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April 17, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:45
April 17, 2006, Monday, Hour #3
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Time Text
Look at this.
This is breaking news from the ABC News.com website.
I have it right here, my formerly nicotine stainfingers.
Former Illinois Governor George Ryan, a strong death penalty critic, was found guilty of fraud, racketeering, and tax evasion.
All right, fine and Eddy.
What the hell does he think about the death penalty having to do with this?
Greetings, my friends.
Welcome back.
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Former Illinois Governor George Ryan, a strong death penalty critic.
What's that supposed to get him less of a sentence or something?
I Yeah, he did that moratorium with a death penalty.
I know what's it got to do with the fact he was found guilty of fraud, racketeering, and tax evasion.
Well, there might be a clue in the next story.
Unbelievable.
A witness called by defense attorneys, trying to spare the life of uh Zacharius Masale said today that he came from a broken home where his mother was repeatedly beaten and has a history of mental illness in his family.
Jan Vogel sang, a clinical social worker, said Massawi was in and out of orphanages the first six years of his life as a teenager.
She said he was rejected as a dirty Arab by the family of his longtime girlfriend with whom he lived and won dance contests.
Vogel sang said at the outset of her testimony she didn't intend to make excuses for Masui's actions as a terrorist, but wanted to explain how he had reached that point.
All right, so um, you know, you hear you hear things like this.
Uh it's gonna it's it's gonna arouse sympathy in people, and it may Oh, that's why we knew he just couldn't be a bad boy.
There have to be reasons for it, and now we know he was called a dirty Arab by the family of his girlfriend, his mother was repeatedly beaten, his father beat him and his mother, and he's a history of mental illness in his family.
So he can't help it.
It's not his fault.
You know, this is the difference between liberals and conservatives.
Liberals will find evil and try to explain it and understand it and blame conservatives for it.
Uh, and conservatives say evil, you die.
And we try to rid the world of evil liberals out there trying to figure it out.
So maybe they can get closer to it.
Who knows?
But that's probably why the media throwing in this bit that uh George Ryan, a strong death penalty critic.
Hey, he's not all bad.
Let's try to be compassionate and understanding.
All right, I'm I'm sure that you have um you have seen the story about Lee Raymond, the uh retiring exon chief.
Soaring gas prices are squeezing most Americans at the pump, but at least one man isn't complaining.
Exxon's giving Lee Raymond one of the most generous retirement packages in history, nearly 400 million dollars, including pension stock options, and other perks, such as a one million dollar consulting deal, two years of home security, personal security, car and driver, and use of a corporate jet for professional purposes, but how can he have any if he's retiring?
Last November, when he was still chairman of Exxon, Raymond told Congress gas prices were high because of global supply and demand.
We're all in this together, everywhere in the world, he said.
Raymond, however, was confronted with caustic complaints about his compensation.
Barbara Boxer said, in 2004, Mr. Raymond, your bonus was over 3.6 million dollars.
This is the way they always work.
They always go after corporate pay when prices in a business go up, and they claim that the executives are rotten to the core, and if they just take a little less compensation that prices could be cut, which is patently absurd.
You know, you can say what you want about the retirement package for this one guy.
But what about what's happened to General Motors in the retirement package for tens of thousands of people?
General Motors is going broke paying people who don't produce anything.
They're not working, they've been laid off, they still get paid.
They get full compensation.
They get medical benefits.
They get their pensions.
And they're not working.
And if you add all that up, it will dwarf what they're paying this one guy at Exxon.
But nobody's complaining about it because individually, these workers are getting $130, $140,000 for not working, folks.
But nobody complains because according to socialists and liberals, it is the duty of the corporation to pay.
It is not the requirement of the worker to work.
A la France, the worker doesn't really have to work, but the corporation must pay.
So here is a retirement package for one guy that can is dwarfed by the problems that General Motors gave itself.
Boxer's a million, she's a multiple millionaire, husband is she is.
Same thing with Pelosi.
They're all swimming in money out there.
California delegation.
Oh, yes, that this guy's paid $3.6 million in salary, and this is horrible.
The little blue pill is leaving General Motors with a very large bill.
The world's largest automaker, which lost $10.6 billion last year.
Exxon made big bucks.
Exxon made big.
I guess we're supposed to hope Exxon loses money, right?
Some of you probably think corporations should not make any money.
That the executives ought to be paid a reasonable amount of money, and uh the price ought to be so that the it's cheaper for as many consumers as possible, but that at the end of the day the corporation doesn't make any money.
Is that is that the way it's supposed to operate?
You would think of the way the drive-by media reports this story is that it is.
Exxon made tremendous amount.
Yeah, but they did it on the backs of the American driver.
They did it in the backs of the American motorists by gouging.
We'll deal with that in just a second.
The world's largest automaker, GM, lost $10.6 billion last year, shelling out $17 million annually for impotence drugs like Viagra and Cialis, according to the GM spokesbabe, Sharon Baldwin.
While the so-called lifestyle drugs make up a small fraction of GM's overall health care costs, now hovering at $5.6 billion every year, or about $1,500 of every vehicle it builds.
Company execs often use the example to illustrate how out of control health care costs have become in America.
That's not even the story.
I'll tell you that I need to find this.
I had it in a stack a week or two ago, and I never got to it.
No, it was a George Will column from last Sunday, I think.
But I read it in the New York Post.
It was I was stunned at the amount of money General Motors is paying the large number of people who have been laid off and fired who don't work at full salary.
They have to show up, but they don't do it.
They play, they play Monopoly, they have rec rooms.
They're not working.
They're not they show up, but they're not producing anything.
They're not contributing to the productivity of the company at all.
And that's part of a union deal that GM agreed to to avoid a strike a long time ago.
Now you add all those people up, and hey, more power to you people if you can get it.
Don't misunderstand, but it's a stupid mistake in General Motors' part.
How can you pay people who aren't producing?
But you can sit there and you can get mad at whatever Lee Raymond's getting, but man oh man, what what General Motors is doing and the costs that it's incurring dwarf that.
But there are other examples too.
I notice that liberals don't get upset over people like Ted Kennedy inheriting a huge fortune.
Or I don't, I don't see liberals getting all upset that John Carey has married into one or two fortunes and tried to marry into a third.
Frankly, I mean, I I don't I don't care how anyone legally gets their money, but I don't care that Moronic Hollywood actors make 20 million dollars for a single film.
It doesn't bother me at all.
Doesn't I don't care that Kerry twice married into enormous wealth.
Um, you know, I mean, if you look at Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, and Lee Raymond, if forced to choose, I'd have to say that only Lee Raymond received his money the old-fashioned way he earned it.
He worked for it.
And yet he's the guy that we're gonna sit here and condemn.
Everybody's gonna get upset.
This is unreal, right?
It's too, it's just it's out of proportion, especially at a time when the average consumer is being gouged.
Yeah, here's that George Will called.
Let me let me take a break.
I'll study this.
Um, I found a paragraph right off the bat.
Under contracts negotiated beginning in 1984.
With the UAW, there are about 14,700 laid-off workers in the jobs bank at General Motors.
About 7500 of them are from GM.
They get paid most of their wages and benefits between $100 and $130,000 a year for an annual cost to General Motors of $750 million to $900 million.
The former and the number of them grows every year.
The former workers expected to be 17,000 by next year are required to do nothing that adds value to the auto company.
Some of them attend classes given by GM.
Wall Street Journal reports that one worker took a class in which he learned how to play trivial pursuit.
Okay, so here's General Motors paying uh $14,700 people between $100 and $130,000 a year for doing nothing.
And that totals between oh what, $700 and $900 million, $750 and $900 million a year.
GM is paying twice annually to support these $14,700 laid-off auto workers is what the retiring exec from Exxon got.
But he worked.
And he earned it.
Ted Kennedy hadn't earned it.
Darkly say Barbara Boxer hasn't earned it.
I mean, it's just this is just absurd.
Anyway, come back with this business on gas prices and gouging and so forth, and it may surprise you.
We'll be back.
Stay with us.
All right, I found this uh blog out there, ladies and gentlemen, called Blogcritics.org.
Blogcritics.org's uh but org describes themselves as a sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, technology, and politics.
Now the blogger in this uh instance goes by the name of Bird of Paradise.
I don't know who it is.
But the numbers seem accurate.
Let me share what this blogger discovered.
His headline, by the way, a thought on gasoline prices.
Rats, maybe they sort of make sense.
Instead of listening to talking heads or talk show callers to learn about gasoline prices, I decided to just sit down for 10 minutes and do a little math.
You know, the kind of math we learned in elementary school.
In any case, I first checked out some facts on the internet.
All figures are rough estimates rounded off.
In 2004, the average cost of a barrel of crude oil was thirty-seven dollars.
In 2004, the average cost of a gallon gallon of gasoline to pump was a buck eighty-five.
The cost of crude oil as a percentage of that $1.85 was $47%.
This means that the crude oil cost came to $87 per gallon of gasoline when the average price was a buck eighty-five.
Now, can I just pause for a moment?
What what does that tell you?
It tells you what we've always tried to tell you here that if you really want to get the gougers, go after the states and the federal government and their taxes.
The blogger then compared those numbers with 2005.
In 2005, the average cost of a barrel of oil had gone from $37 to $65.
The $2,000 average cost of a gallon of gasoline to pump had gone from $1.85 to $250 to $3.
The cost of crude oil as a percentage of the total, and this is where the math comes in, the cost of crude oil increased by $28.
It went from $37 to $28.
$28 is an increase of $76% over 2004.
This means that the cost of crude oil alone added 66 cents to the cost of a gallon of gasoline.
Therefore, this one factor alone would have raised the cost per gallon of gasoline to $2.55 without factoring in any resulting increase in taxes.
Parentheses, which had an average of 23% of the cost per gallon would have risen from 42 cents to 58 cents, an increase of 16 cents.
And this doesn't factor refining costs.
There was a hurricane, remember, and transportation costs.
Those delivery trucks had to buy diesel at higher prices too.
My guess is that with all these factors weighed in, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in 2005 ought to have been somewhere around $2.75 or so.
As it turns out, that's just about what it was.
Now the cost of crude did fluctuate above and below that 65 per barrel figure, even as the selling price of a gallon of gasoline stayed relatively stable.
Over the course of the year, the oil companies probably made an above average profit increase because of those fluctuations, but keep in mind they had to increase prices ahead of costs, because they didn't know just how high the cost per barrel of crude could go.
In short, they had to plan on the worst-case scenario, or else they could have run out of cash to purchase the oil.
So I wanted to throw this in because it's uh it was it's an interesting analysis of the uh comparative prices of 04 to 05, and nobody was out there complaining about gouging in 04.
In 05, everybody was complaining about gouging, but the price made total sense when compared to similar figures a year earlier.
Marty and Corpus Christi, Texas, great to have you on the program.
Nice to have you with us, sir.
Yeah, Rush.
Hey, I saw that headline yesterday, so I got I got curious.
I got on the web and did a little research, and what I found out is that Americans burn three hundred and sixty million gallons of gasoline a day.
So if we take this guy's retirement away from him, the 400 million he's getting take his whole retirement, that means that and give it back to the American people, that means that tomorrow everybody who buys gas will save a dollar per gallon just tomorrow.
Just tomorrow.
Right.
It's asinine to think that corporate pay is they they try to position it as a moral question, uh, but it falls apart when you get to the economics of it, as you just demonstrated.
Yeah.
Well, you know, the more or issue of 400 million to one guy, I guess there may be a point there to some degree, but but the concept that that guy's pay is is affecting the price of our gas that we buy is just asinine.
It is, no question about it.
If they look at the compensation board companies want to do it, and if they want to incur the public relations hit that they're gonna get by doing it uh until we lose the concept of the free market, uh then fine and dandy is their decision to do it.
But I just look at, you know, the uh Marty here is exactly right.
Giving that guy zero is not going to save anybody any money on gasoline.
Paying him nothing is not gonna is and and you can find examples of other people who've inherited that much or more.
You can find examples where companies are paying twice, three times that to workers that no longer work.
Um and if you're worried about the corporation spending all that money, I mean, look, you go out and buy a General Motors car, let's say you're upset about the price.
Well, you got to factor in all these people they're paying that don't produce anything.
Why doesn't that make you as mad as uh what one guy gets?
Corporation's a corporation, right?
They're still evil.
No matter what they do.
By the way, little immigration note here.
This is from Bob Novak's Saturday.
Uh piece was Saturday.
Yeah.
Immigration politics, new national polling data shows to the surprise of many politicians, that the immigration issue is one of the very rare areas where President Bush is gaining rather than losing strength.
The uh conventional wisdom has been that Bush's guest worker proposal runs sharply against mainstream Republican opinion and contributes to the president's loss of party support.
However, current polls show Republican opinion on the issue is split, as are the Democrats, with a national majority actually backing Bush while he continues to drop in nearly every other category.
Now, but this next little paragraph or sentence is the key.
And I think this is good this is going to outrage some of you.
Because a lot of you expected Republicans and Democrats, but Republicans in particular, to go home during the Easter recess.
They're home now during the Easter.
And you expected them to just get an ear full from angry constituents about illegal immigration, right?
Well, some Republican members of Congress have reported back from Easter recess to say that their constituents are less outraged by leaky borders than the possible loss of immigrant workers, some from their own households.
That's all it says.
That's all it says.
Doesn't add in that's his Bob Novak saying this.
We don't know how many Republican members, he just says some.
But he's clearly laying the foundation here.
The Republicans are going home.
And they're surprised because they're hearing a lot of our constituents say, hey, you better be careful about getting rid of these people because I use them.
And notice it's not business people using them in the farms and so forth.
This is uh uh this is Republicans who have them in their households who are afraid that they are going to uh to lose them.
Uh this is interesting.
If that I don't know how m I don't know how it may not, Mr. Snurdley, it may not be bull, it may be three Congressmen.
We don't know how many.
It would be bull if you think that it's over half of them uh with this, but th just the fact that this little blurb makes the news is it th what what made the news is not that everybody is finding outrage out there.
That some Republicans are saying, hey, hey, hey, go easy on this.
We don't want to lose our staff.
And welcome back, folks.
Rush Limboy, your host for life here on the EIB network, not retiring until every American agrees with me.
And we are thrilled and honored to have with us the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld for a few minutes.
Mr. Secretary, thank you for making some time available for us.
Well, thank you.
I'm delighted to do it.
Well, let me ask you, I gotta remind you of something.
You may you probably won't remember the phone call to this program.
It was the first time I spoke to you, and it was early on in the first term of uh of President Bush.
And at the time, I forget the sub it might have been the the uh artillery weapon that uh you had had uh had voted down.
But but I remember it well, the crusader.
Yeah, Chris, but it was that wasn't the at the time, it was shortly after uh uh a couple of very successful operations militarily, you were being hailed as a sex symbol in Washington.
And I asked you about that, you were clearly embarrassed you left and so forth.
Today it's a far different circumstance.
That's a great illustration of just how things work inside the beltway.
What does it feel like to you to go through these ups and downs uh and and to have practically the entire media jump on the case of these six generals demanding your ouster?
Well, you know, uh this too will pass.
I think about it, and um I must say there's always two sides to these things, and and uh the the sharper the criticism comes sometimes, the sharper the defense comes from people who don't agree with the critics, and uh I've been very pleased to to see General Dick Myers and General Tommy Franks and General Mike DeLong and and so many others, uh Admiral Vern Clark step up and uh people who I've worked very closely with, and they've been terrific.
And uh so I'm here at the Pentagon doing my job, working on transformation and and seeing that we manage the force in a successful way, and uh working on on things involving Iraq, for example, they just transferred over some important real estate to the Iraqi security forces today, had a uh ceremony, which is a a sign of progress there.
Now what we need to see is uh is a new government formed in Iraq.
Um let me ask you about well before I get to that, uh uh th you mentioned uh uh General Myers uh and Mike DeLong and and uh others that have come to your defense.
They seem to be contradicting point by point the criticism.
The criticism you is that you're autocratic, that you don't listen, uh that you're inflexible, that you're stubborn, and the details that they're all providing counter that specifically.
So why are these guys doing it now?
What do you think?
Well, I just don't know.
Uh I can't climb into other people's minds.
Uh I was amused at Gen Admiral Vern Clark said, yes, he is tough, and these are tough times, and we need people in government who are are tough minded and and feel a sense of urgency.
So I I suppose beauty's in the eye of the beholder.
Uh Iraq, your assessment obviously with the news that you just gave us is that uh is it's it's a much better there that it's being reported, and and I assume that that that uh you're optimistic about the uh final outcome.
You say we just got to get them to create a government.
The some some people think that uh it might be better just launch an all-out assault on the enemy and defeat the enemy and then set up the government with so you wouldn't have so many distractions and attempts to uh oppose that effort.
Well, of course, it'd be wonderful if there were an enemy that was in in uh uh uh reasonable clusters of people that you could go after them.
The problem is that you don't have a big army, navy, or air force that you can go after.
These are terrorists, these are insurgents, these are people that hide in the shadows, these are people that kill innocent men, women, and children.
They're not people that confront uh anybody in in a formal way that you could go after.
So what you have to do is create a presence, have a a lot of tip lines so that uh calls can come in and people who are supportive of the uh country and the progress that's being made can phone in to the Iraqi security forces or our forces and tell them where the bad people are, and then you just have to go root 'em out one or two at a time.
Yeah.
Well, how would you describe the process and the progress there?
Well, the progress has been good.
I mean, we were up now up to a quarter of a million Iraqi security forces, and they're, as I say, taking over more and more bases and r and uh real estate all the time, and uh we're able to uh transfer responsibility to them.
The the biggest problem we've got right now is that the people that were uh the the people who voted in the last election in December fifteenth are now waiting for the results of that election to be manifested in a new government.
And they the politicians over there are are struggling with that.
They're trying to uh figure out who should be prime minister and who should be the president and who should be the various ministers, and it's taken from December fifteenth until today, and and we're hopeful that in the next period of days they'll they'll pull it together.
More and more the leadership in the Kurdish community, the Sunni community, and now in the Shia community are saying let's let's get it done.
I think it's important that the security forces that we've trained and equip have a government that they can report to and look up to and be uh receive guidance and leadership from.
So is there is there a uh an organized opposition within those three groups to prevent this government from being formed that has a chance of succeeding?
Well, yeah, I mean, there's no question, you're quite right.
Uh the insurgents do not want the government formed.
And and there are elements in the country that are actively trying to prevent that.
Just as they tried to prevent the election last uh year ago, January, they tried to uh prevent the referendum on the Constitution, and they tried to prevent the December elections, and and they're now they're trying to prevent the government from being formed.
But they're they failed the first three times, and they're gonna fail this time.
We're gonna get it done.
Let me ask you this question.
You've you've been in the private sector and you've and you've had plenty of public service uh in various positions in in our government, and you've you've devoted your life largely to public service, and you're very much aware of our representative Republican democratic process here.
We have people in the country who have been attempting ever since shortly after the uh war with Iraq uh commenced, that are trying to gin up as much anti-war support amongst the American population as possible.
Yet here you are as a member of this administration with a stated goal where Iraq and the war on terror is concerned, you have to be aware of the anti-war opinion of those in the country who have it, and you're aware of the people that are trying to fom in it and make it larger.
How do you, as a public servant, square the uh uh attitude of the anti-war people if you think it's a large group of people with what you are stated your stated goals and what the present stated goals are.
How do you how do you put those two together and and and end up uh formulating a policy and sticking to it?
Yeah, that's uh that's a very important question.
And I guess uh uh only someone who's rooted in the history of our country, I think could uh accept the kinds of comments that are being made.
And if if we recognize that the same kinds of criticism that occurred in the si in the revolutionary war and World War One and World War II and Korean War and Vietnam War, it's not new.
There have always been people who've opposed wars.
Wars are terrible things.
On the other hand, if if every time there were critics and uh opponents to to war, uh we we we wouldn't have won the revolutionary war, and we wouldn't have been involved in World War One or two, or we if we had we would have failed.
And uh our country would be a totally different place if it existed at all if every time there were some critics uh that we tossed in the towel.
I think we just have to accept it that people have a right to say what they've they want to say and and to have um an acceptance of that and recognize that that the the terrorists, Zarkawi and Bin Laden and Zawahiri, those people have media committees, they are actively out there trying to manipulate the press in the United States.
They are very good at it, they're much better at managing those those kinds of things than we are, and uh and we have to recognize that we're not gonna lose any battles out in in in the global war on terror out in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Uh the center of gravity of that war is right here.
And in in the capital of the United States of America and other Western capitals in London, they're trying to it's a test of wills, and what's at stake uh uh for our country uh is our way of life.
They're they want to strike at the very essence of what we are.
We're free people.
And our task in government, by golly, is to is to is to help protect the American people from people who killed three thousand people here on September eleventh and killed people in London and and Madrid and and Bali and country after country around the world who who have no problems beheading people and and uh murdering innocent men, women and children.
Well it's gotta be tough, I would imagine, because I um I'm aware of it and I try to share with my audience as often as possible that people like you and the president know far more than the public knows about uh any number of events simply because it's not possible for the information that you learn to be shared, nor should most of it.
And and yet um you that that would have to force you at some point to say, you know, yeah, we do have an anti-war crowd, and they're loud and they and they're being affected by our enemy, but the American people, some of them just don't know what we know, and you have to stick with what you think is right, and that that's where the the whole democratic process I would think becomes challenging for you because you have to make a judgment.
We do what's right or we listen to the people.
Yeah, and if of course if you started chasing uh running around uh uh chasing p public opinion polls or or a handful of people who are critics for this or critics on that, uh y you wouldn't get anywhere in in uh in in this world.
We we need people like President Bush who are serious people who spend a great deal of time thinking through direction for our country.
Set us on that course, and then have the courage and and the perseverance to stay on that course.
I before you go, and I know time is short and I've got a break too, but I know that you uh you're very supportive of a website that uh DOD has put up, America Support You dot military dot mil.
Uh what is that website help people do?
Well, you know, we've got such wonderful young men and women and uh the troops out there serving our country, they're all volunteers.
And and so what we did is we put together a website uh whereby anyone who wants to can get on it and find out what other people are doing to be supportive of the troops and their families.
And and it you'll can learn what school groups are doing, what corporations are doing, families, non-governmental organizations.
They're just hundreds of people who are out there doing things that are supportive of the troops and letting them know that we appreciate their service, their their noble service for our country.
Okay, terrific.
Well, we'll continue to plug that here.
What let me admend it.
Let me ask you one final question.
Somebody on my staff is curious to know um what your opinion is of embedding reporters uh with the military.
Uh has that worked?
Has has that worked as you had hoped?
Well, I i it has.
Uh it worked uh during the Iraq conflict and and we a lot of people who are reporters and journalists were able to work with our troops and and see precisely how terrific they are, the wonderful job they do, the kinds of people they are, how professional they are, and and the rest of their lives, they're gonna have a uh an impression of the American military that that will be good for journalism in my view.
Furthermore, they were able, because they were embedded, to see and then give the the world and the people of the United States a slice of what was actually happening, real reality, and it was it was a good thing.
More recently, very few people have been being embedded.
We're still offering that opportunity.
Uh but but um there have been far fewer journalists who have uh stepped up to become embedded.
Why do you think that is?
Well, it's a funny thing.
Well I asked one reporter about that, and and uh there was kind of the impression left that well, if you got embedded, then you were really part of the problem instead of part of the solution, and you were almost uh gone over to the other side argument.
I I think that's uh an inasc inexcusable thought, and I don't know if that's okay.
It's outrageous.
It is.
It's outrageous.
I'll say it.
I can't I can't believe well look, I uh I I thank you so much for your time.
I I don't want to cause your schedule to get backlogged anymore.
We always appreciate whatever time you have for us and and uh bel I I had so many I I met you a couple weeks ago in New York and I forgot to tell you something.
I had so many people, as I mentioned I was gonna be at the marine dinner, and I had so many people in my audience tell me to be sure to tell you how much they love and respect what you're doing, so let me do it now.
Well, that means a lot to me, and I thank you so much, and I thank you for what you do.
But uh well, thank you, sir.
Appreciate that.
Secretary uh embarrasses me when I get thanked.
Secretary Rumsfeld, the uh at the Pentagon Department of Defense, and we will uh by necessity have to take a brief time out, my friends.
We'll be back and continue right after this.
I I can't believe the uh the last answer we got from Secretary Rumsfeld on uh on fewer journalists wanting to embed with active units in Iraq.
He said a journalist told him that, well, you know, it would it would appear as though we'd uh we're we're we're working for the other side, we're going over the other side's us.
The way I interpreted that is that uh uh why we can't we can't re see the action line is it isn't working.
And to embed troops and embed reporters with the troops, you'd have to show success stories.
You have to run the risk that you'd see a success story out there.
We can't have that because we're going over to the other side.
By the way, uh, ladies and gentlemen, um, I just spoke with Coco during the uh the break uh webmaster at Rushlinbaugh.com.
We're gonna post the Rumsfeld transcript ASAP so that the media can get right to the misquoting, distorting and taking out of context of the uh of the interview.
We as an added convenience, not just to our subscribers, but to the media who want to who want to misquote him, distort it, and take him out of context.
It'll be up there as soon as we can get it up.
Becky in Frankfurt, Kentucky.
Welcome to the program.
Hey, Rush.
Hey.
I uh just want to uh uh hopefully uh you can remind people of the bravery of Secretary Runsfeld during 911 when the Pentagon was hit, and he was saving people's lives by helping evacuate injured people instead of running.
Um speaks great character of the uh secretary.
And uh I'm behind him a hundred percent.
I appreciate your reminding everybody that he's uh uh I think he's he's uh well, obviously all he's a unique individual, but uh he he's he has this knack of uh and I admire this in people.
He has this knack of irritating people.
I've I've I've found that more people you irritate of a certain stripe, uh there it it it's it's a sign of effectiveness.
And uh again, I hearken back and uh you talk about the strategic planning of this group, this cabal uh including the drive-by media that want Secretary Rumsfeld to resign or to force President Bush to fire him.
Uh they have guaranteed that neither of those things will happen uh with this onslaught.
And then the latest today, for in case you haven't uh been with us the whole program, the French news agency is running a story suggesting that that the chief of staff of the Army disagreed with Rumsfeld that uh and he's the first Asian American chief of staff of the Army, Eric uh Shinseki.
And Shinseki resigned or retired in a in a dispute with Rumsfeld, but the the headline and the and a couple of passages in the story uh trying to make it racial.
Uh that Rumsfeld was so insensitive.
They had to get rid of the first Asian American chief of staff of the Army.
And it's just yeah, the the drive-by media is upset they have failed here to get Rumsfeld's uh scalp, and so they're ratcheting it up in an effort to make it happen.
And it's sort of typical of the left.
Uh when extreme tactics don't work, rather than r uh retreat and uh come up with a new plan, they simply double the extreme tactics.
And it's uh it doesn't work, and it doesn't persuade people.
It's just it's like they've tried to persuade people uh on any number of things, policy-wise.
Uh Bush and the National Guard is one.
Uh it just it it the Wellstone Memorial was a classic example of that.
And after that, the Lib so, oh you know, we didn't get our message out when they lost the 2002 midterms.
Now you have.
You've gotten it out loud and clear for 50 years.
And uh people now get it more than ever.
Get this, Honda.
You won't see this in a drive-by media.
Honda Motor Company might cut production of the Honda Accord hybrid because sales have been so slow.
Hybrid sales appear to be slowing down, something that uh was been warned about by uh the Nissan Motor Company chief executive as consumers decide whether hybrids are worth their additional cost.
Why, I thought everybody was buying hybrids.
It turns out that Honda may stop making them, or will make much much less of them.
Uh quick time out.
We'll continue in a sec.
You know, Snerdley's right.
He observes this attack on Rumsfeld parallels the attack on John Bolton in several eerie and similar ways.
Think about that.
We'll talk about it tomorrow and whatever else comes up.
Look forward to seeing you then.
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