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Dec. 28, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:33
December 28, 2009, Monday, Hour #2
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Yes, America's Anchorman is away, and this is your undocumented anchor man sitting in.
I'll be here uh today and tomorrow.
Mark Davis comes in on Wednesday, and a New Year's Eve treat will will ring out the old with the great Walter E. Williams on Thursday's uh show.
Uh uh Happy Christmas bank holiday Monday to the many persons around the world for whom this is not a working day.
Uh Mr. Snardley was shocked to discover that, shocked to discover that not everybody has his nose to the grind scone all grindstone all day long uh like uh like he has.
But uh there's really no there's very little incentive to work a five day week uh these days, I find.
I don't know why uh I don't know why anybody bothers uh bothers really.
I mean looking at the uh man attack.
My my advice is work for the government.
Work for the government, get yourself a nice job.
Maybe Department of Homeland Security get you particularly if you're like of Dutch descent, uh just uh just go along to the Department of Homeland Security and say you'd like to be the heroic Dutchman sitting on the the plane.
I'm sure the pay is good, benefits are good, it should all work out well.
I want to say one thing, by the way, just uh follow up to what Victoria was saying that she didn't care.
She's calling from Palm Beach, she didn't care whether there were four hours, five hours, six hours, whatever delay.
She said four hours, five hours, whatever.
Try and put a price on whatever.
You think of it now.
I used to do a few years ago, I my agent made a mistake, and she signed me up to do a radio show for the BBC from uh Rockefeller Center in New York uh every Friday, and uh some television thing back in Britain uh every week too.
And initially she said, Well, look, I sorry about this, it's a like a bureaucratic mess.
Uh I'll cancel one or I'll pull out of the other.
I said, No, no, no, I'm a fit vigorous young man.
I can I can make this work.
So for a while I was doing my little show at the BBC Studios in Rockefeller Center, and then dashing to uh JFK to board a flight to Heathrow.
And this is back in the nineties, and it was so easy then.
I I remember getting there, I I'd I'd stop and chit-chat and flirt with the uh the the the girl on reception a little too long, and so I'd get to JFK, my feet would be pounding uh down to the gate, I'd get there and they'd close the door, and they'd say, Oh, don't worry about it, we'll open it up and let you back on again.
You could get there twenty minutes beforehand and take off.
Uh and that's the way it was.
Now they say you've got to be there by law you've got to be there whatever it is an hour beforehand for an international flight.
Uh but Victoria and now they're saying practically uh with these new procedures you've got to be there three hours beforehand, and Victoria says, Well, so what if it's four or five hours?
Let's factor in all that time.
Even if you figure that everybody is just like some uh minimum wage person, and take out all those eight dollars per hour out of all the people uh just sitting around at the airport, uh or all the people on the plane for that final hour who can't uh not who've got to sit with their hands on their knees.
Is that by the way, even constitutional in the land of the free and the home of the brave, that the government can tell you you've got to sit with your hands on your knees, that you're a grown man, you're you're thirty-seven and a half, but it's like you're back in second grade and you've got to sit there being good with your hands on your knees, keeping them it's like basically like you're the perp.
You're the perp.
Uh when you're pulled over by the cops.
You know, keep your hands where they can see them.
That's what it's gonna be like now for the last hour of the flight.
Uh factor in the economic the loss of economic activity there.
Never mind the encroachment upon your personal space.
Just think what it does at eight bucks an hour to the economy.
I was uh uh in Belfast and London uh for uh uh quite a part of the um the IRA's long campaign against the British government.
And by the end of it, they didn't have to blow anything up anymore.
The IRA just had to make a phone call to a s to certain numbers in London, hinting that perhaps they put a bomb here or there, and everything would shut down.
The entire transportation system of London would shut down, millions of pounds would be wiped off the stock exchange, millions of pounds are lost in economic activity, and they didn't even have to blow anything up.
The RA figured that out pretty quickly.
And now these guys are doing the same thing.
They don't have to blow the plane up anymore.
They just have to do something sufficiently goofy uh that it requires a whole a whole new level of uh uh of uh airline inspection.
So wh what are you gonna do, Victoria?
And I don't mean to pick on you, but you you you you made this point.
What are you gonna do the fur the first time a jihadist is detected uh with a weaponized suppository?
Okay?
Because th this this is the stuff they're pulling now.
They're gonna they're gonna these innovations innovations uh we cannot we cannot regulate as fast as they can innovate.
Otherwise that four hours, five hours, whatever, that whatever is gonna be a three-hour uh uh basically a three-day wait at the airport.
We're gonna be like aeroflot in the old Soviet Union, you know, where if you turned up in one of the outlying Soviet republics at Alma Atta, they said, Oh, that's great, you're here in in five days time, the plane will be landing and uh it'll develop engine uh failure on takeoff, but then you'll wait around here for another couple of weeks and eventually it will take off.
We're reducing our transportation system to that same level.
Now what should we be doing?
What should we be doing?
We've essentially prided ourselves, because we're good little multiculturalists, that we don't distinguish between any particular persons of interest.
So when you go to the airport and you see the eighty-seven-year-old stooped wizened old granny from Iowa with the leg caliper and homeland security are taking off her her leg caliper and uh running it back and forth through the uh scanning machine back and forth uh every time.
We think, oh, that's great.
They're treating everybody the same.
That must mean they're really serious.
No, it doesn't.
It means they're totally unserious.
You wouldn't watch a cop show like this, would you?
In if you watch a if you watch a a serial killer movie, they're all the same.
Uh the guy the they put little things up on the wall looking for points of similarity between this murder, that murder, this corpse, that corpse, and they find the similarities and they focus on the similarities.
You've never seen a cop show where they pull in everybody, have you?
There's no such thing.
They don't say, There are eight million stories in the naked city, and we won't rest till we've heard all of them.
Bring eight million people in for questioning, and we'll go through them all one by one, painstakingly.
They identify the common features.
What are the common features with the guys in 9-11, uh the shoe bomber, uh the London plot, and this guy uh who tried to blow up the flight into Detroit.
They're all Muslim.
That doesn't mean every Muslim's a terrorist.
But it means you should at least be able to factor the component of Islam into your security procedures.
Uh and that's gonna be tough on people.
Again, to go back to the IRA days.
There were internal flying restrictions within the British Isles, within the United Kingdom.
If you lived in Belfast and you were a person of interest uh to uh the uh Royal Ulster Contrabulary or the special branch, you wouldn't be allowed to board a flight to Glasgow uh or to board a flight to London.
They in fact had internal travel restrictions within your own country, uh in the interests of uh in the interests of public safety.
Now, obviously that's tough if you happen to be called Paddy O'Flaherty and you're a perfectly innocent fellow, uh but you happen to have a name that's similar to someone who's a person of interest, that means yes, you'll be boarding the plane at Amsterdam or at Vancouver or at LAX, and you you might be subject to additional delays.
But they didn't bother pretending uh during that long IRA threat uh that they were under risk uh from uh Fijians and Uzbekistanis and everybody else on the planet.
And that is what we've chosen to do here.
You notice, by the way, these reports, you can see the way these reports go.
They keep calling this fella a Nigerian man, a Nigerian man.
Look in the reports and see how deep into the reports you get before the word Muslim is used.
Uh because his defining characteristic is not that he's Nigerian.
Nigeria is split basically fifty-fifty between Muslims and Christians.
If you happen to be sitting next to a Christian Nigerian uh on your flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, you can relax.
Well, you can't relax because Janet Napolitano says you've got to keep your hands on your knees where she can see them and everything.
But uh if you could relax, you would be able to relax because that Christian Nigerian is no threat to you.
The question is uh do do we can we circumvent the the uh uh the self-castrating mechanism of political correctness sufficiently.
It's not even about red flags anymore.
I mean people talk about red flags.
It's now actually common sense.
It's common sense.
We had this business with Major Hassan.
Fourteen people died at Fort Hood because of political correctness.
Because at every step along the way, things that were perfectly obvious about him, like a guy having soldier of Allah on his business card, didn't actually trigger any action from the authorities.
Uh the guy had two I think it was two uh anti-terrorism watch teams on his tail who were casing his uh who uh who were monitoring his emails to the radical Imam in Yemen.
And they determined they both and by the way, that's the kind of money no object uh budget that we have in the uh homeland security business here.
In other countries they just have one uh counterterrorism uh watch team on his tail.
But here we had two.
But it doesn't make any difference because they both concluded in these in these marvelous words, write these down and chisel them on your country's epitaph.
They both determined uh that his emails to this radical Imam were quote consistent with his research interests, unquote.
And so at every step along the way, a guy who was self-evidently either uh uh uh a publicly declared enemy of the United States was advanced further and further up uh the chain until eventually at Fort Hood he was able to gun down fourteen Americans who died because of political correctness.
At some point it's not it's not smart to be able to say we're gonna be we're gonna treat everybody the same.
We're not gonna distinguish between the eighty-seven-year-old granny with the leg caliper uh and uh the the the uh young Muslim man whose father has reported him to the intelligence agencies uh and who is paying for his ticket in cash.
It's not smart to be i it you can congratulate yourself on how impeccably multicultural and non-discriminatory you are, but people are gonna die because of it.
People are gonna die.
It's and it's stupid, it's time wasting, it sucks money out of the active economy, and it will eventually reduce the transportation system of this country to a basket case.
If we'd known it was going to be like this, when the Soviet Union went belly up, we might as well have said to the Aeroflot guys, well now you're out of a job, why don't you come and run the U.S. transportation system?
Because that's what it's gonna wind up like.
Uh Mark Stein sitting in for the for Rush on the EIB network.
1-800-282-2882.
More of your calls straight ahead.
Mark Stein in for Rush on uh the EIB network.
Uh uh seventeen thousand Muslims had a big uh demonstration up in Toronto on Christmas Day.
And uh I like these words by uh Imam Malik, Imam Malik.
He said, I am going to take an oath to be non-violent, said Imam Malik Malik.
Uh quote, I refuse as a Muslim to kill another Muslim, unquote.
Well it's a start.
Let's go to Russ.
Let's go to Russ in uh Syracuse, New York.
Russ, you are on the EIB network.
Great to have you with us.
Hi, Dilmark.
Uh I just uh wanted to say, well, you had said that uh Janet apparently has uh changed her mind and uh now maybe there was a problem with uh with security.
It's kinda interesting this administration that can't even decide whether we're in a recession or not, now can't decide whether we have a terrorist or whether it was a terrorist act.
Right.
But my my point is that if there was no problem, then we wouldn't have had to have any changes at the airports.
Because that's part of the system.
Yeah, yeah, that's that's true.
If if the system were, why then are we changing everything?
Uh that's again, yeah, you're right.
It doesn't make it doesn't make any sense.
Uh uh at some point we have to stop responding uh and actually get proactive on this.
And the only way you're gonna do you can never actually institute enough protections now.
Uh I mean, why why now what we're gonna say is look, okay, you can't use you can't use the bathroom on an airplane in the last hour of the flight now.
Okay, well in that case, why don't they just uh pull something when the plane's taking off or when they're over the ocean?
Doesn't make they can adapt faster than we can regulate in this scenario.
And that's why it doesn't that's why it doesn't make any sense for us.
Yep.
That's all I got.
Okay, well that's great.
Thank you for waiting.
Let's go to Jennifer in Midland, Texas.
Jennifer, great to have you with us.
How are you doing, Mark?
I'm doing good, all things considered.
Well, that's good.
That's good.
Uh uh it's a pleasure to speak to you.
I wanted to speak on this uh change they've made in these international flights where everybody's gotta sit still and play the quiet game and everything for like the last hour.
I'm I'm not sure I I understand what good that will do.
I I do know that I think it's just it seems like sheep being led to the slaughter.
Well, that's a very good way of putting it, Jennifer, because uh the way you should look at it this way is that uh if something goofy happens when you're up in the sky, the Federal Government isn't going to be up there with you.
You'll you'll be up there, and if you're lucky, some macho Dutchman uh a couple of rows behind will be up there.
But if you if you look at what happened on nine eleven, everybody did that.
Everybody on the first three planes followed the outmoded nineteen seventies hijack procedures and they all died.
On the fourth plane, those guys rose up uh and acted uh as free-born citizens and prevented who knows where that fourth plane was headed.
Some people say the Capitol, some say the White House, but they prevented that day from i being even more uh even worse uh than it was.
And that's the lesson.
When when something happens up there in the sky, no matter what regulations they impose on you, the federal government isn't going to be up there with you.
So you shouldn't be sitting with your hands on your knees.
You should be s you should be thinking as a free-born human individual.
That's what happened with the shoe bomber.
That's how he was stopped.
Yeah.
And the people on the plane rushed him.
Yes, that's that's right.
And you know the way another way to think of it, too, is that uh th the airline cabin is like the advanced state of liberalism.
This is what they want it to be like down on the ground.
Uh that i if you th th basically the modern airline c uh cabin is an Al Gore Ted Kennedy dream.
Uh you can't do anything, you can't have a cigarette, you can't do this, you can't do that.
You've got to do everything the stewardess says, or there'll be someone waiting when you land to arrest you and you'll be dragged away.
Perhaps they ought to just sedate us all when we get to our seats.
Yeah, the old flight.
Yeah, I'd rather do that.
I'd rather they instead of g instead of having to take off my shoes and all because if you if you can't read a book and you can't and you can't look out the window in case you spot a lad mark you want to blow up, uh why don't they just fire an elephant tranquilizer dart into all our butts and uh and then uh uh and uh hopefully it'll wear off by the time we're uh and then they can just sort of bring us out on the baggage carousel at Newark and we can we could be taken taken home by our relatives until we thaw out.
This is all we're adult bappers onto the plane and then they can just crank it.
That's good.
That's a brilliant idea, Jennifer.
I hope you pr uh pr uh I hope you pass that one on to Secretary Incomputado, because uh she needs to hear from you.
That's an excellent idea.
Now you think it outside the box.
We've got to stay one step ahead of this.
But sheep to the slaughter is actually a sadly accurate way of putting it.
Uh and thank you for your call, uh, Jennifer.
Uh Mark Steid, Infrarush on the EIB network.
Uh it's interesting to me this.
It's uh th the uh the absurdities piled upon absurdities.
Um basically w if a guy gets on a plane, he's done it because he's evaded whatever systems were in place.
So if you then are up in the air and you go through those procedures, you're you're uh uh applying outmoded procedures to the current situation.
That's what happened on nine-11.
Three out of those four planes applied the nineteen seventies hijack procedures uh to a situation that had moved beyond it.
They stuck to the old rules uh while the terrorist had invented some new rules.
What uh the brave men on flight ninety-three did uh was to say nuts to that, we're in a situation beyond that now, uh, and we need to act as freeborn men.
You know, people often talk about nine eleven at the time as a kind of Pearl Harbor, big assault, uh first assault on the US mainland since the war of nineteen twelve.
But thanks to those brave men on Flight 93, it was also the doolittle raid as well, the day that America began to fight back.
And remember that all that stuff was in the news, uh uh the Todd Beamer slogan, let's roll and all the rest of it.
We've forgotten the spirit of let's roll until this Dutchman came along.
But we need more let's roll and less uh government telling you to sit uh down with your hands on your knees for the final hour of the flight and banning paperback books.
That's nuts and it's gonna get us nowhere.
America's Hang Command is away, and this is your undocumented anchor man filling in with incendiary underpants fully loaded.
Uh Mark Davis will be here Wednesday and the great Walter Williams will be providing a New Year's Eve treat for you on Thursday.
Uh let's go to Kevin in Collinbush, Ohio.
Kevin, you're live on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Great to have you with us.
Yeah, I want to take exception to something you said earlier, as far as that Dutchman that so called averted what could have happened.
I think you're gonna run afoul of most of the right and rush because you guys are always trying to hijack God, the flag, whatever.
How come God can't get credit for helping that not to happen?
Why is that that when things like that are happening or about to happen, I never noticed that you guys give God any credit at all.
Well, well, wait a minute, wait a minute, Kevin.
That's an interesting theological point.
So so if you're saying if the if the bomb fails to go off on the plane, that's God.
Uh I'm saying that if ever happened.
Yeah, but if the uh if uh the uh bomb does go off, then that too would be God, presumably.
Exactly.
Now you got it.
Yes, I have got it.
But the but but th that's why we have free will.
Uh it is not merely in the hands of God.
Uh that's why insurance companies distinguish between acts of God.
A tsunami is an act of God, for example.
Well, that's that's man doing that.
Now the other Wait a minute, what do you mean that's man doing the tsunami?
The other thing I wanted to say was you picking on that lady that called in the if you didn't care how long it took.
Yeah.
What what is wrong with that?
Instead of belly aching about this administration, as a matter of fact, this administration didn't put these rules into effect, and why not help people and tell them what they can do instead of blaming everything.
Hey, no, I'm not I'm not uh I'm being admirably nonpartisan here.
I thought our response that way.
I thought our response to the London plot when we started banning snow globes, which is where I came in, uh that was two thousand and six.
That was in the days that was in the days of uh President Bush, the swaggering cowboy.
And I objected I objected to those regulations then.
I objected to these regulations when they were put on in uh two thousand and one, in the fall of two thousand one, when you went to an airport and you'd be standing behind the eighty-seven-year-old grandma, a young Saudi male, and you'd be third in line.
And you knew if they pulled someone out for secondary screening, uh it would most likely be the eighty-seven-year-old grandma, second it would be you, and the guy who would just sail through would be the young Saudi male.
It's not that that's not a partisan point.
That is just the bone crushing stupidity of the multicultural, nonjudgmental political discourse of our time.
So it's nothing to do, that's not an anti-Bush or anti Obama point.
That's the stupidity of the air.
Yeah, well, you can't blame the administration for that.
Well, wait a minute.
They had the information they needed.
It is the same crap that happened before nine eleven.
No, well, no, no, no, this is worse.
No, this is worse, Kevin, because nine eleven has happened.
So three thousand people have died.
So when a guy and this isn't to do with red flags, this should have been obvious uh to whoever's uh at the uh security uh at the security desk in Amsterdam.
Uh let's let's give Lagos Nigeria a pass, because that uh airport is a disaster.
I don't deserve a pass either.
I'm just saying, No, that that's probably getting this information ahead of time, and so for some reason the FBI or CIA, whoever's getting it, who are these people that are not acting on this information?
I do not understand that one bit.
Well, you know why they are getting it ahead of time and they're just not gonna be able to do that.
Yeah, and and why do you talk to each other?
Why do you think why do you think they're not acting on it?
Why I don't I just think they're not gonna be a big thing.
Why do you think why do you think for example doesn't deserve the job in the first place why do you think Major Hassan can give an explicitly jihadist presentation to a room full of army psychiatrists and get promoted to major?
Why do you think that happens?
I think every officer in that room, because I'm a veteran, every officer in that room should something should happen to them.
Somebody, I mean, this guy's an officer in the United States Army, and there's no excuse for someone in that room not acting on that what I don't understand that.
But you know, I'll tell you why.
Because, for example, the flying imams.
Do you remember that case in Minneapolis, the flying imams?
Uh they were these they were these imams who began asking for seatbelt extenders uh and uh saying Alahu Akbar and playing uh just before takeoff and whatever the airline was, they threw him off the plane.
They took the flying imams off the plane for suspicious behavior, and the imams sued.
And so that airline got tied up in litigation for months and months and months on end.
And so every time somebody's doing something stupid like that, the stewardess whatever you call them now, what are you calling?
I don't know, the flight attendant, whatever you're meant to call them.
I like to call 'em stewardesses.
I we had this conversation when I was here a couple of weeks ago.
I like what they call them uh in Britain, the trolley dollies.
Anyway, the stewardess or the trolley dolly or whatever she was called, uh just thinking, now do I want to do I want to make a fuss about this guy going Alahu Akbar?
Uh maybe he's a terrorist, but if he's not, I'm gonna be in sensitivity training hell for six months, and it'll be a black mark on me, and I'll never get promoted.
This is this is crippling us.
Uh this guy this guy basically might have had a might as well have been walking around with a big flashing neon sign on his head saying jihadist, uh warning, stand well back, I'm ready to blow.
And it would still have made no difference because we're trained, we've trained ourselves to look the other way, Kevin.
Well, we need to get out of that mode.
It's just crazy.
I agree with some of the points you're making, but I just think that whoever that FBI and CIA, when they're getting this information firsthand, that's where we need to check.
They're not acting on this intelligence.
Even if the guy, for Christ's sake, the guy's dad called in now.
If he doesn't know about his own son, now that should have been a red flag right there.
He should have never even got on the tarmac.
I mean, I understand that.
Yeah, no, no, you're ab you're absolutely right.
Thank you.
Thank you for your call, Kevin.
Great to talk to you.
By the way, by the way, Kevin wound up partially agreeing with me.
I I count that as a great because he was mad with me, he thought I was rude to Victoria.
I didn't know I thought I was perfectly gracious, actually, to Victoria.
I thought it was charming almost.
Almost near charming.
Not not actually charming, but near charming.
Uh but uh but i if you if you disagree with me, let's g call in.
I love hearing, by the way.
I love hearing from liberals.
We're looking back at Obama's first year.
We're gonna uh get into a bit of that as the week goes by here on the uh EIB network.
So if you still love the guy, because I'm finding it hard to find my liberal friends sort of want to change the subject now when I bring up President Obama.
So if you still think he's terrific, if you still think he's the Messiah, if you still think like that Newsweek editor that he bestrides the world like God, and we are all just we are we are all just insects in the enormous shade of his fantastic cool, uh then do do do call us, because I'd love to I'd love to hear you explain why that's still the case.
Let's go to Doug in Great Falls Men Montana.
Doug, you're live on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Great to have you with us.
Hi, Mark, thanks for having me on, and you're you're by far the best uh sub there is on the radio anywhere.
And and I hate to tell you this, but I do agree with you on this hijacking business.
We're giving them victory after victory, Mark.
And if you extrapolate that out eventually, we just won't have flying anymore.
They'll they'll take away step by step by step until we can't fly, and then we'll ride trains, and then they'll attack trains and then they can start having you know more regulations on what we do on trains.
Yes.
Eventually they'd like us just to be going around in carts pulled by oxen like that.
Yeah, wagon carts, wagon carts, and then they can just hold up in the hills and fire at us with uh uh bow and arrows like in the old days.
It's self what we're doing, you're right.
What we're doing is self-primitivizing.
Because if you think of this now, it's two, three, four, five hours to uh uh to wait at the airport for your flight.
You've got to get there before you flight.
So suddenly uh i th th you you start to make different calculations.
A s a six hour drive that would have been unattractive ten years ago is now the quickest way of getting there.
Uh and so the longer it gets at the airport, the more and more they'll be like so all the little short haul flights will fall apart and we'll lose those.
Uh and as you say, uh then they'll start targeting the trains and then we'll be back on the old uh wagon cart.
You're right.
Great great thanks a lot for your call, Doug.
Uh Mark Stein sitting in for the sitting in for uh rush on the uh EIB network.
Uh Janet in Competano has now revised her story and said that the system uh in fact has failed catastrophically.
Uh th this is, by the way, if if a Bush administration official had done this heck of a job, Janet routine, uh the media would be all over it.
It would be the my pet goat moment.
Michael Moore would would open his next film with Janet Incompatano saying within the space of twenty-four hours the system worked and the system failed, and looking like an idiot.
But she can get a pass and Obama golfing away when it was Bush golfing, that showed he wasn't taking it seriously.
When it's Obama golfing, it's uh i it's an attractive uh visual cover shoot for the next vanity fair or whatever he's uh gonna be doing.
Uh when he's playing basketball, that doesn't mean he's not taking uh uh homeland security s uh seriously.
It means that he's taking, as the Washington Post said in its headline, a low-key approach, a nice low-key approach.
Maybe he'll uh maybe he'll get into his swim swimming trunks and he'll uh and he'll do a nice photo shoot splashing and gambling and cavorting in the surf off Hawaii to show how well the low-key approach is is going.
Uh but um uh by the way, that's maybe the way we all of us ought to fly in the future.
We all ought to be fitted out in the Obama swimming trucks.
I mean, admittedly, none of us mere mortals have such fabulously sculpted pictrels as he does, so it's gonna be very distressing when you're sitting in coach.
But um that would that would be the way to ensure that uh that there's uh there's less chance of these guys uh getting all the uh getting all the stuff get uh onto the plane.
We'll talk about that lots more straight ahead.
Mark Stein for Rush on the EIB network.
Mark Stein Inforush.
Let's take a call from Pierce in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Pierce, you're live on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Mark, good to speak with you.
How are you doing today?
I'm doing good, all things considered.
Okay.
Mark, I want to ask you a question.
Why is it that you're opposed to aer airport screening?
I'm not a po I'm not opposed to airport screening, but I'll put it I'll put it this way, because uh this is the line I always say when uh I'm uh when I get more than about three questions when I cross a border thing.
Um I know I'm not a terrorist, I know I'm not a smuggler, I know I'm not an illegal immigrant.
So if if you if if the state authorities cannot tell that, that's a reflection not on me, but on them.
And all efficient security, like for example, uh Israel's security targets uh precisely the kind of the the nature of the threat.
It doesn't universalize the threat.
Uh what what we have done here is universalize the threat and try to pr apply uh security inconveniences that should be applied to a very select group instead to hundreds of millions of people, and that can never work.
Interesting point.
Hey, Carl, come on, you got something better than that.
What kind of response is that?
Interesting point.
Give me your best shot.
You want a best shot?
Okay.
Uh as I was speaking to your to your call screening caller, I used to work for TSA.
As a matter of fact, I used to work over at Logan International Airport in Boston.
Which is one of the airports in which uh nine eleven happened.
Nine eleven started.
Yeah.
Yeah, the one seventy-five and American Airlines ninety.
Oh God, what's the other flight?
No, don't r don't worry about the flight number.
We know that two two of the flights took off from Logan.
Yeah.
I worked over at the American Airlines checkpoint.
Gate thirty six.
That's where the other the flight where Mohammed Ada and his crew took off from.
No, but the thing is, though, that first of all, one of the things about T FA.
The screeners there.
Uh we go through a lot.
You have you basically have to get a you got a you know harsh working conditions.
Management and rank and file are at each other's throats all the time.
Then you both got to deal with the public.
And we're always being in we're always being checked up on as well too.
And then the final thing, we gotta worry about the terrorists.
It's a fun job.
But I can tell you one thing.
I had the pleasure of working with some of the best people I've ever known in my life.
Yeah, but this is this is look, this this is not r not relevant.
Uh I've seen a I've seen airport security uh in many places around the world, including places that you don't think of as being terribly dangerous, like Vienna, where I went through with a uh I I'd just done a TV thing in the street and been running for the plane, and I went through with the microphone, uh the wireless microphone still in my body, set off the alarms.
I was surrounded by troops, soldiers from the Austrian army uh within a few seconds.
I've seen all kinds of different levels of airline security.
What matters is the policy imperatives driving uh what it is that you do.
And the policy imperatives uh that are that are driving ours are ones of uh c uh craven political correctness and attempting the impossible, attempting the impossible.
Now look, what uh what is the shoe bomber have in common with the nine eleven guys have in common with the London guys have in common with the panty bomber.
Go on, take a wild guest, Pierce.
What does he have what do they have in common?
Islam.
Exactly.
Unfortunately, you can't you're not permitted to make that assertion publicly, or at least not by the by our government itself.
And you at the TSA are not permitted to profile people uh on the basis of uh on on on the on on the basis of their support of Islam, which is not just a faith, by the way, but also an explicitly political ideology.
Yes, that is so.
Well, it it's uh it's it it's I'll tell you this.
The one thing is is that I've seen myself that there's a lot of crazy people out there, and a lot of crazy stuff happens.
Let me give you a story.
One day, to the American checkpoint, there was a lady that did come through with a Japanese katana.
And she wasn't she wasn't doing maliciously.
It's just that she didn't realize you couldn't bring one of those through.
They b basically local law enforcement did we did call them in.
They were the issue was resolved.
But the fact is, you know, crazy stuff happens.
Another instance.
No, no, no, wait a minute.
You say crazy stuff happens.
Is that woman gonna pull anything?
I was at I was at Heath.
Somebody could have.
I would no, somebody could have.
But it's the person.
It's like it's like me in Auckland, New Zealand, where they say, well, you could weaponize your snow globe.
There is unfortunately there is no National Snow Globe Association.
We need one.
Because then they could do the bumper sticker.
Snow globes don't kill people, people kill people.
And that is the point.
That is the point.
Most people traveling with, you know, whatever you care to mention, a Swiss army knife, a knitting needle.
Most people traveling with knitting needles want to knit on the plane.
Before Janet in Competano said you've got to put your hands on your knees.
Uh uh most people with knitting needles attempting to board a plane want to knit uh to while away the sheer boredom of being in the care of American Airlines uh or US Airways.
So to ban knitting needles means the state is gonna waste its time confiscating and inspecting for something that is absolutely no threat to it whatsoever.
This is absurd.
This is the death of America.
It is essentially the embrace of stupidity.
1800-282-2882.
Mark Stein in Farage, a spokesperson for the Council on American Islamic Relations uh says that this incident with this uh alleged potential person on the Northwest flight should not be used as an excuse to profile people.
Well, uh Mr. Spokesperson for Council on American Islamic Relations.
I really don't think you have a thing to worry about on uh on that front.
Oh, by the way, Charlie Sheen, who spent part of Christmas Day in jail.
Um he's now I see he's now being investigated for second degree assault, a felony, and criminal mischief.
Connect the dots, people.
Connect the dots.
The one guy with the courage to tell you the truth about what's happening in now nine eleven is now being set up with a spousal domestic incident.
Connect the dots, people.
The one man with the courage to tell you what's really going on.
Mark Stein in Farush, Mark Davis will be here on Wednesday.
And then a New Year's Eve treat.
The great Walter E. Williams will be here on New Year's Eve to close out 2009 on the EIB Network.
Lots more straight ahead.
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