The final hour of our excursion into broadcast excellence is 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 debater, a forum tonight, and these guys are all at a stadium somewhere.
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.
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 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 a Rass Musson 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 Iraq, 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 report's 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 when you boil it all down, the Republicans, 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, of course, all of that.
That's what?
It's Chicago, Soldier Field, Chicago.
Aha.
Well, Jimmy Hoffa may not be buried there, but who knows who else is.
So anyway, why are they doing in Chicago?
The Iowa straw polls are coming up.
Well, anyway, let me get to the global warming stack here, ladies.
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, the U.S. Department of Energy in 97 and as 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 Horton of the 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 kidding.
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 some of the work of the bridge was infested with spiders.
And these guys would have to go down over the edge and get underneath the roadway.
And they'd have to put spider webs out of the way because they couldn't tell the difference of spider webs and cracks.
The pigeons are in there, pigeon guano all over the place.
Who knows what effect that can have?
And also this.
They said 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 a 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.
All in all, it is absurd to start speculating.
We're going to 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 to move it.
Global warming now from a former Clinton administration.
I've already told you about the story from the UK Times.
Walking to the mall damages the planet more than going by car.
You think this is a hoax story?
You think this is 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.
Climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less, and became couch potatoes.
How do you people that believe this stuff keep up?
You people that believe this, I want to know, how does your brain work?
What is it that makes you willing to 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.
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 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?
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.
He's a climate specialist specializing in the precipitation, what impact it might have on global warming.
And 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 Gore is saying that we are now voting on the whole concept of man-made global warming.
Exactly right.
We are voted 56% is this consensus of scientists.
56%.
How can anybody accept anything that 56% of scientists say?
It ain't science.
It's all politics.
It's religion.
It is a hoax.
By the way, a 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 1900 Galveston hurricane, 8,000 dead.
The second greatest natural disaster, the 1936 heat wave, the Dust Bowl, 5,000 dead.
The third greatest U.S. natural disaster, the Great Okeechobee Hurricane, 2,500 dead, 1928.
The fourth greatest U.S. natural disaster, the Johnstown flood in Pennsylvania in 1889, 2,200 dead.
And the fifth greatest U.S. natural disaster, the Louisiana hurricane of 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 Limbaugh meeting and surpassing all audience expectations on a daily basis to Sarasota, Florida.
This is Kimberly.
Nice to have you on the program.
Welcome.
Rush Magadittos.
Thank you.
I'd like to start out by saying hello to my nephew, Lance Corridor, who is in Fallutia.
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 Life Carriers magazine, and inside were all the presidential candidates, all five of them.
There wasn't a Republican to be found.
They were all Democrats.
And I was afraid of the public.
Well, of course.
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 it?
The Republicans don't have any views that are worth anything according to the YouTube.
No, no, no, no.
You know, you're looking for quote-unquote fairness and balance here, and you only find that at the Fox News channel.
Well, Rush, 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.
Who the Republicans aren't or the Democrats aren't?
The Democrats.
I think, look at you.
You're a conservative Republican letter carrier.
You've got a lot of them out there.
You open a magazine that you get, and it just makes you mad.
It's not going to make you more prone to support these guys.
This where these Democrats are missing the boat, 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 going to 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 going to sit there and soak it up like a sponge.
Well, I would like to thank you so much for your help in the EIB school, and you have a wonderful day.
You do the same.
Thanks.
I really 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 a question a short time ago, I think, about out of the field of Democratic nominee hope, who would you pick?
Is there really one you'd vote for?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, actually, I don't think you said vote for, but I don't want to get into that arguing with 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?
And I think, you know, give us your best.
Give us, as a competitor, give us your best shot.
If it's Hillary, that's fine.
Let's go up against her with our ideas.
And if they don't win, then we've got a real litmus test, a real report card on where the state of GOP and the American public is at this point.
If we don't have, if we can't claim that we own the knowledge about what the American people feel that'll be a wake-up call.
What you're saying is that 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 wildcard 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.
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 said, I didn't think I said she was the best, but if she is the best, if that's the one that would be a good idea.
On what basis did you then select her as the opponent for the Republican?
Do you think she's most easily beatable or the toughest to beat?
And that's why you want us to run against her.
She might be the toughest to beat.
Might be the toughest to beat.
Well, you're right about that.
I mean, just based on the amount of people.
See, it's a mood point because it ain't going to be any of these other people.
It ain't going to be Obama.
He may be on his.
It ain't going to be Edwards.
And it ain't going to be Gravelle.
It ain't going to be these other people.
It ain't going to be, it's going to be Hillary.
So, um...
Nature, my question was, is there anybody you would vote for to lead the country?
For my sake, obviously not.
No, there's no Democrat candidate in the list that a thinking, engaged person would possibly support.
You're right about that.
Now, here's the thing.
Don't take this personally, but I understand that it doesn't want to go up against the best and so forth to see what we're made of.
Biggest test.
It's a little bit like a Miss America pageant contestant answer.
Because, yeah, of course we want to find out what we're made of, but we ought to know what we're made of.
Going up against Clinton, Inc. Is not exactly a level playing field.
Clinton war room, all these other things.
But it is, look, it is going to be her.
Let me do another test.
Quick little test here.
What is Mrs. Clinton's position on the war in Iraq?
To Snerdley.
My gosh.
My gosh, are you on today?
You haven't felt good yesterday, I can tell, but 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 correctly answered that there are multiple positions depending on what she needs it to be that hour.
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, Rush.
Thank you so much.
Been there from the very beginning.
Thank you.
Grown old listening to you.
Okay.
Now, Snerdley let me on in on condition that I just mention this in this morning's paper, but a subcontractor who worked on four major bridges in this country has been indicted because he hired 26 employees, all without proper welding certifications.
This is the Tarrasco 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.
What a coincidence.
Isn't this?
Marriage made in heaven.
But I'm taken.
But he's old.
Okay, Rush.
Well, I'm taken too, but then I'm taken by me.
Okay.
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.
Okay, no, I don't, because while we're on the subject, you just asked some poor man to define cowmuny.
I can do that.
That's slander.
Why don't you define for me country?
Country?
Yeah, country.
How do you define it?
Someplace not in the city.
No, no, no, no.
The broader.
Shame on you.
That's wheezed one out.
How do you define that?
You're asking me a trick question.
No, it's not a trick question.
Yes, it is.
It's a trick question.
It's a deeply serious one.
How do you define country?
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 status as a country.
I would say half right, because how do you...
Well, that's good.
No, no, no.
Because we're out of time.
No, Rush.
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 what 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.
I wasn't being real.
We were just rude.
We were just running out of time.
But I'm going to tell you about the story that she referenced.
The owner of Tarrasco 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 arrested Jose Gonzalez, 32, at his office in Greenville Thursday.
Tarrasco Steel was hired as a subcontractor for rebar installation services to major bridge projects in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee.
The federal government considers those bridges as critical infrastructure, and they were part of routine inspection of facilities that, if damaged, 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.
Companion story: United Nations translator was arrested yesterday on charges that he and two others used UN stationery in a visa fraud scheme.
Vasheslav Monokin, U.N. 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?
Cincinnati.
This is John.
John, welcome to the EIB Network.
Hello.
Rush man, how are you, Rush?
Good, sir.
Very good.
Never better.
Listen, I got a point and then a question.
Who was that genius that brought out the report about the bridge and global warming and heat?
A guy named Joseph Rahm is former Clinton administration.
Let me find this story here.
All right.
Just a second.
I'll get it.
It's coming up here very quickly.
Now I say it's coming up here very quickly.
Wait a minute.
There's a story I missed.
Ah, here it is.
All right.
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 as good as mine.
I don't...
I wouldn't, I don't know.
Well, Rush, 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 has heat got to do with the steel bridge?
Of course it's absurd.
But steel does melt.
There was a tanker explosion out in San Francisco or the highway bridge melted because I know that, but she said it didn't do that.
So what's it got to do with night?
Look, steel's not going to melt at 90 degrees out there.
No.
And then my second question: where was the Antichrist Cheney last week?
The Antichrist Cheney.
I saw him in the White House on Friday morning.
On Friday.
And the bridge went down Thursday, right?
Yeah, and it was Phalane, his phalanx of SUVs that finally put too much stress on the St. Anthony Bridge.
SUVs global warming brought down the bridge.
Cheney's up to his tricks again, Rushie.
You know, it's realize he's joking.
He's trying to be funny.
Do you realize there are people who think that kind of stuff?
I get caught up short because it's just you can't relate to it.
And it's even difficult to understand.
Bring, oh, I'm sorry, Bing Hampton in New York.
Gary, welcome to the EIB Network.
Well, thank you very much.
It's a pleasure, hopefully for both of us.
Well, I wanted to defend you.
A fellow called me several calls ago and said, tongue-in-cheek about you being a millionaire, billionaire, whatever.
One thing you never have said, that is you hate rich Republicans.
And at least my question, because I'm going crazy with this.
How can someone in the movie industry, TV industry, anchor on TV, make $15, $20, $30, $50 million a year, and hate rich people?
I need your answer.
How can they hate rich people when they're making millions themselves?
How do they make that go away?
This has been one of these age-old questions that psychologists and psychiatrists have examined.
I myself, not trained in either of those disciplines, have yet come up with the answer.
It's not going to satisfy you all the way, but the overriding emotion that they feel is guilt, be it the actors and actresses or be it these news infobabes and anchors 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 definite requirements, and you must resent the disparity.
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 denial and elitism.
There's also an element in there of trying to hide their wealth or make it appear because they need box office appeal.
They need ratings.
They need viewers.
So they adopt the Kennedy family is classic at this.
And Edwards is trying to put it off now.
You act like it's an accident that you got rich, but you're not going to 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.
God bless you too.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Dawn, did you hear that?
Did you hear what he said?
You and Snerdley were there talking.
Snerdley's got this new computer program called Comic Light.
And he's in there taking pictures at dawn with his iPhone and then making up, you can pick the bubble you want, 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 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 his combination laughing and shaking his head.
This guy said, well, it's too bad.
If you didn't hear it, then it did.
Well, of course it was only hilarious to men.
Some women would find it funny.
The women who can laugh at themselves would find it funny.
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 irony is?
You know what mixed emotions really are?
Your brand new Cadillac is going off the cliff.
It's being driven by your mother-in-law.
It's just, 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 married couple, and he was constantly, his wife couldn't park the car.
Remember one cartoon, she was trying to parallel park in a rainstorm, and he's on the sidewalk.
Why don't you throw me a line here and I'll reel you in based on the fact that women can't drive.
Of course, all this is stereotypical.
It was just, people can't laugh at themselves enough anymore.
Everybody's too uptight, political correctness, all that kind of stuff.
Let's take a quick timeout.
We'll be back and continue after this.
All right.
We were discussing this earlier on the program today, the busy broadcast.
Federal Reserve met and did not change the interest rate, short-term interest rate that's at 5.25%.
They did admit that they are watching and are concerned about 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.
I know I've been, 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.
And that's, I remember James Carville going off with it.
What about the bond market?
Who care about a bond market?
Why have a son of it?
A bond market matter.
The bond market.
Who cares about the bond market?
Because everybody was worried about inflation.
And anyway, I don't do this kind of stuff.
I stay out of the financial stuff, but they're going to have to lower this at some point.
I think, what is the next one?
October?
Somebody next get together?
Something like that?
You watch.
It's going to get lowered by October.
Going into holiday seat.
You watch.
Mark my words.
We've feel pretty confident we've got inflation under control here and managing it.
We've been scrutinizing the credit crunch out there, and we think that it's time here to pay attention to that and try to ward off whatever ill-advised reactions could come if we don't listen.
They'll cut it.
I don't know how much, but they will.
Now, you people know that 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 FISA judge made his ruling that these two phone calls fell outside, that's when the Bush administration ran into, 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 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' neck and destroy them.
But once defeat could be laid at their feet, it ain't going to happen.
And 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 pedal hit the metal, when the rubber hit the road, the realities of national security overcame.
And he kept them in Congress on Saturday.
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 wanted.
And the net roots, the kook fringe, is beside themselves.
They feel sold out.
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 kook who used to be a pretty responsible news guy in New York, but he's totally gone off the cliff with the Democrats.
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.
It was great.
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 here's a montage of his little, he does a thing with Wolf Blitz, a blitzer, on the Situation Room where he puts a question out and answers email or reads email from viewers who react to it.
And this is a montage of 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 in 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 lose embarrassingly.
They lost all of their resolutions.
They lost so bad Dingy Harry had to pull them all.
Now they're left to trying to discredit General Petraeus.
There's a thing.
What is it?
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 all this, why he just skunks them at each and every turn.
We have time to squeeze in another exciting phone call of Hoboken, New Jersey.
This is Ben, and I am glad you waited, sir.
Welcome.
Hello.
Who?
Hi, I just wanted to comment on a lot of the Democrat tax increase perspectives that we hear about.
They always talk about the, you know, the soak the rich perspective, but that's really very disingenuous and misleading because it really means whack the middle class.
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, what, $400,000 a year and you can run the country for a couple, a couple weeks, maybe a month.
Any meaningful increase that's going to come into the Treasury has to come from the middle-class taxpayer.
That's just the fact of numbers.
And 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.
And the way our tax system works, 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 a few kind of hinge numbers like adjusTedros income and taxable income.
And while the soak the rich or racked 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, exactly.
But here's the dirty little secret.
You have to pull it off.
And it's hard.
This is why most people don't understand the tax the rich business.
You've got to structure your life so you have no earned income.
I'm out of time.
I'll explain that.
There's a category called earned income versus other kinds of income.