Welcome to the EIB Net Just So good morning if you are in the Pacific time zone, wherever you are.
It's like me.
As long as I'm here, it doesn't matter where here is, and as long as you're here, it doesn't matter where you are.
We are all in it together.
The EIB network, the Limbaugh Institute, Advanced Conservative Studies, telephone numbers 800-282-2882, the email address lrushbow at EIBnet.com.
Here's the latest on DeflateGate, as I understand it.
There's all kinds of Richard Sherman of the Seattle Seahawks, upon landing in Arizona, where the Super Bowl is going to be played.
And by the way, Media Day has gone on, and I haven't even had it on.
You know, I'm still not all here, folks.
I don't think any of us on the staff really still are.
Kind of just going through the, well, doing our best, but still going through the motions.
But I haven't had the media day, so I don't know what's happening in Media Day.
It's a circus anyway.
The Seahawks land, they got to Arizona on Sunday, and Richard Sherman got a plane and immediately said that he didn't think anything is going to happen to the Patriots, no matter what, because Roger Goodell, a commissioner, and the owner of the Patriots, Robert Kraft, are so close and so tight that there's no way Goodell is going to come down on them.
Even though Goodell has come down on him, it was Goodell that came down on him on Spygate.
And if this is indeed a sting operation that's being run against the Patriots, it was Goodell that authorized that.
But Sherman's basing it on the fact that the night before the AFC championship game in Boston, Kraft had a party, a dinner party at his house, and Goodell was there, and there was a picture of him.
Now, frankly, I don't think it's unusual a commissioner would go to an owner's house for dinner.
I mean, if any owner invited a commissioner, he would probably go.
But anyway, a big deal was made of it, and the media picked up on it.
And then, you know, Sherman is considered to be, and he is a very smart guy.
So that's bulletin board material.
And the Patriots arrived the next day.
They got there Monday.
And they said, it's all BS.
There's a thing about it.
We didn't do it.
We didn't want to do it.
We don't know how it happened.
We don't think we did it.
We don't think we saw it.
We don't know.
It's all Greek to us.
We don't know a thing about this.
Belichick calls another.
The reason Belichick called his press conference on Saturday, by the way, I am convinced, was to try to clean up the mess that Tom Brady's press conference was that everybody was looking forward to on 4 o'clock Thursday afternoon last week.
I was kind of shocked afterwards that the Brady press conference was really ripped to shreds by people that would normally be predisposed to loving Brady and applauding him no matter what he did.
So Belichick goes out and explains atmospheric conditions as a scientist would and explaining why the Patriots footballs could end up being deflated.
The problem in all this is that the Indianapolis Colts footballs were not deflated.
They stayed at whatever their opening pressure was.
The pressure is a two-pound range in each football.
So the Colts footballs could have been presented to the reps at the upper limit of the two-pound range, which is, I think, what, 13.5 PSI.
And the Patriots could have turned theirs in at 11 PSI.
Both balls, both sets would have been illegal.
And anyway, the latest on this is that security video inside the bowels of Gillette Stadium tracked a New England clubhouse boy picking up the footballs from the official's office two hours, their locker room, two hours before the game.
And on his way to the field with the footballs in a zipped-up bag, both teams, 24 footballs there, he stopped in a bathroom.
Now, there's no camera inside the bathroom, obviously.
He was in the bathroom 90 seconds.
And so now the investigation said to have zeroed in, said to have zeroed in on whether or not somebody could have one of those needles and deflate 11 or 12 footballs, two pounds per square inch precisely in 90 seconds.
So now the media probably getting deflation experts, which would be anybody in the Obama Office of Management and Budget, deflation experts out there.
And I'm sure that they're going through a test to see if anybody could successfully deflate 11 footballs by exactly 2 psi in 90 seconds.
Well, it is possible that they could have pulled a switch.
It could be that there were underinflated footballs in that bathroom that the officials had not seen waiting to be switched out.
The only problem with that theory is the referees mark each football.
What are you saying, Snerdley?
That anybody, they know what the marks look like.
Anybody could have marked them.
And you wouldn't have to deflate the balls.
You just switch them out.
You hide them in an empty toilet tank.
You have a toilet with no water in there.
You put the balls up, put them in a bag in there.
You don't have to deflate these footballs.
You have to switch them out.
It's all you have to do.
That's where the investigation is deepening now.
It's getting even more mysterious.
Eli Manning is the latest to weigh in.
Eli Manning, he's a quarterback of the Giants.
Eli Manning said he can't believe, he has never even contemplated his balls.
He has never even thought about it.
All of this, Eli Manning said, is brand new to him.
The whole idea of inflated or deflated football, he had no clue.
He cannot believe any of this.
He's never heard of any of it.
Maybe it is why the Giants are not winning.
The point is, though, no matter what happens or how it happens, the fact is the Patriots had 11 footballs that were inflated low, and the Colts had 11 or 12 footballs that were properly inflated and stayed properly inflated throughout the game.
Something happened to the 11 footballs the Patriots were using.
Something happened.
And I just, like I said at the outset, they're not going to get the answer to this quick.
And certainly not before the Super Bowl.
This is too much hype.
This is causing too much attention.
There's no bad PR for the Super Bowl.
You need a villain.
Bill Velichek is the villain right now.
These kind of things, sports particularly, need villains.
And Brady, I mean, Mr. Pretty Boy, a villain in some people's minds.
As far as the NFL is concerned, fine with us.
That's only going to hype this game even.
I guarantee you, you'll never get anybody to admit this.
In fact, if the NFL were to talk about it, they would say that this is the last thing they want.
Oh my God, we don't know this is a disaster.
But privately, the fact we're going to have the championship game of the NFL played this Sunday with half the country wondering whether one of the teams is cheating.
Do you not think that's going to draw an even bigger audience?
Now, I know in the old days, there used to be this thing called shame.
And in the old days, there used to be penalties and punishment that would come with shame.
In our culture today, things that people do that would otherwise cause shame make them bigger.
It makes people more curious about them.
It makes them bigger celebrities or stars or what have you.
It's one of the downsides to the pop culture that we have in America today is that it really is taking away role models for young people in a positive way.
And it's just the way it is.
It's just evolved, and I think part and parcel.
One of the reasons is why the advent and massive geometric growth of entertainment media.
Entertainment media needs stars.
Entertainment media is not going to condemn the people they cover.
They want you to watch stories about these people.
They want you to, whatever Kim Kardashian is or the Paris Hiltons of the world, they want that persona to continue and expand and grow.
They don't want these people to be clean and pure as the wind-driven snow.
They don't want them to be upstanding citizens.
That's boring.
I'll never forget one year the MTV Music Awards actually came off as a family affair.
Not one performer uttered a single obscenity, including the F-bomb.
And the next day, the entertainment writers at the New York Post and the New York Daily News all wrote about what a dull, boring TV show the awards showed MTV was.
Didn't matter who won the awards.
Didn't matter whether their performances were any good.
Didn't matter what the songs were cool or hot.
It's the fact that nobody disrobed.
Nobody called anybody a name.
Nobody gave an F-bomb out there.
And so the critics thought it was all dull and boring.
Well, this is not dull and boring.
The NFL does concern itself very much so with the integrity of the game.
And if they find something has happened here, I'm going to make a prediction to you right now that they will come down hard on the Patriots.
And it'll be in the offseason with the enforcement of whatever penalties to begin with the new season next fall, regular season, not preseason.
Just a wild guess.
Now, yesterday in a program, yesterday in a program, I referenced a story about Obama closing off a large portion of Alaska to oil drilling.
And I looked at it and I said, that's a joke.
This is a joke.
This is not true.
And I didn't report on or give details of the story.
There's a reason that you don't know.
Because how to say this?
I was being told at the time that Obama did this to honor the deceased King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
And I said, that can't be.
So the story I got was that Obama shut down half of Alaska in honor of the death of King Abdullah.
I said, that's a joke.
That can't, I'm not faulting for that.
I'm going to make a fool of myself and report that.
And so I got emails last night.
You thought this is a joke?
You thought this is a joke?
Well, here.
And then I got the story.
Alaska lawmakers push back against Obama's stunning attack on state sovereignty.
The regime's plan to designate $12.2 million or million acres of the state's public land as pristine wilderness.
Sounds nice.
But the vast parcel also happens to contain Alaska's richest oil and natural gas prospects on the Arctic coastal plain.
While environmentalist wackos celebrate and Interior Department Secretary Sally Jewell calls the gorgeous land one of the nation's crown jewels, Alaska's Republican lawmakers and governor are not disguising their disgust.
The decision, they say, will have long-lasting impact on Alaska's economy and energy security.
And if Senator Lisa Murkowski calls the plan a stunning attack on our sovereignty, which it is, and she added, I can't understand why this regime is willing to negotiate with Iran, but not Alaska.
But we're not going to be run over like this, she said.
We will fight back with every resource at our disposal.
Lisa Murkowski hasn't fought back against this administration on virtually anything.
Now says she's going to get really tough.
Okay.
Yeah, but remember, folks, I have this theory.
You can never be hurt by what you don't say.
Just like in the old days of radio, you could never be hurt by a record you don't play.
Nobody would ever know you didn't really play it, but you could lose audience.
You can play a bad record nobody wants to hear.
Okay, suppose I had said yesterday, suppose I bought it and believed it.
Suppose I said, folks, do you realize Obama just shut down 12.5 million whatever acres of Alaska in honor of the death of King Abdullah?
I'd have been a laughingstock in the media last night.
So I said, this can't be, and I held it back.
And it turns out everything about the story was true, except none of it was done to honor Abdullah.
Right?
You haven't seen that anywhere, have you?
Okay.
But the acres, everything else about it is dead right.
The Senate.
Democrats in the United States Senate blocked the Keystone XL pipeline from moving forward on Monday, but supporters of the project vowed to push ahead and eventually get a vote on the measure.
No, this headline, Senate blocks swift passage of Keystone XL Pipeline Bill.
But that's not right.
That's not, see, this is classic.
The Democrats blocked it.
The Democrats blocked passage of Keystone XL.
And so where are the cries of gridlock, folks?
Normally, something like this would happen if the Republicans were responsible for shutting down action on some bill.
The drive-bys would report the Republicans were to blame.
It's all their fault.
Classic example of gridlock.
And they'd rake them over the coals for not working with the Democrats and not cooperating with Obama, not cooperating and not wanting to get things done and not wanting Washington to work.
The obstructionist Republicans, right?
Now, here comes the Keystone XL pipeline.
The Democrats in the Senate shoot it down.
This story from Reuters says the Senate shoots it down.
Everybody knows the Republicans just won control of the Senate.
So it looks like the Republicans shut it down.
The Democrats did it.
That's not even in the story.
Much less is there any hand-wringing over gridlock.
Quick timeout.
We'll be back and continue after this.
Don't go anywhere.
Back to the telephones.
Here we go.
This is Olivia in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
And Olivia, ladies and gentlemen, 12 years old.
Hi, Olivia.
I assume you're out of school today because of the snow.
Is that right?
Yes, I am.
Well, congratulations.
Did it snow much in Atlantic City?
No, not really.
We only got like four inches of snow, so it's not that bad.
We only got like four.
But you didn't have to go to school today.
No.
Oh, that's cool.
That's cool.
We had to go to school.
It took 15 inches before they canceled snow.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, yeah, you're lucky.
So what's up?
What are you doing?
Well, I'm just enjoying your book, the first book.
Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims.
Yes, sir.
Well, that's awesome.
Thank you very much.
Twelve years old, and how far into it are you?
I'm like halfway into it, but before I picked it up, I didn't like history.
And my grade was like a C.
But now that I picked it up, I can't put it down.
And my grade's like a 99.
No, can't you?
I love history.
What was it you didn't like about history?
Well, it just seemed like not boring, but just like not very exciting and vibrant.
But now it's just like, but I just love history.
Nobody, it sounds like you didn't have anybody that knew how to make history relate to current times.
It sounds like it was just presented to you kind of a dry, hey, this happened way back then kind of fashion.
Well, it wasn't as much that.
It was just mostly the material.
Like, the book that I was learning it from didn't really make it as vibrant as I thought it could be.
Well, that's a shame.
Well, I'm glad that my book satisfies you in that regard.
I'm glad you think it's vibrant.
Yeah, I love it.
Well, that's, that's, have you got the other two yet?
No, I haven't.
Oh, did you get this for Christmas or did you just pick it up recently?
Well, I got it a few months ago.
My dad recommended it because he's been listening to you for like 25 years, and he also says mega videos.
Okay, cool.
But so you've had it around for a while and you just never opened it, and all of a sudden you did, and you end up liking it.
Yeah.
Well, I have to, Olivia, that is, that is, you warm my heart.
I just love hearing stories like this because it was written for people just like you.
It was written so that you would find history entertaining and interesting and that you would want to be a part of it.
If you'll hang on, I want to get your address, so I want to send you the other two books and some C D's of the audio version that I read.
I read them out loud.
And some other stuff too.
So if you'll hang on, I really appreciate it.
Thank you so much.
It's great that you called.
I'm glad you got through, but don't hang up so we can get your address and send you out the goodie package.
When you think back to the past about culture, society, maybe even yourself, can you recall anything that somebody would have done that would have resulted in them feeling and being shamed?
Can you think of anything you would not have wanted to be caught doing because you would have been ashamed and shamed by the culture and you would have been marked and you would have had sullied your reputation.
Can you think of anything?
Like adultery is one.
Can you think of other things?
If you get some people being arrested is something that they never lived down.
Some people being responsible for a traffic accident.
Ooh, that's shame.
Any negative public information about it would shame you.
Well, try this now in Seattle.
See, today, adultery is no big deal.
It's exciting.
Why did this happen?
Why do you think anything's going to come of it?
Does it mean they're really unhappy at home?
Gee, whose fault is it?
Well, tell me more.
Tell me more is the reaction to adultery.
Unless it's somebody you know, and then it can be upsetting.
And likewise, if you get arrested, depending on who you are, it could be the grand jury's fault.
It could be racism and bigotry.
It could be society's unfair, any number of things.
To show you how things are changing now, in Seattle, a new city law makes it illegal to put food in trash cans.
Violators will have to soon start paying up for their transgressions.
If a garbage bin is filled with more than 10% food, a red tag will be placed on it for public shaming.
The goal, this doesn't surprise you, does it, sir?
You lived out there and you found this place that wacky as California.
Well, not all of California, but parts of California.
Yeah, yeah, be careful when you start admonishing and impugning California, some great parts of California.
I know what you mean.
I'm not making this up.
A red tag, at least I hope I'm not making this up.
I'll tell you, it's so easy to spam people with satire today because what liberals do sometimes is not possible and is indeed reality.
Anyway, a red tag is going to be placed on your trash can for public shaming if it is found that your garbage bins filled with more than 10% food.
Do you mean somebody's going to have to go through there and measure it?
You understand what this means?
You're going to have the garbage cops in Seattle and they're going to be looking for people who throw away too much food.
The goal of this is to keep food out of landfills while helping Seattle increase its recycling and composting rate to 60% of all waste.
This story was in NPR.
Seattle is the first city in America to fine people for not sorting their trash properly.
Seattle Public Utilities estimates that each family in the city tosses out about 400 pounds of food every year.
And to keep food out of landfills, households receive a bin for food and yard scraps so they can compost it themselves or for a fee, the city will do it for them.
Right now, offenders of the sorting law are just warned, starting in July, they'll have to pay a $1 per violation at a house, $50 per violation at an apartment condominium or commercial building, and of course get the red tag.
Why can't food go to a landfill?
What, the seagulls eat it or something?
What's the problem with food going to a landfill?
Now, who is it that's going to take the time to look through all of these trash bins for over 10% of food?
Who the hell is going to do that?
The garbage police.
Okay, fine.
Well, where do you go when the garbage police charge you with 15% food in your bin and you don't think there's anything but 10 or 8% in there?
Where do you go?
You go to court?
Where do you go to appeal this?
Garbage court.
Garbage food court.
How many man hours is this going to require?
What is this red tag going to be?
Is it going to be an F?
Is it going to be an A?
Is it going to be an S?
How are they going to do it?
And by the way, why isn't any of this being done?
Because of so many people going hungry in Seattle.
I mean, we've got a homeless problem there.
Why they really care about the landfills and not the people?
Public shaming if you throw away more than 10%, or if you put more than 10% food in the food bin of your garbage bin.
Here's Richard in Lowell, Kentucky.
Great to have you on the program, Richard.
Hello.
First time caller, Rush.
I've been in Union Democrats since McGovern, my first election.
1972.
Yes, sir.
And my union called me and asked me to vote for a young lady here to run against Mitch McConnell.
And I've said, look, you know, the definition of an insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over and expecting a different result.
That's right.
Yeah.
Well.
That was Allison Lundergan Grimes or some such thing.
That was her name.
And she'll do well one day, but it wasn't for me.
So I voted straight line Republican first time ever.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
You did?
Yes, sir.
Holy.
Well, when you consider everything, Benghazi, you know, winning the borders, you know, what's going on with the jihadists.
I've got two grandsons.
Why doesn't that matter to, and maybe you may not have the answer to this.
Why don't things like this matter to other Democrats, be they union or not?
Why doesn't open mortars matter?
Why doesn't the fact the Democrat Party doesn't take jihadism or militant Islam seriously as a threat?
Why doesn't that matter to other Democrats?
Well, when Obamacare came out and they said you could keep your doctor.
Yeah.
Keep your doctor, keep your plan.
$2,500 cheaper premium every year.
Well, I've got a couple of procedures that I've put off.
Why?
Because Obama was going to be cheaper, Obamacare was going to be cheaper?
Well, I can't afford it.
Oh, you've put them off now because you can't afford it.
Did you happen to wait to do these procedures because you thought it was going to be cheaper?
No, the procedures were supposed to have been done in October last year.
Have you had your tires slashed yet?
You know, that happens to union guys that abandon the cause.
Well, I'm not new to standing up in front of my union.
Oh.
Yeah, it cost me my job before, but you've got to do what's right.
I thought you hung in there.
All right, so you are delaying two procedures because you can't afford them.
You know, I'm glad, Richard, that you called.
I hate your news.
I hate hearing your news, but since I've got you here, I want to share a couple of Obamacare stories I have.
And the first one, this is from the UK Daily Mail, which the British press is doing more honest reporting on a lot of things in America than the American media.
And Obamacare is one of them.
But let me give you the nut and bolt of this particular story.
Obamacare program costs $50,000 in taxpayer money for every American who gets health insurance, says a new bombshell budget report.
This figure comes from the Congressional Budget Office report that revised cost estimates for the next 10 years.
And that number now is a government's going to spend $1.993 trillion over a decade.
$2 trillion when they told us the original cost was going to be under $1 trillion.
It's now officially at $2 trillion over a decade.
It's going to take in $643 billion in new taxes, penalties, and fees.
The $1.35 trillion net cost will result in between $24 million and $27 million fewer Americans being uninsured, and it's going to cost $50,000 per person to insure them.
Given these new costs, the law will still leave between $29 million and 31 million non-elderly Americans without medical care.
And this number does not include the insurance premiums and out-of-pocket health care costs by Americans.
This number is only factoring the government's role in implementing the law.
So it's going to be well over $2 trillion of this cost, and it's now amortized out at $50,000 per American.
That's the cost, the real world cost of Obamacare, $50,000.
Now, the next story comes from the New York Post.
And it is a story by a man named Justin Haskins.
And it's his experience.
He's a writer.
He's an editor for the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based free market think tank.
And it's a story detailing his experience with Obamacare.
And it starts this way.
I'm sorry, sir, the politehealthcare.gov customer service agent said, there's nothing I can do.
You're either going to have to enroll in Medicaid or you're going to have to pay the full health insurance rate.
And he said to her, the rate you quoted earlier, that's 30% higher than my current premium.
I can't afford that.
You're telling me that I have to pay 30% more than my current premium or go to Medicaid?
The agent replied, you have to pay the full rate, yes.
And Mr. Haskins said, I don't understand.
I got plenty of money to pay you a reasonable rate, but I can't afford to pay the same rate a millionaire would be asked to pay.
Why can't I get just a partial subsidy?
I'm willing to pay more than what Medicaid offers.
She said, sir, that's just not how the system works.
And he says, that's right.
That's not how Obamacare works.
It doesn't work at all.
I was 26 when my graduate school informed me in 2013 that thanks to usage rates of the plan, changing health insurance regulations, and the administrative workload that's involved in managing a plan, after the passage of Obamacare, students could no longer buy health coverage through the school.
So much for the president's promises.
If you like your plan, you can keep your doctor, you keep your plan.
It's all BS.
I had health insurance.
I liked it, but that plan disappeared.
How many people have you heard this story from?
It's more and more and more every day.
College officials confirmed my suspicion that Obamacare was the culprit.
They said it's just too expensive to operate under the new health care regulations, he was told.
So there I was, a struggling grad student, no health insurance, unable to afford unsubsidized Obamacare plans that I would hardly ever, if ever, use.
And I couldn't get a subsidy.
The system didn't permit it.
I had two choices, pay what I didn't have the money to buy or go on Medicaid.
Those are the only two choices he had.
And he said, call me crazy, but in my book, Medicaid is a last resort, not a first option.
Faced with the choice of either violating a strong conviction by going on Medicaid or signing up for Obamacare insurance I couldn't afford, I chose a third option, short-term insurance.
Unlike traditional health plans, short-term plans are generally available only to healthy buyers, and they last for just a set period.
But what's incredibly frustrating, I now have to pay Obamacare's tax or a fine, whatever they're going to call it, for last year because my short-term plan doesn't count as buying adequate insurance under Obamacare's mandates.
What an abject, absolute mess.
And I'm sure, Richard, that that's one of the things that you've encountered as so many millions of Americans are.
It's an absolute mess.
And I should point out that I've got a story in the stack here how the Republicans have really no intention of rolling it back.
That back, there's a story of McConnell and Boehner, maybe about immigration, or maybe both or one or the other.
But it's basically how they're backtracking from their campaign promises.
They're backtracking.
They just Obamacare is going to be fully implemented.
They're going to be an effort to stop it, and it's going to be an absolute mess.
And ditto, immigration.
Ladies and gentlemen, I have a long scheduled day off tomorrow, and I decided to go ahead and take it.
Mark Belling was going to do the program, but he couldn't get to New York.
Well, he could have, but they should have been down unnecessarily.
So he knew Kit.
They're both from Milwaukee.
But Eric Erickson, who's also worked with Kit extensively, he'll be in the EIB chair tomorrow, guest hosting from Atlanta.