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Oct. 8, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:37
October 8, 2007, Monday, Hour #3
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And we're back.
El Rushbow here and the EIB Network.
We come to you today from the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
The learning never stops.
There are no degrees and there are no graduates.
Our telephone number, if you want to be on the program today, 800 282-2882, and the email address rush at EIBNet.com.
I'm sorry to make this personal, folks, but it's uh perhaps the best teaching aid I have.
I've recommended two or three times that you go out and rent a movie.
Uh The Lives of Others.
It was the Academy Award-winning foreign foreign language film, uh last epidemic awards.
It's subtitled.
Uh it is made in Germany, and it's about what life was like when East Germany was part of the Soviet bloc.
Given the smear of me by Senator Reed and the Amen chorus of those in the media and on the left that bought it hook, line and sinker, knowing full well it was a lie.
The news today that Henry Waxman is going to unleash a number of his staff investigators.
He's chairman of the of the House Government Oversight Committee.
I I you know I laugh at this, but there's there's a part of me that just gets stunned when I hear that the chairman of the House Oversight Committee that over provides oversight of government functions is going to train his some of his investigative staff on a private citizen, a talk show host for the advancement of his own political operations.
And he is using a regulatory agency to come after me, the FCC.
When I hear this, I have to tell you, I get stunned.
You know, I I I can remember back very clearly the Nixon days when they discovered his enemies' list and how they were so fit to be tied in the drive-by media that the president of the United States was doing research on members of the press and how this was intolerable and unacceptable.
And then after a while it became fashionable to fashionable to be on the list.
But the the idea here that this is happening really makes me want to recommend to you, if you haven't done so, to go rent the movie.
And as I've said each time I've told you about it, it's R-rated.
There is some nudity in it.
I've got some people disagreeing with me about this, by the way.
I've I've I've said a number of times that the nudity is is gratuitous, it's not really necessary in the story.
Some people say, yes, it is, Rush, because the nudity is being spied on too.
Because the nudity is being used, the sexual activity is being spied on, videotaped, monitored.
It is necessary, Rush.
Yes, you don't want your kids watching this, but it's not for kids anyway.
It's it's it's uh, you know, it's it's a movie that you really ought to see.
Lives of others.
Just go rent the thing.
Uh and understand that it's an R, and it will show you what happens with totalitarian governments like those in East Germany and the Soviet Union, and in Cuba today and uh places like Hugo Chavez and uh Venezuela.
Now, along these same lines, I want to play some audio sound bites.
We all know of the smear regarding the phony soldier last week, and we know that most of the media that picked it up fell for it, hook, line and sinker.
And they had to fall for it on purpose.
It was too easy to find out that it wasn't true.
So let's first go to C-SPAN's Washington Journal this morning.
The uh host there, Peter Slenn, was interviewing uh USA Today's political writer, Jill Lawrence, and a call came in from Jill Lawrence in Cincinnati.
I want to know in this kind of political atmosphere, how the USA Today paper can go out and just completely misquote someone.
Um, like Rush Limbaugh, his phony soldier's comment wasn't even about soldiers that opposed the Iraq war.
It was about soldiers like Jesse McBeth, who are not real soldiers.
They're serving time in prison now for lying about their record.
I saw the comments, and uh I I think that you're wrong.
I'm sorry to say.
Uh I mean, I think, you know, that some people would say in context it wasn't offensive, but other people of different partisan persuasions would would say it does.
And it, you know, on our blog, I know my colleague Mark Memott has been comparing it to the General Petraeus uh controversy.
Uh these are really a hot button issues, and people feel strongly on both sides.
And we are reporting reaction.
That Rush Limbaugh uh posting that my colleague did was getting fifteen hundred comments from readers.
Yeah, I wonder why.
I wonder why but did you see you hear what she said?
The truth didn't matter.
Reaction from both sides is what matters.
She disagreed with the caller who said that my comments had been distorted and taken out of context, even though she'd read the transcript.
So the narrative was I I rip military people.
The reason this didn't work and didn't fly is because after a 20-year record of being called a chicken hawk and a hawk, and being pro-military as public as I have been, it just doesn't wash.
It doesn't sell with people other than the anointed, who are the mind-numbed robots who are irrelevant, uh to whom the truth is irrelevant.
But this is a reporter.
This is a reporter.
So look, uh we reporting reactions on both sides, people comparing it to the Petrayus.
It doesn't matter that it was all lies.
And what what reaction on both sides both people did this?
Move on.org did the Patrayus ad.
Media Matters did the phony uh uh smear on me, picked up by the Democrat Party.
Uh there were no two sides to this.
Moving on, another illustration of how the press has its narrative, how it has its template, and anything that comes in that doesn't fit doesn't get in.
Howard Kurtz interviewed Robin Wright of the Washington Post and CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr on his show, Reliable Sources on Sunday.
Kurtz said, Robin Wright, should that decline in Iraq casualties have gotten more media attention.
The fact is we're at the beginning of a trend, and it's not even sure that it's a trend yet.
There's also an enormous dispute over how to count the numbers.
There are different kinds of deaths in Iraq.
There are combat deaths, there are sectarian deaths, and there are the deaths of criminal from criminal acts.
There are also a lot of numbers that the U.S. frankly is not counting.
For example, in Southern Iraq, they're Shi'i'd upon Shiite violence, which is not sectarian in the Shiite versus Sunni.
And the U.S. also doesn't have much of a capability in the South.
So the numbers themselves are tricky.
The numbers are tricky.
These are the good numbers that came back about how few deaths there were in August compared to the previous August.
And Kurtz is saying, don't you think it's worthy of being reported because they didn't report it?
And she was essentially saying, no, it's not that this is not news.
This is this isn't the beginning of a trend.
It could get worse next month, and we would be mistaken if we were to report this.
So we we can't be sure that good news in Iraq is really good because the numbers are tricky.
So then Kurtz turns to Barbara Starr.
Says, Barbara Starr, CNN did mostly quick reads by anchors of these numbers.
Do you think this story deserve more attention?
We don't know whether it's a trend or not, but these are intriguing numbers.
But that's the problem.
We don't know whether it's a trend about specifically the decline in the number of U.S. troops being killed in Iraq.
This is not enduring progress.
This is a very positive step on that potential road to progress.
It's not enduring progress.
It's a very positive step on a potential road.
So what she is saying is well, we've got a narrative here, and it's all going to hell in a handbasket in Iraq.
And this is just this is not a trend.
It's just good news temporary.
We we we can't we can't make a big deal out of this yet.
It's not it's not warranted.
So Kurt says, but let's say the figures had shown that casualties were going up for U.S. soldiers and going up for Iraqi civilians.
I think that would have made some front pages.
Oh, I think inevitably it would have.
I mean, that's certainly that's by any definition is news.
Look, nobody more than a Pentagon correspondent would like to stop reporting the number of deaths interviewing grieving families talking to the.
The tape a second.
I don't believe that for a second based on what you just said.
Oh, I think inevitably it would have.
I mean, that's certainly that by any definition is news if troop deaths are rising.
That's news.
Why is it news, Ms. Starr?
Because you are invested in defeat, along with the Democrat Party.
Here's the rest of the bite.
You know, soldiers who've lost their arms and their legs in the war.
But is this really enduring progress?
We've had five years of the Pentagon telling us there is progress.
There is progress.
Forgive me for being skeptical.
I need to see a little bit more than one month before I get too excited about all this.
Oh, well, I need to see more than one month.
I'm sorry.
I I the facts are irrelevant here.
I I need to see much more than this.
How about three months, Miss Star, but the success of the surge and everybody trying to downplay that?
Well, let's go back to our archives, shall we, and let's find out if the numbers of troop deaths in Iraq have always been this tricky.
We have a montage of NBC's Ann Curry, John King of CNN, Julie Manderis of Fox, Britt Hume, Katie Kurick, a whole bunch of people here from October of 2006, a month that the drive-by is crowned the deadliest month in Iraq.
October is now the deadliest month for U.S. troops so far this year in Iraq.
This is the deadliest month of the year.
The deadliest month.
The deadliest month for American troops.
The deadliest month this year.
October has been the deadliest month of this year.
As we've been telling you, October has now become the deadliest month.
That makes it the deadliest month so far, and there's still a week left.
Whoa, didn't seem to have any trouble verifying that number, did they?
That number certainly wasn't tricky.
And let's go back to December 31st and January 1st of 06 and 07.
Another montage as the drive-by is celebrated the grim milestone of 3,000 troop deaths in Iraq.
3,000 American troops have now been killed since the war began.
Today the death toll of American troops in Iraq reached 3,000.
The U.S. military marked a sad milestone today.
3,000 U.S. troops have died in Iraq.
The death of U.S. Army specialists marks a grim milestone, bringing to 3,000 the number of U.S. service members killed in Iraq.
The new year is marked by a grim milestone.
3,000 American soldiers have now been killed.
In Iraq, the year brings with it a new milestone.
The U.S. death toll now stands at 3,000.
Well, the number certainly wasn't tricky.
It's not that the I know the military released the numbers.
The military released the improved numbers too.
But those are tricky.
Those are tricky to count.
These are just accepted.
These fit the narrative, these fit the template.
Be right back.
And we move on to the audio sound bites.
We move on to Mrs. Clinton.
Let me set this one up because what's what's fascinating about this is that Mrs. Clinton has been shielding herself from certain reporters, certain uh questions she doesn't want to deal with.
And in fact, she'd been praised by reporters for doing this.
Most recently, Ann Cornblut in the Washington Post pointed this out to you one Friday and made it uh known that Hillary is only talking to certain people in the media, and most of them are editorial writers that she's avoiding beat reporters, and that it's a sound strategy.
It's very smart.
So Ann Cornblut, reporter, says, yeah, Hillary avoiding me.
That's cool.
Whatever it takes.
Just like when Clinton was lying through his tooth teeth through the 90s.
We got reports on how lying was clever and helpful, spared feelings.
And they marveled at how well he did it.
And Ann Cornblut was marveling at how well Hillary Clinton was managing her media.
Now she ran into somebody in her own party at a town meeting in uh in New Hampton, Iowa.
And this guy's name, Randall Rolfe of Nashua.
And uh he he uh he compared the vote, Clinton's vote for the war, to the one Clinton cast for the walk Iraq war resolution asking why should I support your candidacy?
This was a this was a actually the vote that he was complaining about uh was her vote in the Senate to declare Iran's revolutionary guard a terrorist organization.
And Randall Rolf stood up and said, Why should I support your candidacy?
You you you you won't renounce your vote for the Iraq war.
It appears you haven't learned from your past mistakes.
And she said, Well, the premise of the question's wrong, and I'll be happy to explain it to you.
And then she suggested that Randall Rolfe was a plant, saying his question was based on something somebody obviously sent you.
Now she backed down after a while, so said, I apologize.
It's just I've been asked the very same question in three other places.
But these are her people.
You know, these are her people.
This is this this is the anti-war left that she's running into that she'd been shielded from, and when she gets a question she doesn't like, she lashes out.
We have audio of some of this.
But it wasn't in what you read to me that somebody obviously sent to you.
I take exception.
This is my own research.
I have to do that.
Well, then let me finish.
Let me finish telling you.
Well, I am offended that you would suggest.
Well, I that I apologize.
It's just that I've been asked the very same question in three other places.
So let me apologize.
So she's out there thinking this is projection.
She's out there thinking that people are plants in her own crowd.
Which is what they do.
They're the one that put play people like Code Pink and others in uh in audiences, uh and and of Republicans, or in the Congress and try to uh disrupt them.
This is uh not unprecedented.
We go back to the archives, April 14th, 2004, City College in Harlem.
John Kerry held a town meeting, and a professor, a retired professor at the school, uh Walter Daum was highly critical of Kerry, and just as Mrs. Clinton told the person asking her question, you know what you're talking about, essentially, is what Kerry here told Walter Daum.
If you don't leave a stable Iraq with a legitimacy to whatever entity is going to transform the government, you have the potential for a civil war.
You have the potential for Shia versus Sunni versus Kurd.
There are all kinds of potentials.
Let me just finish.
They are united against the occupation.
Yes, and but but the point is this, sir.
You're not listening to me.
Oh, yes, I am.
Well, then you haven't frankly listened because in fact, the course that I have proposed is to turn over to the United Nations the full responsibility for the transformation of the government and for the reconstruction.
This guy took Carrie off his game there.
He's wandering around in vain search for a thought.
Of course, this will always work, right?
Turning it over to the UN.
Has he suggested it since?
Has Carrie suggested letting the UN fix this mess since?
No, of course not.
It then it then continued.
I have consistently been critical of how we got where we are, but we are where we are, sir.
And it would be unwise beyond belief for the United States of America to leave a failed Iraq in its wake.
And I want the Americans out, and so do Americans.
You say stay the course, Senator.
Let me just finish.
Stay the course of leaving a stable Iraq.
Now, this is 2004.
This is when Carrie is running for the presidency, and an anti-war professor at the at the at the school he was speaking was taking it to him.
You're phony.
You don't believe any of this, and none of the people that are there want us there, was this guy's point.
Uh and Kerry says, you don't know what you're talking about.
You're not listening to me.
Oh, yes, I am.
Uh but also a point to be made here is here's here's Carrie in 2004.
Uh supporting a stable Iraq, not wanting to pull out of there and leave a mess.
My how things have changed since he lost the election.
Uh, one more.
Actually, two more.
Mrs. Clinton has produced a new ad at 9-11 at ground zero.
The ad shows Hillary wearing a mask over her face at ground zero.
Here is the audio.
She stood by ground zero workers who sacrificed their health after so many sacrificed their lives and kept standing till this administration took action.
So now that almost every candidate standing up for health care for all, which one do you think will never back down?
All right.
Now you remember every time Rudy Giuliani or George Bush go to 9-11, uh, ground zero, I can't believe they're exploiting 9-11.
It's not fair.
Now listen to this media montage analyzing Hillary's ad.
That is an extraordinary ad for the.
I'm electable, I'm strong, I'm safe.
Rudy Giuliani has exploited 9-11 for his own purposes.
How effective a strategy is it for Hillary Clinton to try to get her arms around 9-11.
I think it's an excellent strategy.
It shows that no party, no candidate owns 9-11.
I don't know who that last person was.
I need to get my Greek translator to understand that.
But basically, you see uh that the drive by, oh, this is a wonderful great strategy.
Great strategy.
Uh no surprise, no big deal, just continued pounding of illustration after illustration after illustration.
I also have in the story I'm gonna uh in the stack here, and when I get back from the from the break, it's a column in the Washington Post by a Brit.
Guy named Jeffrey Wheatcroft.
I'm not really sure who he is, but his piece is Who Made Hillary Clinton Queen?
And he says, look at it, you know, we you Americans don't understand how we in Europe see you.
It's not what you think, folks.
He basically says, in no circumstance would somebody with as empty a resume as Hillary Clinton be considered for national leadership.
Why is it that she is assumed to be the best you have?
We would like to know here in Great Britain.
We'll be back.
Stay with us.
Get back to the phones here in just a second, but here's this piece in the Washington Post.
It's from yesterday, actually.
It's by uh Jeffrey Wheatcroft.
Among so much about American politics that can impress or depress a friendly transatlantic observer, there's nothing more astonishing than this.
Why on earth should Senator Hillary Clinton be the front runner for the presidency?
We all, nations as well as individuals have difficulty seeing ourselves as others see us.
In this case, I doubt that Americans realize how extraordinary their country appears from the outside in Europe, the supposed home of class privilege and heritable status.
We've abandoned the hereditary principle, apart from the monarchy, and the uh the days are gone when Pitt the Elder was prime minister, then Pitt the younger.
But Americans find nothing untoward in Bush the Elder being followed by Bush the younger.
At a time when Americans seem to contemplate with equanimity equanimity up to twenty-eight solid years of uninterrupted Bush Clinton rule.
Please note that there are almost no political dynasties left in British politics, at least on the Tory side.
Admittedly, Hillary Benn, the environment secretary, is the fourth generation of his family to sit in Parliament, and a third to serve in a Labor Party cabinet, but England otherwise has nothing now to match the noble houses of Kennedy, Gore, and Bush.
And in no other advanced democracy today, could someone with Hillary Clinton's resume even be considered a candidate for national leadership.
It's true that wives do sometimes inherit political range from their husbands, but usually in recovering dictatorships in Latin America such as Argentina.
Maybe third world countries like Sri Lanka and the Philippines.
Such things also happened in the early days of the women's entry into British politics, but not anymore.
More to the point, women who make political careers in other democracies do it their way, which usually means the hard way.
Not many people had fewer advantages in life than Goldemair, born in poverty in Russia, taken to the U.S. as a girl before she settled in Palestine.
She was one of only two women among the 24 people who signed Israel's Declaration of Independence in 1948.
After serving under David Benguri and his foreign minister, she became prime minister in 69, goes on to discuss her qualifications.
What a contrast Hillary Clinton presents.
Everyone recognizes the nepotism or favoritism she's enjoyed.
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd's written that without her marriage, Clinton might be a candidate for president of Vassar, but not of the United States.
And yet the truly astonishing nature of her career still doesn't seem to have impinged on Americans.
Seven years ago, she turned up in New York, a state with which she had a somewhat tenuous connection, expecting to be made senator by acclamation.
And until that point, she had never won or even sought any elective office, not in the House or in a state legislature, nor had she held any executive branch position.
The only political task with which she had ever been entrusted was her husband's health care reform, and she made a complete hash out of that.
So uh guy goes on to one, what what in the world are you Americans thinking?
Which, you know, I've asked this question myself.
Somebody tell me what it is that she's done that recommends her to be president.
It is her last name.
And it is between you and me.
Dirty little secret.
The real desire is to get Bill Clinton back in there, uh, at least as far as many Democrats are concerned.
The other Thing is, the Clintons have become royalty to the Democrat Party.
And that the specifics doesn't matter.
It's just it's about power and control.
They think she can win.
It's her turn.
She's deserving of this.
She's owed this for the excrement sandwich her life has been being married to Bill Clinton.
She gave up her own glorious future to be president of Vassar.
And a big feminist leader in order to get uh where she wanted to go to help him get where he wanted to get her turn now.
That's what I would say to the Brit guy.
Here's John in Kennesaw, Georgia.
John, I'm glad you waited.
Welcome to the program.
Hey, good afternoon, Rush.
You began the program by reading a quote from Hillary some years back scolding people for pointing out increasing tyranny in this country and claiming that it does not exist.
That was Bill Clinton in a commencement address at Michigan State in 2005.
Well, the point is there has been increasing tyranny, and it's primarily due to the left.
Now we may still be the freest nation in the world, but we're going in the wrong direction.
We're going there at a very brisk pace.
Every time these legislatures keep passing new laws, criminalizing behavior that used to be okay, these laws come one after the other like waves lapping on the beach with no end in sight.
There's a long list of things we were free to do thirty years ago, which are illegal today, and it's not George Bush and Ronald Reagan, Pat Robertson or Dr. Dobson who are doing this to us.
No, excellent point.
I mean, if the Bill of Rights were formally repealed, how much different would our lives be today than they already are.
Mm-hmm.
Interesting think piece.
Interesting think piece.
And if they were ever repealed, could they be rewritten today as they exist?
I've also noticed Rush, I did a little bit of radio news, and I spent several years reading police reports.
Even laws which you might consider legitimate.
Police are under pressure to enforce minor violations in a very heavy-handed manner.
You know, you got the jail officials claiming they don't have enough space, the courts claim they can't deal with the workload, and you got sheriff's deputies in Bartow County, Georgia arresting an entire carload of people over a piece of marijuana as big as your fingernail.
I mean, they can enforce some of these laws by writing tickets and giving warnings, but instead they're arresting people.
If you get, you know, you cannot sleep in your car in a Walmart parking lot without being arrested.
And they won't simply tap on the glass and say, I'm sorry, sir, I have to ask you to move on.
They make the arrest, you have to go through the process of getting bonded out.
It's a big hassle over a minor violation.
Wait, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, how do you how, if you're doing so, do you attribute that to the left?
Well, I think the the pressure on the police to turn in the numbers.
I mean, the they are under pressure due to uh uh legislation due to budget um issues.
Um they're we're removing from the police the ability and the desire to use rational discretion.
There was a case here in Georgia uh in Kennesaw not too long ago where a teenage girl, a recent graduate had returned to her high school to deliver some items for her brother.
On the way out, she saw some old friends and stopped the chat briefly, and the cop arrested her.
He didn't simply say, Ma'am, I have to ask you to leave.
And this is another thing.
We have police in schools, young people are being brought up to interpret constant police scrutiny as a normal part of life in America.
The police are searching lockers, searching automobiles without cause.
Young people are being trained to accept this as an acceptable part of life in America.
True.
As long as it doesn't happen to them.
Long as it doesn't happen to them, then they're fine with it.
Uh which is uh it's it's just you know, it's in a in a in a way, it's like the S chip health care program to fund health care for the children.
Forget the argument over how many children for now.
How is it going to be paid for, folks?
Do you remember that?
It's going to be paid for with a new one dollar a p uh uh pack tax on cigarettes and a ten dollar per stick tax on cigars.
Now, that's all well and good because you who don't smoke, they say, yeah, yeah, make them pay for it.
Make them pay for it.
They shouldn't be smoking anyway.
So as long as the tax doesn't hit you, then you're fine with it.
But then you've got to realize that at some point the tax is going to hit you because their objective is to raise everybody's taxes.
But more importantly, and specifically on this case, you raise the price of a pack of cigarettes to a breaking point, And you're going to cause people to quit.
It's just going to be too expensive.
Taxation always has behavioral consequences.
And I thought the Libs wanted people to stop smoking anyway.
I thought it was unhealthy.
It was putting undue pressure on the health care program.
Think of this.
The people, if this plan gets signed into law in some point, which it will, the people they're going to be paying for it.
Smokers.
They deserve a medal.
They deserve our thanks.
And yet what's happening to them?
While taxes are being raised on a product that they obviously need to continue to sell.
And if you're going to if you're going to fund a program with the sale of cigarettes, you need what?
You need people to buy cigarettes.
And well, what do you need then?
Well, if if you're gonna make them buy them, you better allow them to smoke them.
If you don't allow them to smoke them, they're not gonna buy them regardless of the cost.
And then voila, guess what?
The revenue that they have projected will not be forthcoming from smokers.
So guess who's next in the crosshairs?
All of you who were up there applauding the tax increase on smokers.
So while you're sitting there thinking you're not going to get touched by this, you will, because they're gonna tax tobacco and regulate its use out of practical existence.
Now they haven't considered this, or maybe they have.
They are devious enough to have considerate.
They know that they can get the original legislation passed by by taxing only smokers.
Oh, yeah.
You'll go for that, I'm all for that.
They know that smokers are not going to continue to smoke at these high taxes and so forth, plus the increase in prices anyway.
And so the revenue is not going to be there.
And then guess what?
It's hello, your back pocket where they're next going to be because they're not going to cut the program.
They're not going to reduce the size of the program.
Can't.
It's for the children.
And then you who were applauding big time out there.
Grab your back pockets.
Because you are next.
So they've essentially, without doing it in a statutory way, they have criminalized the use of the product that they intend to s to fund by virtue of its sale, this new children's health care program.
Quick timeout, folks.
Gotta go.
Be right back after this.
Oh, hell, folks.
It's happening everywhere.
I had this story from last week and get to it.
But now it's apropos.
Italy's economy minister has sparked an uproar by offering big babies a tax break if they let go of their mother's apron strings and leave home.
More than a third of Italian men over the age of 30 live at home with their parents.
A phenomenon blamed on sky high apartment rents and bleak job prospects as much as liking mama's cooking.
Uh with a rescue plan, a thousand dollar euro, that's $1,411 tax break for 20 and 30 something Italians who rent.
He said the move was aimed at overgrown male babies.
Amen for this guy.
The comment was immediately condemned, of course, by politicians from all sides who said young Italians could hardly be blamed for a sputtering economy and high rents.
This absurd gaff shows how he's probably not clear how precarious is the situation afflicting an entire generation of first generation that has to deal with social conditions worse than those of its parents.
I wonder who made them that way.
There's a reason that these social conditions are what they are.
This is not a phenomenon that's only occurring in Italy.
Big babies is a phenomenon everywhere.
Just well phone call.
Walter in Clarksville, Tennessee, next up you are.
Welcome to the program, sir.
Yeah, Rush.
In postulating with your last uh little bit on taxes and cigarettes, the state of Tennessee increased uh taxes on cigarettes by about six fifty a carton to uh fund child health care in the state.
What's a carton of cigarettes cost now?
Do you know?
Uh it's up around 40 dollars or so.
Uh close to 40 bucks.
I think in New York with the new tax.
$70 a carton in New York.
Well, yeah, but the point here is uh Tennessee is a sales tax state.
We We do not have an income tax, and the eight surrounding states all sell these different products at a much lower rate.
And so now the uh tax revenue has dropped dramatically.
And of course, they've also outlawed smoking in in in restaurants and bars around here.
But uh apparently uh the state now places spotters at sales outlets across state lines, and then if you buy more than two cartons of cigarettes, they report back to the state police on the Tennessee side and stop you as you are re-entering the state and issue you a ticket.
And now this morning, they are they are actually reporting on WLAC in Nashville that they're doing the same thing to beer sales, and if you're bringing back more than X amount of cases of beer, they are actually confiscating the beer as you cross back into the state of Tennessee.
Socialism is alive and well down here in this once proud bread state.
I mean it's not funny, but it is.
I no, it's not funny.
It's not it's it's not because they're they're a victim of their own stupid policies, and now and that taxation causes people to behave in certain ways.
People will do what they can to avoid paying them.
I don't care if they're liberal conservative what they will do whatever they can to avoid paying them.
Well, yeah.
So if they want to really increase the sales of cigarettes, let them let them smoke them in public, not in restaurants and bars, but certain places in public, and and lower the tax on them.
Well, it you you know, it's not about smoking here, it's about the state going to excessive things to collect that tax because it's not coming into their coffers anymore.
Uh and and this same thing is going on in the amount of Tennesseans who go outside the state, like cross over to Kentucky to buy groceries because of lower st lower uh sales tax on groceries, those people are not being arrested yet.
And of course, when we had to go across the line to buy uh lottery tickets, of course now the state has a has a lottery of its own, but before those people were not stopped and and arrested.
But uh, but uh socialism is alive and well.
And growing.
No question it is.
Walter, I appreciate that.
Uh and and notice it's it's built around the vices.
And here's another thing, Walter.
Do you think the non-smoking public is gonna give it care in the world whether smokers going across state lines to buy cigarettes and bring them back or caught?
No.
Because smokers have been uh have have been demonized uh to such a degree in our society that they're hated.
They're the smokers are so they uh we're glad the cops are catching those people.
Yeah.
That's this is this is all part of the trick of how it works.
A condition people to this kind of strong arm law enforcement tactic, and then eventually when it happens to other people, uh they've got no recourse because they went along with it in the first place.
It eventually does cause a rebellion at some point down the line of its successes.
Bob in Boston, nice to have you on the program, sir.
Welcome.
Rosh, it's a pleasure to speak to one of the world's most powerful people and one of the world's most powerful nations.
You influence quite a few people.
Yes, what it said on a teleprompter.
I am from Boston, and I basically have followed liberal principles on many of them.
But I think I know I'm right.
When my conservative friends call me a liberal and my liberal friends call me conservative, this America this country's always been about debate.
Unfortunately, we're very divisive now.
And I'm calling to put this thing to bed, I hope, for what the left wing is doing shamelessly to something that you just happened in this case not to do wrong.
Okay.
I listened to the tape, I saw the video, and you were clearly talking about phony soldier or sold jurors, and there are more than one who may have come forward with false resumes who have opposed this war.
I'm assuming you you back the right of any soldier to speak out against the war if they've been there, right?
Of course.
Of course.
So so therefore you're not you're not ch challenging anybody's right in America.
I wish I had an hour with you, Rush, because you're you're very intelligent, man, but you are also capable of making America debate.
And that's important.
Unfortunately, I hope we never lose our sense of humor, which we have over the last several years.
And I admire what you have to say, but I listened to that tape, and I don't believe you were right in telling us many you couldn't be a Republican if you can't sing in Iraq.
But but of course you're you're alive, so I understand it's no immediate response.
Well, I appreciate that.
That's uh that's uh this this is another example of what I was talking about earlier.
I know some liberals personally who've uh their world has been somewhat rocked by this.
Because they didn't think their side capable of this kind of smear or lie.
They think about my side engaged in this kind of stuff all the time, and uh not the uh not the other way around.
All right, Bob, again, thanks very much.
Quick time out here.
We'll be back and wrap it up.
El Quico.
Well, I tell you what, it's gonna be hard to find a faster, more jam-packed show than this one, folks.
It's zoomed by.
It's the fastest three hours in media.
It's gonna be this way for the next 13 weeks.
So you better you better have uh a full energy load when you get here because it's gonna be energy draining to listen to it as well as it is to perform it.
That's what I do.
See you tomorrow.
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