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March 6, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:44
March 6, 2013, Wednesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Really?
Really, they have shut down tours of the White House because of the sequester.
Can anybody doubt what is really going on?
We had a long protracted discussion yesterday about the inarguable concept that the whole point of this is to hurt as many people as possible in order to marshal support against ever cutting the government or making it smaller.
How are you doing, folks?
Great to have you back.
Already humped day L. Rushbaugh behind a golden EIB microphone.
Telephone number if you want to be on the program 800-282-2882, the email address, L Rushbow at EIB net.com.
All right, folks, uh little inside baseball before we get going here.
Finally, we got it done.
The Rush Android app is now available in the Google Play Store.
We've had our App Store app for the Rush Limbaugh show for I don't know, a year or two.
And we've been working diligently on the Android app for the five or six of you that use it.
And so we wanted to make it available.
We're working very, very hard, and it's there, and it's free.
Now the the Rush Limbaugh Android app is just like our iPhone app.
It's identical.
You can read transcripts of the program for free every day.
And if you become a subscriber to Rush 24-7, that's what we call the website, then you can watch the Ditto Cam live or on demand every day, or you can stream the audio live or on demand every day.
You can watch the video of the morning update.
This is our massively popular uh early morning commentary heard on our 600 plus radio stations all over the country.
All of this is available to you as a subscriber on either the iPhone app, the iPad app, or now the Android app at the Google Play Store.
You can send emails to the host.
You can send emails to me from the phone via the super secret private email address.
And guess what?
I know when you have sent me an email from either the iPhone app or now the Android app because it says in my email inbox from the app.
That's how I know that you are sending so I know I'm getting mail from the app.
We get tons of it, but as a way to distinguish yourself and set yourself apart from others.
Kind of like the people who have a Reagan.com email address, same thing.
So the uh the app requires Android 4.0 and above.
What are they up to now at Android 4.2?
What are you up to?
Jelly bean, ice cream sandwich?
What are they up to now on the Android?
You know what?
The problem with Android is depends on what the phone is as to what your operating system is.
And not the problem.
I don't mean I don't mean to be ripping it.
I mean, after all, they're approaching a thousand dollars a share on the stock market.
So who am I?
Uh Google.
Google is.
Well, 800 plus now on the stock market.
They're just quietly trending up.
They're going gangbusters.
Check it out.
You haven't noticed that?
Well, it's it's it's happening.
Anyway, it's Android 4.0 or above that you need.
So uh if you have an outdated phone using an older Android operating system in 4.0, you're gonna buy a new phone.
So we can say that we are engaging in economic stimulus here courtesy of the EIB network.
So we really seriously have been working on this for a long time.
The Android app is now available for the Rush Limbaugh program at the Google Play Store.
Now when we get the uh the Android version Limbaugh Letter, we'll tell you that.
So you got two apps now for you in the app store on the um on the Apple side.
We've got the show app, which is Rush Limbaugh, and the Limbaugh Letter app.
We've now digitized my uh my monthly newsletter.
Folks, look, uh Hugo Chavez's room temperature.
I know that uh uh the smell of sulfur is everywhere, and yes, we have the sound bites of the the media in this country actually is is extremely sad.
It's hilarious to listen to this.
And I have a story here From USA Today.
And the way they headline the story is this who will take care of us, say the poor after Chavez dies.
There's an object lesson here about where this country is headed.
We've joked often about the similarities between Hugo Chavez and Obama, but they're really somewhat serious here.
A 27-year-old housewife is quoted in the USA Today story, who will take care of us now.
Chavez cared for the people, not like the other presidents.
Who will take care of us?
The president of the country's dead, and citizens are now feeling lost and potentially homeless, moneyless.
Who will take care of this?
And this is the direction that we are headed.
This is exactly the direction we're headed.
Now it's not imminent.
Well, no, it is imminent.
It's not anytime soon, hopefully, but this is the direction that we're trending.
And people all over Venezuela are asking who will take care of us now.
And of course, the dirty little secret is that the number of poor people in Venezuela skyrocketed during Hugo Chavez's presidency.
He did not take care of the poor, but he made them think he was.
When he would go out and nationalize some oil wells, for example, he always did it under the auspices of taking those oil wells back from those evil corporations and giving the money back to the people.
And the people cheered.
The thing is, they didn't get the money Chavez did.
Chavez's family has an estate in excess of two billion dollars.
Whatever Chavez took out of the country, he gave to himself.
The poor people in Venezuela are still poor.
The number of poor people are growing.
But the psychology is stunning.
The poor people in Venezuela think they're being taken care of.
They think they're okay.
Now they feel like they're not.
Chavez is dead.
Who's going to take care of them?
Their lives have been getting worse.
The reality is that their economic circumstances have been getting worse, and yet they still supported it.
That's why I'm going to such great lengths to try to reach low information voters in this country with this program because this is where we are headed.
This kind of blind faith and trust in the government to take care of you rather than you investing in yourself.
There's nobody cares more about you than you.
There's nobody has your self-interests at heart more than you have.
There's nobody better equipped to take care of you than you.
But look how easy it is to turn your life over to people that you don't even know.
The people you'll never even meet.
People with whom all you have is faith and a belief because of their slick demagoguery and their ability to make you think they care about you.
as your life gets worse every day.
Life in Venezuela didn't improve under Chavez, but people thought it did.
And this, at least the poor thought it did.
And this is the danger that we face in this country.
So, yeah, we'll get to all that and some of the funny media sound bites in due course.
But there are a couple of polls out here today, and they greatly conflict with each other.
And they are about Obama's approval numbers.
Now, the first poll is from Reuters.
It's a Reuters Ipsos poll.
And according to this poll, approval for Obama has crashed.
He's down to 43% approval in the Reuters poll.
The other poll that's out is some Rasmussen.
The Rasmussen poll has Obama's approval at above 50%.
Now we had, there was another poll that was uh Gallup earlier this week had Obama's approval number at 48.
It was the first time he was under 50 in that poll in quite a while.
So two out of three have Obama's approval number falling, but Rasmussen is right there.
Now the the Rasmussen breakdown illustrates the limbaugh Theorem.
Listen to these two items.
Obama's net approval rating remains above 50%.
Second item, 29% of likely voters believe that government spending cuts hurt the economy.
So let's round the number up, make it easy.
30% of the people believe that cutting government spending will hurt the country.
On the other side of that, by a 50% to 27% margin, likely voters believe that increasing government spending hurts the economy.
And right here we have the limbaugh theorem on display for one and all to see in the Rasmussen poll.
50% say that increasing government spending hurts the economy, and yet the same people give Obama high marks for job performance.
They do not associate Obama with the increase in government spending.
It doesn't say they associate it with the Republicans, but they clearly don't associate Obama with it.
This is an amazing dichotomy.
50% approve of Obama, a little over 50, approve of Obama's job performance.
The same people say that increasing government spending hurts the economy.
Well, Obama is single-handedly increasing government spending.
He's doing it by executive order.
He's doing it by continuing resolution.
He's doing a budget crisis after budget crisis after budget.
He's the one doing it.
Six trillion dollars been added to the national debt in four years under Obama.
And the same people who say that that hurts the economy, in their opinion, approve of the job Obama is doing.
Which means that the last four years of Obama's spending binge has not yet been seen as Obama's by the people in the Rasmussen poll.
And this frankly is the problem the Republicans have to solve.
And it really isn't that hard.
They're going to have to figure out a way to make the president appear to be governing, as he is, rather than constantly campaigning.
Now let's go back to Reuters for a second here.
Less than two months into his second term, President Barack Obama's approval rating has dropped, and Americans blame him and his fellow Democrats almost as much as his Republican opponents for the fiscal mess.
Now in the White House, they don't like and don't believe Rasmussen.
They believe this other stuff.
I don't know what their internal polling is showing.
Probably something similar here.
Now this is an online poll.
Forty-three percent of the people approve of Obama's job.
That's down seven percentage points since February 19th, just the last couple of weeks.
Most of that drop came in the week, February 26th, when it was becoming clear that Washington was going to be unable to stop the sequester.
Confounding the White House's efforts to blame Republicans for the cuts.
Most respondents in the online survey hold both Democrats and Republicans responsible.
Now, this is not the way it's supposed to work.
Now this really it only means that the news media and the rest of the Democrat Party are going to have to redouble their efforts.
I don't know.
I'm as confused as you are.
There's two different polls here.
And Rasmussen, I know a lot of people in uh in this audience, a lot of you have a lot of faith in the Rasmussen poll, and you don't have a lot of faith in Reuters.
Now they were all correct, as it turns out.
Give her give or take a point or two, they were all correct, the 2012 election forecasts.
At Reuters, I'll tell you in this story, they even go so far as to claim this quote Obama is now facing questions over whether he and fellow Democrats miscalculated the budget showdown and especially their messaging strategy of making frequent graphic warnings that public services were about to be decimated by cuts.
There aren't any cuts, but people think there are.
So now we've got the White House tours shutdown.
That folks, that that is that just flat out irresponsible.
No need for that.
How many people do you think are in Washington this week who have planned vacations for maybe a year in advance?
You know, it's March.
Sometimes at Cherry Blossoms are out in Washington.
Sometimes it's warm.
Um people schedule trips to the nation's capital year round.
How many people are there you think have arranged tours of the White House via their congressman or through the White House tour office, and they're shut down.
And if you call the Office of White House tours, you get a tape recording, digital recording, telling you that because of the sequester and budget cuts, there isn't any money for your scheduled tour of the White House.
There's no need for that.
That alone is evidence of what Obama is attempting to accomplish here with this.
That's just childish.
I mean, that that is the that's so immature and so childish, but it's who we're dealing with.
But the limbaugh theorem continues to be on full display, and as we get into the audio sound bites today, you'll hear even more of it as expressed by others.
I want to remind you this the the limbaugh theorem points out not the only way it can happen, the only way it can succeed, is not only with a slavish media, but with a weak opposition party.
In my estimation, now this is just me, and I'm sure many of you are going to disagree with this, but I don't think Obama is that sharp.
I don't think he's the smartest guy in the room, and I don't think he's automatically charismatic.
I don't think that he's intimidating.
I think his race is.
I think a bunch of people are afraid to be critical of him because they're going to be accused of racism and they don't want to go anywhere near that.
But he didn't even write this playbook.
This is Saul Alinsky.
This playbook has been written by radicals decades ago who came before him.
But he owns the narrative because he's never taken down any notches.
I I have to tell you, it gets it gets frustrating.
I read, I'm sure you do too, I listen to all of these Republican strategists, elected officials, campaign theorists.
You know, they're they're all over the place.
And they are theorizing why the Republicans lost the election, what they have to do to win, and they're getting it all wrong.
They're claiming they lost because they didn't have significant outreach to minorities.
They reach out to the Hispanics, reach out to women, the war on women killed them.
Um the Republicans didn't reach out to um uh whatever minority group.
They'd have a correct position on immigration.
That's not why the Republican Party lost.
The Republican Party lost because four million of its voters didn't show up.
Four million of its conservative voters didn't show up.
And sit there and wring your hands over losing the election and but but at some point, somebody on the Republican side is gonna have to stand up and start defining for people who Obama is rather than acquiescing to all this stuff.
Because where we're headed in not too many years is a citizen standing up when some member of Congress passes away saying, Who's gonna take care of us now?
That is embarrassing.
It's scary.
I gotta take a brief time out, a little long here.
Sit tight, we'll be back much more coming straight ahead right after this.
Here's the uh this is the letter from the White House visitors office.
Attention, interested parties.
Due to staffing reductions, there are seven people in the White House tour office.
White House tours are self-guided.
You get some headphones and a and a digital audio recording and you walk yourself through the tour.
Seven people.
Tours are set up a month in advance through your congressman.
Due to staffing reductions resulting from sequestration, we regret to inform you that White House tours will be canceled effective Saturday, March 9th, until further notice.
Unfortunately, we will not be able to reschedule affected tours.
We very much regret having to take this action, particularly during the popular spring touring season.
For updates regarding this situation, please contact the White House visitors office, 24-hour hotline, which is closed now because of sequestration, and then they give the number.
A person has to go to their Congress and arrange a White House tour.
They usually have to be scheduled more than a month in advance.
There are seven employees in this office.
And the regime has chosen to shut it down.
For precisely this reason, it gets talked about.
People are disappointed and saddened and hurt for the wrong reasons.
Back in a moment.
By the way, if you happen to be somebody under White House tour canceled, all is not lost.
If you can come up with, and I'm not kidding, if you can come up with $500,000, you can buy a meeting with the president, not just get a tour, but you can actually get a meeting with the president.
They are selling access to Obama for half a million dollars.
Now you might ask, why?
What's Obama running for now?
He doesn't have another election he's running for.
He doesn't give his money to the Democrats that are running for office, so what's he need the money for?
Well, the fact of the matter, he does need the money because he is continuing to campaign.
He isn't governing.
He does need to continue to campaign.
He's into year five of pretending not to have any power.
He's into year five of pretending to fight these horrible Republicans and whoever else it is that's destroying this country.
He's into year five of this illusion that he has nothing to do with what's going wrong.
And that's why he needs the money to continue to buy advertising time for his campaign.
But he doesn't have another election.
Sean Penn, noted Hollywood actor, is gonna have to find a new dictator in the world of love because of Hugo Chavez assuming room temperature.
Sean Penn said, I lost a friend, Oliver Stone, a noted Hollywood director, when told that Hugo Chavez had passed away, said, I mourn a great hero.
Now the death of Hugo Chavez matters in a way.
I don't know if you paid any attention to um what's happening in Venezuela, but his hand picked successor, uh, some guy named Maduro, is running around telling the people of Venezuela that Hugo Chavez was murdered by us, that we found a way to give him cancer, just like the Israelis found a way to poison and kill Yasser Arafat.
Now we say that we laugh at this.
Oh my gosh, we've been laughing the last five years.
Who's gonna believe any of this rot gut stuff Obama says?
People do.
The people of Venezuela are going to believe this.
The people of Venezuela are feeling helpless and lost.
They don't know who's gonna take care of them anymore.
They gotta rely on this new president who's telling them that the United States killed their father.
United States killed their provider.
We gave him cancer.
Well, no, no, no, no, not Obama.
Not Obama.
No, no, no, no.
Obama and and Chavez are good buds.
I mean, you see the photo op, the meeting down there, Obama and Chavez shaking hands and they had an embrace.
No, no, no, no.
United the CIA, the Republicans, somebody, George Bush, his people.
Well, that's that's what the people out there are going to be told this.
Now we get not a lot, but we get a significant amount of oil from that country.
Any instability down there is not good.
And they are going to foment all kinds of instability.
They have to.
Folks, this country was worse off for Hugo Chavez.
What whatever Venezuela was when he assumed presidency 14 years ago, he made it abject economically.
I mean the place is Caracas is an expanding slum.
But the people who live there, the people who are mired in poverty and whose economic circumstances are worsening, think Chavez was their hero.
They never got any of the money when he nationalized oil companies or other companies.
He got it.
He and his buddies took the money.
The country of Venezuela didn't get it.
But they believed that he intended to give it to them.
And whatever they had, they believe that he provided it for them.
And it's instructive.
It's highly instructive for what...
We're on a similar path in this country.
And I don't think that can be overestimated.
I don't think it'd be said too much.
It's exactly where we're headed.
And this sequester and some of the things happening and some things the president's saying, and this purposeful desire to inflict pain on the American people with the sequester for two reasons blame the Republicans for it, but also condition people.
That the government can never get smaller.
The government can never cut back in size.
The government can never reduce spending.
Look what happens.
People are denied medical treatment.
People are denied access to health care.
People are denied White House tours.
Long lines at the airports, the TSA checkpoints, all this horrible, and we're not even cutting spending with it.
I mean, we're not even reducing spending.
We're cutting the rate of growth.
So I'm I don't know.
I sit here and I think it'd be the easiest thing in the world today to be a Republican.
I think this is one of the easiest things to oppose.
This would be one of the easiest presidents to identify.
But there doesn't seem to be any desire on the part of any Republican anywhere to do it.
Instead, they're sitting around wringing their hands over why they lost the election and they're all focusing on the wrong things, and they're all prisoners to the daily media narrative.
And this is a fascinating piece here about Twitter.
The Pew Research Center did a year-long study.
They wanted to find out who's there.
They wanted to find out who's using Twitter, who's really spending time there.
Who are these people?
And the reason they did is because more and more, if you if you pay attention to normal everyday drive-by media stuff, you see them report what they see said by somebody on Twitter.
And they report trends on Twitter.
And it is done to create an impression of where the country is.
Because Twitter is thought to be made up of just average Americans tweeting their thoughts.
Anonymously, yeah, but still we're getting an idea of where the country is.
So the pew people were curious about it because Twitter is used by national reporters to gauge immediate public opinion of news events like the sequester, like Obama's election, like the state of the economy.
And it turns out, according to Pew, that a majority of the people who tweet are young Democrats who are there executing a political strategy.
A majority of the people who tweet are young Democrats having been given marching orders from somewhere.
And this gives Twitter the appearance of being unbalanced.
It gives the impression that the makeup makeup of the country and that the country's national attitude is identical to that of the Democrat Party and of Obama.
Reaction on Twitter is much more negative than what public polls find out.
Take the reception to Obama's re-election as an example.
The Pew people said that polling found 52% of the public was happy and 45% unhappy with Obama's reelection.
On Twitter, nearly 80% were happy.
So the universe that is Twitter has been corrupted, so to speak.
It is an outfit that's been taken over by young political activists who are there to create an impression of public opinion that doesn't really exist.
The short version of this would be to say that the Democrats' AstroTurf army has taken over Twitter.
They've taken over Facebook, they've taken over the social media.
And they've they've they doing this to create the illusion that the vast majority of the country is them, that the vast majority of the country agrees with them, and it's not the case.
But it doesn't matter if you don't know this.
If you're not aware of this, you you just you're Republican, for example.
You're exposed to this, and you think, my gosh, I mean, nobody agrees with me.
My gosh, I'm in the tiniest minority, oh my God, and then I gotta find some way to make these people like me.
So I better not criticize Obama.
I better not criticize any of Obama's policies.
And I better maybe moderate my view on illegal immigration.
I better moderate, and it's all being done to manipulate public opinion, which give them credit.
They've succeeded.
They are successfully manipulating public opinion.
They are intimidating all opposition to Obama.
And the thing is the Obama team telegraphed that this was what they were going to do all the way back in the 2007-2008 campaign.
Twitter, for example, it's huge in Washington.
Uh reporters are all over it, constantly tweeting.
Even the sports media tweets left and right.
And they have created the impression, if you think Twitter is America, that therefore America is totally comfortable with all of this that's happening in Washington.
Twitter, Republic, the country, totally satisfied with everything that's going on.
And to the extent that they're not, they don't blame Obama for it.
They don't blame his policies at all.
It's those those mean extremist Republicans.
But then Pew found something that in Washington, they found that Washington's actually a rarity in the nation's capital itself.
Most people don't use Twitter.
Just 13% of adults have they ever use Twitter or read Twitter in Washington.
But not the point.
Nationwide, the illusion has been created that Twitter is simply a microcosm of America, and it's been exposed here by the few people that it isn't.
And this is probably the case with much of social media, which is how their activists attempt to succeed.
You see, it boils down to an unarguable truth.
The left of the Democrat Party cannot survive in the arena of ideas.
Their ideas are still opposed by a majority of people in the country.
The way they succeed is through intimidation.
They scare people into not opposing them.
They scare people and corrupt things into making people believe that a majority of people do agree with them.
But they never debate ideas.
All they do is set out to destroy the character and the reputations of people who oppose them.
In my case, none of these people who rip me or criticize me ever say I'm wrong about anything.
They just characterize me as some mean spirited extremist, you know what.
And it's the same with everybody else that they oppose.
They never ever want to get into a debate on ideas.
They just have to mischaracterize or to look at what they did to Romney.
Romney doesn't mind when guy's wife dies with cancer.
Romney doesn't like his dog, puts his dog on the roof of his car.
Romney is a mean spirited guy, got all of his money in the Caymans, doesn't care about the poor, and it worked because Romney never responded to it because Romney said, like everybody else, nobody's gonna believe this, but they did.
And they believe it because it never ends.
These people are pummeled with it day in and day out.
And that's why the perpetual Obama campaign.
I take a brief time out, and we're gonna work hard at getting your calls in.
I got these, you've got to hear some of these.
We'll get to them next.
Media sound bites and The sorrow and the pain and the abject depression over the passing of a great socialist, Hugo Chavez.
Don't go away.
I actually I do not believe what I am holding here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers.
I do not believe I have a I have an editorial here by the by the Miami Herald, and they rip Hugo Chavez a new one.
This is stunning to me.
Hugo Chavez's folky folksy charm and forceful personality made him extraordinary politician.
His enviable ability to win a mass following allowed him to build a powerful political machine.
It kept him in orifice from February 99 until his death.
Yesterday, but as a national leader, Chavez was an abject failure who plunged Venezuela into a political and economic abyss.
Holy smokes.
There must be, there must be a huge expat Venezuelan population.
Down it was in Durell.
Holy smokes.
My you don't, you're not gonna find this, you're not gonna find this anyway.
You'll find the Heritage Foundation writings things like this.
Uh maybe the Washington Times, but you're not gonna find that anywhere in the mainstream media.
Here, let me give you an example.
Audio soundbite number one.
The state controlled media mourning the death of Hugo Chavez.
This is a montage, and they loved him.
There's nothing they love more than a socialist dictator that hates America.
Folks, I'm not kidding.
There is somebody on NBC actually said that Chavez is a great loss.
Who is going to be the next socialist anti-American dictator in that country?
As though that's a job that needs to be filled.
In order for the balance of the world to be maintained, we need somebody in Latin America who's a huge socialist and hates America.
NBC actually found somebody that had that point of view.
The provocative and unpredictable strongman of Venezuela has died.
The streets are filled with mourners.
Chavez was a hero to Venezuela's poor.
Chavez was a charismatic hero wearing that trademark red shirt.
Incredibly charismatic.
He was very charismatic and quite funny.
He's very quick witted.
Chavez got a lot of big name celebrities who liked him who endorsed him.
He sort of branded himself as the anti-Bush.
He reduced unemployment significantly.
Brought millions of Venezuelans out of the public.
He could be very wrong.
He was very vulnerable.
We like to sing.
He was a crazy American baseball fan.
He was huggable.
He generated positiveness about him.
I tell you folks, it is unreal.
It is absolutely surreal.
The last two voices there were Baba Wawa and Larry King.
And then of course, Piers Morgan had to weigh in there.
He reduced unemployment significantly, brought millions of Venezuelans out of the this guy, I I don't know.
I don't know how Piers Morgan.
Well, I do know how he gets a job.
I mean, but I it's the exact opposite.
He did not rescue people from poverty.
He did not bring millions out of poverty.
He brought millions into poverty.
He didn't reduce unemployment significantly.
Miami Herald has the truth.
That country was far worse off after 14 years, just like any country is after a socialist dictator.
Oh, crime exploded out the wazo.
The place was dangerous.
There were food shortages in a supposedly paradise socialist country where everybody was going to prosper.
He would go out, he nationalized oil companies, oil wells.
Just went in and took them from the companies that owned them.
Who was gonna stop him?
And he did it under the auspices of giving the money to the people of Venezuela.
And he and his family have an estate valued at two billion dollars upon his death.
The people of Venezuela got nothing.
Prosperous parts of Venezuela were converted to slums.
I mean, it it's stunning.
And here we have the brightest lights of the American media falling hook, line, and sinker for this.
It's embarrassing.
It is purely embarrassing.
You know, given all the oil in Venezuela, that country ought to be like the United Arab Emirates or Dubai or Saudi Arabia instead of the cispool of poverty that it is.
What do you think the unemployment rate is?
Saudi Arabia, for example.
You probably can't even measure it.
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