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June 6, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:19
June 6, 2008, Friday, Hour #2
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Greetings my friends and welcome back Rushland Boy, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
Great to have you along for the ride.
It's Friday.
You know what that means.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open live Friday.
Yip, yahoo!
800-282-2882 is the number.
The email address, LRushbow at EIBNet.com.
Whenever you want to call the program on Friday, we go to the program, go to the phones, the program content's all you.
You can talk about whatever you wish to talk about, unlike Monday through Thursday, in which we only discuss what I care about.
Oh my gosh, that's right.
Oh, geez.
Thank you for reminding me.
I totally forgot about it because we had that Barack the Magic Negro story.
I didn't answer the guy's question.
The guy wanted to know what, if anything, I would have done differently during the primaries, given that we sit here as we sit here, what would I have done differently?
I was not purposeful.
I'm just who I am.
I am always focusing forward.
I don't look back.
I'm not reflective.
And so halftime, when I go home tonight, I won't remember 90% of what's on this program today until I go to the website and check it.
It's just the way I am.
I mean, I have a great memory, but I don't.
It was not purposeful is the point.
What would I have done differently?
If questions, if for children, I have no regrets.
Nothing I would have done differently because we couldn't tell what the outcome was going to be then.
It's sort of unfair, actually, to go back and say, well, if I'd have known now, then, but I know now, I would have.
I think the question was oriented towards would you have supported somebody more fervently if you had known that McCain was going to be the Republican nominee?
Probably not, folks.
Not in a flat-out endorsement way, because in primaries I don't do that.
And I never have.
The only time I did.
There's an exception to this.
The only time I did was 2000.
Well, no, actually, I didn't even do it in 2000.
I just got so mad at McCain in 2000 that I was expressing my anger over what had happened there in South Carolina.
Plus, I was livid with Senator McCain for going out and actively seeking Democrats and independence during the Republican primary in 2000.
The one time I actually did an endorsement, flat-out endorsement in 1992, endorse Buchanan over Bush 41, knowing full well Buchanan wasn't going to get the gig, it was just to keep conservatism alive in the Republican primaries and in the presidential campaign.
But no, I mean, I'm not trying to fudge this.
There's nothing that I would have done differently.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the 6th of June.
I realize that many of you know what the significance is of the 6th of June.
But if all the adult Americans alive do not know what today is, then there is something very, very wrong.
If every journalist, if every pundit, every blogger, every member of the United Nations does not know what today is, there is something very wrong.
June 6th, They called it D-Day.
On this day, 64 years ago, 150,000 American GIs stormed the beaches at Normandy.
The casualties in a death toll in one day dwarf what has happened in Iraq in four or five years.
In one day, approximately 2,500 GIs and 2,600 paratroopers were injured or killed in action.
More than 5,000 losses in one day.
That's just the Americans.
The Canadians and the Brits suffered even more.
Well, equal even more.
They did not suffer more.
There were not more deaths, but there were more deaths if you count our allies, the Canadians and the British.
That's the casualties and deaths at D-Day, United States and its allies, dwarf, dwarf the casualties and deaths in five years of this rock, of the Iraq War.
And on D-Day, the mission was accomplished.
You know what the mission was?
What was the mission of D-Day?
The mission of D-Day was to land on the beaches at Normandy.
That was the mission.
And we did.
We landed.
Then the second phase of the mission was to take back France.
And we did.
You know, I've been there.
I was there a couple of days before the, I think it was the 50th anniversary of D-Day.
And I made it a point.
I went to Omaha Beach, and I made it a point to go down to Poindu Ho because I had remembered Reagan delivering one of the greatest speeches of his presidency at Poindu Ho.
Now, Poandu Ho was the place where the German, well, German guns are all over the beach, but the German guns high atop Poindu Ho had just free reign over anybody trying to climb the cliffs.
Once you took the beach, once you stormed the beach, U.S. Army Rangers had to rappel straight up to get to the German guns.
And they got there while the Germans were just firing point-blank range with nothing in the way.
I mean, it was one of the most courageous acts of heroism.
The Army Rangers just kept coming.
Reagan referred to them as the boys of Poindu Ho.
And I will never forget the tear in his eye, and his voice broke when he was recalling the events of that day at Poindu Ho.
If you have any sense of history or patriotism or gratitude, take a moment and be thankful on two counts.
First, the sacrifice made by all of those in battle, those who passed and those who survived.
In fact, I read a piece late last night.
Victor Davis Hansen either is or was recently in Europe, and he visited three military cemeteries on these sacred grounds with Normandy and a couple of other places.
And he wrote just eloquently about it.
And I've seen these cemeteries.
Well, I saw the one at Normandy.
The sacrifice made by those in battle, those who passed, those who survived.
Thankful, be thankful for that.
Second, that no senator, no congressman, no political party used the costs and the losses for political advantage to try and take over Congress.
Back during World War II, the Normandy invasion, the Battle of the Bulge, nothing happened in American politics like is happening today, where the effort on part of the U.S. military was proclaimed a failure by one of the political parties.
It was never stated publicly, we can't win, by members of the House or Senate on the Senate floor.
They were not, in those days, saying anything publicly to demoralize the troops, nor were they doing anything to castigate the commander-in-chief at the time, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
64 years ago was one of the greatest days of the so-called greatest generation.
So give them a thought in at least a few seconds.
If you don't know anybody from that era to thank personally, then think your thanks to them.
The real story of D-Day is they landed on the 6th because they wanted to get to northern Italy on the 7th.
They landed on the 6th because it was the only day they could with weather.
It was delayed over and over again.
Weather forecasting back then was not nearly as precise as it is today, but they came.
The movie's not bad.
I mean, it's a movie for its age, the longest day, summarizes it somewhat.
There was also, what was the Tom Hanks?
Saving Private Ryan is also a pretty good account of one aspect of D-Day in Normandy and the whole French and the Normandy invasion.
But Eisenhower was not confident it was going to work.
This was so massive an undertaking.
I think there were a significant number of deaths even in a training exercise for this mission, something along the lines of 2,000.
So today's D-Day, a lot of people probably don't know it.
Many people probably have not even been taught it.
But it was truly a remarkable day in the history of the United States military and this country.
And if you read the history of it, if you don't know anything about it, if you read the history of it, you will be stunned to compare how that effort and almost all of World War II was dealt with by the American people and our elected officials compared to the way the war in Iraq has been dealt with.
The war in Iraq has featured two wars.
We have had to defeat a domestic enemy in the process of waging it.
That would be largely the American left, which has sought to undermine it at every stage of the way and proclaim defeat.
Plus, we've had to defeat the bad guys, and both have occurred.
The defeat of the bad guys at this stage, a little bit more profound than the defeat of the left, because the left has succeeded in nominating as their presidential candidate, a man who sought the defeat of the U.S. military in the war in Iraq.
We'll be back after this.
The latest Gallup poll is out on the daily tracking results for the presidential general election.
And in the Hispanic vote breakdown, as we stand today, Obama gets 62% of the Hispanic vote.
McCain gets 29% of the Hispanic vote.
Now, you can make of that what you will, but if anybody on the Republican side has an identity that everybody should know, pro-illegal immigration, amnesty, and so forth, it would be Senator McCain.
And we kept hearing during this amnesty debate that the Republican Party had to get in gear.
The Republican Party had to modernize.
Republican Party had to understand the future.
And we needed to get these Hispanic votes.
And the only way to get these Hispanic votes was to understand that the 12 to 20 million illegals here in the country had to know that we were not against them, that we were their friends and so forth.
And here's the biggest friend they ever had in the Republican Party getting 29% of their vote in the latest presidential tracking poll, according to Gallup.
Back to the phones on Open Line Friday to Dumfries, Virginia.
This is Angela.
Nice to have you here.
Good afternoon, Russ.
Hi.
Hi, I'm going because I have a problem with the term black president, referring to Barack Obama if he's elected.
I believe him, if he's elected, I believe he will be the 44th president of the United States.
And this terminology, black president, speaks to me, somehow speaks of a separate agenda, almost like that C-SPAN February thing they do every month, every February of a state of black America.
And you have the Congressional Black Caucus as, you know, somehow or another black president will see America through a black lens versus an American lens.
And so I don't like it.
It sounds as if there may be some type of different expectation nationally and possibly worldwide of a black president of the United States.
And I just wanted to express that.
And also, if I may, say that your constant repeating of being qualified to be someone being qualified to be president of the United States, to me, kind of speaks to a professional politician, which goes against the founding fathers, their idea that a short-order cook or a basketball coach or even a retired waste management employee is qualified regardless of their race agenda according to the Constitution.
I'm qualified to be president of the United States.
And so those are my two issues.
Wait a minute.
I'm confused about the second point because you said my constant repeating of being.
Well, not just you.
It's always a quality.
You mean when we say that Obama's not qualified?
Right, right.
Whenever you say that anyone isn't qualified according to the Constitution, what are the qualifications?
35 and American citizen?
Yes.
Okay.
Pretty much.
I'm qualified.
Well, yes, but give it a go and see what happens.
I'm just saying that it just kind of wrongly speaks to a professional politician, and that's one of the reasons why I believe in term limits for everyone, not just.
Well, I understand that.
But you know, politics, you know, people have many different views and opinions of politics.
But one thing about it can't be denied.
It is a business.
It has its own success track.
It has its own requirements for succeeding.
There are certain human characteristics and traits that one must have to rise to the top in it.
Now, a lot of people get into politics at lower levels, but to rise to the top of that business is no different than rising to the top of any other corporation or any other organized structure.
It has its own skill set.
It has its own requirements.
And the American people have their own demands.
Well, what these qualifications ought to be.
Well, and that's true in a sense, but constitutionally speaking, if a person can handle running for president and get elected president, he's qualified to be president.
Look, I know exactly what you're saying.
Bill Buckley once said that he would rather be governed by the first 100 names in the Boston phone book than by the faculty at Harvard.
Say that again?
Bill Buckley once said he would rather be governed by the first 100 names found in the Boston phone book than the Harvard faculty.
And you're basically saying the same thing.
These people that rise to the pit of professionalism, the peak of professionalism in politics, are disingenuous.
Everything that we associate with politics, I understand exactly what you're saying.
What the real world is, go have your short-order cook try it.
Go have your short-order cook try to raise the money necessary.
It's the stuff of fantasies.
It's the stuff of books and movies.
I mean, it is what it is.
And it'd be great if it would happen.
Your other point about why do we have to call him black president?
Hey, look, that is never going to end.
I don't care how long this country survives.
If you take it out to 2075 and the year 3000, if we've survived global warming, I guarantee you that nothing is going to change on this race business because the original sin of this country was slavery.
The original sin is never forgotten in any religion, and liberalism is a religion.
Liberalism is based on victimology.
Liberalism is based on the denial of individual liberty on the basis that people are incompetent and incapable, thereby setting themselves up in the circumstance where people need them.
That's where they derive their power.
They are going to forever look at minorities, particularly blacks, as incompetent and incapable and disadvantaged.
They're going to look at them through the prism of guilt.
They're going to look at this why, I mean, the orgasms that the drive-by media having over the election or the nomination here of Obama are not surprising at all.
They may be a little sickening because it makes you realize we haven't made any progress at all where liberals are concerned and where the media is concerned.
If liberals are not willing to progress, then liberalism is going to stay what it is.
Socialism is going to stay what it is, which it does.
You can tell by Obama's speeches.
He's simply recycling things that Mario Cuomo said in his acceptor keynote speech at Democrat Convention in 1984.
There's nothing new in liberalism.
There is nothing new, which is another thing that frustrates a lot of you because if there's nothing new, why don't the American people en masse figure it out?
Good question.
Lots of answers to it.
One of the simplest answers is they may have figured it out, but so many of them are now dependent.
So many of them now are dependent on somebody from government doing something for them that that takes precedence over their ideological understanding of the failures of this program to help the country at large.
Anyway, quick timeout.
Thanks to the call, Angelo.
We'll be back and continue after this.
By the way, the correct Bill Buckley quote was that he would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names, not the first 100, by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book rather than the Harvard faculty.
I just wanted to be accurate about that.
Let's talk about this qualifications business for a second because it's actually very interesting.
I want you to go back.
Put this stuff at the back.
I want to get that montage.
It's Cut 23, Obama and Cuomo.
I want to go get that.
We're going to play that again here in just a second.
Qualifications for president.
There's a difference between the legal and constitutional qualifications and what we believe is qualified, which is a much higher standard.
You know, the framers, the founders, put the qualification in because it was, they didn't want to, they were trying to obliterate the notion that only an aristocracy, only the elite, could lead.
And so they purposely, you know, made these definitions very broad.
It's one of the many brilliant aspects of the Constitution.
But look at the framers, I mean, who did they choose first?
George Washington.
And he didn't want it.
They had to cajole him to take it.
But they knew that he had the morality.
They knew that he had the character to be the first.
They offered him king.
The founders offered George Washington the position of king.
It's in no way.
That's not what we're about here, guys.
And his morality, his leadership style and characteristics made him.
You know, it's amazing how little is taught about George Washington these days.
It's just that's another one of these stunning things.
You can talk about D-Day, V-J-Day, V-E-Day, and all these.
That's so little taught about George Washington.
At his estate in Mount Vernon, they have constructed an entire education center.
I myself have made a pittance of a donation to the Education Center at Mount Vernon.
And I'm talking about a whole building, not just the mansion and the stables, but there's a whole new building that chronicles the history of George Washington with wax figures of the man, a dramatic miniature movie that has been made.
And it really, if you're planning to go to Washington this summer, if you're going to take the kids there for vacation, because every time I know people are going to say, what would you do if you were going?
Well, you know, Mount Vernon is a must, especially if your kids are young and have not been taught about George Washington.
And if you've forgotten, next thing I would, I Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian.
Oh, have you been there, Snerdley?
I mean, that is just, the place is just indescribable.
Oh, I know.
They've got one of the Mercury capsules there.
It might have been one of John Glenn's, I think.
And you look at how tiny this thing is and where it went with a human being inside it.
The whole Air and Space Museum will blow you away.
The whole National Archives, go see the original Declaration, the original Constitution.
And there's an infinite number of places to go.
The Library of Congress will blow you away, too.
That is just a phenomenal place.
But if you're planning on going to Washington this summer, you have to make a point to go out to Mount Vernon and tour not just his house.
I mean, his mansion, he was extremely wealthy for his day.
And they've got it decorated as it was in his time.
You can just walk through the hallways.
But you go out on that back patio facing the Potomac and you realize what happened there.
All of the French who came to visit Washington, all of the people planning revolution and so forth, the things that happened, you can stand right there.
Where it happened.
And they've done a pretty good job of making sure that what you can see from the back of the mansion facing the Potomac across the river and Ethereum has not been changed.
So it looks like just what Washington saw, other than the difference in the heights of the trees.
But they've done their best.
They haven't been able to stop it totally, but they've done their best to stop condo projects and so forth going up.
It really is worth it.
But this business about qualifications.
When you talk about how people determine who they think is qualified to be president of the United States, contrast, if you will, conservatives and liberals.
I would maintain to you, and I said this on Wednesday after Obama's big speech in St. Paul, and I'm going to prove it to you here with a little illustration.
Liberals can be bought off with a speech.
Doesn't matter what the speech says.
If the speech has a cadence, if it has great oratory, if it excites the emotions, it doesn't matter the content.
We, on the other hand, we are susceptible in some small way to the same characteristics.
How many of us wish McCain could give a bigger speech, a better speech?
In fact, in the Politico today on their website, there is a long story filled with quotes from anonymous Republicans and anonymous McCain staffers lamenting how bad the speech was delivered on Tuesday night in New Orleans, how good it looked on paper.
The words were perfect.
And it's interesting, I took a little survey of some of my friends after that speech.
All three guys spoke.
Hillary spoke, McCain spoke, and Obama.
And it was in this order.
McCain went first, then Hillary, then Obama got to hit, you know, cleanup and naturally hit a grand slam.
And I had a bunch of people say, you know, I thought that McCain speech was great.
It was fabulous.
Did you hear what he said?
And some of the things he said in that speech were damn good.
I even will admit that.
Some of them made me cringe.
Then others of my friends said, can't we get somebody in this party who can speak?
Can we find somebody who can put two words together and make it sound like they're actually saying it and not just reading it?
But there were people who liked the content.
Didn't matter how it was delivered.
Didn't matter to them.
I think in general, conservatives are more oriented toward ideas.
Liberals are more oriented toward emotions.
Let's go back to this soundbite where we have demonstrated, it's on YouTube, Obama, nothing new here, nothing revolutionary, nothing unique.
Obama using the same tried and true techniques used by Mario the Pious Cuomo in his keynote speech at Democrat National Convention in 1984.
After you listen to this, I want to make a point.
John McCain has spent a lot of time talking about trips to Iraq in the last few weeks, but maybe if he spent some time taking trips to the cities and towns that have been hardest hit by this economy, cities in Michigan and Ohio and right here in Minnesota, he'd understand the kind of change that people are looking for.
Maybe, maybe, Mr. President, if you visited some more places.
Maybe if you went to Appalachia where some people still live in sheds.
Maybe if he went to Iowa and met the student who works the night shift after a full day of class and still can't pay the medical bills for a sister who's ill, he'd understand she can't afford four more years of a health care plan that only takes care of the healthy and the wealthy.
Maybe if you went to Lackawanna where thousands of unemployed steel workers wonder why we subsidize foreign steel.
Maybe Maybe if John McCain went to Pennsylvania and he met the man who lost his job but can't even afford the gas to drive around and look for a new one.
He'd understand we can't afford four more years of our addiction to oil from dictators.
Maybe, Mr. President, if you stopped in at a shelter in Chicago and spoke to the homeless there.
And maybe if John McCain spent some time in the schools of South Carolina or St. Paul, Minnesota, or where he spoke tonight in New Orleans, Louisiana.
He'd understand that we can't afford to leave the money behind for no child left behind.
Maybe, Mr. President, if you asked a woman who had been denied the help she needed to feed her children because you said you needed the money for a tax break for a millionaire or for a missile we couldn't afford to use.
Maybe, Mr. President, but I'm afraid not.
All right, now there's some obvious points here.
The obvious point is Obama is nothing new.
He's nothing unique.
He is nothing special in terms of what he's saying.
What he's saying is Democrat Party blueprint.
There's nothing new about it.
There's nothing special.
There's nothing unique.
It's boilerplate.
It's right out of their handbook.
Change a few locations, change a few social circumstances.
A father here, a teacher there, a mother there.
Appalachia, Chicago, Lockawana, it's the same old thing as 24 years ago.
But that speech, delivered in San Francisco in 1984 as the keynote address of the Democrat National Convention, was the one and the only thing that told Democrats Cuomo was presidential.
We're talking here about presidential qualifications.
That speech was the only thing after that speech, they were, why can't you write?
They were saddled with Mondo.
They wanted Cuomo.
And he fed off that speech for how many years?
Over eight years, he fed off that speech as a qualified, legitimate presidential candidate and president, as far as Democrats were concerned.
They didn't listen to what he said, and they're not listening to what Obama says.
They are dazzled by the fact that they're inspired.
Their lives are so meaningless.
They're so looking for substance.
They all want to make a difference.
And Obama can do all of that for them, and all they have to do is cheer.
So when you start talking about qualifications, it's two different things, being constitutionally and legally qualified versus the high standards that, or the various standards that Americans have in terms of qualifications.
So in one sense, we could say we got Mario Cuomo II here, Mario Cuomo Jr. in Barack Obama, with the same appeal.
How many times have we pointed out on this very program, this award-winning program, that Obama says nothing better than anybody else has ever said nothing?
Cuomo equals second.
Then you add all the other obvious things.
Obama's uniqueness is his race.
It's not his character.
We can't talk about his character.
We can't talk about Resco.
Can't talk about Wright.
Can't talk about Michelle Mybel.
Can't talk about Flager.
We can't talk about vice presidents now.
There's a story.
You find it.
You find it very, very quickly here, folks.
It won't take long.
You will hear me shuffling papers.
Won't be long.
Can't have dead air.
The automated stations will go to commercial.
That's why I'm singing along here.
I'll bet I put it in a different state.
I did.
I put it in a different stack.
I know right where it is, but I'm not going to take time to find it now because I got to go to commercial break.
But you just add to the long list of things that you can't talk about where Obama's concerned, and they are all things that relate to his character.
His race?
We're not even really supposed to talk about that, but that's okay because that's what's unique.
That's what sets him apart.
Quick timeout.
Be back after this.
Where are they?
Whose house is Andrea Mitchell in front of there?
They've been in front of that house all day.
Anyway, I'm just, it's a personal thing.
I'm bugged by.
I think it's Feinstein's house.
But why are they there?
The meeting was last night in the Washington Post in a story on Obama meets with Clinton.
Listen to this.
Obama, who wrote this thing?
Jonathan Wiseman-Shaleg Murray.
Obama said he appreciated very much the statement, and he instructed reporters to dismiss all speculation about possible running mates.
He said he will neither discuss the selection process nor parade prospects in public, as McCain has.
He instructed the media.
Oh, fine.
I love people who talk tough with the media.
Don't misunderstand.
But who else but Obama could get away with instructing them?
They write, they have been instructed.
He knows they will follow his demand.
Can you imagine McCain instructing the media to not cover certain things and them going along with it?
Here's what Obama actually said to them that led to this report.
Obama instructed reporters to dismiss all speculation.
In 2016, I'll be wrapping up my second term as president.
Wait a minute.
I goofed up.
My mistake.
Play number nine.
That bite's coming up next.
Play number nine.
Now, this is when he's talking to the reporters.
The next time you hear from me about the vice presidential selection process will be when I have selected a vice president.
And if you hear secondhand accounts, rumors, gossip about the selection process, you can take it from me that it is wrong because we're not going to be talking about it in the press.
We're not going to be talking about it.
The next time you hear me talking...
So from this, you know, he didn't use the word instruct.
But from that little statement, Jonathan Wiseman and Shaleg Murray said, And then he instructed reporters to dismiss all speculation.
So they wrote it up themselves.
He didn't even say it.
They just took it that way.
He admonished the media.
And the media doesn't want to be embarrassed.
The media does not want to disappoint the Messiah Obama.
The other bite that I ordered played by mistake.
This is just this afternoon in Chicago, 2016 U.S. Olympic pep rally with athletes.
2016, U.S.
Well, anyway, this is what Obama said.
I think he thinks he's elected already.
In 2016, I'll be wrapping up my second term as president.
You hear any, was there any humor in that?
Didn't sound like there was any humor in that.
2016, I'll be wrapping up my second term.
Give you an illustration of what Obama is going to get away with.
When he went to AIPAC talking about Jerusalem, he said this on Wednesday morning.
Any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel's identity as a Jewish state with secure, recognized, defensible borders.
And Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.
And, of course, you heard them there going nuts, the American-Israel Political Action Committee.
Just going nuts here.
But then something happened.
Obama heard from his Arab buddies.
He heard from his Palestinian buddies.
He heard from people who don't like Israel.
And the next day, Thursday night, CNN Candy Crowley interviewing Obama says, I want to ask you about something he said at APAC.
Said Jerusalem must remain undivided.
Well, look at this stupid programming format.
I'm going to have to save this until the next hour.
It's 34 seconds, and I looked at the clock and I had 24.
Would have gone 10 seconds long, and it is a hard break.
Can't miss it.
Anyway, you'll hear the bite.
But he totally flip-flopped on Jerusalem in two days after hearing from his Arab buddies.
There's a point to be made about this, too, and it's not just Arab buddies.
All right, a house I keep seeing on MSNBC.
It's Hillary's house.
And she's throwing a party there for her staff.
You know, some of you people in there watching this could have told me this, so I would have been asking this for two hours.
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