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Feb. 22, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:22
February 22, 2006, Wednesday, Hour #2
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All right, my friends, we are back.
We are back under a beefed up security detail here at the EIB Southern Command.
I was threatened by a member of the Long Beach Longshoreman last hour on this program.
And as such, we have tightened our security procedures and beefed up security personnel here at the secretive and unknown to anybody EIB Southern Command location.
Greetings and welcome back, Rushland Boss, safe and sound.
Don't worry, friends.
I'm okay here.
Telephone number is 800-282-2882.
The email address rush at EIBNet.com.
If you missed the previous, well, the last call, the previous hour, a man identifying himself as a proud member of the Longshoreman Union in Long Beach, a man named Jerry called and said, don't you threaten my union?
Don't you criticize my union?
What he was referring to is that I continue to dig deep on the port deal.
And I have learned that much of the opposition to the port deal from the likes of Senator Schumer and Senator Clinton, Senator Lautenberg, Senator Menendez, Senator Boxer, and others may not be what it seems.
They're hiding, I think, under the cloak of being concerned about national security.
But when you look at it, what really is happening here is that they are all huge recipients of large contributions from the Longshoremen's Union, which, I mean, it's not a surprise to anybody.
Organized labor supports the Democratic Party in rote.
They don't even think about it.
It's just as a reflex action.
And it's a little hypocritical because we already have all kinds of business deals and arrangements with the United Arab Emirates.
The Clinton administration way back when, you know, sold them 60 F-16s.
We've allowed them to own property in this country and so forth.
But when the Longshoreman union member threatened me, it jogged my fertile memory.
Ladies and gentlemen, I recall that in recent years, I thought it was two or three years ago, turns out it was a little over three in 2002, there was a strike by the Long Beach longshoremen over the modernization of procedures, cataloging and inventorying cargo that was on ships and was offloaded.
And you remember this, it was the barcode scanning controversy.
They wanted to put barcode scanning on all of the incoming cargo to help find out where it is rather than send off a bunch of human beings to try to find it.
Let's find out exactly where it is.
Let's computerize it.
And the longshoremen fought this.
This is nothing new.
Unions have been fighting advanced technology since there has been advanced technology.
They've been, I mean, they're afraid it will affect their jobs.
And they went on strike right around Christmas time in this year in order to make their case.
And they had ships that couldn't get into port because the ships that were in port wouldn't be offloaded.
And those ships couldn't be reloaded and sent back out.
You had a fleet of cargo ships out in the Pacific waiting to get in.
And it got so bad that people were demanding that President Bush get involved.
This was Christmas, after all.
The Longshoreman, let me read to you.
This is from a little website here, well, slate.com.
And it's just a, it's titled Short Port Report.
I'll just read you an excerpt.
And that's exactly organized workers have resisted new technology since the 1800s, and that's exactly what the longshoremen are doing now.
The port operators want to start using barcode scanners to speed cargo through terminals.
More likely than not, those operators will want to engage outside contractors to run the new scanners, and those contractors will employ non-union labor.
It's easy to sympathize with workers whose jobs are displaced by technology.
Easy pass has meant the elimination of many decent-paying jobs for toll booth clerks.
And of course, we used to have a buggy whip industry and a buggy industry, but with the car, out went the buggy and the buggy whip industry.
Union members in question here get paid more like accountants than day laborers.
According to the Pacific Maritime Association, the average annual salaries at the ports for longshore workers, $82,895 a year for Class A workers, $118,444 for clerks, and $157,352 a year for foremen.
This piece published, by the way, Wednesday, October 2002.
The six-figure clerks who chart the inflow and outflow of the trucks and the containers frequently by hand say they'll be happy to use these new gizmos, but only if the barcode jobs are unionized.
And that's what the fight was over.
And I am sure that that's what the concern is here.
You say, what's this got to do with the UAED port deal?
Rush, stick to the issues.
I'm getting there, folks.
You stick with me.
Realize I never get lost in this program.
I never lose my train of thought.
I never forget what I'm going to say.
I always stay on track.
There is no doubt that the concern in these six ports is that longshoremen have is exactly over the same thing.
We have, I shared with you a story today from the New York Sun about how the United Arab Emirates port company is modernizing and streamlining all of its ports around the world.
I told you that the number two, actually, number one port operator in the world is owned out of Hong Kong, and they don't want to buy the six ports in question here because they don't want to deal with the union regulations.
I doubt that anything is going to change.
And I've been saying that all week, but I can understand their fear that things might change.
And so that's why they're donating heavily all these years to protect their jobs.
That's what the union people do.
So we're faced with the age-old problem of how do we modernize and advance technologically without putting a whole bunch of people out of work.
And so there has to be, obviously, thought attached to all of this.
What always happens, I mean, I hate to tell you something, but during the NAFTA debate, you know, all we heard about was a singer sewing machine plant up in New Hampshire, you know, and how people be put out of jobs.
But, you know, economics is what it is.
The global market is what it is.
It can't go back with a wall around the country to pretend that this global economy and interlinked economic dependencies is not happening.
You can't turn back the hands of time on things like this.
I actually think this.
I was telling my staff here during the break, what I fully expect to happen is that if the UA deal does go through, after all of this tsunami and all the bad PR, the UAE people are going to bend over backwards to show they have no intention of causing anybody here any harm.
And they'll probably hire more longshoremen.
And they'll say, just sit on the dock.
You're on permanent break.
And we're going to pay you whatever you'd get paid for it.
We're going to increase the number.
They'll do this for a while just as a PR issue.
I know some of you are saying, what's the difference, permanent break and a regular job?
Don't make that joke, folks.
I have been threatened by these longshoremen people now, and we're not going to make jokes about them.
I've already had a beef up security.
You start telling jokes about them, I'm going to be in even further peril.
But there's no question that at some point these ports are going to be modernized.
I mean, it's just the way of the world.
There's going to be new technology.
There's going to be faster ways of getting pork in and out of the docks, offloaded and onloaded.
It's going to happen, and there will be steps taken as this modernization takes place to incorporate everybody involved.
Found another longshoreman story for you.
This is from the Capitol News Service.
It is from Friday, March 12th of 2004.
Longshoremen worry that port security proposals could hit them hardest.
And I'm just going to read to you what the story says.
Men with criminal pasts in need of a job have long turned to the one industry here that would take them.
This is from Baltimore, the waterfront.
Well, don't blame me.
I'm not the one who said yesterday, let the mafia have this.
Somebody said, turn this back over to the mafia.
And snurdly agreed that it'd be better than a UAE.
That's what you said yesterday.
The guy who wrote this is named Joe Eaton, E-A-T-O-N, and that lead story is his, for those of you who are members of the Longshoremen's Union.
And many of the same longshoremen who found a solid paycheck at the Port of Baltimore worry that could change under a 2002 law that aims to protect American ports from terrorism.
The law requires criminal background checks for longshoremen and other dock workers who could lose their jobs if they have a conviction in their past.
The Department of Homeland Security is still developing rules for the checks and could not say when they might take effect, but any time is too soon for longshoremen here.
The waterfront saved a lot of people, man.
I mean a lot, said Anthony White, 36, a second-generation longshoreman who's been at the Port of Baltimore for five years.
White conceded he has a felony conviction for a crime he refused to talk about that's 17 years old.
He said he knows several other longshoremen with records.
He worries about their families.
He questions how they'll pay their bills.
You got to get your life together, man.
Why do they want to take that away from you?
You have a car payment.
You have a house payment.
What are you supposed to do?
Well, obviously, we need income insurance.
Just like we have health insurance, income insurance.
You know, speaking of that, there's a story.
I can't wait to get to this.
Story in the Wall Street Journal about healthcare costs and how fast they're rising.
It might be cheaper to just buy every employee a house than give them health care.
That's how out of control it's gotten.
I will have the details coming up for you.
The bottom line here in this Baltimore story, the longshoremen opposed background checks on dock workers passed in 2002 intended to improve national security.
They opposed it.
And they contribute to Democrats.
That's the connection here.
So when you hear these Northeastern Liberal Democrats talking, national security, national security, national security.
Think Longshoreman Union, Longshoreman Union, Longshoreman Union contributions.
Quick time out here, folks.
We will be back.
Stay with us.
Hi, welcome back.
Ella Rushbow, the cutting edge of societal evolution, your fearless anchorman and play-by-playman of the news.
We're pondering posting some longshoreman cartoons at rushlimbaugh.com.
See if we start any riots.
800-282-2882 is the number.
If you would like to be on the program, let me address something I think that's bothering those of you who oppose the deal.
And I think it's part of the tsunami effect, and it's quite understandable, too, in a mass hysteria way, given the post-9-11 world we live in.
Well, that's what the tsunami is.
It's been mass hysteria.
It really has.
That's one of the reasons red flags went up.
And I would imagine that when some of you first heard this, you had pictures form in your mind.
You had visions of Abdul and Sahib wearing turbans operating the cranes and driving the equipment on these docks at these six ports.
And good God, what are we doing?
How stupid can we be?
Admit it.
That's what you saw.
That's what you saw.
If we're going to have a United Arab Emirates company owning it, then you concluded that they're going to hire their own people.
And now, if that were going to happen, that would change the whole tenor of the deal.
There is no question.
Now you are talking about a genuine, legitimate security risk because you'd have to go through all kinds of hiring practices and steps.
You would have to implement the Patriot Act, practically, as an employment tool.
And I can understand people having that attitude.
I also know that when you hear me say, well, the Dutch companies, Denmark, a big company out there, and the Brits, they're in the port business and getting out of it and so forth.
You think, okay, fine.
Well, those are nations that we have had a long and traditional relationship of trust with.
The United Arab Emirates, even if what we're being told is true, that they are new allies in the war on terror and that they are on our side in this.
And if you happen to believe what I do, that what they actually want to do is be like us, then you say, well, yeah, but that's just been since 9-11.
And can we trust them?
Because you don't have a long period of institutional trust such as that that we have with long-term allies like the Allies, like the British and the, well, not the French and not the Germans.
Well, some of the Germans, but the Danes, the Dutch, and so forth.
So all these things are understandable.
People in a post-9-11 world are being asked to trust some of things that there's not an institution of trust, trust, or to believe in.
And I understand all these things, which is why I'm spending the time on this that I am.
And as I say, I'm just sharing with you the thought processes that I have as I learn things.
For example, reading the Wall Street Journal today, they got an editorial Ports of Politics.
And an interesting paragraph here.
The timing of this sudden uproar over the port deal is a tad suspicious.
A bidding war for the British-owned P ⁇ O has been going on since last autumn.
And the P ⁇ O board accepted Dubai's latest offer last month.
The story only blew up last week as a Florida firm that is a partner with P ⁇ O in Miami, Continental Steve Adoring and Terminals Incorporated, filed a suit to block the purchase by Dubai.
Miami's mayor also sent a letter of protest to President Bush.
As the journal editorial writers say, it wouldn't be the first time certain politicians were acting here on behalf of private American commercial interests.
So we now know also that there is a partner of P ⁇ O in Miami which doesn't want this sale to go through and has enlisted political support from the mayor of Miami.
Common, no big deal, but there are elements of this that they're being reported.
You just have to dig deep to find them.
The mainstream press is simply doing what it's been reduced to doing.
Bush is bad.
Bush is selling us out.
And let's give the Democrats 90% of our broadcast time to express their thoughts on it.
We're not giving us any reporting on this, which is why I'm spending the time here doing it myself.
I also, after having been threatened by the longshoreman in Long Beach, I asked Cookie to find out who owns the Port of Long Beach.
Because I wanted to find out if perhaps it was foreign-owned.
Turns out it is not.
The Port of Long Beach is owned by the city of Long Beach, and it is governed by the Board of Harbor Department Commissioners.
We called them.
And the Port of Long Beach operates as a landlord.
The Board of Harbor Commissioners leases port shipping terminals and other facilities to private firms.
And some of them are no doubt foreign.
No question about it.
Phil in Idaho Falls, Idaho.
Thank you for waiting.
You're up next on the EIB network.
Dittos, Rush.
It's good to talk to you.
Thank you, sir.
You know, I was wondering, are you having a little bit of a double standard here?
You talked about the importance of the Patriot Act and keeping the Patriot Act in full force and not letting down our guard.
Are we letting down our guard on the ports?
Well, I thought I'd just address that.
If the fear that a lot of people first had, no doubt, was that every employee of these six ports would become essentially a foreigner, somebody from the Emirates or somebody from the Middle East, then you'd have to almost have a Patriot Act to go through the employment procedure to check security and backgrounds and all of that.
That's not the case.
The case is that the United States will continue to, and its laws will oversee the operation.
The union contracts will remain the same.
The Coast Guard and customs are still going to be doing what they're doing as though they do it now.
It's just somebody else is going to be writing the checks.
Just somebody else is going to be writing the checks and making the profit on the operations at these six ports.
But I don't know what this has to do with the Patriot Act.
Like I say, if you're going to attach this danger to the UAE, then you've got to stop them from flying into the country with their commercial airlines.
You've got to make sure that whatever property they own here, they divest themselves.
They get out of it, freeze their assets.
And then we've got to make sure that if they are funding, which they are, Columbia University Muslim Studies courses, we can shut that down.
I just, you know, we've got to stop selling them fighter jets like Clinton did back in 1998.
60 F-16s.
They could have used those against us already.
Yeah, so turn it up.
All right, I'm going to stir the pot a little more here.
We checked out the Port of Los Angeles, ladies and gentlemen, and we found out that 80% of the berths are owned by foreign nations, foreign companies, with the vast majority of them owned by the Chikoms.
The Chikoms have quite a few berths at the Port of Los Angeles.
Well, this does not surprise me.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
My memory on this is a little admitted fuzzy, but did the Chikoms try to buy the Panama Canal or did they buy it?
I don't know if they own it or if they tried to buy it and everybody raised a big stink about it.
Let's listen to some media analysis of this.
And I referred to this earlier, how I am often portrayed by the media and by the Democrats as a simple-minded simpleton.
And you are mind-numbed robots.
Why, ladies and gentlemen, I see only black and white.
I don't see nuance.
I don't see the gray areas.
Everything's either right or wrong, good or bad.
And that equals simpleton.
And they are the ones with the nuance.
They, the elitist, are the smartest people in the world.
And they are able to see things that mere mortals and plebes like you and I are incapable of seeing.
What a 180 has taken place.
Today on the Today Show, the perky one, Katie Couric, apparently headed to the anchor chair at CBS, talking to Tim Russert about the ports.
And Katie said, we're hearing about two conflicting images of the UAE.
One is an ally in our war against terror, another as a home to two of the 9-11 hijackers.
What depiction is accurate, Tim, or is it some kind of combination of the two?
It's a combination.
The fact is hijackers from September 11th did come from the UAE.
On the other hand, they have helped U.S. officials apprehend some al-Qaeda officials.
The president is saying to himself and the people around him, if I go before the world and say we're going to cut back on this deal because the UAE is an Arab country, what is that going to mean?
What is that going to mean to the future of our foreign policy?
It's a more nuanced approach, frankly, that the Democrats are usually trying to argue.
This time, the Democrats have the simple issue, we're for national security, Mr. President.
And it's going to come back and stab them in the back because all of a sudden, their whole modus operandi has been exploded.
We don't have any enemies.
The Democrats have been trying to tell us that we don't need to be doing any of this.
We don't need the Patriot Act.
We don't need to have this NSA spying program.
We don't need Abu Ghraib.
We don't need these foreign prisons.
We don't need any of the steps that we're taking because Bush is the one creating the terrorists.
If we just stop Bush, then, well, we're going to be safer.
Now, all of a sudden, we've got an enemy.
And who do the Democrats zero in on?
The United Arab Emirates.
So I say, if the bin Laden family were buying the ports, then we'd have a different take on this.
But even Russert points out that, frankly, it's the president and, of course, me, because there aren't too many other people other than me and the president who are being nuanced on this.
Everybody else is just relying on the simple.
And of course, when he says the Democrats have the simple issue, we're for national security, Mr. President.
We also know that Democrats are inexorably linked to unions, and the unions are very much frightened and scared about this deal and will have a major impact on how Democrats react to this.
It's allowing them, their association with the unions here is allowing them to stand up under the banner of national security, which is really great.
Just why did it take them so long?
And how come they chose the United Arab Emirates as the enemy that they wanted to recognize as posing a grave threat to the country?
So the next question from Katie Couric.
What do you think about the Arab American community claiming it's bias and bigotry that's driving this?
And in fact, President Bush suggested it as well when he compared all of a sudden Middle Eastern companies held to a different standard than a British company.
Is there some truth to those claims?
Well, the Arab community certainly believes that.
And if you look at the numbers, Katie, there are about 360 ports in the United States.
About 30% have terminals operated by foreign companies, including China, Singapore, Denmark.
And so many Arab Americans are saying, why us?
Why is the UAE being singled out?
Democrats and Republicans in the Congress will counter because it was a country that was directly involved in September 11th.
Let's go to cut eight.
That question about their involvement in 9-11 was brought up to Rumsfeld yesterday during his briefing.
And here is the exchange.
It's an unidentified male reporter.
Two of the 9-11 hijackers were from the United Arab Emirates.
It's an undercurrent.
One ought not, in my view, to hold a country of origin responsible for every citizen they may have at any given time, particularly when people have multiple passports.
Does the name Mark Rich mean anything to you?
Mark Rich, pardoned by President Clinton, has been involved in a lot of nefarious criminal activities, used to be an American citizen.
Does it make sense that countries that don't want to deal with Mark Rich are going to say, we can't trust you, Americans?
Look at Mark Rich.
By the way, I might add that the Democrats have been doing their best to alienate as many foreign countries from President Bush as possible.
They've been traveling to Saudi Arabia.
You know, if somebody wants to look at who's really posing a security risk, look no further than Al Gore, who goes over to Saudi Arabia last week, still this has not been reported on the mainstream press, and starts telling lies to an Arab audience, and he was doing it for payment, about the horrible treatment that Arabs are receiving in this country.
Rounding them up wholesale, putting them in prison, not charging them, and they're never to be heard from again.
And on the cusp of typical Al Gore, less than a week after he makes the speech, here we are announcing a deal to sell these six ports to the United Arab Emirates.
What a blowhard idiot.
Now, he may not be an idiot in terms of speaking because his audience back here in the country, the left-wing kooks that they're going to determine the next Democratic presidential nominee, may love it.
But the fact is, with the cartoon controversy and these riots all over the world, and there's Gore out there saying that we are rounding up Arabs in this country wholesale and sequestering them without legal protection, without any charges.
It's just absurd.
And you've got Clinton basically going overseas and saying, I'll tell you what, we ought not be publishing any of these pictures of these cartoons, the Prophet Muhammad and so forth.
I think the press ought to be more responsible about this.
So he's coming out against freedom of the press.
But these guys and Jimmy Carter, they've been going around the world, ripping the United States and its policy in the war on terror, ripping the United States and its policy of the war in Iraq, ripping George W. Bush personally and so forth, all for their own personal gain.
You think that's not whipping up a bunch of anti-American frenzy over there when an ex-president and an ex-vice president do this kind of thing?
You know, I think it's helpful to have a little perspective here.
Now, here's more on the Panama Canal Atlantic and Pacific entrances.
And this is from the Washington Times.
Well, the Hutchinson Wampo LTD, a giant Hong Kong-based, and you know who controls Hong Kong now, the Chikoms.
The Brits gave it back.
So the Chikoms run Hong Kong, a giant Hong Kong-based shipping firm with ties to the Chikom leadership and the People's Liberation Army was awarded a 25 to 50 year contract to run the two major ports on Panama Canal's Atlantic and Pacific entrances.
This happened during the Clinton administration in 1999.
Thank you, Jimmy Carter, who was the first guy to surrender control of the Panama Canal.
And so, you know, folks, this kind of thing has been going on for a long, long time.
And the Democrats, these people are talking about national security and all this, they've got no leg to stand on when it comes to this particular deal.
And who was it?
Was it during when you, the People's Republican, the People's Liberation Army, during the Clint administration, what was the story about this one guy from the People's Liberation Army, son of some Chikom leader who was trying to buy something in California?
Maybe he was trying to buy a port or whatever.
He wanted to ship guns in or some such thing as that.
Remember, I can't, I don't, I don't know what became of that.
But this, if you just take your time to look at this and you will find it's not uncommon and you'll find that it's what makes this different is 9-11, of course.
But the Chikoms are threatening us.
The Chikoms have ICBMs.
The North Koreans are in bed with the ChiComs and so forth.
And one of the ways that we are dealing with the Chikoms is infiltrating their country with capitalism.
We are infiltrating that company.
We're exporting capitalism.
And their market is taking off at its, they need our market, as it were, in order to maintain their own economic viability.
A quick timeout.
We'll be back.
Making it less likely they'll send one of these ICBMs our way.
They'll threaten it, and they get in bed with the Chinese, with the Iranians, the Russians, maybe.
Make no mistake, we've got enemies.
And we're going to have enemies.
We're always going to have enemies because we're the world superpower.
And we're going to have, we're at the top.
People envy us.
People don't like us.
And there are bad people.
Plain as simple.
There are bad people everywhere, regardless of any circumstances surrounding them.
They're just bad people.
And these things all have to be dealt with in a responsible way.
Case-by-case basis.
Quick timeout.
More coming after this.
It was only mere moments ago, ladies and gentlemen, that I asked you if I was not correct when I said that one of your primary fears when you first heard the deal was that you conjured up a mental image of turban wearing Arabs running the cranes and so forth, thinking that the United Arab Emirates would import their own people as employees and so forth.
Yes, you did, Snerdley.
That was exactly one of the fears that you had.
And a lot of people did too.
And let me just show, I was right about this.
And to show you just how knee-jerk reaction the simple-minded the media is, I want to, just a little question here for you.
Five seconds.
You have to listen fast here.
And this is from Martha Radditz to Scott McClellan, the White House briefing today.
She is an ABC News reporter at.
Scott, we'll just go back to the hiring.
So who's running the forklifts?
I mean, do we have any control over that?
Good Lord.
Here is the mainstream print.
This is ABC for three days.
It has been announced on this program.
It's been findable, discoverable everywhere.
The Longshoreman Union will continue to be the union.
The forklifts are going to be run by the forklift operators of today.
The jobs are going to be held by the people who have the jobs today.
The only thing that's going to change are the people writing the checks.
And she doesn't know it.
And McClellan's probably answered the question already twice by the time she gets to it again and says, well, just go back to the hiring.
So who's running the fork?
Well, I'll tell you what's spawning that question.
She obviously has the same mental picture.
She has the same mental picture.
And so, at any rate, again, more evidence.
I just know these people.
I just know them.
It is scary.
If they knew how well I know them, they would be haunted.
Here's Ingrid in San Jose.
Ingrid, thanks for calling and welcome to the program.
Yes, hi, Ross.
You know, it's the same mental pictures that you scared us for the last five years, including this administration, about terrorism, Muslim and Arabs.
It's like the fox watching the hen house.
You know, this is not about Republicans or Democrats.
This is about the security of the United States, you know.
And you have been a Republican first and an American last, always.
And this is just the way it is.
You know, you sell out the country to the highest.
Ingrid, you are wasting my time.
I'm not.
You are wasting my time.
Ingrid, the most appropriate question I can ask you as a liberal is, when did you start caring about national security?
The second question I can ask you as a liberal.
Ingrid, I am speaking, and it's my program, and this way we aren't going to waste time.
We waste time when you speak, Ingrid.
You're so off base.
You think that I'm doing this just to support Bush and the GOP.
The GOP is not supporting this.
The GOP is as opposed to this as you are.
Some members of them are just as opposed to us as the Democrats are.
I've been supporting this long before Bush said a word about it.
And supporting it is not the same thing as coming down firmly in favor of it.
I still don't think this thing is going to pass.
I have not made it.
I am in the process.
To me, it looks like a good deal.
That's what this whole exercise has been about.
This is Wednesday.
We've been working on this for three days.
I've been feverishly doing show prep nightly as I continue to get ready for this broadcast each and every day.
And as much of my support comes from the type of opposition this deal is getting, as much as the research that I have done into looking into it and seeing what's bad about it, good about it.
And I understand that what's bad about it are the fears that people have, which I totally understand.
But at any rate, the idea that I'm carrying anybody's water here.
Ingrid, you ought to see my email.
My audience thinks I've lost my mind, just like they think I lost my mind during the Parole candidacy, like they think they lost my mind during NAFTA.
My audience thinks I'm nuts.
It's not because they think I'm being sycophantis to George W. Bush.
They just think I'm crazy.
It's like they think Bush has gone crazy in 24 hours.
And I have dealt with this before, and I will deal with it in this instance as well.
I appreciate the call, and I thank myself for rescuing this call so that it wouldn't end up being a waste of time.
Max in Cleveland, nice to have you on the program, sir.
Thanks, Rush.
Ken Blackwell Diddles from Ohio.
Thank you, sir.
Yes.
Where does he come down on a port deal?
Do we know?
What's that?
Where does Blackwell come down in a port deal?
You know, I don't know that, but as long as he's governor of Ohio, I think we'll be okay.
But, you know, my point is not to argue with you economically.
I agree with you, and it's obvious how disingenuous the media and the Democrats are about these things.
But one person I did hear speak on this was Jim Woolsey, who was the former CIA director.
And one of his concerns, and this made sense to me and it would seem valid to me, was the fact that not that the employees of these companies obviously would be foreigners.
They're obviously not.
And you've explained that, obviously.
But the fact that a United Arab Emirate company owning this would allow maybe the possibility, and it may be far-fetched, but maybe not so, of an al-Qaeda operative or something like that to infiltrate this company, which would give them access to port security procedures, protocols, things of that nature, which when it's enhanced by a domestic company.
That's a legitimate concern.
They could do that now.
They're in the country already.
They infiltrated the country and blew up the buildings after hijacking airplanes on 9-11.
They infiltrated our flight schools.
I still say, you know, why spend $8 billion to blow up an American target when you can just load a container with a bomb at one of your other ports and ship it in, since we only inspect 5% of these things.
I mean, I don't think they're that crazy to spend $8 billion to blow up an American target when it wouldn't cost them hardly anything at all to do.
Quick timeout, my friends.
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Okay, another hour on its way to the secret warehouse location, non-unionized, where artifacts and exhibits from this program are kept for the future Limbaugh Broadcast Museum.
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