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June 27, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:49
June 27, 2012, Wednesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 247 podcast.
Many people I know and many people I don't know are now predicting what the Supreme Court is going to do on Obamacare tomorrow.
And I haven't kept a running tally of all the predictions from people I know and people I don't know in the media and outside the media.
But it sure seems like most people think that at a minimum.
The mandate's gone by five to four.
With Roberts writing the majority opinion and Ginsburg writing the dissent.
And these people are offering all kinds of reasons for their predictions.
One prediction is look, they gave Obama Arizona to set up taking health care away from him.
I don't know if the court works that way, but that's what people think.
Another one is this.
This is Ed Whalen at National Review.
There's a an unwritten rule at the court that justices will read dissents orally from the bench once per term.
Dissents.
He has found that Ruth Buzzy Ginsburg has uh as as has read more than one dissent this year from this term from the bench.
So he's wondering maybe that rule isn't hard and fast anymore.
But he says he thinks a guy like Scalia will probably be duty bound and honor bound to to respect that tradition of reading one dissent per term live from the court, and since Scalia already read his dissent on Arizona, that it's got to be the mandate's gone because Scalia would have saved his dissent for the biggie if there was to be one.
I mean, these predictions are running the gamut.
And then of course they're predictions predicated on the fact that Obama has already been told, and you can tell by his attitude in his public appearances that he's dejected and mad and ticked off about it, uh betraying the fact that he's been told that the vote goes again.
I mean, hearing all this stuff.
All and more.
Hi, folks, by the way, you know who this is, uh most recognizable voice in American media.
That would be mine, Rush Limbaugh here at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
All kinds of predictions about uh the Chief Justice John Roberts and how uh he might vote based on his desire for the court uh to be uh uh perceived in certain ways.
So I and for me, I have no clue.
I don't know what to believe of any of these predictions.
All I know is that a lot of people are sticking their necks out a long way with this public prediction that the mandate at a minimum is gone, and that the vote is going to be 5'4.
That seems to be, and I haven't spent a lot of time reach reading left-wing blogs on this, but there's a lot of depression out there, primarily for them because of the way the media is covering this.
The media report, like there's a big story over the weekend of the New York Times, for example.
And the focus of that story was to sort of berate the smartest people in the in the history of the Oval Office for not taking care of the fact that they wrote a health care bill that might have an unconstitutional premise in it.
And they really did.
That is the smartest people ever been in the White House.
See, Clinton's people used to be, but now Obama's people, smartest people ever used to be that have ever been there.
But damn it if they didn't screw something up.
They they they sat there and they put together a health care bill and they didn't stop to think that the mandate might be unconstitutional.
They didn't take care of it.
So people looking at that article and assuming Obama knows he's been told in violation of court procedure, ethics, tradition, and all that.
Uh and then there are people that no, no, that rush, rush, let me tell you so Obama's been told and it's a big win, and he just acting disappointed.
He's just acting depressed to set everybody up for a crushing shocking defeat when Obamacare is upheld on Thursday.
I mean, I'm hearing it all.
So I thought what I would do, it's very often, because you know I am the world's foremost authority.
I ask nobody what they think.
I'm not big on interviews because I don't care what anybody else thinks.
That's why I don't have guests.
Really?
Why pussyfoot around that?
People have asked me oftentimes, why don't you have guests on your show?
Well, there's a whole bunch of format programming reasons.
One is everybody else does.
There's no way to be different.
But but secondly, I'd rather find out myself and become the expert rather than turn it over to people plugging this and plugging that.
Behave and conduct a program according to formula.
And then I finally one day in a in a uh shocking realization, I admitted to myself, I don't care what anybody else thinks.
So uh it's not gonna change my mind.
So I have to it's work to sit here and ask people questions that I don't care about.
So I just okay, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna subject myself to that.
That turns this into a job.
But I'm gonna make a departure from that that I'm gonna ask you people as you call in today about whatever it is you want to talk about, what you think the court's gonna do tomorrow.
So if you're planning on calling the program at 800-282-2882, be prepared to give a short and you can say you have no idea, that's fine too.
You can say you don't know.
You can say what you hope.
But no, I don't I don't we I know what you hope.
So don't give me that.
Um I know what you're saying.
I know what you're thinking.
What are you asking us for, Rush?
You are the master at reading the tea leaves.
You even have a tea company now.
And you don't even know how the SCODUS is gonna rule, so how can any of us know?
That's not the point.
I want to know what your thinking is, what your prediction is.
Um, you are you basing that on oral arguments?
Ah, you gotta throw that out.
Snerdley's sending me a note here that uh says that the wise Latina, uh Latina, Sonia Sotomayor, uh agreed during oral arguments, the mandate was unconstitutional, and was doing her best to guide these pathetic government lawyers who had no case to defend through their own oral arguments.
She's trying to help them out.
So you're predicting 6-3 on the mandate.
All right, well, let's start 6-3 on the mandate.
Snerdley says 6-3 mandate gone.
Well, now whatever the vote is, 6-354.
Oh, and that's another thing.
These predictions, a lot of people say, Rush, on a momentous case like this, the chief justice is not going to permit 5-4.
It's got to be at least six to three for the reputation of the court to avoid the charges of partisan.
Folks, that is so much bowunk.
It's gonna vote the way it comes out.
Now, Sturdley says 6'3 because he thinks the wise Latina, Sonia Sotomayor, is going to join the wise majority and bump the mandate.
If it's 5463, if the mandate goes, my friends, that's the primary funding funding mechanism for Obamacare.
Why do you think the mandate is in there?
The mandate, if you've forgotten, the requirement that we all buy a policy or pay a fine.
It's the way on paper, the way this thing was submitted to the Congressional Budget Office for scoring, it's the way it is paid for.
The mandate is how the regime kept the so-called cost under a trillion dollars.
It had to come in cheaper than that.
And it is how Obama was allowed to say via scoring of the CBO that it was going to reduce the deficit and it was going to lower premiums and all this magic stuff.
The mandate is the brain and the heart of this organism.
It's the primary funding mechanism, if the mandate goes, there's no way to pay for anything else in this.
Not as written.
And that now that another question then arises.
What are the Republicans going to do in whatever scenario?
Are the Republicans going to sit around and do nothing if it's torpedoed?
Or are they going to say, you know what, people like insurance for pre-existing conditions, we better keep that in there.
The people like being able to keep their kids who are hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt from school on their policies.
I know this is the problem.
I know a couple of conservative parents, you know, just as conservative as you or me.
Well, maybe not as conservative as I am.
They're a little kookier.
Well, they're much kookier, because I'm not kooky at all.
But when it comes to the kids staying on the policy, the hell with conservatism, they want it.
And this is illustrative of one of the primary problems we've got.
When you get down to the bare bones personal of this, ideology goes out the window, big government goes out the window, because we're talking about my children, my son, my daughter who can't find work, and I need my child to stay on my policy.
So all the big government stuff, all the limited government goes out the window.
With these people, I mean they're willing to chuck it on you.
If if nothing else is kept, keeping the kid on the policy is a big deal.
So I'm not just mentioning this because what will the Republicans going to do?
Now, um, I got a call from Speaker Boehner last Friday, who uh I mean he's calling a lot of people.
Yeah, he called me first, nerdly, yes, yes, yes, he called me, but he's calling a lot of people, and he was telling us what the Republican plan is, and it was repeal, repeal, repeal, regardless of what happens.
The mandate's thrown out, repeal the rest of it.
If the whole thing's upheld, repeal it.
Uh if uh if the whole thing's deemed unconstitutional, repeal that.
Um he made it clear that repeal and not repeal and replace, but repeal was going to be the focal point for the uh for the House Republicans.
So I don't know what the lot here on the line.
And then you realize the election is in four months or yeah, four and a half months.
So if the mandate's thrown out, if the whole thing's torpedoed, and the mandate being thrown out being the primary funding mechanism, there really isn't a whole lot left.
If that happens, then it becomes a campaign issue for the next four months, and Obama's running around out there saying four white guys and an Uncle Tom, four rich white guys, Uncle Tom just took your health care away.
I was the first one to give it to you in a hundred years, they just took it away.
They still have theirs.
There's four white guys and Uncle Tom took your health care.
That's that'll become a campaign uh platform plank for them.
If it's if it's upheld, then it becomes a campaign thing for the Republicans and for Romney.
And then the election in November will have further ramifications on the future of this particular piece of legislation, Obamacare.
So tomorrow's really just the first day of a big mess.
But it's the kind of mess that we want, it's kind of mess that we ask for, it's the kind of mess that has to happen if we're gonna if we're gonna get rid of this and try to bring some uh common sense reforms.
Now, see, here's the Snerdley talked about oral arguments.
And people of both sides is oral arguments, you can't read anything into that.
Other people say, oh, yes, you can.
I got court watchers out there who tell me oral arguments do indicate the way justice are gonna vote.
Well, Kennedy gave himself leave a way to vote any way he wants.
The early Kennedy in oral arguments, no doubt, totally opposed.
But then later on, when somebody came up with a compromise idea where Kennedy, where it was said that certain aspects could be left in, Kennedy was open to that too.
So oral arguments where Justice Kennedy are concerned, don't tell us anything.
Because he left himself wide latitude to maneuver and negotiate.
Now, as far as uh the wise Latina, so to my or she was pretty rigid.
I mean, she was just really in a way kind of mocking virility, the uh the solicitor general, the government lawyer who was pathetic, but he didn't have a case to defend.
Nobody would have looked good.
Perry Mason would have looked like an idiot trying to defend Obamacare before the Supreme Court.
Before we go to the break, a lot of people making a big deal out of this, but I don't know that they are making the right big deal about it.
Last night in Miami, Obama was uh was down here to have fundraiser.
And I got is this 12 seconds?
But you listen to this.
It would be incomplete if I did not congratulate the city of Miami for having the world champion of Miami Heats.
Okay, now uh Barack Obama is a huge NBA fan.
His team uh is the Chicago Boo.
That's his team.
The Chicago Boo, the Bulls.
People are asking, is he really not know that the name of the champion?
NBA champion team is the Miami Heat.
Does he really not know that?
I mean, he does think it's Kominski Park in Chicago.
Folks, I don't think that he knows he knows that's not the Miami Heats.
I think what you need to know is.
This is how in certain sectors you insult people.
You mispronounce the name of their team.
You remember you've seen during the campaign 2008, Obama would scratch his face only with his flip the bird finger while talking about McCain.
That's what this was.
He was flipping the bird to heat fans by calling them the Heats.
He knows what it.
Hey, folks, the next time you see a bunch of Democrats protesting something.
I want you to listen.
I want you to keep this in mind.
This is um video was last Wednesday in Washington at the end of the Take Back the American Dream Summit during a protest march against Carl Rove.
There was actually a protest march, Democrats put it together against Carl Rove.
And so the uh the the Blaze.com sent a reporter out there to ask the protesters who Carl Rove was.
Ask them who and what they're protesting.
Why are we out here today?
Uh we're out here so we can stop um this uh road guy.
Because you cannot let him inside the office.
Who is Carl Rove?
Why are we marching against him?
Harbour is basically a guy.
Would you mind telling me why you're marching today?
I'm trying to keep Obama in Canada.
Nobody can get in.
We're trying to keep Carl Rove from getting in that office.
We don't rove an out.
We're trying to keep Rove from getting votes.
We're trying to keep Obama in campaign so he gets president again.
They're bought and pay for they don't even know.
This is probably the case for 99% of these Democrat protests.
He said, Keep this in mind.
They're bought.
That's a riddle.
They don't even know who it is.
And why?
They're protesting.
Hey, welcome back.
I am Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network, the luck stock and barrel of American conservatism here on the cutting edge of societal evolution.
Well, one more soundbite, these uh the Rinamon people.
This is hilarious.
It was yesterday.
Uh uh Last Wednesday, sorry, a week ago.
In Washington, the end of the Take Back the American Dream Summit.
And the Democrats wanted protesters outside protesting Carl Rove.
They wanted the photo up.
They wanted a news footage.
They wanted it all over the place that Rove and the Republicans are being protested, so we're not hired some people.
Otherwise, there would have been nobody there because nobody knew Rove was there.
It was that.
He may not have even been there.
I went on and hired a bunch of people, but some enterprising website, People of Blaze.com, decided to go out and ask these idiots if they had any idea who it was.
They were protesting.
"He's Paul Rose." "President, one of the people that shout out to President." Having a conference.
My first time hearing his name.
So I don't really know too much about the guy.
Carl Rock Carl Rome's snake.
Carl Rove.
I don't like the guy.
Basically, I don't like the guy.
That's all we want.
Obama did baggy investigation because he's doing everything well.
Everything.
Everything's going great.
So we wouldn't want nothing to jeopardize that.
I don't like that guy.
I'd have never heard of him.
I don't like the guy.
I never heard of Carl Rove.
He wants, he wants to be president, but we want Obama to be president.
I want Obama to get back in president because he's doing everything well.
Everything, everything's going to go great.
So we wouldn't want nothing to jeopardize that.
You probably asked these guys who Obama is and they would.
No, no, no.
I'm sure they would.
They've heard of Obama's stash.
It does.
It sounds exactly like those people from Detroit.
Who had no idea about anything other than they thought Obama was passing out money.
Have any of you heard of an individual by the name of L. Z. Granderson.
Snurdley.
Snurley's not heard of L. Z. Granderson.
Don, have you heard of L Z Granderson?
Brian, have you heard of L Z Granderson?
Prior to last night I had not heard of L Z Granderson.
However, L Z Granderson was named the journalist of the year by the lesbian gay bisexual transgender crowd.
He has a column at CNN.com and he also writes for ESPN.
LZ Granderson.
Name the journalist of the year.
In an op-ed posted at CNN.com yesterday, L Z Granderson, talking about Operation Fast and Furious.
Said times have changed.
And not everything is our business anymore.
We just need to butt out of this.
As for the people killed because of the operation, they're collateral damage.
The journalist of the year, as named by the National Lesbian Gay Journalists Association, said of Operation Fast and Furious, it none of our business.
Times have changed.
We need to butt out the people killed in this operation are collateral damage.
Journalist of the Year.
He said, we're a nosy country.
It's an excerpt from the piece.
We're a nosy country.
history.
Though to be fair, it's not entirely our fault between the 24-7 news cycle, social media, and reality TV.
We've been spoon-fed other people's private business for so long that we now assume it's a given to know everything.
And if there are people who choose not to disclose, they must be hiding something.
Being told it's something none of your business is slowly being characterized as rude, and if such a statement's coming from the government, it seems incriminating.
Well, times have changed.
Not everything is our business now.
In the political arena, things are there, there are things that should be and need to be kept quiet.
Heads should roll Because of the fast and furious debacle, we don't need every detail at operation to be made public in order for that to happen.
But we don't need to be told.
You agree with some of the sentiment as expressed there by L Z Granderson.
Well, it could be your new hero, then.
I'll get you a subscription to his column on CNN.
I'll pay for it.
If this guy, if this guy's uh lighting you up in there.
But speaking of that, there was a column, our old buddy David Brooks of the New York Times, who wrote once of Obama that the crease in his pants was such that that alone told Brooks he's going to be president and was going to be a good one.
The crease in his pants.
David Brooks in the New York Times wrote a piece yesterday said that we have to relearn the art of following our leaders.
We don't have a leadership problem in the United States.
We're not good followers anymore.
I don't know if America has a leadership problem.
It certainly has a followership problem.
Vast majorities of Americans don't trust their institutions, and it's not the institutions' fault, it's Americans' fault.
We live in a culture that finds it easier to assign moral status to victims of power than to those who wield power.
Then there's our fervent devotion to equality, to the notion that all people are equal and deserve equal recognition and respect.
But the main problem is our inability to think properly about how power should be used to bind and build.
Those question authority bumper stickers no longer symbolize an attempt to distinguish just and unjust authority.
They symbolize an attitude of opposing authority, and this is not good.
So you put we got L. Z. Granderson, the journalist of the year.
We don't need to know.
It's none of our business.
Whatever Obama did, it's cool.
And if there was depth, it's collateral damage.
And then Brooks, in his own way, is saying we're not followable.
We just need to accept what our leaders tell us and learn to love it.
Now you know where in Brooks' case where this comes from is the belief that he and others like him are members of an elite and they're smarter and brighter and better.
And they're doing fine.
It's us who are the problem.
We don't recognize how smart these people are.
We don't we don't acknowledge their elite status.
We don't trust their intelligence and their brains.
And America is in trouble because we are not following the smart people.
We're renegades, we are independent, and we don't trust the institutions that are populated today by the best and brightest.
Brooks even criticizes our fervent devotion to equality.
He says it's hard in this frame of mind to define and celebrate greatness, to hold up others who are immeasurably superior to ourselves.
If we're going to assume that we're all equal, then we're not going to recognize the smartest people among us.
And we're not going to follow them.
Now, if you take some of this stuff out of context, he's right.
If you combine it with his theme, it's crazy.
For example, when he says it's hard in this frame of mind to define and celebrate greatness to hold up others who are immeasurably superior to ourselves if we're all going to be fervently devoted to equality.
Well, you take that just by itself.
You could make a case that it makes sense.
But when you combine it with his theme...
That most of us are a bunch of worthless nobodies who think we're somebody and don't recognize the brilliance of people like Friedman and Brooks and Obama and the rest.
It's no wonder The leaders can't do their jobs because all the followers think they're smarter than the leaders.
When they're stupid.
So his basic point is we just we're not subservient enough.
Simply not subservient enough.
So LZ Granderson, who I just learned snurdily admires.
Brooks fears the consequences of a skepticism about authority.
He this whole piece, he says people who are skeptical of authority will lead to dangerous consequences, such as such as you end up with movements like Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Parties that try to dispense with authority together, all together.
They reject hierarchies and leaders because they don't believe in the concepts.
The whole world should be like the internet, a dispersed semi-narchy or semi-anarchy in which authority is suspect and every individual is king.
So the Tea Party's occupy Wall Street are the same because they're trying to dispense with authority altogether.
And of course, it's written from the standpoint that Brooks is a member of the Authority.
He is an authority, and he's being rejected.
He doesn't like it, and the problem is that he's not persuasive enough.
The problem is that we simply don't know how to follow.
Okay, folks, a question here.
If Obama, President Kardashian, if he's not good for Democrats, how can it be argued that he's good for America?
And it's becoming patently obvious that President Kardashian is not good for Democrats.
We've got seven or nine prominent Democrats who've announced that they are not going to attend the Democrat convention in Charlotte, and the most recent prominent big name, Claire McCaskill, Senator from Missouri, who, among all the people not showing up,
probably the biggest, most loyal, most loud, vociferous advocate for Obama and everything he's done, and she's staying home in Missouri.
Then there's this, the top Democrat in charge of getting other Democrats elected to the House.
His name is Steve Israel.
He runs a Democrat congressional campaign committee.
This guy is urging his party's candidates to steer clear of the National Convention later this year.
Steve Israel, the chairman of Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee, offered this warning, this suggestion during a Reuters Washington summit yesterday.
According to Reuters, Steve Israel said of Democrat congressional candidates, if they want to win an election, they need to be in their districts.
Now this is said to the state controlled media by the House Democrat campaign chief.
Obama says he's one of the country's four greatest presidents.
Obama is not good for the Democrats.
The Democrats are being told stay away from this convention, which means stay away from Obama.
This convention's all about Obama.
And these Democrats running for re-election are told to stay away from the biggest party the Democrats throw once every four years.
Now have you noticed?
It's always left to me.
Always left to me to point out the hard hitting to the bone realities.
Have you noticed that all nine Democrats who have announced publicly that they are boycotting the Obama convention?
They have announced it publicly.
They have allowed their pictures to be posted along with their announcement that they are boycotting or not attending.
Have you noticed that they are all dot dot?
White.
Caucasians.
There is so far a white Democrat protest of the first black president within the black president's own party.
Nine white Democrats among them, at least a couple white women are telling everybody they're staying home.
They're getting nowhere near the Obama convention.
Now we have Steve Israel, who runs a Democrat congressional campaign committee, who's in charge of getting Democrats elected to the House.
Now we have Steve Israel using code language to insite, well, I don't know about incite, but to to to uh suggest that more whites stay away.
If they want to win an election, they need to be in their districts, Israel said.
Segregated from the Obama convention, segregated from Charlotte, North Carolina, where there are no unions.
Segregated from the biggest party the Democrats throw every four years.
We're talking, what's the number of House Democrats?
What is the number?
There's 435 total, plus if you throw Eleanor Holmes Norton in there, and the delegate from DC is more than that.
I say 440 just because they've got some people in there from the territories that don't really have votes, but they show up and get the benefits.
We're talking hundreds of Democrats.
Now the usual attendance at a convention is 4,000 or so.
So it's not that they're going to be noticed in terms of numbers, but I don't recall this.
I don't recall.
I'm 61 years old.
Don't look a day over 60.
And I don't recall at any time in my life people being told to stay away from a convention, even during the Nixon era.
I don't recall that.
And the premise, you want to get re-elected, stay home, don't get anywhere near Obama.
It's four days.
You can't take four days out of your campaign.
You can't make your three days.
They cut a day.
They zapped the racetrack.
Well, they didn't cut any of Obama's stuff.
Yeah, but they didn't cut a day from what Obama's going to do at the convention.
If they cancel a Greek columns and if they cancel uh Bank of America Stadium, then we'll have something.
But I have to I have to say you have a point.
All the white presidents have four-day conventions.
The first black president, you got nine white Democrats, the only one near the place, you got a day taken away from Obama, he gets a three-day convention, the other white presidents have all had four days.
I know.
I know.
Steve Israel, the uh chairman of Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee, said that he's asking Democrats running for re-election at 241 Democrats in Congress, in the House and Senate combined, 241 of them.
He's asking if they're running for re-election, not to go.
He said he had to do this to avoid turning off the independence.
It's what he said.
Now my question is: if Obama isn't good for Democrats, how in the heck can it be argued he's good for America?
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