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Feb. 23, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:17
February 23, 2006, Thursday, Hour #2
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And greetings, folks, and welcome back.
Great to have you with us.
America's Anchor Man on the air.
Our security's still beefed up.
Don't worry, I'm safe.
We're all okay here at the EIB Southern Command.
Security has been doubled after yesterday's threat from a Long Beach longshoreman aimed at me.
It wasn't the long shore man.
There was one that was a caller.
The union has not made an official threat.
This man sought to speak on behalf of himself, I assume.
Anyway, here's the phone number if you want to be on the uh program today, 800-282-288-2.
And the email address is rush at EIBNet.com.
Now the Democrats are getting comical again, and they always are when they're out of power.
That's that's when they get absolutely just unhinged.
And on Hardball last night with uh with Chris Matthews, guess who they're trotting back out?
The punk?
Terry McCulliff.
Now, this is a part of this that makes me think that uh Bush is in instigated a rope-dope designed to flush the Democrats out and embarrass themselves once again, in addition to putting together a deal here for the uh the port sale to the United Arab Emirates on the merits.
Because when I listen to these Democrats, uh it's so easy to provoke these people.
I uh here's the question from Matthews.
Is uh is this a winner for the Democrats that the president's now caught off base with his uh own party on this issue?
George Bush, as I've consistently said for years, has made our nation less safe.
He lives in a pre-9-11 world, and he's made the nation less safe.
We have chaos in Iraq today.
He hasn't given the body armor to our troops, and then he says on this whole issue of of port security, well, I didn't know anything about it.
Well, this is the same president didn't know when his vice president shot some guy in the face.
He said he didn't know about Katrina.
Now he found out that he did know about Katrina.
George Bush is not good for this country.
So you see, did you hear any principled opposition to the deal there from the punk from Terry McCall?
And and for him to say that the Democrats are living in the post-9-11 world and that Bush is living in a pre-9-11 world, folks.
I mean, it's it's it's comical to listen to these people.
George Bush, at least the one thing here he's consistent on, the Democrats have been saying for four years that Bush is the threat.
Bush is making us less safe.
Bush is the guy that's spying.
Bush is the guy running torture chambers.
Bush is the guy opening secret prisons, Bush is the guy spying on American citizens.
Bush is living in a pre-9-11 world.
We have another one from the punk.
Um a question from Matthews.
I I want to I want a partisan analysis.
If the president vetoes this bill and permits the deal to go forward, so the Emirates company gets to run the porch in Philadelphia, New York and all the way to New Orleans.
Is that a win?
Or is it better to beat the president?
Well, what's better?
What would you rather see happen?
That the bill's vetoed and overridden, that the president's beaten on this, or the president change his mind.
What do you think's the best thing here?
As an American, I if he vetoes it, I want to see the members of the House and Senate come together to override his veto.
As an American for the sake of the United States, President show the independence of the Republican leadership on the hill and make it harder to beat them.
I think it's great, but uh I finally agree with President has it's hard to beat Haster if he looks like he's not a rubber stamp, right?
He's tough and independent.
I think he's out.
You've turned the entire congressional delegation on Capitol Hill into John McCain.
Uh and see the fear?
No, no.
That's see the fear that Matthews has that every Republican on Capitol Hill is becoming going to become John McCain in the eyes of the media who they love and will never criticize.
See, Matthews is worried about the politics.
If you have been listening all week, folks, I told you that one possibility here, and I don't know whether this was this part of the strategy or not.
It probably wasn't.
But it doesn't matter because it's still happening.
The fact is, the president has set up circumstances here where Republicans in an election year can run and campaign in a way that that makes them not look like sycophants, makes them not look like toadies that are simply part toting a party line.
It does make them look independent, and it also takes away the issue the Democrats think they have, which amazingly and miraculously, they now think they own the national security issue.
It's it's it's absurd.
It's fascinating to watch this play out politically, as well as the actual elements of the deal.
But the Democrats are not responding that.
Well, some of them are.
Like Chuck Schumer was on the radio today, and Chuck Schumer was all worried about the manifolds on cargo ships that maybe could hold bombs and stuff.
And then they said, no, no, no, you mean the manifest.
No, no, no.
He kept you talking about the manifold.
He didn't even know what he was talking about.
He didn't even hit any steamship lingo down pat.
But now he's an expert on uh on on ocean shipping.
He's an expert on ports.
He's an expert on all this.
And there everybody has overreacted politically on this, and they and they they staked out their positions long before they knew the details of the deal, partly because they were hearing from so many of their constituents.
Now, as I said earlier, Peter King has admitted this, the good guy, Congressman from Long Island.
He said most of what he's saying here is in reaction to his constituent response, email and phone calls and so forth, which I understand.
I mean, he's an elected official.
He is a representative.
He is supposed to represent the desires of his constituents, combined with doing what he thinks is right.
Sometimes constituents don't know everything that they think they know, and he is in a position to know more about certain things, as are all Congressmen and Senators than us, than we are.
But in this instance, I don't think members of Congress on Monday or Tuesday were digging too deep to find out the details here.
Everybody get caught up in the in the in the with the mental image of Abdul and Sahib driving forklifts and running crane operations in these ports.
And said, Oh my god, how this happened.
And I'll tell you what I think is happening right now.
I think more and more of these politicians both sides of the aisle, the Democrats are not going to abandon their position on this because they think they've now won the House again.
I think they've won the Senate again and the White House, all in this one issue.
But there are going to be some Republicans.
I there are some Republicans.
I don't know this because I haven't talked to them, but I will I will I will bet you that there are some people in the days since Monday and Tuesday that are looking at this and rethinking their position on it.
Anybody would if you look at it.
Anybody, if you've if your first reaction was simply knee-jerk and based on the things that we have discussed, when you take time to look into it, as I have done, uh you you have less and less fear about it.
And it it it doesn't present the evidence that that led to the original fear that people had, the the uh original reaction that people had.
You find out that the United Arab Emirates is not Al Qaeda, it's not a mosque.
They have all those things there, but the United Arab Emirates uh company doing this is not affiliated with terrorists.
They're not they're not a branch of Al Qaeda or any of this.
And as I say, the more I've looked at it, the more I think they actually want to be like us.
I think that's that's that's in uh key in this.
See, I think it's great when when companies, countries want to be like us.
Because we're the good guys.
And the more they're like us, the less likely they're gonna have any animus towards us.
And it's like the and you know, what I'm sure you've heard Walter Williams quote this guy to you, Frederick Bastier.
He's a French economist.
We'll forget that he's French.
He's uh uh you know Thomas Soule loves the guy too.
And he says, where goods and services, if goods and services don't cross borders, armies soon will.
Well, that's that's not a theory, that's not a guess.
That's the history of the world.
And that's why I say economics and security are linked.
They're not two separate things here.
So again, as I listen to Democrats and I listen to people who have not budged from their position of earlier in the week on this, I can't I can't find anything, and I don't hear anything to recommend itself to me that makes me say, you know, that's right.
I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna come down on their side of the deal.
Everything to me balances out opposite way.
Quick time out, back with more phone calls, audio soundbites, you name it, right around the corner.
Half my brain tied behind my back.
I do that just to make it fair, folks, even The scales here.
L. Rushbo serving humanity simply by showing up, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, and to uh Mendem, New Jersey.
And Phil, I'm glad you called, sir.
Welcome to the program.
Rush, I'm actually sort of hyperventilating, shaking with emotion because this is the first issue I have agreed with you on in maybe recent and middling memory, but I agree with you 100%.
All your analysis.
Uh because though I think that the administration botched the process by not briefing uh the Senate uh early, uh, the people that they had to going with the 45-day statutory process, all of your points about globalism, about not sending the wrong message, about commerce across borders, are very true.
The checks are just going to be written by those companies.
Nothing has to change on the ground in our ports.
The British used to run it, and British nationals were terrorists in the south.
All of this stuff is true.
But uh, I believe that Bush is toast.
It's a Harriet Myers scenario.
Now that uh his base is rapidly withdrawn, and he will never be on a ballot again in terms of the midterm elections that those Republicans are looking at, and the Democrats trying to triangulate this in their favor.
I think that uh either he vetoes and then gets overridden, which makes him an even lamer lame duck, or he backs out of it to try to conserve any power that he's got for some future fight.
Well, that's a that's a mouthful.
First off, let me let me thank you for uh uh admitting that uh you finally found something on which we could agree.
It's not an admission brush.
It's uh I'm it's a glad I'm a pro it's a proclamation, please.
Well, what fine, that's even better.
You're calling here to make an official pro proclamation that you have found something after uh a whole bunch of years you can agree with me on.
That represents progress because this will not be the last issue.
Now that we have formed this bond, you and I, this will not be the last issue on which we agree.
You are first time.
I'll tell you what, let's play it just to humor me here.
Tell me just one thing, and not because I want to argue with you about it, just tell me one thing.
It could be anything that you disagree with me about.
I think you rode the populist tide on Terry Shiva.
And that I disagreed with you on it.
All right.
But this populist tide is something that you're attempting to buck based on reasons that I agree with.
I don't see, but see, I'm glad you said that because uh I say this all the time.
Writing the populist tide is the equivalent of moistening the finger, putting it in the air to find out which way the wind's blowing.
Another way to express it is the populist tide is I'm gonna say what I think my audience wants to hear, and I do not do that.
I have never done it.
It's phony.
I would forget what I said once five years ago, and I'd be caught up as a hypocrite.
I just call them as I see them.
And I've I've I'm just I don't want to retrace my steps on this as I have uh recounted too many times already, the process I went through here.
I want to take the occasion of your call and branch off.
You said the Democrats are trying to triangulate this.
And see, that's their problem.
Everything they try to triangulate everything.
Where is their principle on this?
I still don't know.
To them, this is nothing more than the latest political opportunity and strategy.
Now there is a uh a Zogby poll out.
It's reported today in the Washington Times.
Democrat voters low on enthusiasm.
Democrats, after eleven years of the minority in Congress, still can't get it right with their own voters at poll shows.
By objecting to virtually every initiative and proposal of the Bush administration and congressional Republican majority, Democrats are undermining their party's chances of regaining the majority this fall, according to the Zogby poll, a surveyed a thousand thirty-nine voters.
While leaders like Pelosi and Dingy Harry of Nevada and other visible Democrats in Washington pick fights with Republicans, the Zag Zugby poll, excuse me, shows that 58%, 5'8% of rank and file Democrat voters say that their leaders should accept their lower position in Congress, act like the minority, and work together with Republicans to craft the best deals they can get.
Only six percent of the Democratic respondents say That the number one goal for their party's lawmakers in Congress should be to bury Republican bills.
Only six percent of Democrat respondents.
Can I tell you who that six percent is?
That six percent lives in Cooksville.
That six percent is the blogosphere.
That six percent is the small group of people that have become the base of the Democratic Party.
The moveon.orgs and all this.
These 527 groups, these lunatics that are out there raising more money than anybody else, and that's influencing the people like Pelosi and Reed and the and the other Democrats in Washington, and they have to echo what these lunatic kooks want to hear.
So six percent of the Democratic Party, the lunatic fringe, is is uh actually having the vast majority influence on the elected Democrats, and I think it's a fine line because I think a lot of these elected Democrats are kooks in their own right.
They're wacko leftists, and they they don't need advice on how to be wackos, they don't need words uh dictated to them because they're capable of uttering these things themselves, as we who have been studying them for 40 years know.
But the fact is they still get listened to, but they're it it indicates this poll indicates that there are some uh the silent majority of Democrats, let's go back and revive that term.
The silent majority of Democrats are sitting out there and are not believing what they're watching, and they don't like it.
They are embarrassed when when Dingy Harry or Nancy Pelosi stands up and starts spouting off Bush this, Bush that, they're embarrassed when they hear Carville and Bigala, they're embarrassed when they hear the punk Terry McCallough, like he was on television last night.
Of course, more people just heard McCallov today on this program than'll ever hear in two months worth of hardball.
But the uh, and that's the service we provide, uh, Chris Matthews, we expand his audience here every day when we play sound bites.
Fact of the matter is that these Democrats are concerned they don't they don't it in fact there used to be a term for what they're doing.
It's called gridlock when the Republicans were in the minority.
The Democrats and the media chided them as doing nothing but just stopping the press, just gridlock.
It was horrible, it was it was terrible.
Today, gridlock is praised.
That's Democrat principle.
And and when Dingy Harry shuts down the Senate on a bogus maneuver, that just those six percent of Democrats loved it, though they were showing backbone and spine.
They they they are they're destroying this party.
They literally are destroying it, and the the elected Democrats are kind of caught because while they agree with the kooks, they've also got this big group of Democrats out there that's not happy about what's going on, and because their biggest problem is they refuse to be honest with us about who they are.
And until they start doing that, they aren't going to have much of a chance.
Every bit of strategy the Democratic Party has today is based on camouflaging who they really are, based on masking what they really believe.
Because they know that if they were to come out openly and passionately for what they believe right now, they would lose big.
So they've got to constantly come up with ways to mask themselves, to uh present illusions.
Uh how can we fool them today?
You've heard about these staff meetings that they all had.
They go back behind closed doors to come up with their agenda.
They have two-hour meetings to find out what it is they believe.
They go hire George Lackoff rhymes with uh to tell them how to say what they don't want to say and get away with it.
I am as a as a conservative, I don't need to have a meeting with anybody to find out what I believe.
Certainly I can tell you what I believe uh in robust terms, and you would have no doubt after that in five minutes.
It wouldn't take me two hours in private behind closed doors to figure it out.
Same with them.
They know what they believe in.
This is all just a game.
And they're employing the same strategy here with this port deal.
They are trying to reverse the notion that they are weak on national security.
Well, they are weak on national security.
And one issue like this is not going to make people forget what they've been doing and saying for five years or four, particularly since 9-11.
They're out there saying Bush is the enemy, Bush poses the threat, Bush runs torture chambers, Bush is spying on Americans, Bush is Hitler.
Now all of a sudden, overnight Bush doesn't care.
Bush doesn't care.
He sold the port to some terrorists.
But we Democrats, we Democrats are security conscious, and we are not going to let this happen.
We are not going to let.
And the same time they're out there saying we need to build bridges of friendship.
We must ask, why do these people hate us?
We must find out after they blow up our building.
Why do they hate us?
We need to reach out.
We need allied relationships.
But nope.
Can't even stick with that.
Can't even stick with that.
Because of all the enemies in the Middle East, the Grand Democratic Party, led by Dingy Harry and Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi has concluded that the biggest threat besides George Bush represents is represented by the United Arab Emirates.
I'm sorry, folks.
You just have to laugh.
Your guiding light through times of trouble, confusion, murkiness, tumult, chaos, despair, questionable port deals, torture, humiliation, and even the good times.
Here are the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
All right, um, let's see.
You've got Audio Sound by 16 up there ready to go, Mike.
Yeah, I just keep it keep it standing by because it's coming up soon.
Mrs. Clinton beginning to moderate her position on this now, and I'll tell you why.
We'll get started with the process with this phone call, Dave from Mission Viejo in California.
Hi.
Mega Ditto since 1989, Russ.
Thank you, sir, very much.
Good.
The reason I call, just want to let you know, Bill Clinton goes down to uh University of Dubai almost once a year, gives that speech, promote his books, makes millions of dollars, and then on his speech he says, like what a great ally Dubai is.
What a great country it is.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton.
God save us all from her.
Gets behind the bullhorn and then contradict her husband.
All right, let's let's let's put all this together.
Dave, Dave, thanks for the call.
Let's um uh audio soundbite 16.
This is from this morning in the Senate Armed Services Committee, as they're doing hearings.
Congressional hearings of the secret port deal.
And uh unidentified reporters says, Senator Clinton, after the hearing today, do you anticipate bipartisan legislation to block the consummation of this deal by March the second?
There will certainly be legislation to require the 45-day investigation.
It seems to many of us that on the face of the statute, and given the circumstances of this transaction, uh that should have been undertaken, but in the absence of it, it should now be ordered.
That may be the first step in trying to resolve this matter.
Whoa!
Resolve this matter.
I wonder what she means when she says resolve this matter.
You know what I think it means?
I think it means, all right, let's do the investigation and let's find out how this deal got put together.
Let's do all the fact-finding we can, and then we'll approve it.
Because what upsets a lot of people about this is this this the AP has got this totally misleading story today about the Bush administration engaged in a secret deal with the government of uh United Arab members of this company or whatever.
There is a government agency that does this.
They've been doing it since 1988.
They've investigated five, 1,500 such deals since then.
I think they've rejected one, and it was a deal owned by a questionable SHICOM concern uh out in uh in California.
Uh and you know, it's a lot of people saying after 9-11, why is this process still take place without anybody knowing about it?
If this if if this would have just been subject to public knowledge, if we'd have been told UAE wants to buy the six ports, wait a minute, people can still have the reaction that they had.
That's silly, that's stupid.
Why sell the terrorists?
But then the whole process is open, sunshine on it, and none of this would be taking place here.
None of it, it wouldn't have been sprung on anybody as a surprise.
That's probably what needs to change, particularly in the aftermath of 9-11.
I distinctly hear Mrs. Clinton backing away, and I think she'll hear from the Longshoreman Union this afternoon, backing away from blanket opposition to this.
She doesn't want to stop it now.
She wants the 45-day investigation.
Now let's go back to the guy from Mission Viejo.
Because I have here in my formerly nicotine stained fingers a copy of Arabian Business.
Our research tentacles know no bounds, folks.
And it's published Sunday, December 4th, 2005, so it was just late last year.
Clinton leads Dubai praise.
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton praised Dubai's leaders last week, telling them that the um the way Islamic and Western values and cultures are being merged is wonderful.
Speaking via telecast at the leaders in Dubai conference on Monday, Clinton was quick to highlight the work done by the Emirates rulers, particularly the uh the Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum and Crown Prince of Dubai, the Crown Prince of Dubai and the Minister of Defense for the United Arab Emirates.
Clinton said Dubai is a role model of what could be achieved despite the other negative developments in the Middle East region.
When I went to Dubai for the first time, and he talks about his reaction when he when he first went there and saw all this technological advancement, he had no idea was going on in the Middle East.
Same thing reaction I had.
Now, Clinton also, let's not forget, back in 1998, the Clinton administration sold 60 F-16s to the United Arab Emirates.
The United Arab Emirates funded uh the course on Muslim studies at Columbia University, set up endowed at 200,000.
They're they have a lot of involvement in this country already.
They've been here, they have been able to infiltrate this country with terrorists easily.
If they want to fly one of those F-16s and drop a bomb someplace, well, they probably couldn't penetrate our airspace.
Well, you never know.
Cessna's have gotten close to the White House.
Point is the the point is here that now you've got Clinton with his past as president, big ally, he's he does make these speeches, collects money from Dubai, talks about them great, great praise, and here's Hillary with her knee-jerk reaction earlier in the week.
This is crazy.
Why, terrorism?
Uh in our ports, why we'll not stand for it.
Well, because of course that's what her constituents want to hear.
She's just can't agree with Bush.
I will guarantee you what happened is that I don't know how often the Clinton see each other, and I don't know how often they talk to one another.
But I'll guarantee you that somebody talked to somebody here.
Clinton got hold of Hillary and said, hey, hey, babe, can I mind you some things here?
You know how much money I'm making from the we like talk around how about Rich We are you know how much money I'm making from these people?
These people are cool there, okay.
I sent them jets.
Don't you remember that?
We did that back in 1998.
You if you won't be consistent, if you don't want people throwing mud at you because you being inconsistent on this, you got to moderate your position on this because it's not a bad deal, Baba.
I guarantee you that one of the reasons because there's there has to be something, because the the the pull and a tug of unions on Democrats, folks, is tight.
It's almost a hangman's news.
And Hillary is moderating her position on this since the first of the week, and in doing so, she's gonna make angry the longshoremen's union and other AF AFL CIO unions that donate to her campaigns.
So she walking a little bit of a tightrope here.
I I'll just I'm telling you that as people start looking at just the economics of the deal and ignore the politics of it.
If you just look at the structure of the economics of the deal and a match, there's not much to find to have a problem with, which has been my dilemma all week.
There just isn't much to have a problem with here.
All the problems are on the political side.
And that's where she appears to be moderating her tone a little bit at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearings today.
Mary in Madison, New Jersey.
Nice to have you on the program.
Hi, Russ.
It's wonderful listening to you, the King of Radio and of Logic.
I'm on your side on this, and I wonder why there's so few of us.
But it seems to me that if we trust President Bush to wage the war on trap uh terrorism and to make all these significant decisions decisions from day to day.
How can we uh dispute this uh trivial, what seems to me like a trivial trade deal?
Well, it I wouldn't say it's well trivial, but it's a large.
That's it.
You know, we can swim the channel practically from Dubai to Iran.
I mean, uh they're a strategic uh partner.
I know.
Look, our Navy, the our the the our own Navy uses the ports in Dubai to restock to free to refuel.
It's it's where they most like and and and feel safest.
They most like to go and they feel safest.
The security there is great.
There's no, you know, it's it's it's this is all absurd.
But you ask a good question.
Because I'll I'll take you back to Harriet Myers.
And I remember all of you wanted to trust President Bush on Harriet Myers.
And I was opposed to Harriet Myers.
And you would call here and say, I trust George Bush.
And that wasn't enough for me.
And it's not enough for me now.
But let me expand on this to put it all in context.
George W. Bush's president has done some things in certain areas that has dissatisfied and perhaps even angered a lot of conservatives over the years.
The education bill with Ted Kennedy, the reaching out to Democrats and try to be friends with them rather than being loyal to his own friends, the spending, the lack of attention to immigration.
There have been a lot of things.
But what has caused all of conservatives to stay aligned with Bush is his steadfastness on the war on terror.
And the fact that the Democratic Party is not a partner in our national security.
If you wanted to invest in the security of the country after 9-11, you had to support George W. Bush because there was nobody else out there at high levels of government, the Democratic Party willing to do so.
They wanted to tear him down.
They were making it impossible to wage war against this enemy.
Every prison was a torture chamber.
No domestic spying, no intelligence gathering, no interrogations, no nothing.
They were making Bush out to be the biggest threat.
They were accusing Bush of causing terrorism.
We all know how ridiculous that is.
In the process, the Democrats are making it plain, they can't be trusted.
So we hung with George W. Bush because of that particular issue.
That issue galvanized and kept us all linked, properly so.
But I do not support this deal because I trust George W. Bush.
I'm not saying I don't trust him, but it's not trust.
It's a matter of logic to me.
Here is a man who has for four years been alone at the top, other than his uh the members of his administration.
But he's been alone at the top in keeping this country focused on measures to guarantee as best we can our security.
What I can't believe is that one day after this four-year track record, George W. Bush could lose his sanity, could lose his resolve, could change his mind, and willingly participate in a deal that would undo practically every step he's taken to guarantee as best he can our security.
It's not it's not a matter of trust, it's a matter of logic.
I just don't think he's stupid, and I don't think that he's not paying attention.
And I don't think that he is all of a sudden less concerned about the threats that we face.
If anything, I think this represents an understanding that the threat is real and it's very consistent with his foreign policies, trying to spread democracy to the Middle East, everybody laughing at him.
He's trying to make people around the world who are living in tyranny and an impression free, and and the world is laughing at him.
So here we have a modernized little country in the Middle East, the United Arab Emirates.
They want to be like us.
It's apparent to me, it's obvious that's who their role model is.
Their role model is not bin Laden, their role model is not a bunch of sheikhs and imams and mosques that want to take us back to the 12th century.
Their role model is us.
So it's an ally in the region.
Economic interdependence makes them far less likely to ever be an enemy, and far more likely to join us in the security efforts in this port deal and anywhere else around the world to ensure their investment and to ensure our safety.
We become partners in this.
And I think it actually fits with Bush's foreign policy in terms of modernization, freedom for individuals, economic opportunity, and advancement for I think it's totally consistent.
Once again, it's the Democrats who are on the wrong side of it.
But to me, this this I want to stress this becausen't enough to make me support Harriet Myers just because he nominated it.
I thought that was an absolute mistake, and I would, if I thought this was a mistake, I would tell you the same thing.
You have to know that, if nothing else about me over the last 18 years.
This is not a matter of trust.
This is an I have research.
You've listened to the program all week.
I have done the due diligence, as they say.
I have looked at the details on the economic side of this.
I know it's a time bomb politically, but that time bomb, the fuse is not lit on it yet, and Mrs. Clinton's soundbite just illustrated that.
The fuse on a time bomb is not lit.
And I want to just predict to you that you are going to see more and more hedging back ever so slowly and slightly.
From the knee-jerk position that many people took earlier in the week.
Mark my words.
A quick timeout.
It's a great call.
See, that is an example of great call.
That's how a great called purpose of a caller's make the host look good, and that woman did it.
Back in just a moment.
Despite my best efforts, ladies and gentlemen, this deal continues to be miscast and misrepresented, not only by the school teacher of Dawn's young daughter, mommy, mommy.
Dawn's daughter came home from school.
Mommy, mommy, why is George Bush selling our ports to terrorists?
That's still out there, and that's still how people refer to this.
Um this is we're the bumper sticker is we're selling our ports to terrorists.
We're not, we're not selling any.
We don't own this, folks.
The British own what is being sold.
This and it's not ports.
We're talking terminals.
And in all of New York and in all of New Jersey, it's one terminal.
I know Rush, but that's where it starts.
So I can imagine all of the reactions that you're going to have.
But we're not selling anything.
But why can't an American company do it?
They don't ask me.
I don't know why Americans don't want to do this business.
It probably because they don't want to deal with the unions.
I don't know.
That's why the Hong Kong people have not tried to buy this terminals, folks.
Hong Kong doesn't want to mess with the myriad regulations and security problems and the challenges that they have, the hoops they have to jump through in a unions.
That's they don't want to deal with it.
The biggest port operator in the whole world, the Hong Kong bunch.
So I can't do it.
I mean, why am I not in the widget business?
Somebody should be in the widget business in America.
Why don't why don't I?
Because I have no interest.
I couldn't care less.
It's it's not, it's not enough to oppose the deal.
Say, why can't it American company find me an American?
And by the way, we do own quite a few of the facilities, and they are all run by your beloved government and bureaucracies.
The port authority of New York and New Jersey, the port authority of this or that, the Stevedor's da-da-da of this and that.
It's this particular business that Americans are not in.
And like Americans don't make sewing machines anymore.
We don't make buggies, as in the horse and buggy days, and we don't make buggy whips.
I don't know why Americans don't do this.
Americans also don't like to do their own yard work anymore either.
Americans don't like to be butlers.
You ever go try to hire a butler?
You can't find an American butler, and you wouldn't want one if you did, because the American butler would end up hating you after two months, say, how come he has all this and I don't have anything?
I don't, I don't, I don't have a butler, Mr. Snerdley.
I don't have a but that's not the point.
But there are but you can if you want a butler, you're gonna be hiring a Brit.
Or you're gonna be hiring somebody that does it on a cruise ship.
You're gonna be there are a lot of jobs Americans won't do.
Should we just close up the country?
Back, uh, ladies and gentlemen.
I've I I don't want to hit you with too much logic.
I know you're already dazzled.
I need to parcel this out better.
Back in just a second.
So everybody's out there saying Bush you got a tin ear.
Bush has a tin ear.
Well, I'll tell you this.
Bush's tin ear is matched by a Democrat opposition's inability to handle facts.
He may have a tin ear on this, uh, and that's for the political side of it.
The Democratic Party once again is totally uninterested in facts on this.
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