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May 30, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:40
May 30, 2014, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24 7 Podcast.
Yes, America's anchor man is away, and this is your undocumented anchor man, Mark Stein sitting in.
No supporting paperwork whatsoever.
Rush is uh on vacation for a few days.
Actually, a a real vacation, as in uh scramming, getting out, uh putting his feet up, uh, not paying any attention to uh to the news.
I don't know where he's uh he's gone.
After his fulsome words of praise uh for his Royal Highness the other day, I uh I believe Rush is actually staying with the Prince of Wales.
They're they're going pheasant shooting in uh in Scotland.
So uh if you're interested to know where he is, I believe that's where he uh he is.
Uh it's the season of guest hosts, Mark Belling, Eric Erikson, Buck Sexton, Lois Lanner, Donald Sterling, they're all here, all coming up in the uh in the days ahead.
We're live from Ice Station EIB in uh far northern New Hampshire.
I had a lovely uh ride across the Canadian border, beautiful morning, shafts of sunlight shining through the air holes in the trunk of the car, and then when we're half a mile south of the border post, I bang on the trunk and say, Okay, you can let me out now.
So it's great uh it's great to be with you for a busy end to the newsweek, a dramatic end.
Half an hour ago, it was announced that uh General Shinseki has agreed to fall on his sword.
He met uh about uh ten o'clock with President Obama, who had said beforehand that at this meeting he planned to have a quote serious conversation with the VA chief about whether he's the right man to fix uh the VA crisis.
Uh and Obama made his comments about the quote serious conversation during an interview on live with Kelly and Michael.
Because when you want to have a serious conversation, live with Kelly and Michael is the place to have it.
That's how serious this VA crisis is, folks.
The President is having to take time out of his golf game to do damage control on live with Kelly and Michael.
And uh he didn't explicitly say that it was time for Shinseki to go, but he he did say it was time for him to have a serious conversation uh with Shinseki.
And uh live with Kelly, I don't think I've seen live with Kelly and Michael since it was uh live with Regis and Kathy Lee.
So uh presumably someone had a serious conversation with Regis, and now there's this guy Michael there.
So anyway, General Shinseki uh found himself fitted for the Regis Philbin cement overcoat by uh President Obama this morning.
So he's gone, he's history, we'll talk about that.
Uh other generals in the new it's an all-general Friday.
It's a general discussion we're having today on the Rush Limbushour.
Other generals in the news, General Sissy has just won a spectacular victory.
Uh General Sissy is not Vladimir Putin's characterization of Barack Obama.
Uh General Sissy is the uh Egyptian strongman.
You might think that's uh an unfortunate name for a military strongman, but it's a I guess it works on the old Johnny Cash uh boy named Sue principle that if you if you call your strongman General Sissy, he's gonna be one tough mean SOB of a of a strongman.
My name is Sissy.
How do you do?
Now you gonna die.
That's uh that's General Sissy.
He won ninety-three point three percent of the vote in Egypt.
Uh that's pretty much the end of the Arab Spring.
You can forget about.
You can you can stick a fork at it, the Arab Sprig is done.
Uh Mubarak back in the nineties used to win by these margins, these kinds of margins.
But one time, I forget what it was, it was like the nineteen ninety-five, nineteen ninety-seven Egyptian election, and uh the guys who count the votes, Cabin had said, 'Great news, your excellency.
You've won ninety-eight point seven percent of the vote.
And he was furious with them, and he balled out the Egyptian electoral commission, and he fired people at all the rest of it because he said to them, 'Look, I'm not one of these joke dictators like Saddam Hussein or Kim or Kim Jong il.
I'm meant to be in the ballpark of just about plausibility, and when you make it ninety-eight point seven per cent of the vote I've won.
You make me look like an idiot in front of the world.
Well, General Sissy just won 93.3% of the vote in Egypt.
Uh uh and while, as I said, it's a general discussion we're having on the show today, so more generals in the news.
Aside from General Shinseki and General Sissy.
Uh What about uh General Salami?
Are you familiar with General Salami?
He's the deputy commander of Iran's revolutionary guard, Brigadier General Hossein Salami.
Uh his middle his middle name is Haydha, I believe.
Uh Brigadier General Salami said that the collapse of the United States is now near.
The global US Empire is coming to an end, says General Salami in Iran.
Uh no one anymore puts out a red carpet for American officials.
And that's why Obama when he showed up at Bagram militar military base in Afghanistan this week.
Uh Hamid Karzai wasn't there and didn't want to know.
No one puts out the red carpet for America anymore.
The global US Empire is coming to an end, according to General Salami.
Uh and that's uh we'll talk about that on this as this week comes to an end.
Uh by the way, the most important news this week for me personally is that my kid uh won the Obama Award.
Uh my kid is is gradu Yeah, he won the Obama Award.
It's personally humiliating.
H.R. has just said, really, in that sinist in that sinister way that implies you can't win the Obama you can't have a kid who wins the Obama Award and still be a rush guest host.
They may be breaking into the studio to drag me out here.
Uh with the Obama Award is this thing.
It's called the President's Education Award.
My son's graduating from uh grade school, the eighth grade graduation.
And uh the President's Education Award is this uh is a supposedly a great tremendous achievement.
And as usual, it's basically everybody except like four people in the class gets it.
So it's supposed it's supposed to be it's supposed to be a thing for outstanding educ achievement in educational excellence, and it's equivalent to about, you know, a C grade in Albania.
Uh so they but anyway, he get he gets the uh he and like uh everybody except four kids in the class gets the Obama Award.
So they go up to receive the Obama Award from the teacher, and she reads out the letter from the White House congratulating uh my kid on getting the Obama Award.
And he said and goes, I I am counting on you to continue to set a good example and help others whenever you have the opportunity.
I'm reading from the actual letter that Barack Obama wrote to my kid, because it's signed by him, and my kid didn't believe it.
So he he he wet his tongue uh because he thought it was just some printed thing uh to see if the signature would smudge, and the signature did smudge.
Uh so my kid now thinks that Barack Obama actually signed this letter to him, and uh that's why uh, you know, the world has gone to hell and Putin's taken the Crimea and the Iranians are nuclear rising and the Chinese are taking over the Pacific Ocean, is because Barack Obama is spending all this time uh either appearing on live with Regis and Kathy Lee or signing the uh signing the Obama Award letters to eighth grade students across America.
But this is the bit that I I really made me laugh at the end of this week.
Smart driven young people like you, wrote the president to my son.
Smart driven young people like you remind me that America's best days are yet to come.
And that's used to be the way people thought of America.
That was always the expect expectation for two hundred years.
America's best days lay ahead.
And it is hard if you're my kids' generation, I think, to take that seriously.
This is the week in which the uh US economy contracted by one percent.
Do you realize the US economy actually got smaller this week?
That's what it was announced.
And uh uh every everyone said they used to say when there were disappointing uh uh disappointing growth numbers that the US economy had been expected to grow by four percent, by three point five percent, by two point eight percent.
But in fact it only grew by naught point eight percent unexpectedly.
And that was the phrase.
The media were always taken by surprise by the uh lousy economic performance of Obama's America.
Now it's actually contracting.
They're saying, oh, it's no surprise at all.
No, it was the extreme uh cold winter.
It was the weather.
Uh the cold weather caused the economy to contract, to shiver.
It's like your private parts in the bath.
That's it's the cold water makes it contract.
And similarly, the cold climate, uh, the cold winter made the Obama economy.
It's natural shrinkage.
You don't have to worry about it.
You get out of the freezing water and you just uh rub yourself uh up and down with a towel for a bit, and everything will soon be feeling hunky-dory again.
That's their explanation for the shrinkage in the Obama economy.
And uh one percent.
What is g we are supposedly, I think I think it was what was it, two thousand and uh eleven or two thousand and ten might even be, was the first recovery summer.
So this would now make it the fourth or fifth recovery summer.
And we've got an economy that's actually getting what is gonna actually get smaller.
What is gonna happen to change this trajectory where on?
We had the uh we had the president this week uh accidentally the the White House accidentally announced the name of a CIA station chief in Afghan of the CIA station chief in Kabul in Afghanistan, accidentally announced him to the world.
They sent it out to six thousand people.
This is the greatest thriller plot that has ever anyone has ever come up with.
You can read your Tom Clancy, you can read all the CIA thrillers you want.
But in the real world, this is actually what happens.
Uh there's nothing clever about it, there's no great conspiracy.
Uh an administration of Bozos puts the name of the top secret CIA super spy super spook station chief in a press release and sends it to six thousand people around the world because they don't care, because they don't care.
The president, it's not important to them.
The president gives a speech at West Point and can't even disguise no nobody wants to be.
It's it reminded me in in uh in all the warmth and affection, mutual warmth and affection.
It reminded me of uh Russia's pal, the Prince of Wales, having dinner with Diana on their tenth wedding anniversary.
They they they'd been rumored to be in Splitzville for some time.
So the Prince and Princess were prevailed upon by the Queen to go out and have dinner somewhere on their tenth wedding anniversary to show that everything was uh still going well.
And they the two sat there looking at each other as if neither party wanted to be there, and at the end of it they said, Oh, what a marvellous night, darling.
We must do this again in another ten years' time.
That's Obama and his audience at West Point.
The audience didn't want to be there, they sat on their hands, he didn't want to be there, he couldn't disguise it.
And what he said was so uh uh even even under the Obama techniques of just straw man arguing was so pathetic that even his liberal cheerleaders, even the court eunuchs of the Obama media couldn't pretend that it had been a great hit.
Rush mentioned the other day that Christian Amon Poor had panned the speech, the New York Times panned the speech, the Washington Post panned the speech.
And again, it's the same thing like releasing the name of the CIA station chief in a media press release that they couldn't be bothered.
When Obama uh gave that amazing explanation of of uh that American exceptionalism doesn't mean defying international norms, but means living up to them.
That has got to be let's put aside left-wing, right wing, conservative liberal.
You can make a conservative argument that's coherent, you could make you can make a left-wing argument that's coherent.
I mean, people talk about the communist manifesto, but if you read it, the Marx and Engels evidently put a bit of thought into it.
But this guy who's got speech writers that you pay for, says that the definition of American exceptionalism is living up to international norms.
Well, for start, if they're norms, they can't be exceptional.
You know, uh Sweden lives up to international norms.
Does that mean they're Swedishly exceptionalistic?
Uh Finland lives up to international norms, Switzerland lives up to international norms, Belgium, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Solomon Islands.
The Solomon Islands doesn't pretend to be exceptional because it lives up to international.
If it's a norm, it can't be exceptional.
That's nothing to do with left or right, I'm I'm not making a partisan point here.
I'm saying that the the people around Barack Obama can't even be bothered about what mush they stick in his mouth.
And he's like a robot there doing that Wimbledon center court watching the s final in slow motion head swivel from uh one telepromp to the other teleprompter back to the teleprompter with that glassy-eyed look on his face.
He doesn't even pretend to believe it anymore.
Nobody cares.
He doesn't care.
He's talking to these West Point guys.
He said, I suppose I ought to say something about uh American exceptionalism.
What do you got?
Uh exceptionalism is living up to the norms that two hundred other countries.
That's what makes us exceptional.
We do exactly the same thing as two hundred other countries.
Uh he's not even trying anymore.
So it was a tough week for President Obama uh and uh a b a rough week for him uh in some ways, because even Christian Arman Porenko have turned on him.
We will get to all that in the next three hours because it's the end of the week and you know what that means.
Live from Ice Station EIB.
It's open line Friday.
Yes, indeed, 1-800-282-2882.
You know how this works, Monday to Thursday.
The show is in the hands under the tight, ruthless general sissy-like grip of uh a broadcast professional.
But the broadcast professional has flown the coop and taken off and gone on vacation, and so we are out of control today.
Whatever you want to talk about, uh you can have your say by calling 1-800-282-2882 and uh getting through to America's number one radio show.
Any topic that is on your mind, I will I will there will be no control.
We are we are abandoning the world.
It's like um it's it's like the planet uh after Obama has uh evacuated the military presence uh from uh Libya and all these other places.
We are out of control.
Anything you want to talk about, if you'd like to call in and defend the president, I'd love to hear that.
Uh Mark Stein in for rush, lots more still ahead.
Mark Stein Inforush on the EIB network.
Uh the key findings of the interim report from the Department of Veterans Affairs Inspector General, as uh General Shinseki resigns.
Uh key key facts from the uh from the interim report.
About fourteen hundred, and again, this is government, by the way.
About veterans were on an electronic waiting list and had appointments for care.
Another 1700 veterans were waiting for an appointment but were not on the list, putting them, quote, at risk of being forgotten or lost, unquote.
What this means, these 1700 people, they weren't on the waiting list.
They were on the waiting list for the waiting list.
That's how it works.
Because in order for the staff to meet their performance targets and get their bonuses, uh, you're not allowed to be moved on to the waiting list until you can be moved on to the waiting list in a time when you can actually be seen so they can meet their targets and get their bonuses.
So you think you're on the waiting.
You go down there and you say, hello, I'd uh I've come here for my cancer treatment, and they say, uh you're right, you're riddled with cancer.
Don't worry, we put you on the waiting list, and the guys go back home and think they're on the waiting list, and in fact they're just on the waiting list for the waiting list, because that's the way they do it.
Now they've taken action.
General Shinsecki, who's gone now, uh, but one of the last things he did uh was he tried to bring closure to the scandal uh by firing the under-secretary of health, Dr. Robert Petzel, and replacing him with Dr. Jeffrey Murowski, uh, who was uh the director of the VA's Great Lakes Healthcare System.
Among the hospitals that Dr. Morawski was in charge of was something called the Edward Hines VA Hospital in Cook County, uh, where Freedom of Information Act requests find that they spent millions of dollars on bonuses during the last three years uh at Heinz.
Um about uh only about uh one in four uh of the four thousand employees are actually involved in in primary care.
There's about uh three hundred doctors, eight hundred nurses, little under four hundred, and then there's three thousand eight hundred people doing all all kinds of other stuff at this hospital.
Uh and it has it has uh five veterans died waiting for care.
It has the most inefficient physical plant for inpatient care, but it has fantastically generous bonuses uh for its non-medical employees there.
And this is the guy who they have just put in charge now, the guy in charge of this hospital is now the guy that General Shinseki has put in charge of the whole system.
What do you think is the likelihood of anything seriously changing at the VA?
Yeah, Rush is taking a few days vacation.
Uh but don't forget, don't forget, if you go to uh Rush Limbaugh.com, uh it's like he's never gone away, and you need not be discombobulated by any sinister foreign guest hosts.
If you go to Rush Limbaugh.com and you sign up for Rush 24 7, it means what it says.
You can get Rush 24 7 uh in more or less any form that you want him.
You you can uh get the uh audio of the show, you can get transcripts of the show, you can get the ditto cam of uh of of the show, and it's all right there on uh for Rush 24 7 subscribers uh at rush limbaugh.com.
You can also get all your club gitmo gear and uh and everything else.
So go to Rush Limbaugh.com and sign up for Rush 24 7, and uh and it's it's like he's never gone gone away.
It's like he's here all day, every day, uh just by going to Rush Limbaugh.com.
Mark Stein in for Rush.
By the way, if you sign up for Rush Limbaugh.com, it's not expensive, and you'll still have a few bucks left in your pocket, and you might want to consider this if you've got uh no plans.
Uh Hillary speech tickets are now uh sixty-six percent off.
Uh Hillary is coming to the um first bank center in Broomfield, Colorado.
And uh tickets were originally, what were they?
I think they were originally 175 dollars to see Hillary Clinton, but they've now been reduced to $59 to see Hillary at the first bank center in Broomfield, Colorado.
Um I don't know, fifty-nine dollars for Hillary Clinton, that still sounds you might want to wait a bit longer.
They might be down to, you know, 13 bucks in a couple more days.
Uh Hillary Clinton, here's what I love about the sales pitch, though.
They're trying to get people to pack this thing so it doesn't look embarrassing at the first bank center in Broomfield, Colorado, uh Colorado.
Hillary Rodham Clinton served as the 67th U.S. Secretary of State from 2009 until 2013, after nearly four decades in public service.
Her quote, smart power approach to foreign policy repositioned American diplomacy and development for the 21st century.
Hillary Clinton's quote, smart power approach to foreign policy repositioned American diplomacy and development for the 21st century.
Uh this is really the problem that uh Hillary Rodham Clinton left for Barack Obama when he stood up at West Point and made that embarrassing speech a couple of days ago.
I'm a believer in smart power.
Obama was fighting with Strawman, as he always does.
He said, Oh, you know, there are those who say we should send in the US military every time.
Nobody's saying that.
Nobody's saying, you know, you need to invade Libya and you need to invade Syria and you need to invade Nigeria and you need to invade Chad and you need to invade Ukraine.
Nobody's saying that.
Uh I'm a believer in smart power.
The purpose of the military is that you have such overwhelming might that when people think you're serious about something, they respond to that without you having to invade their country.
Because they understand that you've got the most powerful military on the planet, and you can drone them and you can nuke them and you can do whatever you want to them.
Uh And so the purpose of smart power is to put yourself in a position where you don't have to use that.
Rush was talking about this yesterday.
Deterrence that if people take you seriously, you deter potential threats and you advance your interests through smart power.
We had a total vacuum of smart power during Hillary Rodham Clinton's term as Secretary of State, starting with the stupid staples reset button that she presented to the Russian foreign minister, in which the geniuses at the State Department have got the word wrong.
And since then, uh Russia is gone around doing what it's want.
Almost everything that the president said uh in his uh in his speech was actually not true that he said Russia was isolated.
No, Russia isn't isolated.
Russia's just done this big deal with China.
They're they're buddy buddying around like they haven't in uh in ages.
Uh the Arab Springs gone south.
Uh uh we are in a post American world uh as far as uh as far as foreign policy goes.
And I would like to think that the reason nobody wants to buy uh tickets for the Hillary Rodham Clinton speech at the first bank center in Broomfield, Colorado next month, is because there isn't anything worth hearing her talk about for the cost of 175 dollars or 59 or even 59 dollars.
And this is the this is the issue before the American people, just to go back to that pathetic letter that uh President Obama wrote to my poor hapless kid when he said that America's best days are ahead of us.
America's best days are behind us as long as uh the American people want to entrust the government of the nation uh to people who simply aren't up to the job, to this listless sad sack who stood up at West Point a couple of days ago and could barely disguise the the fact that he was bored out of his skull uh just being there as opposed to being on the golf course or paling around on live with Kelly and Michael.
Uh he'd rather have been anywhere else there.
The fact is uh Putin Putin Putin uh is a guy who is aggressive in the pursuit of what he regards as Russia's national interest.
Uh we elect a guy like Obama, and we're now proposing to uh elect Hillary Rodham Clinton, who's deeply implicated uh in the in the evaporation of American power during the Obama years.
And at some point you have if you're gonna be a serious nation, you have to elect serious people.
We have a thing, we have a in the New York Times today there's a story uh by there's an editorial by uh Michelle Obama on the campaign for junk food.
Uh and it begins like this it begins cold.
When we began our let's move initiative four years ago, we set once I don't know who this we is.
When we began, is this the royal we?
When we began our let's move initiative four years ago, we set one simple but ambitious goal to end the epidemic of childhood obesity in a generation.
So that to achieve this goal we have adhered to one clear standard.
The initiatives we undertake are evidence-based, and we rely on who is this woman?
Who elected her?
She's she's the guy's wife.
She's the wife of the guy who's president of the United States.
Uh and this idea that somehow when we did this and we did that and we adhered to one clear standard and we set goals, you're the wife.
You're the wife of the president.
Who elected you?
Who elected you to decide this stuff?
Today we're doing this, we're doing and she's complaining that Congress is now trying to do undo so much of what we've accomplished.
Who are who is this we?
Who are you?
You're the wife of the of of the uh of the head of government, of the chief executive.
That isn't actually a legislative power uh position in its own right.
Uh but we've now we've got a situation where people so somehow think it's such an impressive achievement uh marrying somebody, uh that on the basis of uh it's it's like medieval arranged marriages in European courts uh in the uh in the in the fifteenth century that simply by contracting a A smart marriage,
you're qualified to uh either uh legislate uh on uh on uh childhood obesity and school menus from Maine to Hawaii, or like Hillary Rodham Clinton, eventually ascend to the throne yourself.
And the and the reality is this is simply not a serious way of choosing leaders.
Uh Michelle Obama just happens to be married to the guy who has a job.
She doesn't have the job herself.
Um there's uh one of the things I quite like about uh when Mrs Mrs. Thatcher was Prime Minister in Britain, her husband was was uh was that made no attempt to intervene on policy or whatever, and and and no attempt to be a celebrity, uh any one kind.
Well, his uh the the Thatcher's daughter, Carol Thatcher, an old friend of mine once once told me that her dad was uh heading home to Checkers, the country house of the Prime Minister on a Friday evening, and he went to take uh catch the train at Paddington or whatever station it uh went from,
and he got into a carriage and he'd been it was empty, and he'd been sitting there for about three minutes when a group of rather confused people who uh had certain mental health issues and had been taken up for an outing in London uh uh one uh for a day out in London, were led onto the railway carriage and came in and sat in all the seats all around him.
And then their their minder, as it were, the lady from the institution where they were institutionalized, did a head count to make sure everybody was on board the train before it went off, and uh she goes one, two, three, four, five, six, she stops at Dennis Thatcher and doesn't recognize him, and uh and says to him uh rather aggressively, Who are you?
And he says, Oh, I'm the Prime Minister's husband.
And she looks at him and counts seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, going on to the that's how obscure being the spouse of a prime minister is in in the Westminster system.
And here, here we first of all we let the current First Lady decide school lunch menus from Maine to Hawaii, which is ridiculous.
Uh and then we're proposing to make uh the the spouse of the previous president uh is quite somehow qualified to be pre to be pres the next president because of her four decades of public service.
Her only experience of executive office was a Secretary of State, and on her watch, uh the world, the American world, American order went to hell.
And at some point people just have to get serious.
And again, it's not a left-wing right wing thing.
It's uh it's about looking at people uh who there are four Republican governors of the five uh female governors in the United States for a Republican, right?
So it's not about a war on women, because the only war on women being waged at the electoral level is by Democrats who don't like to nominate female candidates, who don't like to elect female candidates, and when they do, they just want to elect some guy's wife.
The four out of the five female governors in the United States right now are uh Republican.
And there's no chance nobody thinks they're all they're wonderful public service, we should elect them as president.
No, you want to elect somebody who is famous for being the spouse of the person who did it.
This isn't serious.
And that's why Putin and the Mullers and the Chinese Politburo and every rinky dink nothing guy around the planet, right down to those losers in Boko Haram, are kicking the butt of America because we're not electing serious people.
We're just electing, you know, some oh, it makes me feel good because uh, you know, it'd be it'd be it's it's uh she she's four decades of public.
It's n they're not serious people, and at some point you have to get serious, or you depart the stage of history.
Mark Stein Farush, we'll be back in just a moment.
Mark Stein, in for rush, let us go to Jim in Hunter, New York.
Jim, you're live on America's number one radio show.
Great to have you with the first.
Thank you, Mark.
It's a pleasure.
Mark, in the past, Obama said you can keep your doctor, period.
You could keep your insurance policy, period.
And now with the horrible events taking place in the VA, of which I am a member, the other day he said, I will not tolerate it.
Period.
Mark, do you think that whenever he uses the word period, that's his cold word for I'm lying.
Uh so that's you might you might by right there.
That's his way of signaling to people that uh the I I think the way to look on it is this that there's that it's a kind of abbreviation.
You can keep your doctor for a short period.
Uh you can keep your insurance policy for a a short period, and as for the VA, I'm gonna carry on tolerating this for an extremely long period, uh going at least to the end of my term of office.
I think that's what I think period is an abbreviation in that sense, Jim.
But you might be right.
He might be just tipping he might be actually just like tipping the wink to these Do you know the but uh to just to take that seriously for a moment, Jim.
Again, it's the way uh we praise Obama because he's supposedly a gifted orator.
And uh n normally what it means to be a gifted orator is that your words uh live up to your actions.
Uh the reason why um the the reason why great oratory resounds across the centuries is because uh the people who said those words meant those words, and thus those words had meaning.
Uh like when Churchill says we shall fight them on the beaches, he m and we shall never surrender.
He meant it.
That was his policy, uh to not surrender to the Nazis, and he found the words that exemplified it.
Uh when uh likewise when Lincoln at Gettysburg said uh four score and seven years ago, he meant that.
There's uh a great orator is only great because the words are consistent uh with their meaning and uh how he acts.
Uh uh and and the and if you don't have that, then all it is is that you're just like a an extremely glib liar.
You lie easily.
And and period is supposed to be when you say uh when you say uh uh like when Rush says uh let me tell you I've had enough of you lousy third rate guest hosts.
Uh you better understand one thing.
Your job is on the line, period.
Uh you use that because it's meant to be an emphatic reinforcer that underlines the truth of the statement you're making.
And when Obama says you can keep your doctor, period, uh I'm not going to tolerate this at the VA period.
I won't rest until I've gotten to the bottom of Benghazi, period.
Uh anyone who thinks that uh Putin is just going to be able to walk in and take uh the Crimea and uh uh other bits of Ukraine he wants is sadly mistaken, period.
Uh it means nothing.
It means nothing.
It means it exemplifies why Obama is in fact such a dud as an orator, because he denudes the language of any meaning.
An orator for an orator, his currency is words.
Uh when when words uh when you render words meaningless, when you play the period card uh hither and yon all over the place, you basically uh you basic you basically devalue your own currency.
It's like the red line.
He draws the he draws the red line in the sand in Syria, and then he says, Well, when I said it was a red line, it's not really a uh bright red line.
It's just like a sort of pale pink uh red line you can vaguely see in the sands of Syria.
It wasn't my red line, it was really the international community's red line.
When you're you're stripping language of meaning.
And that's why he is not a great orator.
He's actually the one of the world's biggest duds as an orator, as the West Point speech exemplified, because his words are entirely disconnected from meaning.
Uh and they and then you know, he he belongs to the modern world, so they're just like speech writers' words anyway.
But a good speechwriter, uh again, the art is to conjure the words in the person's character and related to what it is he's actually doing.
And and the pajama boy speechwriters at the White House can't even be bothered doing that.
So they say things like uh like it like the thing I mentioned at the beginning, you know, that American exceptionalism means following international norms.
So America is about as exceptional as uh as Sweden or Ireland or the Netherlands or Slovenia.
And and nobody spots it.
Nobody says, well, wait a minute, this is meaningless drivel.
Everyone thinks, oh don't worry, it's meaningless drivel.
But the president looks so cool when he speaks meaningless drivel.
Why monkey with a winning formula?
That's what we've got.
It's nothing to do with oratory, and not only won't it be remembered in 100 years'time, I'm not talking Gettysburg or anything here, it isn't remembered 15 seconds after it floats out of his mouth and joins the gaseous uplift.
Markstein for us, more straight ahead.
Stephen uh Stephen Foulard uh has uh has just tweeted me and he he uh he says that uh it's not actually a period when he says you can keep your doctor period or I'm mad as hell about what's going on at the VA period.
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