We are back and we are in the midst of three hours of broadcast excellence on the fastest three hours in media.
I am Rush Limbaugh, the Doctor of Democracy, America's Truth Detector, general all-round, harmless, lovable little fuzzball.
And we're doing opening on Friday on Thursday today.
So whenever we go to the phones, the program's all yours.
You can talk about, bring up whatever you want.
It's been fun today.
Telephone number 800-282-2882.
Email address rush at EIBnet.com.
So I'm watching MSNBC during the break, and they're doing a story on Achmadinizad not being allowed to go down to ground zero and place a wreath because it would be a security risk.
Hell yes, a guy could come armed with a nuke.
Who knows?
Bottom line is this.
We're running graphics on MSNBC's Axis of Evil Leader denied.
Look, I burst out laughing.
Axis of evil leader.
When's the last time you ever heard Achmadinizod referred to as Axis of Evil Leader?
And I'm thinking, what's going on here?
First, the drive-bys are referring to Norman Shu as disgraced Democratic fundraiser.
Actually, what it ought to be.
And I think I've figured out why they're doing this.
I think it's, you know, if they wanted to characterize Shu correctly, it would be disgraced Clinton fundraiser.
So they're using the word Democrat to at least, you know, be accurate and get there and not hide it.
But they are hiding the fact that much of his largesse went to the Clintons.
As I say, folks, just put some crime tape around her headquarters because it's a crime scene.
Everybody knows what goes on in there.
And now we've got Axis of Evil Leader denied.
What are they doing?
Are they jabbing Bush with that?
Now, I mentioned Norman Shu earlier, and I said that the excuse that they're offering is that he got on the wrong train, that he actually thought he was getting on BART.
And I've had some emails from people questioning me on this.
Look, folks, his spokesman, Norman Shu's spokesman, Jason Booth, said that Shu intended to appear for his September 5th court date in California and may have thought he was boarding a Bay Area Rapid Transit train when he instead caught an Amtrak train heading out of the state.
Jason Booth, who was in Colorado on Tuesday on the eve of a court hearing at which Shu was expected to wave extradition, said, yeah, that's what appears to be how it happened.
He was disoriented at the time.
We believe he suffered a psychological, mental, or physical breakdown.
How that was caused, I don't know.
I'm not a doctor.
Well, folks, I don't know about you.
I've been to San Francisco.
I've been to the Bay Area.
I've seen the BART train.
There is no way if you are suffering from derangement, if you have been poisoned, there is still no way that you were going to mistake the Bay Area Rapid Transit for the California Zephyr.
And then, because you know, when you get on BART, there aren't any sleeper compartments.
For one thing.
And then, of course, there was Shu's apology letter.
He apologized to all the people he donated to.
This stinks to high heaven, folks.
I'm telling you, it is this.
You remember, let's go back to earlier this year.
I'm talking about January, maybe even a little prior.
Maybe go back to maybe a little 2006, certainly this year, January, February, March.
Do you remember all the stories about all the money Mrs. Clinton was amassing in her campaign war chest?
And accompanying those stories were the analysis.
The analysis is, well, she's just vacuuming all the money up.
They're not going to be anybody for anybody else to get.
She's getting it all.
She's getting it all.
And then the mysterious arrival of Barack Obama.
And all of a sudden, he starts reporting more money raised than Mrs. Clinton.
Now, all of a sudden, Mrs. Clinton's having to give back and give back and give back.
So we wonder where did all that money come from?
And I think, frankly, they don't care.
I don't think they care.
And if they get caught, they'll send something back and it's, oh, it's just a coincidence.
It's a widespread coincidence.
We didn't know about this.
How can we be possibly expected to know the details of all of our bundlers?
And don't you know, too many people love the Clintons out there.
They can't possibly find out every detail about everybody.
That's the story that we've gotten here.
And, you know, Obama is saying the same thing.
You wonder how much she really got and how much of it was legit because it appears this is going to dog her.
This is going to, I think, have a life longer than she wants it to have anyway.
I want to go to the, oh, speaking of the Clintons, the Breck girl, in a very courageous, brave, and typical move, sent his wife out again to attack Mrs. Clinton.
Elizabeth Edwards accused Hillary Rodham Clinton of copying the health care plan outlined more than seven months ago by her husband, the Brett girl.
A New York senator has failed to lead on an issue in which she has extensive experience, said Elizabeth Edwards.
Does Mrs. Clinton's plan seem very familiar to you?
Edwards said in an interview with the Associated Press.
Mrs. Clinton has seven and a half months after John unveiled his health care plan unveiled a health care plan that is in every material respect just like John's.
Elizabeth Edwards calls Hillary's plan John Edwards' health care plan as delivered by Hillary Clinton.
She also stood by her criticism of moveon.org for the New York Times ad.
She said that while Petraeus should be criticized for writing in a 2004 opinion piece saying everything was going swimmingly in Iraq, that the language moveon.org used was wrong.
So the Democrat candidates are sending their wives out to attack Mrs. Clinton.
The candidates themselves still haven't gone there.
Speaking of the Petraeus ad, the moveon.org, the president was asked about that today in his press conference.
Bill Salmon said, what is your reaction to moveon.org ad that mocked General Petraeus as General Betraeus?
Said that he cooked the books on Iraq.
And secondly, would you like to see Democrats, including presidential candidates, repudiate that ad?
I thought the ad was disgusting.
And I felt like the ad was an attack not only on General Petraeus, but on the U.S. military.
And I was disappointed that not more leaders in the Democrat Party spoke out strongly against that kind of ad.
And that leads me to come to this conclusion, that most Democrats are afraid of irritating a left-wing group like MoveOn.org, or more afraid of irritating them than they are of irritating the United States military.
That was a sorry deal.
And it's one thing to attack me.
It's another thing to attack somebody like General Petraeus.
Next question in the presser, unidentified female reporter, said there was a tax increase on cigarettes to fund the children's health program.
Is that a tax increase you oppose?
We don't need to raise taxes.
What I want is the Congress to be focused on making sure poor children get the health insurance they were promised.
Instead, Congress has made a decision to expand the eligibility up to $80,000.
That's not the intent of the program.
I believe this is a step toward federalization of health care.
I know that their proposal is beyond the scope of the program, and that's why I'm going to veto the bill.
All right, right on, right on, right on.
That's what we want to hear and veto this stupid piece of legislation.
Next, unidentified reporters say, Mr. President, economists say the nation's at increasing risk of recession.
What do you say?
I say that the fundamentals of our nation's economy are strong.
Inflation's down.
Job markets are steady and strong.
After all, the national unemployment rate is 4.6%.
Corporate profits appear to be strong.
Exports are up.
There is no question that there is some unsettling times in the housing market and credits associated with the housing market.
And so, as I say, I'm optimistic, but I would be pessimistic if I thought Congress was going to get their way, and they're not.
We're not going to raise taxes.
All right, right on, right on, right on, right on.
Now, one other question before we go to the break: an unidentified reporter said, efforts to curtail the deployment of troops is an ongoing debate right now.
Hey, reporter, the Democrats have lost it.
Yeah, well, here's the rest of the question.
One of those you spoke about in your address last week had to do with impatience with the Iraqi government.
You spoke about that, but not in much detail.
How is the dynamic changing?
Your level of frustration with a lack of political progress, and how long can Americans reasonably expect you to wait before you take some kind of action that really forces the government's hand to reach the goals of reconciliation that you set for them?
Part of the reason why there's not this instant democracy in Iraq is because people are still recovering from Saddam Hussein's brutal rule.
I thought an interesting comment was made when somebody said to me, I heard somebody say, now, where's Mandela?
Well, Mandela's dead because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas.
He was a brutal tyrant that divided people up and split families, and people are recovering from this.
So there's a psychological recovery that is taking place, and it's hard work for him.
And we've got to take a brief time out.
We'll be back and continue after this.
The Senate has voted 72 to 25 to condemn the moveon.org ad.
Some of the senators who won the greatest support from these fringe kook bloggers out there in the last election voted to condemn it.
Claire McCaskill, Tester, Chloe Bouchard, Jim Webb, they all voted to condemn it.
Mrs. Clinton did not.
Hillary Clinton voted against condemning the ad, and why not?
It's her own organization.
Why should she condemn her own organization?
But she didn't.
The nays, let's see, the nays are all Democrats.
Let's see, any names in there?
Feingold, Kennedy, Clinton, Bird Boxer, Reed?
Yes, Reed.
Levin Lautenberg, Carey.
Yeah.
Daniel N. No Way from VE.
So this is going to infuriate.
It is going to infuriate the net roots.
These whack nut jobs out there on the left.
Their big ad has now been condemned by the United States Senate with a lot of Democrat participation.
By the way, people, I think, are having an overreaction to this.
Last night, a $100 a head fundraiser at Town Hall near Times Square, Hillary Clinton said this.
Always tell when the Republicans are restless because the vice president's motorcade pulls into the Capitol and Darth Vader emerges.
And they start laughing and so forth.
It calls Vice President Cheney Darth Vader.
Now, this is from the crowd decries the politics of personal destruction.
Actually, I think that she was just trying to be funny.
I think that they're trying to humanize her.
You know, she's got this stiff Nurse Ratchet kind of reputation and appeal.
Not very likable.
Hey, look, she can joke around and so forth.
I wouldn't make too much about this, folks.
Now, the Reverend Zach, he was on CNN's American Morning this morning, and a co-host, Kieran Chetri, said a Columbia, South Carolina newspaper, the state is reporting you were unhappy with what presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama, and that you criticized him for acting like he's white.
That is an unfortunate misinterpretation.
Fact is, I endorse Barack without solicitation and support him today unequivocally.
And so we would not let that be the version from our support business.
I have to say, our producers did call it the paper, and they did say that they stand by the reporter that you did make those comments that Obama is acting like he's white.
What did you mean by that statement?
I have not in any way engaged in the degrees of blackness debate.
I think he is black, he's aesthetic, and he's brilliant.
And so I support him, and I stand by that position.
Yes, my friends, we are back.
Rush Limbaugh here now, fully having regained my composure to the phones.
We go, this is David in Amherst, Massachusetts.
Nice to have you with us.
Hey, conservative Dittos, Rush, from the bluest spot in the bluest day.
Thank you very much.
I've been there.
Hey, I've got a quick question for you.
Yeah.
My dad has a bust of Ronald Reagan that I got him from the Reagan Library, and he also has a bust of Winston Churchill.
What he and I would really like, though, is a bust of Rush Limbaugh, and I think you should sell them over the EIB store online.
You'd make obscene profits.
You know, I've never been much of a bust guy.
I've never thought about that.
Well, you could have a bust, you know, whether you wanted one or not, but the rest of us are the ones who would be buying them and would like them.
We look up to you.
You know, busts, those are for truly great, unique people of incredible, credible achievement and stature.
Well, how many Rush Limbaughs are there?
Well, that's a good point.
I was just thinking I do qualify.
Well, we always take customer suggestions.
We're on the, you know, you've got a good idea.
We'll put it in a hopper.
Like, what size are you talking about?
Oh, I'm talking about just something kind of small.
Like the one that I got of Reagan is probably maybe 12 inches high.
Oh, okay.
I thought you meant something that's like 18 or 24 inches high.
No, no, no.
Something like you'd find in a Capitol Rotunda.
Oh, no.
No, my wife wouldn't let me put that on the map.
All right, all right.
So like a bookend bust kind of thing.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, I'll do one when I had hair and one when I was, yeah, we could do a whole bunch of different busts of different weights that I've been over the course of my life.
No need to think, ladies and gentlemen, we do that for you here at the EIB network.
Rush Limbaugh, Open Line Friday on Thursday to New Orleans.
And Paul, welcome, sir, to the EIB Network.
Multi-mega dittos, Maha Rushdie.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you for everything you do every day.
I've got a question for you.
What's up?
I'm a baby boomer just like you are.
And given that our generation and our older brothers and sisters are the people who are most likely to vote in the presidential election next year, what do you think are the top two or three things that are motivating our group of voters next year?
Well, now that's an interesting question.
Since you categorized it as baby boomers, baby boomers, most of them, I got real problems in my generation.
And I think they're so meat-oriented.
Everything was handed to us on a silver platter compared to our parents and grandparents.
We've had to invent our traumas.
We've had to invent the trauma is no less real and the stress that people go through is no less real.
But we've had to invent it because we really didn't have nearly the challenges.
So we were able to focus on ourselves.
So everything's about us.
And so when a campaign starts, what is it that is going to motivate likely voters in the baby boom generation?
What's in it for me?
And of course, that tends to take people down the road to Democrats because if they're, well, what's in it for you?
Well, whatever.
What do you need?
We Democrats are here.
The government's at your disposal.
What do you need?
This election is interesting in terms of what's going to motivate likely voters.
There's so many things.
I can tell you that Mrs. Clinton is going to probably redefine the concept of negative turnout, meaning people turning out to vote against her for that reason alone.
And a surprising number of those people I predict to you here and now will be women.
Just as was the case in France when they ran that socialist babe over there, what was her name?
Segaline Royale.
She didn't even get 40% of the female vote.
And of course, the female drive-by media type were aghast.
They couldn't figure it out.
I can't believe any more of the female vote than that.
You just wait and see.
The same thing might happen here.
The likely voters on the other side, people are not just voting against Mrs. Clinton.
I think it remains to be seen what the likely voters on the Republican side vote for.
I know what they want to vote for.
It's a question of whether or not they're going to get it in sufficient doses.
And they want good old-fashioned traditional conservatism.
I know I do.
And I don't want to have to take second or third best and say, well, okay, I'll look the other way.
I might end up having to, but that's not what I want.
You know, I'm a thoroughbred, full-fledged conservative here, and I know in national elections it wins.
And I get very frustrated when people on our side are afraid to proclaim it proudly and loudly and with confidence.
You know, when I hear certain Republican candidates, I'm going to win New York and I'm going to win Pennsylvania and I'm going to win New Jersey.
Yeah, maybe so.
Yep, yep, yep, yep.
How are you going to do it?
What's it going to take to win?
I mean, the objective of the election is to win.
And in this race, I'm going to tell you something.
I think alongside on the Republican side, if that thoroughbred conservative would emerge, I don't think it's going to happen.
It's too late now, one word he would have.
The other thing that will, I think, encourage likely voters is if the candidates of the Republican side can truly make the case for what we face in terms of our liberty, individual liberty and freedom, day-to-day freedom, if any of these Democrats ends up getting elected.
So it's a combination of things.
You're going to have people motivated by what's in it for them.
And really, that's a large part of the seasoned citizen vote because Social Security and Medicare, and that's it.
Medicaid for them, Medicare, and whatever other benefits they get.
That's why they show up in the largest numbers.
It's not because they're older and wiser and have more care and concerns.
Some of them do, but I mean, so many of them's lives depend on somebody in the government sending them that check.
And so that's what's in it for me is a big thing, which is why the liberal push or persuasion is oriented in that way.
That's why we sit here and decry it, because they're out there trying to create that kind of level of dependence throughout the population, not just the seasoned citizen population.
So it's, look, Paul, are you still there?
You still there, Paul?
Yes, I'm here.
What do you think?
Well, I'm sick and tired of holding my nose, Rush.
I'm looking for somebody who is a candidate of principle and who stands for something.
And I don't see that many candidates like that out there on either side this time.
And I just, I'm looking for somebody to be excited about voting for.
And so, I mean, I'm looking for somebody who has character and who stands on principle and who speaks about principles rather than specifics about, well, we're going to provide health care this way or that way or things like that.
I agree with you.
Broad themes.
Two or three broad themes, issue-oriented, broad themes.
You don't want to complicate things.
Reagan ran on a trifecta.
Reagan ran on three things that are very understandable.
I'm going to rebuild a military.
I'm going to wipe out the Soviets and I'm going to cut taxes.
And he did it all.
And it was very easy to understand.
In the context of those three things, he gave a lesson in conservatism every time he spoke.
He won two landslides.
Now I realize you can't go back in the past.
There's only one Ronald Reagan.
Well, I agree with you.
It's frustrating to have that experience not learned from.
And nobody's seeking to try to repeat it.
I'm the next Reagan.
No, you're not the next Reagan because you have this belief and he didn't have.
You got that belief he didn't have.
You got that belief he didn't have.
You're not the next Reagan.
And I said some months ago that what worries me about this is having conservatism redefined by people who aren't.
And so I agree with you.
I think large themes and principles.
And it's, you know, right now, I still maintain to you, even though it's post-Labor Day and it's, you know, we're in the latter parts of September going into October, this still seems early to me.
It just seems early to me.
And I know the first primary comes up, well, some state threatening to do it in December, but they won't.
It'll be January.
And I just, I don't know.
Maybe when I get to November and December, it won't feel like it's early.
I still think a whole lot of candidates have not yet emerged from their shells for whatever reason.
I think when the competition heats up, you're going to see a lot more understanding what they need to do to get the nomination and go on and win the general.
We'll see.
But I agree with you totally.
But you know, your point about, oh, I'm going to do this for health care.
We're going to do that.
That's what the country has become.
That's what so many of us are sitting here quaking in fear in a way.
I mean, a lot of people are quaking in fear over the state of the country because they're programmed to it.
If they watch any drive-by media with any regularity, you're going to be bombarded with doom and gloom.
My trepidations about the country are probably different.
I really worry about this ongoing effort to Democrats and liberals who have to create as many dependent people as possible and control our lives, take away our freedom.
And when I see Republicans campaigning, oh, I got a better health care plan.
I'll give you this and I'll do that.
The way to beat them is not to be better liberals than they are or more reasonable liberals.
It's not the way they, you run against them by telling everybody what they want to do is dangerous.
It's wrong.
It won't work and it's going to end up hurting everybody instead of getting into a competition with them about every issue and point by point of whatever the issue is.
I agree, broad themes.
It's right at the wisdom.
This election is just waiting for somebody to sweep in with a vacuum cleaner and take it all home and go away as the big winner.
But look, I'm just a talk show host here.
I'm not a professional campaigner or campaign strategerist or any of that.
But these people are paid to figure all this out.
I just think there's too much polling going on in these race, too much polling on issues, too many polls on focus groups and this sort of thing.
Democrats are more energized than we are.
You know, the conventional wisdom on that would be yes.
And the reason the conventional wisdom on the Democrats being more energized than we are is simply because we see move on, we see all these conventions and these wackos from the blogosphere, and they get televised.
And we see, but we got, we've got just as many people actively involved, think tank people.
We just never see it talked about.
The coverage of the Democrat candidates is soft.
It's laudatory.
It's respectful.
The coverage of the Republican candidates is what you expect it would be in the drive-by media.
Who are these nuts and let us destroy them one by one, get rid of them?
Here, listen, listen to this.
This is cut 10 today, Mike.
And this was from last night, New York News 1.
Dominic Carter, the anchor, was interviewing Hillary Clinton's co-chair, campaign co-chair Tom Vilsack.
And he said, let's just say Rudy Giuliani is a Republican nominee.
What's funny about that, Governor?
There's a lot that the rest of the country is going to get to know about Mayor Giuliani that the folks in New York City know, but the rest of the nation doesn't know.
I can't even get into the number of marriages and the fact his children, the relationship he has with his children, and what kind of circumstance New York was in before September the 11th and whether or not he could have even been re-elected as mayor prior to September the 11th.
Okay, I see.
They are worried about Rudy.
And this is a co-chair.
Now, when you are the co-chair of the Clinton campaign and you start dishing like this, you have got to expect it to come out.
You know, people ask me all the time, do you think, Rush, that people are going to go back and relive the 90s and question Mrs. Clinton about it will be part of campaign?
And it depends on what the Clintons do.
Now, there's a risk in going back there because people got fed up with it back then.
And who wants to relive those days?
Another argument for not electing her because it's going to be the same soap opera all over again, even worse.
But if this guy, Vilsack, is going to bring all this stuff.
I mean, the Clintons certainly have enough baggage that is far worse than whatever went on with Rudy that can be brought up.
And maybe they're trying to suck that out of people and play fake them into doing that.
I don't know.
But bottom line is, I don't think the Democrats are more motivated than we are.
The motivations are different.
They're motivated by hatred for Bush, which is he's not on the ballot.
And when they figure that out, maybe it'll depress their turnout.
Some of these wacko Democrats are going to, down here, Palm Beach County, they're going to walk in a voting booth.
And they're going to look in there and they're going to say, I don't see Bush on this ballot.
Bush isn't here.
And they walk out without voting.
And they'll call Bob Wexler's office.
I was tricked.
I was tricked again.
There was no Bush on the ballot.
Once they figure that out, I don't know what they're going to do.
Hi, welcome back.
Rush Slimboy here on the EIB Network.
And I got an email today from official climatologist of the EIB network, Roy Spencer, at the University of Alabama at Huntsville.
And Dr. Spencer sent me a link to a website that's trashing a new business starting up down here in Florida called Dayjet.
Dayjet is like a charter coming up for small little jets that hold one to three people, and they'll pick you up and take you where you want to go and bring you home.
And it's not nearly as expensive as large corporate jets and so forth.
But it gets you out of the rigmarole of flying commercial.
So this website, what's the name of this stupid lostweekend.tv is the website.
And whoever these little peons are, they are livid about this.
But I would be embarrassed to get on this little jet.
I mean, that would represent such a freefall for me, but this jet can't possibly harm anybody, the environment or anything.
As the planet begins to whistle like a kettle on the boil, most of us are at least making a passing effort at stopping carbon footsteps being the one that finally sinks the planet.
However, one firm in the U.S. is intent on making a big-size carbon footprint by offering a flying taxi service.
Where might this service be?
The remote wilds of Maine or a string of isolated islands surrounding Hawaii?
No, it's in Florida.
Dayjet offering customers an on-demand per-seat service to allow executive customers the advantage of night.
Let's go on to describe it.
What is truly galling about this is that John and Jane Smiths, the potential customers, are being told by everybody from the government to their dentist to drop their once-yearly cattle-class holiday flight in order to save the environment.
Meanwhile, Mr. and Ms. Moneybags are presumably flying in the lap of luxury while dumping bags of burning coal onto dolphin reserves below.
Such class envy, resentment.
It's just a little air taxi service.
It's just a tiny little jet here.
It's almost like a toy.
No, it doesn't say I'm what you're going to be.
I have to guess, and I probably shouldn't guess because it's not my business.
I'm looking at this little jet, holds one to three people.
I'll bet you it's going to be in the neighborhood of first class airfare, maybe a little more than that.
I would guess that's why they're doing it with these little planes and make it affordable and so forth.
It's a great thing.
It's a great innovative business idea.
It's destroying the planet, Mr. Limbaugh.
It's destroying the planet.
It's a carbon footprint.
This jet's carbon footprint, folks, is smaller than my house and the carbon footprint that comes out of there.
That's right, Mr. Limbaugh.
We used to be forced to fill your health and move.
Yeah, well, you try that, you little new castrati, and see what happens with the rest of the manhood you've got left.
Eric, Reno, Nevada, welcome to the EIB network.
Rush, I can't tell you what an honor it is to speak to you.
Thank you very much.
So I'm surfing the internet the other night, and I have to get the other side from the unbiased internet.
And I come across MSN's homepage, and they're running an article.
It says, are liberals smarter than conservatives?
So I go on to read the article, and the very first line they concede that they are.
And then they go on to explain how they got the results.
Yeah, I saw this.
I didn't even bother bringing it up.
He had like 100 people.
The vast majority of them, maybe not 100, but the vast majority of the people in the sample were liberals.
And they concluded liberals are more open-minded, more less dogmatic.
The usual tripe, you know, the usual clichés, more, what was the word?
Well, yeah, they're more tolerant, but there's a I'm having a mental block on what the one word is.
But look, Eric, a bunch of liberals studied a bunch of liberals, and a bunch of liberals studied a bunch of conservatives.
What do you think they're going to conclude?
Well, what cracked me up is the response of the article I saw from bloggers, and they were coming to the conclusion that since they were proved that they were stupider in the test, that of course there would have to be a fact that the policy and administrations of current conservatives or Republicans would prove that they're stupider too.
And I just think there is no more closed-minded, intolerant group than today's liberals.
They are the exact opposite of how they think of themselves and how they portray themselves.
And that thing was a laughable joke.
I got to run because of the constraints of time.
Be back and close it out after this.
You kidding.
There's a sperm shortage at the sperm banks.
Hmm.
Well, I bet that's too bad for the lesbian couples out there.
All right, folks.
Paul W. Smith here tomorrow, and I'll be in Sacramento making a public appearance back here on Monday.