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Dec. 21, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
32:55
December 21, 2010, Tuesday, Hour #3
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Hi and welcome back Rush Limbaugh the Excellence in Broadcasting Network and the Limbaugh Institute for advanced conservative studies.
Great to have you here.
Our final hour of Open Line Friday on Tuesday.
Mark Stein here tomorrow and Thursday.
Our telephone number, if you want to be on the program, is 800-282-2882.
The email address, LRushbaugh at EIBNet.com.
So I got an email during the break at the top of the hour.
Rush, does your wife listen to your show?
And why would people ask me that?
She does listen.
Here's what happens.
She gets in the car.
She drives during the commercial breaks.
When the program starts, she pulls off to the side of the road and covers her face.
That's how she does.
That's what she tells me she does.
Anyway, we want to talk about this net neutrality business.
We have dealt with this on this program before.
The FCC has just asserted its authority to regulate the internet.
And this net neutrality is a bogus name, just like most legislative titles, well, most titles of legislation are bogus.
Net neutrality does no such thing.
It does not promote neutrality and lack of bias or any such thing.
And we noted on this program back in September of 2009, net neutrality is a solution in search of a problem.
It's just a bunch of liberals wanting to get their hands on something that is massive, that can harm them.
They have to control as much as they can the free flow of information.
They have to be in charge of it.
They have to be able to censor it.
And that's what this is all about.
There is no problem on the internet.
None.
In fact, in most of life, there wasn't a problem until the liberals went in search of one so they could control people's behavior and try to legislate the outcomes of individuals in life.
The only problem here appears to be too much freedom, at least in the minds of the government, too much freedom on the internet in the minds of Obama and his FCC people.
All you really have to know about net neutrality is that its biggest promoters are George Soros and Google and moveon.org, which is heavily funded by Mr. Soros and Google.
It's also promoted by a number of other radical left Soros fronts, such as the Free Press and the Center for American Progress, a couple of additional groups improperly named.
The Center for American Progress is about the opposite.
They're not about American progress.
And free press is not about the free press.
So what we're doing here is neutering the Internet.
It's another private industry.
It's another gleaming aspect of free speech, free market.
Private industry Obama has decided to take over as a Christmas present to himself and the Democrat National Committee and to Mr. Soros.
He's even beaten Hugo Chavez to the punch.
Chavez is just talking about taking over the internet in Venezuela.
Obama has got it done.
It's all about, they want you to believe it's about search engines, making sure that every possible result gets exposure.
And they want to try to tell you it's about money.
And it's not.
It's never, well, it is about money, but it's not in the way that you would think when that is offered as a reason.
It's about control.
Here is a gleaming, gleaming artifact of unabridged free market everything.
Speech, commerce, you name it.
And they want to control it.
They want to control who gets to say what on it.
They want to control who gets found on it.
They want to control pretty much everything about it.
Monday afternoon, two Democrat commissioners on the FCC, Michael Copps and Ming Yong Clyburn, the daughter of James Clyburn, signaled that the order was not as strong as they would have liked, but they wouldn't oppose it.
Their votes, along with Mr. Jenikowski's, would be enough to approve the order or the takeover.
Copps, one of the Democrat commissioners, said that he wanted to ensure that the Internet doesn't travel down the same road of special interest consolidation and gatekeeper control that other media and communications industries like radio, TV, film, and cable have traveled.
They are worried to death that the internet is going to become the next conservative talk radio and Fox News.
And that's what they're not going to permit.
That's what so-called net neutrality is all about, to make sure that the voices of minorities and the displaced and the disfinanced and the disabused and the whoevers are equally heard.
What a historic tragedy it would be, Copps said, to let the fate, that fate, meaning what's happened to talk radio and Fox News, befall the dynamism of the Internet.
That's from an earlier AP story.
Yeah, so we would really hate to see, and they don't, by the way, have any regulatory authority over cable TV, and they haven't asserted it.
And that's what galls them about Fox.
So this is, and they're trying to control Fox on the basis that Fox does news.
But see, news is specifically, journalism is specifically mentioned in the First Amendment.
It gives them a problem.
But we wouldn't want the Internet to suffer the fate of TV, which has gone from three networks to literally thousands of choices.
We wouldn't want that, would we?
You go back, it wasn't that long ago, 1988.
It was the three networks and CNN.
And I think ESPN was just getting started in, I mean, breaking out.
ESPN first started on radio.
But we wouldn't want that kind of diversity, would we?
In 1988, there were 125 radio stations in this country doing talk.
Today, what is it, Snurdy?
It's over 2,000.
Over 2,000.
You've got every format under the sun.
If you want to listen to a talk show on baking carrot cakes for the holidays, you can find it.
It's there.
Chinese opera.
You name it.
We certainly wouldn't want to see the internet end up like radio where there's even room for views that diverge from the liberal establishment.
Oh, we can't have that.
We can't have views that diverge from liberalism.
They see the internet as something, if they don't grab control of it, they're never going to get control of it.
And that What they want.
Let's go to the audio soundbites because this is part and parcel of the same thing.
Today, a good morning, America, rep number six for the broadcast engineer.
The Justice Department correspondent of ABC, Pierre Thomas, interviewed the Attorney General Eric Holder.
Question: What keeps you up at night?
What keeps you up at night?
What do you worry about most?
The concern that perhaps we might have missed something.
The threat is real.
The threat is different.
The threat is constant.
The threat has changed from foreigners coming here to people in the United States, American citizens raised here, born here.
You didn't worry about this even two years ago.
The ability to go into your basement, turn on your computer, find a site that has this kind of hatred spewed.
They have an ability to take somebody who's perhaps just interested, perhaps just on the edge, and take them over to the other side.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's what keeps you is threats, not from foreigners, but people in the U.S., American citizens raised here, born here.
Those are the real terror threats.
When was the last one of those?
When was the last one of them?
And so you see, and the computer, because you can take these people fragilely balanced on the edge and get some really smart molder of opinion, some terrorist, some crazy site, and the person in the basement on the computer can become a terrorist.
That's we got to work.
Sounds just like Hugo Chavez.
This is the language of authoritarian statists.
This is the language of dictators.
And this next is encouraging.
Pierre Thomas said, Are you confident the United States will continue to thwart terror attacks?
The American people have to be prepared for, you know, potentially bad news.
Wait a second.
I thought you were working 24-7, 364 to keep us safe.
Well, that's what Big Sis said.
She was on World News tonight, and Diane Sawyer interviewed her.
She said, What do you say right now about the degree of anxiety that's just realistic right now as we head into the holidays?
What I say to the American people is that we are, and thousands of people are working 24-7, 364 days a year to keep the American people safe.
What is the one day they are not working to keep people safe?
It can't be Ramadan because that's like a month.
What is the one day?
Well, she said, she said 24-7, 364 days a year.
No, because in leap years, it'd be two days.
It'd be 366.
Election day?
Maybe it's Election Day.
Martin Luther King Day.
What day are they not working to keep us safe?
Obviously, here, what would you call this?
A gaffe.
And so on Morning Joe today, Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington.
And we're talking about this gaffe, 364 days a year to protect the people.
Scarborough said, help us out here.
You know, I come from the no labels group, and I don't know what 364 means anymore because we don't believe in labels and numbers or labels.
So what is she talking about here?
If Janet Napolitano says we're not going to have to worry about terrorism because we got people working 364 days of the year, by the way, can we, Joe, you're a no labels guy.
What are you talking about terrorists for?
Isn't that a label?
Hell, I'm distracting myself.
Question: If Janet says that we're not going to have to worry about terrorism because we've got people working 364 days out of the year, are they giving us a heads up to let us know the day they're all taking off so I can keep my family home?
One person takes off a different day.
You see, that's the deal, and they're covering for each other.
I don't know.
Maybe it's Christmas Day.
Ah, Andrea Mitchell, NBC News in Washington, trying to cover for Big Sis.
Well, they got it covered.
It's just that she's taking one day off, but somebody's covering for her.
Okay, back to the funds we go.
And this is Jim in San Antonio, Texas.
It's great to have you on the program, sir.
Hello.
Rush.
Hey.
Hey, I just wanted to point out an irony.
Everybody seems to want to encourage self-esteem in everybody.
And yet, when you're truly self-confident, they try to bring you down.
So, you know, I don't understand why people don't understand you.
I mean, when you're right, you're right, and people shouldn't be upset about it.
You know, that's an interesting point.
To raise up self-esteem the way you have it, then break them down.
That's true.
I'm going to be very honest with you about something.
I have been befuddled by this whole notion of people listening to me not getting it.
Now, I have said that in order to understand everything that happens in context in this program, you do have to give it six weeks because really, this program never ends.
I might talk about something today that happened two years ago with the assumption my audience knows about it because they're here every day.
But I've always been perplexed about this notion that I'm hard to understand and hard to get.
I've always been amused by it and a little bit perplexed because I'm as my inner self is out there on display each and every day.
I hope 20 years people are afraid of self-confidence.
They truly fear it.
Well, I think, I do think, especially, I've often thought that explains a lot of problems that women have with this program that stated is that nobody's supposed to be that sure of themselves.
There's always supposed to be great.
You're not supposed to be that sure.
You are correct.
You are correct in excess of 99%.
I can tell you that because I'm always right, and we rarely disagree.
Well, I remember when I was on William Shatner's show, and we're talking about things and talking, and he just stopped.
How do you know?
And I said, Because I do.
It's my job.
But how do you know?
And, yeah, well, I just know.
And I've studied it.
I've reached it.
It's my business to know.
I can tell you what I tell people that I've worked with for years.
I never tire of being right.
I never get bored with it.
I never tire of it.
Me either.
Well, you know, it's always good to meet somebody that knows everything.
Appreciate it.
Somebody told me a lot of people.
Well, it does make for a much more pleasant existence.
There's no questions.
These insecure people always demanding that you explain yourself, you know, when it's they who have the problem.
Anyway, Jim, very perceptive of you.
Well done.
Here's what has I got?
Ron and Corpus Christie, you're next on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
It's a pleasure speaking about Eric Holder.
I'm acquainted with victims of the FOA and terrorist group.
And, you know, he had helped with the Clintons to let a lot of them free back in 1999.
Yeah, that's a Puerto Rican group.
Right, Puerto Rican nationalist group, and they were really fringe.
And there was one guy that turned down Clinton's offer of clemency.
His name is Oscar Lopez, and he was a co-founder of the group.
He made bombs for the group.
He taught others how to make bombs.
He tried to escape from prison twice.
He never showed any remorse, and he repeated that over and over again: no remorse, no contrition.
Now he wants to get out.
There's a parole hearing on January the 5th, and it's an uphill battle.
And there'll be people showing up there trying to stop this.
And so I encourage everybody to go on the Parole Commission's website, give him a call, be polite, let them know what you think.
Why does the guy want out now?
I guess he just got tired of being in prison.
Well, that makes sense.
And see, there was another friend of his that got out this past year.
He was the other co-founder, but he wasn't as crazy as Lopez is because Lopez is a case.
When he conspired to get out of prison the second time, the FBI busted it up.
He conspired with members that were linked to the Weather Underground, and they had, he made up a list of stuff he wanted to include.
Let me see.
I got the list here.
It's got, let me see, blasting caps, armored-piercing rockets, grenades, rifles, plastic explosives, bullet-proof vests.
He tried to break out to kill his way out, and now he just wants to walk out.
Well, you are informing me of something that I was not this up to speed on.
I had not heard details of any of this.
I've got 30 seconds.
What specifically so bothers you about this guy getting out after spending some time in jail?
A lot of things do.
A sense of justice, compassion for the victims.
They have to go and relive this again.
But Clinton pardoned, Clinton pardoned all of his buddies, and the other guy just got out of the body.
He got all of them, most of them.
And also, you know, to show that the Clintons and Eric Holder can't have their way.
That's part of it.
But it's mainly for the victims.
I've gotten to know some of these people, and I suffer with them, and they shouldn't have to go through this.
Now, that's true.
That's true.
That is terror.
No question about it.
Ron, I'm glad you called.
I appreciate it.
Another brief time out here at the bottom of the hour.
We'll be back shortly.
And we are back.
By the way, the terrorist, the F-A-L-N terrorist, our last caller was talking about.
It's a guy named Oscar Lopez Rivera.
He rejected Bill Clinton's offer of a pardon, and he's served 12 years of a 70-year sentence.
And his hearing is coming up in January.
And it is the hope of many that he is not released.
Audio soundbite.
By the way, black church leaders not happy with Obama over the tax rate extension bill.
But the media has some advice for Obama if he gets the START treaty done.
They don't want him to do a news conference about it.
They say he's lost his luster in news conferences.
This morning on Morning Joe, PMS NBC, the co-host Mika Zhashinski spoke with Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, about Obama and his legislative victories.
And she said, there's talk about a news conference, end of the year news conference.
That seems to be a risk at this point or a good way to put a marker down and say, here's where we're going to go.
Perhaps news conferences are not the president's best format, but the bottom line is if he gets the start treaty and has come through a lame duck session, which as Al and Eugene and you have been pointing out, has been so much better than advertised, better than any of us thought it would be.
They have one don't ask, don't tell.
They will have a continuing resolution, although they've lost the big spending bill, which was really a blindsiding of the Senate leader by that on the earmark issue.
But given everything that they've accomplished so far, he goes out of town before he leaves for vacation, has his own forum, and I think it's exactly what he ought to be doing.
But don't do the press conference.
It's not his best, it's not his best, not his best format.
What about this better lame duck session and advertised?
What media bias?
He's had a better lame duck session and advertised better than any of us thought it would be.
Has no media bias.
These people still insist that there's no bias.
Oh, he's really one big here.
He's won.
Oh, yeah, he got the Bush tax rates extended.
He didn't get the omnibus because of the earmark thing.
And he got the start treaty.
He got don't ask, don't tell.
What a moa, what a grownup guy.
But don't do a press conference.
It's not his great format.
Eugene Robinson, the Washington Post, and Mika Bzinski have a conversation about all of these victories.
This has been a really good stretch of time for him.
And from the lame session, he gets something for everybody, right?
The tax cut deal for those who wanted to see him move toward the middle because, oh, he's moving toward the middle.
We like that.
Don't ask, don't tell goes through with something for the base that really needed a victory to cheer them up.
So you're doing fine.
Why, you know, why mess with it?
The great orator, the greatest speaking president we've ever had.
Why mess with all this and go destroy it by Obama having a press conference or an announcement?
Can't use a teleprompter at a press conference?
What is it?
Lame session.
Lame session.
That's like a hate speech.
But now the next bite, this is interesting from the forehead.
Paul Bagala is not thinking that this is all that big a deal.
Sanjay Gupta, filling in for Anderson Cooper on Anderson Cooper 04 said, you know something about the term comeback kid.
You work closely with Bill Clinton.
What do you think of the comparison here, forehead?
The vital signs, Dr. Gupta, are not political polls.
The vital signs here are jobs.
Can he create more jobs?
We don't have enough jobs being created in this presidency.
I think he's doing all he can.
I agree with his economic theory.
But the reality is we need more jobs.
Move the needle on jobs and raise incomes.
And then all of this punditry is just contributing to global warming as far as I'm concerned.
Now, the forehead not climbing on the bandwagon here of what a great lame session it was.
No, there's nothing really to crow about here, says the forehead.
Until you start getting jobs, there's nothing to crow about.
Now, who does the forehead really work for?
Hillary.
The forehead works with Carville for the Clintons.
I find this analysis from Bagala to be quite interesting and fascinating.
Jay in Salem, Oregon.
Great to have you, sir, on the Open Line Friday on Tuesday version of the program.
Hello.
Rush, nice to talk to you.
It occurred to me one day, I was accused by an inmate of being a Republican, and I realized that They think like Democrats.
The Democrat Party is the party of criminal thinking.
And I just, I got to thinking about it.
And a criminal thinks that laws don't apply to them.
Think no control.
Wait a minute now.
Hold on.
You were accused by an inmate.
Where were you?
Well, I work at a county jail.
Oh, okay.
That helps.
It's an actual inmate accused you of being a Republican.
And they all think like Democrats.
Exactly.
And I got to thinking, you know, what is a criminal but someone that thinks that the laws don't apply to them?
Al Gore said there was no controlling legal authority.
Yeah.
Criminals, they have a problem with addiction, maybe addiction to power.
A criminal thinks a lawyer is the answer to every problem.
And what's my last point?
And lying is the redefinition of truth.
I like it.
What better evidence could there be?
The guy works in a jail and inmates, you sound just like a Republican.
That's excellent, Jay.
I appreciate it.
I'm glad you call and go through.
Hey, folks, I have a couple of pronouncements here to share with you before the holiday break.
One of them, on behalf of my friends in Washington at Heritage.
They are open full days on both Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve this year.
Just saying, just want you to know.
The reason is they've learned that Christmas Eve requires a full day of monitoring, Liberal Congress, when it comes to attempting to pass bills that don't benefit the country.
And on New Year's Eve, Heritage is going to make their own noise, a year-end money bomb.
It's a big deal for them.
What they want to do is build a conservative war chest for 2011 with the greatest possible number of Heritage Foundation members.
Right now, there are more than 700,000.
So even though I will not be here on New Year's Eve, I really hope that you will make a plan to support them with a tax-deductible donation on the one day a year that they are able to turn their total attention to building up the strongest membership group they can, because it is that membership group which permits them to do the work that they do.
Become a member of Heritage at askheritage.org.
A mere 25 smackers will make you a member.
When you join up, you'll receive a free 2011 Heritage Foundation calendar featuring conservative heroes.
It's at askheritage.org.
But you'll also, the greatest thing about this is that you have access to their work.
You have access to the brilliance that percolates there 364 days a year, 24-7, whatever, in all 57 states.
We have news from the Associated Press.
The massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill has been declared the story of the year.
Top news story of 2010, the Gulf oil spill, which is utter nonsense.
The BP oil spill never hurt anything.
It was Obama who did.
It was Obama who shut down the drilling in the Gulf.
The BP oil spill didn't hurt anything.
It was cleaned up in a matter of weeks.
But we are going to take years cleaning up the mess of Obamacare unless we repeal it.
That's the top story of the bad.
Of course, would be expecting quite a bit from AP to recognize that.
Once again, if you happen to be just joining us, today we introduced and unveiled our iPhone app for Rush 24-7 to the iPhone App Store.
Just search Rush Limbaugh.
It'll work on your iPod Touch.
It'll work on your iPad as well as your iPhone.
It's not written custom for the iPad, but it works just fine.
I'll explain that here in just a second.
You have to be a member to access aspects of this program.
The app is free.
You can become a member.
There are a bunch of different membership plans you can choose at Rush 24-7 from the app.
Once you've joined, then you will have live DittoCam streaming each day during the program, archival DittoCam coverage of each program, DittoCam video of each day's morning update, archived video of appearances on other media.
We've got a couple video promos of the Golf Channel, the Haney Project, that are on display now.
It's right email right to the program from the app.
Now, the way you use this on the iPad is that it's written for the iPhone screen.
You simply load the program on the iPad and you run it, and you select either the live DittoCam or any video.
Once the video starts to play, this is a glitch that we're going to get fixed.
Once you start the video, just hit the 2X button at two times.
It'll expand it to fill the iPad screen with perfect resolution.
You won't lose anything with the expansion of the picture of the video streaming.
We handle all of the retina display code perfectly here.
The glitch is that you have to hit the 2X button after the video starts.
You're going to get that fixed.
And occasionally, some sources you'll get a message, some video sources, which will say that network is busy.
Please try later.
That's a glitch that we are working on with some of those video elements.
But it's working flawlessly today for our inaugural users.
And again, search Rush Limbaugh at the iPhone iPad store to find the app.
Janet in Phoenix, you're next on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi.
Merry Christmas, Rush, to you and your family and everyone at EIB.
Thank you very much.
Hey, I just learned recently that the post office has found a great way to deal with the collective bargaining.
They are starting to, every time somebody quits or is fired or retires, they hire a temp to replace them.
That's happening in a lot of businesses around the world.
And I know that there are aspects of it that, you know, where benefits are concerned that seem bad, but over the course of time, there will be no more union members.
They just won't exist anymore.
And I see it as a peek into something we can do.
You know, the public workers should not be able to collective bargain with the taxpayers.
Well, I understand what you're saying.
I think the unions would spot that trend long before they would allow it to happen.
Unions are not just going to sit around and watch themselves dissolve.
Oh, I agree.
I agree that that will take an awful lot of work.
But I think the will is there, and I think the people are disgusted with the collective bargaining against taxpayers.
Everywhere, Janet, everywhere.
Thanks for the call.
John in Philadelphia, less than two minutes, but I wanted to get to you, sir.
Rush, I thank God that you are on the air.
Helping me.
Thank you very much, sir.
Thank you very much.
I wanted to point out the media bias, the sports media bias, as being racist in that.
Michael Vic, they've been complaining now.
I'm a huge Philadelphia Eagles fan.
I'm glad to see Donovan gone.
I was actually defending you, that all you were saying was that you were saying it was the media bias saying that he was overrated.
Well, now the media bias is funny because they want to wear the shoe on the other foot with Vic by saying that the reps aren't calling penalties on Vic that would be called if it were Brady or Manning.
I just Andy Reid.
Andy Reid is not saying those, he's not saying that he's not using the Manning or Brading analogy, but he is saying that Vic's not getting the hits are not being called.
So the media can say they're bouncing off of Andy Reid on that.
Oh, but you heard Chris Collinsworth say, or I did, on NBC a week ago, that if it were Brady or Manning, that that call would have been called.
What are you saying?
Are you saying that the refs are racist?
What are you trying to say from that?
I find it funny that nobody has come out and said, hey, wait a second, you're not allowed to say that.
That's racism.
It is an interesting question.
If the refs are letting Vic get roughed up more than other quarterbacks, why?
You're saying, well, is it because Vic is racist?
Might it be the referees?
It's their way of saying, hey, you want to go beat up on Dog Spine?
Here's how it feels.
Who knows?
It could also not be happening.
Could also just be everybody's opinion that Vic is skating.
Well, not skating, that the people hitting Vic are skating.
Anyway, it makes for interesting conversation because it's sports.
And I got to run.
I appreciate the call, John.
Thanks.
El Mucho.
And it's time for our end of the year tradition.
We always wrap the final show of the year with the silent night from Mannheim Steamroller.
I don't want to talk over too much of it, but you've got to hear this on the CD to hear it.
It's just lush and gorgeous.
Your iPad picture, if it pixelates at 2X, get a better connection.
It won't happen.
We're working on an iPad version of the app.
It will happen.
Droid, BlackBerry as well, in time.
It's all coming.
In the meantime, folks, it's been another stupendous year here at the EIB network, and it's all because of you.
And you continue to say all these nice things, send all these wonderful compliments, email your phone calls and so forth.
But one thing that's always been the case and hasn't changed is whatever this program, whatever we hear at EIB, me, overrated staff, whatever we mean to you, it cannot possibly compare to what you have meant and do mean to all of us, my family as well.
We're blessed because of you.
We cannot thank you enough.
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