All Episodes
Previous Next
May 16, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:21
May 16, 2007, Wednesday, Hour #3
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
And greetings and welcome back, music lovers, thrill seekers, conversationalists all across the fruited plane.
The award-winning, thrill-packed, ever-exciting, increasingly popular Russia Limbaugh program back.
Fastest three hours in media.
My lookie here.
It's already Wednesday.
It's been a slow week for you, actually, because I wasn't here yesterday.
When I'm not here, I know the day drags for you.
But it's already Wednesday.
We're already two hours down in our three-hour excursion into broadcast excellence.
Telephone number if you want to be on the program today, 800-282-2882.
And the email address is rush at EIBnet.com.
Now, look, a lot of you people in an email, I've been checking, you're really raking Tony Snow over the calls, and some of you are even having the audacity to rake me over the calls for a, what you think was a softball interview.
I told you, didn't have enough time to debate, Tony.
And I'm not, folks, honestly, debating Tony on this is not the way to kill this.
The way to kill this is to mobilize power, power which I, for the first time, admitted having today in 19 years.
When this thing comes out of the Senate, because it is going to come out of the Senate.
They're going to get this done.
And it's illegal immigration business.
And it's, as we said, it's mind-boggling in many ways.
But look at, we're all sick and tired of being lectured to on this.
I know a lot of you are personally sick and tired of it.
You don't need to be lectured about it because you're living the problems created by illegal immigration every day.
And we're all being told to believe something that's not credible, that an incompetent government's going to all of a sudden become competent, that a massive number of new bureaucracies are going to perform efficiently, as existing bureaucracies are not.
No, give me this.
It could happen.
Oh, yeah, everything's a wing and a prayer here.
But it still boggles my mind that we're not inviting these people here and they're coming on their own and we're acting like we owe them something.
I'm talking about the illegals.
And we're going out of our way to not hurt their feelings and make sure they become citizens and so forth.
The whole focus on this has always been annoying at me as something that's just unreal.
We respond by acting like we've done something wrong to them.
And we've got to apologize.
We've got to make a man.
Oh, sorry, you came here illegally.
And because we have a law that says you're illegal, you've been stigmatized, we're sorry.
We're sorry that our stupid laws made you illegal.
So we're going to have new laws and you'll find a way to become legal now.
All this predicated on the assumption that we can't deport them because we couldn't round them up.
Well, now they're going to be asked to turn themselves in.
That's what?
I don't believe the tougher sanctions are ever going to be enforced.
I just don't see it.
And when I told Tony, I firmly believe it won't be long if this thing ever does become law.
You know, this business about they've got to pay the fine.
What is it, $5,000 or some such thing, a sliding scale?
You know how long it's going to be?
We can make a book on this.
How long is it going to be before Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and any number of other Democrats start crying and moaning about, wow, that's such a high price.
These are just people doing jobs American people won't do.
How could we think of being so cruel to charge them so much?
And these would be the authors of the legislation that will institute these quote-unquote fines.
And so we're going to pass the collection off, the fine collection off on their future employers.
Look, everybody understands here that if this passes, 20 years from now, we're going to be wringing our hands again.
Gee, what a bad law is we got to do something more, something else.
Just like Simpson Mazzoli 86, we gave amnesty to what was it, 3.5 million of them.
Now we're at 12 to 15.
Got to do something.
Simpson Mazzoli was going to fix it all.
Didn't.
And this won't.
The public understands that because we didn't take enforcement seriously.
Look at.
I hate to be brutally frank sometimes because it hurts people's feelings here, but we are being asked to believe that the same government that allowed three of the Fort Dicks six to remain here despite their expired visas will now somehow make sure that doesn't happen.
Three of the Fort Dick six, and these were people plotting a terrorist attack against our soldiers at Fort Dix.
Look, when bureaucracies start making promises, that's, look, we're all sensitized to this, and we've all been through it.
And there's a natural and intelligent skepticism that arises when all of this happens.
Now, I just, I wanted to say all this to you now because debating Tony on this was not going to accomplish anything other than make you think I'm a tough guy.
And no, I'm not going to take any of that gruff.
I don't care.
I'm not going to bow down to the White House.
That's what you would have ended up thinking.
Now, you're probably thinking, yeah, Limbaugh, White House, lackey.
This is not the place to do this.
The place to aim at this is the people who are doing the legislation.
And that's in the Senate.
And I will not forget Jeff Sessions, a good friend, Senator from Alabama.
We had to buy it last week.
Jeff Sessions out there saying, they're trying to ramrod this legislation through so fast that Rush Limbaugh won't be able to read it and tell the American people what's wrong with it.
And they were trying to do that on a procedural motion to limit debate on this.
It's 600 pages long.
And I think that whole policy or plan has since been confirmed.
I mentioned earlier that the Senate earlier today rejected the defunding of the Iraq war and to bring the troops home by March 31st of 2008.
And it wasn't even close.
It was 67 to 29.
The whole thing went down the tubes.
And of course, you can ask the question, well, I brought the will of the people.
The Democrats keep telling us the election last November confirmed the American people won out of Iraq.
This is the third vote here that's failed on its own without pork being added to it or some other gimmick to get people to vote for.
29 people voted for this.
Two of them were Senator Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
And of course, they voted for it because they don't run the risk of it passing.
So this gave them freedom to just go out and vote for it, placate their base, their presidential candidates.
If this bill ever had a chance of passing, I guarantee you, Mrs. Clinton wouldn't have voted for it.
Because the Democrats are not going to pull us out of Iraq.
Now, I want to use this as a segue into it.
There's a brilliant column in the Wall Street Journal today by Bernard Lewis.
And Bernard Lewis is probably the greatest living scholar and historian on Islam that there is.
And I want to read you that the whole piece is great.
I don't know if they've put it on their opinion journal site.
That's important because it's free.
If they've put it at opinionjournal.com, we could link to it.
Otherwise, it's on their pay site and we wouldn't be able to link to it.
I don't want to read the whole thing to you.
Just the last two paragraphs make the point.
Stage one of the jihad was to drive the infidels from the lands of Islam.
Stage two, to bring the war into the enemy camp.
And the attacks of 9-11 were clearly intended to be the opening salvo of this stage.
The response to 9-11, so completely out of accord with previous American practice, came as a shock.
And it's noteworthy that there has been no successful attack on American soil since then.
And what was shocking about our reaction was, and we had 25 years of these kinds of attacks, not 3,000 people dead, but we didn't do diddly squat.
We didn't do anything.
And bin Laden had commented on that.
And in fact, Bin Laden had talked about the blackout Black Hawk Down situation in Mogadishu, where we couldn't take casualties and ran out.
And he thought the American resolve in these kinds of endeavors had evaporated.
And so the response by the United States of the United States in 9-11 was shocking to the militant Islamists.
And as Mr. Lewis again reminds us, it's noteworthy that there has been no successful attack on American soil since then.
The U.S. actions in Afghanistan and in Iraq indicated there had been a major change in the U.S. and that some revision of their assessment, the Islamists' assessment, and of the policies based on that assessment was necessary.
However, more recent developments, and notably the public discourse inside the United States, are persuading increasing numbers of Islamist radicals that their first assessment was correct after all, that our reaction and response after 9-11 was unique, and it doesn't signal a change in America.
It was the result of a particular president.
And now the Islamists, according to Bernard Lewis, only need to press a little harder to achieve final victory.
It's not yet clear whether they're right or wrong in this view.
If they're right, the consequences, both for Islam and for America, will be deep and wide and lasting.
Now, again, Bernard Lewis is probably the greatest living historian and scholar on Islam.
And the point of this, the headline of his pieces, was Obama right.
Islamists always believe the U.S. was weak.
Recent political trends won't change their view.
This is a comment on the Democrats, their presidential, well, the whole party, just racing against time as the most important thing for the world is to get us out of Iraq.
We are the problem.
And as Zawahiri said, the number two guy to Bin Laden last week said that the Democrats attempting to pass all this legislation is proof that we've already lost, that the Democrat Party has nailed that down.
And whereas after 9-11, we caught him off guard.
Of course, the Democrats, just the opposite, think that our reaction to 9-11 made them hate us even more.
It was sophistry.
So it's an interesting piece.
We'll link to it if we can.
But he makes the point, and he knows these people.
He knows them, studied them, scholar.
He says they're reassessing the position thinking we can be had.
And based solely on the fact that they're listening to the Democrat Party.
He doesn't say that.
It calls it the debate in this country, but wink, wink.
We all know what that means.
Be right back.
Stay with us.
Documented to be almost always right 98.6% of the time, according to the latest audit from the Sullivan Group, the opinion auditing firm that I use.
I'm Rush Limbaugh, serving humanity simply by being here.
Have you heard about Governor Schwarzenegger's latest health care proposal?
Try this.
Schwarzenegger's plan would tap physicians.
This is from the Los Angeles Times a couple days ago.
It would tap physicians to help pay for universal health care.
I read this, and I am still not convinced this is for real.
I'm not convinced that this is satire.
Listen to this.
He wants to tax 2% of doctors' gross incomes to help pay for universal health care.
Now, there's a doctor in the story, and he points out, why not tax teachers if you want to improve education?
Why not tax politicians for being dumb?
How about taxing lawyers for favor the cost of irresponsible legislation?
I mean, where does this come from?
This does not compute.
Tax doctors 2% of their gross incomes.
If that ever actually happens, the rest of us are cooked.
Because look at the whole Democrat Party plan is to blame, is to create problem.
Just create as much belief in the notion that everything in life is a problem and it's an insurmountable problem.
It's a crisis and somebody's responsible for it.
And we're going to tax those people who are responsible.
I mean, this is just mind-boggling.
By the way, that Bernard Lewis story is at opinionjournal.com.
So that's the Wall Street Journal's free website.
We will be able to link to that.
Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, put aside $1 billion to run for president.
This is Ross Perot on steroids, folks.
And he wants Chuck Hagel as his running mate, or Hagel wants to be his running mate.
And don't laugh at this.
A billion dollars.
And he's got millions more than that, billions more than that.
This is going to be interesting.
This is a guy that trans fat ban, smoking ban, green up the city.
I mean, is the country really ready for somebody who absolutely believes in our freedom to abort babies, but not to smoke or eat trans fats in public?
We'll find out.
That's why I say it's so early, folks.
I've told Ben Tilly.
Rush, which candidate you're supposed to, I don't know.
Nobody yet.
It's too warely.
500 days to the first primary vote.
I mean, anything can happen, and this is just an example of it.
All right, here's Beth in Flint, Michigan.
Beth, thanks for waiting.
I really appreciate your patience.
Hi, Rush.
Shit up for Flint.
I can't believe I'm talking to you.
Yes, well, it's true, and it's a day worth celebrating and marking on your calendar so you never forget it.
Definitely.
And please, I am one of those people who never want you to take a day off.
It's never as much fun if you're not there.
I appreciate that.
But there is life to be lived.
Okay, I'm calling because of what you said earlier about the grocery prices in California going up.
I mean, it just makes sense.
It's obvious that if the price of gas is going up, then the price of delivering goods goes up.
So the price of goods has to go up.
And so the public gets hit at the pump and at the store and everywhere else.
Well, no, you're very wise.
You're very wise economically.
When transportation costs go up because of fuel costs, everything is going to go up proportionally.
Corn, a bushel of corn is what's rising because of ethanol production.
But the real reason for the story, and she's right, I mentioned this in the first hour of the program, an L.A. Times story, is new panic.
Food prices.
California rising faster than they ever have.
Oh, no.
Oh, no.
We're not going to be able to afford food.
We're all going to die.
I mean, that's what they want.
They want you in a constant state of panic and tumult and chaos.
And they want you to feel like a victim.
There are unseen, powerful forces trying to screw you and even kill you.
It's like this idiot from the Center for the Science Public Interest suing Burger King because they're killing customers by using trans fat.
That's right.
Burger King wants to kill its customers.
The sad thing is there are people in this country who buy into this.
Yeah, Burger King's trying to wipe us out.
Really?
That would make a whole lot of sense.
Our car dealers want you to die too and crashes.
Don't believe it's airbags.
I mean, where does it go?
Go ahead.
Okay.
But my point is that I'm a conservative in almost every single way you can imagine it.
But I do a little bit feel like a victim of these gas prices because I'm having a hard time believing that the price of gas has to be $349 a gallon when the Exxon by itself in 2006 made $39.5 billion in profit.
Now, you're just destroying every bit of credibility you established with your analysis of food prices.
See, they've got you.
You have been hooked, Beth.
Tell me what you think.
No, no, seriously.
There's no wrong answer.
Well, there are obviously wrong answers, but this is not trying to trick you.
Tell me what you think the top two factors, top three factors are in the price of a gallon of gasoline.
Or no, take it that a barrel of oil.
Give me the top three factors in the price of a barrel of oil.
I'm guessing the actual price and the taxes that they pay and the taxes that they're doing.
No, no, what is it that determines the price?
Determines the price.
You know, you're going to probably say don't tell me what I'm probably going to say.
That's wifey.
Tell me what you would say.
At the current place that we are right now, I think at least part of it is strictly greed because they can, because they know we have to have it.
You know, I'm sorry.
Beth, are you $9.5 billion in one year?
Why?
Beth, Beth, Beth.
Time out.
Are you really conservative or did you just say that to get past Mr. Snirdley?
Because he's easy when women call and he'll believe anything a woman tells him.
So you think it's fair that Exxon.
Okay, sorry.
It's not a matter of fairness.
Is it fair that restaurants charge $600 for meals?
Is it fair?
I mean, you don't have to go get a game.
Wait a minute.
You have become victimized.
You think that there is a giant man behind a curtain out to destroy you by arbitrarily setting the price of a barrel of oil and then what gas.
And it's clear to me, you don't have, and I'm not, I know I sound passionate here.
I'm not being critical.
I want you to learn.
I want you to understand how wrong you are about fairness and greed and all of this.
Everybody's greedy because everybody does what they do for money.
Even liberals.
They set up these nonprofits to make it look like they don't care.
But how are they surviving?
By the donations of suckers that they send their fundraising letters.
Everybody does it for the money.
And if you want to find the answer to most questions that you don't know, follow the money and you'll get an answer.
In this case, the people responsible for the price of a barrel of oil are not doing anything other than trying to make money from it.
But they're more than just the oil companies.
It's something so few people understand.
I will continue to explore this for what it's worth when we come back.
And why am I the most dangerous man in America?
Because, ladies and gentlemen, I am right.
Now, I don't know where to go.
I've done this so many times, I feel like I'm wasting time being redundant here on this, on the price of oil and the price of gasoline.
Where was that woman from, Mr. Snurdy, last caller?
Where was she calling from?
She was like, it was Michigan.
Flint, Michigan.
Yeah.
Well, she ought to go to Wisconsin.
They try to cut gas prices in Wisconsin, and the state told this little gas station, oh, you can't cut gas now.
You've got to sell for a minimum 9.2% over your wholesale price.
If you want to find out who's really greedy and who's really going to town on fuel prices, try your local, state, and federal governments.
They make pure profit on every gallon sold because they don't have to find the oil.
They don't have to transport it.
They don't have to refine it.
They don't have to do anything except stick their hand in their pockets and in your pockets and big oils pockets and so forth.
But there's so many factors in this.
One of them is it's a world market and there is worldwide demand for this and it's only going to increase as the Chinese continue to uptick technologically more and more cars are being purchased and driven.
I mean, the solution to all this, let the liberals drive their little windmill cars and so forth and hybrids and so forth.
The problem is they try to force everybody into cars they don't want, the silly cars that they want.
Then you've got the futures market.
The guys on Wall Street.
And they're bidding up and bidding down the price of a barrel of oil and there are many different types of crude and those things happen every day.
And people have no idea of the effect on raw crude prices based on just the futures market.
It is, after all, a commodity, and it is bet on like any other commodity is.
But the idea that I find it fascinating, that there are people who actually believe that there's somebody or a committee or a group of people behind a curtain somewhere to say, oh, time to ratchet up the price.
And it just happens.
And nope, we went too far.
Time to ratchet the price down.
It's sadly to me, it's understandable why people believe this.
Everybody wants to be a victim.
Everybody wants to think.
They're trying to make Walmart into the next big oil.
Just look at their enemies list, folks.
Look at the Democrat Party's enemies list, and you'll find out exactly who they are.
And they're not pro-capitalist in any stretch of the imagination.
Now, look at this.
All through the global warming debate, species are dying.
We're cutting down forests.
We're denying native species their right to exist, all because of our selfishness and our greed and so forth and so on.
A new chirp in the forest.
They've found a new hummingbird in Colombia.
The gorgeted puffleg is the name of the new hummingbird, rare hummingbird.
We never knew it existed.
We're discovering new species all the time in Colombia.
Boasts a plumage of violet blue and iridescent green on its throat.
It's been discovered living in the cloud forests of southwestern Colombia.
The species was confirmed by two of the world's leading specialists on the puffleg, Carl Schuchman, curator of ornithology at the Zoological Research Museum in Germany, and F. Gary Stiles from down at the Institute Natural History at the University of Columbia down in Colombia.
Now, the bird, obviously, bird's been doing fine.
They just found the bird.
We didn't even know it was there.
And what do you think?
The first thing that we're being told to do is, ornithologists are urging the government to protect the bird's tiny territory from the environmentally ruinous drugs industry, which relies on slashing and burning large tracts of land to grow illegal crops such as coca, the raw material in cocaine.
Well, this little bird's been just fine, been doing just fine without any help from us, despite being surrounded by leftist thugs growing coca.
Now they want to save the bird by making more laws.
Just leave it alone.
The bird's doing fine.
It's surviving.
We didn't even know it existed.
Now all of a sudden, we have to save it, even though it's able to save itself.
More wacko animal news, Irish science.
I'm not making this up, the French news agency.
By the way, did you see that new president of France already inaugurated?
One week after the election, he's inaugurated.
Man, anyway, Irish scientists monitoring dolphins living in a river estuary in the southwestern part of Ireland believe they may have developed a unique dialect to communicate with each other.
The Shannon Dolphin and Wildlife Foundation has been studying a group of up to 120 bottlenose dolphins in the River Shannon using vocalizations collected on a computer in a cow shed near County Clare.
Cut to the chase here.
These scientists believe that Irish dolphins have their own Irish accents.
No, it's a brogue.
It's a brogue.
You're confusing that with Mrs. Clinton's southern dialect.
That's not an Irish or she's got one.
She hasn't brought it out yet.
But they look at the headline, Irish dolphins could have their own brogue.
They don't talk.
How in the world can they have an accent?
They don't talk.
And yet, this will be all over the school.
Mommy, mommy, mommy, did you know that the dolphins are speaking an Irish brogue?
Where did you hear that, little Jenny? Algoy teacher told me in school.
And everybody starts.
Sometimes, folks, this is not a bunch of wisest scientists saying this.
Anyway, we got John Edwards news.
Time for our update.
We have numerous Edwards updates, but this one fits the update to a T. That's our buddy Paul Shanklin and John Edwards and I am woman.
And there's a reason for this.
Kate Michelman, former president of the NAGS.
No, wait, she was not former president of NAGS.
She was, yeah, NAROL.
She's now the president emeritus of NAROL, Pro-Choice America.
Kate Michelman said some weeks ago, John Edwards, he's the guy of all the candidates, including Mrs. Bill Clinton, he's the guy that understands women's issues more than any other Democrat out there.
And so as a result, he's now, and we've got this from his website, Edwards launches Women for Edwards, receives support from women leaders from across the country, announces agenda to address issues facing women.
And Michaelman's quoted in this thing, I believe in John's deep and profound commitment to the issues that matter most in women's lives, from health care to Iraq to poverty to our environment.
I know that John, look, there's a woman sitting on the other side of the glass.
Hello, Jody.
Just nod here.
You are a woman.
Kate Michelman just said that John Edwards is more in tune with the issues that matter to you and your sisters than anybody else.
Poverty.
Is that something as a woman that guides, not that you're in poverty, but are you running around all day wringing your hands over poverty and wondering which president's going to fix it?
Iraq, from the standpoint, we've got to get out of there and we've got to lose.
Let's see.
The environment.
Are you, as a woman, these are now being told, we're being told these are women's issues, the environment.
Are you, as we're up there burning all those thousands of gallons of jet fuel every hour, are you concerned about?
No, she's not concerned.
And of course, so here we have all this, we're being told now that Edwards is the smoker.
He's got it down pet when it comes to women's issues.
Now, I know it's on his website, but there are going to be stories on this.
This is how these things all start.
You get facts or you get a PR statement like this.
It goes to the drive-by media and they report it as news.
At any rate, a couple things here about Edwards.
Let's play Mike Huckabee last night from the debate.
Wendell Gohler said the alternative minimum tax caught 4 million people.
All I want to get here, this is 37 seconds.
All I really want is the last couple lines, and you've heard this.
So put up, I don't have time to edit it now.
Just put up with the first 30 seconds to get to the last seven.
If we had a fair tax, it would eliminate not just the alternative minimum tax, personal income tax, corporate tax.
It would eliminate all the various taxes that are hidden in our system, and Americans don't realize what they're paying.
It wouldn't be a revenue increase or a revenue decrease, revenue neutral.
But it also enables people at the lowest end of the economic spectrum to have a chance to reach the next rung on the ladder.
Come on, come on.
It's the best proposal that we ought to have because it's flatter, it's fair, it's finite, it's family-friendly.
Listen, listen.
And instead, what we've done is what Senator McCain has suggested: we've had a Congress that spent money like John Edwards at a beauty shop.
All right, so there was applause, people laughed, and the drive-bys are not happy.
This is a cheap shot.
That is the politics of personal destruction.
That is a personal assault.
Never mind the stuff they say about Bush, Republicans, me, whoever else.
So, this afternoon on PMS NBC, the anchorette Infobabe, Contessa Brewer, is interviewing Chris Matthews about the debate last night.
And she said, Let's talk about Mike Huckabee.
He sort of had the humorous line of the night.
That was a said piece, though.
He brought that in with him.
These guys write this stuff down ahead of time with their staff people.
They bring it aboard and they waste our time with the said pieces.
I'm far more impressed by the candidates who can respond intelligently and spontaneously to the actual debate than the people who bring in.
To me, it's like bringing in notebooks with information on it.
They're going to bring these said pieces in with them.
It's embarrassing to everybody when they do these jokes.
So, what you're saying is they go into this, they prepare, and they're going to figure out a way to use this line somewhere in the world.
It's Hokey Pinoke, it's Mickey Mouse.
Do you think?
Okay, so what a stupid thing.
What did it have to do?
John Edwards paid the price for his haircut weeks ago.
To bring that up in front of that audience was pandering.
Let's face it.
Oh, come on.
I can't believe this.
He's actually upset because the line was good.
He's upset because it was funny.
Who cares whether it was canned?
The Democrats?
Hey, you media people, when do you not read something on the teleprompter for crying out loud?
Of course, they prepared the Clinton question for the Republicans.
Here's another thing: I'll never forget the debate that Clinton had with Bob Dole.
And Dole started talking about Clinton's morality and so forth.
And Clinton comes out, well, I want to say no attack ever fed a hungry child.
And I was like, oh, no, I grabbed my heart.
You tell me that line wasn't scripted and Clinton wasn't just waiting.
But no, to these guys, Clinton was so brilliant.
Why, everything was improv.
He didn't have to plan anything.
He's so smart.
Same thing with Mrs. Bill Clinton.
Just other illustration of double standard, the two worlds we live in.
Quick timeout.
Be right back.
And I had a comment from Chris Matthews about it's just pandering to go into a debate with staged set-up lines.
It's stupid.
It's truly stupid.
We all remember the Lloyd Benson line at Dan Quayle.
I knew JFK.
JFK was a friend of mine, Senator Yor, no JFK.
And Reagan had a bunch of them.
I paid for this microphone to Jimmy.
There you go again.
Chris Matthews worked for Jimmy Carter.
You don't think that Chris Matthews did everything he could to get Jimmy Carter to say something funny or intelligence, intelligent now and then?
He's left to his own devices.
Carter couldn't pull any of that off.
I just, it's as though Chris Matthews cannot even expect to have credibility with conservatives or Republicans watching MSNBC with a comment like that.
No such analysis would be offered a Democrat in a debate forum.
The guy had been waiting here for over an hour and a half.
I understand what that's like.
Josh Logan, Utah, thank you for waiting, sir, and welcome to the program.
Thank you, Rush.
Maggie to conservative dittos from beautiful northern Utah.
Thank you, sir.
Hey, I just have a quick comment.
I had a little more respect for you today when back when you were talking about your power in you didn't want to mention any candidate because you know it would just mean an absolute surge for them in the polls.
And, you know, well, no, that's not quite what I said.
I didn't choose a candidate because I haven't decided on one yet.
Exactly.
But what I'm saying is you recognized your power that, you know, if you were to say anything positive or negative, it has a lot of sway.
And I just wanted to compliment you on that.
I came across a quote a couple of years ago, and it just hits you to a T.
It says, the highest proof of virtue is to possess boundless power and not abuse it.
I think that's fitting in this circuit.
That's brilliant that you remembered that.
I think it's perfectly fitting here.
Well, this was a big event today, folks.
Everybody has told me of the kind of power I have to move things to be used for good and evil in this country.
You recognize when you need to use it and when you need to use restraint.
And nobody gives you credit for the restraint, which is a huge amount of character.
The powerful don't look for credit.
Exactly.
And you never do anything observing.
I know.
That's why I call in.
You would never draw attention to it to yourself.
Well, you know, I answer mail.
Don't misunderstand that.
People, no, I answer email all the time.
I was just trying to point out, it's people are always telling me that I have all this power, and I've always poo-pooed it.
I thought that's insulting to the audience.
False humility is not attractive.
It's not inspiring, and it can turn people off.
And it was a major thing for me to admit.
And it came in a call from a Ron Paul supporter who was asking me to use my power in order to get his candidate some motion and movement in the campaign.
So, yes, there's no question.
I have single-handedly the ability to move things in this regard, but I don't, I'm not conscious of it each and every day.
It's not why I have this position, do this show, or have this job.
But it would be silly to deny my power, so I don't anymore.
Well, Nancy Pelosi, we'll have to talk about this tomorrow.
Nancy Pelosi has just instituted a new rule, hadn't been used since 1822, hadn't been changed since 1822, to effectively shut the Republicans up on the House floor because they're being too successful procedurally.
So she's, in effect, already instituted a fairness doctrine for House Republicans.
I'll have the details for you tomorrow, and you'll probably hear about it before then, but you won't hear my take, and that's what counts.
See you then.
▲
Export Selection