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April 6, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:28
April 6, 2009, Monday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Yes, indeed, America's anchorman is away today, and this is your undocumented anchor man, Mark Stein, sitting in.
No supporting paperwork whatsoever.
Don't worry, it could be worse.
I saw a column a couple of days ago by Kathleen Parker headlined, Is Megan McCain the GOP's answer to Rush Limbaugh?
Well, duh.
Anyway, Megan will be here tomorrow.
No, no, no, no.
I'm just kidding.
Rush will be back in on Tuesday.
Until then, it's yours truly from the Foreign Exchange Student Wing of the Limbaugh Institute of Advanced Conservative Studies.
Terrific exchange program.
Guys like me get to come and study at the Limbaugh Institute.
And in return, Barack Obama gets to do an immersion course at the Jacques Chirac Language School in Clichy-Subois.
It's an amazing course.
Just 20 minutes, and you too can be talking like a Frenchman.
Just repeat after Monsieur Chirac.
The Americans fail to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world.
The Americans are arrogant and dismissive.
Now you try it.
And so President Obama did on Friday, speaking to a Franco-German audience, quote, in America, he said, there is a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world.
There have been times when America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive, unquote.
By George, he's got it.
You know, it's come to something when Barack Obama is complaining that Americans are too arrogant.
I don't know about you, but at least Bill Clinton just apologized to Africa for the slave trade and to Muslims for the Crusades.
When you start apologizing to the Continentals, maybe the whole apology shtick is getting out of hand.
I think I preferred President Obama when he was bowing to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, prostrate before His Majesty, as if he, a mere American president, is only a humble subject to the House of Saud.
It was a full bow from the waist, and they took the picture from behind.
The president had his butt sticking up in the air, staring down at King Abdullah's wingtips.
And say what you like about that, but at least when he's in that position, he's not giving yet another speech.
So at least until he trains his butt to read the teleprompter.
Anyway, great to be with you for the start of another week of excellence in broadcasting.
El Rushbo will be back tomorrow to take you through the rest of the week.
Nothing much happened over the weekend.
Nothing much happened.
Quiet weekend.
North Korea rained on President Obama's European parade by launching another rocket, a Typo-Dong 2.
The North Korean government claims this Typo-Dong 2 is now up in space playing North Korean patriotic songs.
By the way, under the new Fairness Doctrine, we'll be playing 90 minutes of North Korean patriotic songs every day on this show.
It starts tomorrow, so don't miss it.
North Korean patriotic songs in space.
It's the theme of this year's Radio City Christmas spectacular.
But those North Korean patriotic songs available on satellite is good news for the Queen because she's already getting a bit sick of listening to Obama's 2004 speech to the Democratic Convention on that iPod he gave her.
But I'll say this for Kim Jong-il.
He has a terrific sense of timing.
He sent up his last rocket on the 4th of July a couple of years back.
Now he sent up another to coincide with Barack Obama's big speech in Prague.
And actually, in fairness to Kim Jong-il, it's very hard to send up a rocket on a day when President Obama isn't giving a big speech.
It must be a hell of a scheduling problem in Pyongyang.
You know, do we send the rocket up at the weekend and step on Obama's big speech in Prague?
Or do we wait till Tuesday and step on his big appearance and dancing with the stars?
Problems, problems.
So they send up the latest rocket, and they say, oh, the North Koreans say, oh, it's not to worry about it.
It's just for a satellite.
What does North Korea need a satellite for?
I mean, Kim Jong-il is the only cell phone.
You know, what do they want a satellite for?
There's nothing to watch.
There's North Korean patriotic songs on TV.
What do they need a satellite for that for?
So North Korea launches this rocket.
And it's our guy who goes ballistic.
Headline from the New York Times.
Obama calls on Security Council to punish North.
Woo!
Punishment!
Punishment!
This is what the president says, quote, this provocation underscores the need for action, not just this afternoon at the UN Security Council, but in our determination to prevent the spread of these weapons.
Rules must be binding.
Violations must be punished.
Words must mean something, unquote.
Words must mean something.
But if you read on in this story, you eventually get to paragraph 13 from the New York Times, quote, but it remained unclear exactly what the West will be able to do by way of the talked about punishment, unquote.
President Obama is calling for economic sanctions.
What sanctions?
What economy?
North Korea has millions of starving people.
It is one of the lowest GDPs per capita on the planet, lower than Ghana, lower than Zimbabwe, lower than Mongolia.
Its two principal exports are nuclear technology to Syria and Iran, and no doubt a few folks we don't know about as yet.
And its other big export is counterfeit Viagra.
They're the world's biggest exports of knockoff Viagra.
Don't laugh.
Once we get socialized healthcare, that's the only kind you'll be able to get here.
You'll have 10 minutes to get from the clinic to the Legion Hall to pick up that cute lady you've had your eye on for the last year and a half.
That's the only kind we'll have here.
Nonetheless, Obama is talking about getting a serious response, a serious response from the United Nations.
They met for three hours yesterday and according to the Associated Press, quote, failed to release even a customary preliminary condemnation.
Congratulations, Mr. President.
But these are early days, and I'm sure once he applies major diplomatic muscle at the UN, they may issue a statement expressing their concern.
Or if we work hard at getting enough international agreement, they may express their serious concern.
If North Korea persists in lobbying missiles all over the place, they may upgrade their serious concern to grave concern.
And, you know, if Obama is the world-uniting diplomatic genius we know him to be, the Security Council might go all the way and send a...
Stand well back, folks.
Here it comes.
May send a strongly worded letter.
Now, the New York Times is pretty steamed about this North Korean nuclear business.
As they said, it's a, quote, unwelcome distraction from all their stories about how Europe's melting for Michelle.
Melting for Michelle.
That's the politico headline.
Europe melts for Michelle.
Al Gore's polar bears are drowning in their thousands because Europe is melting for Michelle.
But now the North Koreans are lobbying typo dongs all over the map and it's an unwelcome distraction from all the Michelle worship.
So the New York Times rustled up some experts.
Headline, North Korean missile launch was a failure, experts say.
The experts are agreed according to the Times.
Relax, don't worry.
Nothing to see here, folks.
It went straight up and it came straight down.
That's the rocket, by the way, not a side effect of the cheap North Korean Viagra.
But that's what they said the last time about the North Korean rocket, about the big 4th of July rocket test.
From the trajectory, experts calculated that it was supposed to be headed to Hawaii and instead it fell in the Sea of Japan.
And everyone had a big laugh.
What a loser.
What a schmuck.
What a bozo.
Mr. Nukes are us.
He talks the talk, but he can't nuke the nuke.
Ha ha, what a big joke.
But that's the point.
That is the point.
This is why he's dangerous.
He's not the United States.
He's not the Soviet Union.
He's not India.
He's not even France.
He's an incompetent with nuclear weapons.
Why is that, as the New York Times sees it, good news?
You know, in 2006, he aimed for Hawaii and hit the Sea of Japan.
We don't know what he was aiming for this time around.
Maybe San Diego.
But this time he got a little further into the Sea of Japan.
Next time he might aim for Hawaii, San Diego again, or Oakland or Calgary or Presque Isle, Maine, or Beijing, Addis Ababa, Salzburg, Dublin.
You know, it doesn't really matter.
He's a self-taught nuclear madman and he hasn't quite got the hang of it.
That's why having incompetent nuclear madmen is on the whole worse than having competent nuclear madmen.
You know, if you're going to have a nuclear madman, I'd rather he was like the James Bond villains, at the point where they say, I'm afraid you're going rather tiresome, Mr. Bond, and start explaining the plot to him that they've got this precision nuclear laser out in space that can vaporize the White House and Buckingham Palace and selected other precision targets within 20 seconds if they don't get what they want.
This guy isn't like that.
He just says, whoop, bombs away, nukes away, and off it goes.
And he doesn't care.
He's not fussed about where it lands.
And for some reason, the New York Times thinks that's a reason not to worry about him too much.
Ah, sure, he'll aim for San Diego.
What the hell?
He'll, you know, he'll probably hit Sydney.
What a joke.
You know, that is not a reassurance.
A self-taught nuclear madman.
It's like if you're on the, if you ever been on the New Jersey Turnpike and somebody crosses the median and it's like a confused 93-year-old granny behind the wheel of a Toyota Corolla, that's a problem for her.
But if the confused 93-year-old granny crossing the median isn't behind a Toyota Corolla, if instead she's in an 18-wheeler coming straight at you, that's a problem for you.
And that's what it is with North Korea.
It's a one-man psycho-state with millions of starving people.
That's a problem for them.
But a one-man psycho-state with nuclear weapons is a problem for the rest of us.
And even the New York Times, after saying, hey, no big deal, barely cleared the perimeter fence and all the rest of it, winds up with a quote from Dr. David C. Wright, who said the test was an improvement on the 2006 version and eventually could lead to a ballistic missile that could throw a 2,200-pound warhead a distance of 3,700 miles.
If you're wondering what's 3,700 miles from Pyongyang and you're listening in Alaska, that would be you.
And that is what even the New York Times says at the end of this story is within the range of possibility.
Now, you remember back when it was the Cold War, and it was just America, Britain, France, Russia, and China with nukes.
The left was obsessed with them.
Armageddon was just around the corner.
They wrote novels, movies, plays, progressive rock concept LPs, all with the big mushroom cloud on the poster.
They wrote children's books about nuclear winter.
There was a famous poster of Ronald Reagan with Margaret Thatcher in his arms, like Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara, with a giant mushroom cloud behind them and the caption, she promised to follow him to the end of the earth.
He promised to arrange it.
Back then, that was all the left worried about because it was just crazies like Reagan and Thatcher who had nukes.
So you can understand why everyone was terrified.
But now it's just Kim Jong-il and the Ayatollahs with nukes.
So we're all sophisticated and relaxed about it.
Like the French hearing that their president's, you know, acquired a couple of extra mistresses.
It's no big deal.
Nothing to get alarmed about.
That's the New York Times thing.
So he's got a nuke and he fires it, and it doesn't go quite as far as he intended to.
So what?
What's the big deal?
Meanwhile, President Obama, still traipsing from one Euro schmooze to the next, he's gone from G20, NATO, EU, I think he's on to Turkey today, responded with a plea for a world without nuclear weapons, a world without nuclear weapons.
For Pete's sake, you know, North Korea is assisting the Iranians with their delivery systems.
The Iranians are promising to share their nukes with Sudan.
We're not going to have a world without nuclear weapons.
And incidentally, he's volunteering to give up the American ones first.
He says America has to lead the way to a world without nuclear weapons.
We're not going to have a world without nuclear weapons.
We're getting a world.
We're building a world right now in which the wealthiest nations in history, from Norway to New Zealand, are incapable of defending their borders.
While decrepit third world basket cases from North Korea to Sudan go nuclear.
How long do you think that arrangement's going to last?
How long do you think that arrangement's going to last?
Contrary to what the New York Times says, this is not a failure.
It is, as Obama rightly says, it's a provocation.
And his weak response tells not just North Korea, but all the other psycho capitals of the world exactly how credible and how serious American power is under the Obama administration.
More straight ahead.
Mark Stein in for Rush on the EIB network to start another week.
I am as reliable a guest host as a Kim Jong-il Typo-Dong 2.
I go straight up and nosedive into the asphalt.
But I'm here for the next three hours, and Rush will be back with you tomorrow.
Tragic news.
You know, people say this recession isn't serious.
It is beginning to bite.
The state of Georgia is considering closing the Jimmy Carter Plains Georgia Visitor Information Center because it costs $186,000 to run it and they just don't have that kind of money.
And the Associated Press story, that's tragic.
It's tragic.
It reveals that the Associated Press story reveals that the Jimmy Carter Visitors Center is the least visited visitors center in Georgia.
And HR and I were talking about this after the show, before the show, and he goes, well, hang on a bit.
A visitor center is basically just like an interstate toilet, isn't it?
And I go, yeah, that's the way it is in my part of the world.
In New Hampshire and Vermont, you see the thing saying, you know, visitor center, one mile, next visitor center, 87 miles.
So you think, well, now this would be a great time to visit the visitor center because otherwise it's going to be a really long time.
But people, with the Jimmy Carter Visitor Center, apparently people don't do that.
People say, you know, it says the sign on the road says Jimmy Carter Visitor Center one mile, next visitor center, 87 miles.
And apparently, Americans visiting Georgia from all the other 49 states just cross their legs and saying, I'll hang out another 87 miles before I go to the damn Jimmy Carter Visitors Center.
So nobody is using the Jimmy Carter Visitor Center.
And the $186,000 is going to be cut from the state budget.
And as the Associated Press headline puts it, shrine to Jimmy Carter on shopping block.
This is terrible.
This is disrespectful to our president, by the way.
If you are listening to this driving through Georgia, make a point of detouring and using the Jimmy Carter Visitors Center.
You know, it's probably not just a toilet.
They probably got like a vending machine or something there, too.
You know, they've got peanuts.
Exactly.
I bet you they have a choice of peanuts.
It's not just like, you know, the peanuts you get at peanuts you get in any old regular visitor center.
I bet they've got like extra, I bet they've got those ones that are, you know, infused with speciality flavors.
You've got the, you know, the hazelnut cappuccino flavored peanut and all the rest of it.
Yeah, that's HR suggests they've also got a pocket misery index, which actually is back.
It's fashionable again, isn't it?
The misery.
I don't even know whether the Jimmy Carter Misery Index is of a sufficient scale to encompass the new misery index.
But so listen, if you're in Georgia, detour, considering making a detour for the sake of America, detour 125 miles and the last five miles, you know, stop at a dine the last five miles, tank yourself up with the extra, go to the drive-through McDonald's and get one of those huge, great, you know, supersized cokes that you stick in the cup holder and you go around a bend and it falls out the cup holder and immediately fills up the driving thing over your knees and your brakes,
your brake pads don't work anymore.
That's that's get those extra supersized cokes, tank them down, save the Jimmy Carter Visitors Center in Georgia.
I want to see a line backed up out in Plains, Georgia.
I want to go there and see like 30 people standing in line to use the Jimmy Carter Memorial toilet.
We cannot let this close.
It speaks terrible, speaks volumes for America that we cannot maintain the Jimmy Carter Memorial toilet.
It's out there.
It's in Plains, Georgia.
You can't miss it.
You can't miss it.
It's the least visited visitor center in the state.
So you will identify the way to it by the lack of tire marks on the asphalt.
The lack of wear and tear on the road to it will tell you you're on the right road to the Jimmy Carter Visitors Center.
Make sure you get there because we really need to do something to save the Jimmy Carter Visitor Center.
And anytime someone tells you that this recession is not beginning to bite, just point them to that example: that the $186,000, we're going into debt.
We're beggaring grandkids as yet unborn with a $3.7 trillion budget.
And we cannot spare $186,000 to keep open the Jimmy Carter Memorial toilet.
What is this country coming to?
What is this country coming to?
You know, you go over to West Virginia to, is it still called West Virginia?
Everything else there is named just Robert C. after Robert C. Bird.
I don't know why they don't just name the state, rename the state Robert C. Birdistan, and be done with it.
And then he can have the whole thing named after him.
But they can build everything.
They can spend a fortune on things for Robert C. Bird, but they cannot keep the Jimmy Carter Memorial toilet open.
This is a tragedy, ladies and gentlemen.
Yeah, Rush will be back in tomorrow to take you through the end of the week.
But in the meantime, this is Mark Stein, the typo dong of guest hosts here for the rest of today's show.
Let us go to John in Crofton, Maryland.
John, you're on the Rush Limbaugh show.
How are you doing, Mark?
Great.
Great to have you with us.
Well, I'm just thinking with this Kim Jong-ill firing this missile, which, of course, we didn't want him to do.
And I figured, well, maybe, you know, Hillary had an effect on him that he wouldn't do it.
You know, you back down, but he didn't.
And where is Obama at the time, but in the Czech Republic, when he's given this news, and it just makes me think of that back-channel letter that he said to the Russian Premier Medov saying that if you stop helping the Iranians with their missile program, then we won't put missile shields in the Czech Republic Corps in Poland.
And I'm thinking, you know, you can't write this stuff.
No, no.
And he's missing the point here.
He's been cool on missile defense, even when he hasn't explicitly been promising the Russians that, in fact, there's nothing to worry about.
All they have to do is promise something, and then the missile defense thing will go away.
The reality is the Russians have compelling interests for keeping America on the receiving end of these nuclearizing states.
And they're going to carry on doing that, whatever they may say to Obama in public.
But you make a good point, too, John, in that, you know, at heart, this is about credibility.
What do you think those guys in Moscow make when they see American weakness in the face of a nothing state, a one-man state run by a crazy guy like Kim Jong-il?
This is the thing here.
It's not just about whether we look tough to Pyongyang.
It's whether we look tough to Beijing and Moscow and all kinds of other places too.
Hey, John, what do you think of missile defense?
Do you think, in fact, it's time for a full-scale backdown by Obama on that issue?
Well, you know, he backed down when they had trouble in Georgia, you know, during a campaign, I guess, near the end of the campaign.
And he backs down every time.
I mean, here he was just doing appeasement.
I mean, you're Australian, right?
I've been around.
I'm Canadian via a few other places.
Oh, you're Canadian?
Okay, I thought you were Australian.
But anyway, you're familiar with Neville Chamberlain going to appease Hitler.
And September 1st, 1939, that Hitler turned out to be a little bit of a distance to do what he wanted.
Yeah, there's a difference, though.
There's a difference.
People think of Hitler now as the crazy guy who killed millions of people.
Actually, in the 30s, he was doing a reasonable job of passing himself off as a, you know, admittedly somewhat authoritarian, but still within the realm of conventional leadership.
Lord Halifax, the British Foreign Secretary, goes to see Hitler, and he's getting out of his car, pulling up at Hitler's place at Berchtesgarten, and he sees this guy whom he assumes is the butler and hands him his coat.
And in fact, the guy he thought was the butler turned out to be Hitler, and the meeting got off to a very bad start.
But the point about that is that Hitler at that time was within the realm of he was doing terrible things and he was clearly a threat to peace in Europe.
But he wasn't off the charts kooky the way Kim Jong-il is.
He doesn't preside over some nothing state that has nothing going for it apart from the fact that it's got the world's greatest concession for generic Viagra.
And he wasn't like this Ayatollah guy, the Ayatollahs and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who comes and gives a big address in New York to the United Nations and talks about the 12th Imam showing up.
When Ahmadinejad was mayor of Tehran, he had the streets widened because he thought the 12th Imam was going to be coming back any day now, and it would be humiliating for the 12th Imam to have to go in procession down such narrow streets.
So he had the streets widened for him.
I mean, we are dealing here with people who are way off the charts, even compared to Hitler in the 1930s.
So I don't even think like the old, I don't even think, really, you can use the Neville Chamberlain excuse, because I don't think Neville Chamberlain would have been flying in to sit down with Kim Jong-il and thinking that he was someone you could actually seriously negotiate with, or with Makhmu Dukhman Inerjad.
And there's another point, too, in that because this happened before, and we know where it led, history will judge us far more harshly.
We don't have the excuse.
In the 1930s, guys like Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax could say, you know, oh my God, we had no idea where this was going to lead.
The idea of the Holocaust, to a guy like Lord Halifax, conventional British public servant, the idea of the chap you fly in to see killing six million people was literally inconceivable.
But it happened.
And because it happened, when we hear Makmun Akhmadinejad expressing explicit genocidal aims, we are obligated to take that more seriously.
We don't have the same excuse that Chamberlain and Halifax had in the 30s, that what they're planning is inconceivable.
It's no longer inconceivable.
It happened 70 years ago.
And when a guy starts pledging explicitly to make it happen again, you should take him at his word.
And the idea that this is just something that can be settled over tea in Paris, between Hillary Clinton and a couple of no-name mullers, is really not credible.
We're talking about the Korean nuke, the Typo-Dong 2 that they sent up over the weekend just in time to ruin Obama's stately progress through Europe.
1-800-282-2882.
This big government, by the way, you think big government can't get any bigger?
It's amazing the sort of things that government will pay for these days.
This is a story out of London from the BBC.
While the Home Secretary, that's like the third most important cabinet official in Britain.
You know, it's the equivalent of the Attorney General and the Secretary of the Interior and a bunch of other positions combined.
Third most important cabinet position in Britain.
While the Home Secretary was away on official business, on the evening of April the 1st at 1118, her husband watched an adult entertainment movie.
And on the evening of 6th April, he watched another adult entertainment movie.
Since these movies were available only on subscription, he had to pay for them.
He charged the payment to the government.
You know, you say what you like about this $3.7 trillion budget that's out there at the moment.
But, you know, say what you like about America that they haven't yet got to the stage where the spouses of cabinet ministers are putting their porn-watching habits on the taxpayer's dime.
The BBC continues, it's doubtful if the Home Secretary was entertained at all when she found out this was going to be made public at the very time in her career when she has legislation going through Parliament to regulate matters such as businessmen putting visits to pole dancing clubs on expenses.
So that's true.
If you're like clamping down on businessmen on the deductible, on the deductible, I mean, I don't even know what is that, a deductible pole dancing allowance?
Thank goodness Obama isn't clamping down on that.
Folks, if you're doing your corporate tax return this year, doing your personal tax return, don't forget to fill in the maximum allowance for the pole dancing club visit because as far as I know, Obama isn't clamped down on that yet.
And certainly the 9-11 guys, they all went to the pole dancing club, didn't they?
I think on the night before, the girls complained afterwards that they were totally lousy tippers.
It's interesting to me.
I'm no doubt, I don't know, I forget quite what visas they were here on, but I wouldn't be surprised if those guys had claimed the pole dancing allowance too.
Anyway, as you can see, there's plenty of room for big government still to come.
We could yet be in the situation where it's not just Tim Geithner, but whoever Tim Geithner is married to, starts claiming for all the pay-per-view adult video on the public dime.
So things could get a lot worse yet before they get better.
It's Mark Stein in for Rush on the EIB network.
More straight ahead.
Mark Stein in for Rush on the EIB network at the start of another exciting week of President Obama's European tour.
He's off to Turkey today, and he's told the European Union that Turkey should be allowed into the EU.
This is part of his big outreach to the Muslim world.
And he's saying it's a whole new thing now.
It's nothing to do with George W. Bush is no longer president.
Forget about him.
It's a whole new era.
It doesn't seem to be quite going as well for him out there as it should.
1-800-282-2882.
1-800-282-2882.
Let's go to Darryl in Fort Lauderdale.
Darryl, you're on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Hi, Mr. Stein.
Hey, pleasure to have you with us, Darryl.
You know, Rush Limbaugh's mother's Jewish also, by the way.
Excellent.
That's good.
Nothing wrong with that, and a lot right with it, too.
Nothing wrong with that.
Before I get on to my subject about Korea, I'd like to save people who are in credit card debt $2,000.
Beware of innovative wealth builders.
Innovative wealth builders.
Is that some email thing you're innovative wealth?
It's been a while since I've heard those words in that combination.
Apparently we've lost Darrell.
Innovative wealth builders.
Whatever.
Cordell in Chicago, you are on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Thank you.
How are you doing today, Mr. Stein?
I'm doing great.
How are you?
Good, sir.
Thanks.
I just got a quick question for you about North Korea as far as them setting off that missile.
I'm wondering why is it that we're feeling like, and when I say we, Americans, are feeling like that that action was directed towards Obama or just the United States, period.
Why aren't they, you know, if they're breaking international rules, why isn't it, you know, that they're defying the whole world saying, man, whoever wants a problem with me, I have this missile and I will use it.
Why is it just, you know, America?
It seems like we're always the people are looking for us to police the world.
Other people need to step up to the plate.
Why we always got to be the ones to be the aggressor or we'll come and get you or we'll stop you.
I just want to know the answer.
Okay, I'll give you my version of the answer.
It's because the Europeans won't.
Most European powers, with one or two exceptions, cannot project force beyond their borders.
So the idea of saying, so they don't have policies anymore.
They have attitudes.
They strike an attitude.
A French foreign minister is terrific for standing there with his arm on his hip, pouting in a very attractive manner.
And they can do that.
They can do that brilliantly, but they can't actually liquidate the problem.
Then you go to the regional powers.
Japan.
Japan does not have the military strength to deter North Korea itself.
And the danger there is that if America appears weak, then Japan will conclude America is not serious about defending Japan, and Japan might as well make its own arrangements with the rest, with the North Koreans.
The reality is that the civilized world, and defining that as broadly as you will, the civilized world is not credible when it comes to deterrence.
NATO is a very good example of that.
NATO is a military alliance in which essentially only one and, you know, maybe one and a half countries have a functioning military and the other 20 whatever of them don't.
So what's the point of being in a military alliance with two dozen nations that don't have militaries?
The last triumph of multilateralism, by the way, was the summit a couple of years back that was hailed as a great triumph because the NATO members had agreed to put up an extra one dozen helicopters for Afghanistan.
That's one dozen helicopters between whatever it was at that time, 19 different nations.
You imagine the diplomatic effort that goes into squeezing 0.7 of a helicopter out of these countries.
The reality is, as I said, most of the civilized world has no means of deterring all the bad people that are out there.
And the North Koreans know that.
There was a story about 10 years ago, 10 years ago.
This is interesting to me because I live in northern New Hampshire, so I'm about three hours from Montreal.
And the North Koreans apparently had a plan to nuke Montreal because they thought this would signal to Washington that they were serious, but without provoking any retaliation.
You know, given like the network news's total lack of interest in Canadian stories, they might not even have reported it at all, you know, until the two-headed cow, the wind changed direction and the two-headed cows started showing up at Vermont farms.
But a dad rather would have gone and stood up there, you know, in front of these two-headed Holsteins and reported on the mysterious, no one could, no one knew why there were two-headed cows in this field in northern Vermont, but it might have had something to do with the North Koreans nuking Montreal three months earlier.
Look, the reality is that America has chosen essentially to make the rest of the rich world defense welfare queens since 1945.
Defense welfare queens.
People complain about the Europeans' behavior, and they're right to do so.
But when you maintain essentially, a nation, by the way, that can't defend itself, isn't a nation in any meaningful sense.
It simply isn't.
It simply isn't.
And what you do, in effect, is maintain them in the geopolitical equivalent of permanent adolescence.
And NATO is like one daddy and then a bunch of braddy teenagers who won't move over, won't move out of the bedroom above the garage because they've been on defense welfare since 1945.
Who do you think pays for this terrific European health care that Obama wants to introduce here?
American taxpayers do, because if you remove the need for a military budget from nations from the public treasury, you'd be surprised at all the other stuff they can afford to fund instead.
That's the thing.
That's the point Here.
It's we have an insane world in which the wealthy, and even when we talk about this nuclear rising, we talk about it in the wrong way.
It's nothing to do with proliferation.
Obama pathetically was doing this 1970s non-proliferation shtick that's 30 years out of date.
No one would lose a minute's sleep.
If you woke up tomorrow morning and the big headline in the paper was that Australia had tested a nuke or Switzerland had tested a nuke, you wouldn't lose a minute's sleep over it.
It's the fact that it's the psycho-states, it's the basket case states that are going nuclear, while the rich people, the rich states, just lie back on their sofas and say, oh, well, no, maybe we should be talking about, you know, two years of paternity leave and compulsory retirement at 51 instead of 55.
It's that kind of thing that has helped bring about this insanely dangerous world that we're living in.
Thank you very much for your call, Cordell.
We will be back with more on the EIB network straight ahead.
Mark Stein sitting in for Rush on the EIB network at the start of another week of excellence in broadcasting.
If you're a Democrat or a Liberal, I'd love to hear from you before the show ends today.
How are you enjoying the Hopi Changey era so far?
Basically, the rich and the poor voted for Obama, and the folks in the middle went with McCain.
And a lot of those rich people who voted for Obama are discovering after two and a half months they're not quite as rich as they thought they were.
And it would be interesting, I would be interested to hear from anyone who's beginning to have second thoughts about their votes, or maybe isn't.
Maybe he's very happy with the Hopi Changey era so far.
Certainly in Europe, as he progresses on his stately tour from London to Prague and now on to Turkey, there are changes, changes in the attitude of all these foreigners who are supposed to love America again.
They're not warming up in quite the way President Obama expected.
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