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Jan. 16, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
32:12
January 16, 2014, Thursday, Hour #3
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The views expressed by the host on this program documented to be almost always right 99.7% of the time.
The views expressed by the host on this program, the result of a daily, relentless, unstoppable pursuit of the truth.
Happy to have you here, the telephone number, if you want to be on the program 800-282-2882 and the email address, El Rushbo at LEIBNet.com.
So the commissioner of the National Football League, Roger Goodell, on Fox News, well, they reported it four days ago, said that the NFL might be open to medical marijuana use for NFL players.
Right now, if you test positive for it, you've got a problem.
You run afoul of the league's substance abuse policy, and you could be suspended, you could be warned, any number of things.
But now in California and Colorado, it's legal.
In Colorado, is it legal for recreational purposes, too?
Yeah, it's just medical, I think, so far in California.
So here's the thing.
There's a football team in Colorado, the Denver Mannings, and they're playing the New England Munchins Sunday in the playoff championship game.
And so it's a question that has popped up.
Goodell was in New York, one of the pre-Super Bowl media, I guess, a press conference of sorts.
And he was asked about the possibility of allowing players to smoke marijuana for medicinal reasons in states where it's legal.
He didn't rule it out.
He said, I don't know what's going to develop as far as the next opportunity for medicine to evolve and to help either deal with pain or deal with injuries, but we will continue to support the evolution of medicine.
So what else are they going to do?
I mean, if it becomes legal, see, up to now, everybody has believed that there are some deleterious mental effects.
And not just when you're high, but that they linger.
They destroy ambition.
I mean, some of the, and I don't know if any of this is proven, but some of the contentions about marijuana destroys ambition over a long period.
It promotes laziness.
Of course, enhances the appetite out to wazoo.
And obviously, it has some effects on a human brain.
Now, the NFL has all kinds of stringent substance abuse policies, but have you noticed that there is no substance abuse policy for opiates?
And that's because they're taken for painkilling reasons during the season.
And they're looking for anything that could be a substitute for it.
Now, one of the drugs that it's a great pillar, it's a painkiller and it's non-narcotic is called Toradol.
And in fact, if you're a sports fan and if you hear about a pain-killing injection taken by a player before a game to play, and you've, what is it?
What is this pain-killing injection?
What do they take?
It's Toradol.
Now, players will tell you it's liquid Advil.
They're not shooting up liquid Advil.
It's Toradol.
And Torradol is a great painkiller, non-narcotic.
However, you can only take it for five consecutive days.
A responsible pharmacist will not give you anymore.
Doctor won't prescribe anymore because it really does a number on your liver being metabolized.
But these guys have been shooting up with this stuff for a long time, and some of them have not known of that aspect.
So this is a tough game.
They're looking for anything they can find that will kill pain, that's not narcotic, that's not drug substance abuse-oriented.
And marijuana, there's some players that swear by it.
As you know, there are people that swear by it, not just painkilling, but enhancing recovery in this kind of thing.
So the league is going to have to look into this because it's starting to become legal now for medicinal reasons.
So you're going to have, my guess is a lot of players in free agency are going to want to end up playing for the Mannings in Denver.
And you're going to have a lot of players that are going to want to play for the Fordeners or the Chargers, even the Raiders.
Now, because POT has, well, I mean, it does have effects on the brain.
Can the NFL guarantee that it doesn't?
If they eventually legalize it, can they guarantee that it does not have negative effects on the brain?
And if they can't, then why flirt with condoning it?
I'm just asking here as a citizen and as, well, yeah, it's legal, but so is alcohol, but the league doesn't allow you to take it before games.
I mean, if they find you, some teams on the road, the hotels are required to remove all liquor from the minibars.
That's right.
And the contract writer, I kid you not.
Do you know that I think I'm right about this?
I know I was at one time.
I don't know if it's been relaxed or not.
Beer is not permitted on charter flights in the National Football League for the flight home or the flight to the game.
I think, I know I was right about that at one point.
I don't know if it's been.
Now, this is not to say the guys don't sneak the stuff aboard themselves, but it is not offered.
It cannot be.
Oh, it used to be.
I mean, it was what was in the milk dispenser in the Raiders' locker room.
Now, if just one study exists that finds negative consequences of marijuana, will a plaintiff attorney sue the league in the future if they legalize it?
I mean, they're really flirting with, you know, how litigious this has become.
And you know how all this concussion business, and they're just scared to death of this stuff in the league.
And now they've got to deal with this potential mass legalization of marijuana.
I think the only thing you can do is have players sign waivers acknowledging the risks in playing football and admitting that there are unknowns and indemnifying the teams.
And I think, you know, how would you test for marijuana?
Very, well, no, you know, but maybe before the game, you want to test if you got a player high.
All you do is open a bag of Cheetos and offer it to him.
That's exactly.
Watch the pregame meal.
Just open a bag of Cheetos and pass it around and take a look if somebody starts scarfing them.
And you'll know.
That's it.
I think it's a fascinating thing.
Tom Brokaw, the dean, I guess, father, now the retired news anchor at NBC, he is scolding his media brethren for their fixation on Chris Christie.
He says, look at you guys, the country has moved on.
They don't care about this.
He was on their cable network on Wednesday yesterday, and he warned his media colleagues about their excessive coverage of the Christie Bridge controversy.
He said, I do think across the country, however, when they're looking at long-term unemployment and they're looking at the uncertainty of the Obamacare, they're saying, you got to move on, guys.
We don't care about Bridgegate.
And what Brokov's buddies are saying, hey, Tom, we care about Hillary.
And Bridgegate is how we're taking Christie out.
And Brokhoff said, oh, okay.
Never mind.
I hadn't thought of that.
Everything's.
No, he didn't say that.
I'm making that up.
He said, look, you can only close those lanes for so long if you're in the national media.
I wonder if this had happened in Nevada, whether it would have gotten much attention.
Of course not.
The only reason it got any attention is because Christie happens to be leading Hillary in the presidential poll for 2016.
That's it.
If Christie weren't thinking of running, and if there was no poll that showed him beating Hillary, they wouldn't have made a story about this.
In fact, if there had been a story, it would have been one of those, man.
Look how much fun this is.
Look at what these, look at what these guys do to each other.
At Christie shutting down those lanes to screw the Fort Lee mayor.
Isn't this fun?
That would have been the reaction.
But here they're taking the guy out who is beating Hillary in these polls.
That's all that's happening.
And F. Chuck Todd.
Let me go back and grab that soundbite because I've got some companion sound bites now.
This is going to be soundbite.
I think it's number 45.
What is it?
Number 4.
Now, if you look, here's the story.
This is first read, NBC News.
Headline, Christie cruising through bridge scandals so far.
That's the headline.
It's by Mark Murray, senior political editor, NBC News.
And here's their story.
Nearly 70% of Americans say the bridge closure scandal engulfing Chris Christie has not changed their opinion of him, according to a new NBC News Marist poll.
In addition to that, 44% of respondents believe he's telling the truth about his knowledge of the events surrounding the controversy.
And far more Americans view him as a strong leader rather than as a bully.
So according to this NBC story, all of this hasn't mattered.
The drive-bys have thrown everything they've got at Christie.
And he maybe is more popular in New Jersey than he was.
He's not looked at as a bully.
And yet, F. Chuck Todd, same network, NBC, celebrating on the Today Show, because there's one thing in the story I just shared with you that they didn't discuss.
F. Chuck did on the Today Show.
A month ago, it was basically a dead even race.
And that was his best asset.
The idea is that he's the one Republican that can stop the big frontrunner on the Democratic side of Hillary Clinton.
Now, it's a 13-point lead for all of a sudden, Chris Christie is polling no better than any other generic Republican candidate.
And because he already had problems with conservatives, if he doesn't have electability on his side, this is how this bridge mess has had a real impact on history.
And what F. Chuck, again, is saying, this is how we've done it.
I don't care.
He's more popular in New Jersey.
I don't care if more people look at him as a nice guy than a book.
We don't care.
We took him out against Hillary.
I don't care what else his poll shows.
So we're still able to do it.
We had a guy that a week ago was beating Hillary by two points.
After one week of us being on his case over this bridge thing, he's down by 13.
They're celebrating the hell with the rest of the poll.
And that was the purpose.
That's why they did it.
Basin, Wyoming, next.
Josh, great to have you on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Thank you for waiting, sir.
Hello.
Thank you, Rush.
The reason I called is because earlier in your show, you said that lateral movement is one of the biggest problems in our country right now.
And I wanted to add to that and say that I think healthcare is actually one of the worst fields for allowing people to move laterally.
When you have a nurse working in a long-term care facility for 30 years, performing treatments, passing out medications, those people are capable of moving into the role of a geriatric doctor and competing against those people and driving down costs.
But unless those people want to pay another $100,000, $200,000 into the guild so they can say that they do have that knowledge and that experience, they can't move into that role and compete against their peers.
Wait, I don't think I haven't used the word lateral on the program today.
Are you listening to this program today?
Oh, yeah.
Well, I thought earlier you were talking about people being able to move up in their career paths as in lateral movement, right?
Well, no movement.
Some people can't find any jobs left.
Some people are either losing jobs or they're losing ground, but the amount of upward mobility in the middle class is what I was talking about.
What I said was that in any economy, good or bad, somebody, when things are going great, somebody gets hurt.
When things are going poor, somebody's doing well.
And there are always going to be a few entrepreneurs that are always going to triumph no matter what, just because that's some people are inclined that way.
But the great thing about America was that, and capitalism, the middle class in this country always had upward mobility.
They always had the ability, if they did want to work hard, if they wanted to educate themselves, if they wanted to use all their ambition, that they could increase their standard of living.
That was almost a guarantee indicative.
That's gone now because the pie is shrinking.
The private sector is getting smaller as the government's usurping it.
Now, you heard me say that.
Now, you're talking about a specific where some nurses are not allowed to become doctors, I think, right?
Well, not just specifically that.
I mean, CNAs should be able to move into the role of nursing.
Nurses should be able to move up into the role of doctors as they gain more experience and more knowledge.
Because that's just stagnating people in the dumb as their degree says they are.
Wait a second.
Why should a nurse with only job experience be able to become a doctor?
In long-term care facilities, you usually have like 80, 90 patients in a building, and you have the nurses 40 hours a week doing all the treatment, doing all the medication, and maybe once a month, you actually have the doctor come in and visit a handful of these 80, 90 patient buildings, and they're making more money than the nurses who are doing all of the work and all of the labor,
and they don't get any credit for gaining more knowledge and more experience, and they don't get to make more money as they gain more knowledge and experience unless they want to go back to school and pay.
There you go.
You don't become a doctor by becoming a nurse first.
It's never happened unless the nurse quit and goes to medical school and spends seven or eight years there.
Yeah, I mean, I know nurses that have been in healthcare for 30 years that, in my opinion, are even more competent than some of the newer doctors being released out into this field.
And yet they're making more money because that nurse can't claim that she has more knowledge.
She can't claim that they are competent or capable.
And it's not just that.
She's not accredited.
She hasn't been educated to be a doctor.
She hasn't gone to school.
She hasn't passed the Hippocratic Oath test or whatever the heck it is.
I know what we're getting at here is it isn't fair.
And what we're getting at is these doctors.
Look, isn't this typical?
These guys, they're making all the money.
They don't do any work.
They're out there playing golf.
They're making so much money and don't even know how to count it all.
They don't ever keep their finances straight.
These guys just show up once.
They do their rounds.
They don't even care if the patient dies.
Whenever the patient coaches, it's a doctor.
No, it's the nurse.
To hell with the doctor.
I get it.
I really do.
And it just isn't fair.
I know nurses are mostly women.
And it just isn't fair.
Because after being 30 years a nurse, you probably know more than most doctors anyway, because you've been doing all the work.
Doctors, they're not really doctors.
They didn't really do that.
The nurses do it all.
I know, it's exactly right.
It is inequality.
It is unfairness.
It is discrimination.
It is bias.
It's prejudice.
I'm sure there's all there's nobody can fix it.
No, Obama can't fix this.
You can't.
Only the nurses can fix it.
No, no executive order that will qualify.
Well, no.
There's no executive order that would make a nurse a doctor after, you know, so many bedpan changes or whatever the qualifications are.
It's not going to happen.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen.
El Rushbo here on the EIB network.
I guess I need to apologize because I caught hell when that call from Josh ended.
I'm convinced, by the way, that Josh is an SEIU union rep. Because I have, just in a short break there, I did a little looking up and I, because I caught hell.
My own staff said, you didn't understand what he was saying.
He wasn't saying you ain't.
It's just not fear.
I was descended upon here by my own staff.
He's right.
He's right.
And these one care facilities and doctors only show up one or two times and the nurses are doing all the work.
You don't know what you're talking.
My own staff was saying this to me.
So I'm sitting here thinking, I have really, there is something happening out there, not often, but this has really zoomed right by me.
I did not know.
I just looked it up and I found out that it is, it does exist.
And I'm begging your forgiveness.
I did not know that there was a movement on to qualify nurses as doctors.
The SEIU is pushing for this.
For nurses to become doctors.
And precisely on the basis of Josh's call, it isn't fair.
The nurses are doing all of the work, and the doctors are not showing up much.
And one of the arguments is: look, even if you don't make them doctors, at least pay them a little more.
They're doing all the work.
It didn't fear.
It didn't fear.
There's apparently a massive movement going on.
Well, I don't know massive, but it is being spearheaded by the SEIU to qualify.
And there are also nurses.
And by the way, I have no dog in this fight, folks.
I'm just do not infer a tone in my voice here.
There are nurses who want to consider their educations to be the equivalent of doctorates, and they want to be called doctors.
Dr. Nurse Jones.
Dr. Nurse Hilda, or what have you.
So that is something that's happening out there.
But it is clear that there is a pretty high degree of resentment for doctors who are not doing very much and farming a lot of the day-to-day care off on the nurses.
And the nurses are saying, we need to be paid more.
We're the ones doing all the work and they're getting all the money.
And this is a union-led movement.
From what I've been able to find, again, just in a short period of research during the break.
I mean, even as we speak, ladies and gentlemen, the one hospital in New York City that is not completely unionized is voting on signing up with the Service Employees International Union.
That hospital is Elmhurst Hospital in Queens.
And this is one reason why the SEIU has backed Obamacare so strongly.
They've been trying to sign up as many members as they can by unionizing hospitals.
Now, that may be a separate movement from what everybody is thinking is a fairness and an inequality issue.
So that's as much as I've been able to learn about this in the break.
Well, you know, it's as HR pointed out to me, this same kind of contreton has occurred in the legal community with paralegals.
After a while, they start thinking they're the real thing.
And the lawyers start farming more and more out to them, but they're just paras.
And they're thinking it's a screwball arrangement.
We're called para, so they don't have to pay us anything.
It's sort of like miniature interns.
We're not pairing anything.
We end up doing all the work, and these guys are at the club or whatever it is they're doing.
But we're the one turning into billable hours, and they're not doing anything.
Yeah, that's called partnership.
And the thing is, they used to do that when they were young.
They might not have been paralegals.
One of the problems here, I think, and this is human nature.
This has been around a long time.
You know, most people, history is their life.
There is no other history.
Nothing has ever happened of any consequence if it didn't happen when they were alive.
So there are a lot of people who look at those at the pinnacle of their success and think they've always been there and have a deep resentment for it and do not realize that those people at one time in their lives were schlubs and they were on the low rungs of the ladder and they were working hard and putting in all the hours and they were climbing and they did what it took to get where they are.
But if you never saw somebody engage in what it took to get there, it might be easily assumable that they didn't do the work.
They just lucked out and you hear the president say, you didn't build that.
You didn't get there on your own.
You couldn't have done it without somebody else.
And you easily create an alternative reality where the successful are chosen.
And if you're not chosen, you're not going to be successful.
You're just going to be used and exploited.
The thing is, everybody that becomes a nurse, I would think, knows what the job is.
Everybody who becomes a teacher knows what the job is.
When you, look, this is going to sound really, this is where I'm the mayor of Rielville, and this is, I admit, this is where it'd be easy for some of you to say, Rush, you're out of touch.
I'm not.
I am so in touch, you can't believe it.
But let me just illustrate my point.
When I was young, when I was making $12,000 a year, I living in Kansas City in a shack, but I saw the neighborhoods where successful people, and I would drive through them, and I'd, what do these people do?
And I'll tell you one thing I knew they didn't do.
I knew there weren't any nurses in there, and I knew there weren't any teachers.
I knew what they made.
I said, well, who are they?
Okay, you figure some doctors and lawyers, but what else is in there?
If earning a lot of money is what you want, who are they?
How did they do it?
Sometimes I got, you know, knocking on the door and just asking.
Never did it, but I was curious about it.
Because remember, I wasn't going to school.
I wasn't following any prescription.
I wasn't following any approved route.
Go to college, get an education, be a schlub for a while, be a junior partner.
I wasn't doing any of that.
So I was just curious.
And I had no role models in that sense.
I mean, I did, but not in a direct sense.
There was, I was following the route for radio.
No question I paid my dues.
I did.
But at the time I was going through the neighborhoods, I was out of radio.
I'd quit.
I was working for the baseball team.
I was in corporate America.
Okay, how do you do it here?
And I figured I don't, whatever it takes here, I don't want to do it.
So after five years, I left.
Nothing wrong with it.
I just, it wasn't for me.
But my point is, when you go to nursing school, you know you're the one that's going to be seeing the patient much more often than the doctor is because you've been a patient.
And you know, you've seen the nurse much more often than you've seen the doctor.
Doctor show once a day, maybe.
And if you're really not sick, maybe once a week.
So you know, if you join a union, you know what you're getting into.
You should.
You know you're sacrificing your individuality and you're going to be paid exactly what everybody else in the group's getting paid.
And that's going to be according to whatever the contract is negotiated to be.
And it isn't going to have anything to do with how well or how poorly you do your job because you're not paid on that basis.
You're paid on the basis of what your negotiator can score from the company in terms of the contract.
Your only option to earn more is overtime or quit and do something else.
So that's why I have a little bit, not a problem.
I won't say it's problem.
It's not a lack of sympathy.
It's just, well, wait a minute.
You knew when you chose this profession what it was.
And so now, 10 years later, all of a sudden, you're being exploited and used and it's unfair.
And you're doing what I remember, folks.
This is human nature.
My first two years working at the little radio station in my hometown, every one of us thought the owner was the biggest blithering idiot on the face of the earth.
We'd all get together and talk about what a doom coffee was and how we would be running it better if we were in charge.
And how we'd be doing this different, we'd be doing that better, and we wouldn't be as cheap.
And this is, you know, and one day I got home late, and my dad said, what have you been doing, son?
I said, well, I was with some of the guys at the station.
What are you doing?
You know, we were complaining about the owner.
And he just lit into me.
You were what?
And I said, yeah, we're talking about what an idiot the guy is.
Now, if we were to be doing this.
And my dad lit into me.
He said, you don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about.
You don't know who that man is.
You don't know what he's done to get rid of.
Who in the hell are you to say you're two years doing this?
And you think you've got all the answers?
He just lit into me like you can't believe.
He said he'd be embarrassed.
And I said, well, how many times have I heard you say that the judge doesn't know what he's talking about?
He said, shut up.
Don't be a smart Alec.
I'll be back.
Donnelly, Idaho.
Robert, great to have you.
I've got about a minute here, but I wanted to get to you.
You've been on hold a while.
Hi.
Thank you very much.
Ditto is to you, Rush from a small town near Riolinda originally.
Oh, really?
And you're still alive to tell about it.
That's cool.
Yes.
Yuba City.
You know where Yuba City is?
Oh, absolutely, Yuba City.
There were, in fact, Yuba City was shortly after I moved to Sacramento.
Yuba City was named the worst city in America.
Yes, it was.
And there were actually refugees leaving Yuba City, streaming into Sacramento.
We didn't have room for all of them.
I know.
Anyway, Sterling said, get to my question real quick.
I had two quick questions for EIB.
One was everybody saying how much we needed Obamacare, why we needed Obamacare was for 30 million people don't have insurance.
That is a great quote.
If we needed this so much, if it was so crucial, why is nobody signing up?
That is worth an exploration in human nature.
Folks, thank you so much for being with us today.
Can't tell you how much I do appreciate it and enjoy it.
And such a great realization that there's always tomorrow to do it again.
Open line Friday tomorrow.
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