Nov. 28, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:33
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| Yeah, happy Black Friday to you. | |
| America's Anchorman is away. | |
| He will return live on Monday for the real deal. | |
| Authentic, full strength all-American. | |
| Excellence in broadcasting to take you through the end of the week starting Monday. | |
| But for today it is your undocumented anchor man, a cheap sub-minimum wage foreigner doing the uh jobs that Americans don't want to do, at least not on the day after Thanksgiving. | |
| Great to be with you. | |
| We're here live from Ice Station EIB in far northern New Hampshire in New York. | |
| Mike and Greg are minding the store. | |
| It's a it's an unusual day for me because both HR and Mr. Snerdley are uh are uh are not here. | |
| Normally normally when I'm on the air, the uh the the EIB network is on code red alert. | |
| So they have either HR, Mr. Snerdley, or both when they think uh things might really get out of hand. | |
| Uh but today neither of them are here, so I feel like I've been uh given the uh given the keys to the car, and I can just take it on a wild joy ride and uh and and do what I like with impunity. | |
| And uh that's why uh that's why I was quoting from Monty Python routines uh earlier, uh Mike points out. | |
| But uh 1800-282 is the number to call. | |
| It's the end of the week, and you know what then. | |
| Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's open line Friday. | |
| Yes, from Monday to Thursday, the show is in the ruthless grip of a trained broadcast specialist, but no highly trained broadcast specialist is available on the day after federal holidays. | |
| So anything goes today. | |
| 1-800-282-2882, you can talk about the danger that America faces from men packing bananas. | |
| Uh as uh exemplified by that story out of uh Colorado, you can talk about the immigration amnesty. | |
| Uh, you can talk about the uh the post-Ferguson uh looting and riots. | |
| Rush made a very interesting point on on that, by the way, that he didn't think this was a genuine grassroots movement, that he thought the whole thing uh was being synchronized and organized. | |
| I I think that's true, and I I may expand on that thought a little later. | |
| Um but but if you don't want to talk about that and you want to talk about something entirely different, do feel uh feel free to uh to talk about that. | |
| By the way, I I mentioned earlier uh that uh the Rush had interviewed me and a couple of people said, Well, what exactly was that in? | |
| It's in the Limbaugh Letter. | |
| And if you are listening to this show but you don't subscribe to the Limbaugh Letter, you are missing out because it comes out every month uh and it's uh it's packed full uh uh of uh uh uh of meaty content, I would say. | |
| Um I loved Rush's intro to me. | |
| He he interviews me in the current issue, which you can get by going to Rushlimbaugh.com. | |
| Uh and I I told you I love the intro where he says uh I'm a gutsy aficionado, aficionado, uh or or however you put it. | |
| I was so thrilled by that that I was too nervous to read the interview for uh the next uh two or three days in case it was all downhill from the intro, as it very often is. | |
| In fact, if you listen to this show, you might have noticed that. | |
| Um and uh so I didn't I didn't read on for the next uh two or three days. | |
| When I did read the interview, it's an absolutely rollocking interview. | |
| And I've said I'm not just talking about myself. | |
| Rush is on crack and form, and we're like batting it uh back and it's like a really it's like a really good rally in a Wimbledon final. | |
| Boom boom boom boom boom. | |
| It's uh it's a terrific crack and read, and uh, if you don't subscribe to the Limbaugh Letter, uh you can get it uh digitally or you can get it in print, but one way or another you should get it, because there's uh there's lots of uh great uh great stuff in that. | |
| Um by the way, I'm gonna be in um uh Hartford, Connecticut at the Mark Twain House on Monday, December the eighth. | |
| And uh the uh the uh Rush station uh down there, which is uh WTIC 1080 W T I C one of the presenters of that that event. | |
| Um it's a great honor for me to be at the Mark Twain House, because Mark Stein and Mark Twain don't have much in common except that if you've got uh one of those uh Windows 96 really primitive spell checks uh every time you Type Mark Stein, it may automatically correct it to Mark Twain. | |
| But I will be there on Monday, December the eighth for the Mark Twain House. | |
| And he's an important guy. | |
| And that's even more important when far too many so called educators are trying to get great works like Huckleberry Finn band. | |
| But I'm going to be there doing a live event for them. | |
| And oddly enough, the guy who's going to be interviewing me at some point is NPR's Scott Simon. | |
| So if you've always wanted to see an NPR host and a Rush guest host on the same stage together, it'll be one like one of those standoffs in Ferguson, you know. | |
| It'll be tense, but uh but it may be it may hold for twenty minutes before all the bottle throwing and looting and rioting breaks out. | |
| But that's why I'll be on uh December the eighth uh at the Mark Twain House in Hartford, Connecticut. | |
| Uh a UC Davis economics professor has said there is no American dream. | |
| Uh this guy is reported by uh CBS News to have determined that there actually is no American dream. | |
| Gregory Clark is sharing his research as a hard truth with no hope. | |
| He says the formula for social mobility in the United States shows that there's nothing to dream about. | |
| America, he says, has no higher rate of social mobility than medieval England. | |
| Right? | |
| This is what this guy at UC Davis is saying. | |
| In other words, you think if you're like living in Des Moines or you're living in Houston or you're living in Miami, you've got no more hope of social mobility of bettering yourself than some peasant in medieval England. | |
| Or pre-industrial Sweden, he says. | |
| That's the most difficult part of talking about social mobility is because it's shattering people's dreams. | |
| Clark crunched the numbers in the US from the past one hundred years. | |
| And his data shows the so-called American dream, where hard work leads to more opportunities, is an illusion in the United States. | |
| Quote, the status of your children, your grandchildren, your great grandchildren, your great great grandchildren will be quite closely related to your average status now, unquote. | |
| And I thought this was in I thought this was interesting because social m uh the social mobility is what your social scientists that's his what the American dream means. | |
| And despite what he says about uh medieval England, they certainly didn't have a lot of it in continental Europe back then. | |
| If if you were a Polish peasant in the thirteenth century, uh your great grandson was going to be a Polish peasant in the fourteenth century, and his great-grandson was gonna be a Polish peasant in the fifteenth century, so by the nineteenth century you think nuts to this, and you get in a boat to Ellis Island, | |
| and uh and it's tough, and you're living in a tenement on the Lower East Side, but your kids will get an education and move up town, and your grandkids will be doctors and accountants in the suburbs, and then your great grandchild will be some Robert F. Kennedy Junior type Harvard educated environmental activist demanding an end to all the electricity and indoor toilets, and uh then it then it all goes to hell and the cycle has to begin anew. | |
| That's that's the point of this kind. | |
| That's the American dream. | |
| You're born a peasant, but you don't have to die one. | |
| And I uh disagree with this professor uh for uh in terms of the generality of American history. | |
| You only have to look at the background uh that certain very modest presidents came from to understand that at one time that line that anyone could grow up to be president of the United States uh used to be true. | |
| It isn't true now. | |
| We we're basically in a Harvard Yale uh we've got a Harvard Yale regime. | |
| By the way, there are more people in the Obama administration with advanced degrees from Oxford, Oxford, which isn't even uh an American university, than from all American public universities put together. | |
| So in other words, to get into the t upper echelons of the Obama administration where you're bossing everybody around and designing their health care and immigration policies and all the rest. | |
| Uh you can't do that if you go to uh an American university, uh you've got to go to Oxford for that. | |
| That's the Obama administration. | |
| Uh so we're moving towards a bifurcated society. | |
| And they did a study of developed nations two years ago on declining social mobility. | |
| If you're born into the lowest fifth of Danish society, twenty five percent of Danes will stay stuck there at the bottom fifth. | |
| Uh and uh you think, well, they're you know, and same in Finland. | |
| It in in Finnish society, twenty-eight percent of Finns will stay stuck in the bottom fifth. | |
| And uh okay, they're like homogenous Scandinavian countries. | |
| There's not a lot of super rich, not a lot of super poor, and there's not a terribly vast distance between the two. | |
| But if you're born into the lowest fifth of British society, thirty percent of Britons stay stuck there. | |
| That's uh that's the super rich, the super poor in that country. | |
| You've got your downtown abbey on one hand, you've got your council flats on the other. | |
| And if you draw the short straw in the lottery of life and you're born into a Belfast tenement or a Glasgow tenement, then thirty percent of Britons born into that environment will stay stuck there. | |
| In America, if you're born now, today, in today's America, if you're born into the lowest fifth of society, forty-two percent will stay there. | |
| Forty-two. | |
| So in other words, there's less social mobility. | |
| It's it's easier to get uh from the bottom of society to downtown Abbey in Britain than it is to get from the bottom of society in America uh to uh playing golf at the Martha's Vineyard Country Club with Obama and his cronies uh behind the security perimeter. | |
| In other words, uh there's less social mobility here uh than there is not only in Denmark, Finland, and the United Kingdom. | |
| Now, now that's as I said, that's declining social mobility. | |
| And you look at it in terms of the people who run uh our society. | |
| I said we now live under this Harvard Yale uh division back and forth. | |
| I think uh uh uh Bush Senior, Clinton, uh Bush Junior, Obama, they're all Harvard Yale guys. | |
| The idea of someone like Ronald Reagan from what was that? | |
| Eureka College, Illinois, is that where he was, uh Reagan? | |
| Eureka College. | |
| Uh almost impossible to imagine. | |
| Remember the way they mocked Sarah Palin, all these no-name schools she'd gone to. | |
| Uh pathetic, you know, what the idea of having uh being having somebody like that in the White House, oh, it's just too embarrassing and too vulgar for words. | |
| So we this UC Davis fella is right that there that there is declining social mobility, and that means the American dream is shrinking and out of reach for ever larger numbers of people. | |
| Uh but it didn't used to be like that. | |
| And you look at uh Calvin Coolidge buried uh across the river in Vermont for me, some ways down the Connecticut River, uh uh you look at the uh ranks of Coolidges in his line on that little Vermont Hillside, and you realize that you used to be able to get to the top of this society from very humble background, and now it's increasingly hard. | |
| And the President of the United States has just taken action that's gonna make it even harder uh because not only is he deciding that what we need is even more low skilled uh minimum wage immigrants to this this country, he's gonna make it the the principal victims of that will be Americans in the bottom fifth of society trying to make a living, trying to work hard uh and trying to dig themselves out of that bottom fifth and get a little further ahead on the ladder. | |
| Uh everything that this president has done has uh helped us bifurcate into something that's more like a Latin American society. | |
| That's why he behaves like a cowdillo, caldillo, uh, and simply changes the law according uh to what he thinks it too should be. | |
| Because in a Latin American society, uh there's the elite at the top, and there's a big dysfunctional mass at the bottom, and there's not a lot of middle class in between, and trying to find the escalator that gets you from the bottom to a little way up toward the top uh is all but impossible. | |
| And that's what we are decaying into when we have decaying social mobility. | |
| So this UC Davis guy, he's some lefty, uh, but he's not he's not wrong on this business about declining social mobility and the death of the American dream. | |
| Mark Stein for Rush, open line Friday, 1800-282-2882. | |
| Hey, Mark Stein, in for us on the excellence in uh broadcasting network. | |
| Let us go to uh let us go to Cindy in Indianapolis, Indiana. | |
| You're live on the Rush Limbaugh Show, Cindy, thanks for waiting. | |
| Hi, Mark. | |
| I've uh read your collins. | |
| It's a pleasure to talk to you. | |
| But I I disagree with your characterization of uh the times we're in as post constitutional order. | |
| I think if we talk about it that way, that's implying you know, we've accepted it as the new normal and it's not going back. | |
| I think I think we should call it it's an extra constitutional order. | |
| This regime is living outside the constitution, outside the law. | |
| We need as the people need to be taking steps to rein it back in, not just you know, going with it like post constitutional in the same way we say postmodern, you know, that's that's just the way it is. | |
| Okay, you're you're you're right uh with that. | |
| I'm not entirely persuaded that your average low information voter would know what extra constitutional would he'd think that's what he gets an extra constitution. | |
| He thinks, oh, we've got the US constitution, but uh they're throwing in Slovenias as part of a two for one back. | |
| Um but but yeah, outlaw I think I think is right. | |
| Um but but uh Sydney, you're you're right, and I agree I understand what you're you're you're saying there. | |
| I I use the term post constitutional order um because I mean it seriously, because I want people to understand that's what is at stake uh here. | |
| Uh that if the Republicans do not push back against this and and I love the I love the way, Cindy, that they always say, Oh, Democrats ought to uh worry about this because if Obama gets away with this, imagine what a uh Republican president might do by executive order. | |
| Um he he might tear up Obamacare or he might uh repeal gay marriage or whatever. | |
| But d but but Democrats understand that the Republicans don't pull this stuff. | |
| They don't pull it. | |
| Well I hope so, but honestly, I think part of the reason the Republicans aren't being more uh uh aggressive about trying to rule them back. | |
| I'm a little afraid that some of them are salivating. | |
| You know, waiting till waiting till there's a Republican back in the White House so they can take some of the same kinds of moves, you know, conveniently forgetting that the media for starters and a bunch of other things is not going to let them get away with the same things this administration has got away with. | |
| No, you're you're you're right on you're right on that. | |
| I mean, if you remember the fuss that was made, uh the idea that um with the Patriot Act that Bush was was checking up on every library book that everybody checked out. | |
| Remember that? | |
| They made such a fuss about the library books. | |
| If you go and if you go and take out a library book, Bush knows what library books you're reading. | |
| Now now Obama has the NSA modering uh monitoring every single telephone call, every email, uh every credit card transaction, and nobody minds. | |
| And so that's exactly I think Democrats have figured that they're the ones who push this stuff, push this stuff. | |
| And and that r and and and uh in other words that this will work for them and it won't work for Republicans. | |
| But I use I use that term, Cindy, because I want people to take this seriously and to push back against it. | |
| And I don't get enough sense that the Republic the re already you hear talk of the Republicans, oh, you know, maybe we should just let it go on this uh immigration uh immigration thing. | |
| I don't want to live and I mean this seriously. | |
| Uh and it's nothing really to do with left or right, uh because I accept that the um you know, the Swedes come by their uh socialist big government honestly. | |
| It's what they want and uh and they vote for it and they get it uh uh imposed on them in a lawful manner. | |
| Uh what what is happening here is i is that uh essentially a guy is uh deciding for himself that the law is whatever he can get away with. | |
| And I don't I I feel very uneasy living about in a place like that. | |
| It's slightly unnerving to me. | |
| I agree with you. | |
| Left or right, it doesn't matter who does it. | |
| It's we the s our structure will crumble and it will it will be. | |
| The whole thing will be outlaw. | |
| You're right. | |
| People must take it more seriously. | |
| Well, I I'll I'll I'll try and float your th I like the outlaw thing better than extra constitutional. | |
| Because as I said, we're dealing with low the the Democrats like low information voters, and they're very happy with it. | |
| And I'm not persuaded that they'd know uh uh to they'd be on reliable ground when it comes to what extra constitutional means. | |
| But I I take your point and the post constitutional order, when I use that phrase, it's not a feta compli. | |
| But it means being serious about pushing back against this. | |
| This fella has usurped this president has usurped the powers of the legislative branch. | |
| What's the legislative branch? | |
| Going to just shrug and move on uh to the to the next debt ceiling increase, or are they gonna do something about it? | |
| Mark Stein for Rush, lots more to come. | |
| Hey, great to be with you on Black Friday. | |
| Rush uh returns live on Monday. | |
| Uh uh if you go to RusLimbaugh.com and you become a Rush twenty-four seven subscriber, uh you can get Rush in audio, you can get Rush on the Ditto Cam, you can get Rush transcripts in text, you can get him in any format yet devised or known to man simply by becoming a rush twenty-four seven subscriber when you go to uh Rushlimbaugh.com. | |
| Uh talking about this uh guy in uh Grand Junction, Colorado facing a felony charge for menacing police with a banana. | |
| And by the way, I don't want people to think that I'm making light of this because it is very dangerous. | |
| He could just uh eat the banana, hurl it at them, and then the police officers could slip on the peel and uh and bruise their bottoms. | |
| It is a it is a serious business, and I I want you to understand I am taking it seriously. | |
| Um but there has been a lot of reaction uh to it. | |
| Uh thankful hat tweets back when I was a kid you could put a banana in an unmarked police cruiser's tailpipe without getting arrested. | |
| I don't know whether that's I don't know whether that's really that seems a bit provocative. | |
| That seems a bit provocative to me. | |
| But anyway, there's a lot of this uh peep people are taking seriously this because if you let this go, if you don't if you don't charge this guy uh waving a banana at police officers, you know, next thing you know, I could be uh I I could be uh shaking my seasonal berries at them. | |
| You know, it could there's no end there's no end to to what might happen. | |
| We've also been talking about uh the immigration, the immigration uh bill, this uh this amnesty for five million fine upstanding members of the undocumented American community that Obama announced. | |
| Um in Chicago he he came clean and he said uh and he said he had uh change the law. | |
| I just took action to change the law. | |
| Terence P. Jeffrey of CNS News uh points out that he used the first person singular ninety-one times in his speech on immigration. | |
| I mean my it's all about him. | |
| It's one man government, it's one man government. | |
| Um and I said he for him the law is what he can get away with at any one time. | |
| You know, in most places law is law. | |
| This is it. | |
| This is the law. | |
| Law law to Obama i is what'll fly on the day. | |
| Uh so for that's why he defers parts of Obamacare, because they're p they're politically complicated. | |
| They're politically complicated right now. | |
| But uh a year, if you kick him down the road a year after the midterms, it'll be safe to introduce it. | |
| You know, the like the employer mandate. | |
| Uh you will kick it down the road a year and then it'll be safe to introduce it. | |
| Uh gay marriage. | |
| He believed in gay marriage all along, but he waited until the precisely finely calibrated moment when it was to his advantage uh to come out in favor of it uh to to sign on to that. | |
| Uh and now suddenly it's unconstitutional to take the position Obama took uh for the first five years of his presidency. | |
| That is that that's unconstitutional. | |
| And you should be ashamed of yourself for holding the same views that Obama did for his first five years in office. | |
| Uh but uh now he's precisely calibrated the moment it's safe to s move from that and to be for gay marriage. | |
| It's utterly unconstitutional of you, even to raise an objection to it. | |
| Uh immigration. | |
| He could have done he could have done uh amnested uh bazillions of people in the first two years when he controlled everything, when he had Pelosi in the House and Harry Reed in the Senate, he could have he could have uh amnested everybody and everything. | |
| But he didn't because he knew the pushback would be too great. | |
| And so he uh he then could have done it if he'd wanted to do it this way uh before the twenty twelve uh election, but he knew it might just damage him enough to enable Mitt Romney to slip through. | |
| Uh he didn't want to do it before the twenty fourteen uh uh midterms, because he thought there'd be a cost to it. | |
| Uh and he doesn't want to wait to do it uh till twenty fifteen uh because then uh there'll be Republicans controlling everything in the Senate. | |
| So he did it in this tiny little window of opportunity. | |
| The law is whatever Obama can get away with on the day he can get thinks he can get away with it. | |
| And uh that's why the most interesting part of his words uh about the Ferguson verdict, grand jury verdict, grand jury decision the other night were that w were the visuals, the the split screen, the the the one the ones of him on the right, | |
| speaking at the White House in so peripher terms, the ones on the left, with people looting and rioting and lighting up the town, you couldn't get a better snapshot, per more perfect snapshot of the two wings of the Democratic Party, the gentry liberals in their gated communities uh on the right hand side of the screen where they never have to live with the consequences of what they talk up and the hard reality of the left hand side of the screen where | |
| everything is aflame. | |
| Uh that's the two halves of the demograph uh the demographic coalition uh that drives the Democrat Party to victory these days. | |
| On the right on the right hand side of the screen, uh the nice uh gentry liberals putting everything in in the eunuch language of social justice, where it all sounds nice, fluffy bunny words, marshmallow words, don't uh it doesn't sound as if anything could be mean spirited or bad about them, | |
| and then the left hand side of the screen, the harsh consequences of it, where if you've made the mistake uh of opening up a convenience store in Ferguson, Missouri, uh your business now lies in ruins and uh everything you have is burnt to the burnt to the ground. | |
| Uh and and that's what I meant when I said this president incentivizes the lawless and punishes the law abiding. | |
| In other words, if you if you're one of those people in Ferguson, Missouri who does everything right, you get up, you you do what this UC Davis economics professor who says there's no American dream is talking about. | |
| You get up in the morning and you uh put on a coat and hat and go to work and work at a convenient and if you know anything about convenience stores, that's that's hard work. | |
| That's that's not nine to five with an hour for lunch. | |
| That's hard work. | |
| Hard long days. | |
| And Obama doesn't care about that because if you've got a grievance against some cop, then uh burning down the convenience store uh well, you know, commu quote, communities of color, unquote, as he puts it, uh have got all these legitimate grievances. | |
| And so why not take it out on the Asian store owner? | |
| Pfft, boom, up in smoke. | |
| Uh penalizing uh penalizing the law abiding and incentivizing the lawless. | |
| That's what he was doing in that speech, where uh he basically made clear he disagreed with the grand jury verdict. | |
| I doubt he's even looked at any of the evidence. | |
| He disagreed with it uh not because he saw Michael Brown as an individual, uh but he saw Michael Brown the same way Al Sharpton does as a useful prop in the crowd scene narrative of generalized grievance. | |
| So he's not interested in the specifics of the case any more than Sharpton is. | |
| That's again, that's exactly what he did with immigration. | |
| Uh the US legal immigration system is a disgrace and uh and as I said in the last hour, uh if you enter this process, you are stuck in it for years. | |
| One of the most disturbing consequences of this thing that he's just announced is that um when you uh when if you've been in this country for five years, uh you can now stay here. | |
| You're not gonna be deported. | |
| That's what he said. | |
| And you'll get this little piece of paper, the uh whatever they call the form, uh, and you will then be able to upgrade that into a regular green card, which means you're here to stay. | |
| You're here forever, you're on the path to citizenship. | |
| Do you realize that if you're one of the people who made the mistake of entering the legal process and you got one of these visas, legal visas that's just short of a green card, the H1B one and all these kind of things, where it gives you limited uh uh limited employment rights in the United States, but they don't extend to your spouse or to your children, for example. | |
| Uh but you're here in the country legally and you've got a legal uh uh f uh uh form of work authorization, you can't upgrade that to a green card. | |
| It's almost impossible to do. | |
| You have to leave the country, go away, come back, apply from school. | |
| It's almost it's almost impossible. | |
| If you've been here working every day, contributing your taxes to the United States Treasury, it's all but impossible to upgrade uh that H1 RU 12 or whatever it's called. | |
| It's almost impossible to upgrade your R U12 to a full-scale green card uh within the system. | |
| But if you came here and you didn't pay any taxes, and you broke all the laws, and you send most of your money back to Mexico uh every uh month to the point where uh remittances from U.S. residents are the biggest source of income in Mexico. | |
| And by the way, it's we're not talking about immigrants here. | |
| US citizens can't do that. | |
| If you're a born and bred into the un in the United States and you're wiring all your money uh out of the uh just in very small amounts out of the country every month, Lois Lerner is gonna be performing forensic examinations up every part of your cavities for the rest of your life if you try to do that. | |
| This fat cat act makes it impossible. | |
| This fat cat act means no foreign bank wants to do business with Americans. | |
| You can't you might have a vacation home in the Bahamas, a Bahamian bank doesn't want a bank account from an American because of this new Fat Cat Act they've passed. | |
| So if you're an American, you can't you can't wire uh wire money for the electric bill at your Bahamas holiday home. | |
| But if you're a Mexican uh in this country illegally, you can send all your money out uh every month and the government does nothing about it, uh prioritizes you above legal immigrants, allows you to change your legal status, your status in this country to full-scale green card uh uh far uh quicker than it does to uh to to legal immigrants. | |
| Last time I was here I mentioned the case of Dina Gilby, whose husband died uh rescuing people in the World Trade Center. | |
| Her husband was a British subject, he had a work permit, he was working in the World Trade Center, and he died uh rescuing Americans uh on nine eleven. | |
| And the immigration service of the United States sent her a thing saying, okay, his card expired with him, you're out of here, uh we're gonna deport you. | |
| They were in the country legally, and they have fewer rights uh to a green card than Obama has just proclaimed from the balcony of Barackingham Palace that these uh five million illegal immigrants do. | |
| This is uh with respect to Cindy who didn't uh like the phrase post-constitutional order, this is now a land without law. | |
| Because when the law is what the sovereign on the balcony of Barackingham Palace says it is, according to how he feels in the morning, then it is not a land of law, it is a land without law. | |
| Mark Stein for Rush will take your call straight ahead. | |
| Hey, Mark Stein in for Rush. | |
| Love me some of that uh rush seasonal Christmas music. | |
| Let's go to John in uh Saddlebrook, New Jersey. | |
| John, you're live on Open Line Friday. | |
| How are you doing, Mark? | |
| A huge fan. | |
| Um Thanks Don. | |
| I do have to say when I grow up, I want to be just like you and be taken to uh Canadian court. | |
| Great. | |
| I can arrange that for you. | |
| I've got very good context there. | |
| I can get you up before the Canadian Human Rights Commission at Nothing Flatchot any time you want. | |
| That would get one thing off my bucket list. | |
| Well, Mark, uh You had mentioned in the beginning of the show that you uh you were over in Ramadi, where ISIS is now taken over. | |
| Right uh approximately ten years ago. | |
| I didn't see you there. | |
| I was over there. | |
| Where were you? | |
| I was in uh well, when I say ten years ago, strictly speaking it was eleven years ago. | |
| I think it was about six weeks after the fall of Saddam. | |
| And uh I took a uh I took a flight from uh London to Arman and I rented a beat-up datsen at uh the airport, and uh I didn't tell the guy I was going to be taking it to Iraq because uh I uh I didn't think I could get the car insurance on it for one thing. | |
| Um and uh and I drove uh through the uh eastern desert of Jordan to the Trebial Border Crossing, which you may know, John if you were in Ramadi in 2004, 2005. | |
| It's just uh west of um uh Ramadi and um uh uh what's that town called? | |
| Rootbar, Root Bar, uh, which is the town between the big town between Ramadi and um the uh and the Jordanian border. | |
| And uh one of your comrades, uh I take it, was uh was was manning that post and uh waved me through into Iraq and uh I drove on that uh uh that main western highway uh through the desert. | |
| Uh th that actually was a pretty good uh you know I uh I have my differences with Saddam Hussein, but the Department of Transportation uh or the of highway construction or whatever actually did a pretty good job, I thought in Western. | |
| How about that border crossing? | |
| Was it tougher to get over that than it is to get into America right now? | |
| No, I love that. | |
| And and actually, since you since you mentioned it, uh I I the guy there uh who, as I said, he was an American soldier, John. | |
| Uh I uh showed him my Canadian passport, and he sort of giggled at the idea of a Canadian tourist in a Datson uh coming and tootling around uh Iraq. | |
| Uh but he uh he looked at it and he said uh welcome to uh free Iraq, sir. | |
| And uh I tell you, that's an easier entry that I've had ever had at uh Derby Line, Vermont or Pittsburgh, New Hampshire, or at Logan Airport or JFK or anywhere else. | |
| So if that guy is is listening today, that guy who waved me through and he wants to make a uh uh a career in uh uh the United States Department of Customs and Border Protection, I'd love to be greeted by him the next time I cross the border. | |
| We you were you were there in what uh ten years ago, 2004, is that right, John? | |
| Sir, we came over in 2004, left in 2005. | |
| We actually are on uh National Geographics channel. | |
| Uh we we were the first to establish, like he said, the free Iraq by uh starting the first ever elections over there. | |
| We uh we I specifically was part of training the uh National Guard and uh the police force over there in Ramadi and uh uh and was a part of the first ever elections. | |
| We had go around and do uh a lot of safety checks and make sure and guarantee their their safety. | |
| That way they felt comfortable doing it from then on after we were to pull out. | |
| Uh first ones most important. | |
| Uh had had a phenomenal leadership over there. | |
| If I may, I'd like to give a shout out to some of them. | |
| May I? | |
| Yeah, certainly. | |
| Go ahead. | |
| Uh at the time it was Lieutenant Chappell, and uh we had he he was a phenomenal platoon leader. | |
| Uh he he just he he learned the Arabic language before we ever went over there. | |
| And uh he was definitely the backbone of all leadership that we had there uh administered over us, uh whether it was higher or lower. | |
| He was a very significant part of our our uh safety, and he he kept every one of us safe. | |
| Um every one of us under his command came back. | |
| Well that's that's uh that's uh that's very good to hear, John. | |
| You must feel devastated though at seeing at the idea of the black flag of ISIS flying over that town. | |
| Uh yes, uh I do feel as if it was all for naught, but at the same time, uh it's it's even more disappointing that they didn't learn uh to stand up for themselves from the training that they received from us. | |
| No, that's that's that's true, John, and you you make the the critical point there, uh, you know, whether people are just going along what uh with whatever whatever's big at the time. | |
| So it's uh one day it's Saddam, next minute it's the United States, next minute it's ISIS. | |
| And there's y it takes a long time to plant the real seeds of liberty with people. | |
| I gotta run, John. | |
| I'm coming up on a hard break, but thanks. | |
| Uh thanks for your call, and lots more straight ahead. | |
| Uh the LGBT uh equality caucus in Congress is complaining that Obama's executive order does not do enough for undocumented LGBT immigrants. |
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