RUSH: Friday is the town hall debate, and the following debate, the last debate is on domestic policy, but hell, you can get it in there any time because Kerry is going to bring it up himself because Kerry has made it plain that the war in Iraq is his #1 issue. Edwards illustrated that again last night. So it will come back up and there will be a chance to illustrate this and to swat it down, and it’s something that can be done by going on offense. In fact, I would love to hear my line about the Al-Qaeda was everywhere in all these countries; it was even in south Florida, but somehow, miraculously they weren’t in Iraq. But this business… Can I be honest? Folks, can I tell you something? I don’t think Osama bin Laden is alive, and I have said this from the day after Tora Bora on. We turned that place 2,000 degrees. We plugged every cave and hole in that region.
There were photos of Osama bin Laden on horseback retreating from the area just before our attack. I mean, I know that they may not have any evidence that he’s dead. We may never know, but I’ve seen two military people on TV who are asked directly about this, and they say, “Well, I don’t really know, none of us do, but I can tell you from my experience this Al-Qaeda organization doesn’t seem to be an organization currently being run by a strong figure at the top.” And we’ve got all these tapes of bin Laden’s voice that the CIA confirms and so forth, and there may be a strategic reason for that, not wanting to make a martyr of the guy and further enlighten and enrage these militants and terrorists that are in his orb. But this whole notion that this guy is alive and that there’s no question about it, I’m not convinced. Let me just put it this way: If we ever do get evidence that the guy is dead and died at Tora Bora I’m not going to be surprised at all.
There was another area last night, too, that Cheney could have slapped and didn’t. Edwards came back with the “fact” that we diverted all of our forces from Afghanistan and took ’em to Iraq, and Tommy Franks ran both operations. He ran Afghanistan, he ran Iraq, and Tommy Franks said (paraphrasing), “No, I didn’t divert 
any forces. We didn’t take any ammo. We didn’t take any Special Ops. We didn’t divert anything in Afghanistan to do Iraq.” In fact, we strengthened Afghanistan. There’s Edwards out there saying, “We left it up to warlords to go out and get bin Laden and that’s why we didn’t get bin Laden because the warlords are friends of bin Laden.” This needs to be slapped away, too. There’s still time to do it. But, look, you gotta put yourself in these people’s position on stage.
I mean, they’ve got two minutes and they’ve got– I mean, thoughts are probably racing through their minds. “What do I say? Okay, I want to take on that one, take on that one, take on that.” Generally what happens is the last thing you hear is what you want to comment on, and you start commenting on that then the time pressures ensue. Maybe you don’t have time get it in or you forget it. Maybe you made a note but you don’t want to look down and make it obvious you’re looking at a note. There’s any number of explanations for this, but in Cheney’s case he swatted so many away that I’m not feeling bad over these two that I’ve cited here. But this is not over, the process is ongoing, and I’m sure that Kerry-Edwards feel confident it’s not going to be swatted away since they’ve gotten away with it twice now, and I think their day is coming.
Here’s Robert in Los Angeles. Hello, Robert. Welcome to the program, sir.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you doing today?
RUSH: Good, thank you.
CALLER: Last night I made a couple of notes on the debate, and both of them had to do with outsourcing. It was staggering to me to hear the cheap shots, if you will, on the current administration that John Edwards that said we outsourced the capturing of bin Laden to these warlords. And then when they started to go to the domestic policies he was talking about outsourcing and outsourcing and giving tax credits to companies that are outsourcing jobs overseas. Yet at the same time when it comes to rebuilding Iraq; he wants to slam the American companies and outsource the reconstruction to people that didn’t support the war in the first place. I just think that that’s an appalling position that nobody has really picked up on.
RUSH: Good point.
CALLER: Here’s a guy promoting outsourcing of the reconstruction of Iraq, and they’re supposed to be the party that’s totally against outsourcing. Yet it’s the one government job, one of the most important government jobs, and he wants to outsource it to other countries.
RUSH: That is an excellent point. When you hear Edwards say that, what is your visceral or your emotional reaction — besides anger, I mean — how does it sound to you? Would you characterize it in any way?
CALLER: Well, I have to tell you, one of the other notes that I made was at the very end of the debate. I got the feeling that I was sitting in a jury box when he made his little two minute speech at the end. He was looking at the camera as if he was speaking to a jury. I don’t know if it was because he felt like he was on trial or if he was (laughing) maybe he should be. But I really took offense to that, and I don’t think anybody has picked up on the fact that here is the Democratic Party slamming the president for really something that he has no control over. He cannot force companies to keep businesses or jobs here in America. Outsourcing is mostly done in the private sector. The only thing the president really has control over is the public sector, the government sectors of work.
RUSH: Yeah, but there is an answer to that, though, and I humbly offered this answer on Monday. The answer to the outsourcing question is this. The number of jobs that we lose to outsourcing is probably a net zero anyway 
based on how many jobs from other companies locate here. I mean there are a number of automobile companies from German and Japan that outsource production to the United States. We probably have a net gain on this. But the other thing to say is, Senator Edwards, Senator Kerry, if you’re worried about job loss because of outsourcing, let me tell you how many jobs you’re going to lose because of your tax increases on small business. That’s the way to go after outsourcing.
CALLER: Cheney made reference to that last night about the tax increases causing, you know, several hundred thousand small businesses to not be able to hire. I’m a small business owner myself, and that would personally affect my business. I know that for sure.
RUSH: Let me ask you a question about that. How big is your small business? Never mind that. Do you file your small business taxes on your personal income tax form?
CALLER: No.
RUSH: You do not? So you’re not organized as a sub-S?
CALLER: No.
RUSH: Okay, well a lot of small businesses take advantage of the law that allows them to file their taxes on their personal form rather than some corporate tax form.
CALLER: We were originally set up as a pass-through corporation, and now we are not.
RUSH: All right. Well, the point of what Cheney was saying last night, for those small businesses that take advantage of the rule that allows them to pay their taxes as individuals, this increase of Kerry’s on people and businesses who earn $200,000 or more, is a direct tax increase on small business.
CALLER: Exactly. I have several friends that have sub-S corps here in California and it would be devastating, absolutely devastating. But you know what else it’s going to do, Rush, is it’s going to push those people that have that documentation of income over 200,000, it’s going to be a net loss to the government for revenue because they’ll just file alternative minimum tax. If you read the alternative minimum tax code, they’ll actually save money just by filing AMT and the net gain for the government revenue is zero.
RUSH: Exactly which means all this argument is is class envy and trying to get votes on the basis of envy on those who don’t earn $200,000 or more who want to be made to feel somewhat happier because other people are getting screwed, they think.
CALLER: Yes —
RUSH: I have always — yeah, go ahead.
CALLER: One more quick comment on the whole outsourcing part, too, is one other thing towards the very end of the debate that also just upset me was that they were talking about the prescription drug plan. And there again is Senator Edwards explaining to the American people that we should be buying our drugs from Canadian companies instead of American drug manufacturing companies. Yet again he wants to outsource the prescription drug plan to Canada, which would devastate a lot of drug manufacturing companies here in the United States.
RUSH: Well, but it’s up to Cheney or Bush to say that, to put the label outsourcing on that. Because Edwards’ point is that Cheney and Bush are in the back pockets of American corporations and, of course, as a liberal you gotta hate American corporations, and liberals think their voters hate American corporations, and so when Edwards last night comes out creaming American corporations and claiming Canada corporations are better and fair, he’s merely trying to get support on the class envy side of things which is the 30, 40-year-old playbook argument that they utter. There is a way to deal with it, “Oh, you favor outsourcing of drugs? You favor that?” and if they’re going to use this word, turn it back on them exactly as you say. Plenty of time for this. Appreciate the call, Robert.
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