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Aug. 2, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:35
August 2, 2013, Friday, Hour #2
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Time Text
As expressed by the host on this program, documented to be almost always right, 99.7% of the time.
It's the EIB network and El Rushball on Friday.
Let's hit it.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
No, I knew it.
I knew that Obama would take care of it.
And Obama took care of it.
Remember, I don't know.
This was as quickly as time seems to be flying.
It seems like we talked about this in the last three weeks, maybe four weeks, there is a provision in Obamacare that requires members of Congress and their staff to get their health care via Obamacare, via the exchanges.
And the story we had, if you recall, was how many members of Congress, but mostly their staff could not afford it.
And some of these people are making over $100,000 a year.
And it was a story, I don't have it at my fingertips here, but I remember it like this was yesterday.
There was real panic among members of the staffs of Senators and Congressmen over having to give up their current health care plan and move in to Obamacare.
Part of the Obamacare plan was that members of Congress could have to do it.
They were going to be at one with the people.
They were not going to have their separate Cadillac plan to show that they were just like us.
You know, the equivalent of Mitch Snyder sleeping on a on a sewer grate in the wintertime for solidarity with the homeless.
Well, so were members of Congress and their staff going to have to get their health care insurance through the exchanges.
And the story three to four weeks ago was a real heart tugger, folks.
I mean, it was three handkerchiefs.
They were the tears.
I mean, the paper was wet when I came out of the printer about how these poor people couldn't afford it.
And something was going to have to be done.
Something was going to have to be done because members of the ruling class were not going to be able to afford health insurance.
If they had to do what we had to do.
Never mind that many Americans aren't going to be able to afford it.
That's fine.
That's okay.
But members of Congress, it's just not fair that they shouldn't afford it or their staffs.
So the upshot of this is Obama solves health care problem for lawmakers and staff.
And it's from Roll Call.
Just a day after Obama told Senate Democrats he had personally engaged in the issue of his signature health care law's effect on lawmakers and their staff, it appears there's a solution.
What a coincidence.
Word began circulating around Capitol Hill that the orifice of personal management, personnel management, soon issue guidance to address the way the health care laws exchanges affect members of Congress and those employed in their offices.
Senate aides initially declined to discuss the matter, but Harry Reid confirmed the existence of a deal.
While he was leaving the Capitol late yesterday, a White House official confirmed details of the plan later last night.
Basically, the Office of Personnel Management needed to determine that the federal government could help pay the cost of premiums on the exchanges for congressional employees.
So the solution is that congressional employees are going to qualify for subsidies.
So that they can afford Obamacare.
Essentially, Obama ordered the Office of Personnel Management to give Congress and its staffers a taxpayer subsidy for their premiums.
Now the salary for Congressman, 174,000 a year.
The average staffer's salary is over 70,000, and many of them earn almost as much as Congressman.
So just one day, folks, after Obama promised the Senate Democrats in a closed door session that he would give them an Obamacare carve out, the Office of Personnel Management is saying that it's going to provide taxpayer subsidies to Congress and their staff so that they can afford the Obamacare premiums.
Now bear in mind, the salary for rank and foul Congressman, again, $174,000 a year.
The average staffer's salary is over 70.
That's average.
That means there are a lot of people above that.
This is this is being reported, by the way, on a blog.
It's not in a newspaper news, it's on the roll call blog.
And it has finally bled over now to the politico.
But the mainstream media is nowhere near this.
Now, if a Republican president had given Congress a way around his signature legislation be the biggest story since soldiers put panties on the heads of prisoners at Abu Grab and made them do a pyramid.
Now you want to know what the subsidy is currently, the subsidies to Congressmen and their staffs is 75% of their total health care cost as a result of the deal.
So two days ago, there was panic on Capitol Hill because members of Congress and their staff, some, were not going to be able to afford Obamacare.
They weren't going to be able to afford the premiums.
It was incredible because these are people were involved in writing the law.
These are people involved in writing the law, and they make way above the national average, and they make way above the national mean salary.
Way above it.
And they were whining.
And the story was about how they were panicking.
Yes, they were afraid of a brain drain because these poor, these brilliant people were not going to be able to afford the premiums, and they might have to leave government because in order to get health care, if this just wasn't right.
I mean, it fit right in with this model that's been created the ruling class versus the country class, and the ruling class, the hell if they're going to be bound in the same constraints we are, the hell if they're going to live the same way we do.
They're better than we are.
They're above us.
They're elitists, they're cut above.
They don't they shouldn't have to have these kinds of pressures.
They're important.
They don't need these kind of distractions.
These are really important people, these members of Congress and their staff.
And they ought not have to have this kind of fear in their daily job because it's too important.
They ought not have these destructions or distractions.
And they actually complained about it.
Let you complain about something and you're called greedy.
Let you complain about your taxes or a proposed tax increase, and they call you greedy and selfish.
They're getting, no, subsidies are also available to regular American people, but but the subsidy cap is 94 grand on a family of four.
The caps have been removed.
All of these people, regardless, are going to get a 75% subsidy.
They're getting a subsidy that nobody else gets, essentially.
Now, a family of four at an exchange qualifies for a subsidy up to roughly $94,000 a year.
If the family of four has combined income of $94,000, they qualify for a subsidy at the exchange.
And it goes down through a family of two, single parent family or just a single individual.
These people are going to get 75% subsidies, well above the salary of $92,000.
This congressional welfare.
Now we, you know, the Congress talk about Democrats talk about corporate welfare and how it fair it is, tax breaks for big oil.
The thing about this, however, that that resonates with me is the idea that people in Washington ought not be subject to these laws that they write.
They ought not have to play by the same rules that they write for us.
Equality and fairness don't apply to them.
When they were faced with the reality of the law they wrote, they said, what the hell with that?
We're not doing that.
Who do they think we are?
And they started demanding a carve out, special treatment, and they got it.
That's what the story is about.
Obama said, I'll fix it, I'll make sure that there's a 75% subsidy.
That's the story.
So just wanted to pass that on.
I'm not trying to create a furor out here.
I just, it's it fits right in with the whole mechanism or the structure of a ruling class versus country class.
Well, Snerdley says they have also created what's going to happen because people aren't going to stand for this.
People aren't going to know about this.
Now, see, Snerdley thinks, well, they might not have known about it, but they do now since you talked about it.
Well, the people listening to this program are going to know about it.
But here's where this is where I submit, Snerdley, you're you're still failing to understand.
The truth of the matter is that most Americans probably won't care.
Now, the one way I could be wrong.
Congress is not perceived to be the Democrat Party.
So I could be wrong about that.
Congress, low approval numbers.
Congress has a never-ending poor image.
This kind of thing could be like the House bank.
The House Post Office.
It could I know.
It I I know, but Obama's routinely getting around the law, and nobody cares.
Nobody's worried that Obama's making law on his own.
They're applauding it, in fact.
When he goes out and makes these speeches on the economy, he tells people.
If Congress won't do it, I'll just do it myself.
Yeah, run on, man.
You tell them, Obama, you tell them.
You I'm just, I'm just I hope I'm wrong, but my my wild guess is that you're you're you're waiting for this thing to blow up and become this huge scandal, and people grab their pitchforks and run to Washington to demand, and I'm telling you it's not going to happen.
Uh that may be bigger than the cornhusker kickback, but as time has gone on, I think we we live in in a in an era where government can't do anything wrong.
Whatever they do is okay and right.
With the low information voters and all that.
I know.
60% of the people hated Obamacare before.
Let's just see how much and how wide beyond this show this news gets.
Let's see how far it spreads.
We'll keep a sharp eye.
Brief time out here, my friends, open line Friday.
We you go to the phones and you get to talk about pretty much whatever you want, so don't go away.
Now, our original story on this was back on June 13th, and it was the it was the Grassley Provision, Senator Grassley.
And uh the the Grassley Provision, uh, folks, was intended to make Congress live under the same rules as everybody else in Obamacare.
And this ruling from Obama and the Office of Personnel Management turns that upside down.
And these are not the usual Obamacare subsidies.
You have to understand this is not the same subsidy setup that you or other Americans are going to get at the exchanges.
These are not the Obamacare subsidies that everybody has to apply for.
These are completely different.
These are automatic.
The money is going to come from the Office of Personnel Management Budget.
It is not going to come from the IRS or Obamacare.
The unions have been asking for a subsidy like this too.
The unions have been bellyaching.
Remember the letter that they wrote?
Pelosi and Reed, Jimmy Hoffa and Trump and these guys.
Nobody can live with this.
Nobody can afford this.
So the unions are asking for just this kind of they want a waiver.
They want the government to pay for this, essentially, because they can't afford it, they say.
So congressional staff is going to get anywhere they could get up to $11,000 a year to defray the costs of their health care premiums, folks.
But not via the exchange.
This is not the standard subsidy that other Americans are going to get.
This is just a transfer of money from the Office of Personnel Management to members of Congress and their staff.
The congressional subsidy is not like the usual Obamacare study subsidy.
They're going to make well that's that's really all you need to know on this.
They're not going to have to apply for a subsidy like you are.
They're not going to have to go in and qualify.
They're not going to have to fill out forms.
They're not going to have to prove income or any of that.
The money is going to go to them straight from the Office of Personnel Management, and these premiums are big from $5,000 to $11,000 a year.
It is outright special treatment that you can't get.
And the unions are asking for the same thing.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, let me change gears here a second.
You people out there are incredible.
Yesterday, I mentioned in a throwaway that in honor of the 25th anniversary of this program that we were offering cases of two if by tea at $10 as a as a special way to celebrate the 25th anniversary of this program.
And each case is 12 bottles.
Well, folks, we're sold out of two flavors.
We have sold out of original sweet tea.
And what's the uh the other one we've sold out is um uh just a second uh blueberry.
We have sold out of the original sweet tea, and we have sold out of blueberry.
Now the the remaining flavors are delicious.
They're just as good.
My favorite's the raspberry diet raspberry, if if uh Catherine's around, but the uh the raspberry is absolutely tremendous.
But the way this is going, we might be sold out at that by the end of the day.
A $10 deal is still on.
I mean, I that's what I announced yesterday.
$10 per case, 12 bucks a case, until 11.59 p.m. Pacific tonight.
But by the way, we didn't do this with just a handful of cases on hand.
We thought we were fully loaded.
I mean, we that's why I say you all are incredible.
Yeah, there's no rate, of course, no range.
I mean, this price, $10 is good today, because I said yesterday it was.
And is always free shipping.
No, there's not a limit on how many cases you can.
Why are you asking me this?
There's not a limit on the number of cases.
I Well, good luck.
I feel like I feel like Apple.
You know, I made this big announcement yesterday.
We don't have any more.
We're out of regular, sweetened tea, and uh in blueberry.
Uh this is it's it's fabulous, too, because you know, we're sponsor the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation as part of the entire two if by tea enterprise.
And it's also our little bit here, are doing our part to create jobs and manufacture right here in the country.
Um it's just this is overwhelming, folks.
I mean, you're literally incredible.
Now we uh also yesterday played the tape of the phone call to the winner of the last great sweepstakes we did, the winner of a Jeep Patriot, a great couple in uh Oklahoma, and you can hear the call, you can see pictures of them at the two if by tea.com website.
Uh, that's where you have to go to order the tea, two if by tea.com.
And I I have to stress while supplies last, and folks, I'm look, this is not been you're just overwhelming us.
God bless you, but you are just overwhelming us.
Twelve bottles per case, $10 per case through tonight at 11.59 p.m.
Pacific.
And we want you to join in on the winning fun and in honor of the 25th anniversary of this program.
Simply visit 2ifbyt.com.
There's no promo code needed.
Have at it.
So you should hear snerdley.
You ought to be, you ought to be happy.
People buying the tea, selling it.
Well, I am, but I'm also, uh folks, honestly, we're we're a little embarrassed.
Uh one of the things that irritates me more than anything, I'll just be honest, is when a company advertises something and you go buy it and they don't have it.
It irritates me, and and believe me, we that is not a strategy of ours.
We do not do that.
It's never been, we talked about it one time.
We're joking around one night.
Hey, you know what?
Let's do it like Apple does.
Create this massive demand and prevent people.
That's not the way we're doing this.
We're just overwhelmed here.
You all are incredible.
We thought we had plenty in stock.
So now we've scheduled a new run, a bottling run to handle all this.
But uh anyway, I just am overwhelmed.
Honestly.
But I'm not this is not intended.
It's not any kind of uh, what would you call it, trickery or any of that?
It's just it was totally, I don't want to say unexpected, it was hoped for, but to this degree.
It's great.
Anyway, Philadelphia Eagles have excused wide receiver Riley Cooper from the team.
Have you heard about this?
Riley Cooper is a wide receiver for the Philadelphia Eagles, and earlier this summer he went to a Kenny Chesney concert, and he was backstage trying to get backstage, and they wouldn't let him backstage.
He had apparently had uh consumed massive quantities of adult beverage and started throwing the N-word around like it was a common, ordinary, everyday word, and he was making threats.
And the video, this happened some months ago, but the video went viral this week, and as you can expect, it blew up.
It has that nobody has been able to contain this.
The Eagles tried.
Riley Cooper tried.
Uh black players of the Eagles went before the cameras and microphones.
Riley's a good guy.
This is a horrible thing, but we know the guy.
We're not going to hold it against him.
Michael Vick went out and uh and tried to downplay This, but the sports media just went ballistic with the Philadelphia Eagles ownership and management just went ballistic.
So Riley Cooper was excused from all team activities today, after this video, in which he was caught making this racial slur.
Riley Cooper says my actions were inexcusable.
The more I think about what I did, the more disgusted I get.
I keep trying to figure out how I could have said something so repulsive and what I can do to make things better.
This, of course, has spawned stories that say, well, it's like this in every NFL locker room.
And there are guys like Riley Cooper everywhere in the NFL, and they're talking it's just really it's uncontainable now.
And uh and and the moral enforcers in the media are now demanding to know just how widespread this is and what should be done with all of these offenders, and how in the world can this be tolerated and what are we going to do about it?
The Eagles, they said they sent him away.
They have not been released.
They just excused him.
He's not at camp.
And they did not set a timetable for his return.
They need him.
See, this is the the other side of this.
The number one wide receiver, Jerry uh uh uh uh not um Jeremy Macklin, a Mizzou alum, is out for the season with an injury, and Riley Cooper was gonna step in, thought to step in.
So anyway, Michael Vick, Jason Avant, and uh others, LaShawn McCoy, have expressed their forgiveness for Cooper.
But it hasn't mattered.
So that's the latest on that.
Eagles excuse, still nothing on A-Rod.
This is this is for four days.
Well, longer than that, but this week, four straight days, tomorrow, A Rod may be suspended for the rest of his career.
Every day.
It's been that's been the story.
Tomorrow it may happen.
Bud Sealing may nick the hammer down on A-Rod tomorrow.
Well, it's been tomorrow for the last three days and nothing's happened.
And now the latest is that the feds may be moving in to investigate A-Rod and this biogenesis plant down in Florida that dealt with anti-aging and human growth hormone.
That is thought to put additional pressure on A-Rod to make an agreement with Major League Baseball to settle, not fight it, take the suspension and get out of there.
But the uh the sports media is drooling, can't wait for the lifetime ban to be handed down on AROD.
They just can't wait.
It's amazing to watch.
You know, I've become a student of the media, and I'll tell you there's something happening, and I don't know if it's going to lead to anything.
As you know, I spend a lot of time as a hobby reading high-tech and gadget blogs.
And that media, there are journalists there.
Some of these blogs have actual websites.
They publish as online newspapers, and the people that work there are in their own minds journalists.
And it is amazing.
The online tech bloggers come down and are divided like the mainstream news guys are between Republicans and Democrats.
Now, in the mainstream news media, there's hardly any conservative media in the mainstream.
The alternative media loaded with it, but in the mainstream media, the big newspapers, the big networks, you have to look long and hard to find a conservative, to find a Republican, to find anybody who is even fair about them.
It's the same way in the tech blog.
I would venture to say that nine out of ten bloggers writing high tech hate Apple.
Apple is the equivalent of the Republicans On these blogs, and Google, Android, and Samsung are the equivalent of the Democrats.
They're perfect, they can't do anything wrong, they're ideal, and everybody hates Apple.
But Apple does have a small cadre of loyalists.
Now, all of these people, I would venture to guess, all of these people, they're relatively young, and I say the vast majority of them vote Democrat, no matter what how they divvy up on Apple, Samsung, Google, I say most of them vote Democrat, and most of them uh think they're young and hip, pop culture hip, that's high tech, of course.
It would be Republicans to them are probably aliens from Mars, racist, sexist, big and homophobes.
But to my mind, and I don't know if it's going to mean anything, the pro-Apple bloggers are looking at the way the pro-Samsung, Google and Android bloggers write, and they're now starting to write about the media bias.
And they're starting to write about the unfairness, and they're starting to write about it, and they don't understand it.
I mean, they're chronicling how these pro Samsung and Google Android guys are faking data, faking news to make it look bad for Apple when it really isn't.
And they're at the stage now scratching their heads trying to figure out why this is happening.
Now, I don't know any of these people.
I don't have an entree to any of them, and I'm probably someone that they would associate with Republicans, you know, out of it, old fashioned fuddy duty coo, case, racist sexist, big at home for that.
I would love to just be able to get to one of these guys, say, now I I wish you wanted, I want you to do something.
The way you see these guys propping up Samsung and Google and Android and the way these guys are just are ripping Apple to shreds, would you try to see that in the mainstream media?
Would you open your eyes and see what's going on in the mainstream media?
Would you try to open your eyes and see that in the mainstream media the Republican Party is Apple and the Democrat Party is Samsung, Google, and Android?
My guess is that the entire universe of the people I'm talking about, with exceptions, of course, it's like there are exceptions everywhere, but this entire universe of tech bloggers is probably liberal Democrat in their politics.
And yet they are seeing the same kind of bias in the area they care about that you and I see in the area we care about politics.
And it's a it would be a great teachable moment.
I would love to get some of these guys and say, would you start questioning CBS the way you question that website?
Would you start questioning NBC the way you question that blog and the way they report on Apple?
Would you start questioning ABC the same way you are dubious of that blog and the way they're reporting on Samsung?
It's a teachable moment out there.
Fascinating.
Study of the media is fascinating.
To watch the sports media, folks.
Because they're all liberal.
They're all formulaic.
They're all liberal by default.
They don't know anything else.
And you can predict.
If you become familiar with it with them, you read their stuff often enough.
You can predict when something happens in the NFL, you can predict how 95% of the reporters are going to take it and how they're going to report on it.
You can predict just like you can in news media.
It's incredible.
It's a fascinating study to me.
What are you pointing at?
Oh, okay, cool.
Snartley is going to bring me a story.
Show prep, eh?
Okay, he's going to ask me if there's an uproar over this story that he just saw, which I don't yet know what it is.
Let me take a break.
We'll come back and we'll get back to your phones On this.
I just I just wanted to share this stuff with you, because to me it is, you know, I'm always looking, folks, for the way to break through.
I know it's there.
I know there is a way to break this hold that the media has on everybody.
It's an unsurmountable thing in most people's minds.
Common sense says it'll never change.
But of ancillary events that take place within a smaller universe within the big one, there have to be ways of doing this.
And it would be crucially important if we could do it.
No, in answer question, no, we cannot go to the bottling company and start filling bottles of teeth.
And that's not how it works, folks.
We've learned a lot here in this small business.
All of our bottling runs are scheduled, and they're all based on sales projections, and because inventory is key.
I mean, inventory is the name of the game.
Inventory is the last thing you want is inventory in any business.
You want to be able to, I mean, that's the trick.
That's a great quadly control manager.
These people are worth whatever they they uh commandeer.
The operations people, because the inventory, the longer you store something, the less the profit on it is.
It's just there's all kinds of things that go into it.
So we just can't go schedule an immediate bottling run for regular sweetened tea and have it available today.
We've got we our bottling runs are scheduled.
Uh it can't happen on the fly.
We've got one coming up soon.
Well, it doesn't do you any good today or us.
Now, email, Rush, why don't you name some of these left-wing tech blogs you're talking about?
Folks, I've thought about it, and there's nothing to be gained by it.
If I call them out, all they're gonna do is get happy that I'm giving them attention and elevating attention.
It's not gonna change them if I start naming people the same thing.
It's one of these unfortunate things.
This program is so big that certain things I can't talk about, because believe me, these people do not need, I know I'm making this all sound interesting, but they don't need to be bigger.
They don't need more readers.
The more readers they have, the more damage they would do.
And all I would do if I mentioned them by name or by name of author is make them bigger, and it would, it would it would not accomplish here what I'm I know it's frustrating.
I wish, you know, if this was a local show in Podunk State, I could tell you everything.
But it's a biggest show in media.
And put these little chumps on the map, and they'd never be bigger, and but it wouldn't change it.
It may just make them snarkier and ruder.
It's just the way things work.
Now, snerdly, this story he gave me.
There's a, you know, one of Cheech and Chong, one of them, the Chong of Cheech and Chong had a daughter, daughter named Ray Don Jong.
And Ray Don Chong the other day went out in a radio interview and really insulted Oprah.
Called her a field n-word and a brown noser.
June 27th interview, internet radio show, Ray Don Chong, who starred with Winfrey in the color purple, blasted her as a great brown noser and as a field inward.
And the New York Daily News has a story today.
Ray Don Chong defends Oprah Winfrey slams as N-word comment taken out of context.
So it's no big deal.
Ray Don Chong actually calls Oprah this, but it's no big deal.
Ray Dawn didn't mean anything by it.
Meanwhile, the New York Daily News made up something that I did not say in my Greta interview and reported it.
They said the New York Daily News trying to fulfill the narrative that all of us are racists, sexists and bigots and homophobes.
The New York Daily News ran a story, Limbaugh On Greta blamed plight of Detroit on black people.
And I did not.
I blamed it on liberalism.
And I simply recounted from the book by Zev Chaffetz Devil's Night the role that Coleman Young played in forging racial separatism in Detroit.
The point being that here you have an approved, accredited liberal, Ray Don Chong, who calls Oprah the N-word, and it's a whole hummer, no big deal, and she didn't mean it.
And you have me where the same paper makes it up and reports something I did not say.
In an attempt to tag me as uh as racist.
By the way, the second portion of the Greta interview runs tonight at 10 o'clock on the Fox News Channel, and 85% of what will air tonight has not been seen.
It was not part of what was aired Monday night.
So if you watch tonight, 85% of it is new.
You have not seen it before.
Website 2 if by tea.com.
Need to mention that.
Talking about this, it's 2 if by t.com.
That's what's all happening, folks.
We need to we need to ask Rachel Gentel about Ray Don Chong and Riley Cooper.
That's where I get the final word.
Rachel Gentel of the Trayvon Martin case, the Zimmerman trial, right?
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