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Nov. 29, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:30
November 29, 2005, Tuesday, Hour #2
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Yes, and welcome back, folks.
Great to have you.
A lot to do on the program today.
I know I haven't talked about the Bush immigration speech yet, Snerdley.
That's why there are three hours of the program.
There's another reason, though.
I'm not quite sure what I think of this yet.
But we'll get to that in due course.
Greetings.
Nice to have you along, folks.
800-282-2882 is the phone number if you want to be on the award-winning Thrill Pact, ever exciting program today.
I am Rush Limbaugh, host and highly trained broadcast specialist, and still doing all this with half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
The telephone number is 800-282-2882.
All right.
Now, one more thing on this culture of corruption business.
I mean, we could go through all of it.
Congressman William Jefferson, Democrat Louisiana.
Right, I'm going to focus right now on the torch, though, because this not only is unbelievable, it's just hilarious.
To set this up, this is from the Asbury Park Press of September 29th of 2002.
Once considered a shrewd and flashy New Jersey politician, U.S. Senator Robert the Torch Torricelli now sees his long political career teetering on the brink in the wake of continuing revelations about his dealings with David Chang, a one-time friend and fundraiser for Torricelli.
Chang is jailed for making illegal contributions to the Senator's 96 campaign.
He is at the center of ethics issues facing Torch, stemming from a now closed federal probe into allegations that Torricelli was lavished with cash and gifts in return for help with Chang's Korean business interests.
With Torricelli locked in a heated battle for re-election against the unknown Republican Douglas Forrester, polls show that Forrester could win on the ethics issues surrounding the relationship between Chang and Torricelli.
Well, we all know what happened.
The torch was visited by Bill Clinton.
And Bill Clinton said to Torch, does the name Andrew Cuomo mean anything to you, Torch?
I mean, you saw what happened.
I mean, I hated to have to do it, except it's a Cuomo.
And, you know, though, those people once thought I was in the mafia, so I was kind of happy to get even there.
But I read him the Riot Act.
I said, you can put your signature on this paper or Fort Marcy Park mean anything to you?
And so the Torch signed off and quit.
And the Democrats, well, we're without a candidate.
Too bad the date for the primary has passed.
So the New Jersey Supreme Court said, it's okay.
We'll let the Democrats appoint a candidate so people have the right to choose, blah, Well, Kathleen Cookie put together a little montage here of Torricelli's denial of the charges.
This happened on April 18th of 2001.
Here is Torricelli denying these charges with cut-ins provided by Brad Simon, who is David Chang's attorney.
Brad Simon will list all the gifts that Chang admitted giving Torricelli, and here is Torricelli's denying it in montage form.
To challenge my integrity is beneath contempt.
I do not deserve this treatment.
Two watches, a Rolex watch, diamond earrings for his girlfriend.
I have never television set ever oriental rug, grandfather clock, other antique items.
Done anything.
Suits.
At any time.
Approximately 14 deliveries of envelopes of cash to Torricelli's house.
To betray the trust of the people of the state of New Jersey.
Never.
So, as I say, this culture of corruption business that the Democrats are trying to now ladle out over Duke Cunningham and Tom DeLay and so forth, as we see, this cuts both ways.
And the bottom line is that when there is this kind of massive corruption on the Democrat side, the media is, well, they all do it.
This is part of doing this in Washington.
Yeah, they all do this.
When it's a Republican, oh, this is the pits.
It's the bottom of the barrel.
And it's a culture of corruption.
But make no mistake about it.
American people not fooled by this in any way, shape, manner, or form, folks.
And I just, again, the thing that you have to realize and remember in all this is that to the Democrats, doom and gloom and negativism is a way of life.
And the reason for this, everything is about them.
They are so self-focused.
They do nothing but analyze their feelings every day and themselves every day.
And they always come up short in their own eyes, which we can understand.
Then they measure themselves against other people's prosperity and happiness, and they get even angrier and doomier.
And this constant recitation of doom and gloom, apocalyptic events, negativism, nothing positive to say about anything, particularly their own country.
You never hear them talk about their country in a positive manner.
They're always embarrassed.
They're always ashamed.
They're always angry.
They're always opposed.
It's gotten to the point, as I say, that they've had to redefine patriotism so that patriotism is now not love of one's country, it's hate for one's president.
The right to dissent against one's president because one's president is a liar.
This is their new definition of patriotism.
I'm just telling you, most Americans don't want to live this way.
They don't want to be around such people all the time.
They don't want to be affected by them and they tune them out.
And if the Democrats don't shape up, they're going to continue to be shocked and surprised every election day.
And I expect that to continue happening because they think they're winning.
They think all this is having a bona fide, genuine, positive impact on their fortunes, and they couldn't be more wrong about it.
Now, here are the details of Cunningham.
Randy Duke Cunningham resigned from Congress yesterday after tearfully confessing to evading taxes and conspiring to pocket $2.4 million in bribes, including a Rolls-Royce, a yacht, and a 19th-century Louis-Philippe Commode.
Now, a number of people have sent me emails today saying, What in the world, of all the things, what in the world would Duke Cunningham want with a toilet?
My friends, a commode is not just a toilet.
There are two definitions of a commode.
A commode is a both definitions.
In this sense, a commode is a piece of furniture, but one version of a commode has a concealed pot or toilet in it.
But I'm sure that's not what Kuhn and Cunningham got.
A commode is also a chest of drawers.
It's a decorative piece of furniture from the 18th century, usually French.
I know several people with several commodes right in their living rooms, but they are not toilets.
And I don't think Duke took a toilet here in the process of taking all these other things.
Democrats have vowed to make what they have called the GOP's culture of corruption a major theme of a 2006 congressional election campaign already unfolding under the twin clouds of the Iraq War and a high energy price, high energy prices, gasoline prices are coming down.
And try this.
Wall Street resumed its winning ways today after two new reports showed a jump in U.S. factory orders and a sharp rebound in consumer confidence.
And you know why consumer confidence is shooting up?
Gasoline prices are coming down.
And yet here in the same report, the same day, nevertheless, the Washington Post, Jonathan Weissman and Charles Babcock quoting Democrats is talking about, yeah, culture corruption, Bush lied, Duke Cunningham, and now we got these high energy prices.
We are home free.
We are going to be sailing to victory.
Well, you talk about being in utter denial, living in an alternative reality or universe.
That's them.
Prosecutors said that Cunningham, an eight-term House member, demanded, sought, and received illicit payments in the form of cash, home payments, furnishings, cars, and vacations from four co-conspirators, including two defense contractors, over the past five years.
The plea agreement, which Cunningham signed the day before Thanksgiving, said he'll have to forfeit his house in Arancho, Santa Fe, $1,800,000 basically in cash, a long list of furniture and carpets.
The agreement also stated he will cooperate in the investigation and the prosecution of others.
So the following story in the Washington Post, Jeffrey Birnbaum today, try this headline, a growing wariness about money in politics.
No.
For several years now, corporations and other wealthy interests have made ever larger campaign contributions, gifts and sponsored trips, part of the culture of Capitol Hill.
But now, with fresh guilty pleas by a lawmaker and a public relations executive, federal prosecutors and perhaps average voters may be concluding the commingling of money and politics has gone too far.
After years in which big dollar dealings have come to dominate the interaction between lobbyists and lawmakers, both sides are now facing what could be a wave of prosecutions in the courts and an uprising at the ballot box.
Extreme examples of the new business as usual are no longer tolerated.
Wait a minute.
Didn't President McCain fix this?
Campaign finance reform.
We are going to get the money out of politics.
We're going to get the money out of politics, Sherry.
You got it?
And now we get this.
A growing wariness about money and politics.
Let's not throw George Soros into this, shall we not, Mr. Birnbaum?
Let's not talk about all the funny money dealings going on with the Democrats.
Shall we not?
No, let's talk about President McCain and campaign finance reform and how we're going to clean up this system.
I'm telling you people, they can write what they want about us as the American people, but the thing that they cannot learn is that we are not idiots.
They are sitting there inside the beltway.
They need to send foreign correspondents out to the states to find out what people in this country think.
The people in this country have long been suspicious of people in power, particularly in Washington.
You can go back to Teapot Dome.
You can go back to any number of scandals, the House Bank.
This is nothing new.
What's new about this is that we might be able to snare some Republicans in this.
Yeah, yeah.
I just want to remind you, campaign finance reform.
About all that happened in campaign finance reform is that new tunnels were dug so that larger amounts of money could be shifted unseen between incumbent politicians and big-time donors.
And we also lost some free speech rights in the process.
Thank you, President McCain.
This stuff is starting.
I'm bile coming up here into my throat listening and talking about all this as though this is somehow something new.
It isn't.
And if anything happens out of this, people are going to rise up and say to hell with all of them.
Not just one party.
They're going to stand to the hell with all of them and punish them all.
To hell with this.
They can't cut taxes.
They can't do anything.
Demand more spending, demand more money.
When they don't earn what they want, they go out and make all kinds of deals to have it given to them.
Other people can't live their lives this way.
Other people can't go to the bank and just start writing checks as though they have the money in the account when they never do and get away with it.
People can't go out and demand that somebody give them X, Y, and Z for their house in exchange for some favorable treatment and legislation.
American people are not cowed by this.
Quick time out.
We'll be back.
Stay with us.
You're listening to Rush Limbaugh on the Excellence in Podcasting Network.
Let's grab a phone call here, Charleston, South Carolina.
This is Ben.
I'm glad you waited, sir.
You're next on the EIB network.
Hi there.
I was just calling.
I wanted to make a point to you that you say this was earlier in the show that you were talking about how it's terrible that Republicans never lump Democrats together when they're all caught on these corruption scandals, and only Democrats would do that.
But now, as soon as you make that point, you follow up by lumping all Democrats together and saying, you know, they're all doom and gloom.
They never have any, you know, new ideas and things like this.
I'm just, you know, it's kind of an irresponsible point to make.
Well, it would be irresponsible if it were wrong, but it's not wrong.
Don't you see how that's easy to say that we're wrong?
I mean, well, it's easy to say because it's right.
By the way, there is a Democrat that doesn't join the chorus, and that's Joe Lieberman.
And I said that in the first hour of the program, and it's going to be our why he's got a column in a Wall Street Journal.
It's just an exact opposite of what every other Democrat in Washington is talking about regarding the Iraq War.
And that doesn't have anything to do with him running for president.
But McCain makes these points.
It has everything to do with him running for president.
You know something?
You know, it is amazing to me.
You call with an accusation.
I knock your accusation out of the park, and you totally change the subject.
I've just told you that I do not lump all Democrats together because I specifically said there is a different one as Joe Lieberman.
And now you want to challenge Lieberman's honesty.
So you think Lieberman is not really being honest, he's only running for president?
Absolutely.
Well, then is he an idiot?
Is he an idiot?
I don't know.
I mean, do you think that's the thing?
Because I thought you guys all believe the American people want us out of Iraq.
And here's Lieberman saying Lieberman was the first Democrat thrown out of the primaries in 2004 precisely because of this position.
He didn't even make it to the New Hampshire primary.
But don't you see?
I mean, it's the same point that you just made.
You say that McCain's making these points because he's running for president.
But Lieberman isn't doing that.
He actually cares.
When did I say about McCain doing anything for running for president today?
You were saying that when you were first making that point, just that McCain is doing this simply because he's running for president and everybody's just making the noise.
So McCain in 2008, all this kind of nonsense.
Well, I have said that on previous occasions, but I don't recall saying it today.
But my discussion on the chocolate vagina might have clouded my memory.
Did I say it today?
Seriously, when I talk about McCain running for president today, the only thing I've talked about McCain so far today is campaign finance reform and what a boondoggle that is.
I thought I heard you say it earlier in the show.
Well, you may, you know what?
You're probably reading a website that is quoting what I said on the program.
And I have talked about in the past, McCain does take populist positions.
All politicians do.
But the point is that you're missing, I don't know if you're missing it, if you're trying to deflect it.
My observation is that I don't care who from the Democratic Party of the American left happens to be on television, a member of the media, Cindy Sheehan, Robert Kennedy Jr., I don't care who, or an elected Democrat, I hear doom and gloom.
I hear apocalyptic things.
I hear anger.
I hear wild accusations that are not based in fact.
I don't hear anything positive.
I don't hear anything joyful.
I don't hear any joy in you.
We had a liberal female call here yesterday.
Sounded like the most miserable woman on the earth.
I tried to make her laugh.
It didn't work.
She didn't want to laugh.
I don't understand it.
And I think there is validity to the fact that it's a collective mindset on the left to be angry, PO'd, doom and gloom.
And I've explained why.
Because every seems like so many people in this country, we have so much time on our hands.
We have so much freedom and prosperity that so many people sit around thinking, it's all about me, how I feel, what I want, when I want it, how am I going to get it?
Who's not letting me have it?
It's all about me.
Well, I'm going to give you a clue.
It's not about you.
And it never is.
And people who want to make everything about them are going to end up being miserable.
They're not living life.
They're being so inwardly focused and self-analytical that they're living life by observing other people live it and getting upset about what they see.
But as far as the complaint that you offered, I did not lump them all together today.
Joe Lieberman stands alone.
Thanks for the call out there, Ben.
Appreciate it.
I have a list of scandals from 1979 to 1999.
It's three pages.
I'm going to start going through this list of scandals right now.
And we're going to post these at rushlinbaugh.com.
Now, most of them happen to have been perpetrated by Democrats, but that's not my point.
The idea that there's some kind of new culture of corruption in the U.S. Congress or in Washington, D.C., especially when we just have such recent, fresh memories of the Clinton administration, you want to talk about a culture of corruption that exists now.
And if you want to deny what was going on during the eight years of the Clinton administration, from all the funny, dirty Chinese money to the selling of nuclear secrets or missile secrets to the Chinese via fat cat friends at Clinton, to the Johnny Changs, to the, I'm forgetting all these people's names.
Who?
Charlie Tree.
Yeah, Charlie Tree, Johnny Chang.
I mean, folks, it is absurd here for the Democrats to go out and try to make this case, but it's all they've got because they can't say anything positive.
Webb Hubble.
Oh, Webb Hubble.
Monica Lewinsky, Kathleen Willey, Juanita Broderick, Paula Jones.
Bill Clinton cited himself as being in contempt of court.
Culture.
Sandy Burglar, Josh Steiner.
Remember that guy?
Remember that?
Josh Steiner lied to his diary.
He was some Clinton official somewhere, and he took some notes and made notes in his diary every day, and they've subpoenaed a diary.
And his defense was, I lied to my diary.
It's like Charles Barkley once saying in his autobiography, he was misquoted.
Back to the phones on the one and only EIB network bill in Delray Beach, Florida.
Glad you called, sir.
Welcome.
Hi, Rush.
Listen, as you're recounting the corruption scandals of the past in Congress, you might want to remember the Keating Five, four of which were Democrats.
And one was the only Republican was McCain.
And Jim Wright, the Speaker of the House.
Yeah, I got them all here.
I got them all here.
About the Keating Five, they say there was a Republican in that group, but I'm not so sure.
Here's the list.
Alan Cranston, Dennis D. Concini, Don Regal, John Glenn, and John McCain.
Who's a Republican in that group?
It might be five for five.
Democrats.
Anyway, well, the Keating scandal, the Keating 5, was also related to the savings and loan scandal.
This is 1980 and 1989.
And remember the name Charles Keating.
So, but that's on the list.
Let's just start here.
These are the scandals, major scandals, 1975 through 1999.
Lance Gate, President Carter's OMB director, Burt Lance, resigned amidst allegations of misuse of funds in 1977.
Tung Sun Park, Korea Gate scandal involving alleged bribery of more than 100 members of Congress by the South Korean government.
Charges were pressed only against Congressman Richard Hanna, convicted, and Otto Passman, not prosecuted because of illness, also implicated South Korean President Park Chung-hee.
The Betty Ford addictions scandal was 1978.
Senator Herman Talmadge.
Humman, they call it Human Talmadge of Georgia.
He was punished after his ex-wife produced cash gifts that he had hidden in an overcoat in 1979.
Herman Talmadge later wrote, I wish I'd burned that damn overcoat and charged everything on American Express.
Talmadge the same year admitted to having spent five weeks in alcohol rehab.
He was not re-elected to the Senate in 1980.
What this doesn't tell you is that Humman would go back home to Georgia and he'd go walk in the streets and people would give him money.
Constituents would give him money and that's why he was in the overcoat.
Herman Talmadge.
Humman was around during Watergate period.
He wasn't on the committee or anything, but he was constantly being interviewed about it.
There was the AB scam scandal in 1980.
There was Debate Gate, the briefing book of President Carter stolen and given to the Reagan campaign before the 80 presidential election in Cleveland, or the debate in Cleveland, the October Surprise in 1980, which, of course, the Democrats were still investigating in 1990.
The Ann Gorsuch Burford refusal.
She ran the EPA as she refused to turn over EPA documents in 82.
William Casey, Insider Trading, 1983.
Iran Contra, 85 and 86, savings and loan scandal in the Keating 5, 80 and 89.
John Towers nomination as defense secretary, derailed due to allegations of habitual and extreme alcohol abuse and improper ties to the defense industry, 1987.
Mario Biagi, convicted in 1988 in the WedTech scandal of bribery, extortion, racketeering, filing a false tax return, mail fraud, false financial disclosure, resigned from the House before he could be expelled.
He's a Democrat from New York.
Speaker of the House, Fort Worthless Jim Wright, forced to resign after Ethics Committee investigation found dozens of violations of House rules, including an alleged improper receipt of $145,000 in gifts by Wright's wife from a Fort Worth developer and large profits from the sale of Wright's speeches.
Well, let me tell you about that.
That was 1989.
Fort Worthless Jim published a book of these speeches, and they had to get the book pretty thick to make it look like Fort Worthless Jim was substantive guy.
And so they used a very large font typeface, in some cases, only one or two words per page.
The books mostly were bought by organized labor in bulk in boxes that were never opened.
He had a tough time finding Fort Worthless Jim's book of speeches in the bookstore.
There was the Anthony Lee Coelho of California.
That's Tony Coelho, who now remains a major big shot organizing Democrat politics.
He resigned from the U.S. House for unethical finance practices, including junk bond deal in 1989.
And I remember I was watching Nightline that night.
Barbara Walters was, have you, I saw Barbara Walters last night on Larry King alive before the football game started.
You know, she's promoting her top 10 most fascinating people.
Do you know, by the way, do you know who made her top 10 most fascinating people list this year?
Kanye West.
Kanye West, would somebody explain to me, of all the people in this country that might qualify as among the 10 most fascinating, what in the world is Kanye?
Now, I know I'm not an aficionado of rap music, but what am I missing here with Kanye West?
Why is he among fascinating?
Is it that comment he made about Bush and Katrina?
It has to be.
It has to be.
Anyway, she didn't look any older last night than when I was watching her on 1989 on Nightline.
A friend of mine said, well, it's all the Vaseline they put on the lens, and it was a new version of soft focus.
At any rate, I was watching her host Nightline.
They were doing it on the resignation of Tony Quello, and she was beside herself.
Can the government survive, she said.
And he was just a congressman.
He's a Democrat, powerful Democrat congressman from Merced out in California.
Met him a couple times.
Elsie Hastings, federal district court judge impeached, 1989, convicted of soliciting a bribe.
Nevertheless, elected back to the House by Democrats from Florida in 1992.
Senator Dave Durenberger, Democrat, denounced by the Senate for unethical financial transactions, 1990.
Then the BCCI scandal implicates former defense secretary and Washington insider Clark Clifford, BCCI, that was a Jimmy Carter deal during his term.
There was the House Bank scandal of 1992.
Mary Rose O'Car, 1992, Ohio, Democrat, allegations of ghost employees on the payroll.
George H.W. Bush's pardon of six Iran-Contra affair figures on his last day in office days before the perjury trial of Casper Weinberger was scheduled to begin.
Well, it was a scandal only because the Democrats thought, you can't do that.
We had Weinberger nailed.
Weinberger was indicted the day before the election in 1992.
Pure political indictment.
That ought to be mentioned.
Remember the special counsel on that?
Lawrence Walsh.
Political indictment.
Day before the election, the Friday before the election, indicted Weinberger.
Democrats tried it again right before the election of 2000.
Something leaking that Bush had a DWI had never talked about.
Remember that?
Walter Fontroy, Democrat delegate to Congress, District of Columbia, guilty plea regarding lying on his financial disclosure form.
Zoe Baird nomination as Attorney General.
Kimba Woods subsequent near nomination derailed by past employment of illegal aliens as nannies.
Both nominated by President Clinton.
Walter R. Tucker III of California resigned before bribery conviction, 1996.
In 1998, Clinton, Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy, forced to resign from office despite ultimate acquittal on criminal corruption charges.
Bruce Babbitt, Interior Secretary, Independent Probe, 1998-2000, alleged lying to Congress concerning influence of money in 1995, American Indian Tribe Casino decision finds no criminally prosecutable perjury by Babbitt.
Vice President Al Gore, 1988 or 1998, allegations of improper fundraising and no controlling legal authority defense.
This is those nuns.
Out in California, they built the Buddhist nuns.
And he went on and says, no controlling legal authority.
There was Whitewater in 1994 to 2000.
Newt Gingrich financial improprieties.
Dan Rostenkowski.
A post office scandal of 19.
That's not even half of it.
When they got to Rostenhowski's house in Illinois, they found a bunch of furniture from his congressional office.
Teamstergate, Ron Kerry and Bill Clinton's 96 campaigns for the presidency of the union and the U.S., respectively, swapped Teamsters Union General Treasury funds into Clinton's campaign for Clinton campaign funds into Ron Kerry's campaign war chest.
The Teamster's political director was put in jail.
No Clinton officials were charged.
Wonder why?
They ran the Justice Department.
Kerry's re-election was invalidated.
Jimmy Hoffman Jr. elected when the Teamster election was rerun.
Henry Cesneros.
He resigned as housing secretary, and after a lengthy probe that began in 95, pled guilty to lying to the FBI about money he paid a former mistress, later pardoned by President Clinton in 2001.
And there was Pardon Gate, Clinton, 1999 and 2001.
That's the Mark Rich deal.
We're just up to year 2000 now, folks.
And this is just a list of scandals.
And Democrats want to talk about this culture corruption out there.
Nine out of ten of these that I've mentioned here are Democrats and loads of them in the Clinton administration.
Let's go.
Linda Chavez, nomination as Secretary of Labor derailed by past employment of illegal aliens 2001.
James Trafficant, we all know.
Bob Torricelli bribery scandal.
Trent Lott resigned amid a racial controversy.
Yellow cake forgery.
False evidence presented in the case for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
That's still an ongoing controversy.
To call this a scandal, we haven't even yet got to the bottom of this.
Following that's the Valerie Plame affair.
Halliburton Company is listed as a scandal here.
Abu Grab torture and prisoner abuse.
Tom DeLay, Bernard Carrick, Bush administration, payment of columnists, including Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher, and Michael McManus.
The Downing Street memo is listed.
Duke Cunningham, Jack Abramoff, and so on and so forth.
It's all from Wikipedia as they list the scandals from 1975 to 1999.
What's that?
House bank scandal?
No, I mentioned it.
It's here.
I went through it because I already mentioned earlier.
The House Bank scandal and the House post office scandal are both mentioned.
Anyway, quick timeout.
We'll be back.
We will continue.
Stay with us.
And we're back executing assigned host duties flawlessly.
Zero mistakes.
Other Democrat scandals.
Let's not forget Massachusetts Congressman Gary Studs and the little patty cake he was playing with those House pages.
Remember that one?
Remember that?
How about Barney Frank?
Stephen Goby.
Stephen Goby, Barney's partner running, well, a brothel type thing right out of Barney's basement.
Barney said he never knew it.
Barney is also fixing parking tickets for the guy.
Joe Biden.
Joe Biden plagiarizing Neil Kinnick during a presidential primary that Biden quickly faded.
The Ted Kennedy and Chris Dodd waitress sandwich.
This is a scandal that was repeated practically every night at La Brasserie in Washington, a restaurant that's now closed.
And I'm not making this up.
It would either be Senator Kennedy on the bottom and Senator Dodd on the top and the waitress in the middle or Dodd on the bottom, Kennedy on the top and a waitress in the middle, hence the waitress sandwich.
This The governor of Kentucky, Paul Patton, was accused of pressuring his mistress, harassing her after she broke it off, and then withdrawing Medicare money from her nursing home that she ran.
Remember that?
So if the Democrats want to play this culture corruption game, let's just remind them there's a new media.
Oh, Edwin Edwards of Louisiana.
Gush, fuck.
We could probably take up the rest of the program today mentioning a bunch of Democrats.
By the way, I did make one.
Dave Durenberger is a Republican from Minnesota.
I said he was a Democrat senator.
What about New Jersey?
The whole state's culture corruption there.
New Jersey itself, which is a Democrat-run state.
All right.
There's a speech coming.
The president's going to do a speech tomorrow at the Naval Academy on Iraq.
Bill is a major speech on Iraq.
And the leftist media is having a tough time getting a beat on how they should react.
Should they be angry or should they be happy?
Should they be ecstatic about it?
Because they think they already know what the president's going to say.
FredKaplanSlate.com.
Brace yourself for a mind bog of sheer cynicism.
The discombobulation begins Wednesday when President Bush is expected to proclaim in a major speech that the Iraqi security forces, which only a few months ago were said to have just one battalion capable of fighting on its own, have suddenly made uncanny progress in combat readiness.
Expect soon after, if not during the speech itself, the thing that Bush and Cheney have just this month denounced as near treason, a timetable for withdrawal of American troops.
They think that Bush might actually announce the beginning of a timetable for withdrawing troops.
So it appears, assuming the forecasts about the speech are true, writes Mr. Kaplan, that the White House is as cynical about this war as its cynical critics have charged it with being.
For several months now, many of these critics have predicted that once the Iraqis passed their constitution and elected a new government, President Bush would declare his mission complete and begin to pull out.
This despite his public pledge to stay the course until the insurgents were defeated.
In short, Bush could pull a win-win-win out of this.
He could preempt the Democrats' main line of attack against his administration, stave off the prospect of, from the GOP's perspective, disastrous elections in 06 and 08, and as a result, bolster his presidency's otherwise dwindling authority within his own party among the general population.
The political beauty of this scenario is that even if Iraq remains mired in chaos or seems to be hurtling towards civil war, nobody in Congress is going to call for a halt, much less a reversal of the withdrawal.
The Republicans will fall in line.
Many of them have been nervous that the war's perpetuation with its rising toll and dim horizons might cost them their seats.
So anyway, the speech is coming.
The Democrats and the media have figured out what President's going to say.
There have been some leaks about the speech, but it's not totally known yet what he's going to say.
They're assuming he's going to announce a withdrawal.
They're assuming that this is hypocritical.
They're assuming that they, see, the conflict is, my gosh, Bush may pull a rabbit out of a hat because they're convinced it's what the American people want to happen.
But they also, they want to feel happy because they think they forced Bush into it.
But they don't want to feel happy if forcing Bush into it helps Bush out.
What's missing in all this?
What's missing is a few details that you would think some everyday mainstream reporters would know.
Like for over a year, Bush has been saying, as the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down.
For over a year, the increasing proficiency of the Iraqi security forces has made in from the accounts of Bloggers and so forth into the pages of the New York Times and Washington Post.
This is redstate.org.
The point is that it's not news that the Iraqi security forces are getting better.
It's even been reported in the mainstream press.
And never mind that quietly the security of 14 of 18 provinces, as well as most of Baghdad and large swathes of the Sunni triangle, have been turned over to Iraqi forces in the past year.
14 out of 18.
This is nothing more than the original Bush plan coming to fruition.
That's all this is.
And yet, the Democrats are beside themselves.
They think he's being a hypocrite.
Got to go because of time.
Back here in just a sec.
You know, there's part of me that likes this story.
Four peace activists taken as hostage by al-Qaeda types in Iraq.
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