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Jan. 20, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:32
January 20, 2011, Thursday, Hour #3
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Time Text
Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and grab grab grab some by 21.
I guess we'll go in order from there.
I'm still not sure about 21, but I might do it anyway.
I mean, it's just so over the top.
I don't even know if I want to get in trouble commenting on it.
I've never.
Well, it's just so typical.
Anyway, welcome back, my friends, the fastest three hours in media.
I, your guiding light, El Rushbo, your bulwark, always here, always relevant, always counting.
Telephone number if you want to join us, 800-282-2882, and the email address, lrushbo at EIBNet.com.
The U.S. giant General Motors, the French news agency here, will invest $540 million to produce two low-emission engines in central Mexico.
Company announced in Mexico City on Thursday, accompanied by President Felipe Calderon.
The latest project for GM in Mexico would create 500 direct and another 500 indirect jobs in its plant in Toluca.
Radon!
Radon, radon, radon!
1,000 jobs in Mexico created by the regime, which owns General Motors, along with the United Auto Workers.
John Boehner's office just put out a press release after meeting with a bipartisan group of representatives and the CHICOM leader, Hu Zhintao.
This is from the Boehner press release.
He says the usual things about increasing economic ties, etc., but then closes with this.
And finally, we raised our strong ongoing concerns with reports of human rights violations in China, including the denial of religious freedom and the use of coercive abortion as a consequence of the one-child policy.
When it comes to guaranteeing the freedom and dignity of all of her citizens, including and especially the unborn, Chinese leaders have a responsibility to do better, and the United States has a responsibility to hold them to account.
Can you imagine Pelosi doing this?
Would she or Obama have laid it out like that after meeting with Hu Zhintao?
No.
From Obama, we got pins about how wonderfully happy we are with their advancement, how pleased we are with the CHICOM progress.
But not from John Boehner and the Republicans in the House.
Yes, it's true.
The United Auto Workers is shipping jobs out of the country.
1,000 jobs out of the country for green engines, so-called green engines, to be made in Mexico.
Meanwhile, they're planning to attack foreign car makers with plants in the U.S. in an effort to do for them what they did for General Motors and Chrysler.
By the way, yesterday, Dingy Harry called Hu Zhintao a dictator.
Today, we got photos of Dingy Harry shaking hands with Hu Zhintao.
All smiles.
ABC News Matthew Jaffe reports with Chinese President Hu Zhintao in Washington this week for state visit.
One United States senator is raising an uproar over the Smithsonian Museum selling products made in China.
Such as get this.
Miniature sculptures of presidents.
The Smithsonian Institute, the museum, is selling miniature sculptures of presidents made in China.
The gift shop at the National Museum of American History, located right on a mall in the nation's capital, sells various miniature statues of presidents past and present, from George Washington to Barack Obama, that were made in China.
It appears that a museum owned by the people of the U.S., celebrating the history of the U.S., cannot find companies in this country employing American workers that are able to manufacture statues of our founding fathers or our current president.
This from Bernie Sanders, independent socialist from Vermont.
That's pretty pathetic, he exclaimed.
I was not aware that the collapse of our manufacturing base had gone that far.
Hey, Bernie, you know what you might want to do?
You might want to take a look at some of the regulations that the party you caucus with, the Democrats, has forced on businesses that has led business to shut down here or move across the pond left and right, nevertheless out of the country in order to stay in business.
You just might want to look at that.
There is, or was yesterday, a fascinating post at a blog called Legal Insurrection.
The headline of the post is, We just witnessed the media's test run to re-elect Barack Obama.
If Republicans want to know exactly what not to do to win in 2012 and follow advice similar to that offered by David Frum as to why Sarah Palin should stop talking now about the false accusations that she was responsible for the Tucson shooting, David Frum said there's no one left in America that would blame her.
Oh, really?
Two polls show otherwise.
CNN poll showing 35% of all people, 56 Democrats, 34 Independents believe Palin has a great deal or moderate amount of responsibility for the shooting.
A public policy polling poll reflects that 26% of all people, 45% Democrats, 22% Independents believe Palin bears at least some responsibility for the shooting.
Those are big numbers, considering that there's no evidence as of this date that Jared Lofner ever even saw the Palin electoral target map, which put Palin at the center of attacks over the shooting.
The false connection of the Palin electoral target map to the shooting did not start in the mainstream media.
As I have documented, the false connection started with bloggers at Daily Cause and Think Progress using Twitter to push the issue into the mainstream media within hours of the shooting with the help of their followers.
The ruthless efficiency with which the left-wing blogosphere tied Palin to the shooting and the success of their efforts in equating Palin with mass murder is a lesson we should not forget.
The Democrats and their mainstream media supporters were put back on their heels in 2010 and they're regrouping.
And if regrouping requires falsely accusing a major Republican figure of complicity in mass murder and then amplifying that false accusation for several days in the face of contrary evidence, they'll do it.
But it didn't stop for the accusation.
When Palin tried to defend herself, she was savaged again in the mainstream media.
Palin supposedly didn't issue a statement soon enough, or she issued it too soon.
She was accused of using the term blood libel improperly by people who had used the term themselves in less dire circumstances.
She was making it all about her.
Her tone wasn't right.
She didn't really feel what she was saying, so on and so on.
Having created a false narrative of Palin's responsibility for the shooting, the mainstream media tried to deprive Palin of the ability to defend herself against the charges.
And unfortunately, some who supposedly are on our side have jumped on that bandwagon.
And all the while, Barack Obama stood back for days and let his supporters in the media rip Palin apart, much as he left it to his supporters to go after the Clintons during the primary, only then to proclaim that we don't really know why Jared Lofner did what he did.
And the media narrative was how wonderful Obama was, how he helped heal the nation.
Any Republican, and I want you to listen to this.
This is from the Legal Insurrection blog.
Any Republican or conservative or Tea Party supporter who dumps on Palin in any way over the Tucson shooting or her defense of herself should just stop talking now.
This isn't about Palin.
It is about the mainstream media's desire to have Obama re-elected at any cost and to take down any Republican candidate who stands in the way.
We have witnessed the test run for how the left-wing blogosphere will target any and all Republican candidates and propel false narratives into the mainstream media and how the mainstream media will take those narratives and run with them.
If Palin is taken down politically over the Tucson shooting, there is not a single Republican candidate who can survive the coming onslaught.
If this is the standard by which we are going to choose candidates, then the time has come to put thoughts of Republicans winning in 2012 to rest.
Now, the point here is, if I might summarize, the left is terrified of her.
The left knows that she would wipe the floor with Obama.
Our intelligentsia on the right wing know that she would wipe the floor with Obama.
That's what all of this means.
There are smart people, quote unquote, in both parties who want nothing to do with Palin precisely because of the threat she poses to their claim and hold on power.
And so what the point of this is, is that if Republicans are going to sit by and watch Palin savage, they'd better be prepared to sit by and watch the next one get savaged and the next one because that's what's coming.
If the Republicans cannot defend themselves over this kind of scurrilous, baseless, libelous charge, they've got no business.
They're not going to be able to elect anybody.
If they'll shut up and be silent about this, if we've got Republicans like From who will agree with the left-wing blogosphere and the mainstream media that Palin should shut up, she should stop defending herself.
It's a horrible travesty of justice, what Palin did.
If we're going to have Republicans sit around and give Obama credit for sitting by for four days while his allies try to take her out, then give a speech and get credit for the wonderful things he said about it, then we got more idiots in our party than we would want to know.
We have useful idiots who are being played like a strativarius by the left wing from Obama on down to the mainstream media to the left-wing blogs.
We've got people on our side, typified by Frum, who are useful idiots who are being incorporated into their effort to destroy any Republicans' chance for win for victory in 2012.
I think we put a soundbite by Frum yesterday who said, basically, forget the presidency.
Let's go for down ballot success.
Let's try to win back the Senate.
Obama's going to get reelected.
And I know a lot of people who think David Frum is the answer for the Republican Party.
Not us folks.
Other intelligentsia in the conservative movement so far.
It's preposterous, of course.
But it's a good point.
If all the others, you know, name names, Huckabee, Romney, Polenti, if all the others are going to sit around and watch this happen to their party by virtue of it happening to Palam, then they're just the next ones in line.
And this is an excellent blog post, and it's exactly on the money.
And his call for civility, they don't want us to be civil.
They want us to be cowed.
They want all of us to become from-ized.
They want all of us to see the wisdom in saying that the Republicans are silly and defensive and maybe a little guilty in their own minds for even deigning to defend themselves on this scurrilous charge.
You know, they want us cowed.
And look what happens to cows.
Back after this.
And back to the phones to Atlanta.
We go.
Hello, this is Jeff, and it's great to have you here on the EIB Network.
Hi.
Wow, what an honor it is to talk to you, Rush.
Thank you very much, sir.
I have been a long, long time listener.
As a matter of fact, I've listened to you as long since I started this job I still have, which was August 1st, 1988.
Same time you started EA.
Well, I mean, that's the birth.
That's the dawn.
That's the dawn of a new age.
Without a doubt.
I'm glad to be a part of it.
Thank you very much, sir.
I wanted to take a moment to thank you for coming out with the iPhone app.
It's made a huge difference on my life.
The ability to listen to you when I work out or ride the bike.
I mean, before I'd have to try to go to the web page through the iPhone and log on and then go to the audio page.
And it's really made a big difference.
Thank you very much.
It is cool, isn't it?
I mean, just dial up the Ditto Cam live broadcast each day right there on your iPhone.
It's very cool.
I would do it myself if I could, but I have to host.
Right, I hear you.
But I really appreciate it.
And keep the pressure on the Republicans, unfortunately.
I think it's going to take another election cycle before they realize they need to be bald leaders or get out of the way.
We got, it may be, but there's some decent ones.
There's some, Paul Ryan's doing a great job.
Boehner so far is doing pretty well on some things.
But it's not going to end even with the next election.
And this is an ongoing rest of your life kind of thing.
These people don't go away.
They have to be defeated every time a chance exists to defeat them.
It's just the name of the game, and they're going to need people stealed for everybody, not just people that run for office and win, people like you.
We're all in the game.
It gets played every day.
Terry, Arcata, California.
Hi, and welcome to the EIB Network.
Yeah, hi, Rush.
Thanks.
Listen, it's life or death because everyone would have insurance, and that means preventative medicine would be practiced.
And that's what saved my life.
I had colon cancer five years ago.
And because I had insurance.
Wait, wait, wait.
I need to start again.
Are you I didn't know what you're talking about.
You're calling to suggest that the repeal of Obamacare is a matter of life and death?
Yes, because I'm thinking if people don't have insurance, they won't get preventative medicine.
And that's what saved my life.
Pardon me?
Wait a second.
But here's, I hate to, I hate to tell you here, but Obamacare isn't even kicked in yet.
Obamacare doesn't really kick into 2014.
Most of the so-called benefit provisions haven't even started.
It doesn't kick into 2014.
So people are going to be dropping like flies between now and then, if you're right, because let me tell you something.
Listen, I have what you could call a preexisting condition.
And my insurance agent told me, she goes, you can't get insurance because you've had cancer in the past.
I can't get insurance.
She says, after five years, you might get it, but it's going to be extremely expensive.
So that's what a preexisting condition is.
Okay, do you now have pre-existing were you able to go out and get insurance?
No, luckily, I'm able to hang on to my city of Santa Rosa.
Well, that's good because you can't yet.
You're not going to be able to until 2014.
And by that time, it's not pre-existing conditions.
It's not even insurance.
Now we're talking.
We're talking welfare.
We're not even talking insurance.
People with pre-existing conditions, such as myself, can get insurance after it kicks in in 2014.
But the main thing is, right now, because I had insurance, I went and got a colonoscopy.
Yeah, but look at it.
I live in Litteralville.
You are agreeing with the notion it's a matter of life and death.
That means the life expectancy ought to be plummeting because Obamacare doesn't kick in until 2014.
No, no, no.
Look at this is a look.
I live in Litteralville.
I don't live in platitude land.
If you're going to tell me that you agree with the fallacious concept that Obamacare repealing, it's a matter of life and death.
I'm sorry.
I'm going to disagree with you no matter what circumstance, anecdotally or individually, you give me.
If people with preexisting conditions are destined to die and have been destined to die for hundreds of years, because it's been that many years since we've not had Obamacare, then somebody's going to have to show me the statistics where the number one cause of death in America is people dying because insurance companies don't sell pre-existing condition insurance.
And you can't because it doesn't exist.
This is, I hate to see people falling for this.
I don't care if it's individual anecdotal stories.
It matters.
Words mean things.
This stuff matters.
The talk about this being a matter of life and death is absolutely irresponsible.
It's not factual.
The life expectancy in this country has done nothing but increase.
Nobody is signing up.
The way this is happening out there, Terry, is they've got these things called high-risk pools.
High-risk is pre-existing condition.
So there is an advanced system set up.
Nobody's signing up for them.
Denying pre-existing condition only means you have to pay higher rates.
Doesn't mean that you can't get it.
It just means you have to pay higher rates.
That's insurance.
It's the world.
It's life.
It's how it exists.
Now, nobody is signing up for higher risk pools.
Nobody is.
If it is such a matter of life or death, you would think more than a thousand or so people would have signed up by now.
You would have thought millions would have signed up for it if it's a matter of life and death.
But it isn't.
But I know I don't win any points here.
This is the problem living in Littoralville.
You score no points with the truth.
You get somebody emotionally connected to the idea.
Somehow, I don't even know how it happens.
Repealing Obamacare is going to cause death.
But if they get emotionally connected to that, there's no untying them.
No amount of fact, logic, nothing.
Truth will do it.
And that is frustrating.
On the cutting-edge societal evolution, Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network.
Folks, do you remember all during the debate on Obamacare, every day we were told X number of people were dying every day because they lacked health insurance?
I mean, it was absurd.
It wasn't this 43 million people don't have insurance.
There were people dying every day.
They were trying to attribute daily deaths to a lack of health insurance, pre-existing conditions.
Has that number gone down since last March?
We don't hear about it anymore.
Ever since Obamacare was passed.
Here's a Reuters story, September 18th, 2009.
Study links 45,000 U.S. deaths to lack of insurance by Susan Hevey.
Nearly 45,000 people die in the U.S. every year, one every 12 minutes, in large part because they lack health insurance and can't get good care, Harvard Medical School researchers found in an analysis.
We are losing more Americans every day because of inaction than drunk driving and homicide combined, said David Himmelstein, co-author of the study, an associate prof of medicine at Harvard.
So according to this study, 123 people die in the U.S. every day because they don't have insurance.
Now, we haven't heard that number since March when Obamacare was passed.
We don't know what the number is.
We don't know if that number has gone down.
Shouldn't it be showing up by now?
We got health care law.
We got Obamacare.
Shouldn't the number of people dying every day be going down?
It's been almost a year since Obamacare was signed into law.
We should have 45,000 more people alive and walking around that we didn't have before.
Has anybody seen a death certificate that says cause of death, no health insurance?
I haven't.
Maybe you and the leftist bloggers fear have, but I haven't.
So what we have here is a guy who had colon cancer, got treatment, recovered from the disease, as best I can tell, and he's complaining about the system that saved his life.
Calls here to complain about it.
So he says, if he didn't have insurance, well, what then?
What then?
What's called Medicaid?
It's called state pools.
It's called high-risk pools.
It is absurd.
It offends me as an American to have people believe that this nation's health care system and that our own cultural morality sits around and lets people die.
We do more to save lives in emergency rooms every year than most nations do in their normal scope of daily medical care.
We spend a fortune.
It's a literal fortune, folks.
We spend a literal fortune on people who don't have insurance, including illegal aliens.
And we continue to get these stories, these hypotheticals about what if and what if, what if that, what if this.
Now, if we didn't have Medicaid, if we didn't have state pools, high-risk pools, if we didn't have laws that cover the poor and pre-existing conditions, then they could make arguments like this.
But we have all this.
We have all of these redundant systems, plans, programs that handle and accommodate people.
And yet they still make these arguments.
The truth of the matter is, President Obama's health care system destroys our health care system.
President Obama's health care legislation, his bill destroys the health care system ultimately for all of us, including those of us who pay for it.
And for those of you who pay for everybody else, too.
It isn't aimed at pre-existing conditions.
It's aimed at all of us.
Healthcare quality is going to suffer proportionately to the percentage of this plan that gets implemented over the years.
And yeah, it is extremely frustrating to have to sit here and know that there are gullible people who accept these out-and-out lies.
And it's all political based.
They accept it because they're liberal Democrats.
Liberal Democrats run out there and claim that repeal of health care is a matter of life and death, and they believe it.
And they start calling radio talk show hoes with anecdotal evidence of how it's true.
Maybe what we ought to do is take a page from the ChiComs and their wonderful healthcare system.
Give the patient an aspirin.
And then when you run out of aspirin, shoot the patient in the head and then harvest their organs for transplants.
Salvi-salvi.
Everybody in this country has access to health care.
Everybody does not have health insurance.
Still, everybody can get health care.
Somehow that always seems to get lost in the discussion when Democrats start talking.
People are shameless, folks.
These leftists are absolutely shameless.
Have you ever noticed?
George Will has a great column.
Here it is.
Here it is.
The government disease, which is a correct word.
It takes a worried man to sing a worried song.
And in a recent speech that seemed like Larry Summers' swan song, the president's departed economic advisor warned that America is at risk of a profound demoralization with respect to government.
He fears a future in which an inadequately resourced government performs badly, leading to further demands that it be cut back, exacerbating performance problems, deepening the backlash, and creating a vicious cycle.
The idea that America's problems of governance is one of inadequate resources misses this lesson of the last half century.
No amount of resources, zilch zero nada, amount of resources can prevent government from performing poorly when it tries to perform too much or particular tasks for which it's inherently unsuited.
Actually, government is not sufficiently demoralized.
The hubris, that is the occupational hazard and defining trait of the political class, continues to cause government to overpromise and underperform.
Social scientist James Q. Wilson has noted that until relatively recently, politics was about only a few things.
Today, it's about nearly everything.
Until the 30s, perhaps the 60s, there was a legitimacy barrier to federal government activism.
When policies were proposed, the first debate was about whether the federal government could properly act on the subject.
Today, there is no barrier to the promiscuous multiplication of programs because no program is really new.
Rather, it's an extension, a modification or enlargement of something government's already doing.
That is so true.
It is law upon law, redundancy upon redundancy, layers and layers of bureaucratic minutia, next to impossible to maneuver through.
The vicious cycle that should worry Larry Summers is the reverse of the one he imagines.
It is not government being cut back because of disappointments that reinforce themselves.
Rather, it is government squandering its limited resources, including the resource of competence, in reckless expansions of its scope.
James Q. Wilson writes, there has been a transformation of public expectations about the scope of federal action, one that has put virtually everything on Washington's agenda and left nothing off.
Mr. Wilson suggests that we try to think of a human want or difficulty that is not now defined as a public policy problem.
I think Democrats read the newspaper.
They find every and any story that points out one human need not met, and they rush to a legislature to make it a bill and then into law.
Larry Summers leaves the federal government funded by a continuing resolution.
Congress has been so busy passing legislation to expand government that it hasn't had enough time, energy, or sense of responsibility to pass a budget.
The pathologies of expanding government are becoming worse because of two concepts.
Summers mentioned in his valedictory, Baumel's disease and Moynihan's corollary to it.
William J. Baumel, Princeton economic professor emeritus, said that in certain economic sectors, that is labor-intensive service industries, productivity will increase, if at all more slowly than in the rest of the economy.
The late Senator Moynihan's corollary was that such services, teaching, nursing, performing arts, tend to migrate to the public sector.
Moynihan noted that if you want a string quartet, you must hire four musicians with four instruments, just as in Chopin's day.
Productivity, said Moynihan, just hasn't changed much.
When it does, such as playing the minute waltz in 50 seconds, it doesn't seem to work right.
Moynihan noted a danger to his party in the tendency for the stagnant services to become government services.
The Democrat Party is identified with this very public sector in which relative costs are rising.
By contrast, the Republican Party is identified with a private sector where relative costs are declining.
And how many years ago was it that Moynihan nailed that?
Many.
The public sector's involuntary tendency to become, regarding productivity, a concentration of stagnation.
The government's involuntary tendency to become a concentration of stagnation is a reason for government to become more circumspect than it has been about the voluntary acquisition of vast new responsibilities, such as micromanagement of healthcare's 17% of the economy.
Larry Summers says he's hopeful because markets climb walls of worry.
Well, they do when markets are free to climb, but Obama's poured oil all over those walls, dug a moat around them, and you can't climb the walls, you can't get out.
That is, American history is replete with self-refuting prophecies of peril, predictions of national decline that prompt renewals.
Well, this is a really profound and brilliant piece from George F. Will.
Government has become a concentration of stagnation that seeks to spread its incompetence each and every day.
And to do so, if I might add, they use fear and crisis to garner support for all of this.
Is there anything the federal government does not now regulate or tax?
I asked that question yes.
Is there one aspect of human life that they don't regulate or tax or try to?
Can somebody name one for me?
Somebody says prostitution.
I'm not even sure about that.
They do regulate it.
Well, they regulate it by saying you can't do it, but they wink as they walk in the door.
Can you bet that this government disease that Will is talking about is not covered by Obamacare?
The government disease.
It's consuming us all, and we've got to take a brief time out.
We'll come back, try to squeeze in some more calls, and we get back.
This poor guy that called us his colonoscopy, what he doesn't realize is he got his colonoscopy because we don't have Obamacare yet.
After we get Obamacare, guess who decides who gets their colonoscopy?
Kathleen Sebelius.
As the Secretary shall determine.
It's called rationing.
Depending on your age and the government's assumptions about your future value, you may or may not get your colonoscopy or any other treatment once Obamacare has kicked in.
Would we all agree that Canada has their own version of Obamacare?
Absolutely.
It's unquestionable.
Looked it up here.
Ladies and gentlemen, the wait time for colonoscopies in Canada in 2009 was 147 days, just shy of six months.
Prolonged wait times for colonoscopy in Canada, according to the Canadian Association of Gastroenterology.
147 days.
We're coming to that.
And to it, as the Secretary shall determine, Obamacare will destroy the great healthcare system that is the United States of America.
Mitch McConnell was unequivocal yesterday.
He said we will repeal it.
A lot of people on the line here.
Open line Friday tomorrow.
We're trying to get the Hutch to talk about the Super Bowl too.
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