RUSH: I have four more sound bites, however, on the immigration bill. I want to go back and play two more. Two that we played in the previous hour. One from Harry Reid and one from Senator Kennedy. They’ve unwittingly set me up here, ladies and gentlemen, to explain the futility and the irrelevance and the lack of total necessity, at least in terms of people being properly informed, of the Fairness Doctrine. The purpose of the Fairness Doctrine from their side is to shut up opposition they don’t want to deal with it. But let’s go back and listen to Senator Reid again. This is from this morning on the Senate floor, before the cloture vote was taken and failed.
REID: Talk radio has had a field day. These generators of simplicity — now, Mr. President, I want everyone to know —
RUSH: That’s enough. I want you to remember that. ‘Generator of simplicity.’ Talk radio, generators of simplicity. He has unwittingly paid me a huge compliment. He’s tried to insult me but he’s paid me a huge compliment. To illustrate this, let’s listen to Senator Kennedy again. This is prior to the vote as he’s ranting and raving here about all the things the illegals are going to have to do to become citizens in this bill.
KENNEDY: And we have a process that said, ‘Look, okay, you’re here and undocumented, and you’re going to have to pay a price.’ We’re gonna take people that are in the line in the line and have said that they want to play by the rules, they go, and they wait and you wait and you wait and you wait and you wait, and you pay and you pay and you pay, you pay your fees, you pay your processing fees, your adjustment fees, you pay not only for yourself, you pay for other members of the family, you demonstrate that you’re going to learn English, you demonstrate that you’ve worked here, you demonstrate that you’re a good citizen, you demonstrate that you haven’t had any run on in crime. And then maybe, and then maybe you get on that pathway with the green card and perhaps in 15, 18 years, you’ll be able to raise your hand to be a citizen here in the United States.
RUSH: Now, what I want to demonstrate here, as a generator of simplicity — see, you know, I have a phrase here. I make the complex understandable. So what do we have here? We had 700 pages of absolute confusion that a lot of people in the Senate didn’t even know the contents. As a generator of simplicity, what I actually do is take all of this gobbledygook and synthesize it down to the point that it makes sense and you can understand what’s really in it, and Senator Kennedy here gives me a chance to demonstrate that. Senator Kennedy’s whole point was that if these 12 to 20 million want to become citizens, look at all we’re making them do! Why, they’ve gotta pay and pay and pay and pay, fines, fines, fines, registration fees, processing fees, they gotta go back, they gotta get in line, and maybe 15 to 18 years, then they become good citizens, raise their hand and become citizens. That’s not going to happen because it’s unnecessary to stay here legally. They don’t have to pay one cent in fines unless they seek the pathway to citizenship, and the odds that that would happen are slim to none. And Slim left town a long time ago on this issue. So, Senator Kennedy wants everybody to believe that we’re going to be hard on these people. The whole point of that provision, by the way, was to try to convince you that we’re going to really hammer these people. You think we’re sitting there loving these people, we’re going to hammer, we’re going to make ’em pay, we’re going to make ’em pay, we’re going to make ’em pay.
Senator Kennedy didn’t count on the fact that there were people like me and others who could read the legislation and quickly ascertain that the Z visa would be granted in 24 hours and you’re legal, and that means you’re permanent, and you don’t have to be a citizen. Then the simple question that we always asked, ‘What if they don’t do any of this?’ What then? That’s where Senator Kennedy doesn’t have an answer. So, yeah, I’m a generator of simplicity. I take the complex and make it understandable. I take all the gobbledegook in some of this legislation and I make it understandable to people. Something like this I think you can figure out on your own. Once you have access to it, it makes total sense. Now, four more sound bites on this because they’re all revved up about the Fairness Doctrine. No balance here. No debate. One side doesn’t have a chance to air its views on talk radio. Yesterday on the Senate floor, Republican Senator from Louisiana, David Vitter, and Jim DeMint, a Republican from South Carolina, had some run-ins with the Senate majority leader Harry Reid during the immigration amendment debate. Here’s a montage of their reactions to the actions of Dingy Harry.
VITTER: Mr. President, I ask for five minutes under the same time agreement, for any purpose.
REID: Ahhh, I can’t do that, I would have to object to that.
DEMINT: A parliamentary inquiry, do I not have the right to reserve the right to object?
REID: No.
DEMINT: How many rules are we going to change?
RUSH: So these guys wanted to have their say about the amendments and Dingy Harry wouldn’t allow them to speak on the Senate floor. Now, he’s exercising Senate rules, that’s fine, but where do these guys go? Do we need a Fairness Doctrine for the Senate? Here’s Vitter on the Senate floor who later said this.
VITTER: Yeah, there’s unlimited debate, as long as you agree not to exercise any of your rights as a United States Senator. You can talk only; you can’t make a motion; you can’t try to bring up your amendments.
RUSH: Dingy Harry wasn’t going to stand for this so he tried to defend his shutdown of debate.
REID: I have tried to make these as family friendly as possible, that is Senate family friendly. I say to my friend during the early days of this legislation, amendments were offered by him and others, some of which got votes, some didn’t. That’s the way the Senate operates.
RUSH: Yeah, well, talk radio operates in the free market, folks, and if you can make it, you thrive. If you don’t, you fail, you go bankrupt. But yet nobody’s talking about regulating the Senate because its rules are allowed to prevail, and they should. They’re a private club essentially, can make their own rules. We’re in the market, and the market makes up our rules. Yet they don’t like the way the market is producing results, and so, you gotta regulate us. Here’s Maurice Hinchey, a Democrat, New York. He said this about the Fairness Doctrine. It’s Internet quality here, by the way.
HINCHEY: I don’t think it’s a good idea to have any particular media focused on just one aspect of the information, one point of view, or one philosophy.
RUSH: Yeah, how can you say that after this particular debate, congressman Hinchey? You had the leader of the Republican Party, many leaders of the Republicans in the Senate urging this, and, why, guess who didn’t go along with them? Yeah, I’m an untamed piece of the GOP message machine. Yeah, he’s a democrat. New York 22nd district. Its said republican on the cue sheet, I knew he couldn’t be a republican.