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March 5, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:41
March 5, 2014, Wednesday, Hour #2
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You know, I know as an adult and as a decent, nice person, I know as a person with manners and a sense of propriety that you're not supposed to comment on the way people look.
In fact, I'll tell you a little story.
For those of you who are listening here but never had a chance to hear my mother call this program or in other ways be involved in my life.
She passed away in 2000.
Early on in this program's history, I mean, like the first six months of the program in 1988, somehow we ended up discussing the most unattractive presidential daughters.
Like a caller brought it up or something, and I engaged.
I accepted the premise and began talking about it, and I offered a name.
It would be, it doesn't matter who I said.
So I finished the program and went home and I called my mother every day.
So I called her, and she just read me the riot act.
She says, son, you can't do that.
You just can't make fun of the way people look.
They can't help it.
You're never going to last.
You're never going to go anywhere if that's the way.
I mean, to talk about the most unattractive presidential daughter is just, that's just not something you should do.
Besides, you forgot Margaret Truman.
Just busted up.
I could not stop laughing.
After reading me the Riot Act, she gave me her opinion.
Anyway, when I look at this lowest learner, IRS babe, I see somebody who is miserable, mean, vindictive, unhappy, and vengeful.
The woman just encapsulates all of that just in her facial expression.
This is the woman who led the IRS effort to essentially disenfranchise the Tea Party.
This is the woman at the IRS who was responsible for all of the decision-making.
Aside from Obama, I mean, I don't want to leave him out of this because he's the inspiration for these people.
He's the guy all of these people, the lowest learners of the administration, are trying to impress.
Obama is the guy they are all trying to please.
They are in these positions because Obama or his people put them there because they're not going to need a memo of instructions.
They're already going to know what to do.
Obama doesn't need to send his people at the IRS an instructional memo, i.e. a smoking gun memo, on giving the Tea Party a tough time.
They already are inclined to do it on their own.
It's who they are.
That's why they're there.
And I say that because, again, when this happened, people said, well, how this does Obama know?
Does Obama know?
Obama is the guy who inspires this.
This is the woman who saw to it that all of these applications from the Tea Party for tax-exempt status were delayed or denied.
This is the woman who led the effort at the IRS to target Tea Party individuals and organizations because 2010 is not going to happen again.
We're not going to have that again.
The Democrats are not going to get shellac like that again.
We are going to do everything we can when we're in charge when we run the government.
We are going to use it to punish our opponents.
That's what it's for, in their view.
The government is a weapon.
The government is an anvil.
We conservatives do not look at it that way, of course.
And that's why this is so reprehensible.
Now, it is said, ladies and gentlemen, the American people en masse abhor this kind of behavior by the IRS.
I beg to disagree.
I think most Americans are themselves petrified of the IRS.
And it is my opinion that most people think this is standard operating procedure at the IRS.
I mean, even people who've not been audited and who have not encountered the IRS still have this belief.
I mean, they're scared of it.
And that's by design.
The IRS is the most successful collection agency in the world.
And they use fear and intimidation to succeed.
Now, it's all, a lot of this is traced back to Richard Nixon.
Richard Nixon is falsely accused of using the IRS and sicking the IRS on his enemies.
Nixon never did it.
He thought about it.
And he may in fact have wanted to, but he never did it.
It never happened under Nixon.
It did happen under Obama, and it continues to happen because 2010 is not going to happen again.
And they all know that money is the mother's milk of politics, as it is said.
A flashback from the Weekly Standard did a story on May the 20th of last year.
IRS's lowest learner had a history of harassment, inappropriate religious inquiries at the FEC.
I know who this woman is just by looking at her.
I know who this woman is just by looking at her, listening to her speak, look at the facial expression she makes when speaking, and by virtue of what she did, I know what she hates.
She hates social conservatives.
She despises them.
Probably rooted in abortion, but it's bigger.
It's rooted in conservatism, right-wingers, but it's the social side that she just know this without knowing her.
You can see it if you know how to look, and I do.
I'm highly trained at this.
Well, not so much highly trained at this.
This is just intelligence guided by experience.
So she was brought back to Daryl ICE's committee today, The Oversight, House Oversight Government Reform Committee looking into the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups.
She was brought back after claiming the Fifth Amendment in her first appearance.
However, there was a problem because she delivered an opening statement in her first appearance.
And that, said many legal scholars, constituted her abandoning her Fifth Amendment pledges.
She couldn't make an opening statement and then deny or decline to answer questions because she had already thrown away the Fifth Amendment reservation.
That didn't go anywhere for the usual reasons we talk about here.
There just isn't a whole lot of energy and desire devoted to seeking reciprocity or even by the Republicans on these people.
There isn't any real desire to hold these people accountable.
The purpose of these hearings is for people to see that the Republicans are getting mad and doing something about it or trying to.
But at the end of the day, nothing's changed.
Nothing's happened.
She took the Fifth Amendment again today.
And before she showed up today, she put the word out that she feared for her life if she were made to testify again.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Those loony-tuned Second Amendment right-wingers threatened her life if she had to show up and appear in public as a sitting duck as a witness before ISA's committee.
So she shows up today.
She takes the fifth on every question.
And Isa said, okay, we're done here.
And she's gone and she's free and clear.
And not a thing is going to happen to her.
The hearing on the IRS targeting of conservative groups erupted into an argument between Elijah Cummings of the Congressional Black Caucasians and Daryl Issa, the committee chairman, a House Oversight Committee Chairman, just moments after Lois Lerner invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to testify in regards to her role in this scandal.
Now, the headline here, this is a CBS Washington story.
Here's the headline: Isa walks out of IRS scandal hearing as Cummings calls proceedings un-American.
You note there, the headline tries to make Isa the hot-headed bad guy.
Oh, yeah.
Lois Lerner shows up, takes the Fifth Amendment, all hell breaks loose.
And ISA basically turned off Cummings' microphone because he wasn't asking questions.
He's making political statements.
And Isa walked out and left.
And so they had, Isa walks out of scandal hearing as Cummings calls proceedings un-American.
The spat began as Daryl Isa stood up to adjourn the hearing, but Representative Elijah Cummings of the Congressional Black Caucasians requested to ask a procedural question.
While making a statement, Isa asked Cummings to yield when the Maryland Democrat became incensed at ISA.
Cummings said, Mr. Chairman, you can't run a committee like this.
If you'll sit down and allow me to ask a question, I'm a member of a Congress of the United States of America.
Now, if a committee has been officially adjourned, which Isa had done, there can be no more questions.
If Mr. Cummings doesn't like that procedural rule, he should try to change it.
But ISA wasn't changing any rules.
Let's go to the audio soundbites.
This is Lerner refusing to answer questions and taking the fifth.
What did you mean by Cincey should not have these cases?
On the advice of my counsel, I respectfully exercised my Fifth Amendment right and declined to answer the question.
Why would you say Tea Party cases were very dangerous?
I respectfully exercised my Fifth Amendment right and declined to answer that question.
Why were you worried about this being perceived as a political project?
I respectfully exercised my Fifth Amendment right and declined to answer that question.
President Obama stated that there was not a smidgen of corruption in the IRS targeting.
Do you believe that there is not a smidgen of corruption?
On the advice of my counsel, I respectfully exercise my Fifth Amendment right and declined to answer that question.
I'm not going to answer anything.
There's not a smidgen of corruption here, and she's not going to answer anything.
She's going to take the Fifth Amendment.
But there's no corruption here.
Everybody knows that there was.
You know, the real problem here is that I don't know what percentage, but every Democrat in the country thinks this is fine and dandy.
Every Democrat, Lois Lerner, is a hero.
Every Democrat, that's a way.
Use the government as a weapon.
That's what it's for.
The government exists so that we can use it to wipe out conservatives and eliminate them.
That's what it's for.
Yay, you go, Lois.
That's what they're saying.
And this is when Elijah Cummings tried to get his spin in there, and ISA adjourned the committee.
And then Cummings started screaming.
I am a member of the Congress of the United States of America.
I am tired of this.
Well, we have members over here, each who represents 700,000 people.
You cannot just have a one-sided investigation.
There is absolutely something wrong with that, and it is absolutely not America.
Hear, here.
We had a hearing.
Please adjourn.
I gave you an opportunity to ask a question.
You didn't have a chair.
I do have a question.
I gave you a confidence.
Chairman, what are you hiding?
He's taking the fifth, Mr. Elijah.
So what Cummings is saying there, I mean, I don't know if you can hear it or not, ISA said, we had a hearing.
Hearings adjourned.
I gave you an opportunity to ask a question.
You didn't ask a question.
Cummings said, I do have a question.
I said, I gave you an opportunity to speak.
Mr. Chairman, what are you hiding?
So they turned this all around.
You can't have a one-sided investigation.
It's already a one-sided investigation.
The Democrats don't care to get to the bottom of this.
Democrats aren't participating in this event.
Their whole purpose of being up there is to shut this down.
That's what Cummings is trying to do.
And so he's got his buddies in the media now making it look like ISA shut everything down, and ISA's the bad guy, and ISA's running an un-American hearing and all of that.
Let's go back and listen.
This is Tedo Baxter.
It was interviewing Obama's Super Bowl interview.
And he asked, you're saying no corruption?
No, not.
No.
There were some bonehead decisions out of a corner.
No mass corruption.
Not even mass corruption.
Not even a smidgen of corruption.
No way.
Not even a smidgen of corruption.
Obama was going to say that that was just some out-of-control local weeds in the Cincinnati office.
Somebody better clue him in.
That's already been blown up.
This was way beyond Cincinnati, but that's all he was going to say it was.
But you're not a smidgen of corruption.
And here is this vile, vindictive woman taking the fifth.
Later on, Issa, after the hearing, explained why he adjourned and turned off the microphones on Elijah Cummings.
After an exhaustive seven questions, I determined that she was not under any circumstances going to testify.
And pursuant to an already completed hearing other than her testimony, I adjourned.
Mr. Cummings did not raise a point of privilege or a point of order.
And in fact, I did recognize him when he said he had a question.
He went into an opening statement.
Opening statements had already been completed.
I left because there was no question pending.
He was talking into a mic in an adjourned meeting.
That's the rule.
I know, but.
They turned it around on ISA's the bad guy.
I got to take a quick timeout.
But when we come back, Wolf Blitzer outraged Isa was so impolite to a member of the Congressional Black Caucasians.
Having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have because I am doing what I was born to do.
One more soundbite regarding the IRS hearing, Wolf Blitzer on CNN newsroom this morning after all the fireworks at the IRS hearings.
So impolite to Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the committee.
He wanted to make a statement of the chairman, Darrell Issa, wouldn't even let him make a statement.
You know, this is classic.
You know, the real reaction, hey, Elijah, this is what it means to be in a minority.
You lost the election.
You don't run the committee.
You don't get to determine when you can make an opening statement, especially when they're finished.
And of course, does Wolf know this?
No, Wolf doesn't know this.
Doesn't know parliamentary procedure, rules, or whatever.
Isa didn't violate any rules.
He wasn't being rude.
They had their opening comments before Lerner shows up and takes the fifth.
Then Isa asks her seven questions.
She says, screw you.
Isa said, well, that's all we're going to get here.
And he adjourns the meeting.
And Cummings, wait a minute, wait a minute.
I got a question.
What's your question?
And he starts making an opening statement.
Isa said, I'm adjourning the committee.
Opening statements are over.
And he turned off the microphone and left.
And here's Wolf Blitzer.
So impolite to Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the committee.
He wanted to make a statement.
Poor little Elijah, all he wanted to do was talk.
I mean, that's what we need.
We need people talking to each other.
There's not enough people talking to each other.
We need to be bipartisan and reach across the aisle and get along with one another to get things done.
And poor little Elijah just wanted to talk.
He just wanted to.
And Isa, what a bully.
What a bully.
Wouldn't even let him make a statement.
That's how Wolf saw it.
And that's how Wolf reports it to the 25 people watching CNN.
No doubt, low-information voters.
We are going to get back to the phones here in just a second.
There she is again, Lois Lerner.
Oh, man, you know people like that.
You know liberals like that.
You just do, and you know you do.
Just unhappy, miserable.
Everything in life is politics.
Every day spent in rage and anger plotting revenge against these evil social conservative pro-lifers.
Anyway, folks, here's the truth.
For what it's worth, Elijah Cummings was faking it for the cameras and for the media.
to generate and produce the exact reaction Wolf Blitzer gave him.
Elijah Cummings was faking his anger, faking his outrage to make the story of the hearings about ISA and not Lois Lerner.
The objective was to make this all about the mean and transigent Republicans and to take the focus off the fact that Lois Lerner didn't have the guts to answer any questions about what she did regarding the IRS.
Lois Lerner is up there stonewalling and trying to keep everybody from learning what she and her underlings did.
And Elijah Cummings' purpose was to take the spotlight off of her and transfer it to these mean, evil Republicans, war on women meme, if he could.
He was no doubt coached to do that.
The only question is whether he needed to be coached or whether his instincts as a liberal enabled him to do it without being coached.
The whole point of his behavior, faking outrage, asking to make a, you know, making an open statement when he knows that period is closed, and then saying, I have a question, I have a question, and then not asking.
He knew exactly what he was doing.
And then faking outrage, the way he looked at it, he couldn't lose.
If ISA buckles and lets him ask his question, he launches into an opening statement about a bunch of reprobates and mean-spirited guys the Republicans are.
And Isa sits there and lets it happen because he wants to be fair and equal and everybody speak.
Or Isa adjourns the hearing because it's over.
They're not going to get anything out of Lerner.
No reason to sit there anymore.
And Isa stomps his shoe.
I want to speak anymore.
And Wolf Blitzer dutifully says, wow, look at how rude ISA is.
Look at how mean.
Poor little Elijah.
All he wanted to do was talk.
Everything is a show.
Everything is theater.
Here's Stephen.
Back to the phone.
It's Gainesville, Florida.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
Hello.
Megadittos, Rush.
It's an honor to talk to you.
Thank you.
Yeah, thank you very much for everything you do.
I have a quick question for you on the ISA hearing, but I want to make a comment because you brought up how the drive-bys and the liberals are reacting to this.
And I don't know if you remember, you probably do since you had it, but you used to have a show on TV about 20-something years ago.
And I was a kid at the time, and I picked it up on my antenna.
And I remember you had this lobster in the background, and you had them in a tank, and you said you were going to eat them on Friday.
And this was before the internet, and there's only three major networks.
And I just remember how much uproar you brought nationally because you said you were going to eat a lobster at the end of the week.
And what that told me was this.
It just showed me that, one, Democrats don't have any sense of humor, and two, they'll make a ruckus out of anything.
So there's nothing logical about that.
Since you bring that up, and I will not penalize you by taking time from your call, let me explain the lobster story because you watched it when you were young.
There are actually two elements to the lobster story.
The first element is that a Los Angeles Malibu, I think, bar or restaurant had Larry the lobster.
They had named him in the tank.
He was big and he was old.
And they were going to eat Larry.
I mean, they were going to do what they did.
And Mary Tyler Moore and a couple of other Hollywood actresses launched a campaign to save Larry the lobster.
And I entered the bidding to buy Larry the lobster so that I could eat him and share him with my audience.
And that further outraged them.
When I lost, and then there's a second lobster story.
Katie Couric was doing a cooking episode with some chef on the Today Show.
And the chef is cooking lobster.
And the chef started cutting up a live lobster and throwing the parts on a skillet.
And Katie was grossed out.
Ew!
Oh, my God!
Oh, my God.
What are you doing?
Oh, my.
And the chef, well, this is what you do.
I mean, you got to do these a certain way, otherwise they'll poison you.
Oh, my God.
So then we had, later in the week, after playing that, of course, I didn't bring in a lobster and a chef and all that, but we brought the friends over from Patsy's and started throwing fried calamari to the audience.
So we did two episodes with the lobster.
Yeah, the Patsy guys came over and just giant vats of fried calamari, and I just started throwing it into the audience in honor of Katie Couric being grossed out by watching the way you cook a lobster.
Good memory, sir.
Because that's 20 years ago.
Yeah, it was a long time.
I was only, I don't know, 12 or 13 at the time.
But, you know, the thing, it's just a paradigm to explain how illogical the liberals are on anything.
And, you know, getting to the ISA hearing, and I watched the bit, and you're right.
I mean, it looked like they were trying to turn it away from ISA.
But here's my question to you about ISA.
Why doesn't he make this front page by saying, you know, Lois Lerna, you're not answering, you're pleading the fifth.
I'll put you in contempt of Congress.
I don't, you know, I think, well, because she can take the Fifth Amendment.
That's not a crime.
I don't know about the contempt of Congress, contempt of Congress maybe refusing to appear.
And maybe it could be showing up and refusing to testify, not taking the fifth.
But the bottom line is no way, even if, even if that were permissible, legal, whatever, without any question, there's no way.
You know, Stephen, as well as I do.
The Republicans aren't going to put the woman in jail.
That's just...
Oh, can you imagine?
Can you imagine the hero she would become?
Oh, yeah.
Well, it gets spinned no matter what.
I mean, you're right there, but they need to stop being a doormat.
And we know the speaker that we got over there is a doormat.
And there are very few people over there on the Hill that are actually making a stand.
But, you know, look, I would consider myself a person of the Tea Party.
I've been to multiple rallies.
I've been to one down there in West Palm.
I used to live down there.
We are the most peaceful people out there.
And the people are very kind and caring and generous about a lot of things about their lives.
And all we really want to do is just live by the Constitution.
You know?
You're a threat, man.
You have to understand, you are a threat to what they want, what they believe.
The Tea Party people are the salt of the earth.
The Tea Party is the backbone of this country.
The people I categorize them as the people who make the country work.
You're not seeking fame or notoriety.
You're not vomiting everything about yourself on Facebook or Twitter.
You're doing your best to raise your family and behave right and do all that.
And you're working and you're just trying as hard as you can to overcome the odds of life.
And you see your government out of control.
And for the first time ever in your lives, you organize.
You start going to these Tea Party rallies.
And the left doesn't know what to do about it because it's brand new.
It's not tied to any other party.
There is no singular leader that they can demonize and destroy.
So they created Occupy Wall Street as the counter.
They literally manufactured a protest group made up, I mean, just human debris, these people were.
They were organizing in these rot gut manners, ways.
They were just filthy and so forth.
And they became media darlings.
These people in Occupy Wall Street, Stephen, were the kind of people the media was describing you, Tea Partiers, as being.
And they became instant heroes.
They became just the most wonderful people protesting Wall Street, demanding fairness.
And they were totally manufactured.
They were totally created by the Democrats to counter the Tea Party.
And I know how frustrating it is for you.
I know exactly what you're talking about.
You're out there.
You live in Gainesville, Florida.
You're a nice guy.
You don't harm anybody.
You don't intend harm on anybody.
You don't hate anybody.
All you want is for your country to be the best it can be because of your kids and your own future.
You want the land of opportunity and the American dream to prosper and survive.
And you see a bunch of people that are getting in the way of it and you want to stop it.
And you become villains.
And they start making up all of these horrible things about you and other people in the group.
And you're the furthest thing from what you really are.
And I know how frustrating it is.
And nobody speaks up for you.
The Republican Party themselves has people trying to wipe you out because you threaten them.
The great thing about all of you in the Tea Party is you're hanging in there.
Basic, this is not your life.
This is not your business.
This is not what you committed your life to.
And they're trying to get you out of it.
They're trying to scare you, impugn you.
They're trying to just intimidate you so you'll give up.
You don't want this.
And it's not working.
The Tea Party people are hanging in.
And if anything, they're getting stronger.
And there were elections in Texas yesterday.
And the Erasmus people.
Scott Rasmussen's gone, by the way.
He's out of there.
His own company threw him away or something.
I don't know what happened, but he's not there.
But the Rasmussen poll was released at noon today, the Texas governor's race.
Abbott leads Wendy Davis by 12 points, 53 to 41.
There were five other elections.
Ted Cruz endorsed candidates, won all of them.
It was a great electoral night for conservatives.
The fifth Ted Cruz endorsed candidate is in a runoff and looks to be in pretty good shape.
But they answered Ted Cruz, it's not going to go anywhere.
I've had, I can't tell you.
I wish I could mention names, but I just get it's trouble I don't need.
But you'd know these names.
They get in my face here.
Rush, you better, if you really think Ted Cruz is the future of the Republican, you telling me you think Ted Cruz is going to get elected anything?
You can't possibly, you know, as well as I do.
Rush is a glittering idiot, just like Sarah Palin.
I have people that are on television every night, folks, or three times a week, get in my face, emails in person, say things like that to me.
And yet, here's Cruz and his endorsement.
Now, he didn't have a candidate.
They didn't, they didn't.
Tea Party didn't have a candidate opposite John Cornyn.
And media is trying to look at the Cornyn one with 60%, I think, in his primary, but he wasn't up against a Tea Party opponent.
But everybody says, ah, I say Tea Party, nothing.
They couldn't get rid of the establishment guy, Corny.
They didn't try.
I don't think there was a Tea Party candidate opposite Cornyn.
But everywhere else that Cruz went, his endorsed candidates cleaned up.
It's another one of these.
Pend on the drive-by media, you're not going to get the true interpretation of what happened.
Eric Erickson at redstate.com has a good take on the Texas elections.
But Abbott's up over the beloved, the adored Wendy Davis by 12 for the governor's race there.
Anyway, hang in there, Steve.
That's the best I can tell you.
You've entered a world where the media is on the other team.
The media is the other team.
And there's nothing that's going to change that.
The way you're treated is the way you're going to continue to be treated.
If you win, it's going to get worse.
Be prepared for it.
What do you mean, was I kidding about it?
I wasn't kidding about it.
I have.
I've been, what do you can't believe it?
I've been nominated as I'm one of the finalists for an award.
People like me don't get awards.
People that actually do shows with audience don't get awards.
But I'm up for an award, best children's author.
I don't, I can't think of the name of the organization, right?
It's big.
I'm a finalist.
I wasn't kidding about it.
I wouldn't make something like that up.
I mean, I was shocked and stunned when I threw it.
I thought it was fabulous, too.
I mean, who would have ever thought?
I mean, just two years ago, who would have ever, if you'd have told somebody I'm going to be nominated for best children's author?
Oh, right.
What are you smoking?
And here it is.
It's had, by the way, the question about contempt, Lois Lerner, according to the Politico, the Republicans are thinking about it.
Politico says the Republicans are inching toward a vote to hold Lois Lerner in contempt.
Others have said, why not just give her immunity and make her answer?
I don't know.
Folks, I don't know.
I shouldn't say this.
I don't know how badly they really want the answers.
I shouldn't say that.
But I let me Austin and Clarksburg, West Virginia.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hi.
Yes, Rush.
Are you there?
Yeah, yeah, right here.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, I just wanted to make a comment about this whole Lois Lerner thing.
I've been following it since it, you know, well, let me first off.
I've been taking courses of that at Hillsdale, and I've learned a lot.
And I mean, I haven't gotten through a few days, but I'm on it.
But my point is about the slowest learner thing is that I truly believe that the Obama administration is using the Fifth Amendment as a weapon to protect corruption of this IRS targeting of conservative groups.
So you think they're using the Fifth Amendment to destroy the First Amendment?
Yeah, yeah, essentially.
It's an interesting thought.
I mean, look, there's no question this regime sees the Constitution as a giant obstacle.
It's something they have to maneuver around.
It's something they have to weaken.
It's something they have to do something about.
And that's an interesting way of looking at it.
And you know what?
This is a demonstration right here of the value of that free Constitution 101 course that Hillsdale College is offering.
He took it, and he's thinking this way.
This is excellent.
You can sign up for rushforhillsdale.com just as a side note.
Anybody know if Ronan Faro has written a children's book?
Because if he has, I don't have a chance.
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