RUSH: Here is David in Crawfordsville, Indiana. Nice to have you on the program. Hi.
CALLER: Mega-Hoosier dittos, Rush.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: I am not 65 yet, but my wife and my parents and other relatives that I have are all over 65, and I’m scared to death that if we don’t continue the pressure and continue speaking the truth to power that their health and their lives are going to be at stake and I just wanted to say that those people who are receiving wounds and becoming injured for daring to speak the truth to power, those people are just as much American heroes as if they received those wounds fighting in Ramadi or Baghdad or Kabul.
RUSH: That is an interesting take on this. I think I kind of like that. They are not facing enemy fire, but they also are not trained to. These people are just average citizens, many of them elderly. They’re showing up, being beat up or intimidated, shoved by union thugs — and they are doing it in the name of freedom and liberty.
CALLER: And the more the forces that are in favor of this genocidal bill — this generational genocide that they are trying to foist on us — those people that are fighting against it are American heroes right down the line.
RUSH: You know, let me ask you. You said you are not 65 yet, or you are?
CALLER: I am not 65. My wife is and my parents are and I have other relatives who are, including an aunt who’s over the age of 100.
RUSH: Wow. You know, I’m getting a sense that more and more elderly citizens catching on to what’s happening here, and if Obama loses them… You know, they are the traditional Democrat voters because they’ve bought the notion that people want to take away their Social Security. And I’ll tell you what, at a town meeting in Houston last night in Sugar Land, Texas, doctors showed up. When that starts happening en masse, it’s just going to compound all of this. David, I appreciate your comments. I hadn’t looked at it that way, but you’re damn right. You’re damn right. And these people are not cowed. You know, they are revving up and they are going back. They are madder than ever to be pushed around like this.
Jim in Grand Junction, Colorado. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Many Americans that are against this administration’s so-called health bill are doing so out of self-defense regarding life-and-death medical care. Your previous caller nearly stole my thunder. The parents or the very young who will be restricted in this bill, children of the elderly who will be restricted and those in between — including many middle agers like me who will be old one day — are going to start seeing what the Logan’s Run movie really meant. They are also starting… One thing that is significant and got me a little concerned is many people are saying to the protected media and politically protected elite, ‘You, too, have friends and family and coworkers, and they’re not protected.’ Comedian Ron White, who does that redneck comedian thing, says he had a pitch which I’ll paraphrase that, concerning Texas law and the death penalty. He says, ‘If you kill in Texas, we will kill you back.’ This thing can get real serious.
RUSH: I think it already has.
CALLER: But, I mean, there are people across the country who… If my parents were alive today and they were not treated because of something like this, I assure you I would be thinking of many different options. This is just Nazism, and anybody who ever saw the movie Logan’s Run knows right what I’m talking about. (laughing)
RUSH: Did you see Logan’s Run, Snerdley? Did you see Logan’s Run?
CALLER: He’s probably too young!
RUSH: No, he’s not too young. He just is… He watches different things.
CALLER: But, you know, the media elite and these very well protected politically elite — and I’m not talking about the president. I’m talking about the reps and senators, key senators and all of this. You know, they’re opening their friends and family and coworkers up to all kinds of retaliation to this stuff.
RUSH: Well, same thing with late-night comedians in the entertainment world. They have got family, too.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: You know, the more this spreads, there is a chance that… Well, I read a piece on Andrew Breitbart’s Big Hollywood website the other day, a guy who used to be a writer for late-night comedy show who has been monitoring the comedy shows. Some of these late-night comedy shows are starting to turn on Obama. Jon Stewart, you know. And he thought it was important that Jon Stewart’s turning or starting to because Jon Stewart in the 18-24 demographic and 18-34 is the most respected TV newsman. It’s a comedy show. They asked the question, somebody did, after Walter ‘Klondike’ passed away. So a lot of people are going to be affected by this and it’s going to be much, much harder just to become a propagandist for Obama when it affects you personally as well.
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RUSH: Here’s Pat in Pasadena, Texas. It’s great to have you on the program. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. It’s great to talk to you. I have a pet theory that the government has a vested interest in denying health care to seniors and encouraging their demise because as they die, the government has a potential to reap a huge windfall from the death tax.
RUSH: Well, that’s going to happen anyway. I mean, we all are going to die at some point. I think something more nefarious, Pat, is having senior citizens die earlier than normal by denying them lifesaving health care coverage also will allow them to ‘reform’ Social Security.
CALLER: That’s true.
RUSH: By not paying it. I mean, you don’t pay it to people who died. Sometimes you do pay survivors under some versions of the program. But even before you get to that, it’s none of Barack Obama’s business who lives and who dies in this country — and it’s none of Nancy Pelosi’s business, and it’s none of Henry Waxman’s business. It’s none of Barney Frank’s business. It’s none of Harry Reid’s business who lives and dies. They want to make it their business by being the ones paying for it. They want to make it their business by being the ones who are charged with the responsibility of ‘controlling costs.’ They want to make as much of your life their business as possible. It’s not just the elderly they are focused on. They are going to fund abortions as well as part of the health care plan. They are going to deny certain coverage to people who are not, by virtue of age, close to death, but if they’ve got diseases.
Suppose they come up with… They have been talking a fat tax or some way of dealing with obesity. Suppose that you have lived a lifestyle they don’t approve of that in their minds has increased your health risk and they don’t want to pay for it or they want to charge you additional through the roof and so forth. This is the kind of thing they want. These are kind of statists that want to control every aspect of people’s lives, and they want to certainly not have to spend money on people who have reached a certain age, just to put it bluntly, where it’s not worth it in their mind. It’s not worth the investment to keep you alive. This was not my comparison. I forget who made this. I think it was somebody at the AmericanThinker.com, but you think if you’re 76 years old and diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor, you’re going to get the coverage Ted Kennedy got and is getting?
Ted Kennedy has a program, a health care program in the Senate that he can choose from. He’s also, of course, independently wealthy. So the cost is not a problem with him. You think if you’re 76 and you don’t have anything like Kennedy wealth and you come down with a brain tumor like he had that you’re going to get all the health care that he got? It ain’t gonna happen, folks, because the government’s going to say so. That’s the rub. It’s none of their business. It’s none of their business. To be in charge of who lives and dies based on money? And maybe they can make it other characteristics and factors as well. Who knows? We’re talking about authoritarian imperialists. This health care bill, if it ever passes in this present form, gives them unlimited power to regulate lifestyles and behavior, in every way possible. Things that have nothing to do with health care, they can say that they do and regulate them.
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RUSH: Arthur in Lake Elsinore, California. Nice to have you, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Yes. You are a hard man to get hold of, sir.
RUSH: Well, I’m glad you made the effort.
CALLER: I tried. I lost count of how many times I’ve tried and all I got was a buzz-buzz. (chuckling) Busy, busy, busy.
RUSH: Well, but here you are.
CALLER: Now, my concern is… I’m not really sure which is worse, either being out of a job or retired and elderly. (chuckling) I mean, which is worse nowadays? Because either way you’re in a bad spot with that, with the system they want to put in.
RUSH: Mmm-hmm.
CALLER: You know, right now I’m in pretty good health, you know. I mean, no complaints. The worst I’ve had is a headache or a toenail removed and no big deal. But if something drastic happens, I don’t know how it would be. You know, under this plan I don’t know. I’m afraid my daughter wouldn’t be able to handle it.
RUSH: Probably not, but you wouldn’t have any say-so over it. The government would.
CALLER: Well, see, I have this — I don’t know if you’re familiar with the SCAN out here in California? It’s an insurance coverage.
RUSH: Scam or scan?
CALLER: SCAN.
RUSH: SCAN. I’m not familiar with what you’re talking about, either.
CALLER: Well, it’s an insurance company out here in California. I also have a VA card. But I’m not sure if that would even be covered, if they would even cover it if they took it over because they would probably limit what it would do.
RUSH: That’s the whole point. Everybody’s going to be limited in what they get. There’s going to be rationed health care! Look, you can’t… I’m sorry to sound like a broken record. I want to get off the notion that this is about health care. If it works — if it gets you riled up when you find out that at your end of life, this government’s going to throw you out to pasture, if that works to keep you fired up — that’s good. But this is about so much more than that. This is why I think it’s important that the elderly people, seasoned citizens understand what’s going on. These have been traditional Democrat voters and if you-all get fully informed here as to what these people have planned for you, there’s no way you should put up with it. It’s none of their business what kind of health care you get and when and under what circumstances. It’s just not Barack Obama’s business.
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RUSH: Houston, Texas, Tom, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello, sir.
CALLER: Yes, Rush, thank you.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: If you would, could I say that I love my wife, Paula?
RUSH: Sure.
CALLER: Thanks. The reason I was calling is that my wife is 65 and we went to Gene Green’s town hall meeting the other night and it was quite different than last night when we went to John Culberson’s meeting. John Culberson’s was very positive and uplifting. Gene Green’s was in a small room with police and a lot of mad people.
RUSH: Which one’s the Republican; which one’s the Democrat?
CALLER: John Culberson’s a Republican and Gene Green is the Democrat.
RUSH: All right.
CALLER: The observation I made to John Culberson last night was that the problems that we have with the health care and the insurance is I think caused by the Ted Kennedy HMO legislation from over a decade ago, and the chickens are coming home to roost.
RUSH: That’s certainly a factor. It’s hard to nail down one thing, but Ted Kennedy did invent the HMOs. It was longer than ten years ago.
CALLER: It was in the late Eighties.
RUSH: He invented the HMOs and now he is running around demonizing them. He’s been doing it for two years or longer; demonizing the HMOs as a bunch of profit-thirsty, mean-spirited, don’t-care-about-patients organizations — and he invented them.
CALLER: Well, Rush, we need to spread the word so that people understand exactly what we’re facing is that the intervention from the liberal Congress has now caused the problems and now they want to take it over and mess it up for good.
RUSH: You know, this is the thing. The people that create the problem, then come along and act like, ‘Who did this?’ and they start blaming Big this and Big that while they claim they’re just innocent bystanders trying to protect us — and then they come along, say, ‘We’re going to fix this for you. That’s just a shame.’ Well, what can we learn from what’s happened today, Mr. Snerdley? What did we learn today? We have learned that there is a building percolating, effervescing, boiling-over passion and emotion for liberty and freedom. People do not want a bunch of inexperienced little ninny socialist statists running around controlling their lives. We have learned that the bloom is largely off the Obama rose, and we have also discovered, ladies and gentlemen, that… (interruption) Well, Snerdley wants me to say, ‘Rush rules.’ But bottom line is we may be in the minority, but we’re not anywhere near powerless.