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Feb. 19, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:31
February 19, 2013, Tuesday, Hour #3
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No, Mr. Snerdley, it isn't that complicated.
It is nothing more than this.
Obama wants to be constantly campaigning, demagoguing.
He does not want to be seen as governing.
If he is seen governing, going crisis to crisis to crisis, he's failing.
His leadership would be called into question, so he can't ever be seen as governing.
He's constantly campaigning, demagoguing, fighting against mythical foes.
And that's what this sequester business is all about.
It's not even about the sequester.
It's not about $85 billion.
Not when you peel all the layers of the onion away.
This is about really much more than $85 billion and much more than mythical cuts.
But Obama cannot compromise because that would put his name on some sort of firm policy and agreement to deal with one of these crises.
Now, he'll govern when it comes to Obamacare.
He'll govern when it comes to green energy.
But these crises that he manufactures, he will not be seen as governing on those.
They will never end.
He can't afford for these crises to be solved.
He can't afford for the crises to be ended.
And he certainly can't afford his name or his fingerprints on them because then he can't keep doing more crises.
The crises only work if the first one before it didn't get resolved.
The next one doesn't get resolved.
And it's why the next one happens because none of them ever got resolved.
Why don't they get resolved?
Because the Republicans won't work with him.
The Republicans won't compromise.
They won't work with him.
And so all these crises linger and they never get solved.
And that leads to the next crisis.
And the next.
And pretty soon we got nothing much more than a bunch of crises.
Anyway, greetings.
Welcome back.
Rushland both the EIB Network and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Great to have you here.
The telephone number 800-282-2882 and the email address, L. Rushbo at EIBNet.com.
So the Politico has this story by Jim Vandehey and Mike Allen called Obama the Puppet Master.
And here is Jim Vandehey himself.
You know what?
Before I do this, I've got a couple soundbites that deal with the sequester business, and it involves a slip-up.
Because this whole thing, this whole crisis was started by Obama.
The sequester's his idea.
This is something that you low-information voters need to know.
CNN, let's cat out of the bag.
Here is Wolf Blitzer and Gloria Borger this morning on CNN's newsroom.
Gloria, explain why, if this is such a horrible idea, these forced spending cuts.
Why did the White House come up with this plan in 2011 to begin with?
If you notice, Wolf, the president kept calling this a manufactured crisis.
Well, in fact, it was manufactured right here in Washington by the President of the United States.
Uh-oh, uh-oh.
Uh-oh.
That is a breach of news media security right there.
See, if we had background checks of journalists, we might have been able to prevent this massive trigger puller, this bomber Borger, from letting the truth leak out.
This is way too much ammo.
Borger was given too much ammo.
And she was given an automatic weapon to just fire and fire and fire away.
This is more than one shot because it's Blitzer too.
Glory explained why if this is such a horrible idea.
Why'd the White House come up with this?
Borger, I'll tell you, Wolf, the president kept calling this a manufacture crisis.
Well, in fact, it was manufactured right here in Washington by the president.
But Christine Romans attempted to set things straight.
She is the economics correspondent at CNN.
And Blitzer turned to her.
He said, Christine, take a look at the big picture on the economy here.
If these forced spending cuts go into effect, as RandPaul points out, this year there'll be a projected cut of about $85 billion out of a budget that's nearly $4 trillion.
So how much of an impact would it really have on economic growth and the economy?
It'd be a drag on the economy.
The Congressional Budget Office says you'd lose about 750,000 jobs because of this.
The point is, this is no way to run a country.
This is no way to run a business and no way to run a country.
You don't just lop off 9% on your budget just like that.
You do it with priorities.
You do it with consensus.
You do it with an eye to investing in the future, making sure that you don't hurt jobs.
And that's not what Congress is doing here.
What Congress is doing is basically foregoing the day-to-day budget operations that it's supposed to be doing and doing brinksmanship every three months.
And that certainly is not good for running a country and certainly growing an economy.
I, again, folks, I'm just at a total loss here.
It would be best if I not comment at all on this.
This is trying not to insult Ms. Romans here, but this here's the thing.
Wolf got it right in the question.
We're talking about four or $85 billion.
And that's, by the way, cut that in half because half that's defense, half that's social spending.
So, but total $85 billion out of a budget that's nearly $4 trillion, it's chump change.
You know, Christine just heard Borger say that it's a president's idea, so she has to come in here and set them straight by blaming Congress.
But 750,000 jobs lost because of this?
So 750,000 jobs divided by $45 billion.
Well, it's not true, but it's not possible.
There's no, there aren't 750,000 jobs being cut.
I mean, this is just, again, this is journalistic malpractice.
It's malfeasance.
I mean, this is just embarrassingly wrong.
No way to run a country, no way to run a business.
You don't just lop off 9%.
This is not 9% of the budget.
It's barely 2%.
But what do you mean businesses don't just cut like this?
The place that she works is doing this.
Priorities, you do it with consensus.
You do it with an eye to investing in the future, making sure that you don't hurt jobs.
What the?
The first thing that gets cut is always job.
This is embarrassing.
And it's just profoundly embarrassing.
But anyway, CNN had it out there that it's Obama's idea.
So with that, Ms. Christine Romans bite, let's now go to Jim Vandeheim.
He's half of the writing duo that has this piece out on the Obama being a puppet master.
This is yesterday, Politico's video blog behind the curtain on their website.
Jim Vandehey, the executive editor, said this about Obama and the media.
We're taking a look at President Obama as the puppet master, all the different strings that he pulls with the media to get very favorable coverage.
This has been the biggest critique by conservatives, and we argue in our column that it's an accurate critique.
Yeah.
And so I have their column here.
By the way, Politico has a web page called Politico 44 because Obama is the 44th president.
And right now, the headline at Politico 44 is Obama to do local TV as White House reporters fume.
So Obama ticked off the White House correspondents by not letting them have access at the Floridian over the weekend.
He did grace them with 10 minutes of casual, off-the-record conversation, the back of the plane, going back to Washington yesterday.
He gets back to Washington.
He hears how ticked off they are at him.
And so as authoritarian statists are want to do, he's flipped them the bird, and he's granting a lot of interviews to local TV and not talking to the White House national correspondents, and they are fuming.
Now, here's the story.
And by the way, this is way too long to go through the whole thing.
So I'm just going to highlight this for you.
But it is quite illustrative.
Obama the puppet master.
President Barack Obama is a master at limiting, shaping, and manipulating media coverage of himself in the White House.
So right here, at the first of the story, they lay the groundwork.
Hey, you know what?
We are tricked.
We're manipulated.
Don't hold us accountable.
This guy is so slick.
He's so good that he somehow makes us write what we write every day.
We have no control.
And then the next paragraph says, now, it's not for the reason that conservatives suspect.
So right off the bat, they're very defensive.
In their first paragraph, they admit Obama's a master at limiting, shaping, manipulating coverage, meaning we don't criticize Obama here because he's so slick and manipulating.
But it's not because the liberal press willingly and eagerly allows itself to get manipulated.
Oh, no, we're not that bad.
Instead, the mastery mostly flows from a White House that has taken old tricks for shaping coverage, staged leaks, friendly interviews, and put them on steroids using new ones, social media, content creation, precision targeting.
Now, this is bovine schatology here, folks.
None of this would be possible without a news media as a willing accomplice to this.
If Obama's the puppet master, they are willing puppets.
They are eager puppets.
They are eager manipulators or eager to be manipulated, happy to be.
They like all this.
They like the guy.
And I tell you again, you can't take the racial component out of, in terms of journalists, the fact that they're gooey-eyed over this presidency.
And plus the liberalism, plus they hate Republicans as much as he does.
So any victory he has over Republicans, they celebrate it too.
They'll help.
But they're trying to set it up here.
They're not willing accomplices, you see.
They're being manipulated, but not because they're liberal, because Obama is so good at it.
Never been anybody better.
Now, the media never had any trouble complaining about Bush's attempts to manipulate them, even when he wasn't trying.
They accused him of it, and they said he's not going to get away with it.
If the media were unhappy about all this manipulation, I mean, what triggered this?
A weekend of golf where Obama shut him out?
That's what triggered all this.
It's like a jilted woman.
This is like a jilted woman who's out for revenge now for a while.
And if they were unhappy about any of this, they would have been screaming bloody murder before Obama was elected in 2008.
They, you know, you talk about manipulation.
They manipulated us all during the 2008 campaign.
This manipulation business goes two ways.
And these people in the media manipulated media consumers throughout the 2008 campaign and the past four years they have been doing it as well.
There hasn't been any criticism.
There hasn't been any vetting.
There hasn't been any speaking truth to power.
There hasn't been any attempt to hold Obama accountable for anything.
But all because they got shut out of the Floridian this weekend and missed seeing Tiger Woods and Obama on the links.
Now their noses are out of joint.
And then they say it's an equal opportunity strategy.
Media across the ideological spectrum are left scrambling for access.
So Obama's out there manipulating everybody.
He's using all these new tricks, social media, content creation, precision targeting, and media everywhere are left scrambling for access.
They all want to talk to Obama, and he's dangling that carrot in front of them, manipulating and manipulating, and then denying them.
The results are transformational, writes the politico.
With more technology and fewer resources at many media companies, the balance of power between the White House and the press has tipped unmistakably toward the government.
Oh, crimey a river.
The poor news media just don't have a chance up against the brilliant people in the Obama White House and regime.
The balance of power.
So many news media have had cutbacks.
They've cut back staff.
They've cut back bureaus.
There's more technology, but fewer resources.
And the balance of power, they just, they're powerless.
They can't do anything.
Obama just running roughshod all over them.
Whatever.
How hard is it to write a story on Obama lying about green energy?
How hard is it to do that?
How hard is it to write a story critical of Obama's economic policy?
How hard is it?
Why do you need any resource other than a computer?
What am I missing?
Why is it so hard to question what the president says?
You have a White House, you have a computer, you have a website, and you have a keyboard, and you write on there, and then it goes to your website.
It goes out.
What resource do you need beyond what you've got?
Oh, I wouldn't get access if they criticized him.
That's the manipulation.
That's the manipulation.
Say be on the bad list.
So they get treated like Republicans if they're critical of Obama and they need access to do their jobs.
No, they don't.
Do I don't have any access to Obama?
I got zilt-zero not access to Obama.
That doesn't stop me.
I don't want access to Obama.
I don't need it either.
But I also am not a journalist.
This is an arguably dangerous development, writes Politico, and one that the Obama White House has exploited cleverly and ruthlessly.
He hasn't had to exploit anything.
Our so-called free press has given away their power and responsibility with both hands.
And they're tied up with pink ribbons.
They have given away their independence.
But it's all because they've been manipulated by a master puppeteer.
I got to take a break, folks.
We'll be back.
Ladies and gentlemen, the political guys get a little upset when they perceive me as being unfairly hypercritical here.
And I just want to, as I know they'll hear about this, when you guys write this kind of stuff, those of us out here who are consumers of news, we don't understand when you talk about how hard your job is.
We don't find it difficult to learn things that are true about Obama that you don't seem to be able to find.
And we don't have any access.
We don't.
It's, you know, those of us out here critical of you, we don't think you've deigned to even investigate Obama and tell us who he really is.
Not like you go after Obama's opponents.
This is a really bizarre paragraph.
This next one here in the political story.
Listen to this paragraph.
Conservatives assume a cozy relationship between this White House and the reporters who cover it.
Wrong.
Many reporters find Obama himself strangely fearful of talking with them and often aloof and cocky when he does.
They find his staff needlessly stingy with information, thin-skinned about any tough coverage.
He gets more favorable than not coverage because many staffers are fearful of talking to reporters, even anonymously.
And some reporters inevitably worry access or the chance of a presidential interview will decrease if they get in the face of this White House.
Now, I would think a self-respecting journalist would be ashamed to admit any of that.
I just, they are admitting that they are cringing in fear of the White House.
And they're also admitting that they cannot possibly be critical unless somebody in the White House tells them something that's critical.
So they say, well, we can't report that the administration is lying about that until they tell us they're lying.
But you didn't wait for Nixon to tell you he was lying.
And you didn't wait for Bush to tell you he was lying about something, to accuse him of it.
But here again, we don't hear any of this until Obama's safely reelected.
Now we've got the navel-gazing going on and the introspection going on.
They find his staff needlessly stint.
What do you mean, needlessly stingy?
You know, I don't want you people finding out.
You know, everybody tries to hide what you people are supposed to.
The part we have, you don't seem curious to learn anything about this administration or Obama and his motives.
He writes that Mitt Romney doesn't care if a guy's wife dies with cancer, and you go out and ask Romney, why do you not care if a guy's wife dies with cancer, rather than investigate why the hell Obama would make such an outrageous claim?
I don't know.
We just don't see your job as that hard.
Sticking with this politico story for one more moment, let's use another example, Benghazi, and let's take what we have learned from the politico piece.
Now, they say that they can't really be too tough because the White House denies access, and they can't really report on things if they're not given access.
Well, let's look at Benghazi.
He had four dead Americans, and those of us who are consumers of news have not seen any curiosity at ABC, CBS, NBC, Politico, Washington Post, New York Times.
We haven't seen any curiosity on your part to find out what really happened.
Now, apparently, you can't report on what really happened to Benghazi unless somebody at the administration tells you.
Well, the big question about Benghazi right now is, and by the way, for three weeks, we were lied to by the regime and told us that all that happened because of a video on the internet.
Now, you just parroted that.
Is that how you're manipulated?
Because we didn't believe that.
Common sense, nobody saw that video.
We knew inside of two days, if this is not a video, that it was a planned attack.
Where were you guys in this?
Were you not even curious?
Do you expect Obama to call you in and tell you where he was for those eight hours that nobody could find him?
And until he tells you, you can't report on it?
Because the big question is: where was Obama?
At 5:15, he told Panetta, according to Panetta and Hillary, you guys do what you have to do here to save American lives.
And then Obama's off.
And Panetta said he never heard from him the rest of the day or night.
Now, if that were George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan, you would be digging up every rock that you could to find out where the hell the president was while these four Americans were under assault.
But with Obama, you didn't seem to care.
And what you seem to be telling us is that you can't report on that until somebody in the administration tells you where he was.
And if the story is, well, he talked to Panetta and Panetta was told to do what he has to do, and that's it until they tell you, where's the investigative aspect of what you do?
Where is your sense of curiosity?
When did it happen that you automatically believe everything the administration says?
Because I've never seen that until this regime.
It was a little bit of that with Clinton, but I never saw it with Reagan.
I never saw it with Bush, either Bush.
Whatever they said, you didn't believe it.
You tried to prove it was a lie.
And no such effort with Obama.
And where Obama was for eight or nine hours is a big deal when it comes to Benghazi.
And you don't seem to be interested.
And you seem to be telling us that you can't tell us where he was until he tells you.
Well, is he going to tell you he's playing basketball with Reggie Love?
I don't think so.
Is he going to tell you he was out of two guys burger joint?
Is he going to tell you he went to sleep?
Is he going to tell you?
No, because it's embarrassing he wasn't around.
It's a big deal.
And they're trying to cover it up.
So we're hearing from you that until they tell you, you can't report on it.
Man, I would love to be covered that way.
I'm just telling you guys political, I would love to be covered until I tell you something you can't report on me.
Until I tell you something, you can't tell anybody what I'm doing.
And you know something else I would like?
I would like to require that every one of you who report on me actually listen to the program instead of reading on a third party what I've said.
But you're telling us, when it comes to Obama, you can't report on what's happening there until somebody in the administration or Obama tells you.
And if they choose not to tell you, then there's nothing suspicious about it.
And your hands are tied.
And there's this little passage.
At the same time, this White House has greatly curtailed impromptu moments where reporters can ask tough questions after a staged event or snap a picture of the president that was not shot by government-paid photographers.
Well, let me tell you what I remember about that.
The president strode out into the Rose Garden one afternoon and made some remark about something.
I forget what it was.
And a reporter from the Daily Caller by the name of Neil Monroe asked a question.
This is an impromptu moment.
It was an impromptu question after a staged event.
And what did you guys do?
You guys at Politico joined in attacking Neil Monroe for having the audacity to ask Obama a question at a staged event.
That that wasn't the right time to ask that question.
And you guys practically chased Neil Monroe down to the Washington Monument.
And you gave him holy hell for what he had done.
And some members of the White House press corps demanded that Monroe lose his press credentials.
And they did physically chase him off the White House grounds.
And yet you write here that the White House has greatly curtailed impromptu.
Sam Donaldson didn't wait.
Sam Donaldson wasn't waiting around, or Dan Rather, at the end of a staged event, they just asked the question.
But you're saying the White House has curtailed impromptu moments.
So what we hear you saying is that you can't do anything the White House hasn't granted you permission to do.
So it doesn't make you media anymore.
It makes you an adjunct of the administration.
Maybe I should start threatening the media with denial of access, Mr. Snerdley.
Maybe I should just threaten everybody in the media.
No more access.
I'm not talking to you anymore.
Let's see if that gives me more favorable coverage.
I just, I find all of this extremely interesting and curious.
And you know what's driving all this?
What's driving all this is Obama has a guy's walk golf weekend down here in Florida.
He has Tiger Woods in there and the Harmon brothers for some lessons and it didn't let the media in.
And they're sitting there and they're thinking, you know, we give you everything.
We give you favorable coverage.
We look the other way on everything.
Whatever you want us to say, we say, and then you treat us like dirt by not letting us get a photo of you at Tiger Woods, by not letting us in the Floridian and hanging around.
And all we want is little water so you can turn us into mud, and you won't even give us that.
So I find all this fascinating.
So what I'm hearing here in this story is whatever the regime says is the truth.
It's what's going to be reported, be it this video responsible for Benghazi, or that until Obama tells us what happened, we can't report on it.
From the article in a surprising breach of etiquette, President Obama's Rose Garden remarks on Friday were interrupted by heckling from reporter Neil Monroe of the website Daily Caller, whose editor-in-chief is conservative commentator Tucker Carlson.
Obama interrupted by heckling report.
All he was doing was attempting to ask a question in an impromptu moment after a staged event.
Some of you say that you're denied Monroe did it, and when he did it, you jumped in his chili and chased him down to the Washington Monument.
That was something I don't know which reporter actually did the heckling, but it's political on their 44 page.
President Obama's Rose Garden remarks on Friday were interrupted by heckling from reporter Neil Monroe.
And the reason why they called it heckling is because Monroe is from a conservative media outlet, The Daily Caller.
And all Monroe was doing was what the Politico people say the White House is not letting them do anymore.
Impromptu moments where reporters can ask tough questions after a staged event, the White House has greatly curtailed those.
So what we hear is you can't do anything that they don't let you do.
And you're manipulated here, but it's not because you're liberal, you're being manipulated because Obama is such a great puppet master.
We just don't see any curiosity.
We see you wanting to do everything to keep this man from being embarrassed or proven wrong or worse.
But we think that you guys are the cover-up.
You guys are Deep Throat.
You guys have become what you so often have criticized.
This is willing accomplice type stuff.
And you're being disrespected, so you want to get it off your chest.
I just.
I must take a brief time out here, ladies and gentlemen.
We will come back and get back to your calls as the EIB network rolls on.
Don't go away.
You know, I don't really think we have a free press anymore.
And it's somewhat obvious.
What we've got, we have a bunch of skycaps running around carrying Obama's bags.
And when they don't let him get on the plane, when he doesn't let them get on the plane, well, then they get their noses out of joint.
Hey, man, we're carrying your bags.
Can't we go on the trip?
And they're throwing a tantrum here over the fact they didn't get in there to have a couple of adult beverages and hang around like they were members of that club.
Anyway, Beth in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
I really am glad you waited while I had diarrhea of the mouth there.
Great to have you on the program.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
Hi, thank you.
I agree with you.
The last couple of days I've spoken how Obama has been campaigner-in-chief rather than separating himself from his decisions.
But I believe that next year it's going to catch up with him.
Obamacare will be starting.
The motivation voter will be affected by tax increases.
There's a midterm election.
And I think that that might be the time that Obama and the media will not be able to defend Obama the way they are.
Well, that's I hope you're right because that's the next phase.
That's what Obama's aiming at is the 2014 midterm.
See, if the Democrats win the House, then he effectively has his dictatorship.
I mean, not in terms of all practical reality, in terms of the functioning of things, there won't be anybody to stop him.
But I think what he's doing here, look at it.
He goes on a three-day vacation.
He comes home, gets off the plane, and attacks the Republicans for not acting and not meeting with him.
And attacks him for being a bunch of reprobates who want to take food away from kids, take health care away from people, fire teachers.
He gets off the plane doing this.
Is it harder for him to meet with McConnell or Boehner than Tiger Woods?
Yes, it is.
Because he doesn't want to.
So he will meet with Tyre Woods.
Exactly.
Because the guys are starstruck.
I think he's going to take these next four years off.
No easy, no heavy lifting.
He's going to let Democrats in Congress do all the heavy lifting and get their names on all the legislation.
And he's going to sit back, make sure his name's not on anything until after 2014.
Well, maybe I'm overreaching, but do you think that the Republicans have a chance to win both houses in the midterms?
No, but they've got to hold the House.
I don't see them winning the Senate, but that's a long way off and it can happen.
So I don't rule anything out here.
I mean, it's going to be volatile.
Yeah, these next two years are going to be volatile as they can be because there are going to be implementations of very punitive events, things that are going to cause more job loss, less take-home pay.
It's going to get brutal.
There is nothing on the horizon that indicates positive news for the economy.
I don't care what anybody tells you.
We had negative economic growth the last quarter.
There's nothing.
Who says the housing market's coming back?
The administration says the housing market's coming back.
We had economic growth of minus one-tenth of 1%.
The Walmart guys are saying the February that they're having here is the worst in seven years.
And they're talking it up to the payroll tax.
Quickly, Diana in Mesa, Arizona.
Hi, great to have you on the program.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
You know what?
It is not a free press anymore when you have to worry about your job if you tell the truth.
I mean, I'm a former sports reporter from Canada 30 years ago, long before the Aaron Andrews of the world.
And just a little story that I want to try to tell just from the sports perspective, but you can just sort of crank it up when you think about the political ramifications of it.
I covered hockey, and I was on the road with the L.A. Kings and the Calgary Flames during the Stanley Cup playoffs in 1988.
And Coach Terry Chris gave the guys a day off, the morning off from practice before a huge game.
And I got pictures of them, Cup B-roll, of them swimming, playing by the pool, drinking, playing cards.
And I did sort of a fun tongue-in-cheek piece that aired back in Calgary.
Well, that night when they went to play the Kings, they got skunked 13, I can't even remember what the score, but 13 to 3.
And, of course, my piece aired back home.
And I was worried to death that I was going to have ramifications from showing them up.
And for telling the truth about the stocks, if they had a day off.
And, you know, I just, when you have to worry about telling the truth.
Yeah, but, you know, for you, the way around it, all you have to do is show up wearing skin-tight leather pants like the sideline reporters do these days, the NFL.
You can say anything.
Well, not back in the day when you were, you know, when I was trying to be one of the first women in the locker rooms and covering and being taken seriously.
And, you know, you wanted to do your job.
You had to work, you know, twice as hard to prove that you were half as good.
But, you know, in doing so, you really took great stock in the reporting that you did.
But, you know, here was a fun, tongue-in-cheek piece, and I was literally sweating bullets.
Well, but did anything happen to you?
Worried that I might not have a job or wouldn't have access to the player.
But did anything happen to you?
You know what?
I just want to say that because I was so new and it was so new having anything.
Okay, so you've got 10 seconds.
You survived it, but you were worried about it.
I can understand you being worried about that.
I mean, for access, locker room, I understand that.
Remind me to tell you tomorrow of a female sports journalist I saw doing things in Pittsburgh back in November.
Don't let me forget that.
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