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Sept. 24, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:42
September 24, 2013, Tuesday, Hour #2
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Time Text
There's a lie being told.
It's being told by just about every Democrat in the Senate.
And some Republicans are biting on this lie too.
They're claiming they don't have an exemption from Obamacare.
They do.
I want to lay it out here.
This is unacceptable to have one class of people that get to weasel out of this because of their power.
Now I understand Obama's handing out exemptions to all of his buddies all over the place.
Big labor wants their exemption.
Everybody's looking for exemptions that deal with who can get the subsidy to help pay for health insurance.
I understand that the Democrats are going to be phonies on this.
That's what they are.
I understand the Democrats want to get all the best of Obamacare with none of the pain of Obamacare.
But for the Republicans to be taking that stand is deadly because they're the ones that are fighting against Obamacare.
They're the ones that are threatening to take this thing to the brink because they say that Obamacare must be stopped.
Well, if they believe that way, then they shouldn't be cutting a deal in which they don't feel the same pain as everybody else on Obamacare.
They need to demand that this exemption be taken away.
And they need to get up and talk about it.
There are a few members of Congress that are doing so.
The loudest mouth, and I mean that in a positive way, is the senator from Louisiana, and I don't mean Mary Landro, I mean the good one, David Vitter.
Fitter's been drawing attention to this thing, and a lot of his colleagues, including some Republicans, want him to shut up.
Here's the deal.
Now I'll grant the establishment that wants to keep this exemption in place, that they at least have an argument.
I'm not denying they have an argument, but it doesn't change the fact that there's an exemption here.
Here's what happened.
Before Obamacare, in other words, before we destroyed our American way of life and brought this terrible government monstrosity into something as important as our health care and this incredibly expensive item that so many of us pay for.
Before Obamacare, Congress was like most large employers.
The employees got a group health plan, and there was an employer contribution.
I work for Clear Channel Radio.
I have a group health plan, and the employer pays for a portion of it, and I pay another chunk for it.
That's the way it is for most Americans who work for large employers, and that's how it is for the Congress and their staff now.
When they passed Obamacare, they wanted to make a big show of saying, look, we believe in this so much that we're willing to be part of it ourselves.
So we're going to give up our employer provided coverage and we're going to go into one of the Obamacare exchanges.
I know this is basic for some of you, but it's important for me to establish the point here because I want to be fair to both sides before excoriate those that are taking this exemption.
So they're going into the exchanges.
What are the exchanges?
The exchanges are created.
This is the big big nightmare of Obamacare.
The exchanges are created for individuals who don't have a health plan at work.
You're all required, we're all required to go into these exchanges if we don't have health care from somewhere else.
If the employer doesn't provide it, you go into the exchanges.
The exchanges are private insurance overseen by the government.
In some cases, state governments are running them, in other cases the federal government is running them.
So the Congress said, okay, fine.
We'll go into the exchanges.
Obamacare is going to be so wonderful, we're happy to go into those exchanges with the rest of you.
Those Republicans who are saying that this is terrible, they're wrong.
So they voted to put themselves in the exchanges.
But by being in the exchange, that means they're not getting their insurance from the employer, Congress, United States of America anymore.
Instead, they're getting their insurance, the same as everybody else who's thrown into the exchanges.
That means that the employer can't pay a portion of the premium anymore.
If you're in an exchange, your boss doesn't pay a portion of your health care Because you're not getting insurance to your boss.
You're getting your insurance through the through the exchanges.
Obamacare therefore created these subsidies to help people who are in the exchanges pay for their health care.
The exchange the subsidies are based entirely on your income.
Depending on the number of children you have and so on, there's a line.
If you're above that line, you don't get a subsidy and you have to pay the full cost of the insurance to the exchange.
If you're below the line, if your income isn't high enough, you can get a subsidy to pay a portion of the insurance that you're obtaining through the exchanges.
The exemption granted from Congress, exemption granted for Congress by President Obama that they asked for, says that every single employee of the Congress, including the senators and representatives themselves, in particular the Senate, they are all eligible for the subsidies, regardless of their income.
So a United States Senator who makes, and I think their salaries are right around $175,000 a year, they're eligible for a subsidy to help pay their health insurance.
And all of their staffers, all of the aides who work on Capitol Hill, they're all eligible for those subsidies too, even if their income is above the threshold.
Now the defenders of this are saying, look, all this is doing is maintaining the status quo.
In the past, we, the employer, paid a portion of the cost of their premium.
Now they're getting a subsidy because they're in the exchange.
We're just keeping everything the same for them.
So therefore, it's not really an exemption because we're maintaining the status quo.
The money that helps people pay for insurance just comes from a different source.
In the past, it was provided by the employer, us, Congress.
Now it's provided by the same subsidies that are given to other Americans that are eligible for subsidies to buy from the exchanges.
The problem with this is the following.
There are lots of people who are going to lose their health insurance at work.
And they're going to go into these exchanges, and they're only going to get a subsidy if their income is low enough.
If their income is too high, like say the income of a member of the Senate of the United States of America, they won't get a subsidy.
But employees of Congress, including the members themselves, will get a subsidy.
That is completely indefensible.
It shows how phony both parties are on this.
Aside from the issue of the best way to fight Obamacare, how can the Democrats get up there and try to tell the people of the United States that Obamacare isn't terrible when they have exempted themselves from the realities of Obamacare?
One of the realities is that if you're dumped into one of these rotten exchanges, which millions of Americans will be part of, is that you have to pay the full cost of your health insurance unless your income is low enough.
That's Obamacare.
That's the way it's written, it's what it says.
Just pounded the table so hard that the computer blinked.
I'll behave myself.
That's what it says.
And that's what those of us who are in real life having to cope with Obamacare are going to have to put up with.
If you're a small business owner who's buying insurance on your own, you're probably going to go into one of those exchanges.
And if your income is as high as a member of the United States Senator or senior staffer, press secretary on Capitol Hill, whatever, you've got to pay the full cost of this.
That's what Obamacare is.
You're going to get insurance to the exchange that may or may not be any good, but you've got to pay for it all yourself.
It's one of the reasons that a lot of people dislike Obamacare.
They have sheltered themselves from that reality that everyone else has.
So the Democrats, oh, it's so well, how will you know if it's so wonderful?
You're not part of this.
You voted to put yourself in these exchanges because you were volunteering to be part of this thing.
But when push comes to shove and the clock comes close to Obamacare actually kicking in with the beginning of the year, you run off to President Obama and exempt yourselves From the monstrosity that you created by getting this break in which you get your subsidy paid even though you don't qualify for it.
That's the Democrats.
I am not letting the Republicans off the hook on this.
None of them.
Even those that have been adamantly opposing Obamacare, like Senator Cruz and Senator Lee.
I'm not letting Senator McConnell off the hook.
Senator Rubio, none of them.
They should not be applying for a subsidy that their constituents can't receive.
They should refuse to accept it.
And they should hammer the Democrats that are taking it.
You want to articulate an argument against Obamacare that will resonate with the American people.
And you better have those arguments ready if you're going to play this thing out to the end.
Then stand up and point out that the Democrats on Capitol Hill will not accept Obamacare as written for everyone else in the United States, but we will.
Obamacare stinks, it's the reason we're trying to stop it.
The Democrats want to keep it because they've made chosen to make themselves not part of it.
But as long as the Republicans keep taking this subsidy themselves, as long as they accept this exemption granted by the president, they look like total phonies on the issue.
And there's no legitimate reason they should be accepting this exemption.
None.
There are anecdotal reports that Congressmen and Senators who went home during the August recess and met with their constituents were hammered on this at town meetings, especially Republican senators, in which they were told, We understand you're exempted yourselves from Obamacare.
And so they were no, we're not really exempting ourselves.
We're just getting the same employer contribution to our health care that we've always had.
They're not telling the truth.
It is an exemption.
It's the kind of thing that hacks people off.
The Congress in its own life won't play by the same rules that everybody else has to play by.
So I want to tee that one up and throw it out to any of you who may have an opinion on it.
Whether or not you agree with me that the Congress should not be exempted from Obamacare, that this exemption should be repealed, that the Republicans should not accept it.
The Democrats want to accept it, they can't stop them, but then hang them with it.
Instead of granting yourself this right now, they all say, Well, look, how are we going to hire a staff?
Our staffers are going to quit.
They're not going to be able to afford to work for us if they've got to pay the full cost of their health care.
Figure it out.
Do you understand how many Americans are confronting this right now?
People who will not get a group health plan at all.
Their employer has figured I'm just going to pay the penalty under Obamacare rather than provide coverage.
It won't happen so much this year because the employer mandate has been delayed for a year.
But by next year there are all sorts of businesses that are going to tell their workers look, you can still get health insurance, Obamacare's exchanges are around.
We're not going to provide it anymore.
And all of those workers are going to be in the same boat.
It's happening all across our economy.
Many employers are telling their workers we're not going to provide coverage for your spouses if your spouses have plans at work.
This is happening all over.
Other employers are saying that we are going to dramatically scale back on the coverage that we have because we can't afford coverage because of Obamacare.
This is reality.
If the reality is good enough for most of the rest of us, it ought to be good enough for Republicans in Congress who claim that they're opposed to Obamacare, but somehow want to skate through without feeling the same pain as the rest of us.
1-800-282-2882 is the phone number.
My contention is Democrats and Republicans in Congress, with a few exceptions, Senator Vitter and others, are correct on this, have accepted an exemption in which they are not feeling all of the pain of Obamacare that so many of the rest of us will be feeling.
My name is Mark Belling, and I'm sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
I'm Mark Belling.
This is the Rush Limbaugh Program.
Rush is obviously not here.
Vacation week.
So I'm here, it's UN weekend, it's me guest host day.
They dusted the guest host mothballs off of me, and I'm back here to talk to you guys, and I'm glad to be here.
I've been talking about this exemption that members of Congress are receiving.
It was granted by Obama.
He's been handing out these exemptions to all of his pals.
Well the Democrats in Congress really wanted the exemption because they managed to vote themselves part of be to be part of the Obamacare exchanges.
Well the Obamacare Exchanges grant subsidies only to people who are lower income.
Members of Congress aren't lower income.
Their highly paid staff aren't lower income.
They've got to buy this insurance on their own.
They don't want to do that.
So the Republicans ought to be pointing that out except they're getting the exemption too.
And it's wrong for them to take it.
There are things that they can do here and I understand attracting good staff is important.
Do what every other American business is being forced to do right now.
If necessary, move some money around in your budget, send out a few uh a few less of those free mailings that you send out, work your money around and maybe give your employees a little bit of a pay raise, keep your budget within the same level, but maneuver your funding around if you need to keep good staff.
What you shouldn't be doing is taking an exemption that employees of most other American companies can't get Philadelphia and Linda, Linda it's your turn on EIB with Mark Belling.
It's nice to talk to you Mark it's um I'm a big fan of yours.
Thank you.
Um I wrote my senators Senator Toomey who is a Republican and Senator Casey I have yet to hear from Senator Casey but Senator Toomey did return um my email with an email and he informed me that I was misinformed that there is no exemption for Congress and um every time I hear it from you and from Rush and from the other other uh talk show hosts,
it really infuriates me because he has misrepresented him ri misrepresented himself and he's a Tea Party person.
Yeah, I that's this this really bothers me and I'm glad you called and I'm glad you got that response from Senator Toomey and I want to make it clear I think Toomey's one of the better senators.
I think he's he's one of the good guys there.
But this is an issue in which he's got blinders on and the reason he has blind I say on my own program in Milwaukee that rationalization is the second strongest human drive.
We have this need to rationalize what we do.
Senator Toomey has a staff that he cares about.
I'm sure his people are good people and he's telling himself that because in the past the employer Congress helped these people out with their health insurance that the new system isn't any different than we had done in the past.
So therefore it isn't an exemption.
But the reality is it is an exemption they chose not to have employer provided health coverage anymore.
They chose to go into the exchanges and when they chose to go into those exchanges they're now treating themselves differently than virtually everybody else in the exchanges that is an exemption.
Furthermore and I don't want to be unfair to Senator Toomey I'm taking your word Linda that you did receive that email in which he's claiming it's not an exemption if he's claiming it's not an exemption what in the world did President Obama grant them if not an exemption it's called an exemption because that's what they got.
It's unfortunate that he's taking his taking this stand not only because his position is wrong, I really think it undercuts the legitimate arguments they are making about how horrible Obamacare is it makes them look rather hypocritical here.
I don't think that it's a good idea to move forward and take this matter to the brink as some senators are suggesting and as the leadership of the House may be willing to do if you don't have your ducks in a row if you haven't taken care of your own little hypocrisy here and that's why one of the reasons why I think it's critical that they do away with this and not put themselves in this denial and claiming that they're not getting an exemption because they are getting an exemption.
Thank you for the call Linda let's go to Anderson South Carolina.
Steve it's your turn on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Good day Mark how are you I'm great thanks enjoy your summon you're one of my favorites.
Thank you.
Uh the problem we've got and I'm the most optimistic guy in the world is we have a legislative branch that is completely and totally isolated and most and I emphasize most they don't care about what the people that elected them really want.
I told you it's Carl Scrator if we weren't still a country of laws if we weren't that country there would have already been a march on Washington and most of them would have been dragged out of the Capitol building and flogged.
Now, I'm not advocating doing that, but I am going to say this.
Dealing with the most corrupt executive branch that we have ever had.
The fact that we have a legislative branch that is as inept.
We as the people, until we can do something that would approximate going to Washington and dragging them out and flogging them, we are going to have a hard time getting our problems squared away.
Thank you for the call, Steve.
I have to cut you short because I'm up against one of our hard breaks here.
I think it may it's very hard for Republicans, even Tea Party type lawmakers, to stand up and claim that they are there representing the rest of us when they're part of deals like this in which they get preferential treatment.
They think that we're wrong for seeing it this way, but we're not wrong.
It is an exemption and they shouldn't be taking it.
Mark Bellingham for Rush.
Another one of the marks Mark Stein was in yesterday.
I was flying on my way out to New York where I'm doing the program from Russia's Eastern Command, so I didn't have an opportunity to hear this, but I'm told that a caller talked about this, and we found an item in USA today that verifies it.
It has to do with what they're calling a glitch in Obamacare.
I love that.
Litch in Obamacare.
The whole thing is a series of glitches.
I want to read here because a caller referred to this yesterday, and I want to bring you up to speed on it because it shows just how badly written this law was.
Congress defined affordable is 9.5% or less of an employee's household income, mostly to make sure people do not leave their workplace plans for subsidized coverage through the exchanges.
That 9.5% deals with when people are eligible for the subsidy.
But the error is that it only implies to the employee, not his or her family.
So if an employer offers a woman affordable health insurance but doesn't provide it for her family, they cannot get subsidized help through the state exchanges.
The Kaiser Family Foundation said an average plan for an individual is about 5,600, but it goes up to 15,700 for families.
So even if the employer is making a contribution, the cost of family coverage becomes far greater because the language in Obamacare dealt with these so-called lavish plans, but only referred to the individuals.
One of many problems with this law, one of the many arguments that is being made as to why this thing should be delayed or killed.
There's so much out there right now with Obamacare that we're only finding out about at the last moment.
The federal government still doesn't even have its exchanges up.
When the insurance companies have tried to test the website established for the Obamacare exchanges, which is supposed to be up and running October 1st, that's one one week from today, yeah.
One week from today, that the prices are never coming out correctly.
We are very, very close to a train wreck.
Now, a lot of people are saying that this is just exactly like what people were worried about with the Y2K thing where there are going to be all these computer problems and the world is going to come to an end.
That's what you right wingers are saying is going to happen with Obamacare.
This is different because we see what the problems are.
Some people have argued that maybe the best strategy is to just let this thing go into effect.
That the American public will be so horrified, people's lives will be made so miserable, that that's when they will stand up and demand that something be done.
The problem with that is that we're talking here about the quality of life for the United States.
There are some people who are going to be very, very sick.
There are some people who perhaps are not going to be able to afford the insurance that they're going to be mandated to buy.
Remember when Obama agreed to delay the employer mandate for a year.
The reason he did that is he knows how disastrous it's going to be.
It's going to kill employment.
He doesn't want the employer mandate in effect before the 2014 elections because that's his dream election.
This is when we're going to win back the house.
I will have killed off the Republican Party.
So he delayed the employer mandate, but he didn't delay the individual mandate.
On January 1st, if you want to be a legal law-abiding citizen of the United States, you have to buy health insurance.
If your employer doesn't provide it at work, you've got to go into one of those exchanges and buy it.
And if you're of high enough income, you're not going to get a subsidy.
You are going to be on your own.
No requirement that your employer provide it, so some won't.
But a requirement that you buy it.
You're going to have to bite that whole bullet if your income is above a certain level.
But not if you work for the Congress of the United States.
That employer, the Congress, it isn't going to provide health insurance anymore.
It's chosen instead to put its people in the exchange.
It isn't asking too much that the rules for them in the exchange be the same as the rules for the rest of us.
My request of them, particularly the Republicans, is that if they're going to get up there and stand up and talk about how miserable this is, they should be willing to accept and feel some of the misery themselves.
Let's go now to Lake Ariel, Pennsylvania.
Suzanne, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Mark Belling.
Hi, Mark.
Hi, Suzanne.
Thank you for keeping us informed about what's going on.
I'd just like to say that America was founded as a republic upon the principle that all men are created equal, that the law applies to all, you know, great and small and not, you know, that some obey the law and others don't, where you're creating a separate class that don't have to obey the law.
And this is contrary to our constitution.
All of the exemptions that the president is allowed to grant give him the remarkable ability to protect his pals, and these exemptions are being handed out to some labor unions, some large employers, to anybody who's been able to get the ear of the president.
These exemptions that he's handing out give him the ability to pass a law that's going to badly affect many Americans, but shield his own pals from that law.
If Obamacare is so wonderful, if the president is so proud of his law, why would he exempt anyone from it?
Their lives are going to be better.
Our health care is going to be made more affordable, remember?
They call it the Affordable Care Act.
What a name.
They call this the Affordable Care Act.
We ought to start calling it that because it exposes what a joke it is.
The reason he's being forced to provide all these exemptions to his pals is his pals, the people who have clout, and in this case the Congress, they're running to him saying, you know, this is a problem.
We didn't anticipate this problem.
We don't get a, you know, our people aren't going to get a subsidy when they go into these exchanges.
Okay, I'll give you an exemption.
Well, that's the way the law is written.
Thank you for the call, Suzanne.
Let's go now to Tim in Dallas Fort Worth.
Tim, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Mark Belling.
Hello, glad to talk to you.
Great to have you.
Yeah, I'm longtime listener and I've called in several times.
Uh my concern is the uh the Congressmen keep talking about they're afraid to be blamed for something.
Well, the people that voted them in to actually defund this Obamacare are still gonna be there.
If they do it, those people are gonna be happy, and they're gonna vote for them again.
Now they voted a man once, they'll vote a man again.
I don't see how they can possibly think that the outcome can be bad.
They need to defund it, and if the government stops, the government stops.
Those people, which I'm one of, is are still going to vote for them again.
They're gonna be there as long as they keep doing what their constituents want.
I I I want to I'm not going to argue with you about this because I think you're mostly right.
I want to tell you what some of those that are fearful of playing this out are saying.
They're saying that it's easy for Ted Cruz to say that because he's from Texas, where you're from, which is a predominantly Republican state.
Hard to imagine that Senator Cruz would face any problems there.
What about the senators who represent swing states where Democrats win some elections and Republicans win some elections?
They're afraid that they're going To lose the voters in the middle that they need in order to win.
My state at Wisconsin is a classic swing state.
About half of our elected officials are Republicans, half are Democrats.
We've got a senator who is a Tea Party oriented senator, Senator Ron Johnson.
He's somebody that won because he won in the 2010 election.
He won because a lot of moderates were appalled at what was going on with the government.
In fact, they were appalled at Obamacare.
There's a concern that if they play this thing out, if there is a government shutdown, people's lives are badly inconvenienced, federal workers who did nothing wrong themselves are laid off, that the blame would go to them.
Now I agree with you.
The blame ought to go to Obama.
If you pass a funding bill that doesn't fund Obamacare, and he responds by saying, Well, good, then we're not going to fund anything else.
He clearly is the guy that shut down the government.
And that's what Senator Cruz and the people advocating the strategy have said again and again and again.
If Obama shuts down the government because he's not willing to accept the fact that we didn't fund only the one part of government that he's so impassioned about, he shut down the government.
The problem is in telling that story and communicating through a media that's clearly, I think, going to portray the story the other way.
I'm not disagreeing with your assessment that the majority of Republicans want this because they're saying it loudly and clearly, in part because they're so sick and tired of not fighting.
They know that this issue is so critical, and they want them to fight back.
The question is what is the best strategy to fight back?
I'm not a legislative strategist.
I'm somebody who has strong beliefs on the issues and how to, you know, and what's right and what's wrong.
The best way to attack the Obamacare thing, I can see both arguments on this.
The reason I'm making this doing the squawking that I'm doing about the exemption is that I think that that part of it weakens their argument that if they get up there and they say that we're willing to take ourselves to the brink because Obamacare is so bad, but they've sheltered themselves in the pain of Obamacare.
They just don't look all that sincere about it.
That's the hang up that I have about the exemption and why I've spent so much time focusing on it.
The point though that Tim makes from Dallas, why would these Republicans these people were elected by Republicans?
They ran as in opposition to Obamacare, and not one Republican voted for it.
What are they so doggone afraid of?
The fear they have, rightly or wrongly, is that the moderates in their state, and again, some Republican senators don't face that problem.
Uh one of those that's advocating the strategy of Senator Lee from Utah, overwhelmingly Republican state.
But it's harder to take that stance and worry that you're going to be on the right end of this if you're a senator from a state that is a 5149 state in either direction.
State like Virginia, maybe North Carolina, Wisconsin, a few of the others.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush.
Mark Belling in for Rush Limbaugh.
I don't think the handshake has occurred yet.
The peacnicks of the world are starting to panic a little bit.
Obama hasn't had his the handshake that everybody wants with the president of Iran.
We're trying to keep tabs on this.
Very close to the UN here at Eastern Command of EIB.
I'll watch it as closely as I can.
You can't always get what you want, though.
Didn't Mick Jagger tell us that.
Speaking of which, I don't like this because it I I'm old.
Mick Jagger is about to be a great grandfather.
Ponder that.
I mean, I can accept rock and rollers that I grew up with being grandpaws.
I get that.
Okay.
You know, you're gonna be a grandfather and not be that old.
He's going his granddaughter, whose name is I it's a sissy, isn't it?
I think a sissy is a Sisi is in St. Francis of I think.
Well, that's his granddaughter.
She's pregnant.
Mick Jagger's going to be.
I just saw the Rolling Stones on the um this needs to be the last tour.
It was a great, great, great show.
The tour that ended in Hyde Park and London and went around the United States.
It was a great show because they didn't compromise and he's still out there dancing around and doing all the hits and playing for two and a half hours, and Charlie Watts still keeps a perfect rhythm line and all that stuff.
But great grandfathers can't rock and roll.
It's we are very, very close to being at the end of this tremendous era of all of those great bands that defined music because they're all gonna fade out at the same time.
It's not going to be the same in 20 years seeing Nirvana or Pearl Jim.
The torch is being passed.
By the way, in the we were talking about who would get the blame if there's a government shutdown.
There is an interesting story here from Politico.
The Pew Research Center survey showed 39% of the public would blame Republicans for the shutdown versus 36% who would hold the Democrats responsible.
Interesting, they said Democrats rather than Obama.
I like to bring Russia's audience up to speed about a few of the things that happened back where I'm from the Milwaukee area.
Michelle Obama is on this kick now about drinking water.
Do you guys know about this?
Did this made national lose?
Well, she launched this thing in a community in my area.
The name of the city is Water Towns.
Okay.
That's the great great Obama spinmeisters at work.
Where should we launch Michelle's campaign to drink more water?
Let's go to Watertown.
There's a few water towns in the United States, so they decided to come to mine.
Watertown, Wisconsin.
Here's the deal though.
The idea is to drink more water and less soda.
The largest bottler of soda in the state of Wisconsin, and one of the largest in the upper Midwest is a company called WizPack.
Wiz Pack is in Watertown, Wisconsin.
It employs a lot of people.
It's a major bottler of Pepsi products, including the water product that Pepsi has.
Still, she goes into a city that manufactures all of this bottles all of this soda and tells people to stop drinking soda.
The mayor of Watertown shows up anyway, he's all proud.
Oh, it's just great for Watertown that the first lady is coming here urging people to drink water.
Well, here's the follow-up on the story.
In preparation for her business, the Obama people, the Michelle people, put all these stickers about drinking water on the floor of the gymnasium.
So that there'd be this when people walked into the gym, they'd see all this water stuff on the floor.
They can't get the stickers off the gymnasium at Watertown High School, so they're going to have to refinish the floor.
Isn't that just a whole metaphor for this presidency?
It looks so good.
You know, he came in, the lofty rhetoric and all that.
It looks so good.
And everybody wants to be part of it, so we'll show up even as she comes here and trashes drinking soda in a community in which a lot of people get employed drinking soda.
But in the end, what are you left with?
You gotta refinish your floor.
Whole country's going to feel like that when they're gone.
This one.
There's an interesting piece in the New York Times today.
And I made my point a point about this on my own radio program in Milwaukee.
JP Morgan Chase had to pay this giant fine to the SEC because of the London whale, the guy that made all of the bad trades.
He took all these risky investments which cost JP Morgan shareholders a lot of money.
So JP Morgan Chase, which is run by Jamie Diamond, they paid this big fine to the government.
Well, who pays the fine when a corporation gets a fine?
The shareholders pay that.
The guy who's the CEO of the bank, he doesn't have to pull out his checkbook.
The money is taken out of the general coffers of the corporation.
What was the sin in the first place?
Employees of the company made a bad decision that cost the shareholders money.
So who do we find?
The shareholders.
The victims here are the ones who are paying the fine.
I don't know if the SEC has the ability to fire people, but it seems to me that when you're putting a sanction on a company that takes advantage of its shareholders, you shouldn't be making those shareholders pay the fine for the bad behavior of the management of the company.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
See, the good thing about being a guest host is you can have come up with all this material, and you don't have a show to do every day.
You only come in every here.
I've got a lot of stuff still to do.
I want to talk about the income gap, the so-called income back gap between the wealthy and the middle class that we're always hearing about and denial by many conservatives that it exists.
And if I have any luck, I'm gonna get to e-cigarettes.
Uh this though first, uh, this just cleared.
Obama's hitting back at Vladimir Putin saying, said this at the United Nations today, America is exceptional.
Oh wait.
I am exceptional, and I'm gonna rock it.
uh this one.
The president speaking about the terrible incident of the Navy yards last week, in which he talked about the American gun culture.
As somebody who lives in the middle of the country, here's how this story plays.
We understand that crackpots are going to do terrible things.
We don't understand how a Navy facility can be so unprotected.
There are naval personnel there.
This is an American installation.
How can you go in and just shoot all of those people in a government facility like that rather than worrying about the gun culture?
How about protecting our people, our employees, and our important institutions?
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