RUSH: We’re going to get to this totally contrived Republicans causing all kinds of threats to Democrats story. I’ll tell you, it’s a total diversion. The Democrats are so losing the information war on the health care bill that they’re trying to do anything to distract everybody’s attention from it, and it’s as I said yesterday, this is all part of a plan to criminalize dissent. Let me just ask you a question. When is the last time you can recall a bunch of conservatives having a riot? When is the last time you can recall a bunch of conservatives disrupting a congressional hearing? When is the last time you can recall a bunch of conservatives coming out with books and movies on how to assassinate a president? The simple fact of the matter is that this kind of behavior that these people are running around scared to death of and accusing people of, they are the authors of this kind of behavior. These are the people that wrote the book on how to do this. Our side doesn’t do this kind of stuff. This is all made up, 95% of it’s made up and it’s being done to divert everybody’s attention.
Even Pelosi’s getting in on the act now. She held a news conference today: ‘I don’t want this to be a distraction.’ That’s all she wants. That’s exactly what they want. They are losing the information war on explaining the health care bill, news keeps coming out about it. The compilation of small businesses that are going to have to lay off workers, there’s a company in Massachusetts, the largest manufacturer of defibrillators, heart defibrillators. Their business is wrecked, they say. They’re going to add six to $10 million of expenses over the course of however many years. The reality is just now starting to hit people. I’ll have more details on this as the program unfolds, such as this one. ‘Relief to seniors facing high prescription drug costs is one of the first changes to come under the new health care overhaul. But ultimately that won’t offset the relentless increase in retirees’ medical expenses. A couple retiring this year will need a quarter of a million dollars, on average, to cover medical expenses in retirement, according to a study to be released Thursday by Fidelity Investments.
‘The estimate is up 4.2 percent from Fidelity’s projection last year. The Boston-based financial services company has updated its estimate annually since 2002 as part of its business helping employers design workplace benefits programs. The study is based on projections for a couple of 65-year-olds retiring this year with Medicare coverage. The estimate factors in the federal program’s premiums, co-payments and deductibles, as well as out-of-pocket prescription costs. The study assumes no employer provided insurance in retirement, and a life expectancy of 85 for women and 82 for men.’ Now, mind you, this is before all the supposed Medicare cuts that are built into Obama’s health care reform bill. These Medicare cuts are upwards now of $600 billion. So this number can only go up. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but I’m just repeating here what the State-Controlled Associated Press is saying. Retired couples may need $250,000 for health care expenses after they retire.
Okay. Let’s get right into this violence business. Every media organ that the White House controls is now on the same page, the same template, and that is Sarah Palin is inciting violence with some of her words, that I am inciting violence, that we are promoting violence, that it wouldn’t be happening if it weren’t for people like me and Sarah Palin and a whole network of New Media people. They want to talk about violence? All right, you mean violence like the Black Panthers, the New Black Panthers in Philadelphia at polling places? You want to talk about violence like the SEIU, which beat up a young black man with cancer in a wheelchair at a political rally last summer? You remember all those stories about Republican offices, Bush-Cheney offices being vandalized during the campaign? Did we get three days of stories about those? You probably don’t even remember those stories. I’ve got ’em, we’ll get to them here in just a second. You probably don’t remember them. It’s amazing to me how quickly — and don’t forget Sarah Palin hung in effigy, George W. Bush hung in effigy, assassination books and movies about George Bush.
The simple fact of the matter is, Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Hoyer, Mr. Clyburn, if you were to get out of town you would find out the American people are mad, and it doesn’t just confine itself to the Republican Party. People all over the country are losing their homes. They’re losing their jobs. They’re losing their hope for any significant improvement in the future. You fat cats are sitting around passing all this legislation, patting yourselves on the back, throwing parties, and going out to cheap bars. Stupak and a bunch of guys went to a bar ’til three in the morning on Sunday night until Monday morning after celebrating the passage of the bill in the House. You always accuse people of being out of touch. You have no clue, you members of Congress, you have no clue that the people of this country for the past year — let’s say six months, it took six months for people to figure out that your prescriptions to fix all this stuff were making it worse. So nobody has to incite any anger. Nobody has to drumbeat for anger because you’ve caused it. You’ve caused it with your arrogance, with your policies and with your legislation.
There is genuine anger. A lot of Americans, Mr. Hoyer, think you’re destroying the country, and you’re smiling while you go about it. And they don’t understand it. They’ve always thought people in Washington were looking out for them, were taking care of representing their interests and making sure stuff like this didn’t happen. But instead, they now think you’re causing it. They now think you’re to blame for it. I mean, what are people supposed to do, just sit around and pat themselves on the back and be happy ’cause Obama got his health care bill? Is that what we’re here to do is to celebrate our Dear Leader and take our comfort, satisfaction, and happiness from whatever he thinks his achievements are? Has it gotten to that point that that’s the measure of our happiness, how well our president’s doing in destroying the country? It’s amazing how quickly congressional members or ten of them, actually, almost all at once yesterday and with Steny Hoyer’s lead, with Clyburn standing right next to him, were able to make public the allegations of threats, all at once. Ten members.
I think they should release all the information, all of the tapes, whatever they have. See, no one supports threats or violence. But it’s the left that does that. It’s the left that does that in their protests and their marches. But if there are threats, let’s see them. Let’s see them all. Let’s hear them all. I don’t want to hear that you just feel threatened. For crying out loud, people feel a gazillion things each and every day. I’ll tell you what it is. These people know that what they have done is universally unpopular. They are trying to distract everybody’s attention and create sympathy for them by making up stories and lying about threats, death threats, when these people are the architects of how these kinds of threats and protest marches and violence work. I mean, we don’t have anybody on our side that tried to blow up the Pentagon. And certainly we don’t have anybody on our side who had a friend who tried to blow up the Pentagon who’s now president of the United States. We don’t have anybody on our side wiping out cops. Eric Cantor’s Virginia office was shot at last night. Eric Cantor is a Republican.
So the Democrats are saying, ‘We deplore the violence.’ The Republicans are saying, ‘We deplore the violence.’ The fact is this is not new, as you will hear when we go back just in recent history to recount a couple of stories for you about shots being fired at Bush-Cheney headquarters in various parts of the country. But if there are threats let’s see and hear about them, not just endless media reports saying they occurred. I’m curious to know who did what to whom. If it’s really happening out there I want to know, I really do. See, let me tell you the truth about this, and don’t doubt me. This is a strategery that was executed the moment the bill was signed. They know people hate this bill. They know they are governing against the will of the people. They know they have crammed something down our throats that we don’t want. They know, which makes what they’ve done even more reprehensible. So this strategy, executed the moment the bill was signed, it’s just too coincidental that Hoyer is ready with talking points, that ten cases are almost immediately sent to the FBI, and then when you read what the complaints are you find out it’s just a bunch of people who think something might happen.
There have been a couple phone calls to Stupak’s office. My gosh, folks, I’ve gotten more threatening phone calls on the air than these calls I’ve heard left on voice mail messages to these weenie, cowardly members of Congress. They are cowards from top to bottom. They’re cowards in representing us, they know that they have crammed something down our throats that we don’t want and now they’re acting like we are the ones who are somehow irrational or deranged, when it is they on whom the focus needs to be as to their behavior and their actions and their purpose and their motivation. We still do not know exactly what they’re talking about. Who threatened whom? And how? A gas line cut at the brother of some Virginia congressman’s house? And we assume this is a tea party activist that did it? Do we know who did that? Yet it’s reported endlessly. I know people who are active in politics who have played a public role in a number of things. Their cars have been vandalized, keyed, windows broken out.
The video of this supposed spitting incident involving Emanuel Cleaver, it now clearly depicts a guy hollering at him with his hands cupped around his mouth to focus his words and to make them louder in the noise to make sure Cleaver could hear what he’s saying. He wasn’t spitting at anybody. We have yet to hear or see any tape on the supposed use of the N-word or the F-word. And, by the way, Jesse Jackson Jr. videotaped the whole thing as he walked along. We’ve looked at pieces of video and seen that members of Congress, staff, and people are walking with the group of congressmen were videoing it themselves. Believe me, if they had, because they’ve got video of this, if they had video evidence that the N-word and the F-word were used, it would have been in the media by now. They don’t have it. I think this business of walking in front of these protesters was also a strategy to create this story so that John Lewis and Barney Frank and the others could say that they were insulted. It’s all part of a strategy because they know nobody is in favor of what they have done.
Why did Pelosi and her goofballs decide to march in the crowd on the way to voting for their bill? How provocative was that? That was an in-your-face, with that giant gavel. That’s an in-your-face, they were trying to create this circumstance and if it did or did not happen they were going to say it did. Meanwhile, in Virginia the Democrat Party is actually accusing the attorney general there, Ken Cuccinelli, of supporting segregation because his argument about state autonomy was the same argument the segregationists used in the fifties and sixties, which is a laughable claim. Now, when you’re calling people segregationists and racists because they disagree with you, is that the kind of civil debate Steny Hoyer is talking about? Every time we disagree with these people we have to hear how we’re racists, sexists, bigots, homophobes, and all the rest. Is that not hate speech, especially when it’s lies? The left is the architect, the author of hate speech. They wrote the book on it. They wrote the book on hateful behavior. They wrote the book on uncivil unrest. They wrote the book on blowing up bank buildings. They wrote the book on blowing up the Pentagon. They wrote the book on domestic terrorism. Take a look at an anarchist rally any time the WTO meets anywhere in this country.
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RUSH: Who is one of the biggest heroes of the American left and the American media? Is it not that wacko in Iraq who threw a shoe at George W. Bush? Remember that? Oh, they loved that guy! Oh, any kind of violence or civil disobedience aimed at President Bush was applauded and it amused the left. And, of course, what about calling the tea party people ‘teabaggers’? Do you know what a real teabagger is? Well, it’s not a pretty sex act. It’s a sex act that repulses a lot of people, and the word teabagger is being associated with American citizens who love their country. What are they supposed to do, just sit around and smile about it? On June 14th, 2008, Barack Obama, in Philadelphia: ‘If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun because from what I understand focus in Philly like a good brawl.’
‘They bring a knife, we bring a gun.’
It was Barack Obama who’s ordered his supporters to go out and ‘get in people’s faces.’ From September 3rd, 2009, Thousand Oaks, California: ‘A 65-year-old man had his finger bitten off Wednesday even at a health care rally in Thousand Oaks.’ It turns out that the person who bit off this protester’s fingers was a MoveOn.org person, a MoveOn.orger. The libs in Washington, whether in Congress or in the media, despise and hold in contempt the American people. This is how they view them. Tea partiers are ‘teabaggers.’ The tea partiers are reflective of the public’s attitude about what is going on. They detest the citizens of this country. They seek to control us as Dingell confessed yesterday. Listen to him again from a couple days ago on the radio in Detroit.
DINGELL: Paul W. (Smith), we’re not ready to be doing it, but let me remind you, this has been going on for years. We are bringing it to a halt. The harsh fact of the matter is when you’re going to pass legislation that will cover 300 American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.
RUSH: ‘To control the people.’ They hold us in contempt. This is how they view us. And, by the way, the way the liberals and Democrats are treating the public, why, it’s no wonder the nation’s frustrated and upset and angry. People don’t want their liberties diminished, folks. They don’t want their way of life legislated out of existence. They don’t want their hard-earned property stolen from them.
Another brief time-out. But I’m still not finished. I have barely even begun.
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RUSH: An interesting e-mail, this is a great point from a subscriber to RushLimbaugh.com. ‘When we have a terrorist attack, the Democrats always ask, ‘What did we do to provoke it? Why do they hate us?’ Have you heard, any of them, ask the same for something they’ve imposed on us? Have you heard the Democrats once ask, ‘Why are they mad at us? We need to understand their rage!’ We have to understand the rage of people who killed 3,000 Americans in terrorist incidents. We’re told, ‘We have to understand the people in this country, minorities and whoever else, unhappy with whatever. We gotta understand their rage. We have to expect it. We have to allow for it.’ Well, how come the anger that we feel, the Democrats aren’t interested in understanding? Why do they not ask, ‘Why are they so mad?” The answer is because they know.
Here’s another way of looking at this, folks. I think this is a huge sign of weakness. Liberals, remember, make everybody out to be victims, and then they run their compassion tricks to get legislation passed. This is a huge sign of weakness. They have to frame themselves as being offended victims, now. This is their total self-identity. They are making no effort to cover up or mask who they really are. The sole energizing power of liberal policies is to supposedly correct injustice and unfairness. That’s why they’re doing health reform after all! ‘It’s unfair. There’s no justice. We have to make it fair. We have to redistribute the wealth. We have to make it all equal,’ and since there is no offense (injustice, unfairness) and since they are not victim — in truth they are the victimizers; we are the victims of what they have done — they have to invent this narrative of violence against them for their own psychological well-being. If they aren’t victims they can’t live with this.
The bottom line is they are shaken. They are in a great, great state of weakness here. The-conservatives-as-violent narrative is the only way they can cope with what they’ve done here, because the real death threat is their legislation. We need to look at it that way and stop being defensive about this and turn it right around on them. Everything they have done has made us victims. We are victims of their legislation. Their health care legislation is the real death threat in this scenario. It’s a death threat against the country, as it was founded. It’s a death threat to our economy. It’s a death threat to what is the greatest health care system in the world. These people know what they’ve done, so they have to create this narrative to make themselves innocent victims so people feel sorry for them to divert people’s attention of how rotten this legislation is. It ain’t going to happen.
CBS News has a poll: 62% of the American people want the Republicans in Congress to continue challenging the health care reform bill. CBS News, State-Controlled Media: 62% want the Republicans to keep it up; 33% do not. The Democrats, the party of polls. That has to shake ’em up. Another story. This is from the Virginia Galax Gazette. It’s a local paper. October 28th of 2008: ‘Two people were arrested Monday afternoon after an altercation led to five Republican campaign workers being sprayed with Mace at their headquarters in Galax.’ These were McCain campaign workers, maced at their own headquarters, October of 2008. Remember that? Do you remember the media wringing their hands over that, being all upset over that? Of course not. The way the liberals and the Democrats are treating the public, it’s no wonder we’re frustrated and upset and angry.
People don’t want their liberties diminished. They don’t want their way of life legislated out of existence. They don’t want their hard-earned property stolen from them. The liberals and the Democrats, the media are abusing this nation and its people, and the people do not like it. Let me ask you again: When is the last time there was a conservative riot in this country? You can’t recall one. Yet we see left-wing anarchist riot about once a year regarding the IMF or whenever there’s a WTO meeting anywhere. We see the hate speech when the Marxist left and the Palestinians march in this country against Israel. We see the anti-war left in the streets with their comparisons of Bush to Hitler. We see them attacking our troops.
What about the whole Democrat Party campaign to lose the war in Iraq, to demoralize the troops, to accuse them of rape and murder and terrorism? John Kerry, Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, what was that if that wasn’t hate speech? These Democrats have to realize there are consequences for their own words and their own actions, and people simply do not like what they’re doing and saying. It has been building and building. But you don’t see this kind of behavior with at town hall protests, do you? You don’t see spitting. You don’t see vandalism. You don’t see bombs being thrown when the tea party people get together at any of their rallies. No. The liberals have to manufacture it. Or they have to find the one guy who has a stupid sign or the one guy who makes a stupid comment or leaves a stupid message on a voice machine.
But for the left this is common! For the left, this is expected — and, of course, it’s tolerated by Hoyer. The left gives tickets, members of Congress give tickets to Code Pink to come in and disrupt congressional hearings featuring Rumsfeld or the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Code Pink gets in because members of Congress give them passes, and it’s all tolerated. All this leftist anarchy is tolerated by Hoyer, by the Democrats and the media. No hand-wringing, no calls for civility whatsoever. On InstaPundit today, Glenn Reynolds has a rundown of a number of these stories. Oh, yeah, Jack Murtha! Jack Murtha calling the troops rapists and murderers at Haditha. I’m surprised it’s taken this long for some of this expression of anger to emerge. Most of this is words, which they don’t like to hear.
‘Protesters ransack Bush-Cheney headquarters in Orlando,’ October 5th, 2004. I don’t know the date of this, but rampaging union protesters in Florida, gunshots in Tennessee, a swastika in Madison. ‘If John Kerry wanted to look presidential and have a Sister Souljah moment, he should renounce all these things and say he doesn’t want their vote and urge restraint.’ Now, I’m fully aware that this whole hate speech-threat propaganda is completely bogus, media orchestrated, and hypocritical. But there is no denying that there are millions of Americans who are legitimately furious with their deliberately provocative, in-your-face Democrat congressmen and senators. What about the violence inflicted by abortions? That violence is celebrated as a constitutional right. We have a president who believes that a baby who survives an abortion shouldn’t be saved. I don’t know how you can characterize that other than pure, heartless violence.
And we’ve just had a health care bill signed that now will use the taxpayer money to pay for this atrocity. We have now signed into law legislation saying taxpayers will pay for children to be murdered in the womb, and people are surprised that there’s anger at that? Especially when they were betrayed and lied to and misled for a number of months, thinking there would be some principled pro-life Democrats to hold out against this atrocity, and they caved in the end? And we got a president signing a meaningless executive order yesterday. The effect of that is to cement the notion that abortions won’t continue, but everybody knows it’s just a phony piece of paper. There’s a certain amount of irony here. Part of the anger sparked by the process of jamming Obamacare down our throats is that abortionists are funded by this bill. That’s the killing of innocent life. Angry and frustrated political speech is not even comparable to an abortion, late term or otherwise.
The violence of taking an innocent life is now being paid for or will be by taxpayers, and we’re supposed to send Obama a thank-you Hallmark card and send one to Harry Reid and Pelosi? Yeah, we’ll head down to Hallmark and get our thank-you cards out. That’s it. We’re supposed to be happy. We’re supposed to bow down and be grateful. And again: How many of you know anybody in your close circle of friends who tried to blow up the Pentagon or a police station? So remember what this is all about. This is about changing the subject, which we’re not going to allow to happen. This is about making the Democrats appear as victims against an unruly mob. This is a huge sign of weakness. They have to frame themselves as offend victims. This is their total identity. They’re shaken. They are shaken. They know what they have done. And to keep their conscience free, they have to make us the enemy and the bad people, themselves, the victims, but remember the real death threat is their legislation. The real death threat is that abomination that President Obama signed Tuesday afternoon, or morning, whatever it was.
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RUSH: Okay, we’re back, it’s Rush Limbaugh and Open Line Friday on Thursday. We’ll go to the phones. You guys ready in there to hit the phones? Steven in St. Louis, great to have you on the-program, sir, he hung up. Ah, what a coward, he’s a liberal. He was going to say he’s been listening two weeks and he hadn’t heard me say one thing constructive. We try to put liberals first in line here. Well, never mind.
I have some other stories here. October 15th, 2008, do you remember that McCain-Palin rally, that lie, the media masters talked about how at a campaign Palin rally somebody shouted ‘kill him’ about Obama? Remember that? It turned out the only person who heard this was the reporter who reported it. Well, here’s a story that never made it out of the local media, from the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader: ‘Secret Service Says ‘Kill Him’ Allegation Unfounded.’ A member of the media made it up and then reported it. I could go all day on these stories. ‘Bomb Threat Forces Evacuation of DC Tea Party Planners,’ ABC News, September 11th, 2009. ‘On the eve of what organizers called A Big Old Tea Party in Washington, offices of Freedom Works were evacuated by DC Metro Police Friday afternoon after the conservative organization reported to authorities at 3:42 Eastern time it had received a bomb threat.’ Algore September 24, 2008: ‘Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore urged young people on Wednesday to engage in civil disobedience to stop the construction of coal plants without the ability to store carbon.’ I’m not going to waste your time all afternoon on these things. I could. You get the point.
Let’s go to Idaho. Greg, we’ll take you since the guy in St. Louis chickened out. Great to have you on the program. Hello.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. I appreciate your taking my call. Two quick points. The first one, I have never heard of the term tea bagger until it was brought up by the left. I didn’t even know what it meant. And I bet there’s a whole bunch of people out there, a whole bunch of conservatives and tea party members who have never heard the term before.
RUSH: I didn’t know what it was until somebody explained it to me.
CALLER: No. What does that say about the left who brought up that term?
RUSH: Well, you’ve got members of Congress accusing the tea party people of being tea baggers, it’s being done on purpose.
CALLER: Yes. The other thing is I smell something really fishy by these shouts and supposed spitting and death threats.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: Well, not the shouting, but the supposed death threats, I smell something fishy. Why would the members of Congress walk out there in the middle of nowhere, parade around, when they haven’t done stuff like that before?
RUSH: Well, that’s a point that I raised moments ago, that this was done precisely to create the situation. The reason that Jesse Jackson Jr. was following his dad and these other people videotaping the whole thing was that he was hoping something would happen. Nothing did, or I’m sure he would have released the video. But you do have to ask yourselves, and you have to understand now, the liberal Democrats in Congress and the media, wherever you find ’em, they look at a tea party rally outside the Capitol as a genuine riot. They look at any opposition to them as a riot. They wanted to provoke an incident. They went out in what they think is the belly of the beast. They wanted to provoke an incident and when it didn’t happen, they made it up. This strategy was hatched right along with the signing of the bill. Coincidental, isn’t it that automatically yesterday, all at once, ten Democrats say that they’re being threatened?
Lisa, Annapolis, Maryland, you’re on the Rush Limbaugh program. Hello.
CALLER: Hi. Hi, Rush. Listen, I don’t know what tea party Barney Frank went to on Saturday, but my partner and I, I’m a stay at home gay mom, and my partner and I went to the tea party on Saturday, and people were cordial to us, they treated us with respect. At times we held hands. It’s just beyond me what the Democrats are saying about the tea party members because there were all walks of life there.
RUSH: Don’t let it be beyond you. Please understand it for what it really is, it’s a lie, it’s made up. They know they have done something reprehensible. They don’t want a guilty conscience about it so they have to turn all this stuff around and make themselves innocent victims of an unruly mob.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: We’re the peasants with the pitchforks because the real death threat is their legislation. They’re shaken. They know full well that they have aroused a majority of the people in this country with their lawless bill, with their lawless attempt to pass it and so forth. This is very serious stuff. So, please, understand it. It’s right there in front of you to be understood.
CALLER: Yes. Yes. And I just want to say thank you for all you do. I’ve listened to you for about 20 years, I’m a longtime listener, and really appreciate you out there in the trenches.
RUSH: Thank you very much. I appreciate that. That’s Lisa in Annapolis. We have a sound bite roster filled with Democrats and media people saying horrible things about me and Sarah Palin and other Republicans for inciting all of this violence, all these death threats. And we’ll play some of them, play your phone calls, or take your phone calls, and also continue to update you on what people continue to learn in this health care bill that makes it a stinker. We will not be distracted. That’s what they seek, and it shall not work here.