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May 14, 2015 - Rush Limbaugh Program
30:56
May 14, 2015, Thursday, Hour #3
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Greetings and welcome back, my friends.
Rush Limbaugh having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
Executing assigned host duties flawlessly zero mistakes.
The telephone number is 800-282-2882 and the email address, LRushbo at EIBnet.com.
The next issue of the Limbaugh letter, which should be in dispersal form to you very soon, should be on your way, on its way to you very soon.
The interview is with Kirsten Powers, who is a well-known commentator on Fox News.
She traces her political history back to the Clinton campaigns of the 1990s.
She is an, well, I don't avowed lib might not be the correct way to put it, but she's a liberal.
But she's demonstrated an openness rather than a closed-mindedness about aspects of liberalism.
There are a lot of things about the modern-day left that bother her greatly.
And all of them, most of them have to do with speech and free speech.
She's written a book called The Silencing, How the Left is Killing Free Speech.
And I interviewed her for the newsletter last week, and I asked her what reaction she has gotten from her liberal friends and others on the left.
She said, well, the book's not out yet.
And that was true at the time I was talking to her.
The book hadn't been released.
The release date was three days ago on May the 11th.
And I warned her, I have to be very careful in these things.
I mean, I don't want to come off smug.
I want to be helpful.
I was actually trying to be helpful.
And I said, you are going to be targeted like you have never been targeted before.
And she said she knew that.
I said, you're going to pose a tremendous threat.
You're going to become public enemy number one for what is essentially a really small group of people on Twitter who have found a way for simplified purpose via algorithms.
It's much more involved than that, but people think they know what an algorithm is, so I'll just use the word.
They found ways to make themselves appear to be hundreds and thousands of people when they are 10 or sometimes 12 people.
And I'm not exaggerating.
In the attacks on us and our advertisers on Twitter, we know who the people are.
We did an extensive research project that took months.
We identified, we know them.
We know who they are.
We know their first and last names.
We know where they live.
We know what they do for a living.
In some cases, some don't work.
And they're lawyers.
Some of them are retired college professors.
And they're just mean, spirited, angry trolls that sit out there with too much time on their hands.
And their avowed purpose is to destroy anybody that they think might be effective in harming the leftist agenda.
Well, that has happened to Kirsten Powers.
Now, she's still a lib, proudly says so, but she's, as I say, she's not rock-ribbed with this.
And many times, in fact, on a Fox show here or there.
You know, occasionally, ladies and gentlemen, I find myself involved in a controversial affair.
Doesn't happen a whole lot, but sometimes I do.
And on many of those occasions, Kirsten, using her instincts, has refused to join the chorus in whatever the criticism of me is.
And she's been right on those occasions.
And I thought writing this book was a gutsy thing for her to do because it's not like somebody like me writing a book describing how the left tries to silence people.
I mean, she goes after them, folks.
This is not a soft-pedaled little commentary or analysis on theory.
She goes after these people with explicit, undeniable examples of how people on the left are literally trying to deny average ordinary Americans access to the First Amendment.
They are literally trying to destroy people.
And as a liberal, it bothers her.
She is an old classical liberal, I think is the term.
An old classical liberal is not what a liberal is today.
Liberal today means extreme fascist statist, intolerant, full-fledged, almost Stalinist type person.
And it bothers her.
And she has written about it complete with examples.
And because she comes from the left doing this, she has become this immense target of these people.
And I don't know that she was prepared for it.
She said she was, but I don't know that anybody is.
People who have not experienced this, but yet who comment on it, who witness it.
I mean, she's in the news.
She works at Fox.
She comments on all these issues.
But until it happens to you, it's like anything else.
I mean, you think you understand what people are going through.
And you might know enough to say, I wouldn't want to go through it myself.
But until something like that, until you have a bunch of faceless, nameless people that are literally flooding the zone with lies and distortions and threats about until that actually happens to you, you don't know what it's like.
And depending on the person, it can scare them into silence.
It can shut them up or it can rev them up and it can steal them and it can make them angrier.
And I just wanted to make you aware of the book and the interview coming up.
You might think that you know everything there is to know about how the left is attempting to silence people.
You might think you keep up with the news and you understand what's going on.
But I think it'd be fascinating for you to get her take on it as a member of that club, as somebody who is as distressed by it as you are.
The First Amendment, there are a lot of arguments that we as a culture have over the importance of the amendments.
Which is actually the most important?
Is it number two in guns?
Is it number one, free speech?
Is it the religion clause?
It is the assembly clause.
What is the most important?
And I don't think you can get more important than amendment number one.
So much is in it.
Assembly, religion, freedom of speech.
Freedom of speech is the key.
But see, it was especially, particularly written about political speech.
And the purpose of the First Amendment, no government, no government official, no government agency can deprive anybody, can shut anybody up.
And it's happening.
You heard the president on the at this poverty summit literally blame Fox News.
You know, if I ran the NAB, now Fox is technically not a broadcaster because they're on cable.
But if I ran, you know, the NAB is a trade group for broadcast opera.
If I'm running the National Association of Broadcasters and I see the president of the United States going after my business on the basis that one of our members needs to be silenced because that entity is creating poverty, but there's no pushback.
There's no pushback.
And Fox just sits there.
Of course, they do what they do every day and they keep doing it.
And they plot ways of reacting and responding, and they do.
But it's deadly serious stuff.
And of course, to me, it is because I'm in the speech business, the free speech business.
But I think as important, and it's tough, it's a tough one.
I've always gone back and forth on this, is the right to own property, too.
The right to private property is, I think it's right in there with free speech and freedom of religion, freedom of assembly.
And not to say the other amendments are of less importance.
It's hard to quantify them that way.
They're all crucial and they're all relevant and they are all purposeful and unique in defining this country as something separate and distinct from every other country that exists or ever has.
And so here comes Kirsten Powers, an appreciated and endowed, accepted ranking member of the left, calling them out.
And so now they've got to destroy her.
She's no different than if she were me, as far as they are concerned.
They used to like her.
They used to appreciate her.
And in some cases, still do, but she's got to be shut up.
And notice there's no attempt.
They don't want to engage her.
They don't want to debate her about it.
They have to discredit her.
They have to try to destroy her.
They have to shut her up because they are the ones that cannot deal in sunlight.
They are the ones who cannot exist in openness.
They have to do what they do anonymously.
They have to do it in their pajamas or otherwise hidden.
They have to do it pretending to be people that they're not.
They're gutless, spineless poltroons who happen to have the support of the mainstream media because they're all part of the same cabal or group that share large parts of an agenda.
So I just wanted to bring her book to your attention, alert you to the interview we have with her coming up with the next issue of the limbo letter, and to recommend the book to you, too.
It's one of these books you'll read and you'll get mad.
Some of it you will have heard about on this program, and some of these incidents that she writes about, we've talked about.
But her take on it as a liberal is what you probably, well, you haven't heard from many places.
You don't hear liberals doing what she's doing here.
When's the last liberal you can think of that expressed deep concern over the way conservatives are being treated in the media?
Can you name one?
I mean, there might be some.
I can't name one off the top of my head.
I mean, maybe now and then when he stumbles into it, Juan Williams.
And maybe now and then, well, I can't think of anybody else.
But she's done it purposefully.
And I know you always go, what's in it for her to do this?
I mean, she's got her gig at Fox.
I mean, there's nothing.
She's doing this because she genuinely is concerned about it.
Because you know what she knows is that if anybody's speech is subject to being shut up, then everybody's is at some point.
And she just doesn't want to sit on the sidelines and watch some people shut up because she's fully aware that she could be in the next cross ears.
So she's written the book.
And again, it is The Silencing How the Left Is Killing Free Speech by Kirsten Powers of Fox News.
Now back to the audio soundbites on this Amtrak stuff because I'm not through illustrating this.
Let's go to Boehner this afternoon in Washington.
He was speaking at a press briefing and an unidentified female Infobabe said to the Speaker of the House, There's been some criticism, you know, you're getting from Democrats that Amtrak wasn't well funded enough and that the Republicans have to blame for some of this that are you really gonna ask such a stupid question.
Listen.
You know, they started this yesterday.
It's all about funding.
It's all about funding.
Well, obviously, it's not about funding.
The train was gone twice the speed limit.
Adequate funds were there.
No money's been cut from rail safety.
No money's been cut from anything.
Have you seen the national debt?
It's $18 trillion.
There haven't been any budget cuts.
But when's the last time you heard John Boehner say to a drive-by media specialist, are you going to ask such a stupid question?
Play that again, Friday, because we don't hear this much, and we probably won't hear it again for a while.
John Boehner responding to an Infobabe reporter asking him if Republicans are responsible for the wreck because of budget cuts.
Are you really going to ask such a stupid question?
Listen.
We need to roll that off.
It's all about funding.
It's all about funding.
Stop this.
Well, obviously, it's not.
We need to roll that off.
Are you really going to ask such a stupid question?
Just that.
So we can put that, plug that in anytime somebody says something.
This is good.
This is Carol Costello, our stalker, former stalker at CNN, during a report this morning on the Philadelphia Amtrak crash.
I keep hearing how ghoulish it is to bring up funding for Amtrak's infrastructure.
Well, I actually ride an Amtrak train every other weekend because my husband lives in Boston.
Last week, as my Amtrak train was pulling into Providence, Rhode Island, the engines suddenly stopped working.
Power on the train went out.
It took them 45 minutes to fix it.
The heating and cooling systems on board those trains often don't work properly.
Doors are sometimes stuck open.
Sometimes the trains break down in the middle of nowhere.
More importantly, all trains are supposed to be equipped with positive train control by the end of the year.
Who knows if that'll happen?
Is it really ghoulish to bring up these infrastructure problems?
See, this is the natural progression here of this idiotic narrative that the Democrats and media are pushing.
So Carol Costello has this list of complaints about Amtrak.
Has she ever wondered who it is that runs this train system?
She loves and adores government.
She never will find anything wrong with government except when Republicans are running it.
This laundry list of complaints about Amtrak, infrastructure problems, never-ending lists.
Does she ever stop to think that it is her own precious, infallible government that's running this thing that has resulted in all of these problems?
Does she ever once consider that?
Talent on loan from God.
El Rushbo, the most listened to, most talked about radio talk show in the world.
I am a household name in all four corners of the world, plus the frozen tundra of Antarctica.
Here's Eric in Palm Bay, Florida.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
Hello.
Rush, it's an honor and a thrill to talk with you today.
I'm glad you got through, sir.
Thank you.
Me too.
Listen, you were saying something earlier in the program about Washington's trying to get all of our money running through their control, right?
No.
What I said was all money is there.
All money goes there.
Every dime collected from somebody in this country ends up going to Washington, and then it's dispersed, spent, stolen, defrauded, grabbed, what have you.
But Washington is where it all goes first.
Well, that reminded me of something I saw last year.
My family and I were on a lavish, carbon-rich vacation, and we had to fly through Dulles, but we got delayed there overnight for weather problems.
But the next morning, we woke up and we're driving back to the airport, and I'm looking around this place, and it's immaculate.
There's no sign of any economic stress.
There's nothing burned down.
There's nothing boarded up.
There's no dead cars.
Everything's green and painted and beautiful and bright.
And I'm like, this is the federal ghetto.
Well, you probably stayed close to the airport in your hotel overnight.
It was Fairfax.
Isn't that one of the seven richest counties in the nation?
Hell yeah.
I mean, the whole area there is all of those zip codes combined with some of the wealthiest zip codes in the country precisely because that's where the money is.
That's where people go to get the money.
I mean, the legitimate amount of money that's in that town every year that's collected tax revenue is around $2 trillion.
That's a lot of money.
The government prints more than that.
The government borrows more than that.
That town is a magnet for people who want money, and they go out of their way to get it in any which way, shape, manner, or form.
The unemployment rate in that area is way below the national average.
And the reason that this matters is don't, don't, don't misunderstand.
Nobody's criticizing the, you know, what is a nice area, a good life.
Nobody's criticizing that.
That isn't the point.
The point is that the people who live there really have no idea what it's like in many other parts of the country.
They end up thinking everybody's doing well, that everything's okay, that there isn't any blight anywhere.
And if there is, it's certainly not the fault of the people in Washington.
It's other things.
But it isolates people.
It walls them off, both physically and attitudinally.
And it makes it very difficult for people to actually live there to relate to the lives that the vast majority of Americans are navigating these days.
And we're back.
I just had a guy tell me.
Well, here's the question for Carol Costello.
First, this way.
Here's Carol Costello, and she's whining and moaning about the basic state of disarray, the state of decomposition, the state of disrepair that her precious Amtrak trains are in.
And such as the heating and cooling systems don't work, the engines sometimes don't work properly, doors are stuck open, trains break down the middle of nowhere.
She keeps getting on them.
She keeps getting on a thing.
Would you get on an airplane that may not fly?
Would you get on a train?
The engine may stop and the doors may stick open in the dead of winter out in the middle of nowhere.
She gets on them.
You know why?
Liberals love Europe.
And Europe equals trains.
Trains equal Europe.
Trains equal good liberal.
Trains also equal saving the climate.
You know, all this cockamame crap.
I don't even, I wonder if Carol Costello understands how much Amtrak is subsidized.
In other words, what do you think she pays for that for a trip from Washington to Boston to see her husband now and then?
What is I wouldn't know because I've never been on an Amtrak train.
So $100, $150, $100, okay, but that's a subsidized price, right?
It'd be much more if she had to pay the full, but if she had to pay what it really costs, if there was a private sector entity running that thing and they're making it running it, trying to run it at a profit.
And by the way, if there were, the engines would work, the doors would not stick.
If there were a private sector industry running Amtrak, every problem she had would be solved.
It would have to be, or people wouldn't pay to get on it.
As it is, people are paying much less than what it really costs to ride these things because the government, good liberals, subsidizes everybody.
That's why the cars are in a state of disrepair.
There is no incentive.
This has been done for all the wrong reasons.
You let some transportation company and the private sector buy this thing and run it, try to make a profit out of it.
It's going to be spick and span.
It's going to be modernized.
It's going to be, doors and windows won't stick and all this kind of stuff.
But you'll have to pay for it too.
So you pick your poison.
You want to run, you want to go on a train on a bunch of dilapidated cars you can't guarantee are going to get you there on time.
The doors and windows may stick open.
The engine may stop, but you're only going to pay a small fraction of what it would cost otherwise.
Then don't complain.
Or take a plane.
You know, there are shuttles that run from Washington to New York and Boston to Washington, but you see, that's not cool.
That's global warming.
And then you'll hear the old saw, you know, by the time I drive to the airport and check in with TSA and get one and have to strip and then have to put my clothes back on, my shoes back on, and refill all of my congestion bottles and stuff, and then stand in line to get a boarding pass.
I could drive to Boston quicker than it's going to take me to get there in a plane.
And that's crap, by the way.
It's absolutely BS, but it's become a popular thing to say.
Flying is global warming, and it's crowds, who knows what have you.
So I just had a guy say to me, yeah, well, you know, she's got a point.
The other day I had to get from Newark to Philadelphia, 80 bucks.
I said, you think 80 bucks, Newark to Philadelphia, is overpriced?
Yeah.
You can do it in a Greyhound for 20.
I said, really?
Why didn't you?
I did.
I did.
Well, then, why didn't you walk?
Not that far.
But the people living in Washington, you tell them 80 bucks from Newark to Philadelphia on a train, they think that's nothing.
That's not even what they spend on the wine at dinner.
They can't relate to people that 60 bucks or 80 bucks to get from one place to another is too expensive.
They can't relate to it.
So here comes subsidies and all that.
They think you're doing everybody a favor with all this.
And there's no mystery why this stuff doesn't work.
Janet in Corning, New York, thank you for waiting.
Your turn, you're up.
Hello.
Oh, thanks, Rush.
It is an absolute honor to speak with you.
I've been listening since 88, and I have got dittos from eight rush babies.
You're a lifer.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate that.
Well, I'm calling because you referenced that article earlier in the day about the non-straight women feeling like the straight women have cornered the market on college violence earlier.
Yes, I have that story even now, still in my formerly nicotine state.
Let me review this so people know what you're calling about.
Yes.
It is a story from College Fix, and here's the headline: Straight women are marginalizing other victims of sexual assault at the University of Oregon.
What this story is basically about, it's a study that says that lesbians and gay men rape their intimate partners more than straight men do.
Now, you might say, what are you talking about?
Let me tell you what this is.
Straight college women who claim they were sexually assaulted are forming their own clique that excludes everybody else.
That is according to a Daily Emerald story, University of Oregon, where last month's, this is weirdly written.
Here's the nut of this.
According to the 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, 44% of lesbian women, 61% of bisexual women, have been victims of intimate partner violence in the form of rape, physical violence, or stalking.
35% of heterosexual women have been victims.
So let me explain this.
The rub here is that the gay women are mad that the news of rape on campus is all about hetero.
They claim they're getting raped and assaulted much more often than the heterosexual women are, but the news only reports about the heteros.
And the lesbians and the bisexuals are ticked off that their incidents are not being reported because they claim they're being raped much more often than the heterosexual women are, which to me means that lesbians and gay men are raping more women than straight people are.
You have to conclude that from reading this story.
So that's what Janet is calling about.
Well, I'm calling because the story made me think of my 30 years ago when I was an innocent freshman in a university.
I lived in the all-girls dorm there.
And I, to the course of the whole year, progressed, I had two non-straight women living above me.
And every afternoon, after school was over, before we went to like dinner, I would hear, like I said, it was probably once a month in the beginning of the year, and then it just progressed as the year went on.
It sounded like there were two people wrestling upstairs on the floor.
Really?
Literally, you would hear screaming.
Really?
Oh, man.
Really?
That never happened when I was in school.
You had lesbians up there wrestling?
All of a sudden, it would be, you'd hear yelling, couldn't hear what they were saying, and then crash.
Like, literally, one had to have been throwing the other one in their room, which is, you know, not funny, but.
Did you ever get any pictures?
Well, no.
But what happened was it kept getting worse and worse.
And every time we'd go to the RA, it just happened to be she was never in her room, so we could never cause attention to it.
But what happened was by the end of the spring when we could finally open the doors to our dorm room because it was warm enough, my roommate and I decided we're finally going to lean out and listen to see if we can find out what is going on.
And so one of the last times before we left for the year, their windows were open two up above.
And all I can tell you is that one, the only thing we could make out was one yell to the other, I saw you looking at him.
So I thought that was a little interesting twist of the whole year as well.
So I, that's my, just so you know, it's been going around for 30 years, apparently.
Okay, so you're calling to say even 30 years ago this was true.
Yes.
I mean, actually, it was really, it was kind of shocking to somebody who, you know, like I said, I was an innocent college friend.
Well, see, that's the thing.
We never hear, folks, this is true.
We never hear about.
Look, I'm not making this up.
This story actually is about gay, it's about lesbian and bisexual women mad at heterosexual women because the lesbians claim that they are much, they are victimized by rape and sexual assault much more than heterosexual women are, but it's never reported.
Nobody feels sorry for them because the only thing anybody cares about, apparently, according to the lesbians, is when the heterosexual women are assaulted or raped.
That makes news.
But what's happening to the lesbians isn't making news and they're mad about it.
That's what the story is.
I'm not making any of this up.
And Janet and Corning here is calling and say, yep, it was the case when she was in school 30 years ago.
And it's why I say if the lesbian women are claiming they are victims of rape more than the heterosexual women are, and the bisexual women are saying the same thing.
Well, what does that mean?
I mean, if they're bigger victims, more frequent victims of rape, somebody's perpetrating them.
Somebody's perpetrating these victims.
And they're just ticked off that nobody is reporting about it when it happens to them.
Hey, we just checked it, folks.
A first class Amtrak on the Acela train from Boston to New York, the Acela Metroliner, $393.
It's rounded up $400.
First class, which is what Carol Costello would be traveling.
Do you think you could fly from Washington to Boston on the shuttle for $400?
See, the train's supposed to be so much cheaper, economical, and you're helping the government and saving the planet and all that.
I just wonder, I don't know what the shuttle ticket is from Washington to Boston or New York, but it's about $400 first class on the Acelo.
Early time to zip by here today, Fred.
Just got an alert on the watch.
What is it?
Oh, cool.
Some of my new MacBooks just came in.
You know, those little tiny little brand new computers, the USB-C, the Goldwins, the big iPad type.
Just found out they just came in.
Anyway, that's it, folks, but we'll be here tomorrow.
Open Line Friday.
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