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Jan. 3, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:49
January 3, 2014, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Well, what I need to know is, folks, I'm just trying to get a lay of the land here, and nobody's answering my question.
Did anybody survive in New York City?
That's what I'm trying to figure.
There are survivors in New York City.
There are people alive in New York City.
Okay, that's all I wanted to know.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open live Friday.
I was panicking.
I'm watching the news about the blizzard.
Do you know you can have a blizzard with no snow in now?
I got a drive-by weather babe claiming it.
Who says you need snow for a blizzard?
I was just I it's so bad.
We're being told it's so bad.
I was wondering if anybody lived through it.
And I'm happy to learn that people did.
In New York City in the snow.
Six to ten inches.
Who would have thought people could survive that?
That's unbelievable.
Six to ten inches, and people still live and breathe in New York City.
Hallelujah.
God bless.
Greetings, my friends, and welcome.
Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network, the Limbaugh Institute.
He is so snarky.
He's just so mean.
No, I'm not mean.
Folks, I'm trying to hold on to a sense of sanity and reality and realism in a world literally going nut so.
Every waking moment is a panic and a crisis.
And of course, who is going to save you?
You can't.
You're not capable.
Mayors, governors, senators, congressmen, presidents, sanitation departments, they are going to save you.
They are going to tell you when to go outside and when not to go outside.
They're going to tell you how to shovel snow using your knees, not your back.
Anyway, it's going to be fun.
It's going to be fun chronicling this communist mayor in uh in New York City.
How are you, folks?
Great to have you, Rush Limbaugh in the EIB network.
And we are here to wrap up.
But it's amazing how fast a week goes by when you only work two days of it.
Fastest week in media, and as an added bonus, it is open line Friday, which uh differs from Monday through Thursday in a very significant way.
Now, for those of you new to the program, uh, people that call the program to get on the air have to talk about things I'm interested in.
Otherwise, they don't get on unless they lie to the call screener.
And if they do that, they don't last long.
Uh once they do get on the air.
They're not treated rudely or impolitely, but they are dispatched.
And the reason is I don't want to be bored.
And if I am bored, you will be, and that's not good.
But on Friday, I throw all that out, and whatever you want to talk about is hunky-dory and fine and dandy.
It's a golden opportunity for you to talk about things that you think maybe aren't being discussed here that you think are important.
Or for you, if you're nosy and curious and have gossip-related type questions of me, feel free.
That's what Open Line Friday is.
And again, the number's 800 282-2882, the email address, L Rushmore at EIBNet.com.
So the mayor of New York City, De Blasio goes out there today and said that he was going to make sure.
You gotta hear this, that there wasn't gonna be any unequal distribution of snow removal.
Now I don't know if people remember this, but Mayor Doomberg, and Reuters uh notes this.
Mayor Doomberg was pilloried for his own snow redistribution plan back in 2010.
Mayor Doomberg was accused with everything going on, it just I don't know.
I it just amazes me.
In 2010, Mayor Doomburg was accused of putting too much effort into plowing the streets of Manhattan while letting the snow build up in Brooklyn and Queens, and that led to snow level inequality.
And snow removal inequality and snow plowing inequality, and we Can't have that.
No, sir.
So the um I mean the real problem was that the sanitation union was unhappy, and they held back plowing all the streets in protest of budget cuts, and then they blamed it on Duberg.
That's what was going on.
Now, if you happen to hear De Blasio today, de Blasio, every other word, was bowing down and thanking the good people at the sanitation union.
Every other sentence, he made sure to thank the people, the great, and he had 15 of them standing behind him.
The sanitation union for do oh, what a terrific job they're doing.
They're doing a great job of equal snow removal.
And he warned the residents of New York, do not go out, don't do diddly squat, make it safe for the sanitation union.
And he remembers, yeah, he remembers what happened at Doomberg in in in 2010.
So let's let's just go to the audio sound bites.
Uh this is last night in Brooklyn Heights, which is where the uh the new mayor lives.
Uh but it was I don't know if it's Brooklyn Heights, he lives in Brooklyn, but this is the Office of Emergency Management.
He had a press conference talk about the winter storm impacting New York.
Uh that amazingly, people survived.
And here is a portion of his remarks.
Stay indoors to the maximum extent possible.
Stay out of your cars to the maximum extent possible.
Don't go out.
We want to make sure that people are safe.
We want them to be in a warm location, and crucially, we want to keep our streets clear so the good men and women of the sanitation department can ensure that our streets are plowed and salted.
It's very important.
People get home as soon as possible tonight, get to a safe, warm place, stay off the streets.
Don't go out.
Whatever you do, do not get in the way of my sanitation union people.
By the way, de Blasio also made a be shoveled his own sidewalk today, but he put the snow on a neighbor's sidewalk.
Just an abside.
But he made a point of saying, well, yeah, my son takes the first stretch of sidewalk, then I then I pick it up from that point.
But make sure you don't use salt, because that could harm neighborhood pets.
You have to use a pet-free snow melting pellet.
Or a pet safe snow melting pellet.
And it's green.
You don't know, don't dare put salt out there.
It's bad for neighborhood pets.
Did you know that?
Yeah, well, it is.
Well, I'm going to go back to 1943.
Just for contrast here.
We have Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia speaking to citizens about the preparations for snow in 1943.
Now remember what you just heard.
You just heard the current mayor de Blasio beg people, stay off the street, get home, go someplace warm, cuddle up, do not get in the street.
Do not get in the way.
Don't do anything.
Just stay out of the way.
In 1943, this was the New York City mayor.
We must keep the streets of our city open for the delivery of food supplies, war materials, and readily accessible for our fire department.
Therefore, I am appealing to the people of this city to volunteer in assisting us to keep open the sewer basins located at every street intersection, and also to keep the crosswalks in as good condition as possible for the pedestrians.
And we are also appealing to volunteers.
Volunteers who would be willing to do a little snow shoveling right in their own blocks.
So back in 1943, 71 years ago, the mayor of New York said, get out there, lend a hand and help everybody.
Help us, help us in the city, help the fire department, help us.
Do the crosswalks, do your own sidewalk, keep it safe for everybody.
Let's all work together.
This mayor don't go outside.
It's unsafe.
You might die.
Do not use salt instead of pet safe snow melting tollets.
Keep the streets safe for sanitation.
Do not go out.
It's amazing.
contrast.
Nothing more than just a little interesting contrast.
Now back to the current mayor de Blasio.
This is this morning on Channel 2 Eyeball News, uh CBS TV.
Special coverage.
Special coverage of the snowstorm.
Six to ten inches.
Again, breaking news, people survived.
Correspondent Wee Ju Jang interviewed De Blasio while he was outside his house shoveling snow.
She said, before the storm even hit, you said it was very personal for you because you could feel it.
You said it was personal because you could see it.
And you saw mistakes in the past.
So what did you learn that you're going to apply for the rest of today and tomorrow, Mr. Mayor?
We're going to make sure that we're very proactive when we have these situations.
And I'm just not going to allow, you know, certain neighborhoods to suffer while other neighborhoods are clear.
We're going to move the resources that we have where they're needed to make sure that people get served.
We are going to have equal distribution snow removal.
We are not going to have neighborhoods suffer.
What do you let me get Snerdley's looking at me and he's giving me a be careful expression on your face?
I understand a snowstorm killed John Lindsay and so forth.
I know Queens and Staten Island usually do get the shaft, and sometimes Brooklyn, but Brooklyn won't now because the mayor lives there.
But but the No, I understand.
That's why the media in New York making a big deal.
Oh no, the first day in office, major snowstorm could kill an administration if he doesn't do it right.
So he's out there.
You have to understand though, Snerdley, but liberals anymore.
It doesn't matter what they do.
It's all what they say.
Not one thimble of snow could be removed as long as he's out there saying it's going to be equal.
Sanitation Department can take the day off, and as long as he's on TV saying, I'm going to make sure that there's no unequal snow removal.
We are going to have an equal distribution of snow removal.
As long as he says that, the citizens of New York are going to be hunky-dory and fine with it, no matter what the reality is, because it doesn't matter what the reality is.
All it matters is what the politician says.
And saying the right thing can indicate what's in his heart.
You know, liberals get credit for good intentions, and that's about it, because everything they do fails.
I think the Limbaugh theorem applies at a local level as well as it does to Obama.
Yeah.
You just say.
You just act.
You just promise what you're going to do.
Then whether you do it or not.
And let's see.
Here's here's the quote.
This is a sound bite from uh the uh CBS uh two eyeball news.
I guess this is the uh yeah, the weather babe.
Sorry, not babe, caster.
What is so funny?
What it's not a babe.
It's it's Lonnie Quinn.
Uh anyway, it's a portion.
Chief weathercaster, Lonnie Quinn uh talking about a snowstorm impacting New York City, and this is the bite.
You don't even need snowfalling for it to be called a blizzard now.
Well, what makes a blizzard a blizzard?
Well, for three hours you have to have at least 35 mile per hour winds or stronger, either sustained or gusting frequently, and your visibility has got to be down to a quarter of a mile.
But notice it says nothing there about snowing.
It does not have to be snowing in order to have a blizzard.
It's the snow that's already gonna be on the ground, being picked up by the strong winds and blown everywhere.
Right.
You don't need any snow falling for there to be a blizzard.
You don't need snow.
You did a blizzard.
You you you just so it's a blizzard.
Six to ten inches.
When I grew up, six to ten inches was not a blizzard.
I know we uh you know what?
We went to school in in six, as long as there wasn't any ice, we went to school six inches, ten inches.
Um anyway, um it's just folks just say what is this all What this is all about is how soft the culture's becoming.
That's all this is.
We're having fun here.
We're laughing at it.
I mean, this is six to ten inches of snow is treated as though it could be the end of things.
Six to ten inches, nobody's capable.
If you know if you listen to these government people, six to ten inches, not one citizen is capable of dealing with this without being guided and having his or her hand held by either local news media weather people or the mayor, some politician, and it's indicative of who these people are and how they look at people.
You just aren't capable of handling life yourself.
You're not capable of doing the right thing without being told.
You're not capable of making up the right, making the right decision.
You have to be told.
And this six to ten inches of snow is nothing.
And yet it has become a breaking news story that stops everything in its tracks.
And to me, it's just an indication of the what government can do.
What big bureaucracies made up of people who want to control every aspect of your life can do.
And it's just not healthy that something six to ten inches like this is major crisis.
And I don't, it just it just defends my sensibilities is all, and it worries me.
In uh it's just the wussification of the culture.
I gotta take a break.
We've got big Obamacare news.
People are not being treated at emergency room.
This is big.
This is this administration is out lying through its teeth about all these people signing up and about how great Obamacare is now.
Meanwhile, Obama continues to break the law each and every day with executive actions, not even executive orders, executive actions and proclamations.
Eleven state attorneys general have gone into gear, gotten into gear about this, and are attempting to stop it and at least call people's uh attention to it.
Uh one of the one of the Chinese ChICOM icebreaker ships that was involved in rescue.
You know what?
Those people that were rescued, you still can't find in the media that they were on a global warming expedition.
It just happens to be that we're some scientists going on Antarctica to get stuck in the ice.
Oh, how horrible, oh, how terrible.
But thankfully they were rescued.
Not one mention anywhere that they're on a global warming mission, which is proof positive that the media is involved in the agenda of global warming, which is a political issue.
Anyway, the Chai Com icebreaker that helped them escape is now itself stuck.
The rescued global warming hoaxers are now on some Australian ship.
And they don't care anymore about the ChICOM ship that's stuck because they got out.
People in the ChICOM ship will now have to depend on the city of New York and the mayor to get unstuck from the Antarctica ice.
Greetings, folks, welcome back.
Rush Limbaugh, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Open Line Friday.
We try to take more of your calls on Open Line Friday than we do Monday through Thursday.
UK Daily Mail.
The uh it's it's an amazing story.
Hospital staff North Virginia turning away sick people on a frigid Thursday morning because they can't determine whether their Obamacare insurance plans are in effect.
Patients in a close-in DC suburb who think they've signed up for new insurance plans are struggling to show that their December enrollments are in force, and health care administrators aren't taking their word for it.
They've got no proof.
So people thought they were signing up for Obamacare.
Somehow there's not an enrollment card or an ID card or a membership card or any kind of evidentiary proof that you are enrolled.
But people went to maybe some scammers in here, probably are, but still some people thought they signed up for Obamacare, now showing up in the hospital at the ER and they're being turned away.
In place of quick service and painless billing, these Virginians are now facing the threat of sticker shock that comes with bills that they can't afford.
They had no idea if my insurance was active or not, said a coughing Maria Galvez outside the Innova Healthplex facility in the town of Springfield.
She was leaving the building without getting a needed chest x-ray.
People in there told me that since I didn't have an insurance card, I would be billed for the entire cost of the x-ray.
She had her young daughter in tow.
This isn't fair.
And they're not treating me.
Because she's got no proof.
What a mess.
What an absolute total mess.
Greetings, my friends, and welcome, El Rushbow, half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
Get line one ready.
Open line Friday, 800-282-2882.
We ought to go to Sullivan, Wisconsin, because this is a transition to where I was headed anyway.
Ken, great to have you on Open Line Friday.
Hello, sir.
Rush, it's been many years.
We appreciate you out here.
What do you mean it's been uh it's been many years?
Many years of the program, many years since you last called, many years.
What do you mean, many years?
Uh well, I've been listening forever, and I'm usually busy during the day.
I'm off today because the first time I ever called.
And I got through.
I can't believe.
Okay, so it's it's been many years that you have been trying and wanting to appear on the program, and here it is, you've made it.
And I'm my first call, and again, we appreciate you out here.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate it.
I really do.
Uh well, my first thought as I sat here today was um here with everything going south as far as Obamacare, and with the country in supposedly uh a slow recovery, which we all know is no recovery at all.
Um, our president is in Hawaii, and they're doing photo shoots of him getting lattes and hitting golf balls.
If George W. Bush had put his signature, something that he actually put his name on and then disappeared at the beginning of its inception and was having a vacation while all the sites were crashing.
Uh can you imagine?
Can you imagine what what uh people would be saying in the in the media right now?
I want to hear anything.
Yeah, yeah, I do.
I can totally understand it, but I want to focus on just one half of that.
I don't care what the media would be saying about what Bush is doing.
What matters more to me is what Obama is actually doing.
His signature program is a total lie.
His signature program, he lied to people.
You keep your plan, you keep your doctor if you like it.
People now can't even get insurance.
People who thought they were insured aren't and can't get treated.
They're being untreated, going in the hospitals, and they don't have insurance.
They think they've signed up.
It is an absolute disaster, and he's snorkeling in Hawaii.
Forget what the media is saying about it, which is nothing.
And we all know that if it were George W. Bush, the media would be taking the occasion to drum up hatred, downward approval numbers, and everything else from Bush to run him out of office.
But my point, let's just forget the media for a second, folks, and let's just look at the man.
Barack Obama.
His signature program, Ken's exactly right.
This program has his name on it.
He lied to people for three years about this program.
People trusted him.
People believed what he told them.
They believed that he was going to improve the health care system in this country.
They believed it was going to get cheaper.
They believed it was going to get more affordable.
They believed it was going to become more plentiful.
They believed that everybody was going to have insurance.
They believed Obama.
That's why he was elected.
They believed he was a different politician.
They believed he was messianic.
They bought into that.
They believed Obama and the Democrat Party and everybody in it.
When they made these promises about a new panacea and utopia in health care.
This is an absolute national disaster.
And the man who gave this program to people is snorkeling in Hawaii.
He's out there for 17 days.
I'm reading about the burdens of the office travel with the president wherever he goes.
The burdens of the office are such the president is never on vacation.
This man is.
This man is on vacation even when he's in Washington.
But this is outrageous.
In addition to people going to the hospital and being turned away.
And by the way, that story is in the British media.
You don't find that in domestic U.S. media.
The UK mail online spoke with patients who were told that they would have to pay their bills in full if they couldn't prove they have insurance.
That's not what Obama told them was going to happen.
Obama told them they were going to get cheaper premiums, cheaper deductibles, cheaper copies, and that if they liked what they had, they could keep it.
So people, the ones who did sign up, now may not have actually signed up because after three years, this bunch can't even do a simple login registration website.
And the man who gave us this doesn't appear to care.
He doesn't care enough to even come back and use the power of his office as boss over everybody in charge of this and insist that it get done right.
Instead, he's at Nobu on Waikiki Beach one night.
Instead, he's snorkeling.
Instead, he's out hitting golf balls.
Instead, he's reading books on the beach or whatever he's doing.
Yeah, it's true the media would be hammering George W. Bush, but we know the media isn't going to hammer Barack Obama.
No matter what.
They are Barack Obama.
The most the more important thing here is just what kind of man would do this.
What kind of man could appear so cavalier?
He knew that January 1st, January 2nd was D-Day for this plan to go into effect.
He knew that.
And where is he?
He's as far away from Washington as you can be and still be in the country.
With absolutely not a care in the world.
And yet, it's a Democrat.
They're the ones I've heard all my life.
They're the ones who really care about people.
They're the ones who really have compassion.
They're the ones who really care about the little guy.
Why is it the little guy keeps getting the shaft when these people are in charge?
Why is it the very people who believe Obama, the very people who elected him get the shaft?
One person was faced with a $3,000 hospital room charge, opted to leave the hospital while having chest pains, because couldn't pay the three grand.
Well, who could?
They thought they were insured.
They had signed up at healthcare.gov.
Another coughing in the cold walked out without receiving a needed chest x-ray.
Consumers are facing sticker shock for medical costs under the new Obamacare system made worse if they can't prove they're insured.
How you show up at healthcare.gov, you give them all your data, you sign up, you follow the law, and they don't know you've been there.
Even if you have signed up and for some reason can't prove it, there ought to be some record of you having signed up in their database.
Why isn't there?
And if there is, why can't anybody find it?
This is a disgrace, folks.
These are real people, these are human beings who probably don't have a lot and have been talked into, depending on the government for this kind of thing.
They've been talked into depending on other people.
They've been talked into believing that powerful forces are arrayed against them and are ready to screw them at each and every turn.
Let us handle it for you, the Democrats A. And where are they?
As many as one-third of new enrollees' applications have seen problems when the government transmits the data to the insurance companies.
Here's a companion story.
This is from A.P. out of Chicago.
The new year brought relief to some Illinois patients nearly insured under Obamacare, but others still weren't sure whether they were covered despite their best efforts to navigate the often bulky system.
The major benefits of Obama's health care overcall took effect on Wednesday, the first day of 2014.
By Thursday, the second day of 2014, the first business day of the new insurance system, it became clear that snags in the rollout of Obamacare still remained.
Where this story is ultimately headed is a story about a doctor's office spending two hours on hold with a health insurer for a patient's surgery authorization and finally hanging up in frustration after not getting it.
Here's the way the AP details that.
Early problems with the federal healthcare.gov website led many people to wait until last week to sign up.
Paperwork problems almost delayed.
Suburban Chicago resident Sherry Zakiev's scheduled surgery Thursday.
But Dr. John Vanitos decided to operate anyway without a go-ahead from the insurance company.
That was after his office manager spent two hours on hold with the insurer last Thursday, trying to get an answer about whether the patient needed prior authorization for the surgery.
The office manager finally gave up.
The patient's husband said, I am not a happy camper.
They signed up for a blue cross blue shield bronze plan through the Obamacare website, December 16th.
I understand just a matter of paperwork, and yesterday was a holiday.
Look, I could be an SOB too at times.
Since they're going on with this procedure, it's okay.
No, okay.
You know, it wasn't that long ago where this patient can go to the doctor.
The doctor, you know what you need surgery, they schedule it, do the surgery, and whatever happens, happens.
It wasn't that long ago.
You didn't have to call three or four people for authorization, for permission, for documentation, to make sure papers were in order.
And because the doctor, in this case, happened to be a decent human being, he went ahead and did what was medically necessary despite there being no authorization from the authorities.
He will be dealt with later, make no mistake about this, because this is making Obamacare look bad.
He will be dealt with later, but he did his job.
The doctor, in this case, is the one who had compassion.
The doctor is the one who did what he would have normally done anyway, but almost didn't do because of the involvement of two third parties, an insurance company and the Obama administration.
It's the first day they've had three years to gear up.
Three years to get this going, three years to get this ready.
And so what are we learning here on January 3rd?
People are being turned away.
People are not being treated in emergency rooms.
People who've signed up have no evidence of it and are being turned away because there is no evidence they've signed up, but they maintain they have.
And people may not get needed surgery because the authorities on the other end of the phone, wherever they are in the regime, aren't picking up.
Yeah, it's entirely possible this doctor who performed this surgery may pay for it himself.
It's entirely possible he won't be paid.
If the regime, the Obama official or the insurance company denies permission after the fact, if they said, well, you know what, you shouldn't have done the surgery because we weren't going to authorize that.
Doctors, I had no choice.
I have a patient here who needs this surgery.
Well, that's fine and dandy, but you're not being reimbursed.
This is why doctors are leaving.
Medicare, Medicaid.
It's an absolute disaster.
And I don't care what the media is saying about it.
What matters is that we've got a chief executive who doesn't care.
This business about the burdens of the office follow the president everywhere.
This president is disproving that daily.
Stick with the phones.
I got somebody who wants to react to the doctor's store Chicago.
This is Jay in Orlando.
Jay, great to have you open line Friday.
Hello, sir.
An honor to talk with you, Rush.
I've been listening since they had rush rooms in 1989 here in Orlando.
Yay.
Yes, yes, yes, I remember those.
I wanted to expand on what you were talking about because it touches a point that people aren't realizing.
It used to be with an insurance company, if you had a problem with them, you could call the State Commission, uh, the government, ask them to arbitrate, ask them to try to uh uh correct the situation.
Now with Obamacare, you don't have anyone above them.
Their ruling is final.
There's no arbitrator, there's no person to go to to challenge a ruling.
And there wasn't even a ruling here, though.
Wait, just there wasn't even a ruling here.
They couldn't even get the ruling.
In the past, though, you could call the state commission and say, we can't get through.
These people aren't responding, and the state commission would find the insurance companies.
Oh, I see them.
Well, you're there's nowhere else you can go other than Obama.
That's true.
Exactly.
This is the you have taken the police and turned them into the business that you have to deal with, and there's no police above them.
And so I hope people realize they've lost the ability now to challenge insurance rulings to try to get better or fairer uh treatment.
And uh that's gone now.
That's gone.
I actually think don't know this.
There is no empirical data on this, but people who are experiencing this, whatever these problems are, either being turned away at the ER at the hospital or being delayed, surgical procedures and what have you, or people have signed up and nobody can prove it.
There's no evidence of it.
At some point, I mean, I I the polling data has always shown that the majority of people never wanted Obamacare.
And I think that I think there is there's a greater bubbling up or effervescence of anger out there over this than people realize, because that's not being reported either.
I mean, the stories are being reported in almost a sterile way, as though these aren't real people.
Some people showed up, chest pains might not be treated, get sent away, and then there's some reference to Obamacare and natural snafu's done veil up program or what have you.
But I think, you know, I I this health care matters most to a lot of people.
It's the most important thing.
Democrat Party has seen to that.
And it's now being dealt with in this cavalier uh laissez-faire manner that that I think people are becoming very outraged and angered by this.
Particularly these early adopters, who uh apparently were all in for this and thought this was an improvement.
They believed what they were told, but it's just it's a disaster.
In the just a straight human sense.
It is an absolute disaster.
These things are being reported as anecdotes.
Little single items, but they're not anecdotes.
These are things happening, real people that are being hurt.
Green Bay Packers just announced that they have sold out their playoff game on Sunday against San Francisco Fordiners.
So the uh there will be no blackout on Sunday.
And we'll be back, folks.
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