Rush Limbaugh (NOT) Live Thread Nov 24, 2006

Thank you all very much. Can everybody hear me all right? Good. Before we get started, ladies and gentlemen, to show everybody that I, and all of us, can turn over a new leaf (sigh). By the way, I'm staying at the Four Seasons, and I saw Nancy Pelosi in there this afternoon. (laughter) She looked surprised to see me, but she always looks surprised. (laughter and applause) I was very busy today. I didn't have a chance to turn on the television 'til about four o'clock, and that's the first time I saw pictures of the door opening to the Democrat caucus room and Pelosi and Murtha and these guys walking out, and I thought I was watching Mars Attacks.

It was scary. But this is going to be a fun two years. But to show you that we have turned over a new leaf and that especially I have and that I, ladies and gentlemen, have received the message of the American people. There was somebody who was -- I think it was an oversight left out of the introductions tonight: the pet liberal at WMAL, Jerry Klein. Jerry? (applause) I hate being nice to these people. You know, I just... (laughter) No, I met Jerry backstage. He's just a fabulous, fabulous guy, and I thought, "All these conservatives on this radio station, he's the token, and his side won." So you deserve to at least see him, because in two years he'll be forgotten. (laughter and applause.)

You won't believe this. I haven't told this story much. Some time ago, I found myself in an elevator. It was in New York, and it was at a wedding. It was in Brooklyn, and I'm getting in the elevator to leave. It's been a long night, and just as the door is about to close, somebody puts their hand in the elevator doors that close, and it's Hillary Clinton. (laughter) She's senator at this time. She is a senator. and she gets in the elevator. She sees me, and she hits the stop button on the elevator. (laughter) She said, "I don't believe this. Do you know how long it's been since I have felt like a real woman?" (laughter)

I said, "Certainly." So I took off all my clothes and I put them on the floor of the elevator, and I said, "Now fold them." (laughter)

I bet I gotta check my start time. They gave me 25 minutes tonight. (groans) Backstage there were some people who have been to my television show, and when I hosted the TV show, I had a story, it's a true story, that I always told during the audience warm-up, and they asked me if I would tell the story again. I said, "Ah, it's an old story. I bet everybody in there has heard it."

So here goes. Just a request. Did anybody get question cards? Did you guys fill out any questions? Because I haven't gotten them, but that's okay, because I know what you're going to ask anyway, and I'll just incorporate what I know you're going to ask into my remarks. Actually, there's somebody back there going through them right now, somebody I don't know knows how to do it, but if there's anything interesting they'll just bring 'em on out. Anyway, here's the story. This goes back, has to be in the mid-eighties, late eighties, and I actually told this joke -- it's not a joke; it's a story. I told this story at a meeting of the Council on National Policy early on in my radio program's life.

I'd been maybe up two or three years; it had to have been 1990. It was here in Washington. It was over at the Ritz-Carlton at the Pentagon, and the Council on National Policy is to the Republican conservatives what the Council on Foreign Relations is to the libs. So this is an esteemed honor. So I thought, "Well, these are all conservatives. They'll love this story." So here's the story. Late eighties, mid-eighties, Ted Kennedy is over vacationing off the South of France, and he's got some nubile young woman with him, and they've got paparazzi following around, and the story was illustrated in three pictures published in the New York Daily News.

The first picture is of Senator Kennedy and the young woman speeding offshore, heading out to sea. The next picture is this scantily clad woman jumping off the side of the boat -- and, in a first, Senator Kennedy jumping in after her. (laughter) The third picture, they're back in the boat, and it's... Well, you could play it on MTV today. Back then you couldn't. But they were engaged in public affection -- private, but there were pictures. So these pictures circulated around. They got up to Capitol Hill, and Howell Heflin is shown the pictures, the late big bear of a senator from Alabama, and he looks at the pictures. (Remember, this audience, the Council on National Policy is listening to this.)

He looks at the pictures and says, "Well, I do declare. Why, it look to me like the senator had done changed his position on offshore drilling." (laughter)

Well, that's a greatest hit, but when I got to that line at the Council for National Policy, you coulda heard this. (tapping) Not one laugh. I thought, "Oh, no, what happened?" So I went back to my table and Paul Weyrich was there, who had invited me.

I said, "My God, it's got everything; it's got Ted Kennedy! It's got jumping in the water after a girl diving off the boat! What did it miss?"

I actually had to go apologize. That was the signal to go to dinner. That was the line that sent everybody to dinner. So during dinner I'm being advised, "You know, you'd better apologize," because I'm emceeing this thing. So I apologized. The apology got a standing O. I was pure again. But when the thing was over, and I'm walking through the ballroom on the way out, I look over, and I could swear -- and remember, I've just heard that a Ted Kennedy joke doesn't work in this group. I look out, and there's Donna Rice of Gary Hart fame.

I'm saying, "Something's not clicking here." So I ran into Dr. Dobson, James Dobson. I said, "Dr. Dobson, that looks like Donna Rice."

You know, it's been an interesting 18 years, and we're into our 19th year now, and none of it would be possible without a whole lot of people: first of all, you. I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for being here and for being loyal to me in the admission that you listen to this program for all these years (laughing). Well, it's a lot of people that do that won't admit it. (applause) But you do, and it has enabled me to succeed. I mean, I always knew I was going to be big. See, you just can't be honest with that one. I always knew. My mother told me I was special. My mother, when she heard me first on the radio, said, "You've got a special talent."

I'm not kidding about this. I always thought that I would succeed prominently in this business. I didn't know how; I didn't know how it would manifest itself; I didn't know what that would mean; I didn't know where it would be; but as an attitude. That's what got me through being fired seven times. (laughing) It wasn't funny when it happened, but it would not be possible, none of it would be possible without all of you in ways that you can't possibly imagine -- and I have no way to thank you as much as you deserve to be. I didn't bring enough money to pass out hundred-dollar bills. But it means more than you'll ever be able to know -- and then radio stations, like WMAL.

I remember the first time when we were starting out, we started with 56 small radio stations, and I was just starting out, and we were trying to get top-ten market radio stations, and WMAL is the station in this market that you want to be on if you do what I do. Of course they were dubious and skeptical; I mean this was all said not to work -- syndicated in the daytime had no prayer, and they were a little dubious, so we arranged a meeting, going to fly down here on the shuttle -- I think at the time a Delta Shuttle -- to meet with them, and we got stuck for four hours on the airplane, the end of the runway, because of a thunderstorm system between New York and Washington that didn't move, and there was a near riot on board the airplane.

So finally they canceled the flight. We had to reschedule it. I met with them, and it was a huge day for me personally, professionally when they decided to take the radio program. I'll- talk about this a little later, but I have put you and these radio stations through quite a bit, particularly the last five years, and particularly the last three weeks. (laughter) Actually, I didn't do anything wrong, but the way it was reported was such that people who don't listen or don't pay attention got the entirely wrong idea, and they made a lot of noise. Through all of these things, these radio stations have stuck with me, as has WMAL, so I wanted to thank you and I wanted to thank WMAL for making it all happen and making it all possible. (applause)

As you know, this event is cosponsored by the Heritage Foundation, and the beneficiary tonight is the Fisher House. (applause) To show you how slow the mind can be sometimes, when I was told that the beneficiary for the proceeds tonight would be the Fisher House and was told what the Fisher House does, it should have clicked immediately who it was, that it was Zack Fisher. I do a lot of work with the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation in fund-raising, attending their annual ball every April in New York, and Zack Fisher and his brother had made that organization, and they practically gave every charitable dollar they gave, to the military in one form or another. For some reason it didn't click 'til I got out there today. I went out there today to the Fisher House at Walter Reed, and when I walked in and I said, "Wait, wait, wait," because I knew Zack.

I'd had dinner with him a couple or three times, and I can't say we were friends, but I was acquainted with him, and it all started to make sense. I got a tour of the place. It was just astounding. There were two guys, one missing his right arm, flicking around watching television, and here we come trooping in. I think the only thing that was on was The View, so he wasn't missing anything. (laughter) Another guy in a wheelchair, and their families were there. So the whole purpose of the Fisher House was on display. I got to see it. I talked to those guys, and then they took us up to the actual hospital, the Army hospital for the rehabilitation ward for amputees. We got up there, and we had an entourage of about five or six people. We got up there, and right as we got to the corner, we're going to have to turn to go in the room, there was a stop put on future forward motion.

We sat there and we waited for five minutes, and I figured they were just checking to make sure that nobody would jump out the windows when I walked in. So I was given the all-clear, we walked in -- and, folks, I have to tell you. I did a troop visit to Afghanistan, it will be two years ago in February. The members of this Armed Services -- all of them; I shouldn't single these people out -- they're a different breed of people. They're a different breed of cat. They volunteer to protect and defend the country. Ninety-nine percent of us wouldn't do it. Ninety-nine percent of us don't think about it. They do. Thank God for them, and God bless them -- and look what happens to them when they do. (applause)

There were many things about the past campaign that really rubbed me wrong; but the way they were impugned and disrespected and laughed at -- I don't know how people who do that can win elections, but they did. Look it, I saw guys today missing both legs and an arm, with the biggest smiles on their face in the rehab unit. They're generally happy, not because somebody had come in. I saw people with all degrees of injury, and I didn't see one bitter face. I didn't see anybody just looking unhappy. I talked to ten or 12 of them, found out where they were from. They were all smiling; they were all ecstatic to be there.

Most of them were trying to find a way to reenlist in communications or something. They're certainly not combat ready, but these people are athletes -- and the Army told me today they refer to them as "combat athletes." They're not athletic athletes; they're sports athletes, but they are; and they have that same kind of competitive get-up about them, and I was just... (sigh) It happened to me in Afghanistan. Every time I find myself sinking down into the blues or into a funk. (smacks his face) I do that. There's absolutely no excuse for it. Now, I know everything is relative and everything that an individual experiences is exclusive to that person, but it's hard to allow yourself to get down in the dumps over normal, everyday things when you see these people.

They're young. They are enthusiastic, smiling. I asked all of them, "Do you have what you need?"

"I may be able to go home in six months," or, "I may be able to go home in three months."

I heard all kinds of different answers. When I went to Afghanistan, I had the same reaction. It's almost like I'm in awe of these people. Folks, the older I get -- and I'm 55 now. The older I get, the more respect and awe I have for these people. I think maturation does that to you. The older you get, the more wisdom you acquire, the more knowledge that you absorb, and it's more profound what these people are volunteering and willing to do. One of my messages -- and I wanted to go to Afghanistan specifically to tell these guys, because I'm tired of watching the news and watching them get impugned and made fun of and said about them that their mission's not worth it or that their commander-in-chief is lying. I'm sick and tired of the attempts that were made to demoralize them, to misportray their progress as failure. It burned me up. I know they watch the news, and during this campaign (applause).

During this campaign, I can remember newspapers, television doing stories on enlisted people: "Why are they in the military?" And various Democrats would echo the same sentiments. "Well, you know, the US economy is so bad that they have no future. They have no future. They can't get a job. They can't get an education. They don't have enough money; they don't have a future. They've gotta join the military. That's their only way out. They're not really doing this to defend the country."

That's what infuriated me, and I would say to everybody who ever said that to me, I would say, "Well, wait just a second. Let's just say hypothetically you're right. Let's say they are destitute, and let's say that they may not be as smart as you are. Yet they're doing something you don't have the guts to do. Why the hell impugn it? If that's what they're willing to do to get an education -- risk their life -- let's applaud it! What the hell! Why make fun of it?" (applause)

I told these guys in Afghanistan, "When I was 18 or 19, the draft had this lottery, and you sweated bullets every time they drew the numbers in the lottery." You always had college deferments back then, as Senator Kerry knows, and I had a high lottery number, and so I didn't get drafted. I told these guys in Afghanistan. I had five different troop visits at four different bases, and I told them that one of the reasons I wanted to come talk to you and to tell you how much I appreciate it is because I had the chance to do what you did and what you've done, and I didn't do it -- and it has increased my respect profoundly for what you have done, and I just want you guys to know that no matter what you see on the news -- and they're getting CNN and occasionally Fox there on the big screen -- I said no matter what you see when you get back home and you get off the airplane and get to the airport, you're going to be applauded, people are going to give you standing O's. What you're doing is appreciated, and you are loved, and I wanted to tell them this.

I told these guys the same thing, too, and one of the guys as we were getting around to leave said, "Gosh, I wish you would have been here five minutes sooner."

"Senator Kerry was here." (laughter) This is a guy who just lost two legs, and he's laughing to me about Senator Kerry.

"No, he didn't say much of anything to anybody, but I wish he would have said something to me."

He said, "So I could tell him: 'Senator, I'm too stupid to understand what you just said.'"

That is a true story. I kid you not -- and so is the Ted Kennedy story. I know these things sound like jokes, but (laughter) they're not. So it was a meaningful, touching day. I've not been to a hospital where wounded military personnel are. This was my first time, and it's so touching to me to find that there are people who are willing to invest charitably or other ways to enable these people to reenter society and to have a chance once wounded in these dramatic ways and terrible ways to put their lives back together, and you can see that they have a deep appreciation for it just with their attitude. They were, by the way, working hard at rehab. The rehab is not easy.

These people are put through a bunch of physical paces. It's not a country club. So, all of you, again, thanks for showing up tonight and, for nothing else, all of the revenue that you've generated for the Fisher House, because that is the Lord's work that you are doing. Go ahead and give yourselves a hand, too. (applause) Last night when I arrived, I was fortunate enough to have dinner at the vice president's home with Vice President and Mrs. Cheney. There were 50 people there last night. I expected to walk in there (I'm going to be honest with you) and find a wake. (laughter) But it turned out to be a nonpolitical evening. Some supreme -- I don't think I should name some names, but let me just tell you they're prominent, a couple Supreme Court justices, Mary Matalin was there, some friends of mine that I didn't know were going to be invited from where I live down in Florida were there as well. There was discussion about the election, but it was surprisingly upbeat. I, frankly, expected, as I say, to walk in to sort of a moribund attitude, but it wasn't that way, and it wasn't a whole lot of political discussion during the cocktail hour. At our table, I was with Mrs. Cheney, and Mary was on my right, and Karl Rove was there.

There was some discussion of individual campaigns and what went wrong, and there was discussion of the future and so forth. Everybody there was surprisingly optimistic. It was an interesting thing for me to watch and to study. Then I went over to the White House this morning for breakfast with Karl Rove and one of his guys that I used to know who worked at a think tank before the current Bush administration was elected, and it was a fascinating discussion about just electoral politics and the future, about individual races and so forth. One of the things that -- and I'm not going to tell you what Karl said or anybody at these tables at dinner last night because all that stuff is off the record. I'll tell you what I said, which is why you're here anyway. (laughter).

This is something, by the way, that I learned this a couple of days ago, and it reminded me that it's not the first time this has happened. I think nobody's talked about this in the scope of the reelection for Republicans. Everybody's trying to find the answer. What is the answer? And a whole bunch of things going around. You've heard people say, "Conservatism didn't lose, RINO Republicanism did, or country club blue-blood Republicanism did, liberalism didn't win," and it actually didn't. With the way the Democrats came out of that room today as in Mars Attacks, and the things that they put on their agenda, folks, the thing to do here is stand out of the way and just enjoy it. They are not going to be able to help themselves.

They're not going to be able to help their arrogance. (applause) They're not going to be able to help their liberalism. I hope Conyers goes nuts with subpoenas, investigations and impeachment, and I hope Henry Waxman can't figure out which to choose from so he does them all. You know, he said the other day, "My gosh, this is like Christmas morning for me. I don't know where to go first." Kucinich got it all started, "Let's cut the funding for the troops today." He's all over television. Keep talking, Dennis! Stand on a soapbox so you're taller and people can hear you. (laughter) Keep it up! (applause)

I know we're not supposed to make fun of the way people look. (laughter) Sometimes I mean, face it, if it's in your mind and you don't have the guts to say it, I'll say it for you. (laughter) So it's going to be fun to watch these people. But liberalism didn't win. I mean, look at the Blue Dog caucus. Nine freshman Democrats in the House. Heath Shuler is one. These are conservative Democrats. They're not called "conservative Democrats," by the way, moderate Democrats, and they ran as "I love God, too -- and I'm pro-life." They sound exactly like we do. They won, and they will be running against acknowledged conservatives, and they won, and so you can't say that liberalism won.

For the Democrats to win and to get their liberal leaders into leadership positions, they had to veritably conduct voter fraud by putting a bunch of Democrats on the ballot who are like us, not like them. But that got them the leadership. So these guys are calling themselves the Blue Dog Caucus. There are nine of them, and they think they're going to make a difference, and you know what's going to happen. The Baltimore Sun two days ago, some freshman from New York state was brought into Pelosi's office. Pelosi heard that this freshman was going to vote for Murtha.

By the way, I'm not on a roll. I endorsed Murtha two days ago, and he lost. (applause) Can you believe, ladies and gentlemen, all of the corruption that the Washington Post -- the only thing he hasn't done is say Macaca! (applause) All of the articles in the Washington Post about his corruption and how he's unfit to lead and all? I guess none of that matters during the campaign. He's certainly fit to be elected as a Democrat, but just not in the leadership caucus; is that right? I mean, what a bunch of phony -- and then I read the New York Times yesterday morning. Guess what, folks?

We can't get out of Iraq! No, no, no. They went and got Admiral Zinni, who has been one of the biggest Bush critics and one of the biggest anti-Iraq as a policy critics, John Batiste, a former general, who has problems with Rumsfeld, and somebody else, "Pull out now?" Folks, this is eight days after the election. "Pull out now? Why, that would leave to civil war." I thought we were in a civil war over there. The media has been telling us this for six months, and these military brains are saying, "No, no, no, you can't pull out now." Where was this prior to the election?

Now, what's going on? You've got Carl Levin yesterday also saying, "President Bush ought to tell the Iraqi people we're leaving in four to six months," the same day the New York Times comes out with a story with all these military guys, "What do you mean leave? We can't leave. It's an irresponsible policy."

I think I'm in the Twilight Zone, because the last six months has been, "We've gotta get out of Iraq," and a lot of people think the Democrats won. I happen not to believe this. But there are a lot of people who think that the primary reason that the Republicans lost is the war. Whether it's the real reason or not, we can debate it, but we can't deny that for six months the whole message of the Democrat Party is cut-and-run, and the New York Times was leading the charge, editorial page, front page. Washington Post was right in there. They all were, whatever Drive-By Media network you want to look at. They're all on the same page.

CNN? I mean, they're running propaganda film from snipers killing American troops, calling it news. (Crowd boos.) We can't even -- the US Army can't -- get its own film on the media, because they say, "It's propaganda! Can't trust it," but something comes in over the transom from Mahmoud Ali Akbar, whatever, "Ooh, look what we got! We got news!"

Then all of the yesterday, New York Times, said, "We can't get out. Why, that would lead to disaster."

Why, this sounds like the Bush plan. Sounds like stay the course. Then they go to Batiste. "So if we pull out now, why, before the Iraqis are ready to defend themselves, why, that's just going to cause the civil war." Well, that sounds like Rumsfeld. Sounds like "stay the course." There are a number of things here to try to explain what happened with the election and what went wrong, but these Democrats, for all their talk about talking and cutting-and-running, the media bought it. The media thinks it's going to happen, and when it doesn't happen, it's going to be interesting to watch the friction -- and let's not forget the kooks that make up the Democrat base on the Internet.

You know, folks, there are some elevators there that don't even go to the fourth floor, much the top. (laughter and applause.) These people are... You know, their candidate was Ned Lament, and of course we know what happened to him. But it's just going to be, I think, a fascinating thing to watch the Democrats unfurl and try to be who they are at the same time. Now, as for whether or not the e Iraq war was the reason that we lost, it's clear that it motivated some people, but I don't think you can say it was a national instance. For example, I went back when I was told this. In fact, this is Thursday. This would have been Tuesday. Went back, and I looked at David Stockman's book that he wrote. David Stockman was the OMB, the budget director for the Reagan director the first term, and Stockman was not a doctrinaire conservative.

He was not a movement conservative, but he clearly was a free market guy. He didn't believe the supply-side stuff, but he was basically a free-market economist, and he wrote a book trashing the whole thing. Reagan had to take him out to the woodshed. But what was interesting about Stockman's book was that he said, "This is impossible. I can't get this budget in line. I got every Republican -- forget the Democrats, we know what they do. I've got every Republican congressman calling me up saying, 'I need 150 million for this project in this district, and if you don't give it to me I don't think I can win reelection.'" It was just happening all over the place, and Stockman said, "My job is to take financial requests from members of Congress, not balance the budget."

Well, somebody said that the same thing was going on in this race for the last six months with some Senate races, with some House races, mostly in the House. When I heard this, I said, "Wait a minute. Something doesn't jibe here. These guys campaigned to get elected as conservatives. We're talking about the Republicans here." We know that there's some moderate Republicans and RINOs in certain parts of the country, but we're talking about the conservatives, the people we expect to govern the way they promised to when they campaign. So I'm hearing that as they are getting in the closing days and the last month or so, and they're having some trouble, they're calling Washington, calling the White House, and they're begging for the president to sign some legislation that's got this bill in it or this -- this amount of money or whatever.

The point being that they weren't out campaigning, running good and smart campaigns. By the way, he's here tonight. I don't know if he hung around, but I met him before the show tonight. Michael Steele is here tonight. (Cheers and applause.) Where is he? (Cheers and applause.) Now, that was a campaign. (cheers and applause) He ran an excellent campaign. My point is that there -- there were people calling and asking for money in an attempt to buy their way back in, Republican conservatives. Now, I know that the primary job of members of Congress in the House is to spend money. We all should learn that.

I mean, the idea! I've been around I don't know how many years, 55, paying attention as an adult for maybe 35 or 40. I've never seen the budget go down. The total expenditure always rises. In the midst of every budget that goes way up, we still hear about these "Draconian cuts," and we hear about these "unkind cuts" and we hear about senior citizens having to choose between Alpo and medicine. So it kind of disappointed me when I heard this, because sometimes I got caught up in the whole idealism of this. I believe a conservative is a conservative is a conservative -- and I think that wins. It certainly has in recently years, when it's tried, when it's articulated properly.

The American people respond to leadership, and I think they're hungry for it, and if a candidate is going to forget that because he's afraid to say it, because he's afraid of the media, or afraid of what will be said about him by somebody -- and fear governs a lot of people's behavior -- if he's afraid to say it and goes the easy way of trying to get some sort of spend-back or pork project or earmark to his budget, then what's the point? Maybe people like that -- and this was a point that was made last night. I can't tell you by who; it was not an administration official. Maybe this kind of needed to happen. Maybe we needed to flush the toilet a bit and get rid of some people who really were not serving as everybody who elected them thought they were. The point is, there's good that happens in everything. Not every disaster is total. There's opportunity for good in everything. I look at some of the other reasons that people say we lost.

Let's take a look at that one. The analysis of this is coming from some people who have looked at exit polls. The analysis of this is, I think, a bit too easy. Let's say there were people that did vote this way because of the war, and here's why -- and this is not an excuse, but I'm going to be honest. It was somewhat disappointing to me. I've been doing what I've been doing for 18 years. When I started 18 years ago, what I call the Drive-By Media had a monopoly. There literally were three networks, two newspapers that counted, a couple of news magazines, and CNN -- and there was no difference.

They had, because of this monopoly, the chance to choose what news we saw every day and what news wasn't reported which was just as important. They got to frame it the way they wanted us to see it, and they got to comment on it the way they wanted us to see it. The only alternatives were National Review magazine, very, very small. On comes my program in 1988 -- not with the purpose of destroying anything; I'm just wanting to succeed on the radio. The thing that happened to me was, I had a chance to be honest. I didn't have program directors who had never done what I was doing telling me I didn't know how to do it.

I never had people -- in this show, I've never had people -- say, "No, you can't say that. You must say this," and so I just happened to be honest. I started during the '88 presidential campaign and I had a lot of fun with it, and it just evolved. Pretty soon lots of alternative media springs up, lots more talk shows, the Internet came along, and the Drive-By Media's monopoly is certainly dead. (applause) They don't know it yet. (laughter) Now, there a bunch of things at work in this last campaign, and in the last -- well, you could say six years of the Bush presidency, but especially the last three years since the Iraq war started, the media, daily, has had as its mission a multifaceted objective.

One: destroy the Bush presidency. Two: destroy the Bush presidency by destroying the Iraq war in the minds of the American people. What do you think the daily body count, "A thousand troops dead today. Yaaay!" was all about? What do you think the... I'll never forget this. Reuters came out with a story that said battlefield fatalities are lower than they have ever been in combat, and there was some special interest group that was mad about that. I'm looking at this (this during the Iraq war) and said, "How in the world...? What in the world is...?" We racked our brains at the EIB Network. We know much of everything, but this one eluded us. "How in the world is anybody upset when battlefield fatalities are down?" and we figured it out -- and, by the way, they said this is not good.

The battlefield fatalities are down because there are too many doctors at the front saving lives that really don't deserve to be saved. They're losing legs and arms. This was in the story, and I'm just beside myself. We figured it out. The body count wouldn't go up, the more lives are saved, and if the body count doesn't go up, you can't bend and shape the collective mind of the American people to be against the war. It was hideous. There were daily examples of this. They also wanted to prove that they still had the power, because they're aware of this attack on their monopoly. They wanted to prove that they had the ability to move public opinion like Vietnam, and that's why the comparison between Iraq and Vietnam was made and why it never stopped being made.

Folks like us, we pay steady attention to this. This stuff matters. Politics is how our nation manages its affairs. You and I have almost an idyllic belief that an informed public -- and this, by the way, is my objective when it comes to politics and my program. I believe in the people, not think tanks and policy makers and the elites. There's some think tanks are better than others, like Heritage (applause) because Heritage reaches people. There are a lot of think tanks, they're too good for the people. They're arrogant and condescending, and they don't think the people have the necessities to make the right judgments, either in elections or in driving a car or whatever.

Liberalism and elitism require an arrogant condescension of the body politic in order to exist. You have to tell yourself you're smarter than everybody else, and therefore everybody else needs to depend on you. So they live this stuff, and when liberals lose elections, they never blame themselves. It's either the voters were stupid, as in Florida when they couldn't figure out a butterfly ballot and voted for Pat Buchanan instead of Gore, or -- I lived there in that election. I used that ballot. That ballot was, folks, I have to tell you, one of the simplest things. You took the stylus, found the name you want, and went phewwww. That was it. You know, sort of like paint-by-numbers. They blame voting machines or whatever. It's always somebody besides their fault. So they had to prove with this election that they had the ability to mobilize people, they had the ability to move public opinion.

Now, they succeeded to the extent that the people who voted against Republicans voted against Iraq. They succeeded, but look what it took. Now, this is not consolation. In the old days, once Cronkite decided he'd had it with the Vietnam War, it took one broadcast, and that was it. That turned the public -- and that broadcast, by the way, LBJ said, "Well, I've lost Cronkite; I've lost the country. I'm going back to Texas." They don't have that kind of power anymore. It took them three years of the most offensive, dreadful stories every night on the news -- and it didn't take much. A 20-second sound bite here followed by a stand-up report there; 30 seconds over here of an IED going off or a burning car. Occasionally you pepper it with a story of an American soldier raping innocent Iraqis. People, believe it or not -- and you can tell who watches the nightly news, ABC, CBS, and NBC -- and I call them now ABS, NBS, and CBS, and MSDNC, but if you want to know who's watching...

I don't want to offend anybody here; this is business -- if you want to know who's watching, watch the ads. Prep H. (laughing) "Take this pill to live another two years. Take this pill so you don't have to tow a Port-A-Potty behind your car on the highway." I mean, let's face it, it's an aging audience. But they vote. No, no, no. They vote -- and look at what they're watching. And they're seeing Iraq go to hell in a handbasket. Look it, when this war started, the president's approval numbers were sky high and the public's approval for the war and for the attack was also sky high. It was so sky high, the Democrats demanded in October of 2002, another debate so they could get their names put on the resolution to authorize force.

That's when Kerry voted before it before he voted against it or whatever he did. But there was massive public support for this. The media is what destroyed it. Now, you can say, "Well, the Bush administration didn't do a good enough job selling it. The Bush administration didn't talk about the successes and so forth." You know, they didn't whatever. What happened, happened. We gotta learn to deal with what is and is, ad the media succeeded in this case. It kind of caught me. I told the vice president last night, I said, "I'm taking this a little personally, and I shouldn't. All year long. I've had people coming up to me and saying, 'Are Republicans going to hold the House?' 'Oh, yeah,' I said, without even hesitating, without one doubt," and I never had a doubt, until the Foley thing hit.

But I don't think that was it, either. But I never had a doubt, and the reason I didn't is because I thought that there had been enough education, that after 18 years of alternative media, that there had been enough quality, credible education and information to illustrate for enough Americans just who Democrats were and what they've become, particularly liberal Democrats, and then specifically -- and the media, specifically in the last, I don't know how you quantify it, year or two. It seems to me it's been going on ever since Bush was inaugurated, but the hatred and the rage and the utter madness of the Democrats. Dick Durbin accusing interrogators to the same as Pol Pot, all that, and Ted Kennedy saying, "Well, you know, Abu Ghraib, why, it's no different than when Saddam there was, just under new management."

The personal animus toward George Bush, who nobody hates. I mean, they might not find his policies popular from here to there, but nobody dislikes the man. But these people despise him, and I never believed, just in interpersonal relationships, politics, or whatever, that rage and hatred consistently are motivational, that they build and motivate and inspire movements. I know they may stoke the fires of people you already have -- and the libs knew they had to do this, the Democrats, with some of those kook fringe people on their Internet base. But to capture a majority of the popular vote? I never thought it would be possible. Not after these 18 years. Not after as much airtime of these outrageous statements Democrats were saying about people.

Yet it happened. There's more work that has to be done. I mentioned after the election -- and I'm sure this would be one of the questions I get, if I ever get them. (laughter) You got some? Excuse me just a moment. Let's see if the questions are here. Bear with me here. Now, what is this? "How many Senate seats could we lose in '08? Due to retirements." Oh. Well, depending on some of them, it may not be bad. Let's see. I'm wrong. I don't see it here. "Where can I get a question card? I'm from Rio Linda." (Laughing.)

I don't want to take a chance. Some of you may not know what Rio Linda is or where. When I moved to Sacramento in 1984, one of the things I did was drive around town to get to know the community. It was interesting, too, because in 1984, this is the Reagan second-term reelection. It's October 15th. That's my start date. The weekend before that I'm driving around, and I'm listening to the other talk station in town from the one I'm going to be working on, and they're doing sewage treatment problems for the next two years. They're doing holiday cake recipes for the upcoming Thanksgiving.

I'm saying, "We've got an election two or three weeks away, and we're listening to all this local garbage." So I made a note about that. Then they say, "You gotta drive around; you gotta go out and see the various suburbs of Sacramento." I'm doing that, and I run into this place. It's out by McClellan Air Force Base. It's called Rio Linda. It's the only place I have seen, the only city limit sign I've seen where there's no number to indicate the population beneath the name. You drive in there, and in the main drag, right in people's front yards, two cars each, at least, on concrete blocks with no tires.

Chickens running around. I mean, Borat has got nothing on this place, if you've seen it. So II decided, this place needs a facelift. So I went back on my, I forget, second or third week, I didn't start with this, but I offered to move there if they would name the town Limbaugh, California, to upgrade the property values -- and it just became a pet community to pick on. So this question, where can I get a question card, "I'm from Rio Linda," I had to explain to you why that is the case. Now, the question I thought I was going to get here was about this being liberated and not going to carry water anymore because, you know, it's amazing to me, just as a human being, I have 600 radio stations, give or take, during the rating period vagaries, give or take 22 to 20 million audience, nonduplicated people a week.

At any one time in a 15-minute sweep, there are five million people listening, and some estimates are that during the whole three hours, it totals between ten and 12 million. So I will say something on the radio, like, "Boy I feel liberated after the election. I feel liberated. I don't have to carry the water for anybody anymore." That night on cable news and in the newspapers -- God bless you. Was that a sneeze? You never know who could have gotten in here. I turn on, and I'm watching, and people who obviously didn't hear the program, what happens is that it gets started on whatever web blogs these -- these cable news people consult, and maybe AP runs a story, "Limbaugh admits lying for last 12 years." It's frustrating. Folks, it's frustrating.

You don't need a password to listen to my program. You know, you don't have to go out and get a super-secret radio that only you get. Every automobile has a radio. Every home has a radio, and every city in America has my show. Yet it is the most misquoted, taken out of context, misreported radio program because the people doing this obviously don't listen to it. It's just stunning to me. So what I mean by carrying water, and I mentioned this last night. To set this up, so you better understand it, let me go back to my first book and one of the earlty chapters: "My Success is Not Determined by Who Wins Elections." It meant a number of things. It meant, A: I'm not in politics, and, B: I can't tie myself to a bunch people's future who may not even know me, who may not care about me, and who may not appreciate that I might support them.

I mean nothing against them, but I'm on radio. My job is to attract an audience, the largest audience I can, hold it for as long as I can so that I can charge confiscatory advertising rates (laughter and applause) and put myself in the same tax bracket as Bill Clinton (laughter) By the way, you know, it is amazing; I have never met two people who want you to know how much money they earn in my life than the Clintons. Every time Clinton's raising money for a charity or out making a speech (impression), "Yeah, they gave us these tax cuts, but I tell you, I don't need it. I -- I -- I don't need this tax cut. I'm making -- I'm making more money -- Hillary doesn't need a tax cut, either. I think it's just -- it's a shame."

So give it back! But don't put your hand in our pockets, sir. If you think you have to pay more taxes, go ahead and pay 'em. (applause) I think that's what Whitewater was all about. I think these people looked at the eighties, and they saw all these people getting rich -- and liberals think that nobody really earns their money. You either inherit it (the Kennedys) or you cheat people out of it. But nobody, in their world, people that earn the kind of money they wanted to make, you know, there aren't jobs that pay that much. So here came Whitewater and so forth, and I think that's all it was. I think they've been obsessed with how little money. In fact, you know why Hillary is even the presumed Democrat presidential nominee? I mean really, folks, in all candor, can somebody name for me a political success that she can attach to her name that everybody knows about? Can you name a political failure, a disaster, profound disaster that might have contributed to her party losing the House?

That's right: health care -- and yet, smartest woman in the world, and the White House, why, we may as well not even have the election. In fact, get rid of Bush now and put her in there. We're going to do it anyway. Now, where does this come from? I happen to know. We have to go back to... Where did they meet, Harvard, Yale? One of those Ivy League places. Was it Yale? Okay, so here's Clinton. Now, Clinton's from where? Arkansas. When most people from the northeast hear Arkansas, what do they do? But there was something charismatic about Clinton. He certainly was not old-fashioned below the waist. There's something charismatic about this man, and we're to believe the legend even then, he had a cadre of people who just knew he was going to be president.

The legend grew when he went to Oxford, and he meets Hillary along the way. Hillary was, pretty smart. She made a decision early on, "Okay, I'm going to attach myself to this guy, because he looks like he is going someplace, and I'm going to take over when he gets there." (laughter) You know, I haven't been looking much at the audience during all this, but I just did, and there are some women not smiling. Come on, now. Lighten up. You don't know what I'm going to say. Everybody thinks they do. You know, I know where my syllables are going, and everybody already thinks they know, or some people do.

I can see it on their faces. Anyway, here's the thing. So Hillary and Bill get married, and where do they go? Arkansas. And what does Bill do? He's a governor. For how much? $26,000 a year. These are Yale graduates, Wellesley graduates. These are Oxford people: $26,000 a year, plus Gennifer Flowers on the side. (laughter) Hillary goes to work at the Rose Law Firm. She's the breadwinner. Clinton's out there establishing his political future, wants to go beyond the governorship, doing what he has to do to make this happen. Hillary's having to earn the money, and she puts up with it, and she stays loyal, and she does what she has to do to protect her husband and to advance his political career.

Finally it master -- It manifests itself. (laughter) That was a faux pas. What time is it? (Laughing.) So... (Laughing.) You know, when I tell jokes about these people, the sad thing is, they come true. (laughter) No, so it manifests itself in Bill getting elected president, and then health care, and then Monica, and then Paula Jones. Hillary stuck by him --- and I'm serious about this. I know this sounds funny, but Hillary stuck by him, and the reason she is the presumptive nominee is because, with the elitists in the media, she's owed it. She is entitled to it. Look what she did. She went to Yale, Wesley, whatever. She could have been anything on her own. She could have been a hot-tot lawyer, she could have run her own political year, she could have been anybody.

She subordinated herself to that guy from Arkansas who turned out to show total disrespect for her, humiliated her, embarrassed her, and she still hung on. Don't you think she deserves the White House on her own? And that's it, folks, because if you look at what she's done, there's nothing to argue. I saw a blog post from 2003 from some guy who worked -- a liberal Democrat, admitted liberal Democrat, worked -- in the Clinton White House on health care, he wrote this in 2003, said, "It was a disaster in every which way possible. She didn't have any of the political or managerial skills. Keep her as far away from the White House as possible." This is somebody that worked with her on the team. I don't know if he's still alive. (laughter and applause.) I don't mean to sound mean.

You know, don't misunderstand. I sound enthusiastic. I'm not trying to sound mean. But, really, do you realize how easy it is to get caught up in conventional wisdom? I mean, there are people running around scared to death on our side of Hillary Clinton, and she puts her pants on one leg at a time like every other guy does. (laughter) I just think looking at things from the standpoint of fear is paralysis. It's an unnecessary thing to do, and I know there are people who think that the media is enough to get her over the hump with this and camouflage and hide all of the incompetence. Who knows? But all I know is it's too soon to give up on all this. But, anyway, the point I wanted to make about this. Sorry to get sidetracked here. What was I saying before I got sidetracked on the Hillary. Does anybody remember?

Oh, come on. What? I need one person because of my hearing. (applause) Okay. Carrying water. I normally don't lose my place like that. So what I meant by it was, felt liberated because I got away from the purpose of the program. Purpose of the program is to build an audience, not to get tied to either a political party or a particular political candidate or two, and that always propelled me. Now, I'm a natural conservative, and so the icing on the cake is that it's going to help conservatives and Republicans. But when it becomes the purpose -- and for me, folks, as a performer and as a businessman, it's real fine line. But I'm going to be honest. This last year, much of it has been tortuous, and there have been days that I was not all that excited about 12 noon Eastern showing up and starting the program, and the reason is because I looked out across the landscape, and the people who were charged with defending the president when he's under assault and the war policy, the people are charged with defending themselves when they're under assault, weren't doing it.

They were hiding from it; they were running from the media; they were running from criticism. They were afraid to speak out for fear that they'd be criticized even more, and because I felt the stakes were so important and the stakes were so crucial, the war, the war on terror, and plus what the liberals have become in this season, it overcame me, and I felt like I almost had a mission to help these people even when they weren't helping themselves. I knew instinctively that it wasn't right, that it was not fun. You can probably tell, if you listen regularly, when I'm having fun and when I'm not. Well, maybe you can't, because my professionalism is such that it covers it. (laughter) Some of you probably can. It really disturbed me because I do what I do for you and for me.

You are the focus of what I do, not a bunch of people. I mean, they're going to lose elections; they're going to come and go. I as a radio guy, I'm not a campaign advisor. I'm not on somebody's campaign. I can't afford to get tied to the fortunes of either a party or individuals. What I always have done in the past, if something's being said or articulated by someone that I agree with, then I have no problem championing it, but not because they're a member of a certain party. I felt myself slipping at times, particularly in the last six months when I just thought the dirty tricks that were coming from the Democrats -- and it really frustrated me that no Republican was standing up to it. They're all cowering in fear. Look it (applause) So I kind of took on the responsibility of doing it, and it's not my responsibility. I was carrying water for people who wouldn't pick it up themselves because I cared so much about it, because it meant something to me.

I just, when I say I'm not going to carry water anymore, it's up to them. If they can't articulate and express what -- and I'm not talking about the president. This even got misreported. "Bush. Limbaugh has denied Bush, betrayed Bush." The president's not even on the ballot. He was president was trying to defend himself the best he could on Iraq and so forth, but he had no help. Look at the Foley thing. Okay, the Foley thing hits. You can't convince me that that wasn't held for -- in fact, I think it was to be the last two weeks' October Surprise, but there was a lot of momentum. The Republicans pulled even on the generic ballot in early October, and they were starting to pull some things back, and the president's approval numbers are coming up because he was out there all the time, and the war approval numbers are coming up because the president was out there.

They had this Foley stuff for a long time Brian Ross of ABCnews.com, who there's no question has a penis fixation. If you look, he was eagerly publishing the details of these Foley instant messages. After awhile there was no journalism in it. There was no journalistic reason. Foley was gone. What was the point? Well, the point was obvious. The point was to continue to embarrass Republicans. How does Mark Foley, announcing his resignation three hours after we learn of the e-mails, why does that mean Hastert has to go? Well, that's where they went. "Hastert has to go. He obviously knew, and if he didn't knew, he's a lousy leader." The whole Republican leadership -- this whole campaign: Rice stinks, Rumsfeld stinks, Cheney stinks, Rove needs to be indicted. Bush is Hitler.

This went on and on and on. I said, where is our side standing up to this? They weren't. I thought the American people would not go for it themselves. (applause) So the Foley stuff hits, and all the sudden Denny Hastert has to go. Now, I don't know what you think of Denny Hastert, but he didn't do anything -- and everybody gets caught up down in this inertia, and so the Republicans and some of our brilliant punditry in this town -- no names tonight -- pile on. "Oh, yes, I think Hastert's become an albatross around the Republicans' neck; he should go." I'm watching this; I'm dumbfounded. Why are you joining with the other guys and trying to get rid of one of our leaders? To make the other side think that you're not conservative?

Folks, this is a major thing. Conservatism is tough to stand up for in a lot of places because it's so reviled and impugned, misreported. People say we gotta get back to the basics of conservatism. What are they? One thing about conservatism to me: Conservatism is the ultimate in compassion and respect from one person to another. Liberalism... (applause) Everything about conservatism derives from that, be it economic, be it social. Everything derives from that, and yet we conservatives are tarred and feathered as extremists, racists, sexists, bigoted, hateful homophobes. What do we want? We want the best country that we can have, and we want it for our children and grandchildren -- and how does that happen?

We want people to have the greatest opportunity for prosperity using their own ambition and their own desire to learn or whatever they have to do to succeed. That's how you get a great country: great people, ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Great countries don't come from laws. (applause) They don't come from public policy. They don't come from programs. It's the people who make the country work; it's people who make an economy work. You have a hypothetical situation. Two people walking down the street, and there's a poor person, a homeless person. The liberal will say, "Oh, what are we going to do? I feel so bad."

The liberal will say, "Oh, easy for you to say. Get a job? That's mean. Look at him! Get a job?"

"Oh, so you live off the donations of others. I have a real job. What if we all had your attitude of, 'Oh, get a job? Easy for you to say.' What if nobody worked?"

Work is how people define themselves. Work is where people find their place in life. Work is where people learn, meet people, all kinds of social interactions as well as professional take place -- and it's maligned and it's impugned. Why do we want him to get a job? Because he's not meeting his potential. I'm assuming here that we're not talking about somebody that has any kind of deficiency. I think all things being equal, a conservative will look at an individual and say, "You don't know how good you can be. You don't know what your potential is. You have more possibility and opportunity in the United States of America than human beings anywhere else on this planet," and we want that for people. (applause)

We want that for people. We don't condescend to them. He don't. We conservatives don't look at people and say, "Oh, you helpless, hopeless poltroon. You have no chance. Let us take care of you." We don't condescend to people. The idea that we are extremists or racists or sexists or so forth is simply a way the left tries to discredit us because they can't beat us in the arena of ideas when they debate these things. (applause) So it infuriates me. It infuriates me when conservatives on my side nevertheless cower to these kind of attacks from liberals and will say, "Yeah, Denny Hastert, he should go."

Maybe they'll get invited on This Week with George Stephanopoulos next Sunday to talk about. It just burns me up. But, you know, there's a poison in this town. I've learned a lot over the course of my short career. The social aspects of any community are almost as defining as the professional -- and if you are a conservative in this town, you may as well live in a leper colony (laughing) particularly if you are in the media or if you are in government. You just will not be invited to these places. People want to be invited, want to get long and people want to have active social lives. So, to avoid being thought of as the racist, sexist, bigot homophobes they say, "Yeah, Denny Hastert has to go," and it just burns me up.

The left, if they could, would throw every one of our leaders out because they can't beat 'em at the ballot box -- and we've got people on our side who will help them do it just for acceptance. So this is why I felt the need to carry water, because I felt everybody falling by the wayside. Turned out it wasn't enough, and I feel liberated now not having to do it, and I'm going to get back to what my previous focus was. This is not less conservative. In fact more so, folks. (applause) I'll give you an example, and I'm not trying to suck up here, but this is one of the reasons I have such respect for people like Michael Steele and Lynn Swann and Ken Blackwell in Ohio, and Thomas Sowell. (applause)

They get called names by people in their own groups that we conservatives would never think of calling them. Yet they don't cave. They stick to it, stand for what they believe in. I -- II could not get over the fact, here you have Harold Ford versus Corker in Tennessee, and the preelection media is Ford loses because he's black. He loses because he's black. Why? Because he's Tennessee. To listen to Chris Matthews describe -- this is funny as it can be, except it's frustrating. Chris Matthews got some guest on his show, and he's talking about this ad that they ran on Ford. "Call me, Harold." You know, with the blonde Playboy model? That was supposedly sexist, even though he has dated white women.

Big deal. It doesn't bother us anymore. That's not a big deal, yet that became racism. So Chris Matthews says, "Well, you know, if you're an average Tennessean, and it's Friday night, and you're in one of these roadhouse bars, and you've got the television on, you're smoking cigarettes and drinking beer and watching NASCAR reruns, and that ad comes on, what are you going to think? You're going to think, "He can't be elected because he's black, and he's dating a white woman," and it was racism to appeal to that. That's a liberal attitude. Philadelphia is where he [Matthews] was born. He now lives in Washington. That's his attitude of Tennessee. So if Ford loses: racist. Lieutenant Governor Steele loses, race has nothing to do with it. Lynn Swann loses, race has nothing to do with it.

It's sort of like all these, as I mentioned earlier, these conservative Democrats who got elected, the Blue Dog caucus got elected by having a pro-life, pro-God agenda, are called moderates. You and I, who are pro-life and pro-gun, whatever, we are extremists. The media never will call it. What's the difference? If you're a Democrat and you're pro-life, how can one be a moderate and the other be an extremist? It's because conservatives must continually be tarred and feathered with labels which are not true; it's meant to discredit us with people who pay scant attention during the course of the week because they can't beat us in the arena of ideas.

I remember not long after I was on the air in New York, I met some prominent New Yorkers, Republicans, and I was invited to one of their parties out at the Hamptons. I wish I could name names here, but it really doesn't matter. These are big business tycoons, and they're in the Northeast. They know who I am, but they're still a little hands-off because, you know, I'm openly conservative. These guys are just Republicans. So after dinner, we're out on the deck, and one of these guys -- a very, very prominent executive, you would know the name -- comes up to me and starts poking me. "When are you going to do something about these Christians and abortion? Because until you do, we don't have a chance of winning anything."

This was during the Clinton years, and I looked at him and said, "What am I going to do?"

"Well, you can talk to 'em. They listen to you." "Well, who are you talking about?"

"Oh, you know, the evangelicals, the Falwells and those people, live down in Georgia and Virginia and Mississippi."

"No, I want you to talk to them. We're never going to win anything until we get rid of those people in our party, or get 'em to change their minds."

I said, "They are 24 million votes, and the only reason you had landslides in 1980 and 1984 was because of them, and if you think (applause) that you can just cast them aside..." Well, it turned out I talked to the guy. I talked to him, and after I kind of calmed down and -- and he was being a little provocative, I said, "What so scares you about this abortion issue?"

He said, "You know, everybody knows that the people that are pro-life drive pickups and they have gun racks and they go to church on Sunday but they get there early on Saturday and sleep in the flatbed to get a good parking space," and he was just embarrassed. They're Republicans. He was embarrassed when it was learned he was a Republican, because at the cocktail parties people would give him grief. Plus, these guys -- I know this is going to -- these guys' wives nagged the heck out of them over this issue, and they don't want to deal with that. No husband wants to deal with nagging.

It's easier to get 24 million people to change your mind on abortion than to get your wife to stop nagging you. (laughter and applause.) But no, that attitude prevails in a lot of things. It prevails in race; it prevails in social and cultural things; but strip it all away, and conservatism is something that believes in the best of humanity, believes in the best of individuals, believes in the best of their potential, and seeks circumstances where, for those who want to apply themselves, that can happen. Liberalism thinks just the opposite, thinks people are incapable, incompetent, condescending and arrogant toward them, and doesn't want people to do well. I'm convinced that's why liberals hate Wal-Mart!

Now, stop and think of that statement. Liberals hate Wal-Mart, one of the most successful American businesses. You look at their companies on the target list: ExxonMobil, Big Drug, Big Tobacco, Big Fat Food now, Big Trans-fat, all these. Look at their enemies list, and it is a roster of successful corporate circumstances that have created wealth and jobs, Wal-Mart specifically. If things were as they appear, liberals would love Wal-Mart, because liberals love the little guy. Liberals think that most people are little guys. They don't earn much; they don't have a chance to earn much; why, they need the minimum wage to be able to exist; they can't afford health care; they can't afford a new car; they can't afford a flat-screen TV; they can't afford dog food and drugs.

Now all of a sudden comes Wal-Mart, and they can afford all that. (laughter) You don't think that makes liberals mad? (applause) Because it's government programs that are supposed to provide that. Government programs are supposed to be where people look to find a chance for economic prosperity to save a few bucks. They're supposed to get up, find whatever direction the nation's capital is and kind of do one of these things. Instead they're going to Wal-Mart. But not for long. Because working with the unions, liberal Democrats will do their best to punish Wal-Mart. You know, Wal-Mart's really made 'em mad now. They're having a price war with Target at Christmas. Those prices are already too low for liberals to compete with, but now they're cutting them even more.

So I saw a story in the AP on Tuesday: "Price discounts bad for business." Really? Whose? Well, the story was that these price cuts, this price war that was going to happen between Wal-Mart and Target was going to result in maybe lower earnings expectations the fourth quarter on Wall Street, and that might cause some disappointment in the stock price -- and of course gotta be concerned about the stock price, but if you're Wal-Mart, you gotta have product moving off the shelves, being bought by members of the public. That's your business, and the stock price will take care of itself. If I know anything about this, and I tend to, lowering prices will probably sell more product, and Target, too.

So everything that benefits the liberal little guy, liberals are fighting. Gas price went up, they loved it because they could blame it on Bush. "Gas prices are going up. People can't go on their summer vacation. It's hard out there." The gas price came down, you couldn't find a word about it on the news, except: "Is Bush responsible for this as a political trick?" I go through all this, folks, I can't believe the people doing this won! I'm sorry. I'm taking it personally. I just can't believe the people that went through all this and say all these things actually won (sigh). They did, but not for long, because there's (applause) always opportunity. Now, let's see. What time is it here? Oh, good shape. Got five minutes.

[Question card] "What would you recommend we do with emerging violent nuclear powers such as Iran and North Korea?" (laughter) I'm sorry. I didn't hear that, but everybody is laughing, so it must have been funny.

Oh, oh, oh, nuke 'em! Oh, oh, oh. (Laughing.) See, I'm a Goldwater Republican. He wanted to blow up the country and the world with a nuke, and here's a guy saying nuke these guys and it doesn't even register with me. There's two ways of answering this question. What we're going to do? There are three ways. What we're going to do, what liberals will do, and what we should do. Since Democrats won... The best guy to answer this question actually would be the pet liberal from WMAL. Hey, the Democrats won, folks. I think we call Ahmadinejad and the little pot-bellied, dog-eating dictator, North Korea, and we ask him to forgive us for our president's referring to both their nations as the axis of evil and ask if we can help them with their nuclear program, with the assurance that they will not attack us.

Well, I mean if you listen to John Kerry, essentially "global test," these people -- don't forget arrogance and condescension. They think that they have the ability to talk to people like this and turn 'em into nice. They just don't understand us, you see, because they know the cowboy, frat boy George W. Bush. But if they got to know the John Kerrys of the world, the Breck Girls and the Dick Holbrookes and the Madeleine Albrights and the Bill Clintons of the world -- they probably already do know him -- then there would be peace everywhere. That's what they think. What we're going to do, I don't know about North Korea, but this Iraq study group looks to me like... There was a big leak in Newsday. It had to be a leak. It was very detailed about what -- this is the Baker-Hamilton Commission and what they're going to -- recommend.

The leak had to come from this commission, and it was either a trial balloon to gauge public reaction to it, or else it was an attempt to pressure some people into accepting this and start the conventional wisdom on it so that when the report comes out in December, it's pretty much what the leaks have been. Okay. This leak, pretty profound. It said that there's no way to win in Iraq, that the focus has to be on getting out, and that we're going to seek Iran and Syria's help to do so. (laughter) You know, folks, if that happens... This is why there are people that believe in Area 51. (laughter) Seriously. This makes no rational sense. What are we going to do to get them to help? Who do you think is causing the problems in Iraq? It's Iran, and we know this. They're building the IEDs or manufacturing.

They're the ones that are providing the insurgency with personnel. They're getting exactly what they want, thanks to the US media: the slow drib-drab every night on the news of a country falling apart and an America unable to stop it. They get people worn down. All the sudden now we're gonna talk to stop? Iran's causing it. So we're on the verge of them getting a nuke. I don't understand it. It's above my pay grade. If this is true, I can't explain it to you. I don't know why in the world the people who are responsible for keeping this insurgency alive we're going to go to and ask for their help, and I'll tell you what they're going to do.

The Iranians are going to say, "All right, you can't stop our nuke program, and you gotta promise you won't attack us." No, that's what they'll do. I'm being serious. If we're that serious about getting out of Iraq and ending this thing because we want people's approval numbers of, then we'll make the deal -- and of course when we make deals, we abide by them. You make a deal with the Iranians, you make a deal with the Soviets, a liar is a liar. All those arms talks reductions. What we ought to do? This country has never been military action first. We've got a lot more patience than we do now. After 9/11, the effort to make people forget it, to hide people, the pictures from seeing it, the effort by a political party to pretend it didn't happen, or that it was just a mere episode that doesn't represent anything larger.

I think one of the problems is our affluence in the country. We've got so much affluence and so much opportunity. I think this is one of the reasons why all this good economic news was not an election factor this year, because people expect it now. It's only news when it's not doing well. When it's doing well, "Well, we're Americans. We expect this. We don't want to be giving people credit for it; this is what should be." Even coming out of a recession that was a depression -- a recession induced by 9/11 and some dot-com bubbles and so forth, what we should do is we're the United States of America. We don't have to be pushed around by these people.

You can talk to them in ways that will convey that, but if we pull out of there, if we make this kind of deal that was leaked, the Al-Qaeda terrorists, all these people will have established once again just as after, in Mogadishu, Black Hawk Down: as long as they can manipulate our media, and our media will manipulate enough people, the American people will not put up with what they consider the upsetting aspects of a war. You look at every realistic comparison of the deaths -- and it's never easy to talk about this -- but the battlefield deaths in this war pale in comparison to the number of automobile accidents in a week and in the course of a year, or murders and drug crimes in certain parts of the country. But this has just taken hold.

If we pull out, if we do something here without securing ourselves in this, we're just going to establish that we can be had again, and who's going to join us the next time something like this comes up and we're going to need allies -- and it is going to happen. This is not going to mean the end of war. Let's see. [Question card] "Considering both heredity and environmental factors, which do you believe to be the principal contributors to your emergence as a harmless, lovable little fuzzball?" (laughter) Hmm. You know, I don't think about why, what is. I just accept it. (laughter) The moment I start trying to think about why, you can become a caricature of yourself, start trying to do what you do. [Question card] "How many Senate seats do we lose in '08?"

I don't want to think about that yet. Let's see. [Question card] "Do I think Republicans will get the message of this recent election and get back to Reagan values?" What worries me is that they'll say they're going to. I mean, this last bunch did, but when they got there and governed, didn't see much of it. Now, one thing here. In defense of the House Republicans, the conservative House Republicans -- and I can't say this enough, and I don't want to be misunderstood. This is not a criticism of George Bush; this is just the way it is. George Bush -- and everybody knew this going in -- is not a doctrinaire conservative. He's not a movement conservative. He's not a Reagan conservative.

He's not leading a movement, this president. Reagan did. Reagan believed in advancing an agenda of conservatism. In every speech or press conference he made, you can hear him educating, informing. It's not who Bush is. He's a Republican. He's conservative on certain things, but he's not "a" conservative. The House has lots of conservatives. When your president is signing education bills with Ted Kennedy that's increasing spending, it's hard to go against him and maintain party unity and to get invited to the White House and to be participating in future legislation. It's just not a wise thing to do. When your president is creating an entitlement, something that liberals do, the prescription drug benefit and Medicare, and you say, "God, what have I done? I campaigned on smaller government; here I'm voting for an entitlement."

Sometimes they had little or no choice, because there is party discipline, party unity, and there has to be. I mean, it's just risky to go against your own president at a time when his numbers are not in the thirties or forties. They finally got the guts to do it on the immigration bill in August of this year, but that I think was just an attempt to make a move for reelection and so forth. So it's been very tough, in contrast a with Newt Gingrich. It was easy for Newt to be a pedal-to-the-metal conservative. It was easy for Newt to be full-fledged because he was going against Bill Clinton, and it was easy therefore. There was elected conservative leadership back in the Newt days, and it was easy to bring people along.

The last two or three years, or four, conservative Republicans are sort of -- and all the Republicans -- have been freelancers, wandering all over the place, trying to make their own deals for their own purposes because the agenda coming out of the White House might not necessarily have been what they wanted. They took the blame for it, and it is what it is. Look, folks, before we go, I want t to say one thing about this Michael J. Fox situation, because in all the things that have happened to me in 18 years, I think is the thing that distressed me and upset me the most, particularly because as I said earlier, I've been around 18 years; you don't need a password to listen to what I say. - I'm going to tell you exactly what happened in this circumstance. I'm reading the Drudge Report, and the link says "controversial video, Michael J. Fox ad for Claire McCaskill in Missouri."

Now, I clicked on it and watched it, and I was shocked at two things. I was shocked at what I saw, and I couldn't believe what I was hearing, and I've never seen Mr. Fox that way. I have never met him, I have nothing personal against him, never have. In fact, I've admired his work in those Back to the Future movies and his TV series, but he's gotten political lately. He endorsed Kerry. He's been out there, and he's got his foundation, and that's fine and dandy. He can do what he wants to raise his money. But when you enter the political arena, the idea that you are immune from criticism because you suffer from something is something we've cowered to far too long. In 2004, here's John Edwards saying that if John Kerry is elected, Christopher Reeve will walk.

I think that's cruel. It gives false hope to people who think there's research in a particular area where there's no success yet at all, embryonic stem cell research. It gives people hope that a candidate, a particular candidate cares enough to make somebody well, and another candidate wants to criminalize the effort? That was the ad -- and I'm saying, "My gosh, we're not supposed to be able to talk about this because Mr. Fox has a disease," and then, I'd never seen him that way. - I've watched him on Boston Legal. I knew he had Parkinson's disease. I'd never seen him that way. I also knew that they wanted it to look that way. That's a filmed ad. I know political ads; they wanted it to look that way.

So one of the worst, one of the biggest risks a radio guy can do is put a camera in the studio. Radio is not meant to be watched. But I've got the Dittocam, and I've got some website subscribers, hundreds of thousands of them that watch. I'm a natural mimic, plus I wanted to illustrate what I had just seen on the video because I didn't have the ability to play the video on my own video feed. So I tried to imitate what I had seen within the context, "I have never seen him this way." Might have been two to three seconds of video. Two days later, that video was on as a 12-second loop, speeded up, with the words that I have laughed at, mocked, and made fun of Fox, when I didn't.

I said, "He's either acting or he is off his medication," which, to me, is a perfectly normal reaction to have based on my having seen him before and having read his book where he admitted to not taking his medication before congressional testimony in order to have his symptoms on display as a means of raising consciousness, which I can totally understand when you're up here trying to get money for a cause. So this goes on for two weeks, this misreporting, this misstatement, this idea that I'm laughing at Michael Fox's condition, that I have no sympathy. Katie Couric, who in May -- you know, she and I have had our tizzies, because back in 1992 after my first trip to the White House to visit George H. W. Bush, spent the night in the Lincoln Bedroom, and Katie called, "Well, would you come on and talk about it?"

I said, "Well, yeah, but I can't tell you what we talked about, because it was Perot, and it wasn't good."

I didn't tell her that. So I'm on the Today Show, and I'm in the midst of the interview and she said, "How was it?"

I said, "You know, he's such a nice man." At the moment I said that, Katie went (grimace). She frowned or did something, and I stopped what I was saying. I said, "See? There you go. Why are you frowning when I say he's a nice guy?"

I said, "Yes, you were. What is so bad? You asked me a question," and, you know, you're not supposed to do this to these people.

So the interview ended, I went back to my studio, and she's on the phone, and she's saying, "You have got to correct that. I was hearing somebody on the IFB, and I couldn't hear what they were saying, and I was frowning because of that."

I said, "Okay. I'll tell you people that's what you said, but you knew the red light was on you, and you don't frown on the red light. I know you're professional enough to do this." So she has not liked me since 1992. Not many in the Drive-By Media do. When it was announced -- I know you all won't understand this. When it was announced that she got the CBS gig, I asked Matt Wauer. (laughter) That's how Brokaw pronounces it. He can't say his L's. I asked Matt Wauer. "Do you have her e-mail address, because I want to send a little congratulatory note? He said, "Sure." So he gave me the e-mail address, and I sent her a note strictly among professionals.

I said, "You know, you've got a great opportunity here, and this is a tremendous achievement," as a broadcaster. I wasn't even talking about as an info babe. As a broadcaster. (laughter) That's a plum job. I mean, that's saying something. And so I just -- I wanted to congratulate -- so she started e-mailing me back, and she started telling me what their plans were, and she told me about this free speech business. She said, "Would you come on the first week and do a commentary?"

I said, "I have learned about this, so I have some conditions. A: you cannot introduce me by saying 'Whether you love him or hate him....' You cannot put somebody not nearly of my stature on after me to answer it live, when I'm not there. In fact, you can't put anybody on to answer it."

"Oh, no, no, no! That's not what we're going to do. Every one of these is stand-alone, and no commentary will ever reference a previous one."

I said, "Okay," and I said, "I don't want any restrictions. Tell me how much time I got, 90 seconds? I don't want any restrictions on the content."

"No, that's fine. That's fine." She kept her word. None of my requests were denied, and none of the promises were broken.

Then this Fox thing happens, and about the fourth day into it, she sends me an e-mail and says, "I'm interviewing Michael J. Fox this afternoon for my newscast tonight. What have you said? What is your position? So I type, e-mailed six paragraphs, where I said I was not mocking. I was not making fun. Everything I've told you. I said, "I read in his book where he admits to manipulating his medication. I've admired his work," all of these things. I said, "You should ask him about research that is showing promise on Parkinson's, being done at, interestingly enough, Rush Medical Center in Chicago." It's gene therapy. They drill a couple holes in the head; they insert a gene into the brain that's got some alteration to it.

It's showing some promise on a very few limited number of patients with Parkinson's, and the Fox Foundation's invested nearly $2 million for research. Embryonic stem cell doesn't do diddly-squat, and I mentioned this. There's not one -- and I sent her statistics following the six paragraphs. She writes back, "Thanks, Rush!!!" three exclamation points. "PS: Make sure you watch the segment tonight." Okay. That could mean anything. So I watched it, and guess what? It starts with the looped video. She says, "He was mocking you, he was making fun of you. How did you feel?" And she plays this looped video like everybody else is doing -- and she used one little line. Nobody dared to pay attention to get my point. Now, this was -- and I spent, as you who listen regularly know, probably in the first two days, five hours or four discussing this in the context of Amendment 2 in Missouri, cloning, embryonic stem cells, lack of research, and a fundamental political point.

It is this. I have grown weary of liberals, and I don't like them much politically. I have some friends that are liberal. When we don't talk about politics, we have a chance of getting along. But this business of trotting out victims of anything to enter the political arena for the express purpose of giving them immunity from criticism or even debate has got to stop. This ad... (applause) Stop and think of this. This ad was run against Jim Talent, was ran against Lieutenant Governor Steele here. What was ironic about his situation is that his opponent had voted against stem cell research, Lieutenant Governor Steele had voted for it, and yet the Democrats were running the Fox ad for Ben Cardin. So don't tell me this was about stem cells, and don't tell me it was about research. It was about electing Democrats and using someone who suffers from a disease as an infallible spokesman. This ad, I don't know what -- when it ran here against lieutenant governor Steele, I don't recall the specifics, but in Missouri, it said that Jim Talent wants to criminalize research using embryonic stem cells, wants to criminalize people!

There is stem cell research going on in Missouri at the universities. He has voted for it. But the notion that only one candidate in the race cares about any of you with a ravaging disease is absurd, and the people who run those spots need to be called on it because it is the utmost in cruelty, to try to mislead people that there are cures to diseases which are not there if only certain people are elected. It's the same old, "We gotta bash these conservatives as heartless, cold, cruel, mean-spirited, and extremist. Why, they don't even want you paralyzed people to walk again! Why, they don't even want you people that have Parkinson's to get cured. They don't want any research," and it's all about embryonic, and we all know what that means.

The equivalent would be -- you know, I'm deaf. I have a cochlear implant. If I take this hearing piece off, I am a hundred percent deaf. I hear nothing. Imagine me doing a commercial saying, "Hi. I'm Rush Limbaugh. I'm deaf. I don't like being deaf. I want to be cured. People tell me that the embryos from babies in the womb could cure my hearing. So I want to kill babies in the womb so I can hear again. Please vote for candidate X, because the other candidate won't do it." Do you think I would be applauded as somebody trying to advance medical science to help the hearing? That was the essence of these ads that ran. They were a little bit more cleverly worded, but any time you put in there that somebody wants to criminalize research or somebody doesn't want you to get well because he's a Republican?

And nobody was standing up to this. The best ad that was run was by lieutenant governor Steele's sister. She just nailed it. (applause) But in New Jersey, the brave and the courageous Tom Kean, Jr., after agreeing with the left that Hastert had to go after Foley, and then after agreeing that Rumsfeld had to go on general principles, then had to stand up and say, "I simply must dissociate myself with Rush Limbaugh on this Michael Fox." Now, he was just responding to what he had seen. But I got even. I endorsed him, too, and he lost. (applause) Now, a lot of the people that were being critical of me on television know me, and they knew that what they were saying about me was not true. Now, it was distressing to me because there are a lot of people that don't listen to the radio program who are influenced by this.

I was being treated like I'm a candidate, and I'm not. There are people now running around saying I'm the reason that the Republicans lost. I'll take that, because that means I can be a reason they won down the road. They want to make me that powerful, I'll go ahead because I know the truth. But what I wanted to say about all this is that it was tough. Nobody likes having this stuff said about them. When I'm young -- we're all young, nobody wants to grow up and be hated. Well, maybe Mao Tse-tung did, maybe Khrushchev. But who wants to be hated? I remember I had to learn to take being hated as a measure of success. Try that and stay sane. I'd come home from work, call my mother -- starting this New York show in 1988, called her -- I called her every night. And she'd say, "How was your day today?"

"Humdinger. Half the people heard me hate my guts." You know, that's a bit of exaggeration, but I still had to take as a measure of success people who didn't know me, who just heard my political views literally had venom for me in their hearts and their minds. And nobody wants that. We all want to be loved, we all want to be liked, and it was the toughest thing for me to learn to take that as a measure of success. The way it happened to me was -- and I'm struggling with, "How do I respond to this stuff? My God, is my reputation at stake here? Is it being ruined? What do I do?" and my first time at the restaurant 21 in New York, my guest told me that the restroom attendant in there was a huge fan of mine and would I take a book and sign it for him. I said, "You want me to go to 21 with a book, go to the bathroom and autograph it?"

"I haven't been to restrooms with restroom attendants. I've been with shoe shine guys, but not in restrooms. What do you do in there?"

"Well, put your hands under the faucet, and they'll turn on the water. And they'll hand you the towel. Then you grab ten bucks and put it in the dish." (laughter) I walked in there, and this guy, who was a preacher, and he worked at nights to earn additional money at 21 and to meet people. He said, "This is the second biggest night of my life, Mr. Limbaugh, second only to when I met President Reagan." I was taking aback, and without saying a word to him, yet he said, "You know, Mr. Reagan just laughed at 'em. He never let it bother him. He just laughed at 'em." And I said, my gosh, divine intervention here.

The way to deal with it is to laugh at it, because the minute you have to act upset about it, they know they've zeroed in. The minute you brag or complain about it, you elevate it beyond the original audience that heard it. But this one was relentless, and it was all lies, and it went on for two weeks -- and I'm saying, "What do I do about this?" and I'm being invited by all these shows to go on and "explain my side" and "set the record straight." Set the record straight? I am the record. You're the journalist! You're supposed to get it right. You've distorted it. What do you mean? Why do I have to come on your show to get right what I've already been right about when I've already said I am the record, why do I have to come on your show so you can attack me under the guise of correcting the record?

So screw it. There's no way to win in this sort of situation, and I didn't do it. It was only the fact that all of you in the audience understood the truth and were hanging in with it got me through this. This has been the toughest circumstance personally for me to deal with, at night. You know, I live alone. I go home, and I take everything home with me, and I don't have anybody to bounce it off of. I can go play golf and forget it, but it was hard. I mean with as much reading as I do and as much consulting of the Internet, I couldn't -- I could -- some of the things that were written and said, I couldn't avoid it in the process of doing show prep and looking at the venom and rage.

So I prayed a lot, tried to keep it all in perspective, understood that it wouldn't be happening if the critics didn't think I were a factor and all that and had to be discredited in the process. But what really mattered was that every day I knew that those of you listening knew what had actually happened and that you weren't going to be affected by it. I've always felt this bond, this familial bond with my audience because when I do the program, the focus is the audience. I'm trying to meet and surpass audience expectations every day. I don't do the program for other people. I don't do it for personal aggrandizement. I do it to establish a relationship with the audience and have a deep, loyal bond that takes a lot to be interrupted.

And I owe you all more than I can say, and it's not just this Fox issue. People tell me and have told me for years how much the radio show means to them in a lot of ways, but I gotta tell you, whatever it's meant to you, you can't possibly imagine how much you being out there has meant to me and my family and what a difference it has made. (applause) I don't have an appropriate way of thanking you, other than just to say thank you and understand I appreciate it more than you can possibly ever know. It's great to be in the nation's capital for only one night. I can see how this town gets to people. I was sitting in a hotel this afternoon, and I'm just getting some downtime from the active of this morning.

I'm saying, "Gee, it's Washington. There's gotta be some trouble I can get into." I can drive around here, and I learn very quickly the myth of smaller government. What building are they going to destroy that they're not going to rebuild twice as big? But nevertheless, these are all objectives and goals that are worth fighting for. Some of them we'll realize in our lifetimes and some of them not, but try not to get discouraged over momentary failures. You know, everybody is comparing this election to previous elections, and I'm hearing them compare it to '86 and Reagan's midterm. You know, this election is more closely aligned, to me, with the 1974 elections after Watergate.

I mean you go back and look at those races, it was devastating. It just was. My gosh, we thought we were going to be banished to the desert for decades, and six years later, Ronald Reagan is elected in a landslide. Six years later. So there's always opportunity. But in the process of fighting the fight and in the process of living your lives according to the principles and values that you hold, and if you're in the political world in a sense, if you're just an active participant and voter, somebody that spends a lot of time trying to influence others, even if you lose an election, it's not the end of your life. Your life shouldn't depend on who wins elections, either.

You always want to win, but it's the process of trying to win where you influence people in a positive way; you inspire them, and you engage in good works yourself. Pursuing the things that you believe in may not always result in victory and when other people you don't know are trying to carry the banner. But if they fail, it doesn't mean that what you believe in has failed. If they fail, it doesn't mean that the values and principles that you've incorporated in your life are meaningless. It's just tough to see Democrats gloat. But gloaters always end up getting theirs -- and they will at some point down the line, and we will all be here to watch it and chronicle it and laugh at it but not gloat when it happens.

Seriously, folks, don't be too down about this, because conservatism didn't lose. When it was tried and when it was articulated with passion and confidence, it did pretty well. It triumphed. This country is largely conservative. I mean, people don't live their lives as liberals want them to. People live their lives as conservatives. For example, when you get your paycheck, do you go to the neighbors down the street and say, "Hey, I just got my paycheck. How much do you need for your kid and his education?" You don't do that. You vote for people that do, but you don't do that.

We've got some pockets the country seems to be going to hell in a handbasket, you all know, but on balance I think every day in America is better than the day before, and it's because of people using optimism and desire and passion to achieve that that makes it happen, so... (sneeze) Bless you. Was that not a sneeze? It was a sneeze. I think I'm starting to infect people now. So let me wish you a pleasant good evening. Thank you so much for coming. It's been (applause) almost two hours, almost two hours. That's great.

Guest Host? Replay? Whatever. Too busy trying to recover from my food hangover to care.....ugggg....I can't believe I ate the whole thing.......

1 posted on 11/24/2006 7:53:01 AM PST by MNJohnnie

To: Sensei Ern; EmilyGeiger; NonValueAdded; LibertyisSpecial; HOYA97; ICFN(ICan'tFixNothing); ...

2 posted on 11/24/2006 7:53:45 AM PST by MNJohnnie (I do not forgive Senator John McCain for helping destroy everything we built since 1980.)

To: Sensei Ern; EmilyGeiger; NonValueAdded; LibertyisSpecial; HOYA97; ICFN(ICan'tFixNothing); ...

3 posted on 11/24/2006 7:53:56 AM PST by MNJohnnie (I do not forgive Senator John McCain for helping destroy everything we built since 1980.)

I don't suppose we are lucky enough to get Dr. Walter E. Williams today?

4 posted on 11/24/2006 7:56:47 AM PST by NeoCaveman (Have you thanked the rich person who subsidized your share of taxation today?)

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

5 posted on 11/24/2006 8:09:41 AM PST by txradioguy (Dec. 1st 2006 I become a third generation NCO.)

I did not - we had to cancel Thanksgiving dinner @ my house - wife and 3 kids sick. It came on quickly and thankfully no one was traveling a long distance to get here. Thank God I got a flu shot a couple days ago.

6 posted on 11/24/2006 8:14:03 AM PST by Bosco (Remember how you felt on September 11?)

I hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving...

Now, back to the real world..unless you are a talk show host...LOL

7 posted on 11/24/2006 8:14:50 AM PST by Txsleuth (Bolton/Cheney (that would be Lynne) 08)

How long untill the resident troll gets "offended" at today's show?

8 posted on 11/24/2006 8:23:01 AM PST by RasterMaster (Winning Islamic hearts and minds.........one bullet at a time!)

Thanks for the ping.

Listening to the 8/25 Mark Steyn sub for Rush. It gets funnier every time.

9 posted on 11/24/2006 8:24:25 AM PST by HonestConservative (Snowflake, Levinite and eeevildooer, not necessarily in that order.)

Hello.

10 posted on 11/24/2006 8:24:57 AM PST by AliVeritas (And you will know that I am in the midst of Israel, that I am the Lord your God.)

In case anyone gets hungry...there are plenty of leftovers!

11 posted on 11/24/2006 8:25:39 AM PST by RasterMaster (Winning Islamic hearts and minds.........one bullet at a time!)

Happy Day after Turkey day, Ali!

12 posted on 11/24/2006 8:26:08 AM PST by HonestConservative (Snowflake, Levinite and eeevildooer, not necessarily in that order.)

Heya Ali! Hope ya'll didn't get too wet yesterday!

13 posted on 11/24/2006 8:26:18 AM PST by RasterMaster (Winning Islamic hearts and minds.........one bullet at a time!)

How you doon?

14 posted on 11/24/2006 8:27:02 AM PST by AliVeritas (And you will know that I am in the midst of Israel, that I am the Lord your God.)

If no one responds, they will eventually get bored.

15 posted on 11/24/2006 8:27:21 AM PST by HonestConservative (Snowflake, Levinite and eeevildooer, not necessarily in that order.)

Doon swell.

Glad the day was yesterday, and have today to veg and relax if at all possible.

How you doon?

If you have the oppoturtunity, relisten to the Mark Steyn/Limbaugh show and it just gets better and better.

16 posted on 11/24/2006 8:29:13 AM PST by HonestConservative (Snowflake, Levinite and eeevildooer, not necessarily in that order.)

Thanks for the ping Johnnie

17 posted on 11/24/2006 8:30:07 AM PST by StoneWall Brigade (Rick Santorum And Newt Gingrich08!)

Too many troll feeders and no one to call them on BS posts....

18 posted on 11/24/2006 8:30:34 AM PST by RasterMaster (Winning Islamic hearts and minds.........one bullet at a time!)

Hello

19 posted on 11/24/2006 8:31:32 AM PST by StoneWall Brigade (Rick Santorum And Newt Gingrich08!)

Hello

20 posted on 11/24/2006 8:31:33 AM PST by StoneWall Brigade (Rick Santorum And Newt Gingrich08!)

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