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July 20, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:05
July 20, 2007, Friday, Hour #2
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Welcome back to the Rush Limbaugh Program here at the EIB Network.
Roger Hedgecock in for Rush.
Rush back on Monday, of course.
You may know and have been following, in case not you need to know, about the Homeland Security bill providing for the Homeland Security Department and all of its needs through the coming fiscal year.
Wending its way through Congress in the House, it picked up an amendment by Congressman Pete King that would have provided protection from being sued if you are reporting suspicious behavior.
You remember the six flying imams who praised bin Laden, kind of mimicked the 9-11 behavior, all went to the bathroom at the same time, all this stuff on the airplane.
People in the airplane got a little concerned.
They reported the behavior.
The imams were asked to leave the plane.
It was all a staged deal.
They've had a big press conference.
Now they have a big lawsuit.
They're actually suing the people on the plane who complained about their behavior after the government asked people to report suspicious behavior.
So Congressman King puts in this amendment saying there should be immunity from any liability, any claim of liability.
It should be immunity for anybody who's reporting suspicious behavior.
It's the behavior we want to get after.
It's nothing to do with racism or anything else.
The Imams, of course, claiming.
This got to the United States Senate, the most despised public agency in the United States at this moment.
And according to the New York Times, by the way, this morning's article about Harry Reid is just phenomenal reading.
The Senate today apparently stripped out the King Amendment, the John Doe Amendment, they call it, yesterday.
It fell three votes short of the necessary 60 votes to close the debate and to include it in the Homeland Security bill.
Let me just go through some names.
Barack Obama was not there, did not vote.
Sam Brownback was not there and did not vote.
Dianne Feinstein was not there and did not vote.
Now, she's not even running for president, nor, well, probably wasn't there because there wasn't a contract up for one of the companies owned by her husband.
All of the Republicans voted for the amendment, except Mr. Brownback, who was not there.
Hillary Clinton did vote for it.
A lot of Democrats did, God bless them.
Lieberman, Landreau, Nelson, Schumer, Conrad, Dorgan.
39 Democrats said no.
Here's the pressure to kill this bill.
And ladies and gentlemen, this cancer on our body politic needs to be cut out soon because it's becoming intolerable in so many ways now that it's becoming public knowledge.
The trial lawyers wanted to kill this bill because, of course, they make their living suing.
They don't care who they are suing.
They don't care who they're suing for.
They sue.
And they have a lot of money.
And they've contributed a lot of money to politicians.
Therefore, they have a lot of clout.
Therefore, suing has become a part of daily life of too many Americans.
Trial lawyers.
You know what their fear was?
They actually said this.
That this measure would set the precedent for tort reform.
It would give tort reform some momentum.
We can't have tort reform.
We can't have a reasonable restriction on our ability to sue anybody we want to under any circumstances in any way, shape, or form on behalf of anybody we want who has money.
We can't be restricted.
We're trial lawyers.
Unbelievable.
And of course, of course, this is predictable as can be, Opposed by the ACLU and opposed by the Council on American Islamic Relations care.
So, ladies and gentlemen, it's gone.
We are now looking, however, since the King Amendment is in the House version of this Homeland Security bill, it is not in the Senate version.
They therefore have to go to a committee composed of senators and members of the House to thrash out the differences to try to come up with a bill that will pass both houses.
This is the way the legislative process works.
So, if you are interested in this, if you would like to see an America in which the front line of defense against terrorism is, well, us, without fear of being sued, then you've got to get to your local congressman and senator to make sure that they know that the next time the flying imams happen, we don't have passengers going, gee, I don't know whether I want to get involved.
I certainly don't want to get sued.
No, I'd rather crash and be killed into the Pentagon than be sued.
So we're not going to put that inhibition on the American people.
There's got to be an immunity from liability from this nonsense of these terrorists manipulating our system and the trial lawyers, their willing accomplices.
So the King Amendment, ladies and gentlemen, if you will.
It seems to me too often, and Mike, I think you have this, it seems to me too often, we take up the theme in the drive-by media that if only we talked to the terrorists, everything would be all right.
If only we just talked to the terrorists.
Here's a little parody Rush put together on this theme a while back.
All right.
We're back.
Roger Hedgecock in for Rush Limbaugh.
Rush back on Monday.
Update now on the Haditha Marines situation.
You will recall, particularly if you are a reader of Time magazine, that Time magazine had Mr. McGurk of Time Magazine, and they had to apologize later on, had relied on terrorists in Iraq, people who were associated with the insurgency,
and their videotape to make the allegation that Marines had slaughtered civilians in this town of Haditha.
This massacre, and that's the way they titled it in the Time Report, was a hoax, ladies and gentlemen.
The video was taken and selectively edited by the insurgents to make it appear that what the Marines were doing were slaughtering innocent civilians, men, women, and children.
Marines have, combat Marines, have been taken out of combat and put on trial, in some cases for their lives, as a result of this hoax.
We continue to get from the drive-bys the idea that, for example, as this white truck drives up to the site of this ambush, and the drive-bys admit that the Marines were ambushed.
There was an IED explosion.
A Marine died.
There was AK-47 fire from the village huts nearby.
There was a response by the Marines.
All of that is admitted.
This white truck comes up, four guys in it, young men, Iraqis, and they're shot and killed after they don't stop and so forth.
So out of all of this, and the civilians who died, well, the civilians who died in those houses, it turns out, were human shields.
Some of them weren't civilians.
They were, in fact, insurgents.
The Marines conducted themselves, as they must in this atmosphere, with as much circumspection as possible when you're under fire and you're returning fire, and you're going house to house, door to door, room to room in situations where you could be killed instantly, and many have been, as we know, because every single one of them is on the front page of every paper in the country.
So we know that.
They know it too.
They take precautions, they throw grenades, they shoot people who are making threatening gestures.
This is a, you know, this is what the war is.
Similar to the Bush administration persecution of Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compeon, the prosecution of these Marines is an unforgivable step in the pursuit of this war.
The Border Patrol agents shot an illegal alien drug smuggler.
His van full of marijuana, 790 pounds, was found.
And they are in jail, and he's free, and he's suing the U.S. government.
You and I. Wants millions of dollars.
That's the Bush administration on the border.
The Bush administration and the Marine commanders, with regard to this Haditha situation, this is a disgrace.
These charges must be dropped.
These Marines are heroes.
These Marines are our combat heroes, serving this country and serving the Iraqis, rooting out this insurgency and paving the way for a peaceful Iraq that will be a partner with us instead of a breeding ground of more terrorism.
Ladies and gentlemen, it's really up to you.
And it's up to the Marine commanders and the Commandant of the Marines and all these people up the line of command who want to be politically correct, who get this political pressure.
No, your job, since you're sitting at a big fat desk and you're not out there in the heat, and you're not out there being fired on, your job is to protect those who are.
That's my take.
What's yours?
1-800-282-2882.
I'm Roger Hetzback back after this.
See, this Haditha thing was actually the beginning of another page of the playbook from Vietnam, the Milai Massacre playbook, in which the troops would come home labeled baby killers.
The Democrats have been wanting to do this now all along and have been attempting to seize upon every single circumstance they can in order to, and the military and the Bush administration's unfortunately playing right into their hands to be able to put this label on our troops as they did to returning troops from Vietnam.
In fact, our old friend, John Murthy, Democrat Pennsylvania, jumped the gun on this.
And when the charges were trumpeted in Time magazine, charges which Time magazine later had to retract and apologize for, John Murthy jumped on and did call them killers.
Mr. Murtha has not yet apologized, and he should.
And if he hasn't embarrassed himself enough already on this subject, I'm reading Roll Call about Roll Call magazine about, this is what, June 25, about the earmarks.
Murtha is the king of earmarks.
Here's their quote.
This is from Roll Call, June 25.
Quote: Murthy has obtained millions of dollars in earmarks for firms in his district, many of them clients of PMA and KSA, both run by former Murthy staff.
KSA employed Murtha's brother, Kit Murtha.
But in many cases, the money is for startups that essentially would not be in business were it not for Murthy's largesse.
Some of the firms also are simply storefront offices of companies that do most of their work elsewhere.
But, says Roll Call, there's more to the story than even that.
KSA's client list consists largely of small businesses that are either based in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, or have opened offices in Johnstown, plus a significant smattering of companies that no longer exist or may never have existed at all.
Earmarks of your money are being put into spending bills by Mr. Murtha for companies that do not exist.
I'm Roger Hedgecock in for Rush 1-800-282-2882.
This extra credit for the day, if you can identify the source of this quote, hint it is not a modern source.
Quote: The Democratic Party is united in but one thing, and that is in getting control of the government in all its branches.
Unquote.
Let's go to Chuck in Marietta, Georgia, next on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi, Chuck.
Yeah, hi, Roger.
Yeah, go ahead.
God bless you for telling the truth to the American people.
It's so much appreciated.
Thank you.
I just don't understand the rancor over why we can't disclose the possibility of a threat that we see here in the United States.
There is already in place, and I'm a member of this, it's called a National Highway Watch Program.
Under the auspices of the Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, the American Trucking Association has a certifiable program that, in fact, I took this online and received some hard copy materials to recognize potential terrorist threats on the highways, bridges, possibly in the warehouse area, docks,
and things like that, to be alert, and then how to report these to a national hotline.
That's correct.
That's already in place.
And I think that they're just not paying attention to it.
They don't want people to know this.
And it's all too simple, all too patriotic that we participate in such a program.
Well, and the Bush administration has moved forward on all those kinds of programs.
It's absolutely correct.
They've been training local law enforcement.
This has been the theme all the way along to encourage people to report suspicious behavior.
This is the signs up in various bus stations, train stations, airports, and so forth to that effect.
And now comes Congress saying, yeah, but, you know, you could be sued, and lawyers give us a lot of money, so you're just going to have to roll with it.
Well, I don't subscribe to that.
I'm not a trucker.
I happen to, for my work, I happen to travel all over the Southeast, and I keep my card in front of me at all times in case I see a hazard where I could help or report something suspicious.
Thank God I haven't had to do that.
Yeah.
No, I absolutely agree with that.
Chuck, thanks for the call.
We have, let's get one more call in here.
Harry in Rockville, Maryland.
Harry, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh Program.
Hi.
Good morning.
Or good afternoon, I should say.
Go ahead.
I flew out of Dulles Airport on September 11th, 2001.
I got a 7.30 a.m. flight going to Atlanta, and I got there.
There were three guys on the midfield shuttle with me that I am very suspicious were three of the five hijackers that took the American Airlines plane into the Pentagon.
And I stood there once I got off the shuttle, thinking to myself for 3 minutes or so, should I go say something?
I didn't.
And with the situation as it was that day at that time, I could have probably been sued for Harrison because nothing had happened yet.
That's exactly right.
What a great call.
And in fact, Harry, I'm sorry.
I think I hear in your voice a little bit of regret that you didn't say something.
I'm sleeping well.
I spent 12 years working for the government and understand what the situation is about saying things and not saying things.
But I would have liked to say something looking back on it.
Given what happened.
Yeah.
Given what happened.
I ended up back by Gray Puppy the next day.
Yeah.
Boy.
And look, coming back to what we came back to, the world upside down.
Well, all right, Harry, thanks for the call.
Look, this is exactly right, ladies and gentlemen.
I mean, common sense is, and Congressman King has this exactly right.
Common sense is that we rely on ourselves as the first line of defense against terrorists infiltrating and doing the damage we know they want to do.
That is common sense.
It's the Bush administration policy.
It's been implemented in a thousand different ways throughout our society and generally in the general public as well.
We know it to be the case.
Do not hesitate if you see behavior that reminds you of the terrorist incidents that you've been reading about and hearing about, then do not hesitate to report it.
The Congress and the Democrats that control that Congress, however, want you to be liable to a claim that you owe the Imam some money because you just shouldn't have done that.
And that's what we've got to get in that Homeland Security bill, is an immunity from any kind of claim of liability so that we can go forward and defend ourselves.
The ACLU and the Democrats, the trial lawyers, don't want you to have that immunity.
Now you know what side you're on.
Roger Hedgecock in for Rush, back after this.
Welcome back to the Rush Limbaugh Program here on the EIB Network.
Roger Hedgecock in for Rush and all the information, of course, at rushlimbaugh.com.
Your calls at 1-800-282-2882.
Now, you know, let me do a couple of things on the presidential race.
You know that there's been a great deal of silly comment, I think, personal opinion, about, you know, is Hillary campaigning too much like a man?
I can't even get in.
These discussions on left versus left, I'm kind of left out.
I don't understand where they're even coming from.
But I do understand something about Hillary Clinton, whom I have met, and I have watched in person as well as obviously from afar.
This from the WashingtonPost.com headline, Hillary Clinton's tentative dip into new neckline territory.
Now, as off-putting a word picture as this might be, let me plunge fearlessly into this story.
Quote, there was cleavage on display Wednesday afternoon on C-SPAN 2.
It belonged to Senator Hillary Clinton.
She was talking on the Senate floor about the burdensome cost of higher education.
She was wearing a rose-colored blazer over a black top.
The neckline sat low on her chest and had a subtle V shape.
The cleavage registered after only a quick glance.
No scrunch-face scrutiny was necessary.
There wasn't an unseemly amount of cleavage showing, but there it was, undeniable.
Now, again, this is a Washington Post.
This is a woman writer.
The, well, let me just do the second paragraph, then we'll get into what this means because it's hilarious.
It was startling, she writes, to see that small acknowledgement of sexuality and femininity peeking out of the conservative, aesthetically speaking, environment of Congress.
After all, it wasn't until the early 90s that women were even allowed to wear pants on the Senate floor.
It was even more surprising to note that it was coming from Clinton, someone who has been so publicly ambivalent about style, image, and the burdens of both.
This, ladies and gentlemen, I'm sorry, Robin Given, Washington Post staff writer, you so missed this point.
Over the last couple of days, there's been this rising weapon being used against Hillary Clinton by left of her about her being too much like a man, not sensitive enough, not running like a woman.
Is she really the woman candidate?
This has been coming, by the way, from some of the wives of the other Democratic nominee hopefuls and Mrs. Edwards and so forth.
So this is Hillary Clinton's obvious response to them.
I am a woman.
I am undeniably a woman.
So don't even go there.
So again, I know this is left versus left, and so the rest of us are sitting around scratching our heads going, what?
But that is the message.
That is the level this campaign on the left is on.
It is all about image.
Hillary Clinton's not publicly ambivalent about style, image, and the burdens of both.
Those things are manipulated on a daily basis because it is much of what she has going for her.
So yesterday it was necessary to show cleavage.
By the way, speaking of Mrs. Edwards, she has come out swinging, as we know, on a couple of different things, and her husband as well.
Now a new theme for the Democrats in their race for the White House, and that is poverty.
Poverty is their new theme.
It's a theme that I think is going to.
Mr. Edwards, and again, he's a trial lawyer, so having been trained to argue all sides of the issue with equal intensity and conviction as a lawyer, and I am a recovering lawyer.
I went through that process myself.
I understand the process.
I know what he is capable of doing.
So every time I listen to him, I know perfectly well that he could take the opposite side and be just as sincere and earnest as he is saying what he's saying.
But the other day, I guess this is, again, Rush just nails these.
Here's a parody of Mr. Edwards and the poverty tour.
And we're back.
I have a hard time.
You know, as much as I had a hard time on the cleavage discussion, I have a harder time understanding, again, because I come at these things with logic and reason and a conservative point of view, limited government, the Constitution, and all of that.
Sometimes the debates among the Democrat candidates for president get a little weird.
For example, a couple of months ago, it was Barack Obama who was urging the United States to get involved in stopping the slaughter in Darfur, in Darfur, where the Arab-speaking, the Arab-speaking Muslim government is killing non-Arab-speaking Muslims.
And Barack Obama felt we ought to intervene there, if anywhere, that this was a thing the United Nations, we ought to support getting in there, helping, saving.
Today, in New Hampshire, today, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama, I'm quoting now from the Associated Press account, said Thursday, the United States cannot, I guess this is yesterday when he said it, today's the report.
The United States cannot, he said, use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn't a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.
This is a preemptive strike against people like me, obviously pointing out if you abandon, along with, by the way, the Baghdad bureau chief of the New York Times, Mr. Burns, who pointed out on Charlie Rose's program, if we get out of there, there is an inevitable bloodbath that will follow.
Much as a bloodbath of monumental proportions, millions of people died after we abruptly left and abandoned Southeast Asia.
Barack Obama's response to that is, preventing a genocide is not a good enough reason.
Preventing a genocide is not a good enough reason.
And he turns it around.
He turns it around on this argument about Darfur.
He uses the Congo, but it's the same argument.
He says, and this is a quote: Look, if that's the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument, you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now, where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife, which we haven't done.
We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven't done.
Those of us who care about Darfur don't think it would be a good idea.
So I think Barack Obama perfectly exemplifies the left.
What the hell was Cosica?
Perfectly exemplify the left.
That in this case, they're willing to accept a genocide to defeat George Bush.
Bill Clinton had a different idea.
And I wonder if anybody's going to ask Barack Obama.
He never has had a tough question.
He's never had a tough question.
But today, if I were asking him, if I were in New Hampshire following him around, can I just drop to my knees in gratitude that that's not my role today?
I'm here in San Diego and I'm happy and I'm filling in for Rush and this is a great place to be.
If I were, would I ask him the question, if you were Bill Clinton back in Kosovo, would you have intervened there to stop a genocide?
Because that's what he did.
Was it worth it then?
Did you support it then?
Oh, and by the way, as long as we're onto tough questions, when you were a Muslim and now you're a Christian, do you know that in Muslim nations converting to Christianity is a death sentence?
Are you afraid you're going to be assassinated for becoming a Christian?
Or was that a fake?
So was that a head fake?
So in other words, those are the kind of tough questions I would be asking were I tramping around in New Hampshire and I'd probably be grouchy enough to ask them.
Here's Joseph in San Antonio next on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi, Joseph.
Hi, Roger.
You've got to get out of my head.
It's like you're reading my mind today.
I am.
I am, Joseph.
Why is it during these debates they don't ask the Democrats, for instance, the plank of their platform should be, we have this exit strategy to get out.
Ask them point blank, what is your detailed exit strategy and then what happens afterward?
Because if you're proud of that, that should be the basis for people voting you in, if that's what the public wants, and then give us the detail instead of Hillary saying, you know, this should be wrapped up before the next president takes over, because she doesn't want to deal with it.
No, that's exactly right.
And she wants to label the defeat in Iraq Bush's defeat.
Who lost Iraq?
Yeah.
You can see that one coming from a mile away.
But not only that, Roger, even if it is still going, and heaven forbid she ever gets in, but it's a likely possibility.
And she does, she's still going to blame Bush.
She can't leave the area.
Nobody can.
And what they'll do is they'll just say, well, you know, it was handed to us, and it was a lot more difficult than we thought.
We have to stay there.
And then that spin is going to be, we still have to clean up what George Bush started.
So no matter what happens, they're going to still try to wash their hands off of something.
And the antidote, I'll tell you what, Joseph, the antidote to that is, and this has been my advice all the way along, there is no substitute for victory sooner rather than later.
Get her done, as we say in some circles.
I'm Roger Hitchcock, in for Rush Limbaugh, back after this.
You're listening to the EIB network, the Rush Limbaugh program.
I'm Roger Hedgecock, in for Rush Today.
Rush back on Monday, of course.
All the information at rushlimbaugh.com.
This in from Jersey City.
A Jersey City woman in the flight path of the Newark airport made a shocking discovery.
There's going to be more on this story.
On her lawn this morning, she noticed a six-foot or so metal pipe, which on closer examination turned out to be a military rocket launcher lying on the grass in front of her house.
Niranjana Besai, leaving her house on Nelson Street to go to work just after 8 this morning, she spotted this thing on her front lawn.
I went over and read it.
It said missile.
There was a little word missile on it.
She immediately called police.
It's of the type of this device, the type used to shoot shoulder-fired rockets capable of taking down an aircraft, this in the flight path of the Newark airport.
Now, I'm glad to say that Niranjana Besai called police.
She should know as of today, Congress is not willing to have her call immunized from potential liability and lawsuit by the trial lawyers of this country.
This is what we're talking about.
This King Amendment has got to go into this Homeland Security bill.
And I would think that these and hundreds of other examples of alert citizens turning this kind of thing in would be enough to secure the votes.
But it may be, as it typically is with the Democratic Party, that the trial lawyers, the ACLU, and CARE are more powerful than the people.
Gloria in Corona Hills, California next.
Gloria, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh Program.
Thanks, Roger.
I think the people of our country had better wake up.
The government is hogtying us.
We don't have enough Border Patrol.
We have an all-volunteer army military, and yet we expect them to do a job for us, and then we accuse them and don't back them up.
We accuse them of slaughtering people.
The Border Patrol to be incarcerated for shooting a drug smuggler is completely ludicrous.
I just don't understand it.
You know, the funniest thing about that, when Diane Feinstein, Senator Feinstein was chairing that committee hearing earlier in the week when that testimony came out, and she heard the story about the drug smuggler being shot and the Border Patrol agents put in jail, and she actually said at the hearing, gee, no wonder we have so much drugs in this country.
No kidding.
How do they expect our military to fight back?
We're fighting a war like we've never fought before against people who are thousands of years living in the past.
They stick their little children out there to be slaughtered, blown up by bombs.
What kind of thinking are we dealing with here?
Our government is just not backing up our citizens, and we're going to lose our way of life.
We can't have people crossing the border and then ending up giving them all kinds of money because we're trying to keep them out.
What happens to our country if these people overrun us, if we allow Imans on an airplane to pray to Allah and Osama bin Laden?
I mean, that's ridiculous.
The citizens better wake up and wake up our government.
They've got to start to think in a different direction.
Gloria, amen.
The voice, as far as I'm concerned, of common sense, reason, and the majority of the American people, and I appreciate your call.
1-800-282-2882.
Now, it gets downright weird in this Democratic pantheon of potential White House occupants driving for the presidential nomination in the Democrat Party.
Consider former Alaska Governor Mike Gravel.
Is it Gravel?
Gravel?
I don't even know how to pronounce this guy's name.
It won't matter soon.
Okay, so it doesn't.
But here is his ad.
He actually has an ad, and he can only afford YouTube, you know, so he has an ad on YouTube.
In one of his ads, he appears in front of a pond.
He stares at the camera for about a minute, saying nothing, just squinting.
Then he picks up a rock and throws it into the pond.
Then he slowly walks away.
That's the ad.
In another ad, he gathers firewood, and then for about seven minutes, we simply watch the fire he started burning.
Now, that, you know, to me, vaults this guy into the top ranks for a completely irrational Democratic candidate.
Vote Mike Gravel.
Roger Hedgecock in for Rush, back after this.
Welcome back to the Rush Limbaugh Program here on the EIB network.
Roger Hedgecock in for Rush.
You know, I don't care what your political persuasion is.
You're probably as horrified as I am about the news of the arrest of Michael Vick, the quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons, on the dogfighting charges and the horrific pictures of these dogs that you've seen on every channel.
So I mean, this is a slam duck issue.
Good grief.
If these charges are true, this is not a good thing, and it's a good thing we're getting after them.
But Senator Byrd on this House of the United States Senate, I'm sorry, on the floor of the United States Senate, was making a speech about this, and we kind of cut into it.
And again, I'm sorry, I just failed to understand.
Well, let's just play.
Here's Senator Byrd.
Let that word resound from hill to hill and from mountain to mountain from valley and to valley.
What?
I don't even know what to say.
Look, because we pursue the truth here, let me hear that again.
There must be something in this.
Let that word resound from hill to hill and from mountain to mountain, from valley and to valley.
Okay, your email, please, to interpret Senator Byrd.
Next up on the Rush program, Ramos and Compillon, Carver Elementary Update.
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