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March 21, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:39
March 21, 2006, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
They want to.
They want to.
I have it right here.
They're going to start buying up casinos.
They're going to start.
Hey, one of my Atlantis, Paradise Island, the Ocean Club over there at Nassau.
I was just over there Saturday night.
I kid you're not.
Greetings, folks.
Great to have you with us.
We've got broadcast excellence here on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Ditto Camera, a hearty and pleasant welcome to all of you who not only enjoy listening to this program, but like watching this program as well.
It'll be on for all three hours.
If you'd like to be on the program today, the telephone number 800-282-2882 and the email address is rush at EIBnet.com.
We got lots of stuff today, folks.
We are filled up.
We are loaded.
The president had a fabulous press conference today.
We've got audio soundbites.
In fact, just to tease you, grab soundbite number one, Bob Schieffer, a well-known member of the Drive-By Media, anchors the little scene, very little watched Face the Nation on CBS on Sunday mornings.
Even Bob Schieffer had to say this.
I must say, this is about as close to the George Bush that one sees off-camera as I have ever seen.
I mean, if we named presidents the way we do historical figures like Richard the Lionhearted or Ivan the Terrible, certainly today what you saw was George Bush the passionate.
This was George Bush sort of unleashed, more so, I think, than since those days after 9-11 when he spoke with such passion.
You may agree with him, you may disagree with him, but today the president made sure everyone understood that he feels very strongly about the course he's taken.
Yeah, this is an interesting take.
Schieffer admits that he knows the off-camera Bush, but that doesn't somehow seem to influence what Schieffer's daily take on President Bush is as a man, as a human being.
But he alleges here that he knows what the off-camera Bush is.
I've met the president since the 92 is when I met the president when he was in the White House with his father.
This is before he ran for governor.
This is a guy I've told you ever since that we've been talking about Bush during his candidacy in 2000.
This is a guy that I know.
And he finally, today, and this is not the only occasion, but he was out there today as people who know him are.
And he's just a, he was on fire today.
The other thing I would say about Schieffer's analysis is I have never known anybody to think that Bush had doubts about what he was doing.
I know the media has been trying to create that.
Media has been trying to shake Bush up.
They've been trying to rattle him.
They've been trying to convince him it's a lost cause.
He ought to pull out of there.
He ought to admit mistakes.
Today he comes out firing and just the opposite.
Very committed to what I'm doing.
The fact that that is a surprise to them after all of this is somewhat curious to me.
I also want you to hear this.
Well, let me set this up.
There is an absolutely ridiculous column in the Washington Post of what's ridiculous, but it's very illuminating, very eye-opening.
In fact, I want you to go out and grab audio soundbite number nine.
Grab audio soundbite to show you just how timely this program is, just how on the cutting edge this program is.
It was just last week, just last week, that I pointed out the problem that the media has with Bush is his manliness, that they're afraid of his manliness.
And this is exactly what I said, March 16th.
You know, at least part of the reason that the left and the media want Bush to be driven by polls and do things their way?
It's very simple.
The left, members of the media, are not manly.
And they're uncomfortable with Bush's manliness because manly men lead.
They're confident in their own beliefs.
They take risks to assert those beliefs, like I did, sticking with my position on a pork deal.
Unmanly men wait for the safety of consensus, which is what a poll supposedly produces, gives you cover in case you screw up.
Unmanly men are afraid of screwing up.
Manly men aren't.
This is what I said on March the 16th.
There is a column today in the Washington Post that I guess it's a column or a book review.
It's by Ruth Marcus.
It's entitled Man Overboard.
Here's how she starts.
It I have a new theory about what's behind everything that's wrong with the Bush administration, manliness.
I mean, folks, even I sometimes am impressed with my own prescience.
I mean, I, I, you know, you would think that I've gotten used to being right so often, even in advance, and that even I would just take it for granted as what it is.
But even I sometimes allow myself to be impressed by me.
And it was just March 16th.
What is this?
This is the 21st of five days ago, and lo and behold, here comes this column.
I have a new theory about what's behind everything that's wrong with the Bush administration, manliness.
It is, no, it's actually about a book.
Manliness is the unapologetic title of a new book by Harvey Mansfield, a conservative professor of government at Harvard, which makes him a species as rare as a dissenting voice in the Bush White House.
Mansfield's thesis is that manliness, which he sums up as confidence in the face of risk, is a misunderstood and unappreciated attribute.
Manliness, he writes, seeks and welcomes drama, prefers times of war, conflict, and risk.
It entails assertiveness, even stubbornness, craves power and action.
It explains why men, naturally inclined to assert that our policy, our party, our regime is superior, dominate in the political sphere.
Well, who's not dominating in the political sphere these days?
Liberals.
Manliness, he writes, the quality mostly of one sex.
Though manliness is the quality mostly of one sex, Mansfield allows that women can be manly too, though the sole example he can seem to come up with and deploys time and again is Margaret Thatcher.
Is it possible to teach women manliness and thus to become more assertive, he wonders?
Not really, or is it like teaching a car to bark?
The problem of manliness is not that it doesn't exist, he concludes.
It does exist, but it's unemployed.
Well, excuse me, but I think it's just my opinion.
This is Ruth Marcus reacting.
Just now my opinion, but maybe you disagree, and I'm sure we could work it out.
Mansfield has it exactly backward.
Manliness does exist.
The problem is it's overemployed nowhere more than in this administration.
Think about it this way.
Is a trait exemplified by reluctance to ask directions?
For it is out of manliness that men do not like to ask directions when lost, Mansfield writes, really what you want in a government deciding whether to take a country to war?
I tell you what, this is so classic.
This is so eye-opening.
It's so illuminate.
We have a feminist female, Ruth Marcus, who is writing of her disdain for strong men and now going to an age-old stereotype cliché.
Men never ask directions, and is that what you want deciding the country into war.
The undisputed manliness of the Bush White House stands in contrast to its predecessors and wannabes.
If Republicans of the Daddy Party and the Democrats of the Mommy Party, the Clinton White House often operated like Mansfield's vision of an estrogen-fueled coffee clotch, indecisive and undisciplined.
That's all, this is specious.
Let me just sum this up for you and ask Ms. Marcus a question.
What do you want us to become?
You mean that we would do well to become more like a bunch of shrill, gutless, pandering socialist liberal Democrats like I served in Vietnam John Kerry or Jimmy Carter successfully fighting off the killer rabbit or Bill Clinton who had to read the polls to find out how to get dressed when he went on vacation.
Is that what you're saying?
Tell that to the Marines.
Tell the Marines that you want them to be more like John Kerry and Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.
The problem is, sweetheart, if I may say that to Ms. Marcus, the country can't afford wimps right now, not when the wacko Muslim fanatics are trying to wipe us off the earth.
This is nothing more than the opraization of the country.
This is just tripe.
It is absolute tripe.
The problem is manly.
You want to hear some more?
Here's the conclusion.
Mansfield writes that he wants to convince skeptical readers, above all educated women, that irrational manliness deserves to be endorsed by reason.
Sorry, Professor, you lose.
What this country could use is a little less manliness and a little more of what you would describe as womanly qualities, restraint, introspection, a desire for consensus, and maybe even a touch of self-doubt.
All of those are excellent ways to get us killed, sweetheart.
Consensus is cowardice.
Consensus is the absence of leadership.
Consensus is nothing more than safe haven.
You go by the polls.
The polls tell you what the people want.
You do that, whether it's the right thing or the wrong thing to do.
You do it, and you have cover if it's I was only doing what the consensus wanted me to do.
I was right on the money.
What's got them so upset in a feminized DC culture, feminized liberal culture is manliness.
That's what's got them bugged.
And you can hear in Bob Schieffer's little review of Bush's press conference today.
He was really, I mean, he didn't come off of one of the other.
He was very confident.
He was very, like, they expect him to waver.
They expect him to have self-doubt.
They expect him to lie awake at night, alone in the bedroom, doing introspection, asking himself if what he's doing is the right thing.
They want this inner turmoil because this apparently is responsibility, it's growth.
What Ruth Marcus is describing here as her primary desire is the new castrati.
She wants a bunch of guys who are part of the new castrati, whose modus operandi is to be whatever somebody else, particularly women, want them to be, and then go out and do it.
These are people who have lost the ability to stand up for themselves.
It is more wonderful and it's more understanding and thoughtful to find out what everybody else wants and form a consensus.
And we all get together, we do it.
The new castrati is exactly what Ruth Marcus and a bunch apparently of the drive-by media inside the beltway seek in a leader.
And you've heard the story today, but Hillary has finally told Bill to shut up.
Oh, the New York Daily News has this.
Hillary told Bill to shut up on a port deal.
Everything Bill says from now on out has got to be run by Hillary.
So says this story.
Because she's not going to put up with any more of these port deal fiascos.
Oh, kid.
Wendy, are you yawning or are you in disbelief?
We'll take a break here and be back in just a second.
Everyone's a winner.
Hot chocolate, one of my favorite tunes in the official bumper rotation here, the EIB network.
This is what I was talking to Mr. Snirdley about right as the program opened.
The oil sheikhs from Dubai, who tried to buy all those ports and terminals, apparently want to snap up the popular Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut and the glitzy Atlantis Resort over on Paradise Island in the Bahamas.
The oil money crowd from the United Arab Emirates joining deep-pocketed New York developer Steve Ross of the related companies, along with the high-powered real estate funds Whitehall Street, Columny Capital, and Providence Equity Partners to buy up casino mogul Saul Kersner's Empire.
Kersner has a record.
I mean, have you been over there?
Have you been over to Atlantis?
I've been over there.
It's over there Saturday.
Well, I went to the Ocean Club.
I didn't go to Atlanta Saturday.
I went to the Ocean Club.
Went over there for dinner Saturday night.
Place is amazing.
It's like a cruise ship that never leaves port, is what it is.
They've got one of the most amazing aquariums that you have ever seen.
The same Dubai firm that touched off a firestorm of protest at trying to acquire the port deal is behind the Kersner deal.
So the Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut and Atlantis, targeted now by Dubai.
Just wanted to pass that on.
Here's this Hillary story, the New York Daily News, and they've put it on the cover.
They've got Hillary, the cartoon caricature of Hillary with Bill on the end of a bunch of puppet strings as a marionette.
I'm boss, Hill tells Bill.
Senator's word is now final, says the ex-Prez.
After being surprised by her husband's role in the ports deal, Senator Hillary Clinton, I just love saying those two words, the ports deal.
Senator Hillary Clinton has insisted that Bill Clinton give her final say over what he says and does.
Well-placed sources said the former president agreed to give his wife a veto to avoid his habit of making controversial headlines that could hurt her chances of returning to the White House.
He knows it's Hillary's time now, said an advisor close to both Clintons, who expects to play a key role in her 08 presidential race.
Hillary Clinton's handlers are keeping a close reign on the former president's schedule to try to prevent another embarrassing screw-up like they're completing roles in the Dubai ports deal.
Hillary Clinton's aides denied that her husband's comments have been a liability, but concede that she is calling the shots.
A Dubai ports deal was the latest episode that allowed her critics to charge that she was being politically duplicitous because of their contrasting actions.
The Clintons were lampooned by conservatives and Hillary Clinton faded away as a leading voice of criticism for the ports deal.
And it was funny because I knew this was going to happen.
And Clinton had to go out and issue this correction.
I never did one thing for those people at Port Deal.
I mean, they'd ask me, but it's a lie.
It's all a lie.
I didn't do anything.
I didn't do anything.
You didn't catch me.
So the real question is this: is this any different than any other relationship?
I mean, is it really news to say that the wife is going to say, I'm the boss, you will coordinate everything you do and say through me?
What's news about that?
We've all known that's how this marriage, especially with the Clintons, has been going.
Do we have time?
Do I have time for a three-minute you got to hear this?
This is Bush dealing with Helen Thomas at the White House today.
Helen, after that brilliant performance at the Greatiron, I am.
You're going to be sorry.
Well, then let me take it back.
I'd like to ask you, Mr. President, your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis.
Wounds of Americans and Iraqis for a lifetime.
Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true.
My question is, why did you really want to go to war from the moment you stepped into the White House, from your cabinet former cabinet officers, intelligent people, and so forth?
What was your real reason?
You have said it wasn't oil, plus for oil.
It hasn't been Israel or anything else.
What was it?
Yeah, I think your premise, and all due respect to your question and to you as a lifelong journalist, is that, you know, I didn't want war.
To assume I wanted war is just flat wrong, Helen, and all due respect.
No, hold on for a second, please.
Excuse me.
Excuse me.
No president wants war.
Everything you may have heard is that, but it's just simply not true.
My attitude about the defense of this country changed on September the 11th.
When we got attacked, I vowed then and there to use every asset at my disposal to protect the American people.
Our foreign policy changed on that day, Helen.
You know, we used to think we were secure because of oceans and previous diplomacy.
But we realized on September the 11th, 2001, that killers could destroy innocent life.
And I'm never going to forget it.
And I'm never going to forget the vow I made to the American people that we will do everything in our power to protect our people.
Part of that meant to make sure that we didn't allow people to provide safe haven to an enemy.
And that's why I went into Iraq.
Hold on for a second.
Excuse me for a second, please.
Excuse me for a second.
They did.
The Taliban provided safe haven for Al-Qaeda.
That's where Al-Qaeda trained.
And Helen, excuse me.
That's where Afghanistan provided safe haven for Al-Qaeda.
That's where they trained.
That's where they plotted.
That's where they planned the attacks that killed thousands of innocent Americans.
I also saw a threat in Iraq.
I was hoping to solve this problem diplomatically.
That's why I went to the Security Council.
That's why it was important to pass 1441, which was unanimously passed.
And the world said, disarm, disclose, or face serious consequences.
And therefore, we worked with the world.
We worked to make sure that Saddam Hussein heard the message of the world.
And when he chose to deny inspectors, when he chose not to disclose, then I had the difficult decision to make to remove him.
And we did.
And the world is safer for it.
Helen Thomas asked every question that the Kook fringe has been claiming is true for the last three to four years, three years.
And what you just heard was a very manly yet polite smackdown of Helen Thomas, who is now a totally raving kook herself.
Making the complex understandable so that everyone can benefit.
El Rushbo here with half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
I don't know how we missed this.
I really don't, well, other than it's on page 28 of the report.
But nobody talked about this, and I understand why now that I see it.
And I also understand why this program is continually despised by elements of the drive-by media.
My friends, I'm holding here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers a copy of a report by the Pew Research Center for the Peoples and the press that was released on Tuesday, June 8th of 2004, almost, almost two years ago.
Online news audiences larger, more diverse, news audiences increasingly politicized.
This is the Pew Research Center Biennial News Consumption Survey.
And if you go to page 28 of this, there is this chart, and it is titled Proportion of Regular Audiences Following Hard News Closely.
Now, before I give you the results in a chart, let me read to you the accompanying paragraph that is published just to the left entitled Where Hard News Consumers Go.
Most news organizations attract a wide range of news consumers, including the hard news core and those who are less interested in such news.
But some stand out for their high proportion of hard news viewers and readers.
Among the regular audiences for broadcast programs, Rush Limbaugh's radio show, 56% attentive.
The Sunday morning interview programs, 52%.
The News Hour with Jim O'Lara, 52%.
And Larry King Alive, 48%, have especially large numbers of hard news consumers.
So at the top of the list, Rush Limbaugh's radio show, 56% as the most often cited source where consumers of hard news go.
Here is the, in descending order.
This show is at the top of the list.
And we didn't, this is the first I've heard about this.
They did not publicize this.
Rush Limbaugh's radio show, 56%.
Sunday morning news shows, 52%.
The news hour with Jim O'Lara, 52%.
O'Reilly's show, 49%.
Larry King Live, 48%.
PMS NBC, C-SPAN, 45%.
ABC World News Tonight, 44%.
Fox News, 43.
TV News Magazines, 42.
CNN, 42.
NBC Nightly News, 42.
CBS Evening News, 41.
The Morning News Shows, 40.
NPR, 40.
ESPN, 35.
The Daily Show, 23.
And that's what the Libs think is shaping public opinion in this country is the Daily Show.
So when you boil all this down, what it adds up to is that the largest percentage of consumers of hard news listen to this radio program more so than they do the nightly news programs.
And our audience is larger on a daily basis than theirs are.
The Sunday morning news shows.
And this is the first we've heard of it.
You know what?
I'm going to scan this.
We need to scan this and send it up there to Coco.
Do you have the whole report?
You do.
It's a PDF.
Well, get the PDF file for Coco.
And I just read page 28 here, plus the cover page described with it.
I'm sure there's a lot of other data in here, but I just don't remember this being reported at all.
Hubba, hubba, doesn't surprise me.
It explains a whole lot of things.
I'll tell you what, it was after, that's right, after the Democrats, yeah, but it was a little bit later than this survey.
It was in November of 2004 when the Democrats had again failed.
Or was it 02 after the Wellstone Memorial?
Which was it?
02 or 04?
Yeah, whenever.
It was one of those two years.
And the Democrats had failed to take back the House, take back the Senate, and they were stunned because like now they thought then that it was automatic.
And the Puster, who was the Senate majority leader at the time, Tom Daschell, came out and said, our focus groups have, and I forget his exact quote, our focus groups.
Our research indicates that Rush Limblaugh has more people than just conservatives listening.
He's not.
just preaching to the choir.
And they were shocked, and they were stunned because they've all assumed all this time that the only people listen to this program are conservative, mind-numbed robots.
And they were blown away.
And that's when their plans to coalesce behind their own silly little inconsequential liberal radio network started effervescing, if you will, bubbling up.
And so, well, this explains a lot.
I mean, it does.
It explains why this program is so maligned and impugned by this, because they are jealous.
They are just beside themselves, and they can't believe it.
And it has led, and they can't get away with it anymore.
Well, no, they think they can.
They think they've actually shaped public opinion on the war and so forth.
But that's why I said yesterday, they think they've shaped public opinion on a war, but we had all these protests on Sunday and nobody went out there.
I mean, they're piddly little numbers, embarrassing little numbers here for the anti-war crowd.
Jenny, in Malden, Massachusetts, I'm glad you waited.
Welcome to the program.
Yes, Rush.
I just, when you use the word manly, it brought to me as a resident of Massachusetts, who I consider manly, I don't think when you rush to war and you don't give the right attention to it, it's wrong.
And I think we didn't rush to war.
Have you pointless, but go ahead.
I'll just listen.
As I say, I'm from Massachusetts.
It explains a lot.
I understand.
I'm at the Kennedy Library, and I have been there so often, and the Cuban Missile Crisis Room is my spot.
Yes.
And I've read exactly how John F. Kennedy handled that crisis, and I think he was manly.
You don't want to hear the truth.
No, because he nearly blew that, and we ended up giving up a lot of bases in Turkey for this.
We got rid of missiles in order for Khrushchev to get rid of missiles in Cuba.
And that could, if we had gone to Cuba and bought, even was it General LeMay wanted to bomb Cuba?
I love General LeMay, a genuine, great war hawk.
Yeah.
Well, he wouldn't listen.
He was a man, Jennifer.
Jenny, he was a real man.
Because he wanted to start a war that could have spread to Europe.
Russia could have started something because Khrushchev was involved.
And we had missiles over there we took away to stop it all.
And that's how I feel.
I feel this president makes up his mind and sticks to it, but he doesn't make the best decisions.
And I don't call that manly.
Well, he's leading.
Manly means he's not going to form consensus.
Consensus is a, as Margaret Thatcher has said, consensus is the absence of leadership.
Diplomacy is what you do after you kick the enemy's ass and tell them what their lives are going to be like afterwards.
That's where diplomacy comes into play.
Richard Holbrook is never going to win a war for anybody or solve a serious problem, nor is any other diplomat.
They're just going to continue the problem and have an ongoing dialogue.
I'm talking about with genuine enemies, like Al-Qaeda.
We could have embassies in Al-Qaeda country.
We could be talking to them left and right, and it wouldn't matter a hill of beans.
The fact that you think this is not manly because the president is wrong, you have a partisan difference with him, which I understand.
But that's not what the point of the piece is about or the book about Ruth Marcus's piece was written about.
She's actually making the case that manliness presents a problem, not because it leads people to do something wrong, but because it's manly.
It is wrong in and of itself.
A man shouldn't be a man.
A man needs to more be like the new castrati.
They really have no opinion.
They seek the counsel of others.
They ask upholsters to tell them what to wear when they go on vacation.
And then when things don't go right, they can always say, well, I just did what the consensus said.
And it's a stopgap and it's a shield to provide cover for making a mistake.
Consensus is the absence of leadership.
But remember, this business about manliness has nothing to do with right or wrong here.
It has to do with characteristics and character and traits.
And I just find it interesting that we have Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post, who blatantly and unabashedly, in a very manly way, by the way, suggests that manliness is a huge, huge problem for this administration.
And I'll tell you why it scares them, Jenny.
It scares them because they can't influence Bush.
They want everybody to have doubts.
They want everybody to be introspective.
They want everybody to be constantly questioning themselves and admitting when they are wrong, because that's how they define a man.
Somebody's constantly apologizing.
Somebody's constantly begging for forgiveness.
Somebody's constantly asking us to overlook the errors and the promise that those errors will be fixed and so forth.
And it's just, it's silly.
And it's a direct result of the feminization of much of the Washington political culture.
I got to take a quick break.
Another great soundbite in the president's press conference, this time dealing with the Democrats and their plan for censure and impeachment right after this.
Well, that's good because Cut Five is next.
Broadcast engineer just telling me what he's standing by for.
Like, I don't even run the show anymore.
Greetings, my friends.
Gonna be one of these days.
Hey, Wendy, everybody's emailing asking who you are.
What's happened to Dawn?
Well, Wendy wants to run the show.
I guess you need to let them know, she says.
All right.
Well, Dawn is on a two-day vacation with her daughter at a famous winter playground for adults and children.
And Wendy is her backup who is always here when Dawn isn't.
And what Wendy does and what Dawn does, they transcribe the phone calls that come in, much as court reporters transcribe lying witnesses and so forth in a courtroom.
And this is done in case I have problems hearing, if it's a bad phone line or a strange accent or a cheap phone, which many people have.
I know Wendy does wear skirts and Dawn wears slacks.
It's a good mix.
It's a good mix.
There's no dress code here.
We leave it up to each individual employee to express themselves as they wish in their own manly or feminine way.
All right, now back to the Bush press conference.
This is a, he got a question from Carl Cameron.
And this is, I got to tell you, I'm going to be honest.
When I heard this answer, I sent him a note at the White House.
I said, we need more of this.
I'll tell you why after you hear the answer.
Cameron's question is this.
There have been now three sponsors to a measure to censure you for the implementation of the spying program.
The primary sponsor, Russ Feingold, has suggested that impeachment is not out of the question.
And on Sunday, the number two Democrat in the Senate refused to rule that out pending an investigation.
What, sir, do you think the impact of a discussion of impeachment and censure does to you in this office and to the nation during a time of war and in the context of the election?
I did notice that nobody from the Democratic Party has actually stood up and called for getting rid of the terrorist surveillance program.
If that's what they believe, if people in the party believe that, then they ought to stand up and say it.
They ought to stand up and say the tools we're using to protect the American people shouldn't be used.
They ought to take their message to the people and say, vote for me.
I promise we're not going to have a terrorist surveillance program.
That's what they ought to be doing.
That's part of what is an open and honest debate.
Absolutely.
The point he's making is they can sit there and whine and moan and claim he's breaking the law and censuring, but they haven't demanded a program be shut down.
And that's what they ought to be doing.
We don't need to find out what terrorists are doing in this country.
I'm ex-Democrat running for office, and I don't think we need to be finding out what these terrorists might be planning.
I don't think we need to burden the country with that kind of...
He wants them to go out and say that.
Now, this is a great example.
I did a monologue about a month ago, and I pointed out that because of the partisan nature of our political culture today, people want ideology.
Everybody seems to think that they've got to focus on this great unwashed in the middle, the independents, the undecideds, the moderates and so forth.
And that's a crock.
People want ideology, especially from their leader.
And Bush gave them some ideology today.
He gave them, he responded to these lying, stinking, partisan attacks.
So I sent him a note.
And I said, this is the kind of thing.
If you want to revive support, if you're worried about these reports that say the base has gone soft and gotten disinterested, you can bring them back with a little bit of this now and then.
And I know that the presidents can't go be overly partisan.
Reagan was brilliant at it.
He was ideological in every speech.
Ronald Reagan, in every appearance, defined conservatism for his audience.
And he won two landslides in every press conference, in every speech.
Didn't care whether it was an inaugural address or talking to the pigiron workers.
He gave them ideology in every speech.
Not partisanship, but ideology.
And it can be done.
Now, this White House is reluctant to do it because they want to remain above the political fray.
And the presidents, as you know, have to be presidents of all the people.
But when people are out there telling out-and-out lies about your program constantly, and those lies are being amplified by a partisan drive-by media, this makes perfect sense.
And I hope they keep this up.
I hope this is just such a harbinger, if you will, of things to come.
Mike in San Jose, California.
I'm glad you waited.
Welcome to the program.
Rush, conservative manly dittos from Silicon Valley.
Thank you, sir.
Great to have you.
Oh, by the way, you know what?
I had a story in the stack yesterday, and you being from San Jose, reminded me, well, remind me of this, sturdily.
I won't take away from the caller's time now, but the Clatchy news chain, which I used to work for, when I went to work at KFPK Sacramento, it was owned by the McClatchy Publishing Empire, which owns the Sacramento B and the Minesto B.
They just bought Knight Ritter, and they're going to sell off 12 Knight Ritter newspapers to help finance the sale or the purchase.
And one of them is the San Jose Mercury News.
And the San Jose Mercury News people can't believe, they just can't believe that they would be sold.
It's a funny story.
I'll find it from yesterday's stack.
What do you call about out there, Mike Baby?
Well, based on President Bush's demeanor this morning at the news conference, do you think he's going to have the political will to order an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities if push comes to shove?
I couldn't predict that, especially based on an attitude at a press conference today.
I don't even want to hesitate to guess on that.
I know the next thing coming up is that we are going to engage the Iranians in discussions.
And there's some people who think this is a total waste of time, that we're elevating their importance beyond that which needs to be given by even agreeing to talk to them.
But I guess the best answer I could give you, I'm not trying to hedge it.
Best answer I could give you from this press conference, if you want to use that as context, is that George Bush is committed to protecting this country and doing what he thinks is necessary with the proper consultations, of course, from Congress to do it and get it done.
Whether that involves military strikes, their nuclear facilities, I don't want to guess on that right now.
That's a little bit premature, but I appreciate the question.
We'll be back.
We will continue in mere moments.
Stay where you are.
Speaking of manliness, let's not forget, ladies and gentlemen, it was Naomi Wolf, a well-known feminist who dressed, if you will, Al Gore during his 2000 presidential campaign, advised Al Gore what to wear.
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