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Nov. 16, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:24
November 16, 2006, Thursday, Hour #2
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And welcome back to the Russian Limbaugh Program.
Roger Hedgecock here from the Left Coast.
I'll tell you one thing I agree with on caller John and the other caller from Concerns About the Midwest, and that's the second part of their observation.
The first part uh didn't hold any water, but the second part was about illegals.
And there isn't any question that the advance of uh that I was talking about, the increase uh even inflation adjusted increase in average wages uh would be a lot higher were it not for the presence of uh twelve, fifteen, twenty million, whatever the number is of illegals uh in uh LA County, uh sixty percent or more working under the table for cash.
Uh this is uh the largest black market economy in the world is uh what's going on now in the United States.
It is depressing wages, it is taking work Americans would otherwise do.
It is uh uh one of the great defects of the Bush administration.
I've been talking about this forever.
Um but let's get back to the what happened just now because I'm still stunned by watching it uh on the cable news uh networks, the press conference being held by Speaker elect Nancy Pelosi of the House of Representatives, the uh first woman uh speaker, uh third in line for the presidency in her power red suit, coming out with Stenny Hoyer that she opposed as her number two hand in hand.
Uh the person she wanted as number two, John Mertha, way in the background with a scowl on his face, uh the press conference was held.
Uh Nancy Pelosi got her head handed to her uh politically in the first test of her leadership skills.
Now they're gonna have to patch things up, and uh they've made a brave face of it uh today.
In the Christian Science Monitor, Nancy Pelosi uh right after the election wrote, we pledge to make this the most honest, ethical, and open Congress in history.
Well, let's hold them to it, as I like to say.
Let's hold their feet to the fire on this because ethical, honest, open, uh I didn't uh I don't have to get back into the Mirtha problems, ABSCAM and others, because that's been covered by the New York Times editorial page, the LA Times editorial page, the Washington Post editorial page, and all of them bringing back up the fact that wait a minute, if you're gonna have open, ethical, honest government, this is not the guy you turn to.
You like him because he's against the war in Iraq now.
Wasn't before, is now.
But uh keep in mind what he brings to the table.
So the uh in terms of the unethical issues.
In fact, didn't he say yesterday that this emphasis on uh ethical uh the ethical concerns was a load of yes, he did.
So there we are.
Now, the Democrats in the House having more sense than their uh Speaker elect have elected uh Stenny Hoyer, who is a mainstream since 1981 member of the House, uh liberal from Maryland, and uh not expected to be uh wildly offensive to anybody here.
But uh there's another side to this.
And I hate to bring this stuff up, but I mean you gotta know, I think you have to know, because if you know, like that caller John, if he knew more facts, he'd be less emotionally attached to stupidity.
Um if you know more facts, you're going to be emotionally attached to the truth.
Okay.
Now, one of the great truths, uh truth telling in its purest form, a book that uh Rush loved and I loved, called Do as I Say Not As I Do.
Chronicling Liberal Hypocrisy.
Uh this is an easy thing to do, but it turns out putting it all in one book was a wallop, I must say.
Do as I say, not as I do is the title of a book by Peter Schweitzer.
He joins us from Tallahassee, Florida.
Peter, welcome to the program.
Hey, Roger, it's great to be on with you.
Thank you.
I want to I want to I want to get back to Nancy Pelosi, because I'm reading in your book.
Here she is, the winner of the 2003 Caesar Chavez Award from the United Farm Workers, and yet uh you finished the sentence.
Well, and yet uh she doesn't use members of the United Farm Workers Union to pick her grapes on her Napa Valley Vineyard.
Uh you know, this is uh this one uh really knocked me off my chair when I found out about it because Nancy Pelosi has been trying to get Cesar Chavez um to be given uh congressional uh uh honor uh for years, the Congressional Gold Medal, as she's praised the United Farm Workers Union, and yet she and her husband own this vineyard in Napa Valley, California.
It's valued at about 25 million dollars.
They make about a million dollars a year producing very expensive grapes for very expensive wines, and they use non union contractors to pick their grapes.
And uh in many cases, I don't know on this particular case, but in many cases that means illegals.
Well, that's exactly right.
I mean, I think one of the unwritten stories that the mainstream press has avoided is if you look at the issue of illegal immigration, Nancy Pelosi and her family, their wealth is tied up in basically three industries, the majority of it.
The first is that Vineyard in Napa Valley, California.
The second is is a uh uh a a chain of uh restaurants uh that they that they are part owners in Piasi on the West Coast, and the third is a hotel, a very exclusive hotel they own in Napa Valley, California.
All three of those industries rely on oftentimes illegal workers to bust the tables, to pick the grapes, to clean the rooms.
She has a vested personal financial interest in seeing illegal immigration not halted but actually to increase.
Uh and I think that's something that the mainstream media has to look at because it is is a bona fide fact that it's it's a motivating influence for her.
The Center for Responsive Politics, a liberal uh group, puts uh Nancy Pelosi's net worth, based on her public disclosures, as high as fifty-five million dollars.
Doesn't that make her also the richest uh speaker elect of the House of Representatives ever?
Absolutely, no question about it.
And uh in fact, uh it puts her net worth at about, oh, probably fifty-five times uh the net worth of Dennis Haster.
And you know, this is what you find uh with the leadership uh uh among the Democrats.
I mean, if you look at the wealthiest senators in the United States Senate, four out of the top five are Democrats, and they're all liberal Democrats.
Uh same thing in the House.
The wealthiest house house members like Nancy Pelosi uh tend to be very, very liberal, and that means they are out of touch uh with the concerns of ordinary people.
Uh here's a woman, here's a liberal woman hiring non-union workers in a hotel.
I mean, this is the hotel and uh motel workers are just adamant in California.
We're just we're getting uh we have a deal where all the restaurant workers get minimum wage plus tips as many other states where you get either or.
Uh you have a a very strong uh movement in the in the uh retail uh sales area and particularly in grocery sales area to try to shut down uh Walmart from bringing in cheaper prices in their super centers because the the unionized supermarket uh workers don't like it.
So you you you know there's a there's a huge union movement here.
I don't think they have any idea that Nancy Pelosi is absolutely on the other side.
Well, that that's exactly right, Roger.
I mean, we talked about the vineyard.
Uh she is also professes to be a very good friend of the hotel employees and restaurant employees union.
There was a strike a couple years ago in San Francisco where she wrote this very stern letter telling the managers of hotels you need to negotiate fairly with this union.
Well, you know, she doesn't have to negotiate fairly with that union because their hotel and their chain of restaurants, which have more than two thousand employees, are strictly non-union.
You can't join the hotel employees and restaurant employees union and work at the Pelosi restaurants or at the Pelosi Hotel.
Peter Schweitzer, uh author of the book, Do As I Say, not as I do.
If you haven't read this book, you need to get to it.
Now, here's the here's the thing that kind of grabs me because we're so immersed out here, and hopefully in other parts of the country in this issue, grappling with this issue of of of illegal workers, uh this this cheap foreign labor thing, and I've had these callers now saying we've got to get more isolationist, we've got to get more protectionist, we've got to uh uh protect our jobs and so forth and so on.
Uh Nancy Pelosi is not on their side.
Uh no, she's definitely not.
Uh you know, and you find this oftentimes with with people on the liberal left, Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, they they are economic populists when it comes to our money and when it comes to other businesses, and when it comes to paying taxes, they want us to pay taxes.
Uh but they are enormously adept at avoiding all of those kinds of considerations.
So when it comes to their businesses, I mean they don't they don't buy stock in in companies that are highly unionized.
They tend to buy stock in multinational corporations that are non-union that outsource all the sort of things they deprive.
When it comes to taxes, I mean Nancy Pelosi, you have Ted Kennedy now saying that, you know, with a Democratic majority, there is no way that the inheritance tax is going to be eliminated, the death tax.
Well, that's a wonderful statement for Ted Kennedy, but you know, he hasn't paid much of an inheritance tax at all over the course of the last 40 years because the Kennedy family places their assets in trusts, and many of those trusts they establish overseas.
So, you know, the the wealthy liberals who love the inheritance tax avoid paying it.
The people that end up paying it are people like us who can't afford an army of accountants or an army of lawyers.
Peter Schweitzer from Tallahassee, Florida, the book is called Do As I Say, Not As I Do, Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy.
You've got a lot of other books out too, Peter.
What's uh what are you working on now?
Well, I'm working on a book right now, uh, basically uh making the case that conservatives do all the heavy lifting in our society.
They're the ones that fight the wars, pay the taxes, uh, give to charity volunteers, and that that liberals, on the other hand, uh are largely dysfunctional.
If you look at a lot of the social problems that we have in America today, they're much more prevalent among liberals than they are among conservatives.
And so the end result is that we are a society of makers and takers.
Conservatives are the makers and liberals tend to be the takers.
Dick Army the other day, I saw him on the former member of the House.
I saw him on the tube, and he's saying, uh, you know, there's still too many people in the cart and too few people pulling it.
I think pretty much is the same thought.
That's exactly right.
And you know, it's it's it's really, you know, Nixon talked about the silent majority, but it's very true.
And now we have the data and the information available really for the first time in the studies and the surveys that have been done.
People haven't heard about them, of course, because people don't want to advertise them, but we have all the information now that shows without doubt who does the heavy lifting in our society.
And it is conservatives.
They are the ones that really make the country run and work.
Peter Schweitzer, we will certainly look forward to uh your work in that regard.
Thank you so much for the book, Do As I Say, not as I do, and thanks for being on today.
Hey, it's always a pleasure, Roger.
Uh Peter Schweitzer there from Telehassy, Florida, again, nailing the Nancy Pelosi deal.
She's got a big vino and the the restaurant up there in uh in Napa is Aubert's de Soleil, okay, and the Piati uh chain of restaurants, pretty well known out here on the West Coast, and I don't know where else uh, but there's apparently uh twenty of them or so.
And uh every single one of them, non-union, every single one of them, you know, contract labor when you start talking about picking the grapes.
I I don't know, go up to Napa during the uh the uh season where they're picking those grapes uh starts uh late August, early September, goes into October, and and uh and and see what you see.
Because that's the real Nancy Pelosi.
I'm Roger Hitchcock, In for Rush Limbaugh, and back with your call after this.
The more I watch this replay uh going on now on all the cable news networks on this Pelosi and leadership uh press conference, the funnier it gets.
I mean, she's off to the side there, uh overshadowed by all these taller men, blinking like crazy.
You know, she tr well I don't want to get too far into this, but uh in in in this is a woman who has not fully blinked in in a number of years.
So she when you see her trying to blink, it's really painful to watch.
And then she's up there talking about how there's it's unity and it's uh they had these great speeches and all it was mutual respect and everything, and she's going on and on, and right behind her, there's Mertha with the sour look on his face, like he just swallowed something that he.
You know.
It's too good.
All right, Jim and Albuquerque, next on the Rush program.
Go ahead, Jim.
Hello, Roger.
Hi.
Um happy to be on with you, long time um member of the institute, about fifteen years.
Oh, good for you.
Thank you.
I hope when Rush gets tired of it all and hangs up the Spurs, he'll maybe turn it over to you.
Oh, I think I'm gonna get tired before he does, but go ahead.
Anyway, I was struck with the comment that uh Nancy Pelosi made recently about how her intent is to lead the new Congress into the most open and honest and ethical or something of that nature of superlates.
Right.
And I hearken back to the speech uh Slick Willie Clinton made when he was inaugurated after election.
He and his intention was to deliver the most honest and open and ethical administration the country had ever seen.
Yeah, it sounds like that, doesn't it?
I remember that one.
Yeah.
Well, before we get before we get fooled again, uh Jim, let me just read you one of the one of the now we we've talked about the challenge that Nancy Pelosi had today trying to sell Mirtha, which didn't work.
So in her first uh uh uh action as Speaker elect, she failed.
Let me tell you about another one that I think we ought to be putting as at least as much focus on, and that's the threat uh Nancy Pelosi has uh made a uh uh this clear that she's going to uh appoint Alcy Hastings, Chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
The Intelligence Committee.
This guy's going to get the secret briefings of what the United States government is doing.
This is a this is a congressman who lists in his disclosure form liabilities ranging from $2,130,000 to $7,350,000, and uh income assets of fifteen thousand dollars.
This is, of course, the district uh federal judge who was impeached, tried, uh convicted by the Senate, and removed from office in nineteen eighty-nine for perjury and conspiracy to obtain a bribe.
The Washington Post reports.
Sounds like he needs the bribe to get him uh keep him out of bankruptcy.
Well, that's that's it.
See, this in other words, this th this all hangs together now.
Well, listen to the whole thing.
The Senate found Hastings, quote, engaged in the bribery conspiracy and repeatedly lied under oath at his trial and forged letters in order to win an acquittal, unquote.
This guy comes back from Florida, is elected a congressman, and now Nancy Pelosi wants to put this guy in the new era of ethics and the new era of openness and the new era of the Democratic majority, put this guy in charge of our intelligence.
Well, Rush continually refers to the Democratic playbook, and certainly this little speech that Pelosi just gave is right out of the playbook before he came back in 1993.
Right out of the playbook, Jim.
I appreciate the call.
Thanks.
Here's Scott in Okallala, Okalala, Florida.
Hello, Scott.
Hey, it's O'Cala, Florida.
O'Cala, sorry, O'Calla.
I was really calling a few moments ago regarding the comments by that guy who's who's saying that government policy is destroying American jobs, and I have just the opposite argument.
It's unions and their artificial inflation of benefits and salaries that have destroyed the American manufacturing industry, which is why Toyota can move into a non-unionized state like Tennessee and make a Toyota automobile for a cheaper price than an American manufacturer can make one in Michigan.
It's the union artificial inflation of wages and benefits that's done that.
That's what's crippled the American automotive industry because union negotiations have required more and more benefits.
And you know, when you get a low-skilled job paying twenty-five dollars an hour because of a union negotiation, you have to embed higher prices in your product.
And that's how you become uncompetitive.
And when you continue to require artificial inflation of ba wages and benefits, at some point any employer looks down the road and says, I can do it cheaper over there.
A lot of steel plants shut down, then they automated and figured out a way to get back in business, and now they're more competitive than they ever were.
Yep.
No, there's no question about that.
And I'll tell you the uh on this program, when I was filling in one time, I also revealed the fact that the uh the big three auto manufacturers had locked in over these long-term contracts, the idea that if they uh closed a plant that they would have to keep somebody on the payroll even though they weren't building cars.
And they had guys sitting around, apparently tens of thousands of them being paid as if they were building cars when they weren't building cars, and then they're wondering why they're not making money on the cars they are building.
Um you've hit the nail in the head in cars is a great example of the fact that we've just ignored the world competition.
Now you've got not only the Japanese, uh BMW coming in, you've got uh uh the uh Mercedes people coming in, you've got all kinds of other car manufacturers coming in, and they'll be happy to put up a plant as long as it's non-union.
Now they pay very well.
In fact, the net take-home pay of those guys in those Toyota plants in uh Tennessee and Ohio and wherever the heck else they are, uh their net take home pay is better than uh what they could get at a GM plant.
Uh they don't have to pay those fat union dues to the fat union bosses, and uh that they're taking home more money.
Now, uh they're building a better car, they're American workers, they're proud of what they're doing, and uh you got these made-in-America Toyotas and beamers and all these other cars.
What happened to America?
Well, exactly as you described it.
So is is government policy uh driving jobs overseas?
Should we do something to protect our industries here?
No.
Business is not a welfare state.
Okay?
Business is a competitive enterprise.
And when you're competitive, when you're not just expecting to be on the gravy train, when you're ready to be competitive, you can make a lot of money and you can be a success because Americans are successful.
Americans, Americans, just think about the Internet, whether it was invented by Al Gore or not.
Just think about the Internet and the impact.
Just think about you know, the cell phone, which Qualcomm Here in San Diego makes and among other people.
It took more than a hundred years to get one billion telephones on this planet.
The second billion telephones took five years.
By the end of this decade, two billion people will own not just the phones, but phones with web browsers.
Two billion people will be instantly connected in the new economy.
Are you competitive yet in that new economy?
Because if you aren't, I don't want any whining.
The opportunities are endless for American ingenuity, for American enterprise, for American perseverance and competition.
This is the time not to be talking about what we've lost, but what is there to gain for those who'll grab it.
I'm Roger Hedgecock.
Back after this.
Welcome back to the Rush Limbaugh program, the Limbaugh Institute.
I'm Roger Hedgecock filling in for Rush today.
Let's get into your calls at 1-800-282-2882.
Oh, first I want to ask you if you've filled up at a sitco gas station recently.
I don't anymore, just because I found out, what am I, the last person to know this?
That uh Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez owns, well, the government of Venezuela, which he owns, owns in turn Sitco Petroleum Corporation.
And I don't like boycotts.
Uh I'm I don't I've never participated in a particular boycott of people ought to make up their own mind about where they're going to shop and why they're going to shop there and all that sort of stuff.
But just so you know that I personally will walk before I put Hugo Chavez gas in my car.
Just a personal thing.
Mike in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Mike, welcome to the Rush program.
Hey, Roger, how are you doing?
Good.
Just have a comment for the uh house painter from Kansas.
Yeah.
Uh if uh you look in the archives of uh Walter Williams uh notes, one of your compadres there, uh he shows uh the connection between tariffs, protectionist tariffs, and how it sends jobs overseas.
Uh he uses sugar as an example.
How many uh lifesavers do you think are made in the United States today?
Probably none.
Exactly.
They've all moved to Canada because Canada does not put a tariff on sugar.
So uh all the all the jobs we used to have, many of the candy industry jobs are now uh gone because of the U.S. sugar tariff.
Now let's go over this again and see if I understand what you're saying, because this is r this is really interesting.
We have a a bunch uh uh not very many, but a bunch of uh sugar growers.
Um if you look if you look at the cane producers in southern Louisiana and also I believe Hawaii uh have lobbied to put a tariff on uh imported sugar.
Right, so that their prices can be can be held up so they can keep their jobs in their farms and don't drive us overseas.
We're going to have a domestic source of sugar because it's a uh critical to the war effort, or whatever the logic is that I understand.
So they they said, okay, all foreign sugar coming in, that's gotta be we've got to be protected against that because they have cheap uh slave labor uh and and then they're not environmentalists and they don't belong to the Sierra Club, so we don't allow any of their sugar cane into the United States.
So they allow it in, but they have to pay for it, and it's somewhere twenty to forty cents a pound.
I don't know exactly.
So the result is that if I'm making uh life bars, if I'm making lifesavers, if I'm making Mars bars, if I'm making whatever, uh I'm going, wait a minute, I'm gonna put my plant in uh Mexico, Costa Rica, uh Taiwan, wherever that I can get closer to cheaper sugar cane, right?
Exactly.
Look, I'm looking at a bag of lifesavers right now, and it's made in Canada.
So uh the people in Canada are not having their houses painted by somebody in Topeka, that's for sure.
Thanks for the call.
Great example of what I was trying to say, and a better one than I used.
I appreciate it.
All right, Peter in South Haven, uh where is that?
Michigan?
Peter, Peter in Michigan.
Go ahead.
How are you doing, Roger?
Beautiful South Haven, Michigan, right again against the lake, Michigan.
We need to's the weather today.
I'm sorry.
How's the weather today?
The waves are pretty high today.
Cloud.
Weather and oh the w you have waves on the on the uh lake?
They're pretty high today.
They're going over the pier.
Lake Michigan.
Why are we are jobs moving out of the Midwest?
Let's get down to the reality.
Okay, can't tax your way into recovery.
Thank you.
Um's at uh uh Goodyear.
Let's get down to the tax of it.
The the the bitches is at health care, but the uh the real bitch is the union saying we don't want to give up the $25 an hour wage to $15 for the new employees because the union gets less dues.
They get two hours a month in dues.
So that ten dollars an hour difference in pay for the new union members is what the union is bitching about.
I'm sorry about my soulbox.
No, but no, that's exactly right.
But the other thing is that the code is not a good thing.
Now the painter, the painter would the painter would say, Peter, the painter would say, wait a minute, you see, you're proving my point because you've got fifteen dollar an hour entry-level guys instead of twenty-five dollars an hour, and therefore uh these kinds of jobs are being are being uh ratcheted down.
We don't make the the salary that we made our fathers made before making these rubber products, and the answer is, well, probably not.
Uh I don't know how many.
Of course that's what I'm saying.
In other words, it would it's not worth $25.
But the point the point being, the point being, uh, Peter, that uh if you get the education and you get and you're not going to make tires anymore, you're going to make uh chips, you're going to make software that the chips run on, you're going to make whatever.
Uh and even painters.
Now, I don't know about, and and I think this guy may have had a point about the illegals because out here in the construction trades in uh California, of course, prices have been driven down like crazy because one wave after another of illegals.
In fact, we now have the current wave of illegals putting the previous wave of illegals out of work.
Uh so it we understand that dynamic, but the but the point, the point here is it's absolutely right.
The economy is not static.
Your job cannot be preserved unless it is competitive.
I'm in a competitive position as a talk show host.
If my ratings aren't what they should be, they're going to find somebody else who will do it a lot better and maybe a lot cheaper than I'll do it.
I'm I'm in a competitive world.
I accept that.
That's the world I want to be in.
Well, it's a global economy.
Yep.
And people need to accept that.
The plan I'm working in right now, we just tested 37 people.
They had to pass math and some personality tests too, but the majority of the people failed to test for math.
And eleven out of thirty-seven people failed the test.
Basic addition and subtraction.
Not even getting the multiplication revision, just subtra addition and subtraction.
No.
They failed to test.
No.
Addition and subtraction.
Yes.
Eleven out of thirty-seven what were the ages?
Oh, they the gambit.
They ran the gambit, the average workforce.
You get there's not going to be any more jobs, manufacturing jobs in the U.S. for the uneducated.
The un the unskilled jobs, they're going to go elsewhere.
Because if they're going to have two it's got to be you got to have the high tech end is going to stay in the U.S. The low skilled, unskilled labor jobs, they've got to go overseas because we can't compete.
What kind of work do you do?
I'm in the automotive industry.
Yeah.
Okay.
I'm a senior supplier quality engineer.
Did you disagree with the guy talking about the automotive industry and the labor unions versus non-union?
Well, there's there's multiple factors to that.
One, they get Toyota gets they do they do make more than the U.S. auto worker in the in the for the OEMs.
But there's several factors to that.
One, the states in Tennessee are much more willing to aggressively seek the uh international OEMs for the automotive manufacturing.
Two, they don't have to deal with the unions.
And I've heard, and I can't r and I've seen the facts, it's been years since I've seen this, the health care cost is cheaper.
And then you get the fact that normally you don't get a union voted into those plants.
They don't get unions voted into plans because of the mentality of the people that live around there.
And two, they treat their employees with respect.
So you have several factors.
The employees are treated with respect, and they don't show up to work that, well, my daddy was in the union.
I need to be in union if I work in a manufacturing plant.
Right.
That's how those plants are being successful down there.
What the there's several factors that the unions drive into plants that cause trouble.
They add in jobs that don't need to be there because they got to treat everybody fair.
The unions protect the people that don't work.
They don't protect the good hard worker.
It's a really interesting point.
The good hard worker makes a mistake, he's toast.
I appreciate the call, Peter.
It's a lot of wisdom right there.
Just a lot of wisdom right there.
All right.
I wanted to introduce, since we're getting uh we're getting pretty hot and heavy, why don't we introduce religion into the mix here?
Uh first of all, the uh Pope, Benedict the 16th, presiding at a summit in uh Rome uh today on the celibacy requirement for priests.
The meeting called uh because an African archbishop has now been excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church because he was, well, married.
Uh Zambian Archbishop Emmanuel Malingo.
So the Pope is meeting with top officials to say, you know, we've got a problem here because it isn't just uh Archbishop Balingo.
It's uh a hundred thousand priests worldwide are married in one way or another.
Is the celibacy uh vow going to last into the twenty first century in the Roman Catholic Church?
While they're debating that, Rockstar Elton John wants to ban religion completely.
He said to Britain's Observer Music Monthly, quote, organized religion doesn't seem to work.
It turns people into really hateful lemmings, and it's not really compassionate.
From my point of view, I would ban religion completely, unquote.
So there you have it from the religious file.
Ban religion completely.
What about the celibus maybe you have some uh thoughts about that.
By the way, hypocrisy uh I we should have we could have a complete show.
We had Peter Schweitzer on talking about uh liberal hypocrisy.
My um mayor in uh LA, uh Villa Ragosa, Antonio Villa Ragosa, is out.
This is in the this is actually in the uh LA Times.
From the moment he took office, they write.
Nearly eighteen months ago, Mayor Antonio Villarragosa made traffic gridlock a cause celeb, exhorting Angelinos to help solve the problem by forsaking their cars.
You've got to use public transit, Villa Ragosa said just last week while unveiling an automated signal system to help unclog busy intersections.
You can't keep on pointing to someone else and saying it's their responsibility.
After he made that statement, says the LA Times, he then walked over and got into a chauffeured SUV and was driven off.
Do they think we're not watching?
1-800-282-2882.
I'm Roger Hedgecock, in for Rush, and we'll take a short break and be right back with your call after this.
All right, we're back on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Roger Hedgecock filling in for Rush, taking your calls at 1-800-282-2882.
Now the Republicans in the House of Representatives have their own leadership fight, their own family feud, their own uh decision to make on the leadership that's going to take them forward from this debacle of the uh loss at the election.
So do they go forward with uh John Bonner and uh Roy Blunt?
Or do they go for who are who are uh the leadership uh who have been the leadership along with uh Speaker Denny Hastert.
Now uh Speaker Hastert has uh resigned, uh said that uh well not resigned, but he said he's not going to be uh running for any leadership position in the coming session, so John Bonner wants to move up and uh uh Mike Pence, the uh is running for the Republican uh minority leader out of Indiana, and John Shadig from Arizona running against Roy Blunt uh for the uh uh majority whip.
Uh and this is uh again for the Republicans, a point in time to take a look at what wins and what doesn't.
And I liked the statement that uh Steve uh King, uh chairman of the Conservative Opportunity Society, uh Iowa uh congressman said um Mike Pence.
He said, quote, Republicans have lost seat and c seats in Congress because we needed more fiscal discipline, lacked clarity on the global war on terror, were not aggressive enough on our fiscal and social agenda.
We need an articulate and committed minority leader who can be the most effective spokesman for that agenda.
Mike Pence is the best communicator in Congress and among the most committed.
So uh he endorsed the Pence.
We will see what happens because the establishment, of course, is Bonner and Blunt.
The insurgency is uh is uh Pence and uh and Shattig, and uh they will have to be a decision made there as well.
In the meantime, George Bush is taking the tact that, well, uh I'm the president, so here's what I want.
I want all of my judicial nominations, and I'm gonna resubmit them.
I want uh Mr. Bolton to continue to be ambassador to the United Nations, and I'm gonna resubmit him.
And what a stab in the back.
Um Lincoln Shafey of Rhode Island, who was supported by Bush, supported by the National Republican administration.
They did not support a real Republican in the primary.
They supported Lincoln Chaffee, who has now admitted that he's a Republican only because the Republicans were in the majority, and you needed to bring home the bacon to Rhode Island, so that's the party you needed to belong to, basically what he said.
And now he's saying, uh, yeah, you know, I'm not going to vote for uh Bolton, and he's a uh you know, on that committee, and is the Republican on that committee whose vote sways the whole committee.
So now we've got the payback to Bush for standing by Lincoln Jeffords is the stab in the back that uh Bolton won't stay as uh as ambassador to the U.N. So I wonder what uh Bush strategy will be on that.
Uh that uh gosh.
All right.
Now in the meantime, in the People's Republic of China, which is not run by the people of China, and it isn't a republic, and I don't think they call themselves China, so I don't know exactly what the name of this country means.
But in the People's Republic of China, first it was one child per family.
Remember that?
Forced abortions if you got pregnant a second time and abortions uh made easy if you didn't want a girl and you wanted guys, and so now there's sixty percent guys and forty percent girls, and nobody knows how they're ever going to get married, and there's a huge social problems caused by the government deciding you're only going to have one child.
Well, the the Chinese government has not learned from this experience.
Now uh they're going well, they've launched a new policy.
This is called the one dog policy.
Have you heard about this?
In a move designed to stamp out, they said, the spread of rabies.
China's capital, Beijing, will institute a one dog per household policy in nine areas of the city, says the official Xinhua news agency.
Thousands of dogs have been killed to fight rabies.
Have they have they heard about shots?
You know, I mean, shots will take care of this.
Shots.
Not killing.
I don't mean to sound like uh, you know, animal rights activist here, but I like dogs.
I have a dog.
Oh, yeah, we only have one dog, don't we?
Uh I have a dog, but uh if I want to have another dog, that's my business and my problem.
Mostly problem.
But I'll tell you what, I sure don't want the government telling me that I have.
You know, this is the problem with protectionism.
To get back to John's call, you want the government to protect your job by shutting out competition from everywhere else.
You can do that, but haven't you given government the power to decide when you're going to be employed and when you're not going to be employed?
Isn't isolationism and protectionism just another way of saying government controls your life?
I think it is.
Not only that it doesn't work, but another reason why I oppose it just on a philosophical ground.
All right, 1-800-282-2882.
I'm Roger Hedgecock in for Rush, back with your call after this.
One of the reasons our economy is so strong is a reason that until last week's New York Times attempted to describe it, had not been described, particularly before the election, and that is the remarkable tale of Jackwell No.
Do I have enough time to get into this?
Maybe I don't.
Um Jackwell No.
In the uh 7,000 feet below the surface of the water of the Gulf of Mexico, and 20 some thousand feet below the seabed, a well at twenty-eight thousand some feet, doubled the oil reserve of the known oil reserve of the United States.
The United States has hit a gusher in the Gulf of Mexico, and it is at extraordinary depth.
It is at extraordinary difficulty to get to it.
But without spilling a drop, that one test well is producing what, six thousand gallons a minute or an hour or whatever it is, a huge, huge indication of what is below the waves.
Since then, and not because Bush manipulated the oil price.
Since then, that announcement and lessening demand and more supply in other parts of the world has driven down oil from $77 a gallon a barrel, rather, to uh, what is it today, $69, uh $59 a uh a barrel.
So down almost $20 from the uh from the high.
That's gonna produce a boom, and it has produced a boom.
That one well, wish we could drill it in Alaska.
Be good for the caribou.
I can tell you that story too.
Caribou love oil.
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