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Nov. 9, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:19
November 9, 2007, Friday, Hour #3
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Time Text
Ah, yes.
Earth first, friends.
Earth firsts.
We can mine and log the other planets when we get to them.
Welcome back.
Third hour now up and running on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
I am Jason Lewis from the Twin Cities, but it's great to be behind the golden EIB Mike in the Attila of the Hun chair for a self-imposed exiled rush.
As you know, he committed a hoax, fell prey to a hoax yesterday, and suspended himself.
Now, that's integrity, friends.
He'll be back on Monday, of course, as we continue on with Open Line Friday.
In the meantime, 1-800-282-2882.
What is this I see about Bill Clinton saying, look, if you want to blame the health care, the Hillary care debacle in 94 on anybody, blame it on me.
She's taking the rap.
Bill Clinton said this in Iowa the other day.
She's taken the rap for some of the problems we had with health care the last time that were far more my fault than hers.
And then in the same speech, he goes on to say, What do you mean she doesn't have experience?
To suggest she doesn't have experience?
Look at all the things she did for health care, or he inferred that.
I mean, you really can't have it both ways, I guess.
Speaking of that, or speaking of scandals, you can't bring up the Clintons without speaking of scandals, I guess.
Yeah, I kind of wonder.
You just take the totality of the presidential race.
And I'm just wondering if there isn't an undercurrent of reticence to go back to the Clinton era.
Now, the media is gaga today over the indictment of Rudy Giuliani's ex-police commissioner, Bernard Carrick.
I think he surrendered this morning.
I just made a statement not long ago.
They're going after Fred Thompson for this guy's plane he's using who had a drug conviction years ago.
Folks, I mean, can we say this pales in comparison?
Can we say there isn't any suggestion of a quid pro quo?
I mean, Bernard Carrick, what?
He got indicted on tax evasion, unlawful gratuities.
It was caught before the fact.
I'm just, you know, I know what some of you liberals are saying.
Two wrongs don't make a right.
Well, that's true.
So if you don't want to vote for Rudy or Fred or anybody else, fine.
How can you still support Hillary?
I mean, you're going to have, if President Hillary Clinton, picture this for a moment, you will now have Bill Clinton back in the White House with more time on his hands.
Hello?
The only president ever impeached on personal malfeasance?
The most number of cabinet officials to come under criminal investigation.
Rush and we've talked about Norman Shu and James Riotti and Charlie Tree.
Go right down the list.
Do you want to relive that again?
Another legal defense fund.
First president to be held in contempt of court by Judge Susan Weber Wright.
Can anybody say, Webb Hubble, Al Gore's no controlling legal authority when it comes to fundraising?
Nothing's changed.
I don't think the American people, really, regardless of the public policy issues at hand, really want to go back to the Clinton legacy redux and live it all over again.
I would think people would start to wonder whether they want to do that.
That could be one reason for her relatively high negatives.
Speaking of hypocrisy, did I speak of hypocrisy?
Well, I am now, I guess.
Remember back in 2004, Vice President Dick Cheney got some private sector folks together to form a 2001 Energy Task Force.
Now, these people are immune from scrutiny because they're not part of the government and public disclosure and sunshine.
But that didn't stop liberals, including the Clintons and others, saying, We want the details of the 2001 National Energy Task Force.
We want the minutes released.
We want the records released of the Energy Task Force.
Why these people meeting in private could be advocating, well, you know, exploring for oil.
We can't have that.
Well, the battle went on and on and on.
And Cheney said, look, this is a private protected energy task force minutes or records.
He wins in the Supreme Court in 2004.
The same people who are saying, release those records, are now the people in the Clinton camp and the Clintons themselves refusing to lift a 12-year ban on the confidential communications between the president and his advisors, including his wife.
Now, wait a minute.
You know, if sunshine is a disinfectant for Dick Cheney, why not for the president?
Why not release these communications?
It will show how smart Hillary is.
And the president can do it.
First Lady can do it, notwithstanding what she said in the debate the other day.
So the hypocrisy knows no bounds here.
So as you see all the overcoverage on Carrick and Company, just keep that in mind.
In Utah, by the way, the voucher plan went down to defeat.
We spoke a little bit about that last time I was in for Rush.
And I know what the spin is going to be by the government school crowd, by the public education establishment, by the National Education Association.
And that's really what the education system, the government-controlled education system, is for.
The benefits redound to the members of a union.
And that's what the NEA is.
It's a government union, which I think ought to be an oxymoron.
I don't like the idea of having to contribute to a government union every April 15th.
If I fly in an airline that's got a union and I don't like it, I don't have to fly in that airline.
I have to pay my taxes.
There's something untoward, fundamental conflicts of interest with public sector unions, which probably explains why they're the fastest growing and private sector unions are shrinking.
Well, the NEA and the Utah Education Association, how much did they throw in to defeat this?
Was it $3 million or $5 million?
Let's see.
Well, regardless, 96% of the money to defeat the Utah voucher program, which wouldn't have cost the public education system anything at all.
In fact, there's a case to be made they would have came out ahead per pupil spending-wise because the students that grabbed the vouchers would have come from the general fund in Utah and the government schools would have kept their money.
So that wasn't it.
The union was afraid that people were going to leave if they had, you know, choice.
96% of the money to defeat the Utah voucher program came from union sources.
Now, if you can't get this done in Utah, I mean, take a look at, if you compare Utah, for instance, to states that are demographically comparable, states like Montana or South Dakota or Wisconsin or Nebraska.
They finish last in all of the national assessment of educational progress tests.
Last in math, last in reading, last in science.
And yet the voters went to the poll and said, nope, no vouchers.
I have a theory.
I shared with you my theory last time I was on.
And the theory is this.
There's no way a union spends $3 or $5 million, whatever it was, to defeat a voucher plan if there isn't a growing surge, a growing hope that school choice will come to fruition.
There is a movement of school choice, of school, of the school choice movement, I should say.
There's a growing pattern there.
Homeschoolers, parochial schools, you name it.
I'm afraid vouchers isn't going to be it, though.
People are afraid that vouchers will publicize, as I told you earlier, will publicize their private schools they're in right now.
If I get government money in this school, it's going to turn into another public school with all the rules and regulations from Title I funding to mainstreaming, you name it.
And so people are afraid of that.
They're sold a bill of goods when they talk about defunding the public schools.
Vouchers won't do that.
But that is a serious concern.
When vouchers went down in California, you had suburbanites saying, well, you know, our schools are okay.
I don't want all those other kids coming here with vouchers.
Now, I think many of those concerns are misguided, except the one about applying all of the government regulations to private schools because a voucher is government money.
In order to take the government money, you'll have to comply with the government rules and regulations.
That which the government subsidizes, it may regulate from a famous Supreme Court case decades ago.
The much better answer, the much better answer to free us up and instill market forces in education, which will benefit everybody, is tuition tax credits, at the very least deductions.
And this is what I tried to tell you last week, I believe it was, and there was a great piece in the journal this week about it as well.
But if you had a universal tuition tax credit program where anybody could get a tax credit for paying the tuition of any other child, whether it was their child or not, you would instantly have a market, a flourishing market for education.
And by the way, it wouldn't cost the schools a dime because the schools would say, okay, it costs us $8,000, $9,000 in Washington, D.C., $16,000.
In New York City, $15,000.
But whatever the cost might be, costs us $15,000 per pupil to educate this child.
The school is now relieved from educating the child.
That's a $15,000 expense they don't have.
Let's assume some of that is fixed costs.
So maybe not $15,000.
Maybe it's only a $10,000 expense they don't have.
So they're relieved from that.
The tuition tax credit may only be for $5,000, enough to buy a good private school education probably, or be a tipping point for somebody to do that.
So the government coffers are out $5,000 with a tax credit, but the schools gain the expense or not having the expense of $15,000 at the very least $10,000.
They're up $5,000.
So why would anybody be opposed to this?
What are they afraid of?
What did I tell you a minute ago?
Public education, the government schools, as I call them, operate for the benefit of the members of the union called the NEA.
If people had true choice, that is, they didn't have to pay twice, once for their child's homeschooling or once for their child's private education, and again, their property sales and state income taxes for everybody else's kids, people would flee many of those schools and the union would shrink.
And there goes the NEA's political clout.
That's why they pour $3 million into a plan to defeat the Utah voucher.
I do think there's a problem with vouchers.
I don't think that's the way to go.
If you're interested in school choice, I think a tuition tax credit, which incidentally, Ronald Reagan ran on in 1980 in addition to abolishing the Department of Education, that's the way to go if we really want to get out from under this elephant in the living room that is the government education.
I don't have to tell you the test scores, especially internationally.
They're not good.
So we can talk about that as well.
Open Line Friday now up and running.
1-800-282-2882.
I'm Jason Lewis, and you're on the Rush Limbaugh program.
I am always having more fun than a human being should be allowed when I get the luxury of sitting in for El Rushbo, Maharashi, back on Monday when the self-suspension is over.
I am Jason Lewis trying to do my best to keep things going here on an Open Line Friday.
Let's go back to the calls.
Let's see who's up first.
Joe in Salt Lake City, you're on the Excellence and Broadcasting Network.
Hi.
Hi.
I was involved in the voucher issue.
I was for it.
I was pro voucher.
And we already have two laws on the books already that support vouchers.
So now what are they going to do?
Go back and take off the laws?
But another thing, I don't care how much money you throw at public education.
It's not going to get best.
I'm also...
Why not?
It just never has and it never will.
I'm a child psychologist too, and I see both ends of the spectrum, the really smart ones and the really disability and handicapped ones.
The only part of the population that a public school really addresses is the center normal.
Nice, okay.
kind of gravitates towards the common denominator.
So the gifted or left out.
Look, this is a classic government monopoly.
Why is it, Joe, that so many liberals who wring their hands over the Oil Trusts or Microsoft or anybody else sit there and support the greatest monopoly by government force ever created?
I have no choice whether I want to buy their services or not.
They take my money against my will.
It's remarkable.
I agree totally.
I mean, is it, do they want to brainwash our children?
You know, sometimes I wonder after what I've heard from the colleges and other areas of education, are they going to start younger, start with the younger grades, and just work their way up?
Well, they certainly don't want accountability.
Every time you bring up accountability, are people getting what they're paying for?
The NEA will, in a knee-jerk reaction, say, well, I can't be held accountable for a child's home life, so don't hold me accountable.
But I can guarantee you if you give me more money, we'll do better.
Well, okay, how are we going to measure that?
Well, I don't know.
See, right now we pay teachers not for what they do, but how long they've belonged to the union in the lane and step system.
It is an antiquated pay scale.
The good teachers get dissed.
The bad teachers stay employed when they should be fired because, again, it's a government-sanctioned monopoly.
And I don't know why people can't be pro-choice when it comes to education.
And besides that, the good teachers leave and go into the private sector because they can't make enough money to support their families.
So what we're left with is not exactly the cream of the crop.
Well, I don't know about that.
I mean, they go into the private sector not to teach, to do something else.
They're a little bit more money.
Well, true, but look, why is it that then the private schools, the parochial schools, charge less for tuition and pay their teachers.
Look, you take a look at the benefits for pensions, the benefits for health care, and the average pay in Minnesota, where I'm from, is $50,000 now for a public school teacher.
Now, you know, that ain't rich, but it ain't beanbag either.
And why is it the parochial schools with lower paid teachers with fewer benefits actually achieve more, even educating at-risk youth, because they look at it as a vocation, not necessarily something to be secure at?
I think, you know, the unionization of teachers was the beginning of the downfall.
And now it's just become this overwhelming political animal that stifles every reform, every choice, and it did in Utah on Tuesday.
And it's, you know, sooner or later, I actually think there's a huge appetite for real school choice if it's presented the right way.
I don't think, with all due respect, Joe, vouchers is the way to go because people have genuine concerns about, gosh, I'm in a good private school with my kid now.
Now, you know, 100 vouchers are going to come.
Who's going to come here, number one?
But number two, what kind of regulations will be attached to the voucher?
A tuition tax credit, and if you take a look at the case law on this, a tax credit, like a charitable tax credit or deduction, is not government money.
And the law, the case law, the precedent here would suggest that if you get a tuition tax credit for sending your child or homeschooling your child or sending them to a parochial school or what have you, that is not going to be considered government money where the school would have to comply with all of these other things.
Now, they're going to have to comply with certain things to be accredited and that sort of thing.
But that's why I think if you just tell people, look, should you have to pay twice if you want to homeschool your child?
Yes or no?
No.
Should you have to pay twice if you want to send your child to a Catholic school?
Well, no.
Should you have to pay twice if you want to send your child to a private school or evangelical school or whatever kind of school?
No.
Well, here's how we're going to solve that.
Whatever your tuition is, and then we could even limit that.
I'd be amenable to that.
Let's limit it at $5,000.
You're going to file on your tax returns, just like you would a charitable deduction, a tax credit for $5,000.
Now, you'll still be paying your property tax.
You'll still be paying to fund the public system.
You're just not going to pay twice.
And you're not going to have all of the government regulations coming with a tax credit as you would a voucher.
And that's why, and especially when you talk about universal tax credits where anybody could pay the tuition and then get the tax credit.
I think that's a much better way to go.
There is a market for this big time out there.
There's an outfit that used to be in California, maybe in Montana now, called the Association for the Separation of School and State.
Don't you just love liberals?
The ACLU runs around.
We don't want the government intrusion.
We don't want government indoctrination.
We don't want the government censoring free speech, but we want the state to educate our kids from cradle to grave.
Boy, where are the civil libertarians when you need them?
In Pittsburgh, here's Rich on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Hi.
Hi, Jason.
How are you?
Thank you.
Could not be better.
Hey, the reason I called, we're in a situation where I live in our community that our teachers are on strike.
They've been on strike for about the last three and a half weeks.
They're scheduled to go back to work, I think, November 16th.
That's a mandate.
But it's really negative on our community and a negative on these students, how these teachers basically in the school board have failed to negotiate a contract.
And these children and these students are really held hostage by the whole situation.
Wait a minute.
Every time they want more money, they say it's for the kids, but yet they're willing to go out on strike so the kids don't get an education at all.
Well, eventually they're going to get an education, but apparently they could go to school up till June 30th of this year.
And Pennsylvania leads the nation in teacher strikes.
It's unbelievable.
And what should be done, I know in 37 other states, they disallow teachers strike.
And it's just unbelievable that a government union, basically a union that is sanctioned or supported by the government, can go on strike for public education.
It just doesn't make sense to me.
Well, I think by their own definition, you know, most states have laws that when government unions go out on strike, whether it's teachers or the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees or anybody, that essential employees are not allowed to strike.
So National Guard or what have you.
They're not allowed to strike.
Now, what the teachers are saying to the public is, I guess we're not that essential if we can strike.
Kind of an odd thing to be saying.
The point I was just saying a moment ago was the hypocrisy of all of the school districts selling to you last week on all of the nationwide referenda for more money.
And every time they do, they hold up a child, the last refuge of a scoundrel these days, and say, it's for the kids.
But you know what?
If we have to go out on strike and the kids don't learn at all for a month, eh, so be it.
Well, I guess they weren't thinking of the kids then, were they?
And that's the hypocrisy of all of this.
I have got a real problem with government unions.
I think we shouldn't be forced to subsidize them.
And as long as there's taxation, we will be.
Yes, we are back with me, Jason Lewis, Marvelous Mike at the Controls, HR Kit, Cheesehead Carson.
Of course, producing the program as always.
You know, Kid was giving me a little static during the break here on this Packer Viking game in Lambeau Field.
Kid, you're understanding you're giving me three touchdowns, $100 bet.
I'll take it.
Oh, wasn't three touchdowns?
Obviously, obviously, I got to go with the Vikes because last week against the Chargers, they had a pass defense.
So if they can do that going into Green Bay, I know the Packers are 7-1, but they're not the Patriots.
We'll see.
Vikings at Lambeau Field.
Kid, the Wisconsin boy, is obviously ready to go with Brett Farvin Company.
I, the Minnesota boy, will have to take the Vikes and three touchdowns.
1-800-282-2882.
Jason Lewis here, filling in for Rush.
He'll be back on Monday in Lowell, Massachusetts.
Mike, you're on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Hi, Jason.
How are you?
Could not be better, sir.
Listen, I had a problem with your math a little while ago when you were talking about the tax credits.
Right.
You use the example of $15,000 as an average cost per pupil.
Well, it's a little bit high.
Nationwide, it's about $10,159 according to the Census Bureau.
But in D.C., it's almost $18,000, New Jersey, $16,000.
New York, $16,000.
You'd go right down the list.
Right.
Well, I'm a teacher, and in our district, it's about $9,000.
Where do you live?
You're in Massachusetts?
I'm in Massachusetts, yeah.
The average statewide, according to the annual survey of local government finances, U.S. Census Bureau just released a few weeks ago $13,474 statewide per pupil expenditures in Massachusetts.
Right.
Per pupil is my issue.
Right.
If you take one kid out of that, you're not saving even after fixed costs, an average, because the kids that are going to come out are not the kids who are getting the expensive special ed services.
We have kids in our system that are costing $140,000 a year because they are that severely handicapped.
Actually, I think you've got a point, but you exaggerate just a tad.
No, we can't.
Well, every district has to pay for a residential placement.
I know.
I find that ironic.
Why?
In the Supreme Court ruling, they ruled a couple of weeks ago about this New York City media mogul that the school district has to reimburse for a private special education for a son at a private school, this former Viacom executive.
Exactly.
So what the court said is school choice is okay for special ed kids, but not the rest of the kids, which I found rather odd.
And then the regular special ed population, where the state mandates limits of five to one for a teacher, those kids are costing $30,000 to $50,000 a year.
Are you?
Well, let me give you the honest teacher test.
Now, I disagree with your analysis a little bit because I told you in my spiel here a moment ago that I would consider that if a kid leaves a school district, the school district still has fixed costs, the lighting, the building, they've got to pay for that.
So let's mark it down by a third.
There's no way the school does not get a big relief of some expense if students are to leave.
You know what?
What's the single biggest?
Only if enough students leave that you can leave.
Mike.
Mike, what is the single largest expense in any school district, be honest?
Teacher salaries.
It's over 70%.
About 80%, salaries and benefits.
Including non-teachers as well.
But if you are suggesting that we need to rethink the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act of 1975, I could not agree more.
We've got a special ed system that is running out of control.
We've got parents in schools classifying kids in special ed who shouldn't be there.
We're paying for these Tony private schools because of special ed.
I would be all for that.
But you know who fights.
And in our state, we have a limit on the Proposition 2.5 tax limit.
Right.
So special ed, which is mandated services, gets met first, and everybody else gets funded out of private.
Well, now, now, let's be honest again.
If you want to go without federal Title I funds, if you want to go without federal help, you do not have to comply with the IDEA.
No, in Massachusetts, we're dealing with Massachusetts.
Well, you may have a different region.
You may have a state mandate there, but usually when I get into a discussion about this, people say, Jason, you don't understand.
We've got federal special ed requirements that the federal government mandates but doesn't fund.
It's actually not true.
There's no such thing as an unfunded federal education mandate.
They say if you want Title I, low poverty or poverty funding or schools with high poverty funding.
And we do get some of that.
Right.
What I'm saying to you, though, is this.
Every time you want to reform special ed, every time you want to rethink the mainstreaming mantra and all of this, who fights the reforms in Washington and at your state capitol?
I'll give you one big lobbying group.
You know who it is?
I'm guessing the teachers union.
You got it.
Because special ed, what do you teach, Mike?
I teach math, middle school math.
All right.
The special ed teachers are growing in number, as you well know.
Those are union members.
Yeah, well, we're all union members.
I know, but I'm saying the NEA's primary focus is to grow the union.
Probably.
I'm an AFT unit.
Look, your special ed point is well-founded, but all I'm suggesting to you is twofold.
One, let's reform it.
You're going to have to fight your own union.
And two, don't you think it's ironic that since the Supreme Court decision, that someone who has a special ed child has de facto school choice.
Not de facto, du jour school choice, but the rest of the kids don't.
Right.
If they can get a doctor, and they usually can't.
Mike, interesting point.
You also made the comment that when you take the tax credit, why are you paying twice for your kid to go to school here and pay some taxes?
You bet.
You're not paying twice.
You're paying for your child to go to the school that you choose and for the education of everybody else's children.
Well, okay, I've got a plan for you.
Are you ready?
I'm going to open up a business.
Maybe it will be education consulting.
I'll consult the schools.
You need to pay my salary, whether you use my service or not.
Now, you still got a choice.
You can go buying somebody else's product, but you have to, by law, pay for my products and services.
Boy, I wish McDonald's had that.
I bet McDonald's shareholders wish you got to buy McDonald's every month.
If you want to go to Burger King, you can, but by law, you've got to buy us.
We're still giving you choice.
You just have to pay twice.
Of course you pay twice.
Of course you do.
You know, I'm paying for a service.
Now, your argument is the usual argument about education being a public good.
I'll be honest with you, I'm a radical on this.
I don't think it's a public good in the sense of that if government doesn't do it, no one will.
If you didn't have government running schools, people would educate their children.
They did before Horace Mann, and they will afterwards.
A public benefit is not a public good.
If a company locates in Lowell, Massachusetts, Mike, we don't subsidize them on the notion that, well, you know, if you subsidize this company, we'll have the multiplier effect, the Keynesian economists will tell us, and the money will turn over.
And goodness, we've got to subsidize this because it's a public good.
Everybody benefits.
Hogwash.
This business is done for the benefit of that business.
And when somebody's child is educated, you or I may or may not benefit from that.
If a child grows up, goes into government work, I don't think that's a benefit for me, depending on what it is.
If they grow up and they go into a field in which I never have any interaction, that's not a benefit for me.
It may or may not be.
A public good is when, in the absence of government, it breaks down.
National defense is a public good.
A system of courts and jurisprudence.
A police force is a public good unless you want warring armies.
Education would be provided just fine if the government gave people choice.
Mike, thanks for the call.
A good one, Scott, in Billings, Montana.
You're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Jason Lewis.
Hi.
Hi, Jason.
Certainly agree with your point.
And to further expand on that, if people think for just a moment, what do you do when you need food, clothing, housing, transportation, or most of the things in your life?
You shop the free marketplace.
But what do we do when we do one of the most important things any of us will ever do, see that our children are educated, we turn them over to the government monopoly, as you so rightly call it?
Well, there's an organization that you alluded to briefly that is trying to educate people about the idea of a free market in education.
And they're called the Alliance for the Separation of School and State.
They're based in Fresno, California.
Fresno, okay, that's what I thought it was.
You know, it's a great, you're right.
And I'm familiar somewhat with the organization.
Look, people have this, it's been inculcated in the minds of kids when they were, you know, first going to school that public schools or government schools are the only way to go.
And that really wasn't the case.
You're exactly right, Jason.
When this country was founded, there were no public schools.
There was private schools, home schools, dame schools, a lot of people self-educated.
The idea that our country was founded with government schools, I believe the framers would be spinning in their graves if they could see the present state of affairs.
Well, Thomas Jefferson did help found the University of Virginia.
Was that not a public piece of higher education?
Higher ed.
I'm talking about one through 12.
And they're not entirely public because you charge at universities.
In fact, I would take the university model.
I mean, look at the GI Bill, look at the Hope Scholarships.
I mean, those are essentially vouchers.
But I want to draw your analogy out a little bit.
Just think about this.
We have people that society says we're going to provide a safety net for when it comes to food.
What do we have?
We have food vouchers.
They're called food stamps.
We don't have government-run grocery stores for everybody, whether they're rich or poor.
That would be analogous to what we've done in education.
I mean, if we want to means-test education, I suppose we could to make certain people don't fall through.
I think a tuition tax credit would do that nicely.
But you couldn't be more correct.
And I think that there's been a bit of a tactical mistake.
And God bless Milton Friedman.
He's done wonders for this country.
But I've got to disagree with Uncle Milty here for a second in focusing so much on vouchers.
By focusing on vouchers, we're scaring the suburban parents, and we're giving ammunition to the big unions where you just simply say, look, you know, you go outside the system for education, homeschooling, what have you.
You're going to get a tax credit, or at the very least, a tax deduction, regardless of income.
1-800-282-2882.
I'm Jason Lewis in for Rush Lumbo on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
All right, gang.
Rush is back on Monday after his self-imposed suspension is completed today, I guess.
I am Jason Lewis trying to fill the big shoes of Maha Rushi.
Always a pleasure to be here at the Excellence in Broadcasting Network with Ferris in Hartford, Connecticut.
You are next on the big show.
Hi.
Boy, and you are filling up those shoes big time.
Well, we're trying, buddy.
My case of EIB has just gotten beyond incurable.
Well, I think there's penicillin.
Never mind.
Jason, just a quick Veterans Day appreciation to my father, Will, who is Battle of the Bulge guy and other places with pictures of people in France and Germany and all those places.
And my question to you is, before I tell you why, Al Gore is going to be the next presidential nominee of the Democratic Party.
If this World War II war hero tells his children that his purple heart was for cutting himself shaving, and that was not the case, does that make him a liar?
I'm not certain where you're going with this, but I would suggest, yes.
I'm not going too far, just write what you see on the face of it.
If that was a story, I wonder if that was true or not.
But greetings to him and also to the family of Michael P. Murphy, who is the first Medal of Honor winner in the Middle Eastern theater and a Penn State grad who we are all proud of.
Is that the book The Lone Survivor was about?
Michael P. Murphy is a Navy SEAL who covered his team and gave his life for his team.
What books have been written, I have nothing to say.
Unless I'm confusing things, I think the book Lone Survivor was about the Navy SEAL team in Afghanistan.
And he was obviously the guy that wrote it was a lone survivor.
And of course, the other fellow won posthumously the Medal of Honor a couple of weeks ago in a very unbelievably moving story.
And you couldn't be more correct.
Honor These People come Veterans Day.
I'm glad you reminded me of that.
And I wouldn't argue with you on your source there, especially with the handle that you have on the NEA and what goes on inside these schools.
It's an incredible handle that you have.
But I'm predicting, and I wonder what you think of my prediction.
Why do you say that?
Why do you say that Gore will be ⁇ we're going to have to widen the White House doors then to get him in there.
I mean, come on.
Well, that's, yeah, but look back and look at the size of Grover Cleveland.
Do you remember how big he was?
Listen to this.
Here's how Gore gets it.
Hillary does the inevitable, sticks her foot in her mouth again, stumbles and falls.
People will find out that there were not 900 FBI files that she sees.
There were 9,000 FBI files that she sees.
You pick anything that she's done in her past that she is tenuous and nervous about.
And you combine that with the fact that when she falls, Al Gore is the fair-haired boy now of the far left, and he got a Nobel Peace Prize, and he's on every TV show, and he's going to get drafted in Obama.
A man by the name of Barack Hussein, I'll spell that H-U-S-S-E-I-N is his middle name, Obama, will be the vice presidential candidate because of his popularity in his war chest.
So my demographer.
And does he win?
No, he loses a right-thinking individual.
Believe it or not, Ferris, I think Gore is less credible today than he was in 2000.
The media are in love with Al Gore.
The hard environmental left is in love with Al Gore.
The average American citizen, I hope, and I certainly know of people that look at this guy and say, boy, here's a guy that did not recover very well from a loss.
He kind of went off the deep end here.
And you want to see, the best thing that can happen in the global warming debate is to bring the debate front and center so that the panoply of scientists and weathermen like John Coleman, whom we had on the program, can actually engage the debate.
I want it below the radar.
I want it up and above the surface, I should say.
And I think what will happen is Gore's credibility will be shot by the time the campaign would be over.
And I don't think he'll do it for that reason.
I really don't.
But Ferris, great to hear from you.
And you couldn't be more correct on Veterans Day Sunday.
Dave in Chicota, Oklahoma.
Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program.
Yes, sir, Jason.
I want to comment.
You're doing a great job, and I'm enjoying listening to you.
I appreciate that.
Yes, sir.
I wanted to draw an analogy between the Y2K fiasco and the current global warming fiasco.
Look at the analogies there.
The only difference in Y2K is there was a definite end.
And it was all about the money, also.
Right.
Well, you've got to understand, liberals need a crisis.
How else, liberal, you know, I'm glad you brought this up.
I can't believe I'm a talk show host.
I talk so little.
Liberals need a crisis in order to get people to depart with their money, their time, and their liberty.
There was an old saying, war is the health of the state, where people would give up things they wouldn't normally give up in a time of war because they're afraid.
Well, now we've got a war on poverty, and $6.5 trillion later, the poverty rate has not gone down.
We've got a war on this and a war on that.
Instead of the legitimate war on terror, they want to poo-poo that.
They want a war on global warming.
Well, how else would a you know, liberalism is essentially getting people to do things that are unnatural and that they ordinarily wouldn't do?
Can't drive your car.
Can't live in a five-bedroom house in the suburbs with a three-car garage.
You know, you can't use too much energy.
Oh, you've got to pay high taxes.
You've got to give up your money.
All of those things are counterintuitive, to say the least.
So how else would liberalism get implemented?
A crisis.
And that's why you have to do it.
So we create these crises that don't exist in order to implement liberalism, which is why, as I said earlier, Dave, isn't it amazing that the same solutions for global warming or these solutions for global warming are the same ones the Democrats have been preaching long before global warming?
How convenient.
I got to move.
Thanks for the call, Dave.
I am Jason Lewis, filling in for Rush Limbaugh on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Well, my thanks to Kit and Mike and everybody involved here at EIB and also, of course, to El Rushbo.
What kind of integrity does it display when you self-censor, self-suspend yourself for not being up to your own standards?
Rush has served his punishment.
We are going to release him back on Monday.
Ma Rushi will take control.
So fear not, gang.
It's been a great open line Friday.
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