All Episodes
Previous Next
March 27, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:40
March 27, 2012, Tuesday, Hour #1
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
That is one awesome cigar.
Nine inches long and a 47 ring gauge.
It's like a Churchill with a couple additional inches.
Wow.
Hiya, folks.
How are you?
It's the EIB Network and Rush Limbaugh and broadcast excellence for the next three hours.
Here's the telephone number if you want to be on the program.
800-282-2882.
The email address, LRushbo at EIBNet.com.
Look at this headline.
Just got this.
It's from Reuters.
I was going to lead off with healthcare.
We're going to get to it very quickly here in this Supreme Court.
What's going on there?
And it doesn't appear, and you really can't make any judgments, final judgments on this, but the oral arguments do not appear to be going well for the regime.
The regime's Solicitor General is being laughed at on occasion, and the justices are poking holes in many regime arguments up there.
But they say oral arguments, you never know what indicator they are.
It's like trying to read a jury, but still it's entertaining and it's instructive, and we'll pass it all on to you.
This headline from Reuters, consumer confidence eases.
Inflation view jumps.
When you hear that headline, if you could imagine yourself reading it, consumer confidence eases.
Now, what's happened here is consumer confidence has plummeted.
That's what's happened.
But the use of the word eases eases off.
It does not convey the truth by any stretch.
Inflation view jumps.
That doesn't tell you anything.
Americans this month ratcheted up their expectations on inflation to the highest level in 10 months.
Now, even that is misleading.
It's almost like it's a positive because expectations are always, good expectations are always portrayed in a positive way.
Now, what this means is the American people expect inflation to go through the roof, which is a bad thing.
And nobody wants that.
Well, very few people want that.
Americans this month ratcheted up their expectations on inflation.
Ratcheted up.
Oh, yeah.
The American people feeling much better about expectation.
That's what these clowns at Reuters want you to believe.
Americans this month ratcheted up their expectations on inflation to the highest level in 10 months.
Wow, we're doing great on inflation here, folks.
The people have never been happier in the last 10 months over inflation.
And the rest of the sentence is, consumer confidence waned, though the economic recovery was still seen on track.
Separate data on Tuesday showed home prices unchanged in January from December.
Home prices are now at their levels of 2001.
There's nothing good about this.
There's nothing positive in this story.
But you'd be hell-bent to find the truth even if you read it.
You need a seasoned, trained professional like me going through this stuff for you.
A report from the industry group, the conference board, showed the index of consumer attitudes eased to 70.2 from 71.6, roughly in line with consumer expectations.
No, consumer confidence didn't ease off.
It plunged.
It fell.
Inflation is skyrocketing, led by gasoline prices.
And yet, doesn't matter because the economic recovery is seen on track.
The details of the report were mixed.
I wouldn't have bothered with this, except this whole thing is written as totally misleading, purposely so.
Consumer confidence eases and inflation doesn't jump.
Did the views of inflation jump?
I'm telling you, folks, this is another indication of how bad it is.
And I'm talking about through the prism of the Obama reelection.
That's how bad the economic news is when these efforts are expended to hide it and, in fact, to make it look like something else.
All right, oral arguments at the Supreme Court taking place today.
And we've got little bits and blurbs flowing in here as the circumstances warrant.
For example, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy said the U.S. government has a very heavy burden of justification to show where the Constitution authorizes the Congress to change the relation of individuals to the government.
It means they got a really tough burden of proof here.
The fifth justice, this is the justice everybody thinks is going to end up deciding this.
And this is why, by the way, oral arguments really don't give you much of an indication because justices are political too, and they can say things in oral arguments to deflect attention to any number of reasons here.
But he happens to be right.
And so I think it's important to point it out.
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy said the U.S. government, the regime, Obama, has a very heavy burden of justification to show where it is in the Constitution that Congress is authorized to change the relation of individuals to the government, meaning the mandate.
His comments came as the Supreme Court tackled the central issue in the challenge to the Obama administration's health care law, whether Congress could require individuals to carry health insurance or pay a penalty.
They even got into discussing burial insurance today.
One of the justices asked the regime, well, okay, if you're going to have everybody demand everybody have health insurance, what about burial insurance?
I mean, everybody's going to die, except the left who eat all the right foods and don't go to all the wrong places.
Everybody's going to die, and they're going to have to be buried.
Why not require burial insurance?
Well, the regime said, wholly different situation, Mr. Justice, wholly different situation.
We're not transferring costs in that circumstance.
So there aren't a bunch of burial freeloaders.
There aren't?
How do we know this?
There have to be a bunch of burial freeloaders out there.
At any rate, I think that was Alito.
The Solicitor General, the government's lawyer here, Donald Varilli, in defending Obamacare, argued that Congress was regulating the health care market in which people were already participating rather than breaking new ground by forcing them to buy a product.
Justice Kennedy asked what limits, if any, there would be to government powers under his argument.
Justices Ruth Bader-Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer weighed in repeatedly to further Varilli's argument and to counter skeptical remarks made by Justices Scalia and Alito.
Well, we knew that.
Bader and Breyer and Sotomayor and what's her name?
Okay, they're all in the tank for this.
So it's purely political process going on up there, folks.
On the left side of this, it's purely political.
Let's go to the audio sounds to illustrate this.
This is Morning Joe Today on MSNBC.
F. Chuck Todd, NBC News political director, White House correspondent, was the guest, along with Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post and a co-host Mika Zhinsky.
And they all have this exchange about the Supreme Court hearing oral arguments about the constitutionality of the health care law.
The question is: do they look at public opinion or think about the impact they would have on the political system?
I guarantee you, Anthony Kennedy, more than anybody else, and he's going to be deciding this case, he looks at the politics.
Imagine if they followed public opinion in previous cases.
You got to do it the civil rights board.
I mean, you know, you say that they actually look at polls, which they're not, you know, they're really supposed to try and focus on the law.
How can they not in the heat of this?
How can they not focus?
Because, see, this there's there's Mika Bzinski asking in a basic Civics 101, well, why can't they just look at the law?
Take a look at your leftist justices, Mika.
They're not even looking at the law here.
They're looking at defending Obama.
See, folks, here's what's at stake.
We would be remiss.
I would be remiss if I didn't remind you of something.
This health care law debate at the Supreme Court and everywhere else is about much more than just health care.
It's about the Constitution.
People ask me all the time: the Constitution is what it is, Rush.
How can you have four justices on the Supreme Court who simply refuse to accept it?
And the answer, though frustrating, is very simple.
They don't like it.
And they want to change it.
And this is how.
They know they're not going to have a giant constitutional convention.
They know that they're not going to get a chance to start from scratch and rewrite the whole thing.
So they do it piecemeal as opportunities present themselves, such as this.
They look at the Constitution as a living, breathing, flexible document written by a bunch of racists and wealthy, entitled people who set things up for their own benefit and to heck with anybody else.
They believe the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties.
And in their mind, what that means, the Constitution's problem, the deficiencies in the Constitution are that nowhere does it describe what government can do.
The Constitution is a document which specifically and purposely limits the federal government.
That's why it was written to prevent what's happening now, in fact, massive takeover of the federal government by political forces acting outside or extra-constitutionally.
So the four justices of the Supreme Court look at the Constitution and they frown and they cringe.
They don't like it.
That's why they ignore it.
This is an opportunity to both ignore it and change it.
And it's not just with Supreme Court justices.
It's all liberal judges throughout the federal court system, the appellate level, at the circuit level, you name it.
And that's what's going on here.
That's why the four liberal justices aren't going to budge.
In a sane world, if the Constitution were nothing more than interpreted here by these judges, like I said yesterday, it really is disturbing that the nation as founded hangs in the balance here on the votes of one or two Americans, which is where we are in this healthcare debate.
The nation as founded its existence under the Constitution hinges on the votes of one or two justices of the Supreme Court.
If this were a sane world, and if the law really did matter, if the Constitution really took precedence as it's supposed to, this case would be thrown out.
They wouldn't even accept it.
If they did accept it, it would be 7-2 or 8-1 to overthrow Obamacare, to overturn it, to declare it unconstitutional.
And I don't say that politically, contrary to the opinion of some of you in the audience, I say that purely, constitutionally, purely legally.
There really isn't a constitutional argument here.
What we're going through is a power grab by Democrat forces on the left to fundamentally rewrite the Constitution case by case.
Now, this case happens to be the biggest opportunity they have ever had to take over the federal government with them in charge.
And that's what this is ultimately all about.
Let's take a brief time out, come back, and continue after this.
On the cutting edge of societal evolution, Rush Limbaugh serving humanity simply by showing up.
Here's the burial insurance argument.
A report on the hearings is filed by the Wall Street Journal reporter as to the hypothetical of forcing Americans to buy burial insurance.
Now, remember, if Obamacare is declared constitutional, burial insurance and a thousand other things like it are next.
This was at 10.08 this morning.
Back inside the court, Justice Samuel Alito has focused on the comparison with burial services, asking the government's lawyer, Mr. Varilli, to justify not requiring funeral insurance, since everybody will also eventually have to be buried or cremated.
Mr. Varilli, the government lawyer, has responded that it's completely different.
Burial insurance, completely different because people don't shift huge, uncompensated burial costs to others.
They're met by family members or the government.
So it's not a legal issue, according to Mr. Varilli.
We have to examine if family members kick in.
Why do family members kick in?
Why should they?
Why is it okay?
Why does that negate anything?
When they kick in for burial insurance, why couldn't families kick in for health insurance or medical treatment?
Why does the government have to be the one to do it?
Why can't families kick in in that situation?
I think here, folks, to note factual difference, differences in an analogous situation is to state the obvious here.
To duck the legal question using factual differences is telling.
Apparently, there was no legal argument for burial insurance.
But wait, a Supreme Court justice jumps in to help.
Justice Breyer has taken the government's argument further.
He said that a requirement of burial coverage could be constitutional if there were a uniform national system of funerals With large employers and government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid playing large roles.
Now, the government lawyer didn't want to go there.
He said, I think we're advancing a narrower argument.
So here you have a liberal justice.
The whole concept of burial insurance comes up.
One of the justices, oh, wait a minute now.
If you're going to require everybody to have health insurance, why do you not require them to have burial insurance?
Well, because those things are not cost-shifted and families will kick in.
And a liberal, and this guy, Breyer, I have, if I may be honest, I've always scratched my head when I listen to this man speak.
I've, as a person who comes from a family of really achieved lawyers, my family primarily is lawyers.
It's been impressed upon me my whole life: the intellect required, especially you get to judge level and justice level.
My dad always told me that anytime a controversial case either was before him, he was trying as a lawyer or anywhere in the country in the news.
He'd always impress upon me the need for incredible people as judges.
They really have to be incredible people.
They have to become, as do lawyers, experts on everything if they are to succeed, if they are to excel.
And I've heard Breyer, for example, when he talks about using foreign law, believe me, it's nonsensical.
And I wouldn't be surprised if before this is all over, Breyer or Ginsburg invoke foreign law.
Remember, Ginsburg recently was in, where was she in South Africa, somewhere where they were talking about putting together a constitution, and she specifically advised them not to use the U.S. Constitution as a model.
It was antiquated.
It had discrimination built into it.
The U.S. Constitution, she said to these people, whoever they were, really not good for what you want to do here.
That's a woman on the Supreme Court here deciding this case.
Breyer, I just, I've always scratched my head when I listened to this guy.
And I've always remember what my father said about needing incredible people as judges.
And this guy doesn't seem to be one.
And Loogie, what happened here?
His side's lawyer.
I know it sounds strange, a Supreme Court justice to his side, but it's true.
He's on the government side.
His side's lawyers.
No, no, no, no.
Well, burial insurance.
And Alita said, well, maybe the remedy, Breyer, maybe the remedy, Mr. Virilli, is to have the government in charge of all burials.
Duh!
You want to hear something that's just plain tasteless?
The Obama re-elect campaign, Obama 2012, is now selling hoodies that say Obama 2012 on them.
The Barack Obama re-election effort is exploiting the death of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, in order, obviously, here to secure votes as though he needs them from African Americans.
Hoodies.
2012.
You know, Thomas Sowell has a column out today on this whole thing.
And he comes out in defense of Arolo Rivera.
Rivera took some heat because he suggested that Trayvon Martin get rid of the hoodie for crying out loud.
You're telling everybody who you are.
They call it a hoodie for a reason.
You're a hood.
Don't wear the hood.
And a lot of people had props.
A rollover, how dare you be so discriminatory.
Thomas Sowell said, wait a second here.
It does matter how people dress.
It does say something about you.
There are uniforms for gangs and other things.
If you're going to be walking through a neighborhood that you know is dangerous, and he cites an example when he was at Harvard, when he had to walk through a very rush, a very tough, Irish neighborhood near the campus, he would never wear anything that would incite them.
It was reality.
Yeah, it was a shame he had to do it.
So he comes out in defense of Arola.
Here is the Barack Obama reelection committee, campaign of whatever, exploiting the death of Trayvon Martin by selling Obama 2012 hoodies.
That's just tasteless.
Now, back to this Supreme Court business with Justice Breyer.
This is authoritarianism on parade.
This is statism on parade.
This is totalitarianism on the parade.
This is how these people think.
It's a government lawyer is asked to say, well, how come you're not going to require burial insurance if you're going to require health insurance?
And he said, well, completely different because people don't shift huge uncompensated burial costs to others.
They're met by family members of the government.
So Breyer steps in here and says, well, why don't we just have the government run all funerals and that way it'll end the problem?
And the government lawyer goes, no, no, don't say that.
That's not what we want up here.
For God's sake, be quiet, is what he's saying in his mind.
Mr. Varilli, the government lawyer did not want to go there.
You talk about showing your hand, Justice Breyer.
So Breyer basically, well, look, have the government be in charge of all funerals.
Make every funeral uniform.
The government sets up standard, and that's how it'll be done.
And then there's no problem.
Congress can compel us to buy insurance of any kind.
And then we can tell Congress how they're going to run it.
And this stuff is pervasive.
I have to tell you something.
I wasn't going to mention this because I try to stay focused here, but it now fits.
I read a lot of sports.
Well, you know, I love football.
I love the National Football League.
And it's a very active offseason.
And there's a big controversy in the league going on right now over bounties that were paid by the New Orleans Saints, defensive coordinator, players to take other players, opposing players, out of the game.
And the commissioner has come down hard on the coach, the defensive coordinator, the general manager.
These people have been suspended for eight weeks up to indefinitely.
The head coach a full year.
And so the sports media is writing about all of this.
The league meetings are going on.
The National Football League owners are all right here.
They're all here in Palm Beach this week for the NFL Oters meetings.
And one sports writer suggested a national commission to be in charge of drug violations, concussions, virtually things that the league is in charge of.
The National Football League is a self-contained business.
The member clubs are franchises in this business.
They set up their rules amongst themselves.
They govern themselves according to rules that they all agree to.
And now here comes somebody suggesting that the federal government be in charge of some of these things.
It was just, it rolled right off the guy's typewriter.
There wasn't even any compunction about it.
That the solution to every problem is have the federal government do it.
Burial insurance problem?
Fine.
Have the government do it.
We'll make it uniform and then everything's cool.
You got problems with concussions or drug abuses and so forth, whatever it is in the NFL.
Put the government, get an independent commission so that the league cannot be held to any bias.
Just amazing.
Folks, we are surrounded.
And I don't attribute any particular political motive to the sports writer.
It's just the way he thinks.
It's just the way a lot of people think.
I don't even believe there's anything ulterior.
I don't think it even occurs to him that that's none of the government's business.
To him and to so many other people, the government's the final arbiter of everything.
The government's good and just.
They never do anything wrong.
They never make any mistakes.
They're the ultimate final authority.
And that's the way these four liberal justices on the Supreme Court are looking at this Obamacare case.
They are the final author.
It turns out that they are.
They are going to be the final authority.
And we're here where it's now going to depend.
We got a committed four liberal votes to grant constitutionality to Obamacare.
The other five votes, four of them are conservative, and then the swing votes, Anthony Kennedy, at least as it's all drawn up.
And the press is making a B-line for all five of these non-liberal judges, pressuring them in one way or the other to agree with the four liberals and therefore get a 5-4 decision.
So we're down here now to the votes of one or two justices of the U.S. Supreme Court on whether or not essentially the Constitution is going to be ripped up and thrown away.
And that's what's happening.
That's really what's at stake.
This is about much more than health care and medical treatment.
This is about the Constitution.
This whole issue is the greatest opportunity that the left in this country has had to fulfill their generations-long dream of the federal government controlling everything.
Now, here's more on Breyer from the oral arguments.
Justice Breyer says he doesn't want to get into a discussion on whether the legislation is a good bill or not.
Here are the oral arguments.
He doesn't.
He doesn't want to get into a discussion on whether Obamacare is a good bill or not during oral arguments.
Once again, Justice Breyer speaks, and I, El Rush, both scratch my head.
He sends clear signals.
He believes the insurance mandates allowed under the Commerce Clause.
He also offers a hypothetical in which the U.S. is facing the rapid spread of a disease.
Surely the government could require that citizens get vaccinated, he said.
So if a national disease is spreading rapidly, and we got a pandemic or an epidemic, whatever you want to say, surely, says Justice Breyer, the government could require that citizens get vaccinated.
Well, does that requirement include them buying it?
Does that requirement include them being fined if they don't buy the vaccine?
But you see how easy this is for these people?
The solution to everything.
And in fact, an analogous argument that the guy wants to make to try to be persuasive always ends up: let the federal government do it.
When the federal government does it, it's magic, and it always works.
And it's the simplest way, uniform treatment for everybody, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And this, folks, is what we're up against.
And I don't know how this is going to turn out.
I'm looking at experts who are looking at the outcome either way it goes.
And people are making a persuasive case here that it's not helpful to Obama, no matter how this thing turns out.
I respectfully disagree.
If this thing is declared constitutional, I don't care what kind of reelection problem it gives.
This is worth him losing a second term in his mind.
To get this thing declared constitutional, that's mission accomplished.
That's head to Hawaii, play golf for the rest of your life or wherever he's going to go.
That's this the idea that there's a political problem or losing circumstance for Obama if this thing is declared constitutional.
This is the biggest party the left will have ever thrown.
This is the kind of achievement that you do retire after.
But there are people who think, well, the American people are so opposed to this that that'd be the end of it.
Obama, he'd certainly be defeated.
Yeah, maybe so.
But then what are we left?
Then we're left with whoever the Republican president is or whatever happens at congressional elections.
They then are going to have to find a way to repeal this if there's a will to do that.
If the Supreme Court comes out and declares this constitutional.
I don't know.
Let me ask you: what do you think the mindset of most Republicans in Washington is going to be?
Let's set up a scenario here.
Hypothetical, of course, Obamacare declared constitutional.
American people, vast numbers, oppose this, and Obama loses, hypothetically.
Republicans win the White House, hold the House, and maybe win the Senate.
At that point, do you think, after the court has declared this constitutional, that there are enough Republicans who, as the first order of business, will start doing what they can to repeal parts of this?
I don't know because a Supreme Court decision is the biggest cover a legislator can get.
Well, the court says constitutional.
Now we can do about it.
That would be hard work.
It's going to be hard work no matter what, repealing this, taking it apart shred by shred.
So I don't buy this notion that Obama loses politically if this is declared constitutional.
I don't, that's not something I'm hoping for.
Let's just put it that way.
That's not a preferred outcome.
Back after this, there is panic on the left.
Abject panic on the left over oral arguments today.
Jeffrey Toobin, who is a lawyer, works at CNN, says today was a train wreck for the regime.
We got the audio soundbites coming up in just a second.
The facts also continue to pour in on the Trayvon Martin situation in Sanford, Florida.
Turns out that George Zimmerman is a registered Democrat and self-identified Hispanic American, not white Hispanic American, Hispanic American.
George Zimmerman, registered Democrat.
And there are other interesting things that are surfacing in that whole case.
But let's first explain what happened.
I'll tell you what, grab soundbite two before we get to soundbites 23 and 24.
This is last night.
We'll do a little timeline here involving Jeff Toobin.
Last night on Charlie Rose, CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, who, by the way, for those of you old enough to remember, he is the son of former NBC News reporter Marlene Sanders.
He wrote a big book after the OJ trial, and he's been at CNN for quite a while.
And Charlie Rose says, Jeffrey Toobin, how big a deal is this Obamacare case at the Supreme Court?
Epic.
Awesome.
Enormous.
Huge.
This is the biggest case involving the power of the federal government since the New Deal.
And if this law is struck down, the federal government is going to look very different the next day.
And lots of plans and lots of existing programs are in jeopardy.
So, I mean, as big as you think this case is, it's actually bigger.
Last night, Jeffrey Toobin accurately describing the size and scope of Obamacare.
Today is political breaking news, but we've got the sound bites.
It's on CNN.
Toobin, quote, this law looks like it's going to be struck down.
I'm telling you, all of the predictions, including mine, that the justices would not have a problem with this law were wrong.
If I had to bet today, Wolf, I would bet that this court is going to strike down the individual mandate.
Tom Goldstein, attorney and co-founder, center-left SCOTUS blog, the individual mandate is in trouble, significant trouble.
Los Angeles Times Noam Levy, Tuesday's arguments may signal trouble for the mandate, widely seen as a cornerstone of the law's program for achieving universal health care coverage for the first time in the nation's history.
Politico, breaking news.
The conservative justices and potential swing vote Anthony Kennedy raised concerns today that forcing Americans to buy health insurance would open the door to other intrusive requirements in the federal.
What was so hard to predict about this?
This is right to my point.
What's so hard to predict that this thing is unconstitutional?
It is unconstitutional.
And a Civics 101 student in junior high, after having the Constitution explained to them, would know this.
And here come these legal experts.
They had no way the justices are going to strike this down.
Ain't no way.
And then after one day of oral arguments, these same experts, probably just as qualified as the economic experts at the Associated Press, my God, these justices, they don't like the individual man.
Well, we're in big trouble.
Here's Jeff Toobin.
He's on CNN this afternoon.
The co-anchor, Ashley Banfield, said, tell me everything, Jeff.
What happened today?
This was a train wreck for the Obama administration.
This law looks like it's going to be struck down.
Justice Kennedy, the swing vote, was enormously skeptical.
Every comment Kennedy made, at least that I heard, was skeptical of the law.
The wild card in this argument was Chief Justice Roberts.
Chief Justice Roberts actually asked a lot of hard questions.
Roberts seemed like a much more likely vote to uphold the law than Kennedy was.
So you had to find something positive after saying today was a train wreck for the Obama administration.
And again, as I'm telling you, all these predictions, including mine, that justices would not have a problem with this, were wrong.
If I had to bet today, courts are going to strike it down.
Wolf Blitzer then weighed in.
This is really huge.
What you're saying, and you're an authority on the U.S. Supreme Court, you've written the major book on the current Supreme Court, the nine, so you fully understand.
But just because a justice is asking tough questions, let's say, of the government lawyer, Mr. Varelli in this case, that doesn't necessarily mean that that justice is going to come down on the other side.
Isn't that right?
It's true, but it's not very true, Wolf.
Yes, it is true that sometimes we're surprised by the justices' votes after hearing their comments at oral argument.
Most of the time, and it's not all the time, but most of the time, the questions that the justices ask at oral argument are very good predictors of how they're going to vote.
So, the left is in panic.
Wolf Blitzer in panic, looking for a life preserver from Jeff Toobin, who didn't give him one.
And they're shocked.
This is what's funny.
They are shocked.
We aren't, well, now we might be because we're surprised that the Constitution is actually being adhered to here, or appears to be.
Anyway, got to take a break here, folks.
We'll be back much more straight ahead.
Don't go away.
And the first hour of today's excursion into broadcast excellence in the can on the way over to the Limbaugh Broadcast Museum, which you can take a virtual tour of.
If you haven't, you should.
It's at rushlimbaugh.com.
We'll be back.
Sit tight, folks.
▲
Export Selection