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Dec. 11, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:44
December 11, 2013, Wednesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of The Rush 24 7 Podcast.
Come on, Friday, it's 35 seconds.
You gotta be in there at 30.
Otherwise the audience is gonna think something's wrong.
I'm just talking to the backup broadcast engineer.
Greetings, folks, and welcome to the EIB network, Rush Limbaugh, rearing and ready to go already.
The middle of the week Wednesday.
Great to have you here, folks.
Telephone number if you want to be on the program is 800-282-288-2.
And the email address, El Rushbaugh at EIBNet.com.
You think Obama's upset that he didn't win the man of the year award from time?
I mean, there nobody outdoes him in anti-capitalism.
And and and to lose to a guy who's pro-life, and and guy, it's gonna be a huge insult to Obama.
In case you haven't heard, Pope Francis was named the uh uh Man of the Year by Time magazine.
I'm just wondering if if I folks, if I gave a speech on anti-capitalism, do you think I could be named person of the year by time magazine?
If I didn't change my view, if I if I remained anti-abortion, if I remained anti-gay marriage, well, I the Pope certainly is.
I mean, you realize what happened here.
This is this is phenomenal.
I can't tell you the number of people, I don't frankly believe this.
I can't tell you the number of people who have gotten hold of me today who think the Pope was named Man of the Year because of me.
That the media decided they hated me more than the Pope.
That Time magazine hated me more than the Pope, and and therefore it was just a it was a thumb in my eye.
Now I don't, I'm not a narcissist, and I don't think everything's about me, but I can't say the number of people who have sent me uh notes asking me if you realize you made this happen.
If you had not said a word about this, they would have picked somebody else like Snowden or um take your pick.
But but who knows, uh, ladies and gentlemen.
Uh I I actually think it was going to be Miley Cyrus until the uh until the Pope came along with his anti-capitalist rant.
But there are people, I'm telling you, they think that I should be the co-recipient that nobody would have even noticed what the Pope had written about capitalism if it hadn't been for me.
But I don't think that uh, ladies and gentlemen.
Have you seen, are you aware of the controversy that that selfie Obama took of himself and and the uh what I I can never remember that the Prime Minister of Denmark is that is that Prime Minister of Denmark and and David Cameron, and there's more than one photo.
I mean, there are this guy, folks.
Look at we gotta be up front here.
There is no question Obama was, I mean, he was just enjoying whatever was going on between the two of them.
And he's taking, he took a selfie in the middle of the ceremony honoring Nelson Mandela.
And in all of the pictures, Michelle is not looking pleased, not involved, not engaged, not looking happy.
And in fact, in the series of photos that have been taken, Obama gets up to leave to go make his speech, and when he comes back, Michelle has taken his seat next to the babe from Denmark, so that Obama can't sit next to her.
And then there are pictures of Obama giving this woman a kiss.
Now it's a peck on the chick cheek, but the the angle of the picture makes it look like more than that, with Michelle looking on unhappily.
I know it's not just Europeans that do it, everybody, but but but it's so bad out there that the guy who took the picture of Obama taking the selfie has written a long piece apologizing for taking the picture of Obama taking the selfie and trying to say that Michelle was not bad,
mad or upset that he was there, he was watching it, eyeballs on it the whole time, and he thinks he's just profoundly embarrassed that his picture of Obama taking the selfie with the babe from Denmark and David Cameron has caused all of this.
So it's a giant apologia piece from this guy.
In the meantime, there's a this is hilarious.
There's a piece here from Salon.com by a woman named Roxanne Gay.
The media's Michelle problem, what a selfie says about our biases.
And let me read to you some of the pull quotes.
More than anything, the response to these latest images of Michelle Obama speaks volumes about the expectations placed on black women in the public eye, and how a black woman's default emotional state is perceived as angry.
The black woman is ever at the ready to aggressively defend her territory.
She is making her disapproval known.
She never gets to simply be.
So all of the opinion that's out that Michelle is not happy with what's going on, with her husband taking the selfie of the babe from Denmark and David Cameron, and all of the photos that show her sitting away from it, distant, not looking at it, but with a frown on her face, is another example of the societal bias in this country against black women.
It speaks volumes.
I'm sorry.
I can't keep a straight face with this.
More than anything, the response to these latest images of Michelle Obama speaks volumes about the expectations placed on black women in the public eye and how a black woman's default emotional state is perceived as angry.
I don't know where the stereotype came from, but this woman's complaining about it.
She's black, Roxanne gay.
The media's Michelle Obama problem.
What a selfie says about it.
She looks angry in the picture, too.
She sounds angry here.
Well, it's hard to say.
She's she's Yeah, I'd say she looks angry.
The overanalysis of the first lady's expression speaks volumes about America's expectations of black women.
I don't know how you cannot.
It's not just how can you not notice Michelle's face?
How can you not notice Michelle's vibe?
How can you not notice Michelle's distance from what's happening?
She is removed and she is not part of it.
She is not being included in what's going on with her husband and the babe from Denmark and David Cameron.
It's probably also true to say that Michelle thinks her husband taking a selfie in the midst of this memorial for Mandela is not cool.
And she probably is disapproving of that as well as anything else.
She probably has the sense enough to know that with all kinds of cameras on her and her husband that this is the last place to act like you are not involved in what's going on, i.e., the reason you're there, i.e.
the memorial for Mandela.
I'm I'm not, I'm I'm not leaving the blonde thing out of it, but I'm also looking, I'm trying to give Michelle some credit here for she's got the proper amount of dignity.
I think part of the there's no question, there is no question that she disapproves of what's going on here.
Anybody with any sense of decorum manners would.
I mean, this is a really self-involved narcissistic thing to do.
The reason you're there is to accept the mantle to pass the torch, or to accept the torch being passed.
For Mandela to you.
And what do you do?
You take a picture yourself with them with the Denmark babe while the memorial's going on.
It isn't cool.
Uh and it but there's there's also a picture of after Obama has given the babe from Denmark, the blonde a kiss on the cheek, and it's a big kiss on the cheek.
I mean, it's not a peck.
There's a miniature embrace there.
No, there's a picture after that of Obama kissing Michelle's hand after Michelle has switched.
Oh, speaking of that, have you heard there's a six-year-old boy in Colorado who has been, I think, suspended from school for sexual harassment for kissing his girlfriend's hand.
A six-year-old.
And he's proud to tell everybody what he was doing.
Girl's his girlfriend.
The six-year-old guy little girl, little guy's mother is, you know, their boyfriend and girlfriend.
I've I'm I'm embarrassed.
I'm ashamed what's happening to my son here, what they're trying to do to my son.
He's not a predator.
He was kissing his girlfriend's hand.
He's six.
He now a pariah.
He's now a um a predator.
Okay, look, before we go to the commercial timeout, I had a number of emails.
I gotta say, I gotta face this straight on.
I had a number of emails from people who thought that I dropped the ball yesterday because I didn't mention the upcoming budget deal.
People thought the stick to the issues crowd thought that that I had dropped the ball.
I was I was spending too much time on jocularity and frivolous fun things when the Republicans were about to give away the bank in budget negotiations with uh Patty Murray and the Democrats.
And I didn't drop the ball, I just didn't discuss it for a very simple reason.
There's nothing I could have done.
There's nothing I could have said on the radio yesterday.
There's no interview I could have conducted that was going to change what happened.
There is a simple fact, folks, the Republicans in Congress, and I would say that this is probably true of the Republicans in Washington.
They are suffering shell shock.
They are not moved at all by Obama's plummeting poll numbers.
They are not moved at all by the problems people are having with Obamacare.
They are in shell shock.
I've described it as post-traumatic stress disorder.
Whatever.
They are literally afraid of one thing, and that is being blamed again for the government shutdown.
And that was the objective to make sure there wasn't a government shutdown, and it didn't matter what was required.
If it meant funding Obamacare, which has happened.
It's this simple.
The Republicans didn't like the idea of defunding Obamacare.
They didn't like the idea of a partial government shutdown.
They don't.
They're living in a different world.
They believe that the country despises and hates them.
They believe that Obama is still universally loved and adored, and that there is nothing they can do to overcome that.
They think that anything that goes against Obama's way is going to result in them being blamed, and it's an election year next year, and they don't want to get anywhere near another government shutdown, no matter the principle involved, no matter the issues involved.
They just weren't gonna go there.
I'm I I've never seen anything like this.
I have never seen this degree of shell shock, or whatever else you want to call it.
But my point, folks, there was nothing I could have said, there's nothing anybody could have said yesterday.
There's nothing anybody could have said during the day yet.
There was nothing anybody could have said it was going to change what was going to happen in the Republican negotiating position on this budget.
And this is the first real budget in what, two or three years.
And but I'm telling you, I had conversations with Preventing another shutdown is all that mattered.
They really, to this minute, believe that they may have been irreparably harmed by being blamed for the shutdown a couple of months ago.
They are paralyzed.
The fear of what the media will say and do and report has them paralyzed.
And I think that's uh in large part, it's also why so many of them are talking about moving ahead with amnesty and so forth.
Now, a number of conservative groups have reacted in totally warranted anger and outrage, and Boehner has lashed out at them.
And he's gonna end up, he's gonna try to, I'm I'm convinced he's gonna try to walk some of this back, but he's he's called them ridiculous.
He's he's he's he's mentioned uh one of the one of the three groups is the Heritage Action Group, Heritage Foundation, our buddies there.
Friday grab, let's see, what's uh number um four?
This is Boehner, and this is this morning in Washington at a press conference talking about the tentative budget deal.
Pelosi's not happy about it, by the way, because it does not extend unemployment benefits in this horribly rotten Obama economy.
She doesn't say horribly rotten Obama economy, but that's what it is.
Anyway, reporter said, Mr. Speaker, a lot of conservative groups have put out statements blasting this budget deal.
Are you worried?
You mean the groups that came out and opposed it before they ever saw it?
Yes, that's good.
Are you worried that's the using our members and they're using the American people uh for their own goals?
This is ridiculous.
Listen, if you're for more deficit reduction, you're for this agreement.
Well, this is see, this is the point.
I there isn't any deficit reduction in this.
There never there's not any serious deficit reduction here.
They even gave away the sequester.
And I this is this is it was hopeless, folks.
I I I uh I you know me, I'm I'm not obsessed with uh pessimism or negativity, but I'm just telling you, there was nothing that could have been said yesterday by anybody that was going to change um what happened.
Now, the Republic they want to continue to complain about Obamacare, and they want to continue to complain about deficit spending, but they hate the idea of another partial government shutdown.
They just that isn't gonna happen no matter what, because they still haven't gotten over what they think is being blamed for.
Most people don't even remember.
This is the thing.
I've I the the degree to the disconnect with their own voters and base, I have never seen anything like it.
They are so frightened of being blamed for another shutdown that they gave up parts of the sequester, which had been a hard line on spending.
This is the sequester was uh was a bipartisan deal.
It was Obama's idea.
It's a Republican Democrat achievement that really did help reduce the deficit.
Part of it anyway, the rate.
And this deal unsequestered the sequester, and it increases spending in the near term for promises of some tiny long-term reductions to the tune of two and a half billion dollars a year.
But now the the Republicans in Congress believe that they now have an open field to continue to criticize Obamacare and talk about Obamacare in negative ways, but I just saw the clock.
I have to take a break.
Do you think Michelle Obama cares what's in the media?
I ask that because you think, even though he's president, do they have your average ordinary everyday Relationship.
Because what happened here now?
Everybody in the media is talking about how he was flirting with another woman and she wasn't involved.
Do you think in private she gives him a little don't?
What were you thinking?
Look what you've done to me.
Look how you've embarrassed me.
Look at what the media is saying about me.
You think that's going on?
Snerdley thinks it's uh it's worse than that.
Behind it closed.
You think even though he's president, she would uh dare to go there?
Or does it not?
At that point, he's not president.
He's her husband, and well, I just I'm just just asking out there because it's, you know, whatever the truth is.
The fact is, it's all over the media.
It low information voters are even looking at this and and thinking there's something going on here.
And she knows that.
She knows how people are seeing this, and she knows it wasn't necessary.
I mean, this is the biggest selfie boo-boo since weieners.
So I'm looking at the latest Obama polling data, folks.
There's a crack in the dike.
And I don't think that there's anything fixed.
A hole in the dike, crack in a dike or something.
It is bad.
And I don't think that there's anything they can do about it.
Like they brought in John Podesta.
They brought him in from his think tank that George Soros buys.
Clinton's former chief of staff, and all Podesta is a hack.
Podesta is a tactician.
And he he comes up with uh strategies and tactics to hopefully destroy conservatives and Republicans.
That's not going to save Obama.
The conservatives and Republicans don't have any to do with this.
What's happened to Obama, and this polling data indicates indicates it, but it's all related to Obamacare.
The bloom is off the road.
He has now lost the trust.
And you can blame the Republicans from now to the end of his second term, and that's not going to change.
He has lost trust with the American people.
There are people with cancer.
One of them is Jim Hoff.
Jim Hoffman is a gateway pundit.
And he's out of St. Louis.
And he's got a post.
Please pray for me.
I'm losing my insurance.
In August 2013, I became very sick.
I thought it was a cold.
After a few days, I lost vision in my left eye.
I checked into the hospital.
I soon found out that what I thought was a summer cold was actually strep bacteria poisoning my bloodstream.
The bacteria blinded my left eye, ate a hole through my heart, caused five strokes on both sides of my brain, and forced the removal of my prosthetic left knee.
Dr. Lee was the surgeon assigned to perform open heart surgery.
What was originally scheduled to last four hours ended up lasting twelve hours.
Dr. Lee later told me the surgery was one of the most difficult of his career.
He also said that I only had a few days to live without the surgery.
Thanks to the excellent insurance I carried, I was able to receive life-saving medical treatment at St. Louis University.
This week I found out I'm going to lose my insurance.
The company that carried me is leaving the Missouri market.
I'll have to find something else.
And I'm just one of the millions who will now be looking for new insurance.
God willing, I'll be able to keep my doctors at St. Louis University.
I trust them.
They saved my life.
Please pray for me and the millions of working Americans who are going through this same ordeal.
Why is our government doing this to us?
That's it.
Why is our government doing this to us?
I have in the healthcare stack another story.
Cancer patient.
I am devastated over Obamacare.
It's by Joan Carrika, registered nurse.
I had a lot of trouble early on.
I didn't expect my insurance to be canceled.
I had numerous problems getting onto healthcare.gov.
I gave up on the website.
Since then, I've received assistance from an agent and a blue cross blue shield of Michigan representative.
I've been stressed and scrambling to find an affordable policy that will ensure that I keep my doctors, chemotherapy drugs that are literally keeping me alive.
Over six years ago, I was in a position where I needed to choose an individual health insurance policy.
And after a lot of research, I chose a blue cross blue shield PPO that I participated or anticipated would be short term.
My plan was to get back to work as a registered nurse and be eligible for a group policy.
But for the first time in my life, I got really sick.
I've been battling cancer, fighting for my life for the last six years.
So much for my plans.
I thank God that I'm alive and I'm eternally grateful to Blue Cross Blue Shield and all my doctors, especially my doctors at the University of Michigan, who refer to me as their miracle patient.
good.
She's losing hers too.
What is our government doing to us?
Why is our government doing this to us?
This is the root of Obama's problem.
Not everybody has cancer, not everybody's losing their doctor and their trusted insurance policy and all that, but a lot of people are losing everything.
They've already lost their jobs.
Many of them don't really have any hope of getting a replacement job at replacement salaries at levels.
And now, after being promised for three years that they could keep their doctor, keep their insurance, they can't.
I'm amazed Obama's at 40 anywhere.
I would think after all this, I think the truth is Obama's in the 30s or maybe the high 20s.
Still got people afraid to say so.
This is outrageous what's happening.
And they can bring in all the fixers in the world, and they can't fix this.
The Republicans are not responsible for this.
The Republicans didn't vote for this.
The Republicans don't have one fingerprint on Obamacare.
Well, well, they didn't until the budget deal.
Now they've sustained it, the funding for it.
But that's beside the point for now.
Point is there are people all over this country who have just simply lost faith with the president.
Now it's not a matter of listening to some guy on the radio warn them that you can't trust this guy.
Now they know it.
It's happened.
They don't have to be convinced.
They don't have to be persuaded.
They don't have to be told.
Millions and millions of people no longer believe what Barack Obama says.
This is the last straw.
They can bring in all the fixes in the world they want.
There's nothing John Podesta can do to fix this.
Because this is not Obama hasn't lost his standing because of tricks played by the Republicans.
He hasn't lost his standing because the media is not fair to him.
He hasn't lost his standing or his uh his approval number because the media spent four years attacking him, like they did George W. Bush.
This is all on him.
He owns every point that he has dropped in these approval numbers.
And it's devastating wherever you look.
And this was Mr. Hopenchange.
This was a guy, folks, that everybody that what they did was trust him.
They believed that life was going to get better.
The country was going to get better.
There weren't going to be any more arguing and rancorous partisanship.
And the world wasn't going to hate us.
And there wasn't going to be any more terrorism.
And there wasn't going to be so much income inequality and the sea levels and all that stuff.
They believed it.
And that's what he's lost.
NBC Wall Street Journal.
And they're devastated.
F. Chuck Todd, they are dead they are reduced at NBC to actually on the air hoping that a recovering economy can bring Obama back.
They're all in the tank because they're not journalists, remember.
They're Democrats.
And they're all hoping they're doing they've done everything they can to protect Obama.
They've done everything they can to see that this kind of plummet did not happen.
But He himself is engineered the plummet.
Now they're hoping that something can happen, the economy, a recovery that maybe can bring him back.
The federal health care law is becoming a heavier political burden for Obama and the Democrats, despite increased confidence in the economy and the public's own generally upbeat sense of well-being.
So even though the public, according to this is an NBC Wall Street Journal poll, and they claim in this poll that a lot of Americans are upbeat finally, and they're feeling pretty good about the economy, and it doesn't matter.
Because Obama is thinking, and it's due to Obamacare.
The days of excusing Obama are over.
The realization that we are in the midst of a sorry state of affairs that he has created.
Why is our government doing this to us?
Why can't I keep my doctor?
What I liked my plan.
I like my doctor.
And more and more we're reading about people whose lives were saved by their insurance and their doctor, and it's being taken away.
69% of the people liked what they had before they.
It's being taken away.
Why is our government doing this?
This is profound for this the the nobody looked at Obama the way they now see him.
There wasn't anybody who voted for him in 2008 who'd ever believe they'd be asking, why is our government doing this to us?
These numbers are bad.
Disapproval of Obama's job performance hit an all-time high in the NBC Wall Street Journal poll.
54%.
Now consider Obamacare a bad idea.
It's a record number for this poll.
This poll is a lagging poll in disapproval of Obamacare.
Most polls for the since the beginning of opposed Obamacare.
This one's been a lagging poll.
It's now caught up.
The Quinnipia Act poll, Obama's support among young voters has disappeared.
Forty-nine percent now say they disapprove of his job performance.
Hispanic historic preference for Obama is evaporating.
Forty-three percent disapprove and climbing.
Now says Obama is not honest and trustworthy.
And the same number say he lacks strong leadership qualities.
The Republicans didn't do this.
The media didn't do this.
This is not the result of tactics that have worked on Obama.
These numbers he owns.
He brought these numbers about.
Americans who want Republicans to control both houses of Congress now outnumber those who fear one party control.
And this, the generic ballot, the Republicans are cleaning clocks with the generic ballot.
It's never been Charlie Cook, the dean of generic ballot analysts says he has never seen this kind of shift in this short period of time.
In the generic ballot, who do you prefer?
Republican or Democrat.
Charlie Cook says he has never seen this dramatic a shift in this time, which is basically a year.
Now the Republicans are looking that, and they don't want to mess it up with a government shutdown.
This is, I guarantee you, they're anything that causes negative press to them in the government shutdown, they're convinced that people love, adore, uh, revere government, want it in their lives every day, and they're not going to do anything that would shut it down and be blamed for it.
The generic ballot's one of the things they're looking at.
UK Daily Mail, This is the Quinope Act.
More details.
Obama's approval rating is at 38% in the Quinnipia Act poll.
Just 34% approval on Obamacare.
40% approval on Iran.
It is devastating.
And so this is the Republicans are basically saying, you know what?
We're not going to do anything.
We're not going to say anything.
We're not going to provoke it.
We're just going to let this all happen without any of our fingerprints on it.
Obama's in the tank.
His numbers are plummeting.
They want to stay under the radar.
You and I, on the other hand, would say this is the time to pounce.
But they're not of that mindset, folks.
They're in a totally and purely defensive posture.
But this piece from Jim Hoff, the gateway opponent, why is our government doing this to us?
There haven't been too many administrations.
There haven't been too many presidents about whom people ask that question.
Why is our government doing this to us?
It's worse out there than anybody inside Washington knows.
And we will be right back.
And we're back.
Yo, Rush Bow and to the phones we go.
Dave in Gurney, Illinois.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Hello, sir.
Hey, Russ.
Merry Christmas.
Happy holidays to you first.
Seem to you, sir.
Yes.
You know, every time they they stroll out John Podesta, it's because there's some something amiss with the Democrats and the administrations.
Remember when they pulled them out when they uh when ABC Disney made that video leading up to nine of the attacks in 9-11 and how they portrayed Bill Clinton in that video.
So they pulled John Podesta out to argue with Disney so that they were cut out the most inflammatory parts of that of that movie.
Yeah, I remember that.
The path to 9-11, and they uh Clinton's demanded that uh there be some editing and Disney did a little bit.
They still hadn't been a DVD of that.
They still have not put that on DVD.
It's still, it's it's amazing.
Now, Dave, there's there's a piece here at uh Commentary Magazine by Jonathan Tobin.
And its headline, Podesta cannot write Obama's sinking ship.
The thought appears to be that if anybody can get Obama back on track, it's the guy who helped Clinton weather the Lewinsky scandal and an impeachment trial.
And here's what Tobin says.
They pretty much echoes what's been said uh up to now.
Podesta is a skilled tactician, but it's a mistake to think that Obama's decline is a function of tactics of process.
Because what we've seen in the last 12 months is a gradual dropping away of the sense on the part of most Americans that Obama is a well-intentioned man whose word can be trusted.
And boy, I'll tell you that is so true.
It's the kind of thing that we all hoped people would see from the get-go.
But we hoped that people would believe us when we told them this is who Obama was, because we know liberals, but they didn't believe it.
They believed quite the opposite, but now they don't.
It's no longer universally believed Obama's a well-intentioned guy whose word can be trusted, and that can't be fixed by a bunch of pushback against the Republicans or by a pivot to pursue liberal agenda like income inequality.
Obama can't fix this by extending unemployment benefits.
He can't fix this by talking about raising the minimum wage or whining and moaning about income inequality.
And it isn't helped when the president continues to deny that he lied about Obamacare coverage, or to dismiss problems Like the IRS scandal, or just blame it on a right-wing conspiracy.
If uh if Obama's poll numbers now match those of George W. Bush, it's not because of bad advice, it's bad policy and lack of honesty about it.
And that's right on the money, and there's nothing Podesta or anybody else can do.
There aren't any words anybody can say that can get people's trust in Obama back.
We have to take a brief time out here at the top of the hour.
Uh, ladies and gentlemen, what Podesta can do is just say, you know the hell with Congress, tell it everything, and just advise the president on executive orders and executive action to move his agenda forward,
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