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Feb. 28, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:32
February 28, 2013, Thursday, Hour #2
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Time Text
Okay, okay, that's more like it.
CNN just said the clock is ticking down towards spending cuts.
However, there's no clock.
They just said the clock is ticking down, but there's no countdown clock.
Normally they do a countdown clock for everything.
To the next debate, to the election polls closing to whatever.
There's no countdown clock here in the sequester.
But CNN's all over it.
Spending cuts.
The clock is ticking.
Remember the president himself said last night, by the way.
Nobody's gonna really notice this.
First three weeks to a month.
Getting nervous.
We had the stories yesterday, White House other Democrats were very concerned they had oversold this.
But I don't think they ever really have to worry.
We never can forget that the majority of the news consuming audience is low information people.
They're not even paying that much attention.
Anyway, greetings and welcome back, folks.
Great to have you here.
800 two eight two two eight eight two, the email address L Rushboard EIB net dot com.
Yesterday we had shocking news that the regime had released hardened criminals from the intellectual or from the uh uh illegal immigrant population in jail.
Hardened criminals jailed from the illegal alien population, the doors were open to the jails and they were just released, all because of the sequester.
The sequester hadn't even happened.
It hasn't happened yet.
New York Times story, White House says it wasn't involved in the detainee release.
Some lone actor over at the Immigration Customs Enforcement Department, acting on his own, trying to probably score points.
This is what the story they're telling is that there had been so much fear about the sequester, and it permeated all levels of government, and everybody was panicked.
Oh no, spending cuts.
And you had somebody over at ICE who was a good employee, he's very loyal, and he was just he was he was getting a head start on everything trying to impress Obama and trying to do his job and get a bunch of kudos, and so he jumped a gun and he opened the doors to the jail and released a bunch of people early.
Janet Napolitano, big sis, she didn't know it happened.
Jay Carney, White House press briefing.
Uh we didn't know it happened.
Nobody knew that it happened.
We have an update on this in the Washington Free Beacon.
The Department of Homeland Security's immigration enforcement division was ordered last week, ordered.
Not some random guy acting on his own, not some free agent lone wolf, but rather orders were issued from Homeland Security last week to reduce the illegal immigrant detainee population to twenty-six percent below the legally required level.
This according to a research organization that monitors immigration issues.
That reduction is significantly greater than those required by the impending budget cuts in the sequester.
According to Jessica Vaughn, the policy director for the Center for Immigration Studies, ICE was recently ordered to reduce its detainee populations even further.
Jessica Vaughn said last week ICE field offices all over the country were ordered to reduce the number of detainees from thirty-four thousand to twenty-five thousand by March the first.
They were ordered to do this Last week, not yesterday.
Last week, that would indicate this was strictly a political ploy to ratchet up hysteria about the sequester cuts.
But who gave this illegal order?
And it is illegal, and who gave it and why?
ICE has refused to say how many detainees would be released.
ICE did not respond to requests to confirm the statistics of Jessica Vaughan.
Janet Napolitano said the sequester cuts would eliminate funds needed to pay for the illegal immigrant detention program.
However, the reported 26% reduction reportedly ordered by ICE is much greater than the eight point two percent reduction in ICE's budget required by the sequester.
So if the sequester happened, the ICE budget would require eight point two percent of the prisoners to be released.
But last week somebody on their own, well, somebody got orders to release 26% of the detainees.
Folks, now I'm gonna tell you this is serious stuff.
In the first place, none of it was necessary.
There wasn't, even for budget reasons.
We went to the numbers yesterday.
It was not necessary to release one detainee.
They have in the illegal alien detention system.
They have 34,000 beds, meaning room for 34,000 detainees.
The number of detainees that we have at present is 31,000.
There was room for 3,000 more.
There was no reason to close the place or to let people go or to release people.
Not only did they release people, they released practically three times the number they were supposed to.
ICE was given an order last week to reduce the number of detainees from 34,000 to 25,000 by March 1st.
But they didn't have 34,000, 31,000.
So this is strictly a political ploy.
Now the Washington Free Beacon is pointing out here that a 26% reduction in detainee populations reportedly ordered by ICE, much greater than what the sequester required.
So the question remains, who gave this order?
And why did they give this order?
And why isn't the news media trying to track all this down?
The Washington Free Beacon quotes a director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform who says the detainee releases are a culmination of a multi-year effort to release illegal immigrants rather than detain them.
And some of these people genuinely are hardened criminals.
So in an effort to scare everybody, by the way, as I said yesterday, once you release these people, how do you get them back?
They're not wearing GPS identifiers or electronic tracking devices, ankle bracelets.
How do you get them back?
You put some PSAs on TV and say, by the way, if you were released from an illegal alien detention center last week, it's time to report back.
So they're out there.
I don't know how you get them back.
You got 30,000 potential new Democrat voters.
Well, yes, I know that's a cynical view, but I'm telling you, this whole thing is very, very suspicious.
Now see, yesterday, a loan figure at ICE raised his hand and said, I did it, I did it, and then he announced that he was retiring.
Not resigning, retiring in a month or two.
So they found a fall guy yesterday.
But now the fall guy doesn't explain it all because there were far more detainees let go than were even required.
And all of this happened before the sequester.
So now we want to go back to the audio sound bites and let's move forward here to audio soundbite number 14.
This is David Rodham Gergen.
Last night on Anderson Cooper 69.
Question.
It kind of boggles the mind here, David Rodham Gergen, that here we are facing yet another crisis.
And congressional leaders aren't even meeting with the president until Friday, when the cuts already take effect.
Americans are turned off and tuned out of what's going on.
They're now increasingly saying, look, why can't both sea sides get together?
That's what we thought we voted for back in the election, and it's worse now than it was.
I cannot remember a time when we seem so leaderless that nobody is stepping up and taking the reins.
Whoa, that would include Obama.
You got David Rodham Gurgen saying it Obama's not acting like a leader.
And this time around, the American people are blaming him, not just the Republicans.
That's what David Rodham Gurgen is afraid is going to happen.
Here he says it in the next soundbite.
Anderson Cooper says, is the president crying wolf over all of this?
No, I don't think they're crying, Wolf.
I think they're quite intentionally allowing cuts to go on that are going to be painful, and that's what's irresponsible.
It was this White House that proposed this bill.
With these regidities built into it.
They now come out and tell us, well, it is going to shut down the airline traffic.
It's going to make it impossible to travel.
It's going to shut down beat inspectors.
For goodness sakes, we've got to keep a carrier important because of these tiny cuts.
My goodness, the role of the president is first and foremost to protect the citizenry.
Why put the country through the ringer?
I think now the blame is shared on this one.
I think the Democrats and the President deserve as much blame as the Republicans do on this one.
And they both have a responsibility to get us out of this message.
That was last night on CNN.
Has anybody seen David Gergen today?
I haven't.
Anybody seen him?
This is unheard of.
The president of the United States was just called out last night on CNN by David Gergen.
He's basically saying this is not necessary.
These cuts are minuscule.
This is being done to purposely harm this country.
What in the name of the only saving grace that Gergen can rely on here is that he is sharing the blame.
He's spreading the blame, including the Republicans in this.
So that kind of takes Obama off the he uh uh well takes the heat off him a little bit.
But man, I mean, this I don't think they're crying.
Wolf, they're intentionally allowing cuts to go on that are going to be painful, and that's what's irresponsible.
It was this White House that proposed this bill with these rigidities built into it.
And now they come and tell us going to shut down the airline traffic, impossible to travel, shut down meat inspectors, for goodness sakes.
We've got to keep a carrier in port because of these tiny cuts.
My goodness, the role of the president is to protect the citizenry.
Why put the country through the ringer?
And then he says, I think the blame is shared on this one.
Meaning up until last night it was all the Republicans' fault.
But now, David Rodham Gergen's looking at this, and he's look at it.
Come to the only conclusion you can come to here if you're going to look at this honestly.
This is all Obama.
Now he can't admit that.
But on this, this is all Obama.
This is Obama's idea.
Obama has discretion over what is and is not cut.
It is Obama putting the country through the ringer.
It is Obama inflicting pain for his own political gain.
He is inflicting pain for the express purpose of seeing to it the Republicans get blamed for it.
And Gergen now understands what's going on.
Maybe he's understood it all along and is just now saying it because it's gotten so ridiculous.
And for somebody like Gergen, who fashions himself as intellectually honest, he may have reached the wall here, no long no longer able to intellectually defend this from the standpoint of defending Obama.
And I'm folks, he's dead right on this.
None of this is necessary.
These cuts are infinitesimal.
There are areas of the budget that are filled with waste and fraud that he could cut.
There are areas that don't impact very important things that he could cut, but he's choosing to say that he's going to cut these areas that are going to really make life more difficult.
And the the reason he's doing this is because he knows the Republicans are going to get blamed for it.
And his sole objective is to eliminate any viable opposition.
Mr. Gergen, in the first soundbite, says, that's what we thought we voted for back in the election.
Why can't both these sides get together?
Mr. Gergen, if I may, I know I don't have any credibility with you and the mainstream media in Washington, but there is no getting together.
The Republicans and Democrats have not one thing in common in this sequester or the fiscal cliff or any other budget deal.
There's not one thing the Republicans want that Obama wants, and vice versa.
There is no overlapping of interests.
And if there is, Obama does move the goalposts so that there isn't anything that overlaps.
Go back and look.
John Boehner gave him as much revenue as he was asking for in one of the uh fiscal cliff deals, and that's when Obama upped the ante, wanted $500 billion more in tax increases, and Boehner walked away.
There is no common ground.
There will be no bipartisanship because that's not what Obama wants.
And the key to all of this.
Folks, it's sad to admit this, but I uh I've seen enough focus group data.
I've looked the the low information voters do indeed want cooperation between the two parties.
They really do.
That to them, that's golden.
That's what they want.
And that's precisely why it isn't going to happen.
Because the ultimate objective of President Obama is continued chaos that he can blame on the Republicans.
At the end of the day, he wants the chaos, he wants the unettledness.
He wants the unrest because he wants the Republicans blamed for it.
He wants to be seen as the great compromiser.
He wants to be seen as the guy trying to fix this.
He wants to be seen as the man who's doing everything he can to fix these problems.
But it's the Republicans, and that's why they got mad at Woodward.
Because Woodward accused them of moving a goalposts and making deals impossible.
And that's why Sperling threatened Woodward.
Because Woodward gave up the game.
Woodward explained for anybody paying attention what Obama's actually doing.
He's moving the goalpost.
He's making a deal impossible.
That's why Sperling threatened Woodward.
I must take a break.
You sit tight, we'll be back with much more after this.
And we're back.
Rush Limbaugh.
We'll get to your phone calls here in just a second, folks.
A couple more sound bites.
Arnie Duncan, the education secretary, is the latest regime official caught in an out and out lie about the sequester.
On Face the Nation Sunday morning, Major Garrett is talking to Arnie Duncan.
A question how soon could that happen?
These 40,000 teachers could lose their jobs.
That's what Duncan was saying.
40,000 teachers lose their jobs because of the sequester.
How soon?
Because I read differing accounts.
Could be immediate, could be until the fall.
Is there a sky is falling aspect to any of the things that you're talking about here?
Well, some of the stuff happens earlier, some of the stuff happens this fall, but what it does, it creates tremendous instability.
And there are literally teachers now who are getting pink slips, who are getting notices they can't come back this fall.
That was last Sunday.
Last Sunday, there were already teachers getting pink slips saying they can't come back this fall.
There hadn't been any budget cuts.
Yesterday at the White House during the daily press briefing, Arnie Duncan actually spoke, and it was a QA.
And a reporter said, So you're confident teachers are already getting pink slips as you said.
To be clear, it's uh Title I teachers and head star teachers, so it's these funding sources that are gonna cut.
Whether it's all sequester related, I don't know.
But these are teachers who are getting pink slips now.
So he was forced to admit that he was really exaggerating on Sunday.
Now, folks, there's something there's something else going on here.
As is often the case in Washington, what they put right in front of our eyes and focus on is actually designed to camouflage.
And I think that's what this this this is this sequester, all of these fear-mongering panic stories.
Now, even Obama last night said, you know, we're not even going to notice it for a month.
The reason is because I think it's mission accomplished.
I think the overall objective here has been about establishing the premise that the country cannot get along unless the government gets bigger.
Because the continuing resolution comes up at the end of March.
I I think we're being played for fools again.
No, no.
I mentioned this, I think, yesterday and the day before.
This is this this sequester really is chump change in terms of the amount of money being talked about and the possible uh negative impact of the sequester happening.
It's chump change compared to the continuing resolution fight, which comes up at the end of March.
And I think the one thing here, if if the regime is surprised by anything, and I don't know that they are, but it wouldn't it wouldn't surprise me if Obama and the White House really expected the Republicans to come to the table and cave in order to save the cuts to the Department of Defense.
And the Republicans so far have not done that.
So if the sequester happens and it's minuscule, paying no attention to this fear mongering.
This the fear-mongering and the threats that Obama has promised, even he's backing off now.
He's dialing it back.
He said you won't even notice it for a month.
So this impact is is in real terms minuscule.
But the continuing resolution fight, that's the whole government being funded.
That's not just forty-five billion dollars that we're talking about.
That's the whole ball of wax.
And this has been to set up, I'm convinced, this this sequester thing, it's too much in front of us.
It's too big.
It's too much of focal point.
It's a distraction.
But at the same time, it's also there to condition people.
It it is there to build up support for Obama and the notion that this country cannot survive without even if the government does without a penny one day.
We can't survive.
You can't go on.
And the big stakes are the effort to fund the government again at the end of March.
I've often spoken here of how I try to avoid the conventional wisdom and the media narrative of the day that everybody gloms onto and everybody gets sucked into, and they all end up discussing it in the same way.
You have the big thing, which is the sequester, then you have subsets of it.
And the latest subset is the Woodward Business.
So today everybody's talking about whether Woodward was threatened or not.
And what does that mean as far as the way the regime operates, and what does it mean for the media?
of course everybody's focusing on it.
My point is they get you focused on what they want you focused on while other things are taking place.
And it's not new.
It's not a new strategy.
It's just something I'm constantly wary of.
And I'm just telling you the sequester is not what Obama is actually attempting to achieve here.
It's it's the elephant in the room that everybody can see and is dealing with to hide other things on the agenda.
But in the process, I do think that the Republicans were supposed to cave.
I think the strategy was that the Republicans were supposed to cave in order to stop defense cuts.
And they haven't so far.
And I think the regime is surprised by that.
I think they're a little shocked.
I don't know to what degree.
And they may be forced into making a minor recalculation as they move forward for the continuing resolution.
But regardless...
Regardless of that, uh this is standard operating procedure for the way our affairs are managed.
Crisis to crisis to crisis, panic, fear, end of the world, Armageddon kind of stuff.
And never forget, never forget.
Low information voters really do want compromise.
They really do want bipartisanship.
That's what they thought they were getting in 08 when they voted for Obama.
Gurgen just admitted it.
There isn't any way that's ever going to happen.
Obama's not going to compromise.
He's not going to put his name on anything.
He wants these problems continued and continued until the Republican Party is effectively eliminated as any form of viable opposition.
That is the objective.
And as such, he needs constant turmoil, constant chaos, people constantly unrest, unhappy, dissatisfied.
Because it doesn't attach to him.
None of it attaches to him.
His policies are not seen as having any thing to do with conditions on the ground in the country.
That's the Republicans get to blame, and he wants to maintain that.
So he's constantly campaigning, never governing, never gonna be a bipartisan agreement on it, not of any substance.
To the phones, Columbus, Ohio.
Al, you're up.
I'm glad you waited.
Great to have you here, sir.
Hi.
Good afternoon, sir.
It's a real pleasure to talk to you.
Thank you.
I want to make a quick point on the on uh Woodward here is um I think you're missing part of the whole side of this.
The low information crowd doesn't know who Bob Woodward is.
They and I think the White House doesn't fear the media, and they definitely don't fear Woodward anymore.
You know, the low information crowd get their news from Maddow or Oberman or Bill Maher with a snarky comment and a smile at the camera.
But Woodward doesn't have that.
He doesn't have the class, you know, he's too classy to do that anyway.
So that's you know, the people at Matter here aren't getting, you know, they're they're not getting that.
Well, who does know who Woodward is?
AARP crowd.
Well the ones that grew up with Nixon.
But AARP crowd happens to donate a lot of money, and they are huge Democrats.
They're huge leftists, and it does matter to the regime what they do and what they think.
Yeah, but they don't fear Woodward anymore.
Oh, I don't think they fear Woodward.
I don't think they fear anybody.
I don't think his administration's afraid of anybody.
I think they did threaten Woodward.
And even if it wasn't a threat, he thinks it is.
So that's that has to be the way we interpret this.
He thinks he was threatened.
I agree, but the most fascinating thing to me about the story is not Woodward.
It is how the rest of the media is siding with Obama and Woodward is their guru.
Woodward is the reason 99% of them got into the business.
Yeah, but they're trying to marginalize him.
Even in the pluff piece, they made him out to be kind of old.
You know, that's how he's mentioning it.
And you're gonna try to make him out to be the the crazy old grandpa or uncle as occasionally says the inappropriate comment.
That's right.
That's right.
He's uh he's too old.
He can't he's like Mike Schmidt for the Phillies.
He couldn't face live Major League pitching today.
He couldn't ever be anybody's hero again.
He's just too old.
Correct.
I don't know where you and I disagree.
Where do you think I'm off base?
Well, I mean, I it's not that you're off base.
I just don't think you brought up that side of it.
I mean, you're talking about the you know the the voters and you know, but they're not the ones that's looking at the you know the the Bob Woodward going, oh gee, who is this guy?
They're gonna not gonna research and figure out who he is.
They don't care.
So what does that mean?
What's it mean?
Yeah.
If one of their liberal talking head pieces actually attack the White House a little bit like Woodward did or at least question them.
Okay, so if what you're saying is if the White House threatened Bill Maher, then the low information voters would know about it and might care.
Absolutely.
But since they threatened Woodward, the low information voters saying, who is this dinosaur?
Absolutely.
They don't care.
Woodward could be threatened all day long.
I don't care.
Absolutely.
That's your point.
Yep.
And that the regime knows this.
Correct.
And so then what follows from there?
Are we discussing it too much, or are we spending too much time on it?
What what what's your point?
Well, my point would I wish Bob Woodward would grow a set and go after this group.
But you know, that's just not gonna happen.
I'm sure Bob Woodward thinks he just did by referring to them as madness.
He did he just compared Obama to Nixon.
And the low information bunch doesn't know who he is either.
That's true.
Although they probably know who Nixon is.
I mean, that they've they've been taught Nixon's the worst president ever.
This yeah, but they you know they don't know what brought him down.
And you know, like you said, Bob Woodward's a dinosaur to them folks.
So look it, uh you you uh you you raise a good point.
I don't disagree with you, but I I I want to remind people.
There is nobody in media focusing on the low information voters in an analytical way than me.
In fact, I'll tell you what, Frank Luntz did another focus group, and I think this was for CBS.
It's uh got it's the bottom of the soundbite roster.
And I'm gonna take a commercial breaker in obscene profit time.
I'm gonna come back and play it because it's depressing as hell, and even Lunz admits he doesn't know how much longer he can do this because it's depressing talking to these people.
Well, That's exact w I we're making headway here.
We are we are we're finding ways to get ourselves myself.
I mean, there's no hour here, let's admit this.
I just phonic humility.
Finding ways to get myself uh inserted into low information news cycles.
Just the other day, I maneuvered myself into being mentioned on extra.
Talking about Muchell hijacking the epidemic awards.
So we know what we're doing here.
We're know exactly who the low information crowd is and what they do know and don't know.
And we're also, by not only that, we're engaged in a daily outreach to them.
Because we we do not insult them here unless being honest about them is insulting, but that's not our point.
As for Woodward, again, folks, the regime will take care of him at the death panel stage of his life.
That's that's the they're not gonna do anything public here that would because the low information voters do not think that Obama does stuff like that.
They're never gonna look at him as as the head of the family, uh, so to speak.
So there's not gonna be a dead horse head in Woodward's bed tomorrow morning.
But I'm sitting here still laughing.
Donna Brazil was not kidding.
We had she said this tweet, yes, she really doesn't know why her insurance premiums went up.
She's she's she's uh I don't know if she said more, but but well, yes, she did.
It's not another tweet, but there I've seen people uh talked to her have Done stories about she really totally clueless about the impact of Obamacare on the cost of health care.
She really doesn't she she was not joking, having fun or making some other whatever would have been strategic political point.
She really was shocked that her health insurance is is is becoming more expensive.
That's that that to me is that's a lot of things.
I don't want to laugh about it, but it is funny.
But it is really illustrative of just exactly who we're dealing with here and the kind of stuff that the the that they believe their own PR, some of them do.
It's really mind-boggling at times trying to keep up with these people.
You know, because on one hand we think they're smarter than everybody and out fox us at every turn.
And I've always tried to tell people, no, they're not.
You know, you you you get food, you think they're brilliant marketers and strategirists, and it's not that.
They've got the media backing them up every day of the week.
They've they've got every covering their bases, covering their mistakes, uh doing the destruction of their opponents for them each and every day.
They don't have to be perfect.
And they aren't.
They fail all over the place.
The thing they do is promote their failures so that their failures don't take down the movement.
Anyway, I gotta take a brief time out.
We'll be back and continue in a moment.
By the way, folks, to prove the point that I just made, Hurricane Katrina Vandenhoov, who is the editor of the nation, is tweeting all over the place that the smartest interns at her shop don't know who Woodward is.
Exact point that I've been making here about the low information voters.
They're clueless.
They what the they're sitting out there wondering, what's all this hubbub about?
They don't know who Woodward is and they don't care.
And as far as Obama threatening him, big deal.
Remember, these people want Obama to act like a dictator.
How many how many appearances has Obama had where he's had to tell people, sorry, I can't just wave a magic wander, I just can't sign look, I'm not I'm not a dictator.
There are the people voting for this guy that don't understand going through Congress.
What the hell do those guys have to say about anything?
Why can't Obama just legalize pot?
Why can't he just gay marriage?
Why can't he just say it's legal?
That's what they think presidents do.
Now I don't have time to get into all these lunts because this focus group soundbite would lunch, it was um CBS this morning, there's not enough time to get him in now, so I'll start the next hour with it.
But you'll hear.
In the meantime, Sean Sean somewhere in Pennsylvania, great to have you, sir, on the program.
Welcome.
Well, Rush Megadiddos from a long time listener.
By the way, I've got right in front of me my yellowed autograph 38-year-old copy of all the president's men.
So I have standing.
Uh yesterday, Woodward, who is really the elder statesman of American journalism, called the president the black Nixon.
But what he actually did was remind me one of the reasons I believe why you have low information voters.
Well, now wait, just wait, hold it just he people not gonna understand.
He didn't call him a black Nixon.
He said that he's Nixon.
He's like Nixon.
The fact that he's black is incidental.
It's true, but it he didn't call him the black Nixon.
I know what you mean.
I inferred it, of course.
Yes, yes, yes.
Okay.
Okay, anyway, so he reminded me why you have low information voters, readers, and viewers, and this is something I haven't heard discussed.
It's decades of editors who were either weak or missing in action.
Editors used to be the tough news people who stood their ground, led their reporters to seek the truth.
Unfortunately, today most of them in print and broadcast, they tremble if they don't get access.
And sadly, and we used to joke about this years ago, never let the facts stand in the way of a good story.
Well, the access angle is right.
That's everything.
Because the celebrities aspect of it.
It's not access for news.
It's access for celebrity.
That's what the entertainment media is all about.
It's just access to the celebrities.
It's what the sports media is.
Basically, you have a bunch of groupies, is what you're saying.
Rush, it's newsertainment.
It's not news, it's newsertainment.
That's exactly right.
That's uh anyway, if you can I give you one last quick idea?
Yeah.
In your shop, uh, I don't know if you sell sweatshirts or not, but whether it's a sweatshirt or a mug, I think you should create one that says sequester me, bro.
Sequester me what?
Bro, BRO.
Remember the guy that's a good one.
Oh, sequester me, bro, yes.
Okay.
Now, see, but the problem is if we do that, your lawyer is gonna call and want royalties on it.
We're gonna have hell to pay for doing it.
I know people like you, and I know how you operate, and that's great to have you, EIB network.
Some people think, by the way, that the importance of the Woodward story is not that he was threatened or any of that, but it it it some people say not necessarily agreeing here, but some people think it's the first time that anybody in the media has drawn blood from the regime, gotten a rise out of them, caused them to be upset and lash out in public in a way that everybody knows about it.
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