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May 12, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:48
May 12, 2014, Monday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Greetings to you, music lovers, drill seekers, conversationalists all across the fruited plain.
Great to have you with us.
Oh yes, another exciting excursion into broadcast excellence.
Three big hours, and we're back home.
The EIB's Southern Command on the right coast.
Back home in South Florida.
Here's the telephone number if you want to be on the program.
800-282-2882 and the email address, LRushbow at EIBnet.com.
Very brief, very, very brief cochlear implant update.
Excuse me.
I'm finally seeing the end of this, this whatever it is that I've got, either this allergic thing people have been telling me, you know, there's a lot of pollen out there, or else this has been a six-week version of just a plain old chest cold.
But whatever, I'm finally on the downside of it.
So I went back to the ear clinic, the audiologist on Friday with a scheduled appointment, scheduled on Thursday and scheduled on Friday.
And the reason is, you know, you do your original programming and you go back the next day and do it all over again just to make sure that what you got the first day was close to what you get the second day.
And if it's a difference, if it's a wide difference, then they do it a third time until they get enough times to average it out to where they think they got it down pat.
And the news on Friday is that it was on the right side, the new implant, they were able to double the volume without any distortion, which is huge.
That's massive, massive improvement.
The speech comprehension didn't change.
The chipmunk effect is still there on the right side.
It's just that the volume, which is an important thing, was able to be doubled.
So we have scheduled more appointments even sooner to accommodate what appears to be a rapid adaptation.
So it's all good.
And I was able to actually listen to some music.
I was able to play NameNet Tune for the first time in 13 years on Friday night.
Normally, the only music I could listen to was that which I had known before and heard before I went deaf.
And even then, I had to know what it was.
I was able to make out lyrics of songs.
Look, this is key.
I had to know what it was because I really wasn't hearing it.
My memory was working in conjunction with what I was hearing, the noise I was hearing.
And my memory supplied the melody and the tune aspects of a song.
I was able to hear the lyrics once I knew what the song was.
If I didn't know what the song was, I was hopeless, even if I'd heard it before.
But Friday night, I was able to identify music no matter whether I knew what it was or not.
Some songs I was able to get in five seconds, some it took me 20 seconds, but this bodes well, too.
That is a major shift.
I haven't been able to play Name Net Tune.
That's been an impossibility.
New music, I tried listening to some, and I don't know how close I was, because I'll never know what it really sounds like.
But I mean, that was pretty big.
So that's the update from Friday and scheduled a couple more real quick because the adaptation, as I say, seems to be happening pretty rapidly.
And that's what you don't know that that's going to happen until you do it, until you get the implant in and start working with it.
And some people, it doesn't happen that way.
Everybody is different.
So I continue to be blessed and have good fortune with mine.
Now, today I don't know what to care most about.
Michael Sam, the Nigerian girls, or Sterling, who's out there, gave an interview to Anderson Cooper at CN.
There's a lot of emotional pressure out there, what we're supposed to care about.
Now, one thing has happened.
I knew it was going to happen before I did it.
It's one of the reasons I did it.
In fact, you know me, your regular listener here, you know that I love tweaking the media.
And it's very easy to do because the media doesn't listen to this program.
This is one of the most amazing things.
I am able to sit here and tell you, you know, you and I could together contrive a full-fledged prank or conspiracy involving the media and pull it off, and they would never know that they've been punked because they don't listen to the program.
They don't go to rushlimbaugh.com to find out what happened on the program.
They go to one place which exists for the express purpose of misrepresenting what happens on this program, Ergo.
I see the picture of Mrs. Obama in the diplomatic reception room, and I'm sure it took a bunch of different takes to get her facial expression just right, the proper mixture of solemnity and concern and deep caring with the sign, the hashtag bring back our girls.
And I knew when I pointed this out that the drive-bys were going to have a fit.
That once again, they would all be talking about the insensitivity of Rush Limbaugh and the backwardness and the just refusal to adapt to a changing world.
Rush Limbaugh just doesn't understand things.
And lo and behold, it's happened.
Let's go to the audio soundbites Sunday morning on the Today Show.
Here is a portion.
The White House correspondent, Kristen Welker, the weekend today White House correspondent, reporting on me and my criticism of the Bring Back Our Girls hashtag.
Have you heard the latest about what's actually happened to these girls?
They have all been converted to Islam by Boko Harrim.
And they claim that they're not going to give them back until we give back their brethren.
So somebody is holding members of their group prisoners somewhere, and they want their brothers back.
And when they get their brothers back, they supposedly will return our girls.
But they're not our girls.
They're Nigerian.
That was another thing.
But that's insensitive to point out, too, because we're all citizens of the world now.
Now, you who are listening here know full well what my point was, and that is, if I specified it.
If you have no power to do anything about this and you want to go to this Twitter hashtag thing to make yourself feel better, get in on the action the equivalent of placing flowers along the parade route to the funeral route Princess died go right ahead.
But if you in any way represent The administration of the United States, the government, and you do this, hashtag them, it's pathetic.
It is absolutely pathetic, and it is inconsequential.
It's not going to matter Hill of Beans, except except one way.
And it's all about intentions and showing that you care.
These phonies on the left get behind their Twitter hashtag campaign, and they get credit for caring.
Oh, Rush Limboy, he doesn't care.
He's he's cold-hearted and mean-spirited.
He doesn't care.
Right.
So all I would have to do to care is get behind this Twitter hashtag campaign.
What would it accomplish?
Nothing.
Nothing toward the objective.
I mean, if the objective is to get the girls back, getting behind a hashtag campaign on Twitter isn't going to do it.
And holding up a picture of the hashtag, wherever you are in the White House, on the battlefield in Afghanistan.
I don't care where you are.
It isn't going to matter Hill of Beans.
But it's sure going to send the message, do you care? To the pop culture media and its customers, the low-information voter.
And so in that sense, it's a rousing success.
Now, I'm sorry, I simply, I don't know.
I couldn't, in good conscience, get behind such.
I mean, it's phony.
All it is, is a cheap attempt to make me look like something.
But it's not going to accomplish anything.
I'm about actually doing.
It's the same thing with left-wing policies.
Whatever their policies all fail.
I don't care what it is.
Obamacare, you name it.
Everything they've tried in this regime has failed.
It's an abysmal failure in terms of accomplishing what they claim they want to accomplish.
But it doesn't matter because they're trying.
You see, they care.
At least they care.
At least they want to help.
At least they want to do something.
And Rich Limbaugh, he doesn't even care.
That's the way it all falls out.
It's really a crying shame because it's not true at all.
I just don't understand applauding futility.
I don't understand getting applauding and crediting doing nothing toward really achieving an objective.
Anyway, here's how the media treated it predictably and even maybe a little boringly.
The hashtag bring back our girls has gone viral.
With more than a million retweets, it's now an international rallying cry for helping the missing girls in Nigeria.
But critics like conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh say it won't accomplish a thing.
The sad thing here is that the low-information crowd that's puddling around out there on Twitter is going to think we're actually doing something about it.
But journalist and author Sally Armstrong disagrees.
This is a turning point for the rights of women and girls around the world.
This is working.
Bring back our girls.
One thing is not up for debate.
Social media can give a voice to people who are otherwise deprived of one.
In fact, the Bring Back Our Girls campaign began in Nigeria.
Cries for help that quickly went all the way to the White House.
Yeah, it didn't take long, did it?
It's working?
Sally Armstrong.
Sorry, sorry.
Welker?
No.
Sally Armstrong.
Disagree.
Who is Sally Armstrong?
I've never heard of it.
Have you heard of Sally Armstrong?
I don't mean anything by it.
I just never heard of her.
I disagree.
This is a turning point for rights of women and girls around the world.
This is working.
Bring back our, this is a turning point, having them kidnapped by an Islamist terror group, and no effort has been made to get them back.
I mean, if you're going to do something, you've got to do something.
You can't just get behind a Twitter hashtag campaign, end up doing nothing, and the bad people around the world, I guarantee you, are not intimidated.
They're not scared.
It just rather obvious.
They say it's working.
Boco Harem attacked a village and killed people, kidnapped kids over the weekend.
Maybe Boko Harum isn't on Twitter.
Maybe that's why it hasn't worked.
Maybe if Boco Harem was on Twitter and saw the hashtag CAN campaign, maybe they'd be very scared.
And maybe they would have given the girls back by now.
And let me just tell you something.
This is going to be misunderstood too.
But if the objective of the hashtag campaign is to get these girls returned, it's already failed.
And it will fail.
It's not going to accomplish a thing.
But you can't say that to the people, particularly the White House, getting back, because that's not the objective here with this is not to get them back.
It's to show you care.
This is the equivalent of wearing a red ribbon or a yellow ribbon.
All of this symbolism over substance.
This is, by the way, you know, I could very well, I could have inoculated myself.
Many criticisms.
If I'd have gotten behind this campaign, if I would have gotten behind the Twitter hashtag campaign, they might have said I didn't mean it.
They might have didn't believe it, but I could have inoculated myself.
That's how you do it.
You know, as Victor Davis Hansen said, invest in liberalism and you protect yourself.
Invest in saying things that are liberal.
And you can be the biggest hypocrite in the world.
We were talking about this last week.
All of these powerful leftists, from Hollywood leftists to Al Gore, they don't live the lifestyle they demand of everybody else.
They don't even get close to it.
Not even close.
They don't even pretend to live under the guidelines they claim everybody else should.
And the guidelines they claim everybody else should live by are about big things.
Saving the planet, climate change, other big things.
It's really important stuff, but they don't do it.
They just say that you should.
And they try to make you think they really care about it, but they don't do anything about it.
They never do do anything about anything except bungle it and make it worse.
But they get all the credit in the world for caring and for having all of these great intentions.
And here is this Sally Armstrong.
Well, this is a turning point for the rights of women and girls around the world.
This is working.
Bring back our girls.
Social media can give a voice to people who are otherwise deprived of one.
Really?
Do the kidnapped girls have a voice now?
They're the ones being deprived of speaking, and then nobody's heard from them.
Yeah, I think it's, I don't think it's good, folks.
I think it's all this phoniness.
At some point, it's all going to come home to roost.
Here's the five Friday night on Fox.
They talked about this, and they played this clip from this program before they talked about it.
I just think this is pathetic.
I'm just stunned.
We got 300 Nigerian girls kidnapped by an al-Qaeda group.
And nobody cared or talked about it for a while.
Hillary wouldn't call them a terror group.
Now all of a sudden, for some reason, we're on a big push to get them back.
And this is how the sad thing here is that the low information crowd that's puddling around out there on Twitter is going to think we're actually doing something about it.
It is just unbelievable.
Bring back our girl.
They're Nigerian.
Right.
Okay, so here's Kimberly Guilfoyle on the five.
Yeah, I mean, it is sad.
It's a hashtag.
They're holding up a sign.
I understand their hearts are in the right place, but I would like to have seen some movement, some action, some leadership in a real significant way, meaning results-oriented.
Be careful, Kimberly.
They're going to accuse you of not caring.
Because the only thing that matters here is the hashtag campaign.
Are you or are you not on the right side of the hashtag campaign?
It is a mistake to talk about results.
You never are supposed to talk about results when talking about liberalism and their policies and their programs because they all fail.
That's why you're never supposed to talk about results.
You are supposed to only talk about the good intentions.
Half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
Rush Limbaugh, your guiding light and your bulwark.
I'm thinking of some of the great hashtag campaigns of the past.
Imagine if Twitter had been around during the Civil War.
Can you imagine Abe Lincoln from the White House?
Hashtag free the slaves.
How about McKinley?
Hashtag Spain out of Cuba.
How about Reagan?
Hashtag tear down this wall.
How about George H.W. Bush?
Hashtag get out of Kuwait.
I don't even know what Clinton's hashtag would be.
And Clinton didn't even take on anything big.
Yeah, Clinton, hashtag, have a cigar.
Be careful of dress.
Hashtag what blue dress?
That would be it.
Hashtag what blue dress?
Even the AP, can a hashtag offer any help to abducted girls?
And here's how it starts.
I can't believe this is the AP.
Parents of the kidnapped Nigerian scrollgirls are hoping for a miracle.
So far, all they have is a hashtag.
Even AP.
Here's the first round.
We got time.
First round of commentary from the five on me Friday night.
I'm a little surprised at Old Rush, which, by the way, using Rush is such an unusual thing for the show.
But he said it's Nigerian girls.
What does he mean by that?
I'm not sure, and I'm not going to put words in Russia.
I think he means they're not American girls.
The hashtag is bring back our girls.
He's being specific to our, meaning our American citizen first lady, but I think that that is actually just a hashtag that started actually in Nigeria.
Yeah, which we have since learned.
So the regime gets on board, bring back our girls.
And people in America even care.
I wonder how many people getting behind it in America on Twitter even know the girls are Nigerian.
Anyway, sit tight, my friends.
We be back.
How many people do you think know that this terror group, Boko Harem, has been attacking Christians since 2009?
The jihad aspect of Boko Harem is almost completely ignored by the White House and the media.
And I can tell you why.
I just saw why.
There's video that's been released of about half of, or maybe 150, you know, half of the kidnapped girls who have been converted to Islam.
The other 150, no mention of.
The Boko Harem leader, or whoever Boko Harem had perform on video, he's a good-looking guy.
This is why Mrs. Clinton wouldn't call this group a terror group, because they're black.
Can't afford to do that.
This is how surface conscious the left is.
We cannot call people what they, in this case, a jihadist, anti-Christian terror group aligned with al-Qaeda.
We can't call them terrorists because they look like African Americans and we just can't go there.
Nobody will ever convince me that that's why they didn't call this group a terror group.
Just can't do it.
Just can't go there.
Because the left doesn't go any deeper than skin when identifying people.
Everything is racial politics, identity politics, whatever.
And if you've got a group of terrorists who are particularly from foreign country, not domestically, and they're only just black, we can't call them a terror group.
No, no, no, no, no.
That will not help us domestically, politically.
And so this group escapes any scrutiny.
They don't get the proper treatment from this country foreign policy-wise.
And in effect, they're allowed to just behave without any stops whatsoever.
And I wonder sometimes where I know that maybe this is a bit much, but where would the media be without me every day saying what I think?
You realize I'm all over media, just simply uttering a contrary point of view to the conventional wisdom media soap opera every day.
And that is used, little snippets of this program are used for guests to bounce off of.
I mean, I'm honored.
I mean, I'm happy to be a contrarian.
I happen to think, no, I happen to know that what we do here is relentlessly pursue the truth.
Stay focused on the substance of things rather than the surface.
I mean, it would be easy.
It would be the easiest thing in the world to come here one day and do what liberals do.
You would be driven crazy.
You would think about leaving this program.
You would think I'd been co-opted.
It'd be the easiest thing in the world.
This thing about liberalism, I've always said it's just the easiest.
It's the most gutless thing you can do.
It's so easy.
You don't ever have to really do anything.
You just have to act a certain way and say the right things.
And after that, you can live any way you want.
You can be rich.
You can mistreat people.
You can fire your employees.
You can deny them health care.
But if you say the proper liberal things, you are inoculated.
It's so easy.
Victor Davis Hansen, you know, one of my favorite writers, National Review Online, has a very long piece that he published six days ago.
And I just found it, just brought to my attention over the weekend.
It's called, and none of this is going to be new to you.
You all know it.
I just want to share with you the way Victor Davis Hansen says it.
Because I think even there's, and he's written about this before.
He chronicles what he considers to be the eventual collapse of the left.
That's where I disagree with him.
I don't see them collapsing.
I see them winning.
I see liberalism expanding.
I see it growing.
I see it dominating more and more of our culture.
I don't see it in decline at all.
A country is, but liberalism isn't.
But he believes that at some point it's all going to collapse on itself, just like Reagan believed that the Soviet Union would collapse eventually of its own immorality.
And what Reagan meant by that was that it was entirely possible that the Soviet Union would cease to exist simply without having to fire a shot against it because it couldn't sustain itself.
Now, as a nation, he turned out to be right.
But it took, it required specific policy, directions from this country to force that to happen.
We just couldn't sit idly by and let it happen.
Unfortunately, now, in our battle with the left, our elected leaders are just sitting around waiting for what they think will be the collapse of the left, either because of its own immorality or because it just can't sustain itself or what have you.
But you have to force that.
Wait around for it to happen on its own.
How long did it take for Rome to fall?
Soviet Union would still be around if there hadn't been a Reagan doing what he had done with Star Wars, a number of other things, and the Pope and Margaret Thatcher.
It took a lot of effort to bring down the Soviet Union.
Didn't think any shots being fired.
It took a lot of effort.
Liberals exempt from scrutiny, the piece is right on.
And it ties into much of what we have been discussing in the past couple of weeks about what liberals really believe.
In fact, this was all started, the recent incarnation of this discussion was started by a very perceptive caller.
I forget who.
It was a young woman who made the point, and she went further than just pointing their hypocrites, because, of course, they're hypocrites.
But she said, you know, they do not live by their own design.
And her point was they don't really believe it.
They don't really believe it because they don't live it.
Now, their rank and file tries to live it.
Their nimrods, their bumpkins try to live it and force it on everybody else.
But the powerful leftists do not live one shred of what they preach, was her point.
And her point was they don't believe it.
And I remember in talking with her, I said it was a little risky to say they don't believe it.
I understood her point, and it's valid.
And this is what Victor Davis Hansen addresses, exempting yourself from scrutiny by being liberal.
Here's some pull quotes.
Liberalism professes a left-wing ideology, but these days it has absolutely no effect on the lives of those who most vehemently embrace it.
In other words, being liberal is professionally useful and psychologically better than Xanax, but we need not assume anymore that it is a serious belief.
I didn't know better.
I'd say Victor heard this woman on this program and got to thinking about it because it dovetails with her point.
They don't really believe it.
They just say it to inoculate themselves.
And I think that's risky to think they don't really believe it.
That rank-and-file liberals, that rank-and-file liberals follow con men and women like Al Gore and Elizabeth Warren and Paul Krugman, turning a blind eye to their extravagant, wasteful, high-carbon living standards, while criticizing conservatives who live much more frugally has turned them from useful idiots to just plain idiots.
That he gets into the lie of the NAA LCP because most of the abortions in this country are minority abortions, and yet some of the biggest pro-abortion supporters are African-American leftists.
But let's go back to this one paragraph.
The rank-and-file liberals follow con men and women like Al Gore, Elizabeth Warren, and Paul Krugman turning a blind eye to their own extravagant, wasteful, high-carbon living standards while criticizing conservatives who live much more frugally has turned them from useful idiots to just plain idiots.
Well, they've always been idiots, useful or otherwise.
The rank-and-file, these nameless, faceless people that live on left-wing websites, or these nameless, faceless people that are demanding that Condi Rice not be allowed to speak at Rutgers, those are the people that he's talking about here.
They're the blind bat followers.
They believe it all.
And yet, when they find out that Al Gore has three homes, two jets, does not live one moment of his life in the way he prescribes, it doesn't matter.
Al Gore is never held to the scrutiny.
He's inoculated himself.
He doesn't live what he believes.
He lives quite the opposite.
Elizabeth Warren, another case in point, she's not just in the 1%.
She is in the top 110th of 1% in terms of wealth and income in this country.
She does not live the stuff she preaches.
She's famous for this saying, you didn't build that.
But they don't live lives of austerity.
They don't live lives saving the planet.
They don't, I mean, they might have a Prius that they drive around in public on the way to the airport to get on the private jet.
They might do things like that, but they don't live it.
They don't live in small little houses using one roll of toilet paper a week.
They don't have solar panels all over the place and only solar panels generating their utilities.
But they're out there talking it left and right.
Now, he's got countless examples of this kind of thing.
And the point is, as long as you say the right things, you are inoculated.
Inoculated by who?
Who has this power to inoculate people?
If liberalism is losing, like some people believe, where does the power come from to do away with Donald Sterling?
Where does the power come from to get rid of Condi Rice at Rutgers?
If liberals are losing, where does the power come from to get rid of Dr. Benjamin Carson, as a commencement speaker at Johns Hopkins of all places?
The medical school graduating class.
If liberalism is fading and it's just these rank-and-file idiots who do not realize what their beloved leaders are doing, where does this power come from?
Who are these idiots that are able to corrupt American culture?
Anyway, I got to take a break.
Think about that.
We'll be back after this.
Don't go away.
Yeah, that caller was Jennifer in Lancaster, Ohio.
That's, I remember who it was.
She was the one that got all this started that they don't really believe all of this.
But their rank-and-file do.
Both the Steiers, this is this guy that is the only reason Obama's talking about global warming today is and is and it matters to like 8% of the country.
Obama's talking about it because this big donor threatened to withhold $100 million.
His name is Steyer.
S-T-E-Y-E-R, Jim Steyer, big Hollywood hedge fund, movie, whatever, billionaire.
Another pull quote from Victor Davis Hanson, both the Stires and the Gores of our human comedy know that it is lucrative business to appear green.
And that by doing so, one can keep one's personal life largely exempt from scrutiny in general and charges of hypocrisy in particular.
For them, 21st century liberalism is a useful badge of fashion, not unlike wearing good shades or having the right sort of cell phone.
Liberalism offers a wise investment for a politician, a celebrity, an academic, or a journalist by letting him take out inexpensive insurance against a politically incorrect slip of the tongue.
Donald Sterling almost achieved exemption by his donations to Democrat candidates, the NAALCP, and his trial lawyer billions.
He lost it by keeping his ossified Republican registration while being an old sick white guy who said the sort of reprehensible racist things that one hears sometimes in bits and pieces from NBA players themselves.
So Sterling gets away with it for all that time.
We've talked about all that.
It's Tom Steyer, not Jim Steyer, whatever.
But still, the question survives.
Okay, well, who is it that's exempting these people?
Okay, so Al Gore and Tom Steyer and whoever these, all the rest of them, they are buying insurance by saying liberal things.
They are exempting themselves from scrutiny.
Scrutiny from who?
Media.
Okay, but who else?
Government?
All right, but who else?
I mean, it's not, the government didn't get Condi Rice banned, her invitation rescinded.
50 irrelevant students at Rutgers made that happen, along with a compliant and probably frightened administration there.
Now, my only point here again is that Victor Davis Hansen believes that all of this is so phony and so abnormal and dishonest that it is going to eventually collapse.
And I wish that were true.
I've been waiting for that my whole life.
I've been waiting at for 25, 30 years.
It doesn't seem to be happening.
Liberalism seems to be winning.
Every time you open your eyes, there is more cultural rot taking place.
That's approved of, apparently, by these nameless, faceless, useful idiots who buy into all this, be they low-information voters, be they people who live on social media.
I mean, who are these people?
Where do they, what?
Who started the Sterling thing?
For example, I know TMZ played the video, but who was it that got mad about it?
Really?
I don't know.
I'm asking honestly that some individual – where does the inertia for this stuff begin?
And did Sterling step in it again with his interview with Anderson Cooper?
They're not talking about this much, but one of the things that Sterling said, I don't know if you heard this, Brian, Magic Johnson is not a good example for children.
While saying that he's not a racist, and while saying that all he wanted was some sex from this girl, he said that Magic Johnson is a good example for children.
Well, somebody's going to get hold of that at some point, delayed reaction, and that's going to offend somebody.
But what do you mean by that?
Anyway, I got to take a break here, folks.
We are at the end of another sterling, no pun intended, broadcast session.
I'm back after this.
So, Ann Curry, the former Today Show Infobabe, got lost.
Well, she didn't get lost.
She was in the woods somewhere, a New Jersey hiking trail, broke her ankle, stranded out there.
And the Boy Scouts on a hike found her and rescued her.
They set the ankle, they built the stretcher, and they brought her out.
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