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March 28, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:11
March 28, 2007, Wednesday, Hour #2
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So funny.
I frankly don't feel like laughing.
Not even your charismatic smile makes me feel like laughing.
What are you laughing about?
Well, anyway, greetings to you, uh music lovers and thrill seekers all across the fruited plain.
It's uh more broadcast excellence, straight up, right here on the platter.
We are at 800-282-2882, the email address rush at eIBNet.com.
It's the Rush Limbaugh program from the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
I want to go to the audio sound bites now.
We predicted this here at the EIB network, and we actually predicted the time.
We knew that when the Edwards thing came up and uh the comments that were made on this program, we knew they'd be taken out of context.
Half the fun to doing this program is knowing that that's going to happen.
Because the way this happens is that the people who end up commenting on this program never listen to it.
They they read watchdog websites, liberal websites, uh, which uh take out of context uh things that are said, or even straight misquotes, and that's how the drive-bys learn that what actually uh weren't what happens on this program.
It's as though uh uh, you know, that you need a uh secret password and a special receiver that we only give to our listeners in order to hear this program.
It's amazing to me that they continue to uh rely on third parties and even second parties for the content of this program.
When it's plain as day we're on 600 and some odd radio station, turn it on.
Twelve noon Eastern every day.
It's plain as day for anybody who wants to listen to it.
But we knew when this when this uh Edwards stuff happened that uh uh we dropped a couple key things in there within context, knowing full well that it would be uh taken out of context.
And we have now the videotape.
Uh well, the audio of the video tape to illustrate it.
Here is first off a montage of the drive-by media trying to distort what I said about Elizabeth Edwards.
And by the way, you know, it's amazing.
I was I was uh I got home from uh the golf course last night, about 7.30, and it went in there and I checked the email and I went to the subscriber uh side, the Rush 24-7 email, and there must have been I don't know, 10 or 15 emails.
Rush, I'm sure everybody's telling you this, but I can't believe the way they just took you out of context on X network.
And then about 1015, another slew of emails.
I can't believe I'm sure I'm not the first to tell you everybody's telling me what you were probably telling you what uh what they said about you on Larry King tonight.
Of course, I don't watch any of that stuff, so I don't know what was said.
Uh all the emailers think that somebody else is telling me, so they just tell me that something happened, but they don't give me details.
So, you know, we have to wait for the transcript, go to the next.
Well, Cookie had rolls tape on this stuff.
Unfortunately for her, she has to watch it.
Uh, in order to put these bites together.
We have to.
This is a montage inside edition.
PMS NBC and uh Larry King Alive, I think.
Is that it?
Pretty much covers it.
Yeah.
Controversy over what Rush Limbaugh said about Brave Elizabeth.
Most people, when told a family member's been diagnosed with the kind of cancer Elizabeth Edwards has, they turned to God.
The Edwards turned to the campaign.
That's radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh criticizing the decision.
Rush Limbaugh has been saying on his radio program that this is an effort by the Edwards campaign to relaunch his campaign.
To me, Larry, this is beyond the pale.
When a Rush Limbaugh says he's doing this as a political stunt.
Did Rush say that?
Yes, Rush did say that.
We'll have that full bite coming up in just a second.
But let's go back, shall we?
Controversy over what Rush Limbaugh said about brave Elizabeth.
And then they they uh have the bite.
Most people, when told a family member's been diagnosed with a kind of cancer Elizabeth Edwards has turned to God, the Edwards people turned to the campaign.
I said that.
You heard me say it.
But the context was in the discussion of how all political people are different from other people.
And that and and there were all kinds of phone calls from people that day who said they didn't understand it.
When their family members got cancer, they gave up work or they maybe continued to work, but they did is spend as much time with the kids as possible, especially if they were young, because they weren't going to see them graduate from Haskrul, walk down the aisle and get married, any of this sort of thing.
And they just callers did not relate, did not understand it.
I was trying to explain the political people are a different breed.
The quest for the presidency is a huge, huge thing.
And by the way, what's wrong with saying politics is their religion?
That's where they did turn.
Uh now this the the other voice, the Larry King voice was uh Stephanie Miller.
And here's that whole bite uh that happened on Larry King Alive last night.
To me, Larry, this is beyond the pale.
When a Rush Limbaugh says he's doing this as a political stunt to be a big thing.
Hold it a minute.
Hold it, hold on.
You know, I just now figured out what this is about.
Re-cue that.
They're t I I've this is about Tony Snow.
This is about Tony Snow, and I got a I got an email yesterday from one of the producers at Larry King Alive asking me if I uh if they were gonna do a show on Tony, wanted some of Tony's friends to come on, as if Stephanie Miller is a friend, uh and and and discuss Tony.
And I said, sorry, I can't, I'm gonna be watching House tonight.
Uh email back, I don't blame you.
Anyway, this little bite here between uh Larry and Stephanie Miller is about Tony Snow.
To me, Larry, this is beyond the pale.
When a Rush Limbaugh says he's doing this as a political stunt to boost his his political fortunes, Tony Snow had the good grace to say something something nice about Elizabeth Edwards last week.
Did Rush say that?
Yes, Rush did say that.
And you know, I I don't know where we're at.
You know my dad ran for vice president with Barry Goldwater.
I don't know what either of them would think today of a party that has produced Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter.
Ann Colter who just called the John Edwards last week.
I asked my listeners to pray for Tony Snow and his family today, just like I asked them to play for Elizabeth Edwards and her family last week.
You know, I like Obama think that we really all want a better kind of politics.
Rush thinks Tony Snow's being political.
Now, you know what's funny about this, the King can't believe it.
And during this whole rant of Stephanie Miller's, all King was Rush Limbaugh said that Tony Snow would be political.
I can't believe I can't believe I had to rush.
Well, Stephanie, well, she's you know, you remember Goldwater uh uh uh running mate Bill Miller in 19 Well I do, and it's his daughter.
And she's uh she's a comedian.
She's uh she's a lib comedian, and she has one of these liberal talk shows that nobody listens to very few.
Sorry, I gotta pound the desk here because I get static in the line.
I really do, Brian static something with a connection under the desk here, I'm sure it is.
All right, so let's put this in perspective.
Let's go back to last Friday.
Now, this is what happens when these people don't listen to this program and get it, get information of what was supposedly said on this program from these so-called watchdog websites.
And put this in context.
This is why it is important to listen to this program.
When the Edwards presser happened, I was stunned that the drive-by media's first take was what the political quality of it was and what the political boost would be and what the political outcome would be.
Howard Feynman, the first soundbite we played, raving about what a great political move this was.
There wasn't any tears for Elizabeth Edwards.
There weren't any uh prayers or any of this.
That Howard Feynman said it was a 10 strike.
On the politics political scale, it was just, it was, it was just fabulous.
And I'm sitting here aghast that these people are looking at a press conference where a candidate's wife has just essentially said that she's got a recurrence of cancer that has a 20% five-year survivability rate.
And they're looking at this and speculating, and they're all president We really hate to do this.
But it's a question that must be asked.
And guess who it is they're blaming for doing this?
Me.
I'm the one being accused of ever we've got the sound bites.
We had them yesterday.
They want to redo them again because it was redundant, but if I have to drag them out of the archives, I guess I should drag them out of the archives.
They're all on yesterday's roster, Mike and Cook, if you can if you can get them.
We were uh played all these sound bites of all these Democrats and media analysts who were talking about the political result and the political quality and the uh political impact of this press conference.
So Let's move to Friday.
And on Friday, Tony Snow makes his announcement that uh testing has shown a uh whatever it was, uh uh a new lump, something in his lower abdomen, and he was gonna go in and get it checked.
So I said in my way of poking fun at the media and Democrats, I said, I wonder, and I was asking this rhetorically, and you people, and by the way, the emails from I got from people last night indicated to listen to this program know it full well.
I uh I said, I wonder uh if Tony's just doing this to upstage the Edwards.
Tony's doing this to get Bush's poll numbers up.
We all laughed about it.
Tony is our friend here.
We know Tony Snow.
We know how they do and don't do things and how he does things and doesn't do them.
I was just playing off the reaction.
And I was if we're going to examine the political impact of the Edwards presser, I wonder if the drive-by's are going to examine the impact of the Tony Snow announcement.
And then yesterday, we found out that it's a recurrence of Tony Snow's earlier cancer that was in his colon, which has been removed, and that it's now moved to his liver.
It's not penetrated a liver, it's on the outside, had surgery to remove it, gonna be in a hospital three weeks.
I asked again if this was an effort by Bush and Rove to upstage Edwards.
And I wondered if the drive-by media was going to be uh examining the political impact of this on, and of course, none of that happened.
We didn't get one word of political analysis of Tony Snow, which is fine.
I mean, I've pointing out the differences.
Uh we got a lot of sympathy, we got uh a lot of other things.
But for for them to say that uh to accuse me of suggesting that Tony Snow did this as a political stunt, which is what was said on Larry King Alive last night, just goes to show what we're up against and what you, as consumers of news are up against.
And the I'm telling you, there's a great rule of thumb here.
If you're watching one of these drive-by-oriented shows, and you hear comments about any Republican or any conservative, your best bet is to doubt everything you see or hear and find out on your own.
This has happened to me so much, and it's it's it's a routine now.
It's part and parcel of my existence.
When it ha I I'm I'm under the impression I don't believe anything these people say when they report it, particularly about Republicans and conservatives, because they never ever get it right about me, as you who are regular listeners of this program uh understand.
And of course, the the uh satirical and the parodic humor uh cannot and is not captured by the uh the these blogs and websites that sift through this show and then put up these things out of context.
And even if they did get well, they can't get the humor because they don't understand, they're not funny.
And they certainly don't understand uh this kind of humor, even though they claim to love irony.
Now about Tony.
You have the Feynman, all right, all right, fine.
Well, here's Feynman.
Let's go back.
I'm being pilloried now.
What is they say in the first bite?
Controversy over what Rush Limbaugh said about brave Elizabeth.
Here's Howard Feynman from Friday.
Politically diagnosed, if you will, politically, that was a 10 strike of a press conference.
They showed guts that was nothing short of remarkable and somewhat unexpected, and it's always great when uh something unexpected happens around here.
And that we was talking about the fact that there was a leak that was erroneous that Edwards is gonna suspend the campaign, and then all of a sudden Edwards says, no, the campaign, we're not gonna cower in a quarter, we're gonna move on.
And finally, wow, that was fabulous.
We love this stuff.
We love press conferences with surprises.
So there's a 100% political analysis of this thing, and yet the drive-bys are obsessed with controversy over what I said.
Who's who's the next one that you found?
Oh, yeah, here's Matt O'Hauer.
This is the today's show, and this is from last Friday.
I'm I'm stalling a little bit here because the I have the the question I want to ask you is one that's gonna sound terribly inappropriate, and I'm trying to figure out the right way to say it.
Neither John or Elizabeth Edwards asked for this.
However, one of the facts that remains this morning is that John Edwards' picture is on the front page of the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, and in some ways we have to ask the political question of what is the impact of this gonna be on a campaign that was toiling in third place.
And now we know he got a bump.
He got a bump, he's still there, but he got a bump.
He went from uh nine to fourteen percent or something like that.
Fundraising's up.
There's still stories in the paper about it today.
In fact, here's one.
Um Edwards moves in the LA Times.
Edwards moves in uncharted territory.
The theme of this story is that Edwards is now defined by his wife's cancer, and will that continue?
And that could be a problem.
Yet there is a danger to Elizabeth Cancer, and the couple's personal travails will become all consuming, drowning out Edward's message and turning the focus away from issues that matter to voters.
Even though the announcement has humanized the Edwards's in a way that people can relate to.
Well, if the announcement humanized Edwards, it must mean he wasn't humanized before.
So the drive-bys are saying all this.
There's Matt Lauer.
They're all talking about the political impact.
And somehow, I am the only one who dared do this.
As to Tony Snow.
You know, there's an untold heroic side story of the Tony Snow news.
Tony Snow grave up uh gave up a great gig, a high-paying job to do uh work for the country he loves.
As a husband and a father, the family he loves, he made a big financial sacrifice to answer the call when the White House said we want you to be press secretary.
In the midst of this climate, he didn't need this, but he chose to do it.
And it makes him not only a nice guy and the object of our prayers, but in one sense, uh a true hero, Tony Snow represents the kind of goodness that makes America America's a longtime friend, and for these people to think that sit here and seriously accuse Snow of making this up for a publicity stunt to blunt the Edwards press conference gives you an idea of where the so-called thinking on the left resides today.
We'll be back, stay with us.
And we're back.
El Rushboth serving humanity.
With every breath I take, and all the carbon dioxide I exhale, helping to warm the planet myself in ways that millions of Americans could not even dream.
This is Paul in Burlington, Connecticut, as we go back to the phones.
Great to have you, sir.
Hello.
Thanks, Rush.
Thanks for taking my call.
I take exception to the painting of the Democrats of advocating defeat, which I think I think, you know, that most of the people, not all of them.
I know what I know.
Okay.
You won't let you know.
But here's what here's what I think.
That these most of these people think that uh victory is not obtainable.
The same way that Ed Meese did and James Baker, and I'll bet you a club gitmo t-shirt that at the end of the day, when when President Bush pulls up stakes, that he will have achieved something which no reasonable person will call victory, we will have wasted lives to preserve his legacy.
I think the people that want out want because they don't think it's winnable, not because they want America defeated.
You know, this is this is your great call.
And I'm I'm actually, I'm glad you took the time to call because you are the role model.
You are the microcosm of today's liberal democrat.
A, you don't recognize defeat when you want it.
You can't deny they want defeat.
They want surrender, they own it.
That's exactly what this is about.
It's so bad that the Democrats cannot afford victory to take place.
But beyond that, you know what's really shameful to me, and what is truly, truly disappointing is that you, an American, do not think victory is possible in this, the United States of America.
If you don't think victory is possible, you know, there's one opposite to victory, and that's defeat.
You think we can only lose.
You want us to lose.
You're telling yourself, you got your brain all tied to knots, telling this yourself that no, no, no, no, not about defeat, not about surrender.
Oh, we can't win.
We got this is about securing Bush's legacy and so forth.
You think anything other than victory is going to secure any kind of a decent legacy for George W. Bush given who writes legacies these days and who writes the history.
You know, you people like you are truly frightening and sad and disappointing.
And I feel sorry for you.
I generally when I actually stop to think that there are Americans like you, I get depressed.
Because you do not represent the traditions and the ideals and the institutions that have defined this country's greatness.
And if you keep propagating, And you won't because of abortion.
You keep making more and more of you people who think the way you do, our country and the way it's always been and its future is threatened.
You people get your hands in total control of this country.
You got yourself convinced that we don't face an enemy, that we're at war with the enemy, that the enemy is only the enemy because we've made them mad.
We are truly in deep doo-doo.
And I I go through this mixture of emotions of feeling sorry for people like you, because you sound otherwise intelligent.
You can speak.
And you can do so grammatically correct, so it sounds to me you ought to be able to figure things out, but you you you're just you're so warped out there that it's frightening and saddens me.
Very sad at the same time.
Serving humanity simply by showing up.
I mentioned this earlier.
This is a fascinating, fascinating piece, right up my alley here, and I'm surprised that this piece got published in uh in Newsweek, and furthermore that it was uh put on the PMS NBC website, and a woman who wrote it is Paula Spencer, who lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and I can't believe she will last there very long after having written this.
We uh protect kids from everything but fear, with hand sanitizer and long sleeved swimsuits, we're teaching our children a dangerous lesson.
This is in the April 2nd issue of Newsweek, by the way.
Four eleven and twelve year old girls stood in front of my open pantry, mouths gaping wide.
Look!
Fruit roll ups, oh my god, chocolate chip cookies, you have regular potato chips, we only get the soy kind.
After fourteen years and four kids, I thought I'd feel comfortable as a mother.
Instead, I'm increasingly aware of a prickly new sensation that I'm some kind of renegade.
Who knew that buying potato chips would become a radical act?
Or that letting my daughters walk home from school alone would require the approval of the screw administration.
How did I, a middle of the road mom, become a social deviant?
Fear is the new fuel of the American mom.
It's not fear of her child becoming obese.
It's the fear of falling behind, missing out on a sports scholarship, winding up with a thin college rejection envelope.
Apparently I'm not nervous enough.
Last summer, while I was loafing in front of the TV with my kids, the most benign things morphed into menaces.
For example, the sun.
Long-sleeved UV protective swimsuits were all the rage at my neighborhood pool, while I could barely remember to bring the year-old sunscreen.
The water wasn't safe either.
At the beach I saw Tots dressed in flotation belts and water wings for shelling along the shore.
They weren't even in the water.
And goodbye cotton candy and hot dogs at a major league game, I saw moms and dads nix the stuff as if they'd never eaten the occasional ballpark treat, as if their children would balloon to juvenile diabetes statistics if a single swig of sugary soda passed their lips.
Half of my kids' friends who already make A's and B's had summer tutors in order to keep it fresh.
I thought vacation was for relaxing and recharging.
What would our pioneer foremans think?
You want something to worry about?
Let me show you frostbite, typhoid, and bears.
Heck, what what what must our own mothers think?
Snap out of it.
You know, go worry about something truly scary like how you're going to pay for retirement.
I thought that once the kids were back in school, things would calm down.
Instead, a fresh seasonal crop of anxiety sprouted, this time over corrupt candy fundraisers and insufficient use of hand sanitizer.
I know one mother who wants to change her son's schedule because he doesn't know anybody in its classes.
She's worried he'll be socially traumatized all year.
Another is afraid of learning disability that she just read about, though her child seems bright and charming to me.
And then there's playground panic.
I had to laugh when an Australian study recently found that playground injuries continue to rise despite safety improvements.
One of the suspected reasons, the safe new play structures are so boring that kids are taking more risks in order to have fun.
The fears are as irrational as they are rampant.
Recently, my children's elementary school failed to meet adequate yearly progress goals for a particular minority's reading progress under the No Child Left Behind Act.
They're placed on a warning list.
This meant that parents might gain the right to transfer their kids to another school in the district.
Never mind that this very same school sent more kids To the district's gifted program than any other, or that this entire district has the highest SAT scores in the state.
The day the news broke, six different mothers asked me if I was planning to transfer my kids from neighborhood pride and joy to threat to child's future overnight.
It's not that I think parents shouldn't worry about anything.
I'm personally petrified of SUV drivers on cell phones.
I fret as much as the next mom about how to pay for college.
I pray my kids won't wander onto my space and post something dumb.
Hey, that's probably already happened.
But you can't go around afraid of everything.
It's too exhausting.
No matter how careful you are, bad stuff happens.
Diaper rash, stitches, all your friends assigned to another class, and it's seldom the end of the world.
Watching my friends, my daughter's friends ogle my pantry, I realize there's one big legitimate fear that I haven't heard anybody mention.
What's the effect of our collective paranoia on the kids?
Yes, these very kids, we want to be so self-sufficient, so responsible, so confident, so happy, so creative.
They're growing up thinking these weirdly weenie views are healthy and normal.
Walking out my front door that day, each girl happily clutched a plastic baggie stuffed with exotic kid snacks that my daughter had doled out to them in pity.
I may be a rebel mom, but at least I'm not afraid of a chocolate chip cookie.
Well, this is right up my alley because I don't know whether this woman realizes Paula Spencer just how squarely she has hit the nail on the head here.
I'm sure you've seen this, it's been floating around the internet for I don't know how long about the things that just I'm I'm 56.
Just the horrors that we survived growing up compared to the attempt to sanitize children's lives today.
But global warming, all of these other political fears get thrown into this mix too, and it works.
And you jet you you have little children who can't sleep at night now because they think that we're killing polar bears.
In fact, polar bears are killing panda bears in the Berlin Zoo.
Well, they play a role in it, so it said.
Details of that coming up.
But we've got all of this paranoia.
This is going to cause this, this is gonna get you sick, this is gonna get you this, this is gonna cause that.
Uh and every day there's more of it released, and it's just it's just absurd.
And so she's right, there is a climate out there that's that's creating paranoia and fear of nature, human and otherwise, uh, to the to the point that people are expecting that it's in that it's entirely possible to have a flawless existence,
one with little danger, one with hardly any disappointment, one with no failure, uh, and we want to shield all of our young people from the slightest bit of confrontation, the slightest bit of pain, uh discomfort.
Uh all of the lessons that life teaches.
These fears that are being promulgated by nanny state liberals are actually stunting the growth of young kids, and they're gonna grow up and they're gonna become adults, and the fears are still and they're gonna be realized and they're gonna be passed on, and they're not gonna have the slightest ability to cope with what the real world is really all about once they leave parents' house, leave the protected environment of a grade school or uh or what have you.
Uh and it's it this is something that I remember first hit me.
We go back to the early 90s, and it's one of these volley water volleyball games up at Croton on Hudson, I've told you about at Roger Eels' house.
And it was these are fun events.
And uh, you know, we didn't cut the women any slack.
I mean, women and men are on the same teams, opposite sides of the net.
Nobody went easy on slamming the ball, dunking it.
If a woman was in there, it was water volleyball.
And everybody had a great time, no problem whatsoever.
After one of these things always had a barbecue, sat around chewed to fat, some twenty-six-year-old school teacher who was a babe started talking about how we're pushing kids too fast and just pushing them too hard.
We're really we're demanding too much.
I was appalled.
I said, What do you mean pushing them too hard?
We're trying to make them learn too much too soon.
We're trying to make them grow up.
We need to relax.
We just let the lead let these kids find their own way.
So what you want the inmates to run the asylum?
What do you mean by that?
Well, you want the kids to tell you when they want to learn and what they want to learn or what they aren't going to learn and when they are going to show up and when they're not going to show up and when they're going to leave.
Why do you just think we're being too hard.
We're pushing them too hard.
Our expectations are too high.
Expectations too high.
That's exactly how you get more out of them.
It's when they're young.
Why do you think most people are in school at that age?
Because they don't know diddly squat, and that's when they have the energy to soak it all up and learn it.
It's when they have the energy to study and do all these things.
They don't have any other responsibilities.
That's theirs.
They're too young to go out and earn a living.
This is what they have to do.
We need an educated society.
You cut back on it, and you're going to create a generation of blithering idiots.
Because she just.
You're the problem.
You people like you are the problem.
You're just a slave driver.
I don't drive any slaves.
I don't have any kids.
But I'm damn glad that my kids aren't being taught by you because every night I'd have to do a little mind reworking after you'd programmed them into a bunch of marshmallow men robots.
Who do you say?
Well, you say you would we're not pushing them hard enough.
And I want my kid to learn, I want my kid to think that they I would want my kid to know that there are great expectations.
I want him reaching for heights.
And he doesn't think he can get to.
Well, you're just that sets him up for disappointment.
What if he failed?
We all fail.
Are you what you really wanted to be?
Have you reached your life's dream, teaching school and telling us that it's too much the way we're doing?
Have you really reached your 26 years old?
Is that it for you?
I resent that question.
I'm doing this because I love I'm sure you do love children.
But you're not doing anything if this is the way you're being teaching them.
You're not prepping them for anything other than to be a bunch of softies.
And you're nowhere near getting their full potential out of them.
Well, how do you know what their full potential is?
Well, see, that's the basic difference between you and me.
Because I think most people have far more potential than they realize themselves.
Most people have a comfort level, and when they get there, they stop.
But most people have the ability to go far beyond their comfort level if they're just inspired and motivated.
And you don't inspire people, and you don't motivate people by acquiescing to their cries and moans that it's too tough.
I asked her, I said, how are you at math?
Well, I'm not the best at math, but I don't teach math.
I said, it doesn't matter.
You know why you're not very good at math?
Because you've been told that math is tough for women, that women don't do well in math, so you probably didn't pursue it.
Who says women aren't any good at math?
That may be statistically true, but you probably have a you could learn math if you wanted to, if you had somebody made it interesting to you.
You fall for all this stuff, and now you've got these kids falling for all these things.
We're pushing them too hard and so forth.
This is a problem.
It's just it's exacerbated now, and it's it's amplified, it's been amplified, I don't know how many times, to where life is nothing but a constant fear.
A constant fear of the food we eat, constant fear of the cars we drive, a constant fear of the barbecue pit and what it's doing to the environment, a constant fear, and when when you've got the essence of innocence, these little skulls full of mush who are primed to soak up as much as they can when all you're putting into their heads is fear and paranoia and all those things based on lies, like they are killing the polar bears, or worse their parents are.
I'll tell you what the purpose of this is it's to create a whole generation upon generation to generation of little young leftist radicals who are gonna end up incapable of getting any kind of work except going to a nonprofit where they have to rely on the donations of other saps because they're not prepared to go out and earn a real living with real work in the real world.
And there's a bunch of that happening out there.
I don't have any patience for it whatsoever.
And I love running into people that have that kind of attitude.
Especially people they think they're doing so much for the human condition and so much for people when they're not doing diddly squat.
Well, I get together with these kids after school, you know, we uh have conversations, teach them arts and crafts and dancing and say, well, that's all well and good makes you feel good, but it's worthless.
If that's it, if that's the full scope of what you think you're doing for kids.
With keeping them off the streets, it's keeping you away from drugs.
I appreciate that.
But it's far beneath all that they're capable.
We have to build their self-esteem.
The best way to build self-esteem is through achievement and accomplishment, Not by taking the self-esteem of others and trying to whittle it down.
Anyway, well, we had a story not long ago.
The promotion of all this self-esteem in school was doing what was causing all kinds of problems because we've got a bunch of ego freaks running around.
Who don't deserve to have the huge egos.
I have been taught to love myself, and I love myself and and I'm good.
And they're they're they have no reason for it.
They've just been told that that's a justifiable way to uh behave and have an attitude.
Anyway.
Yeah, they get out there to get crushed by reality.
The first time they go out for a job interview, and they're treated like just one and a million of the ants that are showing up.
And when they're 24 and don't have, you know, the 5,000 square foot house that they grew up in, then all of a sudden it's Bush's fault or the country sucks or what have you.
Anyway, I have as I gotta take a break, the little long here in this segment, which means the next one's gonna be proportionally short as well.
Sorry about that, but you know the drill.
Back in a second.
I feel like I'm in my first radio station.
Blow on the microphone, it went out.
Massive bolts of static here at the bang on the desktop, which creates static in itself, but it gets rid of it sometime.
Anyway, Kathleen in uh in Grants Pass, Oregon.
You're next on the EIB network.
Welcome.
Uh hi, Rush.
Nice to talk to you.
Um this is about the Elizabeth Edwards thing, and it regard it's regarding your show that day.
You made a comment that there was a leak that day that said that they were going to shut down the campaign.
And of course, after the news conference, everybody knew that they weren't going to shut down the campaign.
And you made a comment that was this a political ploy.
You did not say was John Edwards using his wife's cancer as a political ploy or using this to his advantage.
I haven't, but uh but others have, by the way.
And others have uh others have said even worse.
Right.
And the but that day, the minute you said that about his campaign uh floating the idea or coming out and actually saying the campaign was going to shut down was a political tool.
I knew right then and there somebody was going to misconstrue this or not misconstrue this was going to out and out lie about the fact that you said that Edwards was going to use this as a political tool.
And that's what the Larry King that's what Miss Miller's comment was about.
It was not about Tony Snow.
It was about um you, but miss but uh, you know, absolutely an untruth about you saying that Edwards was using this as a political tool, and that's why Larry King was so incredulous that you would say this, because he she was giving him the idea that you actually said that John Edwards is going to use his wife's cancer as a political ploy.
And that's what it was.
It was not Tony Snow.
Oh, okay.
Well, I didn't do that either.
No, you absolutely.
I heard the show.
I heard the show.
But you know, but the but the point is, you know, it it's not that that that Stephanie Miller is who is a babe, by the way, I must point this out.
Uh it's not that she is uh confused in a sense, it's that she's not coming to the source.
I I can I can give you the two or three websites that make have made it their business to take this program out of context, take me out of context, and create all of this hubbub.
Let me give you a short little story.
I hope I have time to squeeze this in.
The leak showed up on the Politico.com website, which is these guys that left the Washington Post.
John Harris and Mike Allen and uh Roger Simons over there.
And they put a leak out at 11 o'clock, which is about 11.05, which is an hour before the Edwards press conference, which said that the Edwards campaign was going to be suspended.
They had a they had a clean good source that had never done them wrong.
Then press conference comes and Edwards' gonna extend the campaign.
There's the the leak was inaccurate.
The politico corrected it, and they did it quickly.
But then I heard the Howard Feynman bite, Howard Fein said, Oh, this was exciting.
So I speculated on the expectative, what if the Edwards people to spice up the press conference, because everybody knows that press conferences leak the contents first or announcements like this.
What if they purposely leaked that there were gonna be a suspension of campaign so that when they announced the opposite, it would really light off balloons and so forth.
Uh and I I'm gonna run out of time for this, but uh I want you to hold on through the break here, Kathleen, because I won't explain this, I want to get your reaction.
Okay.
I then got emails from uh John Harris at politico.com, who told me that friends of his sources told him of things I had said about Politico, which I hadn't even gotten close to uttering the syllables.
It's exactly what happened to Stephanie Miller, but I've got to sit tight because we'll get to this.
Can't wait to tell the rest of the story.
Don't go away.
Hang on out there, Kathleen got another break here.
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