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Jan. 4, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:13
January 4, 2006, Wednesday, Hour #3
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Okay, hubba-hubba, we are back.
America's anchorman firmly ensconced in the prestigious Attila the Hun chair here at the distinguished Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
As usual, we are having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have, and I am doing that which I was born to do.
I am your host for life, Phil Rushbo, here behind the Golden EIB microphone.
Telephone number 800-282-2882.
Email address rush at EIBnet.com.
This is a very interesting story here, folks, from the Associated Press, the authorette, Catherine Schrader.
Congressional intelligence committees had at least a hint in October of 2001 that the National Security Agency was expanding its surveillance activities after the 9-11 attacks.
And do you know how we know that they had the hint?
Because it was in a letter released yesterday by the House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
Pelosi had raised questions to General Michael Hayden, then the NSA director about the legal authority to conduct the eavesdropping work in the October 2001 letter.
This is just a month after September 11th, of course.
Pelosi said that she was told in a briefing that month that the agency had been operating since the September 11th attacks with an expansive view of its authorities to the conduct of electronic surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and related statutes, orders, regulations, and guidelines.
She wrote, and by the way, at the time she wrote this, she was the leading Democrat on the intelligence committee in the House.
And she said, I am concerned whether and to what extent the National Security Agency has received specific presidential authorization.
President Bush has acknowledged he authorized the NSA to eavesdrop without warrants on international calls and emails of Americans and others inside the U.S.
I can say this.
Somebody from Al-Qaeda is calling you.
We'd like to know why, Bush said this week.
So the real important thing about this is Intelligence Panel had a clue about spying.
And yet all these Democrats are running around saying, we didn't want any of that.
We weren't consulted, which we all know is not true.
And Pelosi's concerns are if the president approved it in a way which acknowledges his right to do so.
That's what's not really amplified here.
But she's asking the NSA, has the president given you the authority to do this?
Which implies he has the authority to give them to do this.
Now, I understand there was a story in the Washington Times yesterday that the Democrats indicates that the Democrats, in light of this whole debate on the National Security Agency, are going to make the right to privacy a big issue in the Alito hearings and that they will attack the Bush administration and Republicans as having little regard for the privacy of Americans.
Well, I'm going to tell you what I think about that, folks.
I'm going to bring it on.
You know, I don't see any need to be afraid of these people.
I don't see any need to be intimidated by what their battle line or their plan of attack is going to be because this debate on privacy within this context is one we should welcome because we will win it.
It's worth asking the liberals and the Democrats on their cherished right to privacy, the right to privacy to do what?
What right to privacy are you concerned with here?
The right to privacy for al-Qaeda terrorists to call their allies in the U.S. in order to plan attacks to kill Americans?
You want to protect their right to privacy to do that?
Are you concerned about the right to privacy to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge?
Are you concerned about the right to privacy to fly airplanes into buildings?
You concerned about the right to privacy to unleash a dirty bomb in a New York City subway.
You are concerned about the right to privacy to release anthrax in a major American city.
Is that the kind of right to privacy liberals and Democrats are so hot to defend?
They think that's their road back to power.
Bring it on.
Let them start defending the right to privacy for al-Qaeda.
They're already doing it.
They're already invested in the defeat of the United States in Iraq.
They're already hoping to bring that about.
So we're losing our right to privacy and so forth.
And I find it fascinating, too, on the journalist side of this.
The journalists out there demanding a shield law to protect them against charges of release their source.
And yet, you know, they're the ones who want to be able to send reporters up to testify to put other people in jail.
As in James Risen, clearly now an advocate for the New York Times.
I think what the Democrats ought to do is this.
I think it's just be honest.
Introduce the terrorists' Bill of Rights.
Because that's the privacy we're all talking about here.
This is what the NSA is doing.
It's absurd to think that the president or the NSA is spying on Americans for the express purpose of spying on Americans.
The NSA and the administration are trying to find out the attacks happened in this country for crying out loud, folks.
The attacks happened in this country.
They're trying to find, and these cells were here.
We know that Al-Qaeda had Mohammed Atta and his compatriots in the country.
They're getting phone calls from outside the country.
I mean, it's absurd.
Right after 9-11, the Democrats, everybody was raising cane because we weren't connecting the dots to find out about these people who were in the country long before the attacks.
Now, after the attacks, we're trying to take steps to see to it with the Patriot Act and with the surveillance to see to it doesn't happen again.
They want to impeach the president.
Now he's trying to connect the dots.
They want to impeach him.
Bring it on.
These people are standing in quicksand while they think they're at the beach.
Just be honest about it.
The terrorist Bill of Rights.
Americans don't have the right to yell fire in a crowded theater, but apparently some liberals are upset.
The president is allowing our government to monitor calls and communications by terrorists who are determined to kill as many Americans as possible.
We really do.
We live in a parallel universe here.
And back to Pelosi's letter.
You know, it is fascinating to me that she is very concerned that the NSA is operating without presidential authority, thereby acknowledging that there is presidential authority to authorize this kind of action on behalf, on the part of the National Security Agency.
So I think, folks, that this is, they're teeing themselves up.
They think they're setting themselves up for a big heyday.
And ask yourself, since 2001, since Bush was inaugurated, ask yourself if you can remember one of their attacks, one of their lines of attack, one of their plans coming to fruition.
Have they all not backfired on them?
Cindy Sheehan backfired on the Wellstone Memorial backfired on George Bush's National Guard and then the Bill Burkitt forged documents, forged memos, that backfired on them.
What has worked?
What's worked?
Well, well, okay, they think he's lied about the intelligence, but the American people don't.
They think he's lied about weapons of mass destruction.
The American people in mass don't believe this.
But they haven't affected anything.
They were hoping the elections in Iraq failed, all three of them.
They were hoping that the turnover of the country to the Iraqis back in June, a year and a half ago, would fail.
They've been hoping all these things would fail, and nothing has failed.
They run up the body count.
They eagerly count it up to 1,000 and eagerly counted up to 1,500.
He eagerly counted up to 2,000.
And yeah, they might have gotten the president's approval numbers down.
They didn't affect the policy.
They didn't affect the way the president was conducting the war at all.
I just, it's, it's, I know it works in terms of creating PR that you think affects the American people.
In terms of affecting policy, what's working?
And now they think this is going to work?
Coming out with a terrorist Bill of Rights?
These are the people who wanted to give terrorists constitutional rights and lawyers and so forth.
And I just, I think, tee it up, folks.
I think it's going to backfire on them as much as any of these other things have.
Not that it'll change them, but the idea this is going to succeed and make the right to privacy a central tenet of the Alito hearings.
I thought it was going to be abortion.
But Martin Luther King was for abortion, and we've got to remember Martin Luther King.
And now we've got Abramoff out there.
They're going to be swimming.
I'm going to know which way.
In fact, you remember what I said I would do if I were Bush?
I'd give them so much news to cover, they wouldn't know which one to cover first.
I'd start doing so many things.
I'd just start advancing the conservative agenda.
I would just nominate as conservative judges as I could.
I would go hell's bells into Syria.
I'd go into Iran.
I'd go and I'd stay in Iraq.
And I'd start these people's heads not knowing what to cover, not knowing what scandal to try to create and invent and go after.
And it's close to that.
There is so much going on, much of it in the minds of the Democrats that they've made up, that it's going to be difficult for them to stay on point and on focus on some of this stuff, other than the general focus of it's doom and gloom.
This is a rotten country.
Bush is a rotten president.
Country's been lied to, blah, blah, blah.
The same old themes.
But if they, I'm just going to tell you, if they had succeeded with any of this, Bush would be long gone.
He would have been impeached.
He would have resigned.
Something would have happened.
It would have been far, far different than it is today if they had been successful with any of this stuff.
Tried to blame Hurricane Katrina on him, try to blame Hurricane Wilma on him, try to blame all these things.
Try to blame blowing up the levies on him.
Thank you, Calypso Louis.
You name it.
And it hasn't succeeded.
Now, they think they're chipping away and they're leading up to this culture of corruption leading up to the 06 elections, but now all their eggs are in the Abramoff basket.
Just go from one thing to the next, the manufactured news, the manufactured scandal, creating a scandal where none really exists, amplifying it bigger than it'll be, reporting the news they hope happens rather than just being patient and telling us what is happening on a day-to-day basis.
Anyway, quick timeout.
We'll be back.
Stay with us.
Okay, back to the phones.
This is Sean in Orange Beach, Alabama.
I've been waiting over an hour.
I appreciate your patience.
Hello.
Hey, Rush, this is Sean from Orange Beach.
Hey, the biggest story that we're dealing with here with this mining issue is not the fact that 12 miners died and there was three hours delay between the correct story and a story that wasn't being published professionally.
The fact that they're working in an industry that we depend on day in and day out with little to no enforceable oversight.
That's the story.
Well, actually, I don't know that it is.
I mean, I have actually seen some reporting on this that has been somewhat surprising to me, talking about the improvements in mine safety over the years.
They've been pretty dramatic.
Yeah, well, but how does that equate to the fact that their safety violations have almost tripled in the last 12 months at that very mine?
Well, that's one mine.
I mean, you know, you've got to be real careful about this.
Here's an explosion of this type.
When's the last time you heard of something like this happening?
Yeah, well, when do we hear it?
Are you saying it happens and we don't know about it?
I think it's pushed way back because it's not provocative and it's not sexy.
Oh, come on.
You telling me that miners have died in explosions in mines in the past number of years and it's been covered up.
I'll bet we could go back and research this, and if you compare it to, let's say, environmental issues, it's kept further down.
Well, I don't know what you don't even know what you're talking about.
I mean, that is not the big story.
The big story here happens to be what it is.
A bunch of miners were in an explosion.
Rescue efforts were mounted.
It was reported erroneously that they were alive.
12 of the 13 were alive.
For three hours, the families believed this.
Then all of a sudden, we find out the truth, and the media reported, used gossip as their reporting standard once again.
I mean, that is the story.
Mine safety has been vastly improved.
I can remember, I lived in Pittsburgh back in from 1971 to 1975.
And back then, the Trumpkas were running the United Mine Workers.
And it was a huge, they were in the news every day.
There were all kinds of problems that were taking place in the mines.
And there were exposés of management in the mining companies and how they were playing roughshod with these guys' lives and so forth.
And it started getting cleaned up and improved.
And these policies have been enacted for a number of years.
For you to say that there's been a bunch of accidents that have been covered up, what is it about the third hour on this program where these kinds of mining safe is a Christian Science Monitor story, in fact, in the stack today.
Mining is safer than farming today.
Mining is safer than driving a car for crying out loud.
I know they've been covering up farm accidents.
Everybody knows they've been covering up automobile accidents for all these years.
Here's Carrie in Elkhart, Indiana.
Welcome, EIB Network.
Nice to have you with us.
Yes.
Thank you for letting me on.
You bet.
Yeah, you always make me think, and I appreciate that.
You know, it seems that we've got to give these reporters a little bit of a pass here on this West Virginia mine story because, I mean, after all, they just got bad intelligence.
Well, then it's time they admitted their mistake.
Yeah, well, isn't that what they'll be saying?
It's time they admit that they lied.
They lied to us for three hours of what happened out there.
And they knew it.
They knew it.
Yeah, they got bad intelligence.
They just got bad intelligence.
I'm sure they'll be saying that.
No, Russia.
No, no, no, no.
They will not be accountable at all.
The latest is that the media were victims.
Of course.
The media were victims of circumstances.
And, of course, we all know the media lied.
Miners died.
Hey, have we heard Rush if any of the miners that perished in there were African Americans?
No, I haven't heard that.
Because if there were, that means Bush blew up the mine, doesn't it?
Well, I was wondering about this, too.
How long will it be before they find a way to blame Bush for it?
Sure.
Just like they blame you for the hurricane.
Problem is, I don't think that when it comes to blaming Bush, the previous caller, the one right before you, gives the best indication if there's going to be such an attempt, it'll be on that basis.
That nobody's done anything to improve mine safety.
Bush doesn't care.
All Bush cares about is sending these guys down there with no money and no pay to risk their lives to get this coal up to produce energy for big corporations to go out and pollute the rest of the world and cause global warming and so forth.
If Bush had a heart, if Bush had compassion, then we'd shut this industry down.
It would clean up the planet.
We'd stop polluting and stop creating global warming and all sing kumbaya.
Well, no, no, we can't go drill for more oil.
It won't let us drill for more oil.
I'm surprised we have as many mines operating as we do, to tell you the truth.
Based on because we're not mining offshore.
Of course, we're mining.
Of course, the liberals look at West Virginia.
It's good for two things: Robert Byrd and Jay Rockefeller and everything else to hell with it.
Ron in Charleston, West Virginia.
Welcome to the program.
Nice to have you with us.
Yeah.
Yeah, Rush.
I was just concerned about the fact, and it seems like it's sort of like New Orleans, that the governor and the governor's press spokesman claim to have been caught up in the euphoria, I guess, of what the media was saying.
But if you go to wbgazette.com, which is the Charleston, West Virginia Gazette, you will see the comments that the press spokesman Tom Hunter was making last night.
For example, at 12:34 this morning, he said that the rescue people were there.
They were checking each one of the miners.
They were going to decide whether they could come to the church or go directly to the hospital.
So that sort of seems to me like the government confirming something that the press is running with.
Yeah, well, we need to find out who the original source for all this was.
I mean, somebody had to tell this guy that the miners were being examined by rescue teams and it was being determined whether they go to the church first to see their families or be taken straight to the hospital.
Somebody had to tell him that.
Well, apparently so, and I guess that is the question.
But I guess I'm not a big, obviously not a big defender of the liberal news media.
They get it wrong, as you said, but it looks to me like there was some compounding of the problem by government people making those kind of comments.
That's entirely possible.
It's entirely when you're talking about government and corruption and compounding.
And believe me, the coal mine operators are the ones that are going to be blamed.
They're going to blame them for everything.
Well, of course, that always happens.
But they've got insurance.
That's what it's for, handle things like this.
But no, I know ultimately that's where it will go.
And then, since they're, you know, management and business that will then find its way to which one of these guys donated to Bush, we'll be back here in just a second.
Stay with us.
As usual, half my brain tied behind my back.
Just to make it fair.
800-282-2882.
Looking forward to talking to you on the phone.
We'll go to Hammond, Indiana.
Jim, hi, you're up next.
Welcome to the program.
Good afternoon, Rush.
One of the things that I think stands out most, and it's not being talked about, we cannot go back to the courts in times to get their approval.
That would lead us to the 21st hijacker, and we couldn't get into his laptop because we were forbidden by a judge to get in there.
And a la, welcome.
Here comes 9-11.
You're talking about Zakarius Masawi.
That is correct.
And we were barred by a federal judge from getting into his computer.
So that's the type of protection these Democrats and these demagogues in.
That's exactly right.
That's the right to privacy that they're talking about.
Yeah, he was in that.
That is an excellent point because that was raised by the Minneapolis FBI office, I think, after 9-11.
Colleen Rowley was her name.
But they had the guy's laptop and they wanted to get into it, wanted to connect the dots.
Judge wouldn't let them do it.
You know, that actually, it's a great point.
Why aren't some of these judges investigated and held to account for their secret decisions?
Everybody else is out there getting mad at the press over what he's doing in secret, the NSA for doing what it's doing in secret.
But how about these judges?
As you said, that may very well have prevented us from thwarting the 9-11 hijackers if we would have gotten into Masawi's computer.
All this talk about the great FISA court and how judges can do no wrong and need to be involved in the process.
What's their record been when their input's been used to influence our national security?
That is an excellent point.
In fact, listen to this.
This is a book called What Went Wrong, Michael Hirsch and Michael Issakoff.
Newsweek, May 27, 2002.
We learn that the FISA court had denied wiretaps in Phoenix and Minneapolis, the two places FBI agents were conducting and connecting the dots.
Royce Lamberth, the chief judge in 1999 or 2000, had a hissy fit about a misrepresentation by one FBI agent.
He demanded an investigation.
That resulted in the shutdown of 10 to 20 wiretaps in the investigation of the 1998 African embassy bombing.
But, of course, you're right.
The judges get off scot-free.
Why, why?
Well, the judges are above it all.
The judges are the final authority.
Judges can never do anything wrong.
We never investigate them.
We never take a look at what they're doing that might compromise some of the steps that we're trying to take.
And I think they do need to be looked at.
It's a valid point.
Wayne in Columbia, Missouri, you're next on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
I've been trying to get a hold of you.
I wanted to speak to you for about 12 or 13 years.
I've called many, many times before.
I'm really pleased to get in.
I'm glad you did, sir.
Thank you very much.
What I like to comment on is that our mines are really pretty safe when compared to one of Bill Clinton's favorite countries, China's.
Now, that's an interesting point because you know how much water that would carry with current-day critics?
Zero.
And their answer would be, well, I'm going to hope better than China.
That's a lousy standard to say that our minds are...
And then you can say, well, now, wait a minute.
Then you're saying we're that much greater than China.
Why are you spending your whole day running this country down?
If our minds are so great and you have expectations, our minds be so great and so safe, then how in the world can you write stories about how these miners are simply a bunch of hopeless rednecks who've got no future because America doesn't offer any future because they're the left out group and all they can do is this hard work down in the mines, getting dirty, getting black long.
They've got no other opportunity because America doesn't offer it.
And then at the same time, you turn around and say they ought to be better because look at what is up against China.
The difference between the two countries is China doesn't care.
They got a billion people.
They don't care if a million of them die in the mines as long as the coal comes up.
There's a whole different attitude on the sanctity of life in communist countries.
And it's been demonstrated over the eons.
I know they lose a couple thousand of people a month in the mines from some reports that I have read.
And the Chinese don't care about it, just fewer mouths to feed.
But as long as the coal comes up and as long as the work goes on, and of course, half the people in the mines in China probably are not choosing it, as the miners in this country are and do.
Well, Mr. Snirdley has posed a question.
What if maybe the solution to this problem is really up to the miners?
Maybe the miners could say, no more blood for coal.
No loss of life for coal.
I mean, the left uses that all the time in talking about oil.
No blood for oil.
The Gulf War I, we shouldn't have gone.
That was just for oil.
That's an illegitimate reason for war.
It makes the war unjust.
We have no business going on there for oil.
Well, what makes coal any different?
No coal for blood, no blood for coal, no life for coal.
Maybe the miners ought to start a new movement.
It is an interesting point.
I mentioned this earlier.
Here are the details.
The Canadian Medical Association Journal said in a study published yesterday that giving homeless alcoholics a regular supply of booze may improve their health and their behavior.
17 homeless adults, all with long and chronic histories of alcohol abuse, were allowed up to 15 glasses of wine or sherry a day.
That's a glass an hour from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. in the Ottawa-based program, which started in 2002 and is continuing.
After an average of 16 months, the number of times participants got in trouble with the law had fallen 51% from the three years before they had joined the Drink an Hour program, and hospital emergency room visits were down 36%, which, of course, makes sense.
You get them drunk out there.
They're not going to know that anything's wrong to go to the hospital.
Once we give a small amount of alcohol and stabilize the addiction, we are able to provide health services that lead to a reduction in the unnecessary health services they were getting before, said Dr. Jeff Turnbull, one of the authors of the report.
So once we give the alcoholic homeless guy a small amount, 15 glasses a day, and stabilize the addiction, we are able to provide health services that lead to a reduction in the unnecessary health services they were getting before.
The alcohol gets them in.
That builds the trust.
And then we have the opportunity to treat other medical diseases.
It's about improving the quality of life.
Three of the 17 participants died during the program succumbing to alcohol-related illnesses that might have killed them anyway.
The studies, oh, they might have nothing to do with our 15 glasses of wine or sherry a day.
They were going to die anyway.
So I guess Canada has come up now with a new program, socialized drinking.
They have socialized medicine.
We have socialized this, socialized now.
Now we've got socialized drinking.
And we are promoting the whole concept of homelessness.
Here you have a bunch of libs just assuming, well, that's all these people are good for.
And we'll try to make them as comfortable as possible in their misery.
Well, of course, this will not make them home.
That's right.
They will become social drinkers now, participating in the Canadian socialized drinking program.
So rather than being homeless, they're just going to be social drinkers.
The report showed that the participants in the program drank less than they did before signing up.
And their sleep, hygiene, nutrition, and health levels all improved.
Well, are the homeless any different as human beings, anybody else?
Why wouldn't this work with every alcoholic?
Why not go round up every alcoholic and say, you know, we don't need to get you to stop.
We just need you to start drinking 15 glasses a day as we dole them out to you one glass an hour.
You sleep the other hours.
You'll get a lot healthier.
And we'll be buying you the booze.
I mean, folks, when you're staring brilliant in the face, it's hard to ignore it here.
Now, the per capita cost, around $660 a month per homeless alcoholic, was partially offset by a monthly savings of $96 a month in emergency services, $150 a month in hospital care, and $201 in police services per person.
Turnbull said that some of the people enrolled in the program had stopped drinking altogether, although that was not an option for many of the participants.
I wonder why.
I mean, alcoholics.
We agree 100% that abstinence is the most appropriate route, but in this subset of people where abstinence has failed, there is still a need to provide care.
It's a compassionate program.
You're allowed to fail, and we'll take care of you and will sustain you as a socialized drinker in our socialized drinking program.
And as an added benefit, you will stay homeless.
Sharon Tindler.
Story out of Jerusalem here.
Sharon Tendler met Cindy 15 years ago.
She said it was love at first sight.
Last week, she finally took the plunge and proposed.
And the lucky guy plunged right back in a modest ceremony at Dolphin Reef in the southern Israeli port of Eliot.
Tender, a 41-year-old British citizen, apparently became the first world person to marry a dolphin.
Dressed in a white dress, a veil, and pink flowers in her hair, Sharon Tendler got down on one knee on the dock and gave Cindy a kiss and a piece of herring.
It's not a perverted thing.
I do love this dolphin.
He's the love of my life.
Well, then, why'd you name him Cindy?
She said upon her return to London, Tendler, who said she imports clothes and promotes rock bands in England, has visited Israel several times a year since first meeting the dolphin.
When asked in the past if she had a boyfriend, she would always say, no, I'm going to end up with Cindy.
On Wednesday, she made it official.
While she acknowledged the wedding had no legal bearing, she did say it reflected her deep feelings toward the bottlenosed 35-year-old object of her affection.
It's not a bad thing.
It's just something that we did because I love him, but not in a way that you love a man.
It's just a pure love that I have for this animal.
While she still kept open the option of marrying a human at some stage, she said for now that she was strictly a one-dolphin woman and that she's not jealous.
He knows there's a lot of other dolphins out there, but she's not jealous.
Yes, he will still play with all the other girls there, she said, of their pre-nuptial agreement.
I hope he has a lot of baby dolphins with the other dolphins.
The more dolphins, the better, and I would love to be a grandmother.
We'll be back after this.
Go ahead, folks.
Admit it.
Be honest with yourselves.
You are addicted to this show.
This is EIB, an airborne phenomenon spread by casual contact.
Once you get it, you are cured.
You need no other help.
800-282-2882 Superior, Wisconsin.
Rosemarie, welcome to the program.
Hubba Hubba Rush, long-term listener since 1990.
Formerly from New York, WABC.
Rush, with all the animal rights.
Did they get consent?
I wonder if the dolphin consented.
What does the dolphin think about this?
I think you got it backwards.
I think you haven't heard the stories.
Apparently, I have.
Dolphins love American women.
I mean, it's a real risk here for a woman, and not a marriage, any woman.
It's a real risk for a woman to get in a pool and swim with a male dolphin.
Well, you know.
They love them.
They love them.
I mean, if you were a dolphin, what would you rather have?
A dolphin or a woman?
Stop confusing me, Rush.
I'd rather have what I have, a good man.
You know, but this is ridiculous.
They needed to get.
I tell you, you know what?
You raise a good question.
Snerdley has a more detailed report.
To answer your question, the dolphin did give consent through his trainer.
Was in the original story.
That's an excellent question, by the way, but the dolphin did give consent.
Okay, because they do speak.
And I've pet them in Florida, you know, and they.
Well, I know they speak.
I mean, we're just not smart enough to understand what they're saying, but apparently the trainer was able to muster enough brainpower to understand that the dolphin Cindy was consenting to the marriage.
Okay.
I mean, there was a pre-nup.
I mean, they had to negotiate that.
Had to agree with that.
So, I mean, this is, no, it's a story made in heaven.
You know, you can't.
I just love these heartwarming stories of love and romance and marriage.
And, Ella, you can't blame an English woman for wanting to marry a dolphin.
Look what's happened to English men.
Elton John, Mick Jagger, boy George.
I mean, the pickings over there are not exactly ideal.
Anyway, Rosemarie, thanks for the call.
Before we go, incredible story here from the Detroit News today.
Thomas Bray, who is a news columnist there, this is just hilarious.
He starts out, move over, Nike.
The villain du jour among campus lefties is no longer the sweatshop, but the maker of one of the most popular beverages in the world, Coca-Cola.
And leading the attack is the University of Michigan, where the supposed adults miss no chance to bow to the gods of political correctness.
The University of Michigan this week, I'm sorry, last week, announced that Coca-Cola would no longer be sold on campus until the company agrees to an independent investigation of charges that it is violating a code of conduct cobbled together in 2004 by a committee of University of Michigan professors, students, and anti-corporate activists.
A coalition of activists known as Killer Coke has been implying that Coke is in cahoots with right-wing death squads in Columbia and fails to meet certain environmental standards in India.
Now, even if this were true, and there are substantial reasons to doubt it, what do such charges have to do with Ann Arbor or even the Coca-Cola Company?
The Coke sold at the university is bottled in Van Buren Township by an independent company employing 2,200 workers, 1,500 of them union members.
The decline of $1.3 million a year in sales, that's the amount of Coke reportedly consumed on the UM campus, will mean fewer jobs, lower wages, and less benefits for Michigan workers.
But for the activists, if not for union militants who are supporting the campaign, it's not about results.
It's about ideology.
This was vividly illustrated during the anti-Nike campaign in the late 90s.
Left-wing organizers whipped the students and faculty and other dupes into a lather about Nike's supposed use of sweatshops in Asia to produce its popular lines of shoes and clothing.
Alas for the activists, Linda Lim, a professor at UM's business school, found that workers in Nike factories in Vietnam and Indonesia were making three to five times the average wage in those countries and under far better than average work conditions.
So the Nike campaign died away, but one of the legacies was the University of Michigan's Code of Conduct, which not only requires suppliers to observe U.S. and foreign laws, but gives preference to suppliers who pay a living wage.
This is what's going on on a major institution of learning, college campus, University of Michigan, banning Coca-Cola because it's involved with right-wing death squads in Columbia and is polluting the planet.
Apparently, the administration has nothing to say about it.
Political correctness runs the school, this school and every other school like this.
This is just, it's patently absurd.
Just patently, where does all this, what's the foundation?
America sucks.
Anti-corporate activists.
I'm trying to tell these people, they are anti-capitalist.
They are socialist.
Some of them are communist.
And it's just, we are so prosperous and we offer these students so much time that this is what they have to do to entertain themselves or run around getting their minds polluted by a bunch of socialist blither in the classrooms.
Back in just a second.
Sadly, my friends, out of time, already the middle of the week on the fastest week in media, but we'll be back tomorrow.
We'll do it all over again.
And as always, I will look forward to it.
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