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Aug. 1, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:35
August 1, 2007, Wednesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
It is August 1st.
Ladies and gentlemen, which is a um well, it's not just a big day here.
It is a huge day in the history of the United States.
It is also a huge day in the history of American media.
August 1st.
Oh no.
August 1st, 1988.
This program was born.
Oh, look at that.
Our little celebratory neutral system blueberry muffin.
With one little can.
Let me blow it out.
Thank you all so much.
Snerdley and Dawn and uh and uh Brian bringing this in.
Uh oh, and look, there's a little card here.
They always embarrass me doing this.
Anyway, this program born August 1st, 1988.
Today is our 19th anniversary.
The uh birth of this program has uh uh brought about a sea change, a revolution in American media, and it all could not have happened, of course, without me.
But it could not have happened actually without you.
Without you being there consistently in ever increasing numbers, uh, with your incredible uh loyalty to this program.
We um we all appreciate it here more than more than you will ever know.
Uh I want to I want to bring in a special guest, uh, ladies and gentlemen, to um uh explain the significance.
Everybody thinks the 20th anniversary is gonna be the big blowout, and of course it will, but the 19th anniversary is no slouch.
Now we have an expert to explain the significance of the 19th anniversary of the EIB network.
In the background is the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorial.
Each one of these monuments is 19 feet high.
Abraham Lincoln the 16th president, Thomas Jefferson the third president, and 16 and three make nineteen again.
What is so deep about this number nineteen?
Why are we standing on the Capitol steps today?
That number nineteen, when you have a nine, you have a womb that is pregnant.
And when you have a one standing by the nine, it means that there's something secret that has to be unfolded.
Abraham Lincoln statue, 19 feet high, 19 feet wide.
Jefferson, 19 feet high.
Sixteen, that and the third president, nineteen, standing on the steps of the Capitol, in the light of the sun.
Offering life to a people who are dead.
Offering life to a people who are dead.
And there you have it, uh, ladies and gentlemen, the significance of the 19th anniversary of the EIB network.
And uh that was uh, of course, special guest uh Calypso Louie, Minister Farrakhan, that's from the Million Man March, uh, October 16th of 1995.
You gotta hear this.
We've put together a great montage, Dick Cheney, uh, our hero was on Larry King alive last night.
And uh uh uh Larry uh asked questions that were written for him, and Cheney answered in the way that only Cheney can.
Uh this is a condensed version as a montage, but this is fabulous.
Don't you ever say maybe I'm wrong?
No.
In retrospect, you would still go into Iraq.
Yes, sir.
So those 3,000 plus lives have not died in vain.
No, sir.
Does it pain you when Brent Scrockoff says this is not the Dick Cheney I knew?
Not especially.
When you like to be liked.
Well, up to a point.
Remember, success for uh for a politician is uh 50% plus one.
You don't have to have everybody on board.
You said that the Iraqis were well on their way to being able to defend themselves.
Why not?
Why aren't you?
Well, they are we gone.
They're not there yet because the job's not done yet, Larry.
Does it bother you that the Iraqi Parliament is taking August off?
It's better than taking two months off.
Is General Petraeus the be all and end all?
General Petraeus is a very impressive officer.
Alberto Gonzalez.
You stand by him?
I do.
Correct.
The Scuder Libby trial.
Did it pain you?
Sure.
General Powell says he closed Guantanamo yesterday.
Would you?
No.
You have to torture them when they're there.
We don't do torture.
What are you going to do in February 09?
I have no idea.
And as Yogi said, it ain't over till that's over.
That's right.
Is that not fabulous?
Oh, just we we love this guy here.
All right, here's a here's a story from uh the French news agency about the crisis involving uh the youths in the U.K. British teenagers are among the worst behaved in Europe.
A study by a leading think tank said Thursday, blaming government, wait, I want you parents to listen to this.
A study by a leading think tank said Thursday, British teenagers among the worst behaved in Europe, blaming government policy, government policy failures for a high levels of fighting, binge drinking, drug taking, and underage sex.
The uh Institute for Public Policy Research, a bunch of libs, uh said that young Britons were left to their own devices through successive policy failures.
The report Freedom's Orphans Raising Youths in a Changing World was published as the government announced a new one hundred and eighty-four million dollar or uh actually 275 million euro, 378 million dollar 10-year strategy for young people.
So the government claims they screwed it up, and so they come up with a new more comprehensive plan that's gonna spend even more money.
It makes sense to me.
It will be supplemented by cash from bank accounts dormant for 15 years or this story goes on, and I can read the whole thing to you.
Uh Britain is getting slammed for for failing its out-of-control teens.
Not once in this story is the word parent mentioned.
Not once in this story will you read the word parent.
You have a lib think tank analyzing why British teenagers are so out of control, and it's because there are inadequate government programs.
Just a man, I you know, I gotta I got a note.
An interesting email yesterday says in the uh rush comments line.
Uh uh, somebody subscribes to the website, uh, sent me a note and uh said, you know what?
You had a caller the other day, and I I could just hear this guy typing in anger as he wrote, you had a call the other day, and and you said, you've got to stop this play-by-play, Republicans versus Democrats.
We all know what the Democrats are.
We all know what the Liberals are.
We uh you gotta start teaching conservatism.
You don't do that enough.
You gotta you gotta be like Reagan.
You gotta start teaching conservatism.
And I thought about that.
He's got a point up to extent a certain certain extent, but but but in the process of uh exposing liberalism such as stories like this.
Are we not in fact teaching conservatism?
Uh the it's still it's still it it's a good point.
Maybe what I should do uh after uh reading one of these stories, rather than just assume all of you know that this is whacked out and silly and stupid, but also dangerous.
Government thinking it's responsible for raising kids.
Uh nanny government will liberals here do that.
Maybe follow it up by saying how conservatives uh look at this and uh how we uh philosophize over this.
And I think, don't I make that point when I say, not one time in this story will you see the word parent.
So anyway, I've been thinking about that.
Uh and uh uh ultimately the the guy who wrote me the angry, frustrated, threatening letter uh ha has a point because conservatism by its nature is optimistic.
I don't want to contribute here to the doom and gloom of constantly reporting on liberalism uh without some optimistic, uh optimistic follow-up to it.
But still it must be done.
We laugh at this stuff constantly.
We have been doing so uh for 19 years.
And I think one of the reasons the left is so off the cliff now is because uh they are panicked.
This show starting 19 years ago led to the demise of the media monopoly that the left and all of its associations had the think tanks, these bureaucracies and so forth.
They have to fight now for what they believe, but they can't do it openly.
They can't be who they are because nobody would support them, nobody would vote for them if they were actually honest about what they want to do.
But we're getting them closer to being that.
The Democrats uh in Congress are proposing a uh, you know, appropriations bill with new tax increase.
It's gonna get vetoed, but they're telling us who they are.
Uh and I think it's important to keep pointing out who they are to people because I I travel around, I I meet people all the time who are intelligent, think that they're engaged, think that they're involved, but haven't a clue about how politics works, how the government works, how the New York Times works, how the media works.
They haven't a clue.
Uh they're they're they're they're intelligent, but they're not absorbed, they're not engaged.
And and uh this program's mission has been, among many other things, to create as large an army of informed, educated, engaged citizens as possible, uh so that our ideas triumph legitimately with mandates following uh electoral victories.
Quick timeout, we'll be back lots more straight ahead right after this.
Starting our 20th year today of broadcast excellence on the EIB network Rush Limboy here at 800-282-2882.
If you want to be on the program, the email address is rush at EIBNet.com.
Well, I tell you, I would not want to be Pakistan's president today, Musharraf.
I would not want this guy is hanging by a thread anyway.
He is just barely holding on.
He's at he's at loggerheads, he's got a whole terrorist population, he's got a moderate population, he's got the United States as an ally.
We need to fly over uh Pakistan to get into Afghanistan, folks.
We cannot fly over Iran's airspace.
Found this out when I went into uh Dubai uh to stop for a couple days and rest up for the trip into Afghanistan a couple half two and a half years ago or so.
Uh you can't you can't uh you can't fly over uh Iranian airspace.
So what would normally be a I don't know, an hour, hour and a half is a three and a half hour flight, because you got to go around Iran, you've got to go through and up Pakistan.
We have flyover rights.
It's uh it's it's it's the simplest and fastest way that we can get supplies uh to the troops, whatever is necessary in there.
Uh and and so this m poor Musharraf he wakes up today and he learns that Barack Obama wants to invade his country.
He wants to take the troops out of Iran and invade Pakistan.
Then after he hears Obama say that, he gets a video from some Al-Qaeda hack who is uh who is uh suggesting that Al Qaeda conduct a coup against Musharraf uh and his government.
Uh I think the the biggest fear that Musharraf probably faces or has of these two is Obama.
This is uh this is it's it's if if it weren't for the fact that he's running for president, it would be laughable.
What it is is is horribly naive, and he's just given Mrs. Clinton a hanging curveball here.
We have two sound bites from a speech uh he gave this morning in Washington at the Woodrow Wilson Center for um, you know, hopeful presidential candidates to come make big-time speeches on foreign policy.
Here's cut one.
We went off to fight on the wrong battlefield with no appreciation of how many enemies we would create and no plan for how to get out.
And because of a war in Iraq that should have never been authorized and should have never been waged, we are now less safe than we were before 9-11.
Six years after 9-11, we are again in the midst of a summer of threat with bin Laden and many more terrorists determined to strike in the United States.
What's more, in the dark halls of Abu Ghraib and the detention cells of Guantanamo, we have compromised our most precious values.
Yeah, yada, yeah.
The same old, same old, same old playbook song.
We're destroying our image around the world.
We are making them mad at us for all this imaginary torture that goes on at Abu Ghraib and uh and uh club Gitmo.
Here is another portion, the second bite of the Obama uh workout this morning.
We had to go give this big foreign policy speech, gotta go out there and uh and and and store up his credentials and show the world he's a serious guy.
The president would have us believe that every bomb in Baghdad is part of Al Qaeda's war against us, not an Iraqi civil war.
He elevates Al Qaeda in Iraq, which didn't exist before our invasion, and overlooks the people who hit us on 9-11, who are training new recruits in Pakistan right now.
He is fighting the war that the terrorists want us to fight.
A misguided invasion of a Muslim country that sparks new insurgencies, ties down our military, busts our budgets, increases the pool of terrorist recruits, alienates America, gives democracy a bad name, and prompts the American people to question our engagement in the world.
Wow.
And in this speech, he also said that if Musharraf uh doesn't do the right thing over there and clean out these terrorists in the mountainous regions, he's going to go in there and do it himself.
He would invade Pakistan.
Now the the military futility of that is uh is crazy.
They got 39 million military personnel, 39 million man army in Pakistan.
If you got nuclear weapons, uh they have uh uh vital they play a vital role for us.
And if you look at if you look at the map of that region, uh you find that there's no suitable replacement for Pakistan if we alienate them in order to base ourselves for staging operations to resupply troops in Iraq, uh and so forth.
And just from that sense, this is is is uh is uh is a nonsensical thing.
Uh it it shows exactly what Mrs. Clinton claimed uh the Barack Obama is, and that's naive.
This has so much naivety, and he it's just trying to bulk up here, is trying to flex his muscles to uh demonstrate to everybody uh just how serious he can be and also make a play for the anti-war left.
What is uh what's interesting about this is in this this whole spat uh is is is the way the media plays this.
Uh Obama says he wants to invade Pakistan.
Well, not really all of Pakistan.
He just wants to uh go into Northwestern Pakistan.
Have you checked to see how that could be done?
You would have to go in from the Arabian Sea, I think that's the uh body of water that yeah, you'd have to go in from there.
Uh and then you'd have to march, and by the way, you you uh you need lines of communication, by the way, it's been said today.
You need lines of communication to m muster such a uh a massive military force.
Uh uh Pakistan is what provides that now with our flyover rights, staging base operations.
All that would come to a screeching halt if we just invade this sovereign country, which for the most part is an ally.
Almost 170 million people live in Pakistan.
It's a wobbly government, they got nuclear weapons, uh, and the peace candidate wants to send in troops.
Isn't it amazing how these guys want to lose in Iraq, make up stories about how Al Qaeda was not there.
Uh we know for a fact that the Al Qaeda that is there came in from Pakistan.
They're coming in from Syria, they're coming in from Iran.
Al Qaeda's Al-Qaeda.
We know that this Al Qaeda in Iraq was a phony front group created to make it look like there was a f a civil war going on there when it's not.
Now, look at without all the details here.
The Obama plan's irrational.
But but there is more than meets the eye here.
What do we know?
Well, in the dust up with Hillary, according to the pundits, she won.
But according to the polls, Obama won.
Remember how the pundits we played soundbites from media people, Chris Telezi, the Washington Post, I'm really worried that I may not be seeing things that the rest of the country sees.
It was clear to me that Hillary cleaned up in this debate, but the polls show that the public thought that Obama did.
Now she has pulled ahead big time nationally.
I mean, a huge jump over last month.
But he is tied with her in New Hampshire, and in some polls leads her in South Carolina, those are two crucial states.
And national numbers right now don't mean as much as these local state numbers.
So here we have two high-minded politicians with uh moral compasses who are going absolutely nuts for polling and fundraising.
And no matter how silly or how irresponsible or how inane their words, uh, which Obama's clearly are here today on Pakistan, the drive-by's explain it away.
That, well, you know, they don't really mean this.
It's just primary politics.
Here's what Obama's trying to accomplish.
And uh here's what Hillary's trying to accomplish.
Um you if you had a Republican out there making a statement like this, one of the Republican presidential candidates, I mean, you'd have the drive-bys would be over there with the psychiatrists giving uh uh diagnoses without having seen the patience or anything.
That you know, we all know what Obama has to do here.
What Obama has to do is be a foil for Hillary.
Obama is there to make it look to us like Hillary can overcome a challenge, and he is playing the role perfectly while thinking, unless he's in on it, while thinking he's distancing himself from her in a more serious way, trying To uh uh get over this notion that uh that he is somehow naive.
By the way, uh, ladies and gentlemen, I don't know if you've seen this or not, but a new study has just come out.
And according to this study, the daily commute is not nearly as stressful as we all thought.
Uh we know this because they've taken polls of people who engage in a daily commute.
I have always chosen to live where I don't have a commute.
Uh I have lived for my whole life, because I think it's important to be focused on work and not get distracted.
After all, my friends, I am a performer.
I have made it an effort to live no farther than 15 minutes from work.
Wherever I well, sometimes in the Manhattan, it can take 30 minutes to get to work because of traffic, but I'm riding there and working in the back of the car while on the way in.
When I drive myself to Sacramento, live 50 minutes away.
Uh here, 15 minutes away.
I have made that an objective.
So the stress thing in commutes never been a big deal to me anyway.
Back in a sec.
And we are back serving humanity on our 19th anniversary here at the EIB network.
Starting our 20th year, let's go to the phones.
We'll start at White Plains, New York.
And oh, by Chris, hang on just a second.
A program note, ladies and gentlemen, I will not be behind the Golden EIB microphone tomorrow because and it's this is not a vacation day, it's not a golf outing, it's a super secret meeting in a faraway place.
Uh necessitating my absence.
Uh Paul W. Smith from WJR Detroit will be here tomorrow, but we will be back on Friday.
All right, Chris and White Plains, thank you for waiting, and welcome to the EIB network.
First rush, congratulations on the most wonderful at least 15 years I've been listening to you.
Nineteen years you've been around.
Congratulations.
Thank you, sir, very much.
I appreciate that.
And uh actually, this is a double fantastic day, besides me getting on to you, is that Mr. Murdoch, I have heard, won his bid for the down Jones, which means that now with the Wall Street Journal in competition, we might be able to kiss the New York Times.
Bye-bye.
Well, yeah, it's gonna be a tough thing to do, but you are very, very shrewd, sir, in your assessment.
I read this morning that in an interview in 2005, Rupert Murdoch was asked about the uh the New York Times.
Uh, and he said, you know, the the problem with the New York Times is not really the New York Times, it's the rest of the media.
The rest of the media adopts the New York Times agenda.
Whatever is on the front page of the New York Times is what uh television cable news networks decide is news.
Uh at least the networks, uh CBS, NBC, CBS, the liberal networks.
The New York Times always was.
That's why it was called a paper of record.
Uh stories on the front page throughout the front section determined what the agenda.
In fact, I when I moved to Sacramento, this is the first time I learned this.
When I moved to Sacramento in 1984 to begin the uh program there that eventually became this program, the uh the news director out there, uh consultant actually, who had hired me, was also consulting the station.
And I remember my first day there, he went strolling through the newsroom one morning, and all he found was the Los Angeles Times, the Sacramento B, uh, and the uh San Francisco Chronicle, he blew up.
He started shut up.
Where's the New York Times?
You can't do news anymore without the New York Times.
The newsroom had to have the New York Times because the New York Times set the agenda.
So Murdoch was making this point.
He said the the uh uh that that means that there is a whole market out there for a different way to do news and treat news, and he started talking in this interview in 2005 about the Wall Street Journal having the infrastructure in place to do that.
So I have uh you're very shrewd, sir.
You may uh know more than you've let on, because I think one of the objectives that Murdoch has is to take on the New York Times as the paper of record.
Uh not going to tamper with the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal.
I have no idea what he's gonna do with the rest of the paper.
He signed all these agreements with the Bancroft family, but I meant what's that worth?
He owns the paper.
You're not gonna buy something and say I'm not gonna run it the way I want to.
He's not gonna spend five billion dollars for that.
He'll give it time, ill at all.
You know, the unions inside the Wall Street Journal are having a cow right now.
The New York Times is having a cow, the rest of the drive-by's are having a cow.
Um I'll give you some examples here as the as the program unfolds some of the headlines, some of the uh some of the stories.
They're all worried what he's gonna do to this venerable institution.
What oh no, how will he destroy it?
Uh and of course, if these people were honest, uh if they really think he's gonna destroy the journal, they'd be happy, wouldn't they?
Isn't the news like any other business?
Isn't it competitive?
Aren't they losing circulation?
Aren't they losing ad dollars?
Wouldn't it be great for them if Murdoch came in and blew it and ran the Wall Street Journal into the ground?
That's what they actually ought to be hoping for.
What they're really afraid of is that he can come in, and this is just another chink in the once existing monopoly that the left had.
They are simply afraid of Rupert Murdoch because he's conservative for the most part, and he succeeds.
And he's going to be stiff competition.
You know, when you have a monopoly, you don't have to compete.
When you have a monopoly, you can do whatever you want.
You can sit around and not do anything.
You can work two hours a day, do whatever you want to do.
When there's nobody to compete with you, it doesn't matter.
It's like the government.
If the government provides a service, and if they're the only one that does, like they want to be with health care like the Democrats do, where's you gonna go?
When you have to stand in line, when you have to pay whatever they charge, even though it's free, where else you're gonna go if there's no alternative.
Uh same thing with the news business.
If you've got a monopoly, everything's cool.
Take your time.
Make sure the Republicans never have more than 150 members in the House of Representatives, give them a president now and then, but uh you can still manage them.
Uh all those days are gone now.
And the liberals from the drive-by media all the way into the hallowed halls of uh Congress and state legislatures are still a twitter over what's happened.
And now this Murdoch purchase of the Wall Street Journal with what I think is gonna be a concerted attempt to replace the New York Times as the paper of record.
And by the way, he also acknowledged it's gonna be expensive.
You're gonna have to have worldwide bureaus, journalists all over the world to pull this off.
But I think he's got a grandiose uh idea.
Plus he's got his new business channel starting on cable, Fox Business Channel.
And he's he's gonna brand that with the Wall Street Journal.
They've got a twelve-year exclusive deal with CNBC, but hell, anything can be broken with enough money.
Uh or partner up with them.
You know, what the hell?
Uh uh CNBC is gonna be the primary competition of the Fox uh business channel, but it's exciting.
Uh and the and the drive-bys are all a Twitter.
Here's uh here's Ron, Bend Oregon, your next on the EIB network, sir.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
Hey.
Do you remember how you've told us how Ronaldo Magnus destroyed the Soviet Empire?
Uh Ronaldus Magnus, yes, I remember that very well.
He destroyed the Soviet Empire because they ruined their army in Afghanistan, and they broke their budget trying to keep up with our arms program.
Yes.
Osama bin Laden's aim is for us to break our budget and but and ruin our army in Iraq, and that's the trap we're falling into.
And listen, this is not if it is World War II, we need the money and the troops to fight it.
If it's not World War II, if this is the new kind of what they call fourth generation war.
Wait a second, I have a question.
Okay.
Um it's a it's a hyp hypothetical.
We're not fighting this the right way.
No, no, my my question is not hypothetical.
Do you do you mean to say moments ago at the beginning of your phone call on this program that Osama bin Laden lured us into Iraq for the express purposes of having us destroy and break our army?
He hoped we would get tangled up in Afghanistan.
Instead he was beaten there.
Then we went into Iraq, and he there is nothing he likes better than us staying in Iraq.
Do you know next April, the Army either has to extend tours to eighteen months or do something else because we don't have enough soldiers?
I don't I don't think that that's accurate.
I don't think bin Laden's happy about what's going on at all if he's even still alive.
I don't think Zawa here these guys are happy about what's going on at all.
They're they're they're they're being wiped out of Iraq and they're being pushed out by native Iraqis.
The trend is uh as started to occur.
Our our military, by the way, you'd have to grant this.
Our military has a little bit higher stature and caliber than what the Soviet Union's was.
That's true.
But the strain is great.
The number of troops is not what it should be.
We talked about this a couple of years ago, and they're not yet beginning To increase the size of the Army and the Marine Corps.
And that's where the losses, and that's where the fighting is.
The Army and the Marine Corps.
Not Air Force fighter jets and Navy carriers.
I'm I'm reading that they're meeting their recruitment uh goals overall.
Not for the last two months, Rush.
And the guys that are in the case.
They might be down a left, but they're so far they're on they're on schedule to meet their yearly goals.
You're gonna have ups and downs month to month.
You start analyzing it that way, you can say anything's failing.
Rush, can I suggest one more thing?
Well, go right ahead.
Rush, have you ever thought about this?
If this thing in Iraq is as big a catastrophe as it pretends to be, you may be helping ruin the Republican Party for the next thirty or forty years.
Have you thought about that?
No.
Maybe maybe we'll may not be a Republican president for the next thirty years.
Uh oh, I think that's entirely possible, but not because of Iraq and not because of me.
Uh there's a clear way Republicans can win the White House.
There's a clear way that Republicans can win elections, and if they abandon it, if the candidates running for these offices abandon it, then nothing anybody else can do to save them.
Uh but I don't think it's gonna be a um I don't think it's gonna be a 30-year drought.
Uh I I don't not even sure it's gonna be a a drought.
I'm I'm not conceding that the Democrats win 08.
Uh I'll tell you, the for all the problems the Republicans have, I would not the the Democrats, I don't think they have a clue how silly they look, how how dangerous they appear, how incompetent, and that's a key word, and how corrupt uh they are appearing.
Uh the they're they they live by polls and focus groups that their own uh activists and pollsters take, and they and the drive-by's do puff peace stories on them.
I don't think they really have an idea of what the general population is beginning to think of them and the way they're conducting themselves.
Uh this this this earmarks bill, this this uh uh ethics bill, uh, I tell you, the the the the it's gonna cause national outrage when people find out about this.
This is one of the reasons the Republican lost in 06.
It wasn't Iraq uh that the Republicans lost in 06 for.
It was uh the the appearance of corruption uh and uh insulation from the uh from the people, a bit of arrogance thrown in, and the Democrats are heading right down that road again.
I'll get to that when we get back to this break, uh, which we have to take now.
We'll continue here shortly after this.
And we are back.
Rush Limbaugh, America's real anchor man, a national treasure, Nobel Peace Prize nominee.
General all round good guy, starting our twentieth year of service to America and the world on the EIB network today.
Uh Rich Galen and his Mullings blog has some interesting statistics today, and everybody's looking at fundraising just within the confines of the presidential race, and of course, in the presidential race, the Democrat candidates are shellacking the Republican candidates in fundraising.
However, you may not know that the committee level, the national committee level, the Republican National Committee is kicking the DNC's wallet pocket.
In the month of June, the RNC raised about six point four million dollars for the month.
The DNC raised about four point one million dollars for June.
So what?
Well, the Republicans had a short spurt, which got them a couple million more in June.
So this, if you look at fundraising for the cycle, the RNC has outraised the DNC about 45 million to about 28 million.
A fundraising edge of about 17 million dollars.
And then there's the ever important cash on hand number.
Howard Dean and his DNC enters the second half of 2007 with cash on hand a touch under five million dollars.
The GOP goes into the second half with cash on hand of nearly sixteen million dollars.
This is not being reported.
Uh it's no mystery as to why.
The picture, the template is Republicans are being abandoned by their ardent supporters.
Republicans have no hope.
It's over.
We may as well just crown the Democrats and whoever they nominate president after their primaries because the Republicans don't have a chance.
Look at the fundraising, but it's not exactly that way.
Washington uh journal today, Tom Coburn was on C SPAN for thirty thirty minutes.
Uh and the uh the the callers uh were just uh in righteous indignation.
Uh over and bipartisan too.
Republican and Democrat line callers were just in righteous indignation over this ethics and uh reform bill that is proving to be one of the biggest chams in the in the Democrat Congress.
Let me read you some experts here from the Journal, a Wall Street Journal's editorial entitled Earmarks as Usual.
It's almost too stereotypical to be true, even as the FBI and the IRS raided the home of Ted Stevens this week as part of a corruption investigation.
Congress is quietly moving to dismantle serious earmark reform.
If the members are wondering why their approval ratings have gone subterranean, this is it.
Not that they've had a time for soul searching amid all their self-congratulation over yesterday's passage of the Ethics and Lobbying Bill 411 to 8.
By the way, you know, the ethics and lobbying bill, um, it eliminates $200 lunches.
But permits $27 million earmarks and even even more.
Uh it just it it gets rid of so-called influence from lobbyists, but it uh it it's a shit it's a sham.
And it was 411 to 8.
Republicans and Democrats alike are bragging that they've now banned such occasions of sin as having lunch with a lobbyist or traveling on a corporate jet.
Only Congress people could take pride in claiming that they can be corrupted by a free lunch.
Yeah, we were corrupted by a lunch.
Corrupted on a plane flight, but we're no longer going to be corrupted now because those people can't give us things.
What fools do they take us for?
These ethics reforms do less to limit the members than they do to limit the ability of voters to influence their elected representatives.
As for members of Congress restraining themselves, they once promised more transparency and limits for the pork barrel projects known as earmarks.
These secret spending handouts have proliferated in recent years, and in 2005 alone cost taxpayers some 27 billion dollars.
Worse, they're a kind of gateway drug used to buy votes for even greater spending, as the last unlimited Republican Congress showed all too well.
Earmarks are also a major opportunities for corruption.
The current investigation at Ted Stevens centers on whether he may have directed millions in earmarks to benefit family friends and business partners.
He says he's got nothing to hide.
As I said yesterday, where where's the uh where's the raid in Searchlight Nevada?
Where's the rage and raid in Pennsylvania where Mertha hangs out?
Talking about earmarks.
Now, the uh you you people all loathe this.
We we all loathe this way of doing business.
Democrats uh did well in their campaign last year because they said they were gonna end this earmark status quo, they're gonna get rid of this.
They had a culture of corruption the Republicans had bred they were gonna get rid of.
Uh the uh public embarrassment also allowed uh Republican senators Jim Dement and Tob Coburn to shame Harry Reid into agreeing to meaningful reform in January.
But when the final reform emerged from congressional backrooms last week, any serious reform had vanished, Reed and Pelosi proceeded to bring the bill to the floor in a fast-track procedure that's avoided public scrutiny and limited the ability of reformers to offer amendments to restore the cuts.
So uh uh basically, earmarks are thriving.
They are alive and well, but you are supposed to be bought off with the notion that you and your Congressman can no longer go have lunch that you pay for.
Your Congress is now above corruption.
Your senator is above corruption, ladies, because he can't be bought by having lunch with you or a lobbyist or flying on some plane.
Favorites well, let me take a quick time out here uh to make sure I don't we got a new clock here that we're trying to a format clock.
I won't bore you with the details, but I don't know where I am in it anymore.
All right, now you you may be curious that this so-called ethics reform bill, which preserves these earmarks that just eliminates these uh 200 lunches.
Why did it end up passing 411 to eight?
You say, where are the Republicans on this?
Folks, they were afraid to vote against anything that had the word ethics in it.
They were just afraid, and then plus, you know, some of them want their they want the earmarks.
This is how these guys stay in office.
Is they have they buy votes with these, they trade votes for earmarks amongst themselves on the floor and with uh with voters.
Uh by the way, you know what is ethics reform?
It will even allow members of Congress to accept all the free lunches they want from lobbyists, even though they've been banned.
But the provision is those meals have to be classified as campaign events.
So if a lobbyist wants to take a member of Congress to lunch, he still can, and he can pay for it.
It just has to be called a fundraiser.
I mean, if if people find out what really is in this thing, you couple this with what happened on illegal immigration, you couple this with the anger people already felt over earmarks and uh and all these pork projects uh in the November 6 elections, and nobody up there is going to be safe.
This is a full fledged backroom secret deal that is insulting to your intelligence.
They think you're never gonna find out about this.
We'll be back.
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