Those of you out there who have been excited after Obama's patriotism speech today are going to love this.
I have an AP news alert here.
Former Abu Ghraib detainees are suing U.S. contractors in four states for alleged torture.
Former Abu Ghraib detainees suing U.S. contractors in four United States states for alleged torture.
Thank you, United States Supreme Court and the American left and your civil rights coalition.
Greetings, my friends.
Welcome back.
Rushlin bought the Excellence in Broadcasting Network 800-282-2882.
Snerdley and I were just discussing whether or not this hack surrogate of Obama's, Wesley Clark, might end up hurting Obama.
And, you know, it's a tough call.
I mean, I know so many.
It's amazing.
This is a replay of 1992.
There's nothing new here.
There's nothing new about Obama.
There is nothing new about his politics.
There's nothing new.
I mean, look at his support.
Ashley Wilkes.
Here's a guy, the Messiah, going to bring unity, brand new politics.
We've never before seen anything like this.
And dragging out all these same old hacks from the Clinton years.
Nothing new at all.
And now we've got a campaign that's going to, all of a sudden, they're trying to focus it on character.
Well, what the hell was 1992 all about?
So I'm sitting here asking myself, is any of this that Wesley Clark said, ridiculing McCain's military service, saying it doesn't qualify him for anything, is it going to hurt Obama?
It might hurt him with some veterans who might be thinking of voting Obama.
But here's the way it might, and this is kind of iffy.
Obama has crafted this image of above-it-all, nice, likable, charismatic, makes people feel really, really good.
But this guy is a mean, throw-the-dagger anywhere kind of guy.
There's nothing nice about Barack Obama, folks.
You can say this wasn't his campaign.
This was Clark B.S.
And there have been a number of other things that this campaign is engaged in.
This is a cut.
This is a typical political campaign.
But the idea that Obama's some messianic figure who has only goodwill for people and this is a joke.
He is a thoroughly mean-spirited individual who lets other people do it for him, doesn't denounce it, doesn't distance himself from it until the heat gets too much, and then he'll flip-flop and say that he's grown or he's recalibrating or whatever, and then the drive-bys come right along and buttress that.
So is any of this going to hurt him?
Hell, who knows?
I mean, I think for it to hurt, there has to be somebody at the same time pointing fingers at what he's doing.
And that, from our side, in the party sense, in the political sense, is not happening.
Look, there are other things in the news I want to get to today besides Wesley Clark and this patriotism business.
From the Associated Press, ladies and gentlemen, $4 a gallon gasoline has stolen a beach vacation in South Carolina from Julie Jacobs' family and exotic bathwashes from Angela Crawford.
Phil English had to sell his beloved but fuel-guzzling red pickup.
Like a plague that does not discriminate by economic class, race, or age, soaring gasoline prices are inflicting pain throughout the U.S. Nine out of ten people are expecting the ballooning costs to squeeze them financially over the next half year, according to an AP Yahoo news poll released today.
But here's the money quote from the story.
As a political issue in the presidential campaign, gas prices provide a slight edge to Democrat Obama.
More prefer him over John McCain to handle the problem 28% to 20%, while an additional 18% trust both of them equally.
Now, what's the purpose of this poll?
The main reason is to create this poll so that they can create this news.
They do the poll to create the news, and what's the news?
That people prefer Obama to McCain in dealing with gasoline prices.
BS, it's all a bunch of smoke and mirrors.
It's a manufactured poll that's designed nothing more than to create a news story to promote Obama by our buds at the Associated Press, the only remaining monopoly in the drive-by media from the Boston Globe yesterday by Noah Bierman.
In last week's Globe, reporter Kimberly Blanton and I wrote about the potential for gas prices to spur more Americans to abandon long suburban commutes by choosing homes closer to Boston and other big cities or seeking towns with access to public transit.
The magnitude of these changes is debatable and will depend a lot on how high gas prices get and how long they stay that way.
But as painfully high as gas prices are and as frustrating as it can be to let them dictate how we live, many environmentalists are cheering.
The cost of gas could diminish the appeal of distant suburbs in ways that gridlock and the aesthetics of big box stores have so far failed to do.
May I take you back to last week where I postulated a theory that one of the reasons that these high gasoline prices are found attractive by the left is who they hurt.
They hurt primarily Republican middle-class suburban voters.
If you look at a map of the country in the red and blue versions versus who lives where and how they voted, you find that most large Democrat cities already have some type of mass transit.
New York, San Francisco, Seattle, what have you.
Chicago, they've got their elevated trains.
You go into suburban Republican areas and they're not into mass transit.
They are driving their cars and they're being hurt.
And lo and behold, the environmentalist wackos now in the Boston Globe relishing the misery of working people across the country.
They are relishing the misery because they hope the misery will make these people, you Republican suburban voters, conform to the way liberal environmentalists think you ought to live, meaning back into the cities where you will only use mass transit.
Now, why do they want you using mass transit?
Well, they say it's because it's less damaging to the environment.
And they say it's more efficient.
What it does is put you under the control of city transit plans, where you go, how you get there, when you go.
Liberalism is about control.
It is also about relishing the loss of liberty.
The car Is part of American culture as much as anything else is, and it is under assault as though it's evil.
The car and what it burns and what it does for you give you mobility.
That's something that the left in this country has been attacking for years now.
This is the grand plan.
An attack on Republican suburbs and rural areas, which is an attack on red state populations, which is where Republican voters happen to be.
Newspapers, another story from our buddies at the Monopolistic Associated Press.
Even for an industry at Washington Bad News, the newspaper business went through one of its most severe retrenchments in recent memory last week.
Half a dozen newspapers said they would slash payrolls.
One said it would outsource all of its printing.
And Tribune Company, one of the biggest publishers in the country, said that it might sell iconic headquarters tower in Chicago in the building that houses the Los Angeles Times.
The increasingly rapid and broad decline in a newspaper business in recent months has surprised even the most pessimistic financial analysts, many of whom say it's too hard to tell how far the slump will go.
Speaking on the CNBC Business News cable channel last Friday, Sam Zell, the real estate magnate who is now the CEO of the Tribune Company, said that newspapers have historically been monopolies in their local markets and insulated from reality.
Sam Zell also said something else.
He was asked about the ad market for newspapers.
He said, what ad market?
Are you talking about people who buy ads in the newspaper to increase the?
I don't know where this is happening.
Sam Zell said, what ad market?
They have historically been monopolies in their local markets.
They've been insulated from reality.
And all of a sudden, that's why every other business deserves to be cut back.
Every other business needs to be attacked when seeking a profit.
But when the newspapers lay people off, which, by the way, newspapers laying people off is the equivalent of the Obama campaign cutting back staff.
Let's face it.
When their newsroom cuts, it's the equivalent of the Obama campaign getting rid of staff.
When these beleaguered editors whine and moan about the cutbacks, they say they have to do this to remain profitable.
To which the reply is, why do you have to remain profitable?
I thought news was for the public interest, the public service.
Why shouldn't you just zero it out at the end of the year?
Why do you have to be profit?
And if it's okay for you to seek profit in the newspaper business, then who the hell are you to criticize any other business that does it?
So they're getting a little taste of their own medicine here, and they're not finding much sympathy, just like the people they attack don't get much sympathy.
In another story, it's actually the same story just on PMS NBC.
But it just boils down to the fact here, ladies and gentlemen, that the Obama campaign is bracing for more staff cuts.
Change they do not want to believe in.
I thought the Messiah was going to bring all this to a screeching halt.
How is it these newspapers are having so much trouble?
What's happening?
Why aren't they able to sell ads?
Well, one of them says it's a housing market.
Yeah, the housing market's down.
Our real estate ads are way, way down.
The one thing that newspapers never look at when they assess what's happening to them is content.
If you'll notice, every newspaper having trouble will blame it on the internet, or they'll blame it on talk radio, or they'll blame it on bloggers.
They will blame it on people having other sources of news.
They never ever stop to consider that maybe more and more of their subscribers are fed up with what's in their papers.
And we're back, Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network.
We have more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
Yesterday in the Washington Post, David Ignatius, a columnist, suggested that the a presidential debate between Obama and McCain occur in Dubai.
A presidential debate in Dubai.
He said that having a presidential debate in Dubai would send a message to the Middle East that America is a concerned partner in solving the region's deep-seated conflicts.
So here we have a leftist column and say, hey, we need to show these people that we care.
We need to show these people.
Having a presidential debate in Dubai.
Tell me something.
Can citizens of Dubai vote in the United States presidential?
Don't say no so quickly.
While the Obama campaigns there, don't forget the registrations that can take place.
After that, a debate in North Korea.
After that, we do a debate in Afghanistan.
After that, we do a debate in Iran to show Ahmedinezad, we ought to be taken seriously and listen to we're good people.
Honest to God, folks, I kid you not.
Drive-by media.
Politico.com today, story by Ben Smith.
This is fantastic.
Was it date today?
Yep.
Published today.
Wesley Clark was on CBS yesterday.
And on CBS, Wesley Clark said that McCain's not qualified.
Getting shot down, no big deal.
Dropping bombs on people, big deal.
Getting shot down, serving as prisoner of war, doesn't mean it.
And lo and behold, the politico.com now comes up with a story day afterwards highlighting the fact the leftist claims that are out there in the far-fringe blogosphere that McCain did make a propaganda video.
Therefore, he's disloyal to the country.
A lot of people don't know that John McCain made a propaganda video for the enemy while he was in captivity, wrote America Blog's John Erebosis.
Putting that bit of disloyalty aside, what exactly is McCain's military experience that prepares him for being commander-in-chief?
After being tortured, he participated in some Vietnamese propaganda efforts.
West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller in April said that suggesting that McCain's days as a fighter pilot were themselves a critique of his character.
What happened when the missiles got to the ground?
He doesn't know.
You have to care about the lives of people.
McCain never got into those issues.
Remember the story?
I do remember Rockefeller questioning McCain's humanity, even though McCain's jet did not fire missiles.
McCain's jet dropped bombs.
The New York Times, the Washington Post have run propaganda for the enemy.
The New York Times and Washington Post have run battle plans leaked from the Pentagon and the State Department.
They've disclosed military secrets.
And then they weren't being tortured when they did it.
The writers and the editors of the New York Post, the New York Times were not being tortured when they published American secrets.
McCain was being tortured when he did a propaganda video.
So Clark sets the table on Sunday.
The drive-bys then jump in and add on to it today.
And in this story, Ben Smith of the Politico, who cites these kook-fringe bloggers on the left and gets their claims in print, by the way, by citing them, then says, others, however, disagree.
And the increasing buzz of emails and blog posts, the new equivalent of the on the left of what in the 90s would have been stirrings on conservative talk radio, suggests that this line of attack won't go away, at least not from elements of the energized pro-Obama grassroots and from parts of the anti-war left.
So, the elements on the left that are spreading all these stories about McCain doing a propaganda video and being a phony baloney plastic but had a good time rock and roller has its roots in conservative talk radio in the 1990s.
And so it's valid.
What they're doing is valid.
That's what they're saying.
Yes, don't I know.
I was talk radio in the 90s.
I'm talk radio now.
I understand this.
And we did not take these kook conspiracy calls about Clinton and all the supposed anti-American activity he was engaged in, you know, flying off the, you know, all those rumors.
We didn't put those callers on the air.
We didn't put our right-wing caller, those people that believed all those wacko conspiracy.
We didn't put them on the air.
The Politico has just put them in the newspaper.
So there's a lot going on here.
The discrediting of McCain, the discrediting of talk radio, the elevation of the kook fringe blog, blog of sphere that is living and breathing out on the left.
We have audio soundbites coming up.
McCain telling a crowd of Latinos what his objective is when it comes to immigration.
We have Obama responding, telling Hispanic leaders that McCain walked away from them on the amnesty bill.
In fact, Obama worked against the amnesty bill McCain tried to get.
We'll have details.
Also, what else we have?
We had a caller about this.
I'm going to get into this in more detail.
It's a Washington Post story from today.
U.S. is said to expand covert operations in Iran.
Seymour Hirsch and the New Yorker is reporting this.
The administration, of course, is denying that we are expanding covert operations in Iran.
I hope we are expanding covert operations in Iran.
And the New York Times has tried to suggest that our efforts to get bin Laden and Pakistan are falling apart, not going very well.
All that coming up after this.
Stay with us.
Well, we have more information here on the lawsuits brought by four Abu Ghraib detainees in the United States.
In case you're just hearing this, former detainees of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq are suing U.S. contractors in four states for alleged torture.
The first complaint was filed today, U.S. District Court in Seattle.
Others are being filed in Detroit, Columbus, Ohio, and Greenbelt, Maryland.
The complaints allege that innocent peoples who were arrested and taken to the prison were subjected to forced nudity, electrical shocks, mock executions, and other inhumane treatment by employees of defense contractors Khaki, International, and L3 Communications, formerly Titan Corporation.
The plaintiffs are represented by law firms in Philadelphia and Detroit and by the Center for Constitutional Rights.
The Center for Constitutional Rights is a so-called nonprofit legal advocacy organization based in New York, founded in 1966 by attorney William Kunstler.
Do you remember Bill Kunstler?
Most radical anti-American pro-leftist lawyer in America.
He was a Chicago 7, just a pure radical leftist, and that's a hero.
To this day, he's a hero.
I know he's a hero, like Sololinsky is a hero, but he remains a hero to this day to these people.
Just a genuine leftist extremist.
In recent years, the Center for Constitutional Rights has been frequently in the news for civil liberties and human rights litigation and activism, as well as their legal assistance to the people imprisoned in the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp.
No, it was not Kunstler who said you could indict a ham sandwich.
It was a prosecutor who said that.
Kunstler was a defense attorney.
Matthew Vadam of the Capital Research Center, conservative nonprofit organization.
How come they didn't call CCR a liberal nonprofit?
Whatever.
He aims to study nonprofit organizations, called the Center for Constitutional Rights the terrorist legal team because of his belief that CCR is an ultra-leftist public interest law firm that has protected the supposed constitutional rights of those who would destroy the United States.
That's the law firm behind these four lawsuits of U.S. private contractors in Abu Ghraib.
Let's go to the audio.
Samba's going to get your phone calls here in just a second, so sit tight.
Saturday in Washington at the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Conference, McCain spoke.
An unidentified person said, Senator, you have been a leader on immigration reform in the Senate, but unfortunately, Congress has failed to make progress on this very critical issue.
As the next president of the United States, will comprehensive immigration reform, not just enforcement, be one of your top policy priorities in your first 100 days?
It'll be my top priority yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
And my friends, we tried.
I reached across the aisle to Senator Ted Kennedy, and by the way, I know that he's in your prayers.
And we worked in a bipartisan fashion.
And we were defeated.
And by the way, it wasn't very popular.
Let's have some straight talk with some in my party.
And so I did that and worked together so that we could carry out a federal responsibility.
How badly does he want to be president?
Just how badly does he want to be?
Has he not seen the latest poll on the Hispanic vote?
It will be my first, my top priority yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
I reached across the aisle to Senator Kennedy.
He then said this.
We have to secure our borders.
That's the message.
But we also must proceed with a temporary worker program that is verifiable and truly temporary.
We must also understand that there are 12 million people who are here, and they are here illegally.
And they are God's children.
They are God's children, and they will be treated in a humane fashion.
Immigration reform will be my top priority because we have the obligation to address a federal issue from a federal standpoint.
I will reach across the aisle again and work in a bipartisan fashion.
We will resolve the immigration issue in America, and we will secure our borders.
And he thinks, I've heard him say this, he thinks that these are wondrous things to say.
He thinks that these are very powerful comments because he thinks the American people are tired of gridlock and that bipartisanship will get rid of gridlock.
So he believes that the American people are going to embrace him for walking across the aisle to Ted Kennedy, reaching across the aisle to all these other Democrats because that's going to somehow break gridlock and the American people want to get things done.
And Obama is basically trying to say the same thing by moving to the center on all these issues, flip-flopping from his positions in the primary campaign.
This is, I just don't think how seriously he wants to win this.
I know he does.
It's just nonsensical.
This is moving on.
I'm just blew in the face talking about this illegal immigration issue.
There's nothing more to be said about it.
There's nothing more to be said about the stupid politics of it.
What did they not figure out after they tried this amnesty bill and it was wiped out by the American people?
What did they not understand?
It's not even a question of that.
They understand full well that what they're going to have to do is find an end run around the American people to get this done.
Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Let's see.
This is Tom Brokoff from Meet the Press yesterday talking to Schwarzenegger.
Question, you endorsed McCain as the presidential candidate, saying he was a crusader who had the best interest of the environment in mind.
Now he's in favor of offshore drilling and he wants to build 45 nuclear plants.
You still stand by his record in that regard.
I'm very proud of him.
I am 100% behind him that we don't agree on everything that's clear, nor do I with my wife.
I mean, it doesn't mean that we should split.
It just means that we don't agree on certain things.
I don't think that you will find that everyone agrees on everything.
And he is terrific with the environment.
He has been there four years ago and stood by my side when I talked about the environment, when I talked about fighting global warming and putting together a good energy policy and starting with the Green Building Initiative or start building the hydrogen highway in California and the Million Solar Roof Initiative.
He was there and he supported me on every step of the way.
So he's the real deal when it comes to the environment.
Man, oh man, oh man.
The hydrogen highway in California, the million solar roof initiative, and McCain was there.
It's a joke.
I mean, all you can do is laugh at this stuff.
In fact, if you want to laugh, the real laugher is next.
It's the next question from Brokaw.
Well, it's well known that your wife Maria Shriver endorsed Obama early.
Is that off-limits in discussion in your household?
I can only take off this thing for so long, but eventually, you know, I also am sick and tired of it.
So one day at night, I remember dinner.
I got up because I had it.
And I got up and I said, you know, McCain is the man.
He's the best man for this country and for the future.
And Maria is absolutely wrong with that Obama fellow.
Absolutely wrong.
I was so lucky that Maria was out for dinner that night.
It was easy to do that.
He had you going, didn't he?
When he got up and left the table talking to his kids, he only did it when Maria went.
But I bet he is frustrated.
Can you imagine?
Can you imagine living with somebody who is so diametrically opposed?
How do you talk about it without losing your mind?
How do you talk about it?
Somebody, I mean, let's just say you think McCain is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and your spouse thinks that Obama, and you also think Obama is an empty suit.
He has nothing but platitudes and so forth, and your wife thinks he's full of substance.
How in the world do you just, you have to not talk about it or else get in a big, huge knockdown drag accident.
And first, what?
You get a divorce?
Back to the phones.
Quickly, before I want to get somebody in here in this segment, here is Mike in Wildwood, Texas.
Mike, thanks for calling.
Hi, Rush.
I just wanted to comment on the John McCain thing.
I feel honored that I got to know the senator when I lived in Arizona.
I personally heard his story of captivity on a one-to-one basis.
It's a remarkable story, and anyone who listens to it would appreciate his patriotism.
I was also standing by the senator when the first Gulf War started, when the monitor started showing those famous CNN pictures of the anti-aircraft fire.
And the senator elbowed me and said, there's only two people in this newsroom who understand what that feels like.
I was a Vietnam helicopter pilot, and he knew that.
And we had talked about combat while we were talking about his captivity.
And the look in his eye, because he was on the Senate Defense Appropriations Committee, he already knew when that was going to start.
And the look in his eye and the talk we had about what these people were facing over there and the type of weapons and the type of conduct, we were both expecting to have a lot more fatalities than we suffered in that war.
But John McCain was genuinely concerned about those people, and he had a part in the time and date that that took place, being on those companies.
He was concerned about the Iraqi people?
No, about the military, and especially about the aviators, the first people who went in and were facing those new and devastating weapons, which our technology took care of.
Nobody had tested him at that time under those situations, and it was very...
Well, I don't think anybody seriously doubts any aspect of McCain's character when it comes to war and his military record and his service.
And I think it's a little bit unfortunate.
I'm glad you called, but I think it's damn unfortunate that people have to call in here and think they have to defend it because of what's happened the last two days from the sleaze of the Obama campaign.
It's just outrageous that this kind of thing needs to be defended because it's been attacked by a bunch of hacks and utter failures.
So, Mike, I'm glad you called.
Appreciate it.
Quick time out here, folks.
Your phone calls continue after this.
Back to the phone, Sally in Hudson, Ohio.
I'm glad you waited.
You're next on the EIB network.
Hi.
Thanks for taking my call.
You bet.
I would like to respond to Mr. Theodore's comment that put down Mr. McCain for graduating only fifth from the bottom at a military academy.
Yeah, that was a dastardly thing to point out by Mr. Theodore.
Yes, my daughter is at the Coast Guard Academy, and really that achievement is equivalent to being the top at another college.
They're required to take 19 to 20 hours a semester, which in contrast to other colleges, it could be as low as 12 credits to be considered a full-time student.
They also are required to drill, participate in clubs and sports, do service hours, and not to mention the code of conduct that they have to live by.
Right.
You know, I know.
I have a cousin who went to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and taught law there.
He was also Judge Adjutant General while in the Army, our cousin Dan.
I know full well what it takes to get in there, what it means when you do, and how hard the work is when you're there.
I wouldn't worry about Mr. Theodore.
He's just a hack.
He just is, we respect hacks here, Sally, but nevertheless, he's still a hack.
And if that's the best they've got on McCain, I mean, they're flailing here.
I mean, you understand what this is about.
This is a whole effort here to totally undercut one of McCain's strong suits while elevating Obama up as Mr. Patriotic.
Right.
I agree.
And it's the Democrats that are on defense here about patriotism.
They're the ones that have to go out and constantly redefine it.
They're the ones that have to constantly do these speeches around the 4th of July affirming their patriotism because there are people that have doubts, apparently.
Why do it otherwise?
Here's Jim in Port Charlotte, Florida.
You're next.
Hi.
Yes, Rush.
Yeah.
Great talking to you.
Thank you.
Born in Missouri and ended in Florida, just like you.
Yeah, it's a great place to be.
Everybody has to be somewhere.
Hey, Rush, I was listening to that deal about Obama pandering to these people in Missouri and mentioning Mark Twain.
Yeah, he mentioned Mark Twain.
Do you remember a few years ago when the Democrats wanted to take Mark Twain's books off the market and made him a racist because of his Tom Sawyer?
You know what?
I had forgotten that.
Yeah, I thought I'd like to remind you of it so you could work on them people on that a little bit.
Yeah, it was Huck Finn.
They wanted to get rid of Huck Finn and a number of, yes, absolutely right.
100% racist he was.
Now all of a sudden he's using him as a what would you say, idol?
Well, of course he's in Missouri.
I know that's what he's doing.
Andrew Missourian.
Being from Missouri, that caught my attention.
Quick, quick little trivia question here.
You'd be surprised how many people don't know this.
What's Mark Twain's real name?
Samuel Clemens.
And quick, what state was he born in?
Ooh.
You want to say Missouri, but probably Illinois, huh?
You look it up.
Look it up.
You'll be stunned.
Really?
Yeah.
Look up Samuel Clemens.
You got a computer?
Yeah.
Google search?
Yeah.
Samuel Clemens.
I just always took it for granted he was from Hamilton.
I mean, Hannibal?
Hannibal or St. Louis or something.
What is the capital of Kentucky?
Or how do you pronounce it rather?
You pronounce the capital of Kentucky, Louisville or Louisville?
I say Louisville.
Frankfort.
Hey, that's the oldest one in a bunch.
That's a great question.
You're too shrewd today.
Oh, the people in Kentucky knew that's a cheap joke.
Anyway, look, Lee, I appreciate.
Jim, I appreciate it.
I got to take a quick time out here.
We'll be back and wrap things up after this.
Do not go away.
Samuel Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri, which is in Monroe County, Missouri, which is one county due west of the county where Hannibal, Missouri is.
Didn't take him long to gravitate or migrate to the Mississippi River.
He died in Connecticut when he was 74 years old.
So just a brief little lesson.
As it is, folks, we have to get out of here.
The precious broadcast moments that comprise today's Rush Limbaugh program on the EIB network have ended.
Well, they haven't ended yet, as you can hear.
I'm still talking.
But there aren't enough precious broadcast moments left to take another phone call.
So we'll just have to suspend that until tomorrow.
We'll just take a 21-hour break.
The program never really ends.
We just have a real long break at 3 Eastern.
Be back tomorrow, do it all over again, all revved up and ready to go to clean up whatever messes are made between now and then.