All Episodes
Previous Next
Oct. 4, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:53
October 4, 2013, Friday, Hour #1
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Greetings, my friends, and welcome.
I thought the day would never get here.
It is Friday, my friends, and let's hit it.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's Open Line Friday.
Open Line Friday.
It's the rebob.
It signals a bunch of things.
Signals the end of the week.
Really, that's about all it signals.
It's the end of the week.
That's the big deal.
And we screen the calls a little looser.
Now, that's it.
Happy to have you with us.
My friends, the telephone number, if you want to be on the program, is excuse me, just a second.
Got a little tickle in the throat.
I hope that doesn't mean a cold is coming.
I really.
It can't, no, because I don't feel anything like it.
800-282-2882 and the email address ilrushbow at eibnet.com.
There was no jobs report today because a shutdown and no jobs report.
What's an economist to do?
The AP wringing their hands here.
Latest victims of the government's partial shutdown, policy wonks, politicians, TV talking hids losing their monthly opportunity to dissect the jobs report issued by the Department of Labor, the Bureau of Labor stats.
The ritual unfolds every month.
The jobs report comes out.
Wall Street panics or exults.
Political advocates spin.
There isn't one.
Also, I think, ladies and gentlemen, evidence that what I said yesterday is actually the case.
I think the Democrats are losing this.
And isn't it true out there that Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul were caught on an open mic actually discussing amongst themselves that they're winning?
That we are winning.
Let me grab.
Let's see what his number is that.
I just saw it.
Yeah, grabs on by number seven.
This is Wednesday night in Paducah, Kentucky, on WPSD-TV, their website.
Channel 6, the NBC affiliate.
At least it was when I was growing up.
And they posted video of an exchange between Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul.
It was recorded while McConnell was waiting to do an interview with the station.
WPSD-TV Channel 6.
And here is a portion of what that sounded like.
Can you have a second?
I'm all wired up here.
I just did CNN.
I just go over and over again.
We're willing to compromise.
We're willing to negotiate.
I don't think they poll tested.
We won't negotiate.
I think it's awful for them to say that over and over again.
Yeah, I do too.
And I just came back from that two-hour meeting with him.
And that was basically the same view, probably as it was.
I think if we keep saying we wanted to defund it, we fought for that.
But now we're willing to compromise on this.
I think, well, I know we don't want to be here, but we're going to win this, I think.
We're going to win this, I think.
We're going to win this.
You know, Obama cancel the Asia trip.
I want to know who in the White House had the brains on that.
Because that was a smart move.
I mean, if he goes over there and starts negotiating with all those people at the Chikoms and whoever else he was going to meet with and refuses to negotiate with the Republicans, I mean, don't forget, this is a guy that was elected because he was going to end all of this, folks.
I'm telling you, I know it's hard for you to believe if you just look at the media every day.
It's hard to believe because you look at the media and the Republicans just hammered and hammered.
My gosh, it's just relentless.
But I'm telling you, Denji Harry apologized for his nasty tone on the Senate floor.
Harry Reid delivered a striking meacopa on the Senate floor today as he opened a chamber saying he and his colleagues have simply gotten too personal and nasty in their floor debates.
I don't think he apologized for not caring about the lives of kids with cancer, but I'm telling you that you don't see this.
You don't think these people ever apologize for their language or even or their tone.
I'm telling you, it's coming back to bite them.
And don't forget, folks, it's crucially important.
Barack Obama was elected because he was going to end all of this.
No matter who was to blame for the bickering, Obama was a new kind of politician.
Obama was going to end it.
Obama was going to bring unity and comedy and universal respect and get rid of all the old politics and bring on the new politics.
And everybody just gets along, remember?
And it's gotten worse than many people can remember it ever being, given their ages.
So here's Obama.
He's ready to fly off over to Asia for another confab.
But he says, I can't go.
It's just too important for me to stay.
We've got the shutdown.
We've got the debt limit coming.
This is not the first time he's canceled an Asia trip.
He canceled an Asia trip to hang in while Obamacare was being voted on.
And for another reason, the Asians may be getting a complex because he bugs out on them so much.
But somebody at the White House had some brains because if he'd have gone ahead with this trip and had been seen negotiating with those guys, the Chikoms and whoever else he was going to meet, but refuses to sit down and talk to the Republicans, who he's characterizing in very disparaging terms, it would not have looked good.
And the optics are what these people care about.
Have you seen, speaking of optics, have you seen the barbed wire they have put up around the World War II memorial to keep people out?
Folks, this is this is oh, I just had it here.
What did I do?
It's amazing.
I just had the picture of it here.
Maybe it's something to do with.
No, I can't find it.
But they did.
There's barbed wire in the fencing around the World War II memorial.
I wonder if the regime ever thought about doing something like that on the border.
Look at the lengths that the regime is willing to go to to keep World War II veterans and anybody else from seeing their memorial.
Barbed wire fence, but no, we can't do anything like that on the border.
Oh, and Arizona.
This is interesting too.
State of Arizona has offered to open the Grand Canyon.
And the regime said no.
And the AP story on this, the snark for these Republicans, is unbelievable.
Two Republican senators, it's McCain.
Maybe it's a representative, but somebody elected Republicans want to open the Grand Canyon.
And the AP story is just snarky as it can be about these people.
Here's that picture.
Here it is.
World War II Memorial Barricade wired shut on Tuesday.
Seven National Park Service employees were seen erecting and tending to a barricade around the World War II memorial in Washington.
A couple hours later, the veterans arrived and so forth and so on.
It's barbed wire.
You have to donate wire cutters to the vets if they're to get in to their memorial.
I don't know.
This is looking for the Arizona story now because I want to read the snark.
What did I do with this?
You know what's happened here?
None of this stuff I'm talking about did I intend to lead with.
And it's the first thing that hit my mind when the program started.
It's all buried in the stack, and I can't find it.
And it just looks horrible.
I know it just absolutely looks horrible.
I had it right here.
Well, anyway, I'll find it during the break.
I'm not going to waste precious broadcast moments going through a bunch of loose pieces of paper here.
But this AP story, what in the world?
Why does the regime care if the state of Arizona wants to spend the money to open the Grand Canyon?
Why?
The very idea that the regime wants to keep it shut down ought to tell you what the objective here is.
They are trying to cause as much discomfort, inconvenience, in some cases, pain as they can because they know that their compatriots in the media are going to try to get away with blaming the Republicans for this.
And lo and behold, here you have some Republicans in Arizona who want to use state money to open the Grand Canyon, and they are destroyed by the AP.
Well, not destroyed, but the snark is unmistakable.
Now, I have another AP story.
This, you talk about, you talk about bleeding heart, tug your heartstrings.
Oh my gosh, I don't know if I can finish the day story.
I have it here for you from Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Shutdown slash feeding children.
Subhead, shutdown jeopardizes nutrition program for poor.
Folks, this is so over the top.
I laugh at this.
I laugh at it and I get angry, of course, but I laugh at this.
But this is the kind of thing that most people wouldn't tell you what they really think about it.
That's never stopped me.
Jacob Quick is a fat and happy four-month-old with a big and expensive appetite.
How do they know he's happy?
He's four months old.
He can't tell anybody how he feels.
When you were four-month-old, do you remember being happy or sad or whatever?
Do you remember?
He smiles.
It could be indigestion.
It could be gas.
Could be laughing at his mother.
If he's fat, is his mother fat?
Who knows what the kid's smiling about?
Like millions of other poor women, Jacob Quick's mother relies on federal WIC money to pay for infant formula, women, infants, and children.
And that aid, of course, is now jeopardized by the shutdown.
Pennsylvania and other states say that they can operate WIC at least through the end of October, easing fears among officials that it would run out of money within days.
Advocates and others worry what will happen if the shutdown drags on beyond that.
What's going to happen to my baby? asked Jacob's mother, Sierra Schoeneberger, as she fed him a bottle of formula bought with her WIC voucher.
Can I read that sentence to you again here, folks?
What's going to happen to my baby? Asked Fat Jacob's mother.
AP described him as a happy fat four-month-old, so I'm just trying to keep you people.
You know, you can't read this.
I'm reading it to you.
I want to make sure you remember the characters here.
Who is going to feed my baby? Asked Fat Jacob's mother, Sierra Schoenberger, as she fed him a bottle of formula bought with her WIC voucher.
Am I going to have to feed him regular milk or am I going to have to call a scrounge up the little bit of change I do have for formula or even baby food?
Hey, have you ever tried 911 to see if it delivers some McNuggets?
What am I going to feed my baby?
What's going to happen to my...
How about the baby daddy?
The baby daddy in the equation here?
Wick, the women, infants and children's program, serves nearly 9 million mothers.
Serves.
Serves nearly 9 million mothers and young children, providing what advocates say is vital nutrition that poor families might otherwise be unable to afford.
They can afford babies.
They can't afford the nutrition, but they can afford the babies.
That's how it works, see?
Well, I'm just reading this.
I'm just sharing with you.
If you were sitting here with me and we're reading the paper together, reading the wires, this is how I'd be reacting to it.
That's all I'm doing here.
Vital nutrition that poor families might otherwise be unable to afford.
You can afford the babies, but not the nutrition.
Schoeneberger, for example, said her son, that's Fat Jacob, the four-month-old happy kid, goes through about $40 worth of formula a week.
It's like a car payment, said the unemployed mother of three.
So feeding her son is the equivalent to her of a car payment.
And again, I'm sitting here, where is Dada?
You know, where's the baby daddy?
I doubt that he's working at the car wash.
The special supplemental nutrition program for women, infants, and children, better known as WIC, supplies low-income women with checks or debit cards that can be used for infant formula and cereal, fruits and vegetables, dairy items, and other healthy food.
WIC also provides breastfeeding support and nutrition classes.
Poor women with children under five are eligible.
Right, we got 9 million of them.
Breastfeeding support.
What is that?
A brazier?
What's breastfeeding support?
Your mother, what would you think of the—if you're on WIC and you need breastfeeding support, what would you ask for?
What would you—oh, it's—oh, it's training in how to do it.
I guess that means breastfeeding support.
No, there's more.
It's not just that simple, Mr. Snerdley.
You don't just hold the baby up to the breast and then it feeds.
That's not, apparently, it's much more complicated than that because these women need breastfeeding support from WIC.
Anyway, just before the government shutdown, the U.S. Department of Agriculture had warned that states would run out of WIC money after a week or so.
Now the agency says that WIC should be able to provide benefits in late October with states using $100 million in federal contingency money released Wednesday and $280 million in unspent funds from the last budget year.
Doesn't sound like they got a budget problem to me.
Sounds like they're running a surplus here at WIC.
If you ask me.
Now, if the aid dries up, desperate moms, that's what it says here, the AP story, desperate moms.
You ever seen a desperate mom get out of the way?
It's like, well, desperate moms will probably dilute their baby's formula with water to make it last longer.
Or simply give them water or milk, said the Reverend Douglas Greenaway, the head of the National Wick Association Advocacy Group.
Pediatricians say that children under one should not drink cow's milk because they can develop iron deficiency anemia.
That must be where the breastfeeding support comes in.
These mothers have trust and confidence in this program, and that trust and confidence has been shaken by Congress, said Reverend Greenaway.
Isn't it just unconscionable?
No, Reverend, that's not what's unconscionable.
He's trying to tell us that the WIC mothers trust the program, but their trust and confidence has been shaken by Congress.
Danielle Brent, 22, single mother of three, 22, single mother of three, gets $200 a month in vouchers for food and formula for her two children and a baby.
She being doubly hit hard by the shutdown.
She's a contract worker for the FAA who catalogs records for aircraft certification, and she has been furloughed.
Again, where's daddy?
Okay, folks, I'm major league embarrassed here.
There is no barbed wire at the World War II Veterans Memorial.
Somebody sent me a story with the headline, World War II Memorial Barricade Wired Shut with a picture of barbed wire.
That's what it looks like.
And I assumed that there was barbed wire, and there isn't.
The gate has one wire on it.
The gate is wired shut, but there is no barbed wire at the World War II Memorial.
Now make sure everybody hears this.
I'm doing this correction loud and clear.
I was misled by looking at the optics.
Somebody put a picture to a story that doesn't exist.
And even I, El Rushbo, got fooled and tricked by it.
Anyway, sit down.
We're not through with the story of the WIC ladies.
Open Line Friday, El Rushbo behind the golden EIB microphone.
Now, cutting to the end, this WIC story, women, infants, and children story, goes on and on.
It prints out to two pages.
And it's a Psalm story.
And it's all the pain and the suffering that might happen in a month because of the shutdown.
And the implication, of course, is that it's the Republicans who hate children.
Now, if you go ask Harry Reid about this, Harry, there's a bunch of women and babies in the WIC program that might lose formula at the end of the month.
He would likely say, why should I care about that?
I got 1,100 people at Nellis Air Force Base to worry about.
But the end of the story quotes a woman, Patricia Jones in New Jersey.
He says she's worried about losing her WIC assistants.
You're affecting families that haven't done anything to you, she said.
She's a 34-year-old mother of five.
Because of the shutdown, she was turned away from the Social Security Administration office in Newark.
You're affecting families that haven't done anything to you.
Why are you doing this to us?
We haven't done anything to you.
We haven't hurt you.
Five children, mother of five, age 34.
Now, I know there are a bunch of you leftists in the audience.
Well, what would you do?
Rush, I mean, come on now.
These women exist and their kids are alive.
And what would you do?
Just freeze them out?
No, no, no.
But you use them as an object lesson.
This is not the kind of country we want.
This is not the kind of life we want for these people.
We don't want life like this.
You people on the left tolerate this.
And you come up with programs that actually maintain this.
You come up with programs that sustain this kind of lifestyle for people.
You've become the daddy.
Except none of you take personal responsibility.
You use everybody else's taxpayer money and you credit yourselves for having compassion and you're destroying lives.
You're not helping anybody here.
You're not promoting anybody by creating policies that essentially promote this kind of behavior.
I mean, the sad thing is liberals love this kind of stuff.
This is what rips my heart out.
They love this kind of stuff because this is where they derive their power.
And it's people like this.
Liberals able to claim they're the ones that have compassion.
They're the ones with big hearts.
They're the ones who care.
Really?
These women all sound miserable to me.
These women sound scared to death to me.
These women don't sound like they have any concept of self-reliance.
These mothers don't sound like they have a chance to me.
They're scared to death that whatever they've got is going to be taken away from them.
They haven't the foggiest idea what to do if that were to happen.
I think in this country, that's an absolute outrage.
And I don't applaud leftists, and I don't grant them automatic compassion simply because they're willing to tolerate this all for their own personal political benefit.
That's what's sick about it.
And somebody comes along and actually wants to suggest doing something about this and they get attacked and ripped to shreds.
Do you realize that this program, folks, the WIC program, Women, Infant and Children Program, serves 53% of all babies born in this country?
That is just a stunning statistic to me.
And it is quite telling.
And by definition, we're talking single mothers here, are we not?
We know that in the African-American community, 73% of all births are out of wedlock.
That's not doing anybody any good.
Well, Mr. Limbaugh, they're going to have sex.
You can't stop it.
Well, you know, the attitude you people on the left have had, this laissez-faire attitude and so forth, compassion is the last thing you people have, and it's the last thing you people are exhibiting on the left.
This is almost a life of torture these people are living.
Scared to death that they're not even a baby formula?
Don't know what to do.
If a government program runs dry, there's no compassion in that.
Not in this country.
And because it happens to minorities, you get a double whammy.
You get to claim great compassion and the fact that you're not racist because you're willing to sit there and say you're helping.
You're not helping.
That's the dirty little secret.
This is not helping these.
Do you think I'm wrong about this, Mr.?
I don't think this is helping anybody.
I mean, temporarily, yeah, they're able to babies.
But this is not, this is no way to live, and it isn't necessary in this country.
That's the thing that irritates me.
Anyway, moving on, Dusty Baker, the manager of the Cincinnati Shreds, has been fired.
But that's not the story.
He has been fired and has blamed racists who hate Obama.
Well, that's the upshot here from CBS Sports.
It hurts.
It hurts big time, Dusty Baker said.
It's a double whammy being swept out of the playoffs, and then two days later, this.
It wasn't all about one conversation, of course.
Baker quite likely started to sense that maybe his time was up in Cincinnati.
That's why he said what he said.
He said, the last couple of weeks, I've been getting a rash of hate mail, racial mail, he said.
Maybe it is time to go.
This is really ugly.
All sorts of references to Barack Obama.
So now I know where they're coming from.
I don't know.
Maybe people are mad at him, so they don't like the idea of blacks in authority.
And of course, Dusty Baker, who's the manager of the Reds, is the man in authority.
And so his people are mad at Obama.
They're racist aimed at Obama, and he felt the heat.
When I go to the audio sound bites, this is a couple of really meaningful things to me.
But first, last night on NPR, all things considered, I haven't heard this.
I read the transcript of it.
I'm not quite certain just reading the transcript what the point here is.
It's a portion of the report yesterday on NPR, National Public Radio, and the All Things Considered show.
Their correspondent is Don Gagne, and he's talking about Fox News and me supporting the government shutdown.
No surprise that the single loudest media voice defending conservative Republicans on the shutdown has been Fox News Channel.
At FoxNews.com on day one of the shutdown, story after story referred to it as the government slim down.
On the web and on cable, Fox affixes the blame on the president.
At the same time, there's a clear effort to downplay the impact.
And there's talk radio.
Rush Limbaugh has said the world didn't end because of the government shutdown.
Well, did it?
How in the world does that make news?
And Rush Limbaugh said the world didn't end because of the government shutdown.
Did it?
And I missed it?
How in the world is that news?
Maybe they're mad that the world didn't end.
Maybe they're mad that I pointed out the world didn't end.
That has to be what it is.
They want people to think the world is ending or could.
Just like the sequester, just like Y2K, just like the financial crisis in 08.
Up next, C-SPAN Washington Journal this morning, the anchor Pete Slin spoke with the publisher of National Review, Jack Fowler.
And the subject was what National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr. might think about the Tea Party.
Now, I want to preface this when those of you listening to the program know very well how respected Mr. Buckley was in my eyes.
He was one of my heroes and idols.
And it was a dream come true to be able to meet him and to become his friend.
And I've recounted many stories, times that we spent together.
And the first time that I did meet him at his apartment, his home, on Park Avenue in Manhattan.
And the first time I ever heard a story about Buckley commenting on me shortly after my program began, I must have been three years into it, so it'd be 1991.
And the story was that Buckley was in some city making a speech.
And in the QA section of the speech, somebody asked him, Have you heard this new guy on the radio, Rush Limbaugh?
What do you think of him?
And I don't remember verbatim Mr. Buckley's answer, but it was in the vein of, yeah, let me take you here over to a corner where nobody can hear us.
Yeah, I like him.
And it was a classy way for Buckley to answer the question.
And it's so different today than it was back then.
If Buckley, that's 1991.
Now, remember, 1988, this program starts, and there isn't any national conservative media.
I mean, national review, probably the closest thing to it, a magazine.
There certainly wasn't any broadcast national conservative media.
And so here I storm in, and nobody knew who I was.
I'd not networked.
I had not gotten to know anybody.
I'm just some guy on the radio that's worked all over the country and got a break when I was in Sacramento, end up in New York.
Nobody had never heard of me.
No achievements prior to this of note.
There's no reason they should have heard of me.
Here I come storming out of the gates, and I'm getting all this attention paid to me.
And yet, here these people have been in the so-called conservative movement for years, and they're laboring away in the basements doing their research and writing.
And if they're fortunate, they get published.
They're not making a whole lot of money, and here I come.
And Buckley embraced me and brought me into his world to a degree.
That wouldn't happen today.
I guess it's natural.
It's human nature.
This is one of the reasons I value what happened so much.
If people say, Rush, who's going to be the next you?
There won't be one.
If there was, if out of the blue some really hot shot, nobody ever heard of him before, a conservative popped up, the rest of the conservative media would try to eat the person up and destroy him because it's gotten so competitive now in conservative media.
And that's one of the things I always really consciously appreciated about Buckley was it wasn't a competitive thing for him.
He welcomed anybody into the so-called conservative movement.
And if they needed a boost, he provided it to them with whatever he could do.
And he had a lot of clout within certain areas, particularly in the highbrow literary conservative movement.
He had a lot of impact.
And if you had Buckley's stamp of approval or imprimatur, that was a big, big deal.
These kinds of things don't happen now.
I guess one way of saying it, there's maybe even still to this day a competition underway within the conservative movement for who is going to be the next Buckley.
And other people don't think he was that big a deal to begin with.
It runs the gamut.
Anyway, that sets up a couple of soundbites because Jack Fowler, publisher of the magazine, was asked, what would Buckley think of the Tea Party?
Because what they're trying to do is discredit the Tea Party by hanging Mr. Conservative icon.
He would have hated it.
That's what they're hoping Fowler says.
And rest assured, it's not.
I love how liberal.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Friday, spot break.
Spot break.
We'll do it.
Okay, Cease Man, Washington Journal this morning, Peter Slending Anchor speaking to Jack Fowler, the publisher of National Review.
He says, I'm sure you remember this editorial from the New York Times.
December of 2012, where have you gone?
Bill Buckley, quote, the 1960s, Buckley, largely through his position at National Review, displayed political courage and sanity by taking on the John Birch Society, an influential anti-communist group whose members saw conspiracies everywhere they looked.
Fast forward half a century, the modern-day Birchers are the Tea Party.
This guy's quoting a New York Times piece from last year.
Fast forward half a century, modern-day Birchers are the Tea Party.
By loudly espousing extreme rhetoric yet holding untenable beliefs, they have run virtually unchallenged by the Republican leader.
This is how the Tea Party's deal.
This is an outrage.
There's the Tea Party, nothing at all in common with the John Birch Society.
Nothing.
But that's what the left thinks of it.
And so here comes Jack Fowler, the publisher of National Review, and they, come on, Jack.
Come on.
Just tell him.
Buckley would have, he would have, he would have disowned a Tea Party just like he did the Birchers.
Right, Jack?
Right?
I love how liberals claim Bill Buckley and try to use him as a cudgel.
One of his most favorite people in the world was Rush Limbaugh.
They were very close, and he loved Rush and loved what Rush did, and the feeling was mutual.
The second thing related to the Tea Party is: this is the same Bill Buckley who was famous for saying he'd rather be governed by the first 5,000 names in the Boston Telephone Directory than the faculty of Harvard.
He had great faith in the quote-unquote common man as opposed to taking guidance from the establishment.
I think that editorial is quite off the mark.
Right on the money, it's off the mark.
The Birch Society never, I mean, the Tea Party has nothing whatsoever.
But this is how, you know, to the New York liberal establishment, Buckley was Mr. Conservative.
Use him to disparage the Tea Party.
No, I don't have time for the next bite.
I've got two Buckley bites that'll illustrate.
They are from ones from 1965, both actually from 1965 on Meet the Press.
But in 1965, Buckley ran against the Republican Party as a conservative.
And he went on to Meet the Press to explain why.
And the people saying Buckley would be embarrassed by Ted Cruz.
And that simply isn't true.
And it represents there are people on the right who are trying to make that connection.
Buckley, he wouldn't approve of a Tea Party.
Ted Cruz, he'd be embarrassed.
No.
If he wasn't embarrassed by me, and he wasn't, he wouldn't be embarrassed by Ted Cruz.
Far from it.
But this is just another indication of just how frightened of you they all remain, folks.
You and the Tea Party.
Don't think for a moment you're losing anything here.
Be right back.
By the way, folks, this editorial in the New York Times that excoriates the Tea Party and refers to them as extreme and compares them to the John Burr Society was written by a Republican.
David Welch, a former research director for the Republican National Committee, wrote it last year in 2012.
▲
Export Selection