The Wisdom of Pastor Hagee

Pastor Hagee is a figure on the religious right who publically supports McCain. Because of the Obama/Wright debacle, people (read, Obama supporters) are trying to find any religious figure connected with any candidate in any possible way with either McCain or Clinton.

Pastor Hagee has been quoted as saying "Do you know the difference between a woman with PMS and a snarling Doberman pinscher? The answer is lipstick.

Do you know the difference between a terrorist and a woman with PMS? You can negotiate with a terrorist."

I just read this in an article as one of the reasons McCain should distance himself from Hagee's endorsement. Either the author of this article has no sense of humor, or (more likely) it was written by a woman with PMS.

http://www.desertdispatch.com/opinion/hagee_2781___article.html/mccain_church.html

(Hagee is not McCain's pastor, btw)

Clinton on the Factor

I hope you saw the Clinton interview done by Bill O’Reilly this past week. Both O’Reilly and Senator Clinton shined. This was the first time I saw Clinton laugh where it appeared to be real and not some sort of a cackle. What I am saying is, she did not use her laugh to deal with a question she cannot answer, but that it was genuine.

O’Reilly moved the interview along. Even though he repeated a couple of questions that Clinton would not give a full answer to, he did not pound her with these questions. We are allowed to draw our own conclusions; O’Reilly doesn’t beat into us, “Clinton could not give us a satisfactory answer here.”

In some interviews, Clinton (and other candidates) go into talking points; given any question, they morph into one of their talking points. I did not get this much from Clinton. She and O’Reilly interacted well.

If you think you do not like O’Reilly or if you think that you do not like Clinton, this interview might change your opinion on both of them.

No matter what side of the aisle you are on, this is Senator Clinton on her toes, giving reasonable answers to good questions. Don’t get me wrong—I am not a Clinton supporter by any means; but I have to admit when she does a good job. Here, she does a good job. She also cracks a joke, and it is obvious that this was off-the-cuff from Hillary herself and not something which was written for her.

Part I:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=V8YUbvwRecc

Part II.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=_5yg0EasR7M

Jeremiah Wright Explains Himself

After giving one of his 793 speeches this week, Jeremiah Wright took questions. He referred several times back to his [softball] interview with Bill Moyers on public television. He made at least two points when asked these questions and on Moyers' program. "You have not seen or heard the entire sermon" and "Certain news media just took these comments and looped them." [These are not exact quotes]. Let me deal with these two points: I have heard one entire sermon, and what he had to say about the United States was not softened by hearing the entire sermon. It was the most outrageous part of the sermon, but his remarks were in no way softened or mitigated by the rest of the sermon. Secondly, I have never heard Wright's comments looped. I have heard them played many times, but looping is where you take a few seconds of a video or sound byte and play it over and over again in succession (like what was done to Rush Limbaugh when he made comments about Michael J. Fox; that was looped).

Now, even though Wright made those comments when speaking to Moyers and during this question and answer period, he did not denounce or put into a softer context any of the remarks which he made. When he answered questions about any set of specific remarks that we have seen as a sound byte, he justified what he said. The only time I heard him back off on any of these public remarks was concerning the US creating AIDS to destroy Black America. He kept carefully saying, our government is capable of doing such a thing.

The key to his interview from a political standpoint is, Wright calmly explained and justified his crazy remarks delivered in the bits and pieces of the sermons which most of us have seen. In other words, despite Wright’s objections to how he was portrayed in the media, he still stands by his insane opinions (that we are morally equivalent to Al-qaeda, that we deserved the September 11 attacks, and that the US government has done things specifically against the African population, like AIDS).

For those of you who are Christian, Wright was also asked about what Jesus said. "I am the way, the truth and the life, no man comes to the Father but by me." This was quoted and he was asked if he believed that Jesus was the only way or if Islam, for instance, also provided a way to God. Jeremiah Wright refused, as a pastor, to confirm what Jesus said, and quoted Jesus saying, "I have other sheep" (which refers to Gentiles). Wright meant that, there are other ways to God besides through Jesus. This helps to explain why Wright has more in common with Louis Farrakhan than he does with, say, Billy Graham (or PMS jokester, Hagee).

It is my opinion that Wright is enjoying this 15 minutes of fame, and I would not be surprised if he continued to give more and more speeches and offer to answer questions as well.

(I wrote this the day that Wright gave this speech and then answered questions).

Obama’s Early Response to Reverend Wright

On The View, a couple weeks back, Obama says that “I did not vet my pastor;” indicating that he was not really aware of all Wright’s crazy views. This is nonsense and a lie, which I will cover in more detail in a later story. Wright’s church, the Trinity United Church of Christ (not to be confused with the Church of Christ), recognized Louis Farrakhan (the leader of the Nation of Islam) publically in several ways, giving him an award, and Wright went with Farrakhan to meet Muammar el-Qaddafi in Tripole, and Obama, Wright and Farrakhan all attended the Million Man March.

A point I have made several times: if we can, with the internet, figure out what Wright’s church is all about, how is it possible to Obama, after 20+ years, to be ignorant of church doctrine?

The Obama Reaction

Many of the news services have been downplaying the Reverend Wright situation. Several weeks ago, when the first set of Wright insanity first began, I said, "This is the end of Obama." He probably will not get the Democrat nomination and he certainly will not be elected president because of Wright. As far as I know, I was the only person who stated this as a certainty. Several of the news services I listened to soft-pedaled this Wright business, saying, it was taken out of context, it was a few sound bytes out of a 30 year history, etc. etc. I never bought into that. The key was the crowd--their enthusiasm, their shrieking with pleasure--it was clear that these were not just a few outrageous things which Wright said out of the blue.

When Obama distanced himself this past Tuesday even further from Wright, he had no choice. Already, two anti-Democrat ads had been run, linking Democrats to Obama and linking Obama to Wright. No way, would Obama be elected with ads like that coming out.

Here are these ads:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=JhpcIH_Hw18

http://youtube.com/watch?v=sS5sEbh03aE

No matter who says what about these ads, they would bring down the Democratic party this election. Obama had to stop the bleeding.

Obviously, it would have been has Wright found a far corner of the earth and hid until mid-November. It appeared for awhile that is what he was going to do. However, when he came back, and started spouting his nonsense again, Obama had no choice. Even though Wright made some lame excuses for the sound bytes, he came right back and justified what he had said in the past.

Even though much of the press over the past month downplayed what Wright had to say, Obama no longer could. He finally condemned Wright’s remarks as evil and ridiculous. But, as I said, he had no choice.

Wright had a relationship with Farrakhan going back nearly 30 years. Wright did not suddenly become a fanatic. His theology is known as Black Liberation theology, and it has been around for awhile.

In his condemnation of Wright, Obama says, “This is not the man I knew 20 years ago.” Poppycock. Obama is an intelligent man with splendid credentials. He is not stupid.

The Timing of Obama's Repudiation

We live in a world of instant, immediate information. On Monday, Wright gives his horrendous talk and QandA in Washington D.C. Monday night, Obama gave a short, perfunctory message about Jeremiah Wright. It was not a message of strong condemnation. He simply stated, "Wright does not represent my opinion." (not an exact quote).

The next day, Obama gives a speech where he unequivocally threw Wright underneath the box. So, what happened over the 15 or so hours in between Obama knew what Wright said; he probably had the transcript and/or video in hand Monday night. Do not be confused about this. When Wright talks, no one listens more carefully than the Obama campaign. Wright has single-handedly destroyed Obama's chances to become president. So, you bet they knew what he said. So, why didn't Obama say more than a few generic words?

Two things. A speech had to be written to unequivocally throw Wright under the bus, and, most importantly, polling had to be done. They needed to know, how are Wright's remarks playing in North Carolina. Obama, a few weeks ago, was going to take North Carolina and probably by double digits. How are they responding to Wright's remarks? North Carolina was polled. Obama's people wanted to know how this played out in the minds of the voters in North Carolina.

Rush has an excellent rant on this, which I will include with this issue.

 Options of Obama

Obama spent 22 years in Jeremiah Wright's church and, as recently as 2006, gave $27,000 to his church. If memory serves, he gave $13,00 to this church the year before. Recently, Obama disowned Wright in no uncertain terms. This gives us 3 possibilities:

1) Obama secretly agrees with Wright. He either had these positions before attending this church or eventually developed these positions. He has denounced Wright out of political expediency. I have not heard any political pundit who believes this. I do think that going to church has affected Obama's wife, and that she has bought into what Wright is teaching to some extent (or she held these views prior to attending this church). When it comes to Obama, I am unsure. A Rassmussen survey has over half its respondents thinking that Obama shares some of Wright’s racist views.

2) Obama joined this church at a time when he had no street cred, having been raised in Indonesia and Hawaii. He had no real connection with liberal Blacks, and this gave him that connection. Attending this church is how he got elected to the Illinois state senate and eventually to the United States Senate. This was a politically active and aware (if not brainwashed) church which was vibrant and growing; and the pastor was not above supporting his man, Obama, as a candidate, from the pulpit. Obama recognized that Wright was a crackpot, but he was also a politically powerful crackpot. When he claimed not to know what this church was about (something that anyone with google can figure out in about 60 minutes), Obama was lying. He went to the church out of political expediency; he knew what Wright believed and taught, and went anyway. How much he believed and how much he rejected will probably never be known.

3) After 22 years, Obama was not smart enough to figure out what kind of a church this was. The church was politically advantageous to him, maybe it did some great things in the neighborhood with Obama liked, but he attended the church, gave the church 10's of thousands of dollars, but never understood what was being taught. If this is true, this means that Obama has a personal relationship with a man for 22 years that he never figured out. This same Obama thinks he can go out and talk to anyone of American's enemies, take the measure of the man in a few hours or a few days, and being able to talk things out and get peaceful solutions for America.

No matter which of these scenarios you believe, none of them distinguish Obama as a man of character, a man of intelligence or a man of excellent judgment. There are only these 3 options.

About Issue #22

I was in severe pain when I wrote this issue, and my spelling and sentence structure reflected that. I have since gone back and fixed most of those errors. A corrected issue #22 can be found here:

http://kukis.org/blog/ConservativeReview22.htm

http://kukis.org/blog/ConservativeReview22.pdf

The Wright Stuff

(or, Will Rev. Wright Shut up?)

There is nothing that Obama would like more than for his former pastor of 20 year, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, to shut his big mouth. But what are Wright's needs? It appears that he may have a book coming out in October. The more controversy that he stirs up, the more likely that he will sell a lot of books. He has been in the limelight in a congregation for the past 30+ years which he built up from nothing. His former congregant, Barack Obama, the first possible Black candidate for president, has dismissed his ravings as ravings. The stuff which he preaches to his congregation, Obama has repudiated in the strongest terms. The man Wright has supported from the pulpit for president has just told the world that he, Wright, is a paranoid, racist fool. Although I do not have evidence for this, I will bet you dollars to donuts that Wright is responsible to a great degree for Obama's political success. I can bet that Wright got his congregants to go out and vote and to get their friends and neighbors to go out and vote. Now, Obama, who owes him--and in Wright's mind, might even owe him the vice presidency--has told the world that Wright is a madman. He is not just a man who was brought up in a different world, but he is a man with ideas which are flat out false--these same ideas which Wright has been teaching his congregants over the past 30+ years.

Wright is not going away. He is not going to shut up. He is going to stand up and tell everyone that Obama knew his positions and that Obama cannot pretend that he did not know what Wright was all about.

Wright's church bought him a million dollar + home in a very white, gated, golf course community. Wright is going to be paid by this church for the rest of his life. If the top Black man in the United States publically denounces him as a crazy old coot, what is going to happen to his pension? Are his congregants going to be happy to support him in a grand lifestyle for the next 20-40 years if Obama has dissed him?

Wright cannot afford to retire where people see him as a crazy old Black man. He lives in a great house in a neighborhood run by rich white people. He does not want to step out of his door and his neighbors dismiss him as a loon. He does not want the press to treat him as a crazy old Black man. Up until a few days ago, he was seen as a great, Black theologian; whose character had been questioned by the corrupt conservative media; the media which is stuck on stupid. Now, Obama threw him under the bus. How is the media going to see him now? If Obama disses him as a crazy old coot, how will the mainstream media see him?

Now, do not think this is going to dissuade Black voters from voting for Obama. One thing which liberals are famous for is, they can hold two opposing positions in their thinking at the same time.

Some can continue to attend Black Liberation churches—churches which Obama has denounced—and vote for Obama, the man who has denounced their beliefs.

One more thing: Wright pedals racism. This is what he sells from his Chicago pulpit; this is where he makes his money. If Obama is derailed from the presidency, this fits with Wright's view--that we live in a bigoted, racist nation. So, if Wright contributes to Obama's losing this race, that is fine by him.

Where is Wright?

I think that Dennis Miller gave the best explanation here. After Wright stated all of his insane ideas publically calmly in answer to several questions, Obama had no alternative but to disown this man. The outrageous things which he said in his church were not impassioned words said in the heat of the moment, but what he seemed to believe and what he taught his parishioners. So, after Obama disowned this man, someone probably sat Wright down and explained, "A Black man out of your congregation had a chance to become the president of the United States. You probably just ruined his chances. Every time you publically open your mouth, Obama's chances for becoming the next president of the United States are lessened. Do you want to be forever known as the idiot who kept the first Black man from becoming president?"

What is Ignored in Wright’s Q&A?

Twice, Wright made references to his becoming the Vice President. The first time he said it during this Q&A, several people chuckled, as I did while watching it. Wright made a funny remark, and I was willing to concede that.

1 or 2 minutes later, Wright again speaks about becoming Vice President. I think this was sincere. I don’t think he was making a joke. I think that Wright thought that Obama might really choose him as a running mate.

This should tip you off as to how far removed from reality that Wright is. I grant you, this is just conjecture on my part, but he mentioned the vice presidency twice.

These are Distractions!

Michelle Obama was on CNN with Caroline Kennedy trying to turn the page on this Wright business. Obama has spoken of these various things as distractions. For an outstanding commentary on these distractions, see Krauthammer’s column:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/24/AR2008042402983.html

You can certainly google for Michelle’s interview, but all it is, is her and Caroline saying absolutely nothing, except to repeat over and over again “The American people are ready to turn the page on this controversy.”

Here is Michelle’s side of the story:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080501/ap_on_el_pr/obama

Wright’s First Speech

Wright gave another speech earlier this week, but it was lost in the fury of his Q&A. Prior to this, he spoke at the NCAAP about the education of Black children and how they were short-changed by our education system, because they learn differently than white children.

Wright: American children have a different way of learning. They are right brained, subject oriented in their learning styles. Right brain - that means creative and intuitive.

When they were desegregated in Philadelphia, several of the white teachers in my school freaked out. Why? Because black kids wouldn't stay in their place - over there, behind the desk. Black kids climbed up all on them because they learned from a subject, not from an object.

Charles Krauthammer responded to Wright’s rant: This is complete rubbish of the worst kind. And I'm speaking here choosing my words carefully. This is the worst kind of crackpot pseudoscience. It's not just idiotic, it's also demeaning and dangerous.

This is the stuff of eugenics, of NAZI racial theories, and of white segregationists who created separate school systems under the same assumption that blacks are of a different species who think in a different way and who learn in a different way.

And when Wright says that blacks are right-brained and whites are left-brained, meaning verbal and creative - I'm sorry, left-brained meaning logical and mathematical - what he is saying is that African-Americans are OK in doing hip-hop but not math.

This is just astonishing stuff. But what's worse is the reaction of the audience. He said it at a meeting of the NCAAP, which historically, half a century ago, had brought the case in the Supreme Court which overthrew separate schools, which had been based on the assumption of a separate intelligence, of a different intelligence.

And for the people in that audience to applaud this kind of destructive nonsense was tragic. It was a measure how those who call themselves the "civil rights movement" have degenerated over half a century.

A more compete story can be found at:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,353971,00.html

However, Krauthammer’s remarks give us the gist of the argument against Wright’s science.

Rush and Al Gore’s Religion

RUSH: Here is David in Lakeland, Florida. You're next on Open Line Friday. Hi.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. I was just calling about, I've been reading online recently about all this money that Algore now has at his disposal through all these investment funds, and the last total I saw was about $1.9 billion earmarked for clean tech investments and different funds and different investment firms --

RUSH: Most of them are fraudulent. It's a giant hoax.

CALLER: Well, but when you think about it --

RUSH: Basically it's planting trees, you know, and turning chicken manure into some kind of fuel to do with your lawn mower. Who the hell knows what it is. All a big joke.

CALLER: Yeah. Well, I think we've reached this point where we need to start talking about these global warming people and all the different things we need to do. We need to give it its own new term, and I'm thinking Big Weather is what we need to group all these people under now. I mean, what's the difference, Big Oil makes profits, Big Weather? You know, it's the same kind of thing, just they're trying to put a different spin on it, but ultimately money and control is what they're after, Big Weather.

RUSH: I'll tell you something, I feel good about this. We can call 'em Big Weather. That's not a bad idea, but I think there are better ones. I think we're winning here. Algore's had to go out and invest $300 million in this thing, get people like Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi sitting in a black and white TV ad on a couch outside in Washington talking about their mutual interest in all this. It must mean that his movie didn't work. But here's this story again, this time in the UK Telegraph: "Global warming will stop until at least 2015 because of natural variations in the climate."

We talked about this yesterday. This is about ocean currents in the Pacific, in the Atlantic, and they naturally cool the planet. Nothing we're doing. Every bit of damage we're doing is on the warming side, right. So all of a sudden here comes a massive movement, is going to cool the planet, for 15 years! And then global warming will resume. Well, one of two things is going on here. Either the global warming crowd knows there isn't any warming, and that's probably the case, and the second thing we can say is wait a minute, wait a minute, now, wait a minute, if there are natural cooling cycles (gasping) might there also be natural warming cycles (gasping)? And the reason that's important is because all the warming is being attributed to you and me, not the ChiComs and not the Taiwanese. It's all our fault.

Here's the best idea. John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel, has proposed taking Algore and other environmental wackos to court. He did so at a conference in New York in March. Since then, John Coleman has received thousands and thousands of e-mails with lots of support and thousands of these people want to donate to a legal fund to sue Algore. He hopes that the court could be the venue to settle the debate over what he calls the biggest scam in history and expose global warming alarmism as silly hype. I think it's maybe our only alternative to just hunkering down and waiting it out. He claims the mainstream media ignores what those skeptical of manmade global warming have to say while the educational community does not even debate the issue. "Without the media and the educational institutions," said Coleman, "what resource do we have to counter these people? We're not going to be heard unless we can find a place to be heard, and a court of law may be a place where we could get a fair hearing. If the judge had a nonpolitical, scientific approach in reaching a decision, we could win this lawsuit. It's something that's in the works. I have no announcement to make now, but numerous people are involved, and it remains a valid possibility." That would be awesome. That would be fabulous.

Here are the articles:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/04/30/eaclimate130.xml (it is excellent!)

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2008/03/04/weather-channel-founder-sue-al-gore-expose-global-warming-fraud

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2008/05/02/venture-firm-puts-millions-green-companies-gore-has-stake-in

Out of Touch?

I was recent told by a liberal that Bush was out of touch because he did not know the price of gas. A president does not do self-serve; a president does not even open his own doors.

An example of this is, Hillary Clinton could not figure out how to work a self-serve coffee machine (I believe she had to position the cup and press a button):

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/04/30/video-smartest-woman-in-the-world-tries-to-work-the-coffee-machine/ (Link from Rush’s site)

Look, it is a fact of life—no matter what politicians say, they are out of touch. It comes with the territory.

Throw Obama under the Bus?

I don’t think that I have had a negative thing to say about the super-delegates in the Democratic party. In fact, it is possible that they are a good idea. Since the media does not vet Democratic candidates, we will never know when suddenly, one candidate becomes unviable, because some truth leaks out.

This is what has happened to Obama. He seemed like the perfect liberal candidate. More taxes, more government programs, unity for Democrats, and, bonus, he’s black.

However, with Wright, it is clear that Obama cannot be elected president (even if he ran against Ron Paul).

The Democrats have a system to deal with this: the super-delegates. Even if Obama is ahead in every way possible, the super-delegates can overthrow this mandate of the people, so that they have a better chance of getting an electable Democratic nominee.

There is only one catch: Obama’s black. What will happen at the convention if he is not the nominee? You know how angry and crazy the left has been over the past 7 years. Could they get worse? Is that possible?

Secondly, what will blacks do if their candidate is not elected? Originally, Obama was not a candidate of race, but now he is.

In any case, Rush had a good rant about this, and how Democrats do not need to fear losing the black vote:

Rush on the Black Vote

RUSH: Now, for those of you who are Democrat superdelegates; may I have your attention, please? As you know, I addressed your fear yesterday, and I know how you people are thinking. You're in the depths of fear over what to do now, because it's clear that you, the superdelegates, are going to decide who is your party's nominee; and in the process, you are going to be committing political murder against one of these candidates. You alone are going to decide, and it used to be six months ago you were proud to be able to do this because you were operating from the context of confidence and inevitability. It was like a slam dunk. Now you're operating from fear, and incorrect decisions are made during times of crisis and fear. And the greatest fear that you superdelegates have... I mean, you can see the trend lines here.

You know what's happening. The bloom is off the rose. The messiah, it has turned out, cannot walk on water. Mrs. Clinton's been hanging in there. She has got the testicle lockbox, and it's opening and shutting on schedule. You can see the trend lines, but you're scared to death to take this away from Obama because he leads in delegates; and you're really frightened that you are going to lose the black vote, perhaps permanently, if you take away the nomination. It must be apparent to you that Senator Obama will not lead you to victory. You have to know this. But you fear that denying him support will create a permanent fissure between black voters and Democrats. No Democrat has the courage to examine this flawed premise. It is up to me to advise and address you superdelegates to consider some facts. President John Kennedy and his brother Robert Kennedy wiretapped Dr. King. Black voters stayed with Democrats. Democrats stood in the schoolhouse doors vowing, "Segregation forever!"

Democrats voted against landmark civil rights legislation; Republicans passed it. Blacks stayed with Democrats. Bull Connor was a Democrat. Blacks stayed with Democrats. Democrats created the welfare state, destroying millions of black families. Blacks stayed with Democrats. Democrats bent over forward for the teachers unions, ruining public education for generations of black kids; leaving them unequipped to participate as equals in American society. Yet! Black voters stayed with Democrats. Democrats urged the early release of criminals to further prey on law-abiding black citizens. Blacks stayed with Democrats. Democrats threw blacks under the bus during the immigration debate. After Rosa Parks finally moved to the front of the bus, Democrats threw blacks under it during the immigration debate because Hispanics are now the largest minority voting bloc. Blacks stayed with Democrats. Democrats have not supported blacks achieving power.

Carl McCall was running for governor of New York, and was denied funds from Terry McAuliffe at the Democrat National Committee. This audience contributed to McCall's campaign. Civil rights icon Maynard Jackson wanted to be head honcho of the Democrat National Convention. He was denied. Blacks stayed with Democrats. Earlier this year in Selma, Alabama, Mrs. Clinton shows up; mocks the way black people speak. Her husband, Bill Clinton, the reputed "first black president," shows up in South Carolina and plays not the race card, but a whole deck of race cards! (doing Clinton impression) "Obama? Ha! Of course he gonna win. I mean, it's like Jesse Jackson. I mean, he's the black guy." Blacks stayed with Democrats. You superdelegates in the Democrat Party, you're worried about denying Obama the nomination because you fear that your black voters will abandon you permanently? Come, come! Review your history with me once again. You Democrats have already done far worse to black voters than yanking the nomination away from Barack Obama. Have no fear, superdelegates. Be confident. Blacks will stay with you. So will Jesse Jackson, so will Al Sharpton, and you can have them.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We'll start in Canoga Park, California. Hi Fred. It's great to have you with us, sir.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. I think you're a racist.

RUSH: Well, that's refreshing. Why, Fred?

CALLER: Well, I -- I think you're insinuating that blacks are too stupid to have a learning curve.

RUSH: No, I think you're inferring that.

CALLER: No, I think you're saying it.

RUSH: I'm not. You're inferring it. I'm not implying anything. I stated facts.

CALLER: You're saying that --

RUSH: All these things happened, and Democrats continued to get the votes of the majority of black voters. It's just their political allegiance. It's not a comment on race or intelligence.

CALLER: Well, you're saying there's nothing the Democrats can do that -- that'll stop the -- the blacks from voting for them, that the blacks are too stupid to even vote in their own best interests.

RUSH: No, no, no, no. I didn't say that! You're putting words in my mouth.

CALLER: Oh, you didn't say that? You didn't say that blacks keep voting for stuff that's not in their own best interests and that they can't learn?

RUSH: I didn't say that. I did not say that. This is a classic illustration. You heard what you wanted to hear based on your own biases and prejudices. I simply recited some facts for you. These are not arguable. These things I said are not arguable. Now, you want to talk about why blacks continue to vote for Democrats despite this? I'll be glad to tell you about that.

CALLER: Yes, let's -- let's hear the Rush psychology.

RUSH: For 50 years, black people in this country have been told by elected Democrats that Republicans and conservatives are racists, sexists, bigots, and homophobes; that they have no desire for them to become equal or progress economically -- and then you couple that with ministers like Farrakhan and Jeremiah Wright reinforcing what other black leaders like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson do, and it all becomes very simple. They have been scared to death. Black voters have been told for 50 years that their lives will be ruined if they vote for Republicans, because Republicans don't care about them. When you vote out of fear, it's the same thing the Democrats have done with elderly people, our seasoned citizens and Social Security. It's almost predictable that every election cycle, the Democrats, somebody, will predict or tell old people -- with phone calls, robophone calls, push polling or even blatantly out in the open -- senior citizens that Republicans want to take back their Social Security.

I remember in 1988. I was in Sacramento, California, and Alan Cranston (the Senator from California then) was telling people on television out there, Republicans wanted to kick senior citizens out of their homes if Reagan was reelected. Now, if you're a senior citizen and you don't pay a whole lot of attention and you hear that and you're a Democrat and you have party loyalty going into this and you hear Cranston say that, and all you have is your Social Security; you're not going to take the chance that Cranston's wrong, because if he's telling you, "He's in the Senate. Why, he's a powerful man. He's a United States senator!" If he's telling you that Republicans will kick you out of your house or take your Social Security away, you're not going to take the chance that he's wrong. It's the same thing with the black population here. For 50 years they have been lied to. They have been made to live in fear of Republicans. It's gotten to the point here, Fred -- this is undeniable.

Black people in this country who have achieved great things without going through the Democrat Party civil rights prescriptions to do so -- and I can give you a host of names if you want -- are routinely savaged and destroyed or at least attempts are made to destroy them, as Uncle Toms. For example, Clarence Thomas, Shelby Steele. There are a number of highly accomplished black people who have become Republicans, and they are held out as traitors. How can you explain it otherwise when young black kids are told in school if they learn to do well on tests, they're being "too white"? Who's telling them this? It isn't us. It's the Democrat Party and its agents. All I'm trying to do is make it easy for the superdelegates, here. They know they got a problem. The problem is that Obama cannot win. But they are afraid to pull the nomination from him because he's getting 80% of the black vote; and they think the black vote will not show up in November and vote Democrat, and I'm simply trying to tell them that there's a 50-year history of showing that they have done far worse.

I mean, what worse can you do than destroy the black family with welfare, that didn't work, and took the place of the father and the husband? What more can you do to black people than destroy their family? And Democrats still vote for them. I have said on this program for countless years, countless times: If it were me, and I've been holding out hope and listening to the promises of a political party for 50 years -- and after all those 50 years I'm still complaining and whining about same circumstances I was in 50 years ago -- I'd begin to question my vote. "Wait a minute. You know, you guys keep promising these things, and nothing ever happens. You keep blaming the Republicans for my problems. You promise you're going to fix 'em, and then you forget us after the election. I think you're taking us for granted." I would start to question it. But that hasn't happened. It has not happened. The Democrat Party is perceived in the minds of 80 to 90% of the black population, as its only hope. This is the result of fear that's been instilled. So, this little litany of things I said to try to assure the superdelegates that they could do what they want without any fear whatsoever, blacks will leave them; is unarguable. It's pure, 100% fact.

Entertaining Democratic Primary

As I said, the left is getting crazier and crazier. What about those on the left from Florida? If their voices are not heard, what are they going to do?

I guarantee you that this Democratic convention in Denver is going to be the highest-rated convention of all time.

The insanity of the left, which has been focused on President Bush for the past 7 years is now going to be focused on whether or not they get their way. It is going to be fantastic! This will be a reporter’s dream. Suggestion: wear a bullet-proof vest and headgear. Carry a backup means of recording the excitement.

Here is one example of many; Rosanne Barr wants a rumble in Denver:

http://radioequalizer.blogspot.com/2008/04/air-americas-roseanne-barr-wants-1968.html

Rush on Democratic Floridian Anger

RUSH: Let's get that audio sound bite from Florida, shall we? It's number two, Mister Broadcast Engineer. This was yesterday in Washington, and this is a portion of a group of protesters outside the Democrat National Committee. It is obvious to me that Senator Ken Salazar of Colorado is going to have to hire or at least purchase some more letterhead, 'cause he's gonna be sending out letters left and right demanding that there be condemnations of all these Democrats threatening civil unrest at the Democrat National Convention. This is an unidentified female protester.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We will shut down the convention! (cheers and applause) Nobody is gonna get in until Florida goes in.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If the Florida delegation is not seated, we will March on Denver. (cheers and applause) We'll take all the buses willing to go to Denver (cheers and applause) and we will shut that convention down before it gets started.

RUSH: Senator Salazar, we are going to find out who this group is, Florida Democrats protesting outside the Democrat National Committee, so that you can send a letter to whoever their boss is demanding that they be reprimanded. Ladies and gentlemen, the voices you just heard, sadly, are our neighbors. These are people who live -- well, not that close to me, but they are dangerously close to Snerdley and Dawn and Brian. I have a moat that protects me from these people, but these are our neighbors, Democrats from Florida still reeling over what happened in 2000, demanding that they be seated at the convention in Denver. And if they're not, promising all hell will break loose before the thing even gets started.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I'll play audio sound bite number two again. If you're just joining us, ladies and gentlemen -- you're a welfare recipient just getting out of bed -- and you missed this, Florida Democrats, our neighbors here, went to Washington yesterday to protest outside the Democrat National Committee.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: We will shut down the convention! (cheers and applause) Nobody is gonna get in until Florida goes in!

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: If the Florida delegation is not seated, we will march on Denver! (cheers and applause) We'll take all the buses willing to go to Denver (cheers and applause) and we will shut that convention down before it gets started. (cheers and applause)

RUSH: Once again, I'm actually thinking of buying some letterhead myself for Senator Ken Salazar because he's gotta send a lot of letters here to these people.

Rush, on the Truth

CALLER: Well, we not only trust you, we believe that we understand you; and one of the things that we understand is that the liberals don't understand you, and that is a great source of their confusion. Because you tell them the truth, and that confuses them about what the truth might be.

RUSH: Exactly! Because they don't deal in the truth, somebody that does confuses them. We even had this happen: George Bush, after he was inaugurated in 2001 started pursuing his legislative agenda and there were a couple Democrats that said, "Wait, wait, wait! He's doing what he said he was going to do." You remember that? "He's doing what he said he was going to do!" We at Operation Chaos have telegraphed every move. We have given them countless head starts to stop us. They haven't been able to. They can't stop us, even knowing full in advance, well in advance what we're going to do.

Rush on Clinton’s Ignorance

Rush here is commenting on one aspect of O’Reilly’s interview with Clinton:

RUSH: O'Reilly said, "Oil prices. You want us to suspend the federal gas tax. So does McCain. Obama doesn't. But when I hear that, I say, 'It's the same old politician stuff because the Democrat Party was opposed, is opposed to ANWR drilling.' You voted against nuclear energy seven times. And I'm saying to myself, 'Both parties, both parties have sold the folks out on energy, when the folks are getting hammered and they should be angry at both parties.' Where am I going wrong?"

HILLARY: Well, here's what I think. I think there's plenty of blame to go around. We're not acting like Americans, Bill. We're not in charge, and I want to put us back in charge. I also want to take on OPEC. You know, OPEC is a cartel, it's a monopoly.

O'REILLY: You want to take them on?

HILLARY: Yes.

O'REILLY: They don't care what you say. They're in Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

HILLARY: Nine of the 13 biggest oil producing companies that are in OPEC are also members of the WTO. I would file complaints. I would also change the laws so that citizens and businesses could file anti-trust actions. We're going to begin to hold them accountable.

RUSH: What the hell is she talking about? Why are any of you afraid of this ditz? Did you just hear what she said her plan of action is to bring down oil prices? Lawsuits! Against bin al-Weid Taliban Asheed Sahib Skyhook. Do you know what bin Talawad Kalabi Asid Sahib Skyhook is going to do when he sees Mrs. Clinton's lawsuit at the World Trade Organization? He's going to make a paper airplane out of it and send it back over here on one of his Airbus A380s. This is how they want to fight terrorism: with lawsuits! OPEC is not a monopoly. There are many oil producing companies that are not part of OPEC. This is incompetence on parade.

Rush Interviews Andrew McCarthy

Rush rarely does interviews; however, he is one of the best in the biz.

McCarthy wrote Willful Blindness, and how we do not seem to recognize where we are in history and who are enemies are.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OWM1ZDFmOTllMzgxNTY5ZGUyMzVjNTJiY2YzNWY5YWE=

RUSH: Now, as you know, folks, we don't do too many interviews here. We're not on the author circuit. Friends of mine, however, do write books; and I try to have them on, especially in this most recent example. Andrew McCarthy has written a book entitled Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad. Its timing is beautiful, because we have been so successful in thwarting another attack, terrorist attack on our country, that it is easy for people to assume the threat has subsided when it really hasn't. I welcome to the program, Andy McCarthy, good friend, how are you sir?

MCCARTHY: Happy to talk to you, sir.

RUSH: It's great to have you here. Now, let's get started with this, because there's a lot to discuss with you. There are three themes in Andy's book, folks. The first theme is that a foreign threat to national security is fundamentally a political issue of self-defense that would involve military. It's not a legal issue involving lawyers and criminal law. The second theme is that we have been at war with these people -- declared by them -- since the late eighties, early nineties, and it wasn't taken seriously until 9/11. The third one is what's fascinating to me. I can't wait 'til we get to that portion. It's "You Can't Take the Islam Out of Islamic terrorism." Andy tried the blind sheik, and I'll let him tell you the story when we get there about preparing to cross-examine the blind sheik. He expected to find that this guy was just a fringe nut, making things up -- and nothing he said was made up about Islam. So let's start where you think we need to start for people to understand the threat that we still face, and maybe you want to do that by starting at the beginning and how you became aware of it.

MCCARTHY: Well, I knew nothing more about radical Islam, Rush, in 1993 when I got brought into this than, you know, anyone who's had a fairly good education in the United States; which is to say, you know, maybe the barest headlines, but not a whole lot of substance underneath that. The whole experience was really an eye-opener for me in many ways. Probably most basically, by realizing that the people who founded our country had a much more humble and better idea about how the country would need to be defended. They didn't assume that America would be forever, and they certainly were not under a delusion that we could be protected by our legal system from foreign threats to our security. They had a very strong conviction that there had to be an accountability nexus between the people who made national security decisions and the people whose lives were at stake. And what that meant was that the courts essentially were going to have no role in national security. They had an important role in our system, but not in protecting our nation from foreign threats. I guess what my battle scars are about is trying to basically square that circle, trying to use our criminal justice system as a means from protecting us from people who actually mean us an existential threat to our system.

RUSH: All right. So what are the numbers? Through the Clinton years and even prior to that, we sought to deal with this threat via the courts, indictments. How successful have we been?

MCCARTHY: Well, if your point of reference is national security, it's an abysmal failure. Most of the time when I talked about this it turns out to be at law schools, where what they're interested in is due process, and they look at it and say, "But look, you convicted everyone. You know, you batted a thousand," which obviously you can't do better than that. But in point of fact in eight years we took out 29 people, which, when you consider the fact that, you know, between the time the trade center was bombed in '93 -- which I think is the declaration of war -- and the time it was destroyed on 9/11, we had an enemy that was growing bigger and bolder, attacking us about once a year, and our response to it -- even as the attacks became more ferocious -- was essentially to add more counts to the indictment, which is really not impressive to people who are willing to immolate themselves in terrorist attacks.

RUSH: We indicted Bin Laden, right, in 1998? This was before all the embassy bombings and the millennium plot, the USS Cole and 9/11. We indicted Bin Laden, and yet, we don't have Bin Laden. So tell me something: Why is it? Is it a political issue, is it ideological? Is it most of the people that want to use the legal system to go after these people, are they liberals? Are they on the left? What is their philosophy behind this is the best way to go about it?

MCCARTHY: Well, I think it's a variety of different explanations for it, but I think the predominant one is mainly a human nature-type element, which is that we'd like to believe we're in more control of this than we are. One way that you can convince yourself of that is that you take it on in court, which really does not require you to go to a war footing; and then you look at the bottom line, and you seem to be convicting people -- and as I try to explain in the book, you know, with all the appearances that you have in court, and all the proceedings, pretrial, post-trial sentencing et cetera, you know, four people can look like 40 or 400 people pretty soon. You know, and it's a real opportunity if you want to use it that way -- and I think a lot of our politicians have wanted to use it that way -- to make it look like you're doing more than you are actually doing at a low cost. But you can't put the costs off forever, and I think we found that out on 9/11. The reason that it's so obvious, I think, that the criminal justice approach is too paltry a way to respond to this is: Why haven't we had another attack in seven years? Now, some of it is unquestionably luck. But a lot of it is the fact that we're killing and capturing terrorists. In a single day of combat in Iraq or Afghanistan, we will often take out more people than we took out in the eight years between the bombing of the trade center and the destruction of it. That is very meaningful in terms of confronting people who mean you real harm.

RUSH: Explain something to me, if you would. How is it that some people think that, with the legal system -- the foundation of it is the presumption of innocence.

MCCARTHY: Right.

RUSH: Presume everybody that comes to court is innocent in our domestic legal system. How can anybody think that will apply to armed militants under declared hostilities against the country? Not individuals. How can anybody think that that would apply?

MCCARTHY: They can't if they actually sit down and think it through logically, but that's not the way it works, and it certainly was not the ethos of government when I was in it. What people think instead of the logic of the point that you've just made --

RUSH: Yeah?

MCCARTHY: -- is that it is important in terms of not only our self-esteem, which is generally speaking their self-esteem, but our, quote, unquote, "image in the world."

RUSH: Right.

MCCARTHY: You hear a lot about, "We need to bring terrorists into our system, give them the full power of due process that we would give to a tax cheat," and get them convicted under all those presumptions that you just described, and then that way we can feel good about ourselves.

RUSH: Yeah, but they wouldn't be convicted.

MCCARTHY: (laughing) No, right.

RUSH: By the time you let the defense bar at these guys --

MCCARTHY: Oh, that. (laughing)

RUSH: -- they wouldn't be convicted. That's the whole point, and, you know, some people are of the opinion that there is a group of people in this country that would love to have the enemy win, by hook or by crook. Close Guantanamo, bring those prisoners here, make them subject to US constitutional rights when they're not even citizens; all for the purposes of embarrassing the country, primarily due to a hatred of George W. Bush.

MCCARTHY: Yeah, it's hard to argue with that because that's exactly what we're seeing. And as you pointed out a second ago, Bin Laden himself is case in point of the limitations of the criminal justice system if what you really wanted to do was take on this threat. I've heard nonstop about how we went to Afghanistan, we did a lot of damage and we broke a lot of things but we didn't get him. Well, it's not like he just started in 2001. He had something of a career before then, and we did indict him in the spring of '98.

RUSH: I'll bet he was quaking in his boots, too.

MCCARTHY: Yeah, well, it hasn't seemed to do much to him. We actually indicted him even before the embassy bombings and there's probably about six weeks time between the time we indicted him and the time the embassies were taken out. So, look, if you are trying to do is stop this enemy from having an ability to project power on the scale of a nation; you're never, ever, going to do it by indicting him in the criminal justice system. It just can't work.

RUSH: Talking to Andrew McCarthy, author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad. We'll continue right after this.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We're talking with a good friend of mine, Andrew McCarthy, author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad. Andy, let's explain to people your direct involvement with this. You were at the US attorney's office SDNY, for those of you in the know, Southern District New York. You prepared for trial; you're on the prosecution team I think with Pat Fitzgerald, correct?

MCCARTHY: That's right. Actually we like to say he was with me, back then.

RUSH: Yeah, well, I like the way that sounds.

MCCARTHY: (laughing)

RUSH: So who were the suspects, who were the defendants in this case?

MCCARTHY: Well, the World Trade Center had been bombed when I got brought into the case. There was already four people under arrest for that, and the trial was being prepared by another group of prosecutors, but what we found right after the Trade Center bombing was that this same organization was plotting something that was even more ambitious and horrifying, which was an attack that would be simultaneous against the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, the United Nations complex on the east side of Manhattan, and possibly also the FBI's downtown Manhattan headquarters. And they were going to try to hit them all at the same time. But we had the fortuity of actually having an informant who had infiltrated the organization.

Regrettably, he had infiltrated it before the

Trade Center bombing, but in a dispute with the FBI he left the investigation and then was brought back in after the Trade Center bombing. So we managed to stop that attack, I was brought in at the investigative stage. I think the interesting thing about that is not so much my participation in it as the fact that there really is no substitute for human intelligence. It's really the only terrorism attack that we stopped by anything other than dumb luck, which I think is sort of a lesson we should have learned by now. But I was brought in basically to run that investigation and then try to bring in indictments that was going to target the organization that had carried out not only the Trade Center attack, but this other attack, and really kind of bring it back to where it first began here in America.

RUSH: And this is where you first came into contact in a legal sense with Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman. He was the mastermind, the leader, the guru of this gang?

MCCARTHY: Yes. And he actually had a considerable history before he ever got here. He has taken credit for it, and I think credibly, having issued the fatwa for the murder of President Anwar Sadat in 1981, the Egyptian president who committed the great crime of making peace with Israel. He was murdered, and the murder was carried out by Egyptian terrorist organizations. Abdel Rahman, the Blind Sheik, was a major mover and shaker in those circles, and then he gets himself basically to Afghanistan, where he hooks up with people like Bin Laden and Zawahiri and, you know, the other names that were not household names like he was back then, but have become that way for us and ultimately came to America in 1990. And the way he got here basically is an unfortunate comedy of errors which seems to be a running theme in my book, but, you know, basically we didn't put him on the terrorist watch list when we should have.

RUSH: But we knew he was a terrorist when we let him in?

MCCARTHY: Correct.

RUSH: Did he come in through JFK and ask for asylum, did he use that method?

MCCARTHY: No, he came in a variety of different ways, and he didn't have to ask for asylum until the end because we just let him in. It really was awful. I mean, he was on the list, but we didn't read the list and then when he got here it turned out that, you know, one office is investigating him and the other is giving him a green card as a religious instructor, you know, not our finest hour, but unfortunately a sort of a steady theme of all this. You know, if we look back at the 1993 attack, we had very good reason to know that it was coming. We had the FBI conducting surveillance in the late 1980s of these guys as they were conducting paramilitary training out in Long Island. We had, you know, a CIA angle to this because they were basically funding large parts of the mujahideen in Afghanistan, and they were doing it through the Pakistanis who were very sympathetic to the most anti-American elements of the mujahideen, and then we had this murder of Meir Kahane, the founder of the Jewish Defense League in 1990 where that murder was committed by a guy named El Sayyid Nosair, who was actually reporting to the Blind Sheik even while the Blind Sheik was over in Egypt, and though it was quite clear from the stuff that was seized from him that he was part of something that was much bigger and had much more ambitious designs than just the murder of Kahane, there was a decision made at that time to treat that murder like it was the work of a lone gunman, in order to prevent any religious element from getting into the case, which I think was a big mistake unfortunately.

RUSH: Well, there you go, the legal situation again, the legal circumstance seems to be present in this in misjudging the way to actually go about this and assessing the threat. But I can't help but go back to say you only learned all this because you had an informant. It's beyond dumb luck, but human intel is how you learned about all this.

MCCARTHY: Yes.

RUSH: And that, of course, helped you prepare your case. What was your role in the trial against the Blind Sheik?

MCCARTHY: Well, I was the lead prosecutor, and that informant turned out to be the main witness in the case, and he was my witness, so I spent, you know, quite a bit of time studying what he had done and also, you know, having to do the other odds and ends that you do when you do a case like this, one of which was to try to get prepared in the event the Blind Sheik decided to testify, which, you know, ultimately he didn't do but that didn't mean we didn't have to prepare for it. And that was an eye-opener. In fact, the whole experience in watching the dynamic of him and other people in the Muslim community throughout the trial was a real eye-opener for me. I wanted to believe in 1993 the stuff that we were putting out, you know, that he basically perverted who was otherwise a peaceful doctrine. But what I found was going through all of his thousands of pages of transcripts and statements, was that when he cited scripture to justify acts of terrorism, to the extent he was quoting scripture or referring to it, he did it accurately, which shouldn't be a surprise.

RUSH: So you went in thinking this guy might be a fringe little kooky and perverting Islam, and you were stunned to find out that everything he said or proclaimed had a root basis?

MCCARTHY: That's correct. There's no other way of putting it. And it shouldn't have been a surprise. I mean, he was a doctor of Islamic jurisprudence, graduated from Al-Azhar University in Egypt. Why in the world I would have thought that I or the Justice Department would know more about Islam than he would is beyond me now that I look back on it, but back then I was pretty confident that we must have been right when we said that he was basically perverting the doctrine.

RUSH: Look, I've got less than 45 seconds here, and I want to spend a little time on the second theme. We've jumped from one to number three here. The second theme, we touched on it a little bit, we're at war, they declared it, we haven't really accepted it, I want to ask if you think -- you can ponder this during our profit center time-out, Obscene Profit Center break coming up, you can ponder whether or not we have gone soft again, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but the time in your book I think gives me some indication of the answer. We're talking to Andrew McCarthy, author of the important and timely Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad. And we got one more segment with him. I'm sure you have the time. I didn't ask you if you could go longer than a half hour.

MCCARTHY: I'd be delighted.

RUSH: All right, we'll be back and continue after this.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: And we resume our conversation with Andrew McCarthy; author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad. If you just missed it, we just finished a discussion of Andy being the lead prosecutor on the conviction of the Blind Sheik -- 1993 World Trade Center -- and I want to repeat this point because I think it's crucial. In preparing for the prosecution and possible witness testimony on the stand of the Blind Sheik -- who ended up not taking the stand -- you had to prepare for it, and you assumed him to be a fruitcake. Nobody, nobody's religion could actually have things in scripture that he was citing, and you found out everything he said was there. It opened your eyes, and I think this is the kind of thing... We're in the middle of a presidential campaign, and you've talked about the notion here that they declared war on us, you cite 1993. We didn't take it seriously until 2001. Do you think we still take it seriously?

MCCARTHY: We're taking it less seriously. I think there was a time right after 9/11, probably I put it at about 18 months -- probably into the Iraq operation, so longer than that -- that I think we really were taking it seriously. We certainly changed our enforcement methods. The Justice Department still had a role, but it was much more subordinate. The military was out front, which it needed to be in that phase, but there was a realization that it needed to be a wholesale government approach. But when I read things like what we've heard in the last few days about how we're getting guidance inside the government about purging our lexicon and saying things like jihadism and mujahideen and the like and --

RUSH: Wait. Wait, wait, wait! Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Who's getting what? Guidance? Who in the government is sending this out to who?

MCCARTHY: Well, the reporting that's come out since -- I guess it was about April 24th -- is that the internal syncing at least in parts of the administration -- and this is something the State Department's pushed for a long time -- is that we make a mistake call jihadism, jihadism; because there are all kinds of jihad, not just forceable jihad. This is how the thinking goes. And, by the way, while there may be all kinds of jihad, jihad is a military concept. That's how it grew up. That's the reason there is a Muslim world in the first place. But secondly the idea is that when you call them jihadists, you are somehow emboldening them as if what they were relying on is how we regard them rather than how they see themselves. And that you also --

RUSH: So what are we supposed to call 'em?

MCCARTHY: Well, I'm down to thinking -- as I wrote in a piece in National Review a couple years ago, I think maybe -- we should just call it "Mabel" or something. Because it seems like everything that you say that touches on this... We're so intimidated by the idea that there's a religious label on this and everybody is so afraid of their shadow to talk about it, that whenever you say what is obvious -- which is that you can't take the "Islam" out of Islamic terror and that the main cause of this is not democracy or lack of democracy; or, you know, ancient hatreds or the economy, poverty, or whatever our excuse is this week. This is driven by doctrine. You know, we have poor people all over the world. They're not all committing terrorism.

RUSH: Are the leaders of this movement people of wealth? We know Bin Laden's a man of great wealth; his family was. I don't know about Zawahiri, but he was a doctor in Egypt. What about Rahman? Are the leaders of this movement who are getting hold of these young kids at very impressionable ages and turning them into little hate missiles, are they wealthy people? I mean, so many people in this country believe that it is our usurpation and actual stealing of the world's resources leading these poor people, these nomads with nothing, and they just hate us for that reason?

MCCARTHY: You know, that's a great point. The ideology that we're talking about here is 14 centuries old. It existed and thrived before there was a United States. It has commanded the allegiance of the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the educated and uneducated -- to some extent, Sunnis and Shi'ites, princes and paupers. You know, you can't pigeonhole one rationale for why it exists other than the obvious one, which is that it's a matter of doctrine and the people who believe it believe it's a divine injunction and that mankind doesn't have a right to make laws which run afoul of what they believe is the law that was handed down by Allah directly to Mohammed 14 centuries ago.

RUSH: We live in the United States of America, and the people who live here, many of them have not traveled abroad; and as a result there are many things that they take for granted and one of the things I think a lot of people take for granted is that we're pretty much like the rest of the world, except they're very impressionable and they're told that the rest of the world hates us. They despise us because of our affluence, because our productivity, because we are a small portion of the world's population and we use a majority of the world's resources. All these things, and the education system labels guilt throughout our society. You mentioned these people in the fourteenth century. One of the things I constantly try to tell people is that -- to demonstrate the true greatness of western democracies, representative republics and a western civilization, a culture. We are all born as little savages. If we were not raised by parents -- if we were not instructed in right and wrong, morality and so forth -- we would turn out however we did. These people remind me of just that. They're being raised to behave and think as they do. I'm talking about the jihadists, this culture that's 1400 years old. Human beings are not by instinct, not by nature good. That has to be programmed into them, it has to be raised in them -- and these people of course have a different definition. They think they are good, they're doing everything in the name of God, and yet their crimes are against humanity.

MCCARTHY: You know, Rush, that's exactly right. It actually brings me to another memory of the dynamic between the Blind Sheik and the community, which was an eye-opener and a frightening one to me. We had very long defense case in the case. It actually went on for about two months; and during the course of it, any number of moderate people came in -- and they really were authentic moderate people. There's no way on God's green earth they ever would have crossed into terrorism activity. But every now and then when they were on the stand, a question of theology would come up, of doctrine. You know, "What does jihad mean? What does this concept mean?" and at least three different times, they answered, "I wouldn't be competent to say. You'd have to ask someone like him about that."

RUSH: Meaning Rahman.

MCCARTHY: This was the homicidal maniac sitting in the corner of my courtroom. What it flagged for me was even though these people were very moderate and peaceful people -- you'd never see them be terrorists -- they were willing in a matter of importance in their own doctrine to rely on his viewpoint of it. The second thing is, the world is exactly as you've described it, and every place is not America. When you go overseas -- and particularly when you go to parts of the Muslim world where there's rampant illiteracy and where they think that learning the Koran is really the kit and caboodle of what you need in the way of education -- these fiery clerics, whatever we may think of them, are powerfully influential in those parts of the world; and it's not an accident that when you have the cartoons -- the Dutch cartoons come out or you have this woman in the Sudan who, you know, named the teddy bear Mohammed -- it's not a big surprise that you get riot on demand. When these guys say, "Islam has been insulted," when they say, "Islam is under siege," a lot of people snap to. They're very influential. It's frightening, and I think that we underestimate at our peril how much influence they have.

RUSH: We're in the middle of a presidential campaign, and the sum total of discussion on this focuses on distorting McCain's statement that if we have to stay in Iraq a hundred years, we'll do it; talking about ending torture (of course we're the guilty ones); closing Guantanamo; getting out of Iraq. There is literally hardly any discussion about the war on terror other than the Democrats promising -- just as they promised to lower gas prices after they won the House in 2006 -- that they're going to get Bin Laden. It's not part of the presidential campaign. Granted, there are more pressing issues daily that people face and see now with economic circumstances as they are. What's it gonna take? (chuckles) I almost hate to hear the answer to this. What's it going to take to wake people up again to the existence of this threat, and just because we've thwarted one on our soil for seven years; however we've done it, doesn't mean the threat's gone away or is any less intense. What's it going to take?

MCCARTHY: Well, I hope it doesn't take another attack, but it's probably going to take at least a sense that we could be attacked that certainly isn't present for us now -- and in terms of what you're talking about now, you know, I haven't been the biggest McCain fan to the planet, but let me give him this much of his due. He wants to get the job done in Iraq at least insofar as it means defeating Al-Qaeda there. I can't stress to people how important that is. Even if you don't agree with why we went to Iraq in the first place -- and, you know, say we should never have been there --the fact is that the worst thing we ever did was pull out of Lebanon in 1983 when the Marine barracks got hit. The next worst thing we probably ever did was pull out of Somalia when that got ugly. These people -- and when I talk about "these people," I mean people like Bin Laden and the Blind Sheik -- if used to a fair thee well as a recruiting tool this notion that they're the strong horse, we're the weak horse; and if they make it ugly enough and bloody enough for us, that we will pull out. It's like when a very strong team plays a very weak team in sports. The strong team can never give the weak team a sniff, because the minute you do and they start to think they can win, and they start to believe in themselves, they become much more efficient. It becomes much more easy for them to recruit, to raise money, to do all the things they have to do to take on a superpower. What they have going for them that we don't, is they have basically eradicated our threshold idea of what is civilized behavior. They are willing to do anything to win, and they're absolutely sure that history is on their side. Unless we become more sure than we are now that we're right, and that we have a need to show them that however long it takes, we're going to do what has to be done to win; you know, we can't rely on the fact that we're a super power and that it's inevitable that we'll win this thing.

RUSH: Andy McCarthy, thanks so much for your time. This is a book that if you don't want to get scared too much, you should read. It's timely and it's important, and we just scratched the surface. The title of the book: Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad. Best of luck with it, Andy, and thanks so much for your time here today.

MCCARTHY: Rush, thank you. I appreciate it.

RUSH: You bet. Andrew McCarthy.

END TRANSCRIPT

Kay Baily Hutchinson on Ethanol

Rush conducted this short phone interview:

RUSH: I'm really excited to have with us for a couple minutes here, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison from Texas, and I wish to speak to her about this ethanol problem because she's really on the case and has written an op-ed piece in Investor's Business Daily about this. Senator Hutchinson, welcome to the program. It's always nice to have you here and talk to you.

SEN. HUTCHISON: It is great to be with you, Rush. We are listeners in our family. We think you have done a great job for kind of changing the thought processes of America.

RUSH: I appreciate that.

SEN. HUTCHISON: It's great to talk to you.

RUSH: What's going on with this? Where are we headed with this? Why is it that you are one of the few voices in the elected government that's trying to stop the growth of ethanol, given the problems apparently related to it?

SEN. HUTCHISON: Well, of course there are many interests that don't want to stop this ethanol mandate; and I think that the time has come for us to really, Rush, look at the things that we can do that might bring the cost of fuel and the cost of food and gasoline at the pump down. We can't do a lot, but one of the few things we could do is put a freeze on this ethanol mandate and just let's take a pause and not have this kind of requirement where we are on the one side subsidizing this product, but on the other side the price is so high that it's causing really a ripple effect throughout our food industry.

RUSH: And around the world.

SEN. HUTCHISON: Yes.

RUSH: I mean, even Prime Minister Brown is suggesting something similar to your idea, that it's just gotten out of hand. It's just typical. I'm sure people behind this, at some point -- I'll be gracious -- had good intentions, but the unintended consequences of this make it clearly a boondoggle. But there's some politics involved here. I remember talking about this, Senator, not long ago on the program; and I was besieged with phone calls from people in Iowa who said, "Rush, don't you know who votes for Republicans out here?" meaning agricultural people and this sort of thing. So that's a factor in this, too. Do you feel like you're taking any kind of a risk by proposing this?

SEN. HUTCHISON: Well, yes. I mean, they're in a different system, and they're used to it, and we have to understand everybody's problems. But right now the price of corn is so high, farmers are doing great; and we don't need a mandate. The price will stay high, but it will just come down some, and it will also -- I mean, yeah, I think the market can work here. I think that farmers will continue to do well. But the emphasis on corn is now crowding out people who used to plant wheat. The emphasis on ethanol is also affecting soy and maize and palm oil. It's having unintended consequences. I think when we do something in Congress and it has an unintended consequence, our responsibility is to assess the situation. We're on the brink of recession. We're not technically there yet, thank goodness, but we need to assess where we can make a difference, and this is one area that would be relatively easy.

RUSH: Well, to us out here, it seems like a no-brainer. There are problems related with it. It's not the sole reason why transportation costs are up and fuel prices are up and food prices and scarcity are happening, but it's a contributing reason. Those of us out here who, you know, we don't understand the day-to-day workings of what goes on in these bodies such as the House and the Senate; it looks to us like it's not working. Stop it. It just isn't working. We've tried it. The intentions might have been honorable, but it isn't working, so we move on. But if we're not going to do that, it's going to keep wreaking this damage -- and you're right, it has ripple and residual, ancillary effects throughout the culture.

SEN. HUTCHISON: I met with a group of people who process chickens -- Pilgrim's Pride, Anderson Farms, Tyson -- and they are shutting down parts of their plants, their operations. They are all going to report drastically reduced, not just profits, I mean losses. They're going to have big losses at the end of this month. And they're just saying, they have got to have some relief. I sympathize with them. They're putting the food on the table for us, and I've talked to cattle producers. I've talked to pig producers. They are all saying the same thing: The cost of food and the cost of fuel, is just killing their ability to continue to operate. So I think it's going to get worse, and I'd like to try to do something that might mitigate this and not cause the crisis.

RUSH: But this is just one element. I know the agriculture community likes this. It's something very profitable for them. But at the root of this you find liberalism. You find the environmental movement. This is all part of global warming; this is all part of reducing carbon emissions, reducing dependence on oil and so forth; and none of that is possible. Yet we go down this road because people want their lives to have meaning, and so they buy ethanol thinking they're saving the planet and so forth. It's a devious scheme that we're up against. This food price, this is serious, Senator. I remember the first time I learned when I was a young boy that the profit margin in grocery stores, on food -- not the ancillary things they sell, but the profit margin on food -- was one to one and a half percent. I asked my dad, "How can they survive?" He said, "Son, people have to eat. Food is not a commodity. It's not something that you can mess around with price-wise like you can other things, like electronics or televisions or whatever."

SEN. HUTCHISON: Right.

RUSH: Everybody has to eat. So it has to be affordable for people from all economic ranges, and it's not now. I mean people are reorienting the way they live based on the price of gasoline, and the price of milk and rice and so forth. This is going to have devastating consequences if the problems here that cause this are not really addressed, and that's why I hope you succeed. Your column is very courageous.

SEN. HUTCHISON: Well, thank you very much. I appreciate it. I have gotten the same kinds of calls that you have, but it's just, something that we've got to say, "Look, we did have good intentions, but now we have a lot of other alternative fuels." What we need to do is drill for our own natural resources.

RUSH: Amen!

SEN. HUTCHISON: We need to go into ANWR.

RUSH: Amen.

SEN. HUTCHISON: We need to go into the Outer Continental Shelf where we have our own resources that can help us through this. We need to continue to do research into other forms of renewable energy. Besides solar and wind energy, we can also use waves and currents in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic and Pacific. We've got so many alternatives that we need to pursue. We need more nuclear power plants. We need more refineries. These are things that honestly, Rush, the Democrats are stopping in Congress. Every time we put forward something that could really make a difference, the Democrats are stopping it.

RUSH: Why do you think that is, Senator?

SEN. HUTCHISON: Well, I think they wrongly believe that it's going to hurt the environment to drill in ANWR.

RUSH: Yeah.

SEN. HUTCHISON: ANWR is an area the size of the state of South Carolina. The part that would be drilled is an area the size of JFK airport or Washington National Airport or Dallas Love Field. It's an area the size of an airport that would be drilled because the new technology allows us to drill underground for just hundreds of yards and you don't have to have a lot of wells to drill anymore. But they're not acknowledging that. The people of Alaska want this. They have had referenda. They want the jobs, they want the economic security, and they know it won't hurt the environment. Yet we cannot get a bill through Congress that would allow drilling in that small part of ANWR. These are the kinds of things that just don't make sense when the price of gasoline is so high.

RUSH: Ah, sadly, they do make sense if you understand Democrats. I know you do. We're talking, by the way, with Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison from Texas. Now, yesterday the president made a presentation on energy and said much of the same thing you just said here; and Senator Schumer from New York went out and responded to it and said, "If we started drilling in ANWR today we wouldn't have a drop of oil for ten years." Well, of course, Bill Clinton vetoed the first time this came up in 1994. We could have been at this four years according to his ten-year plan. He also said something that mathematically doesn't make sense. He said that this million barrels a day that ANWR would produce would reduce the price of gasoline or oil -- I forget which one he specified -- by a penny. Well, that's absurd, because when the price of oil... When we lose a million barrels in the supply, does the price only go up a penny? They're using scare tactics, here. We need resources. We need our oil, and you got Schumer out there saying, "No, it wouldn't matter," and they're misleading people thinking that there's a substitute for it right around the corner when there's not.

SEN. HUTCHISON: You're right. When President Clinton vetoed ANWR, we would have been producing. But I totally disagree and reject the argument that it would be ten years. We could start drilling in ANWR, and I think within a couple of years you would start seeing the results. But more important, if we were drilling there and people in the market, in OPEC -- if the people who are hedging in the market for futures in this oil industry. If we were drilling in ANWR -- do you think the price would stay up? No. People would know that there would be an availability. They would know that there was going to be a real difference in what we could produce. The one million barrels a day is the amount we import from Saudi Arabia every day. That's what we would be getting from our own resources and control it; and that doesn't count what we could do if we were drilling off the Atlantic and the Pacific, in environmental safe ways. That's the key. If we took control of our own destiny, we could become energy independent and self-sufficient and not depend on places that don't like us very much like Venezuela.

RUSH: All this makes so much sense that we out here don't understand why it isn't done. We understand the politics of liberalism and the Democrats trying to create as much chaos as they can for reelection purposes in November, but they consistently oppose this kind of independence; despite the fact they're the ones claiming and whining and moaning how dependent we are. But they're the ones that always stand in the way of becoming energy independent, and there has to be more to it than just their own desire for electability. I think it's a little bit more hideous than that. I know you wouldn't want to comment on that. But this is really serious stuff to all of us. The price of everything going up all based on the price of oil and energy. It's all related. There's an ideological group out there, the environmentalists, who are get... They're the only ones that are happy with this. They're getting everything they want out of this. Of course, the people they donate to and vote for are thus happy about it, too; and the country, in the meantime, suffers.

SEN. HUTCHISON: Well, Rush, if we would do this -- if the Democrats and if the people understand this issue enough to force them. If we could open refineries, make it easier to do so; open nuclear power plants, which is the cleanest form of energy at the best, most efficient prices that we could possibly produce it; and drill in ANWR, the Outer Continental Shelf and deep drilling in the Gulf Coast, we could be a country that doesn't have to rely on anyone else. I think we need to make this an issue in this election.

RUSH: I couldn't agree more.

SEN. HUTCHISON: Don't let the Democrats get by with saying, "Oh, it's just terrible that the price of gasoline is high, and it's the president's fault." It is not the president's fault. It's the Democrats in Congress who continue to keep us from drilling in ANWR. We had almost enough, 60 votes, to pass that last time. We were one vote short, couldn't get it, and so here we are again.

RUSH: Quick question, last one. I know you have to go. Senator Obama's running a campaign on "unity" and solving these kind of problems. Could he bring people together on this, Senator, to renew our effort to become energy independent?

SEN. HUTCHISON: Well, I haven't seen any ideas yet from the Democrats that would actually make a difference in our energy independence. That's the key. It's walking the walk as well as talking the talk. We've got to have real action which could be done right now in Congress today. The Democrats are in control of both houses, and yet we can't even get free trade agreements with Colombia much less an open trade --

RUSH: Oh, that's dead, and that's just to protect the unions.

SEN. HUTCHISON: Well, it's just wrong. We've got to have action, and we could make a difference in our energy independence -- and we could certainly make a difference in price, because I think the price of oil would start falling when the other countries that produce oil see that we are taking our destiny in our control. I cannot leave before I say that I listen to you on WBAP when we're home in Dallas. So I hope that you keep running there so that all these messages get out.

RUSH: Thank you, Senator, very much. I appreciate that. It's nice to get so much time with you today. We really appreciate it.

SEN. HUTCHISON: Thank you, Rush. It's great to be with you.

RUSH: Same here. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas.

More Info:

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=294015465776712

Rush: Obama’s Courage

At first, Obama was praised for his courage for not throwing old friend Reverend Wright under the bus. Now, he is praised for throwing Rev. Wright under the bus.

Discuss:

RUSH: This I predicted. I'll give you an example here last night. For those of you who weren't here yesterday, I want to validate that I predicted this. This is what I said on yesterday's program.

RUSH ARCHIVE: So we'll watch the Drive-By Media tonight do their best to spin this into an act of courage, something that's worthwhile of the Kennedy School of Government's award for the Profile in Courage. You know, every year Caroline Kennedy awards a Profile in Courage Award to a great political operative. The Kennedys have endorsed this guy, right? The Kennedys have endorsed this guy. So this is going to be spun as an act of political courage today.

RUSH: We have put together, ladies and gentlemen, a montage of the Drive-By Media the last 24 hours. We have here the Reverend Al Sharpton, former president Jimmy Carter, Democrat analyst Tanya Acker, the Reverend Eugene Rivers, Pat Buchanan, Chris Wallace of Fox, David Mattingly at CNN all talk about Barack Obama's courage.

SHARPTON: Barack Obama showed a real profile in courage.

CARTER: I think it's very wise and courageous.

ACKER: He did something politically courageous.

RIVERS: He was very courageous and is to be commended for the courage he exhibited.

BUCHANAN: You feel sort of anguish for Barack Obama.

WALLACE: You could feel his personal anguish.

MATTINGLY: A very private anguish.

RUSH: Whereas the reaction on this program was precisely the right reaction. The Drive-By Media, left and right, you heard Pat Buchanan in there, the left and the right talking about how this was courageous. This is a classic illustration. I know these people like every square inch of my glorious naked body, ladies and gentlemen, predicted this right down the path. Newspaper stories, our old friend Carla Marinucci in the San Francisco Chronicle: "Obama Praised for Rebuking His Pastor." Here's a quote from James Taylor, who teaches politics and black history at the University of San Francisco. "Wright 'seems to have gone on a path that might actually benefit Obama in a twisted way,' Taylor said. 'Now, instead of being associated with him, we see a break -- so now it's Barack Obama versus Jeremiah Wright. And that's more to (Obama's) advantage.' ... But his handling of the Wright controversy, many political observers said, appeared to be effective. Barbara O'Connor, professor of political communication at California State University, Sacramento, 'He satisfied the concerns of those willing to be satisfied. ... He's being intellectually honest.'"

Professor O'Connor, he was everything but intellectually honest in this speech. In fact, we have learned, ladies and gentlemen, that the primary reason why he did the speech was that he did polling the night before to find out where he stood on this. That's why he waited all that time from Friday when Wright appeared on Bill Moyers, then did the press club thing on Monday. Obama reacts yesterday. He was polling it. I'll have the details coming up. The New York Times: "'Mr. Obama and Reverend Wright.' It was the most forthright repudiation of an out-of-control supporter that we can remember. We would like to say that it will finally take the racial charge out of this campaign. We're not that naive." And then they go on to say that McCain ought to now stop the North Carolina GOP ad and let's have a real discussion on race. I kid you not. I predicted this, folks. Boston Globe today, Peter S. Canellos, "Candidate Faces Down his Former Pastor, but What Took So Long?" Obama did disinvite Wright back in 2007, and we're going to get into the details of this, ladies and gentlemen, because the Drive-Bys, we knew what they would do. They would do everything they could to paper over the fact that this was a damaging speech that Obama did, the little press conference yesterday. Let me make a brief observation.

Let me give you the poll data first because I'm sure you want to know this. This is from Ace of Spades, which is a blog. "The word on the street is that Barack Obama did not repudiate or further 'distance' himself from Wright last night, but rather waited until today, because he was polling on whether he should make the move all night. That's the word on the street. The word from Mary Katharine Ham's dad confirms that, as he, a North Carolina resident, did receive just such a poll," on Monday night. So Obama was polling what to do. Everything about this man is straight down the line average, typical, run-of-the-mill cookie-cutter politician. He just happens to be an extreme left-wing radical. Another question I would have, ladies and gentlemen, for you. Is it likely that we know Barack Obama's preacher better than Barack Obama does? Well, that is what it is being made to sound like. I think this is a crucial point, my friends, because we are being told here that Barack Obama didn't know what he was doing, didn't know what his preacher was saying.

The story is now coming out, Barack wasn't even in church that much, and that's why he didn't hear some of these things. So we knew Wright better than Obama. Does that make any sense? Obama chose the guy. This guy is his preacher, and yet Barack has to go out, "I didn't know any of this." The dirty little secret here is that Obama didn't give a rat's rear end what Wright was saying until Wright went after him. When Wright was going after America and ripping America to shreds with his hate America rhetoric that was fine with Obama. But when he went after Obama, that made it personal, and he hides behind the notion that Wright was amplifying all of this beyond the sermons and beyond the pulpit. Everybody's been smoked here. The people on the left, the Obama supporters want to be smoked. They bent over forward and grabbed the ankles and say "have at me" and do whatever it takes. The story is out today that the congressional superdelegates, "It's over." They have chosen Obama, not officially but somebody has done a head count. The congressional superdelegates have chosen Obama.

It's in The Politico today. "Obama May Win Hill Superdelegate Fight." Superdelegates are not moving. They're just waiting to announce for Obama. They've already decided. There's a majority of them in Congress just waiting to announce and so forth. But I want to go back to this business that we supposedly know Jeremiah Wright better than Obama does. He went to the Million Man March, and who was the speaker at the Million Man March? Louis Farrakhan. That's where he got this big speech on the number 19. This Wright guy I think is probably Nation of Islam. His bodyguards at the National Press Club are Nation of Islam. He knows everything Wright stands for. Obama's church gave Farrakhan the Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award, did you know that? Obama's church gave Farrakhan the Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., Trumpeter Award. It is absurd, ladies and gentlemen, to believe that Obama knew less about this man than we do, but that's what he's asking us to believe, is it not?

Much more straight ahead. Lots to do on the program today, not through with the Obama stuff because there's some stories in the press that contradict, most notably the New York Post here today with Fred Dicker, what this is all about with Obama and his preacher.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: You remember Barack Obama complained that George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson in the Philadelphia debate -- and Mrs. Clinton, of course -- were dwelling on distractions by going after Obama and Reverend Wright. They were just distractions. "Can't we get back to the issues?" Well, a question, ladies and gentlemen. If that's true, why has Obama acceded now and decided to dwell in the distractions himself? Which is what he did yesterday. Barack Obama launched an entire news cycle over this very issue that just days ago he condemned as a distraction. Nothing has changed about Wright's message. As I so keenly, brilliantly pointed out yesterday: There's nothing Wright said over the past four days that he hasn't said in the last 20 years. What apparently miffs Obama is that he's amplifying it from beyond the pulpit and that he's taking it out on Obama personally. But Obama's acting like, "This stuff is offensive. I can't deal with this stuff."

I refuse to believe that Obama did not know this. I refuse to believe that I, El Rushbo, and you, the audience in this program, know more about Reverend Wright than Senator Obama does. I refuse to believe that. Yet that is what we are being asked to believe. The only thing that's changed is that Obama's no longer able to duck and deny this. So now, because of Obama's own choosing, it is a major germane issue. It's not a distraction any longer. So was he telling the truth then or is he telling the truth now? As we have learned, polls are driving his reconsideration to address Wright's message. It is simply impossible to believe that he could have been unaware of it; even if he attended infrequently, which is the latest attempt they are making: "Well, he didn't go that much." Black liberation theology is racially oriented. It's the opposite of what Obama claims to stand for. He chose a church espousing liberation theology.

Yet he's running on a completely different ideology. So he chooses one thing for his private life -- and that would be spiritual nourishment from a racist anti-American divisive pastor -- claims on the other hand that he will lead the country to unity in his public life. To me, this is typical liberalism, promoting the lie that he can divorce his private self from his public one. Barack Obama has fully exposed himself as a con-summate fraud. And, by the way, some of you might say, "Con-summate? It's consum-mate!" No. Well, it is. It's both. Back in the old days, in the glory days of radio, before there was television; if you wanted to go to work for NBC you had to go in and do a live audition, and they gave you sentences, and one of the words that they gave you was "consummate," and if you didn't pronounce it con-summate, you couldn't pass the audition. I kid you not. It has since evolved to consum-mate, but the original pronunciation in the official annals of NBC -- back in the old days when there really were broadcast standards -- con-summate was the way that it was pronounced.

That's just a little aside. Now, Barack Obama said yesterday, "'I am outraged by the comments that were made. I am saddened by the spectacle that we saw yesterday.' The candidate said that after watching Wright's appearance Monday, 'What became clear to me was that he was presenting a worldview that contradicts what I am and what I stand for.'" When did that become clear, Obama? None of this, none of this washes. The sycophantic treatment and reaction to this in the Drive-By Media is precisely why there is a New Media. That was journalistic malpractice the way this was reacted to last night and the way that it was reported. And I want to go through a couple sound bites here to illustrate some of the contradictions. Now, remember, Barack Obama did his best to distance himself from Jeremiah Wright. But before Obama spoke -- and this is key -- when Wright was on Moyers and when Wright appeared at the Press Club, the Drive-By Media, both nights, tried to sanitize Wright.

They all said, "Oh, what a great speech this was! What marvelous, marvelous intelligence this man has!" They did everything they could to spin and recast the actual words and intentions of Jeremiah Wright. So after the Drive-By Media, which is in the tank for Obama, goes out and spins Wright as, "Hey, that was really great. That was good," Obama then goes out and says, "I can't handle this. I'm not going to listen to this. I am disowning this man." But the Drive-Bys are so far in the tank, Obama contradicts his own backers in the Drive-By Media, and yet they sweep it under the rug. Now, what we've done here is I've put together some examples of the audience applauding various things that Wright said at the National Press Club. Some of the applause is tepid, but some of it is not. We've left the applause in so you can get an idea how the audience reacted to the words of Jeremiah Wright.

WRIGHT: This most recent attack on the black church -- it is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright. It is an attack on the black church. (wild applause)

RUSH: Right on, right on, right on! Keep in mind, Obama has disavowed all of this. Here's the next one.

OBAMA: I do not subscribe to the views that he expressed. I believe they are wrong. I think they are destructive.

RUSH: So the media and everybody in the audience is applauding what Wright said, and Obama is denouncing.

WRIGHT: You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you. Those are biblical principles, not Jeremiah Wright bombastic, divisive principles. (applause)

RUSH: Right on, right on, right on, right on. Some of the tepid applause. Here's Obama.

OBAMA: When he equates the United States' wartime efforts with terrorism, uh, then, uh, there are no excuses. Uh, they offend me. Uh, they rightly offend all Americans, uh, and, uh, they should be denounced.

RUSH: See, but he's just learning this? He's just learning this? We're dealing with a typical liberal here, folks. He's tried every which way. He's tried as hard as he could to keep Jeremiah Wright in the close circle. Finally, it got to the point where he couldn't because he was polling it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: It was reported yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, that Barack Obama was angry; seething, in fact. I didn't see this, but I saw somebody slinking, shoulder slumped. I saw somebody defensive and quiet, a little bit sad; maybe, depressed. I didn't see this anger. But a lot of people said that Obama was very mad about this yesterday. Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, was on the Scarborough program today on MSNBC; and he asked her, "What do you think of the Obama statement yesterday? Was it enough to finally put this behind him?"

MITCHELL: I should point out that, quite to my surprise, when he was out on the stump last night; once again, Obama was kind of trivializing it, saying, "Well, my opponents are making fun of me," and, "They say that I don't put my hand over my heart," and, "They talk about my, you know, former pastor's crazy statements." So he was trying to blame it on McCain, Hillary, whoever; rather than on what he earlier said in a very in a, you know, specific and dramatic way.

SCARBOROUGH: Wow, that's interesting.

MITCHELL: Yeah.

SCARBOROUGH: So he's downplaying it again as silly?

MITCHELL: Well, out there on the stump he was. Only hours after this, as I say, very public divorce.

RUSH: All right. So right after the very big public divorce, the big press conference where he was angry and hurt, Obama is back to calling Wright's controversy silly. In other words, the press conference was an act. The press conference was staged for the Drive-Bys. When Obama gets back out and is talking to the peeps and the voters, he's not continuing. "I was mad. I was hurt." No, no, no. It's all back to silly. This whole thing was a show yesterday, and the Drive-Bys fell for it, as typified... Now, Scarborough is not a Drive-By, but he asked a question here that a lot of the Drive-Bys were asking of each other last night: "Do you think he put it behind him? Do you think now we put it behind him? Gosh, I hope..." They're not analyzing it substantively. "Do you think he put it behind him? Do you think this is all it took? Can we get this behind him, now?" That's what they want, and that's of course going to be up to the Reverend Wright.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: To Gainesville, Florida, Alan, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hello, Rush. This is Alan from Gainesville, Florida.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: I want to tell you that you're a very important part of our family. We listen to you every day. I have a couple homeschooled boys at home, my wife and I, and we listen to you every single day.

RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.

CALLER: A very personal relationship. You know, when we listen to you on the radio, we really feel that you're part of our family. We even call you Uncle Rush. But the reason I called is to tell you about my father-in-law in Maryland. He's a mechanic, a lifelong Democrat, all his friends are lifelong Democrats. I was talking to him about Operation Chaos. He told me that he is part of Operation Chaos, but he did not change his registration. What he did is vote for Clinton in the Maryland primary, all his pals voted for Clinton, all their wives voted for Clinton, all their relatives voted for Clinton. They were all registered Democrats. The reason they wanted to vote for Clinton, to, you know, corrupt the -- not corrupt, but, you know, change the outcome in Maryland 'cause Obama was very popular in Maryland.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: But then they told me, "Well, what we're going to do, we're going to vote for Clinton and then we're vote for McCain in the general election."

RUSH: Yes.

CALLER: Without changing the registration.

RUSH: Yes, this sadly doesn't surprise me. This is something that we haven't discussed much. It's a phenomena that we know exists, Operation Chaos operatives who are already Democrats. This is something that the Drive-Bys -- and I haven't wanted to talk about this, 'cause this would alert the Drive-Bys and the Democrat voter registrars to look at their own voters rather than Operation Chaos operatives, and you can't have a better stealth operative than somebody who's already a Democrat, who is following orders issued by me, C-in-C USOC, the Commander-in-Chief US, Operation Chaos. But now we're near the end of the process. I think we can readily acknowledge and let it be known here just as you've done here that there are plenty of Operation Chaos operatives who have already registered Democrats because they are Democrats.

CALLER: You have Operation Chaos members embedded in the university faculty here. They come to my office, they close the door, and they say, "Operation Chaos."

RUSH: In Gainesville? No kidding. Gainesville. Well, now this is something. You are alerting me to troop levels that I was unaware of.

CALLER: We're here.

RUSH: Well, I appreciate that. Alan, thanks so much for the call.

CALLER: Thank you, Rush.

RUSH: Appreciate it. Faculty members at the University of Florida come to his office and close the door and say, "Operation Chaos." (laughing)

Brad in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. It's a real pleasure.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: Oh, you're welcome. I listened to the business yesterday with Obama denouncing Reverend Wright, and I thought I'd listen to how Chris Matthews and the Hardball people dealt with it. They had a roundtable and Andrea Mitchell was there and another fellow and some female reporter. And it was going about as one might imagine with those folks --

RUSH: Let me --

CALLER: -- female reporter says, "This might be to Obama's advantage." And she alluded to Hillary in New Hampshire breaking down and getting sort of the sympathy vote.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: And she then said, "Obama is having trouble with the white women voters," and she said how they then might feel sorry for him, so they played the victim card a couple of hours after this announcement, and I thought to myself, "Isn't Rush just going to love this."

RUSH: We predicted it. We predicted sympathy, that they would be sympathetic, and that they would say it was courageous. Now, a question, because I saw a little bit of Hardball yesterday afternoon. Is the female reporter you're talking about Tamron Hall? Was she from Chicago?

CALLER: Yes. Yes, she was because she attended that church of Reverend Wright's.

RUSH: I watched this and I was fascinated by it because she's an anchor! She's a news anchor at PMSNBC, and they had her on offering commentary because she's from Chicago, and so she was the south side of Chicago expert in the roundtable yesterday.

CALLER: Hm-hm. Yes. That's correct.

RUSH: That's who it was. All right.

CALLER: That was she, hm-hm.

RUSH: Look, I appreciate the call out there, Brad. Thanks very much. Yeah, it was a sympathy play, and "Is this going to be it? Can we get this behind him now?" They so want this to be over, because they are in the tank for Barack Obama.

Obama praised for rebuking his pastor

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/29/MNDF10DP4I.DTL&type=politics