All Episodes
July 9, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:15
July 9, 2007, Monday, Hour #2
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
And greeting once again to you, music lovers, thrill seekers, and conversationalists all across the fruited plane.
You are listening to the most listened to radio talk show in America.
You, according to research done by the Pew Center for People in the Press, are the most knowledgeable and informed audience in all of broadcast media, ladies and gentlemen.
The Rush Limbaugh program from the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies telephone number.
If you want to be on the program 800-282-2882, the email address is rush at EIBnet.com.
Our fourth iPhone winner announced today.
That's Jeffrey S. from Alamogordo, New Mexico.
Listens to us on KRSY 1230 a.m.
Jeffrey, congratulations.
See, what Jeffrey did out there, folks, Jeffrey went out there, went to rushlimbaugh.com and signed up for Rush in a Hurry, our little flash email that we send out within an hour of each day's program.
Recaps of what happened on the program, just a heads up for what's happening on the full website when it's updated a couple hours later, usually around 6 p.m.
And if you haven't signed up, it's free.
Just go to rushlimbaugh.com, register for Rush in a Hurry, and you'll be eligible for a drawing.
I've got four more iPhones, or six more iPhones to give away, one a day until they're all gone.
In addition to the iPhone, you get a check for almost $1,500 to pay for two years of service with AT ⁇ T, which is required to activate the phone.
And we don't want to give anything away that causes you to incur any expense.
You'll also get a one-year subscription to RushLimbaugh.com, a veritable conservative encyclopedia.
You have to see it to believe it.
It's beyond description.
Well, if I had 30 minutes here, I could describe it in full, but it's better if you just go there and take a look at it.
Also, a one-year subscription to the Limbaugh letter for every winner, as well as a $100 gift card from Bocajava.com, great coffee and cocoa and tea.
So don't waste any time.
If you haven't signed up, do it.
RushLimbaugh.com, find the Rush in a Hurry banner.
You can't miss it.
It costs nothing.
If you're already signed up for Rush in a Hurry, regardless how long ago you signed up, you are eligible.
Interesting move that John Dingell is going to make.
New York Times had the story on, what is this?
This is, hey, it was Saturday.
Counting on failure.
Energy chairman floats carbon tax.
Powerful House Democrats said Friday he planned to propose a steep new carbon tax that would raise the cost of burning oil, gas, and coal in a move that could shake up the political debate on global warming.
The proposal came from John Dingell, Michigan, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
It runs directly counter to the view of most Democrats that any tax on energy would be a politically disastrous approach to slowing global warming.
That's not what they're afraid of.
They don't want to propose any massive new tax increases right now before the election.
Raising taxes is specifically what global warming is all about.
That's how you and I are to be punished for the sins that we have committed in causing climate change and planetary destruction.
Now, Mr. Dingell suggested that his objective here was to show that the Americans are not willing to face the real cost of reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
His message appeared to be that Democrat leaders were setting unrealistic legislative goals.
He said, I sincerely doubt that the American people will be willing to pay what this is really going to cost them.
Dingell said that this committee is going to be drafting a broad bill on climate change this fall.
And I'm going to be introducing in the next little bit a carbon tax bill just to sort of see how people think about this.
When you see the criticism I get, I think you'll see the answer to your question.
Now, the idea behind a carbon tax always has been to provide an incentive to reduce the use of fossil fuels like oil and coal, which are loaded with carbon, and increase the use of cleaner renewable fuels like solar power, wind, and none of those are going to matter.
This is all bogus.
Now, there's a little something going on behind the scenes here that the New York Times doesn't reference.
But I, with my superior, highly trained broadcast specialist memory, will remind you that Nancy Pelosi created a special global warming committee and left Dingell off of it.
And Dingell was a little miffed about that.
We already have enough committees to deal with this.
We got my committee to deal with this.
We don't need it.
Pelosi did it for show and maybe to sort of ace Dingle out.
So there's a bunch of little things going on with this, but he's going to propose a massive carbon tax that nobody will support for the express purpose of proving it won't work.
I don't care what the New York Times says about Democrats don't think taxes are the way to deal with global warming.
That's just irresponsible.
That's journalistic malpractice.
Of course they do.
They can't wait to sunset the tax cuts that Bush inaugurated, and they can't wait to raise, which actually living these tax cuts sunset and die is the equivalent of a tax increase if they're not made permanent.
And they want to even raise the capital gains rate from 15 to 20, maybe even 25%.
But the Times nevertheless says here that most Democrats are staunchly opposed to Dingell's idea, saying that a tax on carbon, a carbon tax, fossil fuel tax, would raise the costs of travel, commuting, and heating and cooling homes.
It would be wildly unpopular at a time when voters are already angry about high energy costs.
Republicans, they said, would seize on any such proposal as poof that Democrats were bent on raising taxes and increasing the size of government, which they are.
It's in their DNA.
That's not even arguable.
It's undeniable.
Raise taxes?
That's what they live to do.
And not to raise revenue, but to control you, to control as much of your life as possible.
But look, here we've got this big global warming move going on out there, which I really do think is dying a slow death.
I think it may actually be blowing up.
Saturday night.
Let me check.
What was this?
I want to make sure I've got national numbers or just New York here.
Let me print something out here.
The numbers for NBC Saturday night prime time.
They had three hours of coverage of Live Earth.
We're dismal.
But I'm not.
This is so preliminary.
Let me use my highly trained broadcast specialist skills because I understand ratings numbers.
me.
All right.
Estimated 2.7 million.
This is Hollywood Reporter.
Estimated 2.7 million viewers for Live Earth on NBC Saturday night.
That is, folk, that translates to a rating here of 1.8 rating and a four share.
Fox won the night with a 3.06.
Now, these numbers are so low.
I don't know if these are total audience or numbers in the demographic.
But either way, either way, it's horrendous.
The demographics, 2554, that's the demographic they're shooting.
Well, maybe 1854, 1834.
But regardless, whether it's total audience or in the demo, it's pathetic.
They came in third place, rock concerts Saturday night, save the earth and all that.
So global warming is.
Well, I think we've helped beat it back.
We're not going to stop either.
But I don't want to wear you out on it, so we're going to be talking about it all the time.
But this line here, a tax, a carbon tax would raise the costs of travel, commuting.
Well, isn't that what all these wacko environmentalists have been demanding?
They want high fuel prices.
They should be happy the gas price is going back up.
They should be happy to support a carbon tax because they think we need to be driving less.
We need to be commuting less.
We all need to be riding around on these stupid, inadequate light rail systems.
Ugly little beasts.
Pointless little beasts.
We ought to be doing all this conservation.
We ought to be building windmills and putting solar panels on the roof.
Isn't that what they want us to do?
And all of a sudden, Dingle's going to raise a tax that would get it done, and Democrats are running for the hills on this.
I guarantee you this: if global warming had taken hold and it was something the American people that were steadfastly in support of, then this would be something everybody would not be afraid of.
But the fact that the Democrats realize that tax increase right now, a called for tax increase, would be, especially on energy, would not be politically opportune.
See, this is the kind of stuff, I guarantee you, somebody's going to take Dingle back behind a cloakroom door and go, whack, quack, whack.
John, John, John, this is the stuff we do two months after we win the White House.
We don't do this a year and a half before the election.
We do this boy on the White House.
John, what are you doing?
Well, you took my committee away from me.
It's fun to watch some of this.
The point is, the Democrats are not in all this steadfast unity at all.
Now, let's say that the Republicans were in the House.
Let's say that, take your pick.
Any Republican committee chairman, same committee, proposed the same thing.
Carbon tax increase just to show the American people are unwilling to do what it takes.
The headlines would not be counting on failure, Energy Tame and Chairman Float's carbon tax.
The headlines in the New York Times would be something along the lines of carbon tax proposed would devastate the elderly, especially in the Northeast.
Women and minorities would be hardest hit.
Nobody would be able to get to work.
No matter where they live, it would be horrible news.
This piece simply analyzes whether the timing's right.
But it's the Democrats proposing it.
Back in just a second.
Okay, let's go to the phones.
I really appreciate all of you being patient as we discussed what we've discussed today.
Everybody's held on here, and I appreciate it.
Starting in Black Forest, Colorado, this is Steve.
Hello, sir.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Well, I thank you, Russ.
Ditto's from beautiful Colorado.
Thank you.
Okay.
A few years back, you made the point that the Democrats seem to care more for their party than they do for the nation.
I think they're proving that all the time here.
Their constant massage of their party members' hatred of Bush by continuing to press charges after charges, you know, on some very silly things such as the firing of these attorneys.
Yeah.
They know the defense.
They know that the president is going to claim the constitutional separation of powers and the executive privileges that provides.
Yes, they do.
And they know that Bush will prevail.
So a question for you.
Do you think they're setting the stage for when their next president gets in there, that they can start pressing executive privilege on serious issues?
So they can start with the next.
Well, no.
You're confused.
Why would they want to harass a president of their own party?
No, what I mean by that is when the Republicans then press for issue or information from the president, and it's a Democrat president, then they can say, well, hey, it's executive privilege.
What we want to do is I don't think that's really it.
I think that executive privilege is what it is, and the Constitution is pretty clear on the separation of powers.
I think this is what I said at the beginning of the program and talking about it.
I think this is an attempt to destroy this presidency, this particular individual presidency, by paralysis, and to continue to create, with the help of the drive-by media, which will report this, that the Bush administration is constantly under siege because it's corrupt, that it is engaged in all kinds of illegal, under-the-table acts, and that these vigilant Democrats are doing everything they can to find out what it is so the American people can learn how corrupt this administration has been.
They are doing this so that the White House will have to respond to all this stuff legally.
And by the way, that's what the White House ought to, the White House, I'm fairly confident I know what they're going to do here because it's not hard to figure out.
You can answer all this with either an utter denial and start a process, a legal process, just flood them with paper, flood them with motions.
You only got a year and a half to kill here.
Democrats don't expect to get anything.
That's not the point.
The point is to cause paralysis and to create the impression that this is a corrupt administration trying to hide everything that it's doing, banking on the fact the American public is not educated sufficiently enough to understand the separation of powers already.
There's a story in the LA Times about all this today that guess who is the next Nixon?
Cheney.
Cheney's Richard Nixon.
He's got all these secret things going on.
He's doing all these things under the table.
His Energy Commission.
He's not letting anybody know what's going on.
Blah, It's all part of the old playbook.
They look backwards.
They don't look forward.
They're trying to make Watergate out of this administration.
They're trying to make Vietnam out of the Iraq War.
Those were their two big claims to fame.
And don't forget they lost in a landslide in 1972 after they thought they'd done such great work in stopping the war in Vietnam and this kind of thing.
But no, they're not setting themselves up here for to insulate their next president, be it Hillary or not, from charges of exec, or demands for documents that will lead to claims of executive privilege because it is what it is.
I mean, there are certain things that members of Congress are not entitled to.
Oversight only goes so far.
And some of these things will obviously be litigated.
There might be a little tinge of trying to insulate another future Democrat president from similar Republican action.
But I think this is all just, it's fundraising.
It's trying to keep their base in line.
Remember now, the Democrats have really let their base down.
Their base expected to be out of Iraq.
Look at this.
Cindy Sheehan is demanding.
Grab Soundbite.
I think it's 18, the Cindy Sheehan bite.
I remember the number right.
Yes.
Grab Soundbite 18.
This is Cindy Sheehan phone interview on Fox News yesterday.
This is just a portion of what she said.
I'm going to make a formal announcement on Tuesday that if Nancy Pelosi doesn't put impeachment on the table, doesn't support the impeachment resolution that's already on the table against Dick Cheney, and then introduce articles of impeachment against President Bush, then I will run against her for her seat in San Francisco.
Now, you know, you can laugh about this.
What it means is the Democrat base is livid because they wanted the troops out.
They wanted a rock over.
They wanted Bush summarily defeated on this whole thing.
That's, and, you know, the Democrats have not come through on that, and that's what those kooks in their base thought that the election results of November meant.
So what's happening, the Democrats will be doing this anyway because they signaled it.
This is 300 investigations they've launched in 100 days.
This is harassment.
It is paralysis.
But it's also an attempt to keep their base in line, keep their base happy, because it's the closest they can get to cementing Bush hatred, Bush derangement syndrome, while failing in their primary mission to get the troops out of Iraq.
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Chuck, thank you for waiting, sir.
You are on the EIB network.
Hi, Rush.
Hey.
Hey, I have a question concerning your power.
You are considered the most powerful man in the United States.
No, no, no.
I'm a man running the country.
There are distinctions.
Well, as one of your minions, I consider you the most powerful man.
I appreciate that.
Thank you very, very much.
Now, the question is, back after the election, I recall strongly people like Chris Matthews and other people declaring you irrelevant since we lost power as conservatives.
Now, did you have the power then and use it then, or did you lose the power and regain it?
Can you clarify this for me?
Well, the power flows and fluctuates.
I think I actually lost it, but it was never either irrelevant.
These are an interesting cycle that starts.
Go back to 88 when I started this program.
We started in August of 88, and that was right in the midst of the Dukakis George Bush 41 campaign.
And we were very vocal in that.
A few stations, 56 to 100 or so.
And Bush won.
And, of course, the Rush critics said, well, that's it for Limbaugh.
What's he going to have to talk about now?
He's side one.
He can't criticize anybody.
It's over.
Then the next four years, we went from the 56 to over 500 radio stations with a Republican president, White House.
So then the campaign in 92 comes up, and Bush loses, and Clinton wins.
That's it for Limbaugh.
His side's lost.
He's discredited.
Things he stood for.
He didn't have the power to move the electorate, blah, blah.
Then after eight years of Clinton, the same press said that it was the Clinton administration that made me who I am, even though I had 90% of the radio stations carrying the program before he was inaugurated.
Then when Bush won, it's the same old thing.
Well, that's it for Limbaugh because side won was a never-ending cycle.
When the Republicans lost the election in November, Limbaugh's irrelevant.
See, we can win elections here.
What they forget to analyze are the specifics that go along with it.
It was pretty difficult.
You know, I'm not running for office.
And if you've got a bunch of people who are who don't make it look like they care to win, all the support for them in the world is going to sound hollow.
And if you have guys who are running for re-election who have not governed as they said they would, then you're going to have defections.
Voters are smart.
Voters, especially active, engaged listeners such as our members of this audience, know full well what happens after they elect somebody to office.
And if they fail and they're unhappy with them and they're unsatisfied with their campaign for re-election, then out they go.
And that's what happened in November.
But anyway, the immigration debate, I'm now running the country, so all that talk about irrelevancy was irrelevant anyway.
And as usual, ladies and gentlemen, utilizing talent on loan from God.
Hi, presidential politics.
Fascinating story here.
Melinda Henneberger.
Now, I think, I'm not sure, but I think Melinda Henneberger used to write for Newsweek.
She's now at slate.com does columns and so forth.
She's got a story in Dallas, the Dallas Morning News from Sunday, a column, actually.
More women feeling skeptical about Hillary Clinton's authenticity, though they wish they weren't.
The gals are conflicted out there about Hillary.
They really don't like her, but it's just not right to say so or to think so.
Let me read you some excerpts of this.
The most appealing thing about Hillary Rodham Clinton has always been her enemies, who often seem not in their right minds, screaming that she is a murderer and calling her names like Her Thinness.
Her enemies make you want to like her.
Yet in, have you ever heard of that her thinness?
I've never heard of that term for Hillary.
And I don't know who's accusing her of murdering anybody.
Anyway, yet in interviews across the country with women of all ages, races, income brackets, and points of view, one of the rare patches of common ground was skepticism about the first female presidential contender with a serious shot at it.
Over 18 months, I traveled to 20 states listening to women speak at length about what they care about, what drives them crazy as they look toward the presidential election in 08.
I ought to like her, many of the strongest Democrats among them said, but on no other matter did left, right, and center converge as on the view best summed up as anybody but Hillary, to the point that I began to dread the mention of her name because it meant we would probably not get around to talking about anything else that day.
All of which runs contrary to the accepted narrative of this election cycle, which is that it's women who are leading the charge for Mrs. Clinton's candidacy.
Polling, which is at this point still mainly measures name ID, certainly shows a far more mixed picture for Mrs. Clinton where female voters are concerned.
This is no missed.
Look at the female candidate in France.
Segaleen, it's not an automatic, this is one of these characterizations that drive-by media always thinks that women are monolithic and that they're all feminist related and feminist-oriented.
It's like I was saying last week, the funniest thing I've seen in a long time, a story, a feature on C-SPAN.
With 20 women in the audience, the head of Planned Parenthood was conducting the seminar.
20 people.
The history of the women's movement.
20 people.
How did I get covered?
20 people.
Yet the C-SPAN cameras were there as though this was representative of female group thought.
If I were a woman, this whole notion that you all think alike and you're all going to support a candidate just cause she's a woman, that's a myth.
That's something to drive-bys hope for.
That's something that Democrats hope for, but they look at everybody as sheep without minds of their own.
If Mrs. Clinton won the nomination, however, polls suggest she'd have trouble winning over the independent female voters any Democrat needs to win the presidency.
The open-ended interviews I did were just the opposite of a poll.
I asked very few specific questions in sessions that typically went on for hours.
So the no vote was almost certainly overrepresented, yet the least that can be said is that Mrs. Clinton's negatives are both deep and diffuse.
And I'm not sure if polling can be expected to capture the guilt that many women expressed over their lack of enthusiasm for her.
Oh no, we have tapped into something new, a new malady in America, white gal guilt.
Oh no, the guilt of white women who will feel guilty because they don't want to support Hillary, who forget why.
I mean, reasons would be abundant.
At this point, writes Ms. Hannibur, it'd be hard to say whether it's conservatives or liberals who mind her more, and quotes a Washington Post story on the great strides she supposedly made with opponents of the war.
It can't be a good sign for her candidacy, though.
Some of these modest boo.
Oh, let me read this.
This is key.
Washington Post story.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton drew only modest booze at a gathering of liberal activists yesterday, a sign of how well her changing position on Iraq is playing in the anti-war wing of the party.
Now, how absurd.
She got booed, but it was not as often as the previous time, so it's a sign of success how well her changing position on Iraq is playing.
It can't be a good sign, writes Ms. Henneberger, for her candidacy, though, that some of these modest booze are coming from women who ought to be among her biggest fans.
Why should women automatically be among Hillary's biggest fans?
Why?
If I don't know the person, I always vote for the woman in any given race, said Paula Hughes, a Boston Democrat, whose three over the moon for Obama daughters, 16, 20, and 22, helped convince her to support him.
So here's a woman who always votes for the woman who's going to vote for Obama.
Hillary stands on the war, I find, troubling, and as much as I love the idea of Clinton squared, I can't trust her, even though I don't like myself for that.
God, women are wringing their hands over their white gal guilt over not liking Hillary.
What turns me off about Hillary is I don't feel the realness from her.
Excuse me, that's how Kristen Aston, a 30-something real estate agent in Florida, put it.
Well, for the record, I heard very few complaints about Mrs. Clinton's decision to stay in her marriage.
To the extent that her husband is a factor, he seems to be an asset.
Many women, centrists in particular, said they wish they could vote for him a third time.
Nor did gender seem to be an obstacle, as on the contrary, women across the political spectrum declared themselves beyond ready for a woman in the White House.
Instead, it was the issue of authenticity that they returned to again and again with Mrs. Clinton.
Well, I think the golden nugget in that last paragraph is Clinton seems to be an asset.
Many women said they wish they could vote for him a third time, and she's going to get a lot of votes because of that.
She's going to get a lot of votes from a lot of people, men, women, doesn't matter, who simply going to salivate over the fact that Slick Willie's back in the White House again.
That'll be enough, folks.
It will.
Kelly in Columbus, Georgia, you're next.
I'm glad you waited.
Megadittos, Rush.
Thank you.
Christian Hayseed Hick with a gun rack in the back of his truck.
Rush, last week on the 4th of July, I was watching the History Channel, and they had these documentaries about the Founding Fathers.
Very interesting.
But I was watching it, and I became very disconcerted because I realized there is nobody in today's government, especially on our side of the aisle, that we can emulate the way we do the Founding Fathers.
I mean, you yourself tell us, if you want to know what's happening in government today, follow the money.
Is that what these people did?
Did they follow the money, or did they do what they think is right?
Help me out.
You talk about the founders?
Yes, sir.
Oh, well, it depends.
I mean, some of them gave up everything to sign the Declaration of Independence, but they were wealthy.
A lot of the founders are very wealthy men.
That's always true.
But look, your main point is the founders, by the way, are always going to have mythological characteristics about them.
Any great human being in the past is always going to be amplified and become mythological.
They put their pants on one leg at a time, just like Hillary does.
But they were truly great, and they risked everything, and they stood fast.
And they, by the way, in many cases, went against public opinion.
There weren't really public opinion polls, but there were several quote-unquote Americans who don't want the fight for independence.
There's always going to be a contingent of anti-war that don't want the violence and so forth and so on.
The more important thing is, where are today's statesmen on either side of the aisle?
That depends on how you define statesmen, but I know what you mean.
I mean, I was a child of Reagan.
He was the first president that I really remember, you know, at the last of the Cold War there back in the 80s.
He was the first president I ever saw in person.
And I just thought the man walked on water.
And my parents did, too.
And now I've even seen my parents in their golden years turn against the Republican Party and for what we stand for.
And it really makes for some difficult Thanksgiving dinners, if you know what I mean, because I still stick with them.
Yeah, don't you hate when Thanksgiving gets ruined with arguments with your family about things?
That never happens other than Thanksgiving and Christmas either.
The sad fact today, folks, is that the real statesmen in our society are on talk radio.
They're not, we don't have to get votes.
We don't have to be worried about fundraising.
There's so much out there.
I'm not making excuses for them.
But it is, you know, I think, I had to best state this.
It's not really a lack of statesmanship that you're noticing.
If we had a number of true blue, really dedicated, well-spoken, articulate conservatives who were making the case for it every day and doing it from a position of offense and strength and courage, conviction, and optimism, then you'd think you'd found a statesman.
And that's why you think there's a statesman-like void is because you don't hear the things that you believe in your heart to be true, the things that you define your existence.
You don't hear them replicated.
You don't hear them being spoken in the mouths of leaders.
What you see are people that are surrendering and running for the tallgrass, trying to avoid controversy for whatever reason, the next election, bad press coverage, or what have you.
In that sense, yeah, they're not statesmen.
But I'm going to be interviewing a guy after the program today, Jeff Sessions, senator from Alabama, for the next issue of the Limbaugh Letter.
There's a statesman.
This guy was tough as nails, unbending, unwavering, and carrying the water in the U.S. Senate against the immigration bill.
So in that instance, he's a hero.
He's a true statesman.
He doesn't get a lot of national press precisely because of the positions he takes.
He gets ridiculed and so, but it didn't cause him to back down.
And he didn't take any of the guff that he was given and others in the Republican Party were given during the debate.
He stood up for the American people when they were attacked and insulted as not having read the bill or being racist or bigots or what have you.
Now, one of the reasons Jeff Sessions was nominated for a federal judgeship, I think, if I'm wrong about this, I'll correct it.
I think it was during the Reagan years.
And the Democrats destroyed him.
And they did it on the basis as a typical Southern segregationist when it was the Democrats that were all that, but they destroyed his nomination.
He did not get confirmed to the federal judiciary.
So he went around them and ran for the U.S. Senate.
And now he's on the Judiciary Committee.
And he's a strong voice there.
Need more of him.
Quick timeout.
Thanks for the call out there, Kelly.
Sit tight, folks.
Be right back.
All right.
Presidential politics.
We move on.
This is from the Politico.
Edwards, the brick girl, to announce a poverty tour.
John Edwards plans to announce today he'll take a break from fundraising and campaigning in early voting states next week for a three-day, eight-state, 12-city Road to One America tour aimed at calling attention to poverty in the deep south, the Mississippi Delta, Appalachia, and the Rust Belt.
The campaign points out that none of the states he'll visit has an early 2008 primary and says Edwards will not be doing rallies.
Instead, TV viewers will see Edwards in coal country, Edwards in a factory, Edwards on a farm, Edwards in a struggling neighborhood, Edwards in a screw, Edwards in a health care clinic.
It's an effort to show the rest of the country how 37 million Americans live their lives in poverty every single day instead of brick girl aid.
It's not only their workplaces, it's their homes and the places they get health care.
Now, this swing is reminiscent of John F. Kennedy's repeated coal country campaigning before the West Virginia primary of 1960.
His overwhelming victory ended Catholicism as an issue in the campaign and brought national attention to Appalachian poverty.
28 years later, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis donned a hard hat and overalls for an hour-long tour of a West Virginia coal mine.
The former U.S. Senator from North Carolina has a plan for ending poverty in America within a generation that includes an increase in the minimum wage, investments in rural community colleges, creation of 1 million short-term stepping stone jobs, and a program to encourage responsible fatherhood and fight teen pregnancy.
Now, next Sunday, July 15th, he's going to start all this with a walking tour of the lower 9th ward in New Orleans.
Three-day tour will officially begin the next day in New Orleans with a town hall in conjunction with Good Morning America, where he'll kick off the day's theme, rewarding work and ending poverty in America.
The day's theme of rewarding work and ending poverty in America?
Ladies and gentlemen, I sit here dazzled, stunned, speechless, when I realize the brilliance of this little man, John Edwards.
He comes up with solutions to problems.
He doesn't just complain.
And he comes up with solutions to problems that nobody has ever thought of.
Why has nobody thought of rewarding work before?
It's so simple.
What could we reward work with?
What?
Good idea, Mr. Excellent.
Paycheck, money.
Exactly.
We can reward work with a check for every week work that we could call a paycheck.
Yes.
Wow.
Lady, I'll tell you what, I have to, well, you could get you one of these things if Edwards succeeds in this because he's going to finally reward work.
We will make, this is, as I say, I mean, it's dazzlingly, it's blindingly brilliant.
We will make the employer pay the worker a paycheck.
Everybody who works will be rewarded for it instead of taken advantage of and ignored and fired, laughed at, and made fun of.
So, I mean, we need to dispense with all this campaigning, and we need to make this man president right now so he can propose this legislation.
No debate in Congress.
This is so brilliant.
Just have him sign the law.
We need paychecks.
We need to reward work.
What a 231-year-old country, and it's taken all of that time.
You might be able, with a paycheck, folks, you could afford a haircut with a paycheck.
You could afford, well, not a 28,000 square foot mansion that you had to clear-cut a gazillion trees to build, but you could buy a tent.
Chuck Hagel was on NBC yesterday and says he's not going to run as an independent.
No plans to run as an independent.
Who cares?
I mean, I mean, is anybody out there really going, or is anybody going, oh, no, no, Zayn isn't so brute?
No, it's good.
Well, we have an hour of busy broadcast excellence yet to go, folks.
We'll get to it right after this.
Export Selection