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Feb. 15, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:32
February 15, 2006, Wednesday, Hour #3
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I'm sorry, you you people not watching on the ditto cam can't see me laughing here, the ditto cameras can.
We are on Ditto Cam.
We have been for the whole program and will be for the remainder of it, which is this hour.
Greetings, welcome back, Rush Limbaugh behind the golden EIB microphone, a program that meets and surpasses all audience expectations on a daily basis.
I was just laughing.
Because Fox is hyping their exclusive interview with Cheney.
Excerpts coming up soon.
And they just had new video.
You know, they got new piece of video and a new video in the upper left-hand corner.
It was Cheney walking into work.
I'm watching this, and I think if Libs see this, it's just gonna, it's gonna infuriate them because they want Cheney cowering in the corner.
They want him at home in the pajamas.
They want him all depressed.
They want him talking to Dr. Phil and Oprah at the same time about the mess that he's made.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Here's Cheney going about his business, walking and getting out of a big black SUV and walking into his office.
Because, see, they're hoping that it can destroy him with all this, and he is going about his business.
At any rate, Mr. Sturdley, I mentioned to you some of the stuff going on in the blogosphere, and I've got a little summary here of uh things going around on the left-wing Cooksville blogosphere about about Cheney.
And I I figured I'll share it with all of you here.
It's a compilation of things.
Um is that uh Mr. Whittington die because then Cheney could be charged with involuntary manslaughter and he would have to resign.
Um if you look, if you look around some of the more demented blogs, you will see that there is a contingent of wackos suggesting that all of this is just another dastardly Carl Rove plot.
And here are the possibilities to silence Scooter Libby by intimidation.
And by the way, that was not on a blog.
That was in a newspaper yesterday.
That was in the Raleigh uh news and destructor uh uh or destroyer uh in Raleigh, North Carolina, but by by their their local big big column.
Another theory is that uh this is a purposeful shooting to take the wiretapping situation off of the mainstream media's radar.
It's also being theorized in Cooksville that this was uh a way to get Cheney out of the vice presidency and move Condoleezza Rice or Rudy Giuliani into the spot uh for political considerations in 1908.
Uh and some even think that uh McCain will replace Cheney uh on in the left-wing blogosphere to give him gravitas and incumbency uh as vice president running for president rather than a senator uh running for president.
That theory is out there.
I I would have to say that for any of that to happen, Cheney wouldn't have to shoot anybody, you you people on the left.
He could just resign.
But I mean it's it it's it's kooky.
Uh the the paranoia, the paranoia that's out there and the hyperventilating, uh that and there's fear on the right, too.
If you go to some of these right wing uh blogs, you'll you'll see that the problem with right wingers is they have still have such a desire to be seen as reasonable by their enemies, which is a lost cause.
But all of this is an accident.
All this hyperventilating and all this paranoia is over an accident and an asymptomatic heart attack.
So best case scenario is that Whittington recovers, lives a long life, but even if he dies of natural causes in five years, they're still gonna blame Cheney for it.
Cheney's gonna get blamed for killing Whittington whenever Whittington dies.
Make no mistake about that.
The middling uh scenario is that Mr. Whittington recovers, but David Gregory never gets over not getting a press release handed to him and spends the next year alternately weeping and hectoring Scott McClellan like a sexually frustrated wife.
Provoked beyond sorry, Dawn, provoked beyond endurance.
McClellan leaps over the podium, picks up Helen Thomas by the ankles and begins to throttle David Gregory with her.
This doesn't end well, but it does get rid of two nutbirds with one incident, Helen Thomas and David Gregory.
So interesting theory though about uh about McCain.
Uh uh also there's some there's some theories out there in the blog of fear that uh that uh Hillary will make McCain vice president after he loses his third party.
It's just odd, folks.
It's just it's it's really strange.
A lot of people with way too much time uh on their hands out there and and uh coming up with all these oddball theories to um try to explain all of this, and it's partly due, well, I think mostly due to the way the press has covered this.
By making much ado about this and taking personal offense that they weren't informed, and that then creates a situation, there's a cover-up going on.
Yesterday uh you might remember I I had the earth-shattering news that we are all going to die.
Uh I made this announcement uh while reporting a story.
Um maybe it wasn't yesterday, maybe it was the day before, it could have been Monday.
I think it was Monday.
Well, uh they changed their mind here on fatty foods for women.
Women have been told don't eat fatty foods, and your chance of any cancer will be greatly reduced.
They found that's not true.
Forty-eight thousand women in the survey, and regardless of the amount of fat they ate, uh they cancer rates were not predictable by the consumption of fat.
And I made the observation after reading the story, and it's it's it's it some people may not have figured it out yet that we're all going to die.
So I wanted to make that clear yesterday, and I made no bones of it.
We are all going to die.
There are no exceptions.
There haven't ever been any exceptions.
And lo and behold, I come across this story today on the Associated Press.
Test helps you predict your chances of dying.
Now, what have I told you also about the left?
That they are obsessed with death.
They are obsessed with in in every possible way they can be obsessed with it.
They're obsessed with it via abortion, they're obsessed with it with euthanasia, uh accidental death, criminal death.
Sometimes they like death and they support it and they promote it, other times they hate it.
But they're obsessed with it because it's libs that do all these surveys about oat brands gonna kill us, coffee's gonna kill us, this is gonna shorten your life, blah, blah, blah.
And they all turn out to be wrong, but it's all oriented around doom and gloom, and now it sounds like a perfect parlor game for baby boomers suddenly confronting their own mortality.
What are your chances of dying within four years?
Researchers have come up with 12 risk factors to try to answer that for people who are 50 and older.
This is one game where you want to score low.
Zero to five points says your risk of dying in four years is less than four percent.
But with fourteen points, your risk rises to sixty-four percent.
Just being a man gives you two points.
If you're a man in over fifty, you all automatically are two points closer to dying than a woman is.
If you have diabetes, you get two points.
If you're a smoker, you get two points.
If um uh if you get tired trying to walk several blocks, you're doomed.
You've had it.
You you get tired walking several blocks, and it's over for you.
Your chances of dying have just skyrocketed.
Points accrue with each four-year increment after age sixty.
Now, the test doesn't ask you what you eat, but it does ask if you can push a living room chair across the floor.
The quiz is designed to try to help doctors and families get a firmer sense for what the future may hold, to help plan health care accordingly, said lead all lead author Dr. C. Lee, geriatrics researcher at San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center who helped develop the test.
Now, we know that patients and families want more prognostic information from doctors.
He says it's a very natural human question of what's gonna happen to me.
We also know that doctors are very cautious about giving prognostic information because they don't want to be wrong.
Well, that's what I'm saying.
Doctors can be totally accurate and totally safe if they tell every patient, yes, you are going to die.
Because it is one medical certainty that will affect all of us.
Now, some people though want to know when, and they want to know how, and they want to know what their odds are.
So they've got this whacked out game now.
And they claim that the test is roughly 81% accurate and can give older people a reasonable idea of their survival chances.
Now sorry.
Uh the next line is of course it isn't foolproof.
Other experts note that it ignores family history.
It's much less meaningful for those at the young end of the spectrum.
The researchers even warned, don't try this at home, saying a doctor can help you put things into perspective.
This is so frightening.
It is so shocking.
It confronts you with your reality, so you shouldn't take the test alone.
You need to take the test with a doctor.
The doctor needs to be in the room when you figure out you are going to die.
Even if somebody looks at their numbers and finds they have a 60% risk of death, there could be other mitigating factors, said the co-author, Dr. Kenneth Kavinski.
I am here to tell you there is no one with a 60% risk of death.
We all have a 100% guarantee.
Back in just a second.
It's crazy.
And back to the phones.
I want to I want to go to uh Canton, Michigan.
This is Jason.
Jason had been hanging on here for over uh an hour and a half, and I I appreciate it, Jason.
Thanks for being patient.
Oh, you're welcome, Rush.
I just wanted to say mega dittoes to you.
I've been a huge fan of yours since uh my dad got me started listening to you when you first came on the radio in Michigan back in eighty-eight, I believe it was.
And I just I love your show.
Um and as far as all this about Dick Cheney, before I want to tell you about Valentine's Day, but I'll tell you, I'm an avid hunter, and I would rather hunt with Dick Cheney than ride in a car with Ted Kennedy any day.
Okay.
All right.
Hang on here just a second.
I appreciate that.
I I I just I've gotten two emails today.
We need to go back to the we need to go back to the archive on Monday's show.
I got an email from a friend of mine on Wall Street today who said, This is going around the street.
You've got to see this.
And then I got a friend in Hawaii, Mike Hartley, who said, You gotta see this.
And both emails were quotes of the first words out of my mouth on this show on Monday.
And bumper sticker has already been made.
Jason, and you because I opened this show by saying, I'll tell you what, folks, I would much rather go hunting with Dick Cheney than I would be in a car with Ted Kennedy while it's crossing a bridge.
And now it's on a bumper sticker, and now I got friends of mine emailing me as though I don't know about it, and I got you, Jason, calling me as though I haven't heard about it.
I authored it.
It's a classic example of how I get so little credit for my brilliance and creativity.
I am stolen from more than anybody in media.
Do I complain about it?
No.
Am I complaining about it now?
No.
I'm just mentioning it.
Well, I wouldn't have to be a good one.
I'm not chastising you, Jason.
My friend and Hawaii, I wrote both these guys back, and I stood Hartley in Hawaii.
I said, these are the exact words I owe my show with Monday.
He wrote back, say it takes a long time for word to reach us here in Hawaii.
So um at any rate, I know that that uh uh uh this is how it happens.
Uh very often the uh original tellers of jokes are never known.
Uh and so I don't I don't let this bother me.
It's just another example of how I am I am perhaps the most ripped off performer in big media.
You okay, we're gonna go back to the archives.
Now hang on, Jason, because I know it's not what you wanted to talk about, and I'm not gonna take away from your valuable caller time.
We're gonna go back and play as the program opened on Monday.
Is it ready up there?
Here we go.
Three, two, one, hit it.
So let me ask you a question, folks.
What would you rather do?
Would you rather go hunting with Dick Cheney or riding in a car over a bridge with Ted Kennedy?
If you go riding in a car over a bridge with Ted Kennedy, he's gonna run off if an accident happens, and you won't see him again, and it's too late.
You go hunting with Dick Cheney and an accident happens, and he'll take you to the hospital.
Greetings, my friends, and welcome.
That's great.
That's it.
That's enough.
So we just to prove it.
To go back to the archives, that was uh that was that was Monday.
Mm-hmm.
Oh, yeah, then we had a guy call me that was terribly unsensitive of you to bring Ted Kennedy into this.
Yeah, very unchristian.
He asked me if I was a Christian, a very unchristian thing.
Okay, Jason, now we're back to you.
Okay.
Um I I will give you all the credit in the world.
For the last few years I've listened to you talk about the show twenty-four.
And I had never seen it.
And I listened to you one day and you were talking about you saw the previews to the first four episodes this year.
And I told my wife, I said, we've got to watch the show.
Limbaugh keeps bragging about how great it is.
And I sat on the edge of my seat for two hours both nights.
And I I told my parents about it.
And since then, because of you, it's cost us a hundred and fifty dollars to go out and buy the first four episodes just so we could figure out what was going on and who was involved in what.
And last night I heard you talking yesterday about Valentine today and what all these people are doing.
My wife and I had a great Valentine.
We sat and finished season four, and we we finally figured out what went on and how he got involved with the Chinese, and they're just our Valentine's Day was watching 24.
Don't want to give away any plot point.
Don't go to any because there are people out there who are uh still having they're saving money.
You are fortunate that you are wealthy enough to be able to afford the hundred and fifty bucks.
Some people are saving money, some people are renting these, uh, and you don't want to give away any plot lines uh when you're talking about the show.
That that's one of the requirements.
Okay.
But but you and your wife spent Valentine's Day and night watching how many episodes?
We watched four episodes last night, and then we watched the prequel to season five.
Yeah.
Just so that we could get caught up and know what's going on.
And now we have to start back at one.
My mom, who has been she got hurt and she's been laid up for the last week.
She's been watching seasons one and two trying to get caught up.
So I've given her season four and she's given me seasons one and two to watch.
There you go.
Well, it's I'm surprised you could uh turn them off after only watching four.
But it was Valentine's Day.
I think I know what got in the way.
Um and I do mean got in the way.
Uh so well, I'm glad that you're a fan.
I gotta tell you, for all of you, I've been meaning to mention this, and I it just it just keeps slipping my mind.
But uh the latest issue of my favorite magazine, Cigar Aficionado, uh, has a cover story on twenty-four.
Keefer Sutherland's pictures on the cover, but they talked to Joel Cerno, the creator and producer, and and uh do a lot.
And for people to whom this is all new, it is a great, great piece.
It it's a quite lengthy piece.
It's on the newsstands now.
In fact, I got a note from Cerno today that he is going to join us at the annual night of the century cigar dinner that we have every uh it's in March this year, uh up in New York.
Uh he's he's gonna come.
It's gonna be a hoot.
And then we're gonna come back down here for a couple days.
And uh and and I don't know if we'll have time to bring him by here.
Uh, he'd probably want to come by here.
I mean, uh, but we're yeah, I'm gonna bring him.
We're gonna I'm gonna I'll bring him by here, Mr. Snertley.
But uh he's he's agreed to uh he's been invited at all as all cover artists of Cigar Aficionado always are.
Now, for those of you, don't get the wrong idea about this magazine.
It's it it it originally started out devoted entirely to cigars, but it's branched out now.
It's basically about the men's lifestyle.
It's a great men's lifestyle magazine, and it's one of the best ways for women to understand what interests men out there.
You know, back when I was young and worried about meeting women, that's not a problem for me anymore.
But back in the day when it was a problem for me like it is for most everybody.
Some of the best advice I ever got was go out and get a bunch of women's books and magazines and turn to the chapters on where to meet men.
Find out where you're supposed to be and go there.
Well, ladies, this magazine will will uh give you a a heads up on the thing, and there's there's nothing untoward in it.
I mean, it's it's it's uh lifestyle, it's high class, it's uh you love the magazine.
Uh and they still devote considerable attention to uh to cigars, but uh so much more as well.
So the but the current issue uh and you can't miss it because Kiefer Sutherland's picture is on the cover, is devoted uh to the show twenty-four.
Jack in Tulsa, you're next on the EIB network.
Hi.
Hi, thank you very much, Rush.
Mega golfing dittoes from Tulsa.
Thank you, sir.
The uh I wanted to call and say if any competent attorney would tell Dick uh uh Cheney keep his mouth shut and not say anything in regard because there's a possibility of future civil or possibly criminal liability in the future.
Uh there's a lot of things that go into this.
There's there's there's uh medical privacy, which we all know is a joke.
Uh but but there's there's that, uh there's the privacy of Mr. Whittington, and of course the concerns that uh that the that you mentioned.
But I'm sure I'm sure though that when Whittington agreed to be shot to send the warning to Scooter Libby that he also signed a waiver saying he wouldn't sue Cheney for this.
I'm sure Whittington got a lot of money.
You know the Halliburton and oil money that goes next.
He's okay.
I just thought of something Scott McClellan could do if he wants to get back to the press corps totally in character with the way the press corps looks at this administration.
Very secretive, very stonewallish, very arrogant, Darth Vader like.
And it has a it has a tie-in with this uh shooting incident.
What is what is what is I don't know, what is a duck license cost, a duck hunting license.
Anyone know?
Uh well John Kerry didn't know either.
He didn't, but in his case, he wasn't buying it.
His wife was, so it didn't matter.
Um but let's just say I don't know either.
But I'm just a pick a round figure here, let's say uh 125 bucks.
125 bucks for a duck license.
This would be a combination way for McClellan and the White House to get back at the press and also combine some fundraising at the same time.
Instead of a duck license, the White House should begin to begin sell and issuing dick licenses.
Every journalist, every blogger, every kook who wants to attack Vice President Cheney has to anti up 125 bucks for a dick license.
If they want to go dick hunting, then they have to go out and pay for it just like anybody else does when they go duck hunting.
Wouldn't you just love to see Helen Thomas or David Gregory respond to that?
North Bergen, New Jersey, Ryan High, welcome to the EIB network.
Hey, thanks for having me.
It's great to have you with us.
Yeah, I just had uh a couple of points.
You know, it seems like the media and the Democrats are really big on the constitutional right to privacy, you know, with regards to like frontal notification or women's right to privacy and stuff.
Well, what about this guy convalescing in a hospital?
You know, I mean, uh w why does his whole medical history need to be made public to, you know, the media?
I mean, can't he convalesce in peace?
I mean, I I understand that it's a You're asking the wrong guy about medical privacy.
What's that?
You're asking the wrong guy about medical privacy.
I lost mine a long time ago.
I mean, and it just seems like there's a there's a double standard there.
You know, of course there's a double standard.
They did everything they could to protect the privacy of Bill Clinton in the Oval Office with Monica Lewinsky on the basis that it was nobody's business.
Well, no, exactly.
And then I I was yelling at the TV last night when I hear Hillary Clinton talking about this administration not being forthcoming, you know, and thinking uh tell me about being forthcoming.
Yeah, right.
You know, and then the the second the second quick point I had was just, I mean, what if this were like a fly fishing accident hooked in the face, the guy gets stitches and it leads to a heart attack?
Would they be calling for for him to resign then too, you know?
I mean, just uh doing outdoor stuff.
There are accidents that are inherent in, you know, being in the outdoors.
Well, uh I I think that you raise a good point, although I do think anything, the anything uh that could possibly remotely give them an opening of Cheney they would take.
So your fly fishing example, it would be the same thing.
It wouldn't be any different.
The gun makes it sexier because we all know what the left's view of of guns and gun control is.
And mark mark my words on this, Ryan, and everybody else.
By the time this story plays out, the action line on it is gonna change.
And before and and and the the very last thing to happen, and I don't know when it's gonna be.
But the very last thing to happen on this storyline is is non-stop features, documentaries, reports on hunting and how dangerous and how risky, and how out of control it is.
And we're going to get some of the sorriest information presented to us, deaths, we're gonna get pictures, we're gonna get all kinds of things.
And the purpose of this will be to revive the left's traditional opposition to the second amendment, their support of and for gun control, because the left is fed up with their pansy little elected officials who are caving on this issue.
Al Gore in the debates in 2000 appealed to hunters carry in more than a debate.
He actually went hunting.
He actually went into some sporting goods store in Iowa somewhere.
And these leftists out there, this isn't this it's just as important as uh as abortionist to them.
They hate guns.
They despise except when criminals have them because criminals are entitled to have them because criminals are victims.
Criminals are victims of the rich.
Criminals are victims of an unjust society.
So we understand them wanting to have guns and yet even with everybody.
It's the only way they can have a crack at a fair and decent life.
But guns in the hands of lawful people, we are not going to tolerate that.
And elected Democrats have begun to tolerate it because they have read the polls and they understand where the American public is on this, but it doesn't placate their kook base.
So the end of this story is going to be a renewed assault on the dangers of guns and hunting, and you people who are big into both, brace yourselves because it's the next thing coming.
Mary Joe in Leesburg, Florida.
I'm glad to have you on the program.
Hi, Ross.
I'm concerned about what I'm hearing about these seaports being turned over to the United Arab Emirates.
And maybe you can explain something to me that I don't understand.
All right, well, but I think this happening.
Well, when I saw this, I have the same uh gut reaction to it, the first same first reaction to it that you and everybody else had.
This is senseless.
We're turning over the United Arab Emirates, several of our ports.
They're going to own them again.
Then I then I thought back.
Um Have you ever been to the United Arab Emirates, by the way?
No, I haven't.
Well, I have.
Uh well, I've been to Dubai.
You wouldn't believe the place.
Dubai is as an American a city as you will find.
It's it's fast food, every sign is in English.
Um it looks like Las Vegas in the middle of the desert.
It is sprawling, it is it is huge.
They've got massive skyscrapers going up like crazy.
It's very um.
I mean, they're the United Arab Emirates, there's no question.
Uh, but it's it's um stuff goes on there that we will never see going on in Saudi Arabia, for example, or in Iran or or Baghdad, and that's where these owners are from.
Uh the s the second thing, and don't and let me go through all this before you think I'm I'm losing my mind here.
The second thing I thought of was the Japanese once bought the Rockefeller Foundation Trust, you know, that the everybody thought they were gonna own Rockefeller Center and they're gonna tear it down and build Japanese structures, and everybody's gonna be employee of the Japanese.
Um there have been when everybody worried about Toyota coming in and uh and all these Japanese automakers establishing factories here that was gonna end up, we're all gonna end up working for Japan.
And this is back in the 80s when we were scared to death of Japan, so scared of Japan, we're making movies about Japan taking over and destroying our culture, and it didn't happen.
Um there was um, I think within the during the Clinton years, there was a story about the Chinese that were gonna buy the port of Los Angeles or something.
And I don't know if that deal went through or not.
Um I I thought about all that after I had my instinctive gut reaction, and I uh the instinctive gut reaction is exactly uh what what yours was, given the the circumstances at present uh it it it's it seems like a suicide plot.
Uh and it sounds like some people still don't get just how serious the the stakes are in the condition that we're in, and I really think that's true.
When you have Al Gore going over and accepting money from the Saudis, and part of part of the uh group there was the Bin Laden family.
Come over and and and engage in near sedition, to go to Saudi Arabia of all places where 16 of the 19 uh hijackers and 9-11 were from to go there and start trashing his own country and and and telling veritable lies,
creating this picture in the midst of all this rioting that's going on with this trumped up business of the cartoons to go over there and get these people all riled up about how the United States is mistreating Arabs and putting them in prisons and rounding them up and creating a picture over there that cannot be helpful at all.
And for that not to be covered, for Al Gore to do it, it tells me that there are people, way too many of them, especially on the left side of the aisle, who are so cowardly that they don't have the guts to face the world as it is post-9-11.
They want to continue to construct a scenario for themselves and for everybody else where it's pre-9-11.
And they want to treat 9-11 as an abstract oddball thing that doesn't have any meaning behind it, even with all the evidence that we have and that have preceded that attack, all the attacks that preceded that one, and all of the intelligence we're able to gather since, plus the war in Iraq and the and the uh continued statements from whoever's pretending to be bin Laden that they're going to take us out and so forth.
Uh it just seems to me that there are way too many people who, for whatever reason, maybe they're fearful, maybe they're affrighted, maybe they um uh uh don't have this nation's best interest at heart combination of a number of things, simply refuse to accept the reality of the threats that are aimed against us.
And you know what, folks, they're always will be aimed against us.
It's just a fact when you're number one, when you're number one at anything, everybody's gunning for you.
When you're number one as a nation, when you're the only superpower in the world, everybody's gunning for you.
Some people are going to be irrationally afraid of us.
Some people are just not going to like us because we're number one.
Some people because we're number one are going to blame our status or assign our status of being number one not to our ingenuity and not to our creativity and not to our freedom, but rather we steal.
And we've got Americans that run around the world and tell the other people of the world, yes, our country has stolen your resources.
Our country has stolen your treasure, our country has stolen your riches.
Uh and so it's uh it's it's a it's always going to be a fact of life.
People ask me over the course of my star-studded career, why do we have to have air bases in X?
Why do we have to have a Because we have to do it to protect ourselves?
It's uh we you know, isolationist days are over.
Living behind a wall in this country is not possible.
We're always going to have enemies.
And and uh in the past, it seems to me that we well, we saw clear evidence of a dire threat.
We saw clear and present danger.
For the most part, we unified, rallied, and dealt with it.
There are always detractors in every circumstance.
There were in the Civil War, there are both world wars, Vietnam certainly.
But for the most part, there's a there's a unity in this situation.
There are people in this country, and there are a lot of them who are actively seeking to sabotage our ability to win and wage war against this particular enemy.
And Al Gore is one of them.
And I don't this business of selling the port, uh selling ports to uh owners from United Arab Emirates, it doesn't pass the smell test, even though I've been there and even though I've seen it, and and I know it's a different uh culture and lifestyle there, at least on the surface, but you have to consider that it may be different on the surface only as a means of attracting investment uh from people around the world.
I think they're smart in that way.
But beneath the surface are they are they still Wahhabis?
Are they still militant Islamists?
Can you take the chance?
It's troubling.
Uh so I don't I don't know that I know any more about it than you do, and I don't know There's anything more I can tell you than that, but I get those those are my thoughts about all this.
And I guess it'd boil it down to say, uh, like I've said on previous occasions, it may take a couple more attacks before people actually, enough people wake up and face the reality.
You know, we in America are so prosperous.
We have so much freedom that we if we want to ignore these things, we can.
Because there are plenty of us who will go face the threat themselves.
Armed forces, men and women who wear the uniform, they'll go do it while any of the rest of us continue to pursue our hedonistic or uh pleasure-packed lives, or deal with whatever aspect of life we have to deal with on that particular day.
But part of that, I think allows us to that isn't that bad.
That was just one time.
It's not gonna happen.
It can't happen again.
And a lot of people get lulled into this confident feeling that it's not gonna happen.
Well, for it not to happen, there have to steps be taken that do the best you can to ensure it doesn't happen.
There have to be people gathering intelligence, people on the front lines, things don't just not happen.
You have to take steps to see to it that it's more difficult for those who want to take action against us to do so.
And I just don't think enough people are yet up to speed.
Uh I think too many dunderheads in this country believe it.
All this is unnecessary.
Bush just made it all up, and all this is about oil.
You'd be stunned how many Americans think that.
I'm a little long here.
I gotta take a quick time out.
Back with more in just a second.
Well, I thought of that.
Uh uh H.R. just suggested that uh Cheney show up on Fox in a neck brace a la Ted Kennedy, but it's too late.
Uh the interview's done.
They're showing excerpts of it.
Cheney said it's his fault and it was the worst day of his life.
And uh that's that's as much as I had a chance to hear.
Uh they're not showing much of it.
They're they're reserving the majority of it for Britt Hume's show at six o'clock.
Something I was just talking about.
United States, why do we have military bases everywhere?
We're the ones have to do everything.
Folks, do you understand we're supposed to cure AIDS?
We're supposed to wipe out poverty in Africa.
We are supposed to just uh clean up all the situations in uh Darfur in the Sudan.
We are supposed to clean up Kosovo.
We're supposed to make sure that tsunami relief gets taken place.
We have to do it all.
We have to do it all, and even doing that, we're hated.
Now look at this.
America's major NATO allies have cut military manpower and defense funds as a share of their economies since the September 11th attacks, in sharp contrast with the U.S., which embarked on deficit spending to boost arms outlays to fight global terrorists.
So our NATO allies, after 9-11, are saying, United States can handle it.
We'll cut back.
They come back, we have no recourse.
We don't rely on others to defend us or to take care of us.
Only some of our own people rely on the rest of their citizens to take care of them.
But we as a country do not rely on anybody else in the world to take care of.
And that makes everybody out there mad.
By the way, this is predictable every year we get this kind of story.
Tax cheating has gone up to federal studies fined.
Commerce department found Americans fail to report more than a trillion dollars in income on their 2003 income tax returns.
The uh the IRS report concluded that the perpetrators of this fraud are proprietors of small business, investors, and farmers.
You farmers, investors, and small business owners, you're the biggest cheats, and you're not reporting all your income.
Now, this story has two purposes.
One, to scare everybody as they file their taxes, and number two, to set the stage for raising taxes.
But here's what's gonna happen.
We better do tax reform fast, folks, because we're nearing the point where less than 50% of the people of this country will be paying any taxes.
And when we get to the point that less than 50% of the people are paying taxes, you can kiss tax reform goodbye because tax reform would mean some people would have to start paying taxes again, and they're not gonna want to pay them.
So if we don't get tax reform done fast, and I'm talking two or three years.
What, Mr. Snitty?
What?
Time is running out here.
The rich, that's who the who do you think investors, rich, small business, rich, farmers, rich.
That's the whole point.
The rich are the ones cheating.
The rich are the only ones paying taxes anyway.
That's the whole point of the story.
We'll talk about more of this tomorrow.
I'll be back here in just a second.
And uh don't forget, Bill Schneider.
I actually said today, waiting for you to uh report on this, I wish George Bush would throw some reporters in jail.
Just like Abraham Lincoln did, who was a great president, saved the Union, got rid of slavery.
They call him great, and he threw reporters and agitators in jail and out of the country.
I think Bush ought to do it too, in the Cheney situation.
Look for that on CNN soon.
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