Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
I don't see how I can do it.
I'm too famous.
Oh, no, this business about moderating Republican debates.
Did you see that out there?
There's a suggestion that's been made.
A lot of people have made the suggestion.
Cal Thomas has made it that me and Sean Hannity and Mark Levin would nominate, moderate Republican primary debates.
And I think I'd overshadow it.
I think I'm too famous.
It'd be a tough call.
It'd be a real, real, real tough call.
Anyway, well, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It could get ratings.
I mean, there's no question about that.
Anyway, it's an idea that's out there.
Now, some people misunderstood and thought that it was moderating debates on mainstream TV.
That would never happen.
These would be debates that are strictly for a conservative Republican media and audience.
Anyway, anyway, how are you, folks?
Yesterday we left the program.
I thought today was Friday or going to be Friday.
And I very seldom get ahead of myself like that, but I did.
So here we are on Thursday.
It's great to have you here.
The telephone number, if you want to be on the program, 800-282-2882, the email address, lrushbo at eibnet.com.
I want to start out with a see I Told You So this is from CBS Eyeball News Philadelphia, KYW-TV.
It's a study out there.
And it predicts a decline in happiness among people who use Facebook.
But this could be any social media.
This is not meant to focus on Facebook, although this study did.
But I think it runs the gamut.
New study shows that Facebook may help people feel connected, but it does not make them any happier.
In fact, according to the research conducted by the University of Michigan, Facebook actually, using Facebook, actually predicts a decline in a person's well-being.
Now, they studied 82 young adults, all of whom had smartphones and Facebook accounts.
The researchers then used experience sampling to measure how the users think, felt, and behaved by texting them at random five times a day or a week.
I'm sorry, at random times, five days a week for two weeks.
And each text contained a link to an online survey with five questions, including how the Facebook user felt at the moment, how worried he or she was, and how lonely the user felt at that time.
The study concluded, the more the subjects used Facebook, the worse they felt.
Exactly right.
This is a see I told you so moment.
And you know why?
You remember why?
Because everybody lies about what they're doing and how much fun they're having and where they are and where they've been and where they've going, where they're going.
And people log on to Facebook and they read about all these places people are and things that people are doing.
And they think they're missing out, left out.
All this stuff is going on out there, but it's not happening to them.
And they start wondering what's wrong with it.
We never really get out of high school.
This is nothing more than not being in the big click.
When you're not in the big click, you think you're missing out on everything.
You're not with the cool people.
You're not with the hipsters.
Well, there may not be any real big click on Facebook, but the fact that everybody lies about what they're doing, everybody tells you in high school they didn't study when they were.
Everybody tells you they were out partying when they weren't.
Everybody told you how many women they were when they weren't.
It never changes.
And on Facebook, with relative anonymity, this stuff has bothered me for a while.
I don't want to make too big a deal of it, but it falls under the umbrella of my desire for a healthy, productive, content, positive, happy country.
And there are just countless assaults on people more than ever.
And not suggesting anything change.
I'm not an old fuddy-duddy.
Can't put anything back in a bottle.
All I'm suggesting is that just like anything else in your life, believe very little of what you hear and half of what you see.
But this was a no-brainer.
And now they've actually confirmed it in this University of Michigan study.
Additionally, researchers had the test subjects rate their level of life satisfaction at the start and at the end of the study.
And they found that the more participants used Facebook over the research period, the more their life satisfaction levels decreased.
And why would that be?
I mean, here people have increased connectivity, supposedly talking to more people, supposedly more in touch with things.
And it's just the exact opposite of what the conventional wisdom would be.
A more connected population and more aware.
It's the exact opposite.
Insecurity is on the rise.
Feelings of inadequacy and incompetence on the rise.
The feeling that everybody else out there, basically, it's everybody's having a good time and I'm not.
What am I missing out on?
And the sad thing about that is that the more you expose yourself to that, some people, the more they want to expose themselves to it.
It's just an amazing thing out there.
Journalism graduates do not read newspapers or magazines or books.
This is Paul Bedard writing, The Washington Examiner, could be the final blow to paper and ink news.
Reporters graduating out of J school and headed to work at newspapers and magazines do not read media.
Seven out of ten choose digital news and social media websites instead of the places they want to go work.
I think the real answer to this is why read anything.
Most of these journalists are just like Obama.
They think they already know everything when they come out of journalism school.
Why read anything?
They're in the business of telling you what you don't know.
They already know everything.
They don't want to have their belief systems challenged.
They come out of J school and they are perfectly programmed little liberal robots and they live in their safety cocoon and they don't want to be challenged with anything that doesn't fit.
So they're going to expose themselves to it.
So they don't read.
They go to aggregator sites that read for them and tell them what's out there.
And that's how they find out what's there.
People graduating journalism school do not read journalists.
I find it interesting.
This actually happened at the University of Georgia.
Annual survey of journalism and mass communication graduates surveys J school grads, their habits, their salaries, and the jobs they take.
Found that just one-third had read a newspaper the day before taking the survey.
A stunning drop from 81% in 1994 who had read a newspaper.
Normally, I wouldn't mention this, but this is maybe I'm not.
I'm going to put this aside.
I may not.
There's an ongoing effort to try to convince low-information voters that the Senarev brothers in Boston were inspired by conservative right-wing extremism.
And it was on MSNBC yesterday, and they had this literal idiot, this Mark Potok guy from the Southern Poverty Law Center.
And he was on with one of the radical left-wing extremists disguised as a host named Alex Wagner.
And they said that Tamerlin and Jokar Sonayev were motivated to commit their despicable acts of terrorism by conservative thinkers.
Right.
In Boston.
They're motivated by conservative thinkers.
The vocal conservative opposition to Barack Obama.
Upset at Obamacare, upset at Obama's race.
I mean, what is happening to NBC is literally amazing.
These people have walked off the cliff long ago and they're now banging against the rocks on their way down to the bottom of the canyon.
It just amazing.
Gallup!
Now, the headline of this story: Obama's economic approval slips to 35%.
That's not the way to look at this because they have a chart here.
Let me read to you the lead from the story.
Despite Obama's renewed focus on the nation's economy this summer, comma, he scores worse with Americans on the economy than he did in June.
His approval rating on the economy is now 35%.
That's down seven points.
His rating on taxes and the federal budget deficit are down five points each.
During the same period, his overall approval rating is down three points.
Now, what this means, if you look at the chart, they have the disapproval number on top because it's higher.
The disapproved number of Obama on the economy is 62%.
And if you ask me, that's the number.
The bigger the number, the better to make the case.
Now, it's nothing wrong with saying only 35% approve, but that's 62% disapprove.
62%.
It dovetails with the polling data on people who don't want Obamacare.
And once again, today, I have an Obamacare stack that if I wanted to, I could take up an entire hour with it.
The news, and I probably will interspersed with all the rest of today's program.
62% disapprove of Obama's handling of the economy.
About the same number disapprove of Obamacare.
And he's been talking about it all summer.
He's been talking about it.
He's doing the limbo theorem.
He's been out there talking about jobs.
He's going to create jobs.
He's going to grow the economy.
These rotten Republicans and everybody standing in his way.
He's trying to do everything he can to build up the American people and reignite the economy.
And so it's not possible for this economy to grow given what Obama's doing to it.
He's shrinking it.
He's taking parts of it, transferring it to the federal government.
It can't grow.
It's not possible for it to grow.
But this is a huge number.
Now, you have to ask: who are these people?
Got some low-information people in here.
62% disapprove of Obama's handling of the economy.
But there doesn't seem to be any outrage.
Well, you and I know there is outrage out there.
What do you think this clown thing at the Missouri State Fair was about?
The entire episode of the Obama clown at the Missouri State Fair was a way of illustrating people in the heartland and their dissatisfaction with the leadership of this country, not dissatisfaction with the person's race, and not dissatisfaction with a dissatisfaction with the job he's doing.
That's what it was about.
And people in many parts of the country have reached their wit's end and they're trying to at least laugh about it.
Talk about reading Facebook and getting all depressed.
Hell, folks.
Just trying to find a job, trying to get a raise, trying to think about the standard, ordinary, everyday climbing the ladder of success is a depressing thing in this country because of the leadership and the lack of anybody in charge that knows what they're doing.
Well, they do, obviously, know what they're doing, and they're just trying to transform.
Anyway, it's a big number: 62% disapprove of the way Obama is handling the economy.
I'll tell you: if this were a Republican president, this would be all Wolf Blitzer would be talking about today.
And they would be sending reporters out to find people in as depressed an economic circumstance as they could for Man on the Street interviews.
And they'd have these people detailing every miserable fact of their lives.
And they would be blaming it all on George Bush or whoever the Republican president was.
They'd be blaming it on the Republican Congress.
They'd be blaming it on talk radio.
The misery, the melee, the fog of utter depression that has swept over this entire country.
62% disapprove of the economy as being run by Obama.
Under normal circumstances, this would be occupying the media morning, noon, and night with individual after individual after individual bemoaning his economic plight.
Today, it's not even a yawner.
Brief time out.
We'll be back.
We'll continue on the EIB network.
Don't go away, folks.
And we're back, Rushlinboy, here, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
Thank you so much for being with us, folks.
Yesterday, we had the story of the New York Times about the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Librarian Massage Parlor.
And it was a New York Times story, and it raised a number of questions.
And those questions were dealt with and analyzed on this program.
One of the points made was this foundation is running incredibly high deficits while bringing in millions and millions of dollars in donations.
And I made, I connected the nuts.
And I came to the conclusion that one of the points of the story was that somebody making out pretty well here in the middle of philanthropy.
Philanthropy, usually people don't get rich.
And then, as to review, I talked about how the Clintons run around and have been for the longest time bragging about how wealthy they are.
Which, by the way, I was always brought up and raised to never talk about things like that.
And certainly not to brag about it.
It was a big deal in our house growing up.
You just didn't talk.
You didn't, you didn't, nobody, whether they were wealthy or not, you just didn't talk about that.
And the Clintons, for the longest time since actually since Clinton left office, they've been talking every time the idea of a tax increase comes up.
Hey, that's fine with me.
I'm in that upper tax bracket.
I don't need that tax cut.
I don't need it.
Hillary now doing just fine now.
Thanks.
We even put together a parody.
Bill Clinton hosting a game show called I'm Richer Than You Are.
And Hillary does the same thing.
So, lo and behold, right on schedule, the writer of the story shows up on MSNBC last.
I don't want the audio.
Cookie, don't worry about finding audio.
Don't play it.
The author of the story shows up and says, well, once again, Limbaugh is factually challenged.
He said the truth of the matter is that the people that work at the Clinton Foundation and the library and massage parlor are profoundly underpaid.
These people are not going to say, wait a minute now, who was talking about the employees getting rich?
The Clintons aren't.
It doesn't surprise me that Clintons don't pay anybody anything.
You know, this Cheryl Stanberg, is that her name?
The chief operating officer at Facebook, the babe who wrote the book on lean back, lean forward, round heels, whatever, whatever.
She wrote this book advising women.
Somebody found a job posting to work with her as an intern, and it highlighted unpaid for many months.
And the job description is intern, it was deep.
It was detailed.
Now, here's a woman who just made $90 million selling some Facebook stock.
And who knows what she made with her book, and she's got a job posting for an unpaid intern.
And liberals don't pay anybody anything.
And I never said it was the employees that were getting rich at the Clinton Foundation and Library and Massage Parlor.
I was pretty clear that it was the Clintons getting rich off the Clinton Global Initiative.
But the Times writer goes on MSNBC.
Once again, Limbaugh doesn't know what he's talking about.
Some of the employees.
I think, folks, if the employees aren't making any money at the Clinton Foundation and Library and Massage Parlor, and if they're look at, they're raising gobs of dollars, millions and millions of dollars.
The Times makes this clear.
And they're running deficits.
And yeah, there's some perfunctory inclusion of the good works and the charitable donations that the Clinton Foundation is engaged in.
Most charitable foundations are not running deficits.
They keep the nut, the principle on hand, so that they've always got a basis of growth or for growth.
And they don't start giving away more money than they've got.
It defeats the whole purpose.
And it just keeps the fundraising cycle going, which is fundamentally crucial.
to people like the Democrats.
I mean, I've always said that Democrats love to portray themselves.
Liberals love to portray themselves.
It's not interested in money.
They're into good works.
They're good people.
They're into charity and helping people.
And they're not concerned with earning a lot of money.
They're not concerned with becoming the evil rich.
And they are.
They are obsessed with it.
And the Clintons are perhaps two of the greatest examples of that.
Back in the 1980s, there's Clinton making $25,000 as the governor of Arkansas.
Hillary's the breadwinner at $100,000 at DeRose law firm, and everybody hanging around is uber wealthy.
Whitewater was a get-rich-quick scheme.
Back in the 80s, the allegation made against the rich back in the 80s was they didn't earn it.
They're cheating people or they're doing get-rich-quick schemes and they're fooling people.
But none of it was legit.
And the Clintons wanted to get in on that.
But these people are obsessed with it.
Now the Clintons are uber wealthy, and they brag about it and they let everybody know.
And a lot of liberals are obsessed with money.
And you know how they do it?
They live off the donations of others to the nonprofits or other groups that they run.
They don't, I mean, you've got a decent number of liberal Democrat entrepreneurs.
It's always been a puzzlement to me, by the way, how a robustly successful, self-reliant entrepreneur is a Democrat, but I think it's tied to power and cronyism and so forth.
But a lot of them, a lot of them just get rich off the donations of others to the organizations they run.
From a nonprofit to a for-profit to a what-have-you.
If you have money like this rolling into the two and a million of dollars, and you can't point out all the great work you're doing, and where's the money going?
And if you admit, if you're telling me that the employees aren't making any money at the Clinton Global Initiative, where's the money going?
It makes the thing even more fishy.
And then we treated to this idea that they don't care about money and they don't care about having a lot of money and they don't care about being rich and they're obsessed with it just like everybody else is.
Whitewater was all about trying to make money by foreclosing on the mortgages of seasoned citizens.
The Clintons and McDougall and the gang, they were foreclosing on people who missed one payment.
It was classic.
But of course, as liberal Democrats, this is not possible.
They couldn't possibly do anything like that.
They love people.
They give things to people.
They give other people's money to people.
They don't like money.
They don't care about money.
It's one of the greatest scams going that liberals don't like money.
But my point is, I never said that the employees were getting rich, as was characterized on MSNBC last night.
Now, let's go to Egypt and get this out of the way before we get to the healthcare stack.
Ladies and gentlemen, Way back, grab soundbite number four, because back in February of 2011, when this whole thing started, I made a point, or I made an observation.
And I want to play for you what I said.
I'll set it up by saying that I said it's the second revolution that counts.
What is happening now?
In other words, the first revolution, more often than not, doesn't survive.
So what you really have to pay attention to is the second revolution.
After everybody blows up, gets mad at the status quo, and there's a move made to oust.
In this case, it was Hosni Mubarak.
And they put Morsi in there, the Muslim Brotherhood.
Then, of course, he's gone.
So the second revolution is what's taking place now.
And it is bloody.
There are hundreds of people dying.
And this, I think, is something that the regime missed.
They were all for this first revolution.
Remember, they tried to make that first revolution in Egypt look like it was an outgrowth of the Obama campaign in 2008.
Yes, that campaign was so magnificent.
It was so wonderful.
Hope and change.
Everything was going to be better.
And this was the Egyptians being inspired by Obama and doing their own version of hope and change.
And that's what the administration tried to glom on to this.
Our buddy Nick Robertson at CNN still sent my all-time top 10 favorite audio soundbites.
I just, I will never forget these as long as I live here.
The Egyptians are trying to overthrow Mubarak.
And CNN sends a reporter over there to go to Tahriri Square to ask people to comment on how important and relevant to this Obama is and how happy they are with Obama for making their revolution possible.
And they all said Obama's got nothing to do with this.
And the CNN reporter basically had to tie up all these reports at the end.
And there you hear it, people here in Tahriri Square, very happy that President Obama, it wasn't about Obama, but the regime trying to make it about Obama.
And that first revolution is falling apart as we speak.
So we're going to work backwards.
Let's go back.
I want to play that soundbite for you, me, February 10th, 2011.
It's the second revolution that counts.
So I don't know whoever is behind this, if they don't survive, and the military is aligned with them.
If they don't survive this, is it the Muslim Brotherhood waiting in line to then overthrow whatever happens here?
And it may take years for all this to play out.
We don't really know.
Despite the efforts of our media, I know what they want.
What do they want?
They want by tonight, by the evening news tonight, the U.S. media wants to be able to say that Barack Obama has transformed Egypt into a democracy of peace-loving people and that their economy is going great, that the joblessness numbers are going down.
They want to be able to wrap this up in a pretty little bow and say Egypt's fixed by the evening news, certainly by the Sunday shows on Sunday.
And that's what they're all angling for.
But there hasn't been any consistency from the White House on what their message is and what their position here is.
So Morsi's gone and hundreds of people are dying.
And the second revolution is taking place.
The guys that took over first, Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, well, his wing of it anyway, get tossed out by the military who run the show there.
And now you've got a second one taking place.
And the Washington Post headline today, Egypt erupts as security forces attack Morsi.
Before the July 3rd coup d'état in Egypt, the Obama regime privately warned the armed forces against ousting Morsi, pointing to U.S. legislation that requires the cutoff of aid to any country where the army plays a decisive role.
So with Morsi, the regime had who they wanted in place.
But there was a problem.
The Egyptian people didn't.
There was a revolution of sorts.
The Muslim Brotherhood stealthfully, by the way, went in there and hijacked it.
And they installed Morsi and they put Mubarak on trial and sent him to prison.
And the media goes over and tries to make it look like peace has broken out, democracy's broken out, economic growth is happening, and unemployment's falling, and it all happened because of Obama.
And then the whole thing got blown up when the Egyptian people said, wait a minute, none of this is any good for us.
And it's bye-bye Morsi, Obama's chosen leader.
And now all hell is breaking loose on the streets.
And the Washington Post editorial here says, because of these decisions, the regime, Obama, is complicit in the new and horrifying bloody crackdown launched yesterday by the de facto regime against tens of thousands of protesters who had camped out in two Cairo squares.
Now, when this editorial was written, 278 people were reported killed.
It's over 500 now, including many women and children.
Chaos erupted around Egypt as angry mobs stormed Christian churches, which went largely unprotected by security forces.
The regime, Obama, duly protested the latest crackdown, just as it previously urged the military not to use force against the demonstrations and to release Morsi, who had been taken prisoner.
And the regime wanted him released, along with other political prisoners.
The military's disregard for the appeals of the regime was logical and predictable.
Washington had already demonstrated that its warnings were not credible.
Obama does not scare anybody.
Except us.
The only people Barack Obama scares are the American people.
But he doesn't scare the Egyptian military.
He doesn't scare Bashur al-Assad.
He doesn't scare the guy Recep, Yusep, Isep, Tyrid, Erdogan, whatever his name is in Turkey.
He doesn't frighten the Chikons.
Obviously, Vladimir Putin is not all that concerned about Obama.
And why would they be?
During the bin Laden raid, Obama's playing spades, according to Reggie Love, his body guy.
Now, before that, we were told Obama was out playing golf on the day that bin Laden raid took place.
Yeah, he was out playing golf.
They had to drag him in there.
Remember, Valerie Jarrett had to drag him in there and put his presidential jacket on for the photo op in the situation room.
And now Reggie Love has been sent out to say that Obama was playing spades or playing cards.
And so the media is reduced to explaining this, Charlie Rose and the boys on CBS.
Well, you know, he's really stressed.
And whatever he can do to focus, well, we must support this.
And we must understand.
If during the bin Laden raid, the president has to go play spades with Reggie Love and some people, who are we to judge?
You know, you let Bush play golf or play cards or take a hike or whatever when this is going on.
My God, folks, it's irresponsible.
So we don't know what was going on.
We don't know he's playing golf.
We don't know playing cards, maybe both.
What we do know is that whatever he was doing, he wasn't in the situation room, which made it look like to the people around the world he didn't care and that he doesn't care now.
So all of this is happening despite the best efforts of the regime to control it.
One bite before we go to the break.
John Kerry yesterday at the State Department.
This audio soundbite number five.
Very quick, but it makes my point.
The promise of the 2011 revolution has simply never been fully realized.
And the final outcome of that revolution is not yet decided.
It will be shaped in the hours ahead, in the days ahead.
Yep.
Well, told you that back in 2011.
The second revolution is what counts.
The second revolution.
That's what you keep an eye on.
And here's Carrie admitting it.
Yeah, the promise of the 2011 revolution.
Never been fully realized.
The final outcome of that revolution is yet to be decided.
That's exactly right.
And these guys have no say in it.
One more thing about this New York Times story yesterday on the Clinton Global Initiative.
And I just want to reiterate a point that I made toward the tail end of the discussion.
Because when something like that happens, we start saying, why?
Why would the New York Times dump on the Clintons?
Well, they wouldn't.
So are they dumping on the Clintons with this story?
Does this represent a change?
And that's highly doubtful.
The left is going to circle the wagons, and no matter who the nominee, they're going to protect every Democrat and every liberal.
They're not going to turn one of them.
They're not going to turn one of them loose.
It isn't going to happen.
They don't even turn their failures loose, like Jimmy Carter.
They buck them up.
They send them up to the head of the class.
So it couldn't have been better.
I'll tell you what this was.
That story on the Clinton Global Initiative was to get it out of the way so that when scandal about it erupts during Hillary's candidacy for the presidency in 2016, they say, oh, that's an old story.
That's been dealt with.
There's nothing to see there.
That happened two years ago.
And here I am.
I'm still here on the verge of winning the nomination.
There's nothing to that.
That's why that story ran.
And that's why that reporter is out there on the damage control in the way he thinks people like me are mischaracterizing it.
Okay, to the phones.
Maslin, Ohio.
And John, thanks for the call, sir.
You're up first today.
It's great to have you.
Hi.
It is an honor to talk to you, Rush.
And I remember the first time in the Air Force, two old-timers were listening to the radio, and I said, well, what's up, Joe?
What's up, Frank?
They said, we're going to listen to Rush.
Paul Harvey just ended.
And I hear dun dun.
I said, hey, I'm from Akeron, you guys.
That's not Rush.
That's the pretenders, man.
I know that.
They go, no, no, Rush Limbaugh.
And ever since I heard you, I found out I'm a conservative.
I didn't know what I was.
I thought I was a liberal, you know, pretty open-minded guy.
Well, welcome home.
Well, thank you very much.
And, you know, what's depressing my wife and I is, you know, when we see the news and we see 525 souls dead in Egypt, and we don't want to make joke of it, I turn to my wife and said, wonder what movie set them off.
The 525 Rush, we can't even fathom it.
Hey, I understand.
It's 525 people, and you say it's Egypt.
They're an ally.
They've been an ally.
And it's not a news story.
They're real people.
It's not just people on the news.
They're real people.
And I'm wondering what's going on.
And we hear news story after news story.
I have to quit watching the news rush because it's not about red state, blue state, left or right, Democrat, Republican.
It's about right or wrong.
And my wife and I of 30 years, we want to see good win.
It's not about that.
If you're going to turn on, your instincts are right, but if I may just correct you in a very minor way.
You turn on the American media today, and I don't care what the story, it's about Obama.
And it's usually about shielding Obama, promoting Obama.
They've got a lot rioting on Obama.
So Egypt, 525, it cannot be allowed to harm Obama, whatever else.
That's the objective.
Noord Gingrich is criticizing Republicans, saying that they have zero health care ideas.