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Aug. 2, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:35
August 2, 2007, Thursday, Hour #3
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Time Text
Thank you, Johnny Donovan.
The time has just been zipping by.
Always nice to be with you and to hear from such a great audience.
Of course, at this, your favorite radio station, everybody's working hard all the time to try to keep on top of all the news of the day, every hour of every day, including these three hours of broadcast excellence with America's anchorman, Rush Limbaugh, who will be back in the chair tomorrow for an open line Friday.
He is at a super secret location as we speak, but he will be back tomorrow here in what is lovingly known as the Northern Command.
This is where we sit at this moment, high atop the EIB building in Midtown Manhattan, where the view is somewhat clearer than everywhere else, I think, in this New York City area.
The East Coast campus of the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, where there is never a final exam, but we are tested every day.
And right away, because time is of the essence, we go to our guest, the former Speaker of the House author with his latest book out, Pearl Harbor, which is a novel, Pearl Harbor, a novel about December 8th, the former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich.
Mr. Speaker, always a pleasure.
Well, it's great to be with you and to talk with you once again, Paul, as we did the other morning on your Detroit show.
We always enjoy the time we get to spend together, and since that Detroit show, there's been this horrible collapse of the bridge, and inevitably they'll get around to talking about infrastructure problems in these United States.
And while it's been, I guess, popular to argue about whether the Republicans should or should not accept a YouTube offer to be questioned by a snowman, we continue to waste our time on issues like that rather than very real problems with our infrastructure, roads, bridges, water mains that are going to have to be replaced, with education, whether it's No Child Left Behind or anything else snappy that people come up with with letters that have great acronyms and everything else.
And there are real issues here, and I know you're smack dab in the middle of many of them.
Well, I think that one of the major reasons we've created American Solutions, and our listeners can go to AmericanSolutions.com, is to make the case that bureaucracy today is so inefficient and so ineffective compared to what it could be, that we really need to have very fundamental transformation in government.
And any of our listeners can go to YouTube and look up FedEx versus Federal Bureaucracy, and they'll see in three and a half minutes just how big the gap is between the world that could be the world of success where things work, and the world of failure where so much your government's trapped.
You know, just take the example you're citing of the bridge.
I hope the people in Minnesota will look at three recent case studies.
The Northridge earthquake, where Governor Pete Wilson offered an incentive contract and got the bridge repaired in record time.
The recent explosion of a gasoline tanker in Oakland where the incentivized contract was used at Oakland, California, and the bridge was repaired in 23 days.
And the job that then Governor Levitt did in Utah in using an incentivized contract for rebuilding the interstate system around Salt Lake City for the Winter Olympics.
And again, in each of those cases, by using the technique of the modern private sector, having incentives, having rewards, having deadlines, having metrics, in every single one of those cases, a great deal of money was saved for the taxpayer, and a great deal of time was saved.
Well, in fact, Newt Gingrich, you've talked about incentives in our conversation this past week on education.
And unfortunately, you used the Detroit Public Schools as an example of a failure in a system.
And we're not proud of that.
We don't like to hear other people say it.
Nobody ever does, but the reality is there are some real problems.
But there are problems across the board in education these days.
And you talked about incentives, even talked about paying students, the poorest students, for achievement.
Well, I think when you're faced with a crisis, what the Hart Rudman Commission said was the second greatest threat to American survival, which is the collapse of math and science education.
And you're faced with a bureaucracy which has been consistently failing and by one estimate of the Gates Foundation only graduates 25 percent of entering freshmen on time.
You really have to look for new approaches, new solutions, whether it is the KIPP system, KIPP, which is a private system that is operating in a number of very poor neighborhoods with 85% of the students going on to college, or whether it is considering the bold possibility of actually in the very poorest neighborhoods paying the equivalent of working at McDonald's for any student who's willing to study math and science and get a B or better to try to create a sense of genuine incentives.
We use incentives in football, in basketball, in baseball.
We use incentives from movie stars.
Somehow, once you get outside of the education bureaucracy, incentives are just fine.
But we don't see it as appropriate to say to the poorest kids in America, we think it's so important that you learn that we're willing to economically help you and reward you if you're willing to go and learn.
Before we talk a little bit about the political scene today and education a little bit further, and that may be a reaction to one of the Democrats, Obama, saying he'd go to war with one of our allies, No Child Left Behind, things like that.
Just give me an overview of what it is you're trying to accomplish with American Solutions, these workshops you're going to do around the country.
And these are starting at the end of September.
Did you say Americansolutions.com?
They can go to AmericanSolutions.com.
They'll get all the information about what we are doing.
And it's really several stages.
We will have up in the next couple weeks a solutions lab on the Internet where anybody in the country who has a good idea can come in and can enter their idea, can work on solutions, not have to wait until we someday have a conference or not have to travel, but actually be involved immediately in finding these kind of solutions and then talking with other people around the country about them.
And we think that kind of approach could be very effective in creating a new generation of solutions.
In addition, we will have six workshops out at Ames at the Republican gathering in Ames, Iowa.
They'll be open to everybody.
It's going to include border control.
It's going to include Social Security.
It is going to include looking at what we call green conservatism.
How can we apply incentives and science and technology to solve the challenges of the environment?
Because we think that using entrepreneurship and using science and technology and using incentives, we can do a far better job with the environment than can Al Gore with big taxes and big bureaucracy and big litigation.
Fundamental difference in approaches.
We also are going to have John Linder, Congressman John Linder, who you know, and Neil Borts are going to be there to talk about the fair tax, which is that and Steve Forbes' concept of an optional flat tax are two of the big interesting dialogues underway.
And we think people ought to have a chance to look at these kind of ideas.
We believe that America needs new solutions more than it needs more 30-second ads or more campaign consultants or whatever.
And so on September 27th, the anniversary of the contract with America, we will have a workshop nationwide on the Internet.
And then on September the 29th, on Saturday, we will have an expanded workshop so that anybody who wants to, Democrat, Republican, or Independent, at no cost to yourselves, can get involved on the Internet and can see the kind of ideas that are available and the kind of possibilities that are available.
Well, I said to you before that it sounds like an excellent platform to step off of or from to announce that you're running for president of the United States.
Well, I think there are a lot of ways to think of it, but my belief is that we need a generation of solutions, not just for president, but at every level.
You know, you mentioned this controversy about the Detroit bureaucratic schools, and that started when two things happened.
One is we did a historic look at Detroit, and in 1950, Detroit had 1,800,000 people and the highest per capita income of any city in the United States.
Today, it has 950,000 people.
It's lost almost half its population, and it ranks 61st in per capita income.
And so we began raising the question, why isn't there a policy debate?
Why isn't there some sense of what has Detroit been doing wrong?
Not just Detroit as a victim, but what does the leadership of Detroit have to change?
What does the city and the state and what does the school board have to change to make Detroit as successful as it once was?
And that's how you get into this.
And then the Gates Foundation did this study that initially said that they only graduated 22 percent of their entering freshman on time.
They now have gotten that up to 25 percent.
I was going to say they fight these figures.
And the figures, there are a lot of different ways of looking at a lot of different figures.
The fact of the matter is, whatever the figure is, the Detroit public school system is not proud of the figure, of the number of people that enter that school and the number of people that actually graduate.
And they're not alone across the country.
But this is part of my answer to you about the whole presidential thing, which is, as a citizen, I feel I have every right to advocate that the people of Detroit ought to try to solve their problem.
We passed this multi-billion dollar no child left behind, and you end up in this question of whether you really believe that the federal government's the right level to do this or whether you think the state and local government is.
I think that the state legislature ought to be looking very seriously at offering an option, an alternative for every young person in Detroit to have the best possible learning so that they can have a good, decent life so that they don't end up in jail.
Remember that if you're an African-American male and you drop out of high school, you face a 73% unemployment rate in your 20s and a 60% likelihood of going to jail.
And that's a tragedy.
It's a tragedy for the individual.
It's a tragedy for their family.
It's a tragedy for the community.
And it's a tragedy for the United States of America.
So I think every citizen has the right and the obligation to speak up when they see those kind of tragedies happening.
When we come back with Newt Gingrich, part of the lack of recognition, you say, by Republican candidates right now, now on the scale of the performance failure of government as a system, and you say the Democrats are living in a fantasy land in terms of their policy proposals.
I'm not sure that you really called the current presidential field on the Republican side a bunch of pathetic pygmies.
You can get the actual quotes at newt.org and from right here on the Rush Limbaugh program.
I'm Paul W. Smith.
Stay with us.
Former Speaker of the House, Newt Ingrid, with us here on the Rush Limbaugh program.
I'm Paul W. Smith.
And a couple of quick notes, newt.org to get the actual quotes, and also Americansolutions.com to try to help get some of the actual answers to some of the problems we have across the board in these United States.
All right, you have spoken out about the field out there, and I think you wanted to wait until maybe October to see if the Republicans had a chance of putting someone up to be a serious alternative to what you've called the Clinton-Obama ticket.
What's your feeling about this now?
Well, I think that you've got three very respectable, serious people running in Governor Mitt Romney, Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and Senator Fred Thompson.
And I think all three of them are very much to be respected.
They have very strong capabilities.
But I also think that we need to engage, and they need to engage, in a much more dramatic critique of where we are, of what needs to be done, and of things that have to change.
If we're seen as just offering more of the last six years, the fact is we're going to, I think, lose and potentially lose badly because that was the lesson of the 2006 campaign.
I mean, every close election for a Senate last year was lost by the Republicans, every single one of them.
If they were an incumbent, the only one to win was an open seat.
So I think the country was trying to send us a signal, and I think we owe it the respect of accepting that it's allowed to do that.
Did you call the Republican presidential candidates those who have so far announced a bunch of pygmies?
Or did you use that in your reference to de Gaulle?
Well, this is something I was actually asked about this by Chris Wallace on Sunday, and I thought it was, frankly, funny.
My dad served in the U.S. Army, and we ended up being stationed in Orléans, France, during the collapse of the French Fourth Republic.
And so as a very young American, one of the most vivid moments I had early on was seeing the French Fourth Republic collapse, seeing the paratroopers come back from Algeria and kill the government.
This is a government that had 100% inflation.
It had lost all public confidence.
And they brought General de Gaulle back from retirement, and he created the Fifth Republic, which is still today the longest-serving, stable institution in France since the monarchy.
So I'd lived through that kind of experience, and I was fascinated by de Gaulle's sense of history and his ability to not get drawn into the daily politics of the French Fourth Republic.
And it was de Gaulle who basically said that the Fourth Republic had created a system where everybody was reduced to a pygmy.
And what I've tried to tell people is when you have these auditions with 10 or 12 or 14 people standing in a row with a television personality in charge with 30 seconds to answer whatever random question the television personality gives to you, you are shrinking the potential for leadership in America.
If you go back and look at Lincoln and Cooper Union, he spent three months, wrote a 7,300-word two-hour speech, and it's the only major speech he gave in 1860, and yet he was nominated and became president.
And he did so because people took him seriously.
They thought he was the right leader at that moment because they thought he was a serious person.
Well, and they're not really debates, as has been pointed out so many times on this program and elsewhere.
And as you've said, they seem to demean the process, Newt Gingrich, of seeking the next president of the United States.
We want, as a people, presidents who are thoughtful, who are prepared, who have serious ideas about how they're going to lead the country and how they're going to solve our problems.
And we need some device, some method of getting to know them better.
And these are the opposite of that.
These are virtually a joke.
I tell people they're a cross between The Bachelor and American Idol, and are you as smart as a fifth grader?
I mean, if you just watch them, there's something goofy about the whole feel to them.
But I'm proposing, and Marvin Calvin and I are doing an event at the National Press Club, and we're going to propose that whoever the nominees are in 2008, that they agree in advance to nine 90-minute dialogues, one a week from Labor Day to the election, with a commitment to have a timekeeper, but no moderators.
So you'd end up with two adults sharing their concerns about America's future, their ideas for solving America's future, and hopefully both of them would actually grow out of the experience.
Both of them would actually be a little more complex, a little more knowledgeable, a little more creative and positive by the end of that dialogue.
But we Americans, we would have had a chance every week to spend 90 minutes with two people who are seeking to be our national leader.
And I think the process would be dramatically healthier than the current system that we're using.
The question is, and the question doesn't apply to the Rush Limbaugh program audience, or for that matter, the audience to my show in Detroit, but it does apply to an awful lot of people.
And that is, how are you going to get Americans, generally speaking, to sit there nine times for 90 minutes to watch what should be very, very important and people explaining in historic terms and otherwise how they're going to change Washington and change America?
Well, I think, first of all, that a surprising number of people would do just that.
That if they knew this was the moment all week when they got a first-hand personal glimpse of the two presidential candidates and they had a chance to measure these two people, I think you get surprisingly good audiences.
All right.
I think you have to leave, I'm told, on the half hour.
So I do want to just ask you a quick question about Pearl Harbor, your novel, because I always tell you I will do that when you're kind enough to join me.
It's the novel of December 8th.
How is it doing?
It's done very well.
We've been as high as number six in the New York Times best-selling list, and we're very excited about it.
I think the story of Pearl Harbor relates directly to today.
I think it's a very serious warning about the danger of being surprised, about the power of technology.
And I really do recommend it to folks.
I think you'd find it, I realize it's a little self-serving for me to say about my own book, but I think you would find it a very, very effective read and one which has an awful lot of relevance for what we're living through today.
All right.
And for folks who want to get more information, if they want to know about a quote or they think there's a quote from you, newt.org is a good place to go.
That's our official website, and we put everything there so it's easy for people to get to.
And Americansolutions.com, these workshops over the internet, a way for you to get truly involved.
September 27th, the anniversary of the contract with America, the 29th, an expanded workshop to actually have your say on how to fix some things in America.
Newt, always a pleasure, my friend.
Good with you, Paul.
You take care.
Newt Gingrich here on the Rush Limbaugh program.
I'm Paul W. Smith, In for Rush, and right back to you on the telephone, 1-800-282-2882.
Now in its 20th year of teaching conservatism on a daily basis, and sure is nice to be here, Infor Rush, who will be here in for himself on an Open Line Friday right here on your favorite radio station.
You can be in touch at 1-800-282-2882 with the time we have left.
1-800-282-2882 with what we've been talking about on this Radio Free America, the different issues.
If it's about education, at what point do we say the students have to be responsible for becoming educated?
I wanted to talk a little bit, too, about how long we'll keep bringing things into this country from China, finding out that they're just bad.
You know, when it starts to affect kids, first of all, pets.
That I thought would be enough to have people charging into the streets and saying, we're not going to take this anymore when they started killing our pets with food from China and then the toothpaste.
And now these kids, toys, Toymaker Fisher Price recalling 83 types of toys, including the popular Big Bird, Elmo, Dora, and Diego characters, because their paint contains excessive amounts of lead.
Now, along with Adam, who's going to be 15 August 20th, we've got Sophie, who's 4 and loves all these characters.
And it worries me, it bothers me that there is a recall now, once again, when you consider that Mattel is known for its strict quality controls, considered a role model in the toy industry for how it operates in China, and yet these toys from China, 967,000 plastic preschool toys made by a Chinese vendor, sold in the United States between May and August.
The latest wave of recalls that has heightened global concern about the safety of Chinese-made products.
We're talking about our kids, and we're letting this happen again and again.
Every recall this year of products, of toy products, have been products made in China.
I don't know how long we're going to keep doing that, putting up with it.
There's lots to talk about, certainly, and I want to hear from you at 1-800-282-2882.
And Mark is in Houston and checking in on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Hi, Mark.
I'm Paul.
Hi, Paul.
Good talking to you.
Nice to have you with you.
I just wanted to say that in reference to the YouTube debate, I'd prefer to see 90 minutes of AM radio debates, which all you'd have to do, I think, is a much better medium.
And all you'd have to do is listen to them.
You wouldn't have to look at them and just hear what these guys have to say.
Well, you know, you make an interesting point here, Mark.
I have to tell you, if you listen to a debate on the radio, or if you watch the debate on television, or if you read the transcript from the debate in the newspaper, you can get three completely different ideas of the people and what they said.
I believe that.
And I think that, depending on how these debates are going to go, or these 90-minute programs, in fact, that Newt Gingrich was just talking about, I suspect that if they're on television, for example, they certainly could be simulcast on radio, AM information-rich radio.
That would be a possibility, certainly.
I think it's a good idea.
I don't think they're going to get them just on radio, though, Mark.
I don't think that's going to happen.
It doesn't have the power that the television has.
It's just the way it is today.
That's just the way it is.
I'll tell you: when I'm asked to do a television piece, whether it's for Fox News or Bloomberg News, there's a lot of attention on the Detroit area because of the UAW talks and Ron Gettelfinger and Rick Wagner and Tom Lasorda and Alan Malally trying to put that industry back together and healthy.
So they come into town, and the amount of money television stations and specifically television networks can spend on getting a three- to five-minute conversation with me is mind-blowing compared to what we have to spend or not in regular radio.
Now, I'm not talking about this, of course.
This is it.
This is the top of the mountain.
This is the EIB network.
This is the Rush Limbaugh program.
This is a juggernaut.
So they have money is no object here.
But I'm getting a different kind of reaction from Mike Maimon, the engineer, I guess.
All right, but the point is this.
In television, they've got a lot of money, a lot of resources that radio just does not have.
Radio has a lot of ability that it has to remind itself it has, and that frankly, Rush Limbaugh, 19, now 20 years ago, brought back to reality by saving radio, but that's another story another time.
There's lots that can be done, and you have to read what they say.
You have to watch them.
You have to listen to them.
You have to do all of that.
Let's go to Dan in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Welcome in to the Rush Limbaugh program.
I'm Paul W. Smith.
Dan, hello.
Hi, Mr. Smith.
How are you today?
I'm going to hope you're well.
Great.
Good.
Just wanted to come into you on the show today and say right up front, as I told the other gentleman, I'm not particularly a Rush Limbaugh fan.
That is somewhat unfortunate because it blocks, you know, it's more of an issue with the messenger than with the message.
And your presentation today is a pleasant break from the ranting and raving that is normally in the middle.
Well, now, wait a minute.
Now, wait a minute, Dan.
I am a huge fan of Rush Limbaugh.
He has a different and far more successful style than I do.
This is me, though.
This is what I do.
That's what he does.
And I would ask you to not listen to Rush for an hour or two or three, but listen to Rush for three weeks in a row, and you'll get it.
You'll understand what he's doing and why he does what he does and how he does what he does.
You can't get it in a show or two or even three.
Absolutely.
And I agree with your statement.
I just think the theatrics could be toned down a bit, and that's what I found very interesting about your presentation this afternoon.
Well, I don't know what you, you know, okay, I appreciate that.
Is there anything else that you want to say?
Because I have to disagree with you on that.
I think that everything that Rush does is interesting and entertaining and thought-provoking.
Entertaining indeed.
I will agree with you.
Well, everything has to be in its own way entertaining or people won't listen or tune in.
That's why this kind of radio program, this kind of radio station, does so much better than public broadcasting stations that seem to be without a sense of humor.
And the fact that they're wildly liberal probably has a lot to do with it, too.
Well, yeah, and you're certainly entitled to your own opinion.
Well, of course I am.
Actually, a point I did want to raise.
I'm not sure you're entitled to your own opinion, mister.
Here, is that a little better?
Well, I'm just kidding.
Go ahead, Dan.
What's your thought?
Thank you.
Thank you.
I do appreciate that.
I do agree with your statement that on certain news issues, and today, of course, we're using the tragedy of the bridge collapse, that sometimes perhaps we're focusing on perhaps the wrong presentation or all right, but we have to say this every time because there's someone out there listening thinking we're saying something else.
We're not using the bridge collapse as an example of what I'm talking about because this is a tragedy that happened less than 24 hours ago.
This is truly a legitimate news story.
A week from now, two weeks from now, check with me.
Yeah, oh, absolutely.
Okay.
Well, again, I commend you for the broadcast today.
Very interesting and very well put forth.
All right.
Okay.
Thanks, Dan, very much.
All right.
You know, HR is working so hard in there going through the phone calls.
And generally, when someone calls in, they really actually have something to say.
And I was trying to find out, and every time I went back to him, he complimented me.
It looked like I was milking him for more compliments.
I'm not doing that.
But I'll get you the 20 bucks a little bit later, though, kid.
All right, let's go to Roland in Brentwood, California.
Roland, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program.
And I am Paul, yes.
I really, I was kind of hoping I'd get in to talk to Newt before he went off.
Yeah, it's hard, but what is it you wanted to say?
Maybe he's still listening, and if not, we can pass it along to him.
Yeah, that'd be great.
My comment was on his plan for the underprivileged kids and the incentivized thing that he had going there.
Yeah, like McDonald's wages for kids who are getting B's and A's.
Yeah, now, you know, he was only talking about any underprivileged kids.
It's trying to motivate them.
The poorest kids.
Yeah, exactly.
And, you know, I have three kids, my own.
I live in California.
And, you know, we're about 250% of the poverty level.
I've been a stay-at-home dad for the last two years.
Good for you.
And the thing is, you know, my oldest daughter is in second grade now.
She skipped kindergarten.
She's an extremely bright student.
If they had GATE for her, she'd be in GATE.
She's in Odyssey of the Mind and some other after-school stuff.
You know, is his program going to take and work for her also?
Is he going to offer that to a student who isn't at the poverty line?
Probably not, because this is a student whose father, at least, is very, very much involved in his child's education.
And she's not at risk, I think, based on what you're telling me, of dropping out.
No, not at all.
But why should, you know, in California, we have so many other issues with trying to take and get her the education that she needs, you know, from the standpoint of relevant to her.
I mean, the kindergarten class she spent nine weeks in, the teacher was using her as an instructional aid for other kids that couldn't actually understand and do stuff.
Well, you should be proud as a dad, but I also, it kills me to hear the distress in your voice as well, Roland, that you're concerned that you're not going to be able to afford her education.
Well, it's not just that I can't afford the education.
It's just the fact that it's not a fair system.
Oh, wait a minute.
Okay, so wait a minute.
It's supposed to be fair, I know.
Wait a minute.
Roland, Roland.
Let's go back to the rushlimbaugh.com for our lesson today.
Roland, I'm going to let you listen to this on hold because we're past our break time.
But again, only the rich pay taxes.
Remember that.
84.6% of all federal income taxes are paid by the top 25% of income earners.
The top 50% pay 96.70% of all income taxes.
The top 1% pay more than a third, 36.89%.
And you want to talk about FAIR and wonder where your piece of the pie is?
We continue on the Rush Limbaugh program.
I'm Paul W. Smith.
All righty, Paul W. Smith in for Rush Limbaugh.
Rush Limbaugh is in tomorrow, Open Line Friday.
He'll be right here in his 20th year of teaching on a daily basis, all about what being a conservative is all about as we come to you from the East Coast campus of the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, where there is never a final exam, but we are tested every day.
Paul W. here along with you on the phone at 1-800-282-2882.
That's 1-800-282-2882.
And of course, you should always go to rushlimbaugh.com to find out what's going on as well.
Let's go to Ron in Las Vegas.
Does anyone, Ron, does anyone there say lost wages, Nevada?
Probably the tourists that come and when they're heading out, they're probably calling it that.
I suspect they do, yes.
All right, Ron, what's on your mind?
It's a pleasure to speak to you.
I was going to say the story on the tragedy on the bridge collapsed, it won't be over for a little while just because the drive-by media and the liberal Democrats haven't got around to blaming Bush and the war for the reason why the bridges haven't been fixed.
You know, it's funny you say that because we've had a little sidebar conversation going on behind the scenes here, wondering when that would happen.
Now, this tragedy is not yet 24 hours old.
And one thought was that the president, of course, too busy trying to come up with another hurricane.
But at this point, I have not heard anyone say that if we hadn't spent all that money in Iraq, this bridge would have been fixed.
There was something else about a oh, no, that was in Alaska, a bridge to nowhere where all that money went.
So I'm not exactly sure.
I haven't heard anything about that.
But here's how it came up, Ron, and you bring up an excellent point.
I said to the folks here, I said, I'm not so sure it makes a lot of sense for the White House to come out with a statement like this.
And there's a piece here that says, a news piece here from a drudge.
The White House said Thursday that an inspection two years ago found structural deficiencies in the highway bridge that buckled during evening rush hour in Minneapolis.
White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said the Interstate 35W span rated 50 on a scale of 120 for structural stability.
Then the quote is, this doesn't mean there was a risk of failure, but if an inspection report identifies deficiencies, the state is responsible for taking corrective actions, he said.
The bridge was 40 years old.
Now, I don't, and I know the First Lady is going to be there tomorrow to console the victims of the collapse.
Now, I don't know if Tony, Tony's a great guy, as we all know here from this program and back in Michigan, we certainly know.
But I don't know if Tony Snow was actually answering a question or not when this came up.
But my question to HR was, for example, why would they come out and say something like that right now?
It almost sounds like, okay, we just want to point out it's not our fault.
And Kit said, well, because he will be blamed.
In the end, the president will be blamed for this bridge collapsing by the Democrats.
So, Ron, it didn't even take us three hours of being on the air and in these hallowed studios in Midtown Manhattan to hear somebody ask the question or actually say, as you just did, that this won't be over.
Whoops.
This story won't be over until the blame is at the feet of our president.
So there you are.
I thought, frankly, I thought that maybe H.R. was off on this one.
I thought, kid, there's no way that the Democrats in any way, shape, or form are going to lay this at the feet of President Bush.
And his only answer at that point was, Katrina?
And I went, oh, yeah, I guess you're right for once.
No, again, is what I really meant.
All right, a couple more stories, and then we're out of here.
And it can be on education, if you'd like.
We have somebody standing by that wants to go back to that, maybe what Newt Gingrich was talking about, what I was talking about, and wrap it up too with you at 1-800-282-2882 so that Adam W. Smith and me and I, no, me, I, can continue our excellent adventure doing all the touristy things here in New York City.
As we're also here on the Rush Limbaugh program, I'm Paul W. Smith.
Finally, an international flavor of St. Catherine, Ontario.
Nicole, you've waited so long, so patiently.
Go ahead, Nicole.
Thank you for taking my call.
From the viewpoint of a Pop Culture University grad student, I agree with Newt Gingrich in that academic incentives are a great way to feed the drive and the determination of the individual student to work longer and harder and basic reading, writing, and arithmetic.
But after the school system has been challenged and these incentives are made official, at what point does the individual student take personal responsibility?
That is the question, and to be continued, we can't answer it, but there is responsibility here, personal responsibility.
Everybody in the country needs to know that, and we don't have enough of it.
I want to thank Cookie, HR, Mike, and you for being tuned in.
Rush will be back where he belongs tomorrow for Open Line Friday.
I want you to go on out and make it a great rest of the day.
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