Rush Limbaugh Program - May 30, 2007, Wednesday, Hour #1

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May 30, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program

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May 30, 2007, Wednesday, Hour #1

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	Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
	And greetings to you, music lovers, thrill seekers, conversationalists all across the fruited plane.
	It's time once again here to hit the boards on the Rush Limbaugh program from the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
	Looking forward to talking to you.
	Here we are already at the middle of the week.
	The fastest week in media, the fastest three hours.
	It goes by lickety split, just like that.
	Telephone number 800-282-2882 and the email address is rush at EIBnet.com.
	Well, lots going on here today.
	Just to give you a little rundown of some of the things we're going to be discussing.
	Many people think that President Bush yesterday and his remarks about conservative critics of his immigration bill were actually aimed at me.
	Many of the people who think they actually aimed at you, but maybe me too.
	But the drive-by media is rejoicing today that they are aimed at me.
	Brian Bramalone, who has a blog called the Radio Equalizer, has got a little piece he just posted called Bush versus Rush.
	And this is all about how the media is excited.
	Now, the media is excited because the President of the United States has taken me on.
	And there's a McClatchy story that's running in all the McClatchy newspapers and quite a few others around the country today as well.
	And the media is just having a field day with the New York Times.
	I mean, some of the reporting on President Bush today is some of the most laudatory and some of the friendliest that he has had in a while.
	It leads me to believe that drive-bys hate me more than they hate President Bush.
	And it seems that I may have been able to have done a service here in some regard, because if I can single-handedly turn around press coverage for President Bush, who knows how valuable that is to the people at the White House.
	Some are speculating that President Bush might become the new McCain because he's essentially attacked me, i.e. his own base.
	And this is what you have to do to get the drive-bys to love you.
	This is what McCain did, constantly attacking Bush and his own party in order to get fawning press coverage.
	Of course, that's dried up now that McCain is seeking the Republican presidential nomination.
	Speaking of McCain, he was in Carlsbad, California yesterday, and he urged Congress to adopt a sweeping overhaul of his immigration bill, criticized his leading rivals, Romney, Giuliani, and a reporter said, what about their opposition to the Senate compromise brokered earlier this month?
	And McCain said, look, anyone, anybody says we shouldn't pass this, I would ask for their proposal.
	What's your idea?
	I got the answer.
	Stick with existing law.
	We don't need to pile more laws on top of more laws.
	What's the solution?
	Enforce what's on the books now.
	It makes...
	And of course, that answer would be greeted with a show of frustration.
	Throw their hands in the air, be totally frustrated.
	Oh, yeah, easy for you to say.
	Sort of like telling homeless people to go out and try working, get a job.
	At any rate, we have a full stack on illegal immigration and the process of this bill winding its way through the Senate.
	I want to call your attention.
	We've linked to this at my website, www.rushlimbaugh.com.
	A man by John Burlow has written an open letter to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee in Oslo.
	Let me tell you who he is.
	He is director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, author of the book, EcoFreaks.
	Environmentalism is hazardous to your health.
	And it's a long letter.
	I printed this out.
	It's seven pages.
	I can't begin to read the whole thing to you.
	But he makes the case in this open letter to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, and actually the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, that I am far more qualified for this year's Nobel Peace Prize.
	And I have been nominated.
	For those of you just tuning in for the first time, I am a Nobel Peace Prize nominee for this year's prize.
	It's handed out in October and November.
	Al Gore is the odds-on favorite right now, but the purpose of Mr. Burlau's letter is to suggest to the Nobel Committee that I am far more worthy of this august award than Al Gore could even hope to be.
	And he cites as one of his primary examples my ongoing crusade for the last 10 to 12 years to discredit Rachel Carson and to get DDT back in production.
	The banning of DDT has led to increased cases of malaria in Africa.
	And Gore has not spoken up about this.
	It's a great, great letter, and it's at rushlimbaugh.com right now.
	If you would like, just go and check it out when you have time, because it's much too long here for me to read to you in its entirety.
	Tonight, the school bus Nagan, Ray Nagan, the mayor of New Orleans, is going to give a state of the city speech.
	And on the eve of this, Louisiana, the state of Louisiana, says they want thousands of state and local government workers to send back $10 million in unemployment pay that they received while still collecting regular pay after Hurricane Katrina.
	State audit found lax control by this, no kidding, lax control by a state agency.
	In this case, it was the State Department of Labor.
	State audit lax control was the main reason that 5,439 ineligible workers were able to collect up to $258 a week.
	And with this, of course, they went to Vegas, so they played the lottery, they did any number of things.
	Administrative workers with the city of New Orleans got the most money with 2,200 of them wrongfully collecting $4.3 million.
	Yeah, $4.3 million.
	There were about 1,600 state workers, many with the State Department of Health and Hospitals, who got $2.7 million.
	And so now they want the money back.
	Fat chance.
	I remember when this all happened, that some said that they were entitled to the money in the first place.
	And in today's installment of It's a Crisis, It's Chaos, It's Tumult, and We're All Going to Die Out There.
	This is from the UK Daily Mail.
	Booming sales of laptops have led to a surge in the number of computer users with back and muscle problems.
	Experts have warned.
	It's those backpacks out there that the kids carry these little laptops around in.
	They're destroying their spines, ladies and gentlemen.
	They're going to end up being crooked out there.
	They're going to stoop shouldered.
	They're not going to grow up and have good posture.
	They may be wounded and damaged for life, ladies and gentlemen, because of laptops.
	Girls as young as 12 are being diagnosed with nerve damage caused by slouching over the screens and carrying them around out there.
	Millions of others are at risk of irretrievable damage to their spines, their necks, and their shoulders because of poor posture when using laptops and when carrying them around.
	So, you know, we've had the evil backpack and we've had cell phones and all these things are going to wipe us out.
	Now it is after you take the laptop out of the bag, the backpack, you are going to die.
	Degeneration in the joints is occurring.
	It never ends.
	You can make book.
	This kind of stuff is going to show up every now and then.
	It just the nanny state fed by the drive-by media.
	Now, the Politico, this is the bunch that said Elizabeth Edwards' press conference because of cancer would lead to her husband John Edwards dropping out of the presidential race.
	And then he went to the press conference and no, I'm not dropping out, and she's not dropping out either.
	We're going to campaign together.
	Politico corrected the mistake.
	They now have Fred Thompson planning to enter the presidential race over the 4th of July holiday, announcing that week that he has already raised several million dollars and is being backed by insiders from the past three Republican administrations.
	Thompson advisors told the Politico, a testing the waters committees to be formed June 4th so that Thompson can start raising money and staffers will go on a payroll in early June.
	Even going to have that red pickup truck that he used to run for the Senate in Tennessee on display in Iowa, but not so fast, ladies and gentlemen.
	Our buddy Jim Garrity at National Review Online in his blog called The Hillary Spot says that he just talked to a Thompson source this morning that he calls Thompson Associate 3.
	And the first word was that there will not be a presidential announcement from Fred Thompson on July 4th.
	There was some discussion of a June 4th beginning of fundraising.
	That's the date checks will be collected.
	I suppose that's where there was some confusion.
	The forthcoming announcement will be that Thompson is testing the waters.
	So we're a little conflicted here.
	Politico says he's running and going to announce on July 4th, but some of his own associates are telling National Review Online and Jim Garrity that that is not the case.
	Brief time out.
	We'll come back, get started with, I got some audio soundbites here.
	Al Gore talking about the fairness doctrine as well as the evil United States when it comes to global warming.
	Democrats duplicating the feat executed by Walter F. Mondahl when he ran for president in 1984.
	The Democrats, one after another, are promising to raise your taxes.
	Ladies and gentlemen, back with watch more after this.
	Hell had another one of those famous big-time dinner parties last night, ladies and gentlemen.
	Another august guest list.
	This time it was a retired high-tech mogul who is not going to mention any names here because it's not the point.
	Walked in there.
	I don't think the retired high-tech mogul had been informed that I was going to be there.
	He looked a little stunned when I walked in and started saying, ah, the last place I ever thought I would be is having dinner with Rush Limbaugh.
	Then he started talking about how rotten Bush is.
	And I was my usual charming self.
	And I refused to take the bait out there.
	I said, look, I got my own disagreements with President Bush.
	They're probably far different than yours are.
	His were based totally on a rock.
	Mine based on this immigration business, some of the spending.
	Then he started saying, well, look, it's going to be a contest between who's the worst president in American history, your guy or Nixon.
	Said, you know, by the time you and I are both gone, both those guys' historical legacy is going to be far better and far greater than what you think.
	It ended well, folks.
	No fireworks started.
	There were attempts by the host once again to start the fireworks, but I refused to do so.
	The woman that I was seated next to is a contestant.
	I didn't even.
	Have you heard of this show Hottest Mom in America?
	Oh, yeah.
	Oh, that's right.
	That's right.
	Well, anyway, I sat next to the contestant on the show.
	Apparently, it's already done.
	Everybody's trying to get her to divulge whether she wanted or not.
	And she, of course, wouldn't.
	It's like when you go on Survivor, you've got to sign all kinds of confidentiality agreements.
	But anyways, it was a great day.
	It was a late night out there, ladies and gentlemen.
	Sound a little stuffed up to myself.
	It's not like I got a little bit of a head code, even though I don't.
	So I asked the staff member moments ago, did I sound like I'm stuffed up or is it just the baseline running through my cochlear implant?
	And they said, Oh, no, no, you're sound fine.
	The baseline running through your cochlear implant.
	So that is good to know.
	Democrat presidential candidates want to raise your taxes.
	Most of them aren't exactly advertising the fact when they talk about their plans for health care or the environment or education.
	But for a party, this is ABC.com, for a party that has long feared political fallout when talking about taxes.
	The Democrats' 2008 crop of presidential contenders is showing remarkable frankness in talking about the need for additional revenue to fund their priorities.
	We don't need any additional revenue.
	Revenue is poor.
	Remarkable frankness.
	Isn't it love?
	The drive-bys just love it when you start talking about raising taxes.
	It doesn't matter the circumstances, and it certainly doesn't matter what the result will be.
	Yes, we're going to raise taxes.
	Remarkable frankness.
	How can they be speaking with remarkable frankness if they aren't exactly advertising the fact that they're talking about raising taxes?
	Those two phrases appear in one paragraph.
	Senator Barack Obama became the latest candidate to call for higher taxes Tuesday when he unveiled his health plan, his universal health coverage.
	Look, I can do this much simpler.
	I can do this much more cogently, much, much quicker than reading a drive-by media story to you.
	And when I go through it this way, you might think that it is an absurdity, but it is not.
	This is real.
	It's straight from the playbook.
	This is real liberal thought.
	Osama, sorry, Obama has a plan for universal health care, and the plan is to roll back tax cuts for the rich.
	That's it.
	The New York Times has a plan to fix the alternative minimum tax mess, and that's roll back the tax cuts for the rich.
	Mrs. Clinton has a plan to fix income inequality, and that is to roll back tax cuts for the rich.
	Before long, I'm certain one of the liberals will come up with a plan to make us energy independent, and the plan to make us energy independent will be to roll back the tax cuts for the rich.
	I mean, it's just, and they go down the tubes each and every time they talk about this.
	And Clinton, in fact, you go back to 1992 during the campaign, promising everybody a middle-class tax cut.
	And then within a week or two after he was inaugurated, he has this press conference or this address from the Oval Orifice.
	And he said, I've worked harder than I have worked on anything in my life.
	I have never, ever worked harder on anything.
	I just can't come up.
	I can't come up away, give you a middle-class tax.
	In fact, I'm going to raise everybody's taxes.
	I'm going to make them retroactive.
	He did this after he was in the Oval Office.
	Mondahl tried it in his acceptance speech at Democrat National Convention in San Francisco.
	He said, President Reagan is going to do exactly what I'm going to do.
	The difference is he won't tell you, and I will.
	I'm going to raise your taxes.
	So long, he lost in a 49-state landslide.
	Let's start on the phones of Washington, D.C. Bob.
	I wonder what subject people are going to bring up today.
	Bob, how are you, sir?
	I'm doing all right.
	Good.
	I got several topics I'd like to talk about, but of course, Fred Thompson's right on the docket right now.
	And of course, as a lot of people know, he backed McCain Feingold, pushed it through the Senate, and so we're stuck with the campaign finance to form.
	But he was also in charge in the Senate of investigating Red China owning the Clintons.
	And I didn't see any results from that.
	Whereas in the House with Chris Cox, I saw the Cox report, which resulted in Clinton either bombing Iraq.
	Wait, Cut to the chase.
	What are you saying here?
	I'm saying that I don't like Fred Thompson.
	He's not what he claims a lot of people perceive from being on TV.
	No, that's not that's that's that's not what interests me about this whole Thompson thing.
	Well, if you're interested in the taxes, you were just talking about the taxes.
	And, you know, there's the flat tax, but even more importantly, the national sales tax is pushed through by Tom Tancredo, as well as closing the borders and flattening.
	Wait a second.
	Wait, wait, wait, wait a second.
	Who are you supporting?
	Who is your choice in the Republican field?
	Well, as a Libertarian, I've never voted Republican, but I would vote for Tom Tancredo.
	He's got.
	All right.
	HR, we got a spam campaign going on out there.
	The Politico runs the Thompson thing today.
	And so all of the Tancredo and Ron Paul people are going to be out on a warpath today.
	Keep a sharp eye on it.
	Well, the fascinating thing about the Fred Thompson candidate, whether it happens or not, is that so many people are waiting in bated breath for it, which is an indication.
	And I think the same thing exists on the Democrat side.
	There's a lot of Democrats out there just panning away, hoping that Al Gore gets in.
	You realize that right now, 70%, 65% of Democrats in polls are not excited about Mrs. Clinton.
	She's, what, 35%, something like that, in these preference polls.
	So the Democrats are not happy with their field.
	The Republicans, I mean, if Fred Thompson, you know, tickling everybody with what he might do can cause a lot of people to get all excited, it tells me that there's not a clear frontrunner yet.
	Well, we know that it's worse than that.
	There's just not a whole lot of excitement about any one of the frontrunners, I think, in either party, which is why I have restrained myself in throwing my hat in the ring, because you know, I have the power to pick the Republican nominee.
	They all know it.
	Everybody knows it as the elephant in the room.
	I finally admitted to this power mere weeks ago.
	And it's just not time, folks.
	It certainly isn't time to do so.
	This is Case in Stafford, Virginia.
	Great to have you on the program, Case.
	Yes, sir.
	Thank you for having me again.
	I think you're a few months ago.
	Hey, I'm kind of with President Bush on this immigration thing.
	I think we are enforcing the laws on the books right now.
	I think ICEPA returns, what, a million folks a year, something like that.
	The analogy I like to use is like creating a 10-lane highway and pushing speed limits on it, 15 miles an hour.
	You don't have to have enough cops out there to give speed to get to everybody.
	And I think that's what ISIS is facing.
	For whatever reason, there's a need for these guys to come across the board and work.
	And so we have 12 million folks.
	It doesn't mean that we didn't return a million folks each year.
	Yeah, you know, all I know is that Kant never did anything.
	And you're right.
	If we can't debort 12 million people, by the way, nobody is suggesting that.
	Got to take a brief time out.
	We'll be back in a moment.
	By the way, a little program note, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Snerdley, our regular call screener, is out today.
	Had to get the car washed again.
	And so my trusty and loyal chief of staff, H.R., is doing the screening today.
	And I just want to warn you, he's much less patient with people than is Mr. Snerdley.
	And Mr. Snerdley doesn't exhibit a whole lot of patience.
	So any complaints, if you get past HR, you have any complaints, tell me about them and we'll deal with them accordingly, if I believe that you are being honest.
	I note that the ratings for the CBS Evening News have now plummeted to an all-time low.
	The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, now at an all-time low, 5,960,000 viewers for the week of May 21st.
	And I think because I'm a nice guy and I would like to help out here, I will renew my offer to sit for a live interview with Ms. Couric on the CBS Evening News to jumpstart the ratings.
	I am ratings.
	They will happen.
	It has been established and proven countless times.
	Now, the last time I made this offer, Bob Anderson, who's a producer at 60 Minutes, they've been trying to get me to sit for a segment there for a year.
	They're very pleased.
	And the nice guy did, he produced the first 60 Minutes profile of me many, many, many moons ago.
	Bob called, well, hey, I just heard your offer.
	We'll have Katie do the piece for you on 60 Minutes, and we'll run highlights on the evening news.
	I said, nice, try, Bob, but that isn't how it's going to work.
	This is a one-time offer.
	Now I'm reviving it since the numbers continue to plummet.
	I'm not worried that she'll accept this.
	It won't happen, which is why I'm extending the invitation.
	But it has to be live.
	No tape, no editing, no nothing.
	And not even the whole show.
	I don't care how long it is.
	I just, something has to jumpstart the numbers of the CBS Evening News.
	It's a crying shame what's happened over there.
	And I'm here to help.
	I just wanted to once again extend the offer.
	Let's go to the audio soundbites.
	Speaking of CBS, on the early show today, Harry Smith was talking to former Vice President Al Gore.
	Gore says, the element of television that I think has been troubling for democracy, now that it's become the most dominant medium by far, even with the rising importance of the internet, is that it's one way.
	Harry Smith said, well, radio is one way.
	If you look back, some of the greatest presidents of our democracy or the republic happened during the age of radio.
	That was one way.
	Simulates two-way communication by having call-ins.
	But you're quite right that radio preceded television as the first broadcast medium.
	Right.
	And the first concerns among defenders of democracy arose with radio.
	And that's why the equal time provision and the fairness doctrine and the public interest standard were put in place here.
	Those protections were almost completely removed during President Reagan's term.
	Yeah, well, I think it's time.
	I've had this in the stack for a while here, and it's time to get to this.
	Gore, makes this false claim that radio is two-way now, simulates two-way communication by having call-ins.
	But you're quite right, radio preceded television.
	And then the first concerns among defenders of democracy arose with radio.
	And that's why the equal time provisions and the fairness doctrine and all that were put in.
	Robert Trusensky, Real Clear Politics, is back on May 23rd, had a piece called Al Gore's Insolent Assault on Reason.
	It's about his book, which, by the way, has been outsold the first week by Ronald Reagan's diaries.
	Reagan's diaries, the latest book scan, outsold Al Gore's book by five copies, which means that the Al Gore people will no doubt be demanding a recount on this.
	Early coverage of Al Gore's new book, The Assault on Reason, has focused on the fact that the book is largely an assault on the Bush administration.
	But they have glossed over the most significant and alarming theme that Al Gore has taken up.
	His alleged defense of reason includes a justification for government controls over political speech.
	Now, judging from the excerpts of Gore's book published in Time, his not-so-subtle theme is that reason is being assaulted by a free and unfettered debate in the media, particularly by the fact that Gore has to contend with opposition from the right-leaning media.
	Now, this piece goes on and on and on.
	I'll tell you, it makes the point that I've tried to make over and over and over again here about liberals.
	To them, there is no debate.
	There is no alternative point of view.
	Anybody who expresses one is simply a gnat that has to a fly.
	It has to be swatted away, not engaged.
	You don't debate your opposition because there isn't any.
	They are just a bunch of kooks.
	And they, the opposition, me, we are the ones getting in the way of reason.
	Developing a dangerous theme that the left has been toying with for years, Gore says that reason is being suffocated by media Machiavellis.
	A veiled reference to Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch, Karl Rove, and people like me.
	According to Al Gore, these puppet masters take advantage of the clever use of electronic mass media to manipulate the outcome of elections.
	It's sort of like Newsweek magazine back in 1994 did a cover story with me, of course, on the cover, or Time did, whatever, I forget which one.
	Is there too much democracy in America?
	Can there be too much democracy?
	Meaning, all of a sudden the libs had lost their monopoly, and here come these alternative points of view.
	Wow, that's not what we're thinking.
	Oh, that's just getting in the way here.
	Too much democracy.
	But here's the really ominous part.
	This manipulation of the outcome of elections is rendering our representative government illegitimate because it only has the public's consent.
	He repeatedly puts consent in square coats quotes just to emphasize the point that this consent is not, in Al Gore's superior judgment, genuine or legitimate.
	As he puts it, the consent of the governed has become a commodity to be purchased by the highest bidder.
	He simply doesn't like the arena of ideas.
	He doesn't like people in the arena of ideas competing and trying to win the day on ideas.
	His ideas are what should dominate, and anything that threatens them must be swatted down with government control.
	And that's why he is for the fairness doctrine.
	His new argument doesn't do anything to reverse this impression.
	His basic theme seems to be this.
	If the left isn't winning in the marketplace of ideas, there can't possibly be anything wrong with their ideas.
	It must be the marketplace itself that's broken, and the left needs to use the power of government to fix it in both senses of the word fix.
	Now, this is by no means a new theme on the left.
	Noam Chomsky has been peddling this stuff for years.
	We only think that we're free to write and to speak and to make our minds up for ourselves, the left tells us.
	But behind the scenes, we're being manipulated by big corporate media.
	So the votes we cast and the consent we give to those who govern us is artificially manufactured.
	We need to be liberated by having the left take control of the media and manage it in our best interests.
	So that's the way to translate this soundbite from Al Gore.
	And what's really bugging him here is that there is an alternative point of view that's gaining traction, and it's persuading a lot of people that his global warming hoax, which is his latest religion, is having trouble getting traction with the majority of the American people.
	And so his idea is not to go out there and continue trying to persuade people he's right, is to shut down the people who are standing in the way of reason.
	He, of course, is reason.
	Nobody else is.
	And this, by the way, he's not alone.
	This is pretty much the attitude of most liberal Democrats today, be they elected or not.
	This is Dave and Linwood.
	What is that?
	Michigan?
	Is that right?
	Welcome, Dave.
	Nice to have you on the EIB network.
	Rush, it's an honor.
	Thank you, sir.
	Rush, if Al Gore wants to cite Ronald Reagan to sell the case for the fairness doctrine, I think we ought to bring our former president on posthumously, and I think he could clean his clock.
	Oh, there's no question.
	If you just, you know, Rand Reagan is a corpse, you mean?
	Well, you know, let's have powerful media types start it out.
	You know, let's run some spots with Reagan citing government as being the problem.
	And, you know, whatever.
	You know, this leads.
	At first, I was saying, what is this?
	We're not going to run corpses here.
	But you have raised an interesting point.
	And the point is the antidote to all of these Democrat candidates is Reaganism, which is conservatism.
	All these guys, Obama and Hillary and whoever else, going to raise taxes, want to grow the government.
	Not to mention what they're trying to do with his immigration bill.
	They want to increase the redistribution of wealth.
	They want people to be poorer.
	They want to take wealth and opportunity for income away from people.
	And the antidote to this is exactly the kind of things Reagan said.
	It's mystifying to me that so many Republicans today remain unwilling or maybe even embarrassed.
	Well, it's not totally mystifying why they're embarrassed to evoke Reaganism.
	It's simply to drive by just kills them.
	In Washington, hell, you know, in fact, we have some JFK quotes that precede Reagan.
	We have a JFK in 62 made a speech in the fall of the Economic Club of New York, making the case for his big tax cuts.
	I swear if you listen to these, you're convinced you're listening to Ronald Reagan.
	We've played those soundbites over the course of this program's many, many stellar years of broadcast service to mankind.
	And when we do, liberal Democrats call here and are outraged.
	And they tell me that I don't have the right to play JFK's words.
	Who are you?
	You're a Republican.
	You can't take his words and appropriate them for yourself.
	I'm an American.
	He was president, and he was right about it.
	They just don't want to hear Democrats talk that way.
	It's funny.
	Quick timeout as a clock just keeps chugging on back after this.
	I've been looking at the emails here during our obscene profit center timeouts, and I'm getting a lot of emails from people who are expressing surprise and incredulity that I am not outraged and angry at President Bush for his attacks yesterday on his base.
	And many people in their emails, you know, he was talking about you.
	You know it was you.
	And you're not firing back.
	And I don't understand it.
	Let me try to explain it, folks.
	I've known President Bush since before he was governor of Texas.
	And I don't know him well, but I've been with him socially on two or three occasions.
	And I personally like him very much.
	I don't associate his motives on this immigration bill, the same characteristics that the Democrats have on this.
	It's disappointing to me.
	I'm not going to hide them.
	But the fact that he may be attacking me doesn't bother me.
	What concerns me more about it, because you can't take this kind of stuff personally, he didn't mention my name, and I'm not going to sit around here and start making assumptions.
	The thing that is most troublesome to me is that the words that he spoke yesterday were criticism of the people who have stood by him through thick and thin when everybody's been trying to destroy him, be it on the National Guard story, take your pick.
	Rumsfeld, the entire war in Iraq, the whole weapons of mass destruction thing, people have stood by him because they trust him and believe him on those issues.
	And they also did not want the Democrats to get away with taking him out.
	I'm even getting even, I don't even want to mention it.
	Never mind.
	It's because it's nuts, what some people are suggesting that I now support.
	I'll just say this.
	I'm getting it.
	This is a few.
	You ought to get behind the impeachment of Bush.
	Now, come on, folks.
	This is asinine.
	I've told you what I think the president's motivations here are on the immigration bill, and I think they're far loftier motivations than political, frankly.
	I think they have to do with his vision of his desire to help the less fortunate around the world to realize dreams, his belief in this country as a way to get it done.
	But this criticism of his base is going to be problematic for him because the left is going to keep up their incessant harping on Iraq, and he needs people to support him on this.
	He needs to have a base of support that will not waver.
	And I don't know, I haven't talked to any of you about this.
	I've gotten some emails, and those are just anecdotal, but there are people who are saying, I've had it.
	I'm through defending the guy.
	This is the last draw because he's attacking me here as somebody who doesn't know what I'm talking about, somebody who doesn't want what's right for the country, and so forth.
	And I understand you and other people getting upset about it.
	And I can even understand if you flew the coupe in terms of supporting some of these other things.
	I just think that there's a little bit of tone-deafness in the Republican Party on the impact of this on their base.
	There has to be some either that or there's so much arrogance now in the Republican Party over this that it's incomprehensible.
	But I don't take this stuff that the president said yesterday personally at all.
	I don't even think he meant it that way.
	He's just out trying to sell his position on this.
	I think he's wrong about it.
	I've made no secret of that.
	But he does not in any way constitute an enemy to me on this.
	The enemy on this is the Democrats, primarily and the Republican.
	Remember, this is a Ted Kennedy bill, and he joined up there with McCain to get this done.
	And there's some Republicans in the Senate that are recalcitrant.
	But the Republicans in the House, the conservatives over there, fit to be tied over this.
	And it's going to have a rocky road ahead of it, regardless what comes out of the Senate.
	I just wish he hadn't done it because he's not going to lose me on Iraq.
	And he's not going to lose me on national security.
	He's not going to lose me on the war on terror.
	But he might lose some of you.
	And that might mean losing some of your votes for other Republicans because the president's not on any ballot anymore, but other Republicans are.
	And it's, you know, the people who hung with you, you don't just cast them aside in an even casual sense.
	That's the thing about this that troubles me the most.
	That's what's the saddest aspect of this to me.
	Nothing personal.
	Stoked on California.
	This is Robert.
	You're next on the EIB network.
	Hello.
	Good program, Rush.
	You know, do you find it kind of interesting that Al Gore's comments come, as well as the fairness doctrine, as all this is coming just as Hugo Chavez is shutting down media in Venezuela?
	Oh, let me tell you something about this.
	I've got a story.
	You will not believe this story about this.
	It's a drive-by media story making excuses for what Chavez is doing because this TV station has ripped him and supported a coup against him.
	Here it is.
	It's Bart Jones, who spent eight years in Venezuela, mainly as a foreign correspondent for the Associated Press.
	And he says this: Would a network that aided and abetted a coup against the government be allowed to operate in the United States?
	Well, yes, it happens every day.
	What do you think the Drive-By Media has been trying to do for five years, if not sponsor some kind of a Democratic coup against George W. Bush?
	But this guy goes on to praise Hugo Chavez for standing up to this TV station because they tried to oust him.
	They tried to run a coup against him.
	And what do you expect?
	So he has a lot of support.
	And the Democrat Party in this country, he has a lot of support because he hates Bush and they hate Bush.
	And so any friend of theirs, anybody who hates Bush, whether they're an enemy of the country or not, is a friend of the Democrats and a friend of the liberals.
	But you're right.
	What Hugo Chavez is doing, nationalizing TV stations and shutting them down, is the Venezuelan version of Al Gore's fairness doctrine.
	First hour is in the can on the way over to the museum.
	Well, the warehouse, housing artifacts for the future Limbaugh Broadcast Museum.

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