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July 30, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
31:50
July 30, 2007, Monday, Hour #3
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Hey, by the way, Mike, I've also got a global warming update coming up.
Grab What a Horrible World by former Vice President Al Gore.
Greetings, my friends, welcome back.
It's Rush Limbaugh having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
Doing what I was born to do.
There's just no question about that.
Doing that which I was born to do.
I was born to host, and you're doing what you were born to do, too.
You were born to listen.
And we work well together.
Telephone number 800-282-2882.
Email address, rush at EIBNet.com.
Also, ladies and gentlemen, the Breck Girl, last Thursday in Creston, Iowa at a campaign rally, had a meltdown, and it led to this.
He went into the recording studio.
Background vocals by the Bee Gees.
And you should see Dawn while she wants to laugh so hard, but she thinks, oh, this is horrible.
It's the Breck girl, John Edwards, with Bee Gees on the background vocals and more of a woman.
Once again, our buddy Paul Shanklin Lear.
What happened was on Thursday in Creston, Iowa, the Brett girl had a meltdown on his haircuts and so forth.
Now, this is internet quality.
We have two sound bites.
You remember the Swift Boat stuff in the 2004 election?
This stuff's not an accident.
Nobody in this room should think this is an accident.
They want to shut me up.
That's what this is about.
Let's distract from people who don't have health care coverage.
Let's distract from people who can't feed their children.
Let's talk about this silly, frivolous, nothing stuff so that America won't pay attention.
They will never silence me.
Never.
I'll take that right now.
Pointing that thing.
They will never silence this woman.
He also said this.
We don't stand up to these people.
If we don't fight them and if we don't beat them, they're going to continue to control this country.
They're going to control the media.
They're going to control what's being said.
They hate listening to people like me.
Well, I got bad news for them.
They're going to have to listen to me for the next eight years is their question.
I'll tell you what.
Well, this is John Edwards melting down in Creston, Iowa.
You know, Snerdley, you may have a point.
I mean, that did sound like an ex-wife.
You are going to listen to me.
You are going to.
They are going to listen to me.
Who are they?
Who is it here that he's talking about?
Who's swiftboating him on the hair?
His own barber.
His own barber put the news out about the $400 haircuts and the $1,250 haircuts because the Brick girl dissed the barber.
Been using him for years and years and years.
Newt Gingrich has predicted that the Democrat ticket will be Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
You know, that's conventional wisdom.
Everybody thinks that's going to be the case because there's the two frontrunners and you'd have the first woman.
You'd have the second black, well, the first black vice president on the same ticket and so forth.
But what does he bring to her campaign that she doesn't already have?
More money?
More money, period.
Well, but she doesn't bring votes.
I mean, he doesn't bring votes that she can't get on her own.
I mean, the people that support him, if he doesn't win the primary, if he doesn't win the nomination, where are the people that vote for him going to go?
You think they're going to go Republican?
Plus, plus, two senators.
This is the thing.
She is not an historical idiot.
Two senators.
Senators very seldom win the presidency.
Governors win presidency.
Two senators, we tried that in 04 with Carrie and the Brett girl.
So I don't know that I'm willing to subscribe to this conventional wisdom.
Also, a Brett girl story.
Folks, I don't know how to report this to you.
I just, I cannot.
I can't believe this.
We told you that there's a cover story, the latest issue of Esquire, with this picture of Edwards on the cover in just a gaudy pose and inadvertently, we think, and a little red banner right above his head.
Bannett says the sexiest woman alive or some such thing.
But get this.
Every once in a while you read a men's magazine, you find something truly disturbing.
What follows is the true story, according to John Edwards, of how Elizabeth Edwards' cancer was discovered.
From the Esquire profile, I hope this isn't too personal, I said to Edwards, the reporter said to Edwards, but I was reading about how Elizabeth discovered her cancer this second go-around.
It was a broken rib, correct?
Yes, Edwards said.
Well, the paper said that you were hugging her, which is always nice to hear a married guy hugging his wife.
It must have been bizarre.
What happened?
Just hugged her and heard a snap?
Edwards said, well, maybe it's a little personal, laughing self-consciously.
Reporter, maybe I don't want to know.
Edwards, no, it was a perfectly reasonable question, bailing the reporter out.
So hugging was perhaps a euphemism?
That's my story, and I'm sticking to it, he said, raking his forelock with his fingers.
At the next overpass, the caravan pulled over.
My time in the minivan had run out.
Do you realize what he's saying here?
They were getting it on and broke her rib, and that's how they discovered the second go-round of cancer.
For some reason, the story reminds me of what we had on Friday about the new eye vibrator in Japan.
Well, the situation beginning to look a little more grim for Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick.
One of his two co-defendants who pleaded not guilty last week has flipped and has told the court he will plead guilty.
No doubt he's going to flip.
People have been asking me, Rush, where's Al Sharpton on this?
Come on, folks.
Reverend Sharpton likes dogs, too.
There's no win in this right now.
However, the NAA LCP has urged public restraint today in judging Vic before he has his day in court.
R.L. White, the president of the Atlanta chapter of the NAA LCP, said that the Atlanta Falcons quarterback has been vilified by animal rights groups, talk radio, and the news media, and prematurely punished by his team and corporate sponsors.
White said at a news conference, if Mr. Vick is guilty, he should pay for his crime, but to treat him as he's being treated now is also a crime.
Be restrained in your premature judgment until the legal process is completed.
Vickus pleaded not guilty to charges of sponsoring a dogfighting operation.
Tony Taylor, co-defendant of case, pleaded guilty in Virginia to federal dog fighting conspiracy charges in a plea agreement with the prosecutors.
Pernell Peace of Virginia Beach, Quantus Phillips of Atlanta faced similar charges, are scheduled for trial in November.
They remain free without bond.
White, R.L. White, plans to contact Vic to see what assistance the Atlanta NAALCP chapter can offer.
He predicted public opinion may worsen in the wake of Taylor's plea deal.
Really?
Duh.
What would make him think that?
Yes, Mr. Snurdy, do you have a question?
You don't.
All right, let's go to Scott, Las Vegas.
Scott, I'm glad you waited.
You're up next on the EIB network.
Hello.
Mega Diddles from the city where what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, unless you're a conservative political like Bill Bennett.
True, sir.
Thank you for the call.
Hey, I want to give you my opinion of why we see the sudden sea change in the Democratic position on the war.
No, no, we haven't seen that yet.
We've seen a sea change in the position and a drive-by media on the war.
The media, that's right.
Well, I think they're one and the same.
They're just the mouth up the front right now.
But you see, there's only about 47 days to that report by Petraeus, and that report's not going to be written a night before.
I think that the intelligence community and the Pentagon and the military people, all their context, quote-unquote, sources, are letting them know that things are pretty good over there, and Petraeus is going to say there's even better.
That's true.
I think the Democrats can see the handwriting on the wall, or the drive-bys can't.
Remember, the Democrats haven't weighed in on this yet.
But the thing that struck me here is the drive-bys that were on Chris Matthews' show yesterday wasn't so much talking about the success of the surge.
That was in the New York Times today.
The drive-by reporters were saying things that we've all known for four years.
They were saying things like, hey, we can't get out of there.
It would lead to a genocidal massacre.
It would destabilize the region.
We could lose the whole region.
It's horrible.
And then they were saying that, look, Iraq cannot be separated from the overall war on terror.
Now, I know that the drive-bys have known this for four years.
They've just been spouting a different line.
They've been spouting the Democrat Party line.
Now they've kind of broken away from the Democrats.
They're on their own out there.
It's four or five reporters, plus the two think tank guys from Brookings in the New York Times today.
Look at, plus Gordon Brown, a press conference today with Bush, the new British prime minister, praising us, the United States, for our lead in the world against international terrorism.
I mean, Nancy Pelosi's face, I'm telling you, I could hear it crack, folks, when I read this New York Times piece and I saw what was said yesterday on Chris Matthews' Sunday show.
So I, you know, the drive-bys are ahead on this.
The Democrats haven't spoken up.
But in the sense that you said the drive-bys, the Democrats know the intel and they know what's going to be going into the final report in September that Petraeus writes is already being written now.
I mean, you don't, as you say, you write that overnight.
The drive-bys are in Iraq.
They know, too, what's going on.
They know it's, you know, no longer is it going to be workable or easy to portray this as a huge failure.
Rob in Greenville, South Carolina, you're next.
Great to have you with us here.
Rush, second time, Kohler Dittos.
Again, it's my honor.
Thank you.
Rush, all this talk about leaving Iraq is political positioning, as you've spoken to, and it's simultaneously in complete opposition to two facts on the ground I'd like to point out.
First, we have been building one of the largest military bases in the world, 43 miles north of Baghdad, aka Ballad Air Base, or it's also referred to as Area Anaconda.
Newsweek reported that there are 27,500 landings a month at that base, which makes it only second to Heathrow as an air base in the world.
Second, we're simultaneously building the largest embassy in the world with a price tag that has been reported in the neighborhood of $800 billion.
So my point is simply this.
No matter what anybody says, these two things point out, we're not going anywhere.
And all this talk about leaving is not real.
It's simply political talk, as you've pointed out, for positioning people in the public for the 08 election.
It's not reality.
No, it's not reality.
Even if the Democrats win the White House, they're not pulling us out of there.
I've said that.
Not if it means defeat.
They're not going to have defeat saddled on their shoulders.
I hadn't heard about this base.
You said this is a newsweek?
It is a newsweek.
I believe it was actually last month, Ballad Air Base, and they reported.
Yeah, but wait, is this a permanent airbase?
Because there's some arguments going on.
The Democrats are trying to argue against any permanent base there.
We haven't started building a permanent base in Afghanistan.
The Afghanistan people want us to.
They're making big lobbying efforts, unless I'm behind on this.
No, that's part of the point of my message, Rush, is that this base, which has basically been being built 43 miles northwest of Baghdad, it's 15 square miles in size.
And as reported in Newsweek, it is the second busiest airbase in the world, second only to Heathrow.
Well, but Heathrow's not an airbase.
You're just talking about general landings.
I'm talking about the number of landings per month, one landing every two minutes.
And as you know, I mean, you're not exactly landing at Baghdad for the tourism.
Well, yeah, but Baghdad International Airport's still around.
Yeah, but I mean, that's Baghdad International Airport.
That's not this airport.
I know, but you're not landing at this place for tourism either.
No, that's my point.
27,500 landings a month, one landing every two minutes.
You don't hear the media talking about the size of the footprint we have put down.
Well, but you just did.
You said Newsweek has reported this.
Oh, no, yes, I agree with that.
I mean in the broader picture.
I mean, as you just said, you're a little bit behind.
I was a little bit of a message.
Well, that's because I don't waste my time with the news magazines.
I really don't.
No, I didn't know about this until this weekend.
I started reading about it.
Why?
Because I actually got an email through a friend that I work with who is an ex-West Pointer, and he mentioned this airbase, which I had never heard of.
Well, all right.
I'm going to send the research team out, try to find this.
Newsweek's hard to come by these days.
There aren't that many copies published anymore, but we'll see if we can find one somewhere.
And I want to read this for myself.
So it's not that I don't trust you.
No, I don't.
Don't.
Again, I'm reporting what I'm reading.
Well, I know, but you are a rank amateur, and I'm the highly trained specialist.
I got to learn this stuff for myself.
This is true.
I am willing to take the title of rank amateur.
Well, but it couldn't prove that you are going to end up being a first-rate reporter here and rise above your rank amateur status.
We all have to sometimes rise above principle.
It ought to be good for a Gitmo t-shirt, then.
If I'm right.
If you're right, okay.
Well, you know, you're right.
Well, you think you are.
Tell you what, Snerdley, get his address.
I got cornered into this.
So don't hang up out there.
All right.
Rob, and we'll get an address where to send the Gitmo t-shirt and maybe a mug.
You never know what else.
Thanks much.
That is big.
27,000 landings a month?
Every two minutes.
We'll have to find it.
First, I've heard of this.
My awareness is that people have been arguing against the establishment of permanent base there.
The Democrats have.
Very rarely is your host shocked and surprised.
This may be one of those rare moments.
Happily so, ladies and gentlemen, making the complex understandable, one of our missions here.
Well, here.
Rob was right.
He almost had it word for word verbatim from the Newsweek story.
It's April 23rd of 2006.
It is 15 months old.
This story.
Balad Air Base in Iraq.
Evidence that U.S. planning to stay for a long time.
15-square-mile mini-city, one of four super bases where the Pentagon will consolidate U.S. forces.
New $592 million massive U.S. embassy being built in Baghdad.
In-depth coverage.
Despite all the political debate in Washington about a quick U.S. pullout from Iraq, the vast Balad Air Base, 15-square-mile mini-city of thousands of trailers and vehicle depots, located 43 miles north of Baghdad, is hard evidence that the Pentagon's planning to stay in Iraq for a long time, at least a decade or so, according to military strategists.
With 27,500 landings and takeoffs a month, Balad is second only to Heathrow in traffic worldwide.
Brigadier General Frank Gorink, the base commander, tells Newsweek senior editor Michael Hirsch in the current is you.
In an interview with Newsweek, Goring says that he's normalizing the giant Balad airfield or gradually rebuilding it to U.S. military specs.
The Saddam-era concrete's considered too substandard for the F-16s and the C-130s that fly in and out of there because they regularly crack the tarmac.
Safe to say Bilad will be here for a long time, said Balance, who feels that at home in Iraqi Skies, because we own the airspace.
We own it.
You can talk about the insurgents.
You can talk about Al-Qaeda.
We own the airspace, and whoever owns the airspace over a country owns the country.
And he said the United States owns the air space.
So, yeah, I don't know how I missed this.
Everybody missed.
I mean, it was in Newsweek, and nobody picked it up.
It just went.
Well, 10 years is certainly not getting out tomorrow.
10 years is certainly not getting out in 08.
10 years may not be permanent, but drive-bys knew this.
It just went against the template that Bush lied, Bush is failing, we're losing, and we got to get out of there.
You know, oftentimes in this program, we theorize why the bad mood here, why the angst, if it exists.
And everybody chalks it up.
It's just a rock.
We're losing.
And we're the U.S.
And we're winners.
We're losing.
A fascinating piece at the Bloomberg website, a column by Kevin Hassett from today.
We found out Friday the U.S. economy grew 3.4% in the second quarter.
The numbers are familiar when the average annual rate of real growth in a U.S. GDP from 48 to the present was about 3.4%.
The U.S. is indisputably a great and thriving nation.
The economy right now is about the same it's always been, delivering growth and general well-being that's unrivaled in world history.
And yet, judging by the mood of the country, Americans seem to be close to despair.
Why?
Some say the problem is that the benefits of growth go only to the rich, but this argument rests on spurious data.
The best measure of the people's welfare, consumption, suggests that the middle class is doing just fine economically.
Iraq has certainly dimmed the country's mood, but one senses the feeling will remain negative long after the war is behind us.
The best explanation for this disconnect is that our government is simply failing us year after year, and no progress is made on the big problems facing the country.
When you form an opinion about a country, you can't help but heavily weigh its leaders.
Just as Ahmadinezad sours us on Iran, our political parties sour people on America.
Our country may be great, and our challenges may be as well, but our leaders are not.
You know, I loved reading this today because I have long thought that the real root of this so-called malaise or depression is the Democrats and the drive-by media pummeling never-ending doom and gloom, crisis, and chaos day in and day out because they want people in that mood because they think it'll deliver change in the 08 presidential election.
And everything in politics is about that from the drive-by side and the media and the Democrat Party side.
If you want to understand what they're saying and doing, you've got to look at it through the only lens they're looking at, and that's the 08 presidential election.
Now, Mr. Hassett says, and this is hardly new.
Alexis de Tocqueville noticed a similar problem in America in 1831.
In a passage called O Great and Small Parties, he wrote, as if about today, that America has had great parties, but they exist no longer.
I can't conceive a more wretched sight in the world than that presented by different coteries.
They don't deserve to be called parties, which now divide the United States.
It's a shame to see what coarse insults, what petty slanders, and what impudent calumnies fill the papers that serve as their mouthpieces.
If you want a wretched sight, look at the political speech of the leading Democrat candidates.
President George W. Bush, as to put it lightly, made numerous mistakes, but he's not Satan.
You'd hardly know it, though, if you listen to the Democrats.
This is what Hillary Clinton had to say about Bush's performance: It's a stunning record of cronyism and corruption, incompetence, and deception.
Referring to Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's jail time, Obama said, this decision to commute, the sentence of a man who compromised our national security, cements the legacy of an administration characterized by a politics of cynicism and division, one that has consistently placed itself and its ideology above the law.
Both candidates, it seems, are accusing Bush of being a criminal.
He isn't.
But if you listen to the Democrats, simply a criminal, he's an evil criminal.
And he goes on to say, our politicians mischaracterize their opponents' motivations, focus on their personal failings because they themselves have given up the quest for greatness.
They have been honed into cynical creatures with the sharp blades of their own parties.
Their failings reflect on us all, turning Americans into an unhappy bunch, even in the face of prosperity.
Americans know in their hearts what they yearn for.
At some point, some successful candidate will read to Tocqueville and offer it to them.
We don't have to go that far back.
Read Reagan.
Basically, what he's saying is here that what really makes us mad, what we're upset about, is our government.
And its arrogance, its unresponsiveness, and its inability to get anything done.
Martinsburg, West Virginia, this is Nate.
Great that you called, sir.
Welcome to the program.
Well, I really appreciate you taking my call, Rush.
You bet, sir.
Well, I wanted to call and let you know about my experience at Ballad Air Base.
Yes.
Okay.
I can't say that I disagree with the Newsweek article now because I worked for General Gorns while I was there.
I was assigned to finance under his command in the fall of 2005.
But what I told your call screener, and what I want your audience to know, is that Congress had so much stipulations on the money being spent to build up that base as to make it more of a commercial airport than a footprint for soldiers and airmen to have a long-term presence there.
And my example I gave the call screener is we wanted hard billeting, concrete dormitories for the troops there.
Okay?
Congress had made stipulations that there was to be no hardened structures like that, no permanent presence.
So we had to buy these lousy trailers.
They were nice because they're air conditioned, but that base is mortared on a daily basis.
So here we are in these trailers that are no different than a travel trailer that you would set up in the woods of West Virginia.
You know what I'm saying?
And mortars come in, and there's very little protection from that, and that's all because the U.S. is trying to minimize its footprint there.
And when we leave, Congress wanted us to be able to tear up everything that we had put down and take it with us, including our dormitories that we were staying in.
What about the idea that's being built to last for 10 years to house people like you?
Negative.
No, it's it.
See, but you say General Gorn said it to Newsweek, and so he would be more in the know than I would, but I would say that what the idea there is, is that there would be a minimal military presence there, and the whole base, every expenditure on the Air Force side, I can't speak for how the Army was spending their money there, but every expenditure was under close scrutiny by my boss, who was the wing comp troller.
All right, so what's this thing going to be used for when we leave?
I guess the whole idea was that it would be a commercial airport.
Are the statistics about 27,000 landings and takeoffs a month accurate?
Doing the math, if they're saying $27,000 a month, did I hear that correctly?
Yeah, let me see if it's going to see.
Yeah, 27,500 landings and takeoffs a month.
Second only to Heathrow.
Who's going in there?
There is no way.
There is absolutely no way.
From what I saw sitting out on the runway, every single day, we'd have the U.S. military, you know, we'd have our C-5s or our C-130s coming in and out.
We had permanent F-16s stationed at that base.
Yeah, it says that here.
Okay, but there was like maybe one Russian airline that came in.
You'd see a white jet sitting out there every once in a while.
What, you had commercial traffic at this base?
Yeah.
Well, you'd almost have to for that kind of activity, for that many.
There's no way, unless they're counting each time a drone takes off.
But even then, you'd see those go out maybe two or three times a day.
I mean, there's just no way.
Because the Air Force, our billeting was right next to the flight line.
We wouldn't get any sleep.
We wouldn't get any work done if we were sending out 27,000 flights a day.
It'd be impossible.
We'd have to have 40,000 airmen there.
And there's only two runways at that base.
It's just not possible.
So maybe they were wrong on that figure, and General Gornston set him straight on it.
I'll tell you, we're not setting up a permanent military footprint there, or at least if we are, it's being done in such a haphazard way as we're going to be replacing these trailers.
Well, that's what's what surprised me about the call because I am familiar with the that's a sticking point with the Democrats.
They want out of there.
They don't want us anywhere near there.
And there's, you know, anytime a discussion comes up about, hey, we need a permanent base there to protect our interests, like we have a permanent base in Germany.
And this, they've always heard that they're just opposing it left and right.
And this piece in Newsweek makes it sound like all this is just for show that we've got a permanent footprint being built there.
Well, permanent 10 years.
Hey, well, look, I'm glad you called out there, Nate.
I appreciate it.
The water is a little cloudier now, requiring further research from us here at the EIB Network, our specialty.
Back in just a second.
Hi, welcome back.
Rush Limbaugh, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have with half my brain tied behind my back, as always, to make things fair, being bombarded, ladies and gentlemen, with requests for an instant replay of the latest parody tune about the Edwards campaign.
This is the Brick girl, John Edwards, singing more of a woman than you.
It's Paul Shanklin as the Brick girl, and more of a woman than you.
Exclusively heard here on the Excellence in Broadcasting.
Never get any easier dawn to listen to it a second time.
Yeah, good.
Great, great editorial cartoon here.
I don't know who did this, but you've seen the picture of the painting of the founding fathers in Philadelphia, Constitution Hall, drafting the Constitution and discussing it among themselves.
Thomas Jefferson, well, not Jefferson.
Benjamin Franklin's in there.
All these guys.
Gentlemen, I just came up with a brilliant conspiracy, says one of the founders to the group.
Why don't we split from the British crown, become founders of a nation that'll cause all of the world's wars, crime, corruption, slavery, disease, torture, murder, assassinations, racism, sexism, violence, environmental destruction, cannibalism, and man-made hurricanes for all eternity?
That's the kind of country we want.
Benjamin Franklin says, yeah, and then steal all their oil.
Another founder says, sounds like a plan.
Great, great, great cartoon because it's this is how libs see America today.
It's exactly how they see it.
Wait till the Democrats hear about this.
New Zealand's parliament has voted itself far-reaching powers to control satire and to ridicule members of parliament, attracting a storm of media and academic criticism.
The new standing orders voted in last month concern the use of images of parliamentary debates, make it a contempt of parliament for broadcasters or anyone else to use footage of the chamber for satire, ridicule, or denigration.
The rules apply to any broadcasts or rebroadcasts in any medium.
This is this is this is yeah, you're going to be worried about this because our Supreme Court has said that they look to foreign law for guidance when they can't find what they want in our U.S. Constitution.
Can you imagine, though, this is a very extreme, exaggerated example of what McCain Feingel was about.
Pure and simple.
Back here in just a second.
Well, Governor Schwarzenegger is over in his homeland.
He's in Vienna, Austria, celebrating his 60th birthday.
He says he has a simple wish that his United States, his adopted country, improve its reputation in the world.
And he wants world peace and no hunger anywhere.
Blue skies and green lights every day.
Socialized medicine, cool temperatures, no hurricanes.
And he wants everybody in the world to sing in perfect harmony.
All for his 60th birthday.
We've been a blast here today, folks.
And we'll be all rip-roaring, revved up, and ready to go tomorrow when we get back.
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