RUSH: You know, folks, I’m beginning to wonder here. Everybody is talking about ‘outsourcing.’ It may be time to outsource Congress! This is embarrassing to watch this. I don’t care what you think about the port deal, this is just embarrassing. Greetings, my friends, and welcome, the award-winning, thrill-packed Rush Limbaugh program here on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network. Three full hours of broadcast excellence today. The telephone number if you want to be on the program is 800-282-2882, and the e-mail address is Rush@eibnet.com. I am not kidding. Outsource Congress! They’ve gone from playing politics, and then they go to panic, then they go to a stampede. Now it’s a lynch mob.
It is just a lynch mob, and the Democrats and Republicans are in a race here to see who can be more opposed to the port deal, the best and the fastest, and in this contest, the Republicans have won, and they’re sitting there beating their chests like a bunch of Tarzans, and everybody’s watching this, and in the meantime, Dubai is getting irritated. ‘Dubai is threatening retaliation against American strategic and commercial interests if Washington blocks its $6.8 billion takeover of operations at several U.S. ports. As the House Appropriations Committee yesterday marked up legislation to kill…’ the port deal, ‘the UAE let it be known that it is preparing to hit back hard if necessary. A source close to the deal said members of Dubai’s royal family are furious at the hostility both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill have shown toward the deal. ‘They’re saying, ‘All we’ve done for you guys, all our purchases, we’ll stop it, we’ll just yank it,” the source said.
Retaliation from the emirate could come against lucrative deals with aircraft maker Boeing and by curtailing the docking of hundreds of American ships, including U.S. Navy ships, each year at its port in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the source added. It is not clear how much of Dubai’s behind-the-scenes anger would be followed up by action, but Boeing has been made aware of the threat and is already reportedly lobbying to save the ports deal. The Emirates Group airline will decide later this year whether it will buy Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner or its competitor, Airbus A350. The airline last fall placed an order worth $9.7 billion for 42 Boeing 777 aircraft, making Dubai Boeing’s largest 777 customer.’ The sheikhdom, the United Arab Emirates, ‘may buy as many as 50 wide-body aircraft from Boeing and Airbus during the next four years, according to Aerospace Enterprise officials.’
So they’re mad over there. I do understand it. I don’t blame them being mad about this, and they’ve also said that if this doesn’t go through, “The days of us helping you in the war on terror are also over.” They’re sitting there and they don’t understand this. They probably understand it to a point. Let’s go to the audiotape. The audiotape will set this up. This is after the Senate appropriations committee vote on the Dubai — they didn’t even wait for the 45 days. The 45 days is supposed to have a much further scrutiny of the port deal, find out exactly what it is, find out if any risks involved. They didn’t even wait for the 45 days, and this is purely because it’s an election year. The substance of this issue is not being dealt with.
Emotionalism is rampant. Emotionalism and fear is what’s driving this — and not fear of terrorism, fear of elections coming up in November of this year. The Republicans in both the Senate and the House are just paranoid that the Democrats got out in front of them on this on a national security issue, and I gave them the recipe for smoking the Democrats on this. The Democrats are not concerned about national security. The Democrats are doing what they always do: they’re posturing; they’re making it up. They’re camouflaging themselves. Way to smoke them out on this and expose them for who they are. “Nope, don’t have time for it. We’ve got to get out in front of them now. We’ve got constituents out there.” I know you’ve got constituents out there, but nobody is thinking about this. Everybody is just reacting to it. I’ve never seen something as reactionary as this. So the audio sound bites will tell you the tale. This is Jerry Lewis, after the house appropriations committee vote on the Dubai ports, the chairman of the committee, Jerry Lewis, he’s a Republican from California, made this announcement.
LEWIS: This is a national security issue. This is a national security bill. We want to make sure that the security of our ports is in America’s hands.
RUSH: And so with that, they sent a message. The Republicans today are telling the White House, President Bush: “This deal isn’t going to happen. We’re going to reject this deal. We don’t want any part of this deal.” They’re up there sending messages back and forth even now. Those are the news alerts that are flying around even as we speak. So the Democrats yesterday got all bent out of shape because they got outmaneuvered by somebody named Jerry Lewis. They got outmaneuvered by the Republicans and they can’t stand it. They’re just fed up with this, especially the Democrats in the Senate, because they thought that they were the ones that were the face of this bill. They were the face of the opposition, the Democrats, and now here the Republicans have beat ’em in this race. The Republicans have stolen their thunder, and they’re not happy about it. We have a montage. Chuck Schumer and Senator Dick Durbin.
SCHUMER: We believe that a majority of senators, an overwhelming majority would vote to end the deal. Enough of them have said that already. And we’re not going to rest ’til we get a vote on this issue.
DURBIN: The Republican leadership in the United States Senate does not want to face a vote on the Dubai port deal, not this afternoon, not this evening, not tomorrow, maybe not ever, but they will. They’re going to be held accountable to the American people.
RUSH: Yeah, the Senate! Here’s Durbin threatening other senators. They don’t want to vote, we’re going to make them vote, because we’re going to be accountable to the American people. Folks, if you don’t know how you’re being manipulated on this — if you don’t know how you are being railroaded on this, if you don’t know how poorly you are being represented in all of this — here, we’ve got a montage. Dingy Harry. Dingy Harry had to get in here. He had to compliment Schumer. He had to say to Chuck Schumer, “You — you — are the face! You are the face of the Dubai port deal opposition.” If you hear this stuff you understand what this is really all about.
REID: My friend from New York who has been out front on this issue from the very beginning, Senator Schumer, came to the floor and offered an amendment which was going to be offered, and his having been out in front, I’m glad that he’s — he’s the personality, he’s the — he’s the face of this amendment. He deserves it. He was the first one to notice this issue —
RUSH: Stop the tape. Stop! Do you see what this is about? “Whoa, who is Jerry Lewis? Chuck Schumer is the guy that made this happen. He’s the face of the bill. He was the first one out there. He’s the one that called everybody’s attention. Chuck Schumer is the hero in this bill — and I, Dingy Harry, am going to make sure that it’s Democrats who are the face of victory in opposing the port deal and sinking it.” Here’s the rest of Dingy Harry’s little sound bite.
REID: — anywhere else. So I admire the work that he’s done on this issue. We, Mr. President, can’t turn over control of these ports to a foreign country. That’s what this is. This isn’t a foreign company. It’s a foreign country. We stand ready to vote on this port matter, after a very short debate.
RUSH: All right, now, once these guys start talking, you know whose not far behind — and that’s John McCain. John McCain had to get in on this, and he’s all upset that the Senate is moving so fast on this. He says it’s the Senate that’s supposed to be the saucer that cools the drink, cools the coffee. Here’s his bite.
McCAIN: What I saw happen yesterday and what I’ve seen transpire here makes me very, very concerned and even, to a degree, saddened, at the way that the Senate has degenerated and deteriorated from an atmosphere of a willingness to address issues in the fashion that the Senate has to, which has to do with sitting down, discussing, agreeing, and moving forward. We’re not the other body. I see this institution deteriorating and degenerating to a point where sometimes I am not only embarrassed, but sometimes a little ashamed.
RUSH: Yeah. Yeah, well, I happen to agree with Senator McCain. I’m ashamed of all of them. The House side, too. That’s what he means by “the other body,” and it’s because this is pure politics. They’re not paying attention to any ancillary ramifications of this: the effect it will have on Dubai, the effect it will have on perhaps losing an ally. The effect it will have on the war on terror — especially if you’ve taken the time, which I don’t think these people have even yet done that. If you take the time to look at the deal, if you take the time to actually look at what’s going to be the end result, we are not going to have, as Dingy Harry lied, a foreign country running our ports. It’s terminals in the ports. It’s nothing like what they are saying it’s going to be, and everybody is just having their fear ginned up and ratcheted up here all for the selfish concerns of election-year politics — and the Republicans are just as guilty as the Democrats.
Republicans, in a way, I mean the Democrats were out front on this, going nuts on it first, the Republicans in a race, you know, if you want to find something good — and I always try to find something good in everything, folks, because there always is something good to find. The something good to find is the Republicans have turned the tables on the Democrats, and if there is any victory, if there is anything to be gained in this, it is this little political maneuver that they’ve pulled off, which has demonstrated clearly that they were the ones, the Republican Party is not going to sit here and stand for our ports to be overrun by a bunch of terrorists, we’re just not going to put up with it. One more McCain and we’ll take a break. This speaks for itself, and if it doesn’t, I’ll translate it for you.
McCAIN: The Senator from New York came to the floor and said, and I quote, just before the vote, reserving the right to object, because he was reserving the right to object to a unanimous consent agreement, as we do business here by unanimous agreement, before we set it aside on this amendment. On this amendment. On this amendment. That was his statement. It’s part of the record. And then, when he was recognized, he reached into his pocket, reached into his pocket and pulled out an amendment. Now, Mr. President, it is the right of every Senator under the rules to propose an amendment. It is not the right of every senator to mislead his colleagues. It is not the right of every senator. How can we do business, how can we do business in this floor if our colleagues mislead us?
RUSH: All right, so what McCain is saying here is that Schumer has committed a crime against the Senate; that he lied in order to sneak in his amendment, and McCain is steamed. This is from the floor of the Senate this morning. The amendment deals with lobbying and other things. They’re sneaking the port deal thing in a bill that has to do with lobbying and gifts and all that sort of stuff — and this is Schumer just basically trying to get his port deal rammed through the Senate without the deliberateness and the deliberations and the reasoned analysis that Senator McCain says the Senate is so well known for.
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RUSH: Here’s Chuck Schumer’s response to the assertion by Senator McCain that he’s basically thwarting the procedures of the Senate.
SCHUMER: Many of us have come to the conclusion, the same conclusion that Jerry Lewis in the House came to, and I guess 62 of the 64 appropriations members, bipartisan, in the House appropriations committee came to that this deal should be stopped. We don’t have the luxury of waiting. That appropriations bill may not get over here ’til April, the supplemental. It may not be voted on ’til may. The deal will be consummated and done and then they’ll say you can’t undo it. There will be constitutional and legal problems. We have to act now. Our job, my job as I represent 19 million New Yorkers, is to see that they’re secure, above all. I believe that we must vote on this amendment.
RUSH: Want to make me puke. Secure? Your job as you represent New Yorkers is to see that they’re secure? Well, welcome to the party, because for the last three or four years I haven’t gotten the impression that the Democrats care a whit about that, and I don’t think that they care about it in this. I don’t think that has a thing to do with it, Senator. You can say it does, and I know you will continue to, but it doesn’t have a thing to do with it. Now, I just checked my e-mail, and I know you people are mad at me about this, and I understand why. Go ahead, be mad at me. A guy writes in, and he says, ‘Well, you know, you can’t have it both ways. You sit there and attack members of Congress for not doing what we want them do and now they’re doing what we want them to do because the polls are 80% against this. You can’t have it both ways, Rush.’
I’m not trying to have it any way or both ways. I’m just suggesting to you that the reason all this is happening is not what you think it is. The reason all this is happening is fear, election year politics. This is gutlessness; this is not courageous. What you’re watching is not courageous. This is the easiest thing in the world for these guys to do, what Peter King has done. He’s the Long Island congressman who accused me of being ‘in the tank’ for the Bush administration and said that I was the reason that there was any slowdown in opposition to the bill, blamed me for that. In the House, they’re going to tie this bill to an amendment or make it an amendment to a bill that funds the troops, so they’re going to force Bush to choose, ‘You want the port deal, or do you want to fund the troops in the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters?’ I mean, (laughing) this is just so, so irrational. All the while they think they’re being ‘courageous’ and showing a lot of guts. I think it’s just the exact opposite. Barbara Boxer. Listen to this.
BOXER: We have to stop. We have to stop this deal from going forward. Listen, that deal was greased. That deal was greased. The president’s all for it. He said he didn’t know anything about it, but 50 seconds later he was all for it. This is our only chance today, unless there’s an agreement to have a stand-alone bill.
RUSH: They’re arguing here about the Schumer amendment that he snuck in there, and that’s what got McCain all peed off (yeah, teed off. It was close) and here’s Boxer saying the deal was greased. Yeah, let me tell you who greased it. Bill Clinton greased the deal. That still isn’t being discussed in all this. Bill Clinton is the guy — George Bush’s ‘brother’ — who’s out there lobbying for this deal while his wife is out there pontificating against it, all the while their family is financially enriched because of the payments Clinton’s getting as an unregistered agent or lobbyist for a foreign concern. He hadn’t even done that. That’s required by law. He’s out there advising these guys. He’s the one that greased it. You call ’em up.
In fact, if I were Dubai, I’d sue Clinton for malpractice because he told them, ‘Hey, you go in and propose a 45-day wait.’
Dubai said, ‘Okay, well, we’ll do it, a 45-day wait.’
Now, the 45-day wait has been used by Clinton’s — well, the Republicans and Clinton’s own party — to sabotage the deal. They didn’t have to do this, but they did, trying to calm everybody’s concerns about this.
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RUSH: Now, to show you how it’s disintegrating out there particularly on the Democrat side, this was on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal today. Maxine Waters was the guest, and this is what she said about the port deal.
WATERS: We thought that after 9/11, this president — who made the cornerstone of his presidency the war on terrorism — really was on top of what could be done to secure the homeland. Don’t forget, he led the leadership on creating the homeland, uh… department, and we started to live under orange and yellow and red signals and alerts because this president said that we had to be on top of it, and I know you feel duped to find out that even after 9/11 and supposedly lessons learned, here we are in the middle of negotiating a contract with a country that is suspect.
RUSH: What is she saying? She almost says that 9/11 never really happened, that Bush just made that up and it’s a trick? I can’t follow this anymore. All right, let’s go the phones. To Hartford, Connecticut: Neil, glad you waited. Welcome to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Rush, fellow highly trained broadcast specialist dittos, sir.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Listen, I’m not a person prone to violence so I need you to calm me down before I do something I’m going to regret. Peter King needs to put on a flak jacket and go to Baghdad and explain to my friends and relatives who are in uniform why he painted our president, our commander-in-chief into a corner and forced him into a position where, in order to keep his word to the American people and veto anything that’s got the port deal attached to it, he’s going to have to pull out the rug from underneath our men and women in uniform. Peter King needs to haul his greasy butt over to Baghdad and explain that to my friends and relatives who are getting shot at every day, why he deliberately tried to get the funding pulled out from under them.
RUSH: Thanks, Neil. Very well said, in a highly trained broadcast specialist way. I think Peter King feels rather heroic today. Look, an honest analysis of what he did, you’d have to say it’s smart. He got what he wanted. This is the way our system works. What he did, the best way to explain this, the House appropriations committee voted 62-2 yesterday to approve an amendment to block the deal, and this amendment is to an emergency spending bill that would fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and additional Hurricane Katrina relief.
That bill, expected to be considered on the House floor next week, of course it will pass overwhelmingly, because it’s primarily a deal to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and more Hurricane Katrina aid. Nobody is going to vote against that, and an amendment to that bill is what Peter King put in there, saying that there will not be any Dubai ports deal. And that’s why king is running around bragging, he’ll say, “Hey, the president’s gotta make up his mind here. He wants the port deal or he wants to support the troops.” So to people who oppose the port deal, this is a great maneuver. This is a fabulous parliamentary maneuver, brilliant thinking and so forth. The White House is saying, “Oh, yeah? Well, we’re not retracting our veto threat. We might still veto it, then where will you guys be?”
When you get into showdowns like this it can be great entertainment and great fun, but there’s a lot at stake. As I continue to say, folks, it’s the motivations behind this that just really, really, really bug me. They really, really do. The way these people are acting is like kids, just totally emotionally. It’s like dealing with liberals all over the place. Here we have a couple Peter King sound bites. Last night he was on CNN with Wolf Blitzer. Wolf said, “Is it too late to find some sort of compromise? This notion of a subsidiary, an American subsidiary, perhaps taking charge of these six ports? Is that something that you still think could be worked out?”
KING: That train has left the station, and I think that Dubai ports was too — too reluctant and too slow to take advantage of that. I got the impression that the White House didn’t realize until the last one or two days how severe this issue was, and there’s no way I see the House changing its mind on this issue. I really think that DPW was — was really too slow to move. They were in a way, arrogant, they were locked in, they did not have any comprehension of the political realities nor do they understand the legitimate concerns that the American people had.
RUSH: How do you know? There was a 45-day period, we’re in it now, where you’re supposed to address all of that. What do you mean they’re too slow to move? What are they supposed to do, come up to Capitol Hill and bare all to you guys? They were up there yesterday testifying, the CEO of the outfit, DPW, and he wasn’t wearing a headdress or a turban and he didn’t have an Arab name. I know that’s just a front. I know they’re just trying to appease us, fool us. They actually have a white guy — white hair and everything — as the CEO. He looked as respectable as Marlin Perkins did back in the Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom days. Remember those, Rachel? Rachel doesn’t. She’s too young. Do you remember those days, Brian? You probably don’t remember those days.
More from Peter King. Really, what are they supposed to do? That 45-day wait was used as a race by the Republicans against the Democrats to see who could cross the finish line first.
“I stopped the port deal! I did! Notice me! I stopped it!”
You’ve got Chuck Schumer over there, “No, I’m the face of the port deal! I was the first to say it was a bad deal.”
“Well, too late because I’m Jerry Lewis and I got the votes before you guys did in the Senate, so the Republicans stopped the deal.”
“No, I did it! You wouldn’t have done it,” says Schumer, “If it weren’t for me!”
And Dingy Harry gets in, “That’s right! Senator Schumer should be the face of this deal. We in the Senate must be.”
And McCain is saying, “Slow down.”
“It’s too late,” Peter King said, “Train’s left the station.”
So Wolf said, “Well, what about the White House threat, the threat directly from the president, early on? He boldly came out and said, ‘I will veto any such legislation that would torpedo this deal.’ Do you think he still would veto legislation?”
KING: I don’t see how he can, because this amendment is going to be part of the supplemental appropriation which pays for the war in Iraq. I don’t see how the president of the United States as commander-in-chief can veto the appropriation that he needs for the war to be carried on. So it’s going to be very difficult. I don’t see how the president can do it because in effect he would be putting the United Arab Emirates before the welfare of the American troops. And this president I know does not want to do that.
RUSH: So let’s go Hardball last night. Chris Matthews talking to Christopher Hitchens, and the question, “So, when we put our flags in our shipping, we were doing — what’s the relevance to all this, Chris?”
HITCHENS: So sad to see these black chauvinists at the top of the show and xenophobes. If it matters, this is not an Arab company, it’s not run by Arabs or this paranoid horror show talk you get all the time. It’s a multinational effort partly run by United Kingdom, partly by others. It’s just — it’s really using the most abject, lowest propaganda for the cheapest purposes. And as for national security, don’t — I mean don’t start. This is — no other people making these asinine remarks know or care anything about national security.
RUSH: Well, they may care about it, but I agree with him, this is not what this is about. I think they may know about national security, but what he knows is the Democrats haven’t cared a whit about national security since the Iraq war started, and they really intensified in the last year their obvious lack of concern about national security. That’s why they don’t win elections. Everybody knows they can’t be trusted with it. So he’s exactly right. That’s not what this is about. Now, another guest was on this show defending the Democrats for taking advantage of an opportunity here, and Hitchens said, “Yeah, it’s called opportunism.” The other guest is the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson, and he was asked to respond to what you just heard Hitchens say.
ROBINSON: Well, you know, I don’t think you can blame the Democrats for kind of piling on here. I mean it’s an opportunity —
HITCHENS: Yes, I can.
ROBINSON: It’s opportunities you have if you’re in the condition that the Democratic Party is right now.
HITCHENS: That’s called “opportunism.” Not to interrupt you, but it’s called opportunism.
RUSH: It’s called opportunism and what he means by that is there’s no real statesmanship going on here, it’s just political opportunity. It’s election year politics is what it is. Jeff in Indianapolis, I’m glad you called, sir, welcome to the program.
CALLER: Yes. Thank you for taking my call.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: It’s kind of strange that you’re focusing on how much money Bill Clinton took from the people in Dubai, but let’s just remember that there’s Republican, former Republican Senator Bob Dole hired as a lobbyist for that group to lobby the deal on Capitol Hill.
RUSH: Yeah?
CALLER: So, I mean, it’s people on both sides.
RUSH: I think Bob Dole’s probably a registered lobbyist. Bill Clinton isn’t. Bill Clinton is doing it on the sly, under the table so to speak — or the bed. Who knows where it was going on. The point s he’s got a wife in the Senate who is voting and commenting and doing all kind of things on this, and she is essentially taking the same money that Clinton is getting because they’re a family. It has to be reported on her financial disclosure forms, but Clinton “greased the deal,” if anybody did. I’m not saying it disqualifies the deal. I’m just saying you let anybody else do what Clinton is doing in the exact same circumstances, and it would be the headlines of this story, right along with the so-called security threat that is posed by all this.
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RUSH: Mike, Washington, DC. You’re next. Nice to have you with us.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, good to talk to you, man.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: This is getting insane here with the protectionism that’s going on. If you start closing off ports, then you start closing off — talk about closing off airlines, what next? We start keeping foreign investors out of pretty much everything in this country, like trucking industry, financial industry, pharmaceuticals, tech companies, and this is getting insane. I was watching, I think on Fox the other day, and I heard this guy, Ed Feulner of the Heritage Foundation talk about a book, asking questions, ‘Is it the government’s business to do things in legislation?’ This, to me, is going far beyond the government’s business on what this country needs. If you start getting lawmakers telling certain companies they cannot invest in this country, that goes against the very principles that we are founded on.
RUSH: Wait! Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We do. There’s a whole bureaucracy set up that examines all of these deals, all of these opportunities that foreign investors to want get in. Yesterday we learned that the latest to come down the pike is that the US airline industry wants to be able to for the first time accept foreign investment, and they’re having trouble. You know, this will never go. If the port deal is going to be bombed out, that will never happen on the same basis. Look, let me be clear about something here. Congress has every right to do all this, and the White House is not exactly exemplified itself here. They’ve not made themselves innocent in this whole thing.
They came out… I mean, there’s just too much stupidity everywhere. There’s stupidity in Congress, the way they’re dealing with this, but I sort of understand why. The president came down, threw down the gauntlet. He said, ‘I don’t care what you do. You can do a 45-day wait. This deal is going through’. I mean, he threw down the gauntlet. Well, you know, the traditional battle for power between the executive and legislative branches is a traditional part of our political system, so the president comes out and says, ‘Screw you! This deal is happening. I don’t care if we wait 45 days or not, and I don’t care what the 45 day shows up. This deal is happening.’
Congress says, ‘Screw you! You want to make sure it happens, then here’s what you go to do and we’re going to make sure it doesn’t happen,’ and so Peter King comes up with his technique, and plus Congress has something very powerful on their side, and that’s all of you. I mean, the constituents for these guys are pounding their doors down and ringing their phones and probably jamming up their computers with e-mail, ‘No to the ports deal.’ So the members of Congress are flexing their muscles here when they’ve got the power, and this is traditional. Neither side here has been exemplary. What I think is something about this that really is a point to be made here is that this 45-day review period was demanded, and it’s being ignored, and because of that, we’re not going to really learn what the security issues were, because obviously we’re not going to do the review.
The review has just been killed. So the whole point of having the 45 days to figure out, ‘Okay, what is this really all about? How did this happen? Who are these people?’ We’re still not going to know. This is all because both parties are in a race to see who could be the first to cross the finish line, think, ‘I did it. I won! I stopped the port deal. I stopped the port deal.’ I have to also admit, all the things going on out there, I’ve been trying to get away from this issue. It won’t go away. Today is evidence of it, but to think that this deal is occupying so much of what’s going on in the country when there are so many other issues out there that are seemingly more important, relevant, timely. I’ll tell you why that is, because this is raw emotion, and this has taken on the aspects of a spectator sport, and the gladiators are up there in Capitol Hill, the emperor is up there in his box suite, in the owner’s box in the White House, and we are the spectators, and we’re watching all this as though it’s an event.
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