David Rosell, the guy I met at Walter Reed yesterday who lost part of a leg, worked himself back into shape, and went back into combat.
He was the first to get back into combat after such an injury.
And he was among many people I met and and I was my mind didn't put the two together.
At the at the moment, my uh security guy, Stalin.
Security guy looks just like Stalin.
I if you want to know what my security guy looks like, just go look at a picture of Joseph Stalin.
Anyway, it's Friday, folks.
Let's keep rolling here.
Live from a Southern Command in Sunny South Florida.
It's open live Friday.
So it was the great David Rosell.
And he had he he too had this biggest smile on his face.
And I um I ought to apologize to him for not getting it.
It was it's always a challenging hearing environment environment.
And he had a name tag, a nameplate on Rosell.
And I was I don't know, I was just kind of a little in awe of where I was and what I was seeing.
So anyway, well that even a bigger day than I thought.
Open line Friday.
We go to the phones, you can ask or talk anything you want.
The uh phone number 800-282-2882, and the email address is rush at EIBNet.com.
Want to go back to Boone, North Carolina.
This Jordan, sixteen years old, you're a rush baby in home school, right?
That's correct.
And I as I was mentioning earlier, we're talking about Macs, how my Macs are better, and I don't know.
Yeah, now wait, what kind of computer do you have now?
Oh, I I'm PC based mostly, just because that's my family's gotten, but I'm working on getting a Mac, so that's kind of my What kind of Mac do you want?
Um well, since I'm doing stuff my business, portable is kind of my pretend here.
No, pretend that you are John Edwards' son.
Okay.
And and and uh you you can get whatever you want.
Uh pretend that I am a volunteer for your father, John Edwards.
Just tell me what you want, son.
Okay.
And I'll call Walmart and try to make it happen.
Well, can I make a quick comment on that really quick?
Pardon?
For the John Edwards thing?
Just quickly aside.
Oh, sure.
Okay.
Anybody who's ever bought a game station before, and I'm assuming if he's buying his kid a PS3, he's bought stuff for him before, knows that unless you want to stand in line, three weeks ago you could go to a video game store and pre-order a PS3, in which case he could have proven to the rest of the world that if he had been vice president, he would actually had what we call uh planning ahead as opposed to trying to send someone out last minute because all of a sudden he decided, oh yeah, I want to get one at Walmart.
If he just pre-ordered it, none of that would have happened.
So I think he uh it's probably a good thing why he's not vice president.
But anyway, um gee, as far as uh a Mac uh my my choice would definitely be the MacBook Pro.
They just came out with a core two duo.
Fifteen or seventeen inch.
Oh um.
I'd have to say seventeen.
Go for the broke, huh?
Go for it all.
Uh well, I'm I'm telling you, it's just it's it's the it's the the only experience that he can't beat.
Well, what what do you not like about your uh PC machine?
You have to name what it is.
What why do you want to move up to a Mac or move over to a Mac or whatever?
Well, for one thing, I do a lot of video editing, and so it's much easier in my case to work with media when I'm when I have worked on Macs.
And my PCs do that okay, but one of the great things about it, and especially one of the reasons I've always wanted a Mac, but it's always been that barrier of Mac versus TC, and now that I can just do a uh a boot camp on it.
I can when I go to my client.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I mean boot camp's great, but that's not what you want.
Not what I want.
You want parallels.
I've used that.
I'm sorry, I did that for a client.
$80.
I did that for a client.
Uh actually she had a brand new MacBook, and I took her old Estera laptop and I moved it over for her.
And eight I I meant stay parallelists that's what I meant.
Uh but yeah, totally.
It's just it runs it all simultaneously.
Well, I mean, you are wait a minute.
Are you saying you don't like parallels?
You prefer boot camp?
No, I love parallels.
I just said boot camp, you have to reboot when you want to change.
No, no, with uh with parallels, it runs like a program.
So you just do a little command tab key, run over the parallels, and boom, you're in windows.
Right.
You gotta be careful when you do that, Jordan, because what when you do that, you better put your firewalls in on the window side, or you're opening your whole computer up to every virus out there for windows.
So there's a windows, obviously.
Well, I know, so you gotta be judicious.
You know, you don't don't we don't use windows for internet connectivity or email uh on a Mac because you're just you're just inviting those viri to come in.
I hear you.
But I use it basically mainly just for diagnostics for my Well, there you go then.
There you go.
Well, I'm trying to think about how we can get you a 17-inch MacBook Pro.
That would that would make sure what how are you saving up money to buy one?
Well, um it it's kind of like a couple of things.
Mostly I'm doing uh this business to stay out for college, because I want to go to uh missionary missionary aviation school, I'm gonna be a missionary pilot, so that's kind of my main objective.
But just on the side, uh would consider a business expense and just put away a little bit every month.
But um, you know, from what I make uh from my business, but mostly it it's kind of you know backburner to Okay, how much how much have you saved up?
I'd say not a whole lot.
Um I'd say somewhere around the range of five hundred.
Okay, so you're gonna need I mean to get the thing outfitted, you're gonna need twenty five hundred dollars more.
Uh I think the yeah, I think that sounds right.
I don't know what seventeen starts out.
I know the fifteen starts at oh yeah, you're right, seventeen starts at twenty-five.
Yeah, and you you uh you could uh depending on how you you have the bigger hard drives you can put on them now and what mine has.
I've got a MacBook Pro.
I have a seventeen inch MacBook Pro.
Very nice.
I also know you also mentioned a while ago when you when they came out with the uh quad core Xeon, you had the uh sixteen gigabytes of RAM.
Yeah.
So it's written it's right, it's right behind me here.
I know, I know it.
Um and I tell you, ma uh Rush.
Well in my business, and now I'm looking at people wanting to get VISTA, and I know that I'm gonna have to eventually get a cheap VISTA machine just so I can learn how to use it, because my clients are gonna want me to be able to service it for them.
And there's three different versions, and it's so confusing, it's all these things that one version has the other one doesn't.
And to me, it's just like, boy, if everyone would just move to Mac, it'd make my job so much easier, but it oh well, it doesn't work like that.
Um look, uh Jordan, I tell you what I want to do.
If you wouldn't mind, if you would give uh call screener your contact information.
Yes, sir.
Um I want to try to figure out a way to get you one of these things.
Okay but I don't want I don't want to give it to you uh because that that would not be proper motivation for someone being homeschooled.
You would not learn the right let you would become John Edwards Kidd.
That's that's probably true.
In that regard.
But there may be a way here that you can earn this by doing freelance things for the EIB network.
That would be so I want to th I want to think about this.
I want to keep I want to stay in touch with you on it.
Okay.
And and uh and we'll uh we'll see what we can do, okay?
Thanks for the call.
Don't hold on don't hang up.
Uh stay on hold of we'll we'll uh get that contact data from you and and uh and uh stay in touch and we'll we'll do the same uh with you.
Uh Sean in Newport, Delaware.
I'm glad you called.
Welcome to Open Line Friday.
Hello.
Hello, Rush.
Hey Rush, this is a rush.
It's uh I'm a long time listener, first time caller, uh 24 7 podcast.
Got my Gitmo gear and to jump on that last guy.
Um I did uh went to PC to Mac Switch about two years ago and I never looked back.
Thank you, sir.
Based on your recommendation.
Good.
Uh I I'd like to ask a question uh to you.
Um through these election cycles the last ten years.
Yes.
It's so frustrating to watch politicians chase to the center and have muddled positions.
Uh you know, I'm a longtime conservative, I'll always vote Republican.
Where are you going third party?
Is that what you're thinking might be the solution?
Well, and and I when I was talking to the screener about it, he kept he kept uh catching a third party as third party presidential candidate.
But what I'm interested in is the thought that if you could have a real uh third party movement or even a fourth party or fifth party in different areas of the country where you could the politicians would actually have clarity of thought and they wouldn't have to try to appeal to the middle.
They could they could have clear uh conservative views on specific subjects, and then if you could build a coalition of those parties in Congress, for example, if you had um thirty or forty seats in uh in the House of Representatives or five or seven seats in the Senate, you could then build a coalition.
We all know that Well, you could create some really fun gridlock if you see that's always been the challenge of third parties.
You can come up with a presidential candidate, but if he gets elected, he's got nobody in Congress or the Senate, because third parties are genuinely one guy.
I under presidential candidates.
So what you're talking about would take a while to build up.
You get enough third party representatives to actually run for office in the House, various districts around the country in the Senate too.
And I've always you know, I I I'm I don't want to be uh pessimist on on uh things, but uh uh you have to be realistic.
If you look at the history of third parties in the modern era, they just don't get off the ground.
Uh they just and they don't last.
John uh Anderson in 1980, uh Perot in 1992, there have been a number of people toy with it.
McCain, McKay Theodore Roosevelt at Bull Moose Party, if he couldn't do it.
Uh it can't be done, and McCain is as toyed with it.
Uh but events might lead to it have it might evolve someday rather than be created.
Uh and by by evolve I mean enough people with an attitude like yours get fed up to actually make it happen rather than be led by one guy.
There'd have to be one guy that would perhaps be the focus of the attention and the effort.
But some guy announcing, oh, we're starting a third party and I'm gonna do this.
I uh that that that to me seems uh it might seem like the natural way of building a movement, but I think this this is gonna have to come bottom up, not top down.
I've I've come to think that about third parties.
But you have reminded me I learned something on this trip to Washington that reminded me of all things of uh David Stockman's book back in 1981 that he wrote uh that caused Reagan to have to take him to the woodshed, and he was the uh budget director.
And he was not a supply cider.
He wrote books saying this is nonsense.
Well cutting taxes and lowering uh lowering rates and and raising revenue says this is this is uh I forget what name he gave it.
Didn't believe in it, but that's not the interesting part of the book.
Let me take a break here, I'll come back and tell you what I'm talking about and explain it all right after this.
Hi, we're back, uh Rush Limbaugh, America's real anchor man here, uh serving humanity.
As usual, with half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
I think it might have been voodoo economics that uh David Stockman called Reaganomics.
It might not have been him that called it voodoo, but the critics.
Bush 41.
Oh, Bush 41, that's right.
Bush 41 called a voodoo economics.
Right, right.
Anyway, that's not the point.
In the Stockman book is the most revealing thing, and I'll tell you this in the context of everybody trying to figure out why certain Republicans lost their races.
When I when I r was was pointed to the Stockman book, this this is 1982, the 1982 midterm elections after Reagan's landslide over Jimmy Carter in 1980.
Now you would think that only two years after Reagan's landslide, that Republicans in the House and in the Senate would have gotten the message about how to win elections.
Conservatism.
Preach a conservative message, articulate it well, passionately and with belief, and then govern on it.
Stockman said he got frustrated to no end because Congressman would call him from the campaign trail six months out, three months out, and say, you're gonna have to find a way to get me 150 million dollars for a bridge here.
It's the only way I can win my race.
Or you're gonna have to get me 200 million dollars for that Senior Citizen Center, if you don't get me this, I can't win re-election.
Stockman said, What is this?
Am I a bank?
You guys are telling me unless I find a way to steer some money to you, you can't win.
Well, guess what?
The same thing happened this election.
Various Republicans were calling the White House in a state of panic, asking for the president to somehow shift some funds into a state or into a congressman's district as the only way that person had a chance of winning.
And the White House that it's not that easy to do this, because Congress authorizes the expenditure of money.
Uh White House can help and this sort of thing.
But the point of it is that we're all out here thinking these guys are running for office, and we're wondering why they're not doing what got them elected in the first place.
A governing as conservatives, b, campaigning as as conservatives.
And I've offered various theoretical reasons for this.
The bottom line is that wasn't even important to them.
They wanted to win their re-elections by buying votes.
And it will always stand you in good stead, ladies and gentlemen, and serve you well if you remember the number one job of anyone elected to Washington, and that is to spend money.
That's the it's not to cut the budget.
It is not to uh do anything other than spend money.
I I I mentioned this last night, I mentioned it a lot.
Ever since I've been alive, the federal budget every year is bigger than it was the year before.
Sometimes it's been balanced, and yet every time a new budget comes out, it's dead on arrival because there are draconian cuts.
There are not draconian cuts in anything.
God bless us if there were.
But there aren't.
And so while we're wondering where are these guys with their message.
They're bugging the White House for financial help.
And they've got themselves believing they have no prayer of winning unless they come up with some money.
And it probably frustrated a lot of people at the White House.
Come on, you guys.
Run around and then do your jobs.
There's a there's another little uh, well, I guess you could say uh adjunct to this.
One of the theories going around is that the Republicans in both the House and Senate that were in the leadership uh got so focused on being in the leadership that they stopped being congressmen to people in their districts.
I was told a story by a guy he was at a wedding in August on the East Coast, and there were these two guys from Ohio.
And these two guys, big the political animals.
They're just they're citizens, they're not involved in politics professionally.
They came up to this guy and they were just talking about how excited they were about their congressman.
Their congressman was just, he was great.
He is on TV all the time, and he was going back to forth Washington in a district, and everybody knew who he was, and he was he was doing the job, and these guys were identifying the wrong Congress.
These guys lived in Deborah Price's district and didn't even know that the guy they thought was their congressman wasn't.
Now the point is Deborah Price, and she's gonna win, she's gonna this this recount, but it was close.
And the point is that she's she was in the House leadership, and she wasn't on television.
Her own constituents who are admittedly political animals didn't remember seeing her, but they saw a neighboring district's congressman so often that they thought he was their congressman.
So there are uh a lot of things.
Some people relied on the fact that they were in the leadership to speak for itself to members in their districts, because that supposedly was a sign of having risen uh and ascended to a high level of importance and so forth, and what it led to was complacency.
So there are um there are a lot of factors that uh that go into that.
And all of this I'm I mentioned to you because our last caller wanted to talk about third parties and so forth.
And like Time Magazine, now if you notice this in a time, I think it was Time magazine, and all the cable networks are picking up goodbye red and blue states.
There's no more red and blue, it's purple.
And what they mean by that is the great center has arisen.
The moderates and the uh the independents have uh have risen.
And goodbye liberalism, goodbye conservatism.
Um it's it's now uh reasonableness has ascended to a position of prominence in politics.
All you have to do is go back to the 1974 post-Watergate election.
Look what happened to Republicans.
And I mean, it was far worse than this, uh, as you all will remember, and it was only six years later uh that Ronaldus Magnus triumphed over Jimmy Carter in a landslide election that Jimmy Carter knew was over at 7.30 that night, even before most of the polls in the Central and Western time zones had uh had closed.
By the way, uh there's some journalists out there that are starting to compare Nancy Pelosi to Jimmy Carter, and that's never good.
Uh I think it's Jeffrey Lord at the American Spectator.
He's got an interesting piece today about when Jimmy Carter was elected president, oh, it was this great aura and a lot of hope.
Uh Southern guy, peanut farmer, nobody ever heard of him before.
Governor Georgia comes out of there and becomes president.
Oh, it's wonderful.
The trees are taller today, the leaves are greener, the grass is greener, uh, the birds are chirping louder, all this stuff.
And he appointed a speechwriter to be head of the CIA, Theodore Sorensen from the Kennedy uh uh era.
And nobody, the Democrats were a gog.
They just couldn't believe it.
They were, and and they one personnel Decision after another, it was an utter disaster.
Jimmy Carter, perhaps, well, not perhaps the worst president in all of our lifetimes and beyond.
And now he's being equated by some with uh with with uh Bella Pelosi.
As not to be confused with Bella Lugosi.
Uh Nancy Pelosi and her nomination of uh if she does this, Al C. Hastings to head up the Intelligence Committee in the House, one of seven people to be impeached from the federal bench for fraud and bribery to head up the uh House Intelligence Committee.
And it looks like it's it it may happen.
And contrary, you know, a lot of people think Pelosi outsmarted everybody on his Mertha and Hoyer thing.
She did she's not that smart.
She's not smart enough to uh to to pull a double cross on this, and and she she just was a bad tactical move.
She doesn't have to please her wackos on the web now.
She's got to please the Democrats in the House.
I'm getting all kinds of emails.
Are you going to engage the OJ book story?
Because Judith Regan, the editor, was the uh editor of my first two books when uh she was at Pocket Books, which is uh, what was it?
Steiman Steinman und Schuster.
Frankly, folks, um when everybody else gets in a tizzy about something, I tend to ignore it.
Uh this this is this is I guess I will.
At some point.
Be patient.
Give me time.
It's not a top of my list.
Um we'll get there occasionally.
We're also going to talk about Pelosi and Mertha.
Uh this.
It's I'm just telling you it is it is going to get fun.
Already, Slate.com wants to get rid of Nancy Pelosi.
Yeah.
Dump Pelosi, let's put the new House speaker on probation by Timothy Noah.
I'll admit my timing could be better since the incoming House Democrats on a unanimous voice vote just made Nancy Pelosi the speaker, but I think her party ought to give serious thought to dumping her.
The approximate reason, of course, is that she tried and failed to install Jack Mirtha as number two.
It's bad enough that she promoted Mertha over the perfectly acceptable Stanley Hoyer.
By the way, they're they're they're they're portraying Hoyer as a moderate, folks, and he is not.
He is a liberal.
There are no moderate Democrats.
You know what's interesting?
These these conservative Democrat freshmen who won election.
This is a point I saw this in USA Today yesterday.
These people are on the campaign trail, and Errol Ford, too, saying how pro-life they were and how pro-God they are, and how pro-gun they are.
And the media is calling these people moderates.
Yet you and I, conservative pro-gun, pro-god, pro-lifers are extremists.
How can moderate conservatives be called moderate and we are extremists?
That's typical drive-by media attempt to discredit conservatives as often as possible.
I also don't know how this is going to work.
I don't know, these these freshmen and these blue dogs out there, these freshmen that won.
Do we do we know?
We ought to try to find out.
How many of them were promised appropriations committee uh memberships, important committee memberships that they may not now get?
What if they end up having been lied to?
Uh in order to accept the candidacy.
There is an up there there is an uproar here that people are noticing.
Now, this guy, Timothy Noah, and they're all upset here about the lack of unity.
And if and they're starting to zero in on this cat fight between Pelosi and Jane Harmon.
And Barney Frank had the most fascinating quote about this.
Does this not sound like high school?
Barney Frank said, look, somebody told me she hasn't liked Stenny Hoyer since 1963, but it's had zero effect on how well they've worked together.
We don't have to guess at this.
We've seen it.
They can and will work together as we move forward.
Somebody told him since 1963.
63 that Pelosi 1963.
Pelosi and Hoyer haven't gotten along.
My gosh, they're both older than they were kids.
I mean, it's I mean, what they're well, one of them is a kid, but they they're both, I mean, she grew up in uh Maryland, Baltimore, and that's where Stenny Hoyer's from.
1963, they've had a grudge.
It's high school.
Anyway, this uh this this Timothy Noah guy says uh going after Mertha for Mertha, even after he'd been an unindicted co-conspirator in ABSCam?
Uh even worse is that Pelosi persisted even after a video tape of his ab scam performance.
Uh as a preview of the sort of instincts that she will display as speaker, her steadfastness in supporting Mertha was discouraging on two levels.
Most obviously it suggested Pelosi lacks a sincere interest in maintaining ethical standards.
Mertha's out there saying that her ethics plan is a bunch of crap.
Her she's still supportive.
Now there's some people think she was doing this just to satisfy the wackos on the uh on the internet and so forth.
And uh, she's not that smart.
Besides, it doesn't, they're not gonna applaud her for trying.
As far as they're concerned, she failed.
She failed to get the number one anti-war guy into the number two spot in the house.
As far as those kooks and the fringe and the websites out there concerned, she failed.
You don't get any credit with that bunch for trying.
And she's smart enough to know that.
She's not smart enough to pull that problem.
What good does it do her to have the kook fringe support?
She needs the support of the Democrats in her caucus.
And it it it looks like she's fractured them with uh with this.
Uh and and Noah here says that uh Pelosi's about to go through an almost identical test once more as Ruth Marcus wrote in the Washington Post, um, she can take credit for jumping early on the Mirtha story.
Uh Pelosi's apparently decided not to allow Jane Harmon to become chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, even though Harman is in line to do so.
In both cases, uh Hoyer and Harmon, the reasons for Pelosi's animus are cloudy and in all likelihood personal, which is discouraging in itself.
Here's what he proposes at the end of his piece.
Let Pelosi remain speaker for now, but let her know that before the new Congress even begins, she has placed herself on probation.
If she chooses Hastings to chair the House Intelligence Committee, that's two strikes.
One more strike, even a minor misstep, and House Democrats will demonstrate that they, unlike Speaker elect Pelosi and President Bush, he has to find his way in here, know how to correct their mistakes.
If this scenario strikes you as unlisting, unrealistic, I only say this to you.
Remember Bob Livingston.
Named speaker and resigned when it was uh discovered that he had had an affair.
So forget the details.
The bottom line here is that uh they're not happy.
Uh they came out of that room all smiles yesterday, but they are they are they are not happy.
Bob in uh Indiana, we have a cell phone call open line Friday moving on.
Welcome, sir.
Nice to have you with us.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
Uh a couple of times during the week, you've mentioned the Ohio Michigan State game in passing related to other stories.
And I was just kind of wondering what the environmental wacko pick's gonna be on that game.
Well, you know, I don't have a history of doing environmental wacko picks for uh for college football, but this is a big game.
And two in the nation.
They're number one and two of the nation.
Ohio State's number one, uh, Michigan's number two.
Uh the legendary Glenn Beau Shembeckler passed away today.
That is expected to provide an incredible inspirational and emotional boost for Michigan's players.
Uh, but that has nothing to do with the environmental pick.
I think the environmental hit pick here is very soon.
Do you know what a buckeye is?
It's the Ohio State Buckeyes.
Do you, Bob, know what a buckeye is?
Uh not, Ross.
They're all nuts in Ohio.
Uh no, no, no.
That's be kind here.
It's uh a buckeye is a tree.
And an Ohio buckeye is a small tree, has a short trunk.
Uh it it generally grows to about 50 feet.
Some of the older trees may get taller than that.
So a lot of people, I'm sure don't know this.
The Ohio buckeye is a tree.
What are the what's the Michigan uh mascot?
Wolverines.
Uh Wolverines.
What do wolves do on trees?
Oh, well, I don't know if I want to go there, Lesh.
Uh well.
They um they treat them like fire hydrants.
So you you using the environmentalist wacko pick and the environmentalist wacko pick only it's a tough one though, because environmentals love animals and they love trees.
Uh it's in it's it's uh it's a It's a toss-up here, but you have to come down on the side of who has dominance in the field of nature, and uh there's nothing a tree can do to stop a Wolverine if a Wolverine wants to pee on it.
Uh so uh it's rather obvious the um environmental wacko pick, you gotta go with the Michigan Wolverines.
Game is at Ohio State, though.
Uh which is gonna be fast.
It's 3 30 start time on ABC on uh Saturday afternoon.
Brief timeout, we'll be back and continue.
You heard about the March of the Gay Penguins book out there, ladies and gentlemen.
Well, if you haven't, sit tight.
All right, now as we know, this is uh this is more on uh Michigan Ohio State tomorrow.
The uh uh, as you know, the uh uh legendary coach Bo Schembeckler passed away today.
Or recently I've got heard about it today.
It might have happened last night.
In light of that, I don't know that this event tonight will go on.
It probably will, from the Columbus dispatch.
Of all the festivities leading up to the Ohio State Michigan football game Saturday, few are as inspired as the Hate Michigan rally at 8 p.m. tonight in the Newport Music Hall on North High Street in Columbus.
The rally will feature performances by Central Ohio bands Watershed, B.A. Barackus, and the Dead Shembecklers.
There is a band by the name of the Dead Shembecklers, calling themselves the best damn punk band in the land.
The Dead Shembecklers are a quartet of Michigan hating guys who dress up like Woody Hayes.
I got a picture of them here.
Their names are Bo Vicious, Bo Scables, or Scabies, I guess it is, Bo Biafra and Bo Thunders.
Uh they have been together since 1990, playing mainly on the eve of the big game.
Singer and songwriter Bo Biafra calls this year's concert the biggest show we've ever done.
Now, that's they've been calling themselves a dead Shembecklers for many, many moons now.
And on the eve of their big performance at the Hate Michigan Rally, Bo Shembeckler.
That's what it's a hate Michigan rally.
Yeah, that's cool.
This is college athletics, man.
This is what it's for.
This is when you this is all part of the learning process.
The university environment and all that.
Hate Michigan Real.
Um Snerdly, come on, get with it.
Sturdist about how divisive this is.
You don't know anything about college football rivalries.
This is this is this is one of the this is a dream game.
Other people won't sleep.
They have been sleeping all week over this.
This game.
This is uh this is huge.
I we finally posted at Rush Limbaugh.com the interview with Milton Friedman, who passed away this week.
Brilliant man, uh, one of the most um uh interesting interviews I've done.
And we've posted it if March of 1996, we posted it at Rush Limbaugh.com.
Just want to give you one it would be impossible for me to do Milton Friedman justice.
Free market economist, uh he is responsible for so much free market thinking uh in this country and in the world today.
Just an utterly brilliant man with and fearless.
Well, he and his wife both.
But in 1962, you you remember JFK's Ask Not.
What your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.
Milton Friedman said that's bunk.
Most people rather go, oh yeah, man, yeah.
Don't ask what the country can do for you, ask what you can do for the country.
People thought that was fabulous.
Milton Friedman, no, no, no, sorry, you guys are missing it.
He said President Kennedy got it wrong.
You should ask neither question.
And here's why.
What your country can do for you, Friedman said, implies that the government is the patron, the citizen, the ward.
And what you can do for your country assumes that the government Is the master, the citizen, the servant.
Rather, he said, you should ask what I and my compatriots can do through government to help discharge our individual responsibilities to achieve our several goals and purposes and above all protect our freedom.
He was so he was appalled, he was aghast at any attitude that focused central authority on the government in any way, shape, manner, or form, because he looked at the government as the place where God-given freedom was limited.
In our country, the intentions are good.
It wasn't talking about it being a tyranny.
It's that the natural evolution of governments is to ramp up more and more power, more and more control, and to grow and grow and grow, and staff themselves with bureaucrats who never solve problems, because if they did, they wouldn't need bureaucrats anymore.
Hello, State Department.
Uh, for example.
So he was uh truly a brilliant man.
I was really honored to be able to talk to him that day for the uh Limbaugh letter interview, and again, it's up at Rushlimbaugh.com.
Here's Rooney in Midlothi in Virginia.
You're next on Open Line Friday.
Hello.
Uh hey Rush, Megadiddos.
Hey, thank you.
Uh I I really appreciate the work that you're doing to get the truth out there.
I appreciate you uh noticing.
Thank you.
Sure.
Um I I I re I saw on the news the other day that uh the Republicans were about to pick Mel Martinez to head up the RNC.
And I just I just can't figure out why uh after they uh conservative voters were angry about the that the Republicans did uh little to nothing about the border, why they would pick somebody uh that is uh basically supports Bush's uh amnesty and the and the guest worker program.
Well, because Bush runs the party right now.
I mean, get used to it.
The president is the head of the Republican Party.
He gets his people in the positions that he wants them to be in the next nominee, the Republican Party, it'll then the transfer of power will effectively occur then, and uh and that guy will start installing his own people at the RNC and uh and this sort of thing.
Uh Carrie Carrie, in fact, it it it's not automatic.
Carrie didn't quite pull it off.
Howard Howard Dean ended up, but they by there's another war in the Democratic Party over there.
Carville is out for blood.
This is the Clinton war machine that is up at full ratchet speed, getting rid of Dean.
These guys are out there thinking they could have won 50 seats if Dean had not spent all this money in all 50 states on races they had no chance of winning.
But it's uh it's also about it's it's it's about getting you know Clinton's people in there uh early.
Uh I I'm you know, uh I'm not thrilled with the Martinez choice, but the president picks him and it's uh it's it's his uh it's his job.
Shouldn't surprise you.
I mean, the president's position on immigration is widely known, and it makes total sense that he would install somebody at the RNC head uh who has that same uh that same view.
Right.
What bugged me most, is I'm not surprised about uh the president's immigration position.
What um he's only general chairman, by the way.
He's he's he's still gonna be in the Senate.
Mo he most of the work of the RNC is going to be done uh by somebody else.
Day-to-day operations, he's gonna have an assistant, but if he he's he's his main job's gonna be being a senator.
Uh the thing that when he when he said, Look, I'm I'm uh what is he saying I'm not a bomb thrower?
Well since he's not an attack dog.
Well sorry.
I think we need attack dogs in the sense that we need partisans.
I and and so when he says he's not going to be an attack dog, uh, you know, I'm I'm gonna wait and see what that means in practical application.
If he means I'm not gonna go after these Democrats personally, well, fine, don't need to do that.
But if he's saying I'm not going to be ideological, then you know that that's that's gonna be something has to be overcome as we get to 1980.
And and of course, McCain is out there trying to sound like me.
I hate to say it that way, folks, because as you know, I am not obsessed with a massive ego.
But the um it's it's unmistakable.
This guy, this guy is I I I wonder who he thinks he's going to fool.
Um the uh Federalist Society gave him standing goes.
Well, fine, that's the Federal Society.
I'm talking voters.
I'm I'm I'm the I mean, I know they voted to Federalist Society, but don't give me that.
That's like that's like telling me that the Weekly Standard gave him a standing ovation.
I mean.
Okay, two big hours of open line Friday are in the can, soon to be on the way to our secret location museum, warehouse, where all EIB artifacts are kept for eventual housing in the Limbaugh Broadcast Museum.