Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
It is true, ladies and gentlemen.
Welcome to the show.
It's Doug Erbansky, and that is because the mayor of Rielville, the man who goes by many names, the Maharashi, Ali Limbali, the doctor of democracy, the founder of the Linbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, is not here today.
So you're stuck with Mr. Hollywood, as I was named yesterday by Mark Stein.
It is true I am a Hollywood insider.
I don't want to talk about that.
We'll do that another day if you insist.
It is Doug Gerbanski filling in for Ali Limbali, the Doctor of Democracy.
1-800-282-2882 is the phone number if you'd like to be part of today's broadcast.
Well, well, well, my dear friends, welcome.
There is news.
And that is this, the poll numbers, they are shifting.
Get this.
We were waiting for this to happen, were we not?
Three-quarters of U.S. voters now say they want a special prosecutor to investigate the IRS, the IRS, and their targeting of Tea Party groups.
This is a poll that this poll, by the way, also showed a drop in President Barack Obama's approval and trust ratings.
This is big stuff.
Is this a little crack?
Is this a little crack in the unbridled support that the president is getting?
I mean, I fully expect that the Limbaugh theorem will kick in.
Of course, it always does.
It is never wrong.
The Limbaugh theorem sits side by side, by the way, with the Urbanski explanation of Obama's worldview.
Which, if you remember, the Limbaugh theorem is that things happen, and Obama does, Obama is in no way connected with the bad things that are happening.
He is somehow separate from everything.
Well, Urbanski has explained to you before, the worldview of Obama is simply this, that all matters.
I don't care whether it's gay marriage, Israel, the IRS, Benghazi, Egypt, Libya, all matters fall into one of two categories, the oppressed and the oppressors.
And he paints himself into the position of being the man who can solve the problems that the oppressed are facing as a result of the oppressors.
Now, so three quarters of you voters, three quarters of U.S. voters want now a special prosecutor.
Oh, it's high time.
And part of the reason that this has gone so far and may continue, may continue going the way the White House wants it to go is because he may never appoint a special counsel.
Think of this.
Not a single, think of this, not a single Justice Department official went to jail or ATF official went to jail for sending hundreds of guns over the border to Mexico.
No one at this point is being held accountable for the, at this point yet, about the IRS scandals, the Benghazi scandals.
And I want to stop, interrupt myself for a moment here.
The word scandal, we're hearing the word scandal.
The White House has three scandals, four scandals.
Who knows how many scandals?
We're hearing the word cover-up.
Cover-up.
Did they participate in a cover-up?
I'll tell you the word we're not yet hearing.
I'm waiting to hear it.
You're going to hear it now.
The word is hoax.
The word is hoax.
When we finally get to the spot where we ask the question, not who doctored memos from the CIA on talking points on the horrendous activities in Benghazi.
When we get to the point where we're saying who, who, who came up with the story about the videotape?
Where was that story concocted?
Because that story is and was a hoax, a big hoax.
Hoax that the administration was invested in enormously.
Remember, they sent Hillary Clinton out there.
I don't know why in my mind's eye she resembles Khrushchev pounding his shoe on the table when she's saying the videotapes of videotape.
They make a commercial that they pay for with your and my tax dollars.
They air it out in the Middle East and Pakistan, Pakistan.
They air it.
The president himself goes in front of the entire world at the UN.
And I don't know if it was 13 times, 15 times, 18 times, 18, 1,000 times.
But he says, he apologizes in front of the entire world that it was the video, it was the video.
And we're talking about who's editing talking points from the CIA and the State Department.
There was a hoax.
The hoax, and I'm not talking about the global warming hoax, I'm talking about the video hoax.
And they sold it, and they sold it to you, to me, to the world, and they sold it hard.
The word is hoax.
Now, either the president himself decided and invested himself in the hoax, or someone else did, and someone else is operating the president.
I'm just mentioning now, there's no special counsel.
That is the way that they'll be able to, if they don't appoint one, that they'll be able to avoid charges of further corruption.
Eric Holder surely doesn't look like he's going to be appointing a special counsel to investigate any crime that is associated with him or with this administration.
Eric Holder is coming under all this fire.
Did he commit perjury?
Didn't he commit perjury?
And we'll be dealing a lot more of that.
I want to go back to this poll for a moment.
Because the spotlight on all of these controversies is having an effect.
It is taking a toll of some degree on Obama's standing.
In the latest survey, 49% disapprove of Obama's performance in office.
45% are approving.
Now, if you trust these polls, it makes you ask a question or two about who those 45% are.
He's also judged Obama is, and this is the Limbaugh theorem at work.
Obama is judged honest and trustworthy by 49% in the latest poll.
Now, that's down.
The last time they asked this question was way back in September of 2011.
Now, that's a long time ago.
Why were they asking that question in the intervening years?
But the last time Quintipiak asked that poll in September of 2011, 58% said that Obama was honest and trustworthy, and now only 45% are saying it.
And 68% of voters are saying they are somewhat dissatisfied or very dissatisfied in the way things are going in the United States.
This is further proof of the Limbaugh theorem.
If you've got 68% of voters saying they're somewhat dissatisfied or very dissatisfied by the way things are going in this country, these are the same people who are giving Obama, even with his lower trustworthiness and honesty rating, they're still giving him 49%.
So there is always that disconnect here.
You know, now we've got to come to the real question, the real question of the day, which is really, you know, I'm going to get to the IRS thing, and we're going to cover it in great detail here.
I want to tell you that the IRS matter, as I knew I was going to be here today for about the past two weeks, I've been in New Orleans, I'm working on a film down there, I've been in Vancouver, New Orleans the past two weeks.
As I was poking around on the machine, the interweb, what I found was there was an awful lot of tremendously good reportage about the IRS matter and about the Benghazi matter.
Tremendously good coverage, which confirms to me that unless you're reading on the internet or unless you're listening to the Rush Limbaugh show, maybe a few others, you will not know what is going on for real.
Because the mainstream media has essentially abandoned, completely abandoned their responsibilities in the matter.
Great example.
Holder, Attorney General Holder, embattled Attorney General Holder, which, by the way, folks, if he was a Republican, if this was a Republican administration, that's how he would be characterized.
Embattled Holder.
Well, embattled Attorney General Holder has, as you may have already heard, planning to sit down with media representatives to discuss guidelines for handling investigations into leaks.
Are you troubled by that as I am?
I'm very troubled by the arrogance, the grandiosity that there is an attorney general who feels that he should be able to sit down under any circumstances with the press to discuss guidelines, guidelines.
Now, this is supposed to be an off-the-record meeting.
Now, once the media heard it was going to be off-the-record, the Associated, they've lined up to not go because they've just had it as well with this guy.
The Associated Press have said that they are not going to.
They object.
They object to the idea that this is going to be an off-the-record meeting.
The New York Times, same position.
We are not going to go.
It's not appropriate for us to go, they say.
CNN, not going to go.
Huffington Post, even, not going to go unless the meeting is on the record.
So you've got the embattled Attorney General wanting to give guidelines to the so-called free press about how they should handle leaks and investigations.
And sitting there in front of all of us is this IRS matter.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, it may be because at times I sit here, I fly around on airplanes, I'm at work on location, and I have lofty ideas that enter my brain occasionally.
And these ideas tell me that they've told me for the past four or five years, maybe longer, that the question of our age, the big question of our age, was going to be, what is the role of government in our lives?
And what is the true nature of the relationship between you, the citizen, and government?
My friends, I am disbanding those questions from my mind.
I do not think they are any longer the questions of our time.
I'll tell you the shocking question of our time, the big question of our time is this.
Prepare yourself, because we're at the beginning.
We're not at the end of this conversation.
We're at the beginning of this conversation.
The big question of our time is this.
Are you now, or have you ever been a member of the Republican Party?
Are you now or have you ever taken a view that it would be considered conservative?
Are you now or have you ever disagreed with the idea of the collective which knows best?
I'm not joking, ladies and gentlemen.
The phone number here is 1-800-282-2882.
It's Duggar Bansky filling in for Rush Limbaugh on his show.
We'll be back right after this.
Welcome back to the Rush Limbaugh Show, ladies and gentlemen.
Doug Rabanski here filling in for El Rushbo, the Maharushi, Ali Limbali.
The telephone number here, as you know, is 1-800-282-2882.
Now, I have friends in Washington, D.C., as it turns out.
No surprise.
And I've got friends who are connected to many of the IRS matters.
And I cannot identify them at all because we had a very private conversation earlier in this week.
But my friend is actually friends with, knows Ms. Lerner, has had experience with Mr. Miller, and has had a lot of experience with the Department of Justice and also with the IRS.
The IRS, as you know what that stands for, Investigate Republican Services, is what it apparently stands for these days.
And my friend and I got talking, and he truly is a world-class expert in these matters, top of the hill.
And we got to talking about this targeting of conservative groups.
And I said to him, I said, is it possible as the string starts to unravel from this ball that we're going to learn that individuals were targeted also?
He said, it's possible, maybe even be likely.
And I said, well, what have you observed, if anything at all, during the past several years about the IRS and their conduct?
And he said, well, the IRS has become arrogant.
Arrogant was the word he used to a degree that we never ever have seen before.
And I said, I'm going to throw something at you because I hear you using the word arrogant, and I know that you're a cautious person.
I said, but I watched this testimony.
I watched it from my hotel room down in New Orleans.
And I was struck by something else, by Mr. Miller's testimony, by Miss Lerner's testimony or non-testimony, which I'm going to be getting into in some detail in a little while.
I'm struck by something.
I said to my friend, it's not arrogance.
I said, let me throw this at you.
I'm struck by the impression that they give that they feel they are not answerable to anybody.
They feel they are not answerable to anybody.
Almost as if a fourth separate branch of government exists.
By the way, when you dig into this a little bit, they are answerable to somebody.
They're considered part of the executive branch.
And I said to my expert friend, I said, answer me this.
I said, in recent days and weeks, I've heard the IRS referred to as an arm of law enforcement.
And I said, I never thought of them that way as an arm of law enforcement.
I said, is that what we think of them?
Because I tend to, you know, I'm one of these people.
I say, pay your taxes.
Don't mess around with the system.
It is what it is.
But I picture people in the IRS being sort of like accountant types, actuary types.
Men with green eye, the green eyeshades sitting there at their accounting tables.
And I couldn't be more wrong because they're Louise Lerner, Lois Lerner.
People like her, Miss Ingram, Mr. Miller, they're people who would do very well in a uniform, maybe a little star on their lapel, maybe a red stripe down the side, just mentioning it.
But I said, is the IRS a division of law enforcement?
He said, well, I suppose you could see them as a division of law enforcement.
I said, let me ask you this next question.
If the IRS is a division of law enforcement, and the only aim of it is to collect income tax.
And when I was here doing this broadcast, visiting with you folks the day after Thanksgiving and the beginning of this year and at the end of December, we spent an awful lot of time talking about the tax code.
And I said to you at the time that the current tax code is approximately 76,000 pages long.
In fact, if you want to find out how long the tax code is, you actually can't.
You can spend hours on the internet trying to find out the answer to this, and it's quite hard to find out because the number keeps changing.
But I defined for you what those 76,000 pages are.
According to Obama, those 76,000 pages are loopholes because they're all exceptions to the reasons you pay tax on your income.
Yes?
Yes, okay.
And those 76,000 pages are loopholes gained how?
Well, they are favoritism that's been won over by special interest groups as the result of lobbying.
Now, if the IRS is a division of law enforcement, as we are now told, we are also told that the IRS is going to run, administer, be involved with.
What are they going to have exactly to do with Obamacare?
Well, I guess the first thing they're going to do is to enforce collection of money and/or fines.
But I said to my friend the expert: is it reasonable to think that it stops there?
Or is it more possible, given what we know, that the Internal Revenue Service, as a service considering itself a division of law enforcement, remember, that their involvement in Obamacare could become much uglier as they attempt to enforce it?
Now, you will see all over the place people saying, well, we're the only civilized, we're the only industrialized, civilized democracy in the world that doesn't have single payer.
Well, let me explain something to you, my friends.
First of all, that's not true.
Secondly, I know a lot of you think single payer is coming as a result of Obamacare, and that's their goal.
Friends, it's here.
One way or another, it's here.
They're going to write the rules.
One group decides everything.
Whether you're paying it to this one or that one.
It's all the same hodgepodge.
Now, I've been in Canada.
I've been in Toronto 18 times between September and January.
And I know they have single payer there.
I go to England a lot, and you've been led to believe they have it there.
They do not have it there.
They have national health, and yet you still have the freedom in England to choose your own private doctor and also other European countries.
They do not have a division of law enforcement that tells you how your health care has to be paid for and ultimately administered.
There is no such thing in these countries.
Now, Canada is a little different.
They do have a little, they're quite aggressive.
They are true single-payer.
And the laws against doctors and patients who violate, who try and go private, who try and give or accept treatment on off hours are quite strong.
Now, why does this matter?
All of this matters because we were told all during the 2012 election that the Democrats' ground game was the best of all.
And what did it turn out?
The game was rigged.
Welcome back to the show, ladies and gentlemen.
The telephone number here is 1-800-282-2882.
Please call in.
Now, this IRS thing, remember how Hillary Clinton said about the murdered ambassador in Benghazi, what does it matter?
Remember how Jay Carney said, not to be confused with Art Carney, Jay Carney said that was a long time ago.
And I opined to you in the last half hour that there has been a hoax, not merely a cover-up, but a hoax, this videotape hoax, who made that decision, who made the idea to sell it to you, and then they sold it hard.
All of this had one aim.
All of this had one aim.
Were they ever concerned about the truth coming out about Benghazi?
Clearly not.
Were they ever concerned about the truth coming out about the IRS?
Clearly not.
How can I say such a thing?
Very easy.
They were only concerned about making it until November the 6th.
Because that's the, you see, these people operate with target dates, and the target date at that moment was making it to Election Day.
They only needed to sell the story until Election Day.
Now, all of this matters because we were told and sold the story by all of the mainstream media that the, well, the ground game of the Democrats was so far superior.
The ground game of the Democrats was so far superior, that's why Obama won.
Well, yeah, it looks like it was a very dirty game.
Chicago thuggery style game.
Yeah, if you call that superior, the Chicago way, that's the ground game, and that's the ground game that apparently is superior.
And this, and look, is it a stretch to suggest that this is why Republicans and people sympathetic to Republicans stayed home?
We've been asking ourselves since Election Day, and we've come up with a lot of different reasons, why, why did Republicans stay home?
Where were they?
Because many of them are working class people.
Many of them are small business owners.
Many of them are people in tune with the thinking of the Tea Parties.
But maybe, just maybe, it's because the Tea Parties were not as active as they wanted to be, couldn't raise the money to the degree they wanted to.
Now, you go back.
It has been talked about.
We know that Schumer, we know that Franken, Max Baucus, we know that this conduct was encouraged by sitting senators who now seem shocked about it.
And we know this because they were very upset about the Supreme Court ruling on the Citizens United case.
They do not want any political opposition.
When they're faced with it, they actually can't believe that it exists.
Obama, especially, is in disbelief every time he learns opposition to him exists.
And yet, they, whilst at the same time they don't want corporations to be able to have political speech, and what is a corporation?
Other than a piece of paper, it's a legal instrument through which individuals, ultimately all individuals, are operating as a group?
You might say that a corporation is like a union.
And unions, I hear Noah screaming on the left saying, well, we've got to get unions out of politics.
So where did this thinking come from?
Inside the IRS that said, target the enemies of the regime.
Target the enemies of the collective.
And as I told you a little while ago, there's some amazing reporting on this.
I'm going to get to Jeffrey Lord's amazing reporting on this.
I tell you folks, it's borderline Woodward and Bernstein stuff that connects the dots.
But let us begin with a simple premise.
All you have to know about the liberal mindset, the leftist mindset, is this.
Just like the leftists in the media, they do not consider themselves or any of their actions as partisan.
You have to wrap your brain about this.
They do not see themselves as partisan because they feel that they are serving the public interest.
They're serving the public interest by wanting to change the world, by stopping conservatives, certainly by attempting to stop conservatives from organizing, attempting to stop conservatives from expressing their views.
I'm going to tell you, from the beginning of this scandal breaking in the past few weeks, I've been struck by the conduct of the White House because the conduct of the White House, just as an amateur observer sitting out here in Los Angeles, the conduct appears to be that of somebody who's scared of something, who's terrified of something.
They want to keep the ball in play.
And yes, they're going to divert your attention talking about edited memos from the State Department and the CIA.
And every time they talk about these edited memos, please, ladies and gentlemen, listen to me here.
You know how a magician has a pretty girl distracting you while they're stuffing the pigeons up his sleeve?
Well, these are the pretty girl distractions because they're nothing to do with the main event.
The White House is acting like it's terrified of something.
What would that be?
Well, it could be any number of things.
But we do live in the day and age of emails, cell phones, witnesses, recorded conversations.
And if you don't know what may pop up at some point, you've got to play it very, very, very carefully, and that's what they're doing.
Now, the Limbaugh theorem is in play.
Obama's approval rating is staying up, despite the fact that the public is against his policies.
The public wants a special prosecutor.
They are not associating Obama with any of this.
Obama's out there.
He's got a sort of split personality in the whole story.
He goes out.
Again, another pretty girl diversion.
He gives a long speech on national security and terrorism.
Such a bizarre speech.
He gives a speech.
He says he doesn't like war, but it's necessary.
He takes every position on every issue.
Doesn't like it when the military causes civilian casualties, but bad things happen.
He's out there trying to divert your attention because of the scandals, especially the abuse of power by the taxman.
If your trust, ladies and gentlemen, in the government is being eroded, it is being eroded appropriately so.
Even supporters of the president are wondering whether all these things represent evidence of incompetence or corruption.
Maybe both.
Maybe both.
He still treats people as if they're dumb if they don't agree with him.
Anyway, he's out there and he takes both sides of every issue in this talk.
He does it so often that Politico headlined its story, Obama Debates Obama.
Look, Obama's inability to allow himself the slightest risk of being wrong.
And this is why he does not answer that reporter's question directly about when someone in the White House knew about the IRS scandal.
He does not allow himself the slightest risk of being wrong because at the end of the day, there's also a fragile ego there in operation.
Look, I've got the story here.
I'm going to have to save it until after the break.
Got the story here way back from when is it from 2010, September 2010.
You want to know the culture that causes the IRS to function like this?
The culture alone.
Obama claims Fox News is destructive to the nation.
He says this in an interview with Rolling Stone way back in 2010.
The President of the United States, by name, addresses Fox News.
He goes after the network in 2009.
Others for him did the same thing.
Now, there's no mention of the fact that all of other news is liberal.
And Fox News is a pretty good news organization.
I don't think it's all wall-to-wall conservatism.
They had a couple of opinion shows on there.
But Obama, go after your enemies.
If they bring a knife, shout in their faces.
All this kind of talk.
That is because they don't see themselves as partisan.
They see themselves as part of a larger cause.
And that cause is to stop conservatives.
I've got to take a break, ladies and gentlemen.
Excellent stuff coming up as I get to this Jeffrey Lord story and Candy Crowley and the other characters.
And you're going to hear some names you've not yet heard who are serious players who need to be called also before Congress.
It's Douger Bansky filling in for Rush Limbaugh, phone number 1-800-282-2882.
We'll be right back.
Welcome back to the Verse Limbo show, ladies and gentlemen.
It's Duggar Bansky here filling in for Rush, who's not here.
Look, when you've got a branch of government that is really just a department, but that starts to consider itself a branch, not answerable to anyone.
You see the way that Mr. Miller answered questions, the way Mr. Shulman answered questions, and if you didn't, I'm going to be going into that in a little while here on today's show.
This is something run amok.
They are somehow above it all and not concerned in the slightest about serving the public interest.
Not at all.
They are delighted to stonewall and not cooperate.
Where is the president in the statement where he comes out and says, I demand everyone in my administration cooperate fully with this investigation?
People found violating any laws will be prosecuted.
Where is the president strongly coming out and saying any of this?
All he's saying is I'm shocked, shocked, shocked.
There were these things going on.
Now you get Candy Crowley.
I want to spend a moment on Candy Crowley here, and I'll tell you why.
Something that's been bothering me.
Candy Crowley, right after this story broke, she's the CNN reporter, as you know.
She has on her CNN show Rand Paul, and she says to him, to Senator Paul, she says, can't you see in your mind's eye a way that this might not have been political?
That this was misguided, a misguided, stupid way to sort out things, but that they didn't intend to be some kind of political attempt to harass the Tea Party.
Now, she uses a lot of words to entrap him, because what they want at CNN is one Republican, hopefully a prominent one, saying, I suppose that it wasn't political, but Rand Paul didn't fall into it.
Now, Candy Crowley, and by the way, Rand Paul's answer was wonderful.
He said, I would think that if there was any chance that this was a mistake, the investigator general wouldn't be coming out saying otherwise, and the IRS themselves wouldn't be admitting that they made some mistakes.
And so Crowley comes back and she says, well, they say it's a mistake.
She says the question is whether it's political.
So, Ms. Crowley, let me just ask you a question.
Do you actually think, do you actually think that there's a chance this isn't political?
Ask the question.
And I want to take you back.
Because in my view, Candy Crowley is such a very poor excuse for a newspaper.
Let's go back to the debates.
Do you remember in the debates?
Now, there was the weird performance of Mitt Romney on the famous last debate where Mitt Romney did not, he chose, it was about foreign policy.
And if you remember, I'm not making this up, the election was getting very tight.
Axelrod was out there saying it's going to be a very close election.
We're fighting for our political lives here.
The polls were tightening.
There was some real momentum behind Romney and Ryan at that point.
And the big third debate came, and Romney made a mess of it, as you know, and he didn't, he chose for reasons that we'll never fully understand, and they conscientiously did it.
They chose to not ask questions about Benghazi.
Questions that had been on all America's minds, questions that no reporter had the guts to ask the president.
Romney had the chance in front of the country.
He didn't do it.
And there's that moment that we all remember, if you were paying attention, where Romney says the president didn't even call it an act of terrorism until, and he names a date.
And the president immediately jumps to life and he says, that's not true.
Is it Candy?
Is it Candy?
And Candy Crowley, without missing a beat, has, I have the piece of paper right here, and she reports it and she said the president is right.
And Romney looks very shocked by this.
Now, she apologizes under the radar on the next day.
It turns out the president wasn't right.
And as an old theater producer on Broadway and movie producer, that to me felt like, and I looked at the tape several times afterwards, it always looked to me like a very, I don't want to call it, rehearsed, prearranged moment.
Shall we call it that?
Now, she, whether it's pre-rehearsed or not, she steps into the debate, she enters it as if she was supposed to answer and prepared to answer questions to help Obama and to determine a winner of whatever issues might arise.
And this woman is still on the air, and she is now still trying to rewrite the IRS story.
I mean, think of this, Candy Crowley saying this, because this is what they'd like to say, what she'd really like to say.
So it is possible that this is simply a fabricated story by desperate Republicans, isn't it?
That's what she'd like to say.
Candy, the IRS has admitted it.
The Inspector General has proved it.
The president doesn't know about it, of course.
I love the Leno joke.
He said most presidents give news conferences to explain what's going on.
He said this president gives news conferences to find out what's going on.
Another important thing I think is worth pointing out, to those of you who don't already know this, this Inspector General report was an audit.
It was not an investigation.
And there's a huge difference.
An audit is what it is.
An investigation gives them the ability to put people under oath, to subpoena emails and other things.
And do you honestly think the White House didn't know about this, that Obama doesn't know about this?
I'm going to explain more about this in the next hour.
But you know the old adage, if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, quacks like a duck, bottles like a duck, probably is a duck.
And Candy Crowley, you know, with Rand Paul on there, we know her biases already.
We know all of her biases.
And I don't even know why she asked Rand Paul the question.
I would have thought she already had the answers in her notes.
Ladies and gentlemen, Dugar Bansky for Russian Library.
Be right back.
Doug Abaski here for Rush Limbaugh, ladies and gentlemen.
Welcome back to the show.
I see many of you holding.
I promise I'll try and get to your calls in the next hour.
There's just so much I need to cover here, including the Jeffrey Lord story.
Do any of you know that there is a union that operates the IRS?
This is the story.
This may be the smoking gun linkage between the IRS's activities and the White House.
And Jeffrey Lord has done a wonderful, wonderful job of reporting this.
I'm going to cover that in the next hour.
Ladies and gentlemen, this growing creeping hand of the IRS, this is, shall we call it the best argument?
This fourth branch of government operating as a law unto itself, unanswerable to anyone at all?
Is this not the best argument that you've heard against any further ideas of an expansionary government?
Because, ladies and gentlemen, the administrative and regulatory instruments of this government have become too large and too complex and too unmanageable, is the word we keep hearing, that they're now a law unto themselves.
I want to borrow a quote from Ian Fleming, may I?
He says, once is an accident, twice as a coincidence, three times as an enemy action.