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Dec. 16, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
33:45
December 16, 2013, Monday, Hour #3
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Time Text
The views expressed by the host of this program are talked about everywhere, folks.
You are listening to the most listened to radio talk show in the country, the most talked about radio talk show in the country.
You are listening to the most talked about host of the most talked about radio show in the country.
You are talked to death by other people, but not to my me.
I know.
They're now talking about me on another cable network about me and the Pope.
And they're upset here that the Pope responded to me.
And they're really upset.
The Pope said he wasn't offended.
No, no, no.
Pope said Marxism is wrong, but I know a lot of good Marxists.
And so I'm not offended.
You know, folks, Pope could be a fan.
You know, you never really, Pope is from this hemisphere.
You just never know.
But, you know, let's take that sentiment.
Well, look, Marxism's wrong, but I know a lot of good friends.
I know a lot of good Marxists.
Or whatever he said.
So it's not necessarily a bad thing.
Substitute something for Marxists.
Let's say, what can we substitute?
Just have fun here.
Sexist.
You know, sexism is wrong, but I know a lot of good sexists.
So I'm not offended.
How about ooh?
Ooh, ooh, snerdly.
How about this?
I know racism is wrong, but I know a lot of decent racists.
So I'm not offended.
I know Nazism is wrong, but you know, I knew some good Nazis, and I'm not bothered.
Well, we're just having fun here, folks.
Just lighten up.
Fascists.
You know, I know that fascism is wrong, but I know a lot of really decent fascists.
So I'm not bothered by it.
Anyway, they're upset.
They're despised.
I can't believe that Pope responded and that he's not offended.
It would have been one thing if he responded.
Pope responded.
Limbaugh, why not Hume?
Why not Mark Shields?
Why didn't a Pope responding to Paul Krugman or something?
Why does he have to respond to Limbaugh?
And then he wasn't offended.
Pope may not have cable, but he's got satellite.
Make no mistake.
All right, look, see?
Oh, yeah.
How would you like to be Tony Romo?
Tony Romo did a smart thing.
He went to a children's hospital today, snerdly, and started signing autographs and stuff.
And so he's escaped a bunch of mountain of criticism.
Dallas for the last-minute interception.
Okay, here we go to the healthcare stack.
Ladies and gentlemen, it will.
Something has to happen.
Yeah, you mean in Dallas?
Yeah, something has to happen.
Something has to happen.
I don't know what.
Something has to happen.
Another hard lesson to learn for anybody that would trust in the myth of efficiency.
Stories range from Maryland's exchange director going on vacation as As the exchange website imploded to dishonesty at the highest levels as Sebelius ducks questions on the lie of the year, but now kgw.com.
For the second week in a row, the Washington State Health Plan Finder website is down and it's causing problems for people who are dealing with billing issues.
Some of them say that the website is mistakenly debiting their accounts.
Healthcare accounts, people's private bank accounts are being debited by the Washington State Health Exchange.
Shannon Bruner of Indianova logged on to her checking account Monday morning and found that she was $800 to the negative.
The first thing she thought was that I got screwed.
The Bruners enrolled for insurance on the Washington Health Plan Finder website last October.
They say they selected the bill pay date to be December 24th.
Instead, the Washington Health Plan Finder drafted their payment Monday.
Josh Bruner started his own business this year as an engineering recruiter.
They said that it's forced him to pay a lot of attention to their bills and their bank accounts.
One viewer called King5 Eyeball News saying they drafted my account this morning for a second time.
Another woman on a Facebook page with a similar problem said, we're all in the same boat.
The state of Washington's health exchange is debiting people's bank accounts for payment on days and dates unagreed to.
So in addition, ladies and gentlemen, to all of the errors and the lost applications and Sebelius changing things every day, now Obamacare is literally drafting money out of bank accounts in a way that was not agreed on.
Isn't that fraud?
This is a report out of Washington State.
Families who cannot pay their bills now because the state exchange is erroneously debiting money from their bank accounts.
And they're overdrawn in many cases because the state exchange is just taking their money.
You think that's not an eye-opener for people?
Wait a minute, that's not supposed to happen.
You know, people, this is, I don't want a Life Lock commercial here, but boy, is this ever a case for one?
You know, if you're a Life Lock member, you give them your bank account number in addition to everything else.
And when there's activity like this on it, you're alerted and you find out about it in time to stop it.
And I'm not sure, but I think LifeLock would stop this.
This is not supposed to happen.
If they're debiting your account on a day, date that you have not agreed to, it's going to get red flagged.
Anytime somebody goes and starts debiting your account, you're at least going to get an alert from Life Lock asking if it's you.
And then in this case, you'd say, no, it isn't me.
And you would shut it down.
Now, can the state be shut down?
Can a government be shut down is another question.
But this is what LifeLock does.
You give them your Social Security, your bank account number, or your credit card numbers.
And when there's any activity like this, you get an alert.
And that's how the fraud is eliminated.
But stop and think of this.
In addition to everything else that's going wrong with this, plans being canceled.
You know what the Republican Party ought to be doing?
You know what?
There ought to be an ad run out there right now.
As many times a day as they can afford it.
How are you spending the $2,500 you're saving on Obamacare insurance premiums this year for Christmas?
What a great ad that would be.
Well, because the regime, Obama, for years promised that Obamacare would reduce premiums and average $2,500 a year.
So it's an appropriate question.
What are you doing with the $2,500 insurance premium savings from Obamacare this Christmas?
How are you spending it?
Any little prod to the memory about what people were promised?
Because that's another giant broken promise right off the bat.
Now, Michael Boskin, a well-known famous economist, been everywhere at Harvard, various regimes and so forth.
He's written a good piece here, summing up many of the things that we've already mentioned on this program, but it's put them in a single issue form.
In the nearer term, political iceberg, a political iceberg looms next year.
Insurance companies usually submit proposed pricing to regulators in the summer.
And the open enrollment period begins in the fall for plans starting January 1st.
Businesses of all sizes that currently provide health care will have to offer Obamacare's expensive mandated benefits or drop their plans and except for the smallest firms pay a fine.
So tens of millions of Americans with employer-provided health plans risk paying more for less, losing their policies and doctors to more restrictive networks.
The regime is desperately trying to delay employer plan problems beyond the 2014 election to avoid this shock.
This is just, this is the biggie.
So far, the cancellation notices have gone out to people who are privately insured.
They insure themselves self-insured or they just join a pool on their own by policy.
They have all, vast majority, received their cancellation notices.
And then they found that replacement policies, the premiums have doubled and the deductibles have tripled.
Almost to a person.
I mean, you can count on one hand the number of people whose expenses have actually gone down.
Well, that is due to start happening next year for most Americans because 80% of people get their health insurance at work.
And those cancellation notices are about to go out.
So what the regime is trying to do is delay that until after the 2014 midterm elections next November.
They are desperate to try to do that.
New York's cultural elite, blindsided by Obamacare.
This is John Nolte in Breitbart.
If there is at least one benefit of Obamacare, it's watching those who support nationalizing the purchase of mandated health insurance get their comeuppance.
Little Schattenfreude.
The New York Times reports that many in New York's professional and cultural elite who supported Obama and Obamacare and carved themselves out a sweet little health insurance pool to avoid the sky-high rates in the individual insurance market are now out in the cold with the rest of us.
Under the Affordable Care Act, these cultural elite are going to be treated as individuals.
They're going to be responsible for their own insurance policies.
And for many of them, that's likely to mean they'll no longer have access to a wide network of doctors and a range of plans tailored to their needs.
And many of them are finding that if they want to keep their premiums from going up, they're going to have to accept higher deductible and co-pay costs or inferior coverage.
The anguish these elite Obama supporters are going through is no different than the nearly 6 million in the real world already victimized by cancellations.
Stress, sleepless nights, financial burden, and the loss of familiar doctors and hospitals.
One author in this piece said, gee, we're Obama's people.
Her insurance has been canceled.
Her doctors are not available through the exchanges because they're not going to be part of the network.
And she's not alone.
Take Barbara Meinwald, a solo practitioner lawyer in Manhattan.
She says, I couldn't sleep because of it.
Ms. Meinwald looked on the state's health insurance exchange, but she said that she found that those plans didn't have a good choice of doctors and that it was hard to even find out who the doctors were and which hospitals were covered.
It's like you're blindfolded and you're told that you have to buy something.
You know what else these people are learning?
The elites are learning that the top hospitals are not included in Obamacare.
Did you know that, by the way?
The best, most expensive hospitals and doctors, Obamacare is not going to be sending people to them.
Did you know that?
You're looking at me like you didn't know that.
I would think you, Mr. Snerdley, would know that.
Top-flight hospitals in many cities are not part of what's being called the network.
This woman, this, what's her name, Meinwald.
Barbara Meinwald, an Obama voter in New York, said that if she had known this would happen, she would have voted for Mitt Romney.
The New York Times, there's a story about the cultural elite.
I mean, these are the people, the upper crust, upper west side of Manhattan liberals who think they're special, who think they're exempt from all of the rigmarole and the daily elements of Obamacare and other Obama laws and policies, are now discovering that they're no different than the schlubs they consider themselves to be better than.
And they're panicked because they're faced with higher costs, loss of doctor, loss of hospital, and they don't know what to do about it.
And somehow, I don't know why the New York Times even ran the story.
But they are, and these people that they quote are beside themselves with shock and panic, saying they can't sleep at night.
And if they'd have known this, that they would have voted for Romney.
The fact is, they could have known this.
I am just one of hundreds of people who've been trying to warn everybody for three years about this.
They had every opportunity in the world if they would just read something besides the New York Times.
I'm going to tell you something.
The New York Times, folks, there was a story that we chronicled and highlighted last week.
The New York Times is literally responsible for this fraud being perpetrated because they are part of the network that perpetrated it.
They're the ones that kept this kind of truth from people.
Now, all of a sudden, the New York Times is writing all these CYA stories, but they need to be held account.
They have misled their entire readership, as typified by this, New York's cultural elite blindsided by Obama.
Who the hell are the cultural elite?
Well, they're New York upper crust liberals.
They hate guns.
They're pro-abortion.
They're just far, far leftists.
And as usual, they think nothing is going to impact them.
This is all for the little people.
And now they're finding out they're getting creamed by it, and they're wondering why they didn't know.
And there's one place.
They all read the New York Times and nothing else.
They probably watch MSNBC or NBC, and that's it.
And they think every other source of news is just a bunch of lying, right-wing pablum, and they ignore it and put it down.
Most of the real elites who are pitching Obamacare to us will never have to face Obamacare because they're going to be able to afford the most expensive private insurance no matter what.
All the regime people and all of Obama's buddies and so forth, the people promoting this, the New York Times people, they're never going to be held account to this.
Obamacare and the exchanges, they are for the schlubs like us.
The rich, the elites, they think that they're going to have top-flight private insurance, and they will, the rich elite.
But the cultural elite are not necessarily rich.
They just think they're better than everybody else.
And they're being, I mean, they're being creamed by it.
And there's outrage all over the place about this, is the point.
And there's continuing polling data that reinforces this.
I got to take a break.
There's more coming up, so don't go away.
Sit tight.
And welcome back, folks.
El Rushball and the most influential radio talk show in the world.
And here is Denise in Evans, Colorado.
Hi, Denise.
Great to have you here.
Hello.
Hi, Mr. Limbaugh.
Thank you so much for taking my call.
I'm a little nervous, and I'm very honored to be speaking with you.
Well, you don't sound nervous at all.
You sound great.
Oh, I'm shaking.
I just wanted to tell you that in speaking about your topics today, you were saying the Lord works in mysterious ways.
And today I received a gift for my youngest daughter, Olivia, from Liberty, the horse, and you and your beautiful wife as well.
And I just wanted to call and say thank you so much for sending that to her and to my other daughters.
And that's just very gracious.
And it's quite a shock and an honor to receive that from you.
Let me guess what happened.
Your daughter sent a fan layer or fan letter to Liberty.
Yes, she was.
The talking horse.
And Liberty was so moved that Liberty told the elves in our shop to send out a box of the audio version, which is some CDs.
And I'm guessing that Liberty also sent Ted T. Bear.
Yes.
Yes, he did.
And then you weren't expecting any of that.
I mean, you didn't.
No, not at all.
Well, that's the fun we have.
Well, I can't.
I'm so excited to go pick up my kids from school today.
Because I know they're going to be just as shocked as I was to see it.
Oh, they don't know that the stuff's arrived yet?
No, no, I got it this morning in the mail, and they're at school.
And I was wondering if I could send a picture.
I would love to take a picture of them with the bear and send it to you.
How do I send that to you?
Well, you just hang on, and after we finish here, Mr. Snerdley will pick up the phone and give you an encrypted, secure, off-site server used by Edward Snowden in order to send a picture.
We'd love to, actually, you can do that at the2fbit.com.
Hang on, Denise.
Okay, we're back.
Denise, are you still there?
Yes.
Okay, what you do is you go to the 2fbit.com website, and you click on the Rush Revere portal there, the adventures of Rush Revere, and click on the mailbox.
And, you know, where you send an email, I think you're going to attach a picture.
I know people are sending us pictures left and right.
Okay, and you'll be able to see that picture as well.
Well, it's my website.
Oh, okay, good.
I mean, I've got overrated staff working there, of course.
Okay.
But as everywhere.
But, yeah, people are sending us pictures left and right of, and you'll see that there's all kinds of stuff.
The kids can download blank outlines of pictures from the book that they can then color themselves and send it back in as works of art.
It's all there.
If you just poke around the Adventures of Rush Revere section of the 2fbit.com website, you'll find a way.
But also, hang on, Mr. Snerdley will give you a way to get the picture.
I don't, off the top of my head, know what it is.
Okay.
Because I can't, if I made this public, whatever it is, we'd be deluged, and then Edward Snowden wouldn't be able to keep up with it all.
I understand.
Thank you so much.
Well, I just – look, I want to thank you for – I'm so glad that – so you get a little – Liberty gets an email, and we always try to respond with a little bit more.
And we love these bears that we had made.
This is, by the way, folks, Ted T. Bear.
You can see what I'm talking about, the cutest little, well, tell them what it is.
You've got one there.
You like it?
Oh, it's beautiful.
It's so soft and fuzzy.
And when the girls and I looked on the website and we saw the little bear, because you have him hidden, you have to click on it.
And when they saw it, the three of them all said, oh, how cute.
It is cute.
It's got a tricorn hat.
You can see that that's in the house.
The three of them are just going to flip out.
Well, that's cool.
Yeah, the bear is dressed like Rush Revere.
Tricorn hat with a blue Patriots jacket and my signature on the bottom of the right hoof.
And it's a cute little thing.
And my cat plays with it.
My cat's another story.
Thank you so much.
Well, you're welcome.
I'm glad the stuff got there in the audio version as well.
So hang on, Mr. Snerdley will pick you up here in just a second.
The Ted T Bear, by the way, just I'm just going to throw this in because I've mentioned it.
If you do go to the 2FBT.com site, the Rush Revere Adventures portal.
And if you want, this is the last day to get one in time for Christmas.
Just throwing that in.
Yeah, here it is.
Let me show you.
This is Ted T Bear right here.
We're holding it up for those of you watching on the Ditto Cam.
Is that not cute?
I mean, it's just cute.
That's what she, that's what Denise was calling her.
That's what we sent her daughters.
This from, because they sent us the Liberty a fan letter.
And it's got the tricorn hat, and there's my signature right there on the lower right-hand bottom of the right foof, and the American flag's on the left side.
Ted T Bear.
Lovable little thing.
Yeah, I mean, it looks almost like you could, like, it looks like our sheepdogs in a way.
I mean, if you want to look at it the right way, but it actually, it's a cute little polar bear that's not threatened by global warming.
It's the happiest little bear that you'll ever see.
I'll just put Ted T right there and head back to the phones.
This is Amy in Decatur, Illinois.
Amy, great to have you on the EIB network.
Hi.
Hi, Russ.
Thank you so much for taking my call.
You bet.
Merry Christmas.
Same to you.
Thank you.
I was calling in regards to capitalism in the Catholic Church.
I'm a practicing Catholic, and I've been over to Rome twice.
And I can just tell you that just about every church over there, including the Vatican, has a gift shop.
And you have to go past the gift shop most of the times on your way to exit the church that you're visiting.
That's a very interesting point that you make there.
What would be the point of the gift shop?
I mean, you have to buy things there, do you?
Yes, and most of them were always crowded, especially the Vatican one.
I mean, just very quick transactions.
And I believe that's how they get a lot of their money through tourism.
And people want to take something home as a symbol of their faith.
Let me ask you a question.
Why did you go twice?
Once I went with the World Youth Day with the Catholic Church, and then the second time I went on a business trip with my husband.
And after you saw it the first time, you had to show it.
You had to go visit it with somebody that mattered to you, right?
We had to go back, yes.
And have you been all through it?
Have you been down to the tomb of St. Peter?
Have you Sistine Chapel and all of that?
Yes.
Yes.
It's incredible.
It is breathtaking.
And I get chills every time I talk about it or somebody else talks about it.
And not only would they sell Catholic memorabilia, but also replicas of things that were in the museum.
And it's just, they have a lot to purchase.
Well, I appreciate the point you're making.
They are engaging in their own form of capitalism.
They're not giving the stuff away in the gift shops.
Correct.
By any stretch.
And so people are engaging in trickle-down when they visit the gift shop.
But you're right.
It's not just the Vatican.
But I have to tell you, I've been more than once, too.
And it is a just, I'm not Catholic, but I am so moved every time I've been there.
And I've spent days there, and I've done various guided tours, private tours, and so forth.
And I'm not going to bother sharing my personal reaction to it, but I was in awe, particularly the first time that I was there.
All of Rome does this to me.
The Coliseum, the catacombs, the ruins there from B.C. Rome.
It's really amazing.
The aqueducts that are still standing after thousands of years, the way they got water into the city, and the bowels underneath the Coliseum.
I think you learned about it.
It's stunning.
It really is.
And then, of course, the jewel is the Vatican.
And you see, I remember I got in trouble once.
My first trip was in February 1985, I think, when I was working in Sacramento.
And I took a tour of listeners, travel tours.
It was El Cheapo, too.
It was like $1,400 a person for the week.
And the hotel we stayed in was actually some cheap dormitory of a college that was not in session.
And it snowed 12 inches the second day we got there.
That was the day we happened to tour the Trivoli Tivoli Fountain.
It was just a but despite all of that, when I got back, this is 1985, and I'm talking about it on the air.
I was telling people how in awe I was to see what people's religious beliefs could inspire in them.
And I had people calling me their most vicious mean people.
What do you mean, religious beliefs?
There was none of that rush.
Everybody that did that was paid.
The popes commissioned it.
There wasn't any religious beliefs that built that.
That was just money.
They were just being paid to do it that way.
This guy was ripping into Michelangelo, the Sistine Chapel ceilings and so forth.
And that was 85, some years ago, 20, 30 years ago, 30, 28, whatever.
That was my first exposure to real venom.
When I grew up, nobody hated churches.
My little town.
Remember, my little town was Bedford Falls, and it's a wonderful life.
And I didn't learn about all this hatred and racism and sexism and stuff till I left when I was age 20.
But the venom that I was speaking of how in awe I was of the Vatican, and I call after call after call.
But you got to wake up.
You've got to understand something.
It wasn't religious beliefs inspired.
I was evil popes commissioning people to do that or they die.
And they were all doing it for money to hell with it.
It wasn't anything about religious.
I said, sir, you can't tell me that there wasn't some divine.
And I remember talking about this to Mr. Buckley, who, of course, had been there with Charlton Heston when they filmed Michelangelo.
And it's look at this.
The point here is that I have an almost profound in awe, respect, and curiosity about the Catholic Church and the Vatican and its history.
And I only mention this because my intention with the Pope was not at all anti-Vatican, anti-religion, anti-Catholic at all.
I was just simply stunned at what I thought was just utter sheer, the lingo was no different than what you would read on a post at the Democrat Underground about capitalism.
It just really floored me.
Really taken aback by it.
All right, folks.
At the beginning of the program, I talked about the fact that the media was all upset that the Pope responded to me.
They were really despondent over this.
They were snarky.
We have the evidence now.
It just happened on CNN.
Two soundbites.
Brooke Baldwin, the Infobabe, speaking with their religion commentator, Edward Beck, Father Edward Beck.
And to set up the segment, the Infobabe said this.
If the whole Pope thing doesn't work out, Francis would make a pretty good cable news funded because he is certainly not afraid of taking on his critics, the leader of the world's Catholics, responding to folks like Rush Limbaugh, who called him a Marxist.
They say I disrespect the Pope.
How about if the whole Pope thing doesn't work out?
They say I am disrespecting the Pope, the whole Pope thing.
And here is what Father Edward Beck said in reply.
No, I can't say that I have.
However, he was asked by La Stampa in an interview about this, and you know this isn't a waiting.
Wait a second.
I forgot to tell you what the question was.
There's another question.
She said to him, in all of your studying and knowledge of the Pope's past, have you ever heard of a Pope taking on a radio talk show host?
No, I can't say that I have.
However, he was asked by La Stampa in an interview about this, and you know this isn't a Pope who shies away from answering.
Even though we're not hearing specifically the name Rush come out of his mouth, we know who he's responding to in this particular interview.
Do you think he should be responding?
Do you think it diminishes his stature?
I don't because I think what people like about him is his willingness to respond.
Rush isn't the only one who has said similar things, by the way.
Right.
So if he's going to critique global capitalism, which he has, and he says it's not equitable, people are going to say, okay, then what do you really believe?
And he has really a responsibility then to say what he does believe, and he's certainly saying it.
Well, now, isn't that interesting?
Isn't she here's a free invitation to rip into a critic of what the Pope said.
And Father Beck doesn't get close.
Isn't it, aren't you worried that he could be diminishing his stature by responding to Limbaugh?
No, not at all.
After all, he stepped in it.
He criticized global capitalism.
Let's have the discussion.
Folks, there are a lot of people who were surprised by what the Pope said.
I'm not the only one.
A lot of people.
I'm just the only one who said so.
But as far as the CNN babe is concerned, I thought they wanted him to respond.
I thought the meeting was going over there and demanding, what do you think of what?
And he responds and they worry about his stature.
This is, I knew that's been so snarky.
You know, if he would be responding to say, Wolf Blitzer, why that would be one thing?
That would be okay.
Because Wolf is a real journalist.
Out of here, folks.
Time's up.
Total la completa.
It's over.
But not really.
Never ends.
Just take hiatuses here and there or hiati and be back here in 21 hours, ramped and ready to do it again.
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