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Oct. 18, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:25
October 18, 2005, Tuesday, Hour #2
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Hi atop the EIB building in Midtown Manhattan, Rush Limbaugh executing assigned host duties flawlessly.
Zero mistakes.
And if I were you, I wouldn't uh expect any.
Telephone numbers 800 282-2882, and the email address is rush at EIBNet.com.
So we left off discussing uh General Motors and the uh effect, the impact of this latest event with General Motors will have on the Democrats.
Again, to remind you, the left's game plan issues, among many other things are we need more manufacturing jobs, we need more worker benefits and power for corporations.
We need more health care, we need more job training, all of this sort of stuff.
And we need more power in the American unions and so forth.
And where is everybody gonna get this from U.S. businesses?
Because American corporations are evil.
They are pocketing too many obscene profit dollars, and we gotta get we gotta get them.
We gotta raise taxes, we're gonna we gotta cause all this to happen.
Uh, and nothing's changed.
Everything's like the Great Depression to these people.
Hurricane Katrina equals the Great Depression.
The big problem for them is that the um the whole equation now doesn't work because General Motors has finally gotten a break.
They got a break from a not enough powerful or not not enough power union.
And here are the details from the Wall Street Journal, accelerating a deep restructuring of the U.S. auto industry.
General Motors Corporation said that it will slash health care coverage for unionized retirees, pushing the United Auto workers to make one of its biggest concessions since the early 1980s.
GM also said it would try to sell a big stake in its lucrative financing business.
Some might say, well, why are they going to try to sell a big stake in its lucrative financing business to get some cash?
More than likely.
The moves come as the world's largest automaker posted a third quarter loss of 1.63 billion dollars, sales of the trucks and SUVs that make up most of its profit continuing to deteriorate.
Now, General Motors' plan, which is called the biggest cost reduction it has announced in a single day, is just the latest convulsion of an industry in the throes of a rapid transformation.
Sales for U.S. automakers are being squeezed by foreign rivals such as Toyota.
That has exposed many of the industry's deep structural problems, including high labor costs, soaring pension and health care expenses for hundreds of thousands of retirees.
Folks, I warned you about this.
How many months ago is it?
It's been within the last three months that we warned you this was coming.
That they were on a collision course.
It was a story about how the new GM uh CEO said, you know, I got in this business because I love cars and trucks, but I'm I feel like I'm a health care company administrator now.
That's all I can that's all I have time to do.
And the numbers that they were facing in in continuing to pay health care and pension benefits for retirees was staggering.
And that's what they just were released from by the union.
Now General Motors didn't say how the tentative agreement hadn't been voted on yet, by the way, but uh I guess everybody's assuming it will be.
Um they didn't see say how the tentative agreement uh would affect retirees, according to a person close to the company.
It could also have some impact on current workers, although this person wouldn't elaporate.
Now, from a financial perspective, GM said the the uh the new deal will cut health care liabilities for unionized retirees by about fifteen billion dollars.
Or about twenty-five percent of the liability relating to those retirees.
Fifteen per 15 billion dollars is twenty-five percent of their of their liability to retirees.
Now look, folks, and I a lot of you got mad when we did this story originally, because the point that I made was this is simply not sustainable.
You cannot continue to pay pension and health care benefits of people not working for you any longer that are not being productive, that are not generating anything to the company's bottom line.
You I mean it you can do it for a while, but after a while, the the the the course of uh global competition is such you just can't sustain that.
And people called here and they said, but but they promised.
I mean, that was the deal at the time.
I mean, I mean it's not our fault.
Don't blame I'm not blaming anybody, folks.
I'm I'm I'm I'm not here to assign blame.
I'm simply to here to try to explain, you know, the this panacea that somebody else can pay everything you want and need for the rest of your life has got to end sometime.
It doesn't exist.
It never has existed.
This is socialism and it doesn't work.
But Rush, but Russia, it was part of the deal.
I know it was part of the deal, but but you know, it was all a roll of the dice, just like living in Florida with a hurricane coming at you.
It's a roll of dice.
We're all on the circle of chance, folks.
We're all on the circle of chance.
It's not just going to affect unionized auto workers.
This stuff's gonna have to, it's gonna level out in in all kinds of industries down the road.
My point is that this is the thrust of the Democratic Party's social contract.
That big corporations ought to pay for all of these things because they are endless rivers of profit.
That they make obscene profits.
They take it from their poor workers and they give it to themselves, and it's it it and so that the Democratic Party structure, their game plan has not changed.
They've just had the rug pulled out from under them.
This is all taking place here under my theme today that while you might be worried and some of you might even be panicked over what's happening with the Republicans.
I'm telling you, you wouldn't want to be a Democrat today.
And remember, the UAW leadership negotiated this deal with GM.
This is nothing that's being forced, well, you say it's before, but they they agreed with it.
I mean, they can see the numbers.
There's no point in going on strike for something that isn't there.
I mean, you can go on strike all you want, but if eventually down the road you force the company that pays you out of business, where are you?
You might have a moral victory, but where are you gonna get your bird flu uh vaccine uh after that?
I mean, every everything's panic oriented out there.
Where are you gonna go get your bird flu vaccine?
Well, you're gonna require if you don't have a health care plan to get your bird flu vaccine, what are you gonna do?
Well, a lot of people are at a loss.
The concept of paying for it for themselves just doesn't occur to them.
Because they've been told by Democrats you shouldn't have to, these are these are constitutional rights.
You have a constitutional right to health care just like you have a constitutional right to a lawyer.
And you have a constitutional right to this and that, you got a constitutional uh right to a retirement, you got constitutional rights, social security, and a pension.
Well, you don't have constitutional rights to those things.
These these were good faith promises, but they were made back in an era entirely different than today.
Now, from a financial perspective, GM said that the contract will cut health care liabilities again by fifteen billion dollars or only twenty-five percent of the liability relating to those retirees.
The company's total retiree health care liabilities at the end of 2004 were 77.5 billion dollars.
Now, taking, and we must here for the sake of this point, take the human element out of this and just imagine that somebody's got to come up with 77.5 billion to pay to people who no longer work there.
Uh the cuts will reduce retiree health care expenses by about three billion dollars annually on a pre-tax basis, according to General Motors.
So these so this the these cuts here will only reduce their health care expenses for the retirees, the companies, by about $3 billion.
The agreement underlines a notable shift in the labor movement, and this is key.
With unions in a host of industries, from airlines to grocery stores, forced to make concessions in order to salvage jobs and benefits.
The auto industry was long viewed as one of the last bastions of old-style union power, and the UAW's acceptance of the proposed cuts loudly signals the labor movement's further decline.
UAW experts said this was the union's most significant health care concession since it first began bargaining for health care benefits with automakers in the late 40s, when it negotiated hospital coverage for workers.
With each contract, it added new elements, such as full coverage for families and retirees and vision and dental benefits.
By the late 60s, most UA members, UAW members and retirees had top-class health care benefits.
But at some point you squeeze the golden goose and there's no gold.
There's just there's just nothing left.
So some might say, I mean, stockholders of General Motors is good news for them, it's good news for General Motors, and it's it's good news for the workers whose jobs will be saved because they're still a company.
But the great lesson here, and I uh I know that there are a lot of you in this audience affected by this, and I know you did nothing wrong.
You just you accepted a deal, your union negotiated for you, and now they're changing a deal in the middle of the game, but they're not really changing the deal.
I mean, even the union recognizes there won't be any money to pay salaries for existing workers if this keeps up.
So the great lesson here is the failure of modern liberalism in today's world.
You can have a Democrat candidate for president go out to I think we need more jobs.
I want to, I'm a promise I'm gonna guarantee more jobs.
Sounds good.
And know what?
I don't know.
I'm gonna guarantee more benefits.
Health care for everybody.
Health care, universal health care for one and all.
Sounds good.
Okay, vote Democrat.
Go ahead and vote Democrat.
Wait a minute, though.
There's a problem.
You can't have more jobs in perpetuity and more benefits in perpetuity.
World is too competitive.
You can have more jobs or you can have more benefits, but you can't have a combination of the two.
That is the lesson here.
Anybody who offers you both is either a demagogue or a fraud.
And anyone who buys the promise, well, you come up with your own term for this.
But it's just, folks, it's dollars and cents, it's simple economics 101.
And by the way, uh this is a little self-taught indicator, little lesson, if you will, for this thing called Social Security.
Because all of the warning signals for what's happened to General Motors have been out there for years, and people have been talking about it, but it was so far down the road, nobody thought it would actually happen.
Nobody wanted to listen to it.
They wanted to live for the good times now.
Social Security.
Nobody wants to think about when the day comes that something's wrong there.
But this is a a harbinger of uh what lays ahead for all of these kinds of programs that uh that have to be funded by current earnings when so many people receiving the benefits have retired and are not producing anything toward that uh bottom line.
Now, as I say, I'm not dealing with the human element here, which I know is crucial, uh, because people that are getting caught on the on the worker side of this didn't do anything wrong.
They did what their labor bosses said.
They joined the unions, and probably some of them vote Republican too by now.
Uh it's it's it's an object lesson in how something very simple is true, and that is that all of your needs in life cannot be provided by somebody else.
And if you think so, you can roll the dice, and maybe somebody will go along with that idea for a while, but at some point, maybe not in your lifetime, but your kids, your grandkids, it's all gonna catch up because it cannot be sustained.
Quick time out, we'll be back and continue here in just a moment.
People have been waiting patiently to appear on this program.
Let's go to the phones.
We'll start in Delphus, Ohio.
Hi, Jim.
You're first.
It's great to have you with us today.
Well, Uber conservative dinos from a conservative evangelical pastor.
Uh Rush, I'll get right to my point.
Uh, in your discussion about the demographics favoring Republicans, I agree with your point there, but I just have a quick question.
Why then were the elections in 2000 to 2004 so close?
Well, uh, 2004 wasn't nearly as close as they'd like you to believe.
It was a four million vote split.
And there were more votes for uh George Bush than any president uh ever got.
And Kerry can say he got more votes than any Democrat president ever got as well, but it was still a uh four vote uh uh or four million vote uh margin.
But the answer to the uh the answer to the question is that this demographic shift is underway, but it's by no means reached massive stage yet.
For example, give you the the time frame.
Uh as I've said a couple times, calculations are today, and they're pretty accurate, eight hundred people a day move to Florida.
Eight hundred a day.
Largely they're coming from the the Northeast and the upper Midwest.
Now, if this trend continues for ten years, then Florida will have more electoral votes than New York.
So the demographic shift is occurring.
It's nothing that has an immediate effect on things, but if it keeps up, it will.
The reason why it is important is is this.
In a political sense, the Democrats' electoral vote margin, New York.
and that puts them very close.
They own California.
But if New York loses the electoral vote uh uh number that it has and it migrates to Florida, which is a red state.
Now some might say, but hey, all those New Yorkers moving to Florida, they're going to turn Florida into a into a blue state.
It's possible, but not everybody moving is a Democrat or a red stater.
You know, while the Democrats do rule New York, there are a lot of Republicans outside of New York City that live in New York who are fed up with a lack of opportunity and high taxes.
They're moving to other red states.
The odds are, if this trend keeps up, that the Democrats have always relied on this Northeastern voting block for their electoral strategy for president every four years.
That is something they're going to have to address too.
And I'm saying this is down the road.
It's not going to affect the 2008 election.
I don't I didn't mean to imply uh that it that it will, but it just is another nail in the coffin of how the Democrats are caught in the past looking to the past for their presumed glory days, not looking to the future and seeing what they face.
They can't even look at themselves in the mirror and admit what they see.
They see liberal, but they can't admit it.
They're still trying to come up with things to mask who they are.
If they're denying who they are, they're also denying what's happening in the country around them, and they're taking refuge in historical strengths that are no longer going to hold up.
And remember that the theme here today is I know some of you are all down in the dumps, and oh, whoa is us, everything good.
Seem to be going so well.
We owned it all.
Then the Myers nomination came, and you think that this has exposed a great fracture in the Republican Party conservative movement.
One of the reasons you're thinking this is because the media is so hot to trot about this, and you're also worried about the CIA investigation, special prosecutor.
I've got audio sound bites that'll illustrate what's happening there.
But but folks, it it's all I'm trying to tell you is is that you're getting a picture that's being painted by a bunch of people who can't even look at the present and see it honestly.
They're looking at the past, and they're trying to demoralize.
And all I'm suggesting uh today is don't be demoralized.
I'm trying to give you some reasons why.
These are long-term things, but we're all in this for the long term.
Dan, Fort Leonardwood, Missouri, your next.
Great to have you with us, sir.
Hey, Russ, thanks for taking my call, mega military ditto from the heartland.
Thank you.
Um another another factor in in the uh demographic shift is without question is the rush factor.
Uh i you know, it's attributable to you and what you're doing for average Joes in the political scene like myself.
Um, you know, Sam Donaldson doesn't even understand this, but I understand it.
And the point is, Sam Donaldson's saying, what does Rush have?
20 million listeners out there.
Well, he's not gonna convert five million liberals.
Well, first of all, uh I I I would imagine that on day one of your broadcast history, you didn't start with 20 million visit uh listeners.
That's what's grown over time.
Started with 250,000.
And look where we're at today.
And secondly, we don't need to convert five million liberals.
What we need to do is awaken the rest of the population that hasn't plugged into politics, and I'm a perfect example of that.
I started listening in 1993, and uh, you know, so I'm a case in point, and and what you've done is you've empowered me, and you empower those 20 million visitors or listeners out there to go and fight the fight at the grassroots level.
And Sam Donaldson does not understand that exponential power that you've created out across America.
No, you're right.
They think it's all speeching to the speaking uh preaching to the choir.
They don't have the slightest understanding of what is happening.
And it it really uh it extends to this too.
Throughout and even today, into my eighteenth year, many on the left think that I am some magical pod piper, and you are a bunch of mind-numbed robots.
You people are a bunch of idiotic sponges.
You are Hayseed hick, truck driving gun rack in the back, pro-lifers.
Bunch of hicks.
And I've come along and I've somehow found a way to worm my way into the persuasive part of your brain, and you get marching orders from me each and every day.
And this is considered dangerous.
This is considered dangerous because you up till now you were just good, decent-hearted Americans, and then I came along and I poisoned your minds, and you tune in every day to get your marching orders.
What they've failed to understand is exactly what Dan here has said.
Dan was an average ordinary guy going about his business.
He, in his heart, and instinctively was a conservative.
Probably was apolitical.
Probably didn't follow all this stuff all that much.
Probably irritated him.
Most people, you tune into politics, you listen to your average politicians go at it.
I don't care about this.
When are the Steelers on?
Well, what I came along and did and others uh behind me is just enabled you to validate what you already believed and awaken what was already in you.
But to think that you have been persuaded from something other than what you were, that's happened, but that's not the vast majority of the uh explanation.
I appreciate that insight, Dan.
We'll be back.
We'll continue in just a moment.
Oh, yeah, it's having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have, uh, ladies and gentlemen.
Firmly ensconced in the prestigious Attila the Hun chair here at the distinguished Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, Logan's Port Indiana.
Hi, Jeff, you're next.
Welcome.
Rush Ditto, and thanks for taking my call.
You bet, sir.
Hey, uh, getting back to this GM UAW issue.
Um, I find it interesting that the uh Democrat the Democratic Party has been anti-SUV for how many years, as chronicled by your SUV updates.
Yes.
And GM, you know, list that as one of the main reasons, softness in that market as to why they're having to cut back on these benefits.
So, in a sense, once again, the Democratic Party is the worst enemy of its own constituents.
Well, that's an excellent point.
You have to throw in uh to be honest about it, yeah, you have to throw in some uh uh gasoline price factor.
I mean, the people are reactionary in that way.
I've warned those people, by the way, not to overreact.
I have uh I've asked you people who own SUVs to be cautious uh and to be patient here.
The gasoline price is coming down, and it will continue to come down uh uh somewhat.
I mean it's it's not gonna go back to a buck twenty-five or buck fifty, but it's not gonna stay at three or four dollars either.
But there's no question that the uh anti-environment left.
The militant environmentalist wackos have been trying to get you out of your SUVs.
It's I think it's longer than five years, it's f over five years, and they've been denigrating SUVs and running them down, and uh the Democrats have been talking about wasteful gas guzzlers and so forth.
And when you have a temporary uh uh uh interruption in the distribution of gasoline brought on by Hurricane Katrina, uh it it's just like all these the these endless whining and moaning complaining about global warming.
You do it long enough and you're gonna convince people that something's going on, and then you're gonna convince them it's our fault.
So you've had SUVs contribute to global warming, SUVs killing pedestrians, SUVs killing people in smaller cars, and now when you've got the industrial supply line interrupted for gasoline, uh price goes up uh after a while doesn't take much to get people.
All right, I'm gonna I'm gonna ditch this Hummer.
I don't care if Schwarzenegger has four of them, I'm ditching mine.
Uh, and then people stop buying them and so forth.
And this is a it is a classic illustration of the left getting exactly what it wants.
Uh but but they never factor the results of getting what they want, just like they never factor the results of their definition of victory in Iraq uh or the war on terror.
Let me move on to some things here.
I the speaking of uh uh Democrats and what they're hoping to achieve in their look back to the past to their presumed glory days and trying to find exactly those things that launched them to power in the past today.
One of those things is the CIA leak investigation of Patrick Fitzgerald.
The Democrats are convinced now that Cheney's going to jail.
Cheney's going to jail.
Roves go to jail, Roves indicted, scooter Libby's going to jail.
It may even be Bush.
This is worse than Watergate, folks.
Do you understand this is worse than Watergate?
In the meantime, we don't know diddly squat about what is happening.
Now I must tell you.
The rumors are out again that the indictments will come tomorrow.
I just wanted to share this.
Don't know if it's true or not.
Don't know anything about this.
Well, actually, it's not true.
We are able to put two and two together, but let's let's start with some audio sound bites.
This is on CNN yesterday, Wolf Blitzer's Situation Room.
Jack Cafferty and Wolf have this exchange.
Here's the question.
What should Carl Rove do if he is indicted?
He might want to get uh measured from one of those uh extra large orange jumpsuits, Wolf, because uh uh looking at old Carl, I'm not sure that he'd they'd be able to zip him into the regular size one.
Well, he's actually lost some weight.
I think he's uh in pretty good shape.
Oh, well, then maybe this is the regular uh off-the-shelf uh large would handle it for him.
Yeah.
But you know, it's still a big if.
It's still a big if.
Oh, I understand.
I'm I'm just hoping, you know.
I love I love to see those kinds of things happen.
It it does uh wonders for me.
Okay.
So now don't get mad.
Cafferty is an opinion guy.
He's there to stir you up, and if you're gonna let him succeed in stirring you up, then uh Cafferty's doing his job.
The point is that it's all part of the inertia.
They've got they've got Rove indicted.
Rove's in jail.
They're fitting him for a jumpsuit now.
I mean, this is and uh folks, let me tell you what this is.
This is payback for Bill Clinton.
It is nothing more than that.
The Democrats, the media, they have been biding their time.
They've been hoping, they've been trying to make everything up till now this.
The National Guard story, 9-11, war in Iraq, lies on weapons of mass destruction.
They have been trying to recreate Watergate.
Because it it by the way, what's the importance of that?
You have Watergate is when they were first able in the modern era to successfully criminalize being a Republican.
And it was with Watergate that the Democrats learned that they can get back power in Washington without having to win it at the ballot box.
If they can scandalize current officeholders, then that is all it takes to get wins at the ballot box.
You don't need ideas, you don't need to persuade anybody.
You don't need to have uh an agenda.
All you need to do is to be able to persuade voters that the current occupants are a bunch of scalawag SOBs and simply throw the bums out.
So they succeeded with that in Watergate, and since then they've tried every every the scandalizing delay.
I mean, it's all about trying to come up with scandals and corruption because they can't win on the basis of their ideas.
Then you throw in the Clinton impeachment and Monica Lewinsky and all, and I'm saying they have been waiting for payback, and this is it.
This is what's driving them.
Those are the two things, and they're unable to put on the brakes.
Now, this is from last night's hardball with uh with Chris Matthews.
One of his guests is the attorney, Richard Ben Vanista.
Uh Ben Vanista who defended Bill Clinton to the bitter end.
He waxes on in this bite on the sacred importance of being truthful under oath.
We have had one president cited for contempt, of court for lying under oath, and that was that was Bill Clinton, the man he defended to the end.
Uh Chris Matthews says, This reminds me of Watergate.
Reminds me of Watergate.
What what reminds you of Watergate?
Uh and but Ben Vanista basically has this to say about me.
I disagree with Jim is is that he's overlooking the importance of testifying truthfully in a grand jury.
You can uh assert a Fifth Amendment privilege and not testify.
But if you go in and swear to tell the truth, then you better do it.
Otherwise, if a prosecutor finds that you have testified in a way that is factually incorrect, and you had reason to know that it was factually incorrect, then you're guilty of perjury.
So the cover-up, not the crime initial crime, could bring these guys down.
But there's also the Mr. Watergate prosecutor.
So now Rove has lied.
And of course, last week Matthews uh called these guys in the White House lying bastards.
Why would he go in there and lie?
He's assuming that Rove was called back a fourth time because they've caught him lying in one of the previous testimonies or previous appearances that he made.
And and Matthew said, What makes these guys so powerful they think you win a grand jury and lie?
And that was when Jim Vandenhae, the Washington Post said, hey, hey, we don't really know what's going on there.
Oh, yeah, no, no, it doesn't matter.
I know what's going on.
I'm putting two and two together.
It's obviously rode, obviously Rove lied and a bunch of other these guys lied, and they're not trying to save their own skins.
Uh back to hardball with Matthews, Senator Biden was on uh as well.
Matthew said, Do you believe the staff of the vice president headed by Scooter Libby did this all by themselves without ever telling the vice president, hey, look, boss, we're out there working to kill this guy who's been attacking you, meaning Joe Wilson.
Uh, do you believe that that's credible?
I find it very difficult for anybody to believe that Carl Rove does not have a long leash that the president allows him to go on, and that scooter liberty doesn't have equally a long lease.
The vice president.
These guys are these meaning s uh uh Rove and Libby are known as, we say, no pun intended, real hardball players.
Uh, you look what they did to McCain in South Carolina, you look what they've done.
You know, I mean, these guys go after people who uh who take them on and they go after them in ways that uh are the the record is pretty self-evident.
Of course, Bill Clinton never did any of this.
Lyndon Johnson never did any of this.
Uh but the the the the the the Bushes are are trendsetters here.
They're there's they're setting precedence.
No administration has ever taken on its enemies.
And of course, the Clinton the Clinton administration is is uh is uh probably at the top of the heap for this.
Yeah, it's like saying, how dare you defend yourself?
We've got you dead to rights.
What do you mean saying you didn't do it?
Who do you think you are?
We are Democrats, and we accuse you, you're guilty.
I'll shut up.
Uh so Carl Rove is on this long lease, he can do whatever he wants to do.
Bush may not even know what he's doing.
These guys are real hardball players.
Look what they did to McCain.
Oh, so now, in addition to trying to get even with what happened to Clinton, they're trying to get even on behalf of McCain.
As though McCain was, you know, Lily White and innocent, just trolling through South Carolina, dumping on evangelical Christians every chance he got.
And of course, that's permissible.
You can do that.
But they said, Oh, yeah, you're gonna do that.
Well, you're gonna dump on the Republican base.
Let me uh let me show you the price for that, Senator McCain, said uh George W. Bush, and we all we all know what happened.
Finally, uh Matthew said, Well, let me ask you another one, Senator.
He says it out in the Aspens, where they're where they're changing now, and out in Wyoming or whatever, they they turn in clusters, the aspens, because their roots connect them.
You know our roots are connected, Senator.
People don't talk like that unless they want another person to know we're in this together.
What could it possibly mean, Senator?
This is a question.
I have I have no idea.
It could mean any and all of the above.
I mean, look, this is this is an unusual crowd.
You know, this is a very good thing.
They speak in a different language.
Uh I think you're right.
Okay.
Maybe it's neocon for we're all in this together.
Uh what they're talking about there is the letter that Scooter Libby wrote to uh Judy Miller of this uh over the the this giggling uncontrollably over a line, meaning we're all in this together like the uh like the aspen trees are because they're connected by the uh by the roots.
Uh and they're just giddy here because they they think it they think they know who's going to be indicted and who's going to be convicted, and they just can't wait for it.
Now, the people at redstate.org have a little piece today that's pretty insightful.
It's uh it's entitled What's New with the Joe Wilson Scandal?
And it's very short and sweet to the point.
Don't let the press lull you to sleep with their god-awful grasping at effinescent straws, i.e.
the Joe Wilson scandal, because there could be a big stuff afoot here.
The Washington Post tells us that prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has assembled evidence that suggests Cheney's long-standing tensions with the CIA contributed to the unmasking of operative Valerie Plame, quote unquote.
Well, now if that's true, it contradicts Joe Wilson's own assertion that this whole thing's about him.
But it shows the vice president having his chief of staff, Scooter Libby, leaked the name of a CIA desk jockey to enact revenge against an agency for which he didn't care.
Now, the thing you have to understand is that Scooter Libby did not know that Valerie Plain was covert.
He thought she was overt.
You have to know that somebody's covert when you out them for that crime to have been violated.
And by Scooter Libby's own admission, he didn't know that Valerie Plame was covert, and she wasn't at the time all this happened anyway.
So now they're getting into this whole discussion of what is Fitzgerald actually interested in.
And maybe Joe Wilson, this is not about him.
Maybe this is not about the leak anymore.
Maybe it's about the battle that was going on between the CIA and the White House.
The CIA was leaking information designed to doom and gloom the Bush policy in Iraq.
As were element that the CIA was populated by a bunch of libs left over, didn't like Bush.
Same thing with the Pentagon, the State Department.
I mean, the point is, who knows what Fitzgerald's looking at here.
Now, Reuters uh lets us know that Libby did not leak the correct information because here's the this is the backup for the fact he didn't know that Valerie Plane was covert.
According to Miller's account, Judy Miller, uh her account with meeting with uh Libby on July 8th, she wrote in her notes that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA's weapons intelligence, nonproliferation and arms control unit, also known as WinPack, which tracks unconventional weapons.
A former intelligence official said that Plame did not work at WinPack, but for the CIA's clandestine service.
The former official, familiar with Plame's activities, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the matter sensitivity.
Now, if that's true, then Scooter Libby didn't know that Valerie Plane was classified as James Bond and Drag, did not know that there was some sort of covert uh uh assignment that she had, super secret and all that, when he let the cat out of the bag.
So we've got Cheney, who directed Libby to leak Valerie Plame's name of a covert op in order to harm the CIA, but it was really about getting revenge on Joe Wilson for a trip he had not yet taken, and Libby didn't tell anybody she was a covert op.
As redstate.org concludes, I almost feel bad for these people.
Somebody give them a decent scandal, because so far as what we can piece together, there isn't really much of a scandal here.
Quick time out.
We'll be right back.
Stay with us.
All right, let me address something here.
I'm getting a lot of questions, a lot of email questions, and I've I've been getting these for quite a while.
Rush, are you gonna make available tonight at your Rush on Broadway appearance a live video stream via the Ditto Cam?
Are you going to maybe produce DVDs that can be sold with the proceeds going to you or to charity of your performance tonight?
Should I be honest with them about this?
Okay.
No.
No, it's the truth, you say.
No, I'm not.
No, no, no, no.
I'm not talking about the fees.
I mean, the fees are what they are.
No, I mean, if we if we do this, you would not believe what Folks, in this town, the homeless have their hand in your pocket.
The homeless seem to be unionized.
I mean, if you you want to do anything in this town, but but that's not that's not it.
I let me.
How do I say this?
You people are not gonna believe this.
But I'll just I'll just tell you.
I never promote that we're gonna do this in advance, because if it doesn't turn out to where I like it, I'm not gonna make it available.
And I never know before these things happen whether I'm gonna like them or not.
Well, what are you gonna talk about tonight?
I don't know, folks.
I don't I I I have no clue.
I don't even think about these in advance.
If I do, I get it it doesn't, it's just not it's not conducive for me to sit down.
I don't write scripts and I don't.
So I've no it's why failed speech, because I don't outline the speeches.
I just go give them.
Uh but that this isn't really a speech.
I mean, it this is uh they're looking for 90 minutes tonight.
So, you know, 45 to 90 minutes, and I tell you, if I do 45 minutes, they're not gonna be happy.
Do 90 minutes, they'll be close to happy.
So, but I don't know if it's gonna be any good.
I mean, I by my standards, I just don't know if it's gonna be any good.
If it's good, believe me, we'll find a way to make it available to you.
If it isn't, you'll never see it.
The only people ever will will be the people in the theater.
Quick timeout, we'll be back.
Stay with us.
Okay, got an email I want to share with us a good point from a subscriber at Rushlimba.com.
Uh, Rush, thanks for your optimism.
I heard your discussion today of GM's deal with the UAW regarding retired employee health care benefits.
GM's deal comes on the heels of Delphi's filing for chapter 11 protection, brought on in part by the same thing.
Uh, you suggested this would be a wake-up call for people to recognize that somebody else footing the bill forever is not sustainable.
I fear just the opposite.
That is, people in large numbers will now call for national health care paid for by the government.
They will understand that companies can't handle a burden but not make the connection that the federal government can't do it.
I anticipate this uh bad news for GM employees is good news for the Libs, and they will take this opportunity to resurrect the push for nationalized health care.
I pray that they won't be successful.
Now, this is an excellent point, and there's no question that uh that this is going to happen at some point after the left finishes bashing GM, and after the left finishes bashing American corporations, which they they just are instinctively and reactionary about uh prone to do, uh, they will say this proves that we need a national health care problem paid for uh by the government.
Uh, and I agree it'll start a whole new debate.
That's why I make the point, folks, that none of this is sustainable every social security is the next thing in the crosshairs on this.
You know, you you're either going to have a socialist circumstance and and and structure to your society or you're not.
And we know that socialism doesn't work.
If that's what people want, because that's what it'll take to get them health care, then the debate will just have to rage on.
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