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Feb. 20, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:20
February 20, 2007, Tuesday, Hour #3
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Ha how are you and welcome back El Rushbo serving humanity America's real anchorman with talent on loan from God
third hour of the fastest three hours in media here on the EIB network from the prestigious Limbo Institute for advanced conservative studies a little Little side personal note.
Many many of you are writing I've been checking the emails here of course during breaks and many of you writing on the subscriber line from rushlimbo.com.
Why are you holding your right side when you cough?
I'm embarrassed to admit this, but last Thursday during a particularly bad coughing spasm on this program, I pulled a muscle in my rib cage or did something.
And it last Thursday and Friday and Saturday and Sunday, when I coughed, it was a horrible stabbing pain.
I think one of the reasons that I have spent so long getting over whatever this is is that because of that, I was taking cough medicines to suppress the cough, to stop the pain, because when you suppress the cough, you're not being productive and getting a gunk out of the bronchial passageways, the bronchial tubes.
And it still bothers me.
And the doc says it's either that or a cracked rib and it's going to be with you for a while.
So I'm in a somewhat weakened state if attacked by women, which is not a bad state to be.
Anyway, again, the phone number 800-282-2882, email address, rush at EIBNet.com.
Immigrant rights activists yesterday in New York renewed their push to allow legal non-citizens to vote in the Big Apple, a bill that would grant permanent residence and other legal immigrants the right to vote in municipal elections has been stalled in the city council since last year.
A related story, Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, is touting Congressional Democrats' push to make college more affordable for young people, including those without legal residency.
In a news conference following a meeting recently, Pelosi made reference to the effect of Proposition 300 in California, or rather an Arizona initiative that passed by voters in November that requires illegal immigrants to pay out-of-state tuition to attend public universities and community colleges.
Our country does not benefit by our depriving young people of an education.
This is, we're talking about college here.
Young people are young people.
We're not talking about children here, Ms. Pelosi.
But anyway, you see what this is all about.
And this is something that I have been warning you people about for many, many moons now, that the whole illegal immigrant crowd or the legal non-citizen crowd, they just represent new voters for Democrats.
They're running out of victims and they need more.
And it is the country and its traditions be damned.
These people don't give a rat's rear end about it.
It's just whatever they can do, whatever damage happens to the country in the process of keeping themselves in power, they couldn't care less.
In fact, there's a part of me that thinks that they would love to destroy as many of the traditions and institutions that have defined this country's greatness for countless decades, simply because they don't fit in with those institutions for a whole host of reasons.
In Austin, Texas, last week, the CEO of Apple Incorporated, Steve Jobs, lambasted teacher unions, claiming no amount of technology in the classroom would improve public scruels until principals could fire bad teachers.
Now, he said this no doubt in response because the school districts and the teachers, a whole bunch of people are crying and moaning to computer companies, give us computers, give us computers so our students can learn.
You know, and Jobs is in the business selling computers and iPhones and iPods and whatever else they're going to invent there.
And he basically stood up and told them, look, you can put all the computers in the world in there, but if you got rotten teachers, it isn't going to matter.
He compared scruels to businesses with principals serving as CEOs.
What kind of person could you get to run a small business, he asked, if you told them when they came in, they couldn't get rid of people they thought weren't any good.
And he got loud applause for this.
This was during an education reform conference.
What kind of person indeed could you get to run a small business if you told that person you're stuck with all the incompetence that surrounds you here and you can't do anything about it?
Well, there is a kind of person you could get for that.
A socialist liberal Democrat would probably take the job.
As Jobs said, not really great ones will take the job because if you're really smart, you say to yourself, I can't win in this situation.
In a rare joint appearance, Steve Jobs shared the stage with competitor Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell Incorporated.
Both of them spoke to the gathering about the potential for bringing technological advances to the classroom.
Jobs said, I believe that what is wrong with our screws in this nation is that they've become unionized in the worst possible way.
This unionization and lifetime employment of K through 12 teachers is off the charts crazy.
Now, at various pauses, the audience applauded enthusiastically while Michael Dell sat quietly with his hands folded in his lap.
Jobs said, I'm sure that we at Apple just lost some business in this state because I've what I've said.
Earlier in this discussion, Jobs told the crowd about his vision for textbook-free scruels in the future.
Textbooks would be replaced with a free online information source that was constantly updated by experts, much like the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia.
Now, about textbooks, one thing, just a little aside here.
I got a note from just a listener, a student, college student, taking a philosophy of something or other class with a 600-page textbook.
And on page 464, I am cited as a glaring example of something or other in this textbook.
I forgot what it was about or what, but this is obviously a new textbook.
Point is that textbooks today are written by ideologues.
They're written by leftist activists, as you well know, because they're bought by leftist activists in the academic professorial ranks.
And so Jobs' idea is to open it up here to a number of online sources.
But look, the bottom line here is when he says, I believe what's wrong with our schools in this nation is that they've become unionized in the worst possible way.
Conservatives and just plain people with any common sense have been saying this for decades.
But do they get put into the headlines of a story?
No.
Only if you're a big lib, only if you're a big Democrat, do you get applauded for this kind of talk?
I am happy and proud to be on the same page with Steve Jobs.
The way to put it is, I'm happy and proud he's on the same page with me.
If he finds out I agree with him, he might change his mind.
But I mean, this is just classic.
And this is an AP story.
You know how many average ordinary American people have been saying this?
You know how many political candidates on the Republican side have been saying this?
And when they say it, they get tarred and feathered and the NEA comes after them.
Jobs says it.
Wow, we must really think about this.
Why, there might be something here that we haven't considered before.
Blah, Anyway, take a brief time out.
Much more.
Soundbites got still our Obama, Obama, whatever stack.
More of Hillary and this Confederate flag business in South Carolina with Hillary is, I'd say, this time this woman opens her mouth, the best thing she should is just shut up because when she opens her mouth, her poll numbers go down, justifiably so.
Anyway, sit tight.
We'll be right back after this.
Big news yesterday from the New York Times.
Senior al-Qaeda leaders have reestablished control over the terror network and set up training camps in Pakistan.
Citing U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials, the New York Times said the senior officials operating from Pakistan have set up training operations in tribal regions near the Afghan border.
U.S. officials told the Times there's mounting evidence that bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, have been putting an operations center together.
Until recently, the Times said the Bush administration had said that bin Laden and Zawahiri were detached from their followers and cut off from operational control of al-Qaeda.
Now, of course, the Times slant on this is if we weren't in Iraq, of course, this wouldn't be happening.
We could focus attention on it.
If we could kill Bin Laden, it'd all be over.
Which, of course, is smoke and mirrors.
Here's the thing.
Let's take the story at face value, shall we, just for the fun of it.
It's the New York Times, after all.
Is Jack Murthy right that if the slow bleed policy leads to the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops, is Al-Qaeda going to disband these new training groups?
That's what Murtha thinks.
Murtha thinks Al-Qaeda will disband in Iraq.
It'll leave Iraq, and it won't come after us if we just get where the reason Al-Qaeda exists, essentially.
So if we pull out of it, somebody needs to ask him this.
Will these new bin Laden and Zawahiri training camps in Pakistan simply disband if we get out of Iraq?
What do you think, Libs?
Mike in Richmond, Virginia.
Welcome to the program, sir.
Great to have you with us.
Hey, Rush, God bless you.
Hey, I just wanted to say truck driving and progressive rock dittos to you.
I want to tell you a little about the crazy world of Arthur Brown.
That is an excellent selection, an excellent selection for the global warming update.
Not only because it's seductive and alluring as a song, just like the arguments of the left are for global warming, but it is also, if you listen to the lyrics of the verses, it really sounds like a liberal talking down to you.
I mean, if you've never heard the verses, it's amazing about how you've worked hard and you've saved and earned, but all of it's going to burn.
And your mind, your tiny mind, you know you've really been so blind.
It's just perfect.
And not to mention the drummer in that band was Karl Parma, who went on to play with Emerson Lake and Palmer.
Well, then you end up, you obviously know a little bit about Arthur Brown himself, if you know about the drummer.
Well, I know some things about Arthur Brown.
I know he's still around.
He's still making music.
Yeah, Arthur Brown is British, born in England, and he was part of the 60s movement.
He was a radical.
So for didn't make any money off this song.
He was, even though it sold bazillions of copies, he had financial problems and so forth.
But read a little biography of the guy.
Yeah, and he's still around.
And he was a long-haired maggot-infested dope-smoking type guy back in the 60s, as most of them were in music.
He still is today.
Well, he's bald today.
Well, I guess.
In spirit, he is.
Exactly right.
Exactly right.
May still have maggots, I don't know.
Yes, yes.
Just kidding.
I had just one other thing, which is really more of an open-line Friday type of question, if you'll bear with me.
Finally, what is it?
I have been dying to ask you this for years.
Going back into the Clinton years, I remember at one time people were asking if you would consider forming and heading up a true conservative party.
And what you said has rung in my ears for years, that if we ever got to the point where we had a Republican president and Republican majorities in both houses of Congress and the conservative agenda still couldn't get passed, that you would give it some thought.
And I was wondering, in light of all that has happened, what do you think about that these days?
I don't remember saying that.
I'm not denying I said it, but I've said so many things over 18 years.
I'm sure.
But I can tell you now that I wouldn't head it up.
I'm not going to start a third party.
Third parties are doomed.
Well, I figured that was true because if you were going to do it, you would have done it by now.
That's right.
But considering that you should get the memory division on that.
But you've got to keep one thing in mind here, and that is I am not in politics.
I talk about it, but I don't live in the political world.
I am in broadcasting.
I am in media.
And those are two totally different worlds.
Talking about political parties, political activities, getting elected, getting votes as opposed to acquiring an audience.
They're two totally different things.
And if I wanted to be in politics, I would have done so long ago, and I would quit this and go get in it.
And I don't have any desire to do that.
But I appreciate your faith in my ability to do so.
Nevertheless, Stewart in Moranga, California.
I'm glad you waited, sir.
Welcome to the program.
Yeah, hi, Rush Megadittos.
And the person I'm ashamed of in the House of Representatives is Tom Lantos.
If somebody was supposed to be the conscience of the House Democrats, the way Joe Lieberman is the conscience of the Senate Democrats, you'd think it was Tom Lantos, who's the only Holocaust survivor in Congress.
Well, you know, I think I know what you're saying about Lantos, and he has in the past, when it's come to Middle East policies, he's been pretty consistent with what you would expect him to be, as you just recited.
I think the Democrats, look, Nancy Pelosi is ruling the Democrat caucus with an iron girdle.
And I really think that the Democrat Party itself is not in charge of its foreign policy.
And by that I mean, I think that they really are kowtowing to their kuk fringe, the bloggers, and who they consider to be the base of the party in adopting positions for the next two years as a means of winning the White House.
I think that's what all this is about.
And to the extent that Pelosi can get Lantos to fall in line, shall we say, with the position of the House.
Because you don't see too many Democrats in the House defecting from her at all.
No, but I agree with you that it's the Kukfringe left dominating the party.
But you would think a man like Lantos, with his personal experience and with his concern for things like the genocide in Darfur, would stand up for the United States doing the right thing in Iraq and saving innocent people.
Well, he may not equate what's happening in Iraq right now with any of his personal experiences.
He might have equated Saddam with that, but he may be of the mind now that, okay, we got rid of Saddam.
That's fine.
Let these people run their own show and get out of there.
It could be genuine.
I've not paid enough attention to individual Democrats' statements on this.
I just think that even if they want to defect, I think they've got to deal with Pelosi.
If Darfur is an important issue to liberals, as they say it is, then why is it that only African Muslims killing African Muslims is important and Arab Muslims killing Arab Muslims isn't?
Well, let me put it in the answer to it this way.
If George W. Bush had deployed troops to Darfur, the Democrats would oppose it.
Yes, you're right.
Thank you.
Pure and simple.
The substance of the issue is not what matters to Democrats.
Political opposition on every issue is.
And taking that position.
That's their objective right now, and that's what they think is going to carry them to even greater electoral victories down the road.
Before we go to the break quickly, Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said yesterday that South Carolina should remove the Confederate flag from its statehouse grounds in part because the nation should unite under one banner while at war.
Ladies and gentlemen, do you understand how genuinely intellectually vacant that statement is?
The Democrats are all about unity in this struggle?
Yeah, we saw that in spades over the weekend, didn't we, with all these resolutions?
The only difficulty is that they have a problem, and it's not with the Confederate flag.
It's with any banner that would stand for victory.
But I can't believe she would open herself up, unite under one banner while at war, while her party and herself are invested in our defeat in this war.
It's amazing.
You don't have to think about it, ladies and gentlemen.
I do that for you here at the EIB network.
I got an email just.
I can't believe I got this.
I can't believe that there's even one person in this audience who would send me this email.
Not one.
I'm stunned that there is one.
Dear Rush, what's wrong with Brittany Spears?
I can answer the question.
I'm just surprised anybody in this audience cares.
The answer is this.
Brittany Spears hasn't been the same since Justin Timberlake told her to go to hell, and she went out and did it.
It's that simple.
It's no more complicated than that.
And go through all this stuff with her mother and all this other stuff with the kids and this quasi-rapper KFED.
But I guarantee you, trace it all back to the Mousketeers and Timberlake, and he took up with Cameron Diaz and her Prius.
That was it.
And if anybody sends me an email about Anna Nicole Smith, I'm not even going to bother to answer it.
I am not going to waste any precious broadcast time on that circus.
That's just, if it weren't for the money involved, no big deal.
Los Angeles Times had an interesting piece on the 19th.
This is yesterday by Louis Chud Soke, and that's hyphenated name, and I don't know if I'm pronouncing it right.
It's titled Redefining Black and centers upon the question of Barack Obama's relative blackness.
Now, the main point, according to this guy, is that Osama Obama is not black enough to get the support of the standing black American leadership because of his white, Hawaiian, African heritage.
By the way, this is a key, and Warner Todd Houston at Newsbusters had a great bunch of insight on this piece in the LA Times and points out here that Obama is not getting the support of the standing black American leadership because of his white/slash Hawaiian slash African heritage.
And by African, this specifically means not African American, but real African heritage.
In other words, it is his real African heritage that is denying him official black status with African American leaders.
Now, Obama is aware of this.
Let's go back to the audio soundbites February 11th on 60 Minutes.
Steve Croft interviewing Obama says, your mother was white, your father was African.
You were raised in a white household, yet at some point you decided you were black.
I'm not sure I decided it.
I think, you know, if you look African-American in this society, you're treated as an African-American.
And when you're a child in particular, that is how you begin to identify yourself.
Now, this is amazing.
He's saying he didn't decide his race.
He didn't choose.
It was chosen for him.
An amazing admission on the part of somebody who wants to be president of the United States to say that kind of self-decision is something I had no control over, which led me to say the following a couple of days later.
So what do we conclude here that he didn't define himself as black, that the way he looks does, but I'm not sure I decided it.
Well, if you didn't decide it, then how did it happen?
Well, just when you look like that, that's what you are.
Well, renounce it then.
If it's not something you want to be, if you didn't decide it, renounce it.
Become white.
Just say so.
He can.
He can say he's white.
He grew up in a white household.
He is.
His mother was white.
But he has said he doesn't have any say-so over this.
Now, this comment of mine fortunately and laughingly caused all kinds of hysterics in the drive-by media.
But I mean, what's the natural reaction to this?
See, the natural, the lib reaction is, oh, poor guy, that's right.
You know, we're such a racist, bigoted society that we determine how somebody's going to grow up and how they're going to be looked at.
Especially kids.
Our kids are mean-spirited, impolite little bullies in our kids made Obama feel black.
Not Obama.
Obama didn't know.
He wasn't aware.
It was the way he was treated.
But now he knows.
And if he doesn't like it, he can renounce it.
He can very easily say, I'm not black.
Someone said, well, he can't do that.
He's got African-American boys.
He's got African blood.
Well, his mother was white.
He could say, I choose to be white.
It would be kind of interesting if he did.
He could do this.
Why is the automatic assumption is he's black?
50-50.
He can do what he wants.
He is in charge here.
But we know the answer to all this.
And these comments, in a couple days, when they show up on the left-wing website, well, this might make the network news tonight.
More fireworks tonight on how Limbaugh's a racist bigot, whatever else.
Jake Tapper, last Friday on ABC's Good Morning America, said this.
There is a feeling among the Obama campaign that a lot of African Americans don't even know that he's African American because they don't know much about him yet.
So they're hoping things will turn around in time.
How can this be?
A lot of African Americans don't even know he's African American.
Now I'm really confused.
If he is African American based on how he's treated because of the way people see him, how in the name of Sam Hill can there be a whole lot of people who do not know he's African American?
Are they just listening to him on the radio?
Anyway, it's not me obsessed with race.
I'm simply reacting to what Obama's saying, what Jake Tapper's saying.
We got this LA Times story.
Obama not black enough.
And there have been several of these.
Now, the feeling of Obama not being black enough for black American leaders to warm up to is, according to this piece in the LA Times, because of the growing community of immigrant blacks in the U.S. who are not really African Americans in the way that black leaders prefer, meaning that they aren't Americans, but they are immigrants.
And they are immigrants that do not kowtow to black American prejudices and racial political demagoguery, causing black leaders to distrust them.
In other words, Obama's got a problem because he's not African American and therefore not part of the civil rights tradition and the slavery tradition.
He's from Africa.
He's a straight old immigrant.
Actually, it's total discrimination.
The African American leaders are discriminating against real Africans, according to this guy writing in the Los Angeles Times.
Also, and here's another thing.
Stick with me on this.
Because the immigrants are often better educated or interested in being better educated than their native-born African American fellows, they are also shunned.
Well, we know this to be true.
You know, doing well on test scores, some people accuse, some blacks are accused of being too white.
Naturally, the author, Chude Soke, completely avoids the fact that natural-born African Americans are less educated and less interested in education, but the inference is clearly there if the reader is paying attention.
Listen to this.
From the column, a good proportion of immigrants tend to be better educated than African Americans.
They don't have the chip of racial resentment on their shoulder and exhibit the classic immigrant optimism about assimilation into the mainstream culture.
Now, what can you imply or what can you infer from reading this?
You can infer that African immigrants, better educated than African Americans, they don't have the chip on their shoulder because they haven't been raised that way with the so-called slavery tradition and culture.
And they come here and they're optimistic.
They've just arrived in America.
They want a better life.
Whereas African American leaders are telling their charges it ain't possible because there's racism in America.
And the only way you can get halfway where you want to go is through us and affirmative action.
That's why people like Michael Steele, Ken Blackwell, Lynn Swan, and Clarence Thomas Condoleezza Rice are routinely scorched because they have made it without going through the prescriptions required by the African American leadership in this country.
And Obama hasn't either.
And this is the reason they are conflicted.
How in the world do you sit there and trash a Condoleezza Rice, a Ken Blackwell, a Michael Steele, a Clarence Thomas, and then give Obama a pass?
The only difference is he's a lib.
He's a good lib, but still not an African-American.
And so now they're writing Times, LA Times columns on is he black enough?
And they call us the racists.
They say we're the ones preoccupied with race.
And here they're having a hand-wringing session over whether Obama is black enough.
Now, this writer, Chude Soke, he's a professor at UC Santa Cruz.
So his perspective is a bit different than the average person.
His claim that whites exploit these differences is absurd in the general population, even as it might be true in the university setting.
They don't exploit these differences.
You know, pardon the sniffles again.
Here's what he says.
Many whites, however, exploit these differences to magnify the problems of African Americans while avoiding charges of racism.
And because these differences often result in greater employment and more educational opportunities for immigrants and their descendants, they also feed tensions between native and immigrant blacks.
The bottom line here, even though this guy doesn't know he's saying it here, is that immigrant blacks, true African immigrants, posing a problem here.
And Obama is one of them.
Well, he's not a one of them.
He's a citizen.
But, well, I don't know if Obama did sell out, if he would be called an Uncle Tom.
I don't know that I'm qualified to proclaim that or answer this.
Chude Soke makes another key mistake common to the university set.
He assumes that black pathology is still all the fault of white people.
He says of immigrant blacks, quote, they also are less responsive to American racial traumas, as if these traumas are ongoing and still integral to how blacks can fit into white society.
If this were true, then immigrants wouldn't find themselves in agreement with the so-called black leadership in America, who continually fan the flames of race hatred to justify their places of power.
This is exactly right.
So these African immigrants are less responsive to American racial traumas.
Of course, as we've stated, these traumas must never end because there's a race business out there.
Just to remind you again, this is a column in the L.A. Times.
I am reacting to it.
Is Obama black enough?
Apparently, this is Warner Todd Houston concluding here.
So blacks do not distrust Obama because he's an immigrant and therefore not black enough.
They distrust him, distrust him because he's able and successful and smart and educated.
So that's what makes him not black enough.
It's hard to conclude otherwise when you start reading all this idiocy.
I'm telling you folks, it is the American left, the drive-by media, who are obsessed.
With race and gender and everything else that defines us as different on the basis of appearance.
We'll be back in just a second.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am sorry, I just have not had a chance to get their exciting lifestyle stack today.
Mr. Snerdley had to leave early to go get the car washed.
And he would love this stuff.
So I'm going to save it till tomorrow.
But let me just remind you of what's coming up in the lifestyle stack tomorrow in addition to whatever else we learn.
Men hardwired to ignore their wives, according to latest study.
Why praise can be bad for kids.
Women are chokers.
This is in slate.com, written by a man, Steve Landsberg.
Studies show that women cave under pressure.
Slate.com, a liberal publication.
Survey sports may not build character.
SUV fatally strikes man in wheelchair.
Minnesota lawmaker wants to tax facelifts and Botox injections.
New York City Councilman wants to put the amount of caffeine in everything you eat and drink on menus and labels in New York.
All of that plus more from the Lifestyle Stack coming up tomorrow.
And let's see what else.
Yeah, a couple other things, too.
In the meantime, let's go to Belinda in San Antonio.
I'm glad you waited, Belinda.
Welcome to the program.
Oh, my God, Rush.
I wanted to talk to you for years.
You helped me get through college and everything else.
But I'm very emotional about this issue.
I'm Caucasian.
My husband's African-American.
And you know what?
You cannot allow society to decide your race.
When you put your children into school, you check the box, black, white, whatever.
There's no box for biracial.
Wait, are you white?
I'm white, and my husband's black.
We've been married 25 years.
I have a son.
Okay, look.
Okay, I mean, my kids are all very successful kids.
No, no, question.
When the kids went to school and checked off the box, what did they check?
Well, I had to decide, white or black.
Well, what did you decide?
Well, I didn't.
I put other.
And they told me that I had to decide, and I said, I'm not deciding.
So I said, I'm putting black or white.
You decide what you want.
So I think that they checked black.
You think they checked black?
Yes, I do.
Well, I mean, look, I understand why that happens.
Well, Sure.
But you can't, you know, you can't be white.
Well, that's why it would be interesting if one of your kids or somebody like Barack Obama actually said, I'm white rather than black, just to see what the reaction was.
You can't be white.
Look at you.
That would be more instructive and educational for people in this country than anything else.
But the idea that if you're half black or half white, you're automatically all black is, you know, that's what Obama's saying.
I'm all black.
Well, he uses that to his advantage.
You know, until this country gets real about race, and I mean, you talk in realistic terms, but until everybody else in this country gets real about race, then we're not going to have a real discussion and people are not going to be living a, quote, colorblind society.
Well, that's going to be a long time in coming because there are many, many institutions, groups, organizations who have no desire for the racial problems that exist in this country to be lessened or even put behind us.
And they are the left-wing civil rights groups who make money off of the race business.
Where would Al-Sharpton be without it?
Where would the Reverend Jackson be without it?
Be right back, ladies and gentlemen.
And it's been great being back, ladies and gentlemen.
Love this more than, well, most things in life, most everything else in life, something's exceptional.
But regardless, I'll be back and do it all over again tomorrow.
Looking forward to it.
See you then.
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