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Dec. 22, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:29
December 22, 2014, Monday, Hour #3
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And we are back.
Great to have you, my friends.
Rush Limbaugh executing assigned host duties flawlessly and meeting and surpassing all audience expectations every day.
And I want you to know, I have consciously been on my best behavior today.
Well, I'll tell you why.
Actually, I'm not doing anything different, but I want to acknowledge it.
It's Christmas week, and I realize a lot of you are not working today who normally would be, and therefore might have a chance to hear the program live as opposed to listening to it on podcast later.
You do know you can do that, right?
If you become a member at Rush 24, say you do not, you probably don't know because I won't talk about it enough.
But if you become a subscriber at rushlimbaugh.com, man, is it overwhelming what you get?
I mean, just the access to the content of this program every day.
15,000 words are uttered by me every day.
None of them written, by the way, meaning it's all improv.
You have access to that, the audio soundbites, whatever parody songs we play, an encyclopedic database that is the result of 25 years of show prep that is accessible to members of the website.
Plus, we make the program available every day as a podcast, every hour separately as a podcast.
You can get it either via our website or from iTunes.
And it downloads automatically when available, usually 20 minutes after the program.
And you listen to the program that way.
And this is a lot of time shift listening, people on the Stairmaster at the gym, on the treadmill or where have you, or just driving around listening with your ear pods or what have you.
And it's a great way to keep up with the program.
But on a week like this where you're not listening or working, you have a chance to listen to the program live.
And I'll bet you some of you have convinced some friends of yours who hate me to listen.
And when you do that, you're hoping, you're hoping that I don't do anything to embarrass you.
I mean, you know the drill and you know the context of the program.
You know, sometimes somebody tuning in for the first time might hear something not knowing the foundation on which it is said.
And if by itself, wow, that's outrageous.
But you get it.
But you're just hoping.
Oh, come on.
Come on, Rush.
Because over the years, I've gotten emails from people.
You know, I was just on the verge of getting a new convert for you.
I finally got my girlfriend to listen to you.
What do you do?
You come out with some stupid thing on feminazis and so forth without explaining it.
And she turned the radio off.
And I've always said, well, it's her problem, not mine.
The show's what it is.
And actually, it's your responsibility.
If you're going to have somebody listen to this program on the basis and expectation that they're going to learn the truth about it by actually hearing it.
And if they hear something you don't understand that you do understand, it's up to you.
Why are you staring at me, Mr. Snerdley?
It's a hopeless cause.
Oh, Snurdly's wondering what would happen if I explained why I don't like You Are So Beautiful.
It's not that I don't like it.
I just, I categorize this.
Joe Cockery passed away today, 70 years old.
And my favorite Joe Cocker song, it's High Time We Went.
And there's other, there's another Joe Cocker song.
Well, yeah, but it's not what I'm thinking of.
No, no, no.
It's not the Dana Wine and Roses.
Joe Cocker to be the day of booze and ale.
What was it?
Not came in through the bathroom window.
No, not upward.
Didn't he have a version of A Little Help from My Friends?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So that might be one.
But the song, You Are So Beautiful.
I'm just going to say it.
It sounds like, and every woman I know practically melted when that song came on the radio.
Now, when I was a teenager, you know what song did that?
You wanted to be, you wanted, if you had a date on a Friday night, you wanted to be where everybody went to park when this song came out.
It was guaranteed to Can't Take My Hands Off You by Frankie Valley.
I mean, just didn't need any words.
When that song opened, that's what I said.
Did I say, oh, can't take my eyes off?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
But when that song opened, just with the, just the, you can see the melt.
When that Joe Cocker thing, now I was closer to 20, maybe 20 when that song came out.
And women just melted.
And I thought, well, this song gives every bloke hope for a miracle.
If this song.
Because to me, it sounds like it's being sung by a biker who hasn't showered or shaved in two weeks that's got 10,000 tattoos and is pointing a gun at you while he sings it.
But I'm in a distinct minority there.
Okay.
Anyway, I just wanted to acknowledge those of you listening here and tell you that I love being here when everybody else is off.
It takes me back in a way to the first five, six, seven years of this program when this show was it.
Before all of the spawn and before Fox News and all the bloggers came.
Those are the, you know, it's about nostalgic days.
And so being here on a day where most everybody else already started their vacation break, it's just kind of in a neat attitude.
So I was, and a comforting attitude, nostalgic attitude.
So I know that some of you listening at work live or off work at live for the first time in a while, and you might have a friend who's you're trying to convert, agreed to listen with you today.
And I just wanted to let you know I'm on my best behavior for that alone.
My best behavior, by the way, is such, I don't really need to try to irritate the left.
It happens by the syllable.
Don't even need a full-fledged thought.
Washington Times has a story that there's a huge Obamacare surprise that's going to hit on Christmas Day or thereabout.
Mark Meadows, Republican, North Carolina.
If you like your healthcare plan, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has a Christmas surprise for you.
When will this new president arrive?
December 25th.
In an ongoing effort to keep Obamacare numbers elevated, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has embarked on the next step of its government takeover of healthcare.
Seems that the Centers for Medicaid Services taking a page from Jonathan Gruber's book, rather than allowing the stupid masses to make a decision on their own health plan,
the Center for Medicaid and Medicaid Services has proposed a new rule that includes an overly reaching provision allowing the Centers for Medicaid Services to re-enroll anyone who has not made the annual trekbacktohealthcare.gov in a cheaper plan of their choosing.
That's right.
On December 25th, the government just might choose your plan for you, perhaps limit access to your doctor and ultimately make the decision on what is best for you.
Not to worry, because the Centers for Medicaid Services will use a blindfold to pick your plan.
The agency will select your plan without knowing your medical history.
And they'll do so without knowing if you're currently undergoing treatment or working with a specific doctor.
And they will do so without knowing your financial status.
Despite the fact that the millions of people who had already enrolled chose the plan that they believe was best for them, you could still have your plan taken out from under you and switch, is what this is about.
If you've signed up on December 25th, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services could switch you just based on arbitrary whims.
And you won't know about it.
To be clear, a citizen will sign up once for a private plan with a health care provider only to have that plan changed by the federal government.
Moreover, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will change your plan after the open enrollment period ends, leaving you and your family stuck with a potentially unwanted plan for the year.
Now, the author of the piece here, Mark Meadows says, I sent a letter to the Centers for Medicaid Services demanding that they immediately strip this provision from the pending rule and abandon any future attempt to single-handedly choose Americans' health care plans.
Because if not, it says here, the Republican House and Senate stand ready to take the action necessary to ensure that the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services does not further erode customer choice in healthcare.
Well, we will see.
Now, there's a related story here, folks.
This will comfort you from the Hill.com Republicans Eye obscure budget tool to repeal Obamacare.
No, they're not really going to repeal it.
No, no, no, don't get your hopes up.
What they're going to do is send a message.
Republicans on and off Capitol Hill are rallying behind using a rarely deployed budget tool next year to dismantle Obamacare.
But the issue of how to use budget reconciliation, that's the tool, the issue of how to use budget reconciliation has divided Republicans.
Some calling for it to be implemented to overhaul the tax code or to push through major energy reforms.
Now, budget reconciliation is useful because it could allow newly empowered Senate Republicans to pass legislation with a 51-vote simple majority instead of the usual 60 votes, which of course would greatly increase the chance of moving legislation to Obama's desk.
Now, while Obama is certain to veto anything that tries to roll back Obamacare, Republicans increasingly see budget reconciliation as an important messaging tool to help paint a contrast with Democrats on Obamacare ahead of 2016.
One senior Senate Republican aide, familiar with the behind-the-scene discussions, said, my guidance is that's where members are headed.
What he means is not actually doing anything, but talking about it to send a message.
In other words, Republicans aren't really going to repeal.
They're just going to pretend.
They're going to act like it because this is how we would do it.
And the reason is to show you they oppose it while not stopping it.
You know, by the way, this reminds me of something.
You know, last week when I went through a very detailed, reasoned explanation why a Jeb Bush Hillary Clinton presidential ticket would make sense on the issues.
You remember that?
Well, guess where that's starting to pop up everywhere.
It's not, they're not naming me, of course, but more and more people now are starting to write about how close Jeb and Hillary are on the issues.
Nobody has taken the leap I did and put them on the same ticket yet, but they're writing about how close they are to positions.
Amnesty, Obamacare not being repealed, education.
Jeb's a big believer in core curriculum, which is a leftist Common Core, Common Core, yeah, Common Core.
And it's a leftist thing, and he's all in favor of it.
And so's Hillary, and so are all the other Democrats.
And so here, here, this guy, the Senate staff, oh, yeah, yeah, what we might do here is, you know, because budget reconciliation is what they used to pass Obamacare.
It is a trick.
It is a tool.
It's a way to skirt around the filibuster and prevent the need for cloture, which is 60 votes.
That's why you need 60 votes to pass anything.
And the Republicans are talking about doing the same thing to the Democrats that the Democrats did to them.
Douglas Holtz Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Orifice, said if Republicans are serious about enacting tax reform next year, they should aim for 60 Senate votes.
He said, the last time, the last time reconciliation was used was 2010 when the Democrats, shy of a filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate, needed it to make changes to Obamacare.
Well, Republicans should take the bill that the Democrats passed and you run reverse.
You get rid of it wholesale, said Holtz Eacon.
If it's designed to send a message vote anyway, you might as well be aggressive.
It's not about the legislating.
So the purpose of this story is to inform us that Republicans are thinking about going through the motions, but not actually doing anything, just talking about it, hoping to send a message that illustrates how different they are from the Democrats.
But they're going to stop short at actually having final votes to repeal this little part of it and this little part.
Now, you may have seen, as I have, story after story after story about the Republican plan to get rid of Obamacare piecemeal, attack it over here, attack it over there.
We'll do this here.
We'll do this there.
Little chunks, not go for one big repeal, making ourselves a smaller target, a little chunk here, a little chunk there.
But what this is saying, well, they're going to do that, but not really.
They're going to do it just for messaging purposes.
Got to take a timeout.
We'll come back and continue.
I have been thinking, by the way, of additional ways of explaining how these two parties, the leadership of these two parties, have become almost identical.
And I used to say it's because the Republicans were scared to death of the media and afraid of being critical of Obama, be called racist.
I think it's actually more than that.
Back in just a second.
Yeah, we got, I got some soundbites, Herr the Blasios, some comments at the Police Athletic League luncheon.
And he's got a presser at 3.30.
We'll be gone by the time that happens.
I'll get to these soundbites.
He basically wants everybody to sit down and stop protesting until after the funerals.
This guy is just over his head, doesn't know it.
Gerardo in Westchester, New York.
I'm glad that you waited.
Welcome to the program, sir.
Come out.
Rush, I cannot believe this.
I got to tell you, I got to thank God, Mr. Snurdley, and yourself for letting me on and for not getting a service call.
I've been a police officer around the Albany, New York area for a few years, and now I'm working in Westchester.
And you've been a beacon of hope for me, Rush.
I mean, I listen to you.
I got a nine-year-old son, couple daughters, six years old.
And my son, I always have you on the radio, and he's always quizzing me about you.
And I just got to tell you, you've been a beacon of hope.
But I got to disagree with you today.
You know, I deal with people.
I, you know, obviously deal with good people, bad people, and I see what's going on in the world nowadays.
I just feel, honestly, Rush, that the hope that this country at some point is going to turn around is not there, and it's because of the media in this country, Rush.
To me, the media in this country is like Pravda.
When the United States would say, with the facts back in the day, and I'm old enough to know this, they would have some facts.
They would bring it to the attention of the media over there, and they would just say, you know what, we don't know what you're talking about.
This is what the real, you know, this is what reality is.
And that's what's going on now in this country.
I understand you're not alone, and I'm with you.
I think the media is poison.
And there certainly is no change in store for the media.
They are who they are.
But there are things happening, even within the media universe, that are going to threaten the power of what was called the mainstream media.
And just this program did, and the rise of conservative media destroyed their monopoly.
There's another generation now coming up doing the exact same thing.
Girardo, can you hang on through the break here?
Absolutely, Rush.
Because you see the belly of the beast every day, and I can understand the impact that would have on you.
But let's finish this up when we have this more time after the break.
So don't hang up, Girardo.
And we are back with Gerardo in Westchester in New York.
Girardo, before we go any further, you said you have three kids, and two of them are young.
And if you wouldn't mind, I would like to send you some copies of the Rush Revere books for your kids.
Oh, Rush.
Thank you so much.
But, you know, that was going to be one little thing I was going to tell you.
I bought Rush Revere for my son last year.
Yeah.
And the kid is a voracious reader, Rush.
When I tell you voracious reader, he'll get up at 5.30 in the morning and read, you know, books on end.
It's just unbelievable.
He will not read your book.
He will not?
He will not read it.
I mean, like I said, he'll sit in the car with me and we'll listen to you, going places or what have you.
But for some reason, I don't know whether it's because I got it for him and I said, here, read this.
It's good.
I don't know, Rush.
I feel awful about it.
Don't feel bad about it.
I'll tell you what, let's do this.
Let me send you the audio versions and the CDs.
Awesome, awesome, Rush.
And that way you can put them on in the car.
You can put them on.
Yeah, yeah.
Then he can hear them that way.
That's what I'll do.
So when we finish here, don't hang up.
We'll get your address and I'll send you some audio versions.
Rush.
God bless you, Rush.
And maybe he'd read it if I sent it to him.
Absolute Rush.
Are you kidding me?
God, thank you, Rush.
We'll do that.
We'll make this work because if he's a voracious reader, he would love these books.
There's no question.
But, you know, I know how it can be.
Sometimes parents don't know anything.
Absolutely, Rush.
Just like husbands don't know anything.
That's true, Rush.
Anyway, I know you're a cop.
You see the belly of the beast.
You see the underside of it.
And that's, you know, I can totally understand that you have your realistic view of things.
You probably think, and I wouldn't blame you and most cops, that if you finished every day saying, you know, we can't even keep up with the crime.
We can't keep it.
Half of it gets thrown out.
We catch them, half of them get tossed back.
There's just no end to it.
And I've heard so many cops, and not just cops, but executives in law enforcement openly express the, it's not a fear so much, it's just a resignation.
We're never going to fix crime.
We're never going to stop these guys.
There's always going to be, and it's always going to be outrageous.
We're always going to be shocked at how inhuman some of it is and so forth.
But my point about we all hope that one day something happens and a turnaround takes place, and you don't think it will because of the media.
I totally understand what you're saying.
One big difference, though, you mentioned Pravda.
And you may not have stopped to think about this.
At least Pravda lied to the Soviet people in trying to prop up the country.
The Soviet media lied about the crop reports.
They told them, oh, man, we're producing more wheat than you can imagine.
They lied to the Soviet people in the process of building up the so our media tears our country down every day.
I have to agree with you 100% on that, Rush.
Now, as far as the turnaround, I think the media doesn't yet know how their version of journalism is over.
They're so upset.
You can read it in places like the New York Times.
They're so upset at bloggers.
They're so upset at people that don't have formal journalism training that now have websites and bloggers and have blog posts.
And anybody can be a journalist now.
And they're fed up with it.
They're threatened by it.
And it's the wild, wild West in the media now.
But there's also going to be something happen at some point.
It may be your kids' generation.
Who knows?
But some generation is going to come of age in a period where things are so rotten and corrupt that they're just not going to put up with it.
And they themselves are going to say, we don't want to live this way.
And they will affect change.
I firmly, and I can't predict when, I don't know when, but I'm always optimistic that in the long run, the country's going to survive and that the country is going to triumph.
And there are always signs of it.
These last two midterm elections, to me, are good indications.
They're not proof, but they are good indications, reason to be optimistic.
Certainly, there's every reason in the world not to give up on this.
I haven't given up, Rush.
It's just that, you know, even when we elect a Congress and a Senate that's Republican and then they turn around and stab us in the back, that's disheartening.
I know.
You know, before we're done, I just want people to know that, you know, your average cop just wants to do his job every day, do it, you know, respect people's constitutional rights, keep everybody safe, and go home at night.
And the media is based is basically making that not a reality for people.
They're basically saying the police are out there to hurt them, and that's not the case, right?
I know, I know.
I know exactly what you're up against.
I do.
You are like the military in some ways in that regard, in terms of the way the left views you.
Now, don't hang up, Girardo.
I need your address so we can send some audio CDs of the Rush Revere series.
I might even sneak in a hey, Gerardo, are you still there?
Is he still there today?
Yes, yes, I'm here.
Gerardo, you still there?
Yes.
You're here.
Gerardo, look, it's Christmas time, and I've got an extra iPhone here.
Would you like it?
Are you kidding me, Rush?
No, I got.
God bless you, Rush.
Yeah.
Cool.
Do you know which kind you'd prefer, the iPhone 6 or the iPhone 6 Plus?
Rush, you're the expert.
Make it a Christmas surprise for me.
Well, but no, this is.
Do you like using your phone one-handed?
Yes.
Okay, then you need the iPhone 6.
The 6 Plus, that's the one with a 5.5-inch screen.
But to really use it, you need both hands with it.
You certainly wouldn't use it in the car, but it's the greatest couch.
Merry Christmas.
I can't even believe this.
Well, believe it.
Believe it.
Thank you, Rush.
You bet.
So hang on.
You'll have it tomorrow.
And the Rush Revere stuff will get that out to you as soon as we can.
Now, he mentioned something about the Republicans and their election and a landslide win and they stab us in the back.
And I mentioned this earlier.
I've been thinking about how this has happened.
The fact that the Republican leadership is throwing in with the Democrat leadership on amnesty and Obamacare and take and pick up issues.
And you and I, folks, have discussed and theorized for a long time.
And it has become obvious, and we've talked about this, that the GOP agrees with Obama on amnesty because they too see a pool of potential new voters.
And they also think that they've got to support it for the Hispanic vote.
You know the drill.
But it turns out they also do not oppose Obamacare when it gets down to talking about repealing it.
They really don't want to repeal any of Obamacare.
So we have to assume they either don't want to do it, don't want the fight, or actually don't have a problem with it.
And they're really not doing anything.
We have a chance here to take control of government spending with the omnibus versus a continuing resolution for a couple of weeks.
They chose to go big and just have all kinds of wacko crazy spending, and there's no difference between them and the Democrats on that.
But I've always thought that it goes deeper than the Republicans agreeing with the Democrats on a few issues.
I think that what's happened, and it goes right back to the article we made famous here on this program by Angelo Codeville in the American Spectator called The Ruling Class.
And it is apparent now that there is, overall, a Washington establishment, not just a Democrat establishment, not just a Republican establishment.
There is a Washington establishment.
Call it the ruling class if you want.
And it's made up of people of both parties, and it is devoted to big government.
It's devoted to big government because they all want the power of running it and controlling it.
Republicans and Democrats alike.
Not every.
I'm talking about leadership now.
So there's an aphidisiac about the power of spending all that money and what that can mean to you and the power of doling that money out and running the government.
And therefore, anything that comes along that threatens big government, they are united in opposition to, such as the Tea Party or just average ordinary American citizens who want to streamline government, reduce its size, limit it, get it out of people's lives.
They become the enemy of this Washington establishment.
John O'Sullivan, as I quoted last week, said, any organization that is not actively conservative will, over time, become liberal.
Liberal is easy.
Liberalism is gutless, but conservatism.
It's a daily adherence.
It's a daily application.
And so what we have now, the Republican majority, is actually a very happy Bob Michael type minority.
They are the majority in the House and Senate with a minority frame of mind brought about by the media and just the Washington culture.
But I think there's something else.
A friend of mine gave me his analogy, and it makes some sense.
If you compare the Republican, the Beltway GOP with the State Department, now in the State Department, there are plenty of good people there, but they're not there.
They're in the field offices and various places.
And your average State Department person is not as bad as, say, the average anti-American UN or Euro-socialist bureaucrat.
But the people that run the UN and some of the people at the State Department, it's not that they are committed anti-Americans.
It is that the better way to describe them would be post-Americans.
They think that they have evolved beyond these trite notions of patriotism and American exceptionalism.
And that's quaint, and that's old-fashioned.
That's really schoolboy, schoolgirl stuff.
You know, patriotism, that's beneath these people.
And American exceptionalism, okay, that's just that's that's ghost.
That's 200 years ago.
That's not today.
We are much more progressive than that, these people say to themselves.
And we are citizens of the world.
And they think that the Constitution is a relic of a time that was unsophisticated, not very advanced.
And they don't think they've got anything in common with the people who founded America, wrote the Constitution, or any of the founding documents.
Instead, they are transgressive, if you will, transnational progressives.
And they deal on a daily basis with these small-minded Americans who have these quaint old-fashioned notions of exceptionalism and patriotism.
And they're embarrassed about it.
And this guy sees the Republican establishment the same way.
They're post-conservative.
They are embarrassed by conservatives.
They are much more invested in Washington than they are in representative government.
And they have much more common ground with progressive Democrats than they do with us because we are hicks and hayseeds and we're quaint pro-lifers and American exceptionalism.
And so it's just, it's almost a class thing where they're just so superior to us.
We're kooks and we rally around all these old-fashioned, quaint notions that are no more realistic, no longer realistic, and so forth.
And they suffer us sometimes, not gladly.
I have to take a break, but I thought it was an interesting characterization to go along with the other things that we also think are true about them.
Okay, back we go to this is John in Bluebell, Pennsylvania.
Hi, John.
Great to have you on the EIB Network today.
Hello.
Thank you very much.
Merry Christmas, Rush.
Thank you, sir.
I pray that you stay healthy, live for a long time, and love what you do forever.
I was watching the Eagles game the other day.
I was at my neighbor's house with his two boys, one in college, one in high school.
The boys were saying that their dad and I, we were so negative for being critical of our Eagles.
They were just like, how can you be so critical?
Or how can you be so negative, so negative?
And it made me realize that this new trophy generation is such a bunch of wusses.
Everything should be peaceful.
Nothing should be negative.
And I'm sitting there thinking, you know, these boys, they've been infiltrated since they were young, you know, with the teaching.
Now, wait a minute.
What were they upset at?
They were upset at their dad and me getting, you know, just being critical of the Eagles, the plays they were calling.
Like, what are you doing?
Why are you doing that?
And they sat there.
Well, I saw that game.
The Eagles did.
I mean, they were horrible.
Oh, they made so many mistakes and so many errors that how can you not get upset at that?
And these kids, they just, they're such wusses anymore that, you know, everything has to be peaceful.
And I think, you know, just like your dad, you know, taught you how to think.
My dad.
Brittany led the charge criticizing.
You should have heard him go after Tom Landry.
Well, he hated the Cowboys, a big Cardinals fan.
Yeah, but what did they want you to do?
They want everything to be peaceful.
They don't want us to be negative and be critical of anything.
And you just sit there and you say, these boys, they're growing up to be such wusses, and they're not taught to think.
That is a heck of a thing for a father to admit.
Can you imagine how well?
And we will be back tomorrow, ladies and gentlemen, to get you even closer to Christmas.
You're in the EIB network and the Rush Limbaugh program.
Remind me about this guy who's calling the Eagles.
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