The Rush Limbaugh program here on the EIB network, a program envied by everyone.
A program copied and emulated, but never equaled.
The Rush Limbaugh program.
And it's the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
I am your host and general all-round good guy, harmless, lovable little fuzzball himself, Rush Limbaugh behind the golden EIB microphone.
Half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
Telephone number 800-282-2882.
Email address, rush at EIBnet.com.
Just as soon as I started watching television at the top of the hour break, Fox was televising the White House press briefing.
And I don't know who the drive-by reporter was, but he asked the question about Condi Rice.
How come she's not going over there yet?
I mean, come on.
Bush 41 and Clinton, they went over there and they talked to Assad and they sent people over there.
And Tony looked at the guy.
Tony Snow looked at the guy and said, what?
Just like they said, what?
And this reporter sort of stunned.
He said, well, that's true.
I mean, we went over there and we talked ceasefire with these guys.
And Tony Snow said, yeah, and it was blazingly pointless.
My gosh, this is fabulous.
Have a White House press secretary telling the truth to the media in the White House press corps that bluntly.
It was blazingly pointless, too.
And it's obvious that it was blazingly pointless because where are we?
And of course, Clinton's out there.
You know, I'm so sad.
I wanted my legacy to be to solve that crisis over there.
And I thought, you know, when you stop and think of this, stop and think of it.
Israel had agreed with Clinton.
This is, I think, Ehud Barak, I believe, was the prime minister at the time, could be wrong about that.
They negotiated this big deal where Israel was going to give half of Jerusalem or a section of Jerusalem to the Palestinians, 97% of the West Bank.
And Arafat turned it down because it's not about land.
That's not what this is about.
They claim that they want Israel off these lands.
They want their original land back, blah, blah, blah.
It's not about that at all.
It's about the annihilation of Israel, and nothing has changed.
It's what Hezbollah is about.
It's what Iran is about.
And anybody who thinks, listen to Bolton, John Bolton said this so well today.
It's great that he is the ambassador to the United Nations.
A question, unidentified idiot reporter.
Mr. Ambassador, a lot of Arab diplomats in the hallway here at the UN accuse you of blocking any movement toward a ceasefire, a ceasefire, thief fire with a terrorist, a ceasefire immediately in Lebanon.
What would you answer to that?
The notion that you just declare a ceasefire and act as if that's going to solve the problem, I think, is simplistic.
Among other things, I want somebody to address the problem, how you get a ceasefire with the terrorist organization.
I'd like to know when there's been an effective ceasefire between a terrorist organization and a state in the past.
This is a different kind of situation, and I'm not sure that sort of old thinking, conventional thinking works in a case like this.
I am going to explain what ceasefire means, ladies and gentlemen.
We have what Tony Snow said to Helen Thomas yesterday.
Here, grab cut number eight before I explain to you what ceasefire means.
Helen Thomas, who is Lebanese, she's part Lebanese or all of us.
Yeah, she is.
She just, you know, she'd been there too long.
It's what it is.
And she went on a rant yesterday about the whole situation.
And here's a portion of it from the White House press briefing yesterday.
The United States is not that helpless.
It could have stopped the bombardment of Lebanon.
We have that much control with the Israelis.
I don't think so, Helen.
We have one for collective punishment against all of Lebanon and Palestine.
Now, what's interesting, Helen...
And that's the perception of the United States.
Well, thank you for the Hezbollah view.
That's Tony Snow who told a reporter today, yeah, and your question and the answer is blazingly pointless and just told Helen Thomas, thanks, Helen Thomas, for the Hezbollah view of the circumstance.
This is great that he's there.
I sent him an email yesterday.
My brother was in Washington yesterday and has three of his little girls, three of my nieces, and took them by the White House to meet Tony.
And Tony showed him the West Wing and so forth.
And I sent him a note thanking him for doing that.
And I added on to it.
I said, you have redefined this position.
And it's just, it's great that you're in that job.
And it really is.
And these are two great examples, blazingly pointless.
And thanks for the Hezbollah view.
Now let's talk about this ceasefire business because you heard Helen Thomas talking about it and you hear Bolton saying, how do you have ceasefire with terrorists?
You know, little kids need primers.
Crumb crunchers need primers.
And so do liberals, drive-by journalists, and UN members.
Now, crumb crunchers, little kids, learn from C-Spot Run.
Remember the book, Dick and Jane, C-Spot Run, and all that?
I don't know if they still use that, but that's what I learned to read with.
That was my primer.
The liberals need a primer on sea terrorists' ceasefire.
Absurdity with absurdity is a bit too grown up for liberals in the drive-by media.
I don't think they would understand if I were to illustrate absurdity by being absurd.
I think it's too subtle for them.
Satire and parody.
Liberals don't laugh, particularly when you're making fun of them.
So I want to take a different tack here, not quite as direct as Bolton, but with the same point.
How do you just declare a ceasefire with a terrorist organization?
It's absurd to how many ceasefires have there been over the course of just this conflict alone.
The first, remember Arafat showing up, the United Nations had a gun.
First thing the terrorists said, they had guns, they started firing their pistols in the air.
But the forces of good, the good guys beat them back and they call for a ceasefire.
The PLO and everybody else, when they had just little pistols and, you know, penny, anti-little weapons, they call for a ceasefire.
And during the ceasefire, they loaded up with rifles and then they attacked again.
Forces of good beat them back with their rifles, and so they call for another ceasefire.
And then they loaded up with hand grenades.
And then we beat them back with their hand grenades.
Their hand grenades weren't enough for the forces of good.
They call for a ceasefire.
Then they loaded up with suicide bombers.
They started sending their kids out there with bombs strapped to them and blowing up innocent people all throughout parts of Israel.
And then we beat them back with that.
And they call for a ceasefire.
During the ceasefire, they ratchet up again and they load up with katushas, ketusha missiles.
But the forces of good beat them back.
And so they call for a ceasefire.
They're always calling for a ceasefire.
Do you note it's always the bad guys that are really leading the call for a ceasefire?
They'll, in this case, you've got some of the world knowing there needs to be a ceasefire and so forth.
And the Israelis need to do this.
But the bottom line is, in most instances, it's the bad guys, after they got their clocks cleaned, start waving a white flag, say, we need a ceasefire.
After the catushes, now they've come back with rockets.
And when the forces of good beat them back, what will they come back with next after their next demand for a ceasefire?
The bottom line is this.
The moral, my friends, is that ceasefire does not mean end of hostility.
Ceasefire simply means time out, time out.
We Hezbollah guys need to find a more powerful weapon, and we'll be back at you when we get it.
There is no such thing as a ceasefire in their lexicon.
There's no such thing as a ceasefire in their dictionary.
It's nothing more than a ruse.
So when they demand ceasefires or when they have their allies around the world demanding ceasefires, it's simply to buy some time to amp up, to load up, and to increase their own armaments.
And Bolton is exactly right.
I mean, there's no logical way that you negotiate a ceasefire.
That's what the Limbaugh Doctrine is.
The Limbaugh Doctrine clearly states peace follows victory.
Peace does not result from settlements, ceasefires, negotiations, doctors, nurses, clean water, all of that sort of happy go-lucky good stuff.
Quick timeout here, folks.
We'll back and be back and continue in seconds.
Stay with us.
And we are back.
El Rushbo.
Talent on loan from a God.
According to CBS MarketWatch, oil futures have fallen to a three-week low, $73, under $73 a barrel now.
And here's why.
This is the explanation for why.
An unexpected climb in last week's U.S. gasoline supplies and the realization by speculators, by traders, that the fighting in the Middle East hasn't and mostly likely won't cut into global oil production.
You know, remember the first Gulf War?
People's memories are short, but not mine, ladies and gentlemen.
First Gulf War, 1990, 91, and the no blood for oil crowd came alive during the fall and the early winter of 1990, saying it's not worth this blood for oil.
And the environmental concern and all that.
And people said, oh, my God, what are you going to have?
Oil war, war in Iraq.
Oh my God, what's going to be oil prices?
The oil price fell dramatically after all, after everything shook out, the oil price, barrel price fell dramatically.
I'm not saying that it's going to fall dramatically here.
There are obviously different market circumstances today than there were 15, 16 years ago.
But the fact of the matter remains that there is experience to look to.
Why is it that people keep expecting something to happen that hasn't happened?
Isn't that the definition of insanity?
Keep doing the same thing that it results in the same way, but you keep hoping for a different result or you keep thinking there'll be a different one.
I mean, it's like nobody learns from history.
Now, one of the discussion points that we have been on to today, and CNN just led their hour, their top of the hour news with this.
Now, the evacuation's going good now.
Oh, yeah.
We're going to get by this weekend 6,000, 7,000 Americans, people out of there.
That'll be good.
Now the problem is the cost.
Now the price of the journey out of Lebanon is the problem.
And we had audio soundbites this morning.
In fact, let's go back and play those, Henderson.
I'm going to go back to the top.
We'll start with number four, and we'll go through number five and six.
This is a 20-year-old college co-ed, A college co-ed attending university in Lebanon.
Must have been an attractive student loan program.
Her name is Ashley Marinakio.
And she is asked this morning by Solodad O'Brien of CNN, the first mass evacuation by a ship of Americans done by the Norwegians.
Did that surprise you?
I mean, look at the evacuations from Katrina.
We didn't expect to be getting out anytime soon.
Well, then, what are you whining about?
If you didn't expect to get out anytime soon, why are you whining?
Russia, I didn't hear her whining.
Oh, you haven't?
Well, next question.
Sounded like a pretty awful trip out there, Ashley.
Looks really hot out there.
I wonder why I stole a dead.
Could it be it's the Middle East in July?
I mean, saw people covering themselves with tarp and they're sort of arranging their children around cardboard.
Describe what that was like.
Pretty crowded.
Yeah, it was unfortunately a floating refugee camp.
It was awful because there's people with 10 kids, you know, seriously, 10 kids, and they're trying to get food.
And then there's other people yelling, saying that they're stealing food.
And, you know, I'm assuming that they were hungry because they'd been there since 9 o'clock.
And apparently, from what I hear, at around 11 o'clock when they came around giving food out, this was the first time that people were being fed.
Yeah, it was sad.
It was sad.
It was sad.
More on that in just a moment.
Because I've done additional research and I have found a story about this getting fed business.
But yeah, it was really bad.
It was, oh, it's bad.
They're stealing food.
And assuming they were hungry, it was really, really, really bad.
So the next question, well, highly organized.
We're on it.
We're doing a good job.
Is that how you would describe the evacuation?
I mean, the boat's not made to hold people.
I mean, it wasn't comfortable, and there were lots of flies.
It was by the end of the trip, people were sort of going crazy.
All right, so you complain about the trip.
You complain about the boat.
You complain about the flies.
You're out of there.
You're on television and you're a star.
Now you're concerned about the price.
You got to get concerned about other people.
No matter what you do for these people, it's never enough.
Just let the war zone for crying out loud.
Just let the war zone.
What do you expect to get out on?
The Queen Mary II?
Or the Queen Elizabeth II?
Whatever the hell it is?
At any rate, ladies and gentlemen, I have a photo here, and we're going to put this on our website.
We'll put the photo on the website of a bunch of Americans lounging around on a cruise ship off the coast of looks like Beirut.
It's an evacuation ship.
And here's the caption: U.S. citizen.
Dr. Sam Dagger, left, looks on, may even be smoking a cigar.
I can't tell.
Got something in one of his hands.
Looks on as his son Glenn, Wright, and his friends Jim Nasser, second left, and his brother Jeff, all from Scranton, Pennsylvania, sunbathe on the deck of the Orient Queen cruise ship with the Beirut skyline in the background and the port of the capital, Beirut, in Lebanon.
And they are sunbated jeans and cutoffs.
They're rolled up, look like they're drinking beer.
A little card table out there on the deck of the ship.
Really, really tough, tough, tough tuti.
And then here's the full CNN story that involves the Ashley Marinakchio, the college co-ed age 20.
She's, by the way, from Long Branch, New Jersey.
And the interesting, just to give you some interesting pull quotes from this or excerpts from this piece.
But Marinakio said that she was pleased the U.S. government had provided food for Americans aboard her ferry, although she said it disturbed her that others were hungry and there wasn't enough to go around.
This is the Norwegian ship that she was on, 127 Americans on the ship.
And what happened was that U.S. Navy SEALs, I didn't know this, but the Navy SEALs have a meals on wheels program.
The U.S. Navy SEALs pulled alongside the ferry on which this babe was getting out of town to deliver boxes of chicken sandwiches.
That's where they got their food.
And that's just complaining, but there wasn't anything going around.
I don't know how many were on this ship, 1,600 or something, or 1,200, whatever it was.
And she said, it was for American citizens only.
And that actually made a big stink on the boat because people who weren't American citizens are trying to get the food.
Other people were screaming, it's for Americans only.
Show your passport.
People getting out of a war zone.
Let me ask you something, Ashley.
You're on this Norwegian ship.
You're praising the Swedish.
You're praising the Norwegians.
You're praising whatever other little podunk countries are sending their rat trawlers over there to get people out of Beirut.
They don't put any food or water on the boat.
Just herd you people on there like a bunch of cattle.
And all of a sudden, riding to the rescue, the U.S. Navy SEAL's Meals on Wheels program, food for Americans, and you're still not happy.
Why don't you blame the Norwegians for not provisioning the ship?
Who would try to get 1,600 people out of there or 1,200, whatever it was, without putting any food or water on the boat?
Well, because they were in a hurry and people want to get out of there.
It's a war zone.
And they're only going to Cyprus.
What's it going to take?
How long is it going to get Cyprus?
Cypress little island right off there can't be very long.
Then the Ashley Marinakio added, I understand this was the government's food, but in the case of an emergency, everybody needs to eat, whether you're an American or not.
That's what I'm thinking.
I think she could have, you know, it's loaves and fishes time here, Ashley.
You got 127 chicken sandwiches brought by the U.S. Navy SEAL's Meals on Wheels program.
You got Americans having to show their passport.
Share it.
Share it.
It's a short trip.
If it's so important that everybody eats, then share what you have.
Find a way to make 130 chicken sandwiches and whatever else they had.
Go around.
It's a short trip.
Not a whole lot of sustenance needed, and I doubt anybody starved on the trip anyway.
My real question is, were the vegetarian meals?
Because if the Navy didn't think of that, there will be hell to pay.
Well, you've got to take these dietary restrictions into, and were there diabetics on board were the people that were glucose intolerant.
You know, some people can't eat bread and gluten.
And where was the U.S. government on this?
I mean, they should have found a way to take a survey of the 1,200 people and find out the dietary requirements of everybody on board if they're going to deliver any food.
They could have killed somebody with this food.
The Katrina, I mean, it could have, you know, this could have been a disaster averted if they'd have just done a little research and sent out menus.
buddy Bo Diddley.
From our lifestyle stack, no details on this yet, because they've got lots of other stuff in the lifestyle stack, but try this headline.
Blind man trying to handle gun and food fatally shoots wife.
It's from Morganton, North Carolina.
Legally blind man fatally shot his wife while trying to balance a plate of fried chicken and a pistol.
Don't know if it was extra crispy or original recipe, but I guess that doesn't matter.
We have the audio soundbite of the exchange between Tony Snow and this reporter about why don't we have somebody over there talking to these people about a ceasefire?
My question is, why send Condi Rice?
Well, obviously at this point, she's going to be talking to one side of the country.
Has the president considered perhaps sending Bush 41 and Clinton to have a really good track record after the tsunamis?
What?
We just said that Condi Rice is not going to go until the conditions are right.
So we'll wait until she goes the conditions are right.
Talks now would be pretty much one-sided.
But wait a minute.
You said yourself correctly that both Bush 41 and Clinton had talks about as el-Assad.
There is precedent, which were blazingly pointless.
Is that not great?
Tony Snow, send Clinton or Bush 41 to talk to Basher Assad.
This is the narrow focus of the action line of the story because they had good relations with him during the tsunami.
And Tony's, what?
He reacts the way any of us would.
By the way, two more, three more comments here about these ingrates.
And by the way, I don't really know how many of them are ingrates.
No.
Is it in your stack?
Come find it in the stack.
I haven't a chance to go through your stack, but apparently there's more than just this Maracino, babe, what is her Ashley Maracino.
And the complaining about the flies and all of the hardships and the heat and so forth.
It was awful.
Yes, it was awful.
We're all awful.
What with Katrina and all the rest?
So my question, why come home?
If the United States is so bad, and if we can't handle things like hurricanes and the aftermath of hurricanes, why come home, Ashley?
Why get on the boat?
Why make an effort to come home?
Why go to Cyprus?
Why leave this heaven on earth that you live in already called Beirut?
What is the point?
Somebody else should have taken her spot on the ship, somebody who appreciates all the people working so hard to save her little rear end from her boneheaded decision to go to Lebanon in the first place.
Are any of these people, have you seen anybody on these ships being interviewed by the media say thank you?
You heard one thank you?
You think this is easy?
But we're at superpower rest.
We should have retharthies everywhere in the world.
Yeah, well, we would like to have resources everywhere in the world, but there are a bunch of anti-war peacenicks who are doing their best to keep resources away.
Like the Democrats want to redeploy troops to Okinawa.
Yip, yip, yip, yip, yahoo.
That would really be helpful in this situation, wouldn't it?
Here's one of the Reuters stories.
Americans wiped away tears, hugged relatives, and grumbled about evacuation delays today before boarding a luxury ship that was to carry them from war-torn to Lebanon.
Crew members of the Orient Queen welcomed aboard parents pushing strollers and clutching their churon.
Many expressed frustrations it had taken the U.S. government so long to get them out of Lebanon, while Europeans and Lebanese with foreign passports already had fled by the thousands.
I can't believe the Americans, said Danny Atia, 39-year-old civil engineer from Kansas City, Missouri, as he stood with his pregnant wife and sons, Ali, 10 and Adrian 6, while waiting for buses that were to take them to the ship.
Everybody else had gone home, but we're still here.
After criticism from Congress, the State Department said it dropped plans to ask Americans to pay for their rides on commercial vessels.
Earlier authorities had planned to make Americans sign a note pledging to reimburse the government of the price of a commercial flight from Beirut to Cyprus, which is usually $150 to $200.
And they complained.
Ingrates complained about $150 to $200.
Did the government pay to get them over there?
It is not done.
I knew this was not done.
The State Department's issued EVAC orders all over the place.
And they never pay to get everybody out of there because most people paid to get their way over there in the first place.
But because Congress raised hell, well, we're going to waive the $150 to $200, the price of a ticket to get out of Lebanon over to Beirut.
And still not one thank you.
Not one, just a bunch of ingrates, spoiled brat complaints.
And of course, we can't ask what kind of wizards are these people to be over there in the first place.
You know, I mean, Beirut used to be, Beirut used to sing.
Beirut used to be a place that you want to go.
I'm talking 20, 30 years ago.
They made James Bond movies over there.
It was a hot spot.
But, you know, the last 30, 40 years, it has become nothing more than a terrorist haven.
And they've done their best, but Syria runs the place and has run the place for a long time.
Now, Iran and Hezbollah are trying to run the place.
And everybody's known for the last 20 years, you're going into a war zone over there.
And so, no, you're not supposed to ask this.
This is completely incorrect.
We have freedom in the country.
We can go anywhere we want to go.
Sure, you can.
But it doesn't stop some of us from judging the competence of your little gray cells in the places you choose.
They're not over there doing missionary work.
Priscilla in Olivet, Missouri, outside St. Louis.
Welcome to the program.
Nice to have you with us.
Thank you.
I think you're being too hard on these people on the boat.
I mean, they are experiencing discomfort, but I have a suggestion for what the State Department ought to do about it.
And that is if they just sent them, you know, picked them up quickly and sent them over to Guantanamo, because in all the pictures I've seen on TV, the prisoners there all have plenty of shade, and they have three meals a day.
And I've never seen it.
No, they even gain weight while they're there.
That's true.
Well, I've never seen any flies in the shows.
And even Ted Kennedy went over there and didn't come back and report that there were any flies.
So they could take all the evacuees to Guantanamo and maybe take the prisoners and put them on the ship so that they could really help them.
I like that.
That's funny.
That's good, Priscilla.
Well, there's a funny side to everything.
I'll tell you, though, I think the airfare from Lebanon to Cuba, the Guantanamo, will be a little bit more than $150 or $200.
So the added expense.
But you're talking about the hardship factor.
I understand that.
And yeah, it might be a good place.
Send them over to Gitmo send the Gitmo prisoners on the ships on the boat.
Priscilla, thanks very much.
Henderson, standby over there with audio soundbites 11 and 12 and 13 since she brings up Gitmo.
And Ted Kennedy went down there.
So now has Dick Turbin.
Do you know that Turbin went down there?
Chicago Sun-Times Lynn Sweet column today, Durbin gets eye full at Guantanamo.
The Pentagon took an extra security precaution for Monday's trip to Club Gitmo by Senator Dick Turbin, a strong critic of the prison, made sure that Turbin brought along a Republican.
Turbin toured the U.S. military prison at Club Gitmo with Senator George Allen, Republican Virginia.
And Turbin was on the situation room last night with Wolf Blitzer on CNN.
And Wolf's first question, or one of his early questions to Senator Turbin, was, did you watch them being interrogated, Senator Turbin?
Yes.
There was a camera in one of the rooms, so we watched one of the interrogations, and it was much different than you might imagine.
A relationship had been developed between the interrogator and the translator.
The interrogator sat down, opened a bag, handed the detainee a subway sandwich.
He lit up and started eating the sandwich and started talking.
It was a much different circumstance than most people would imagine.
Including you.
Let's not forget how Senator Turbin has characterized these people.
What is this subway sandwich business?
I think the menu has gone to hell then.
The menu at Club Gitmo used to be far greater fair.
Nothing wrong with subway sandwiches.
I'm not putting down subway sandwiches.
But I mean, the menu at Club Gitmo, I mean, it was health conscious, dietary restrictions as needed by the guests and so forth.
Subway sandwich.
I guess this detainee nevertheless lit up.
And as soon as he started munching his subway sandwich, started opening up.
Next question from Blitzer.
Some of the critics would suggest that this was a dog and pony show for an important legislator like you who had come by to visit.
It is simply not the real world at Club Gitmo.
Are you convinced that what you saw is actually the reality of that prison?
You know, that's possible, Wolf, but I don't believe it happened.
Now, there could be tougher interrogations.
I'm sure there are.
But I think under most circumstances, what I heard was reassuring because the chief interrogator told me they followed the Geneva Conventions.
They follow the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
They acknowledged that a few years ago, the message from the Pentagon and from the administration was really confusing.
They were saying that Geneva Conventions didn't apply and there'd be a new definition of torture.
That wasn't fair to the interrogators or the troops.
And I'm glad that that era is behind us.
Oh, goes down there, witnesses it, sees it's totally unlike what he characterized it as being, and then has to blast the Bush administration for confusing the counselors, the concierges, the waiters, and, of course, the general manager at the Club Gitmo resort.
Well, let's go back, shall we?
A little bit over a year ago, June 10th, 2005, Dick Turbin, after describing the treatment of the terrorists at Club Gitmo on the floor of the United States Senate, said this.
If I read this to you and didn't tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have happened by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime, Paul Potter, others, that had no concern for human beings.
Sadly, that's not the case.
This was the action of Americans in treatment of their own prisoners.
Yeah, and of course, all Hill broke loose and he had to apologize without apologizing.
Then he finally had to apologize when the apology that wasn't an apology was recognized as not being an apology.
So he had to give it up.
That's just a year ago.
He gets this anonymous letter from an FBI agent describing what went on down there.
So Senator Turbin goes down there and sees something entirely different.
And I didn't see the whole interview, so I don't know if Wolf zeroed in on him as I would have had I been asking questions about this.
I don't know if he was let off the hook again or not, but I thought this an appropriate time to air these sound bites given our call from Olivet, Missouri.
Quick timeout.
We'll be back and continue in a jiffy.
By the way, folks, I have to tell you, I think the Israelis, everybody said hey need to show restraint, and every other response has been disproportionate and so forth.
I think the Israelis have shown restraint.
If they wanted to, they could blow Beirut off the map.
They wanted to, they could blow Lebanon off the map.
If they wanted to, they could blow Syria off the map.
And if they didn't want to blow all of Syria off the map, they could certainly get rid of Damascus.
They haven't done any of that, have they?
I think they're showing restraint.
By the way, it appears that the evil United States, who or which, by the way, is the one country in the world people in the midst of natural disasters turn to for instant relief, i.e. the tsunami, i.e., earthquakes.
You name it, whenever there's a disaster, guess who it is that's first on the scene with relief?
Guess who it is with the vast majority of the relief?
It's the dirty, rotten, uncaring, without compassion United States of America, right?
It appears we're not the only ones who are delaying evacuations.
There's a story here from the Islamic Republic News Agency.
My friends, we will stop at nothing for show prep.
We'll go wherever the news is.
And we found this piece from the Islamic Republican News Agency.
Prime Minister Tony Blair yesterday rejected criticism that Britain had reacted slowly in evacuating its people from Lebanon in the face of week-long Israeli bombings of the country's civilian infrastructure.
Speaking at a joint conference with the Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanidar, Blair insisted his government was acting as quickly as we possibly can to get his citizens out.
We've taken out of Lebanon the first 60 people that was done yesterday.
First ship will come today, so obviously we can take far greater numbers out.
Britain is under criticism over its evacuation plans.
This is the Islamic Republic News Agency.
Now, it strikes me that the reporting from the Islamic Republic News Agency is eerily similar to the American drive-by media.
By the way, we have posted at rushlimbaugh.com if you want to see it.
I think it's an AP picture of passengers lounging on the deck of the Oriental Queen or whatever the name of the yacht is, the cruise ship that is taking Americans out of Lebanon in such horrid, unspeakable conditions.
It's there at rushlimbaugh.com, Shreveport, Louisiana.
This is Randall.
Glad you waited, sir.
Welcome to the program.
Thank you, Rush.
It's an honor to speak with you.
Thank you, sir.
As far as the comparisons of the evacuation in Beirut to Katrina, as far as the U.S. government acting slowly, they don't have the resources in the area immediately available.
Whereas in Louisiana, I live in Shreveport in the northwest corner of the state.
The state had the resources on the ground to get the people out, and they dropped the ball.
Hell, everybody dropped the ball, including the citizens.
This is the thing.
One area of this that nobody's, well, I'm commenting on it because I, my friends, have no fear of the truth.
And there is this thing called personal responsibility.
I'll just, let me tell this story in first person.
If I, and I wouldn't do this because I have more smarts than this, but if I were going to move to Lebanon, if I were going to move to Beirut, I, the wizard of smarts here, would clearly understand where I'm going.
And I would know that I've got a terrorist group in the southern part of the country, and I've got Syria to the northern part, that it's a country under siege constantly from both directions, and that they're surrounding Israel, and they hate Israel, and that there are acts of terrorism going on within close proximity of where I will be.
And so I know that it's possible that hostilities would reach a point that they would go beyond just random terror attacks, and I would have a plan to get out of there on my own.
I'm not going to wait.
If my life's at stake, I'm not going to wait around for some rickety little Chinese junk ship or whatever to show up and troll me out of there.
I'm not going to go there in the first place, actually.
But were I to have made the decision to do that, as I have done in the rest of my life, I'm going to depend on myself.
In fact, I have a story in the stack.
Unrelated to this in terms of the actual news, but it's about companies who encourage rugged individualism and how they end up with far more creative people and employees rather than the corporate rubber stamp Ken and Barbie doll suits that wait for upper management to tell them when to breathe, when to exhale, and so forth.
But at some point, personal responsibility has to be a factor in this.
But no, that's too cruel, unkind.
Can't be that judgmental.
Besides, folks, evacuating people on cruise ships and even safe.
You hear about that cruise ship off Port Canaveral?
Two people, seriously?
What is the United States thinking?
Putting citizens on cruise ships to get them out of there.