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May 21, 2015 - Rush Limbaugh Program
31:27
May 21, 2015, Thursday, Hour #3
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Time Text
Hi folks, welcome back.
Great to have you.
You tuned to the most listened to and the most talked about radio talk show in America.
All across.
The fruited plane, telephone number if you want to be on the programs 800-282-2882.
And the email address, Lrushbow at EIVNet.com.
Snerdley, I'm glad that you alerted me to this Ace of Spades piece on uh on Letterman.
It really is good.
It really is insightful.
Ace of Spades is a well-known uh conservative blogger, and uh is reputed and correctly, so rightfully so as uh as an original thinker.
And I hadn't I did I'd not seen this.
It it reminds me, and I have I have my own uh little Letterman stories.
I think I did three different contributions of the Letterman show.
None at NBC, all at CBS.
And there was just one sit-down interview, and the other two were the three were uh pre-recorded bits that ran uh in in other shows.
Never a top ten list.
I don't know.
Maybe if there's a slow day, some open line Friday, as slow as it gets, uh which is not really slow, but if it's slower than maybe I'll go back and revisit some of these experiences.
Um but the point of uh Ace of Spades piece here is again, Chris Salisa and others in the media think the great thing about Letterman is we never knew if he's a liberal or not.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Isn't that funny?
Yeah, right.
That's kind of not been in doubt uh ever since Letterman went CBS.
And I made a prediction way back at the beginning of Letterman that he was going to end up being in second or third place at 1130, and this Ace of Spades uh guy was a little put off by that.
He's a big Letterman fan back then and thought that my my prediction might have been churlish and rooted in devil or envy, and then he figured out I was right, breathtakingly so.
Shockingly so.
He uh realized I was right.
So anyway, Snerdley, thanks for pointing that out.
Now there are other things out there happening here today, folks, that uh haven't gotten into the extra point rule of the NFL.
Let me just briefly touch on this, because they're they're trying to make the game more exciting, and here comes a player now claiming that they're making the league more dangerous.
Dan Carpenter, the kicker for the Buffalo Bulls, says being on a field goal protection unit, probably the worst job in football.
I know that, and all my linemen know it.
Well, now that they just went from a play that there weren't too many collisions on to a play where not only is the defense coming to take that one point off, but maybe a chance to add two more to their score for a sport that was trying to cut back on collisions.
I think you're probably just gonna add a few more on these situations.
And he's got a point.
Uh the NFL's they've they've done their best to eliminate the kickoff return by moving the kickoff up to the 35 or 40 yard line and results mostly in touchbacks.
But the extra point rule, the real thing about it now is that the defense can score points too if the team trying for the extra point fails to convert if there's a turnover of any kind.
And that leads to injuries, is the kicker's point.
And he says, Little ironic, league here trying to reduce this kind of stuff.
But it really makes sense to do because if you look at the extra point in the in the in the context of a televised football game, here's what happens.
A team scores, and one of two things that'll either go right to the extra point and kick it, and then do a commercial break.
Sometimes, it's rare, but sometimes there'll even be a little commercial break before the extra point.
So you have a touchdown, and then the extra point, then a commercial break of minimum two minutes.
You come back and the kickoff.
And another commercial break.
So you've had two plays that literally nothing happened in a span of six minutes, an extra point try, and a kickoff that probably did not result in a return.
Statistically, so in that six minute period, you've got 30 seconds of action.
The NFL said, we've got to do something about this.
Besides the extra point, such a short kick, it's automatic.
They make 99.5% of them.
So to make the play a little bit more dramatic, they've moved the point try back.
It's going to effectively be a 37 or 38-yard kick.
No, I'm getting 32 or 33.
As opposed to the kick being essentially a 19 or 20 yard field goal.
It's now going to be at least 30 yards.
So the margin of error is a little tougher.
And it makes maybe going for two a little bit more seductive, because they'll place the ball to the two-yard line for a two-point conversion.
I don't think you're going to see any changes right off the bat.
I think I think coaches get rooted in conventional habitual behavior.
And one point is what they're familiar with, and I don't care where that kick comes from, the vast majority of extra point tries are going to be kicks from whatever the new distance is.
And they'll only go for two when two points really makes a difference.
And now you don't know that till the second half, and in some places, some cases the fourth quarter.
So we will see.
Look at this headline.
This is typical.
This is the AP headline official.
Arkansas officers shoot cuffed man in patrol car.
Now what do you think just happened?
You read that headline, you haven't read anything else.
Read the headline, Arkansas officers shoot cuffed man in patrol car.
What you probably think is that an innocent young African American was sitting in the back of a patrol car and he was handcuffed, and a bunch of racist cops came along and just started firing.
Given the context of news coverage today, you would be forgiven if that's what your thought was, because that's what the headline says.
But let's look at how the story actually leads off.
A handcuffed parolee who had been frisked, opened fire on law enforcement officers from the back of a patrol car, according to an Arkansas corrections official, provoking a return of gunfire that left the man dead.
Okay, so what really happened was the handcuffed parolee, after having been frisked, somehow got hold of a gun and opened fire on law enforcement officers from the back of the car.
This resulted in the cops firing back, i.e.
firing second, and the suspect succumbed to room temperature.
The headline, Arkansas officers shoot cuffed man in patrol car.
You could not have a more misleading headline.
But what does this headline do?
This headline furthers Obama's agenda and narrative, which is the cops are dangerous SOBs who shoot helpless victims.
That's why you can't find a cop in Baltimore right now, because the Obama DOJ has everybody convinced that the police are a bunch of dangerous, bloodthirsty people don't care about anybody, and they they just randomly shoot helpless people.
And sometimes even in the back.
And you get a headline, Arkansas officers shoot cuffed man in patrol car.
That's not what happened.
They were fired on somehow by this guy in the back of the car.
From CNBC, 40% of the unemployed have quit looking for jobs.
At a time when eight and a half million Americans still don't have jobs, and that number is actually well, what a disparity this is.
The number of people not in the labor force is now 93 million.
The labor force participation rate is at its lowest point since the Jimmy Carter 1970s.
93 million Americans not working.
But the way we calculate the unemployment rate allows the media to say at a time when 8.5 million Americans still don't have jobs, some 40% have given up even looking.
A tight jobs market and a benefits program that, while curtailed from its recession level, still remains obliging, have combined to keep workers on the sidelines.
According to a Harris poll of 1,500 working age Americans conducted for express employment professionals.
Overall, nearly one in five, nineteen percent, said they spent no time looking for work in the week previous to the survey.
I mention this because there's no way there's a roaring economy, and there's no way people, you know, this climate of gross income inequality and unfairness inequality and wage inequality and wealth inequality and that this while all this is going on, they try to tell us we've got a great economic recovery going on, and the job market is bursting.
And it isn't.
Well, you've got 93 million Americans not working.
Don't you think there's going to be some wage inequality out there?
By definition, the people working are going to have more than the people not working.
Well, I take that back.
Because in certain circumstances, people not working might end up with more disposable income than people who have a job.
Given all of the benefits that can accrue to the unemployed, from the Washington Free Beacon, the federal government spent 100 billion dollars on food assistance last year.
This, according to the government accountability office, the lion's share of spending, lion's share of that 100 billion comes from the food stamp program, which gave benefits to an average 46 million Americans last year at a cost of 74.6 billion dollars.
The National Scrugal Lunch Program was second, 11.3 billion dollars, followed by the special supplemental nutrition program for women, infants, and children, otherwise known as WIC.
7.1 billion.
Other spending included 1.9 billion for nutrition assistance for Puerto Rico, 10.7 million for the special milk program.
And one of the income secretaries here, the uh Kay Brown, income security expert, House Subcommittee on Nutrition said that there is a potential for overlap and inefficient use of federal funds due to the government's complex network of 18 food assistance programs.
Here's the bottom line.
I know I say that a lot.
I say it a lot on purpose because I'm trying to make a point.
It used to be that if you wanted to eat, you had to work.
And I don't think that's such a bad thing to have to return to, frankly.
In addition to 93 million Americans not working but eating, pretty much all of them have phone.
Pretty much all of them have access to TV.
Many of them have a flat screen.
A lot of them have air conditioning, and yet they are not working.
And then after all of that, we get this story from the AP, and they're deeply concerned.
Rising inequality holding back economic growth, report warrants.
Oh, really?
You're kidding, right?
The widening gap between haves and have nots in much of the developed world not only raises concerns about the fraying social fabric, it also dramatically holding back economic growth, according to New Global Study.
Far from a rising tide lifting all ships, income inequality increases in good economic times as well as bad, according to a report yesterday, today, actually, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
You know this group, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, now talking about income inequality.
You know what their history is?
They they originated in 1948 to help administer the Marshall Plan.
Now the Marshall Plan has been implemented, it's done, it's over with, it's over, and yet this group that was put together to implement it is still around.
Another of the gazillion bureaucracies nobody knows anything about making regulations, spending money, all without any awareness of Congress.
And this group has concluded the OECD, the organization for economic cooperation says this.
Put simply, rising inequality is bad for long-term growth.
In it together, why less inequality benefits all?
That's the title of the report.
Isn't that amazing?
Just like in the uh case of global warming, the only solution is going to be more redistribution of wealth.
That's where this is all going.
We've got economic recovery going on, but it's not like it could be.
And the reason the economic recovery is not burgeoning and roaring is because of income inequality, rising income inequality.
And obviously, the message is that capitalism is failing.
Capitalism and markets are not accounting for this.
They're not taking care of the people of the lower end.
We liberals must step in and redouble our efforts at redistribution.
No matter where you go, you just cannot escape this smothering liberalism everywhere, just polluting and corrupting everything it touches.
Have you heard, by the way, do you know George Stephanopoulos is back on the job talking about Hillary?
It's like it nothing ever happened.
Just exactly like I told you.
I hate to be nobody likes it.
I told you so.
I told you this wasn't going to amount to anything.
I remember all these stories, page six.
ABC terribly concerned.
ABC very worried about the impact of all this stuff.
And give a rat's rear end.
He's already back talking about Hillary's campaign.
Doesn't matter.
Democrats downplay whispers of a coup against Stenny Hoyer.
This story is more important than that headline indicates.
It's in the Hill.com Dems downplay whispers of a coup against Stenny Hoyer.
There's just one sentence in this story that makes this relevant, and it is this.
House Democrats have been licking their wounds following a disastrous 2014 election cycle.
Folks, I'm I want to reiterate something.
Because we're in the midst now of Hillary is God, goddess coverage, Hillary's the next Hillary this, Hillary that.
We're in the midst of uh paying homage to the great liberal David Letterman, who has uh retired.
We're just the the zone is being flooded with the wonders and the greatness and the sweetness and all this of anything and have it to do with liberalism and the Democrat Party, while at the same time the Republicans get lamb-based and plastered all over the place.
But the truth of the matter is the midterm elections in 2012, sorry, 2010 and 2014 were devastating to the Democrat Party in the real world, not in the world of PR and buzz.
The Democrat Party lost a total of 1,500 or more electoral seats, all the way from the U.S. Congress down to the local level of mayor and dog catcher and governor.
The Republicans control a majority of the governorships and state houses, and the number is rising.
The Republicans own the House of Representatives.
Now, this is not a comment on what they're doing with it.
It's a comment on who's winning elections.
I know that midterm election turnout is not the same as a presidential year turnout, in the sense that the Democrats don't get their base of minority voters out in big droves for midterm elections like they do presidential.
But that doesn't, that doesn't mask or hide the fact that in 2010 and 2014, the Democrat Party got shellacked twice, seriously shellacked.
It's why so many Democrats who've been in Congress for decades retired.
They don't want to be in Congress in the losing party, the minority party.
It's why so many of them quit.
It's why Denji Harry is quitting.
Number of senators as well.
And this story about there being a coup against Demi Hoyer, that is a reflection of these election defeats.
In the last two midterm elections, the current Democrat leadership, from Blabbermouth Schultz all the way down to the uh campaign, congressional campaign committees and so forth, everybody there is under the microscope because it's been a disaster.
They are not winning at the local level, at grassroots level.
They are losing big.
This is why I I think it's a mistake for the Republicans to give up on states like New York and California.
Campaign for something there.
I know it may not be the governorship that you're gonna win, and it may not be a statewide office, but get Republican turnout going somewhere for local elections somewhere.
It can have an impact.
It can reduce the Democrats' victory margin in these states that are considered to be hopeless for us.
But in the real world, the Democrats know it's not good for them out there.
Let me just tell you how bad it is for Democrats.
Democrats have lost 900 seats in state legislatures alone.
Just in state legislatures.
They've lost 900 seats since Obama was immaculated, since Obama's been president.
And the number is almost twice that when you go deeper, like to mayor and city council, dog catcher, and I'm not making a dog catcher, but any elective office that used to be automatically held by Democrats, they are losing them big in these in these uh non-president, even in presidential election years, when you get to the local level, the Democrats are not sweeping things away.
You never read about it, you never hear about the problems in the Democrat Party.
You just get the resignations and the oh, it's such a wonderful thing, all the great work Barney Frank did.
We're so sorry to see him go.
You don't hear that he's leaving because he thinks he's got no future.
And the ditto with Dingy Harry and all the rest of these people, you just are not going to hear the truth written about the Democrats in this regard.
All you're gonna get is what a mess the Republicans are in.
But I'm telling you that it is not pretty for the Democrat Party.
They have their own these talk about the Republican Party aging and dying off.
It's the same thing for the Democrats.
At least Republican deaths are legitimate.
Democrat deaths happen before people are born.
This idea that that only the negative things are happening to Republicans, it's all across the board, folks.
And I mention this to you.
See, you don't get depressed and down in the dumps.
It's hard not to if you absorb the media every day.
But it's not sweetness and light.
It's not a cherry Sunday with a little cherry on top and some chocolate sauce for the Democrat Party every day.
They've got their problems too.
It's just nobody is ever told about them.
Audio sound by time, Chris Christie.
This is on CNBC's squawk box today.
I don't need to set this up.
This will speak for itself.
He's talking to to the host Joe Kernan, who says, why not be inclusive?
Why not focus solely on the economy?
Is there a Republican candidate that will see that and say, look, I want everybody to be happy.
We include everyone.
I don't care what your personal preference is anywhere.
So the the question is to Chris Christie, why don't you Republicans why don't you become nice people?
Why are you so obsessed with who sleeps with who.
Why are you so obsessed with who loves who?
Why are you so obsessed with this or that?
Why don't you just get together with us?
We all come together kumbaya and fix the economy and be inclusive and everybody love everybody.
Why won't you Republicans do that?
It's your tone and how you talk about it.
If you talk about these issues in a way that you are absolutely critical of a person who has a different view than you and dismissive of them.
Well, then they're going to be dismissive of you as a candidate.
If you are talking to a person who's pro-choice on abortion and you're pro-life, and you say to them, like, listen, I'm pro-life, and that means I'm going to heaven, and you're pro-choice, and you're going to hell.
Well, you know, if that's your tone, they don't care what you have to say about pro-growth policies.
They don't care what you have to say about any of that stuff.
They care that you seem intolerant to them.
That's tone.
That's not position.
So this, ladies and gentlemen, is an example of the establishment Republican view of how to get elected.
Never mind that this technique has not worked.
It's still the way to go.
You can believe what you want to believe, but you don't criticize anybody, and you don't insult anybody, and you don't put anybody off.
You must be inclusive.
You must never tell anybody they're going to hell.
But who does this anyway?
I imagine it happens in some areas, but again, that that's sort of a straw man argument.
The Republican conservative, whatever view on pro-life is not your going to hell.
It's rooted on the in the value of life.
It's not rooted in the punishment of the so here's Governor Christie explaining that this is this is a the Republican problem is one of tone.
See, we say anything we want to say, but we we must be inclusive and not insulting and not exclusionary.
Um and he he wrapped it up with this.
We're getting back to tone in his question was about electability.
It's how you present yourself.
I feel very strongly about the things I feel strongly about.
Part of our problem has been tone over time.
And I think if the Republican candidate for president's tone is better and more inclusive, then you can get to a lot of the other issues that the media doesn't want you to get to.
Okay, look, I uh I I don't I don't have uh intellectual problem with the answer here.
My problem is why is it only us?
Why is it only we that I'd be concerned about tone?
The meanest, most extreme people in American politics are members of the Democrat Party and the American left.
Tone.
These are the people who are rooting for people to die on Twitter.
These are the people rooting for people to get cancer on Twitter.
These are the people who are intolerant, mean spirited, they're the bullies, and they don't care one bit about their tone, and they don't get punished for it.
And yet we come along and we're the ones that have to make sure that we're not seen as mean-spirited and bullyish and only one way of looking at anything.
Um this whole notion of of tone.
I I totally understand the art of persuasion here, and I understand where tone can come into it.
But the problem I have is that all of these rules that end up shellacking or are sh uh shackling people, all these rules end up causing people to not be who they are on our side, are never applied to people on the left.
I mean, look what these people say about Tick Take Your Pick, what they say about anybody, George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, take your pick of any Republican anywhere and what they say about them, and they're never punished more.
Nobody ever goes to them and says, What about your tone needs to be moderated a little bit here, Mr. Hoyer?
Your tone needs to be moderated a little bit, Ms. Pelosi.
But dingy Harry for crying out tone.
Anyway, we take a break here, come back, listen to how Ted Cruz deals with this.
Don't go away.
Okay, yesterday, day before this week earlier, Ted uh or George, sorry, Jeb Bush, somewhere in Nevada, and some 19-year-old college, he's talking about uh the Iraq war and it's questions that every Republicans have been getting about it, knowing what you know now.
And uh made the theory that the Republican establishment has this belief that Christie said, You've got to be nice, we've got to be respectful, be partisan, cooperative, and for all of that, then we'll show the Democrats that we don't hate them, and they have no reason dislike us, and we can work together to get things done and make Washington work and blah blah blah.
And in the midst of all this, here comes this 19-year-old smart ass college co-ed who asks Jeb a set up question about ISIS in Iraq, and Jeb starts giving the typical Republican establishment answer.
Well, I think that's nothing one way or the other.
She's a wrong your brother created ISIS, your brother by going into Iraq.
Your brother gave it well, what help it?
What just happened?
I did everything they told me to do, and she still hates me.
What?
And my point is this business of tone and all that.
Just let it rock, folks.
If you're just let it rock.
You know, that's not about tone, it's about substance.
It's about issues, it's about the Democrats are destroying the country, and people need to be told this.
Now, if you need to whisper it to them, fine, I don't know, but don't shirk from the substance.
Ted Cruz, some some little snivelling little drive-by reporter down in Beaumont, Texas, goes up to Cruz and says, Do you have a personal animosity against gay Americans, huh?
Recognize you want to ask another question about gay rights.
Well, you know, ISIS is executing homosexual.
Do you want to talk about gay rights?
This week was a very bad week for gay rights because the expansion of ISIS, the expansion of radical theocratic or Islamic zealots that crucify Christians that behead children, and that murder homosexuals, that ought to be concerning you far more than a few.
Stop it, stop it.
We're out of order here.
Stop it, stop it, stop it.
Stop it.
We gotta play the right one here.
Because he asked the question twice.
Here's the first answer.
Mr. Cruz, do you have a personal animosity against gay Americans?
Let me ask a question.
Is there something about the left, and I'm going to put the media in this category, that's obsessed with sex.
Why is it that the only question you want to ask concerns homosexuals?
Okay, you can ask those questions over and over and over again.
I recognize that you're reading questions from MSNBC.
Okay, then the guy says again, do you have a personal animosity against gay Americans?
I recognize you want to ask another question about gay rights.
Well, you know, ISIS is executing homosexuals.
You want to talk about gay rights?
This week was a very bad week for gay rights because the expansion of ISIS, the expansion of radical theocratic or Islamic zealots that crucify Christians, that behead children, and that murder homosexuals, that ought to be concerning you far more than asking six questions all on the same topic.
Next question, same reporter.
Do you have any personal animosity against gay Americans?
He asked him three different times.
Do you have a personal animosity against Christians, sir?
Your line of questioning is is highly curious.
You seem fixated on a particular subject.
Look, I'm a Christian.
Scripture commands us to love everybody.
And what I have been talking about with respect to same-sex marriage is the Constitution, which is what we should all be focused on.
The Constitution gives marriage to elected state legislatures.
It doesn't give the power of marriage to a president or to unelected judges to tear down the decisions enacted by democratically elected state legislatures.
All of that's totally over the head of this Nimrod reporter because he doesn't care.
He's just trying to get Cruz to lose his temper, and Getmick is a guy.
I don't know if the guy's gay or not, I haven't seen him, but I get that if he is, he's trying to get Cruz to react and get mad at him so they can do a report at Cruz loses it with a simple question about homosexuality.
So that's what they're trying to set up.
Ask the question over and over again, and Cruz answers it three different ways, with just perfect tone, as far as I'm concerned.
So that is an alternative way of doing it.
Never rising to debate and getting your answer out anyway, ignoring this lame brain, stupid question.
I don't think it's Governor Christie's tone that has made him popular in New Jersey, right?
It's because he came at people.
Anyway, folks, have a wonderful rest of the day, as best you can without this program.
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