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April 15, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
33:17
April 15, 2011, Friday, Hour #3
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A miscommunication.
They're saying it was a miscommunication.
There's no way that was a miscommunication.
Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said that what Obama said on the open mic that nobody knew was open about, you know, deal with me head on, you know, don't try to steal things, that that was not an issue.
It was a miscommunication.
It wasn't a miscommunication.
It was a communication.
That's the only time we know what Obama really thinks is when he thinks nobody's listening.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's Open Line Friday.
And Drudge just put it up there.
A Gallup is out with their latest poll number, and it is the lowest approval number Obama's ever had in Gallup.
A whopping 41%.
Now, I'm going to tell you, folks, if this were an approval number for George W. Bush, we would be getting the Wolf Blitzer countdown.
41% for a guy who opened up in the 60s or higher.
41% for a Messiah.
Ha.
How are you?
Open Line Friday, Rush Limbaugh having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
Let me check something right quick here, folks.
Don't go anywhere.
Let's see here.
We are still ahead.
We are still running ahead.
That's what I was just checking of last year's donations and the contribution rate after two hours last year.
So, and this is it.
This is the final hour that we have for our curathon today to do everything that we all can to advance the research that will hopefully ultimately provide cures for the blood cancers.
This is our 21st curathon, and it spans now three decades.
I got something in common with my buddy George Brett.
George Brett, I think the only major league player to win the batting title over three different decades in the 70s, the 80s, and the 90s.
And of course, I'm the only guy to have done a leukemia curathon that spanned three decades.
Very, very cool.
Here's our premium list, and you can see these at rushlimbaugh.com, incentive levels for your donation.
$75 donation will get you a commemorative Rush Limbaugh t-shirt.
It's one size fits all.
I know you're saying, well, if my waist is 44, you mean it fits somebody with a 34?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I don't know, frankly, if it fits a 34 or 44.
But I do know that it stretches.
And it's got a three-color EIB logo specially made for this occasion.
$100 donation or more qualifies you for the same t-shirt along with a golf head, an old Rushbaugh golf head.
And for $350 or more, custom-sized Rush Limbaugh golf shirt and hat.
It's an orange shirt, and it's available in sizes all the way up from small to double X.
And it is ultra-cool technology, the clima cool stuff.
If you play golf on hot days, that stuff is wonderful.
What are we doing here?
We are donating to research that will lead to the cure for the blood cancers.
Now, I haven't mentioned this since the first hour, but I think it's important that all of you know that I don't sit here And say, donate, donate.
And then tell everybody else, well, yeah, I'm donating my time.
That's easy.
I would be here anyway.
No effort to donate my time.
Plus, I never really feel good asking you to do something like this that I don't do myself.
So I upped, Catherine and I, we talked about it.
I upped my donation this year from last year by $100,000.
So our total commitment is $500,000.
Then Mr. Trump threw in $100,000 at the top of the second hour.
By the way, we do not count those amounts.
Well, we'll count Trump's, but we don't count my amount in the overall total.
It gets added to it later, but the numbers I'm reporting to you strictly are your donations.
I mean, it wouldn't be quite fair to lump mine in there and then take a running tally every way ahead or behind.
That's strictly – and I got a note from somebody asking me, subscriber to RushLimbaugh.com, could you describe for me how it feels to be able to do that?
Meaning, contribute $500,000 to the Leukemia Lymphoma Society.
I can try to describe it pretty similar to the way I feel whenever I do something like it.
It's a blessing.
It is a, I don't know, I use this word and people have told me they don't understand it.
But it's humbling to me.
I remember they threw a book party for me at the 21 Club, my first book, and some editor at Time magazine came over and how do you feel about it?
Your book is number one in the New York Times list.
And I said, I'm kind of humbled by it.
And he could not understand.
Well, what do you mean, humbled by it?
I said, well, I'm in kind of, I mean, I'm in awe.
I think I'm very appreciative of the fact that something I've written is on the top of the list.
This guy thought that I would feel cocky, arrogant, confident, confident, all that kind of stuff.
To me, it was just, it was a bit, maybe humbling isn't the right word, but it's the closest I can get to it.
The ability to be able to help people, I remember my mother, perhaps, put it best, when I started earning what I call real money, she said, you know, I would just give it all away.
If I earned the kind of money you'd, I'd just give it away to people.
That was, I said, well, mom, it's easy to do when you're talking about other people's.
But that's what would make her happy.
She just would, you know, whatever she needed, which was not much, and then giving it away, that's what made her happy.
And there is an incredible amount of happiness at the ability to be able to do it.
The realization of how unique it is.
But we've got people who are donating five bucks, and it all adds up, and it goes to the same place.
Now, I don't take anybody's contribution for granted, mine, yours, or anybody else's, because it all is going to be totaled at the end of the day.
And it's going to end up being more than it was last year.
Whether you count mine and Catherine's or not, you are going to continue to set records.
You do each and every year, and it doesn't matter.
We've got wars going on, pestilence, pretenders in the White House, bad economic circumstances, or what have you.
You continue to awe everybody involved here with the efforts that you make.
What are we talking about?
We're talking leukemia, non-Hodgkins and Hodgkins lymphoma, myeloma.
Leukemia patients, for example, in the late 1970s had a five-year survival rate of 36%.
And today, simply because of research, that five-year survival rate from the time you told you have the disease is now 55% and climbing.
Children who have the most common form of leukemia are now up to a long-term survival rate of 89%.
That's just, it wasn't 89% 21 years ago when we started.
Now, myeloma, that's a tough cancer, really tough.
They had five-year survival rates of 13% in the 60s.
It wasn't good when you were diagnosed with myeloma.
Now that has tripled.
The five-year survival rates, 39%.
And all of these survival rates are ratcheting upwards.
And they are improving.
And it's all because of the money people like you donate to the cause.
And again, everybody here is a volunteer, and they've been here since the beginning, at least for me.
I've lived 21 years into the same people.
They've all been personally affected by it, one way or the other.
Every day of the year you call them, they're there.
They don't just come together this day.
They're year-round people working on this.
And it's a volunteer organization.
Largest voluntary organization of its kind in the country is the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of America.
So this is the final hour where you can use the phone and the website to make your donations.
877-379-8888 is the phone number and the email or the website address is rushlimbaugh.com.
And that's where you can see what the premiums are and follow the easy instructions to make your online donation to the cause.
Brief timeout.
We'll continue.
Come back, grab more of your phone calls right after this.
Last time Obama's approval rating was this law was October of 2010.
And we know what happened the first week of November 2010.
That is 41% in Gallup.
You know that really means 35.
No, it really means 35.
Ladies and gentlemen, your host came up on Fox News mere moments ago.
This is on Megan Kelly's show.
Megan just had a baby.
Second little child out there.
Megan is 40.
The daughter's name is Yardley.
So Megan's maternity leave.
Martha McCallum is guest hosting, and she had to interview Alan Colms.
I guess he's a Fox News contributor, and they stuck him on the Megan Kelly show with Martha McCallum.
Here's how it went, folks.
Here's the dynamic now that's happening.
You know, you've got, you know, Rush Limbaugh, you know, calling it a B slap.
Is that the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh?
He also says that Obama supporters are savages, are human refuse.
Yeah, it's his language for dealing with these things.
It's a radio show.
Nobody has to listen to it.
They can do whatever they want.
They can stop over and listen to Alan Collins if they prefer to do that.
That's the great thing about America.
Okay, so she was basically trying to refute the notion that I run the Republican Party.
Colms was trying to make the assertion that I run the Republican Party.
Wrongo, Alan.
I'm running today to Leukemia Lymphoma Society for America.
And I just got another report.
We get feverish reports in the final hour.
And we are way ahead.
I just, I, I, no, I'm going to tell you, every year, this last year and this year particularly, I thought no way we can break the record because 45% of the country's working for crying out loud.
I mean, the unemployment rate is the unemployment rate.
The gasoline price is the gasoline price.
I thought there's no way that we're going to be able to.
I told the leukemia people, I said, look, we've got our fingers crossed here, but we're grateful for whatever comes in, but we've got to temper our expectations here.
And we're blown away by this.
It just every year it continues that we improve over the last.
It's all because of you.
There has never been in modern media, there has never been, I'm confident in saying there has never been a program where the host and the audience have such a familial, not familiar, family type, familial type bond.
It's just it's wonderful.
It absolutely is.
Let's see.
Here's Molly in Boston.
Molly, I'm glad you weighed it.
You're up on the EIB network.
Hi.
Hi, Russ.
It's an honor to speak with you.
Thank you very much.
I'm a bit nervous.
No, no, you don't need to be at all.
I know that.
I just want to say I made my donation this year, like I do every year.
I'm a great believer in your fundraiser.
Thank you.
And being a leukemia survivor myself, and I can't match Mr. Trump's level, but I give what I can.
It all counts at the end.
Yeah, I know.
It all adds up into one giant.
So Trump couldn't match mine.
That's true.
Always.
Somebody always has more.
That's true.
I just want to say that I feel that I was diagnosed five years ago with leukemia, and if I were diagnosed under Obamacare, I don't really think I would be alive.
Now, that is, you really have that thought go through your mind?
I really do because, you know, I was diagnosed then as a 58-year-old.
I think they would say I was a non-productive grandmother, and I don't think I would have hear the care that I got at the day of the year.
You might not have.
No, that's a that sadly with Obamacare, that's a genuine concern, you know, whether you'd be rationed out of treatment.
I feel I would have been.
Now, what is your, if you said at the beginning of your program, you said you're a leukemia survivor, meaning what?
Are you in remission?
I was diagnosed five years ago.
And you're in remission now?
I'm in remission now, yes.
Well, that is great.
I still go in to get regular checkups and blood work, and I'm sure so far it's going good.
I'm sure.
How do you feel?
I feel good.
Glad to be alive.
And thankful for the fantastic care I got.
I'm glad you called.
I really am.
And you were great.
You didn't sound nervous in the slightest.
Well, I am.
No, no, no, no, no.
You don't sound it.
Molly in Boston.
I appreciate it very much.
Thanks.
877-379-8888.
Who's next?
Gary in Atlanta on Open Line Friday.
Welcome to the program, sir.
Hi.
Hi, Rook.
How are you?
Delighted to speak to you.
Good.
I'm going to try to refrain from being a nasty, ugly, right-wing person.
Been unemployed for seven months, so I get to listen to you a little more often than I would normally like to in the sense.
But also, by the way, I have a sister Eileen in Ohio who's fighting breast cancer.
So thoughts and prayers with her if you can.
It's a great, great fundraising opportunity that you're actually performing.
Thank you, sir, very much.
Appreciate that.
You announced just recently Obama's rating at 41%.
You know what?
It should be about one or two percent because I'd like to know what this guy is actually doing to this country to actually move it forward.
You had a gentleman by the name of Joe that called a little earlier, and he mentioned the devaluing of the dollar, so to speak.
And if there's anyone out there that would like to refute that, I'd like to know where they are, who they are.
So name me something that's actually a positive that this guy has put forward that is actually assisting the country.
Is it cash per clunkers?
Is it the stimulus?
I can go on and on.
The unemployment is, again, what, 412,000?
Is that what I heard?
10.2% in the state of Georgia.
This is the worst economy this state has ever seen, from my understanding.
I've lost my home, and I'm not on here to sit here and talk about me.
I'm one of the ones that's here that looking for a job day in and day out.
They're not out there.
Fortunately, I have maybe an opportunity coming up here that I'm going to find out about with Delta.
I could be happier.
It's a contract position.
So you tell me or have this guy explain to me what is working in this country.
I'll tell you, he's doing a great job of raising money for the Democratic Party.
I know what you mean.
Here's the scary thing, though.
The scary thing, Gary, is that there are people in the country who think Obama is doing great.
That Obama care.
They can't wait for him to raise taxes.
You know, we got a whole bunch of things to do today, and I've got a great soundbite roster.
We got Robert B. Rice, and a number of Democrats literally having orgasms over the possibility of tax increases.
Honestly, a lot of people that think Obama is finally running this country the right way.
That's a little scary and alarming, but I get your point, and I totally agree with you, as do a majority of people.
I just checked some emails during the bottom-of-the-hour break, and there were a couple emails from people who were apologizing about the amount of their donations to our Curathon.
One guy said, I just, I can't give any more than $10 this year.
Another one said, I can't do any more than five.
And there are probably a lot of them in there like that.
If everybody in this audience just gave one, we'd set a record that couldn't be broken.
If everybody just gave a dollar, if you're in your car or if you are wherever you're listening, if you just stopped and went to rushlimbaugh.com and got your credit card out, put one dollar on it.
If everybody did that, folks, if 30% of the audience did that, it'd be a record fundraiser for anything this year.
In these economic times, that's what I was saying a moment ago.
I was prepared for the total to be down this year simply because the price of gasoline is up almost $4.5 places.
Only 45% of the people in the country are working.
A lot of people, this is not what you would call the good times.
$5 or $10, whatever it is, I don't think you should ever.
In fact, I don't want you to be embarrassed over that.
If you're giving $5 or $10, you know, it probably means you really can't even afford that.
That's what we all understand.
You see a $5 donation, it tugs at your heartstrings.
It does mine.
I see somebody donating $5 or $10.
It actually tells me that they may not even really have that.
Or that coming up with that in these economic times is really hard.
And I can tell you that the people that we all work with here at the Leukemia Lymphoma Society don't care.
A dollar here, $5, $10.
You know, we have these amounts of $75, $100, and $350 and premiums to offer.
Those are, you know, incentive premiums and so forth.
But nobody here has any expectations, and nobody's making any judgments on what amounts people donate in any way because it all adds up.
It doesn't matter if you send 10 and somebody else sends in 100.
That's 110 at the end of the day.
I really can't tell you how much it's all appreciated.
We've been through today how much it matters.
The research into finding cures for blood cancer ends up finding treatment for other solid tumor cancers, other types of cancers that are a bonus.
They weren't even looking, for example, to find some of the treatments that they found.
It's all a bonus.
And so the overall effort here goes way beyond just the blood cancers.
The money and the research to find a cure, survivability rates going up.
It's like anything else that involves science and medicine.
Costs continue to go up for everybody involved in this.
Except for the people who actually work at the society.
They are full-fledged, year-round, full-time volunteers.
So we do this once every year and we raise what we raise.
Everybody involved is appreciative and happy, starting with me, everybody at the Leukemia Lymphoma Society of America.
But really, I don't, five or ten bucks or even less, please don't feel badly about that.
That's it's appreciated as much as anybody else's donation is.
It really is.
Who's next?
Where are we going?
Ashland, Kentucky.
This is David.
I'm glad you waited too, sir.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Hi.
Rush, thanks for taking my call.
Been trying to get to you for two weeks.
Well, you're lucky day.
Well, it is, and here's my question: Is anybody doing anything about the price of gas?
The other thing is, why is it so much?
And the other thing, I have a solution for the problem.
Well, what do you mean?
Why is it the other?
Yo, oh, Mrs. Rhett, you have a solution to the price of high gasoline.
What is it?
Yeah, well, okay, if they can put gas at a palatable price, correct?
To put more money in people's pockets where you can go out and afford to go shopping or whatever, right?
Isn't that going to create jobs because you're going to need more demand for goods out there, correct?
You're going to lose the surcharges on all delivery truck deliveries from freight companies, correct?
If they lower the price, you say?
Yes.
Okay, who's they?
The oil companies.
Well, but they're not all the same, and gasoline is not the same price from station to station.
That's right.
But I mean, like $389, you know, that's a pretty good chunk of change.
Yeah, but the gas station guys, they'll tell you they barely break even on their gasoline sales.
If it weren't for Twinkies, they wouldn't have anything.
Correct.
I mean, am I thinking too far outside the box?
Well, no, but it reminds me when I was a kid.
I would love to wave a magic wand, make everything cheaper.
I would love for jet fuel to cost a buck.
I would really, you know what the price of jet fuel is these days?
I would love for that to cost a dollar.
I remember when I was a kid and we're watching the early stages of the space program.
We're watching the suborbital flights.
There's Alan Shepard and John Glenn, and they're going the suborbital flights, and they finally do the orbitals.
And I'm watching on TV, and it's all the giant patriotic efforts.
President Kenny said, we got to get to the moon.
We got to beat the Russians, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And I'm a young skull full of mush.
And by the way, this story, I think, is very instructive in terms of just what a job we have in educating people about economics.
Now, I'm a little kid.
I'm watching this on television, and I'm hearing how this is a patriotic effort.
The United States, President Kennedy, has asked everybody to come together and make sure that we get to the moon in 10 years for whatever reason.
And I remember looking at my dad and I said, well, why don't I'm also hearing about how much it costs.
Now, I don't know the numbers per say what they were.
I don't remember them, but it was a lot of money.
You know, each rocket costs this.
Here's how much it costs to manufacture the capsule.
And I said to my dad, why doesn't everybody involved just do it for nothing?
Why does a space capsule cost us anything?
If this is for the country, dad, why is anybody making any money off of it?
Now, I'm growing up in a family of rock rib conservatives.
In my instinct as a kid, I'm associating patriotism with free.
Okay, so my dad's got another challenge on his hand.
He's got to explain to me how the economy works so I will understand it.
And he gave it a shot.
He tried to tell me that there are employees everywhere along the line that this capsule just doesn't get made.
He said people couldn't afford to donate their time.
They wouldn't have anything to live on.
He said, what are they going to eat, son, if they work 15 hours a week or a day or whatever it is to build a capsule?
If they're doing it for nothing.
But I was this little kid wanting to know if it's patriotic, how come it costs anything?
Why does America beating the Russians have to cost us?
And I think that there are adults who have that attitude about economics, not so much the patriotic angle, but if it's that important, it's reflected in this gasoline.
Every time this subject comes up, somebody says, well, why doesn't somebody just lower the price?
Look at how much it would help the economy.
If gasoline price went down a buck, people could afford to drive more.
That means go more places.
I mean, the leisure industry.
Yeah, all that's true.
So then the argument becomes how do you lower prices?
Well, at that point, there are people who believe that there's some evil guy who's profiting from the hype.
One guy or one CE or one company who doesn't care about the pain and suffering everybody else.
He just wants his profit.
And so that's where our education on economics starts from a false premise.
And this is why, you know, capitalism has a job to do in explaining itself.
The liberals out there say, yeah, that's right.
Limbaugh, if you'd have kept that attitude, why you'd be on our side today?
Why should it cost anything?
A lot of liberals have that added the understanding of basic economics.
It's just, it's the simplest, most logical thing if you have a foundation to understand it.
So, yeah, you are overreaching.
You're outside the box when you say somebody ought to lower the gasoline price.
We've got to have a show that educates people on how the price of gasoline gets set.
And it starts with this.
There is not one person who's involved in setting the price.
There's not one person who can raise it or lower it.
It's too complex.
There are too many people involved.
There's no way even one company can set the price of gas.
They can within their own company in Bailiwick, but they'll soon go out of business if they...
And plus, there are laws against them if they sell something at way too much below the market price.
It's its problem.
Anyway, let me take a brief time out here, my friends.
Again, the phone number to donate to our curathon today is 877-379-8888 or online at rushlimbaugh.com.
We'll take a brief time out and come back and conclude.
I'm sorry, continue right after this.
Now, this has never happened before, but we're being so inundated with donors that our website's slowing down.
We've got a server farm, folks, that handles this, and it's not handling it.
This has never happened.
I just got a note from a good friend.
I'm trying to donate $1,000 and I can't get in.
It's simply, it's volume-related, folks.
What's going to happen here?
We're going to keep it open after the show.
We're going to keep, how long is the phone line going to stay active?
Did we decide?
HR.
Okay, so we've decided we're going to keep the phone number, 877-379-8888 and the donation page at rushlimbaugh.com open throughout the weekend.
So there's no mad dash now to finish this in 10 minutes.
So you can back off and wait 10 or 15 minutes and then get back in.
So, yeah, don't forget to do it if you back out right now.
But, gosh, I've got goosebumps.
This has never happened before.
I've never shut down my own site.
I always shut down other people's.
But never my own.
By the way, the House passed the Ryan budget without one Democrat vote.
Not a surprise.
But it has passed the Ryan budget in the House of Representatives.
George Mount Vernon, Indiana.
Hi, welcome to the EIB Network.
Great to have you here, sir.
Hello.
Rush, what a pleasure to speak with you.
I'm in North Vernon, Indiana.
We're about 65 miles north of Louisville, Kentucky, and about 75 miles east of Cincinnati, Ohio.
And we're in kind of the middle of the poverty belt, I guess you would say.
And my comment has changed a little bit listening to you talk about all of these rich Republicans that are sending money to help with the lymphoma society.
And I guess maybe things aren't as bad as I'm thinking they are, but the more people that I run into in our particular area, it seems like that they're becoming more and more dependent upon the government.
Even our town, I hate to say, is more dependent on the government of programs and money that comes in in different ways.
It's not just taxpayer money, but your instincts are right on the money.
I mean, we're at 45.6, I think, percent is the number.
45.6% of people in the country are working.
And this is the strategy.
This is the mechanism of the Democratic Party.
What I was telling Mr. Trump, I mean, there is an effort out there.
There's a method to this madness.
Creating economic distress is how the Democrat Party expands.
Stop and think of that.
It's really, that's it in a nutshell and really doesn't need any further explanation.
The Democrat Party does best in their minds when people are economically depressed and hurting.
And that's a circumstance they're not crying about.
They may, way, may lament the loss of jobs and all that stuff, but they actually try to benefit from it.
All right, we got a final time out here.
We'll be back and wrap it up right after this.
Don't go away.
Once again, ladies and gentlemen, thanks to all of you from the bottom of our hearts.
I mean, really to all of you, but to you $5 and $10 donors who sent your apologies in, don't be silly.
We love it.
We love all of you.
And we're going to keep these donator abilities open.
The website is not going to shut down.
It's going to stay open all weekend, rushlinbo.com.
The donor page there as well as the phone number, 877-379-8888.
Thank you all very much from all of us for your continued efforts here to find cures for the blood cancers.
Do it again a year from now, and we'll see you back on Monday at the same time.
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