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Feb. 21, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:45
February 21, 2014, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Greetings!
Greetings to you music lovers, thrill seekers, conversationalists, and people who just sit there and veg and listen.
Great to have all of you.
It's the Rush Limbaugh program, the EIB network, and it's Friday.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's open live Friday!
I guess, ladies and gentlemen, a giant career risk on display each and every Friday because we turn the content of the program over to people who have no idea how to hold an audience.
But that's okay.
That's the fun of it.
Monday through Thursday, you have to talk about what I care about.
On Friday, you don't.
You can talk about anything you want.
Now, you still have to be somewhat interesting to our official call screener, Mr. Snirdly.
I mean, you're not going to get on here if you're just boring.
I mean, you can't, we don't go that far.
Telephone numbers 800-282-2882 and the email address lrushbow at eibnet.com.
So yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, I told you that the media would not be upset over this FCC idea of monitors and newsrooms.
And I further, and I admit this was a guess, but it was an educated guess.
I told you that I wouldn't be surprised if I found out that a journalism school was actually behind this idea.
While mentioning to you that there wouldn't be any protests from journalists or journalism schools, I said, if it turns out here that a dean or an entire J school is behind this idea, won't surprise me a bit.
And guess what?
There are two.
The Annenberg School of Journalism at USC, the University of Southern California, and ladies and gentlemen, the University of Wisconsin Madison Center for Communication and Democracy.
The FCC commissioned those two institutions of higher learning to do a study defining what information is critical for citizens to have.
The scholars decided that critical information is information people need to live safe and healthy lives and, quote, to have full access to educational employment and business opportunities.
That's what the news should be.
Any Maya culpas in there?
Anybody want to now admit I told you this isn't about news anymore?
It's about advancing the Democrat Party agenda.
It's about advancing the leftist agenda.
Why is it uncanny?
For 25 years, I've been accurately predicting.
You know, this is interesting.
It really.
For 25 years, I've been predicting this, and yet people still doubt me.
Now, look, I'm smiling when I say this.
I don't want anybody to misunderstand.
But on the one hand, it is kind of serious.
I am a renowned authority, one of the world's foremost on the left.
I'm never wrong about them.
And yet, even now, after 25 years of demonstrable proof of that assertion, I'm still doubted.
All right, okay.
All right, so this goes to the core of a free press, and you would think even they would understand that.
It's a new world.
There isn't any news.
That's not what journalism is anymore.
You don't go into journalism because you want to report news to people.
You don't go into journalism because you want to find out first what's happening and be the first to report to other people what's happening.
That's not why you go into journalism.
You go into journalism to advance an agenda, meaning world peace, ending world poverty, destroying the powerful, whatever it is.
But it is not related to the news anymore.
By the way, Katie Bachman, who I mentioned yesterday that I've encountered in my professional broadcast career, writes at Ed Week.
She reported yesterday that the program has been dialed back.
It hasn't.
It has not been dialed back.
They want us to think it has.
And Lanny Davis has stood up in outrage.
A well-known Clinton defender.
Lanny Davis stood up in outrage.
And this is, it's typical.
Obama needs to find out who did this and fire him.
Lanny, Obama would have to fire himself, and that isn't going to happen.
Can I tell you what else I found?
I found a, I think it's, yes, it's a tweet.
This is, it, a screenshot here.
It's very small, and it could have been Facebook, but it's a tweet, and it is from a Democrat running for Congress in Virginia against Eric Cantor.
The Democrat's name is Mike Dickinson.
And the tweet is from, looks like February 17th.
It's going to be four days ago.
And I'm going to read you the tweet.
Fox News does nothing but tell lies and mistruths.
They have unqualified political analysts.
need the FCC to monitor and regulate them.
It's a Democrat candidate.
You think this is a coincidence?
Four days ago, this clown comes out and tweets this?
Do you know whose idea this really was?
I can't say it's her idea.
You know, where this gem of an idea originated?
Try Mignon Clyburn, the daughter of James Clyburn, who is a ranking member to Congressional Black Caucasians in the House of Representatives, has a daughter named her after a steak.
A prime cut steak, but nevertheless a steak.
And, you know, the filet is the least amount of fat.
If you serve it without a bone, it's the tenderest.
Yeah, probably one of the most tender cuts.
Prime cuts, you get.
He named his daughter after a steak.
A very lean steak.
Mignon Clyburn.
And Mignon is, she's the agent behind this.
The Washington Examiner.
The First Amendment says that Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of the press or of speech.
But under the Obama regime, the FCC is planning to send government contractors into the nation's newsrooms to determine whether journalists are producing articles, TV reports, internet content, and commentary that meets the public's, quote, critical information needs, close quote.
Those, quote, needs, close quote, will be defined by the administration.
News outlets that do not comply with the government's standards could face an uncertain future.
It's hard to imagine a project more at odds with the First Amendment.
No, it's not hard to imagine.
That's the point.
It isn't hard to imagine it.
Maybe it's hard to accept it, but it isn't hard to imagine.
It's right in front of your face.
They're being very open about it.
They're not even doing this under the cover of darkness.
They're not even doing this while nobody's looking.
They're doing it wide open.
Under a full sun.
They're doing this right in our faces.
The initiative, known around the FCC as the SIN study, CIN pronounced SIN, says here's a bit of a mystery even to insiders.
It's never even been put to an FCC vote.
It was just announced, said Agit Pai, one of the FCC's five commissars.
And he's one of two Republican commissars.
Of course, the president being a Democrat, he gets a majority to commissars.
They used to be called commissioners, but I'm calling these people commissars because they are high commissars.
And in the German, they're Haupt commissars.
H-A-U-P-T, high commissars.
And it is what it is.
Here's some pull quotes.
Advocates promote the project with Obama-esque rhetoric.
Advocates, people in support.
There's nobody out there in the media that's frightened by this.
They all think that what this is going to end up doing is silencing Fox News and me.
That's the attraction to them for this.
This study begins the charting of a course to a more effective delivery of necessary information to all citizens, said FCC Commissar Mignon Clyburn in 2012.
This thing goes back two years.
One of the Republican commissars is who made this public.
Now that it's public, nobody's denying it.
They did tell Katie Bachman that they're pulling back on it, but they're not.
I want you to listen to this quote again from Mignon Clyburn.
Maybe she might pronounce it Mignon.
I don't know.
I've never heard her name pronounced.
Is it Mignon?
Have you heard her name pronounced?
We'll call her Mignon.
Mignon Clyburn, daughter of James Clyburn, congressional black Caucasians, who, by the way, do you know what else he does?
The guy's got a publication in South Carolina.
I think Charleston, I think it's where he said, they got a publication aimed at the African-American community.
So he's into business himself, so to speak.
But listen to this.
This study begins the charting of a course to a more effective delivery of necessary information to all citizens.
This means that the regime is going to determine what the news is.
The study is for the news outlets to tell the regime how they pick the news and what they decide to ignore in the news.
And the regime is going to come and say, no, no, no, no.
Here's what the news is.
And this is what isn't the news.
That's, in a nutshell, what this is.
This is the regime officially making it state-controlled media.
The FCC commissioned the University of Southern California Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Communication and Democracy to do a study defining what information is critical for the citizens to have.
And the scholars at these two journalism schools decided that the critical information that we, the people, need from the media is information that will help us live safe and healthy lives.
Well, they're already, don't you get it, already doing that.
They're already telling us what we can't eat, how much of a soda we can't have.
They're already doing this.
And not just the media.
Elected officials are already telling us how to live healthy lives, what we can and can't eat.
Also, the scholars at these two journalism schools decided that another avenue of critical information for the people is full access to educational employment and business opportunities.
So the news is going to become a giant classified ads section.
Educational, employment, business opportunities, among other things.
If the FCC goes forward, pull quote from the story, if the FCC goes forward, it is not clear what will happen to news organizations that fall short of these new government standards.
Perhaps they will be disciplined, or perhaps the very threat of investigating their methods will nudge them into compliance with the regime's journalistic agenda.
What is sure is that it'll be a gross violation of constitutional rights.
This is Byron York's piece, by the way, from the Washington Examine.
I'm reading, that's his pull quote.
That just, United States of America, this is being written as though it's likely to happen.
It's almost a fait accompli.
And all we're talking about here is what's going to happen to the dissidents.
What's going to happen to the resistance?
It'll be underground.
They're going to have to broadcast some private locations on private frequencies.
Perhaps news organizations that fall short of the regime's standards will be disciplined.
More likely, the very threat of investigating their methods will nudge them into compliance.
That's what they've done with the Republican Party.
Republican Party is in total compliance with the Democrat Party.
Is it not?
In terms of the party at the establishment level?
Have they not been nudged into total compliance?
And who are the holdouts?
Me and Talk Radio, and some of them say Fox News.
Got to take a break here, folks.
They're not pulling back on this.
They have not set it aside, as was reported yesterday.
I got some audio soundbites on this from the Republican FCC Commissar, Adget Pai.
Coming up.
Don't go away.
Bob Beckel has confirmed that journalists of all three sexes are sleeping with their sources in Washington and have been for years.
The subject has been popularized by the latest season of House of Cards.
Have you delved into it yet?
Have you watched on Netflix?
Okay.
Okay, well, in the show, journalists and members of Congress routinely sleep with each other.
And so it came up on Fox the other day.
It's come up in other places since the show is in its second season.
Dana Perino says, oh, no, no, that would never, never Bush's press secretary.
It would never, never happen.
Beckel said, you kid, let me tell you something.
I've been in this town 20 years, and I'm going to tell you what.
Everybody's sleeping with everybody.
You know what?
And it's males and females and sources and journalists.
I can tell you I've seen it.
Dana Perino says, I can't believe that that would actually happen here.
And it is, it is.
I've got that soundbite, but I want to get a little bit of the Republican FCC Commissar.
And by the way, for those of you who think that the media would still stand up in righteous outrage, I want to remind you, October 9th, 2013, last year, Los Angeles Times announced that it was going to stop publishing letters to the editor if they held a view that man-made global warming was a hoax.
If they were climate deniers, the LA Times was no longer going to publish them because they're just wrong.
Not going to waste space.
Here is Agget Pai.
It may be PAY, it's P-A-I, last night on the record with Greta Van Sustran.
She said, what's been the response by the other commissars at the FCC?
I am pleased to report that tonight the chairman of the SEC, Tom Wheeler, has instructed the contractor who will be doing this study to remove questions from the study relating to news philosophy and editorial judgment.
And I think that's a positive step, but of course, the devil's in the details when it comes to the actual study as implemented.
Right.
And remember, the Republicans have two seats on the FCC.
The Democrats have three plus the chairmanship.
This is not going to be dialed back.
Whatever they have, tell Republicans in Congress to get them to go along with whatever the Democrat agenda, this is the Democrat agenda, this is going to happen.
And Mr. Pai had one more thing to say about this.
The study was designed and adopted under previous leadership, and I think the reaction that you have is the one that a lot of people in America have, and that is that the government doesn't have a place in the newsroom.
They're going to need the government over their shoulders telling them that they're doing something wrong.
The study hasn't yet started, and that's why I think it's critical for us to make sure at the outset that either we stop the study or if it's going forward, we make sure that it doesn't infringe on anyone's constitutional freedoms.
I tell you, that just amazes me.
No, I don't have time to tell you right because I'm going to break here, but just the whole attitude here.
It just amazes me.
Alban Line Friday.
Rush Limbaugh serving humanity.
Great to have you here.
I am behind the Golden EIB microphone.
This is the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
And by the way, ladies and gentlemen, this is already happening in the UK.
I have a story here from January 30th, UK Guardian.
Diversity monitoring service will show broadcasters if they are hitting targets.
The BBC, ITV, Sky, and Channel 4 to join pilot to be launched by the Creative Diversity Network, a monitoring service that will assess how the major broadcasters are performing against their diversity targets and against each other.
is about to be launched by the Creative Diversity Network.
The aim is that the initiative will become a permanent benchmark to track the successes and failures of the broadcast industry, the news industry, holding its key players to account.
A pilot set to launch into spring, featuring the BBC, ITV, Sky, and Channel 4.
However, it's not clear how much of the data will be shared publicly.
So diversity monitoring in the works in the UK.
Now, technically, this isn't being imposed by the government per se.
It's being done after pressure by the government.
The British don't have a First Amendment, by the way.
There is no freedom of speech per se.
There is no freedom of the press per se.
Did you know that?
The British don't have the Constitution.
You didn't know that.
Everybody thinks every country has a Constitution.
The Brits do not have a Constitution.
And Ergo, there is no actual First Amendment.
There may be in practice the notion of a free press, but it isn't codified.
Sticking here with the audio soundbites, would you grab number three?
I got to be very careful.
I don't want to be critical of the Republican Commissar here, Mr. Ajit Pay.
It might be Ajit Pai.
I don't, I'm sorry.
You know, I need to make a metal note.
I need to find pronunciations of people's names because I never hear them pronounced because in my hearing, I don't ever have the volume up.
It's just noise to me.
So if there's no pronunciation guide, I don't know.
And so I have to pronounce it all these different ways to assure the subject I'm not trying to purposely get it wrong.
But I want you to listen.
I'm sure he's a great guy.
But think of what's going on here.
We actually have the federal government ripping the First Amendment to shreds here.
And we're talking about it in a reasonable, scholarly, introspective, extrospective, scholarly way.
This ought not be given one iota of respect.
This view doesn't have any, we don't have to respect this view that the government's going to go in and start monitoring the contents of the news.
Anyway, it is.
Well, look at that.
It says Ajit Pai.
I was really close.
Again, one of the two Republican Commissars, FCC, Greta Van Cestron last night.
Look, it may be a positive step that they're dialing this back a little.
But you'd have to be out of your mind to have proposed this in the first place, she said.
So, you know, I suppose it's great that the Commissar now, after everybody's raining all over his parades, dialing it back.
But who in his right mind suggested this in the first place?
Or who thought it was okay to see, she's got the right attitude.
She's literally outraged at the entire concept.
Here's the answer again.
The study was designed and adopted under previous leadership, and I think the reaction that you have is the one that a lot of people in America have, and that is that the government doesn't have a place in the newsroom.
They don't need the government over their shoulders telling them that they're doing something wrong.
The study hasn't yet started, and that's why I think it's critical for us to make sure at the outset that either we stop the study or if it's going forward, we make sure that it doesn't infringe on anyone's constitutional freedoms.
What do you mean if it's going forward?
It is infringing constitutional freedoms by virtue of its design.
The government doesn't get to monitor content.
The government doesn't get to say what anybody can or can't say specifically in political speech and specifically if they're in the media.
Do you all find it strange that I am one of the few in the media outraged by this?
I mean, I'm not technically a journalist because I laugh and smile and I love America, so I'm not a journalist.
But there's cricket silence out there about this.
Now, admittedly, people like me are the target of this thing.
And the drive-by journalists do not think they're the targets.
I guarantee you that's why they're being silent.
They don't think they're the targets.
They don't think Obama wants to shut them down, and they know how to make sure he doesn't.
And that is just kiss ass.
Just every day, just keep kissing butt.
That's all you got to do.
You got a regime monitor in there.
This is why I was telling Snerdley yesterday: I think the media is going to like this.
There's a monitor in there that somebody can report back to Obama how good I'm doing, how big a butt-kisser I am.
There's a monitor in there going to report right back to Obama what a great job I'm doing advancing the agenda.
There's no fear in the drive-bys because they don't think they're the targets of this.
Yeah.
Well, they don't know that.
Snerdley says they've got to know they won't stay in power.
For you know, my dad used to always tell me when he was educating me about communism and what it did to people.
You know what it, what it literally meant for people, how it not just denied them their freedoms but ended up many of them die, many of them.
There's a wall built in countries to keep people in, not keep people out.
Uh, end up in political prisons.
You end up being tortured.
There is no, there is no upward mobility economically.
The leaders take it all there's, there's literally nothing.
It's an absolute, it's a dungeon of existence.
And he always used to tell me that the people in the media don't realize they're going to be the first shut up, they're going to be the first silence, they're going to be the first to go, unless they're brought in line, unless they're willing to toe the line, unless they're willing to become absolute Butt kissers and report everything written for them.
If there's any dissent whatsoever, they're the first gone.
Because the state is going to control the media.
And anybody in the media who's not cool with that is going to be the first silenced.
Actually, the first thing a totalitarian regime will do is go for universal health care.
And then if you doubt that, look, this is a matter of historical record.
That's not an opinion, even.
Go look at what the National Socialists did in Germany.
What's the first thing?
And it's always under the auspices of helping the poor, the downtrodden, and making everybody healthy and everybody keep them from getting sick.
Everybody.
You control health care and you control every aspect of every citizen's life.
You hold their lives in your hands.
If they surrender their medical care to you, you own them.
Then the next thing you do is you move in, and it almost happens simultaneously.
You control the media.
Look, this is, go study what Mount Seitong did.
Go study what Castro did when they revolutioned Cuba.
Anywhere.
Look at Hugo Chavez.
The reason I said sternly said, Don't these people in the media know that they're going to.
No, they think they're on the same side.
They do not, they think they're loved and adored.
They want to be agents.
The people that you see on CBS ABC, they want to be on the team.
So they're going to be sucking up whatever they have to do to get notice to stay in good stead, if you will.
Here's more from Ajit Pai.
Greta Van Susteren said, well, now look, what is the authority for the FCC even to think that it can do this?
Mr. Pai, what's the statute that they think that they must or are complying with here to do something like this?
Technically, the FCC is relying on a statute that requires the FCC to report to Congress every three years on barriers that entrepreneurs and small businesses face when they're trying to get into the communications industry.
Stop there.
What does asking a question about whether or not you've been prevented from telling a story have anything to do with being a barrier?
And that's exactly the concern I have: that there isn't any connection.
And moreover, even if there were some connection, the FCC doesn't have any regulatory authority when it comes to the print media.
And so we don't tell newspapers what to cover, and newspapers nonetheless are covered under this SIN study.
What does that tell you?
They don't care what the First Amendment says.
But you notice the hook here.
Mentioned this yesterday.
The hook is: we're going to do the study to find out what the barriers are to minority ownership, media properties.
So, Greta said, okay, what in the world does how any newsroom choose the stories that it's going to report?
What's that got to do with whether or not minorities can own broadcast properties?
And Mr. Ajit Pai said, well, yeah, that's the same question.
I'll tell you what they have.
That's how you get everybody supporting the study, the concept of the study.
It's to help minorities.
It's to help victims.
It's to help the poor.
And of course, this country is so unjust and so immoral and so unfair that the media is like everything else.
It's like big oil.
It's like big pharma.
run by a bunch of racist, rich, white pigs.
And we have changed that.
So we are going to find out how these racist, rich, white pigs are keeping everybody out.
Now, we're going to do that by finding out how they taint the news so as to create racist attitudes about potential minority entrepreneurs.
And everybody's going, yeah, yeah, TMZ, e-entertainment network, low information, Yahoo News.
Yeah, yeah, you go for it.
You go for it.
Because we want equality and we want fairness.
When in truth, the biggest barrier to anybody owning a broadcast property is what?
Money.
Money.
So I think if they're really serious, they need to take the subprime mortgage program and transfer it over to the broadcast business and call it the subprime broadcast purchase opportunity.
And let people that can't afford to buy broadcast outlets buy them.
Give them a mortgage.
Give them the loan.
Let them buy the TV station, the radio station, whoever, and know that they can't pay it back.
Demand that the banks lend the money like they did in the housing business, or else they will be investigated.
That's how you do it.
But you see, there's much more to this than just minority ownership.
That's just the hook.
It's Open Line Friday, and we're going to get to your phone calls.
I intended to in this hour.
I may still have time.
I got two Lanny Davis bites.
I got to get in on this, so we can close the loop on it.
This was last night on Hannity.
The fill-in host was Andrea Tarantula.
And she was saying to Lanny Davis, look, your good friend, Hillary Rodham, admitted recently that the regime is losing the information war.
Hillary said the Obama administration is losing the information war.
Did Hillary say that?
What in the world is she talking about if she means that?
What information war are they losing?
Don't look it up.
I just don't know.
That doesn't make any sense.
Losing the information war.
Who's beating them in the information?
You mean Obama's being caught in his lies?
What does this mean?
Anyway, Andrea Tarantula said, is that why they're doing this, sending these monitors into these newsrooms because they feel like they're losing hold of the messaging?
This is nuts.
I can't help your audience that always loves to disagree with me, but most people in the Fox audience at least seem to.
I think this is crazy.
It is unconstitutional.
Whatever they do with it, it clearly could have a chilling effect on news gathering.
We have a First Amendment.
Whoever at the FCC calls himself a Democrat, much less a Liberal Democrat, cannot be behind this.
And I would really question the sanity of somebody at the FCC even thinking of this idea.
Well, you better.
Lanny, you know, it's Mignon Clyburn.
This is her brainchild, along with, by the way, that's not her brainchild.
This is Obama's idea.
This is the one thing.
Here's the next Lanny Davis bite because he actually thinks that Obama ought to find out who did this and fire him.
And Andrea Tarantula said they want to ask if a reporter has ever been told by their boss whether or not a story could be approved or not.
So essentially, they're asking the reporters and the station managers to rant out their bosses.
What's the intended or unintended consequence of that?
Look, I'm really having a hard time other than saying whoever is saying that this is happening in the FCC, some of the FCC has to say this is not true.
Because if it's true, then President Obama ought to be firing everybody he can over there who thought about this idea.
See, this is, this is just, isn't it classic?
Boy, somebody better tell Obama who's doing this.
Somebody, you better make him aware of what's going on here.
Because when he finds out about this, he's going to be really mad like he was after Benghazi.
He's going to fire somebody like he did after Benghazi, like he did after Fast and Furious.
Like, you know, he's got to find the guy who made him lie about keeping your doctor.
Whoever that guy is, I hope he never gets found.
The guy told Obama that premiums are going to come down $2,500.
Whoever the guy told Obama that premiums are going to be reduced $2,500 a year, that guy is going to be fired too if Obama ever finds out who told him that.
I'm listening to these guys.
Landy Davis is close here, but it is obvious to me, to sum this up, that nobody is willing to admit just who these people are.
Nobody is willing to admit, even with Obama violating the Constitution as often as he does, nobody's willing to admit that we've got a regime that doesn't like it and wants to circumvent it and maybe get rid of it if they could.
Okay, I found out what Hillary's talking about.
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