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April 25, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
28:36
April 25, 2014, Friday, Hour #3
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Hi.
How are you?
Great to have you back, my friends.
Rush Limbaugh, your guiding light.
And it is Friday, so let's just keep hitting it.
Live from the left post at our satellite studios in Los Angeles.
It's open line Friday.
I don't think there's anybody better than Johnny Donovan at saying Los Angeles.
There is nobody better.
Not Ed McMinneman.
And nobody better.
There's no better staff announcer than Johnny Donovan.
You know, back in the old days, folks, I think about the old days a lot.
In the old days at real radio stations, they had people that were called staff announcers.
That's what they were.
And let's say the morning guy, Fred J. Gambling called in sick after a night of gambling in booze.
There was always a staff announcer on standby to move in and do the show.
And he was called the staff announcer.
Never had a name.
Now the costs are prohibitive and don't have companies pay people hanging around just waiting for people to not show up.
But in the old days when money was not an object, back in the Sarnoff days and the Paley days, the staff announcer days, you really have these guys, and that's what they did.
They just they just hung around and they often had great pipes, great voices.
Ah, the old days of broadcasting.
Anyway, it's great to be back with you.
Open line Friday wrapping up a uh a week here in Los Angeles.
And here is the here's here are the final bit of data here from from Robert or Mark Rank of Washington University, which is the best counter to this Thomas P. Kitty book.
We left off with the fact that the top one percent is such an unstable group of people that people move in and out of it.
You think of the one percent as Warren Buffett and the Koch brothers and the uh Bill Gates, that's the one-tenth of one percent.
The one percent uh 12% of the American people are gonna be in that group at least one year of their lives.
And it's small.
But at least 12% are gonna move in and out of it, but you can't study it.
You can't make any definitive economic, socioeconomic claims about them because they change too often.
It does not contain the same group of people from year to year.
There's a tax scholar by the name of Robert Carroll, who has examined IRS records.
And Professor Rank notes that the turnover among the super rich top 400 taxpayers in any given year is what the super rich category is, the top 400 taxpayers.
The turnover among the top 400 taxpayers in any given year is 98% over a decade.
You know what that means.
It means that just 2% of that group remained there for 10 years in a row.
Now you listen to Barack Obama and the Democrat Party, Joe Biden, Dick Gephardt, and you're gonna think you're gonna be told.
They're the same people.
They've been there since the day they were born, they're gonna be there till the day they die, and then their families take over.
And they're this evil faceless group of people.
They start sipping cocktails at 4:30 in the afternoon playing polo or croquet, clipping coupons, don't even know when the country's at war.
That's not who they are.
They are you.
They've been your neighbors.
It's the essence of freedom and liberty and opportunity that makes this possible.
It is not command and control economics.
It's not people assigning these Incomes to people.
It's not networking.
If you could network yourself into this situation, you'd stay there forever.
It's work, folks.
It results from work.
It results from creating things that people want, producing services people willing to pay for, and then staying on the cutting edge so that your competitors don't outdo you.
Capitalism is bloodlust.
Capitalism is look at you look at what's going on with Apple and Samsung and everybody in the smartphone industry right now.
It is some of the bloodiest competition you will find.
In the civilized world.
And it is unfair.
And it is filled with tricks.
It's filled with chicanery.
It's filled with deception.
That's what it is.
And the big boys play in that league.
And you want to be a big boy in that league, there's a route you take to get there.
And you can in the United States of America.
Some people don't want to go that high.
Some people don't want to get involved in that game.
Some people don't have a stomach for it.
Some people don't want to deal with the stress.
Other people thrive on it.
We're all different.
We cannot ever be the same.
It's one of the most profound insults.
Particularly for a leader of a country like this, to even assume that sameness is possible.
It's even worse to assume that sameness is an objective.
So two percent of the super rich remain there ten years.
Two percent, the top 400 taxpayers any given year remain there for 10 years.
Among those earning more than one million dollars a year, most earned that much for only one year of the nine-year period studied.
Only six percent earned that much for the entire period.
Ultimately, Professor Rank writes, this information casts serious doubt on the notion of a rigid class structure in the U.S. based upon income.
It suggests that the United States is indeed a land of opportunity, that the American dream is still possible, but that it is also a land of widespread poverty.
Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics finds that among allegedly privileged one percent, inherited wealth accounts for only 15% of household holdings.
A smaller share than it does among middle class families.
There is going to be poverty in great wealth.
There just is.
You're always going to have extremes in everything.
There is no flat line, folks, unless you're dead.
And then your line is flat.
Excuse me, hit the wrong button.
There is no flat line.
But poverty in the United States of America is not like poverty around the rest of the world.
Those in poverty in this country eat regularly, drive cars, watch television, and make phone calls.
And I get lamb based at every time I make that point, but that's Robert Rector citing statistics that he's worked up at the Heritage Foundation year after year after year.
Now, Pete Wayner, Commentary Magazine, Obama's staggering record of failure.
And just some pull quotes here.
It's not simply that Mr. Obama has fallen short of what he promised.
It's that he has been in so many respects a failure.
Choose your metrics.
Better yet, choose his.
Job creation, failure.
Economic growth, failure.
Improving the healthcare system, failure.
Reducing the debt, failure.
Reducing poverty, failure.
Reducing income inequality, failure.
Slowing the rise of the oceans.
Failure.
Healing the planet.
Failure.
Repairing the world.
Failure.
The Russian reset.
Failure.
Peace in the Middle East.
Failure.
Red lines in Syria.
Failure.
Renewed focus on Afghanistan.
Failure.
A new beginning with the Arab world.
Failure.
Better relations with our allies.
Failure.
Depolarizing our politics.
Oh, big failure.
Putting an end to the type of politics that breeds division and conflict and cynicism.
Failure.
Working with the other party.
Failure.
Transparency, i.e.
honesty, failure.
No lobbyists working in his administration.
Failure.
His commitment to seek public financing in a general election.
Failure.
The list goes on and on.
Barack Obama was among the least prepared men to ever serve as president.
It shows.
He's been overmatched by events right from the start.
He is an excellent campaigner, but unusually inept when it comes to governing.
Man, this is a limbo theorem, is it not?
This is the limbaugh theorem to a T, and Mr. Wayner has swerved into it.
He survives by constantly campaigning against what he has caused.
He makes it look like he is opposed to what's happening, except he is the one making it happen.
He does not govern.
He cannot be seen as governing.
That's the point of the limbaugh theorem.
Obama's non-accountability rests on the fact that he is not seen as governing.
He's seen his campaigning and being constantly against all of this stuff.
Thank you.
But this line, Barack Obama was among the least prepared men to ever serve as presidency.
How do we get here then?
Because my I maintain that it was known in 2008 that he was among the least prepared to ever seek the presidency.
So why is it that some only now in 2014 feel comfortable saying so?
Well, there's all kinds of answers for that.
But you remember David Brooks?
David Brooks, one of the learned class, the conservative columnist of the New York Times.
Remember what he said?
Obama's crease in his slacks told him that he was going to be a great president, and I am not making that up.
we had our own intellectual class fail us.
And, By signing on to this.
He was a Harvard man.
He was a Columbia man.
He was the first African American oppression.
He could speak.
He could articulate.
He sounded intellectual.
He sounded smart.
He sounded erudite.
He sounded sophisticated.
He sounds like us, they said.
But if it is safe to say that he was among the least prepared men to ever serve as president today, it was true in 2007.
And it was true in 2008 because there has been nothing that has changed.
It has only gotten worse.
And the New York Times has their own version.
It is the Washington Post.
Gotta take a break here, but there's another attempt at it's a Time magazine.
Obama's foreign policy failures are proving his critics.
Right, let's take a break.
Don't go away, folks.
Much more as promised when we get back.
Okay, gonna grab a phone call.
Promise we're gonna get phone calls in.
Where are we going?
Who's first?
Tell me.
Okay, I got three numbers there.
Okay.
The computer's down, so I'm getting a verbal cues.
This is Mike in uh in Tucson, Arizona.
Hi, Mike, great to have you.
Welcome to the program, sir.
Hello.
Hello, Rush.
Um uh Diddles from Sunny Tucson, and and thanks for everything you do.
I wanted to echo everything that you said the last hour.
Uh you're 100% correct and exactly on point.
And it's been very, very true in my life.
Um I started my company over 30 years ago, and I've been for many years in the top point five percent, and I've never struggled harder over the last five or six years than I am right now.
But you go in and you go out, and the one thing that doesn't change, I think for people that achieve that level, is their work ethic and drive, because it's not tied to money.
It's just like your career.
You do it because you love it and you never quit, and you know, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
I also have a have a theory on your your top one percent and why people come in and go out, if you don't mind.
Umless you're born with a lot is kept in a trust for you.
The people that achieve that, Rush are there because they take risks.
You know, they succeed and they continue to take risks, they're calculated.
Yeah, you know, let me jump in here.
Let me let me uh because Larry, there's a mic, there's a point here.
Both of these feminist books, this the Claire Shipman book out and this this Marlowe Thomas book.
Here we get feminists who have been practicing liberal theology for the past oh 40 years.
And what have they finally discovered?
They need to learn how to risk and they need to learn how to fail.
They're just coming to it, Mike.
They're just now discovering what that means.
You and I, you've known it all your life, but it's not to them it's it's it's something new.
It's something they think it's brand new revolutionary.
Why we've got to get better at failing, meaning we've got to start taking risks.
And it doesn't dovetail with what this administration's putting out.
Risk taking is the root of evil in capitalism.
Risk taking is what leaves people high and dry.
That's what Obama wants people to believe.
And I just find it fascinating.
Several of his acolytes, particularly on the feminist left, all of a sudden now have decided that risk taking is something women need to get better at in business.
And different things in their life.
I mean, that's the only way you can truly appreciate success.
That's the only way you can truly achieve success, is you have to take a risk.
Now maybe it's with a relationship, maybe it's in business.
Any decision you make involves a certain amount of risk.
Not all risks pay off.
I mean, you try to make the best decision you can, but you keep moving forward.
Well, risk manifests itself in a whole lot of different ways.
I once had a a guy uh ask me what level of risk he thought I was taking, my grass.
I don't think much.
And he looked at me and his eyes bugged on me.
You you don't think you're taking risks?
No, I'm not that fallback positions if things don't work.
He said, You're crazy.
You have no idea the risks you're putting yourself up to every day.
And when he explained it, I understood what he meant.
Hey, we're back on the line Friday Rush Limbaugh.
With half my brain tied behind my back just to make it very...
It's been pointed out to me, half my brain has actually been dormant.
Uh in terms of my uh cochlear implant, not just tied behind my back.
It's actually been dormant.
And that makes all of this even more incredible.
Well, trying not to pound on the table too.
I'm cognizant of that.
Ah, God, Matt and Phoenix.
Uh I'm glad you called, sir.
Welcome to the program.
Great to have you here.
Hello.
It is great to talk to you.
It has been I called you once eighteen years ago.
I was working as a paramedic, and right in the middle of our conversation, I got a dispatch call, and I had to hang up, and it's been 18 years trying to get through, but I'm glad I waited.
Wow, you got a you had a dispatch call, you had a hang up eighteen years ago.
It was uh one time I got through the one time I got through to you, I was working as a paramedic, and right in the middle of our conversation, uh tone went off and I got dispatched.
And uh had to hang up.
So it was uh at any rate.
Well, here you are, you're you're back at it, proving that you are not a winner of life's lottery, but you are a stick to it of guy.
Uh I am.
Although I will say I did win life slaughtery with my grandson, and that's who I wanted to talk to you about.
He is uh four and a half years old, five years old.
Uh my wife and I are uh raising him uh with our daughter.
He was born with uh auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder.
So he kind of hears, but it doesn't translate into anything.
It's like I they explain it as hearing white noise.
So we had a cochlear implant done uh three years ago, and one of the most exciting days of my life was the day that about six months after the six weeks after the surgery, when they put it on for the first time and they turned it on, and I just happened to be talking, and that little boy whipped his head around with an astonished look on his face and just smiled and it was absolutely incredible.
Now we're thinking about a second cochlear.
And as you know, and and the nerve, when they put in the cochlear, it does stuff to the nerve.
And I'm kind of wondering if what you would advise on a second cochlear versus one waiting longer.
I uh basically if you had to do it over again from what you knew ten years from ten years ago, would you have gone and done it immediately?
Or would you have to do that?
Well, no, I can't I can't change the circumstances I was given.
Ten years ago, I was told fairly confidently that in ten years there was going to be a cure for what ailed me, and so that I should keep my second ear untouched so that the cure could be applied to it and natural hearing restored.
And that's kind of what they've told us.
Right.
And and but but thirteen years ago, it's all changed.
Thirteen years ago, the best science of the day said that all any cochlear implant patient needed was one, whether they were deaf in both ears or not, only needed one because two a cost prohibitive B, the benefits were not they were not measurable in terms of speech comprehension and a number of things.
Um but it's that's 13 years a long time ago.
Now I I would bet last two years the uh medical community has been imploring me to get the second ear done because they've had an entire change of heart on the nature of of bilateral implants and patients' success measured in terms of speech comprehension,
uh uh perception of environmental sounds, uh spatial awareness where sound comes from, uh, and general enjoyment of life.
I'll tell you, I always just me w when it 13 years ago, I said, why are we only doing one?
What is this I I never believed there was going to be a cure for baldness.
I thought that was smoke and mirrors, but I had to trust the doctors.
I I couldn't understand why I wasn't getting two at once anyway.
Well, God gave me two ears.
Why are you guys only going to replace one of them?
What do you know that he didn't?
I mean, that was my thinking on it.
So but I trusted what they said.
Um in your case, what what what is the nature of your son's deafness?
And it are there any real possibilities that his natural hearing could be restored in his lifetime.
I mean, he's only five years old, you said.
Well, and right now we don't know what he is actually.
We know he can hear noise, he just can't process that noise.
It's like uh the best way to explain it is like as if that nerve is asleep and it's constantly tingling, and when he he can hear a noise but cannot process that into sound.
So that the uh let me let me let me step in here again and and try to help the audience understand this, because um folks, I'm gonna venture to say most of you don't understand what this man said.
What do you mean his son can't hear?
Because you can't relate to not hearing.
People that have have not experienced deafness, I can't emphasize this enough.
Um You cannot replicate deafness.
You can't put your hands over your ears or headphones on your ears and replicate deafness.
You can't do it.
You can you can close your eyes and be blind.
You can you can strap yourself into a seat and not be able to walk.
You can you can replicate other disabilities, but you cannot replicate blindness.
So when you hear a man like on this call talk about, well, we don't know what our son is hearing.
Grandson, we don't know what he's hearing.
He's hearing sounds.
He can't tell them what he's hearing.
He doesn't know enough.
He the the everybody's flying blind here.
He doesn't know if he's hearing words.
The things coming out of his parents' mouths, he's never heard words.
He doesn't know what he's dealing with.
His his grandparents have no clue, and he and the grandchild cannot tell them.
It's the biggest mystery in the world.
Now imagine Helen Keller who was blind and deaf.
She went nearly insane trying to communicate with people.
It's really a tough thing for people who can hear to put themselves in a position of people who can't because you can't relate to not just hearing sounds is just frightening.
That's easy.
There's nothing.
And when that's all somebody hears, and they don't know how to convert them into words because they've never heard words before.
Um your grandson has uh uh a lot of time ahead of him with with therapists.
They're gonna try to teach him letters and vowels and language and this kind of thing.
And I just see how it goes in in that in that one ear.
One thing to take solace in, though, regardless what happens with speech and and your uh your grandson, he is always going to be connected to his environment via sound, and that's irreplaceable.
Even if if he doesn't know what you're saying, the fact that you're making sounds, he's gonna interpret them some way, and in conjunction with your facial expression, he's gonna know when you're happy, and he's gonna know when you're not.
He's gonna be able to make connections, and you are going to establish ways to communicate.
It may not be verbal right off the bat, but the fact that he can hear environmental sounds, it's a safety thing.
If he's if he's out, he's he's he's gonna hear sounds like a car close by or whatever.
It's it's those are the it's it's all good, no matter what the negatives are.
There's there's good in all of it.
And I from what I'm being told, the doctors now that the second implant is only anecdotal.
There's there, there's no really scientific empirical data on it, but all the anecdotal data is that the second implant is an improvement.
To give you a short answer to the question.
We know he can hear because when he's doing something he's not supposed to, like using grandpa's iPad without permission, he will take his implant and pull it off the side of his head and let it hang down so that well, if he can't hear us, we obviously can't hear him either.
Right.
You clever, you clever little guy, you that's but he's he can use an iPad with no problem.
He's he has learned to use the iPad, and for a kid who was born with a brain malformation and deaf, and we were told all sorts of things that were going to be wrong with this kid.
Um he is just absolutely an incredible, incredible kid.
We gave him an old iPhone that uh we no longer were using and have it connect to the Wi-Fi so he can use his sign language apps on it.
We haven't been able to get him an iPad yet, but you know, that's that's down the road.
Um we're looking at the technologies to be able to connect the uh with Bluetooth to the iPad.
You know, I was just I was just reading last night.
Um and by the way, Matt, no, don't don't hang up here.
Uh the Apple and their latest iOS 7 has got some of the most amazing hearing aid software.
It's astounding to it for people who can hear naturally to be able to hear in crowds to improve hearing in crowds.
It doesn't do people like me any good.
You've got to have residual hearing.
But Apple has some of the most incredible, you named it, uh low-power Bluetooth third-party hardware that works in in conjunction with their system software that is apparently miraculous, used in conjunction with an iPhone.
It is just, I wish when I was reading the story, I wished that it would work for me.
But it doesn't because I don't have any residual natural hearing.
Now, I've got to go.
I'm going to put you on hold.
But I want Snurdly to get your address.
I'm going to send you guys an iPad Air so he can have his own, and least I can do it.
Just play your play yourself out with this first implant.
See how it goes.
You've got all the time in the world to decide whether to do a second one.
And the doctors will tell you the best thing to do on it.
Don't – I have full faith that they know what they're doing there.
I'm not going to play doctor with you in that – Got to take a break.
Thanks for the call.
Sit tight.
We'll be back and don't hang up now, Matt, so Snerdley can get the uh get the address and tell him what color you want.
I think we have some we'll just send you the air.
I don't I'm not even sure we have any minis left.
The air's better anyway because it's lightweight and thin, big big screen.
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