RUSH: You see this? “Boko Haram Kidnaps More Women,” UK Guardian. I tell you, these are some brave guys. You challenge that hashtag, and you’ve got some gonads, I’m telling you. These guys apparently are fearless. That hashtag, I mean, that’s big. You throw that hashtag, #BringBackOurGirls, out there and that says something.
And these guys are just (raspberry) us! I mean, they’re just, “(Raspberry!) you and your hashtag.” Suspected Boko Haram gunmen have reportedly kidnapped 20 women from a nomadic settlement in northeast Nigeria near the town of Chibok, where the Islamic militants abducted more than 300 schoolgirls and young women on April 15,” most of whom are still missing despite the power of the Twitter hashtag, #BringBackOurGirls.
“Alhaji Tar a member of the vigilante groups set up to resist Boko Haram’s attacks, said the men arrived at noon Thursday in the Garkin Fulani settlement and forced the women to enter their vehicles at gunpoint.” Hundreds of people flashed the hashtag at them, and it didn’t stop them. It was something to see. A lot of local residents had that hashtag on piece of paper. Here comes Boko Haram with weapons and guns kidnapping women, and these people are holding up signs with a hashtag, and Boko Haram didn’t stop!
Can you believe it?
What brave guys!
I’ll tell you what, you flout that hashtag and you’re gonna have Obama to deal with just like Bashar Assad did, or… Well, whatever. “News of the latest kidnapping came as the people of Maiduguri buried more than 100 bodies almost a week after a Boko Haram attack. Local leaders said many more victims of the attacks had yet to be found.” Now these are women. These are not little girls. The 300 original kidnap victims were girls. These are women. These Boko Haram thugs are now totally out of control. So we need a new hashtag now. We had #BringBackOurGirls. Now it’s time for #BringBackOurWomen.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Pottsville, Pennsylvania. James, you’re first today. It’s great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hello, Rush Limbaugh. I got a question. Do you have kids?

RUSH: Do I have kids? I have nieces and nephews.

CALLER: Okay. Now, what if —

RUSH: Now, wait a second. Is your name James?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: It is. Okay.

CALLER: What if something happened to one of your nieces or nephews and you wanted to bring them back home. Wouldn’t you want social media to help you bring them back?

RUSH: Uhhh, well, I actually wouldn’t expect social media to really succeed in bringing them back. If it makes you feel better to use social media to alert people that the kids are gone or whatever, then that’s fine, but thinking that it’s going to get them returned, I would not fall into that trap myself, but —

CALLER: I’m not saying that it’s a trap. I’m saying with all the technology today, social media would be the best way to bring back your loved one if they’re kidnapped or if they’re missing, and —

RUSH: Has this worked before?

CALLER: — wouldn’t you want the help?

RUSH: James, look, I realize I’m getting old and maybe missing out on something. Can you tell me where such a hashtag has resulted in the return of a kidnapped child?

CALLER: I can’t tell you necessarily how social media helped with bringing back a kidnapped child, but I can tell you when the Chilean minors were stuck in the mine, social media did help to bring them out of that mine.

RUSH: Really? So if it weren’t for social media, there would have been no attempt to rescue the miners kidnapped by the mine?

CALLER: Can you say that again?

RUSH: Okay, so you had the miners.

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: They’re in there doing their job and the mine decides to kidnap ’em. Okay, they’re gone. They’re lost. They’re in the mine. They’ve been kidnapped by the mine. All of a sudden social media pops up, and that is why they were rescued?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: Without social media they would have been just left in there to die?

CALLER: Without social media it’s a possibility they could have.

RUSH: Really? So the people —

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: — in charge of rescuing the miners, if there hadn’t been #BringBackOurMiners hashtags or whatever, they would have just left them in there to die?

CALLER: I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is that social media today does help and the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls is necessary because it’s not illegal immigrants. It’s daughters of African women, and they should be treated as human beings.

RUSH: Well, the hashtag is not gonna change the way they’re being treated. The hashtag doesn’t know whether they’re human beings. The hashtag doesn’t know whether they’re being kidnapped or illegal or not. The hashtag, like I say, if you want to engage in that kind of social media because you feel better after doing it, that’s great, that’s wonderful, but it isn’t gonna get anybody back.

CALLER: Okay. But I do want to tell you something about — there’s breaking news going on right now. There’s a shooting going on in a high school in Oregon —

RUSH: I’m watching it right now. I’m actually seeing that. I’m waiting for the hashtag.

CALLER: Okay. If you’re watching the news coverage and you’ve seen these kids tweeting their parents that they’re okay, that they’re safe, that they’re alive, that brings a great comfort to them. And if you’re trying to tell those parents that their kids tweeting them isn’t gonna do anything.

RUSH: I’m not saying that at all. You keep changing the circumstances here. I’m not saying the kids tweeting their parents that they’re okay is not good or irrelevant. I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying if a gunman held those kids hostage you could have 50 million hashtags and it wouldn’t change anything. The only thing that’s gonna change anything is when somebody else goes in and shoots the gunman with another gun. And until you can arm a hashtag and put a trigger on it and a bullet in it, it isn’t gonna matter.

CALLER: Okay, now speaking about arming and pulling triggers. This lone gun nut, I don’t know if this person has mental problems. I don’t know if this person —

RUSH: I can believe you wouldn’t know that. That’s true.

CALLER: But don’t you think it’s time that we, the people in the United States, stop selling guns to certain people?

RUSH: What kind of people?

CALLER: Like people that have severe mental problems. People that don’t know what they’re doing when they have a gun.

RUSH: How are you going to determine that?

CALLER: There are background checks, but guess what? Congress — the House — the Republicans keep shooting it down —

RUSH: Okay. See, folks, I’m sure many of you were saying, “What are you doing here, Rush?” If you stick with it long enough you find out what’s really going on here. So it’s the Republicans’ fault that wackos end up with guns.

CALLER: I’m not saying it’s not just the Republicans fault —

RUSH: You just did.

CALLER: Rush, it’s not just the Republicans’ fault that some people have guns. I know Democrats, and some Democrats do vote for gun rights as well. I don’t know why they’re Democrat. They shouldn’t be, but they vote for gun rights as well, and I respect that they vote for gun rights, but some politicians don’t understand that —

RUSH: I know, but you do. See, you do. So we need to put you in charge of determining who is qualified to have a gun and who isn’t, because you obviously would be able to tell who should have one and who shouldn’t.

CALLER: I’m not saying you need to put me in charge of determining who or who shouldn’t have —

RUSH: No, I’m saying that. You think that we need to have better background checks, and you need to —

CALLER: Yes, we do.

RUSH: — have somebody that we can somehow stop these people from doing what they’re doing by preventing them from getting the gun. Okay, well, how are we gonna identify them? You said they’re wackos. How are we gonna identify them as wackos? Do you realize you cannot accuse somebody of being mentally insane? That’s discrimination. You can’t accuse somebody of being anything. It’s discriminating against them. You’re being unfair to them. You’re unequal and all that.

CALLER: No, I’m not being unequal. I’m just a concerned United States citizen about the public safety of my fellow people —

RUSH: Why? I thought the hashtags and social media fixed all of this?

CALLER: I believe it can.

RUSH: Right. Okay. Look, James, thanks for the call. I appreciate it. What were we talking about yesterday? The low-information voter and how they don’t know who they are.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Let me explain this hashtag phenomena to you in another way. Our last caller really believes that hashtags are a productive way of dealing with social unrest or any other kind of problem, despite the fact they accomplish nothing. Nothing toward the real objective. Now, the hashtag can make you feel better and make you think you’re doing something.

It can show others that you care — and of course, in our touchy-feely society, that counts for almost everything now. You don’t have to do anything beyond care. I mean, that’s the definition of a great liberal. It’s the easiest, most gutless choice in the world you can make. To be a liberal, you just have to say you care. Bam! That’s it. Actually doing something about something?

No, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no.

The hashtag will do it!

You remember the death and subsequent funeral and funeral procession for Princess Diana? You remember how the media and a lot of people were stunned at the tens of thousands of people who showed up along the funeral procession route and the tens of thousands of people who put flowers at various spots? And our social analysts on American TV said, “This is a sign of just how important to people Princess Diana was.”

Now in my usual curmudgeon self, quickly rejected that as not possible. Not enough people knew Princess Diana to be personally impacted by her life or death. But in the terms of celebrity pop culture, journalism, well, now, that’s an entirely different thing. And what was happening? What was happening was a huge news story: The death of Princess Di and how it happened.

Did she really love Dodi, and were her last words to Dodi about Dodi, or was she cursing the last meal she had, scrambled eggs at the Ritz? Nobody knows. This was what occupied people. They wanted to be part of the story. There was no social media at the time. There was no way to tell everybody in a mass way how you cared. There was no way to make yourself part of something that had captured the world.

So the closest thing you could do is go drop some flowers along the route and then stand there while the hearse and other parts of the motorcade went by. It was just people wanting to be part of the story. Well, today Twitter allows that from your basement with a hashtag.

It allows you to be part of the story. It makes you think you matter. It makes you think you’re doing something. The fact that you aren’t is irrelevant. The fact that you think you are doing something is all that counts. There’s a political party that’s really good at appealing to these people, and you all know which one it is.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Jennifer in Las Vegas. You’re next. It’s great to have you. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you?

RUSH: Fine. And let me tell you I’d much rather talk to you people than listen to sound bites of Hillary Clinton, and that’s why I went to the phones. But we’re gonna do Hillary in the next hour, so we all have to gut it up now and then. Jennifer, thanks for calling. How are you?

CALLER: I’m fantastic. Thank you. I was on my way to work and heard your caller talking about the fact that they need to check people who have guns. They need to do better background checks and verify whether or not they have mental illness. I just have to say, they already have those laws in place. Several years ago I was going through a divorce, and my ex-husband decided he needed to get a gun, ’cause he thought I was dangerous, and he was definitely experiencing some deep depression, and he still got a gun. So there are ways around it. He had a friend buy the gun for him, and that’s how he got around it.

RUSH: Now, wait. You knew he was deeply depressed, but was it obvious to people?

CALLER: Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, in fact —

RUSH: You know, I’ll tell you what. We owe the ACLU. They’re the ones who are preventing all of us from digging deep to find out just how disturbed people might be. That’s considered discrimination and unfairness and all that. So the ACLU is largely responsible for our inability to identify people who might pose a problem with a background check. We’re just not allowed to notice that. We’re not allowed to act on it if we do notice it.

CALLER: Well, that’s true. But it was apparent to everybody, and because it made me so uncomfortable, I went to investigate whether I should get a gun, and they have a questionnaire. “Are you experiencing depression?” And he was under treatment by a psychiatrist for his depression, and he can still get the gun.

RUSH: Sure. As long as you’re honest. You got 10 seconds. Did you get a gun?

CALLER: Not until the last couple of years.

RUSH: But did you?

CALLER: Yes, I did eventually.

RUSH: Okay. You’re safe. That’s all you need to know.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: The second caller today, the woman named James who was touting hashtags as the solution to kidnapped kids and gunmen who had taken over schools and so forth. Hashtags as the reason miners are rescued. She also said — and I’ve got a lot of e-mail reaction to this, which is why I want to spend just a few short seconds on this. She said there need to be laws. There need to be laws about denying people who are crazy the right to get a gun. And of course we have such laws. We’ve got more laws in this country than people can keep track of.

There is a federal law, everything she complained about is already against the law. The federal law Section 922(d) of the penal code, and there are a slew of similar laws throughout the states.

“It shall be unlawful for any person to sell or otherwise dispose of any firearm or ammunition to any person knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that such person – (1) is under indictment for, or has been convicted in any court of, a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year; (2) is a fugitive from justice; (3) is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance (as defined in section 102 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 802)); (4) has been adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to any mental institution.”

I mean, it goes on and on and on. And in fact, Georgia has a law, licenses will not be issued to any person who’s been hospitalized as an inpatient in any mental hospital or alcohol or drug treatment center. Hawaii, no person shall own, possess, or control any firearm or ammo if the person is or has been diagnosed as having significant behavioral, emotional, or mental disorder as defined by yada. Texas has one of the longest lists of mental illnesses that prevent you from legally purchasing a gun. And yet that woman had no idea. Not surprising.

I don’t know. I can’t tell you how useful that call was. Low-information voter, unaware of it totally. Totally caught up in emotion and caring as substance. I mean, that call was quite useful in terms of illustrating the kind of thing that we’re up against. You can blame things on Obama and the Democrats, and we will and we do, but there are people that elect them, and there are a lot of them. And they are the product of their education and their environment and the media. It’s an overwhelming task, I think, if somebody wanted to tackle this and, say, try to get these people straightened out. That would be monumental. It’s why the preferred mechanism is to just beat them, defeat them, and don’t coddle them and cower to ’em because you can’t. It’s a waste of time.