Backbone of America, Rush Limboni Excellence and Broadcasting Network, another hour of broadcast excellence straight ahead, a program exclusively designed for rich Republicans, right-minded conservatives, and big-time lobbyists.
And those, of course, who aspire to one or all three.
Telephone number if you want to be on the program 800-282-2882 and the email address rush at EIBNet.com.
You know what?
I'm just going to change my mind out here, Mike.
Standby audio soundbite number eight.
I got a lot of grief in the email over the break.
What do you mean, Karl Rove?
And the plans to blow up the seven NFL stadiums this way.
How cool was that, I said.
You think I just make this stuff up?
CNN, Situation Room, Wolf Blitzer, the forehead is on, and Blitzer says to the forehead, 75% at that time thought most members of Congress were out of touch with average Americans.
Democrats, the Clinton administration, as you remember, in 94, paid a huge price for that attitude.
This is shaping up to be the worst year for the Republicans in a generation.
And they're going to do everything that they can.
There's a whole lot of people today.
They're going to watch the first 15 minutes of our broadcast today and say, isn't that interesting?
We're 19 days before an election, and they hype this potential threat to the NFL.
It is interesting that these things always seem to spike right before an election.
The FBI is talking to some guy in Milwaukee, a young adult in Milwaukee, who supposedly is responsible for these dirty bomb threats being on a website to blow up several set off these dirty bombs, seven NFL stadiums.
Of course, the federal government saying the threat is not credible, yet the forehead there implying that the administration is hyping this.
And I'm sure it won't be long if it hasn't happened already, that some Democrats on their Kook blogs are going to blame this as a Rove dirty trick.
Meanwhile.
What was it the forehead said?
The forehead said it's interesting these things always seem to spike right before an election.
You mean like Foley?
And try this.
Try the timing on this.
A federal judge has ordered the Bush administration to release information about who visited Vice President Cheney's office and personal residence, an order that could spark a late election season debate over lobbyists' White House access.
The Washington Post asked for two years of White House visitor logs in June, but the Secret Service refused to process the request.
Government attorneys call it a phishing expedition into the most sensitive details of the vice presidency.
U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina ruled yesterday that by the end of next week, the Secret Service must produce the records or at least identify them and justify why they are being withheld.
Visitors to Cheney's office, visitors to Cheney's personal residence.
Washington Post wants to know.
Find out for me, Mr. Snerdley or anybody out there.
Ricardo M. Urbina, the judge, U.S. District Judge, I'd like to know who appointed him.
Senator McCain yesterday was in Iowa, and he joked that he would commit suicide if Democrats win the Senate in November.
McCain's out there on a visit to campaign for Republican congressional candidates, was asked his reaction to a potential Democrat takeover of the Senate.
He said, I think I just commit suicide, told reporters to accompanying laughter from Republicans standing with him.
I don't want to face that eventuality because I don't think it's going to happen.
I privately think he wouldn't mind it a bit because the theory, ladies and gentlemen, is that with Democrats in charge for two years of the House and or the Senate, the voters would be so fed up, Republicans so fed up, that the base would vote for McCain in the primaries, so eager would they be to elect anybody about whom it will be said he can win.
Okay, Judge, let's see here.
We're going to get the name right.
Judge Ugweth Urbina.
No, that's a baseball.
Richard Urbina, was that what it says?
Judge Ricardo M. Urbina was appointed to the district judgeship that he holds in July 1994.
Now, let's see.
Who was president then?
1994.
That would make it Clinton.
Well, what do you know?
A Clinton appointee has told the White House of Secret Service to open up all these records, who's in Cheney's office and who is in his personal residence.
The number of U.S. workers lining up for jobless benefits unexpectedly fell by 10,000 last week, the government said today in a report underscoring a relatively stable job.
Relatively stable.
What is it?
4.6 unemployment, 6.6 million new jobs created in the last two years or three, whatever it is.
Jobless claims in total were a seasonally adjusted 299,000 workers that filed new claims for state unemployment insurance benefits.
That is nothing.
The New York Times doing what it can to drag down the economy for the Democrats.
New York Times company reported today that its third quarter 2006 profit plunged 39.2% on costs related to its job cuts and a loss on its sale of its 50% stake in the Discovery Times channel.
Meanwhile, Bilo, publisher of the Dallas Morning News, said that net income for the quarter fell to $19.2 million or $0.19 per share compared to $22 million or $0.20 a share during the same period last year.
So the drive-by media, New York Times and the Bilo Corporation doing what they can do to drag down the economy so the Democrats can poke holes at it.
But is it working?
The Rasmussen Consumer Index, which measures the economic confidence of consumers on a daily basis.
Now, this just doesn't make sense.
But tell you what it says anyway.
The Rasmussen Consumer Index measures consumer confidence, jumped 2.5 points today to reach its highest level of 2006.
At 120.5, the index is up 10 points from a month ago and up 13 from three months ago.
This is just the second time in calendar year 2006 the index has topped the 120 mark.
The Rasmussen Investor Index also gained on Thursday, moving up two points to 145.5.
That's up 18 points from a month ago.
Only twice this year has the investor index measured higher levels of confidence than today.
Now, how does that jibe with all the polling data that we get that says, yeah, the economy is good and people admit it, but they just don't feel good.
They just don't like it.
It doesn't feel right.
Rush, I know the economy is doing well, but it just doesn't feel right.
I'm not happy.
George Will has a column today, and he theorizes, among other things, that the American people have grown soft because of the welfare state mentality, that there are safety nets for virtually anything that could go wrong.
And as such, there's no tolerance for natural market fluctuations, such as the spike in gas prices going up.
People just can't believe it.
There's nowhere they can go to get an assistance check to help them cope with a new price, the higher price.
And so they get panicky and they blame it on a conspiracy.
And then when the prices come down, there's not an appropriate, ooh, wow, we appreciate what the government's doing for us.
They blame the government when the price goes up.
The government doesn't need credit when the price goes down.
And it's all because of the lingering welfare state mentality that we established in this country for many, many, many moons.
Some other factors he's thrown in there, I'll share with you as the program unfolds today.
Consumer confidence, measured by Rasmussen, at an all-time high, while at the same time, we're getting drive-by media polls that tell us that the vast majority of the American people are depressed and in a funk over the lagging speed of economic recovery and good economic circumstances in their lives.
Back in just a second.
Having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have El Rushbow, half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
All right, here's the George Will column: Prosperity Amid the Gloom.
Recently, Bill Clinton at the British Labor Party's annual conference delivered what the Times of London described as a relaxed, almost rambling, and easy anecdotal speech to an enthralled audience of leftists eager for evidence of America's disappointments.
Never a connoisseur of understatement, Clinton said that America is now outsourcing college education jobs to India.
But Clinton, as Cassandra, should not persuade college students to abandon their quest for diplomas.
You know what the unemployment rate is among college graduates in the United States?
2%.
The unemployment rate among college graduates is 2%.
Is it any wonder we had this story?
I forget where this came from yesterday, about all these people that are just, whoa, whoa, if you don't have a college degree, you're going nowhere in this country.
Hasn't that been the message that kids have been taught in this country?
I was taught that the whole time growing up.
You don't go to college, son.
Everybody's going to outpace you.
They're going to outperform you.
You're not going to get your foot in enough doors, son, because nobody's going to think you're educated unless you're getting a degree.
Everybody's told this girl.
Were you told that, Brian?
Were you told that, Dawn?
You weren't?
You were.
Yeah, okay.
Everybody's told this.
All of a sudden, now, where did this expectation that you're going to be in the top 5% of income earners if you don't go to college come from?
When did that start?
So here's Clinton saying, yeah, we're outsourcing college-educated jobs, college-degree people to India.
Clinton is always the leading indicator of progressive fashions and rhetoric.
His speech yesterday at Georgetown was, I mean, it was a puker.
It was just, it was filled with lies about how he ran his administration, how he looks at politics.
You know, I don't look at this as there's either right or wrong.
And if you're an ideologue, you have to live in a state of denial.
Because if you are an ideologue and someone comes along and challenges your worldview, you have to deny it.
You have to ignore it.
And so you aren't open to discussion.
You aren't open to fair, unreasoned arguments.
So he's going on and on and on.
I was, gee, Wiz, this is one of the most leftist administrations that we have ever had.
Their holdovers are still in this government as a shadow government trying to destroy people.
They're in the CIA.
They're in the FBI.
They're at the State Department.
They're at the Pentagon.
Their latest target is Kurt Weldon.
They're trying to take him out.
And we get this speech from this guy yesterday about how open-minded and reasonable.
I like all forms of argument and debate.
That's the only way you get the right answer.
Listen to all points of view.
Everybody matters.
It's just, it is preponder.
The audience, just like the audience in Britain that Will talks about, the audience was eating it up at Georgetown.
Clinton is always a leading indicator of progressive fashions and rhetoric.
And every election year, meaning every other year, brings an epidemic of dubious economic analysis as members of the party out of power discern lead linings on silver clouds.
Worst economy since Herbert Hoover said carry in 2004.
While that year's job growth, the economic growth was 3.9%.
Today's unemployment rate, 4.6%, is lower than the average for the 1990s, which was 5.8.
And everybody thinks of the 90s as a boom economy under Bill Clinton.
The average unemployment rate was 5.8%.
It's 4.6% today, lower, in fact, than the average unemployment for the last 40 years, which is 6%.
Some economic stall we're in, right?
Some economic slowdown we're in.
George Will calls what we're facing today economic hypochondria.
You hypochondriacs know who you are.
One sniffle and you think you've got a cold.
Something wrong on your skin, you think you've got cancer.
A pain in the wrong place and you think you have appendicitis.
Everything.
You know, hypochondriacs are hypochondriacs.
And we've all encountered them.
Well, Will calls it economic hypochondria, a derangement associated with affluence, a byproduct of the welfare state.
An entitlement mentality gives Americans a low pain threshold.
Witness their recurring hysterias about nominal rather than real gasoline prices and a sense of being entitled to economic dynamism without the frictions and creative destruction that must accompany dynamism.
Economic hypochondria is also bred by news media that consider the phrase good news an oxymoron, even as the U.S. economy, which has performed better than any other major industrial economy since 2001, drives the Dow Jones industrial average to record highs.
The Jack No. 2 well, Deepwater, 175 miles southwest of New Orleans, recently discovered a field with perhaps 15 billion barrels of oil, a 50% increase in proven U.S. reserves.
This news triggered a gusher of journalistic gloom.
More oil means more wool, a reprieve for that enemy of humanity, the internal combustion engine, and more global warming, more air pollution, more highway fatalities, more suburban sprawl.
The recent 20% decline of the cost of a barrel of oil from a nominal record of $78.40, which, by the way, adjusted for inflation was well below the 1980 peak of $92 in 2006 dollars.
The 20% decline in the cost of a barrel of oil has produced an 81 cent decline in the average cost of regular gallon of gasoline in 70 days.
For consumers, that is akin to a tax cut of more than $81 billion.
President Bush's tax cuts were supposed to cause a cataract of red ink.
In fiscal 2006, however, federal revenues as a share of GDP were 18.5% higher and above the post-1962 average of 18.2%.
The federal budget deficit, $247.7 billion, just 1.9% of the $13.1 trillion GDP.
That is below the average of the 70s, the 80s, and the 90s.
It is said that workers' compensation has been stagnant.
But to tickle that bad news from the statistics, you have to treat compensation as a synonym for wages and then ignore the effect of taxation on individuals' well-being.
Taxes, particularly those paid by middle-class families with Churin, have declined substantially.
There's no question the middle-class about, well, you've seen the numbers on our website, who's paying taxes and who isn't.
Still have the payroll taxes, but we're talking income taxes here now.
Consumers, by modifying their behavior, protect or enhance their well-being in ways not captured in economic stats.
For example, an American who, prompted by higher energy prices, traded in his Hummer for a Prius, has served his or her standard of living.
If I ate 80 apples last year and the price of apples increased this year to a million dollars, my welfare would not go way down.
I'd just switch to oranges, the authors write.
People make changes.
They accommodate.
Finally, today's widening income disparities will be partly self-correcting.
Now, granted, income statistics show the increasing disadvantages of persons with education deficits.
But that's the market, shouting really, stay in school.
That's what the market's saying.
Stay in school.
Over time, the voice of the market is rational, credible, and therefore a potent instrument for changing behavior.
And yet, the drive-by media, in concert with the Democrat Party, has convinced people that this is a pretend good economy.
It's all built on phony, false, feel-good things that aren't working.
It's going to crash down upon us.
Immediate deficits out of control.
National debt's out of control.
Everything's out of control.
Gas prices are going to go up after the election.
Everything's going to go up after Christmas prices are going to go up.
It's going to be a miserable if George Bush and the Republicans win.
And you can't trust any of this that's happening now because it's all fake, phony, baloney, plastic, banana, good time rock and roll, marketing and packaging.
When in fact, it is legitimate and it is the market.
So what do we have?
We have cut-and-run conservatives today, and we have economic hypochondriacs.
And both groups will play a large role in dooming the future of the country for the next few years.
Back in just a second.
Stay with us.
Even the stingrays are afraid of this program, ladies and gentlemen.
We're back at 800-282-2882.
And to the phones we go, this is Ty in the regions of the nation's capital.
Hi, Ty.
Nice to have you with us, sir.
Entrepreneurial United States Navy dittos.
What an honor it is to speak to you, Mr. Lindlaugh.
Thank you, sir, very much.
I just wanted to tell you, I agree with you 100% that the terrorists are the number one deciding vote in the election that's coming up.
I don't think that the Republicans are going to lose as long as they keep talking about the things that are going on.
Well, I would hope so.
The terrorists have a different view.
They are voting.
They are in the early voting category now.
They are ratcheting up the havoc and the chaos, and they're trying to create news every day that results in more death of U.S. servicemen and women and civilians in Iraq.
They think that they're thinking, because they know the media in this country, Ty, they know that that news is going to be portrayed as a failure of the Bush administration.
It will not be seen as a sign of how dangerous these people are, of how serious they are and the threat they pose.
It will be seen as a failure, the Bush administration, for the inability to stop this.
That's why they're voting early.
And it's no question for whom terrorists are voting.
Voting Democrat.
But I don't think that there's any question that the more they talk, the more we're going to beat the Democrats at the polls because the Republicans are strong on security.
The homeland hasn't been attacked.
The economy is strong.
Everything is going our way.
That is a good point.
Democrats say that Bush hasn't made us safer.
Well, how much safer can you get than not one more attack on U.S. soil since 9-11?
How can you do any better than that?
Exactly.
Exactly.
I just want to thank you for your optimism and your inspiration because you have allowed me to step out into the entrepreneurial atmosphere of the United States and start my own business.
And hopefully, one day I'll be large enough to have a commercial on your program.
What are you up?
That is one of my goals.
What is your lofty goal?
That's a great goal.
That's right.
That's right.
Well, I'm going to, you know what?
I'm going to help you to realize that goal even now.
I appreciate that.
Well, you haven't asked what it's going to cost yet.
Okay, okay.
What's it going to cost?
No, it's not going to cost anything.
I would be afraid to tell you our commercial spot right here.
Our competitors would give up if they knew what we did.
What is your business?
I'm an electrical contractor.
I'm also an aviation electrician in the United States Navy.
An electric contractor, and you have a Navy?
Yes, sir, I am.
Aviation electrician, okay.
Aviation electrician in the Navy.
Yes, sir.
You're in the Navy now.
I'm a reservist.
I signed up after 9-11.
Wow.
I just got back from Iraq, and the media couldn't be more wrong about how the country despises the war.
I was there, and you could not count the number of packages, the number of letters, the number of gifts, no matter what anybody asked for that came flowing into Iraq for the soldiers from all over the country.
The stuff was never from one place.
Anything they asked for, they got with unconditional support.
It was just a totally humbling experience.
Yeah, but you know, to the liberal media, that is not a sign of decency and goodness on the part of the American people.
It's a sign of weakness on the part of the U.S. Pentagon that the people of this country have to send such packages over to you means that Rumsfeld doesn't care about you.
I'll tell you, it didn't matter.
You could ask for anything you wanted.
The soldiers that had family, the soldiers that didn't have family, no matter what you asked for.
CD, DVD, Walkman, iPod, it was in the mail to you with unconditional love and thanks for what we did.
We have heard about that, and it warms all of our hearts here.
Now, I'm confused.
Your business, are you still in the Navy?
You're a Navy reservist, but have you started your business, your electrical reservoir?
Yes, sir.
I'm sorry.
I put my business on hold while I went and did my tour in Iraq.
I just got back a month ago, and now I'm trying to get the business off the ground to a footing to where if I'm called back in the theater, I can still have the business run without me being there.
Well, what's the name of your business?
My business is Delivered Electric.
Your business is Delivered Electric?
Is that hearing you right?
Yes, sir.
Yes, sir.
Well, you just got your first commercial.
You are the man.
I am so honored to talk to you.
Thank you so much.
No, it's us who thank you, or we who thank you, Todd.
Thanks very much for calling.
I appreciate it.
And it's great to hear your optimism.
I can't tell you how refreshing that is.
It's all due to you.
Without listening to you, I don't know where I would be.
I took the housing market and the bubble and took a house that I bought for $66,500 and sold it for $325,000 so I could start my business.
God bless you.
Isn't the market a wonderful thing?
It's an awesome thing, man, and I owe it all to you for hanging in there and just doing what's right, you know, doing what's right, and that's what you're all about.
I thank you so much, Mr. Limbo.
Thank you, Ty.
You have a great rest of the week, and we'll talk to you again soon, I'm sure.
Meanwhile, Gene in Richmond, Virginia, you're next on the EIB Network High.
Mega Ditto's rush from Richard.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I just want to send a message out to all those Republicans who want to stay home and teach the Republicans a lesson.
All you're doing is rewarding the press and the Democrats for their tactics during this election cycle, all the negative stories they put out.
So, really, you know, if you want to teach them a lesson, teach the press a lesson and teach the Democrats a lesson by going out and voting.
Well, I think that's what they want to do.
I think they're trying to inflict pain on people they think have let them down.
Well, but all you're doing is rewarding the Democrats for their stuff and the press.
Well, I was saying yesterday, I don't understand how in the world, if you're going to look at the political system today and you're going to get mad at it, I don't know how the Republicans win that with what the Democrats have been trying to do, especially if we're talking about evangelicals or Christian conservatives.
Those people have been targeted for they have been impugned and maligned.
They have been made fun of in open, in the open by Democrats, and yet they're mad at Republicans.
There are other conservative voters that are not values voters or part of the Christian right that I'm told also angry and they don't want to show up.
I think a lot of it has to do with immigration.
But I don't know how you escaped.
This is the best way to put this is, I don't think I've ever been more wrong.
I got to come clean, folks.
I'm asking myself if I'm even qualified to do this anymore.
And I'm being dead flat honest with you.
I'm going to say a couple things that you will remember me having said.
I go out, play golf or whatever.
And for the past year, invariably, without exception, you think the Republicans, you think the Republicans will hold on the House?
Oh, yeah.
I don't have any doubts.
What about the Senate?
I don't even doubts.
Why?
I said, what are you reading?
The New York Times are said, what do you mean?
Why?
Who in the world is going to vote for Democrats?
Have you ever seen a more hateful, uninspiring group of people?
What in the world are they doing to build a movement?
What are they doing to inspire people not already on their side to join them?
My God, there's nothing but derangement, madness, lunacy, uncontrollable rage and hatred.
Somebody tell me what the attraction of that is.
I didn't see any way the Democrats could be building their base.
And I don't think they are.
I don't think the Democrats are growing at all.
I didn't think they had a chance.
What in the world?
I've always thought people vote issues.
I know that's what elected Ronald Reagan to two landslides.
I know it's what elected the Republican House in 94.
I've always believed that people vote issues.
Well, the Democrats are not giving anybody any reason to vote for them at all.
Why had somebody call me today and said the Republicans aren't giving anybody any reason to vote for them?
News to me.
Now, I'm not seeing all the commercials that are running out there, but I listen to the president who's the standard-bearer of the party, and I've heard other candidates talk about the security, the national security issue, the Supreme Court, tax cuts and making them perfect.
What do you mean?
Then all of a sudden, just seems like three weeks ago, I start seeing a plethora of stories about how Republicans are mad and they're not going to vote and they're staying home.
And I'm puzzled by this, and I'm hurt by it because it doesn't make any sense.
I do not live the life of a hermit.
I am not in a cocoon.
I am out there all the time.
I've not run into one person tell me they're not going to vote this year.
I go out to these Russia Excellence appearances, admittedly, not a whole lot of them, but not as many as I used to do.
But wherever I am socially, I have never heard a Republican come up to me and say, Damn, Republicans have made me submit.
I'm not voting.
Screw them.
I've heard anger at Republicans.
Why don't they fight back?
Why don't they tell the Democrats what the hell and what's it for?
But I don't hear anybody saying they're not going to vote now, three weeks before the election.
And I guess this only started last week.
All of a sudden, last week, what's the big news?
What's the media template?
Cut and run conservatives, my name, but Republican conservatives are going to vote.
Well, yeah, Rush, but that's just as a Foley thing happened.
That's what's caused it.
I say, well, this may be why I'm not qualified to sit here and do this anymore.
Because it's patently obvious to me that the Foley thing, with all that's known about it, and it's possible to know all that there's known about it, the Foley thing is a politically timed trick.
The Democrats have had this information.
The media has had this information for months, in some cases weeks, sat on it.
It's a politically timed thing.
I am stunned after all these years that the sophisticated, learned, educated people on our side are fooled by this and impacted by it to the point to throw up their hands in frustration and say, heck with it, I'm not voting.
I assumed that people on our side were more informed, more educated now than ever before, and understood these kinds of dirty tricks and were immune to them.
That's where I'm wrong, apparently.
Apparently, the same old, same old still works.
And so I'm left here to question my ability to read the American public, particularly those on my side of the aisle.
I guess things haven't changed in 18 years.
I guess the Democrats can continue to play the same old dirty tricks, get away with the same old hypocrisy.
The media can do what we know it's going to do.
I am stunned.
People are surprised at the alliance between the Democrats and the media.
I'm stunned that people still get mad at it as though it's new.
I just assumed after all these years that a new level of awareness and understanding had been reached, and this stuff, while it would work on some, would not have the across-the-board impact it seems to be having.
So, as such, I am pronouncing myself unqualified to sit here and analyze this stuff anymore because apparently I'm out there talking to them, and I don't hear one word about people saying they're not going to vote.
And apparently, it is the dominant mood among conservatives in America today.
So, I don't know.
We'll play around.
All right, time for a little history lesson here for what it's worth.
The Libs trying to make a big deal out of the fact that George Bush agreed yesterday with Tom Friedman that we could be witnessing the equivalent of the Tet Offensive, the Vietnam War Tet Offensive currently in Iraq.
Stephanopoulos was doing an interview with the president, said Tom Friedman wrote in the New York Times, whose profit, by the way, has declined 39% in their latest report, that we might be seeing the Iraqi equivalent of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam in 1968.
Tony Snow this morning said he might be right.
Do you agree?
He could be right.
There's certainly a stepped-up level of violence, and we're heading into an election.
But what's your gut tell you?
George, my gut tells me that they have all along been trying to inflict enough damage that we leave.
And the leaders of al-Qaeda have made that very clear.
Here's how I view it.
First of all, al-Qaeda is still very active in Iraq.
They are dangerous.
They are lethal.
They are trying to not only kill American troops, but they're trying to foment sectarian violence.
They believe that if they can create enough chaos, the American people will grow sick and tired of the Iraqi effort and will cause government to withdraw.
As I have phrased it brilliantly today, the terrorists are the early voters in the November elections.
They're voting Democrat.
But I want to talk about this Tet Offensive business because the libs are just ecstatic.
They think this is the equivalent to them of having Bush admit, we're going to be getting out of there pretty soon, and I'm not going to run for president anymore.
And I'm quitting.
And that was a mistake, and I'm sorry.
Because it was the Tet Offensive that drove Lyndon Johnson from office.
He refused to run.
The Tet Offensive January, February, by April, Lyndon Johnson went on TV, said, I will not accept and I will not seek the nomination of my party to be your president.
Bang, off he went.
Now, what was the Tet Offensive?
The Tet Offensive was a massive, massive offensive by the North Vietnamese commies in which they lost a huge number of men.
They lost the invasion.
They lost the military objective.
But the propaganda is what they won.
It was so intense and so bloody at such a stage in the war.
It looked and was because it was on television.
And Walter Crown Kite and his clowns put it on television.
It was made to look like this thing never going to end.
It is out of control.
Look at the size of this.
Why we can't ever beat these guys.
Well, there's more of them than we knew were alive.
And so that's what they're agreeing with.
That could be the equivalent of the Tet Offensive, if you want to say that.
But what the liberals are trying to say is that the TED Offensive worked by the North Vietnamese, not militarily, but propaganda-wise, because it drove us out.
Now, what that means is that the drive-by media in this country is eager for us to win the battle and lose the war and come out of there.
They are eager.
They are eager for their version, the propaganda version of the TED Offensive to be applied to what's happening now in Iraq.
Mr. Snerdley is sending me a little note here saying that it was only on this program some years ago that he learned that we actually won the Tet Offensive.
Snerdley had lived all of his life thinking that that was the big battle, and we got creamed, and Johnson knew it was over, and we had to get out of there.
We won them.
The North Vietnamese lost.
I forget what the number is, but it's phenomenal.
They launched a lot of people.
They did not win it.
But the propaganda that came out of it, because American anchors turned against the war, were able to portray with pictures all of that action as never-ending.
Look at how many of them there are.
We can't beat these people.
And Johnson fell for the propaganda.
He says, I can't win the war because it's on television.
The difference in Johnson and Bush is that Bush is not going to quit, and he's not going to get.
He understands what the Tet Offensive is.
I just want you to know for what it's worth.
Well, it doesn't matter anymore.
The Tet Offensive was a U.S. victory portrayed as a loss via propaganda that drove a president from office.
And that's why the Democrats are so damn eager to draw that connection.