Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 247 podcast.
Greetings, my friends.
How are you?
It's great to have you with us, and it is a big day here at the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
To start with, it's Friday.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
Open line Friday, which differs from closed line Monday through Thursday.
In one significant way, that is that you choose what it is we talk about when we go to the phones.
I don't.
I take the day off.
When we go to the phones.
It's a golden opportunity.
Whatever you wish to discuss.
Have a question or comment, weigh in on anything.
Telephone number for the phone calls is 800-282-2882.
And the email address is Lrushbaugh at EIB net.com.
But I want to give you another phone number and remind you of an email address.
This is our 24th annual radio curathon for the Leukemia Lymphoma Society of America.
24 years that we have done this, and you people have enabled records to be set in terms of donations.
You have enabled research and progress toward cures of the blood cancers that are unparalleled.
And as is the case, most of the time, there simply isn't a proper way to extend thanks to everybody.
All I can do is tell you how much it's appreciated by everybody involved.
People that you'll never meet, people that you will never know, have the greatest appreciation for you.
Even though they've not met you, they think that you are their friend.
They consider you a member of their family, simply by virtue of your generosity and your caring and your compassion.
Twenty-four years of this leukemia lymphoma society curathon here on the Rush Limbaugh program.
And I uh want you to write down this number because I'm going to be telling you to call it for the next three hours.
It's 877-379-8888.
And whatever you have to donate is appreciated.
A dollar.
The one thing I want to start off by telling people is do not call because you don't think that whatever you can give or afford matters.
We're dealing with such large numbers here, folks.
This is the largest radio talk show audience in the country.
By far, if every one of you simply phoned in a dollar, a new record would be set.
And who knows?
We might find cures.
It's that many people.
So it doesn't take people giving hundreds or thousands of dollars.
They're there, and they do, and they will.
But it's like everything else.
It's the biggest stash of money is in the hands of most everybody.
And it doesn't take a lot when everybody is participating.
That in fact is the whole point of cutting taxes.
You increase revenue created by having more people paying taxes because they're working.
Cutting taxes grows the economy.
Same principle here.
The more people participating, you don't need to send hundreds of dollars.
It's appreciated, but it's not expected.
The point is that if you only have five or ten or whatever, don't think that that doesn't make a difference.
It does.
Now, when we started this 24 years ago, of course, the phone was the primary way that people donated, but online has slowly crept up and has, I think, come close to usurping the phone.
So therefore, we make both available.
You can donate at Rushlimbaugh.com.
Just click on the link there, and it'll take you wherever you need to go to make it happen.
Everything's secure.
And as usual, we have premiums for certain level of donations.
And we have new information for you about the progress that's been made.
And we have uh the regular program today.
We mix all of this in into one jam-packed radio program for the next three hours.
In fact, let me review quickly.
Donations between 75 and 99 dollars.
You get a Rush Limbaugh t-shirt, the special 2014 Rush Limbaugh t-shirts for color.
100% cotton, all natural fibers.
It's in a 60s sort of design, comes in one size fits all.
Perfect for the bedroom.
For 100 to $374, a golf cap thrown in with the 2014 Rush t-shirt, the T-shirt with a khaki colored adjustable golf cap.
It's got my signature, the EIB logo, are stitched, not stamped, not pressed or actually stitched on the front of the cap.
And for $375 and over, a golf shirt, the golf cap and the t-shirt.
Now the golf shirt's a high performance golf shirt, custom sizes, small through 2X.
This year's color is Kiwi Green with the EIB logo stitched on the left chest, and my signature on the sleeve, and the shirt comes with a t-shirt and a cap, and all of this you can see when you log into Rush Limbaugh.com and follow the links.
You know, we're one year shy of 25 years.
I think back to how this got started, and it was an accident.
It got started with a little trepidation and nervousness, and it was in New York at the time, the radio landscape was much different then than it is now.
In order for me to have a national radio program, I had to do a two-hour local program for New York City only.
That was the price that I paid for syndication at the time.
Which was fine.
Don't misunderstand the tone of voices.
Now, on a particular day, one day in April in 1989, I was approached by management, the radio station, which said, hey, uh, you know, we've we're doing an all-day thing here with all of the ABC owned and operated stations.
It's an annual leukemia radio thon.
And we know that you know your national show, you can't you can't do that uh on on your national show.
But if if we gave you a phone number, would you give it out a couple of times?
Local radio stations on the ABC networks which were doing this were going wall to wall with it.
24 hours, nothing but it was the Jerry Lewis telethon on radio for leukemia.
That's what's but my actually, I think it was my three-hour national show, was in the middle of this, and my my show was on a bunch of stations that were not ABC owned, so they kind of they kind of crept in and said, would you mind giving this uh phone number?
I said, sure, be happy to.
Absolutely, and did.
And I think this went a couple years like that, and eventually things changed in radio, the ABC networks went through metamorphosis, and it turned out that the audience for this program generated more revenue than the stations combined during the 24 hour.
That's how powerful you people are.
I don't say that for any reason other than to let you know how large you are in terms of this audience and your generosity.
It was stunning.
It was it was unbelievable.
Three-hour radio show that just threw the phone number out a couple of times, three times.
It was more than that, but but it was not certainly wall-to-wall.
And you ended up being the largest donors.
So as the broadcast business changed, and ABC bought and sold stations and management changed, and leukemia people approached me and said, let's just let's just do it one day a year, as you've been doing, but let's have you do it.
Readily agreed, and that's how it got started.
And the lesson there is If you want something, ask for it.
They came and they asked.
Uh, and I was more than happy to participate.
There were a lot of things going on at the time.
I wanted to demonstrate how large this audience was.
I wanted to demonstrate its power.
I wanted to demonstrate the audience loyalty, and it's a great cause, and it could help millions of people.
So it all made total sense.
And here we are 24 years later.
And the amount of money that's been collected, you look at it this way, is a three-hour show, one day a year, but it isn't three hours.
We don't go wall to wall with this.
We mix standard programming in with our fundraising efforts and our educational efforts on the latest taking place in medical advances for leukemia, lymphoma, the blood cancers.
And it's phenomenal, folks.
It just continues to be mind-boggling, even after 24 years.
Let me be honest.
24 years is a long time.
And there have been economic ups and downs.
There have been economic crashes, there has been 9-11, there have been any number of times, right now.
Look at the number of people not working.
So the powers that be have often times, many years, you know, we're not really expecting to do as well this year.
So don't pressure yourself, Rush.
We're not expecting.
And yet, except I think for the 9-11 year, every year's been bigger than the year before.
Or close.
It hasn't mattered.
And so the standard rules don't apply.
You think after 24 years everybody's been tapped out, everybody said, look, I've got no more to give.
It hasn't been that way.
You all are just amazing.
You're just phenomenal.
Your being here and your admitting being here, and your the proof that you're here by all of the patronage that you engage in and all the donations that you have sent to this organization have everybody else on the outside just staring at this in wonderment.
None of it makes sense.
You can't do this in three hours a year.
You can't do this by mixing in other programs.
We can't do this without television and pictures and sob stories.
And yet, we do.
We continue to live outside the box and prove that genuine love and loyalty and devotion triumph over whatever obstacles.
So here we are again, 24th annual Curathon for Leukemia.
And lymphoma, and the rest of Open Line Friday.
Again, the phone number 877-379-888 or RushLimbaugh.com if you want to contribute and donate online.
And by the way, we are secure.
Don't sweat it.
Don't sweat this heart bleed thing if you're keeping up with the supposed bug.
The latest that I have been able to glean on that is that maybe the whole thing didn't happen.
Maybe the key, the encryption key, really wasn't violated.
That's the latest, just as of a half hour ago.
I just want this is the way these things, it's always an urgency and a panic at the outset, and always people preaching the worst, and then you sit back and you wait two or three days and you find out it wasn't nearly as bad as they thought.
The point is, I want to get it deeply into that.
Don't worry about the security of online.
And don't worry about ending up in this massive database that you're going to be hounded by or from later on.
Nothing in that regard has changed.
And as always, ladies and gentlemen, I do not come here and say the value that I bring to this is my time.
I never do these radio carathons without first doing what I'm asking you to do.
So I always throw in an amount of cash myself or appreciated stock, whichever, but I always make a donation to lead it off.
Some years I announce what it is, other years I don't.
The years I don't, people demand that I tell them what it is.
I say my parents always say, don't do that.
People can think you're bragging.
No, no, no, no.
People want to know so forth.
So I'm always nervous about expressing how much.
But I'll just I'll just tell you this year.
In advance of, I'm going to do this in honor of the 25th year.
The 25th year is next year.
This is the 24th.
But I'm going to kick it off.
Catherine and I are going to kick this off with a cool half a million.
Now we've gotten there in increments in previous years, but I've never started with that amount.
So I'm just going to start with that and then throw it open to you.
We'll have the rest of the program got some updates and some information on what's happening with the progress to find a cure, the uh uh in areas where cure is not found, survivability rates increasing with some really, really great news to report, in conjunction with all the contributions and donations that you have made over the years.
They matter.
It really has meant something.
So 877-379-8888 or rushlimbaugh.com, and we will be back.
Don't go away.
You know, I just I just uh chatted with Larry Vanderveen, who is one of the head honchos leukemia lymphoma society, who has been there 24 years.
You know, all these people at the Leukemia Lymphoma Society.
They're like my friends at the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation, they don't get paid anything.
I mean, all of the money.
I mean, it's incredible.
The pastor is like 95, 96 percent.
This is a labor of love for these people.
They've all been affected by myeloma, leukemia, every one of them there.
Pam Edelstein, uh, Manderveen, and they've been there the whole time, 24 years.
They were they were there before we started this.
So I just, you know, Vanderveen's up in New York right now, tabulating everything as it comes in.
I said, what do I get for my donation?
500,000.
What are the premiums I get?
He said, well, you get the golf shirt, the golf cap, and your own t-shirt, and the the benefit will FedEx it to you free.
So see, folks.
Anyway, I urge you to join Catherine and me in this.
It's so rewarding.
It's such a great, great cause with so many great people and so much success that people are having.
The doctors and the and the researchers and and and the research into the blood cancers is providing valuable research information for other diseases and other forms of cancer.
So there's a multiple effect, uh, if you will.
Now we also do open line Friday today, and I just want to go through a little rundown of some of the things that we might have time to get to.
Kathleen Sibelius is out, and they had this big ceremony at the White House, and the replacement is a young and had the patented pained look on her face, the concerned liberal in pain, Sylvia Burwell is her name, and Chanceworth Osborne Jr.
Snerdley, look at me here.
Look at me for just a second.
Stop screening that call.
You want to hear this.
It's a fascinating theory.
Chatsworth Osborne Jr. thinks that the reason we get the audio coming up.
The reason Obama chose Burwell, Sylvia Burwell, is that she is young and attractive.
But that what they are trying to do is set up a confirmation hearing where a bunch of old Republican white guys are mean to the girl, fighting her confirmation.
They think they can recreate or further the war on women.
That's Chatsworth's theory about why this particular woman was chosen, simply for the confirmation hearings.
In fact, uh I don't have I don't I can't, I don't know how long it is, so I don't know if I can squeeze it.
We got it.
Play it.
We got time to squeeze it in.
I believe that the White House welcomes, relishes a nomination fight over Burwell.
This is exactly the kind of symbolic moment they're looking for in order to drive turnout among the single most important demographic, which is unmarried women.
That's how he got elected president twice because unmarried women voted for him.
They want some kind of showdown where this attractive young woman is attacked by male Republican senators.
They will use that as they've used all kinds of other moments like that, like they did over birth control and Rush Limbaugh and all that stuff to get out the vote.
Right.
And the theory is that the Republicans won't be able to help themselves.
They'll just naturally oppose this young, attractive woman, and that single women who are not likely to vote, according to polling David now, will get fired up and show up.
That's the theory.
Hi, welcome back, Rush Limbaugh.
It's open line Friday and a number to cure the blood cancers 877-379-888.
Or just go to Rush Limbaugh.com to donate.
So Burwell, Sylvia Burwell.
Do you know that she used to run the uh the charity arm of Walmart?
She did.
She worked at Evil Allmart.
Uh the charitable arm of Walmart, that's where she.
That's right.
Walmart has a charitable arm.
I'm sure some people didn't know that, but they do, and she worked there.
Uh, but she didn't mean it.
She was just in there as a spy.
That's how they'll get by with the left.
Now people say, well, why did what what happened to Sabelius?
Why was she forced out?
I wonder if did they find out she donated to Prop 8?
I wonder if that's what it was.
Did Sibelius secretly donate to Prop eight?
And they found out about Actually, I think the reason Sibelius is gone.
Multifaceted reason here, folks, uh, I think the pressure is getting too.
I really think Sabilia's, despite her age, really believed that this is going to end up being a utopia, and it's just an effinate mess.
And I think she's just overwhelmed with the pressure of it.
She doesn't know what she's doing, she has no clue, she doesn't know tech, she doesn't know websites, she doesn't know anything but reactionary liberalism where things are just supposed to work and nothing is working.
And I think they wanted her out because they need a fall guy when the truth comes out that they don't have seven million enrollees.
They don't have seven million if pay, they don't have any.
She is going to take the fall for it, not Obama.
Now, some of the other things that I just want to go through a news summary here for you to give you an idea of what's in the stack.
Jeff Sessions, Senator Jeff Sessions, this is amazing, says that the Obama administration is executing a deliberate plan to collapse the U.S. law enforcement system, and they're doing it via the immigration laws by not enforcing them.
Senator Sessions says it's far greater than that.
That there is a deliberate plan.
This is not soft-selling or sugarcoating anything.
Deliberate plan by the president to collapse the U.S. law enforcement system.
So we'll have that.
There's a poll out from Democracy Corps.
James Carville Stan Greenberg.
They claim that fixing Obamacare now wins over replacing it by 49 to 44.
In this poll, Obamacare still opposed 51 to 47, but the big take from this poll is that most people want it fixed, not gotten rid of.com has played the race card.
Nancy Pelosi.
You know how Harry Reid makes up people and Dick Gephardt makes up people.
Like Dick Gephardt had his friend, his rich friend is always asking for tax increases.
Gephardt said, I've got this friend, this rich friend, and he said, I'll really get rich if you raise my taxes.
And Pelosi, Harry Reid has this imaginary friend who told him that Romney hadn't paid his taxes in ten years.
Well, who is it?
I'm not Going to say, but I've got this friend.
And now Pelosi has one.
Pelosi has a friend who told her that the Republicans are saying in private, if the immigrants were Irish, they wouldn't oppose it.
This is dangerous stuff.
I mean, you sit here, we laugh at this, but that is actionably dangerous character assassinate.
Pelosi, the leader of the Democrats in the Senate and in the House, is actually saying that she's heard Republicans say if the immigrants were Irish, i.e., white, there wouldn't be a problem.
They'd be all for amnesty.
So she's basically playing the race card.
Republicans are racist.
They don't like dark-skinned people.
Jeb Bush is defending his act of love comment.
This is in politico.
It's a political story.
And Jeb Bush is defending the statement that it's an act of love to come here illegally as an immigrant.
Well, I'll get to it.
I'm just giving you a rundown here.
And in the same story, Bill O'Reilly, according to Politico, is hinting that Jeb Bush stole the act of love line from him.
Just telling you, that's what's in the political.
85% of public pensions will fail.
This is USA Today.
85% public pensions will fail.
Jimmy Carter has chided Hillary for failing foreign policy with Israel.
It's kind of bad timing for Hillary because somebody's threw a shoe at her.
Now, when they threw a shoe at Bush, they loved the shoe thrower.
Whoever threw the shoe at Hillary is now hated and despised.
As a woman in a blue dress, I didn't see that.
A woman of blue dress threw the shoe at Hillary.
Devil with the blue dress, blue dress, blue dress, devil with the blue dress.
Really?
Okay.
Well, I doubt if it was a bimbo eruption, but I guess it's possible.
The Washington Post has an editorial to Democrats, stop demonizing the Koch brothers.
It isn't going to work because people don't care about them.
Stop demonizing Koch brothers.
It ain't going to work.
Nobody cares.
Nobody knows who they are.
The Post is trying to actively manage a Democrat victory.
That's just some of the stuff that is that is out there.
Now, folks, imagine this, if you will.
A doctor walks into the waiting room and says, We found out what it was.
Your son has cancer, it's leukemia.
In another hospital, a doctor is heard saying, I'm sorry, your daughter has lymphoma.
Last year, there were 54,000 deaths from the blood cancers.
Leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma.
150,000 new cases of these diseases are diagnosed every four minutes.
1.1 million Americans are now fighting for their lives against these killers.
And it just happens.
There's no warning sign.
There's no pre-existing condition.
There's no telltale that you can prepare for.
It's just one day you could be 65 and something doesn't feel right.
You go in, and that's the diagnosis.
The same thing with your child.
It just happens.
And it doesn't know.
White from black, rich from poor.
It doesn't know.
The disease doesn't know from anything.
It just hits.
And every time it does, it's the shock of a lifetime.
Nobody goes to the doctor, the hospital expecting to hear that.
Some of the other cancers they do.
Breast cancer, there might be indication other kinds, but look, kid, the blood cancers just pop up.
Now, today's our 24th annual leukemia lymphoma society curaton, and we are going to strike another blow against these killers today.
Last year's show.
The focus of the information we imparted was all about survival.
But today there's a new generation of these cancer patients that aren't just surviving.
More and more of them are actually living, living their lives again As they were before falling to leukemia and lymphoma and myeloma.
And the reason that this is truthful.
The reason I can tell you this, the reason that they are living, not just surviving, is you.
I cannot emphasize that enough.
It's not a suck-up.
It's the truth.
You and your support, your generosity through these 24 years.
We have seen a slew of medical advances in that time.
These patients, they're all still hoping for a cure, and they always will.
But in the meantime, they're grabbing for as much life as they can while they can.
And we can't stop now because things are turning our way.
Now there's nobody that's going to stop.
Nobody wants to.
It's just that progress is being made.
An attitude of optimism and positiveness is required here because there are now payoffs for all of this that are that are quantifiable.
Your donations have funded some of the most amazing breakthroughs, turning the corner on these diseases with new treatments, and in some cases, there are actual cures.
You know that one third of all child cancer deaths are from leukemia.
One third.
Imagine being told that there is a 40% chance that you will not see your son or your daughter enter high school.
You imagine that?
It happens.
Or you've got myeloma.
You've got a 50-50 chance seeing your daughter off to college.
It used to be worse than that, folks.
It was not 50-50 or 40%.
The numbers were much smaller.
And that's why we are here today.
Once again, go to Rush Limbaugh.com and our Curathon page, see a great example of someone who, with your help, has battled her cancer back into remission and she's not stopping.
We have a couple of videos on the site now that you can see.
You can actually see people who have been affected and who have been helped.
And are making progress.
She's living in every sense of the word.
So this is it.
This is the one day a year where we ask you donate now.
Rush Limbaugh.com or 877-379-8888.
Also in our news summary today, there is this.
Vatican City Human Life Center.
Sacred and inviolable.
Every civil law is based on the recognition of the first and most fundamental right.
The right to life.
So said Pope Francis, speaking to an Italian pro-life organization today.
Pope Francis called abortion an abominable crime in the strongest remarks he has made on the subject to date.
And to the phones we go, it's open line Friday, and we try to always get to the phones in the first hour.
Don in Lake Ron Kunkama in New York.
Hello.
Hey, Megatidas, Russ.
Great to talk to you.
Thank you very much, sir.
Hey, listen, I go.
Do you think there's a possibility of a future book with Rush Revere and Liberty?
To time travel into the future to see America after the Obama Obama administration gets done with it.
Uh see to the future.
Right.
Why not?
They don't need a flux capacitor.
You know, I love these people in their creative idea.
That is uh that's an intriguing idea.
Now the problem is, see, if I were to do it, you're gonna come knocking on a door demanding a royalty payment.
You're gonna sue me for plagiarism or some such thing, so we'd have to get a release sign from you.
I'm just I'm just joking here.
Um that is actually that would be intriguing.
Maybe not in a rush review, because those are devoted to American history, but perhaps there's another vehicle for that.
There's snurdly to say, what if there's no America?
There's always going to be an America.
Just like there's there's always a France, there's gonna be a UK, there's always gonna be an America.
It says, what is it going to be?
That's really what the fight is about.
Um, But I appreciate, I appreciate the um thought process right now, Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims and Rush Revere and the First Patriots.
Uh that whole series is time travel adventures to the past.
Actual events in American history, written for 10 to 13 year olds, and you're actually taken to the events depicted.
You are part of the event.
Your children, whoever reads the book, that's what happens.
Here's uh here's Ron in Seattle.
You're next on the EIB network.
Hello, sir.
Yes, good morning, Rush.
Uh, it's a pleasure to talk with you negative for everything that you do.
I've been listening to you for 20 years.
I have 20 years worth of questions, but I'm putting that all aside today because of your uh day raising for funds for leukemia and lymphoma.
Uh one, first of all, thank you for for doing that.
It's uh uh a tremendous uh cause and tremendous outpouring of uh support for that.
I greatly appreciate it.
One thing I wanted to mention, too, for those people with limited funds like myself.
Um I gave dollars to it.
But more importantly, what I do is I am a blood marrow donor, uh, a bone marrow donor.
And uh I've been doing this for the last twelve years.
How many times a year can you do that?
Well, it it's you basically get tested to make sure that you're a certain type and and you know what the process is going to entail, and then you just wait to be contacted, and when there is a match or what they believe is a match, they go through what is well, what is the procedure?
Uh the procedure is pretty straightforward.
First of all, uh go to event where there are raising awareness for uh bone marrow uh donation.
No, no, I mean the actual bone marrow extraction.
The actual medical procedure.
What is it?
It's actually pretty straightforward.
Uh several days before the actual extraction, you will be given the number of drugs to raise the uh the amount of uh marrow and and its activity in the system uh prior to donation.
Uh it refers an overnight or sometimes two days in a hospital under general anesthesia.
They'll put you out, they'll do the extraction, and um that will be uh from where I mean I uh bone marrow is inside the bone.
How do they go get where do they get it?
Uh typically it's uh on the larger bones where they they will get that.
You're here.
And you're right.
And I I have been at that point where I was almost the donor, but there wasn't a close enough match for that.
Well, this this is one of the I'm glad you brought this up because bone marrow transplants are one of the really fascinating advances in in treating the blood cancers, and that also have had ancillary uh benefits.
Look, myeloma, myeloma is cancer of the plasma cells that begins in the bone marrow.
That's what myeloma is.
It it touches 88,000 people today.
At this very moment, 88,000.
There are in total 148,000 new cases of blood cancers every year, 54,000 deaths.
Lymphoma is cancer to lymph system.
79,000 people were diagnosed, 731,000 are living with it.
It used to be a death sentence.
The one of the worst diagnoses you could get was lymph cancer.
Now 731,000 people are not just surviving, living, but myeloma, the cancer of the plasma cells that begins in the bone marrow, and leukemia is cancer of the bone marrow and the blood.
And this cancer, leukemia, causes more deaths than any other cancer among children and young adults under 20.
Leukemia.
And it just pops up.
There's no genetic indication or trace For it just out of the blue.
One day, healthy as you can be, the next day something's not right.
Goes on for a week, you go get checked, and bam.
And it's heartstopping.
We got to take a brief time out.
Again, 877-379-8888 or rushlimbaugh.com.
Just heard that Donald Trump was driving around, folks, and listening to the program and has sent in $25,000 to the Leukemia Society Curaton.