June 15, 2007

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: What are we going to do about Mississippi Senator Trent Lott? What are we going to do about Senator Lott?  You remember when he got into trouble with the Strom Thurmond comment?  We're out there defending the guy. The White House threw him overboard. All kinds of Republicans were throwing him overboard. Talk radio came to his defense. Trent Lott is now one of the engineers of the Senate immigration bill, the amnesty bill, and they're trying to bring this thing back. The amendments are being kept under wraps. By the way, I understand Lindsey Grahamnesty, senator from South Carolina, is going to propose an amendment to build the border fence.  (Laughing.)  $4.4 billion!  The government spends that much on rubber bands every year.  Well, maybe not that much, but you get the point.  Senator Lott is out there saying, "The problem with this is talk radio, and it's a problem that's going to have be dealt with."  Now, what does that mean?  When I hear a United States senator say that what I do for a living is a "problem" that the government has to "deal with," you can interpret it any number of ways.  He's either saying, "Well, we're going to have to come up with our own ways to overcome them," or, "We're going to just have to wipe them out." What does it mean?  The real question is: How are we going to deal with Trent Lott?  What are we going to do about him?  

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RUSH:  I want to spend a little time here on Trent Lott's comment that talk radio is running the country.  What is talk radio?  Talk radio is the greatest democratic forum in the country today.  It is truly diverse.  There are more ideas, there's more back and forth, there's more so-called diversity. There are all kinds of great things to say about it.  Talk radio is the American voter.  I bet most of the people who listen to talk radio are voters.  That's what bothers Trent Lott.  Well, who should be running the country?  I don't mean making the day-to-day decisions, but go look at our founding documents, and all that jibber-jabba about governing with the consent of the governed.  This is a battle between Washington and the people now.  This amnesty bill, when you strip away all of the extraneous stuff this is a battle between Washington and the people, and they know it.  So you got a Republican talking about talk radio the way liberals talk about talk radio, which tells you (it tells me) what the real objective of most elected officials in Washington is anyway. It's to perpetuate themselves and their jobs and to spend money and maybe not -- well, yes. It would be in that order.  The reason talk radio is "running the country" is because the people who are voters in this country are listening and involved and are passionate.  Talk radio may be informing you, but it's not making you a robot, and you're taking action on your own, and these blowhards in Washington are hearing from you, the American people, and that's what bothers them -- and we are being blamed for you being informed, and that should tell you something.

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RUSH: Trent Lott: "Talk radio is running the country. We're going to have to deal with that problem," he said.  You need to really think about that.  Well what is he talking about?  The people that he's actually complaining and whining about now are the ones that tried to defend him when everybody else was throwing him overboard when he made those joking comments at a tribute to Strom Thurmond.  Folks, I want you to think of something.  The notion that people freely expressing their opinions on radio is a "problem," should scare every one of us that loves liberty.  The notion that people freely expressing their opinions in e-mails and phone calls to their elected representatives is a problem should scare every single person who loves liberty.  This is the exact sort of thing -- people expressing their opinions is a problem -- that gave us McCain-Feingold, a government signed, government passed and the president signed assault on free speech, the First Amendment, during campaigns.  Trent Lott is a Republican.  He has thrown his hat in with John McCain on this because McCain defended him, too, during that episode.

You know, I was kind of surprised because Lott loves to stick it to President Bush any time he can because of the White House lack of support for Lott during the Strom Thurmond thing.  So the bottom line here is that this is frightening stuff.  I mean, it's one thing to hear it from liberals and Democrats.  We hear this from them all the time.  But the idea that a Republican now joins this mind-set -- and believe me, I don't actually think he's the only one.  You're good little voters when you sit out there and just shut up. Show up on Election Day. Send your money in. Send in your donations. But you're getting uppity out there, folks, when you start telling them how to do their jobs.  By the way, the latest Rasmussen poll -- they're still going to try to bring this thing back -- 20% of the American people support the bill. Only 20% want this.  Pure and simple, it's only 20%.  "They prefer smaller steps," this is a Rasmussen poll, "with the focus on enforcement."  They're working overtime to bring this back and get it done.  Oh, you gotta listen to Dingy Harry here.  This was this morning on the Senate floor.  Listen to this.

REID:  I also want to indicate to all senators and staffs, it's Friday, and now I understand, Mr. President, we have indicated we might have to work weekends, and I know this causes a lot of distress to folks.  But everyone should know that to complete this bill and to complete the immigration bill will require next weekend, without any question, next weekend, Saturday and Sunday.

RUSH: Aw!

REID: Senators should understand that this is the real thing.

RUSH: Awwww!

REID: If we're going to finish these two bills, which both the Republican leader and I think is absolutely mandatory, essential, that senators should be advised that next Saturday and Sunday -- which means the preceding Friday, which is a week from today and a week from Monday -- we'll have to be in session.  We only have two weeks left in this work period, and I hope we don't have to run into the Fourth of July recess period, which is only one week long.

RUSH:  Awww, folks, they're going to have to work weekends!  Oh ho-ho! They might have to work weekends in order to get this done. Oh, how horrible.  Maybe you could go out and hire some "illegal Americans," Dingy Harry, to do some of the staff work on weekends so that you don't have to. I mean, you obviously don't want to work weekends. A senator working on weekends is a job you don't want to do.  There are plenty of illegal Americans who will "do jobs that Americans don't want to do."  Hire them! Make them temps. Make them interns or whatever. Show them the inner workings of government, Dingy Harry, and bring 'em in and let 'em give you weekends off.  They can certainly help.  You know, it's interesting. When one million illegals protest, they're called "activists."  When one million African-Americans protest or supposedly 19 million, or -- yeah, one million (nineteen, that's Calypso Louie) they're called "activists."  When presidential candidates go down to Selma to recreate a memorial, it's activism.  When millions of talk radio listeners protest, they're called...what?  A problem!  They're called a problem.  Now, when 20 million talk radio listeners protest, that's a problem.  They're a "problem" that has to be "dealt with."  So you see, ladies and gentlemen, will never be called activists.  

People who get called activists, why, there's virtue to activism!  Why, there's virtue to getting behind your cause and putting action behind the cause, and getting personally involved in it -- and when you do it, it ain't activism.  No, it's a problem. It's a problem that has to be dealt with.  I'll tell you, I don't think that they know. If they think they got deluged last time, they have no clue what's going to happen after Trent Lott's comments, and they start doing this stuff and bringing this stuff forward with amendments that have yet to be revealed, amendments that are being kept "under wraps," is the term right now. These elected officials think that they got heat before? I don't think they realize what they're going to get now, but keep in mind what Dianne Feinstein said. In her 15 years in the Senate, she's never heard more racist, hate-filled commentary than on this issue, the phone calls and e-mails she got on this issue.  So the effort to demonize you is on, and I think Lott was trying to do the same thing: demonize you.  When you demonize talk radio you're demonizing the audience of talk radio. You're being demonized, and the reaction these people are going to have is, "Hey, look, it's just a bunch of angry hotheads full of racism and bigotry, nativism, and so forth.  We don't have to listen to these people. We don't have to listen to what they saying." That's what's being set up.  

Now, this thing is going to come out in the Senate. They're hell-bent on getting this done, and the White House put a lot of pressure on them, by the way. That's the pressure that's working on the Republicans.  This is going to be a battle at a time, one battle at a time.  If it wins passage in the Senate, you ought to prepare yourself for that.  I wish it wouldn't, don't misunderstand, but it's then going to go to the House and it's going to get revved up all over again.  The Senate may finish this before their precious July 4th recess, but the House isn't.  The target date on the part of the proponents to get this done is the fall, August, sometimes before the August recess or a little bit after that.  So that's really the time frame on this for the whole thing to get done.  So even if it's not stopped in the Senate -- and I'm not giving up on that, don't misunderstand. I'm just pointing out to you that it's gotta go to the House next, and then if the procedures are followed, there's a conference committee between the two, and it's no sure bet in the House.  A lot of  House people don't like it. Representatives are up for reelection every two years. Members of the House are far more attuned to the thoughts and opinions of their constituents than senators are, because senators are not reelected every other year. They're reelected in six-year terms, as you know.  You know all this. 

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Read the Background Material...

NYTimes: Senate Leaders Agree to Revive Immigration Bill

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/15/washington/15immig.html?ei=5090&en=8cbf54f3cc157012&ex=1339560000&adxnnl=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1181919960-N1fpxkz+ECK076ifwTKmzQ

Rasmussen Poll: Voters Want Smaller Steps to Immigration Reform With Focus on Enforcement

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/poll_voters_want_smaller_steps_to_immigration_reform_with_focus_on_enforcement  

June 7, 2007

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RUSH: Here's what happened last night on the immigration bill, as written up by the AP and then I will give you the correct analysis of this.  "A fragile compromise that would legalize millions of unlawful immigrants risks coming unraveled after the Senate voted early Thursday to place a five-year limit on a program meant to provide American employers with 200,000 temporary foreign workers annually.  The 49-48 vote came two weeks after the Senate, also by a one-vote margin, rejected the same amendment by Senator Dorgan. The North Dakota Democrat says immigrants take many jobs Americans could fill."  Now, why did they bring this back?  Why in the world did they bring the Dorgan amendment back?  This is Dingy Harry's decision to do this.  Now, I told you yesterday and I've been telling you all week, it looks like Dingy Harry wants to kill the bill.  We started speculating why would Dingy Harry want to kill the bill?  I'm going to tell you what I think is going on here, but I don't want it to change your attitude.  As far as we're concerned, the bill is not dead yet.  I'm just analyzing this for you up to now.  If he allowed a second vote on the Dorgan amendment, that is a sign that he doesn't want the bill to pass.  One of the reasons could be it's blame the Republicans time, since the Republicans are the ones that have torn themselves up over this for a month.  Politically can they pull it off?  I don't know, because this was a Democrat amendment.  

Byron Dorgan is a Democrat, Helmet Head from North Dakota.  So if the Democrats are going to say, "Well, we think the bill is not going to pass anyway." As people learn the details of this, more and more people aren't liking it, and even though it's a Ted Kennedy White House bill, Dingy Harry would love nothing more than to shelve the blame on all this to the Republicans.  If he can get away with it, it would be smart politics, and of course bad, bad result for the White House in a political sense, but good for all of us.  Now, I have a friend who talked with a reporter from a Hispanic publication, and this reporter spoke with Rahm Emanuel off the record after the election, asking him why immigration wasn't one of his priorities. Rahm Emanuel said, "After the elections back in November, we don't want to do immigration, let the White House do that. It's just as difficult an issue for our coalition as it is for the Republicans.  We're avoiding it. We're refusing even to discuss it.  Let the Republicans duke it out." Now, even though Kennedy brought the bill forward, it has caused myriad political problems for the Republicans.  Actually, many good things have happened.  It has, for the first time, doomed McCain.  We can thank the White House for that.  

I don't think they intended to doom McCain, but President Bush and his steadfast support of the bill has doomed McCain.  It's starting to show up in polls.  It also split the Republican Party, which some people think is a bad thing.  I don't.  I think that it's going to create a vacuum that a genuine conservative could move in and fill.  So that's why I say you can always find something good in everything that happens that mostly you think is bad.  Also yesterday, in the House they had a judiciary hearing, and the black caucus members visibly broke with their Latino colleagues yesterday.  Sheila Jackson Lee, Maxine Waters berated representatives from the restaurant industry and agriculture and even from Google because apparently the black caucus members got an earful from constituents back home over the recess.  Their constituents are saying they are taking jobs that we want, these illegals.  Typical quotes that came out of this hearing yesterday.  "What have any of you done to hire Americans first, to avoid worker displacement?"  This is what the black caucus was asking representatives in the restaurant industry and agriculture and so forth.  "My son goes to Morehouse College, have you gone there recruiting or are you just looking for illegals?  Have you tried to employ urban black workers for agriculture jobs?  What percentage of your employees are black Americans?"  These are some of the questions.  There was a pretty tight-knit coalition between the black caucus and the Latino caucus but the split yesterday in the House over this.  

So the efforts of Dingy Harry, if this is what he's actually doing to blame this on the Republicans because they have been the ones that have torn themselves up over it, he's going to have a lot of help from the Drive-Bys because the Drive-Bys will spread Dingy Harry's spin on this.  But we're going to be out there to counter that spin because this is a Democrat bill, and that's what has everybody so upset.  Why is the president joining with presidents again on a bill that is going to destroy the Republican Party?  Now, they had a test vote today for cloture to stop the amendments, because the longer this goes on and the more amendments, the more fragile the "coalition," as they refer to it, becomes.  The more details people learn, the harder it's going to be.  So Dingy Harry brings back the Dorgan amendment for a second time, after it failed.  You bring something back and this time it passes?  That's a sure sign that he wants this bill killed.  So they had their cloture vote, and they failed to stop debate on it.  They didn't get 60 votes; they got 33.  They're saying it's on life support now.  They're going to come back for another vote later in the day at some point, maybe tonight.  

Now, all of this that I have told you sounds pretty right to me, as I said it, as most things I say do sound to me right.  One caveat that I want to mention to all of you, and that's this:  We have to pretend that it's not dead, because it isn't dead yet.  We have to pretend in order to keep the emotion up, because we have to make sure this thing gets killed, and it isn't dead yet.  The president, the White House, have split the party.  The good news is he's doomed McCain out there, and the splitting of the party opens up a vacuum for a conservative.  And, by the way, breaking with Bush is commonplace now, so the idea that Republicans are breaking away from Bush, the Drive-Bys, the Democrats say, "Oh, this is setting us up really well, Republicans falling apart."  Just the exact opposite.  It could help in 2008.  So, I know a lot of you people are mad at President Bush on this, but we need to thank him because he's taken McCain out of this, apparently, at least for now. 

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RUSH: Let's move on to immigration news here, ladies and gentlemen.  "Presidential politics and partisan resentments reached a boil in the Senate Wednesday night, as a heated exchange between Sens. Barack Obama and Lindsey Graham[nesty] erupted on the chamber floor and continued in a nearby corridor." Vice President Lindsey Grahamnesty was "disappointed" that Barack Obama was trying to amend the immigration bill. He thought it would undermine McCain's work. After all, the Republicans are walking the plank and blowing off their base on this. Lindsey Grahamnesty was a little bit upset that Barack Obama had offered this amendment. It doesn't matter what the Amendment was.  The amendment failed.  By the way, Mrs. Clinton offered an amendment, too.  I don't know what the amendment was, but it failed.  I'm sitting here asking myself, "Here's the inevitable Democrat presidential nominee, the smartest woman in the world who is going to have all this power. She's is going to have this ability to make and shape the Democrat Party in her own image, however she wants it to look and act, and she couldn't get her amendment passed on the immigration bill?"

Hmm.  I got to thinking, "Would that ever happen to Bill Clinton on something he really cared about?  Would he allow this kind of embarrassment?"  Now, you haven't heard about this because the be Drive-Bys are not talking much about Hillary's failed amendment, and the only reason they're talking about Barack's failed amendment is because Lindsey Grahamnesty literally shouted him down on the floor of the Senate and followed him out of the chamber and starting berating the guy outside the Senate floor, and Obama didn't quite know what to make of this.  They have since put it all back together and smoked a peace pipe over this.  "Obama [was] stunned and demanded time to respond. The notion that his amendment would gut the bill 'is simply disingenuous' he said. 'It's engaging in the sort of histrionics that is entirely inappropriate for this debate.'  ...  In separate interviews later, [Vice President Grahamnesty] said, 'I wanted to go outside' to impress upon Obama the danger he was causing for a bill he supposedly supported. 'I said, "I'm very disappointed in you,"' he said, adding: 'I like the fellow.'" Well, they always say that.  They said it was just a little misunderstanding. It's all been put back together, "too much coffee and people being on the floor too long," Obama said, led to the eruption here between Barack Obama and Senator Grahamnesty. 

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RUSH: Mark, you're up first in this hour.  Great to have you with us, sir.

CALLER:  Well, Mr. Limbaugh, what an honor and a thrill, I appreciate it, but I've got to see the three words that I thought I would probably never say to you: "We are irrelevant." It seems to me that we as the conservative movement in this country that you have led extremely well, we're dead.  No one's listening to us.  You yourself have said that the senators aren't paying attention to us anymore.  You yourself have said that --

RUSH:  I said they "said" that.  There was a Washington Post story out that said the senators went home and they didn't find as much anger and disagreement as they thought they would.

CALLER:  Yes, and we know that was a lie.

RUSH:  Well, of course it's a lie, and they ran a poll that was fraudulent, too, and there are other that polls indicate... Look, this bill's on life support.

CALLER:  I understand that, Rush, and I'm glad it is, but like you said in the first hour, we can't let up. We have to --

RUSH:  That's right.

CALLER:  -- be stronger.  But I'm wanting you, our Grand Pooh-Bah, to lead in a stronger voice.  I think that we need to call these people out by name, the Republicans in name only, that are voting for this bill that would literally kill the Republican Party and our conservative movement moreso in this country.  This bill is garbage, it's trash, and we as conservatives basically are sitting on the sidelines three hours a day --

RUSH:  No, we're not --

CALLER:  -- listening to you, listening to --

RUSH:  Whoa, whoa! Hold it a second.

CALLER:  -- Sean Hannity.  We're not doing anything!

RUSH:  Why do you think that the bill is on life support?

CALLER:  We've been calling. We've been faxing.

RUSH:  Okay, what the...?

CALLER:  But we need to do more. 

RUSH:  Well, you just said --

CALLER:  But we need to do more.  We should be in the damn streets, Rush!

RUSH: No! We don't do that.  We have more effective ways of protesting. If we were in the street, it wouldn't matter.  There are not enough of us that are going to do that.  That's not how we make noise.  We're not a bunch of malcontent troublemakers that blow up bank buildings.  We don't do it. We don't throw paint on people.  That's not what we do.  This is working.  But you're right, we can't stop. We can't give up on it but you must have missed the first hour of that program.  Tsk, tsk, if that's the case, because I'm telling you: if this bill is beaten back, it is a great thing for the conservative movement.  It will send shock waves through both parties, and it will create a vacuum. The White House has split the Republican Party on this.  There's no question about it, but there's a good thing, two good things that have happened as a result of splitting the party.  The White House inadvertently has also really, really, really damaged McCain in this.  The second thing is, they're creating a vacuum.  I agree. If the bill passes -- if it gets through the Senate, gets through the House, the president signs it -- yep, it's a disaster, but even that is going to create a vacuum that will be filled by conservatism in the Republican Party.

So you have to look at every instance and look at the side that really frustrates you and looks like all is lost, you gotta look at it because you will find good there, and there is good in this.  If the bill is killed, they're going to have to go back to the drawing board and come back with something better.  Look, when Harriet Miers' nomination was effectively beat back, we got Justice Alito.  We got a got a one.  This time, if this thing is beaten back -- and it's being beaten back on substantive reasons -- when they go back and rewrite it, if they have any hope of the new one passing, it's going to have to deal with border security first and nothing else. Until that is done, we have to stanch the flow, and then you can start talking about what you want to do with the people that are here.  But this bill is so bad on the substance that the people that wrote it didn't ever want us to see it, but it has been seen and it has been analyzed and people know about it.  If this is beaten back, it's going to be a huge, huge thing for conservatism, because conservatism will have been the reason it was beaten back.  Now, I know there's some rifts in the conservative movement over this.

You know, some of the elite conservatives have ties to the business community and so forth.  Everybody's got their pet peeves in this, but the vast majority of the conservative movement is dead-set against this thing.  You gotta be a little bit more positive about this.  We're not going to take the streets. Nobody that I know of is going to urge people to take to the streets. It's not how we operate.  They don't want to be looked at and thought of as a bunch of malcontents that show up -- and even when we do protest, they don't cover it, and certainly downplay the numbers.  So just sit back. Sit back.  This is not going anywhere.  Nobody's sitting around doing nothing, and you are not "irrelevant."  I don't know how can sit there and think you are irrelevant when what is happening to this bill is happening.  They couldn't even come up with 40 votes, needing 60, to stop debate on this thing.  They couldn't get cloture.  If they'd have gotten the 60 votes, then we'd have been cooked.  That basically means the bill is ready to go.  But they have so few votes. Dingy Harry intends this thing to go down the tubes, I think, for his own political reasons.  He wants the Republican Party split.  He wants the Republican Party taking the criticism on it.  

They think that there's a big political winner here for them, because they think the country wants the bill and that the country loves Democrats but those rascally Republicans with those screaming nativists and yahoos on the right, and they think they're going to be able to make all kinds of political hay on that, and they have misjudged this because even people in their own party, and even black caucus in the House has split on this.  So you're not irrelevant. Nobody working on this is irrelevant.  Do you realize what a fait accompli this was when we started this?  They negotiated this bill in secret; nobody knew what was in it. La Raza was in there with the Democrats during the negotiations, and they got veto power over elements in the bill.  The Republicans went along. I just think the Republicans in the Senate got snookered.  I don't think there's anything more complicated to it than that.  There are some Republicans that think this is going to be the only way we can get these Hispanics.  They actually believe that Prop 187 turned the state of California over to the Democrats.  What has turned the state of California over to Democrats is uncontrolled illegal immigration.  All those illegals came in and they're Democrats.  They end up voting, some of them do. Prop 187 didn't lose the state.  What Prop 187 did, when the federal judge had overturned it, is he caused Republicans and others to say, "To hell with this," and they fled the state, further affecting the demographics.  The Republicans actually believe that Prop 187 is what lost California.  Republican Party lost California all by itself. 

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is from the Minneapolis Pioneer Press.  "A female worker's immigration status doesn't bar her from a filing a sexual harassment lawsuit, a federal judge in Minneapolis has ruled.  Maria Torres, a cook at the Perkins Restaurant and Bakery in St. Paul's Midway neighborhood, accused her boss of making sexually suggestive remarks, touching her and showing up unannounced at her house. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Torres filed a harassment and retaliation lawsuit, alleging Perkins started investigating her immigration status only after she complained.  Attorneys for Perkins tried to have the case dismissed, arguing her suspected status as an undocumented worker barred her and the EEOC from suing. ... U.S. District Judge John Tunheim refused to throw out the suit, finding that "a ruling that undocumented workers could not pursue civil rights claims on their own behalf would likely chill these important actions."  So, you see, it doesn't matter if you are here in violation of the law.  If you are here breaking the law, you still can go to court, take advantage of all of our nutso liberal political correctness out there.  Of course, the business that hired her is also breaking the law, but neither is being prosecuted for that, so it gets more surreal each day. 

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Read the Background Material...

AP: Senate vote leaves immigration bill in doubt
WSJ: Immigration Bill Fails Senate Vote
CST: "Silent Amnesty" and the faltering immigration bill
Pioneer Press: Female worker's suit can proceed