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Sept. 24, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:13
September 24, 2007, Monday, Hour #3
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Yeah, late arriving show prep here, folks.
Hang on.
Greetings and welcome back.
It's Rush Limbaugh and the Excellence and Broadcasting Network.
Great to have you with us.
The third hour of our excursion into Broadcast Excellence now officially underway.
Telephone number 800 28282 and the email address rush at EIB net.com.
I'm uh I'm certain that Cookie has been rolling tape on the uh uh introduction, if you will, by the Columbia University President Lee Bollinger to uh the Iranian axis of evil leader, Mahmood Ahmadini Zod.
I have I have to say, folks, I I do not believe what I just saw.
The Columbia University president, Mr. Bollinger took it to in a 30 plus minute introduction of Ahmadini's, just took it to him, and the students applauded.
Could you explain to us why?
You are repressing women in your country.
Could you explain to us why you are threatening your neighbors?
Your maniacal statements are so embarrassing reasonable Iranian citizens that your party lost last December's mayoral elections.
You have become a laughing stock.
You threaten peace-loving democracies in the Middle East.
I don't expect that you will answer any of these questions, Mr. President, but your refusal to do so will inform us much.
He said our military families rightly see you as the enemy.
You are undermining U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
You are targeting them with your own manufactured munitions.
He quoted Petraeus as an authority in a speech he gave to the National Press Club.
And uh I mean, it was just a broad side.
It was every accusation that you could level that I heard anyway at uh true accusations in the form of questions.
Uh he's now saying that many of the claims by Bollinger were incorrect and so forth.
Uh and that people mislove, uh misunderstanding the peace-loving people of Iran, the peace loving leadership of Iran, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So uh I I have to tell you, I was I was uh shocked and surprised by it.
And so was Mr. Snerdley, who was uh who was in the room watching it with me.
So we'll get uh we'll get the tape, we'll get some translation of all this, and uh we'll probably not be able to get to this in great detail till tomorrow.
Um because it'll take it a while.
Bollinger was it's gonna be tough to edit that because it was the whole the whole thirty minutes was bam bam bam bam bam.
Well, you little runt, who do you think you are was basically the theme of the uh of the questions uh that uh Bollinger asked Mahmoud Ahmadini Zod.
Now, I want to I want to pick up on something that uh Susan from Madison, Wisconsin was made.
She's an emergency room doctor.
And she made the point here that uh she gets fed up with the incessant criticism of the health care business.
Uh one of the points that she made was that they see 300 people a day, and that people walk in the emergency room expect the doctor to do their work for nothing.
Health care is a right.
Uh and as such, it's a constitutional right, and I shouldn't have to pay for it if I'm sick, uh, and they don't have insurance because they choose not to have insurance.
And this is something, you know, we don't talk enough about this aspect of uh of health care, be it Hillary's proposal or anybody else's, and that is what's the effect going to be on the doctors?
Do you realize the doctors are perceived as part of the enemy?
Uh to people like Mrs. Clinton and others on the Democrat side who propose nationalized or socialized health care.
The doctors are the enemy.
And nobody ever talks about, well, they're the providers.
I mean, if you if you if you drum them out of the business, if you don't make it profitable for them to recoup what it costs to become a doctor, if you don't allow them to uh uh earn enough money to make it worthwhile, who's gonna go into the profession?
Is the government gonna have to mandate certain people go into it and become doctors?
This is something nobody thinks about.
The doctors in this country have been portrayed as the enemy, just like the CEOs of Walmart and Big Oil are the enemy.
They're overcharging, they don't care, they don't do good work, and nobody talks about the tort lawyers, the trial lawyers that have run up the cost of malpractice insurance, ambulance chasers running around, you know, just just seeking piles of money wherever they can uh wherever they can get it.
She has an excellent point.
There's a story here in the Los Angeles Times.
And it is from yesterday.
Financial woes jeopardize area hospitals.
Nearly two dozen area hospitals in Los Angeles are at risk.
Losing even a few would mean greater strain on the region's health care network.
And this goes back to my my point that I made not long ago.
In most every other business sector, an abundance of customers would mean obscene profits.
It's how Walmart does it's how any number of people do it.
Apple doesn't, I mean some people go for profit margin on price with what they consider to be superior products, but regardless, they're all seeking more customers.
Because more customers means more sales.
More sales leads to more profit, more productivity the whole the whole cycle.
Yet the health care business, the more customers the worse the system gets, the poorer the system gets, the poorer the coverage is the service or what have you.
And there's a simple explanation for this.
The healthcare business is not operating in a free market.
It's operating on a socialized government controlled circumstance which has taken so many incentives out of it, which has led to so much entitlement on the part of so many people that the whole thing's busted.
And the fix for it as proposed by Mrs. Clinton is to just compound existing problems.
Now listen to the details of this story.
By the way the people that wrote this story, Daniel Costello and Susanna Rosenblett should be fired for being too stupid to mention the reason why all these hospitals in LA are actually shutting down.
Nearly two dozen private hospitals in Los Angeles and Orange counties accounting for up to 15% of beds in the region are in dire financial straits and they're in danger of bankruptcy or closure, according to hospital administrators, industry experts and state data.
The troublesome development follows the closure of community clinics and hospitals in recent years that has left the healthcare system seriously overburdened.
If even a few other hospitals close or reduce costly critical care services, it could mean longer ambulance rides to hospitals, additional delays in emergency rooms, and less access to care, get this especially for poor and uninsured people.
Can we be honest, which these two reporters were not who are these poor and uninsured people you will not find in this story the fact that free service is being provided to illegal aliens.
I know of these hospitals that have shut down in Los Angeles.
I've read the Los Angeles Times about them and I know why they've shut down it's because nobody going in there can pay for anything.
And that's what Susan from Madison was talking about.
In order to give them coverage or care which they are required to by federal law somebody has to eat it.
So the doctors have to eat their profit the doctors the hospitals have to eat their profit and there's no business incentive here.
And so they're shutting down they can't stay open that's why these hospitals have closed down and the Los Angeles Times is all concerned what's going to happen to the poor and the uninsured the poor and the uninsured are what's causing the problem and most of the uninsured are illegal aliens.
You know this myth about how many uninsured we have in this country we never break it down.
We just use this number 47 million it is now I never see any proof of this we just hear the assertion we don't know how many of them are illegal but we figure 12 to 20 million illegals in this country will duh right there 12 to 20 million of the 47 and how many of the rest are children and how many of the rest don't want it on purpose because they don't see any need because they're healthy,
they're young, they don't see any need you ought to buy insurance they'd rather have a nicer car or plasma TV and every whatever the hell it is but the impression is left that this country is so rotten and so mean spirited and so uncaring so lacking in compassion that we will sit around to have 47 million of our own citizens sick and dying because we don't care to insure them and that's the message Mrs. Clinton puts forth we've got to fix this.
People's hearts and minds are sometimes not on the same page so your mind might tell you yeah but they're what I just told you.
There aren't really 47 million uninsured in America is not bad.
We're not a horrible rotten country lacking in compassion where your heart says we can't let these people suffer.
And so Mrs. Clinton comes along with an idea I can fix it.
I can fix it, and we'll never have a problem again.
And your heart says, that's good.
I want to feel good about my country.
I want to feel good about the way we treat the poor.
While your mind is say, wait a minute, this is a ruse.
So the feelings win out.
But how in the world can you write a story about how financial woes are jeopardizing area hospitals without mentioning the fact that most of these emergency rooms are being shut down, the ones that are being talked about being shut down because they can't afford to stay open.
Because nobody going in there can pay.
For or will pay, whatever the uh whatever the reason.
So it's a, you know, it's it's it's a serious thing to discuss.
But you gotta get your heart out of it if you're gonna do it and be honest.
Here's a Bloomberg story.
Uh Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton called overhauling the U.S. health insurance system a moral imperative, and said that raising taxes on the wealthy along with cost savings would be enough to pay for the proposal she'll unveiled last week.
Well, you know, there's a problem with this.
How many other programs has she proposed where to pay for it, she's going to raise taxes on the rich.
How many times can you raise taxes on the rich before you destroy them?
And by the way, we're not talking about the wealthy.
We're talking about riches defined as 250 grand a year or up.
Just how many programs are we going to tax the rich on?
Every Democrat proposal is accompanied by how do I pay for this?
I'm going to raise taxes on the rich.
I figure we're up to a tax rate about 75% now.
To pay for all these programs, this is pure class envy, nothing more than the politics of envy.
It is not serious whatsoever.
And it's all aimed, folks, at making the government the only entity in health care so that you are totally dependent on advocates of big government for what you have now been led to believe is a constitutional right to never get sick.
And if you do get sick, your constitutional right is to get well, doing whatever you want, wherever you want, seeing whoever you want, whatever it costs, as long as you don't have to pay.
And that's what they're out there selling.
And by the way, nobody's ever gone broke at the outset selling something that costs nothing.
There will always be takers, even though they haven't the slightest idea that there's no such thing that is free.
I got to take a quick time out.
We will be back.
We will continue.
We will roll on undeterred, unstopped, undistracted right after this.
I want to read you some quotes, uh, ladies and gentlemen, and I want to ask you if you know who said these things.
Here's, I get six of them.
Number one, we are going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.
Number two, it's time for a new beginning for an end to government of the few by the few for the few to replace it with shared responsibility for shared prosperity.
Number three, we can't just let business as usual go on, and that means something has to be taken away from some people.
Number four, we have to build a political consensus, and that requires people to give up a little bit of their own turf in order to create this common ground.
Number five, I certainly think the free market has failed.
Number six, I think it's time to send a clear message to what has become the most profitable sector in the entire economy.
That they are being watched.
And I had a seven who also said, what I want to do is take those profits and apply them to alternative energy.
All seven of these things were uh not said by Karl Marx or Frederick Engels.
Uh these were all stated by Hillary Clinton.
June 29th of 2004, May 29th of 2007, June 4th of 2007, June 4th of 2007, June 4th of 2007, September 2nd of 05.
Shared responsibility is a common theme of Mrs. Clinton.
So let's go to the uh audio sound bites.
On uh Slay the Nation yesterday, Bob Schiefer said, last week you rolled out your new health care plan, something Republicans immediately said is going to lead to socialized medicine.
Uh it would require, among other things, said every American would have to, Would have to buy health insurance.
You're proposing to pay for it by rolling back some of the Bush uh tax cuts.
How do you force people to buy health insurance, Senator?
Well, let me describe briefly what it is I'm trying to do, Bob, because this is uh not government-run health care.
We don't create any new bureaucracy, but we do have shared responsibility.
There it is.
Shared responsibility.
Now, for the first year or two, she may not create any new bureaucracy.
And for the first year or two, she may not eliminate the private insurance business in order to do this, but that's just to set up the takeover down the road once the costs spiral out of control with the other mandates she's gonna put on it.
The whole objective of Mrs. Clinton's plan is to make it look like she's really not changing anything other than covering everybody with insurance.
Uh but she wants the program, she wants the whole system to break down so what in in such a fashion.
This is a typical liberal trick, by the way.
Stack the deck so that the whole thing fails, leaving only one option, the government to go in to save the day.
And that's uh when she will uh move in with the full-fledged part of her plan that she is not announcing.
See, Congress will work out the details.
You know, she her proposal is just ten pages now.
Uh so she can't promise anything here because she's gonna let Congress work out the details.
This is look at folk, politics is product.
Mrs. Clinton tried it with what was in her heart and mind uh fourteen years ago.
Didn't work.
So now time to repackage it.
Same product, just packaged in a different way to make it more saleable.
The same product, it isn't gonna change.
On Stephanopoulos, the question uh would illegal immigrants be covered under your plan.
I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you that time, George.
Would illegal immigrants be covered under your plan?
Illegal immigrants would not be covered.
No, they would not be covered.
All right, now we have a major conflict here.
Because if she doesn't cover illegal immigrants, then we're still gonna end up with at least 20 million uninsured.
But she also said last week that you're gonna have to have insurance when you go into the job interview.
Remember that?
So how in the world are the illegals gonna ever get a job if they don't have health insurance?
If you gotta have health insurance to get a job, just like auto insurance to get a car.
Remember, this is not something the feds can mandate, by the way, the states can, but federal government cannot mandate that to do this.
Uh and how can everybody be insured if everybody isn't gonna be insured?
Illegal immigrants aren't gonna be insured.
So then how is everybody gonna be insured?
This is the smartest woman in the world.
They're in their invisible.
We don't even know that they're there.
So they go in for a job interview.
It's be very afraid, ladies and gentlemen, so I'm telling you, be very afraid.
Now, this next one is a huge, huge, maybe one of the biggest, see I told you so in my star-studded and stellar career.
Stephanopoulos said, can you pledge that all U.S. troops will be home over the course of your first term as president?
You know, I'm not going to get into hypotheticals and make pledges because I don't know what I'm going to inherit, George.
I don't know, and neither do any of us know what will be the situation in the region.
How much more aggressive will Iran have become?
What will be happening in the Middle East?
How much more of an influence will the chaos in Iraq have in terms of what's going on in the greater region?
Will we have uh pushed Al Qaeda in Iraq out of their uh strongholds with our our new partnership uh with some of the uh uh tribal sheikhs, or will they have regrouped and retrenched?
Ladies and gentlemen, I don't really quite know what to say here.
She has just outlined the position of George W. Bush and General Petraeus, to whom she said to listen to would require willing suspension of disbelief.
I also have been telling you for months that the dirty little secret is if Hillary Clinton's elected, she not pulling those troops out of there.
Because she's not gonna saddle herself with a United States defeat.
She'd be glad to do it.
You you you compare what you heard her say here to what she's been saying.
I mean, every hour it seems her position on the war changes and she flip-flops.
We gotta get those troops out of there now, she's saying today.
We gotta get them out of there.
We have to bring them home.
We have to start that process.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
What about when you're president, Mrs. Oh, no, no, no.
I don't know what he's saddled with.
Uh, Also, she's going to say, I don't know what the Bush administration kept from us.
I got to the White House, I was president, I was elected, and I saw the file.
I said, Oh my God, we can't get out of there.
Look at what always is horrible what we face.
It would be irresponsible to get out.
There's no way she's pulling the troops out.
She's talking about how to win in this answer.
But only in the context if she's president.
Before then, she's free to run around and try to promote defeat all she wants, and nobody calls her on it.
I tell you what, I think uh Mahmood Ahmadinezad has been a little bit perturbed, maybe a little unnerved by some of the broadside questions from Lee Bollinger in his introduction, the president of Columbia of uh Mahmood.
Mahmoud just uh flapping his gums and going on and on and on about a bunch of nothing.
And he said, How can you ask these questions and say that you are a free country?
How can you ask these questions and say that you are a free country, that this is freedom when you ask uh questions like this.
I want to go back to this Hillary soundbite, folks.
This is this is all of you leftists out there, all the you those of you in the anti-war movement uh who think the Democrats are your boys on this and that you're gonna do this and that, and they're gonna get them out of there, and uh the troops are coming out, you know, Mrs. Clinton's gonna make sure they come out.
I I want you to listen to this the two two things about it.
A she said in this answer everything I predicted they that she would say.
Uh but she's beating me to the punch in terms of I didn't think she'd say this till she was president.
Uh I told you that there's no way Hillary is going to take troops out of Iraq if she's elected.
No way they're going to saddle themselves, herself, and the party with defeat of the U.S. military and the United States of America.
No way it's going to happen.
Dirty little secret.
Democrats don't know it.
The anti-war crowded Kook Blockosphere on the left doesn't know it.
And what else did I say?
I said she would say, Well, we don't know what the Bush administration held from us, so I don't know what I'm going to inherit.
I had no idea what the situation was going to be.
And it's like Clinton's tax cuts.
He let everybody believe he's going to cut taxes, and after a month, he said, I worked harder than I ever have in my life.
I just can't find a way to do it.
Which is the Bush administrationists and things that I learned when I got in here.
I didn't know were going on in the economy.
We just, we just can't do it.
Same technique will be employed here, and she admits it.
So here's the question again.
Can you pledge?
Remember now, this is what the Democrat Party thinks the 06 elections were about, in which she was re-elected.
Can you pledge that all U.S. troops will be home over the course of your first term as president?
You know, I'm not going to get into hypotheticals and make pledges because I don't know what I'm going to inherit, George.
Stop the tape.
She's already making pledges, though.
She's already she's already told Petra she doesn't believe what he's saying about the situation in Iraq.
Keep that in mind.
She doesn't believe it.
As you hear the rest of this bite, she didn't believe what Petraea said.
She doesn't believe what Bush is saying.
There's no reason to be there.
We ought to bring the troops home.
We need to start now bringing the troops home.
Now listen to the rest of this.
No, and and neither do any of us know.
What will be the situation in the region?
How much more aggressive will Iran have become?
Stop the tape.
What does that matter?
It doesn't matter now, Mrs. Clinton.
It doesn't matter to Chuck Schumer, doesn't matter to Dick Durbin, doesn't matter to you now or Harry Reid.
Why will it matter when you're president?
What what Iran is doing?
Here's the next sentence.
What will be happening in the Middle East?
How much the top what does that matter?
It doesn't matter now.
What do you mean?
Keeping troops there when you're president will depend on what's happening in the Middle East.
Why does that not matter now, Mrs. Clinton?
It's more of an influence will the chaos in Iraq have in terms of what's going on in the greater region.
What's right, but why does that matter now?
Why does that not matter now?
Why does it why is it only going to matter when you're president?
The chaos in the region.
Chaos in Iraq, what does it mean?
That apparently is of no concern now to you or your party.
Why will it be a concern when you are president?
We have uh pushed Al Qaeda in Iraq out of their uh strongholds with our our new partnership uh with some of the uh uh tribal sheikhs, or will they have regrouped and retrenched?
Uh she's talking about the surge here, and they're saying the surge failed.
The surge isn't why why does it matter whether our partnership what do you mean Al Qaeda in Iraq?
I thought Al Qaeda wasn't in Iraq, Mrs. Clinton.
I thought this whole thing was bogus, Bush lied.
My my how things change when you are asked questions of what you're going to do as president.
And every bit of this never forget, my friends.
I, L. Rushbow, the all-knowing, all seeing Maharashi, predicted this very answer.
She just beat me to it by a year and a half.
Kelly in Plymouth, Indiana, as we go back to the phones, nice to have you with us.
Thank you very much.
It's an honor to speak with you, sir.
Thank you very much.
Okay, just wanted to make a point.
The uh physician that called in, you know, and and the supporting things that you read talked about how the you know doctors are eating the profits and and I totally agree and understand that you know the current system isn't good, and what you know m Mrs. Hilbert there is coming up with isn't going to work either.
But the point I wanted to make is I also don't know of any other private business that you go to.
She compared it to going to the mechanic.
I don't know any mechanic that you walk in the door, and if you are uninsured and you have assets, your price tier system is going to be five times more than the immigrant that walks in or the Medicaid recipient, and even you know, the private health care, which I understand that's you know why you pay for insurance, uh private health care insurance.
But my point is, you know, the physicians are crying about their system, but you know, I mean, I can tell you from personal experience, and you know, uh when you walk in the door and you think, you know, okay, I'm a hardworking person, I'm a good Republican, I can pay my bill, and you find out that your bill is five times more what anybody else has to pay just because you do have assets.
That also is a minute.
I have found that to be not true.
I had to go to the doctor, as I mentioned last week.
I had to go to a hospital, actually.
Okay.
Last December.
And I ended up being put in a hospital for two or three out of an intestinal blockage.
And because I paid up front and in cash, I got a thirty percent discount.
Tell me where you're living.
Maybe I ought to move there.
Well, I live in Palm Beach, Florida.
Okay.
Well, we don't have it.
Really?
I did.
I paid up front, paid a whole thing myself, I got a discount.
Okay.
I I just know what my experience was because I was not uh Let me tell you something.
You're uh the auto the auto, the auto the mechanic example you gave, I got another story for you.
Okay.
I'm in Kansas City.
I don't make any money.
I'm just I I've I'm driving a beat up beat up Pontiac that my dad traded, and I got a beat up Riviera, I gave him the Riviera, I took the Pontiac.
And it was old and it I just I couldn't have didn't have the money to keep it up.
I wasn't earning enough.
And it it it it was on the verge of breaking down, and I I never forget this.
I took this to a mechanic that was recommended to me by somebody.
I walked in there and the guy had a plastic Jesus on the cash register.
I said, aha, this is an honest guy.
And the guy told me my car needed a new disgruntator.
And it was 800 bucks.
And I never heard of a disgruntrificator, but I didn't have time to the car could would not move.
We need our cars to go to work.
So, okay, put it in.
And I, you know, I uh I to this day I don't remember how I paid for it.
800 bucks I did not have to fix the car.
Well, there's no such thing as a disgruntator.
Right.
In a car uh the guy knew I was pleading my case.
The fact that I couldn't pay did not help me a bit.
The fact what determined it was I had no recourse.
The car would not move.
So, you know, this the this is the this is the free market system and the way it works.
I I was advised to go someplace I shouldn't have gone.
I went there when I got there, the car conked out, I couldn't go any further.
Uh I don't know really what it took to fix the thing.
What do I know?
I have since appropriated the word and I love using it.
Uh but nevertheless.
Uh I I do think that the focus here to really fix health care needs to be on the free market.
Portability of insurance.
Cut taxes.
You know, make people able to afford this stuff.
Give them education or medical savings account vouchers where they can shop for services based on ability to pay to get to keep what they don't spend every year from that account.
And it's just the money that's being taxed from them now anyway to do this.
I mean, it's it's not a complicated fix.
Free market can, you know, you can fix things in the free.
You put the government in charge of things, it's going to be an absolute uh disaster.
All right, I've got a couple bites here from uh sound bites from Lee Bollinger, and I want to I want to take a break here.
We'll come back and uh and play these just to give you an idea of the way he introduced Mahmoud Ahmadini Jad and the questions he was asked.
One of the students at Columbia just asked Ahmadinejad, why are you executing homosexuals?
And he started to answer just as soon as the uh the break here ended.
Here I talked earlier about uh I was totally surprised, taken aback by the aggressiveness of the introduction of uh Harvard or of Columbia President Lee Bollinger and his introduction of President Mahmood Ahmadini's dad.
We have two examples.
A number of Columbia graduates and current students are among the brave members of our military who are serving or have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
They, like other Americans with sons, daughters, fathers, husbands, and wives serving in combat, but combat rightly see your government as the enemy.
Can you tell them and us why Iran is fighting a proxy war in Iraq by arming Shia militia, targeting and killing U.S. troops, and finally, Iran's nuclear program and international sanctions.
This week the United Nations Security Council is contemplating expanding sanctions for a third time because of your government's refusal to suspend its uranium enrichment program.
You continue to defy this world body by claiming a right to develop a peaceful nuclear power, but this hardly withstands scrutiny when you continue to issue military threats to neighbors.
Last week, French President Sarkozy made clear his lost patience with your stall tactics, and even Russia and China have shown concern.
Why does your country continue to refuse to adhere to international standards for nuclear weapons verification in defiance of agreements that you have made with the UN nuclear agency?
And why have you chosen to make the people of your country vulnerable to the effects of international economic sanctions and threaten to engulf the world in nuclear annihilation?
Now speaks for itself, correct?
But I, ladies and gentlemen, seeing the stitches in a fastball, have additional questions.
I made mention of this when it happened, but very, very few have commented on it themselves.
During General Petraeus' testimony before the House and the Senate recently, he referred to the proxy war that we are fighting with Iran in Iraq.
That basically our involvement in Iraq is a proxy war with Iran.
The president of Harvard sorry uh uh Columbia University just referenced it too.
In this question, this litany of charges, if you will, the liberal president of Columbia University had no difficulty whatsoever spelling out what is at stake.
Why do we never hear this from the American left?
Why the American left, obviously, members of the American left get it, understand exactly what's going on, but yet they're doing everything they can to undermine it and essentially aid and comfort the enemy.
I was taken aback by these allegations and the questions for far more than just the words that the President of Columbia used.
He is one of these leftists, folks.
His faculty, as you can well imagine at Columbia University, is among those who think that Bush lied, that none of this is real, that it was all made up, that Iran isn't a threat, that we're causing all this.
The world Hates us.
If Mr. Bollinger had been consistent with what he actually says publicly and people like him say publicly, his questions would have not been this at all.
It would have said, Mr. Ahmadinejad, what can we do to help you deal with our president who has brought war to your part of the world?
Because that is what they think.
That is what they're out there saying.
That's what elected Democrats are saying.
It's what their Kook blogosphere is saying.
It's what their base believes and thinks.
There are protesters carrying signs outside this speech today saying Ahmadinezad's bad, but Bush is worse.
Now, there's some real intellectual dishonesty going on here.
In academia.
What this tells me is these people know what's at stake.
They know full well what's at stake.
They know full well who the real enemy is.
But in public discourse, other than today, they don't dare acknowledge it because that would mean Bush is right.
Or something else.
Here is how Mr. Bollinger closed this.
In all candor, Mr. President, I doubt that you will have the intellectual courage to answer these questions.
But your avoiding them will in itself be meaningful to us.
I do expect you to exhibit the fanatical mindset that characterizes so much of what you say and do.
Fortunately, I'm told by experts on your country that this only further undermines your position in Iran, with all the many good hearted intelligent citizens there.
A year ago, I am reliably told your preposterous and belligerent statements in this country as at one of the meetings at the Council on Foreign Relations so embarrass sensible Iranian citizens that this led to your party's defeat in the December mayor elections.
May this do that and more.
May this do that and more.
I'm really sort of here perplexed on, I'm at a bit of a loss.
I mean, this is everything I would say to Ahmadini Zad.
I can't believe.
You know, I was going to say that Mr. Bollinger may end up in the same situation as Larry Summers at Harvard.
But he won't because he stood up for women being murdered and homosexuals being murdered.
Well, it's the end for he challenged.
Akhmadini's out on it.
But this is so off the playbook.
This is a little frustrating.
On the one hand, all right, rah, rah, way to go.
I apologize for being critical of you, Mr. Bollinger.
But on the other hand, where's this been for five years?
And where is this on the academy?
Where is this in the classrooms?
Where is this being taught?
You obviously believe this stuff.
You actually face down a U.S. enemy instead of coddling him.
The rest of the time, people like Mr. Bollinger all are coddling our enemies and blaming Bush.
Where's this been?
Back in a second.
Well, the funniest, uh, the funniest part of Mahmoud Ahmadini Zad's uh remarks to the students at Columbia just happened.
He was asked, why do you execute homosexuals in your country?
And he started blabbering on about how we love women, women are the most favored creatures of God in our country.
We have nothing but love and love and love.
And then he said, We do not have this phenomenon in Iran.
We do not have homosexuals in Iran.
Don't know who told you that, but we don't have homosexuals in Iran.
Now, this is not the way, ladies and gentlemen, to uh establish a loving relationship with the students at Columbia University, to deny that there are homosexuals in Iran.
Uh to the extent that that is true, he can only be because, yes, they are executed if they are discovered.
Uh Mahmood may not know any homosexuals because they're way behind the closet.
Who knows what else they're behind?
But if they're found, they are executed.
They are.
I don't know if he means we don't have any homosexuals in Iran or we don't have any homosexuals in Islam.
But he regardless, whatever he meant, he said, we don't have that phenomenon.
I don't know who told you that.
But we don't have any gays here.
We will have that answer and many more for you tomorrow as the next excursion into broadcast excellence kicks off in about 21 hours.
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