All Episodes
Previous Next
March 5, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:46
March 5, 2012, Monday, Hour #1
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Yeah, I knew it was getting bad.
I'm watching the media on Saturday.
And I said, you know what, I gotta call myself and cancel and suspend the two of my tea advertising.
So I called myself to cancel the advertising.
I got a busy signal.
So I couldn't cancel my own company's advertising.
So two of my tea remains a sponsor of the Rush Lindball program and the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Great to have you here, folks.
Looking forward to talking with you today as the program unfolds before your very eyes and ears.
Our telephone number 800 282-2882, the email address L Rushball at EIB net.com.
While I have your attention, give me 30 minutes here.
It's all I ask, and then you can do what you want.
It's 30 minutes.
I want to explain why I apologized to Sandra Fluke in the statement that was released on Saturday.
I've read all the theories from all sides.
And frankly, they are all wrong.
I don't expect, and I know you don't either, morality, intellectual honesty from the left.
They've demonstrated over and over a willingness to say or do anything to advance their agenda.
It's what they do.
It's what we fight against here every day.
But this is the mistake I made.
In fighting them on this issue last week, I became like them.
Against my own instincts, against my own knowledge, against everything I know to be right and wrong, I descended to their level when I used those two words to describe Sandra Fluke.
That was my error.
I became like them.
And I feel very badly about that.
I've always tried to maintain a very high degree of integrity and independence on this program.
Nevertheless, those two words were inappropriate.
They were uncalled for.
They distracted from the point that I was actually trying to make.
And I again sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for using those two words to describe her.
I do not think she is either of those two words.
I did not think last week that she is either of those two words.
The apology to her over the weekend was sincere.
It was simply for using inappropriate words in a way I never do.
And in so doing, I became like the people.
We oppose.
I ended up descending to their level.
It's important not to be like them ever.
Particularly in fighting them.
The old saw, you never descend to the level of your opponent, or they win.
That was my error last week.
But the apology was heartfelt.
The apology was sincere.
And as you will hear as I go on here, it was not about anything else.
No ulterior motive, no speaking in code, no double entende or intention.
Pure simple heartfelt.
That's why I apologize to Sandra Fluke on Saturday.
Because all the theories, all the experts are wrong.
So Well, what's gone on since what really is going on here is what we all know to be true.
Our president, Barack Obama, has a socialist agenda when it comes to health care when it comes to birth control.
when it comes to virtually every aspect of his agenda.
In this case, Barack Obama wants the government, his government, making moral decisions about what treatments, prescriptions, pills you pay for through your insurance premiums.
He isn't willing to let you or the market make that decision for yourself.
Now, the hearing that started all of this, I want to go back and put the timeline here in context.
Start the very beginning.
The hearing that started all of this was called by Daryl Issa, a California Republican.
He's the head of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
ISA is on our side.
His point in calling this hearing was to get facts into the record that otherwise would not be aired.
But his committee is made up of both Republicans and Democrats, and there are rules and procedures that are followed in calling witnesses.
And what this was all about the President of the United States acting extra constitutionally, mandating that Catholic churches and their schools provide contraceptives, abortive fashions.
He doesn't have that power constitutionally.
He cannot mandate these things.
And that was the original purpose of the hearing.
He was to get facts into the record that otherwise would not be aired, but his committee is made up of Republicans and Democrats, and there are rules and procedures that are followed in calling witnesses.
So the Democrats tried to play a game with Daryl Issa and his committee, and he rejected it.
What they did was they requested a witness for his hearing, a man named Barry Lynn to make their points for them.
Barry Lynn is a guy that represents the Democrat point of view.
They asked for him in advance.
ISA's committee checked him out, invited him, and prepared for his testimony.
ISA agreed he has a level and degree of expertise about subject matter of the hearing, which was not contraception.
That's what Obama wants to turn this to.
Obama is sorely hurting with women in pre-elect polls.
He wanted to turn this into an issue much as they used to use abortion.
So the Democrats played the game.
What happened next is instructive and it's very important.
At literally the last minute, the Democrats decided they wanted Sandra.
Is it Fluck?
Now, is that how her name is Sandra Fluck?
What happened next, the last minute, the Democrats decided that Sandra Fluck would be a better witness for them.
Not because she had any special knowledge or credentials like Barry Lynn has, but because her optics as a woman and a college student, a 30-year-old college student, and an activist on Democrat issues, by the way.
They thought all of that would show better than Barry Lynn.
Now, this is at 4.30 p.m., 4 30 in the afternoon, the day before the hearing, that the Democrats asked Issa to uninvite Barry Lynn, the guy they had asked for originally, and replaced him with Sandra Fluck.
Daryl Issa said, sorry, it's too late.
She hasn't been vetted.
We don't know who she is.
She doesn't have any real qualifications to appear before this committee.
We don't have the time to prepare for her and ask her questions.
So the answer is no.
You cannot have her testify.
All of this, by the way, is in a very interesting Washington examiner article from last week, and I've linked to it at RushlinBaud.com so you can read it yourself.
Now the Democrats and the leftists sensed opportunity over this controversy that they created themselves.
They publicly turned the situation they created to their own advantage.
They invite Barry Lynn, they disinvite him at the last moment.
They want him replaced with Sandra Fluck.
The committee is who is this?
We don't know who she is.
The second panel of witnesses.
It was Carolyn Maloney, if you'll recall last week.
Carolyn Maloney, Democrat from New York, started shouting, Where are the women?
Where are the women?
And they started saying Republicans hate women.
They started attacking ISA.
The Republicans on the committee are saying they don't want To hear from women.
They're misogynists, sexists, or what have you.
ISIS committee invited the Democrat choice again, Barry Lynn, and the Democrats on the committee tried to replace him at the very last minute with a sympathetic woman when it was too late for the committee, so again they said no.
So the Democrats played their game of lies, and ISA complained.
On February 16th, he said that the Democrats on his committee have appeared as a quote, have appeared outright giddy in attempting to distort the testimony offered and purpose of the hearing.
You bet they did.
They wanted to turn this from an committee hearing on Obama and his unconstitutional mandate to the issue of contraception, so as to bring back to life page 1A of the Democrat playbook, Republicans Hate Women.
Wanted to change the whole subject.
So how did they do it?
Well, the Democrats have their own little subcommittee called the Steering Committee.
This is a subsets inside the larger oversight and reform committee that ISA chairs.
And they wanted their sympathetic witness on the record, Sandra Fluck.
So their committee called her to testify before them, not ISIS committee.
The subcommittee, they staged a subcommittee hearing to look like a press conference.
Actually, yes, staged what was essentially a press conference to look like a committee hearing.
She gave the testimony that she was going to give to the full committee.
It was taped and released and made to look like a committee hearing.
And Daryl Issa had been right all along.
Her testimony was not that of an expert.
It was just another non-expert person in this case, Sandra's case, 30-year-old longtime birth control activist who went back to law school after a career of years of championing birth control issues.
In fact, she told stories less about birth control as a social tool, which is, of course, the left's true agenda, and more about birth control as a medication for treating other conditions, such as pregnancy.
To the left, pregnancy is a disease.
If you're listening to me for the first time, they may say, well, that's crazy.
It's not.
They treat pregnancy as a disease for political purposes.
All of this, folks, is political.
Sandra Fluck gave vague examples based on unnamed friends who she says couldn't afford birth control to treat medical conditions they had, since Georgetown University wouldn't pay for them.
Georgetown paid for all of their other medical treatment, but it wouldn't pay for the birth control pills that these doctors prescribed, should they be necessary.
Or so she says.
We still don't know who any of these friends of hers are, these other women.
Or we don't know what happened to them.
Her testimony was hearsay.
And it was unprovable.
And Issa was right not to let her give the testimony, particularly when the Democrats foisted her on the committee at the very last minute.
For the express purpose of pulling this fast one, this trick.
Now, let's get a few facts on the record here.
Georgetown is a Jesuit university.
It's Jesuits run by the Jesuits, which are Catholic order of priests.
Their policy on birth control is not exactly a secret.
It's not given to you in a sealed envelope after you sign up.
It's out there for everybody to see.
It's a Catholic university.
Everybody that goes there knows.
Ms. Fluck stated on occasion she went there specifically to change the policy.
If birth control insurance is important to you as an enrolling student, and you find out that Georgetown doesn't offer it, you might want to attend or work at a school that isn't run by Catholics.
I mean, just a thought.
But if you know the place doesn't offer contraceptives, when you sign up, and that is your big political issue, then why are you really there?
Actually, They know what they're doing.
They intentionally target schools like Georgetown to advance an agenda of ultimately forcing them to abandon their religious beliefs.
All of this is to serve Obama's agenda.
The agenda he worked all summer, and he abandoned only when America stood up, united, and said they would not tolerate tearing down religion to increase government's control over our lives.
You did that.
You stood up to him.
You made him stop.
That was a proud moment for all of us.
This is his second attempt at mandating Catholic churches and other organizations under the cloak of a so-called committee hearing, be forced to provide contraceptives against their moral.
Conscience dictates what have you.
So Sandra Fluck, a 30-year-old birth control activist, gives unverified and inexpert testimony about how Georgetown's longstanding in public policy has hurt her unnamed friends.
And let's be clear on something else.
I haven't called Georgetown to see if they pay for birth control pills when being used to treat other medical conditions.
I have no idea if they do or don't.
If somebody Georgetown wants to weigh in on that, I'd be interested.
But the point here is that this was an issue that represents a tiny tiny slice of what the Democrats really want here.
They use Sandra Fluck to create a controversy.
Sandra Fluck used them to advance her agenda, which is to force a religious institution to abandon their principles in order to meet hers.
Now, all of this is what I should have told you last week.
Because this is what happened.
I use satire.
I use absurdity to illustrate the absurd.
The story at the Cybercast News Service, which characterized a portion of her testimony as sounding like, based on her own financial figures, that she was engaging in sexual activity so often she couldn't afford it.
I focused on that because that was simple.
Trying to persuade people, change people's minds.
I am huge on personal responsibility and accountability.
People providing for themselves when they're totally able to.
Totally against social government has no business doing any of this, people's bedrooms mandating that other citizens pay for other citizens' social activities and so forth.
Now that was the wrong one to focus on.
I acted too much like the leftists who despise me.
I descended to their level, using names and exaggerations to describe Santa Fluck.
It's what we have come to know and expect of them, but it's way beneath me.
And it's way beneath you.
It was wrong, and that's why I've apologized because I succumbed.
I descended to their level.
Don't be mad at them or mad at her.
Everybody here was being true to their nature except me.
I'm the one who had the falling on this.
And for that, I genuinely apologize for using those words to describe Miss Fluck.
No, I've got to take a break, but I'm not through.
We'll be back here in just a second.
Welcome back, Rushland bought talent on lawn from God, and still half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
Stick with me through a couple of more segments here.
I want to clean up a few other things.
The left folks, the media, giddy that some advertisers have said they're leaving the program.
And I'm sorry to see them go.
They have profited handsomely from you.
These advertisers who have split the scene have done very well due to their access to you.
My audience from this program.
To offer their products and services to you through this venue is the best opportunity that they have ever had to advertise their wares.
Now they've chosen to deny themselves that access.
And that's a business decision and it's theirs alone to make.
They've decided they don't want you.
Or your business anymore.
So be it.
For me, this program is always about you.
You talk to anybody that knows me who asks me about this program, and I always say it's all for the audience.
Because if you're not there, all the rest of this is academic.
This show is about you.
It's not about the advertisers.
I knew the political inclinations of these people.
They didn't care when they were profiting, and I didn't either.
Everybody's able to put these things aside for the sake of mutual beneficial business activity.
No radio broadcast will succeed by putting business ahead of the needs of its loyal audience, and that audience is you.
My success has come from you.
My focus has always and always will be on you, and I'm still not through.
Hang in there.
As I was saying, uh, ladies and gentlemen, this show has always been about you.
It has always been about meeting and surpassing your expectations as an audience on any level that I can imagine on any level for which I have empathy.
If this program were about the advertising, you don't know the kind of commercials you'd be treated to.
I reject millions of dollars of advertising a year, much to the chagrin of my hardworking sales staff.
Millions, folks, including, I might add, General Motors.
What would you have thought if after the government took over General Motors I started advertising German?
I made the decision not to accept that because you, the audience, come first.
Because no successful program puts the audience second or third.
See, I understand my success has come from you.
Every Thanksgiving on this program, many of you.
Well, during the year, many of you regale me with how much of the program has meant to you personally, your family or whatever over the years.
Every Thanksgiving at Christmas, I take time out to tell you no matter what this program's meant to you, it can't compare to what you have meant to me and my family.
So fact, and I have no adequate way to express my gratitude to you.
It just doesn't exist.
It's how great my gratitude for all of you is.
Without you, advertisers would have no need to participate in this program.
So what we're gonna do is replace those that leave, those that no longer want access to you, those advertisers who no longer want your business, fine.
We'll replace them.
It's simple, really.
Every advertising's a business decision, it's not a social one.
Only the leftists try to use extortion, pressure, threats to silence opposing voices.
We don't do that.
Never ever do any of us on our side of the aisle try to suppress the speech or the voices of those with whom we disagree, and we never will.
So, as you've always done, you make your own business decisions about the products and services you buy.
But don't be like the opposition.
That was my mistake last week.
Don't make it yours.
So let me do this one more time, and then we're not gonna do it again.
I should not have used the language I did about Sandra Fluck, it was wrong, and despite all the theories, my apology was to her for simply using inappropriate words.
I'm not going to wait for apologies from the left ever.
And you shouldn't either.
They won't come.
You won't get apologies from people like Bill Maher or all the other leftists Who have said some of the most horrible, despicable things about us, people like Sarah Palin.
They get rewarded for those despicable things.
They get to make movies out of their despicable things and amplify them.
But all of the other leftists that call me and other conservatives the most rude and explicit names, never in apology, and in fact they get patted on the back.
Don't expect apologies, they're never going to apologize to you or to me or any of us.
That's the difference between them and us.
And it's one more reason why ultimately we will prevail over them.
Now I spoke earlier about integrity, self-reliance, rugged individualism, things that made this country great, the things which define the institutions and traditions made this country great.
They are all under assault by people who actually hold you in contempt.
They don't look at you as competent.
You don't have what it takes to make the right decisions.
They know this because, given the choice, you would not turn your life over to them.
And when you won't turn your life over to them, you're a threat.
They derive their power from forcing you to turn to them for your very needs in life, not just your wants, but your very needs.
If you want an endless supply of anything, they'll be happy to provide it as long as you vote for them.
But you're never going to get too wealthy in the process because then you become an enemy.
You must be cut down.
It's called class enemy.
Alexis de Tocqueville wrote on this subject in a famous book.
It is indeed difficult to imagine how men who have entirely renounced the habit of managing their own affairs could be successful in choosing those who ought to lead them.
In other words, people who have totally abandoned self-reliance.
Managing their own affairs, people who have given up running their own lives.
What in the heck kind of people are they going to elect to lead them?
It is impossible, Tocqueville writes, it's impossible to believe that a liberal, energetic, and wise government can ever emerge from the ballots of a nation of servants.
The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.
When the taste for physical gratifications among them has grown more rapidly than their education, the time will come when men are carried away and lose all self-restraint.
It's not necessary to do violence to such people in order to strip them of the rights that they enjoy.
They themselves willingly loosen their hold.
They neglect their chief business, which is to remain their own masters.
They give that up, which is fine, but then they come along and demand that all the rest of us give up our own self-reliance.
And our own independence.
They're not content to live their lives the way they want.
They then must try to make all the rest of us live the same way.
And that is what the entire Obama administration is about.
This administration actually has an enemies list.
This administration actually calls the names of private citizens and holds them up for ridicule and attack and encourages those attacks on private citizens who simply disagree and who do nothing more than speak constitutionally Protected words.
You ever thought what kind of people they are who are literally threatened to death by words.
Well, that's President Obama and his supporters at his political party.
Words.
And publicly ridiculing.
Some might say that we really aren't private citizens anymore under this regime, that we are more like subjects.
If we behave properly, then we need pair of sneakers, we might get it, need a new kitchen, we might get it.
Don't behave accordingly, not only will you not get it, you'll get called out.
And a nation of Obama supporters will then attempt to ridicule you into silence and acquiescence.
Back to Toqueville, democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality.
But notice the difference.
While democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.
The equality of socialism is everybody equally miserable.
Everybody equally wanting.
Everybody equally unhappy.
Not liberty.
But equality in restraint and servitude.
America is great, Tocqueville concludes here, because she's good.
If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.
Liberty cannot be established without morality.
Nor morality without faith.
The greatest threat that the nation faces is the absence right now of a moral core.
Any attempt to establish one is fought tooth and nail by those who do not want one.
That's it.
Take a brief time out.
We'll come back and continue with all the rest of today's program right after this.
Have you heard, ladies and gentlemen, that President Obama has asked, one might say demanded to deliver the commencement speech at a women's college in New York?
This is Barnard College.
Barnard, I've never heard it pronounced.
I'm deaf, so I have to guess at the pronunciation.
Barnard Bernard, it's an all-women's college in New York.
Obama will address the graduates at this year's commencement, May 14th.
The White House called Barnard College in recent days and offered up Obama as the commencement speaker, and they promptly accepted, except they already had one.
They already had one.
Jill Abramson, the executive editor of the New York Times, was set to address the graduates before the White House called the college.
During all of this, last week the White House calls the colleges that we want to address, we'll send the president up there.
What's the college to do?
Okay.
So Obama will go address the women.
Why?
It goes back to why Daryl Ice's committee was corrupted.
His hearing was corrupted.
Look, there's an NBC Wall Street Journal poll out today that shows Romney pulling ahead of everybody else in the Republican side, but Obama's approval back to 50%.
This is a bogus poll.
800 people adults, not likely voters, not registered voters.
If you're new to the program, presidential approval polls are a pre-election polls are the most accurate when they sample likely voters.
They are the least accurate when they sample adults.
In addition, the Republican sample of this 800 people participation poll was 27%.
Twenty-seven percent Republicans.
Now we know from Gallup that twice as many Americans identify themselves as conservatives as people identify themselves as liberals.
It's 40% to 20%.
Conservatives, self-proclaimed conservatives, vastly outnumber the liberals in this country.
Yet, in an NBC Wall Street Journal poll, Republicans represent 27% of the sample, and they are celebrating and ballyhooing that Obama's at 50%.
It's a worthless poll.
Because the sample is adults.
The truth of the matter is that the president's still finding it difficult with women in his approval numbers.
And that's why they wanted to change the subject from whether or not he behaved unconstitutionally in mandating churches give away abortion pills or birth control pills to Republicans.
Don't agree with contraception.
Totally made up.
There's not a Republican out there that wants to ban contraception.
There's not a Republican in the world as a political issue, wants anything to do with it.
It's totally manufactured, and it succeeded in distracting everybody's attention from what Obama had done, and it's meant to portray the Republicans as Neanderthal troglodytes.
While the party of Bill Clinton who's destroyed Monica Lewinsky's life, among others, is held up as God's gift to women.
Everything's 180 degrees out of face.
So here comes Obama calling this college in New York and kicking Jill Abramson off the podium.
She is only the first woman executive editor of the New York Times in its 160-year history.
So the party of women calls Bernard College and all-girls school, all women college, says we want to speak.
Get rid of whoever you had.
Well, it's Jill Abramson, New York Times.
Even better, get rid of her.
Was it a Republican that called and demanded the right to address the graduates at Barnard and kick an achieved woman off the podium?
It was Barack Obama.
The president, his fellow Democrats, have made women a focus of their campaigns of late.
Precisely because they wish to change the subject.
Also, there was this headline, this was at a George Thoros, George Soros funded think tank called Think Progress.
Limbaugh attacks helped put the Chevy vote workers out of a job.
You didn't see that over the weekend?
Well, General Motors shut down vault production until April because nobody's buying them.
And so to fit the meme that had been established last week is my fault.
Now why is it my fault?
Well, because I've made fun of the vault.
It's not that the thing costs more than people can afford.
It's not that people don't want the vault.
It's not for any reason other than me and other media critics, General Motors and me and other media critics have poisoned people's minds against the vault.
I predicted before they made it that it was not going to be something that the American people make a mad dash for.
There's no market demand for one of these yet.
But I'm reminded of what Nancy Pelosi has said that unemployment compensation stimulates the economy.
So the right way to look at this is if if I have helped put the Chevy Volt workers out of work, then that's really not the case.
These 1,300 workers are going to get unemployment checks, and they can finally stimulate the economy.
The headline ought to be limbaugh jolts economy by forcing vote layoffs.
No, folks, if I tell you, if you're brand new to the program, Nancy Pelosi of the Democrat Party of the Former Speaker of the House has said time and time again, unemployment checks.
Extending unemployment beyond 99 weeks stimulates the economy.
People not working stimulates the economy.
Well, if they want to blame me for 1,300 layoffs at General Motors, I'm going to take credit for stimulating the economy.
Using their own words.
The 1,300 workers will get unemployment so they can finally stimulate the economy.
Volt layoffs, jolt economy should be the headline.
The problem with the vault is just like all of Obama's green energy, there's no business there yet.
There's no solar energy business yet.
There's no wind energy yet.
It's not there yet.
But we can't have more oil.
We can't have cheaper gasoline for Newt says that Obama wants $9 a gallon gasoline.
Newt says Romney doesn't care because he's rich and can afford it.
There is a Republican election coming up soon, by the way, folks.
I've forgotten when it is, but I know it's pretty soon.
Okay, have to take a brief break here at the top of the hour.
We'll do that.
We'll come back and uh start going through the audio sound bites today, the stack of stuff with lots of uh goodies in it, and we'll work your phone calls in as well.
▲
Export Selection