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Feb. 17, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:28
February 17, 2014, Monday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Greetings, my friends, and welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program here on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
We come to you as we do each and every day from the distinguished and prestigious Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
And telephone number, if you want to join us today, is 800-282-2882 and the email address illrushbo at EIBnet.com.
Well, according to social media, you know what the big news is today?
The big news is the mistreatment of American skier Bodie Miller by an NBC infobabe named Kristen Cooper, who herself used to be an American skier.
Well, she still skis.
I guess she was an Olympian.
Anyway, she just bore in there.
She just kept boring in and boring in, and Bodie Miller broke down and collapsed in tears.
She was asking him about the death of his younger brother.
Yeah, and she just wouldn't let it go.
And he was on the verge of apparently providing some real insight into his victory.
And she kept boring in on the death of his brother.
He just collapsed.
And social media is outraged.
It's the big news.
If you go to the New York Post and New York Daily News websites, that's the number one story.
Headlines all across your computer monitor.
I mean, from left to right.
That's it.
That is the big news.
There's also secondary big news.
Did you see where the U.S. Olympic hockey team once again beat the Russians?
Now, this was not a bunch of amateur kids this time on our team.
These were professionals.
But it was an exciting game.
It was on Saturday morning, and it was a real nail biter.
It happened in a shootout.
And it just, it didn't mean anything.
It was a seeding match.
It had nothing to do with, there was no medal at stake here.
It had nothing to do with medals.
But it was just a great victory, overtime shootout victory.
No, I don't know what happened.
All I know is the media was just going nuts over this.
In fact, the media might even be hailing it as bigger than the miracle on ice in 1980 if they can be sure that there may be some gay players on our team.
If they can find some gay players on this hockey team, do you know how much bigger this would end up being than 1980 was?
I don't know that there are, and it doesn't matter to me.
I'm just telling you, if the media found out about it, if there are, and the media found out, can you imagine this would be bigger than 1980.
I've also been fascinated with something else.
On Friday, I guess it was, I guess it was right before, yeah, right before the program started, the Ted Wells report came out on what went on in the Miami Dolphins locker room.
Richie Incognito, offensive lineman John Jerry, and center Mike Pouncey and an assistant, an offensive line coach were just lambasted left and right for their mistreatment of Jonathan Martin and an assistant trainer.
And it's, I'll tell you what's going to happen now, folks.
You can make book on the fact that there will be seminars that the NFL players will now, every team will have to conduct sensitivity training, workplace behavior seminars.
There will be, obviously, with Michael Sam joining the league, there will now be seminars on how to interact with and speak and not to speak and what say, what, not say to gay players.
They're going to start treating the NFL locker room like they would any other level of business.
And it's fascinating.
One thing that I noticed in the case of the Dolphins, even as we sit here today, not one Dolphins player is ripping Richie Incognito.
Not one Dolphins player is ripping John Jerry.
Not one dollar, even after the report, after the report has come out, the perps are all being defended.
Everybody in that lock, every player is defending every perp.
Yeah, I can explain it.
They think that Martin's a snitch.
And he didn't snitch at the time.
He snitched afterwards, but they think he's a snitch.
They think he's weak.
I'll tell you what it boils down to.
What it boils down to is the players in that locker room think that Jonathan Martin's weak and there's no place for weakness in the NFL.
Pure and simple.
If you want to boil it down to its essence.
And a sports writer in Miami, Dan Labertard, has a column, which he's kind of surprised.
He says, you know, you and I look at this one way, but it's a different world in that locker room.
And these guys, they don't care what we think.
And as far as they're concerned, incognito and these other guys, nothing wrong with what they did.
The problem in our locker room was this Martin guy, he was weak and then he ended up snitching.
And there are people wringing their hands like, we can't believe this.
I mean, because the media wants everybody now to be dumping on Incognito and these players.
But the players, there hasn't been one player that's ripped into incognito.
In fact, Vernon Davis, the tight end for the San Francisco Fortune's, has come out and defended Incognito.
So that's the kind of guy we want on our team.
So you can make book on the fact that there are going to be in every NFL locker room sensitivity training sessions.
You name it, they're going to have them.
Sensitivity training.
There will be sexual orientation seminars.
There'll be the, you know, because Michael Sam is coming out.
There will be respecting your fellow human beings seminars.
There will be don't pick up the soap seminars.
There will be don't make jokes at people's expense seminars.
There will be don't hurt anybody's feelings seminars.
You know this is going to happen, and the league is going to make a huge big deal about it.
It's not going to be, the seminars will be done in private, but the league's going to make a big deal out of the fact that they've done it.
And players, well, they may privately laugh, but the players are going to have to get in the line here.
The players are going to have to have to fall in.
Well, I think, yeah, I think they're, well, I don't know how common the Dolphins culture is in every locker room.
I don't know that what went on in there to that level goes on in every other locker room.
The league is going to do its best to rework and redefine the culture of an NFL locker room.
It's a major corporation.
They're going to think they have to do it for public relations.
Let me tell you something.
If the biggest news of the day is a skier being brought to tears in an interview and the public is angry at the interviewer, and by the way, folks, how many times have you gotten, if the press won't let something go in the aftermath of a disaster, you know, somebody's died in a car wreck and here comes the surviving member of the family and the press bores in, tries to get in the house, ask questions.
How many times have you gotten mad at the media for that?
This is with, I'm going to tell you where the trend is headed here.
It isn't any big deal.
I mean, it's just what it is.
Do you know?
Let me tell you something.
There is, folks, you're just going to have to listen here with some open mind.
In the Miami Dolphins locker room, the players have a fine book.
The players fine themselves for committing transgressions.
And being arrested or investigated by the FBI will get you fined less than if you let go a stinky fart.
I kid you not.
Or maybe it's the same.
It's $100.
I kid you not.
This is how the NFL is going to be tackling this.
I can't wait to see it, actually.
I'm making it up.
And the media said that stinky fart fine is going to survive.
That's the kind of stuff that'll survive.
And rookies having to sing their alma mater fight song for veterans, that'll survive.
But this harassing of other players, that's got to go.
It's going to go.
It can't survive.
It will not be permitted.
Stinky fart fines, however, they're going to remain permissible.
Can you imagine in any other workplace?
First floor Goldman Sachs having an employee fine book with something like that in it?
Okay, this is that actually is some interesting news.
A union was shot down where?
In Kentucky?
Tennessee.
United Auto Workers got shot down in Tennessee.
Did you know that there was Union Talk Radio?
I had no idea that there was something called Union Talk Radio until today.
And here's the headline: The Growing Silence of Union Radio.
It's politico.
And it's a tear-soaked story.
The golden age of unions is long gone.
And for the radio shows that focus on labor and workers' rights, every day is a struggle just to stay on the air.
There are a number of talk radio shows around the country covering and funded by organized labor that are still up and running.
But like the labor movement as a whole, what remains of union talk radio is a far cry from the time when unions and the concerns of workers were a dominant part of the media landscape.
The politico horrified here at the idea of losing diversity on the radio.
Union talk radio.
I had no idea that the unions had a talk show.
I don't think anybody else knows that either.
Who's the host of this show?
What in the world do they talk about?
Where is this show?
What network is this show on?
Then you live and learn every day.
Pat Cadell was on the Fox News.
Oh, folks.
Folks.
Do you, I have to tell you, you may know this.
The Republican Party establishment.
Karl Rove made this point yesterday, I think, on Fox News Sunday.
Pardon the snibbles.
Nothing wrong here, just the snibbles.
The Republican Party establishment is telling everybody in the party that I don't have the bite.
I don't have the Bodie Miller soundbite.
I don't have it here.
I'm sure we could get it.
Do you want to hear?
You want to hear this interview?
I mean, it was apparently very brutal.
This babe, Kristen Cooper, just wouldn't let go.
I mean, the guy didn't just start crying.
He collapsed.
He fell down on the ground, collapsed, just curled up in a fetal position, bawling his eyes out.
She kept asking him about his brother that recently passed away.
I don't know if we've got it.
If we've got it, Cookie will find it.
And if we find it, and if Cookie gives it to me, I'll play it for you.
Anyway, the Republican establishment.
Let me set this up by going back to the 2012 presidential campaign.
You remember when you learned that the Romney campaign, along with Republican establishment types, had put the word out that there was to be no criticism of Obama.
In fact, I remember, let me told you all this, a prospective Republican presidential candidate in 2010 or 2011.
There was some confab here in Palm Beach.
And this man called and wanted to come by and tell me what his plans were.
So I said, sure, here, come on by.
Sunday morning.
And the guy said, Rush, no, I just want to tell you, we can't go after Obama.
Instant death.
We can go after his policies, but we can't go after Obama.
And I said, really?
How do you separate them?
How do you not go after Obama if you're going after his policies?
I mean, how can you go after his policy without going?
We can't make it personal, Rush.
We just can't do it.
And that led over to the Romney campaign so much so that in the debates, they would even bring up Benghazi.
So now, the Republican establishment has let everybody in the party know that they will not tolerate, they will not advocate, and they won't put up with anybody attacking the Clintons past.
If Hillary runs for president, there will be no discussion of Lewinsky, the blue dress.
There'll be no discussion of the Rose Law firm, the billing records.
There'll be none of that stuff from the paper.
We're not going to dredge it up.
The Republican establishment says it ain't going to happen.
There's we can't win by going back and being critical of the Clintons.
We can't bring all that stuff up from the past.
We're not going to do it.
We're going to stay away from it.
Sure, they can attack Palin.
They can attack Palin's whole family.
They can make movies and talk about how the Republicans so scared of her lack of intelligence they wouldn't even vote for her.
They can do all that.
Can't attack the Clintons.
Can't attack Obama.
Can't now attack the Clintons.
And Pat Cadell was on Fox.
GOP establishment wants the IRS to go after the Tea Party.
Pat Cadell said yesterday on Fox News that the reason Republican leadership has not pushed for a higher-level investigation of the IRS for targeting the Tea Party is because they want the IRS to go after the Tea Party.
When you have 71% who want an investigation, 64% who believe it is a sign of corruption, including nearly a majority of Democrats.
The reason is the establishment Republicans want the IRS to go after the Tea Party.
Got it?
They want them to go after the Tea Party because the Tea Parties are an outside threat to their powerhold.
And I'm telling you, the lobbying consulting class of the Republican Party, Republican leadership, who have been attacking the Tea Party and alienating them, they want the IRS to do this.
That's why there hasn't been any establishment Republican pushback on the IRS.
Almost safe to say the Republican establishment might be willing to lose a couple of elections if it meant getting rid of the Tea Party, because it's clear, folks, they don't want to win any elections the Tea Party can claim any credit for.
I just want to jog your memory a little bit.
You remember how the Democrats went all the way back to the time Mitt Romney was at Bain Capitol, and they were ripping Romney as a friend of the rich and a guy didn't care about the poor and ripping his time at Bain Capitol.
Now, let me just tell you, Bill Clinton's scandals in the 90s are a lot more recent than Romney's activities at Bain.
Romney stepped down from Bain Capital in 1994.
The Clinton-Lewinsky stuff is 1997.
So it's permissible.
Go all the way back to Bain Capitol, rip Romney to shreds, do whatever you want, go back in time, rip Palin, doesn't matter.
Can't rip Obama, can't rip Jeremiah Wright, can't rip Monica Lewinsky, can't rip the Clintons, according to the Republican establishment.
But Clinton's sex scandals are a lot more recent than Romney's evil activities at Bain Capitol.
And they weren't evil, by the way, and there were no scandals at Bain Capitol.
And nevertheless, it was all portrayed just the fact that Romney was at Bain, that he co-founded it, was a scandal in and of itself.
Tea Party super PACs, by the way, raised three times the money of the GOP super PACs last year.
And that scares the establishment.
Tea Party super PACs.
That's why they also want the IRS investigating a Tea Party.
The Tea Party's outraising the GOP, super PAC-wise.
Charlie Cook, noted political handicapper, has a piece in his thing, the Cook Report, is Hillary Clinton too old?
That's right.
That's right.
The left went all the way back to Romney's days in prep school.
Remember?
He supposedly cut a kid's hair because he hated him.
And by the way, the media is trumpet.
And Romney has said, by the way, the media is trumpeting this.
Romney said over the weekend, Lewinsky's scandal has nothing to do with Hillary Clinton.
We ought not go there.
We ought to focus on Hillary's time in government with Obama as Secretary of State.
Need not go back to the Lewinsky scandal because she had nothing to do with it.
Well, Diane Blair, remember her, the late Diane Blair kept a journal.
It was released last week or the week before last.
And Diane Blair in that journal said that Hillary blamed herself for the Lewinsky scandal because she wasn't a good enough wife to Bill.
What a crock that is.
But anyway, that's what was in Diane Blair's journal.
Hillary was handling the bimbo eruptions.
Kathleen Willey, who was harassed by Clinton, is out saying that Hillary Clinton is the war on women.
And she's got a point.
Charlie Cook, who is one of the deans of handicapping elections in Washington, he has a thing that you can subscribe to called a Cook Report.
And it has all the predictions and polling data and handicapping, and you pay for Charlie's analysis.
And the latest issue of the Cook report at the NationalJournal.com website is Hillary Clinton too old to run.
Entering a presidential race is effectively a nine-year commitment, one year to run, and then another eight if she runs for re-election and wins.
And he's the first of the mainstream guys to bring this up.
We, of course, I did it in my own inimitable way some years ago, asking a very mature and relevant question.
Asking if, and I was opening the question.
I mean, I asked the question without knowing or providing the answer.
We put a picture of Mrs. Clinton up at rushlandboat.com, and we simply ask, does America, do the American people want to observe the aging of this woman in office?
I had a picture up there.
We left it open-ended.
But now here comes Charlie Cook.
He's basically saying, it's just too old.
She's just too old to run.
He points out that she will be as old as Reagan when he was elected.
Is she too old to run?
This is an anniversary.
February 17th is an anniversary.
You know what it is?
This is the fifth anniversary of Obama's stimulus.
Nobody noticed, did they?
Nobody's out celebrating it.
Nobody's reminding you of it.
Nobody is calling your attention to it.
Nobody is applauding it.
Nobody's doing stories on how much it mattered.
We're not getting any stories in the media about all the great things that happened as a result of the stimulus.
We're getting a big fat zero, goose egg, nothing.
The media are not crowing about it much.
I do have an article here from the Wall Street Journal pointing out what you and I all know.
The stimulus did not help lower the unemployment rate, as was promised.
And the only reason the jobless rate's gone down at all is due to more people leaving the workforce.
We're not creating any jobs.
It points out that only 10% of the Obama stimulus went to infrastructure.
You know, the building of roads, the repairing of schools, the building of bridges.
All of those wonderful things that were highlighted with the stimulus, and this is what we're going to use this almost $1 trillion for.
There is nothing to show for it but added debt.
In fact, you could make the case that the stimulus has retarded economic growth and recovery, held it back.
You could make the case that the stimulus has led to higher unemployment.
You just can't that and you know why, folks, because it wasn't a stimulus.
Now, it could have been theoretically, this is how Keynesian economics works.
You have an economy and it's slowed down.
It's chugging along.
It's just barely moving.
You need to do something to goose it.
So you stimulate it.
You pump a bunch of money into it.
You put money into it and you cause, you put that money to work for you.
And that money starts circulating in the form of commerce.
And that commerce revives a moribund economy and it grows.
And businesses start making more profits and they start hiring more people.
And that's what the $1 trillion was supposed to do.
However, that is theory only.
It can only work, only, and even then, questionably, a stimulus like that can only work if you have a trillion dollars laying around somewhere that is not part of the economy.
And we don't have that.
If you could find a trillion dollars somewhere that was not part of the economy, it was just lying around idle.
It wasn't in circulation.
It wasn't being used.
And you throw that in there, maybe.
Even that's dubious.
But we don't have a trillion dollars that's sitting around doing nothing, even if we print it, even if we borrow it, because we are already $16, $17 trillion in debt.
And there are debt service payments the government has to make every month, every year.
There is no way that we could stimulate the economy because whether we printed it or whether we borrowed it, the trillion dollars had to first be taken away from the economy before it could be put back into it.
So the stimulus was a net wash.
It canceled itself out.
Even if you raise taxes to get the trillion dollars, you're still taking the money out of the economy you want to stimulate.
You cannot stimulate an economy by taking a trillion dollars out of it and then re-injecting it, putting it back in.
Net zero, net wash.
There's no change.
If you print the money and throw it back into the economy, that's not what happened anyway.
90% of the stimulus went to unions and states and state employees.
90% of the stimulus was part of what I describe as a money laundering scheme.
It was spent to keep union workers employed, government union workers, state after state after state, employed, so that they would continue to pay union dues.
And the union dues, as you know and I know, all end up, vast majority of that money, gets spent on the Democrat Party.
Now, back then, Obama didn't think he could go to the Treasury and write a check from the U.S. Treasury to himself or to the Democrat Party.
So what he had to do was get a trillion dollars and give it to union people.
And they washed it.
They cleaned it.
They stayed employed.
They paid their dues.
And the dues ends up back in the coffers of the Democrat Party and various candidates to buy ads, to run campaigns or what have you.
That's what 90% of that stimulus did.
10% actually went toward things Obama promised.
Now today, five years later, with Obama just anytime he wants making up a law, not enforcing a law, altering a law, if Obama decided the Treasury was going to fund the Democrat Party's campaign next year and they wanted to write a check, he might be thinking, yo, I could probably get away with that.
Now, nobody's going to stop me.
I use that as an illustration only.
They're not to that point yet, but that's what the stimulus was.
Look at your own family.
You want to stimulate your own family's economic situation.
And if somebody gave you $50,000 you didn't have and you didn't have to pay back, free and clear, no taxes on it whatsoever, that $50,000 would certainly stimulate your family.
But if that $50,000 you had to give them first before they gave it back to you, it's a wash, right?
Well, that's what the stimulus was.
Because we don't have a trillion dollars sitting around not doing anything.
If we borrow it, there's debt service on it.
If we print it, there's inflation.
There's just, there's no way.
That stimulus never had a prayer.
It was a PR gimmick from beginning to end.
And that's why, on the fifth anniversary of the great stimulus that was going to reignite the economy and erase all the memories of every bad thing Bush did, there's not even a mention of it in the news.
Ladies and gentlemen, there's one other thing to remember about Obama's nearly $1 trillion stimulus and another one of the real hidden reasons for it.
Reason number one, obviously funding unions.
But the second reason was that it raised or expanded the baseline on the federal budget by a trillion dollars.
And the baseline, of course, is where every new budget starts.
So after stimulating, after adding a trillion dollars in spending, the new baseline goes way, way up.
And therefore, every spending item in the next budget went up accordingly, because the baseline went up.
It drove the budget from $3 to $3.5 trillion, is in effect what it did.
And that became the new baseline.
Now, the journal doesn't explain how that happened, but it was because the Democrats never did a real budget.
They were doing continuing resolutions, and that became the floor, the new $3.5 trillion with the stimulus added to it.
So it was a gimmick.
It was a trick from the get-go, disguised as a PR message, told a low information crowd, we're going to rebuild your bridges and your roads and your schools.
And they're not rebuilt even now.
They're not repaired even now.
Nothing was done on any of that.
Okay, here's the audio sound bite of the vicious interview.
Kristen Cooper.
This lit up Facebook and Twitter.
This is what had the nation outraged.
Kristen Cooper interviewing the bronze medal winning skier, Bodhi Miller.
Here's how it sounded.
Bodie, you're showing so much emotion down here.
What's going through your mind?
I mean, a lot, obviously.
Just a long struggle coming in here and just a tough year.
And I know you wanted to be here with Chili, really experiencing these games.
And how much does it mean to you to come up with a great performance for him?
And was it for him?
I mean, I don't know if it's really for him, but I wanted to come here and, I don't know, I guess make myself proud.
When you're looking up in the sky at the start, we see you there, and it just looks like you're talking to somebody.
What's going on there?
Sorry, babe.
He's got his head in his hands crying now.
The last six seconds of this, he's got his head.
He collapses.
His head is in his hands crying.
He can't answer.
And the info babe, Kristen Cooper, who's a former skier herself, says, oh, sorry, babe.
And he keeps crying.
And that is what lit up Twitter.
Now, how many of you who did not see that, you only heard my build-up to it, how many of you are now saying that was it?
Or do you think that was brutal?
You think that was...
When you look up at the...
He'd already said, no, I wasn't doing it for him.
And then she kept hammering him.
Well, no, I really was.
No.
I mean, I don't know if it's really for him, but I wanted to come here and I don't know, I guess, make myself proud.
When you're looking up in the sky at the start, we see you there.
It just looks like you're talking to somebody.
What's going on there?
And head in his hands.
And he cried.
And he, Bodhi Miller, has since tweeted twice to go easy on her.
She was just doing her job.
Everything's cool.
And we'll be back.
Don't go away.
Okay, right.
So now we move on to cleaning up NFL locker rooms after the vicious treatment of Bodie Miller by Kristen Cooper of NBC.
When you're looking up in the sky, it looked like you were talking to somebody and collapsed.
Okay, folks, that's it.
It's a good thing because I can't say any more about this.
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