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Feb. 7, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:58
February 7, 2011, Monday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 Podcast.
Yes, America's anchor man 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 uh I'm not sure I'd want to take odds on which of those menu options uh America will select right now, although I'm I see that uh voters are opposing the uh raising of the debt ceiling.
Only twenty-seven percent of voters favor raising the uh nation's fourteen point three trillion dollar debt ceiling.
Although once you're up around fourteen point three trillion dollars, you're you've you've long since flown the planet.
You might as well uh just keep going from there.
Uh Mr. Snerdly and the rest of the gang are uh handling all the important stuff behind the scenes.
Don't worry, it's just like a regular Rush Limbaugh show.
Uh Mr. Snerdley and Co.
uh are with us.
I'm just the idiot frontman.
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 get I'll get all the blame.
Uh but but but but they're the ones pulling the strings behind the scenes.
Rush back tomorrow to take you through to Friday.
Uh but you can always go to Rush Limbaugh.com and it's like he's never gone away.
You uh you got your audio, transcripts, illustrative material, and a lot more uh at Rushlimbore.com.
Great to be with you.
I'm from the uh 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 uh 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.
One-eight hundred-282-2882, that's the number to call.
We will get to Egypt.
Uh the administration has now clarified its position on Egypt.
Uh 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, uh, paving the way to elections that must be held within three months, according to senior officials, unless he uh waits till September, which is fine by us, according to the State Department.
Got that?
Uh 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, uh, because he's standing in the way of the full bloom of a new Egyptian democracy.
Uh, unless it turns out that he's all that stands between us and a Muslim Brotherhood takeover, uh, 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, uh, 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 uh suits you best.
Uh Rush 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 I'll get to that a bit later, if I can try if I can manage to get through the opening paragraph uh without breaking up in laughter.
Pul Paul Krigman says the Egyptian riots are just the latest manifestation of climate change.
Of climate change.
Uh it's the day after uh w uh Super Bowl Sunday, Super Bowl Sunday.
Don't ask me about football.
I'm the uh world's worst Monday morning quarterback as an unassimilated foreigner.
In cricket terms, I make a pretty good Monday morning backward short leg.
Actually, that's a bit of an exaggeration.
In cricket terms, I'm more of a Monday morning silly midwicket.
Uh but we might we might uh discuss the Super Bowl commercials, because I'm always interested uh in what they tell us about where we are as a nation.
Do you remember the big one last year?
It was uh the um uh Audi commercial, the the one where the 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.
Uh and the the enviro cop uh sneers At him, uh, you picked the wrong day to mess with the ecosystem, plastic boy, uh, and he's led away.
And we see all these uh shots uh 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 uh a backed up ins interstate with the uh with the green police prowling the lines of vehicles to check their in the environmental compliance.
And and and I was watching this last year and thinking, well, this must be one of these big time libertarian things, uh uh, you know, warning about the uh totalitarian tendencies of the eco-nanny state.
And any minute now, uh Clint Eastwood will come uh roaring through in his grand Torino, flipping the bird uh at all these uh green stormtroopers and blowing out their tires for good measure.
Uh but in s instead uh the the green Gestapo simply stumble across this uh Audi vehicle, whatever whatever it is, what was it, the A3 TDI?
I think that's what it's called.
And and they tell this guy in the or 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 uh and drives away.
And the tagline is Green has never felt so right.
Being a being a compliant dweeb in thrall to societal groupthink has never felt so right.
That was the message from Audi.
Uh 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 I thought that was a very revealing ad last year, because w when when I first came to this great nation, I love the way car ads were all about uh liberty.
It was all, you know, get your motor running, head out on the highway.
Uh uh to sell automobiles to dull people who live in suburban cul-de-sacs.
The car manufacturers would show them roaring round hairpin bends, deep into forests, splashing through rivers, across the desert plain, uh, and they'd uh come to rest on on a spectacular promontory on the roof of the world, uh 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 uh Elm Street uh to your office uh three quarters of a mile away, uh they would 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 uh the car ads now, all the car companies are owned by uh uh the uh government one way or the other.
The government's got its fingers in uh in uh all the car companies except Ford to one degree or another.
So we had a uh a a Chrysler ad, uh a nine million dollar Super Bowl ad, paid for by you, by the way.
These guys uh are requesting more taxpayer dollars.
Uh Chrysler wants a better deal on its bailout.
Uh the g the the guy uh uh the the the head guy at Chrysler, Sergio Marchioni, because uh Chrysler is something to do with fiat these days.
It's partly owned by the government, uh partly owned by Fiat, partly owned by the unions.
Uh and and this guy was complaining about the shyster rates uh 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 nine million dollars of your money, your taxpayer money, and he made a Super Bowl ad with M. I wonder how much uh Eminem uh got uh uh got for that ad.
But anyway, M made uh the Super Bowl ad, it's just got eleven words in it, and it shows this guy, uh Eminem, dr uh s driving his new Chrysler vehicle through Detroit, p pulling up uh 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 uh that he could find a theater that is still not been reduced to rubble in uh downtown Detroit, because if you look, for example, at the um uh uh beautiful United Artists Theater, once beautiful, which was built in the uh Spanish Gothic style in uh 1928 uh and abandoned in the 70s, it's it's now a complete ruin.
If you look at uh the uh Lee Plaza Hotel and an Art Deco landmark from 1929, it's now a shattered ballroom uh with the grand piano upturned and uh MM uh uh even though most of his music sounds like he's uh playing it on a grand piano that's been upturned.
uh it's uh that theater he can't go to.
So uh I congratulate this guy on on having found a theater to uh 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 uh 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.
Uh the photojournalists wandered through European cities taking uh pictures of the rubble.
But now they're doing it to American cities, and this is Detroit, and uh, 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 uh that's right, uh that's right, m uh, Mr. Snerdley, because uh uh Detroit was a one-party state, a one-party state, uh and and it reduced this city to rubble.
And now Eminem is taking uh with the benefit of nine million taxpayer dollars uh that Chrysler had telling you this is the motor city and this is what we do.
Uh here's a here's a statistic from Detroit.
Uh forty-four percent of adults in Detroit have a reading comprehension below grade six, uh, which means that nearly half the grown-ups in Detroit couldn't graduate from elementary school.
And believe me, uh, you know, what sixth grade requires of American twelve-year-olds is uh no great shakes these days.
According to uh Time magazine, the functional illiteracy rate in the city hovers near fifty percent.
This is an American city at the dawn of the twenty-first century, and one in two citizens are illiterate.
That's about the same rate as the Ivory Coast or the Central African Republic, uh, which uh for must most of the uh seventies and uh and eighties was ruled by a cannibal emperor.
Uh 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 featherbedded Democrat Union army, all of whom cannibalize the city.
And say what you like about Emperor Bacasa in the Central African Empire, but dollar for dollar, his reign was a bargain uh compared to Mayor Coleman Young's uh 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 Eminem uh that takes nine million dollars of taxpayer money uh to tell us that a ruined city uh that is attracting uh that is attracting the kind of photojournalism from French photojournalists that used to be reserved for uh 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 now don't get me wrong, I like Eminem.
He seems a perfectly pleasant fellow.
I find that song of his about uh what's the what's the song of his about uh shove a jurble uh up your butt?
Uh I find that very pleasant and pleasant and catchy song.
He did a couple of years ago.
You remember there was a there used to be uh rumors about uh about a famous Hollywood celebrity who'd opened up an animal sanctuary in his own bottom and uh Eminem managed to get a hit record about it.
Right that right there, by the way, is very telling about the state of American popular culture at the dawn of the twenty-first century.
But I got no I got nothing against MM uh making uh uh a big hit record out of uh uh out of the uh the the uh r rather more recherche uh uh hobbies one can pursue with a friendly gerbil.
Uh but that's a better that's a better thing than taking nine million dollars 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.
Uh one-eight hundred, two eight two-two eight eight two.
Uh we're gonna be talking about uh two monuments to human progress in the uh 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 Farush, one eight hundred two eight two two eight eight two.
Mark Stein in Farush on the EIB network.
Not not sure about all that uh heavy breathing.
We don't want to get that excited uh this early in the show.
Talking about some of the uh uh the the ancillary entertainment uh at the uh the Super Bowl, always uh interesting to to uh to take in the musical acts.
Uh Christina Aguilera sang the national anthem uh yesterday.
And uh it's always very slow when you get a pop star to sing the national anthem because they they're like melisma crazed uh 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 Can you see?
You've got to like if you there's a special Grammy Award when you're doing the national anthem, if you can get a uh one syllable word into uh about fourteen syllables there.
But she sang it, she sang a very particularly idiosyncratic uh version of it.
And one point, uh, I think about a minute into the song, she she got uh she got her lines made uh mixed up, and instead of saying uh what uh what was 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, is reference to the the uh the the streaming or the internet streaming of Twilight or something.
I'm not sure I'm not sure, but it was fascinating to watch Christina Aguilera do that.
Uh by the way, though, I think they used to play Christina Aguilera to the inmates at Gintmo.
And uh that's one of the things that uh the ACLU at Amnesty International complained about that this was in breach of the Geneva Conventions to play Christina Aguilera to the poor old jihadists at uh Gidmo.
So I don't think they do that anymore.
Then they started reading them Harry Potter.
Uh and uh uh and apparently uh the uh the 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.
Uh the black-eyed peas were there last night, and they amended their song uh 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 either, create jobs so the country stays stimulated.
Uh I'm Mr. Squaresville, so I don't know what uh black-eyed peas uh how that tune normally goes.
It's I think that it's their song Where is the Love?
So we'll we'll see if we can get one of the cooler cats on the Rush Limbaugh team to remind me of what they uh 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.
Um uh America uh 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 uh or or have you got some smarter idea there?
Create jobs so the country stays stimulated.
Well well, Obama is the D stimulator, sir.
Mr. P, Mr. Black Eyed.
Obama is the D-Stimulator.
Uh he spent a trillion dollars, and he might as well have thrown it all out the window uh in single dollar bills, because while most of it would have been uh fallen into the Potomac and washed out into the Atlantic Ocean, there was a good there'd be a good chance that maybe $17, $18 would have blown back onto uh onto onto the Eastern Seaboard and been used for some genuine uh economic activity.
He spent a trillion dollars and he destimulated the uh economy.
But this is what what passes for the penetrating political insight of uh uh of our cutting-edge artists.
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?
Uh 1940, uh most Americans had an eighth grade education.
1940.
Uh that's the America, by the way, that invented uh everything that's 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 eighteenth grade America, uh with with this huge bloated excessive spending on education, frittered away, frittered away the inheritance built for it by eighth grade America, that eighth grade America in nineteen forty.
Now uh our children stay in school twice as long as their parents and grandparents did, uh receive uh twice as much attention from their teachers because pupil-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 eighteenth grade America isn't enough, what the hell?
Let's make it 28th grade America.
Obama, let's get these kids educated.
Mark Stein and for Rush, Mordican.
Yes, Rush will be back tomorrow, but if you go to Rushlimbore.com, it's like he's he's never gone away, as uh there's all kinds uh there's all kinds of good stuff there.
I I uh I I I 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 kings kids educated, create jobs so the country stays simulated.
The guy responsible for that penetrating insight uh was uh Will I am.
It's like it's it's he's he spells his name as is the fashion these days, like an like an internet URL.
It's will dot I dot am.
Uh but that's it that's his name, will I am.
It's like that guy.
What's the other rapper uh type uh fella like uh Flow Rider?
Is that the is that the guy?
It's like he spells it Florida, uh but he pronounces it Flo Rider.
I think that's right.
Anyway, I like the uh I like the rapper we've got up here in New Hampshire, Newham Peshire.
He's he's he's great.
That's a terrific, uh terrific rap artist.
Um just before doing that, by the way, the black-eyed the black-eyed peas, just before telling them Obaba, let's get these kids educated, included a short redition 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, uh, you know, doing uh uh queer legal theory and other useful fields of academic discipline, uh, because that way they can both get educated and get stupid all at the same time.
Uh Mark Stein Infrarush, 1800-282-2882.
Let us go to Dave in Sault Ste.
Marie, Michigan.
Dave, you're live on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Thank you so much, Mark.
Uh 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 uh consider Detroit my second home city, and to hear those comments uh 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, uh I'm I got no problem with Michigan.
Uh I I spend part of my year I'll if a couple of weeks' time, I'm gonna be at Hillsdale College, where uh I spend part of my year every year, and always happy to uh to to be at Hillsdale, always always happy to land at uh Detroit spectacular new international airport, uh, which is where I I fly into to go to Hillsdale.
But but when you say, when you say to me that uh Detroit is coming back, uh I I pointed out when I and I would advise you to to have a look at this uh French coffee table book uh with the pick the pictures of uh I know what these uh the splintered pews of the Woodward Avenue Presbyterian church uh with the dust-caked Bibles and hymnals scattered across the floors.
You can you can get these uh coffee table books for all kinds of cities that had terrible things done to them.
Sarajevo, for example, Stalingrad, uh, 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 that's what ought to shame uh shame any true Michigander.
Uh And and you know, it may well be that the city has hit bottom.
I'm not entirely persuaded that by that, by the way, because uh you still have uh a situation where it's got uh one of the uh highest murder rates in the country, seventy percent of murders uh 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 that's the American way.
If you don't if you can't earn it, sue your way to the qualification.
So that's the difference between 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 uh you know maybe they have hit bottom when they've got I 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?
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 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 from for whatever reason that they got into those problems political, social, racial, whatever it is but I think it's too easy to start picking at these cities and just pointing out the negatives looking at some of the positives as well.
I think really make a lot of a a lot of great sense.
And I think that you also need to uh note up some of the other tremendous things happening in city of Detroit the Fantastic Detroit Institute of Art, the Henry Ford Museum, the 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 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 percent of the population are government workers.
Right there, that cripples the possibility of economic renaissance.
Another 29 percent – uh out of work uh according to the Detroit News in real terms real unemployment.
According to uh Dave Bing, by the way, the mayor you were just talking about much uh a couple of moments ago, the real number is uh is closer is closer to fifty percent.
You know I'm not saying Detroit isn't Somalia.
Not yet, not yet.
But what I what I do have great concerns about uh is is the idea uh of uh jumping the gun uh getting some overpaid uh pop star uh and giving him nine million dollars of taxpayer uh dollars uh to sell uh an economic renaissance in Detroit that is not yet visible uh to the rest of us.
And the problem here is this that at the moment Detroit is an outlier.
If you if you're talking with uh uh people about how bad things are likely to get in the multi-trillion dollar hole that people the government is digging us into in Washington and you and you point to Detroit, people say, well Detroit's an outlier.
It's not you know 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 we are uh hailing it as a model for 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 when you've got the murder rate Detroit has, uh when fifty percent of the population has left in the last sixty years, uh and uh and you gotta figure it's the fifty percent who who uh who want to be able to fulfill their economic potential in life, and that a lot of the fifty percent who are left behind uh are quite happy either to be uh uh members of the dependent class or the class that services the dependent class, i.e.
the government bureaucracy.
Uh it's gonna take a lot more than a riverfront development uh to to to persuade me that Detroit is uh is a model for the America of the twenty-first century, Dave.
Thank you, Dave, and uh 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 uh I do love I will uh I s sorry I didn't get a chance to tell him this, because I do love uh whenever I'm up in uh Sault Ste.
Maria, and I do love the upper peninsula of uh of Michigan, which is uh spectacular.
Oh, the Bronx is coming back too, Mr. Mr. Sturdley says.
Well, you Yeah, yeah, that's right.
That's right.
It's been coming back longer than it's been gone.
And uh it's true it's about uh, 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.
When the the minute government I'm a small government guy, but I'm not uh you know, I'm I'm not r quite ready to commend the Somali model just yet.
Uh but functioning government entirely collapsed, and yet uh the health of the population, uh educational performance and life expectancy went up.
So, you know, maybe the Somali model.
Maybe next time round they can have MM driving through Somalia in his uh whatever I don't know what models uh of cars they make in Somalia.
I wouldn't be surprised if Chrysler hasn't outsourced the factory uh to Morgad issue by then, and we can have MM uh driving through at the next Super Bowl hailing the uh resurgence of Morgan issue.
Uh Mark Stein in for Rush, 1800-282-2882, lots more still to come.
Mark Stein in for Rush on the EIB network, 1800-282-2882.
Uh I think there might be a war between uh between Britain and Mexico breaking out any any moment now.
The the the BBC has a car show uh called Top Gear, a motoring show, as they call it there, motoring.
And uh and and uh one of the guys uh they were testing out a Mexican car, and the guy says uh this car is just like Mexicans.
It's lazy, feckless, and flatulent.
And uh the uh the Mexican ambassador has complained, the uh the I believe the the British ambassador in Mexico City was called in.
There have been questions raised in Parliament.
Uh the Mexican government has called the remarks offensive, xenophobic, and humiliating.
And uh it could well be, it could well be that uh that we are on the brink of war uh between Mexico and the United Kingdom, because the Mexicans are uh are escalating this at every opportunity.
I don't know which uh part of that, by the way, was most offensive to them.
The the the uh whether m the the uh BBC guy saying Mexicans were lazy, feckless, and flatulent.
Uh but I noticed that um the government of Malawi has uh just passed a new law banning flatulence in public.
Uh it is a it is now a criminal offense to break wind in public in uh in Malawi.
Uh and uh this this was uh this was uh justified by the solicitor general Anthony Kamanga, uh, who said that uh that uh 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, uh 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 uh Al Gore is uh is so concerned about.
Uh so perhaps uh so uh it's good to know that at any rate the BBC, if it ever gets to test out a Malawi vehicle will not be uh uh will not be accusing Malawians of being excessively v uh flatulent because the government's taken uh action stern action to stop that.
Uh Al Sharpton, who knew Al Sharpton owes three point nine million dollars in back taxes.
And uh and and he's uh he's relatively relaxed about it.
He's not worried that anything is going to happen to him uh because he's Al Sharpton after all you'd have to be crazy to attempt to drag Al Sharpton uh into court uh but he has said that uh he's uh he's uh he he owes a total of three point seven million dollars in city, state and federal taxes uh dating back to two thousand and two.
And Al Sharpton said that all these liens and so forth are quote just a matter of uh bureaucracy uh unquote.
Uh and uh and that's 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 uh Massachusetts should uh charge John Kerry or anybody else five hundred thousand dollars to register a yacht in the Bay State uh and I'm glad he found a workaround.
You know I'm I think I'm with him there.
Take 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 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 Daschle's chauffeur, or Timothy Geithner's strange inability to understand the simple yes-no prompts of basic TurboTax
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 the money.
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 Muddled.
Beach, South Carolina but wants to talk about Detroit.
Great to have you with us, Jimmy.
Uh thank you for having me on.
Yeah um you know Myrtle Beach is a very big tourist city.
You know obviously we have the ocean that draws everybody here.
Um Detroit doesn't have that but I want to tell you that we went there last year on vacation my wife and I and um we went there with the purpose of watching the Red Wings and uh watching the Lions and we stayed in a double tree uh hotel downtown that was an old renovated old uh I I'm not sure what type of building it was but it was a fantastic hotel.
Um they have the public transportation down there at the over above ground rail system it's like fifty cents to ride around the loop uh of the whole city.
Uh we went to the MGM ground we gambled a little bit obviously we went down the uh riverfront and uh it was we had a fantastic experience in Detroit and obviously you know there are bad parts to it but uh we can't keep beating a dead horse.
We gotta 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 uh 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, uh and uh I rode around uh for a very uh reasonable price and I even went uh uh went down the Nile or up the Nile.
I can't remember which direction I was heading in.
But uh but but uh the question is whether you would want to actually uh uh live there, move there, educate your children there, uh start a business there, and uh try and fulfill your e 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 uh uh 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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