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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 Rush Lingbaug 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 didn't hold any water, but the second part was about illegals.
And there isn't any question that the advance that I was talking about, the increase, even inflation-adjusted increase in average wages would be a lot higher were it not for the presence of 12, 15, 20 million, whatever the number is, of illegals in L.A. County, 60% or more working under the table for cash.
This is the largest black market economy in the world is what's going on now in the United States.
It is depressing wages.
It is taking work Americans would otherwise do.
It is one of the great defects of the Bush administration.
I've been talking about this forever.
But let's get back to what happened just now because I'm still stunned by watching it on the cable news networks, the press conference being held by Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi of the House of Representatives, the first woman speaker, 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.
The person she wanted as number two, John Murthy, way in the background with a scowl on his face, the press conference was held.
Nancy Pelosi got her head handed to her politically in the first test of her leadership skills.
Now they're going to have to patch things up, and they've made a brave face of it today.
In the Christian Science Monitor, Nancy Pelosi, 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.
I don't have to get back into the Murtha problems, AB scam and others, because that's been covered by the New York Times editorial page, the L.A. Times editorial page, the Washington Post editorial page, and all of them bringing back up the fact that, wait a minute, if you're going to 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 keep in mind what he brings to the table.
So in terms of the unethical issues, in fact, didn't he say yesterday that this emphasis on 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 Speaker-elect, have elected Stenny Hoyer, who is a mainstream, since 1981, member of the House, liberal from Maryland, and not expected to be wildly offensive to anybody here.
But there's another side to this.
And I hate to bring this stuff up, but I mean, you've got to 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.
If you know more facts, you're going to be emotionally attached to the truth.
Okay?
Now, one of the great truths, truth-telling in its purest form, a book that Rush loved and I loved called Do as I Say, Not As I Do, chronicling liberal hypocrisy.
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 get back to Nancy Pelosi because I'm reading in your book, here she is, the winner of the 2003 Cesar Chavez Award from the United Farm Workers, and yet you finish the sentence.
Well, and yet she doesn't use members of the United Farm Workers Union to pick her grapes on her Napa Valley Vineyard.
This one really knocked me off my chair when I found out about it because Nancy Pelosi has been trying to get Cesar Chavez to be given congressional honor for years, a congressional gold medal.
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.
They make about $1 million a year producing very expensive grapes for very expensive wines, and they use non-union contractors to pick their grapes.
And 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 a chain of restaurants that they are part owners in Piati 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.
And I think that's something that the mainstream media has to look at because it is a bona fide fact that it's a motivating influence for her.
The Center for Responsive Politics, a liberal group, puts Nancy Pelosi's net worth, based on her public disclosures, as high as $55 million.
Doesn't that make her also the richest Speaker-elect of the House of Representatives ever?
Absolutely, no question about it.
And in fact, it puts her net worth at about probably 55 times the net worth of Dennis Haster.
And, you know, this is what you find with the leadership 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.
Same thing in the House.
The wealthiest House members like Nancy Pelosi tend to be very, very liberal.
And that means they are out of touch with the concerns of ordinary people.
And here's a liberal woman hiring non-union workers in a hotel.
I mean, the hotel and motel workers are just adamant in California.
We have a deal where all the restaurant workers get minimum wage plus tips.
There's many other states where you get either or.
You have a very strong movement in the retail sales area and particularly in grocery sales area to try to shut down Walmart from bringing in cheaper prices in their super centers because the unionized supermarket workers don't like it.
So 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's exactly right, Roger.
I mean, we talked about the vineyard.
She 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 2,000 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, 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 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 illegal workers, 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 protect our jobs and so forth and so on.
Nancy Pelosi's not on their side.
No, she's definitely not.
You know, and you find this oftentimes with people on the liberal left, Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, 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.
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 buy stock 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 decry.
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 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 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 had a lot of other books out too, Peter.
What are you working on now?
Well, I'm working on a book right now basically making the case that conservatives do all the heavy lifting in our society.
They're the ones that fight the wars, pay the taxes, give to charity volunteers, and that liberals, on the other hand, 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.
Nick Army, the other day, I saw him on the former member of the House.
I saw him on the tube, and he's saying, you know, there's still too many people in the cart and too few people pulling it.
I think pretty much the same thought.
That's exactly right.
And, you know, 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 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.
Peter Schweitzer there from Tallahassee, Florida, again, nailing the Nancy Pelosi deal.
She's got a big venue.
And the restaurant up there in Napa is Auberts de Soleil, okay?
And the Piatti chain of restaurants, pretty well known out here on the West Coast, and I don't know where else, but there's apparently 20 of them or so.
And 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 don't know, go up to Napa during the season where they're picking those grapes.
Starts late August, early September, goes into October, and see what you see.
Because that's the real Nancy Pelosi.
I'm Roger Hedgecock, in for Rush Limbaugh, and back with your call after this.
The more I watch this replay that's going on now on all the cable news networks on this Pelosi and leadership press conference, the funnier it gets.
I mean, she's off to the side there, overshadowed by all these taller men blinking like crazy.
You know, she, well, I don't want to get too far into this, but this is a woman who has not fully blinked in a number of years.
So when you see her trying to blink, it's really painful to watch.
And then she's up there talking about how it's unity and 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 Mirtha with this 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, Ruther.
Hi.
I'm happy to be on with you, longtime member of the Institute, about 15 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 going to get tired before he does, but go ahead.
Anyway, I was struck with the comment that 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.
Long string of superlatives.
Right.
And I hearken back to the speech Slick Willie Clinton made when he was inaugurated after election.
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 fooled again, Jim, let me just read you one of the one of the now we've talked about the challenge that Nancy Pelosi had today trying to sell Mirtha, which didn't work.
So in her first action as Speaker-elect, she failed.
Let me tell you about another one that I think we ought to be putting at least as much focus on, and that's the threat.
Nancy Pelosi has made this clear that she's going to appoint Alce 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 congressman who lists in his disclosure form liabilities ranging from $2,130,000 to $7,350,000 and income assets of $15,000.
This is, of course, the district federal judge who was impeached, tried, convicted by the Senate, and removed from office in 1989 for perjury and conspiracy to obtain a bribe.
The Washington Post reports.
Sounds like he needs the bribe to keep him out of bankruptcy.
Well, that's it.
See, in other words, this all hangs together now.
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, in the new era of openness, in 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 was right out of the playbook back in 1993.
Right out of the playbook, Jim, I appreciate the call.
Thanks.
Here's Scott in Okallala, Okallala, Florida.
Hello, Scott.
Hey, it's Ocala, Florida.
Ocala.
Sorry.
Ocala.
I was really calling a few moments ago regarding the comments by that guy 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 $25 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 wages and benefits, at some point, any employer looks down the road and says, I can do it cheaper over there.
There's a good process happening in our country.
Steel is a great example.
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, on this program, when I was filling in one time, I also revealed the fact that the big three auto manufacturers had locked in over these long-term contracts the idea that if they 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.
You've hit the nail on the head, and Cars is a great example of the fact that we've just ignored the world competition.
Now you've got not only the Japanese, BMW coming in, you've got the 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 Tennessee and Ohio and wherever the heck else they are, their net take-home pay is better than what they could get at a GM plant.
They don't have to pay those fat union dues to the fat union bosses, and they're taking home more money.
Now, they're building a better car.
They're American workers.
They're proud of what they're doing.
And you've 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 government policy driving jobs overseas?
Should we do something to protect our industries here?
No.
Business is not a welfare state.
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, 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 the cell phone, which Qualcomm here in San Diego makes, and among other people.
It took more than 100 years to get 1 billion telephones on this planet.
The second billion telephones took five years.
By the end of this decade, 2 billion people will own not just the phones, but phones with web browsers.
2 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 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.
I've never participated in a particular boycott.
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 you doing?
Good.
Just have a comment for the house painter from Kansas.
If you look in the archives of Walter Williams' notes, one of your compadres there, he shows the connection between tariffs, protectionist tariffs, and how it sends jobs overseas.
He uses sugar as an example.
How many 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 all the jobs we used to have, many of the candy industry jobs are now 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 really interesting.
We have a bunch, not very many, but a bunch of sugar growers.
If you look at the cane producers in southern Louisiana and also, I believe, Hawaii have lobbied to put a tariff on imported sugar.
Right, so that their prices 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 critical to the war effort or whatever the logic is that I understand.
So they said, okay, all foreign sugar coming in, that's got to be, we've got to be protected against that because they have cheap slave labor and 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 20 to 40 cents a pound.
I don't know exactly.
So the result is that if I'm making fishery bars, if I'm making lifesavers, if I'm making Mars bars, if I'm making whatever, I'm going, wait a minute, I'm going to put my plant in Mexico, Costa Rica, 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 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.
Where is that, Michigan?
Peter in Michigan, go ahead.
How are you doing, Roger?
I'm beautiful in South Haven, Michigan, right against the Lake Michigan.
How's the weather today?
I'm sorry?
How's the weather today?
The waves are pretty high today.
You have waves on the lake?
They're pretty high today.
They're going over the pier.
Lake Michigan.
Why are jobs moving out of the Midwest?
Let's get down to the reality.
You can't tax your way into recovery.
Thank you.
Your job's at Goodyear.
Let's get down to the tax of it.
The bitch is health care, but 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 $10 an hour difference in pay for the new union members is what the union is bitching about.
I'm sorry about the soapbox.
No, but no, that's exactly right.
Now the painter would say, Peter, the painter would say, wait a minute, you see, you're proving my point because you've got $15 an hour entry-level guys instead of $25 an hour, and therefore these kinds of jobs are being ratcheted down.
We don't make the salary that our fathers made before making these rubber products.
And the answer is, well, probably not.
I don't know how many people are saying.
It's still labor, Roger.
Of course, that's what I'm saying.
In other words, it's not worth $25.
But the point being, Peter, that if you get the education and you get, and you're not going to make tires anymore, you're going to make chips.
You're going to make software that the chips run on.
You're going to make whatever.
And even painters.
Now, I don't know about, and I think this guy may have had a point about the illegals because out here in the construction trades in 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.
So we understand that dynamic.
But 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 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 11 out of 37 people failed to test.
Basic addition and subtraction.
Not even going to do the multiplication and division, just addition and subtraction.
No.
They failed to test.
No.
Addition and subtraction.
Yes.
11 out of 37.
What were the ages?
Oh, the gambit.
They ran the gambit, the average workforce.
There's not going to be any more jobs, manufacturing jobs in the U.S. for the uneducated.
The unskilled jobs, they're going to go elsewhere.
Because if you're going to have two, it's got to be, you've 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 multiple factors to that.
One, Toyota gets, they do make more than the U.S. autoworker for the OEMs.
But there's several factors to that.
One, the states in Tennessee are much more willing to aggressively seek the international OEMs for the automotive manufacturing.
Two, they don't have to deal with the unions.
And I've heard, and I can't, 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 a union.
I need to be in a union if I work in a manufacturing plant.
And that's how those plants are being successful down there.
There's several factors that unions drive into plants that cause trouble.
They add in jobs that don't need to be there because they've 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 thing.
If 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 pretty hot and heavy, why don't we introduce religion into the mix here?
First of all, the Pope, Benedict XVI, presiding at a summit in Rome today on the celibacy requirement for priests.
The meeting called because an African archbishop has now been excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church because he was, well, married.
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 Archbishop Malingo.
It's 100,000 priests worldwide are married in one way or another.
Is the celibacy vow going to last into the 21st century in the Roman Catholic Church?
While they're debating that, rock star Elton John wants to ban religion completely.
He said to Britain's Observer Music Monthly, 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 celibacy?
Maybe you have some thoughts about that.
By the way, hypocrisy, we could have a complete show.
We had Peter Schweitzer on talking about liberal hypocrisy.
My mayor in L.A., Villa Rogosa, Antonio Villa Rogosa, is out.
This is actually in the L.A. Times.
From the moment he took office, they write, nearly 18 months ago, Mayor Antonio Villa Rogosa 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 Rogosa 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 L.A. Times, he then walked over and got into his 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 decision to make on the leadership that's going to take them forward from this debacle of the loss at the election.
So do they go forward with John Bonner and Roy Blunt, or do they go forward who have been the leadership, along with Speaker Denny Hastert?
Now, Speaker Hastert has resigned, said that, well, not resigned, but he said he's not going to be running for any leadership position in the coming session.
So John Bonner wants to move up, and Mike Pence is running for the Republican minority leader out of Indiana.
And John Shattuck from Arizona running against Roy Blunt for the majority whip.
And this is, 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 Steve King, chairman of the Conservative Opportunity Society, Iowa Congressman, said about Mike Pence.
He said, quote, Republicans have lost 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 he endorsed Pence.
We will see what happens because the establishment, of course, is Bonner and Blunt.
The insurgency is Pence and Shattig, and there will have to be a decision made there as well.
In the meantime, George Bush is taking the tact that, well, I'm the president, so here's what I want.
I want all of my judicial nominations, and I'm going to resubmit them.
I want Mr. Bolton to continue to be ambassador to the United Nations, and I'm going to resubmit him.
And what a stab in the back.
Lincoln Schafey 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 Schafey, 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, yeah, you know, I'm not going to vote for Bolton, and he's 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 Bolton won't stay as ambassador to the U.N.
So I wonder what Bush strategy will be on that.
That, you know, 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 made easy if you didn't want a girl and you wanted guys, and so now there's 60% guys and 40% girls, and nobody knows how they're ever going to get married.
And there's a huge social problem caused by the government deciding you're only going to have one child.
Well, the Chinese government has not learned from this experience.
Now 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 heard about shots?
You know, I mean, shots will take care of this.
Shots, not killing.
I don't mean to sound like, you know, animal rights activists here, but I like dogs.
I have a dog.
Oh, yeah, we only have one dog, don't we?
I have a dog, but 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.
Might be another reason, 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. 2.
Do I have enough time to get into this?
Maybe I don't.
Jackwell No. 2, in the 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 28,000-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, 6,000 gallons a minute or an hour, 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 what is it today, $59 a barrel.
So down almost $20 from the high.
That's going to 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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