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Dec. 24, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:25
December 24, 2013, Tuesday, Hour #3
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Time Text
Thank you very much.
Welcome.
It is Eric Erickson here in for Rush Limbaugh here at the EIB Network.
The phone number, 1-800-282-2882.
As so many others have discovered, you can get me on Twitter and Facebook at EW Erickson.
There's actually a C and a K in there.
Email Eric E-R-I-C-K at redstate.com.
I've gotten a number of, what's this?
Yes, I can do that slower.
I tell you, you know, this is my normal pace.
People got to keep on.
Sterdley's trying to screen phone calls too, so I'll go slow.
EW Erickson on Twitter and Facebook.
And Eric at redstate.com is the email address.
Now, plenty of people are picking up on this.
E-R-Wait, wait, wait.
Oh, wait.
I'm getting it wrong.
E-W-E-R-I-C-K-S-O-N.
E-W-Erickson.
If you just want the email address, Eric, E-R-I-C-K at redstate.com.
Are you happy, Mr. Sterdley?
You're welcome.
You're welcome.
I try to remind myself to slow down, but there's just so much to say, and it all comes flowing forth at once.
There's no medication for this.
The Politico has a story, the title of which is The PR Nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue.
The PR Nightmare.
You think about this on your own for just a minute.
The PR nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue.
This isn't a PR nightmare.
The entire story is how the Obama administration, things are, it's looking bad for them.
They've got to make carve-outs.
They've got to make exceptions.
They've got to extend deadlines.
The president can't sign up himself on the website.
He has to have staff do it for him and they have to do it in person.
And he's not even going to get it.
It's just a symbolic effort.
This isn't a PR nightmare.
This is a policy failure by the White House.
Leave it to Washington News to call it a PR nightmare.
It's not a PR nightmare.
Again, this is a conscious policy decision by the White House and the Democrats, and it's blowing up in their face.
Now, as I said last hour, you missed some real genius last hour.
I tell you people that.
But it's designed to implode over time.
They just assumed they could manage the implosion over time to transition us and say, well, now, look, it didn't work.
We thought it could work.
We tried to get it to work, but now we've got to have single-payer health care.
It's blowing up well ahead of schedule.
This is a management issue.
This is a policy issue.
There's no PR behind this.
But yet that's the Washington.
It's always about Washington.
In Washington, it's always so vapid and shallow, isn't it?
It's always about the management of the public relations.
Rarely is it about the politics.
Rarely is it about the policy.
Unless it's Republicans.
And then, of course, the media is perfectly happy to excoriate Republicans.
Had a Republican, let's be honest here.
Let's just say we were in opposite world for a day.
You know, opposite world.
Every third grader has done opposite world.
You've got entire comics of opposite world where suddenly Superman is bad and the bad guys go.
If we went to opposite world and the Republicans were the Democrats and the Democrats were the Republicans, but somehow the media stayed the same because the media, they're outside reality anyway, and Republicans passed Obamacare, the media would be destroying them.
They would not be saying it's a PR nightmare.
They would be saying it's a public policy disaster.
Instead, now, in the real world, in reality, the media, they can't ignore Obamacare.
They can't do it because it's affecting millions and millions of people.
The stories are too absurd and too extreme.
The only thing the media likes better than liberals is stories of heartbreaking tragedy.
And there are many heartbreaking, tragic stories involving Obamacare.
So the media can't ignore it.
They would if they could, but they can't.
So the best they can do is say it's a PR disaster.
If all of this had happened differently in the management of the public relations rollout, it would all be fine.
No, because the underlying policy is bad.
When the fish is rotten, it's not that there's just a bad smell.
It's that the fish is rotten.
You don't eat the fish.
Here are the media say, if only they had sprayed some fragrant perfume around the rotten fish, it would be tasty.
No!
That's not the way it works.
Not the way it works.
It is a policy disaster.
It is a political disaster for the Democrats.
They're going to get eaten alive in 2014.
The only way that the Democrats can save themselves in 2014 is if the Republicans screw up.
And the Republicans, you, I guarantee you, as a formerly elected Republican, they will do their best to try to screw up.
They always do.
They don't fight back the way the Democrats fight back.
They're already for the debt ceiling because they want to raise the debt ceiling.
I don't understand why we need to raise the debt ceiling.
Some economist out there right now says you just don't understand.
Well, I do understand, but why do we have to keep raising it?
Why must it be raised?
Why don't we make cuts?
We're going to give up on sequestration.
Why don't we make more cuts?
Why don't we say the government doesn't have to spend the money it's spending, let's be honest.
They would have to make tough choices, though.
That's the problem, isn't it?
They would have to make tough choices.
Neither side has the testicular fortitude to be able to make or want to make.
They would have to make choices.
But let's not kid ourselves.
These headlines, the media is trotting out now at the end of the year, that the healthcare rollout is the big story of the year.
It's a PR nightmare.
No, it's a policy nightmare.
And leave it to the media to not recognize bad policy when it's staring them in their faces when it comes from the Democrats.
They only write about it being a policy failure when it's the Republicans in charge.
How about we do something special?
It is Christmas Eve.
I should be charitable.
We should take phone calls.
Let's go to the phones.
Rita in Phoenix, Arizona.
For those of you in Riolinda, that's a city, not a bird.
Rita, welcome to the EIB Network.
How are you?
Hi.
I like Rush's show.
I worked in healthcare for many years, 25 years, and I had a degree.
And I saw a lot of unfairness.
And I don't agree with Obamacare totally.
And I don't consider myself a Democrat or Republican.
I vote for some Republican presidents and some Democrat.
I vote for the person.
But when I was working in healthcare, I would see people that were in their 80s, and the doctor would push them to do open heart surgery, and they would have a stroke.
They wouldn't be given all the facts, and they end up on two feeding and half dead.
There's a lot of waste and a lot of unnecessary stuff being done, people being put on expensive machinery that are very close to morbidity and would just enjoy a nice quality of life in the last couple of years instead of all these procedures and there needs to be more caps.
I don't agree with Obamacare totally.
I'm sure the premise was good, but it's not good.
I don't like people telling me where I should go, but, oh, we don't need such a lot of doctors, I remember in the 80s and 90s, they would push certain medications and they would get free trips to Hawaii.
And it wasn't possible.
You sound very conflicted here.
You have to keep your mouth closed, you know.
You sound very conflicted here in that you aren't a big fan of the system, but yet doctors need restraints.
Now, it is.
No, I'm not sure.
I'm not sure that work for hospitals, doctors.
This has been going on for 30 years.
It's just been slowly going in.
But aren't these issues between the patient and the doctor and not issues for the government and the doctor?
And that's okay.
Why not?
Some of them are taking money, and who knows what's going on.
I like that somebody oversees because there's a lot of abuse out there.
But do you want the government being the one to oversee it?
I mean, what good does the government do?
It's all about surgeries and pills.
But wait, wait, wait.
Rita, I guess what I'm asking is we seem to be talking past each other.
Who do you want in charge?
Shouldn't the patient ultimately be in charge of themselves instead of Barack Obama?
They're not in charge because they're not given all the facts.
There's hiding of the medical system because it's to promote their wealth.
But if there's hiding in the medical system and they are the wealthy ones, we know that the wealthy are the ones in Barack Obama's America who can pay the lobbyists in Washington to get ahead.
Won't the system just perpetuate itself even worse, maybe even codify it in regulation if we allow Washington, D.C. to be in charge of this instead of trying to empower the patient?
The patient is not going to be empowered either way.
It's very difficult to get difficult to get facts.
Well, but I mean, Google is your friend when it comes to being able to get facts.
Now, look, I understand the one example you gave, the having the open heart surgery when they didn't necessarily need to have the open heart surgery or shouldn't have it and having a stroke.
I totally get that.
But, you know, I do, I feel like I feel compelled to speak up for some doctors out there who sometimes these things happen, but it is for the best that they, in fact, do try to have the surgery.
There are some good doctors.
Yes, many, many good doctors.
Yes.
But many also abuse the system and are not checked.
Okay, so, Rita, this is the impasse then.
We've already got medical licensing boards in states.
We've got insurance commissioners in states.
I'm not talking about something that's illegal.
Right, right, right.
But we already have regulatory agencies who can make sure that the system is abused.
Why do we need a federal bureaucratic level total Obamacare?
This is not illegal what these people do.
No, I totally understand it.
It's not illegal.
But your supposition is that sometimes they give medicines or perform surgeries that benefits them but doesn't necessarily benefit the patient.
If we're not already in the 21st century stopping this, how will Obamacare stop it?
Well, it's going to put a cap on some things.
It's unfortunate.
Yeah, it is unfortunate because what about the people who, I mean, are you speculating that the majority of people are being injured by doctors?
No.
Okay.
I'm not telling you.
OK, so if we've got this law, well, hang on a second.
Just follow this out with me.
If we've got this law that is going to put a stop to this, but it's a minority who's being affected by it right now.
The majority is not being affected.
Why are we harming the majority to curtail problems with a minority that could be further curtailed with patient empowerment that isn't happening in Obamacare?
There is no patient empowerment.
People are not giving the patients all the information.
Some are.
And some people don't want to hear the truth.
Okay, so some people don't want to hear the truth.
Isn't that their problem, though, if they don't want to hear the truth?
Now, I got to tell you, I had surgery three weeks ago, completely unexpected.
I did all the research myself.
I got on Google.
I realize I may not be typical, but I was going out to find the information myself.
I wasn't waiting to be spoon-fed from the doctor.
I'm just not sure why we need to expand the federal government into one-seventh of the economy to do something to help a minority of people, a small minority of people, by the way, when it's going to negatively impact a majority of people.
You know what's the problem with our country?
Not that people want to work.
Well, okay, Rita, look, I appreciate that pivot.
I've got to let you go there because I'm running long.
You have a Merry Christmas.
We'll be right back with a breakdown of Rita.
Wow.
Mark on Twitter just tweeted that we should not judge all people from Arizona by Rita, the last caller.
I actually asked Mr. Shirley if he can trace the line to see.
I just feel convinced that she was actually in Colorado toking up and not actually in Arizona self-medic.
Whoa.
The moment she moved on to, well, the problem in this country is people just don't work.
I just, we couldn't continue to have the conversation.
It was fascinating to me, at least, to get inside the mind of someone like that.
But if people aren't working, why is Obamacare a good thing?
Because there's nobody working to pay for the system to keep it.
Wow.
We could have gone in circles forever, but then I would eventually wind up sounding like Rita from, I think she was actually from Riolinda.
I'm, you know, forget, I bet you it was Rita from Rio.
I just let, you know, I'm going to let Kurt from Point Pleasant, New Jersey take this.
Kurt's a doctor here.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Kurt, how are you?
Good, Dan.
How are you?
I'm good.
So, Rita from Arizona.
Totally false.
We haven't had, we can't have drug companies even give us tens anymore, no less take trips and things like that.
And that might have happened in the 80s, but it does not happen now.
Yeah, I've had several people tell me that this was in the 80s, and it was a Republican administration that had clamped down.
Even with the surgeries, and doctors, you know, speaking, I'm a podiatrist, so I deal with feet all the time, so it's not life-threatening things in most cases.
But one of the things that's happened since the early 90s is that they've decreased surgical allowances from, you know, the high numbers to nothing, almost nothing, because they're paying for office visits now.
And, you know, more so, the insurance company is paying for all of these things, so the people don't have a concept of what things cost.
Right.
Yeah, no, let me ask you this.
As a doctor, isn't that probably one of the biggest issues with insurance right now?
Is when I use, I've got car insurance, but when I go get my oil changed or tires rotated or new tires or something done, I know how much it costs, largely because my car insurance doesn't pay for the routine maintenance things.
But when I go to the doctor, like when I had my gallbladder surgery a couple of weeks ago, I had no idea how much it was going to cost.
I got an estimate from the hospital of how much I would pay out of pocket, but not for the overall surgery, let alone then all of a sudden I'm getting the doctor bill and the anesthesias bill and everything else.
Right.
And, you know, that's the thing.
I mean, we're basically, you know, there's not socialized medicine, but it is kind of socialized because you've got Medicare fee schedules and everybody, almost all the other insurance companies base it off of their Medicare fee schedules.
So, you know, we could charge, you know, $5,000 for an operation and might only get $500.
And, you know, because that's what the approved amount is, or the allowed amount is.
It's not like, you know, it's not like a retail store where there's competition between doctors.
You know, if I'm charging one price, the guy down the street's charging the same price.
There's no, you know, because of the insurance companies.
Right, right, yeah.
There's no competition.
We've separated this out.
There is no competition.
You can't go into your doctorate.
I read an article a while back about a doctor in Lawrenceville, Kansas, who actually posts a price list, doesn't take insurance, decided he wanted to save the overhead, doesn't have a staff filing insurance.
He just posts the price list and tells people it's going to cost X, Y, and Z for these procedures.
Come in if you want.
And has a booming business out there, but very few doctors do that.
Right.
Well, and it's kind of tough, too, because, you know, it's a whole thing.
People blame the insurance companies.
People blame the doctors.
People blame the patient.
It's a combination of all three of them.
You know, and doctors got into the credit granting business years ago because they send patients pills.
Patients walk in oftentimes to the office and say, Can you send me a bill?
They never go to a restaurant and say, Can you send me a bill?
The service is great.
Food was great.
Things like that.
So it really is, you know, it's a tough business.
It's not.
Well, let me ask you this.
I'm curious about this.
You're in New Jersey, a doctor in New Jersey.
Are you already seeing impacts from Obamacare?
Somewhat.
Not as much, I don't think.
People's copays are going up.
You know, people have $50, $60 copays now.
We're at E65 and $10.
But I haven't seen a lot of my copay has gone up.
But some of my colleagues in New York have had some of the problems I've been reading about and talking to.
Yeah, and I just think it's only going to be.
It's a good tough out there.
Yeah, I really think it is.
I wonder if we're going to get to a point soon where we're going to start seeing doctor shortages.
People just aren't going to want to deal with it.
Well, that's the thing.
I mean, you look at some of the things.
I just had a request the other day for money back from an insurance company because the patient didn't have a referral at the time.
The insurance company paid it in error, so now the patient's got to pay it.
But, you know, every other topic worked out.
Once I got paid, I didn't have to pay that money back.
You know, it's a tough one.
Wow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, I've got a friend of mine out in Texas who he had dealing with lymphoma for a while.
And now Texas Cancer Center is one of the big Texas cancer centers out there.
Isn't going to take patients under Obamacare because of this whole payback issue where they could wait forever and then pay the money and someone could cancel Obamacare and them not know and have to pay back money.
Just absolutely insane.
Well, Kurt, look, Merry Christmas to you.
Thanks very much for the phone call.
This system is already out of white.
For the liberals who say, well, this is the free market.
No, this isn't the free market.
This is not a free market health care system.
It is a system that is overrun with bureaucracy.
It is a system overrun with regulations.
It is a system where the doctor and the patient don't meet in an arm's length transaction.
There's a middleman most patients have to go through.
Only if you're rich enough can you get rid of the middleman and go straight to the doctor and negotiate the price with the doctor.
For most of us, for you and for me, that's not going to happen.
And it's just going to drive up costs even more with Obamacare.
Again, George Will, honestly, I've got to give credit to George Will.
He said it so well.
The only way Obamacare works is if people behave irrationally.
And people are rational creatures.
So, well, most of them, Rita, I'm not so sure about down there in Phoenix.
I'm not sure if Rita's that rational.
Okay, when we come back, we're going to spend a little more time taking some phone calls.
We'll spend, well, we'll go outside the realm of politics.
And Chris Christie, the media is turning on Chris Christie.
Welcome.
Merry Christmas to you.
Christmas.
I hope you have your shopping done.
I took my dad out to do his shopping yesterday, and then I took my mom out after my dad.
I went home and took my mom.
I was so exhausted after it was all over.
I turned to the internet to do my shop.
Look, I don't particularly care for people.
I don't like going into stores.
The people milling about.
It drives me insane.
Just dot com it and do your shopping.
I just, I suspect it would be a more wonderful thing.
There are Democrats, particularly in Georgia.
They are upset with the President of the United States.
Believe it or not, Democrats actually, they're willing to be a little critical of the President of the United States.
Why, you ask?
Would they be critical of the President?
Well, they're unhappy with his selection of judges.
Down in Georgia, civil rights hero John Lewis, down in Georgia, is upset with the president's picks for judges.
He says the president needs to, well, pick better.
President Barack Obama, this is from Jonathan Allen of the Political.
President Obama has upset Representative John Lewis and other civil rights leaders by ignoring their input in picking four nominees to fill vacancies on the federal bench in Georgia's northern district.
Lewis and Presidential Medal of Freedom winner Joseph Lowry and C.T. Vivian are expected to ask him to withdraw his nominees.
Bad process, a result in bad judges, says a lawyer involved in the effort to pressure.
Now, this is Joseph Lowry, who said the benediction or the prayer or whatever at the first inauguration.
You know, you couldn't have Louie Giglio, the pastor, because he had actually quoted scripture like Phil Robertson, so they had to bar him the first way.
They got Joseph Lowry, and he's upset now about the judges.
The White House cleared three judges, Mark Cohen, Eleanor Ross, Michael Boggs, with the blessings of two Republican senators in Georgia.
That's actually how it works, you know.
It's an informal, unwritten system, but the senators from each state sign off on the judges who will be appointed into their states.
So they didn't need to ask John Lewis or Joseph Lowry or C.T. Vivian.
They had to ask Johnny Isaacson and tax members.
But the civil rights leaders are outraged by the president doing this.
Now, John Lewis, incidentally, I kept this audio.
It is the gift that keeps on giving.
John Lewis is unquestionably a hero of the civil rights era.
He faced down the dogs and the water hoses in the street.
John Lewis, a couple of years ago, there was a guy running for chairman of the Fulton County Commission in Georgia, the Fulton County Commission.
That's in charge of the metro Atlanta area.
John A. Eves, I believe his name was.
And John Lewis and Shirley Franklin, the mayor of Atlanta, and Andrew Young, former ambassador, they cut a commercial for this guy.
And John Lewis on the radio, in an actual commercial, you cannot parody this.
He actually says that voting for a Republican would be worse than the dogs in the street of the civil rights era.
Having a Republican in charge of the Fulton County Commission would be worse than the dogs and water hoses of the street.
Think about that for a minute.
Think about that mindset.
That a Republican in charge of a county commission would be worse than water hoses and dogs attacking you in the street, trying to get your right to vote.
Think about that for a minute.
He ends this commercial.
Your very lives may depend on it.
I kid you not.
I keep the audio of that commercial around every once in a while when John Lewis comes up.
I got to play the audio to remind people that the man over time, my goodness.
Here's the other thing that stands out to me.
Where are they when it comes to poor black children in Louisiana being deprived of access to good schools?
You know, one of the very first things Barack Obama did when he came to office was he stopped letting poor black children go to his daughter's school in Washington.
They had no opportunity anymore.
Got rid of the school choice program that black parents in Washington, D.C. loved because teachers' unions didn't love it.
He wasn't worried about their civil rights when it comes to getting a good education so they can succeed.
I mean, after all, he could just redistribute wealth from the wealthy and give them a check.
They don't need to be educated.
They don't need access to good education.
Hasn't done anything to improve the D.C. schools to offset denying them access to his daughter's school.
In Louisiana, the same thing is happening.
In Louisiana, the governor of the state, Bobby Jindal, a friend of mine, and others in the state, they've been able to get a law passed and work to expand access to good schools in the state for poor children.
Most often, our minority children.
The Obama Justice Department, Eric Holder himself, is fighting Louisiana.
All they want is for these kids to be able to get a good education.
And they're fighting against it.
You know, our Declaration of Independence says we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.
They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.
Among these, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.
All men are created equal.
The problem Democrats have is they're much more interested in the equality of the outcome than the equality of the beginning.
See, everyone starts off as what?
Unless Planned Parenthood intervenes, they start off as a baby.
They don't all have the same access to healthcare.
They don't have the same access to good schools.
And Republicans, believe it or not, for all the Democrats out there say, the Republicans only care about them when they're in the womb.
Once they're out there on their own and they can starve and die.
It's not true.
It is factually not true.
Here is Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, who wants to give children access to a good education, understanding that if they can learn to read and write at an early age, the odds are they can continue in life and do well.
And it is Barack Obama, it is the Democrats who are denying them that right.
And these civil rights leaders, they're upset because the judges who are getting picked for the bench, they're not liberal enough.
Yes.
Go ahead, Mr. Sturdly.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
No, no, they're not upset by record unemployment in every city, most of which are pretty much all of them now overseen by Democrats.
No, they're not upset by that.
They're upset by politics.
This is yes, another one, please.
Are they upset by the high crime rates in the cities?
Only to the extent that they want to impede people's Second Amendment rights to protect themselves.
They're not actually upset by the overwhelming crime waves.
They're just upset that some people have access to arms to protect themselves.
Any more questions?
Sir.
Are they upset?
Are they upset that black teens have the highest unemployment in the country?
Not with Barack Obama as president.
If it happened with George Bush, yes, they would be upset, but they're not upset with it because, you know, Barack Obama, he's one of them and he means well.
I mean, Barack Obama may be the only man in America who actually celebrates Kwanzaa so that he means well.
He's for the black community.
Never mind that crime in the black community is bad.
Never mind that schools in the inner cities are terrible.
Never mind that unemployment among black teenagers is terrible.
Never mind that the black family is falling apart.
You know, this is one of the most galling things to me.
As an evangelical Christian male in this country who sees the decline and decay in society, who actually cares about these people, who has worked in public schools, yes, I have worked in public schools.
The collapse, Juan Williams and I, we've had these conversations before, and he and I, we see largely eye to eye on this, different solutions, but we see the same thing, the collapse of the family in the black community.
Here is a man with a wife and two children who is well off, who is well-to-do, and he seems to be incentivized to continue to preach this us versus them.
You know, call me silly, but I believe when you, the civil rights leaders in the United States, when the president of the United States, when you all go around and you say, well, you people are victims.
You people, you've been pushed down by others.
We've got to give you affirmative action.
You pay no attention to us depriving you of access to their schools.
We'll take their money and give it to you, and we'll give you affirmative action so you can get into college and take remedial courses.
You're a victim of society.
I'm sorry.
But when you go around and you tell people that they are a victim of everyone else, at some point they decide, well, if everyone's putting me down and I'm a perpetual victim, then why am I even going to bother?
And they lose the incentive, the will, the desire to improve themselves.
I see it happening around the country.
But if you talk about it, you're called a racist.
Yes, please.
You know, I'm deeply pessimistic when it comes to – Mr. Sturley is asking if we're going to be able to overcome this one day.
There are too many people, I believe, in this country who profit from scraping off the scabs and keeping the wounds open and festering for us to be able to overcome this.
Only by the citizens of the nation ourselves will we be able to overcome this.
We're not going to be able to rely on government.
As long as too many people profit from the system, though, leaving it the way it is.
Yeah, I don't, I don't, maybe someday in the very far future, maybe when the yeah, no, I don't think we're going to overcome it unless something dynamic changes.
The only thing I think that can change is, you know, like in the wilderness, the Israelites, they had to wander till the old generations died off.
Maybe when the old generations die off, the younger generations will decide it's time to move on.
That's my one hope in this: the younger generations will decide it's time to move on and time to realize that, you know, life's not fair for any of us.
That makes us a victim.
We'll be right back.
All right, my friends, it is Eric Erickson in for Rush Limbaugh today.
Merry Christmas.
It is Christmas Eve.
If you're just looking at your calendar and panicking, phone number is 1-800-282-2882.
Let's go to, well, Ted, San Diego.
How are you?
Yeah, I'm doing good here.
Listen, I want to make a comment about the Obamacare plan that was supposed to insure 30 million uninsured people.
Now everybody's jumping up and down because 1 million people have signed up.
Well, what about these other 29 million people?
When are they going to sign up?
They probably won't.
Well, then, what's the big deal?
Why did we ruin it, everything?
So that 1 million people could sign up for health care.
Oh, because, you know, it's the greater good for the neediest souls.
And the reason the others aren't signing up is, well, they can get insurance elsewhere.
Look, I don't mean to be facetious here, but I'm scratching my head too.
The reason we did it is because we had a system that worked fairly well, even though it wasn't great.
It wasn't a free market system.
The Democrats, though, don't know what free market is, so they assumed it was, and they decided they needed to blow it up because of their hostility to the free market.
So they've ruined it for everybody.
But why aren't the Republican legislators jumping all over this thing?
We're supposed to sign up 30 million people.
We've only signed up 1 million.
And even then, they probably haven't even jumped all over this.
Well, you know, the Ted Cruises of the world, the Mike Lee's of the world, they are.
It's just, well, the Republican leaders in Washington who've decided that the problem isn't government itself, but Democrats in charge of government.
They think they can prove to the world they're better technocrats than the Democrats.
Well, the bottom line is when this is all said and done and they count up how many people actually signed up and paid their fees, I think we're going to find out that those 30 million people, 29.5 million, are still uninsured.
Yeah, look, I don't think it's going to work out for them the way they think it's going to work out.
I really don't.
I think it's blowing up in their face.
They wanted to undermine the system to get to single payer.
They just didn't realize it was going to happen in the cascading effect that it is.
And, well, you know, those of us who understand the way markets work and the way people behave, I said this on Friday, and I don't mean to repeat myself, but I just believe conservatives understand better the way people work and function and live in the world than Democrats.
They put their faith in the collective instead of the individual when you should put your faith in the individual instead of the collective.
I just, I'm not a fan of the way the Democrats have worked this out.
Tim and Pasadena, let's go to you next.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
How are you?
Good.
Merry Christmas, Eric.
Merry Christmas to you.
You know, you've been touching somewhat on what I want to say, and that is that the media has created straw dogs.
You've given some examples.
I'd like to give an example in the Duck Dynasty affair.
They're saying all over the media where I listen to this subject, they're saying conservatives say this is a First Amendment.
I've never said it was a First Amendment issue.
I know very few other smart conservatives that say this is a First Amendment issue, but it is a bigotry against Bible issue.
And I'm telling your audience, if you want to frame this conversation, frame it in terms of bigotry against the Bible because they have every right to fire the guy, but I think they should be made to feel the heat for bigotry against Christianity.
Well, you know, I was shocked.
The Atlantic isn't exactly a conservative publication, but I was really shocked this weekend to read an article in The Atlantic where the author said, in effect, that the issue we're having here isn't really with Phil Robinson.
It's just that the GLAD activists, the gay rights activists, know they can't launch a full-on assault head-on against St. Paul, so they've got to go after Phil Robertson instead.
I mean, that's really it, is they want to dance around things that they're uncomfortable with that billions of people think is legitimate.
And they know they can't take on a billion people at one time.
So they go after Phil Robertson, hope to use him as an example and censure him and silence him.
Yeah, you know, am I still on?
Yes.
Yeah.
You know, where they go then, I have gone that direction.
Where they go then is, oh, you need to keep your religion private.
Well, you know what I say?
I say a private religion is a cowardly religion.
Yeah, I agree with you, Tim.
I completely agree with you.
I will tell you this: in Barack Obama's American, in the left's ideal world that we're seeing shape up, we live in a society where we used to, many of us, be defined by our faith and who we slept with was a private matter.
And the left wants to flip that.
And now we're defined by who we sleep with.
And faith is something we do for an hour on Sunday.
That's the left in America.
Folks, we've got to take a quick time out to earn some money here on the EIB Network.
We'll be right back.
Merry Christmas to all of you.
Eric Erickson here on the Rush Limbaugh Show and EIB Network.
It's just been a delight to sit behind the golden EIB microphone, although today I'm back in Atlanta, so I'm behind mine with my TV makeup caked on the pop filter.
Yeah, long story.
You know, I would like to, as we head out of here, point out one of my favorite Christmas songs is I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.
It's a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, written in 1863.
In despair I bowed my head.
There is no peace on earth, I said, for hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, goodwill to me.
You know the song.
He was writing this song.
His son had been badly wounded in the Civil War the prior month.
His wife had died in an accidental fire.
His son would ultimately die.
And he ended the song on a high note and recognized right prevail with peace on earth, goodwill to men.
It's a wonderful song and a wonderful story behind it.
So peace on earth, goodwill towards men.
Merry Christmas to you all.
Mark Stein will be here Thursday.
Mark Belling will be here on Friday.
I hope you guys have a very safe Christmas.
Remember, if you're doing last-minute shopping, be kind to people out there.
Lord knows, be patient with people out there who are distracted.
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