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Aug. 8, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:45
August 8, 2013, Thursday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
And greetings, my friends, and welcome.
Great to have you, Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network, and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Always a thrill and a delight to be with you.
Truly is.
Telephone number if you want to be on the program 800-282-2882 and the email address lrushbow at EIBnet.com.
I mentioned some of the gaps yesterday President Obama made while appearing on The Tonight Show.
Oh, by the way, you know, a little fascinating little story here, folks, a column by Chris Salizza in the Washington, the Washington Post for Newton Cambridge.
And it is headlined, why nobody should be surprised that Jay Leno asked Obama real questions.
Now, yesterday on this program, about 24 hours ago, I observed that I think this was the first time in my lifetime that a president of the United States had gone on a late-night comedy show to address the American people about something of potentially grave consequence.
I mean, shutting down 21 embassies for a week in the Middle East is not an insignificant thing.
And I pointed out Jack Parr show did not feature John F. Kennedy.
JFK did not go on Jack Parr to tell the American people about the Cuban Missile Crisis.
And it just seemed to be emblematic of the plunge that the country is making in its devotion to the pop culture low information segment of our country.
Now, nothing against Leno.
I mean, I want to stress again, good get for him.
Get the president.
That's cool.
This is a White House decision.
I'm being critical of Leno at all.
And I was not at all surprised that Leno would ask better questions than the White House Press Corps does.
I've been a guest on the tonight show and when Leno had his primetime show.
And I know when I'm there, all he does is ask tough questions.
There isn't any comedy unless I interjected.
I know he's capable of it.
And I wasn't surprised that he did it.
But usually in the past, when presidents have gone on comedy shows, not during moments of great import, but just a casual appearance, which, by the way, is relatively new in and of itself.
I don't think George H.W. Bush went on any of these shows.
Clinton, I think, playing the sacks on Arsenio Hall might have been the icebreaker, certainly in the modern era, which is not surprising.
I don't know if W went on a late-night comedy show or not, George W. Bush.
Don't remember.
My memory is that he doesn't.
Anyway, whenever this would happen in the past, even when Clinton did it, the mainstream media would have a cow.
Because comedians are comedians.
I mean, this isn't serious.
The president of the United States is a serious guy.
It's a serious job.
What was he doing talking to comedia?
And they considered it a sellout by a president to do it.
Because you're going up before a low-information audience.
You got a host who is not going to supposedly drill down from the really tough questions.
And it was viewed almost as an act of cowardice by a president to do it in the eyes of the mainstream media.
Now, all of a sudden, Chris Salizza headlined Washington Post, again for Newt Gingrich, Washington Post, why no one should be surprised that Jay Leno asked President Obama tough questions.
And he says here that the overwhelming sentiment coming out of Obama's interview with Jay Leno could be summed up like this.
Wow, Jay really asked serious questions.
Russia, Edward Snowden.
By the way, Mr. Salizza, the real news of that appearance was not the questions, but the answers and the gaffes, which we're going to get back to here in just a second.
I don't want you to think I've lost my place.
Saliza writes, Russia, Edward Snowden, the NSA were part of the conversation.
So too was the increased terror alert.
And Hillary Clinton's presidential prospects.
There was relatively little, hey, how are the wife and kids chatter that many people expected?
Leno did ask Obama how he spent his birthday.
It wasn't a totally dry interview.
No one who has watched the transformation of media and how politicians have learned to take advantage of those things should be surprised, however, Mr. Salizza says.
Because here is, according to him, the reality.
As the definition of who is a journalist has continued to expand, the line between serious and fun has blurred.
There are examples of this phenomenon everywhere.
The successive buzzfeed, the rise of the daily show, the Colbert Rapport, primary news source for many young people.
As we have written before in this space, the idea that a serious journalist cannot have fun is not one that's broadly held by the people who, you know, consume our journalism.
Leno's interview with Obama proves the opposite's also true, that a fun person can also be serious.
Now, it's risky for me to get into this because it could be misunderstood, but we did.
The Rush Limbaugh TV show was the daily show before the daily show.
This radio program has always been something that prior to it really didn't exist in major national media.
And I attempted to explain this now and then in the early days when a mainstream journalist would interview me back in the days when I thought being interviewed was an opportunity to inform them and educate them, which it isn't and wasn't.
And I would tell them what I do.
They were not interested in hearing what I had to say.
All they wanted to do was take shots at, make fun of, or disagree with what my answer to them was.
But the thing I said to them was that I do something that you don't find elsewhere in the media.
I combine the serious discussion of issues with irreverent, satirical comedy with credibility on both sides.
And I would say, you imagine if Letterman came out one night and actually did a serious monologue for five minutes, people watching that show would not know what to do.
They wouldn't know how to react.
That's not why they're watching.
They don't tune to Letterman for anything serious.
Ditto Ted Koppel a nightline.
If people came out and watched Ted Koppel and he opened nightline with a 10-minute joke routine, a la Carson or Leno, people wouldn't know what to do.
That's not why they're watching.
And by the same token, if the Tonight Show started and Johnny Carson came out and did 10 minutes of dead, drop-dead serious politics, people wouldn't know what to do.
And I tell these journalists in the early day of the program, this is what I do.
I do both those things with credibility.
The fact that I do satire and irreverent humor does not take away from the credibility I have with my audience when I discuss things seriously.
But because of that, in the early days, I don't think it even survives to this point, the media still used the fact that there was a lot of comedy on this program to poke hole.
Well, Liv Boy, just an entertainer.
I mean, I don't know why the Republican Party pays so much attention to Liv Boy.
I mean, you still hear that today.
He's just an entertainer, meaning you can't take him seriously.
And then something will happen.
And the next week, I will be the titular head of the Republican Party.
But my point here is that all kinds of allowances are being made for the watering down of journalism in order to accommodate Obama.
That is the point that's being made.
Normally, and you can go back and you can look, that a Washington Post, New York Times columnist would be really upset at a president who appeared more often on comedy shows than he did in the White House press room or doing formal press conferences.
You can go back and you can find that that would have, if George W. Bush, in the middle of the war in Iraq or after Abu Grab had gone on Leno or Letterman to explain, you would have the Washington Press Corps would have had a field day ripping Bush to shreds for doing that, for being a coward in avoiding them.
And then you would be able to read a little jealousy and envy for whatever late night host show that Bush had appeared on.
But now that it's Obama, well, guess what journalism is changing?
Oh, yeah, you know, even the funny can be serious.
Oh, yeah.
It ain't any big deal.
And it's what Saliz's point here is, he said, nobody should be surprised that Leno asked Obama real quiet.
No, really?
It wasn't that long ago.
You would have been ticked off that Obama wasn't making himself available to you for these so-called serious questions.
But whatever Obama does, whatever standard is being destroyed or blown up has to be tolerated in order to accommodate Obama.
Because what this really means is there's nothing wrong with Obama going on a comedy show.
What's wrong with that?
Well, I maintain to you that it's not a serious thing to do.
It's not the place to have discussed what Obama was going to do.
But that's just me and my tip of my hat to tradition, but also the idea that I take foreign policy in the office of the presidency pretty seriously.
It's not something to be joked about and watered down with for the sake of building a bridge of compatibility to the low information population.
But that's what it's being used as.
So given now that it's perfectly fine, we shouldn't be surprised that Leno asked tough questions.
And we shouldn't be surprised that Obama went there because the definition of a journalist is expanding.
And that, of course, is having to accommodate whatever Obama does, because we cannot, if we're in the drive-by media, we cannot criticize the imperial president Barack Obama.
No way, no how.
It cannot happen.
In fact, I'll even make this, if the president today were George W. Bush and George W. Bush had gone on to Leno and gotten the same questions that Leno asked Obama.
I don't think that we'll be reading today about how Leno asked Bush tough questions or real questions.
I think that the drive-bys would categorize Leno as lobbying softballs at Bush if George W. Bush got the same kind of questions from Leno that Obama got.
Because if Bush had gone on there, if Leno didn't say, how come you didn't care that 3,000 people died in Iraq?
How come the world has, you know, all these stereotypical templates and narratives that they think were true, if Leno hadn't brought them up, that would have been a softball interview.
So it just means, folks, that standards not worth much anymore.
Standards declining left and right, doesn't matter.
Whatever necessary, prop up Obama.
I'll give you another example before we go to the audio satellites.
Right here, I've got a story from Reuters.
It's on unemployment.
This is Thursday.
Unemployment.
Jobless claims edge up still points to a healing labor market.
Ladies and gentlemen, I've been chronicling for you how things repeat, and I'm noticing the repetition, the pattern repetition.
Now in 25 years, four years of the exact same headline every month, sometimes every week.
Jobless claims up, meaning more people seeking unemployment benefits because they're out of work, and that means a healing labor market.
Every month for four and a half years.
This has been the story.
When it's not true, it is simply made to accommodate Obama and to avoid reporting the truth about Obama.
Okay, I just found out George W. Bush did go on Letterman in 2000, delivered the top 10 list, but that was as a candidate.
He was not the prexi at the time.
He was a candidate.
So the number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits rose slightly again last week, but it was near the lowest level since the recession.
A hopeful sign for the economy.
Man, that's the kind of news I like.
As the situation worsens, the news is hopeful for the economy.
So let's go to the audio soundbites.
Here is Obama.
This guy makes more gaffes than George Bush and Sarah Palin combined and is never called on it.
Here's this is this is Obama struggling to remember the name of the wife of the vice president.
Keeping our military strong means keeping our military families strong.
Michelle and Vice President Joe Biden's wife, Dr. Joe Biden, they've made this their mission.
I got it, folks.
You let that be George W. Bush.
You let that be Ronald Reagan.
And the stories today is Alzheimer's setting in.
Do we have dementia?
And I'm not kidding.
They'd have psychiatrists and psychologists on TV, and they'd be analyzing this.
And if you're looking for any indication that a declining mental capacity was taking place, that was Camp Pendleton, California.
Obama's struggling.
Listen to this again now.
This is not tonight show.
The next one's the tonight show.
This is Obama.
I want you to hear it again.
Full-fledged Camp Pendleton, California yesterday.
Keeping our military strong means keeping our military families strong.
Michelle and Vice President Joe Biden's wife, Dr. Joe Biden, they made this their mission.
That's not a gaffe.
He didn't remember her name.
And that means probably that the teleprompter froze.
Now the tonight show.
Now I'm looking at the clock.
We'll take a break.
We'll come back and we'll resume with this.
And by the way, there is more to add to the whole discussion we had yesterday on feminism and women and not having babies and how that means wonderful things for countries and so forth.
So I have a little story here from Media I on this whole business of the drive-by media not actually probing Obama with tough questions.
And MediaIT, by the way, is no conservative website.
And a headline here, the other Benghazi scandal.
Journalists worry that covering the attack threatens White House access.
The thrust of this story is that CNN had a random act of journalism the other day in which they reported that there were a whole bunch of CIA agents on the ground at Benghazi.
And CIA, CNN, actually reported that what might have been going on there, and the reason the ambassador was there, was a gun-running operation to the rebels in Syria who were opposing Bashir al-Assad.
And there's a story here from media that people at CNN are now scared to death that they were tough, that they were critical.
They were critical, that they just reported the truth.
They're very worried at CNN that they might not have as much access to the White House now, and they're not alone.
This story of Media goes on to say that journalists throughout the drive-by media, Washington Press Corps, is just very reluctant to tell the truth about this administration because they will be denied access.
They won't be able to hang around Obama.
They won't be able to get leaks.
They won't be able.
They won't be treated nicely by people in the White House.
And so it's access.
They won't be able to talk to Obama.
And that's why this story says that there aren't any tough questions.
And that's why we have to rely on late-night comics for it.
On the cutting edge of societal evolution, El Rushbo is having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
The journalists are so devoted to Obama.
They are such sycophants that they're worried about access.
Here's a network insider, unnamed, speaking to Media Knight about this.
Access is a very serious consideration when it comes to stories that could adversely impact a show, a correspondent, a network's relationship with the regime, a campaign, any political leader.
I would suggest it's not an accident that those who have been given a lot of access to the president have generally been a wall when it comes to stories that might reflect poorly on him.
And that's why Leno asked the tough questions, and that's why the drive-bys are now saying, it's no big deal.
Hey, you can have fun and be serious at the same time.
I don't want to make a bigger deal out of this than it needs to be.
I mean, this is not earth-shattering stuff here, but I'm just telling you that it wasn't all that long ago that journalism, by definition, wasn't fun.
It was too serious.
These people take themselves very seriously.
I mean, they are elitists.
They have a constitutional role, of course, in our country.
And the idea, I always used to say when people say, well, you're a journalist.
I say, no, I'm not.
I laugh.
There wasn't, the jocularity was not associated.
But now all that's off the table, whatever it takes to accommodate Obama.
Because the media has never, where Obama's been concerned, been reporters.
They're nothing but suck-ups.
That's why I call them state-controlled.
They are suck-ups.
They want to be able to run around and talk about how close they are to Obama, as though he's their friend and confidant and buddy.
I mean, the line between journalist and government and becoming friends with who you cover, it's a huge no-no.
All of that's out the window now.
And it just, it's part and parcel of the mediocre, problematic coverage that we get.
And I just, I guess, in one sense, I find this interesting personally, maybe be a little too inside baseball.
But the idea that we have a story, hey, it's perfectly fine that a comedian asks serious questions.
Why?
Everybody's a journalist now.
I'm telling you, that would never fly with any other president.
Now, here's Obama on the Tonight Show Tuesday night.
And Leno said, you mentioned infrastructure.
Why is infrastructure a partisan issue?
I live in a town, the bridge is falling apart.
It isn't safe.
How does that become Republican or Democrat?
Why don't you just go fix the bridge?
I don't know.
As you know, for the last three years, I've said, let's work together, let's find a financing mechanism, and let's go ahead and fix our bridges, fix our roads, sewer systems, our ports.
You know, Panama Canal is being widened so that these big supertanks can come in.
Now, that'll be finished in 2015.
If we don't deepen our ports all along the Gulf, places like Charleston, South Carolina, or Savannah, Georgia, or Jacksonville, Florida, if we don't do that, those ships are going to go someplace else, and we'll lose jobs.
Businesses won't locate here.
So this is something that traditionally has been bipartisan.
I mean, it used to be Republicans and Democrats.
They love cutting those ribbons.
Let me take a stab at this because I can answer this easily.
Now, of course, the gaffe there is Obama saying, look, we have to deepen our ports all along the Gulf.
Places like Charleston, South Carolina, which on the Atlantic Ocean.
Savannah, Georgia on the Atlantic Ocean.
Jacksonville, Florida on the Atlantic Ocean.
None of these are in the Gulf.
Now, you remember what grief Sarah Palin got when she said she could see Russia from her house.
You remember that?
And you remember how that among maybe at the top of the list, that statement from Sarah Palin was the primary Means by which the media set out to destroy her.
Her intelligence, her credibility, and here is Barack Obama not knowing what he's talking about, sounding so sure of himself.
And it's, in fact, the AP has written about this and doesn't even mention the GAF.
They are whitewashing it.
They have written a story that essentially praises Obama's brilliance for understanding that we need to deepen the ports.
They don't even touch on the GAF.
This kind of stuff genuinely really ticks me off.
But let's go back to Leno's question.
Why is fixing a bridge a partisan issue?
Why does it have to be Republican or Democrat?
Why don't you just go fix the bridge?
Do you know that question?
Leno in that question encapsulates the low-information voter and the way they think.
They cannot possibly see the partisanship in infrastructure.
They haven't the slightest clue.
It doesn't make sense to them when you explain it.
They just don't understand.
Why would there be any disagreement?
You got a bridge that fell, just fix the thing.
Where is the partisanship?
He wants to know.
And I guarantee you, that question reflects the attitude of a lot of people.
And of course, Obama answered, well, yeah, you know, I don't know.
I'm the guy that I'm not partisan at all.
I'm the one who's been trying to get everybody to work together on this infrastructure.
Well, let's examine how he did that.
He lied to this country when establishing this, I don't know what you call this presidency.
This is this stimulus was designed to fix all of these bridges.
And Obama's out there trying to make everybody think that their bridge is going to fall down, or pretty much every bridge is in trouble.
And we're going to build schools and we're going to rebuild roads and all this.
And not one penny of that stimulus went to any of it.
So the way this becomes a partisan issue, Obama makes the case for the stimulus to rebuild crumbling infrastructure and gives the money to the unions in a money laundering scheme.
Teachers' unions and public sector workers' unions got 75% of the stimulus.
We've been through all of this with the details and the dollar amount.
As a result, nothing got fixed.
Not one bridge, not one school, not one road, and very few infrastructure jobs were created in order for this work to take place.
And Obama then turns there on and says it blames the Republicans for it somehow.
And that becomes partisan.
Where what we really have here is lying.
What we really have here is misrepresentation and disingenuousness.
What we have is a president going on television over and over again, saying we need a stimulus to get the economy going, to come out of a recession, and we're going to get this money, and we're going to spend it on people building roads and bridges and fixing them and all that.
And then that doesn't happen.
The Republicans don't have the votes to stop anything.
The first two years Obama owns the House, owns the Senate, owns the White House.
It's one-party government.
Republicans can't stop anything.
And yet the bridge doesn't get fixed.
Obama's the president.
And Bothirum, Leno says, why don't you just fix the bridge?
What the hell is partisan?
Well, the question, yeah, Mr. Brett, why didn't you spend money on repairing bridges, like you said, and creating jobs instead of giving it to unions?
The question will never be asked is I doubt that Leno knows that that's what happened.
I'd venture to say that the percentage of people outside this audience and some of the alternative media programs don't know.
They think the stimulus was spent on creating jobs.
For some reason, the Republicans still made sure the rich got all the money.
This is why it is constantly so frustrating.
Anyway, the gaffe portion of this, AP writes about it and praises Obama for knowing and saying and warning that we have to deepen our ports on the Gulf if we're to maintain our nation as a port economy.
I'll tell you, the degree to which the people of this country are being dummed down on purpose every day is striking.
And all for the express purpose of maintaining in power a political party which seeks a permanent underclass and as many dependent people on government as possible, as many uninformed, misinformed, no-nothings as they can get.
Brief timeout.
We'll get to your calls when we get back, folks.
Don't go away.
By the way, play, folks, just to remind you, Sarah Palin never ever said that she could see Russia from her house.
Tina Fay said it on Saturday Night Live, impersonating Palin, and it became popularly assumed by people that Palin actually said it.
She never said it.
And yet, Tina Faye impersonating Palin, saying that she could see Russia from her house became one of the primary reasons for Republicans to run around and say, well, this woman's not smart enough.
We can't, this woman is an embarrassment.
We can't have this woman in our party running for president.
What is an absolute Republicans, Democrats, everybody, bought it was it's embarrassing.
The closest Palin ever came to saying anything like this was, you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, which is true.
You can.
You can see Russia from certain parts of Alaska.
But she never said you could see it from her house.
And she never said that it qualified her in foreign policy, which was part of the Tina Fay joke.
Here we have a legitimate statement of GAF proportions.
And by the way, there were three or four of them on Leno, and they're unremarked upon.
The AP actually, in their effort to whitewash Obama's gaffe, the AP actually added words to their report to cover for the guy.
The AP printed, quote, if we don't deepen our ports along the Gulf and in places like, they added the words and in, and they put them in parentheses, which means it's not a direct quote, it's an assumed, but Obama didn't say and in.
He said our ports along the Gulf in places like they added the word and changed the whole thing.
Whitewash cover-up.
Tina Faye got an Emmy.
I remember The last time, and there have been many of these years, the last time I was one of top 10 most fascinating Americans by Barbara Walters on that show she does every December, Tina Fay.
Tina Fay was on that show in that list of top 10 most fascinating Americans, I think it's called, because of her Sarah Palin impersonation.
Sarah Palin wasn't on the list.
Sarah Palin wasn't one of the top 10.
Tina Fay impersonating Palin was.
So eager and so desirous was the media to ridicule Palin out of a political existence that they went to the most ridiculous lengths necessary.
And the sad thing is that the low-information population just sucked it up like a newborn baby.
Just ate it all, didn't question it, just believed every aspect of it.
Obama on Leno.
The odds of people dying in a terrorist attack are still a lot lower than in a car accident, unfortunately.
Another, he did say, I double-checked this.
The odds of people dying in a terrorist attack are still a lot lower than in a car accident, unfortunately.
Well, obviously he's trying to say, that's terrorism.
Not that big a deal.
More people die in car crashes, unfortunately.
I mean, he was trying to express solidarity with families of lost people in car crashes by acknowledging how terrible that is.
It's still terrible, very terrible, but not nearly.
Terrorism is not nearly that bad.
Just infantile.
In another gaff, Obama said that Putin, Vladimir Putin, used to head the KGB.
Putin did not head the KGB, never had.
Putin was a mid-level nobody there.
Putin was one of these guys in the KGB who was, he's a climber.
He was forever hoping, climbing that ladder, trying to get to the headspot, but he never got there.
He was a nobody.
But now, now he's running a whole show as he wanted to when he was a nobody at the KGB.
Nobody ever leaves the KGB, by the way.
Once you're there, no matter what you say you've done next, nobody ever leaves the KGB.
I don't know if Obama was trying to pay him a compliment or not.
But here, let's grab somebody for we got a little miniature list here, a little montage of Obama gaps.
And none of these are reported on.
None of these are commented on.
None of these are analyzed.
None of these reflect negatively in any way on Obama, as any of these by themselves or together uttered by a Republican would destroy the guy.
I've now been in 57 states.
You send a kid to the emergency room for a treatable illness like asthma.
They end up taking up a hospital bed.
You gave them treatment early.
And they got some treatment and a breathweiser or inhalator.
I don't know what the term is in Austrian.
Navy Corpsman Christian Bashar.
Corpsman Brichard.
Corpsman Bashard.
On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes, and I see many of them in the audience here today.
Corpsman.
But that last one, that was Memorial Day 2008.
This Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes, that means killed in action.
I see many of them in the audience here today.
He looked out and he saw the dead, which of course he didn't.
And in each one of these, if the media was inclined to talk about it, you know he didn't mean that.
You know he didn't mean, come on, you know he knows Biden's wife's name.
What are you talking about?
Well, one of the things I'm talking about is I don't, I have not drank the Kool-Aid.
I do not believe that Obama is smarter than anybody else.
I do not believe he has cut a new path as a politician unlike any we've ever seen in his intellect.
I don't believe any of this hocus.
Just like I didn't believe it when they said it about Hillary, smartest woman in the world.
Quick time out.
We'll be back.
Much more straight ahead.
There are, folks, the healthcare stack today.
I mean, it's an absolute disaster right on schedule.
There's a new poll out.
Give you the details when we get back.
More Democrats than Republicans.
53 to 27% say the American dream is dead.
53% of Democrats.
The American dream is dead.
27% of Republicans.
This goes nicely.
What we were discussing the other day about pessimism versus optimism.
Sit tight.
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