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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 uh here, a part of this great uh team.
I usually uh come to you from Detroit, Michigan, still the automotive capital of the world, uh, the greatest state uh 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, uh, you are here with me at the Limbaugh Institute of Conservative Studies, East Coast branch, and uh uh as I remind you, uh 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 uh a pleasure and a privilege to be here with you along with uh Mike Maymoon, a mere shadow of his former self, our broadcast engineer, losing weight.
It must be contagious from Rush, because apparently Russia's lost a lot of weight.
Uh and then there's H. R. Kit Carson, the chief of staff, uh, who looks like Conan O'Brien, and he clearly doesn't need to lose weight at all.
Cookie Gleason, a producer with the soundbites exclusively for Russia.
Now, the whole team here is a great team uh to bring you that excellence in broadcasting.
It's uh it's nice to be here with you as well, uh, along with my uh my daily duty uh at uh Russia's home in Detroit, WJR, the Great Voice of the Great Lakes.
Uh meanwhile, we're taking your calls at 1800-282-2882, and uh the caller's standing by, we are going to get to you just as quickly as we can, while we also take care of a little business uh with uh a gentleman that I find very interesting and is uh he's not uh he's not coming down on one side or another uh necessarily on global warming.
But he is he's coming down on the hypocrisy that we are surrounded by so often.
And uh Donald Luskin and the National Review Online has uh 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 b I 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 uh in this part of the world uh might wonder about that.
It is supposed to be uh April uh sixth.
We don't like to see uh uh snowmen uh 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 uh called crackpots or uh or free trade deniers.
And that's an excellent point that Donald Leskin 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 uh it's the hypocrisy, once again, of of of this business, this uh powerful special interest group, I guess, the environmental lobby.
It's all it's all politics.
Uh they want to scare the bejesus out of you by making you think that uh the world is gonna burn up from global warming, and so some scientists agree, so they they say the science is on our side.
But when it comes to trade, the liberal union funded labor lobby, uh, they want to scare you by making you think that your job's gonna go to China.
Now, economic science doesn't agree at all.
For two hundred and fifty 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.
Uh so we're gonna deny the settled science of free trade, and we're gonna say that we ought to put a twenty seven and a half percent 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, it's uh you know, uh it's funny because again, more good news today.
Uh U.S. payrolls rose 180,000 in March, jobless rate at four point four percent.
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 as you know, Donald Leskin, uh, my home is Detroit, Michigan, and we've had our hands full, and and we haven't enjoyed the success that virtually every other state has.
But but but we're aware of it.
My fear is when things start to go south uh for the rest of the economy, I wonder what that will do uh for Michigan, but that's another story for another time.
The fact is things are going well.
Uh all the things that we were worried about regarding these uh various global trade agreements, uh, 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 ha is up about fifty percent since that time, the number of people doing manufacturing work was higher in nineteen forty-eight 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 do we're at at 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 uh that's an interesting point, the one that's not uh remembered very often.
Uh, I think that our Rush Limbaugh program listeners have a thought or two in this area as well, and they certainly are are invited to join us at one-eight hundred-282-2882.
That's one-eight hundred-two eight two two eight eight two.
Uh, our uh special guest, Donald Luskin, uh 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 uh him and that company at Trendmacro.com.
But right now you can reach him at one-eight hundred-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, InfoRush has the day off taking the holiday, and he'll be back with you in this chair, the big chair, in front of uh, 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.
Uh a point uh pointed out by Donald Leskin of the National Review Online, Chief Investment Officer of Trend Macro, an independent economics and investment research firm.
There are people maybe maybe it's the transition, Donald, and you can help us understand this.
Because certainly uh in the Midwest and in specifically Detroit, the motor city, the motor uh capital of the world still, uh, we feel it.
We feel the pain of our auto industry suffering right now and therefore losing uh manufacturing jobs, while the auto industry itself is thriving.
It's just thriving with Toyota and Nissan, uh and uh and Hyundai and Kia and and many others, and not with us.
Right.
That's true.
Uh, 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 uh ten or fifteen years ago.
I live in the San Francisco area, and right now, and I 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 one hundred buildings in the county in which I live.
This is a company that didn't exist ten 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 centuries.
You know, it's a big dislocation, but that's the way it works.
It is.
I know it is the way it works, and then you're right.
A lot of them came from from Kentucky and other places uh into Detroit.
And but what it it seems so easy for you to say, Donald, well, uh 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 does that do to Detroit?
I get it's not up to you.
I mean, i Detroit and Michigan is not your responsibility.
But for those of us who live there, we'd like to see it stick around and and live.
So let me make some suggestions to Detroit.
Uh what Detroit and the auto industry ought to do is it ought Detr uh the city uh 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 in 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 unecto to operate.
So if you don't want to leave Detroit, you gotta 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.
You How are you doing today?
Good.
Wonderful.
Um I guess I wanted to uh call and ask, um, because free trade we were talking about, um, is supposedly going to be okay for the American job market.
Um, but uh federally the government um gives so many subsidies to like farm workers and to steel workers and miners, um that I'm just curious how um if the United States were to actually uh eliminate all its trade protections and subsidies as uh free trade suggests it should,
um how uh we wouldn't lose jobs in those areas and such and how um I mean we'd be getting goods at better prices, admittedly, but um I don't see how employment wouldn't be affected adversely here.
Employment uh 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 gonna have less economic activity.
So if you take away all those restrictions, you're gonna have more economic activity, but in the transition, the people who in the past had received subsidies are gonna feel like losers.
And one of the great ironies of free trade is uh 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.
You know, 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 US economy has done so well in the last twenty five years, where there's been so much growth and it's been so steady, without any kind of real depression or recession, those c 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?
Uh definitely, definitely.
So it's really just uh you would think just like stubbornness of for change is why we're not seeing uh the subsidies being disappeared basically I guess um because obviously elected officials don't want to put all the soy bean farmers in America like out of soy farming.
I mean like I don't know it seems like a tricky thing to uh actually put into place um especially any uh under any quick time schedule it is it is difficult and it's happening step by step it's it's politically difficult it's it's personally difficult to the people who are affected but over the last twenty five 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 uh uh advocate shock treatment where we just simply take all the laws on the books that affect these things and burn burn them.
Uh you would just take them off one at a time you'd amortize your way out of this over say ten or twenty 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 twenty years from now than they are today.
That's well put uh and Dan I hope that helps you and uh that's uh that that's putting a finer point on it uh Donald Luskin is with us as you've pointed out too uh in in your writing a 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.
On 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 eighteenth century.
You know you're talking Adam Smith, David Ricardo that uh there's a you've uh told me in the past uh a best selling college economics textbook macroeconomics by Harvard's N Gregory Mangew 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.
Yeah it's the transition liberals say when they want to talk about putting three dollar 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 the it's it's the transition pain for one but not for the other would be no transition.
That would be a one-way trip to death for Detroit.
1-800-282882 1-800-282-2882 we go to Carlsbad, California.
Mark you're on the Rush Limbaugh.
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.
Alright?
And that tangent is in these globalized times we have international brotherhoods of this and international uh 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 and have gradually encrusted the automobile industry the way barnacles encrust old ships and they and uh the unions have funk the U.S. automobile industry, and God help China if they make the mistake of letting unions.
We will uh we we'll have there's lots more to talk about in that area uh uh that some people would agree or disagree with.
We thank you for being with us, Donald Luskin and uh 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 uh around here on the Rush Limbaugh program make news all the time that uh and there's a bit of a controversy.
Maybe uh uh H.R. Chief of Staff will uh uh 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 uh earlier in the week.
The So well I well, maybe I will uh but you know, I don't like you know th Rush is the uh the Maharishi, you know, he's the he's the all-knowing he's he's the guy.
I am merely the uh the teaching assistant, and I uh I don't ever ever try to uh take what I've learned from him and and and try to bring it back out as if it's from him on one of these issues.
When when he's going to be Well, I know, I know I I know I am I'm in school, but I I I don't want to talk, you know, out of school.
So uh meanwhile, one uh eight hundred two eight two two eight eight two.
But it is interesting when you have the transcript, because I got the transcript before I even knew you were uh having this situation uh come up, and you get the actual verbatim transcript from uh from uh Rush Limbaugh dot 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, uh and uh 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 i Rush will do that uh and uh handle it beautifully on Monday after he is well rested after taking this Good Friday vacation.
Let's uh finally get to uh day oh, by the way, uh top of this next hour uh 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, uh Senator Kerry has been uh dubbed an environmental champion by the so-called nonpartisan League of Conservation Voters.
He and his wife Teresa have uh written the book This Moment on Earth.
Not gonna be uh one-uped by that Al Gore guy, I can tell you that.
All right, uh one eight hundred two eight two two eight eight two, and in Detroit, my hometown, uh 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.
Yeah, I know.
It's just it's uh 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.
Uh they get a bad rest, 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.
I well I have I'm a I am this is hard to explain, but I'll try to explain it.
I think I've said this before on this uh very program.
I am a big supporter of of uh Walmart.
I'm not a shopper at Walmart.
I just don't shop there.
But I'm a big supporter uh of a company that hires more people than anybody else uh and and does more business and does more commerce.
Now, I know it's it's uh popular to criticize them, etc.
etc.
I I happen to be a Costco shopper.
It's not that I'm against uh uh you know discount shopping.
I'm not at all.
I I think it's great.
I so I'm not supporting Walmart because I shop there.
It's just uh it's like my thing with uh with the uh the coffee shop, uh Starbucks.
I think that they're a very interesting company.
I think they're uh uh 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.
I it's nothing personal against Starbucks.
I just I don't I don't like their coffee.
So anyway, um people have a tendency to 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.
Mm-hmm.
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 that that we see in the news or see uh uh talked about in television or in the newspaper or magazines, and 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 uh then they're knocked out of favor.
And that makes sense.
It's not a 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 uh checking in.
Sorry you had to wait so long, but uh it's just the way it happens here, and uh and uh so now I have both Detroit, my uh hometown of Monroe, Michigan, right in that uh circle, uh growing up there, born and raised there, and then we had Philly where I spent great uh six great years.
So it was uh it was uh touching.
Let's see what else would I need.
I'd need uh a New York caller now.
Cover Can you see if you can find a New York caller on our great uh 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.
Uh what I'm calling about is, you know, I'm listening to uh 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 uh a sham than anything.
Why can't we get that straight talk?
You know, I don't know.
You know, i 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 uh 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 they make tremendous sense, and then they get into those positions and and it it falls apart.
Bill, I I just don't know.
I don't know.
Yeah, it it's just it's sad that uh the truth is such a gray matter, whereas you're explaining things very clearly from nineteenth century economic principles.
Well, but you know what though, but you see, uh Donald Luskin, Chief Investment Officer of the Trend Macro, an independent economics and investment research firm uh from National Review Online.
You can find him too at Trendsmacro.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 these all of these things don't happen in a vacuum.
Most of them are absolutely correct, i 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, uh i it it really it doesn't much matter.
Clearly, people are afraid to give us the truth, oftentimes.
There's no question, uh, you know, that 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 uh, you know, I'm I'm not going to mention the hotel, because uh 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 because 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 fifty 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 uh print, look for the fine print here.
Uh one-eight hundred-282-2882, 1-800-282-2882 in our hybrid of uh of an open forum uh and uh an open line Friday.
Should we do that again?
Do you want to hear the open line Friday thing?
No, we don't.
You only do it once, twice, maybe.
All right, and uh and Newt Gingrich will be here in the next hour to talk about uh well a variety of issues, but uh the climate change debate coming up with the Senator uh John Kerry this next week.
Should be uh fascinating, I think.
Um meanwhile, oh but meanwhile I should point out this because the guys gave this to me, and I aim to please this team, uh including, of course, uh H.R. uh.
Kid 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 and again experienced just how polluted it is there, uh and they've got a major problem, which means we will eventually have a major problem.
Anyway, uh they are going to start their own American Idol like program.
Uh it's it's it's called um Boys Happy Voice.
Obviously, this is the translation, and it doesn't American Idol doesn't translate very well, especially as I understand though I'm not not a watcher of uh American Idol per se, but I have people who watch it for us and then report on it on my uh morning program at WJR in Detroit.
And the fact is, uh the boys are very weak this time, I'm told.
This much I've learned uh about uh American Idol.
And uh they say that there will be no weirdness, no vulgarity, no lay low taste.
This 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 of American Idol.
It's a talent show to be broadcast beginning May first, and it's a sequel to the hugely popular TV contest, Supergirl's Voice, that in 2005 drew more than four hundred 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 uh Wednesday, I guess.
Uh 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 uh China Idol, I guess, uh, or in this case Boy's Happy Voice, is uh Simon Mao.
Uh Simon Mao is the lead judge and producer, and he says uh we are going to prohibit judges from mocking or humiliating contestants.
Uh also the hairstyles, clothes, fashion accessories, language and manners should be in line with the mainstream values.
Four hundred million people tuned in to their show in two thousand five.
All right, uh back to you.
Uh we had that China story.
We wanted to tie in with everything we've been talking about there.
Uh 1-800-282-2882.
And uh John in Maryland is on the line.
Uh is it uh Queenstown, Maryland, John?
Yes, uh Queenstown, Maryland, and um 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 uh count together here.
One other than me.
No, no, uh then zero.
Okay.
Well, uh my name is John.
Uh I come from England.
Uh I've been living in the United States now for ten years, so uh this is not a uh uh singles program.
Did you get the right is are you calling the Rush Limbaugh program?
Okay, what sign are you anyway since you got that far?
Sorry, say again.
What sign are you since you got I'm Cancerian?
Okay, all right, very good.
Okay, go ahead, John.
Okay.
Um yeah, I just wanted to take issue.
I'm 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 um the the problem with Marines and the sailors in Iran.
Yes, Anita, Anita was saying we should not be too tough on them.
I I well if that was the case, uh I'm I may have misunderstood.
I I was on my way back from Annapolis, believe it or not, which of course is the home of the Royal Navy uh the Royal Royal Navy, wait a minute.
What were you doing at Annapolis?
Uh the uh by the way, uh my uh sister-in-law, Carmina Tao, proud graduate of Annapolis.
What were you doing there?
I was just dropping my wife, she works there.
Um 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 um unfortunately the if you want to work, you've got to cross that Bay Bridge every day for a commute to uh Anarundal County, Baltimore, Washington, D.C. John, uh uh, why don't you uh gather your thoughts uh now that we've had the introduction uh and uh we're going to come back to you and let you uh ask your question and also uh uh if you have issue with uh Anita, I will defend Anita, as I would defend you when you leave.
Uh 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 uh John uh speak his mind here, because you only have a little over a minute, John.
Go ahead now.
Uh you had a concern about Anita, maybe you misunderstood.
What do you what do you say?
Yeah, first of all, never doubt the Marines, believe me.
Um these are men who in 1982 went eleven thousand miles to the Falkland Isles, they marched nonstop for 40 mile uh miles with a hundred pounds on their backs in order to keep uh get the Argentinians prize.
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.
Um all I do know is that we've got our people home, and we got them home in fourteen days.
The same happened to the Americans in 1979, if I believe rightly.
Um it took you over four hundred 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 what can I say?
I mean, uh uh 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 uh 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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