All Episodes
Previous Next
Dec. 10, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:00
December 10, 2014, Wednesday, Hour #1
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Yeah, look at this.
Right on time, right on time.
When it can't do any good, a Wall Street Journal has a story essentially saying that I was right.
So There is no public relations catastrophe.
That happens to the Republicans if there's a government shutdown.
That's right.
No public relations catastrophe given the perennial low approval.
The headline, shutdowns political damage may be overrated.
And an eight to ten seat pickup is what happened as the damage of last year's government shutdowns.
So right here it is.
After the fact.
Now the reason why it's a big deal, all these clowns up there read the Wall Street Journal.
All these clowns in the Washington establishment, a Republican side, especially the Wall Street Journal's gold.
Wall Street Journal's gospel.
So now they've got a story.
Shutdowns political damage may be overrated.
Subheadline, Rush Limbaugh was right.
Well, it doesn't say that, but it may as well.
Anyway, greetings, friends.
Great to have you at Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network here at 800-282-2882 in the email address L Rushbow at EIBNet.com.
There's more to this story, but basically, I've just given you the sum total of it, that there's no big deal.
Government shutdown does not cause a PR catastrophe.
Political damage overrated.
But that doesn't matter now because yesterday they did it.
They funded the government for the rest of the fiscal year, 1.1 trillion dollars, I'm told.
There's a Washington Post story that they say we're going to do a service for you.
Rather than you read the whole thing, we're going to do it and skim it for you.
And then we're just going to give you the highlights.
And the third highlight in the Washington Post story is that Obamacare is fully funded.
Now there's no new money.
There's no new money for Obamacare, and the Washington Post says if I read it, I had to quickly glance at it before the program commenced here.
I think they cut $10 million from the death panel aspect.
But I've got to double check that when I have a uh lengthy break coming up here of a chance to really read it.
But the bottom line is, and I guess because Drudge has got the lead headline, Republican betrayal, Obamacare fully funded, Wall Street Journal.
Yeah.
Slow realization that the shutdown is not a PR catastrophe.
And there you have it.
Greetings, my friends.
It's great to have you here, isn't it?
Midweek Wednesday on the Rush Limbaugh program and the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Now there's one other thing here before we get into the uh the CIA report.
Well, the the Senate committee staff report on the CIA and on torture.
Although we pretty much said everything yesterday that that can be said about this, but we will review it.
There's some interesting stuff about about Mrs. Clinton.
You know, I I remain in the camp, but I've always been there, and I've always been wrong.
That she's not gonna run, and if she does, it's not gonna be a slam dunk.
But I've got stories left and right, how she's just a shoe-in.
She just her poll numbers are something higher than anybody's ever seen at this stage on the Democrat side.
That Elizabeth Warren is essentially sitting here at 10%.
And and Hillary is in the 70s or 80s in terms of Democrats who wanted to run and would vote for her.
But then there's another story, people are all concerned that Hillary is still scheduling paid speaking engagements all the way through March of next year.
And for summary, the smart money says if she's doing that, that means she's not running.
You don't do paid speeches after you announce.
And in 2007, she announced in January.
So the people that read the tea leaves thinking, well, if she's going to announce her 2016, it would be in January of 2020.
And if she's doing paid speaking engagements in March, then there's no way that she's gonna you don't do paid speeches after you who says we're talking about the Clintons here.
Who says you don't do paid speaking engagements after you've announced your Canada's?
Anyway, before we get into all that, a friend of mine sent me a story today that just thought it was the most wonderful thing.
No, it has nothing to do with me.
It has nothing to do with me.
Oh, you've because this friend is the only one who finds every story critical of me and sends them to me with the note, you've probably seen this a hundred times, and I never see them because nobody sends me that stuff except this one person.
Anyway, no, this is a this is a it's a it's a note that it's an email, it's designed to be feel good.
I read it and I replied, I said, this should not make you feel good.
This is this portends another disaster.
Let me give you the details, and I'll tell you why.
It's story of ABC News, and it's about the Syrian refugees starving, thirsting, not having sex.
I mean, everything could be going wrong with them is going wrong with them.
The United Nations, which is essentially a United States food stamps program, the United Nations had promised to take care of these people financially, economically, and maybe even the sex.
UN's got people can do that.
But they ran out of aid.
They ran out of everything.
These poor Syrian refugees, and they heard about it on social media.
So remember the GoFund campaign that revived the woman's uh cake store in Ferguson, Missouri.
We mentioned that a number of other people did, and she ended up, at the end of the day, I think over 300 and some odd thousand dollars raised by people all over the country to help her reopen her store, which was destroyed into looting after the grand jury decision in the gentle giant case.
Well, something similar happened here.
The UN started crying about the fact they were out of money and they couldn't fund these poor Syrian reputations, social media campaign sprung up, much like GoFund, and the objective here was to raise $64 million from around the world.
They wanted one dollar from 64 million people.
Well, let me tell you what happened.
After a social media campaign brought in a significant cash infusion, the UN food agency, which is the U.S. food stamp program, said yesterday that it has reinstated the food aid program.
It helps feed more than 1.7 million Syrian refugees, but just for one month, because this you start feeding 1.7 million people costs a lot of money.
In early December, the world food program suspended electronic food vouchers for Syrians, i.e., food stamps, who had fled to Jordan and Lebanon and Turkey and Iraq and Egypt.
The move triggered panic among the refugees, threatening to starve thousands of families and add pressure to the already strained countries that were hosting them.
At the time, the world food program said that many donors failed to meet their commitments.
Many people who had pledged money to the UN didn't pay up.
The agency said that it needed $64 million to support Syrian refugees in December.
Just in December, $64 million for one month.
So on Tuesday, the World Food Program said that the voucher program was back on again thanks to an unusual campaign that was launched on social media to raise one dollar contributions from 64 million people around the world.
They ended up collecting 1.8 million dollars in donations from about 14,000 people and from private sector donors in 158 countries as part of a campaign using the hashtag a dollar a lifeline.
So my friend says, Isn't it wonderful?
Oh my god, we good people.
Look at this.
The UN failed, and people came alive and kept the Syrian refugees eating.
And I said, do not get so excited first.
What's this gonna what message does this send to the United Nations?
What message does this send to somebody like Barack Obama?
Now, what does it, if you're a UN bureaucrat, if you're in the food stamp program at the UN, if you're at the Children's Health Fund program, whatever, if you're in any UN program that gives away American dollars, and you've run out, and all of a sudden a social media hashtag in less than half a day raises 1.8 million dollars, and you are well on your way to raising the 64 million you need, what do you conclude?
Think about it now.
What do you if you're one of these bureaucrats, if you're a UN socialist big government bureaucrat, or a United States Democrat, doesn't matter, what do you conclude?
You have to conclude that people are not being taxed enough.
If they've got this kind of money in this economy to donate in half a day, 1.8 million on the way to 64 million to feed the Syrian refugees your average big government bureaucrat.
The first conclusion, the first reaction is not going to be gratitude.
It's not going to be thanks.
The first reaction is going to be we aren't taxing these people enough.
If they've got this kind of money in their pockets, then we need to raise taxes on people.
If you're the bureaucracy and you have run out of money, and yet people you don't even know all over the world can fork up almost two million dollars in half a day, you will conclude people have too much money.
Because remember, these are the people that think all money is theirs anyway.
That's what American Democrats believe, it's what socialists believe, all money belongs to the state.
And whatever individuals end up with is simply the result of the state's distribution, redistribution, goodwill, or what have you.
So I am I I said back to the note, and I hope I don't destroy your day here, but a story like this presents a great risk to me because all of these UN, European Union, Obama type bureaucrats are going to easily figure out that they're not taxing us enough.
If we have the ability to raise and spend money like this on their causes, we gave, people gave almost two million dollars to the UN on one of their causes.
You mark my words, it will not be long before somebody observes that there is maybe too much money floating around still in the private sector.
Now they'll never say this publicly.
They'll talk about it amongst themselves privately, and they'll probably get mad, and then they'll devise schemes to go out and raise taxes with user fees, all kinds of hidden little things, because this is ultimately this they're not going to be happy about that outwardly they will say so.
But I don't know, a story like this is a is a dual-edged sword to me.
Because I know there is deep resentment among bureaucrats for how much money people in the private sector have, and especially here you have a UN program that ran out of money.
And the UN doesn't have any money of its own and have any money until it fleeces or extorts whoever it can around the world.
So we'll just keep a sharp eye on this.
I've uh I've put this at appropriate places in my computer software to trigger my memory and to keyword relate to any future news from the UN and fees and taxes.
It'll circle back to this story.
Now, question, ladies and gentlemen.
Has the United States been attacked in a major terrorist plot since 9-11?
It has not.
Now, who do we need to thank for that?
You don't think that we owe a debt of gratitude to the Democrat staffers on the Senate Intelligence Committee?
In other words, you think that we owe a debt of gratitude to Bush, Cheney, uh, the CIA, uh, the interrogators, the agents, people on the ground, special forces who've been trying to weed out terrorism and foil plats, plots of the tax form.
That's who we in the military, that's who we need to thank.
Really?
Okay.
Uh so that what you're saying is that we haven't been attacked, despite the Democrats and Congress.
Democrats in Congress and the staff of this committee have actually put this country at greater risk now.
I think they're they have really put us at greater risk than we otherwise would have been.
And we're supposed to believe after all of this, by the way, that one of the one of the greatest pieces about this is from a former member of this committee, Bob Carey, not related to the haughty John Kerry, who served in Vietnam, although Bob Carey did, but he doesn't talk about it much.
Bob Carey's a former senator from Nebraska.
Many of you may know him as uh the guy who dated Deborah Winger.
That's how most people know him in the low information community.
He has an op-ed just ripping this committee to shreds, just ripping the committee staff to shreds for this report that they came out with yesterday.
And he gives the reasons why, and he's he's right on the money.
They didn't even interview anybody.
They didn't talk to anybody.
This is it's an opinion piece.
And it is a get-even piece.
It's because the CIA and others thought there might be some serious intel leaks on the Democrat side of the Intelligence Committee and their staff.
And so earlier this year, there were clandestine investigations of people like Dai Fi and others, and boy, when they found out were they fit to be tight, and that's why this thing happened.
We are supposed to believe that the enhanced interrogation of detainees at Guantanamo Bay was of absolutely no value whatsoever.
It did, and of course, we know just the opposite to be true.
We learned a lot in the interrogation process about attacks that had happened and about future attack.
There's a reason why we have not yet been hit again in a major attack since 9-11.
And that's because we have foiled a number of them, but we can't ever announce the details.
To do so would give away techniques.
So once again, here riding to the rescue a bunch of Nambi Pambi Senate staffers who have in their minds a political score to settle.
Internal strife on display is what this report is.
In the meantime, as they attempt to add credibility to their report, they try to tell us that there's not one shred of information that was useful or worthwhile that was obtained as a result of these enhanced interrogation techniques.
But again, how many successful Al Qaeda attacks on the U.S. have there been in the 13 years since 9-11?
Answer is zero.
Probably just a coincidence, though, right?
Probably just luck.
And never mind, never mind that Barack Obama was able to personally hunt down Osama bin Laden from the golf course.
Barack Obama was able to personally hunt down and shoot Osama bin Laden because of the enhanced interrogation of Guantanamo detainees.
Gotta take a break.
Right in the middle of it as usual, too.
I have to stop and take a break.
Meetings, welcome back.
Great to have you, Rush Limbaugh.
Middle of the week, Wednesday, here at the Excellence and Broadcasting Network and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
I was thinking about liberalism, which I think about a lot.
But whoa, folks, have I got to tell you I interviewed.
I interviewed Dr. Thomas Sowell yesterday afternoon after the program for the next issue of the limbaugh letter.
Now normally I would tease you with what he said as a means of hyping the purchase of subscriptions, but because I Don't look at you people as pockets and dollar signs.
I'm going to tell you this.
I started off by asking him, Dr. Sowell, you and I and countless others have been chronicling the deterioration of American culture, our society and our politics.
In my case, for twenty-five years.
At what point we just keep talking about at what point does any of this change?
And he said, that's actually the big question.
And I said, What's your biggest fear?
You ready for this?
Said his biggest fear, the Iranians get nuclear weapons and attack not Israel, but the United States.
Dr. Sowell said to me that one of his, not his only, of course, one of his biggest fears is that the Iranians would launch a nuclear attack of some kind on the United States and the kicker.
He is convinced that if Obama is president when it happens that he will surrender.
And I expressed total shock.
And he said, what did the Japanese do?
All it took was two bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
What did they do?
If we wake up one day in Chicago and New York are gone, if we wake up one day and Dallas and Los Angeles are gone.
So the shock of that, I I had to come back to it probably 20 minutes later in the interview to ask him about it if it's something he'd be really, and he was dead serious.
He's 85 years old now.
And he does he does sound a day over 50.
You know, if if that.
And we are back, and I'm gonna grab a call real quickly.
Palm Bay, Florida, this is Keith.
Uh, thank you for the call, sir.
Great to have you on the program.
Hello.
Hey, it's great to be here.
Merry Christmas to you and yours, Russ.
Same to you, sir.
Thank you.
Hey, you know, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but doesn't it seem like all authorities being undermined the CIA, the Secret Service, our police at the beginning it was the ATF?
Where are we going with this?
Is the FBI next?
Uh I can I can understand your point of view.
I can't team six with a failure.
What was that?
SEAL team six.
Oh, City.
So you're on the uh, you know, trying to get the guy back and killing the guy that was supposed to be ruling the next day.
A la Jimmy Carter.
Yeah, I mean, all our authority seems to be getting undermined during this administration.
And you think that this is uh purposeful?
I you know, I don't see why, because if he undermines all the authority, if he was going to go to whatever, you know, what would he use for his authority?
Oh, believe me, he has got plenty of power that he can project if he wants to.
I I think you may your way of describing this is intriguing is Obama undermining all authority, calling into question the moral and legal authority of, say, the police,
the Secret Service, CIA, clearly, a number of these institutions which are charged with protecting the public and defending property, public safety, and the castle, clearly are under siege.
Clearly they're under assault.
And I think you have to look at this cumulatively if you want to understand, if you are of the opinion that all of this authority is being undermined, if you take it all together, as I say cumulative, you may have a point.
And then you would have to ask, okay, why?
Who benefits from that?
Who benefits from the CIA not being trusted?
Who benefits from the cops being thought of as enemies?
Who benefits from the FBI or any or the police, any other law enforcement, who benefits from the border patrol being for the most part worthless?
Who benefits from all this?
And I think answer the question, you have to examine the impact on people, such as you, you've noticed it.
And if you are thinking it, and if you're asking about it, it's obviously harrowing.
It's upsetting, it's frightening.
If all of these institutions that are designed to defend and protect are in the process of being undermined and rendered almost in depending on who you list to, engaging in criminal activity themselves, that they're not trusted or trustworthy.
I think the overall impact that may be desired if this is part of a plan is to simply continue the whole assault on the psyche of the American people.
And to create attitudes of utter futility and worthlessness.
And to make it appear that trying to stop this onslaught is pointless because there's no way we can, because every day there's something new.
So the short answer is it could be, well, it does.
I think it's accomplishing it.
I I think it is reducing the spirit of a lot of people to object to it.
And most people are now reaching a point where they're just trying to stay unaffected by it all.
Just trying to stay out of the way.
Don't do anything, say anything, go anywhere, don't do anything where you might run into any of this.
Just keep your distance.
Because all of these public institutions and government institutions, they are under assault.
There's no question about that.
It's uh it's an interesting point, Keith.
And I do think it has an overall psychological impact on people.
And it may not be something that they realize in the forefront, like you have.
It just may be a creeping, slowly evolving that people have.
And by the way, where are the attacks on all of these institutions coming from?
They're coming from positions of greatest power in this country.
The Obama regime is assaulting all of these institutions.
Here in the case of the CIA, it's a Democrat staff on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Now, attacks on the CIA are nothing new.
It's been part of the but this is an effort to undermine and expose the country to greater risk.
And this has the the uh, I think also another purpose, and that is don't you dare.
Don't you dare try to do any more than you're already doing in trying to ferret out future attacks because we're not going to put up with it.
And this is all coming from people who think the U.S. is the problem.
Now you have to keep that in mind.
All of this is happening as corrective measures.
The people behind.
So if I tell you, I was thinking about liberalism the other day.
Look at this, folks.
Look at it this way.
What is liberalism ask us to do?
What does the Democrat Party today, Barack Obama, what are they asking of us?
They're essentially asking us to set aside our survival instincts.
And they are asking us to set aside mechanisms and institutions that have been devised to help us survive.
Liberalism is asking us not to use effective interrogation techniques to save American lives.
Liberalism is asking us to look the other way.
Liberalism is asking us to be empathetic.
You know what torture is to me?
Can I tell you what torture is to me?
Torture to me, not all this waterboarding and stuff.
You know what torture is?
Torture is trying to go to sleep every night with pictures in your head, that your wife, your husband, your son, your daughter, jumped from a top floor at the World Trade Center to his or her death rather than burn alive.
That's torture to me.
You know what's torture to me.
Torture to me is being a family member, somebody who died at 9-11, either in the Twin Towers, the field in Pennsylvania and the Pentagon, trying to go to bed every night thinking about what they experienced at that moment when the planes hit the towers.
Torture to me is what you go through each and every day, trying to go to sleep As you think about the last moments of the lives of your loved ones or family members on 9-11.
Torture being a family member of an American beheaded on television by Al Qaeda or ISIS, or you name it, Islamic jihadists, and wondering what was going through their mind at that moment.
Torture is then having that be the first thing on my mind when I wake up every day.
That's torture.
And it's every day.
And it is every night.
Torture is being the family member of a first responder on 9-11.
As they gallantly, valiantly, courageously walked and ran to those twin towers looking for survivors, hoping to drag people out, and they never came out.
Torture every day is wondering what they went through.
I'll tell you there's something else that's torture to me, and that is knowing all of that, trying to go to sleep every night with those thoughts in my head, then having to get up and listen to the news in this country.
CIA report, intelligence report from the Senate Intel Committee, which blames Americans for this.
Try to go to sleep every night, and I can't get the picture out of my head of my family member jumping out of those buildings or burning alive.
And I get up and I get to listen to how we're mistreating by depriving them of sleep, the people who did it.
Torture to me is the utter frustration involved in watching various elements of our government bend over backwards to be nice, to have empathy, to be respectful to the people who did this.
People I loved or members of my family.
That's torture to me.
What's torture to me is to get up every day after having not been able to forget any of that.
And to listen to one American after another, essentially find ways to blame the United States for what happened.
There's all kinds of torture out there.
But what the left wants us to do is set aside our survival instincts.
They ask us not to use effective interrogation techniques to save lives.
They ask us to gut the military.
They ask us to downsize the military so that we can pay for ever-expanding dependency benefit programs.
Liberalism asks us to set aside our survival instincts by doing nothing as we dismantle our nuclear capabilities.
In other words, liberalism is asking us to set aside our survival instincts while we reduce our ability to project our power, either offensively or defensively.
Then liberalism asks us to forego affordable energy.
Liberalism asks us to stop using efficient, cheap, plentiful energy, and instead turn to a bunch of new things that don't work, never will work, and are only profiting a few select Democrat donors.
Liberalism today is asking us to accept unaffordable health insurance premiums and unaffordable health insurance deductibles.
Liberalism is asking us to pay more for everything.
Liberalism is asking us to set aside our survival instincts and to accept unaffordable health insurance premiums and deductibles, which is resulting in people forgoing medical treatment because they can't afford it.
Liberalism is asking us to set aside our survival instincts by demanding we leave our borders wide open and unprotected.
Liberalism is asking us to set aside our survival instincts while those borders are overrun.
And just recently liberalism told us that we should welcome known criminals from all over the world, entering our country because it's judgmental to deny them.
Liberalism is asking us at the same time while all this is going on to bankrupt our country, $18 trillion in national debt.
And I think eleven or 10 trillion of that has been added in just the six years of Barack Obama.
Liberalism is trying as hard as they can get us to set aside our survival instincts by surrendering our Second Amendment rights to self-defense.
Liberalism never stops in attempting to get you separated from your gun.
Asking all of us to set aside our survival instincts, all the while trusting them to protect us.
Except the problem is liberals think that we are the problem.
Not Al Qaeda, not Islamic Jihad, not the Taliban, not the Iranians.
No, the Israelis and domestic Americans, particularly Tea Party and conservative Republicans, that's who Americans need to fear and be on the lookout for.
the liberals are asking us to set aside our survival instincts and they call that progress back to the phones we go to the monmouth organ this is jim i'm glad you called sir welcome to the eib network hello Hello.
Hello, Rush.
It's good to talk with you.
I appreciate the uh chance to talk with you.
Thank you, Bet sir.
Great that you called.
Yeah.
Well, I wanted to just comment on what you were just saying about lawlessness and what it's doing.
You talked about torture for you being thinking about people at ground zero and what happened to them, and it kind of triggered something in me.
I was a chaplain, and I was actually back at ground zero working with the families and the uh the people that were trying to find body parts and had kind of the whole meal deal about the horror of all of that, and I've thought about it often since then.
That you're trying it today with a discussion of lawlessness and how people are getting desensitized.
I was telling uh Mr. Sterley that uh the very word apathy, it's a Greek word, apo.
It means you can't feel it anymore.
And I think people are becoming sort of benumbed by all this lawlessness and the increase of lawlessness.
And because I was a pastor, I I know that verse that says because there's an increase in lawlessness, the direct result will be the love of the many would begin to wax cold.
And I'm starting to see that.
I'm starting to see it at all sorts of levels where people are apathetic in the true sense, they don't feel it anymore.
Well, is it is it that they're epithet or uh apathetic and frustrated that nothing seems to work to stop it.
Exactly.
I I've met a lot of people who have lost heart to uh the point of not addressing little lawlessnesses, but it's starting to add up, and what we're seeing on a massive scale nationally now is the unavoidable.
Well, you know where this leads.
I'll tell you where this leads.
If what you say is right, if there is a creeping national attitude of apathy rooted in frustration over the inability to stop this downward spiral, then people are going to be wide open to massive tyranny.
If lawlessness as you describe it, if order breaks down, and there is no common sense In matters of law and order, then eventually people are going to accept some form of total authoritarianism as a solution, as something that will work to restore peace, to restore order.
If that takes tyranny, then they'll gladly sign up for it.
I know that's where you're leading with this.
And it is uh it is a flash point to be concerned about.
So great call.
Back after this.
You know, it'd be great to know the names of the Senate Democrat staffers who put together this report on torture and the CIA, but we will never know their names.
Their names never get published.
They get to work in complete anonymity.
We'll never know who they are.
At least I don't know of a way of finding out who they are.
Not all of them.
People may know them individually.
Anyway, folks, uh, we got to take a quick time out here at the top of the hour, but we've got much more as always.
If you just be patient, we'll be right back before you know it.
▲
Export Selection