Yes, America's Hancherman is away and this is your undocumented anchor man filling in today.
Rush is in California doing the family guy, but he will be back here tomorrow to take you through the end of the week and he may drop a few hints at what it was he was actually singing on the family guy because this as HR pointed out with with with Rush's hearing the key's going to be a bit hit miss isn't it?
It's kind of good I like it.
I like it Rush Rush is very musical.
I like it when he he kind of he's got a good sense of rhythm so we don't know we don't know what it's going to be like but I'm sure it'll work out.
He's going to be singing on the family guy.
I mentioned Cindy Sheehan just a few minutes ago.
I love the Cindy Sheehan would be protesting Bush at Crawford and there'd be like her and three other people and there'd be dozens and dozens of camera crews out there covering it, putting her on TV, putting her on magazine covers, putting her on the front page of all the big newspapers.
There are thousands and thousands and thousands of people going every few days to these town hall meetings and Cindy Sheehan is real and authentic but these thousands and thousands of people are astroturf.
They're evil mongers according to Harry Reid.
They're un-American according to Nancy Pelosi.
And they're not representative of America according to Arlen Specter.
But somehow Cindy Sheehan and three other people are representative of America.
At least they were under the old regime.
Now Cindy Sheehan is in Martha's Vineyard.
She's not representative of anybody.
She can protest Barack Obama to her heart's content and she's not going to get any coverage for that.
Incidentally, it's interesting to me, we used to have Clinton used to vacation at Martha's Vineyard all the time.
He used to take his summer vacation in the Martha's Vineyard and the Hamptons and he got great press for this because the journalists liked going out to Martha's Vineyard and the Hamptons to cover him.
Whereas then Bush took office and all these guys had to fly and spend the summer in Crawford, Texas, which they loathed.
There was nothing to do there.
You could see, I think, the charred remains of Waco.
That was within a convenient 20-minute drive or something.
But otherwise, there's not a lot going on in Crawford.
And like all the big shop media guys hated it.
And I remember them interviewing.
They used to interview each other on how there was nothing to do and what they liked about the place.
I remember, I think it was the CBS guy who was interviewing the ABC guy or vice versa.
And one of them says, well, I really like Crawford because you don't have to pay to park your car.
And it's true, you don't have to pay to park your car in Crawford.
You barely had to pay to park your house.
I think you could get a double wide on a two-acre lot for like $12,000, something like that in Crawford.
I believe it used to be $16,000, but then Bush moved in and there goes the neighborhood.
So the media hated it.
And so they loved it when Clinton used to vacation at Martha's Vineyard.
And he'd get off the plane.
Do you remember that way?
I think it was the year of Monica.
He got off the plane at Martha's Vineyard.
And Carly Simon was there to meet him.
I don't know whether it was in an official capacity.
I don't know whether she's the honorary mayor of Martha's Vineyard or whatever.
But she was there to receive him at the airport, like it would be if he'd flown into Moscow or Beijing or somewhere.
And he rubbed her arms, he rubbed his hands all over his back.
She's got fabulous shoulder blades, Carly Simon.
And he was sort of like running his hands up and down the small of her back.
And there's nothing like that to do in Crawford, Texas.
And so the media must love it that he's back now.
The President Obama has gone back to the Martha's Vineyard vacation.
Maybe they'll get the Hamptons, East Hampton next year.
The one time Clinton didn't do it, this is like classic Clinton thinking.
1990, I think this must be the beginning of his second term, Dick Morris got Clinton got Dick Morris to take a poll on where he should have a vacation.
Can you imagine that?
That is one real poll-driven president.
He got Dick Morris to take a poll on where he should vacation.
And the poll came back saying he should do something outdoorsy and manly.
And so Clinton didn't get to go to Martha's Vineyard and run his hands up and down Carly Simon's back.
He had to go and have a miserable time pretending to camp and hike on the Snake River up in the mountains.
I forget the name of the mountains up in Wyoming.
And that was and he did that because Dick Morris had taken a poll showing that soccer moms who like outdoors activities would prefer it if Clinton could take his hands off Carly Seibard for a couple of weeks and go and have a more outdoor sea vacation.
And in the typical way, he took this poll-driven vacation and he came back and his numbers went down.
So after that, he said, to hell with this, we're going to go and have a vacation in Martha's Vineyard.
And now we're back.
Obama is in Martha's Vineyard.
All the media are there and Cindy Sheehan's there too.
But they're not going to get, she's not going to get the coverage she would have.
We're talking healthcare because that is the decisive issue.
If you kill the healthcare thing, and I mean really kill it, not just get some compromise version passed, but if you actually kill this thing stone dead, this will be a cautionary tale for the president and for the Democratic Party.
And if you don't kill it, it's not just a political thing.
It's not something you can undo if there's a more favorable House of Representatives or Senate or White House two or four years down the road.
It's not going to be like that.
This thing, if it gets passed, will be irreversible.
And if you listen to what so-called right-of-center parties say about it, say about socialized healthcare in Canada, in Britain, in Europe, you'll know that Conservative political, once you have socialized healthcare, Conservative politicians who wish to remain electorally viable cannot speak out against it, except to promise to reform it.
But they can't say, let's undo it and let's give you, the freeborn citizen, the right to decide how much you want to spend on what kind of medical treatment you think you ought to be getting.
They can't actually say, let's go back to trusting adult citizens to make their own decisions about healthcare.
So you'll get a system that will pass and it will be endlessly reformed, but you will never, ever get rid of it.
And that is why we need to learn the lesson that I think Sarah Palin taught us with the death panels, that you're not moderate, you're not reasonable.
You say, no, this is a line we will not cross and speak out against it.
Put the president on the defensive to the point where all the left-wing commentators now are saying, where's Mr. Hopi Changy?
Why is he equivocating on the public option?
To the point where Democrats are threatening to abandon him.
To the point where even his biggest defenders are saying he needs to regain control of the narrative.
No, no.
The president wanted to ram through by August a 1,200-page bill that would have dramatically transformed in perpetuity the size of government in the United States.
And he wanted to do that sight unseen.
He wanted, nobody would have read the bill.
Alan Specter would have read the bill.
None of these guys would have read the bill.
And as John Conyers said, There's no point in them reading the bill because even if they've read it, they wouldn't understand it.
That's what legislation has come down to in this country now.
There's no point asking the congressman to read the bill because it's all too complicated and they can't understand it.
And so now they're saying, now that's been scuttled, they're saying, oh, no, now, if it weren't for all these noisy people shrieking at these town halls, we could have a nice, reasonable, intelligent, thoughtful conversation.
The American people are crying out for an intelligent, thoughtful conversation on healthcare.
Sorry, you didn't want to have that.
You wanted us to pass the bill by the beginning of August, sight unseen, unread, unwritten at the point at which it passed.
And then after it had passed and it was a fait accompli, then you wanted to have the nice, thoughtful conversation.
Sorry, it's too late for that.
It's too late.
What is needed is to actually understand the implications of this thing, because it's all very loosely written and loosely worded, and there'll be a thousand pages of regulations arising from every little rinky-dink nothing subclause.
What is important is to understand what is at stake here.
And what is at stake is the right of citizens to decide with their doctors what it is that is in their best medical interests.
And you know, people say, oh, well, my insurance company doesn't let me do that anyway.
My particular plan doesn't cover this, won't do that.
In the end, that may be true, but in the end, you still have the freedom to get out your checkbook and write a check for whatever it is you want done.
Or, you know, if it comes to that, sell your house or sell your car.
But you don't even have that freedom under government systems.
I mentioned British Columbia earlier, where they've said they've just announced a 15% cut in elective surgeries.
And so if you're one of the 15% of elective surgeries who's been cut, that's not going to happen.
That's it.
You can't get that surgery anywhere in British Columbia.
You can't get it anywhere in the Dominion of Canada.
You have to go to a foreign country if you want to have that procedure.
Because in a sense, they've made it illegal for you to have that of your own volition in your own country.
A government bureaucrat has the say in whether you get that surgery or not.
And that's what's at issue here.
And all the rest is details.
The key word in death panels, by the way, is not death.
People keep saying, oh, well, no, we're not going to have a death panel.
It's not going to be three people who'll decide that you're going to die and the other fella's going to live.
The point about the death panels isn't the death, it's the panel.
It's government bureaucrats deciding on how much money should be spent on hip operations each year, on angioplasties each year, on catheters each year.
The minute that becomes a government bureaucrat's decision, you no longer have control.
Mark Stein, in for rush, 1-800-282-2882.
We'll take your calls straight ahead.
Mark Stein, in for rush on the EIB network.
Let's go to Rich in Moscow Mills, Missouri.
Rich, you're on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Great to have you.
I wonder if those guys down in Texas, when they go down there, I wonder if they'd rather spend some time in Moscow Mills, Missouri instead of down in Texas.
Well, does Moscow bills make Crawford look like Vegas?
Is it not the liveliest town in Missouri?
Well, I was just thinking the name might be appropriate.
Oh, right, I see.
They might get a little homey feeling.
Oh, yeah, the confusion.
Oh, my God.
I booked through USAID.
I was all set to tour the Kremlin and look at Lenin's tomb, and they sent me and my luggage to Moscow Mills, Missouri.
I hate it when that happens.
I hate when I...
Why are you named Moscow Mills since we were...
You know, I haven't researched it.
I've been here a couple of years.
Oh, right.
Okay.
Okay.
But the reason I called, by the way, I enjoy every time you're on.
Well, that's nice of you to say.
It's a great honor for a foreigner to be behind this microphone.
Well, I don't think of you as a foreigner.
I think of you as a fellow conservative.
Oh, great.
That's the citizenship of the world.
That's great.
We sure need them in that country.
Yeah, no, no, that's true.
Doing the jobs not enough Americans will do.
Although we'll talk about the little poll on conservatism a little later, too.
But you were calling about health care.
Yes, sir.
And, you know, I agree, obviously, with everything you've said up to this point.
The reason I called was I got up today.
I'm retired.
And, you know, I've been following it not in great detail, although I do listen to Rush, and I watch the news periodically.
And, you know, it's gotten to the point where it's redundant, the arguments.
And so it's kind of settled in with me.
You know, it's kind of like repetitious.
And I think with most Americans, we all understand what's at stake, how great it is, what it can do to our country.
I think it's a tremendous problem, obviously, to say the least, if it does get passed.
So I'm kind of in the ballgame.
I understand what's at stake.
And then today I happen to catch a clip that President Obama says it's just a sliver.
Come on, now, lighten up, you guys.
You know, that listen to the media.
They'll set you straight.
It's just a sliver.
And I thought, you know, every politician in Washington, D.C., all the congressmen, all the senators, if I know in the center of Missouri that this is a con, what he just said, that all he needs is that sliver, if I know it, everybody in Washington, D.C. knows the big lie.
That it starts, as you've been saying all morning, it starts that way, but it's going to grow and grow.
And it just, I almost need psychotherapy.
Yeah, it's energized me.
It's always a thin sliver at the point at which it's coming towards you.
And it's as wide as a barn by the time they get through with it.
And you're right.
He keeps saying, oh, the public option isn't the entirety of the plan and all the rest of it.
And he keeps making these little rhetorical concessions.
But he's got to get that sliver through the door.
And if he gets that sliver through the door, he can ram the rest in.
The other thing I find interesting, Rich, when you see Obama on the road as he is trying to sell this thing and prop it up and doing it in purple states, basically.
He was in New Hampshire.
He was in Colorado.
He was in purple states that turned blue last fall.
And he's worried that they might be getting a little bit red again.
So he's going there and he's talking it up.
And we're told he's the silver-tongued orator.
He's not anymore.
He's punchy and rambling when you see him.
He can't come up with a compelling health care rationale for what he's proposing.
And that's why people think that in fact what's attractive to him about it is the government, the government control aspect rather than the medical aspect, because he's been unable to come up with a compelling medical rationale for what he's doing.
And that's why he's having to make all these concessions about a sliver of this and a sliver of that.
Thanks for your call, Rich.
It is true the president, who was supposed to be the greatest orator since Lincoln, if not Socrates, has been a complete bust on this issue.
Yeah, this was his plan or non-plan, and he talked himself into the hole he's in.
And I found this interesting because I liked his voice last year.
I thought he had this mellifluous baritone, and I found it appealing.
He was like, even if what he was saying was complete hogwash, I enjoyed hearing him say it.
And I notice now he's gone up kind of half an octave.
He's sounding shriller.
He's yeah, but even it sounds like he's been listening to Rush speeding up his voice and is now trying to talk at the speed.
He sat when that high school student asked him that lethal question in Colorado, he was all like shrill and squeaky.
He's sounding like his own Rush Limbaugh taped version of Obabada.
Very, very, very strange.
And the point is, though, he has not got a medical rationale for it because in the end, it's not about the healthcare.
It's not about the life expectancy.
It's not about the procedures or anything about that.
It's about inserting government into every aspect of your life.
Because once you have government healthcare, it licenses the government to control everything because everything's healthcare.
You see it already.
People say about this argument about seatbelts or crash helmets if you're riding a motorcycle.
They say, well, you should wear a helmet because if you fall off your motorbike and your head cracks, you'll have to be treated in a hospital.
So the state has an interest.
The minute you have government health care, the state has an interest in how you're living because it has to pay for that treatment.
So it will regulate not just the seat belts that you wear in the car, not just the helmets you have to wear when you ride a motorcycle, but all kinds of other aspects of life.
We see this routinely in, for example, the province of Ontario where you're not allowed to smoke if there is someone under 21 in your private vehicle.
It's your car.
You own that car.
But the province of Ontario says if there is someone who is under a certain age in that car with you, you're not allowed to smoke.
They regulate because they'd have to pay if the kid gets cancer or whatever.
And then it goes beyond that to saying, well, if you do smoke, as they say in Manchester, England, we won't treat you for heart disease.
Healthcare gives them the right to regulate every single aspect of how you live.
It's incipient in the bill.
It's an embryo.
It will grow and it will give them the reasoning to control every aspect of how you live.
Mark Stein sitting in for Rush on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Lots more straight ahead on the EIB network.
And don't forget, Rush returns fighting fit from the family guy tomorrow.
Yes, America's Anchorman returns tomorrow.
Till then, it's your undocumented anchor man filling in 1-800-282-2882.
I see Hurricane Bill, Hurricane Bill is heading straight for Bermuda.
I asked HR whether we had any Uyghurs in the news today because I always like to have a couple of Uyghur stories when I'm behind the Golden EIB microphone.
And there were no Uyghurs in the news.
And since we cut on the air, Hurricane Bill is now heading for Bermuda.
And all those Uyghurs released from Gitmo to sit on the beach of Bermuda are right in the path of Hurricane Bill.
So if something goes horribly wrong, they could be swept up and deposited straight back at Guantanamo.
So we'll keep an eye on track on that Hurricane Bill.
Remember, actually, wasn't it Sheila Jackson Lee, who, Congressman Sheila Jackson Lee, you know, she's the one who's all in trouble for placing a phone call while one of her angry constituents was asking her a question at one of these town meetings.
I think it was Sheila Jackson Lee, who a couple of years ago complained that hurricane names were racist.
She had her argument was that blacks were being discriminated against because hardly any destructive meteorological phenomena were given African-American names.
You know, they've all got like Hurricane Bill.
I mean, what kind of name is that?
And Hurricane Andrew and Hurricane Nigel.
I don't know.
Was there a Hurricane Nigel?
I don't know.
But you can bet if they got up to end, there would have been a Hurricane Nigel.
You know, Sheila Jackson Lee's point was that, listen, the black community can't relate to these whitebread wind names like Hurricane Andrew just blowing in and tearing up the joint.
And it would be much more fair if we had a Hurricane Leroy or a Hurricane Latifah.
And it's deeply racist and insulting to say that only forces of nature with these effect, waspy appellations are appropriate, are capable of inflicting billions of dollars of damage on our communities.
So that's what she was complaining about.
And it's interesting, racism is everywhere.
But I was interested to see that the Obama Joker has been unmasked.
And you remember this, these posters have been peering in everywhere of Obama with his face turned into the Joker from the Batman movie.
And the speculation was that this was some embittered right-wing extremist.
And the critics said it was racist because, of course, putting white face on Obama was a bit like what was a kind of minstrel thing, like the 19th century thing where people would put boot polish on and pretend to be do a colored minstrel routine, and that this was returning us to the days of a kind of minstrelsy, putting Joker-type white powder on Obama's face.
So let's identify the extreme right-wing racist who did the Obama poster.
Meet Firaz Al-Khatib, a 20-year-old Palestinian from Chicago.
And you're probably thinking, okay, okay, so the guy's a Palestinian from Chicago.
But he could still be, so it's like hard to make him out to be just one of these racist white supremacist types, maybe.
But couldn't we at least, isn't he at least right-wing?
Well, no, in fact, he's a Dennis Kucinich supporter.
So this racist poster, right-wing racist poster of Obama's The Joker, turns out to be done by a 20-year-old Palestinian Dennis Kucinich supporter, Firaz Al-Khatib.
Good on you, Mr. Al-Khatib.
He actually abstained from voting in November, but he did the poster.
Aside from the fact that he supports Mr. Kucinich, he's a sound guy.
He goes, after Obama was elected, you had all of these people who basically saw him as the second coming, Mr. Al-Khatib said.
From my perspective, there wasn't much substance to him.
So even a Dennis Kucinich supporter can be right once a day.
Mark Stein, well, maybe not once a day, once a year.
Mark Stein sitting in for Rush on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Let's go to Jeff in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
Jeff, you're on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Hey, Mark.
Hey, good to have you with us.
My question was: earlier, you stated that, like, let's say an individual is deemed not to be able to have a surgery by one of those panels in the bill.
That's right.
You know, that was previously proposed, I guess.
Now, are you saying that the ability for that person to secure financing on their own and get this surgery will not be available?
What happens in countries that have the socialized system is there are two types.
In Canada, the government has a monopoly.
So if the government says you can't have the procedure, you've got to leave the country to get it somewhere else.
Then you have systems where you have a private, public system side by side, as in the United Kingdom.
And what happens there is that you'll be told there's a three-year wait for this procedure, so you might look to have it somewhere done privately.
But your options are limited because the minute you have a public system, the private system shrivels.
That's inevitable.
As that genius student put it to Obama, the government's ability to run a form of health insurance, they have certain advantages over private insurers.
Obviously, if they have to borrow money, the company will have to pay interest on that.
The government can essentially just print the money, as Rush pointed out yesterday.
So the government, if you're competing with the government, the government has certain advantages.
And it particularly has them when it's going to impose penalties on those individuals and companies who don't do what they want.
For example, if you don't provide employee health insurance, they're going to take 8%, they're going to give you an 8% supplemental tax.
Well, for a lot of companies, it'll be just easier to take the 8% hit on that and scrap the employee insurance plan.
So you'll actually be saying to Mrs. Jones, your receptionist, sorry, our private company plan ends on Friday, and at midnight you'll be enrolled in the Obamacare plan.
So the minute you have the government and the private thing side by side, you would have a diminution in the availability and the affordability of private health care.
And to go back to your question about how if you're denied a particular procedure under the plan, what can you do?
I would imagine what we will see here is a huge increase in medical tourism.
In other words, you'll say, I'm paying for all this government health care, but I'm not getting it, so I'm going to take a vacation in Bombay and get some Indian doctor to perform it on me, as already happens to some degree.
So in your experience, you haven't seen a lot of private practice pick up to get the work that the government's not going to provide.
No, because private practice shrivels the minute you have a government system.
I mean, you have, in Britain, you have some elite forms of private health care.
You have things like the Portland Hospital in London, where royal duchesses give birth to their babies and things like that.
But we're talking there about a highly specialized for the very elite in society that cover the top 5% to 10%.
Don't forget, if you look at Canadian taxes comparatively, for example, if you look at Quebec, where the basic combined provincial federal tax rate is something like 54%, I think it's the highest in North America, basically you're paying so much in your taxes that you should be entitled to about three chronic illnesses a year.
But in fact, when you do get a chronic illness, you've just got to go on a wait list and eventually they send you down to be treated in a hospital in New York State or Vermont or New Hampshire.
That is this so-called elective surgery.
You would be surprised how elastic that term becomes because what it actually ends up doing is that critical surgeries that you need desperately to improve your quality of life, they'll decline to give that to you, and you'll have to wait two years, three years, three years for that.
Three years in Quebec for a simple procedure on incontinence.
I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago.
Incontinence is about as uncomfortable as you can, you can't sleep.
You've got to get up and go to the bathroom 12 times a night.
It's a half-hour procedure.
But they say, no, you've got to wait three years for it.
And they're the government and they can say that.
And that's the problem.
All government plans, in the end, can only work by restricting your access to care.
So, Jeff, don't go down this path because there's no way back up once you've gone down it.
You're not thinking of supporting this thing, are you, Jeff?
No, I'm very much against having additional government control in my life.
I was just wanting to know.
I love the way you put it so casually, by the way.
I'm very much against having it.
That's good.
That's reasonable.
That's moderate.
You're not raising your voice and getting too excited.
That's the best way to do it.
I couldn't see the government pushing, I guess, the decisions of individuals for myself to go secure my own financing outside the system.
Pretty much like you would get plastic surgery.
What system handles that today?
Yeah, and that's a good way of looking at it.
Now, that is something that isn't, not all aspects of it are covered by the Canadian plan.
And so they permit those clinics to operate privately in Canada if you want to get Botox or something.
But the point is that for anything other than that and one or two other little things, if the government says no, we have got a maximum number of procedures that we perform.
I mentioned that urological business, the incontinence thing.
The Quebec government, a bureaucrat somewhere in the government, has decided that only two hospitals in the entire province will offer that procedure.
And that means that there's a three-year wait for it.
And they do that very cynically because they don't want to have to buy the equipment to do the procedure.
So they think if they only have two hospitals for it, people will either wait three years and by the end of the three years they might be dead or they might have got so frustrated that they'll have driven south of the border with their incontinence problems with their legs crossed all the way, stopping at every interstate rest area until they get to an American hospital and pay to have it done.
HR wants to know where, well, then they're going to have to drive.
They won't be able to just drive to Plattsburgh.
They'll have to drive all the way to Costa Rica with their legs crossed for thousands of miles.
That is going to be extremely painful.
So if you don't care about subjecting your fellow Americans to this system, think of the poor foreigners.
Where are they going to have to drive to?
Mark Stein, Sylvia for Rush on the EIB network.
1-800-282-2882.
Mark Stein, in for rush on the EIB network.
Always an honor for a foreigner to come and sit behind this microphone.
And, you know, basically, I've got nothing else to do because I've got a couple of years to kill until my procedure comes through.
So might as well come and guest host for a bit.
Let's go to John in Battle Creek, Michigan.
John, you're on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Great to have you with us.
Hey, Mark, great show.
How are you doing?
I'm doing good.
How about you?
I'm doing great.
Hey, listen, you know, I was thinking, I think the Republicans need to start their own cap-and-trade program.
We need to cap spending and trade Obama right out of office.
Yeah, no, that's mean-spirited and probably racist, too.
Because trade has racial connotations, as that guy Obaba was talking about.
That's right, that's right.
But hey, the real reason I was calling is because I think the threat of the public option is even more imminent than you had stated earlier.
I heard Howard Dean on PMSNBC earlier, and I realized what Obama is doing is he's pulling a huge rope of dope on the American people because he's trying to downplay this public option.
It's going to be a co-op to get it through the Senate Finance Committee to get the 60 votes.
Then the House will pass their bill, then Pelosi will turn around and stuff the public option in, and then they will only need 51 votes to pass it.
And that is what I really think is going on.
So I mean, everyone is talking like, oh, the public option is dead.
It's not dead.
They're going to stuff it back in in the end, and there's no way we'll be able to stop it.
No, the public option is dead publicly.
You say those words in public now and people are booing.
But the public option, as you say, is going to be rammed through privately in conference in enough of a form that they will able to make it mean whatever they want it to mean down the road.
And you're right.
And you make the point that is made in the Washington Post this morning.
I think it was Eugene Robinson, who says, basically, look, this stuff is unpopular, and it's going to cost Democrats seats in 2010.
But let's just do it.
Let's just ram it through and take the hit for it.
What would you rather do?
Take the hit and change the country or listen to what the American people are saying and just be a do-nothing president who doesn't accomplish anything in his administration.
And I think that actually is the way the administration's mind is thinking on this, John.
By the way, what's your reckoning on when we'll get this public option?
Do you think by the fall he'll get something in there?
Well, I don't know because, like I said, I mean, if the Republicans and the Blue Dogs wake up to what's really going to happen and they realize that Nancy Pelosi is the one that's going to be running the show, I mean, you know, hopefully they can stall it.
I wouldn't know.
I wouldn't put your faith in blue dog Democrats or some of these or some of those reach across the aisle types on the Republican side.
Right, right.
Well, I mean, like I said, I hope it doesn't pass, and the longer they can put it off, the less chance it has of passing.
But I mean, like I said, you know, I feel like this whole thing, all this talk, I feel like the Democrats know behind closed doors.
I feel like they're actually complaining about the public option.
It's kind of, like I said, a rope a dope.
Like, I heard Howard Dean, and he seemed to know.
He's like, oh, what's going to happen is they're just going to pass the Senate, and then we'll put it in, and then we only need 51 votes.
Like, he's behind the scenes talking to people in the administration.
And I was like, holy cow, I never even thought about that aspect.
That would be a way to skim off 10 votes they needed.
Yes, and Howard Dean did kind of let the cat out of the bag on that, John.
Thanks for your call.
Howard Dean, because he is a doctor, I think he's always very enthusiastic.
What I liked about him when he ran for office is that when John Kerry would go, oh, I'm deeply, personally, agonizingly, anguishly, personally, deeply opposed to abortion, but I would never let my deeply personal, passionate, anguished, personal, deep beliefs interfere with my legislative program.
And he'd tie himself all in knots like that.
Whereas what I liked about Howard Dean was he was basically just offering to perform partial birth abortions on volunteers from the crowd.
He was like all for it.
He'd say, hey, bring it on.
Let's have a couple today.
He is a doctor.
And it would be interesting to ask Howard Dean, how come with abortion your whole thing is, oh, a woman's right to choose, keep your laws off my body.
And you believe in that for reproductive rights.
You believe in that for your fallopian tubes, but you don't believe in it for anything non-fallopian.
It's some non-fallopian part of you, you say, Well, the government can put its laws all over you.
No more.
Why doesn't he say, keep your laws off my body when it comes to your twisted ankle or your knee replacement?
No, no, but it's only your birth canal and your fallopian tubes and all that kind of stuff.
Keep the government off the body.
Every other body part you have, the government is going to be owning 100%.
Mark Stein talking healthcare on the Rush Limbaugh show.
More straight ahead.
1-800.
Mark Stein Infra Rush on the EIB network.
You know, people sometimes wonder what it's like with this socialized healthcare.
I needed an EKG once in Montreal, and I went to make the appointment for the EKG.
And they said, we'll give you the appointment on October the 13th.
And then you'll have to have a meeting with the doctor to discuss the results of it.
And that will be on December the 12th.
I go, well, wait a minute.
If there's something of the EKG that says, you know, I've only got three weeks to live, what good is the meeting on December the 12th?
They go, oh, don't worry about that.
We would call you back and move the appointment up if there was anything like that in it.
That's what happens under these socialized healthcare systems.