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May 22, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
31:38
May 22, 2014, Thursday, Hour #3
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Hi, folks, and welcome back.
Great to have you with us, Rush Limbaugh, half my brain.
Tied behind my back just to make it fair.
Telephone number if you want to be on the program.
800-282-2882, the email address L Rushball at EIB net.com.
When you grab that last Pelosi soundbite, I just threw the transcript away and I can't find it's an a mess.
It's sound by number 24.
And it was it's Pelosi, this is what they're setting up, uh, folks, in terms of this VA scanner.
Obama announced his investigation yesterday.
And by the way, before we get to number 24, while you find number 24, grab numbers 11 and 12.
Because this is somewhat interesting.
They didn't get the memo on how to deal with this.
It's it's actually somewhat amazing.
Last night, Anderson Cooper 360, the correspondent Drew Griffin, this guy's already made news for not understanding how Obama could go out there yesterday and act mad.
This guy doesn't get it.
How do you how do you not know your president?
We had that sound but yesterday.
How does he not know what's going on?
So last night after the press conference, and I want you to hear the shock in this guy's voice.
Drew Griffin interviewed the medical director of the Phoenix VA post-deployment clinic, her name is Dr. Catherine Mitchell, about the VA hospital medical treatment during this discussion about wait lines for veterans to receive treatment.
This is what the well, this this is the conversation took place.
You are telling me that our troops coming back from war, now separated from active service.
Coming to the Phoenix VA for follow-up care for war injuries are being put on a waiting list and made to wait six to ten months?
Yes, or longer.
You're kidding.
No, but it's the same for everyone.
Everyone is made to wait.
That's now?
That's happening now.
Yeah.
Can you tell me what type of person we're talking about?
We're talking about people that were injured by being blown up by IEDs.
We're talking about people who had a mental breakdown and have severe PTSD and can't are having trouble functioning.
We're talking about veterans that were severely injured.
Now, the CNN guy can't really he can't believe what he's hearing.
He can't believe this.
It doesn't make sense.
It doesn't compute.
Now, somehow, they have got to get from this to it being Bush's fault.
See, because this guy, Drew Griffin, this is the normal reaction to have.
We're six years into the Obama administration.
We're still in Afghanistan because of Obama.
He's got his drawdown, but he's not pulled everybody out yet.
We're still there.
Gitmo's still open.
And then we're still capturing bad guys around the planet.
And so this guy learns about all these delays, people not being treated, and worse, and he can't believe it.
That's the normal reaction.
And this follows, you'll have to remember we had a soundway from the same reporter yesterday who couldn't believe that Obama would go out yesterday and act like he didn't know about any of this and be mad at the bottom of it.
So then after this little exchange, Anderson Cooper weighed in with his two cents.
I mean, it's really incredible.
I mean, you know, we all hear about delays and stuff, but I mean, there's somebody who's recently returned with a war injury with an IED injury, lost a limb, severe PTSD, is told to wait ten months.
I mean, that's insane.
It's insane.
Now, what they're going to have to do is transfer this incredulity and anger to it being the fault of George W. Bush.
Because right now the normal reaction, and this is six years.
We're into the Obama administrator.
We're in a second term.
How can Shinseki or Obama or whoever allow this to happen?
That's a normal reaction.
So let's re-listen to Pelosi from earlier today as she sets the stage for how all of this at the VA is going to end up being blamed on George Bush.
Maybe when we go into war, we should be thinking about its consequences and its ramifications.
You would think that would be a given.
But maybe it wasn't.
And so we go into a war in Iraq, uh, going to Afghanistan, leave Afghanistan for Iraq with unfinished business in Afghanistan ten years later.
We have all of these additional veterans in the past five years, two million more veterans needing benefits from the VA.
That's a huge, huge increase.
So you see, Bush, ten years later, we have all these additional veterans.
So this anger that you just heard see and this incredulity, they're going to blame it on Bush, unnecessary wars.
We didn't need a war to get bin Laden.
Osama was killed by Obama without a war.
We didn't need a war.
Bush, these two wars there were wasted, and now all of these wounded vets are coming back, and poor Obama, he can't handle the load.
And nobody could.
Because it was Bush's fault.
This is where they're going to take this.
That's that's what this investigation and folks, they're getting away with blaming Bush on everything else for everything else.
I mean, the public, 5149 still blames Bush for the economy, not Obama.
You just heard this guy from Cranberry, New Jersey.
His insurance premiums are $16,000 a year precisely because of Obamacare.
He's blaming Bush.
And he's he's applauding Obama because Obama he thinks Obama is sticking it to the insurance companies.
Getting even with them, because everybody hates the insurance companies.
Obama does too, and he's getting even with them for us.
Wait till this guy finds out Obama's gonna bail him out so they can continue to charge him $16,000 a year.
But I remember, ladies and gentlemen, when the Democrats used to pretend we had to fight in Afghanistan.
Remember the whole time we're in Iraq, the Democrats said this is a wrong war.
We don't need to be here.
We need to be in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is where that war was launched.
Afghanistan's where been a lot in this.
Afghanistan, they couldn't wait to get into Afghanistan.
But the wars are irrelevant.
The problem is the covering up, the lying, the hidden waiting list.
People dying because of the lying.
They're not they're not dying because of the wars.
They're not dying because of Obama or Bush.
They're dying because the VA can't handle it.
And so they're coming up with hidden waiting lists and any number of other things to cover up the inability to handle treatment.
And the people at the VA wanted to keep getting their bonuses, and the bonuses were rooted in numbers of people treated.
So they had to doctor the waiting list to make it look like more people were moving off the waiting list and getting treated, which is why they set up the secret waiting lists.
They transferred people to those to get them off the main waiting list to make it look like they'd been processed.
That's why the waiting lists were secret, so nobody could find them.
But the lid blew, and people have found out about it now because of a whistleblower who has told everybody what was going on.
And Bush didn't do any of this.
The Republicans didn't do any of this.
The Democrats own the Veterans Administration right now.
Shinseki and these guys have been running it since Obama was immaculated.
David.
But nevertheless, we now know that there are plenty of really, really ignorant, gullible people who are just they want to blame Bush for all this.
So much has their hatred been ginned up.
So much do they hate Bush.
I mean, it took the media six years to make it happen or five, but they...
They pulled it off.
Now let's may as well stick with the same basic overall theme.
It's an AP story today.
And the headline, nearly half don't care who controls Congress.
Isn't this fascinating?
It was just last week.
We had two polls.
And they were devastating for the Democrats.
One poll said that by 65 to 30, the American people want people in Congress who are going to oppose and roll back Obama policy.
65 to 30.
There was another poll that was similar to that.
The margin was 60 to 30.
People wanted a different party from the president running the show in Congress.
So today, week or two later, nearly half don't care who controls Congress.
Isn't it amazing?
This is a push poll, and I think what this poll has is its purpose is to lay the groundwork to deny the Republicans a mandate if they happen to win big in the midterms.
Who cares?
This is how the story begins.
It's by Connie Cass and Jennifer Gesta.
Who cares what party controls Congress?
Only about half of Americans, the other 40 per six, 46%.
They don't care.
Nearly half of the American people don't care who controls Congress.
See, the midterms don't matter, folks.
Even if the Republicans win in a landslide, they're not gonna have a mandate because nobody cares.
Half the country doesn't care who wins.
Now, according to the polling data, the AP asked the question, generally speaking, would you say that you personally care a good deal which party controls control of Congress uh in the elections this fall, or don't you care very much which party wins?
And the results for that were fifty-three percent care a good deal and forty-six percent don't.
And the media is hyping the forty-six percent as being almost half.
But it's a weird question.
It sounds as if you have a personal stake in which party would win.
So there's that.
Um an effort here to make it look like nobody cares who wins the midterms.
So if the Republicans do win, they have no uh no mandate.
Then of course the New York Times story, Democrats seek issues to lure midterm voters after races boy the GOP.
And again, this story is all about how the Democrats win big when they portray Republicans as uncaring toward working class Americans.
So we see where all of this is headed.
Blame Bush.
Nobody cares who runs Congress.
There really therefore isn't any need for any major change.
Uh and Bush is responsible for the VA scandal.
That's a quick time out.
We'll come back, we'll resume before you know it.
Don't go away.
Heading back to the phone, Zell Rush Bowl.
We're at 800-282-2882.
This is uh this is Jones in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Hi, great to have you with us.
Hey, Rush.
Jones, I've been listening to you since the Ross Perot days.
It's been a great 20 years.
Um to get into it.
You know, with this VA fiasco.
I would say that ever all these pundits are trying to frame up the administration as being incompetent, and then they might go so far as to say they don't care.
But I just think it's a conscious decision to ignore this problem, and it's it's because the this problem concerns a voting group that uh is votes statistically is Republicans or conservatives.
And I think that's backed up by the point that Rush.
Well, I think it's backed up by the point that uh Obama even said in a speech to uh a Latino group group that uh that he was talking to about uh one of their issues, uh a left-wing issue that uh either uh that uh, you know, we're gonna reward our friends or punish our enemies.
And I just don't see uh I think that you know Obama will come will come out to the national stage and give speeches about how a single woman who's 30 years old in law school can get she'd get five dollars worth of birth birth control every month, but he can't come out in his six years of his presidency and say Uh our our veterans are waiting six months for treatment and they're dying.
That that shows me that he's he's caring about different groups of people based on their political leanings.
Based on their well, of course.
Uh I I'm I'm not sure what your point is.
I I think I think my point is that he that uh you know veterans in the military and any other group that doesn't statistically vote for Obama, he considers their enemies.
Yeah, but but but the uh so okay, so you think that Obama is purposely ignoring the vets and their health care because they didn't vote for him in the first place, and so he's not going to spend a lot of time or effort on them.
Instead, he's gonna spend his time on the women who want birth control paid for everybody by everybody.
Yes, yes, yes, he purposely ignored them because he already recognized that it was a problem six years ago when he started when he was campaigning for his administration.
Yeah, but as I said, look, one of the reasons see one of the reasons he had to ignore this, there's this thing called practicality.
He's out there trying to sell Obamacare.
He's trying he's working hard on this.
He's not gonna get one Republican vote for it.
They're having to rewrite the rules.
They're they're lying to people like Bart Stupak and any number of things about abortion and whatever they can do to get every Democrat to vote for this thing because not one Republican will.
And they they remember that the Scott Brown race in in Massachusetts.
I mean, it was nip and tuck here.
And Obama could not afford during this high cell period for Obamacare, for any of this VA scandal to come up because it would illustrate it would just make it all that much harder to get Obamacare signed or passed before he could sign it.
So they had to bury this VA story.
Now you you think they're bearing because Obama doesn't care about vets and this and this kind of thing.
I I know what you're saying.
If you're a Republican and you're in line, you're gonna remain at the end of the line.
If you're Democrat, they'll move you to the front and take care of you, whatever it is.
But in this case, I mean, we had the news from CBS today.
They they've gone out and pulled veterans and veterans, and they're not blaming Obama for this, Jones.
CBS made a big deal of it this morning.
He went out, they surveyed some veterans overnight about Obama's speech yesterday, and they're not blaming him, they're blaming Shinseki.
There's no reason for Obama to be mad at the vets and so forth.
But again, here again I'm remind you of something else that came up earlier on the program.
We let's call Ralph from Ralph who rem remembered and I didn't.
That Obama in in March of his first year in office 2009 actually suggested that wounded veterans pay for their own medical care.
We had to get rid of Tri-Care.
He wanted them since they volunteered.
Since they weren't drafted, since they volunteered, they should pay for their own health insurance for injuries and wounds incurred in battle.
Now I don't know that anybody remembers that.
Our caller did.
Um but I know your point is that Obama doesn't care about veterans and and they won't vote for him.
Uh and so because they're not going to vote for him, he's not going to devote a lot of uh time to.
I don't deny that that that factors in the way Obama does things.
I don't think that's so much as what uh is going on here.
Remember, he's not on the ballot anymore, but the Democrat Party is.
Uh Glenn in Fort Worth, Texas.
Great to have you.
Thank you for waiting.
You're on the EIB network.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
Thanks for taking the call.
You bet.
Thank you for um your um boomed your ears, your voice and your enthusiasm sounds a whole lot better.
Um reason why I'm calling is my dad retired from the army.
He was in the battle of the bulge driving a tank.
He was involved with the VA.
I was there as a youngster, and um he he didn't get good treatment at all.
And I've gone into the Air Force, I have retired from the military, and I have issues dealing with uh service connected, and I chose not to go to the VA for help.
I used my plane, my insurance from the company in the um TRI-Care to go to civilian doctors that I know in hospitals that I knew that would take care of me, and they did.
I did not trust the VA.
And I saw a movie dealing with the Fourth of July with Tom Cruise.
And that was a pretty bad movie to come out, and it kind of put a real bad taste into a lot of um a lot of people.
But anyway, I want to let you know that I told my family, if anything comes where I cannot do anything, do not take me to a VA hospital.
And this has been a wish of yours for how long?
For as long as I have been married, which is over 38 years.
So is your you you're essentially saying that what's going on in the VA here, there's nothing new here.
It's always been someplace you'd rather not go if you didn't have to.
Yes.
There has been like you've been talking about it's a culture, and there's a lot of things going on in there as a bureaucracy, and then you know, the saying that is good enough for government work.
That is a saying that's been going on for a long time.
Well, but you know, you were, I guess you were you were see, it always comes down to this.
You were fortunate.
You didn't have to.
You apparently had means to go elsewhere.
And some vets don't.
They're trapped and have to go there and have no choice.
And you know, the Now I gotta take a break here.
You hear the ear splitting tone.
Be right back.
Don't go away.
And we're back.
Great to have you.
El Rushbow, as usual, talent on loan from God.
I want to go back for just a second to this AP story on how nobody cares about who wins the midterms.
It's a predicate, if you will, to deny the Republicans a mandate if they happen to win and win big.
The Associated Press is attempting to set up the fact that people don't care about the midterms.
It really doesn't matter.
And then half of them, you know, nearly half don't care who wins or anything.
But that's not the point.
Because this poll is about something we already know.
And what we already know is that voter participation rates in midterm elections traditionally is way down when compared to presidential election years.
That in fact is what was noteworthy about 2010.
That turnout was through the roof.
And it was through the roof because of the Tea Party.
And that that even needs to be said.
There is no Tea Party.
You know, the media loves to talk about how the Tea Party is dead.
There isn't really a Tea Party.
There is no leader.
There are nobody running for the Congress or the Senate on the Tea Party ticket.
There is no Tea Party building.
It is a mindset.
It's it's average Americans fed up with professional politicians.
And it's it's people who oppose runaway government spending, runaway expansion of government.
They're worried about their kids and grandkids' future financially, they're worried about freedom and liberty, and they're they want to maintain the principles that founded the country.
But there is no Tea Party per se.
But what what happened in 2010 was that a lot of people who had never formally organized.
They had voted, but they never formally organized in terms of uh opposing or supporting something, did.
And it only was called the Tea Party because of the Rick Santelli on CNBC referred to the Tea Party and the throwing a T in the Boston Harbor and people objecting here and the in in the here and now and uh In a way similar to what happened during the days of the founding.
But the traditional midterm election turnout, we already know that voter participation rates are around 40%.
We know that 50 to 60 percent of the public doesn't care enough in midterms to go vote.
So they're taking a story.
There's nothing new about.
And nothing new in that 56% of the people or 46% don't care who wins because 46% don't vote.
But that does not tell us anything, because what you have to look at and what you have to survey, what you have to poll, is the percentage who do care and who are going to vote, and what they think and what's animating and motivating them.
And that's what the AP's not doing.
The AP is ignoring them and taking the 46% and saying, I'm not care enough, I'm not going to go vote.
It doesn't matter.
And they're using that 46% to say Republicans, if they win, aren't going to have a mandate.
It's done purposefully.
The only relevant thing here is what do people who are actually going to vote think.
And I don't care if it's 10% or 20 or 30, they are the ones who matter.
And how they vote matters.
And the AP is studiously purposely ignoring them and focusing, as far as their news story is concerned, for low information consumption.
And the headline's supposed to be, nobody cares.
This midterm is no big deal, anybody.
Look at it.
46% don't even care who wins.
That's because they're not going to vote.
They never do.
Unless it's something outrageously unique that drives them like 2010 did.
And this could be as big as 2010, I think.
But but the fact that 46% aren't going to vote is immaterial.
Doesn't matter, except it can be used by the media to spin a story that things aren't bad for the Democrats when they really are.
And that's what that story was trying to do.
Plain and simple.
You have to know how to analyze this stuff.
That's why I say don't try this at home.
And don't leave it up to the professional analysts on cable TV, because half of them are not they're gonna they're gonna totally miss the trick in that story.
I guarantee you, if that story happens to find its way to cable TV, you're gonna hear it reported.
Hey, you know what?
In all this talk that we've done about the midterms, it turns out that 46% don't even care who wins.
And that's going to be the focal point, meaning nobody's really fired up about Obama.
Nobody cares.
It's not that much concern.
And it's going to be used to dispirit those of you who do care and plan to show up.
Purposefully done.
Don't let it bother you because it's doesn't matter.
What matters is who is going to vote and how they're going to vote and what they think.
And that is going to have impact because it's going to be 56%.
Still a majority, according to their own story.
Mike in Washington, you're next.
Great to have you here, sir, on the EIB network.
Hello.
Thanks, Rush.
How are you?
I'm great.
Glad you called.
Listen, I I want to talk about this VH fiasco.
I lay the whole thing right at Obama's and the Democrat Party's feet.
Obama for six years has been cutting budget, cutting budget, and it sure as heck hasn't been the food stamp budget has been cutting.
And if you want to go back even further, sometime in the early 90s, early in the Clinton administration, there's a big move on to convert VA beds to AIDS beds.
You may remember it.
We wanted to uh the Clinton administration wanted to close down VA hospitals because if uh well, never mind.
I think that question.
Uh yeah, if if uh if if if aids were involved in this VA scandal, what do you think would be you think there'd be any delays, a secret waiting list and all that?
There wouldn't be any delays.
No.
Not at all.
The idea is to take it away from people who earn the right to the bid and give it to people who didn't earn the right to the bid.
Well, but didn't, but I mean it that it's it's clear that that the Democrats are gonna pander to donors and and constituency groups here.
And you know, last guy that called, or one of the most recent callers said, look, Obama doesn't like military people.
They don't vote for him, and so they're not gonna be at the top of his list.
Like you say, food stamp recipients will be.
And there's not that many of us anymore.
Veterans, you mean.
Yeah.
I mean, World War II had 15 million people in uniform.
Vietnam.
Wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
You heard her.
Nancy Pelosi today saying that we got we got two wars, two unnecessary wars, versus worth of uh uh wounded veterans.
Yeah, right.
And that they're flooding the VA system.
You don't you won't even want to talk about it.
Well, you don't have to convince me.
Yeah.
But she did.
She's out there saying that these two unnecessary wars have flooded the VA with wounded that we wouldn't otherwise have had.
And yet you're saying that this number pales in comparison to World War II.
That's obviously true.
Well, yeah, and and it's like it's like the fire department.
You don't close down the fire department because you have a couple of good years with no fires.
You don't close down the VA because you have a couple of good administrations with not many veterans needing the facilities.
But you've got to be there when it's needed.
And the Democrat Party keeps squeezing, squeezing when we have a uh uh uh a time of relative peace, they squeeze it down and then they scream and holler when there's not enough when something gets hot.
It's it's mindless.
It's insane.
They don't mean in it.
This screaming and hollering, though, it's it's phony baloney plastic banana good time rock and roll anyway.
I mean, I can't I can't get there.
They're complaining about it because it's a scandal.
I mean, it's uh they they've got to I think Obama had to go out and act mad about it.
If he really was mad, it wouldn't have taken him all these years to uh to show it.
But you've looked he's got a point here, uh folks, Mike does because uh uh World War II vets.
This is gonna shock you.
World War II veterans were eleven percent of the American population back then.
We're nowhere near that number, percentage-wise today, with Afghanistan and Iraq and whatever other deployments there have been in the uh in the war on terror.
Eleven percent of the population, World War II vets.
Nowhere near that now.
But I do think, you know, we'll find out soon enough.
But the the Democrats, they're still gold in blaming George W. Bush for whatever.
And Pelosi's little press conference this morning sets the stage for what I think Obama's unnecessary investigation.
It's like this Drew Griffin guy at CNN said yesterday when Obama announced investigation.
He actually went on CNN.
I'm surprised he was back today.
He went on CNN and said, What do you mean investigate?
We already know what happened here.
We know about the secret lists, we know about the deaths, we know that people aren't being treated.
What do we mean?
Pelosi's little pressure today told us why.
They're gonna do an investigation.
They're gonna find out the VA has been flooded with injured and wounded vets because of two unnecessary wars started by George W. Bush.
And that's all they're gonna have to say.
They're into turnout here, folks.
They've got to find something to turn people out.
They can't turn people out in November saying, vote for us so you can keep on getting more of this, because nobody wants more of what they've offered.
So they've got they've got to scare everybody about the Republicans and what they're gonna do and how bad and mean they are, and Bush works magic in that regard.
So just keep a short.
What was your question, Sertley?
Sertley?
Uh because that's veterans.
The reason they're worried that this could really hurt it because it's veterans, veterans being wounded, veterans dying, veterans not being treated.
That that crosses party lines in most parts of the of the country.
Okay, folks, that's it.
Sadly, the fastest three hours in media have to come to a screeching halt.
And that doesn't mean we're finished.
We never are.
And there's much more tomorrow.
Open line Friday, which will be back at it in 21 hours.
So hope you have a nice rest of the day, and we will be back revved up and ready to go all over again tomorrow.
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