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Sept. 21, 2015 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:19
September 21, 2015, Monday, Hour #2
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You're guiding light through times of trouble, confusion, murkiness, tumult, deception, misdirection, lies, and even the good times.
Rushlin Boy here.
Great to have you with us at 800-282-2882, the email address, L Rushbow at EIB net.com.
Just two other observations about the new content blockers that Apple has made available on iOS 9.
They are for the web browser Safari only.
They do not work on Apple's browser or uh Google's browser Chrome is strictly, strictly Safari.
But two things about this.
And really maybe the primary reason Apple is doing this, and there are perhaps three major reasons.
But I would have to say the top reason that Apple is doing this, and this is my wild guess, based on things that I've studied and read.
Steve Jobs, before he died, declared back back in the days when Apple only had, I say only, their cash reserve was 40 billion dollars.
Now they're over 200 billion.
Back when they had 40 billion, and it was still more than anybody else had, Jobs said he would spend all of it to destroy Google.
He said he was ready for thermonuclear war.
And the reason was Android, he believed was stolen from iOS.
Eric Schmidt used to be in the Apple board.
He was on the Apple board when the iPhone first came out in 2007.
If you look at Google's Android phones around then, they were clunkers.
They had keyboards, hard button keyboards on them.
They were nothing like what the iPhone is or any other smartphone today.
Shortly after that, Google announces they're totally redoing their their phones and Android phones begin to look just like iPhones, as Samsungs did.
And Jobs was not mad at Samsung at this.
He was, but is the focus, the focus of his anger was Google.
Well, Google's primary source of revenue is advertising sales all over the internet.
And the best way, the fastest way to launch an attack on Google is content blockers, ad blockers on Apple, because mo the percentage of iOS users in the uh developed world with customers that spend money is an overwhelming percentage using Apple's iOS.
And so if Google sees a severe decline in revenue from iOS devices, iPhones, iPads, and all that, it would be a huge chunk out of their revenue stream.
That's, I think, among whatever other reasons there are for this, that's one of the big ones.
But there's another thing to consider here, too.
We talk about the conservative media, folks.
And a large part of the conservative media is online.
There are blogs and there are conservative websites.
And of course, the vast majority of those are advertiser supported.
I don't know how many conservative websites have paywalls.
I don't know how many conservative websites actually charge for subscriptions in order to access content.
If there are some, it isn't very many.
They're all advertiser supported.
However, the the left has their websites too.
I mean, every major network website is a Democrat Party website for all intents per, plus CNN.
And they have most favored nation status with uh advertising agencies and advisors.
I mean uh CNN with no audience still sells out, even if it may just be for $5,000 a spot, they still sell out because little activist media buyers make sure that some money goes to CNN to keep them afloat.
That kind of decision doesn't help, say Fox News or other conservative outlets.
Point being that if um if a lot of conservative websites are harmed by virtue of the ad blockers, it could be the end to some of them, because they're otherwise not independently supported.
Maybe some get donors, I'm sure some of them have benefactors and so forth.
But the point is, liberal or Democrat websites, if you go look at them, you'll see the Democrat Party is a regular sponsor.
You won't find the Republican Party as a regular sponsor and a whole lot of conservative sites, but the Democrat Party is a built-in sponsor.
The drive-by media websites will survive whether there are content blockers or not.
The game is rigged on their behalf.
They'll find a way.
But it's going to be, it might be tougher for these conservative websites and blog sites to survive.
And what you're already seeing is the sites are acknowledging the existence of the blockers now and asking users to whitelist them.
Now what that means is in each one of these blockers, for well, not all, but most of the blockers that you would download and buy, if you go into the settings, you'll find a way to whitelist various websites, meaning no blocking, and every ad and every tracker that's on that site will come to you.
If you want that site supported by your clicks, then you can whitelist it.
But that's asking for a uh uh an act of of loyalty and and customer behavior that is not common.
Customers patronize ads on websites, and that's the statement.
But then to go further, get a they opt to get a series of blockers on their phone, and then decide they have to go whitelist various sites.
I mean, some users will do it, very loyal ones, but maybe how many will never even heard what whitelisting is.
So it does have a potential.
It's it's gonna hurt a lot of websites who can't find ways of adapting.
And by the way, that's what life is, folks.
Life is ever changing.
I don't care.
Sports politics, entertainment, all of life, the human condition is about adapting.
Those who do prosper, those who can't or don't have problems.
And it's also the story of uh you know, animals in their kingdom and so forth, they have to adapt.
We have to adapt to various things.
Others do, and if you have the ability to adapt, rather than stay locked into something while change passes you by, you're running a much greater risk of becoming obsolete.
So once these things happen and the so-called genie is out of the bottle, it's up to the business interests involved here to adapt.
Because this the content blocker thing, I don't know how it's ever going to get put back in the bottle.
I can see down the road where some member of Congress at some point might speak out against them, and members of, say, Apple's board of directors of the executive team called up to explain this.
And Congress can do anything they want.
And I just don't see a successful effort to eliminate blockers via statutory law.
But stranger things have happened.
Uh depends on the powers that be and how much money they want to give to a politician or two to effect something like this.
But it is just in its infancy now.
It's just starting out.
It's like anything else.
If you listen to this program, you'll be on the cutting edge.
You'll know of mainstream events long before they become mainstream.
And this is uh is is one of them.
So keep a sharp eye, because this is this is rattling a lot of chains, it's dealing with a lot of people's livelihoods, their income streams.
And this is a direct assault on the income streams of a lot of people.
You know, the internet and internet service providers and website operators are kind of operating at a at a I don't know if you call it disadvantage or not, but the internet from its earliest days, content was free.
And it became expected that everything on the internet is free, including streamed video, music, uh textual content, whatever it is, it's supposed to be free.
It's always been free.
And if people that come along and start charging for it, have had boku problems if they have Not had vast great popularity if their content has not been special and they like the New York Times has not figured out how to do it yet.
The New York Times, I don't know how many times they've tried their paywall.
They've tried you get 10 articles free every month, and then starting with Article 11, you must start paying.
They've tried every which way they can.
But for how many years was the New York Times every word in it and more, ill freebo on the world wide web.
And look what's happening to the print version of all of these papers and all of these magazines.
They can't sell advertising in them.
Their circulation is down, the number of pages are down, number of readers is down, advertising revenue is down, the internet was looked at as a way to counterbalance that, either with subscription paywalls or with advertising sales, but they had created such expectations of free in terms of content on the Internet that when they started trying to charge for it,
it backfired on even the biggest providers, such as the New York Times.
I mean, the Wall Street Journal gets away with it.
Their content's somewhat special and related to finance in and of itself.
But you don't need to pay to find out what's in the New York Times, because it's everywhere in the drive-by media.
You don't need to pay to see what's in the Washington Post.
And you don't need to pay to see what's in the LA Times, because it's going to be found everywhere else.
So they've got big problems.
Now the content blockers coming along and attacking the only revenue source they've really been able to depend on is going to cause major upheavals.
And the way it's, as I say, it's going to manifest itself is these advertisers and their agencies are going to try to come up with new way to have their advertising present it to you, disguised as news stories, or who knows what, contests, promotions, you name it.
But whoever comes up with the most creative way of getting around the blockers is going to get rich.
It's the way it always happens in America.
While America's still America, so act fast.
Back to the audio sound bites, then let's keep going here.
We finished uh last with uh with Donald Trump talking to George Stephanopoulos, explaining why it was not his obligation to defend President Obama.
Now I would say the amount of heat and pressure that's been on Trump since when did this happen?
Thursday night?
Yeah.
The amount of pressure that's been on Trump since Thursday night, most Republicans would apologize by now, begged forgiveness.
Now don't Trump don't forget, doubles down on this stuff.
But even so, you would that that there were people so worried before Trump issued a statement, they were so worried he was going to cave.
They were so worried that he was going to apologize to this guy that stood up and asked him the question.
People were really, really worried.
And then Ben Carson comes along and says we should not put a Muslim in charge of the nation, and he's not backing down.
And the media's kind of ticked off because in both of these instances, your average typical Republican who have already given in uh and apologized.
Let's go to Ben Carson.
This is uh Meet the Press yesterday, F. Chuck Todd said, let me ask you the question this way.
Should a president's faith matter, Mr. Carson?
Should your faith matter to voters?
I guess it depends on what that faith is.
If it's inconsistent with the values and principles of America, then of course it should matter.
But uh if it fits within the realm of America and consistent with the Constitution, no problem.
So do you believe that uh Islam is consistent with the Constitution?
No, I don't, I do not.
I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation.
I absolutely would not agree with that.
Kablooy all over the media, giant explosions could be seen, heard, and felt everywhere, and they continue to reverberate, reverberate at this very moment.
So outraged the media, we we have we have a nation filled with apologists for Islam, as you know.
It's been one of the most amazing things.
9-11 happens, militant Islam kills 3,000 Americans, and all of a sudden there's a giant Islamic apologist group in this country that grows and grows and grows based on what I don't know.
We better not make them any angrier than they already are.
We better stop doing what they've uh gotten mad at, so it's our fault or what have you.
And now people are just, well, this just shows Ben Carson does have no business running for president.
He has no idea.
This is so unprepared.
This is so evidence of his inexperience.
No, we have religious faith in this country.
What he meant was he asked, he was asked a specific question, and the question was should a president's faith matter?
Should your faith matter to voters?
And his answer was relevant to the Constitution.
Juck Todd says, so do you believe that Islam is consistent with the Constitution?
If you look into Sharia law, you will not find any consistency with the U.S. Constitution.
Sharia law is the law which is used to be head uh women in Islamic countries who've been raped.
Sharia law is the reason women in Islamic countries can't drive.
Sharia law is so inconsistent with the U.S. Constitution that Ben Carson could not be more right.
And the question he was asked was in that context.
Well, do you believe it Islam is consistent with the Constitution?
Well, Sharia law isn't.
So then the question becomes well, are all Muslims believers in Sharia?
Or are they not?
And that's open-ended.
Uh, in many cases, you won't know.
It's broad-based and it's all over the place, but a lot of people think that it's just too dangerous to flirt with.
What do you what do you what are you chuckling at in there?
I know I'm a naturally funny guy, but what have I said here that's yeah, yeah.
If the fear over this is I'm telling you it's totally manufactured and made up, just like the Trump Fuhrer was.
And the Fuhrer is uh not about this specifically, but it's about the giving the media another chance, or better stead, the media taking another opportunity to point out in their mind that Republicans are bigots.
What do you mean I'm about to step in it?
Yeah, I just explained it.
Well, okay, they do take me out of context everybody.
I don't care.
But McCain has said the same thing.
Do you know that John McCain, who's being quoted as the guy to follow on questions like this?
Remember McCain ridiculed one of his supporters who made fun of Obama.
He's never, and I'm gonna put up with that.
One of my rallies, find a person who should get and get them out.
Kick them out of here.
Find a prisoner to put them in, but get him out of here.
Okay, so McCain's loved and adored.
McCain said, no Muslim president.
United States would be better with a Christian president.
Details when we get back, don't go.
By the way, I can go one better than McCain on this.
How many times do you think you can remember when I remind you of this?
How many times do you need to remember various leftists saying we ought not ever have a Christian as president?
Specifically an evangelical question.
It's always okay to object to that.
Remember Pat Robertson ran for the presidency once, he used to run the uh 700 club.
All the people running, we can't have that in the White House.
What if he imposes his religious views on the country?
Which meant abortion maybe abortion.
But regardless, I don't know how many of you remember this.
Maybe some of you don't even know it, don't remember it, but I'm you know, trust me here.
There have been countless Republican presidential candidates who have been open and honest about their evangelical Christianity.
The media, various Democrats, commentators, pundits, have written gazillions of words warning everybody about the calamity that could happen to this country if we were to ever elect an evangelical Christian.
So here comes an evangelical Christian, for all intents and purposes, Ben Carson.
I don't think a Muslim president.
No, that's not what we would want.
And all hell is breaking loose by the same people who say no, no, no way to an evangelical Christian, even though you're a Christian nation as founded.
Here is the New York Daily News.
You know it's so bad.
The New York Daily News may become printed only three days a week.
They're laying off people left and right in the sports.
Yeah, my old buddy Philip Bondi laid off, fired Bill Madden, a great sports columnist and reporter for the Daily News.
I mean, and then the business section was next.
Business, there's not even a business section anymore in New York Daily News.
They might print on Sunday, and maybe three days a week.
The rest of it's going to be online.
Anyway, back 2007, GOP presidential candidate John McCain says America is better off with a Christian president and he does not want a Muslim in the Oval Office.
He said, I admire the Islam.
That's the quote.
I admire the Islam.
There's a lot of good principles in it, but I just have to say in all candor that since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles, personally, I prefer someone who I know who has a solid grounding in my faith.
And McCain was a media darling.
McCain was a media hero.
They love McCain.
He said the same thing Ben Carson said.
He even went farther.
And there was not one assault on McCain for this.
Ha!
Half my brain tied behind my back, just to make it fair, Rush Limbaugh behind the golden EIB microphone.
One more before we get back to the phones here very quickly, just uh one more observation about these content blockers.
It's not just on the smartphone or the iPad, desktop computers.
I gotta be honest with you, and I'm I'm I'm this close to naming them.
There are some websites that I used to use religiously in prepping this program that I no longer use because there's so much garbage and clutter that you can't find the content.
And when you do find the content, and these are news sites.
When you find the content, it's not formattable.
You can't find a way to print it to make it use, at least I can't.
So for my purposes, there is so much clutter.
And I'm not talking about the unseen things like the trackers and the analytics that help websites analyze who's using them and so forth.
I'm just about the ads.
I mean, there's so much clutter that it makes these sites impossible to use anymore for show prep.
So they don't get mentioned by me anymore because I don't use them.
I mean, it it has become a problem.
It's it's you know, you you can't find one entity to blame here.
It really is a chicken or egg question.
But I I think the ad blockers are simply a consumer.
I mean, you give the consumer a chance to buy them, they're the number one app downloaded on the AMP store right now.
People are crazy because it's just gotten out of hand.
So, chicken or egg, whichever, but the but the point is uh it's it's gone way overboard here to the point that it's counterproductive for advertisers.
These websites, these two, I don't even try to load anymore.
And I have gigabit internet, I have fiber here, I've got fiber speed, and I'm just not gonna put up with it.
And the end result after the load, after the page load, it's unusable on some of these sites.
And to try to just focus only on the content to cut and paste it, you can't even do that, the way the sites build.
So it's useless to me for my purposes.
Fine and dandy.
It's just that those sites don't get referenced here, and I don't patronize them, so whatever clicks they might get don't happen with me.
I'm not saying I'm any big deal in that regard.
I'm saying that this stuff has happened, and when the consumer has a response to it, has ability to react to it, the consumer will.
You can blame Apple all you want, but ad blocking software for desktop browsers has been around for years.
It's only on your your mobile devices that it's that it's new.
And it's much more prevalent there because websites on mobile devices load much slower anyway.
Processors are not as fast, and uh mobile speeds generally are not as fast as Wi-Fi speeds, although that's changing.
But when you put a blocker, it's uh you'd be stunned at how fast just the content of a web page will load.
You'll be stunned, as in the difference in 45 seconds and 10 seconds.
Anyway, to the phones we go.
Here is Peter in Seattle.
I'm really glad you waited.
Great to have you on the program.
Hi.
It's not or the my older brother I never had.
Um I have the solution to the the Pope's politics and the president's religion.
Okay.
It's very straightforward.
The Pope is you alluded to it.
The Pope is Peronista.
And for your listeners, Peron Peronism is a fungi fungible combination of kleptocracy, fascism, and cult of personality.
Um I'll let you explain that.
Now we gotta be real careful here.
You're you're you're you're you're calling Juan Peron and Evita, don't cry for me, uh the kleptocracy.
You're not saying the Pope is a clept correct.
Right.
I just I just wanted to specify here for the cardinals and bishops in the audience, that you are not calling the Pope a klepto.
You're describing what Peronism was, Juan Peron, Peronistas.
Yeah, but he ascribes to that political view as well.
Well, he grew up on he he grew up with it.
It was that that that's what Argentina was when he was raised.
And so yeah, he's But he didn't reject it.
The Pope from Poland grew up with communism and he rejected Exactly right.
And the president worships in the mirror.
The big question there that yet has yet to be played.
Wait a minute, I like hold it.
Don't let that just go skating by.
That's worthy of pondering.
The president worships in the mirror.
Man, oh man, is that good.
That's almost uh that's almost an EIB style profundity.
That's very good.
And the the only real question about his religion is is there a reflection?
There are reflections.
Now, you mentioned about the net cases that were talking about Moslem.
Um, no, you nut cases in terms of people that think there are training centers of uh training camps of terrorists somewhere in the United States plotting further terrorist activities in this country.
There are people, well, I've seen the websites that that tout them, yeah.
They're out there.
There are there are three Seattleites in jail currently for doing just that.
One convert and two Somalis.
I believe the guy's name was James Ujama.
He grew up here.
Right.
Normal kid in the central area of Seattle, went to Garfield High School.
Everybody knew him, said he was okay.
And there are Americans joining ISIS.
Okay, so you are saying that even though these people may be characterized as kooks or crackpots, that there is some evidence to suggest uh that they have a point or that the things they have read may have a point, is that right?
Well, I don't know if that made it out any further than the Seattle Times and the local coverage.
I don't know if it got if how much national coverage that got.
Just saying.
I mean, that's not the politically correct stuff that uh little Pinchy and his people would pick up at the New York Times or uh whoever's at the Washington Post.
No, you're you're he's he's talking about that little pinch uh folks, uh Schultzberger, little Benji.
You are uh you're full of them out there, Peter.
I like it.
Anyway, it's Peter from Seattle.
By the way, Forbes magazine back in 2013, Pope Francis Colon, this is the headline, Pope Francis espousing a Peronist or Peronist rather than a Marxist liberation theology.
And it's uh The Economist, July 11th of this year, the Peronist Pope.
So you've got you've got Forbes and you've got the uh Economist both writing That uh Pope Francis is a disciple of Juan Perone.
Let me take the occasion here of this call.
I mentioned earlier that George Will had a column at National Review over the weekend.
I don't know if this ran as his Sunday column in the Washington Post or not, may have.
But I know a lot of you people are upset with George Will because of his uh his writings and utterances on Trump.
But George Will, now and then hits a grand slam home run.
And it's undeniable.
And this is one of those.
I I must have cut and pasted ten different things from this column in my notes app, with attribution to George Will.
Just to make sure that I didn't forget them.
I didn't cut and paste the whole column.
We'll do that.
But let me let me take a break here and I'll come back and I'll read you excerpts of this thing of George Will's piece just to give you an idea.
Sit tight, my friends, we've got much more and more of your phone calls coming up too.
By the way, if you have an Apple Watch and you've been waiting for Watch OS 2, you know that it was supposed to be released last Wednesday, then they canceled that because they found a bug.
It's now available.
They just released it.
And so just wanted to pass that on to you since it didn't happen with a lot of fanfare.
Okay, George Will, and the headline of this column is Pope Francis does not understand how to alleviate poverty.
That is a profound statement and headline because Pope Francis is making his case all about alleviating poverty.
And I want to remind you again before getting into this.
Herbert Meyer, a former Reagan administration official, shocked a lot of people three years ago, in the middle, maybe four now.
In the middle of the debates on Obamacare, maybe Obamacare just recently passed, and everybody's talking about the calamity that is this administration.
And Herbert Meyer comes out and says the greatest thing happening in the world right now is the numbers of people all over the world who have come out of poverty.
The amount of poverty in the world is falling rapidly.
It was one of the greatest untold, unreported stories, and it's the result of a much more massive, but successful distribution of capitalism.
That is bringing about this reduction in poverty.
And the point is that Will will gets to in this piece is that if Pope Francis were to succeed with his buddy Obama in implementing all of these things, all these people that have escaped poverty would find themselves back in it.
That's his contention.
Pope Francis embodies sanctity, but comes trailing clouds of sanctimony.
With a convert's indiscriminate zeal, he embraces ideas impeccably fashionable, but demonstrably false and deeply reactionary.
His ideas would devastate the poor, on whose behalf he purports to speak if his policy prescriptions were not as implausible as his social diagnoses are shrill.
Supporters of Pope Francis have bought newspaper and broadcast ads to disseminate some of his woolly sentiments that have the intellectual tone of fortune cookies.
One example, quote, People occasionally forgive, but nature never does, unquote.
Unquote.
He thinks that's kind of vacuous.
The Vatican's Majesty does not disguise the vacuity of this.
Is Francis intimidating or intimating that environmental damage is irreversible?
He neglects what technology has accomplished regarding London's air and other matters.
And the earth is becoming an immense pile of filth.
Hyperbole is a predictable precursor of yet another UN climate change conference, the 21st since 1995.
Fortunately, this is another one of George Will's great, great, great sentence constructions.
Fortunately, rhetorical exhibitionism increases as its effectiveness diminishes.
As the effectiveness of left-wing wackos, in this case, plummets, their rhetoric becomes crazier and crazier and more and more shrill, which it does.
In his June Encyclical and elsewhere, Francis lectures about our responsibilities, but neglects the duty to be as intelligent as one can be.
This man who says the church does not presume to settle scientific questions, proceeds as though everything about which he declaims is settled, from imperiled plankton to air conditioning being among humanity's harmful habits.
Did you know that, by the way?
Did you know the Pope had condemned air conditioning?
He has.
He has condemned air conditioning as an economic and ecological disaster.
Without air conditioning, can you imagine where the productivity of the world would be without air conditioning?
That's just it's insupportable.
The church that thought it was settled science at Galileo was heretical, should be attentive to all evidence.
Francis deplores compulsive consumption, a sin to which the 1.3 billion people without even electricity can only aspire.
He leaves the Vatican to jet around praising subsistence farming, a romance best enjoyed from 30,000 feet above the realities that such farmers yearn to escape.
The saint, who is Francis' namesake, supposedly lived in sweet harmony with nature.
For most of mankind, however, nature has been and remains scarcity, disease, and natural disasters.
Folks, this is a fundamental point.
I must stop here to emphasize this.
The human condition, when we talk about American exceptionalism, the reason America is exceptional is because it is an exception to the way.
Most human beings have lived in the world in the course of human history.
Most human beings have known only tyranny, poverty, dungeons, prisons.
It has been, you know, life expectancy back in the medieval times, 30 years.
I mean, it is the American way of government, the American Constitution, our founding documents, came along and stood humanity on its head by proclaiming that human rights are first, and then among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that not government.
Government's not the be all end all.
Government is not where rights come from and freedom comes from.
That's natural, that's created by God.
And governments only impinge and impugn that.
Well, it's the same thing with nature.
All of these environmentalist wackos running around talking about the beauty of nature.
When the fact of the matter is for most of mankind, nature has been and remains scarcity, disease, and natural disasters.
Our flourishing means our prospering requires affordable abundant energy for the production of everything from food to pharmaceuticals.
Poverty has probably decreased more in the last two centuries than it has in the preceding three millennia because of industrialization powered by fossil fuels.
Only economic growth has ever produced broad emelioration of poverty.
And since growth began in the late 18th century, it has depended on such fuels.
Well, all of this is what Pope Francis speaks out against, and this is why Will has written a piece saying if he ever succeeds with this, he's going to reverse all of this progress.
But then again, all this stuff is stuff that sounds good, but it'll never happen.
But it sounds good.
Nobody is going to ever really get rid of fossil fuels.
Too much good come from them.
Too many people get under poverty, too many lifestyles are advanced, wealth, productivity skyrocket.
Economic growth unbridled in industrialized nations precisely because of fossil fuels.
There's always going to be a bunch Of malcontents running around ripping them and criticizing them and suggesting we get rid of them.
It sounds romantic.
It sounds clean.
It'll never happen, though.
And the people who talk about it know it, and therefore they reap all the benefits of good hearts, big hearts.
But they will never have to deliver on their promise.
That's all it will remain.
Is an illusory utopia.
There's even more, and they are basically environmental facts.
But it is uh it is not a complimentary piece.
He concludes by saying Pope Francis stands against modernity, rationality, science, and ultimately the spontaneous creativity of open societies in which people and their desires are not problems, but precious resources.
He stands against.
It's quite a piece.
Got to take a break now, however.
Sit tight.
Back in a moment.
It is the fastest three hours in media, folks.
And we are jam-packed and loaded in the first two.
We still have another one to go.
Still got a lot of stuff to jam pack in the third hour as well.
Sit tight.
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