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Aug. 7, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:35
August 7, 2007, Tuesday, Hour #3
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Lots to do on the EIB network, Rush Limbaugh.
The final hour of our excursion into broadcast excellence is uh underway.
It's a thrill and delight to have you with us.
You know, I'm watching this PMS NBC telethon for the Democrat candidates.
There's a debate or a forum tonight, and these guys are all at a stadium somewhere.
And I've and I don't know where it is.
I figure it's someplace in Iowa.
But I was hoping that it was Giant Stadium in New York.
But it's not, because the seats at Giant Stadium are red and these seats are blue.
Uh but since this thing is co-sponsored with the AFL CIO, it'd be giant stadium be perfect because that's where Jimmy Hoffa is uh is supposedly buried.
Here's the phone number if you want to be on the program.
800-282-2882 and the email address rush at EIBNet.com.
This is a very, very good headline, and it's from uh a Rasmussen poll company report.
Democrat presidential candidates have no advantage over Republican candidates on Iraq, the economy, or restoring the nation's optimism.
While America's voters are not particularly happy with the current Republican president, the leading Democrat presidential candidates have no advantage over the top Republican hopefuls when it comes to a rock the economy or restoring the nation's optimism.
Democrat candidates do have an edge when it comes to the environment, while Republicans hold a lead on immigration.
Among the nation's pool of unaffiliated voters, Republican candidates also have the edge when it comes to the economy.
These surprising results came from a or come from a Rasmussen reports national telephone survey that asked voters to name which individual candidate they trust most on particular issues.
On an individual basis, Hillary Clinton was the top choice on four or five issues among all voters.
Another Democrat Barack Obama did especially well among unaffiliated voters.
But the when you bought it all down, the Republicans well, let me put it a different way.
The Democrats do not have any kind of an advantage.
And they presume that they do, by the way.
They are thinking that they own this election cycle, and that it's only a matter of time because they think they've convinced the American people that Republicans are horrible, rotten to the core.
Bush stinks, uh, of course, all of that.
Such what?
It's uh Chicago, Soldier Field Chicago.
Aha.
Well, Jimmy Hoffa may not be buried there, but who knows who else is.
Um anyway, why are they doing in Chicago?
The Iowa straw poles are coming up.
Well, anyway, let me get to the global warming stack here, ladies and this this stack today is just unbelievable.
A former member of the Clinton administration, current senior fellow at the virtual Clinton think tank, the Center for American Progress, claimed yesterday that global warming might have played a factor in the collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis last week.
Writing at Climate Progress, the global warming blog of the Center for American Progress, Joseph Rahm, who served as acting assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy in 97, and his principal deputy assistant secretary from 95 through 98, stated in a piece amazingly entitled, Did Climate Change Contribute to the Minneapolis Bridge Collapse?
He says I was skeptical at first, but after doing a Google search, and after NBC reported Sunday that the National Transportation Safety Board investigators are looking at everything, including the weather, I think it's a legitimate question to ask.
Melissa Hortman of the Mini Minnesota House of Representatives speculated that 90 plus degree heat on Wednesday and the above normal temperatures of the past two summers may have been a contributing factor.
You wonder if this bridge was built to withstand the massive heat we have had this summer.
You have got to be ki.
We don't build bridges that can handle 90 degree heat.
Some may object to even asking the question he writes: Did climate change contribute to the collapse?
My guess is those are the same people who deny that global warming is caused by humans, or that it is a serious problem, the same people who inevitably say we can adapt to whatever climate change there is.
But in my experience, those adapters are actually not interested in finding out what the impacts of global warming are.
The Bush administration has blocked research into the impact of climate change on this country and muzzled climate scientists from discussing key climate.
This is just patently absurd.
But this is how ridiculous it's gotten.
Global warming, they build bridges in Minnesota, can't withstand two summers of 90 degree heat.
By the way, there's an interesting story out of Minnesota on all this.
Do you know that repairing this bridge and doing maintenance is very, or was, it was very, very difficult because the some of the work of the bridge was infested with spiders.
And these guys would have to go down over the uh edge and get underneath the roadway, uh, and they'd have to put spider webs out of the way because they couldn't tell the difference.
Spiner spider webs and cracks, that pigeons are in there, uh pigeon guano all over the place.
Who knows what effect you know that that can have.
And also this.
They said that that when they had to close off a lane or two to repair this bridge now and then, that drivers would become sometimes abusive with the workers and throw things at them out the car for delaying their travels across the bridge.
And so this necessitated um uh reaction on the part of the repair workers and the maintenance workers, who would often choose odd times to do the work, speed up their work and so forth to avoid the hassles and creating hassles for drivers and motorists.
Uh all in all, it it it uh is absurd to start speculating.
We're gonna find out.
People could just wait.
Going to find out what happened here.
There will be a forensic analysis and examination here, and we will know what happened.
But people just can't wait.
Got a move in global warming now from a former Clinton administration.
Already told you about the story from the UK Times, walking to the mall damages the planet more than going by car.
I know you think this is a hoax story.
You think this is uh like a satire?
It is not.
Here's the money quote.
Walking does more than driving to cause global warming.
A leading environmentalist has calculated.
Food production is now so energy intensive that more carbon is emitted, providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance.
The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less, and became couch potatoes.
How do you people that believe this stuff keep up with how in the you people that believe this?
I want to know.
How does your brain work?
What is it that makes you willing to associate associate yourself with literal glittering jewels of colossal ignorance?
Al Gore in Singapore.
He said research aimed at disputing the scientific consensus, and there we go again.
There can be no consensus in science.
It's not science if there's consensus, it's not up for a vote.
Research aimed at disputing the scientific consensus on global warming is part of a huge public misinformation campaign funded by some of the world's largest carbon polluters, Gore said today.
Uh there's been an organized campaign financed to the tune of about 10 million a year from some of the largest carbon polluters to create the impression that there's disagreement in the scientific community.
Gore said at a forum in Singapore.
In actuality, there is very little disagreement among leading scientists of the world.
Gore likened the campaign to the millions of dollars spent by the tobacco companies years ago on creating the appearance of scientific debate on smoking's harmful effects.
He said this is one of the strongest of scientific consensus views in the history of science.
We uh we live in a world where what used to be called propaganda now has a major role to play in shaping our public opinion.
So I consulted our official climatologist, Roy Spencer.
I said, what is this scientific consensus?
What what what please explain this to me?
Here is what Mr. Spencer, Dr. Spencer wrote back.
The only survey, and he's at the University of Alabama Huntsville, former NASA, his uh uh climate specialist specializing in the precipitation, what impact it might have on global warming, and it's by the way, precipitation is not in any global warming models.
He wrote back, he said, the only survey of climate scientists I'm aware of is a survey of 530 climate scientists from 27 countries.
Only 56% of these 530 scientists agreed that climate change is mostly the result of man-made causes.
56%.
So uh Gore is saying that we are now voting on the whole concept of man-made global warming.
Exactly right.
We're voted 56%.
Is the um is is this this consensus of scientists.
Fifty-six percent.
How can anybody accept anything that 56% of scientists say that it ain't it ain't science.
It's all politics, it's religion.
It is a uh it is a hoax.
By the way, uh little quick question here.
What was the top U.S. natural disaster?
Natural.
Not 9-11, not a terrorist.
The top, because I have the top five here.
I don't see how many people.
What's a top U.S. natural disaster?
The greatest.
The 199 uh 1900 Galveston hurricane, 8,000 dead.
The second greatest natural disaster, the 1936 heat wave, the Dust Bowl, five thousand dead.
The third greatest U.S. natural disaster, the great Okeechobee hurricane, twenty-five hundred dead, nineteen twenty-eight.
The fourth greatest U.S. natural disaster, the Johnstown flood in Pennsylvania in 1889, 2200 dead.
And the fifth greatest U.S. natural disaster, the Louisiana hurricane of uh 1893 before they were named, 2,000 dead.
The top five greatest U.S. natural disasters, 1900 and prior.
Back in a sec.
All right, back to the phones.
People have been waiting patiently.
Rush Limbaum meeting and surpassing all audience expectations on a daily basis to Sarasota, Florida.
This is Kimberly.
Nice to have you on the program.
Welcome.
Rash Magadettos.
Thank you.
I'd like to start out by saying hello to my nephew, Lance Clark, who is in Fellutia.
Um, but then I would like to tell you that after all this talk of the fairness doctrine, I picked up my copy of the National Association of Library's magazine.
And inside were all the presidential candidates, all five of them.
Um there wasn't a Republican to be found.
They were all Democrats, and uh Well, of course it's supposed to it's a union.
I understand that, but you would think that they would at least go to the Republicans and say, what are your views on these five topics that we have here?
Oh, why would you expect the Republicans don't have any views that are worth anything according to the U.S. No, no, no, no.
That that I you know, you're you're you're looking for quote unquote fairness and balance here, and you only find that at the Fox News channel.
Well, Rash, there are a lot of us letter carriers out here that are conservative, so they're not getting their message across if that's what they're trying to do.
Uh who the Republicans aren't or or the Democrats aren't.
The Democrats.
Yeah, I uh look at I I think look at you.
You um uh you're a conservative Republican letter carrier, you got a lot of them out there.
You open a magazine that you get, and you know it just makes you mad.
It's not gonna it's not gonna make you more prone to support these guys.
This this were these uh uh Democrats are missing the boat.
They they think that they can hide from you the fact that there are Republican candidates.
It's what I mean.
They think you're stupid.
They think you're not gonna notice this.
They think they can put these five candidates in there, little summaries of what they want on these whatever issues, and that you're gonna sit there and and uh you know soak it up like a sponge.
Well, I would like to thank you so much for your help in the EIB school, and um you have a wonderful day.
You do the same.
Thanks.
I really uh appreciate that.
Scott in Cincinnati, great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello, sir.
Hi, Rush, how are you?
Good.
Good.
Well, you asked the question of a uh short time ago, I think about uh out of the field of democratic nominee hopefuls.
Who would you pick?
Is there really one you'd vote for?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Well, actually, you I don't think you said vote for, but I don't want to get into that arguing with you.
You're too smart for me on that point.
But what I want to say is I look at the question a different way.
Is who would I pick to go against?
Um and I think, you know, give us your best.
Give us as a competitor, give us your best your best shot.
If it's Hillary, that's fine.
Let's go up against her uh with our ideas.
And if they don't if they don't win, then we've got a little litmus test, a real report card on where the state of the GOP and the and the American public is at this point.
If we don't have uh if we can't claim that we uh own the knowledge about what the American people feel that you're maybe it'll be a wake-up call.
What you're saying is that l let's say I'm the coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and I'm in the Super Bowl, and I say I want the best opponent I get.
I don't want some wild card team, some cellar dweller in it.
I want to go up against the very best, because I want to prove that my team's the best.
Is that what so you think Hillary's the best and that'll be the best test for the Republicans and find out where we really stand.
Well, I didn't think she say I didn't think I said she was the best, but if she is the best, if that's the one that would be.
Well then wait, well on what basis did you then select her as the opponent for the report?
Do you think she's most easily beatable or the toughest to beat, and that's why you want us to run against her?
Uh she might be the toughest to beat.
Might be the toughest to be.
Well, you're right about that.
I mean, just based on uh the amount of the case.
And it isn't it isn't gonna be Gravel, it ain't gonna be these other people, it ain't gonna be by it's gonna be Hillary.
So the uh nature of my question was is there anybody you would vote for to lead the country?
From that, obviously not speechless.
There's no Democrat candidate in the list that a that a thinking engaged person would possibly support.
You're right about that.
Uh now you you know here's here's the thing.
You you you you uh uh don't don't take this personally, but but I understand it is that one to go up against the best and so forth.
To see what we're made of.
The biggest test.
Uh uh It's a little bit like a Miss America pageant contestant answer.
Uh because yeah, of course we want to find out what we're made of, but we ought to know what we're made of.
The going up against Clinton Inc.
Uh is not exactly uh a level playing field.
Clinton war room, all these uh all these other things.
But it is look, it is gonna be her.
Let me let me do another test.
Quick quick little test here.
Uh what is Mrs. Clinton's position on the war in Iraq.
My gosh.
My gosh, are you on today?
You've you haven't felt good yesterday, I could tell, but you are you are really on today.
Snerdley's answer was which one.
If you answered what year are you talking about, you get one point.
If I asked you the question, what is her position on the war and you said what year are you talking about, Rush, you get one point.
If you answered what day are you talking about, you get three points.
And if you answered it depends on what hour of the day you are talking about, then you really, really, really understand her war policy, and you get five points.
So I think we put you in a three-point category.
You said which one you uh uh correctly answered that uh there are multiple positions depending on what she needs it to be that hour.
Uh Linda in New Orleans, I'm glad you waited.
You're next on the EIB network.
Hello.
Thank you.
It's a privilege and a pleasure, right.
Thank you so much.
Been there from the very beginning.
Thank you.
Grown old listening to you.
Okay.
Now, um Snerdley let me on in on condition that I just mentioned this in this morning's paper.
But a con a subcontractor who worked on four major bridges in this country, uh has been indicted because he hired twenty-six uh employees, all without proper welding certificates.
This this is the Tarasco Steel guy.
Yeah, had you mentioned it earlier No, no, no, I had it in the stack.
It just happened to coincide with your call.
Oh what a what a coincidence.
Isn't this ma marriage made in happen?
But I'm I'm taken.
But he's old.
Okay, Rush.
Well, I'm taken too, but then I'm I'm taken by me.
Okay.
Uh there's nobody else.
Oh, well, what a loss to our side.
What?
What?
What a loss to our sex.
No, no, no, no.
You want me focused.
You don't want me distracted.
You don't have to.
Okay, no, I don't.
Because while we're on the subject, you just asked some poor man to define calmly.
I can do that.
That's slander.
Why don't you define for me country?
Country?
Yeah, country.
How do you define it?
Uh well, someplace not in the city.
No, no, no, no.
The broader.
Shame on you.
That's weaseling out.
How do you define.
You're asking me a trick question.
No, it's not a quick question.
Yes, it is.
It's a trick question.
It's a deeply serious one.
How do you find define country?
Um country is a group of people oriented around a common culture, common history, common goals focused on maintaining those goals and that tradition and that history so as to maintain the status as a country.
Um I would say half-right.
Because how do you think that's good?
No, no, it's because we're out of time.
No, right.
How can you do it without that?
That's right.
A man a living legend, doctor of democracy, Nobel Peace Prize nominee, prophet.
General all around good guy here on the EIB network.
Now I know I know what uh Linda from New Orleans is trying to say, trying to get me to put the borders aspect into the definition of country.
Obviously.
It goes without saying.
Uh I I wasn't being read, we were just rude.
We were just running out of time, but I'm gonna tell you about the story that she referenced.
Uh the owner of Tarasco Steel, which is a company that supplied workers on the Biloxi Bay Bridge, was arrested and charged with hiring illegal immigrants on projects in three states.
Some had improper welding certification.
U.S. immigration and customs enforcement agents uh arrested Jose Gonzalez 32 at his office in Greenville Thursday.
Tarasco Steele was hired as a subcontractor for rebar installation services to major bridge projects in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee.
The uh federal government considers those bridges as critical infrastructure, and they were part of routine inspection of facilities that if damage could pose a threat to a national security and public safety.
Serious public safety concern when illegal aliens not authorized to work in the country legally and who don't possess valid welding certifications are employed in the construction of bridges in our community.
Well, no kidding.
The companion story, United Nations translator was arrested yesterday on charges that he and two others used UN stationery in a visa fraud scheme.
Vashislav Manokin, UN employee based in Manhattan, was accused of helping numerous non-U.S.
citizens enter the country illegally by providing fraudulent documentations or documents, sorry, so that they could obtain visas to attend conferences that either did not exist or which they did not attend.
So it's another UN scandal.
How many scandals do we have here?
In the United Nations.
Uh Cincinnati.
Uh this is John.
John, welcome to the EIB network.
Hello.
Rushman, how are you, bro?
Good, sir.
Very good.
Never better.
Listen, I got a I got a point, then a question.
Who was that genius that brought out the report about the bridge and global warming and heat?
A guy named Joseph Joseph Rahm is uh former Clinton administration.
Let me find the story here.
All right.
Just a second, I'll get it.
Coming up here very quickly.
Wait a minute.
Ah, here it is.
All right, guys, Joseph Rahm, R-O-M-M, a former Clinton administration official and current think tank specialist at the Clinton think tank, the Center for American Progress.
Is he one of these rogue scholars?
Uh your guess is good as mine.
I I don't I wouldn't, I don't know.
Well, Rush, here here's my point.
A couple of months ago, I don't know, two, three months ago, the genius Rosie O'Donnell set on the view that steel doesn't melt.
So what does he got to do with the steel bridge?
Uh of course it's absurd.
But steel does melt.
Uh There was a tanker explosion out in San Francisco or the highway bridge melted because of it.
Well, I know that, but he she said it didn't do that.
So what's it got to do with with nine look it.
Steel's not going to melt at 90 degrees out there.
No.
So then my second question.
Where was the Antichrist Cheney last week?
The Anti-Christ Chaney.
I saw him in the White House on Friday morning.
On Friday.
Yeah.
And the bridge went down Thursday, right?
Yeah.
And it was phalanx, his phalanx of SUVs that finally put too much stress on the St. Anthony Bridge.
SUV's global warming brought down the bridge.
Jamie's up to his tricks again, Rushy.
You know, I I it's realize he's joking.
He's trying to be funny.
Do you realize there are people who think that kind of stuff?
And I I get caught up short because it's it's just you can't relate to it.
And it's even difficult to understand.
Uh bring oh I'm sorry, Binghampton uh in New York.
Gary, welcome to the EIB network.
Well, thank you very much.
It's a pleasure, hopefully for both of us.
Uh I want well, I wanted to defend you.
A fellow called the uh several calls ago and said tongue in cheek about you being a millionaire, billionaire, whatever.
One thing you d never have said, that is you hate rich Republicans, and at least my question, because I'm going crazy with it.
How can someone in the movie industry, TV industry, uh anchor on TV, make 15, 20, 30, 50 million dollars a year, and hate rich people.
I I need your answer.
How can they hate rich people when they're making millions themselves?
How do they make that go away?
Um this has been one of these age-old questions that uh psychologists and psychiatrists have examined.
I myself, not trained in either of those disciplines, have yet come up with the answer.
It's not gonna satisfy you all the way, but the overriding uh emotion that they feel is guilt, be it the actors and actresses or be it these uh the news info babes and anchors that uh that you're talking about.
But actually, beyond that, it's liberalism.
You know, a liberal is a liberal first.
A wealthy liberal is a wealthy person second.
The liberalism comes first.
Liberalism is a religion.
It has it has definite requirements, and you must you must resent the disparity.
You, as a liberal, you are able to exempt yourself because you are a good person.
A TV anchor is not a corporate interest, destroying jobs, stealing money from the hopeless.
A Hollywood actor or actress is not doing what they think other rich people do.
It is the height of uh denial and elitism.
There's also an element in there of trying to hide their wealth or make it make it appear because they need box office appeal, they need ratings, they need viewers.
So they they they adopt but the Kennedy family's classic at this.
And Edward Edwards is trying to pull it off now.
You act like uh it's an accident that you got rich, uh, but you're not gonna give it back.
You are going to do good work that you are serving our culture and society with your wealth by trying to deny it and take it away from the people who are destroying the country, i.e., capitalists and conservatives.
Thank you very much.
You are the best three hours of the day, and I mean that other than occasionally my wife once in a while.
But you are you are the best three hours of my day.
You always pick me up whenever I'm down.
I listen to Rush and I say, Rush, get me through the day.
God bless you too.
Thank you.
Uh thank you so much.
Don, did you hear that?
Did you hear what he said?
Because you and Snerdley were there talking.
Snerdley's got this new computer program called Comic Light.
And he's in there taking pictures of Dawn with his iPhone and then making up you can you can you pick the bubble you want and put whatever you thought you wanted.
And they're in there chatting, and he's showing her after he's got a full board of calls here.
He's he's playing with his comic light program.
This guy just had a humongously hilarious line, and I don't think you guys heard it.
Brian got it.
Brian guy started combination laughing and shaking his head.
This guy said, Well, it's too bad.
If you didn't hear it, then it did.
Uh well, of course it was only hilarious to men.
So some women would find it funny.
The women who can laugh at themselves uh uh would would would find it funny.
Oh everybody loves He didn't mean it, it was stereotypical humor.
I love stereotypical humor.
I absolutely love it.
Like, you know what?
You know what?
A real.
You know what irony is?
You know what mixed emotions really are.
Your your brand new Cadillac is going off the cliff.
It's being driven by your mother-in-law.
It's just I've I don't for some reason, you remember there was this comic strip back in the 70s, a single comic called the Lockhorns, and it was about this this married couple, and he was constantly his wife couldn't park the car.
Remember one one one cartoon, she was trying to parallel park in a rainstorm, and uh and he's on the sidewalk.
Why don't you throw me a line here and I'll and I'll reel you in, based on the fact that women can't drive.
Of course, all this is stereotypical.
It was just, it's people can't laugh at themselves enough anymore.
Everybody's too uptight, political correctness, uh, all that kind of stuff.
Let's take a quick time out.
We'll uh we'll be back and continue after this.
All right, we were discussing this uh earlier on the program today, the busy broadcast.
Uh Federal Reserve met and did not change the interest rate uh short-term interest rate that did five and a quarter percent.
Uh they did admit that they are uh watching and are concerned about uh credit problems, the rising credit problems, but they made the decision to leave the interest rate where it is in deference to their concern over controlling inflation.
Um I know I've been well it's just the focus of things.
They've been worried about inflation since the 90s.
I mean, that's been the focus, keeping inflation under control.
Uh and that's I remember James Carvel going off with it.
What about the bomb market?
Who cared about the bomb market?
Why have a son of it?
A bomb market matter.
The ballmark, who cares about the bone marker?
Because everybody was worried about inflation, and and uh anyway, I I don't do this kind of stuff.
I I stay out of the uh financial stuff, but I they're gonna have to lower this at some point.
I think what is the next one?
October?
Is that when they next get together?
Something like that.
You watch.
They'll it'll it's it's gonna get lowered by October.
Going in the holiday seat, you watch.
Mark my word.
Well, we've uh feel pretty confident we've got inflation under control here and managing it.
Uh we've been scrutinizing the uh uh credit crunch out there, and we think that uh time here to pay attention to that and try to ward off whatever ill-advised reactions could come if we don't look.
So they'll they'll they'll cut it.
I don't know how much, but they uh they will.
Now, you people know that uh over the weekend, the Democrat Congress totally caved and gave Bush spying authority.
Just did.
And the reason is very simple.
They know the threat we face, and when push comes to shove, when that fiz a judge uh made his ruling that the these two phone calls fell outside the that's when the Bush administration ran into it.
Look at folks, we've got the Democrats know.
They see the intelligence, they know what's going on.
They know that's why if if if they're in the White House and oh wait, whoever it is, Hillary, we're not pulling out of a rock.
We are not.
And they are lying to their own base, and they are lying to the American people about getting out of a rock.
I mean, they'd love to get out now.
They'd love to engineer a loss.
Don't misunderstand.
They could saddle around Bush and the Republicans and that can destroy them.
But once once defeat can be laid at their feet, they ain't gonna happen.
And when when the push came to shove on this security, all of this talk for the past two years about domestic spying, civil liberties, bunch of BS.
Because when the when the pedal hit the metal, when the rubber hit the road, the realities of national security overcame.
And he kept them in Congress on Saturday.
This is he told us Bush is showing how to be a great parent, how you deal with kids, you put them in a detention center, You deny them their vacation on the first day.
You do whatever.
Tough.
He got what he wants.
And the net roots, the kook fringe, is beside themselves.
They feel sold out.
They fe they're angrier at the Democrats in Congress than they are at Bush.
And that is saying something.
You got to hear this soundbite.
A fellow fringe cook who used to be a pretty responsible news guy in New York, but he's totally gone off the cliff with a Democrat.
Just it's amazing to watch what's happened to Jack Cafferty.
It is amazing to see what I when I moved to New York, live at five doing all this stuff.
Great.
It just just totally like all these people on the left has just lost it.
No sense of reason.
Unless this is just a purposeful attempt to appeal to a certain segment of kooks.
But he here's a montage of his uh uh little he does a thing with with Wolf Blitzed, a blitzer, uh, on the situation room where he he puts a question out and answers email or reads email from viewers who react to it.
Uh and this is a montage of uh of uh Jack Cafferty reading some of the emails he has gotten from the wacko fringe base.
Lisa, Fairfax, Virginia, I can't believe this happened.
This is not what the Democratic Congress was elected to do.
I want them to restore our civil liberties, not help King Bush and his minions take them away.
Mary writes the Democratic leadership are just too cowardly and gutless to be trusted to defend our country.
Claire writes, the Democrats caved on the issue and allowed themselves to be, as you put it, strong armed.
What's left?
Hopeless.
Jonathan in Connecticut, of course, the Democratic Congress shouldn't have allowed the warrantless wiretapping bill to go through.
Samantha in Arizona writes, Congratulations to our Congress in backing a president who continues to violate our Constitution and prolong a lie-based war.
And Tom and Delaware writes, the Democrats have joined the Republicans in scuttling the Constitution.
I am less afraid of a terrorist attack than I am of my own government.
All right.
So they are livid and they are livid at the Democrats.
But the bottom line here is aside from the substance of the issue.
Every time, every time these Democrats go up against George W. Bush, they lose.
And they'd get and they lose embarrassingly.
They lost on of all of their resolutions.
They lost all bad dingy hair, he had to pull them all.
Now they're left to trying to discredit General Petraeus.
There's uh a thing uh uh what is it?
Uh they're trying to blame him.
Oh, all these missing weapons.
They're trying to blame Petraeus as incompetent in advance of his report, which is coming out in September.
But every time for this guy, Bush, to be such an idiot and such a brain-dead Alfred E. Newman and a frat boy and uh and all this, why he just skunks them at each and every turn.
We have time to squeeze in another exciting phone call, a whole book in uh New Jersey.
This is Ben, and I am glad you waited, sir.
Welcome.
Hello.
Who?
Hi, I just wanted to comment on um a lot of the Democrat tax uh increase perspectives that we hear about.
They always talk about the you know, the soak the rich perspective, but that's really very disingen disingenuous and misleading, because it really means whack the middle class.
And really and it's for two basic reasons.
One, the rich are already quite overtaxed, and two, there just simply aren't enough rich people around those kind of income.
Exactly right.
We discussed that you can confiscate all the money over um what, 400,000 a year, and you can run the country for a couple th couple weeks, maybe a month.
Any meaningful increase that's gonna come into the treasury has to come from the middle class taxpayer.
That's just a fact of numbers.
And why why why why would you say that?
Because there simply aren't enough rich people.
There are more of people in the middle class.
Right.
Exactly right.
Um, and you know, and the way our tax system works, you know, we have an overly complex system, which in itself is a problem.
But the way our tax system works and the way the tax laws are written, it's based on thing uh on a few kind of like hinge numbers like adjusted gross income and taxable income.
And while the soak the rich or wrecked middle class, however you choose to describe it, really doesn't come down that way.
It really comes down to much lower income levels.
It does.
Exact.
And but here's here's the dirty little secret.
You ever pull it off?
And it's it's it's hard.
This this is why most people don't understand the tax-the-risk business.
You've got to structure your life so you have no earned income.
Uh I'm out of time.
I'll explain that.
There's a there's a category called earned income versus other kinds of income.
Earned income is what the income tax rates on.
That's how the rich do it.
They don't have earned income.
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