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June 6, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:27
June 6, 2014, Friday, Hour #2
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Today's last work day of Russia's vacation.
He's going to be back on Monday.
It's also the end of the week, and with a one-hour delay, that means live from New York City.
It's open line Friday.
I am indeed in New York.
Complete waste of a city on.
A guy like me.
The last time I was here, I did at least trudge my way around to the uh New York Auto Show.
Otherwise, I do nothing.
I'm always nervous that I'm not going to have enough show preps, so I want to get up really early, meaning I go to bed really early, and all of New York is wasted on me.
I didn't watch any of Game One of the NBA finals last night.
The heat couldn't handle the heat.
You know about this, the air conditioning didn't work in the San Antonio arena.
And for whatever reason, the Miami Heat, you think being from Miami, they'd be able to handle heat, plus it's their name, Heat.
They had trouble with it.
LeBron James had trouble with cramping, and I guess he left the game for good with four minutes left when it was still a two or a three-point game.
All I know is what I read in the media on this because I was already in bad witches.
That's pathetic, isn't it?
Here I am in New York.
People always ask me, act like you from Milwaukee, what do you do when you're in New York?
Nothing.
I am single.
I can do anything I want.
I go to bed, that's what I do.
I eat I I'm like an elderly person.
I eat dinner like at 5 30 at night, go back to the hotel room, do a little bit of reading, and go to bed.
So anyway, I forgot to do something on yesterday's program, and now it's going to seem so insincere.
This isn't going to seem Obama-like.
This is going to be Clinton like.
I was going to predict that I think San Antonio is going to beat Miami and win the series.
But now that San Antonio's up one-nothing, oh yeah, of course you're going to say that now.
So I know it just sounds terrible.
My thinking is this San Antonio is the best team in the NBA all year.
They have the best coach in the NBA and maybe one of the two or three best coaches of all time.
They've got a great combination of veterans that are still at peak level and very good young players.
And they really should have won last year, were it not for Ray Allen's tremendous three-point shot and that miracle comeback.
And I think it was game six in Miami, the game in which everybody went home, San Antonio would have won the thing last year.
But saying it now today just sounds unbelievably insincere, and something like Bill Clinton would do.
Wait until after game one was over.
Come on and then make your prediction and say, oh, I was going to say it yesterday but forgot.
So I'll make up for that.
Sometime on today's program, I won't tell y'all who's going to win the Belmont Stakes, and much as you don't want to hear this, I don't think it's going to be California Chrome.
Let's dive into the news today.
Oh, open line Friday.
That means I should put out the telephone numbers.
1-800-282-2882.
Bergdahl News.
Now the spinning of the Bergdahl story continues.
After the original version was put out, you know the version that we were told by the President of the United States, after the original version was put out and nobody believed it because it wasn't true, the version put out by the President of the United States.
We're creating new narratives.
The New York Times reporting yesterday that we had terrible fears that Bergdahl was going to be killed.
Really, that's the reason that we went to this extraordinary effort.
We thought he was going to be killed.
How come the president didn't mention that the first day or the second day or the third day or the fourth day?
How come Susan Rice didn't throw that on in her talking points?
And now, well, all these people that are concerned that he was a deserter was he really a deserter.
Today's New York Times.
Bergdahl is said to have had history of leaving post.
Apparently, according to a classified military report that just happens to have landed in the hands of the New York Times now, when the administration needs cover for its decision.
Sergeant Bergdahl apparently repeatedly walked away from his unit.
Sometimes for a few minutes, sometimes for hours at a time, that he'd go off for a smoke or go off to see the sights or go off because he wasn't happy, and he'd always come back, and it was an indication of the lax discipline that was in place in his unit.
And what happened that night was probably no different.
I don't know.
I think that the people who say that they know whether or not Bergdahl was an out and out deserter or wasn't, don't know.
I wasn't there.
I know what the people in his unit think.
They think that this is a person who wasn't where he was supposed to be, probably deliberately and was planning to do it.
But I don't know.
What I do know is that because of Bergdahl, we went through extraordinary efforts militarily, with people trying to bring him back, and people were killed as a result of that.
And now, without regard to what you think of the deal, five Taliban commanders are back free because Bergdahl wasn't where he was supposed to be.
I think it is too early to definitively judge him or what he did, but it's certainly undeniable that all of this happened because one of our people wasn't where he was supposed to be, and we've made important and controversial decisions ever since.
The president's doubling down on all of this.
Here's his latest quote.
I make absolutely no apologies for making sure that we got back that we get back a young man to his parents, and that the American people understand that this is somebody's child.
It's an odd word, and that we don't condition whether or not we make the effort to try to get them back.
Oh, really?
We don't condition whether or not we make There are all sorts of Americans that are grabbed up that we don't do anything to get them back.
We've had hostages held that we didn't make an effort to get back.
We still have an American boy, is he a Marine being held in Mexico?
What have we done to get him back?
Suddenly this high ground, this imperative, in fact, these are always things in which we make decisions.
The problem I have with getting him back on these terms, and I don't quarrel with the president.
We did have an obligation to try to get him back.
I don't deny that.
Whether or not Bergdahl is a good guy, bad guy, or just another American trying to make his way who may have made some poor choices, that's an irrelevancy.
Even if he deserves military punishment, that punishment is supposed to come from us, not from some goon squad off in some foreign country.
We did have an obligation to try to get him back.
The question is the price and the choice to negotiate him back rather than succeed in in a rescue that is able to bring him back.
We have unleashed back into the world five Taliban commanders.
There is every reason to believe that they will rejoin the war on terror.
The Taliban itself is celebrating this as an incredible.
In fact, we've even heard from the Mullah Omar.
Remember him?
He's been off the charts for a while.
The Mullah Mohammed Omar gloating in a public statement about the trade.
I extend my heartfelt congratulations to the entire Afghan Muslim nation, all the Muhadin Muhadin, and to the families and relatives of the prisoners for this big victory regarding the release of five Taliban leaders from Guananama prison.
So the Mullah Omar is cheering this.
We've got another Taliban commander, quoted on the website of Time Magazine Time.com, asked whether the Taliban would be inspired by the exchange to kidnap others.
He laughs.
Definitely, he says, it's better to kidnap one person like Bergdahl than kidnapping hundreds of useless people.
It has encouraged our people.
Now everybody will work hard to capture such an important bird.
So why'd we do it now?
Was it really because we had imminent reason to believe that something awful was going to happen to Bergdahl?
Or was it that the timing politically was right?
I've argued that Obama wants to clear out Gitmo.
I also believe that Obama wants to negotiate with the Taliban, a way to get out of Afghanistan once and for all so it doesn't look like he's cutting and running.
It serves those purposes.
But why last weekend?
Why that day?
Was it because of the VA?
Were there other political concerns?
Kim Strassel, today's Wall Street Journal.
She writes, debate all you want over what motivated the White House to do the Bergdahl swap.
What's beyond debate is that politics drove its rollout, And that there was nobody with enough seriousness or clout in the White House to stop it.
It was a political desire to sweep the Veterans Administration scandal off the front pages that put President Obama in the rose garden with Sergeant Bergdahl's parents.
When Secretary of State John Kerry or even a press release would have given distance.
It was a political desire to claim a foreign policy victory that saw Susan Rice again peddling a phony story, this time about how Sergeant Bergdahl had served with honor and distinction when senior officials had to know that was questionable.
Who failed to warn the president that Sergeant Bergdahl's fellow soldiers would surely speak out?
Who failed to walk him through the ABCs of the statute?
He signed requiring congressional notification or warn him of the bipartisan fury his cold shoulder would inspire.
Most remarkable is that despite the endless loop of foreign policy fiascos, this White House seems oblivious of the need for institutional change.
It has had its share of experienced hands, Bob Gates, Leon Panetta, come and go, but shows no evidence it learned from them.
In Obama world, there is only politics, and so the world will continue to burn.
That's Kimberly Strassel, Wall Street Journal.
She argues that politics is driving all of this.
All right, to economic news.
It's the beginning of the month.
That means we have the monthly job report.
The United States economy added 217,000 workers in May, a bit more than the average monthly gain over the last six months.
According to the New York Times, a sign the economy may...
Finally, be gaining momentum after a week's start to the year.
The key word there, may, and the other key word finally.
The narrative we've been given is that the reason the GDP was down in the first quarter is because we had the harsh winter.
Consumer spending was down, economic activity was down.
The cold, awful winter weather that took over much of the country was a drag on the economy and therefore a drag on hiring.
But that means that there's pent up demands, so that the second quarter is going to be really good.
The numbers are going to be juiced in quarters number two and three.
Hiring's finally going to improve.
Now we get this.
You know, it's not terrible.
It's better than going the other way.
It's a little above average, but it's not that big boom that we keep that we continue to be told is going to occur.
Unemployment rate flat 6.3%.
And listen to this.
The labor participation rate, that's the one that is a measure of how many people are either working or seeking work.
The labor participation rate unchanged at 62.8%.
That means 37.2% of working age Americans are not in the labor market at all.
Is that a permanent number now?
Is this what it's come to?
That we're just going to accept that whatever growth we have is slow, the job gains are going to be so meaningless that nearly forty percent of Americans who are of working age just aren't going to work.
That will give them Obamacare, we'll give them welfare, we'll give them all these other programs that they're just going to have to fend, they're going to fend by, and this is what it's going to be.
That's a permanent condition.
Have we given up any notion that you can have an American economy that gets to really full employment?
When we go back to what we had not that long ago where there were worker shortages?
We debate whether or not to raise the minimum wage.
I remember it was Clinton's presidency for heaven's sakes.
The worker shortages were so bad there were fast food restaurants at advertising eight, nine, ten, eleven dollars an hour.
The winner minimum wage became an irrelevancy.
Now we're just stuck in this long-term Obama neutral with apparently no hope that things are ever going to get much better.
It's Open Line Friday.
I'm Mark Belling, and this is the Rush Limbar Program.
In this economy where there just isn't job creation, the Keith Olberman keeps getting new jobs.
I mean, you talk about the people who are really challenged the long term, Unemployable, they've got issues, spotty work record.
How does this guy keep getting hired?
I bring all of this up because I'm going to rip him off a little bit later on in the program, which probably wouldn't be a good career move.
Steal the tactics of somebody who keeps flopping at everything that he does.
Anyways, an ESPN two now.
Every time you flip a there he is barking away at the TV, I get terrified and wow, Al Gore's channel isn't.
No, it's ESPN two.
Okay, thank God ESPN has 15 other channels to move over to.
I've got a story that's serious but hilarious at the same time.
But before we do that, we're gonna play out Open Line Friday here and go to the phones.
Arlington, Virginia, Jeff, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Mark Belling.
Hey Mark, how are you doing?
I'm great.
Doing a great job.
Um Hey, the thing that comes to my mind, I can't quite figure out what is the best thing to do with with the like a detainee that we have.
I mean, it seems to me this the three things we could do are all lose-lose situations.
I mean, if we kill them, they become martyrs, you know, execute them.
Um if we imprison them, you know, they just they're always gonna be trying to get them back and want them back, and we're always gonna be connected in that way.
And then, of course, if we release them, then they're back in business.
Um I can't seem to get my mind around what is what is the best thing to do.
The first thing you have to do is decide whether or not they are criminals in the sense that they belong in the American criminal justice system, in which case, you know, you put them on trial, which we did with a few of them, or whether or not they are detainees who need to be put in a different category, like a prisoner of war.
I don't believe that you can look upon terrorism in the same way that you look upon other type of crime, because the key to fighting terrorism is to stop it from occurring.
We'd love to be able to say that we can prevent murder or shoplifting or arson, but we really can't.
What we instead do is we prosecute people after the fact.
The whole point, though, of terror, especially with people who are involved in suicide bombings and things like that, is you've got to stop them from doing it in the first place.
And the only way to stop them is to not allow them to be out there.
There are a lot of people who are queasy with this notion that we're just going to hold these people forever and ever and ever.
I'm fine with it.
But well, what do you do about it?
It seems to me that Getmo.
Does Russ still have all the club Gitmo stuff?
I look around in the closets trying to find stuff to bring back to Milwaukee, and I didn't see any of that stuff.
Club Gitmo was a big, big, big deal here.
I mean, he had it's not here, it's somewhere, but it's not anywhere where I can find it.
I Guantanamo was perfect for it.
Here you have an American military base in Cuba, a nation that's hostile to us.
So if they did get away, like they're going to get away from the American military, if they got away, all they'd be, the only place they'd be would be in Cuba.
They were held there and they were detained.
Obama keeps arguing that this is a terrible PR move, that it allows the propagandists in the terrorist world to say, look at how evil the Americans are.
They hold people in Guantanamo.
They say we're terrible for every reason imaginable.
I don't care about the propaganda value of it.
As for whether or not they're being treated terribly, they're not being treated terribly.
Everybody knows they're being babied and pampered.
They're being treated as well as you can be treated as long as you're in detention.
Because the terror problem is unique.
The only thing I think that you can do is hold these people.
If you try them according to the normal laws that we have in our own criminal courts, the laws of discovery means that you've got to lay out all of your evidence that we're going to have to put out their information that is secret.
We know that these are people, the five here that were released, who even Obama acknowledges were active Taliban compan uh commanders who were involved in acts of terror, who either assisted al-Qaeda or acted against the United States during a military effort.
So instead of worrying about what it is that we ought to do with it, to me the answer is what shouldn't you do?
And I don't think you should simply turn them loose for no good reason other than that the president needed an excuse to bring back Sergeant Bergdahl.
So I know that it's a challenge, but it seems to me that Guantanamo has served its purpose just fine.
Who who really, what is the downside of holding them at Gitmo?
And I can't imagine they'll go back and tell everybody, you know, the Americans are really wonderful people.
Let's rethink what we've been doing and let's just join with them, or you know, let's uh they have an awakening.
I just I just can't imagine something like what that would happen, and maybe some actually believe believe that.
I mean, I would think the the people that we released are hardcore true believers.
They've bought in to the jihad message.
They've bought into the Taliban ideology, and people need to go back and see what life was like in Afghanistan under the Taliban, the repression of rights of anyone who wasn't Taliban, the way they treated women and non-believers.
These are true believers, and there's every reason to think that now that they're back on the loose, they're gonna go back and live their lives the way they were living it prior to us having captured them in the first place.
I'm Mark Belling in for Rush.
This is purification for Rush.
No medical issues.
Everything's going well on that front.
Uh he took the week off.
He's going to be back on Monday's program, but if something never goes on vacation, then that's Russia's website, Rushlimbaugh.com.
Wonder how much Rush had to pay consultants to come up with that title for the website.
Mine is Belling.com.
I'm thinking my audience were from Milwaukee.
I'm not going to make them type the additional four letters, just throw the last name in there.
Anyway, you can catch up with Rush on Rush Limbaugh.com.
And while you're there, you can join Rush 24-7.
That's the only way you can get the podcasts of my when I do the show of the all the guest hosts, all of Russia's programs.
Uh you can also watch Rush on the Ditto Cam when he does the program.
No ditto camp.
Do any of the guest hosts get on the ditto cam?
Good.
I don't I I don't want any part of that ditto cam.
The ridicule the we're holding it.
So in other words, the the ditto cam is there for purpose.
I see.
You don't want to see me doing the program.
You just don't.
I mean, every time I see Russ do it doing it, he seems so calm and comfortable and sits back and when he makes one of his points, he's got that look on his face that you would expect he has on his face when he makes one of those points.
I'm here scratching my hair and scratching everything else and throwing stuff around and you just don't want to see this.
Watching me do the show is like sausage.
I s yeah.
All right, yeah.
Uh I can ridicule myself.
I don't need the staff chiming.
Yeah, you're right.
It's a good thing that people can't see you.
They'd be appalled.
I said I had a story that's serious and hilarious.
I promise you, I'm not making this up.
Obama sets deadline for Putin.
You just have to laugh when you see the headline.
Oh, we're setting a deadline for Putin.
What?
Another one?
Boy, this is what I'm sure this one will be followed through on.
Here's Obama.
With regard to Putin and Ukraine.
We will have a chance to see what Mr. Putin does over the next two, three, four weeks.
Oh, that's specific.
The next two, three, four weeks.
And if he remains on the current course, then we've already indicated what kinds of action we're prepared to take.
Oh, okay.
So in if he doesn't get out of Ukraine and he doesn't reverse course in two weeks, or is it three?
Or is it four?
Then we'll really do something.
He has huffed and puffed and huffed and puffed and keeps threatening to blow the house down, and we keep waiting for that to happen.
Now it's going to be four weeks.
Who takes this seriously?
Does anybody think Putin takes it seriously?
Four weeks from today, I think four weeks from today is the fourth of July, right?
I think I'm right about that.
Today's June 6th, 28 days, yeah, fourth of July.
So that's the new line in the sand.
By the way, Fourth of July, my birthday.
So I'll be waiting for I'm sure Putin will be waiting for that.
Because if Putin doesn't get out of Ukraine, then the real trouble's gonna come.
Then you're gonna see the fury that Barack Obama's gonna bring down on Vladimir Putin.
Why even say this stuff?
Why even do it?
Why not just come up come right out and say, I don't know what to do about Putin.
I'm afraid to do anything about Putin.
I don't have any backbone as commander in chief of the United States, so we're just gonna let him do whatever.
Everybody is interpreting it that way.
The words have become so insignificant as to be, you know, silly when he utters them.
Phone line, Levi in Jacksonville, Florida.
You're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Mark Belling.
Hey, Mark, thank you so much for having me on.
I just wanted to call in and uh retort something that you had said earlier about this generation, whether or not we would be able to pull off a D-Day landing or this generation whether or not we'd be able to find World War II.
And you know, I'm not trying to take away anything that that that greatest generation did.
They accomplished a lot in their time.
However, you'd have to remember that you know D Day didn't happen in 1939 when Germany invaded Poland.
And it didn't happen when Germany invaded France, it didn't happen when Germany invaded Russia.
Okay, it took an attack on American soil by an ally of Germany to get us involved.
Okay, so today.
I said true.
You're right.
Yeah.
So I mean, today would I mean are we going to go over into a D-Day landing in Crimea to try to liberate it from the Russians?
Probably not.
And it's not that we have any less backbone today.
It's not that the young people listener are not, you know, more than willing to throw on the uniform and go forth and do what we need to do.
It's just that is it worth it?
You know, it it wasn't worth it in 1939 when France was occupied for two years to get involved in the war.
That's true.
On the other hand, most and again, there's no way of knowing for sure, most historians believe the reason we were attacked at Pearl Harbor by the Japanese was the belief that we were going to get involved, at least in the Pacific, and probably in Europe.
It was seen as a preemptive strike.
Other otherwise, it's the dumbest thing the Japanese could have done.
Let's hack off the United States and get them involved in the war.
There was increasing pressure on Roosevelt, and a lot of people felt that it was time for the United States to get involved.
So but but you're right.
The point is that the United States reacted with tremendous fervor and commitment after we were attacked at Pearl Harbor.
And once we made the decision to get involved, there was no turning back.
The point that I make is that I think that today we would have rationalized that there would be another way to deal with it, a way to manage it, and that we certainly would not have had the backbone to stick it out, and we wouldn't do anything as bodacious as the type of war plan that you know that occurred on D-Day.
I do think, and I made these comments at the beginning of the first hour of the program, you can make some mistake in acting as though D-Day was the most only was the only important battle of World War II.
There were significant victories in the Pacific.
The Battle of Midway was a major turning point.
Guadalocanal was significant.
Even in Europe, the Battle of the Bulge, North Africa, the fighting in Italy along the Russian front, the Russians paid a terrible price.
There are a lot of those events.
I merely question whether or not the short-term focused Americans who, you know, really get the jitters every time they see anything that bothers them, anything unpleasant on television, would be able to commit to any fight that was worthwhile.
Even if we were attacked here.
If we had gone to war against the jihadists and had the kind of casualty count that we sustained in World War II uh HR found the number of about 420,000 American fatalities in World War II, many times more wounded, would we have stuck it out through that?
I I just doubt it.
I think that World War II was really the last great major commitment that the United States was capable of making.
I think the generation that I'm in and the one that's coming after me, if anything, is even more hedonistic, is just totally into self and looking for alternatives and not wanting to confront that there really is evil in the world.
Thanks for the call.
Sartell, Minnesota.
Kelly, it's your turn on the Rush Limbaugh program with Mark Belling.
Hey Mark, thanks for taking my call.
I just had a uh quick comment in regards to all the policies or the poor policies and the uh decisions that have fallen under the uh Obama administration, and we all want to point our fingers at Barack Obama.
But I I think the real place that we should point our fingers is at the voters, the the people that voted for Barack.
Uh we would not be in this position.
These decisions would not have a chance to be made uh had they not voted him in.
And I think the voters need to understand the power of their vote and they and really take a a second look on this second time around on how they're gonna vote.
Uh they're ultimately responsible as well.
On my own program in Milwaukee, I well the saying I've got all these things.
One of my sayings is is that people deserve the government they get and they get the government that they deserve.
You are right.
We did elect Obama twice.
We've fallen, we pretty much fall every other election for the liberal argument.
But, and there is a giant but in this.
We've elected Democrats in the past.
I don't know that we've ever elected one like Obama.
This is someone who I think just doesn't buy into the notion that free market American capitalism is the answer.
He thinks that we don't have a level playing field.
He thinks that America's essentially a raw deal.
That's why you see his attempts to transform us.
Obamacare itself and the utter lawlessness with which he's implemented it.
This is new stuff.
So to simply say that the public did it, I think isn't entirely fair because I'm not sure that a lot of people voted for what they're getting here in the second term.
The part where I agree with you, though, and I want to ball out some conservatives.
Well, you know, there are a lot of people who sat on their hands and weren't involved in the 2012 election.
They weren't involved in 2008.
They had problems with McCain and for legitimate reasons.
Some people felt that Mitt Romney wasn't truly a conservative, that he's, if anything, he was the guy that invented governmentalized health care, that they thought, well, hey, this guy isn't good enough.
This guy isn't good enough.
At some point you've got to consider the alternative.
And I do agree with you.
For people, whether they're in the Tea Party movement, the pro-life movement, the gun movement, the constitutional movement, or they're simply citizens who care about their country.
In the end, you can't do anything if you don't have any power.
And Obama does have power.
And the only way to stop him from doing more is to gain more power.
That's why the next elections are important.
It's hard for people to acknowledge that their fellow man can get things wrong.
But the reality is in a country like ours, the only way to gain power is to win elections.
So I mostly agree with your comments.
Thanks for the call.
Let's try.
Let's not try.
Let's take a break.
I'm told don't fall as far behind as you normally do.
My defense on that is I know Rush falls behind sometimes on his clock.
You're not Rush.
That's right, I'm not Rush.
My name is Mark Belling, and I'm sitting in for Rush.
This is EIB.
Mark Belling, open line Friday, sitting in for Rush.
You know, great time in sports, really.
You've got the NHL finals going on, the Rangers and the Kings.
Not a huge hockey fan, but I do like watching the Stanley Cup Finals, the NBA finals.
Best two teams are there.
The Heat and the Spurs.
The Belmont Stakes is tomorrow, Triple Crown on the line.
I think they held the French Open Men's Semis today.
I don't know who won, but every one of these matches always seem championships always seems to come down to uh Djokovic and Nadal and Nadal doesn't lose in France.
Lots of good sports stuff going on.
Let me bring you up to speed on the VA.
Now we have a deal.
Bernie Sanders, who calls himself an independent, which translated into English as radical, Senator from Vermont and John McCain have struck a deal on legislation to reform the VA.
I'm going to quote from Politico, the legislation would allow veterans to see private doctors outside the VA system if they experience long wait times or live more than 40 miles from a VA facility.
It incorporates provisions from legislation introduced in the Senate by Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, making it easier to fire VA officials.
Let's start with what they've done here.
So if there are long wait times, veterans can simply go to private doctors and have their care reimbursed through the VA.
Well, why did we need this scandal to do that?
That's simple common sense.
The VA is a bureaucracy.
And the reason I think this happened is there was a lot of turf protection.
If there had been a suggestion from within the VA several years ago, hey, we're all backed up.
Maybe we need to allow as a mayor simple short-term measure to deal with this backlog.
Let's allow people to go see private physicians.
We'll figure out a way to compensate them for their care.
Some might have suggested that it would be easy to farm out a lot of those services, and the that's not in the interest of VAR bureaucrats.
They wanted to keep control of the entire thing.
So now you have a sensible, and I don't know if this is the long-term solution.
Maybe if we simply have a VA that, you know, allows people to go to physicians of their choice, we won't have any type of waiting problem.
I don't know.
I don't know.
What I do know is that it is common sense when you Have a veteran who needs care.
That instead of telling that person they're gonna sit in a waiting list for 113 days, okay, let we can't see you were backed up, our facility is short staffed.
Go see a doc go see your own doctor, come back and expense it, and the VA will take care of it.
This is something that should have happened a long time ago.
And this scandal actually does do us some good in that it's requiring now not only the administration but people in Congress to do something about it.
There's another question I've got to ask, and I don't think this is a cheap shot.
I'm capable of taking cheap shots, but I don't think this is one.
We know that the worst problems or seemingly the worst problems in the VA were in Arizona and the Phoenix facility.
That's the one where we heard about the 113-day wait time.
That's the one where we're told that a lot of the records were fudged to make it appear as though the weights were shorter.
Senator McCain's a senator from Arizona.
My experience, when people have problems with the federal government, their social security check is screwed up, some sort of government benefit is fouled up, they're trying to get a government grant.
They drown in red tape.
What do they do?
Well, they call the congressman, or they call their senator.
Given Senator McCain's longstanding support of military veterans, you'd think that some of those people that were caught in this quagmire in Phoenix contacted McCain's office.
Is it fair to ask if Senator McCain knew about these delays?
And if so, why didn't he raise a bigger stink publicly?
I don't buy this argument that this thing was totally contained within the bureaucracy of the VA because it is not human nature to be denied the opportunity to see a doctor for lengthy periods of time and simply sit back and take it.
It's human nature to raise a stink and complain.
And in this case, complain for good reason.
These are benefits these people are entitled to.
But we're told while nobody really knew about it.
Shinseki, the head of the VA, he didn't know.
These were regional managers who were trying to get their bonuses, so they were fudging records.
I just don't buy that this thing could have been as contained as it was.
What?
The president was never briefed on this until the scandal broke.
Nobody in top management of the VA knew that records are being manipulated.
No one knew that at clinics all over the country veterans were being told, including some that were in need of critical care, that they had to wait these obscene amounts of time.
Or were we working off a narrative?
Remember, the VA was the thing that we were told during Obamacare, this is proof the government can run health care.
Look at the VA.
Just like we needed to pretend that Al Qaeda was beaten and therefore we came up with a phony narrative in Benghazi.
Did we have a phony narrative with regard to the VA?
Where there were a lot of people who were looking the other way.
Now, I'm not going to accuse Senator McCain of being aware of this because, and I'm not a huge McCain fan, but I I think his commitment to veterans is sincere.
And his commitment to a strong national defense is sincere.
But you certainly have to wonder how something as awful, something as bollocks up as the Phoenix VA wait situation was, could have gone on without anybody knowing about it.
The positive here, once the American public found out, there was outrage, and we've demanded that something be done about it.
And it seems like the legislation they're moving forward with is going to help and is a good thing.
But why did it take this?
Boy, I just think about the General Motors story, which is in the headlines today, where everybody knew about the problem, but everybody thought it wasn't their fault.
Is that not the same thing that happened in the VA on a very very serious matter that everybody just kind of looked the other way, and nobody paid any attention to business?
I'm Mark Belling filling in for Rush Limbaugh.
Lots of good stuff still to come.
Open line Friday, Rush Limbaugh program, Mark Belling filling in.
Give you my thoughts on the Belmont Stakes.
Yes, I know something about horse racing.
Here's a story the National Football League kicked out of Radio City Music Hall for the NFL draft, or they've held it there for years.
I'm not making this up.
There's something about a delayed Rockettes show that has to go on the time of the year of next year's draft, so the NFL can't go to Radio City Music Hall.
I get to come here in to New York and do the program.
I never go see it.
Is Radio City where is that?
How far away from here it is there?
I know where it is.
I'm trying to be trying to be humorous and taking another big swing and another miss at all of that.
So we've got a big hour still to come on the program, and I want to share all of those things.
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