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July 5, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:08
July 5, 2005, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
You know, it's amazing the amount of spending that's going to go on in this campaign for the next Supreme Court justice.
A hundred million dollars, both sides.
It's ridiculous.
It's not going to matter.
It really is not going to matter.
I I I The public doesn't vote.
At any rate, uh, greetings.
We got lots to do here today, folks.
Great to have you with us.
Hope you had a uh whether you are charcoal American or a propane American, a pre-soaked charcoal American, lighter fluid pre-soaked out of the bag, whichever kind you are.
Hope it was a great 4th of July and Independence Day weekend for you.
It's Rush Limbaugh on the EIB network, and here we are for uh three hours of broadcast excellence at 800 282-2882.
Let me say one thing about this Carl Rove business.
Let me let me tell you how I know.
I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Rove is not the leaker.
If Carl Rove were the leaker to Matthew Cooper of Time Magazine, do you think they'd have kept that news private during the 2004 presidential campaign?
This leak occurred in 2003.
If Carl Rove engaged in criminal activity, do you not think that the media who claim to know it all now would have not released that information during the campaign, given it to John Kerry or something, and made it a huge campaign issue that the president's chief political advisor is a criminal.
The idea that, you know, I mean, we we have all kinds of stuff leaked all over newspapers, folks.
Uh the war plan for Iraq was leaked to the New York Times, the Washington Post.
We had all kinds of things leaked during the uh the first term of the Bush administration.
Uh uh all kinds of secrets were were were were let go that were that were intended to harm Bush.
We had forged documents from CBS that were intended to affect the outcome of the election.
You think if they really had proof that it was Rove that was the leaker of Valerie Plaim's name, that that would have the press would have kept that secret during the 2004.
I don't.
Why keep that secret of all other why why go to the trouble of making up and forging documents when you've got the one story here that could really rally people, maybe.
Um and maybe it can't.
I don't know how many people really care about this that Valerie Plame's name was leaked, and I don't know how many people actually consider it a crime.
But that that was just that was just my first reaction.
Folks, we wait before we get into the uh the substance of today's program.
I have to tell you I'm worried uh that tropical storm down there off the coast of uh South America has now been uh named a uh uh a tropical uh depression.
Uh tropical storm, I got trying to been named, it's Dennis.
And as I look at this thing, it's headed right for Club Gitmo.
I am worried about tourism uh and the effect this hurricane's gonna have on Club Gitmo.
I mean, this thing's right for it.
I mean, it it by by Wednesday night, Thursday morning, Club Gitmo is right in the path of this of this baby.
Uh you know, everybody's worried about the treatment of of uh of the guests at Club Gitmo, and and look now, look what the Bush administration has done.
The Bush administration started a hurricane, and they've aimed it right at Club Gitmo.
I mean, just as we're getting off the ground here with our Club Gitmo brochure and our merchandise, all of a sudden, here we go with his hurricane headed right for him.
So all we can do, all we can do is pray, folks, and keep a sharp eye and hope that the effects of global warming are not gonna steer this thing too close to Club Gitmo.
Uh uh but but there's not, I mean, I don't know what we we can do, but other watch and report.
Uh uh Club Gitmo is such a nice place, and none of none of our guests are gonna want to leave.
The little they'll they'll ride it out, but still who would want to go through this kind of humiliation and torture uh to have to sit through without any ability to do anything about it, uh a Bush-inspired hurricane.
By the way, what we've decided to do, we had a caller last week uh who uh described a circumstance in Cleveland when he when he went to a Starbucks wearing a club gitmo t-shirt and the effect it had on liberals.
So we've set up uh an email address, special email address at Rush Limbaugh.com.
Uh and we we are gonna post the best pictures that you send us of you wearing your club gitmo gear, uh agitating liberals or just anywhere you happen.
We got to get one in this morning, some guy at Mount Rushmore wearing his club Gitmo t-shirt.
Uh so the and it the address, the the email address is at Rushlinbaugh.com.
It's right there on the uh top of the page.
It's Club Gitmo at Rush Linbaugh.com.
Um one thing I want to make clear here, the better the photo, because we the Club Gitmo photo gallery is what this is going to be.
It's going to feature you and your club gitmo gear.
But the uh the the better the photo, the more interesting the locale, a better chance it'll have of being selected and posted.
Uh we want to see interesting pictures from Main Street USA from Iraq, the Eiffel Tower, a nag rally outside Dick Durbin's office, baseball game county fair.
Not just you sitting in your living room.
You sitting in your living room or your club gitmo gear, feeding the dog, walking the cat, whatever, uh will not work.
You gotta give us a caption and uh and so forth, and we will uh go through these photos and and uh post them as we establish the club gitmo photo gallery.
All right, now I know uh the the the judge deal is a big thing, but it's not gonna happen for a while.
I know a lot of people are worked up about this.
I'm I I'm I'm one of them, but I I I must I must be honest with you.
I have a I have a little bit of a different attitude about this than I thought I was going to have.
I don't find myself all worked up about it yet.
I mean, I'm because nothing nothing happened, nothing that has happened is unpredictable.
Yes, you you have I mean, we're gonna and I'm gonna mention it.
You have Joe Biden uh demanding or Chuck Schumer demanding a judge summit with the White House.
Democrats demanding to sit in on the selection process, which the Constitution does not allow them.
Constitution does not permit.
In fact, if you if you read up as I have done, ladies and gentlemen, uh go back and and read uh, I think it was Hamilton, Alexander Hamill of Founding Fathers and the The Reason the Senate did not have anything other than an advice and consent role.
The original thinking of the founders was that okay, let them reject the judge.
The result is they're just going to get another one they don't like.
They're gonna and the idea is to end up having the Senate not rubber stamp, but approve these people and send them on.
The purpose is not for the White House to send us send a judge up that the Senate likes.
The purpose here is for the Senate to realize that if they reject this, they're gonna get the same thing back.
If they reject that, they're gonna get the same thing back.
That was part of the original thinking of the founders in this whole advice and consent business.
Now that you listen to the Democrats today, and that's gone out the window, as has much of the original intent of the Constitution, and the point now.
I'll tell you what worries me as always worries me about this is not the Ted Kennedy's, just like in the war in Iraq.
I said last week, it's not the Ted Kennedy's and the Biden's.
These people are utterly predictable.
The people for the American way, the Alliance for Justice, the the nags and now gang.
We all know what they're gonna do.
The thing about this that causes me the greatest uh concern is when I hear people like Orrin Hatch say what he said on Good Morning America today, or when I hear Arlen Spector continue to rip to shreds Robert Bork, when I hear Republicans say what they're saying about this, you know, that's when I get queasy.
Uh and all this money that's being spent by these interest groups on both sides, I uh it just it just amazes me.
I I it's you know me, I'm a big believer in having an informed public, but the public's not gonna make this choice.
And I don't think I don't think one dime spent is gonna influence who Bush picks.
I really don't think in fact the the the conservatives are out there saying, you better not pick Gonzalez.
You better not move him from the attorney general's office up to you better not conservatives don't like the guy.
He's not an originalist.
He's uh he may be pro-choice.
And Bush finally had heard enough of it.
Says, shut up about Gonzalez.
He's a friend of mine.
I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do here.
Uh if I pick Gonzalez, I'm gonna pick Gonzalez.
He's a fine man.
Shut up about it.
He's sending that message out to the base.
See, the the one thing the base, you people in the base, we all in the base better understand.
I know Bush said what he said during the campaign, and I know he he he w many of us uh rallied during both these campaigns for this exact reason.
Uh the next justice or uh two or three on the Supreme Court, Bush isn't running for anything again.
If Bush wants to blow off the base, he can blow off the base.
I don't see Bush as trying to establish a big conservative movement in the country like Ronald Reagan did.
The thing you worry about in second terms is legacies.
You know, is the president won a legacy?
I've got a couple stories.
One of them I think uh USA Today, Kathy Kiley, I'll get to it in detail in a moment.
This pick will contribute to Bush's legacy.
Now, you know, I think if the president has a desires of legacy to turn this court around, we'll be fine.
If his legacy is to have the immediate, instant writers of history, which are the American left today, write great things about him, then it's going to be a pick we don't like.
But at this point, I'm gonna sit back, I'm gonna wait, see what the president does.
I've trusted him on these kinds of things.
The appellate judges he's sent up have been good.
The circuit judges he's sent up have been good.
So I mean there's no reason to panic yet here.
There's no reason, there's no reason for all this.
Oh my god, oh my god, no reason for the knife over the wrist here waiting to slit yourself, folks.
We haven't gotten there yet.
Uh it I think this is a time for cool, calm reason and uh and and reaction uh when it is appropriate.
But uh there's really whole not a whole lot to react to yet, except, you know, the usual suspects on the left and the usual suspects on the right.
Uh, and and we will do so.
And of course we had live eight.
Um heard some of the quotes coming out of live eight.
Bob Geldoff, Boomtown Rats, Bob Geldoff said, something must be done, anything must be done, whether it works or not.
Something must be done whether it works or not.
Sir Bono of U2 said that 3,000 Africans, mostly children, are dying every day from mosquito bites.
I ran the numbers.
That's, you know, uh uh 3,000, that's 1.365 million a year.
That's just children, mostly children from mosquito bites.
If you had AIDS and genocide to it, there ought not to be anybody left in Africa.
So we shouldn't have to send any aid at all.
But he said with all these mosquito bites, we got to do something.
When and something can be done.
No, it can't, not since Rachel Carson got DDT banned.
You get DDT back over there, you might be able to stop some of the malaria, some of the mosquito bites.
But I mean, it's just you you look at these people with their good intentions and uh and and all that, and you realize two of the most amazing stories in the New York Times about this, and I don't know what happened to the editing process.
I don't know how these two stories made it past the editor.
One's a story, both are columns.
One from yesterday, one from today.
Do you know since 1963 the U.S. with just the U.S., Mr. Snerdley, it's 1963, 568 billion dollars.
Just to Africa.
Just to Africa.
568 billion.
It runs out to about 13 and a half billion a year.
That's in today's dollars.
So it's actually more than that when you 568 billion dollars since 1963.
And still the problem persists.
Why?
Uh well, you look at the war on poverty in this country, and since 1964, we've transferred between three and five trillion dollars.
From producers to nonproducers, yet we don't count the casualties in this war.
We never hear anybody talking about an exit strategy for this war.
Um, and we don't we don't ever talk about anything but the good intentions of the people whose policies have failed.
And that's all we're doing now is sitting around regaling these live eight performers.
Oh, they care.
Yeah, well, they haven't done diddly squat.
Uh because, you know, the model for fixing all this is right under everybody's nose.
You know what it is?
The model for fixing Africa and any other socialist country is right under everybody's nose.
Call the United States of America.
But oh no, oh no, we can't impose our way of life on people.
We can't do that.
We can impose socialism and poverty on them all day long because it's done under the guise of good intentions.
So there's a lot on the plate here today, folks.
And we'll come back and start uh chipping away at it after this timeout.
Look forward to talking you'd to you during the uh course of the busy broadcast today as well.
Sit tight, won't be long, and we continue.
Already having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have, folks.
That's my day here at the EIB network and the uh the valued and uh prestigious Limbo Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
All right, let's uh uh Redlands, California.
Hello, Carl, nice to have you on the program, sir.
Y'all, Rush.
Uh, I was shaving this morning and tuned you in as I usually do, and I was shocked by what you were saying concerning the uh the Africans and so forth.
It seems as if uh you would like to see not only the Africans die without any particular cause, either by murdering themselves off or dying by disease.
And the same thing true in Afghanistan and so forth.
You know, I think you could do everyone a favor, your listening audiences and so forth, but do the same thing that Sandra Day O'Connor has done.
Breeze all right.
Give yourself a break, or at least go home in the evening and listen to your tapes, and you'll recognize how cold and hearted, cold hearted you are.
Cold hearted and cruel.
Yes.
Cold hearted and cruel.
Yes.
Yeah, Carl, I don't I don't need to go home and listen to tapes.
Uh I I listen to MP3 Files tapes, uh, I don't use any more, and I don't need to listen because I remember myself doing the program since I host it.
This just points out the great disconnect that I'm talking about that's out there.
Carl, you know, you you you hear certain things and you have knee-jerk reactions.
You are hearing things I did not say.
You are assigning to me emotions I do not have.
You are reacting based on your own template.
You are unable to hear one thing I said.
Everything I said was oriented on success in Africa.
I'm tired of failure.
I'm tired of people dying, and I'm tired of people with good intentions failing, getting all the credit for caring.
I'm tired of n never-ending efforts to prop up socialist regimes with relieving debt or sending more money over there, and all it ends up is the same.
I'm tired of of do-gooders like Rachel Carlson getting DDT banned because it supposedly kills while it's wiping out a continent with people dying from mosquito bites, Carl.
Mosquito bites.
I don't know how much money in the world is going to stop that.
I don't know how much caring in the world is going to stop mosquito bites.
The only thing that's going to stop mosquito bites are insecticides that do good or liberals in this country of Sikh has have seen uh fit to ban uh around the world.
Uh you know, you you you see something totally different than I do when you hear these stories coming out of Africa.
You you see the efforts and the intentions.
You see the beauty of people finally getting together to do something.
And I look at results, and I this and I see that despite all the efforts and the good intentions, no progress has been made at all.
Yet here we go, more live eights, uh more caterwalling, more protests, all from the same people who have failed over the years, demanding that more be done with somebody else's money.
Meanwhile, this current administration has done more for Africa in terms that you probably would appreciate than any of his predecessors.
He's done more than any rock stars and their concerts, yet it doesn't seem to register with people.
We still don't do enough.
We'll still calculate, well, we don't give enough according to GDP.
We don't give as much as the Netherlands do as a percentage of GDP.
Try this.
As I said, Carl, I don't know where you were, over six hundred billion dollars from this country alone to Africa alone in forty-three years, with nothing to show for it.
We've had two genocides.
We have a stateless regime in the Sudan where another genocide's going on.
We have the destruction of capitalist countries all over the world.
We got Robert Mugabe running wild, taking land away from private property owners.
Nobody complains, nobody says a word.
Nobody makes an effort to get rid of people like Mugabe.
And yet the efforts of Livate and others with big hearts and great intentions continue as though they're new and unique.
It's like the war on poverty in America, as I said.
We we we're not allowed to impose our form of government on people, but it's not an imposition to impose freedom.
What needed in Africa is capitalism.
What's needed in Africa is personal income.
The only way we're going to wipe out poverty anywhere is with individuals and an increasing personal income.
You do that with jobs, you do it, you do it not with roads and bridges and clean water.
You do it with a growing economy.
You do it with imports and exports, you do it with trade.
You do it with the time-honored techniques that have happened here, you do it with freedom.
But you don't do it with people like Robert Mugabe.
You don't do it with dictators, thugs like existed in Somalia, Rwanda, and currently in the Sudan and Uh Zimbabwe.
And sadly slowly becoming the same in South Africa.
You don't do it with people like Mo Mardafi up in Libya.
You just don't do it.
You're never going to reform a country that has leadership like this in such a great percentage of the country.
This country, this continent is beyond the realm now of just forgiving debt or throwing money at it.
And yet, like I say, what is this?
Forty years, folks, 40 years.
$600 billion.
Hasn't accomplished a thing.
Still got the problem, still belly aching about the same circumstances in the same situation.
Yeah, I'm I'm I'm sick and tired of it.
Damn right I'm tired of it.
But where you're wrong, Carl, is that I'm not tired of of of trying to actually fix it.
I am tired of people dying, and I'm I'm really tired of people who are doing nothing about it, getting all the credit for trying to stop it.
Because as long as they keep getting credit, their efforts, which have failed, are going to continue, which all equals failure, and I'm fed up with failure.
Here on the cutting edge of societal evolution, Rush Limbaugh, America's anchor man.
I just consulted the maps.
The 11 a.m. track map from the National Hurricane Center.
And uh, it's only going to be a cat one, but still category one hurricane, but still the worst quadrant of the hurricanes, the Northeastern Quadrant.
And that looks to be, if the map is accurate today, it looks to be the quadrant's gonna hit Club Gitmo.
So I can already see we're gonna have to have relief efforts to Club Gitmo to restore the beauty and and the uh you know the the surroundings to their natural uh existence as it is today.
I hope there's not too much destruction down there.
It's it's uh but we're gonna be uh keeping an eye on it.
Let me give you one of these New York Times stories about Africa that I was stunned when I read today.
It's a column by Nicholas Christoph, and I'm surprised it made it past the editors.
It's entitled Bush, A Friend of Africa.
Those who care about Africa tend to think that the appropriate attitude toward President Bush is a medley of fury and contempt.
But the fact is that Mr. Bush has done more for Africa, much more for Africa than Bill Clinton ever did, increasing the money actually spent for aid there by two-thirds so far, and setting in motion an eventual tripling of aid for Africa.
Mr. Bush's crowning achievement was ending a war in Sudan between North and South.
And while Mr. Bush has done shamefully little to stop Sudan's other conflict, the genocide in Darfur, that's more than Mr. Clinton's response to genocide in Rwanda, which was to issue a magnificent apology after it.
So is the G eight summit meeting convenes this week focusing on Africa.
It's worth acknowledging that Mr. Bush and conservatives generally have in many ways been great for the developing world.
At their best, they bring a healthy dose of hands-on practicality to their efforts.
The liberal approach is helping the poor uh to helping the poor, is sometimes to sponsor a UN conference and to give ringing speeches calling for changed laws and more international assistance.
In contrast, a standard conservative approach is to sponsor a missionary hospital or a school.
One magnificent example is the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital, where missionary doctors repair obstetric injuries that have left Ethiopian women incontinent.
It's all conservatives doing this.
Liberals also focus on changing laws, but in a poor country, the legal system's often irrelevant outside the capital.
Liberals may also put too much faith in aid itself.
What Africa needs most desperately are things it can itself provide.
Good governance, a firmer neighborhood response to genocide in the Sudan, and a collective nudging of Robert Mugabe into retirement.
Plenty of collective nudging if if if we're well, never mind, I don't want to get sidetracked.
It needs to blown it, be blown into retirement, if folks, but plenty of studies have shown that aid usually doesn't help people in insecure, corrupt, or poorly governed nations.
Indeed, aid can even do harm by bidding up local exchange rates and hurting local manufacturers.
That's that's that's Nicholas Christoph today in the uh in the New York Times about this.
And there I've I've got I've got other stories on this, primarily about about live eight.
Some of them are just absolutely hilarious, one of them by uh by Mark Stein uh in the telegraph in London.
It's just absolutely hilarious, which I'll get to here in just a moment.
There's the battle of the backstage egos uh at the concert itself.
Sir McCartney, Sir Paul McCartney, who both opened and closed Live 8, made sure everybody knew exactly whose show it really was by continually strolling up and down the backstage area with his entourage of six in tow.
When the McCarthys came face to face with the Beckhams, it was always gonna be interesting to see the result.
After praising Sir Paul on his opening number, which she was actually not there for, Victoria Beckham managed to infuriate the former Beatle by running off to hug an old friend.
These were there were uncomfortable smiles all around because David Beckham didn't know how to explain his wife's disappearing act to Sir Paul.
When Victoria finally returned, Sir Paul told her through gritted teeth, oh well, if she's more important than me, keep talking to her.
And then we we had we had Brad Pitt on stage for all of two minutes, furious he didn't have his own dressing room.
I mean, it just it it goes it goes on and on.
What they were eating backstage uh it was just it was they they got you know twelve thousand dollar gift bags, including a three thousand dollar Nokia phone and an iPod.
Dancers got a free live eight t-shirt.
Uh it was it was uh I'm trying to I'm looking here for what what they what they got to eat back is lobster and steak.
It was while they're talking about famine and starvation in uh in Africa.
And then they, of course, all get on stage and they rant and rave about how uh nobody's doing enough and uh to threaten the G eight countries here to do something even if it doesn't work.
Those are the words of Bob Geldoff.
Uh and it, you know, it's just it's just it's humorous.
If you want to talk about humor and and and flat out irrelevance, it's this stuff.
Uh some have even argued that the uh original live aid was such a failure that it exacerbated the problem by creating in the uh minds of too many people that it had solved the problem.
And this thing runs the uh runs runs the similar uh prospect.
Then this other New York Times piece uh that was uh actually on Sunday, tone deaf in Africa.
Bono Jeffrey Sachs, Tony Blair, Rock Band's finance ministers, and aid agencies have been vowing to make poverty history in Africa as the group of eight summit meeting in Scotland begins this week.
The proponents of a comprehensive plan to end Africa's poverty say the solutions are easy.
For example, Gordon Brown, Britain's Chancellor, the exchequer Treasury Secretary, uh says preventing the deaths of five million children over the next ten years would cost us three dollars more for each new mother in the world's poorest countries.
All told, Tony Blair's commission for Africa calls for twenty-five billion dollars more in aid to Africa per year.
It's great that so many are finally noticing the tragedy, but sadly historical evidence says that the solution offered by big plans are not easy.
From 1960 to 2003, we spent 568 billion dollars in today's dollars to end poverty in Africa, yet these efforts still did not lift Africa from misery and stagnation.
Why don't big plans work?
Because they miss the critical elements of feedback and accountability.
If consumers like a product, its maker prospers.
If they don't, the company goes out of business.
If voters complain about public services to their local politicians, the politician either fixes the problem or gets voted out of office.
It doesn't always work, but it works well enough for rich people to get potato chips and paved roads.
But it doesn't work in Africa because people don't have the freedom to demand these things.
Goes on and on.
It's just so obvious.
Again, folks, I mean the solution to this is right under everybody's nose.
It's this country.
And yet the American left in this country, you can't impose American values on people around the world.
You can't impose democracy on people.
They're gonna come up with her own form.
No, we can impose Marxism on them, and we can impose capital uh communism on them, we can impose socialism on them, and we'll call it our good intentions and our big hearts.
We can impose you impose socialism on a country you are guaranteeing poverty.
You're guaranteeing misery.
It's the history of the human condition worldwide and for as long as human history's been around.
And yet, the left still thinks that socialism's the answer, they just haven't been able to give it its full test yet.
Because there's always been enemies out there like the U.S. to stand in the way.
So all of these all of these plans that are oriented around good intentions and big hearts continue to fail miserably.
Well, the model to fix many of these problems is right under people's nose, but they hold their nose and say, Ew, we can't impose our way of life on people.
We just can't.
So, yeah, you lose patience with some of this stuff.
Uh, and the same arguments get made over and over, and the same big hearts come forward.
All these good intentions, but we're never supposed to examine the results of those with good intentions, only their big hearts.
We only give them credit for caring.
We give them credit for taking trips to Africa.
We give them credit for doing concerts.
We give them credit for standing up and shouting obscenities at governments that are having conventions.
We do all this stuff.
It doesn't accomplish a thing.
Other than make those doing the shouting feel better, other than those attending the concerts of the protests feel better, it doesn't accomplish a thing.
Here's uh John and Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Welcome to the program, sir.
Hello.
Hello, Rush.
Uh, it's an honor to speak with you this morning.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you, sir.
I was uh listening to the comments made by your previous caller Carl, and those comments are just absolutely asinine.
They they made me absolutely furious.
I had to pick up the phone and call, and they are just typical of the liberal mindset in this c in this country.
It's the it's the conservatives of this country who have continuously reached out and done the positive things.
They've lifted people up around the world, have freed them from poverty, have freed them from domination by despotic regimes, and it's it's the liberals who just give lip service to what they want to do and and try to evidence their good intentions.
And as you've been pointing out, it's the conservatives who are stepping forward and doing the things that need to be done.
Well, a great illustration of this.
One of these, one of these uh rock stars, I forget who it was, might have been Robbie Williams.
I don't know these names anymore, uh stood up, or maybe it's Chris Martin.
I don't know, but I couldn't tell you who these people are.
I just remember the names associated with the news stories.
This is the most important blank blank event that's ever taken place, and they better listen.
That's the most important thing why this hawk him, this is the greatest thing that's ever been done.
Yeah, what has been done?
Uh what's been done is that you feel like you did something that mattered, and you haven't even seen, and you haven't even been there to look at the problem, you haven't done diddly squat.
Listen to this from Mark Stein's piece, What Rocks is Capitalism.
He's saying, Let me cut to the chase.
And this is all about this is all about the McCartney's uh and and uh and his Paul McCartney and his ex-wife, uh his his his dead wife, Linda McCartney.
Seven years ago, you'll recall Sir Paul's wife died of cancer.
Linda McCartney had been a resident of the United Kingdom for three decades, but her Manhattan tax lawyers, Winthrop, Stimson, Putnam, and Roberts, devoted considerable energy in her final months to establishing her right to have her estate probated in New York State.
That way, she could set up a qualified domestic marital trust that would uh uh in the immortal words of Lenin and Partners go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Big deal, you say.
We're into world peace and saving the planet and feeding Africa.
What difference does it make which jurisdiction some Squaresville suit files the boring paperwork?
Okay, let me cut to the chase.
By filing for probate in New York rather than the United Kingdom, Linda McCartney avoided the 40% death tax leveled by her Majesty's government.
That way, Paul McCartney, the family, got all 100% of her estate, and that's not a figure to be sneezed at.
For purposes of comparison, Bob Geldoff's original live aid concert in 1985 raised 50 million pounds.
Linda McCartney's estate was estimated at around a hundred and fifty million pounds.
In other words, had she paid her 40% death tax in Great Britain, the British Treasury would have raised more money than Sir Bob Gildoff did with Banana Rama and all the gang at Wembley Stadium and the original live aid.
Given that she'd enjoyed all the blessings of life in the UK since '68, the Chancellor of the Exchequer might have felt justified in reprising Sir Bob's heartfelt catchphrase at Wembley, give us your blanket money.
But she didn't.
She kept it for herself and good for her.
I only wish I could afford her lawyers.
Now the point here is that while these performers are out there demanding you give up your blank and money, they're doing the same things that every other rich person In the world is doing trying to hold on to every dime they've got, hiring lawyers, trying to get around tax laws so that they don't have to pay any more than they have to while them demanding that you go out and give up your blank and money, and governments give up their blank and money.
The point is that the rock stars are a bunch of capitalist hypocrites.
They are not socialist do-gooders.
They don't run around and give their own money to the things.
They're trying everything they can to earn as much as they can and keep as much of what they earn for themselves while going on stage and putting forth a different front.
And that's Stein's point here.
And he's exactly right about it.
Quick timeout.
We'll be back after this.
Well, the Bush's new surrogate son is at it again.
Bill Clinton is overseas ripping the United States of America.
On the eve of the G8 summit, Bill Clinton's telling European audiences the U.S. is stingy with its foreign aid dollars, and that Americans think they contribute more than they actually do.
He was the president for eight years.
You would never know it.
What did he do in foreign aid, Africa or anywhere else, but apologize for things?
Just absolutely amazing.
Bill Clinton with the same MO, the same modus operandi.
Here's Mike and Aurora, Illinois.
Hello, sir.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Well, Rush, hey, great to talk to you.
Thank you, sir.
Uh, my question uh is concerning the uh stepping down of Sandra Day O'Connor.
Yes.
And I'd like to know, you know, basically I'd like to get your take on whether you think Bush has the political capital or the political clout to be able to get a conservative in there, someone of his ideological preference without having to yield to all these other considerations, you know, whether it's a woman or a Hispanic or a minority.
I mean, do you follow what I'm saying?
Yeah, he's got the political capital to do it.
But he he can do what he wants.
He that's exactly what he should do.
But I'll tell you what, I think we need to change terms.
I don't like this.
Orin Hatch's on Good Morning America today talking about Bush, Bush will nominate a conservative.
I'm confident of that, but he won't not nominate a right-wing conservative through my glasses down.
Can he can he get through with it?
What?
Can you I mean, can he get through with it?
Do you think it'll I mean, does he have the backing from the Senate and whatever all other means to have to have this person approved?
Yeah, take the fight to him.
Absolutely, whether he's got it or not, go out and make it happen.
For crying out loud.
I I'm t I'm tired of reacting.
I'm tired of these Democrats acting like they won the election.
When somebody needs to stand up and say, when you win the election, you pick the nominees.
Until then, shut up.
Just shut up.
Just go away, bury yourselves in your rat holes, and don't come out till you win an election.
When you win election, you can put all these socialist wackos like Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Steven Breyer all over the court.
But until then, shut up.
You are really irritating me.
I'm getting sick and tired of Chuck Schumer saying there needs to be a summit.
I'm getting tired of Biden saying we're gonna fill a filibuster.
Go ahead.
I'm ready for you people to kill yourselves politically.
I'm ready for you to commit suicide.
The Democratic Party and a liberal wing are on a steady nosedive, and I hope Bush nominates somebody that irritates him so much that Ted Kennedy comes out with another Robert Bork-like statement, because that'll finish him off.
These people are in their death throes, folks.
I'm telling you, the left is in their death throes.
You can see it, they know it.
The desperation is all over the place.
So screw all this talk of capital.
Just and screw all this talk of conservative versus liberal.
Let's get an originalist on there.
It's originalist versus activist.
When you hear the liberals say, we need a pragmatist.
And we need a centrist.
What you're hearing them say is, we need an activist.
And when you hear them say, we can't have these conservatives and these right wingers on there.
What you're hearing them, we can't have an originalist.
Why that would screw us.
So yeah, he's he's got all kinds of capital.
He can do whatever he wants.
He's the president of the United States.
He nominates these people and then let the Senate have at it.
And if the Liberals filibuster this, if the Liberals torpedo this, I'm telling you folks, they're going to show up at the polls in 2006 and then they're going to get fewer votes and they're going to get fewer votes in 2008.
You know, I I the Bush administration is looking at three three open seats here.
This is just the first one.
Renquist is next, and there's talk about that Ruth Bader Ginsburg is not not very healthy at all.
She may, in fact, be less well than Rehnquist is.
And, you know, they're talking Gonzalez would be the third pick if if um if if it goes that far.
But yeah, I just I uh I don't as I say what worries an Oren Hansel, good morning America.
Oh, he'll he'll nominate a conservative, but I don't think a right wing.
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