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Dec. 16, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:55
December 16, 2008, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Boy, I did not see that one coming.
I mean to tell you Caroline Kennedy now says she may in fact go after the Senate seat in New York vacated by Hillary Clinton.
This was just like a shot out of the blue, wasn't it?
Nobody had any idea, a well-kept secret.
In fact, the only reason anybody knew about it yesterday or the day before was because she got a call from the governor of Illinois demanding 500 grand for the seat.
So uh that kind of you know blew it wide open.
Other than that, I once again everybody, Jason Lewis here, Minnesota's anchorman filling in for America's Mr. Anchorman.
Behind the golden EIB Mike once again in the Attila the Hun chair.
Great to be back at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Actually, of course, I guess our Illinois governor, Mr. Uh Blogoyevich, is getting delusional.
You can't sell a New York seat.
I'm just kidding there.
Maybe David Patterson, the beleaguered governor of New York, so upset with Saturday Night Live, I gotta get into that a little bit.
Maybe he's making a deal.
I don't know.
Hillard or uh Caroline, you can you can have Hillary seat if you do one thing.
You go to Washington and shut down Saturday Night Live.
That's it.
Did you see this?
Did you see this brew aha?
I mean to tell you it was hysterical.
The skit they did parodying uh David Patterson, the governor of New York who wants to yet once again raise taxes in New York, this time an obesity tax on non-diet soda, believe it or not.
Yeah, I'm not making this up.
That's all New York needs.
We're in a recession, so I got an idea.
Uh let's penalize more work savings and investment.
Shrewd.
Where do we get these leaders?
Anyway, Patterson's very upset because the Saturday Night Live folks uh made fun of him.
They made him look dumb.
You know, kind of like what they did to Sarah Palin, George Bush, Ronald Reagan, uh, Gerald Ford.
I remember Chuy Chase going after Gerald Ford for being clumsy, for being clumsy.
I no fault of his own.
He's clumsy.
That's going after somebody's quote unquote disability, isn't it?
You know, the this hypersensitivity that we find ourselves in these days is political correctness personified.
People always ask me, what do you what do you mean by political correctness?
And the best explanation I can come up with is political correctness is when you want to effectively criminalize something that the politically correct crowd finds offensive.
So you end up with campus speech codes.
There was one campus that had a speech code banning inappropriate laughter.
You know, kind of like the laughter at uh at the Rock on Saturday night, uh the Saturday Night Live stuff.
Come on.
What where why is it these people are so humorous?
I thought the Palin skits were hysterical.
Tina Faye did a great job.
I thought the old you know, the old skiffs going back with Bill Murray and the whole gang in Saturday Night Live.
Pretty funny stuff, and more than other particular programs, uh pretty even-handed.
They went after a lot of people in the years of Saturday Night Live, and they went after some Democrats.
I remember seeing an hysterical skit uh about a a leading Democrat of the time once, and I thought, wow, these guys are actually uh, you know, going after both sides.
It just kind of goes to show you that the left really doesn't like uh their ox to be gored too much.
They like political correctness.
And that's what this is all about.
That's what censorship is all about.
They want to criminalize what is the offensive.
Little problem with that, called the First Amendment.
That's precisely why we have it to protect offensive speech.
Oh, it's not absolute.
That's why we have laws against libel and slander.
Your speech ends when it actually uh, you know, instigates harm against somebody else.
There's laws against fighting words or fire in a crowded theater.
But there is nothing in the American experiment that would ever try to restrict speech that somebody finds merely offensive.
For heaven's sakes.
I mean, look at how far we've gone down the road, the slippery slope, if you will, on some rather salacious uh sexual speech.
That's fine.
But you can't make fun of David Patterson.
It was hysterical.
They ought to do it again next Saturday night.
You know, speaking of this uh Illinois governor, uh, Blagoyevitch, uh, you know, and the horse trading and all of this.
I've got uh uh I'm not certain if it's an update.
I know Rush has talked about this, but but there's something here that bothers me.
And uh Victoria Tenzing wrote an op-bed on the Wall Street Journal the other day that that kind of nailed the U.S. attorney in this case, Patrick Fitzgerald, for violating the ethical requirement that the Justice Department mandates that prior to a trial, a prosecutor shall refrain from convicting the defendant, essentially is what I'm saying.
You know, the prosecutor assembles probable cause for a charge, they don't convict beyond a reasonable doubt.
And they should not make statements that are extrajudicial, that pose uh, you know, uh a threat of heightening public condemnation, tainting the jury pool, that sort of thing.
And yet Fitzgerald, when he was going after the beleaguered Democratic governor of Illinois, did just that.
I mean, he, you know, what did they say?
He said uh this is corruption as low as it gets or something like that.
Uh this is this is uh appalling.
He went uh you know, taking us to new low, Blagoevich political corruption crime spree.
Uh the uh law enforcement chimed in with, you know, if Illinois isn't the most corrupt state.
Now, far be it for me to defend Chicago politics, or as Sean Conray used to say, Chicago politics.
When they strike you, you strike them back four times.
Okay, that's a pretty bad Sean Connery.
But nevertheless, you get the drift.
The point is, there's something a little fishy about this.
It's gotten me going.
And it goes back, I think Rush mentioned this a while back, but I've been kind of following this thing, and if you look, believe it or not, from a criminal defense standpoint on this particular indictment, the 76-page headline grabbing affidavit, you'll find that it's far from a slam dunk in front of a jury.
Uh, the idea that the case is done.
Now, politically it's done.
I mean, there's moves to impeach this guy, and hopefully there'll be a special election because you cannot allow the Illinois machine, the Chicago machine, to get rid of the sacrificial lamb, the current governor, so somebody else can appoint another lackey to the U.S. Senate.
There's got to be a special election because the whole community is tainted.
Let's be honest about this.
I'm surprised, you know, people in Chicago voting voting frequently, voting from the grave.
I mean, of course, it's been going on for quite some time.
You can go back to Nixon and Kennedy for crying out loud in that race.
Which, by the way, Nixon said he did not want to challenge.
There was evidence of vote fraud in 1960, uh, all over the country, but especially in Illinois and I believe in Texas.
He did not want to challenge it because he thought it would be too traumatic for the country.
Hey, Al, you listening.
Point is uh, this is not a slam dunk for uh for Fitzgerald to go after Blagoevich.
A number of criminal defense attorneys say that the portions of the FBI edited transcripts don't necessarily add up to criminal behavior.
Uh politicians keep accounts.
They engage in horse trading.
What's hyperbole and what's the usual political give and take?
You don't think your local politician will take a campaign contribution from, oh, I don't know, an infrastructure contractor in exchange for voting for a gasoline tax to build more roads?
Welcome to Minnesota, my friends.
Happens all over the country.
And typically a prosecutor would wait to obtain a grand jury indictment before arresting somebody as high profile as Blagojevich, but they moved in advance.
They moved in a hurry.
And you know what they say?
They wanted to thwart Blagojevich from completing some of the crimes.
Well, wouldn't it have been easier had Blagoevich actually appointed somebody for cash into the Senate seat?
Money had changed hands, had that on tape or on a wiretap?
Of course it would have been.
Would have been much more compelling evidence.
Right now you got a guy saying the Senate seat is golden.
Well, what does that mean?
Politicians engage in horse trading, I'll do this for you, you do this for me.
Now, I I'll be the first to admit this this is beyond the usual horse trading, and there is such a thing as conspiracy when it comes to committing a crime.
But nevertheless, this was unusual in cutting the investigation short before you had the slam dunk evidence to get this guy.
And Victoria Tinzing and others are raising the possibility or seem to be inferring that wait a minute, what who is Patrick Fitzgerald trying to protect here?
Was he perhaps afraid?
Goodness gracious, afraid that the governor might engage in wiretap conversations with, oh, I don't know, a high campaign staffer of Barack Obama, perhaps?
Maybe actually do a quid pro quo with the incoming administration?
Now there's no evidence right now that the President-elect met with the governor, although Obama's team uh yesterday said, Well, we're not going to comment on this at the behest of the U.S. attorney, Mr. Fitzgerald, he doesn't want us to comment on this.
Now that's ridiculous.
They could comment on it.
They don't have to comply with this, but it's an excuse not to give out any more information on how many times that Ram Emanuel may, I say may have met with the governor's staff.
You give the impression that Fitzgerald wanted to cut this thing short.
Well, I mean, why I mean we gotta stop these guys quick before Obama does something dumb and ruins the incoming Messiah.
Now remember, if you think this is all conservative hyperbole, think again.
U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald is the fellow that went after Scooter Libby for a perjury trap.
Remember the Valerie Plain case, the quote unquote CIA operative who wasn't, who wasn't clandestine, who wasn't, in fact, a a classified agent that would that would be covered under the Identities Protection Act of 1982.
The woman who wrote that, once again, Victoria Tanzing, says, I wrote the law or helped write the law, and she wasn't covered.
So how could she be outed?
Joseph Wilson outed himself in the New York Times.
But how did Joseph Wilson get this plum job to go check on the yellow cake and then the New York Times and everybody else made a big deal out of this?
There was no quid pro quo for uranium in Africa for Saddam Hussein, therefore Bush lied about Iraq.
And and when Rove and Libby and Et al were confronted, they said, Well, I don't know, you're gonna have to ask uh Joseph Wilson how he got that gig.
Could be his wife had some influence here.
She's in the CIA.
She may have gotten him that appointment.
Who knows?
Just re you know, rebutting accusations.
And for that, Patrick Fitzgerald went on a proverbial witch hunt to go after Scooter Libby, whom he finally got on a perjury trap, all the while knowing who the real leaker was.
Richard Armitage over in state.
So you had Fitzgerald going after Libby for leaking, knowing, according to Tenzing and others, before he ever started the investigation in January 04, that Armitage, the skeptic of the Iraq conflict, was the leaker.
Makes you suspicious that this guy had a uh political axe to grind.
And now some are suggesting, well, what's going on in Illinois?
Why cut it short?
Why save Obama?
Why have the sacrificial lamb be Blogoyevitch when bigger fish could have been fried?
Just a thought, my friends, just a thought, a little twist on all of the uh nonsense going on in Illinois.
We've got that in the news.
We've got we've got the era of irresponsibility back and rearing its ugly head.
The Supreme Court now is allowing you poor cigarette smokers out there who didn't know, after, let's see, 40 years of labels on the cigarette pack that cigarette smoking was bad for you, even for light cigarettes.
So the Supreme Court once again bowing to the plaintiff's bar is going to allow lawsuits, get this, over cigarette advertising.
They advertised it was a light cigarette low tar.
I didn't know that smoking was was bad for me.
Why, why?
I'm a moron.
1-800-282-2882, I'm Jason Lewis, filling in for Rush Limbaugh today.
Rush will be back tomorrow.
In the meantime, check out Rush Limbaugh.com.
Back with your calls when we return.
With talent on loan today from Rush Limbaugh, I am Jason Lewis, Minnesota's Mr. Wright.
Glad to be back in the Attila the Hun chair once again during the uh holiday season.
By the way, in case you're wondering, it is yet to get above zero in uh the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.
Note Al.
It's not happening.
Get over it.
Obama made some cabinet choices that are just to the left of Karl Marx on the environments.
We'll get to those a little later.
We've got some environmental news as always.
Lots of things to talk about, some great guests coming up in the second and third hour about what's going on in Washington with the bailout and the stimulus package, as though government spending could get us out of a recession.
Didn't they try that in Eastern Europe?
But I got to get to this cigarette case before we uh go to the phone calls at 1-800-282-2882.
Now, I enjoy a great cigar like Rush every now and then, but I'm not delusional about it.
I know in a perfect world that if you smoke too many, it's not good for you, just like cigarettes.
I also know that you can the health claims in many cases or the deleterious effects of of all sorts of things can be overblown by by the Ralph Nader types out there for gain by primarily the attorneys, the pro the plaintiff's bar.
And so uh w when when you see something like this, and when people voluntarily take a moderate risk to enjoy life, uh why should that be settled in a court of law?
We now have this notion that contrary to the preemption doctrine of the FDA label on cigarettes, individuals claiming they smoked too much, caused health problems, they didn't know it was bad for them.
And by the way, up until recently, these lawsuits went nowhere.
It was called the the criminal defense doctrine of assumption of risk.
That when you engage in something, whether it's jumping on a trampoline or smoking or doing, you know, eating too much, uh, the fact is you are assuming a risk yourself.
Now those common law defenses have basically been eviscerated when it comes to tobacco companies.
We have shredded the law, trampled on the law because we don't like big tobacco.
But don't think you can do that to big tobacco without doing it to every manufacturer in the country, and the plaintiff's bar would love to do just that.
You know, they sue for fun and profit, then they contribute to Democrats to block tort reform.
That's the way the game is played, or they run themselves.
Unless you're Dickie Scrugs of Mississippi, who's now been sentenced to five years for the anti-tobacco zealot five years for bribing a uh judge, and then you got little problem of the attorney general down there who's in trouble and being investigated, sued by State Farm for keeping documents from the court.
But but I digress.
Here's the situation.
We have had labels, the cigarette labeling and advertising act on a package of cigarettes since I believe 1965.
And it was required under federal law.
If the federal government requires you to warn people that cigarette smoking is bad for your health, how is it possible, regardless of the marketing, how is it possible then to sue the cigarette companies for fraud?
Now, I don't want to get too esoteric in the law here, but there is something called the preemption doctrine, which says if the federal law is in its proper sphere, that is, there's a federal nexus, and we have far too much federal law, far too much federal criminal code, we need to get back to federalism.
But there are, if you remember the landmark Supreme Court case going back in the uh eighteenth century, McCullough v.
Maryland, I believe, no, actually the 19th century, McCullough v.
Maryland, says where federal law is warranted, it is supreme.
And if the federal law requires you to do something, how is it possible in complying with the law you can now be sued to perpetuate fraud?
It is unbelievable to me.
There's a pending case on the preemption doctrine with regard to a drug company that's going to settle a lot of this.
But this is not a good sign.
This idea, and by the way, the American Heart Association is ecstatic.
You know, since when did these nonprofits, very, very wealthy, become so political?
Why don't they solve heart disease and cancer instead of advocating smoking bans and contributing money to smoking ban groups?
I don't understand how that became a part of the nonprofit mission.
But they have, and they're all politically correct to the extreme.
The idea that people don't know that cigarette smoking is bad for them, therefore could be defrauded is a real joke.
You can go back a century when you know fourteen states at the height of the uh National Anti-Cigarette League ban the sale of cigarettes.
For in the words of the Tennessee Supreme Court, they're noxious and deleterious effects.
We've known for decades, a century.
How is anybody defrauded?
This is a gift to the plaintiff's bar, to the trial attorneys, to Ralph Nader who gets his money from those groups.
That's what this is all about.
I'll give you a perfect example of what I'm talking about when it comes to preemption.
Think about this for a moment.
Remember because we are so, shall we say, sensitive over the environment these days, that we had to have oxygenated fuels.
The Clean Air Act said you gotta have we got to get rid of the unleaded gasoline.
We're gonna have to have oxygenated fuels, and they were only conveniently for the people who were lobbying.
There were only two alternatives.
And they were MTBE and ethanol, both of which are not very good fuels.
MTBE had a lot of problems with it.
But they had to comply with the law in California to put it in to comply with the Clean Air Act, and then they got sued for it.
If you comply with the law, you should not be liable in general for you know, in a court of law for being sued.
I'm Jason Lewis, Infor Rush to the phone calls when we return, so don't go away.
All right, to the phones we go.
1800-282-2882 on this uh lovely Tuesday rush is out today.
We'll be back tomorrow, however, so do not despair.
First up today in Ludlow, Kentucky, John, you are on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Hi, Jason.
Hey.
Uh I just have a general question.
Um I've never heard Rush or you or any of the talks you hosts um, and I'm sure you've answered this a million times.
If capitalism is taken to its ultimate extreme, doesn't it degenerate into social Darwinism?
I love that line.
I've always loved that that false premise.
And when especially since the opposite is true.
Capitalism is in fact protected by the law.
It's called private property.
It's called laws against illegitimate force and fraud.
So that the only way to get ahead in capitalism is through social cooperation.
That is uh you know, you cannot defraud me, speaking of lawsuits.
Uh they are legitimate when somebody is truly defrauded.
They are legitimate i if somebody is encroached upon, tort law, somebody doesn't keep their word, contract law, uh you can't steal.
That is the essence of upholding individual rights and making certain the strong don't run roughshod over the weak.
Now compare that, my friend, to socialism.
Where socialism, the mob rule, where there are no limits on what the Federal Government may do, enumerated powers be damned, is clearly the power of the mob.
The power of brute force.
If you win an election, you can do whatever you want to anybody else.
It is the power of government.
I think you've misunderstood my question.
I guess.
Um my question is if capitalism is taken to the ultimate extreme, if everyone works as hard as they can, and everyone gets as much education as they can, and everyone tries as much as they can.
Uh are you not still going to have people who are not employed?
And I mean, it's almost like saying, well, if they starve to death, that's the system.
Well, no.
You sound like Barney Frank.
Uh we need welfare for the automobile workers, and at least he called it what it was.
Uh the bottom line is, of course, there have always been people who are unemployed, most usually children.
Now, it's amazing how capitalism in producing the greatest amount of wealth the world has ever known takes care of 99% of its children.
But what about the people?
They do not have children do not have commercial value, and yet the vast majority of them uh are taken care of.
How is that possible in this Darwinistic system?
Well, uh, even animals take care of their children, and they certainly uh fall under Darwinistic systems.
Yes, but animals do not abide by the rules of capitalism.
Private property, freely flowing capital, the rule of law.
Uh let me why do you suppose that when you get into a third world banana republic, there is so much poverty and so much uh, you know, oppression.
Because there is no capitalism, there's only government.
And the people who control the government may do whatever they want.
You put limits on government so that capitalism and freedom of choice is protected, so quite frankly, the only way the strong can can you know run roughshod over the weak is to ask for your business.
Nobody forces you to buy a software program.
Nobody forces you to buy a gallon of gasoline, but you are forced to pay taxes, aren't you?
If you're if you have enough money to pay taxes, yes.
Um but the planet.
Let me get let me interject one thing before I let you finish, and that is you know, Jefferson said it the best.
He said, Look, what what this experiment is is a meritocracy.
It is ruled by by an aristocracy based on merit as opposed to a familial or a monarchy or a government aristocracy.
Isn't that better?
Well, sir, meritocracy um implies competition.
And there are people who simply cannot compete.
And I'm wondering what happens to those people.
Though I'm who can't compete?
Who doesn't have commercial value out there?
Are you saying that half of your Americans are illiterate?
I would say that the people who are currently unemployed, and it's not 6.5%, if you take the discouraged workers, it's about 12.5%.
We will all—you've got to get over this fetish of jobs.
Are you going to retire someday, John?
I hope to.
I don't know if I will or not.
Well, you're going to be unemployed.
I will say that.
If somebody is wealthy at 40, Barbara Streisand could retire tomorrow.
She'd be unemployed.
There will come a point where I can no longer work, yes.
No, not when you can no longer work.
When you choose not to work.
You want full employment, John, here's what we're gonna do.
Here's what we're gonna do in Barack Obama's stimulus package.
We're going to have full employment.
We're gonna hire folks in Kentucky to dig ditches, and we're gonna hire people in Ohio to fill them up again.
Hey, we got full employment, John.
You know what we have for wealth?
Zip zero Nada.
Well, since I don't have any wealth, that doesn't concern me.
Well, that's the problem.
And that's exactly why you're flirting with socialism.
Since you don't have, you're more than willing to use the arm of government force to take from somebody who does, and you tell me who the social Darwinist is.
I gotta go, but thanks for the uh effort.
I mean, th this is really emblematic of what we're fighting against in America.
The people that that are the real, you know, survival of the fittest crowd have no uh no reticence at all to use the force of government to take from others.
Tell me that isn't social Darwinism.
Th this whole notion the purpose of good economic policy is to is to promote wealth creation, to foster production, not just jobs.
By the way, we've got re we've had record low unemployment.
There will always be unemployment, and that's why when you produce wealth, you can have a safety net if you care to to help those people.
People do it voluntarily anyway.
It's always good to start off the program with the Democrat.
Uh Breck in Ann Arbor, Michigan, thanks for waiting.
You're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Jason Lewis.
Hi.
Hi, Jason.
Uh what do you think of the idea that the Obama camp is orchestrating the whole thing with Mojevich?
Uh Emmanuel finds out about the sting and then orders the prosecutor to come in, Fitzgerald, and stop it before he actually commits the crime so that they can uh in essence save his tail by uh stopping it and let the let it fly.
I mean, you've still got the guy that had the cash in the freezer in the office, uh, why not keep uh Moevich in?
That's what some people are suggesting, not so subtly.
And I wouldn't, you know, I don't know whether it was orchestrated by the President elect's team or not, or whether you had kind of a consensus or a I'm not gonna say uh a wink and a nod.
That might be casting too many aspersions.
Well, I think that's a good thing.
You do have an unusual situation here where Fitzgerald cut the investigation short.
Why would he do that?
I think the uh the Obama camp stumbled into it.
Uh, you know, when they started getting the briefings and then found out what the FBI was doing.
Well, the idea what I would think.
Here's a guy that that campaigned for Blogevitch in two thousand two, two thousand six, uh uh the president elect.
Here's a guy who clearly was was you know, whose Senate seat was the epicenter of his life, so he was giving that up.
He wouldn't be in negotiations uh with the governor.
I I don't know if negotiations are the is the right word, but he wouldn't be talking to the governor.
Of course they were talking.
Now, whether Barack Obama was actually calling up Rod on the phone, I don't know, and nobody does.
So far there's no evidence of that.
But certainly the camps were talking.
Of course they would do.
Why wouldn't they be?
But then they after they were talking is when they found out about the FBI sting.
So you're suggesting that we're about to have another eight and a half minute gap on a wiretap tape?
I think you're gonna find more than eight and a half minutes.
I mean, uh you know, I don't know, I I don't want to go too far down the Conspiratorial angle here, but I do think there are some questions that have to be answered, and you bring up a couple of good ones.
Breg, thanks for checking in.
Scott in beautiful Santa Barbara.
You're next up on the program.
Hello, sir.
Yes, uh, hello, Jason.
Uh I just want to talk about uh Mr. Fitzpatrick.
Uh I'm an attorney.
Uh when I saw him do his uh press conference, I was very outraged because I think he should be fired.
He's a show voter on day one of the Obama administration.
I mean, he did the same thing in the Scooter Libby case.
Uh he held a press conference.
Um if I was uh Blogo's defense attorney, I would have gone into court that morning and then requested a gag order because this guy, he's held to a higher standard.
He is to he's sworn to uphold justice, and here he is, judge and jury and prosecutor in front of the cameras.
And by the way, I think all the witnesses behind him should be reprimanded because why are they there?
Were they told to be there?
I mean, they're supposed to be independent, they're independent law enforcement.
Uh, you know, dependents are saying that Mr. Fitzpatrick is untouchable.
I'm sorry, but this is the second time he did this.
He held a press conference in the Scooter Libby case, and he should be fired, period.
That's that's the same thing.
So you uh you as an attorney concur with my monologue to open the show.
Absolutely concur.
And when I saw him do his press conference, the first thing I was thinking is why is he doing this?
This this is I don't know if it's totally on if it's you know unethical per se, but it comes close because it gives uh you know an appearance of of impropriety.
If he was going to hold the case.
Well, let's take this uh let's take this a step further.
Is in fact he I I'm not gonna say again deliberately or whether it's incompetence or whether he just can't uh hold his his uh show boating in check, whatever the case might be.
Is he deliberately then giving Blagojevich a number of appellate options?
I mean, I'm gonna go there and say I can't get a fair jury when the U.S. attorney is telling all of Chicago that I I am convicted beyond a reasonable doubt already.
Well, yes, it is tainting the jury uh uh absolutely.
It it to me it is.
That's one of the reasons why I would have requested a gag order.
But you know, the other the other thing is the uh the witnesses.
I mean, you had I believe they had a uh, you know, the guy that the FBI guy, the agent in charge.
He also made some sort of statement there about how bad this is and all that.
Well, if I was Blogo's attorney, I mean I would wheel out, you know, bring a television with the table.
And say, why are you on TV?
Why are you trying to get your 15 minutes of fame?
Did Fitzpatrick order you to do this?
I mean, there's no reason.
So I gotta I've got to be able to do that.
I gotta cut this short, get to break.
I gotta cut this short and get to break, Scott, but you're concisely, why is he doing it then?
Uh i to me he was doing it for his his own glory.
He did it before in a scooter libby case, and he should be fired.
Uh so noted.
Scott, the attorney from Santa Barbara, thanks.
I'm Jason Lewis.
In for El Rushbow on the Excellence and Broadcasting Network.
By the way, the governor of Illinois was preparing an executive order, according to the AP, that would have allowed a group of home health home health care workers to unionize, even as the complaint of which we've been speaking was uh was being drafted.
Uh even as uh as the governor was exploring options to get a job with the same powerful union, the Service Employees International Union, which I believe gave him uh more than one point eight million in uh campaign contributions.
So as you remember, this uh this uh quickly expanding union, uh, the Service Employees International Union was allegedly in on the quote unquote scheme to uh cut a deal uh to get the person they want in that uh in that Senate seat according to the complaint.
Um this is hardly surprising.
It's Chicago, but none of it, quite frankly, is hardly surprising in government.
You know, if you take a look at scandals, and I don't care where they exist, they always exist when someone has power over another human being.
And government is the ultimate, the ultimate in power.
As Washington was allegedly uh allegedly said, uh government is not eloquence, it is not reason, it is force.
And that's you know, the the real the real definition of what legitimate government is is only to repel illegitimate force.
We give government a monopoly on force, but for one reason to repel illegitimate force.
The danger when you don't have limits on government is the force we give government comes to oppress us, just as the others would do in the absence of government.
That's why you've got constitutional chains on government.
And when you break those chains, we do so at our own peril.
And we get scandals.
We get corruption.
We get oppression.
If that isn't dog eat dog social Darwinism, I don't know what is.
In Baltimore, Maryland, Brian, you're on EIB.
Hi.
Yes, sir.
Uh I wanted to ask you with the last eight years, it's been said that Dick Cheney was the one with the most power because he was second in command and most experience.
So are we going to go through the same thing with Joe Biden?
I have no idea.
I don't think it makes much difference, to be perfectly honest with you.
Biden would be more comic relief.
Well, yeah.
Uh, you know, someone might want to tell Joe Biden which article in the Constitution talks about the role of the vice presidency before he has another debate.
But I I have no idea, and I don't buy the notion that that Cheney was the the Rasputin uh, you know, in uh in in this particular administration.
I've been, you know, critical of this administration on a number of issues.
Uh certainly when it comes to fiscal restraint, there hasn't been any on spending, and we're laying the groundwork for kind of a 1930 style Malays with these silly little bailouts which have failed to achieve their objective.
Um so there's room to be critical, but I don't know that I'd be critical of of Dick Cheney any more than George W. Bush on those particular issues in this election.
The flip side of that is he has kept us free from another attack for for eight years.
Yes.
And who would have thunk that on nine twelve?
Uh-huh.
But I don't think that the whole vice president, you know, being in control.
I mean, it was Al Gore that was going to be the most powerful vice president ever.
This is a creation of the media because they loathe Dick Cheney because every now and then he actually s you know says what he believes, and it's usually the truth.
They can't countenance that.
Thanks for the call.
Michael in Houston, Texas.
You're on the Rush Limbaugh program with uh Jason Lewis.
Hi.
Hey, Jason, nice to talk to you.
Same to you.
All right.
I'd like to first off say I'm not exactly um a Democrat.
I'm not a Republican.
I did vote Democrat this year, but I don't want to get into that.
Well, my call was about is what you were talking about with cigarettes and uh the people that were suing the cigarette companies.
First off, that's ridiculous.
You know, that's on there.
Everybody knows cigarettes are bad.
You know, they call us all day in school when we're young.
For somebody to sue them, it's ridiculous.
But well, the states the states did, and they didn't even have standing to sue because there were no real damages, but the master settlement agreement was a was a a legal compact in my view, amongst a bunch of state attorneys general for money and greed and power, but enough said on that.
Yeah, it's exactly my other thing here was about the free market capitalism, which uh I do believe could be governed to a certain point, though.
It is good to a certain point.
But did you know that there is a safe cigarette out there?
One of the people that worked for the tobacco industries created a safe cigarette that would not harm anybody.
And it would still be addicted, still keep people addicted, still be able to keep them revenue, but they buried it.
They buried it because it would take out all the other cigarette companies.
All right, I'm up against the clock here, but let me just say this.
This sounds like the automobile that doesn't run on gasoline that has been killed by these evil car companies or oil companies or whatever.
Look, what you're saying is somebody is sitting on a gold mine, and for the sake of conspiracy, they're just gonna retract from the market and not put something out there that would make them rich beyond anybody's imagination.
I don't buy into those kind of conspiracies.
Gotta move, you're on the excellence and broadcasting network.
All right, coming up next hour, Representative uh Trent Franks will join us, second district, Arizona, voted against the automobile bailout.
We'll get into that.
We've got some environmental news with Barack picking a environmental cabinet energy cab cabinet that is reminiscent of the Malays days when Jimmy Carter's idea of an energy policy was hey, do with less.
Energy conservation is no energy policy, but that's what's in store for us.
And uh, we'll also talk to the uh proponent of the tax holiday instead of the bailout, and that does make some sense.
I would prefer a permanent tax uh reduction.
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