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Feb. 21, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:34
February 21, 2013, Thursday, Hour #1
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Time Text
Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Folks, I'm sorry here.
I just I can't help but think that we are all being played for a bunch of fools, bunch of suckers on this sequester business.
I don't know.
Are you like me?
Do you really think 800,000 people are going to lose their jobs in the Pentagon because we cut $22 billion?
Do you really think air traffic control is going to shut down?
Do you really think there aren't going to be any meat inspectors?
Do you really think that all of these horror stories are going to happen?
I don't.
And I feel like I've been here.
This is deja vu all over again.
I remember the 1995 budget battle.
That involved a legitimate government shutdown.
And it wasn't just $22 billion we were not going to spend.
We're still going to spend $3.5 trillion.
We're just not going to spend $22 billion if it happens.
And all of this hell is going to descend.
Now, the government shut down in 1995.
Yeah, we were going to starve kids.
That was the plan then.
I'm just kidding.
I'm sorry.
It's all ridiculous to me.
Every bit of this.
I've been doing this in a new perspective.
I've been doing this into my 25th year.
And I think I mentioned to you last week and maybe the week before, I've been doing this long enough now to start seeing the repeat cycles on everything.
I don't care whether it's a debt limit or the fiscal cliff or a continuing resolution or the budget crisis of 2008 or TARP or the auto bailouts.
And now the sequester, it's the same playbook.
It is the same threats.
It's the same danger.
It's the same crisis.
It's identical.
There's nothing about it that changes over and over.
And everybody gets sucked into it.
I try to escape.
I try to get out of it.
I try to leave it aside.
I try to move on.
But it just sucks me back in too until I realize that I have been sucked back in.
And then there's a part of me that says, oh, wait a minute now.
You got not just Panetta, but now a military, a uniformed military general, General Ordono, Ordono, or Orderno.
He's saying that he could lose 600,000 uniformed people.
And the common sense of this, does it add up?
Now we've got a guy comparing this to the Oklahoma City bombing.
I have that story.
Let's see.
Yeah, I've got that story on women talk more than men and how they discovered why.
I'll get to that in a minute.
Did you see that?
You didn't see that?
It's from Science World Report, Why Women Talk More Than Men.
It's a government study.
What isn't a government study?
What happens here that isn't related to government anymore?
It's a language protein that they've uncovered out there.
You know, this is Catherine Griffin writing for something called Science World Report.
And I think this is hate research.
Hate science.
I mean, this is beating up on women.
It's all part of the war on women.
Now we're doing a science survey on why women talk more than men.
Hate science, hate research.
You know all the times that men complain about women talking too much?
Well, apparently, there is a biological explanation for the reason why women are chattier than men.
Scientists have discovered that women possess higher levels of a language protein in their brains.
And that could explain why women are so talkative.
Previous research has shown that women talk almost three times as much as men.
In fact, an average woman, there is no such thing, by the way, but we'll go along with this there.
The average woman notches up 20,000 words in a day, which is about 13,000 more words than the average man speaks.
In addition, women generally speak more quickly and devote more brain power to speaking.
This thing had me until we got to that point.
Yet before now, researchers haven't been able to biologically explain why this is the case.
Now, we've all had our theories about why women talk more, and it's because we upset them so much.
We're constantly in trouble.
We men are constantly on the edge.
But now scientists can explain it.
New findings conducted by researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, show that a certain protein may be the culprit.
See, that's why this is hate science and hate research.
Culprit indicates criminal.
Culprit indicates bad person.
So here we have a culprit explaining why women talk so much.
In 2001, a gene called FOXP2 appeared to be essential for the production of speech.
In order to test the protein, the team led by J. Michael Bowers and Margaret McCarthy looked at young rat pups.
Did you know that baby rats were called pups?
I didn't know that rats talk too much either, but that's why this is all hate research, hate speech.
I've learned that.
I studied the war on women.
I know about every battle.
Anyway, these animals, these rat pups, what they do is they emit cries in the ultrasonic range when separated from their mothers.
The team recorded the cries over five minutes in groups of four-day-old male and female rat pups that had been separated from their mothers.
They found that male rat pups had up to twice as much of the protein FOXP2 in regions of the brain known to be involved in vocalization.
Perhaps an unsurprising finding since researchers noted that male rat pups made twice as many cries as female.
Do you want to hear the rest of this?
You're kidding.
Next, the researchers wanted to test their findings in humans.
So they conducted a small study on human children aged four to five years old, the closest they could get to the rat pups.
These children who had died in accidents less than 24 hours previously.
That's what it says.
They conducted a small study on human children aged 4 to 5 who had died in accidents less than 24 hours previously.
They then analyzed the amount of Fox P2 protein in the brains of these children.
And in the end, the researchers found 30% more protein in the brains of the girls.
All of this, rat pups and all, to find out why women talk more.
Once again, I don't know what these guys were paid, but I would have blown the whistle on this for a dime.
The research shows that the protein is a key molecule for communication in mammals.
In fact, it could allow researchers to better understand other species that may or not possess the protein, such as Neanderthals.
So Neanderthal women didn't speak as much.
Anyway, with this new biological link, scientists could possibly trace back the evolutionary origin of speech.
Wow.
How exciting.
So anyway, that stuff is out there.
But back to the sequester here business.
Everything gets repeated.
The cycle, the claims, the threats, the crisis, Armageddon, it's the same.
And we're talking $22 billion.
It's not as though we're not going to spend anything.
If the sequester happens, the first year is $44 billion.
Half of that's defense.
We're still going to spend $3.5 trillion or $3.3 trillion, even if we don't spend the $22.
And then there's this guy I mentioned that blames all of this draws an analogy to the Oklahoma City bombing.
And we got our old buddy Ron Fournier, used to be at AP, not the National Journal.
This is quite instructive, actually.
Let me just read a portion of this to you.
Mr. President, this is crazy, is the headline of his piece.
Your federal government's almost certain to blow past the March deadline for averting $1.2 trillion in haphazard budget cuts that could cost 700,000 jobs.
But see, it's not $1.2 trillion.
It is over 10 years, but it's not next year, not this year.
This year's portion of it's $22 billion.
And does somebody really think that even if the sequester happens, it's not going to get fixed for 10 years?
Anyway.
But don't worry over the loss of these 700,000 budget-cut jobs.
We know who to blame.
President Obama makes a credible case that he's reached farther toward compromise than the House Republicans have.
He has?
Well, I guess he has since the media says so.
President Obama makes a credible case that he has reached farther toward compromise.
But knowing who's at fault, right, Mr. Fournier, doesn't fix the problem to loosely quote Billy Joel.
You may be right, Mr. President, but this is crazy.
Is this fiscal standoff, this is the fifth such standoff since Republicans took control of the House in 2011?
Is that not an interesting perspective, by the way?
It's not the fifth standoff since Obama was emaculated.
No, no.
It's the fifth standoff since Republicans took control of the House two years ago.
Is this standoff just about scoring political points or is it about governing?
And unknown to Mr. Fournier, he has swerved right into my theory now.
Political points versus governing.
And he says it's all about politics.
If it's all about politics, then bully for Obama.
A majority of voters will likely side with the president over Republicans in a budget dispute because of his popularity and the Republicans' pathetic approval.
Speaking of that, I don't want to depress you out there, but Obama's approval rating is as high as it's been since 2009.
55%.
The Republicans' approval is as low as it's been since 2009.
Chris Christie was on a letterman, eats a donut, and he's at 74% approval.
Christie is at 74%.
Obama, 55%, highest approval in four years.
But then, Mr. Fournier says, after writing, if this is all about politics, then bully for Obama.
But if it's about governing, the story changes.
Yes, sir, Bob.
That's my whole point.
You see, as Mr. Fournier writes, totally unaware that he's totally confirming my brilliant theorem of last week.
If it's about governing, then the story changes for Obama, because in any enterprise, the chief executive is ultimately accountable for success and failure.
Yeah, blame Congress.
Go ahead and castigate all 535 of them.
But there's only one president.
Even if he's right on the merits, he may be on the wrong side of history.
Fair or not, the president owns this mess.
Mr. Fournier, I disagree with you.
He doesn't.
That is the whole point.
The president does not own this mess.
His approval rating wouldn't be at 55% if he owned this mess.
He is not governing, Mr. Fournier.
You've stumbled into this, and I'm here to alert you to how right you are.
You don't even know it.
He's not governing.
It's all about politics.
Congress is being blamed for this.
The Republicans are being blamed.
Obama's just the outsider trying to fix it all.
He's the guy trying to compromise.
He even went out and played golf to try to compromise.
He even went out and played golf with Tiger Woods to try to compromise.
And still the Republicans resist.
Fair or not, the president owns this mess.
He doesn't own this mess.
Even though it was his idea.
Even though he will choose, if the sequester happens, where there are cuts, he will choose it.
But as far as the low-information voter population in this country, he does not own this mess, Mr. Fournier, and he will not own it.
The Republicans own this lock, stock, and barrel.
But Mr. Fournier writes, what can Obama do about it?
Well, for starters, and he says he could read an op-ed piece published a couple months ago in a Midwestern newspaper, and Fournier highlights an op-ed written by a Republican who blames everybody on both sides for it, and we all got to get together and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
That's what Fournier thinks Obama needs to read.
With a few weeks, Obama could make it a presidential address.
A few tweaks, I'm sorry.
This column is so good it could make it a presidential address.
Americans are fed up with the jousting.
There's a lot of public posturing, but apparently not much genuine conversation.
That gets to the root of what's bothering me here.
The jousting never ends.
And there's, I just feel like I'm being played for a fool here to get sucked into this narrative and this template every day.
The way all this stuff plays, I think this whole episode is a big joke on the country.
I think this is an insulting joke to everybody.
This is an embarrassing spectacle.
And after 1995, 1993, I'm getting tired of it.
It's history repeating itself over and over and over, almost verbatim, from taking food out of the mouths of children to coming for our children to we're going to no meat inspectors.
Even they're even saying we have to close down the sleigh rides in Jellystone Park has come up again, like it did in the 1995 budget bill.
Let me take a time out here, folks.
We'll come back and continue with all of this and much more right after this.
Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in my life, I am ashamed of my country.
To be watching all of this, to be treated to have my intelligence, all of us, to have our common sense and intelligence insulted the way it's being is it just makes me ashamed.
Seriously, man, here we get worked up over $44 billion.
That's the total amount of money that will not be spent, that was scheduled to be spent this year.
And in truth, we're going to spend more this year than we spent last year.
We're just not going to spend as much as was projected.
It's all baseline budgeting.
There is no real cut below a baseline of zero.
There just isn't.
And yet, here they come, sucking us in, roping us in, panic here, fear there.
Crisis, destruction, no meat inspection, no cops, no teachers, no firefighters, no air traffic control.
I'm sorry, my days of getting roped into all this are over.
We have the media play along with all this.
The ruling class, both parties play along with all this.
It's insulting.
I don't know how else to describe it.
I'm into my 25th year.
I can't tell you the number of times.
This hit me yesterday.
I've said the same things over and over for 25 years.
Whether the Clinton presidency or the Obama presidency, whether it's a Pelosi speakership or Tom Foley, who was speaker when I started, it's the same stuff.
It's the same threats.
It's the same arguments.
Over and over.
Nothing ever changes.
We just keep spending more money.
We create more dependency.
We get more and more irresponsible, one crisis to the next, all of them manufactured, except for the real crisis, which nobody ever addresses.
And that is we can't afford any of this.
Sadly, my friends, right as I reach the peak, I have to take a break.
What's happening here, folks, is we are being played for fools, being succored, suckered into supporting the never-ending expansion of government, the wholesale destruction of the private economy.
And everybody who joins in this debate under the premise that Obama puts forth, as well as debating the politics of this nonsense, just being used to cover up what's actually going on.
Now, what's going on is no great conspiracy.
It's no mystery.
We're spending much more money than we have.
The government is getting inexorably larger.
It's less and less efficient at accomplishing anything.
We're creating more and more dependence.
We're robbing people of their own dignity and humanity and their own opportunity to realize their own dreams as they turn their lives over to the government.
It's a never-ending cycle.
The government makes the private sector smaller.
There are fewer job opportunities.
There's less money in the private sector, less opportunity to accrue wealth.
Income taxes and others threaten to go higher.
They do go higher.
It all adds up to the government growing, the private sector shrinking, freedom being lost ever so slowly.
And nobody ever talks about stopping this.
Everybody gets sucked into debating the crisis of the moment, according to the terms of the moment,
without any context and relationship to the past and a knowable future and a relevant perusal.
of the present.
These little debates take place within their own little universe as though they're unaffected by things that have happened in the past.
It's just and we hear the most outrageous things.
The government's going to shut down.
Life can't go on as we know it if we don't spend $22 billion this year.
For 15 to 20 years, I have been behind this microphone and I've actually been defending the accusation that Republicans want to starve children.
It comes up predictably regularly.
And for 15 or 20 years, I have been trying to tell people in this country via this radio show: no, the Republicans are not trying to starve children.
The allegation itself ought to disqualify the people who make it because it's patently absurd.
There's nobody trying to starve anybody in terms of food.
But particularly, Republicans trying to starve children.
Republicans trying to deny people health care.
The Republicans want big business to be able to pollute the air.
The Republicans want their children living in an economic and environmental sewer.
It's an insult to my intelligence to have to even try to defend this to people.
The idea that there are people who believe it is bad enough.
But I can understand it once or twice, but for 20 years, this cycle has been repeating.
And it's ridiculous.
It's a distraction.
And one of two things is either happening: either more and more people believe this idiocy, or more and more people are just saying, you know what?
I don't want any part of this and they're not paying attention to it.
National Journal has a piece today by Matt Cooper.
Matthew Cooper.
Just when you thought the drive-bys could not top themselves with sequesteria, we get this.
Matthew Cooper is comparing the 2.2% reduction in the rate of spending increase to the Oklahoma City bombing.
Now, he immediately says that he's not making that comparison.
But if he's not, why did he bring it up?
In relationship to sequestration.
Seems to be the point of his article.
He says in the piece that sequestration has a good side, that it'll show the American public that the government is important.
That the American people will learn that we should not demonize the government.
He says the sequester cuts are going to stop air traffic control.
Well, you know that's happened before.
Rinaldus Magnus fired the air traffic controllers when they went on strike in the early 80s, and the airplanes still flew.
And the airports remained open.
The schools remained open, and the military was still out there firing weapons at bad guys.
But we need to live through this sequester.
So people will find out just how important and relevant government is to their life and how we should not demonize it.
Not only will this sequester stop air traffic control, Mr. Cooper says it'll end meat inspections.
It'll close Yellowstone.
And this is exactly what I mean.
The budget battle of 1995 was going to end the sleigh rides at Jellystone National Park.
And CNN Larry King actually got the sleigh ride concessionaire on his TV show.
And the sleigh ride concessionaire, who ended up being a conservative, we ended up talking to that guy.
He called here, but he was playing it for all it's worth.
Yeah, he went on and he talked about how tough it was going to be.
Nobody was going to be able to go on the sleigh rides because the government wasn't going to be paying him to do it.
Remember, all the federal employees were going to lose their Thanksgiving turkeys because of the government shutdown.
Oh, folks, if you weren't around then, it was Armageddon.
And so is this.
But never mind, the world didn't end when Reagan fired the air traffic controllers.
And never mind that the states have their own meat inspectors and they pay teachers and cops and firefighters.
The federal government doesn't.
Never mind that there has to be enough money remaining in the $3.7 trillion budget after the $44 billion in cuts to keep the national parks open and everything else operating.
Look at it this way.
How much money do you earn a year?
$100,000?
I'll just pick around for you.
You earn $100,000 a year, and every now and then a government comes to you and says, we need to raise taxes.
You can afford to do without as much as you're earning.
You don't really need that much.
We're going to raise taxes because we need to invest in education here.
And we need to invest in research and development.
And we need to invest in jobs.
And we need to invest in infrastructure.
So we're going to raise your taxes.
And you are expected to not complain and get along with less.
Now, the federal government earns a lot more than $100,000 a year.
The federal government has $3.7 trillion.
And whereas you are not supposed to complain and you're supposed to be able to get along just fine with a little tax increase if you make $100,000, the government can't be expected to continue to operate if $22 billion is subtracted from their $3.7 trillion.
This is the equivalent of the government being asked to do without a penny and a half, ladies and gentlemen.
And they can't do it.
A penny and a half closes airports, shuts down air traffic control, shuts down meat inspection, shuts down the military civilian personnel.
A penny and a half out of our budget not being spent.
Whereas you are expected to happily pay more and get by just as you have been on a little less next year.
The government never ever is supposed to be able to get by with a little less.
Can you imagine if the government came along and said, we want to raise your taxes 10%?
Well, no, I won't be able to afford food.
I won't be able to afford clothes for my kids.
I might not be able to pay my mortgage.
If you use the same arguments on them that they use on you, you know what they do?
I tell you, deal with it.
But here we are, over and over again.
And, Mr. Cooper, the American public needs to learn that the sun will still, that's what we need to learn, that the sun will still rise and the sky will still be blue and the birds are still going to chirp after this sequester, if it happens.
Now, here's Mr. Cooper.
The last time I can think of such an educational moment was not the short-lived government shutdown in the 90s, but the Oklahoma City bombing.
In 2001, looking back on the bombing, President Clinton said, and I had, like every other politician, on occasion, I had gotten upset by some example of government waste or something that we all do, you know, referred derisively to government bureaucrats.
But after that bombing of the mirror building, I promised myself I would never, ever use those two words together for the rest of my life.
Government bureaucrat, never, ever again.
From that point on, I'm going to treat those people who serve our country with respect, whether in uniform, law enforcement, firefighter, nurse, any other thing.
It doesn't matter.
And then he says, now, I'm not comparing the tragedy of Oklahoma City to sequestration.
Of course not.
He just compared them.
So we can't even think about cutting federal spending by $22 billion without being accused of disrespecting law enforcement, firefighters, nurses, none of whom are paid for by the federal government.
Anyway, this is the predictable course this takes every time such a crisis.
We just lived through this with the fiscal cliff.
We just went through this with the expansion of the debt limit.
If it all sounds familiar to you, it's because it is.
We haven't had a federal budget in four years, and because of that, we have these never-ending budget crises, funding crises.
A brief timeout.
Your phone calls are coming up as well as some audio sound bites, which further illustrate all of this.
Let's grab a telephone call as we move on down the line.
Fastest three hours in media rush limbo.
We're already at Thursday, by the way.
And one-third of this program already gone.
It's amazing how fast this program goes by, particularly when I'm the only one talking.
And it just zips by.
Here's Mindy in West Valley, Utah.
She says that she used to be a low-information voter.
And we're glad to have you with us.
Hi.
Hi, Russ.
Such an honor to get to speak to you.
I was a low information voter before the 2008 election.
And I didn't even know that Fox News existed.
I went to CNN for all of my news coverage.
And I'm not uneducated.
I just kind of didn't get involved in politics.
Now, wait, wait, wait, just I need to point of clarification.
You didn't even know it existed, or you just didn't bother to click to it.
You know what?
I don't think I even realized that it was a news station that was interesting.
That's fascinating.
I can understand this, actually.
Yeah, I always went to CNN because, you know, I grew up with my parents watching CNN.
That's where I went for my news.
And I remember the first time I heard your talk show, you changed my life as far as politics.
How did you end up hearing this program as a CNN devotee?
Okay, so I was driving in my car and I was flipping through the radio stations and I came to a stoplight and I had to stop for a moment and it stopped on mine as 105.7 and I heard your voice.
And I'll never forget, you were talking about how at the time Senator Obama was talking about how we could bring the gas prices down and it was, you know, by rotating our tires and silly, silly things.
It was checking tire pressure.
He wanted to give everybody a tire gauge.
Yes.
And it was so, so stupid.
And you said something so amazing.
You said, you know, that's not going to take a dollar off at the pump.
And I'm like, yes, this guy is so awesome.
I love what he's saying.
So I listened to everything that you had to say, and I realized where I have gone wrong.
I did not, I was not getting my information from a place that spoke truth.
And when I heard you talking, I knew that it was truth.
And I'm like, oh my gosh, I've got to get the word out.
People have got to start listening to your program because that is where we're going to make a difference.
All they need to do is just listen.
And that is where we're going to get some of these independent voters to change their mind and know that what you're hearing isn't truth.
You have lived an interesting experience.
You are an admitted, acknowledged, low-information voter whose only source was CNN.
Then you had an enlightenment.
You know better than most what the life, the news life and so forth, the awareness of a low-information voter is.
I do, so I know where they're coming from when they don't know what's going on.
And because of your teachings and all of these things that I've heard, I'm now a state delegate.
I'm a member of the Tea Party.
I took Constitution 101 through Hillsdale, which was amazing.
And I have three sons.
Man, man, you are all in.
You are all in.
All in.
I'm teaching my kids.
I'm like, I want my kids to know, because I know, I live in Utah.
We're mostly Republican state.
My sons go to school.
You will not believe how many of these kids are brainwashed.
My kids will come home and say, these guys are all on board for taking away our guns or just anything.
And they all know how they're propagandized.
And it's something that needs to change.
It does.
The left has total control over the public education, all the way up to university level.
It's something they own, and it's going to have to change.
It's going to have to change.
You know, I think it needs to change in the home.
My gosh, we have to somehow, I have my family now listening to you.
They all listen to you.
My sister, my brother, we all listen.
Mike, if we can get more people aware, because, you know, honestly, I wonder if some of these people don't even know that this, you even exist.
No, they do.
They do, but they know things, they think they know things that aren't true because of what they've heard about this.
Reagan had an interesting phrase.
I think I remember this.
Probably going to get it wrong as I try to paraphrase it.
Reagan said, it's not.
What people don't know that's the problem.
It's what they think they know that's not true that's the problem.
That's the paraphrase.
A lot of people think they know things they're dead wrong about, but you can't convince them.
Anyway, Mindy, I'm so happy that you called.
That's just great.
See, folks, just a few minutes of my voice can change a life.
Yeah, I know, I know.
Even though I've been doing this for 20, 25 years, fact of the matter is that no matter how many times we rebut all of these Democrat lies, there are always going to be people in the audience hearing it for the first time.
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