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Jan. 1, 2015 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:17
January 1, 2015, Thursday, Hour #2
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Yeah, yeah, I know.
I really did.
I meant to get a phone call in in the last hour, but look, it was important to make the point that I made in the final closing segment of the previous busy broadcast hour.
There is no logical explanation for all of this so-called Republican fear over how bad they're going to get beat up if they get blamed for shutting down the government.
All that is, and I think it's time to cut to the chase here.
They're hiding behind that because the more obvious conclusion is that we know it's true in the case of Republican donors, Chamber of Commerce, and affiliates.
They are in favor of it.
Look at Romney.
Romney is a Republican establishment member, and he came out and said Obama didn't go far enough.
You might have missed this, but Mitt Romney said that Republicans need to swallow hard and go all in for amnesty, not just $5 million, but for all of them.
So the Republican Party, the establishment position is that they're in favor of amnesty, but they can't come out and say that.
They just won an election.
They just won a landslide election.
And the intention of the people that voted for them was to stop this.
Well, the Republican establishment apparently doesn't want to.
So I think they're hiding behind this shutdown talk because this is so silly.
A, it's not a government shutdown.
B, nobody remembers last year's other than the World War II vet, which the Democrats got blamed for.
The government kept running the functions that people associate with government, i.e. Social Security and Medicare and all that kept happening.
And the Republicans won a landslide election after supposedly getting creamed in the polling data last year for their government shutdown.
So here we're back at the same page, on the exact same page, in the exact same place, the exact same table, and forces are repeating themselves.
The Republicans, the only thing different is they just won a landslide election.
They just, I mean, the Democrats just lost a landslide election.
And yet the Republicans are saying, well, we can't shut down the government.
No, no, make a damn.
That would make the people that just voted for us, they would hate us.
No, no.
That's what they elected you to do.
They didn't elect you to shut down the government.
They elect you to stop the Democrats.
They don't want any more of this quest for utopia.
They elected the Republicans to stop this.
Well, when it comes to amnesty, the Republicans don't really want to stop it.
And so they're hiding behind this government shutdown.
They can't come out.
If anything would really make you mad after electing them in a landslide, it would be for them to come out and publicly support Obama on amnesty.
So what they're doing instead is making it look like their hands are tied.
They can't stop him.
Oh, my God.
Look at what if we shut down the government, oh my God, they're going to hate us.
So they want you to believe their poor hands are tied and they just are paralyzed.
They can't do anything.
Damn it.
Obama got them again.
But you wait till next year when we finally run everything and then we'll show them.
And that's the message.
And it's the same thing on the budget.
The Republicans today in this lame duck are all for letting Harry Reid and Obama write a budget that would complete the fiscal year.
We've been running on continuing resolutions up till now.
And the logical thing is do a continuing resolution again for a couple of months here.
And then when the Republicans take over the Senate along with the House, then go in and kick ass and then do the budget for the remainder of the fiscal year.
But they're not doing that.
They're going to let the Democrats dictate the terms of a budget that'll run through September 30th of next year.
And they're saying the same thing.
Well, no, what we got to do here, see, we can't, if we do this, if we, because if we shut down the government over this, why, people just elected us are going to be mad as hell, and we're going to blow every ounce of goodwill we got.
So, what we got to do, we've just got to be smart.
We have to go ahead and just give them a budget through next September, and then next year, when we start the budget process in February, that's when we kick ass for fiscal 2016.
That's when we, and that's what they're doing.
And it's the same, it's actually a policy or a strategy for whatever reason.
In the case of Amnesty, I think it's because they want it, they support it.
Budget, I don't know what it is, but they want you to believe that their hands are tied, that if they do anything before next January, that they're going to squander all the goodwill they got in the election.
And so, they want you to feel sorry for them and understand their hands are tied.
They really can't do anything.
You just got to be patient and wait until January, and then we're going to, that's what we're going to kick button.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, boy, yeah, man, that's what we can't wait for.
And for whatever reasons, they're hiding behind all that so they don't engage.
Okay, so that's that.
One humble little radio guy's opinion.
And by the way, I am Rush Limbo.
I've been doing this a long time, folks.
Boku years of experience.
800-282-2882.
Email address, lrushbow at EIBnet.com.
So, after the Washington Post ran a story today on why the Republicans would be shellacked and creamed if they shut down the government, yes, here's why Republicans really shouldn't want a government shutdown on one chart, and it's a poll.
Right, they have another story.
Charles Barkley is a conservative black hero, but almost everything he says is wrong.
The Washington Post, this is Nia Malika Henderson.
You knew this was coming.
You knew that Chuck was going to be enemy number one.
He's the new Cosby.
That's what it says here.
Barkley is the new Cosby.
He is the new scold of African Americans.
He's the new white conservative hero because he comes out and says what they say.
But the problem for Chuck is, according to the Washington Post, the problem for Chuck is he's ill-informed on black culture and black behavior.
He seems to see black people as somehow existing outside of American mainstream behavior and culture.
So Chuck is now in the crosshairs of the drive-by media.
And his comparison to Cosby, by the way, is no accident here.
Now, isn't it interesting?
Chuck made his original comments last week.
This is Tuesday.
I think it was a week ago that Chuck is this Tuesday or Wednesday.
Okay, this is Wednesday.
Right, Wednesday.
It was a week ago yesterday that Chuck made his comments on the radio in Philadelphia.
And you know what I find, and I don't misunderstand this, but what I find fascinating about this, when I came back from the Thanksgiving break on Monday, nobody had talked about it.
It hadn't been anywhere other than in the website that I found it.
And I don't remember which one it was.
But last Tuesday, Chuck makes these comments about Ferguson and nothing, not a word.
On Monday, I quoted what Chuck said.
And then, Monday afternoon and Monday night, all day yesterday, it blew up and it was everywhere.
Now, I need to ask, I need to make sure I'm right on something because I was off the grid Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
Mr. Snir, okay, it wasn't.
Brian, what about you?
Had you heard what Barkley had said Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday?
Okay, so I've got staffers.
Now, admittedly, they kiss ass, but in this case, they're being straightforward and honest.
That's right, because you were working.
You were working and checking the news, and there was nothing on Buckley.
I mean, he made these comments a week, eight days ago now, and not a soul had said a word.
You couldn't find outside of Philadelphia.
And it didn't even make sports media.
We'd have heard about it if it did.
So I, in show prep on Sunday, getting ready for Monday, ran across it, and on Monday, spent a lot of time talking about it, and then it blew up.
It really blew up Monday afternoon, Monday night, all day yesterday.
Blog is fear, television, everywhere.
And so now Chuck has sat for two more interviews, both of Muncie and I think he's got a pet info babe there he likes.
Because that's who he talks to when he goes up, Brooke Baldwin.
And Chuck likes the ladies.
Let me be honest about it.
Everybody knows this.
And so now Chuck's made two appearances on CNN.
I think it's two.
Maybe it's just one.
And they're showing it in stages.
Anyway, we've got the audio sound bites from it.
Let me take a break now so that I don't have to stop in the middle.
Let me take a brief time out here.
We'll come back because Chuck is doubling down now.
He's doubling down.
He is not intimidated by the Washington Post or anybody else in the drive-by media.
And I'm going to tell you something else.
This is the Chuck Barkley that, I better not, I don't know if I should say this.
I don't want to take him off course.
This is the Chuck Barkley that asked me to speak at his fundraiser, at his charitable fundraiser in Orlando way back in the night.
This is the Chuck Barkley that I always, this is Chuck Barkley that was prominent everywhere.
I mean, remember Chuck going through those periods of time where he was being looked at as a role model and he didn't want to be a role model because he didn't think athletes held enough stature.
Remember all that?
I knew Chuck Barkley during those days.
But when Obama was elected, Chuck, he changed direction, and now he's back.
That's my perception.
I'm not calling him names.
I'm not accusing him of anything.
I'm just observing, which is what I do here.
But the Chuck that's out there now is a familiar Chuck.
To me, you remember what one?
Oh, yeah, Chuck was thinking of running for governor of Alabama.
Exactly right.
Remember that Chuck was going to run, and he was – so Chuck, as far as I'm concerned, this is the Chuck that I always knew.
Not totally.
But there was obviously a change in direction when Obama was elected.
But now we're back.
Anyway, we'll take a break and come back and let you hear Chuck doubling down on CNN.
We get back after this.
Don't go away.
By the way, what was it on Monday?
What was it I said when I first began talking about Charles Barkley and what he had said about Ferguson, Missouri?
Said there's one man in America who can say anything he wants on race and there'll be no blowback.
That's how I introduced it.
There is one man in America.
And it was that comment.
After that, here came what?
All the blowback.
I kind of blew it for Chuck.
Anyway, here he is.
Charles Barkley on CNN.
This aired last night.
Brooke Baldwin interviewing Chuck.
She said, do you think that we would be seeing all that unrest had Darren Wilson been black?
And all the facts remain the same.
Would we still have a slain 18-year-old?
Would the outrage be there if the cop was black?
The notion that white cops are out there just killing black people, that's ridiculous.
It's just flat out ridiculous.
And I challenge any black person to try to make that point.
This notion that cops, cops are actually awesome.
You know, they're the only thing in the ghetto between this place being the wild, wild west.
So this notion that cops are out there just killing black men, it's ridiculous.
And I hate that narrative coming out of that, out of this entire situation.
Oh, man.
See, we're back again to the same old thing.
We've got truth, which he just uttered, which is up against power.
And the power is the civil rights coalitions of the Democrat Party, which does not want to hear this.
This is unacceptable.
The cops are awesome.
The cops are the only thing in the ghetto between it being the wild, wild west.
The notion that cops are out there just killing black men is ridiculous.
No, no, that's the narrative.
The whole point of hands up, don't shoot is the cops are hunting young gentle giants and assassinating them.
So here comes Chuck.
No, it's ridiculous.
It isn't happening.
Don't want to hear it talked about.
The cops are awesome.
CNN kind of confused as to what they've got here.
Brooke Baldwin said, well, we're waiting for the results to come down from the grand jury from Eric Garner here in New York.
This is the chokehold victim, by the way.
If you haven't seen that videotape, it's, well, it doesn't matter because Barkley's answer will cover it.
We're waiting for the results to come down from the grand jury for Eric Garner here in New York.
And it's one thing in Ferguson.
There's some audio, but this, you see the video.
You see the cops surround him.
The chokehold.
And it was a homicide where he dies.
I don't think there was a homicide.
The cops were trying to arrest him, and they got a little aggressive.
I think excessive force, you know, something like that.
But to go right to murder.
Brooke, when the cops are trying to arrest you, if you fight back, things go wrong.
There's some black people out there who are crooks.
We, we as black people, we got a lot of crooks.
We can't just wait until something like this happened.
We have to look ourselves in the mirror.
There's a reason they racially profile us at times.
Sometimes it's wrong, but sometimes it's right to act and sit there and act like we hold no responsibility for some of this stuff.
That's disingenuous.
Now, that, you understand how minds were just blown with that one.
He doesn't think Eric Garner was murdered.
The media narrative is that Garner was murdered and the cops set out to murder him.
And then he doubles down and said that black people have a lot of crooks in their community and they bear responsibility for profiling.
And I tell you, the people in the middle, I don't care if it's Brooke Baldwin, CN, I don't care who it is.
This is just, many of them, this is the first time they are hearing this.
They imagine people like conservatives thinking this, but they don't know anybody who talks this way.
They don't know anybody who actually believes this.
And here now they are confronted with one of the most popular black athletes in the country saying this, and it's just, it's not computing.
And so here's the, we have time for one more here before the break.
Brooke Baldwin says, okay, Ray Rice.
Now, we've seen the video, the elevator, Atlantic City, punching his then-fiancé, knocking her out cold.
We now know that Ray Rice is eligible to play back in the NFL.
Do you think a team is going to pick him up?
I do not.
It's too hot right now.
Ray Rice made an awful mistake, and I'm hoping somebody got the courage.
It's going to take courage.
I hope somebody got the courage to give him another chance because he deserves another chance.
Why does he deserve a second chance?
He knocked his then-fiancé out cold.
We've had players who kill people get second chances.
You can't ever hit a woman.
Let me repeat that.
You can't ever hit a woman.
Let me tell you something.
I've been really disgusted in Roger Goodell and DeMar Smith from the NFL.
This thing could have been handled right away.
For them to put off how to handle this quote-unquote conduct policy has been atrocious.
You can't have men hitting women, period.
Okay.
So that speaks for itself.
Now, what next?
We have, yeah, we can squeeze this in.
Up next is Brooke Baldwin and our buddy, Don Lemon.
And they're talking to each other, and they're speechless.
They just, they cannot believe what they just heard Chuck Barkley say.
Where do we begin?
Why don't you say how you really feel, Charles?
This is what he says.
We have a lot of crooks talking about African Americans.
Then he says, there's a reason we are racially profiled.
And I'm paraphrasing here.
We act like we hold no responsibility.
It's just ridiculous.
What do you say to that?
They're hyperventilating.
don't know what to say to that.
They have no...
So the Washington Post came to the rescue today and And the headline, Charles Barkley is a conservative black hero, but almost everything he says is wrong.
And by the way, Barkley, he's just the new Cosby.
So now there's blowback.
Hebusin is another Democrat.
I find this, it kind of ticks me off, actually.
It's amusing.
It's another Democrat, another prominent Democrat senator has come out and said, you know, we shouldn't have done Obamacare.
The timing was wrong.
We should have focused on jobs.
We should have focused on the economy.
It was an absolute, we shouldn't have done it.
It was a mistake.
It's not working right.
The first one was Chuck Schumer.
Tom Harkin is the latest.
And Tom Harkin is one of the authors.
Senator Tom Harkin, one of the co-authors of Obamacare, now thinks Democrats may have been better off not passing it at all and instead holding out for a better bill.
He chairs the Senate Health Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.
He laments the complexity of it.
He wonders in hindsight whether the law was made overly complicated to satisfy the political concerns of a few Democrat centrists who have since left Congress.
He said, we had the power to do it in a way that it would have simplified everything, made it more efficient, made it less costly.
We didn't do that.
So I look back and I say, we should have either done it the correct way or not done anything at all.
What we did, we muddled through.
We got a system that's complex, convoluted, needs probably some corrections, and still rewards the insurance companies extensively.
Now, can I translate this for you?
This one's in thehill.com.
What this means, first Schumer and now Tom Harkin, and there's going to be more, they know that the worst is yet to come.
Schumer is in a preemptive mode to protect Hillary.
That's why he's doing it.
Because this, and there's a story, I think it's the Washington Post again.
It may be the New York Times.
It's the New York Times.
Is Obamacare destroying a Democrat party?
It's Thomas B. Edsol.
And his contention is it is because it's destroying the middle class and white Americans.
And he's the guy who wrote the piece in November of 2011 describing Obama's reelection strategy as discarding white working class families.
So Edsol's feeling bad about that, but everybody knows this is an outrage and utter disaster.
And now Democrats Harkin is retiring, but they're now starting to say it's a mistake.
We shouldn't have ever done it.
But as far as I'm concerned, too little, too late.
Don't cry on our shoulders.
You guys are the ones that made this happen.
You didn't read it.
Pelosi told us all.
We had to pass it to find out what was in it.
You wouldn't give us the public option.
You wouldn't do anything.
You wouldn't, guys, didn't do any hearings.
You knew exactly what was in this bill.
You wrote it, Senator Harkin.
This is, you know, it's not treasonous, as somebody suggested to me.
But folks, this is just, well, I don't know what it is, but they knew.
They knew it was an utter disaster.
And for these people who benefited from it to now come out and tell us they should have never done it, or not that they should have.
They're passing the buck.
Democrats, they should never have done that.
We shouldn't have done this.
Healthcare law is really complicated.
What this means is they know the worst is yet to come.
They know that individuals are being shocked by the increase in premiums and deductibles.
They know they can read the stories in the news.
They know that people are now choosing to avoid going to the doctor because they can't afford it.
They know that people are going to be paying higher taxes and foregoing insurance because it is unaffordable.
This promise of utopian single-payer health care is here and it's another lie and it is a disaster in the making.
And they know that we are now at that very important moment of full implementation when the full nature of the disaster this bill is is about to hit people.
That's what they know.
And they are trying to get out in front of it so that in whatever case and for whatever reason, they can be on record to say, yeah, I know we shouldn't have done it.
Oh, they're trying to insulate themselves from any damage as Democrats who voted for it.
It's one thing to say, you know, we should have done it differently.
But they're not saying that.
They're saying we shouldn't have done it, period.
Both of them.
Schumer and Harkin are both saying, you know what?
We shouldn't have done it.
We should have waited.
We should have done the economy first.
This is a mess we shouldn't do.
They know.
And therefore, you had better be clued at how bad this is going to be.
They are the canaries in the coal mine here.
And I don't know what Harkin's future gambit is, but I know that Schumer still has political aspirations and they're tied to Hillary.
Well, no, I think they are bombshells.
Both of them are not being reported as bombshells.
The Hill.com has Harkins.
Schumer's was a one-day story and forgotten.
I mean, you didn't, until I just mentioned, you didn't even know that Harkin said it.
So this is the second one now.
And I guarantee you, if Mary Landrew has to say it, she'll say it.
And if Diane, there's going to be more.
Because this, folks, it's exactly as bad as all of us tried to warn everybody.
I mean, you do.
You and this audience knew how bad it was.
And I'm sure you were trying to warn your friends and people you worked with.
And some of them didn't want to listen to you.
It's as bad, if not worse.
That's what this means.
Well, I don't know.
This last election, oh, I'm sure they do.
I'm sure they think part of the election results are because of Obamacare.
And they are.
These last election results, the last election meant it was a landslide defeat.
The only way, if you're going to be honest, the only way to interpret this election is the American people standing up and yelling, stop.
Stop amnesty, stop Obamacare, stop Obama, stop the Democrat.
This is the wrong direction, and we don't want to go on this road anymore.
That's what the election meant.
Everything on that road.
I don't care if it's a stimulus, if it's Obamacare, whatever it is, amnesty people stood up.
They went and voted.
The message is stop.
And the Republicans don't want to stop it.
So they're hiding behind, well, we'll get blamed for a government shutdown.
Or we can't just do a continuing resolution for this month.
We got to go ahead and do the budget for all of next year.
My God, we'll get creamed because that'll lead to a government shutdown if we don't let Harry Reid do it the way he wants to do it.
So we're going to get creamed.
They don't want to stop any of it.
Or they don't want to badly enough.
There's no other logical explanation.
These are adults.
They're not.
They can't possibly really be this afraid, frightened of a couple of weeks' polling results on a so-called mythical government shutdown.
Anyway, let me grab a phone call.
If I don't get to the phones here, I'm so wound up I might not get to them the rest of the day.
So I'm going to say people have been patiently waiting, and I have a lot of guilt over that.
Appreciation, too.
So we're starting in Jays Mills, Wisconsin.
Mary, thank you very much, and it's great to have you.
Hi.
Oh, hi, Rush.
Boy, we love you here.
But anyway, my question is: do the Republicans really care about the will of the people, or are they just in for power?
I mean, to me, it appears they're about maybe 10% of the Republicans in both houses are true conservatives.
Doesn't give me much hope.
Well, that's ballpark correct.
I don't know.
To answer your question literally, because I take it you meant literally, not rhetorically.
Do they, Republicans, care anymore about the will of the people?
I think the Republicans, and let's be specific here, talking about the moderate Republicans, the establishment, the professional political class inside Washington, the Beltway.
I don't think that the will of the people is a factor.
I think that throughout the Washington establishment, there is a view of the general population that says we don't know enough and understand enough about what really goes on to be able to render responsible opinions about what they're doing.
It's not that they think we're stupid.
It's that they think there's no way we can possibly know how hard their jobs are and how involved.
And that is the, I think one of the reasons why public opinion is ignored is because public opinion is not fully informed and it would be stupid to rely on public opinion.
Because we just don't know what they know, and we don't know how hard their jobs are.
We don't know what it is to have to deal with the media like they do every day and all of that.
And then on the other hand, there is a at least on the issue of amnesty, I don't think there's any other conclusion that a lot of Republicans actually want it.
And they know that you know enough about it that you are never going to vote for any Republican that's for it.
So they're never going to say that.
They're never going to say they're for it.
So they've got to construct a scenario where it happens despite them.
And that's where the government shutdown excuse comes in.
But I don't think that I think all of professional politics is disdainful to one degree or another of public opinion.
However, if you let public opinion be expressed in a poll by the Washington Post or the New York Times, then all of a sudden, why, public opinion is all that counts.
Isn't that amazing?
The public opinion expressed by the public in an election, nah.
But public opinion in a poll at NBC, the Washington Post, New York Times, now that, yeah, we'll listen to that and we'll be intimidated by that and we'll be afraid of that.
And what that actually is, is fear of the media, if it's even fear.
Anyway, I got to take a break.
Sally, I appreciate it.
Mary, I appreciate very much that you held on.
We'll be back, my friends, with much more.
Don't go away.
And we're back.
Rush Limbaugh, talent on loan from God.
And here's Bob in Coronado, California.
A beautiful place, by the way.
Hi, Bob.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Thank you, Rush.
I have a quick comment and a question for you.
Many believe that the Ferguson riots were completely preventable had only the grand jury brought an indictment against Darren Wilson.
And that leads to my question.
Let's say they had indicted him, and let's say he went to trial next summer, and would you get the same evidence?
Most likely, he would have been found not guilty.
He'd have been exonerated and been able to walk free.
Would the riots have then the riots have started?
In other words, would the riots have occurred either way?
This way, it just would have turned it into a summer riot instead of a November winter riot.
Well, one of the things I have learned is it's kind of, and I'm going to answer your question, but there's a line in a song I once heard that for some reason stuck out at me.
And it is, I don't believe in if anymore.
If is for children.
Now, I'm not castigating you, Bob.
I mean, I, because I'm going to answer your question.
I think in your scenario, there would have been two riots because I think there was going to be a riot no matter what the grand jury did.
They were gearing up for it.
They couldn't wait for it.
It was going to be at a minimum.
They were going to reenact Selma.
John Lewis from Georgia and the rest of the civil rights coalition, the civil rights, shall we say, hierarchy from that era, from the 60s.
They were itching for a nostalgic replay of Selma.
And so was Al Sharpton.
We know that the Black Panthers, the new Black Panthers, couple of them were apprehended trying to come up with the ingredients for a pipe bomb.
There is evidence.
There is credible evidence.
In fact, get this.
Let me find this.
The Feds, the Feds found evidence.
Here it is.
This is from the Washington Free Beacon.
A black racist group was plotting to blow up the Gateway Arch.
The new Black Panther Party plotted to bomb the Gateway Arch and to assassinate local law enforcement officials.
But the Justice Department found out about it and even so, has so far limited the prosecution of the group to an indictment of two members on minor gun charges.
This is a story by our old buddy Bill Goertz from the Washington, the old days of the Washington Times.
He's not the Washington Free Beacon.
And this story is as much an indictment of Eric Holder as it is of the new Black Panthers.
This is a story that should have been reported on the floor of the House and the Senate.
We had two guys that wanted to blow up the gateway arch, and they were going to do it no matter what the grand jury did.
This incident was just a favorable excuse.
If the grand jury had indicted, the reason for rioting then would have been confirmation for the rage.
And the rage would then boil over, and we would have all been told we've got to stand back and understand because the community knew from the get-go that this was a racist shooting and the grand jury has just confirmed it and so the rioting would have taken place.
The rioting would not have been forestalled by a grand jury indictment.
That would have been the excuse for the rage that fueled.
So there was going to be unrest and looting no matter what.
Now, in your second scenario, okay, there's an indictment and then the trial.
And if Officer Wilson had been found not guilty, there's no question there would have been another riot and more looting.
There's no question about it.
Because it has really, there's no real connection to the evidence in the case in the looting, because the evidence in the case doesn't support any of this anger or rage.
Unless you're angry that the truth was discovered and you didn't want it to be.
But yeah, there would have been unrest no matter what.
And I don't think they're through, are they?
Still seeking reasons for being outraged.
I mean, the feds are still in, but what happens if the federal government says, you know what, we can't find anything either?
What do you think is going to happen then, folks?
I like this story.
North Dakota.
North Dakota taking a new approach to ensure that its young people learn the value of the greatness of the United States.
That's so rare.
That's so rare.
That's a news story today.
We have details.
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