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Sept. 15, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:27
September 15, 2006, Friday, Hour #3
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Time Text
And greetings, folks, and welcome back.
Rush Limbaugh, the excellence in broadcasting network, over 600 radio stations, 20 to 22 million people, and broadcast excellence.
It's Open Line Friday.
Pretty much means when we go to the phones, you own it.
You can discuss whatever you want.
Monday through Thursday, I'm a bedevolent dictator.
I determine what we talk about because I'm not going to talk about things that bore me.
On Friday, I will run the risk of being bored.
It's fun.
Telephone numbers 800-282-2882.
I'm really happy to introduce to you Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, who joins us from Washington.
The last time I spoke to you, Madam Secretary, was during the 2000 presidential campaign.
So it's long overdue, but welcome to the program here.
Well, it's great to be with you, Rush.
I can't believe it's been that long.
Time flies when you're in a good time.
Look, I want to get straight to this because I know your time is limited.
The press conference today, the President had about the congressional legislation he wants.
45 Democrats oppose.
I'm not trying to draw you into political questions here.
Rest assured.
You've got the three Republicans, McCain and Warner and Lindsey Graham, joining the Democrats opposing this.
Secretary Powell wrote Senator McCain a letter that McCain has publicized.
You have responded in a letter to Secretary Warner.
What did you say?
Well, in fact, I sent the letter before I had seen Secretary Powell's letter.
My letter simply stated the Department of State's position, which is that the interpretation of a U.S. treaty obligation through U.S. law is something that we do frequently and all the time.
We're not trying to change what's called Common Article III.
We're not trying to weaken it.
We just want our professionals to have clarity so that they know what is legal and what is not.
And I have absolutely no problem defending what the President has asked the Congress to do when I go internationally.
I think it only makes sense that you would not leave a very unclear standard like that of Common Article III, which talks about outrages on human dignity, for instance, Rush.
You don't want to leave that to unaccountable prosecutors, for instance, internationally.
You want U.S. law to define that.
Madam Secretary, people like me don't understand the substance of this.
We see pictures of people jumping out the World Trade Center on 9-11 this week.
We remember the videotapes of the kind of treatment American and foreign hostages receive at the hands of our enemy when in their captivity.
I don't understand the effort on the part of those who oppose this in Congress to try to establish a moral equivalency between the way we treat prisoners and the way our enemy does, and to suggest that we can't do something here because it might incite them to be even meaner to us.
Could you help me and others like me understand the common sense of opposing this?
I can't get my arms around it.
Well, Rush, I have to say, I think I don't quite understand either why we would not give the professionals, our professionals, a clear standard so that they know that they are obeying the law.
These are people who take tremendous risks to try and defend us.
They have made tremendous strides in getting information from people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who planned 9-11, from people like Ramsey ben al-Sheikh, who you saw on that videotape with al-Qaeda just a few days ago, crowing about September 11th.
They have made great strides in getting information from these people that have prevented other attacks.
And by the way, not just prevented attacks here in the United States, but prevented attacks in other parts of the world, too.
To have a piece of legislation that does not protect them and does not give them a clear legal standard, I think, is simply wrong.
Do you find yourself in an uncomfortable circumstance, what, with the Secretariat Powell?
I mean, leaving aside the apparent lack of loyalty that exists in his letter, do you find it, like I have the New York Senate here, showdown, or a headline rather, showdown set between Rice and Powell.
Do you think this is descending into something personal?
No, no, I don't see it that way.
Colin Powell is a private citizen.
He can have his views, and I think that's the nature of our great democracy.
He's a well-respected private citizen.
It's my responsibility now to help defend the United States.
It's my responsibility now to defend American policies abroad and to try through diplomacy to make us safer.
And I am quite confident that the United States can both get the information that it needs and live up to our treaty obligations, and that the legislation that the President has proposed does exactly that.
At his press conference today, he introduced something new.
Basically, if I understand it right, the President said if he doesn't get what he wants, if there's not clarity defining and specifying the vagaries and ambiguities of Common Article III, he said the program will not go forward.
Now, I interpreted that to mean he'll scrap it.
He's not going to put our professionals, as you refer to them, in any kind of precarious circumstance.
And if they don't go along with what he wants, he'll scrap the whole program.
And I assume that means the focus of attention on the lack of the program existing from that point forward will be on Congress.
Well, I feel very strongly, as does the President, that these men and women who go out and do this difficult and dangerous work deserve clarity about the legal ground on which they're standing.
And I don't think that you will get people who will actually participate in this program if you don't get that kind of clarity.
So you won't have a program.
And it would be unfortunate because we have learned a lot from this program.
We have prevented attacks.
Rush, information is the long pole in the tent in the fight against terrorists.
If you wait until a terrorist has committed his act, then 3,000 people die.
What you want to do is to prevent them.
And the only way that you can prevent them is to know what they're thinking, to know what they're planning, to know what they're plotting.
And this program has been essential in helping us to find that out.
Madam Secretary, the average American understands this.
This is not complicated.
And that's why so many people don't understand the actions of those in the president's party who are attempting to halt this.
They're thinking there's got to be something behind the scenes that matters more than just the specifics of this.
I'm not asking you to address that.
I know your time is limited, and I have one more question for you.
And I assure you, I'm asking this solely from the position of wanting to learn and wanting to understand.
And I want to go back to the recent war between the Hezbollah and Israeli forces.
It seems that when it comes to Israel and their fight against terrorists, ceasefires and resolutions are the rule of the day, even though they really haven't worked in ceasing these hostilities and bringing about peace.
They just bring interruptions to it.
Yet when we are fighting terrorists, we don't tell ourselves to ceasefire and negotiate with them.
What is it about the paradigm of the Middle East that requires the fight against terrorism there be fought differently than the way we're fighting it against us?
Well, I would think of it a little differently, Rush.
What you have there is you have a Lebanese government that wants to fight terror and that is the beginnings of a democratic government that could be actually a partner for Israel in fighting terror.
So the ceasefire was really with the Lebanese government, and now we're trying to help the Lebanese government deal with the effects of Hezbollah that launched that attack without Lebanon even knowing.
I think of it the following way: we are fighting terror in Iraq, but we're doing it with an Iraqi government.
We are fighting terror in Afghanistan, and we're doing it with an Afghan government.
So, the way to think about what happened in Lebanon is that we're going to fight terror, but we need to do it with a Lebanese government that is devoted to fighting terror.
So, I think from our point of view, there isn't any difference.
No terrorist can be supported or understood or negotiated with.
What you can do is to find moderate governments, moderate leaders in those countries that are suffering from terrorism themselves and enlist them in the fight to help defeat terrorists.
Is Lebanon really serious about this?
I mean, if the Hezbollah group was able to attack without even the government of Lebanon knowing it, then what good does a ceasefire with the government of Lebanon do?
Well, you have to strengthen that government.
It's a weak government, but it is getting stronger.
It's finally deployed its military forces throughout its whole country for the first time in more than three decades.
And this is a government that came to power when the extremists assassinated the reformist prime minister of Lebanon, Rafiq Hariri.
And so, this is a government that comes from the right set of values and the right set of principles.
It's just not very strong.
We're trying to help build it up, build up its security forces.
But when we've done that in Lebanon and in Iraq and in Afghanistan, and indeed, if we can find that kind of government in the Palestinian territories, having those strong, moderate forces to help you fight terror, indigenous forces to help you fight terror, is extremely important.
Okay, so the theory is that terrorists will gravitate to areas where there are no states, where there are no governments, like they did Afghanistan and Somalia.
Exactly.
And so, you have to build up governments that can prevent that from happening.
And it's hard work.
I hope they're allied with us.
These are governments that are allied with us.
It's hard work.
They're sacrificing to.
There was an attempt on the life of the Deputy Interior Minister of Lebanon just a few days ago.
So they're sacrificing too.
But these are really good partners.
We just have to build them up and help them to fight the terrorist in their midst.
Before you go, are there days you wish that you could have become the commissioner of the National Football League?
I love it that you're a football fan.
Oh, yes, of course there are days I wish I could have become.
No, look, I love what I'm doing.
And I'm really lucky to be here at this particular point in time.
But at some point, I'm going to want to go to one of my first loves, which is well, let me tell you, there are a lot of Americans who are thrilled that you're there, too, because they understand the battle you have with a lot of career people in the State Department who were there before the administration got there.
And you bring a comforting salve to a lot of people with the way you conduct yourself in the office.
Do you have a favorite NFL team or you?
Well, I do.
Let me just say, Russia, I just want to say one thing.
I really do like being Secretary.
I've got a great team here, a great group of people, and career and professional.
They're working hard, and people are serving in places like Baghdad and Kabul, sometimes without their family, always without their families.
They're good folks.
But in a couple of years, I'll be glad to go.
And yes, I have a favorite NFL team, the Cleveland Browns.
Cleveland, oh, my God.
Yes, who managed to let Reggie Bush have a great rookie first game?
What a disappointing season you are headed for.
Well, now let's just watch it.
15 games to go.
I'm a Steelers fan.
Oh, I see.
Anyway, I appreciate your time.
We need to have conversations more often.
It's very enlightening.
I like that rush.
Let's let it be too long the next time.
We'll do that.
Thank you very much for your time today.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and we'll be right back after this.
Stay with us.
Uh-huh.
Senator McCain getting phone calls from detainees in prison, getting to call their lawyer one phone call.
They call him.
Welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, and Open Line Friday, Gary in Naples, Florida.
Thank you for waiting, sir.
Appreciate the patience.
Rush, congratulations on your new car.
Thank you, sir.
Kudos from across Alligator Alley.
Listen, I'm wondering if we shouldn't be pinning down Senator McCain a little tighter.
And my question is a fairly simple one.
Suppose we lack information in Guantanamo due to his policies.
And say a detainee escapes, and that detainee kills one of our servicemen.
What I wonder, how would Senator McCain explain to the mother of that serviceman exactly why he died because we didn't have the information that we needed because of Senator McCain?
Let's change this.
You said you wanted to ratchet it up.
Let's really ratchet it up.
Now, the odds that this would ever happen, the question would ask if Senator McCain ever be asked is remote, but an escape wouldn't have come.
Nobody's going to escape down there.
What we have to do is assume the program is punted.
Let's just assume the McCain's side wins this and the president says, all right, screw it.
You know, the Congress won't go along with helping to determine when we're going to get hit next.
We can't interrogate prisoners, so we're going to let them all out.
And because I'm not going to have my professionals down there getting trouble, and bam, no, these guys are all let out of jail, and we get hit some months later, some period of time later, during the presidential debate, would Bernard Shaw come out of retirement to say, Senator McCain, if it could be established that the latest terrorist attack in the United States happened because of your involvement in the sort of like the Dukakis question, Bernard Shaw asked Dukakis if his wife, Kitty,
were raped and killed, would he support the death penalty?
And Dukakis wanted to, well, you know, I care about people, Bernard.
And he wasn't at all outraged at the assumption of the question, at the premise of the question.
He answered it as a hand-wringing liberal that he doesn't think capital punishment works, that he doesn't think the death penalty would have any effect.
Meanwhile, he's just been asked, what would you do if one of these thugs murdered and raped your wife?
And it was, I mean, even the libs were going gaga.
So we don't want to get hit again, and nobody wants that.
It's going to be real interesting to see how this all plays out.
I'm going to tell you what, folks.
The one thing that's different here is President Bush is playing hard ball when he's threatening to dump the program and not go forward with it.
And then saying if the program gets dumped, it's these guys over in Congress who are causing the problem.
See, the guys in Congress are not used to that.
They're used to the president caving.
They're not used to him vetoing things.
They're used to him caving in.
I don't see that happening on this.
This is not some social security reform issue or education bill or something else.
This is the defining issue of George W. Bush, the defining aspect of his personal character and his sense of duty as commander-in-chief.
So we keep a sharp eye on this.
But it's not all rosy for the Democrats out there, as I've been telling you.
I mean, even the savior of the Democratic Party, Barack Obama, says the Democrats are confused.
Get this new book out there dedicated to his mother and maternal grandmother, the women who raised him.
And he accuses fellow Democrats of being confused as the Democratic Party has become the party of reaction, which is something you don't want in a war on terror.
You don't want it in a war period.
You don't want a reactionary leadership that waits to react every time we get hit and then wring their hands in debate over how in the world we do react.
Will we offend people around the world if we defend ourselves?
We need to go to the UN to get permission.
The global test of John Kerry.
So here's Barack Obama.
When we come back to the break here at the bottom of the hour, I have some stuff from Charlie Rose last night on PBS.
Drive-by media panicking as the election slips away from them.
They're all upset that the Republicans are gaining confidence.
And the Democrats are starting to feel like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football.
You know, Lucy keeps holding him and gets up there to kick it.
Bam.
Lucy just pulls it away.
Charlie Brown, the idiot, never figures it out.
Just keeps trying and trying and trying, plotting away.
But the same thing keeps happening to him.
He never sees it coming.
Or he has hope.
He has a desire that she'll eventually be nice and stop teasing him and so forth.
So you'll hear those sound bites coming up.
John O'Neill has responded to John Kerry, who served in Vietnam, claiming that the Swift Boat guys come back in the 08 presidential race.
He will kick their ass from one end of the country to the next.
O'Neill had a great, great, great reaction to that, great response.
All that, plus a new study shows that abstinence education can work.
Really?
Premarital sex.
STV.
America's real anchorman, always serving humanity, a living legend behind the golden EIB microphone.
Is it indeed raining out there?
Did you go check?
I knew it.
I could tell.
We lose the satellite signal for a couple seconds, and I know it must be clouding up out there, right when Joe was here washing the car.
But that's okay.
Still helps.
All right, to the phones, Ray in Dayton, Ohio.
Nice to have you on the program, sir.
Welcome.
Thank you, Rush.
Good afternoon, and Sarah Dittos to you.
Thank you, sir.
First, I want to say thank you for all of your years of service.
I think I've been listening to you for about 17 years, and it's been an absolute education.
So thank you.
Thank you.
I really appreciate that more than you know.
Thank you.
My question is: what are your thoughts about the changes in radio?
You know, we're hearing things about HD, radio, and, of course, satellite.
And I'm interested in knowing if you've thought of going over to satellite from terrestrial or what your thoughts are on that.
Yeah, I'd be glad to answer this question.
It comes up now and then, usually on Open Line Friday.
And whenever I go speak to groups of radio management people, a question always comes up.
I think that the new delivery systems, podcasting, satellite radio, all of this, HD radio, they're fine and so forth.
But I don't think anything will be like, I was asked the other day by a radio magazine during an interview: what do you think the next gimmick is going to be that works in radio?
Is it going to be satellite?
Is it going to be podcasting?
HD?
Is it something that we don't know of yet?
Radio broadcast your telephone.
What's it going to be?
And I said, I don't think it's gimmicks that make radio work now.
I think it's content.
Radio is no different today than it's ever been.
People listen to what they want to listen to, and they'll go wherever they have to to get it.
I mean, AM was supposed to die when FM came along.
All of radio was supposed to be dead when television came along.
Look at it now.
Everybody and their uncle wants a radio show now because everybody thinks that's where the majority impact is taking place in a lot of political and cultural ways.
And there aren't any gimmicks that have made this happen.
There's no gimmicks in radio.
There's no stereo on AM.
FM is what it is.
AM is what it's always been.
It's content, content, content, content.
As to me going to satellite radio, you know, I started this program in 1988, and I started at a time when nobody in radio thought it would work because a nationally syndicated program in the daytime, a couple of them or three had been tried, but they really didn't make any impact.
They weren't making any money.
There are a couple reasons aside from what the conventional wisdom is as to why that was the case.
But regardless, they weren't.
Syndicated radio was a nighttime affair, nighttime and overnight affair.
So local stations wouldn't have to hire local people to bring in some satellite show.
And the companies that syndicated those hosts, for the most part, were not using those programs to make money.
They were using them as loss leaders to get other aspects of their network offerings broadcast during the daytime, like newscasts and the commercials contained therein.
So when I started in 88, it wasn't thought to be possible.
But look what happened.
In the process, there are a lot of radio stations, Ray, that took a tremendous risk in taking the program for business reasons and controversy reasons, political reasons.
I mean, there were people out to kill the program and destroy advertisers that supported the program.
We had quite a huge business challenge ahead of us.
The business aspect, the business model success of this program is one that's never really been fully explored and is thus not understood by even those trying to imitate it today, even on the conservative side.
In the process of building up to 600 stations, these are the stations that enabled me to succeed.
I couldn't have done it without them.
Now, satellite is an intriguing thing for some reasons, but it simply doesn't offer me the opportunity to maximize the reach that I would have of the American people.
I cannot do both with one radio show.
To put this program up on satellite would be to cannibalize the radio show on radio stations around the country.
And I get email from people repeatedly.
When are you going to be on XM or when are you going to be on Sirius?
And the only way it would be possible is if I did a different show every day and put that one up on satellite.
It would make no business sense to cannibalize these radio stations who have supported me.
And believe me, I've put these radio stations through a lot of challenges, as I have my own broadcast partners, just in the last five years.
And they've all stuck with me.
We haven't lost one station.
We haven't lost an advertiser.
It would make no sense for me to say, you know what, guys, thanks for all these great years, but I'm heading off satellite.
The second reason is, and this is nothing against satellite, but what's the combined subscribers they have now?
Is it 6 million?
I thought it was 12 million, 10 to 12 million people.
Okay, well, that would be the universe of the audience that I would have access to.
The universe.
And they're offering 250 channels, and they've got music, and they've got, I mean, they really do niche stuff on satellite.
I mean, you people never hear from me again.
And the liberals would, you know, if I went satellite, I could probably get the liberals a DNC to give me a house in Hawaii and $50 million to go to satellite.
They'd probably pay me $100 million and the house in Hawaii to retire.
The Liberals would love for me to go to satellite because that would be the end of any impact.
They'd simply ignore me.
And if you didn't have satellite, and most of the country doesn't, it just wouldn't make any sense.
This is not to criticize the satellites people.
They're going to business model.
They're trying to make it work.
And I wish I could help them in some way, but I'm not going to do a second show just for satellite.
And it's to me, people say, aren't you afraid people are going to lose you and not listen to you and go to satellites?
No, I'm not afraid of that.
What will make people stop listening to me is if the show gets boring or uninteresting.
Because it goes back to what I told you a moment ago, content, content, content.
If people want to listen to it, they'll do it with two 10 cans and a piece of string.
And it doesn't matter where it is.
If the content on satellite was something people really, really, really, really, they'd be doing better than they are.
I don't mean that as a put-down.
I'm speaking as a businessman.
And I have to look at it in a host of ways.
And I know some of you say, well, yeah, but I can't get your, and if I travel around the country, there's some dead spots and I can't pick up the show.
Why don't you make it?
It's not, I can't put it up.
Other people may do it.
I don't think it would be right to do.
If I were to go to satellite, I would have to leave terrestrial radio.
And I have judged that it doesn't make any sense for you or me to do that.
Plus, I love radio.
I grew up.
I started when I was 16 in it.
And radio has done nothing other than fire me seven times to make me want to screw it.
And I didn't want to screw it even then because I stood.
That was eight times, I think, actually.
I keep forgetting one, but it actually is eight.
So that's the answer.
I appreciate everybody's interest in this.
I'm glad you called and asked the question because it gives me an opportunity to answer it for people who have not heard the answer on previous programs or prior occasions because they may not have been listening.
But again, I mean, the best way to explain this to you is this question.
I want to repeat this that I got from, it was a Radio Inc. reporter.
He said, what's the next gimmick that's going to, and I don't think it's gimmicks that work.
I don't think it's just tricks that work.
I think it's content, content, content.
I mean, people watched Seinfeld, not because Seinfeld did promotions and gave away money and was all over the place doing personal appearance.
They watched Seinfeld because it was a good show.
And people watch 24 and not because there's anything ancillary going on.
They watch it because they love the show.
And if 24 happened to change networks, guess what?
They would go to where that network is.
But we're talking cable and television with national penetration.
It's not gimmicks.
A lot of people think it is, but it isn't.
It's just quality and content.
So I'm not worried about, hey, look, the best way to explain this to you is throughout this, for 88, 1980, I started this and there's nobody else doing what I'm doing.
Now everybody's doing it.
Conservatives, liberal, and we haven't lost any audience here.
All these conservative shows are building their own.
Because none of them are up against me.
But nevertheless, well, a couple are, but you never heard of them.
There's a reason.
We've expanded the pie, the radio business pie, like the New York Times has this story about it.
Radio in bad trouble outside of Driveton.
I recognize what this story is all about, and it's bogus.
Network radio, we've expanded the pie.
There are people advertising that had never been advertising before.
That's a great business thing.
There are more voices and more opinions being heard than ever before.
And now radio is looking to syndicated people to save the day.
And just 18 years ago, it was thought to be impossible.
It wouldn't work.
So content, content, content.
Growth, growth, growth.
We haven't had a down year yet in 18 years.
Don't expect one.
We're way ahead this year anyway.
So no reason to change anything other than to try to continue to get better and dazzle you people more tomorrow than you were even today.
Back in just a second.
All right, look, one more thing on this satellite radio business.
I practiced great restraint in the last explanation here about why various things are the way they are with me.
People are sending me letters.
Well, so-and-so is on satellite and radio stations too.
Why can't you do it?
I'm not them, and I don't know what their financial arrangements are with radio stations, but I'm just, folks, you have to trust me, I'm the one who knows here.
It's amazing to me how many people, I don't care where I go, who think I have no idea what I'm doing.
I'm doing it all wrong.
I'm not thinking of something.
You want to know how we're dealing with those of you who say you can't get the program for your, when you're driving around, you're in dead spots, and maybe you live out there on a mountain valley and the radio signals don't get there.
It's called the internet.
And it's called Rush 24-7.
This program is available via podcast where you can listen to it any time of day.
And it's available 20 minutes after the program every day.
It's just like having it on satellite, except you're paying me instead of them to join Rush 24-7.
What in the world, folks?
I mean, we're trying to accommodate everybody that wants to hear this program.
If they have to time shift it, if you have to listen to it when you can't listen to it live, it's available to you in a number of formats.
It's available on the DittoCam every day.
We've got some video upgrades coming with that down the road, too.
But we're doing everything we can to make this program available to everybody in one form or another.
There's no difference in listening to it on your iPod, traveling around, and listening to it on a radio or a satellite receiver or what have you.
But it is, it's not being denied you.
It is not being denied.
We're everywhere out there.
All right.
Mark in Hollywood, you're next.
I'm glad you waited.
Welcome to the program.
Hi, IQ Radio and Common Sense Content Doodos.
Thank you, sir.
Hugh, I mean, I'm sorry, Rush.
You're going to have to start doing this show with seven-eighths of your brain tied behind your back to make it fair.
Why?
Because I'm afraid that the biggest threat to America is not terrorism.
It's not global warming.
It's not the bird flu.
It's an epidemic of stupidity among our population, from congressmen to talk show hosts to Rosie O'Donnell.
Mark Stein yesterday said on another program how stupid Rosie O'Donnell was talking about the Christians and Muslims because they behead homosexuals in other countries.
How come the people that think that the World Trade Center towers were imploded, do they realize that the number of men in the world with the skill set and knowledge base to do that could fit in the EIB studios and they all have a business card?
Call them up.
Which one did it?
And how come people would rather form their opinion of George Bush from a clip of him falling off a Segway and oh, segues were recalled yesterday, I remember, instead of the video clip of the statue of Saddam Hussein falling down in Baghdad.
And I'm just afraid that there's just too much stupidity out there.
I hear it from you, Rush.
I hear it from other talk show hosts.
And I mean, should I give up?
Is everyone just stupid?
No, you know something?
I will make you a wager that throughout every generation of life in this country, every generation since this country was founded, has had its conspiracy theorists, has had its kooks, and every generation has thought things are going to hell in a handbasket, and these are the last days of the apocalypse.
There are people alive today that think it.
They thought it 25 years ago, 50 years ago.
It's always going to be a fact of life.
I'll bet you throughout the history of this nation.
We've had people think, my God, we're never going to survive.
The people here are too stupid.
It seems to be amplified and focused because of all the media attention that we have.
I don't think it's really that much different today than it's ever been.
You look at, you point out Mark Stein commenting on Rosie O'Donnell.
That's good.
That's new.
That used to not happen.
Rosie O'Donnell, to understand Rosie, I mean, sure, she's stupid, but why?
I heard what she said on the view.
Well, there are militant Christians too, and militant Christians and militant Islamists, there's no difference in the two.
As Stein pointed out, there clearly are.
But you have to understand Rosie is a liberal first, an American second, and whatever else, third, fourth, or fifth.
It's the same.
It's how you explain liberals.
It is their religion.
And they are liberals first.
And there are certain aspects of liberalism that trump everything else that will explain why she says and thinks the things or feels the things that she does.
The conspiracy stuff on the World Trade Center, that's just loony.
But Mike, I can't count the number of conspiracies I've been treated to.
When I was in Kansas City in 1976, I had a bunch of people come to me and try to give me the spiel on a new world order and a trilateral commission and the Council on Foreign Relations.
And it was seductive.
And I bought into it for about three months.
And I finally started asking questions to which their answers were insane.
And they couldn't even make sense out of.
So I'm not concerned about it.
I think some of these stupid people don't end up voting anyway.
Some of them obviously do, but I think if you react and treat people with the assumption that they're intelligent, you're going to get intelligence back if you treat people with high expectations.
I will admit, you know, sometimes it's tough.
I just spent 10 minutes explaining why I'm not on satellite, and I got a bunch of emails.
Well, can't you do both at the same time?
And the whole 10 minutes was devoted to why I can't do both at the same time.
And it was, well, can't you put your station up on satellite?
There are 600 of them, and stations are not on satellite.
Satellites are competing with stations.
That's the whole point.
I'd be competing with myself.
It makes no sense.
But I find if you patiently take time to explain this, eventually light bulbs do go off in people's heads.
But, you know, be cool, be calm.
It's certainly not time to give up, despite all of these fears that people have that the country is stupid.
And there's clear evidence of it in the number of liberals that get elected.
But they're not being elected to real positions of power.
And they're not going to be this time around either.
We need to explore this in more detail, actually, because it's something I think a lot of you probably are worried about.
And I would like to try to calm and soothe you.
Sadly, we are out of busy broadcast moments.
Thanks, Mark, for the call.
We'll be back here in just a second.
Stay with us.
Some of you people on a Ditto Cam say, hey, if you have to wear the same shirt two days in a row, let me know and I'll send you one.
It's a different shirt.
It's a different color.
Come on, folks.
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