Views expressed by the host of this program, documented to be almost always right 99.7% of the time.
Great to have you here, El Rushball, behind a golden EIB microphone.
It's an abbreviated week.
It's Independence Day, which is on Thursday.
So we've got a best of show on Thursday.
Now, what do we have on Friday?
Mark Stein is here on Friday.
Oh, he'll be great for Independence Day plus one.
So Mark Stein will be here on Friday.
So tomorrow we'll probably do Open Line Friday on Wednesday, just so that I can do it.
Here's the telephone number for the rest of the day, 800-282-2882.
Look, this idea, I have to disabuse people of the notion.
Everybody knows this, but somehow they want to somehow ignore it, or maybe think it'll be different this time.
Marco Rubio is not going to get the credit for this bill passing with low-information voters.
When it is all said and done, that isn't going to happen.
The media, the Democrat, remember, that was McCain's big selling point, that the left and the media loved him, and people that normally hate Republicans would like McCain, and therefore we've got a chance.
How did that work out for everybody?
The low-information voters, believe me, this thing, if it ever gets signed into law, the signing ceremony up there, Rubio will be there, but he's not going to be front and center.
It's going to be Obama's bill.
It is going to be, who do you think is in charge of writing the legacy of this country and the transformation taking place?
You think Obama is going to give anybody else credit?
Chuck Schumer will be up there.
He'll take in his share.
And Dick Turbin and these other guys, it's going to be Obama is going to get the credit for this.
And with the low-information voters, the idea, now Rubio may get some of the idea that the media and the Democrats are going to let that happen.
It's amazing to me.
This is a classic illustration of a triumph of emotion over common sense that is used to explain many human behaviors.
A triumph of emotion over common sense.
That's right.
That's usually when the worst stuff happens.
Stimulus, Obamacare, triumph of emotion over common sense.
Anyway, having an affair and retiring from service, military, CIA means never having to go broke, if current reports from the City University of New York are any indicator.
CUNY is apparently going to pay David Petraeus $200,000 every year to teach for three hours a week.
A three-hour a week course.
The class will be filled out by graduate student staff who will handle course research, administration, and grading.
Petraeus won't have to do any of that.
He's just to show up three hours a week and lecture, teach, whatever he's going to teach about.
Now, normal adjunct professors at CUNY, City University of New York, make about $25,000 a year.
Petraeus is going to earn $200,000 to work three hours per week.
Well, I'm just being handed a note here.
You make more than that in one three-hour.
Oh, really?
Well, the city of U. Three hours a week, I do 15, and then nobody sees the 75 or 80 that go into producing the 15.
But anyway, anyway, I just, I have no animus.
No, no, no.
I'm just passing on the news.
There's a story here from the UK Telegraph: losing friends, the reason why we unfriend people on Facebook.
Part of our low information outreach.
You know why people unfriend people on Facebook?
It made me laugh.
No, because people are giving them too much information.
People don't want all the information.
They don't like all the sharing as much as we think we do.
Almost as many, 61%, said they couldn't bear to hear any more about a Facebook friend's romance and how much they love their partner.
Other common reasons for unfriending include too many updates, annoying posts, inappropriate photos, while more than a quarter of users, 25%, said they found a friend's status posts too personal.
Some people's updates just scream, look at me.
It's like they're trying to convince themselves their lives have, well, hello, what is the point of Facebook?
So this is not good for Facebook because the very reason for it people are now finding objectionable.
What do you mean people's updates just scream, look at me?
Of course they do.
You know, I don't want to get anybody in trouble.
I really don't.
I mentioned an app yesterday, and it exists.
I'm not going to mention the name of it because if I do, I'll get roasted in the tech media because it is loved, this app, in the tech media.
But it is an app that you and your friends are, say, going to the yard house.
What you do is you let them know you're going, then five minutes after you left, you let them know you left.
Then you post again saying you're 10 minutes away.
Then you're five minutes away.
Then you post when you're there.
Then when you're there, you post what you're having and what you think of the waitress and what you think of everybody else.
And then you post when you're going to leave.
And when you leave, you post that you've left.
Five minutes after you've left, you post where you are after you've left.
Ten minutes later, you post where you're going to go.
Ten minutes later, you post whether you used public transportation or your own car.
Then you give a map of where you've been and where you're going and how much fun it was and if there are walking directions provided.
And then when you get where you're going next spot, then you tell everybody what a wonderful night you had.
And all of your friends are supposedly reading this desperate to know everything that you've done in your trip to the art house.
And I read about this and I can't imagine ever doing anything like this.
And then the app is heralded as a great way for your friends to find out cool places for you to go.
Because then as you're there, when you've gotten where you're going, then you rate the place that you're at.
Whether you like the beer, whether you like the waitress, whether you were able to do anything with a waitress in the bathroom, whether you mistake the bathroom for the kitchen, how are the tables setting?
All of it.
I mean, it just never stops.
And this is a huge, huge app on many mobile format services, systems.
And it just boggles my mind.
And now here's Facebook.
People are starting to unfriend people because they're posting too much stuff.
Yeah, it's like people saying, notice me, notice.
Of course it is.
What's the point of it?
Then there are all these photo apps like Instagram and Vine.
I can't believe every time you take a picture, you post it someplace.
A little audio tag, maybe.
Here's a picture of my cat in the litter box.
I just took it.
Look at the fun we're having.
Here's the cat leaving the litter box.
Here we are on vacation.
The family, I mean, it never hundreds, tens of millions of people are posting photos of everything they do on these various places.
It's just, but it's happening.
I mean, there's a whole generation of people that are doing this and letting everybody know everything about them, where they're going, pictures when they're there.
The first step, I was, yeah, once you've gotten where you're going, you can take a picture there and then post that and raid the place.
And these apps are reviewed favorably by these tech bloggers.
I'll tell you, I know you people find it strange that I delve into the.
The reason I read the tech bloggers is because I'm looking for one thing.
I'm looking for the latest technical advancement on the gadgets I use.
And in order to find that, I have to read this other crap because it's all part of the mix.
So if I'm looking to find out the latest thing that's been learned about the beta of iOS 7, I also have to learn this other crap, weeding through the posts to get to the one I want.
So that's how I come across this.
I don't want you people thinking that I am purposely immersed in this stuff.
I have often said that I participate in life by observing it as a commentator and a social arbiter.
And that's still true.
But I marvel.
I marvel at what people post about themselves.
I mean, it gets literally ridiculous.
I want to go to the Zimmerman.
No, Zimmerman trial just a second because the defense witnesses, I'm sorry, the prosecution witnesses are some of the best witnesses for the defense ever in this trial.
All the witnesses, the prosecution, guess what?
By the way, oh, I got to find this.
I have to find this.
How about the Stuart Rothenberg?
It's uphill all the way for social conservatives.
I got to share with you what that's about.
Feminist calls for sex strike in Texas.
But that's not what I'm looking for.
Where is it?
Where is it?
It's here.
It is.
James Taranto, Wall Street Journal, Best of the Web.
The prosecution in the Zimmerman case, the Trayvon Martin case.
Well, we never claimed this is about race.
Their witnesses are destroying them.
Prosecution witnesses are destroying.
The media.
You know why this race, this trial is on TV?
You want to know why is it on TV, Snerdley?
Why is this trial on TV?
The what?
The racial.
Well, not just the racial component.
This trial is on TV because the media is convinced that Zimmerman is a racial, a racist bigot murderer.
And they're covering it so that that's their hoped-for outcome.
And it isn't working out for the prosecution.
At least it wasn't.
I haven't been up to speed on what's happened today, but the defense witnesses, I'm sorry, the prosecution witnesses yesterday made the case for the defense.
Amazingly so.
So much so now that the prosecution, we never said this was about race.
The only reason Zimmerman's on trial.
Do you remember when this first happened?
The cops didn't arrest him.
There wasn't any evidence.
The only reason this trial is happening is because the race industry in this country made this trial happen.
They forced everybody, intimidated everybody down in Sanford, or up in Sanford in this case, to treat this as a case of racial hate crime discrimination.
And that's why the media can't let go of it.
That's why all the interest in it, and they're hell-bent on that being the outcome, was not going so great for the prosecution.
So now it's not about racial profiling, said lawyer Darrell Parks about the trial of Zimmerman.
We never claimed this was about race.
Really?
Who was it who said Trayvon, if he had a son, Trayvon would look like him?
What do you mean it's not about race?
Why are they now suddenly not trying not to make this about race?
Because it isn't working, is why.
But wasn't it Barack Obama who said, if I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon Mark.
And now they tell us it isn't about race.
Insult our intelligence.
It's on the subject.
One of my all-time favorite leftist radicals, Cornell West.
You know, Cornell West and his buddy Tavis Smiley.
I mean, these guys, you know, there's a lot about them that you can caricature, but they really are.
They are really serious about trying to eliminate poverty.
They may not be going about it in the most efficient way, you know, promoting capitalism, but they are serious about it.
They do have this.
I don't know if they're still doing it, but they did have this nationwide thing going on about it.
And, you know, I admired them for what they were trying to do for their motivations.
But on Sunday on NPR, on Smiley, they've got a radio show on NPR, Smiley and West.
That'd be Tavis Smiley and Cornell West.
And they're not happy with what's happening here with gay marriage and Obama and everybody else's focus on it.
And here's Cornell West explaining why, and you'll hear Tavis Smiley in the conversation.
We're living in an age where we black folk are just being pushed to the back of the bus in terms of our visibility of our suffering, in terms of the intensity of our exclusion, especially our poor black youth, especially with the new Jim Crow and so on.
And we have to be honest about that.
Again, this has something to do, of course, with what history books will say.
The irony of the age of Obama in which black folk found themselves pushed to the back, our gay brothers and lesbian sisters more and more pushed to the center.
Not happy.
They're not happy.
What this means is that Cornell West is not happy that the age of Obama Where black folk find themselves pushed to the back of the bus again while their gay brothers and lesbian sisters are more and more pushed to the center and the front of the bus.
So, according to Cornell West, even with the first black president, he cares more about and spending more time on gays and lesbians than he is on his own folk, on his own people.
And Cornell, that's because they got more money.
I mean, they have more money to donate.
I don't mean to insult you, but I mean, that's why.
And Cornell's right.
He's totally right about this.
Cornell, the black folk vote is assumed.
It's taken for granted.
Why not?
They get 93% of it every election.
Don't have to work for it, but the gay and lesbian sisters, brothers and sisters, they donate a lot of money.
And they have to be paid back.
So they get to move to the center of the bus, the front of the bus.
Obama's at the front of the bus.
The gays are at the center of the bus.
You know, I take it back.
I changed something I said to Cornell West.
Cornell Obama's not at the front of the bus.
Nobody, he doesn't want to even be on that bus.
He's on jet.
He's on the jet.
You are in the back of the bus being pushed there.
And the gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, respectively, are at the center and the front of the bus.
But Obama's on the jet.
By the way, speaking of this, Michelle Obama said that the White House is like prison.
It's nice.
You got to cook.
But it's so confining.
It's like a prison.
She did indeed say this.
I had it here in the stack.
I just zoomed past it.
Put it aside.
Lala Anthony is still upset over being told she tasted like honey nut Cheerios, too.
I've got that.
Yeah, Lala Anthony, you know, Carmelo Anthony's wife, the basketball player, remember the Knicks and the Celtics and Kevin Garnett of the Celtics during the playoffs said to Carmelo Anthony, on the court, on the floor, your wife tastes like honeynut Cheerios.
And a brawl ensued, or a near brawl.
I mean, this is back in the spring.
And it didn't go down well with Carmelo, that Garnett would even know what his wife tastes like.
So Lala is her name, Lala Anthony, and she addressed the Honey Nut Cheerios controversy involving her husband and Kevin Garnett on the upcoming season of her reality show on VH1.
Lala Anthony is the host of Lala's Full Court Life.
It's an eponymous show named after her.
Lala Anthony's Full Court Life on VH1.
And Garnett of the Celtics famously told Carmelo Anthony his wife tasted like honeynut Cheerios during a game with the Knicks and the Celtics this past season.
And in a preview or trailer for the premiere of Lala's show, she sounds off about this.
Page six of the New York Post says that Lala says, last year, this year, this year, we had a tough time as a family.
The honey nut Cheerio thing was so stupid.
I'm very protective.
My husband, my son, and you don't want people feeling like they have the right to judge who you are and how you handle certain things.
So, yeah, she's writing a relationship book for Penguin Publishing and started on that before the Honey Nut Cheerios blow up.
So that's in the news, too, folks.
Welcome back, folks.
Your guiding light.
Times of trouble, confusion, murkiness, tumult, chaos, deceit, treachery, lies, and yes, even the good times.
Rush Limbaugh, EIB Network.
You know, it could have been worse for Lala Anthony and Carmelo in that.
Kevin Garnett could have told Carmelo his wife tasted like Lucky Charms.
And it was bad enough at Honey Nut Cheerios.
But imagine if it had been Lucky Charms, especially with what we know about Lucky Charms now.
Here is audio.
Muchel Obama.
This is in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
You know what this used to be?
Dar es Salaam used to be the capital of what?
Let's test your geography.
Tanzania, Tanzania, relatively new country.
Dar es Salaam.
Do you want to take a shot at it?
You don't know what Tanzania used to be?
No, no, not Tanyanyika.
That's somebody's daughter.
No, that's Zimbabwe is Rhodesia.
Zimbabwe is the former Rhodesia.
Dar es Salaam.
Well, I'll let people.
That can't be the answer to everything.
Have to figure it out on their own at some point.
All right, what?
Let me ask you a different question.
In what African country will you find the city Khartoum?
Anyway, here is Muchell Obama.
She is in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania at the African First Ladies Summit, which is being moderated by Cokie Roberts of ABC News.
And she's talking to both First Lady Michelle Obama and Laura Bush.
And they were talking about life in the White House.
There are prison elements to it.
But it's a really nice prison.
But with a chef.
You can't complain.
The prison, a really nice prison with a chef.
You really can't complain.
You know what I think?
I think we need a t-shirt.
Perhaps as part of our club getmo line.
The free Michelle t-shirt.
Free Michelle t-shirt within the club getmo line.
Consider it early parole.
And now she's living in a prison.
Let's free her.
Let's get her out of there on an early parole.
That's what?
Say free Michelle with her picture on the front, if we can legally do that.
And then early parole on the back.
Picture the White House.
That's what it is.
Picture the White House with behind bars, the White House behind bars.
Michelle on the top waving with the chef.
And on the back, early parole.
Here's Rebecca in Plainwell, Michigan.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hi.
Oh, hi, Rush.
Yeah, I'd like to throw a couple of suggestions out before I get to my real question.
And one of them is with President Obama, where he was on the night of Benghazi.
I haven't heard anybody put out there that, you know, maybe he was in one of those rooms doing a little blow.
And maybe that's why he was so anxious to shut the White House down.
That's that one.
Well, there's no evidence whatsoever on that.
Well, it's just fun.
Just fun.
Just for fun.
Doing a big blow?
Doing a little blow.
A little blow.
He was growing up?
I don't think that's happened since Clinton was there, but you may be more informed than I. What's the other thing?
The other thing is with this Trayvon Martin and Zimmerman case.
How will the Hispanics like it, how the media is trying to pick winners and losers in this thing, and then the Hispanic side, you know, obviously the losers.
They're trying to turn an Hispanic guy into a white guy for the express purpose of seeing that he's convicted.
Well, we need to keep hammering that he is Hispanic.
You know?
But anyway, so here's the real question.
I don't understand why we allow the narrative to go to the Democrats who will tell us how we can win our elections and all that when we have Obamacare that's widely disapproved of.
And they have that momentum behind them, and yet, you know, we still let them say how we need to win.
We won in 2000, president, 2004.
We won 2010 in the House.
And it's like, it's not true.
We do win elections.
I agree with you on this one.
And I've searched, and I've had my theories, and you've heard them, to explain why it is.
The Republicans do want to listen to Democrats, tell them how to win elections.
I'm telling you, it baffles me like I can't believe.
But look, very quickly, here are the reasons.
Money.
The big-money Republicans want the cheap labor.
So this is what it takes to make sure there's an endless supply.
The Republican consultants have a lot of sway over candidates, telling them this is how you're going to win elections.
You've got to break up.
Third thing is the Republican establishment, not really fond of its base, knows that this will irritate the base, wouldn't mind if the base split.
Any number of explanations, but none of them make any common sense.
I don't know how many times I'm blue in the face.
Listen to Bob Menendez and any of these other Chuck Schumer tell us, you know, you guys are never going to win another election unless you do this.
As though they're really interested in us winning.
I mean, the main thing about this is if we're to believe them, the Democrats are saying, you know what?
We're willing to share some of these Hispanic votes with you just so you guys survive.
So maybe what they want, maybe they want a Republican Party to survive that is a constantly beatable minority.
So they always have an, you know what?
This does make some sense.
Because the Democrat Party cannot exist without villains and demons that it impugns and criticizes and discredits.
And if there were not an opposition party, they'd have to invent one.
So who knows?
Maybe they know what they're doing, and they're creating a permanent, minority, always beatable Republican Party with the Republican Party's assistance.
Now, the Republican Party thinks that what they're doing is their route back to victory.
Don't forget that.
They really do.
Don't ask me to explain it.
None of it's rooted in common sense, and as such, I can't.
Scott in San Diego, I'm glad that you called, sir.
Welcome.
Hey, Rush, second time caller.
The first topic of the day you covered about United Healthcare not writing policies in California and why they backed Obamacare, what's the logic behind it.
I believe it might be in the risk reserves that they have for health care in each state.
If they stop writing, like, let's say, policies in California, the risk reserves for California can be freed up.
They can basically release those risk reserves to use as capital for their business or to give dividends to their shareholders.
It gives them latitude.
So you're saying this.
So what are you?
Well, I'm saying they allow that risk reserve, which is billions of dollars, which now they can utilize within their company.
But are you saying that's why they canceled, not because of Obamacare?
Well, that's why they supported Obamacare.
And I think that's why they canceled, because now they'll have no more risk in California.
They can free up those risk reserves of billions of dollars.
Okay, so they support Obamacare to sell the policies.
Well, I think they see the writing on the wall that it is going to go single pay or government.
So why not allow, why not start taking that risk reserve money and using it?
The old risk reserve trick.
You know, I should have thought of it and didn't.
You make a great point.
Scott, seriously, thanks for the call.
I got to take a quick timeout.
We'll be back and continue.
Risk reserves.
I should have thought of that.
I don't know why I didn't.
What Scott was saying was that the risk reserve is simply a way of getting out of insuring people.
They got all this money selling policies.
Now they can use Obamacare as an excuse to get out of the insurance business, or at least the unprofitable parts of it.