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Aug. 13, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:41
August 13, 2014, Wednesday, Hour #2
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Uh, greetings, my friends, welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, the cutting edge of societal evolution, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
Where every day we try to highlight the good cheer and the optimism.
We do point out the problems and what's wrong, but we don't ever advocate succumbing to them.
We never advocate giving up here.
We never advocate throwing in the towel.
Because on this program there is always the light of inspiration and encouragement.
And positive change for the good of everyone.
That's what we do here on this program each and every day, and that's why we chronicle sometimes and report on some of the bad negative things that are happening that are unnecessary and need to change in politics.
Great to have you.
Telephone numbers 800 28282.
Is Lee still with us.
Lee, I I I ran out of time and I didn't I didn't want to uh just complete the call there on on your on your note.
Um and I I wanted to come back to you for just a brief moment here before you had to go.
The uh circumstance that you were faced with, your did you say your brother had committed suicide in the year?
Melaged about just a few years younger than Robin Williams.
Right.
Right.
And they wouldn't tell you any details, and yet you saw every detail announced the that was what very I mean, like I said, my parents are in their eighties and it really traumatized them all over again because here they're hearing specifics about how Robin Williams died, you know, the the rigor mortis setting in and everything.
And when my brother my parents had just seen my brother that day, and when they got the call that night, obviously very traumatic.
And to hear and have all these questions about you know what had happened, w what was in his system, what pushed him over the edge because they had just seen him.
Well, wait, we don't know that about Robin Williams.
I know, but my I'm talking about my brother.
Yeah, but but and then just to hear about Robin Williams being found in that position and and all of these kinds of things with cuts on his wrist and all that.
My parents were wondering, gosh, what did our son go through?
You know, what is our what are the authorities not telling us?
And that was what was very frustrating was this to hear.
Well, I'm that's understandable because everything I've read says that uh state law and and the the U.S. A-Day report that is filled with disgust that the details were released.
Exactly.
Makes it plain that it is the county, the the the officials in the county Marin County say, we're required by law to tell you this, so don't get mad at us.
That's what we that's what we tried to tell the authorities.
And they they're like, no, we're protecting the rights of the d of the of the victim.
And we said the victim is dead.
What's he gonna care?
He's in heaven now, you know?
He's only looking down at us laughing.
That's that's not that's not altogether uncommon in um you know in a lot of legal circumstances.
Um although I d I understand the the the conflict that you're going through.
I don't have an answer for you.
Oh, I know.
I I just was very I just wanted to share that with I mean, and the whole issue of mental health and people questioning why he did it, you know, that that one split second when you say when when they make that decision to say, you know what, uh i it's not worth it anymore.
And that's that's one of the issues that I don't think that a lot of people take a look at is the desperation that Mr. Williams may have been going through.
Um, you know, like you said, the money, none of that's worth it in the long run.
Uh we're we're who we are.
And what you know, and our family had rallied around my brother prior to this, and it's just when it comes down to it, you're gonna leave this earth the way you came in, naked and you know, going back to your creator if you believe in that.
That's all altogether true.
Um, I I I'm frustrated because I wish I I did have an answer for you.
I can understand that you'd want to know why.
You'd want to know the talks report.
You'd you'd want to have all those details.
I'm stunned that they're not releasing that to the family.
I uh maybe you'll get it at some point if you keep pressing it.
But I um I sympathize with you, I really do.
I had I checked the email during the break, and uh none of uh none of it was crude, none of it was uh caustic or any of that, but there was one well what would you do differently?
You're sitting there and you're you're ripping the media and all these other people for what they're doing.
What would you do different if you I'll tell you what I would try to do different.
I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say, and I wouldn't report that with anybody who committed suicide, that that means the world must be.
I wouldn't do anything that justifies it.
Whatever if it were up to me to tell people about this, I would do it with a note of sadness and uh disappointment and how it's it's it's not the answer and and a number of other things.
I wouldn't glorify it.
I I would not celebrate it.
I I would uh I I would not suggest that, for example, the world has become so negligent that the best and brightest among us have to check out.
I wouldn't do that.
That's not.
I would try to take the occasion and make it a teachable or learnable moment for other people in that circumstance.
I certainly wouldn't want to characterize it as something people would want to emulate and copy to get fame or notoriety or or what have you.
But I understand why they do it.
Robin Williams, one of their heroes.
And the left is going to paint, they're gonna put every every accredited member of their tribe in the best light possible in every circumstance.
I mean, look at Dan Rather.
Dan Rather gets caught making up a news story, making it up.
George Bush and the National Guard.
And when it was uncovered that he had made it up and that there were forged documents, what did the left do?
They gave him an award for journalistic excellence in order to protect the news business, to protect the image of journalism, and to save Dan Rather.
They circle the wagons in that regard.
No question about it.
What was it you what about Shep Smith said that.
For what for what?
I hadn't heard that.
Snerdley is telling me that good old Shep Smith may be the lone liberal at Fox, well, other than the analysts and commentators.
He said that Robin Williams took the cowardly way out.
He said it yesterday, and he's had to apologize for that.
How did I miss that?
You better not be making this up just to get me in further trouble.
Okay.
Okay, okay, I've had three different confirmations now.
I had not I didn't turn on Fox yesterday.
So I had not I had not heard that.
Cowardly it that by the way, for those of you that are that are young uh or younger, cowardly way out used to be the default reaction to suicide.
Just so you know, before political correctness consumed our culture, and before this heightened sensitivity to not offending anyone consumed our society.
The default reaction people had to suicide was it was the cowardly way out.
And for those of you who are too young to remember that, let me tell you why it was said that way.
Why why that was said.
Because there are people that you leave, and maybe you are leaving them with your burdens that you couldn't face, be they financial or whatever.
And it was always said that the act of suicide was taking the easy way out of facing the burdens that you had to deal with and leaving the people you loved with all of that to deal with, plus the Hurt and pain of them asking why you did it.
That was also part and part of the default reaction.
There used to be novels written about this.
I mean, true, I mean, novels of great suspense and tension, written about survivors, people who uh a family member family member committed suicide, and the family goes nuts trying to figure out why.
Did they do something?
Were they responsible for it?
Could they have stopped it?
All of that.
That's torture for family members of uh suicide.
And that's why it was uh it was always characterized as a as a as a cowardly way out.
Here's a story.
Fox News anchor Shep Smith apologizes for calling Robin Williams a coward.
Hmm.
It's in the New York Daily News.
The newsman used the word coward to describe William's suicide Monday, just hours after he was found dead.
Smith apologized, saying I would never presume to know anything about his private life.
Well, here you go again.
He's not presuming knowing about his private life.
That's what the media is.
The media is trying to give us all the answers here, and they're glorifying it.
That's my whole problem with this.
Look, I I've said what I've had to say about it, and I'm just repeating this because I'm the one being taken out of context and all this.
But I've been very clear about this.
Uh it and I just to reiterate, it was, it used to be the standard reaction everybody had.
It was it was a cowardly thing to do.
Because of what you left everybody else to face.
That you couldn't.
That used to be standard.
Now some might say, well, that's that's heartless and mean, and I'm glad we've evolved beyond that.
And I wouldn't be surprised if there are a lot of people who feel that way.
Because cowardly, that's a mean word.
Who are we to judge?
You know, as a common refrain today.
Who are we to judge?
You don't have the right to judge what other people do.
Who do you think you are?
That's common reaction that people have.
But back before that kind of stuff settled in, this was a common reaction.
Now, Shep is obviously saying that he didn't mean to characterize Williams as a coward because he didn't know his private life.
Uh, but I don't think he was describing the act, not the private life.
Anyway, that's that.
I I just, folks, I uh I think everything's a teachable moment.
And I do know that there are people that the the the left in this country does have a view, an image, uh uh a vision of life.
And who let me give here another illustration that you might consider proof.
Who is it that justifies abortion on the basis we wouldn't want to bring a child into that circumstance, be it poverty or what is something else.
It's so bad.
So why would we want to saddle a child with that?
Well, it's not your decision to make.
And you could cite statistics.
There are all kinds of people who've been born poverty and worse and have triumphed over it, have become immensely successful, and have been just tremendous citizens, done great things.
So it there are people who justify abortion on the basis that the world's such a nasty place.
We have no right to bring people into the world in that circumstance.
These are the people that we're talking about here.
And as I say, you know, pessimism and doom and gloom and negativism, defeatism, it's easy.
We can all do it.
Doesn't take any effort.
Most people are inclined to pessimism.
Most people are inclined to say.
That's why we all need somebody.
We all need a mentor.
We all need somebody to show us, or to inspire us or do something to tell us that we're all better than we think We are.
And this is the same old saw, folks.
Why is it that people who write persuasive books on positive thinking are millionaires, and you can't find a book in the library on how to fail.
Because everybody knows how to do that.
But positive thinking and success, these are things that people think take an applied effort.
And they'll go out and buy a book to learn how to do it.
Because it's perceived to be uncommon.
And my one of my quests here is to know it's not that uncommon.
You have it in you.
You have it in you to be better than you think you are.
You have it in you to accomplish more than you think you can.
You have it in you to be better than you think you are.
You have it in you to do more than you think you can do.
It's sometimes just that people don't have the ability to tap into that themselves and need somebody else to show them by pushing them, pushing them beyond their comfort level or their self-imposed limits.
Remember the story about Merrill Lynch.
I knew a guy that used to work at Mirrill Lynch.
This is back in the 1980s.
And he told me that when they were interviewing for job openings, one of the questions they would ask every applicant was the amount of money they hoped to make.
And if somebody, if if the if the applicant gave a number, they were very close to being disqualified.
Even if the number was 10 million.
Well, yeah, someday I want to earn five million.
No matter what the number, if they gave a number, the likelihood they were going to be passed over.
And the the reason why is because they had discovered human nature studies that when that number was reached, the comfort level had arrived, and that's when people stopped working.
And so people that knew this about Merrill Lich were advising future applicants, do not ever answer how much money do you hope to earn here.
Don't answer it.
Just say as much as you can.
Just say sky's the limit.
If you give them a number, they're going to think when you reach that number, you'll stop working because you've reached well.
We all have a comfort level, and no matter what it is, how hard we want to work, how hard we want to play, how many hours a day we want to work.
We all have a comfort level.
And the idea is to be pushed beyond that.
That's what good teachers do.
But we've gotten to the point now where teachers coddle rather than push.
Because we think that young kids can't handle being pushed.
No, no, no, no, let's be too hard on them.
It's actually it's it's wrong.
It's back Swards.
People, everybody needs to be pushed.
Everybody needs to be pushed beyond what they think they can do.
Physically, mentally, what have you?
It's how you learn how good you are.
Back after this.
Don't go away.
Back to the phones we go.
This is Mark in uh Moran, Pennsylvania.
Great to have you.
Hello.
Oh, you may made the comment that one of uh Williams friends said he didn't want to go back to having to do a uh an uh a sequel to Mrs. Outfire.
And things like that depressed them.
And I and I wasn't I had no intention of calling today, but I'm thinking, how many people have lost their jobs in this country?
How many people have maybe worked at NASA who really have no future now in front of them who had a mortgage who were paying for their kids to go to college, who in one fell smoke catch on.
And you know, and you want to talk about depression?
Uh that to me would seem more uh something of a depression than having to go and do a sequel to a to the movie that made you millions.
See, this is that wait a now.
See, this you are, whether you know it or not, making one of my points here.
Well no, you're no, no, no, you're a teacher.
You're my teacher.
No, no, no, don't misunderstand.
You your your reaction here, I think, is perfectly natural and understandable based on the way this story's being covered.
There's almost in every like nobody knows why he did it.
He didn't leave a note.
Yet all these stories purport to know.
The latest one is in the UK telegraph.
Mark, that's what you heard me say.
A friend of his has told a reporter, oh, he's really depressed about having to do Mrs. Doubtfire sequel.
He hated sequels, he didn't want it, so you're out there.
You're going through the ups and downs of everyday life, and you hear that a guy didn't want to do a sequel and make however many millions of dollars he was going to do it and decided to kill himself because of it.
And you say, My God, why are we glorifying that?
And that's totally understandable.
There's almost there's a justification.
This is the word I've been looking for.
There's almost as the media reports this story as they as they pretend to tell us the reasons why Williams did it.
There's almost a justification implied in in this reporting.
Oh, yeah, I didn't want to do Miss Downfire.
Well, yeah, I can understand that.
Meanwhile, you're out there in the real world saying, what do you mean you don't want to do Ms. Downfire?
I can't K off my kids' college debt.
NASA laid everybody off.
We don't have any future out here.
I would love to do Miss Downfire.
I'll just stand by saying I I have to believe every day that there's something there bigger than me.
That when I go to my maker, and if I warrant to kill myself, they're gonna look me in the eye and say, that's not why I gave you your life.
Right.
But here's let me let me caution you about one thing.
Do not this is just a hearsay story that that ended up getting a headline in a major European newspaper.
You don't know if that's accurate.
There are also stories that he was facing bankruptcy and financial troubles.
Well, hello, millions do.
So that we don't know why he did it.
If there's clinical medical depression involved, then that is an entirely different thing.
And if there's medication involved, who knows what's you don't know yet.
You don't know why he did it.
This is why I object to the way this coverage is justifying it, glorifying it, and all this other stuff.
Because it's it's it's out of proportion and it's not based in any reality.
Tell you something else uh about quote unquote the old days, whenever anybody in a in a local community with local media or a celebrity when anybody committed suicide, in addition to the default reaction being what a cowardly act, you know what you'd also face or see?
The media would just go nuts urging anybody contemplating the same thing to call the local suicide prevention hotline.
Get in touch with somebody, do not do what you just saw us report happened.
The media would encourage everybody.
Sit, talk to your family, talk to your friends, call a professional, don't do it.
It's not the thing to do, and that's missing anymore.
Now it's glorified, and now we have people writing pieces saying, well, if the world is so screwed up and so backwards that Robin Williams checked out, my God, what about the rest of us?
Wrong attitude.
It it cements pessimism for people.
And it it justifies negativism, defeatism, and giving up.
And it's not the way this kind of thing should be dealt with.
We all only get one life.
Most people take it for granted because it's a chore.
You get up, you got things, it's just every it's filled with ups and downs.
And few people ever stop to think of just it's the most precious and rare thing that we have.
And there's there's no second chance, there's no do-over.
There's it.
And it's got a finite length of time to it.
And in that finite length of time, that's all you've got to make the most of it.
And that's what I think should be emphasized to people, whether they're in in good mental shape or bad mental shape.
It's you've only got one shot here at making the most of.
There's a whole world out there to go see, to be part of, to do, to conquer.
However, you want to look at it.
And that's a great gift.
I don't care if you believe in evolution creation or combination of the two.
It's really, really special.
And to say that because somebody that made us laugh or we respected checked out, well, well, if this world is so bad that not even so-and-so can live in it.
Whoa, what does that say for the rest of it?
Wrong attitude.
Sorry.
Wrong, wrong attitude.
There's other news out there.
Let me check the calls.
People want to uh Well, I still got people want to weigh in on this, and I let's stick with it for a little while.
But I'll tell you what we got coming.
We got do you know that we are going to send a hundred and thirty more advisors?
Quote, this is exactly the terminology with Vietnam.
It's exact we're gonna send a hundred and thirty more military advisors just to Northern Iraq just to help the local forces in their fight against the Islamic militants ISIS, or ISIL, known as both uh in both ways.
Just 130 more from the guy who said we're gonna get out from the guy who said we should have never gone, from the guy who beat up Bush for seven years over it, from the guy and the party and the media that look just ridiculed anything and everything to do with Iraq.
The irony of this is overwhelming to me.
The very people who were gonna end this and make it a better world.
The very people who were going to end strife and end partisanship and end arguments and solve problems and make the bad guys love us, finally, are now escalating hostilities in the very place they said we had no business going or being in the first place.
And that we were lied to to get there, and that there weren't any weapons of mass destruction, and Bush knew, and there was lousy intel, and it's a phony excuse.
Bush and Cheney, just a bunch of warmongers that wanted to get Saddam for whatever reason.
And now look, well, we had bad intel.
We didn't know how bad ISIS was.
Uh we would have never gotten out of Iraq totally.
Well, except I promised my base I would, so I had to get out.
But now we're going back in, but I gotta make the base think it's just chump change, nothing serious here.
So just 130 more advisors.
Then you got Hillary Clinton out there saying this guy, foreign policy, if sit around and do nothing, that isn't gonna work.
And this guy chose the wrong side in Syria.
So now there's a war going on between the Clintons and the Obamas.
And the media is choosing Hillary.
Exactly, exactly as I predicted yesterday.
But we still have people who want to uh discuss optimism, pessimism, doom and gloom, uh, and uh the opposite of that, plus suicide of Williams.
So we go back to Richmond, Virginia says, Bobby, I'm glad you waited, sir.
Welcome to the program.
Thanks, Rush.
Um I'm gonna preface my point by uh referencing the Russell Brandt that you had read from.
And it's whenever I hear something like that, I have this nagging feeling when he uses the the term the world or our world, um, that he's really talking about the U.S. And I every time I hear that, I think, well, his world is just another way to say these the misery of the U.S. And given that.
I I'm wondering why we don't have uh why Russell Brant's not spearheading a campaign to convince the people south of our southern border to not come here in the first place to convince them of what they're getting themselves into.
Well, the misery that is.
No, no, no, everything is relative.
Now, this is actually a good question.
If the left thinks that the United States is gone, and if it's so filled with pessimism and false promise and misery, depressing and doom and go, then why do they want these poor children from Central America to come here and be part of it?
Well, remember the left lives in a fantasy world that there is a utopia out there.
The left, some of them believe that all of this suffering is the pathway to utopia.
The left also believes that no matter how bad things are here, they still know it's better than anywhere else in the world.
And that's not fair.
The left also loves political power in order to implement all of these convoluted beliefs that they've gotten.
They need people voting to do that.
That's what these people represent.
These are Democrat voters in waiting.
All they're waiting on is the voter registration movement.
Get these people registered coming in as young kids if we grow up as members of the welfare state.
They'll become dependent and loyal to the Democrat Party, and they will vote for them in gratitude for the rest of their lives.
That that is the that is the thinking.
And in order to keep them in that mindset, they're gonna have to remain a permanent underclass.
And like every other Democrat voter, they're going to be told that things are bad and worse because of whoever the political opponents of the left happen to be right now, the Republicans.
They get all the blame for what's gone wrong.
The Democrats hold the answer.
The Democrats represent the promised land.
The Democrats, in these people's eyes, represent the escape from all this misery, you see.
And how's it gonna happen?
The government's gonna take care of everybody.
The government's gonna get you health care, the government's gonna get you a job, the government's gonna get you an apartment, the government's gonna get you a little garden near your apartment.
Government's gonna think the government's the only people who can get rid of this misery and make it fair for everybody.
Plus the U.S. needs to be cut down to size anyway.
It's not fair that we've had so much prosperity in relationship to the rest of the world.
And another reason why they're totally in favor of this mass illegal immigration is their political opponents oppose it.
And they love beating their political opponents.
Regardless what the results of that are, regardless of what the victory that they achieve means.
They are a depraved bunch in uh in many ways.
Sad thing.
Very, very sad, but true.
Half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
Rush Limbaugh serving humanity, executing his scientist duties flawlessly.
Look at this.
This by Stephen Dinan in the Washington Times today.
Gay, illegal immigrants demand special treatment from Obama.
Gay immigrants are mounting a campaign to demand that they be included in any unilateral moves Obama makes this year to halt deportations.
They argue that they face unusual circumstances that otherwise might leave them on the outside.
Oh, wouldn't ever want to be on the outside?
The demands pose a tricky test.
Why are you shaking your head in there?
Never would be want to be on the outside.
Be on the inside.
The demands pose a risky test for Mr. Obama, who has made major inroads with gay rights groups during his time in the White House, but he's gonna have to draw the line somewhere, it says here, as he seeks to craft a more lenient deportation policy without canceling deportations altogether.
How do you if you're gonna let five or six million, if you're if you're gonna grant them citizenship, how do you deport anybody after that?
You can't deport anybody after if he does this, if he grants amnesty to whatever these Numbers being bandied about five, six million.
That's the end of deportations, folks.
How do you deport anybody?
After you wave the magic wand and legalize five million, six million, or even all 12 million.
But this this is.
I'll tell you what's happening here.
We talk about balkanization.
Gay, illegal immigrants.
So now these illegal immigrants, you think they're doing this on their own?
Do you think these they're they're they are breaking into smaller and smaller group identities?
Now they're not just illegal.
Now they are gay illegal.
Pretty soon feminist illegal immigrants, and then bisexual illegal immigrants.
And whatever other group, victim illegal immigrants.
So we are putting, we're taking the un incoming group of illegals, and rather than having them just be a singular group defined by their illegality, now we're gonna make them victims of a whole bunch of things.
Not even Americans.
These are these are illegal, these are not even Americans, and the left is already politicizing them and can and and and creating different small groups for them to be in and thus be identified as or by.
This is that's that's a bad sign, folks.
And I I wouldn't not let this day go by without mentioning that.
We'll have more on all of this in the next hour or two.
But here we go.
Back to the phones.
This is Bruce and Augusta, uh, Georgia.
Great to have you on the program.
Hi.
Russ is absolutely honored to speak to you.
I agree always with about 99.3% of what you always could say.
Well, you need to call a Sullivan group because we haven't heard from them in a while on my opinion audit.
I'm I'm still I'm beginning to wonder if they're still in business.
I'll do that.
I just want to make a quick point.
When the first time I heard about Robin Williams and the suicide, the first thing that really stuck with me is I remember this is the man that stole that stood shoulder to shoulder with Christopher Reeves right after his accident where he was paralyzed,
and this is he was with him the whole time, helped raise money for his Christopher refund, stood with him and his family, was there with him that I mean, I can't even tell you how many pitchers, if you just Google it, how many pictures they are side by side um with each other, but he was in the presence of true bravery and perseverance.
Seeing that, and if he can't get inspiration from that, I'm he was probably offering some inspiration and bravery to Christopher Reeve, in addition to just being around it, he was probably offering some.
I'm sure.
Well, it just to just to refresh your memory, there was a story yesterday, Fox News website.
It was a it was a local Fox 41, wherever 41 is in this country, Channel 41 Fox, wherever that was, ran a stories on their website and said that one of the reasons that Williams committed suicide was he had survivors guilt because his close friends died young and he was guilty that he didn't.
And one of them was Christopher Reeve, the other was Andy Kaufman and then John Belushi.
And he fell guilty.
So said the story.
And survivors guilt.
But here's we're we're back to the nobody knows.
If he was on medication, have you ever seen some of the uh warnings and side effects possible with some of these uh what are the Zoloft is one and what anything that but but but not no the depression medicine, these these uh re-uptake inhibitors, whatever the hell they're called.
If you look at some of the side effects, suicide tendencies, who we the point is we don't know.
Yeah, I'll tell you something else.
I I'm probably gonna get nailed for throwing this out there, but it's all nobody knows it.
He didn't leave a note.
So everybody's just guessing.
And and the learned types are Guessing depression associated with his genius.
That's another thing.
You can't be genius and normal.
If you are a genius, you're whacked out somehow.
That's the only way you can be genius, particularly creative genius.
You've got to have something wrong.
That's you're so you're so unique.
That kind of genius, you gotta be different.
You just can't no such thing as a normal genius, according to the media today.
But what if have you seen pictures of Robin Williams?
Late, recent pictures.
A lot of weight loss there.
Gaunt.
I mean, I what if there's a physical reason involved?
Nobody knows.
Didn't leave a note, at least according to the people who were asked if there was a note left.
So all of this is speculation.
And that's that's why the media's got to fill time with it and turn it into as positive a thing as they can for their own political reasons again.
But anyway, I'm out of time.
I've sad folks, I'm in the middle of another brilliant thought, and I have to stop.
Okay, gonna change directions when we get back.
Uh, ladies and gentlemen, phone lines always open at 800 2822.
Well, the lines are open, they're never open.
I mean, it's always filled up, but I mean we're gonna keep taking calls, is what I mean.
Maybe.
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