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May 9, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:40
May 9, 2014, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Yes, sir Rebub.
Greetings, my good friends, and welcome to the one and only EIB network and Rush Limboy.
Here it is, Friday.
Let's go.
Live from the left post at our satellite studios in Los Angeles.
It's open line Friday.
The satellite studios from Los Angeles.
Staff announcer Johnny Donovan introduced the program today.
Open line Friday.
Now you know what that means.
It means that when we go to the phones and it's your turn to speak on the program, you can talk about whatever you want.
That's not the case Monday through Thursday, folks.
Monday through Thursday.
You have to talk about what I'm interested in, or you don't get through.
You don't get on the air.
You have to lie, and then that's that's the end of you when you're uncovered.
Discovered.
But on Friday, I don't care.
Uh if I it's it's uh just it's a little twist in things.
And if you have something you want to talk about that hasn't been discussed or question or comment, this is the day for it.
Telebone numbers 800-282-2882 and the email address L Rushbo at EIBNet.com.
Now look, as much as I've talked about it, I know that you're eager to hear how things went yesterday at the Ear Clinic with the new cochlear implant on the right side activated, and I'm gonna tell you everything.
But there's something I gotta deal with first here, because yesterday I flashed a picture up here on the Ditto Cam of Mrs. Obama looking sad and grim at the same time in the diplomatic reception room at the White House, holding up a sign with that hashtag save our girls about this terror group, Procolharem.
Uh uh what uh you you're responsible for that, Snurley.
You you told me that that's what it reminds you of.
Boko Haram, the Nigerian Al-Qaeda group kidnapped uh over 200 girls.
And I held that picture up, and I is this it?
Is this how powerless we have become?
Is this the extent of our ability to deal with something like this?
I was just I was aghast.
I mean, I think it's embarrassing.
It is literally that a Twitter hashtag is all we've got.
And in fact, I was further embarrassed that a Twitter hashtag is assumed to be enough.
Because all we have to do is show that we're concerned.
All we have to do is exhibit our proper intentions, and that covers it.
We have to actually do anything.
It's perfect liberalism.
You don't solve anything, you don't do anything, you just show that you care and you have good intentions.
Well, I was raked over the coals for this, as I knew I would be.
There is some news stories out there about my insensitivity to this.
And I just I'm I'm it it to me is another example of the decline in this country.
And then the president of the United States on a campaign fundraising swing basically admitted that he is powerless.
He admitted that he has no ability to do anything about this.
He said he wakes up thinking of the Nigerian schoolgirls abducted by these Islamist extremists and facing a life as sex slaves.
By the way, you wanted a real war on women, this is it.
An al-Qaeda group kidnapping a bunch of young girls to sell them into slavery.
That is your war on women.
So Obama said that he wakes up thinking of the Nigerian screw girls abducted by Islamist extremists and facing a life as sex slaves and wishes he could reach out and save the kids.
Oh, what a great guy.
Oh, man.
I hope he gets drafted like Michael Sam does.
That's another thing.
Don't, don't, don't distract me with that, but it wasn't drafted yesterday.
The openly gay Michael Sam, and now there's panic throughout the media, wondering if he will be.
Don't doubt me on this.
He's going to be drafted.
He's going to get drafted today.
I just hope it's by the Redskins.
What are you shaking your head for in there?
Anyway, he's gonna get drafted.
This is the no mystery to this.
will get drafted.
That this that this I was not surprised that it took 22 picks to get to Manzell.
I'm not the in fact the homeless made the pick in Cleveland.
Do you hear about that?
The owner of the Browns, Jimmy Haslum, a man I have met on the sidelines in Pittsburgh when he was a partial owner of the Steelers, said that a homeless guy in Cleveland told this is now this is according to Sal Palantonio at ESPN.
So Antonio reported this somewhat seriously, somewhat as a joke, but he said the owner of the Browns, Jimmy Hasm said a homeless guy, told him to draft Manzell, and from that Haslam assumed that the Cleveland fan base wanted Manzell.
So they went and got Manzell.
So I think the Browns need to hire this homeless guy and put him in charge of the pro-player personnel department.
Because his his demand was met.
No, I wasn't surprised that Manzell took a while.
I'm not surprised in anything that happened to draft.
I don't care what they tell you, it's a it's it's all uh pot luck.
I mean, you look at the first round draft choices over the years that don't make it.
I mean, it's it's it really, for all the expertise and all the time they put into it, you're still talking about human beings, and despite whatever things, everybody's different.
And no matter how you test people, and no matter how you try to categorize them, no matter how you psychoanalyze them, do all this.
In fact, who was it?
The Browns.
I spent a hundred thousand dollars on a psychoanalysis of some player, and then and it came out good and they ended up not taking him.
I think it was the Browns.
The idea that that anybody knows for certain I mean, the the best draft in the history of the National Football League was the Pittsburgh Steelers 1974.
Nobody's gotten close to that draft before or since.
Well, it was Lynn Swan, Jack Lambert, Mike Webster, uh practically every five of those draft picks are in the Hall of Fame.
That's just never happened before.
Uh I'm I'm I don't mean to be leaving people out of just having a brief mental block here.
Anyway, back to this Book O'Harren thing.
Because I really think, folks, that this is, you know, I I I took a little grief for pointing out that the extent of U.S. involvement here is a Twitter hashtag.
I'm the one that was called insensitive.
And the President of the United States admits that he is impotent.
He has no ability.
All he can do is hope.
He sent some hostage negotiators.
Oh, and by the way, John Kerry served to Vietnam sending some diplomats over there to deal with it.
So State Department's hit the ground in Nigeria.
Here's what Obama said yesterday.
It was at a press conference.
He wakes up thinking of the Nigerian schoolgirls abducted by these Islamist extremists and wishes he could reach out and save those kids.
Most powerful man in the world.
I wish I could reach out.
And people applaud.
What a guy.
Everybody wishes those kids could be saved.
Nothing unique about that emotion.
I have this remarkable title right now, the President of the United States, Obama said.
And yet every day when I wake up, and I think about young girls in Nigeria or children caught up in the conflict in Syria, there are times in which I want to reach out and save those kids.
Now, for the longest time, the regime, both Clinton and uh Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama refused to categorize this Al-Qaeda group as a terror group.
And people are asking why?
What is the problem?
And I think Andy McCarthy weighed in on this, and I think this is the absolute best Explanation for this.
Clinton, Obama, the left, all believe in appeasing these people.
They all believe in appeasing our enemies, particularly the most violent of them.
They believe that if we just show them we're nonviolent, if we just show them we intend them no harm, if we show them that we understand in ways that they may not think we do, that they will be nicer to us, that they will stop being such bad people, and that at the same time they're promoting peace and stability.
And say, look at Egypt.
See how well that's working.
And then again, there's this.
If you're Obama and you claim to have wiped out Al-Qaeda, if you claim, which they did running up to the 2012 election, remember the GM's alive and bin Laden's dead.
I mean, they claimed they wiped out bin Laden, they wiped out Al-Qaeda.
There wasn't any terrorism.
This is why a video was responsible for the four dead Americans in Benghazi.
So the plan is, pretend terrorists and Islamists are unconnected.
You downsize, in importance and in reality, the terror threat.
You appease Islamists with the left's version of reaching out in a peaceful way to show that we intend no harm.
And that's how you are convinced not to put Boko Haram on a terrorist.
And in a way, you can pretend that the jihadists are not really that important.
So yeah, we're just going to treat them like a criminal gang.
We're not going to treat them like we're not going to treat them like terrorists.
Besides, we don't want to offend Muslims either.
They're going to be war on Islam on our watch.
It's embarrassing, folks.
It's just literally embarrassing.
This this now, if if you've joined the hashtag thing, look, I uh I all I understand the desire to want to be part of a story and to want to show you care, but in terms of doing anything, that's what the problem.
This President of the United States, his wife out there grimly frowning, holding up the hashtag sign in the White House.
What?
Is Boko Haram supposed to be so frightened by this that they release these girls again that they have kidnapped to sell into slavery?
Are they supposed to be so frightened?
Or are they going to hear the president say, gosh, and I wake up every morning?
I just wish there was something I could do.
I just think it's a just a terrible, terrible illustration, indication of what's happening to our country, managing a nation in decline.
And what by the way, why isn't that, aside from all that, why isn't there any outrage over what's happened here?
I mean, here you have a terror group kidnapping.
These are African girls.
These are these are these are minorities that they were lived in the United States.
I mean, they were where's the outrage here?
Boko Harem just targets Christians.
So you treat them like a like a police matter?
I don't know.
I just, it's embarrassing to me.
That's the only point I wanted to make.
Angelina Jolie weighed in on this too yesterday.
It says last night in London.
These men felt that they can get away with this and they can abuse women in such a way, sell them, rape them, take them as property because so many people have gotten away with this in the past.
No, well, partially, yeah, but they know that all they're up against is a Twitter hashtag.
Well, are you kidding me?
Are you serious?
Snurdly is telling me in my IFB that we can't criticize Boko Harem because they're black.
Are you kidding me?
They're African and they're black, and so we can't criticize them for that.
Wow.
You know, that's real slave blood we're talking about here, Snerdley.
I'm gonna tell you something.
If that's the case, you then the next thing you're gonna tell me is we can't criticize the leader because he looks like somebody that lives in Chicago.
Looks like one of the gang leaders in Chicago.
I mean, that that is if you really think that's true.
You can't criticize these people because they're black.
Oh man.
They're black Islamists and so black Islamists have a special place reserved where they get no outrage and no criticism.
Well, look, we're really worrying about nothing, folks.
John Kerry, who served in Vietnam, is on the case.
This is yesterday, Washington.
Our interagency team is hitting the ground in Nigeria now.
And they are going to be working in concert with President Goodluck Jonathan's government to do everything that we possibly can to return these girls to their families and their communities.
We are also going to do everything possible to counter the menace of Boko Haram.
I am not.
The entire world should not only be condemning this outrage, it is doing everything possible to help Nigeria in the days ahead.
It is.
Everybody's condemning it.
We're doing the with the power of a Twitter hashtag.
So let's see.
Our interagency team hitting the ground in Nigeria, and I mean a bunch of diplomats are getting off the plane.
They're going to work in concert where President Goodluck Jonathan's government to do everything we possibly can to return these girls.
Remember, Boko Harem.
This is the group.
John Kerry criticized earlier this week, pointing out they don't have health care.
This is the group.
They don't build schools for the girls that they kidnap and sell into slavery.
And they don't have a health care plan for the girls they kidnap and recycle into slavery.
Well, they don't even know.
They don't have recycling.
They do not recycle.
They are not environmentally adept either.
That's why we should really not like these.
They don't have a health care plan for the kidnapped girls.
And it'll build schools for anybody.
He said it.
It's a joke.
This whole regime is nothing but a joke.
Sadly, the joke is being played on us each and every day.
And we're back.
It's open line Friday, Rush Limbaugh behind the golden EIB microphone, executing assigned host duties flawlessly zero mistakes.
And no, folks, look, I'm I'm not I'm not teasing you by delaying the explanation of getting my new implant activated yesterday.
You know, I just don't like making everything about me.
And this this Boko Haram thing, I mean, I took a little heat for this in the media.
Look, it's one thing, and I'm I'm gonna do the implant explanation in the next right after this break coming up.
It's one thing for people can't do anything here to have a Twitter hashtag and and join the the fray, and it's it's like placing flowers uh along the funeral route, Princess Diamond.
Everybody wants to be part of the story, and it's it's kind of like global warming.
Everybody wants to think they're doing something.
And so, but people that can't do anything about this, getting behind the Twitter hashtag fine and dandy, but for the first lady of the United States and her husband to lead the Twitter hashtag effort here.
It's pathetic.
And it's an illustration.
It begs the question.
Is this how powerless we really are?
Is this the extent of our willingness?
It's not our ability.
Is this extent of our willingness to protect power around the world?
This is a terror group that Mrs. Clinton and and and Barack Obama would not so designate for obvious reasons.
You could say, well, why does the Nigerian government go after?
I don't know.
But I'll tell you one thing.
This is Boko Haram Buzz with John Kerry pointing out that they don't offer health care for the girls that they kidnap.
They'd better open an Obamacare exchange pretty damn quick.
Can you believe if they would actually apply to do that?
We want to be an exchange here for Obamacare for our kidnapped girls so that we can get the Secretary of State to stop criticizing us.
Show that we have compassion and that we care about people.
Um did you heard about the North Koreans criticizing Obama?
Have you heard about this?
Ho.
Well, hold out of your hands here.
This is in the Washington Post.
The White House on Thursday sharply condemned a lengthy, racist North Korean screed against Obama, calling the rhetoric from Pyongyang particularly ugly and disrespectful.
The rebuke came in response to a recently published diatribe by North Korea calling Obama a clown, a quote, dirty fellow, quote, and somebody who, quote, does not even have the basic appearance of a human being, unquote.
Another part of the North Korean tirade declared, quote, it would be perfect for Obama to live with a group of monkeys in the world's largest African natural zoo and lick the breadcrumbs thrown by spectators.
Close quote.
I expect that we'll respond in kind of Twitter hashtag pretty damn quick.
About this North Korean racism, I wonder, uh, ladies and gentlemen, a commissioner of the United Nations takes notice and bans North Korea for life and makes Kim Jong-un sell his country.
That's the way you deal with it in the NBA.
Why not at the United Nations?
I mean, this is this is we're in a Donald Sterling territory here now with the North Koreans.
But you want to hear the piece de resistance in this Washington Post story after quoting what the North Koreans said about Obama.
Just a couple of paragraphs down is this.
Propriety has never been a part of North Korean rhetoric, but rarely has Pyongyang so ferociously and personally attacked a U.S. leader in this case pulling language right out of the American 1850s.
Are you kidding me?
The Washington Post thinks only Americans have ever used that language.
The Washington Post wants its readers to believe that this kind of language that North Koreans use to describe Obama originated in this country in the 1850.
Another reason why I am writing the Rush Revere Children's Book series on American history.
Okay.
The implant, the new cochlear implant on my right side is activated.
I'm not using it at the moment, but I did from the moment I left the ear clinic yesterday until one hour before the program started today.
When I have the right side implant on after activation, things and people sound entirely different, entirely completely, not even close.
Now you've heard me say over the years when talking about the various ways to program a cochlear implant that the accepted best technology they call high resolution.
They actually refer to these things as strategies.
And in medical parlance, what this means is approaches.
You see, each cochlear implant has a number of electrodes, in my case, 21.
And the electrodes are stimulated by sound that they pick up, and then they tap into the auditory nerve and send the signal to the brain.
And there are two strategies, two approaches to doing this.
The old analog and then the high-res, which is just digital, and it's the best.
When I got my original implant in 2001, the FDA had not approved high-res.
It involves the brain.
There had to be a lot of testing.
So I had no choice but to go with the analog.
And it was excellent, right out of the box.
It was superb and great.
In fact, uh my speech comprehension has declined in the past 13 years because I've had to turn off some electrodes because of facial ticks that were caused by volume just at normal control.
So I've had the right side of my head, the Hearing process, the auditory nerve essentially dormant for 13 years.
In such a case, nobody knows whether it can still be used or acting.
You do the surgery, have the implant surgically implanted, and then you put the earpiece on on the outside, which is the battery in the software, and turn it on, see what happens.
And that's what I did yesterday.
I've told you before that the high resum on my left side makes everybody sounds like the chipmunks.
And it makes everybody sound speeded up, the volume level is very low, unusable compared to my analog, which to me makes people sound normal.
So I'm sitting there waiting with baited breath.
It turns out it only took two hours yesterday, not four, because the time taking are required to create the digital program is much less than the analog.
But after the first 20 minutes, uh turned it on, and lo and behold, everybody sounded like chipmunks.
It was horrible.
It was unusable.
It was simply a disaster.
It was the it was worse than the chipmunk sound on my left side.
The volume was so low, and it it was volume, it even the turning the volume up did not make it louder.
It just added distortion.
And I looked at the audiologist, and I told her, point blank, you've had to be honest with them.
And I said, This is horrible.
This is this is worse than what I she tried to calm me down, and I was not ranting, I was just sitting there being honest in my appraisal.
She said, Look, you're gonna have to use this for six months.
You have to train it.
You're gonna have to use it and reteach the right side of your brain and your right ear to hear again.
I said, I thought that wasn't possible.
No, no, it is.
And here's I've been wrong about something for 13 years.
An honest mistake.
And I've been wrong in telling you.
I told you that you can't practice and get better, and it turns out you can in my case.
Now, the reason that was true, the reason I couldn't practice and get better on my left side is because my left side never forgot how to hear.
I was only deaf for two or three months before getting the implant, so my brain just didn't common parlance here, had not forgotten how to hear, but on the right side, 13 years of dormancy.
So there is room for it to relearn, but I have to wear this horrible sounding unusable, cannot comprehend anybody saying anything, implant regularly so that it gets better.
So I said, Well, look, this is unacceptable.
She says, Well, it's gonna get I said, No, could you do something?
Could you put my old analog program on this new implant?
She didn't want to do it, defeating the purpose, she said.
You can't have it on there permanently anyway because it's incompatible.
You're that that software is incompatible with the new hardware.
The hardware is 13 years newer than it won't work.
Can you try it?
Can I just see what the imp what the what the program I really like sounds like on the right side?
Because I had a trick in mind.
You know, it was going to outsmart the doctors.
If the old analog program on my left side worked on the right, I was running out of there.
I wasn't going to give her a chance to take me back to high-res.
So she did.
She put the old analog program, which I'm using right now to do this program on the right side, the new implant, and it was horrible.
It was as bad.
It wasn't chipmunkey, it was just bad.
It was the same low volume.
It was just every when I heard somebody say an S, it sounded like lurping, and it was just, it was just there were the only way I could describe this is the way this chipmunk thing, it's not just chipmunks.
If you can imagine if you've watched a movie, uh sci fi movie, outer space satellite, kind of weird electronic beeps and sounds.
It's just, it's hard to describe.
I have yet to be able to explain to people what artificial sound created by a cochlear implant sounds like.
And I'm probably not gonna, because I don't remember ever hearing anything when I could hear normally that sounds like the way I hear now, but I keep trying so that people can understand.
So all this time, my good implant, the one the left side sitting there on the desktop, unused.
So after about an hour, the high res is a disaster, and the current program is a disaster.
And I'm thinking, well, no big deal.
I've still got the left side, works perfectly, works perfectly fine.
This is always a roll of the dice.
And like I said, it can't get any worse if it doesn't work because I've always got this.
So then I said, uh, well, what what happens if I put the left side on right now?
Well, which your analog?
She said, yeah, what if I put my old program on the left side and this new high res on the rise at the same time?
Well, let's try it.
So I did, and magic happened.
The right side was improved by 200% with just the left side also turned on.
It was the strangest feeling.
It was, if you can remember the first time you heard stereo music, then multiply that by a hundred.
So then I said, okay, I'm gonna switch to my high-res, I'll call it the chipmunk.
I'm gonna switch to the chipmunk program on the left side so that it matches up with the new one you just put on the right side.
And when I did that, another dose of magic happened.
I it's hard, it's hard to describe, but everything had an immediate positive improvement to it.
There was a new depth of substance presence to everything, environmental sounds and voices.
The left side, this is the fascinating, the left side chipmunk effect vanished.
It's gone.
The high res on the left side is now working as it was originally intended.
There's no chipmunk on it.
The chipmunk remain, the right side by itself is still unusable.
The right side by itself still horrible.
The right side by it.
I'll put it to you this way.
If all I had available to me was the implant that was activated yesterday, I would have to retire.
I could not do this program.
I would have to tearfully, because that's how you do it now, quit.
It would simply not be possible to hear a phone call.
I would not sound to you normal because I couldn't hear.
In fact, when I got back to the car, Catherine was with me.
She's as nervous as a as a cat about all this too, because this is deeply personal thing here.
We got in the car, and in this in the confines of the car, windows closed, and all that upholstery, great acoustics, the driver and Catherine, but you know, your voice is lower.
Your voice has changed.
I said, really?
I started listening to myself, and they were right.
And just folks, by now two hours has gone by.
And just that short amount of the brain is an amazing thing is the point here.
It's impossible to comprehend it.
But in just actually an hour and a half of using chipmunks on both sides, my hearing improved such that my voice changed for the better so much that it was noticeable to people.
Now, I don't know if my voice sounds different to you, because I'm not using chipmunk right now.
I couldn't do the program right now using either of these chipmunk programs.
But together, chipmunk gone left side, and the right side By itself, which is barely audible with all those out of this world sound effects and the chipmunk sound.
To me, with the left side turned on as well, the right side sounds as loud as the left, if not louder.
By itself, it's unusable.
So I went from the floor in terms of being disappointed to on the roof of the building optimistic.
In just the two hours I spent there, there is I have no doubt whatsoever that in six months, these chipmunk programs are going to end up being the best thing I've ever done or had, and I'm going to wish that I had had the last 13 years with it.
It's hard to explain, but the emotional roller coaster yesterday, and I was prepared for bad news, but I really thought it was going to be good.
I thought it I thought they could have hooked up that high-res on the right side and it was going to be twice as good as what I had on the left on the old analog side.
And it was horrible.
You realize this too.
I don't know if this is really applicable.
And I I don't remember why we chose the left side to do first 13 years ago, but what if I had chosen the right side 13 years ago that was just as bad then as it is now.
I wouldn't have been here.
I'd have been doing something, but not this.
So there's a little more here, but I'm I'm long.
I have to take a break.
We'll uh do that and be back right after this.
Don't go away.
There are other improvements to uh to note.
And they are in the area of environmental sounds.
And I've not spent a lot of time explaining this to you, but environmental sounds are among the most irritating, and they're very small thing, the most irritating aspect of having a cochlear implant.
I can be sitting in my library at home with all the doors closed because I got the cat in there, and we haven't let the cat get the rum of the house yet.
The doors are closed in whatever room we have, the cat.
If somebody opens the door to come in the library, it sounds like the loudest explosion.
I literally causes me to jump out of the couch if I don't know it's coming.
If somebody is ripping paper nearby, I have to take my implant off.
It just not just the sound of it, the volume.
Environmental sound playing golf, a guy throws a club back in a bag.
It just the environmental sounds are three times louder than the voices I hear.
So I have to keep the volume low so that the environmental sounds don't drive me crazy.
Well, that makes it harder to hear people.
And you get to a crowded restaurant, it's just amplified and it's it's it's made all worse.
Well, that's changed too.
With uh the chipmunk program on both ears, I still hear the environmental sounds.
I'm I'm not better yet at identifying what they are, but they sound much more distant.
They're not nearly as shocking when they occur.
I mean, even sitting here at the uh at the golden EIB microphone, when the printer turns on, if somebody prints to the printer, not me, and I don't know it's coming when the thing first clicks, it everything like gives me a start if I don't know.
Even when somebody speaks to me and I don't know they're getting the the not knowing where it's coming or what it is, it's the environmental noise of it all is just one shock after another.
That is much less now.
I I don't know how to describe this other than magic.
By itself, the thing I had implanted or turned on yesterday would require me to retire.
It is so bad, it is unusable.
It's indescribably bad, folks.
But when I put the same chipmunk program on my left side and have them both, doesn't Even matter if the volume's the same.
Everything's improved a hundred percent or more.
And I it just it's it's inexplicable.
Gotta take a break here.
Still not through.
There's some more details here, but that's the nub of it.
Bottom line is it's an overwhelming success.
But the first 20 minutes, I thought it was an abject waste of time failure.
Okay, a couple of people in the email with questions.
Apparently, I wasn't clear enough about why, if all I had was the right side, I would have to retire.
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