Snerdly, I'll ask you, as I'm asking everybody else, because I'm asked this question all the time.
I have answered this question all the time, but I'll ask it again.
Why do truth in advertising laws not apply to political commercials?
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's Open Line Friday!
Yip, yip, yip, yip, yahoo!
Open Line Friday, Rush Schlimboy, your guiding light with half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
Yes, sir, Reba.
Golden opportunity for you because when we go to the phones, you can talk about whatever you want.
You can ask a question.
You can make a comment.
Whatever is on your mind is usually fair game on Open Line Friday.
The telephone number is 800-282-2882.
The email address lrushbo at eibnet.com.
That's exactly right.
The First Amendment Freedom of Speech Clause was specifically written with political speech in mind.
The federal government cannot tell somebody what they can or can't say in political speech, and political advertising is political speech.
So you can say whatever you want in a political ad, unless you're the Tea Party.
And then the IRS will come down on you.
The IRS, in fact, will come down on you before you run any ads, making sure that you don't have the money to run any ads.
And that was because the IRS probably was directed by Obama to do that.
And not directly.
They wouldn't have to.
Rehashing old ground here.
But the IRS, one of the head honchos met with Obama a couple of days before all this started happening.
But that's not necessary.
Obama puts people just like himself in all of these positions of authority, in all the cabinet positions, all of the czars.
So he doesn't have to have a paper trail.
He doesn't have to send a memo to Eric Holder about what he wants the Justice Department to do.
Holder's going to do it anyway.
Holder is Obama.
The people of the IRS, they don't need a memo.
They don't need instructions.
They're put there because they already hate conservatives.
They're put there because they already despise conservatives.
They're put there because they already are inclined to have an unlevel playing field for conservatives.
This is why liberals want to be in government, is to use it as a weapon against their enemies, political opponents.
That's why they want to be in government.
It's all about power.
It's all about control.
It's not about governing.
It's not about all the things they claim to stand for.
Fairness and being nice and understanding and tolerant and compassionate and guaranteeing that there won't be any discrimination.
That's not at all.
The government's the biggest weapon in this country.
It's a giant weapon and there's all kinds of ammunition that you can put in this weapon.
And that's why they want it.
Liberals want to control the government to eliminate their opposition.
So Obama puts somebody over at the IRS.
It's explicitly understood that whoever is there, and not just one person, whoever is there isn't going to have to be told to make it tough on conservative groups.
It's just going to happen.
Same thing at the EPA.
Same thing at OSHA, wherever Obama is going to put people in appointive or even career positions.
This is how liberals use government.
In fact, it's one of, as far as they're concerned, the reasons for government to exist to advance their agenda and to eliminate any opposition.
I mean, the media doesn't be told what to do, do they?
Nick Obama has to have a meeting with Matt Lauer or Brian Williams or Chris Matthews or Piers Morgan.
I better stop naming names.
I'll be here all night.
Nick Obama has to have meetings with any of these people to tell them what to do every day on their newscasts.
Hell no.
They're going to do it anyway.
It's who they are.
That is why when anybody gets hired by a news network, they're hired on the basis of what their already known inclinations are.
Are you conservative or are you a liberal?
It's not even asked.
Conservatives aren't even hired, much like it is in Hollywood.
Okay, this has become mildly conservative, controversial this afternoon.
In Washington at the White House, after meeting with President Truong Tan Sang of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, Obama spoke with reporters about the meeting.
Here is a portion of what he said.
President Tsang shared with me a copy of a letter sent by Ho Chi Minh to Harry Truman.
And we discussed the fact that Ho Chi Minh was actually inspired by the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution and the words of Thomas Jefferson.
Ho Chi Minh talks about his interest in cooperation with the United States.
And President Tsang indicated that even if it's 67 years later, it's good that we're still making progress.
Now, I'm going to have to parse this, because as is the case with much of what Obama says, there are grains of accuracy in it.
But the intent of what Obama said here is outrageous, folks.
It happens to be true that Ho Chi Minh actually did once cite Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence.
He did this at the end of World War II in 1945.
And that was when Ho Chi Minh was, in effect, declaring a war of independence on the French.
But this is nothing new from communist dictators.
Communist dictators have often cited, they'll lie about anything to advance their cause.
They'll lie about anything to make people think that they are what they're not.
Every dictator starts out as the greatest freedom fighter there's ever been.
Every dictator starts out as somebody who's going to liberate his people from tyranny and from bondage.
And they all cite the great thinkers and the great minds of freedom and liberty.
It's all part of the camouflage.
It's all part of the lie.
Ho Chi Minh was no more like Thomas Jefferson.
Ho Chi Minh no more was interested in the Declaration of Independence.
For his people, it served his purposes as he sought independence from the French, but he was no interest in any of that in terms of how he's going to run Vietnam.
Obama knows that.
Ho Chi Minh, he was actually inspired.
Declaration of Independence, Constitution.
Well, Obama wasn't.
That's one of the problems.
You think I've stepped in it there?
He wasn't.
You go back.
We have played audio interviews of Obama from the early 2000s.
He clearly clearly has a problem with the founding of this country, in large part because of race.
But he doesn't.
He's not enamored.
Why do you think he's trying to transform this country?
Why do you think he's trying to turn it upside down?
He does not like the way it was founded.
It was unjust and immoral.
So citing Ho Chi Minh, he's just kissing butt with the Vietnamese guy here.
That's all that's happening here.
And when he goes out and says, Ho Chi Minh talks about his interest in cooperation with the U.S., what cooperation with the U.S. was there ever from Ho Chi Minh?
He might have lied about wanting to cooperate with the U.S. in 1947 or 1948.
He might have lied about it to convince John Kennedy that he wasn't going to be up.
knows but he had for what did ho chi minh do I don't care what Ho Chi Minh.
The fact that we're even having to sit here, that I'm even having to sit here and take the time.
No, I guess this makes sense because it's a long time ago for a lot of people.
Ho Chi Minh was a butcher.
Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, they come out of the same school.
They're butchers.
They're dictators.
They're bloodthirsty.
Interested in cooperation with the United States.
Yeah, insofar as he can fool whoever was running the United States at the time into thinking he wasn't an enemy or need not be opposed.
Ho Chi Minh talks about his interest in cooperating with the United States.
And President Tsang indicated that even if it's 67 years later, it's good that we're still making progress.
What a bunch of hokeum.
So he's just, he's got this little Vietnamese guy there.
One of these meetings he probably didn't want to take.
The Vietnamese guy shows up.
So, okay, I'll have the meeting.
And here you go.
I'll say some nice things about your buddy Ho Chi Minh and we'll move on.
And in the process, Obama comes out, says something that's going to profoundly irritate the Vietnam-era war veterans.
He doesn't care.
This is kind of funny.
Judy Miller was on Fox Happening Now this afternoon with the co-host, the fill-in co-host Rick Folbaum.
And they're talking about Wiener and recent revelations that Wiener participated in several inappropriate online relationships since he resigned from Congress.
And Fulbaum said to Judy Miller, formerly of the New York Times, said, Judy, is the media complicit in pushing the narrative that Weiner had recovered and was happy in his marriage all the while he was still engaging in these acts?
Yes, because it's a story.
But I've been fascinated by the kind of Hillary Huma story that the media has picked up on.
You know, Hillary pioneering the standby your man line recovery narrative, political recovery, that is.
And now we have Homa Abedeen more or less adopting the same posture.
We all know that Homo worked for Hillary, that they are still very close.
Ergo, we get a story that, as far as I know, is completely devoid of fact.
I don't know for a fact that Homo's been talking to Hillary or vice versa.
I'd like to see some reporting on that.
Okay, now that happened this afternoon.
Judy Miller, a former infobabe and reporter at for the New York Times, saying, you know what?
I haven't seen anything on this.
Everybody's just assuming that Hillary talked to Huma, but we haven't seen it.
I want to see some reporting on that.
Now, in journalism speak, reporting means going out and finding out.
Hell, I reported that story.
That just means I researched it and I found they speak their own lingo.
I want to see some reporting on that.
She just, I wish somebody would tell me.
Well, what she doesn't know, a lot of other people didn't know because nobody watches CNN.
But earlier this morning on CNN, Gloria Borger had already reported that.
Gloria Borger had already broken the story about Huma and Hillary.
Gloria had already done the reporting, but Judy at Fox didn't know it because nobody watches CNN.
So the fill-in host at CNN, John Berman, speaking with chief political analyst Gloria Borger about Weiner and about Huma.
And Berman said, Gloria, you have a little bit of news here in the Wiener story.
I have from two knowledgeable sources that Hillary Clinton, whom, as you know, is very close to Huma Abedeen, did not know that Huma was going to go on TV and defend her husband.
People are wondering if Huma's been getting advice from Hillary.
Not on this topic.
So somebody needs to call Judy Miller because I doubt that she's listening to me.
Judy, somebody reported it, and it was Gloria Borger.
And Hillary did not advise Huma.
And Huma did not talk to Hillary.
So Huma was on her own out there with Wiener when she was professing her love and adulation.
Now, as you know, one of the sextets with whom Weiner was sending naked photos of his genitalia has come forward, this appropriately named Leathers.
Last name is, I think her first name is Sidney.
Is that right?
You follow this.
Sidney Leathers.
She's 22, and she's out there saying that Carlos Danger is a reprobate.
That this guy is a weirdo.
He's a dirty old man.
This is one of the women that Weiner, aka Carlos Danger, was sexting after he resigned and after he said that he and Huma had moved on and they were hunky-dory and everything was cool.
So last night on Fox on your world with Cavuto, Stuart Varney was guest hosting and he had on Kirsten Powers because Pelosi had weighed in on the Wiener situation.
I forget what I forget what Pelosi had said, but anyway, Stuart Varney said, Nancy Pelosi, one of the most powerful women in politics, former speaker, she was always talking about the war on women, but she doesn't think that she's not prepared to tell Weiner to get out of the race.
This has been my point on this all along.
These are the people that run around talk about all this Republican war on women stuff when they are the ones debasing women and using them in these ways.
And apparently Pelosi said that Weiner's got no business getting out of the race.
So Stuart Varney, you want to know what Kirsten Powers thought of that.
She's not from New York.
I just don't think it's necessarily Nancy Pelosi's place.
I don't see why Nancy Pelosi is supposed to weigh in on mayoral racism because she's from the country.
It's about a war on women for years and years and years.
But this isn't a war on women.
I mean, he's had an affair and he cheated on his wife.
How is that a war on women?
I don't see why this is Nancy Pelosi's responsibility.
It isn't a war on women.
Kirsten, the reason we're bringing it up is because these are the people telling people like me and everybody else that we're conducting a war on women.
Weiner is the one that's using them, debasing them, co-opting them, corrupting them, what have you.
And then lying to his wife about it.
Take a quick time out.
We've got a little bit more on this.
We'll be back here in just a second.
Yesterday on Inside Edition, Jim Morray spoke with Sidney Leathers, latest sexting partner of Carlos Danger.
And during a discussion about the relationship, Moray and Sidney Leathers had this little tete-a-te back and forth.
He said that they went from texts to phone calls.
Yes.
And what would happen in those phone calls?
We had phone sex.
I read one quote that suggested you thought he was a dirty old man.
He actually said that about himself to me.
The exact wording was that he's an argumentative, perpetually horny, middle-aged man.
And at the time, I was like, oh, no, you're not.
But, yes, he is.
This is not all.
There's a no, there's even more from Sidney Leathers, who actually sounds more cogent and aware than Weiner does.
That's amazing.
Back in a second.
Half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
This Sidney Leathers, 22 years old, said that they had phone sex every day.
She said, she said a lot, folks.
Some of it, I am not.
She was explicit about.
She was explicit about how fast Wiener was.
And it was not good.
I mean, it was, here's the point.
No, it was like 20 seconds.
I mean, it was just—but that's not—the point of this stuff is out there being discussed in public about a candidate who may, in fact, win the race for mayor in New York City.
The Democrat Party.
And you've got Nancy Pelosi out there defending this, defending Weiner.
Isn't that what Kirsten Powers is upset about?
What did Pelosi?
She went off on Weiner, then I misunderstood what Kirsten Powers was talking about.
Kirsten Powers upset that Pelosi weighed in on this.
At any rate, I mean, there's some Democrats that want him to go away and so, but this is just, it's just smarmy.
And now you've got Sylda Spitzer, who is leaving client number nine after the election.
She's going to file for divorce.
Pelosi said, disrespectful to women and reprehensible.
Okay.
Then I got confused on that previous soundbite.
I don't know why Kirsten Powers would be upset with Pelosi saying that, but she was upset with her.
At any rate, back to Inside Edition, Jim Murray talking to Sidney Leathers.
And Murray said, so Carlos Danger texted you, do me a solid, and can you hard delete all our chats here?
He asked you to delete everything.
Yeah, that was before April.
So what did you think he wanted you to do and why?
I mean, obviously, I knew he wanted me to erase any evidence of our conversations because that was around the time I knew that he was going to run for mayor.
And did you get the sense that he perceived you and your relationship as a threat?
Of course.
Did you get a sense that he was having second thoughts or getting cold feet?
Not really, which is what's strange about it.
I feel like he suspected that this could happen, but he didn't do a lot to protect himself from it.
He was making these campaign promises that he had totally changed and he was a better man now and he learned from his mistakes and I am proof that that is not true.
This is a case study.
Here you have Weiner publicly saying all this is behind him, that he's a changed man, that he and Huma have reunited, gotten together, put it all behind them, professed their love for each other, now a little baby in the oven on the way, and they're moving forward.
And Weiner even takes it close to the cleaners now, just to show that he's fully committed to the marriage.
And all the while saying that publicly, he's still doing the nasty here on the phone with Sidney Leathers.
Now, some people say, didn't he know he was going to get caught?
See, and that, folks, is the rub.
Didn't he know he was going to get caught?
Of course.
That's the thing you live with.
He lives at that constantly doing something like this.
That's not, the question is, did he really think he was going to get away with it?
And that's where the answer is yes.
And that's where this is screwed up.
That's where Weiner is a mess.
I mean, yeah, doing this stuff's messy and yeah, engaging all this stuff.
It's odd.
It's at least in normal circles that we call perverted.
But he still thought he could get away with this.
He thought that he could continue to do this and that very little harm would come to him, either in his marriage or politically.
Now, I know some of you say, no, no, Rush, there's something sick.
This is a sickness and so forth.
Well, there's this simple thing of, you know, Nancy Reagan just say no or just a little self-discipline, a little restraint.
I'm telling you that there's an arrogance here and a conceit.
I guarantee you that Anthony Weiner thinks that he is something special.
In his own mind, he's a legend.
In his own mind, there's nobody better.
In his own mind, he's the greatest of whatever.
Now, in real life, Anthony Weiner hasn't done anything.
He's authored no legislation.
I mean, he claims that he was the author of healthcare.
He hasn't done anything.
Anthony, you know what Anthony Weiner is most known for?
Arguing on TV with Fox News anchorettes and Sean Hannity.
That's what he's most known for.
The left loves Anthony Weiner because when he would go on TV, he would shout at them and yell at them just exactly like the nameless, faceless, pajama-clad commentators that post comments on these blogs talk.
He was saying in public to conservatives what they were writing anonymously.
And that's why he was loved.
That's why Weiner was thought to be the greatest guy on earth because he really told those conservatives.
And he'd tell Megan Kelly what for, whoever, whatever Fox anchor he was talking to, particularly if it was a woman, he just treated them with no respect whatsoever and would shout over them and just prevent them from continuing a conversation, asking questions.
That's all he ever did.
But in his mind, obviously, he's really something special.
So special, so good.
The funny thing is Bill Clinton Jr. can survive all of this stuff and might even become even more popular, more notorious, more well-known for engaging in it.
Here's Rob in Glencove, New York.
Hi, Rob, great to have you on the program.
Hello.
Hey, good afternoon, Rush.
How are you?
Very well.
Thank you.
Good.
Thanks for taking my call.
You know, in terms of some of these political people deciding whether they should go after the repeal of Obamacare before 2014 or not, I just want to tell you and your audience that the rates came out for the exchanges here in New York last Thursday.
The average premium, I'm doing healthcare for 23 years, the average premium for the cheapest plan for a person over 30 years of age is about $415 a month.
And that includes a $3,300 deductible.
And from my experience, that's also based on your modified adjusTedros.
Wait a minute, wait a minute.
$400 and how much a month?
$4.15.
$4.15.
So we're basically looking at $4,800 a year.
Right.
But you get no help from the government in terms of a premium tax subsidy if you make just north of $3,750.
But I thought Obama was going to cut everybody's premiums $2,500.
Well, that's based on the subsidy.
The point I'm saying to you is that this is any young kid who's got student loans, got the cars, car maintenance, car insurance, on $3,800 a month, he still has to pay taxes.
He still has to pay all the other nuts he's got to pay in terms of his rent.
And if he gets sick for paying $4.15, he still has a $3,300 deductible.
No, he doesn't, because there's an option to pay a fine.
Did they publish the cost of the fines?
Well, the fine is going to be $95 or 1% of his annual salary.
But I'm saying to you, that's my point, is that you're right.
He's going to pay the fine.
He's not going to buy the insurance.
Hence, you're going to have adverse selection, and you're going to have only the sickies go onto the exchanges, and it's going to be even a bigger cost.
And the irony is that if you have like a dental issue, you have no coverage at all.
Right.
For all this money out of your pocket.
All these people, the 30 and under crowd you're talking about, they're going to opt for the fine.
By the way, this is part of the plan's design.
The fines are so relatively comparatively inexpensive to the policy, they want young people paying the fine to suck them in.
By paying the fine and not buying a policy, they're undercutting private sector insurance companies.
The whole thing here is designed to put private sector insurance companies out of business.
The fines are cheaper for two or three years.
And then after that, the fines end up.
I mean, they skyrocket.
They end up being much more expensive than the policy after only, I think, two or three years.
And then these young 30-year-olds and under, they are going to get shocked because their fine is no longer going to be cheaper.
And the IRS is going to be after them.
And their policy, whatever it costs, is going to be deducted via their taxes because those people and their contributions, whatever we're going to call them, have to subsidize the treatment for the elderly, correct?
Yep.
And that's why they're being sucked in the way they are.
Well, I'm just saying to you that it's going to be a load such that the hook that holds the whole thing together, I don't see this being able to be properly financed because the benefits are way too rich and the costs on the ground for other costs, other necessities are so high that young people aren't going to buy it in the first place.
They'll just pay the penalty.
For a while.
For a while.
Then the penalty goes away after two or three years by design.
Look, this is not insignificant.
Those fines are cheap to attract people.
They want the young not buying insurance.
Health insurance companies can't exist without customers.
The objective is to eventually have, in 10 years, everybody required to go to the government because that's going to be the only place you can go to get insurance.
And then they own everything.
The purpose of the fines is to put private sector insurance out of business eventually.
What's to stop them from going off the grid?
The income tax form.
By off the grid, you mean going cash economy.
Well, nothing's – that's why this thing – I mean, Rob said it.
The numbers don't work out.
The benefits so far outweigh what is going to be contributed, for lack of a better word.
It can't fly.
Now, there's a Wall Street Journal story today that Bobby Jindal and Scott Walker, Louisiana governor, Wisconsin governor, respectively, they're out there talking about this, that Obamacare is simply unworkable.
It cannot work.
And the point they make, I'll just read from the piece, a pull quote.
The slightly larger problem is that the Obama administration does not have a health care plan.
Yes, the White House has a law with thousands of pages, but the closer we get to October 1st, the day that government-mandated health insurance exchanges are supposed to open, the more we see the administration doesn't have a legitimate plan to successfully implement the law.
There is no framework.
There's simply 2,200 pages of liberal utopia panacea crap, page after page after page, but there is no systematic blueprint to tell people how to implement this and what to do.
It doesn't exist because that was not the purpose of this.
And we head back to the phones.
It's Open Line Friday, Sugarland, Texas.
It's one of my all-time favorite names of a town.
Sugarland, Texas.
This is Kent.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
Hello.
Oh, thanks, Russ.
Minnie Dittos, and I love your peach iced tea.
Thank you, sir.
This morning I was watching Fox, and Carl Rohl was on and with his little chalkboard showing that over 90% of the spending on Obamacare won't be affected by the discretionary spending, and that trying to cut the program, cut the money from it, wouldn't really do anything.
Byron York has a piece today, much the same, in the Washington Examiner.
Byron York says, all this talk about defunding Obamacare is not even possible.
The law is, I mean, it's the law of the land now.
There's nothing to do.
And he made the same point that the spending isn't discretionary.
You can't take it back.
And there's a theory that, well, Obama's trying to lure the Republicans into doing this and then shutting down the government so he can beat the Republicans up over a shutdown and sail the victory in the 2014 midterms.
Yeah, that was in the Drudge Report this morning.
The Washington Post was saying that was part of their strategy.
Yeah.
Well, I don't know if the Republicans can't seem to do their PR very well.
I don't know who would win that battle.
Which battle are you referring to?
The PR battle on if they do try to cut the funding and then no, here's my point.
I wish I had more time.
We're down to 35 seconds with you, and I wish I'd have gotten to you sooner, because this idea that Obama is trying to lure us into shutting down the government so that we will, it seems to me that the Republicans always seem to come up with a Democrat strategy that they've detected that is designed to make them give the Democrats what they want in the end.
For example, well, Obama wants to lure the Republicans into shut down the government.
And so the Republicans are going to screw him by not opposing this and not shutting down the government.
And therefore, Obama's going to get what he wants.
I think it's no different than the Democrats.
And you better not criticize Obama.
The Independents are going to hate you.
It's bohunk.
The government shutdown in 1995 was not the disaster that everybody thinks that it was, not substantively.
But I'll have to explore that again in detail on Monday because we're out of time now.
Thanks so much for being with us this week, my friends.
It's always the most fun that I have.
I can't tell you how much I look forward to it.
And I look forward to the return on Monday after a fine, restful, and recharging weekend.