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June 26, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:11
June 26, 2007, Tuesday, Hour #2
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Hi, welcome back, folks.
Great to have you, Rush Limboy and the Excellence in Broadcasting Network running America.
And having more fun than a human being at the same time.
Without a what?
Of course I haven't had a pay cut.
Well, no, if I've, no, no, no.
If I run America, I don't have to take a pay cut.
They say I'm running America without being president.
Talk radio is running America, and I'm talk radio, so I'm running America.
Anyway, welcome back, folks.
Great to have you with us.
Telephone number is 800-282-2882.
If you'd like to join us, the email address, rush at EIBNet.com.
Now, there are two ways to look at this cloture vote, which passed, which means that the full bill now goes to the full floor, the floor of the Senate for final vote that'll happen next week.
This bill was 6435, I think was the final passage.
Was it 6534?
You sure about that?
You sure about that?
You sure it was 65.
You're sure it's 6534?
You sure double-check that.
I thought it was 6435.
I'll bet you an SRX crossover from Cadillac at 6435.
Snerdley, look it up.
I'm telling you, go find it.
I'm going to tell you right now, I know.
Hang on just a second.
It was 6435.
lose the SRX crossover from Cadillac.
Two ways to, well, I would never make Snurdly buy me a car when I, I mean, I would never do that.
Anyway, the two ways to look at this, folks.
One is, as I mentioned in the last out, I want to present both these options to you and let you decide how you want to look at this.
And I'll offer my opinion as to how I think a lot of people will look at it.
One way is, okay, this is a long war to stop this.
This is but one battle.
The cloture vote was but one battle.
The vote on the bill next week, there's still time to add a lot of pressure.
Some of these senators on the Republican side that voted for it could change their minds and could have planned all along to vote for cloture, but vote against the bill next week after they massage these amendments and so forth and see if whether they actually get what they were promised.
You have to ask yourself some of these Republican senators who are so ignoring your sentiments on this.
What were they promised?
I mean, there's stuff going on behind closed doors that we don't know.
And you have to wonder, okay, who's promising them what?
What did they get?
What are they being told that they're going to get to make them so vote in such opposition to the people that elected them, their own constituents?
The second way to look at this, and that first way features obviously some optimism and you don't give up, continue the fight.
It's not over until it's over, and there's still a House of Representatives to deal with on this.
And I haven't heard anymore about what came out of the meeting that the Republican caucus in the House had.
They were thinking of issuing a one-sentence statement suggesting that they were not going to support this in the House in whatever form it comes to them from the Senate.
I don't know that that has happened.
It was just rumored to be something that they were thinking of doing.
But it still has to pass the House.
And Nancy Pelosi will not have it pass the House without a significant number of Republican votes.
She's not going to take the heat on this.
And a lot of these senators are not up for election next year, but every member of the House is.
And so you have the opportunity here if this comes out of the Senate and if it passes next week, then goes to the House.
That's where you'll be listened to far more than some of these senators, theoretically.
Now, the second way to look at this is to throw your hands up and say, screw these guys.
I have had it.
We may as well not even have a Republican Party.
We don't have a conservative anywhere out there.
We may as well just throw our heads, screw it, and let's just vote against these guys because they don't deserve re-election, those that are up.
I'm talking about senators now in 2008.
And I have a sneaking suspicion that many of you fall in that area today.
I know how mad you are.
I know how disrespected that you feel.
And you're probably thinking, some of you, what the hell is the point of caring and being involved?
We get involved.
We let them know what we think, and they still don't listen to us.
And so the reason you stay involved is because you love the country and you believe in it.
And you don't want to sit idly by while you see it inalterably changed.
The traditions and institutions that have defined this country's greatness, you care about maintaining them for future generations of Americans.
But at the same time, you're just frustrated as you can be.
And you can say, okay, there's not a reason to elect Republicans.
There's not a reason to donate to them.
Republican national leadership, where is it?
How is it differing from the Democrats at all, especially when it comes to this bill?
When you've got Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi almost on a weekly basis proclaiming defeat, happily so in Iraq, demoralizing the troops, criticizing the commanding officers, the generals, claiming that they're incompetent, and the Republicans don't do anything.
They don't stand up and demand that other Senate Democrats.
You agree with Harry Reid about that?
Do you think we've lost?
We're not worthy of victory.
Is that what you really want to happen?
None of the kind of things that liberal Democrats do when they get in the trenches and the foxholes and fight this battle.
So you could also, if you're choosing the second one, and I mentioned this a couple, three weeks ago.
Now, this is a long shot, but you know me.
I try to look at things.
I try to find the good in everything.
That's been the nature and the experience of my life.
I just do.
Try not to get defeatist.
And I do sometimes.
I mean, I don't always succeed at this.
But when you have a situation where it looks like, my gosh, there's no Republican Party.
And by Republican Party, I mean no repository for conservatism.
I'm not talking about Republicans first, but there just doesn't seem to be any conservative dominance in the Republican Party these days.
You can say, yeah, that's true.
It's over.
Or you can say that's a vacuum that's been created.
And there is a chance somebody has the guts to move in and fill that vacuum.
I'm talking about presidential candidates now.
So we've also, you don't know how this is going to shake out down the road in months and in the next year, because what we've had here, we've had a vivid illustration for people of just how unresponsive, how incompetent, how arrogant and condescending big government is.
And that has been one of the central themes of conservatism ever since there has been conservatism.
Markets work, limited government, low taxes, all of these things are on parade here in terms of the way this has all been handled by elected officials.
They have been effete.
They have been unresponsive.
They have been arrogant.
They're telling us we don't know what's in the bill, and yet they don't dare tell us what's in the bill.
They've made no effort to explain it to us.
All they've done is insult us.
We've got big government on parade.
We've got the illustration of how Washington actually views you.
You're an obstacle.
They need you at Election Day.
But after that, they don't care about you until the next Election Day.
And they expect you to come around because they expect, especially, that you're going to forget things, that other issues are going to come along and make you forget this.
And in normal circumstances, that has happened.
But this is such a visceral thing.
This touches people in their daily lives every day.
It is instinctive.
Everybody opposed to this understands why it shouldn't pass.
This is not something you have to spend 13,000 hours watching C-SPAN to understand.
This is simple.
It embodies some of the basics.
The rule of law, number one.
Number two, national security.
Maybe that's first and rule of law is second, but whatever, these things.
And it appears that there are people that don't care about that, not worried about it whatsoever.
This causes people to start, well, what is then the objective?
What are the goals of the people trying to ram this down our throats?
And obviously, people are starting to say, how come they care more about pleasing these illegal immigrants than they do their own supporters, donors, contributors, and constituents?
So I know you're going through all of this, and I am too.
We've waxed eloquent here trying to analyze this and figure it out, which is why I mentioned a moment ago, what in the world did whoever promise some of these senators they're going to get in exchange for that vote today?
Because that happens too.
Arm twisting could be, or what threats were made.
You never know.
But what we do know is that in a normal civics 101 atmosphere, this makes no sense.
This is not logical what's happened here.
So there has to be or have to be other things at play.
Now, I had a, I know some of you are thinking that when I say that it creates a vacuum for a conservative to fill, I know the name that pops into your head first and foremost, and that's Fred Thompson.
Now, he's either going to announce, well, he's going to announce soon, is the rumor, this week or next, in Tennessee.
And there was a story on Sunday in the UK Times.
And the headline says, old girlfriends cast their vote for Thompson.
Presidential hopeful Fred Thompson, labeled by former flames as a charmer who could bring home the female vote.
And the story starts this way.
In the battle for the women's vote, Fred Thompson has a secret weapon against Hillary Clinton, the legions of former girlfriends who still adore him and who want him to be president.
Even his ex-wife, or wife, wife, every woman this guy has ever dated or been married to loves the guy.
Now, women may really warm to this.
The writer of the story is a woman.
It may make sense.
But as a man, I mean, something doesn't seem right about that.
It may be a beautiful thing, but how many of you can lay claim to the fact that every former flame or ex-wife of yours loves you and would do anything they could to help you get what you want?
I just, here's a, well, they give some names here.
Laurie Morgan, a country singer, dated Fred Thompson, considered marrying him in the mid-90s, told the Sunday Times, I couldn't think of a bad word to say about Fred if somebody put a gun to my head.
He's a perfect example of chivalry.
He's the kind of man little girls dream about marrying who opens doors for you, lights your cigarettes, helps you on with your coat, buys wonderful gifts.
He's every woman's fantasy.
Morgan remembers encouraging Thompson to run for president when they were together.
I think he has a great chance of capturing the women's vote.
He's majestic.
He's soft.
He's a safe place to be.
And that could be Fred's ticket.
Women love a soft place to lay and a strong pair of hands to hold us, said Laurie Morgan.
George Ed Mossbacher, leading Republican fundraiser who dated Thompson after Morgan remains a good friend, said he would defeat Clinton because of his appeal to traditional women who like the southern gentleman in him.
And of course, they asked Fred Thompson about this.
He said, Well, I was single for a long time, and yeah, I chased a lot of women, and a lot of women chased me.
And those who chased me tended to catch me.
So, not a bad word from former flames of Fred Thompson.
What does that mean to you?
You don't believe it, or you're not commenting.
See, Dawn won't comment.
Well, one woman here who could provide insight here takes the lame.
Quick timeout.
We'll be back after this.
Stay with us.
Just checked out a post at the National Review website, their blog.
It's called The Corner.
Mark Krikorian has a post that says there is a second cloture vote on Thursday.
That this cloture vote that took place today was to simply end the whole opportunity to offer new amendments.
And so the Senate's coming back at 2.15 this afternoon, and what will happen between now and Thursday is debate on the amendments.
Now, this is important because the real cloture vote is not until Thursday.
And it's that vote will determine whether the full bill moves to the Senate floor for a vote.
So this was a cloture vote today just to stop the offering of amendments, and they voted to do that and then begin debate on the amendments.
But you only get 30 hours to do this, which is why there's a second cloture vote on Thursday.
30 hours of debate.
No senator can speak for more than an hour.
And Krikorian's post indicates that, well, anybody would know this.
You only need five votes to switch from yes to no.
And he lists these names, Brownback, Kit Bond, Ben Nelson, John Ensen, Richard Burr, and Judd Gregg, he thinks are good bets to change their votes, particularly because if they thought they got phone calls and faxes now, wait until this vote today.
And I'm sure that all of these guys' offices are being peppered and inundated with probably meltdown is what's going on.
So you have some people here who are on the fence, like Kit Bond.
He says, look, I got an amendment here, and my amendment says these people got to go back home.
And Lindsey Gramnesty offered that amendment.
Well, they got to go back home.
I got to touch back, then come back before they get their Z visa.
None of this 24-hour thing.
So there's some people here who are still wavering.
And the way to look at this is that their vote today in favor of cloture means they're still open to try to get whatever they can get in exchange for a vote on the real bill.
So you've got some people who apparently are holding out for all kinds of whatever you'd want to call it.
Things that will spice this up and help them.
I guess, look at it.
They want something for their votes, and this is an opportunity for them to get that.
And if they don't, then they could change their minds on Thursday.
So we're going to go through this again on Thursday.
What's going to happen in the Senate now is simply debate on the amendments, 30 hours of debate on the amendments that were accepted and offered.
Remember that that was the White House, in order to get this vote, was telling these senators, you'll get your amendments.
Because when this thing first started, if you can just retrace this for you, when this first started, there were no amendments permitted.
This was done, as you know, behind closed doors under cover of darkness.
It came out.
McCain said we don't want any extracurricular politics involved in this, meaning no debate, no involvement from you.
Just wanted to ram this through.
Of course, that failed because people found out how that behind-the-scenes stuff worked, that La Raza was in there with veto power over Democrat ideas as they were putting this together.
And so in order to, and then that went down to defeat, and it was thought to be dead.
Harry Reid pulled a bill.
So the White House said, okay, you guys, we'll let you offer some amendments to this.
And that's what's been going on since they, quote unquote, revived it.
The cloture vote today was to end the period of time to offer amendments and to start a 30-hour period of debating the amendments.
That will end on Thursday, then another cloture vote to actually shut down the whole debate process, amendments, whole bill, everything else.
And as I say, we'll go through this whole thing again on Thursday.
And if that vote passes, then the bill will go to the floor next week for a final vote.
So the point is, you still have time to raise hell.
Still have, because there's one more cloture vote to go.
Here's Isis, am I pronouncing it?
ISIS in Shreport, Louisiana.
I'm glad you waited.
Welcome to the program.
Hi, Rush.
Hi.
It is so great to talk to the man who runs America.
Thank you.
It's nice to have you on the show.
Thank you so much.
I'm calling.
This is the first time I'm calling, but I've been listening for a while.
I first would like to say that I'm an American who is from Puerto Rico, and I'm calling in response to Mary's call yesterday accusing you of being mean to the Mexican people.
And I would like to say that I do not believe that at all.
I think that you are just stating the fact that the majority of the illegal Americans coming to this state to the United States come from Mexico.
Right.
My whole thing with that is, and this is another side that I've been seeing as far as a Latino person, I say that with air quotes, is that if Latinos who don't agree with the Mexicans, with the immigration bill, amnesty bill, if you will, we are being chastised for it.
Precisely.
Well, that's the whole point.
And I think I made this point yesterday.
Well, I don't think I know.
My memory is extraordinary.
And I remember doing this.
And I said the whole point, Mary was part of an ongoing liberal tactic here to blame the opponents here for angering and being mean-spirited and almost racist and bigoted.
And that's why the Hispanics are mad at us is because of people like me.
And that's what you're heated up about because we weren't out there with them waving Mexican flags, one million strong in Los Angeles, demanding to be exempt from the laws of this country.
They did that on their own.
Way to go, Donovan.
That's fast.
I ordered this up just a half hour ago, and here it is already done.
800-282-2882, Rush Limbaugh, America's real anchorman with talent on loan from God.
The venting continues.
Alexis in Concord, New Hampshire.
Hello.
Yes.
Good afternoon, Mr. Lumbauer.
Good afternoon.
Okay.
First, let me just briefly say that I'm a first-generation American, offspring of Ukrainian ancestry, so I know very well what it means to come here legally because that's what my parents did.
But I must say that I think that the Question of illegal, and I do mean illegal immigration from Mexico is a geopolitical necessity for the foreseeable future.
A geopolitical necessity.
They have both legal and illegal immigration from Mexico.
Correct.
What is the geopolitical necessity?
Well, I think that basically there is obviously a large low-income group in Mexico that is having enough gumption to do what they need to do to come here to this country illegally and risk what they risk because the economy down there can't support them.
And obviously Mexico wouldn't want to admit that, and we wouldn't want to do that either.
And if they don't have an outlet for those people to come here, those people would stay in that country and get discouraged.
And you know what happens when you have a large discouraged populace that doesn't think they have anywhere to go?
You revolt and overthrow the government.
Right.
And then you have another Hugo Chavez II down in Mexico.
And if you think that $3 a gallon gas is bad, wait until it gets to $5 or $6.
Okay.
You know, I thought this is where you were going to go.
I thought you were going to go to oil.
Well, that's just part of it.
I knew you were going to go to oil.
I knew you were going to go to oil.
And I had this sneaking suspicion that you were going to bring Hugo Chavez into this.
I don't know why.
It was just my instincts on parade here.
We have good instincts.
I had a feeling that you were going to do this.
Okay.
And in the context of we need oil.
This is what nobody wants to admit.
We're in this mode in this country right now where we're trying everything we can to get people to convince we need alternative energy, ethanol, all this.
But the bottom line is the dirty little secret is for all the pontificating on alternative energy, we would starve and die and cease to exist as a superpower if we lost access to oil.
And since we are not going to drill for our own oil, because we have a bunch of obstacles in the way to getting that done, we need cooperation from countries who are producing and drilling oil.
Mexico just discovered a huge field.
Yeah, and I believe they're our number two or number three supplier of crude oil.
Well, Canada's number one.
Saudi Arabia is number two.
But Mexico is high up on the list.
And then, of course, you got Hugo Chavez, which is his own geopolitical problem that we face.
Don't know what we're going to do about it.
But Hugo Chavez has financial interest in some of the refineries in this country.
So, look, and I say this again in the context of these are the things that Republican senators who are voting the way they're voting would never tell us.
I mean, that would doom their fate.
I would think that, you know, to have the president and all these political leaders do what they do with this bill and not, you know, quote-unquote listen to the populace and still try to put this through, there has to be something else going on that we are just not being told.
And that's the dirty.
You're exactly right.
And I mentioned this in the last hour.
Now, just so people don't misunderstand, you're looking at this in a way, way, way down the road issue, and you're looking at it without any apparent ⁇ wait, let me say ⁇ I'm asking you.
You're looking at this without really examining the impact on the United States of the arrival of this kind of influx.
It could be 45 to 50 million people.
No.
Your theory, I want to go back to your theory at first.
Your theory at first was we've got to get these people out of Mexico because it's the only way to keep Mexico stable.
Correct.
They've got to come here because it's the only place they can.
What if our attitude was like that about every country?
What if we said, okay, the starving and the dying and the oppressed and the unhappy and the near-riotous?
Not every country shares a common border with us.
And, you know, again, if there was a socialistic dictatorship in Mexico, I think it wouldn't just affect us.
It would affect the entire global marketplace.
Why let Mexico off the hook?
Why is it our responsibility to provide a haven in terms of you are you are supporting the concept of an illegal, a constant flow of illegals, which is, by the way, what the Senate wants.
You people need to understand this.
There's nothing in this bill that's going to stop the illegal flow, even if all these currently here are made legal, however that happens.
There's nothing that's going to stop.
They say there is, but there's no enforcement here.
I think eventually what the hope is, what will stop it, is that the Mexican economy over a period of a decade or so or so will advance to the point that, well, I mean, we have to have hope that it will, because otherwise you're going to have a problem.
Well, you know, you don't have no hope is the wrong thing to have.
You have to have a policy for economic revival.
Hope will not accomplish anything.
Hope may keep you alive a couple days if you're in the bottom of a well.
No, I'm saying the United States has to have the hope that Mexico, given time, will be able to improve their economic standards.
Well, if that's going to be our policy, if hope is our policy, then we're doomed.
Because hope never accomplished anything.
The only thing, look at NAFTA, GATT, that was supposed to revive the Mexican economy.
We've bailed Mexico out with loans from the Federal Reserve, $25 billion back in the mid-90s.
We've done everything they can.
There are structural problems inside Mexico that make it impractical.
They've had all kinds of time.
They share a common border with us.
We do trade with them.
But somehow, all of that wealth is not finding its way down to their ever-increasingly poor population.
So what's the answer?
I mean, something has to be done.
Well, let me ask you a question.
What's inherently wrong with revolution?
If the Mexican people feel like revolting, let them revolt against their own government and not destroy our country.
Well, that's the problem.
How did we come into existence?
We came into existence via revolution.
You've got this idea that we're so big and so compassionate that it's our responsibility to save Mexico.
No.
At what point does Mexico have to save itself?
Mexico's just dumping the educating people how to get through our border, how to get here.
I'm saying it is in our society's, I don't want to say best interest, but it's in our economic survival best interest in order to prevent that kind of turmoil in Mexico.
Like I said, if we have enough trouble dealing with little hiccups in our economy and not having everybody scream the sky is falling, the sky is falling, if you have some real problems on your back doorstep in the middle of the morning.
See, here's the problem with that.
The problem is that your attitude is one of the United States in a constant defensive mode without having any control over our own destiny.
If the United States' future could be imperiled by a revolt in Mexico, then we are in bigger trouble than many people could imagine.
You talk about a revolt in Mexico upsetting, let's say, their distribution of the oil that they drill and so forth that they produce.
Let me tell you something.
The people who sell oil are going to keep selling oil, and they're going to find whoever will buy it at whatever price the buyers will pay, whether there's a revolution or not, because oil is the fuel of the world economy.
It is the foundation of the world economy.
And whoever has it is going to find a way to sell it, whether their country's in revolt or not.
Now, if these revolutionaries get hold of the wells, that's another matter, but that's probably unlikely to happen.
They're trying to do that in Saudi Arabia.
That's one of the things al-Qaeda would love to do is get us.
What Saddam Hussein wanted to do was get us.
That's why he went into Kuwait.
He was making moves to get into Saudi Arabia to get hold of those oil wells.
I understand your concern here, and what you're trying to offer this audience is an explanation for why these guys voted the way they did and why they will never say any of this.
Because this would really doom them.
Because what they're saying, if you're close to being right, and I agree with you that there's something going on here that we don't know, arm twisting promises some real reason for this, because these guys are risking, many of these Republicans are risking their futures.
Some of their futures may literally be over now, political futures, because of this vote, depending on what they do on the closure vote on Thursday.
But when you call here and say that there has to be, for geopolitical reasons, an influx of legal and illegal immigration from Mexico, there is no justification for the numbers of illegals that will be made legal.
And when you have the, what are the, what do they call it, family unit aspect?
I forget what the actual name of this thing, the family unification, we could end up with 45 to 55 million here of low educated, uneducated, low skilled.
This is not, this is, we may be staving off whatever bad thing could happen in Mexico, but we're ruining ourselves and our economy at the same time.
And there's no justification for that.
Anyway, I appreciate the call.
We've got to take quick time out here.
We'll do that.
We'll continue right after this.
Stay with us.
Hi, welcome back.
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We go to Homedale, Idaho.
And Donna, Donna, nice to have you.
Thanks for the call.
Hi, this is Donna Schlank, and I wanted to comment on this man who came through the legal requirements to get here.
And he thinks that's good, but he wants us to have another policy for the Mexicans to come lawlessly.
I don't think he understands very well what a country of law means, obviously.
Now, what he was trying to say, and I'm glad he called, but what he was trying to say is he's trying to offer an explanation why this inexplicable vote in the Senate.
Why in the world?
None of this makes sense.
People destroying their careers potentially with ruining their chances for re-election, insulting us, telling us we don't know what we're talking about when we do, telling us we don't know what's in the bill.
He was trying to offer an explanation.
And an explanation that included as his answer, his theory, why these people in the Senate can't be honest with us about what they're really doing.
I understand that.
Okay, so he was simply saying, we got great big problems out there south of the border in our southern hemisphere, and a lot of our oils comes from there.
And we cannot, we can't stand a revolution in Mexico, and so we have to help alleviate Mexico's own tattering framework of social destruction and economic hardship and so forth.
I mean, he's just offering a theory as to why they're doing what they're doing.
Yeah, we've been there well, their program forever.
And as for you picking on them, for goodness sake, what other ethnic group has 15 million people floating around illegally in this country if it isn't Hispanics?
In our area, a spokesman for that group wrote a nasty letter to the editor and said, we are 10% of your population and we commit 90% of your crime, but it's all your fault.
She didn't quite get that explained satisfactorily to me, but.
Well, she said that proudly.
We're 10% of your population, so we commit 90% of your crime.
Boy, I can say it's the truth, too.
I know.
I know.
Look, I'm not agreeing with the guy.
Don't misunderstand.
I just, of course, we can't absorb that number of people and maintain the America that always has been.
And we can't compromise our standards for oil or we're not going to be America.
No, that's true.
Well, that was my, we don't have to compromise it.
I don't like this notion that we're on the defensive, that we find ourselves prisoner.
We're the lone superpower on this planet.
And yet, every time that there's something goes, we feed the world.
Morning update today, and I don't know if you heard it.
A morning update today was about giving USA.
Giving USA is a group that chronicles and records charitable giving.
Charitable giving last year was up through the roof.
It was higher even than in 2005 when we had Hurricane Katrina, that tsunami over there, or wherever it was, Hurricane Wilma.
The American people, despite their level of taxation, despite all the obstacles that they face, you know, having their paychecks work out, we are still the most charitable nation on earth.
And this doesn't count the foreign aid budget that our tax dollars also contribute to.
And yes, whenever anything goes wrong in the country, guess who gets to blame?
The United States, we're destroying the world.
We're stealing the resources.
We're polluting the planet, global warming.
And we act all defensive.
That's one of the things about this immigration debate that sort of irritates me.
We act like we owe these people who are here illegally an apology for daring to call it a.
We need to build the fence.
And here it's an insult to the engineers.
I bet they were mad when they heard him say that.
But he says that, well, they've got an engineering problem there in Smuggler's Gulch.
And it's been held up for two years, which is, I believe, about the time it took to build Boulder Dam.
Oh, Devin Fuel.
Look at, let me, this is something that really, really, and Rich Lowry made this point.
And this is something when I put this in perspective, this was frightening to me.
You go back to the Depression, the 1930s.
In San Francisco, we built the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge both at the same time, roughly on time in four years.
And the Golden Gate Bridge fascinates you.
The Bay Bridge is actually a more challenging engineering marvel.
But the Golden Gate fascinating.
I went out and got books about how they did this and videos.
I was fascinated by it.
The Hoover Dam was built in the Great Depression.
The Empire State Building went up in 431 days.
Five years after 9-11, we got a hole in the ground in New York City with Republican attacks, Democrat attacks on Rudy Giuliani as being lousy.
Nope, we're not builders anymore.
We have too much of a defensive posture.
We're worried that we don't offend people, that we're worried about our image in the world as being who cares.
It takes longer now to fill out the permits and more money than it would to build the project to get them filed and acted on.
Well, I'm going to tell you why.
I'm going to tell you why.
It's because you have a bunch of anti-capitalists that have grown very powerful in this country, and they're pushing for their own socialist dominance.
In fact, it's interesting to note, too, because in China, they're having trouble educating kids.
Marks is not interesting to the students.
The students are seeing this wild market development.
A place like Beijing and Shanghai, development's going crazy.
They're putting up buildings, people driving cars, and the students don't want to read Das Capital.
They want to read about capitalism because they want a part of it.
They want a piece of it.
And so the teachers are having big problems.
The Chinese government, you know, they've unleashed the free market there.
They've tried to control it like Gorbachev did with Glasnost and Perestroika.
But you can't once you unleash freedom to people who have had it denied them.
It's only a matter of time before they're going to get what they want.
There's another interesting aspect of this story, too, but I don't have time to get into it now.
I'll do this in the monologue section of the next hour.
Sit tight.
We'll be right back.
Okay, when I come back, I'm going to re-explain what happened today on this closure vote.
Basically, it was to allow debate on the amendments.
So all is not lost here, folks.
Lots still ahead.
Don't give up.
Don't go away.
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