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Aug. 5, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:47
August 5, 2013, Monday, Hour #2
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Now look at this headline here.
It says, see, this em Reuters just saw this.
It's a Reuters exclusive.
U.S. U.S. directs agents to cover a program used to investigate Americans.
What?
What is that?
From the article, it says a secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants, and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.
U.S. directs agents to cover up the program that's being used to investigate Americans, the DEA program.
You think that might be stuff like that might be why there is so little trust for crying out loud.
What a headline.
Exclusive U.S. Just that's that's the government.
Obama, whatever.
U.S. directs agents, DEA agents in this case, to cover up the program they're using to investigate Americans.
Cover it up.
Lie about it.
Oh, hey, how are you?
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen.
Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network, the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
The telephone number, if you want to be on the program, is 800-282-2882, and the email address, lrushpo at eibnet.com.
Now, when I went to bed last night, the news was that Major League Baseball was going to announce the suspensions related to the abuses that took place because this biogenics place down in Coral Gables.
And among those announcements was to be Alex Rodriguez.
And the announcement was supposed to be at noon.
Well, it's now a little bit after 1 Eastern time and no announcement.
Now, here are the basics of this.
Without going into all kinds of crazy detail, because there's just a couple of salient points about this.
The stories all say that Major League Baseball called the Yankees last night and told them that Rodriguez is going to be suspended through the 2014 season, the rest of this season and all of next season.
Now that, in terms of dollars, will add up to $37 million that A-Rod will not earn because he's on suspension.
And it's because he has created or he's engaged in a number of abuses involving steroids, human growth hormone, PEDs, performance-enhancing drugs.
Major League Baseball, it is said, has overwhelming evidence against Rodriguez.
Overwhelming.
More evidence on Rodriguez than they have on anybody else they've suspended.
The other suspensions are 50 games.
Now, the way A-Rod has been dealing with this is fascinating.
In everything A-Rod has said, he has not denied.
He's out there accusing the Yankees and baseball of having a vendetta against him.
He and his lawyers have portrayed him as a huge and giant victim.
There were two possible ways that baseball could go here.
One is what is rumored to be the way, a suspension that Rodriguez can appeal and keep playing while his appeal is being heard.
The other way the commissioner could have gone or could go, still could go, because it hasn't gone anyway yet.
Commissioner, the eminent Bud Sea Lig could invoke the best interests of baseball clause and deny Rodriguez, because of the invocation of that particular clause, the right to appeal his suspension.
The story is that he did not go that route.
I'm sorry.
He will not go that route because it is already felt that the Sea League has a vendetta against A-Rod.
This has all been in the news.
None of it's fact yet.
It's all speculation.
But the Sea League has a vendetta against A-Rod, and he wants to avoid that perception.
So he's going to choose the option of suspending A-Rod that will allow A-Rod to keep playing if he appeals it.
A-Rod has said he's going to appeal it, but it doesn't stop there.
A-Rod then says that he's going to sue the Yankees and he's going to sue Major League Baseball.
And the interest, he's not denying any of this.
What he's doing, he's now threatened to sue the Yankees, claiming the team doctors have essentially engaged in malpractice, misdiagnosing and mistreating his injuries since 2009, which forced him to go elsewhere to get better.
He is going to claim that Major League Baseball and the Yankees were trying to sabotage his career.
This is all being reported as what will happen.
That if he's suspended, he's going to fight back this way.
And if that happens, folks, this is going to be one of the most fun circuses to watch take place that we've had in a long time.
And I find it kind of interesting that in all of this speculation, and Rodriguez talks to the press now and then, he hasn't denied any of this.
He just makes himself out to be the biggest victim that there has ever been, and he's the victim of a conspiracy.
And that Sea League and Major League Baseball and now the Yankees have been conspiring to prevent him from playing, misdiagnosing, and improperly treating his injuries, which forced him to seek medical treatment elsewhere.
Anyway, this was all supposed to have come down at noon, and it hasn't come down.
None of it.
No announcements at all.
And so A-Rod, who has been rehabbing from hip surgery and a quadriceps injury in various Yankees minor league teams, is due to report to Chicago and be in the lineup tonight.
The news reports, and this kind of puzzles me.
I ought to call somebody and ask him because every news report I have read says the Yankees are obligated to play A-Rod if he shows up because he's off the disabled list.
I mean, he's eligible now pending the suspension.
Well, why are they obligated to play him?
I interpret that as meaning they're obligated to put him in the lineup.
I would think the obligation simply give him a uniform, his 25-man roster or whatever the number is now.
And if the manager wants to play him fine, if he doesn't, why are they obligated to play him?
I don't, maybe I'm misreading that.
But anyway, it's the venom that has gone back and forth in this case with ARAD and the sports media, particularly in New York, is fascinating to me.
Anyway, folks, it's great to have you here.
Telephone number if you want to be on the program 800-282-2882 and the email address, lrushbaw at EIBnet.com.
Yesterday afternoon, C-SPAN 2, former director of pediatric neurosurgery, Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Ben Carson, was the guest.
And during the caller Q ⁇ A, a guy named Brad in St. Augustine, Florida called in and said to Dr. Carson, I'd like to ask you a two-part question.
The first being, what is your opinion of Rush Limbaugh?
Secondly, do you feel that Limbaugh has a positive or negative impact on society?
I think Rush Limbaugh serves a very useful purpose in our society because he breaks things down.
He looks at things.
He analyzes it.
You know, some of his analysis, you know, I might not agree with, but a lot of them I do agree with.
And because a lot of people have tried to demonize him, people look at what he says in light of that demonization as opposed to the merits of what it is.
You know, he is so right about that last part.
Little update.
One day last week, it might have been Friday.
It was either Thursday or Friday, I told you how I had studied the media, and I've been particularly interested in the tech media.
And I drew the analogy for you that the tech media as a universe, they're probably all 99%, 95% liberal Democrats in their politics.
But within that universe, you subdivide it further, you have in their universe, instead of Republicans versus Democrats, you've got Apple as a political party, in my analogy.
And then you've got Google and Samsung and Android as a political party, in my analogy.
And I find it fascinating that in the tech media, you can find the exact portrayal of Republicans and Democrats in tech media as Apple and Samsung and Android and Google are portrayed.
And I made the point that the pro-Apple bloggers are just livid at the factually incorrect, erroneous bias against Apple.
And my point was, could all of you who are Apple fans, tech bloggers, could you learn to look at ABC and CBS and NBC, the mainstream media, the same way you're looking at the pro-Samsung media?
I looked at it as a teachable moment.
I went through it.
I explained it explicitly.
Could not have been more clear.
I explained it at a since a third grade level.
And then I said, I'm not going to mention any blogs or bloggers because I'm too big and they're too chump change and I don't want to elevate them.
I don't want to make them bigger than they are.
That's not the point.
If I talk about them and identify them, then they're just going to go to get even snarkier and so forth.
And that happened.
A couple of tech blogs wrote up a reaction to my comments, totally misunderstanding it, totally, well, I think purposely getting it wrong.
They did exactly what Dr. Carson said here.
Because a lot of people have demonized Limbaugh.
People look at what he says in light of the demonization as opposed to the merits of what he says.
And that's exactly what happened on a couple of tech blogs over the weekend.
Because in their minds, I am this lying, racist, sexist, whatever.
That judgment of me thus rendered everything I said viewed in that light and therefore as unqualified and unknowledgeable.
It was fascinating.
And it's kind of frustrating.
I was trying to make an inroad and offer some thinking people in there an opportunity to educate other people on media bias.
Because these people that all probably, every one of these people believe everything they read from ABC, CBS, NBC, they don't see any bias there.
And yet the same kind of stuff that is used against the Republicans is used against Apple.
I said, okay, you Apple fans, maybe you can get an idea of what it's like in the mainstream news media.
Anyway, the whole point was missed because the blogs that chose to react to this chose to react to me within the caricature that I've been portrayed.
So it's frustrating, but Carson is exactly right when he says this.
A lot of people have tried to demonize Limbaugh, so people look at what he says in light of that as opposed to the merits of what he says.
He wasn't through.
He continued.
I think, you know, Rush Limbaugh, you know, on one side, some of the people we see on MSNBC on the other side.
You know, we need to stop, you know, taking these people and say, you know, you're bad, you're good.
Forget about all that stuff.
Listen to what they have to say and analyze the merits of what they have to say rather than always trying to focus on the individual.
Good point.
It's an excellent point.
And it takes bigness to get past your prejudices and your biases.
To get past your smallness, it takes bigness to get past your smallness.
These tech blogs that reacted were just, I mean, you should have seen the snarkiness.
It was childish and immature.
Purposely missed the point.
Purposely didn't get the point.
Maybe they're thinking about it anyway.
Now, let's continue.
Cookie gave me a couple other soundbites here.
A lot of people have been asking me about some things about this program in the news.
And I have chosen not to be specific in comments about it because others I knew would and have.
And so we can hit the sound bites in that riddle.
Let's grab soundbites five and six.
This is on CNN's Reliable Sources yesterday.
They've got a new host in there, Patrick Gavin.
You know, Howie Kurtz went over to Fox News Channel.
So their new host at Reliable Sources, Patrick Gavin, had Michael Harrison from Talkers Magazine on and a syndicated talk show host, but talk show host by the name of Tom Hartman on.
I guess he's a liberal.
And they were talking about the stories that have been in the politico lately about me supposedly being dumped because I'm losing everything that's going on and people can't wait to get rid of me and so forth.
They wanted to put those stories in perspective.
This is what you've emailed me about.
So the host of this show says, look, there are two ways to look at this.
One is that it's a big blow to conservative media if Limbaugh gets dropped.
The other way to look at this, simply people sorting out their negotiations in public, simply two people trying to resolve a business deal, and we can't read much more into it.
What is your take from what you're hearing about what exactly this debate's about?
And here's Michael Harrison.
It's clearly a radio deal.
It has nothing to do with the future of conservative talk radio.
It has nothing to do with the future of Rush Limbaugh.
It just is a deal between two giant radio companies trying to negotiate whether they're going to continue to be in business together.
And they're two competing companies that also work together, Clear Channel and Cumulus.
And they're just trying to come up with a deal.
Okay, so I have to tell you, he's right.
And in this sense, probably a little bit better than somebody outside this program who I don't know that well.
I mean, I know Harrison, but I wouldn't call him a friend, but he's an acquaintance and I know him fairly well, runs the Talkers magazine, but he's got it exactly right.
And I'm just, I don't want any of you to be concerned about all this because it's being written up as a content issue and it has nothing to do with content.
It's strictly dollars and cents.
It's strictly business.
And one side decided to start negotiating in public.
And the left wants this to be about something that it's not, so they write it up that way.
Now, here's the liberal host by the name of Tom Hartman.
The question he got was, Media Matters said on MSNBC, this is a huge victory for progressive radio.
And you're in progressive radio.
You look at this, do you view the fact that Limbaugh might get dropped by these 40 radio stations as a victory?
No, I agree with Michael that it is just a business deal.
In fact, I'd take it a step further.
David Brock and Media Matters were leading the boycott Limbaugh crusade.
I can tell you it did a lot of damage to Progressive Talk Radio because a lot of advertisers right across the board said, just pull me out of all talk radio.
So I don't know Limbaugh's numbers, but I do know on our side of it that Progressive Talk Radio took a hit as a consequence of that.
Anyway, the bottom line from all of this is that it isn't about conservatism.
And no matter what happens, I am not going to be on 40 fewer radio stations.
That no matter what happens here, I got to take a timeout.
I just saw the clock wip you back just.
So I checked the email.
Well, you sound awfully tentative about that.
No, no.
Folks, I already know how this ends.
And I can't, I'm sort of hamstrung.
I already know.
The bottom line is, let's put it this way.
It's all good.
We're in our 26th year, and we are continuing to grow.
It's the number one radio show in the country, and there isn't a station that doesn't want it.
That's it.
Well, there might be a couple of radical leftists, but I mean, you get my.
It's better than okay.
Okay, now, finally back to the phones where we go, Douglas, somewhere Pennsylvania.
This is the trucker, and I'm really glad that you waited, Douglas.
Hi.
Hey, how you doing?
Thank you for taking my call.
You bet, sir.
Yeah, I can't say that I'm a longtime listener, but from what I have heard, I've definitely a fan already.
Well, I appreciate that.
Guys, if you could, could you speak a little slower?
I'm having it.
You're on a cell phone.
It's tougher for me to comprehend speech there.
Oh, well, I apologize about that.
No, it's not your problem.
It's mine.
But if you just slow down, it'll help.
All right.
Well, here's my issue with today's conversation.
You say that I lost you there.
All right, here we go.
You say that you have a problem with closing of the embassies because they're following after these terrorist threats that you believe are not real.
Yet in the same thought, you say that the terrorist threats that we were getting prior to 9-11, we didn't follow and that the nation is angry about that.
Now, you can't have it both ways.
You can't have your taking 82.
Either you're angry that they're following up on these threats or you're not angry.
I think what you're asking me, or maybe, maybe you're even going Hulhog and you're accusing me of being a hypocrite.
Well, in a way, I would use you to be a person.
But also, I mean, obviously, I know that from listening that you're not a hypocrite, but I mean, if these terrorist threats are real, then you would think that those individuals that are in those countries.
Let me explain this.
This is going to be a teachable moment here.
Your call is, your question is good.
You probably have a Samsung phone, which is why it's not good to call.
But the question is, see, I can play the game too.
I can do my tech biases, just like those clowns do.
Now, here's what Douglas the trucker is saying.
He's saying that I'm being a little skeptical when the regime says that they've got this threat, specific threat, that closed down 21 embassies and consulates, and it's worse than anything that we've had since 9-11.
And he thinks that I'm poo-pooing it.
And yet, he thinks I've also gotten on governments for not doing enough with what they knew before 9-11 to prevent it from happening.
So he is suggesting that I ought to be supporting what I'm hearing because the government this time is telling us in advance and they're taking action to stop it or deal with it, which didn't happen before 9-11.
And as such, I'm being a little hypocritical about this.
Now, to put this in perspective, I'm not saying anything.
I'm reacting to what I'm being told by people in our government.
And it's not isolated.
We're being told things by a regime which has told us things in the past.
This regime is engaged in a number of policies that are opening up the privacy of Americans to any kind of penetrative ability the government has.
This administration has shown a desire and a knack for distracting people away from things that might be harmful or damaging to them politically.
This administration, when the last terror attack happened, did not take it seriously, tried to blame it on a guy making a phantom video that nobody ever saw.
And now the guy who tells us, the president who tells us is the worst threat since 9-11 went out and played golf that day for seven hours and left a bunch of underlings in charge here.
What I'm trying to express here, Thomas, is a way to explain why people might not trust the government.
And believe me, there are a lot of cynics who don't believe this.
In the first place, there's a specific threat.
If it's specific, why are you closing 21 embassies?
If it's specific, specific means specific.
You've got it nailed down.
Specific means you know where, you know, who, you know what.
At least that's the assumption that people make.
The first note was: we're going to close the embassies for a day, yesterday, Sunday.
Now, all of a sudden, all week.
And now we've got people, both parties, going on TV.
Well, the chatter here.
I mean, it's about like what we had before 9-11.
Maybe the most credible stuff and the most dangerous stuff since 9-11.
And it comes at a time where this administration is trying to cover up what happened in Benghazi.
So it's not happening in a vacuum.
And the people telling us this, Thomas, are not clean and pure as the wind-driven snow.
I'm simply putting all this in a flow, in a contextual flow, to explain why there is a lot of cynicism, because it's not good.
It's not good to have people, because this could be real.
This threat could be exactly as we're being told.
It could be dire.
And we got people out thinking the government's lying to them about it.
And it's not, it's because of things that have happened.
This administration has told people who they are now.
This administration has behavioral patterns and objectives.
This is an administration which has done everything to distance itself from everything that's happened that's gone wrong in this country, Thomas.
We have a president who, to this day, after four and a half years, still isn't accountable, still isn't responsible, is still on the campaign trail, still trying to make people think that nothing that's happened is his fault, that nothing that's happened he has anything to do with.
So we got a president who is distant and removed and not responsible for anything and not accountable, who was in charge when a terrible terrorist incident happened.
Four Americans died.
He blamed it for three weeks and everybody in his regime blamed it on a filmmaker.
The MSA is in the process here of trying to penetrate virtually every citizen and have access.
And there's a lot of pushback on that.
And so there are a lot of things happening the regime would like to distract people's attention away from.
This is also the same bunch of people who told us in 2008 that we had a financial crisis so bad that if we didn't deal with it in 24 hours, if we didn't bail out all these financial interests, in 24 hours, the world economy was going to collapse.
So Thomas, my point is that at least once a week, the government of this country tells us, the population, that we have an imminent crisis.
We have a life-changing crisis facing us.
We have something that could matter to the life or death.
We have something that could mean the end of the U.S. economy.
We have something that could mean the end of the country, maybe the end of the world.
I mean, this is how they approach us.
Every week, Thomas, every week, it's a political strategy of the Democrat Party to create never-ending crises after crisis, after crisis, after crisis.
The American people are a ball of nerves, or they simply refuse to believe it because they don't have a large enough emotional reservoir to stay that worried that long.
So they get cynical.
They say we don't believe it because 90% of what this government tells us is going to happen doesn't happen.
Jobs don't get created.
Healthcare costs don't come down.
The economy doesn't grow.
None of what this administration tells us actually happens.
And the things that do happen, they deny.
So, my only point in all this was to try to explain to people why there's so much distrust and so much cynicism and how that isn't good.
This is a great nation at risk in a really dangerous world.
And we have people playing games with that.
It really is unfortunate because this could be real.
It could be real.
And most Americans are simply laughing and thinking that it's nothing more than another political move by the administration to distract everybody's attention away from things that are going wrong.
I've got a story here.
New York Times.
Dovetails.
I mentioned the economic crisis of 2008.
What the nation got for $800 billion.
Almost, we almost have here a random act of journalism from the New York Times.
They admit that the $800 billion that Bernanke, Chairman of Federal Reserve, has pumped into the financial markets hasn't done anything for the country.
They even point out that this amount, this $800 billion, is more than the budget for the Departments of Defense and more than twice what the federal government spends on welfare programs, including food stamps, other nutrition assistance, unemployment benefits, and disability payments.
So this is not the stimulus.
Folks, the Federal Reserve, this is QE1, Quantitative Easing 1, Quantitative Easing 2, QE3 now.
This is the Federal Reserve propping up Wall Street.
$800 billion has been digitized, created, just put into accounts that end up buying stocks and securities on Wall Street.
Next time, I want you to notice something, what happens on Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
The next time that the chairman of the Federal Reserve publicly speculates that quantitative easing might be coming to an end, I want you to watch what happens.
The market plunges.
All he has to do is speculate that it might end and the market plunges.
Because the people on Wall Street know that it's the Federal Reserve essentially printing money and buying stock with it that's keeping the stock market up.
Because Main Street ain't up.
The average, ordinary, everyday economy ain't up.
But Wall Street is.
And the administration points everybody to Wall Street.
See the economy going, great guns.
Look at Wall Street.
We've got a new record on the Dow.
15,000 plus, whatever it is.
Look at the price of stock skyrocketing.
Great news.
Well, you and me and most mom and pops are not buying the stock.
The Federal Reserve is to the tune of $800 billion.
And the New York Times has a long story here basically asking, what have we got for it?
And I'll tell you what we've got for it.
You want to hear some real cynicism?
What is really happening here is that the people who contribute in large amounts to political campaigns, issues, and candidates are the ones getting the money.
That's where the economy is growing.
Political donors, whatever industries they are in, they're doing well.
You know, I make a joke about, well, this is simply the Fed making sure that their buddies hold on to their summer homes in the Hamptons.
There is a grain of truth to that.
But if you look, the people that donate to candidates and campaigns are largely the recipients of this money.
Another small version of the money laundering scheme that the Democrats have with unions.
So while the rest of the economy is stagnant, not growing at all, the people who play in the political arena happen to be the ones doing pretty well right now.
No, no, what I'm saying is, ladies and gentlemen, that the income of those people who contribute big numbers to politicians, their income, I think, is they're okay.
There aren't a whole lot of laws or policies taking place that harm the income of people who play big time in political finance.
You want cynicism?
There's some cynicism for you.
All right.
Joe in Chicago.
Glad you called, sir.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hi.
Rush Limbaugh.
It's an absolute pleasure to talk to you, sir.
Thank you.
So my comment is to discuss the Limbaugh theorem and go a step further, I believe, in defining discrimination as it exists today.
As we all know it, it is the rating of individuals of different colors and creeds and nationalities based on their look and appearance.
I believe it exists today as the belief that people of different colors and creeds just naturally cannot perform.
And that is why we need entitlements.
That is why the media seems to give Obama so many passes because they just see him as someone who is different, who naturally can't perform at a certain level.
So they don't give him that same.
Well, no, no, no, no.
I happen to know that in the case of Obama, that's not, they don't look at Obama with sympathy.
They look at Obama with reverence.
Obama is them.
Ivy League, Harvard, Law Review speaks like they do.
There's a reverence for Obama.
Now, I know what you are trying to get at.
You are essentially talking about, there's a phrase for this: the soft bigotry of low expectations is what you're talking.
You're talking about how liberals look at certain people and think they don't have a chance for whatever reason.
They're minorities, skin color, they just don't have a chance.
Liberals don't have faith in them.
Liberals need to help them.
And then when liberals help them, that means liberals are good people.
You're talking about something that's very real: the soft bigotry of low expectations.
And you're right, it's everywhere.
I would love to give you examples.
I see examples of it multiple times a day in sports reporting, in news reporting.
I see it constantly.
And it is Part and parcel of elitist liberals, for whatever reason, thinking certain people just they don't have it.
But it's not their fault that they don't have it.
They've been discriminated against, or they are the recipients of some kind of bias.
But whatever, liberals essentially have a contempt for most average people.
And this contempt is the source of much of their arrogance.
Think they're better.
But see, they have compassion.
And they're better and they're superior, but they're trying to help these people.
Affirmative action.
Affirmative is racial profiling at its worst.
Take a break.
Be back after this.
I'll tell you what affirmative action is.
Soft bigotry, low expectations.
Affirmative action is a racist insult disguised as social justice by the Democrats.
And a quick timeout here at the top of the hour.
We've got much more straight ahead.
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