Posted on 06/15/2009 4:36:08 PM PDT by GOP_Lady
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BIDEN: At the time no one realized how bad the economy was. The projections in fact turned out to be worse. Everyone guessed wrong at the time the estimate was made about what the state of the economy was at the moment this was passed.
RUSH: They did not "guess wrong." I did not guess wrong and the Republicans in Congress did not guess wrong. The stimulus plan is a disaster. Biden has now admitted it! Another thing that happened over the weekend that the country learned is that Bush was right about the war in Iraq. Thank you Thomas Friedman, New York Times. The next thing that we learned over the weekend was that Iran is a lying, murdering regime that you don't negotiate with. Thank you, Iranian elections. And number four: We learned that global warming is a lie, global cooling is in full swing because the sun is in charge. Have you seen the stories in Chicago, it was in the fifties last week, they're only now approaching normal June temperatures on the 15th? There's snow in North Dakota. There is a cooling trend happening! It's chilly in New York during the day as well. Now, these four things are articles on every one of these points I made from day one.
We were told Obama was ready to lead on day one, remember? Well, he was wrong about the economy. Biden admitted it yesterday. He was wrong about foreign policy in Iraq. Thomas Friedman admitted it over the weekend. He was wrong about Iran and wrong about global warming, and therefore he's wrong about cap and trade. All this, all this in one weekend -- a grand-slam weekend for your host -- and Colin Powell endorses Barack Obama, the guy who struck out enforcement he went to the plate! Obama is 0-for-4. I hit a grand slam when I hit the plate. Obama is a failure. The results are in. So I ask this with all humility: "Who should the Republicans be listening to, me -- who hit a grand slam -- or Powell, who fanned, struck out? Now we know why Barack Obama didn't want Republicans listening to me. Now we know why the left is scared to death of Palin and why they are afraid of me. We get it right.
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RUSH: Gallup poll, remember last week the Drive-Bys went all nuts with the USA Today/Gallup show that showed only 13% of the Republicans thought I spoke for them and then Cheney was at ten and they tried to paint this picture of the Republicans in the wilderness. Well, the Gallup people are out with another poll today, and it's very, very cool. Conservatives are the single largest ideology group in America. Forty percent of Americans call themselves conservative. The number of moderates is 35%. Liberals are 21% and 22% of Democrats call themselves conservative. This is why the left is afraid of Sarah Palin, folks, this is why they're trying to destroy her. Nobody else on the Republican side excites the Republican base like she does. I don't mean to insult anybody out there. Some great people on our side, but this ought to have specific impact here on our conservative media which is wandering off the reservation continually saying we gotta get rid of Reagan.
If I were Dick Cheney I would think about suing Leon Panetta for defamation. Panetta says it's almost as if former Vice President Cheney would like to see another attack on the United States. That's patently absurd.
RUSH: You know, back to that poll, the Gallup poll. Conservatives are the single largest ideological group in the country. Liberals are 21% and independents are 35%. If I were running the Republican Party, you know what it would tell me? And if I were in the conservative media, and if I really wanted to win the next series of elections, as Randall Hoven here of the American Thinker says, "Here is how you do it: get 40% of the vote by being genuinely conservative, without apology," and that's where you get your (quote, unquote) "Reagan Democrats." Just be pedal-to-the-metal conservative and don't apologize for it. "Then go after one third of the 'moderates' (thus getting another 12% of the vote, for a 52% majority) by pushing responsibility, competence and integrity.
"Heck, maybe you'll get half the moderates, for a total of 58%, almost what Reagan got in 1984." Forty percent of the people of this country identify themselves as "conservative." Twenty-one percent identify themselves as liberal. This is why I closed the program on Friday telling you I still have faith. I still have faith in the people of this country -- and if you look at the campaign of 2008, the 40% of the American people who were conservative had nobody to vote for! And if the Republican Party keeps up, they're not going to offer anybody to vote for. And that's why the left is so scared to death of Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin excites this 40% of Americans that are conservatives. Of course, the blue-blood, country club, Rockefeller Republicans and the media and the Democrats make fun of her and say that she's a dunce and she doesn't have any experience, she's uninformed and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But all you have to do...
If you want to know, the left will tell you everything you want to know, if you listen to them. The far left, the left, the Democrat Party will tell you everything you want to know. And I just need to ask you one question. Of all the potential Republican presidential candidates that people could name for 2012, which one sends the Democrat Party, the media, the Comedian Community, and everybody else into an absolute insane tizzy? It is Sarah Palin. Why? Because they're scared. And why are they scared? They're afraid of her. They're afraid of that 20,000 people she can draw anywhere, any time, when she shows up to make an appearance. They're afraid of her because she can win. They're afraid of her because she could beat Barack Obama. That's why they trash her. That's why they're trying to destroy her. It's not because she embarrasses them. It's because she frightens them. Listen to the left, listen to the media if you want to find out what they think 'cause they'll tell you every time.
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RUSH: Now, back to this poll for just a second, the Gallup poll, 40% of Americans identify themselves as conservatives. Our buddies at Power Line today right after eight o'clock posted a post on their blog called, "Conservatives in the Wilderness -- The lead essay in the current issue of the Claremont Review of Books is William Voegeli's 'The wilderness years begin.' Does American conservatism need to reinvent itself for a new age? Voegeli addresses the diagnoses of the decline of American conservatism, and various prescriptions for its recovery. In the second-to-last paragraph (it's a long essay) rendering the case for the conservative opposition to the progressive liberal project." And this, folks, is a great way to express and define liberalism for people. Listen to this: "The danger liberalism poses to the American experiment comes from its disposition to deplete rather than replenish the capital required for self-government.
If I might add something to this, "The danger liberalism poses to the American experiment comes from its disposition to deplete rather than replenish the capital" necessary for economic growth, and that's precisely what's happening now. People's retirements are gone. I've gotta story about that in the stack today. Economic expectations are plundered because more and more of the private sector has been taken over or completed by Barack Obama and transferred to him and his czars to rule in an unconstitutional manner from the White House, including the Census and other things. "The danger liberalism poses to the American experiment," and forget that "experiment." It's the danger liberalism proposes to America. I think America, as an "experiment," has succeeded. America is now in the process, our private sector, being destroyed by President Obama.
"The danger liberalism poses to the American experiment comes from its disposition to deplete rather than replenish the [money] required for [economic growth]. Entitlement programs overextend not only financial but political capital. They proffer new 'rights,' goad people to demand and expand those rights aggressively," which is exactly what the left has done. New "rights," new entitlements, health care, read it that way and other things. People demand those things and expand on their demands. They "disdain truth in advertising about the nature or scope of the new debts and obligations those rights will engender. The experiment in self-government requires the cultivation, against the grain of a democratic age, of the virtues of self-reliance, patience, sacrifice, and restraint. The people who have this moral and social capital understand and accept that there 'will be many long periods when you put more into your institutions than you get out,' according to David Brooks.
"Instead, liberalism promotes snarling but unrugged individualism, combining an absolute right 'to the lifestyle of one's choice (regardless of the social cost) with an equally fundamental right to be supported at state expense,' as the Manhattan Institute's Fred Siegel once described it," and isn't that where we are with the American left? People think they have an inherent right to live however they want with the government paying for it. They have an equally fundamental right to be supported at state expense because that's what they think America is because the Democrat Party and the American left have been working on them for years in this way. "Finally, the capital bestowed by vigilance against all enemies, foreign and domestic, is squandered," read the defense budget, "when liberals insist on approaching street gangs, illegal immigrants, and terrorist regimes in the hopeful belief that, to quote the political scientist Joseph Cropsey, 'trust edifies and absolute trust edifies absolutely.'"
That's just the second-to-last paragraph of William Voegeli's, The Wilderness Years Begin. Conservatives are not in the wilderness. The Republican Party is in the wilderness. Conservatives are fine and dandy. Conservatives know exactly what they are. Well, some Washington conservatives don't. Some media conservatives have gotten all confused and are off the reservation saying some of the most ridiculous things, But as far as the people outside the Beltway, the American conservative population, wham bam! We don't need to reinvent it 'cause it's timeless. Conservatism's foundation is freedom. Freedom will never go out of style. And you get people saying, still to this day, "We gotta forget Reagan and we gotta do..."
Nobody is holding onto Reagan as a cult. What people are holding onto is there was an application of conservatism and look at what it got. Fifty-eight percent of the vote! It wasn't just the positions on taxes and communism and defense. It was the philosophy that produced those possessions. And that philosophy exists the same then as it does today and is just as applicable to issues today as it was then, even though the issues may be different. There doesn't need to be any realignment, redefinition, or anything of the sort. So this ought to hearten people. Republicans aren't going to like this. Some of the conservative intelligentsia media aren't going to like it and they're going to say people like me are misrepresenting the poll and misreading it, but I'm not.
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RUSH: Well, it will depend on who the candidates are but, look, let me remind you again Gallup poll out today, 40% -- and this is the largest percentile -- 40% of American voters identify themselves as conservatives. Twenty-one percent identify themselves as liberal. About 22% of that 40% is Democrat conservatives. So all the Republican Party has to do is run a full-bore conservative campaign and they'll pick up that 40%. That's why I said if the Republicans had nominated a conservative in 2008, Obama could have been beaten.
Don't listen to people on our side who rip Sarah Palin. Don't listen to Republicans who rip Sarah Palin. Listen to Democrats. Listen to liberals. They'll tell you who they're afraid of. They tell you who they're afraid of by trying to destroy them. If they thought Sarah Palin was the easiest slam-dunk defeat they could ever engineer, they would be talking her up, they're scared to death. She can draw 20,000 people, as it was said early today by somebody, reading a cookbook. There's no other Republican candidate that enthused and energized the crowd that way. So just listen to the left. Just listen to the Democrats. Forty percent of the people identify themselves as conservative. Now, people say, "If that's the case how did Obama win?" I can give you a number of factors -- Bush fatigue. There was no conservative on the ballot to vote for. And the whole notion, "Change parties, let's just change, it's been eight years. Everybody hates the Republicans. Let's just change parties." A lot of conservatives stayed home.
But 60 million people did not vote for Obama. Fifty-eight, 60 million people did not vote. We gotta get rid of Reagan, they say. Reagan got 58% of the vote in 1984, 58%. What was Reagan? He was a conservative. I get blue in the face talking about this stuff, it's so simple, it really is so simple. And the people who think they're the smartest people in the room have to get in there and start monkeying around with something that's not complicated to try to prove how smart they are or whatever else they're trying to establish when the blueprint's there and the base, it's ready to go, with the right candidates. So if you are a Republican, if you're thinking of running, I don't care what part of the country you live in, either, by the way, forget this northeast garbage, might have to exempt Massachusetts, but I doubt it, maybe Maine. If you're Republican and you want to win and you want to run for office in 2010, be conservative and don't make any excuses for it! And don't apologize for it. Just run as a conservative on the principles. Apply the principles to today's issues, and it ain't going to be hard because it's the easiest thing in the world to contrast conservatism with socialism. And that's what Barack Obama and the Democrat Party is.
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RUSH: All right, we're going to talk about this Iranian situation. Did I call this or did I call this? I totally called this and I'm stunned. We've got audio sound bites from the Drive-By Media comparing Iran to Florida 2000. I mean it's just stunning. Everybody who knows anything about Iran and is willing to be honest admits that the mullahs pick the presidential candidates and then they pick which one is going to win, pure and simple, and that was always going to be Ahmadinejad, pure and simple. Now, we had Obama on Friday talking about, well, we've created this great robust debate over there, my Cairo speech, man, it's really great and now there are people rioting in the streets, the libs want you to believe that Obama caused that. That's not true. The people that live in Iran, we've been hearing about this for years, the unrest in the general Iranian population and in a run-up to Iran going nuke, people have said, particularly Michael Ledeen who was one of the most profound Iranian scholars writing about this has been asking for us, the United States, as a policy to help overthrow the regime by buttressing the anti-regime population in Iran, not militarily, obviously Obama's going to try to take credit for this, but this unrest has been simmering in Iran for quite a while. Not that it matters, though. I mean, you line 'em up and you shoot 'em and do whatever you want. I mean we're dealing here with a totalitarian regime.
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RUSH: Try this. This is from the New York Times on June 13th, on Saturday. This is a pull quote. The story is on the Iranian elections: "Both Sides Claim Victory in Presidential Election in Iran." But listen to this quote because it seems, ladies and gentlemen, that Iranian journalists are not any different than American journalists. "As voting began on Friday morning, journalists gathered to watch Ayatollah Khamenei cast his vote in a mosque near his home in southern Tehran. Just after 8 a.m., a set of brown curtains opened and the leader emerged, a gaunt 69-year-old with clunky glasses and a long white beard, with a black turban on his head and a black clerical gown draped around him. The journalists, mostly Iranians, gasped and then chanted a religious blessing." I read that, and I said, my gosh, these Iranian Drive-Bys are no different. I mean, Iranian State-Run Media is no different than American State-Run Media. The journalists, when they saw the supreme leader, gasped and then chanted a religious blessing.
Now, you wonder the journalists who react this way to the Ayatollah Khamenei, you wonder what they're reporting in the unrest now and how they're -- (laughing) -- by the way, it's the Rush Limbaugh program and the EIB Network. Great to have you with us. Telephone number is 800-282-2882, and the e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com. If you want to see or hear how predictable and how irrelevant State-Run Media is, we have a montage here from Saturday and Sunday, a bunch of different media people and scholars discussing the Iranian election. A lot of people here comparing it to Florida 2000.
DON LEMON: What can we expect as far as accuracy, because we have our own problems, Florida in 2000.
WOLF BLITZER: Like Florida 2000.
KARIM SADJAPOUR: What's happening now is similar to what took place in Florida in 2000.
RACHEL MADDOW: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and his main opponent have declared victory. Florida 2000 anyone?
WARREN BALLENTINE: I think the White House shouldn't say anything, and the reason being is because of what happened in 2000 when Bush stole the election. Who are we to judge Iran?
RUSH: That's Warren Ballentine, the last voice that you heard. I never heard of him but he's out there. So the White House shouldn't say anything. The reason being is because of what happened in 2000 when Bush stole the election, who are we to judge Iran? So predictable and so embarrassing. These people do not understand that there isn't freedom in Iran. You know, there were 495 presidential candidates to start this whole process all picked but the mullahs. All the candidates are picked! There's no primary, it's a joke. The vote count was irrelevant. I don't know whether they had to stack it, whether they lied about it, they wanted Ahmadinejad, and believe me, the reason they stayed with Ahmadinejad is precisely to spit in the face of Obama and his Cairo speech, folks. Let's be honest about it.
While Obama is out there trying to take credit for all this new robust democracy, the mullahs said (raspberry) you. You wonder if Obama had any impact on the election on Friday when he went out there and basically assumed the position that the challenger was going to win. If he woulda shut up I wonder what woulda happened. But since he goes out there and starts taking credit, you know, these mullahs are autocrats, they're dictators, they're not going to listen to some upstart young know-it-all, start proclaiming relevance and importance in the outcome of their election. Here is last night's CNN's Newsroom. The anchor, Don Lemon, spoke with senior international producer Samson Desta in Iran about the election, and the anchor said, "Look, do you get the sense this is going to escalate, that the protests are going to continue, or are you seeing a sense of calm now? Are they backing down, or is this backing off at all?"
DESTA: A number of students came up to me today and said that they want to appeal to President Obama. They said is he going to accept this result because if he does then we are doomed. So a lot of appeals to Obama in the international community today from university students.
RUSH: A lot of people are asking Obama to speak and he's not speaking now, he's not said a word about it. Would you please speak up, there are people waiting! Now, when the result is in and it's not what he wanted he's not going to speak out because he's probably taking this as rejection and they're figuring out how to position this. In terms of the question, the timing, is it quieting down? Now they're firing shots over there. The latest I saw a minute ago. Shots are being fired into the crowds now. Just like Florida, just like Florida 2000 and probably some of the people armed are journalists. I'm kidding. Just like Florida 2000, they're firing on people who are rioting in the streets. And where was the rioting in the streets in Florida 2000, by the way? Richard Engel this morning on MSNBC, question, "It's a paper ballot election. Now, there have been accusations of fraud." Can you explain this to us, O wizard?
ENGEL: There were about 35 to 40 million votes cast. Originally state television said 35 million, then Ahmadinejad said about 40 million votes cast in a country of 70 million. That's a lot of ballots. These are paper ballots that you put your thumbprint on or fingerprint on, fold them up and stuff into a box, and there were so many people turning out to vote, they were leaving the voting stations at nine, ten o'clock at night and then just a few hours later state TV announced that Ahmadinejad had won, and there were no computers, there were no records, it was just folded pieces of paper in a box, and that's very quick to count.
RUSH: Are these people really this idiotic? Are they really this naive? It didn't matter! Ahmadinejad was going to win. The whole election is no different than when Saddam Hussein got 98% of the vote the last time he stood for election. They're naive. They're stupid. They are not informed. Sarah Palin knows more of the ways of the world than the media covering her. Let's go back to last Friday morning in Washington, the White House. When the Iranians leaked the news that something big was happening, the vote turnout, why, look, it's higher than ever, why, the challenger is doing well, but here they sucked Obama right to the microphone and he said this.
OBAMA: We are excited to see what appears to be a robust debate taking place in Iran. And obviously after the speech that I made in Cairo, we tried to send a clear message that we think there is the possibility of change. And ultimately, the election is for the Iranians to decide. But just as has been true in Lebanon, what can be true in Iran as well is that you're seeing people looking at new possibilities and whoever ends up winning the election in Iran, the fact that there's been a robust debate hopefully will help advance our ability to engage them in new ways.
RUSH: There hasn't been a debate. His remarks on Friday look even more foolish today than they did on Friday. And I, El Rushbo, knew how foolish they were on Friday the moment I heard them.
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RUSH: Mike Pence, CNN's State of the Union yesterday morning.
PENCE: We need to take a half step back from this administration's, uh, olive branch and apology approach to enemies and countries that have been hostile to the United States of America and our allies, particularly with regard Iran to. I'm hoping before the end of the day today the president of the United States will speak a word of support for Mr. Mousavi and for the dissidents and the reformers within Iran. I think now is a great moment for this administration and the United States to reach out, express support, look for ways that we can encourage that demonstration within Iran and I'm hoping the president will do that.
RUSH: He hasn't said a word he's been out lying to the doctors at the AMA, or misleading them. Can we go back? The much maligned George W. Bush in his second inaugural address...
BUSH: All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know the United States will not ignore your oppression or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you. Democratic reformers facing repression, prison, or exile can know America sees you for who you are: the future leaders of your free country. The leaders of governments with long habits of control need to know: To serve your people, you must learn to trust them. Start on this journey of progress and justice, and America will walk at your side.
RUSH: He didn't say "I" one time. People since Sunday have been urging Obama to say something about this. George Bush did. "The idiot," "the dummkopf." That was George Bush's second inaugural. The date, by the way, was January 20th, 2005, in Washington, DC. There has been a quasi-administration reaction from Joe Biden on Meet the Press yesterday. Question: "You don't want to recognize Ahmadinejad as the president at this stage?"
BIDEN: Well, uh, uh, I'm not... Look, that's -- that's what they're announcing. We have to accept that for the time being, and -- but there's an awful lot of question about, uh, how this election was run and we'll see. I mean, we're just waiting to see. We don't have enough... We don't have enough facts to know, to make a firm judgment.
RUSH: He cannot bring himself to say he stands with the people of Iran who want freedom. They can't. (sigh) This is just a dangerous bunch of people that are running this whole show, domestically, internationally.
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Take a look at the Drudge Report, folks. Go to the front page, just the front page and you'll find a picture of one of the four Chinese Uighurs transferred from Guantanamo Bay to Bermuda swimming in the ocean. And there are stories accompanying these pictures saying that the Uighurs now have totally changed their mind about the United States. Now, Bermuda is British, and the UK was not informed that these four Uighurs -- these are Chinese Al-Qaedas, essentially -- were going to be try to find to Bermuda. Gitmo just sent them there and now they're swimming in the ocean. I've seen two pictures. One of them us out there doing a... I don't know what the hell movement it is but lying on his back with his arms just having a great time, and the other two are out there splashing around. The only thing missing is the pina coladas 'cause I know Uighurs don't consume alcohol. Well, they could be virgin coladas. They don't consume alcohol.
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RUSH: By the way, one observation before we go to the break here. Go to Drudge and look at the Uighur prisoner from Club Gitmo swimming in the Atlantic Ocean, and then remember what John McCain looked like when he got out of the Hanoi Hilton. Broken legs, broken arms, beat up. This guy, outta Club Gitmo, one, two days, is swimming in the Atlantic Ocean.
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RUSH: Here's Walter in Blairstown, New Jersey. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Rush?
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: TV dittos!
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: You're welcome. I know something about health insurance because much of my adult life I've carried my own policy, and Obama is setting up this straw man -- President Obama I should say is setting up this straw man -- about "preexisting conditions." Preexisting conditions is not so much something you have as something you know you have. It's something that has to be diagnosed previously or it's something that a reasonable person would have to seek medical attention for. And President Obama is making it out that a person can be denied coverage. A person cannot be denied coverage because of preexisting conditions. Treatment can be denied for a period of time. But my son is disabled. He's blind and he's deaf. (ahem) I'm nervous, Rush. He's blind. He's deaf. He has a heart condition. He needs support in all areas of living. And last year, New Jersey canceled his Medicaid. So I called my insurance company, and I said -- being a responsible person -- I needed a policy for my son. So I explained to them that he's disabled and that he takes a lot of medicine, but I was still able to buy coverage for him. And not only was I able to buy coverage for him, but because he had Medicaid going in there was nothing against his preexisting conditions.
RUSH: Right. Now, that's an excellent point. And I'll tell you something else. If you didn't have that private option, you'd be SOL. You wouldn't be able to get insurance for your kid from the government.
CALLER: And, Rush, could they not deny him coverage they can't even charge him more. The charge is based on --
RUSH: Now, you're going to have a lot of people out there like this. We're gonna get a lot of calls from people who have preexisting condition limitations put on them that are going to disagree with what you're saying. I just want to prepare you for that if we get some we'll put 'em on because this is very strange what you're saying to a lot of people who have been bitten by this preexisting condition rigmarole.
CALLER: I live in New Jersey. I've done this in New York, and I've done it in New Jersey. I can't speak to all 50 states. His premium was exactly the same. They have a rate chart. It goes by the county you live in and it goes by your age.
RUSH: Now, here's something else. There's another point I want to make about this. Did you hear the description that Walter gave of his son? He's disabled in practically every way you can be. He's blind. He's deaf. He has a heart problem of some sort. Now, that is the kind of condition for which we need reasonable insurance. We don't need health insurance for people that go to the doctor for a sore throat. We don't need 50 tests when you have a sore throat, or however many tests they give you. But it's this kind of unusual, out-of-the-ordinary condition that ought to be the first that's insured and take a lot of other people off the insurance rolls who could pay for this by themselves. And then you will lower premiums for everybody and you'll cover the people who actually need. Because this man with his son's condition, there is no family that could afford the kind of medical bills that this young man's going to require. That's what you need catastrophic insurance for.
And its conditions like his, his kid's, that are the hardest to ensure because everybody else is being insured for things and they have to draw the line. "Okay, you've got a preexisting condition here. Why should we insure this?" Life expectancy, all that soft stuff. But if you lower the cost pressure, the price pressure on some of these other insurance policies that are not even necessary... Now, the insurance company might not like hearing me say this. They love the premiums. But still, when you talk about a responsible health care system, this is it. We don't need insurance for nine people to make 2600 visits to a single emergency room in six years. We don't need health insurance for that. This is so out of whack. But this preexisting condition stuff... Look, I have preexisting conditions. We all do. I've 58 years old. I'm able to get insurance. I have to have, every year, Key Man Insurance in order to do this program since I am it. If I go be so goes the show. So I have to get insurance for that. There's a thriving business called Key Man. You would not believe the physical I have to take for this, and is shows up preexisting conditions. The premium is what it is. You go to get the best price you can. But the point is I can get it. It's out there. I wonder what would happen to Key Man Insurance when the government's running it, especially mine.
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RUSH: Seana in Spring, Texas. Great to have you here in the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. I'm so excited to talk to you.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: I am a doctor in Texas, and I was listening to Barry's speech and he says that doctors will be better off because if we don't prices are going to skyrocket, premiums will go up and our practices will suffer. But if you listen to what he said, he said that a large part of this will be paid by reimbursements being based on outcomes and best practices, which means that if a patient doesn't get a perfect outcome they're just going to deny the claim. And this already happened --
RUSH: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's bad enough.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: But who's in charge of deciding the best outcome?
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: Two people: the trial lawyers and Barack Obama.
CALLER: Hmm. Well, and I'll give you an example, this already happened with Medicare. If you have a patient in the hospital, and she needs a catheter in her bladder for days at a time and she gets an infection from that catheter even though having it in was the standard of care, Medicare will deny the whole admission and not pay for anything if she gets an infection.
RUSH: How common are bladder infections with a catheter?
CALLER: All the time.
RUSH: Pretty common.
CALLER: Even if you get antibiotics and you do everything right and everything perfect it's going to happen sometimes.
RUSH: The whole admittance, everything to do with it, can be denied?
CALLER: Yes. And that happens every day.
RUSH: So the doctor basically works from the hospital, in his office, works for nothing?
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: And Obama says this is going to get worse if we don't do his plan.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Okay, cut to the chase. You're a doctor, you heard Obama's speech. Are you inspired?
CALLER: Absolutely not. Quite the contrary. I don't believe anything he said about costs.
RUSH: Are you a member of the AMA?
CALLER: No.
RUSH: All right. You know about them, I'm sure.
CALLER: I do, but they're a little too liberal for me.
RUSH: Well, it's like the American Bar Association, just a bunch of commie bastards anymore. They are, they are, just a bunch of commie bastards anymore, leadership, American Bar Association, tort lawyers run the whole thing. If the AMA is a similar special interest group, all Obama has to do is promise the AMA some money. There's all kinds of leverage he has with that group and then of course the Drive-Bys, the State-Run Media can go to the AMA, report whatever one person there says, and make the country think that's the opinion of every doctor. So we'll see how this shakes out. Thanks, Seana.
Dick in Northampton, Massachusetts, your turn. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. I think a good headline for that Flint story would be, "Destroy it and increase its value."
RUSH: What's the headline?
CALLER: That would be a good headline for the story: "Destroy something and increase its value."
RUSH: Oh, I see what you mean, yeah, they want to bulldoze -- if you've missed this, they want to bulldoze 40% of Flint because apparently 40% of the town has homes that are boarded up, foreclosed on, and so forth, so they want to bulldoze it and turn that land over to nature and downsize the city. I mean that's just something I thought I never would see in America.
CALLER: Well, we had urban renewal back in the sixties, and there are cities that are still suffering from that.
RUSH: Yeah. Okay, it's another form of urban renewal. And we know who got renewed, by the way.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: And they weren't renewed.
CALLER: Well, the reason I called, Rush, was I've been thinking about the first chance that the electorate will have to put the brakes on the government, is of course the congressional elections in 2010.
CALLER: That's right.
RUSH: And I was thinking, where could we get some candidates that would have name recognition and not too heavily identified with the party, would have the skills and everything, and I thought, how would it go to encourage disenfranchised car dealers of which there are five, an average of five in every congressional district, to run for Congress? They have the mailing list, local contacts, are known locally, people evidentially trust them if they've been customers of them.
RUSH: Yeah, but see, look, if a disenfranchised car dealer runs for office, how many voters are going to trust the sticker price of the vote?
CALLER: (laughing) Well, they have as good a chance as they have trusting the sticker price on the vote that they're going to get otherwise.
RUSH: Look, I like your thinking. I like the fact that you are thinking, 'cause there are a lot of disgruntled, disenfranchised -- their businesses have been taken away from them by Barack Obama, who doesn't want to run the car business! He doesn't want to run the banks. He doesn't want to run health care. He's got enough on his plate. He's got Iran, he's got Iraq, he's got North Korea, he's got Afghanistan. He doesn't want to run all this stuff. But he doesn't make any speeches about any of that other stuff. He runs around and makes sales pitch speeches on all this domestic stuff that he wants to control.
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RUSH: Lincoln in New Orleans. Great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Rush, great to talk with you. I just wanted to respond to a very perceptive comment you made regarding Obama quoting the AMA. Obama obviously is doing this as a public relations ploy to get them to sign on board to his version of health care reform.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: Now, what the public does not understand is that the AMA does not represent America's physicians. The AMA, to put it kindly, has always been very, very supportive of politicians. The AMA has not been very supportive or very representative of doctors' interests. Only about 25, maybe 30%, at most, of the nation's physicians are members of the AMA. I'm a surgeon. I have not been an AMA member for 20 years. I think most of surgeons in this country are not AMA members. So it's a very convenient way for Obama to go ahead, make a big PR splash in front of the convention there in Chicago, try and get the AMA to sign on board, and (unintelligible) to then extrapolate that to say the nation's physicians support my health care plan, which is a huge, huge, huge leap of --
RUSH: Now, it's like the AARP, it's claiming to represent every seasoned citizen or the ABA claiming to represent every lawyer. My brother is a lawyer and I'll guarantee you whatever the ABA says about judicial nominees, 90% of the time, my brother disagrees with. I think my brother is a member of the ABA, American Bar Association. I don't know.
CALLER: That's a pretty good analogy --
RUSH: The AMA is the same thing, huh?
CALLER: The AMA is the same thing. Doctors snicker at the AMA, and sure they have a core group of supporters but as far as the rank-and-file physician in America being a supporter of the AMA, or the AMA speaking for physicians, no way.
RUSH: Good.
CALLER: Our problem is America's physicians are a very, very diverse group of people, with diverse interests so it makes it very easily politically --
RUSH: I knew it.
CALLER: -- to be divided and conquered.
RUSH: I knew it, I knew it. Obama goes out there and talks to a left wing group -- like the union leadership. It's like all union members are left-wing Democrats. They're not. Anyway, there's no question he's going to say, "Yeah, the AMA supports my plan," thereby try to make everybody think all the doctors do, we've heard from you, we've heard from the woman doctor in Spring, Texas, said she's not even a member of the AMA. Lincoln I appreciate the call. I really do.
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RUSH: Let's get to health care here before Obama's speech starts, scheduled to start in five minutes and I want you to have some information before this speech begins. Back in 1993, when the Clintons attempted Hillary Care, one-seventh of the US economy was health care. It's now one-fifth and they're trying to take it over and they're trying to nationalize it. Even Stan Greenberg, the pollster who works with Clinton and Paul Begala, is out today saying this thing, it could fail, and it could fail easily because there's no way you can sign up more people and cut costs. There's just no way it can be done. Cutting costs is absurd. The Democrats are talking about $600 billion in new tax increases. But George Will yesterday on This Week with George Stephanopoulos had some profound insights and statistics during the roundtable discussion. He said, in the president's words, it'll keep 'em honest. The public option will keep 'em honest. "To try to preserve the government as a lagoon of honesty, you can argue, refuted by anybody who reads any budget of any administration."
So the Obama administration says the public option will keep the private sector honest. It's the public sector that's dishonest. It's the public sector that's corrupted. Number two. George Will says this. "Obama says it will play by the same rules as the private insurers, and therefore, won’t drive them out of business." Now, if you play by the same rules, what's the point? If you're going to have a public option that plays by the same rules as the private sector, then what's the point of having a public option? In real terms, there is no reason for it. If what you're saying is it's not going to be any better -- and we all know it can't be -- then why do it? "Third, it’s necessary to give what Secretary Sebelius said a choice to the consumers. There are 1,300 entities offering healthcare plans in this country. Another one--" i.e., the government "-- isn't going to change that."
Thirteen hundred entities offering health care plans in the country today and Sebelius says that Obama needs to have a public option to give consumers a choice. They've got choices out the wazoo. "Taking this a step further, many of these 1,300 entities will likely cease to exist if government gets involved." So the end result is that there will be far fewer options for people. The idea is to wipe out the private sector with the public option, that's its intent. George Will again: "Finally, there’s the argument that the American people are not smart enough to handle something as complicated as healthcare and have a competitive market. They’ve done rather well in computers." But you see, this gets to the common thing I continually attempt to remind everybody of, and that is the government liberals, Democrats look at everybody with contempt. None of us are smart enough to survive without them paving the road, guiding the way, and steering us.
George Will was not done, though. He is talking to Donna Brazile. He said, "You talk about the 46, 47 million uninsured. Fourteen million of them are already eligible for other government programs and haven’t signed up. Ten million are in households with household incomes of $75,000 a year and could afford it if they wanted to. Furthermore, an enormous number in that 47 million are not American citizens. Sixty percent of the uninsured in San Francisco are not citizens." So this 47 million uninsured number that the left and the media is always throwing around is disingenuous, it's largely irrelevant. They portray this number and it's grown from 42 to 43 million during the Clinton days, now it's magically up to 47 million and is just as accurate as their homeless number was inaccurate. So of the 47 million, they try to paint this picture that the system is so unfair and so mean that it's leaving 47 million Americans out, and it is not doing so.
Now, Obama just strode to the podium. We're not going to JIP this. We're not going to cover this. We'll get sound bites from it later on. I got a note from a friend of mine today, "The AMA will probably cave, Rush. They're sounding really tough against him now but everybody thinks they're going to cave because everybody else caves before Obama." Here's the one heavy hand he has on it. He already determines what they make when they treat Medicare patients. They already are in charge of reimbursement. It takes them whatever time they want to reimburse the doctor, and they reimburse whatever they want to reimburse. And Obama has said, further, he is going to squeeze the doctors and the insurance companies, which means he's going to reduce their fees even more. But there's a large bit of fear of this guy in every plan he comes up with, whether it be this health care reform plan or the TARP plan, the stimulus money, or whatever, there's just genuine fear, and these people cave. Everybody's afraid of government. That's not a good sign for the United States of America. I run into more people who are more afraid of their government today than at any time in my life. So I don't know whether the AMA is going to cave or not.
He's probably going to offer a bunch of platitudinous things here that will never really be in the final deal just to get them. We know the guy says things that aren't true; we know he makes it up, we know he lies; we know he presents the either/or option. He'll try to legitimize their concerns while saying his concerns are legitimate, too, we'll have to work together in getting along and then he'll forget what their concerns are and just impose them. Of course, we can't impose our values anywhere else but Obama can impose his values anywhere he wants to go.
Other items in the health care stack. Joe Lieberman has now come out in opposition to the public plan in Obama care. He said this weekend he opposes the public option for consumers. "'I don't favor a public option,' Lieberman told Bloomberg News in an interview broadcast this weekend. And I don't favor a public option because I think there's plenty of competition in the private insurance market." And there is. There are 1,300 different ways you can go to get health insurance.
Lieberman says, "We have a unique opportunity, a real opportunity to do this year what we've been trying to do for years, which is to reform American healthcare. I think the one thing that will stop that is pressure on the so-called public option." So there's a Democrat not in favor of it, but with all these czars that he has appointed, which give him dictatorial control over every department where there is a czar, Robert Byrd, Democrat Senator, has sent Obama a letter essentially saying, you know, what you're doing here is unconstitutional because the czars do not have to go to confirmation hearings, the czars do not get approved or interviewed, nobody knows what they do. They're paid by Obama, they're ordered to do what they do by Obama. Cabinet secretaries have been rendered secondary or tertiary role, the czars lead the way, the czars do not go through the legislative process, they do not go to the confirmation process. It's statist behavior, it's authoritarian behavior. It is Obama basically saying screw the way we've set this country up as a representative republic. I'm going to rule this country. I'm not going to govern it, I'm going to rule it.
Also, a friend of mine related to health care, this has been an eye-opening experience for me. See, I have a cat, and I don't have to do anything with the cat except take her to the vet for normal checkups and teeth cleanings and stuff like that. A friend of mine just got a little puppy. Now, the friend of mine travels a lot and has been busy and has been traveling around finding various places to park the puppy, and there's a place up in Jupiter called Fur Seasons, the Fur Seasons Dog Resort. You can get a room for your dog with a television in it. There are these places all over the country. And I started thinking about this in relation to American health care. The private sector is providing dog owners every option they want for their dogs to be cared for in a great way, or if you just want to park the dog in a cage in some kennel you can do that, too, if you want to go high end you can do that, but it's all private sector. It's much cheaper than human care, don't misunderstand, but you know how people are with their animals.
Animals are, by definition, pets, essentially helpless. They become domesticated they become dependent on human beings. They attach themselves, some might say they fall in love with their human beings, it's a debatable thing but they still do get attached and so they're cared for. I go through this list of options that a dog owner has for its health, for its well-being and they're all in the private sector, and there's no federal dog health care plan out there and it's working just fine. And it's based on the dog owner's ability to pay. There's no insurance involved. Some of them don't even take credit cards. But it works. Are you comparing dogs to human beings? No. I'm comparing the private sector to the public sector. If the government was into dog care, if you had to take your dog to government-run Fur Seasons or whatever it is, I guarantee you wouldn't want to leave your dog there because there would be no guarantee it would be alive when you got back.
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RUSH: Now, I want to expand on this business I spoke about. We're back to health care here for just a second. I mentioned a friend of mine, a girlfriend, got a new puppy. It's an old English sheepdog. It's the cutest little thing. It's about eight. (interruption) What are you...? What are you...? What are you laughing at, Snerdley. What are you laughing at? What's so funny? Girlfriend got a dog. What's so funny? No, I'm not baby-sitting a dog. The dog's been over to the house. You ought to see the dog and Punkin. We thought going to be some fur flying here, but there wasn't. There was just genuine curiosity. Punkin hissed a couple times. It's a puppy bounding around. You know, Punkin looks at the dog like, "Shut up, you little kid. Stop bothering me."
You know, cats are very indifferent. But no. No territorial battles or anything. The dog is even eating some of Punkin's food, and Punkin doesn't care. No, I'm not baby-sitting the dog. I wouldn't mind if I baby-sat the dog. It's a cute little thing. It's an old English sheepdog named Abbey. Anyway, we've been looking for things to do with the dog when it needs to be baby -- and we found all kinds of options where this dog can live in dog luxury, and it is just amazing. I mean, some of these places will come pick up the dog. If you're just going to be gone all day and there's nobody to take the dog out, you take the dog to dog day care. (interruption) No, I'm not... (chuckling) Snerdley is trying to suggest here that I have enslaved myself. No. (interruption) I've been out walking the dog. I've been out with the dog. But not by my...
(interruption) What? (interruption) No, I did... (interruption) I do not... (interruption) No, I don't have the pooper scooper. Would you let me stick to the point? Once again I am in the middle of a brilliant point and the staff wants to go all sexist here thinking I'm turning into a slave. This is the cute he is little puppy and it is... Let me tell you what I did. When I learned all of the options there are for this puppy when it has to be left or treated or done something, when it has to go to the vet or whatever. I went online last night, and I started doing some research on this, and I found a place. This is page one. I'm going to give you the details of a brochure from the Park East Animal Hospital in New York. Park East Animal Hospital. Now, I'm doing this because Obama is up there talking about how he's going to "save" health care and all that by destroying it.
In dog care, in animal care you can have any option you want. It's all there. You pay for it at whatever level of service you want for your dog. There's no "government option." There's no government involvement, and it's all affordable -- and listen to just page one here from the Park East Animal Hospital. "Appointments 7 days a week with evening appointments Monday through Friday. Nursing care 365 days a year, with technicians continuously on duty. Around-the-clock / 24 hour emergency service," for your dog or cat. "Calls responded to immediately by staff, not answering services or machines." It strikes me. Have you ever called some company and a machine answered, "Your call is important to us." Well, if it was important then how come a machine is answering? Well, at the Park East Animal Hospital calls are responded to immediately by human beings. "House calls and supportive home nursing assistance," are offered.
"Affordable preventive medicine and client education on topical issues," for your dog or cat. "Top grade, board-certified medical and surgical specialists available for consultations." Free. "Special discounts and free first examination for rescued strays and newly adopted pets from shelters." This is health care for pets. Health care for pets from a private practitioner, not a government program, and they're all over the country, outfits like this. You know, people get as attached to their animals and their pets, especially dogs. I mean, a cat you can leave alone. It will take care of itself. Just leave the food out and litter box and go to town. Cats are independent. But a dog, they become the essence of innocence. They don't become attached to you. They can't. Well, the owner thinks the dog can't survive. These people are smart at these cat and dog hospitals. They understand the relationship between the owner and the pet and they're there to serve that owner's desire, and they do it and they'll charge -- and you know people pay for it. They'll pay for it just as much as they'll pay for their kids because that's how important the pets are to them.
So you have health care for pets. You have a private practitioner, not a government program. Whenever you hear, whenever you hear a liberal promise government help that will give you universal care, better care, at lower cost -- whenever you hear that -- just sit back and you know what your response ought to be? "Arf! Arf! Arf!" Bark like your dog does, because your dog has it, without the governments being involved -- and this is not a conclusion that is out of bounds or a stretch. It's health care. It's care that's just as important to pet owners as their own health care is, probably more so because most people think they can handle most illnesses that they have themselves. A dog or cat gets sick, what do you do? They have to take it to the vet and you can find whatever level of service that you want. They even offer special evening appointments on Monday, and that's just page one of the brochure from the Park East Animal Hospital. So stop and think about that the next time you get involved in any kind of debate about human health care and how the government's gonna make it better and so forth. Ask yourself: If the same kind of care, whatever price you want to pay, whatever level of service you want, is available for your dog, why is it not available to you?
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RUSH: By the way, the health care industry is now one-fifth of the US economy. There's a dollar amount that you can put to that: $2.5 trillion. That's how much is at stake, that's how much, 2.5 trillion, that's how much wealth the federal government wants to take out of the private sector, how much it wants to deplete from the private economy and add to the government economy, 2.5 trillion. That's what Obama is actually wanting, is control of $2.5 trillion. And that, my friends, is the way you have to look at it.
All right, we're going to start on the phones in Downingtown, Pennsylvania. Tom, hello, sir. Great to have you here.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Nice to talk to you.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: Listen, the point I wanted to make is insurance has to go back to being insurance. You know, the definition of insurance is people share, put their money in a pool, for unexpected risks. Well, a heart attack is an unexpected risk, but drugs and doctor visits are not. You're just pre-paying for that. It would be like having grocery insurance where you paid a thousand dollars a month and, you know, every time you needed food you called up your insurance company --
RUSH: That's exactly right. You are right on the money, A-100 percent.
CALLER: Right. I appreciate it. That's all I wanted to say.
RUSH: See, everybody wants validation from the host. Do you realize I just made Tom's day by telling him how brilliant his point is. He's going to live off that for at least a year. Everybody wants validation, everybody wants an attaboy now and then, and what better attaboy can you get than from me, especially on this topic. He's right on the money. This is what the Safeway CEO's op-ed in the Journal was about last week when he said we have modeled ourselves at Safeway here after auto insurance, varying levels of premiums, based on how well you drive or how poorly you drive or what a big risk your kids are or what have you. But the argument is the same. Suppose you had to go get hotel room insurance or food insurance, suppose the same concept in health care attached itself to everything else that you consider vital. You know, we can't live without food, that's a necessity. Health care has become that in people's minds. So imagine the same kind of food care provided by the government. In fact, we've got it. Food stamps. You know, this is the only country where poverty leads to obesity.
Stop and think of that. And why is that? 'Cause with the food stamps you go in there and buy the Twinkies, the Milk Duds, six-pack of Bud, bag of potato chips, head home to one of your two color TVs as you live in poverty to watch the NFL on satellite TV, and turn off your cell phone so that you don't get interrupted. That's poverty in the United States, compared to elsewhere around the world. By the way, I have a story here in the stack. I shouldn't laugh. I shouldn't convey that I draw pleasure from this. (laughing) But some of you who accepted extensions in unemployment compensation have become ineligible for food stamps, because your total compensation has lifted you above the ceiling where you qualify for food stamps. I love it. The reason I love it is because when you depend on Washington, all you're gonna get is basic survival.
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He wants to put 47 million more people on the rolls, and somehow this is gonna make it cheaper? It reminds me of the Soc. Security debate. Democrats said that any reform would mean "less" than what some Americans are receiving now. Well, the dirty little secret is that Social Security cannot pay what is promised already. Social Security is bankrupt, too! People are going to get less anyway as soon as Social Security starts to go under in ten years or so. This is another typical, false Obama argument. I also read today that Obama was thinking of actually of tort reform. I have a newspaper story somewhere, I think it's the Washington Post but I'm not sure. Tort reform might be part of health care reform. He's "open" to tort reform. He's "open" to all this stuff that he's not open to. He's open to tort reform, because that would lower medical malpractice insurance, which would lower health care costs. He said he's open to it. Well, let's go to the speech. The first of two sound bites here. Here's number 25. This is typical Obama, too. He tells the doctors he's going to listen at them.
OBAMA: My signature on a bill is not enough. I need your help, doctors. We listen to you. We trust you. That's why I will listen to you and work with you to pursue reform that works for you. I recognize that it will be hard to make some of these changes if doctors feel like they're constantly looking over their shoulders for fear of lawsuits.
DOCTORS: (applause)
OBAMA: I recognize that.
DOCTORS: (applause)
OBAMA: Don't get too excited yet.
RUSH: Did you hear that, now? When he laid the ground out here, it'll "be hard to make some of these changes if doctors feel they're constantly looking over their shoulders for fear of lawsuits." They started applauding. They start applauding, and he says, Wait a minute, "don't get too excited yet." That's off script. That was not on the prompter. "Don't get too excited yet," because this is what followed.
OBAMA: Just hold onto your horses here guys.
DOCTORS: (laughter)
OBAMA: I -- I -- I -- I want to be honest with you. I'm not advocating, uh, caps on malpractice rules, which I believe, uh -- I personally believe can be unfair to people who, uh, have wrongfully harmed. I want to work with the AMA so we can scale back the excessive defensive medicine that reinforces our current system, and shift to a system where we are providing better care rather than simply more treatment.
RUSH: That's up to the doctors, Dad, not you. So he starts out... This is mean. This is dishonest. He tells these guys he understands that malpractice awards are giving them all kinds of problems. They applaud. "Don't get too excited." So after he says he's gonna listen to them, he needs their help and he teases them with some limit on torts, then the very next sentence is, "Screw what I just said! I just want that sound bite for my buds in the state-run media to play tonight, because I know they will not play what I say right now about any of this. We're going to put the notion out there that we're going to reform." This is like Lucy and the football with Charlie Brown. The poor guy after 50 years still hadn't got the football. She still holds it out there, and Charlie Brown thinks he's gonna kick it, and he never gets it.
Now, this probably is the smartest group of people he's ever spoken to, just in terms of education, IQ, and so forth. And they're already happy with what the government's running especially if they treat Medicare patient. They're already unhappy with the system and he just wants to expand it. Unless there's something really earth-shattering, frankly, I don't want to play any more of this because I'm in a good mood and I just can't handle this know-it-all, smug, arrogant condescension from this guy. The lying to people. I can't stand it. I told you Friday I got fired by one of those kind of guys 'cause I confronted him head on. He gave me the biggest line of BS about something and I had been going on... Plus at this time I'm be berated for playing music out of rotation and this guy is going on and on. I didn't blow up. I said, "Look I know this is not true. I know you're lying to everybody. You didn't do that. You don't know this person. You have not been to that state. Your track record..." I shouldn't have done it because I threatened this guy's false identity and his alternative reality so I got fired 20 minutes later on a phone by the owner of the radio station. Obama is that guy. (sigh) I hope I never get invited to the White House, I really do, not for a meeting here. That would be tough. It would be tough. I mean I'd be civil, don't misunderstand. But it would be tough.
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RUSH: Let's go to the phones quickly, to Rigby, Idaho. Jen, nice to have you with us, EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hello! I'm just calling about the health care. I was listening and realizing that I might not have a choice in what I do. I got pregnant about a little while -- a year or so ago, and I didn't have insurance. So my husband and I sat down, went over the numbers, and we wouldn't only save about $500 if we decided to pay for insurance. We were very lucky, very blessed, and I -- you know, I was healthy, the baby was healthy, but we had that choice and I would like to keep that choice. I would like to keep my liberties in that and (laughing), you know, I don't support state-run or federally -- federal government-run --
RUSH: I don't want to be overly dramatic here, Jen. I really don't here. But your liberty is at risk with Obama in the White House. All of ours liberty is at risk. She makes a brilliant point, though. There are a lot of people who have run the numbers. They don't health insurance. They only save 500 bucks with it. It's not worth the hassle. They were lucky. They had the money to pay for it themselves and they did. She's afraid of losing that option. She will if Obama gets what he wants here.
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RUSH: I keep trying to avoid any more Obama sound bites. Maybe I just ought to flood the sound bites to make the libs tired of him like Bill Maher is already get tired of him, but I don't want to tire you out. But this is an outrage. This is an outrage. What you're going to hear him say here, he knows is not true.
OBAMA: Let me also address a illegitimate concern that's being put forward by those who are claiming that a public option is somehow a Trojan horse for a single payer system. Now, I'll be honest. There are countries where a single payer system works pretty well.
RUSH: Name one.
OBAMA: But I believe -- and I've taken some flak from members of my own party for this belief --
RUSH: Lieberman.
OBAMA: -- that it's important for our reform efforts to build on our traditions here in the United States.
RUSH: Our mistakes.
OBAMA: So, when you hear the naysayers claim that I'm trying to bring about government-run health care, know this: They're not telling the truth.
RUSH: They are! This is a more blatant lie than any Bill Clinton told except that he never had sex with that woman Lewinsky lie. It is precisely government-run health care, and why is he heading out to the AMA to get 'em on board? 'Cause it's government-run health care. It's government-run everything with this guy. It's government-run General Motors, government-run Chrysler, government-run banks, government-run mortgage industry, and whatever else he can get his hands on. You just wonder here how the doctors reacted to this.
Here's Rich in Sierra Vista, Arizona, as we go back to the phones. Rich, thank you for waiting. Nice to have you with us, sir.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, thanks for taking my call.
RUSH: Yes, sir.
CALLER: I have a question for you. You hear this over and over again, especially with the medical thing since it's up here right now. What are they saying, it's going to cost $1.2 trillion over ten years? Is that what the fact is, or somewhere around there?
RUSH: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's not the number to look at.
CALLER: Well, yeah. The question I would have is, okay, they say over ten years. And I know that it's going to cost a lot more than that, I totally agree with you, but they say over ten years, what's supposed to happen in ten years? Is it this thing just not going to pay for itself anymore? What's going on with that?
RUSH: George Will made the point Yesterday on This Week, every year's budget is a lie. Every single budget is a lie. Every single year's budget there's more spent than what is slated to be spent. They have to go back and get supplementals and they're lying through their teeth every year and now they're making the truth in terms of projections ten years out. It's BS. Your instincts are right. Don't doubt them. The real number here is not how much they're going to spend because it's already outrageous and we don't have it. We're already two trillion in debt this year. And the more he takes on, the more he is depleting the private sector economy, the more he's taking money out of it. He's trying to nationalize, government-run, the US health care system. It is now one-fifth of the US economy. That number is two-and-a-half trillion dollars. That's what Obama wants control over. He wants to take two-and-a-half trillion dollars out of the private sector and put his administration in charge of it. Man, follow the money. You always get the answer to most every question. They control two-and-a-half trillion dollars this way whatever they control with the automobile business. This is not good, folks, any way you look at it.
Doug in Scottsdale, Arizona, where I was told today by a friend there's no traffic in Scottsdale. Hi. How are you?
CALLER: Good. I've grown up listening to you my whole life. I'm a senior in college and I'm getting ready to graduate, and I've learned more listening to one of your shows than I have in all of my years in school.
RUSH: Well, that's awfully nice. I don't doubt that that's true, either.
CALLER: It's very true. I'm calling because my father is an orthopedic surgeon and I work at his office, and, you know, government and Medicare, they're already controlling doctors, and they dictate what they get paid, and now it's even starting to affect the private sector insurance. You know, not too long ago my father did a surgery, and I sent out the bill to a private insurance company, and they came back and they said we will reimburse you for 15% of what you billed. And they said we're doing that because that's what Medicare would do.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: So the private sector is now saying, well, you know, government Medicare, they're dictating, they're telling doctors what they can --
RUSH: Exactly. Exactly right. That's the leverage Obama has over them at the AMA. Medicare already reimburses them. But you know how many people use Medicare. It's already in as much trouble as Social Security is. But the telling point is Obama's out there talking about we need a new option, we need more options. There are 1,300 health care options available for people in this country, according to George Will. What's adding one more gonna mean? In fact, adding the government option will result in a serious decline of the 1,300 private sector options, which is the objective.
END TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This is me just a month ago, May 13th, behind the Golden EIB Microphone.
RUSH ARCHIVE: There's no way that these health benefits are not going to be taxed one way or a couple of ways. There's no way. They're going to be taxed as income to you, imputed income to you, or they're going to eliminate the tax deductibility and maybe a combination of both. It's too great a source of money, and they don't have any. And they want national health care. And they're going to tell everybody only the rich are going to be paying this tax anyway, not you. As they lie to you again.
RUSH: Yesterday on Meet the Press, David Gregory to Joe Biden, "Will the president sign a bill that taxes health care benefits for employees?"
BIDEN: We've made it clear we do not think that is the way to go. We think that is the wrong way to finance this legislation.
GREGORY: So if the bill comes with that, the president wouldn't sign it?
BIDEN: No, no, I didn't say that.
RUSH: Now, that happened pretty quickly. Let me read that to you 'cause Biden's learning here from Obama or vice versa. "We've made it clear we do not think that is the way to go. We think that is the wrong way to finance this legislation." Gregory: "So if the bill comes with that --" Biden: no, no, no, no. "-- the president wouldn't sign it?" Biden: "I didn't say that." We don't think it's the way to go but if we have to sign it, with that in it, if that's the only way we can get it we'll do it. In other words, they just want to pass it off to Congress, they want Congress to take the heat on raising taxes on your health care benefits. That's all it is.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Hey, folks, I don't want you to get overconfident now when I postulate that the health care system Obama wants is gonna go down the tubes and that he's not going to get it. I don't mean you should just say to yourself, "All right, it's over." It's only going to fail if everybody keeps speaking out against it, if everybody maintains their energy level against it. I'm just telling you I'm getting the sense that the energy level to this point is starting to get some traction. But don't take my opinion here that it can be beaten back and stopped, as a sign that it has been and that you don't need to get engaged or involved in it.
END TRANSCRIPT
| Read the Background Material... |
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| • Washington Times: Obama, AMA At Odds Over Health Reform • Newsweek: Obama's Unhealthy Reform - Robert Samuelson • AP: Hospitals Oppose Obama's Medicare, Medicaid Cuts |
Thanks Again. The Rush In a Hurry Pings are a treat after work Gop_Lady. You are a reliable tenacious
Messenger.
: )
I'm going to heat up my dinner now. :-)
Bermuda baby! I keep thinking this is from the Onion. Then I remember Daniel Pearl. That is the difference and Obama makes us the culprits. Those Chinese guys in Bermuda said Gitmo was preferable to their own country! They would have been happy in Gitmo!
We are doomed.
I’m going to heat up my dinner now. :-)
What a coincidence. I am as well. Left overs from Saturday. Enjoy your dinner.
Thanks...I am listening to Limbaugh as I read your post...great follow through.
I’m having chips and salsa for dinner, LOL!
It got HOT here today; our first pretty hot day with high humidity. Yuck. I just needed a snack; no heavy meal, for sure.
Everything is dry, dry, dry...and to think that just ONE short year ago, we had major flooding in our state and were praying for the rain to stop!
Now we can’t BUY a raindrop...
So, what’s for supper? ;)
Hi, Diana!
We had the BEST morning temperature/weather here all year here today!
Left over grilled sirloin steak, green beans and scalloped potatoes.
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