Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 Podcast.
And we'd like to welcome back to the program today, Mr. Bo Snardley, who has been on an extended vacation since just before Christmas.
Arrived back home yesterday has been overseas in the Philippines.
Even got a note from him while there talking about the Philippines.
It's uh no, I it's it was it's Filipinos.
I'm reading him talking about the Philippines and what they think about this and that.
At uh at any rate, Snardly says uh that over the weekend, he's minding his own business, you know, he's just on vacation over there, and by happenstance turns on the television and the American cable news networks are available in the Philippines.
You're in Manila, and all of a sudden he starts seeing Rush Limbaugh here, Rush Limbaugh there says, What the hell is this?
So he starts tuning in, he says, My gosh, I'm on vacation.
What Limbaugh's responsible for a shooting.
So he wanted me to know that around the world.
And then on the flight home, what what leg was this?
The from from Philip.
Tokyo to Detroit non-stop.
So he's in a Tokyo to Detroit flight, and the couple behind him are cursing me during the flight.
He hears these people cursing me for hijacking American politics.
Is that what they said?
Hijacking American politics.
And he just at the next natural opportunity stood up either get some exercise, go to the bathroom or whatever, and just stared at them for a while.
Didn't say anything to them, right?
Didn't want to cause a scene, but uh listen to two people on the flight, Rush Limbaugh hijacked American politics.
Greetings 800-282-2882 if you want to be on the program.
Email address El Rushball at EIBNet.com.
I honestly thought about opening the program to go out and find a medicine man uh to open the program, much as they opened the uh pep rally uh last night.
It uh well was a pep rally.
I mean, I I think even Obama was a little bit put off by the uh the behavior of that crowd last night.
I mean, there's a lot of questions out there.
I you know, they they had two members of the regime quoting the Bible.
They didn't have preachers, priests, rabbis, they had Big Sis and Eric Holder quoting from the Bible.
And I'm thinking, you know, uh this is not gonna play well with the uh with the Democrat base.
Why why and of course the Muslim brothers uh did might be scratching their heads over that.
Uh medicine man out there starts out with the first ten minutes telling us who he is.
Uh and the and the creator doing his stuff from the north portal, the south portal, the right portal, a left portal.
Uh Catherine and I were looking at each other.
Uh uh uh we were fully expecting what this was gonna memorial.
And it was like it when it this thing started out, it was like a pep rally.
In fact, what before the thing started, cameras inside the uh room, and there was somebody that was just laughing and yucking it up with some people in Catherine Point O. How can anybody sit there and be laughing?
You got families of the dead and the wounded sitting there.
Who is this guy?
It turned out to be the uh president of the university when he finally went to the podium there to get the old thing kicked off.
Uh anyway, folks, I want you to listen to a couple sound bites here.
Because these two sound bites have uh well they know I was thinking, where was Reverend Wright?
I mean, he could read from the Bible.
Uh just as well as as as Holder and and Big Sis.
But this is Thursday, so the the memorial slash pep rally was on Wednesday.
And you think this could have been done a little earlier.
You think they could have done this memorial a little earlier than last night.
Uh Why do you I I do too.
I I think I think.
No, it wasn't it wasn't prime well, obviously prime time, but they could have done prime time Monday, I guess they were up against a football game, the uh BCS.
They could have done it Tuesday night.
I I well before before I offer any opinion, and I am by the way, I want to tell you right now, I'm going to reserve my opinion of Obama's speech itself for later on during the program.
Because we have serious news out there, Snerdley that is being ignored about this country.
The unemployment numbers skyrocketing, food prices are about to skyrocket.
We have no change whatsoever happening economically.
We had a speech last night where essentially the people of this country were were uh commanded to change the way we are behaving because of events like this when when I know he gave lip service to the notion that we didn't have anything to do with this, but he didn't specifically say it.
So but I I I've I we'll get into it here in due course.
I know people question my ability to do this each and every day, but I am host.
And uh always always trust my my instincts.
So here, uh last night, MSNBC hardball Chris Matthews and the uh senior political editor of the Huffing and Puffington Post, Howard Feynman have this exchange.
Well, Fox, for example, or Rush Limbaugh say, you know, he was okay last night.
Is that the scorecard he's looking for?
Did the other side of him politically get to decide whether he was nonpartisan?
That's a very good question.
And I think you're right.
I think in his mind, I'm guessing here, the president is playing as much to the right here.
He would like everyone to say, from Fox to MS and everybody, you know, all around the spectrum, that he served a civic, important civic healing function tonight, and that's it.
And that's it.
Apparently, uh Matthews and Feynman are of the opinion that I will be the ultimate arbiter of Obama's speech.
That if I can say positive things about it, then okay, it will have been of the right tone with the right message.
Now, Fox loved it.
The Fox All Stars when this was over were slobbering over the speech.
It was it was it was predictable, and it was they were slobbering over it for the predictable reasons.
It was smart, it was articulate, it was oratorical, it was uh it was all the things the the educated uh ruling class wants their members to be and sound like.
Uh later on on Hardball, uh this is before Obama's speech, Matthew's New York magazine columnist John Heilman had this exchange about Obama's speech and me.
Who's to decide what has a political overtime?
I think that's why it's very difficult.
Everyone's gonna score the president tomorrow.
But look, this thing that happened last Saturday, I think many people hoped that this would bring a moment where everyone would pause and reflect.
And instead, what's happened over the course of the days since then is everything that's bad about our political culture has speeded up.
And the first opportunity was to attack one side, and then the other side attacked the attacks, and it's become this.
It's become everything that you hoped it wouldn't.
Oh, come on.
It was everything we knew it would be.
It became everything we knew it would be, and that is attacking talk radio, attacking Sarah Palin.
We knew.
It was utterly predictable.
Now, one I I tell you, I think the reason why they waited as long to do this was they were waiting for polling data.
The polling data shows the American people do not associate political rhetoric with anything that happened in this incident.
That's what they were waiting on.
If the polling data had been different, the speech would have been different.
But because the polling data says the American people don't associate political give and take, the political rhetoric in the media with what happened here, that pretty much dictated how the speech had to go.
So they had to wait for the polling data to come in.
That's why they waited a win.
I have no doubt at plus.
Plus, my friends, they needed time to print those t-shirts.
Uh to uh give away at the rally.
Brief timeout, we'll be back after this.
Don't go away.
I'm not making it up.
They were waiting on the T shirt to be printed and the logo to be designed.
And you'll notice that the logo is one color, blue.
Blue states.
I kid what you want my observations.
I'm sharing with you my observations.
But I know they had to wait it on the t-shirts to get printed and a logo designer to finish his work.
That's one reason this thing was moved along with the polling data moved last night.
And I okay, here's stream of consciousness reaction.
The thing starts, and the medicine man and the Native American family said, were any of the victims Native Americans?
I didn't know.
But I I it what is this?
I said, what the medicine man spends ten minutes telling us who he is.
Because he said that's what is standard.
And I'm thinking this is not about you.
It's it's not about it's not about any of the elected officials here.
It's not about the college president.
It's not about the students cheering.
It's that the people about whom this memorial was ignored for a large block of time at the beginning of this.
It was Arizona Governor Brewer who got this thing on track, talking about the victims and who they were.
The president's gotten glowing reviews from practically every corner, but he didn't shut down the primary theme that has been occupying America since Saturday, and that is that conservative media was responsible for this.
He started talking about civility in general.
Kirsten Powers has a column in uh Daily Beast today, and she's got a good point here.
When the president did lay blame, it was on Americans in general, among the many odd assertions he made suggesting that what a tragedy like this requires is that we align our values with our actions.
We were told to expand our moral imaginations.
What does this have to do with any nothing?
Yet a lone gunman, mentally disturbed, got to figure out how he got the gun since he couldn't afford it.
We have to figure out why, since everybody knew he was such a menace, he was able to run as free as he was around that town.
The questions are obvious.
The answers are not that complicated here.
Um but the notion that we Americans somehow need to improve ourselves.
We need to get better at the way we talk with it.
If that if the president said that didn't matter, that that wasn't a factor yet.
Most of his speech was about how we got to get better dealing with each other.
That we have to somehow step it up.
And yet he tried to say in his own way that that had nothing to do.
He said, We'll never really know what happened here.
Um rhetoric didn't cause this, and yet we've all got to improve our rhetoric.
We've all got to step up.
Now I know the Target always is going to eat that stuff up.
I mean, you could see people in the crowd crying over the notion we all just have to get along and so forth, but I, you know, I live in Literalville.
I live in Realville watching this, and I'm thinking this is this is not solving anything.
This this is this is I mean President himself is responsible for some of the disunity that exists in the country.
And uh it he didn't talk about improving himself.
He didn't talk about trying to improve the way he's dealing with people and things, uh, and so forth.
He got plenty of incendiary rhetoric on his side.
So I, you know, I've I've I watched it with with you know I couldn't get past the fact that this was not a memorial.
That kept it was a heavy weight over my head.
The the uh the crowd reaction as though it was a pep rally or a political event.
White House is saying, according to there, the White House transcript that Obama's remarks were interrupted by applause no less than 53 times.
Now that's not standard fare for a memorial.
You go back and look at the Bush 9-11 memorial, you can go back and look at Reagan.
Reagan spoke for four and a half minutes after Challenger.
Clinton spoke for nine minutes after Oklahoma City.
This thing went on for 35 minutes or so.
And it clearly had uh political element and political overtones and objectives to it.
Well, I I just I I I find a lot of contradictions in this.
The one part of the speech that I I've talked to a lot of people about one part of the speech that particularly moved people was when President Obama was talking about the nine-year-old little girl who was snuffed out, and how we all have a duty to live up to that little girl's expectations, her uh nine-year-old dreams and expectations of the greatness of America.
We have to uh I I I think the greatness of America exists.
Uh the the the there was the theme here that we're failing, a theme here that society is somehow not all together what it should be, that the American uh experiment's not working out all that well.
And we gotta step it up here.
When one lone deranged gunman, not American society, not American culture had anything to do with this.
Uh but I knew that line was going to work with a lot of people because it's about a child and it's about dreams, and it's about not uh letting go what she wants this country to be.
She was growing into this country, let's make sure we live up to what she expected.
I think we have done that.
So to me there was a it was very subtle, but there was a uh constant theme running through this that there are severe deficiencies throughout the country.
Severe problems, deficiencies, shortcomings throughout our culture, as evidenced by this event Saturday in uh in Tucson.
When the thing started, I said, is this a is this people are gonna jump down my throat on this.
I mean, you are tuning in to hear what I thought of this.
And when the university president started singing the accolades of the University of Arizona, I said, Well uh are they taking advantage of this occasion to do a PR shot for the University of Arizona?
It didn't happen at the University of Arizona.
It happened in a safe way.
What a great chain it is, and that this kind of thing doesn't happen there all the time.
I don't know.
I just because I was expecting a memorial.
You have to understand I was and I did have uh a little trepidation that what we might get was the Wellstone Memorial II.
And when this thing started, I said, Oh no, don't tell me they're gonna do it again.
They're gonna.
Uh I saw that I heard the report that Brewer was booed too, but I I can't hear well enough to know.
I I just so I don't know if she was booed or not.
I it's been reported.
I wouldn't be surprised if she was booed.
Uh given the universe of people in that area.
It's a university town, Tucson, for people to get in and and uh the president of the United States coming.
Obviously, uh you're gonna have people in there who might be politically opposed to the governor for the immigration business and problems that are going on out there.
But whether she was booed or not, can't say, even if she was not surprising.
But I just, again, I was expecting a solemn memorial.
I and to the president's credit, I actually think he was too.
I I I looked over when they shot uh or I'm sorry, when they camera trained over to uh show us the president and the first lady and the assorted dignitaries, while when the medicine man was doing his thing, you could there's some people were looking at the floor during that,
and at other points, when the even even when the president was speaking and making solemn points and references and telling stories about the dead and the injured, the applause that came up, as though they were applause lines, even appeared to unsettle the president a little bit.
So, you know, I I was expecting a very solemn, this is this is a genuine tragedy, and the families of all involved are sitting there in the front row when the camera showed them, these people are s they are in pain.
They are crying, they are they are they are uh seeking uh some explanation from leaders, and they find themselves in the midst of a of a of a pep rally.
So I don't know, it had me a little uncomfortable.
My mouth was open.
Kat and I were looking at each other uh with our mouths wide open in a state of shock and surprise.
So I bet the first 15 or uh twenty minutes of this.
But any rate, uh the reviews have come in from all over the country, and it was a grand slam home run.
As I say, the Fox All-Stars loved it.
It was, I mean, if we this is it was, yeah, there were no best it's ever been.
In fact, folks, depending on who you listen to in the post-speech analysis, we may as well just forget the 2012 election.
We may as well just start counting up the ballots right now, and assuming Obama's gonna win in a landslide because of that last night.
Forget about all the rest.
Obama reminded everybody why he cannot be beaten, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Let's just let's just go ahead and make a foregone conclusion that there's not a soul out there that can beat Obama.
This was the extent of the analysis in many places last night, and as usual, way over the top.
But we have to take another brief time out.
We'll do that and be back and continue right after this.
So there's Obama being praised to the heavens.
Obama being exalted and held up as only Obama can be the Messiah, the one.
Praising, being praised for this wonderfully healing speech last night by the same people who are exhibiting and announcing and proclaiming a vicious hate against Sarah Palin, who gave a perfectly fine speech that morning.
In fact, they're even trying to say that Palin tried to mislead her viewers at Facebook because she was using a teleprompter and didn't tell anybody.
I kid you not.
And then, of course, there's this blood libel business.
Now they show you a blood libel.
There's a Glenn Reynolds is a law professor at the University of Tennessee.
And Glenn Reynolds is a longtime blogger.
And he had a piece Monday in the Wall Street Journal, and in the headline of his piece on the op-ed page was the term blood libel.
Not a peep.
No one said a word.
There wasn't one level of outburst.
There wasn't one instance of anybody disagreeing or saying that Glenn Reynolds was anti-Semitic, or how how reprehensible the use of that term.
He doesn't understand what he's talking about.
What an idiot.
Palin uses it in her eight-minute uh Facebook video, and all hell breaks loose.
So the very people that the president is asking to tone it down here, although not by name, just cannot stop.
The unbridled hatred for Sarah Palin goes on.
Unchecked, uncommented upon.
The president, if he really meant what he was talking about with all of this, could have easily named names.
He is the president of the United States.
He could have said how ridiculous it is for individuals like Sarah Palin, or anybody else he chose to name to have to be accused of having to do with this, that this is not helping our politics.
But he is vague about it.
And it's left to the individual to interpret whatever the president meant, which is exactly what he intended.
Had to be very careful to walk the fine line because it's his side that's been engaging in all this.
We, I don't know about you, but we were all minding our business on Saturday, not doing it.
We weren't in Tucson.
We didn't know this guy.
This guy didn't listen to us.
He didn't go to Sarah Palin's blog.
All of a sudden it's all our fault.
Who starts this?
Obama's side started this.
This is the thing.
But there was a moral equivalence established last night.
Everybody's guilty.
The whole country's guilty.
We must do a better job.
No, no, no, I don't accept that.
I don't like the way this country is talked about by this president.
Even in an attempt to unite people and make us uh feel that we all need to step up and somehow improve our civility and our dialogue, when at the same time that didn't have anything to do with this by his own admission.
Our dialogue, our lack of civility, the way we talk to each other.
He he said it had nothing to do with this.
And yet we've all got to step up and improve.
Not him.
Not him.
No way.
Audio sound bites.
Here is oh, this one.
This one, folks, just knew it before it happened.
Knew something like this was gonna be part of the presentation.
Right after we went to visit.
A few minutes after we left her room, and some of her colleagues from Congress were in the room.
Gabby opened her eyes for the first time.
Gabby opened her eyes for the first time.
Gabby opened her eyes.
Gabby opened her eyes.
This is what makes it.
It's what makes this program so I deserve combat pay.
And I really do.
Yesterday was Wednesday.
She opened her eyes on Sunday.
We have the doctor saying so.
Doctor opened it because they were keeping her in an induced coma, and she'd come in and out of the coma, I guess.
Now, the doctor made it a point to say today that she voluntarily opened her eyes for the first time yesterday.
Now, clearly, folks, the impression sought here is that the president and Mrs. Obama arrive on chariot one.
They head to the hospital.
They go into the room of Gabrielle Giffords.
They do whatever they do.
They lay on hands, what have you.
The president, the first lady then leave, and in walk some of her friends, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Kirsten Gillibrand and others.
Pelosi, well, there's one other that forget there's four.
Four female members of Congress, friends of hers.
And after Obama and Michelle have left, the Congress women walk in, and it's at that point that she opens her eyes.
And her husband has given Obama permission to announce this to the world during the memorial service.
Why not?
Why not?
I know.
I'm going to let it go.
All right.
All right.
Amen.
Thank you.
It's you know, I think it it explains uh itself.
Yeah, you are snurly.
Don't go to me.
Let me trust and follow my instincts here.
You it moving on here.
This is um uh a portion of uh the president's lecture on civility.
At a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized, at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who happen to think differently than we do.
It's important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we're talking with each other in a way that that heals, not in a way that wounds.
Right.
So I mean like stop calling people bitter clingers.
As the president did in San Francisco, people that cling to their guns and cling to their religion, and stop telling people they bring a knife to the fight, we're gonna take a gun.
You mean to stop saying to people, get in their face, I want you to be angry.
Is that what the president meant when he was saying we've got to start talking to each other in a way that heals and punish your enemies, he told Hispanics.
Punish your enemies when they don't do it right.
And uh I I also uh uh ladies and uh and gentlemen, again, we were lectured on civility, but we were also told that whatever his opinion of our lack of civility is had no role in the event.
So why are we being lectured on it?
I mean, he said, he openly said that we can't, and I'm sure it uh there were probably memorial services At the Daily Cause in the Democrat Underground when he said it.
He said political rhetoric had no role here.
It had no impact.
There was no, I forget his exact words, but it did not contribute to the uh cause of the event.
And yet we get a lecture on improving our civility.
He's trying to help us heal.
The people that need the people that need to heal are the victims of the shooting.
They are the ones who need the healing.
And I don't know how helpful it is in the process of trying to help them heal to sit there and get the whole country worked up and say they're likely, and we're all in a in a in a unified way somewhat responsible here.
Because well, we must be if we've got to improve ourselves in the way we dialogue with uh with each other.
Okay, another brief timeout at obscene profit timeout here from the EIB network, L. Rushbow back right after this.
This is the president saying that lack of civility did not cause the shooting, while really saying that it did cause the shooting, but making sure nobody can say he said a lack of civility caused the shooting.
If this tragedy prompts reflection and debate, as it should.
Let's make sure it's worthy of those we have lost.
Let's make sure it's not on the usual plane of politics and point scoring and pettiness that drifts away in the next news cycle.
This has been discussed in recent days.
Their death helps usher in more civility in our public discourse.
Let us remember it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy.
It did not, but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to the challenges of our nation in a way that would make them proud.
This is why you need me.
As translator.
What do you think that said, Snertley?
What did he say there?
What you come away with was hey, uh lack of civility did not cause this tragedy.
Simple lack of civility did not cause this tragedy.
It did not.
But uh more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation.
So it didn't, but it did.
And if we're the only way we're gonna move forward is you people stop criticizing me.
And we do it so as to make the victims proud.
We do it in the name of the victims.
Of course, calculated, it's took a time to write it.
Here's now here's Obama along the same lines.
None of us can know exactly what triggered this vicious attack.
None of us can know with any certainty what might have stopped these shots from being fired.
But we do.
Or what thoughts lurked in the inner recesses of a violent man's mind.
But we do.
See, this is the thing that we may I know, we may not want to face up to it, but we do.
We know with certainty what might have stopped those shots from being fired.
That's if this guy would have been properly institutionalized.
That if the process of determining who's qualified to own a gun would have been followed.
No business having a gun.
Uh, or what thoughts lurked in the inner recesses of Sheriff's Department knew.
A number of people have been interacting with this guy for years.
They've had that note that she sent him, on which he wrote, Die bitch.
They have known since 2007 of this guy's feelings for Gabriel Gifford's.
This is not a shock to people.
This is not a surprise to people who knew this guy.
We most definitely can know.
The uh challenge is to act on what we know.
And the reason we don't act on what we know because this kind of person is a victim.
It's just unfortunate and Unfair that society has created this kind of person.
So it's almost like we have to deal with this.
It's kind of like the judge in New Jersey when the homeless stinking guy was in the library and they wouldn't let us kick him out of the library because we made him homeless.
We're the reason he stinks.
We have got to subject ourselves to this poor man because we created the circumstances in which he lives.
We made him.
Well, as far as the left is concerned, this guy exists because America is unjust, immoral, and unfair.
And it's a violation of rights to keep people as obviously deranged and insane as this guy is institutionalized.
It's a violation of his rights.
So we know who we're dealing with.
We've had people say that he was he was kicked out of school.
There were people afraid this guy would show up with a gun.
It is not unknown who he was.
It's not unknown what he might do.
It's not unknown what he was capable of.
There was none of this that was actually a surprise, other than the date and the time and the event.
But the fact that it was likely to happen with this guy, there were plenty of people in positions of power who had enough information to know that they got a walking time bomb here.
So once again, none of us can know exactly what triggered this vision.
That that part's true.
We don't know what it was that that uh at that instant caused this guy to go nuts.
Uh none of us can know with any certainty what might have stopped.
Sure we do.
If he's not there, he can't pull a trigger.
Not hard to admit that.
And what might have stopped these shots from being fired, or what thoughts lurked in the inner recesses of a violent man's mind.
Well, we most certainly knew in this guy's case.
Um now, this one I might have trouble translating for you.
I might have to go to uh even different kind of expert, one that could explain this to me.
We cannot and will not be passive in the face of such violence.
We should be willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of such violence in the future.
But what we cannot do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on each other.
Well, it's too late.
It happened.
And it continues today.
The media continues to assault Sarah Palin to this day on this very day.
So we cannot and will not be passive in the face of such violence.
We should be willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of such violence.
What old assumptions?
Challenge what old assumptions?
The assumption that the left lives and dies by is that right wingers and what they say is responsible for this.
What we can't do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on each other.
Sorry, it's already happened.
So I guess also what this could mean is chip away at the second amendment.
The Constitution's the old assumption.
That's also possible.
Keep a sharp eye on that.
We're going to go to the phones to uh Texas.
This is Mark.
Great to have you on the EIB network, sir.
Hello.
Yes, Ditto's rush.
Listen, I was absolutely sickened by what I saw from President Obama last night.
Uh the applause immediately began to seem to be totally out of place.
It would it was more of a political pep rally, as you stated.
And you, I have to disagree with you about one thing.
I don't think Obama was particularly perturbed by it.
I think he might have been surprised.
But once it started, I think he began to relish it, if not revel in it.
Uh when that when he talked about uh Gabby opening her eyes and the applause began to go on, he repeated it four times.
Four times.
I'm surprised he's not a few.
Well, that's in his look at all this was about him.
Well, and as far as the college president was concerned, it was all about him.
As the medicine man was concerned, it was all about him.
And that's the thing, I guess that really grated on me is that everybody participating in this thing last night thought it was about them and not the families, not not the uh not the victims.
Absolutely.
I'm surprised he didn't go as far as saying Gabby looked up at me and winked.
I mean, he was reveling in this uh opportunity that he was that he was given.
I was extremely upset, and he could have easily, after the first set of applause when he took the platform, he could have easily said, folks, this is a memorial, and we want to first of all memorialize those that tragically.
Look, and I agree with you.
He could have, he could have waved off the applause.
There's no question.
But had he done that, somebody might have fainted.
You realize that's the only thing that didn't happen last night.
Here's an affirmation, folks, of uh of my point earlier.
Uh Dan Balls in the Washington Post, as Obama urged unity, Palin brought division.
Now, if anybody has read the transcript or watched Sarah Palin's video speech, there's that there's no division whatsoever.
It's an attempt at the same thing Obama was attempting.
Unity, perspective, uh honesty.
And yet, there are the drive-bys out there, Obama urging unity.