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Sept. 23, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:48
September 23, 2011, Friday, Hour #3
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Yes, America's Anchorman is away, and this is your undocumented anchor man sitting in.
No supporting paperwork whatsoever.
Great to be with you.
Rush returns live on Monday.
He will as he said at the end of uh yesterday's show, sorry he couldn't be here today to go through all the I don't think he'd be talking a lot about uh what happened at the Republican debate in Florida.
There we'd kind of uh kind of demoralizes you to pick it apart piece by piece.
Perry has come out uh uh uh swinging today.
I think he's speaking at CPAC in uh in Florida somewhere, and he said that he doesn't think we need to elect the smoothest debater.
Uh no, no, that's true, but we we'd like to elect a guy who it's clear what he's on about, and it wasn't clear what he was on about when he was asked the call about what he'd do uh if uh it turned out the Pakistani nukes had suddenly fallen into the hands of uh Islamists.
Uh he got the old 3 AM call.
Uh, it wasn't clear what he was talking about when he uh said there's one person on this stage that is for Obama's race to the top, and that is Governor Romney.
Uh he didn't explain what race to the top was.
It's some one of these latest pointless education boondoggle.
Speaking of which, by the way, education boondoggles uh from the Associated Press, President Barack Obama is giving states the flexibility to opt out of provisions of the no child left behind law.
Hey, I'd like that, by the way.
D don't you uh do you like the idea of flexibility to opt out of laws?
I'd like the flexibility to uh opt out of uh Debbie the Secretary's tax law when that gets passed.
I'd certainly like the fle Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, no, it's easy Mr. Snerdley says immigration law, but there's actually there's thirty million people in this country who've already opted out of US immigration law very successfully.
And believe me, by the way, opting into US immigration law is the uh is the big mistake here.
Nobody gets uh nobody gets given the runaround more than legal immigrants uh to the United States of America.
But I like this idea now, this concept of the flexibility to opt out of provisions of the law.
Uh because that's actually a fascinating it's true with Obamacare.
If you know who to call in Washington and get past the switchboard, uh you can get one of these Obamacare waivers.
So you can opt out of that law.
You've been given the flexibility to opt out of the provisions of that law.
You know what this destroys, by the way?
The basic principle of equality before the law, which is actually uh b is about as basic a sign of a civilized society uh as you can have equality before the law.
And when you have these three thousand page bills, which is what uh the depraved government in Washington specializes in these days, when you have two thousand page bills, three thousand page bill bills, you know they're not about equality before the law.
They're essentially about a hierarchy of privilege.
The reason they need to be two thousand or three thousand pages uh is because all these fellas who know who to call in Washington have to get their ten cents in.
They have to be given the flexibility to opt out of provisions that they happen to find uh particularly awkward, and before you know it, the bill is two thousand or three thousand pages long.
But President Obama now wants to give states the flexibility to opt out of um provisions of the no child left behind law.
Now, this was one of these classic Bush era bipartisan initiatives.
I mentioned it earlier when he was standing there saying my good friend Teddy Kennedy, they all they all it was passed with bipartisan supports.
It was the reach across the aisle, no child left behind.
Every child, we reached across the aisle and dragged every child in America across with us.
It was classic bipartisan support.
Um it's grown, unfortunately, like so many bipartisan great ideas.
It's grown increasingly unpopular because what it was gonna do was it w there were gonna be measurements that risked labeling schools a failure.
Now, if you're like these schools in Atlanta, uh where they just the teachers all got together and they went round to each other's homes of the evening and they got the uh erasers out and they rubbed out all the incorrect answers that they're that the that the that their poorly taught uh students had filled in and they wrote the correct answers in to ensure uh they maintained uh the right standards to qualify for the various uh uh f uh federal uh federal requirements.
Uh you can do it that way.
But if you're an honest school and you risk being labelled a failure, then that's bad news.
And and as uh as more and more schools risk being labelled failures, they're now being allowed to opt out of the provisions of the no child left behind law.
So this law, by the way, this is like all these things.
It's like race to the top.
Race to the top.
Why don't we just try, by the way?
That's unfeasible that's totally unfeasible.
If you look where where the United States comes in global education rankings, it's not going to be race to the top.
Why don't we try race to the middle?
Well that might just about be doable.
You know, because when on some of these subjects, we're down there between Croatia and Uzbekistan, and that's kind of embarrassing when you're not when you're not really with uh with established members of uh of developed economies, but you're with countries that were basically dictatorial basket cases uh a decade or so back.
So why don't we try instead?
Why don't we try something, you know, more doable, like a race to the middle.
But no, it's got this fantastic name, race to the top.
No child left behind.
No child left behind in the race to the top.
Uh and and and it's supposed to fix failing schools.
That's what they all say they're gonna do.
A man in Washington has designed a plan to fix failing schools for three hundred million people from Maine to Hawaii.
And when the the plan to fix the failing schools fails, uh they say, no, no, don't worry, you can uh we are gonna give you the flexibility to opt out of the provisions of the consequences of your failure.
So much for the last great bipartisan reach across the aisle initiative.
Reach across the aisle, no child left behind, race to the top.
Uh it was all about uh the the whole thing about it was supposed to impose national standards uh that would fix America's failing schools.
You can only fix failing schools, one school, one school district at a time.
And the remorseless centralization of uh the American education system.
By the way, the federal government isn't to blame for the lousy education system in the in in America.
America spends more per student uh than any other country except uh Luxembourg or Switzerland uh and Luxembourg and Switzerland are plenty to show for their education dollars.
We don't uh because it's uh basically a cartel by uh teachers' union that has benefited from the wholesale centralization of school districts that has occurred since the Second World War.
Before the Second World War, there are about ten times as many school districts in the United States as there are now.
It's down to fifteen thousand, shrinking, grown ever more centralized every year, and that delivers them more and more into the hands of the centralized uh bureaucracy.
Doesn't work, no child left behind, failure, race to the top, failure.
You can only fix these things one school, one school district at a time.
Federalism is supposed to be the great experimental laboratory.
You can try something in northern Maine, and if it works there, some guy out in Hawaii might pick it up and try it.
But if you have a centralized guy trying to fix schools for a population of three hundred million people, you are guaranteeing failure on a hugely expensive scale.
It is the end of the week, and you know what that means.
Live from Ice Station EIB, it's open line Friday.
Yes, we are here in the mountain vastness of Northern New Hampshire.
Mr. Snerdley is uh at the end of uh long piece of wet string uh in southern Florida, and then he is connected to Central Control at EIB in New York, and from there goes over to California up to the satellite and out to you wherever you are.
But this bit from ISTATEM EIB is the technically impressive part of the whole operation because believe me, communications-wise, New Hampshire is like uh Baghdad outside the green zone.
You know, it's amazing to me this uh this works.
It's uh it's truly impressive.
Now, all you have to do is call 1800-282-2882.
You can talk about anything you want to talk about.
You want to talk about Rick Perry's performance last night, you can do that.
Uh but if you want to talk about the latest Bushkarzi League school uh league scores from uh from from Jalalabad, uh you're also welcome to do that.
We'll take your calls on whatever subject you want to talk about.
1800 28282.
Uh before we leave this uh the this education biz, uh there is a real problem here.
It is not a it is not a trivial matter.
Uh the great expensive failure of the American education system is is truly horrible.
Uh It's one of the things that ought to be fixed.
I mean, I agree.
I actually agree with Rick Perry when he says that uh race to the top is a waste of uh complete waste of time.
Uh Arn Duncan's reforms uh uh are a waste of time.
We need to liberate uh the American education system.
We need to free it uh from the teachers' unions.
And we need to and we need to do that quickly, because otherwise we are simply not going to have a workforce that is gonna that is going to be able uh to compete in the global economy.
And it's part of this uh that's part of the whole general complacency that is so revolting uh about some of these about some of these debates.
The idea that simply uh the fact that um America has enjoyed an unparalleled period of peace and prosperity since uh it became the dominant uh power on the planet in nineteen fifty, the fact that that is as permanent uh a feature of life as the earth and the sky and the sea and the stars, uh, is not true.
And if you and if you do what we do in education, which is just throw more and more money uh down a hole, and in fact not just waste money, but actually spend it on destructive uh the worst kind of destructive social engineering, the consequences actually catch up with you.
I've got a little bit in my book about uh uh uh the uh uh a an educator who was touring a midwestern middle school uh in the early nineteen nineties and walked into the vestibule and was very struck by a banner of uh of all these uh hands applauding, school children's hands applauding, under the motto, we applaud ourselves.
That's and and she was struck at the sort of horrible narcissist narcissistic self absorption of the American education system in the early nineties.
We applaud ourselves.
Well, those middle schoolers, what do you think they did?
The middle schoolers went to high school and then they went to uh college to do complacency studies for five and a half years, and when they'd finished their bachelor's in complacency studies for high five and a half years, the the the kids who grew up with the big banner saying we applaud ourselves, uh, went out and voted for a presidential candidate who told them we are the ones we've been waiting for.
There are consequences.
Uh there are consequences for the s the wasteful, the fiscally profligate, wasteful self-indulgence uh of the education system.
And we all know that race to the top is a joke.
The title is a joke, race to the top, we're not gonna be racing anywhere.
I take that back what I said about we should call it race to the middle.
You can't race to the middle either.
Inching to the middle.
Why don't they get real and at least call it inching to the middle instead of race to the top?
You you're deluding you're not deluding yourselves because you know it isn't gonna work.
But you're deluding all the all the people out there who are still foolish enough uh to fall for these stupid bills just because you give it some idiotic name like race to the top or no child left behind.
Honesty in legislative uh nomenclature, actually.
Why don't we pass that bill?
Why don't we pass that bill?
Say what you like about the Tea Act, but it was an act about tea.
Race to the top isn't about racing and it isn't about getting to the top.
Mark Stein in Farush, lots more straight ahead.
Open line Friday, Mark Stein in Farush.
Let's go to Tom in Essex Junction, Vermont, a town I know well I'm I'm uh sad to say.
Great to have you with us on the show, uh Tom.
Greetings from uh across the Connecticut in uh New Hampshire.
What's on your mind today?
Well, uh Mark uh i i it's the idea that you I've heard in the past a number of people talk about a flat tax.
I heard Hermann King talk about that, but not too many of these uh major uh candidates running now.
I can't see how anybody could complain uh and say that's not fair, because if they had a tax, uh say a nine percent as an example to everyone, regardless of what you made for an income, they couldn't complain and say the the uh rich are are making aren't doing their fair share because their fair share at nine percent w would be uh fair regardless of what your income is.
What do you think of that idea, Mark?
Well, you're uh you're absolutely right.
That's what uh some of the Baltic states, and I think it's uh is it I think it's Slovakia and uh some of the other post-Soviet states have in introduced flat taxes.
And the great advantage of a flat tax is that uh everyone knows what it is, and it's generally said at a rate where there's no incentive to to start uh monkeying around and figuring out little dodges and weaves to get around it.
That the president, when he keeps talking about loopholes, uh uh is actually proposing to add more loopholes because he wants to complicate the tax code.
By the way, but when the tax code gets to the the other reason, by the way, if we're going to go back to this Warren Buffett Secretary thing, what was her name?
Debbie the Secretary.
Debbie, the last Secretary in America.
Warren Buffett is embarrassed that his secretary pays more taxes than than he does.
It's actually easy to pay more taxes than Warren Buffett because he owes a billion dollars to the United States Treasury.
So basically most of us most of us pay more taxes than Warren Buffett.
He may be the least least tax guy in the country by now.
But the the reason for that is that Debbie the Secretary, apart from anything else, doesn't have access to the the kind of advice that uh the accounting advice that uh Warren Buffett has.
The minute you have a complicated tax code, uh what what you do is you uh you reward people who can afford to hire the best people to negotiate the way through that tax c tax code.
So any the longer a tax code gets, the less democratic it gets.
That's why that you can go, as you know Tom, if you were to drive from where you are in uh in northwestern Vermont uh drive due east over to me in New Hampshire, you would meander through several little broken down Vermont towns where the gas station is closed and the general store is closed, but has still got some guy with a shingle uh hanging out outside his door saying he's the uh local representative of H and R bloc.
Because no town in Vermont is so broken down and decrepit uh that it doesn't need a guy to help people who earn very low salaries um uh hel with their taxes.
That's fundamentally unfair uh in the i to go back to the point you were making but you know Tom it's not difficult to figure out why Obama uh and the Democrats wouldn't want a flat tax.
I mean why why do you think they don't want it well I I don't know I I suppose it it isn't just a flat tax it's a loophole more than anything else uh uh but uh at any rate I uh the only thing I can think I I can't think why he wouldn't want it but it just seems all it would be absolutely fair for everybody.
I can't see how anybody could possibly but that's why he doesn't want it.
That's why he doesn't want it.
Because the entire model of government it's as he said to Joe d Joe the plumber, he thinks it's better when you spread the wealth around.
So if you, Tom in Essex Junction, Vermont, happen to have earned some wealth, and if you have in Vermont, that in itself is quite an impressive achievement given the state of the Vermont economy these days.
But if you, Tom in Essex Junction, happen to have earned some wealth, the President of the United States thinks he has the right to spread it around and disperse it to other people.
What's the name of this lady who's running across uh against Scott Brown in Massachusetts, Mr. Snerdley.
What's her name uh Elizabeth Warren Rush was talking uh about Elizabeth Warren.
Her model is that nobody genuinely creates wealth.
Uh Elizabeth Warren's thing is the factory owner has only managed to uh to create wealth by exploiting the infrastructure that everybody else has put in place.
And that's why uh that's why the the top what is it now?
The top one percent of taxpayers in this country pay more than the bottom fifty percent of taxpayers.
So if you had a flat tax it would be fair and because it's fair that's why Obama and the Democrats don't want it.
But here's the here's the thing eventually you reach the point where you have totally disincentivized genuine wealth creation in this in this country.
In this country it is uh the uh the incentive to have a company that makes more than fifty thousand dollars in profits uh is significantly dented by the fact that you're up against the thirty five percent tax rate when you get to that point.
We should have every candidate on the Republican side at least should be uh committed to putting a huge uh uh al-Qaeda type suicide bomb under the United States tax code, blowing it into confetti and starting it and starting from scratch again.
They did that in the Baltic States uh they did that in I think it was Slovakia because they had the great advantage of emerging uh from a Soviet dictatorship for uh uh for f for the f since the uh end of the second world war and that's uh and they in a sense they found it easier uh to start from scratch but if we don't do it if we just continue to add more barnacles to the U.S. tax code the president now uh is proposing in his ridiculous in the past my jobs bill jobs bill was was
proposing to add a uh uh a tax credit if you happen to give a uh an employee a raise.
In other words, he's he's not simplifying taxes.
He's adding more pages to an already revoltingly long, uh fundamentally diseased and profoundly undemocratic tax code.
The longer a tax code gets, the more it's an affront to basic fairness because never mind Debbie the Secretary, Warren Buffett's secretary, uh spare a thought for for for for Margie the waitress and Cindy the uh part-time house cleaner.
None of those have the advantages that come with a complicated tax code.
Yes, Rush returns Monday to start another week of excellence in broadcasting.
Before we're done today though, I will be interested to know it says uh low probability, uh according to NASA, low probability that satellite debris may hit United States.
So with a bit of luck it'll uh just take out one of those foreign countries.
But this is this dead six ton satellite.
It isn't uh it isn't falling as fast as NASA had expected, apparently it's not falling as fast as the Dow or the uh U.S. employment market or any stuff like that.
Uh it's coming down.
The reason the technical reason what is the technical reason solar activity is no longer the major factor in the satellite's descent.
Rather its orientation has changed.
Well there's uh there's a lot of that about these days.
It's orientation has uh changed and that's uh and that it's no it's not I don't I d I no idea what that means uh Mike I don't I don't want to suggest the satellite swings both ways but if it's it swings both ways I hope it drops on the Chinese treasury and and takes out the uh safe with all the American IOUs in it.
Good luck to the Politburo in proving we still owe them all that money.
Anyway the uh the who knows uh the satellite may land uh before uh we're done today at the top of the hour it might land on ice station EIB so if you hear a dull thud don't worry about it that's just my normal guest hosting style but if you hear a fiery bust uh that means the satellite has dropped on us and taken out the show.
Let us go to Bruce in uh Alpine New York which part of uh which part of uh New York is Alpine New York in Bruce New Jersey New Jersey or okay it's Albine New Jersey that's uh that's great okay that's a great start okay what's what's on your mind Bruce?
Well I was uh on a judge report Wednesday morning and I noticed that they uh announced that they had put to death this gentleman uh this gentleman this person in uh Atlanta who had shot that twenty seven year old police officer uh about twenty two years ago and then I and I re remembered that there were protests thousands and thousands of protests around the world to spare his life and most of them were because they were opposed to the death penalty.
And about three stories later uh on the drug report there was a story that Texas had executed the same day this uh diabolical uh white supremacist who had dragged that poor man behind his uh pickup truck with a chain for three miles there were no people protesting him being put to death and I'm just curious as to your opinion as to you know if you're really opposed to the death penalty is that for everybody or just certain select people that you particularly think ought to be spared?
Right.
So here we have a situation where two people are put to death on uh the exact same day and we have and we have principled people who uh supposedly object to the death penalty in principle and in principle means that you're not in favor of frying anyone you're not in favor of shooting the juice to any you don't care who it is you are opposed to the state uh engaging in judicial execution for everybody.
So we've got two people who are put to death on the same day one of them gets a ton of publicity, ton of demonstrations, ton of protests, and the other one zippo.
No one cares.
He's uh dispatched uh through the gates of hell uh and he checked the no publicity box.
Nobody cares about him.
Why why do you think that is Bruce Senator obviously no loss to planet earth but I mean you know if you're like I said if you're that opposed to the death penalty where is Amnesty International or all the rest of these people in this case I'm I'm perfectly satisfied with the fact that Texas did what it did but a little hypocritical I think well yes because in the first case this this was a man who had uh killed a police officer and uh in the in the second case in the Texas case it's uh James Bird Jr. was dragged
behind the truck by uh this white supremacist Lawrence Russell Brewer a a white man uh killed a black man a lot of people made a lot of uh got a lot of political mileage out of this they uh the it turned up in what was it an NAACP uh commercial against George W. Bush in the 2000 campaign I think I'm right in saying if my my memories right it was a big case at the time it was a much bigger case it was it was nationally known it figured in the presidential race uh and yet suddenly and yet suddenly what so
what's the reason for that Bruce?
I have no well I the reason is obviously they're hypocritical they're selective in their indignation about what it is that they oppose.
Yeah exactly and it's also and of course it also uh plays into uh uh certain aspects of racial politics uh in the in the United States in this case you've got a white supremacist killing a black guy what was it in the other case Bruce?
It was a black man who showed an off duty police officer.
Yeah and it's funny about and that's a funny business isn't it's like well the free mumia thing in Philadelphia in two thousand just about the same time uh that the NAACP was running all these ads in which uh James Byrd Jr. was somehow the death of James Byrd Jr. was somehow being linked to George W. Bush.
He was the guy in the pickup truck apparently they were they were also outside the Republican convention all these demonstrations by these free Mumia guys uh that uh that the the the the somehow somehow it's fascinating that principled opposition to the death penalty uh manifests itself more uh when a uh black guy kills a white cop uh than when a white supremacist uh drags a black guy uh behind the truck it's uh that and that but that gets into simply hierarchies of victimhood.
Uh if you remember the Matthew Shepherd do you remember the Matthew Shepherd case in Wyoming Bruce where some gay guy was the young man the young the gay man that was tied up to the fence was beaten to death yes I do Yeah exactly and and there've been a ton of plays and movie TV movies and pop songs written about this guy.
Now, you imagine if they decided to put those guys to death, those guys who hung Matthew Shepard on a fence.
I don't think there'd be a lot of protests by the principal death penalty people there on that either, because it gets to, again, it gets to the whole liberal view of things, which is that there is a hierarchy of victimhood.
And what counts is which membership of identity groups you happen to belong to.
And that's why Lawrence Russell Brewer is never going to be the poster child.
uh for the uh ban the death abolish the death penalty movement whereas uh some guy who uh offs a uh white cop on the other side of the country he is and that's why you can have two guys executed by the state on the exact same day but only one of them uh is the pinup child for the uh for the anti-death penalty movement.
By the by the way, Bruce, thank you for your call.
You know how bad things are in Rick Perry's Texas This guy who killed James Bird Jr. he ordered his last meal and he asked for two chicken fried steaks, a triple meat bacon cheeseburger, fried okra, a pound of barbecue, three fajitas, a pizza, a pint of ice cream, a slab of peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts, and prison officials uh declined to give him any of it.
Uh there is no really he didn't eat any of it Oh I didn't I didn't I misunderstood the story.
I miss so they served him they served him the last meal Oh why under I get you I get you because he because this is just more government waste isn't it?
We could we could probably reduce mys Mr Snadley has Corrected me.
He ordered all this stuff.
Lawrence Russell Brewer.
He ordered his two chicken fried steaks, triple meat, bacon, cheeseburger, and all the rest of it, and then declined to eat any of it.
And as a result, a state senator has now uh got the got the death row in Texas.
You don't get your d last meal.
Every guy sitting on death row in Texas who doesn't get his last meal, he'll just get what the kitchen agrees to serve him.
So if Michelle Obama gets her way uh and you're just gonna get the lentil soup that day, you will be going through the gates of hell on a tasty nutritious bowl of lentil soup courtesy of Michelle Obama because they ain't giving you your last meal requests anymore.
Uh budget budget budget well, no, it he didn't he w I think he was just mocking the Sisney.
He was demonstration he could have obviously he could have had a spoonful of his peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts, but he was just uh just mocking he was just making a mockery of the system.
Anyway, so there's no last meal in Texas.
I don't suppose you get your last cigarette either, uh or whatever it is.
Uh but that's uh that's uh how Lawrence Russell Brewer met his end.
He did not take his uh last meal.
Let's quickly go to uh to Anne in Lake City, Tennessee.
Anne, you're live in the Rush Limbaugh show.
Thank you, great to have you with us.
You mentioned uh Elizabeth Warren who is running for the US Senate for Massachusetts.
Right.
Obama knew he could never get her confirmed, so he went around the Congress and appointed her to be in charge, be in control of the TARP fund, which was almost nine hundred billion dollars.
The banks have essentially paid that back with some of them interest rates as high as sweat percent.
Now I have called both my senators, Alexander and Corker, several of my representatives.
Nobody knows where that money went.
And I think that's Congress's job is to be uh oversight committees, uh to keep uh control of where this money is going, but yet nobody seems to know where it went.
And when you were talking about the um lost generation, I have five grandchildren in college.
It is very expensive.
And I told them before they would take a loan from this administration that would be in control of their life, I will sell a kidney.
Well, uh don't don't sell a kidney just just yet, Anne.
But you're right, this is just shy of a trillion dollars that has supposedly been repaid.
And again, this gets gets back to the point we were discussing uh earlier in the show about government accounting.
If it's being repaid, where is it?
What account is it sitting in?
Is there a is there a TARP repayment account uh somewhere at the Federal Reserve, uh somewhere at the United States Treasury?
Where is the TARP money that was paid back?
That's a very good that's a very good point.
Has it gone into the general fund?
If so, is it down the deficit?
Uh I know the president of the Bank of America said they were paying twelve percent interest on that money.
We're talking about real money.
Yeah, yeah, paying twelve percent interest.
When you say is it gonna pay down, it's not obviously gonna pay down the debt or because that's just uh that's just gone up, so no debt has been paid down.
Yeah, where is it?
Somewhere in the accounts.
There ought to be uh there ought to be this money coming in and it for it to be reducing it, showing being accredited to certain US bank accounts.
Where is it?
We'll look we'll look into that.
Thank you, that is a fascinat that is a fascinating point.
Nobody, as far as I know, nobody actually knows where the TARP money is uh that that was paid back.
But we'll look into we'll look into where it's gone.
Uh thanks for your call.
This is Mark Stein, Info Rush, open line Friday, more to come.
Mark Stein in for rush, open line uh Friday.
Let us go to Richard in uh in Albany, the the state capital of the great state of New York, and I believe also the capital of the New York State Bureau of Compliance, which uh uh declared that I was in noncompliance with the Bureau of Compliance.
So uh uh you d you don't work for the uh New York State Bureau of Compliance, do you, Richard?
No, I do not.
Uh nice nice talking to you, Mark uh Mark.
I actually work for a corporate world I'm uh insurance adjuster, so that's uh beyond that.
I'm very busy up here.
Um I just got a quick point, I just got a quick question and a quick point to make.
Um the quick question is uh Perry and Romney both used to be Democrats and now they're Republicans and they're these wishy washing close college McCain.
Why is the Republican Party entertaining them as a possible Contender if they're not even sure what they want to be, if they want to be a Democrat or they want to be a Republican in the long run.
Um that's my question to you, but my point also that I want to make was something you touched on about the uh gay gay uh rights in in the military.
Um I want to know what they're gonna do with the unicorned uniform court of military justice.
Being a former Marine myself, um there's uh uh a loan that says no sodomy, so I guess we can automatically kick all the gay people out right now, anyway.
Well, I think I don't think so, because the Marines were somewhere they were somewhere down in Florida.
It's not just that they're I think I think what happened, uh the reason the question came up is I think this week is the first week uh that gays are allowed to serve openly.
The bill was passed in December, but this is the first week that they're allowed to uh apply.
And um as usual, it's not just a qu with all these this cockamami diversity stuff.
It's not just a question of uh like sitting there at the recruiting office and uh waiting to see what who happens to stroll in and apply to me be a marine.
The United States Marines uh were at some uh gay bar somewhere in Florida, actually actively setting up a a uh a stand to recruit uh gays, and uh none of the gays, they were just looking for a few gay men, and they didn't get them.
Uh none of the gays, uh none of the gays um uh met the qualifications to be in the United States Marines.
So they're still looking for the requisite number of gay and lesbian uh Marines.
So if you're out there and you'd like to be a gay Marine, uh the uh the US Marine uh U.S. Marines would uh would like to come and meet you.
Uh so that's uh that's on the gay thing, Richard.
But i the the fascinating point, by the way.
Uh yeah, Romney uh and Perry, it is interesting that they have emerged as the two in in this particular time, in this particular time that the two lead candidates uh in in the Republican primary are a guy,
Rick Perry, who was uh a Democrat not so long ago, and uh and Mitt Romney, a guy who has certainly held uh Democrat positions uh during his uh extremely brief uh il uh electoral uh time in uh in electoral office.
Uh he's used phrases that one does not normally associate uh with members of the Republican Party.
Uh for example, he his whole business about he would uh support a woman's life uh to choose.
That was uh when he uh was running for uh statewide office in uh Massachusetts first for the Senate race in uh I think it was nineteen ninety-four, and then again when he ran for governor in two thousand two, he was uh he was an openly pro-choice candidate.
He did he did the usual sort of uh uh mealy-mouthed thing.
He said he rejected uh labels like pro-life or pro-choice uh and said he was committed to preserving a woman's right to choose or whatever it was.
Uh he usually he used that phrase.
He basically took the democratic line.
This is as recently, by the way, we're not going back to his 1994 Senate race.
We're going back to the 2002 governor's race.
Now, again, with Rick Perry, again, Rick Perry, a former Democrat.
And it just seems odd to me.
I mean, I think this is an interesting point, Richard.
That it would seem to me statistically improbable that the two lead candidates uh for the Republican Party nomination are in effect uh both people who have uh very uh uh uh recently, and uh uh in pig in Rick Perry's case, and in effect in Romney's case, uh essentially been running as Democrats.
And it's and it's odd to me, because in this election of all elections, we need a choice not an echo.
A choice not an echo.
And that is what this country needs right now.
More to come.
Hey, thanks uh for being with me on this open line Friday.
Mark Stein, your undocumented anchor man, I've had a great time, but Rush returns live for another week of excellence in broadcasting Monday on the EIB network.
Have a great weekend.
Watch out for falling satellites and rising debt.
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