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Dec. 20, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:04
December 20, 2010, Monday, Hour #2
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And greetings, welcome back, ladies and gentlemen.
I am Rush Limbaugh, this is the most listened-to radio talk show in the country.
Thanks for being here.
Great to have you with us, as always.
And Merry Christmas, as everybody fully now immerses themselves in the season.
Where was this in the UK?
I think I saw this.
UK Telegraph, they want people to take down their Christmas trees if they have them outside because it depresses people who do not celebrate Christmas.
No, no, I kid you not.
I had a fascinating conversation.
It was in Boston over the weekend, a fascinating conversation with, well, a diplomat.
Let me just put it that way.
He told me something I believe, and I didn't know it, that the active number of recruits in the British military is under 100,000.
And it's, we were talking about the fact that they're lost.
I mean, they've lost the country with immigration and all this cultural rot.
And their health care, the National Health Service, is becoming an even greater disaster now.
It's worse than rationing that's happening.
And it's a blueprint for where we're headed if Obama isn't headed off, the Democrats aren't headed off at the pass in 2012.
And I remember this Christmas tree story, and I don't think I printed it out.
I might have seen it on the airplane coming home last night.
I'm not sure, but I do know.
I saw it.
And I can't remember if it's Christmas trees inside that you can see through a window, but because it depresses people, it don't celebrate Christmas.
It's sort of like an in-your-face.
You have a Christmas tree.
Nothing religious.
It's not a religious thing.
It's typical left-wing dugutarism.
It's whatever offends anybody has to stop.
If you're enjoying yourself in the process, then it's even worse or an even bigger target.
I mentioned Nina Tottenberg.
This was actually Sunday morning on the syndicated Inside Washington.
I thought this program aired on Friday, but it doesn't matter.
It's a local Washington, D.C. show, and this is what she said.
These agencies, including the Defense Department, don't know how much money they've got and for what.
And I was at a, you forgive the expression, a Christmas party at the Department of Justice, and people were actually really worried about this.
Forgive me.
And I was at, forgive the expression, a Christmas party at the Department of Justice.
So Nina Tottenberg didn't want anybody feeling bad about her for going to a Christmas party.
Please forgive me.
I have to say this.
I want her buds in Washington to be down on her because she went to a Christmas party.
Yeah, I didn't enjoy myself there.
It was at the, well, would you, would you enjoy yourself at a Christmas party at the Department of Justice at this Department of Justice?
Hey, for those of you in the stick to the issues crowd, and you know who you are, there are about three of you.
And you bombard me with emails under false, phony, fake names to make yourselves look like there are 25 or 30 of you.
It's funny.
It's laughable.
But here's a little bit of news for you for the stick to the issues.
These are the people that constantly give me grief if I maneuver into discussing football, National Football League, or golf or what have you.
Bill Carter and the New York Times, and they're not really happy about this, but it is what it is.
If it wasn't clear before, this season has underscored the point, italicized it and shouted it from the rooftops.
NFL football is by far the most popular form of programming on American television.
The evidence of the 20 highest-rated telecasts of any kind so far this season, 18 have been NFL games on CBS, NBC, or Fox.
In terms of the best of 2010, nothing else comes close.
Of the 50 highest-rated programs during the calendar year, 27 have been National Football League games, including eight of the top 10.
And at a time when little or nothing on television increases its audience, the NFL is still finding new viewers.
NBC's Sunday night games are up 10% this season.
With three games left, Sunday Night Football is certain to complete the fall as the most watched offering in prime time.
The first time the NFL's primetime showcase, which began in 1970, is Monday Night Football, has ever attained the top ranking.
And CBS Sunday afternoon games also soaring up about 10% from last year.
Games on Fox are up about 2%.
ESPN's Monday night games are about flat with last season, which that network considers remarkable because last season's games broke all records.
And there's another reason why they're flat over there at ESPN.
And the basic reason is that they forget they're telecasting a football game.
You know, what's fascinating about this, as far as the television industry is concerned, and the reason why it has people wringing their hands is there are no writers.
There isn't a script.
It is genuine reality football.
Now, reality TV, the only difference in reality TV and regular TV is that in reality TV, the writers are not union.
But there are no writers for the National Football League.
This is pure, unadulterated.
I have no idea what's coming next, drama.
You couple that with, I mean, our culture is what it is.
The more reprobate the characters are that play this game and the more they star, the more curious people are going to be about them.
And the more people are going to want to see them plunge and fall.
And by the same token, when you have the high-minded, the impeccably dressed, great character, superstars continuing to do well, that is an attraction.
But it's also a testament to, I think, economic activity being down.
It's also a testament to the rest of TV not being all that good.
I mean, you can count on probably one hand the number of shows that you would want to TVO or record.
Well, speaking for myself, but it's, I don't know, I just, the National Football League has done such a fantastic job of marketing itself.
Here's something that happens once a week, and it maintains interest throughout the week.
I mean, jump off the cliff kind of interest.
It's what do I mean, ESPN for guests they're airing again?
Well, the game is secondary.
I mean, I can give you so many examples, but I was watching, and they're not the worst at it, but I was watching this, and you watch tonight.
Watch that.
ESPN has the Chicago Bears at the Minnesota Vikings.
Outdoors in this stadium that's not equipped or winterized, most NFL fields, even the artificial fields, are heated so that they don't become rock-solid frozen.
But the stadium they're playing in tonight, where the college, the Minnesota Golden Gophers play, their season ends mid-November.
So it's not a heated stadium.
So what they're going to do, what they've been doing is heating the stadium under the tarp with hot air.
I read for 30 hours.
They're going to take the tarp off.
It's snowing.
So it's the way football should be.
It's snowing maybe five to six inches this afternoon and tonight, 25 to 30 degrees.
Not too bad.
I mean, they've played in far colder and far worse weather.
You watch tonight within the first five minutes after a kickoff, the formula is to show the starting lineups.
No matter what happens, you could watch on the kickoff an obvious, horrible energy, and they'd cut away from it to show you the starting lineups.
Now, why not do the starting lineups before the game starts?
In the NFL, who cares about the starting lineups anyway?
It's not like baseball.
It's not that big a deal, but all these guys get caught up in the formula of what they're doing.
And what happens on the field becomes secondary to the way the game is being produced.
Whereas the game ought to lead, is all I'm saying.
Now, ESPN's improved can say, used to have all these celebrities in the booth and all these people talking about stuff.
They've done a lot better in that regard.
But you can look at the networks, CBS, Fox, NBC, and ESPN, and you could, well, this guy wants to know.
Yeah, they identify these starters at what university they came from.
Nobody cares about that except the university.
This is, you know, the NFL has a free farm system.
You know, so like Dan Connolly, did you watch a game last night?
Dan Connolly, number 63, the New England Patriots, with a 71-yard kickoff return.
Do you know where Dan Connolly went to school?
He went to school in my hometown of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, southeast Missouri State, SIMO.
It's a university because they have a number of correct number of books in the library.
That's how they got university status.
Or did.
But, you know, guys been in the NFL 15 years and this dealer, James Farrier, Virginia.
Who cares?
Virginia cares.
It's part of the relationship between the NFL and the universities which provide the farm system, essentially.
So that's why the universities they're from are continually identified.
But you can tell which network treats their games as huge, big events and which don't.
And I think it's one of the reasons why NBC is soaring.
They make that look like the only game of the weekend that matters, even when it doesn't.
They make it look like it's the only game of the weekend that matters.
And it's fascinating.
But I've always been, as you people are well aware, I'm a marketing.
That's one of my passions, fashion, fascinations.
And the way the NFL's marketed itself for years is amazing.
If it wouldn't cause the no-issues crowd to commit suicide, I've explained it in great detail.
What's the question?
Let's see.
Oh, okay.
Here's, well, I don't know what the truth is with the McNabb Jersey thing.
All I know is what has been reported.
There's a lot of stuff going on with McNabb and the Redskins, and it involves the Redskins saving money, not having to pay McNabb, getting a better, or not having to give away a high draft choice versus a low one based on how much he plays in the trade they made with the Eagles.
And the way it's shaping out, it looks like McNabb's being insulted left and right when it's business that's going on here.
I mean, they've made the decision McNab's not their quarterback of the future.
So they save money by not having him get on the field as much.
If he plays X number of snaps, he gets bonuses, so he'll keep the snaps down.
If he plays X amount of time, then the Eagles get a third-round pick instead of a fourth-round pick.
So the Redskins have decided McNabb's not their guy.
They're trying to limit the price, what it costed.
Now, the jersey business, there was a big story over the weekend that McNab jerseys, Redskins jerseys, prices have been cut in half, and this was considered to be another in a never-ending line of insults at McNab.
No athlete has ever suffered the humiliation McNab has suffered last week, everybody said.
And then the piece de resistance was the cutting the price of the jerseys.
That story appeared on NBC's website, which is a damn good NFL website.
And it turned out that it was not the Redskins that did it, it was a single retailer that did it.
So the Redskins apologized, but they don't know to who yet.
People can.
Well, now they apologize to the fans.
Are they apologizing to McNab?
Or are they apologizing for the retailer that did it?
But it wasn't the Redskins that cut the price of a McNabb jersey in half.
All right.
Let's see.
Brief timeout.
Ladies and gentlemen, we'll come back.
More of your phone calls lurking right around the corner.
Back to the phones.
This is Terry in St. Peter's, Missouri, not far from St. Louis.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
Hello.
Thank you, Rush, and Merry Christmas.
Same to you.
The Don't Ask, Don't Tell is going to have a negative effect because what we've done is we've elevated homosexuality above military service.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
How have we done that?
Well, I retired from the Air Force almost 20 years ago.
I was a personnel officer, and I had to work long before the days of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
I was working with the JAGS on discharges of homosexuals for active homosexual activity.
The Judge Adjutant General's office, right?
Right.
What is that?
The judge got.
Well, that's the military lawyers.
Yeah, okay.
So we were working cases on misconduct for this.
Misconduct for open, active homosexual activity.
Yes.
People were being thrown out for that?
Yes.
Okay.
Now, and what we're talking about here is actual physical activity, Russia.
I mean, person on person.
Yeah, that's what I understood it to be.
Okay.
And, you know, I think there have been homosexuals in the military probably ever since there's been the military.
But now what has happened, in my estimation, is through this Don't Ask, Don't Tell, we've now elevated the homosexual class above the rank-and-file military class.
Well, see, that's what I don't.
Look, I know that this is not about gaining equality.
I know it's about getting special treatment, but how does it elevate the homosexual class over the rank and file?
Because before, if a person was a homosexual, either active or latent or whatever, if they kept their mouth shut and they were serious about serving in the military, they could get by.
Okay, I mean, we have heterosexuals in the military every day, and they do have interaction with members of the opposite sex.
And they've been thrown out as well, haven't they?
Oh, yes, they have.
I've worked those cases too.
But the point being here is now we've taken a, And at the risk of being politically incorrect, a deviant behavior.
And now we've made it.
That is politically incorrect.
I know, but I've always been that way.
Anyway, now we've elevated this to a status which I believe places the concept of service in a secondary role.
The first is I can now flaunt myself, and that becomes the first role.
Because I'm sure there have been people throughout who have so much.
You mean without being thrown out?
I just want to understand what you're saying.
You can make enough flaunt themselves without fear of discharge.
That is correct.
And now any discharge of homosexuals will, so to speak, will entail perhaps a lawsuit.
It might.
I mean, military justice is still in effect, and it's still, whether it's male on male or female on female, if it's outside the sphere of marriage, quite frankly, it is misconduct within the concept of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Yeah, but that happens what Tail Hook was all about.
Yeah, it was.
And that was the whole political issue that I don't want to get into.
Right.
Well, but that's what this is.
Aren't you basically saying, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, so feel free.
You don't have to agree with me if I'm wrong, but are you now saying that homosexuals, by virtue of lifting Don't Ask, Don't Tell, now have special rights or they are a protected class?
So that behavior is now immune from the...
Well, I won't say the...
I don't say that the behavior is immune from it, Rush.
What I'm saying is the identity is immune from it.
I mean, you could probably walk into a barracks room and see the multicolored gay flag hanging with pride, where before you couldn't.
Okay, let me.
So what?
Well, how does that manifest itself as being detrimental?
Well, I see it as positioning myself as a special protected class more concerned with my identity as a gay than my identity as a member of one of the armed services.
And I think that can be counter to good order and discipline.
And without taking up too many hours of the show, I think there are other areas that are now opened up for serious discussion.
Do you send your lover into war knowing that he or she might be killed?
It's very troubling to me.
What do you think is going to happen to recruitment?
That has come up on the program today.
Well, I think it's possible that it could have a negative impact.
You know, I'd be a little concerned if I dropped my soap in the shower.
Well, but, okay, that's your.
You're speaking for yourself.
Yeah, I'm speaking for myself.
Somebody theorized this could lead to a draft if it hurts recruitment, it could lead to a draft because somebody's going to have to make up.
They're going to need a certain number of bodies.
Well, if it hurts recruitment, it could lead to a draft.
But I think before we went back to a draft, we might see the repeal of the repeal of Don't Act, Don't Tell.
Well, now that can use the firefight that would be.
Folks, just to go to the break here, what he's saying That the whole, the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell now puts sexual identity before unit, before army, before country.
That's what the callers fear the end result of this all is.
Thanks very much.
I got to go.
As I said, I warned you a break was coming.
Here it is.
Now, here's a question.
I'm just an open-ended question.
Will straight soldiers, heterosexuals, be able to claim sexual harassment by gays in the military?
Or will such claims now be considered hate crimes?
How's this going to play out?
Well, you know, because there are, in our culture, there are certain templates.
It's like women never lie about rape, yet we've got this ABC weather babe.
You know, women never lie, yet children never lie, yet we know that they do.
This notion that there is predation in the homosexual community, oh, that never happens.
Well, yeah, just like it never happens in the heterosexual.
Of course it does.
And predators everywhere out there.
And hate crimes are if you're thinking about it, well, if you were, well, that's even worse than the crime that you commit.
So, anyway, it's a lot of stuff to shake out, so to speak.
Here's the story from the UK Telegraph: Christmas trees make non-Christians feel excluded.
I was wrong, it is religious.
Christmas trees should be removed from public places to avoid making non-Christians feel excluded.
Scientists have suggested.
Researchers at Simon Fraser University in Canada found that non-Christians feel less self-assured and have fewer positive feelings if a Christmas tree is in the room.
The scientists conducted the study using 77 Christians and 57 non-believers, including Buddhists and Sikhs.
The participants did not know the survey was about Christmas.
They were asked to fill in questions about themselves, both when a 12-inch Christmas tree was in the room and when it wasn't.
12-inch?
Non-celebrators reported fewer positive feelings and less self-assurance in the Christmas room.
Christians were mostly cheered by the tree.
Who would even think to do this except somebody's trying to wipe out Christmas?
And they say science isn't politicized.
I've got a story here in the stack about this, folks, that I, a little monologue going along with it that I've got to find here on the basis of this.
Hang on here with me because it's somewhere in here.
It's not a big stack today.
It's about the Democrat.
Here it is.
I have found the story.
It's classic.
It's by Tiffany Stanley at the New Republic.
And it's about, after the 2002 midterms, Wellstone Memorial and all that, when exit polls were stunned to learn that values voters were the, and the Democrats were stunned.
Well, yeah, we got to work on our appeal to the values voters, which lasted about two weeks.
Here's a piece.
Things fall apart.
How Democrats gave up on religious voters.
How Democrats gave up on religious voters.
When Barack Obama burst onto the national scene, the 2004 Democrat National Convention, he represented the shining hope for the religious left.
He was a liberal politician who was not afraid of the language of faith, who just might reclaim territory a Democrat Party had, willingly or not, ceded to Republicans.
Red America did not own religion, Obama declared.
worship an awesome God in the blue states.
He's talking about himself.
Between 2004 and 2007, when Obama announced his candidacy for president, he became possibly the most prominent Democrat politician who was comfortable speaking about religion, a liberal who gave the impression that his religiosity was heartfelt, genuine, and important to his politics.
Now, the point is here, see, that he gave the impression.
With Democrats, it's always about making the impression because it's really not something that is, well, it's not in their heart.
Reverend Wright took religion away from Obama's campaign.
If I recall, if people found out who Wright's Obama's pastor was, Obama had to take religion to get out of there.
Obama only talked about religion once during the campaign.
That was on the eve of the South Carolina primaries.
After that, he never brought it up again.
But here's the point.
This is a long piece.
I don't have time to read even a lot of excerpts to you, but you will understand the commentary here because the commentary I put together derives from reading the piece.
It is instructive on so many things that Democrats do and think.
And this is one of these pieces that proves to me that, particularly in matters of religion, liberals are from Mars and conservatives are from Venus.
There's nothing about this, this woman's piece that makes any sense to me.
It is sad in a way.
The writer Tiffany here, writing about the latest reason the Democrats are losers, describes how the Democrats have lost the religious voters since Obama's ordination due to their lack of outreach to them.
It's the same thing back, I think it was the 2002 midterms when the values voters, yeah, it was, and the Democrats, oh, we just, no, we're not reaching out the right ways.
So they have to go find George Lackoff, Rhymes With, to tell them how to reach out, what words to use.
And as always, the liberals and the Democrats think that they're just using the wrong words.
They think that we're just not hearing what they're saying, that we just don't get it because we're a little thick in the head.
So they just need to do some more summits, have some more forums, initiatives, and of course, ask for more tax money to spend to reach us on matters of religion so that we would understand them.
Meanwhile, while they think it's a lack of outreach or possibly a problem with communication, it's clearly obvious to all of us that we're not listening to them because we're seeing what they do.
We don't have to hear what they say.
In fact, listening to what they say only confuses things.
Here's what we see them do.
We see them, as in this story here from the UK, try to get Christmas tree.
Look, the left in the UK and the Canada, the same way as the left here, Christmas trees make non-Christians feel excluded.
Okay, what do we do?
Get rid of Christians and get rid of their trees.
Well, I don't know what kind of outreach you Democrats think is going to help us overcome the way we see that, but it's pretty obvious.
We see the Democrat Party routinely, excitedly Voting for and promoting the killing of babies, abortion.
That's, I don't care what kind of outreach you come up with.
There's nothing that's going to be able to make us think that that's not what it is.
We see you trying to gut the military.
Marriages, churches, over to a homosexual political agenda.
We have no problem with who loves who.
Remember, we conservatives object to political things.
We object to liberals, not individuals, in this case.
And so there's obviously here an effort to give the military and marriage and church over to a leftist political agenda, which is hidden inside the homosexually gay political agenda.
And not all gays are part of that.
It's not a blanket assumption.
We see the Democrats openly supporting a mosque at ground zero.
We see Democrats repeatedly supporting efforts to get rid of any public display of Christmas or Easter in our communities and in schools.
We see the Democrat Party and the left try to destroy things based on or rooted in God, like the Boy Scouts.
We see religious people in this country mocked by the lead Democrat of the day, Obama, as bitter clingers.
Now, all of this, I don't know what kind of outreach, Tiffany, you Democrats think is going to overcome these actions.
Because these actions speak louder than all of your words.
At every turn, we see Democrats racing to replace God with government.
The Democrats want government to be God.
We see Democrats replacing husbands and fathers with government.
We see this.
This has been going on since the 60s.
Generally, conservative Christians believe in smaller government.
We believe that government's not the highest power.
Government is fallible.
The left doesn't think that.
Democrats don't think that.
Government is infallible.
Their pope, their Vatican, is government.
Liberals know that government is fallible, but they have no higher power to turn to, so all of their faith is placed in government.
And for all their faith to be placed in government, there isn't room for faith to be placed anywhere else.
So, as such, to the Democrats, everything is some sort of sick political game.
Nothing's real, especially faith in God.
The only thing that's real is what Democrats can make us believe about them.
And we have to be told, don't believe what you see.
No, no, no, don't believe what you see.
You listen to what we're telling you.
We're going to be working on our outreach.
We're going to come up with better messaging.
And we're going to show you why it's dangerous for you to dissociate us from religion or God.
But faith in God panics them.
Faith in God angers them.
They get irritated.
They make fun of people who go to church, particularly in the South.
And this is what liberals never have or never will understand.
Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, it's real to people who believe it.
Faith is real.
It's what sustains the word of God to people is real.
It means something.
Gives structure, comfort, security, orderliness, consolation, reassurance.
It attempts to answer the questions or at least to provide faith that there are answers to questions that there really aren't answers to on this earth.
And you, Democrats, I mean, you treat the Bible like the Constitution.
It's a set of rules and guidelines that are flexible.
When you tell Catholics that it's up to the church to change to adapt to your latest fall from grace, I don't care what kind of message you come up with, outreach or what have you, you're never going to be able to convince people that you have this same degree of faith and religious belief, the people you're trying to reach.
You only have to follow these rules and guidelines, as in the Constitution, when it suits you.
But Second Amendment, it may as well not be there because it doesn't make any sense.
You don't like it.
You can't rewrite the Bible, but you're trying, just like you rewrite the Constitution with your judges.
This piece, things fall apart, how Democrats gave up on religious voters, how Democrats have problems with religious, and not one mention of Reverend Wright in this piece.
So that alone tells me that it's just a game to them.
Okay, we've got a problem here.
The left, religious people don't really understand that we love them or whatever, believe what they do.
So we've got to come up with a new message, make them think that we're, well, that ain't going to cut it if your behavior is not similar or in line.
So when you start saying, you know what, Christmas trees just make non-Christians lose self-esteem and think that they feel you got to get rid of the Christmas tree in order to spare people's feelings.
Don't even try to come up with a message or outreach because nothing can overcome that.
From the UK Guardian.
And by the way, we learned this from Julian Assange and Wikileaks.
Cuba has banned Michael Moore's movie Sicko for depicting a mythical healthcare system in Cuba.
Authorities feared footage of gleaming hospitals in Michael Moore's Oscar-nominated film would provoke a popular backlash.
So Cuba has banned Michael Moore's documentary Sicko because it painted such a mythically favorable picture of Cuba's healthcare system.
The revelation contained in a confidential U.S. embassy cable released by WikiLeaks is surprising given that the film attempted to discredit the U.S. healthcare system by highlighting what it claimed was the excellence of the Cuban system.
Now, see, this goes back to what we were talking about last week, smart.
How do you define smart?
Who in the world would ever believe that the Cuban healthcare system outclasses the American healthcare system in any way?
Who would believe?
And Who would come along and try to make a movie to depict that in an effort to destroy the U.S. healthcare system?
Come along and try to, as a comparison, say the Cuban healthcare system is the model.
And this guy gets a nomination, an Oscar nomination for it after winning the huge award at Con for Fahrenheit 911.
And look at this sentence.
UK Guardian.
The revelation contained in is surprising.
Given that the film attempted to discredit the U.S. healthcare system, what is surprising about this?
What's surprising that the Cubans, upon seeing a piece of propaganda about their healthcare system, wouldn't want their own people to see it because there isn't a gleaming hospital in Cuba.
At least there isn't one where average Cubans can go.
But the memo reveals that when the film was shown to a group of Cuban doctors, some became so disturbed at the blatant misrepresentation of healthcare in Cuba, they left the room.
Cuban doctors left the room hoping they could keep going and leave the country.
By the way, there's a reason that they pronounce C-A-N-N-E-S con because that whole thing is a con, especially when some bloated bigot like Michael Moore wins the biggest award.
I got an email question here, folks.
What happens when a non-gay NCO orders a gay private into a dangerous situation?
The private refuses the order on the grounds of gay discrimination.
Because if it's openly, NCOs are going to know who's who.
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