Rush Limbaugh Program - January 9, 2007, Tuesday, Hour #1

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Jan. 9, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program

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January 9, 2007, Tuesday, Hour #1

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	Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24 7 Podcast.
	Now look at that.
	Esther, the show is starting.
	Are you going to listen?
	Amazing.
	Anyway, greetings, ladies and gentlemen and thrill seekers.
	Music lovers, conversationalists all across the fruited play in the award-winning thrill-packed, ever exciting Rush Limbaugh program here on the EIB network.
	Back at you.
	Telephone numbers 800-282-2882.
	If you would like to participate, remember, this is Tuesday and Monday through Thursday.
	We only talk about what I care about.
	If uh if you're if you're not calling to call what I care about and talk about what I care about, you will be shut out.
	Again, the number 800-282-2882.
	The email address is rush at EIBNet.com.
	Well, congratulations to the Florida Gators in an upset route of the Ohio State University Buckeyes last night.
	Little life lesson there all year long.
	The Gators were told they couldn't do it.
	And even after the matchup was announced, the uh Gators were basically told, don't show up.
	And if you do show up, bring an army because that's the only way you got a chance to win.
	And they kept hearing about how they were underdogs and had no prayer and no chance throughout.
	And uh game turned out to be the way it did.
	I you have to factor in the fact that uh Ohio State hadn't played a game in 51 days.
	The college football season needs to have some kind of adjustment.
	Either start the season in October, they can play all the way through these bowl games, or that's not practicable either, but the uh I mean you can say the same thing for Florida State, but they did play two games after the Ohio State season uh was concluded.
	Anyway, for the most part, same thing for both teams.
	It was uh a shocking stunner of a game, but congratulations to the Gators.
	U.S. airstrike.
	AC-130 gunships, ladies and gentlemen, hit targets in southern Somalia, where Islamic militants were believed to be sheltering suspects in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies.
	Many people reported killed.
	Monday's attack, the first overt military action by us in Somalia since the 1990s, i.e.
	Blackhawk Down, although it was not clear if they were American or Ethiopian aircraft, it was not known if there were any casual well, it yes, it is now known that there were casualties, and some pretty high-up Al-Qaeda's figures uh bought the dust.
	Two helicopters fired several rockets toward the road that leads to the Kenyan border.
	Aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower arrived off Somalia's coast and launched intelligence gathering missions over uh Somalia, three other warships conducting anti-terror operations, even as we speak off the Somali coast.
	This, ladies and gentlemen, is more like it.
	New York Times today.
	Unbelievable.
	Lead editorial.
	Past time to get real on Iraq.
	This is a ramp up to opposing Bush's plan tomorrow night for his uh his surge.
	By the way, I read the Washington Post today.
	The the real in interesting ingredient to me about this is not really the additional troops.
	I'll get to that here in just a second.
	I've I've have to share this Times editorial with you because it's mind-blowing.
	They want it both ways.
	They're telling us to get out of Iraq.
	This is absurd, they think, to go in there and ramp up our troop presence and put our troops at risk.
	This is crazy.
	And laying the groundwork here for everybody to join their their side in this and to uh oppose it.
	What's interesting about this lead editorial is the third to last paragraph.
	And let me read this to you.
	After they have advocated the U.S. getting out, pulling troops out of uh Iraq.
	For most of the editorial, they write, nor can America simply turn its back on whatever happens to Iraq after it leaves.
	With or without American troops, a nightmare future for Iraq is a nightmare future for the United States, too.
	Whether it consists of an expanding civil war that turns into a regional war, or millions of Iraq's people and its oil fields falling under the tightening grip of a more powerful Iran.
	This mind boggling.
	They tell us we have to get out of Iraq and then tell us that we've got to make sure nothing bad happens there after we get out.
	This is a classic case of wanting to have it both ways.
	And you know, this you couldn't have responsible comment like this from anybody with accountability.
	Here we have a stupid, unsigned editorial, which of course will be passed off as wisdom among drive-by media circles.
	Because you can say anything you want, like I can too.
	I have no accountability when it comes to policy, and these people certainly don't, although their first and foremost desire is to is to have that power without the accountability, but to suggest that we should get out of there and get out of there now and not do anything further aimed at victory, and then after we get out, win the thing.
	Protect Iraq, make sure a nightmare doesn't happen.
	Their tantamount admission here is that a nightmare will happen if we get out, but that we should still get out, and that we should still protect the place after we get.
	How in the world does that happen?
	Can you imagine if Bush, in his speech tomorrow night, said, ladies and gentlemen, I have decided we're going to pull out of Iraq.
	We're going to get it done exactly when the New York Times wants.
	We're going to do it tomorrow.
	As of tomorrow, we're going to be out of Iraq, but I want to assure the Iraqis that after we bring our troops home and our presence there is finished, we will continue to protect the country, we will continue to protect the oil fields, and we will ensure that Iran doesn't take them over and that there's no great civil war.
	How in the world would that be reacted to?
	I mean, they'd they'd call in the men with a little white coats and say, hey, it's time for some serious couch time here.
	We got to hook some electrodes up to the skull and see what's going on inside the president's head.
	When the New York Times unsigned editorialist writes this gibberish, uh it is passed off as reasoned thought and something worthy of consideration.
	This is just classic liberalism.
	We feel, and we are good people.
	And they think that their words, words alone can accomplish missions like this.
	Great case study.
	Now, here's the part in the Washington Post story that uh interests me.
	It's by uh Michael Abramowitz today.
	Bush works to rally support for Iraq surge.
	And they start by saying the president yesterday began promoting his plan to send more troops to Iraq, bringing more than 30 Republican senators to the White House as part of a major campaign to rally you behind another effort stabilize the country.
	Senators who met with the president said that he made it clear he's planning to add as many as 20,000 U.S. troops to quell violence in Baghdad.
	They also now that which is exactly what the New York Times just editorialized that they want to happen.
	They want to quell violence.
	But they want to do that, pulling our troops out and then making sure that somehow we make sure there's no violence after we're gone.
	They also heard, this is what's interesting, they also heard uh the president uh say that his new plan has a better chance for success than past plans because of a greater willingness on the part of Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki or Maliki to uh commit Iraqi forces against all perpetrators of violence, including the Shiite militias.
	Gordon Smith, Senator from Oregon, a Republican, it was clear to me a decision's been made for a surge.
	Smith said the president believes the political processes have been overtaken by sectarian violence, that sectarian violence must be quelled so political processes can be restored.
	Anyway, the the um the thing that's striking here is uh by the way, Iraq's gonna put 10 billion dollars into this effort uh themselves.
	But if if this is true, that if somehow Maliki has been convinced, hey, you've got to start, you you gotta attack the Shiite.
	See, he's a Shiite, and the Iranians are Shiites, and a lot of people opposing the surge uh on the right have been upset or concerned, I should better say, that if we're just gonna go in there and give Maliki 20,000 more troops, he's a Shiite, and if he's not gonna come down on his own people who are causing problems, uh, then we're just building up uh uh uh a legitimate satellite of Iran that has been a very real concern of a lot of people looking at this.
	So the the main impact of this is that the president says to these Republican senators he has uh convinced somehow malakating to uh to tighten down on uh his own party, if you will, his own sect, the Shiite uh Muslims uh who are creating sectarian violence.
	If that indeed is the case, that's as much a story as big a news as the 20,000 troops comprising the surge.
	I got a quick break here, folks, but a huge, huge see I told you so is right around corner.
	Yes, yes, uh, I know.
	Uh the Democrats have a new slogan, stop the surge.
	Senator Kennedy proposing legislation to cut off funding for any of the uh additional troops and so forth.
	The typical Democrats, we talked about this yesterday, they are uh they're ramped up in the interest of U.S. defeat.
	I mean, there's there's no other way to look at this, folks, and I I don't mean to sound hysterical about it, but uh there's no other way you can analyze their actions.
	Uh this is all about winning with the president's ideas, winning and wrapping this up.
	The Democrats are opposed to it.
	Now, we know they're opposed to it in principle because that's who they are, and they're also opposed to it because they're scared to death Cindy Sheehan and that ragtag band of kooks that uh they're marching all over the country and disrupting Democrats now.
	But uh nevertheless, for regardless of the reasons, you know, forget the motivation in this case, and we've got sound bites from Teddy Kennedy coming up.
	I mean, there's no other way you can analyze it.
	They are invested in the whole notion of us losing.
	Time for a C. I told you so.
	This is um this is delectable.
	We start with me.
	An excerpt of me, pontificating on this program October 24th, 2006.
	Democrats politicized spinal paralysis and spinal injuries in the 2004 campaign, and now they are politicizing Parkinson's disease, and they've done that, and it's all about stem cell research and of course embryonic stem cell research.
	Any bit of information or research that shows progress in either of these areas that does not involve stem cell, embryonic stem cell research is rejected by the left.
	Now, why is this?
	What is so damned important about embryonic stem cell research?
	Why not adult stem cells?
	Why not research on umbilical cord blood cells can be extracted from the blood of umbilical cords?
	Why?
	Because you can't take abortion out of this mix.
	And if any just because it's not being talked about in this campaign, do not be lulled and fooled into thinking that abortion does not remain the sacrament of the Democratic Party and its religion.
	It is the thing that they will never once compromise on, and they think that uh uh anything that that uh stands in the way of embryonic stem cell research is going to be an obstacle to having abortions, and the and the converse is true.
	All right, so yesterday we had the news and shared it with you that uh researchers have made remarkable discoveries involving the availability of useful stem cells from um uh the fluid in the womb that protects a baby uh during gestation uh the amniotic fluid.
	And of course, any normal person would greet this news, even though there's no evidence yet that embryonic stem cells show promise.
	Other stem cells have and do, but embryonic stem cells yet uh have yet to prove that.
	And you can you if you want to if you want to understand what this is all about or understand how that's the case, if there had been any research that showed promise, there would be all kinds of private investor money going to people doing the kind of research in embryonic stem cells because there would be great profit at the end of it, uh, should there be a great discovery that people are just waiting for the time to pass to make.
	Uh that there isn't any of that private money.
	It's very limited, and the that that that's the reason the embryonic stem cell people are so uh incessant uh and uh insisting on federal funding, because without it there won't be any money.
	There's no private investment as there is in other areas of medical research.
	So when the amniotic fluid stem cell story broke yesterday, why this was big and it was exciting, and it showed the same kind of promise that those who advocate embryonic stem cells advocate without killing the baby.
	Well, I'm sorry, folks.
	Uh, that was not good news to Democrats, particularly Tom Harkin and others.
	I just want you to listen to these sound bites.
	Last night on Capitol Hill, Congresswoman Diana De Jett from uh from California, a Democrat held a press conference on the stem cell bill that the Democrat But this is another thing.
	The Democrats, does anybody remember them running on anything?
	In terms of the campaign of 06, in fact, wasn't their stated strategy to not run on anything?
	No, we don't want to hem ourselves in.
	Their strategy was simply to cream the Republicans on everything.
	Just be critical, critical, critical, create a negative aura around everything happening in the country, and then set themselves up as a change, as different.
	They didn't run anything specific.
	Now all of a sudden they've got a mandate.
	Yes, ladies and this is exactly how Democrats do it.
	They ran on nothing and they won on nothing.
	But guess what?
	The nothing they won on has morphed, not into fill-in-the-blank.
	Pelosi and Mertha say they've won on leaving Iraq.
	Barney Frank says that the Democrats won on income differences between the rich and the poor.
	Probably won't be long before Al Gore says the Democrats won on global warming.
	Others will say tax increases for the rich.
	We want on education, we want on Medicare, we want on Medicaid, we want an affirmative.
	They'll call and that's how they'll give themselves their age-old liberal agenda, even though they didn't run on that.
	Everybody knows the Republicans lost, much more so than the Democrats won.
	Anyway, here is that one of these bills that they claim that they have a mandate to move forward is embryonic stem cell research.
	They claim that that was part of their agenda and part of their campaign.
	It was nothing of the sort a couple of Senate candidates did in terms of the House and Pelosi.
	They didn't get that specific.
	They were afraid to.
	Here, ladies and gentlemen, is Congressman Dina DeJet.
	I do think that the study is fantastic news, and I welcome it.
	But it's not a substitute for embryonic stem cell research.
	This research is going on around the world and has been for seven or eight years.
	You see, even though the same thing might be available from amniotic fluid, that's not good.
	It's great news.
	It's but it can't, it can't take the place of embryonic.
	No, we must kill those embryos.
	This is a I know this is hard for some of you to believe or hear.
	Uh, but it is uh abortion is the sacrament of liberalism in the Democrat Party, and nothing is going to get in the way of stopping it.
	Now it gets even better.
	Tom Harkin, Tom Harkin, Democrat Senator from Iowa, also spoke at a press conference for the federal funding for stem cell research.
	Here's a portion of what he said.
	It's about hope.
	By giving hope to people who have Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injuries, kids with juvenile diabetes.
	It's about hope.
	That's what this legislation is really about.
	It seems like every time we bring this issue up, there's some paper comes out that our opposition grabs a hold of and says, see, we don't need this now.
	Well, the same thing has happened here, but as Dr. Atala himself has said, this is no substitute for embryonic stem cell research.
	While the new study is noteworthy, it does not represent a major breakthrough and should not be described as one.
	Yeah, it's about hope.
	It's all about hope.
	It's not about research.
	It's not about results.
	He admits it here.
	It's about hope.
	And you know what, folks?
	It's about false hope.
	And the Democrats specialize in it.
	There was John Edwards the Breck girl in the 2004 campaign assuring those with spinal cord disease and injury that if John Kerry were elected, Christopher Reeve would walk.
	And there was Michael J. Fox presenting false hope that only embryonic stem cell research was going to lead to the cure for Parkinson's disease, and anything else, anything but got in the way was trying to criminalize it and so forth.
	It was outrageous.
	And Harkin talks about hope.
	How many of you pee I know hope is an important thing, but false hope is cruel.
	Speaking of which, get this next bite from Harkin.
	In the future, I urge those of you in the media to beware of overhyping incremental advances in stem cell research, especially when they're published on the eve of a congressional debate.
	So many opponents of our bill are now breathlessly touting this new study as if it makes all other forms of stem cell research irrelevant.
	It would be irresponsible from a scientific Perspective and cruel to millions of Americans who are suffering from diseases like juvenile diabetes and ALS and Parkinson's spinal cord injuries to abandon efforts to lift the president's arbitrary restrictions on embryonic stem cell research on the basis of a single new journal article.
	And that's all that is.
	Unbelievable.
	There is no evidence to support the Harkin side in all of this, and he dares say that this is engaging in false hope, and that it is cruel to suggest that there might be some success in amniotic fluid.
	What's if it works, Senator, what's wrong with it?
	Why must you still continue to to try to discredit all other research in favor of embryonic stem cell research about which there are no success stories yet?
	It's because of abortion.
	And this is what's cruel.
	This is the false hope and the cruelty that the Democrats are famous for.
	Now they accuse others of it.
	That's typical of them too.
	We will be right back.
	Thank you.
	Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.
	America's real anchor man here at the Limbaugh Institute for advanced conservative studies.
	Telephone number if you want to be on the program.
	800 282882, the email address rush at EIBNet.com.
	It's just amazing.
	Senator Harkin lashes out at a new scientific study released on the day before the Senate begins debate on embryonic stem cell research.
	He says that's unfortunate and it's unfair.
	And he urges his buddies in the drive-by media to ignore such things in the future because he's not interested in debate, and he doesn't want anything that challenges the orthodoxy of their position on this to become front and center.
	So the audacity, the world's greatest deliberative body, has a member which tells his buddies in the media, don't report that stuff, especially not on the eve of our precious debate.
	Well, what's the point of the debate?
	If you're going to ignore some of the research in this.
	Now, some of you might think that my driving force here, motivation on this, is the protection of human life.
	And it is.
	I mean, as I've told you over the years, I think the longer we go down the road of deciding who lives and who dies based on the convenience or benefit to the living, we are destroying one of the foundational building blocks of our society and culture.
	I think we've already started down that road.
	Everybody knows it.
	We're deciding who lives and dies at the beginning of life and at the end of life based on totally convenience to ourselves.
	We don't tell ourselves that, of course.
	We say, well, that baby wouldn't want to be born into a life of poverty.
	Well, grandma wouldn't want to live like this.
	I know she wouldn't.
	This is a humane thing.
	So we tell ourselves we're doing great, great things, but we don't even have the guts to do it.
	Want to give doctors the uh the power to contribute to uh participate in a assisted suicides and uh and this kind of thing.
	So this is a this is a proverbial slippery slope.
	But there's also another motivation I have for this in making a big deal out of this, and that is to continue to try to teach and instruct people into the ways liberals operate and attempt to persuade or even claim a majority of opinion uh is on their side.
	They are the exact opposite in uh many instances of what they claim to be.
	They're not open to debate.
	They can't win many of them, and that's why they refuse to participate and instead try to discredit and ruin and destroy uh uh their opponents.
	Uh there they are, in many cases, they show traits of Stalinism.
	A state will exist in all power and treats citizens with contempt as unknowing and ill-prepared to deal with the consequences of life.
	It's really an arrogant condescension, such as is illustrated here by by Harkin when he suggests that his buddies in the media simply ignore this, especially on the eve of such an important Senate debate.
	Uh that's really open and democratic, isn't it?
	Here's Tom in Columbus, Indiana.
	Tom, welcome to the EIB network, sir.
	Nice to have you on the EIB network.
	Thank you, Rush.
	It's good to talk to you.
	Thank you, sir.
	Rush, I was wondering if you could uh give us your feelings on changing the rules of engagement in conjunction with our uh increase in troops in Iraq.
	And I'd like to have your comments uh with the background of our concern about the media and the Islamic nations reacting to collateral damage that surely will accompany a uh change in the rules of engagement.
	Well, I don't know that there will be any changes of rules and engagement.
	Do you think there should be?
	Well, I I've thought that for a long time.
	Um, but I don't know whether there will be.
	I look it.
	You know, it it this is not complicated for me.
	I I don't twist myself into pretzels over this.
	Uh we are in a war, are we not?
	Yes, we are.
	The objective of the war, most times you fight one except when Democrats are involved, is to win it.
	Right?
	Correct.
	So I don't care what the enemy's reaction is uh if they get shellacked, and then collateral damage, give me a break.
	Uh let's talk about the collateral damage in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
	Let's talk about the collateral damage in Dresden.
	Let's talk about the collateral damage in Berlin.
	I mean, both the all four of those places were leveled.
	But we won the war, they were rebuilt, and guess what?
	We don't have problems with either of them, except maybe the Germans now and then when it comes to diplomatic things, taking bribes from Saddam Hussein, that sort of thing.
	But I mean they haven't threatened us again.
	But in those cases, we weren't uh shy about what the media would say about our trying to win the war.
	Well, that's true, but th that was that was back in days uh uh before there was 24-7 media, but d look at it drove Lyndon Johnson out of office.
	I mean, Walter Cronkite drove Lyndon Johnson out of office with one newscast, Tom, back in the when when when LBJ heard Cronkite say, we can't win, this is a mistake.
	LBJ said, Well, hell, I've just lost Cronkite, I've lost the country.
	That means I can't get reelected, I'm out of here.
	I think, you know, what one of the things is going to have to take place.
	The media is what it is, it's not going away, uh not going away.
	You're gonna have to factor future presidents, generals, war planners, strategirists, are going to have to plan in in addition to their actual war plan to deal with media coverage of what they're doing, and they're gonna have to assume a hostile media.
	Uh you know, w as I said last week, one of the one of the things the American people uh I think want to know is are we killing the enemy?
	They don't know anything about that.
	All we know is this daily death count, now over three thousand.
	We see a burning car or two every night in the news.
	We see smoke and blown up buildings and so forth.
	And uh it's always portrayed as the U.S. took another hit.
	The Iraqis took another hit.
	We never hear about whether we're killing the enemy.
	If the administration does release a body count, then the drive-by media, that's unseemly.
	That is just unseemly that war is not about body count.
	They can, of course, issue body counts for U.S. troops all over the place day and night twenty-four-seven.
	Uh but the you know, it's looking it's easy for those of us who are not in the oval orifice and not in the Pentagon to say who cares what the media says.
	Uh we don't we don't have the accountability.
	I I wish uh, you know, it were it were the case, but I I wouldn't hold out hope that that's uh gonna change much other than if if the White House were listening to the media, we wouldn't even be talking about this surge, and the surge would be uh would be shut down.
	The President's gonna go ahead with it.
	Um I I I think that uh you know there's there's potential for this.
	It's obvious something's obviously taken place that makes them realize we're in a stalemate.
	We can't continue to fight it this way.
	We are the United States of America.
	We don't we don't have to put up with this kind of thing if we don't want to.
	We have the ability to project power like no other nation on earth uh ever has been able to project power, and we haven't used a smidgen of it.
	And there are obvious reasons for it, but uh as far as uh rule changes, I think the biggest one, as I pointed out, is in this Washington Post story today, if it's true that the Iraqi Prime Minister is going to start getting tough on his own people, the uh militants, the Shiite militants that are causing all these uh uh problems.
	Uh if that's true, then that that that's a major engagement change, rules of engagement change.
	Uh Tom in uh Nevis, Minnesota, you're next in the Rush Limbaugh program.
	Hi.
	Good morning, sir, and how are you doing?
	Just fine, sir.
	Thank you.
	That's good.
	Uh, my question about the STEM fluid research is exactly where do you stand?
	And the reason I asked this is because a couple months ago you were quoted as saying that it is your constitutional right to get your hearing back and you didn't care about the abortion.
	Right.
	So, I said that.
	So, I mean, I'm not against you coming down to Democrats.
	I don't really care for them.
	I don't like them at all.
	Now, let me tell you why I did that, uh, Leslie.
	Uh the uh uh Tom, I'm sorry, the the uh reason for it was I was trying a new tack.
	Okay.
	Uh to illustrate absurdity by being absurd.
	Uh see, it was my theory that the Michael J. Fox's and the John Edwards' and all these people out there running these ads, creating false hope, were engaging in selfishness.
	And they were promoting liberalism at the same time.
	They were promoting a liberal big government agenda.
	Right.
	But the ads were done in such a way as to evoke sympathy.
	They were very evocative.
	They evoked a lot of s.
	Oh, my, that's horrible.
	We've got to fix parks and like Tom Harkin said, why, we can't strip these people of their hope.
	They've got to have hope.
	So I gave it my best shot, treating this in a rational, responsive and reactive way to what I saw.
	Right.
	Didn't seem to make much of an impression.
	So I thought I would become Michael J. Fox and uh uh John Edwards and anybody else doing commercials like this.
	And I I said to the audience, including you, ladies and gentlemen, I've changed my mind.
	You know, I have lost my hearing.
	No fault of my own.
	Right, and I can't hear.
	Without my cochlear implant, I can't hear.
	I can't hear music the way I would like to hear it.
	It's tough for me to go out in public where there are lots of voices because I can't communicate and I feel like an invalid, and I need hope that I can get my hearing back.
	And my doctors have told me that there might be a chance with embryonic stem cell research to restore my hearing.
	And so from this day forward to hell with the babies of America, I want my hearing back, and I want embryonic stem cell research.
	And I was hoping that people would wow, that sounds cruel.
	Wow, that sounds selfish.
	Uh to try to illustrate what I think advocates of embryonic stem cell research themselves sound like.
	Selfish, mean, and self-focused.
	And so uh I carried this on for two days, as is always the case.
	I'm so good at it, and I have so much credibility that my audience, some of them like you believed it rather than got my point.
	So um it's been a that was many months ago.
	I'm glad you called and gave me a chance to explain this to you.
	Well, thank you.
	I appreciate that.
	Does that make sense?
	Yes, it does.
	You always have to keep something in mind when listening to this program that we do a lot of things sometime to illustrate absurdity by being absurd.
	Right.
	We take the absurdity we see and turn it around and use it for our own causes to show people how ridiculous it is.
	I was just trying to portray myself as needy, unfortunate, a victim.
	It's not fair I lost my hearing, and it's not fair people are denying me my hope to get my hearing back, and it's not fair, it's not right that people are denying my doctors a chance to do the research that might give me my hearing back.
	And furthermore, I want you to pay for it.
	Because I am I am I I I own I'm owed this.
	I deserve this.
	This did I didn't do this to myself.
	I did it as just happened in six months and it was gone.
	And it's not right and to deny me my hope.
	So screw the babies.
	I want my hearing.
	That's was my attempt to um illustrate how the libs in this whole embryonic stem cell argument are actually approaching it.
	Uh quick time out.
	My friends back with more in a moment.
	Senator Kennedy delivering a speech at one o'clock.
	He's calling it a prequel to the uh president's speech tonight or tomorrow night on the um is Kennedy speech today at one o'clock tomorrow.
	Maybe it's today.
	Uh the president's speech tomorrow night at nine o'clock is a prequel.
	We have some audio sound bites of Senator Kennedy.
	And Keep in mind now these are sound bites from a man uh and a party who profess consistently their support for the troops.
	Senator Kennedy making the rounds on TV today, today's show, Meredith Vieira asked him this question.
	Just two days ago, your Democrat colleague, Senator Biden said, as a practical matter, there's no way to say, Mr. President, stop the surge.
	What exactly are you proposing, Senator Kennedy?
	What do you hope to accomplish?
	My proposal is uh very simple.
	It just says that historically the Congress has the power of the purse.
	And what we are saying is that before the President sends additional American troops into uh the Civil War, uh, that the President has to come back to the Congress and get the authority uh for that deployment.
	Uh Meredith Vieira says, but Senator, but Senator, doesn't he already have that authority and doesn't he set policy?
	We have that uh authority.
	We have not used it in the Iraq War, but we have used it at other times.
	We used it in the Lebanon conflict.
	We've even used it uh during uh the Vietnam situation.
	Those that want to support the President will have the opportunity to vote on the United States Congress and Senate to go ahead and send those troops over there.
	Those that do not will have an opportunity to vote no.
	That is the power of the purse.
	That's Article I of the Constitution.
	We have that power.
	We have done that historically.
	Now that's true.
	I mean, we've always said if they want to defund it, that's that's their prerogative.
	They can do it.
	The problem is, Senator Kennedy says he can split the baby.
	He can defund the initial or the the this surge while not touching the whole operation.
	That's going to be problematic because the Senate and Congress signed a resolution back in uh 2001 and demanded another one in 2002.
	And they gave the President authority to use his judgment to to um use force around the world.
	Wherever he thought necessary to protect United States interests.
	That happened after you might remember 9-11, uh, I think the World Trade Center's uh buildings were destroyed and the Pentagon was hit, in case you've forgotten.
	Uh and and after that, uh Congress pretty much gave him a blank check.
	And now they're gonna come back, and that's the administration, by the way, they're falling back.
	We've already got the authority.
	They've already voted on this.
	Now they want to but if they want to vote to uh to purge the funds on the surge to purge the surge, if you will, uh, but not anything else to deal with Iraq.
	Obviously, let them do it.
	Let him go on record with this.
	That that's that's that's fine with me.
	I wouldn't mind it at all.
	Meredith Vieira then said, Do you believe, Senator, that we should cut funding for the war and begin withdrawing our troops immediately?
	If you're talking about, am I prepared now to cut off uh funding for troops that are there, the answer is no.
	What I do believe is that we ought to have a vote, and we ought to have a debate, and we ought to say the Congress has the authority, we have the power.
	So I'm as uh as I predicted, as I as I said, uh he wants to split the baby.
	No, we're not gonna we're not gonna deal with the uh troops that are already there.
	Uh we want to cut the money for the troops that are heading off there.
	Well, we would we want to uh stop this incremental surge.
	That's that's going to be fun thing to watch if this actually happens.
	And as I say, he's got a a speech at all this that he will deliver as a as a prequel.
	Now, over in the House, uh Jack Mertha uh going to do the same thing.
	He was on with Chris Matthews last night who said Biden, he was on meet the press, he was saying Congress doesn't have the ability to cut off spending for this war.
	I don't know if that's true, is it?
	No, that's that's not true at all.
	If they have a request for additional funds in the supplemental, and it's going to take them two or three months for them to get these troops out in the field.
	We have every ability.
	And uh, Matthew said, well, the conservative Republicans dumped all over the idea of creating economic development by jobs programs, public works, infrastructure in the country.
	Why are we spending money in Iraq to buy their hearts and minds in a way we would have never done at home?
	That's unbelievable.
	That question is.
	Not only that, but the $8 billion that we're spending a month, uh, Chris, this is uh this is the big problem.
	There's so many things could be done.
	What is Medicare, whether it's education, and whether it's road sewage and water, basic things like that.
	That's what we can spend it on.
	We are being treated as though we're a third world Country.
	Folks, we are going broke spending money on education, on health care, on sewage and road.
	We are go we have got so much redundancy in all of these programs, and I, for one, resent this insinuation that we are not spending money on things and people in this country that we are spending it on in Iraq.
	That is frankly ridiculous and it is irresponsible.

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