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Dec. 24, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:30
December 24, 2014, Wednesday, Hour #3
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Here we are on Christmas Eve, and I am here with you, Buck Sexton, in for Rush Lindlaugh today on the EIB.
Facebook.com slash BuckSexton, or you can go to theblaze.com slash Buck Sexton for more on me.
You can download my podcasts and all the rest of it.
I wanted to move us to some domestic policy stuff, broadly speaking.
And let's talk Obamacare for a second.
See, something happened with Obamacare that, again, these are things that they're just, they're sliding.
It's the end of the year.
People aren't paying attention.
We've got these protests all over the place.
What do I want?
We don't know.
When do we want it?
Right now.
That's all they know.
We're really angry.
I just want to ask them, why are you yelling?
But they're yelling a lot.
So that's been getting all the coverage.
And things can slip through the cracks.
Like, for example, more information has come out about the IRS, which thinks conservatives are icky.
That's a quote.
They think they're icky.
They thought that the Tea Party groups, the IRS, thought the Tea Party groups were worthy of disdain and therefore extra scrutiny.
That just sort of slid under the radar.
A lot of stuff sliding in the radar.
But there's one that I refuse to just let disappear over the horizon.
Before President Obama decided to go on his end of year vacation, before he decided to leave the Capitol, he enrolled symbolically in Obamacare.
He decided to sign up for coverage over the weekend before there was a big deadline for what the plans are.
And I think now they said they're at $6 million or something.
The numbers are all stacked and it's ridiculous.
And they're including so much cooking of the books that it's hard to keep it all clear at this point.
But in a symbolic act, he signed up for Obamacare.
Now, let's just, first of all, this is such a slap in the face, right?
Think about this for a second.
This is like somebody who's showing up and they're deigning to be among the common folk.
Honor Starman's luck.
Can't pay your health care bills.
So I'm going to show up and pretend like I have really high health care pills.
And he chose, not only did he fake sign up for Obamacare, and this is literally what he did.
This is like an act of solidarity.
No, this is a slap in the face.
This is not in any way making me feel better about the Obamacare situation.
If he actually had to sign up for Obamacare and the rest of Congress with him, which of course they've fought against tooth and nail, then I think, then I think we can start to have a discussion about the optics of this and how it doesn't look so bad.
But it gets even better.
Because not only did he fake sign up for the signature legislative act of his entire time in office, but he chose a bronze plan.
Now, yeah, he chose the bronze plan.
So he chose the lousiest plan you can choose.
What is this?
You know?
I mean, yeah, at least go for the gold plan, Barack.
Come on, man.
He's deciding to go for the bronze plan.
You know, they're actually going to come out with a copper plan next year.
That's in discussion right now, which is going to precede the rusty nail plan, which is, yeah, which is going to be what the government's actually giving America, like walking around and you step on a rusty nail, the rusty nail plan, the you don't get healthcare plan, the walk-it-off plan.
We say you have health care because then that looks cool for us politically, but actually care?
You see, there's a difference between coverage and care, as we've always known.
And so the president's like, oh, I'm going to choose a Bronze plan.
If I cut out, choose a copper plan because, you know, what can I say?
Man of the people.
Got to go surfing now.
Aloha.
So he chooses the copper plan.
He enrolls for all this.
And the Obamacare march continues on, right?
We know that going into the new year, we're already seeing the compiling of these numbers.
And they've structured this law in such a way that it's still such a slow roll.
It's still so hard to actually get people aggravated about this all at one time because, well, when is it actually happening?
Ah, we don't know.
We're going to change it here.
We're going to change it there.
But I have to say, I do not think, I do not think that it is in any way helpful.
I don't think it's cute.
I don't think it's in solidarity for the president to fake sign up for something that had to go to the Supreme Court for its constitutionality and John Roberts threw us all under the bus.
That's not helpful to this at all.
And I think it just shows the disdain with which the political elites now view the American people.
As I've said before, the vaster the state, the heavier are the chains, the more crowded the prisons.
It's from a Russian anarchist, actually.
That's true, though.
Vaster the state, the heavier the chains, the more crowded the prisons.
It's a maxim.
So as we get closer to a more, a larger, a statist society, you're just going to be forced to do more stuff.
And you'll see these sort of acts of political theater here and there, politicians showing up.
Yeah, we're right there with you.
We have different health care coverage.
We have a totally different deal.
But for you guys, this is going to be just great.
Premiums are going up this year.
No surprise there.
And we're seeing that Vermont backed out of its single-payer system.
Did you know that?
That one also just, yeah, that one also just sort of sliding under the radar.
Let's not talk about this.
Vermont, lovely cheese, good ice cream, fun in the summertime.
Spent some summers in Vermont.
Like it there.
Politics are not exactly my cup of tea.
They're not exactly my Rocky Road or my, what's the other?
What's the best?
What's the best Ben and Jerry's ice cream flavor, if one were to ask?
Do you have a cookie dough?
Let's go cookie dough.
It's not exactly my cup of cookie dough, but Vermont decided to bail out on its single-payer system.
Why, you might ask that it's what could what could possibly be the reason?
You see, here's what they never factor into all this healthcare analysis.
When I mean they, I mean the Democrat statists.
As you'll notice, I do not refer to them as liberals.
This is just a personal preference because they are anti-liberal.
They are not liberals.
They may have taken that term, but it is a misnomer.
It is a misapplication of the term.
So, but Vermont, by the way, is a harbinger of things to come because here's what we have in this country.
We don't have single-payer, and Obamacare is not going to be single-payer.
But the thing that single-payer does that is an advantage, just for a second, just walk with me through this, is that in Europe, they use it to try to bend the cost curve down a little bit by rationing care because the only people paying for anything are the government.
The government can decide what they're going to pay for.
So, really expensive treatments, you know, if you have something that is a life or death situation, but the National Health Service in the UK is like, I just don't think you're going to make it.
So, I think it's time that you just check it out.
Cheerio.
You have no recourse, really.
I mean, you can try to go private, right?
But no one ever talks about the private health system in Canada or in the UK or anywhere else, really.
We're always told that, oh, it's paradise.
It's socialized medicine.
But because the state has total control over both the production of health care, in a sense, the actual giving of health care, as well as the coverage of health care, they can change the cost curve a little bit.
What we have here under Obamacare, which, as you know, is just a massive wealth redistribution mechanism.
That's actually at the heart of the law.
You've seen this now from Gruber.
And whenever I hear Gruber, I think of Hans Gruber.
Whenever I think of Hans Gruber, I think of Die Hard.
Again, best Christmas movie.
Some are saying it's lethal weapon.
That is false.
Die Hard is obviously superior.
But Gruber came out and said, this is basically we cloaked this whole thing in such a way that people wouldn't figure out that what it really is, is they're just paying for other people's health care.
And you don't really know what you're getting or what you're paying for.
And it's all this big machine that can't be figured out.
And that's the whole purpose of it, is that the lack of transparency is, in fact, the advantage that it gives you.
But what we have here, back to the sort of single-payer thing, and what Vermont has figured out, is that we have providers that are set up to get paid a certain way at a certain amount.
They got med school bills, which it's always disheartening when you talk to a doctor, even if it's a great family doctor you've known for a long time, they'll say, I do not encourage anyone to go into medicine.
It's just you're making less money, doing more paperwork, more bureaucracy, more lawsuits.
The problem is that we have this system in place, and people expect the providers, as well as, by the way, those who are just in the healthcare industry more broadly, they expect to get paid at a certain level.
And so you have to redistribute the wealth in a way that you're paying these people off, and that becomes incredibly expensive.
Very, very, very pricey.
And what Vermont figured out is that you only have two options then.
You either start rationing, right, which brings us back to the initial early debates around Obamacare.
You just don't give people.
You say they have coverage, but you don't give them care, which is what they do in Europe in a lot of cases too, especially for expensive treatments.
You have that option.
Or you start really jacking up taxes.
Now, in the instance of a state, for example, that can have some negative effects, obviously.
People don't particularly like their money to be taken from them in that manner, or at least I don't.
You don't.
And even if they try that, the problem is that it never is enough because the cost keeps going up.
So you either have to keep raising taxes or you have to start denying care or start limiting care.
So Vermont, if it can't work in Vermont, by the way, how is it going to work in the rest of the country?
And we haven't even that's Vermont is a window into implementation of Obamacare.
When this is tried nationally, we're still talking about 6 million, 8 million, 10 million, over 300 million people in this country.
And this affects health care for all of us.
But don't worry about it because Obama's showing up.
He's picking the Bronze plan.
And if he could, he would pick the copper plan.
It just wasn't an option.
And if there was an old spoon that you found on the sidewalk plan, we could pick that plan.
I mean, it's just they're going to keep on dropping it down because they're going to have to find a way to be compliant with this law, but at the same time, not completely explode the deficit.
Unless that's actually the purpose of the whole thing, which I know some of you think.
It's just going to collapse the system on its own weight.
Then you have to.
The idea is not that this is a stepping stone to single payer.
That's not really what those who say that this is supposed to head in that direction.
It's that eventually the system just collapses and then you need single payer to sort of make sense of the chaos.
And that's years in the future, probably, but could happen.
I need some Merry Christmas tales or something.
Someone tell me something happy.
Is Santa making his rounds yet?
We need something that's going to light it up around here.
Don't make me start singing Christmas carols to you.
Oh, wonderful listeners.
I'll do it.
I'd prefer, though, you call in and tell me what's on your mind and maybe share some holiday cheer or tell me about your experiences with healthcare.
I don't know.
We could talk about Christmas presents or single payer.
We're wide open here.
800-282-2882.
This is Buck Sexton in for Rush Limbaugh.
Much more coming.
Don't go anywhere.
Buck Sexton here in for Rush Limbaugh, Facebook.com/slash Buck Sexton and at Buck Sexton on Twitter.
And hosting the Buck Sexton Show, which will be on The Blaze TV starting in 2015, as well as the Buck Sexton Show on The Blaze Radio.
All right.
I can't mention Vermont, by the way, without talking about one of my favorites.
Bernie Sanders.
Social health medicine is clearly the way of the future.
If we just get Wall Street fat cats to go and pay their fair share, all of a sudden everybody gets healthcare and it's finished and we're done.
Right?
That's how Bernie rolls.
Bernie Sanders, the socialist from Vermont, is amazing.
He knows the way to go.
It's Bernie.
Let's take John in Maryland.
John, you're on the Buck Sexton.
I mean, sorry, you're on the Rush Limbaugh show speaking to Buck Sexton.
Merry Christmas.
I love to get on this show since it has such a wide audience.
But the main thing is, sure, why not?
Bernie Sanders, does he have a New York accent or is it just my ears?
Do you ever listen to Bernie?
I mean, you're talking to him right now.
This is, you know, look at him?
He goes out there, he talks about healthcare.
The workers, the people?
Yeah.
You know, I went to school in New Hampshire, to Dartmouth College, and this is over 50 years ago.
And we didn't have scumbags from the New York area that relocated just like Ben and Jerry's.
They're all up there trying to change things, and the country is being affected by it now.
But the reason I called is you mentioned that Chief Justice Roberts, in his decision on Obamacare saying it was constitutional, threw us under the bus, and now we got hell to pay for it.
But, you know, there is a case having to do with Obamacare pending before the Supreme Court.
I understand they're going to come up with a decision.
An exchange established by the state.
What does that phrase mean?
It seems pretty clear to me.
I have a feeling it's pretty clear to you, John.
It does to me.
I think any three-year-old just learning to read the Russian Reverend Trustbooks.
Try this at tax time, John.
Say, oh, I thought when you meant state taxes, I thought you meant federal taxes.
So it was the same thing.
So there's no state tax to pay because clearly you meant the state in this sort of Locke and Hobbes version of the state.
I don't think so.
I don't think so either.
But I want to just say one thing about the last election was a landslide.
It was obviously a vote of no confidence against Barack Obama, especially with Obamacare.
And he just ignored it.
They decided to have this lame duck Congress.
They should have waited until the new Congress came in in January.
But you talk about Chief Justice Roberts throwing us under the bus, us conservatives, us real Americans.
Boehner and McConnell threw us under the bus by giving the president in the appropriations bill the full funding of Obamacare and everything else he wanted.
Could not that you take it immediately.
Your demands have all been met and I won't hear any more of it.
Okay.
Well, that's one way to negotiate.
Kind of like Barack Obama on Cuba, by the way.
You haven't actually caved at all.
You haven't actually decided that you will lift the embargo yourselves by just loosening up Your control over these people by freeing the Cuban people from the yoke of this dictatorship.
But we're just going to, I got an idea how we end the standoff.
We're just not going to stand off anymore.
We're just going to walk away.
Well, there you have it.
That's certainly one way to go.
Another thing is this is now, I'm trying to find all the things that are sliding under the cracks that aren't getting the attention that they should.
And this is very important.
We're just talking about the first act of the new, well, I should say of the first act after the midterms of the Congress.
But the president has been doing something that will have consequences long after he leaves office.
He may confirm, I believe, actually, I think we are at 88 now.
He was on track as of a few days ago to confirm up to 88 federal judges.
This is not one of those things that necessarily gets people riled up until they think about what the implications of this actually are.
88 federal judges.
This is, for example, let me just point out to you some of the stats here on this so you get a sense of how big of an issue this actually is.
When he took office, 10 of the 13 appeals courts in this country had more Republican appointees than Democrat appointees.
Now, in fact, Democrats are the majority on nine of the courts.
That's an enormous shift.
And as you know, activist judges from the left recognize that they can have it either way.
They can either pass laws when they're a majority in Congress and then say, oh, no, the other elections don't count, or they just stack the bench.
And they have been racking and stacking that bench high with federal judges.
And this was why the decision to get rid of the, I shouldn't say, well, Harry Reid's decision to get rid of the filibuster for judicial nominees was so momentous.
And you've got to love Republicans at the first sign of actually having political power.
Republicans, the first sign of being able to do something about this.
I think John McCain, was it John McCain leading this charge?
I think John McCain was leading the charge of this.
He's like, well, maybe we'll put the filibuster back.
Maybe we'll go and return the.
They had it.
They used it, but we don't want to play mean like that.
So let's put it back so that all of a sudden judicial nominees, judicial nominees, can be filibustered.
And the Democrats will do that because they know that control of the courts now means control of, if you're a progressive, if you're a statist, an additional legislative body because that's really how it acts these days.
That's really what it's there for.
It also gives top cover to the Obama administration for its unconstitutional acts.
I get an idea.
Let's talk some immigration for a few minutes.
This is Buck Sexton in for Rush Limbaugh.
800-282-2882.
Back in a minute.
Buck Sexton here in for Rush Limbaugh, 800-282-2882.
I want to talk a little bit about immigration and what is just bubbling beneath the surface on that in the news cycle.
But let's take Tim in Biloxi.
Tim, you are on the Rush Limbaugh show.
You're speaking to Buck Sexton.
Thank you, Buck.
Listen, a little while ago, you were talking about the appropriations bill and how Boehner and McConnell couldn't wait to get out there and roll over.
And I had this discussion with a lot of friends.
And one of the things that nobody seems to know about, there was an article three weeks ago reporting a speech that Trent Watt, phony conservative from Mississippi, that Trent Watt had given to a group of lobbyists and other political insiders in D.C.
Now, the incredible thing about this is that he actually said these words.
I mean, they were so overt.
But what he said in his speech is it is critical that Boehner and McConnell immediately grab a hold of these new incoming Republicans because many of them are conservative and they represent the Tea Party type's beliefs.
He said, quote, it is critical that we co-opt these new legislators because one of the things that they want to do is take away our ability to earmark.
And the earmark has long been the most useful tool that the political parties have to punish those who won't fall into line and reward those who do.
And that is, you know, that's sort of the essence of Boehner and McConnell.
And people say, well, why would they do that?
Why would they do that?
It's got nothing to do with, oh, we want to look like we're, you know, cooperating, reaching across the aisle and all of that.
Bottom line is the establishment Republicans are every bit as big government and as power hungry and as self-centered as the Democrat Party is.
They are.
And two of the people doesn't bring that out.
Well, look, what you're saying is true.
I just think it's a question of degree.
I think that generally speaking, I think the worst Republicans are better than the best Democrats on these issues.
So I wouldn't agree that it's completely, it's all the same.
They're all the same.
Is there an establishment machine?
Absolutely.
Are they trying to stamp out the parts of the Republican Party that are actually conservative and want to restore fiscal sanity and try to actually limit government?
I mean, just our whole notion, I mean, there's so much work that has to be done at the national level in the conversation about what Congress should be doing.
This notion that it should constantly be passing, that they have to be passing more laws, passing more laws.
We have so many laws right now that it is literally impossible to categorize and count all of them because it depends on how you count the regulatory laws.
It depends on whether you think a statute can be broken down into several applications of law.
We don't even know how many laws we have.
And people rack this up and say, well, they need to be doing more of that.
And also, they need to be moderating, which is, I think, what you're getting at.
They need to be looking towards the center to try to come together with Democrats for the purposes of passing laws.
I'm hopeful, and maybe that sounds naive, but Tim, I don't know what the alternative is.
I'm hopeful that when the new Congress is seated, that they will take a different tack and they'll actually try to maintain, hold the line, at least, on conservative issues, more so than what we've seen in the last six years.
The good news is that won't be hard to do, right?
It's going to be an improvement over what we've seen.
But do I think that this is going to be great, that they're really going to tackle the hard issues and make substantive and substantial changes?
I wouldn't put money on it.
Well, Buck, I appreciate and respect your opinion.
I truly do.
But with respect to your query that, you know, is the worst Republican better than the best Democrat?
I'll refer you to the voting record with two words, sad conference.
You may.
That's pretty bad.
I agree.
Thank you, Tim, for calling in from Viloxi.
Look, I think it's a tight call when you get at the worst Republican and the best Democrat, but we'll see.
Let's take Wayne in Nevada.
Wayne, you're the Rush Limbaugh Show.
You're speaking to Buck Sexton.
Yeah, Buck, this is Wayne from Reno, Nevada.
And I just wanted to touch bases with you on the cost of medical premiums going up.
And I just got a letter from my provider, which is Senior Dimensions, which Medicare paid for entirely last year.
This year, now we're having to pay $35 a month.
So I just wanted to let you know that because of Obamacare, things are going up all around, not just with the Obamacare coverage.
Oh, of course.
This is going to create dislocations in the market across the board, and it's going to affect health care prices for everyone.
It already is.
But remember, they tell you it's all based on a lie, right?
Just like I was saying before, the protests are all based on a lie.
This is all based on the lie.
Obamacare is all based on the lie that they can cover more people, give them more coverage, and it will cost less money.
That is flatly not possible.
It's literally something that they would never be able to do.
And the reality is that they actually just want to be in a position to determine who gets what.
It's not that they're going to be giving everybody more.
They're just going to be moving from some to others, and that's going to affect the cost of health care for everybody that goes in to see a doctor or has to go to the hospital.
And by the way, they accept that.
They won't say it publicly, but as we know from Gruber and others, that's the whole purpose of this.
So, Wayne, I'm not surprised.
I'm sorry to hear that, especially if you go on the holidays.
Your healthcare is more expensive, but it's not surprising.
It was designed.
Thank you for calling, Wayne.
It was designed to do that.
This is not a side effect, right?
Your healthcare getting more expensive because of Obamacare is because it is subsidizing other people for their health care.
And we're already, by the way, of course, paying through taxes for Medicaid, for example.
And Medicaid expansions as a part of this bill have been massive.
Now, of course, the most comprehensive study ever done about Medicaid and health care outcomes, i.e., if you have Medicaid, are you more likely to be healthy over the long term than people who are just sort of going ad hoc without any coverage?
It was done in Oregon, and it showed the answer is actually no, not really.
So Medicaid so far has been generally ineffective, but very expensive to the taxpayer.
But you can always pay more taxes.
Your fair share can always get larger, my friends, and it's going to.
One more call here.
Ron in Bismarck.
Ron, you are on the Rush Limbaugh show.
You're speaking to Buck Sexton.
Yes, Mr. Sexton.
We have been in the Middle East now for 13 years, our longest war ever.
And to use your terms, a legacy of failure.
And it sounds to me like you want to put more troops on the ground.
I say come home.
Well, I would say this.
And Ron, I can understand where you're coming from on this.
And I have a lot of friends who served.
And I spent time myself in both of the theaters of war as an analyst.
And I would say that if you're going to do something, right, be serious about it.
And for example, the air campaign that they have now is not even a half measure.
It's a bottom line measure.
It's, oh, we'll just do the bare minimum.
And that doesn't.
Now you have the drawbacks of being involved, right?
Now you kind of own this thing more because you're dropping ordinance.
We're killing people.
We're killing terrorists, but we're also going to kill people we didn't mean to.
That's just the nature of warfare.
That's going to happen.
But you should at least be serious about what the outcomes of this can be.
Now, you say we shouldn't go to war in the Middle East.
I understand the president's reluctance to put more troops in the ground.
Not in Afghanistan, where he sent more troops because it politically was more palatable to him, right?
Afghanistan was a good war.
By the way, the outcome of Afghanistan right now is looking more bleak with every passing day.
They were supposed to pull out troops by the end of the year.
They haven't pulled out troops because they realize the whole thing is going to collapse.
Well, what was the purpose of the Afghan surge that Obama ordered?
He wasted a year dithering in office when he came into office before he even decided what he was going to do.
And then he sent troops there and decided, well, I'm going to pull them out as soon as I'm going to tell you what I'm pulling them out as soon as I put them in.
This is unserious policy, right?
Look, no one ever wants any of our men and women in uniform to have to go to war anywhere.
And I can agree with you on that.
And we've spent far too much blood and treasure already.
But we're still spending blood and treasure in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And the management of those two conflicts by this White House has been deplorable.
Now, if you want to say we should go all hands out, that is at least ideologically or intellectually, I should say, consistent, Ron.
So I can say that to you, and that's absolutely true.
It's consistent.
But the Obama administration didn't say that.
That's not the path they've taken.
They've sort of gone, oh, well, more troops in Afghanistan, full pullout from Iraq.
Now we actually have troops in Iraq again, but they're saying, oh, it's not boots on the ground.
We've had to deploy Apache helicopters with our guys piloting them to stop advances on Baghdad.
If Baghdad falls and the Islamic State, for example, becomes the de facto power between Damascus and Tehran, we've got a big problem, Ron.
So I understand that we'd like to think that we could just make this whole thing go away, but they're setting up training camps just like they did in Afghanistan, and they're explicit about this.
They're setting up training camps with people who have Western passports, who speak languages from the West, who are Western citizens, and saying, we're coming for you.
So we ignore this?
I think we ignore this at our peril.
And I think my criticism of the Obama administration is that they're just unserious about it.
If they said, everyone comes out, we're done with this, that I would say was not the right move, but at least they're being consistent.
What they've done is, how does this look a little bit here, a little bit there, not too hot, not too cold, just right, with people's lives at stake?
Does that at least clarify my position a bit, Ron?
It clarifies your position, but that position is insane.
You either go after him 100% or come home.
And we have been there for 13 years, and I like your words.
A legacy of failure.
Okay, well, Ron, thank you.
I mean, if my options are, this is the old joke in the State Department, by the way, that your options are suffer in silence, nuclear war, or do some diplomacy.
And if the options you're giving me are a full-scale invasion with hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops or nothing, I mean, I think that's more binary than it should be, and I think that's not necessarily going to be the case.
I remember I was being pushed once by somebody who was very anti-interventionist.
He said, point to me one, point to me one place where foreign intervention has had the desired outcome of an insurgency against a larger power.
And I was like, how about pointing at the floor where you are standing because it is called America and it was the French?
This can actually work, believe it or not.
There are ways that you can work with allies abroad without actually a full-scale invasion that can have the desired outcome.
This is the Founding Fathers waging an insurgency, my friends, and did receive help, essential help, particularly naval help from the French.
I could go on through other cases.
And it did work up until 2009 in Iraq in terms of counterinsurgency.
I'm not in this one fell swoop trying to relitigate the decision to invade.
And it worked with the Northern Alliance against the Taliban in 2001, 2002.
But then we decided to reconstruct a country that has been, as is so often repeated now, the graveyard of empires.
It's the graveyard of empires for a reason.
Let's take Mike in.
Oh, actually, I have a better idea.
Let's take a break and then take the call after the break.
This is Buck Sexton in for Rush Limbaugh, 800-282-2882.
Facebook.com/slash Buck Sexton.
I'll be right back.
This is Buck Sexton in for Rush Limbaugh today on Christmas Eve with you.
Thank you for spending some time with me as we get ready to kick off Christmas itself.
Christmas Eve is always a fun time.
I thought about doing some caroling, maybe even caroling in various accents and changing it around, but I will spare you this time from the dulcet tones of Buck Sigging voice.
This time, I know I'm getting like a slow clap, but nonetheless, Mike in Ohio.
Mike, you're on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
You're speaking to Buck Sexton.
Hey, Buck, you're doing a great job.
I appreciate that, sir.
Thank you.
So I'm driving along thinking about good Christmas Eve thoughts, and I hear listen to my favorite radio station.
And that last caller prompted me to furiously dial in.
I'm a retired Air Force pilot, and I started out as an E-1 crew chief, and then I got a commission, did some nuclear weapons stuff, and then went flying.
And by far, the most profound and rewarding professional year of my life was spent from 2007 to 2008 in and around Baghdad helping to train the Iraqi Air Force.
And it affected me so much when I got back.
I actually wrote something down, I sent it to Rush.
He can talk about it if he wants to.
But the media has done a fabulous job of losing that war for us.
They're doing a great job in Afghanistan as well.
And to your last caller, I'd say, yeah, we spent 13, 14 years there, depending on when you want to start.
But do you know how long it takes us in this country, in this high trust, very complex, and very safe society, how long it takes us to make a good senior NCO or a good, even a major?
It takes a good decade and a half.
And those aren't the guys that run things.
The real tragedy of all of this, I was working with guys that we had shot down, Buck.
I mean, I was working with guys that we had tried to blow up.
We had dropped bombs on them.
Then one colonel in particular, we had blown out of the sky.
And do you know what they called us, the Americans?
No.
They called us the friendly side.
And they trusted us more than they trusted their own countrymen.
Unless, you know, there's five or six guys that I worked with as a core, but they were the ones that were going to start up the whole Iraqi Air Force.
Now, the young kids coming up that were risking their lives every day, and the media didn't feel that they needed to talk about that, these young Iraqi kids that were investing in what we were teaching them, they would fit in rather well with our armed forces.
We were quite a bit smaller than the Army, but the Air Force was still a very dangerous place to be.
They were being hunted, actively hunted, by both the Iranians and, of course, the terrorists.
But these kids would fit in well here.
And what happened when we walked away from them because we elected a guy who promised to do that, is that we hung those guys out to dry and we made it harder for the guys that actually risked their lives to be with us to continue the mission of a responsible and moral Iraqi Air Force, Iraqi military.
Mike, thank you for your service.
Thank you for your calling.
Merry Christmas to you and your family.
I just wanted to let you have that say.
It's important to have that context for this discussion.
800-282-2882.
Buck Sexton in for Rush Limbaugh.
Back in a minute.
It is Buck Sexton in for Rush Limbaugh today.
Thank you so much for joining me today during the broadcast.
I trust you are having a Merry Christmas Eve and are prepared to really enjoy yourself tomorrow, as you should.
I was mentioning before Christmas movies, of course, making some comments about Die Hard, fabulous movie.
Hans Gruber, one of the greatest bad guys of all time, not to be confused with MIT Gruber.
And I just realized American Sniper comes out today, which I am definitely going to see, or at least it comes out today in New York.
I'm not sure if it's across the country yet or not.
So not a Christmas movie, but an awesome movie from what I understand.
And I'm looking forward to checking that out.
So that's how I'll be spending some of my time.
I hope you do the same.
I'll be in for Rush again next week on Wednesday, which is New Year's Eve, is it not?
That's what I'm in on New Year's Eve.
Bam!
See, this is how the.
Now it all makes sense.
We've gone full circle.
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