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May 23, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:36
May 23, 2013, Thursday, Hour #2
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We are back.
Great to have you here, Rush Limbaugh behind the Golden EIB microphone, the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Telephone number 800-282-288-2, the email address.
Lrushbo at EIBNet.com.
Now, I want to I want to close the loop here on the hooking up business, but it's for me it's it's much more than that.
The hooking up is just one characteristic of the phenomenon that's happening now.
And the hooking up business has been going on a long time.
Tom Wolfe wrote a fiction book about actually a nonfiction book called Hooking Up in 2000.
He said a lot of kids that are hooking up don't even know each other's names.
So it's not just this babe that talked to the students.
Snurley, Tom Wolfe.
Are you gonna tell me Tom Wolf don't know what he's talking about?
I do think that it's a phenomenon.
I don't question that it's that it's happening.
Uh but it's it's uh, you know, Clinton.
Look at Bill Clinton didn't ask Monica her name to the sixth date.
This hooking up can uh can happen.
Yeah, it's it's happened throughout.
I know in the 60s, the free love and the free sex.
It's it's but look what that begot us.
That's my whole point.
I mean, we are living some of the trash that happened in the 1960s, and some of those people, many of them assumed office, political office, high power in in the Clinton years.
It's it's it's demonstrably problematic.
There's no question that it is.
The disintegrating values, the idea that the IRS, all these institutions can be used to intimidate political that stuff has roots in the 60s.
Um that's actually a a very good point about that.
But I want to bring it down even more locally than that.
And not just tie it to what happens when people end up into politics from this.
I'm actually more concerned just about their lives in general.
And this, I'm telling you, this willingness that these kids have to just vomit everything about themselves to everybody and give up their privacy and give up their anonymity.
Uh and it's not just so much that, it's why they're doing it.
This quest for fame.
I'm telling you, it is it's insidious to me.
It's uh it's copycat, it's you know, fame by itself is how you get Kardashian.
Now, people who become famous after having done something, some major achievement, major accomplishment, that's one thing.
But fame for its sake is a pursuit that is is it's empty and it's endless, and it's never satisfying.
But the big problem with all of this social media, in addition to the obvious, and I think one of the most dangerous things about it.
And I look, I don't have kids, but I've got nephews and nieces.
But more than that, I really do.
All of this concern for me is about country.
When I tell you that I want a great country, I mean I want self-reliant, rugged individuals taking care of themselves and their families, and I think that's how you get Norman Rockwell communities and neighborhoods and towns.
That's how you get decency and respect and uh and uh and a common valuable culture.
I think all of that's crucially important.
And yeah, it may sound old-fashioned, and it may sound like I want to go back to the 50s and Donna Reed shows.
No, no, that's not what I'm talking.
The stuff I'm talking about is timeless.
And these characteristics are the things that used to be commonly taught.
Honor, valor, honesty, integrity.
That's all I'm talking about.
Things like this that people laugh at today, but people are willingly just abandoning any hope, any chance of having those characteristics about themselves.
The debasement of the language is part of that.
And you see that now in primetime TV.
The debasement of the language is happening really quickly.
Taken in isolated chunks at any big deal, but the cumulative year after year impact of this is not good for the country.
And that's always been my concern.
It's my concern with politics, its effect on the country and the people.
The people of the country are what matter to me.
Having the continued opportunity to do what they want to fulfill their dreams, have the desires and dreams be things of importance and substance, rather than fleeting fly-by-night things that really don't offer any substantive satisfaction.
It's a real challenge for parents today, I would think.
I think it'd be a real, especially for parents of young girls.
I just think it would be an absolute nightmare out there today.
Constant concern, worry.
You start talking about the hooking up stuff.
Just one thing.
But the the biggest danger, I think, or one of the most dangerous things about all this is not just this quest for fame and the giving up all privacy.
Add to this that most kids are insecure.
And then add another human characteristic, and it is this.
The grass always looks greener.
Everybody, I don't care who you are, you always think everybody else is happier.
Everybody else is more normal.
Everybody else doesn't have problems you do.
It's just a natural thing to think.
A lot of people think this way.
And when you start reading social media or watching television shows, and you see depictions of people in certain ways, uh, and you know that that doesn't in any way depict you, then what does it make you feel like if you're not emotionally secure?
And I think this all a social media just adds to this.
You add up this natural insecurity that everybody has, particularly it's amplified in kids.
Uh, and this idea that that the grass is always greener and that somebody else's life, uh, everybody else's life is more fulfilling and better than yours or whatever.
It's just fact of life for most people.
And when the when young kids read all of this social media, and it tons and oodles of it out there, when they read all this stuff, and they see all the stuff they're not doing.
See, my dad used to tell it to me this way.
He said, son, all your friends bragging to you about all the things they're doing are lying to you.
All they're doing is telling you the things they wish they were doing.
And they just trying to impress you.
And that's social media.
How many people are lying about where they are every night and going to these clubs or whatever it is they're doing that that they think is fun.
You've got these kids sitting at home not doing all this, reading about it, and man, all they're seeing is things that they're not doing.
Compared to everybody else who seems to be really having a ball out there.
Gosh, my life is boring as hell.
Look at what all people and what's it gonna make them want to do?
Kids lie about their social achievements like everybody else lies about their social achievements to impress everybody.
But then you've got this wild collection of insecurity and kids reading all this, and it in addition to the complex they could develop, because they're they think they're missing out on all this cool stuff, then that creates its own set of problems.
Either depression or a madcap desire to catch up and experience all these things that they think are cool that people really aren't doing, but they think they are.
Now, none of this is new in a psychological sense.
I'm not seeing any of this...
Is new and hasn't been the case before, but the sheer volume of all this stuff that they can expose themselves to could be overwhelming.
I've always had a bad feeling about it.
I don't even have any kids.
But I've always had a bad feeling about it, knowing in my own limited way what losing your anonymity means, what it really means, uh, and the the whole business of fame, nothing is ever what you really think it is.
When you're young, when you're any age, and when you're imagining a promotion at the job or you're imagining uh new place to live or whatever, if you ever when you finally get it's never really entirely what you think it is.
There are always things about it you didn't consider or can uh and then and it just I don't know problem for parents.
And I think it's just becoming more and more intensified.
In fact we I got a call.
Let me grab a call on this and then we'll go to the break.
This is uh Jeff and Goshen New York.
Hi Jeff, I'm glad you called welcome to the program, sir.
Hey Rush, thanks so much for having me on.
You bet I heard your your comments on social media and I had to call in.
You hit the nail on the head.
These kids have no idea what they're giving up when they and where your privacy when they put the stuff out there.
I I'm actually the director of an IT uh of the IT department for a manufacturing group and you know so I've done it I thought I did a good job at educating my kids.
I have four kids two girls two boys girls from the oldest one's a teenager and she dabbled in social media kind of went around my back a little bit to dabble in it.
And when I found out I showed her with just her email address all the information I can pull up from her Vines account her Instagram her FM and I said if I can do it anybody can do it.
And these kids don't don't know what they're giving up and I think what's worse is the parents don't know what their kids are doing or what their kids are giving up and we're doing a terrible job in the schools.
They're not educated well that's another aspect because the kids are so far ahead of parents on what you can do online.
Parents have no concept.
No and even you know and and Facebook I know a lot of the teenage kids today they don't want Facebook as mom and dad are on it.
So they're finding other things and my only advice to parents is know what your kids are doing.
Talk to them about it.
You know I use the stuff I I like social media for its positive aspects.
But for you you're Russia you and I know you can take the best tool in the world that's meant for good purposes and turn it for evil things.
And that's what happens with these social media sites that's all okay that's a that's a good point.
I am not preaching.
I don't want anybody to think I'm preaching and I'm not I don't want anybody inferring that I think this stuff should be shut down.
Far from it that's not at all possible solution not even not even uh something I contemplate it's a reality it has to be dealt with I just think it's you're right it's a challenge for parents in raising kids.
It just gets harder and harder to do.
There are just more and more distractions, more temptations and it it it do what you can to provide a solid moral foundation.
And after a certain point you're done there's not much you can do and then it's true people have to live they have to live their lives they have to make mistakes to learn from them and you hope that the foundation you gave them is sufficient that when they do screw up have embarrassing things happen or whatever that there is a foundation from which they can learn from it and not repeat it.
Anyway Jeff I appreciate the call I really do.
When we come back folks I just I just wanted to get into this because it's finally reached the pinnacle here of the pop culture the the mainstream culture talking about this.
And you've been on the cutting edge we've been talking about this for many many moons now but I want to talk about the story I mentioned at top of the program about Baehner and his reluctance to investigate Benghazi it's actually potentially more problematic than that.
Which I want to delve into uh a little bit here.
There are another story today about another collection of huge entities seeking exemptions from Obamacare.
And I want to repeat something about this that I said again numerous times previously this thing is going to implode on itself.
It simply can't work.
It's too big, it's too unwieldy, and it's like everything else in big government.
It's just too big to manage.
There's no group, there's no bureaucracy, there's no individual that can manage this.
But my point from day one about that has been that's the purpose of it.
The intention I think Obama has always had with Obamacare is to create such chaos, to create such a mess that people will just automatically say, please government, will you take this over so that you're the only place we have to go to deal with this?
I think it's a uh strategic move to just totally bollocks up the health care system, which was the greatest in the world, to make it so chaotic, so unpredictable, so unsatisfying that people demand something else, because Obamacare is only going to make it worse, gum up the works, add chaos to it, which is I think what the original intention was.
And as you see, more and more of these major unions, hospitals and so forth wanting out of this, and in fact, not just wanting out, but pulling out of it.
Uh it tells the tale.
So let me take a brief time out.
We'll come back and continue with all the rest of today's exciting excursion into broadcast excellence right after this.
By the way, speaking of all this social media stuff, the Weekly Standard is reporting that more photos of Anthony Wiener might come out, more lewd photos of Anthony Weiner.
Now you have to know that there are more.
There are always more than what have been released.
People have more.
If Wiener was taking photos of himself and sending them to one babe, you know it was happening in a lot of and then that babe forwarding them to other people.
It's a it's a balloon process.
It's a geometric progression.
The Weekly Standard article, Wiener told his uh radio host in the first live interview since announcing his mayor will be people may decide that they want to come forward and say, here's another email that I got, or another photo.
I'm certainly not going to do that.
So people may hear things that are true, they may hear things that are not true, but I'm gonna try to keep being focused on issues that are important to New York City.
Now I would think New York City has uh seen enough of Wiener.
I would think that New York City's seen enough and had enough of uh of Wiener.
But supposedly Huma is standing beside Weiner, standing with Wiener, encouraging Wiener, supposedly.
We'll see.
Here's Denise in Trenton, Michigan as we head back to the phones.
Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi.
Hey Rush.
Um my question is pretty simple, but I also want to ask you talked to somebody on Tuesday.
It was a guy, and I know you remember him.
He worked two part-time jobs and he had a one-year-old, and he's talking about how he can't get benefits.
And um, you had told him that you had hope to give him.
And you talked about a time where there were people that were in like their fifties and stuff, and they had to go back and they basically lost their jobs, and they did what they really wanted to do.
Right.
And I just I hope he's listening today, because I was on the phone with you on hold saying, please take my call so I can tell him.
It was true then, and it's true now.
I mean, I could that's what we're doing.
That's what our family is doing, because of course, thanks to Obama and his infinite wisdom, I went through the same thing and lost two of my jobs.
And I'm back in school, and I'm gonna do what I want to do.
And I just want your guy to just I hope he hears this because anybody can do it.
And and you are who you are, not because of who they let you be, but because of you.
He he just he has to do what you said and follow his passion.
Because it's a good point.
You know, it it really is.
Just just to recap, I remember the guy.
He was working two jobs because he had been downsized because of Obamacare.
He'd been reduced in both jobs to part-time status, so he'd lost his benefits.
Even though he with two jobs was had the equivalent of a full-time job.
He didn't have any benefits.
Health care particularly was gone.
And you know what he was gonna do.
And he was from Asheville, North Carolina, And I told him, I said, you know, even true today, most of the limitations that people face are self-imposed.
And I asked him, are you willing to move to pursue your dream?
He said, Yeah.
Okay, well, that's the big one.
Once you're willing to move, you're really over a hump.
But if you're not going to leave Asheville, then you have to realize your potential is dictated by what Asheville has.
What there is to do there job-wise, career-wise, or what have you.
But the point that I made that you recounted here that's really worth it, all these guys in the 90s, laid off in their in their middle ages 50s, white-collar guys, could not get rehired at the salaries they were earning.
So what they did finally, late in life, was start businesses with areas that things they really loved and always wanted to do, but had never done.
Well, here we go, folks, the National Weather Service Wild Guess.
Hurricane season starts in eight days, eight or nine days, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, the government, is predicting an active hurricane season this year.
That's very bold.
They are saying there will be seven to eleven storms that could become hurricanes.
They say that the era of high activity for Atlantic hurricanes continues.
What is implied there is because of global warming.
It's not stated, but because of it.
Now, may I tell you the truth?
With all props to William Gray at the University of Colorado, nobody knows.
There's not a single person, there isn't a model, there isn't a computer indication of any kind that can tell us how many hurricanes are going to be.
They can't tell us where they're going to rank on the Safford Simpson scale, Cat 1 to Cat 5.
They can't tell us if there are hurricanes, where they're going to hit.
They can't tell us how much damage is going to be done.
And they can't tell us what's going to cause them.
And they can't tell us that if the hurricanes come, how we can stop them.
And they can't tell us how can we change the direction of the hurricane.
In other words, they can't tell us anything.
They don't know.
It's all a wild guess.
It's the weather.
All they can do is take what is known in terms of historical data, and once a storm forms, they can then within a 250 mile range, usually forecast where it's going to go.
And they can get a pretty good indication of its speed.
But they can't stop it.
They can't change the direction.
They can't increase or decrease the intensity.
And they can't tell us before it forms that it's going to.
They can show us it looks like it's favorable over there off the coast of Africa for tropical formation, but they can't predict it.
So what are they doing?
Well, they're using historical data, and they're saying in every hurricane season there's usually 11 to 15 storms, so it's pretty safe to say that there's going to be seven to eleven storms.
It's a wild guess.
But it's all political, folks.
It's tied to global warming.
And this is the Obama regime commerce department.
They run the weather, and they're the ones making these predictions.
In fact, if you recall, William Gray, the famed hurricane forecaster, University of Colorado, has said to Lee's blue in the face that global warming has nothing to do with them in any way, shape, manner, or form.
Formations, intensity, zitch, zero nada.
And I think last year he stopped forecasting.
I think he stopped predicting.
Packed it in, if I'm not mistaken.
So what'll happen is that shortly after June 1st, the media will go stand on the beach in New Orleans and Florida, and they'll gaze and they'll see if they can see hurricane signs.
They'll look for thunderstorm clouds.
And when they don't see anything, they'll run videotape of past storms, showing you the destruction and the damages, and actual footage of storms ripping little towns to shreds in preparation for what's coming.
You can make a book on it.
Now, one thing about our last caller.
The caller she was talking about was Andy from Asheville, North Carolina.
This is worth repeating.
He was downsized in two jobs, so he had a full-time work week with two jobs.
So he was part-time in two jobs.
He did not have any benefits as a result.
And he had been downsized in both jobs because of health care.
The companies where he worked converted him to part-time status so that they would not have to provide him health care coverage.
And that's common, and it's happening with greater frequency and will increase its occurrences.
As more companies realize what they have to do to be complicit with Obamacare.
If they want to stay in business, they're going to have to let people go.
If they want to stay in business, they're going to have to convert people to part-time.
They're going to have to reduce their hours, and they're going to have to reduce the benefits.
No, that's not the spirit of Obamacare at all.
In fact, Obamacare officials are shocked and stunned that this is happening.
Actual people in the government can't believe this.
They thought that the health care experience in America would be, as they said, enriched because of Obamacare.
They're just a bunch of political lugheads who accept the flawed premise and promises of liberalism.
And because they're good people, and because they've put the program together, it's magically going to work.
Never does.
Never.
I was just asked if they just discount all the articles that uh point out how it's not being implemented as it was designed.
Because it isn't a surprise.
It isn't a surprise that business is doing this.
Everybody that paid any attention had any smarts at all knew exactly what businesses were going to have to do in order to stay in business once this thing started to be implemented.
And so the question is don't these guys in government how do they not know this?
Don't they read these stories?
I don't know.
Maybe they don't read them, but more likely they do and just discount what they're reading.
They do.
They think it's all right-wing propaganda.
No matter where it runs, it's right wing.
All of these forecasts, Obamacare not working, all of these stories of companies downsiding, they just think that's evil business profit taking.
These people in the government who really thought that Obamacare, and even do still think Obamacare is going to lower costs and expand coverage, and when it doesn't happen, what do they think?
They think that evil CEOs are being greedy and are just laying people off, using the excuse of Obamacare, but all they're doing is hoarding money and building bigger houses for themselves and buying nicer cars while they're firing or laying people off.
That's what they think.
They think that all of this is right wing conspiratorial activity designed to harm Obama.
When they read these stories, look, I've got try this one.
It's from the Washington Examiner, but this is a repeat of an LA Times story.
United Health, the nation's largest private insurer, has decided not to participate in California's Obama Health Exchange.
Health insurance giants Aetna and Signa will also opt out of covered California.
That's the state agency that's charged with implementing Obamacare.
All three of these insurance companies are still going to provide health insurance through large employers, but they're not going to participate in the Obamacare exchanges.
Kaiser Permanente, the largest health insurer in California, will work with the exchange, covered California.
Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of California also will.
Together, these two companies already control 87% of the state's individual health insurance market.
That number will only go up as United Health and Aetna and Cigna drop out.
Market consolidation And decreased consumer choice is exactly what some supporters of Obamacare hoped would happen all along.
And this is my point.
As United Health pulls out, as Cygna pulls out, as Aetna pull out, what does that mean?
It means consumers have fewer choices.
That's the design.
The people that really thought about this at the government, the Obamacare people, the people that really put this together with their ultimate aim in mind, intended all of this.
They intended for it to be too big, too unworkable, and too expensive.
They intended for all of these companies, be they businesses or insurance companies to pull out to not insure people.
They intended this.
That's why the fines for not having insurance in the first couple years are very cheap.
The fines for not having a policy cost much less than having a policy.
They want people to not have the policy.
They want people to pay the fine.
They want to upset the market and create a mess.
And then to clean up the mess, they want everybody just to say, finally, you know what?
You know what would fix this?
Single payer.
Just have the government do it.
Hell with Aetna, the hell with Signa to hell with United Hell.
Hell no.
Let's just have the government do it.
That will be the solution.
It's not me saying so.
Obama said this in 2007 in a speech to the Service Employees International Union.
We've played the audio of that speech on this program, I don't know how many times, where he said to them, I know you want single payer, I want single payer, but we can't get there overnight.
It's going to take 10, maybe 15 years.
People are going to have to be slowly conditioned to it, and ultimately it's going to have to be the only option available.
That's how we'll get it done.
Because people don't want that.
Obama knows it.
He knew it in 2007.
He knows it today.
He's governing against the will of the people.
People do not want single payer, government-run health care.
They don't want Obamacare.
Still, the numbers are 60%.
But the people in the regime who believe in this, who think that all of this is the perfect solution to our health care problems, they'll read a story here.
They'll read this LA Times story.
United Health Aetna Cigna pulling out, and they will say, they will tell themselves that the people running these companies are just a bunch of greedy Republicans trying to screw Obama.
Everything is political to them, and there is no legitimacy in capitalism, and therefore no capitalistic entity is legitimate.
They're all cheats, liars, they're all frauds.
Capitalism is unfair.
Capitalism is what the 1% used to stay the 1%.
And they got to be the 1% by taking everything from everybody else.
So if you start out from the standpoint that there's nothing legitimate about free markets, if there's nothing legitimate in capitalism, you read a story like this, and you know how mean and nasty Republicans are, well, you're just going to assume the people running these companies are Republicans and hate Obama and are trying to screw up his grand plan.
And then at some point they realize what's going on, and that's when you get the story from, yeah, well, we really thought it was going to lower cost.
We really thought it was going to enrich the health care experience for people.
The cookie cutter liberal, the standard operating procedure liberal, is really a giant ignoramus.
And I mean that seriously.
They're really ignorant.
They are so politically oriented and they are so arrogant and condescending.
And they have such solid boundaries built around themselves that the truth of anything doesn't permeate.
The only truth is what they believe and what they think, including all of their biases and all of their prejudices.
Those things are truth.
And anything outside their believability system outside of Cocoon is a conspiracy designed to undercut them or destroy Obama, or it's just a bunch of right-wing kooks.
That's the challenge.
That's why, folks, there's no working with these people.
There isn't any there's no point in bipartisanship.
There is no area of commonality.
We don't have anything in common with these people.
That's why, in my mind, politically, they're to be defeated.
The problem is, we usually do.
They are a minority.
We're just being governed by a minority.
It's made to look like the majority because of their never-ending media support.
I mentioned yesterday that even the union for the people who are going to enforce Obamacare.
The IRS, that union is begging out of it.
The National Treasury Employees Union, which runs the IRS, that's the union that all IRS workers are members of.
They want exempted from it.
They want their job is to make sure you sign up.
Their job is to make sure you are assessed a fine if you don't get insurance under the terms of Obamacare.
They want an exemption.
That is liberalism for they set up two sets of rules.
One set for everybody else and another set for them.
And they never have to live by the rules that they set up for everybody else.
Because they're special.
They're better.
They're more important.
The rules set up for everybody else are to handle the masses.
The bourgeois.
You know, the slow-witted, dim-witted, mindless people that are incapable of taking care of themselves.
So they set up rules for them and then another set for themselves.
And that's how it works.
United Health, Aetna, and Cygna opt out of the California Obamacare Exchange, and they're going to continue to offer insurance policies to employers.
Eventually, what is designed to happen and therefore will the policies are going to be so much more expensive than what will be found at the exchanges.
Oh, yeah.
Gotta take it.
Back to the phones to Chicago.
This is uh this is Chris.
Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program.
Great to have you here.
Hi.
Hey, Megadetto's Rush.
Great to talk to you.
Thank you, sir.
Yeah, I uh was calling about your comment about uh like the 60s uh kind of causing some of the uh scandals that are going on here, and uh I kind of saw it a little different, maybe uh like kind of a the need to win.
You know, it's the left versus the right, uh, Democrats, Republicans, and you know, watching some of the IRS hearings.
There's kind of a uh an effort to, you know, I didn't know anything, that was above me, someone else was doing it, and it reminded me of uh the the Sandusky um scandal at Penn State.
Well you knew everyone knew.
They just to me they they had a football program to win.
And it was kind of when win at all costs.
And I kind of see that happening here, too, where everyone knows what these people are doing in the administration.
They like it though, so they don't they don't want to stop it.
Well, it's an interesting comparison.
Although I think I think the what we have here in in all of these scandals, there's a common thread through all these scandals, and that is that none of the people at the top supposedly knew what was going on from Obama on down.
Didn't Benghazi IRS fast and furious doesn't nobody knew.
I frankly think that that is the culture of liberalism as embodied by the current occupants of power, Obama and his buddies.
They're liberals, that is a characteristic of liberalism, not accepting responsibility, doesn't matter, doing everything at all costs, politicizing everything, advancing the agenda, eliminating your opponents, all this.
Um you might have something similar mindset-wise at Penn State, but I think that was not so much political as just people trying to protect themselves, although the program, too.
You have a point about that.
Folks, a really, really short segment here.
I'm really sorry.
It's because I went long in the two previous segments.
My bad.
Just enough time to say sit tight, thanks much.
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