Hillary Clinton Is Clearly a Cold and Unlikable Person
Rush Limbaugh characterizes Hillary as being like one's ex-wife. Sounds exactly right. "You can't put in what God left out."
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Rush Limbaugh characterizes Hillary as being like one's ex-wife. Sounds exactly right. "You can't put in what God left out."
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It's always great fun to watch Rush Limbaugh run rings around the liberal Democrats. Talk about rich with irony. Why do they ever try going after Rush? He's way too smart for dullard Democrat Senators like Harry Reid-LOL! Basically what's happening is that Harry Reid got 40 stupid Democrat senators (including Hillary Clinton) to sign a letter written to the CEO of Clear Channel demanding that the CEO force Rush to apologize over the Phony Soldier smear. The CEO of Clear Channel gave Rush the letter, and Rush is auctioning this letter (again, signed by 40 Democrat Senators) on Ebay. The auction runs until this Friday. And to make it even better, Rush is challenging Harry Reid, or any of the other 40 senators who were dumb enough to sign this letter, to match the donation to the Marine Corps - Law Enforcement Foundation. The auction price right now is up to $45,000.
Here's the video:
(HT: Kim Priestap at Wizbang)
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Al Gore makes a movie and wins a Nobel Peace Prize. I suppose that makes perfect sense in liberal la-la land.
Rush Limbaugh, also a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, calls for Gore to turn his prize over to General Petraeus, the US military and President Bush.
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Uncle Jimbo, who posts at the Milblog, Blackfive, posted an anti anti-military diary at the Daily Kos site. Uncle Jimbo's post was banned less than two hours later. Here's the insane notice of the ban:
I’ve banned you because (5+ / 0-)
on your blog, you willfully promote pedophilia.Well, actually, I don’t know if you do or don’t (since I never read your blog) but I figure until you’ve proven yourself not to be a pedophile — to my satisfaction, not yours — it’s fine for me to keep calling you that.
If you see any irony here, you might want to ponder on it for a while. But not too hard — Rush fans gotta pick their intellectual battles.
by Hunter on Sun Oct 07, 2007 at 02:16:35 PM PDT
Aren't those lefties so crazy moderate though?
Here is this blog's Rush Limbaugh post page.
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Could well be the case, and why didn't the MSM report on it? (HT: Ace of Spades)
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The MSM is working hard to keep the liberal, George Soros funded, attack against Rush Limbaugh going. As I have documented on my Rush Limbaugh program index, this entire phony soldier issue is a contrived lie by the anti-war political left in this country in preparation for the 2008 elections. The left needs to damage Rush's reputation and to reduce influence so he doesn't negatively impact Hillary Clinton's campaign for the presidency. Remember, in 1994 Rush was called "the majority maker" by the newly elected Republican congressional majority.
Conservative bloggers are working to counter the lying spin (there's a redundancy, n'est-ce-pas?) of the Democrats and their MSM allies. Here are some great resources/opinion pieces:
This is all so faux, so contrived...all for the price-per-click Google AdSense keywords...
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George Soros is on the rampage, out to destroy/impugn conservative talk radio hosts-not only Rush Limbaugh of the pseudo-phone soldier controversy. Conservative talk radio must be increasing in power to warrant all this lefty activism.
Powerline is looking for nominations to add to Phony Democrats list.
Ed Morrissey has more Rush Limbaugh/Phony Soldiers thoughts, as always well worth reading.
Listen to Gov. Mitt Romney's opinion on the Rush Limbaugh/Phony Soldier pseudo-controversy:
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This phony controversy, and attack against Rush continues. Eric Cantor, the Republican whip in the House is defending Rush Limbaugh. Wesley Clark (or Ashley Wilkes as Rush refers to him), incredibly wants to regulate free speech. John McCain makes a smart decision and declares the phony soldier issue closed. Chris Matthews continues to distort as he does all things conservative. GOP presidential candidates, Romney and Thompson defend Rush (there may be hope for this party yet).
Here's a petition to Stand With Rush and stand up for free speech (more than 2770 signatures as of now).
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Clarence Thomas' new book is out today, My Grandfather's Son. 60 Minutes did an interview of Justice Thomas last night. Rush Limbaugh will air a 90 minute interview of Justice Thomas on his radio program today.
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Rush Limbaugh opened his radio program yesterday describing how, in the past 24 hours, the Media Matters (a Hillary Clinton/George Soros front group) website, Democrats in Congress, Howard Dean and the drive by media had conducted a coordinated attack against Rush. The lie that these liberals are spreading is that Rush had described US soldiers who are against the war as "phony soldiers". That is a lie. What Rush said has been taken totally out of context. I know, because I was listening to his show when Rush said it.
Rush was speak, specifically, about Jesse MacBeth who had been a hero of the left. Jesse MacBeth had claimed he was an Army Ranger who had served in Iraq, and had seen other US soldiers commit horrible atrocities. Turns out that, just as Rush had reported, Jesse MacBeth has never been an Army Ranger and he's never served in Iraq. Jesse MacBeth was run out of boot camp after just a few weeks.
Watch this video of Rush, on his radio program, accurately describing exactly what happened:
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I hear that Hillary Clinton was on plenty of Sunday morning shows yesterday - wouldn't know myself as I do not subscribe to cable TV (too anti-American for my taste). Rush Limbaugh reports that the only note worthy thing was her ridiculous goofy laugh.
Patrick Ruffini at Hugh Hewitt's blog was amazed as he watched, because Hillary said that she would not withdraw from Iraq. Ruffini thinks that this indicates that Hillary knows she has the nomination wrapped up:
Hillary is morphing into a George W. Bush Democrat
How weird is that??
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It's reassuring to be reminded that Ronald Reagan worked his heart out campaigning in 1986 for the goal of GOP gains in the House and Senate. Didn't work out that way (the GOP lost seats in both chambers), but Reagan soldiered on for conservatism. (I didn't know that Jack Kemp called Ronald Reagan was called the Old and Wise One (O&W).
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Rush Limbaugh reported in the first hour of his radio program that the National Intelligence Estimate will be declassified so people can read it for themselves-instead of throught the liberal filter of the New York Times.
Turns out that a blogger who had been in the IC (Intelligence Community) has seen the entire document and it's not at all like the Times characterized it. There have been numerous successes that the Times -surprise-failed to mention.
The Times' NIE liberal/biased report has yet again delivered another club to beat Republicans with during this election. Also likely that administration has used the NIE as bait, the Democrats have stupidly invested themselves, yet again in a lying press report. Dems have been fooled yet again with their own leftie echo chamber.
The nature of the NIE is highly subjective, anyway. And this whole thing is another example of the MSM experimenting to see what will stick.
Michelle Malkin provides an excellent set of links.
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Mahmoud says:
Just imagine where Germany would be today in terms of its eminence among [Western] nations, Muslims of the world, and peoples of Europe, if...the governments in power in Germany had said no to the extorions by Zionists...
Yep, that's what Ahmadinejad wrote to Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany. (HT: The Limbaugh Letter, September 2006).
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Rush took a great call from a listener yesterday who coined the term: Axis of Ignorance. That refers to the ignorance created in the American people who rely on the MSM (or Drive By Media to Rush listeners) for their news consumption.
Funny stuff.
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Andrew McCarthy and Mark Levin of National Review, who have each served as prosecutors, have an important piece up stating in no uncertain terms, that they support Rush in his legal battle against the prosecutor's (Barry Krischer) politically motivated attack:
And why, you might ask, wouldn’t Rush fight this charge? Well, he did. He fought this politically motivated investigation for several years; he spent millions of dollars in legal fees challenging the state attorney every step of the way; and he went to the airwaves repeatedly to discuss his legal battle. In the end, despite Krischer’s efforts, Rush continues to maintain his innocence—and he does so as a matter of law—by responding once again with not guilty to a phony doctor-shopping charge the state attorney is unwilling to take to a jury. He has admitted to no wrongdoing at all. And now, finally, it is Rush’s innocence that remains unchallenged as this sad chapter comes to an end.
Rush is a decent, generous, honorable guy who has been dragged through the mud, at great personal embarrassment, solely because he is a conservative icon. When he wakes up tomorrow, he’ll still be a conservative icon. And Barry Krischer will still be a disgrace
Technorati tags: Politics, Florida, Prosecutor, DrugAbuse, Drugs, RushLimbaugh, Rush
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The March 2006 Issue of The Limbaugh Letter (Rush Limbaugh's newsletter) features an excellent interview of Kate O'Beirne of National Review. In the interview, Ms. O'Beirne talks about her new book, Women Who Make the World Worse, and mentions that never married men make 62 cents to the dollar of a married man. Why is that:
I don't think it's mere convention, Rush. I think employers find married men, given their responsibilities, to be more reliable.. As has been said, men show their devotion to their families by working hard. Women show their devotion to their families by showing devotion to their families. These men are no less devoted to their family than the woman who's staying home with children. But they express caring for their families by working as hard as they can and earning as much as they can. I think that's what employers recognize. They're steady, they're sober, they're reliable, owing to their family responsibilities.
Technorati tags: O'Beirn, Women, Discrimination, Feminism, Men, Politics, Wages
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The December 2005 issue of the Limbaugh Letter (you can subscribe to The Limbaugh Letter at Rush's web site) has a great transcription of Rush Limbaugh's interview with Peter Schweizer. Peter Schweizer is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and has written the book, Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy. Rush's newsletter has this great excerpt from Mr. Schweizer's book:
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The White House web site has posted the transcript of Rush's interview of Vice President Cheney:
THE VICE PRESIDENT: No, it's not off the table by any means. We'll keep pushing it because we think it makes eminent good sense. And we came very close in the last session to getting it, and we'll keep working on it. But he -- what he wanted to emphasize last night, of course, he took a long-term view here, reaching out as much as 20 years in terms of the effort to reduce our imports, but the emphasis on technology, the ability to pursue what we think are some imminent break-throughs in the R&D area that are going to allow us to produce more of the energy we need, even for our transportation system, here at home. So energy has been a constant theme since we got here. It's still going to be a big one going forward. But I thought this was a bold proposition last night. There's nothing that is in any way limited or timid when you talk about those kinds of basic fundamental changes to our economy.
Q The next question on policy is Social Security. The one time I recall the Democrats really standing and cheering in a partisan nature was when the President acknowledged that his attempt to reform Social Security last year had failed. What's the status of Social Security reform because the President followed that by saying it's still broken and still needs to be fixed. Is that still on the agenda?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: It is on the agenda. Of course, the proposal that's on the table now that we'll go ahead and proceed with is to put together a commission that includes Democratic as well as Republican members of Congress, sitting members of Congress, and sit down with them and begin to have them address this issue and look at the problem of the retirement of the baby boomers both with respect to Social Security and Medicare. And the Medicare is an even bigger problem than Social Security is.
And I think the sense you had last night was the President has been pushing hard on it. He campaigned on this twice. It obviously was a centerpiece of our program last year. We ran into a brick wall to some extent in the Congress. And the Democrats cheered at the fact that we hadn't been able to make any progress. But then he came right back and reminded them, yes, but the problem is still there, folks. We have to address this issue. It's going to be a huge mountain for us to climb the longer we wait. Every year that goes by and we don't address it, the problem becomes more severe.
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In the December 2005 issue of The Limbaugh Letter, Rush Limbaugh has an article titled, The Lies of Joe Wilson. In the article Rush lists and refutes Joe Wilson's falsehoods:
Wilson: My wife had nothing to do with my trip to Niger
As Rush explains in his newsletter article, the Senate Intelligence Committee's bipartisan July 7, 2005 report states:
...interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that [Wilson's] wife, a CPD [the CIA's Counter-Proliferation Division] employee, suggested his name for the trip.
Wilson: My trip "debunked" an Iraq/Niger uranium deal
Rush explains what's really going on with this lie:
Wilson's report actually bolstered the case for an Iraq-Niger deal. As the Senate report noted: "The report on the former Ambassador's trip to Niger, disseminated in March 2002, did not change any analysts' assessments of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal. For most analysts, the information in the report lent more credibility to the original CIA reports on the uranium deal..."
Wilson: The Bush Administration saw my report
Rush again refers to the Senate Intelligence Committee's report to knock down this lie:
Wilson "told Committee Staff that he had no direct knowledge of how the information he provided was handled by the CIA."
Former CIA Director, George Tenet said, "Because this report, in our view, did not resolve whether Iraq was or was not seeking uranium from abroad...we did not brief it to the President, Vice President, or other senior officials."
Wilson: I determined intelligence documents were forgeries
This lie is easy to shoot down-it's a matter of simple calendar dates:
the forged documents in question could not have sparked the original inquiry; they were not in US hands until eight months after Wilson's Niger trip (the CIA received them on Oct. 16, 2002.
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UPDATE: Welcome Polipundit readers, and thanks to Lorie Byrd for linking here.
This is a transcription of two calls from the Rush Limbaugh Radio Program today. Both are very enlightening calls that describe how essential the Patriot Act is to our country's safety and survival. And these callers shed a lot of light on how dangerous the FISA secret court process can be to the safety of US citizens. And anyway, how is it that unelected judges have become the be all and end all when it comes to safeguarding civil liberties? It is to laugh...
The second hour of the Rush Limbaugh Radio Program, January, 9, 2006 - at approximately the 26 minute mark.
Rush Limbaugh: Dan in Orlando, Florida. It's great to have you with us on the EIB network.
Dan, a caller: Good after noon Rush. Former federal agent with extensive experience working cases under FISA back during the 1980s when this stuff wasn't on the front page. Very very frustrating work and a lot of the public just doesn't have a tenth of the understanding of what's involved.
RL: Let me ask you a question right there, because if you've been listening, you've probably heard the latest line from the left is, hey, if electronic surveillance uncovers something, fine go ahead and act on it, just drop over to FISA. You've got 72 hours to get a warrant and everything's legal. Is it that easy?
Dan: Well, Rush, it's not that easy. There's two separate divisions. One being working a case on the criminal side, another working a case on the FISA side. And the two could never meet. In other words, anything that I was working, I would never go down to an assistant US attorney to brief them on the case, to try to get a search warrant or an arrest warrant or any kind of wire tap or anything else. They weren't even authorized to hear my case. They didn't have the security clearances involved. Everything that I worked had to be under FISA. When a case would be opened it would be opened as a preliminary investigation and I could do basic things such as running a license plate number for example off a car. Things of that nature. Once I found out a certain amount of information I had to convince back at headquarters a supervisor to allow me to proceed to a full investigation. During that full investigation I would have to develop enough information without any kind of sophisticated means in order to develop a FISA application. Now that FISA application has to go to my supervisor in the field. It has to go to the supervisor at headquarters. And if all those people approve then it went to a certain person at the Department of Justice. And by the way, it was a woman at the time and she had several staff of very junior lawyers right out of law school just trying to whip the world and really make something out of things and stuff, and it would be. They would review my affidavit and I would get some of the most idiotic questions back that would lead me to blink. I may as well have said, "forget it" because I have to have the whole case worked and why would I even need any kind of sophisticated means to work the case if I already had to have it worked. You see what I'm saying? It's like a dog chasing its tail.
RL: Right, by the time you add electronic surveillance into this you don't even know who your subject is.
Dan: Well Rush, let me tell you something. Every FISA case that I worked, and I worked 30 maybe 35 in my tenure. None of them had a FISA application go out of the Dept. of Justice to even be presented to the FISA court. The woman that was there, never, was always fearful of something being turned back or turned away from the FISA court, so every little thing was nitpicked and so forth. Now, maybe that was good. Another thing is if I had a case that developed that involved a US person, and we had a definition of that. A US person is not just a naturalized citizen or a born citizen of the US. If somebody had a green card they were considered a US person. Well what we saw were a lot of these guys, that was the first thing that they tried to do was get a green card. Then they became a US person you were not going to get anything approved so don't even ask for it, don't even apply.
RL: You know, this is surprising I'm sure to a lot of people because most people think federal agents, they think jack booted thugs who go do whatever they want because nobody's going to reign you guys in or stop you. That you have free reign to go entrap anybody at any time that you want to. And I think that's one of the reasons here that we're having such trouble getting people to understand this. This is the misinterpretation, misunderstanding of just what kind of power federal agents have. Dan, anyway, that's illuminating. I'm stunned. Actually, I'm not. Glad you called to actually substantiate all this.
END TRANSCRIPT
From the second hour of the Rush Limbaugh Radio Program, January, 9, 2006 - at approximately the 37 minute mark.
Rush Limbaugh: Let's go to Dan in Virginia. Dan, welcome to the program, nice to have you with us.
Dan, a caller: Hi Rush, how are you doing?
RL: Just fine, sir. Thank you.
Dan: A point I brought up to your screener, is this, this US persons issue and the maintenance or data by various elements of the federal government. That is a very very very serious for those of us who work in law enforcement and intelligence and other fields of work like that. In fact, it is one of the things that can actually put us directly into jail. If you are maintaining information on US persons, that broad scope definition that Dan mentioned earlier, it is exceedingly broad. If we get caught maintaining data on US persons that is not justified, and there are also limits of time, how long you can maintain it, and all kinds of restrictions and regulations on that data. You can find yourself not only out of a job, but under prosecution.
RL: Now wait a minute, Dan, wait a minute. That doesn't square with what liberal Democrats are saying that you guys and people like you are spying on Americans all over the place and you can do it with impunity. You can spy and Bush authorized it. You can go do whatever you want, you can entrap any American by doing anything. The liberals and the ACLU are protecting us against people like you.
Dan: I seriously doubt that you can find a small handful of those people who have ever done this job. They don't know what it entails on the inside. I will tell you right now that I have to screen my files on a regular basis for information on US persons, and if I have information on US persons, that information has to be justified, I have to show activity. You know what I'm saying, all that kind of stuff. Now I personally don't work in a position where I have to hold information on US persons. I'm more of a technical guy, but the fact of the matter is that the entire law enforcement and intelligence communities throughout the federal government, that includes DOD and everybody else, are required to do, you know, screenings and we can have our files searched with and without notice and stuff like that. If somebody thinks that we're doing something we shouldn't be or just random searches, those are all, just like every time I log onto my computer, my computer says that my work on there is, my logging onto the computer constitutes consent (inaudible). And so, it's a big deal, Rush and it's not something that we in the business that I'm in take lightly by any stretch of the imagination.
RL: I'm sure, and you understand that I'm playing devils advocate with you. The Democrats are making it sound Bush authorized all this spying and it's being done on a routine basis and that Bush is actually not even interested in catching al Qaeda, he just wants to spy on Americans. And of course, part and parcel of all that is how easy it must be. And your call and the previous call and plus what I've learned here about the statutory requirements for getting an after the fact warrant from the FISA court, none of this stuff is easy. Plus, look at how much material you're dealing with in the first place. The real question that people like me have, is how much do you miss? Because there's so much. How much in the world out there? You're mining computer data, electronic surveillance, how much is missed?
Dan: Rush, there's only so much that automated tools can do with respect to data mining. At some point in time you have to bring in the human mind to look at that. And that comes down to analysts, and we right now are desperately, desperately short of analysts. We do not have anywhere near the number of analysts that we need to cover the scope involved with the volume of information that's coming in. And people wonder how things fall through the cracks. And one other point I'd like to make and I don't want to take up any more of your time because I know it's valuable, but the re-authorization of this Patriot Act, that has to happen. It is so very important. I mean, if that wall goes back up between certain aspects of the federal government, if we're not allowed to talk to each other any more, if we can't share data, it's not going to be good.RL: It's absurd. It is literally absurd. After 9-11 happens, everybody gets on the President because he didn't connect the dots. He couldn't connect the dots because of the Jamie Gorelick Wall. FBI couldn't share data with CIA, vice versa. Now all of a sudden, after 9-11, we try to connect the dots on some things, they accuse the President of spying and they want to impeach him. They are politicizing the national security of the country. It's going to come back and bite them in the rear as these things have.
END OF TRANSCRIPT
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During the second Hour of yesterday's (Thursdays) Rush Limbaugh Radio Show, 19 minutes and 10 seconds mark-
Rush Limbaugh:
None of this violates privacy. It's all a computer doing this. The computer at the NSA are the ones mining all of this data. And in fact, there's a link to Able Danger with this. Of course Able Danger is the special outfit in the Pentagon that actually dug up the where abouts of Mohammad Atta and these other hijackers and had evidence that they were in the country a full year before 9-11. But it took a computer to gather all the data. And then after they key word searched, they looked at a number of different things, who knows what the keywords are, but the computer mines all this stuff and then human beings go through what the computer finds. And most of it's thrown away. It's irrelevant. And even the stuff that we find, like on Mohammad Atta and the hijackers, somebody tried to suppress that somewhere because, whatever reason. We still don't know and we're not going to find out very easily because it's going to make a whole lot of people look bad. Washington is about a lot of things, but one of the things at the top of the list, is that when anybody in the upper strata of the establishment there falls in the water, they circle the wagons and make sure the sharks don't get to them. And that's probably something similar to what's happening with this Able Danger business.
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Here is the response that I received from Senator Bill Nelson, D-FL:
Thank you for contacting me with your thoughts on the Patriot Act.
The Patriot Act was enacted in 2001 following the attacks of September 11, as increased emphasis was placed on counterterrorism and counterintelligence. Several of the provisions of the Act dealing with law enforcement wiretaps and access to library, medical, or financial records are set to expire on December 31, 2005. Other sections, including those dealing with sneak-and-peek searches, will not sunset.
I strongly believe that while we must remain vigilant in our fight against terrorism by equipping law enforcement officials with the necessary tools, we must also safeguard our precious civil liberties.
As I closely examine the Patriot Act, I will be sure to keep your thoughts in mind.
Senator Feinstein-D, CA, sounds like she's having second thoughts about not supporting the Patriot Act. From The Rush Limbaugh program today:
Rush says: ...one more Feinstein sound bite from MSNBC last night, from Andrea Mitchell, guest hosting for Chris Matthews and they're talking about the Patriot Act, and Andrea Mitchell says, but won't it expire now with the House having gone home for the holidays? Won't it expire? The Patriot Act will not exist as a result of this debate?
Senator Feinstein: The House said they would come into session on Thursday if necessary, and certainly the leadership can come and if there is an agreement and the leadership of the House is willing to go along with it, that will settle that. The point is there's ample time to settle this. Now, there are probably some members of my party that don't want to see a Patriot Act, I am not one of them. And if I at any point in this feel that there's a disingenuous streak and that people are trying to kill the Patriot Act, I will not be part of that.
Rush: Well let's go back to her leader, Senator Dingy Harry, this is last Friday after the Senate voted down the Patriot Act, Senator Reid went over to party with a bunch of Democrats and said this:
Reid: Think of what happened 20 minutes ago in the United States Senate, we killed the Patriot Act (applause).
Rush (applauding): Yeah, Senate Democrats applaud killing the Patriot Act. So what we have, prior to 9-11, these same people whining and moaning about not connecting the dots, now the President trying to connect the dots, surveilling Al Qaeda types, not domestic spying on American citizens, suspected Al Qaeda types, and now the President's trying to connect the dots and they want to impeach him...
I agree with Rush. If I'm blown to bits by a terrorist bomb I can't really worry about my precious civil liberties can I? Priorities Democrats, priorities.
UPDATE: Polipundit has the money quote from the 9-11 Commission Report:
Democrats must be made to pay a high price for their opposition to the PATRIOT Act. Here’s an example from the 9/11 Commission Report that illustrates why the Act is vitally important:
According to the unanimous bipartisan report of that Commission, the “wall” thwarted the investigation of Khalid al-Midhdar and Nawaf alHazmi, two of the hijackers who flew an airplane into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. In June 2001, FBI agents investigating the U.S.S. Cole bombing met with the CIA. Even though the CIA knew that al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were connected to the Cole bombing and had been in the United States, the CIA refused to give the FBI this information because of the “wall.” Even after the FBI learned from the CIA of al-Mihdhar’s and al-Hazmi’s presence in the United States and the FBI launched an effort to try to locate them, FBI Headquarters refused to allow criminal investigators in New York to participate. A New York FBI agent working on the case expressed his frustration with these restrictions in the following e-mail: “Whatever has happened to this - someday someone will die - and wall or not - the public will not understand why we were not more effective and throwing every resource we had at certain ‘problems.’”
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Rush Limbaugh's Able Danger Remarks from his 10/28/05 show:
Caller: Hi Rush, hey, I think this whole thing with Valerie Plame and Libby and all these people, this is just a big yawn. I can't believe that this has become front and center. I read your article last night in The Limbaugh Letter about Curt Weldon and I listened to his speech and read his speech the other day. And that's what I think should be front and center. That's where the big cover-up is. Man, this whole thing with Valerie Plame, it's going no where. Wasn't it CBS or ABC the day who did man on the street interviews and nobody even who Libby or Rove or anybody was? They don't really care about that stuff. I tell you what, if this Able Danger stuff ever got out into the public, that's what people would be interested in. What do you think?
Rush Limbaugh: Well, I agree with a lot of what you've said. But I think that they're both important. And we give the Able Danger story a considerable amount of time here just as we did Congressman Weldon in the newsletter which you so thankfully subscribe to, and you quoted it here. The Able Danger thing is going to not go away because Weldon's not going to let it go away. But I wouldn't downplay this business here of Valerie Plame. I can read my emails and I know that there are a lot of people who say, Rush, this is no big deal, we don't care about this out here.
Folks, it's important that you understand what's going on. The media has been totally scandalous in this, just as they have been after Hurricane Katrina. And they are attempting to get this president out of office. They are attempting to force this president to resign. They are attempting if they can to get this to go forward toward impeachment. They are trying to relive 2 events at one time-Watergate and the Viet Nam War. And it's an all out press. It is the whole Washington press corps and their allies in New York and Boston and so forth along the Eastern seaboard are totally invested in this now. I can't sit here and ignore this. I can't sit here...I know, I'm the one who tells you, folks, the mainstream press, they don't have the influence they used to have, and I'm fully aware of that. They're not going to be able to get away with this, but they can't just be ignored and laughed at, so we can't say, OK, let them do what they want to do because it's occupying the news cycle. And if I don't talk about this at some point you're going to find out who those people are and then get mad at me for not talking about it. But beyond all that, to me this is crucial. We have the criminal justice system here, which to me has got a big question mark on it. We've had 2 years of investigation now, and we potentially have indictments coming today, and not one of these indictments has anything to do with the original crime that's been committed here. I'm hell bent on making sure that you're armed and prepared to deal with what you're going to see when you turn on the media any night of the week or any weekend.
So we're not letting other things go by the wayside, and we're not forgetting other things. We're touching on all of these, some important things that we got into yesterday as well. And the Oil for Food scandal, I've got first up in the stack here. And as soon as I find out that this document release is supposedly imminent. Now that the prosecutor's handed up the first charges in the leak case, that means that he's given them to the judge. When you hand up an indictment, you give it to the judge. When an indictment is handed down it means that they come from the court and go out to the accused, the suspect. So the indictment's have been handed up and they are going to be here about 2:00 this afternoon. Whatever they are, we're still dealing with speculation. Don't for a minute think that this is irrelevant or unimportant because people don't care about it. You need to care about it if the mainstream press is going to try to conduct another coup d'etat if you will and force this president out of office or try at any rate.
End of transcript.
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During the third hour of his radio program today, Rush Limbaugh discussed Rep. Curt Weldon's Able Danger speech late night on the floor of the US House of Representatives. This is a transcript of Rush's remarks:
Caller: I just wanted to get your thoughts on the Curt Weldon speech last night that I haven't heard anybody else talk about-Able Danger.
Rush Limbaugh: Well, you know, one of the reasons I took your call here and the reason you've been on hold for a while is because I was planning to get to it here in this half hour because I have audio sound bites of Weldon on the floor of the House last night talking very much about this Able Danger business. We've talked to Curt Weldon for The Limbaugh Letter. He is fit to be tied. People constantly say, Rush, how come you stopped talking about Able Danger. We haven't stopped talking about Able Danger. Nothing ever leaves the table here. When it comes back we're on it. We're on it, it's back. Weldon is convinced that the DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon, is doing everything they can to destroy the career of this whistle-blower. He's been told that they destroyed all the evidence of Able Danger. He's learned now that there is another packet of evidence. Let's listen to the first sound bite, a portion of his speech last night. He's talking about the new Able Danger officer. Somebody else that nobody knows who can verify all this.
Sound bite of Rep. Curt Weldon: Mr. Speaker, I met with another Able Danger official. I was not aware of this official's knowledge because he doesn't live in the beltway. This official, Mr. Speaker, has impeccable credentials. I can't reveal his name today. I will to any member of this body, any colleagues who want to come to me, I'll tell you privately who this official is. And you will agree with me when I tell you his name, he has impeccable credentials. This official yesterday, Mr. Speaker, in a meeting in my office, told me that he has never been talked to by the Pentagon, he's never been talked to by the Defense Intelligence Agency in their supposed investigation, he's never been talked to by the 9-11 Commission staff in their investigation. Yet this official had a leadership position in Able Danger. This official told me that there's a separate cache of information collected from over 20 federal agencies in 99 and 2000 on Able Danger that still may exist. Now the Pentagon has told us that all of this material was destroyed.
RL: And in this new packet of information, is evidence apparently that Mohammad Atta's identity once again can be proved to have been known one full year prior to 9-11.
Commercial break.
RL: OK, 2 more Curt Weldon bites from his speech last night on the floor of the House, this one features him pounding on the podium as he gets really worked up.
CW: Wolf Blitzer on CNN told my staff that a Defense Dept. employee told him that Lt. Col. Shaffer was having an affair with one of my employees. How low can we go, for this Defense Dept. to ruin the reputation and the personal life of a Lt. Col. with a Bronze Star. He doesn't even know my staff. To accuse him of stealing pens when he was 15. To take away his health care benefits for his 2 kids because he's telling the truth. What do we stand for, Mr. Speaker, if not the truth. Is it more important that we be politically correct? Then I don't want to be here. I'll leave. I'll leave my post. But I'm not going to do it until we get justice for this man and for these people, that the 9-11 Commission called historically insignificant. There's something wrong inside the beltway. There's something desperately wrong when a military officer risks his life in Afghanistan time and again embedded with our troops under an assumed name with a false beard and a false identity, forward deployed with our troops, gets castigated, gets ridiculed, gets some low life scum at the Pentagon spreading malicious lies about this individual.
RL: Congressman, that's how it works. He's put some pressure on somebody's turf. Somebody who just wanted to sit there and just go along with life and not upset any apple carts. He's talking about Lt. Tony Shaffer is who he's talking about here. When I spoke to him for his interview in The Limbaugh Letter he was this agitated and you can tell that he's not going to let this go. And for all this talk about the Democrats and their culture of corruption. Let me tell you that the culture of corruption is in these career positions in places like the CIA and like the Pentagon and like the State Dept. It is obvious that there's more to 9-11 than they want us to know. It's obvious that the people who conducted the investigation into it had as their primary objective to protect people's positions of power and cast blame somewhere. You'll note that no heads have rolled, that nobody has been fired. And now this guy, Tony Shaffer and this new unnamed official who apparently everybody would know and would immediately believe is credible also can validate what the others of this unit are saying. And the 9-11 staff, the Pentagon, the DIA are not interested. There's a simple reason why they're not interested, it upsets the apple cart. They though they had this handled. And some people are so outraged and upset by it that they are coming forth and they are risking everything. Here's more pounding on the podium, our final bite from Congressman Weldon.
CW: This is not about the DIA, it's not about the CIA, it's about CYA. It's about CYA by bureaucrats in the Defense Intelligence Agency and possibly some political operatives that don't want the facts to come out about Able Danger and the information that the Able Danger team put together. And in the process they're going to destroy a man, a man who has been recognized by his country, who has a family, and who simply wants to do the right thing. Mr. Speaker, what's happening here is unacceptable, it's unimaginable, it's un-American.
RL: And it will not go away. Weldon, I guarantee you will not let this go away.
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These are excerpts from the article, My Conversation with Curt Weldon, in the September 2005 issue of The Limbaugh Letter:
Rush Limbaugh describes his interview of Congressman Weldon as:
...one of the most passionate I've ever conducted.
Here is some of what Rep. Weldon (R, PA) said:
They [the media-ed.]make it almost impossible for Congress to do aggressive oversight of the bureaucracy, because they basically don't want to look at the facts. They attempt to spin things. As a result members of Congress aren't willing to stick their necks out to pursue issues like this that need to be pursued...I've now got an Annapolis graduate, a 23-year career commander of a nuclear submarine, who's come out publicly, jeopardizing his career. I've got a 22-year military intelligence officer who gave up his career to come out...
I did not take the story to the media first when I was told about Able Danger in June. I'd been working on datamining with the Army's LIWA (Land Information Warfare Assessment) facility for six years, since 1999...When I first found out about Able Danger three months ago, I went to the House floor after I investigated this. I went to two 9/11 commissioners, a Democrat and a Republican. And John Lehman told me I should pursue this publicly. He said, "Curt, if you don't, nobody else will." I went to the House floor and did a speech, and no one paid attention...Then The New York Times picked it up and it's become a national story...My goal was to get this issue brought forward, not to grandstand...So Tony Shaffer came out and said, "Congressman, I'm going public. It's going to be the end of my career as an intelligence officer, but the time is right to stand up for what's right for America." Then Scott Phillpott, a Naval Academy graduate, a stellar career in the Navy, came out and said, "I will stand until the day I die and affirm we identified Mohammed Atta in January and February of 2000..."
I talked to (Defense Undersecretary for Intelligence) Stephen Cambone yesterday, and I said, "Steve, I'm sick and tired of your (Pentagon) press person saying that there's no information. I've got ten charts." Steve said, "You've got nine charts more than I do." I said, "Then don't have your press person come out and try to discount this and lend credibility to the 9/11 Commission. If you do, I'm going to embarrass the Administration, and I'm going to embarrass you in the Pentagon..."
I think what happened was one of the 9-11 commissioners and her staff saw the potential, if this was carried out, to embarrass her personally.
I have people willing to testify-more than just the two or three than have come out. That's the advantage I have over the Pentagon. They don't know what to do, because I have more information than they have about what's going on. I have more people talking...
Rush Limbaugh: ...I though you said just a moment ago you only learned of Able Danger in June.
Rep. Weldon: But I contacted Kean because, you see, I wasn't an expert on Able Danger. I was an expert on data mining and datacollaboration. And that goes back to '99, when I was chairman of the Defense Research Committee...I started to promote the need for a national collaborative capability. In 1999 I called it NOAH, a National Operations and Analysis Hub...The CIA said, "We don't need that capability, it's not necessary." I pub language in three successive defense bills, 1999, 2000, and 2001, calling for a National Collaborative Center. The CIA continually balked...By the way, the NOAH I proposed was established by George Bush in '03, called the TTIC, the Terrorism Threat Integration Center...Today it's called the NCTC, the National Counterterrorism Center. But I never knew the details of Able Danger until three months ago, when the military intelligence officials came to me to propose a follow-on to that. I asked them to give me a copy of the chart I had given to Hadley, and that's when they told me the whole story...I offered to give Kean the basic run-up, from which he would have had the ability to do when I've been doing for the past few weeks...I uncovered more information about al Qaeda linkages in ten days than they did with 100 staffers in two years...
The 9/11 Commission's spin that "we weren't gold" is B.S. They could have done what I've done in ten days, with basically myself and one staffer going back and making all the connections, identifying the private contractors working with the intelligence community, using my networks. I offered all of that to the 9/11 Commission. I offered to open the door, as did Tony Shaffer, as did Scott Phillpott, and they rejected it...I can only assume they rejected it either because they were incompetent or because they had an agenda...This has not come out yet, but I think they were monitoring mosques in America, and that's how they were getting people to take photographs and identify associations. I don't think anyone wants that to come out...Tim Roemer arrogantly say, "How could they have had a photograph of Atta? He didn't even arrive here until 2001 or so." The fact is, as you saw in The New York Times, the contractor said, "We bought that material from a California-based woman who gave us the photograph of Atta." The 9/11 Commission did not even pursue the alternative ways of identifying Atta besides the normal government means...There are two things at play. One, I think Clinton Administration holdovers do not want this story to be told. Two, I think career bureaucrats within the Defense Intelligence Agency do not want it to come out publicly that in '99, 2000, and 2001 they were using sophisticated data mining techniques...
Rush Limbaugh: Let me ask you about Sandy Berger. Is there any connection...
Rep. Weldon: I have no idea. But if the Clinton Administration had come up with the level of information I gave to Steve Hadley after 9/11, it's almost certain it would have gone to Sandy Berger before 9/11. And it's a guarantee that the Clinton policy of the firewalls is what caused the Special Forces lawyers to tell the Military Intelligence folks, "You cannot communicate with the FBI..." we have the FBI person who will publicly testify that she actually was the one-and actually had the paperwork, and our inspector has already talked to this person and she's verified to his staff-who set up FBI meetings three times that were canceled at the last minute for this specific purpose in September 2000...this needs to be fully and completely investigated. This is a scandal far worse than Watergate, because 3,000 people were slaughtered. I can't believe the cavalier attitude...
And let me tell you this: Jamie called my office when this story first broke, and I've never met the woman in my life. She called me from her vacation in Massachusetts. My chief of staff calls me in Pennsylvania and says, "You won't believe who just called here: Jamie Gorelick herself. She wants you to call her back." I said, "I'm not calling her back, you call her back, I'm tied up." He called her back, and she said, "I just want the Congressman to know I'm getting all kinds of emails. I did nothing wrong." Now, why would Jamie Gorelick call me...
Bill Cohen, Secretary of Defense under Bill Clinton, in a recent interview with Wolf Blitzer, said it was an extremely hard situation knowing the Clinton Administration did not allow agencies to talk to each other. Cohen acknowledge this...Cohen acknowledged that could have been a major reason why this problem occurred-which it was. But I don't think those Special Forces lawyers were acting on their own. I actually think there was consultation, either with the White House lawyers or with the Justice Department lawyers, which would have involved Jamie Gorelick directly...
Rush Limbaugh: ...my impression is, and I hope I'm wrong, that the Bush Administration doesn't want to go there either.
Rep. Weldon: I think they just don't know what they want. And that's part of the problem. Cambone said to me recently when he came into my office, "To be honest with you, Congressman, I don't know anything about this program at all. You know much more than I do..." It's a question whether the Republican leadership has the guts and the backbone to stand up and do the kind of oversight investigation that's necessary...
There are two fundamental questions. The first is, Who made the ultimate decision and why, to stop the military intelligence officers in September of '03, from bringing in the FBI to brief them? We have all the people who will verify that story, from the FBI itself to a number of military intelligence officers. The second questions is, How could and why would the 9/11 Commission-a commission chartered by the Congress and the President, given assets involving hundreds of staffers-not fully investigate a top-secret military program that was specifically designed to look at al Qaeda for two years? How could you not talk with them? How could the commissioners never be briefed? I'm convinced, Rush, the commissioners were never briefed on Able Danger. I think it was suppressed at the staff level. That's the question that has to be answered.
I was a fire chief. I represent all the firefighters in America...One of my best friends, Ray Downing, the chief of all rescue for the New york City Fire Department, was killed when the first tower came down. 343 firefighters were killed there. And for the past four years, I've had it in my mind that I should have done more. I should not have let the bureaucracy of the CIA back me down from establishing this data mining capability that the military had perfected. I did, and people died...if it means it's costing me the chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee, so be it. This is not about whether or not I can move up the chain; I'm doing my job, this is what's important...
They're scrambling to find out what happened, because nobody else has done their research. Cambone doesn't know who to talk to...
vadkins
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Hugh Hewitt reports that National Review's characterization of Evangelicals' support of Miers as hypocritical will only demoralize this critical Republican supporting demographic.
In his morning Miers update, Hewitt notes this Washington Times piece making the case that the opposition to the Miers nomination on the Republican side is mostly from the GOP punditry. I'm listening to Rush now and he's dissing this Washington Times column saying that the article sites Republican State Party Chairman as supporting the nomination-which is required by the party, and does not reflect support from the voting party base.
The bottom line from Mr. Hewitt:
But the desirability of a talent is not the same --by a long shot-- of its necessity. President Bush has made a different calculation. It isn't the one I owuld have made, but that's no excuse to wage a campaign of self-destructive (to the GOP coalition) recrimination that endangers the Senate majority in the long term by endangering gains that might be made in 2006.
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Trey Jackson has the transcript of Rush Limbaugh's interview with VP Cheney today. The topic is the nomination of Harriet Miers to SCOTUS. Some notable excerpts:
RUSH: Is there a reason why conservatives' known quantities about whom the president's supporters wouldn't have questions, were not chosen -- Michael Luttig, Edith Jones and others? I mean, they've got records and the president wouldn't be facing questions he's getting today from his supporters. Any reason why those names were left off this time?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I wouldn't take this as negative on anybody. We looked at a very broad range of candidates and, frankly, I hope we have additional vacancies down the road that the president will be able to full and some of those people you mention will be, I expect, on everybody's short list. But the president sat down and looked at all of the options and all the alternatives. He spent a great deal of time on this himself. He's convinced Harriet will do a great job on the court, as am I, and you'll find when we look back ten years from now that it will have been a great appointment.
vadkins
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With all the Able Danger news tracking/blogrolling that I've been doing, I haven't had the time to devote to posting at the Dittopod Index. At least for now, that posting situation should improve. Here are the Rush Limbaugh Show Dittopod Index posts for last week (Sept. 26-Sept. 30, 2005):
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