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Oct. 6, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:21
October 6, 2005, Thursday, Hour #2
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The Lewins and the Moonbat coming out from uh Under the Woodwork, Bill Clinton in an interview in Ladies' Home Journal.
Ladies' Home Journal.
What's he giving advice on?
Window treatments?
How to make the bed.
Or how to never have to make the bed.
Greetings, my friends.
Welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, serving humanity here on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Great to have you along.
800 282-2882 is the phone number.
The uh email address rush at EIBNet.com.
Yeah, Al Gore made a speech, and it's an embarrassing speech.
It is uh here's a man who ran for president.
He was vice president, he was a U.S. Senator to listen to such sophistry uh from a man who ought to know better is just it's just embarrassing.
We have some audio soundbites of this speech.
It's basically complaining about all the media that's out there.
There's too much media, and because of this too much media, we're gonna lose our democracy.
And we're gonna lose our democracy because too much of the media is right wing now.
We need to go back to the old days where it was Walter Cronkite, Walter Cronkite, Walter Cronkite, New York Times and the Washington Post.
That's when news was good.
That's when media was responsible.
Uh, but now it's just it's uh it it's it's horrible, and we're gonna lose our democracy.
Got a hate mongers, call me a hate monger uh in this uh in this speech.
And it's just here's thank you, uh, Mr. Vice President for being honest.
You hate the free flow of ideas.
In the marketplace of ideas, in the arena of ideas, you hate ideas going back and forth.
He make he makes every point I've made about these people.
They can't win these debates, so they'd rather not have them.
And the way not to have them is try to shut up and silence their opposition.
They just can't get over the fact that they lost their media monopoly, and they can't get over the fact that they don't get to shape and bend the news on a daily basis in their own liberal image.
Well, they still get to do it, but it doesn't carry the day anymore.
And they're just like he's like a whining little kid.
You do many meaning.
And then Bubba, Bubba shows up in an interview in the uh in the Ladies' Home Journal, and he said that uh Iraq looks like a quagmire.
He estimate the odds are not great of our prevailing there.
Thank God you're in Ladies' Home Journal and not the Oval Office anymore.
Speaking for an interview that appears in a November issue of that magazine, Clinton qualified his quagmire remark by saying it's not Vietnam.
He said the reason this isn't Vietnam is that 58% of the eligible voters showed up and voted in Iraq.
The South Vietnamese government was never legitimate in the eyes of the Vietnamese.
Meaning we were never legitimate because we were supporting the illegitimate government.
That's not why this is not Iraq.
There's a so many so many uh factual differences between Iraq and Vietnam.
In the first place, we are not fighting a superpower in Iraq.
We are not, we're not, we're not up against the Russians or the Chinese.
Uh there is no central figure that leads a government that we're up against.
We're fighting an entirely different kind of enemy.
They don't run a country.
They are trying to take over a whole host of countries in the world.
Uh, and and the the notion here that, and he's right about one thing that the people of Iraq have voted, have asked for this, uh, are trying to set up their own country with our assistance.
Uh but nevertheless, here's this quagmire comment.
And it's designed the the the word quagmire is used on purpose because it has direct linkage to these people to Vietnam.
So while he may say it's not Vietnam, he didn't want you to really hear that.
Uses the word quagmire first to get it out there.
So, you know, we could ask some questions of uh President Clinton.
Is Kosovo a quagmire?
Is Haiti a quagmire?
Was Somalia a quagmire?
And what the hell was that North Korean nuclear deal all about, Mr. President?
And where were you when the terrorists blew up the World Trade Center in 1993 and the USS Coal?
Where were you?
This is uh this is the folks, this is Why these people are on the ropes.
All they can do is whine and moan and complain and point fingers, but as far as solutions to any of this, they've got zilch.
They've got nothing.
Have you heard the latest about Charlie Wrangle?
Charlie Wrangle is demanding an apology from Vice President Cheney.
He is all upset, folks.
Vice President Cheney's feud with the Democratic Party's Charlie Wrangle was perpetuated Wednesday when the 75-year-old Wrangle said Cheney ought to be ashamed of himself for a remark about his age.
Months of verbal attacks from Wrangle turned into a back and forth on Monday, when the 64-year-old vice president said Wrangle is losing it on this program, later adding that Charlie is a lot older than I am, and it shows.
After an appearance at City Hall on Wednesday, Wrangell was asked when the dispute would die.
He said, I think it ends when he apologizes to me for attacking me as a senior citizen.
It's true that I'm much older than he is, but that's got nothing to do with mental alertness.
Wrangle has suggested in recent interviews that Cheney, who suffers from heart trouble, might not be healthy enough to do his job.
There's one thing this story doesn't mention.
It's an AP story.
You know what it doesn't mention?
It doesn't mention that Charlie Wrangle referred to President Bush as the modern generation of blacks Bull Connor.
The goal, the runaround.
I am, I'm going to join Cheney here in questioning Wrangles' mental acuity to demand an apology for this.
This isn't this is it's he's a laughing stock.
Wrangell said uh of Cheney last Friday, I would like to believe that Cheney's sick rather than just mean and evil.
Well, during an interview on Monday with Nationally Syndicator radio host Rush Limbaugh, Cheney said he was bewildered by Wrangell's attacks.
I'm frankly surprised at his comments.
Almost struck me, I mean, they were so out of line, almost struck me that they're Charlie was having some problem.
Charlie's losing it, I guess.
And it was later in the afternoon that Cheney made the remark about Wrangles' age that Wrangle is now demanding uh an apology for.
Now, I want to I've got to say one other thing about this because I've mentioned this twice.
I'll mention it as many times as I have to to get it right.
I've seen it three times now in various media that the White House dispatched Cheney to appear on this program Monday to calm me down after my initial opposition to the choice of Harriet Myers as the next Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.
And that's not how it happened.
The Cheney interview was scheduled two hours before my program even started.
The White House didn't dispatch Cheney to calm me down.
They weren't, the White House didn't hear what I had to say, and then oh get Cheney on the phone over there.
That's not how it happened.
And yet this myth that it did persists.
I mean, it may be a small thing, but it does it does go to the uh the whole notion of media accuracy, and they get in their minds what they want to believe, and it becomes truth.
They create this uh alternative reality, parallel universe, if you will, and it survives like they did in uh in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, like they do in Iraq.
Now, this this next story that's got people fit to be tied to.
Uh, and the headline, this is uh NAP story.
Dovetails with what we discuss frequently on this program.
Headline says Congress seeks to cut food aid to poor.
Democrats are fighting attempts to make cuts in food stamps and conservation programs at a time when people are coping with hurricanes and drought.
Right now, the difference between life and death for many Americans is a food stamp program, said Senator Max Baucus, a Democrat from Montana.
We should not, we cannot cut the very nutritional programs that are literally saving lives.
A Republican plan to cut agriculture spending by three billion was scheduled for a vote today in the Senate Agriculture Committee.
But a spokesman for the panel's chairman, Senator Saxby Chambliss, Republican Georgia, said late yesterday the vote was being put off indefinitely didn't offer a reason.
The bill by Chambliss would cut food programs for the poor by $174 million in conservation programs and farm payments by more than one billion dollars each.
Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, senior Democrat on the committee, said this proposal is an unconscionable slap in the face at America's poor.
In the first Place.
These are not cuts.
They are reductions in the rate of growth.
There will be no real cut.
If this were to happen, there will be no real cut, meaning that the food stamp budget would not be less this year than it would be last year or was last year.
It would be $574 billion less than it is scheduled to be this year, but it would still be a five to six percent increase.
That's story number one.
Here's story number two.
Headline, this is from uh Channel Cincinnati.com.
Three million eligible people miss food stamps group says.
2.1 billion dollars in food stamp aid goes unused.
These cuts, by the way, only affect families that never applied for food stamps in the first place, but get them anyway.
And that's what this story is about.
More than three million needy people in big cities could be getting food stamps, but don't for a variety of reasons.
An anti-hunger group said, Well, are they starving?
If they're starving, then why aren't they going and getting the food stamps?
They must not be hungry.
That translates to 2.1 billion dollars in unused food stamps, the Food Research and Action Center said in a report scheduled for release yesterday.
Agriculture Department officials have worked to make the program simpler and spread the word about who's eligible, said the spokesman.
They're still advertising the food stamp program.
They don't have enough takers.
And they're worried that their budget will be cut because of this, folks.
And this is not new over the course of this program's length, 17 years, our history.
I have recounted for you countless times where the food stamp people advertise the availability of food stamps in big cities like Los Angeles.
Because they're not spending all the food stamp budget that they get.
The agriculture department has given grants to local and state groups, including faith-based and community organizations, to reach out to eligible people who haven't applied.
Well, Rush, they don't know about the program.
Don't give me that.
There's not a welfare recipient out there that doesn't know where to go to get welfare.
I mean, it's it's a way of life, isn't it, for these people?
That's what the program's intentions, as written by the left have always been.
So the whole story, Congress seeks to cut food aid for poor, is simply bogus.
It's traditional.
It is always reported this way, but it is a bogus, bogus story.
The food stamp budget, as currently allotted, is not being utilized.
And they're worried about that, and they essentially are advertising for more applicants.
Quick timeout.
We'll be back after this.
Okay.
I just got a note from a friend of mine driving through North Carolina.
This is not a mistress, this is a guy.
And he said, It's not hide the salami rush, it's hide the pepperoni, but Howard Dean wouldn't know the difference.
Here is uh Chris in San Mateo, California.
Welcome to the program, sir.
Great to have you with us.
Hi, Rush.
Anti-Idiot term Rottweiler Didddo.
Gore is just nuts praising the Katrina coverage.
Um there's one paragraph in that speech that just jumped out at me about vividness and clarity.
Yeah, we have that bite here.
Let me play that for you.
You can comment on it.
I think Gore's stuck on stupid.
Something has happened to the man.
Seriously, there's something that's happened to his brain cells ever since Florida 2000, because he's he's just it's it's embarrassing.
You know, it's it's I I when I got these sound bites, I listened to him today.
I don't know that I want to embarrass him like this.
This is just it it the this whole speech of his is just it's it's embarrassing to think that this man was once vice president, respected senator and so forth.
But this is what he's talking about the media.
He's all worried there's too much media, and it's a threat to our democracy.
And this is what he said about Hurricane Katrina coverage that Chris here is talking about.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there was, at least for a short time, a quality of vividness and clarity of focus in our public discourse.
That reminded some Americans, including many journalists, that vividness and clarity used to be more common in the way we talk with one another about the problems and choices that we face.
But then, like a passing summer storm, the moment faded.
Where do we go with this?
I mean, like a passing summer storm, he's talking about a hurricane.
And but the first the point I know you want to make is that the the hurricane coverage was an absolute lie.
It was the most exaggerated fatalistic coverage, and he's pointing to it as an example of his ideal of journalism.
There were not 40,000 bodies.
It was a category three rather than a category five, telling guests and reporters to get angry, blaming Bush and leading questions and ignoring the culpability of Blanco and Negan.
It was just a pop pot of Well, not just that, but taking rumors of anarchy in the Superdome and in the convention center in New Orleans, of rapes and murders, and then not verifying all those rumors and running with it and scaring relief workers to the point that they didn't want to go in there because they're not armed.
And so they delayed the relief effort.
The media, as I said yesterday, folks, the real question needs to be asked about the Hurricane Katrina aftermath, does the media kill?
Did the media lead to uh people having more pain and suffering because they delayed the rescue efforts because the rescuers, I'm not going to take my chances in that superdome.
Look at what I hear is going on in there.
None of it was true.
And here comes this blithering idiot gore saying that this was the high point, recent high point of media coverage.
I mean, it folks, it is just uh well, it it's it's instructive, it's illustrative, uh, because what he really thinks was good about it was all right, finally, finally the media has exposed this Bush guy that beat me as what as an incompetent boob.
He wanted to believe all this stuff.
He wanted to believe it.
He wanted to believe that this was happening the way the media said.
It's just it goes back to the fact they loved their old days where they had the monopoly, they could bend and shape the news to whatever they wanted to make it create their own reality.
Al Gore then continued, uh he was lamenting here uh the invention of other forms of media uh after print.
As early as the 1920s, when the predecessor of television radio first debuted in the United States, there was immediate apprehension about its potential impact on democracy.
You believe this?
One early American student of the medium wrote that if the control of radio were concentrated in the hands of a few, quote, no nation can be free.
You believe this?
As a result of such fears, safeguards were enacted in the U.S., including the public interest standard, the equal time provision, and the fairness doctrine.
Though a half century later in 1987, they were effectively repealed.
And then immediately after that, Rush Limbaugh and other hate mongers began to feel the airwalls.
Folks, um this this is we are not listening.
We are not listening to sanity.
This is not sane.
People worried about reality, they worried about the automobile.
All kinds of everybody worries about everything that's new.
Radio in the hands of a few corporate interests back in the twenties.
There's so many so many myths here.
Uh, plus this continued mischaracterization of the fairness doctrine.
The fairness doctrine did not include did not inspire fairness.
The fairness doctrine chilled commentary.
The fairness doctrine made sure that nobody said anything because station management, station owners didn't want to deal with all the demands that would be put on.
They basically a fairness doctrine got rid of any controversial commentary.
It's why radio was dying.
AM radio was dying in 1987.
It was nothing odd but a bunch of worthless music that would sound better on FM.
They couldn't put anything compelling on because it would invite other controversies and the management didn't want to deal with it.
They all had to have their licenses approved and uh, you know, every five years back then by the FCC, they want to deal with it.
It was Reagan that that saw that repealing the fairness doctrine uh, which is not equal time, has nothing to do with equal time.
Equal time is a whole different thing.
Repealing that would open up the medium to vast more numbers of ideas.
Uh you know, I never heard the print media get all concerned when new newspapers do.
Yeah, there used to be 10 to 12 newspapers in New York.
I didn't hear anybody complaining about that then.
You know, Al Gore is a big believer in global warming.
And and and and it there may be some global warming going out there.
I prefer to call it solar warming, Because I think that's probably the primary reason for it.
But Gore believes it's caused by humanity, uh pr progress in technology, uh decadent American lifestyles, the internal combustion engine.
That's what's causing global warming or destroying the planet.
Well, I don't accept that, but I'm about ready to concede that there may be something to global warming.
And I'm about ready to concede that the primary effect of solar warming global warming is the way it affects the brain.
Uh particularly of people who believe it, because his is fried.
We will be back in just a second.
You're listening to Rush Limbaugh on the Excellence in Podcasting Network.
On a program that meets and surpasses all audience expectations on a daily basis.
The Rush Limbaugh program.
Here from the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
What did Al Gore say here?
He loved the uh media coverage in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
At least for a short time, a quality of vividness and clarity of focus in our public discourse.
This is we has he not read his favorite newspapers, the LA Times and the New York Times.
Does he not know how all of that was drivel?
And then he says, like a passing summer storm, the moment faded.
Well, his speech is like passing wind, if you ask me, and that's what it's like listening to it.
We got one more bite from it.
Here it is.
I truly believe that American democracy is facing a grave danger.
You and it is a danger that is sometimes hard to describe in words.
But you'll try.
And I'd like to start this way by saying it is no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse.
I want to throw up now.
I just can't believe it.
I know that I'm not the only one who feels that something has gone basically and badly wrong in the way America's fabled marketplace of ideas is now functioning.
I wonder how many of you have had a friend or a family member over the last few years remark at some point that it's almost as if America has entered an alternate universe.
You know, I think Al Gore the alternate universe is genuine.
It's one that you feel you're out of power.
You've lost your media monopoly, you've lost your power, you didn't win the election for president.
You don't have a chance of being president ever again.
And it's just like Walter Cronkite said last Friday on Larry King Alive.
The American people are too stupid.
They're not even voting the right way anymore.
But we can't trust democracy to the voters anymore.
Just uh people are too stupid, they're too uninformed.
And now here's Al Gore fretting that democracy has uh has uh uh frittered away and is in grave, grave danger.
And he calls me a hate monger.
You know, I don't need I don't need lectures from the son of a segregationist.
And I don't need lectures from a man who stood silent, stone silent while his friend Bill Clinton was abusing young women in the White House.
They don't need lectures from this guy.
It's it's a um uh it really it it it it's further evidence, folks, they have cracked up.
It's not that they are cracking up.
They are Humpty Dumpty, they have fallen off the wall.
They don't know how to put themselves back together again, and it's time to just sweep them away.
They are ripe.
Here's Randy and Des Moines.
I'm glad you called.
Welcome to the program.
Hi, Rush.
Uh Dino's.
Thank you.
I just wanted to point out the irony of Gore's little speech and and his uh indication that uh that we're squashing ideas.
The irony is that it was the left that started that with political correct speech.
Absolutely right.
Political correctness is nothing more than an obstacle to truth that has been set there by the left, been placed in the in the way of the truth, because they don't want to hear it.
They want to create this alternative universe that they live in that is not reality, and they used to have the monopoly power to be able to do it, and they can't anymore, and they don't know how to deal with it.
They had it for 50 years or longer, so it is probably a tough adjustment, but you would think after 20 years, they'd start getting the idea.
You would think.
Well, but they uh they don't.
Uh it's just uh uh as I say, it it this is not, folks, this is not even in the realm of of sanity.
George and Blue Jay, California, you're next here on the EIB network.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
It's a pleasure talking to you.
I just wanted to point out uh I've been a longtime Bush supporter, and when he gives a speech like you did this morning, it it makes me feel good, and he gives good speeches.
However, when it comes to immigration issues, I think he's wimped out, just like I think he wimped out when he selected Myers instead of a qualified conservative for the Supreme Court.
Well I I just think I haven't heard the term wimped out, and that's a uh marine term, and uh I just feel bad that that I think he has wimped out.
Well, I don't think I don't think he has, but I think that's the impression that people have, like you have it, and I'm uh but but more problematic is that the Democrats will think it.
That's what they think.
You're you're precisely making my point.
I don't think he made the choice because he's wimped out.
But it for the perception is that that's not good.
Uh let's face it.
When you when you take a look at a number of issues uh over the past five years, the president signed campaign finance reform.
We weren't happy about that.
Let Ted Kennedy write the education bill.
We weren't happy about that.
Uh uh the immigration uh has been sort of a big question mark and mystery to a lot of us, as you say, not not happy about that.
But the war, the war on terror, is something that we totally support the president on because it's crucial, it's important, particularly when the Democratic Party decides to uh abandon a unified stance as a nation on the war on terror, then that causes universal support for the president.
It is support for the war, and he is not wimped out on any aspect of it.
Well, we have to do that.
Either by perception, by perception or by reality.
He's not wimped out on a war whatsoever.
Uh I mean, some people think, okay, let's just go in and nuke these people to be done.
Let's go into Syria, let's go to Iran, let's take take care of business.
But that's that's strategic.
That that's that's not having uh uh, you know, a wimpy policy.
That's that's not the um at least I wouldn't assign it to that.
Well it would it seems like that there's terrorists coming across the border, Mexican border, and he should get a little stronger about that.
That's what we're concerned about, especially in California.
A lot of conservatives in California are really worried about terrorists.
I've I've said that this is the issue that holds the greatest threat to uh continued uh victories in elections by the Republicans.
If they don't get their act together on this, they don't understand exactly how people in California, and it's not just border states anymore, but California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, how they feel about this.
Because I I'm I'm with you 100% on it.
But my point is that despite being disappointed on those things, Kennedy writing the education bill, signing campaign financial reform, all this spending.
It is the war that has kept us unified in our support for George W. Bush because of its crucial nature, uh because he's great on it, he's right on it.
And we also see the Democrats parting ways with the country trying to use the war as a wedge, which in effect gives aid and comfort to the enemy, which just makes us livid.
And so that's that further cement support for the president.
Then comes the Harriet Myers pick, and that's you know, some people say, okay, that uh you know, the war, that that's what's held us together here, but you know, we we we might not have been this uh supportive of uh President Bush all these uh years if it weren't for the war.
And so people want to see the George W. Bush of the war on terror in some of these other issues.
You want to see it on immigration.
Uh a lot of people want to see it on budgets, but a lot of people want to see it on different things.
Uh Supreme Court nominees, what have you.
I think that's one of the reasons the speech is so timely today is because it will it'll shore up his support.
It's why uh why I say also that that when the President's right about something and when we agree with him, we've got to be unabashedly supportive.
Uh the these uh this this war on terror is a crucial thing.
So is the uh so's the Supreme Court.
So I don't I but I disagree with you that he's wimping out on these things.
I think he's got a different f philosophical uh outlook on them.
I think he's wimping out on uh immigration, uh uh we're wimping out on some of these things.
He's just he's he's not He's not as ideologically conservative as you are, George, or as I am.
But when it comes to the war, he doesn't look this ideological issue.
This is about good versus evil, right versus wrong, which many of us look at as conservative versus liberal.
Good versus evil and right versus wrong.
I don't think the president takes it as far as we do ideologically.
So that at least in disappointment too.
But the problem with your your perception that he's wimping out is that Howard Dean thinks he's wimping out too, and Harry Reed thinks he's wimping out.
You don't want your enemies to think that you're wimping out unless you're setting them up and playing rope a dope.
Faye in Houston, I'm glad you called.
Hi.
Hi, Red Ditto.
I'm calling in regards to the food stamp thing.
I think what is insulting is to be told that I need to be educated that I need food stamps.
Um we are well aware that we qualify.
We have a huge family.
Um our kids can be getting free lunch, not just reduced lunch.
But we don't want the government to pay for our lunch.
What we want is to be able to keep the money my husband worked hard to earn so that we can pay for our own lunch.
God love you, because this is gonna stand you in good stead and your husband as well.
But see, this is a great illustration.
Here's a woman you you claim that uh you do qualify for food stamps one way or the other.
Oh, yeah.
Not through any circumstances of its own.
My husband's going through a career change and having to work two jobs right now.
We have five kids.
Things are tight, but why can't the government cent in its belt just like we do so that I can keep some of the things that we're gonna do?
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.
That that that'll never happen.
No, no, no, no.
No, no.
You you you're asking a great question, but uh it'll never happen.
When the when the government, for example, decides to raise taxes on us, do they ever consider the impact?
Do they ever think, hmm, can the American people afford this?
No.
But when a tax cut is proposed, what's the first thing politicians say, well, how are we gonna pay for this?
Meaning, how are we gonna make sure this doesn't cost us any money to spend?
Yeah, let me keep my money, let other people keep the money.
I don't want somebody else to feed my kids.
I can take care of that.
Well, I you know, you're you're you're right, and and you illustrate the point here that that all these so-called mythical cuts in the food stamp program are are being proposed because the budget isn't being utilized.
And the food stamp I just got an email, and I don't again, I don't know that this is true uh, but we'll check it.
Uh Lister in Kansas City, listening on our powerful blowtorch there, KMBZ, claims that the food stamp program is advertising and has been for weeks.
Advertising for applicants to food stamps.
And but but the the next thing you have to understand, folks, that when when they come along and say five hundred eighty-four billion dollar cut, or five hundred and eighty-four million dollar cut in budget for poor there's no cut.
There's no cut.
The way this works is every year the federal budget, every line item in the federal budget, that's called the baseline.
I'm gonna go through this very quickly.
Every line item in the federal budget is scheduled for an automatic increase based on previous years' budgets.
The budgets of the federal government never go back and look at the previous year and say, do we spend too much there that we don't need to spend?
They assume every dollar budgeted was spent and that more is needed every year.
The budget always goes up.
Some items have a six percent scheduled increase, some have as high as a thirteen percent scheduled increase, especially the entitlements about whom and which we can't touch.
So when somebody comes along and says we're gonna reduce what we're spending on line item A, let's let's call it food stamps.
Food stamp budget may be projected to go up six percent this year.
But instead of going up six, it may go up five percent.
We're gonna cut five hundred and eighty-four million dollars out of it.
It's still going up.
It is not being cut.
We are not gonna spend less on food stamps this year than we did next.
We s n it never happens.
We don't spend less on anything this year than we did last.
Look at the budgets.
When Bush came into office, the budget was 1.3 trillion, it's 2.6 trillion now.
You tell me where the cuts are.
Pilgrimage was no, there are reductions in the rates of growth, but they are never cut, folks.
And it's gotten to the point now we're spending so much on food stamps we don't have the people to use the money.
They advertise for it.
It's it's it's absolutely you you couldn't get away with running your household budget this way.
But the federal government does.
It just Grants itself automatically.
Six to thirteen percent uh increases in spending every year from the baseline.
The baseline is what was spent the previous year.
Not what was not what was used of that budget, but what was allocated, the baseline, and it's uh the assumption is that if we spent ten dollars on light item B last year, then we're gonna need to spend 15 on it next year.
It the that's just the assumption.
There they don't look back and see if only seven of the ten dollars were spent.
They make the assumption it was all spent, we practically had a shortfall, and we need to increase, and that's baseline budgeting in a nutshell, it's how it works.
So there are never another illustration.
You're in a market for a new car.
So you go to various dealerships, and you go in here to kick the tires, you go look at a Ford, you go look at a Chevy, you go look at a Buey, go look at a Lexus, and they go look at a Mercedes.
And you tell your wife when you go out to buy the car, yeah, honey, we got we got 30 grand to spend on this car.
But then you go look at the Mercedes.
Whoa, man, is that great.
What was that thing cost?
$75,000.
Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna go buy the $40,000 Ford.
I just saved myself $30,000.
You didn't save yourself anything.
Just because you didn't spend $75 and ended up spending $35, you think you saved 40?
When you're spending 35 more than you did last year.
That's exactly how it works.
So when you hear about all these budget cuts, they are phantom.
They do not exist.
They there are never any in terms of real dollars.
And if a program happens to be eliminated, and I can't tell you when one was, two or three will come up to replace it to do the same thing.
Just with a different title.
And more money.
We'll be back after this.
Stay with us.
Let's go to San Francisco.
Uh, I love San Francisco.
Uh, even some of the people there.
Andy, welcome.
Nice to have you with us.
Hi, Russ.
Thank you.
I'm a little confused, and I'm hoping you can clear something up for me.
Yeah, I'll be happy to.
I know I can.
Well, we had a little topic enter our marketplace of ideas.
I'm thinking about ten years ago called NAFTA.
And I remember a certain debate with uh with the esteemed former vice president with Ross Perot on, I believe Larry King's show, and he referred to you as a distinguished American at that time.
Yes, he did.
And and my recollection is that you've been pretty consistent over the years, and I'm trying to figure out how you went from a distinguished American to a hate monger.
Uh kind of answers itself.
But he is right.
I'm glad you reminded me of that, Andy, because I was stunned.
I was watching that debate uh with uh with the little general uh and uh and Ross Perot.
Uh Gore, and and and Gore was sent out, and it was it was thought that that Perot was going to make mincemeat of Gore.
And what happened, it was sort of the other way around.
Uh uh Gore sort of won the debate, and in in winning the debate, he had a list of distinguished Americans who supported NAFTA along with him and President Clinton.
And in that list of distinguished Americans was me.
And uh and he mentioned my name.
And you're right, I have now become a uh a hate monger, but and and you're also right, I haven't changed.
I'm I'm the same person there in every way that I was then, terms of my principles, my core beliefs, and uh uh and all.
Uh I I think we'd all have to admit, folks, especially those of you who uh who watching the Ditto Cam, uh I mean, you you'd have to admit, if I'm a hate monger, I'm I'm one of the I'm one of the most fun and lovable hate mongers you could have.
Uh this guy is uh all over the ballpark.
But the reason I became uh a hate monger is simply because I played a fundamental and instrumental role in uh uh destroying the Democrat power base in their minds, and you can only do that with hate, of course.
Uh you can't defeat them with ideas, you can't defeat them.
They don't think their ideas are defeatable, so you have to lie about them.
You have to be uh imbued with uh with a whole bunch of hate.
But I think it just illustrates that uh the vice president is the one here that that has the fried mind.
There's just no question.
Quick timeout, back with more in a second.
Folks, Louis Free has the former FBI director has a new book out.
And let me read to you one of the blurbs.
The problem was with Bill Clinton.
The scandals, the rumored scandals, the incubating scandals, the dying scandals never ended.
Whatever moral compass the president was consulting was leading him in the wrong direction.
His closets were full of skeletons just waiting to burst out.
Just one passage from the new book by former FBI director, Louis Fried.
Clinton was a problem because his closets were full of skeletons.
And we'll be back.
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