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March 12, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:43
March 12, 2012, Monday, Hour #2
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Yes, America's anchor man is away today, and this is your undocumented anchor man, Mark Stein, uh just another foreign mercenary in the Republican Party's war on women.
War on women.
Because we conservatives, you all know this, we conservatives want to round up all the women and put them in a big camp where they won't need contraceptives, because we conservative men are so bad at sex we couldn't get them pregnant even if we tried.
In this war on women, we're shooting blanks.
The uh women the women are like the in uh they're like the insurgents in Afghanistan and the Sunni Triangle.
They're they're detonating all these IUDs by the side of the road.
That's what's happening, isn't it?
Was it IUDs, IEDs, EIBs?
I don't know.
EUDs, that's it, I think, explosive uterine devices.
Uh anyway, we're finding the good war on women here at the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Uh Rush will be back tomorrow.
He suspended himself for the day to go golfing.
But he will be desuspending himself and will be back live behind the EIB microphone uh tomorrow.
I'm just back from Australia.
I was uh I I was on a little speaking tour of Australia.
It was a big sell-out uh everywhere we went, from uh Melbourne to Sydney to Brisbane to Perth to uh to Adelaide.
Uh and I was talking about um freedom of speech, because actually I think almost every issue uh that confronts us in the Western world today, uh whether you're talking uh about uh something like uh government spending or government health care or climate change.
Basically the left doesn't want uh to talk about it.
The the the left uses all these phrases like uh oh we need to have the fairness doctrine uh on in radio so we can have a level playing field.
But they'd actually rather there was only one team on the playing field uh and they could just kick the ball t into the other guy's uh end uh undisturbed.
And so almost every I think almost every issue uh uh around the Western world today derives, in fact, from uh the the question of uh the left trying to impose this kind of spurious conventional wisdom on everybody else.
And I used to one of the things I used to like was the way America had the First Amendment.
Other countries don't have the First Amendment, you know, they have sort of uh protections given to speech going back hundreds of years in most of the English speaking world and s and slightly more precarious in continental Europe.
But America always had free speech absolutism in the uh in the in the First Amendment.
I used to love the First Amendment.
Uh I think it was two or three years ago when the Canadian Human Rights Commission and the Ontario Human Rights Commission and the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal attempted to criminalize my writing.
Uh Senator Larry Craig down here, the uh in in the US Senate.
Senator Larry Craig, you'll remember, had that unfortunate run-in with with uh the undercover cop in the adjoining stall in the Minneapolis Airport men's room.
He was arrested for uh sliding his foot under the stall divider and twirling it in a George Michael-like manner, if you recall.
And I was amazed.
At the time I was put on trial up in Vancouver, I was amazed to read in the newspaper a story announcing that uh Senator Craig's lawyer had filed a brief arguing that the hand and foot gestures he made under the bathroom stall divider were constitutionally protected speech under the first amendment.
What what a fantastic country.
Uh in in in Canada, uh freedom of speech uh apparently doesn't extend to my book.
Uh but in America, uh Senator Craig's uh men's room semaphore, his little George Michael foot twirling act is covered by the First Amendment.
I thought what a great country, you know, instead of uh writing about radical Islam, uh it it's I I I'd be better off just hitting on imams in bathrooms.
It'd be a it'd be a lot safer.
But what we have seen in the last few weeks is that in fact the first amendment means nothing if you have a government determined to ride roughshod through it.
That is what the issue is with the uh the the decision to force uh uh Catholic institutions to violate their consciences and do things that uh they do not wish to do, but to force them to do it.
To use to use the government to use the power of the state to force them to do it.
Uh in in complete violation of the First Amendment, this isn't even uh shouldn't even be a close call.
Kathleen Sabelius, Commissar Sibelius, the health commissar, says that she's attempting to balance uh the right to freedom of religion uh with the alleged uh right to uh to to reproductive choices in health or whatever mumbo jumbo it is.
But there's no such there are no such rights.
The the the gu the Constitution of the United States is very clear on one and has absolutely nothing to say about the other.
So in fact she's she's she's balancing.
Well, you're right, HR, that that in fact she's deciding now uh that this is something that is good for her th that is good for her, good for the citizenry, Commissar Sabelius knows what's best for you, and sometimes what's best for you is better than your rights.
And it's not a difficult thing all this rights it's been pretty much that way since Magna Carta, which is coming up on its eight hundredth birthday uh in uh in a couple of years.
Magna Carta uh this is what rights are.
Rights are restraints that the subjects place upon the king.
They're not toys, they're not gifts that the king or commissar Sibelius uh bestows on the grateful subjects, and we've we've completely distorted that now.
And you see in uh the the current uh in the current climate.
People, by the way, I find it bizarre that people are betting them their th the religious liberty on finding five judges uh at the Supreme Court on finding five individuals who will be prepared to steck up for the plain meeting of the First Amendment.
I mean, do you really want to bet your liberties on that?
If th th this this what's going on here is nothing to do with uh w with what some judge, the fifth vote, uh what Anthony whatever is uh which what's the what's the one what's the swing vote uh Anthony?
Anthony Kennedy, yeah, the the he's the he's the big swinger on the court since swinging Sandra Day O'Connor retired.
So he's like the big swinger.
Why would you bet religious liberty on Anthony Kennedy?
Uh all over this country there are judges willing to torture the plain meaning of the United States Constitution into meaning whatever the hell it is.
We've just seen it actually in this in this present controversy.
All of this arises.
The present climate of sexual rights in America arises from the Supreme Court in Griswold versus Connecticut, which was about contraceptives, and Roe vs.
Wade, which was about abortion, in the Supreme Court claiming to have detected a right to privacy, privacy.
Okay, I thought I how do they say it here, uh H.R. I've been in Australia so long.
Do they say privacy or privacy here?
I've got an all privacy, that's right.
You can't get a right to privacy.
The Supreme Court would never give you that.
Uh you'd have to go to another country to get a right to privacy.
But the Supreme Court claimed to detect a right to privacy in Griswold versus Connecticut and Roe versus Wade.
And what is privacy, as it is it understood, ought to uh used to mean that things were private.
And now it means, in fact, uh that people will be uh able to, in effect, bill their employers uh uh for their sex lives.
And all over this country, thousands and thousands of employers who self-insure will in effect be keeping computer records on what that nice uh nice Miss Jones on reception, uh how many uh uh how how many uh what form of birth control she's on, uh how much herpes medication she needs.
All these things now.
The so-called right to privacy will lead to your employer keeping computerized records of every aspect of your sex life.
It's a very it's a uh it's a very bizarre it's a very bizarre situation.
But the idea that somehow liberty liberty uh in the most profound in the most profound sense, in terms of freedom of expression, in the terms of freedom of religion should now depend, should now depend on Anthony Kennedy's vote on the Supreme Court.
Don't live like this.
In the end, I'm I'm I've I've gotten less impressed by the First Amendment uh and the constitutional protections after seeing what a uh in in democratic societies, in democratic societies, uh all constitutional checks and balances depend on a certain deference and respect uh and governmental modesty before them.
If you Don't have that, you do what President Obama and Commissar Sibelius do.
You ride roughshod over them, even though you know you're doing this.
This isn't a close call.
They know they're basically running the First Amendment through the shredder, and they don't care.
They're quite confident that if it ever comes to court, if it ever comes to court, eh it's a bit of a toss up, you know, it might go five four their way, might go five four the other way.
But but do you realize what they're saying now?
That core basic liberties in the United States depend on one whimsical swingers vote on a bench of judges.
What kind what kind of in the end, what kind of liberty is that?
And that's why all this talk about, well, you know, we maybe uh we'll bring it to the Supreme Court and we'll see what they say.
Don't be ridiculous.
These are these are hard fought liberties uh that people expended their lives on, the people gave their lives for.
The idea that you're just gonna file a brief uh so that Anthony Kennedy can pass judgment on it is completely preposterous.
I've I've come I've come away I all during my difficulties uh with uh with the human rights guys up in Canada, I used to think, oh, it'll all be a lot easier in the United States with the First Amendment.
But in the end in the end, uh as we've seen these last few weeks, a determined government, a basically comic we're not even talking here about elected representatives.
We're not even talking about uh a law that was passed by legislators who put themselves up for election.
We're talking about regulations invented by unknown uh bureaucrats uh in uh in uh in somewhere in Commissar Sibelius's bureaucracy.
And that's why I was speaking about this stuff um down in uh down in Australia.
I had great I had great fun down there.
By the way, I'm I'm gonna be if you're in the Buffalo, Niagara area, I'm gonna be in I'm gonna be in Toronto on April 24th, doing pretty much my free speech thing.
I mean it's a convenient what I don't know what it is, a a it's a convenient seven hour drive or whatever from Buffalo, so it's not uh it's not gonna be far from you.
There's a guy, by the way, on our Buffalo station, uh Tom Bowerly, who who claimed to me that he he listens to me when I fill in for Rush and he does a great impression of me.
So I don't know whether that's true, but if he if he's there um if he does and you listen to uh to to those guys, I'm gonna be uh uh speaking on this issue uh in uh in Toronto, big uh big old uh rallying thing for free speech.
Because almost everything.
If you notice the the the left wants to say we've just it doesn't matter whether it's with r with uh Rush, the Rush uh Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem and uh th w the uh the other great uh liberal, what's her name, Robin Morgan, uh announced that they want the FCC to take Rush off the air.
In other words, they don't want to have a discussion.
The debate is over.
Uh they've won the debate, they want your side to shut up and go away.
The climate change consensus guys.
Uh they've won.
They've won the debate.
They don't want to he they don't want to hold a debate anymore.
Uh they've they've decided what the correct answer to the debate is.
They just want you guys to go away.
And that's what almost every challenge facing developed societies uh b b uh boils down to.
It's like uh multiculturalism in Europe, uh where uh people weren't consulted about uh mass m Muslim immigration that has been transformative in the Netherlands and Germany and all kinds of places, and the ruling class says, no, you can't talk about it.
Jane Fonda says no, you can't talk about it.
She doesn't want to hear Rush.
She doesn't have to think about what Rush says, she'd rather the FCC just banned Rush.
She compared she compared uh Rush to Joseph Goebbels, the sophisticated propagandist.
Uh it and and so she's asking the government to the FCC to ban Rush.
She doesn't even seem to know that Dr. Goebbels, he did he wasn't a radio host in Germany.
He was the FCC of his day.
He's the guy who banned a zillion radio shows, who burned thousands of books, who f who banned uh movies he didn't like and operas he didn't like.
He was the FCC of his day.
Uh but the left is so invested in the purity and inviolability of its own ideas uh that it says No, that's it.
Uh we don't we we don't need to have a debate because we're right and you're wrong, and you sh you guys should shut up and go away and not be heard from.
That's what I was uh talking about down in Oz.
Uh that's what I'll be talking about in Toronto's.
if you're uh if you're in Buffalo and you've mastered that excellent impression that Tom Bowley on our Buffalo affiliate does of me.
Uh it's a convenient uh what is it, nine hour ride up the Queen Elizabeth way or whatever, so come and uh come and see me there.
Um we I want to say a quick word uh about the current state of play in the uh United States uh presidential election, because there were some developments over the weekend, so we'll get into that and take more of your calls.
1800-282-2882.
Hey, Mark Stein in for us on the EIB network.
Uh the the the uh the primary campaign staggers on over the weekend.
Uh Rick Santorum won Kansas, and uh Mitt Romney won the Northern Mariana Islands.
Uh not not the not not the whole island chain itself, just uh whatever it was, the primary or the caucus they uh they had there.
So I don't know how many delegates that that uh that adds up to.
Uh but it and we got this week, I think we got uh Alabama that uh Newt is uh is uh optimistic about and Mississippi.
Let's go to Sharon in Daytona Beach, Florida.
Sharon has been following the other side of the uh the election campaign, Sharon.
Yes, I have.
Hey, Mark.
I'm good to have you with us.
Thank you.
Good to be with you.
I would like to know why it is that Obama can campaign in North Carolina.
He has time to pick up the phone and congratulate Miss Flock, but he has not stepped foot in one of the tornado rabbit states.
Nor could he pick up the phone and congratulate the mother who lost both her legs, protecting her children in one of those tornadoes.
No, it's uh it's interesting that, isn't it?
It's uh it's like the uh all the uh all the stuff that goes on around the world, and the phone call that the President of the United States finds time to make.
Uh maybe you should uh maybe you should call those uh villages in uh in Kandahar where those uh bereaved families are over the weekend.
Maybe he should uh get some long distance satellite phone or get their cell phone numbers and call them.
That he can do, that he can do.
He can make his phone call to uh what whatever her name is, sa uh we can we say her name?
I don't know whether we can.
I'll call her Mabel.
Yeah, is it is it's flying.
I'll call her I'm gonna call her just we'd like to remain a uh what's a call what's her name, a Sandra Free Zone.
So I'm gonna call her Mabel for the rest of the show.
Yeah, he's got time.
The President of the United States has caught time uh to call Mabel to check w how Mabel's holding up.
But he hasn't got time to call these tornado ravaged areas in in the United States.
That's that presumably he leaves to he leaves to FEMA.
He can leave to great parts of the bureaucracy.
But but you know, th why then th this this is the interesting question, Sharon.
There's two theories around uh at the moment.
One is that the Republicans have been entirely inept over the last few weeks.
They had Obama on the ropes, the economy is lousy, uh, and then they spend the whole time given the impression that they just want to stop uh Americans in having sex lives, and the whole thing becomes about uh contraception and all the rest of it, and the Republicans look like a bunch of uptight squares, and what do you know, Obama's cruising to victory?
And all the against that we have the theory is that the Republic Yes, the Republicans have been characteristically inept over the last few weeks.
Uh but look at Obama!
The result of that is Obama's got fifty percent disapproval ratings.
This is what he does when Republicans are sort of staggering from one alleged disaster to another.
So so so which which which of those do you do you kind of run with, Sharon?
Do you think uh do you think Obama's in pretty good shape for re-election?
Or do you think in fact if he can't even if his numbers are like this when after the Republicans have had a really bad four or five weeks, what'll they be like uh when we get near November?
Well, Mark, I think that everyone underestimates just how many mothers there are out there like me, like my circle of friends, who are proud, beyond proud that we have raised daughters the antithesis of Miss Mabel or whatever.
Oh, no, don't mention don't don't say that, Sharon.
You know we Republicans are just we misogynist men just want to wage war on women.
I can't wait.
I'm a conservative man.
I can't wait to wage war on you and your daughters, Sharon, because that's what conservative men do.
We hate women.
We're so misogynist we can't even spell misogynist.
M I S S E double who knows.
But that's the kind of guys we are, Sharon.
Uh conservative men just want to wage war on women.
Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem have just said have just told us so.
Oh well, and we we put so much stock in um what Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem say.
Jane Fonda is such a feminist.
Why does she spend so much time trying to look 20 years younger than she is?
Ooh, whoo!
Sorcerer of milk for Sharon.
Meow.
Thank you.
Thank you for calling.
Now now she was a fine looking woman back in her Hadoying Jane days.
Hanoi Hanoying Jane, the uh face that launched the thousand boat people.
Boy was she boy was she great then.
Thanks for your call, Sharon Bachst for Rush.
Lots more straight ahead.
Yes, Rush has suspended himself for the day, but he will return tomorrow if you go to Rush Limbaugh.com.
You need not be discombobulated by any sinister foreign guest hosts, so you can be a rush twenty-four-seven subscriber.
And Rush Limbaugh.com it's got it all.
It's got it in print transcripts, it's got uh audio, it's got uh video from the TV show, it's got all kinds of stuff at Rush Limbaugh.com.
You know, I mentioned these developments, exciting developments over the weekend.
Mitt Romney won the uh Northern Mariana Islands caucus or primary or whatever it was.
And uh I was thinking back to the old days.
And my fav my the way they used to do it in uh before we got into these uh primary season business.
And uh in 1848.
Anyone remember the eighteen forty-eight election?
They didn't uh in those days they didn't do the sort of non-stop campaign eighteen forty-eight on Fox News and CNN and all that.
Uh it was all much more casual.
Uh the Whig Party nominated Zachary Taylor as their presidential candidate, uh, without telling him, basically.
They did this in I think it was June.
Uh and then they sent him a letter saying that they'd notified him uh uh letter telling him, you know, to notifying him that he'd won the nomination, but they forgot to put a stamp on it.
So when it uh reached his home, uh it had ten cents postage due, and um he sent uh so so the l there was the letter.
He had to pay ten cents to get the letter, so he told the postmaster, nuts to that, you can take it away.
I'm not paying ten cents to get that letter.
So he didn't actually find out that he was the presidential nominee of the Whig Party until whatever it was six or seven weeks later, when the letter had got all the way back to Washington on the stagecoach, and then they'd uh put the ten cent stamp on it and send it all all the way back.
Uh and I can't help thinking that actually things would be a lot better if we s if we'd stuck to that way.
You know, you just uh the the party decides who's gonna be the nominee.
They mail him the letter, he sends the letter away.
Uh seven weeks later it comes back with the stamp and he discovers, oh gosh, I'm the presidential nominee, I bet a campaign.
Oh, it's only a couple of weeks now to the election.
Uh course Zachary Taylor wound up uh wound up winning that election.
He he was a um he'd been a war hero uh in the Mexican war.
Um and so he used to get all this mail uh from people who admired him as a war hero, and also male, you know, asking him for various stuff because he was a big time war hero.
So he used to get tons of postage due mail, because stamps were expensive in that day.
So he got used to basically rejecting all the mail, 90% of the mail that showed up to his house.
He told the the postmaster to take it away again, you didn't want to know.
So when the Whig Party nominated him for the uh presidency of the United States and forgot to put the stamp on it, he sent that away, so he didn't find out until six or seven weeks later.
I'm not sure we wouldn't be better off going back to that system.
Let's go to Bill in Mexia, Texas.
Bill, you are live on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Great to have you with us.
Hey, Mark, it's just great to hear you.
Hey, good to hear you too, Bill.
That's right.
Uh what's on your bide today, Bill?
Well, I uh try to get into a little bit of a political mind here down here in in central Texas.
Beautiful sixty-eight degree sunshiny type day.
Oh, good I I have great difficulty getting people to debate with me.
Uh the left just seems to want to leave all their news articles as to as to be the uh the way things are.
And if anybody would like to uh you know engage in a civilized conversation about that, uh they don't they don't engage.
They don't uh talk about it.
No, that I think that's the that's the purpose of left wing orthodoxy.
Uh the whole idea of, you know, oh climate climate change, I think we should I think we need to save the planet.
The whole point about all that is like they're they're not to the left.
That's not politics.
That's the sort of default uh position.
It's like the air that we breathe.
And so uh the great advantage of those opinions as far as the left is concerned, is that uh uh once you've decided that's the view you h hold, you don't need to waste time d debating it.
It's just it's not it's not an opinion, it's not a point of view.
It's something more than that.
It's uh it's basically something that is beyond questioning, and that's why uh when the state determines that uh Catholic institutions have to provide contraceptives, or the state decides that it needs to uh uh regulate you out of your car and onto uh the bus system.
Uh that that's that's not something it wants to have a genuine honest debate about.
It would rather just actually clear the other side off the field.
We would rather demonize them as racists, as sexists, Islamophobes, homophobes.
If necessary, they'll do what they did to Juan Williams when he accidentally wandered off the reservation and made uh and expressed some misgivings about people saying a lahu Akbar on aeroplanes, and the woman who fired him from NPR uh said that the poor guy was mentally ill.
That's exactly what they do in the Soviet Union.
They say uh oh, don't worry about it, we'll just put you in the straight jacket, take you off to re-education camp, and you'll soon be feeling fine.
And that's the way that's their whole approach to it.
And and you're probably finding difficulty, Bill, when you're like with your neighbors uh who take that position, is they don't want their bubble, they don't they don't want anybody else inside their little fluffy princess fairy pants liberal cocoon with them.
Well, is it also possible that they're unable to articulate their argument?
Well I think I think there might be I think there might be something of that.
There was uh there was there's a very funny account.
There's a fellow called uh uh Viscount Moncton, uh who's a uh who's a British uh fellow who's uh not on board with the whole climate change thing.
He's a climate skeptic.
And he was speaking at Schenectady in uh New York uh I think just a couple of days ago, and there was a hilarious account of him encounting the college students who all like very pretty little airheads.
They're all running up uh six figured six figures of debt uh to fill their heads with pretty little nonsense.
And this uh this lovely little blonde girl, uh blonde woman, I should say.
I don't I don't want to be any more beastly in the war on women than I have been.
This blonde woman who's head of the college environmental faction, she had all these recycled uh boxes that she duct taped together uh to save the planet, and uh she was just yelling at him uh there's a consensus, there's a consensus.
Whatever he said, she'd just yell, there's a consensus.
She'd shriek it like this.
And this guy, Lord Moncton, who's like some P. G. Woodhouse uh toff from uh out of the House of Lords, he he goes, uh that, madam, is intellectual baby talk.
Haven't you heard of Aristotle's codification of the commonist logical fallacies in human discourse uh including uh that which uh the medievalists would later describe as the argumentum ad populum or the headcount fallacy.
Of course, she just looked baffled at him and went back to shrieking, there's a consensus, there's a consensus, there's a consensus.
Uh and that's and that's what it means in left left wing arguing.
You get your slogan, you write the slogan on the cardboard, and you shriek it over and over and over and over.
And that's all they want to do.
And that's why, you know, I don't I really don't care.
And if you uh by the way, if you're a liberal and you disagree with this, give me give me a call.
1800-282-2882.
Because I love talking to liberals on this show.
I love talking to liberals who actually want to debate the facts, who actually wanna who actually want don't want to just shriek the little the s the the silly little the silly little slogans.
All those little Occupy Wall Street slogans that seemed so great when they were raking in all those six-figure donations, and now they're broke and busted and have only three weeks before they're completely bankrupt unless Obama gives them the old General Motors-type federal bailout.
All those people, all those cute little slogans that seem so, oh, they're so idealistic.
Look, look, look, they're so idealistic.
They've got slogans.
That's a sign of their idealism.
They've got a slogan.
They've got like a three-word slogan, like this little blonde cutie, the little blonde co-edit Schenectady, who's the president of the Environmental Club, who's shrieking, there's a consensus, there's a consensus, there's a consensus.
Okay, are there any other words to the song?
Has the song got any additional choruses, any new verses?
Could we get into something else?
Look, if you're a liberal and you disagree with me on this, call me, call me, 1-800-282-2882.
I'm interested in talking to liberals.
I'm not interested in lefties who...
just want to do as Jane Fonda does and get the FCC to take you off the air or just want to do as the climate change types like Al Gore say oh I don't debate denialists and wants to compare them to uh Nazi holoca uh to Holocaust deniers and all the rest of it.
Uh if you want to hold the debate we can hold the debate but too much left wing thought just boils down to saying we don't need a debate because we're right and you guys shouldn't even be allowed into the debating room.
Mark Stein in Farush 1 eight hundred two eight two two eight eight two Mark Stein in for us uh by the way it's uh Mahaya I think it's Mahaya uh Texas uh a brazillion and one aggrieved Texans have just corrected me.
Look I'm in a room full of Americans uh I thought I would it would it be too much would it be too much to ask HR and the gang to uh spell these exotic uh American names uh phonetically H H why did nobody tell me it's it's Mahaya it's Maha in Texas it's m it's it's it's it's uh it's not that's not a good excuse that's not a good excuse.
Texas they they pronounce the X in Texas do they?
It's not to hey ass or anything, is it?
You've got me rattled now.
I'm just like a foreigner bluffing my way through here and I and I still okay well let's go to Lori.
Laurie is in PA PA that's that's for that's Pennsylvania right?
I'm just checking now I'm nervous.
And she's and she's in the city of uh Patesborough Patessisborough I think that's how you pronounce it looks like Pittsburgh but I'm not gonna be caught out again.
Laurie great to have you with with us on the show.
Thank you.
I wanted to just say as someone who lives in Pennsylvania I am thrilled that I feel like it's the final four and I finally get to make my vote count.
Um I'm a later primary state in the whole presidential primary so in past years the candidates decided before it ever got to my state I didn't get to make a decision and I'm really excited it's going this long because it gives everybody who is registered a chance to say this is the candidate I want it's not people up in um in Iowa or New Hampshire or the Super Tuesday state saying this is who our candidate's going to be I think it's wonderful.
And everybody gets a chance to vote for the pres for who they want to be the Republican nominee.
I'm threw about it.
I kinda I kind of uh can see your point about that because I know as uh someone who lives in New Hampshire that uh the the rest of the country hates us and says you know the when when it's a like a typical primary season and there's Iowa New Hampshire and South Carolina and then boom it's over uh people resent it because they feel you know people live in states that got a lot of a lot more people in them and uh and uh a lot more demographically varied and all the rest of it and they don't like uh the uh Iowa and New Hampshire wrapping up the whole thing.
But but you're still in the same situation, Laurie.
I mean whatever there were there were like whatever it was eight or nine candidates in Iowa and now uh in fact may even be more of that now that we're down a four stick it out they didn't stick it out they if they saw that that was how it was going to be in a day said I'm gonna get out based on that then they didn't have confidence that the rest of the country might see what something they liked in that candidate.
So, you know, it was their decision to pull out.
They didn't stay for the long haul.
And maybe, you know, it it all shuffled up.
It's kind of like the the final four with the NC and CAA, where you have a bracket of candidates and they start, you know, you have playoffs and you have you know teams playing against each other.
You have the candidates playing against each other in different states and they decide to get out.
They didn't stay for the long haul.
And I'd rather have the candidate who stayed for the long haul and said, I'm going to try to do this and try to win this, because to me that's a candidate is going to stay for the long haul and basically have, you know, once you president and once to take this, you know, once say I'm in it for the long haul.
I'm not getting out it doesn't look good.
I'm going to get out.
That's a can I prefer to have as President because it shows that this is someone who can handle the hard stuff, can handle when it's good and bad.
It I think it says a lot for the candidates that are still there.
Yeah, well that's that's good that's good if you feel that way, the the final four in the uh like the uh like the uh brackets uh you're good good good for you and you you're right this year your vote counts.
Hey uh speaking of Pennsylvania Laurie Harrisburg is about to skip five point three million dollars of its debt payment it has three hundred and twenty six million dollars of debt.
This is a city of fifty thousand people uh due to uh the exp expensive repairs of its trash incinerator.
Uh so the state of Pennsylvania or at any rate its capital city is in a pretty parlous position at the moment, Laurie.
We worry about the national government having sixteen trillion dollars of debt.
But when you look at the debts held by uh your capital city there in Pennsylvania and other bankrupt cities uh the smallest city in the smallest state Central Falls Rhode Island is also bankrupt I learned from national review.
Uh th there's uh you yeah you you can't you can't say the problem is all at the national level.
You've got state and municipal problems in Pennsylvania too, haven't you?
Absolutely.
And I think one of the things I'm just going to throw out here for that is that Pennsylvania are, unfortunately, a very, very strong union state.
We're kind of like Wisconsin in a lot of ways with our unions, and they have chokeholds on these municipalities with pensions and health care and such as that.
And I think that becomes a huge factor because, you know, they're going to be fault-on
on that la on that debt but I wonder what their debt is because of because of um you know the cost of uh you know the cost of our of our government here in Pennsylvania with all the pensions and all the um you know people taking early No right normally we hear that it's uh uh with these cities it's their uh pensions obligations uh this is a new one on me that that in fact the trash incinerator in Harrisburg Pennsylvania is about to swallow the entire city.
Have you used uh have you have you used the uh trash facilities in Harrisburg Laurie?
No I have once actually twice.
Yes I have though years ago though years ago.
You've used them twice.
Okay, well, I hope you got your $326 million worth.
Great to talk with you, Laurie.
This, by the way, is not a small point.
You know, we talk about the $16 trillion debt and the debt ceiling thing that's going to come up just before we've hit the debt ceiling early, funnily enough.
And we're going to have another round of debt ceiling negotiations all during the election campaign.
But actually, that is only the tip of the iceberg.
When you look at the number of municipalities that are also kaput, the level of indebtedness.
of the entire United States is breathtaking and this is why sometimes the Greek comparisons and all the rest of it uh don't actually do the situation justice because m most other uh nations France for example is is uh an entirely centrally governed uh society so most other nations don't uh distribute their debt between the national government between regional governments between municipal governments to the degree the United States does.
When you add up the total government debt uh of the United States plus the uh liabilities, the unfunded liabilities in Medicare, you get not sixteen trillion dollars but a figure that's actually closer to ten times that about a hundred and fifty trillion.
This is not small potatoes.
Mark Stein for us, more straight ahead.
Amazing results from the Swiss referendum uh yesterday.
The Swiss, there was a ballot measure to raise the minimum paid vacation each year to six weeks, like many other European nations, to six weeks paid vacation a year in order to alleviate stress, workplace stress.
The Swiss people, to their credit, uh rejected it.
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