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Feb. 20, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:44
February 20, 2013, Wednesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
I have to tell you, folks, I'm getting profoundly confused here as I listen to everybody talking about the sequester.
Of course, we're one day closer now.
Every day takes us one day closer.
It's a quirk of the calendar.
Every day we get closer to it.
And I'm going to tell you, I don't know what's going to kill more people now.
Assault weapons, global warming, or the sequester.
If you listen, if you listen to Obama and his minions in the news media, they're all running neck and neck.
Maybe we need to start exploring some kind of sequester control because it's out of control.
This whole sequester business is totally out of control.
We might need universal sequester registration in order to deal with it.
In fact, I'm starting to think that the sequester might even cause more trouble in the world than man-made global warming.
And global warming, man-made global warming, even causes asteroids.
God knows what the sequester is going to cause.
I mean, it is just, it is pressure and the intensity is mounting.
I got a most incredible story here just posted about an hour and a half ago, Byron York at the Washington Examiner, the GOP's astonishingly bad message on sequester cuts.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed today, House Speaker John Boehner describes the upcoming sequester as a policy, quote, that threatens U.S. national security, thousands of jobs, and more.
Close quote.
That's Boehner, the Speaker, the Republican leader in the House, writing in the Wall Street Journal today, which leads to the question, why would they support it?
But they are.
The Republicans are supporting the sequester, and they're positioning it, or Boehner did today, as something that threatens national security, thousands of jobs, and yet the Republicans are all for it.
This is a genuine head scratcher out there.
Before we get into great detail, and we also have a special message in the president on this, but first off, there's some other news out there I want to alert you to before we have a chance to get to it.
Because once you get into everything, some of this stuff gets shoved aside.
I don't want to shove it aside.
I want to get to it now.
By the way, great to have you here.
Telephone number, if you want to be on the program, is 800-282-2882, the email address, El Rushbo at EIBNet.com.
This is from Granbury, Texas.
Authorities there, this is North Texas.
Authorities say a 48-year-old woman called 9-1-1 to ask a deputy to deliver a carton of cigarettes to her home.
Not chicken McNuggets.
This is not Port St. Lucie.
Remember, we had a woman there, went into a Mickey D's.
There were no McNuggets, and she called 9-1-1 thinking she was calling the White House to complain about it.
Hood County Sheriff's Lieutenant Kathy Jividen says that the woman called 9-1-1 on February 11th asking for cigarettes.
The woman instead got a visit from two deputies and she was arrested.
She was arrested for occupying resources, delaying and using up resources.
The sheriff's lieutenant said that the caller was very intoxicated when she dialed 911, which is a total shock.
But maybe by the Granberry 65 miles southwest of Dallas, just in case you want to know.
So 911 call asking for carton cigarettes.
Well, I think she wants to get an M4 sequester.
I think obviously paying attention, and the cigarettes might not be available after the sequester.
It might not be.
The Sheriff's Department might not have the gasoline to drive to deliver the cigarettes after the sequester.
Well, look at, you don't know, folks, there's going to be cuts in everything.
Why not 911 cuts?
This woman may be way ahead of the game.
It may have highlighted something that only a few people know and will soon learn.
Well, I don't know if there are 911 cuts and the woman knew about it, she had to get the request for cigarettes in before the sequester.
By the way, yesterday we suggested that, what's her name, Fergie and her husband, Josh Dumel, they got an upcoming child, human baby going to be born.
We suggested the name Sequester.
No reaction to that.
We're keeping a Sharpe.
Tiger Woods has spoken to what a great guy Obama is.
What a great, great opportunity it was to be able to play golf with Obama over the weekend.
Tiger out in Arizona for this week's upcoming PGA tournament.
Oh, yeah, he's great.
He's got a great touch, he said.
He's great around the greens, great chipper, great, great putter.
And he's such a great guy, and it was a lot of fun.
And Tiger and the president won.
So that's out there.
Ras Mussen Consumer Index, which measures consumer confidence on a daily basis, dropped two points today to 95.3.
The consumer index is down three points from a week ago and two points from a month ago, but it's up five points from three months ago.
Do you follow all that?
24% of consumers think their personal finances are getting better.
43% think they are getting worse.
But don't worry because Obama's working on it.
And by the way, we have a series of audio soundbites coming up on the program where these people, whether they know it or not, probably inadvertently are confirming every aspect of my recently espoused theorem on how Obama gets away with wrecking the country while being perceived as trying to fix it.
All of that is coming up as the program unfolds.
You remember the S-CHIP program?
That is the state children's health insurance program, S-CHIP.
That is the program that is almost 100% funded with sales tax revenue from the sale of cigarettes and other tobacco products.
And I'm not making that up.
That's why I've often said that smokers deserve recognition, maybe a medal, certainly some sort of praise, because they alone, with the purchase of tobacco products, are funding the program.
Well, it turns out now that this is a New York Post, if you are a poor child and you like your health plan and your family and you like being in the S-CHIP program, you can't keep it.
In fact, it's now clear that Obamacare will force tens of millions of Americans to accept inferior health coverage to what they have now.
The most threatened group includes people who now get their policies from a job at a small business, those who buy individual coverage direct from an insurer, seniors who qualify for Medicaid as well as Medicare and the kids enrolled in the S-CHIP program.
It turns out here, and we're hearing about this way too late, they're taking kids out of the S-CHIP program and they're shifting them over to Medicaid.
They're putting an added burden.
I guess I'm just guessing, but I would have to think that sales tax revenue on the sale of tobacco products ain't what everybody projected it to be because they're out there demanding everybody quit smoking.
And once you buy a tobacco product, you can't smoke it anywhere.
So it's getting harder and harder to fund the S-CHIP program.
And because of this move that says right here that the S-CHIP program provides health coverage to nearly 8 million children of families with incomes too high to qualify for Medicaid.
The program has lots of flaws, but often kids get enrolled in plans that are a lot better than traditional Medicaid.
So they're actually by moving into Medicaid, they are losing not a blue chip plan, but their plan is getting worse.
Their coverage is becoming less being moved out.
At risk are S-CHIP kids whose parents earn between 100 and 133% of the poverty level, which comes out to $23,000 to $31,000 a year for a family of four.
The provision makes these kids mandatory Medicaid population.
It's going to apply to all states.
As long as the parents are in that income zone, the kids are on Medicaid, even if the parents aren't.
And, well, the reason this is important is Medicaid's in trouble, like Medicare is in trouble.
And all of these expenses are being shifted to the states involves the exchanges, and who's going to pay for all this?
And the feds are basically saying we're kicking you out of our program.
There's a story.
I have a bunch of stuff from yesterday's stack I didn't get to.
There's a story in that stack about a number of businesses who are beginning to self-insure when it comes, they're just, they're not subscribing to any health care plan.
They are paying for their employees' health coverage as it is needed.
And the companies are setting aside their own pool of money invested somewhere to cover these expenses because it's cheaper to pay on a per capita basis as an employee gets sick and needs medical care.
It's cheaper to pay for it that way than to go get on any kind of a policy mandated, especially by Obama.
So this is what that is, and I'll have more details of the program unfolds, but that is that's the free market working.
Well, there still is one.
That's simply the free market at work.
But that option is not going to be around long once Obamacare is fully implemented.
So let's take a brief time out.
We'll come back here.
And as much, folks, the sequester is a, I'll admit, I'm sort of being trapped into talking about it.
It is the big news stories today story of the day.
And it's the narrative is being set by the media and the Democrats in Washington.
And talking about it is reactionary, but it's still worthwhile.
It's an educational moment, teachable moment to get into this for whatever value there might be still in that.
So we'll do that.
Other things, no, I've not forgotten.
I did promise to tell a story that I saw while in Pittsburgh, Sunday night NFL game, journalist on the field kissing players.
I saw that.
I'll give you details on that, but for now, an obscene profit timeout.
Sit tight.
We'll come back.
Return with all the rest of today's exciting excursion into broadcast excellence right after this.
One more little item here before we get into the actually two more items before we get into the sequester.
It was last week we did the story.
University of what is it, Madison?
University of Wisconsin somewhere.
And they got the idea of the University of Minnesota teaching students how it's not cool to be white, to feel guilty if you're white.
The rest of the media just picking up on this.
The story's been out there now for five or six days, and you now are seeing cable news networks get into this.
I actually saw today on Fox, they had a panel on this, and African-American woman said, oh, it totally makes sense because all we're trying to do is start a conversation.
We need to talk about race in this country.
We need to talk about race.
We need to stop talking about race.
The whole point of this is racism.
And it's the left behind it.
The left is always, they've always been the people who look at somebody and first notice them by the color of their skin, then guessing what their sexual orientation is, and guessing what their gender is, and wondering if they had a sex change operation.
They might even ask somebody.
All of these things on the outside.
Well, sex change, the added dictomy.
Well, that would be on the outside too.
But all of these surface things.
But you actually had this woman defending this under the guise, oh, yeah, it's entirely worthwhile here.
We need to start the conversation about race.
And it's understandable that white people should feel guilty.
They should in some cases.
I mean, folks, I don't know what to do about that, but that clearly isn't any good.
That clearly isn't healthy.
And the very people who are out every day charging people with racism are the very people themselves engaging in it by suggesting that the first thing that you notice about somebody is their skin color.
And then these leftist progressives are demanding what you think about that person.
You think it cannot deteriorate any further, and it just continues to.
From the Washington Times, Washington state lawmakers have pulled a contentious gun control bill from the state's legislative tracking website after calling a section that, quote, gave law enforcement the authority to enter homes and check for proper weapons storage, a mistake.
They actually had a bill in the state of Washington which would have granted law enforcement the authority to enter your house, check for your weapons, and to make sure that you were storing them properly according to their own guidelines.
The Seattle Times is reporting that Seattle trial lawyer Lance Palmer first raised doubts about it, Senate Bill 5737, to the newspaper.
He complained, they always say, well, never go house to house, take your guns away, but then you see this and you have to wonder.
Mr. Palmer was referring to a now scrapped section of the text that gave the local sheriff the right to conduct home searches for proper storage of guns once every year.
Now, you know the left as well as I do.
Once they start something, once they propose something, it doesn't go away.
They may have pulled this because the pressure became too intense, but they clearly, in the state of Washington, and they're speaking for all progressives, they clearly let out of the bag what their intentions are.
So all of these people who have projected or complained that what the left really wants to do is to go home to home, house to house, and eventually find a way to get your guns away from it.
It is true.
And people who have made that claim have been ridiculed and impugned and shamed into shutting up.
And then here comes a bunch of legislators, state of Washington, they go ahead and make it official.
And this is under the guise of letting authorities from law enforcement into the house to make sure you're storing the gun pro.
Well, what if you're not?
Then what happens?
And in the story is this interesting quote.
You know, I'm a liberal Democrat, he said, but now I understand why my right-wing opponents worry about having to fight a government takeover.
It's exactly this sort of thing that drives people into the arms of the NRA.
That is Lance Palmer, the trial lawyer who first raised doubts.
Violators, by the way, those who wouldn't let the sheriff inside, that's how you would be in violation of the statute if you didn't let the sheriff in.
You could get up to a year in jail.
According to the Seattle Times story, even Mr. Palmer, the trial lawyer, self-described liberal, found the provision distasteful.
Lance Palmer, I am a liberal Democrat, but now I understand why my right-wing opponents worry about having to fight a government takeover.
It's exactly this sort of thing that drives people into the arms of the NRA.
So you know the lesson they have now, they'll always tell you what they want to do, the progressives, and they'll always tell you what they fear and who they fear.
And when you accurately accuse them of something that they haven't yet proposed, you can gauge how correct you are by looking at the reaction that you get.
And if they throw up their arms and they start squealing and moaning and talking about how you're a racist, sexist bigot home, you can guarantee you've hit the nail on the head.
So if you've heard people say that the objective of the left is to eventually find a way to get into everybody's house, in this case, just to make sure you're storing the gun right.
Oh, yeah.
Just to make sure you're storing it correctly, according to them.
And if you're not, well, if you don't let the sheriff in, you get up to a year in jail.
So they've pulled this now.
This was supposed to be stealth.
They were supposed to sneak this in.
But it ended up being exposed.
Yeah, they're teaching university people, university students, that it's not fair to be white.
How long is it going to be before they start teaching people it's not fair to be legal?
And being a legal citizen is unfair and that it's discriminant.
Don't laugh.
You ever think you would hear a university teaching a course to white people about how it's unfair and they need to think of themselves as inferior because they're white?
And the reason for that, well, we have to make amends for all of the transgressions and discrimination and slavery and racism of the past.
A couple more things about this piece of legislation in Washington state.
Naturally, it was introduced by two Democrats.
They introduced and sponsored the bill.
They said they hadn't read it.
That was their excuse.
They hadn't read the bill that they introduced that would empower law enforcement to enter everybody's house in the state of Washington and inspect to see whether weapons were properly stored.
And if you don't let them in, then you go to jail for a year, maybe.
The bill is only eight pages long, and the two sponsors said they had not read it.
That was their excuse.
Well, we didn't read the bill.
Don't hold us responsible.
We just sponsored it, but that wasn't our bill.
We didn't read it.
Why not?
It's only eight pages.
One of the sponsors, one of the two Democrat sponsors of the bill, said that he introduced it more as a general statement, as a guiding light of where we need to go.
So it is their goal.
What he means is he never expected the law to pass, not now, just like 50 years ago, 30 years ago, they never expected gay marriage to pass and become an everyday common part of culture.
But that was 30 years ago.
It's quite different today.
Now gay marriage and gay rights are the number one issue to people 1824, maybe 1834, at least according to polling data.
So the left works on long timetables.
So the purpose, this guy's admitting it, the purpose in introducing this bill was not to get it passed.
They knew that wasn't going to happen.
It was a, quote, general statement, guiding light where we need to go.
You ever notice that Democrats make mistakes, quote unquote, like this in their legislation all the time?
They hope nobody will notice until it's too late.
But if somebody does notice, they just laugh it off and they say, oh, we'll slip that in later.
We didn't really expect this thing to become law.
This is just a guiding light.
It's just a statement of conscience.
But the idea is to get the public used to it.
The idea is to get the idea in the public domain so that it is discussed, so the idea is considered so that they can then gin up support for it.
They can then go poll it and then report on the poll results and show that an ever-increasing number of people actually favor.
This is the projected path of something like this.
An increasing number of people actually favor for the children's safety.
Allow the authorities to come and make sure guns are stored.
Well, what's the harm in that, Mr. Limbaugh?
What's the harm in?
I mean, the law enforcement authorities, they're the experts on firearms.
What's wrong with letting them come in and make sure that you're storing your guns properly where your children can't get to them?
What's wrong with that?
And the answer has to be rooted in the Constitution where you lose people.
Because the Constitution is not really cool right now, if you haven't noticed.
Constitution is not hip.
The Constitution, that's a roadblock to so much fun that we could have.
That Constitution, man, that's just a bunch of judgmentalism.
That Constitution is a bunch of negative stuff.
That just tells you what you can't do.
That's not any fun.
So it's the beginning of a long process, and they're willing to be patient.
And this is their objective.
Do you know, ladies and gentlemen, that back in November of 2011, you could safely say that this was campaign season.
It was early.
It was just a little less than a year from the presidential election in November of 12, President Barack Obama promised to veto any effort to block the sequester.
Let me say that again.
In November of 2011, President Obama promised to veto any legislation that would undo the automatic spending cuts set to take effect on March 1st, known as the sequester.
The president said already some in Congress are trying to undo these automatic spending cuts.
My message to them is simple.
No.
I will veto any effort to get rid of these automatic spending cuts to domestic and defense spending.
There will be no easy off-ramps on this one.
So a year and a half ago, a little less than a year and a half ago, the president was hell-bent on the sequester happening.
And any effort by anybody to prevent the sequester from happening, he would veto it.
Well, what's his position now?
His position now is that the sequester is going to lead to the ruination of the world.
We played for you this defamatory litany of things that are going to happen to people because of the Republicans if the sequester happens.
And if we wanted to, we could go get the audio of this.
There's a YouTube video of his pledge back from November 2011.
Obama promises veto of Everest to get around the sequester cuts.
And this is part of the presidential campaign.
Because what this meant was that back, everybody, we got to cut spending.
The government's out of control.
And Obama, in campaign mode, clearly, wanted everybody to know that if somebody tried to stop these automatic spending cuts, he was going to stop it.
He's going to let those cuts happen.
Now he's been re-elected, and guess what?
Those cuts are going to do.
They're going to destroy everything.
You remember the litany from yesterday?
It is getting increasingly difficult these days to use absurdity to illustrate absurdity when talking about Obama.
He just promised to veto himself.
You may have forgotten this.
You may have forgotten.
You may not have known at all.
This might have been a topic back then that when you heard it brought up, that spending is never going to happen, ruling class, and you tune out.
But he did promise to veto any effort to derail the sequester spending cuts.
So yesterday he comes out in full hysteric mode, vowing the sky's going to fall if a couple billion dollars are cut from the federal budget.
He promised the veto himself.
So yesterday we had Kim Kardashian saying that she would love to have sex with herself if she was a guy.
Remember that?
Kim Kardashian basically said, yeah, if I were a guy, I'd love to know what it's like to have sex with me.
I think that'd be a pretty great thing.
So Kim Kardashian was talking about a way to go screw herself, and Obama's saying he should veto himself.
It's getting impossible to keep up with all of this.
And you throw it in the mix, the low-information voter, and trying to tell people now, hey, you know, a year ago, Obama, that doesn't penetrate.
It doesn't register.
It doesn't matter.
Because all that does matter, and you'll hear it in the soundbites coming, all that matters is the Republicans are trying to destroy everything for everybody, and Obama is the outsider trying to fix it.
I got three or four different soundbites from people who are basically confirming the theory that I opened up and announced last week.
Okay, we'll get to all that.
I got to take a brief time out now, but we'll get to that when we get back.
Don't go away.
Okay, so let's look where we are.
In regards to the sequester and the Il Rushbox theorem that was postulated last week, Obama, and you remember we played the soundbite yesterday, this defamatory litany of destruction that the Republicans want to wreak on this country and on the people of this country.
Obama is now threatening to punish the country if the plan he came up with goes through.
He originally said that anybody that tries to veto this, tries to stop these spending cuts, he's going to veto it.
He wanted these spending cuts a year ago.
Now, he doesn't want to go anywhere near these spending cuts, but it's his plan.
The sequester was his idea.
Now he's complaining that these cuts will hit the wrong people.
But he's the guy who decides what gets cut.
That's another part of the sequester.
Obama gets to decide within certain frameworks.
We know the defense gets hit big, which is fine with him, by the way.
And one of the reasons I think he wants the sequester to go through.
But this is a perfect, perfect example of my theorem.
Obama gets to complain about the very things he caused and about cuts that he will choose.
He's the outsider complaining about all these powerful forces that want to do all this damage, and he's doing everything he can to protect the American people standing up to all this.
He started it all.
He demanded the sequester, and he said anybody that tries to stop it, he's going to veto their effort.
Now he's done a 180.
And here we go to the audio soundbites.
F. Chuck Todd last night at NBC Nightly News.
Brian Williams talked to him.
And Brian Williams said, What's going to happen here, F. Chuck?
And if it does happen, and if it's fixed, do you wonder why people are so deeply angry and cynical and checked out of our politics?
I can understand if viewers tonight think this is chicken little all over again.
The president holding another event surrounded by people who could see dire effects of a budget compromise.
It feels like we've been through this before.
The sky is falling.
What are we going to do?
The president is testing the political limits of the public cynicism, which is how much are they going to believe this?
Are they going to look up and say, how often are you going to say this?
I'm through listening to Washington.
Well.
Folks, that, to me, that is profound.
You know what F. Chuck is saying?
F. Chuck Todd is saying, how many years is he going to get away with this?
Chicken Little, sky is falling.
And he's right.
We've been limping from crisis to crisis.
The modern era of crisis fear mongery began in 2008 with TARP.
Now, we know it predates that by a lot, but the modern era, the current cycle began with 2008 and the financial crisis that was imminent.
I mean, we're going to destroy the world economy, not just our economy.
We had to allocate $800 billion for TARP.
We had to do it in 24 hours.
Well, the Republicans initially opposed it.
And 24 hours came and went, and the birds were still chirping.
And the sky was still blue.
Food was still being produced and consumed.
Ditto adult beverages.
People were driving around.
There was no disaster.
Two weeks later, after the constant pressure of the sky is falling, the world economy is going to collapse.
And after the Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson brought a bunch of bankers in, shut the door and refused to let them out until they took a portion of the TARP bailout.
Until that happened, there was no action on it and nothing bad happened.
$800 billion was authorized to save the world, to save the American economy.
I think even now, $200 billion of it has yet to be spent.
Since then, we've had how many debt limit deals?
How many budget continuing resolutions have we had to do?
Because there hasn't been a budget.
Seems like every three to four months, it's the same thing.
We better do this now or my God, everything's going to implode.
You're going to lose your job.
You're going to lose your house.
The sky's going to fall.
Meteorites are going to hit the country, going to hit the planet.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
It's horrible.
We're going to die.
We're going to die.
We've got to do something.
And F. Chuck is saying, how many times can Obama get away with this?
Let me answer the question, as many times as you want him to get away with it, F. Chuck.
The answer to that's simple.
He's going to get away with this as often as you want him to get away with it.
How much are they going to believe this?
How many people are going to look up and say, you know what?
The sky's not falling.
I'm through listening to this.
Obama doesn't care, by the way, if people stop listening to it.
Obama at this point doesn't care about public opinion.
He doesn't care what people think about this.
This is about something that the American people are totally oblivious to anyway.
All Obama is doing is wiping the Republican Party off the playing field.
He is simply doing everything he can to eliminate all viable political opposition.
To the tune that he can bore people and get them to tune out and not pay attention to what's happening, I would think that's all the better for him.
More destruction can take place.
More damage can be done.
And the people that do hang around and still listen get to hear this prediction of utter disaster.
And Obama gets to position himself as on the outside of trying to save it and stop it and protect everybody.
But what does he care about people being bored and tuning out of it?
He doesn't care.
The fewer people paying attention, the easier it's going to be to get away with the scam.
The fewer people in the bank, the greater the odds you're going to get away with robbing it.
Here's John Dickerson.
John Dickerson, the CBS News political director.
This is the guy who wrote a piece at slate.com urging the president to annihilate the Republican Party as a political move.
Just do it.
You're going to have smooth sailing if you just do that.
Was on CBS this morning and Charlie Rose.
So, what are the short-term gains and long-term gains either party can get out of this, John?
In the long-term picture, economies tend to be talked about by the presidential terms.
And what the White House worries about is this economy, which is struggling, would really take a hit if the sequester took effect over a long period of time.
That, in the end, in history's eyes, that makes the Obama economy weaker, and that's not a great legacy item for this president.
And I think, once again, this guy doesn't get it either.
Obama has no intention of taking any blame for the economy.
What's happening here is that Obama is setting up what he has been operating since he began, and that is, whatever bad happens has no relationship to his agenda.
Whatever damage the country incurs has nothing to do with him.
He's trying to stop it.
The more damage, the better.
The only downside to that is that eventually at some point people might say, you know, you're not any good at fixing anything here.
You're not any good at stopping it.
But for now, he's getting away with the Republicans getting blamed for all this.
He doesn't care about the legacy of a bad economy right now.
Hell, a bad economy is what he's aiming for.
Right on schedule, ladies and gentlemen, Leon Panetta, the Pentagon, informs Congress today that if the sequester happens on March 1st, they will furlough 800,000 civilian employees.
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