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May 10, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:53
May 10, 2013, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
So it's all over the place now that the White House lied about the Benghazi talking points.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Benghazi story has now escaped conservative media and it's all over everywhere now.
I shouldn't say all over.
It's out there.
It is everywhere.
Greetings, folks.
It's Friday, and you know what that means.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's Open Line Friday.
Well, yesterday when we opened the program, I honestly said there wasn't much going on.
And there wasn't.
The big news yesterday with Jody Arius and the Cleveland Castro story.
But today it's Benghazi and the IRS.
And it's also Open Line Friday.
Great to have you.
Rush Limbaugh at 800-282-2882.
Now, remember, the Open Line Friday rules differ from Monday through Thursday in that Monday through Thursday, when you get on the program, you have to talk about things I am interested in.
Can we get rid of the music?
Why is this continuing to go?
Okay, now the rules on Friday are that after or whenever you, whenever we go to the phones, you can talk about whatever you want to talk about.
You can ask questions, you can make comments.
I don't have to care about it.
Really, it's an attempt to turn the content of the program over to you when we go to the phone.
So again, the telephone number is 800-282-2882 and the email address, ilrushbow at EIBNet.com.
So where to begin with this?
I guess the buzz today about Benghazi is over a report by Jonathan Carl.
But the actual beginning of this, if it weren't for Stephen Hayes at the Weekly Standard writing the story in a way that for some reason was attractive to Jonathan Carl at ABC, it might not have escaped conservative media.
Now, folks, there are, well, for example, I just got a note from somebody who said that Scarborough, who is increasingly difficult to decipher, Joe Scarborough at MSNBC this morning said that we'd have been much further along in the Benghazi story if right-wing media hadn't overplayed it.
Now, as often happens with Scarborough, he has inadvertently swerved into a decent point, 50%.
It is true.
I don't think it is deniable.
Whenever we, I, conservative media, are really interested in something, the mainstream media purposely avoid it.
They mock us for being interested, but they use almost as a guidepost anything that's happening in the country.
I don't care it could be news, cultural, could be social, could be political, whatever it is that we are interested in, focused on, trying to call your attention to, they purposely avoid it because we're pushing it.
They have been, I think, moved into the area of journalistic malpractice.
I think they have.
My friend Andy McCarthy asked a question today in a post at National Review.
Does the White House Press Corps have any self-respect left?
Sometime during the administration of Bill Clinton, these journalists went from seeing their job as watchdog keeping Democrat government honest to admiring racing tours of how artfully they were lied to.
Remember that, and he's right about that.
They marveled at how well Clinton lied.
They appreciated it, they studied it, and they learned it.
And they put it into practice.
One of the reasons I'm convinced the Monica Lewinsky story was spiked was because they knew we would run with it.
And then when Drudge did finally run it, they look how long it took them.
They were dragged, kicking, and screaming to the Lewinsky story.
And they've been dragged, kicking, screaming into the Benghazi story.
Now, the difference is where Scarborough's wrong is: had we not made a big deal out of Benghazi, it would have been forgotten.
They would have buried it.
So the idea that we would have gotten to the Benghazi story a lot sooner if right-wing, quote-unquote, media hadn't overplayed their hands is literally nuts.
It's crazy.
One thing I want to add at the top in beginning this discussion today and letting you know where it is, the focus still remains on Hillary Clinton, as it should.
But folks, I'm telling you, the real focus of this is Barack Obama.
And it's going to end up being Barack Obama.
And this is not to excuse Hillary, and it's not to lessen her involvement.
And it's not in any way to suggest that her involvement is insignificant by no means.
But Obama should not get a pass on this.
Where he was during this event is the fundamental question.
And at some point, that question also is going to be asked.
Right now, the focus is on Hillary and the 12 rewrites of the talking points.
12 rewrites of the regime talking points that were used by Susan Rice and others explaining what happened, the video as an excuse, and all that.
The focus right now is the State Department, but at some point, this is going to build and it's going to expand because it must.
If they stick with this, if this actually becomes something they stick with, at some point they're going to have to get to Obama and what he was doing and where he was because he's the only guy that could issue the standdown order.
He's the president.
He's the only guy that can order military action or no military action.
So he's not going to get a pass.
And that's certainly not here at the EIB network.
Now, Stephen Hayes at the Weekly Standard, a week ago, essentially had the story, the essence of this news,
about the talking points being rewritten a grand total of 12 times so as to be flavored and shaped and formed to be the least damaging to the administration.
And we must remember that the talking points, the fraudulent talking points, were the basis for the appearance on the Sunday talk shows by Obama's ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice.
She pretended on behalf of Obama, not Hillary.
She pretended on behalf of Obama that this was nothing more than a spontaneous ad hoc protest provoked by some scoundrel Islamophobe who made a video that nobody at the time had seen.
And the administration knew.
They knew from intelligence that was supplied from the compound throughout the sea.
We've been through the, you know, all of this, but this is just now the fascinating thing.
Everything I'm telling you, you know.
You've known this for months.
You've known this since before the election.
The drive-by media is just now getting to this.
Just now.
You know that Susan Rice was lying.
You know that she was lying on behalf of Obama.
You know that they made up this business about the video.
You know that the administration knew the night of the attack what was going on.
The State Department knew at the time of the attack it was Al-Qaeda.
The White House knew at the time of the attack it was Al-Qaeda.
That's what's been so maddening about this.
Everybody knew.
Dare I say the mainstream media knew.
But the White House line was it was a video.
And so they parroted that, knowing full well what really happened.
Jonathan Carl, ABC News, now reports that talking points went through 12 different rewrites and something very key was eliminated.
And that was all references to Ansar al-Sharia, the al-Qaeda-related group that did the terrorism.
Ansar al-Sharia is the local al-Qaeda group that orchestrated the entire Benghazi operation.
Jay Carney lied.
The rewrites, these talking points were subjected blatantly.
And they blatantly contradict what Carney was saying.
This is a remarkable development to happen here.
And it does illustrate the importance and the relevance of the media.
Like I said yesterday, what was it?
I'm not even talking about Benghazi.
Nothing's going to happen here, folks, till the media gets in on it.
Nothing is going to happen.
I remember telling you yesterday nothing was going to happen.
Well, overnight, something happened.
Let's let you hear it.
Let's go to the audio soundbites.
We've got two bites here from Jonathan Carl.
You might say this is the smoking gun.
This is Good Morning America today.
And Jonathan Carl, the chief White House correspondent for ABC News, we don't know for how much longer, but he had a report this morning on GMA.
We have two sound bites of it.
Here it is.
The White House said they relied entirely on CIA talking points, but I have obtained 12 different versions of those talking points that shows that they were dramatically edited by the administration.
Take a look at two of them.
On the left, a draft initially written by the CIA.
On the right, one that was used by the White House, the final version.
What was taken out?
All references to Al-Qaeda and all references to CIA warnings before the attack about the terror threat in Benghazi.
They knew, folks, they knew, and now ABC's dumped it.
They knew it was Ansar al-Sharia, an al-Qaeda franchise, if you will, in Benghazi in Libya.
They knew.
They knew that there were warnings before the attack, that the CIA had issued warnings before the attack about the terror threat.
They knew it all.
Obama knew it all.
Hillary knew it all.
They studiously crafted a series of lies about a video.
They ignored everything.
They rewrote the talking points over and over and over again.
And now there is no doubt, there is no question whatsoever that Susan Rice was sent out with a bunch of lies to repeat.
She works for Barack Obama and Hillary, but she works for Barack Obama.
Here's the next soundbite of Carl's report, Jonathan Carl on Good Morning America Today.
I have had emails read to me that show that many of these changes were directed by Hillary Clinton spokesperson at the State Department, Victoria Newland.
In one email, she said that information about CIA warnings, quote, could be abused by members of Congress to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings.
So why would we want to feed that?
After that email, all of those references were deleted.
Now, the White House is saying there is nothing inappropriate about the State Department giving input into this and that ultimately the CIA drafted these talking points and approved them.
But I'll tell you, Josh, they initially said only one word had been changed.
Right.
They said only one word had been changed.
The whole story was made up.
The real story was swept under the rug.
Twelve edits, 12 rewrites, if you will.
The whole story swept under the rug.
We were told that the talking points were revised, were edited to protect national security.
Instead, they were edited and revised to protect Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
And about that, there can be no doubt now.
But it's not just ABC that has this story.
Ron Fournier, former White House correspondent, AP bureau chief now at the National Journal, scrubbing the truth from Benghazi.
Caught playing politics with tragedy.
What's next for the Obama administration and Republican investigators?
Ron Fournier, now saying the White House was playing politics with Benghazi.
That makes Obama a liar, according to this story.
And you remember in the debate, one of the three presidential debates, Obama told Mitt Romney in the country he would never play politics with Benghazi, not with four dead Americans.
And he was outraged that there would be any such accusation.
His administration would never play politics.
And that's all they did because that's all they do.
Everything they do is politics.
These changes don't resolve all of my issues or those of my building's leadership.
With that sentence, one in a series of emails and draft talking points leaked to Jonathan Carl of ABC News, the regime was caught playing politics with Benghazi.
Caught playing, I'm reading to you from Fournier, caught playing politics with Benghazi.
It's not just ABC.
And that second presidential debate, President Obama.
The suggestion that anybody in my team, whether the Secretary of State or the UN Ambassador, anybody in my team would play politics or mislead when we've lost four of our own governor is offensive.
It is exactly what happened.
Brief time out as we continue.
Oh, one other thing.
Lisa Myers, NBC News, says a number of Democrats are calling her to attempt to undermine Gregory Hicks, the Benghazi whistleblower.
There's something called Benghazi going on, and I think the Democrats now are starting to worry about it.
It started.
I got calls from a number of Democrats yesterday trying to undermine Greg Hicks' testimony saying he wasn't demoted.
So I think they feel that some damage was done by those three witnesses yesterday.
I think it's safe to say the Democrats may be in full-blown panic mode.
Speaking of Lisa Myers, she's a woman, and NBC, it's a news network.
They have named their new president.
Well, New York Times says they have their new president.
It is a female, a woman who runs ITV in Great Britain.
The chickification of news continues.
We've got a woman running the New York Times.
You have a woman now going to run NBC News.
You have a woman running the White House, Valerie Jarrett.
You got another woman running the White House, Michelle Obama.
And now a woman running NBC News.
And you have Oprah.
We'll be back after this.
You put the dots together if you want.
So it turns out, ladies and gentlemen, Benghazi may be too big to bury.
But I'm serious.
By the way, this is no feather in their cap, but I'm telling you, the drive-by media will pay attention to what we're interested in as conservative media.
And for that reason alone, they'll avoid it.
And the reason they will avoid it is simply so that we don't have a win.
They will subordinate their own integrity.
They will subordinate their own jobs, their own professionalism.
They will subordinate their own self-respect just to deny us what they would consider a win and themselves a loss.
So they looked at Benghazi and they see big trouble for Obama, but we're the only ones talking about it, so they ignore it for that reason, plus the possible damage to Obama.
The fact remains, they participated in a cover-up of four murders after the fact.
And in a sane world, Mrs. Clinton should now be disqualified from holding future public office.
I don't care what the real story might be.
And there may be something we don't know yet about what was going on.
This doesn't cover it.
Boy, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
Now, folks, there's much more than just Benghazi happening out there.
We're going to get back to it in just a second.
But let me give you a little flavor of some of the other things happening out there today.
And I have not forgotten, I asked to be reminded That I wanted to make a point about the politics of Benghazi.
Now, all I was going to say about that, the Democrats are accusing the Republicans in their investigation of Benghazi and the hearings yesterday with the whistleblowers two days ago as being politically motivated, as though that automatically disqualifies whatever happens because, well, it's just political.
In the first place, it's not just political.
There is an actual effort underway to find out what happened.
That effort has been underway since the night of the event last September.
Serious people have wanted to know what really happened, and our interest in what really happened has been intensified by virtue of the number of lies we've been told.
And we have been lied to constantly.
Now, everybody in this audience, all of you, none of what you're hearing today is new to you.
Jonathan Carl might be surprised to learn that the talking points were edited 12 times.
You're not.
Ron Fournier might be surprised to learn whatever it is he's learned, but you're not, because you've known all about this ever since the event occurred in the immediate aftermath, because we chose to talk about it.
Now, the idea that looking into this is political and therefore it's disqualified is absurd.
This is about politics.
The Democrats in the White House have made it political.
In fact, what's guiding them in their effort to spin this and cover it up was politics.
Washington is politics.
Somehow, if people have political objectives, then those objectives are automatically disqualified.
If that's the case, the Democrats have no business being legitimized about anything because everything they do is political.
But the idea that we have to ignore what Greg Hicks said or any of the other whistleblowers because the Republicans are motivated by politics, it's crazy.
It's ridiculous.
It's absurd.
We're motivated by a number of things.
Yeah, there's politics going on here.
Some people say, well, Rush, I've had people email me, Rush, there may be a big problem.
There's no scandal here.
Yes, there is a scandal.
By what definition is there no scandal here?
This is a huge scandal.
And I'll tell you what, in this case, the cover-up is not worse than the crime.
Ever since Watergate, the conventional wisdom has always said, yeah, come forth, be honest, because when you try to cover it up, that's when you get into real trouble.
The cover-up is often worse than the crime.
Not in this case.
They're equally as bad.
So we will stick with this.
And we're going to go back in time to the archives to September.
And in fact, September 17th, just to show you what all was known and broadcast on this program about Benghazi, that the drive-bys claim that they are just learning this week.
In addition to that, the Internal Revenue Service is apologizing for inappropriately flagging conservative political groups for harassment and additional review during the 2012 election.
See if they were violating their tax-exempt status.
Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS unit that oversees tax-exempt groups and organizations that included the words Tea Party or Patriot in their applications for tax-exempt status, were singled out for additional reviews.
Now, folks, let me tell you the truth about this.
What they're saying, by the way, the IRS saying low-level workers in Cincinnati committed these violations, if you will.
And we're deeply sorry here at the IRS.
It's a bunch of low-level workers in Cincinnati, and it was wrong, and we apologize.
And they announced all this at a conference in Washington, the IRS apologizing for inappropriately targeting conservative political groups in 2012.
And what happened was if a political group applying for tax exempt status had the word Tea Party or Patriot in their name, they were singled out for additional investigation and harassment.
Now, how did the IRS become aware of this?
Well, there are a number of conservative groups that alerted them to it.
One of them was the Landmark Legal Foundation.
And amazingly, the IRS responded and looked into it.
Now, I'll tell you, I think this low-level worker in Cincinnati excuse, the equivalent of low-information voters at the IRS, I don't think that's the case at all.
I think low-level workers are being cited here to shield and cover up higher-ups who were obviously engaging in politics.
It's politics, Rush.
We just have to ignore it.
Yeah, we can't.
If there's a political motive, we can't really consider it as serious.
Well, what else could it have been here with the IRS?
They were targeting conservative slash right-wing groups, harassing them, making it doubly tough for them to qualify for their tax-exempt status.
And they have apologized for this.
Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, I mentioned a name to you working at the Heritage Foundation.
His name, Jason Richwine.
What is happening to Jason Richwine is inexcusable.
What do I often say I do on this program?
As a means of helping people, new listeners, understand what happens here.
I get up every day.
I do show prep.
I watch TV.
I read the news.
I absorb whatever I can.
And whenever I see the things I believe in under assault, I come here and defend them.
Whenever I say people that are involved in advancing the things I believe in under assault, I defend them.
So whenever there is an attack on what I believe in, I come here and defend it.
When there is somebody that the left is trying to destroy because they are involved in advancing things I believe in, I defend them.
But never once do I get up and ask myself, who can I attack today?
I'm portrayed as just the opposite.
I come here and I attack.
I defend.
I react to assaults on the traditions, the institutions, and the people that I think are important.
And Jason Richwine is one such person.
But I'll tell you, it actually goes beyond him.
The left is now targeting the Heritage Foundation.
Jason Richwine is a fellow.
He works there.
He's a Harvard University PhD.
And if you recall from yesterday, he co-authored a study that pegs the cost of the amnesty bill to $6.3 trillion.
Now, the lead author is a guy named Robert Rector.
We've quoted him often on this program, too.
He's a former Office of Personnel Management analyst.
He is the leading intellectual warrior on welfare and welfare reform in all of Washington.
He holds a master's degree in political science from Johns Hopkins University.
Jason Richwine at Harvard wrote a doctoral thesis in which he concluded that the IQ of illegal aliens is lower than natural-born residents in the country.
That has been discovered, and he is now being charged with racism and bigotry.
He's out of the Ivy League.
He comes, he's got the perfect pedigree.
He comes out of Harvard.
There were a number of people on the review board for his doctoral thesis.
Want to hear some of the names?
Michelle Malkin looked into this.
Rich Wine's dissertation, dissertation committee at Harvard, included George Borjas, a professor of economics and social policy, Cuban-born scholar, got his PhD in economics from Columbia.
He's an award-winning labor economist, National Bureau of Economic Research Research Associate.
He's written countless books.
Next, Richard Zeckhauser.
Richard Zeckhauser is a professor of political economy at the Kennedy School of Government.
He also signed off on Rich Wine's dissertation.
Zeckhauser earned a PhD in economics from Harvard.
He belongs to the Econometric Society, the American Academy of Sciences, and the Institute of Medicine.
The final member of the committee that approved Rich Wine's thesis, Christopher Jenks.
Christopher Jenks is a professor of social policy at Harvard's JFK School.
Christopher Jenks is a renowned left-wing academic.
He's taught at Harvard, at Northwestern, the University of Chicago, and the University of California, Santa Barbara.
He edited the New Republic, liberal journal of opinion, in the 1960s.
He has written several scholarly books tackling poverty, economic inequality, affirmative action, welfare reform, and he's even written on racial differences.
The black-white test score gap was the title.
So all of these achieved and highly acclaimed scholars reviewed Jason Richwine's doctoral thesis and granted him approval.
And not one of them at the time they reviewed it accused him of racism or bigotry or prejudice or bias.
He sailed through the doctoral program.
But because his work has been cited in the Heritage Foundation report on the Gang of Eights amnesty bill, he is now targeted for destruction.
And joining this attempt to destroy him are several Republican establishment members.
Several rhino Republicans who are Part of this cabal that thinks the Republican Party needs to go out and support amnesty in order to get Hispanic votes to have any chance of winning future elections.
I think, folks, I think these, the Republicans that make up this group, the Rhino group, the group that support this amnesty type legislation, or if not amnesty, the Republicans that think we ought to modify and moderate our view on all the social issues like abortion and so forth.
You know what it is?
I think these people are jealous.
I think they want the support of people who vote for Democrats.
I think they wish people who voted for Democrats were voting for them.
I think they wish they were going to things like the metball.
I think they wish they were on red carpet premiere events.
I think they wish to be accepted in that way by the pop culture icons of the left.
So it's understandable to me that the left would try to destroy Jason Richwine.
That's what they do.
Anytime somebody comes along and pokes holes in what they're trying to do and illustrates the folly of their objectives, of course they're going to set out to destroy them.
But what's happening now is the entire Heritage Foundation is under assault, predictably from the left, but being joined by some Republicans.
And Jason Richwine is at the head of this list for destruction.
And again, his doctoral thesis, in which his review of the IQ of illegal aliens, was simply a scholarly result of research.
And his research was passed with flying colors by his dissertation review board at Harvard.
Nobody had a problem with it until it shows up in a heritage report, which might damage official Washington, elitist Washington's desire for amnesty.
Got to take a break.
We'll be back and continue after this.
Don't go away.
Ladies and gentlemen, I just sent the link for Jason Richwine's doctoral dissertation up to Coco, and he's going to post that link at rushlimbaugh.com El Quicko.
I mean, it'll be up there probably 30 seconds from now.
And we'll also put it on our Facebook page.
And I don't know, we might even put it in the cesspool known as Twitter.
It's 166 pages.
It's titled IQ and Immigration Policy.
And this dissertation, which was gloriously approved by his Harvard dissertation committee, made up of a number of leftists, is now being used to smear him and all of heritage as racist.
And it's funny because everybody's out there demanding honest discussions.
We must have honest discussions about race.
We must have honest discussions about immigration.
We must have honest discussions.
Well, here is one.
Here's an honest discussion, a doctoral dissertation, and it is under attack because it is honest.
It's entitled IQ and Immigration Policy.
We've put the link at rushlimbaugh.com or three parts.
Part one reviews the science of IQ as the foundation and basis for what follows.
Part two delves into the empirical research, comparing IQs of native-born American populations with that of immigrant groups, with the Hispanic population broken out.
And then he explores the causes of an immigrant IQ deficit that appears to persist among Hispanic immigrants to the U.S. for several generations.
He didn't make it up.
He didn't invent it.
This is not some premise.
This is not like global warming where these guys have a premise and go out and do research and then fake it.
He had a premise.
He researched it.
And this is what he found.
And when it was published, nobody had a problem with it.
But now that it's in the Heritage Report criticizing the Gang of Eights immigration bill, all hell has broken loose.
Poor guy, Jason Richwine, I don't think he had the slightest idea what was going to happen to him.
He's like so many on our side.
He's now under assault, and I guarantee you, not one person in his life has ever accused him of race, bigotry, any of that.
And they sit near Scranton, what the hell?
He's getting his taste of it now.
This is what happens to conservatives in America today.
We'll be back.
Don't go away.
It's Open Line Friday, and I fully intended to get the phone calls in this hour.
Sorry about that.
My bad.
I'll make it up to you in the next hour, which is happening soon before you know it.
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