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March 1, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
30:44
March 1, 2013, Friday, Hour #3
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Time Text
It is the fastest three hours in media, and the proof of that is that we've only got one left to go here on Friday.
It is unbelievable.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's Open Line Friday!
That's right.
Telephone number 800-282-2882 Open Line Friday.
We go to the phones.
Whatever you want to ask about, it's okay.
Whatever you want to say, for the most part, it's okay.
It doesn't have to be about sequester.
It doesn't have to be about big item in the news.
It can be, if you care about it, but it doesn't have to be.
It can be whatever interests you.
I just got a note from the Hutch.
You know, he had this story here about Lauren Silberman who wants to try.
She wants to be a kicker in the NFL.
And they're going to give her a tryout at one of the regional combines.
And she said she's not treating the tryout like a publicity stunt.
She got a bio at NFL.com, by the way.
So they've listed her.
She's a former soccer player at Wisconsin.
She seems to understand what she's up against.
More likely, she wants to use this weekend of tryouts as an opportunity to promote greater diversity in football.
Folks, I told you, I told you, enjoy it while you can because it isn't long for this world as you and I have known the game.
Diversity in football.
She's also going to use the opportunity, Lauren Silberman is, as a stepping stone to other ventures, public speaking, sports marketing.
I got a note from the Hutch.
The Reverend Dr. Ken Hutcherson in Seattle used to play the NFL for the Seattle Seahawks, Dallas Cowboys, San Diego Chargers.
He said that after his rookie year, and I don't think he means the Cowboys, I don't.
This probably happened when he played at Alabama or in Alabama.
But he said that a female tried out for the team and she wanted to be a holder on extra points and field goals.
And he told me he has never seen more roughing the holder penalties and longer pileups and pileons.
In fact, his exact words, she wanted to be a holder.
She almost got killed.
She couldn't catch the ball.
This opened her to getting hit.
It's the largest and the longest pileup I ever witnessed.
Meaning the guys took advantage of the opportunity.
She couldn't catch the ball.
It's a fumble.
The scrum ensued to try to recover the fumble, and you know what goes on in those things.
I don't know how long she lasted, and it can't be that the cowboys ever tried out a woman.
Don't say that she doesn't really want to kick.
If she makes a team as a kicker, I'm sure she would do it.
See, this is, you know, are you not paying attention to what's happening in this country?
Snirdly just said, what team is going to put a woman on the field to get, what did you say, brutalized?
That isn't what's going to happen.
But what team is going to put a woman on the field?
What owner wants to build up a positive image with the current makeup of the country as diverse and where else in his life can we make a lot of money and get a lot of media attention from being the first to do it?
What do you mean, what owner?
There'll be one, maybe two.
And then there's going to have to be a rules change.
Roughing the kicker, you're not going to be allowed to touch, run into, you're not even going to be allowed to get near the kicker if there is a woman.
That's what I mean.
They're going to have to, because the fans will not put up with seeing a woman brutalized, as you say, but creamed by guys that weigh three times what she weighs.
So have to be rules changes to accommodate it.
But I can see a couple owners.
I can probably name a couple who would do it for the positive PR.
Entertainment tonight would be at practice every day.
You want to open the game up to an audience that's not yet interested in it?
That's what I mean.
Enjoy it while you can.
That's a real Neanderthal question.
You're not paying attention to what's happening in the country if you ask me stuff like that.
The question now is not what owner would do.
The question is when and which owner is going to do this.
The Harvard Crimson.
That's the college newspaper, university newspaper.
Harvard Crimson published an editorial urging conservatives not to apply to Harvard if they intend to criticize the university down the line for political points.
The editorial titled Warning Do Not Enroll denigrates famous conservatives who graduated from Harvard and later sharply, perhaps hypocritically, complained about the place because of its liberal ideology, including Nitt Romney, Ted Cruz, Bill O'Reilly.
These are Harvard graduates who now rip the place.
And the Harvard Crimson has just published an editorial.
Don't enroll here if that's what you intend to do.
If you're a conservative and you want to come here and be one, don't come.
Now, I suppose you're going to ask me, how can they get away with that?
How can they get away with that?
You're going to ask me that?
Okay, so now you could, so this, no, that's Harvard.
It'll happen.
From NBC News in Los Angeles, an enterprising Los Angeles mother-to-be is outsourcing the name of her soon-to-be-born human baby.
26-year-old Natasha Hill is due in September, and she is selling the naming rights to her baby for $5,000.
How about FedEx Field?
How about Staples Center?
How about Bank of America?
How about Heinz Field?
She's naming rights, $5,000, and you can name my baby.
Now's your reaction.
Who'd be stupid enough to do this?
You want to know who's going to pay her and get it done?
You don't think somebody will?
Somebody will pay her, and it's going to end up being more than $5,000.
And the kid's going to be walking Billboard fame for all of his or her life.
And after five or six years, the mother is going to go back to court and say she didn't charge enough.
And the person who bought the naming rights knew that they were getting a big deal.
Is she going to sue for more money when the kid is five or ten years old?
And then do it again when the kid's 20.
And then the kid will sue when he's 21 because all this happened to him.
The kid will sue because he doesn't like to be known as Staples Center.
Kid's going to be a walking lawsuit.
The mother's going to be a walking lawsuit.
Somebody's going to do it.
Audio Soundbite Time.
We got a lot of these and they're good.
And we're going to start Matt Wauer on the Today.
But you know what I saw?
I can't believe this.
The Today Show in the demographic, 2554 adult demographic that ostensibly advertisers covet.
The Today Show finished third in New York City.
Apparently, I didn't know it was this bad.
I knew they were having some challenges there.
But the Today Show finished behind Good Morning America and the local morning show on Fox 5 in New York.
That's a crisis.
NBC.
So the story I saw, and you don't know if there's anything to it, the story, because they just re-signed Lauer to a huge deal, a huge extension.
And I don't know how much of it's guaranteed.
I don't know what outs Comcast has, but this story said they're already talking about maybe getting rid of him.
You know, originally it was Ann Curry's problem that nobody was watching.
So they got rid of Ann Curry because Lauer didn't like it.
Then Al Roker went out there and admitted that he pooped in his pants at the White House at the Christmas party.
You think that might have something to do with this?
Do you think people really want to tune into the weather on the Today Show and listen to the weather guy talk about pooping in his pants at the White House?
And Al Joke, he didn't do it just one day.
He got a whole week out of it.
Then Matt Lauer went out and cut his hair.
He looks now like a skinhead.
And they're finally getting around to blaming him.
Poor guy.
Anyway, he was talking to Woodward this morning on the Today Show.
And here's how that started.
These kinds of high-energy, high-octane, high-emotion conversations and debates happen all the time between government officials and the people who cover them.
You felt the heat before.
Why'd you go public with this one?
Well, I didn't go public.
Politico came and asked me in a long-hour interview about how I decided and what the interaction was to write that op-ed piece, really calling the Obama administration out, pointing out how the president had said Congress was the one that proposed the sequestration, these automatic spending cuts.
It turns out that's not true.
The White House has finally acknowledged that.
Now, Bob, did you, I know this happened early this morning.
This happened before the president's presser.
Where is it?
I've already gotten rid of those sound, but grab Soundbite 32.
You just heard Woodward say that the White House has acknowledged that they, that Obama did the sequester.
The White House has acknowledged now that the White House did the sequester, and that's what he reported, and they at first opposed him on that, but now they've admitted it.
And then 7 o'clock, 4 and a half hours later.
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 refused to budge on closing a single wasteful loophole to help reduce this.
So, Bob, with all due respect, the White House has not acknowledged this.
But Woodward did report that the sequester was Obama's idea, got into big trouble.
But Lauer wanted, why are you doing this, Bob?
Why are you going off the reservation?
And so that was Matt Woward.
And last night, now Woodward is trying to stave off the death panel here because BuzzFeed, a bunch of people have put it out there.
The big news in Washington today is that everybody's waiting for Woodward to die.
I'm not making this up.
This was on a website.
It's been talked about on TV now.
The upshot is that all these reporters in Washington, they don't really like Woodward.
They resent him.
Human nature is what it is.
We've been thinking all this time that Woodward is a god, that Woodward is an idol, that Woodward is a guy they really look up to, the guy that inspired them to get into journalism.
Woodward is the guy they all want to be.
Woodward is the guy you can rely on.
Woodward's the guy that got access.
Woodward is it.
Woodward is the king of the hill.
And it turns out that now that Woodward's gotten in trouble, a bunch of reporters, lower level to be sure, are now coming out and expressing the fact that Woodward is not highly respected.
He's not even well liked.
And they're talking about now how a whole bunch of people are just waiting for Woodward to die because a lot of people have the goods and a bunch of dirt on Woodward.
They can't report it while he's alive.
There are others like at gawker.com who are raising the possibility that the whole Watergate story or big parts of the Watergate story were made up.
And the only reason they ended up in the paper was because Ben Bradley let them end up in the paper, but that Woodward and Bernstein were making stuff up left and right.
So the long knives are out.
Bob Woodward is in trouble.
And it's amazing.
When Dan Rather did a phony report on Bush and the National Guard, Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings circled the wagons to protect Dan Rather.
Now, big difference, a Republican was president, George W. Bush.
Whenever anybody in the media got in any trouble, when they were caught faking it, forging things, when their ratings went south, other journalists would circle the wagons, give them awards, protect them.
Bob Woodward's gotten in trouble, and it looks like everybody or many in the upper levels of journalism in the nation's capital want to throw Woodward under the bus.
Even now, expressing excitement at the prospect of his death so that people can tell the truth about Woodward that they have to hide now because he's so powerful.
So he's on with Hannity last night.
Hannity said, okay, Bob, let's start at the beginning.
Tell us about the conversation in question here.
People have said, well, this was a threat, or I was saying it was a threat.
I haven't used that language, but it's not the way to operate in a White House.
As you know, when somebody says you're going to regret something, particularly somebody in a position of power like Gene Sperling, I just think that's a mistake.
And if you go back into the history and what other people are saying now about the Obama White House, Ron Forgier of National Journal wrote a piece that he's actually refused to talk to somebody in the White House because the language he gets from this person is so belligerent.
That's true, but Ron Fournier also ended his piece by saying Obama, if he knew about this, would be livid.
And Woodward said something to that extent.
I can't believe Obama knows what his underlings are doing.
You guys can't possibly believe it.
Bob, you have to know that Obama is the inspiration for these guys and the way they're treating you and the way Fournier is being treated.
Obama's the inspiration.
These guys are trying to act in Obama's name.
He's the Alinskyite.
They're there because that's how Obama wants them to behave.
Anyway, Hannity said, Well, Bob, do you feel that that's been a pattern with you in this White House?
Do you feel at any time threatened, either during the phone call?
Did you feel it was a threat when he wrote, you'll regret this?
What happened here?
I wrote a piece Sunday in the Washington Post on the op-ed page, and they got caught about being the father of the sequester.
And they, for two or three months, denied that to Jay Carney's credit.
He came out and said, Look, yes, the idea originated here.
They got caught, and so this is an old trick.
Make the conduct of the press the issue rather than their conduct.
The conduct of the press, Bob, they're blaming the Republicans for everything.
Well, and you now.
But here's another instance of Woodward saying, to Jay Carney's credit, he came out and said, yeah, the idea for the sequester originated here.
Obama isn't saying that.
And again, at his presser this morning, Obama once again blamed the Republicans for the sequester.
These people, my head's swimming.
Nobody knows who's really saying what here.
Next question from Hannity.
So they attack you as being willfully wrong.
Why should this matter?
I mean, don't we deserve our government to be honest with us, Bob?
Exactly.
And I'm almost 70 years old.
I hate to acknowledge.
I've done this for four decades.
The problem is there are all kinds of reporters who are much less experienced, who are younger.
And if they're going to get roughed up in this way, and I flooded with emails from people in the press saying this is exactly the way the White House works.
They're trying to control, and they don't want to be challenged or crossed.
Okay, so I got to take a quick time out here, folks.
Sit tight, back with more just.
Don't go away.
All right, folks, I have to apologize to you way in advance here.
My staff totally blew it in reminding me to take the 17 minutes after the hour commercial break.
And I just got wrapped up in the show, just as wrapped up in it as you get listening to it.
And I practically zoomed through that break just in the nick of time, which means that we now have to take the next break.
And I'm apologizing for this segment being only long enough for me to blame the staff for the mistake.
Just like Obama blames the Republicans.
There was another error.
Obama got something else wrong at his press conference today.
When he said this, starting tomorrow, everybody here, all the folks who are cleaning the floors at the Capitol, now that Congress has left, somebody is going to do the vacuuming and cleaning these floors and throw out the garbage.
And they're going to have to have less pay.
The janitors, the security guards, they just got a pay cut.
And they got to figure out how to manage that.
That's real.
Sequester means people clean up around here.
Just got to cut.
But Dana Bash over at CNN has since tweeted that that's not right.
She said, despite Obama claim pay cuts to begin for Capitol janitors and police, the sergeant-at-arms tells me that there are no plans for pay cuts yet.
And just like the Education Secretary Arne Duncan yesterday, saying that teachers were already getting pink slips when they weren't.
Well, why shouldn't they say this?
They're getting away with blaming all this on the Republicans.
I'd go for it.
If I were the Democrats, I'd be throwing everything I had at the Republicans right now.
Because for the most part, it's going to stick.
It's going to stick with my low-information voters.
The media is going to help me make it stick.
By the way, Jeff Sessions, I love Jeff Sessions, Republican senator from Alabama.
Jeff Sessions pointed out that Obama's golf weekend down here at the Floridian, the one in which he played around with Tiger Woods, Obama's golf weekend cost as much as 341 federal workers furloughed.
341 federal workers furloughed is how much it cost for Obama to do his golf weekend here.
Speaking of which, we got Courtney in Wilmington, North Carolina.
As we go back to the phones, Open Line Friday.
Greetings.
How are you?
I'm good.
How are you?
Good.
Thank you.
I was calling today.
My husband is an eight-year veteran of the 75th Ranger Regiment, and he now works for a Department of Justice agency.
And he is in receipt of his 14-day furlough notice, which is 112 working hours for our one-income family.
We have two young boys.
He and I had to sit down and figure out how to trim our budget in a matter of days so we can try to make it through this.
However, these agencies can't figure out how to trim their budget instead of passing it off to the middle-income workers.
You know, he sees so much government waste.
Do you know how many children's health programs there are?
There's like 26.
Do you know how many programs there are to feed kids at school?
It's like 10 or 12 of those.
My point is that there are all kinds of federal programs that are built on top of each other, redundant, that they could cut and not be cutting anything at all, and you wouldn't have to be.
You're being cut on purpose.
Obama wants pain like you are experiencing, and he wants you calling here and others like you calling media and telling them about it because he wants Republicans getting blamed for the tight economic circumstances that you're now in because of him.
That's what's so frustrating.
There's just so in his agency alone, there's so much wasteful spending on a daily basis.
You know, there's no reason they need to drive 2013 government cars.
Yes, there is.
It's just like when in your local community of Wilmington, if the mayor is facing tight budget circumstances, what's the first thing he'll tell you he's going to close?
The fire department.
And then what do you, oh, no, there's not going to be a fire truck if there's a house.
And you beg the mayor not to shut down the fire department.
And the mayor says, well, you're going to have to agree to a property tax increase because that's what's going to happen if I don't get more revenue.
And if it's not the fire department, it's the teachers.
And if it isn't the teachers, it's the cops.
And if it's not the cops, it's all three of them until you finally agree to be squeezed out of a new tax increase.
And the same thing is being done to you.
It's not necessary at all for your husband to be furloughed those days.
No, it's definitely not necessary.
We are spending things that could be cut.
$3.7 trillion we're spending this year.
This government is $3.7 trillion.
There's no reason.
These furloughs, these areas, Obama is in charge of what gets cut.
Now, he's got to make the cuts in defense.
The sequester requires that half the cuts come from defense.
Are you telling me that there are not weapons programs temporarily be put on hold or some such things?
It's absurd.
But you have to understand, I think you do.
This is purposeful.
Right.
No, I mean, I understand exactly what he's trying to do, you know, but it's ridiculous.
And I just, you know, he said that people, you know, yesterday he just said that people aren't going to see immediate effects from it.
But that's not a true statement at all.
No, it isn't.
It isn't to you.
But you are not the audience.
Obama doesn't care about the people who disagree with him.
In his mind, you are very few in number.
You're a minority.
He is continuing to play what Obama's objective here, and he's using your husband to do it, and others like your husband, Obama's objective is to eliminate all opposition, political opposition.
This is about wiping out the Republican Party.
That's all this is.
And you, your family, your husband is a mere pawn in this, Courtney.
You are paying the price for Obama's political ambitions.
And we are back.
It's El Rushbo.
It's Open Line Friday, Charlie, in Springfield, Illinois.
I'm glad you waited, sir.
You're up.
Hello.
Well, thank you, Rush, for taking my call.
I'm calling from Springfield, Atlanta, Lincoln, personally from the financially strapped state of Illinois.
I was wanting to let you know that you were talking earlier this week regarding Seth McFarlane and the fact that he was making a joke at the Oscars regarding Lincoln getting shot.
He took a lot of heat over that.
Now, back in 2005, I was here in Springfield and was at a dedication for a Lincoln Library Museum, which is a wonderful place to go.
It's a great place.
But they were having this ceremony specifically honoring Lincoln.
You got Dick Durbin here, and he was trying to be funny and was telling a joke about Lincoln, how people thought he was Jewish because his first name was Abraham, and he was shot in the temple.
So just to let you know that that's...
Wait just a second.
I don't think I heard that.
Yeah, April.
I don't think I've heard that story.
Dick Durbin told that joke at the dedication of the Lincoln.
I was honoring Abraham Lincoln specifically, and he told that joke, and I was there.
That was so quiet after he told that joke, he knew he'd stepped in it.
I think the dump we got from Dick Durbin that day was probably bigger than the one Al Roker gave the White House on Christmas.
So he was Jewish because his first name was Abraham and he was shot in the temple.
Yeah.
That was his attempt to be funny that day.
That was just unbelievable.
But yeah, that was April 2005.
I remember that.
That was even back then.
Man, I don't remember it.
Oh, it's on, you can look it up.
Oh, I don't doubt you.
I'm also not surprised it wasn't reported.
Yeah.
Well, you've got to remember who it was.
It was Dick Durbin.
Oh, yeah.
And it's the land of Illinois here.
Look at he was excused.
Oh, yeah.
He was trying to be respectful.
Everybody knows that Democrats love people and care about people.
He's just trying to be funny.
He didn't mean anything by it, just like Biden doesn't.
When he tells a guy in a wheelchair, stand up, Chuck, let him see you.
Oh, my God, what have I done?
Oh, geez.
Let's stand up for Chuck.
Ah, these are goofballs.
Anyway, I hadn't heard that.
Pass that on to Seth McFarlane.
See what he thinks about.
Thanks, Charlie, for the phone call.
Brief time out.
Come back and wrap it up after this.
Okay, that's it.
Another exciting excursion into broadcast excellent is in the can.
Here's the upshot of today.
The Republicans in the Senate yesterday gave Obama a chance to take total control of the spending cuts, and he said he'd veto it if the bill ever got his way.
It was never going to get there, but he would veto it.
He doesn't want his name on anything that's happening.
Did a press conference today before the program started and said that the next six months, any activity that's negative is going to be tied to the sequester, and the sequester happened because of the Republicans.
This is a Limbaugh theorem in perfect wide open view.
All kinds of negative stuff happening that Obama has nothing to do with.
He's seen as fighting it.
He's still opposing these mean Republicans who are inflicting all of this pain on you and six more months of it headed down the pike.
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