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Jan. 17, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:46
January 17, 2011, Monday, Hour #3
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The views expressed by the host on this program documented to be almost always right 99.6% of the time.
Rush Limbaugh, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Our telephone number is 800-282-2882.
The email address, lrushbaugh at EIBNet.com from the grooveyard of forgotten favorites.
It was May 9th, 2009 in Washington.
At the White House Correspondence Dinner, the comedian Wanda Sykes said this about me while Mr. Civility, Barack Hussein Obama, was laughing.
Rush Limbaugh, one of your big critics, boy, Rush Limbaugh said he hopes this administration fails.
Like, I don't care about people losing their homes or jobs or soldiers in Iraq.
He just wants the country to fail.
To me, that's treason.
He's not saying anything differently than what Osama bin Laden is saying.
You know, you might want to look into this, sir, because I think maybe Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker, but he was just so strung out on OxyCotton he missed his flight.
Rush Limbaugh, I hope the country fails.
I hope his kidneys fail.
How about that?
He needs a good waterboarding.
That's what he needs.
And Obama was laughing during all this.
So that's lessons in civility from the left.
The comedian Wanda Sykes, May 9th, 2009, in Washington, D.C.
And there wasn't any condemnation really of Wanda Sykes.
There was just hard-hitting comedian, hard-hitting material, blah, blah, blah.
You see, it's wishing for the death of conservatives.
It's just good, clean fun.
Like civility, censorship.
It's just good, clean fun.
Folks, here is a story that was in the New York Post a couple days ago.
Short little story.
But it got me.
As I'm wondering where or if there is going to be any outcry over this.
Governor Kumo began marshaling his forces for war with the state's powerful public employee unions yesterday as he urged campaign donors to open their wallets and finance an advertising blitz to back his agenda against public employee unions.
In an urgently worded email, governor Kumo's campaign fund friends of Andrew Kumo warned supporters the governor's effort to close an estimated 10 billion dollar budget gap would be doomed if he couldn't counter well-funded opposition by groups dependent on state funding.
We cannot allow governor Kumo's positions to be misrepresented by special interest campaigns.
The letter reads, we must be in a position to defend ourselves.
Television ads are expensive and if we can't communicate our case to the people, we won't win.
So here's the newly inaugurated Democrat governor of New York, Andrew Kumo.
Well, I know it's Cuomo, but I once heard the reverend Dox pronounce his dad's name Kumo, and uh, it's Martin Luther King Day and the forces of anti-racism are out there.
I don't want to run the risk here.
So if the reverend Dax Says Kumo, then I will say Kumo.
Previous governors have seen their poll numbers plummet and have folded after the teachers and public employee unions and their allies in the healthcare industry attacked budget-cutting plans.
Expecting a fight, Kumo says he's prepared to drain his campaign fund to finance a counterattack.
Whatever Kumo raises will be bolstered by $10 million pledged by a coalition of business groups calling itself the Committee to Save New York.
Now, I can understand this happening in Texas.
I can understand this happening in a lot of states, but New York save New York from the public employee unions, save New York from government workers.
A Democrat governor saying this.
You know what they do to Chris Christie when he talks this way.
He doesn't back down.
But here's another thing: Kumo is having to raise money to go to war against the unions.
Like the threatening the state of New York.
And how many of these people in the public employee unions probably voted for Kumo?
I mean, things must be pretty close to total collapse for this kind of thing to be happening in the empire state.
This is bigger news than whether or not Andy Pettit's coming back.
This is better news.
Did you see, by the way, the New York Post cover yesterday?
The cover, not the back cover.
The New York Post got the Jets were in Foxborough to play the Patriots.
The head coach, Rex Ryan, it has been revealed, his wife videos out there, foot fetishes and so forth and so on.
So on the cover of the New York Post, a color picture of a female foot with her toenails saying go jets.
And the headline was lick'em.
Yes, it was.
Yes, it was.
We'll get a graphic of the post cover yesterday.
We'll put it at rushwinbaught.com on Facebook so you can see it.
Lick'em, which the Jets did.
So anyway, we're going to keep a sharp eye on this.
This is a Democrat-elected governor elected by these people, now waging war.
Wait till David Gregory goes after Governor Kumo, if that'll happen.
New CBS poll: Americans split on what to cut from government.
New CBS news poll finds that Americans strongly prefer cutting spending to raising taxes.
While 77% prefer to cut spending, just 9% call for raising taxes.
Another 9% want to do both.
Yet, most Americans could not volunteer a program they'd be willing to see cut in order to reduce the deficit.
Only 38% could name a program they would support cutting.
The top responses were military defense, 6%, Social Security, Medicare, 4%, Welfare, Food Stamps, 4%.
However, Americans are more willing to consider cuts when presented with specific ideas, as the chart above illustrates.
I have that chart.
The most popular ideas for reducing the deficit are to reduce social security benefits for the wealthy, reduce the money allocated to projects in their own community, reduce farm subsidies, and reduce defense spending.
More than 50% Supported reductions in each of those programs when giving are given a list of areas, such as the number of people willing to cut social security for the wealthy, 63 percent.
The number willing to reduce money for projects in their area 58, 55.
Willing to reduce farm subsidies, 52 percent.
Reduce defense spending eliminating mortgage interest deduction, 45 percent.
Raise the retirement age, 43 percent.
Reduce money for student loans, 41 percent.
Pay more in taxes, 33 percent.
Reduce health care education spending, 27 percent.
Tax health care benefits, 26.
You know, all it would take is 10 across the board.
10 across the board.
Get back to 2008 spending levels.
That would be a great, great painless start.
Now there's another chart here uh, on lowering the deficit, 77 say cut spending, 9 say raise taxes, 9 percent say both.
This is a pie chart and it the closing paragraph of the CBS story is, most Americans do not know exactly how the government spends its money, which is why the chart's bogus.
Most Americans don't know exactly how the government spends its money.
Uh, ladies and gentlemen, I don't know if you have seen this.
There's a couple blogs out there saying that uh, there were applause signs on the jumbotron at Obama's speech.
Now i've looked at screenshots of this and I don't think those were applause signs.
As an expert in closed captioning, I think they were closed captioning Obama's speech.
I know they were and it's, or it was a big teleprompter, one of the two but the the text of the speech was on the jumbotron and if you're watching a closed caption movie tv show, they'll put in parentheses a song that's playing, if and they might identify the song or the type of music it is.
If you're watching a program where there is applause, there will be parentheses applause in a closed captioning sense.
Now, in this, in this case, the pictures i've seen, the word applause was in parentheses between other words of text Obama was using.
Now, given that the audience was a bunch of college students who can hear and might have no experience with closed captioning, they could have seen the word applause and went nuts.
They could have thought that it meant applaud, but I don't think that was the intent.
I think this is just, it might have been trickery.
It might have been a trickery, intentful thing to do it.
Might somebody might have realized, by the way, if we put applause up there during the transcript, it's gonna somebody's kids in there are gonna think we're heard.
Yeah, let's do it.
Let's do it.
That could be the only way.
But when you look at the picture you'll see text of what Obama was saying.
And now there also people have reported that the Organizing FOR America volunteers were standing in the aisles and leading the applause like flax and they had the t-shirts printed up.
So I don't, I don't doubt, I don't doubt that there was efforts being made out there to create a pep rally type atmosphere.
I don't doubt that at all.
But I just don't.
I wouldn't, I wouldn't jump to a conclusion that the word applause, in parentheses on the jumbotron, was a suggestion.
Oh, just and no, I'm not trying to be polite or anything.
No, no, I'm not caving in here.
I'm just here.
I've got the picture of one right here.
There's Obama at the podium and the word school.
He just finished talking to school.
There's applause in parentheses.
I'm a closed caption expert.
If you want to see what I'm talking about, turn on a closed caption on your TV tonight when the show is on, any kind of a show.
And you'll see when there is applause.
Now, you can't do it during a drama or comedy or something like that, but if you're watching the tonight show or something and you closed caption that, you'll see when the audience is applauding, they will tell the person who can't hear that there is applause taking place.
It's standard, ordinary procedure for closed captioning or subtitling, and that's what I think this was.
All right, a quick timeout.
We'll be back.
We'll continue right after this.
Talent on lawn from God.
It's Rush Limbaugh.
It's a good thing they didn't flash look sincere and bite your lip on that Jumbotron.
Who knows?
Can you imagine if Obama had seen that?
Look sincere and bite your lip.
There might have been blood flowing.
He didn't know how to do it.
This is Enid in Marietta, Georgia.
We go back to the phones.
Thanks for calling.
Rush, what an honor it is to finally get to speak to you after all these decades.
Thank you very much.
I'm so excited.
But Rush, I just want you to know, I felt so relieved and so vindicated.
I knew that if anybody was going to call out that idiot, David Gregory, in his 15 minutes of fame, it would be you.
I had to suffer through it live.
Why, you may ask?
Well, my husband said, can't you watch anything besides Fox News?
And I said, why bother?
So I tried.
And I can't handle it.
I can't take meet the press.
And all I had to see was David Gregory trying to make himself look important for me to remember why I can't stand network news.
Well, your instincts are right on the money out there, Enid.
All those programs exist for the advancement of the Obama agenda.
Yes.
No question about it.
So I, well, it's, it's, I guess it was a worthwhile pain.
You watched it, and then you had your pain assuaged by listening to me nuke it.
So everything happens for a reason.
And I'm happy to have been of service.
Tim in Salem, Oregon, you're next.
Great to have you here, sir.
Thank you very much.
You bet.
You have an excellent staff, by the way.
How do you know?
What?
Because I've talked to him a couple of times.
Oh, how many of them have you talked to?
Three.
Three.
Cool.
All right.
I'm sure they'll be happy to hear that.
Rush, as I've listened to you talk today, how can I help you?
Tim, is your radio on?
If your radio's on, you need to turn your radio off.
We're on about a 45-second delay, and if you're trying to follow the radio, you're going to be totally, totally confused.
Turn the radio off.
I'm doing that right now.
Okay.
Okay, the radio's off.
Now, you should start again.
You've talked to the three members of the staff, and they're great people, right?
Yes, sir.
All right.
Now, what did you say you wanted to help me with?
My question, Rush, is what can I do to help you as you're having to deal with these issues?
What issues?
Like the shooting in Arizona.
Oh, you mean when I'm being attacked for that?
Yes.
What can you do to help?
Yes.
You know, I think you do it by continuing to listen and not being affected by it all.
Don't believe it.
That's the single best thing that you can do, and everybody in this audience does.
Nobody buys it.
That's the single best thing that you could do.
I really appreciate your asking.
I appreciate your thought.
It's very moving.
And that's, I don't know.
Just help get out the truth.
Just help get out the truth.
Don't be afraid to sell the truth.
Say the truth.
Tell the truth to people that you come in contact with who do believe that stuff.
Because they're attacking you, too, when they say this stuff.
It's not just me.
I mean, they're saying that you are all capable of doing what Jared Lochner did because you listen here.
If I were you, and if you aren't, I'd take it personally.
It's meant that way.
It's not.
In fact, they know it isn't me pulling the trigger.
They think it's one of you.
They think it is I, El Rushball, a harmless, lovable little fuzzball, mesmerizing you, hypnotizing you, motivating you to do what this guy did.
It's really these comments are aimed at you.
I would take it personally, and I would not stand for it.
Don't think it's just an attack on your host.
They're calling all of us accessories to murder with this.
And now the latest template is, well, man, you guys are really going overboard defending yourselves here.
You really, really, really want the palin there.
She must really have guilty feelings about this to go to defend herself.
She was dragged into this.
Tim, thanks for the call.
This is Jonathan in Everett, Washington.
You're next.
And it's great to have you on the EIB network.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
Thank you so much.
This is a total honor.
Thank you, sir.
About your previous caller and the advice you gave him, it's wonderful.
That's the way I feel.
They don't back me down for one second.
Good.
And I don't listen to one thing they have to say.
I just, it's a blah to me.
But what I called about is that word civility they keep talking about.
And over the years, I've noticed a lot of killings they've done.
For example, the killing of jobs, the killing of our industries, the killing of the USA economy.
They want us to kill our unborn.
They want to kill our grandparents.
Through rationing of health care.
Rationing of health care.
Death panels.
They killed President Lincoln's birthday.
They killed President Washington's birthday.
They're trying to kill Christmas for us.
They made a movie, like you said, about killing President Bush.
And wrote a book about it.
And wrote a book.
They stand outside our soldiers' funerals with banners, how happy they are that our soldiers were killed.
Oh, yeah.
That's a bunch out of a bunch of Democrats.
I have dreams.
People who come to this country have dreams.
We all have dreams.
A wonderful man I respect highly was Martin Luther King.
He had a dream.
But they killed him.
Boy, has that been bastardized.
That dream.
And it's just content of character.
Yep.
Whatever became of that.
The poor girl in Arizona.
I just.
She should be with her nine-year-old friends.
They talked to our friends who played baseball with her.
That's where she should have been that day.
The poor girl was just brainwashed by her parents, by her neighbors, just like the Hitler youth.
She shouldn't have been there in the first place.
Well, I don't know if I'd go that far, Brain.
Well, we don't know.
But yeah, that was a toughie.
It always is when kids involved like that.
We'll be back.
Don't go away.
Hey, folks, despite everything, Gallup is reporting.
Obama's approval rating has just gone down 1% from 49 to 48%.
This survey period includes his speech out in Tucson, Arizona.
So, approval number is falling for Obama.
This is another bit of evidence not to fall for the conventional wisdom.
Don't never fall for it.
You know, people ask me all the time, Rush, how is it that you always because I know liberals, it is not an exaggeration to say that most that comes out of their mouth is a lie.
Whether they're in the media, whether they're politicians, or just average, ordinary, run-of-the-mill followers of liberalism, they're not hard.
That may be a tough thing to accept, but once you accept that, it's easy to understand them.
It's easy to predict them.
It's easy to understand how they try to advance an agenda.
And all of this is apparently not working.
His approval numbers are down.
And the whole point of this speech was to get his approval numbers up.
The whole point of this, the whole point of going out to Tucson was to reconnect.
And it's like so many people have said, you know what people remember about that event?
It's not what Obama said.
They remember the atmospherics.
They remember the cheering.
They remember the pep rally feeling that a supposedly somber memorial had.
That's what people remember from that.
They don't remember because there wasn't a memorable phrase.
There wasn't a memorable word.
There wasn't a, I'm not trying to be critical here.
This is objective analysis.
There was not a memorable point to this.
The fact that it was well delivered in some circles, the fact that it was oratorically superb in some circles, the fact that it sounded intelligent in some circles, fine and dandy.
But nobody remembers much of it other than what in the hell?
You had a medicine man out there and he got cheering and t-shirts and it sounded like a pep rally for the Democrat Party when all this is going on.
That's what people take from it.
And that's what will be the lasting memory.
Do you remember Evan Thomas had a piece for Newsweek shortly after Evan Thomas had a piece for Newsweek called We're All Socialists Now, shortly thereafter, back on September 12th of 2009, Newsweek ran a piece called The Case for Killing Granny.
We need to talk about death.
Newsweek magazine.
Subtitle of the piece was Rethinking End of Life Care.
The Case for Killing Granny.
Newsweek.
Evan Thomas from the thoughtful, compassionate, never incendiary rhetoric people.
And here's an excerpt from the case for killing Granny.
The idea that we might ration health care to seniors or anybody else is political anathema.
Politicians do not dare breathe the R-word, ration, lest they be accused, however wrongly, of trying to pull the plug on grandma.
But the need to spend less money on the elderly at the end of life is the elephant in the room in the health reform debate.
Everyone sees it, but no one wants to talk about it.
At a more basic level, Americans are afraid not just of dying, but of talking and thinking about death.
Until Americans learn to contemplate death as more than a scientific challenge to be overcome, our health care system will remain unfixable.
It means we must immerse ourselves in misery.
We must constantly talk about things we don't wish to talk about.
We're afraid to talk about race.
We must talk about it, said Eric Holder.
We're cowards.
We are afraid to talk about death.
We must talk about death.
We must tell Granny, we're pulling the plug on you, old lady.
We don't have the money.
The case for killing granny is the title of the piece.
We need to talk about death, rethinking end of life care.
It was also Evan Thomas just last week, maybe the week before, but certainly within the last two weeks, who had a piece, Healthcare a Dismal Failure.
Yep, Evan Thomas referred to, not in Newsweek, I don't think, I think it was on a TV show.
It was a guest, might have been in the magazine, but he basically pronounced it just a total mess.
I don't know why.
I didn't bother to read why.
But you ask, what does he mean by this, Nerdley?
It's very simple.
We can't be so damn squeamish about killing our parents and grandparents.
We need to talk and think about death.
At a more basic level, Americans are afraid, not just of dying, but of talking about it.
Yeah, here's the headline of that story.
Thomas, healthcare bill is dismal failure.
But again, I don't know why.
I don't know.
Didn't bother to read it.
Tom, in Port Orange, Florida.
Hello, sir.
Welcome, Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network.
Yes, good afternoon, Rush.
Hi.
It's a pleasure to talk to you.
I've listened to you for many years.
Thank you, sir, very much.
I have just a little different take on all this rhetoric about what caused this tragedy in Arizona.
Yes.
I listened to the liberal people try to blame it on right-wing rhetoric, and I think they're just shielding the president.
I think he's the biggest divider in the country.
I understand what you're saying.
I've said it myself.
He has come to divide.
Yes, I believe it.
I mean, you consider this.
Think about the amount of fiscal and moral damage he's heaped on this country.
I think he's created a level of civil unrest almost equal to the days of the Civil War.
It's just non-stop from this man.
His name-calling, just any hardworking, honest people who work hard that disagree with him are automatically they're the enemies of America.
Or they're racist or something like that.
Yeah, but what a thing to say from the president about the American people.
I just can't understand this man.
Well, that was set up by design.
That was supposed to insulate him from any criticism being effective.
Ah, it's just a bunch of racists.
It's just a bunch of people who are nervous to see a black man as president.
That's the refrain.
It's designed to do two things.
Stifle criticism and then render any criticism as irrelevant because it's just coming from a bunch of racist kooks.
What president has ever demonized his critics more than Obama?
Bill Clinton, it's a toss-up.
Remember, we're comparing two years of Obama to eight years of Clinton.
I think two years of Obama versus two years of Clinton, there's no question it's Obama.
Big time.
And we hope there's not an eight-year comparison that we can make.
We hope it's four years, Obama, eight years worth of Clinton.
Anyway, Tom, I appreciate the phone call.
Thanks, El Mucho.
Little Spanish lingo there.
Hi, and welcome back.
It's Rush Limbaugh, serving humanity simply by being here, just by showing up behind this, the golden EIB microphone here at the distinguished and prestigious Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
To Chicago, this is Travis, and welcome, sir.
Nice to have you with us.
Good afternoon.
How are you?
Very well, sir.
Thank you.
How are you?
Pretty good.
Excellent outstanding.
Glad to hear that.
All right.
Well, I've been kind of looking at all sides of this health care issue here.
And from my understanding, the laws that we have in effect right now are basically they can't drop you if you're sick.
They have to spend 80% of their money on care, and you can't have children turned down for previous conditions.
Aside from the mandates and the lack of a public option because of that mandate, I'm really having a hard time seeing what's a bad thing about this.
Why do we want to get this taken away?
You just listed things that are wrong with it.
Everything you just listed as a negative.
What right does the government have to tell an industry how much it must spend of its revenue on anything?
Imagine you own a business or are running an industry and Barack Obama says you have to spend 80% of whatever you make on certain categories.
How are you going to react?
Are you going to think, well, Obama's looking out there.
Isn't that the business they're in?
We give them money to care for our health insurance.
The business they're in is health insurance for a profit.
They are trying to insure as many people as they can, as affordably as they can, so that they make a profit and so that the patients get covered.
Obama is wiping the profit out.
Obama is purposely trying to destroy the private health insurance industry so that the government's the only option people have five, ten years from now.
That's the objective.
And by telling them that they must devote 80% of their profits to X, he's got no right to do that.
It's totally unconstitutional to tell an insured, the government telling an insurance company you can't drop a kid or you have to, the pre-existing condition, that's not even insurance.
And let's not even talk about the individual mandate, which is unconstitutional.
I mean, there's nothing about this that's that's I can't think of anything about it that's any good because the government's running it.
The government wants to incorporate all of health care under its umbrella in five to 15 years.
Well, the thing is, see, I'm paying over 700 bucks a month for my insurance.
And if I get sick, I'd really hope that they wouldn't drop me.
That seems like it'd be really unfair because I'm pretty healthy now and I'm paying them a lot of money.
Yeah.
Well, have you ever been dropped?
Has your health insurance company ever dropped you?
I haven't gotten sick, really, really sick yet.
So I'm hoping that doesn't happen to me because that would be kind of unfair.
How often does it happen?
How often does it happen?
I mean, they don't drop people for getting sick.
If they drop people for getting sick, people will be dying.
If they drop people for getting sick, you could be able to get in the hospital any day you wanted.
There'd be beds galore.
Where are you coming up with all this?
I just heard that that was the new law that you can't be dropped once you're sick.
And that sounds like a pretty good idea.
I mean, that's their business.
They shouldn't do that.
But it's already the case.
As long as that's the case, that's a good thing to me.
I don't think they should be dropping anybody.
What business are you in?
I'm an electrician.
What would you do if Obama dictated how much you can make in your business?
What if Obama told you?
It's kind of weird right now with how we make two, with the whole union deal right now.
Well, but forget that.
There's only more we can make until we get to seniority.
Forget that.
Forget that.
Forget all that minutiae.
If Obama came along and passed a law said you have to do electrical work for people, it will not pay you.
Well, that's not going to work.
Whoa.
Well, it's happening in the health insurance business.
In fact, there are the you may have heard that McDonald's does not offer health care.
Dirty, rotten company.
Stinking, rotten company, poisoning people with cheap, fast food, using toys to coerce kids to come in there and eat and die.
And they don't cover their employees with health care.
Stupid, decent, rotten company.
Turns out that 30,000 Obama employees have health care coverage.
And in order for McDonald's to stay in business, after providing mandated coverage from Obamacare, they needed a waiver from Obamacare.
McDonald's needed a promise that they would not be held accountable to the law.
McDonald's and 232 other companies were granted in the first year of Obamacare an exemption from the law so they wouldn't go out of business during an election year.
Now you called.
You wanted the answers.
These are the answers.
You got 233 companies who said to the government, if we have to do this, we're going to have to lay off a bunch of people, maybe go out of business.
Obama can't have that during an election year, so they granted him exemptions, waivers, if you will.
More than 50 unions have already gotten waivers.
Most of the waivers have gone to unions.
Your union might have gotten one itself.
There's an axiom.
Nine times out of ten, the private sector, 999 times out of 1,000, the private sector can do it better than the government.
The only thing I'd say is military would be the exception.
Nine times out of 10, 99 out of 100, 999 out of 1,000.
That should be the, if the government wants to take over health care, your instinctive reaction will be, no way.
That ought to be your default reaction.
No way.
Government's going to tell X company how much no way.
They don't have that authority, power, or constitutional right.
That guy said he was an electrician.
I don't know if he was IBEW, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, but if he was, they were granted a waiver from Obamacare.
Yep.
IBEW granted a waiver.
Some of those guys are bored ups at radio stations is where they used to be, if still not.
Not sure.
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