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June 7, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:32
June 7, 2007, Thursday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Well, it looks like Dingy Harry's strategy on the immigration bill has worked.
They just had a cloture vote.
They need 60 votes to shut off debate and take the bill down to the Senate floor to make the whole thing happen.
And they got 33.
They got 33, so they're going to do it again later today.
They're going to try to have another cloture vote.
The bill is being described as being on life support.
And there's a course life support sometimes saves lives, they're saying, if they drive by media.
Anyway, greetings, my friends, and welcome.
You are tuned to the most listened-to radio talk show in America, the Rush Limbaugh program.
We meet and surpass audience expectations, all audience expectations on a daily basis.
Telephone number.
By the way, not going to be here tomorrow.
I'll tell you Monday where I was.
If I tell you where I'm going now, I'll get mobbed when I get there.
But I'm taking a bunch of Allen Brothers steaks with me and hot dogs and hamburgers.
Well, I had not taken them.
I had them shipped.
They're already where I'm going.
They'll be ready when I get where I'm going tonight.
Can't wait.
At any rate, I can meet the meat there.
Exactly what I plan on doing.
Anyway, we're going to do Open Line Friday on Thursday today since I'm not going to be here tomorrow.
And that means the usual Monday through Thursday rules are off the table.
Those rules are, I have to care about what you call about or you don't get on the air.
But on Friday, we waive that.
Anything you want to talk about is fine.
So we go to the program.
We go to the phones.
The program is yours.
So the phone number is 800-282-2882.
The email address is rush at EIBnet.com.
We'll get to this immigration stuff here in just a second.
I have to tell you that when I got in here this morning and started doing a show prep, the TV networks were going bonkers with this Paris Hilton stuff.
They were literally going bonkers with it.
And I continue to sit here and be amazed that anybody cares about Paris Hilton.
And I think that what's happened today with the coverage of this, this is a perfect illustration, a perfect example of the power of the drive-by media to take nothing.
And I mean nothing and make people care about it.
You can see how they use this power and these skills on things like global warming.
So I'm thinking, what's happening?
Paris Hilton's like a sports franchise.
She's an escape for people.
Pay attention to Paris Hilton.
You don't have to worry about your problems.
It's like gawkerism.
It's like watching a car wreck or whatever it is.
And Snerdley comes in here livid.
Snerdley walks in the studio.
He is livid that she's been let out of jail.
And I said, I can't believe you care.
And he starts just muttering to himself, walks out the door.
Brian comes in here about an hour later, goes into the broadcast engineer complex across the pane of glass.
I walk out to go to kitchen to get a bottle of water, and I hear volume coming out of that room.
I hear audio coming out.
I never hear audio coming out of that room prior to the program.
So I walked in there.
He's listening to this Paris Hilton stuff.
I said, I can't believe it.
And he had turned up loud so he wouldn't miss a syllable.
So I walked back to Snerdley's office.
I said, I cannot believe this.
And Snerdley said, you, you, you just, you are so out of touch on this.
You won't understand.
People are mad about this.
Here, this little twit goes in for a 15 or 23 day sentence, gets out of there in three days.
Medical reasons.
Yip, yip, yip, yip, yahoo.
I said, she's not been released.
She's been reassigned to her house.
Yeah, yeah.
He said, the problem with this is she's going to be allowed to go to parties because that's her job.
I said, no, the parties will go to her house.
But the choppers are flying all over it.
And then something that was nothing has now become something because the Reverend Sharpton has weighed in.
See, Snerdley's on the other side of the class standing up, pointing at what Snerdley said, you ever heard a jury nullification?
He said, let me tell you what's happened.
They're taking note of this all over the country in urban neighborhoods and in south central Los Angeles.
They're taking note of this.
And plus, you know, I made the point to Snerdley that Barack Obama isn't out there talking about a quiet riot that's brewing.
This may light the fuse to get Obama's quiet riot actually into gear.
Because Snerdley's point is they're going to keep this in the back of their minds.
And the next time one of their homeboys ends up on trial, whatever, if they know he's guilty and no matter what the crime is going to be, OJ all over again, not guilty.
And then I came after learning that from Snerdley, I came and asked Brian, I said, are you angry about the yes, what do you expect?
Three days?
Give me a so I'm just Paris Hilton to me is something to be avoided.
And I'm surrounded here by what about you, Dawn?
Are you this Miff you a little bit too?
Tell me the truth.
Just give me a nod.
Okay, doesn't bother her.
I understand what it is about the judicial system and so forth.
But there are rumors flying around about what the medical condition is.
I've heard a few, but I'm not going to pass them on because I don't know what they are.
But the Reverend Sharpton has gotten involved here.
President of the National Action Network, one of the country's foremost leaders for civil rights, is blasting the justice system, not Paris Hilton.
He's blasting the justice system for what appears to be favoritism in her early release.
Here's his statement.
Though I have nothing but empathy for Ms. Hilton, whom I have met and appeared with on Saturday Night Live, the night I hosted in 2003, he has to throw in there that he knows her, that he hosted SNL with her, and he asked us to make sure, hey, Paris, honey, I'm not mad at you.
I like you and I want to see you again.
I want to be on TV with you again.
Then he continues to statement.
The early release gives all of the appearances of economic and racial favoritism that is constantly cited by poor people and people of color.
There are any number of cases of people who handle being incarcerated badly and even have health conditions that are not released.
I, Al Sharpton, have served several sentences for civil rights and civil disobedience actions.
And I even fasted, which caused health concerns to prison authorities who paid for a doctor to come see me daily rather than release me.
This act smacks of the double standards that many of us raise.
Snerdley is standing up, pointing, and say, I told you.
I told you.
Well, now it's a story.
And now that the Reverend Sharpton's got involved, it is a story.
I just, I don't know, folks, this something about this that just had me cracking up all day, watching the drive-bys go nuts with this.
And then see my staff actually getting exercised and worked up about it.
Let's go to the audio soundbites here.
Number one, this is sort of interesting.
This is yesterday on Channel 5 in Los Angeles, KTLA, their morning show.
The entertainment reporter Sam Rubin and his guest, the actress Rosie Perez, are speaking about fairness in the media.
And here is a portion of their remarks.
The liberal voice is not heard in America as much as it could be.
And even the Senate, like you said, the Senate voice is not really heard as much as it should be.
So that's why I think that it is unfair.
There's also a showbiz element.
There's two things that I thought as all of you guys were talking.
You know, Rush Limbaugh, who has a very definitive opinion and is very, very much to the right.
And I'm afraid to say it.
And I'm afraid it is.
And also, very entertaining.
Love him or hate him.
He's extraordinarily good at what he does.
And a lot of liberal voices, I think, have said, you know, the problem is we don't have anybody articulating our point of view who's that entertaining.
And that's the problem.
Now, this is somewhat troubling to me.
This indicates that some of the libs are starting to understand their plight.
It was fun while they were ignorant and continued to bash their heads against the wall.
But this Sam Rubin guy pretty much understands it.
Whether that'll mean anything to the efforts of liberals to be entertained.
How can anybody be entertaining who's constantly outraged and angry and ticked off?
I don't know.
I mean, Don Rickles does it, but it's a joke.
There aren't a whole lot of angry comics out there that score, and it certainly isn't going to happen when you combine liberalism with it.
Another soundbite, this is from CNN's newsroom.
The anchorette, Heidi Collins, she's talking to Terry Jeffery, the editor of Human Events, and a former congressman and Democrat strategerist Donna Brazil.
And the anchorette said, Terry, you're hearing a lot about Fred Thompson by the way of people interested in what he may have to offer the American public.
Absolutely.
There's a lot of excitement among conservatives, including inside the Beltway with Fred Thompson getting into it.
I think this is an issue where back in 1996, he ran for the Senate, not just pro-choice, but he was against the pro-life plank of the Republican platform.
He's got to be very clear and very specific about where he stands on that issue and why his views change.
But just remember, he's not auditioning for a spot on Rush Limbaugh.
He's auditioning to be president of the United States.
What's the difference?
So Al Sharpton, Justice Brother, is complaining about the justice system.
I think that's fabulous.
Go to the commercial break.
It's going to be one of these kind of days where no matter what I do, it's not right.
Everything I do is going to be wrong today, huh?
Brian, did you turn down a compression on the microphone?
Well, I don't know.
It sounds a little different.
Anyway, we're back.
It's Open Line Friday on Thursday, Rush Limbaugh at 800-282-2882 and the email address rush at EIBnet.com.
All right, here's what happened last night on the immigration bill as written up by the AP, and then I will give you the correct analysis of this.
A fragile compromise that would legalize millions of unlawful immigrants risks coming unraveled after the Senate voted early this morning, like just after midnight, to place a five-year limit on the guest worker program, the temporary worker program.
It was a 49-48 vote.
It came two weeks after the Senate, also by a one-vote margin, rejected the same amendment by Senator Byron Dorgan, helmet head of North Dakota, who says that immigrants take many jobs Americans could fill.
Now, why did they bring this back?
Why in the world did they bring the Dorgan Amendment back?
This is Dingy Harry's decision to do this.
And I told you yesterday, and I've been telling you all week, it looks like Dingy Harry wants to kill the bills.
We started speculating why would Dingy Harry want to kill the bill?
And I'm going to tell you what I think is going on here.
But I don't want it to change your attitude.
As far as we're concerned, the bill is not dead yet, right?
So don't, I'm just, I'm just analyzing this for you up to up to now.
If he allowed a second vote on the Dorgan Amendment, that is a sign that he doesn't want the bill to pass.
And one of the reasons could be it's blame the Republican time since the Republicans are the ones that have torn themselves up over this for a month.
And it would be, you know, politically, can they pull it off?
I don't know, because this was a Democrat amendment.
You know, Byron Dorgan is a Democrat, helmet head from North Dakota.
So if the Democrats are going to say, well, the bill's not going to pass anyway, I think this is looking bad.
And as people learn the details of this, more and more people aren't liking it.
And even though it's a Ted Kennedy White House bill, Dingy Harry would love nothing more than to shelve the blame on all this to the Republicans.
If he can get away with it, it would be smart politics.
And, of course, a bad, bad result for the White House in a political sense, but good for all of us.
Now, I have a friend who. talked with a reporter from an Hispanic publication, and this reporter spoke with Rah Emmanuel off the record after the election, asking him why immigration wasn't one of his priorities.
And Rah Emmanuel said after the elections back in November, we don't want to do immigration.
Let the White House do that.
It's just as difficult an issue for our coalition as it is for the Republicans.
We're avoiding it.
We're refusing even to discuss it.
Let the Republicans duke it out.
And this, now, even though Kennedy brought the bill forward, it has caused myriad political problems for the Republicans.
So what's happened here, it's actually many good things have happened.
It is, for the most part, doomed McCain.
And we can thank the White House for that.
I don't think they intended to doom McCain, but President Bush and his steadfast support of the bill has doomed McCain.
And it's starting to show up in polls.
Also split the Republican Party, which some people think is a bad thing.
I don't.
I think that it's going to create a vacuum that a genuine conservative could move in and fill.
So that's why he says always something good.
You can find something good in everything that happens that mostly you think is bad.
Also, yesterday in the House, they had a judiciary hearing, and the black caucus members visibly broke with their Latino colleagues yesterday, Sheila Jackson Lee, Maxine Waters, berated representatives from the restaurant industry and agriculture and even from Google, because apparently the black caucus members got an earful from constituents back home over the recess.
Their constituents say, well, they are taking jobs that we want.
These illegals.
Typical quotes that came out of this hearing yesterday.
What have any of you done to hire Americans first to avoid worker displacement?
This is what the black caucus was asking representatives in the restaurant industry and agriculture and so forth.
My son goes to Morehouse College.
You gone there recruiting?
Are you just looking for illegals?
Have you tried to employ urban black workers for agriculture jobs?
What percentage of your employees are black Americans?
These are some of the questions that there was a pretty tight-knit coalition between the black caucus and the Latino caucus, but they split yesterday in the House over this.
So the efforts of Dingy Harry, if this is what he's actually doing to blame this on the Republicans because they have been the ones that have torn themselves up over it, he's going to have a lot of help from the drive-bys because the drive-bys will spread Dingy Harry's spin on this.
We're going to be out there to counter that spin because this is a Democrat bill.
And that's what's had everybody so upset.
Why is the president joining with Democrats again on a bill that is going to destroy the Republican Party?
Now, they had a test vote today for cloture to stop the amendments, to stop all the hackers, because the longer this goes on and the more amendments, the more fragile the coalition, as they refer to it, becomes.
And the more details people learn, and the harder it's going to be.
Dingy Harry brings back the Dorgan Amendment for a second time.
After it failed, you bring something back that, and this time it passes?
I mean, that's sure sign that he wants this bill killed.
So they had their cloture vote, and they failed to stop debate on it.
They didn't get 60 votes.
They got 33.
They're saying it's on life support now.
They're going to come back for another vote later in the day, some point, maybe tonight.
Now, all of this that I have told you sounds pretty right to me as I said it, as most things I say do sound to me.
Right.
One caveat that I want to mention to all of you, and that's this: we have to pretend that it's not dead because it isn't dead yet.
We have to pretend that in order to keep the emotion up because we have to make sure this thing gets killed, and it isn't dead yet.
The president of the White House has split the party.
The good news is he's doomed McCain out there, and the splitting of the party opens up a vacuum for a conservative.
And by the way, breaking with Bush is commonplace now, so it's not the idea that Republicans are breaking away from Bush drive-by as the Democrats say, oh, this is setting us up really well.
Republicans falling apart.
Just the exact opposite.
It could help in 2008.
So, you know, this is I know a lot of you people are mad at President Bush on this, but we need to thank him because he's taken McCain out of this, apparently, at least for now.
Here's Josh in Rochester, Indiana.
You're up first on the EIB network today.
Hello.
Hey, Russ, how's it going?
Just fine, sir.
Never better.
Hey, my question is about the Sopranos coming up on Sunday.
What do you think is going to happen?
What do I think is going to happen on the Sopranos Sunday night?
Yeah, you think Tony's going to get clipped, or do you think he's going to make it?
I've got two theories about what I think is going to happen on the Sopranos.
I think, and I don't know which one.
I know they shot a bunch of different endings.
I think everybody in Tony's family, his crime family, his home family, are going to get clipped, but he doesn't.
Left all alone with nothing.
Well, that's interesting, isn't it?
Well, you got to think.
Now, everybody says that this is it.
And it can't be a movie now since they killed off all these mobsters in Tony's family.
However, Gandalfini, and he may be tired of the role, but if they do want to bring it back someplace, they can't kill the guy off.
And I think about this, you know, in a creative programming sense.
If he gets clipped, I was telling Snerdley yesterday, if he gets clipped, I think that maniac sister of his is going to be the one that does it.
Because she's all upset, you know, that well, she's not, she knows wacko in the first place, but her husband just got wiped out in last week's episode.
She probably blamed Tony for this.
And they've had this relationship that's been at odds for the longest time.
I mean, Tony's mother put out a hit on him, you know, before she died.
What a great character she was, Nancy Marchand.
So, I mean, that's my best guess.
But, you know, I'm watching it without my prediction in mind.
I'm just going to watch it and see what happens.
But those are the two various endings that I have conjured up.
Thanks for the call out there, Josh.
I appreciate it.
Time for an EIB Profit Center timeout.
Open line Friday on Thursday when we go to the phones.
The program is yours.
Be back and continue after this.
I got to get a cigar.
I've been so busy, I forgot to do that.
Gladly, ladies and gentlemen, that's what we do here.
Make the complex understandable.
Rush Limbaugh America's anchorman, national treasure, and all-around good guy, harmless, lovable little fuzzball on Open Line Friday on Thursday.
Now, what was it?
A couple days ago, I mentioned Gary Sheffield's remarks about why there are fewer and fewer blacks playing baseball, Major League Baseball.
And Gary Sheffield said, Look, it's a simple matter that you can't control my race, but you can control these Latins.
And he said, I called this long time ago.
I said, you're going to see dark faces on baseball fields, but there ain't going to be any English coming out of their mouths.
And they go down there and they recruit, and they can control these Latins because all I got to do is threaten to send them back home if they don't straighten up and fly right.
Now, you can't do that with my guys.
Now, the percentage, somebody's actually run the numbers on this.
The percentage of blacks, American blacks, African Americans playing baseball is like 8.8%.
So even when we bring something up on this, something as innocuous as something like that, it leads to even wider coverage.
The Detroit Free Press has a column today on how Latin baseball players are treated like migrant workers.
I'm not making it up.
I have it right here, my formerly nicotine-stained fingers.
And he says that American black kids aren't playing baseball because they don't have the money.
All the equipment's expensive.
All you need is a hoop and a basketball to go play basketball.
But you need bats, you need baseballs, you need bases, and you need a lot of friends to go out and play baseball.
And you're just not going to get there because it's too expensive.
Now, a lot of black kids are playing football, and that requires some equipment too, and it requires a lot of friends.
Not cheap, but maybe not as expensive as playing baseball when you're a kid.
But he says this: I'll just give you some excerpts.
What he's saying here is that Latin ball players are playing a sport Americans won't play.
It's amazing.
Compared with their American-born counterparts, Latino players are like migrant workers.
They deal with lousy work conditions because the alternative, going home, often to a poverty-stricken area, is so unappealing.
On every rung of the ladder, they are afraid of getting sent home.
Yes, this makes them easier to control.
What lousy work conditions does a major league baseball player have?
The main reason is economics, said Don Mutley, the executive director of the Negro League's Baseball Museum.
A fixed-income person, their kids can't afford to play this game anymore.
To me, that's what's happened to these black kids who are not playing baseball.
If there's a hoop in your neighborhood, you're just a basketball away from being able to practice.
In baseball, you need bats, gloves, balls, a bunch of friends who can afford the equipment too.
It's much easier to start a pickup basketball game than a pickup baseball game.
In some Latin countries, baseball is so ingrained in the culture, kids will play the game with homemade bats, balls, and no shoes.
But that's not the case in America anymore.
I'm not making this up.
I'm literally not making this up.
This is in the Detroit Free Press.
I mean, that can't afford to pay.
They have fixed income.
Families can't afford to go out and buy their kids enough bats and baseballs.
Look at our, well, I know, well, they cause $100 Mike Jordans to try $250 Mike Jordans.
Oh, sure.
The Air Jordans are $250, aren't they?
$200?
Oh, come on, Brian.
You're a sports now.
You should know.
I know they're not $100.
Well, no, you missed the Latin kids will play in their bare feet if they have to, because they are willing to do what Americans won't do.
The immigration debate has now found its way into this controversy over why there are so few blacks playing Major League Baseball.
But I'm still stuck here on this notion that the Latin players deal with lousy work conditions in Major League Baseball.
They just don't exist.
Daniel in Southern California next.
I'm glad you waited.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Hello, Rush.
Hey.
Hey, it's an honor to talk to you, sir.
I can't believe I'm on the phone with you.
Well, it's a great day for you, and I do believe you're here because I hear you.
It is.
And, you know, I started smoking cigars recently, so hopefully after this call, you can give me a good list.
But the reason I called was to inform your audience about the sentencing of Paris Hilton.
I used to work for the Sheriff's Department in Los Angeles County for five years, and her sentence was very, very excessive, actually.
An average person would only have gotten about one or two days.
And in fact, several deputies while I was working there had even gotten that charge and didn't serve any time.
So her sentence, a lot of people think she's getting off easy.
She actually got the book thrown at her.
45 days reduced to 23, reduced to three with an ankle bracelet at home so she can party.
I'm just saying most people wouldn't have gotten anything or they would have gotten one or two nights in jail.
Well, but this was not a first offense for her.
There's a probation violation, and there was alcohol involved in her case.
Look at there are people in jail for 10 days driving on a suspended driver's license in parts of this country.
Understood.
I'm just letting you know what the L.A. County typically, you know, it's very excessive what she did get.
But I was also hoping while I have you on the line, I just started smoking cigars.
I'm smoking, you know, the Romeo and Juliet kind of mild stuff.
And I was wondering if you had a good list to recommend.
Yeah, I've got a list on my website at WD.
It's probably on the subscriber side.
I'll tell you what, I'll have Coco put it on the free side today so that you can see it.
I'm a subscriber.
Oh, you're a subscriber?
Okay, then we won't put it on the free side.
Just kidding.
Could you tell my wife Juliet Hello on the radio for her?
Where is she?
Why not right now?
Tell her right now.
What's her name?
Juliet.
Juliet.
Where is she?
She's teaching right now.
She's a third-grade teacher.
Oh, so you're going to show her the tape later.
Yes.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
All right.
I'll squeeze it in at a surprise moment.
Okay.
All right.
Thanks, Rush.
God bless you.
Same to you, Daniel.
Appreciate it.
Bruce, Fort Wayne, Indiana, you're next.
It's Open Line Friday on Thursday here.
Great to have you with us.
Hello, Rush.
Mega Dido.
Thank you, sir.
The last month, I've noticed you spouting this 80% statistic about Hillary winning the election.
And I've been listening since 2001.
I've been kind of a post-September 11th listener.
And you kept on saying she wasn't the smartest woman in the room.
The American people would see right through her.
That she made tensive steps.
That she just wasn't a very appetizing individual, and she had high negatives.
How is this product now 80% based entirely on the lack of Republican leadership?
Or what exactly, what changed you from all those comments to now?
Well, at the time I made the statement, Linda, get the statement correct.
At the time I made the statement, at that moment in time, I said there's an 80% chance that she's going to be the next president.
And it was based on the fact that there wasn't a whole lot of excitement in the Republican field.
There was more excitement for people that were not in the race.
Calculations also of the power of Clinton Inc. to take out opponents and so forth.
The Democrat Party's sense of inevitability with her.
The November elections.
We lost the Congress.
What are we doing?
It looks like it's going to be one back.
I mean, and plus, you have a historical thing.
It's rare for a party to hold the White House for three consecutive terms.
Bush 41 did it after two terms of Reagan, but you have to go pretty far back to find where that's happened.
And we're not coming off a popular Republican presidency, particularly among his own party right now.
Now, there are so many variables in this.
I'll tell you one thing that Clinton camp probably did not expect.
There's a USA Today Gallup poll, and Barack Obama is one point ahead of her.
It's 30 to 29.
This is the last thing they expected to happen.
Now, it's a statistical tie, but his fundraising is on par with hers and maybe even exceeding hers in certain categories.
And I don't think they ever thought that somebody, particularly somebody who's only been in this game for two years, would come out of the woodwork and so excite people as Barack Obama.
So I think they're going to have to start spending some of their war chest money on television ads, and they're going to have to get in gear here a little sooner.
Because even though the public image of the Clintons is that they didn't like this notion of inevitability because they wanted to be able to show that Hillary can overcome a challenge and can win a fight in the political arena, they did secretly rely on this inevitability.
That she's it, the smartest woman in the world, Bill Clinton's wife.
She's owed this.
She has put up with so much and she's done so much and she has sacrificed so much.
They were relying on that.
Obama's thrown a little monkey wrench here by getting a little bigger and more powerful than they thought.
But at the end of the day, I don't think the Clintons are going to have any trouble dealing with a guy who's only been in this foxhole for a couple months, and he's really not even been in it that long.
He's been a senator for two months.
But in terms of being a campaign like this, and it really hasn't ratcheted up yet, the thing about Obama that frightens them is that the black vote, they need that, both in the primary and the general.
And if Obama gets in the way there, that could be a problem.
But I haven't seen anything yet to change this prediction of mine or this assessment that there's an 80% chance, as we sit here today, that she's going to be elected.
If that changes, I mean, I will be the first to tell you if I think it's dropped to 75%, when I think it's dropped to 75 or 70%, I'll tell you.
Right now, I am not ready to change my assessment of the situation.
Some time ago, in the past three months or so, we had a caller asking me why I thought the liberals and the Democrats are so enraged over this, so angry.
And I'm going to him hawed around about it.
I get the usual answer, Florida 2000, this sort of stuff.
And I said, if you want to know the real reason, it's me.
It's me and my success.
They owned media for 40 years.
They never had to debate anybody.
They never, 50 years, they never had to have anybody challenge them.
They didn't have to explain what they believe.
And I'm not as liberal leaders, but the whole cockamame bunch of them in the country.
And all of a sudden, this show comes up and it spawns all kinds of other spin-offs, and they're just enraged.
And there are other things that I mentioned too that are factors, too.
But I do think, folks, and I don't feel guilty about it.
There's nothing I can do about it.
I wouldn't change it if I could.
I think the raws of this program has contributed tremendously to the overall rage and anger that liberals feel.
And they've tried to counter it with every which way you can imagine.
Blogosphere blogs have had their various attempts at radio shows, and they can't do it.
They just can't get in the field.
They can't get in the field.
They can't make an impact at all.
And there is confirmation that I am right about this from no less than Joe Klein of Time magazine.
Although he's wrong in a couple of assertions, let me read to you an excerpt from his, I guess I got an essay or article on Time magazine recently.
The left liberals in the blogosphere, and he's upset about it, by the way.
He's upset at the rage and the anger on the Democrat side.
He's trying to assign the reason for it.
The left liberals in the blogosphere are merely aping the odious, disdainful, and politically successful tone that right-wing radio talk show Rush Limbaugh pioneered.
They are also justifiably furious at a Bush White House that specialized in big lies and smear tactics.
And that is precisely the danger here.
Fury begets fury.
Poison from the right-wing talk shows seeped into the Republican Party's bloodstream and sent that party off the deep end.
Limbaugh's show, where Cheney frequently expatiates, has become the voice of the Republican establishment.
No, it isn't.
This show is not the voice of the Republican establishment.
It is the voice of American conservatism, but it is not the voice of Republican establishment.
And something else, this program is not odious.
It is not disdainful.
It is, we are not angry.
We are not enraged.
We are not, we are nothing but happy on this program.
In fact, Joe, I get emails from people upset with me that I am too happy because I shouldn't be given the status of the country these days and where the country is headed.
And if I'm happy and enjoying myself, why it's it's uh it means that I'm out of touch.
But this is they continually misunderstand what happens here.
And on all these other shows, you can see it in the Republican debate the other day.
There wasn't any anger up there.
There wasn't any rage, like you can see when the Democrats all get together.
It was a bunch of optimistic people debating different ideas that they have within the same party about the future of the country, which everybody cares about.
This is an upbeat, optimistic, inspirational radio program.
If it were odious and disdainful, it wouldn't be as big as it is.
You don't attract this kind of audience, this large an audience, and hold it for 19 years, August 1st, with odious, disdainful, hate-filled talk.
Now, I think he's right that the left liberals in the blogosphere are angry.
They may think this program is filled with rage and hatred, but actually it's just projection.
This program fills them with rage and hatred because they can't deal with it.
They can't beat it.
They can't answer it.
They cannot, even in the arena of ideas, they can't call here and win on the arena of ideas.
And they're frustrated and they're angry.
Even when they won the elections last fall, it didn't satisfy them.
They are still livid.
It's a state of mind, and it is because of the success of this program.
To understand this, you have to understand what it was like to be a liberal without this program and the alternative media all the way up to 1988.
You have to, you have to, people ask me all the time, how do you put up with the constant, disparaging, brutal comments about you in the media?
They lie about you.
How do you put up with it?
I understand it.
They ought to hate my guts.
They ought to despise me.
I single-handedly led the movement that destroyed their monopoly.
And in the process of doing so, I've been very critical of them.
I call them the drive-by.
They ought not like me.
But right, they lie about it.
That's who they are.
You have to, you know, why get mad at people when they're who they are?
You know who they are.
I don't give them the kind of power to make them mad at me.
Very rarely do I, as you people know, on certain things will I stand up and refute some of what they say.
But if I made a point of that, that'd be all I would do.
So no less an authority in the drive-buz than Joe Klein gets it right, but gets it wrong at the same time.
Jimmy, in Wichita, Kansas, you're next on the EIB network.
Have about a minute here.
Can you squeeze it in?
I can if you can.
Yeah.
How are you doing?
I'm so glad to talk to you.
Thank you, sir.
Like you, my glass is always half full, and I always take a negative and turn it into a positive.
So here's my tip for the day, if you'll test it on.
Rename this Kennedy-McCain bill to the Paris-Hilton Immigration Act.
The Paris-Hilton Immigration Act?
Oh, because she's getting amnesty here.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
Well, you know, that's not a bad thought.
I mean, if you are pro this bill, you've got to support what happened to Paris Hilton.
She's, although, I mean, in a legal sense, she hasn't been released.
40 days of confinement in her mansion.
And I siphon it's like Martha Stewart.
Was Martha Stewart allowed to go to work in a grocery store?
Once it was.
She went to her.
Martha Stewart went to her.
Well, okay, Paris Hilton's office is a nightclub.
You know, so we'll see how that works out.
All right, we must take a break here at the top of the hour.
Time for your local, well, not your local, biased network news on your local station.
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