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Nov. 13, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:10
November 13, 2008, Thursday, Hour #3
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Time Text
Well, I got one hour to try to live up to that because so far it's been a probably too meandering, probably too clock ignorant, ADD stream of consciousness kind of thing.
But, you know, it's real.
It's me.
And I'm so pleased that you are tolerating me.
Filling in for Rush on this day, and I so much appreciate it.
It is the EIB Network, the Rush Limbaugh Program.
I'm Mark Davis, joining you from the studios of WBAP, Dallas, Fort Worth, where I've been hanging out for low these past 15 years.
In a minute, though, we're going to go to a city where I once worked.
And I know that creates enormous listener suspense.
But speaking of suspense, here's a guy who had some a moment ago because he actually thought I was going to put him on the air.
But it was the end of the hour.
It would have been really short.
And trust me, this will be much better and much more relaxed.
Let's head out west of Chicago along the shores of the Rock River in Sterling, Illinois.
Bob, your time has come.
Pleasure to have you, sir.
How are you doing?
Pretty good, Mark.
Thanks for taking my call.
First of all, first time calling.
And I'll give you a brief history before I get to the share, Governor Palin.
I never really cared for Rush Limbaugh back in the early 90s when I was around when I got out of the Navy.
I was in the Navy from 81 to 91.
And my cousin was so adamant about Rush Rush.
I said, you know what?
The guy gives a lot of, points out a lot of problems, but this is before I even listened to him.
I said, give me solutions.
Then I'll listen to the guy.
Well, then just recently I started listening to him for some, I mean, it was Tolin Hannity who turned me on to him, really.
And I tell you what.
Oh, stop.
Just stop for a minute.
That's unbelievably.
It did.
I listened to Sean before the time.
I hated Rush, but Sean got me to like him.
Well, the thing is, see, I did everything backwards.
Right.
But and now I know why Rush is who he is.
And God bless him for that.
And I guess it's possible.
Lord knows people have spent a lot of time analyzing that.
But 80%, maybe 98% of the people who disparage Rush have never heard the show or paid much attention to it.
Same here.
That's me.
But now I know.
You know something?
And I'll tell you, since you've been so kind with us for time-wise, this takes nothing of the time away from what you want to say about Governor Palin or anything else.
I am fascinated by things people say.
And here's something someone says 47 times a day.
Something about problems but not solutions.
All right?
Correct.
I believe, I know, and you're right, and that's great.
And solutions are lovely.
Sometimes there is no solution immediately at hand.
And that the only way you really get to a solution is by really examining and examining and examining again the problem.
Let's take a million talk show issues.
What's the solution to abortion?
I know what it is.
Overturn Roe v. Wade, let the states make up their own minds.
That honors the Constitution.
What is the solution to gay marriage?
To have these stupid courts like they did in Connecticut stop telling everybody there's a right for gay marriage to enjoy equanimity with heterosexual unions.
There is no such right.
But if a state wants to recognize gay marriage, it may because that honors the Constitution.
Here's the thing.
That's my solution.
But that might not be somebody else's.
And thus the debate goes on and on and on.
And so it really just sort of stays a problem.
I guess so.
If anything strikes you, and I'm not really talking to you and sort of using this as a lesson for everybody, if anybody says, well, it's all problems and no solutions.
Well, guess what?
Problems change.
Their face changes all the time.
And sometimes you stumble onto a solution when you least expect it.
Don't ever grow weary.
If something really is a problem, talk about it.
Talk about it all day, every day.
There's nothing wrong with that.
Sorry to waste your time.
What's going on?
I think a lot had to do with the problem solutions thing.
The military training I had in the Navy.
And first of all, I served under the greatest commander-in-chief in Ronald Reagan.
And I tell you what, I learned a lot about improvise, adapt, and overcome.
And when Mr. Obama was running for Senate here, I met him one time in Rock Falls.
Not personally, but he came there and speaked, a little speech and all that.
And even then, I just didn't, there was something about him that I didn't trust.
Now I understand what it is.
But like Rush says, you're drinking the Kool-Aid.
Well, a lot of Illinois, I'm behind enemy lines, by the way.
I should be careful what I say because I might get audited like Mr. Joe the Plumber.
But anyhow, we get back to Mrs. Playlin.
Came back 30 seconds.
You said you sort of came to understand what it is that enabled you to trust Senator Obama.
A, what is it?
And B, do you still?
No, there was nothing.
Oh, okay.
You realize that this, boy, like your disfavor that you showed the Limbaugh show, the affinity you had for Barack Obama was similarly baseless.
Right.
And it was discernment, though.
That's what it is.
I mean, the thing is, people that are voting for Obama, God bless him and all that.
But the most people I talk to really don't have much wisdom behind it.
It's all about bumper stickers.
And, you know, I'm a creative.
It makes me feel good.
Well, it's the truth.
I mean, God will use the foolishness of the world to baffle the wise people and knowledge like Sarah Palin.
Everyone thinks she's whatever.
But you know what?
She's a strong conservative woman, and that's a threat to a lot of people.
But my main question was, or my comment was, she doesn't need to be a senator.
As a governor, I think a governor has more executive power, more experience, and can actually delegate and make decisions where a senator can just go with the win.
I think you're very, you have a great point about that.
Here's the problem.
I think the point has been made, and you just made it very well, and she made it very well.
Governors have a lot more, a governor's job is a lot more like the president than a senator's job.
However, if you're the governor of a state that is on the far side of the moon, which Alaska might as well be for most of us in the lower 48, and God bless those limbaugh affiliates in Alaska, I love you.
It's an appearance game.
And if she can come down to the lower 48 to the seat of power and shake things up in the Senate as she has done in Junea, there's nothing but good.
Nothing but good.
You know, that's another point I never saw either, but you're right about that, too.
But I just don't want her to change who she is.
No, and I think even a blind pig stumbles across an acorn.
I had a sentence last hour that I'll just be saying 100 times.
I believe she would change the Senate more than the Senate would change her.
Bob, thank you.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate hearing from you, and God bless Sterling, Illinois.
Now, it's funny, and the two minutes that I just took on that thing about problems rather than solutions, this is a neat exercise.
Identify things that people say all the time that have always struck you as weird and disagree with them.
Here's another one.
In the corporate world, which is rife with doublespeak, you ever have somebody say, Bill, you're too negative.
You know what?
Did I go in this riff last time I hosted the show?
I'm sorry.
If I did, I'm sorry.
But it's valuable enough.
Every time I come back, I will tell this 60-second story.
Stopping bad ideas is a positive thing.
In a country, in a company, in a corporate boardroom, in Congress, in a governor's mansion, in a state legislature.
If you're perceived as the person who's always rising up and saying no, the person who's always rising up and talking about what's bad with a particular idea, oh, he's too negative.
He needs to be more positive.
Those words are meaningless.
Negative about what?
I'm negative about the radical gay agenda.
I'm negative about radical pro-choicers.
I'm negative about people who want to pull out of Iraq.
I'm negative about all manner of things.
Flip the coin, though, and I'm positive about people who want to win the war.
Positive about keeping the definition of marriage the same.
Positive about cutting taxes.
Positive about cutting the size of government.
It depends on what the thing is, whether I'm negative or positive about it.
They are the ultimate in relative terms.
So where am I going with this?
A question I'm often asked.
Is if somebody has identified you, Tommy, you're always negative.
Very civilly say, well, you know what?
Maybe the most valuable thing I can do in helping it to chart a positive course for this company is to point out bad ideas and help us fight them.
Because without negativity, everything gets greenlighted.
Hey, I got a great idea.
Let's put everybody's 401k into Bohemian golf cart stocks.
Hey, great idea.
So, see what I mean?
Bad ideas deserve to be fought.
And if you're the person who is negative and preventing the ascendancy of bad ideas, that is in and of itself a positive thing to do.
My motivational series of books will be out soon on the internet.
Right now, it's 1-800-282-2882.
One call from Illinois deserves another one.
This time we are in Centralia.
Frank, Mark Davis in for Rush Limbaugh.
How are you?
How do you do, sir?
I appreciate your time.
Thank you.
All right.
Well, the one question that I overall had, and by the way, I agree with everything that you said in terms of with the bailout situation.
I really believe in individual accountability.
And if a person, you know, if a person, as you said, you know, they have a bad idea, well, you know, they have to try to, they have to rise and overcome.
It's, you know, the free enterprise, the business that I'm in, if we don't succeed, we don't have a business, and that's just the nature.
And I agree with that.
The only thing I guess I have to ask is that when it comes to like healthcare, that's where I deviate off of that course.
And I've heard a lot of conservatives, they've talked to the healthcare situation very much the same way that they've talked about the bailouts and the holdouts.
And so the question that I overall had was, is there a conservative approach that can benefit all the American people?
Let me give a 30 to 60 second, if I'm capable of that, a version of it and then give you the floor back to see what you think.
The conservative approach to healthcare, it's kind of funny.
In keeping with what I just said, first let's identify the problem.
And that is government is shot full of the entire network of healthcare, government intrusion, government over-regulation, government impediments to the free market price of things from tests to aspirins.
So the first thing you do is you get government as much out of healthcare as possible.
There, we've identified the problem and done something positive by fighting it.
Then, in the free and open marketplace, individuals who need health care, sometimes through the insurance system, sometimes not, sometimes willfully not, are out there competing that these service providers, whether it's doctors, hospitals, people who do testing, people who, pharmaceutical companies, are in a real marketplace rather than one that is perverted by government and inflated by insurance.
The $12 aspirin exists because some insurance company is stupid enough to pay it and they don't care.
Well, we have an insurance problem as well as a healthcare marketplace problem.
Everybody says we have the best healthcare system in the world, and it's true.
What it needs is to be unfettered and freed from government edict so that doctors and patients and providers of healthcare and consumers of health care can interact more like the providers and consumers of almost any other product or service.
Last thing, there's something different about this.
It's not selling a car.
It's not selling a refrigerator.
In healthcare, people might die.
And unlike I could sit here all day and say, well, a car company might go under.
I can't sit there and say, well, Uncle Bill might die.
We don't want that to happen.
And the good news there is the bailout, if you will, will be churches, private charities, and indigent hospitals, which will always exist.
People are not dying in America for lack of health care.
It's a myth.
I'll stop now and see what you think so far.
All right.
No, actually, everything that you say makes good sense.
Well, like, what you say, and this is the one thing that I overall that I applaud.
And I thought that, you know, John McCain, I thought that John McCain in the debates, you know, he hit the nail on the head when he talked about his health care plan.
There's a lot of trust involved.
And you have to forgive me for this, but I don't have a lot of, when it comes to insurance, I don't have a lot of, I don't have a lot of faith in insurances or health insurance's goodwill towards men, so to speak.
It is a spotty history.
Yes, sir.
And so I guess overall, like what you had said, and it's very sound, it would all rely on it, it would all rely on the honor and the integrity of the insurance business.
And there would be, and you know what?
And I think the insurance industry would become more honest and become more reliable.
There'd be fewer bad actors, fewer ridiculous claim crises when everybody's dealing with what things actually cost in an open marketplace rather than duking it out and trying to elbow each other out for the most inflated costs they can from individual pills to expensive tests.
I need to scoot here, Frank, but thank you for the opportunity to make that thought.
And if it resonated with you, I'm proud and happy and I love you and give us a buzz anytime.
Rush would be glad to hear from you.
From Central Illinois to other towns, next, it is the Rush Limbaugh Show, 1-800-282-2882.
I'm Mark Davis, filling in in Texas, and we shall continue.
1-800-282-2882.
That's the number on the Rush Limbaugh Show, even when Rush is away for a day.
I'm Mark Davis in his stead.
Much appreciated.
Down here at WBAP, Dallas, Fort Worth, that's where I am now.
And let's go to a place I once was.
We are along the banks of the St. John's in New Valley County, Florida.
We're in Jacksonville on WOKV.
Russ, hi, how are you?
How are you doing?
I'm doing absolutely great.
Thank you, sir.
Let me step outside.
I'm in that.
Wow, let's do something because you sound like you're on Mars.
That big Jacksonville send-up, too.
All right, you got about three seconds there, my brother.
Is that better?
We can fight through it for a bit.
Give it a shot.
Basically, I've been listening to the commentaries before and after the election, and I felt like they didn't understand what I was hearing from other people out here in the factories and in the job sites.
And then that's that we're not dealing with class envy.
We don't care what the CEO is making.
We care what we're making.
Right.
We care whether or not we can bring home enough money to put food on the table, pay for repairs on the car, things of that nature.
And like I was telling you before, I heard me and some friends were listening to me.
A vortex guy who called up and was talking about our jobs being shipped overseas, and he said, they're not your jobs.
And they looked at me and they said, see, see, this is why we won't vote for McCain, because the conservatives don't get it.
Well, actually, I'm afraid they do.
And I'm going to stick up for my brother Neil on this because it's not.
It is a job, which may be yours.
It may be someone else's.
It is the decision made by the company.
Now, once you have it, it is yours.
It's yours to have as long as a job is a mutual relationship.
You are there because you want to be, and the company has you there because they want you there.
As soon as one of those, I mean, what if you decided to leave a company and the company said, wait a minute, you're my employee.
You'd get up in their face.
No, you're not.
I can do whatever I want.
Guess what?
So can the company.
And of the things that you mentioned at the beginning of your call about making ends meet and not worrying about what CEOs make, worrying about what you make.
You're absolutely right.
And the first thing you need to understand is government has nothing to do with what you make.
Government has nothing to do with helping you make ends meet.
That is not government's job.
It is your job.
And it's a hard job sometimes when the marketplace waters are rough, but that's just the way it is.
And the sooner you realize that, the easier life will be.
Okay, well, I understand that, and I understand your point.
And to an extent, I agree to your point.
But what I'm saying is if people are going to manage this country, they have to understand that when we're down here saying, you know, look, when we're bringing up these issues, we're not saying, well, we're jealous of you because you live in a McMansion, you know, and we can't even afford a house.
We're basically saying, well, look, we can't afford a house, which means the other guy over there making houses, he's not going to sell a house.
Right.
The restaurants around here in Jacksonville are getting boarded up because for one reason, that's because we can no longer afford to go out and eat.
Understand.
Was that always the case?
Because when I did the first talk show I ever did from 1982 to 85 on WOKV, there was talk of an NFL team.
Jake Godbold was mayor.
They hadn't built Jacksonville Landing yet, the Rouse project up there downtown.
But the place was on the verge of a boom.
Of course, it was the Reagan years, which helped.
Things rise.
They fall.
Everything is cyclical.
I understand that.
And you're right.
It's not always been like that.
But for the last 20 years, you know, the working man's wages have not kept up with inflation.
Now, we're not talking about a matter of awareness.
Boy, stop right there.
Stop right there.
They have exceeded.
Inflation has been non-existent for most of the last 15 years.
Wages have absolutely outstretched inflation.
Absolutely.
By every definition.
Maybe for some people.
You're not talking.
No, not for some people.
Listen, it depends on kind of what you're doing for a living.
I mean, if you're having a tougher time, that has to do with what you're making.
That may not be the case for the guy next door.
And it's not certainly not the case for the country at large.
Well, the census says, according to the census, if you go back to 1989 and I looked it up.
I got about 10 seconds.
Go ahead.
The median income has not kept up.
I'm sorry.
First of all, that is simply, factually incorrect.
I love you.
Love Jacksonville.
Work hard.
Improve yourself.
Hunker down.
If things get bad enough, move.
That's a lovely option nobody talks about.
Come to Texas.
We're not sucking wind over here.
I mean it.
And God bless Florida.
You're doing fine, too.
All righty.
I love all people.
Mark Davison for Rush.
Be right back.
And he thanks you for that.
Referring to myself in the third person.
Rush here on the EIB network.
And it's funny.
I think Rush is tickled by the same thing that I am and all of us who do this for a living.
I do a local thing here in Dallas-Fort Worth on Thursday mornings usually.
Our local Fox affiliate has been inviting me over for weekly discussions of stuff in the news pretty well since 9-11.
And I love going over there and talking to those folks and their great reporters and their wonderful support staff.
And after I got there and sort of done the makeup thing and got ready for the TV bit, somebody came up and said, so after the election, I guess things are a little slow.
I think I just kind of looked at them and went, are you paying attention?
If the election home stretch, I mean, gave us an enormous amount of material.
It's funny.
It gave us intensity of material.
It was all about Obama, McCain, McCain, Obama, Obama, McCain, McCain, Obama, Palin, Biden, Biden, Palin.
It was all sort of on a narrow track, but 100,000 watts of energy.
Now we got everything, everything to talk about.
The entire landscape of what the new president might actually do.
The entire landscape of post-mortems on why McCain lost.
The entire landscape of speculation of what lies ahead.
If anything, I mean, no matter how this election went, all it was going to do is yield an unbelievable fertile field of topical chaos theory that's going to play out for the foreseeable future.
So be happy that there's a Limbaugh show to guide you and plenty of local hosts like me on the stations that carry rush.
All righty, very, very glad to be with you.
1-800-282-2882.
I'm Mark Davis in Dallas-Fort Worth.
Let's head to, and boy, we're talking a lot about this city, and there are plenty of emotions up there.
And it's a pleasure to go back into WJR territory and say hi to Bill in Detroit.
Welcome, sir, to the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Nice to have you.
Yes, Mark, it's nice to talk to you.
Hi.
I do disagree with you, though, as far as the buyout goes or bailout.
And I really don't think it is a bailout.
If you loan money to a person, it's a loan.
It's not a bailout.
It's not giving you money.
With this market.
Full disclosure, are you a GM employee?
I am a Ford retiree.
Oh, okay.
All right.
Go ahead.
I'm sorry.
I didn't mean to interrupt you.
You look back what they did to Chrysler in the 70s.
They bailed him out for $2 million loan.
Fell into your own trap there, didn't you?
You just called it a bailout.
Well, it's a bailout, as if people want to call it that.
But I call it a loan.
Well, if you're a bad person, they paid the loan back.
Chrysler took a Chrysler employees took a pay cut.
They worked it out together, and they survived it so much stronger.
Here's the thing: it's kind of a semantics issue, but that's okay.
Semantics are important.
Semantics are the science of the meaning of words.
What's the difference between a bailout and a loan?
Some bailouts, you don't expect to get paid back, right?
You're completely right.
And it is important to say that in the midst of this bailout, we do expect to get the money back, and it would be really nice if we got the money back.
Bailout, per se, colloquially, is to get somebody out of a jam.
I would really suggest that if a friend of mine needed 20 grand and I was in a position to give it to him and I considered it worthy, and I really wasn't totally sure I was going to get it back, I might.
That's a bailout.
It's a loan and a bailout.
They're not mutually exclusive.
In the Chrysler case, it's kind of funny, and it's always a valid question.
You asked, how old are you, son?
As it turns out, I'm actually 51 today.
Thanks for asking.
And when the Chrysler bailout happened, I had just graduated from college.
I'd gone to work for my very first radio station, Charleston, West Virginia.
And it was like fall of 1979.
And even in my little mushy brain, I remember thinking, and by the way, this was not to avoid extinction.
It was to avoid bankruptcy.
And I remember asking at the time, what's the matter with bankruptcy?
Bankruptcy is the appropriate place to be for a company that's run out of money.
It doesn't mean you're going to die.
It means you reorganize, you get your, you know, what together, and you come back to fight stronger another day.
And even though the Chrysler bailout worked out well, the government got its money back.
That didn't mean it was right.
Can I say something?
Of course, I'm sorry.
Now, on another note of that, though, another part of that is that if the GM or God forbid Ford or Chrysler goes bankrupt, there's 100,000 GM, probably like amount of Fords and Chrysler that would lose their pensions.
Well, but again, you're equating bankruptcy with extinction.
Look at airlines.
There are airlines flying today that are bankrupt.
It doesn't mean you vanish from the face of the earth.
Means you reorganize, you really seriously look at getting your act together.
Now, you are, it doesn't mean you're wrong about that because you're right.
Depending on how the company chooses to reorganize, that may be one of the extremely difficult decisions they have to make.
They can lose that in a heartbeat.
They can do away with pensions.
And our living goes down, and for the $300,000, $400,000, they lose most of what they have.
I have a feeling, because I clearly, I'm not without sympathy.
And in fact, let me throw you some cred that you probably weren't expecting because this is your life, and you know who else's life it is?
My magnificent father-in-law, 30 years, lives out in south of Paris, Texas, but for 30 years served right here in Arlington, Texas, GM plant right here between Dallas and Fort Worth.
And they sometimes dread the envelopes that come in the mail.
Uh-oh, the deductibles are going up for the health care.
I bet that's something you know a lot about.
And I somehow think, and it's weird because you're the guy who's worked for them and I'm not.
I somehow, maybe I've got more faith in them than you do, and maybe I'm naive too, but I think that they would try to do almost anything short of cutting all you guys loose.
I'm hoping you're right.
But for Fords, they've treated the retirees pretty good because they know we are what put them where they're at now.
Of course.
You're the lifeblood.
Your years of service to Ford were from when to when?
74 to 2006.
74.
And I also, I buy Ford products.
My family buys Ford products.
We help that way also.
Two things.
First of all, I'm the proud owner of an F-250.
Love it, love it, love it.
First car I ever owned.
My dad just went out and got it.
He said, I'm not going to tell you what it's going to be because I'm basically going to get you what I can afford and you'll love it.
And I said, yes, sir.
It was a 1970 Ford Maverick, and I loved the living daylights out of that thing.
I kind of got to scoot, but do me a favor.
It was a joy to talk to you.
Thank you for your service to the magnificent American automobile industry.
And I really appreciate your voice in today's debate.
I really, really appreciate it, Bill.
Thank you.
All right.
It is 1-800-282-2882 on the phone.
And what we'll do now is head into Huron, South Dakota.
Stan, that is you.
Mark Davis, you're on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Hi.
Hello, Mark.
How are you doing today?
Good.
Thank you.
Great.
Say, I was calling a few callers back.
There was a caller that said by bailing out different businesses, it's basically like rewarding failure.
And I couldn't agree more.
I guess the one exception I'm thinking about with the lending industry, the lending companies, where they kind of got into that mess because of government policies and because they were being forced to take on loans that they knew would probably be defaulted on.
And I just kind of wonder what you think about, you know, maybe in that case, you know, it is up to the government to kind of get it.
This is a magnificent point that you're making.
And I can feel your caution as you craft tactfully that which I will now, in honor of the last bumper two, and I'll take out the Peter Gabriel sledgehammer.
Here is the truth.
You're absolutely right.
Listen, a lot of banks were just stupid.
A lot of lenders, we're just stupid.
Like, what in the world are we doing?
But some special dispensation is owed to banks who, with the government gun to their head, absolutely had to make loans for fear of lawsuit, for fear of discrimination lawsuit, for fear of allegations of racial bias.
They had to, as a practical matter, make loans to minority lenders who they knew were going to default because if they had looked into the black or Hispanic or whatever face of the applicant and said, boy, I'm sorry,
you're just no way in the world you qualify for this, that that person might well run out and sue them, or some government agency might take a look at the demographics of the declined loans and come down with the fires of hell on a bank for being racist when all they had really done is look at the numbers.
So, yes, there is some special dispensation, a little air bubble of forgiveness, you might call it, because some banks did not make those loans by choice.
Yeah, and as far as losing a pension or losing your retirement, for those people that might think about putting their 401ks into the Social Security system, when Social Security goes belly up, well, they might lose those two anyway.
No, but maybe, but, Stan, great point.
I believe that it's kind of like privatizing education will only strengthen it.
I believe privatizing Social Security will only strengthen it.
When people have the opportunity, not by mandate, but have the opportunity, if they wish, I don't think they'd have a lot of takers these days, to take their fate out of Social Security and put it in the free and open investment marketplace, takes a lot of the pressure off the Social Security pool and gives it some breathing room.
That is some beautiful country in South Dakota, Stan.
Thank you for calling us from here on.
I appreciate it.
1-800-282-2882, Mark Davis in Texas in for Rush.
Back in a moment.
It's the Rush Limbaugh Show for 12 more precious minutes.
And I'm Mark Davis, enjoying every one of those minutes as the fill-in guy of the moment from WBAP in Dallas, Fort Worth.
It's been great to be with you.
And let's go right here to my local neighborhood, if I may.
We are in Cowtown in Fort Worth with Rhett.
Hey, Mark Davis, how are you doing, borrow?
Hey, Mark.
How's it going?
It's great.
I've got a couple of things.
And I think you remember me a few weeks ago mentioning this before the election: that a theory that I have, one reason, and I give George Bush and our military all the credit in the world, but one reason we have not had any more terrorist attacks is so we could have a presidential candidate such as Barack Obama and then subsequently, unfortunately, a president like this man.
Can I pause you?
Because it's weird because I remember your theory, and your theory, but I don't know if you phrased it well.
If I remember it correctly, it was you said that one of the reasons that Barack Obama may be electable and may, in fact, win is because Bush has, in fact, been so successful.
It's like his success will backfire on him.
The war has been so successful, we haven't had more attacks, and we're all so improperly overly secure, false sense of security, you'll go, oh, you know, we're good, Obama can win.
Well, I think it was, you know, that's one reason.
I mean, of course, Bush has helped protect this nation, but I think maybe the terrorists, you know, this is a combination of both.
That's the reason.
Now, they wanted somebody who was weak on defense, such as Barack Obama.
And I think part of their plan is that, okay, we get a guy in office like this.
He cuts our military.
He cuts all of our defenses.
Hey, you know, we're sitting ducks.
Well, that's the baseline fear.
That is the baseline fear.
I mean, if it's no more complex than that, Barack Obama is a weak president, viscerally anti-military, follows those instincts, cuts our military, pulls out of Iraq, empowers al-Qaeda, and we have another 9-11.
I mean, now, will that happen?
I don't know.
Could that happen?
Absolutely.
Go ahead.
I'm sorry.
I just want to say something else, kind of related.
I think what's happened is the liberal media has brainwashed a lot of the American public into believing, oh, there's no danger.
You know, we're living, this is pre-9-11, you know, everything's hunky-dory.
And that's another reason that they elected, you know.
Bett, I will blister the media for anything and everything that they deserve.
And maybe even some things that they don't sometimes.
This ain't the media.
It's us.
We as a country, and maybe there's a media component to this.
I don't know, but it's still our fault.
We are fat, lazy, war-weary, historically illiterate.
And it's not the media's job to make us any different.
It is our job.
Remember, we're the ones who talk about personal responsibility all the time.
It's our responsibility to know what a war is, what it feels like.
Talk to some veterans of World War II.
They will tell you what casualties are.
Every time I hear someone urinate on this war by talking about 4,000 war dead, you know what 4,000 war dead is called?
It's called the summer of 68 in one season of one war, just about.
It is our fault.
It's our fault.
We are societally historically illiterate and not strong enough of will and of spine and of heart to stand up in this battle of civilizations and win it.
And that's one thing that just happens to not be CNN's fault.
I love you, man.
Appreciate it.
1-800-282-2882.
1-800-282-2882.
Let's go ahead and take our pause now, come back and have room on the other side for maybe another person or two.
Mark Davis in for Rush on the EIB Network.
Saturday Night Special, right?
Now, speaking of firearms, little story to tell, is this happening in your neighborhood?
I was in a sporting goods store the other day, and I was actually looking for a present for my producer.
He's a big hunter, and I wanted to get him a little hunting hat or some little goofy thing.
And it's a cool store, Academy, Sports and Outdoors, and a wonderful store.
And I'm in there, and I'm behind a guy, and this will sometimes, boy, you ever wonder what it's like to be Rush?
Can Rush go to a movie?
God love him.
Can he go to a store?
Can he go to Target?
You know, it's just, I mean, listen, and boy, I don't think he'll be complaining about it, but you do have to think about this.
We talked about this here in the Metroplex about what's it like.
In fact, I talked to Deion Sanders about this during the time that he was a cowboy.
And we were talking about something.
He was talking about the slings and arrows of fame.
And I said, oh, please spare me the violin music.
And he said, listen, I'm not complaining.
I'm so not complaining.
But, and I'll get back to the sporting goods store in a minute.
He said, if it's Christmas season and it's Toys R Us and I want to go buy some toys for my daughters, I have three choices.
Go in alone, be mobbed immediately and never get out and never do anything.
That's one.
Go in with a security guy or a small entourage essentially to keep people off me so that I can go in, buy stuff and leave like a normal person, in which case I'm a complete you-know-what.
Or walk the line in between there, go in with a little entourage, some security, buy my stuff, and then take 10 or 15 minutes to talk to people.
At some point, I got to stop and I got to leave.
And then those, and then those people hate me.
So I got no choice.
So anyway, fame has its highs and its lows.
Here's the deal.
So I'm in the sporting goods store because I can do it anonymously, and because I ain't that famous yet.
And the guy's in front of me, and he says, hey, Mark, I love your show.
Thank you.
What you got?
Well, just celebrating the new president.
He's got like 150 boxes of shotgun shells.
Guns and ammo are at a premium because I'm thinking people wonder how long they'll be able to buy them.
Mark Davis in for rush.
God bless you.
Thank you very, very much.
And I'll see you whenever next time is.
Be good.
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