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May 16, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:53
May 16, 2014, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Hey folks, how are you?
I trust everybody is going to be expected.
Hope everybody's doing well.
We're all here and we're all ready to go and it's a bonus.
It's Friday.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's Open Line Friday.
Oh yeah, it's Open Line Friday, one of our favorite days of the busy broadcast week.
Rush Limbaugh and the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, a network named after a high level of my talent.
I named the network.
When we started the program, I said, what's the network?
I said, what do you mean, what's the network?
Well, you got to have a network name.
So I just immediately came up with EIB, Excellence in Broadcasting.
And it stuck.
Nobody disputed it.
Great to have you.
Telephone number if you want to be on the program 800-282-2882.
Email address, lrushbow at EIBnet.com.
Since our tune-in factor continues to expand, and that means that people who will be tuning in today for the first time ever may not know what Open Line Friday is.
It's real simple.
It is the one day of the week where I demand that most of the restrictions on callers be removed.
Monday through Thursday, it's tightly screened.
You've got to talk about something I care about.
I don't have to be talking about it at the moment, but it has to be something I'm interested in.
Otherwise, we politely say goodbye.
But on Friday, whatever you want to talk about is fine.
It doesn't matter.
Questions, comments, stories out there that have nothing to do with anything that's been discussed, something you think needs to be talked about hasn't been, whatever.
It's a career risk.
Turning over content portion of the program to rank amateurs like you.
Lovable, rank.
I say that just to tweak the left.
I tell you, I am tired.
It has been a busy, busy broadcast week.
So I'm going to be leaning on you people today, more so than I usually do.
Again, the telephone number is 800-282-2882.
I can't.
Yes, I can.
I can believe it.
I don't know what the word is.
I shouldn't after 25 years.
Nothing should surprise me.
But winning this award, Author of the Year, Children's Book Council, has just caused tumult like you can't believe out there on the left.
Whole television networks are leveling charges of voter fraud.
It's just it's finally, see, it's not amazing and it's not surprising, but at the same time, it is.
Something as harmless as an award for writing a children's book is such a threat to these people.
It is a real threat.
They're really irritated.
They're really bothered by it, and they really think it's illegitimate.
The Associated Press even has a story.
Snerdley found it.
I don't read the AP.
The AP is his responsibility.
And he says, yeah, the AP, they've got this real long story.
He said, Rush, it doesn't matter.
They spell your name right in it in every instance.
Yeah, I know.
But the AP has a, they didn't even know I had a book out.
See, these people are, they're the ones out of touch.
They're the ones not aware of what's going on.
The first one, I've got two books in the current New York Times top 10, the children's list.
One's at number three, one's at number five.
And they go back and forth.
The second book, The Brave, or the First Patriots is at number three, Brave Pilgrims, number five.
And Pilgrims goes back and forth to four and five.
But we've got two books, and the first book has been on the list now for seven months.
And it was number one for half of that time.
They don't even know it.
So I get the award and they're shocked.
They can't, but children's book, children, and then they can't believe it.
Isn't political.
So AP has this long story today where they got hold of Robin Adelson, the Children's Book Council, and they just demand for her to admit that the vote was fraudulent.
Just demand that she tell them that the vote was something they couldn't police and it really may not be legitimate.
And she stands up for the vote.
She explains how it all happens.
She's really a gutsy woman because her friends are coming after her on this.
But she's holding firm and she's trying to maintain the integrity and dignity of the organization she leads that she's proud to lead.
And it's got a Children's Book Council and it's all about children's literacy.
It's got a great objective and agenda.
But the drive-bys are just obsessed with discrediting because they just can't accept A, they didn't know it.
B, they can't accept that people are buying it.
C, they can't accept it would win an award.
You know, it is, I'm going to tell you something, folks.
And I know that many of you are going to be shouting back at your radio, why are you surprised?
You're the one that's always telling us who these people are.
I'm not surprised, but I do continue to learn.
So I know the left like every square inch of my again shrinking and yet glorious naked body.
I know them better than they know themselves, as you well know.
But it is still, I've been mentioning this to a lot of people lately.
It is still, when you just stop and think about it in a dispassionate way, it is really stunning what average ordinary American leftists or Democrats have been made to believe about America's conservatives.
It is what they really believe.
They really believe this three-eyed monster race, all these stereotypes, they really believe these stereotypes.
And they are just, you can see the puzzlement on their face.
When you show up amongst them and you're not that, they are really confused.
It's not that they're mad.
They're just genuinely confused.
They really believe.
And we talk about the low information crowd.
This is it.
They really believe what they've been told.
They believe that over half of their fellow citizens are really subhuman when you get right down to when you look at things that they believe about conservatives.
So anything that upsets that apple cart, it just is difficult for them to process and comprehend.
And so it can't be real.
Therefore, there has to be fraud involved or there has to be cheating involved.
And of course, that's just projection because that's in large part how they arrange things for themselves.
Stacking the deck, you name it.
Let's just, well, they, Dawn, just wait till they see the stuffed Liberties on the shelves.
There aren't any stuffed Liberties on the shelves yet.
But we are, this old Rush Revere series is just in its infancy here.
They have no idea.
And I could announce every day what we're going to do, and they would never know until it happened.
Unless, you know, some leftist media watchdog website happened to reprint what we said.
It's amazing how disconnected they are from the mainstream and the bloodstream and the heartbeat of this country.
It is genuinely amazing how removed they are.
I know I shouldn't be amazed, but I am.
Anyway, just a little soundbite just to illustrate: if you were a liberal drive-bys all across the country reporting on Author of the Year, I am, I mean, I knew it was going to be sort of a big deal.
I had no idea, folks.
This just goes to show you.
No matter how much you know, how much you learn, no matter how open you are to learning, as I am, the ability to be shocked and surprised never goes away.
And this award, children's book Author of the Year, has just discombobulated these people.
They're turning this into such a big story.
And we've just got a little montage here of TV, I think a couple of radio stations, just all across the country.
This is a sample of what if you just happen to be a drive-by media person, or if you happen to be an average ordinary American sampling media yesterday, you probably heard this.
The winner of the Children's Choice Book Award for Author of the Year is Rush Limbaugh.
Rush Limbaugh receives another award, and this time it stakes to fourth and fifth graders.
Rush Limbaugh wins an award for his children's book.
Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh has won a children's book award.
Limbaugh's book titled Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims won the Children's Choice Book Award Author of the Year.
The book has been a bestseller.
Can you imagine the leftists driving around hearing this just in stunned shock?
It's fun.
Now, there were six or seven other winners.
They had winners in categories by age, you know, books for six and seven-year-olds, and then first and second graders.
I forget all the categories.
There's six or seven other winners.
Have you heard about any of them?
You haven't?
I mean, you saw them listed in your AP story?
Or did you?
You haven't.
Yeah, you don't know who they are, right?
You know who the other children's.
There's six or there's six or seven.
Well, the well, it was funny because the one network that I'm, you know, I've banned here and don't mention anymore devoted almost their whole day yesterday to the concept that voter fraud was involved here and that there is no way that I would ever win Book of the Year in a legitimate vote among kids.
And it wasn't Book of the Year.
It was Author of the Year.
I didn't win the award for Book of the Year.
The woman who wrote the book Divergent won that.
She won Book of the Year.
I didn't.
These idiots don't even know what they're talking about.
They're so they just sent into orbit with all of this news.
So anyway, it's just it's a it's a it's a never-ending life for me every day is an adult Christmas.
I've been saying this for a long time.
And this is this is another Christmas morning winning this award.
And the aftershock, it's like an earthquake.
Everywhere there's a leftist.
Yeah, well, I know when they find out their kids have it, when they find out, teachers are letting it in the schools.
Oh, wait till they find that out.
And we're not in any danger of them finding it out because I say it here because they're not listening, folks.
So don't worry about that.
Now, this next story, this is a classic, classic example of something I have been talking about for the, well, forever, but in an intense way in the recent past.
Barack Obama to host summit on concussions in youth sports.
President Obama this month will host a summit at the White House devoted to the issue of concussions in youth sports, a regime official said yesterday on May 29th.
President Obama will host a White House summit on youth sports safety and concussions, said Cecilia Munoz, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, announced it on Twitter.
Not the NBC Nightly News, not World News Tonight ABC, not the CBS Evening News, announced it on Twitter.
Obama says here, this is a Washington Examiner story.
Obama's already waded into the debate over the spate of concussions in the NFL, and he has said he would not let his own son play football.
Yet he called Michael Sam and congratulated him for being drafted by the St. Louis Rams.
Yeah, here it is.
He even says, and he made headlines, Obama did, by suggesting that if he had a son, he would not let him play professional football.
Now, see how this works?
Here's a guy.
Here is a cannot run the VA, cannot run the Veterans Administration, cannot run Obamacare, cannot run the economy, cannot do one thing right.
But he is going to have a concussion seminar at the White House for young people.
And you see how this works?
He really cares about our kids.
Such a great concerned guy.
At least he's trying to help people, not just run them down all day like you Republicans do.
At least Obama wants to help.
At least he cares.
At least Obama's concerned.
There are people hurting their heads every day in school, and they're banging them on the ground and in sports.
And he cares.
At least he cares.
And all you do is run people down every day.
All he wants to do is help people.
What's wrong with that?
How dare you be critical of this?
And that's how it works.
And that's why, in the midst of absolute helplessness, despite a hashtag, the girls are not been brought back.
Have they?
The girls are still being held captive, despite the power of the First Lady's hashtag.
She held up a powerful sign.
The girls have been no sign of them.
Still being held.
We've got veterans dying because they're not getting adequate medical care.
You remember this name, Shinseki, this guy that's running the Eric Shinseki, not to be confused with Eric Shinesky.
People mispronounced this.
You remember why he's famous?
Do you remember why he's even at the VA?
Do you know why he Shinseki was one of the first uniformed military people to trash Bush and the Iraq War for the Democrats back in the second term of George W. Bush.
And I'll never forget John Kerry, who you may not know, he served in Vietnam, was running around quoting Eric Shinseki day in and day out.
I'm going to have one of my researchers look into it.
I'm going to find out exactly when it was that Shinseki first popped up as a uniformed.
This is key now, active duty uniform critic.
He was one of the first.
And he became an instant hero of the left and the media.
So they put him over at the VA, and just like everybody else in this, they can't run Diddley Squat.
But they, you know, you tell these people that our troops are raping women and terrorizing children in Iraq, and they'll believe it just like that.
And they'll make a move to put them on trial just like that.
You put them in charge of actually doing something for people, and they fail miserably.
But you put them in charge of caring and saying how much they care, and they excel at it.
Got to take a break.
Back after this.
I wonder if Hillary is going to attend Obama's concussion summit.
Well, I mean, she had, and that'd be a kick in the head, wouldn't it?
Or a trip.
Listen to this.
You want to hear how funny this is?
The AP story, this very, very long AP story on the potential, illegitimate result that saw me win Author of the Year, Children's Book Council.
The potentially illegitimate result.
Listen to this from the AP story.
Quote: An individual voter can vote multiple times and does not need to provide a verifiable email address or proof of his or her age.
You're kidding.
The AP outraged over no voter ID in the children's book awards?
What?
We have to have voter ID for the children's book awards, but not for political office?
Hmm.
Yeah.
You know, here's the thing: the left owns the awards industry, folks.
This is the bottom.
They own it.
They give themselves awards for things that people never see.
This is famous for stuff that's on NPR and PBS.
I mean, you can get away.
Dan Rather got an award for his fake National Guard story.
Tom Brokoff, Peter Jennings, arranged a dinner to give Rather an award to try to save Rather and liberalism and the credibility of journalism after that hoax.
And people like me are not supposed to win awards.
That whole industry is for themselves.
And something went wrong.
And what went wrong is that actual citizens can vote in the award I happen to win, not just leftists.
Okay, just one more thing here on the book award.
One more line from the AP story that Mr. Snerdley furnished me this morning.
A book, talking about Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims.
A book that landed high on the bestseller lists of Amazon and other outlets despite limited mainstream coverage.
They're just so ticked off.
What that means is, hey, nobody in the mainstream media even talked about his book, and yet he ends up on the top of the list.
That's not possible.
How could that happen?
A book that landed high on the bestseller list of Amazon and other atlets despite limited mainstream.
They're admitting they ignored it.
They admit they don't review it.
And yet it's there.
And they're perplexed.
Now, to you and me, it's only common sense.
They have the most popular, most listened to radio program in the country.
To them, it's not mainstream.
It's so easy to tweak these people.
Eric Shinsecky.
His notoriety began even before the Iraq war began.
Eric Shinsecki was a uniformed Democrat, actively opposed to Iraq before it started.
John Kerry loved him, the John Kerry that served in Vietnam, constantly quoting him.
One of the things that Shinsecki said, he was the Army chief of staff at the time.
I mean, this is not an insignificant position.
General Shinseck, the Army chief of staff, told Senator Kerry he was going to need several hundred thousand troops.
This is in response to a question of the committee.
Several hundred thousand troops.
General Shinsecki said there was no way to win the Iraq war.
No way to go in there.
No way to occupy unless we sent several hundred thousand troops.
And then John Kerry said they retired General Shinseki for telling him that.
The president hasn't listened.
This was in a debate on October 8th, 2004.
This was Kerry talking to the American people in a debate about this.
So Shinsecki's been a hero of these people for a long time.
If you think you've heard the name, that's why.
Army Chief of Staff opposed Iraq, said it wouldn't work.
It's impossible.
Bush wasn't adequately prepared.
No way.
Kerry loved it.
Now the guy's running a VA into the ground.
Patients are dying.
New York Times praised Shinseki back in 2009.
A second act for General Shinseki.
They loved this guy.
You have to understand, folks, this is classic.
The guy's not qualified to run anything except in his own mind and in the minds of these leftists because he cares.
All he had to do, he made his bones.
He came out.
He humiliated Bush, he thought.
He criticized Bush.
He was anti-war, anti-Iraq, and he was the one that allowed all the Democrats to – let me reset this picture here for just a second because the vote authorizing use of force in Iraq was a two-phased vote.
The Democrats misread the public mood.
And when the original vote authorizing President Bush to use force in Iraq was taken, a lot of Democrats voted against it.
And then they learned that the vast majority of American people were for it, and they demanded a second vote.
They demand, and Bush acquiesced.
Okay, if you want to vote again, go ahead.
He had the Republicans in Congress go ahead and let them vote again.
So the Democrats could all go on record as supporting the use of force authorization in Iraq.
Now, another thing that you may not remember, this didn't happen overnight.
Bush spent 18 months Building up his case, making his case, traveling all over the country and making speeches, going to the UN.
And, you know, General Powell, the weapons of mass destruction.
But my point is, I'm not trying to relive the WMD thing.
The point is, Bush didn't say on a Friday, we're going to war on Monday and do it.
It was a year and a half.
The president made his case.
The American people overwhelmingly supported him in the first vote to authorize use of force.
I mean, the president even withheld action until Congress had voted.
He gave them an opportunity to be part of it.
And the first vote, a whole slew of Democrats voted no.
And the outrage directed at them from the American people was such that they demanded a second vote.
Hillary, John Kerry, all of them ultimately, in the second vote, voted to go to war in Iraq.
That's why everything that they did after that is hypocritical and phony, baloney, plastic, man, a good time, rock and roll, because they voted for it.
They wanted to act like they never did.
They then spent six years saying Bush lied.
Well, we went back and found out that Bill Clinton in 1998, in the midst of the Lewinsky scandal, used almost the same statistics and the same reasons.
It was uncanny.
The words that Bill Clinton used, seeking support from Congress to use force in Iraq in 98, that Bush used in 2002, 2003.
It really was uncanny.
And when Clinton wanted the authorization to use force in 1998, every Democrat voted for it without thinking about it.
Granted, Democrat president, Democrat Congress, you got it.
Here comes Bush four or five years later.
Same arguments, folks.
Do not doubt me.
Same arguments.
Democrats want no part of it because they politicize everything.
Then they see that the American people are all for it.
They demand a second vote.
And after the second vote, General Shinsecki pops up and says, Well, there's the Niver Prayer.
You can't do this without hundreds and hundreds of thousands of troops.
We're not ready.
This isn't going to work.
And that's all it took.
Shinseki gave the Democrats the cover to run away from their yes votes on the use of force in Iraq and allowed them to pretend those yes votes never happened.
And so for the next six years, the Democrats and the media did everything they could to destroy Bush, to secure defeat in Iraq so they could hang that around Bush's neck.
You remember the daily news stories of the body counts?
All the stories of terrorism committed by American troops.
The now deceased Pennsylvania Congress had an airport named after him.
I forget his name in a minute.
John Murthy.
Some of the stuff that they were saying about our troops, folks, was unconscionable.
And it was all political.
But the guy that really paved the way for all these Democrats, particularly in the Senate, to run away from their authorization to use force votes was Eric Shinsecki, uniformed Army chief of staff, ripping into Bush, gave him all cover because here's a military guy, expert.
He's an Army Chief of Staff.
So he was paid back by being named VA.
Well, here's this.
Here's the New York Times story in 2009.
General Eric Shinseki, the retired Army Chief of Staff, who presciently predicted that stabilizing Iraq would take more troops than had been committed to the invasion, pledged Wednesday to transform the Department of Veterans Affairs to better fulfill the nation's promises to those who have served in uniform.
As Obama's nominee, Obama hadn't even been immulated yet.
This is before the inauguration.
It's January 2009.
This is two days.
In fact, January 14th, two days before I went public and said, I hope he failed.
Just to give you some timeline here.
As President-elect Obama's nominee to head the second largest bureaucracy in the government behind the Pentagon, General Shinsecky said that if confirmed, he would streamline the disability claim system, that he would use new information technologies to improve delivery of benefits and services and focus on unemployed and homeless veterans.
When he retired in June of 2003, after 38 years as a soldier, General Shinseck was the highest-ranking Asian American in the United States in military history.
That speaks for itself, too.
So that's the guy they sent over there to run the VA.
That's made an absolute mess of it.
As big a mess of the VA as Obama has made of Obamacare.
It's such a tragedy.
It is a genuine tragedy that these people are in leadership positions.
They just don't have the qualifications.
And I'm sorry, folks, but caring just isn't a qualification, not by itself.
October 8th, 2004, St. Louis, Washington University.
It's the second debate between President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry, the haughty Senator John Kerry, who at one time in his life served in Vietnam.
They're talking about the Iraq War.
Remember, Kerry was part of the cabal that asked for a second vote after first voting no on the use of force.
They all wanted to vote yes to get on the right side of public opinion.
And then Shinseki came out and said, you can't do this without multiple hundreds of thousands of troops.
And by the way, he was not right.
I mean, the surge, the maximum number of troops we had in Iraq is 170,000.
And Shinseki said we need at least twice that.
But we pulled it off with the surge, and we eventually got out of there victoriously.
What's happened since is another story, but the Iraq war.
See, the problem is too many people think we lost it.
The media has got everybody convinced we lost the Iraq war, that we were humiliated.
Bush didn't know what he was doing because there weren't any weapons of mass destruction, so it was all lost.
It was a humiliating experience in the U.S.
And another reason why we shouldn't use our military very much.
See, this is the left loves military failure, particularly when they're not in the White House, because it just gives them another bit of ammo to advocate for not using the military, except for meals on wheels type thing, social experimentation, this kind of thing.
But military failure, oh, yeah, man, see, we have no business being around.
We have no business.
Now, if the hashtag doesn't work, get the girls back, you're going to wait.
These same people are going to say we should send maybe some armed drones in there instead of just camera-equipped drones.
But I just want to play for you, 2004 St. Louis presidential debate.
Here's John Kerry, who just a year earlier had voted for the Iraq War.
We didn't have enough forces.
General Shinseki, the Army Chief of Staff, told him he was going to need several hundred thousand.
And guess what?
They retired General Shinseki for telling him that.
This president hasn't listened.
Now, my point in playing this is this Shinseki has been a hero to the left since 2003.
He got the VA gig because of it.
Kerry was one of his big champions.
Loved him.
Loved him.
Uniform military Army chief of staff ripping into bush.
That's all the cover they needed.
I got sick and tired of hearing the name Shinseki.
Here, Shinseki.
He was the only person by the end the media or Democrat Party had any military credibility.
Roosevelt didn't have any.
General Myers didn't have any.
Nobody active duty prosecuting the war had any credibility.
Shinseki had all the credibility.
And now look.
Now look at the VA under these people.
It's an embarrassment.
It's worse than an embarrassment.
It's a disaster.
All right.
We always try to get the phone calls in the first hour on Open Line Friday, and we're going to do it.
Jennifer is in Floyd, Iowa.
Hi, Jennifer.
Great to have you here.
Rush, congratulations on Children's Book Author of the Year.
We are so excited to hear about that.
We're just thrilled.
Well, thank you.
Thank you very much.
I bet you were.
My brother said, you've got to understand you winning is like everybody in your audience winning.
It's a big deal.
And because I was, when the word spread about having won the award, I was hearing from all kinds of people.
And I know that the written word is a very powerful thing.
But I've been here, I've gotten more feedback on this book award than anything in a long time.
And I was telling my brother David about it.
He says, because everybody, they're excited for you that this has happened.
And I guess he's got a point.
So I thank you.
And I just had a comment to make, too.
I just think that maybe the liberal media needs to talk to their own kids to find out what the popular books are out there.
This is, I don't quite know how to express this.
There are very few things that I say it that way.
Because as a professional communicator and as a highly trained specialist and as one who's mastered brevity is the soul of wit, I generally don't have any problem saying what I want to say in as few words as possible.
And I don't want to convey naivete either because I'm not.
But despite all that, I still and I shouldn't be.
We should just be able to see what our millennials believe to understand how easy it is to propagandize people.
But I guess in my case, I'm here every day.
I've been here 15 hours a week.
How many hundreds of thousands of hours have I been doing this radio?
But 25 years, you don't need a password to listen to this program.
You don't need a secret decoder wing.
All you have to do is find one of 600 radio stations or go to any number of websites and turn on the radio and listen to it.
It's not a secret.
It's not shortwave.
It's not pirate radio.
It's out there, and it's been the most listened to radio talk show In America, for most of these 25 years.
And yet, despite who I am every day on this program, the left has succeeded in turning me into a caricature and figure that I am nowhere near being.
That millions of people really believe.
And it's not just about me, it's every conservative.
And the things that they believe, when you run into it, when you see how shocked they are that you actually breathe air and don't walk into a room and start beating people up.
It's really a testament to see what these people have been convinced of, people on the left, what they have been made to believe.
It's a stunning thing, each and every day to me.
Back after this, don't go away.
Now, one other thing about John Kerry, he claimed that George Bush fired Eric Shinseki for his disagreement statements on Iraq.
Not true.
Shinseki's retirement was announced in April of 2002, long before he testified about the Iraq war.
His retirement was announced easily a year and a half before he said anything about Iraq.
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