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Feb. 16, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:08
February 16, 2012, Thursday, Hour #2
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And just as I promised, here we are, right back where the nation is comforted at the dulcet sound of my mellifluous voice, Rush Limbaugh emitting vocal vibrations coast to coast from the distinguished, the esteemed Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Telephone number, you want to be on the program 800-282-2882.
The email address LRushbo at EIBnet.com.
This Whitney Houston in New Jersey and the flag at half-staff.
There's a question.
If she did not have in her life a problem with drug abuse and alcohol, take that out of it.
And she died prematurely.
We don't yet know what the cause of death was, but let's assume that alcohol and drugs had nothing to do with it.
Let's take that out of it.
How many of you would be upset that the flag was lowered to half-staff?
How many of you are upset about it simply because in your mind, she's an entertainer?
Come on.
We lower the flag for statesmen, for heroes.
What is this entertainer business?
I bet there's some people who have that point of view, but keep in mind, New Jersey lowered the flag for Frank Sinatra and Clarence Clemens of the E Street Band with Bruce Springsteen.
So it's not that uncommon.
It really isn't.
Here's a phone number if you want to be on the program, 800-282-2882.
I want to wrap up this North Carolina thing and move on.
It's big, and I could spend another hour on this with perspective, but there are other things I must get to today, and I must get your calls.
And what's happening now is the CYA.
Everybody at the Hoke Elementary School in North Carolina, or this preschool, everybody's trying now to shift the blame elsewhere or to say that this story is not what it's being reported to be.
There aren't jack-booted thugs in here.
The story going out now is that it was just a misunderstanding, that the four-year-old little girl was never made to eat the chicken nuggets, that she's just a little confused and a little stupid.
And in fact, the Raleigh television station online story on this features a headline, which if you read it the right way, if you know where their starting point is on this, you could say, you could assume that they're basically agreeing with the little girl here, basically being a little confused, maybe a little stupid.
It's just all a misunderstanding.
But put yourself in the situation this little four-year-old little girl's in.
Now, when you're four years old, everything can scare you.
Here comes an adult telling you that your lunch isn't good.
Your lunch isn't good.
Your mommy didn't make the right kind of lunch.
Here's what you need to be eating.
And they plop some chicken nuggets in front of her.
A four-year-old kid is not going to have any concept of her rights.
She's not going to sit there and be able to argue with this big adult who is automatically conferred with authority just by being there.
It'd be scared to death not to do what the adult says.
The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services is stonewalling this.
Nobody will identify who this agent was.
This agent is unnamed, unidentified, and nobody will claim, yeah, he was one of ours.
Yeah, she was one of ours.
The feds, the state, nobody will claim them.
There's one report that it was a grad student or something from the University of North Carolina, but nobody knows.
So everybody, oh, you won't tell us who it was?
Hmm, I wonder what you're trying to hide.
Local congressman is asking to speak with the Skruel administration.
The Skruel administration is refusing to talk.
The local representative won't return the phone calls.
So at any rate, I'm telling you one more time what this is all about.
This is not accidental.
This is not good intentions.
This is not a bunch of adults from the federal government or Michelle, Obama's department, whatever, thinking they're really going to try to improve nutrition for kids.
That's not what this is about.
That's the vehicle.
What this is about is control.
What this is about, honestly, folks, is separating young kids from their homes and their families by causing or creating doubt and distrust from the child to the parents.
You're a four-year-old little girl.
An adult comes and tells you what's in your lunchbox is not good for you.
Well, who put it there?
Your mommy did.
That lunch isn't healthy.
In fact, this little girl did go home and tell her mother or ask her mother why she didn't make her a good lunch.
I'm paraphrasing, but it's something like that.
It's very easy for the government to pull this stuff off.
It starts this early.
You create distrust between a child and the family and total trust between the child and government.
How's this kid going to vote if they get away with this, if they keep treating this kid and others throughout the educational experience?
How's this kid going to end up voting?
How's this kid going to live?
What is this kid going to end up believing?
It wasn't for the government.
I might have been poisoned.
If it wasn't for the government, I might have starved to death.
I might have gotten a disease because my mommy didn't know how to fix a good lunch.
Don't smirk, folks.
I can see you smirking and I can see you looking at the radio as though you think I've lost my cookies.
Do not do it.
Have the courage to admit you know that I am right about this.
This is exactly how it's done.
Human history is complete with stories like this.
Tactics like this.
From the weekly standard, House Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi said today, this very morning, in fact, that the government should require self-insured religious institutions like the Catholic Church in Washington to directly pay for contraception and abortive fashions.
Pelosi was asked by the Weekly Standard, Catholic Church in Washington is a self-insured institution.
Should the Catholic Church in Washington be required to pay for these morning after pills and birth control if they find it morally objectionable?
And Nancy Pelosi, who claims to be a devout Catholic, said, yes, I think all institutions who cover, who give health insurance, should cover the full range of health insurance issues for women.
So, Pelosi is suggesting the Catholic Church, unlike what everybody thought, Catholic Church, damn well should provide abortion, damn well should provide contraception, damn well provide abortion pills or contraception pills, birth control pills.
Damn right they should.
Why shouldn't they?
They have insurance policies.
Why should they be given an out and not have to cover health issues for women?
At the same news conference, Pelosi said 98% of Catholic women use birth control.
Well, I mean, are even 98% of Catholic women within childbearing age?
I just, I don't know.
Sheesh.
She really is, keep an eye on Pelosi.
They will tell you, the Democrats will tell you exactly who they are.
That's why I'm able to predict back on December 20th what they're going to be doing today.
Speaking of which, grab audio somebody 22.
This is just now, moments ago on PMSNBC.
John Podesta, the former Clinton chief of staff, was on.
He now runs Think Progress, Think the American Way, some Uber leftist think tank.
And he was asked, do you think there's a risk here of Democrats in the White House getting overconfident?
What with all this great economic news out there?
Do you think so?
I doubt it.
You see his job approval going up, but you also see the enthusiasm gap being closed in the latest New York Times poll, for example.
Democrats now are as enthusiastic about this campaign as Republicans.
That's quite a reversal from last year when Republicans were quite fired up and Democrats were kind of down.
So, Podesta, enthusiasm gap is gone.
All is well for the Democrats.
Yep, yep.
We're now on equal footing and it's Katie by the doors.
And here is Al Hunt.
A little bit different view.
Al Hunt last night on Charlie Rose on PBS.
And the question was, if you look back at Bill Clinton in early 96 or Ronald Reagan early 84, what you saw was those guys crossing the 50% threshold in approval, continuing to creep up a little bit more.
If that continues to happen, the president will be in very good shape for reelection.
That's Charlie Rose to Al Hunt.
Here's what Al Hunt said.
I would add that I think a lot of people who I talk to about the economy who are Democrats have great fears that this has been, if not a Prague Spring, it's not something that's likely to continue for the next seven or eight months.
And if it doesn't, direction really matters.
If it stalls, I think you'll see that number go down a bit.
The Obama campaign is a bit more arrogant than they have a right to be right now.
We have a long way to go in this race.
So Al Hunt apparently does not believe that the White House is in charge of the numbers.
Al Hunt doesn't believe that the White House can control the unemployment number and presidential approval poll numbers and so forth.
And what Al Hunt is telling us here is if the media ever decides to report the truth, Obama's going to be in trouble.
All right, we'll get to your phone calls when we come back.
Your patience will be rewarded.
Hi, welcome back.
Great to have you.
I had something here that was going to dovetail and it slipped my mind.
It'll come back.
In the meantime, to the phones, we'll go to Iron Mountain, Michigan.
Hi, Monica.
You're up first.
It's great to have you with us.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
This morning on Morning Joe, Howard Dean said the following, and I quote, most Americans don't think sexuality is the business of the church, any church.
They just don't believe it is.
They believe it's their own business, not the business of the church.
They don't think it's the business of the government either.
And everybody kind of nodded.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Now, if you think about that statement for two seconds, it defies logic.
Tell me, which one, which group is trying to make sexuality the business of the government?
It's ridiculous.
Well, You mean the government is trying to make sexuality its business?
Excuse me, yes.
Exactly.
And you know, you know, wait a second.
Hold it.
Hold on.
Just a second.
I don't want to let this first thing you said just go by.
You said that they were talking on the answer.
Howard Dean said that people don't think churches should be discussing sexuality, correct?
Did he say that?
He said Americans don't think sexuality is the business of the church.
Okay.
Okay, stop.
Stop right there.
Stop right there.
Would you be shocked?
Would you be shocked if I were to tell you I think he's on to something?
I'm not shocked because I'm not shocked.
You realize organized religion, particularly Christianity, has been in the crosshairs of the American left and the media, Catholicism, Protestantism, for as long as I've been alive.
When it comes to the Catholic Church, the media, the American left, have actually been lobbying for the church to relax its views on everything it believes regarding personal morality, including sex.
Now, how many, how many, given where our culture is today, I wonder how many people that go to church don't really want to hear their church preach to them about their sex lives.
They don't.
How many parishioners do you think believe the church needs to modernize, needs to understand the mores of today and learn to save our souls based on the way things are today?
The church is too old-fashioned.
My preacher knows what he's talking about.
He doesn't know my life.
Rush, Rush, I am a Catholic, okay?
I'm faithful to the magisterium.
I'm hearing now the last two weeks this 98, 99% of Catholic women have rejected Humane Vita.
Do you realize what a crock that is?
Do you realize 98% of Catholic women use birth control?
That is absurd for Pelosi to say.
Do you realize how absurd that is?
Well, it's not even true because we have women who have infertility and, of course, past childbearing age.
But let's just take it on the face value.
98%, 99% of Catholic women don't reject Humane Vitae.
They ignored it.
They don't even know what it is.
They've never read it.
99%, 99% of Catholics have never read Humane Vitae.
They don't even know what they're supposedly rejecting.
You know what?
If the Catholic Church had wanted to ban contraception, they would have been from the government.
They would have been trying to do it for 2,000 years.
For all I care, Obama wants to solicit private monies to fully stock every planned parenthood in the country.
He can have kiosks on the street distributing birth control.
I don't care.
I think it's harmful for men and women, but I don't care.
We don't live in a theocracy.
But if I'm a business owner and not just a faith-based, any business owner, don't you dare force me to subsidize the morning after pill for my employees.
Well, I know.
I think we're speaking across each other here.
What I'm trying to get at is that there has been a relaxation of morality among the parishioners.
You say they haven't read whatever they haven't read.
I have news for you.
I'm not Catholic.
From what I hear, the Catholic Church isn't even preaching about it.
The piece I read the other day from Paul Ray, who is the professor at Hillsdale, who weighed in on this whole controversy, he left the church.
He went back to it 13 years ago.
He's gone to Mass weekly for 13 years.
He's had three sermons or what have you.
Went to mass three times where he heard the teachings of the church in this area.
That what he's hearing from the priests is left-wing political dogma.
He's not hearing church teachings.
That was my point.
I just, I think inmates are running the asylum at a lot of places.
Anyway, I'm glad you called.
I appreciate it.
Up next is Lee in Leesburg, Virginia.
Welcome.
Great to have you here.
Hi, Rush.
Good to be with you.
Rush, you know, I heard you over the past several days opining on, well, what is Obama really up to?
What are the Democrats really up to with this contraception deal?
And I, you know, I feel that there's some political angles that they're playing.
But one thing I don't think you really distilled down, which I am accustomed to hearing, you do, because you have the last word on everything.
But what this is, to me, is the kind of opening salvo of how the health care bill is going to be used as a political bludgeon going from this point forward.
Anytime in an election or when this particular vote is needed, all Obama has to do is like bring up, okay, well, we need to have mandatory free breast cancer screenings for everybody.
And if the, you know, if the insurance company won't do it, look, and the Republicans are going to fight against it.
They just create a new battle.
And God knows where this can go.
It could go anywhere.
Just let your imagination run.
They can make up any argument they have going forward and just make these, continue to make these false choices, these strawman arguments about why this should be done and why this should be a mandate.
All right.
Now, what is it that I failed to do?
Well, you were getting into the idea or talking about the idea that, okay, why were they doing this?
You were saying, I'm just trying to paraphrase you best I can, but you were explaining that, well, why are they doing this?
You kept raising the question.
Well, wait a minute.
What is this?
Are you talking about?
Why contraception?
Why contraception right now?
What does this have to do with anything?
And that was the question that you've been raising, and as I remember.
Okay, so what am I not saying about it that I need to be saying?
What am I not getting?
That this is how the health care bill is going to be used against whoever the Democrats' political opponents are going forward.
This is the first time I've ever seen anything like this done in this country where a mandate has been handed down for a political reason over contraception, which means really, you know, nothing, I mean, to anybody, but they just dredge this thing up and say, okay, we're going to use this as a political weapon in this election here.
And I think that's what I saw this as.
This is kind of like the opening round.
This is how this is going to be used going forward.
The reason I'm confused is that I've spent three years giving examples of how Obamacare will be used to control every aspect of your life, from what you eat to what you drive to where you say what you say to how you say it.
It is total control over everybody's life.
This contraception business that they swerved into is a political ploy right now to defeat the Republicans.
Pure and simple.
Hi, there are you.
Welcome back.
Rush Limbaugh.
Half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
I mean, I am, it's largely a hearing thing.
I'm still not clear what the previous caller was trying to get at.
So let me say again what I said about this contraception business as it relates to how it came out of nowhere.
I thought that we had gotten into this pretty detailed and made it pretty clear.
The whole point of bringing up contraception and trying to make it look like the Republicans want to ban birth control is simply something to excite the Democrat base, which has been depressed as it can be because their president has done a rotten job.
The economy is in the tank.
Excuse me.
The economy is in the tank.
They have to fudge and screw around with numbers.
They're trying to tell us the economy is rebounding, but nobody senses it.
Nobody feels it.
Small businesses are still not hiring.
Wages are not going up.
Gasoline prices increase.
They've got to distract people from this.
They had, as Podesta talked about, an enthusiasm gap.
Republicans far more eager and excited to vote than Democrats.
And that still is the case.
Podesta's out there saying that they've changed it now.
The point of this whole contraception business, he wanted to stir up the base, the women's vote.
You take a look.
I mentioned it yesterday.
I asked you to go find Obama's approval numbers in the female vote, the women's vote.
It's down.
It's way down.
All you have to do to get their attention is to come and dredge it back up that the Republicans want to get rid of their birth control pills and deny them abortion.
And that will bring them back.
And that's what they're trying to do.
It's a total move of feint and distraction.
It got started on January 7th with Stephanopoulos asking Mitt Romney if he supported banning contraception.
He had no idea.
It came out of blue in a presidential debate.
No idea what he was talking about.
And he said to Stephanopoulos, George, nobody wants to ban contraception.
I don't know what you're talking about here.
It's silly.
But the question was out there.
The concept of banning contraception was out there at either the federal or state level.
Now, Romney was supposed to step in it.
The design was they hoped Romney would say, well, if the states want to, they could then allude to the Republican frontrunner suggesting that contraception be banned.
Then they went out and they found an interview with Santorum where they can take him out of context and say that this is what he intends to do when he has not and did not say that.
So this is all about taking everybody's attention away from Obama's dreadful performance, the debt.
This budget that he submitted is an absolute, to call it a disaster is to undersay.
It's irresponsible.
I have a piece here by a woman named Liz Peake in something called the fiscal times.
Obama doesn't deserve to be reelected by refusing to address the greatest challenge this nation faces, our financial security.
Mr. Obama has failed the American people.
Despite warnings from the IMF, the credit ratings agencies, China, and the American people, the president continues to offer up budgets and programs that ignore the dire trajectory of Medicare and Social Security spending, putting the future of this nation at risk.
Well, this is exactly right.
But they can't allow the election to turn on this.
Ms. Peake says, let's get specific.
This week, Obama set forth a budget calling for yet another trillion-dollar deficit, the fourth one in four years.
Through certain spending cuts, some gimmickry, and a $1.5 trillion tax increase, the budget gap is projected to shrink to $575 billion in 2018, comfortably beyond the range of the country's political telescope.
Each of the proposals' major provisions scratches a partisan itch.
Raising taxes on the wealthy, imposing new fees on banks, eliminating tax cuts on oil companies, spending $476 billion on transportation projects, allotting $30 billion and guaranteeing voting blocks from police, teachers, and fire department workers, and so on.
She goes on to say this budget is as cynical an affair as last year's offering, which was defeated 97 to nothing in the Senate, an act of rare bipartisan cooperation.
And before we celebrate that moment of sanity, however, we recollect that the Senate has not passed a budget in more than 1,000 days, though they are required by law to do so.
The White House blames this on Republicans.
But in reality, all that's needed is a simple Senate majority to pass a budget, which the Democrats have.
But all this skirmishing is but B-rated play acting.
Informed citizens should be furious that the real issues clouding our future are not even addressed by the president.
The crisis in our country is twofold.
A rising number of people receive ever-increasing assistance from the government.
At the same time, fewer Americans are paying taxes.
The inevitable outcome is a widening gap between revenues and outlays, i.e. the deficit.
The recession has accelerated the problem.
Here are the facts.
Last year, the first of the 78 million baby boomers reached retirement age.
Between now and 2050, the number of people over 65 will more than double to 89 million.
This huge population will receive increasing money from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
And if nothing's done, it'll be crippling.
Social Security outlays, according to the trustees of the program, will advance from 4.2% of GDP to 6.2% in 2035.
Medicare, too, is a menace.
With our mandated spending on health and retirement benefits continue to sprout like weeds, the portion of the country paying for this tab will shrink.
Now, these trends threaten not only our economy, but our country.
Even now, the president's proposing cuts of the military.
He argues he's delivering what the country needs, more stimulative spending in the near term, while delaying the groundwork for long-term deficit reduction.
He knows better.
Our entitlement programs demand structural overhaul.
He's afraid to light the fuse.
He's not afraid to light the fuse.
He doesn't intend to light the fuse.
He has no intention of fixing this.
He has no intention of dealing with this.
This is a purposeful reordering or transformation of this country as it was founded.
Now, put simply, the president cannot allow an election on that premise.
That is why we're getting all of these phony numbers on unemployment.
All of these numbers, the president's approval numbers are way up.
There is nothing going on in real life that warrants those two numbers.
There is nothing happening that would warrant his approval number skyrocketing.
There is nothing happening that would warrant this whole plummet in unemployment.
There are no new jobs being created.
People are continuing to leave the workforce.
The numbers of people who used to be in the workforce when he took office versus now is down by two to three million, if not more.
The only reason there's an 8.2 or 8.3% unemployment number is because they have just erased the number of jobs available to be secured.
It's called a labor force participation rate.
The price of gasoline was $1.67 a gallon when we took office.
The unemployment rate was 7.2%.
We're approaching, we've hit $4 a gallon in some parts of the country on our way to five.
Unemployment is at 8.2 or 8.3%, but everybody knows that that's a phony number, except the people who want to believe it's a real number.
All the Democrats have is pages from their playbook that have worked in the past.
They cannot run on this record.
They don't want to run on this record.
Now, I know Obama's out there touting the economy's coming back, and he's going to continue to do that.
But what they're really doing is ginning up this old social issues business because they know that what it'll do first and foremost is divide the Republican Party.
They know, the White House knows, that their biggest threat is conservatism.
Their biggest threat is if the conservatives took over the Republican Party.
Their biggest threat is people voting the way they live.
They can't allow that.
So this contraception business, yeah, it has roots to Obamacare.
And yeah, it's an example.
I mean, for crying out loud, where does Obama get the right to tell any company what it must sell or give away, period?
Be it contraception or hot dogs.
He doesn't have that right, but he's doing it.
With Obamacare, if it is declared constitutional, virtually anything that they say impacts health care and its costs, they will have the right to control, including every aspect of human behavior.
You haven't seen anything.
You can't even imagine how oppressive this is going to be because you are an American and you can't possibly relate.
You can't possibly understand.
We know the horror stories in totalitarian regimes, so we've never lived under them other than those who have immigrated to this country from those places.
But people who have been born here have no clue what's coming.
They have no way of comprehending it or understanding it.
They have no way of even conceiving that there are people in this country who would want to impose that kind of will, that kind of loss of freedom.
That's why Obama's getting away with it.
People just can't believe that we've elected somebody who has that as his ultimate agenda and they can't believe that he is surrounded by an entire political party that has the same objectives.
Yet the evidence is all around us, everywhere we look.
And this thing last week with mandating that churches schools, give away abortion pills and contraceptives.
They're telling us this thing in north Carolina, with the agent telling the four-year-old girl, what your mommy brought you isn't any good.
You can't eat that.
You have to eat what we give you.
You should trust us as a story here.
This is another.
Most people would read this and wouldn't connect the dots.
But look at this one.
This is from the WALL Street Journal.
General Motors is freezing the pay of its 26 000 U.s salaried employees, I.e white collar, and will eliminate its traditional pension contribution for those salaried workers who still receive them in moves to reduce financial risks and cut costs.
Well, guess who owns General Motors?
Now you say Obama.
It's the unions, the United AUTO Workers.
Guess what's going on here?
Do you realize the grievance and the chip on their shoulders that union leaders and thugs have had for years over white-collar people?
Well, it's payback time now.
Now, the union owns general motors, backed by the government, so it doesn't matter.
We can make a car that nobody wants and we can someday demand that you drive it.
Just wait.
And furthermore, we're going to show these management types what it's been like all these years.
They wouldn't give us a new contract, they tried to cut our pensions, they tried to deny us our freedom.
They tried to deny us our fair wage.
Okay, it's payback time.
That's exactly what this is.
GM cuts benefits for salaries.
GM is the unions.
It's payback time all over the country from the days of the founding.
The one percent, as envisioned by the Democrats, are in the crosshairs and the one percent are the achievers, and it doesn't matter their race, it doesn't matter their religion, doesn't matter anything.
What matters is that they succeeded on their own.
They acquired and amassed their own wealth.
They are the targets now.
That's what this means.
Harmless little store yeah GM, they're behaving responsibly.
Sure, they're having to cut costs, just like they always.
Now, this is payback.
This is payback all the years the union was mistreated by the white collar management types at General Motors.
By the way, General Motors ie the unions are cutting white collar pensions, salaried pensions, converting them to 401ks, reneging on deals.
The bottom.
General Motors just recorded its largest profit ever in 2011.
They just announced this their largest profit ever, if we're to believe that 7.6 billion dollars.
The old record profit was 6.7 billion in 1997, during the pickup and suv boom.
Yeah, I'm kind of surprised by this too.
General Motors earned its largest profit ever in 2011, two years after it nearly collapsed.
Not to state control media.
But look, I want to get sidetracked.
Bottom line is, you think this isn't payback?
Largest profit ever.
And what do they do?
Tell the white-collar guys, okay, it's your turn to get screwed.
No, it wasn't from the volt.
Profit wasn't from the vault.
And then, ladies and gentlemen, this Paul Bedard, this is the Washington Examiner, desperate for jobs.
Youth flee Obama.
America's youth vote, which turned out in a record numbers in 2008, has soured on him because they're having a hard time finding work.
And as a result, are putting off major decisions like getting married, starting a family, even leaving home.
Obama, who won 66% of the 24 million voters aged 18 to 29, has seen that support slashed as a new pollout.
Generation Opportunity nonprofit seeks to engage younger voters.
Only 31% approve of Obama's handling of the economy.
The youth.
And that's who the Democrats claim they own.
And that's, folks, they were down with female numbers, this contraception business.
Make no mistake what's going on.
This guy is in the tank.
They are having to go back to old pages years ago in the playbook to try to revive this presidency.
And don't doubt me on that.
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