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Oct. 14, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:07
October 14, 2005, Friday, Hour #3
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Time Text
We have a breaking news flash here, ladies and gentlemen.
Karl Rove has left the courthouse.
What do you?
He left about 11 o'clock, right?
The media is still reporting that Karl Rove has left the white.
I'm sorry, the grand jury room.
He left the courthouse.
Which I think happened about 11 o'clock.
Well, they're still reporting that he left the courthouse.
And he didn't say anything when he left.
He was smiling, too, that arrogant creep.
How dare he smile when he come out of a grand jury room where we're all aware he's going to be indicted?
How dare he smile?
He's just trying to infuriate the media.
And I have to say it's been a pretty good open line Friday.
We've had phone calls all over the place.
The one phone call I didn't have a chance to get, well, I didn't get a chance to get to it before the caller hung up.
Want to know what I thought of the sex cruise allegations against the Minnesota Vikings?
That makes me want to set sail on a cruise.
Anyway, they're just allegations.
I'll tell you what, folks, until something is known, I'm not going to listen to what the press tells me is happening.
And even after they tell me what's happening, I'm not going to assume it's right.
I'm going to wait for other sources.
Open line Friday, whatever you want to ask, whatever you want to say.
800-282-2882.
As you know, we let off the program today with a montage, and I'm going to play this again, of a bunch of media types just going bananas over Bush having staged and choreographed this teleconference he had with soldiers in Iraq.
And of course, it wasn't staged or choreographed.
It was the questions were not the answers.
The answers that the soldiers gave were not written for them.
They were not predetermined.
They were not ordered to say whatever they said.
They just rehearsed it so they wouldn't look nervous.
They're talking to the president.
They're on television.
And they were given a chance to go over their answers.
They knew what the questions were going to be.
And of course, what all these press people fail to mention is that back in December of 2004 in Kuwait City, it was the press who staged an event with Rumsfeld.
He was having a town meeting, and he set up a guy from the Chattanooga Times Free Press, Edward Lee Pitts, got hold of a soldier and fed him a question.
And they rehearsed the question, and the soldier asked the question.
And then, when the media played Rumsfeld's answer, they played one little bit of it that made Rumsfeld sound like he was disrespecting the soldier and telling him to get the hell out of his face.
The excerpt they played from Rumsfeld was, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.
That was one sentence of about 20 sentences in Rumsfeld's answer, which was a substantive answer.
But the media didn't play the substantive answer, and it was a staged event.
Well, I found one more.
I remember one more hugely staged event from Al Gore.
And before I get to that, I want to replay this montage, this media hysteria.
And this comes from NBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, ABC, and CBS.
The people are Brian Williams, Andrea Mitchell, Terry Moran, Katie Couric, Bob Schiefford, Niane Sawyer, Lara Logan, and Claire Shipman.
The satellite picture from Iraq was being beamed back to television newsrooms here in the U.S.
It showed a full-blown rehearsal of the president's questions, along with the soldiers' answers and coaching from the administration.
Today's encounter was billed as spontaneous.
But troops were coached on how to answer the commander-in-chief.
The fact that this was so carefully choreographed shows just how urgently the White House wants PR success at home for this embattled president.
The Bush administration using staged events to sell the war in Iraq.
After satellite cameras caught administration aides rehearsing the soldiers beforehand, the new embarrassment, the White House scrambling after a photo opportunity with troops in Iraq didn't go quite as planned.
His message was overshadowed by questions about how much staging went into the event.
And a lot of other problems are giving the White House a major case of the nerves, including yesterday's slip-up staging a photo op with U.S. troops and letting our cameras see it all.
Yeah, that's quite a they're really trying to hide something there, aren't they, Claire?
That was Claire Shipman of ABC, really trying to hide this, right?
There was no hiding and there was no secret and there was no staging, as I have said.
Much of this program we have spent recounting genuinely staged events.
The Clintons dancing on the beach to no music down in the Virgin Islands two weeks before the Monica story broke.
Bill Clinton finding a pile of stones on the Omaha Beach at Normandy during an anniversary of D-Day and placing them in the shape of a cross while the gaggle of photographers gathered atop the hill, a lone battleship out in the horizon within the shot of the camera.
There were no stones that were placed there.
Totally staged photo ops, left and right.
Back then, the press marveled, practically had verbal orgasms over how good at this Clinton was.
Well, I recalled another one.
Back in the days when Al Gore was running for president, remember he kept reinventing himself every few months?
It was Naomi Wolf who told him to shed the blue suit and red tie and start wearing earth tones, khakis, polo shirts, hiking boots.
Then they rolled Gore out as the environmental candidate.
He staged a canoe ride down the Connecticut River.
Do you remember this, folks?
Gore staged a canoe ride down the Connecticut River to illustrate his credentials as the environmental candidate.
And they pre-positioned photographers along the riverbank to capture the earth-toned environmental candidate knifing heroically down the pristine river.
There was only one problem with this, though.
The day before the trip, Gore's advance team discovered the river level was so low that his canoe might get stuck, which would ruin the photo op.
I mean, it's hard to plow through a treacherous river to show your bravery when it's three inches deep.
So the local environmentalist wackos hosting Gore.
Remember this, Mr. Sturdley?
The local environmentalists hosting Gore arranged for the BGE Dam upriver to open its floodgates the morning of Gore's canoe ride and release 400 millions of gallons of water, which raised the level of the largest river in New England by one foot.
As soon as Gore got out of his canoe after the staged photo op canoe ride, a phone call was placed to the utility and the floodgates were closed.
The drought was, and there was a drought going on at the time, and that's why the river was so low.
The drought was so severe that local residents were forbidden from watering their lawns or washing their cars.
And yet they opened the floodgates at this dam, 400 million gallons of water to raise the water robo in the river a foot so that Gore could have his canoe ride in his new Naomi Wolf-inspired earth tones to show what a great environmentalist he was.
Now, Bill Salmon, Bill Salmon broke this story in the Washington Times, and then it was followed by the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, AP, and Gore screamed bloody murder.
And the Republicans had a field day with Floodgate.
They actually issued a press release about Gore's watery dilemma, and it was headlined Roe versus Wade, ROW versus Wade.
All the best.
Oh, which reminds me, I told a little joke the other day, and maybe I didn't tell it well enough because some people didn't get it.
Al Gore is over in Sweden.
He's making this anti-U.S. speech, which is what Democrats do when they go to Sweden.
And after he gave the speech, it's the speech where he said how America would be different had he been elected president, he had a meeting with reporters, and one of the reporters said, Vice President Gore, did you hear that three Brazilians were killed in Iraq?
Gore said, No, no, no, no.
How many is a Brazilian?
I went to commercial breaks and I went to email.
I don't get it.
We waste our time with jokes.
Gore's an idiot, right?
You got bazillions, gazillions, trazillions.
And Gore wanted to know how many was a Brazilian.
I guess you had to be there, folks.
We'll be back in just a second.
Okay, it's Open Line Friday and back to the phones to Macomb, Michigan.
Sandy, been waiting for a long while, and I appreciate your patience.
Welcome.
Hi, Rush.
Thanks for taking my call.
You bet.
I'm another one of those used-to-be liberals that you helped convert.
Thank you.
And I thank you so much for that.
Thank you.
I'm a little upset with Ann Coulter.
It seems that she has grabbed onto this Harriet Myers thing, and she is taking it to a real extreme.
I mean, I think she has gone way over the top with this thing.
And I wanted to get your reaction.
Well, I, excuse me, just a second.
Clearing the throat there.
The reaction, I think, on the right in general has to be understood in context.
I know it's disturbing to a lot of people because it appears as though that there is a bust up here of the conservative coalition.
You see, I know what's bothering you and a lot of other people.
And I'll get to Ann here in just a second.
What's bothering you and a lot of people is it's bad enough that we've got the media and the Democrats just never leaving Bush alone.
And it's mean-spirited.
It's extreme.
It's near criminal in what they're saying about him.
But now here come a bunch of conservatives and they're piling on and they're saying things that they're being critical of Bush.
And president is a very, very respected and loved person on the right.
And the people on the right correctly think that in many ways that it doesn't help here when members of the president's team go off the reservation and start criticizing him too.
Now, the reason for this, whether you accept it or not, is deep rooted in substance.
And it's rooted in a profound disappointment over an opportunity that's been missed.
Wesley Prudent had a pretty good summary of all this today in his piece in the Washington Times.
And his last two sentences, and I'm going to get pretty close to what they are, verbatim, just sum it up.
His last two very short sentences.
They are this.
It's such a pity it needn't have happened.
And that really just, to me, says it all.
The whole thing is just sad and unfortunate because it's so unnecessary.
It need not have happened with this nomination.
There just were other choices that were better to make and so forth.
Now, you have to understand here, Sandy, that the conservative movement, such that it is, is huge now, and it's not monolithic.
And there are a lot of independent contractors in the conservative movement.
There's a lot of competition.
And people are competing for different things.
And this leads to different degrees of conservatism, whether you're conservative purity or consistency or what have you.
Now, I know Ann Coulter, and Ann Coulter does not hold back ever about anything.
And what she writes is exactly what she thinks.
And in that regard, I think, take it as it comes and take it as it is.
You can be critical of it.
A lot of people are because they think it's when any conservative, I think this is unfair, by the way, but when any conservative happens to be just bluntly honest, the left characterizes them as over-the-top weirdo extremist kooks and then tries to lump all conservatives in with the most outrageous example of the most prominent conservative speaking or writing that they can find.
But in terms of what she thinks about this, she didn't like Roberts either, and for the same reason.
She didn't like Roberts because he wasn't known.
And she doesn't think there's any excuse for nominating somebody that isn't known.
A lot of conservatives believe that the left, when it comes time for them to nominate judges, they go full bore liberal.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, member ACLU, Stephen Breyer, there were no mysteries about any of these people.
And there wasn't any opposition to them on the Republican side.
But for some reason, there appears to be this fear of being open about who we are.
And so we have to nominate these stealth candidates.
And there's some people who just, like Ann, who wishes the president were as bold as she is.
Well, I would have liked to have seen the fight also, but to, you know, and the only thing that I know about this woman is what I've read about her, what I've heard about her.
What do you want to know about her?
I know her.
What do you want to know about it?
Don't believe her.
No, I'm talking about the president's choice.
I'm not talking about Ann Coulter.
Well, I thought you were upset at Ann Coulter.
Well, yeah, I am.
But for her to say that she's an absolute lightweight that has absolutely no business at all being even considered for the court.
Why does, okay, wait a minute, stop right there.
Because a lot of people, a lot of people are, and this may not be you, but a lot of people are saying that.
And then they say, what's wrong with an average American being on the court?
People think that, hey, this is good.
We don't need an elitist.
We don't need some egghead.
We don't need some pointy-headed elite scholar that spent all of his time in an ivory tower at a university or whatever.
What's wrong with an average American rush?
And is that your view, by the way?
No, not necessarily.
I just, I guess I trust the president maybe a little bit more than maybe I should.
No, no, no.
Now, I'm not trying to talk anybody out of the trust out of the trust they place in the president.
Again, and I don't think Ann is either.
She's just telling you what she thinks, but there's no requirement that you sit out there and gobble it up and agree with it.
In the case of trust, I read an interesting quote from President Reagan when he was making his acceptance speech at the Republican convention in July of 1980.
And he talked about trust, and he said he cited Jimmy Carter.
He said, Jimmy Carter said, trust me.
Well, that's the wrong way to look at this.
We're not a country that puts our trust in one man and believes everything one man says.
That's not how we're built.
What we do is put our trust in the American people.
And then our leaders are invested with that trust.
And if they violate it and break it, they're not re-elected.
And I mentioned this because a lot of people do want to don't.
Reagan also said trust but verify.
And a lot of people can't verify here is the problem because there's not enough to know about Harriet Myers.
There's no opposition to her that she's an average American.
There's no opposition to her that she's whatever she is.
At least in my case, it's simply that there are others about whom so much more is known, it wouldn't be such a risk.
And we don't know why we still have to take the risk.
But at the same time, you know, when you get to talking about this, folks, look, I don't want to retrace all the steps because I said earlier this week, somebody wanted to get into this with me.
I said, look, the opposition has been stated.
There's nothing that's going to happen.
We weren't elected.
I wasn't elected.
It's not my choice to make to the Supreme Court.
I don't get a pick.
And neither do anybody else.
None of the critics on the left or right.
It's not their pick either.
It's the president.
So the focus here now has to be on the end game.
There may be some people out there with their criticism trying to quell and kill the nomination, trying to convince her to leave.
Some have said so.
Some have urged her publicly to withdraw.
I know President Bush well enough that he's not going to withdraw her name.
And I have a tough time believing that she's going to withdraw her name.
And I'm going to tell you what's going to happen here, folks.
Best guess.
Best guess is the Democrats, you know what the smart thing for them to do would be, and don't worry about me giving them this advice because they'll never do it.
The best advice for the Democrats is just to shut up when the hearings start.
Be very friendly, be very warm, be very encouraging.
Don't ask her any controversial questions.
Don't ask her about original intent, federalism, Roe versus Wade.
Ask only questions that are under the radar, you know, some obscure court rulings that no one short of Chief Justice Roberts could follow.
You know, do what you can to establish that you think that she's unqualified and do it in a congenial manner and then punt it to the Republicans.
You know, just illustrate that she may not have the experience or the constitutional philosophy.
And if she has the ability to answer these questions, then bam, then they're struck.
But if she can't, then they kindly pass it off to the Republicans and it's up to them.
That's the smart thing for the Democrats to do, but they're not going to do that.
The Democrats are already, I've been reading newspaper editorials, I have been reading the liberal websites and they are fit to be tied over the fact that Bush picked her because there's a religious component to their friendship.
And they can't help themselves.
And what they're going to do, folks, they're sitting idly by now watching the right wing of America criticize her, but they're not going to be able to avoid getting in on this fun.
I don't know what the end game is going to be here, but the end game is where this is all headed.
And that's where our focus ought to be.
And also setting a marker for the next nomination because there is going to be another one, my guess is.
Yes, thank you.
And speaking, my good friends of staged media events, I have this from the archives of the Rush Limbaugh website.
Never forget this.
Let me just read to you from the date we posted this, February 19th of 2004.
You have to read Patrick Healy's Boston Globe piece as Kerry Surge's feistiness seems slipping to believe it.
The headline leads one to believe that Kerry's relaxing, having less anxiety, not being as provocative with the media.
That has nothing to do with the story, though.
begins saying Kerry is wrangling with rival John Edwards over jobs and trade, two things neither of them know diddly squad about, by the way.
Story goes on to publish this quote.
The administration promised America several million jobs over the course of the next months, and I immediately said that those predictions would fall short based on the promises they made with respect to the tax cut, which was supposed to give a million jobs.
It cost a million.
And the next tax cut was supposed to produce a million jobs and it lost a million.
The Globe writes that this is what Kerry told reporters, but that's not how it happened.
Kerry's remarks lasted three minutes, the Globe reports, yet it left TV reporters without a soundbite until one CBS news producer asked Kerry to try it again.
They don't know what they're talking about in their own economic policy, Kerry said of the Bush team.
Today it's one thing, tomorrow it's the next.
So they used take two.
So in other words, CBS didn't get a good soundbite from Kerry in take one.
So rather than use that and say, this guy can't speak, he's having a tough time in the campaign trail, they asked him to do it again, telling him they didn't get a soundbite.
Senator, you need to tighten it up.
Can you try it again?
And he did, and they gave him a pretty good soundbite.
Staged events, anyone, for the mainstream media.
James in O'Calla, Florida.
Hi, sir.
Nice to have you with us.
Original intent Dittos, Rush.
How you doing?
Fine.
Thanks very much for the call.
Okay.
Hey, when you have those soundbites of questioners asking people on like, what, Matt Lauer and those Sunday shows, you always have to ask the question instead of the questioner asking the question during the soundbites.
Why do you do that?
You know, this is a great example of a great Open Line Friday question.
And I'll be glad to tell you the answer to this.
Matt Lauer is not our employee.
None of these journalists are our employees.
I can't use them.
I can't use their voices except in little bitty bits and pieces if they occur within the text of an answer.
So I have to read the questions here of all of these reporters and anchors, but the sound bites of the newsmakers are fair usage.
It's a newsmaker on a news show.
And as long as we credit where it came from, you say Matt Lauer today on the Today Show was talking to X, then we can play whatever the newsmaker says.
But since Matt Lauer nor any of the others are employed here, we can't pass off the impression that they are or that we have access or any of that.
It's just a legal question, and it's nothing more than that.
And sometimes it's problematic because some of these questions are very long and require a long setup.
And I hate reading these log questions, but sometimes it's necessary.
But that's the answer to it.
It all boils down to what's fair usage and what isn't.
By the same token, I'd say five or six times a month, there are segments of this program that news networks want to use.
They always call and ask us for permission because they have to.
I'm not their employee.
They can't just take this show and rebroadcast it without permission.
And there are understood agreements between all programs that do news in one way or another that you can use the newsmaker.
As long as there's the credit on TV, it has to be a bug on the screen that says courtesy of.
And on our radio here, we have to verbally identify where we got this unless our cameras and microphones are there, and then we can say it as our own because we gathered it.
But if we're not the news gatherer on this, we have to credit the gatherer who is.
When it comes to the reporter doing the question, they're not ours and we can't use them.
It would be no different if I were to say, hey, let's go to the soundbite.
Our Matt Lauer has the question.
Well, he's not ours.
He's NBC's.
And so that's the reason for it.
It's not because I have ego, and it's not because I don't like these reporters, and it's not because I don't want to give them airtime.
It's just something that we cannot do.
I imagine if we called them and say, you mind if we use you on the question, they probably say, yes, but I'm to call these people every day to do this.
And, you know, they like everybody else.
They like the airtime.
They like the plug and so forth.
For the most part, they do.
We don't get any complaints about it.
What do you mean?
Tell me, give me one.
Give me one example.
Well, I don't play Katie Couric on the air.
I don't play Katie Curry.
If she wants to object to my calling her the perky one, that's too bad.
You know, if she'll clean up her act about George W. Bush, I'll clean up my act about her.
You know, but hey, you know, two and three can play this game.
We had her on a sound, but we can run this montage business.
We're taking little bitty sentences here from each one.
We're allowed to do that.
You've got to like, you can use five seconds or less of somebody, but you can't use any more than that.
Otherwise, you get into some legal hassles that you just don't want to mess with.
Nancy in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Hi.
Hello.
Thanks for having me on.
I just wanted to say I'm 40-something, and I wanted to agree with your view on feminism.
And I was pretty young when it started, and I remember, you know, burning with bras and not wearing bras, but that doesn't last very long.
And I just remember going through different things and not really hating men, but I mean, to me, that's what it was.
And I got tired of it after a while.
But the nail in the coffin was when Hillary Clinton was on that morning show, and I went in and watched that, and I looked at her, and I said, she's either lying or she's gullible.
And she's too smart.
You mean when she blamed the attacks on her president and her husband as the vast right-wing conspiracy?
You know, I was so busy with kids and work.
I wasn't really paying attention much to politics back then.
But this right-wing conspiracy kept coming up with the Clintons over and over and over again.
I was so tired of that.
I tried to find out what it was all about.
That was it.
That was the turning point.
But whether for Hillary and the feminist movement not doing anything about Bill Clinton with all the other things that were said against him.
Amen.
Amen.
The feminists were gone.
I told myself.
Yes, I told my boys, don't come home from college telling me about your feminine side.
I don't want it.
Yeah, and how about here comes a woman, Paula Jones, well, a series of them.
You got Juanita Broderick, he raped me.
Paula Jones, he exposed himself to me.
Kathleen Willey, he assaulted me.
And where are the feminists defending these women against a powerful man who has total control over them, especially that intern, Monica Lewinsky?
They're out there ripping into these women.
Paula Jones was a trailer park hayseed hick, and she didn't fit the mold of the modern feminist movement.
Ivy League elitist and so forth.
Plus, she was prettier than they are.
And that bothered them, too.
Yeah, they're just a political movement.
And then I can't watch the news anymore because my husband sings it so depressing ever since Bush was president, and he's like, watching it, he turns it off.
This is really depressing.
We don't want to watch this.
I'm like, what am I going to do?
And then I read Newsweek, canceled that because all they did was bash Bush.
And then I had someone come work for me, and she listened to you.
And that's when I finally gotten better news.
And when was this?
About three years ago.
Three years ago.
Well, we're so glad you found your way here.
And I'm glad you called because there's no better illustration of how right I am than hearing from a woman who feels totally betrayed or misled by feminism.
Now, folks, you might think that I'm just prattling on about this because I'm an opinionated guy.
But let me tell you something.
I'm 54.
And the modern era of feminism, I'll never forget when I was first exposed to it.
I was doing a little radio show in my hometown in 1968.
And I'm 17.
And it's a Saturday morning remote at a Sears store for the old days.
The owner of the station had set up this remote every Saturday morning at Sears to earn money.
And so I had to go out there with this little gizmo, played the records from there, did all that with people going through the Sears shop.
And once a month, we had people from the local high school come in for a half hour to discuss issues.
And one of the girls that was in my class, I was a junior in high school at the time, came in and it was all riled up about feminism.
And she was spouting it from some book that she had read or magazine or whatever.
And I'm, you know, I'm listening to this.
And I, I was hit upside the head, broadside with it, no idea this was coming.
And I'm listening to it.
And the, it just, it was, she was mad.
She was vicious.
She was angry.
She was motivated.
She was 18 or 17 years old.
So I trace the modern era of feminism back to 1968, 1969.
Well, I left home when I was 20 and I went away to Pittsburgh.
And it was in full swing, folks.
I mean, I am not making this up.
You couldn't open a car door for women without them being offended.
I couldn't compliment their appearance, Dawn, without them being offended, because that was to ignore their brain.
Now, these are not clichés, folks.
I'm telling you this, this had a formative effect on me.
And then after Pittsburgh, I went to Kansas City.
And there I ran into trouble with the local NAGS president because I called some woman reporter on the air dear.
So I had to go to a sensitivity training seminar with the local chairman of the NAGS.
The name was Tracy something or other.
Came in wearing this giant straw hat and Birkenstocks and a floral dress that looked like a burlac bag.
And I'm sitting in there and I had to do this because the manager was scared to death of these people.
Then one of my buddies at the radio station had a girlfriend and his girlfriend had a girlfriend and they wanted to introduce me to her.
They said, she's a big feminist.
And I said, by this time, you know, I'm ready for them.
By this time, this is nothing more than exploration and experimentation.
So I go out with a date on this woman.
All she wants to talk about is this new book.
Susan Brownmiller has this new book out, and I can't remember the title of it, but it changed the whole perception and definition of rape.
So here I am on the first date with a woman.
All she's talking about is rape and how she's been profoundly affected by the book, but she hasn't read it.
So I went out the next day because I'm figuring on a second date, just for the fun of it.
So I went out and found the book and bought it and I gave it to her.
And you would have thought I'd given her a ring.
Oh, she was ecstatic and she wanted to sit there and read it with me.
And it was all about this.
I wish I could remember the title of the book.
Probably if you go to Amazon, put in Susan Brownmiller, it'll be there.
But the purpose of the book was to change the whole focus of rape was an act of violence.
Men were natural born predators.
And so I became a member of a class that was a natural born predator.
And with women who believed that, the whole existence was proving that you weren't a predator.
And how did you do that?
You had to act like a wimp.
Against our will, Men, Women, and Rape, Susan Brown.
What's the year of that book?
Does it say what year it came out?
It's in the 70s sometime because it had to be after 75 and before 1980 because that's when I was to be 76 or 77.
And that's when I was in Kansas City.
So I'm, you know, you people wonder why I don't have kids.
Yeah, just no way.
Back after this.
Stay with us.
Mr. Snurdly is telling me some similar stories from his early years when he lived in, it was New York, right?
So Snerdley is about my age.
We're about the same things.
Back in this era of militant feminine, which was really nothing more than ultra-liberalism, and that's all it's ever been, and that's what it is today, militant feminism.
But all the girls back, they got all caught up in this, like Brown Miller's book and whatever other related things, Ms. Magazine, this stuff.
And it eventuated that all these feminist playwrights began writing plays, and Broadway productions were held of these angry female tirades against their lot in life.
And Snerdley's girls and girlfriends, and we want to go see the play.
So Snerdley, okay, girl wants to go see the play.
I mean, I got to do the final.
We'll go see the play.
And the girl would get so mad at Snerdley for being a man during the play, practically hit him on the way out of the theater.
Now, I'm sure some of you people think that there's some exaggeration in this.
And over the course of years, yeah, stories do expand.
But I am not exaggerating at all the attitude that militant feminism gave women during the period of time that I was of that age, too.
And it was not pleasant.
It was and it was, I mean, parts of it.
We try to have fun with it, but can you imagine on the first date discussing rape?
And have that be the proof that I cared?
That I was interested?
Forget it.
Portland, Oregon.
Tom, welcome to the EIB Network.
Hi.
Thank you, Rush.
I appreciate you taking my call.
You bet, sir.
Anytime.
I have a question for the all-knowing Maha Rushny.
Yes, sir.
You've come to the right place.
As I was paying close attention to all the storm news from Rita and Katrina, there was one thing that I kept waiting for to happen that never happened.
And I'm just curious, out of the, if you know anything about this, out of the hundreds of platforms and thousands of wells in the Gulf, apparently none of them leaked any oil.
There were no oil spills.
One of those rigs even had a hit a bridge.
And to me, that seems like that's pretty good proof that the guys that are designing these things and operating them know what they're doing and that maybe it makes some sense to diversify our oil exploration areas by putting wells in other places where they're proven to be a single- Let me just piece.
I got to interrupt here because the constraints of time, but you were exactly right.
The 109 rigs were shut down or affected by Hurricane Katrina.
One of the things, I'll be honest, they had enough lead time to get out there and close them, shut them down, lock them.
A case of an earthquake that might not be an earthquake, it probably wouldn't matter anyway.
But your point is right on.
But just to add to you, nothing that they predicted in terms of the apocalypse came true.
The water is not a toxic soup in New Orleans.
There weren't mass deaths.
There wasn't mass murder.
None of what they said was true.
None of it.
Literally none of it.
Including that.
I'm talking about all these predictions that they were making.
None of them came true.
And it's just, you're right in the money.
But even now, with all this evidence that these oil rigs can withstand a Cat 3 hurricane or worse without spilling oil and destroying the even today, as Republicans in Congress are trying to expand the energy bill to include more offshore drilling 25 miles offshore in the Gulf, California and off the Florida Gulf Coast, militant environmentalists are out there opposing it.
And there's one quote in a story I have in the stack today from some brilliant environmentalists saying, exploration and drilling is not the answer to dependency.
Well, then what the hell is hybrids?
Nuclear power we can't use.
These people are just, folks, when you nail them on facts, they resort to who they really are, and that is they're anti-capitalist, anti-corporate.
They're anti-progress.
And by all rights, it's environmentalists who ought to be forced to move back into the ninth ward because that's the way they say we should all be living.
Pristine neighborhood now, thanks to nature, right?
Well, let's see the environmentalists take the lead and move in.
How about it?
Back after this.
To Franz in Baltimore, the Steelers are going to be fine this year.
To Charlie in Almond, North Carolina, whoever's telling you to buy a smaller Christmas tree, screw it.
Buy the Christmas tree that you want.
Buy three Christmas trees.
Burn the first two and then use the third one for the real one.
Whatever.
We'll see you Monday.
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