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Oct. 24, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:40
October 24, 2013, Thursday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of The Rush 24-7 Podcast.
Ladies and gentlemen, whatever you think you know, you don't know how bad it is.
You do not know.
I did not know.
Well, I suspect it.
You don't know how incompetent Obama is.
You really don't know.
This is this is breathtaking.
What has been learned recently by me and others.
Do you know, ladies and gentlemen, by the way, greetings in L. Rushbow here of the EIB network at 800-282-2882.
As was the case yesterday, a lot of stuff popping.
These these hearings they're going on this morning with the contractors of the website, well, blame them.
We did everything we could.
Blame them.
This is this is the root.
These hearings are the root of Obama's real incompetence.
It's breathtaking.
He can't even, I'll give you a little hint.
He can't even design a system that is supposed to fail.
It's just too good, folks.
But I had it was mentioned to me last week.
For those of us who take as long as we can to pay our taxes, October 15th was the extension filing date for 2012, and I dutifully was in there.
And uh my my accountant, who is almost afraid to be my accountant because he thinks he's going to get targeted too, just because his name's on my return.
He said, Look, you may not know this, but you know, you keep talking about these Obamacare fines.
If you if you don't buy a policy, do you know that the only under the law, and I had to go look it up, not that I didn't believe him, but he just never gets political with me.
He just he stays over there.
And no, no, he's not no no, he's not he doesn't live, he just he just is just there's a it's a professional relationship.
That's it's buddy long time ago.
Anyway, he said to me that the only according to the law, the only way that the government can collect the fine or penalty for you not buying insurance is if you are owed a tax refund.
If you do not owe a tax refund, they cannot go into your bank account or anywhere else and get that money.
So everybody.
Now the sad thing is that most people file their taxes to get a refund because they think they're screwing the government.
And they're not.
You're just you're giving the government all that money all that year.
But no, it's look at what what it what it means is is that it it can't work.
The whole point of this is the individual mandate.
The whole the guts of this are the mandate that you buy that that young, healthy people get screwed price-wise by being forced to buy insurance.
You've got to.
And in three or four years, if things don't change it, it's gonna be bad.
Uh and I'll tell you, by then, the regime is good.
If if this thing goes forward, it looks like it may not, but if it goes forward, these are gonna be the good old days.
Because right now with the website broken, these kids can't find out how badly they're gonna get screwed.
By kids, I mean, you know, 1824, 1830, because the site's screwed up.
Nobody can find out how well, although some people are.
I I know that we're gonna get to the hearings in a minute.
There's nothing nothing wrong, folks.
Did you know the site's working?
Everything's happening as it should be.
The only problem is the Republicans.
That's what I meant.
We're loaded here.
I'm I'm sorry to be hopscotching over the place.
I'm trying to do an hour's worth of content here in five minutes.
I really apologize.
I'm bursting at the seams here.
Anyway, the the the website not working, and therefore people losing their policies being dropped.
They don't know yet.
People really don't know how they're gonna get savaged price-wise on health insurance premiums.
And they're not gonna know that for a couple of three years once the fines catch up with the price.
The fine's always gonna be the first preference because it's so much cheaper than buying a policy.
Now you by the way, the whole point of this, Obamacare, is to fail and usher in single payer.
And as I say, Obama can't even manage to structure that right.
This is glaring here what's going on.
So point is that here, let me let me uh read this to you to stay on point.
Yeah, it's from the uh the joint tax committee.
They think for summary.
And to talk about the mandate here.
The penalty applies.
This is for not having insurance.
The penalty applies to any period.
The individual does not maintain minimum essential coverage.
And is determined monthly.
The penalty is assessed through the code, the tax code, and accounted for as an additional amount of federal tax owed.
So it's tax.
However, look at me.
However, it is not subject to the enforcement provisions of subtitle F of the code.
The use of liens and seizures, otherwise authorized for collection of taxes, does not apply to the collection of this penalty.
Noncompliance with the personal responsibility requirement to have health coverage is not subject to criminal or civil penalties under the code.
Interest does not accrue for failure to pay the fine in a timely manner.
Therefore, the only way that they can collect the penalty or the fine is by taking money from your refund.
If you are not owed a refund, they cannot get money from you.
They can't issue a lien.
They can't garnish your way.
They can't use any of the normal procedures available to them if you owe them money.
Even though the Supreme Court has said it's a tax.
So for those of us, I mean, folks, I'm in Fat City.
I'm in Fat City because I always structure to where I owe money.
Well, not entirely.
There have been years.
But if you structure your taxes so that you do not get a refund, you do not have to buy insurance and you do not have to pay a fine because they can't collect it from you if you don't have a refund due.
And that is just another nail in the coffin of Obamacare imploding on itself.
Now the regime, this is according to uh this is uh the CBS market watch, the regime will delay enforcement of the personal mandate, extending how long Americans may go uninsured before facing a penalty under all this is moot now.
If you do not get a tax refund, all this is moot.
Senate Democrats, Danabash CNN, we got it coming up in the audio sound bites.
Senate Democrats up for re-election unanimously want to delay the individual mandate till January 2015, after the election.
Yes.
You heard right, they want to delay the individual.
Now just last week, folks, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, me, anybody suggesting that the individual mandate be delayed, to be fair with the uh the the the corporate mandate.
We were what were we called?
Terrorists, the equivalent of the KKK, racist, crazy extremist kooks, mean spirited hate moners, bomb throwers, hostage takers, extortionists, Nazis.
Just don't this last week, just last week.
Those of us who reasonably said to the president who said he's willing to wish to listen to all offers.
Well, since the employer mandates been delayed for a year, let's even things out.
Let's let's delay the individual mandate for a year.
You're extortionists.
You're a hostage taking.
I'm not gonna sit here and negotiate with ransom demands, Obama said.
One week later, when elected Democrats up a re-election want to do it.
Now we're going to do it for the American people.
Oh, what do I mean by Obama's so incompetent he can't well that's easy.
Let me explain this to you.
We all know, and this is further evidence today.
We all know.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I've got sound bites from the hearings.
Just to sit tight.
I'm in the middle of something.
Jeez.
Trying here, folks.
I'm really trying to stay focused for you.
Like I am so excited to tell you things, and others are excited to hear me say things that they want it now.
But I gotta say it when I'm ready.
This is up tap now.
We've all known that this thing's designed to fail, to implode, to just create mass chaos and confusion.
So as to facilitate what?
Single payer.
So much chaos.
Part and parcel of this, you've got to take the private sector insurance industry out so that they are not an option when this thing bombs out.
And that's being done.
It is the point of my monologue yesterday was I mean that we've got an entire industry now, which by way of deceit and lies has been savaged.
They are canceling just two outfits canceled 460,000 policies in one week.
And the news isn't talking about that.
They're talking about this the hearings and stuff today.
We're not going to let that go.
But the fact is, in order to get the single payer, you have to remove all other options at the same time you're having Obamacare fail.
And when Obamacare fails, it has to fail.
And this is where Obama's screwing up.
And I love it.
I love it.
The whole idea is so this for the system to fail, not to work so that the left can come in and say single payer, single payer.
Here's the fix.
Let's just just everybody go to the government.
That's it.
The government will take care of everything.
We get the insurance companies out of this, and we'll get the states out of it, and we'll get the exchanges out of it, and we'll just go single payer.
Let's let the government do it after the all the other options have been eliminated.
Now, to pull that off, what do you need?
You have to design the failure.
Now, some of you might think something like this, this big, this encompassing, will fail on its own, and yeah, probably would.
But you still have to have hands on on the failure because you've got to make sure that when it fails, the right people get blamed.
And this is what Obama can't even do.
You have to to competently, in in a in a in an evil mastermind kind of way, design the failure so that it looks like it's the fault of who?
The insurance companies, the hospitals, the doctors, the pharmacies, and of course the Republicans.
Everybody except government.
Everybody but government must be blamed for it not working if government's going to be the solution.
But Obama, it uh apparently is too incompetent to even do that.
Obama has managed both to laugh.
I know it's not at the end of the day funny.
Obama has managed to design.
Pardon me, it's nipples now.
Not crying, I'm mirthful here.
Obama has designed a total bomb of a system.
And at the same time, what he's done, he's done it in such a way that the government is being blamed for it.
It's the government, well, it's healthcare.gov that's screwed up.
It's Obamacare that's screwed up.
It isn't the insurance companies being blamed for this.
It isn't the Republicans, it isn't the hospitals, it isn't the pharmacies, it isn't anybody.
It's the government, everybody, the news media, everybody dutifully falling in line here, say, I guess this, what can the government do to fix this?
What did the government do wrong here?
Why did the government do these contractors?
Why?
Oh, and I'm hearing a lot of people pick up my theme from from Tuesday about how could so many people let down an inspirational leader like Obama.
Why weren't people in there chugging to make him look good?
No, anyway.
So what Obama has done here, Obama has managed, he's accomplished.
The exact opposite of what he intended.
People are coming to the common sense conclusion that government can't do this.
So, in that sense, why then, when it fails, would anybody reasonably say, well, let's let the government do it?
Because the government is who's screwing this up.
And therein lies, I think a brilliantly conceived, flawlessly executed explanation of the just raging income, I mean incompetence of Obama.
You gotta design a failure.
You have to design the failure so that your enemies get the blame.
And with the media on his side, I mean, how could he fail here?
But he did.
And there are reasons, there are explanations for that.
Okay, take a break here while you digest all of that.
Sit tight, much more straight ahead, obviously, be right back.
Don't go away.
Hi, welcome back.
Great to have you here, folks.
Rush Limbaugh, already October 24th.
I I can't believe how rapidly the days are going by.
Now, make another observation here.
I want to build on the point here that Obama remember this traces back my my thinking on this, it traces back to it was in California dinner with a guy who said, Rush, let's let's stop going after Obama and the fact he's a liberal and a leftist and a socialist.
What about incompetence?
The guy's an absolute incompetent boob.
If you give him every benefit of the doubt, he's just a boob.
He's incompetent.
So that stuck with me.
And so here's Obama.
He has he he we know that it's not even arguable.
They want this to fail, they want single payer.
Obama said it, Pelosi Reed, they've all Hillary.
Clinton himself, they've all dreamed of this.
And they'll never be able to legislate it.
The American people wouldn't accept that if proposed and voted on.
But if it's the last resort to save something that's so screwed up, then yeah, they'll go for it.
But you have to screw it up first.
You have to design the screw up.
You have to design an absolute failure, and they've done that.
But the one thing they screwed up, in order for the government to be the outpost of solution and salvation, the blame for the screw up cannot go to government.
It's got to go to everybody else, doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, Republicans.
And everybody's blaming government.
Everybody's now saying government's too big, can't do it.
I mean, if if if the government can't handle 400,000 cases of the VA, well, how in the world are they going to handle a country full of health care?
People are asking these kinds of questions.
So the government, thanks to Obama's incompetence, does not look like the shining city on a hill of salvation here.
And I think this is another occasion where We need to thank Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee because were it not for them, the public would not even be aware of how much the Republicans, I put that in quotes, fought against Obamacare.
And I think this is crucially important now.
Within this context, Obamacare designed to fail, government is the salvation, but that won't work now because government is being seen as the problem and the blame and the incompetent player here.
One of the reasons that's happening is because Cruz and Lee fought this thing and identified for the public that the quote-unquote Republicans fought against this.
They are not part of it.
They don't.
Those two led that charge and lead that identity for the Republicans at a boys.
Hi, welcome back.
Let's go to the audio sound bites now.
The hearings today up on Capitol Hill with the um the uh joint committee looking into what happened here.
Well, not a joint committee, Republicans and Democrats, House Committee looking into the glitches and the problems of the website.
And the uh chairman and the ranking member give their opening statements, and then the next members in the leadership give their opening statements, while the guests and the targets are just sitting there at the witness table waiting, and everybody goes through the motions here, then they finally get to the questions for the witnesses.
During his open opening statement, a ranking member, the Democrat on this committee, is Henry Nostralitis Waxman, a Democrat from uh California.
And here's a portion of his opening remarks.
We have already documented a record of Republicans attempting to sabotage the Affordable Care Act, even by shutting down the government in order to try to repeal this law.
Republicans have not shown us that they are trying to make this law work so far.
If we want this law to work, we've got to make it right, we've got to fix it, not what the Republicans have been trying to do, mix it and repeal it.
We have documented a record of Republicans attempting to sabotage the Affordable Care Act even by shutting down the government.
In the midst of the system collapsing, in the midst of people unable to go online.
The Republicans have nothing to do with this law's existence.
Anyway, that's just a uh an example.
There were there were others on the committee, other Democrats, Frank Pallone, you'll hear in a moment coming in.
They're just all over the board here using the typical time-honored tactics, blaming the Republicans coming up with a conspiracy theories.
Um, at this hearing, all the contractors, the witnesses passed the buck, saying that their individual parts worked, but that the whole system didn't.
And they also said there was not a sufficient end to end beta testing period.
Now, that is unbelievable.
You've got three years, six hundred thirty-eight or whatever it is, million dollars, and they didn't beta test it.
They didn't test it at all.
And they had people who knew that it wasn't going to be.
Yeah, Waxman called it enormous success for first.
The first thing he said was, it's an enormous success.
And he cited statistics of people that are now have insurance who didn't, and he cited people who are paying much less than they ever did.
I mean, it was incredible.
It was one misstatement after another.
And it'll be played in California, low information voters out there will hear it, and they'll fall for it.
But the fact is, the real life is that it's a bomb.
And it's it's a bomb so that all of these Democrats who are up for re-election, Democrat Senators, every one of them up for re-election next year wants a one-year delay in the uh in the individual mandate.
By the way, Obama has extended the Obama.
This is the New York Times, I think, uh is extended the Obamacare enrollment period by six weeks.
Which means he's arbitrarily changing the law again.
New York Times calls it a tweak.
But remember when uh when Ted Cruz and Mike Lee tried to change the law of the land?
That was called terrorism, hostage taking, treason, uh demanding a ransom or some such thing.
When Obama does it, it's just a tweak.
He just arbitrarily is extending the enrollment period six weeks.
He can't do that, but he's doing it.
So here's a montage of the contractors passing the buck and and then saying that there was no integrated beta testing, meaning after each individual contractor set his area up, they didn't see if any of it worked together.
That's not their C and S is what's yeah, it's it's always somebody else's fault.
The problem is they can't blame this on the Republicans.
That's where this is falling apart.
They can't blame this on the Republicans.
Here it is.
Here's what we saw.
Isn't that a beta test?
Wouldn't it put the different components together and see if the system worked?
So here's what we saw.
We didn't see the full kind of integrated end-to-end system testing that you're talking about.
Why not?
Until the couple of days uh leading up to the launch.
Shouldn't we have had that?
Ideally, yes.
Ideally, yes.
Wouldn't any other system, corporate entity rolling out something would test to see if it worked before it went out into the field?
Yes.
Now again, just raised questions about how in the world something like this happens.
And I I remember on um on Tuesday, uh it really is important.
I mean, you because it it exposes so many things about Obama that are not true.
You know that if you are a leader of people in a business or in any endeavor, and if you're charismatic, dynamic, and if you're really passionate about something, and they all know you really want it and they love you, and they love working for you, they want you to look good, they want to look good in the process.
They believe it like you do.
You want it, they'll go over the hill for you.
They'll work 24 hours straight for you, they'll do whatever it takes to get it right and make it the best.
Why wasn't that happening here?
We've got supposedly the most messianic uh inspirational, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of a politician ever in Barack Obama.
And this is the big deal.
I mean, this is the cat's me out.
This is the PSD resistance.
Where were all these people making sure it worked for Obama?
Where were all these people doing it for Obama?
Where were all these people doing it for the country?
Where were all these people doing it for the party?
Where were all these people doing it for the cause?
Nobody was.
And that comes from the top, and I'm telling you, Obama still to this day doesn't care about any of this because this isn't what the big deal is to him.
This is just, you know, a bump in the road on the way.
This doesn't matter to anything.
He's a forward thinker.
He's already three, four years down the line while we muddle our way through this.
And in Obama's life, everything did get taken care of.
Everything got done.
Every school he wanted in, he got in.
He did a grade, he got it.
Law review got it.
President law review, got it.
Whatever, you know, Obama's way has been paved.
He's got a lifetime of expectation.
It's all gonna work out.
Uh Kathleen take care of it, whoever, it'll work somehow, somewhere, someday it'll end up working.
I don't care what happens between now and then, it'll work.
That's his attitude.
So he goes out and says you're gonna keep your doctor.
No, it doesn't matter because in the end you're not gonna be able to anyway, but whatever it takes to keep you in line, premiums come down $2,500.
He may actually be saying things he wishes he could make happen, and by force of will, because he wants it to it will, maybe that's his makeup, I don't know, but I'm I'm telling you all of this even now.
The only reason he cares about it is because image, optics.
That's why he dumped uh jumped both feet today into immigration reform and amnesty.
I mean, full vote.
Which we'll get to in due course.
Frank Pallone, Democrat member of Congress, uh, New Jersey, lost it numerous times in the hearings uh with Republicans who were daring to ask questions about the competence of the regime.
Pallone ended up calling the hearings today a monkey court.
So once again, here we have my Republican colleagues trying to scare everybody.
No, I will not yield to this monkey court or whatever this thing.
This is not a monkey court.
Do whatever you want.
I'm not yielding.
That's Frank Pallone, admirable person from uh from the monkey court.
And you imagine if a Republican had referred to a congressional committee as a monkey court.
In the Obama age, can you can you imagine what would have everybody would have forgotten the controversy over the Washington Redskins, and they would have been full bore into this monkey court business.
And they'd have dragged Howard Cosell out of the grave to comment on it and everything else.
Oops, clock time.
Take a break, folks.
We must do that, but we'll continue before you know it, so sit tight.
We're coming right back.
And we're back.
Rushland bought 800 282-2882.
I want to take you back.
Last Friday.
Listen to something I said on this program.
The truth of the matter is that fighting Obamacare, trying to defund it or delay it, whichever, and engaging in the shutdown, heightened attention to the miserable failure Obamacare in this rollout is.
And I'm going to tell you something, folks.
I got an Obamacare stack that I'm going to get into in the program today.
And I wouldn't be surprised, I'm not going to predict this, but I wouldn't be surprised if before the end of the year.
Well, I mean, wait till you hear.
I think they're going to have to do something before the end of the year to officially delay this, otherwise it's going to cream them.
It is that bad.
And there is nothing that Cruz or Mike Lee or anybody else in the Tea Party did to cover that up.
It was not a strategical error in the slightest.
Let me reemphasize something here.
And I said it a moment ago.
I I think the truth that Ted Cruz and Mike Lee fighting this thing, trying to defund it, delay it, whatever.
Um, engaging in the shutdown.
I think all of that helped bring attention to the miserable failure Obamacare is.
And the fact that they did it so bravely, loudly, consistently, courageously has also served another purpose.
It has given the impression the Republican Party has nothing to do with it.
The Republican Party, therefore, can't be blamed with part of this failure here because they've got nothing to do with it.
The Republican Party, because of Cruz and Lee, is now seen by low information voters as not wanting any part of this and as being right.
That it should be delayed, that it should be defunded, that it should be held off on for a while.
And while they were doing this, their own party was trying to sabotage them.
Their own party was trying to malign them and impugn them.
But they persevered, and in the process, the entire Republican Party is now going to benefit from what they did in this.
So it was last Friday that I, El Rushbow, your beloved host, said with uh not ontological Certitude, but pretty close to it that this such a bomb that they're gonna have to before the end of the year do something to hold this off in order to prevent utter collapse.
That was last Friday.
Let's go now to last night, the NBC Nightly News.
Brian Williams with correspondent Tom Costello reporting about the regime's decision to delay the deadline for the mandate.
Breaking news out of Washington after the debacle on the internet surrounding the rollout of Obamacare, we have learned tonight that because of these staggering computer problems, because of the millions of Americans who have tried to line up coverage but have been turned away instead.
The administration now intends to slide the deadline for the so-called individual mandate for health care coverage.
Details of this are still coming into us.
We want to begin with NBC's Tom Costello, who's been covering it all since day one.
He's in our DC newsroom tonight.
Tom, good evening.
Hi, Brian.
The White House tells NBC News it plans to move the deadline for individuals to be required to buy health insurance by as much as six weeks.
Yes.
That's what the New York Times is calling a tweak.
Obama just arbitrarily, well, we're going to delay that deadline for individuals required to have insurance by six weeks.
But that's not gonna matter.
It can't fix this in six weeks.
And now you've got every Democrat senator up for re-election who wants a full year delay of the individual mandate until January 15.
That's after the 2014 elections.
Here's Joe Manchin last night on the O'Baxter factor on the Fox News Channel.
What we've said is it should be a transition year for one year.
There should be no fines.
And let's work through the problems.
We've got a lot of problems.
They've been identified.
I think everybody's recognized them.
Let's fix it.
Ours has a certainty of time.
January 1, 2015, no fines whatsoever.
Transition in, work out the kinks.
Let's fix this thing.
Right on, dude, right on.
Let's fix it.
Let's fix it.
Let's go, team.
Let's fix it.
Let's delay it till January of 2015.
The longer the individual I want to whisper this.
I don't want you to tell anybody, because if this gets out, the individual mandate is the guts.
If that goes, the whole thing goes.
But don't tell, like I don't want Obama to know that.
Because if Obama hears that, he won't delay it.
And he'll tell these senators to take a hike.
So just keep that between you and me.
But don't doubt me.
Well, I mean, if it stands to reason, if the law requires you to have insurance, and then doesn't.
Bye bye Obamacare.
So I have time here.
Uh-da-da-da-da-da-da.
Yeah, Bob in Charlotte, North Carolina.
I'm gonna grab a quick phone call here so I can say that I took a call the first hour.
Bob and Charlotte, great to have you, sir.
Hi.
Yes, sir.
Glad to talk to you.
Listen, you talked earlier about the invincibles.
They're not the only ones looking at the uh not buying insurance, but also seniors who are in good health and within a year of getting Medicare.
Yeah.
Uh some of us have gotten bills that are increasing by almost a thousand dollars a month.
And if you're reasonably healthy and you can go online and get your prescriptions, go to your doctor now while you're on you're still on a plan.
You can get your prescriptions written to cover you up until that time that you get on Medicare.
And in our case, it's a series of twelve thousand dollars.
You mean your costs are going up out there.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah, all over North Carolina.
We've got a hundred and sixty thousand people who have gotten these letters.
Yeah, I know.
But at least at least you haven't been canceled yet.
Well, not me, it's her.
Uh my wife.
It's it's uh I'm on Medicare.
Oh, uh if anybody wants to see something, uh you heard of Sivitas in North Carolina?
They're posting people's articles and copies of the letters from the insurance companies.
For those people who don't believe it.
Well, I've got one.
I have, I've got a copy of a uh a letter that uh a female insurance agent wrote.
Uh one of the things you're talking about, and sh I I've got a she she takes the Republicans to task for not standing up and fighting this thing.
It is such a disaster, and she wants to where the hell the Republican Party has been in not trying to stop this and oppose this.
It's really good.
Okay, Bob, I appreciate it.
We'll be back, my friends.
Don't go anywhere.
Folks, I think in these states that did not set up that did not they have their own exchanges and go with the government.
I think a lot of the media reporting of glitches is being used to cover up the fact nobody's signing up, nobody signed up in New York.
They've got their own exchange.
A lot of states didn't go into healthcare.gov and nobody signing up.
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