Feb. 27, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:23
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| Okay, I'll tell you what I got going on here, folks. | |
| I have Cookie doing a little Nexus search. | |
| I've asked her to go back in the Nexus database, which is a database of gazillions of newspapers and magazines and newsletters and so forth around the world. | |
| And I say, Cookie, I want you to go out there. | |
| I want you to find the first story on the Dubai Ports deal. | |
| And she has found it. | |
| Do you know when it was? | |
| You know when the first it appeared in the Times of London on October 30th, 2005. | |
| The Wall Street Journal ran the story the next day, October 31st, 2005. | |
| Not a word of uh fear, protest, or whatever resulted for months. | |
| Now, admittedly, the story on October 30th was just about Dubai's effort, to buy his desire to buy the port. | |
| They were they had they had hired um Deutsche Bank to advise them on their bid. | |
| Banking sources in Dubai said this weekend that a preliminary meeting between the two sides was likely to take place within deal uh within days. | |
| Uh Middle Eastern firm understood to have contacted banks about financing a bid for the British ports operator, blah, blah, blah. | |
| So this was before the deal was even done. | |
| We knew before it was even done, it was in the Times of London, a Wall Street Journal the next day. | |
| So we knew folks that this was happening, and we know members of Congress read the Wall Street Journal, and we know members of the media read the Wall Street Journal because the US the Wall Street Journal's the media. | |
| Greetings and welcome back. | |
| Great to have you, Rush Limbaugh here, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network at 800-282-2882. | |
| And I told Cookie, okay, now tighten the search. | |
| Get me the earliest date of the story within the past three weeks. | |
| I want to find out because it was a week ago today that all hell was raised. | |
| Well, actually, it was Friday. | |
| It was the Friday a week ago, about ten days ago, is is when all hell started to break loose. | |
| And that was that coincided with the Cheney story, uh, which they tried to keep alive all last week, fizzling out on them. | |
| So I just want to find out how much time went by here because I remember asking you one week ago today about this port deal, or some point last week. | |
| Do you feel a little manipulated by this story? | |
| Because it's been out there for so long, now all of a sudden it is it is getting all of this attention and focus long after it's been done. | |
| There wasn't anything secret about it. | |
| There wasn't a thing secret about it, not when it was known to be in the works before it was consummated, and all we can probably get the story that was published on the date it was consummated, and I'm guaranteeing you that's more than three weeks ago. | |
| So there's there's a just all kinds of manipulation going on with this, but the word secret has been attached to this, and it it couldn't have been. | |
| It may have it may be that it didn't interest anybody. | |
| Um it didn't. | |
| I wonder why that is. | |
| Why didn't it raise the red flags back in October that it's raising today? | |
| Why didn't it raise the red flags a month ago or two months ago that it is raising today? | |
| And this is the kind of stuff I've been suspicious of, and I told you all last week. | |
| And I don't like being manipulated, and I don't like joining the crowd of conventional wisdom, and I don't I'm not gonna get on this tsunami until I start looking at the thing, which I did last week. | |
| Now, Representative Peter King has blamed me. | |
| He was on WABC radio this morning with John Gambling, and he blamed me for softening some of the original opposition to the deal that was out there last week. | |
| And he claims or speculates that the reason I am opposing this deal is because I'm in the tank for the White House. | |
| So getting information, learning the details is in the tank. | |
| Not rushing the judgment. | |
| That's called being in the tank. | |
| So when when Cookie finishes this most uh recent uh search, I will give you the results of that, but it simply could not uh have been secret. | |
| I I was I went out and played golf yesterday, didn't play well at all. | |
| Um 30 mile an hour wins. | |
| It was like a mother-in-law convention out there. | |
| It was just you know, I had a little cold front going through, and it just, it just. | |
| At any rate, and I had my golf clubs fixed last week, and the guy that did it is totally screwed him up. | |
| It just totally just and I was just, I've been fit to be tight all weekend. | |
| I'm not gonna, I just have been fit to be tight. | |
| I just I have been. | |
| I've been angry, I've been depressed, I've been in a blue funk and so forth. | |
| But at lunch yesterday, somebody asked me before we went to play golf, have you watched any of uh is Mary Webster? | |
| She said, Have you watched any of the Olympics? | |
| Their eyes were bright, she was very excited about it. | |
| I said, No. | |
| I haven't seen any of the Olympics. | |
| I haven't watched them. | |
| What network are they on? | |
| She said, NBC. | |
| I said, I haven't, I haven't seen them. | |
| And she started talking about some of the fine things she watched and all the fun that she had watched. | |
| I said, Mary, I hate to tell you, I only know what I read, and you know how little I trusted that. | |
| But from what I've read, it sounds like we had a bunch of bad actors and a bunch of malcontent athletes over there making uh fools of themselves. | |
| It sounds to me like if what I read is true, that the ESPN sports culture has now come full circle. | |
| That a generation of showing highlights of bad behavior, show boating, uh test type stuff, you can pick the characters, has now caused a bunch of young athletes to grow up emulating that, so they too will be on the highlight reel. | |
| And I started, I said, Well, how do you pronounce this guy's name? | |
| Is it Bowde Miller or Bodie Miller? | |
| The skier who didn't he flopped in everything, apparently, and he went out there and still said he rocked because he was in the bar having a great time every night before his uh his uh competitions. | |
| He's up till midnight drinking. | |
| Yeah, I agree. | |
| I didn't disappoint myself. | |
| I didn't have any great expectations. | |
| He had his big Nike deal before he went over there. | |
| So we won more medals at this Olympics than we have ever won on foreign soil, but we uh we didn't we didn't we didn't acquit ourselves, apparently, in terms of character and deportment. | |
| Um we had a couple people did, but I mean, uh I guess most of the athletes did, but there were just enough of the big names, like one woman, I guess a skier or a snowboarder or or some such sport, um, apparently was on her way to winning the gold and decided to show boat right before the finish line and fell and and and lost her gold medal, something like that. | |
| And that's strictly the the uh uh I think the the coming full circle of this new sports culture that we have on on television. | |
| So I get up to I'm doing show prep, and there's this story of the Boston Herald today ugly American tourists, U.S. picked too many rotten apples for its team. | |
| And I think this is a columnist, her name is uh Karen Garegian, and she says four years ago it was uh easy coming away from the Olympic games in Salt Lake City with a great sense of pride about the Americans and their performance. | |
| They corralled this and it corralled that, blah, blah, blah, a bunch of medals, 34 of them, left everybody with a tapestry tapestry of glorious images that still resonate today. | |
| I didn't watch any of those Olympics either, so don't uh there's nothing about this one that Distant didn't interest me. | |
| I lost interest for the Olympics, you know, when we beat the Russians, and we had no enemy in the Olympics. | |
| If Al Qaeda had a team, you can bet that uh that I would be watching. | |
| As for this Olympics, the U.S. athletes have certainly authored some wonderful moments. | |
| It produced the most medals ever by this nation while competing on foreign soil. | |
| Um the number sure sounds good in the context, it looks good on paper. | |
| Trouble is the Americans have given fans more reason to wince than cheer. | |
| Uh and she goes on to describe some of um what she uh feels was was jerk behavior. | |
| Um course the question is were they acting like jerks or were they acting like modern athletes have been inspired to act in order to draw attention to themselves. | |
| Because most of the money athletes make to the big ones uh make them endorsement. | |
| Now that's that baseball's not necessarily true, but uh at a lot of sports, uh the big money is not made for competing. | |
| Yeah, I mean you have to that has to be the root of getting the big money, but uh anyway, I just I had to share that with you because I I uh it seems like every everybody writing about these Olympics, and I have not so I haven't watched them and you know what I think about the the print media but it seems like everything being written about this suggests that our team was a bunch of jerks was a bunch of immature little ne'er do wells that embarrassed the media there to cover the big Olympic story. | |
| Alright a quick timeout we'll be back and continue get to your phone calls right after this and we are back great to have you with us Rush Limbaugh serving humanity here on the one and only EIB network. | |
| All right, here's the earliest story on the port deal in the month of February was February 15th in the Philadelphia Inquirer. | |
| February 15th, which was the Wednesday of Cheney Shooting Week. | |
| And this story happened on that Wednesday of Cheney Shooting Week, and then it was a couple days later that it blew up. | |
| Here's the basic thrust of the story. | |
| The purchase of the port unit of a renowned British maritime company has given a United Arab Emirates company a half interest in a firm that loads and unloads ships in Philadelphia, Wilmington and Camden. | |
| Delaware River Steven Ours has been jointly owned by Stephenoring Services of America Inc. | |
| of Seattle and PO Ports Limited that's the that's the Brits on Monday P and O shareholders approved the sale for six point eight billion dollars of its maritime terminals and ferries to Dubai Portsworld lifting the uh United Arab Emirates Company into the top three marine terminal operators on Monday so it would have sale was consummated I guess on the thirteenth of February and it wasn't until the uh seventeenth that all hell broke loose uh on the story. | |
| Now listen to the last paragraph of this story. | |
| Pennsylvania State Representative William Keller, Democrat Philadelphia, who is chairman of the Delaware River Maritime Enterprise Council is a leading advocate for the deal said he is aware of the change and is working to make sure this doesn't hurt the port of Philadelphia and from that we uh arrived to where we are today with the first story on this being October thirtieth of last year when the deal was rumored to be in the works the next day | |
| the Wall Street Journal have that story so on October 31st I don't know what happened in the intermont beyond the month of February in our Nexus search because I wanted to find out within this most recent time frame just when all this got ginned up versus when it was first known and it's been known since the third quarter fourth quarter of two thousand five. | |
| All right back to the phones. | |
| Joe in uh Morristown New Jersey I'm glad you called sir welcome to the program. | |
| Hey Rush how you doing fine sir thank you. | |
| Great. | |
| It's been making my blood boil listen to it uh to to Peter King talk about this port deal. | |
| This is a guy who for years has supported the Irish Republican Army who has all kinds of ties you know to them has has been a uh you know an apologist if you will you know and and for years. | |
| And and you know it's you could almost turn it around on him and say well maybe he shouldn't be in charge of Homeland Security based on that. | |
| You know not to mention the IRA contacts with the PLO with FARC from Columbia with uh well I guess Qaddafi too you could throw him in the mix. | |
| So you know he he he he's really uh I don't know he's talking out both sides of his mouth on this because he has wait King King is a supporter of the IRA has been for years. | |
| I mean he's recently with the bank robbery over there oh some fifty million pounds they took he kind of uh well was whistling a different tune after that I think primarily to get this gig he has now over at Homeland Security or in charge of the subcommittee in Congress. | |
| But oh for years I mean he's met with Jerry Adams he's uh and and you know in in truth I mean maybe he can say that those were different times but the fact remains everybody has known the IRA has had contacts with uh what from Arafat to Qaddafi all those years he was supporting them. | |
| So they haven't linked the IRA they nobody's linked the IRA with uh terrorism in this country have they or against Americans well no not exactly because they they the problem is you know they've never attacked us because financially you know they need American support or well not private American support not not not government support. | |
| So you know it would have been quite foolish for them to attack us but they've certainly uh you know attacked our allies the British repeatedly over the years. | |
| And and you know if any American happened to die in one of their bombings and these were the original car bombers and these are the guys who invented the whole deal you know I don't think they would have shed any tears over it and certainly you know he's known that all along so you know for him to come out now and say that these people in the Aram in in the Arab Aram emirates are uh you know a threat to us. | |
| Well I mean I I just can't take it seriously. | |
| And I don't think anybody else should either. | |
| And it's just it's just driven me nuts because I know people over there who had to put up with this for years and years and years. | |
| And and uh you know he's he's always been an impediment to you know the British efforts to kind of get control of the situation over there. | |
| So I don't know. | |
| You know you could turn it around on him and say maybe he shouldn't be in charge of that subcommittee based on his past with the IRA. | |
| And I think it's about somebody does look you you you can say that if you want. | |
| I have I've tried uh during this this whole affair to go out of my way not to personally indict Peter King at all. | |
| The only thing I said I guess that could be considered that is is I I think it's not just the the Democrats who see a political opportunity here. | |
| I think it's the Republicans too. | |
| This is an election year. | |
| And members of the House run every two years, so they're all up for re-election this year. | |
| And I think there are a lot of them getting scared to death over the lack of progress in Iraq they think and the lack of progress in the war on terror and are looking for an opportunity to distance themselves from George W. Bush so that they don't appear quote unquote in the tank. | |
| And I think that there was a lot of uh of an original opposition to this among Republican politicians based purely on the calculation it could help them. | |
| Uh and they saw it as everybody apparently did in the knee jerk reaction first. | |
| Whoa, we're selling we're selling our ports and our port security to Arabs and we're gonna have Abdul and Sahib driving the fork that's that was the mental picture everybody had when this thing was first announced and and ran around and started talking this way and that ginned up predictable reaction from uh from members of the public. | |
| I am not aware of Peter King's support for the IRA and and uh if if if that gives him a problem with hypocrisy I that's for somebody else to say. | |
| I've you know I've I've tried not to to uh make this personal with anybody I've just basically tried to explain why I'm you know not opposed to it and why I'm not frightened by it. | |
| For some reason this is it doesn't scare me after I looked into this. | |
| There are a lot of other things to me that are far more frightening than this and I just tried to apply a little logic combined with the information that I learned when I when I started looking into it. | |
| And I think as more people did that their original reaction to this changed and it softened somewhat I'm sure there's still a lot of fear and still a lot of opposition to it. | |
| Congressman King is blaming me for that blaming me for softening the um the opposition. | |
| Last I saw I was the only talk show host taking this position. | |
| Everything I'm reading says all my talk show brethren are out there on the on the other side of this. | |
| So I mean if he wants to blame me for softening the opposition I will take it. | |
| But all those other hosts who've been out there beating the drums along with Peter King uh I would think that well you figure it out. | |
| Thanks for the call out there I appreciate go to Los Angeles and Holly I'm glad you waited. | |
| Welcome to the program. | |
| Hi thanks Bres it's an honor to talk to you. | |
| You bet. | |
| Um I'm just wondering how if if this were Kuwait um who the American public are more familiar with because we fought for them and they're good friends of ours and they're very westernized, would we be complaining this much? | |
| Would we be having this debate? | |
| And you know I live twenty minutes from the La from Los Angeles port where China has owned us for years. | |
| Yeah. | |
| And you know I'm also and and what about cutter? | |
| Isn't Cutter a tiny little nation that is next door? | |
| Um but cutter cutters were Al Jazeera is we also that's where our command central is so would we refuse to do business with them just because of that because I thought I believe their their president or their leader um who wears a suit was I think educated in our country and is very westernized and very democratic where we refuse to do business with them because Al Jazeera came from there. | |
| Uh you raise good questions. | |
| You raise good questions. | |
| I mean taking them specifically if it were Kuwait I doubt I doubt that there would have been uh uh as much Bruhaha cutter that's a fifty fifty possibility I think but what you're actually illustrating here uh is is that there was and I I hate to say this, but I I I've I've gone on this rant a number of times. | |
| I'll try to make it very short. | |
| I've tried to tell everybody as long as I'm alive, I do not participate in the world the media creates every day. | |
| Um I'm I participate in it, but I don't let it affect me. | |
| They write stories about how Bush is in the bubble, because Bush doesn't care what they're saying. | |
| Bush doesn't care what the his job's not to react to the media. | |
| Uh I have to, but I don't have to be sucked in by I think a lot of people got sucked in for a whole lot of reasons with the original reporting of this story. | |
| Well, the original reporting was missed. | |
| They got sucked in later when a vacuum after the Cheney shooting incident died. | |
| A vacuum had to be filled, and this story filled it. | |
| Everybody has to be all worked up and blattered about something, and this is it this week. | |
| Hillary, by the way, now says that Carl Rove is obsessing on her. | |
| Because in in uh in Bill Salmon's new book, Stratigery, uh in in separate interviews, Rove and the president uh both suggest that Hillary probably no question should get the Democrat nomination, but can't win the presidency. | |
| She irritates too many people, but blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. | |
| And so Hillary's apparently responded to Carl Rove obsesses about me. | |
| Uh Mrs. Clinton or representatives, I can assure you you are misunderstanding this. | |
| Um a woman says a guy is obsessing on her. | |
| That that's that's um well uh oh, you think that she enjoys it. | |
| Sterling says it's been a long time since she's felt that, so she may actually you may have a point. | |
| I hadn't thought of that. | |
| Let's go to Clearwater, Florida, and Glenn, you're next on the program, sir. | |
| Hello. | |
| Rush, it's great to talk to you. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | |
| Thank you. | |
| I just I just had a comment about the Olympics situation. | |
| I watched quite a bit of it. | |
| I I really enjoy it. | |
| Um but what I saw time after time were uh reporters basically baiting some of these athletes to try to get them to say uh inappropriate things or what they would perceive as a being inappropriate, and then they could splash headlines all over saying, you know, so and so said this or so and so. | |
| So you don't think you don't think the athletes were uh were as uh there was there was one or two examples. | |
| Bodie Miller was was pretty much over the top. | |
| I mean, he he obviously had the attitude of he was just going over there to have a good time, and if he didn't perform well, well that's all right, and he didn't care. | |
| Um but other than that, it was it was more the media, you know, trying to create scandals just like they do in the politics. | |
| They try to do the same thing, you know, to try to uh make it sound scandalous, make it a bit of a you talking about NBC, you talking about NBC. | |
| Oh yeah, absolutely. | |
| Okay, because I didn't watch well. | |
| I think if if that's true, they they were having some ratings problems and are losing to uh skating with the stars, American Idol. | |
| They're losing to practically everything out there. | |
| Uh largely because the American performance didn't didn't didn't measure up. | |
| Uh I you know, I remember watching the Olympics when I was a kid, and I promised I'm not wasn't gonna grow up into a being old fuddy duty. | |
| But uh this is new behavior. | |
| I mean, the the the people I remember going to the Olympics went there to win. | |
| They went there to be the best. | |
| Uh which was about performing and winning the Olympics, have that one chance every four years to go there, and then when your name is called and it's time you go, that's the epitome of pressure and and and meeting up to it, and some of them didn't, I think, again, I from what I read, some of them didn't respond to the call of pressure well and some stars like I guess Michelle Quan got hurt, couldn't go out there. | |
| Um but it does seem different um just just attitudinally, but I guess that's it's it's gotta change at some point. | |
| That the culture is gonna be reflected uh no matter no matter what the event happens to be, be at the Olympics or uh anything else. | |
| Dave in Youngstown, Ohio. | |
| Nice to have you on the program, sir. | |
| Welcome. | |
| Thanks, Rush. | |
| It's an honor. | |
| Um I'm calling because I wanted to uh get your reaction on Bill Buckley's latest column where he said that our mission in Iraq has failed. | |
| Yeah, you know, I um I was sitting around over the weekend uh uh minding my own business bothering nobody except myself, and I started uh I was in such a bad mood I was even mad at myself. | |
| But I I I anyway, I got I got all these emails. | |
| Rush, rush, rush. | |
| Buckley says we failed a mission in Iraq. | |
| And I was so listless and so out of sorts, I didn't bother to check that until this morning. | |
| And I went to National Review Online, and lo and behold, uh here is uh uh a man I I consider uh like a surrogate parent in a way um terms of my education, as you well know, uh writing a piece as on February 24th saying it didn't work. | |
| Um and I think I I it's gonna be very tough to speak for him here. | |
| I I'm not gonna try to do that. | |
| I just it seems like this is tied to the um uh the mosque being blown to bits, and it it it seems that uh a lot of people have concluded that the the primary mission was that our presence would somehow unite these three warring factions that Kurds, the Sunnis and the Shiites, into one big happy family. | |
| And that's where Bush uh uh Mr. Buckley is saying that the mission has failed. | |
| Uh that they're still at war with one another, there's still these tribal factions, that we haven't we haven't succeeded in that mission. | |
| Uh and I just tough for me because I have I I do disagree with this, but I think I think I understand, you know, there a lot a lot of people look at conservatism and see a monolith. | |
| You know, one conservative is the same as all, and as you know, as being a conservative, uh most of you are yourself, there are many different derivatives out there of of our so-called movement. | |
| I mean, you've got some great social conservatives who are protectionists. | |
| You have um you have some other great conservatives who have one view on foreign policy that differs from the president's. | |
| Some would say the president is not actually a conservative when it comes to foreign policy. | |
| Now, there's a there's a sentence in this column that I that to me gives me a little insight into um the kind of conservatism of William F. Buckley. | |
| It would not be surprising to learn from an anonymously cited American soldier that he can understand why Saddam Hussein was needed to keep the Sunnis and the Shiites from each other's throats. | |
| Okay, that tells me that what Mr. Buckley is is is thinking here is is along the lines of well, you know, maybe it took a guy like Saddam Hussein with the way he ran the country to keep these different uh tribes, sects, whatever, away from each other, or to keep them from blowing the country up internally and causing all kinds of strife. | |
| Maybe he had to run a police state. | |
| Now there's there's a if if you if you if you go back, there's uh the James Baker uh wing of foreign policy, and and many, I could give who's another. | |
| Um, uh Brent Scowcroft, who was one of the early opponents, and he worked for Bush's dad, and he was National Security Advisor. | |
| And Scokroft came out totally against doing anything in Iraq, writing all these op-eds, and he and Jim Baker wrote a couple together, or at least one together. | |
| Their their brand of foreign policy can essentially be summed up like this. | |
| If there's no s vested stated national security issue, then it's none of our business to get in Van Pab Buchanan might fall into this uh as a derivative in a way. | |
| Uh it doesn't involve us, it's none of our business trying to bring democracy to people if it doesn't help us is foolish. | |
| It's a waste of time, it's a waste of our army, it's a waste of our treasure, and so forth. | |
| And I think this one sentence here. | |
| It would not be surprising to learn from an anonymously cited American soldier that he can understand why Sodom was needed to keep the Sunnis and Shiites in each other's throats. | |
| I'm not saying that that means Mr. Buckley thinks that. | |
| I think it just is an insight into uh into his definition of the mission having failed. | |
| Uh where I part ways with this, uh and uh if I don't anybody think this is criticism. | |
| I'm just this is I'm just differing where I part ways with this, uh thinking on the part on the behalf of conservatives like this is that well, there wasn't a vested interest. | |
| It was after 9-11, everything everything changed. | |
| We had uh let me do a better job of illustrating this before I give you my answer. | |
| The this the The the the the type of conservatism that would would view this as a failure now. | |
| Uh all during the nineties after the first Gulf War, when all these resolutions were passed that were not that were not uh uh forced down Sudan who Saddam Hussein's throat. | |
| Uh we didn't push him out of the country in the first Gulf War. | |
| We pulled back because that's not the mandate. | |
| The mandate, the UN resolution was not to get rid of him, it was to get him out of uh Kuwait, which we did, and we pulled back. | |
| We pulled back because of pictures on the highway of death. | |
| And all during the nineties, we did nothing. | |
| We UN passed these resolutions, uh well, we had inspectors over there, but we as a country didn't do anything about it. | |
| We didn't do anything about Iraq. | |
| Then and and that was that that was probably fine because what was there to do? | |
| At that point, Iraq was not threatening anybody. | |
| We didn't think, certainly not us. | |
| Uh you know, freedom for people like the Sunnis and Shiites of Iraq, that's not worth our losses to go secure. | |
| It's none of our business either. | |
| That's that's what this certain wing of conservatism believes. | |
| And apparently 911 didn't change that for them. | |
| Uh and and that's that's I guess where they where they come down on it. | |
| Uh the whole notion of the intelligence and what it said about the weapons of mass destruction, which the whole world agreed with, including the people at the United Nations and the Security Council. | |
| Um the the ideas that terrorists were being trained there at places like Solomon Pac, apparently that that still didn't rise to the level of threat uh uh to this branch of conservatives that uh uh re thought it required action. | |
| But they gave it a chance uh because of post-9-11, suggesting, okay, if we go over there and do this, uh and if we can actually make this country a functioning democracy on their terms uh and bring an end to these warring factions, then it will have been a success in the post-9-11 world. | |
| And they're judging today that it hasn't been because of the strife that continues and uh and all that. | |
| I also have to check my memory, but I'm not sure that Mr. Buckley was among those who originally supported the uh war in Iraq at all. | |
| I'm not sure he was ever fully on board with it. | |
| He ended up supporting it because he supports the U.S. military, and he's given it whatever chance that he uh thinks it deserves here. | |
| That's that's my best job at analyzing this. | |
| I uh without and I haven't spoken to him, I haven't asked him about it, and it's really I mean, I it's really a risk trying to speak for William F. Buckley because there's nobody that has his brain. | |
| So I I offer this analysis with a pure caveat that it is nothing more than a wild guess. | |
| Back after this, stay with us. | |
| I should also remind you people that uh last Friday, Victor Davis Hanson, who just got back from Iraq uh wrote a d uh what I thought was a brilliant piece. | |
| I he's one of my favorite thinkers and writers today, and it was very optimistic about Iraq. | |
| He just got back from there. | |
| That was the same day that Mr. Buckley's piece, in which we have failed appeared. | |
| Uh not even national review is monolithic. | |
| Uh and there's no requirement from the editors on down that everybody in that publication agree or that I mean they have a guiding mission statement and uh and and principles and so forth, but um if you put these pieces back to back, I mean you you'd you'd uh you'd be hard pressed to uh find a problem with either of them. | |
| Uh the p well not true, but it it's still it to me fascinating that Victor Davis Hansen who just got back had written this this really uh uh optimistic piece about the future of Iraq uh appeared the same day as uh as Mr. Buckley's on on what is essentially Mr. Buckley's own webpage. | |
| Here's Tim San Diego, I'm glad you waited, sir. | |
| Welcome to the EIB network. | |
| Rush, although it's been a while, this is I think my twenty-first call to you. | |
| Wow. | |
| It's been a long time, though. | |
| I'm I was sort of a recovering ditto head there for a while. | |
| But um I'm kind of back. | |
| Well, great to have you back, but what do you mean recovering ditto head? | |
| What happened to you? | |
| Did your wife get hold of you? | |
| No, I just rush, I don't know. | |
| I don't want to go into it now because it's I don't want to get contentious with you. | |
| I understand that I can handle that if you want, but I understand why you might not want to. | |
| Well, we can get to that after I get to this point. | |
| All right. | |
| Uh I know you find find yourself as something of a maverick among your if you want to call them peers, I know you wouldn't refer to them as peers, uh, but your talk show hosts. | |
| Colleagues, yes, colleagues. | |
| Colleagues, yeah, thanks. | |
| As far as this uh Portgate thing goes. | |
| But I I need some clarity from you. | |
| Is the 45-day period of of wait time a bad thing or a thing? | |
| Not at all. | |
| Okay. | |
| Not at all. | |
| I'm all for it. | |
| Anything to calm eva anything to calm people's fears, and uh and anything to uh uh uh do whatever can be done to reassure people on this. | |
| I'm all for it. | |
| Forty-five days in the history of the future of this deal is nothing. | |
| Good, good, good. | |
| Now uh now to get to the point of why I was sort of I sort of got unplugged from you. | |
| Um I find you as having a lack of independence in terms of your alignment with the administration or generally with Republicans, although maybe not necessarily in this case, as a lot of the Republicans are against it, but definitely in line, almost lockstep with the administration on most things, with the possible exception of spending. | |
| Spending immigration, education. | |
| That is the number one thing for us here in in San Diego, as it is in most of the Southland. | |
| Um but that should be As I as as I know and as I mentioned free. | |
| Each time I go out there and come back, I relate to people the fact that that's the only thing anybody I talk to wants to speak about. | |
| Yeah. | |
| I know how it roils. | |
| I've I've I I uh and b believe me, uh I have spoken so vehemently about immigration that emissaries have been sent to me from powerful places to try to change my mind. | |
| I I'm not I am not going to divulge names, I'm not going to give you details. | |
| Uh but that has happened. | |
| So I don't know where this business of in the tank comes from. | |
| It's as if you can't think that if you listen to the program. | |
| Now, I I think some of this stems from the fact that there are certain people and traditions and institutions that I hold dear that I think are great, uh and they're under assault a lot. | |
| And I will defend those institutions and traditions and the people that run them. | |
| And I will defend certain people that are under assault constantly when I don't think that the reasons that they are stating to be their criticism are genuine when I think it's pure politics. | |
| So I I I do think that a lot of this uh is similar to a war. | |
| And while I might not agree with my side on everything, I am not going to be a traitor just to prove to people my independence. | |
| But the bottom line, all this is all this is just patent BS. | |
| If you don't know by now that what I do on this program is tell you what I actually think, feel, and believe, then I don't think after 18 years you're going to figure it out. | |
| Um so it's it's actually it isn't my problem. | |
| I can only do what I can do here, but I'm not in charge of your opinions, uh even though a lot of people think that that I am. | |
| Um I'm not. | |
| You're free to come up with whatever you want on your uh on your own. | |
| But I appreciate the call. | |
| I I welcome you back into the uh into the ditto head fold and the ditto head cocoon, and we hope you hang around. | |
| We'll be back and continue here just a moment. | |
| Stay with us. | |
| The fastest three hours in media just keeps on chugging. | |
| We've got uh only one hour remaining. | |
| I do have these audio sound bites from Calypso Louie over the weekend Saturday in Houston, Calypso Louis delivering the State of the Black Union address to uh celebrate black history month. | |
| And uh, we have these audio soundbites for you, and they are quite hilarious. | |
| Also, John McCain softening his stance on taxes while toughening up his position on Hillary. |
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