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April 6, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:27
April 6, 2007, Friday, Hour #2
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Thanks, Johnny Donovan.
And we'll get to our callers standing by in just a moment here on our hybrid Open Line Friday.
We're doing a little bit of both here.
Rush handled the duties yesterday, but we've extended it a bit today.
I welcome you to the East Coast campus of the EIB Network, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
I am Paul W. Smith, as you heard Johnny Donovan say.
I used to work with Johnny Donovan at WABC many, many years ago.
And in fact, he's still there and doing a great job.
And here, a part of this great team, I usually come to you from Detroit, Michigan, still the automotive capital of the world, the greatest state in the world, the state of Michigan.
And you see, you have to experience it to know what I'm talking about.
There's so much to do, so much to see there.
And yes, we've been kicked around an awful lot, especially in Detroit, in the auto industry, but we are still the automotive capital of the world, and there's lots going on there.
Now, meanwhile, you are here with me at the Limbaugh Institute of Conservative Studies, East Coast Branch.
And as I remind you, there is never a final exam, but we are tested every day.
And as a fellow student, elevated just for the day, once again, to being a TA, a teaching assistant, it is a pleasure and a privilege to be here with you, along with Mike Maimone, a mere shadow of his former self, our broadcast engineer, losing weight.
It must be contagious from Rush, because apparently Rush has lost a lot of weight.
And then there's H.R. Kit Carson, the chief of staff, who looks like Conan O'Brien, and he clearly doesn't need to lose weight at all.
Cookie Gleason, the producer with the soundbites exclusively for Russia.
The whole team here is a great team to bring you that excellence in broadcasting.
It's nice to be here with you as well, along with my daily duty at Russia's home in Detroit, WJR, the great voice of the Great Lakes.
Meanwhile, we're taking your calls at 1-800-282-2882.
And the callers standing by, we are going to get to you just as quickly as we can while we also take care of a little business with a gentleman that I find very interesting.
And he's not coming down on one side or another necessarily on global warming, but he's coming down on the hypocrisy that we are surrounded by so often.
And Donald Luskin and the National Review Online has pointed out that if you question whether global warming is happening or whether human activity is causing it or whether it's worth doing anything about, then you must be a crackpot.
You're a global warming denier.
But there are no such accusations against those who question the benefits of free trade among nations.
Now, meanwhile, while there's a lot of questions about global warming, I believe it's obviously that there are things that we do that affect the environment.
Sometimes people are selling.
I get charts now sent to me at the radio station that show and prove that we're in the midst of global cooling.
And those of us who are freezing in this part of the world might wonder about that.
It is supposed to be April 6th.
We don't like to see snowmen Easter Sunday.
But be that as it may, the benefits of free trade are settled science, and yet it gets questioned, and the people who question it are not called crackpots or free trade deniers.
And that's an excellent point that Donald Luskin brings up in National Review Online, and he joins us here on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Donald, nice to have you with us.
Great to be here, Paul.
It is.
It's the hypocrisy, once again, of this business, this powerful special interest group, I guess, the environmental lobby.
It's all politics.
They want to scare the bejesus out of you by making you think that the world is going to burn up from global warming.
So some scientists agree, so they say, see, science is on our side.
But when it comes to trade, the liberal union-funded labor lobby, they want to scare you by making you think that your job's going to go to China.
Now, economic science doesn't agree at all.
For 250 years, economic science has been saying that global trade is great, and the booming U.S. economy and the booming world economy is proof of that.
But when it comes to that agenda, it's the heck with science that contradicts our labor-funded liberal agenda.
So we're going to deny the settled science of free trade, and we're going to say that we ought to put a 27.5% tax on all goods that come in from China.
We should make it illegal to buy a Japanese car, and so on and so on and so on.
Well, you know, it's funny because, again, more good news today.
U.S. payrolls rose $180,000 in March, jobless rate at 4.4%.
It doesn't get any better than that.
It doesn't get any better than that.
And yet you'd never know it by the institutional media's reporting of how things are going.
Now, it's hard for me to argue this, as you know, Donald Luskin.
My home is Detroit, Michigan, and we've had our hands full, and we haven't enjoyed the success that virtually every other state has.
But we're aware of it.
My fear is when things start to go south for the rest of the economy, I wonder what that will do for Michigan.
But that's another story for another time.
The fact is, things are going well.
All the things that we were worried about regarding these various global trade agreements, the bad stuff hasn't happened.
On the other hand, it can be argued that manufacturing jobs have suffered greatly.
Well, you know what?
Manufacturing jobs have been in decline since 1948.
Even though the American population is up about 50% since that time, the number of people doing manufacturing work was higher in 1948 than it is today.
And yet, here's the amazing punchline to that story.
The amount of manufacturing output that fewer people today than we're at in 1948 is the greatest in American history.
So we are still a great manufacturing nation.
It's just that we've gotten so good at it, it just doesn't take as many people as it used to.
Well, that's an interesting point, one that's not remembered very often.
I think that our Rush Limbaugh program listeners have a thought or two in this area as well, and they certainly are invited to join us at 1-800-282-2882.
That's 1-800-282-2882.
Our special guest, Donald Luskin, contributing editor for the National Review Online.
He is also Chief Investment Officer of Trend Macro, an independent economics and investment research firm.
You can reach him and that company at trendmacro.com.
But right now, you can reach him at 1-800-282-2882 on the Rush Limbaugh program.
I'm Paul W. Smith.
It's the Rush Limbaugh Program, Friday edition.
Good, Good Friday to you.
I'm Paul W. Smith.
In for Rush has the day off taking the holiday, and he'll be back with you in this chair, the big chair, in front of, or in this case behind, the golden EIB microphone.
He'll be back here Monday.
So if you talk about free trade and you deny the manifest evidence of its success or challenge its status as a human right for that matter, you are not treated like someone who has denied or questioned global warming.
A point pointed out by Donald Luskin of the National Review Online, Chief Investment Officer of Trend Macro, an independent economics and investment research firm.
There are people, Maybe it's the transition, Donald, and you can help us understand this.
Because certainly in the Midwest and in specifically Detroit, the motor city, the motor capital of the world still, we feel it.
We feel the pain of our auto industry suffering right now and therefore losing manufacturing jobs, while the auto industry itself is thriving.
It's just thriving with Toyota and Nissan and Hyundai and Kia and many others and not with us.
Right.
That's true.
But it's also the case that on a worldwide basis, the automobile industry itself is shrinking as a proportion of the world economy.
And what's taking its place are a whole new category of businesses that didn't even exist as recently as 10 or 15 years ago.
I live in the San Francisco area, and right now, I live within a few miles of Google's world headquarters.
I can tell you that they have a list of job postings miles long.
They have over 100 buildings in the county in which I live.
This is a company that didn't exist 10 years ago.
There's an employment boom going on.
It's just not in autos, and it's just not in Detroit.
So just as the auto workers in Detroit, just as their grandfathers and great-grandfathers migrated from the farms at the turn of the last century to come to Detroit and work, now unfortunately they have to migrate away, develop new skills in new places to take on the new century.
And the big dislocation, but that's the way it works.
It is.
I know it is the way it works.
You're right.
A lot of them came from Kentucky and other places into Detroit.
But it seems so easy for you to say, Donald, well, the jobs aren't in Detroit.
People should pick up and leave Detroit.
If they're not finding work in Michigan, then leave.
But what's that do to Detroit?
It's not up to you.
I mean, Detroit and Michigan is not your responsibility.
But for those of us who live there, we'd like to see it stick around and live.
Survive.
I would too.
And so let me make some suggestions to Detroit.
What Detroit and the auto industry ought to do is the city of Detroit and the state of Michigan ought to lower its taxes.
It ought to lower its regulations.
The unions ought to abolish themselves.
And if those things happened, then instead of locating in South Carolina and North Carolina and Georgia and Mississippi, Toyota and Nissan would have built their factories in Detroit.
Because there is a job shortage in this country right now.
So if you're a smart company and you want to set up business somewhere, you want to go where there are able-bodied employees that you can get to do the work.
What better place than Detroit that has a high unemployment rate?
Well, unfortunately, those are people who want to belong to unions.
It's a high-tax, high-regulation state and city.
It's a lousy place to do business.
That's because when the auto industry was a huge success in the middle of the last century, that success got exploited.
People threw taxes on it.
They threw regulations on it.
They threw union demands on it that have now made the U.S. auto industry and the city of Detroit uneconomical to operate.
So if you don't want to leave Detroit, you've got to change Detroit.
But you can't live with the status quo.
It doesn't work anymore.
Face the facts.
Well, you're absolutely right about that part.
Donald Luskin with us of National Review Online.
And Dan is here, too, at 1-800-282-2882, 1-800-282-2882, the Rush Limbaugh Program.
And Dan is in New Orleans, and they know a thing or two about adversity and setbacks there as well.
Dan?
Yes.
How are you doing today?
Good.
Wonderful.
I guess I wanted to call and ask, because free trade we were talking about is supposedly going to be okay for the American job market.
But generally, the government gives so many subsidies to farm workers and to steel workers and miners that I'm just curious how if the United States were to actually eliminate all its trade protections and subsidies as free trade suggests it should, how we wouldn't lose jobs in those areas and such.
And how I mean, we'd be getting goods at better prices, admittedly, but I don't see how employment wouldn't be affected adversely here.
Employment overall and over time would not be affected adversely because subsidies and protection, any kind of interference with the marketplace's ability to do the kinds of transactions it really wants always means you're going to have less economic activity.
So if you take away all those restrictions, you're going to have more economic activity.
But in the transition, the people who in the past had received subsidies are going to feel like losers.
And one of the great ironies of free trade is the Bush administration one week ago today through the Department of Commerce imposed so-called countervailing duties on coated paper being imported into the United States from China.
And their argument was that the coated paper industry in China was heavily subsidized by the Chinese government.
Well, goodness gracious, look at all the subsidies that happen in this country.
Look at the subsidies to farmers in particular.
Unfortunately, the whole world operates on subsidies and all kinds of regulation and government interference.
And one of the reasons why the world economy and the U.S. economy has done so well in the last 25 years, where there's been so much growth and it's been so steady without any kind of real depression or recession, those things used to happen all the time.
And now they're rarities.
And the reason is that the economy has been allowed to be adaptive and flexible.
And so that's a good thing.
So you allow for adaptation and flexibility.
Sure, you put pressure on people to adapt and be flexible.
But that's what people are good at.
That's what the economy teaches you to do if government just lets you do it.
All right.
Dan, does that help?
Definitely, definitely.
So it's really just, you would think, just like stubbornness for change is why we're not seeing these subsidies being disappeared, basically, I guess.
Because obviously elected officials don't want to put all the soybean farmers in America out of soy farming.
I mean, like, I don't know.
It seems like a tricky thing to actually put into place, especially under any quick time schedule.
It is difficult, and it's happening step by step.
It's politically difficult.
It's personally difficult to the people who are affected.
But over the last 25 years, we've gotten there one baby step at a time, and that's allowed the adaptations to take place without too much pain.
So if you made me king for a day, I don't think I'd advocate shock treatment where we just simply take all the laws on the books that affect these things and burn them.
You would take them off one at a time.
You'd amortize your way out of this over, say, 10 or 20 years, and people would gradually adapt.
And if we did that, I'll bet you the United States would be growing and selling more soybeans 20 years from now than they are today.
That's well put.
And Dan, I hope that helps you.
And that's putting a finer point on it.
Donald Luskin is with us, as you've pointed out, too, in your writing on National Review Online.
Global warming deniers are attacked not because they stand against a scientific consensus, but because they're standing against a powerful liberal special interest group, the environmental lobby.
And this global warming threat has to be maximized, has to be repeated over and over again so that environmentalists can keep raising more money, getting more political influence.
The other hand, the benefits of free trade are settled science.
This isn't something we're questioning or wondering about.
It goes all the way back, as you've pointed out, to the 18th century.
You're talking Adam Smith, David Ricardo.
You've told me in the past, a best-selling college economics textbook, Macroeconomics, by Harvard's N. Gregory Mancu, enshrines among the ten principles of economics the axiom that trade can make everyone better off.
You know what's so shocking to me about this is the first thing that anybody ever talks about when the issue is trade liberalization, free trade, is, well, what about the adjustment effects?
What about the short-term pain?
What about the people who are put out of work?
We've heard that here today.
It's a very natural question.
It's the transition pain.
What do people say when they want to talk about putting $3 a gallon taxes on gasoline?
What do you think to prevent global warming?
That's going to put Detroit into the sewer and it'll never get out.
But no one ever says that.
Right.
It's the transition pain for one but not for the other.
There would be no transition.
That would be a one-way trip to death for Detroit.
1-800-282-2882.
1-800-282-2882.
We go to Carlsbad, California.
Mark, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program.
I'm Paul W. Smith.
Our guest is Donald Luskin.
Hi, Paul and Donald.
I'm a former Detroiter, and I had a tangent to add to your argument, which I agree with.
All right.
And that tangent is in these globalized times.
We have international brotherhoods of this and international organizations of that, which represent unionism.
We have an economic condition in China where kids have come in off the farms, they've gone into the factories, they're getting paid slave wages.
And there's an irresistible opportunity for unions to go in there and give them a better life, raising their labor rates, making them, shall we say, more equitable competitors against Detroit and putting Detroit on a better footing in terms of its overhead expenses.
How come we're not seeing globalization from the unions?
How come the global union dues aren't going where they're needed?
Well, the reason is that nations find it easy to export good products and very difficult to export bad products.
Unionization is a bad product.
So we are going to have a very hard time exporting it and tricking anybody in China into buying it.
Because all anybody needs to do is look at what's happened in the United States, where the unions have gradually encrusted the automobile industry the way barnacles encrust old ships.
And the unions have sunk the U.S. automobile industry.
And God help China if they make the mistake of letting unions.
There's lots more to talk about in that area that some people would agree or disagree with.
We thank you for being with us, Donald Luskin.
And go to TrendMacro.com to find Donald.
Good question, Mark.
More good questions from you on the Rush Limbaugh program.
I'm Paul W. Smith.
Thanks, Johnny Donovan.
Boy, you guys around here on the Rush Limbaugh program make news all the time that there's a bit of a controversy.
Maybe HR, our chief of staff, will explain it to me completely.
Maybe we'll wait till Monday.
Maybe Rush addressed it.
You know, that whole thing with the vice president, his conversation with the vice president earlier in the week.
So maybe I will.
I don't like, you know, Rush is the mother.
You know, he's the all-knowing.
He's the guy.
I am merely the teaching assistant.
And I don't ever, ever try to take what I've learned from him and try to bring it back out as if it's from him on one of these issues when he's going to be.
Well, I know, I know, I am.
I'm in school, but I don't want to talk out of school.
So meanwhile, 1-800-282-2882.
But it is interesting when you have the transcript, because I got the transcript before I even knew you were having this situation come up, and you get the actual verbatim transcript from rushlimbaugh.com, and then you look at the headlines in the newspapers regarding that very interview when you have the very transcript word for word.
I think they say verbatim.
And the fact is that the headline and the story has nothing to do with what you read on the paper, the transcript of what took place on this program with Rush Limbaugh and the Vice President of the United States.
So anyway, but Rush will do that and handle it beautifully on Monday after he is well rested after taking this Good Friday vacation.
Let's finally get to Dave.
Oh, by the way, top of this next hour in the opening segment, we will welcome in Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House, possible presidential candidate.
But what we're talking about is the fact that he's going to square off on a climate change debate this coming week with Senator John Kerry.
Now, remember, Senator Kerry has been dubbed an environmental champion by the so-called nonpartisan League of Conservation Voters.
He and his wife, Teresa, have written the book This Moment on Earth.
Not going to be one-upped by that Al Gore guy, I can tell you that.
All right, 1-800-282-2882, and in Detroit, my hometown, Dave is on the line.
Finally, we could get to you, Dave.
Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi, how are you doing?
I'm doing well.
Quite await in this freezing cold global warming weather out there.
Yeah, I know.
It's amazing.
Anywho, the point I wanted to bring up is some of the big companies in the environmental world, I do environmental work here locally in Detroit, they get a bad rep, specifically Walmart, that type of company, of being the worst, worst of the worst.
But when you go to the environmental end of things, they are one of the only, I guess, companies that would have the type of money and assets and everything necessary to follow these environmental regulations, and they do the work to the T.
They are a dream to work with when it comes to environmental work.
That's interesting.
That's good to know.
Well, I have, I'm a, I am, and this is hard to explain, Dobbs, hard to explain it.
I think I've said this before on this very program.
I am a big supporter of Walmart.
I'm not a shopper at Walmart.
I just don't shop there.
But I'm a big supporter of a company that hires more people than anybody else and does more business and does more commerce.
Now, I know it's popular to criticize them, et cetera, et cetera.
I happen to be a Costco shopper.
It's not that I'm against discount shopping.
I'm not at all.
I think it's great.
So I'm not supporting Walmart because I shop there.
It's just like my thing with the coffee shop, Starbucks.
I think that they're a very interesting company.
I think they're a pretty good company.
I think the guy who runs Starbucks, pretty good company.
I just, I don't like their coffee.
I just, I don't like dark roast coffee.
It's nothing personal against Starbucks.
I just, I don't like their coffee.
So anyway, people have a tendency to blame Walmart for a lot of things.
But if you'll notice, sadly, in our country, we have a tendency to go after anybody of great success.
It's just the way it is.
And in fact, what the institutional media likes to do is build somebody up who really doesn't deserve to be built up and then knock them down.
I mean, how could you explain?
Oh, I don't even want to start naming names.
But I mean, there are people out there that we see in the news or see talked about in television or in the newspaper or magazines.
You go, why are they there?
Well, they're there because the media has decided they should be there, and then people catch on to it and start following it and start to believe they know these people.
And then finally, luckily, they do something horrible, and then they're knocked out of favor.
It's not a good trend that we're following here.
But it is the way it is right now.
But, Dave, is there anything else there in Detroit?
Things are okay?
Is it snowing there?
Oh, it was a minute ago.
It's cleared up now, but it looks like there's more on the way here.
Well, I'm coming, I'll tell you that.
Coming home for a wonderful snowy Easter back home a little later after this fine program.
Thanks for checking in.
Sorry you had to wait so long, but it's just the way it happens here.
And so now I have both Detroit, my hometown of Monroe, Michigan, right in that circle, growing up there, born and raised there.
And then we had Philly, where I spent six great years.
So it was touching.
Let's see what else would I need.
I'd need a New York caller now.
Can you see if you can find a New York caller on our great station, WABC?
Maybe Phil Boyce, the program manager at WABC, will call in, change his voice, disguise his voice, and be just a caller.
Maybe not, though.
Bill is in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
He has called 1-800-282-2882.
And luckily, he is right here on the Rush Limbaugh program.
I'm Paul W. Smith.
Bill, hello.
Thanks, Paul.
Thanks for taking my call.
What I'm calling about is, you know, I'm listening to Don, and I've had some, I guess, extended training in economics and investments.
And listening to what Don is saying makes so much sense.
Why can't we get that same kind of candor out of Washington?
Why can't Washington show us who these pork-barreling senators are that are passing this defense bill, which is more of a sham than anything?
Why can't we get that straight talk?
You know, I don't know.
You know, let me try to put it to you this way.
Have you ever known somebody, maybe work side by side with them, and you would commiserate about how apparently dumb, ignorant, out-of-it management seems at your company?
And you're of like mind with this man or woman that you work side by side with, and then all of a sudden that person gets promoted, and they become a manager, and they become as ignorant and as dumb as those other managers.
I'm not sure what happens to these people when they get in these positions, but there have been plenty of people that you and I have talked to or listened to that seem to make tremendous sense, and then they get into those positions and it falls apart.
Bill, I just don't know.
I don't know.
Yeah, it's just sad that the truth is such a gray matter, whereas you're explaining things very clearly from 19th century economic friendships.
Well, but you know what, though, but you see, Donald Luskin, chief investment officer of the Trend Macro, an independent economics and investment research firm from National Review Online, you can find him too at trendmacro.com.
Donald Luskin can sit here and say, well, if the jobs aren't in Detroit or in Michigan, you pick up and you move.
That's what people have done historically.
They move, they go to where the jobs are.
That's easy to say when you're sitting there not in Michigan or not in Wisconsin or wherever you might be.
So all of these things don't happen in a vacuum.
Most of them are absolutely correct, whether you're in a vacuum or not.
Many of them are hard to take.
Let me tell you something.
Michigan and any other state that's in the same kind of situation or will soon find themselves in that kind of situation has to change.
And it's got to be drastic change or people will pick up and leave.
And then you're in worse trouble.
And it goes back to that old movie, Can We Handle the Truth?
Well, it really, it doesn't much matter.
Clearly, people are afraid to give us the truth oftentimes.
There's no question, you know, that expression, don't murder the messenger, is there.
That expression is there for a reason.
We do have a tendency to take it out on the person who may be telling us the truth, but they're giving us bad news.
And when they give us the bad news, we end up taking it out on them.
You know, if a politician came in and said, here's what I'm going to do, and it's really going to be painful, that politician probably wouldn't get re-elected.
And unfortunately, that's the whole goal.
They get in, and then the entire time is spent getting re-elected, not necessarily doing all the noble things they thought they were going to do if they ever ran for office.
Well, that's the truth.
Bill, I appreciate your call in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and other calls too at 1-800-282-2882.
It's a good Friday on the Rush Limbaugh program.
I'm Paul W. Smith.
I didn't know, you know, I'm not going to mention the hotel, but it's kind of, hey, they're expensive.
You're right in Manhattan.
Nickel diming you to death.
I never, I always thought the newspaper outside your door, which is of no use to me because I leave before it gets there early in the morning.
But when I come back, it's there.
I thought it was free.
I thought it was complimentary.
I thought they just did that, you know.
I thought the newspaper said, well, we'll provide the newspapers.
We want to get them in the hands of people, and that's all good.
On the back of my little holder of my key, in the smallest of print, in quotation marks, I have requested a weekday delivery of USA Today, end of quote.
If refused, a credit of 50 cents per day will be applied to my account.
Please call the welcome desk or check here to refuse.
Please drop off during your stay.
Unbelievable.
I can't believe that.
I had no idea.
You better look for it.
You got to look for the small print.
Look for the fine print here.
1-800-282-2882.
1-800-282-2882 in our hybrid of an open forum and an Open Line Friday.
Should we do that again?
Do you want to hear the Open Line Friday thing?
No, you only do it once, twice, maybe.
All right.
And Newt Gingrich will be here in the next hour to talk about, well, a variety of issues, but the climate change debate coming up with Senator John Kerry this next week should be fascinating, I think.
Meanwhile, meanwhile, I should point out this because the guys gave this to me, and I aim to please this team, including, of course, H.R. Kit Carson, Chief of Staff.
He pointed this out, and since we were talking earlier about China and business, and we should be talking about China and pollution, having been there and again experienced just how polluted it is there, and they've got a major problem, which means we will eventually have a major problem.
Anyway, they are going to start their own American Idol-like program.
It's called Boys Happy Voice.
Obviously, this is the translation, and American Idol doesn't translate very well, especially as I understand that I'm not a watcher of American Idol per se, but I have people who watch it for us and then report on it on my morning program at WJR in Detroit.
And the fact is, the boys are very weak this time, I'm told.
This much I've learned about American Idol.
And they say that there will be no weirdness, no vulgarity, no low taste.
This is a statement from the state administration of radio, film, and television in a notice to the producers of Boys Happy Voice, their own version of American Idol.
It's a talent show to be broadcast beginning May 1st, and it's a sequel to the hugely popular TV contest, Supergirl's Voice, that in 2005 drew more than 400 million viewers.
And the woman who won that contest became a popular singer in China.
But the competition drew official and public criticism for promoting vulgarity.
Now, Happy Boy's Voice should include only, quote, healthy and ethically inspiring songs and avoid scenes of screaming fans or losing contestants in tears, which is what they just did this past Wednesday, I guess.
The show should maintain a happy atmosphere.
Scenes of wailing and screaming are low taste and should not happen.
And the lead judge and producer of the Chinese edition of American Idol, which would be China Idol, I guess, or in this case, Boy's Happy Voice, is Simon Mao.
Simon Mao is the lead judge and producer, and he says we are going to prohibit judges from mocking or humiliating contestants.
Also, the hairstyles, clothes, fashion accessories, language, and manners should be in line with the mainstream values.
Ought to be a great show.
400 million people tuned in to their show in 2005.
All right, back to you.
We have that China story we wanted to tie in with everything we've been talking about there.
1-800-282-2882.
And John in Maryland is on the line.
Is it Queenstown, Maryland, John?
Yes, it's Queenstown, Maryland.
And I don't know how many Brits you've had call into you today, sir.
I think I'm guessing.
Let me count.
Let's count together here.
One.
Other than me.
No, no, then zero.
Okay.
Well, my name is John.
I come from England.
I've been living in the United States now for 10 years.
This is not a singles program.
Did you get the right?
Are you calling the Russian Limbaugh program?
What sign are you anyway since you got that far?
Sorry, say again?
What sign are you since you got this far?
I'm a Cancerian.
Okay, all right, very good.
Okay, go ahead, John.
Okay.
Yeah, I just wanted to take issue.
I have never called a radio program before in my life, but I did want to take issue with the lady from California who called in earlier about the problem with Marines and the sailors in Iran.
Yes, Anita, Anita was saying we should not be too tough on them.
Well, if that was the case, I may have misunderstood.
I was on my way back from Annapolis, believe it or not, which of course is the home of the Royal Navy, the Royal Royal Navy, right?
The best naval academy.
What were you doing at Annapolis?
By the way, my sister-in-law, Carmena Tao, proud graduate of Annapolis.
What were you doing there?
I was just dropping my wife.
She works there.
Sadly, I live on the other side of the Bay Bridge on the Chesapeake Bay, and there's very little work over here.
It's very beautiful, but unfortunately, if you want to work, you've got to cross that Bay Bridge every day for a commute to Anarundale County, Baltimore, Washington, D.C. John, why don't you gather your thoughts now that we've had the introduction?
And we're going to come back to you and let you ask your question.
And also if you have issue with Anita, I will defend Anita as I would defend you when you leave.
It's part of my job as a guest host here, teaching assistant, on the Rush Limbaugh program.
I'm Paul W. Smith.
All right.
We better let John speak his mind here because you only have a little over a minute, John.
Go ahead now.
You had a concern about Anita.
Maybe you misunderstood.
What do you say?
Yeah, first of all, never doubt the Marines, believe me.
These are men who in 1982 went 11,000 miles to the Falkland Isles.
They marched non-stop for 40 mi miles with 100 pounds on their backs in order to keep get the Argentinian surprise.
They are hard men.
They don't just get up on television and just say, oh, yes, I'm sorry I did this.
I'm sorry I did that.
Not without a good reason.
There was some diplomacy went on.
All I do know is that we've got our people home, and we got them home in 14 days.
The same happened to the Americans in 1979, if I believe rightly.
It took you over 400-plus days to get them back.
You had an abortive attempt to rescue them, where helicopters were crashing into each other, and you lost a lot of men.
And finally, in the last days of Carter, it is generally believed that they were paid off in order for him to live gracefully and with some dignity.
We're at the end of the hour here.
What can I say?
I mean, I don't know why you're feeling so defensive.
The Brits themselves are questioning how these soldiers behaved during their detention and why they had been captured in the first place.
Don't blame us.
We're just talking about what's being talked about back home.
Well, we'll continue.
Newt Gingrich joining us on the Rush Limbaugh program.
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