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Aug. 30, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:31
August 30, 2013, Friday, Hour #2
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Time Text
Okay, folks, I'm sorry.
I'm going to apologize to you here in advance.
I'm doing my best to separate my obvious bias against this administration.
I've just watched, and he's still going, I just watched John Kerry from a State Department set that I have never.
It looks like the dining room in his Beacon Hill home.
Crystal chandelier and everything.
It's just amazing.
And he's giving us the evidence of Bashur Assad using chemical weapons on his own people.
I'm sorry.
I just, I don't, he may be saying the truth, but this guy, he's more convincing when he talks about the undeniable proof of man-made global warming.
It's just pathetic.
It's just, this munch is just embarrassing.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's the same people.
Who didn't give a rat's rear in when Saddam Hussein was doing this?
The same people who can't be moved to do anything when four Americans are dead in Benghazi.
But these are the people led by John Kerry who called our military members terrorists and rapists.
John Kerry accused Marines of bursting down the doors of Iraqis in their homes, terrorizing the children, raping the women.
Accepting as true any allegation made against the military in Iraq simply out of partisanship and opposition to George W. Bush could not be made, could not be moved to do anything about Saddam Hussein gassing his own people, the Kurds, or slaughtering his own people, murdering them in any number of different ways.
Calling Bush a liar and joining with every one of his fellow Democrats in calling David Petraeus a liar.
Anybody else that had anything to do with the United States effort in Iraq has the audacity to show up on a set at the State Department made to look like an elitist Park Avenue dining room to tell us what we know about the horrors and atrocities committed by Bashir Assad.
And it's so bad.
It's so horrible.
We can't get one nation to join us to do something about it.
We didn't go to the UN.
We can't.
Nobody cares.
The Brits have told us to take a hike.
The Germans have told us to take a hike.
Even the Caribbean superpower, Belize, has told us they're not interested.
They joined us in Iraq.
The French say they might be with us in spirit.
These were the people that knew it all.
These were the people that were going to be the answer.
These were the people that were going to renew American respect around the world.
These were the people that were going to renew the love and adoration for this country around the world.
These were the people who were the smartest people in the world.
These were the people who could speak French and therefore had the ability to relate to Europeans.
These were the people who, in fact, were Europeans in their roots.
These were the people, the chosen ones.
These were the best and the brightest.
These are the people that said George W. Bush better get a coalition.
He better go to the UN and he better go to Congress.
These are the people that are not going to the UN.
They can't put together a coalition and are purposely ignoring Congress.
These people are an embarrassment.
I'm telling you, they really are to me.
I know this is not the way to persuade the low-information crowd.
And I'm sorry, that's not what I'm doing.
I'm not engaging in the art of persuasion here.
I'm just venting.
This guy is an absolute, I just haughty, thinks he's the smartest guy.
This guy threw his fake medals over the fence at the White House, told lies about what our troops did in Vietnam, accepted lies and spread lies about our military in Iraq.
I don't forget this stuff.
All to advance a political agenda, all to oppose the political agenda of a Republican president.
These people were trying to secure defeat in Iraq and hang that around the neck of George W. Bush.
I remember telling people on this program, 2007, 2008, I said, if the Democrats win in 2008, they're not pulling out of Iraq.
We're not going to lose wars while they're in the White House.
It ain't going to happen.
They're going to become the biggest hawks on earth.
And that's what's happened.
But when they're out of power, they're perfectly fine with this nation being humiliated.
They're perfectly fine with the American military losing.
Perfectly fine with it.
As long as they can get away with blaming the Republicans for it.
Now, this guy, who has, in my book, zero credibility, is still mouthing off about all these atrocities.
The only good thing that I can say about this is, is at least he's not criticizing this country, which is a new step for him.
Hi, folks.
How are you?
Greetings and welcome back.
Great to have you here on the EIB network.
It's open line Friday.
We are going to get to your calls, but I want to go back to the NFL.
Oh, another thing.
Just got this story off the Time magazine website.
Headline, labor leader admits Obamacare woes.
Oh, let's all grab the violins.
The head of the nation's largest federation of unions admitted, quote, we made some mistakes in writing Obamacare.
That was Richard Trumka, the head of the AFL CIO.
Yesterday, Christian Science Monitor breakfast downtown Washington.
We made some mistakes writing Obamacare.
Yep.
Said he was surprised that employers have reduced workers' hours below 30 hours a week to avoid an employer penalty scheduled to go into effect in 2015.
He says, obviously, something that no one intended.
You know, when are you people going to realize there are unintended disastrous consequences to everything practically that you do?
Oh, we had no idea.
Yeah, you had no idea either that when you raised taxes on yachts, you had no idea that the people who built them would get fired, did you?
Because people would stop buying them.
You just have no idea.
You had no idea when you raise taxes that you get bigger deficits, did you?
Because you kill jobs.
You just had no idea of any of this, do you?
We had no idea that employers would try to get below 30-hour work weeks to avoid the penalty.
What do you think they're just going to sit there and bend over, grab the ankles, and take the hit?
You think you people just diagnose and proscribe liberalism on everybody, and we're just going to sit here and take it?
Many of us, Sir Richard, devote our entire lives to avoiding what you people do.
Many Americans spend their entire waking day trying to figure out how to not be negatively impacted by the things that you people do.
Be it your regulations, your taxes, your silly social changes that you make that cost everybody an arm and a leg.
That's why there's no productivity in this country anymore because everybody's just trying to figure out how to not be damaged by you people.
There's an entire industry of people in this country who are getting along by finding ways to not be damaged by Barack Obama and the Democrat Party and their policies.
What did you think people were going to do, Richard?
Just sit there and pay these onerous penalties and fines and go out of business.
You're not foolish enough to really believe that every business has a pile of trillions of dollars that they're just hoarding rather than giving you that if you come up with the right law, you can separate them from that money.
You don't really believe that, do you?
Don't you understand how most businesses are themselves one version of paycheck to paycheck?
They're just one Democrat regulation from going bankrupt.
They're just one Democrat tax increase from going out of business.
Who do you think they are?
Oh, we haven't sorry that we didn't intend this.
We didn't anticipate this consequence.
Let me tell you something, Richard.
You bought it.
You broke it.
You own it.
I don't have any sympathy here.
Labor leader admits Obamacare woes.
You're not going to get sympathy here, Mr. Trump.
You fought for it.
You helped write it.
You had your thugs help beat up people at town hall meetings who were opposed to it.
You were perfectly fine using force on Tea Party people, one black guy in a wheelchair, in order to make sure this thing signed into law.
And now, all of a sudden, when your workers are losing their jobs, oh, gosh, we didn't intend this.
This is what's wrong with you people.
You really didn't know, and I don't believe this.
You really don't understand the consequences of what you do.
There's just an endless pile of money out there somewhere, and no matter how many times you dig into it, it's always going to be there.
Richard, we haven't had any money in this country in 20 years.
National debt, $17 trillion.
This guy's running around now.
Labor leader admits Obamacare woes.
That is obviously something that no one intended.
No one intended the Healthcare Act to result in people working fewer hours just so they, the employers, don't have to pay for health care.
That's something that needs to be addressed.
Not by you people.
You have already messed this up.
You have already taken the greatest health care system in this country and practically destroyed it.
The only hope now is to defund this thing and repeal it.
If you really want to do something, Richard, you'll join that effort.
If you really care about your rank and file, Mr. Trump, you'll join everybody in trying to stop this before it is unalterably implemented in this country.
Didn't know this was going to happen.
Do you not remember when you guys sat there and just celebrated massive tax increases on the sale of luxury goods, including yachts and high-priced cars and so forth?
And do you not remember what happened?
The union members who make the yachts got laid off because people stopped buying the yachts in this country.
They went elsewhere where they were cheaper.
If I can remember that, surely you can.
What do you mean you don't know what's going to happen when you impose massive penalties, massive financial penalties on businesses for doing nothing?
This is exactly what happens, Mr. Trump, when you treat American businesses as criminals, when you look at them as suspects, when you treat them as criminals and come up with legislation that gets even with them, what do you think they're going to do?
They're going to do whatever they have to to stay in business.
And that's what this country has become.
The United States versus the policies of Barack Obama and the Democrat Party.
We are in the midst of an effort oriented toward the greatest survival since the Donner Party tried to get over the Sierra Nevada mountain range.
Every day, rather than being productive, people in this country are simply trying to find out ways to avoid the damage that you have inculcated everywhere in this country.
People get up and productivity is figured out and based on what we can avoid, not what we can do.
And then you come along and say, oops, you know, we didn't expect this to happen.
Well, we maybe made a mistake there.
Well, you can fix it, Mr. Trump.
You can join the effort to repeal it.
I mean, it's that bad.
It can't be fixed.
When asked if he would accept a change in Obamacare's definition of full-time work, as some legislators have suggested, Trump has said, well, of course we would, but he didn't elaborate on what the change would be.
You really think changing the definition?
This is the way they work.
Okay, let's take what's happened.
Obamacare says that you do not have to provide insurance or provide a pay a penalty for anybody working fewer than 30 hours a week.
So businesses have converted full-timers to part-timers less than 30 hours.
So what Trump is saying here, well, let's now just say 25 hours is full-time.
And let's fix it that way.
It's not specifically what he's saying, but when he says, well, when he's asked if he would accept a change in Obamacare's definition of full-time, all that means is let's change the definition of full-time so that under 30 hours means you have to pay the penalty or cover them.
Well, we could.
You fought for this, Mr. Trumpka.
You literally fought for this.
You had people beat up for this.
Town hall meetings in St. Louis.
Maybe not you specifically, but that the widow Carnahan's kid, one of his town meetings, it was union thugs.
Maybe S-E-I-U came in there and beat up some people.
You fought for this.
You wrote it.
You helped write it.
You did everything you could to help this law become the law of the land because you thought it was great socialism.
Amazing how it never works, isn't it?
I'm going to tell you what Trump is really after.
Trump wants the same thing Congress got.
Trump wants a waiver.
That's exactly what Trump is trying to get is a waiver for his union buddies.
And he wants the penalties to be delayed until he can get those waivers.
Just like members of Congress say, we can't afford this.
We can't afford this.
Obama came along and is going to give him subsidies from the Office of Personnel Management.
So that's what Trump is angling for, is whining and moaning.
We can't afford it.
Oh, my God.
We didn't know.
We need a waiver.
We need a waiver.
And once he gets his waiver, then everything will be fine.
And you will be stuck with this.
And that's what these leftists are all going to do.
They're going to be trying to find ways to exempt themselves from this, as they always do.
They write laws for all of us, and then they exempt themselves from it.
And that's why Trump is whining and moaning.
He doesn't want the thing repealed.
He just doesn't want to have to abide by it.
And what he's really saying is to Obama, look, man, we're responsible for you being elected.
You give us a break.
If you're going to give these members of Congress and their staffs a break, think about us.
That's what he's doing.
Okay.
Open line Friday to the phones.
We go to Greg in Clinton Township, Michigan.
Hi, Greg.
Great to have you here.
Hi, Rush.
Thanks for taking my call.
Love your show.
Love your tea.
I'm calling today, Rush, regarding the NFL situation.
I did not play in the NFL.
I played in the CFL, so I'm not party to the suit.
And even if I was an NFLer, I don't think I would be.
We all knew back when we were getting into football, I'm 61 years old, the dangers.
I've got the two replacements to attest to that.
But when all this started to happen, and if you look at the guys that are having the problems now, they're in their 50s and 60s.
John Mackey, Wally Hildenberg, Cookie Gilchrist, these guys who have passed away.
Well, look at Jim Otto.
I mean, the center for the Raiders.
He could barely get out of bed.
I know.
But the point is about the, first of all, why did all this happen?
Why didn't you see this stuff earlier on?
Well, when the plastic helmet became in vogue in the 60s, with the addition of the face mask, the head was coached as a weapon in blocking and tackling.
Now, we didn't know.
Nobody knew back then what was going to happen.
I take medication every day to keep my headaches stiff armed.
And as you rightly said, there's no way to diagnose chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which is what this is, until after you're deceased.
So all that can be done is to be treated symptomatically.
And that's fine.
And if I was 18 again tomorrow, knowing what I know today, I'd do it all over again.
You would.
That's how much I love the game.
And of all the things that God gave me in the way of abilities, he gave me the ability to play football best than anything else I can do.
Don't get me wrong.
I'm a professional and I enjoy my work.
Let me ask you, you've been holding on halt here for a long time, and I've got a short little break here.
Can you stay on hold?
Good, because I'm sure.
Greg here played in the CFL, Canadian football.
And let me tell you, there was a time where the CFL was considered to be a much more brutal game than the NFL was.
Back in a second.
Hi, how are you?
And welcome back.
It's Open Line Friday.
And Greg in Clinton Township, Michigan, former player of the Canadian Football League.
I'm going to get right back to him.
There are just two things I've got to do here about John Kerry, some observations before I lose the context here.
I still can't believe what I saw, the setting.
But here's something else.
John Kerry essentially went out there and made the case for U.S. military action.
Secretary of State?
Obama outsources this?
Is it beneath the president of the United States to go on television to the American people and justify military action?
I guess so because remember, Obama cannot appear to be governing.
This cannot appear to be Obama's mission.
It's beneath Obama to justify the attack, beneath Obama to persuade the American public and the world.
You know, a real leader wouldn't send some long-faced Secretary of State out there.
So he sent John Kerry out, the Secretary of State, to pitch, to pitch a possible attack in the Middle East on a Friday afternoon on a holiday weekend.
This is Document Dump Friday.
And you pitch military action in Syria on Document Dump Friday in the middle of this show when nobody's going to hear you because they're all listening to this show.
And you have your Secretary of State do it.
And here's something.
I did not know this because I didn't get to hear all of this.
John Kerry cited all of the evidence of all of the atrocities, all of the usage of chemical weapons.
I didn't hear who he cited and relied on for the evidence.
He relied on the Arab League.
And my buddy Andy McCarthy sent me a note, said, Rush, did you hear who he is relying on?
The Arab League, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the OIC, and Turkey.
Those three elements are responsible for the evidence that we are relying on that Assad used chemical weapons.
Well, that basically, the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Turkey, is basically the Muslim Brotherhood triumvirate.
And of course, they want to attack Syria because their guys are the opposition.
So Kerry cites evidence from Assad's opposition, essentially the Muslim Brotherhood.
And I guess you could look at it this way.
Who needs authorization from Congress when you have the Arab League and Erdogan and the Muslim Brotherhood telling you it's okay?
Makes sense to me.
If you're Obama, who needs Congress?
He's got the Brotherhood.
He's got recept, tie up, take him to prisoner Erdogan from Turkey.
Back now to Greg.
I really appreciate your patience.
You said something really interesting that you glossed over because you thought you had very little time.
You said that there was a time in the history of this game, even the professional level, where these kinds of effects on the players long after they quit playing didn't happen.
And, you know, you made a point.
If you go back professional football in the, well, even college football, 40s and 50s, and obviously prior to that, you could look, Greg, at film of professional football, before the 60s, and college football.
Tackling was entirely different.
It was an art.
Absolutely.
The head was not used, and all of these long-term effects were not really reported.
So it's an interesting point you're raising, that something changed about the way the game was played.
You say, coached and taught that has led to some of these long-term effects, right?
Is that your point, basically?
Yeah, that's my point.
You know, the plastic, prior to the plastic helmet, the leather helmet was just a hopeful safeguard against banging the player's head off the turf.
And the turf is much, much softer than another player's helmet or head.
The plastic helmet gave the ability to hit forcefully with the crown of your head right above the forehead and for the most part come away unscathed.
Obviously, as it continued more and more, we got more and more concussions.
I've had six recorded concussions.
I spent some time with Boston University and the Sports Legacy Institute really studying this thing because I want to know what I'm up against.
And they've helped me an awful lot in understanding how to deal with this.
Don't get me wrong, I'm fine.
I'm gainfully employed.
Yeah, but you understand.
And you said you'd play it again.
If you know everything you know now and you had to do over again, you'd play it again.
Yep, that's how much I love the game.
So what do you think of the settlement?
Well, it's not the settlement.
The settlement isn't about what causes dementia or CTE or whatever.
It's about when did the NFL start looking at all these injuries and going on their own and finding out, wow, we've got a trend here.
And how long did they hold that trend away from their players?
If you look at the pre-1994 players, prior to the collective bargaining agreement there, they've got limited benefits for this kind of injuries.
The suit was never really about what causes it.
I mean, yes, you can't prove it while you're alive, but everybody knows what causes it.
The suit is about what did the NFL know and when did they know it.
Just like our attorney general and other folks, okay?
Well, it's a Watergate.
What did the president know and when did he know it?
So you believe then that the NFL has known that the game is damaging and riskier than they've ever been willing to tell the people that play it.
To the brain, not to the rest, okay?
Everybody knows that the broken legs and arms and the torn ligaments and things of that nature.
That's part of it.
Everybody knows that.
But a concussion, something that's a closed head injury, even in everyday life, is not something that's easily identified unless there's a trend in concussions like this.
I know guys that are a party to this suit that are in the hall now that have a tough time from day to day.
But all the NFLPA wants is the NFL to say, we knew about this and we withheld the information from you.
Now, are they going to do that?
No, that's why they made the settlement.
But proof of the fact that they know that is if you just look at the rule changes in the NFL and what is new this year with the NFL, I think it called last year for youth football.
NFL plays safe.
What is that?
That's getting certified as a youth coach in the proper blocking and tackling techniques so that you don't lead with your head.
Well, I don't know how long.
Look, I'm the wrong guy to have any authority on this.
I played two years high school football.
And I remember being told, do not lower your head.
Whatever you do, keep your head up in contact.
Don't lower it.
I was a tackle.
I was an offensive lineman.
Don't lower your head.
And it's the natural thing to do when you're encountering somebody.
You're running the ball.
You lower your head.
I remember back in the 60s being coached, don't lower the head.
And that was at high school.
And that was just at one place.
I have no idea about anything beyond that.
But, Greg, look, I appreciate the call.
Very intelligent way to look at this.
Come back from the break.
I want to stick with the sound bites that we have on this and stick with one of the original premises, and that is the media, sports media, thinking the league got away with financial murder here because they're so rich.
And they're not paying very much at all.
And it just isn't fair.
It just isn't right.
1,429 people killed in chemical weapons attack in Syria.
It's 426 children.
I'm now told that the Muslim Brotherhood is not the source for that data, that it's U.S. Intel sources.
But you can't believe them.
They lie.
They lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
What's Kerry doing believing them?
For crying out, wow, John Kerry and Obama and everybody told us that you can't trust.
In fact, the intel was doctored so that Bush and Cheney could get what they wanted, a reason to go into Iraq.
Well, that means we can't trust U.S. Intel because John Kerry and the Democrats did their damnedest.
They did their damn best to destroy the credibility of U.S. Intel all during the 2003 to 2007 period.
And not just U.S. Intel.
They did their damnedest to destroy the credibility of British Intel.
In fact, intelligence services the worldwide.
They lied for Bush and Cheney.
Cheney.
Cheney went in there.
He made them lie.
So what's Kerry doing citing U.S. intelligence services?
They can't be trusted.
They just tell the administration what they want to hear.
And then you're not going to go to Congress.
Why should you go to Congress?
You got the approval of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Where's General Powell?
Where is the titular head of the Republican Party here?
Where's Colonel Powell, Colonel Colin Powell?
Why can't he show us the slideshow of all this that our Intel services have told Kerry?
I still find it very strange, in all candor here.
Document dump Friday, holiday weekend document dump Friday, and Obama sends lurch out to pitch the case for U.S. military action.
And now, and now all over CNN, they got Time magazine for you.
This is nothing like Iraq in 2003.
No way.
This is not like, you know why?
Because there really are weapons of mass destruction here.
They weren't any internet.
This is not like Bush lied.
Bush lied, and that's not changed.
So that's, you know, I'm going to get to these NFL soundbites if it's the last thing I do on this program.
They keep trying to distract me from this.
And I'm going to make a prediction.
I'm going to make a little bit of prediction.
Some of the pajama-clad leftists, if Obama actually does launch, and if he does do this, by the way, it'll be like a what, a two-hour attack, just safe faces.
I told him they crossed that red line that they're going to pay for it.
So there'll be something to deal with.
They're going to push them back across the red line.
Oh, yeah, Bashir Assad.
Basher, basher.
Basher Assad, far worse than Hussein.
Oh, yes, there's no comparison between this and Iraq.
Oh, no.
Of course, really, the final authority on all this would be Susan Rice.
We haven't heard from her.
And Samantha Power, if she's, I don't know, she might be back at the museum.
She missed a briefing at the UN on this.
She went to the museum.
Cocktail party.
Cass Sunstein doing a presentation on the Constitution sucks.
Okay.
We have a montage.
I think it's a montage.
This is a montage of, yes, sports media people ripping the NFL settlement.
The premise here is that the rich owners cheated the players.
And here are the numbers again.
You have 4,500 players in a class action suit.
The NFL has agreed to pay $765 million if it's divvied up equally per person.
Each player, former player in the suit, gets $173,000.
Sports media thinks that's horribly unfair.
The media think that the players or the owners have far, far, far more much more money than that.
This isn't right.
You should also know the lawyers are getting $200 million on top of the $765 million.
Lawyers are getting $200 million to do this deal.
The league and each team, by the way, is paying an equal...
This is going to cost each team $23 million, basically.
And by hook or by crook, they've got 17 years to pay it out.
I think the first half gets paid in the next three years or two years, and then the other half over the next 17 years.
And that's another thing it has the sports media upset.
Because a 17-year payout for some of these guys are going to be dead before they get it all.
And it's going to be worth so much less because of inflation 17 years from now, 15 years from now.
So the unfairness is ripping people apart.
But it's $23 million a team.
And then there's the argument, as I said, the Houston Texans, they've been in the league 10 years.
They haven't contributed anything to these injuries.
They haven't been around as a team long enough.
They got no players in the 4,500 in the lawsuit.
But they're still going to get saddled with a $23 million payment.
Here is the media montage.
$765 million sounds like a lot of money.
Until you look at $9.5 billion, that's how much the NFL brought in just in 2012.
The NFL, which makes $9 billion a year, paying out less than $1 billion.
Your $9 billion year industry, you made out a lot better than the plaintiffs did.
It will not have a huge financial impact on the league.
Great victory for Roger Goodell.
He got the best of the NFL players.
It's a very big win for the NFL.
This is such a big win.
Without question, this is a win for the 32 owners.
The NFL got off cheap here.
It's chump change when you look at what the NFL brings in.
This is a complete drop in the bucket to the NFL revenues.
When we look back five years from now, 10 years from now, did anything change for the game today?
What did you people want?
Did you want the NFL to go out of business paying off here?
Isn't it amazing how from one media person to the next, it's identical.
Well, they bring in $9 billion.
They're only paying out 700 cigarettes.
That's totally unfair.
It's what both sides agreed to.
Nobody held a gun to anybody here.
By the way, $9 billion may be revenue.
It's not profit.
I don't know.
It's hopeless.
It is literally hopeless.
Having people learn things and become educated and informed on things, it's hopeless.
I'm convinced.
It's hopeless.
Anyway, folks, this is just going to be the first bite of the apple.
The lawyers are going to find another way to get into the NFL's pocket since the NFL has admitted culpability with the settlement.
Maybe they haven't.
I don't know what kind of riders there are here, but this is not going to take this out of the conversation as the NFL said it would yesterday when this was announced.
And we've got, I have some playtime here.
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