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May 5, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:40
May 5, 2014, Monday, Hour #2
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Time Text
I'll tell you what, it's getting a more like 35.
It's creeping.
It's getting longer.
Anyway, greetings, my friends, and welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, a brand new week of broadcast excellence.
Great to have you here.
Telephone number if you want to be on the program is 800-282-288-2.
I'll be out in uh the left coast later in the week.
It's actually going to be uh an exciting week, kind of unknown, because it's uh later this week that I have my new cochlear implant activated and mapped, and at that point, find out whether or not it made sense to do it.
Well, no, because it can't be any worse, but there are no predictors.
Just three weeks ago that I had surgery to have a cochlear implant put on the uh in the right ear, and they have to wait to turn it on and program it and map it for three to four weeks, let the swelling, the surgical incision area go down.
And so I'm scheduled for later this week, after the program, not gonna miss any broadcast time.
And it's it's fascinating the way this works.
And it's as many times as I've explained it to people, can't grasp it.
And it's not if you don't understand it, it's not your fault.
The main problem is that people who can hear cannot understand, even though you think you might, you cannot understand total deafness.
You can't relate to it, you can't create it.
You can put earplugs in, you still hear things.
You can put headphones on with no audit, you can still hear things.
You do not know what total deafness is.
They have no idea.
You cannot possibly relate to it.
As hard as you try, it's not anybody's fault.
So the whole concept of a cochlear implant is foreign to people.
The hearing is not natural, it's totally bionic, it's totally artificial.
It uses your audial nerve, but it does not use the ear.
Well, it uses a cochlea, but it well, not even that's not even true.
It just taps into the audio nerve.
The ear actually is gone after the surgery.
And the way the implants work, you know, the 35,000 hair cells in each human hair.
They are actively awake, they stand up, they vibrate, they move around, and that's what enables you to hear.
That's the first step in the audio process in a human being, those hair cells.
Well, mine are dead, laying down.
So they've been replaced with 21 man-made electrodes, nowhere near 35,000.
So the sensitivity to various frequencies just isn't there.
But everybody is different.
They cannot tell you how you're gonna do.
No matter what.
There are no predictors.
You don't know until you actually turn it on and have it mapped, and that is another thing hard to explain.
And it it changes from person to person.
Now, what'll happen is I'll sit in there wired up, and they'll start pumping tones into my cochlear implant at various frequencies.
At an almost impossible to hear low volume.
And the moment you think that you hear the tone, you let them know, and they mark it down.
And after you do this for four hours with all different kinds of tones, what they think they've come up with is the frequency response and range that an individual has.
And if you're not honest with them, if you if you screw around, you can you can you can have a you can have a cochlear implant mapped in such a way you can't understand anything.
It it can be done.
I mean, very easily.
That's why it's precise.
It's nerve-wracking in terms of intense concentration to get it right.
You want it to be as good as it can be.
And so that anyway, that's what I'm looking forward to toward the toward the end of the week.
And it can't get any worse than what it is.
The hope is that it will expand speech comprehension and improve my ability to tell where sounds are to be able to determine where sounds are coming from.
So I'll be sure and keep you posted on uh on all of it.
This just might be the worst poll yet for the Democrats.
AP story.
Republican Party is at its strongest point in 20 years heading into midterm elections, according to a new Pew Research USA Today poll.
The latest daunting sign for Democrats ahead of campaign season.
The GOP is at an even stronger point than in previous wave elections in 1994 and 2010.
And they look poised to make major gains.
And possibly, it says here, take control of the Senate.
According to the poll, it was just out today, Republicans have a 47 to 43 lead on the generic congressional ballot.
That is a 10-point swing from October.
Last October, when the Democrats, boosted by Republicans getting blamed for the federal government shutdown, had a six-point lead in the generic ballot.
Now, most of you know what the generic ballot is, but for those of you who don't, the pollsters go out and say you're going to vote Republican or Democrat this year for you to the Senate for Congress.
And they don't give you a name.
And historically, the generic ballot has always been won by the Democrats.
Traditionally, the closer Republicans are in the generic ballot, it has been an indicator how well they're going to do.
And if they ever are leading in the generic ballot, particularly the last one before the election, it usually has meant big, big gains.
But it's the drive-by media.
It's Pew and USA Today doing the poll.
And there's one thing that we know, correct me if I'm wrong.
USA Today and the Pew Research Center have no interest in Republicans winning elections.
Number one.
Number two, we suspect, because we know, that any polling unit can get any result it wants based on the way it asks questions.
So I'm not looking a gift horse in the mouth here, but what if what if they have attempted to light a fire under the Democrats here by producing a poll that's absolutely horrible?
And it's not just these guys.
Greenberg and Carville have a poll out, their latest uh whatever the name of the mental block of the name of their poll.
But it's bad for the Democrats, too.
There isn't a there isn't one poll that looks good for the Democrats going into the November midterms.
The polls all show a different variation of success for the Republicans.
Democracy Corps, yeah, that's the Greenberg and Carville poll.
Now, common sense tells you that this is going to be a huge, huge sweep for the Republicans.
I think there's so many things going on underneath the radar that the Washington press corps totally unaware of.
And even if they are aware of it, they're ignoring it.
I just I just don't think the average American media organization has the slightest idea what most people in this country think.
I don't think they have the slightest idea what their lives are like.
I don't think they have any way of understanding or appreciating how tough it has become for people economically, you name it.
Because this administration has been a disaster, and it is also my contention that we're being ruled by a minority.
I think we're being ruled by an actually pretty small minority, but they're all bullies and they own the media, which makes it look like they're the majority.
And I don't think they are.
well, no, look at 2010 was the last midterm elections, and the Republicans had a huge sweep all the way down the ballot into local races.
I mean, it was a massive landslide.
That was the Tea Party midterm.
And as as was the case then as the case now, there's no competing set of Republican ideas on the ballot.
There's no single Republican leader that people can figuratively vote for.
This is a total anti-Democrat, total anti-Obama mindset at the moment.
It's a total anti-Democrat anti-Obama, anti-Obama care, uh, anti-Obama economy mindset right now.
If we'd lost the country, if if we were actually being governed by a true majority, the 2010 midterms wouldn't have happened.
We'd have lost those instead of winning them big.
And all of these polls, let's say they're right.
Let's say this is a huge Republican sweep.
It'll just be further evidence that we really are being governed by a minority.
The question then becomes what to do about it, because most Republicans are permitting themselves to be bullied.
Everybody is permitting themselves to be bullied by various elements of the left.
But I the Democrats are in a in a in a panic mode over this.
Uh some of them are lying to themselves about it not as bad as it looks.
But at the same time, it's only May things can change.
For example, what what's different between now and last October?
We've had this massive shift in the in the generic ballot.
What really has changed?
So I never I I don't accept conventional wisdom very much.
Then this this story in USA Today says, well, the Democrats were winning big in a generic ballot last October because the Republicans are being blamed for the government shutdown.
Really?
I don't think that many people were affected by the government shutdown to be that upset about it.
That was a total creation of the of the Washington media soap opera.
It's made to look like the people of this country have a massive, adoring, loving relationship with government.
Bigger and bigger all the time, the better it is.
It is kind of conflicted.
The millennials, on the one hand, they're out there expressing opinions that are not at all supportive of big government, but they vote for it every chance they get.
But there is panic on the left with this pew USA Today poll.
Might be the worst poll yet for the Democrats.
There is nothing the Democrats can run on issue-wise.
They can't say elect us for more Obamacare.
Elect us for more of our economic, but there's nothing good happening.
All they've got is to gin up racial issues and gay rights issues and get their turnout up.
That's pretty much all they've got.
It's just it it's it's just like 2010.
It was such a tremendous opportunity.
I got to take a break here, folks.
We've got to do that, be right back after this and continue here with uh I got some calls I want to take, and I this let me give you a headline.
Try this headline, and I want you to think about what it could have been here.
CNN boss Zucker, shocked by staffers, fearful question.
I saw that headline over the weekend.
Wow, what the hell happened?
CNN boss Jeff Zucker shocked by staffers, fearful question.
What could it have been?
And when you hear what it is, your reaction is going to be, that's all.
You'll see what I mean when we get back.
Don't go away.
Back to the phones, wiggle.
This is Jennifer in Lancaster, Ohio.
Thank you for waving.
Great to have you on the program.
Hi.
Thanks, Fresh, for having me.
I wanted to make two points about the soundbite you played at the top of the first hour where he had said that you don't really believe the, you know, all the things you say on the show, you just say it to gin up your listeners.
I think the first point is in when we're naive about someone when we don't know or ignorant to a person, we assume people are the way we are.
So because that's how they are on the left, they don't really believe it.
And you know, that's just part of their script, that's part of their shtick, that's part of their spiel.
So that's what they assume that you are, because they really don't know.
So you think that they're projecting on me the fact that they really don't believe what they claim to believe.
I think so.
And that's the second that's the second part of my point.
You had someone on months ago, and I don't know if it was someone who wrote a book or just, you know, a very articulate caller, but they made they articulated this point so well, and it stuck with me that not just the left, but in lots of political arenas.
Um when someone truly believes in something and they accept it and they own it as part of who they are, that person then allows other people to be free to have different opinions or disagree with them because it doesn't bother them because they truly believe in what they you know, whatever the issue is.
Right.
The left does not believe anything.
They are constantly bullied and pressured into vocalizing and you know, saying and acting in a certain way that's so PC, and they have to cave constantly, and it makes them so angry at us who will not cave, and they d that's why they're so angry.
We will not cave.
We believe in what we believe in, and so they do not understand that.
That's why they're angry.
Well, now this is fascinating to me because there I think in discussing this, we're gonna have to admit that there are varying degrees and kinds of liberals.
Uh you've you've got the true believers and the leaders, and then you've got the rank and file the Asian carp uh.
Agreed.
Uh and then you've got the followers.
And and they they're just trying to be cool, trying to be hip, uh.
And in every different group of liberalism, there's there are differing or varying degrees of belief.
I think that there are a lot of liberals who believe everything they say.
But I think not the majority of them.
They don't.
They have to go along to get along because they can't handle the pressure.
They don't they can't accept being called different or you know, then b just the way they attack us, and they they just can't articulate their point.
No, no, that it's a it's uh look at it's a really great point to say that anybody who is utterly confident of what they believe will be totally open to other ideas.
And in fact, we'll enjoy discussing them with people.
You're absolutely right about that.
If you are totally confident what you believe, you don't care, bring them on.
You'll be glad to take a shot at it and try to change their mind, or you'll be happy to tell them why you think what you think.
And your point is leftists don't want to go there.
They can't go there because they can't explain.
All they want to do is silence any opposition.
That's correct.
And uh I understand you particularly in young people, the peer pressure to say, for example, support gay rights, I'm sure is intense on college campus.
And the peer pressure to be pro-choice and support abortion, I am sure oh, the peer pressure's all over the place on this.
And if you have liberals who are wishy-washy and are totally obsessed with what people think of them, then yeah, they're gonna be go with the flow, whatever they think the majority opinion is and anything, you'll go with it and take the path of least resistance, which is essentially what you're saying they do.
And then when it comes time time comes for them to explain what they believe, they can't.
Is basically your point, right?
That's part of my point.
Not only can they not articulate, you know, their position because they truly don't have one, you know, they're just accepting caving the pressure, but not just not being able to articulate their point, but truly being angry.
You know, when you see people on, you know, any be able to talk someone from the left and someone from the right, you know, that where they truly get angry, I think that anger comes from not, you know, a righteous indignation and well, I really feel like this is the right issue, so you know, I'm on the right side of this issue.
So it's truly angry because they really don't again, they they haven't truly accepted it, so they don't understand that there can be differences of opinion, and that's the anger.
Well, here's the risk that that we're right, if you think they don't really believe See, I I think that there's it's uh it'd be much easier to change their minds if they really didn't believe it.
I I I think I think it's it's a little bit more complicated than this.
I mean, a there's there's a uh a massive desire on the part of the left to just shut up people who don't agree with them.
They don't even want to consider there's an opposition.
But you say it's because they have no confidence in what they believe themselves.
I well, I'm not saying that the top, you know, some of the leadership in the party or you know, some of the hardcore you were just talking about the three percent, some of the really hardcore leftists.
I think they believe it, but the you know, the millennials.
You know, I see so many of these memes on Facebook from you know the the millennials, and they'll they'll go straight from you know a conservative me meme to uh you know a leftist, left-leaning meme.
And I'm like, you don't even understand both sides of the issue.
You you think you're here, but you can't argue both sides of it.
You really don't know.
You they buy into the low information world argument in the crowd and they're gonna be able to do it.
Okay about that.
Thanks much for the call.
Uh let me let me explain my hesitation in in speaking to our last caller, aside from the fact that she can't hear me when I'm talking, because I I don't I d uh I'll never understand, but our phone system she the callers can't hear me or else they just keep talking over me, whichever's the case.
But nevertheless, when you are going to posit the opinion, put forth the opinion that liberals don't really believe what they believe.
That's dangerous because it makes them sound not quite as let's put it, it sounds makes them sound a little bit more harmless than they are.
And I don't think it's accurate to say they don't believe it.
Now I understand with certain levels of liberalism, you've got low information.
Uh I think the low information voting block out there is not even ideological.
The low inform they're they're just like one of my dogs.
They're just happily running around absorbing what happens with their mouths open all the time and their tongues hanging out, and whatever happens, happens, and that's it.
Then you've got another level which thinks they know it all.
The more they've been educated, the more arrogant they become about it.
Uh you've got there you've got then the the the fascists on the left who uh they're the they're the ones who spearhead the effort to silence any opposition.
And why do they silence the opposition?
And this goes to her theory.
Well, if you're really confident about what you believe, you don't care if the people disagree with you.
If you're really confident, you'll take them on.
You'll have be happy to discuss things with them.
And the left not eager to do that.
But it's not I think in a majority case because they really don't believe it, I think it's it stems more from an attitude of superiority than inferiority.
I think a vast majority of them just think they're better.
And what they believe is, and there isn't any alternative to it.
Life's easier that way if you don't have to debate.
And again, depending on the age, look at what they've experienced growing up and what they've been taught, what they've been exposed to.
But the reason I was hesitant is because I think it it's dangerous to assume that they don't really believe it.
Believe what the most important thing to tackle that they believe is well, it's hard to keep to categorize one thing, but these are not people that believe in freedom.
They may think they believe in it, but they don't.
They're totally opposed to it.
They are all for the massive use of government force to make people conform.
That's dangerous.
That's not something that's just lack of confidence, although it may be an ingredient.
But I think of people who don't really believe what they believe as being ripe for persuasion, and these people aren't.
They are far more dangerous than just people who are not confident about what they believe.
That's why I constantly, you know, pound this desk hoping that people will learn what people's ideology means in terms of defining them, telling people who if if more and more people understood what a liberal is, more people would have known what Obama was gonna do.
It's just a it's a it's an off-told lament of mine, and it remains one of the primary objectives here is to ramp up the uh ramp up the number of people who I'm telling you, everything the left does is political.
Everything.
Everything they do is rooted in their ideology.
Everything.
Here's Craig in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Great to have you, sir, on the program.
Thank you.
Russ did us from Charlotte.
Thank you, sir.
Hey, I uh want to commend you for your books, and as you're saying in the last hour, how important they are in uh re-educating our young people.
I uh when I go around to elementary and middle schools and teach uh history well, it's just amazing how their eyes and minds light up, and your books are just amazing in that regard.
Well, thank you know, it's such a great story.
The story of this country and the way it's maligned and impugned and lied about.
When you if if you have a chance to get to like you do and see them, and you tell them the truth about some of the people of what they did or what happened to them and how this country came to be, their eyes do light up.
There's no question.
Great story.
So I actually took a modern day trip like Liberty uh does in the book.
I went to New York City last Wednesday, April 30th, and from your research, you probably already know this, but uh George Washington was inaugurated in New York City on April 30th, 1789, and last week was the 225th anniversary of Washington's inauguration there.
And I just wanted to go there and see if people showed up for it or if there was any interest on the ground.
And well, I don't have to ask.
What what did you find?
So I found about uh it was a rainy day, so that was working against us, but uh there's about seventy people all told, and as I just asked around, it seemed like one or two people may have traveled there from outside of New York City, and it seems like most of the other folks maybe had just wandered in for the day.
Um the interesting thing in history, though, is this day, April 30th, uh, when the um immediate uh uh civil leaders of our federal government after the founding period celebrated, they celebr celebrated July 4th as kind of our birthday of independence, but then they celebrated this April 30th day as the commencement of the Constitution, because Washington, of course, was inaugurated, but it's when our whole American constitutional system got put into operation.
And at the 50-year anniversary, 10,000 people came out to New York City, and in Chicago on the hundred-year anniversary, they had three hundred thousand people celebrate this day in 1889.
And now it's just so long ago and so distant.
It has nothing to do with what's happening in America today anymore, and besides, Craig, as you well know, Washington owns slaves.
He was a racist, and so he's not really legitimate as uh in terms of all those things.
great American to be taught.
He's not somebody we would want our young people emulating.
And that's what it's become.
Yeah, exactly.
And then you you you you you you add the Constitution to it, then you add the fact that the left hates the Constitution, particularly the first Ten Amendment.
They those are those are big obstacles to the left.
Then there's there's no reverence being taught at all.
Yeah.
You know, on 1789, the actual day of Washington's inauguration, they started the day by uh firing 13 cannons at uh daybreak at 9 a.m. the church bells rang in the city because they wanted the citizens to come out and pray for the new government for an hour.
He was inaugurated around midday.
And then at 3 p.m., the whole federal government went to St. Paul's Chapel, and they actually heard a sermon and uh attended a church service.
And St. Paul's Cathedral, as you may recall, is uh the uh cathedral uh that was right at 9-11 where all the uh rescue workers and for 18 months it served as uh kind of ground zero um um care and nurture.
And so that chapel that Washington went to after his inauguration miraculously survived 9-11 and became the very place that after 9-11 uh people went for solace.
And now April 30th is taught as the day Obama got bin Laden.
Yeah.
Why I I I I kid you not.
By the way, I don't want to give anything away, but you um what the subject of your call will be explored in a further literary effort.
Amazing.
You say uh we should ask what we want.
I'd love to help you uh with any Washington research on inauguration day, if you like.
Well, I appreciate the offer.
I uh have Sturdley take your uh your your your contact data down.
Make no guarantees, but I'll have him take it down because I appreciate it.
Um we've we're fully staffed and all that.
We've got, I mean, I we're we've got it covered, but I appreciate the staff may be overrated, uh, but but sometimes they they they come through various assignments.
And uh but I appreciate seriously, Craig, the um the offer.
Brief time out, my friend Zell Rushbow, back with much more right after this.
Don't go away.
By the way, and that phew research center and USA Today poll that shows this massive advantage for the Republicans in the generic ballot.
It points out that by more than two to one, respondents assess the nation's economic conditions as poor or not excellent or good.
And that's essentially unchanged for a year ago.
Meaning the number one thing that people respond to as being the reason they're unhappiness with the Democrats and their desire to vote Republican is the economy.
And remember there was a poll last week, a stunning poll.
NBC News, Washington Post, uh uh uh NBC Wall Street Journal or ABC Washington Post, but this was frightening for the left because this poll actually had a result which said that more people wanted Republicans elected to stop Obama than wanted Democrats elected to help Obama.
It was stunning.
Now the the drive-by is going to be making all of this up, I doubt it, but there I know some of you think that it's all made up, designed to sandbag us, get us getting overconfident.
But some of this stuff, it's it rings too true.
People ought to be fed up with this economy.
People ought to be and are fed up with this economy.
92 and a half million Americans not working.
Uh all the other economic news.
There is there isn't any good economic news.
The Obamacare news, the health care news, it's all disastrous.
The polling data ought to be bad, and it is.
But because of this result that the vast majority of people say it's the economy.
Um you can you can bet that the drive-bys are going to become even more relentless in telling us how well the economy is doing.
I guarantee this is how they react.
This is how they respond.
Just go out and lie.
And you're going to see Obama on TV.
You're going to see Biden.
They're all going to be out there praising and talking up this recovery, like you heard Obama last week in the Rose Garden when the unemployment number came out.
This totally bogus 6.3% unemployment number.
So Obama comes out and he starts talking about what?
50 straight months of job creation.
All of this this hocus pocus mumbo jumbo.
They're just going to ramp all that up, and they're going to start talking about this massive recovery and how great the news is, and we're back on track, and people are going to be scratching their heads.
It's not happening to me, but well, I guess it's happening to somebody.
Okay, cool.
That's the desired effect that they're going to have.
Get this result by more than two to one, sixty-five, that's 30%.
Americans want the president elected in 2016 to pursue different policies and different programs than the Obama regime, rather than similar ones.
I'm telling you, folks, we are being governed.
We're not even being governed.
We are being ruled by a minority, a bully minority that the Republican Party's afraid to death of.
They're literally shell-shocked.
Post-traumatic stress disorder, I guarantee you.
This is stunning.
65 to 30 percent Americans want the next president to pursue policies different than the Obama policy.
65 to 30 percent.
I want to play a sound by the view from uh from Obama from the Nerd Prom, the White House Correspondents Dinner.
You know, most uh presidents, when they show up this thing, it's been a tradition for as long as this dinner has been held that presidents get up, things uh tell self-deprecating jokes, make fun of themselves.
And every president up to Obama has done that.
Obama doesn't do that.
Obama does not laugh with Obama's mean.
I you know, I've from the get-go, everybody talk about how cool, calm and collect.
I don't think the guy's cool.
I think he's cold.
I think this is a really cold and calculating guy.
And we have just uh it's just a 44-second montage of some of his so-called jokes.
And when you hear these jokes, you'll understand who it is that's keeping certain issues, like the birther issue.
He's the only guy talking about it anymore.
Here, listen.
An American won the Boston Marathon for the first time in 30 years, which was inspiring and only fair since a Kenyan has been president for the last six.
Haven't seen somebody pull a 180 that fast since Rand Paul disinvited that Nevada rancher from this dinner.
As a general rule, things don't end well if the sentence starts.
Let me tell you something I know about the Negro.
Let's face it, Fox, you'll miss me when I'm gone.
It will be harder to convince the American people that Hillary was born in Kenya.
What if your yearly checkup came with tickets to a Clippers game?
Not the old Don Sterling clippers, the new Oprah clippers.
Yeah, it just the kind of stuff that uh people politely laugh at, but it it it it makes some people nervous.
This constant focus on Kenya and the birth, he's the one keeping it alive.
He's got you got Fox News on the brain, uh, obviously.
And you what we just had a caller, a young woman who who made the point that uh left doesn't really believe what they believe.
They uh they just they sort of conform to be cool and hip and so forth.
Let me here's a guy who believes it.
This guy believes every syllable of it.
And I think what's what's going on with Obama is gets elected in 08 to massive messianic type fanfare and can't do anything wrong.
And the world is loving him and adoring him, and all of these accolades that he probably believes that he is messianic, that the world is going to unite now, that we're gonna lower the sea levels, all that stuff.
And now, look, six years in, he's presiding over a disaster.
Now, one of two things.
Either this is what he's intended, or he really believes this socialist stuff had only failed in the past because of the wrong people being in charge, and he finally was the right guy.
No matter how he looks at it, he's not a happy camper.
No matter how you slice it.
Not that it matters to anything, but chip on the shoulder has been one of the defining characteristics of this president from day one.
Okay, it's official Trey Gowdy has been appointed a chairman of the House Select Committee.
Looking into Benghazi.
No better member could have been found to chair the select committee.
The question now is will any Democrats show up?
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