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Aug. 29, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:19
August 29, 2014, Friday, Hour #2
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And greetings to you once again, ladies and gentlemen, music lovers, thrill seekers all across the fruited plain.
Time for the award-winning Throw Pact, ever exciting, increasingly popular, growing by leaps and bounds.
Rush Limbaugh program on the EIB network.
It's Friday.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's Open Line Friday.
Yip, yip, yip, yip, yeah, who open line Friday.
Telephone number, if you want to be on the program, is 800-282-2882 and the email address, lrushbow at EIBNet.com.
Open Line Friday, anything you want to talk about, have at it.
Feel free.
Doesn't have to be anything I particularly care about.
Telephone number is 800-282-2882 and the email address lrushbowl at eibnet.com.
Okay, there it is.
I found it.
I was looking for this story that I teased in the last hour about, it's actually ESPN, it's not the NFL, it's ESPN thinking that women need to look at fantasy football the same way they look at relationships if they're going to be interested in it.
And I wanted to find this since I talked about it and have it ready for you.
And here, just to confirm, because there was some confusion about this, the Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people at Fort Hood has indeed written a letter to the leader of ISIS asking to become a citizen of the Islamic State's Caliphate.
This from his attorney yesterday.
The letter states that Nadal Hassan wants to become a citizen of the Islamic State Caliphate.
He wrote it in the last few weeks.
So, can we take from this that the Fort Hood massacre was not workplace violence, that maybe it was indeed terrorism?
And maybe Nadal Hassan was actually a terrorist.
So he wants to become a citizen of ISIS.
And who wouldn't?
Obama just got there saying nothing we can do about ISIS.
I mean, not permanently.
We can't do anything about him.
Back to the audio soundbites today.
White House press briefing.
Josh Ernest, the press secretary, got a question from Jim Acosta at CNN.
Now, Acosta is apparently one of the biggest apologists for the regime that you can find.
And here's his question.
Listen to this question to the White House press secretary.
This was just mere moments ago, in the last hour.
The fact that you came out so quickly and tried to explain what the president had to say suggests that what he said was not what he intended to say.
Or are you saying that the rest of us took it the wrong way?
When is the last time you can recall outside of this administration a member of the press bending over backwards like this?
Listen to this question again.
This is after Obama said, you know what?
I was watching the news and I was watching what some of you people are doing and we don't have strategy for that.
We don't have strategy.
Okay, so Josh, you're out here so fast after that answering questions.
So the fact that you came out so quickly, does it suggest that what he said was not what he intended to say?
Would Sam Donaldson ever say that to a spokesman for Reagan?
Like Larry speaks.
Larry, Larry, did the president really not mean to say what he did?
Did we take it wrong, Larry?
Is that what you're saying?
Did we take it the wrong way?
And here's the answer from the press secretary.
The reaction that we had at the White House yesterday was not in response to the president's comments.
It's in response to the way it was being reported.
We didn't listen to the president's news conference and go formulate a strategy for responding.
We listened to the president's news conference, watched your reporting, and recognized that if we wanted people to have a very clear understanding of what the president was trying to communicate, that we needed to engage you directly to do that.
Meaning, you know, we can't leave it up to the president to tell you what he means.
After he does that, we have to come here the next day and tell you what he meant.
Because you people are obviously not smart enough to keep up with the president.
You're not quick enough.
You're not whipped enough.
You really can't keep up with the guy.
You don't know what he's saying.
So we have to come out the next day and explain it to you.
This is what Ernest was saying, based on the question.
And what he's really saying here was, well, you know what?
We watched you guys reporting on the president saying we didn't have a strategy.
And we realized that we had to come out here and correct what you guys were saying because you didn't understand what the president said.
Now, folks, there's no way to interpret or misinterpret we don't have a strategy.
There's no way to misinterpret, well, you know, we got the best military in the world.
We can put them down here and there.
We can't, we're not going to be able to get rid of them.
The Iraqis are going to have to step up.
So the press, so shocked, so dismayed by what they heard, desperate for some word from the White House today that it was them who were wrong and not the president saying something stupid.
And that's what Acosta is begging for.
Acosta basically begging for the press secretary to tell him that the press corps is just, they just got it wrong.
No, no, no, the president didn't say anything stupid like that.
And the press is totally willing to accept that they are the idiots if it means Obama not looking like an idiot.
Jim Avila, ABC, then said, is there evidence from the TSA, from the FBI, CIA, NSA, that any of those people with Western passports have been on planes or are on their way back to the U.S. or are already in the U.S.?
The most detailed intelligence assessment that I can offer from here is that there's no evidence or indication right now that ISIL is actively plotting to attack the United States homeland.
That's true right now.
Really?
So there's no evidence and no indication right now that ISIL is actively plotting to attack the U.S. homeland?
Well, let's go back to August 21st, eight days ago, in Washington at the Pentagon, Press Secretary with Chuck Hagel, Secretary of Defense, and Martin Dempsey, General Dempsey, the Chairman of Chief Joints of Staff, during a QA.
And Jim Miklashevsky, NBC, says, Secretary Hagel, is the calculation that ISIL presents a 9-11-level threat to the U.S. ISIL is as sophisticated and well-funded as any group that we have seen.
They're beyond just a terrorist group.
They marry ideology, a sophistication of strategic and tactical military prowess.
They are tremendously well-funded.
Oh, this is beyond anything that we've seen.
So we must prepare for everything.
And the only way you do that is you take a cold, steely, hard look at it and get ready.
So the press secretary today said, nah, nothing to sweat here.
There's no ISIL here.
There's no possibility of an ISIL attack.
They're not even plotting one in the homeland, Chuck Hagel.
This is the biggest threat we've seen, and we should be getting ready to be attacked.
Utter chaos, utter, total chaos emanating from Command Central, the Pentagon, and the White House.
We go back to the press conference yesterday, moving up now to audio soundbite number four.
During the Q ⁇ A, this is after Obama has explained that there's no strategy for dealing with ISIL-ISIS.
An unidentified reporter said, Mr. President, despite all of the actions the West has taken to get Russia to pull back from Ukraine, Russia seems intent on taking one step after another, convoys, transports of arms.
At what point do sanctions no longer work?
And would you envisage, envisage, would you envisage, sorry.
Good thing this guy is not identified.
Would you, Mr. Mr. President, would you envisage the possibility, for those of you who reel into him and say envision, would you envisage the possibility of a necessity of military action to get Russia to pull back from Ukraine, sir?
We are not taking military action to solve the Ukrainian problem.
What we're doing is to mobilize the international community to apply pressure on Russia.
But I think it is very important to recognize that a military solution to this problem is not going to be forthcoming.
Well, can you imagine Putin watching this?
He cannot believe his luck that he got this guy as an adversary.
So one day, Obama says, well, no, ISIS, there's no way.
We're not going to have a strategy for that.
There did anyway.
And Putin goes into Ukraine and Obama says, hey, there's no way military solution to this problem.
No way.
And it's not by accident that Putin today announces we are back and you had better not stop us.
Russia, nuclear Russia is back.
He was at a children's camp and he said, you cannot stop us.
You'd better not try.
And Obama said, you don't have anything to worry about, Vlad.
We have no intention of stopping you.
Now, folks, don't misunderstand.
Nobody here is calling for military action in Ukraine to kick the Russians out.
We already promised the Ukrainians we would do that, by the way.
Let's never forget the Ukrainians disarmed in exchange for a promise of protection from us and Great Britain and some of the other NATO countries if they would disarm.
And they disarmed.
And now they have no way of defending themselves against a full onslaught from Russia.
Now, even if the president's convinced that there isn't a military solution, we're not going to do that.
Why say it?
I guarantee you, Putin, he can't believe it.
He's thinking, what the stroke of luck I got with this guy for an adversary?
Today in London, British Prime Minister David Cameron speaking on the raising of the terror threat level to severe in Great Britain because of ISIS.
The root cause of this threat to our security is quite clear.
It is a poisonous ideology of Islamist extremism that is condemned by all faiths and by all faith leaders.
This is about a battle between Islam on the one hand and extremists who want to abuse Islam on the other.
We need to tackle that ideology of Islamist extremism head-on.
That means challenging the thinking of extremist ideologues, identifying the groups in this country that push an extremist agenda, and countering them by empowering the overwhelming majority who believe in British values of democracy, the rule of law, and respect for minorities.
Well, see, it's really fine till you get there to the solution.
And then you get conflict resolution 101 and political correctness.
After correctly identifying these people as absolute extremist, bloodthirsty, deadly brutes, he suggests the way to beat them is to empower the overwhelming majority who believe in the British values of democracy, the rule of law, and respect for minorities.
And he's talking about Muslims who are opposed to Islamic extremism.
And everybody's praising Cameron here in comparison to Obama.
And I have to admit, anything would look better than Obama.
But what's he really saying here?
Where is the evidence that the world's Muslims want to fight extremism?
They are as intimidated by it as anybody is.
The Obama equivalent would be: well, yep, you know what?
We see ISIL as a big threat, but we can't stop it.
And we don't have a strategy to.
So it's really going to come down to the world's peaceful Muslims to deal with this because we can't.
Except that they haven't.
So we're going to beat in the UK.
They want to defeat terrorism and every horror associated with it with good vibes.
The empowering of the majority with values of democracy and the rule of law and respect for minorities.
Excuse me, but what does that have to do with terrorism?
What in the world does that have to do with anything?
Respect for minorities when you're up against terrorists?
And you've just characterized them as a poisonous ideology of Islamist extremism.
And we're going to root them out and make sure that they have respect for minorities and are overwhelmed by the British values of democracy.
That's the old liberal equivalent of we can win wars with doctors, nurses, and clean water.
Oh, and doctors without borders, too.
Yeah, you can't stop us once we have those people.
Open Line Friday, Rush Limbaugh serving humanity simply by showing up.
Back to the phones, Nancy, Jacksonville, Florida.
Great to have you.
Hello.
Hello.
Thanks for having me.
You bet.
Rush, my comment is twofold.
First of all, Julie is exactly right.
Domestic abuse is already incredibly underreported for the very reason she mentioned it.
Whether you're wealthy or poor, you don't want the main breadwinner losing his job.
So this NSL decision makes it probably a guarantee that people are not going to report it in legitimate cases.
Okay, let me refresh for people just waking up.
You know, welfare recipients just joining a show today at this time.
The NFL has revised its policy on suspensions of players guilty of wife beating.
They have changed it.
Now, it used to be two games.
Now it's six games, first offense, and a full year, the second offense, with no guarantee of reinstatement.
And we had a caller say, that's not going to work, Rush, because the woman is not going to, she likes the mansion.
She likes the lifestyle.
She's not going to get her breadwinner thrown out of the game with no paycheck.
So it's not going to get reported.
There's going to be more of it going on than everybody knows about because these women aren't going to report it.
And Nancy is calling to agree.
Yes, sir.
And also, I think that the other side of the coin is it's going to get abused by the really hot, crazy chicks who, you know, will threaten their boyfriends with this kind of thing because if you're familiar with the hot, crazy matrix, the better looking they are, generally the crazier they are.
And they might, you know, use it like that lady did who said her husband was downloading porn to try to get him in trouble, but he wasn't even living in the house.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
The hot, crazy matrix?
Yeah, it's a kind of a thing on the internet.
This guy comes out and explains the hotter the girl is, the crazier she is.
And, you know, these are zones where it's safe to date a good-looking girl.
No, it's a new take on an age-old philosophy.
Exactly.
Yeah, okay.
The hotter she is, the crazier.
You know what?
The old.
Okay, folks, stand by.
Do you know what the equivalent of that was 20 years ago, 30 years ago?
For every hot, sexy chick you see out there, there is a guy tired of her.
That is, that's the equivalent 20, 30 years ago, what you're saying right now.
Hot, crazy chick goes nuts, and guy gets, it isn't what anybody thinks.
And she goes crazy.
The hotter she is, the crazier, the more threatening she becomes, and so forth.
And so that's all over the internet now, huh?
Yeah, it's actually really funny.
You should see it.
But yeah, I just think the decision is a lose-loose.
In legitimate cases of abuse, they're not going to say anything.
And then in cases where you've just got somebody losing.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't, because that's not what really is at stake here.
What's stake here is appearances and image and PR.
I mean, it's real simple to see what happened.
The league doesn't know what to do.
They've got a videotape of a player dragging his fiancé out of an elevator at a casino that he knocked her out.
And the media starts going bonkers.
It's Ray Rice of the Baltimore Ravens.
And the media goes bonkers because there's no immediate suspension announced.
And then it's learned there's not even a policy for substance or spousal abuse.
So the league's kind of tied, hands are tied, don't know what to do because there's no manual.
There's no owner's manual.
There's no guidance manual here.
So finally, after media pressure and feminazi pressure and so forth, the commissioner announces a two-game suspension.
And the media says that's not enough.
That's outrageous.
How dare he?
And then the feminist group stamps, that's outrageous.
How dare he?
How can he be someone to touch only two games for knocking your wife out and dragging her out of an elevator on a videotape?
How dare he?
How dare?
So the commissioner, I can't have this.
Six games.
It's clearly reactionary.
And it's designed to appease critics.
It's not, as you guys point out, it really isn't well thought out in terms of dealing with the problem of players who beat their wives up.
Amber back, El Rushbo, executing assigned host duties flawlessly, zero mistakes.
So here we are.
We are six days from the opening of the NFL season.
The Seattle Seahawks and the Green Bay Packers at Seattle next Thursday night.
And what is everybody talking about?
Wife beater suspensions.
And Goodell being praised today by the media for admitting that he was wrong in the original announcement of two games as a suspension.
He admitted he was wrong.
He admitted it.
That's what we wanted.
And now he's changed it to six games.
He's back to being a great commissioner now.
Does he listen to us?
Okay, here is the story from Adweek, actually, about, by the way, I want to point out we've had two callers on NFL football today.
Both have been women and both have been brilliant.
Both have been right on the money on this subject.
But yet it is assumed out there that women will never understand fantasy football unless it is converted into terms and lifestyles that they understand and care about.
Now, ladies, let me explain fantasy football to you very quickly, as I did yesterday.
Fantasy football is where you assume the role of owning a team.
And a week or a month, whenever you decide to do it, you get together with the other people in your league and you conduct a draft of NFL players, depending on how you want to do it.
Let's do an offense-only fantasy football league here.
So each team, let's say, can draft 25 players.
No player can be on more than one team.
So you draft a number of quarterbacks and you draft a number of receivers and you draft a kicker and you draft a number of running backs.
And then on Saturday at 12 noon or whenever your league designates, you have to activate, let's say, 11 of them for the games that Sunday.
So you can activate, let's say, three quarterbacks, four running backs, and three receivers, a kicker, however you want to do it, whatever rules you want to set up.
And then when the games are played on Sunday, you follow your players.
You don't follow teams.
You follow the quarterbacks that you activated.
You follow the running backs because there are points allotted for every touchdown and every field goal.
And at the end of the weekend's action, you total up the points that weekend, and that's the points, the highest points wins that week.
You keep doing it all season long.
Some leagues draft defensive players.
Some do it all kinds of different ways, but that's basically, is it hard to understand?
It's kind of straightforward.
And when it first started, the league was not in favor of it.
The television networks were not in favor of it.
They were all frightened by it because it diverted fans' attention away from teams and wanting to follow teams, which leads to TV ratings, and instead following individual players.
So let's say you have Rothlessberger as one of your quarterbacks, but you don't have anybody else on the Steelers.
Maybe you've got a Steelers wide receiver.
You don't care if the Steelers win or lose, but you care that Rothlessberger and his receivers and running backs score a lot of points, but you don't care in the end if they win or lose.
And it happens.
Believe me, I can tell you it totally changes the way people look at the game.
And it makes them want to watch all the games or have access to all the games more than just follow a team.
And the NFL has been very team loyalty oriented.
The broadcast over-the-air broadcast rules are based on team loyalty in market, out-of-market, and all that.
This totally upset the apple cart.
But it got to be so big the league couldn't stop it and now had to adapt to it.
So now ESPN sponsors fantasy football leagues.
And I think the league is doing things now to facilitate the reporting of information every day, every game day, on individual players and their stats so that fantasy players can tabulate how well they're doing while the action is underway.
So now they're all in.
Now, add to this: the league wants to expand its demographics.
And naturally, football is a rough and tough man sport.
I mean, there's cursing and there's farting and it's sweaty and it's dirty and it's vicious and it's brutal.
All the things women supposedly find.
I know I need to find it yet.
So the NFL has tried to find a way to bring women into the game.
And so we have October, which is all pink in the NFL.
Players will wear items of their uniforms in pink.
Penalty flags are pink in some games.
It runs the gamut.
For breast cancer awareness, which is meant to show that the league cares about women and their breasts, so as to expand women's interest in the game and watching it and attending it.
Well, now the league is attempting to expand fantasy football to women, but doesn't think the way I explained it will make it interesting enough to women to join fantasy football leagues.
So they have come up with a way of enticing female fan interest in fantasy football.
And there's a story about it in Ad Week magazine.
And I have it right here, my formerly nicotine-stained fingers.
ESPN thinks fantasy football is too complicated for the female brain to understand.
So it is simplifying the stats into terms that women will comprehend by posting relationship-based rankings.
An article on ESPNW, that is the women-friendly portal of ESPN, introduced the Sisters Williams, who will be writing fantasy advice on its site during the season.
There are three of these women named Williams, and they run the Her Fantasy Football podcast, which documents the Sisters League and provides analysis for level-headed people who love fantasy football but don't want it as their second job.
Apparently, because women cannot grasp the concepts posted on the thousands of existing fantasy football sites out there, the Sisters Williams will dispense their advice in female-friendly terms that parallel the game of dating in order to attract female fantasy football players.
The sisters wrote on their website, that's why we have a simple relationship-based rating system that cuts through all of the clutter of statistics.
LaShawn McCoy and Calvin Johnson are two of the very best players in the game, so we considered them marriage material.
LaShawn McCoy is a running back for the Philadelphia Eagles, Calvin Johnson, Megatron, a wide receiver for the Detroit Lions.
Now, it is felt that you women would not be excited enough by that to get involved.
So, these two guys are rated as relationship prizes.
And LaShawn McCoy and Calvin Johnson, best players, so they are marriage material.
They are elite players.
Arian Foster, running back for the Houston Texans, and Andre Johnson, wide receiver, Houston, Texas.
They are, they're not. among the best.
They are boyfriend potential.
It'd be great catches if you could get them for a date or two.
Wes Welker, wide receiver, well, slot receiver for the Denver Broncos, and Vernon Davis, a linebacker defensive end for the Fortiners.
These guys are classified as, it's complicated.
They're pretty good players until you find something better.
So the way the players are ranked, it's considered that women don't understand elite versus really good versus, eh, they got some problems and you might not really want them.
So for women to understand them, they're classified as marriage material, terrific catches, and placeholders until you can do better.
And in that way, women are supposed to better understand who to draft and who to activate and who to have on their fantasy teams.
Because it's just too much for them to understand real live football statistics.
It's especially degrading, because this is I'm reading now from, this is a woman writing the story, Michelle Castillo at Adweek.
It's especially degrading considering that ESPN's main fantasy football site has a series of introductory videos to help people learn the game, but it's employed the talents of one of its top analysts, Matthew Berry.
While he can create a fantasy football for dummies primer for the main audience, it seems ESPN believes that neither he nor any of its staff know how to speak to women who apparently only comprehend things if it relates to finding a potential mate.
Now, so essentially, folks, what ESPN is doing here in order to spread the game to the female demographic, they're turning fantasy football into the dating game.
It's not fantasy football.
It's fantasy football dating.
And as I say, LaShawn McCoy and Calvin Johnson, you don't want to just date those guys.
You want to marry them.
Meaning you would really like them on your team.
And that's how they're choosing to do it.
Now, I thought the way I explained fantasy football yesterday and just now was perfectly understandable.
Now, remember, this is from the sensitive left who are very, very, very aware of women and not part of the war on women like us conservative Republicans are conducting no way.
And so they have to insult them and their intelligence and assume there's no way they can be attracted to fantasy football, but less they can fantasize and pretend about marrying or dating or rejecting.
They need a fourth category.
Husband who would abuse you if you married him and you would turn him in.
Open line Friday, Rush Limbaugh serving humanity.
With half my brain tied behind my back, as always, just to be fair, here is Kevin in Fort Myers, Florida.
I'm glad you waited, sir.
Welcome to the program.
Thanks, Rush.
Longtime listener.
First time call.
Thank you, sir.
I'm starting.
I'm coming up with a premise I think is a winning formula for Mitt Romney to become the head of the Republican Party, win the nomination, and become the president.
Now, I may be starting from a false point of view, but my point of view is I think we want a president that's mature, experienced, probably a governor who's actually run something, who's educated, maybe ran a business as well, and is a mature, practical guy.
If I'm Bitt Romney, I say, here are the 19 things that are affecting our country to the negative.
And these are the 19 things I'm going to talk about.
19 things.
I'm not going to talk about abortion.
I'm not going to talk about Bain Capital.
I'm not going to talk about my money.
I'm not going to talk about this or that.
These are the 19 things I'm going to talk about.
And, Mr. Press, if you bring them up, I'm going to say, I'm not going to talk about that.
In addition, he presents or publishes a position paper on these 19 elements and the top 10 things he would do in the first hundred days in office on each of these 19 critical problems that the company, that the country has.
And the hell with the press and say, hey, I'm going to do this.
I'm going to talk about that.
And that's all I'm going to do.
And I'm not going to talk about these incendiary, false straw men and issues that you want to, obstacles you want to put in front of people that are just not obstacles.
Why are you choosing Romney to do this?
Well, I started out with looking for a guy of high caliber, high talent, good experience, and he's actually run something like a state and a company and a country, a company, I should say.
And I don't see a lot of those guys around.
I see a lot of career politicians that have not done anything else.
And that's, I think, the last thing that we need.
We need a practical solution to a series of practical problems that can be overcome.
Okay, so one of the things you want him to avoid?
Abortion, his wealth, bain capital.
Bay capital.
Well, but that's part of running a business.
I understand that, but we can talk about running a business instead of talking about specifically a private equity business.
There are principles that he believes in.
For instance, I'm in business, and I have absolutely key core operating values.
And no matter what you say, no matter what you do, I'm not going to violate operating values.
Let me just ask you a question.
Let's say Romney does this.
He identifies these things he's not going to talk about.
And two of them are abortion and bain capital.
What does he do when that's all the media wants to talk about?
And then when he says, no, I'm not talking to you, what's he going to do when that's all they write and broadcast about?
Well, the additional thing that I added to this action plan is that on the 19 critical issues that are affecting our company, he publishes a position paper.
I don't care if it's 10 pages or 40 pages on each one before he runs.
It says, if you want to know what I'm interested in, if you want to know what my solutions are, here they are.
Go research them.
I'd be glad to talk to you about them.
I want to talk to you about things of substance.
I don't want to talk about burning logs that you want to throw on the table to disrupt this discussion and this election.
I know, but the bottom line is that the Republican candidate will never be able to define what he will not or will talk about.
And if anybody says to the media, I'm not talking about abortion, that's fine.
That's all they will talk about.
The discussion is that.
And he can have 15,000 position papers and they will ignore the position paper.
Discussion of abortion should be acknowledged for what it is.
It's a straw man.
It's a burning log.
It's an incendiary device that they just want to put it on the table.
The bottom line is it's not an area that's affecting the future of our country.
Our country is not going to rise and fall on what the presidential candidate or president thinks about abortion.
It's just not going to happen.
Well, maybe, but as an issue, yeah, as a defining characteristic, it could be relevant.
But I understand what you're saying about it.
You think it's an automatic loser.
The media hypes on it, scares women.
Women are never going to vote for anybody.
That's what Stephanopoulos did by asking Romney what he thought about contraception.
And Romney's, nobody's talking about it, George.
Well, I'm asking you.
What do you think about it?
What does contraception have to do about our economy?
What does contraception have to do about energy?
What does contraception have to do about paying back a $20 trillion debt?
What does contraception have to do about the future of our children?
Absolutely nothing.
I'm not suggesting that they should be talked about.
I'm just telling, I know what the media is going to do.
If you taunt them and tell them what you won't talk about, they will make sure that that's all they report on where you are concerned.
They'll tell everybody Romney, for some reason, will not win his position on abortion or contraception.
They'll make it an issue.
That's not the way to go about it.
Ladies and gentlemen, I will endeavor to respond to Kevin in Fort Myers call with his suggestions for Mitt Romney when we get back when I have a little bit more time to do so.
I was not sloughing him off by any means.
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