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May 8, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:28
May 8, 2012, Tuesday, Hour #2
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Our official climatologist, Dr. Roy Spencer, University of Alabama-Huntsville, has weighed in on dinosaur flatulence and global warming, extension,
extinction said look if if this guy is right in his research about all that flatulence and if the dinosaurs were smoking cigarettes there could have been combustion all over the place they might have something to talk about then Greetings and welcome back, ladies and gentlemen.
Great to have you with us.
Rush Limbaugh having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
Telephone number if you want to be on the program.
We will get to your calls in this hour is 800-282-2882.
Email address, Elrushpo at EIBnet.com.
Okay, so we have the new French socialist, Monsieur Holong, and this guy hates the rich.
This guy despises the rich.
This guy has promised tax increases on the rich.
It is to hell with austerity.
We're not cutting spending.
We're raising taxes and we're going to spend and spend.
And that's what got him elected.
And the Obama regime, privately very happy, but they're also very concerned.
They don't want this guy to implement any of this stuff yet.
Have you heard this?
Because it's going to destroy the French economy, and they don't want that to happen before the election.
They want this guy to wait until after November to destroy the French economy so that it won't hurt Obama.
Not making it up.
President Obama's spokesman, Jay Carney, warned the new president-elect of France not to implement his campaign agenda of ending austerity measures, indicating that such a reversal could damage the world economy.
A balanced approach, fiscal consolidation effort, and efforts to boost the recovery.
That's the right approach for Europe, said Jay Carney to reporters yesterday.
That's an approach that Obama thinks ensures the recovery continues while putting our fiscal house in order.
So Jay Carney yesterday said to the new French president, don't raise tax, for the sake of the world economy, do not raise taxes and increase spending yet.
The exact Obama agenda, the precise Obama, the agenda Obama's campaigning on, the agenda this guy won on, now Obama, via the spokeskid, Jay Carney, is asking the French president, I'm not making this up, folks, is asking the French president not to do this.
Seriously, stop and think of this now.
I know I'm a naturally funny person and you're laughing about it.
And it's, I mean, it's sadly funny.
I can't deny it.
But folks, this new lunatic in France, by the way, there isn't any austerity.
Could somebody point to me the austerity in the European Union?
Where is this cutting in spending?
It isn't happening.
There is no austerity.
All these guys, like Monsieur Holland, run for office opposed to all the austerity, the spending cuts, and there aren't any spending.
There's lots of talk of spending cuts.
There haven't been any spending cuts in the European Union.
Greece hasn't cut any spending.
They're being bailed out for crying out.
What does that mean?
The spending continues.
Spain hasn't cut any spending.
And by the way, don't forget, cuts in liberalism are actually increases that are smaller than what was hoped for.
So while all this talk of austerity is going on, actual spending is being increased.
But here's Obama, who's running for reelection, taxing the rich.
Increasing spending, more stimulus.
Telling the new French president, don't do it.
It'll destroy the world economy.
Well, if the French president doing it will destroy the world economy, why will us doing it not destroy the world economy?
If raising taxes and increasing spending is a cause for alarm in the Obama regime, then why is it their agenda?
Why?
After the election, the French president is free to do all the economic destruction he wants, but not before the election.
The New York Times has come out and actually admitted that Holan's socialist policies are closely aligned with Obama's.
New York Times says we all know it, but when the House organ of the regime says the same thing.
And I've got a soundbite here.
I don't have it in front of me, and it's not in order, but some newsmaker here has said that, oh, John Podesta, former chief of staff for Clinton, and now runs the Center for American Progress.
He's the chairman, said, well, yeah, Obama's a socialist.
They're admitting it now.
Obama's a socialist.
I find this fascinating.
Literal panic.
Don't do it, Mr. Holan.
Raising taxes, increasing spending will harm the world economy.
Yet that's what his agenda is.
From Nancy Helmich, it looks like.
Heilmich or Helmich, what is USA Today?
Headline, obesity could affect 42% of Americans by 2030.
By the way, did I put this in the right order?
Did I put this in the right order?
I'm asking myself a question.
Story from yesterday.
Certainly, I told you about it.
Didn't get to it.
I didn't put it in the right order.
Let me find it.
I will find it.
A new forecast on America's obesity crisis has health experts fearing a dramatic jump in health care costs if nothing is done to bring the epidemic under control.
Well, that opening sentence has so many see I told you so's in it that I don't know where to start.
One of the most glaring see I told you so's is that once they get health care implemented, that's the way that they control every aspect of your life, including what you eat and what you can't eat, where you can eat it and where you can't and so forth, because of the impact your eating will have on health care costs.
If your eating leads to your obesity, then that means you're likely to get type 2 diabetes and maybe more susceptible to heart attacks and early death or disease.
And we have to take care of you.
It's going to be not cost efficient.
So they're going to control what we eat on the basis that if we become obese, the costs on the healthcare system are unacceptable.
The new projection released in Washington yesterday warns that 42% of Americans may end up obese by 2030, and 11% could be severely obese, adding billions of dollars to health care costs.
I want you to think again, folks, take a moment here seriously.
I want to ask yourself, how far back in your life do you have to go to remember whether or not you're overweight being a factor in federal health policy?
I'll give you an example of what I mean.
I've always had a battle with weight.
I'm a roller coaster dieter.
I've done it all.
Every diet there is, I've done it.
I've even made some up.
And every time I have gotten to the point I think I need to lose weight, I have never once said I need to do this for my country.
I've never once said, you know what, I'm so overweight, this is going to have a negative impact on my country's budget.
When was the last time you had that thought?
Seriously, folks, when was the last time your weight made you stop and consider the impact of your weight on the federal budget and federal health costs?
My guess is never.
You have never equated the two.
Am I right?
Until the past couple of years.
Maybe some of you, you have pain in the rear bosses who have told you you need to lose weight because the health insurance policy doesn't cover people who are obese.
Maybe you've had some introduction to this.
But my point is that now whether or not you're overweight, which is purely, that is as personal a matter as you can get.
Now your weight comes under the inspection authority of federal agents who have or will have the power to determine that your weight,
if you are obese, has negative consequences to meanwhile, elected politicians have spent this country into near bankruptcy, and yet they want to blame it on you.
They want to hold you accountable.
They want to blame your obesity for breaking the budget via health care costs.
And right falling in Lopstack here, Lockstep is this reporter for USA Today.
The new projection warns that 42% of Americans may end up obese by 2030, adding billions of dollars to health care costs.
That's the concern.
Obesity and rising health care costs, that's why we're worried about it.
Well, if it is, that gives the government all kinds of power to deal with the obese.
And they get to define what's obese, by the way.
Justin Trogden, research economist with RTI International, a nonprofit research organization in North Carolina, said if nothing is done about obesity, it's going to hinder efforts for health care cost containment.
Guess what?
The federal government is soon asserting power and rights over your weight.
That means over what you eat on the basis of controlling health care costs.
Now, before Obamacare was voted on, you were warned that we were headed in this direction.
Some people poo-pooed the idea, come on, Rush, you're just being paranoid and extremist as always.
They're concerned about your health.
Well, that's going to be an excuse to control your life.
It's going to be an excuse to exercise power over all of us.
As of 2010, about 36% of adults were obese, which is roughly 30 pounds over a healthy weight.
6% were severely overweight.
Obese, that's 100 or more pounds over a healthy weight.
Eric Finkelstein, health economist at Duke University Global Health Institute, lead researcher on the new study, says the obesity problem is likely to get much worse without a major public health intervention.
Major public health intervention.
Well, let's move on to the next story.
I have it here, right?
My formerly nicotine.
Let me take a break.
We'll come back because I'm going to give you the headline.
It's in Reuters.
Obesity fight must shift from personal blame.
U.S. panel.
Obesity fight must shift from personal blame.
So we have here a panel of federales who have opined that fighting obesity will no longer involve the obese.
It's not personal.
We are no longer going to blame the obese for obesity.
No, there are other reasons.
And those other reasons are an invitation to government to come in once again and take control over another aspect of your life.
Snurdley just asked me a good question.
Where does this story come from?
Excellent question.
What happened is that a university professor decided to do a study, probably got a federal grant, went out, studied obesity, and he came up with a conclusion that calls for government intervention to fix the problem.
And voila, anything calling for government intervention by a university professor after a study that automatically qualifies as front page news in a lifestyle paper like USA Today.
That's how it happens.
No different than that nutshole group of vegetarians.
By the way, you talk about flatulence.
Have you ever been around vegetarians?
I'm telling you, it is undeniable and it's something you want to avoid at all costs.
But these clowns at the Center for Science and Public Interest, they're just a bunch of busybodies who want to try to tell everybody else how to live.
So they got an icon.
They got a logo.
They got a fax machine.
They did a study.
They put it out.
It calls for government intervention and banning of certain foods.
The media says, God, we love this.
Government intervention.
Makes news.
Same thing here.
The Reuters story is simply their version of the same study that USA Today did a story on.
And the Reuters story says that America's obesity epidemic is so deeply rooted that it'll take dramatic and systemic measures from overhauling farm policies and zoning laws to possibly introducing a soda tax to fix it.
This from the influential Institute of Medicine.
That's the Institute of Medicine.
Oh, wow, that sounds important.
Well, that's really influential.
So did you know that you are getting fat because of zoning laws?
Well, this study says so.
And this study is 478 pages.
It refutes the idea that obesity is largely the result of a lack of willpower on the part of individuals.
So 478-page study calling for federal involvement happens to coincidentally include the notion that personal responsibility is not a factor.
Well, if personal responsibility is not a factor in losing weight, well, then who's going to be in charge?
Oh, yeah, the federal government, yep, that's right.
Obama.
Yeah, okay, got it.
Michelle Obama and her new food camp or whatever campaign.
Yeah, that's so you're fat.
You are contributing to rising health care costs.
Not your fault, unlike global warming, which is your fault.
This isn't.
And so now, drastic measures, zoning laws.
Do you know that one of the reasons why there's so much obesity in this country is sidewalks?
I kid you not, lack of sidewalks are leading to obesity.
From the study, I quote: The lack of sidewalks makes it impossible to safely walk to work, school, or even neighbors' homes in many communities.
So while 20% of trips between school and home among kids 5 to 15 were on foot in 1977, that had dropped to 12.5% by 2001.
This is some of the stuff they're studying.
That's right.
You'd walk 20 miles to work if there were sidewalks, but there's a shortage of sidewalks.
We haven't invested in enough shovel-ready programs to build enough sidewalks.
So you have no choice but then to sit in a car and get fat on the way to work.
Now, the obesity study was paid for by the Center for Disease Control.
It was released at the Weight of the Nation Conference, W-E-I-G-H-T, the Weight of the Nation Conference, a three-day meeting hosted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Weight of the Nation Conference actually had a bunch of people assemble at the Weight of the Nation Conference.
So not making any of it up, all this is, folks.
This is why this regime has got to be defeated in November.
This is why Obamacare has to be repealed.
Every chance they get, they are taking personal responsibility out of the equation as the cause for anything.
You don't have a job, not because you.
Oh, no, it's because rich people aren't hiring.
They don't want to share their money.
There's any number of explanations for what's going wrong in your life.
And interestingly, you have nothing to do with any of it.
You're nothing but a victim.
Everybody's out to get you, and they are getting you.
So you don't have a job.
Your house is underwater and you're getting fat.
And pretty soon you're going to start emitting gas just like the dinosaurs did.
And the world is going to end.
Unless you agree to letting the government come in and run your life.
Actually, you won't have any say in the matter.
You won't be able to disagree.
Another companion story.
The Boston Herald bake sales.
The calorie-laden standby of cash-strapped classrooms and PTAs and booster clubs will be outlawed from public scruples in Massachusetts on the 1st of August as part of a new no-nonsense nutrition standard plan, forcing fundraisers back to the blackboard to cook up alternative ways to raise money for kids from kids.
Bake sales are leading to obesity.
And they may be raising money for good causes, but we are not going to permit them anymore.
They are too calorie-laden.
Honest, not making it up, folks.
Okay, if you are on hold, please, I beg you, stay on hold.
I'm going to get to the phones here in just a second.
Just a couple of more things here.
Honestly, bake sales in Massachusetts banned because they're calorie-laden and unhealthy.
But this is something I warned you about back in 2008, November 10th, right after the election.
Let's go back to our Soundbite archive.
Listen to me on this program, November 10th, 2008.
Rush, why are you laughing about all of this?
They're canceling bake sales with baked goods in it.
These are traditions.
Why are you laughing?
What else can you do here, folks?
We've been sounding the warnings on this kind of encroachment by these wackos on the left for all these years.
If people want to go out and vote for people who are then going to appoint people in the education system or wherever that are going to enact these kind of things, then fine.
If this is what people want in California, this is what they vote for, and if this is who they vote for, then all you can do is laugh at it and anywhere else as well.
And if this is what people want, let them have at it.
At some point, this is all going to come back and bite everybody in the rear end, and I'm going to know what happened.
And the only question is going to be: is it going to be too late to really roll any of this stuff back and change it?
Will the left have so much entrenched power, unelected entrenched power for generation after generation, that will there be any chance to roll it back?
At some point, you know, red lights are going to go off.
The brains are going to start functioning normally again, and people are going to realize where all this is headed.
This was me speaking, somebody on the phone, that a bake sale was banned in California.
Somebody was outraged about it, and I said, Well, why are you surprised?
This is what people voted for out there, and it's only going to get more frequent.
It's only going to become more common.
Now, right again, one other shall I say, one other aspect.
So far, in discussing obesity, we haven't discussed exactly who they are talking about.
Now, as you are out and about where you live, when you notice the obese, who are they?
Are you able to categorize them?
Are they mostly women?
Are they mostly men?
Are they white Hispanics?
Are they 132nd squaws?
Who are they?
So far, none of the stories that we've discussed here have mentioned exactly who the obese are.
Well, a very brave, courageous writer of the New York Times has tackled this one, Alice Randall.
Alice Randall is an African-American woman.
She wrote a piece that ran the New York Times over the weekend.
It might have run yesterday.
I'm not sure.
No, it was a couple days ago.
I guess it's Saturday or Sunday.
And the title of her column is Black Women and Fat.
Yes, there is a picture of the author.
I didn't, it's in the third page.
I didn't print it out.
She's not, I wouldn't consider her obese by virtue of her picture.
But the government, 30 pounds overweight's obese.
I'm sorry, it's not.
But it is anyway.
Four out of five black women are seriously overweight, says Alice Randall in the New York Times.
One out of four middle-aged black women has diabetes.
With $174 billion a year spent on diabetes-related illness in America and obesity quickly overtaking smoking as a cause of cancer deaths, it's past time to try something new.
What we need is a body culture revolution in black America, says Alice Randall in the New York Times, an African-American woman.
Why?
Do we need a body culture revolution in black America?
Why?
Well, because too many experts who are involved in the discussion of obesity do not understand something crucial about black women and fat.
Many black women are fat because we want to be, says Alice Randall in The New York Times.
The black poet Lucille Clifton's 1987 poem, Homage to My Hips, begins this way.
These hips are big hips.
She establishes big black hips as something a woman would want to have and that a man would desire, such as Sir Mixilot.
She wasn't the first or the only one to reflect this community knowledge.
20 years before 1967, Joe Tex, a black Texan, dominated the radio airwaves across black America with a song he wrote and recorded called Skinny Legs and All.
You remember that song, sir?
I played that song on the radio.
Joe Tex.
And one of his lines, writes Alice Randall in the New York Times over the weekend, one of his lines haunts me to this day.
Quote, some man somewhere who'll take you, baby, skinny legs and all.
For me, still seems like almost an impossibility.
Chemically, in its ability to promote disease, black fat may be the same as white fat, but culturally it isn't.
How many white girls in the 60s grew up praying for fat thighs?
I know I did, writes Alice Randall in the New York Times.
I'm reading verbatim from the New York Times over the weekend a column called Black Women and Fat by Alice Randall.
Let me start this graph again.
How many white girls in the 60s grew up praying for fat thighs?
I know I did.
I asked God to give me big thighs like my dancing teacher, Diane.
There was no way I wanted to look like Twiggy, the white model whose boy-like build was the dream of white girls, not with Joe Tex ringing in my ears, skinny legs and all.
How many middle-aged white women fear their husbands will find them less attractive if their weight drops to less than 200 pounds?
I've yet to meet one.
But I know many black women whose sane, handsome, successful husbands worry when their women start losing weight.
My lawyer husband is one of these guys who does not want me to lose weight.
Another friend, a woman of color who was a tenured professor, told me.
See, folks, you didn't know that when obesity hit the news today that it was going to end up here, did you?
Alice Randall, writing in the New York Times over the weekend, a piece called Black Women and Fat, another friend, a woman of color who was a tenured professor, told me that her husband, also a tenured professor and of color, begged her not to lose the sugar down below when she embarked on a weight loss program.
And it's not only aesthetics that make black fat different, it's politics too.
To get a quick introduction to the politics of black fat, I recommend Andrea Elizabeth Shaw's provocative book, The Embodiment of Disobedience, Fat Black Women's Unruly Political Bodies.
Ms. Shaw argues that the fat black woman's body functions as a site of resistance to both gendered and radicalized oppression.
By contextualizing fatness within the African diaspora, she invites us to notice that the fat black woman can be a rounded opposite of the fit black slave.
That the fatness of black women has often functioned as both explicit political statement and active political resistance.
Now, you might be asking, Rush, what do you take from this?
Well, it sounds to me like Alice Randall, Black Women and Fat, says that a svelte-fit black woman has links to slavery because they were so overworked,
mercilessly so, that they had no chance to get fat, and that the fat black woman represents emancipation from slavery.
That's what I hear Alice Randall writing over the weekend in the New York Times.
Already, we've had several curious cultural references in this piece to the fact that black men like fat black women.
She's attempting to explain why here.
Her husband, don't lose the sugar down below if you go on a diet.
So again, let me read this again.
By contextualizing fatness within the African diaspora, Ms. Shaw invites us to notice that fat black women can be a rounded opposite of the fit black slave.
That the fatness of black women has often functioned as both explicit political statement and active political resistance.
This is why I have warned you people, don't try this at home.
I make it look easy, but it's not everybody who could understand this.
It's not everybody who could break this down into its components and explain it to you, as I am doing here.
We continue.
When the biologist Daniel Lieberman suggested in a public letter at Harvard this past February that exercise for everyone should be mandated by law, the audience applauded.
A room full of thin, affluent people applauding the idea of forcing fatties, many of whom are dark, poor, and exhausted, to exercise appalls me, writes Alice Randall in the New York Times.
Government-mandated exercise, writes Alice Randall, is a vicious concept.
But I get where Mr. Lieberman's coming from.
The cost of too many people getting too fat is too high.
But we need to hold on to the black sugar down below.
I live in Nashville, writes Alice Randall in the New York Times.
There's an ongoing rivalry between Nashville and Memphis.
In black Nashville, we like to think of ourselves as the squeaky, clean, brown town best known for our colleges and churches.
Contrast, black Memphis is known for its music and bars and churches.
We often tease the city up the road by saying it in Nashville.
We have a church on every corner.
In Memphis, they have a church and a liquor store on every corner.
Only now the saying goes, there's a church, a liquor store, and a dialysis center on every corner in black Memphis.
The billions that we are spending to treat diabetes is money that we don't have for education reform or retirement benefits.
And what's worse, it's estimated the total cost of America's obesity epidemic could reach almost a trillion dollars by 2030 if we keep on doing what we've been doing.
We have to change, black women especially.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, blacks have 51% higher obesity rates than whites do.
We've got to do better.
I've weighed more than 200 pounds.
Now I weigh less.
It will always be a battle.
I call on every black woman.
This is Alice Randall writing in New York Times.
I call on every black woman for whom it is appropriate to commit to getting under 200 pounds or losing 10% of our body weight that often results in a 50% reduction in diabetes risk.
She calls on.
She's asking for this to happen, even though it will take her closer to the fit black-slave link that she wishes to avoid, as previously expressed in this column, Black Women and Fat, by Alice Randall in the New York Times, which ran over the weekend.
So there you have it.
And a brief timeout here, ladies and gentlemen, we'll come back, and your phone calls are next.
How can you possibly live up to this?
By the way, Alice Randall, I should have told you this.
Alice Randall, who wrote the fat black women piece in the New York Times, which I just liberally quoted, is the writer in residence at Vanderbilt University.
She once wrote a book, the title of which was Ada's Rules, a sexy, skinny novel.
Now back to the phones.
This is, or to the phones, we're going to start with Ann in Louisville.
And great to have you on the program.
Hi.
Thank you, Mr. Limbaugh.
You are wonderful, and you are my daily tutor.
Well, thank you.
And I do thank you for what you do for our country.
I called to tell you that on April 19th, I attended a Tea Party rally in Louisville.
I estimate, guess that there were somewhere between 350, 450 people there.
We're 32 chairs crossed, about 20 rows deep, probably three or four rows unoccupied.
They got zero coverage in the media, right?
Less than zero.
Not even a little word on page whatever.
Right.
Because they think the Tea Party's gone dormant.
They think the Tea Party doesn't exist anymore.
Tea Party's gone out of existence.
But you're not a protest movement anymore.
You're now organizing and trying to get people oriented toward helping others win elections.
Yeah, we are.
And the crowd there was so classy, so dignified, and I would say probably contributed to a small amount of global warming, although maybe the Occupy can top that, which also got tons of coverage, actually.
The Occupy movement in Louisville was here until April.
They didn't get kicked out until April, and they were in the news all the time.
But not a word about that Tea Party.
And I just called to tell you and America to please keep going at Tea Party movements.
We're alive and well.
Well, I know that it is.
And the interesting thing here is the news media trying to convince everybody Occupy Wall Street is alive and well and that the Tea Party is dead when it's just the exact opposite.
Thanks, Ann.
This is Tom in South Holland, Illinois.
Great to have you, sir, the EIB Network.
Hello.
Good morning, Rosh.
How are you doing?
Good.
Thanks much.
We're getting to the point about the insurance policies and the government trying to take control over it for many years.
30 years ago, I weighed 300 pounds.
20 years ago, I weighed about 160.
10 years ago, I weighed 135.
Today, I weighed myself this morning.
I'm 201.
I did this because I wanted to.
I have a lot of self-control when I want to do things.
I quit smoking 12 years ago.
I did this all because I want a nice, healthy life as I get older, not sitting in a wheelchair with an oxygen mask strapped to my nose, wondering where my health care is coming from.
Well, you don't have to worry about your health care that much if you take care of yourself first.
And I'll tell you what, Rush, you fighting the uphill battle against leftism, I admire you and I respect you.
I listen to you every day.
And I want to tell you one thing: I've been a personal contact with a left-sided person, which is a friend of mine who walked up to me at a funeral about a year ago, looked at me and says, oh my God, he says, you're 69.
You look like you're 60 years old, if not younger.
What do you do?
So I take care of myself, exercise every day.
I'm a retirement age, but I still work 55 to 60 hours a week.
And I take about 18 supplements a day.
Supplements meaning garlic, nettle, COQ10, garlic capsules, stuff like that.
He looked at me and he says, that's too much.
You shouldn't be doing that.
I said, you know, you're about as left-leaning as you get without falling down.
You know, if you respect me, and if you tell me that I look young and act young and feel young, why aren't you taking notes?
Because he's lefty.
He doesn't approve of the way you're doing it.
See, he knows better, even though you're living it.
He thinks he knows better than you do.
But I'm glad you called.
This notion that weight loss or your job or anything no longer is a matter of personal responsibility.
You're absolved.
That's what this study on obesity says.
It's not your fault.
It's lack of sidewalks.
It's other socioeconomic problems.
Just another invitation for government or busybodies like your left-leaning friend to come in and tell you how to do it right.
Okay, we've got a new Facebook page to announce in the next hour.
This is going to be a lot of fun.
It involves Rush Babes, exclusively for women on Facebook that.
And stuff still in the news that we haven't yet gotten to.
All coming up.
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