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Sept. 4, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:38
September 4, 2013, Wednesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of The Rush 247 Podcast.
You know, ladies and gentlemen, um this is all getting this serious stuff now, but I just have to say this is getting embarrassing.
This is not this is not how a great power operates.
This is this is just rank amateur time.
Everybody involved it.
This is McCain at the hearing yesterday, caught playing poker on his iPhone, and Wolf Blitzer over at CNN had to be convinced that it was just a game.
He thought that McCain was actually online gambling.
Was trying to make a story out of it.
And I'm sitting there thinking maybe McCain will draw four queens and think that he's now in a Muslim marriage and move.
Well, you can sit there and dream.
Anyway, greetings, my friends, and welcome.
It's all you can do.
It's all you can do is laugh at this stuff.
This is, you know, this Syria business and Obama now claiming it.
He never did the red line.
He was going to blame that on Bush, but he figured not even that would be.
So he's not blaming it on the world.
The world did the red line.
And everybody is acting like this is Huff and Puff the most dangerous.
It's all it's horrible.
Oh, we got to do something.
In the meantime, the effort to defund Obamacare is being dwarfed, and everybody's attention's being distracted away from it.
I don't know if that's being done on purpose, but it's a practical reality of this.
Uh I mean, it's this is this is I don't know.
To me, this is embarrassing.
This is this is just not how a great power goes about dealing with what are we told here is a is a terribly consequential uh matter.
I mean, Barack Obama is running around the world.
Well, what was he doing now?
He's got um Well, but I know that, but he's got the G20 coming up.
He's he did the red line, he didn't do it, but he did.
We'll have the audio.
He did.
He used me and I when talking about flexibility and stuff.
Uh last summer when he mentioned the red line.
Then he's off to Russia to meet with gay and lesbian leaders in Russia, all because Putin is banning him from the Olympics.
You know, he says no to Putin at the G20.
He punts Putin, but he's gonna go to Russia and meet with lesbian, gay, bisexure, bisexual, transgender people.
It's just it's it's it's unserious.
Obama's a uh uh a clown.
You know, really, folks, I I took all of this very seriously yesterday, and I'm watching everybody here take it seriously and wring their hands over it.
I mean, John Kerry is an absolute idiot.
Wait till you hear the sound bites of Kerry yesterday at the hearing when Medea Benjamin of Code Pink shows up.
They started having a love-in practically as they're remembering the great protest days of the 60s.
Well, McCain's sitting there playing poker on his iPhone.
Poker spades, what's the difference?
And now you never know, he might have been involved in a remote game with Obama on the other end of it while this was all going on.
And meanwhile, does anybody remember all of those supposed gaffes that Mitt Romney made in his swing through Europe during the campaign?
He didn't make any gaps, but every time he opened his mouth, the media said he'd committed a gaff.
They portrayed Romney as unqualified, a stick in the mud, an arrogant elitist, a rich guy out of touch with everybody, embarrassing himself every time he opened his mouth, which he didn't.
Romney was making serious statements.
He was trying to deal with foreign policy as a candidate in a in a serious way, making his swing through Europe, and everybody putting it down, impugning it and so forth, and we have to sit here and watch somebody, our president bumble through this stuff when everybody seems totally focused on Making sure the world doesn't figure out that we've got somebody bumbling through this stuff.
And meanwhile, the world knows.
The Iranians, the Russians, everybody's watching this.
And they're understanding that we've got somebody that's really wet behind the ears in terms of qualifications for all this stuff, just bumbling through this.
In order, what do we talk?
We're talking about chemical weapons that have been used by somebody on the people of Syria.
And Obama's, okay, well, I'm not going to know we're going to have a strike.
And then he changes it and says, no, I'm not going to do it without congressional authority.
That starts a whole new argument.
Just like Clinton today.
I'm sorry to be all over the ballpark, folks, it's sort of stream of consciousness here.
Clinton's at his library massage parlor in um in Little Rock selling health care.
A political speech on health care.
Meanwhile, Obama, this is a Syria, I'm led to believe, and I'm sure you are too, that what's happening in Syria is a matter of gravity.
Grave consequences.
Middle East, chemical weapons, uh son, Basher Assad, uh Muslim Brotherhood running amok, Middle East powder keg, all of this stuff.
And what does Obama do?
I've told everything these people do is political.
He sends Axlrod out to TV to start trashing the Republicans on this, as though it's nothing more than a budget battle or some other battle on legislation.
I mean, it it just every so beneath the former stature of this country in matters like this.
It's just, it's if it weren't otherwise so seriously serious, it'd be a little comical.
I remember Romney raising serious concerns about the security at the London Olympics.
That turned out to be a howler.
Well, aren't we glad we dodged that Romney bullet?
I mean, well, how embarrassing would it have been to have a guy like Romney as president?
Well, what an idiot when it comes to foreign policy.
Oh, yeah, Mitt Romney, you can't have that.
Thank goodness.
Thank goodness we have somebody highly competent and battle tested like Obama in charge.
The Washington Post has an article this morning about how Obama has turned his brain trust for selling his attack in Syria.
Everything is politics to these people.
And the Republicans are the villains.
Don't care what the story, don't care what the event, don't care how serious or irrelevant the Republicans are the villains, and that's how they sell it.
And the Republicans haven't the slightest idea, at the same time, what really to do here.
The Republicans slash conservative right is just as confused about all this because they're scared to death to say or do anything critical of Obama.
They're just paralyzed.
And we all have a pretty good guess why that is, and it's race.
They're just paralyzed.
Not only are they paralyzed from being critical, they think they've got to act like they agree and sign on.
To whatever it is, amnesty, health care, there's no serious effort here to push back on that.
You uh you name it.
Washington Post has an article this morning about how Obama has turned to his brain trust for selling his attack on Syria.
And the brain trust includes Axelrod, David Pluff, Robert Gibbs, and Needed Dunn, Stephanie Cutter, Tommy Vitor, and some former speech writer.
And these people are nothing but cutthroat campaign people.
And so the way that we're gonna sell military intervention in Syria is to beat up the Republicans and force them to vote yes with Obama on this.
And I still hold out this possibility that Obama hopes they don't give him the use of force authorization so that he can blame the atrocities on them.
Which, by the way, Axelrod and the boys are already starting to intimate.
If Republicans don't join the president here, the blood, the skin warts, and whatever else happens from chemical weapons will be on the Republicans' hands.
Not whoever's using the weapons in Syria, but the Republicans will be responsible for this because the Republicans are always the villains.
Can you imagine the kind of advisors Romney would have gathered around him?
I'll bet they wouldn't have anybody as smart as Samantha Power, Susan Rice.
It's just amazing.
And I I want to develop this further, but at the same time, helping helping me do that are the sound bites that we have with Obama on this red line business anyway.
But we are this is absurd.
We're looking, we're we're in the midst of total absurdity.
The way this is being dealt with.
The unserious way it's being it's being handled.
But I guess it makes sense given the unserious nature of everything else, or the way everything else is uh that is important is treated.
So let's take a break.
We'll come back and we will continue with all the rest of today's exciting excursion into broadcast excellence.
Don't go away.
If I were Basher Assad and I were watching all this, I would I'd start thinking that maybe all of this is for show and that there never will be an attack.
I think he'd I think he would be making an error thinking that, but I can see where he might think it.
I mean, he's the object.
He's the guy we're aiming at, right?
And I'm just telling you Illustrate, I think Basher's over there looking at this and thinking, you know, this guy's huffin', it's all for show.
Everything this guy does is for domestic political consumption.
I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't do diddly squat.
And if he does, it'll be akin to what Clinton did.
Launch a cruise missile into the 33rd floor of an office tower, if they have one in Syria, on a Saturday night.
You know, get in, get it, and get out inside of 25 minutes or so, and and say we had an attack and we've taken care of it, and we hit the targets and we're gone.
We accept the accolades and all that.
Um we've got, if you look at the legislative calendar, which of course, ladies and gentlemen, one of my all-time favorite things to do, just so you know.
Forty days left in the legislative calendar this year, may not sound like much, because it isn't.
Recesses, holidays, poker games, forty days remaining.
And in those 40 days, we gotta do whatever we're gonna do in Syria.
We gotta do whatever we're gonna do in implementing defunding, delaying, or rubber stamping Obamacare.
Uh, we got the big debt crisis coming up.
The continuing resolution perspires on September 30th, and that has to be dealt with.
And that's where the if anything is gonna happen with Obamacare, where that'll happen.
In these 40 days that are remaining with all that on the agenda, is there time for the regime and the Republicans to push amnesty through.
I don't know.
I mean, I'm just I'm just throwing it out there as uh something to to think about.
But I can tell you what everybody's now focusing on Syria, all the uh all the attention being paid to Obamacare has vanished, but the stories haven't.
The I mean, Michigan premium increases of 112%.
I mean, do they just keep pouring in?
I've got the health care stack today to share with you about the costs of this plan.
Just this going through the roof wherever you look.
It's it's just mind-boggling.
I it it it's just the theater of the Absurd.
This is this is to me it's incomprehensible.
And yet it's happening, so I have to deal with it.
Let's go to the audio sound bites.
This is this morning in Stockholm's Vietnam.
President Obama and the Prime Minister Frederick Reinfeld, who I uh have to credit, this guy speaks English better than most Americans do.
Certainly better than most low information Americans do.
Joint press conference.
During the QA, a reporter said, Mr. President, Mr. President, have you made up your mind?
Whether to take action against Syria, whether or not you have congressional resolution approved, is a strike needed in order to preserve your credibility for when you set these sorts of red lines?
And were you able to enlist the support of the Prime Minister here for support in Syria?
What a joke?
Question.
Mr. President, Mr. President, have you made up your mind whether or not you'll have congressional authority?
Is a strike needed to preserve your credibility?
What about the people of Syria?
Isn't that what this is about?
No, it isn't.
It's about Obama's credibility now.
And uh was that, you know, you set these sort of red lines, and did you get the support of the Prime Minister?
No.
The Prime Minister of Sweden has withheld his support, and as a result, we're canceling the operation.
What does it matter?
If he's got the support of the Prime Minister of Sweden.
Anyway, here was Obama's answer.
I didn't set a red line.
The world set a red line.
The world set a red line when governments representing 98% of the world's population said the use of chemical weapons are abhorrent and passed a treaty forbidding their use even when countries are engaged in war.
Congress set a red line when it ratified that treaty.
When I said in a press conference that my calculus about what's happening in Syria would be altered by the use of chemical weapons, which the overwhelming consensus of humanity says is wrong.
That wasn't something I just kind of made up.
I didn't pluck it out of thin air.
Doesn't matter, he didn't set the red line.
It is.
It's hilarious.
It's absurd, and it's like it it typifies exactly what it's a limbaugh theorem.
It is the limbaugh theorem.
Well, I didn't do that.
You didn't build it.
I didn't set the red line.
The world did.
He welieve me, if he could have blamed Bush for it, he would have.
But I think even he knew that that might not fly.
So blame it on the world.
Because you can say that they went to the U.N. for resolution.
You can't say, yeah, UN was involved.
Of course, the U.N. can't do anything here.
The U.N. doesn't have you may not know this or not, but the investigative authority been granted to the U.N. does not grant them the authority to investigate whether or not these weapons have been used.
Not in this case.
It's not that they don't have blanket authority, it's the specifics of this case.
So he didn't do it.
He didn't set the red line.
He isn't governing.
He's out fighting for the people.
He didn't set that red line.
The world did that.
And now because the world is a bunch of idiots, I, Barack Obama, have to come in and try to make sense out about what the stupid world did.
And okay, I'll do it.
I'll I'll try to clean up this mess.
I mean, that's what he's saying.
I didn't do this.
I had nothing to do with it.
But the world did, and so, you know, I got to go in and back up the world.
And he wasn't through.
My credibility is not on the line.
The international community's credibility is on the line.
And America and Congress's credibility is on the line, because we give lip service to the notion that these international norms are important.
How credible is the international community when it says this is an international norm that has to be observed.
The question is how credible is Congress when it passes a treaty saying we have to forbid the use of chemical weapons.
This is this is just it's Clinton-esque, is what this is.
He didn't do it.
His credibility isn't on the line.
Congress, the Republicans, they're the villains.
They're the ones that did this.
They're the ones who set up this original resolution in the first place years ago.
They're the ones who gave me this impossible standard.
Here is Obama August 20th, 2012.
We cannot have a situation where chemical or biological weapons are falling into the hands of the wrong people.
We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized.
That would change my calculus.
My calculus, if I see a bunch of chemical weapons being moved around, that was August of last year when he drew the red line, which today he said he didn't.
And his credibility had not aligned the world.
Did it.
Hi, welcome back.
Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network, the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Hey, folks, I have a question.
Last August Obama drew the red line.
He said if he saw a movement of chemical weapons, movemental usage, that would constitute crossing the red line.
He wouldn't put up with that.
And he said that would change his calculus.
So chemical weapons have been used in Syria.
And Obama today in Sweden said he didn't draw the red line.
The international community drew the red line.
The world drew the red line.
Simple question.
If we didn't do it, if we didn't draw the red line, what the hell are we doing voting on the use of force?
Why isn't that happening at the UN?
And don't give me this we are the UN business.
This is a serious question.
Is what this guy's doing, everything Obama is doing is for domestic consumption aimed at low information voters and low information media suppliers.
That's who all of this is aimed at.
He didn't do it.
The media will report that he didn't do it.
They will back him up.
They'll go twisting and turning and pretzel themselves at all kinds of weird, contorted positions to say he's got a point.
It's just what they do.
So he's positioning himself here as in a no-win because of what the Republicans did.
Because of what the world did.
The world is sort of hamstrung him.
The world has sort of pinned him in here.
He doesn't have a whole lot of room to move because they drew that stupid line.
He didn't do it.
His credibility isn't on the line.
All right, if all that's true, then what the hell does the U.S. Congress have anything to do with this for?
If the world drew the red line, and if the world's credibility is on the line, then why isn't the UN voting on whether or not to use force?
Why is it a matter for the United States?
Where is the anti-war left, by the way?
Where is Cindy Sheehan and all the others like her?
Where are all of these people who stand up and object every time the U.S. even talks about military involvement around the world?
We have a president to whom everything is a political opportunity.
Everything that happens represents an opportunity to advance the political agenda, his political agenda, as such.
Obama blames all of his domestic problems on conservatives or the Tea Party.
He actually said last week that the reason he can't get anything done is me.
He said last week again that the gridlock in Washington and the partisanship is because of me.
Meanwhile, he's getting everything he wants.
That's the irony here, but forget that for a moment.
Blaming the fact that he's not getting what he wants.
And that by the way, that's part of the Limbaugh theorem, too.
For Obama to continue to complain that he's being stopped is another way he insulates or distances himself from the stuff that is actually happening that he has made to happen.
For Obama to run around constantly, day in and day out and complain that he can't get anything done is just another way of establishing in a subconscious way in the minds of the American people that his policies have not been implemented.
And therefore he has nothing to do with the economy.
He has nothing to do with the problems of Obamacare.
He has nothing to do with whatever is going wrong.
Because the Republicans are stopping him.
Limbaugh and the Republicans are stopping him at every turn.
He blames all of his domestic problems on conservative villains of the Tea Party.
Nothing is his fault.
And if you listen to him, and if you listen to it be amplified with the drive-by media, all of his plans, all of his ideas, his entire agenda is rejected by Congress.
His entire agenda rejected by conservatives, his entire agenda rejected by the Tea Party.
And why?
Because they're racists.
They don't like black people, and therefore they're denying Obama his presidency.
This is what he says.
This is well, he doesn't use the racial aspect, but he doesn't have to, speaks for itself.
Well, I'd kind of like to turn that around because if he wants to maintain that, it seems to me that the world has turned conservative.
The United Nations is saying no to Obama in Syria, acting just like the Conservatives.
NATO is saying no to Obama in Syria, just like the Conservatives.
The British are saying no to Obama, just like the Conservatives.
Germany, nine, just like the conservatives.
Australia and Canada, they have said no to Obama, making them conservative.
The world is the Tea Party.
Everyone is against Obama's ideas.
Everyone is against Obama's strategies, except our media, and maybe France.
And he set that up.
Now, I don't nobody's gonna conclude that.
I just point it out for the for the fun of it.
But while he's getting everything that he wants, he's doubling down on the Limbaugh theorem and making it appear that he's not getting anything, that whatever is happening isn't because the Republicans are stopping what he wants to do.
Therefore, he has no relationship to what has happened policy-wise in the country.
None.
Because everything he's wanted to do has been stopped.
Those racist, extremist, villain Republicans.
And that's what changing his mind on the red line is all about.
I took control the red line.
My credibility is not on the line.
You heard him, he blamed Congress.
Grab somebody too.
He blames Congress for this.
You just heard the soundbite August of 2012.
He drew the red line, he defined it.
He explained what would happen if somebody crossed it.
Then this morning, after saying that he didn't set a red line, the world did that.
My credibility's not on the line.
The international community's credibility is on the line.
And America and Congress's credibility is on the line because we give lip service to the notion that these international norms are important.
How credible is the international community when it says this is an international norm that has to be observed.
The question is how credible is Congress when it passes a treaty saying we have to forbid the use of chemical weapons.
How old is that treaty?
That treaty's as old as the Geneva Convention.
What the hell is he talking about?
I mean, this is absurd.
He's not even part of America in this equation.
He says America and Congress credibility is On the line.
His isn't.
He's not America.
He's not Congress.
He's Obama with a brother who still lives in a hut.
Kenya.
He didn't draw the red line.
His credibility is not a line.
International community did this.
He doesn't know anybody's talking about here.
The Republicans, they came up with that resolution forbidding the use of chemical weapons just to embarrass him, just to stop him, just to hamstring him, just to make him look bad, those villains.
That was the purpose of this BS today.
And that's why to me, this is the theater of the absurd.
And I'm just going to tell you that the people have designs on us, and we have enemies.
They're watching this.
And they're not dazzled and awstruck by Obama.
They're watching somebody bumbling and stumbling through this, and they're seeing opportunities present themselves for them to advance their ideas.
And don't forget what his policy in the Middle East is, which of course isn't his mind.
Talked about this yesterday, and this is fundamentally important to understand, folks.
I don't want to have to repeat all this because I don't like repeating.
I like to always move forward.
But there are parts of the world where we support dictators because that's the best thing for American vital interests.
A dictatorship in a certain part of the world could be stabilizing as far as our interests are concerned.
And of course, the left, when they hear something like that, they just go banshee on you and they try to distort it, misrepresent it.
But it's always been U.S. policy.
Well, Obama is ridding, getting rid of these quote unquote stabilizing dictators, Mubarak is the most recent example.
The Shah of Iran was another.
Getting rid of these people because they violate human rights and so forth.
And what he's installing, what he is witnessing is the installation of radical Muslim extremists as leaders of these countries.
To Obama, that is much preferable than a stabilizing dictator who holds U.S. interests close to his heart.
Now there are arguments both sides of that.
I'm uh we don't support dictatorship, don't misunderstand here, but U.S. vital national interest.
Example I gave yesterday, the free flow of oil at market prices.
Now, again, saying that to a Democrat or to an environmentalist is like showing Obama, I'm sorry, Dracula, the cross, they just no blood for oil, that crowd.
But the free flow of oil at market prices, as long as we're going to not develop our own resources, and as long as Obama's going to keep us dependent on foreign oil, then the free flow of oil at market prices is a vital U.S. security and national interest.
And if the dictatorship in Saudi Arabia is to our benefit in that regard, fine.
If Mubarak is beneficial to our regard in that regard, fine.
We do not want a radical Muslim extremist in charge of oil production.
And that's who Obama is installing.
By supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, you name it, trying to get rid of Basher Bashers and nothing.
In all that yesterday, I want to stress again, I was not saying that Basher Assad's a good guy.
By any stretch.
You know, at one time, Saddam Hussein was an ally.
When Iran was at war with Iraq for eight years, Iran was the bigger enemy.
We allied with Saddam.
That made the most sense for our vital national interest in that region.
Then Saddam went rogue and got full of himself, actually, and thought that meant that he had impunity.
And could never run afoul of us.
And started, he got grand designs on taking over the Saudi oil fields.
And the first step was Kuwait.
And we said, uh, uh, uh, uh, not going to happen.
So after the eight years of the Iraq-Iran war, we finally decided Saddam is not one of these stabilizing dictators is a problem.
We took him out.
It's how the world works, but Obama doesn't view it that way.
These guys are all rotten to the core because they violate human rights and so forth.
So he's going to put in radical Islamists under the guise that they're being elected, which they aren't.
And that's what's playing out in Syria.
If he does get rid of Basher, who's waiting in the wings?
Al Qaeda's waiting in the wings.
Militant Islamists.
Uh Al Zawahiri Bin Laden's number two guy.
It's a serious stuff, folks.
This is this is why the way these people are handsome joke.
They're making this a joke, a laughing stock.
And it really is troublesome.
And we are back.
I want to go to the phones.
I don't know what to wait till next hour, but we have uh number of sound bites on tap.
A number of officials were asked on TV last night.
What about this report that uh Basher Assad's being set up that he really didn't use the chemical weapons and machines?
That McCain said, it's ridiculous.
It's ridiculous.
I mean, I I got a news alert when I was playing poker and my iPhone, and I saw that, and it's ridiculous.
It couldn't have the means to do it.
Serious.
It's not serious.
So we got that, and we've got um other things.
But I I waited too long to get the phones yesterday.
I always feel bad when I do that.
So we're going to start in South Whitley, Indiana, with Dylan.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hi, Glenn.
Okay, wanted to go over that whole thing about the military strike and Obama's idea of no boots on the ground, right?
Uh, that's right.
This is like Clinton in uh 95 and Sarajevo.
15,000 feet.
Yeah.
Here's the problem with that, right?
I spent time in the Army, I spent time in Iraq.
Here's the problem with only air strikes.
You have no boots on the ground.
How do you verify?
Key word, verify that the targets were hit and that the strikes were effective.
What are we gonna do?
Carpet bomb the entire country and then not have to worry about it because it's a glass parking lot.
You know, you um uh you are to be forgiven for not understanding something here.
You are how long ago were you active military?
I got out back in 2008.
Now that's five years ago.
Back then, the stuff that you mentioned mattered.
But a surgical strike on Syria will be automatically said to be an overwhelming success.
That Obama was in the situation room looking at his own heads-up display, watching the damage unfold on the big screens right in front of him.
The pilots will offer the proof there will be no questioning of it, because it's Obama who cannot fail.
There will not need to be any evidence.
The success of the mission will be pronounced the moment the bombs begin their plummet from the aircraft.
Well, and at the same time, I mean, you're talking about, you know, we put out all this stuff, and the pilots are verifying that everything is done, everything was destroyed.
At the same time, this situation is such a massively internationally watched event unfolding right in front of us that you know you and I both know exactly what'll happen.
We send the strikes, we bomb the targets, and we sit here and put out across all our news and media outlets, internet, TV, paper, everything that it was an unit was a resounding success, but then it just comes back around on us with the international community.
Well, that's just that's just the evil West.
The infidels, you know, just saying that these doesn't matter, nobody will see it.
The infidels and the international community who are already responsible for this, Obama said so just today.
They will never see the American people will never see those news stories of people say, wait a minute.
We didn't succeed here, we didn't kill any rebels.
Look at the women and children that died.
Now, that'll never be reported.
We've sent the message.
Obama was a tough guy, and that's what the world saw, and they're now quaking in their boots, and that's the end of the story.
Another exciting hour of broadcast excellence.
Right around the corner, my friends, we've only just begun.
Sit tight.
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