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March 1, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:15
March 1, 2013, Friday, Hour #2
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Time Text
Views expressed by the host on this program make more sense than anything anybody else out there happens to be saying.
It's Friday, and let's continue to roll.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's Open Line Friday!
And we're great to have you.
It is great to have you.
Here, our telephone number is 800-282-2882.
The email address, lrushbo at eibnet.com.
Grab audio soundbite 32 again.
Have it standing by because what we are witnessing is as reprehensible as it is, as repulsive as it is to us, as insulting as it is to us, as depressing as it is to us, as frustrating and maddening as it is to us.
What we are witnessing is masterful.
Now, it's also happening with no opposition.
Oh, I mean, Obama has some opposition here, yeah.
And he's got some opposition at Fox News, but he doesn't have any opposition in the Republican Party.
So he's got smooth sailing.
We are watching masterful demagoguery.
This guy, I'm going to say better than Bill Clinton.
This guy is smoother, he's better, he's more accomplished, and the real genius of Barack Obama.
He's been in office now for four years and may as well not have been because not one aspect of his agenda or policies explains what's happening in the country today.
Not one thing.
His policies, in fact, as far as people are concerned, are all efforts to fix this mess.
But damn it, he's trying as hard as anybody could.
He really cares about people as much as anybody ever has.
But man, the mistakes that are this country, the flaws that are this country are so deeply embedded that it's going to take a long time to fix this place.
I'm sure he thought he could do it in four years, but now he knows it's going to take eight minimum, maybe 12 years to fix this.
And all the while, the people that voted for him are encouraging him to keep going.
They are advocating that he keep on because none of what he's doing has any relationship to the bad things happening in the country.
He's doing everything he can to fix it.
You realize he opposed the sequester.
That was a Republican idea.
He doesn't want any part of this sequester.
He's trying to save the country from it.
Now, you and I all know that it was his idea.
You and I all know that he loves it.
You and I all know that everything that's happening is because of his policies.
You and I all know that what's happening is because he wants it to happen.
And now you and I know that his genius is keeping his name off of it all.
And by the way, this sequester business today, this is textbook example number one for the Limbaugh Theorem.
The Limbaugh Theorem is Obama can't be seen as governing.
He has to be seen as constantly campaigning, seeking the power to stop this.
Right now, he doesn't have enough power to stop this.
The flaws are too deeply embedded in this country's fabric.
All of the favors that the rich doled out to themselves all these years, all the tax cuts they gave themselves, all the money that they got from this government, all the money they took.
It's been going on for since the country was founded.
And we can't fix this in four years, but he's trying.
So we have the sequester, and the Republicans have done it again.
They want to shut down the government.
They are trying to starve your kids.
They're trying to see to it that your kids don't have any firefighters protecting your house or any police officers.
The Republicans really don't care if your kids have anything to eat.
Kids don't care if the horse meat that's in the food you're buying at fast food places is inspected or not.
Republicans are getting away with polluting the environment.
He's doing everything he can to stop it.
He's trying as hard as he can.
And all of this stuff he wants to happen, all of this stuff he's causing to happen, and yet nobody thinks that.
And that's why the Senate Democrats, the Senate Republicans yesterday attempted to get Obama's name attached to all of this sequester stuff.
What did they do?
They passed a bill that would give Obama total authority to administer the cuts mandated by the sequester.
Now, he already has most of that authority, but the Senate Republicans wanted him to know that as far as they were concerned, he had total authority.
And he promised to veto that bill if it were ever sent to his desk.
He promised to veto a bill that would have made him dictator over the spending cuts.
And I've read a lot of media analysis of this, and they're saying this just shows that Obama isn't serious.
And they're missing the point.
It doesn't show that at all.
Obama rejecting that power, Obama rejecting that authority is not because he's not serious.
It's because he doesn't want officially to have that power.
Why would Obama want his name on the spending cuts in the sequester?
Why would he want that when he succeeded in making everybody think the Republicans are doing it?
A party that doesn't have any power at all, a party that even if they had power doesn't even know how to use it.
Man, look at all the evil the Republicans are conjuring up.
Look at all of the pain they're causing.
Why would he want his name on that?
He doesn't.
The limbaugh theorem.
So here, listen to this again.
This is Obama.
This is the limbo theorem.
Remember now, just want to remind you, we found the Des Boin Register story from last October 23rd, an interview with the deputy editors that he did not let them run for a week.
And everybody thought that it was because they weren't going to endorse him.
And he didn't want that out in the Des Moines Register, important state, two weeks before the election.
That's not why he didn't want them to run it.
The reason he didn't want them to run it is because in the interview, he was all for the sequester.
He was excited about the sequester happening, and he was salivating, eagerly tabulating the results of the sequester combined with the expiration of Bush tax cuts to give him his grand bargain, his massive solution to budget problems.
So the truth is, last October, he was counting on the sequester happening.
He wanted it to happen, and he was calculating positively the impact of the sequester.
Now, that's the truth.
Everything since then you've seen is not the truth, but that doesn't matter.
Because the genius of Barack Obama is the truth never attaches itself to him.
It's not, folks, it's not that he's not held accountable.
That's not the genius.
It's not that the media doesn't tie him to it.
His genius is his direct relationship with the people that vote for him and how he is able to convince them.
I don't even think he needs the media, frankly.
Now, it would be a lot harder if the media were challenging him, but that is a hypothetical that's never going to happen because the media never is going to be in opposition to Obama.
So that's a pipe dream.
It's ridiculous to examine if it would be any different were the media an enemy or at least opposed to him.
So here he is at the presser today.
And what he's doing in this soundbite, if you listen very carefully, well, he doesn't say it, but what he's doing, folks, in his mind, and remember now, in the minds of the people who voted for him, the sequester is going to cause pain.
Layoffs, salary reductions, shutdowns of meat inspectors, the weather forecast bureau, all of that.
His voters believe this.
You've got to understand that.
And in this one little 31-second soundbite, Barack Obama sees to it that every bit of economic woe in the next six months is seen as the Republicans' fault.
He has just guaranteed another reason why the sequester happening is valuable to him.
If everything you do can be assigned to other people in terms of responsibility, including if you want to destroy things, you can make others responsible, you do it.
He has just, with this soundbite, guaranteed that his voters, a majority of people, think it's the Republicans making all of this misery happen.
Let's be clear.
None of this is necessary.
It's happening because a choice that Republicans in Congress have made.
They've allowed these cuts to happen because they refuse to budge on closing a single wasteful loophole to help reduce the deficit.
As recently as yesterday, they decided to protect special interest tax breaks for the well-off and the well-connected, and they think that that's apparently more important than protecting our military or middle-class families from the pain of these cuts.
Yep.
So the sequester now is a fait accompli, midnight tonight, less than 12 hours, and the Republicans did it.
And all the misery, pain, and suffering that results from it, Republicans' fault.
And nobody's going to challenge him on it.
Well, we will.
Fox News will, but his voters, we're outnumbered, folks.
Hollywood, movies, books, newspapers.
Well, Snerdley is asking me a question, what's the incentive to work with somebody like this?
There isn't any, but see, this is another area where he's got the Republicans over the barrel.
You remember the Lunch Focus Group from yesterday?
22 people have voted for Obama.
22 people have voted for Romney.
They all blame the Republicans and Congress for this, and they all want people to work together.
They think the solution here is people getting together and holding hands and compromising.
So the Republicans, desperate to get votes from people, desperate to be loved, desperate to be understood, hear people say they want us to work together.
So they're going to make it known they're willing to work with Obama.
And he's going to take full advantage of it.
He's going to supposedly listen to them say it, and he's going to say, I tried, but these people, they keep insisting on tax cuts for the rich.
I've tried.
I've done everything.
But look at these people.
Why, just yesterday, they decided to protect a special interest tax break for the well-off.
Nothing like that happened yesterday.
In fact, that whole soundbite is untrue and wrong.
But break time, folks.
We'll get to your phone calls when we come back.
Don't go away.
Sit tight.
No, Snerdley, it's not me saying it.
Snerdley arguing with me here about the next six months being blamed on the Republicans.
Obama said it.
Here, we got the soundbite.
Obama said it in the presser today.
Listen.
Not everyone will feel the pain of these cuts right away.
The pain will be real.
Beginning this week, many middle-class families will have their lives disrupted in significant ways.
Oh, yeah.
All of this will cause a ripple effect throughout our economy.
Layoffs and pay cuts means that people have less money in their pockets, and that means that they have less money to spend at local businesses.
That means lower profits.
That means fewer hires.
So every time that we get a piece of economic news over the next month, next two months, next six months, as long as the sequester is in place, we'll know that that economic news could have been better if Congress had not failed to act.
So here you have it.
Next month, next two months, next six months, every bit of economic news, there isn't going to be any good economic news, folks.
There hasn't been any in four years what's going to change.
So the economic news is going to be bad.
And whether there's a sequester or not, but there will be, the sequester will be in effect.
We'll know the economic news could have been better if the Republicans had not failed to act.
Congress equals Republicans.
And then he went on to say that the American people agree with my approach.
They agree that we should have a balanced approach to deficit reduction.
And question is, can the American people help persuade Congress to do the right thing?
Co to the phones we go.
So I'm just warning, next six months, that was the media getting their advisory, their marching orders.
Next six months, every bit of economic news, you trace it back to March 1st.
Sequester and the Republicans.
But don't worry, we are not going to let people forget what Obama said in the Des Moines Register last October, where he wanted the sequester.
It was his idea.
And he was counting on it accomplishing his goals of causing economic harm.
Here is Tom in Sandusky, Ohio.
Tom, great to have you with us, sir.
Hello.
It's great to be with you again, too.
I've spoken to you a couple of times, but, you know, I was listening to what how the, or reading how the media was coming out with their long knives against Woodward.
And it occurred to me, you know, here's a guy that comes out and speaks the truth.
And all of a sudden, oh my God, you know, what is happening?
You know, and their sacred car, the liberals, all of a sudden turned against him.
My question is, you know, in this kind of environment, how do you get the truth through to the low-information voter?
It doesn't seem like we have a chance.
But then I thought again to myself, you know, maybe the best thing to do is we need more bomb throwers like Woodward and Ted Cruz from Texas.
You know, just keep hitting them with this stuff, you know, Nick putting them on the defensive, whether it's true or not, because that's their tactics.
You know, I mean, that's a dingy hairy tactic of, well, he hasn't paid taxes in 10 years or something like that, talking about Romney and all the lies that they told about him.
We got to start doing the same thing that they're doing.
Fight fire with fire.
Make innuendos.
Make statements.
Well, you know.
Now, Tom, I had a story.
I didn't use it.
I had a story last week that had 25 absolutely horrible things that have happened in this country in the last 75 years, all done by Democrats that they were never blamed for.
Things that really hurt the country, things that hurt people, and they never got blamed for it.
So if you say, okay, they're going to say Romney didn't pay his taxes in 10 years, then we go out and say that we, we just lie about Harry Reid.
He didn't pay his taxes in 10 years.
The battle's bigger than that because where the American people are right now, they believe the lies told about Republicans.
They don't care.
Whatever the truth is about the Democrats, they don't care.
And you know why?
It comes down to something I think it's really profoundly simple.
They think that the Democrats care about people and that the Republicans don't.
And it may be a little more involved than that.
But when you strip it all away, there's a reason why stuff doesn't stick to the Democrats.
Now, you might say it's branding, it's marketing, it's they can't do anything wrong because they never intend to.
They really love people.
They're ones trying to help people.
And the Republicans don't care about anybody but the rich.
The Republicans don't care.
Tom, all we can do is to just keep pounding the truth.
You just keep pounding it.
And eventually, the truth will out.
Now, a lot of people don't have faith in that.
I happen to, but it takes time and it's not universal.
It doesn't happen with every instance.
We'll be back.
Janet Napolitano, Big Sis, according to ABC News, says that she had no part in a decision by underlings to release illegal immigrant detainees as a way to save money before sequestration.
And you know what?
She was surprised to learn about it.
Detainee populations and how that's managed back and forth, that's really handled by career officials in the field, she said.
Really?
Even though, according to the Congressional Committee overseeing ICE, they're mandated by Congress to detain 34,000 illegals, and they say they can only be released after notifying Congress.
That's what the law is.
But Napolitano says, no, there's a bunch of underlings.
There's some rogues in there that let these guys go.
We didn't even know about it.
I saw the governor of Arizona on TV today, Jan Brewer, and she was practically speechless in trying to explain that.
They weren't told in Arizona that the illegals being held in that state were going to be released.
Arizona has been sued by the regime.
Now the inmates have been released.
She was really trying to hold back saying what she really wanted to ask and what she really thinks about what's going on.
It was fascinating to watch.
I mean, she really was, it's not that speechless is the wrong word.
She wanted to unload, but thought better of it for obvious reasons.
But, I mean, do we believe this?
A bunch of rogue underlings, career bureaucrats decided on their own to let these detainees loose starting last week.
You know, the economic news, every month when the unemployment news comes out, whether the number is up or down, there's always the word unexpected.
Americans unexpectedly applied for more unemployment benefits this week, exceeding expectations of the analysts and experts.
Remember all that?
Everything's forget that.
Nothing is going to be unexpected anymore.
All of the future bad economic news substitute because of the Republican sequester for unexpected.
So when unemployment starts ticking up, nobody's going to be surprised anymore.
Why?
Experts won't say it's unexpected.
It'll be totally expected.
It'll be totally predicted.
It'll be because of the Republican sequester.
Next six months, Rob in Lansing, Michigan.
Great to have you, sir.
Welcome to the program.
Thank you, Rush, for taking my call.
I appreciate all that you do.
Well, thank you very much.
I appreciate that.
I have an open line Friday question for you about cigars, if that's all right.
Sure, fire away.
I'm not a big cigar smoker, but I've had the opportunity to try several different Cuban cigars, and there was one in particular.
I don't know if you're familiar with it, but it's called a Partagas.
P-A-R-T-A-G-A-S.
T-A-R.
Oh, Partigas.
Oh, yeah, Partiga.
P-A-R.
Yes, Partigas.
What kind of Partigus was it?
Well, Corona Senor.
Ah, Partigas Corona, Senor.
Yes.
And, you know, out of all the ones I tried, I just like the consistency and.
I'm sure you got that from an illegal immigrant who brought it with him, right?
No, no.
Let's just say I went to Canada.
Yeah, that's it.
Ah, okay.
You got it from an illegal immigrant in Canada.
Okay.
Okay.
There you go.
Well, what can I get in the United States that is legal that I don't have to go to an illegal immigrant to get it from?
That's fairly similar, something close to it.
Okay, now, you're putting me in a tough position here because for every type of cigar I give you, I'm going to make angry other manufacturers or hurt their feelings or what have you.
Well, this is an opportunity for you, Rush, because it's my job to make you look good.
Well, yes, it's exactly right.
And so you want a cigar that will remind you of the Cuban that you smoked.
And I'm going to tell you something.
Cuba, the place in Cuba where the premium cigars come from is a place called the Vuelta Bajo.
And it's near a little town called Pinar del Rio.
And just like Bordeaux in France, it happens to be the one place on earth that God made perfect for growing all three elements of the cigar, the binder, the filler, and the wrapper tobacco.
It's the only place in the world where all three types are grown in the same place.
Now, the Fuente family has managed to do that in the Dominican Republic.
And that is the Opus X. If you can get hold of any size of Fuente, Fuente, Opus X. Opus X.
Yes.
Opus 10, Opus X, whatever.
But they've got a beautiful band.
It's a strong cigar, as Cubans are.
But it's tough.
You say, can you name for me a Cabernet Sauvignon from California that'll taste like a Chateau Aubreon?
No.
That's why Chateau Aubreon is what it is or Chateau Pertreuse.
But the Dominican cigars and the domestic cigars are good in and of themselves for different ways.
The Cuban cigars are unique.
And they're not as good as they used to be, by the way, because the Cubans lost their subsidy from the Soviets, which was $5 billion a year.
The cigar fad hit back in the 90s, and the Cubans started mass producing to keep up with demand around the world.
And they stopped the aging process.
They hired young kids to be rollers that weren't as good.
For a long time, people who bought Cubans said that they were too tight to draw.
You get a hernia trying to smoke one because they were too tightly packed.
They've gone back and forth on the quality control.
So it depends on what year you get a Cuban from, from what I'm told.
But let me give you two other.
One of my favorite cigars is the La Flor Dominicana double Leguero chisel.
La Floor Dominicana.
La Flor Dominicana double Leguero chisel.
That means the Leguero portion of tobacco plant is the richest.
And it is kick butt.
Okay.
This cigar.
It's a short, it's about six inches bigger than a robusto.
The fuentes also make a great cigar called a Don Carlos.
Don Carlos.
I think I've had that, actually.
In various shapes.
The Ashton people make mild, good mild cigars, too.
And there is a Pardigus, domestic brand made, too.
I think the Pardigus, the Partigus number 10 or something, I forget what it is, but there's a domestic Pardigus that's very good as well.
I see.
Where the band looks identical to the Cuban band.
But man, I'll tell you, the domestic cigars have gotten so good, they have gotten, they've all really, some of them are really, really good.
And some of them, people tell me now, they like, they prefer to Cubans.
In some cases, they're made better.
Quality is better.
But the Opus X is a unique cigar because it's the only place that the Fuentes found a way to grow all three tobacco types in one plantation.
I see.
Well, this is a nice education.
I appreciate your time.
Give those a shot.
But you, let's see, what else?
I don't know.
This is the problem.
I don't mean to be forgetting or disrespecting any of the others because I, my gosh, some Davidoff, the Davidoff Double R, the Double Corona, if you like a big, long cigar, is good.
Okay.
The Padrones, now the Padrones are routine.
Those are Nicaraguan cigars.
Now, you talk about unique.
You're not going to find a cigar taste anything like a Padrone anywhere.
And they're out of Nicaragua, and they have in Marvin Shankin's magazine, Cigar Ficionado, for years they were finishing number one in every category.
Okay.
And the editor says that.
So you've got a lot to choose from there.
Right, right.
What do you drink when you have a cigar?
Well, several different things.
I guess the basic is, can I say it's an adult beverage?
It's all right.
Sure.
Yeah, I like scotch or a cognac.
And when I lived abroad, I used to drink Vecchia Romagna, which is a kind of Italian brandy.
Yeah, that's great.
That's good.
Almost like butterscotch.
Oh, sounds good.
So, yeah, so a hard liquor with a cigar, of course.
And at what time of the day do you have your first cigar?
Well, I'm not a huge smoker.
You know, maybe I do five or six a year.
Oh, well, for crying out loud, five or six a year?
But I'm interested in them, so that's why I thought it was.
And you talked about them last week on Friday, and that's what made me think about them.
Well, always, as you get into this, there's a theory that I think is wrong.
And that is you start the day mild and you build and build until after dinner at night.
That's when you smoke the strongest cigar.
And that's a crock.
What you should do is smoke your favorite cigar all the time.
And the first cigar of the day can oftentimes be the best one because that's when the palate is the most receptive to the unique flavors of the cigar.
I see.
Well, when I do smoke them, I smoke them in the evening, hopefully after my daughter goes to bed.
You know, I don't want to smoke her up.
My wife doesn't really like it in the house, but she lets me get away with it once in a while.
Maybe that's why I have a limit of five or cigars.
Well, I'll give you something.
When you really get into this, you live in Lansing, so you don't, this time of year going outside to smoke a cigar, this thing's going to fall apart on you because it's cold and there's no humidity.
And it's snow on the ground now.
Well, yeah.
So you need to be able to smoke inside.
Therefore, you need an HVA system called Thermal.
Oh, I forget the name of it.
It'll come to me in a moment.
But what it does, it floods the bottom of your room with cold air and it rises as the air warms takes the smoke with it out of the room.
It doesn't recirculate through filters and it takes the smoke out of the room so that the next day, nobody knows you were smoking a cigar in there.
Wow, that's fantastic.
Yeah, a guy named George Dunham designed this system, and it is back in the days you can smoke in restaurants.
Some of them had it.
I see.
It was a thermal.
I'm having a metal block of this.
It's one other word, and I'm having a metal block.
I'll think of it before the program ends.
You either consult my website or keep the radio on, and I'll have the name for you.
Well, I'll be listening all afternoon, as I do every day.
Okay, cool.
Thanks for the call, and we will be back.
Don't go away, folks.
One of the drive-bys took a stab at challenging Obama today at his sequestered press conference.
Here's how that went.
Sounds like you're saying this is a Republican problem and not one that you bear any responsibility for.
Well, Julie, give me an example of what I might do.
Just trying to clarify yourself.
Well, no, but I'm trying to clarify the question.
What I'm suggesting is I've put forward a plan that calls for serious spending cuts, serious entitlement reforms, goes right at the problem that is at the heart of our long-term deficit problem.
I've offered negotiations around that kind of balanced approach.
And so far, we've gotten rebuffed because what Speaker Boehner and the Republicans have said is we cannot do any revenue.
We can't do a dime's worth of revenue.
So, what more do you think I should do?
Losing $170 million, that's a mean trick the Republicans are pulling off there, killing 170 million jobs.
We only have 140 million.
Now, we used to have 149 million jobs.
You know that?
Back in 2009, when President Obama took office, we had about 149 million jobs in the country.
We now, after the Republicans, have gotten rid of those jobs the past four years, now down to 140.
And we're going to lose all of those and an additional 30 million jobs because of the Republicans.
And Maxine Waters is the one telling us this.
A female kicker is set to try out for the National Football League regional combine tryout.
What I want to know is: are they going to ask her if she likes girls?
Because we've been told that they're asking certain players if they're heterosexual at the combine, which the question confuses some of the players.
I don't know what that is.
So they want to ask them if she likes girls.
They want to promote greater diversity in football.
I'm not kidding.
Her name is Lauren Silberman.
I'm not kidding.
She wants to kick for an NFL team.
Thermal displacement is the ventilation system I have in my home that vacates cigar smoke and the aroma out of the room.
Thermal displacement.
I couldn't remember the name, but I just did.
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