All Episodes
Previous Next
April 4, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:58
April 4, 2011, Monday, Hour #1
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
All right, folks, now I want you to be prepared and beware.
As you know, I was in Hawaii over the week.
I tried to surrender.
Nobody was home.
Nobody was at the city council.
Nobody was there.
So I went out and played golf a couple days and did some other stuff.
But I left Hawaii at, I got wheels up at 9.30 Sunday morning.
And one of the weirdest things has to be global warming.
We had headwinds.
We had headwinds from Hawaii all the way to the continental United States.
We had 45 50 mile an hour headwinds.
That's not, that's unheard of.
We tried 44,000, 47,000, that went up to 51,000, settled at 43,000 feet.
That's where the winds were the least.
That's not the airplane almost refused to fly.
That's just, that's unheard.
Well, I'm joking about that, of course, but we had to really goose it up to Mach 0.86 here.
And, well, we were, the airspeed was 565.
The ground speed was barely 500 miles an hour.
I mean, we had, which is funny.
It's normally the other way around.
Normally, from Hawaii back home to Palm Beach, take 8 hours and 15 minutes, 8.20.
It took 920 to get back.
The same, it was 9.45 flying out there.
My only point here is, because I know people, what a way to open a show complaining about this.
I'm not complaining about anything.
I'm just telling you, it's a weird anomaly.
And unlike Southwest Airlines 737, my fuselage didn't split open.
Well, I know it takes you two days.
We left here Friday afternoon at 3.45.
We got to Hawaii at 7.30.
You know, we got out there.
But coming back, my point is a late, late arrival last night.
I mean, early, early this morning.
And when I went to bed, I probably slept five minutes at a clip and would wake up to check the clock.
Because remember, alarms don't wake me up.
So this is a long way around telling you that this is going to be one of these interestingly giddy programs.
I have Zilch, Zero Nada Sleep, the essence here of running on fumes.
But it's great to be here back with you, my friends.
It always is a thrill to delight.
And thanks to Mark Stein.
Well, it's always, I think it's a polite thing to do to thank the guest hosts.
Well, they should.
It's a mutual thank you.
Stein thanks me.
I thank Stein.
And don't forget, I got several critical emails last time with a guest host in here, and I was not being appropriately appreciative of the guest host sitting in.
So wanted to get that out of the way.
So much crazy news.
I mean, it literally is crazy.
You see, Elton John, do you see?
He plays my wedding almost a year ago last June and gets his first Saturday night live hosting gig.
I mean, what a career bump that was for Elton John.
Apparently, the after party was through the roof a great time too.
So just, it's, it's, folks, it's an amazing thing to be me, to have this big an impact on so many people's lives.
It's something I wish everybody could experience, even for just a day.
I really do.
Anyway, so much crazy news out there for the last few days.
You know what I could do?
I could just sit if they fired on Geraldo in Libya.
Well, I don't know.
I don't know whether rubber bullets are not standing.
They're firing on Geraldo targeting the Grim Reaper.
He said, whenever you, that's right, because whenever Fox puts Geraldo on, somebody's dead or has died or is about to, they're still getting mileage out of this.
Still getting mileage out of the rebel attack on Geraldo.
That's what I mean.
So much crazy news out there for the last few days.
I could just sit here and read the headlines and shake my head for three hours.
Not even say anything.
Wouldn't make for good radio, but if anybody could pull it off, it would be me.
And I have, I've gone through the news here and I've looked at, I literally am just shaking my head at things.
Eric Holder, the attorney general, going to announce his latest plan to try the 9-11 conspirators.
And apparently, since today is an odd number, four being the date, he's going to say that they're going to get a military trial.
That'll change depending on the winds.
Those headwinds.
Really, folks, it's unheard of for that kind of headwind to be blowing east to west.
It's kind of like Obama protecting us from Japan's radiation.
That's what I was thinking it was.
Maybe Obama is going to lower the sea levels.
Maybe Obama said, oh, I'm going to change the wind direction.
You know, there's a scientist out there that's working on a new theory.
Who was it, Copernicus, that finally settled it says the Earth revolves around the sun?
State-controlled media is convinced everything revolves around Obama.
He announced his re-election intentions today.
Is that news?
Was anybody thinking that he might not run for re-election?
At any rate, what do we have?
Katie Couric, ladies and gentlemen.
Katie Couric, I have a story from David Border, who is the TV critic, the TV writer for Associated Press.
And full disclosure, I have spoken to Mr. Border on previous occasions.
He's emailed me for my opinion on various things television.
Well, I don't remember what the latest one was, but what is I have spoken to him before?
It's not, we're not friends.
I wouldn't say that word acquaintances, but I have spoken to him.
And he has this story here on Katie Couric leaving, and it's a great illustration of how the news business protects and covers their own.
Katie Couric leaving her anchor post at the CBS Evening News less than five years after becoming the first woman to solely helm a network TV evening newscast.
What an historic achievement that turned out to be.
I mean, women are lining up all over the country to be Infobabe news anchors now.
A network executive who spoke on condition of anonymity because Couric has not officially announced her plans, reported the move to the AP on Sunday night.
The 54-year-old anchor is expected to launch a syndicated talk show in 2012.
Several companies are vying for her service.
Oh, of course they are.
I mean, they're lining up out there.
Notice how the AP is trying to cover here, trying to make it sound like this is all her idea.
It's not her idea.
Contract perspires on June 4th, and it's Sayonara.
She's out of there.
Couric's move from NBC's Today Show was big news in 2006.
She began in the anchor chair with a flourish that September.
She tried to incorporate her strengths as an interviewer into a standard evening news format.
Millions of people who normally didn't watch the news at night checked it out, but they drifted away.
And the evening newscast reverted to a more traditional broadcast.
Yes, you see, it's really the fault of the stupid audience not being fully capable of appreciating Ms. Couric's style.
Yeah, you saw it one time.
Snerdley, you are the biggest suckup.
Snerdley's interesting.
He watched the Katie Couric CBS Evening News one time, and that was the night I was on it.
Doing come.
I know a lot of other people did.
At any rate, get this.
This is the pies de resistance.
Here you have, this is a, this is a, and I'm sorry, Katie, but you know, facts are facts.
You guys might own the narrative, but we have the facts here.
And CBS Evening News ratings are the lowest in history.
And don't think that if that ever happened to my ratings, people would report that about my other.
I'm sure the stories are already written in their future file.
They probably got my obituary already written, and they're just dying to run that.
The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, that she destroyed it.
I mean, the network news ratings for CBS just plummeted.
And yet, here's Mr. Boder writing, despite the ratings problems, the CBS Evening News won the Edward R. Murrow Award as best newscast in 2008 and 2009.
Now, if that doesn't tell you everything you need to know about the state of broadcast journalism in this day and age, the absolute lowest-rated newscast wins the highest award possible.
What have I always said about liberalism?
Failure is a resume enhancement.
These people circled the wagons.
Remember Dan Blather and the George Boy, that fiasco?
Remember that Tom Broko and Peter Jennings had a big awards ceremony for rather within all of that.
Now, I talked to Congressman Paul Ryan on the phone this morning.
He is going to announce a major budget blueprint, a 10-year budget blueprint tomorrow.
And folks, it's wonderful.
It is, forget all of this that's going on with the remaining budget continuing resolutions for the remainder of this fiscal year, which goes to September.
The next budget, starting in October, the budget that's going to be put forth and announced tomorrow by Paul Ryan, he gave a prelude to it on Fox News yesterday.
I spent some time on the phone with him this morning, and it is just, well, in the first place, substantively, it is superb.
Politically, it's brilliant.
They are going to throw so many balls in the air at the Democrats that the Democrats are not going to know which ones to focus on and try to defeat.
First, it's a tough budget.
You've probably heard $4 trillion in cuts over 10 years.
It might end up being more than that.
It is a growth-oriented budget.
It doesn't feature a lot of tax increases.
There's new spending in it, of course, but basically it's going to freeze spending levels at 2008 levels.
And it's just fabulous.
Exactly.
It's exactly what the election in November, last November, was all about.
And Ryan has worked hard, and he has slaved over this.
And already it's being responded to in the most predictable, cliched manner.
Chris Van Holland, the leading Democrat in the budget committee in the House, came out with 30-year-old clichés in opposition.
But I want to, there's another story unrelated to this that is going to be fun juxtaposing against what Van Holland said in reaction to what he heard the Ryan budget was going to be.
And it is this story Byron York had in the Washington Examiner on March 31st, uncovered new $2 billion bailout in Obamacare.
$2 billion of corporate cronyism or crony capitalism, if you will.
For example, AT ⁇ T got $140 million to subsidize health care plans.
Verizon, $91 million.
General Electric, despite not paying any U.S. income taxes last year, got $36 million.
General Motors, Obama's car company, received $19 million in bailout money in order for them to be able to more easily afford health care within their companies.
Anyway, let me give you the details on this.
Oh, and Steve Moore had a great piece recently in the Wall Street Journal talking about the numbers of people working in government versus the private sector.
The amount of people, number of people being hired, it is devastating.
It explains so much.
So we're all like food stamps, food stamp participation at an all-time high.
And then a story, ladies and gentlemen, let me just find the headline on this to tease you with.
It's a Celinda Lake story, and it's out of political.
You know, she's part of the battleground polling team.
Edgo asks Celinda Lake, what do women really want?
And this is not good.
This is not good.
So much for the feminazi movement.
What women want is to be taken care of by government.
Women define security as the government taking care of them.
I mean, we're loaded today, folks.
We got a lot of stuff coming at you.
Here's the Steve Moore fact.
Today in America, there are nearly twice as many people working for the government than in all of manufacturing.
So what this is, the takers, the takers, which we've been talking about, are on parade.
22.5 million people work for government.
They don't make anything.
They're just being paid by virtue of transfers of wealth, redistribution of wealth.
Government workers are paid from the income taxes and other taxes paid by Americans.
So 22.5 million people working for government.
That's twice as many as work in manufacturing, which is $11.5 million.
This is almost an exact reversal of what it was in 1960.
There were 15 million workers in manufacturing, 8.7 million collecting a paycheck from the government.
And therefore, we have become a nation of takers, not makers.
More Americans work for the government than in manufacturing, farming, fishing, forestry, mining, and utilities combined.
So as I say, folks, we're loaded here today.
Add to it the potential giddiness that is brought on by limited amounts of solid REM sleep, and who knows what's going to happen.
The protests in Afghanistan about the burning of the Koran in Florida.
These protests are not entering their fourth day.
Never mind that nobody even knew about the burning of the Quran.
It happened more than two weeks ago until these devout Muslims brought it up.
And never mind that the Quran gets burned all the time when Muslims blow each other up in their mosques.
And never mind that the U.S. burned Bibles in Afghanistan back in 2009.
Do you remember that, Dawn?
Well, you should because we talked about it on this program.
The U.S. burned Bibles in Afghanistan in 2009 so as not to offend the locals.
Now, our buddies over at MediaIte have an analysis piece.
Apparently, Chris Matthews on his Sunday Syndicated show, there was a discussion.
I think it was his Sunday syndicated show.
I forget which.
But it was one of his shows.
And some guest, or maybe it's the writer of this piece, says, well, you know, there's a difference.
There's a difference in burning the Quran and burning the Bible.
And F. Chuck Todd said, well, what is it?
Well, Muslims believe the Quran is the direct word of God from Allah to Muhammad to the page.
The Bible isn't.
The Bible is just put together by a bunch.
But the Quran is the direct word of God.
And F. Chuck Todd, oh, yeah.
Oh, it makes sense to me.
Direct word of God.
Now, whoever wrote this obviously hasn't ever gone to Sunday school.
Like, the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament are the word of God.
And somehow this guy says the Bible, just a bunch of different people wrote the Bible.
It's not the word of God.
The Quran is.
So when you start burning the Koran, it's a far greater insult than when you burn the Bible.
And of course, then the media people take this up as though it's a legitimate intellectual question.
It must be analyzed in the most profound and deep manner possible.
A glittering example of the sophistry that you find in these pseudo-intellectual class ruling class people.
Anyway, sit tight.
A brief EIB Prophet Center timeout and back right after.
No, we did.
We burned Bibles in Afghanistan in 2009, and we did this so as not to offend the locals.
You know, our soldiers brought Bibles with them.
And okay, we don't want to offend the local Muslims.
We're not here to conquer.
We're here to liberate.
So we burned Bibles.
Nobody had any problem.
It was cool.
And never mind if that wasn't the excuse.
There'd be some other excuse like a cartoon or whatever, these protests in Afghanistan about the burning of the Quran in Florida entering their fourth day.
The exchange, I want you to listen to this because this is the exchange that happened on the Chris Matthews Chuck Todd piece I was just talking about.
And it's a Time magazine reporter named Ghosh or Ghosh.
His name is spelled G-H-O-S-H.
I'm guessing he's pronouncing it Ghosh because Ghosh means extremely bad or bad taste or what have you.
But here's what he said.
He said, the thing to keep in mind is it's very important here that the Quran to Muslims, it's not the same as the Bible to Christians.
The Bible is a book written by men.
It's acknowledged by Christians that it's written by men.
It's the story of Jesus.
F. Chuck Todd said, oh, yeah, yeah, it's exactly right.
The Bible is the story of Jesus.
Time magazine reporter, F. Chuck Todd.
Yeah, yeah.
But Ghosh Ghosh, whatever his name is, but the Quran, if you're a believer, if you're a Muslim, the Quran is directly the word of God, not written by men.
It's transcribed directly the word of God.
That makes it sacred in a way that it's hard to understand if you're not Muslims.
So the act of burning a Quran is much more, potentially much, much more inflammatory than an F. Chuck Todd reverentially saying, directly attacking, directly attacking God.
Directly, as though a revelation has occurred.
F. Chuck has never thought of that before.
He is in awed, breathless silence, practically, over his realization.
Now, this Ghosh guy, Ghosh, whatever his name is, just so you know, is the reporter from Time magazine who invented the Haditha massacre story, made it up.
The Marines and Haditha, the rapes, and made it up.
John Murthy picked up on the story, as did many other Democrats picked up on the story, ran with it about what a bunch of rotten creeps U.S. soldiers were.
It was made up.
This is the guy, Bobby Gush is his name, who invented the Haditha massacre story.
That story was hoped by Time magazine to stir up the populace and cause murder in mayhem.
Turned out to be a lie, but it was one of the many efforts that the press engaged in to get us out of Iraq in defeat.
And Ghosh is from India.
So burning a Koran is terrible.
I've noticed it, but making up an atrocity at the same time.
So here's Obama.
Remember Obama and the put-down of Christians, this whole bitter clinger business.
Do you think Obama would ever say of Muslims who are now in their fourth day of protests in Afghanistan over this?
Over this preacher up in Florida burning the Koran.
Do you think Obama would ever say, well, you know, it's not surprising.
These Muslims, they get bitter.
They cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
He would ever say that.
Will we ever hear that from Obama about Muslims?
Well, it flowed from his oral cavity with ease at a fundraiser in San Francisco talking about Christians.
Okay, here we go.
Ladies, oh, one of the things, I don't know if you've seen this or not, McDonald's is having something they're calling National Hiring Day.
McDonald's hold its first national hiring day at its restaurants and via its website.
It's going to be on April 19th to fill openings at McDonald's restaurants across the country.
They want to fill 50,000 jobs on that day.
Now, that's cool.
That's fine.
No problems here at the EIB network.
But do you remember, let's go back to the 1980s or any recovery, any economic recovery presided over by a Republican president?
I'm sure you'll all remember the left and the Democrat Party deriding so many of the new jobs being created as worthless hamburger flipper jobs.
Remember?
Even during the 80s, during Reagan, during Bush, whenever there was an economic recovery, the Democrats, eh, yeah, but they're worthless hamburger flipper jobs.
Now, celebration.
McDonald's wants to hire 50,000 people, fill 50,000 jobs on April 19th.
The media is ecstatic.
The Democrat Party talking about a great impetus for economic recovery Obama is.
And nothing here deriding the kinds of jobs.
Nothing here about them being hamburger flipper jobs.
Just interesting.
Remember, folks, we have the facts on our side.
The Democrats, however, own the narrative.
Our never-ending battle is always going to be with the media.
It's always going to be with the two groups of people that the Democrat Party owns, and it will forever, and I mean forever, present us an ongoing battle, and that is the media and unions.
And when you look at the fact that there are twice as many union members, public sector government jobs, as there are American manufacturing jobs, the takers outnumber the makers in America today.
And it wasn't that long ago, 40 years ago, JFK asked not what your country can do for you.
Ask what you can do for your country today.
The motto of the Democrat Party, the motto of every Democrat constituency is ask what your country can do for you.
Or worse, demand what your country must do for you.
From Byron York, again, the Washington Examiner on March 31st, investigators for the House Energy and Commerce Committee have discovered a little-known provision in the national health care law that has allowed the federal government to pay nearly $2 billion to unions, state public employee systems, and big corporations to subsidize health coverage costs for early retirees.
At the current rate of payment, the $5 billion appropriated for this program could be exhausted well before it's set to expire.
This is something nobody knew was in the bill until it was passed and then signed.
A little-known provision, $5 billion can be spent by the federal government to pay unions, state public employee systems, and big corporations to subsidize health coverage costs for early retirees.
In other words, you're people who are not working.
The discovery came on the eve of an oversight hearing focused on the workings of an obscure agency known as the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight, or CCIO, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services.
It oversees the implementation of Section 1102 of Obamacare, which created the Early Retiree Reinsurance Program.
Obamacare pays.
I mean, you know, the things that we continue to learn, I'm not really surprised generically, specifically, yeah.
We knew what was, we knew that this was nothing more than massive federal spending, slush fund type spending.
But get this.
And remember now, this is this is the authorship of this is Democrats, and they're all they're the ones running around talking about all the unfavorable, the favorable and the unfair tax breaks to big oil, the unfair tax breaks to all these rich corporations, the Democrats running around trashing big this and big that.
And yet here they write legislation.
GE is not paying any federal income tax, and they're getting $36 million from the federal government to pay for their retired employees' health care.
ATT got $140 million.
Verizon, $97 million.
The legislation called for the program to spend a total of $5 billion beginning in June of 2010 and ending on January 1st, 2014.
2014 is when the full thing gets implemented.
And this is another one of these provisions put in the legislation to buy off support.
You know that the ATT crowd knew.
You know that Verizon knew.
You know that a lot of these unions had they were told, okay, don't oppose us.
Here's what we're going to do for you.
And this is all going to happen before all a real excrement hits the fan.
You know, all the benefits, that's really going to kick in in 2014.
This is going to happen under the radar.
Nobody's going to know anything about it until it's been discovered.
The idea was to subsidize unions, states, and companies that had made commitments to provide health insurance for workers who retired early, between the ages of 55 and 64, before they were eligible for Medicare.
So it's practically obvious what this was.
The authors of Obamacare go to these various companies, institutions, unions, and so forth and say, here's the deal.
You shut up.
You don't oppose us.
Go along with this.
You commit to providing health insurance for your early retirees before they're qualified or eligible for Medicare, and we'll pay you for it.
We'll use U.S. taxpayer dollars to cushion the blow on you at the corporate level and to also cushion the blow on us.
So where's the money going?
This $5 billion of a slush fund.
The biggest single recipient of an early retiree bailout, the United Auto Workers.
Look at me.
Are you listening to this?
$206 million, Your taxpayer money went to the United Auto Workers to subsidize health care coverage for early retirees.
Other big recipients, AT ⁇ T, $140 million, Verizon, $91 million, General Electric, $36 million, Obama Motors, also owned in part by the United Auto Workers, $19 million.
This is crony capitalism, but it's worse than that.
This is emblematic of all the things that the Democrats in this regime have been working so hard to do.
Take from the people who work and earn and produce and give it to your friends.
Give it to people who will shut up and not criticize you.
Give it to people who will vote for you.
Give it to people who will raise money for you.
Come up with a health care plan that's going to break everybody else's bank.
Come up with a health care plan that's going to raise everybody else's premiums and then go to the United Autoworkers who already have sweet health insurance deals.
Go to AT ⁇ T, Verizon, wherever, and offer to pay their employees' health care coverage.
All the while as a party in public, you're ripping the AT ⁇ Ts of the world.
You're ripping the Verizons because their costs are way too expensive for the average American to afford.
You rip them and you send protesters to the front lawns of their executives.
But under the table, you're best friends with them.
Payments to individual states were dwarfed by the payout to the Auto Workers Union.
The United Auto Workers got more money than the states of New York, California, and Texas combined in this Obamacare provision to provide health care costs, money for retirees who are not yet eligible for Medicare.
Quick time out.
Back after this.
It's Rush Limbaugh.
This is the EIB Network.
Great to have you here, folks.
Our telephone number is 800-282-2882 and the email address, illrushbo at EIBNet.com.
We even reported back in August of 2009, $10 billion aimed at union retirees, provision called welfare by some, not enough by others.
This is something that we alone had and nobody believed this.
Actually, it was from the Detroit Free Press.
But this has long been part of Obamacare.
I don't know about you.
To me, this is outrageous.
Our tax dollars paying the health care costs of early retirees, United Auto Workers, $202 million.
AT ⁇ T, $140, Verizon, $97 million.
All so that the impact of Obamacare would not be seen for what it really is.
And now I move on to a story from the Associated Press about Paul Ryan's budget, which will be officially announced tomorrow.
It's an AP story, the headline of which, GOP 2012 budget to make $4 trillion plus in cuts over 10 years.
And in the story, now keep in mind what you just heard in this story is this little paragraph.
Maryland Representative Chris Van Holland, the top Democrat on the budget committee, slammed Paul Ryan's plan in a press release on Sunday.
Quote, it's not courageous to protect tax breaks for millionaires, oil companies, and other big money special interests while slashing our investment in education, ending the current health care guarantees for seniors on Medicare, and denying health care coverage to tens of millions of Americans.
I mean, classic 30-year-old cliched reactions.
But, Mr. Van Hollen, you may want to take a look at this provision in Obamacare because it is your party, sir, offering tax breaks for millionaires, using taxpayer dollars to pay for health care for the United Auto Workers and ATT and Verizon and others.
And you have to go out and attack Paul Ryan and Republicans.
It's not courageous to protect tax breaks for oil companies and other big money special interests.
The crony capitalism that has been popularized by your party, sir, and your president, dwarf whatever cliched criticism you can mount about Republicans being in bed with big business or what have you.
Ending current health care guarantees for seniors?
How about using U.S. taxpayer dollars to pay for health care for early retirees from rich American corporations and rich American unions so as to hide the real punitive costs of Obamacare on every average American in this country?
Okay, I got a question here because this Mr. Ghoshfella tells us that the Koran is the direct word of God, right?
And yet we're told that Islam is in the midst of reformation, a number of reformers out there.
Well, who's going to tell God that they're reforming Islam?
▲
Export Selection