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Aug. 30, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:54
August 30, 2013, Friday, Hour #1
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Time Text
Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Yeah, John Kerry must not want to be heard.
Whatever he's going to say on Syria, he must not want anybody to hear it because he's going to speak at 12.30.
About 25 minutes from now, that means that nobody's going to hear what he says.
That doesn't matter, my friends, because I am going to tell you everything you need to know about Syria.
And really, the only thing you need to know is that Basher Assad's kid, the 11-year-old Hafez Assad Jr., it's Friday, by the way.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
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Open Line Friday, where the opening of the American mind begins with the opening of America's lines.
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Yes, sir.
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Now, Basher Assad's kid.
This doesn't say it all.
11-year-old Hafez al-Assad, I guess, Jr. Hafez al-Assad was Basher's dad.
Hafez al-Assad, 11 years old, has posted on Facebook a taunt of our president daring him to attack an 11-year-old kid.
Now, as you read this, you do have to wonder whether the 11-year-old kid actually wrote it.
But it doesn't matter.
It has been posted in his name.
Facebook post and the stories in the New York Times.
Facebook post said to be by Assad's son Dares Americans to attack.
Hafez Assad.
12 hours we waited.
48 hours, they said.
We're waiting.
They may have said the best army in the world, maybe the best airplanes, ships, tanks, they may have best better than ours, but soldiers?
No one has soldiers like the ones we do in Syria.
If you ask me, what rank would I rank American soldiers?
I wouldn't rank them in the worst because the worst are soldiers, but America doesn't have soldiers.
What it has is some cowards with new technology who acclaim themselves liberators.
They said they supported revolution, but actually they made it.
Right now, we're all Syrian.
It doesn't matter if you're with or against, because that's democracy.
The ability to express yourself in your own way.
So when people say, can you imagine being lectured to on democracy by an 11-year-old punk kid in Syria taunting our president?
This kid obviously is a little racist, too.
You know, a little racist bigot Taunting our president like this.
I'm not making this up.
And furthermore, Assad's kids' Facebook post has been liked or commented on by several accounts that appear to belong to the children or grandchildren of other senior figures in the Assad administration.
This is funny.
It's hilarious.
I'll tell you what else.
I'm sorry.
The United States is paramount, of course, but there's look at some of this.
When Obama took office, what's one of the first things he did?
He called the Brits.
I don't even know if he called them.
They had gifted to us a bust of Winston Churchill.
And it was, I think George W. Bush had it in the Oval Office.
And one of the first things Obama did was get it the heck out of there.
Now, I think I'm going to have to go back to the news archives.
I think Obama didn't just move it out of the oval orifice.
I think he didn't just move it out of the White House.
I think he sent it back to the British Embassy.
I'll have to.
We're going to look it up because I'm not.
By the way, there's not one comment on this New York Times webpage on Hafez al-Assad Jr.'s taunt of Obama.
Apparently, New York Times readers don't care.
Not one comment on it.
I mean, you would think that your typical New York Times reader would respond with, you punk kid, what do you know?
You don't know anything.
Who gave you a computer?
You know, some childish thing like that.
Okay, it is outside the treaty room.
I have been in the treaty.
What do you mean outside the treaty room?
That's a hallway.
Okay, well, the treaty room is up there in the residence.
I have had cigars in the treaty room.
It was George W. Bush's last year, and it was August.
No, it was, well, was it a Churchill cigar?
No, I forget what kind of cigar it was, but we're all smoking cigars in there.
President had non-alcoholic beer, a Diet Coke or something like that.
It was an hour and a half in there, and then we went in and had dinner.
And it is exactly what it is.
Treaty room is where treaties have been signed and so forth.
There are other artifacts in there now.
It's a museum room now, but it is off the residence.
So that's where Politico says that the Churchill bust is.
Well, the fact-check site at the White House says that story is false, but the claim is there were two busts, and the one still in the White House is not the one in question.
The point is, Obama took it out of the Oval Office and gave it back.
He didn't want it, and we know why.
And then when it came time for the Queen to be given some gift, he put some of his own speeches on an iPod and gave that to the Queen.
And so the Brits said, no, we're not going into Syria with you, bud.
And so, no, Obama's got to go it alone.
I mean, I think, what do we have?
The French?
They're the French with us, at least in spirit.
The Germans have said no.
There's Obama.
I mean, the irony here is delectable.
But folks, I just want to remind you that all during the 2008 presidential campaign, all we heard from the media and the Democrats was how the nation was despised.
America was no longer respected because George Bush, the cowboy, had ruined our reputation.
George Bush had made everybody hate us.
George Bush is the guy that had a coalition of 50 or more nations to go into Iraq.
Obama can't even put together two.
And what happened in Iraq is the same thing going on in Syria.
We had a butcher of Baghdad, which was Saddam Hussein.
Obama has called Assad a butcher.
We've got chemical weapons, weapons of mass destruction, and we've got Obama big-footing it around, ripping into Bush.
Now he can't get any of these countries that supposedly were going to love us.
Supposedly were going to respect us again.
Supposedly going to join us again in a worldwide effort in utopia once we got rid of the hateful cowboy Bush.
I know that some of you might think that I'm a little bit too gleeful over this because this is obviously foreign policy, U.S. national interest, and I understand that.
But there's part of me, folks.
Well, I don't know that it's in our interest.
This is another thing.
I mean, what about Syria in and of itself?
I don't know what our national interest there is, but Syria as part of the region.
And if Syria goes, so does Jordan.
If Al-Qaeda takes over Syria, I mean, there's some concerns here.
I still, despite that, despite that, I can't stop laughing over here.
Here we have this, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, all of the smoke and mirrors.
It was all a mirage.
Everything about Obama was phony, baloney, plastic, but had a good time rock and roll.
Here he is now becoming obvious and apparently.
Yeah, the program observer has a question.
What's the question?
What is President Obama's foreign policy?
I don't know.
It depends on the issue.
It's issue by issue.
Yeah, it's kind of like the law.
If he likes it, he obeys it.
If he doesn't, he does an executive order.
So foreign policy, you know, it's missile by missile, coup by coup.
No, I don't know.
I don't think there is a, for example, the Bush foreign policy could be clearly defined.
Is this what you're getting at?
The Bush foreign policy can be clearly defined.
The Clinton foreign policy could be clearly defined, and that is distracts from Monica.
The Obama foreign policy.
I mean, if I had to say anything, the Obama foreign policy has been rooted in, I don't want to say apologizing for downsizing America's role in the world.
If there's been an Obama foreign policy, it's been to de-emphasize the U.S. role in the world, particularly in defending freedom and liberty.
Just like there is a decline in the U.S. economy, there is a decline in the country overall.
So is there a decline in American foreign policy?
We've got genuine incompetence running it.
Susan Rice doesn't know what she's doing.
Samantha, what's her name, Power?
She doesn't know what she's doing.
John Kerry is a literal windsurfing joke.
He doesn't know what he's doing.
And Obama never knew what he was doing here and still doesn't.
But he alienates the Brits.
He alienates the Germans.
You know, looking down his nose at everybody.
You know, believing all this hype, I think here's, let's go back to 2008.
It's a little human nature.
And the way people react to others who are getting a lot of media attention, a lot of positive media attention.
There are many people called hangers-on.
If you know somebody who is getting a lot of media attention, it could be good or bad, but there's a lot of media attention.
A lot of people want to get in on that.
They want to be near whoever's being talked about so they can show up in the photo.
They want to be near whoever's talked about so they can be included in the discussion.
There are just a name for them.
They're celebrity intercoursers, star intercourse.
These kinds of people are all around.
Now, you go back to 2008, and there was Obama wanting to appear at the Brandenburg Gate.
They said, no, but he's speaking in Berlin.
He's speaking everywhere.
And let's face it, back in 2007, 2008, Obama was the closest thing to a superhuman.
And everybody wanted to be in that glow.
Everybody wanted to be in that light, particularly foreign leaders.
But at the same time, there is also a jealousy.
This is just human nature.
At the same time, there's a resentment.
And I will guarantee you, folks, back in 2008, Sarkozy, Merkel, whoever was Blair, the UK, I guarantee you that in addition to wanting to be in that glow, there were a lot of people saying, who the hell is this guy?
This guy's going to get his.
This guy doesn't know what he's doing.
Who the hell is this?
He hadn't been elected to anything yet.
He's running around like he runs the world.
And they were saying to themselves, his day's going to come.
This kind of behavior turns around, bites you in the rear end at some point.
You live by the photo op, you die by the photo op.
You live by the messianic glow, you die by it.
You live by the reverb microphone, godlike audio, you die by it.
And so now maybe, as the esteemed Reverend Wright said, maybe some chickens are coming home to roost here.
Because the guy's all alone for a measly little one-day strike on Syria.
The guy's all alone.
He can't put together a coalition.
After telling the world that Bush didn't know what he was doing, after telling the world that Bush was a near criminal, after telling the world Bush was so incompetent that cowboy the world hated us, and Obama was going to make us loved and respected and all of that.
And the guy can't even put together a three-country coalition for a one-day cruise missile strike on a desert in Syria.
This is called come-upance.
And there's a part of me that is delighting in it.
And there's another part of me that says this is just not good for the United States of America.
And then you've got, ostensibly, an 11-year-old kid taunting the president of the United States in the New York Times as they republish a Facebook post.
And I would love to see, ladies and gentlemen, Joe Biden, Hillary, any top Democrat candidate go to ABC News with Charlie Gibson to explain the Obama doctrine.
You remember Sarah Palin with Charlie Gibson?
Walking around and trying to say, can you explain the Bush doctrine?
I would love to see Obama explain the Obama doctrine.
I don't think there is an Obama doctrine, not one that he wants to admit to.
The Obama doctrine is de-emphasize the role of the United States in the world.
Because in Obama's worldview, the United States has been the problem more than it's been the solution.
The U.S. military, part of the problem.
So de-emphasize it.
Get the U.S. out of here and get it out of there, and the world's going to be a better place.
Get the U.S. out of there and out of there, and get the U.S. stop driving those cards.
The climate's going to be a better place.
That's what these people believe.
I seem to recall that Obama said the Republican sequester, the budget cuts in the sequester, meant that our military would not be ready to go to war.
Whatever happened to that, because he's about ready to deploy them.
CNN reporting right now, by the way, that the Syrian rebels say that there's been another chemical gas attack.
Anyway, I got to take a brief time out, my friends.
We'll be back, the NFL, and its settlement.
I told you yesterday, the NFL thought this was going to end the conversation.
They forgot to calculate the sports media.
Just as though the McDonald's protesters think that McDonald's has $500 billion in a pile that they could give to their workers, the sports media thinks the NFL and its teams have a lot more money to give these former players than they're agreeing to in this settlement.
Yeah.
We've got that and a whole set of sound bites on Syria and some other things.
Not good polling data on this for Obama either.
All that coming up in a moment.
By the way, CNN's report: Syrian rebels say that there has been another chemical gas attack.
It was last Monday, five days ago.
Not now, five days ago, another gas attack.
NBC has a poll.
80% want congressional approval on Syria.
80% of the American people.
Obama is not going to go to Congress because there are Republicans in Congress.
Nobody likes Republicans.
And Republicans don't agree with Obama, so we're just going to bypass them.
The hell with the Constitution.
We go back to March 6, 2012.
In White House, QA, NBC correspondent Mike Viguera is asking Obama about, oh, foreign policy intervention.
For us to take military action unilaterally, as some have suggested, or to think that somehow there is some simple solution, I think is a mistake.
That was just a year ago.
It's a mistake to do what he's going to do today.
Welcome back, my friends.
It's Open Line Friday.
Rushlin Boy, your guiding light.
Executing assigned host duties flawlessly.
Zero mistakes.
Okay, let's move forward into this NFL business.
And we'll get back to Syria and Obama and the social media boomerang.
And that's what it is.
And when you supposedly own the social media, you got together with Sergey Brin and Larry Page at Google.
And you own it.
You got Google, you got Eric Schmidt, you got all these guys helping you out.
You own Facebook and Twitter, you own social media, and then all of a sudden, here comes the 11-year-old son of Basher Assad taunting you on Facebook.
And then it gets reprinted in the New York Times.
The comeuppance.
I don't think they can.
I just, it's just funny to me.
Let's start with audio soundbite number two, because yesterday we had the story of the settlement: $765 million, 4,500 players.
And I don't know that this is going to be the case, but that works out to $173,000 per player.
Some of them don't have any health insurance anymore.
Some of them don't get, therefore, treated.
Some of them do have dementia.
Some former NFL players.
We're talking about a large universe of people here.
4,500.
Some of them have Parkinson's.
Some of them have Alzheimer's or early onset symptoms.
It's not known if every such player suffering such symptoms is because they played the game, but the assumption is that it's because they played the game.
But nobody can prove that.
But proof doesn't matter once emotion takes hold of an issue.
Facts and proof don't matter.
It's like Junior Sayow, Junior Sayao.
It doesn't matter what the facts are.
The sports media is convinced that he committed suicide because he played in the NFL.
And you know what?
He ended his career at the New England Patriots.
And you know who else played at the New England Patriots?
Aaron Hernandez.
And you know what Aaron Hernandez did?
He's accused of committing murder.
He's accused of being a thug.
There's a Rolling Stone story that says the Patriots knew all about it.
A Rolling Stone story that says Bill Belichick, the coach of the Patriots, was fully aware of what a bad actor Aaron Hernandez was.
But they looked past it because the guy could play.
Rolling Stone asserts that at the past February at the Combine in Indianapolis, where the incoming, well, the graduating seniors and those college players trying out for the NFL go through their paces.
And Rolling Stone says that Aaron Hernandez showed up there and told Coach Belichick that his life was in danger.
And the Rolling Stone story says that Belichick told Aaron Hernandez to get a safe house.
Oh, now everybody at the Patriots is denying all of this.
They think it's all made up.
Didn't happen.
They didn't know.
They said they were duped by Hernandez.
He had no clue that he was this kind of a bad actor.
So anyway, you've got Aaron Hernandez, number 81, a giant end, accused of homicide, said to have a damaged brain and a poor upbringing.
And that's why he's doing what he's the junior sayow.
Number 55, linebacker, committed suicide after retiring from the game.
I think the last team or the last team he played multiple seasons for was the Patriots.
So the way this all works is there must be something going on at the Patriots causing Sayao to commit suicide and causing Hernandez to be accused of homicide.
And it's then not just the Patriots.
These guys are getting their heads banged every week.
And this is the way this all works.
All this emotion.
There's no proof for any of this.
And yet, emotion takes hold.
And they committed suicide.
You know what, folks?
I have a story here in the stack.
Stick with me on this.
I put it at the bottom of the stack because I didn't think I was going to get to it, but now I'm going to get to it.
Story about blueberries.
And if you eat blueberries, you have a 26% less chance of getting type 2 diabetes.
26% chance less than what?
Normal?
Well, what's normal?
Anyway, the story says drinking fruit juice will add to your chances for getting type 2 diabetes because that's just raw sugar.
But if you eat the regular fruit, you got it's much better than fruit juice, but blueberries, the best thing you can eat to avoid getting type 2 diabetes.
Well, I happen to have met a guy once in my life who believed that blueberries were the best antioxidants on earth.
I had never heard of an antioxidant when the guy was telling you this guy wolfed down blueberries.
I said, what an antioxidant?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
I mean, it purifies the blood.
It gets all the oxidants out.
I said, what, what, what, what are you talking about?
I didn't know what it was.
Well, you need these antioxidants.
He committed suicide three months later.
He never played in the NFL, so it can't be the NFL.
But was it the blueberries?
He didn't get type 2 diabetes.
That's one thing.
But he did die.
Did the blueberries have it?
This is the way it all works in the media these days.
I'm telling you, you think that this is how it works.
So back to this story.
We have the NFL settling with 4,500 players, $173,000 per player.
People are saying, that's not enough.
Gee whiz!
The NFL is a multi-billion dollar industry.
They're guaranteed billions of dollars in the next 10 years from television money.
They can afford more than that.
And then they're also mad at this.
The NFL gets to pay this money out over time.
Yeah, they don't have to pay the full whatever $765 million today.
They get to pay like a third of it now and then another third of it 10 years from now.
And then they pay a rest of it per month over 17 years or some such thing.
So the sports media is complaining that the NFL got away with highway robbery because they're paying all of this benefits money so many years down the road that the money isn't going to be nearly worth then what it is now.
And it's just so unfair.
Meanwhile, despite what you've read or may have been told, there is not conclusive, settled medical science that says playing football causes dementia, causes Parkinson's, causes Alzheimer's.
If there was, the settlement wouldn't be $765 million.
It would be in the trillions, and they would be banning the game If the game of football actually caused all this stuff that they claim it does, that game would be banned.
And the penalties paid to players that played it in years past, who were not told that they could get dementia, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, in fact, were guaranteed to get it because they played the game, they would be Bill Gates Jr.
But because there isn't such conclusive factual proof, there is this settlement.
And both sides agree to it.
And the size of the settlement sounds like it's a lot of money up top, up front, $765 million.
But then you divide 4,500 players into it and you get $173,000.
Then the argument is: well, wait a minute now.
Should every player get the same amount?
Remember, a bunch of liberal socialists in the sports media are now starting to ask, oh, wait a minute, shouldn't some players get more?
Because their injuries are worse.
And some of them don't have any money at all to take care of themselves.
Shouldn't the guys who have the ability to take care of themselves get a little less?
And I'm laughing myself silly because these are socialists who believe everybody ought to have the same thing.
These are socialist do-gooders who believe that the outcomes in life ought to be the same for everybody, particularly in a case like this where there's a lump sum being distributed.
I mean, this is income redistribution, if you will.
And then, to top it all off, there are some people asking, oh, wait a minute, Rush, let's take a look at the Houston Texans.
The Houston Texans have been in the NFL for 10 years.
They haven't been a team long enough for anything they did to cause anybody to get Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and dementia.
Should the Houston Texans have to pay anything, Rush?
Or should they get a break against all these other teams that have been around for years or some of these players played for, but none of them played for the Texans?
Or how about the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Carolina Panthers?
The same thing.
And the answer from the sports, nope, those guys don't get a break.
Bob McNair, who owns the Texans, going to pay as much as any other owner.
But wait, the Texans haven't been around long enough to even have had any role in whether or not these players suffered.
Head or brain.
It doesn't matter.
They're part of the league now and they're going to pay.
It's just, folks, it's fascinating.
The sports media, these leftists and so forth, and they, oh, they're so concerned with fairness and unfairness, and it's not enough money, and the money's not being paid out now.
And the money, when it is paid out, it's not going to be worth nearly what it is today.
And it's just usually big, rich, fat cats are getting away with it again.
And the big, rich, fat cats thought that when they agreed to this, it was going to end the conversation.
And all it's done is take the conversation into 15,000 different directions and made it even more prevalent in day-to-day conversation about the NFL.
Now, Time magazine has a piece on the settlement, and it ends this way.
So football's fundamental problem remains, no matter the value of this settlement.
You can teach tackling technique that takes the head out of the game.
But when two players are running across the field at high speed, collisions and concussions are unavoidable.
You can't even imagine how fast the strike zone changes, says Riley.
Football's a scary sport.
Nothing fixes that.
Time magazine says it can't be fixed.
Time magazine says, you can't fix this.
You can legislate this.
You can legislate that.
Why don't these guys have the same attitude about government?
Government can't fix everything.
You can't fix the problem in healthcare with government.
You can't do that.
You can't take the risk out of the game.
You can't take the injury out of the game.
You can't legislate it.
You can't fix it.
I got to take a, I'm telling you, folks, this settlement is proof that there is no proof that playing football causes all these horrible things.
We'll be back.
It's Open Line Friday.
Rush Limbaugh back at you.
By the way, I got a question in the email.
How much do the lawyers get?
I happen to know the answer.
The lawyers, the legal fees on this settlement are $200 million.
So actually, the league is paying $965 million.
$765 million is going to the players.
$200 million is going to the lawyers on both sides.
Now, I don't know how many lawyers are going to be dividing their $200 million, but it isn't $4,500.
Another little interesting tidbit, isn't it?
So the NFL effectively, let's just round it up because the time you add up some of the ancillary expenses, the NFL is going to be paying out a trillion dollars.
$200 a billion, I'm sorry.
NFL is going to be paying out a billion dollars.
$200 million of it is going to lawyers.
$765 million is going to the players.
Am I just, folks, look, I know what you all think.
I don't blame you.
You've been hearing for the last two years that football causes Alzheimer's, causes headaches, short-term, average-term, long-term memory loss.
Football causes dementia.
Football causes suicides or is to blame for all of this stuff.
And I'm just telling you, folks, if all of that had been established as medically proved science, this settlement wouldn't be $765 million.
It would be $7.65 trillion.
If every assertion, well, stop and think about it.
If playing football leads to suicide, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, dementia, short-term memory loss, other former players have blamed football head injuries for becoming criminals.
If it was ever established as medical proof that that activity was caused by playing football, they wouldn't have gotten away with only $765 million.
The fact that 4,500 players are going to get $173,000 each means that there is no proof for any of these assertions.
There may be evidence that tends to indicate there may be enough evidence that warrants further investigation.
But there's another little fact here that they can't really establish scientifically any damage to the brain until they do an autopsy.
Meaning, for those of you in the low-information voter crowd, until the player is dead.
So there's no way to know while the player is alive.
So all these assertions that you're hearing in the sports media, football causes suicide, Parkinson's demand.
Nope, nope, not proven.
If it were, this settlement would be 25 times, and they'd ban the game.
They would ban the game.
I got to take a break.
Don't go anywhere.
See, we have just scratched the surface here.
Mr. Snerdley just pointed out something.
I mean, this is true.
You ex-NFL players, this settlement's chump change.
What you should have done is gotten in on that Pigford action and be a fake black farmer.
And you could have gotten millions instead of $173,000.
Easy to be a fake farmer.
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