Rush Limbaugh Program - February 7, 2011, Monday, Hour #1

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Feb. 7, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program

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February 7, 2011, Monday, Hour #1

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	Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
	Yes, America's Anchorman is away today, and this is your undocumented anchorman sitting in.
	Mark Stein, honored to be here.
	No supporting paperwork whatsoever.
	Live from the granite state of New Hampshire.
	Live free or die.
	And I'm not sure I'd want to take odds on which of those menu options America will select right now, although I see that voters are opposing the raising of the debt ceiling.
	Only 27% of voters favor raising the nation's $14.3 trillion debt ceiling.
	Although once you're up around $14.3 trillion, you've long since flown the planet.
	You might as well just keep going from there.
	Mr. Snerdley and the rest of the gang are handling all the important stuff behind the scenes.
	Don't worry, it's just like a regular Rush Limbaugh show.
	Mr. Snerdley and co. are with us.
	I'm just the idiot front man.
	I'm like the appealing, idealistic, youthful face of Egyptian democracy.
	And Snerdley and co are like the Muslim Brotherhood sinisterly manipulating everything behind the scenes.
	Rush back to rush back.
	Yeah, I'll get all the blame.
	But they're the ones pulling the strings behind the scenes.
	Rush back tomorrow to take you through to Friday.
	But you can always go to rushlimbaugh.com and it's like he's never gone away.
	You got your audio, transcripts, illustrative material, and a lot more at rushlimbaugh.com.
	Great to be with you.
	I'm from the foreign exchange student wing of the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
	It's a great program.
	Guys like me get to study here.
	And in return, Anderson Cooper gets to be beaten up by the graduating class of the Cairo Institute for Arab-American Relations.
	So it works out just great for everyone.
	1-800-282-2882.
	That's the number to call.
	We will get to Egypt.
	The administration has now clarified its position on Egypt.
	President Mubarak is not a dictator, and he should stay in office, according to Vice President Biden.
	But he needs to step down immediately, according to Secretary Clinton, and remain president to ensure stability, according to Special Envoy Frank Wisner.
	And he should have resigned as president yesterday, according to Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, paving the way to elections that must be held within three months, according to senior officials, unless he waits till September, which is fine by us, according to the State Department.
	Got that?
	The official U.S. position is that Mubarak needs to go immediately, needs to stay indefinitely, needs to stay for a bit, then go, needs to stay for a bit longer, then go sooner rather than later, unless he decides to stay until September, because he's standing in the way of the full bloom of a new Egyptian democracy, unless it turns out that he's all that stands between us and a Muslim Brotherhood takeover, because the Muslim Brotherhood are a radical theocratic tyranny in waiting, unless, of course,
	it turns out that they're reasonable, moderate types we should have been talking to all along.
	So that's the official Obama position verbatim from whitehouse.gov.
	If you're making that critical 3 a.m. call to the Oval Office and you get voicemail, press buttons one through six for whichever Obama position on Egypt suits you best.
	Rush Limbaugh news update, by the way.
	Paul Krugman in today's New York Times says the Egyptian riots are due to climate change.
	Seriously.
	Seriously.
	I'll get to that a bit later if I can manage to get through the opening paragraph without breaking up in laughter.
	Paul Krigman says the Egyptian riots are just the latest manifestation of climate change, of climate change.
	It's the day after Super Bowl Sunday, Super Bowl Sunday.
	Don't ask me about football.
	I'm the world's worst Monday morning quarterback as an unassimilated foreigner.
	In cricket terms, I make a pretty good Monday morning backwards short leg.
	Actually, that's a bit of an exaggeration.
	In cricket terms, I'm more of a Monday morning silly mid-wicket.
	But we might discuss the Super Bowl commercials because I'm always interested in what they tell us about where we are as a nation.
	Do you remember the big one last year?
	It was the Audi commercial, the one where the guy is asking for a plastic bag at the supermarket checkout.
	Next thing you know, his head's being slammed against the counter and he's being cuffed by the green police.
	And the Enviro cop sneers at him, you picked the wrong day to mess with the ecosystem, plastic boy.
	And he's led away.
	And we see all these shots of the green Gestapo going through your trash until they find an illegal battery and they seize your house.
	And eventually we switch to a roadblock on a backed-up interstate with the green police prowling the lines of vehicles to check they're in environmental compliance.
	And I was watching this last year and thinking, well, this must be one of these big-time libertarian things, you know, warning about the totalitarian tendencies of the eco-nanny state.
	And any minute now, Clint Eastwood will come roaring through in his Grand Torino, flipping the bird at all these green stormtroopers and blowing out their tires for good measure.
	But instead, the green Gestapo simply stumble across this Audi vehicle, whatever it is.
	What was it?
	The A3 TDI, I think that's what it's called.
	And they tell this guy in the Audi A3 TDI, you're good to go.
	And so with the approval of the state enforcers, he then meekly pulls out of the stall traffic and drives away.
	And the tagline is: Green has never felt so right.
	Being a compliant dweeb enthralled to societal groupthink has never felt so right.
	That was the message from Audi.
	Not you're a free man, don't bend to the status bullies, but resistance is futile.
	You might as well get with the eco-totalitarian program.
	And I thought that was a very revealing ad last year because when I first came to this great nation, I love the way car ads were all about liberty.
	It was all, you know, get your motor running, head out on the highway.
	To sell automobiles to dull people who live in suburban cul-de-sacs, the car manufacturers would show them roaring around Herpin Bends, deep into forests, splashing through rivers, across the desert plain, and they'd come to rest on a spectacular promontory on the roof of the world, offering a dizzying view of half the planet.
	Freedom, freedom, freedom.
	That was the message of car ads.
	Even if you just used it to go from number 27B Elm Street to your office three-quarters of a mile away, they would sell you the car by showing you all the possibilities of freedom.
	And now they show you all the possibilities of groupthink eco-compliance.
	That was last year's genius car ad.
	Got even better this year because the car ads now, all the car companies are owned by the government one way or the other.
	The government's got its fingers in all the car companies except Ford to one degree or another.
	So we had a Chrysler ad, a $9 million Super Bowl ad, paid for by you, by the way.
	These guys are requesting more taxpayer dollars.
	Chrysler wants a better deal on its bailout.
	The guy, the head guy at Chrysler, Sergio Marchionne, because Chrysler is something to do with fiat these days.
	It's partly owned by the government, partly owned by fiat, partly owned by the unions.
	And this guy was complaining about the shyster rates that he has to pay the taxpayers for the money he got in the Chrysler bailout.
	He wants more money and he wants a better deal on the money he's getting.
	In other words, he's sick of you loan shark taxpayers giving him this money at such unfavorable rates.
	Anyway, he's taken $9 million of your money, your taxpayer money, and he made a Super Bowl ad with Eminem.
	I wonder how much Eminem got for that ad.
	But anyway, Eminem made the Super Bowl ad.
	It's just got 11 words in it.
	And it shows this guy, Eminem, driving his new Chrysler vehicle through Detroit, pulling up in his car in front of the theater and going inside.
	And then he says, this is the motor city and this is what we do.
	And I was impressed, actually, that he could find a theater that is still not been reduced to rubble in downtown Detroit.
	Because if you look, for example, at the beautiful United Artists Theatre, once beautiful, which was built in the Spanish Gothic style in 1928 and abandoned in the 70s, it's now a complete ruin.
	If you look at the Lee Plaza Hotel, an Art Deco landmark from 1929, it's now a shattered ballroom with the grand piano upturned.
	And Eminem, even though most of his music sounds like he's playing it on a grand piano that's been upturned, that theater he can't go to.
	So I congratulate this guy on having found a theatre to appear in that is still standing in Detroit.
	I've just picked out a couple of examples, by the way, from this French coffee table book by two French photojournalists who photographed the rubble of Detroit.
	They've just gone through taking photographs of the rubble of Detroit.
	Once upon a time, photojournalists used to do this with European cities, circa 1945.
	The photojournalists wandered through European cities taking pictures of the rubble.
	But now they're doing it to American cities.
	And this is Detroit.
	And unlike the European cities, no bombs fell on this American city.
	This American city did it to themselves.
	But this, yeah, the liberal bomb, that's right, Mr. Snerdley, because Detroit was a one-party state, a one-party state, and it reduced this city to rubble.
	And now Eminem is taking, with the benefit of $9 million taxpayer dollars that Chrysler had, is telling you this is the motor city and this is what we do.
	Here's a statistic from Detroit.
	44% of adults in Detroit have a reading comprehension below grade six, which means that nearly half the grown-ups in Detroit couldn't graduate from elementary school.
	And believe me, you know, what sixth grade requires of American 12-year-olds is no great shakes these days.
	According to Time magazine, the functional illiteracy rate in the city hovers near 50%.
	This is an American city at the dawn of the 21st century, and one in two citizens are illiterate.
	That's about the same rate as the Ivory Coast or the Central African Republic, which for most of the 70s and 80s was ruled by a cannibal emperor.
	Whereas in the 70s and 80s, as Mr. Snerdley just pointed out, Detroit was ruled by a Democrat mayor and a Democrat bureaucracy for life and an ever more feather-bedded Democrat Union army, all of whom cannibalized the city.
	And say what you like about Emperor Bakassa in the Central African Empire, but dollar for dollar, his reign was a bargain compared to Mayor Coleman Young's reign in Detroit.
	So we now have the perfect emblem of America at the dawn of the 21st century.
	We have this slick high-style ad with MM that takes $9 million of taxpayer money to tell us that a ruined city that is attracting the kind of photojournalism from French photojournalists that used to be reserved for African banana republics after a civil war, we're now being told that this is the model for America in the 21st century, this slick high-style Super Bowl.
	And don't get me wrong, I like Eminem.
	He seems a perfectly pleasant fellow.
	I find that song of his about, what's the song of his about shove a gerbil up your butt?
	I find that very pleasant and catchy song.
	He did a couple of years ago.
	You remember there used to be rumors about a famous Hollywood celebrity who'd opened up an animal sanctuary in his own bottom.
	And Eminem managed to get a hit record about it.
	That right there, by the way, is very telling about the state of American popular culture at the dawn of the 21st century.
	But I got nothing against Eminem making a big hit record out of the rather more recherche hobbies one can pursue with a friendly gerbil.
	But that's a better thing than taking $9 million of taxpayer money and making a slick ad to tell you that Detroit is the future of America.
	If it is, we're all doomed.
	1-800-282-2882, we're going to be talking about two monuments to human progress in the dawn of the third millennium, the city of Detroit and what's going on in Egypt and lots more of today's news.
	Mark Stein in for Rush, 1-800-282-2882.
	Mark Stein in for Rush on the EIB network.
	Not sure about all that heavy breathing.
	We don't want to get that excited this early in the show.
	Talking about some of the ancillary entertainment at the Super Bowl, always interesting to take in the musical acts.
	Christina Aguiera sang the national anthem yesterday.
	And it's always very slow when you get a pop star to sing the national anthem because they're like melisma crazed the way they do.
	I think there's some competition.
	I think there's a Grammy Award for the most syllables you can get into.
	Ooh, can you see?
	You've got to like, there's a special Grammy Award when you're doing the national anthem if you can get a one-syllable word into about 14 syllables there.
	But she sang it.
	She sang a very particularly idiosyncratic version of it.
	At one point, I think about a minute into the song, she got her lines mixed up.
	And instead of saying, what is it?
	Oh, the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming.
	She said, what so proudly we watched at the Twilight's last streaming.
	So I don't know what that is.
	It's a reference to the streaming, the internet streaming of Twilight or something.
	I'm not sure, but it was fascinating to watch Christina Aguiera do that.
	By the way, I think they used to play Christina Aguiera to the inmates at Gintmo.
	That's one of the things that the ACLU at Amnesty International complained about, that this was in breach of the Geneva Conventions to play Christina Aguiera to the poor old jihadists at Gidmo.
	So I don't think they do that anymore.
	Then they started reading them Harry Potter.
	And apparently that was also in breach of the Geneva Convention.
	So they're now thousands of enraged jihadists who never found out how Harry Potter ended and are even madder about it.
	The Black Eyed Peas were there last night and they amended their song to insert the words Obama to insert a little bit of political message.
	This is the searing political insight you get from the black-eyed peas.
	Obama, let's get these kids educated, create jobs so the country stays stimulated.
	I'm Mr. Squaresville, so I don't know what black-eyed peas, how that tune normally goes.
	I think it's their song, Where is the Love?
	So we'll see if we can get one of the cooler cats on the Rush Limbaugh team to remind me of what the Black-Eyed Peas tune for that couplet is.
	But they amended the couplet to, Obama, let's get these kids educated, create jobs so the country stays stimulated.
	Thank you for that penetrating insight, Mr. P or Mr. Black Eyed, whichever one it was.
	America, what's wrong with American education?
	We spend more than any other country per student than Luxembourg.
	So why aren't they educated?
	What is it?
	Should we throw more money at the teachers' unions?
	Is that what you're proposing?
	Or have you got some smarter idea there?
	Create jobs so the country stays stimulated.
	Well, Obama is the de-stimulator, sir.
	Mr. P, Mr. Black Eyed.
	Obama is the D-stimulator.
	He spent a trillion dollars and he might as well have thrown it all out the window in single-dollar bills because while most of it would have been fallen into the Potomac and washed out into the Atlantic Ocean, there'd be a good chance that maybe $17, $18 would have blown back onto the eastern seaboard and been used for some genuine economic activity.
	He spent a trillion dollars and he de-stimulated the economy.
	But this is what passes for the penetrating political insight of our cutting-edge artistes.
	Obama, let's get these kids educated, create jobs so the country stays stimulated.
	Why can't we?
	Why can't we get these kids educated?
	1940, most Americans had an eighth-grade education, 1940.
	That's the America, by the way, that invented everything that's great about America.
	That's the America that invented Detroit and made Detroit the economic powerhouse of the world.
	Eighth grade America.
	Eighth grade America built America, made it the economic powerhouse of the world, won a Second World War, and emerged as a victor, an unparalleled colossus of global reach until 18th grade America, with this huge, bloated, excessive spending on education, fritted away, fritted away the inheritance built for it by 8th grade America, that 8th grade America in 1940.
	Now our children stay in school twice as long as their parents and grandparents did, receive twice as much attention from their teachers because people-teacher ratios have fallen and fallen and fallen, and we have absolutely nothing to show for it.
	But the black-eyed peas think the solution to what ails America is to spend even more money keeping people in school for no purpose whatsoever longer and longer till they're 36, 37, 38.
	Who knows?
	If 18th grade America isn't enough, what the hell?
	Let's make it 28th grade America.
	Obama, let's get these kids educated.
	Mark Steinen for Rush, more to come.
	Yes, Rush will be back tomorrow, but if you go to rushlimbaugh.com, it's like he's never gone away.
	There's all kinds of good stuff there.
	I was grossly disrespectful to the black-eyed peas a few moments ago because I was referring to Mr. Black-Eyed or Mr. P.
	And of course, the guy who actually sang those, Obama, let's get these kids educated, create jobs so the country stays simulated.
	The guy responsible for that penetrating insight was Will I Am.
	It's like he spells his name, as is the fashion these days, like an internet URL.
	It's will.i.am.
	But that's his name, WillIam.
	It's like that guy.
	What's the other rapper-type fella like Flo Rider?
	Is that the guy?
	It's how he spells it Florida, but he pronounces it Flo Rider.
	I think that's right.
	Anyway, I like the rapper we've got up here in New Hampshire, Newham Peshaya.
	He's great.
	That's a terrific rap artist.
	Just before doing that, by the way, the Black-Eyed Peas, just before telling the Obaba, let's get these kids educated, included a short rendition of their celebrated song, Let's Get It Started, which was originally titled Let's Get Retarded, in which they call on the audience to get stupid.
	So on the one hand, the Black-Eyed Peas are telling us to get stupid, but also get educated.
	And I think we should combine those policies and do what we do, which is to keep kids in school till they're 24, 26, 27, you know, doing queer legal theory and other useful fields of academic discipline, because that way they can both get educated and get stupid all at the same time.
	Mark Stein, Infra Rush, 1-800-282-2882.
	Let us go to Dave in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.
	Dave, you're live on the Rush Limbaugh show.
	Thank you so much, Mark.
	I have to tell you that I agree with you about 99% of the time, and of course, love Rush as well.
	But I am a Michigander in heart, and consider Detroit my second home city.
	And to hear those comments earlier, some of which, of course, are true, but it has to also be pointed out that Detroit is coming back.
	Detroit is really coming back.
	It's a big city with big problems, but it's coming back.
	Well, Dave, I got no problem with Michigan.
	I spend part of my year, a couple of weeks' time, I'm going to be at Hillsdale College, where I spend part of my year every year.
	Always happy to be at Hillsdale, always happy to land at Detroit's spectacular new international airport, which is where I fly into to go to Hillsdale.
	But, but when you say, when you say to me that Detroit is coming back, I pointed out when I, and I would advise you to have a look at this French coffee table book with the pictures of the splintered pews of the Woodward Avenue Presbyterian Church with the dust-caked Bibles and hymnals scattered across the floors.
	You can get these coffee table books for all kinds of cities that had terrible things done to them.
	Sarajevo, for example, Stalingrad, for example.
	But the difference is, the difference between all those situations is that big government in Detroit did this to itself.
	And that's what ought to ashame any true Michigander.
	And, you know, it may well be that the city has hit bottom.
	I'm not entirely persuaded by that, by the way, because you still have a situation where it's got one of the highest murder rates in the country.
	70% of murders go unsolved.
	It has a school board.
	I just want to check whether it's the chairman or the superintendent, but the senior school board official in Detroit is himself barely literal.
	He's someone who failed when he was at college in Michigan.
	He failed to pass the English language proficiency multiple times until eventually he sued the college to get his degree.
	Because that's the American way.
	If you can't earn it, sue your way to the qualification.
	So that's the difference between Detroit and Sarajevo and Stalingrad is Detroit did this to itself through nothing other than big, bloated, unsustainable government.
	So while I'm happy to hear that it may be, you know, maybe they have hit bottom, when they're coming up with ideas where they want to turn part of the city back into farmland.
	Have you heard about this thing?
	This proposal, Dave?
	It's.
	We look at the details.
	I think it's a genius move.
	You look at what Mayor Bing is doing.
	He's coming up with big ideas to solve big problems.
	And I think that's the thing that we have to keep in mind.
	People are used to looking at Detroit and other cities in America that have been having their problems over the years for whatever reason that they got into those problems, political, social, racial, whatever it is.
	But I think it's too easy to start digging at these cities and just pointing out the negatives without looking at some of the positives as well.
	Mayor Bing and his leadership has put together, I think, really make a lot of great sense.
	And I think that you also need to know some of the tremendous things happening in City of Detroit, the fantastic Detroit Institute of Arts, the Henry Ford Museum, the cultural assets, the riverfront development.
	Things are happening there that the people of Detroit are making happen.
	They are also tired of this history.
	They're ready for a real renaissance, and it's happening.
	I just have to, I would personally show you around Detroit if you will come to Detroit.
	It's that fantastic.
	Well, I may well take you up on that, Dave, because to be honest, it doesn't look that impressive every time you go a few blocks from the riverfront development.
	Detroit is a city where 30% of the population are government workers.
	Right there, that cripples, that cripples the possibility of economic renaissance.
	Another 29% are out of work, according to the Detroit news, in real terms, real unemployment.
	According to Dave Bing, by the way, the mayor you were just talking about much a couple of moments ago, the real number is closer to 50%.
	You know, I'm not saying Detroit isn't Somalia.
	Not yet.
	Not yet.
	But what I do have great concerns about is the idea of jumping the gun, getting some overpaid pop star and giving him $9 million of taxpayer dollars to sell an economic renaissance in Detroit that is not yet visible to the rest of us.
	And the problem here is this, that at the moment Detroit is an outlier.
	If you're talking with people about how bad things are likely to get in the multi-trillion dollar hole that the government is digging us into in Washington and you point to Detroit, people say, well, Detroit's an outlier.
	It's not a typical American city.
	And that's true.
	And I don't want it to be a typical American city.
	And I don't want Detroit to become less of an outlier because we are hailing it as a model for a recovery that has not yet happened.
	I'm happy to hear there's been a riverfront development, Dave, but it's going to take a lot more than that.
	When you've got the murder rate Detroit has, when 50% of the population has left in the last 60 years, and you've got to figure it's the 50% who want to be able to fulfill their economic potential in life, and that a lot of the 50% who are left behind are quite happy either to be members of the dependent class or the class that services the dependent class, i.e. the government bureaucracy.
	It's going to take a lot more than a riverfront development to persuade me that Detroit is a model for the America of the 21st century, Dave.
	Thank you, Dave.
	He's gone back to Sault Ste. Marie.
	Now, Sault Ste. Marie, that is a town.
	I haven't been in that town for a while, but I do love.
	Sorry, I didn't get a chance to tell him this because I do love whenever I'm up in Sault Ste. Marie, and I do love the upper peninsula of Michigan, which is spectacular.
	Oh, the Bronx is coming back too, Mr. Snutley says.
	Well, yeah, yeah, that's right.
	That's right.
	It's been coming back longer than it's been gone.
	And it's true, it's about, you know, Somalia.
	I mentioned Somalia, where functioning government collapsed entirely in Somalia.
	There is no government.
	The whole thing has collapsed.
	And the amazing thing about that is that life expectancy and general health and welfare went up.
	The minute government, I'm a small government guy, but I'm not, you know, I'm not quite ready to commend the Somali model just yet.
	But functioning government entirely collapsed, and yet the health of the population, educational performance, and life expectancy went up.
	So, you know, maybe the Somali model, maybe next time round, they can have Eminem driving through Somalia in his whatever, I don't know what models of cars they make in Somalia.
	I wouldn't be surprised if Chrysler hasn't outsourced the factory to Mogadishu by then, and we can have Eminem driving through at the next Super Bowl, hailing the resurgence of Mogadishu.
	Mark Stein, in for us, 1-800-282-2882.
	Lots more still to come.
	Mark Stein, in for us on the EIB network, 1-800-282-2882.
	I think there might be a war between Britain and Mexico breaking out any moment now.
	The BBC has a car show called Top Gear, Motoring Show, as they call it, they're motoring.
	And one of the guys, they were testing out a Mexican car.
	And the guy says, this car is just like Mexicans.
	It's lazy, feckless, and flatulent.
	And the Mexican ambassador has complained.
	I believe the British ambassador in Mexico City was called in.
	There have been questions raised in parliament.
	The Mexican government has called the remarks offensive, xenophobic, and humiliating.
	And it could well be, could well be that we are on the brink of war between Mexico and the United Kingdom, because the Mexicans are escalating this at every opportunity.
	I don't know which part of that, by the way, was most offensive to them.
	The BBC guy saying Mexicans were lazy, feckless, and flatulent.
	But I noticed that the government of Malawi has just passed a new law banning flatulence in public.
	It is now a criminal offence to break wind in public in Malawi.
	And this was justified by the Solicitor General Anthony Camanga, who said that it's a form of air pollution.
	It's a form of air pollution.
	Any person who vitiates the atmosphere in any place so as to make it noxious to the public, to the health of persons in general, dwelling or carrying on business in the neighborhood, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.
	So they're cracking down on flatulence in Malawi.
	This is human flatulence, by the way, not just the bovine flatulence that Al Gore is so concerned about.
	So perhaps it's good to know that at any rate, the BBC, if it ever gets to test out a Malawi vehicle, Will not be accusing Malawians of being excessively flatulent because the government's taken action, stern action, to stop that.
	Al Sharpton, who knew Al Sharpton owes $3.9 million in back taxes.
	And he's relatively relaxed about it.
	He's not worried that anything is going to happen to him because he's Al Sharpton.
	After all, you'd have to be crazy to attempt to drag Al Sharpton into court.
	But he has said that he owes a total of $3.7 million in city, state, and federal taxes dating back to 2002.
	And Al Sharpton said that all these liens and so forth are, quote, just a matter of bureaucracy, unquote.
	And that's good to know.
	So, Al Sharpton, I don't think anyone's going to do anything to Al Sharpton over that, but apparently he's got this $3.7 million.
	I love this, by the way.
	This, though, is a characteristic of people who are always calling for huge amounts of government spending, yet are curiously reluctant to contribute to the treasury that has to be dipped into in order to spend the money on government spending.
	If you remember John Kerry, for example, registering his yacht in Rhode Island because he would avoid the $500,000 Massachusetts luxury yacht registering tax.
	Now, I agree with him there.
	I don't think Massachusetts should charge John Kerry or anybody else $500,000 to register a yacht in the Bay State.
	And I'm glad he found a workaround.
	You know, I think I'm with him there.
	Take it to the next state, take it to the next jurisdiction, and avoid the tax.
	That's one reason, by the way, that liberals always want big centralized government.
	So you don't have a choice.
	So there's nowhere else to go.
	Right now, if you don't like the Massachusetts boat tax, you can go next door to Rhode Island.
	But liberalism, eventually, their ideal is to have everything done at the Washington level so you can't go to the next town, the next county, the next state.
	And eventually, as we saw with climate change, at the global level, so you can't even go to the next country.
	Their whole object is to make it impossible to avoid these taxes.
	And yet you notice, strangely enough, that when it comes to the Reverend Sharpton's unfortunate little tax problems, or John Kerry's yacht, or Tom Dashell's chauffeur,
	or Timothy Geithner's strange inability to understand the simple yes-no prompts of basic turbo-tax software, that all these people who are so eager for everybody else to pay more taxes into the federal treasury so we can have even more spending are curiously reluctant to pony up for it themselves.
	Mark Stein in for rush talking about Egypt and talking about some of the broader lessons from the Super Bowl last night and the halftime entertainment and the commercials and whatnot.
	We'll take lots more of your calls straight ahead.
	1-800-282-2882.
	Mark Stein in for rush for furious Michiganders jamming the line to defend their city.
	Hey, let's go to Jimmy.
	Jimmy is in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, but wants to talk about Detroit.
	Great to have you with us, Jimmy.
	Thank you for having me on.
	Yeah, you know, Myrtle Beach is a very big tourist city.
	You know, obviously we have the ocean that draws everybody here.
	Detroit doesn't have that, but I want to tell you that we went there last year on vacation, my wife and I, and we went there with the purpose of watching the Red Wings and watching the Lions.
	And we stayed in a Doubletree hotel downtown that was an old, renovated old, I'm not sure what type of building it was, but it was a fantastic hotel.
	They have the public transportation down there.
	It's an above-ground rail system.
	It's like 50 cents to ride around the loop of the whole city.
	We went to the MGM Grand.
	We gambled a little bit.
	Obviously, we went down the riverfront.
	And we had a fantastic experience in Detroit.
	And obviously, you know, there are bad parts to it.
	But we can't keep beating a dead horse.
	We've got to help him out a little bit and, you know, bring him back.
	Okay, I'll take your word for it, Jimmy.
	But you know where I had a great time on vacation a couple of years back?
	Cairo.
	I could say all the same things, by the way, you just said there.
	I stayed in a Terrific Hotel and I rode around for a very reasonable price and I even went down the Nile or up the Nile.
	I can't remember which direction I was heading in.
	But the question is whether you would want to actually live there, move there, educate your children there, start a business there, and try and fulfill your economic potential in that city.
	And the tragedy of Detroit, which was the economic powerhouse of the world half a century ago, as I said, is that it did this to itself.
	So if it's coming back, if it's genuinely coming back, as opposed to just boondoggle programs of this and that, that's all very well.
	But the fact that it had to come back is an appalling reflection on the stewardship of that city under a mainly democratic one-party state this last half century.

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