Welcome to today's edition of The Rush 247 podcast.
Well, here's a headline that says it all.
Putin.
Vladimir Putin redraws Russian borders.
Obama unveils bracket picks.
Does that not say at all?
Vladimir Putin is reassembling the Soviet Union.
And while all that's going on, Obama is filling out his March Madness bracket picks.
In fact, that is such a big story that CNN broke away from the coverage of the Malaysian airliner disappearance to report on Obama filling out his NCAA March Madness bracket picks.
That's big, because that missing airliner, that's all CNN is talking about.
And you know why?
Because their ravings are through the roof.
They finally found something they do that an audience wants to watch, so they're not letting go of it.
I mean, it's like Howard Kurtz said yesterday, CNN's devoting 26 hours a day to this story, but they did break away to cover Obama filling out his March Madness picks.
Greetings, my friends, and how are you?
Great to have you, Rush Limbaugh and the EIB Network.
We come to you from the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
The telephone number is 800-282-2882, the email address Ilrushball at EIBNet.com.
I want to start here with a little teachable moment, a minor little thing, but it's personal to me.
And it affects you.
Long ago, back during the peak of his career, on Monday night football, people that knew Howard Cosell loved to tell stories that on Tuesday or Wednesday of every week following a Monday night game,
Kosell would walk into the office just fit to be tied, angry, livid, and he'd be holding up a copy of the Oshkosh Gazette, in which he had been ripped and criticized.
And he would walk in and he would throw that down and ask, can you believe what they're saying about me and Ashkosh?
You look at this.
Look at this.
These people don't even know what they're talking about.
And people say, Howard, Howard, it's Oshkosh.
Howard let it go.
Well, in a way, although I'm not coming to you in an agitated way here, but you know, this program has many elements in it, and this program is aimed at you.
I mean, there's no question.
But there are two groups of people involved here.
You, one group, people who listen to this program, and then the other group, people who don't.
Now, I do the program for you, obviously, people who listen to it, but I would love to attract people who don't.
That's the objective to grow the audience.
Now, let's then combine something else here.
That is, one of the uh performance techniques that I employ is parody and satire.
And it requires contextual listening for you to understand when I'm being satirical or doing a parody.
This is why I have always said that you need to spend at least six weeks listening to this program before you can be assured that you understand everything that can happen here.
Not that in six weeks you're gonna learn everything you need to know, but you're just gonna understand the program and what makes it unique and different from others.
Well, that's all fine and dandy, but then there's that group that doesn't listen, and in that group are several journalists in local communities.
And it's it's it's frustrating in the sense that those people do not get the satire and do not get the parody, and then they report what was satire or parody as fact, which then helps create this impression that I'm something I'm not, which retards the effort to attract People who don't listen to the program.
That's not a big deal, but it is interesting to me, and there's no there's no way around this.
Because if you announce up front, attention, what's next is satire, what next is parody.
It doesn't work.
Now, the other day, on this program, in the midst of expressing my frustration over the outrageous coverage of the missing jet, I advanced my own theory.
It was a cockamami, wacko, ridiculous theory that the plane was shot down by one of three countries, and that the United States knows who did it.
And I said, my theory is as good as anybody else's.
The theory was reported as serious.
In one little market, Wilmington, uh, North Carolina.
Now we're big in Wilmington on the radio, but this TV journalist lumped me in with Courtney Love, who also said that she had a theory.
In fact, she had what seen it.
She had seen a crashed wreckage on a satellite photo.
So let's go.
This is last night, WSFX TV, eyeball news at 10 during the what's trending segment.
And this is not the infobe anchorette.
This is a reporter, Jennifer Merwitz, uh reporting about various conspiracy theories surrounding a disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight 370.
This unsolved mystery has sparked up some conspiracy theories.
Some believe that the flight may have been linked to aliens, Illuminati, terrorists, or even top secret technology.
Conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh believes the plane was shot down with some hostile country.
And even Courtney Love has her own speculation tweeting this photo.
The picture love tweets features drawn lines meant to point at what appears to be discoloration in the water and possible debris.
There are none so blind as those who don't listen.
And this is not a criticism of Jennifer Merwitz.
It's just an illustration of how hard it is.
I do not believe, and everybody listening to me knew that I was making a joke about the plane being shot down because before that I had speculated that the Koch brothers were behind it.
Because the Koch brothers are evil incarnate to the Democrats and the American left.
And by the way, about that, with the Koch brothers, you have to understand what that means too.
It's not strictly personal with the Koch brothers.
The Koch brothers are a symbol.
When the Democrats and the media start blaming the Koch brothers for it, it's like blaming the rich in mass.
It's not just specific, although to some Democrats it is.
I mean, literally personally, hate the Koch brothers.
But on a balanced scale, who has done more for this country than the Koch brothers and compared to Harry Reed.
Well, Harry Reed hasn't done diddly squat for this country compared to what the Koch brothers have done.
With their business, the number of people they employ, the research and development, all business, any number of ways you want to measure it.
Harry Reed can't even hold a candle of Koch brothers, and yet they are enemy number one to him.
And he denounces them as he did me on the floor of the Senate.
So I thought I would get in a mix and blame the crash and the Koch brothers, that they had some plans for the plane or the missing airplane on it.
Now, just illustrating this, because people watching this last night in Wilmington, North Carolina, who do not listen to this program, are now going to think that I actually believe the plane was shot down.
And then they're going to start telling that Limbaugh, that idiot that wackled in here, what he thinks the plane was shot down.
And then there are going to be others, you know, Limbo may have a point.
Limbaugh may be right before you start laughing at it.
So I just am mentioning this.
I'm not complaining like Cosell was.
And I'm not personally offended.
I'm just telling you how difficult it is.
Because I know some of you.
You know what happens?
This used to happen a lot.
People, recent arrivals here, brand new in love with the program.
They're into their second or third month.
And they know people who will not listen to me because they believed all this negative press out there.
And they finally convinced their friends to listen, and then I come up and use the word feminazi.
I don't know any of this, of course.
Then I get emails, you know what?
You blew it.
Here I had just convinced my friends after three months to listen to you, and you go and do that, and there's no way they're going to understand.
That's what am I supposed to do?
Cut back on what I do to avoid offending the people that don't listen.
It's just a challenge, folks.
Because I know you're like me.
You want this uh program to expand geometric proportions, and when you do stuff like this happening, it's and I I wouldn't even know it.
Uh except our eager beaver audio soundbite pursuers uh found it.
So we've got what do we have today?
We've got Putin expanding and reassembling the Soviet Union, redrawing Russian borders, Obama is unveiling his bracket picks.
We've got a number, again, of devastating stories about what is happening to people, in this case, their premiums and cancer patients with Obamacare.
And the short version of this is Obamacare premiums are skyrocketing all over the place.
And the second phase is that people are beginning to learn that fewer and fewer hospitals that treat cancer patients are part of their network.
And this touches on people who believe that they are being covered with a pre-existing condition.
They are learning that there is a very big out for the regime and for insurance companies on pre-existing conditions.
Well, it is that if if you've got, let's say, uh cancer, and you are to be covered because you are covered under the pre-existing condition clause of Obamacare.
If they discover that you have a heart ailment, for example, that will disqualify your coverage for cancer.
We told you that story yesterday.
Well, it's just in the law.
It's just in there.
It's it's as though, well, yeah, you are you we we granted you coverage pre-existing condition coverage or cancer, but you didn't tell us you had a heart problem, and that nullifies it.
It's an out built-in so that the regime doesn't have to cover pre-existing conditions, is essentially what it is.
Point is people are now learning this.
The regime, the regime is permitting, oh, since you ask it that way, the regime not only is acting as an evil insurance company, and they are enabling insurance companies to be more evil, while all this is going on,
it has been learned that because of various clauses peppered throughout, scattered the Obamacare law, insurance companies, evil insurance companies, are allowed to profit even more while all of this hardship is going on for patients.
Yes.
And then our morning update today is about uh college that's having to downside six hundred professors so that they will not have to cover them of Obamacare.
These are all left-wing liberal professors that are card-carrying supporters of the regime are being aced out with that 30-hour a week rule.
The White House pastry chef has been forced out.
The White House pastry chef, this is an outrage.
The White House pastry chef has resigned.
He was forced out, and he's doing it because he needs to defend cream, butter, sugar, and eggs, because nobody else will.
He is gay, he is married, and Michelle Obama still told him, I don't care what you're good at, you're not going to use butter in the White House, and you're not going to use cream, and you're not going to use sugar, and you're not going to use...
to use eggs.
So this guy had to come up with fruit puree as a sugar substitute in his baked goods.
And he finally threw up his hands and said, the heck with it, I'm out of here.
And I I have it, they'll hire another chef that will do what Michelle wants.
But here's the point of this, though.
I happen to mention this to a couple people, and their reaction was, well, wait a minute, okay, she doesn't want to eat it, but there are a lot of people in the White House that may not have a problem.
I said, doesn't matter.
They are going to eat what Michelle tells them to eat.
And that is the point.
And it's not just people in the White House.
Your kids are being forced to eat what Michelle is telling them to eat in the school lunch program.
And many of you know that your kids are saying to hell with what Michelle wants, and they're sneaking around eating what they want to eat.
Well, it's fine and dandy.
Michelle Obama does not want to eat cream, butter, sugar, and eggs, but because she doesn't, nobody's going to, because she knows better than everybody else.
This is a story in the Daily Caller, and for the last line of the story, I wish Bill, the White House pastry chef, Bill Yosses, Y-O-S-S-E-S.
I wish Bill and his husband Charlie all the best in their future endeavors.
So we have a same sex married couple losing their income because of the dictates of Michelle Obama and her dislike.
And what do you bet she eats this stuff in private anyway?
What do you bet?
What do you?
I mean, we're not exactly talking about never mind.
We'll be back after this.
There is another way, ladies and gentlemen, that the regime is allowing, and it's important that people understand that.
The insurance companies are totally under the auspices now of Obamacare.
And there is another way that the regime and their buddies in the insurance industry are getting out of this demand that people with pre-existing conditions be covered.
You know what it is?
In addition to you maybe having a disease or an illness that they didn't know about, which cancels your pre-existing coverage of what you had, they also, in many cases, are not covering the drugs necessary to treat whatever your condition is.
Not even a pain pill.
If you have pre-existing condition and if because of Obamacare you have managed to get coverage, you know, I don't want to beat a dead horse here, but that's not insurance.
I'm a stickler for the language, which is why I oppose same-sex marriage.
I very much appreciate the language.
Words mean things.
And marriage does not equal a union of two people the same sex.
It just doesn't.
Words mean things.
And the regime is engaging in sort of a trick here.
They will allow you to be covered, if you're pre-existing condition, But then the medicine you need to treat it might not be covered, in which case you're not covered.
You might you may be a doctor visit may be covered, but the the actual treatment, the medicine won't be.
But pre existing coverage is not insurance.
Insurance is something you buy, you're taking a risk or making a bet.
If you have homeowner's insurance, you buy insurance to cover yourself in case there is a fire that either burns the house down or damages it.
If you live in a hurricane alley, you go out and hopefully if they'll sell you wind insurance at a decent price, you buy it.
But if you can go get an insurance policy after the house fire is starting, let's say you've got a house, and it's all of a sudden on fire, and then you call the insurance company.
Hey, I need some homeowner's assurance right now, like in the next five minutes.
And if they cover it, you that's not insurance.
Don't care what anybody thinks, that's welfare.
But because politicians want to be thought of as compassionate, and they want to win elections based on their compassion and their love and devotion to people, they call this insurance coverage of pre-existing conditions.
But the point is they're finding ways out of actually covering you.
You know, folks, I'm sitting here and I'm watching CNN, and I can just you can tell by watching them, they are loving this.
And either way, I think I read where Anderson Cooper has openly admitted this is the biggest story, the most intriguing, the most exciting state in his career.
He can't get enough of this.
Now, at some point, ladies and gentlemen, whatever happened is going to be learned.
Whatever happened is going to be reported.
And I'm going to repeat again, my fear is that whatever happened, whatever the explanation is, is not going to be believed by people.
Because there have been so many conkamami out of this world, ridiculous conspiracy theories that a relatively comparatively simple explanation will not be believed.
I'll give an example.
TWA Flight 800 took off from JFK.
It was on the way to Paris.
It was a Boeing 747 over East Mauritius.
It exploded.
Jim Calstrom at the time ran the New York office of the FBI.
He was the lead investigator.
Jim Calstrom is a good friend of mine.
I know him from work with the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation.
He's one of the founders.
In fact, they've got their big annual soiree tomorrow night at the Waldorf Asteria in uh in Nueva Ortic.
I'm not going because I can't hear anything in there.
And it's really a shame.
I've uh I just can't.
I can't last time I went, I could not hear one word.
And because of the acoustics in there, I actually, I don't know how to describe this, but I felt like I was in the middle of a concussion of air.
That the PA system had something in it that just I literally got I was feeling ill.
I had to get out of there.
Couldn't hear a word.
So I it's it's a waste time to go and can't talk to anybody, and you end up sitting there looking like an idiot when you can't hear you, obviously you have to fake paying attention sometimes.
Eyes get drooping and whatever.
But anyway, uh Calstrom is a man of complete total integrity.
Uh unquestionably.
And eventually, he, the FBI and the uh NTSB and the other groups came up with an explanation.
And that was there was a fuel tank in the middle of the airplane.
It was not filled because they didn't need a full load of fuel to get to Paris, which, by the way, raises another question about this Malaysian thing that nobody's asking, and I can't believe it, and I'll get back to it in a minute if I remember.
But while the investigation, what happened at TWA 800 was on the way, remember all the things that people said they saw.
I saw a rocket launched from out there in the Atlantic.
Yeah, there were two guys.
Two guys out there, suspicious-looking guys in a boat.
It looked like what they had was a missile, and I thought I swear I saw an explosion up there.
Well, that's all it took.
Then the official explanation came, which was that something sparked the uh the fumes in that empty fuel tank, causing the explosion.
Nobody accepted it.
To this day, everybody believes that there's a conspiracy to hide from people what really happened to TWA 800.
And that's just an example.
They came up with an explanation that they swear by that they they had uh PowerPoint presentation, various video slides and pictures.
It was kind of funny watching the coverage uh uh some of the news people.
I actually were asking on air uh wait a minute, is it could I see a parachute?
Could somebody have survived?
Is that somebody?
The plane blew up at like 20,000 feet, and they were watching debris falling.
Hey, look, why that might be a passenger?
It's not possible.
I mean, all kinds, the strangest, weirdest things happen.
So, nobody believed it.
To this day, there are a lot of people that think it was a government cover-up, that it was a missile, that it was terrorism, nobody's claimed credit for terrorism, nobody's claimed credit for blowing up TWA 800, but that's my point.
This is going to be even worse.
Because there were witnesses to that plane crash, there were witnesses in East Maritches, there were witnesses that wreckage came out of the sky, and they were able to find it and put it back together.
And there's nothing here.
I mean, there's literally nothing.
Now we've got some people on the small island in the Maldives claiming that they saw the plane fly over their island low enough that they could read the logo on the tail.
And that would prove the contention that it was flying low to escape radar coverage, and I.e.
was hijacked and all of that.
So the simple explanation is is not going to happen.
That's the big problem of what people like CNN are doing.
I'm telling you, they are so into this, and Anderson Cooper thinking it's the biggest, most intriguing, exciting uh stories ever covered, and others they're saying the same thing.
When this is solved, when where whenever that is, whenever there is an explanation, I'm going to make a prediction to you right now that CNN is going to continue to cover this story 24 hours because they're getting ratings for the first time in 20 years, they are not going to let this go.
I don't, I'm not going to predict what the coverage is going to be.
Maybe it'll be rooted in we don't believe the explanation, uh, or maybe we're going to find guests who don't believe it, but they're going to keep this alive.
I just want to warn you, they're not going to let it go.
They're going to turn this into a reality show.
This may be the first stages of the missing airliner network.
May even rename CNN.
But here's the question, folks, that maybe it's been asked.
I haven't heard it asked, and it seems to me fundamental to many of the theories that have been proffered here.
The regulations for commercial air travel, like this airplane was uh scheduled to fly from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Now, I don't know what that flight time is.
But the regs are for everybody that you've got to carry an additional two hours of fuel in the event you end up in a holding pattern because of weather, or if you have to be diverted, you have to carry enough fuel.
You all every flight plan declares a primary secondary airport.
If you can't make your destination, where are you going to go?
You have to have enough fuel to get to that destination.
And the easiest way to calculate it is that you load up for two hours more.
Now the Boeing 777 at a full load can probably go 14 hours or longer.
What we need to know, and it is known, is how much fuel was on this airplane.
That we We could really narrow the search area significantly, and maybe this question's been asked and answered.
I haven't seen it.
But if if this airplane couldn't fly for eight hours or nine hours based on the fuel it took off with, then searching there is going to be, and particularly if you're flying at low altitude.
Like they claim they were doing to avoid radar detection.
When you fly at low altitude, you just burn fuel like you can't believe.
That's one of the many reasons you fly high.
It's it's the most economical up there, and the reason for that is the air is thinner and it takes less propulsion to get you through it at the speed you want to travel.
Down here, thicker air, higher air pressure, takes more fuel to get you through the air, stay in uh stay in flight and all that.
So the amount of fuel they had will be really indicative of what the search area should be.
Now I apologize, those of you who have been watching this 24-7.
If that question's been asked and answered, then uh I will go find it.
I haven't heard it.
Uh I haven't seen it, but if you want to have some fun, turn on CNN and turn off the sound, and just watch the talking heads get as worked up as they do, as if this is some sort of heated debate.
You turn the sound down and watch and say, what the hell?
What are they getting so worked up about here?
It's uh it's one way to entertain yourself.
In the National Journal today, try this headline.
Here's how NASA thinks society will collapse.
Wait.
What?
Here's how NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Here is how the National Aeronautics and Space Administration thinks society will collapse.
And then I had to remember that the NASA mission has been redefined by Obama.
And as you know, we don't have any manned manned aircraft any longer.
We don't launch human beings.
If we want to send an astronaut, the International Space Station, we have to pay $70 million to the Russians to get aboard a Soyuz.
I think it's 70 million.
It's an it's an absurd number.
The mission of NASA was changed to Muslim outreach.
Now they still do other stuff at NASA.
They've got this really extreme uh just Looney Tune environmentalist wacko there by the name of James Hansen.
And he's using NASA as his uh his his perch here to propagate this this this this hoax of man-made global warming.
But what in the world is NASA doing examining the way society will collapse.
Well, they are, and they have reported their findings.
And you know what they are?
You know what will doom America?
Our society.
Too much inequality and too few natural resources will leave us vulnerable to a Roman Empire style collapse.
Too much inequality.
This is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration reporting this.
I tell you, they politicize everything they do.
Another example.
Great to have you, Rush Limboy, and we go to the phones.
First time today to um Eric in Harper, Connecticut.
Thank you for calling, sir.
It's great to have you on the program.
I appreciate it, Rush.
Thanks for having me.
You bet.
Uh, I'm sure your um director uh talk to you a little about about what I had told him.
Let me let me just stop you right there.
That's another thing.
Um what he is referring to here is the the official screener of calls, who is also the official program observer, that would be most nerdly.
Uh Eric, I do not talk to Mr. Snerdley, except on rare occasions.
What happens is I've got a computer monitor.
It's got your name, and I'll tell you what it says about what you're gonna say.
It says, never really liked you, slash, was a low-informed voter, slash, now finds that he agrees with uh you about 95% of what you say.
That's all I never the only time I would ask Mr. Snerdley about what a caller's gonna say is if I don't understand his note.
Okay, good.
That he did give me that that for every caller, there's a there's a brief summary of what the caller tells him they want to talk about, but he doesn't tell me so the my point to tell you that I've I have no idea what you're really gonna say, so I'm not coached or prepped or lying and wait to nuke you.
Okay, well, I just um first and foremost, I enjoy your hold info.
That's really informative to me and as uh comedic as far as I'm concerned.
Um secondly, um a long time ago I just never listened to you, and I just heard about Rush Limbaugh, and I never really enjoyed the the comments that people said about your show.
I guess I was just misinformed as as far as what you uh what you're putting out on the airway.
You were and I mean that a lot of people are, and it went during this twenty-five years, and it's still the case.
I need to ask you a question, Eric.
Seriously, there's no wrong answer here, and don't don't misunderstand tone in my voice.
So it's a long time ago, you're not yet listening to program, and you're talking to people and you hear them discuss me in unflattering ways.
Did you just believe everything they said, or did some of you at uh uh some of you at some point question what they said?
I don't know what it was they were telling you about me, but did you just accept it?
Yeah, that's horrible.
I would never oh my guy can't you said that I can't believe Was that your reaction?
Well, how did you react to that?
I'm sorry to cut you off there.
No, no, not at all.
I'm used to it.
Um basically one of the things that was told to me a long time ago was about um Barack Obama taking away our rights and our Second Amendment rights, and I know that he probably don't want to get into that now, and that's fine.
Which I could not believe that was gonna have, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's gonna do whatever he can to get rid of our guns and ammunition and all that, and I'm not an NRA and I don't support NRA, not that I would wouldn't or would.
I just don't have the money to do that.
But I just said, no, no, that's not gonna happen.
Now, of course, in uh my state, Hartford, Connecticut, where um things have happened, yes, they're um trying to get legislation passed, and they have already to take away our guns and they're taking away everything.
See, this is highly useful for me, and I appreciate your being honest, because here's what he basically said.
You had people telling you that I was saying Obama essentially wanted to really curtail gun rights and ownership, and you said, no way, Obama would never do that.
There's no and so I didn't know what I was talking about, and I was chalked up as just an Obama hater, right?
Well, just in my just in my personal, my little circle of life that I live here in Hartford, Connecticut.
But the point is, and this is really important because leading up to the election, and ever since the election, one of the things I've been trying to do is tell people who the guy is and what his presidency is gonna mean.
And you're admitting to me that when you were told the things I would you no way, not possible.
Obama wouldn't do that or whatever.
That's exactly what I'm saying.
That's me.
And this is you know, this is that's frustrating for me, because I'm not lying about what I believe.
So it's it's it's it's how to reach people like you sooner.
Um that is an objective I've got.
What was it that finally changed your mind?
Well, I just kind of been listening for probably over a couple years now, you know, and um I've been doing it.
I've been listening every single day.
Yeah, but what made you start doing that?
Because prior to that, you wouldn't want to be part of this program because you thought that I was whatever.
What made you finally start listening?
Well, I I gotta be honest with you, is the uh morning talk show that I listened to in the area, and then along with the uh 12 um the 10 to noon program, and then I just kind of continued it on to your program.
All right, so it was the lead-in, and you were just too lazy to change stations.
No, I like I uh I turned over.
I I like talk radio now a lot more than I used to when I was a youngster.
Well, this is how it happens.
Well, look at it.
We get older, I'm sure.
Well, uh I'm happy that you're here now, and I'm happy that uh this this transformation took place.
And I thank you for answering my questions honestly, because the objective, one of the many objectives here, is to reach people like you much sooner than I do.
We'll be back.
Don't go away.
Michelle Obama, a new slogan from the White House: don't let them eat cake.
Laura Antoinette, let them eat cake.
Not Michelle Obama.
We got a brief timeout here, an obscene profit timeout.