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RUSH: Now, they need a demon. There’s a story in the stack here today on the health care bill and the Democrats in Congress need a demon, they need a villain but there aren’t any Republican villains. And Bush is gone, and Cheney is gone, and Scooter Libby is gone and Karl Rove is gone, they don’t have any villains. The villains in the House on the health care bill are the so-called Blue Dog Democrats. They can’t get anything done without a villain. Everything that they do has a demon or villain attached to it. The latest demon — and this is related to health care, of course — is obesity. You remember when smoking was the big demon? You remember when it was Republicans, when it was greedy corporations, when it was Big Oil. Now it’s obesity, chubbies, fatties. We get stories that doctors don’t even like to treat them, that doctors don’t take them seriously. When fat people walk in the doctor, ‘I don’t even want to see them take off their clothes much less check the blood pressure.’ We’re getting stories like this.

I don’t think that anyone but your host, I, El Rushbo, would have the nerve and the gall, the courage to ask this question. Okay, tell us, the cost of obesity is what? Is it $147 million a year, $147 billion, I think I saw the figure. How much does HIV and AIDS cost us? ‘Shh, shh, not supposed to ask that, Rush, don’t ask that, don’t ask.’ It’s too late. Don’t tell anybody I said it, okay, folks, just keep it between you and I. ‘How dare you, Rush, obesity is by choice, by overindulgence, it’s an unhealthy behavior.’ Don’t get me wrong, my friends, I know what I’ve said here is a no-no and I’m not arguing in its favor. I don’t like the whole construct of villains in the first place. What I do suggest is the allegedly rational analysis of cost savings in these liberal schemes are not economic judgments, they are political judgments based on creating demons. They have to keep Americans hating or disliking other groups of Americans. Have you ever heard of an African-Canadian? We have African-Americans. Have you ever heard of Uglo-Canadians? We have Uglo-Americans but we don’t have Uglo-Canadians. Have you ever heard of native Canadians? Have you ever heard of Hispanic-Canadians? No. They call themselves Canadians.

We group ourselves and we become victims. That’s how we’re set up, that’s how we’re encouraged to act. And the latest group, smokers, the fat, the obese, or what have you, these are all political calculations by a bunch of shysters who don’t care what you think. All they know is that they can make you hate smokers, and they can make you go along with massive tax increases on smokers, and 50 years ago, 30 years ago they told us that if we just cut smoking in half, look at all the health care costs we would save. And we’d get rid of all the secondhand smoke and people wouldn’t die. Well, we’ve cut smoking in half, maybe more. Have the costs of health care gone down? Did anything they promise ever come true? Or is it always just the opposite? I wonder what percentage of all medical costs are for people over 80? I wonder what percentage of all medical costs are for people over 70? I mean if we’re going to start demonizing people, let’s go to the people that are actually spending the most money on health care and that’s the elderly, who, by the way, according to Heritage are more and more opposed to Obamacare.

I’m going to tell you what, folks, if we can get seasoned citizens rallied against this, then we’ve got a chance to keep it buried. Now, the Senate, they’re getting close on health care because the Senate committee dealing with it has got some Republicans who want to get a bill with the Democrats. And this is the Kennedy bill. Now, they’re negotiating in there to have some input in it. What they ought to be doing is saying no to the premise and setting themselves up for 2010 and 2012. But they’ve got this notion, ‘We gotta do a bill, we have to get something done, we have to get a bill. Saying no won’t work.’ Yes, it will. Saying no to this is a winner. It’s going to destroy everything it claims to repair. It’s a tragedy. It is a tragedy to see all this go down the way it is.

Here’s The Politico story on villains: ‘With their health care plans in a holding pattern — and no George W. Bush to kick around anymore — Democrats are casting about for somebody to blame. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn says that Republicans have ‘perfected ‘just say no.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said insurance companies are chalking up ‘immoral profits.’ But even if they won’t acknowledge it publicly, most Democrats in Congress know the truth: It’s their own colleagues who are slowing down progress in both the House and the Senate.’ You see little bits of evidence pouring out of state-controlled media. There’s an AP story today that you will not believe is an AP story. I’ll get to it quickly.

Here’s the Heritage story on Obamacare’s effect on seniors. I’m telling you, if we could get these people hysterically mad about what’s going to happen to them, then we could do a Dan Rostenkowski on the entire administration. ‘Today at 1:30 PM, President Barack Obama will participate in a health care ‘tele-town hall’ at AARP headquarters in Washington, DC. The President is scheduled to answer questions about his health care plan from AARP members via phone, e-mail, and even a live audience of about 40 AARP members and volunteers.’ Here are the things that the AARP members need to know. ‘Under the current system, more and more seniors are discovering that it is becoming harder and harder to find and keep doctors who will accept Medicare patients. A 2008 survey found that 29% of the Medicare beneficiaries it surveyed who were looking for a primary care doctor had a problem finding one to treat them, up from 24% the year before. This problem is compounded by the fact that our nation is facing a growing shortage of doctors. Obamacare promises to only make these problems worse. First, Obama plans to pay for up to a third of his plan by cutting $313 billion in Medicare reimbursements to health care providers over the next ten years.’

Well, Medicare, that’s how they get paid, we’re going to cut — this is called squeezing the doctors, which he has promised to do. You squeeze the doctors, you’re not going to create any more new doctors that want to go into the profession and you obviously are going to be rationing health care. If you’re squeezing coverage, if you’re squeezing payment, the doctors are going to be able to treat fewer people, and the people that will be treated less are senior citizens who, because of their age, utilize health services in this country more than any other age-group. ‘Second, Obama’s public ‘option’ could decrease the annual net income of hospitals by $36 billion, while the annual net income of physicians could drop by $33.1 billion.’

Now, you add this up, hospitals and doctors under Obama’s plan lose a combined $66 billion. ‘Facing a sharp reduction in their pay, more doctors will retire early and more bright students will elect to pursue other careers,’ but there’s also other things here. ‘Losing Your Coverage: 22% of all Medicare patients, which translates to 10.5 million seniors, are currently enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans. These health plans cover all of the traditional Medicare benefits and much more. … President Obama has proposed killing this program entirely.’ Look, folks, they’ve gotta get money from this somehow. His whole point is that our budget is out of whack, that our spending is out of whack, that our debt’s out of whack because of health care. He’s got to show he’s going to spend less. It will never happen but he’s got to show it. So kill that program, Medicare Advantage. ‘Another centerpiece to Obamacare is the creation of a federal health board that will ration your health care.’ A health board will decide who gets treated and for what, aimed at senior citizens. And this is likely going to be done on the back of America’s seniors.

I hope to hell, although I’m not expecting it, I hope to hell this is brought to light by somebody at Obama’s little tele-town hall today in about 45 minutes. You can see this at AskHeritage.org, by the way. AskHeritage.org, 25 big bucks is all it takes to join, become a member, go online and have access to things that I think are the smartest and best produced bits of analysis in all of Washington.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, yesterday Bill Moyers said that I incite riots in the public mind. Robert Gibbs said that I fan the flames of racism to sell advertising. The distinguished, first-class intellectual, Dyson, said that I’m ‘the opposite of a first-class intellectual.’ And, of course, the running criticism of old El Rushbo out there from the White House on down to State-Run Media is that I lie. I make it up. I’m a hypocrite. So I want to go through four, quote, unquote, ‘lies’ here, and I want you to pick your favorite, biggest-of-the-biggest, worst-of-the-worst lie I tell. All right?

Number one: Obama cannot deliver all three of these: better health care at lower cost for all Americans. You like that lie? Lie number two: Centralized, digitized health records won’t be any more confidential than our military secrets leaked to the media. You like that lie? Number three: Squeezing doctor fees will reduce the number of new doctors entering the field. That’s lie number three. And lie number four: Medicare payments will be further reduced. So there you have four lies from El Rushbo, which is… (interruption) Well, that’s the point, Snerdley. I know they’re not lies. I’m telling people the truth about this. But they counter by saying I’m lying. So you pick a lie. What’s your favorite lie there?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Oakwood, Georgia, and this is Clint. I love having guys named Clint on the show.

CALLER: Well, thank you.

RUSH: Great to have you here.

CALLER: Thank you very much. I appreciate you taking my call.

RUSH: You sound just like a Clint should sound, too.

CALLER: Well, thank you so much. (laughing)

RUSH: You bet.

CALLER: Rush, I just wanted to call. I was getting ready to tune into your program at 12 o’clock and I was catching the news before that and heard about the town meeting in Washington that President Obama was having with the seniors, and also heard —

RUSH: Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. No, no, no. Everybody misunderstands what AARP is. They’re just retired union people.

CALLER: Well, I’m a member. I’m an ex-member as of today. When I heard that they were helping sponsor this program I immediately picked up my phone, I called the organization and I said I wanted my membership canceled as of this very moment and she asked me, ‘Well, why?’ And I said, ‘Because first of all, you are sponsoring the town hall meeting to let President Obama continue to mislead people,’ and I said, ‘I don’t appreciate that at all, been a member since 2002 but as of right now before I hang up I want my name taken off the rolls.’ And she says, ‘Well, there’s a lot of misinformation that’s going around about the plan.’

RUSH: The misinformation is Obama and his plan and that’s what you understand and the AARP is supporting it. We had a caller about this yesterday, Clint, who called the AARP to figure out what was going on because she was also upset about it, and ended up asking me, ‘Why would the AARP do this? This is not in their members’ best interests. The Obama plan is going to harm AARP members.’ Because a lot of them are retired union, there’s all kinds of sops to unions in every piece of legislation, whatever it’s called. But the first thing you understand, they’re liberals and they’re liberals first. They’re liberals before they’re anything else and he’s their president, and they’re unified with him. It’s a group that promotes big government, under the guise of caring about seniors. It’s just like the NAGs, the National Association of Gals, is a group advancing liberalism and big government under the guise of women’s rights. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is nothing but a bunch of liberals advocating the loss of liberty on the part of individuals in exchange for this concept of animal rights.

Now, my cat went outside the other day. I let old Punkin walk around outside and she saw a tiny little lizard, and bam, beeline, and I said, ‘There go the lizard’s rights.’ I love those little things. They’re our buddies here because they eat insects and so forth and so on. So I try to save a lizard every time Punkin makes a beeline. Well, what rights does the lizard have? We buy into this. Now, I’m all for anti-cruelty and so forth, you know me, folks, I’m the biggest softy when it comes to animals. But the idea behind all these liberal groups is that what’s destroying the planet is humanity. If we weren’t here then this would just be an idyllic pristine place. We have come along and destroyed it. We’re no different than any other animal. We’ve adapted to what we found, and we have improved the quality of life for people all over the world. But there are people in this country trying to tear that down and destroy it in their quest for sameness, equality of outcome, or just giant government with more and more people having less and less freedom.

My mother, when she joined the AARP, I said, ‘Mom, what are you doing? You’re gonna destroy the family reputation here if people find out about this.’ ‘No, son, they do really good things.’ She bought hook, line, and sinker the whole thing, and most of their members do, obviously, until this comes up. But I don’t think they’re gonna have mass defections. But clearly Obama’s plan is not in the best interests of the membership in the AARP. What the AARP knows is that it’s in their best interests to support Obama and what he’s doing. Liberalism comes first before any of the basic so-called interests and purposes of the organization. Clint, thanks again. I appreciate it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Robert in Sarasota, Florida. Hello, sir. Glad you called. It’s great to have you with us.

CALLER: (long silence) Hello?

RUSH: Yeah, hi Robert, great to have you with us.

CALLER: Good afternoon, Rush. How are you, sir?

RUSH: Never better.

CALLER: Never better. We are not better with all this health care issue by Obama. It’s really gonna hurt us real bad, you know? It’s gonna increase occasion. It’s gonna increase the deficit. It’s gonna make more things more expensive to go to the hospital, to the clinics, to see a doctor. We gonna pay more. He doesn’t know that.

RUSH: You know, this guy can lie as well as I do.

CALLER: Of course he’s lying to all of us!

RUSH: No, no. (laughing)

CALLER: Nancy Pelosi —

RUSH: No, no.

CALLER: Nancy Pelosi said yesterday they want to charge this through. Regardless of what happens, they going to pass the health issue anyway.

RUSH: I agree with that. No what I said —

CALLER: Is it not fair for all of us?

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: Go ahead, Rush.

RUSH: Actually, no. It’s not fair for all. But I want to explain something. ‘Cause I saw the reporter’s eyes light up when I said that Robert here is as good a liar as I am. I did a little bit before you arrived. I told four things that are unquestionably true. But the media accuses me of lying. I make things up. So I said, ‘Pick your favorite lie.’ This guy, everything he said is true — for the most part, all of it that I could understand — so I was making a joke: ‘He’s as good a liar as I am.’ Wait ’til the media hears him. Robert, I appreciate it.

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