RUSH: Once they start, they never stop, and they are never happy no matter what they get. I’m talking about the American left. First Mayor Doomberg comes out… well, what was first? Was it trans fats first? Was it salt first? Salt, New York City. Well, yeah, but Doomberg didn’t do the smoking, did he? Was Doomberg the guy that led the smoking ban? Oh, that’s right, that’s right, ’cause Rudy smokes cigars. Rudy wouldn’t do that. Okay, so Doomberg is taking the fun out of life in Fun City, in New York City.

So it started with smoking, then trans fats, then salt, and then large sweetened soft drinks, and now this. “The board hand-picked by Mayor Michael Bloomberg that must approve his ban of selling large sugar-filled drinks at restaurants might be looking at other targets.

The New York City Board of Health showed support for limiting sizes of sugary drinks at a Tuesday meeting in Queens. They agreed to start the process to formalize the large-drink ban by agreeing to start a six-week public comment period.” And then, after getting the ball rolling on that, “Some of the members of board said they should be considering other limits on high-calorie foods.

“One member, Bruce Vladeck, thinks limiting the sizes for movie theater popcorn should be considered. ‘The popcorn isn’t a whole lot better than the soda,’ Vladeck said. Another board member thinks milk drinks should fall under the size limits. ‘There are certainly milkshakes and milk-coffee beverages that have monstrous amounts of calories,’ said board member Dr. Joel Forman.” They’ve already eliminated coconut oil as the oil you can use to pop popcorn, and it’s one of the healthiest oils out there and it’s what always made the movie theater smell like the movie theater. No matter what you pop popcorn in, if it’s not coconut oil, it doesn’t smell like a movie theater. I don’t care, Crisco, Wesson, Mazola, nothing is like coconut oil. And there’s another reason that coconut oil was used by concessionaires, and that is it holds the popcorn much longer.

I remember when I worked at the Kansas City Royals, the concessionaire at the time was an outfit named Volume Services. I don’t know if they’re still around. They use Aramark now, and that might be the new name. Anyway, Volume Services, and part of my job was to go down and get to know these people. Their operation was underneath the parking lot between Royals Stadium, Kauffman Stadium now, and Arrowhead Stadium. I went down there and the minute I got down to this cave, all I smelled was the popcorn. I said, “Oh, my gosh, this is my opportunity. I’m gonna go get some coconut oil from these guys.” So I met the head honcho, and I went down there, and he had vats and vats and vats of the coconut oil. I said, “Gee, can you give me some of this stuff?”

“Oh, yeah, yeah, how much?”

I said, “Where do you get it?”

“Well, we can only get this through a private service. You can’t get it publicly. It’s not available for consumers.”

I said, “Why not?”

I forget what he said. But he said, “The reason we use it is not just because of the smell and taste; it holds the popcorn. We can pop popcorn and two weeks later, as long as we heat it up, it’ll taste just like it came out of the popper.” Well, I’ve tested that, and that’s true. I now have three or four coconut oil popcorn machines throughout my homestead, and I’ve tested it. Popped the stuff up, and put it in Ziploc bags, whatever you don’t use, heat it up a week later and it’s fresh as it can be. No other oil does that, so it’s economical as well.

Well, the Center for Science and Public Interest took care of that. They got that banned on the basis it will clog your arteries and cause strokes, heart attacks, death, and all that. Now they’re actually going to try to ban certain sizes of popcorn in movie theaters. And milk drinks. Where does this stuff stop? Now, we sit here and we laugh at it, but it doesn’t stop with these people. They’re not content to limit themselves. They have to limit everybody else. They have to make sure everybody else follows the same dictates. And it’s none of their business.

Now, Doomberg was asked about this. CBS This Morning, Charlie Rose never got more publicity than he gets on this show. We are probably are making Charlie Rose’s career. Nobody watches that show, but since I put a ban on MSNBC, the only place we can go to get liberal sound bites is CBS, NBC, or CNN. And, no, I’m not gonna lift the ban on MSNBC. Can I tell you something? I took MSNBC off the top monitor here a month ago. It was a slow, creeping thing. It wasn’t an instant, massive realization. It was just one day I realized I wasn’t constantly running around ticked off, thinking I had to react to something, respond to something, listen to something asinine, insane, stupid, which is all there is on MSNBC.

My life, my professional life has been enhanced profoundly by not having that network on and not listening to the stupid sound bites that come out of the people that work there. That’s a tradeoff. Now we have to play Charlie Rose sound bites and Anderson Cooper sound bites, but life is made of sacrifices. And this one has been one of those that turned out to actually not be a sacrifice, but a positive. So, anyway, Doomberg is talking to Charlie Rose today. And Charlie Rose said, “You talk about education, crime, and gun control, but you attract enormous attention for what you’re trying to do in health. There was smoking. There was trans fat. Now there’s sugar and sugary drinks.” And he doesn’t mention it, but popcorn and milk products are next. “What is it? What is it that drives you to impose this stuff on people?”

BLOOMBERG: If government’s purpose isn’t to improve the health and longevity of its citizens, I don’t know what its purpose is. We certainly have an obligation to tell them what’s in the best science and best medicine says is in their interests.

RUSH: How do we know if that’s true? One of the things we’ve learned over the course of the last 20 years is what science tells us is bogus. How many scientific theories — and I’m not even counting global warming in this — how many scientific theories have we heard over the years that turn out not to be true? I mean I ought to keep a list of them, because it’s longer than anybody can remember. But science has been politicized, and it’s dominated by people on the left, and Doomberg’s a leftist, and so whatever they say is unchallengeable. It’s always true.

Okay, so he says, if government’s purpose isn’t to improve the health and longevity of its citizens, I don’t know what its purpose is. We certainly have an obligation to tell them what’s — okay, tell us. Tell us. But don’t impose on us. If you want to tell us that large sugary drinks are dangerous, let us make the decision. If you want to tell us that big vats of popcorn you think are unhealthy, fine, let us make the decision. Put a label on it if you want to. You know, put a picture of a clogged artery on the popcorn bowl. We don’t care. Just let us buy it if we want it.

Folks, this is classic liberalism. This is classic statism. This is right in front of our eyes, the vast, rapid erosion of personal liberty and freedom. Now, you might think it’s a minor thing, but these things never stop. Once they start, they never are satisfied. No improvement, no ban, no progress, as far as they define it, is ever enough. Where does this stop? It doesn’t. That’s the point, it doesn’t stop. These people have to be limited in their access to power. It is none of their business.

Go ahead. Do all the science you want, do all the research, and then tell us — and let us make the decision. But they can’t do that because, as far as they’re concerned, we don’t have what it takes. We’re not smart enough. We’re not educated enough. We’re not bright enough to know what’s good for us and what’s bad for us. It is not just with popcorn and Coke and cigarettes and all the other things. No, no, no. It everything.

It’s health care. It’s buying a house. It’s getting into college. It’s paying for college. We don’t know diddly-squat. They want to run and control everything, and who set them up as the arbiters? They did, pure and simple. So Charlie Rose said, “Well, sugar seems to have gotten bigger attention. You talk about the size of the drink and the big newspaper pictures of you as a nanny.”

BLOOMBERG: But that’s just because it’s the story of the week. That’ll get blended into lots of other things. The average person today is much heavier than they were. Uh, this is… Obesity is becoming the single-biggest health problem in America and will kill more people than smoking in a few years.

RUSH: They just throw this stuff out. No backup. No proof for it. But so what? We’re all going to die. See, this is where health care comes in, because what he’s not saying is, “We’re gonna be paying for your health care and we’re gonna have to limit how much we pay for you, so you’re gonna have a role. You’re gonna be told what you can and can’t eat, and how much of what you can’t eat you can eat. Otherwise, it’s gonna put cost pressures on health care.”

They were wrong about salt, by the way.

Was it just last week or two weeks ago we had that big story? All of these stories about salt and high blood pressure turn out to be wrong. “Mr. Limbaugh, why do you automatically accept that story and then simply refuse 20,000 years of previous history?” That’s Mr. New Castrati asking me a question. Mr. New Castrati, that’s not the point. The point is, for 20,000 years “Salt = High Blood Pressure.” Last week or two weeks ago, the story says: No, it doesn’t. What are we to believe? The point is, they don’t know. And yet here we are making policy on this. You’ve got…

Doomberg has far more important things to do than this kind of stuff, but this is… It’s all about control. It’s all about… (sigh) I don’t know. I grow weary. It’s not the only thing. Here’s National Review today: “By proposing a ban on large sodas in New York City, Mayor Bloomberg made himself a competitive candidate for Chairman of the Anti-Fun Committee. But the FDA just might have him beat: They’ve moved to regulate cigars as they already do cigarettes.” We knew this was coming.

Just a second. My cigar happens to have gone out. (torch igniting) So I, El Rushbo, am gonna torch it up here. And I’m gonna puff on this baby while I tell you what the details of this story are. (puffing) All right. “Representative Bill Posey (R., Fla.) has introduced legislation, currently before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, to block the FDA’s effort.” So far, so good. He’s got “203 co-sponsors in the House and nine in the Senate, including Bill Nelson (R., Fla.), who has introduced a version in the [Senate].”

What they want to do is regulate cigars identically to the way they regulate cigarettes: Warnings, bans, can’t smoke them anywhere, can’t touch them. This FDA rule would prevent people from going into a tobacco store and actually touching the merchandise! Every day, folks. When is this gonna end? It’s not minor; it’s not insignificant. Out of context and by itself, it’s laughable. It’s funny. But you throw it all in the mix with who these people are and what they’re trying to do, and what you end up with is a Barack Obama and his administration.

And these people represent 30% of the thinking in this country. They are not the majority. And even if they were, it wouldn’t entitle them to impose every scientific belief they hold on the rest of us. Just because they believe it, doesn’t mean we have to. Just because they believe something doesn’t mean we must be subject to their mandates on these things. Not in the United States of America.