We Wake Up Every Morning and Face a Mountain of Ignorance

Rush Limbaugh.com ^ | October 15, 2017 | Rush Limbaugh

[Kaslin]

RUSH: The first thing I do when I roll out of bed, literally the first thing I do, I grab my iPhone. I have a whole system of programs set up that informs me of things I’m interested in that happened overnight, after I went to bed or even before I went to bed that I didn’t know about. And today the first couple things I saw almost made me want to put up my hands in frustration and say, “Just what the hell are we doing? What is the point?”

And it was the fact that two late-night comedy shows, Jimmy Kimmel and Colbert, went on rants about net neutrality last night, thereby submitting another level of proof that all it is is yet another phony, left-wing, expand-the-government idea. All it is is the next Obamacare. All it is is the next climate change. All it is is the next Democrat fraud.

And then I got to thinking how sad it is that liberalism has now corrupted late-night comedy. Some people like those late night comedy shows. When I was growing up, Johnny Carson, you know, you try to keep the TV lights low so your parents wouldn’t know you were watching. And then as I grew older I didn’t have to hide the fact I was watching it. And then Letterman came along and I watched that. But in the last number of years — and I always try to guard against it. Maybe it’s just I’m getting older and those shows are made for young demographics, and I’m not in the demographic anymore.

I always try to avoid the old fuddy-duddy position. When I was growing up I always promised myself I was not gonna become one of those old fuddy-duddies that thought everything about modern times was an absolute disaster. And I was always gonna do what I could to stay young at heart. That I was never not gonna abandon the Beatles and go back to Sinatra. My parents never adapted. They like what they like.

And I’m finding people my age, you know what their most favorite radio stations are? Stations that play the sixties, the oldies from a happier time gone by. And I’ve since learned because of the business I’m in that if you are not in the 18 to 49 demographic, nobody cares about you. When you hit 50 and older advertisers abandon you. They don’t care because they don’t think they can change your mind. But until then, you are fair game.

So anything the 18 to 49 demographic is doing is considered hip and interesting, and we need to keep our eyes on it, but once you hit 50, nobody cares. I vowed I was not gonna play. I was not gonna become irrelevant at 50. And of course now I’m 66, and I am not irrelevant. I am as and more relevant than ever. But it’s a daily fight. It’s a daily battle. And of course it’s an ongoing battle not to succumb to the negativity that’s out there. Nobody wants to hear it. I certainly don’t like rolling out of bed and seeing it.

But it just hit me today. Do you ever stop to think — because net neutrality, folks, is an entire fraud. It’s as fraudulent and hoax oriented as climate change. You do everything you can to prove it to people, and when you run out of proof, you simply say, “Okay, look, what’s the difference in climate change and net neutrality?” To these people, not a thing. It means one thing. It means the government controlling and regulating as much as it can get its hands on.

These lamebrains talking about net neutrality being the end of the internet do not know what they’re talking about. Net neutrality, the Obama rules, are only two years old. But it doesn’t matter. You ever stop to consider how much fraud we are hit with each day that is presented as news, that is presented as news hidden in entertainment, presented as information and cumulatively how negative it all is? And the cumulative impact that it has on people who absorb this stuff on a daily basis, if you want to understand the rage that is occurring all over our country, you have to only look at where people are going to find out what they are learning.

And the left in this country today is in a constant state of rage, so much so that late-night comedy isn’t funny anymore. It’s just the latest platform for deranged, delusional, left-wing liberalism. And it isn’t healthy. This constant dose of fraud that is always negative, that is piled on top of itself day after day after day, it takes a concerted effort to avoid being affected by it.

And even with the greatest efforts you can muster, you cannot avoid totally being affected by it. There’s so much of it, and it’s so all around us, it’s so constant and encompassing that you can’t ignore all of it, and thus you can’t avoid being affected by some of it. You know, there’s a story, I can’t remember who told me this. I was just reminded of it by my old buddy Andy McCarthy. We’ve been chatting about this.

Robert Bork had a story about watching the Clarence Thomas, Anita Hill hearings at the faculty lounge at Yale. And there was a colleague of his in there, a friend, people think it might have been Irving Kristol, but it doesn’t matter who it was. So Bork is sitting there watching the Clarence Thomas, Anita Hill hearings, and a guy walks up to him, “What do you think you’re looking at, Judge? What are you are witnessing here?”

And Bork said, “We are looking at the end of civilization.” And the guest said, after handing him a martini in the faculty lounge, hands Bork a martini, the guest says, “Well, yeah, we are, but it’ll take a long time, and it’s still possible to live well.” So even though the left has embarked on a course to transform and destroy our great country as we know it, it is going to take them awhile if they succeed.

We’re here to do what we can to see that they don’t, but that it is still possible to live well at the same time. But you’re gonna have avoid some of this stuff. I mean, for crying out loud, I’ve been on the net neutrality hobby horse here for this week, and I’m not gonna spend any time on it here again in terms of telling you what it is. All I want, for those of you on the fence about it — in fact, I’ll tell you this. This is the best way to illustrate how this stuff works.

I have a friend, a professional athlete. You’d all know his name. This guy, unbeknownst to me when I found out he was a listener… Unbeknownst to me, this guy is a bigger right-winger than any of us, but he’s not public about it. If I told you who it was, you’d be shocked. Well, I don’t know that you’d be shocked. You’d be surprised only because you don’t know. There’s nothing that this guy does that would indicate to you that he is one of us. So I get a note from him about a month ago, and he’s in a knock-down-drag-out with a stepson over net neutrality and he’s asking me for assistance.

So I reply to his questions, and he was getting sucked in himself by his stepson, by what his stepson was saying. His stepson was literally relaying every liberal bromide about this, and he was getting sucked in because he didn’t understand why some of these major internet service providers would be for it if it penalized them. I gave him an analogy. It’s kind of like what Rubio and these senators are doing. Have you noticed that Rubio came out yesterday and said he’s a “no” vote on tax cuts until they do something more with the child tax credit for poor kids or whatever?

Now, I know Senator Rubio, and I admire him, but I’m just gonna tell you what this is. He’s gonna vote for this. He’s not gonna vote against it. There’s a lot of attention being focused on it right now, and there is not one of these senators that wants to be the reason this thing doesn’t pass. But they’re using the opportunity of all of the attention to insert themselves in the story in a way that makes it look like they are holding out for a better deal for certain elements of their constituency. It’s a common practice. Politicians do it all the time.

“I can’t vote for this bill the way it’s currently written.” He’s gonna vote for it, as are most of these others. It’s just an opportunity now to have attention called to himself, particularly caring about poor kids. I’m not being critical. I’m telling you how this works. So when it comes down to major ISPs claiming they’re for net neutrality, what would you do? If you’re a major ISP, if you’re a cable provider and your young customers hate your guts because you charge them money — and if you think your young customers love net neutrality — what sweat is it off your back to say you support net neutrality, too?

When you know it’s not going to pass, when you know the FCC’s gonna get rid of it, what harm is it to you siding with your young customers (who hate you) and trying to change their minds? And I told my buddy, I said, “This is exactly what’s happening. It’s no different than an automobile company or General Electric signing on for climate change. It’s no different than Nabisco selling green Oreos to relate to climate change. ‘Keep everything green!’ It’s nothing more than marketing.

“They’re trying not to antagonize their customers who already hate them.” But,” I said to my buddy, “how in the world are you being fooled by this? Look at the people promoting it and look at everything they promote, and tell me how they’re promoting this any differently than they promote climate change.” With that, finally, the light went on, and he said, “You’re right! It’s not about the specifics. The specifics are what lured me in here. It’s about what the ultimate aim is: Putting government in charge of the internet for the exact opposite reason they claim.”

I watched… I read these little tech blogs, and my heart goes out to these young kids. They’re so wrong. They are so desperately wrong. They have been ginned up to hate everybody that provides them internet service. They hate them for a host of reasons, and they think the end of net neutrality means that evil internet service providers are going to start throttling their speeds, denying them service, slowing them down in favor of rich customers who will pay more. Let me give you a hint: That’s the way the market operates in virtually every aspect.

And they love this FedEx example. “Well, you know, Amazon, FedEx all packages are treated the same.” (chuckling) No, they’re not. You can order a package delivered in a week. You can have it ordered by 8:30 the next day. You can order, if you want to pay for it, a faster delivery speed. The internet is no different. But while these guys are worrying… “Throttling” is when the company slows down your connection speed, and they do it to save data. But these guys think they’re doing it to cheat them. The thing is, that’s been happening the past two years under the rules of net neutrality!

You know, I encounter every day in preparing this program mountains of ignorance coupled with stupidity in some cases, and it’s just frustrating to me, the ill-education and the maleducation that is the happening here. And no matter what the issue the left pushes, it is all about denying the population of our country expanded liberty and freedom in place of the government regulating more and more behavior of people, wherever they are, including on the internet. And then these young people glom right onto it and think it’s the greatest thing in the world and if it doesn’t happen, they’re going to lose their internet.

This is what they’ve been told, and they believe it. And of course, for the first 15/20 years of the internet when there was no net neutrality is when it expanded and grew to be this great resource that it is. All of this is in utter defiance of common sense. So I get out of bed and I see that the late-night comedian, Jimmy Kimmel — who has now become the nation’s expert in health care for children — and now that idiot Colbert and probably that idiot, John Oliver, at HBO.

All of them now. Climate change is no different than net neutrality. And then yesterday, don’t forget a brain — a one-of-a-kind brain, an intelligence so rare we never encounter it — Sandra Fluke worried to death that net neutrality, eliminating net neutrality would all of a sudden make it impossible for women to get abortions. Do you know why? Because net neutrality would lead to the elimination of how-to-get-an-abortion instructions on the internet.

A bunch of right-wingers are gonna come along and simply erase and clog up the Planned Parenthood site or whatever, and women who want to get abortions would not, starting today, be able to find out where to go or how to do it. What utter stupidity. It’s the kind of stupidity that makes me fear for the country, and it makes me so grateful at the same time to have people like you in my audience. I cannot tell you how appreciative I am.

[ex91B10]

I recall watching a very young Rush Limbaugh on late night TV in the late seventies.

[loveliberty2]

Thanks for posting. Rush’s is the best and simplest commentary yet on this silly argument about the unnecessary involvement and meddling with the internet by the previous administration.

[Oscar in Batangas]

” I have a whole system of programs set up that informs me of things I’m interested in that happened overnight I have a whole system of programs set up that informs me of things I’m interested in that happened overnight”

Rush, if FreeRepublic.com isn’t at the top of your popup list, you are woefully under-informed.

[a fool in paradise]

>>So anything the 18 to 49 demographic is doing is considered hip and interesting,

The demographic they want is 14-34 and female.

[a fool in paradise]

>> “Throttling” is when the company slows down your connection speed

Facebook and Twitter both downthrottle your posts (already, not just proposed). They aren’t be seen by all (or any) of your followers in their “feed”.

You can even have 100,000 views of a video in a day on fakebook and you won’t “trend”. How messed up is that?

Fakebook is a big proponent of Net Neutering. Why is that when they already violate it? Oh, it attacks service PROVIDERS and not websites. Isn’t Fakebook’s website a service provider?