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Jan. 14, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:51
January 14, 2014, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of The Rush 24-7 Podcast.
You know, I really ought to learn something, and I start I ought to do this stuff on the weekend.
Because it's just it's just too distracting.
It always happens, and I always tell myself I'm going to learn from and I never do.
Do you ever have it happen to you?
You do things over and over again, and you say never gonna do it this way again, and you keep doing it because your excitement and eagerness overcomes you.
So I got this new Mac Pro installed starting yesterday, and it's you know, it's like any installation of anything new.
There's all kinds of little things that aren't right.
And I just like up to ten minutes ago, I'm still trying to get just tiny little preferences and stupid things that did not migrate over, set up to the way I like them, and it's still not totally finished and complete, which is okay, but the uh the it's it's distracting.
And so I I ought to delay this stuff to the uh to the weekend, uh, and I just uh never do.
And it makes me mad at myself.
You ever get mad at yourself?
Well, yeah, Snerdley never does anything worth getting mad at himself over.
Anyway, folks, I'm not complaining.
I'm just telling you, I have no idea what what I'm gonna talk about today because I've been so occupied with this stupid installation of a new I mean it's not that I don't know what I'm gonna talk about, but I've I've forgotten everything that's in the stack, and I didn't have a chance to look at what's in the stack, so I'm actually just filling time here, trying to wait till some idea comes to me.
I'm just kidding, folks.
I'm as prepared and ready as uh as ever.
See, where uh Governor Christie, by the way, um there's a story here in the Washington Post.
You talk about this program being show prepped for the rest of the media.
Washington Post, why the Republican cavalry is not running to Chris Christie's rescue.
I mean, that was a major point, a major area of focus on yesterday's program, and it is worth, if you missed it, it's worth going to Rush Limbaugh.com and reading or listening to audio of what I said.
I'm I Well, I don't know, I haven't read the post, I just read the headline.
That's what I'm talking about.
I've read the headline, and I've now I've got to read the story with you live here.
I don't know what the story says, although I can guess.
It's the Washington Post, it's the drive-by media.
Uh, and it basically is pointing out that uh the only people have come forward to defend Christie are are are Rines.
I never can remember how to put Prebis, uh Carl Rove and Rudy are the only ones coming forward.
I mean, a couple of governors, but there the point is there isn't this massive effort from the Republican Party to defend Christie.
And I'm sure the story makes the point.
Well, maybe I shouldn't say that.
Um, but it I bet it references the fact that a lot of Republicans are issuing somewhat timid support of Christie with the caveat that if he's telling the truth, everything's fine and dandy.
Yep, that's in the story.
Just okay, fine.
So here it is.
Chris Christie, one of the Republicans' brightest stars, one of its best hopes for 2016.
But during his toughest hour, he simply hasn't been able to count on a chorus of national Republican support rallying full border his side.
And I'm sure he's surprised.
You know what amazes me about these people, they they end up doing things, saying things that they think are gonna make them bulletproof, like talking about working with Democrats, and talking about bipartisanship and cooperation, and criticizing conservative Republicans.
I mean, they do it all.
And they think that's gonna make them bulletproof.
But as I said yesterday, this exclusive, remember we're bouncing off the John Pedoritz piece yesterday.
He was he had a column telling his readers that the lack of media focus on the IRS scandal.
Oh, by the way, the uh FBI says nothing to see there.
There's not gonna be any prosecutions of the IRS thing.
There's some mismanagement is about all that went on there.
Nothing to see here.
Let's move on.
It's official.
And Pedoritz was saying it's not media bias, liberal versus conservative, that makes the media not probe the IRS.
It is that they're good friends with Obama.
They're in the same club.
They've got the same pedigree.
They have the same Education background.
They're in the same club and they love themselves.
And they just, there's no way they wouldn't use the IRS in their minds, and they can't imagine Obama using it.
I don't think that's quite accurate.
I know what Pedorts is trying to say.
I actually think there is more media bias.
There's no question in my mind that they'll do anything, take any opportunity to destroy a threat.
But the problem the Republicans make is they think they can get in that club and make themselves bulletproof.
So that, yeah, the Democrats and the media go after people like Palin, and they go after people like Scott Walker, and they'll go after people like me.
But they're not going to go after us rhinos, because we talk bipartisan, and we're with them on immigration and all this other stuff.
And then when that doesn't buy them any insurance, they're flummoxed.
They think they're bulletproof and they're not.
And it just amazes me that they don't understand this.
I guarantee you, Christie and these guys are shocked that the Democrats, because I guarantee Rove and these guys all thought that that Christie press conference was a grand slam home run, and that was going to end it.
And it's not the end, it's just the beginning.
The point is you cannot admit yourself into this club.
No more than you can admit yourself into the local country club.
No more than you can admit yourself into Augusta National.
You cannot admit yourself into the liberal Democrat elitist culture of Washington, D.C. If, especially you are a Republican, you cannot gain, you have to be invited, and that it application is quite lengthy and extensive and requires many, many years of loyalty to the Democrat cause, and it requires a whole lot of time spent criticizing other Republicans.
Even McCain, he thought he was in the club, but he wasn't.
So anyway, the Washington Post story makes the point here that nobody's coming forward.
McCain even adopted an uncertain tone, even as he praised Christie.
McCain says, is it a blow to him?
Obviously.
How permanent it is, I think we'll know in the days and weeks ahead.
Well, the reality is, Post says here, that as 2016 takes shape, potential candidates and allies of those would-be candidates need to be very careful what they say.
And what's more, there is uncertainty about the scandal itself.
And a cardinal rule of politics is this.
Know exactly what you are supporting or opposing before you do it.
Now the Post says here that Chris Christie's rise in Republican circles is in no small part due to an invisible but immensely powerful donor and power broker class that loves him.
This wing of the party tried to woo him to run in 2012, even after Romney was in the race.
And they are expected to be there for him in large part come 2016.
Now, for the most part, these are not the people who are on the front lines of the media battle, making cable news appearances and staging press conferences.
Carl Rolv, who has defended Christie is part of the group of behind the scenes players, but his forward-leaning public profile is the exception to the rule.
And then they mention here Prebus and uh and and Rudy.
But the point of the story is it just isn't a whole lot of the cavalry hadn't come to the rest.
The will the beasts are still standing aside while the feds probe, continue to probe Christie's use of relief aid for Hurricane Sandy.
Now, the story is that the agency wanted Bruce Springsteen or John Bon Jovi, and they couldn't do it.
Springsteen was on tour, and Bon Jovi Union rules say you can't work for free.
And so everybody's saying, hey, Christie wasn't the first choice.
He wasn't the first choice.
He did the spot with his family, the tourism spot.
And so the investigation here is just uh continuing.
And they're trying to make the point, hey, Christy didn't engineer anything here.
We took Christie because Springsteen wasn't available.
The polling data on Christie, a majority think that he's dishonest, but 59% approve of his job performance.
It's a Monmouth University poll reported in the LA Times.
So a majority think he's dishonest, and 59% approve of the job performance.
You figure that out.
Now the mid it it well, it did.
It did work for Clinton.
Now, in the midst of all this, have you seen that Governor Christie is proposing a longer scruble day?
Did you see that?
Now he's not disliked enough.
He's got to turn a whole generation of school kids against him now.
By proposing a longer scroll day.
And speaking of this, now, in other parts of the world, there are also some scandals going on.
The socialist president of France, Francois Hollon, has been allegedly carrying on a year-long affair with a beautiful young blonde French actress named Julie Gaillet.
Now why can't we have scandals like that anymore?
Why can't we have Obama running around on Michelle or something?
Good old fashioned, just what?
Don't go there.
Okay.
Well, I'm looking at just it's just wishful thinking.
Just for that, you know how the drive-bys love to have exciting things happening in the news.
I mean, this is wouldn't that be a much better scandal than Christian Bridge lane closures for crying out loud.
And this Holland guy, he's not even married, and he's in a love triangle scandal.
See, well, he's been living with his girlfriend, Valerie Tyrweiler, at the Presidential Palace.
In fact, he became secretly involved with his current girlfriend Treerweiler while living with his previous girlfriend, who is the mother of his four kids.
Are you keep you keeping this straight?
This guy got elected president of France.
I mean, say what you will, but the socialists, in one in one sense of the word, know how to live.
I mean, this guy's got a love triangle going on in the presidential palace.
But now back to our scandal.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting the FBI, as I just mentioned, has decided that it's not going to be filing any criminal charges into their investigation of the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups.
Not a surprise, right?
Especially since we just learned a few days ago that the lawyer in charge of the DOJ's investigation, a woman by the name of Barbara Kay Bosserman, is a big Obama donor and a big donor to the Democrat Party.
She's the woman in charge of whether or not the IRS is going to be investigated.
And we we've we just learned that she visited the White House back in 2009, spent seven hours there.
She has got intimate contact, not in the biblical sense, of course, but in it with the with the White House.
She's in charge of all this, and she's decided nothing to see here.
Cleta Mitchell, who is an attorney representing a dozen of the Tea Party groups targeted by the IRS, says that not one of her clients has ever been contacted by the FBI during their investigation, which Supposedly began back in May.
Now, this makes it sound like the FBI is investigating this Tea Party IRS scandal about the same level of scrutiny they investigated the Benghazi scandal.
Oh, and there's news on that.
It turns out now that Obama and the boys were aware real time what was going on.
Their original statements about this have been blown to smithereens again.
Nothing's gonna come of that.
I just it's now we've got grab somebody 21.
This is Obama this morning at the White House.
He convened his first cabinet meeting of the year, and he has got one of his three themes for this year income inequality and essential unfairness in America.
And he announced at his cabinet meeting how he's going to deal with this.
I've got a pen and I've got a phone.
And I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward.
And I've got a phone that allows me to convene uh Americans from every walk alike.
Nonprofits, businesses, the private sector, uh universities, uh, to try to bring more and more Americans together around what I think is a unifying theme, making sure that uh this is a country where if you work hard, you can make it.
This is just so he's basically bragging about the fact that he can do executive orders to make things fair.
He can do executive orders and executive actions to get rid of the unfairness.
You're gonna make this lousy country finally fair.
Never mind, he's been running it for five years.
Never mind the fact that his entire economic policy has undermined the old saw about working hard, you can make it.
Because not only can you not work hard, you can't work.
We're up to 92 million Americans, not in the labor force.
But this is classic limbaugh theorem stuff.
This is Obama as an outsider saying he's looking at Washington and the country, and he sees all of this inequality and all of this unfairness, and he's just at his wits in now.
He's tried and he's tried, and he's tried.
He's got these Republicans that's standing in his ways, fine, okay, I'm gonna just start writing executive orders to hell with it.
I'm gonna finally make everything fair.
Now, he might have a pen and he might have a phone, but what he does not have is the constitutional power to run this country like a dictator.
And yet, that's exactly what it sounds like.
The Republicans, Senate Republicans, have made a new offer on jobless benefits.
Senate Republicans have signaled that they have a way that they would agree to extending unemployment benefits for the entire year.
No, you don't want to hear this.
But you're going to after this.
Seriously, folks, at his cabinet meeting, Obama announced essentially his economic agenda.
It consists of doing something for uh for preschool kids, the minimum wage, and immigration.
And that essentially, at least according to uh reports, people who are on the inside.
Now, that's that's gonna be the theme or some of the themes of the State of the Union show.
And uh promise zones.
So preschool, uh, immigration and minimum wage.
Eugene Robinson, the Washington Post today.
Where is the Democrats' outrage about unemployment?
He wants some blood.
He thinks the Democrats aren't angry enough.
He thinks the Democrats aren't on television enough, ripping the prop Republicans to shreds enough for not caring about the unemployed.
And he says we need to go out and do whatever it takes to extend these benefits, including borrow money from whoever, because it'll create 200,000 jobs.
You know, this is literally insane.
All of these Democrats saying that all of this unemployment benefit money will create jobs.
If that were the case, how would there be 92 million Americans not working now?
We've been extending unemployment benefits from 99 weeks and beyond for five years.
We should now be at full employment.
Meanwhile, prospects of 1.4 million unemployed Americans getting their federal jobless benefits back soon brightened yesterday when Senate Republican negotiators offered a new plan to extend the emergency relief for three months.
Now I've got to take another bottom of the hour break, not enough time to get into the uh the details here.
But they basically, in their offer, would pay for unemployment benefits by extending across the board spending a sequestration for another year into 2024.
That's how they would pay for it.
Ten years from now.
Three months of an extension.
It's very depressing, folks, to realize that the Republicans want to join in this whole phony accounting business.
Phantom budget cuts in 2024 to pay for three months of unemployment benefit extension this year.
Yeah, we're taking it off the table for three months.
We're taking a weapon away from the Democrats by giving them what they want.
That's really smart.
You people are not smart to figure that out, see.
The Republicans, they're they're they're making themselves smaller targets for abuse by Democrats by giving the Democrats what they want.
Well, here are the gory details.
Prospects of 1.4 million unemployed Americans getting their federal jobless benefits back soon brightened.
Yesterday, when Senate Republican negotiators offered a new plan to extend the emergency relief for three months.
Now, here's what's interesting.
The chances of an extension of these one-time emergency federal benefits seem to be dead.
day It really wasn't going anywhere in the Senate.
It seemed to be dead.
It wasn't totally buried, but it seemed to be.
So why are the Republicans trying to revive it?
Senate Democrats and Republicans plan to meet privately today to evaluate the proposal.
And a vote on it could occur within days.
Now, according to senior aides, the Republican offer would pay for the jobless benefits by extending sequestration for another year into 2024.
See, sequestration cuts are now extended to 2023.
And the Republicans have said to the Democrats, hey, look, you know what?
Give us another year on sequestration, 2024.
It will take those savings ten years from now, and that's how we'll pay for the unemployment benefits extension.
We're talking again about $6.4 billion.
They're going to pay for it with money they hope to collect 10 years from now.
Now you and I both know that 10 years from now, this IOU will have long been forgotten.
And future Congresses can't be bound by this.
I mean, a new law can change next year to wipe this out.
But here in one sentence is everything that is wrong with the U.S. Congress and what passes for fiscal responsibility.
This is this is an accounting trick, gimmick, it's a it's it's a joke.
And then Republicans decided to uh get in on the game.
Obviously, they have determined somewhere that the country wants unemployment benefits extended, and there's no future in trying to tell people why they're no good.
It's there's no point should the Republicans have concluded there's no point in trying to tell people how doing this is harmful.
It's just easier to support it so that the people will not hate Republicans as much.
But again, the Republicans cannot make themselves bulletproof on this stuff.
And look at what every every issue that comes up, they give the Democrats all or a part of what they want, trying to buy peace and love and affection, and it just never works.
So extending unemployment benefits, and here's here's Obama's economic policy.
Extending federal employment, unemployment benefits, raising the federal minimum wage, and amnesty.
That's Obama's big economic push.
That's what we're told is going to be his focus of the State of the Union show.
You couldn't do three things together to cause more harm to the U.S. economy than those three things.
And they are packaged now as an economic recovery proposal.
Raise the minimum wage, amnesty for illegals, and extending federal unemployment benefits.
That is the perfect trifecta.
A perfect trifecta for destroying the economy.
Doesn't grow anything.
It doesn't create a growing and thriving private sector where careers are, where meaningful employment takes place.
That continues to shrink.
The government continues to absorb more and more of it.
And the government begins to assume the role of provider.
92 million Americans out of work, not even in the workforce by virtue of trying to find a job, and the number is growing, and it's all called compassion.
Turning to Obamacare for a moment.
From the politico, a vast majority, this is a tearjerker, folks, prepare to get really sad and maybe even shed some tears here.
A vast majority of top congressional aides say in a new survey that they are concerned about the effects of Obamacare on their staff, and they list worries about changes to their benefits, higher costs, whether they'll have access to local health care providers.
Now, these are the people, let me remind you, this is congressional staff.
These are people that earn anywhere from $95,000 to $170,000 a year.
These are the people who have already been granted subsidies, up to 75%.
And this story from the politico is all about how these people say in a new survey that they are still worried.
They are still concerned about the effects of Obamacare on them and the things they list that are troubling them.
Changes to their benefits, they can't keep their doctor or their plan.
Higher costs, the premiums are going up, so is the deductible, and whether they'll have access to local health care providers back to they can't keep their doctor if they like him.
And they're worried about that, even though they've been granted 75% subsidies.
90% of congressional staffers surveyed by a for a report that was released yesterday by the Congressional Management Foundation said that they're concerned about benefit changes under Obamacare.
86% are anxious about the financial hit.
And 79% say they're worried about even having access to any health care.
These are the people that got a 75% subsidy.
These are the people that wrote Obamacare.
These are congressional staffers.
These are not just the elected officials.
These are the people that work for them.
These aides are getting 75% of their premiums subsidized by the taxpayers.
By the way, the politico does not mention this in this tearjerker story.
Additionally, most of the congressional staff in this story are young.
Only about 35% of staffers said they have a good understanding of the changes to their health care plan under Obamacare.
Under the health care law, all members of Congress and most congressional aides were required to enroll in the exchanges.
But they cried and belliached about that.
Do you remember?
They said, well, we don't wait, it's too expensive.
We don't have we can't afford it.
We're only making $170,000 a year, we can't afford it.
And so Obama came in and said, okay, we'll give you subsidies, but not to the exchanges.
I can't do that.
We'll just we'll just pay 75% up to 75% of your premiums through the Office of Personnel Management.
Now, if this sounds familiar, don't you're right, it is.
It sounds like a rerun of an article, a story that we've seen dozens of times.
But here's the upshot of this, folks.
Despite having written the law, despite getting a 75% subsidy of their premiums, which again the politico doesn't mention in this tear jerker, despite getting an illegal carve out for some of these staffers, congressional aides are still threatening to quit.
That's where the story ultimately goes.
Congressional aides are threatening to quit their jobs over Obamacare.
Now, the question is obvious.
If these, for the most part, young and very well paid, and heavily subsidized people do not want Obamacare.
They wrote it, they're intimately aware of it, and even they have questions that they don't have answers for.
Or two.
Then add all this up.
75% subsidy.
They're young.
They make between $95 and $170,000 a year.
And the prospects too daunting.
They don't think they can afford it.
They don't think it's going to work.
They're not really going to get health care, and they're threatening to quit.
Now, if that's the case, what do they think the rest of us will do, especially young people?
What do they?
Nobody's getting 75% subsidies.
Nobody in their income levels are.
Look at how isolated.
Folks, this is this is what a great illustration here.
Look at how isolated inside the beltway bureaucrats are from the rest of the country.
I'll just mention it again.
They earn between 95 and 170,000.
They are being subsidized.
They're premiums 75%.
Not all of them.
But they're all getting subsidies.
The maximum amount is 75%.
I don't know how many of them get that, but it's a lot.
And they're nervous and they're worried, and it's so bad they're threatening to quit.
What must they do they ever think of people outside the beltway who earn 50 or 60?
Do they ask themselves how anybody else is going to afford this?
What must they think?
What an illustration of the wall of separation that exists between the inside the beltway denizens and their mentality and the rest of the country, popularly known as flyover country.
This is just amazing to me.
And they at least they were honest on this survey, ticking off the things they're worried about.
Nancy Pelosi.
Something called the Independent Journal Review.
It's some obscure website out there, but it's probably accurate.
Nancy Pelosi was asked last week about Governor Christie and the bridge scandal.
And you know what she said?
She is worried because of what Christie's aides did, closing three lanes of an on-ramp to the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee, New Jersey.
She's now worried that Chris Christie could screw up traffic patterns for the Super Bowl on purpose.
She actually is concerned that Christie, in a peak of bullyish anger, and a desire to get even with people who are trying to harm him, actually screw up traffic patterns at the Super Bowl.
Now, she goes on television in her district and says this kind of stuff.
And I guarantee you, the lame brains that vote for this woman that are in her district, hear her say this, and they nod their heads.
And meanwhile, I'm reminded of the Washington Post story, they can't find any Republicans other than Rove and Rudy and uh and and Rince Rines Prebus willing to defend Christie.
Democrats think he might try to get even by screwing up traffic at the Super Bowl.
All right, okay, I knew this was gonna happen.
So I admit here that I am in the middle of an installation of a new Apple Mac Pro, and I'm being inundated with email.
Well, why don't you tell us about what is it like?
Is it really fast?
What's folks?
Let me just be as honest with you as I can here.
I haven't used it enough to to be able to give you any kind of satisfying answers to your questions.
Uh I I haven't even copied massive file size.
I haven't done anything with video yet, which is why the machine was actually made.
I'm just doing standard app behavior with mail and and safari, the web browser, and uh a couple of other things, and I I don't notice it being any faster than my iMac was in opening apps.
It's a little faster opening Microsoft Word.
Um I have a 4K display, and I gotta warn you about something.
If you go out and get a 4K display, Apple is selling one made by Sharp, but they do not have the right resolution set up for it.
And everything is either very small on the screen or much too large, such that app windows bleed over the edges.
They need to issue a software patch to get resolution back to normal, which they haven't yet done with this.
I've got to assume something like that's coming.
As far as the uh the the retina type quality of the 4K display and text and so forth, it is awesome.
There is I mean, it's it's superb.
And the machine feels solid as it can be.
I mean, don't misunderstand.
Uh I just haven't used it enough to be able to give you any kind of uh genuine assessment on on how big a step.
What's that?
A full review on a tech blog.
Don't get me started.
The reviews I've seen on this thing are are maddening.
I it's it's uh I I've seen reviews that that say a MacBook Pro or an iMac are faster than a Mac Pro.
By the way, the one I've got, I've got the one loaded.
I've got the 12-core 2.7 gigahertz chip, a processor.
And some people are saying, well, that's not going to be as fast as a four-core, six-core 3.7 gigahertz for what you do.
That is it's not slower than anything.
What if you've read that it's slower than an iMac or Mac, that's not true.
Now, how much faster it is, all that's depends in on the solid state drives that you're using and so many other things that you know above and beyond the the chip.
But I'll tell you about it as I get into it, as I actually put it through its paces, which I really haven't done yet.
I I just I just had a Sherlock Holmes type magnifying glass delivered so that I can read what's on the screen.
Let me just because the tech people get so upset, they resent me talking about this stuff anyway, because just like the sports people did when I was at the SPN.
What I meant when I mentioned screen resolution, I'm actually talking about scaling.
The size of windows and so forth on the display is not properly scaled.
It's it's just too small.
And they'll fix it with a software patch.
The resolution, the actual DPI, is is profound.
It's absolutely gorgeous.
So no complaints about that.
Okay, that's it for that.
And I got a brief timeout here at the top.
Um we've got a a woman out there who says that this concussion concerned the NFL way overblown.
Way, way overnight.
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