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May 17, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:06
May 17, 2013, Friday, Hour #2
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Time Text
Our last caller has stirred some passions out there.
Fascinating.
We'll get to all of it.
Great to have you here, El Rushbo, serving humanity, simply by being here on Friday.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's Open Line Friday.
S. Serie, Bob, you are tuned to the most listened-to radio talk show in America.
I am Rush Limbaugh, America's real anchor man.
America's truth detector.
America's Doctor of Democracy.
General all-round, good guy, well-known radio raconteur.
Meeting and surpassing all audience expectations every day.
Here's the telephone number, 800-282-2882.
And you go to the phones on Open Line Friday, you and talk about whatever you wish to talk about, whatever you want to say.
I mean, within limits.
I mean, I'm going to complain about the phone bill, things like that, but in other words, it doesn't have to be something I care about.
Ev, if you've got questions, comments, feel free if you disagree.
I know many of you don't, but if you do, it's a golden opportunity.
Again, the telephone number is 800-282-2882.
Now, I mentioned at the last segment, right before the top of the hour, that the IRS was asking religious groups for the content of their prayers prior to granting them tax-exempt status, and in some cases not.
It came out today during the Ways and Means Committee hearing on the IRS scandal.
The acting IRS Commissioner Stephen Miller, who's leaving, was testifying.
Aaron Schock, a Republican from Illinois, had a question for him.
Let me ask you about another letter that was received by a pro-life group, this one in Iowa.
Their question specifically asked from the IRS to the Coalition for Life of Iowa, quote, please detail the content of the members of your organization's prayers.
Would that be an appropriate question to a 501c3 applicant?
the content of one's prayers.
It pains me to say I can't speak to that one either, but that's an...
You don't know whether or not that would be an appropriate question to ask.
Speaking outside of this case, which I don't know anything about, it would surprise me that that question was asked.
That's it.
The guy is reluctant.
The IRS commissioner, the acting commissioner, is afraid to comment because he doesn't know the details of the case.
Well, let me ask a question.
What details could possibly justify such a question?
Iowans for life, Coalition for Life of Iowa.
Well, Mr. Limbaugh, what if they're praying to the Lemmer?
So what?
There's religious freedom.
But you think it's okay to pray to animals?
I'm using extreme existence.
Of course, they weren't praying to Lemmers.
The IRS commissioner could not condemn the actions of his agency.
He held that in reserve.
Well, speaking outside the case, which I don't know anything about, it would surprise me that question was asked.
It would?
Folks, there's no sense of outrage on this guy's part at all.
There's, oh, gosh, geez, I could.
I'm going to tell you something that many of you, you don't want to believe it, and you're going to reject it.
That question is probably, in his mind, entirely legit.
These people, these uber radical leftists, one of the characteristics people have that they are most afraid of and distrustful of and threatened by is a deeply devout religious life devoted to God.
That they don't understand it.
That's kooky.
That is really weird to them.
And in their world, it is entirely understandable that we need to know what you're praying to.
I mean, we're going to get tax-exempt status.
Who knows?
You could be subversive.
To them, that's an entirely legitimate question.
This guy would not condemn it.
You think this is hard to believe this is happening in America?
I don't.
Not with this current regime and not with this bunch.
I know who they are.
I know why they're in power.
They don't like the way this country was founded.
They don't like the Constitution the way it was written.
They don't like it because it limits them.
They think this country is rooted in racism, slavery, prejudice, bias, discrimination, sexism, bigotry, homophobia, you name it.
They think this country is immersed and founded in all of that.
To them, all of that's corruption.
And at the center of it, it's a belief in God.
So this guy, you heard him.
It pains me to say I can't speak to that one either.
You can't?
You can't tell us that you find that question illegitimate in deciding whether or not a group gets its tax-exempt status.
It's amazing.
By the way, folks, we are being told that Lois Lerner's seemingly out-of-the-blue admission about the IR exist IRS tax-exempt waivers was carefully planned.
The question that evoked her admission was planted as part of a prepared strategy for the IRS to release this information to the public.
And that's according to the outgoing IRS Commissioner Stephen Miller, who said in testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee this morning.
So Lois Lerner's out-of-the-blue admission about the IRS tax-exempt waivers that was orchestrated to get that in official testimony.
So this would seem to show that they wanted the IRS stuff to come out right at the point where Benghazi was starting to gain traction.
That's the point of this.
There were some people who were laughingly suggesting that the lid was blown on this IRS thing last Friday, right when Benghazi was starting to heat up.
And I remember a number of people that called the program here sent emails that rush, this is an attempt to cover up what's going on in Benghazi because that's the real problem.
And it is.
The IRS thing, though, is easily understandable.
The IRS thing, that's abusive power, that's government overreaching.
A lot of people understand that.
The Benghazi thing, still kind of murky.
And it's a tougher sell to try to convince the American people that an administration didn't care about the lives of four Americans.
That's a real tough sell.
It's a real tough sell to suggest to the American people that the regime was incompetent because everybody in this country thinks that the president of the United States, first and foremost, is concerned with defending America, saving America's lives, and is indeed competent to do so.
I dare say that most people, low-information voters especially, think it's just automatic that every president is profoundly qualified to run the military.
They just accept it.
They can't conceive of anything else.
Such is the lofty image of the presidency itself.
It's not so much a lofty image of Obama.
It's the office.
So the Benghazi situation, that's tougher.
So that's what Bob Woodward is out saying that these Benghazi, the talking point controversy of Benghazi is comparable to Watergate.
He said, I have to go back 40 years to Watergate when Nixon put out his edited transcripts of the conversations.
And if you read through all these emails, you see that everyone in the government is saying, oh, let's not tell the people terrorists were involved.
Let's not tell people that there were connections to al-Qaeda.
Let's not tell the public that there were warnings.
Bob Wood, he said this on MSNBC today.
He said, don't dismiss this, Benghazi.
This is very serious.
He compared it to Watergate.
He compared this to Nixon.
And I dare say, and I want to remind you again that in all the emails that have been released, not one reference to the video, folks, not one reference to it.
In all of those emails, there hasn't been one reference whatsoever to the film, to the video, to the thing that irritated Muslims and so forth.
I got to take a quick time out.
We'll come back.
We'll get to some of your phone calls and review other things in the snack of stuff, such as the case against George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin.
There isn't one.
It's totally disintegrated.
There is not a case against George Zimmerman.
This is another outrage in and of itself.
And no less than Professor Dershowitz is saying this.
Oh, here it is, Stephen Hayes.
What about the video?
So what about the video?
The White House last week released nearly 100 pages of emails detailing some of the discussions within the Obama administration that resulted in major revisions to talking points about the Benghazi attack that were drafted by the CIA.
And from the beginning, there have been two big questions about the regime's deceptive spin on Benghazi.
How were the talking points whittled down to virtually nothing from the CIA's original draft?
And how did a previously obscure YouTube video gain such prominence in the regime's explanation of what happened in Benghazi?
And Hayes has looked at all these documents.
There's nothing in there about the video.
They can't find it.
Where did this come from?
People start.
Two big questions.
Where was Obama during the heat of the moment of the Benghazi attack?
And where did this video excuse come from?
I think I know, by the way.
We talked about it earlier.
One other thing before we go to the break, there's a movie that is premiering this weekend, starts tonight, called Hating Breitbart.
And it is biological, but it's also infotainment about Andrew Breitbart, who was a really committed conservative warrior.
And this guy was leading the charge on the internet and in other places, walking into places with cameras and exposing liberals and Democrats for who they are.
He died very prematurely from a heart attack.
I cannot tell you how beloved Andrew Breitbart was.
When Andrew Breitbart passed away, much of the, and particularly the, what I would call the young conservative brigade, I mean, he was a hero to them.
He was a hero to everybody that knew him.
He was indefatigable.
He was constantly on the go.
He had energy that was enviable.
He was always upbeat and laughing and smiling, but he was loaded for bear.
And he was fearless.
And they've made a movie about him.
And they've made a movie about efforts to discredit him.
And Andrew Breitbart is always going to be very close to my heart because he became a conservative in part because of me.
And he told me the story.
He was from Brentwood, California, liberal hotbed, Los Angeles suburb.
His father-in-law is the comedian Orson Bean.
And Orson Bean is a conservative and has been for a while.
Andrew married his daughter.
And while they're dating and so forth, Andrew is over at Orson Bean's house, and he happens to see my book, my first book, The Way Things Ought to Be, in Bean's library on his desk.
And Andrew goes nuts.
I can't believe, I can't believe that you've got a book by this guy.
This guy's a racist.
He's an extremist.
I can't believe.
And Orson said, you know what, Andrew, you ought to take this for the weekend and read it.
Now, Andrew told me this story numerous times.
I interviewed him for the Limbaugh Letter, and he recounted this story during that interview.
He was always eager for me to know this.
But Orson Bean gave Breitbart, who was to be his son-in-law, gave him a copy of the book and said, you take it home and read it.
And Andrew Breitbart took the book home and read it.
And that began his transformation from Brentwood, California, default Southern California liberal to a, I mean, an ignited conservative warrior.
And I've always been very proud of the fact that I had some, I played some role in Andrew Breitbart becoming what he became.
Anyway, a lot of people have worked very hard on this movie called Hating Breitbart, and it opens all over the country today, and it's had some previews.
It's exceptionally well done, and people who have seen it are very, very moved by it because he's very missed.
I don't know, you probably, when Andrew Breitbart died, some of you say, who's Andrew Breitbart?
You've heard the name and so forth.
But you have a TV on, say, everybody, for example, everybody at Fox Counted him as their best friend.
It was incredible.
A number of people that he ended up knowing, that he ended up coming into contact with, he touched.
Greg Gutfeld loved him, for example, who hosts Red Eye on Fox, devoted, I think, a week worth of shows to the memory of Breitbart.
Because he was.
He was motivational, inspirational, fearless, and so forth.
And I wanted to mention the movie that these people have produced about his life and his enemies that does open a day.
Hating Breitbart.
Okay, quick timeout, my friends.
We'll come back and get to your phone calls right after this.
Don't go.
It's Open Line Friday, and back to the phones we go.
This is Deborah in Monticello, Georgia.
And great to have you here.
Right.
Deborah, Deborah, how are you?
I am great.
Thank you.
All your music, great bumper music.
Appreciate that.
Hey, listen, first of all, great, many thanks to my husband for making me listen to you since 1992.
That's when it started.
Your husband made you listen to the program?
He made me listen to you in 1992 because, you know, all of the drive-by liberal media, every time I heard your name, was, ooh, bad news, what you were associated with.
Still the case today.
It's probably bad.
Still the case today.
They still do it today.
And yeah, well, anyhow, he made me start listening to you.
And also, I want to thank you for your confidence because it was infectious.
And it carried over to me and everything that I was learning and understanding.
Not that I was a liberal, it's just that all I heard and knew is what I heard and knew.
And in direct response to the previous caller, I'm having an opposite reaction to what I heard because, you know, this is it.
I mean, I was already angry and upset about what was going on, but they've really gone too far now.
And I'm not a high-tech kind of person.
I'm a little bit of an older lady.
I've never done Facebook.
And let me tell you how I feel right now.
I feel like creating a Facebook account, telling them everything that I think, everything that I feel, putting it all out there.
This is what America is and why they're destroying it.
America is built on freedom, what the Constitution means.
Bring it on.
Come and find me.
Come look for me.
You want my guns?
Come and get them.
Go for it.
Had it.
Go for it.
This is it.
I can't tell you how much I love hearing you say this.
Go for it.
I understand the previous caller.
She was afraid.
This is what this IRS thing is doing.
It's telling people: if this government wants to stop you and target you, they can find you and they will.
And it's got her scared to death.
But I love your attitude.
Okay, come get me.
You want my gun?
Come get me.
You want to try to silence me?
Come try.
I love that attitude.
I happen to think yours is going to be the majority attitude that people have.
They want to silence me.
You know what?
And I've had it.
I will not be silenced.
That's my First Amendment right.
I do have a right to protect myself from my government.
That's why the Second Amendment is there.
I will no longer have anybody, they do not have a right to tell me how I am to engage in dialogue, what I can say, how I can say it.
I do not need an Atlanta talk show host, a rhino, who I've decided is a closet communist, tell me how I am to engage in dialogue with the left.
Don't tell me how I am to engage in dialogue, what I can and cannot say.
I'm not going to be silenced.
I'm done.
I've had it.
You don't stop.
I'll tell you what.
You keep on.
Go ahead.
Hang on just a second.
Look, Deborah, don't go away.
She said she's not high-tech.
I want to fix that.
Don't go away.
Okay, we're back now to Deborah in Monticello, Georgia.
Deborah, you said that you're not a high-tech person.
Is that right?
Not particularly.
What does that mean?
You don't have a computer?
You don't go to the corner?
No, I have a computer, and I used to even train attorneys to switch from DOS to Windows, basic stuff.
But I haven't kept up with the latest and greatest.
I got a Mac about two years ago to teach myself how to do some Apple stuff.
But I don't, I mean, I'm using the jitterbug right now, okay?
I think smartphones are stupid phones, but you're on Facebook and the Twitter and the whatnot.
I just feel like I don't have time for it.
Yeah, well, I hear you on that.
I hear you on that.
Well, okay, look.
So you've got your Mac.
How about an iPad?
Oh, my gosh.
I've heard they're pretty cool.
They are very cool.
And they're really cool.
And they're portable and they're the future.
And they're fun to boot.
So, and if you want, you know, this is, it's a Macintosh operating system.
It's an iOS.
And if you want to ever do Facebook and Twitter, it's built in.
You don't have to do anything special other than get an account and sign it.
If you want to go there, I'd like you.
I mean, we have accounts there for the program, and we post stuff occasionally, but I would never live there.
I know exactly how you feel about it.
But all that aside, I want you to hold on.
You want a big one?
You want an iPad Mini?
I would take the big one.
I'll tell you why.
The iPad Mini is not retina yet, and it will be.
They're going to come out with a new version of the mini by the end of the year that'll have a retina high-definition screen in it.
The current one doesn't have that, but the big one does.
And it's just, you won't believe it.
You will not believe the display on this thing.
Well, I would be honored.
Cool, because it's even EIB signature rush engraved on the back of the thing.
I mean, the whole thing, not just a little portion of it, the whole back side is EIB El Rushboast signature engraved.
So look, Deborah, hang on, and we will get your shipping information.
And hopefully, we'll try to get it out to you for Saturday delivery.
So you'll have it tomorrow if you want it.
And I'm also going to throw in a couple of tumblers from the toifbyt.com website.
And you will love these two.
Deborah, thanks much.
I appreciate it.
Dana in Columbus, Ohio.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Thank you so very much.
I am calling because you mentioned earlier that no liberal would dare call and say that you're right or give any sort of credence to any conservative point of view.
And I want to tell you that as a soon-to-be 40 African-American woman that has been told my entire life to vote down the Democratic Party line, I appreciate your point of view.
And I appreciate you staying firmly behind your belief because over the past four plus years that our current administration has been in, and you know, even before that, you saw the writing on the wall, and I was living in.
Well, I want to qualify you here for a second.
Did you vote for Obama in 2008?
I did.
Did you vote for Obama in 2012?
I did not.
Okay.
And then the reason why you saw the lights were in that.
I abstained from voting for president before.
I mean, I just, I couldn't, I couldn't find the lesser of the two evils.
And that is That's my unfortunate dilemma.
I have a master's degree, and I've put myself through school, you know, a ton of student loans.
I own my own home, and I have three children, one that's a second year at OSU.
Oh, yeah, let me ask you a question.
Why did you vote for Obama in the first time?
Because I believed.
I was a believer.
And I just knew that, hey, with my master's degree, the entire world's going to open up.
There are going to be all sorts of marketing communications jobs, marketing opportunities where companies are going to grow exponentially, want and need my education and expertise.
When did you realize?
I just knew that that was going to happen with his.
When did you realize that Obama's policies were doing the exact opposite of what you thought was going to be?
Or have you realized that?
Children, all the time.
Do your best because you're going to be the one that gets you to your next level.
I have been challenged with the whole tax issues of raising taxes because, God willing, I'm going to be one of those people that will be negatively impacted by those tax hikes.
You know, I'm trying to get there, and I don't feel, I feel so much, as you've been saying, why knock down the people that are doing it for themselves?
No, no one's going to tell me that I didn't get anywhere by myself.
I love my family dearly, but if I didn't have the motivation and initiative to succeed.
Okay, wait a minute.
Dana, can you hear me?
Can you hear me?
Yes.
Okay.
When did you realize that all those things you believed about Obama weren't true?
Probably the top of this year.
It probably just started to hit me.
And then I would say with the IRS Benghazi issues over the past couple of weeks.
No kidding.
Really?
Those things have been the catalyst for you, the icing on the cake, actually.
I believe in personal responsibility.
And all of the finger pointing at that level, that there is not a single person that's willing to own anything is disgusting to me.
Well, let me tell you this.
And this is, by the way, National Review has a story on it, but everybody is reporting it.
The IRS chief, this interim head honcho, the IRS, has just said it is absolutely not illegal for the IRS to target these groups.
A question, do you believe it's illegal for employees of the IRS to create lists to target individual groups and citizens in this country?
That was Tom Price, Republican, Georgia, asking Stephen Miller.
And Miller said, I think the Treasury Inspector General indicated it might not be, but others will be able to tell that.
Well, what do you believe, Price said?
I don't believe it is illegal.
I don't believe it should happen.
Don't get me wrong, it shouldn't happen, but it is not illegal.
So this acting IRS chief, this guy that's being fired ostensibly, he doesn't think that anything that happened is wrong.
He doesn't think that anything happened is illegal.
And I'm here to tell you he's being serious.
Folks, I have, for 25 years, I've tried to explain liberals.
I've tried to explain who they are, and I'm going to keep explaining who they are, regardless how difficult it becomes and how maybe incredulous people are when they hear it.
But I'm telling you, they are a different breed.
You've got Janet Napolitano issuing advisories from the Department of Homeland Security demanding that everybody at DHS, TSA, everybody in that department, make sure that you treat Sharia-believing Islamic supremacists with great respect and deference.
The same woman who issues a report early on warning the same groups, TSA, Department of Homeland Security, of the militant extremism of American right-wingers.
The only conclusion is the obvious one.
People like Janet Napolitano, and they're all over the government now.
They're all over the in their mind.
The real insurgents are us.
The real radicals, the real extremists are us.
They consider us to be their primary enemy.
And in a political sense, of course, they're right.
But it goes much, much farther than that with them.
We consider them political opponents.
You and me, you and I, we look at these people as opponents to be defeated in the arena of ideas.
We look at these people as obstacles to what we want to accomplish.
They have different ideas.
We think they should be defeated, but we want to do that by convincing a vast majority of Americans to vote for us, not for them.
Pure and simple.
They don't leave it up to that.
They don't want the American people having a say in this at all because the American people might vote and get it wrong.
So they are going to do the eliminating.
They are going to take care of the opposition.
They are going to make sure that their opposition doesn't get a foot.
They're not going to have a debate with us.
They're not going to throw it open.
They're not going to let the, I mean, they have to undergo elections.
But what are they trying to do here with the IRS?
This whole thing was an effort to impugn the efforts of conservative group Benghazi.
All this stuff was oriented toward one thing: Obama's reelection, and that's at all costs, no matter how, no matter what, that is at all costs.
But they do look at us as a serious enemy that has to be dealt with as not opponents.
We are a serious, serious enemy, much, much more than real enemies of the country.
Thanks.
A quick timeout.
We'll be back and continue with much more right after this.
Get this.
At the hearing this morning, the IRS commissioner, Stephen Miller, the guy who's been canned.
He was leaving anyway.
So he really had been canned.
He was moving up his departure.
He was asked, oh, yeah, what do you need?
What does the IRS need to keep this from happening again?
You know what he said?
We need more money.
We need a bigger budget.
When asked how to limit the targeting of certain groups, well, we need a bigger budget.
We need more agents.
No, no, no, no.
See, that's why the Tea Party came into existence because you guys are growing out of control.
The federal government's getting out of control.
The federal government's in charge of every aspect of modern life now.
The federal government says yes or no to way too many things.
Yeah, with more money, you can screw twice as many people.
With more agents, you can screw twice as many tax-exempt organization applications.
So the guy said, no, there's nothing illegal about what happened.
It might not have been right, but there's nothing illegal about what we did.
It's perfectly fine to ask a pro-life group what their prayers are.
We've got to know that kind of stuff.
And by the way, we need more money.
If they give us more money, that's how we deal with it.
Look, I don't, I'm not trying to throw cold water on things.
I just can't tell you the number of people who've rushed.
Is this it?
No, this isn't it.
This isn't it.
We're in the midst of an ongoing educational effort and project.
But when you say this is, nothing is going to happen to Obama, folks.
You just have to accept the fact that this country isn't going to remove a sitting African-American president.
It's not going to really severely punish such a president.
It isn't going to happen.
And the press isn't going to turn on the guy.
What's happening now is an educational opportunity for the future.
What's happening now is an opportunity for a bunch of people to say, this is what happens when people like this end up running the show.
Don't let it happen again.
This is Washington versus the people.
That's what this is here.
That's, I think, a sensible way to approach it and a sensible way to harbor expectations.
Now, look, folks, I'm being completely honest with you here.
When we started 2FBT.com, we started a small business.
We wanted to experience firsthand all the rules, all the regulations required to produce a product in this country from scratch.
I'd heard so much about the trials and tribulations and the hoops people had to jump through.
And I've always been a huge tea fan.
And the Tea Party was out there.
So let's just do our own tea.
And we came up with the name 2F by T with our character Rush Revere and with all the patriotic application and implication for it.
2F by T is a takeoff of 1 If by land, 2 If by sea, Paul Revere, and so forth.
So, you know, I know that a lot of you have created and are managing small businesses out there every single day.
And we wanted to do the same thing and see what you were going through.
See if we could make it work.
Find out what was involved.
And from the start, we knew that we were going to have a sponsor.
We were going to sponsor the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation.
This is a charitable group that I have known since the day of their founding.
They provide scholarships, college scholarships for the children of Marines killed in action.
And in cases of massive emergencies, they also provide assistance to members from other branches of the military as well.
Many of you in this audience are Marines, current or former military.
And to us, you are the true heroes.
And we'll always be eternally grateful to you.
You're the ones.
You are the ones who truly know the sacrifice that's made by our United States military and their families to defend freedom, protect the Constitution.
We thank you sincerely, and that's why 2FIT is a sponsor of MCLEF.
Now, one of the greatest parts of this 2FIT business is without question our little sweepstakes that we do four or five times a year and calling the winners.
I absolutely love calling.
Catherine and I get on the phone.
We call the winners and they don't think it's us and they can't believe it.
It is such a thrill.
I can't.
No, they don't hang up.
They ask us to call back and put it on voicemail so they can tell their friends that we called.
And they're all so excited to win.
It's just, it is really great.
Now, hopefully today is going to be your lucky day.
And you'll be the next grand prize winner that we call.
The latest 2FIT sweepstakes happening right now through 1159 p.m. Pacific time tonight.
Grand Prize winner.
Are you ready?
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It is a true escape.
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All you have to do is go to 2fbit.com.
That's our website.
It's a great website.
Previous winners you can see, previous heroes that we have donated or denoted and other items that are available for you there.
And all you have to do is go shop.
2ifbytea.com right now until 1159 p.m. Pacific.
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All the rules are posted at 2ifbytea.com.
And if you can't travel, if you're the winner, you can't travel, you can transfer it, give it to somebody else you love.
Don't worry, we'll handle it.
2ifbytea.com by 1159 Pacific tonight.
A brief break at the top of the hour.
And back for our final big excursion hour to Broadcast Excellence right after this, folks.
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