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Nov. 20, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:40
November 20, 2006, Monday, Hour #3
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Hi, welcome back, folks.
We are here.
Rush Limbaugh, Living Legend, a highly trained broadcast specialist showing how it's done each and every busy broadcast day from the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
You want to be on the program?
We'll have some phone calls in this hour.
The telephone number 800-282-2882.
Email address is rush at EIBnet.com.
Got an email from a subscriber at rushlimbaugh.com, which reminds me of all kinds of requests over the weekend for a performance at the Warner Theater in Washington last Thursday to be downloadable rather than just streaming audio on our website.
So we're going to make it an MP3 file.
This is for members only.
It'll be an MP3 file that you can download on the website, or it'll be a podcast.
If you sign up for the automatic delivery of our podcasts each and every day, no additional charge for that, by the way.
Look for two additional files in your podcast downloads today.
Those two additional files will be the two-hour performance at the Warner Theater last Thursday night in Washington.
And I got this email from a guy named Charles Nelson, a subscriber to my website under the subject line, times have changed, and he's bouncing off comments made in the last hour.
30 years ago, Rush, I stood in line the entire night for a refinery job.
The weather was cold and windy.
By daybreak, I was frozen head to toe, but I got an application.
I still work in that refinery, and I've advanced to high levels of management after 30 years.
My son stood in line all night last week for a video game.
That's an example of how times have changed.
This is not a criticism, and most people have this attitude of pessimism and negativism about their kids' future and so forth.
It's bunk.
Even in the context of cultural rot that's taking place, the way that the cultural rot is damaging is if it's not outgrown.
There's always going to be lowest common denominator attractive things in any free society.
It's when that stuff's not outgrown and higher aspirations are not sought that you have a problem.
And if the pop culture ends up doing that to people, then it's something that has to be dealt with.
It leads to the attraction of the wrong people, false idols, immature, incorrect role models, things like that.
Anyway, I don't want to belabor this today.
We're working on all of this as part of a special premium for the holiday time for Limbaugh Letter, the newsletter, the little special report premium called What's at Stake in 08.
All right, let's move on to Charlie Wrangell here.
Americans would have to sign up for a new military draft after turning 18 under a bill that Wrangell says he will introduce next year.
All you have to know about the real motivation is the next sentence here in the New York Times story.
Wrangel said yesterday he sees his idea as a way to deter politicians from launching wars.
He says, there's no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to Congress if indeed we had a draft and members of Congress and the administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm's way.
That's ludicrous.
Folks, it's absurd.
It is ridiculous.
And he knows it.
At any rate, here's a little soundbite.
This is what he said on Slay the Nation yesterday with Bob Schieffer when asked if he would seriously still favor a draft.
You bet your life an underscore serious.
There's no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress if indeed we had a draft and members of Congress and administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm's way.
I will be introducing that bill as soon as we start the new session.
Yeah, I'm going to cover my basis here.
He may well want the draft to exist, but I don't think that's his primary reason for introducing it.
I think he's trying to set it up and create a continuing anti-war mentality in this country.
It's what they think got them elected.
And he is convinced that if we have a draft, that fewer and fewer people will be sent to war because politicians won't have the guts and presidents won't have the guts to defend the country when necessary because they won't want to incur the wrath.
Now, this is all belied by the facts of history.
We had a draft for most of this nation's recent history during the Vietnam War era and so forth.
And yeah, it caused some problems.
It didn't stop President Kennedy, and it certainly didn't stop LBJ, and it didn't stop Richard Nixon, although Richard Nixon is the guy that presided over Vietnamization, peace with honor, and what have you.
But it's silly.
The whole notion here that we have an unfairly constituted military now is, I don't know what the word is other than absurd.
We have a volunteer army.
So we got volunteers who got stuck in Iraq, and they supposedly didn't come from all walks of life.
I think Jim Webb's son is over there.
That's why Jim Webb was wearing combat boots during the campaign.
Who else's sons?
There are two or three that have joined that are over there that are in the military.
But with a volunteer army, that's what you get.
This is class envy, folks.
And he's out there telling stories that are not true about who comprised the military.
We have told you, Heritage Foundation has done the research.
The average educational level of today's military is above the national average.
The financial circumstances from which they come is at or above the national average, including blacks who volunteer.
Wrangel doesn't understand why people volunteer.
He ought to do what I did and go to Walter Reed Army Medical Center and talk to these people about why they signed up.
They did it out of patriotism.
They didn't do it because they were forced, either by economic circumstance or lack of future in any other endeavor.
But I think the real purpose of this is simply, he might go through with it, but with an all-volunteer army, it's impossible to have any particular group forced into anything.
It just is not possible.
And yet he wants to convey the impression that somehow the people who serve today, even though they volunteer, are forced into it and that they are the poorest among us and they are minorities.
And it's just not true.
I think what's at stake here, or what his purpose here is, is simply trying to continue the anti-war mentality throughout the country, throughout our population.
The liberals and Democrats definitely don't want us winning this war.
And you can't doubt that.
You can react in horror at the fact that I'm saying it, but you can't doubt it.
If you look at what they've said, look at what they've done, look at what they've proposed, how they've mischaracterized and impugned our volunteer army.
You cannot say that they are interested in victory here at all, ever.
You can't even say, as they do with accuracy, that they support the troops.
I want you to believe they do, but they say they support the troops by bringing them home.
Well, troops don't join the military to be brought home.
They take very seriously their mission and their honor, and it is disgusting to see this.
I have my doubts as to whether this will ever see the light of day, but nevertheless, this is the third or fourth time he's proposed it.
In fact, there was a controversy about one of the times he proposed it.
I think to show that he didn't mean it, the Republicans set up a vote for it and he pulled a bill, right?
Something like that.
I think whatever.
When it was the moment of truth, and there was a possibility we'd get the draft somehow, it didn't happen.
I mean, they called his bluff.
I have to check this.
But he's proposed this at least twice, and I think this would be the third time.
Now we're not through with Congressman Wrangel, however, ladies and gentlemen.
I have a story here from the New York Post.
New York's heavily Democratic congressional delegation will be one of the most powerful on Capitol Hill when the next Congress convenes in January, and it's already angling to use its clout to New York's advantage.
Charles Wrangel told the Post that one item high on his to-do list is a cash deluge for city scruels, a priority shared by most other local lawmakers.
Wrangel said he's not eyeing a one-time pork barrel payout, so these are not earmarks.
He wants lasting legislation that can be structured in such a way to benefit New York City scruples.
New York Democrats surveyed last week by the New York Post listed their priorities.
$2 billion for a JFK lower Manhattan rail link.
This is your tax dollars.
This is money that Charles Wrangel, the New York Liberal delegation, want from the federal budget.
$2 billion for a JFK to lower Manhattan rail link, a cash infusion for the city's school system, money to put more police on the streets, changing Homeland Security funding to benefit New York and other big cities.
And a must-do for Big Apple lawmakers is solving the medical crisis related to ground zero cleanup, including money for treatment and an investigation into the depth of the danger.
Representative Anthony Weiner, a Brooklyn Democrat, said that his mission is to revive the Bill Clinton-era cops program, the community-oriented policing services, to boost New York PD staffing.
It's my baby to try to get more cops on the street.
So while he's in opposed the draft, proposed the draft and so forth, this is what the New York delegation is going to try to get from the federal budget.
Then there is this.
And this is from today.
Not that students had to go to any of these sessions.
Well, wait a minute.
I missed the paragraph.
One recent day at the Brooklyn Free School, a schedule included the following chess, debate, filming horror movies, and making caves for teenage mutant ninja turtles.
That was on the educational schedule.
Not that the students had to go to any of these sessions.
At this school, students don't get grades.
They don't have homework.
They don't take tests.
They don't even have to go to class unless they want to.
You can basically do anything at any time.
It's just a lot more fun because sometimes you need a break at regular schools.
You can't get it, said Sophia Bennett Holmes, 12, an aspiring singer, actress, fashion designer.
But here, if you just need to sit down and read and have time to play, then you can do that.
At the Brooklyn Free School, much of the decision-making occurs in a mandatory weekly gathering called the Democratic Meeting.
Students air grievances, pose challenges, propose rules, and set policy.
Even the youngest churan have a vote equal to staffers.
One agreed-upon rule is there would be no sword fighting allowed inside.
Students are required to show up for a minimum of five and a half hours a day, partly so the school can meet legal obligations.
No homework and no tests at a New York school.
And yet, Wrangell wants all this money for the New York school system and police and so forth.
So that's what's on tap in addition to the draft.
Now, what happened was this.
We have researched this here.
Wrangell voted against his own draft measure.
That's what it was.
Representative Wrangell did something a little unusual yesterday.
This is October 6th of 2004, two years ago.
First, he protested when Republican leadership scheduled his own bill for a vote.
Then he sent out a letter encouraging his Democrat colleagues to vote against it.
Wrangel's bill, which the leadership had placed on the suspension calendar, would create a national service draft under which all 18 to 26-year-olds would serve in the military or perform two years of national service as determined by the president.
Wrangell accused Republicans of using his bill to assuage fears that President Bush had plans to reinstate the draft, stating the Republican leadership decision.
Oh, oh, I remember that makes this even better.
Wrangell was running around accusing the president of wanting to reinstate the draft.
And that's why he came up with the legislation to prove that they wanted to do this and so forth.
So the Republicans, okay, is this what you think?
They put the bill up for vote, and he voted against it and urged all of his Democrats to vote against it, leading to the conclusion he wasn't interested in this.
He was simply trying to scare the American people into thinking that there was going to be a draft.
Now, after all of this, after him accusing President Bush of having a secret plan to do it, he has announced he's going to introduce the same legislation first thing in the next session.
Be right back, folks.
Well, head off the wires, ladies and gentlemen.
A reinstatement of the military draft being pushed by Charles Wrangell will not be slated for consideration in the House of Representatives, the chamber's newly elected top leaders said today.
We did not include that in legislative plans for early next year, said Steny Hoyer, who will be the House majority leader.
Over the weekend, Wrangell said he wanted a draft, but the Democrats said, that ain't going to happen.
Now, interesting, check the fallout on this.
I mean, they're publicly cutting Wrangell's feet off or chopping him off at the knees here, which is if he didn't want the draft and all he wanted to do was to drum up more anti-war sentiment, the Democrats have just ended that chance.
At least if he wanted to do it via the draft, they can still be anti-war all they want with other ways.
But they've just chopped Wrangell off at the knees here.
Also, there was a story earlier today that Iran has invited the Iraqi and Syrian presidents to Tehran for a weekend summit with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to hash out ways to cooperate in curbing the runaway violence that has taken Iraq to the verge of civil war, threatens to spread through the region.
Iraq President Jalal Talibani has accepted the invitation, will fly to Iran on Saturday.
The Iranian diplomatic gambit appeared designed to upstage expected moves from Washington to include Syria and Iran in a wider regional effort to clamp off violence in Iraq.
This is so ridiculous.
Iraq is one of the factors and contributors to all of the violence in Iraq.
We want to go talk to them to see what can be done about.
I know how this is going to turn out.
I have a bad feeling about this.
We're going to promise Iran we won't attack them.
We're going to bring them in.
They're probably not going to stop them from getting a nuke.
And hey, speaking of that, how about conflicting news yesterday?
Here we have some CIA.
There must be somebody at the CIA whose job it is to leak to the media.
Because there's another one.
And this leak says, Iran, nukes?
There is no plan in Iran to have nukes.
They have no plan.
They have no program to get weapons-grade nuclear material.
And yet the Iranians keep saying they're close and they're not going to back away.
The Israelis are convinced they have it.
Throw your hands up in despair at times.
Then this, an AP news alert just off the wires 20 minutes ago.
An Iraqi government spokesman says diplomatic relations between Iraq and Syria will be restored.
Oh my God, that's the reaction you.
Oh my God.
So Jalal Talibani is going to go visit with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
And all of this is designed to upstage the Baker report, the Iraq study group report.
This is done to upstate because they've leaked what that report is.
That we're going to try to get Iran and Syria to work there.
I said, why stop there?
Get North Korea involved and China.
Get everybody involved.
Get Hugo Chavez involved.
Solve the problem in Iraq.
Anyway, the Iraq Study Group says we want to reach out to Iran and Syria.
And now the Iranians say, we don't need you.
We don't need the Baker report.
We don't need the Iraq study group.
We'll bring these people in on our own.
We don't need you.
That's how I read this.
Here's Anthony in Cleveland.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Hello.
Yeah, how are you doing there, Russ?
It's a pleasure to speak to you.
Thank you, sir.
Yeah, say, I was just listening a couple of segments ago.
You were talking about Stanley Crouch.
Yes, sir.
And you know, something I couldn't agree more about the hip-hop generation, how they turning our kids, you know, into a different type of being, if you would say.
Me, I was a 35-year-old male, four kids, you know, grew up in the household without a father.
A father passed away when I was two.
And the streets pretty much took me in.
Little educational level, but however, I did go back to school, you know, finish my education.
Well, get my GED.
Also, you know, I even got a little bit of a.
Okay, wait a minute.
Hey, hey, hang on.
Hey, Anthony, hang on.
I've got a break coming up here in 13 seconds.
Can you hang on through the timeout?
Sure.
Because I would be interested to learn with what you just described how you, quote-unquote, saved yourself.
If you didn't have your father around, sounds like you got out of it at some point.
I'd like to hear how.
Back in just a second, folks.
Stay with us.
And we're back, and we are rejoined here by Anthony in Cleveland.
By the way, Anthony, sorry for what happened yesterday at Cleveland Brown Stadium that last minute come back by the Steelers.
Well, we got the Buckeye, so I mean, we're cool with it, you know.
Well, see, that's how you look at things positively.
Okay, you were on the street.
You left the street at age 29.
Your father died when you were two.
You decided to go back to school and get your GED.
Why?
What happened to you at age 29 that made you do this without the role model that you said you needed?
Well, first off, you know, I need to tell you that the streets I took me in, and, you know, I did get arrested.
I was there in jail before I was able to bond out.
I think I was in there for like 12 hours or whatever.
Before I was able to bond out, I said to myself, you know, there's nothing that, I mean, I don't want to go, I don't want to come back here no more.
There's nothing in my mind that I could think of that would want to make me come back here to jail.
Why am I here for doing something stupid?
It's crazy.
You know, after I got out of jail, I did get my CDL license.
And when I was going for sentencing or whatever, the judge looked at, you know, pretty much what I had accomplished in that little time and he said, well, you know what?
What can I do to keep you out of jail?
And he said, you know, if it's just dropping this down to a misdemeanor, you know, we're going to work with you.
But you got to stay out of trouble.
Stayed out of trouble for a year.
Within that year, that's when I got my, went and got my GED.
I went and did a little college in a vocational school or whatever.
By then, I had got four kids.
I have four kids.
You know, just looking up my kids, you know, knowing that I didn't have a father when I was growing up in age.
Let me ask you something, Anthony.
Go ahead.
Let me ask you, if, and I know that this is, it's an if question.
It cannot possibly change.
But I want to ask you, since you think it was a factor in the way you ended up until age 29, do you think if you had had an active father that you might not have ended up in the streets?
That's the answer right there, Rush.
You need a two-parent family, especially in the black family where so much is grabbing at you, so much other influences out there for you.
And when it looked good, my mother never worked.
My mother didn't even have a driver license, nor did she have a bank account.
So I didn't know none of that stuff.
But when the streets grabbed hold of me, I mean, when the money was fast and, you know, when you were in the streets, who did you want to be like?
Who was your role model when you were living that life?
I mean, back then it was BDP.
I mean, Boogie Down Productions.
I mean, Flavor Flavor and all them guys.
I'm 35, so Boogie Down Productions.
Stuff like that.
It was a hip-hop rap, you know.
I mean, I just wanted to sing like them.
I wanted to be like them.
I wanted to, I mean, the gold chains and stuff.
You know, but that ain't it, though.
I mean, if you don't have education, and that's what most of these kids need to understand, it's got to be under education.
When I turned 29, 31, I have two jobs, Rush.
I have two jobs.
Well, you're 35 years old now, is that right?
You're 35, but you were age 29 when this life-changing experience happened.
So you're six years ago was when this happened to you around 2000.
99 is when I got arrested.
Okay, now, were you at that point in your life, 1999, 98, 97, all those years when you're in your mid to late 20s, are you following news at all?
What do you think when you hear the name Colin Powell back then?
What did you think when you heard Clarence Thomas?
You know, Sam, that's amazing that you said that, Rush, because I swear that's the first whole book that I read, Colin Powell's American Hero.
That's his biography, his autobiography, or whatever.
That's the first book that I actually read.
I looked up to him somewhat.
Some of the things that he said, some of the things growing up in Jamaica or whatever.
I mean, I just read this book.
It was amazing to me to read an autobiography.
I wasn't used to doing it.
I wasn't accustomed to doing stuff like that.
It was just, I mean, Colin Powell, Clarence Thomas, and our Chief Justice or whatever, Justice.
Yeah, it's educational.
You got to be educated, though.
Well, The reason I ask that is bouncing off the Stanley Crouch column, which is what you heard me read and why you're calling here, because I think you agree with him.
If he were here, he would probably say he might, he might, I think he'd probably say Clarence Thomas is a decent role model.
I don't know what Stanley's politics are, but he's the type of person anyway who is the things that he has achieved as a role model.
And the same thing with Colin Powell.
Why are people like that not role models on the street?
Okay, if you can excuse me, I'm going to come right back to what you were talking about, but I just want to say that, you know, people like, I mean, the Jesse Jacksons of the world and people like, I mean, in that era, in that time era, and like Eric Gap or whatever, you know, they preach the same old, to me, to me, and this is just me, they preach the same old nonsense to me.
I mean, with civil rights and all this stuff about, you know, people they're not able to get nowhere.
I mean, affirmative action.
I mean, I'm just against all of that.
But going back to what you were saying about why other hip-hop isn't, you know, preaching the same thing as Stanley Crouch or Clarence Thomas.
It's quick money.
It's what's getting them attention.
I mean, I don't know.
I can't give you a complete answer as to why they're in the middle of the morning.
His point is it's perpetual youth.
I mean, you don't have to grow up.
And because sometimes you don't think you're going to live long enough to grow up.
Well, what are you doing now, Anthony?
Well, right now, you speak right now.
I'm working right now.
I'm driving trucks right now.
No, what kind of work are you doing is what it meant.
I'm a truck driver.
I'm a truck driver.
Well.
You hear me?
Oh, yeah, I hear you.
I just, I get calls from people like you periodically when this subject comes up.
And every time I do, I get so hopeful because I think there are probably far more people like you out there than anybody else.
This hope out here is just education.
You got to be educated.
I mean, you got to get yourself, you got to get busy.
You got to get doing something.
I mean, for me, Anthony, I don't disagree with this education business.
I don't disagree with it at all.
And I think in a lot of places it is crucial in a lot of circumstances, but it's overblown for others.
You know, a formal book learning education is not for everybody.
Just like not everything is for everybody.
There are a lot of people who are brilliant and have succeeded beyond their wildest imaginations.
They've got IQs that are sky high.
They may not have a formal education or classical education, but they're brilliant and they're smart and they're informed and they're learned in their own ways.
But in order, when anybody says we have to get an education, well, you're going to have to get something before the education aspect enters the equation, and that's attitude.
And that's, you're going to have to be somewhat optimistic or desirous of wanting to be something or wanting to accomplish something.
Look what you, it finally hit you at age 29.
You went to get your GED.
And I'm sure you were very proud of that.
But what we were talking about earlier, and you just referenced this when you mentioned Jesse Jackson.
You know, a lot of people will look at the electoral returns and it never changes.
In a presidential race, 90% of the black population votes Democrats.
And you don't understand why people can't figure it out.
Well, as you mentioned, Jesse Jackson, I mean, there's a race business, and there's the civil rights movement that exists for the express purpose of telling people who follow them that they don't have a chance because the country's stacked the deck against them.
That the majorities are just not going to let minorities accomplish anything.
And they go back and they continue to harp about racism.
If you look at the civil rights movement's role models, they're all aging or dead.
There's no one in the future they're pointing to.
They are reliving over and over their past achievements, which were significant.
But at some point, you have to move on.
You cannot have as your inspirational moment or two every month a funeral.
You have to celebrate somebody who's living, somebody who's achieving, somebody who's accomplished this.
They're not doing.
If you are an average black American sitting at home and a parent today, and if your sole source of information is from the mainstream media, the drive-by media featuring Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, what can you conclude other than the deck is stacked against you?
And you have no prayer and you have no hope because you're black or you're some other kind of minority and nobody's going to let you get anywhere.
It's unconscionable that this is, but this is what I was talking about earlier in the program, about liberalism versus conservatism.
Liberalism looks at people and sees failure.
They see people who are incompetent.
They see people who can't overcome the obstacles in life.
They embrace all of this and call it imperfection.
They make these people victims and become their champions so that they will vote for them.
It's a vicious little circle here.
But the bottom line is it destroys ambition.
You talk about fathers not around, Anthony.
I've had people like you.
I've had black women have called here, three or four of them just in the last two years, who have said it was social programs that did it because government-sponsored social programs took the place of the father in the black family.
He didn't have to hang around and support the family because the government was there to do it, which dovetails exactly with what you were saying.
And all this, by the way, started today, folks, on a discussion of the basic, the basic, most simple definitions of conservatism versus liberalism.
And my belief that despite all the complications that people encounter in trying to define both things to people, it's really very simple.
Life is about relationships with people.
Life is about work.
It's about home.
It's about school, whatever.
And conservatism and liberalism have two distinctly different views of how average people are seen.
Liberalism doesn't see much.
Liberalism condescends, sees failure and hopelessness.
Conservatism is just the opposite.
Potential, desire for people to be the best they can be, using whatever ambition they want.
If they want an education, they've got to have an attitude first that creates the desire for it because desire is 80% of achievement.
Liberalism destroys the attitude of desire by suppressing it and telling people they're silly for having it.
It can't happen.
Too many things are stacked against you.
You're a woman, you're going to suffer sexism.
Gay, you're going to suffer of homophobia.
If you're black, you're going to suffer from racism.
If you're Hispanic, you're going to suffer from nativism and restrictionism and all that.
I mean, they've got all these isms down.
And it's really unfortunate.
But you can take that simple definition I just gave you of liberalism versus conservatism and apply it to virtually everything else.
Cultural, fiscal, social.
You can immediately define those two things simply if you understand the root of the difference.
Anthony, I appreciate the call.
I got to run because I'm a little long.
All the best to you, sir.
We'll be back and continue here in just a second.
Okay, get this.
Boston Globe yesterday, the K Street Price, K-Street's big lobbying.
Street in Washington.
K-Street price that business will have to pay for Sarbanes-Oxley reform along with big campaign contributions.
This is about Barney Frank proposing a new bargain to business.
Now, Sarbanes-Oxley, businesses hate this legislation.
It was the legislation enacted after all the corporate fraud and accounting fraud and so forth.
And it's, well, it's cumbersome to say the least.
It's personally invasive in terms of privacy and this sorts of thing.
And they would love to be free of it because it's just like having to do another set of tax returns personally for a CEO and other members of the management team.
So here's the deal.
Representative Barney Frank has proposed in a series of meetings with business groups a grand bargain with corporate America.
Democrats would agree to reduce regulations and support free trade deals in exchange for businesses agreeing to greater wage increases and job benefits for workers.
Barney Frank is in line to chair the House Financial Services Committee.
And the Globe says he has struck a conciliatory posture with financial industry leaders in recent years.
But since the morning after election day, he's moved quickly to lay out an ambitious plan to try to end the political stalemate between Republicans and Democrats on broad economic issues.
That's BS.
His plan is not to end the political stalemate.
His plan is to wipe out Republicans.
I don't blame him.
That's what it's about.
Our side doesn't look at it that way, but they do.
What I want to do is break the deadlock, Frank said in an interview.
A lot of policies the business community wants us to adopt for growth are now blocked.
On the other hand, the business community is successfully blocking the minimum wage increase and created a very anti-union attitude in Congress.
So Barney proposes that if businesses support a minimum wage increase and provide protection for workers adversely affected by trade treaties, Democrats would be more willing to ease regulations and approve free trade deals.
Doesn't say they'll do it.
They'll just be more willing.
Basically, yeah, that's what he's saying.
When we say no, we'll say no nicely.
He also would support changes to immigration rules favored by businesses and noted that allowing more immigrants would put needed funds into the social security system.
I should point out to you that Stephen J. Collins, president of the Automotive Trade Policy Council, which represents the big three automakers in Detroit, said business leaders would welcome such a discussion with Barney Frank.
Our companies are very open about the fact that we're facing massive competitive challenges of a global nature that need big answers.
There has to be a partnership between government and industry to solve some of these problems, and health is one of them.
So I'm going to tell you, folks, this is the kind of thing I hate to say this.
I've always thought Barney Frank's one of the smartest guys up there.
He can be who he is and so forth.
But when it comes down to coming up for strategical things and handling himself in a debate, sometimes he caves and goes over the top.
But this is just in terms of non-populism, just in terms of reaching independence and so forth.
What in the world is wrong about this?
He's going to get businesses to pay more money and wages.
He's going to get them to raise the minimum wage.
He's going to get them to protect these people that are losing because of free trade.
And if they do all that, then he might get rid of Sarbanes-Oxley and some of these onerous regulations that businesses face.
Now, with as much angst in this country as there is over free trade, and you look at these minimum wage ballot initiatives that passed in, what is it, five or six states on Election Day with the Missouri, I think it was 75, 25.
And now with the big three automakers in big trouble because of Toyota and others, they are willing.
They would love to get their pension plans and the health care plan passed off to government.
They would love for the government to take that over so they don't have to increase the price of their cars.
They don't like being in the healthcare business.
They want to make cars.
So keep a sharp eye out for this.
This is going to get some interesting reaction.
And in this sense, if this ever happens, for example, you don't know what the legislative procedure will be, how far it'll go if it gets to the White House whether President Bush never signed it.
You don't know those things.
But even so, just the process of debating this is going to make people, oh, wow, they really care about us.
Government's going to raise our wages.
Government's going to get our health care taken.
Government's going to all.
And I tell you, folks, we're at a point in time here where it's crucial to understand there are more Americans than you think who will sign on to that like that.
Back in just a sec.
Stay with us.
All right.
Don't forget, folks, the Warner Theater Rush to Excellence Tour coming down the line soon as a podcast.
To those of you who've signed up for it, it'll also be a downloadable MP3 file at rushlimbaugh.com later this afternoon.
Have a wonderful Monday, and we'll be back.
Do it all over again tomorrow.
See you then.
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