Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Hope you had a great weekend, folks.
We're back at it here.
The Rush Limbaugh program coming at you from the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
A thrill and a delight to be with you.
Telephone number 800-282-2882, the email address, LRushbaughyibnet.com.
So I got an email today, just a quick one-liner from a gossip person out there.
He said, look, whatever I can do to help, I will.
I said, what's this about?
So I wrote back, I said, help with what?
Well, all the bad PR you're getting.
I said, I'm not getting any bad.
I mean, that's standard, ordinary practice, SAP, standard of procedure.
What new?
In fact, the PR that's out there today is actually somewhat good, folks.
There was some good PR that happened yesterday.
And of all places on CNN.
And I'll have the audio sound bites coming up.
Anyway, telephone number, if you want to be on the program, is 800-282-2882 and the email address, ilrushbodeibnet.com.
I hate to be, and I told you so, but we did a story last week that Obama has saved the day.
Members of Congress and their staffs, if you recall, as part of Obamacare, were supposed to face the same laws, regulations, restrictions that all of us face in acquiring health care and health insurance.
We were supposed to go to the exchanges.
They were supposed to go to the exchanges.
Remember the story?
The members of Congress, particularly their staffs, complained out the wazoo because they couldn't afford it.
These people make anywhere from $70,000 to $174,000 a year.
They couldn't afford it.
They needed subsidies.
They needed the taxpayers to subsidize their health care.
These are the people in large part who helped write Obamacare.
Many of these staffers are Democrat staffers.
They helped lobby for the bill.
And then they're out there last week, actually the past two weeks, crying and moaning about how, well, it's just too expensive.
And they were demanding relief.
And remember, Obama went in and basically just waved his magic executive order pin and exempted them.
And so they're going to get members of Congress and their staffs 75% subsidies on the health care costs that they face under Obamacare, but not the standard Obamacare subsidy that is established as part of the law.
This is a brand new subsidy that is going to be paid by the Office of Personnel Management.
You remember the story.
And it was outrageous.
It's along the lines of the House bank scandal, the House Post Office.
And it clearly establishes the Washington versus the rest of us mentality.
It establishes ruling class versus country class.
And I remember going through the story and Snerdley said, you what?
This is going to blow up.
This is going to cause a tidal wave.
People are going to, they're going to storm Washington and pitchfork.
I said, no, they're not.
It isn't going to be a big deal to most people.
Most people aren't going to care about it.
Most people aren't going to know about it.
Guess what?
Nobody cares about it.
Nobody's done anything about it.
There is no groundswell of opposition to this.
This outrageous carveout did not get any attention in the drive-by media over the weekend.
It's just being accepted as a done deal.
I have a Wall Street Journal editorial about it, and it's pretty tame.
The Wall Street Journal editorial is not filled with outrage about this.
It does mention that the deal is completely illegal, just like the Obama employer mandate delay is completely illegal.
But when you have a president who doesn't care about the law, or probably more accurate to say, he doesn't think the law applies to him.
And if he doesn't want the law to apply to anybody else, then he can make that happen too.
And that's what he did do here.
He just said that the Obamacare law will not apply to congressional staff because it's too expensive.
They can't afford it.
They're going to have to get help.
They're going to need 75% subsidies.
Now, the rest of us, well, we either pay the fine or we get the policy.
We either get it at work or if we don't, we've got to go to an exchange and try to get a deal there.
And if there's no exchange, we've got to somehow get it because if we don't, we pay fine.
Now, may opt to pay the fine the first couple years because it's cheaper than getting a policy, but that won't last long.
But my point is, it didn't get any attention.
There is no outrage, even among low-information voters.
They don't even know about it.
The Wall Street Journal editorial basically says it'll be amusing to watch Obama break the law.
It's like people mesmerized with the way Clinton could lie so easily to them.
They were just impressed.
They were dazzled.
They knew he was lying to them, and they were just dazzled by how smart he was at it and how talented he was at it.
And in this case, it's going to be amusing to see how Obama break the law.
So just, I just, I'm not, I'm not trying to irritate anybody, but I just wanted to let you know that my instincts on this, once again, have been proven correct.
Not a big deal.
Nothing is a big deal to people anymore.
That's the button.
There's nothing that government does is a big deal to anybody.
I don't think a government scandal is possible unless it got Republicans in it somehow.
But gold-fashioned, I bet you if the House bank scandal erupted today, well, it might matter because the Republicans run the House.
But my guess is if the House Bank scandal became known today, you wouldn't have a lot of people all that upset about it.
Different times.
The country has changed and is changing.
New York Times sold the Boston Globe for $70 million.
They took a 93% loss.
They bought the Boston Globe for over a billion dollars back in the 90s.
They sold it for $70 million.
They sold it to the owner of the Boston Red Sox, a man by the name of John Henry.
He was not the high bid.
There were two other bidders that bid more.
What they wanted here was a headline that says Red Sox owner saves globe.
Not globe in terrible straits, barely staying alive, blah, blah, blah, which is the case.
They wanted a headline, Red Sox Owner Saves Globe.
And they got it.
I don't know what the higher bids were, but they were not chump change higher.
I mean, the Times could have made more money had they, but they can sell whoever they want.
I'm just pointing out that there were higher bidders.
The real point about this is the newspaper, the print newspaper business continues to plummet.
And the people in that business do not look at content as a possible explanation.
They've got themselves convinced that the reason they're in trouble is because of the internet and television.
They don't at all.
I mean, they're losing ad pages.
They're losing size of the newspaper.
That's being cut down.
Editorial content, it's all being cut down and it's vanishing slowly but surely.
Well, the shareholders at the New York Times don't have any power because there are two structures in the New York Times shareholders.
And the family, the Schultzberger family, has the Class A shares and whoever owns a Class B shares may as well be homeless.
They don't have any way to impact management decisions because the family owns all the Class A shares and they own it and they have it wrapped up.
There's nothing a shareholder outrage could do to it.
That's just the way the family structured it and people buy it knowing that.
New York Times, if you buy New York Times stock, I mean, it's an ego buy.
It's like going out buying an earring or two that you want people to see or like adopting a little baby from a foreign country and parading it around.
It's the latest, well, I'm looking at it for a word here.
Mental accessory, right?
A New York Times stock is an accessory.
It's not even brag about at a cocktail party, but it doesn't mean anything to you.
Anyway, the last thing they look at is content, but here is the real point.
The New York Times every day tells all of us how to run the U.S. economy.
The New York Times every day, from Paul Krugman to the news stories to the commentary page, routinely offer economic advice.
The New York Times wouldn't know how to turn a profit in anything.
Obviously, they're demonstrating this left and right.
It's no different than here.
We've got Obama and Democrats and the white who never have done anything in the private sector, who assume the mantle place of expertise, and everybody simply grants them that.
Like Obama is more fit to run healthcare than people in that business.
You know why?
Because Obama cares about people.
That's why.
And Obama is more fit to run the oil business and be in charge of energy than anybody in it.
You know why?
Because Obama is fair.
And Obama understands how people hurt.
And Obama understands people's pain.
And Obama understands that those people are destroying the planet with all their fossil fuels and climate change and all that.
And this is how, in a very broad-brush way, it works.
Now, Matt Drudge on his homepage has one of the funniest pictures, a picture that portrays something people my age actually had to do.
The story is about the threats that have closed our embassies around the world for now a week.
Not just the day yesterday, but the whole week.
The picture is a black and white from the 50s that shows a bunch of school kids hiding under their desks to protect themselves in the event of a nuclear attack, which, of course, wouldn't have mattered a hill of beans.
If the Soviets had launched a nuclear attack, there's no desk in a school that's going to protect anybody.
But we all had those drills.
And I think that picture is a little bit of a goose because what do we have here?
Every report on this says that there was a specific threat, and this threat was more precise and more ominous than even the chatter prior to 9-11.
And you've got people from both parties out talking about this dire terrorist threat.
It is huge.
We're closing embassies everywhere, not just for a day, but for a week.
21 embassies and consulates in Allah knows how many countries.
That doesn't sound specific to me.
They say it's a specific threat.
But closing 21 embassies doesn't sound too specific to me.
Every report says it was a specific threat, and we have to close down 21 embassies and consulates.
This is the worst threat the country has faced since 9/11, folks.
So naturally, Obama went off to Camp David for the weekend to celebrate his birthday and play golf for seven hours on Saturday, which was the day 11 top officials of the White House met with Susan Rice to decide what to do about this horrible, specific, worst threat since 9-11.
Now, if we're closing down our embassies in the Middle East, doesn't it mean the terrorists have won?
Let's go to the audio symbol.
I'm really wondering.
I'm really cynical.
I know there are Republicans who I know.
Michael McCall from Texas, member of the House, he's out there saying the same thing Obama said.
It's the biggest.
How many times have we been here?
Financial crisis.
Everything's going to come to a screeching halt 24 hours if we don't do X. Go back to October 11th, 2012 in Miami during a campaign event.
Here is the president.
I said we'd end the war in Afghanistan, and we are.
I said we'd refocus on the people who actually attacked us on 9-11.
And today, Al-Qaeda's on the run, and Osama bin Laden is dead.
I don't know, folks.
Sounds like we're on the run.
Seriously.
Doesn't sound like Al-Qaeda is on the run.
Sounds like we are.
Sounds like we're the ones scared to death.
We're the ones who shut down 21 embassies, not just for a day, but for a week, because of a specific threat, more credible, more ominous than anything since 9-11.
Here, Sachsby Chambliss, Republican Georgia, meet the press yesterday.
David Gregory said, Senator Chambliss.
Congressman Peter King said, This is an al-Qaeda threat, the most significant threat that we've seen in years.
What have you been told about it?
There's been an awful lot of chatter out there.
Chatter means conversation among terrorists about the planning that's going on, very reminiscent of what we saw pre-9-11.
We're hearing some kind of that same chatter, David, that we heard pre-11 leading up to anecdotes like that taking place by the terrorists.
Okay, leading up to anecdotes like that taking place by the terrorists.
I don't even know what that means, but I think I know what he's saying here.
What he's saying is, and he's on the committee, I think he's on the intelligence.
He's saying, hey, these threats are real.
These threats are huge.
These threats, they're big, they're specific, and they're as big all that chatter we were hearing pre-9/11, which we didn't listen to, by the way.
Up next on Meet the Press, Senator Dick Turbin from Illinois.
David Gregory said, Senator Turbin, is this a big deal or a big overreaction?
No, it's a big deal.
Vice President Biden gave us a classified briefing this last week.
We need to know and realize we're living in an increasingly dangerous world.
And this specific threat that we've been briefed on over and over again has reached a new level.
And this week, ABC Peter King, congressman from New York.
You know, we can't criticize them for doing too little with Benghazi, and I'll criticize them for doing too much.
I'm giving them credit for saying they learned from Benghazi, and that's why they're firming up the embassies.
But also, as far as this worldwide alert, I think it's absolutely warranted in this situation.
All right, there we see.
We've got to take a break back after this, folks.
Don't go away.
So let me see if I understand this.
The Russians have just granted asylum to Snowden.
The Russians, well, that's a whole other story.
There's a fascinating story of Putin and the crackdown on gays and why he's doing it in Russia.
He's basically trying to make sure, in his words, that the decadence and the perversions of the United States do not find their way to his country.
That's coming up.
Anyway, Snowden has been granted asylum, and that's NSA.
A lot of people talking about now how they're worried the NSA collecting so much data, metadata, all of the spying, all of the monitoring on people that probably have no way of being a threat whatsoever.
In the midst of a backlash against NSA spying, here comes the biggest terrorist threat since 9-11.
So bad.
Members of both parties are telling it's worse than ever.
We've got anecdotal chatter going on out there.
And it's so specific.
We got to close 21 embassies for an entire week.
And Obama can only play golf one day of this threat.
It is not hard.
It is not hard to be a cynic about this government.
Just isn't.
And we are back, Rush Limbaugh kicking off a brand new week of broadcast excellence.
And a quick question, folks.
How come nobody is blaming?
There's an anti-Obama YouTube video out there by a belly dancer in Egypt made it.
It's an anti-Obama.
You know, you look at all of the things.
You got the NSA scandal.
You got Benghazi, the phony Benghazi scandal.
And we're learning so much about the efforts the regime made to keep that thing buttoned up and buttoned down and make sure nobody found out what that was really all about.
And the guy who was blamed for that, the filmmaker on that, still in jail without bail somewhere.
So you've got two things.
You've got a little bit of a backlash against the NSA.
The Russians grabbing Edward Snowden asylum, so it finally was able to leave the Moscow airport.
And then this Benghazi thing.
And again, whatever backlash there is against Obamacare, then all of a sudden here comes this monstrous terror threat that originally was going to close our embassies on Sunday, but then it was so bad.
And it was so anecdotal and it was so credible.
And it was, I mean, nothing compares to this until you go back to the same kind of chatter that we were hearing before 9-11.
So we've got to close the embassy for the whole week.
It's just easy to not believe it anymore.
It's just too easy to be cynical.
Now, there is a YouTube video.
There's an anti-Obama YouTube video made by a belly dancer in Egypt.
You haven't heard about it?
It's gone viral.
It attacks Obama for helping the Muslim Brotherhood.
Now, why doesn't somebody blame that video for the fact that we have to close the embassies for 21, 21 embassies for a week?
And it's a specific threat, so specific that we have to close 21 embassies and consulates to be prepared for it.
Julie in Dayton, Ohio, I'm glad you called.
Welcome to the program.
Hi.
Hi, how are you?
I'm fine.
Thank you very much.
Good, good.
Hey, I just wanted to let you know, it is so refreshing to listen to you today.
And I knew deep in my heart that you would open up with this conversation regarding the closing of the embassies because my friends and I were talking about it over the weekend when the news.
Well, it was either that or A-Rod.
Well, let's not go there.
Well, no, I am going to go there.
They told us over the weekend they were going to announce the suspension at noon, right when this program started.
They haven't announced it.
This is one of those moments.
There's a phrase for this that I cannot utter on this program.
It involves the bathroom and doing something and getting out.
You know, it's time to just get the country can't handle this pins and needles stuff.
The Yankees can't handle it.
Anyway, you wanted to talk about the terror threat.
Please, I didn't mean to distract you.
No, that's fine because I'm a Reds fan and, you know, I don't care about A-Rod.
But, no, what my friends and I were talking about was that we just, like, right away, we just thought that this was all phony, to be honest with you.
Why?
Why did you think, why did you and your friends Think it was all phony.
Well, I think it's to distract the cover-up for Benghazi and to show that, oh, now, you know, we've learned from this and we're taking firmer action and Obama's doing things, and he's it just trying to make him look presidential and that he's how can here's the I look.
I understand that somebody might think this could make him look presidential.
Now, to those of us that remember, Obama was such a munificent munificence that this kind of thing was never going to happen once he was president.
There weren't going to be terrorists, and I'm not exaggerating.
Obama was going to show the people that hated us that there was no longer a reason to hate America.
Because Obama's election would have meant, or did mean, that America had gotten rid of all of its mean guys, gotten rid of all of its mean people, gotten rid of the people that are cowboys and sending the military around to plunder and rape and pillage and steal.
We had a guy who's going to apologize for all of that past behavior on the part of the United States of America.
We had a guy, they told us, he told us, the Democrat Party told us, the media told us, we had a guy going to unify the world.
He's going to unify the United States because he's the first black president.
That meant there'd be no racism in America.
We're going to be post-racial.
We had a guy.
He is so wonderful, so municipal, that he was going to end all arguments in America.
He was going to end all disagreements.
He was going to end all partisanship.
And the parties are going to unite and get along.
And everything that was going to happen was going to happen in America's best interests.
And there was not going to be any more friction.
All kinds of people in both directions crossing the aisle were going to be post-partisan.
The world was going to love us because all of our bad people had been defeated and sent away.
And Obama, this new person of the world, unlike anyone we had ever seen.
All of this was stated, folks.
This was everything I'm telling you.
Everything I'm telling you is what people, some people in this country thought this that I'm telling you is the impression that was given.
No more racism, no more partisanship, total unity.
Obama was going to make the world love us again.
We're going to close all of the terrorist prisons.
We were going to stop torturing people.
We weren't going to have any enemies anymore.
And Obama was going and did to apologize for all of the past transgressions.
And finally, after 200 and some odd years, America had finally gotten it right.
And there weren't going to be any terrorists.
There was not going to be any need to look at the United States as an enemy.
And even after he was inaugurated, Obama then goes to Cairo and makes a big speech in the Middle East, basically telling his audience in Cairo and in the Middle East all of this.
And then there was the Arab Spring, which Obama tried to capture and take control of and make it look like that it was an outgrowth of his own campaign and his own presidency.
People in Egypt decided to get rid of their George W. Bush, Hosni Mubarak.
They threw him out of there.
They had all these rallies in Tariri Square.
CNN sent Nick Robertson over there to ask the protesters how much they loved Obama and how much they were willing to praise Obama for making it happen, how much Obama was responsible for their new freedom and their new economy and all their new jobs.
This is it, folks.
This is how this man was presented to us.
This is how this man, Obama, was presented to the world.
It's how he presented himself.
And so in all the, how can this be happening?
How could what happened in Menghazi happen?
There wasn't supposed to be any more terrorism.
There weren't supposed to be any people looking at us as the enemy.
We were supposed to be loved again.
We were supposed to be respected again and really loved and respected once we had a decent Secretary of State out there.
Hillary Clinton, followed by John Kerry.
The American media and the Democrat Party told us that they were the solution and the answer to everything.
And they certainly gave off the impression that their terrorists were not going to be mad at us anymore.
That they would not have any reason to attack us.
And yet, terrorism continued.
Obama expanded wars.
This country, supposedly loved and adored because Obama was president, isn't.
Terrorism's ramping up.
Obama says, after he kills bin Laden, that al-Qaeda is on the run.
It's the United States on the run.
It's the United States closing 21 embassies.
This is an absolute embarrassment, if you ask me.
What this country bought, what the voters of this country bought and fell for and elected is an absolute embarrassment.
It's a common sense embarrassment.
We actually had people telling us that all that I just described was going to happen because of the almost messianic-like existence and aura of Barack Obama.
So how come none of it's played out the way Obama said?
How come it's gotten worse?
How can this closing of 21 embassies, how can it even be happening?
I mean, we're out there and we brought freedom to Egypt and we did the Arab Spring and we did it.
It was Obama's campaign that inspired Egyptians and the Muslim Brotherhood to get rid of that SOB, Mubarak.
Doesn't seem like it's worked out.
The people of Egypt say, you know what?
We don't like this guy.
Morsi threw him out.
Military threw him out.
Obama was trying to take credit for all of this.
The cynicism?
Let me tell you something about this.
The cynicism is easy, but folks, this is really bad.
This is really, really dangerous.
You know, the United States is a great nation at risk in a dangerous world.
We always have been.
And I cringe.
I look what has happened to the foreign policy establishment of this country, the Justice Department, what has happened and what it's doing.
You may not know this.
This is an ancillary issue, but and I know you're going to get mad when I mention the magic word Apple, but you may not know this.
Apple just lost a trial against the Justice Department on their e-bookstore.
As a result of this, the Justice Department has demanded, they have submitted a motion to a judge that they be allowed to supervise and run Apple's app stores and iTunes for 10 years because Apple has so cheated and screwed people.
What Apple has done is not pay a lot of lobbyists.
What Apple has done is not pay a lot of politicians.
What Apple has done is not sent a lot of money to Washington.
Microsoft didn't, but the Justice, Microsoft never faced what Apple is facing.
The Justice Department's gone to court and has literally demanded the right to oversee every aspect of Apple's operations on the assumption that they are cheating and screwing everybody.
That's another story.
Just happened to pop into my mind.
My focus here is that we have a bunch of rank amateur leftists who have no practical experience in the real world.
Their life experience is the faculty lounge sitting around, sipping cocktails, theorizing with each other about what great utopian lives they could create if they were in power.
And all of their prejudices and biases against capitalism, against liberty, against freedom, that's what they blame for the problems in the world.
That's what they blame for the problems in this country.
Freedom, liberty, capitalism, free markets.
Then they create these half-bank lies that this country's hated and despised while people around the world are still willing to die for the chance to live here.
So they set Obama up as this great utopian leader, this great guy with all the answers and the world is going to practically melt at his feet in love and adoration.
So how can any of this be happening?
But there's another aspect of this that's dangerous.
The very fact that there are so many people who are cynical about this, the very fact that there are so many Americans who think they're being lied to about a terror threat is a really dangerous thing.
It is an unhealthy thing for the country.
It is the surest sign of the wanton lack of respect for this country that has swept all across this country.
This threat may be real.
Everything we're being told could be real.
We could be facing somewhere something as matter worse than 9-11.
And I dare say the majority of Americans think it's a lie.
And what does that tell you?
What most Americans think of the people who are telling them about this threat?
They're liars too.
Yeah, let's dichotomy here.
No, actually a dilemma.
And I'll go to line one.
But you tell, we got a trucker on the phone somewhere in Pennsylvania who I can tell is a big fan, but he thinks I may be off the rails a bit here on the terror threat.
We'll get to him in a second.
Here's Thomas in Bolt, Maryland.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Hi.
Thank you, sir.
It's a great honor.
I had a quick question.
I wanted to know, building off one of the last callers, about the failure of liberal policies to enact what they want them to do to make America the seemingly loved again in the world.
But I was curious to know, in your opinion, do you think liberals enact liberal policies to give themselves power, which that's usually what happens, or do they enact them because that's what they honestly believe in the nation.
That's an interesting question because there are many different levels of liberals.
The population of liberals, think of it as, I don't know, as a beehive or as an ant farm.
And you have the queen bee and her court and so forth, and those, the leaders, and those people, they know full well what they're doing is all about the acquisition and the permanent, the permanent acquisition and never-ending hold on power.
All right.
They know that what they're doing is guaranteed to keep people in need, dependent and underclass.
Now, you get the worker bees and just the standard, ordinary, faceless, nameless liberals.
They buy it all.
They believe that everything liberal is going to make everything fair and just and equal, and they believe in this utopia.
And the leaders, the queen bee, the head honcho ants, whatever, they promote this notion among the idiots that are the worker bees or the carpenter ants or what have you.
I mean, they fully, they exploit these young liberals, they're idealists.
They believe all of this stuff.
And they're fully exploited.
But the people that run this show know full well what they're doing.
They don't care.
Their permanent hold on power is the success, not what happens to the country back after this.
On Sunday afternoon, Dr. Benjamin Carson was asked on C-SPAN what he thinks of me, Dr. Ben Carson.