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Dec. 20, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:27
December 20, 2006, Wednesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of The Rush 24-7 podcast.
I'll tell you, folks, I am thankful.
I am grateful that I did not have anything to eat today before I came into work or after I got to work because Hillary was on the view today.
That show's hard enough to watch with Rosie.
That show's hard enough to look at with Rosie on it.
Plus Hillary's in a pink pantsuit for crank.
How many pants suits does she have?
And and I'll tell you this motherhood is now if you're a mother, you're a victim.
And the audience got free copies of the reprint of It Takes the Village.
Anyway, greetings, uh, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome.
It's Rush Limbaugh, coming to you today from high atop, the EIB building in Midtown Manhattan.
Uh telephone number if you want to be on the program is 800-282-2882, and the email address is Rush at EIB net.com.
Uh the uh uh news is today, uh people have been complaining.
Uh, you know, there's no news of this is this is actually crazy.
I got an email today from Gretchen Carlson, uh, who is the uh co-host of Fox and Friends, uh, and she said, Hey Rush, uh, my mom heard you on the radio yesterday talking about the Miss USA stuff.
She's referring to this this hijacking of three cable networks by Trump yesterday for this gag me press conference with Tara Connor.
Uh Gretchen writes, as a former Miss America, the two pageants are markedly different.
Miss America actually stays busy all year doing speeches, talking about her platform and performing her talent.
She also has a constant adult travel companion, Miss USA, lives in a New York City apartment with Miss Universe and little supervision.
There is no talent category or scholarship aspect of the Miss USA pageant, confirming everything I thought yet.
By the way, thanks, Gretchen, for the note and the clarification on the difference between the two pageants.
I knew that this girl, uh, this gal um Tara uh Connor uh was gonna survive uh even uh as long as she didn't disgrace the swimsuit competition.
There was no other competition to disgrace because there isn't any.
Which, you know, I don't know how many other people have thought of this, but this is I think this is a good idea.
Trump, I don't know whether he knows it or not, but he may have accidentally swerved into a new reality show yesterday to pick up when the uh when the apprentice finally bombs, as all TV shows do.
I mean, the apprentice is gonna be out in LA for its uh for its next run.
But the title of Trump's news show, Second Chances.
Instead of firing incompetent people, Trump will give them a second chance.
Uh and uh viewers will watch the second chancers struggle with not blowing it.
And there's any number of people, it could be contestants on this show, Foley, uh Michael Richards, uh Marion Barry, he would just nabbed again yesterday, claimed he got set up again.
Uh Tank Johnson of the Chicago Bears.
What is a guy 6'10 and 500 pounds need of bodyguard for?
Uh and what good's the bodyguard when a bodyguard gets gunned down at a nightclub in Chicago.
At any rate, uh, and of course, Miss USA could appear on on there as well.
Funny story today, also today in the New York Observer.
That's a pink paper here in uh in the city.
Headline, John McCain and the Iraq Numbers game.
The drive-by media is starting to turn on McCain now.
Uh because they loved McCain when uh when he was anti-Republican.
Uh and they thought when he was a moderate and a straight talker, but Richard Cohen.
And they didn't get to this yesterday, but Richard Cole of the Washington Post had a story, or column, uh, essentially saying that McCain's campaign's a tale of two cities.
Baghdad and something else, because he's all for troop increases, uh, increasing number of troops, and the the drive-bys are just beside themselves that that McCain uh is is uh changing the guy he was uh during that period of time when they fell in love with him.
South Carolina in the primaries, the New Hampshire primary of 2000, the Straight Talk Express, and this New York Observer story is sort of a takeoff on this.
It's not that McCain's call for more troops to be dispatched to Iraq is disingenuous.
He is, after all, a confirmed believer in democratizing uh the democratizing doctrine of American neoconservatism.
He's a proponent of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein back when George W. Bush was poo-pooing the concept of nation building.
Consider the chief lesson that McCain seems to have learned from his 2000 White House bid when his Maverick credentials certified him as the most popular politician in the United States, but doomed him in the primary.
Now that intrigued me.
That intrigued me.
So I decided to keep reading the story.
The story is otherwise dull and boring, and we know everything there is to know about McCain.
And here it is, which brings us to the present debate over Iraq, its parameters redefined by the bipartisan study group's suggestion to surrender.
I doesn't say that, I put that in myself.
For Mr. McCain, the fault lines are eerily familiar.
His old allies have their fingers crossed, hoping that Bush's obstinacy will at least wilt but a shrill minority of voices on the right.
The Rush Limbaughs and the Sean Hannities who led the intra-party assault on McCain in 2000 feel threatened by the Iraq surrender group and have viciously turned their guns on its members and their proposals.
Notice when any of us disagree with these people, we are called vicious, and we turn our guns on them.
I said it was stupid, and I called it a surrender report.
And I don't feel threatened by it at all.
At any rate, a shrill minority of voices on the right, the Rush Limbaughs who led the intra-party assault on McCain in 2000.
This time, McCain is standing squarely with the Limbaugh crowd.
Maybe it's because he genuinely agrees with the Limbaugh crowd, or maybe it's just that he's learned a political lesson about what happens to you when you don't agree with the Limbaugh crowd.
This is the New York observer, and they are meant that this is a trend.
You're going to see it more and more drive-by media, very much upset over the fact that McCain's changing who he is and uh becoming a uh trying to become the new definition of conservatism.
And we'll see how he reacts to that.
I mean, he is, you know, everybody loves fawning media.
Uh, and uh you would assume he has to know that this was going to happen.
Maybe not.
Interesting headline here in the Washington Post.
Short mental workouts may slow the decline of aging minds.
This study finds ten sessions of exercise to boost reasoning skills, memory, and mental processing speed, staved off mental decline in middle-aged and elderly people in the first definitive study to show that honing intellectual skills can bolster the mind in the same way that physical exercise protects and strengthens the body.
But there, you know, we've got if you heard our morning update last week on this, too much exercise can lead to cancer now.
And I call for investigations on this because big exercise and big gym uh have been forcing on us this notion we gotta get out there and work out and do all these things, and people are going nuts with it, and uh they're exercising too much.
It's an interesting process by which the research group has discovered this, but too much exercise can lead to cancer.
So I've known uh all my life which why don't do any exercise that's not necessary, like walking to the bathroom or uh getting out of bed or what have you.
Now the researchers also showed that the benefits of the brain exercises extended well beyond the specific skills the volunteers learned.
Older adults who did the basic exercises followed uh by later sessions were three times as fast as those who got only the initial look it.
Uh, ladies and gentlemen, uh it's a long story.
I've highlighted a lot of things in it, but I'm not gonna waste any more time on it.
Short mental workouts may slow the decline in the aging minds.
Uh all any of you, if you're worried about your mind declining.
If you're worried about your mind, and and look at I I think if you don't know, ask family members.
Uh sometimes victims are the last to know that things are happening to them, particularly mentally.
So if uh if you think everything's fine, just ask trusted family members if your mental capacities are declining.
If there's something about you that they seem to think odd or unusual.
And if they say yes, it's very simple.
All you have to do is listen to this program and listen to me in order to get all of the brain exercise you need, and you can do it in less than three hours a day.
And you don't need to mess with all the other exercises that are in this story.
Another public service brain exercise provided by us here at the EIB Network.
We'll be right back, folks.
Stay with us.
Remember, my friends, as long as I'm here, it doesn't matter where here Is.
Even though we are in New York today, high atop the EIB building in Midtown Manhattan, Rush Limbaugh, America's real anchor man, doctor of democracy, and truth detector, all combined as one harmless, lovable little fuzzball.
So misunderstood by so many, which is so funny.
Telephone number 800-282-2882.
It was only last week that we learned, ladies and gentlemen, of the sad situation at a Needham, Massachusetts has grow, where one parent, one mother, I think it was, who had three kids, complained to the scruel principal that the fact that two of her kids didn't make the honor roll was causing trouble in the in the household because the school published a list,
and so the principal took it under advisement, thought about it for about a half minute, and broomed the whole notion of publishing the honor roll list.
It didn't want to make people it didn't make it feel uncomfortable.
It was it was just wise thing to do.
Now there is this from uh from News Day.
A Long Island school bus driver by the name of Kenneth Mott.
He has a white beard.
He looks a lot like Santa Claus.
And he was driving the bus with a Santa Claus hat on.
Newsday reports Mott said that he was told that a parent of a child complained to the district about Mott's Santa Claus hat, saying that the child doesn't believe in Santa Claus and was bothered by the hat.
So a guy with a beard wearing a hat who looks religious, although Santa Claus is not a religious figure per se, minding his own business, driving the bus, upset a kid.
So, I mean, what what else is this this kid not get to go to the mall?
I mean, if you see Santa Claus somewhere, is this upset the kid?
What is the kid do at the sight of anything that reminds him of Christmas?
Company officials nevertheless told Mr. Mott to remove his Santa Claus hat, uh, and he refused, by the way.
Kenneth Mott stated, nobody is gonna tell me what I can do and can't do.
He doesn't pretend to be Santa Claus while driving, nor does he play Christmas carols or decorate his bus.
This is America.
I am not hurting anybody.
You know, the other day, it must have been yesterday, uh, Dawn had to go out and play Ms. Claws, our female Santa Claus.
She wore a bright red dress and so forth with uh with Judy Garland bright red shoes.
She came in and she sat down right before the program started, put on a Santa Claus hat.
Now, if I'm this kid out of Long Island, I protest, and I refuse to do the program.
I'm being inundated with religious beliefs, and I didn't ask for this, and this offends me, and this bothers me, and she's trying to provoke me or pervert me or influence me or do something or distract me from the job.
But of course, nothing like that occurred to me.
Just the opposite.
It was in the spirit of the times, the spirit of the season.
It was cute.
And it was fun to see somebody get in the holiday spirit.
And it used to be that way when we were kids, get on a bus.
Santa Claus is uh driving a school bus, or the drivers were into Santa Claus.
Nobody would run around.
Oh my God, I'm offended.
I'm bothered by that.
One person, one kid, goes home and tells his parents about it.
You know, the uh this is political correctness run amok, which it's hard to pick one occasion or example uh to say that political correctness has run among.
Jack Kemp, who is a contributor to American Thinker.com, not the Jack Kemp, but another Jack Kemp, says this farce, the type of thing one sees in the plot of a seven dollar Christmas movie you can buy off the rack at a drugstore chain, has mercifully ended for now.
Seems that there are two major schools of thought about unusual people with odd hats.
One is that we should all learn about other cultures and be tolerant of them.
The other is, what if the guy had been wearing a turban?
Let's forget the Santa Claus hat for what if the bus driver, what if Mr. Mott had been wearing a turban?
And what if Ace a kid had complained?
Do you think the kid would be sent to sensitivity lessons?
Damn right he would be.
The kid wouldn't be allowed to, and I guarantee you that turban would not have come off.
Mr. Mott, he chose to wear a turban, would be riding around wearing the turban today, and the kid would be off somewhere getting his mind right, learning how not to be discriminatory and bigoted, but put a Santa Claus hat on, and Mr. Mott is approached by his bosses and told what for and he denied them.
So we're either taught to be tolerant of other cultures and to learn all about them.
The other lesson, uh, the other school of thought today is that we are now in America.
We have the guaranteed right not to be made uncomfortable by anything that doesn't suit our fancy.
Be it a person with an unusual hat or a person with only one leg or who is obese or doesn't wear designer jeans or is obese and wears designer jeans.
Uh the two opposing viewpoints are increasingly headed for confrontations, and the winners will be those who come to the conclusion that we are all entitled to our reasonable public displays of our culture that don't interfere with public safety.
But I think it goes deeper than that.
This is uh it goes back to what, well, frequently talk about on this program, and that is the the offended.
It is a it is a it is a almost a registered group now, the offended.
If there are people out there who are personally bothered, they think they have a right not to be.
They have a right not to be offended, they have a right not to be bothered, and they are given power because they are a minority.
In some cases, such a small minority, they are one person.
So if one person's bothered, one person is offended, then all hell breaks loose, and the majority obsessed with guilt over being the majority.
Okay, okay.
Well, we don't want to hurt your feelings.
And we don't want you uncomfortable, and we don't want you offended.
Then go to Mr. Mott, or the principal cancels the publishing of the honor roll, or uh what have you.
And the process repeats.
It's it was very vivid in the days after the 9-11 attacks in New York City at the World Trade Center in the Pentagon.
Uh, an august bureaucracy, no less than the State Department, convened a series of forums on the subject, why do they hate us?
Meaning the terrorists who blew up the World Trade Center in the Pentagon.
Why do they hate us?
And of course, why are you going to ask that question?
Well, you're going to ask it because you want an answer.
And why do you want the answer?
Well, you want the answer because you think the answer might help you convince them to stop hating us.
Which, in a war, is a s is a is a serious dereliction of responsibility.
And an absolute distraction.
It doesn't matter why we're hated.
There's nothing that justifies blowing up two of our buildings.
There's nothing that justifies blowing up the Pentagon and trying to blow up another building in Washington, we don't know if it was a White House or the Capitol.
Nothing.
But there are enough people in this country that we are guilty, Rush.
We have we brought pestilence and syphilis, racism, sexism, and bigotry.
The white people did when they conquered this land that was once dominated by the great Indians who were at one with nature.
Of course, everything was pristine back then.
We came along, we destroyed it, kicked them off their land.
Now we rob and steal the other people of the world, all their oil, all their gold, all of their diamonds, which are now called conflict diamonds.
Uh, and we we put these baubles around our necks and on our fingers, and we put their oil in gasoline in our cars, and we air condition our homes while the rest of the world suffers.
And so we deserve this kind of thing.
So it's, and this has been building for a long time.
The tir I call the tyranny of the minority, and it's getting it's getting bad now when one person, particularly a child, can be made to feel offended or uncomfortable.
And the guilt of the majority is the only thing, even if it's adults versus children.
It's the guilt of the majority, the only thing that permits the minority to get away with this kind of intimidation.
Speaking of this somewhat related story, I always love news from Dubai, as you know.
And remember the uh Dubai Ports World, which is part of the great infrastructure of the nation of Dubai, or the emirate of Dubai, were not allowed to purchase six terminals at six American ports because of the threat posed by terrorism.
I mean, this is a country that's close over there to the hotbed of terrorist activity, couldn't allow them to charge of the ports and so forth, and they were run out of town on a rail.
In fact, they just sold their port operations to AIG, the insurance company joint.
Turns out now that um the government of Dubai plans to check into the Time Warner Center after signing a contract to buy the New York branch of the Mandarin Oriental Hotels up there on Columbus Circle for a record price.
Uh Ismar Hotels, an investment vehicle owned by the Dubai government has agreed to purchase the 251 room hotel uh in the twin towered complex for approximately one point eight million dollars per key per room.
One point eight million dollars per room do the math times two hundred and fifty one rooms.
That's a lot of terrorists that you can put in that hotel to get ready for the next day.
How can we permit this, folks?
How can you who participated in running a Dubai ports world out of their deals sit idly by and let them snatch up at whatever price 251 hotel rooms on Columbus Circle.
We'll be back.
I want an answer to this right ladies and gentlemen learn it, love it, and live it.
Mike, a l pardon me, ladies and gentlemen, a brief inside uh baseball technical exchange here between me and the broadcast engineer mix minus a little hot on my mic side just distorted just a bit there you go.
There you go.
There you go.
All right we're back here on the cutting edge of societal evolution Rush Limbaugh having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have let's go to the phones.
People have been patiently waiting.
We'll start in Oregon in Astoria.
This is Colin and I'm glad you called sir.
Welcome.
Thanks a lot.
I I'm gonna be open with you.
I'm a twenty two year old liberal and I listen to you almost daily and not out of spite but I think you're thoroughly entertaining and I appreciate your side and it only helps me hone my own views.
Now what I what I want to say to you though is I think like your attitude towards liberalism and liberals in general like when you're talking about the saturated politics of DC, you know, that's okay.
But your audience I fear takes it and tries to bring it into their everyday conversations and they just don't it doesn't work for them.
Uh now wait you said my audience Yeah the people like I'll I'll be talking to people and they'll be like they'll I'll t I'll you know ask them but do you listen to Rush and that's after talking to him for a while and there the attitude of you know oh you're a liberal you know everything's a the binaries of liberalism and conservative when there's three hundred and sixty degrees of humanity.
It's not just...
Well, there may be 360 degrees of humanity, but there's only two ideologies that are dominant in American life, culture, politics, and whatever today.
And one of them is liberalism and one is conservatism.
And there, I suppose, are varietals of each.
But they're basically pretty consistent.
Conservatives and liberals are.
And I would be very cautious about blaming the audience for not...
not understanding what is being said on the program or for misunderstanding it and taking it the wrong way and because what you're you're l that's something liberals tend to do is look at average people and think they're not very bright.
And you're basically saying my audience loves me and listens to me but they don't really get what I'm saying and they go out there and they can't have polite conversations with people because everything is becomes a you know black or white uh uh context basically right in which case I would then say that you're probably you're upset with him if I'm polarizing the country unnecessarily and you think what you think is divisive.
Well um how is it that liberals are never accused of being divisive?
Why why is it that uh look at look at what the uh some of the most over the top outrageous things that liberals say you can go back the last six years I can take you back as far as you want to go but just the past couple days Sean Penn has been profane while demanding that Bush and Cheney be impeached and a number of other uh horrible things happen.
George Bush has been called Hitler uh the biggest terrorist in the country by liberals he's the biggest problem we have had Joy Behar on the view the other day calling Donald Rumsfeld Hitler and saying that's why he should have been Times man of the year.
People try to excuse oh she's just a comedian why are we talking about how come when when liberals make these divisive and incendiary allegations that are not based in fact is nobody call that divisive I don't know I I think that's divisive too but I think you have a great o my I guess it was just a constructive criticism I was trying to offer.
I think you have a great opportunity to really specify and say, you know, those people are divisive too.
But let's not join them just on the opposite end and start, you know, uh, I guess separating an already fragile situation in America, even more.
Well, but it's how old are you, uh, Colin?
I'm twenty-two.
Twenty-two.
You know, most people uh historical perspective begins with the day they were born, and and that's that's not an insult or cod, it's just it's true of everybody.
Uh but the partisanship that exists in the country today is no different than it has been at any other time.
It was this part as in the nineteen eighties, uh shortly before and after you were born, and Ronald Reagan was the target of much the same kind of vilification as uh as George Bush is today.
Uh Richard Nixon was was uh the target like you can't believe that back in those days, though the Democrats ran the show.
I think one of the reasons for partisanship today, Colin, really is uh since 1994.
Democrats ran the House of Representatives.
They ran Washington for 40 years until 1994, actually 95.
This is uh you were you were just maturing, getting getting uh at a certain age people understand these things then.
And I think losing that power, they power to them was a birthright.
It was it was uh it was their entitlement, and it was denied to them.
It was taken away from it, and they were livid and they were angry.
You're too young to remember some of the things that were said about Newt Gingrich and some of the things that were said about other Republicans and Tom Delay.
Uh this partisanship has been out there, and in fact, the liberal media has been dominated or dominant in this country for so long.
People like me are actually equal time.
We are attempting to balance the partisanship that was not called partisanship because it was so dominant.
Liberalism was just what was.
It was just the way things were.
Uh as recently as 1988, there were no radio talk shows other than mine, and it was CNN, those that was the only network.
The rest of it was the newspapers and the news magazines and the broadcast networks.
Now they've now lost their minority, and there's a lot of people losing power, and that's gonna make them mad and try to get it back.
But this is natural.
You know, this is healthy, the exchange of ideas and people being open to it and inspiring their own critical thinking.
People that listen to this show are not puppets, and they're not robots.
Uh they end up doing their own thinking, and most of them just have their own thinking validated.
I'm not I'm not creating a bunch of mind-dumb robots out there.
This is uh, you know, uh, we view it here as a contest in the arena of ideas to persuade as many people to agree with us as possible.
Okay, can I uh can I just ask you to do one thing then?
Well, you can ask that would be if you could if you could just not make me feel like since I'm liberal that I support terrorists, that would be awesome.
Oh I under now I have a better picture about this.
Well, see, here's here's you know, I I understand what you're saying.
Because the liberals say that conservatives are racist, sexist, bigots, homophobes, uh mean-spirited extremists.
I made fun of Michael J. Fox.
I was out there mocking him.
I am so mean and so rotten.
None of that was true, and yet I'm lumped in with this by people who don't even listen to me who say these things.
The way I have to deal with it is I know the truth and they're wrong people saying this about me, and so why let they and their opinions affect me.
If you if you're upset as as a liberal to hear uh people like me equate you with the support of terrorists, your best bet might be to go to the people who are liberals who are supporting terrorists and ask them to stop.
Yeah.
I'm not gonna sit here and and and stop characterizing I mean, uh I do think that many Democrats and liberals are invested in the defeat of this country.
You get John Kerry in Damascus today.
You've had Bill Nelson over in Damascus trying to undercut U.S. foreign policy.
You remember what Dick Durbin said about the way American interrogators treat prisoners at Club Getmo, comparing us to Pol Pot's uh savages and the gulags of the Soviet Union at death camps in uh uh uh then in the days of the Nazis.
Uh they claim to be supporting the troops.
Uh well they're not.
I mean, it's it's you know, you can only call them as you see them out there, uh uh Colin.
Yeah.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry you feel bad, But if if you are not one who supports terrorists, then just tell yourself Rush isn't talking about me.
Because I haven't been, because I don't know you.
This first time I met you.
All right.
Well, I appreciate it, Russia.
I'm glad you called.
You know, you are a rarity.
And I and then I mean this as a compliment.
You are the first liberal in many, many weeks here who's called here who has lasted more than 30 seconds or a minute without calling me names or this sort of thing.
And we've had a very productive conversation, and I appreciate it, and I've enjoyed it, and I hope you call back.
All right, thanks a lot.
You bet.
Well.
Quite interesting.
Well, I thought I thought I was going to get a transition in that call to go to some sound bites.
I didn't.
But I'm going to go to the sound bites anyway.
Hillary Clinton, as I said, was on the view today in a pink pantsuit, which made me wonder how many pants suits does she have.
You know, people are always talking about wardrobes and clothes and this sort of thing.
But I don't know if it's the same uh uh uh pink pant suit from the Pretty and Pink press conference, which would have been in 1993.
Uh perhaps 1994.
I don't know if it was that.
All I know is that view show that is hard enough to watch, hard enough to look at with Rosie on it.
Today, Hillary went all mommy.
All mommy all the time.
She talked about mother this and mother that and how hard it is.
And she talked about daycare and head start and working mothers, and we can help an uh uh we can help mother more, and we all need to nurture kids.
Every kid needs health care.
Good preschools are needed.
Uh schools need to be in tune, and employers need to give parents time off to go to teacher conferences.
The bottom line here is that in Hillary's world to be a mother is to now be a victim.
This is not by accident.
She'd passing out uh reprints of her uh book.
It uh it takes a village.
Uh and you know, it you know how easy it is to make people think they're victims.
Oprah has made a billion dollars doing it to make people think they're victims.
Uh and here's Hillary coming up.
Motherhood.
Motherhood is to be a victim.
But what exactly did she suggest?
Well, we need to do more.
We need to do more.
Uh some people just get a nanny.
Anyway, here are a couple sound bites.
Uh Elizabeth Hasselbeck uh says, Do you feel that uh like a mom and having worked as a mom and being able to multitask, does that give a would-be president kind of an edge up on, say, a male rival?
Nobody's ever been in a position to ask that question because we've never had a mother whoever ran for or held that position.
When I was a young mom years ago, and I was, you know, working, it was at a time when, you know, if you were a mother in the workplace, you weren't supposed to really talk about your kids.
You weren't supposed to bring it to work.
What?
And it was so schizophrenic.
I remember, you know, in the office that I worked in, starting at like three o'clock, every woman was on the phone making sure their child got, you know, safely home from school or got picked up by the babysitter or made it to the after school program, and everybody was like on the edge of their seats.
How can you do that if you're not allowed to talk about it at work?
People did you try to tell me there's been a period of time in this country when women and mothers have not discussed their kids with each other.
This is how it's just I don't know how we did it in the past.
I really don't know how we did it.
Well, we met we managed, we we actually managed.
Parents always talk about their kids.
In fact, if people like me who don't have kids, you get sick of hearing about it.
I don't want to see the pictures anymore.
I don't want to hear about the honor roll.
I don't want to hear about the latest poem.
I don't want to hear about it.
I've never stopped talking about their kids.
What is this?
Here's the next uh bite.
Joy Behar.
Do you think it would help to have a woman in the White House?
I mean, let's go there.
I guess we will never we will never know that until um until somebody tries.
Because it's it's such a leap of faith.
And I am well aware of that.
It is like way out there.
You if you weren't going to take that leap, and Senator Barack Obama decides he is going to take that leap, would he get your vote?
He is a terrific guy.
Stop the tape a second.
This is the last time Hillary will appear with Elizabeth Hasselbeck.
You don't ask Hillary about Obama and live to describe the answer.
A lot of good people running in the Democratic primary.
And I think that's exciting because in most elections, you know, it was kind of accepted Somebody on one side or the other was going to be the nominee and and maybe the likely winner.
This time that's all thrown up, and I think that's good.
I think everybody who wants to compete should compete.
It's a free country, you know, we tell our children.
If you study hard and you're a good kid, maybe you could grow up and be president.
Even if you're a girl.
Even if you're a girl.
Let's throw open those doors.
This is throw open the doors of everybody.
Nobody is denying anybody in the door.
It's called you got to go out and get the votes.
This is mindless twaddle.
But I know what she's doing.
Hillary has become Miss Mom because it's the one thing Obama can't do.
Back in just a getting ever closer to the big day when Santa Claus tumbles down the chimbley.
Wonder how many people are upset when I say that.
Ron in Athens, Georgia, I'm glad you called.
Glad you waited.
Welcome to a Rush Limbaugh program.
Rush, it's great to talk to you.
Can you hear me all right?
Yeah, I hear you.
Fine.
All right, great.
What do you have?
Some kind of a cell phone out there driving around.
What's that?
Young cell phone.
You can't hear me.
I can hear you on a cell phone, right?
Yeah, actually I'm on a I'm on a uh I'm on a Bluetooth, so my son can listen inside in the truck.
He's a big fan of your.
Well, Bluetooth works here.
We handle all technologies.
Hey, I want to say small business pizza making large family dittoes from a guy who got his start because he listened to you too much.
Well, thank you.
I appreciate that, and I understand.
This minimum wage thing has been bothering me for a long time, and uh I haven't given a dime to the Republican Party for over ten years because they can't get their economic stuff together.
And I just heard today, this minimum wage thing's been going around, and the Democrats, of course.
That was part of their theme in the 2006 elections.
But President Bush, I just heard a soundbite at the uh half hour where he said he could support raising the minimum wage, two dollars over the period of two years, but he hopes or doesn't want it to hurt small businesses.
I thought, well, that's like telling somebody I want to eat as much chocolate as I can, but I want to lose weight.
And uh I wanted to hear your thoughts on that.
You know, uh I'm I'm glad you called.
We have been talking about this this minimum wage for the longest time.
Had a story.
I've must have been Los Angeles Times or somewhere.
It was a California uh story on the minimum wage out there is going up higher than the uh federal minimum wage is slated increase uh in January.
And they went out and they talked to a bunch of small business owners, dry cleaners and donut shop owners and this sort of stuff, and they said we're gonna have to raise prices.
We're gonna have to read prices, and I'm afraid the uh small business owners, I'm afraid that my customers aren't going to understand that.
And I agreed because most of them are idiots.
They're they're not going to understand.
They think, well, just cut back expenses, cut back on some of the luxuries that you business owners uh no doubt have and so forth.
People don't understand the economics of this stuff.
Uh as far as Bush, I heard him too in the press conference today, said he supports a Democrat proposal to increase the uh minimum wage, said it should be coupled with tax and regulatory relief for small business.
I let me tell you if he gets that with a Democrat-controlled Congress, I will uh I'll be surprised.
Here's the sad thing about this, Ron.
There's no other way to put this.
The um and I I think this is happening in global warming.
I saw a story today by Pat Patrick uh Roberts, uh Pat Michaels in the American Spectator made me start thinking of this.
Uh we have lost as conservatives the minimum wage argument.
And we lost it for a simple reason, not because we're wrong, because we argued it in a in a in an almost scholarly and pure economics way.
Whereas the left, we need people to be able to feed their families.
We need for people to be able to eat.
We need something that's fair.
The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and what is a measly dollar an hour and the average American.
Oh how can my country be so cruel to deny these people at least a halfway decent wage?
Meanwhile, we're out there saying, well, no, if you do that, you're gonna actually end up losing j you lose them.
Uh it it's been like the same way we lost the Social Security Reform argument.
It was primarily a uh marketing framing uh uh mistake.
And uh same thing's happening in global warming, by the way, which I will splay in As the program uh unfolds before your very eyes and ears.
But we we lost the argument on this.
I mean, we've lost the American people.
Bush is for a minimum wage.
The Republicans in the House last year before the November elections were for it.
People get what they want in this country.
Back in just a second.
Okay, folks, got to take a brief time out here for the uh traditional top-of-the-hour break.
Uh broadcast excellence, all yours, and will continue in a matter of moments.
Back before you know it.
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