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May 8, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:23
May 8, 2006, Monday, Hour #2
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And greetings to you, thrill seekers, music lovers all across the fruited plan, Rush Limbaugh, from Los Angeles today and tomorrow, here on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, the Rush Limbaugh program, a program that meets and surpasses all audience expectations on a daily basis.
Our telephone number, if you want to be on the program today, 800-282-2882, and the email address is rush at EIBnet.com.
Now, where we were discussing what we were discussing before I rudely interrupted myself after being told that I had forgotten a commercial break in the last hour, we fixed all that, and I apologize for that, folks.
Clock's in a strange place here.
I mean, there's a reason for this.
I'm not blaming anybody, and I'm not blaming the clock.
I'm just saying it's in a strange place.
But this mistake has been made, and it won't be made again.
You learn from your mistakes, as I will demonstrate in this hour that I have.
Now, we're talking about Republicans, and I was going to tell you about Ken Blackwell in Ohio.
He won the Republican primary running for governor there, and he did it running as a conservative.
And I don't understand why Republicans in Washington are so afraid to do the same thing when it's what got them there.
There's an interesting story today by Jim Rutenberg, who is at the New York Times.
I have to tell you, every time I've had an encounter with Jim Rutenberg, it's been accurate, it's been fair, and I've never found Rutenberg to write something that, in my case, was not what I had told him.
And he's not taking me out of context.
So I consider him to be a pretty upstanding fair guy.
And he's got a story today, Rove using threat of loss to stir GOP.
This is all about Rove.
And now that he's back in his primary position in the White House, how he's going to go out and try to unite conservatives, the conservative base, in order to win the elections this November.
Now, Rutenberg starts the story this way.
Do anybody who doubts the stakes for the White House in this year's midterm congressional elections consider that Representative John Conyers of Michigan, the Democrat, would become chairman of the Judiciary Committee if his party recaptured the House.
And he has called for an inquiry into the possible impeachment of President Bush over the war in Iraq.
Nancy Pelosi is saying the same thing, that they're going to start investigation.
Yeah, we don't know if we're going to get to impeachment.
We're certainly going to start investigation.
They're going to look into the Cheney energy committee he put together in the first year of the Bush administration.
Two courts have already said there's nothing illegal about what Cheney or the administration did.
They can bring any expert they want in at the executive branch to discuss policy.
It happens frequently.
And it's typical of Democrats to be mad that they would bring in energy experts to talk about energy.
Democrats want you to bring in a bunch of politicians and people that don't have the slightest bit of understanding about any business in order to fix it.
So they brought in the, and it was a secret meeting, and that Democrats tried to make hay out of that.
So they're going to investigate that again and do a number of other things.
So Rove is going to go out there and try to unite the base.
And here is what Rutenberg's story says are going to be the issues.
Rove has focused in particular on uniting the conservative base behind the administration's proposals to overhaul immigration, which include guest worker provisions that conservatives despise, the Iraq war, which has driven Bush's poll number sharply down, and the Medicare prescription drug program, which administration says will cost $872 billion from 2006 to 2014, and which the president backed enthusiastically.
Now, I read this, and I don't know how anybody could unite the conservative base on these three issues.
To get the conservative base to go along with the White House immigration program?
What are they not getting in there?
The Medicare prescription drug program is going to unite the conservative base on that.
I mean, it may end up being a good program in the sense that the people that signed up for it like it much more than and find it easy.
I mean, it does introduce market reforms into an entitlement program, and that's okay.
And the Iraq War, that's the one in here that I think people are willing to rally to the president on, especially the conservative base side, because I think the news there, if they could just get it out, is ultimately better than it is worse.
But overhauling immigration, whatever happened to conservatives is why I said the president does not lead a conservative movement.
He never has.
I'm not being critical.
I'm just pointing it out.
He's a conservative on some things, but he's not an actual, doesn't look at himself as leading a movement.
But whenever conservatism is tried, like Ken Blackwell in Ohio is doing, did extremely well.
Lynn Swan running for the governorship, Pennsylvania, he's running as a conservative.
Both of them, you know, African Americans to boot.
What are the Republicans doing in response to this?
Well, the Washington Times has a story, Donald Lambro today, and the headline says it all.
GOP embraces local issues for 2006 elections.
This is almost akin to saying they're already blowing off the approach that Karl Rove wants to take.
Ed Petru, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, says, we're content to have a Democrats talk about the national atmosphere.
We're focused on local issues.
Winning on local issues.
That's going to be the key to Republicans' success in November, Mr. Nick said.
Brian Nick, who is the chief spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, he added that Elizabeth Dole, the chairman of that committee, is definitely stressing to the candidates to run on local issues.
That means they're running away from the White House.
And that's, I can understand it, but I'll tell you, that may not be the wisest thing to do.
It may actually want to stand with the president if they really want to fire up the conservative base.
Now, they're making it tough to do this because it's the immigration bill, particularly, having this guest worker program is problematic.
However, if you it's frustrating if you just look at the past and even the Republican majority that's there today, the vast, you know, we hear about these liberal, moderate Republicans and how powerful they wouldn't be in the majority and they wouldn't even have a chance to make their mischief were it not for conservative Republicans running either on national or local issues in their districts and winning.
But they ran on conservatism.
And the big problem that they're all having with the base is that once they got there, they abandoned it.
And they act afraid of it.
It is part of the typical Washington culture.
Now, on the other side of this, here came this big story yesterday in the Washington Post.
Confident Democrats lay out agenda.
Democratic leaders increasingly confident they will seize control of the House in November, laying plans for a legislative blitz during their first week in power that would raise the minimum wage.
I mean, the whole point of this story, can you ever imagine a story like this?
If the Democrats were in the majority and the Republicans thought they were going to win it, I mean, there would never be this kind of story.
They wouldn't, if the Republicans did have such an agenda, I know they did with the contract with America, but nobody thought that Republicans were going to win 54 seats and take control of the House in the 1994 elections.
But ever since then, the drive-by media has been obsessed with one thing, and that's when the Democrats are going to get back in power.
So they already think they are.
It's just a matter of time.
We just got to let the clock tick and the calendar run until we get to the elections in November.
got this story increasingly confident they will seize control, laying plans for a legislative blitz their first week in power.
Here's the blitz.
They're going to raise the minimum wage.
They're going to roll back parts of the Republican prescription drug law.
They're going to implement homeland security measures.
What homeland security measures?
I didn't know they supported any.
I thought they were trying to tear down whatever it is that we're trying to do there.
And they're going to reinstate lapsed budget deficit controls.
Nancy Pelosi said in an interview last week that a Democratic House would launch a series of investigations of the Bush administration, beginning with the White House first-term energy task force, probably including the use of intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.
They want to convince people Bush knew that there were no weapons and that he lied.
And if they run the committees, they can bring whatever witnesses up they want.
They can write whatever reports they want and they can come up with that conclusion if they want to.
Now, Pelosi denied the Republicans' allegations that a Democratic House would move quickly to impeach President Bush, but she said of the planned investigations, you never know where it leads.
That's all they want to do.
You make no mistake.
Payback time.
They can't get over what happened to Clinton, so they've been wanting to pay back, especially after Florida 2000 and the aftermath there.
So in recent days, Democratic confidence has been buoyed by a series of polls indicating not only is Bush growing increasingly unpopular, so are Republicans in Congress.
So are Democrats in Congress.
Democrats, Republicans, whoever in Congress, approval numbers are much lower than even Bush's.
But let's go to this companion story, ladies and gentlemen, that's in the American Spectator today.
Nancy Pelosi talking a tough game about what would happen to Republicans in the Bush administration if Democrats take back the House in November.
She promised major investigations of the president and members of his administration, more money in homeland securities.
Really, their agenda is, can sum it up, we're going to hate Bush even more.
We're going to spend all of our time hating Bush.
That's what we're going to do.
That's what our agenda is going to be.
But do they have a lock on this?
The results in Ohio, where Democrat pollsters brought back comparatively bad news, makes people scratch their heads why the Democrats are talking tough.
Despite record spending for primaries, Democrats barely improved on primary numbers they had in the state back in 2002 for midterm elections.
Nationally, while approval numbers for Republicans edged down to the teens, Republican turnout has been surprisingly good.
And it now appears that several seats targeted by Democrats in Ohio, California, Texas, and Florida will not be in their column in November.
Pelosi's been talking a good game, but her party's numbers aren't holding up, said a Democratic leadership aide who's working behind the scenes to remove Pelosi after the midterm elections.
You don't hear about any of this in a drive-by media, but they're not happy with her.
She's mouthing off.
All of them are.
And Dingy Harry's not doing that great either.
Mike DeWine's got an 11-point lead over his contender in Sherrod Brown in the race for the Senate there.
And if he maintains that lead and even builds on it, they're not going to pick up the seats in Ohio they think they're going to pick up.
Now, this is not saying Republicans do anything great, except the Republican base is turning out.
And the one thing the Democrats are not factoring, this could be a total repeat of 2002, because ever since the Wellstone Memorial, the whole Democratic Party every day has been conducting a Wellstone Memorial.
They are not inspiring.
They're not recommending themselves.
They're not successfully reaching out and making new Democrats.
That's why they need illegal immigrants and so forth.
Now, this is not to let Republicans off the hook.
It's just they're missing such an opportunity here.
If they would just put their conservative caps on and be conservative and govern that way and campaign on it, the Democrats wouldn't even have a prayer and wouldn't be talking about having one.
Back right after this.
Before we get back to the Nancy Pelosi soundbites, one little interesting story here.
This is a columnist by John McIntyre, a column by John McIntyre, and I found a real clear politics.
And it's just the first two paragraphs are all that are necessary here to share with you.
Given the New York Times story today that Rove wants to unite the conservative base on the president's immigration plan, the Iraq War, and the Medicare drug benefit.
All right, Ron Brownstein had an interesting article in the Los Angeles Times yesterday about how the 2006 elections could lay the playing field for a pivotal battleground states in 2008.
Brownstein correctly points out that Democrats are looking to the West, in particular the Southwest, to put more states in play on the electoral map.
Of course, any handicapping of potential 08 battlefields will be seriously impacted by who the candidates are.
But as a general statement, Democrats are going to be looking to put the southwest states of Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico into play.
These are all states that are modestly trending Democratic on the national level, even though President Bush was able to flip New Mexico in 2004, winning by 6,000 votes versus losing to Gore by 365 in 2000.
In Colorado, John Francois Kerry narrowed the Bush win to five points from nine points in 2000.
In Nevada, he cut Gore's four-point loss to only two points.
Kerry did.
The Kerry campaign gave up on Arizona in 2004.
He lost ground there compared to Gore.
But ever since Clinton's two-point win in 1996, Arizona is a state that directly Democrats definitely have on the radar, primarily because of the state's 25% and growing Hispanic population.
There it is.
I mean, not news to any of us, but just to confirm to you what illegal immigration is all about as far as the Democrats are concerned.
The state's 25% and growing Hispanic population.
And that's why they think Arizona is going to be in play.
So I'm having trouble understanding why the White House thinks they're going to be able to siphon off a number of Hispanic votes anywhere to upset the Democrat majority there.
And the way to still, the thinking, the way to do it is to go about this amnesty program for it boggles the mind.
Anyway, to the phones, this is Aaron in Kokomo, Indiana.
Hi, Aaron.
Welcome to the program.
Hi, Rush.
Tremendous pleasure to talk to you again.
Thank you, sir.
I'm at a loss here, too.
I don't understand this strategy.
I'd sure like to know what happened to privatizing Social Security.
I'd like to know what happened to school vouchers.
Those are two huge issues for me.
It's issues that I voted for the president.
I voted for my local congressman who's a Republican.
I've voted for him.
They've campaigned on it every time, and they keep campaigning, but then they don't get it done.
And now it seems like they've just kind of chucked that off to the side, and they're not going to mess with it.
And, yeah, I mean, Medicare, I don't have a problem with the Medicare bill, but I'm not a senior citizen, and it's not, you know, anything I'm going to get jazzed about.
The immigration bill, if you want to come up with a guest worker program or something like that, that's the second step.
The first step is shut the border, and I think they're getting ahead of themselves on that one.
But I just can't understand what happened to the privatizing social media.
Well, let me try to explain it to you because the president tried both, though.
Now, the tax cuts being made permanent, I think the Republicans are still going to work on that.
And that would be wise, if not permanent.
Some of them are going to at least bank capital gains and some other investment taxes are going to be extended at least for two or three years.
As to the Social Security and vouchers, they did try.
I think Social Security, they sold it the wrong way.
The key word in Social Security is security.
And they went out and sold it as an ownership and investment program.
A lot of people are worried and fearful of investments because they don't all turn out well.
And there's a large educational process to tell, but look at the long-term history of the market, any starting point you want, and look at it years later, and you'll always see a net gain that's very large.
But the Democrats are able to exploit this by saying if the president wants to take away your security and put it at risk in the stock market, we're, of course, nothing but a bunch of evil, rich Republicans are waiting to steal your money.
So they had high hopes for this, and I did too, frankly.
It turns out that they sold it the wrong way.
Vouchers, you know, this is one of these perplexing issues because one of the groups of people in this country that are just astoundingly pro-voucher are minorities.
It is the one way that their kids have an access, a chance to some quality education.
And I think looking for something that's new and something that's relevant rather than going back to things that they tried and lost, I think they should still make the claim that they're going to keep trying for these things because it takes a while and you need a bigger majority to get votes to pass all these things.
So I think they should focus on those things a little bit more than they are.
Appreciate it.
Let's see.
Let me go to Lansing, Michigan next.
Alex, I'm glad you called.
You're on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
Thanks.
It's a privilege.
Maybe not even a good question after your analysis on the midterms, but if you could put aside all the analysis, the media, not your own, but what kind of picture do you see in November?
Because I go from day to day.
Yeah.
And I don't know.
Well, I'll tell you, we were talking about this at dinner last night.
I am asked this question constantly because people do think that I am clairvoyant, able to see the future and predict these kind of things.
And I also think that people want to hear optimism because they get nothing but pessimism wherever they turn, even from Republicans.
And you're probably like a lot of people.
You're hearing constantly about how the Democrats have already got it won and they're already telling us what the agenda they're going to do.
They're going to investigate Bush.
Republicans, some are saying, yeah, boy, if we're not careful, we can lose in those seats, we can lose control.
It's going to be desperate out there.
And I have a totally different take on this.
I don't think the Republicans are going to lose the House at all.
And I think they may even gain seats despite themselves.
One of the main reasons for this is I never get along and go along with the conventional wisdom.
It's always wrong.
I don't care if it's in sports, if it's in politics, it's in standard news.
The second thing is, folks, that Democrats, I don't care what the Republicans are doing.
The Democrats are not giving anybody that already doesn't vote for them a reason to join their movement.
I got to take a quick timeout.
I'll expand on this when we come back.
Stay with us.
America's anchorman, America's Truth Detector, and Doctor of Democracy all combined as one harmless, lovable little fuzzball here in Los Angeles today and tomorrow on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network about this 06 analysis.
Folks, this is not wishful thinking, phony optimism.
I've thought about this.
I have never bought into this notion that the Democrats are going to win in 06 just because it's 06 or because of the Iraq War or Bush's poll numbers.
Every year, you have to every since 1994, when the Republicans won the House, every two years, 96, 98, 2000, 2002, 2004, now 2006, you can make book on it.
We're going to get stories and we're going to get polls about how the American people prefer the Democrats to run the economy, prefer the Democrats to run security, prefer the Democrats to run the war on terror.
It's absurd.
Because if that were true, John Kerry would be president today.
The Democrats would have taken the House back in 2000, 2002, 1998.
You look at what happened when Clinton took over as president in 1993, from 1993 to when he left office in 2001, the Democrats had a tremendous loss of governorships, tremendous loss of seats in the House.
They started to put some back.
And they went back and forth controlling the Senate.
If it hadn't been for Jumping Jim Jeffords, they wouldn't have controlled the Senate earlier in this century.
The idea that the country's clamoring for Democrats to run the show is absurd.
Because if they were, it would have happened already.
And they haven't even gotten close, folks.
Well, I mean, the last lake could say that they're seven, depending on how they fall, seven and 15 seats short.
But I think you get affected by that.
It creates a conventional wisdom.
And now the Democrats are trying to create a reality in advance.
They're trying to create a self-fulfilling prophecy.
They're out there talking about what they're going to do the first week they get their power back.
And they're even not afraid to use the word seize power when we seize power.
But if you look at the evidence, forget the polls.
Look at elections.
I just gave you details of what's going on in Ohio.
And that's a state.
There's a Republican governor that's got a corruption problem and he's not happy.
The people there are not happy.
But can Blackwell run one big in his primary as a conservative?
Don't buy into this notion that it's just automatic because as I say, since 1995, all we've been getting is stories about how the country prefers Democrats.
And you get polls and you get the Democrats saying, yep, it's only a matter of time because they think this has just been a temporary interruption in the natural order of things, which is Democrats running everything.
But they're not winning.
And they, I mean, Kerry lost by 4 million votes.
They called it a close election.
Gnat's eyelash.
B.S.
It wasn't.
They run around and say, yeah, well, 55,000 votes swing in Ohio, it would have been a different story.
There wasn't a 55,000 vote swing.
I mean, if anything, yeah, you can construct a difference.
So don't be surprised if once again, every expert and pollster on the left is talking to you and making you think that the Democrats have this big sweep coming.
Don't be surprised in November when it doesn't happen.
But I want to be very clear here.
I'm not saying that this is going to be the case because the Republicans are giving anybody great reason to vote for them either.
I always get this question about what's going to happen in 06.
And I thought it was a follow-up question.
I got it on a golf course yesterday.
I got it on a golf course Saturday.
I'm going to get it on the golf course this afternoon, I'm sure.
They said, do you think Hillary can get the nomination?
Yes, I think Hillary can get the nomination.
Do you think she's going to win?
Well, anything's possible, but I don't think she will.
She's one of those polarizing figures around.
Now, John Pedoritz is a columnist of the New York Post, got a big book out.
And, of course, he's very smart, wants to sell a lot of copies that he's probably going to because he's laying out the case here as a conservative how Hillary can win.
The left wants to hear that.
We don't want to hear that.
So it's going to feed into this notion that she's just automatic, that the Hillary presidency is something that we're entitled to.
But again, that's conventional wisdom as well.
We don't know for sure she's going to get the nomination, or we don't know who the Republican nominee is going to be.
Conventional wisdom there, it's going to be McCain, but looks like Giuliani's starting to get serious, may pull the trigger, starting to get serious about raising money.
Mitt Romney is a dark horse, a sleeper out there.
You have no clue what's going to happen.
We don't have a clue what's going to happen in 06.
And I also don't believe these stories that the Bush White House is wandering aimlessly in the desert without any idea what to do and what to think and what to say and so forth.
There may be some people in the White House that way, but I don't think that they're as disengaged as this propaganda media is trying to persuade.
What's frustrating is that with the Democrats being who they are and finally opening up and showing everybody who they are and what they stand for, and the Republicans have such an opportunity to contrast.
And the Republicans are so scared that they're going to be associated with Bush that they're trying to go local in their campaigns or trying to out Democrat Democrats in certain ways.
Like this silly plan to give people $100 at the end of the summer as a rebate on gasoline prices.
Just the wrong way to do it.
I think they can win despite themselves.
Because believe me, folks, I have a tremendous amount of faith in the people of this country, at least the people that vote and the people that pay attention.
And I understand human nature.
And I'm telling you, there's nothing even likable about the Democrats today.
They don't have a charismatic figure.
They don't have somebody other than Clinton.
But Clinton is not running for anything.
And he didn't help Kerry.
May have hurt him.
You look at the candidates Clinton goes out and endorses, and it's not a happy picture.
So I just, I don't see them doing anything.
I mean, there may be all this disgust at Bush, but you let Hillary get the nomination in 08, or you let the Democrats continue to go nuts, and the Republican base showing up in great numbers still in Ohio, and that's what's interesting about the analysis coming out of there.
I think Republicans will show up and vote if for no other reason, just to keep the Democrats from the reins of power in the war on terror and national security, because they're making it plain they can't be trusted.
And that's going to be an overriding issue, regardless what else is on the table.
Bill in Cincinnati, you're next on the EIB network.
Hello.
Good afternoon, Professor Limbaugh.
Thank you, sir.
I think you're right on target here as far as my philosophy is just a lot of doom and gloom from the left.
I know that the Republicans aren't giving our base a big reason to vote for them right now, but I think there's a lot of conservative blue states out there.
And I'm here in Ohio.
Thank God Mr. Blackwell came through.
And I don't think it's just the Republicans going to keep us in power, but I think some of the common sense Democrats out there who can think for themselves, I mean, they have to realize the economy is good.
They're making money too.
And I don't think they feel guilty about it.
And we haven't had any attacks in this country since 9-11.
Yeah, but see, that's something can always change.
That's one of these things.
And if that happens, then Democrats, wait till I go into action on it.
If we get a hit again, the Democrats will doom themselves, I guarantee you, with their reaction.
But you, what did you say?
You said common sense Democrats.
I'm beginning to wonder how many there are.
And I don't mean this to put down Democrats, but it's clear that the Democratic Party base, and by this I mean, I don't know how big it is, but this is what the Washington Democrats, elected Democrats are listening to.
The Washington Post is publishing op-eds by the obscure leaders of this fringe kook base.
I don't know if that's alienating how many common sense Democrats there are.
I don't know how many there are.
When I listen to Democrats speak, they all sound like kooks to me.
They all sound like this kook base fringe.
And I'm sure there are some out there who are disgusted, but you never hear from them.
So they could be a sort of a silent minority out there.
But you mentioned the economy.
Now, that's an interesting thing, too.
Here in the New York Times, I have a story by David Leonhart, and it's from yesterday.
For Bush, the economy is a glass half empty.
Even as gas prices top $3 a gallon in much of the country, President Bush spent a good part of last week trying to tie himself and his party to the economy.
He said in a speech in Washington, the economy is powerful, productive, prosperous, and we intend to keep it that way.
Now, listen to this next paragraph.
It was, in some ways, an odd remark.
The president vowing to stay the course at a time when Americans say they're unhappy with his handling of the economy as they are with his performance on everything else.
Mr. Bush's cheerleading also had a clear logic.
Polls show that Americans are quite satisfied with today's overall economy, but gas prices and interest rates and healthcare costs may be rising, and so people aren't that confident that it is that good.
People have anxieties, mostly about health care and the direction of the economy.
Still, a Gallup poll taken last month, more people than not said their own financial situation was improving.
Just 10% of Americans were worried about losing their jobs in the next year, less than throughout most of the 80s or the 90s with a Clinton boom.
So we've got people more confident and more secure.
But this same little sentence here, their own financial situations was improving, but they're not so confident about their neighbors.
Now, what's the common thread here?
You didn't see a report like this in the 90s.
When the economy was booming for Bill Clinton, the media marveled at Clinton and his economy and his rising polls.
And they said it's all because the economy things are wonderful.
And now the media scratching its head, writing stories.
Why isn't Bush getting credit for this good economy?
Well, here's we all know the answer because it's not being reported as such.
In fact, it's even worse.
The broadcast networks, the drive-by media, are doing nothing if not trying to create panic over global warming, fuel prices, oil prices, and so forth.
NBC, ABC, CBS, obsessed with gasoline and gas prices, and irate consumers.
According to Brent Bozell's outfit, the Media Research Center, the three networks aired a total of 183 stories about the horrors of gas prices between April 12th and May the 2nd.
Only four stories in the same time period covered the current low unemployment rate of 4.7%.
Well, voila, there you have it.
The economy is doing great, as you point out.
People have to experience it themselves because there is no rah-rah coming from the drive-by media about it.
They've had nothing six years, folks.
I mean, they may be losing their monopoly, but they still have power to influence six years of hammering this president, hammering the country, hammering global, hammering environmental destruction, doom and gloom, pessimism.
It has had an effect.
I got to run, take a quick break.
We'll be back after this.
I know that.
I'm sending an email.
I'm everything's cool.
El Rushbo in total control of the EIB network.
We're in Los Angeles.
We'll be here today.
And tomorrow.
I'm out here primarily for a 60th anniversary celebration for the House Ear Institute.
They've been around 60 years helping people with hearing loss.
They helped me and they surgically performed the cochlear implant operation that restored my hearing.
And they invited me to come out for this.
So I decided to come out on Friday and do a bunch of other stuff some people haven't seen out here for a while.
Having a great time.
Here is a story about old Mahmoud.
Now, this is interesting.
These despots, these little tinhorn dictators, these lunatic Islamo fascists, the one thing they understand is their allies in this country, the Democratic Party and the drive-by media.
They understand, they can push the buttons.
They know exactly how to play them.
Bin Laden or whoever is running al-Qaeda and knows how to play them.
Saddam knew how to play them and still does.
Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinezyad, has written to George W. Bush proposing new solutions to their differences.
The letter will be sent via the Swiss embassy.
This is not an open letter.
He's not publishing this in some wacko newspapers.
Actually, I think Mahmoud probably sat down and may have even written it himself or dictated it.
I don't know how they do this in Iran.
Do they have computers there yet?
They must if they got nukes.
So the letter will be sent via the Swiss embassy, which represents U.S. interests in Iran.
Mr. Ahmadinezyad proposes new solutions for getting out of international problems and the current fragile situation of the world, he said.
Reports say that it's the first letter from an Iranian president to a U.S. leader since the Iranian Revolution in 1979.
The Swiss have confirmed that they received a sealed A4-sized envelope addressed to President Bush, which they would deliver as soon as possible.
Did you see, by the way, if I have a little brief departure, they've come up with the forever stamp because of these rising fuel costs.
You can go out, and I know I understood this right.
It made no sense, but it made sense.
It's a bureaucracy stating it.
That you can go out and buy a forever stamp at the current price, 42 cents.
And they said, and if you do it, if you buy it now, buy the forever stamp, you will never again pay a price increase until we raise the price.
And I couldn't have misread that.
Forever stamp.
Government promising forever, but it's not forever.
At any rate, I don't know if Mahmoud's going to send it airmail, if the Swiss are going to send it FedEx.
You don't know how it's going to be sent.
I don't know when Bush is going to get, but that's not the point.
Here's Mahmoud sending a letter to Bush and getting great PR out of it.
Oh, look at this.
Mahmoud, he cares.
He wants a solution.
He's willing to talk to Bush.
Bush has no time for Mahmood.
Bush won't tell.
Bush just threatening to blow him up.
Bush is just threatening to strike him to stop them from becoming a genuine member of the nuclear club.
So when nothing happens, and Mahmoud has no intention for anything to happen, old Mahmoud and his pals in this country and in the national and worldwide drive-by media will be able to portray President Bush and the United States as the bad guys, as the recalcitrant ones, the people that don't want an agreement, the people who are spoiling for war.
Because Mahmoud tried.
He tried dialogue.
He tried talking.
But Bush wasn't interested.
A smart move for Mahmoud based on who his intended audience is.
Here's Stephen in Baltimore.
Steve, welcome to the EIB Network.
Hello.
Great to speak with you, Russ.
It's funny because we agree on much more than we disagree on, but we draw different conclusions.
I think we agree that the American people are pretty smart.
But this culture of corruption thing really does have consequences.
You know, it's four and a half years since 9-11.
Republicans have had all sorts of time to reform the CIA.
But they put Porter Goss in there, who, according to media reports, was caught up in this MZM scandal with Dusty Fago, who was a mid-level bureaucrat that all of a sudden rose to the third highest level of the CIA.
You know, after Katrina, Katrina could have been a terrorist attack, and it took four or five days to get people basic needs like water.
You know what?
But that's not the CIA's problem.
Look, I have to take a commercial time out here.
I will continue this, Steve, in just a second.
Don't go away.
Stephen Baltimore, culture of corruption is not going to play because the Democrats have their own culture of corruption, plus they have a culture of treason, and that can be exploited, as is their own culture of corruption.
They've even dropped that.
They're going to go on other directions.
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