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Sept. 26, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:58
September 26, 2006, Tuesday, Hour #3
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Time Text
Mary, I love you.
Greetings.
Welcome back.
Sorry, folks, I can't let you in on the joke.
It's not a joke.
I can't let you in on it anyway.
We're here at the EIB.
Excuse me.
Tickled my funny bone.
We are here at the EIB Southern Command Broadcast Excellence, all yours, Rush Limbaugh, living legend, Doctor of Democracy.
America's truth detector, all combined is one harmless, lovable little fuzzball.
Our telephone number if you want to be on the program.
800-282-2882.
Back to the uh audio soundbite situation room with Wolf Blitzer last night, CNN talking to the forehead.
And Blitzer says, Jerry Falwell said on Friday, I certainly hope that Hillary is the Democrat's candidate.
She's got 300 million so far, but I hope she's the candidate because nothing will energize my constituency like Hillary Clinton.
If Lucifer ran, he wouldn't.
Hillary would energize Falwell's flock more than the devil.
So who better to ask about this than uh than a member of the Democratic Party, uh, Paul Bagala, the forehead, who also uh would count as a member of his party, uh uh Hugo Chavez.
Here's what the forehead said.
It's a character test for Republicans.
Uh last week when Hugo Chavez, who in my eyes is a clown and a thug and a martinette, he comes.
Why would you say that?
Uh, forehead.
I mean, Hugo Chavez simply said the same things you guys have been saying, albeit with different words.
Um here's the rest of this.
To the UN and gives a really disgraceful speech insulting our president.
Stop the tape.
Well uh uh again, uh forehead, what?
Can you draw a distinction here between uh the essence of what Hugo Chavez said and what you guys have been saying for five years?
There's really not much difference here, and yet you describe Chavez as a clown, a thug, uh marionette, martinette, whatever.
Disgraceful speech, insulting our pres when did he become your president?
All of a sudden.
Um by the way, Hugo, you know, Hugo is uh is a dictator of uh of a sovereign nation.
Falwell is a private person, uh, just a preacher.
Uh Hillary is uh is not a president yet.
Um and yet all of these comparisons are made uh apparently among equals according to these people.
Here's the rest of the forehead's comments.
Democrats, Nancy Pelosi, a Democratic leader in the House, uh Charlie Wrangle, the Democratic Congressman in whose district that occurred, stand up and say that is wrong.
You should never compare our president to the devil.
Jerry Falwell compares Hillary to the devil.
Well, I don't think that's what he did.
I I I think he said that the devil wouldn't have as much effect on his constituency as uh Hillary would.
But I don't think he called her the double like Hugo Chavez did.
I still am a little confused, though, Paul, because I mean you you're you're out here ripping uh Hugo Chavez to shreds for doing essentially what you guys do.
Why did Chavez think he get away with it?
Why could Chavez do it?
You guys have set the roadmap.
You guys have described it.
You guys have laid it out, you guys have been criticizing this president, this country, this military, our foreign policy, the objectives in the war on terror to a T. Both Mahmoud Ahmadini Jad and Hugo Chavez, no doubt can come here and feel like they're on safe ground.
They I mean they certainly weren't breaking any.
You know, the Secretary of State Connellyza Rice came out today and and and blasted uh Clinton's interview on Fox and Sunday.
Said, this isn't true.
What he was saying isn't true.
Nobody left us a plan, a war plan on Al Qaeda.
And Clinton said, I gave him one of those plans, I'll put it put it together, I presented it, and I had it over Richard Clark.
I said, You give it these people because I can't start a war running, these people coming in, but I gave him that plan, and they didn't for eight months.
They didn't.
I tried, I might have failed, but I tried, at least I tried.
Banging at finger and poor Cliss uh you know it's a good thing Chris Wallace's notes were in his lap, or who knows where that finger would have landed.
Thank God we Don't have to deal with that.
Anyway, Byron York today at uh National Review Online.
Did Clinton really give Bush a comprehensive anti-terror strategy?
Clinton says he did.
The record says he didn't, uh didn't.
Uh Condoleza Rice interview with the New York Post.
We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight Al Qaeda.
The notion somehow for eight months the Bush administration sat there didn't fight Al Qaeda's just flatly false.
But Clinton says he left one.
What is it?
Which is it?
The argument over whether in January 2001 the Clinton administration left the incoming Bush gang, a blueprint, to destroy bin Laden and Al Qaeda, has been going on for years now.
Long before the Clinton Fox interview.
It came to a boil in the late summer of 2002 on the eve of the first anniversary of the 9-11 attacks.
When Time magazine published a 10,400-word story, they had a plan, blaming the Bush administration for not following the Clinton newly developed administration strategy.
Well, uh the Clinton Plan Time Reporter was drawn up after the October 2000 attacks on the coal.
In the wake of that bombing time said, White House anti-terror chief Richard Clark put together, quote, an aggressive plan to take the fight to Al Qaeda.
Clark reportedly wanted to break up Al-Qaeda cells, cut off their funding, destroy their sanctuaries, give major support to the anti-taliban Northern Alliance in Afghanistan.
In addition, Times said the U.S. military would start planning for airstrikes on the camps and for the introduction of special ops forces in Afghanistan.
It was, in the words of a senior Bush administration official quoted by Time, everything we've done since 9 11.
Time said that Clark presented the strategy paper to National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, December 20th, 2000, but Berger decided not to act on it.
We'd be handing the Bush administration a war when they took office.
Time quoted an unnamed former Clinton aid, saying that wasn't going to happen.
Instead, Berger urged Rice to take action.
But the new administration didn't follow that good advice.
The Clinton proposals time reported became a victim of the transition process, turf wars, and time spent on the pet policies of top new officials.
Time account was very explosive, or at least it seemed to be explosive until we heard more of the story.
After that article appeared, National Review talked to Georgia Republican Saxby Chambliss, who was then a member of the House chairing the subcommittee.
By the way, we documented all this to be false yesterday on this program, and it's still up on the website.
We used Clark's own book to do it.
So the Time magazine.
I'm just going through Byron York's story here because he's got some interesting details.
But the the that whole interview was classic Clinton, lie after lie after lie after lie, and they're out there telling them that, yeah, he he gave us a spinal transplant.
Well, I'm just gonna say again, if you need a backbone transplant, it means you don't have one to start with.
And it's paddily obvious.
I mean, you know people with good spines, you know people that you got backbone, you know people that hang in there and you you know when you run into the backbone of America, and you know when you're running into people who are pretenders to it.
And the pretenders to being the backbone of this country are the Democrats today, at least these vocal ones and loud ones elected in Washington, plus their kook fringe supporters out there in the blogosphere.
Anyway.
After the Time article appeared, National Review talked to Georgia Republican Saxby Chambliss, who was then a member of the House chairing the subcommittee on terrorism and homeland security.
Chambliss was perplexed.
Quote, I've had Dick Clark testify before our committee several times.
We've invited Berger several times.
This is the first I've ever heard of that plan.
Unquote, if it was such a big deal, Chamblers wondered, why didn't anyone mention it?
Finally, Richard Clark himself debunked the story in a background briefing with reporters.
He said he presented two things to the incoming Bush administration.
One, and this is a quote from Clark, what the existing strategy had been, which we know was not much, and two, a series of issues like aiding the Northern Alliance, changing Pakistan policy, changing Uzbek policy, that they had been unable to come to any new conclusions from 1998 on.
A reporter then asked Clark, were all of those issues part of an alleged plan that was late December and the Clinton team decided not to pursue because it was too close to There was never a plan, Andrea, Clark asked.
Or answered.
What there was was these two things.
One a description of the existing strategy, which included a description of the threat, and two, those things which had been looked at over the course of two years and which were still on the table.
Question.
So there was nothing that developed, no documents, no new plan of any sort.
Clark, there was no new plan.
Question.
No new strategy?
I mean, I mean, I don't want to get into semantics.
Plan strategy, there was no nothing new, Andrea.
Andrea, had had those issues evolved at all from October of ninety-eight until December two thousand.
Had they evolved, said Clark?
Not appreciably.
Amid all the controversy, some former Clinton administration officials began to pull back on their story.
One of them, who asked not to be named, told National Review that time didn't have it quite right.
Quote, there were certainly ongoing efforts throughout the eight years of our administration to fight terrorism.
It was certainly not a formal war plan.
We wouldn't have characterized it as a formal war plan.
The Bush administration was briefed on the Clinton administration's ongoing efforts and threat assessments, which is pretty much what the Bush White House said had happened all along.
But now the story's back in the news.
At least I tried I tried to destroy all Al Qaeda Clinton told Fox.
That's a difference in me, and some, including all those right wingers out there attacking me now.
They ridiculed me for trying.
They had eight months to try and they didn't.
I tried so I tried and failed.
When I failed, I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy.
Perhaps the former president hoped to put an end to the questions about his record on terrorism instead he just brought back the issue to uh public scrutiny.
That's why I hope they keep playing this video tape.
Look.
What was it I said yesterday in his own book, My Lie, his autobiography?
Life, my life.
Uh the first reference to Al Qaeda was on page seven five hundred something.
The first reference to bin Laden was on page seven hundred something in a nine hundred and ninety-five page book.
Anyway, I gotta take a quick time out.
We'll be back.
We'll continue right after this.
Everyone's a winner here on the EIB network.
That is hot chocolate and to the phones.
This is treat in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Hi, I'm glad you waited.
Welcome to the program, sir.
Hey Rush, Megadiddos can't do it.
Let me read off uh um I feel like I'm a clone or a long last kid brother of yours, and I won't go into the reasons.
Uh proud member of the graduate class of the high honors of EIB.
My dream job is to be your permanent replacement host.
Uh just wanted to get that out of the way.
Well, the job's open.
I'll apply for it at the end of the call.
Um, I was calling about the uh discussion on the fraternity.
Yes, uh Florida AM uh university.
That fraternity would be Kappa Alpha Psi.
Okay, yeah, I won't go into the name of my fraternity, although you can look it up.
It's the same as Mr. Bush, uh President Bush and his father, as well as Dan Quayle, Gerald Ford, and a few other presidents.
Skull and bones, eh?
Uh well, the fraternity back behind that organization, that's right.
But um, you know, we knew it going in that this was a rite of passage, you know, and and although it was coercion, it was coercion to become a brother, you know, a part of this brotherhood.
Um, just like, you know, they're calling this torture, but it's really a coercion.
I I didn't feel that it was ever torture, although uh Well, but wait a minute, did you ever get twenty-five stitches in your buttocks and have a ruptured eardrum?
Well, again, that's the actions of a few.
Yeah, but this is worse than what was going on at an actual prison.
That this is a good thing.
I had to apologize to our soldiers at Abu Ghrab.
I accused them of uh simply you know, replicating a typical college hazing, and I find out this hazing actually is uh far more torturous than what's going on, for example, Club Gitmo.
Well, yes, it is is very coercive, and I'll I'll tell you I did go through some things, but I went through it because I I wanted to be a member, and that I knew that going in.
I you know that that's part of what fraternal, you know, fraternities are all about.
You know, these are different times, Treat.
Uh back in the then in your day, when when when were you uh when were you initiated?
When did you pledge?
What year in all of the eighty eighty one.
Well, that's you know, you're going to be twenty-five years ago back even further.
I I remember when I first started working in um radio, I was actually started as a plebe as an intern when I was fifteen, and and most of the most of the guys at the radio station were college guys.
And uh, you know, I I hung around with them a little bit, and uh they were Sigma Kai's.
Let me tell you something.
The stuff that went on, I mean, it's exactly as you describe it, but we're you know, w with with political correctness and constant media attention, a whining moaning society, and a lot of babies out there.
I mean, if you can't handle twenty five stitches in the butt to get into fraternity, you're not worth the fraternity, right?
I don't know if I go that far.
But yeah, I I mean Well, I thought that's what you were saying.
If you really wanted to get in it as a brotherhood and so forth.
Well, my second part of that comment is the way it relates to Abu Ghraib is there are a few bad apples out there that carry it too far.
They they think that they got worse treatment, and so they, you know, they single-handedly go beyond the uh, you know, the powers that be within the fraternity um to do things in their own hands.
And I think Abu Ghraib is very similar to that because you know, this is just a couple people.
And uh, you know, that does not reflect on our whole army's view or our home army whole army's tack it tactics or the view at the top.
Well, no, I'm sure it doesn't, and you're right about that.
Um, folks, don't misunderstand me here.
I'm not suggesting that twenty-five stitches in the buttocks is a small price to pay for getting into your fraternity.
I think uh you're you're exactly right, Treat.
There are uh people that go over the line and everything.
But I'll tell you the the reaction that we have, if again put it on a graph here.
Let's say that uh normal uh and what has always been tradition is right in the middle of a bar graph.
I'm looking at a graph left or right, and the line in the middle, right in the middle of the two edges there is is what normal is.
Okay, when something goes way beyond normal in either direction, our society today has a tendency not to roll things back to normal, but to take them back even further than where they were, uh in an overreaction to what are isolated attents or incidents, uh and when that starts affecting the way we prosecute wars, which is exactly what's happened here, uh, then it then it becomes uh dangerous.
I mean, it becomes a it becomes a detriment.
Uh and now we've got well well, uh while wait till I get to it in the stack.
I don't want to I don't want to try to paraphrase uh what I'm gonna say here about McCain and and these guys seizing the moral high ground on on the behalf of the country because McCain's out there uh proudly announcing what will no longer be permitted and what no longer will be tolerated and so forth, and it's just we're a bunch of pansies.
You know, p excuse me, we've become a bunch of pansies, and it's part of the feminization of our culture.
I had some I had some people suggest to me, you know, Rush, I hear you've been watching twenty-four.
What else do you watch on to?
Nothing.
Well, you know, you ought to watch this Gray's Anatomy.
I said, what's that?
Well, it's it's a hospital show.
So I said, okay.
So I went out and I got the first two seasons, and I watch a little bit.
You know what it is?
I mean, I'm no I'm going to insult some of you.
And I'm not trying to do that.
But it's chick show.
It is a pure do you watch it, Dawn?
Aha.
So you've seen it a couple times.
Couple times.
You what about you, Brian?
Do you watch it?
You never seen it?
Sturge leave you.
Uh you've seen you've seen it, H.R. You see everybody is messed up.
The angst in this sh it's a relationship show.
Set in a hospital.
It wears me out.
I w I watched two or three episodes.
I I could tell it's going to take two seasons to resolve this love affair, and I don't have time.
I I just I just uh and I look at all of this and I look at the chickification of news, and I look at this I still, I'll be very honest, I still do not understand the sh the overwhelmingly over the top mock outrage of what happened at Abu Grab with that first series of photos that we saw.
Uh and I I frankly am still stunned when I read blogs and go on the web and listen to these angry libs talk about torture the way they do when they haven't the slightest understanding of what it is.
Uh and I will admit there are some things about liberals I do not understand.
I know most of them like the back of my hand every square inch in my glorious naked body, and I can predict what they're gonna do.
But some of their attitudes about things are so cloistered, so in denial of reality.
Uh there should not be anything painful in life.
There should not be anything challenging in life.
Uh Nobody should ever do anything that they consider wrong, and if they do, it is a major, major breach of utter humanity.
And so forth.
And yet this quest for perfection that they demand is somehow one that they never impose on themselves.
It really just a just a confused uh confused bunch.
I mean, how old is college hazing?
And how many excesses have there been?
And yet it still is big news.
By the way, uh, ladies and gentlemen, stand by on audio sound by 22 up there.
The uh broadcast control complex.
Uh Mrs. Clinton has weighed in on her husband's uh spinal transplant.
Democratic party.
Sorry.
I cannot stop laughing from the moment this show began.
USA Today and AP go out and find a bunch of idiots who are upset, two-thirds of them are Democrats that the gasoline price is falling, think it's a conspiracy.
And I marvel at how easy it is for these people in the media to find these idiot people, and now they get the the forehead out there saying, Dr. Clinton, good Dr. Clinton gave our party a spine transplant.
Now here's Hillary out there uh weighing in on this.
Uh she had a press conference.
My husband did a great job in demonstrating that Democrats are not going to take these attacks.
You know, all you have to do is read the 9-11 Commission uh to know what he and his administration did to protect Americans and prevent terrorist attacks against our country.
He didn't prevent any.
He didn't even quote the 9-11 report.
Have you people talked to each other since this happened?
He kept quoting the Richard Clark book.
He told us, Hillary, to go out and look at Richard Clark's book.
You're telling us to go look at the 9-11 Commission report.
You're telling us that he did all this great stuff to protect Americans and prevent terrorist attacks against our country.
Shall we go through the list of things that happened in the 1990s?
Didn't prevent any of the ones that happened.
Uh okay.
And she has become an issue, ladies and gentlemen, the Maryland uh Senate race.
This is from the Baltimore I'm sorry, it's the New York Sun.
Senator Clinton becoming an issue in the race for Senate in Maryland.
They are going to release one of the most partisan controversial and divisive members of their party to campaign against me, said Michael Steele, Republican senatorial candidate, in an email to potential supporters, and that person is Hillary Clinton.
Can this possibly be?
The Democrats are gonna send Hillary in to campaign against Michael Steele.
Is that all they've got?
They got to send Hillary in to do this.
By the way, did I see the other day, Snergly, that Imfume has thrown in with Michael Steele.
Could you check on that?
I check on that because I could swear that that I that I saw that somewhere.
Uh Pickerington, Ohio, this is Bob.
Bob, I'm glad you waited.
Welcome to the program, sir.
Megadethos from the heart of Buckeye Country, right?
Thank you, sir.
Thanks very much.
You bet.
I think the president has a golden opportunity, hopefully has not missed it, to garner overwhelming support for the initiative in Iraq by using the same linkage.
The fact that we're in Iraq has led to terror or increased risk of terror, using that same linkage to validate that we're on target.
In other words, question to Ted Kennedy.
Were we safer or more at risk after we declared war on Japan following Pearl Harbor?
Now we could have we could have tried to be neutral.
We could have given up Hawaii.
We could have signed a peace treaty very similar to what England and England and Fort.
Or we did we we could have apologized for making them mad at us and asked them why they were mad at us, then we could have convened in countergroups to find out why it is the Japanese hate us so much.
Right.
Uh the, I mean, we the linkage is true.
May maybe we have, but you cannot take a you can't take a broom and hit a hornet's nest uh and expect not to get stung and not the hornets aren't going to come out and say, oh, we better run and hide.
They're gonna attack and try to preserve the hive.
So the fact that we are provoking a response means that we're on target.
And I think Bush ought to drive home that point, and you know, most of conservatives and common sense Americans will understand that.
I think they do anyway, without the president driving it home.
The idea that you get attacked and responding makes you I mean, take it to your neighborhood.
You got a rapist running around the neighborhood, or you got a burglar, whatever.
You telling me that sending the cops after him or trying to catch him is uh is going to make him even angrier, and therefore the neighborhood would be safer if we just didn't provoke the guy.
That's what they're saying.
Everybody understands this is pure blarney.
It's BS, but it is their agenda to get out of a river.
Their agenda, their point is to prove or establish if they can that Bush is the enemy, that Bush has created all of this hatred for the U.S., and that 9-11 actually happened because Bush won the election.
They're not saying that.
They want people to infer it.
They're trying to make Bush out to be the devil.
They're trying to make Bush out to be the whole sole problem of why terrorists want to attack the United States, which of course is absurd.
Uh brilliant comment today from the Afghan president Hamid Karzai, which we played earlier in the program.
It'll be on our website tonight.
It's just tremendous.
Just without pointing a finger, just really putting a stupid journalist in her place.
And the uh the president uh did the same thing.
All right, uh Imfume has not thrown in with the steel, but he wasn't at the big Hillary fundraiser for Ben Carton.
Uh he was uh notably absent.
Speaking of all this, Bob, I I want to I want to go back to the uh Victor Davis Hansen piece that I read earlier, in which I culled a quote about the uh latest Al-Qaeda reader and the things they're putting out, Dr. Zawahiri about what's wrong with America, and it reads just like a Democrat rant.
Uh we haven't signed Kyoto, we have desecrated the environment.
Uh Bush doesn't care about America.
He was reading a GOAT story on the morning of 9-11, uh lack of campaign finance reform in the United States, inadequate health care coverage for 40 million.
This is what Al Qaeda is putting out in their latest little pamphlet that'll be circulated amongst Al-Qaeda readers on websites.
And as Hanson points out, where they get this stuff.
They're in a cave.
Where do they get this?
They get this and people like Noam Chos Chomsky in his book, they get it from CNN, they get it from listening to Democrats.
That is where they get this stuff, and they put it out, and they sound just like that.
If I were the Democrats, I would be appalled.
That our number one sworn enemy is using their talking points, but they think it's gonna help them.
Anyway, at the end of the piece, and it was your your uh comment about attacking Japan, uh, or actually we declared war on Japan after they attacked us, uh, and did we open ourselves up to increased danger?
Yeah, we did.
Uh but what would have been the case had we not?
Anyway, Victor Davis Hansen writes this today, I finished the last class of a five-week course I taught this late summer at Hillsdale College on World War II.
And you know what it's striking?
Is the adrupt uh abrupt end of the war, whose last months, the last months of World War II, saw the worst American casualties in Europe of the entire struggle.
Ten thousand six hundred and seventy-seven of our soldiers died in April 1945 alone.
Just a few days before the collapse of the Nazi regime.
About the same number of Americans uh lost their lives a year earlier during the month of June in the 1944 landings at Normandy and the slogging in the hedgerow.
Okinawa saw our worst casualties on the ground in the Pacific and was declared secure only six weeks before the Japanese surrender.
1945 was far bloodier than 1939.
A reminder that in the midst of a war, daily losses are not necessarily a barometer of how close or how far away is the end of the carnage.
Ask the Red Army, for whom the final siege of Berlin, 361,000 367 Russian and Polish soldiers lost, may have been their worst single battle of their entire war, itself characterized by killing on a scale unimaginable in the West.
I don't know how close or far away we are in Iraq from securing a chance for Iraqi democracy to stabilize, but I do know.
Despite the recent spate of doom and gloom journalistic accounts, that is in all wars, it is almost impossible to tell from the 24 hour pulse of the battlefield.
You hear that number, 10,677 of our soldiers died in April 1945 alone.
About the same number a year earlier, the month of June, the 1944 landings at Normandy.
And this was at the end of the war.
Anyway, brief timeout.
We'll be back.
Much more, plus your phone call straight ahead.
Hi, welcome back.
Great to have you, Rush Limboss serving humanity.
Simply by being here.
Simply by showing up, the EIB network at 800-282-2882.
Well, yesterday, Senator McCain, I see a couple days ago, Senator McCain listed some of the rights that terrorists now have, thanks to him.
According to McCain, they have the right not to be subjected to waterboarding, extreme sleep deprivation, and forced hypothermia.
This is why I suggest we just empty Abu Grab and send these guys to Florida State and Florida AM and have fraternity up there.
I just wonder if this poor guy that got 25 stitches in the butt and a busted eardrum is protected by the Geneva Conventions common Article 3.
No answer to that question that we sent in earlier to uh Senator McCain.
Uh terrorist organizations also have the right, according to McCain, to know in advance what practices apparently are off the table when it comes to torture or interrogation techniques.
And he defended all this, which is which is really no more than advocacy for rights of terrorists, by saying we have to have daring moral ground.
You get it?
High moral ground.
See.
Now, apparently he thinks we didn't have that.
Before he got in gear.
I was just uh watching with Mr. Snerdley.
At the top of the hour break, we were in Mr. Snerdley's office.
I was trying to help him out with his uh dilapidated computer.
And we were watching Fox on there.
Remember, remember when uh Barbara Boxer came on with uh with their new anchor and this uh Jane Skinner.
Um had a knockdown drag out in that interview, Snerdley.
Um Senator Boxer uh thought that the questions from Jane Skinner were unfair, and said, I hear that you agree with the president.
Well, I'm not surprised, okay.
And Jane Skinner said, We're just trying to bring both sides.
Boxer, you're fair and balanced.
Thank you very much.
Uh, and Jane Skinner said, indeed we are.
Mocking tones.
I've seen Boxer do this two other times on Fox this year with uh with different anchors, and and imply that the uh the the questions are somehow tainted, unfair, slanted.
Oh, okay, so I say you agree with the president on this, okay, fine.
Very, very mocking tone.
Um I'm just wondering, we Gilly need to keep an eye on this, because I think that the Democrat long knives are going to be out for Fox now.
And I wouldn't be surprised if there is a parade of Democrat guests on Fox that in the middle of the interview sort of mockingly blow up and accuse the anchor or the reporter, whoever's doing the interview, of having questions written for him by the White House.
Oh, okay, I thought you guys are fair and balanced.
Well, if you agree with the president, fine, why don't you say that?
Something like that.
Let's just see.
Let's just see if this happens.
In a story close to my heart, my home, and my beach.
Scientists are trying to figure out why the number of loggerhead sea turtle nests has declined significantly over the past seven years on the Atlantic coast of Florida.
Sea turtle biologists said this summer has seen the smallest number of nests on local beaches in 25 years.
The trend has been seen throughout Florida, but especially noticeable from Brevard County to Palm Beach County, which is my county, where 80% of the sea turtle nesting takes place in Florida.
And I know that because we've got some of the most ridiculous, stupid, anti-lighting, must-be in the dark regulations I've ever been subjected to down here.
I'll probably get a citation from the town for just mentioning this on my radio show.
The lack of nests could be a sign of population decline, say uh say uh these biologists.
Ann Malin with Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute said biologists were analyzing nesting data dating back to 89 to document statistical changes in turtle nesting habits.
Maylon said about 70 juvenile loggerhead turtles beached themselves last week on the beaches from St. Augustine north to the Georgia border.
Scientists think the deaths were caused by a tox.
No, no, no, somebody had their lights on.
Let's get to the root of this.
Somebody had their lights on, and it really, folks, here's the deal.
It's a personal thing with me.
I'm sorry to bleed on you over this, but it irritates me.
I've seen it happen.
The sea turtles show up and they're massive creatures, and it's amazing thing to watch.
They labor out of the water.
And they climb up the beach.
It's got an angle because of erosion.
Huge beach for Island.
They just they get up there to where it's flat.
And it takes them, that can be 30 or 40 yards on maybe a 15 to 20 degree incline.
And these female sea turtles are huge, and they labor, and you know they're loaded with eggs, and they get up there, and the back flippers start going crazy, and they end up digging a perfectly circular hole.
Then the sea turtle lays her eggs, flippers go into gear, cover up the eggs.
Mama turtle turns around and just you can just sense how tired she is, heads back to the water.
That happens starting in May.
However, on the first of March, those of us who live on the beach have to turn off security lighting, landscape lighting, and everything that faces the beach.
You know why?
Because the little egglets, the turtles that hatch, are supposed to go to the water when they hatch to be 90% eaten by other creatures out there, 10% survive, and the whole process repeats.
But if they sense light, they go to the light.
So you have to turn the lights off.
Well, fine.
Just don't make me do it in freaking March when there's none of them there.
And they don't.
The eggs get laid in April in May.
I don't know when they start hatching in June.
Can't turn the lights on till December 1st.
Sea turtles are long gone.
Environmentalist wackos out there patrol the beach.
I had one of them actually call the cops on me at 10 o'clock at night in a rainstorm for violating town policy.
And a cop actually rang the buzzer.
And I thought, what the hell is this?
Walked out there, and it was this typical looking environmentalist, just knew it.
I was in total compliance, total harassment.
Now there's a shortage of sea turtles.
They don't know where they're going.
Don't know what's happened.
Maybe population problem.
Now they're not in my backyard, but besides that, you know, when I was building the house, showed up one day, and there were no lights on at night at all because it's construction project.
Showed up, and there's some dead baby sea turtles in the uh you think I'm going too far with this, Brian?
Okay.
I it's a No, they don't.
The lights don't get to the beach.
That's the whole point.
It's absurd.
The whole thing's a don't get me started.
I got 25 seconds.
I want to finish this.
Construction project, no lights at all show up in the morning, and there's some dead baby sea turtles.
What happened?
Couldn't figure this out.
Why did they go to the ocean?
Full moon the night before.
The lights of the full moon attracted.
I'm sorry I sent the town a note saying, could you instruct me how to turn out the moon?
So I just got an email.
What's your point about sea turtles?
My point about sea turtles is I think it's ridiculous.
They can't have any lights on, and now they're not showing up anyway.
So what the hell is going on with these stupid regulations?
I know it's personal, but it's my show.
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