[ theme ] this is the Stephanie Miller show and its not Stephanie Miller. 100 less stephanie. We have hal sparks. Hal i know it is amazing. Im so excited by the way to actually be able to speak before my theme song. It happens so rarely. We have the lovely and talented Jacki Schechner who is not going to be doing our news breaks but interjecting throughout the entire show. Cool. Hal elbowing us out of the way with facts and figures and a beautiful figure at that i might add. I was going to ask which hour i get to hump halibut apparently we get to hump him all three hours. Weve all been traveling. Tbone, we need some talc in here stat. Major chafing on the hump days with hal. Chris and jim will be with us. Chris will be scrolling through adult sites the entire show as normal. Get a load of that. Whoa hal now lets go to the news with Jacki Schechner. On that note. Good morning. Secretary of state clinton will testify today before the Senate ForeignRelations Committee about the september 11th attack on our consulate in benghazi that killed cons late Chris Stevens and three other americans. Senator rubio will be among those questioning her. And any exchange between the two could make for an interesting dynamic. Senator rubio is among the contenders for a 2016 white house bid. Secretary clinton is a favorite on the democratic side. Blame was laid on the state department for systemic failures and deficiencies in management that resulted in grossly inadequate protections for our facilities abroad. Secretary clinton already has taken responsibility for the department she oversees and democrats on the Committee Say the goal now is to figure out how best to protect our diplomatic outposts. Also on the house side, a vote to increase the debt limit for three months. It comes with a stipulation that both chambers pass a budget in the next four months or both chambers go without pay. Im not sure this is a threat the American People would mind so much. Senator Chuck Schumer has said the senate is working on a budget but the republicans wont like it because it includes tax increases. They will talk about a short term solution. It is a change from before. Beyond that, it remains to be seen what common ground, if any we can find between the two sides. House Speaker Boehner wants to balance the budge net ten years but doing that would take massive spending cuts that democrats wont go for. Were back after the break. Coming on to me all the time now. vo she gets the comedians laughing and the thinkers thinking. Ok, so theres wiggle room in the ten commandments, thats what youre saying. You would rather deal with ahmadinejad than me. Absolutely. And so would mitt romney. vo shes joy behar. And the best part is that current will let me say anything. What the hell were they thinking . Announcer ladies and gentlemen, its the Stephanie Miller show. Im walkin on sunshine im walkin on sunshine and its time to feel good hey, all right now and its time to feel good hal welcome to the Stephanie Miller show. Im hal sparks, of course filling in for a i guess one day and a half vacationing stephanie as she goes to see her mother. Who turns 90 years old. I think she turned 90 yesterday. Hal at that point, does it really matter . You cant mince words when youre 90. I turned 90 when the trees were brown. When the hay was being pulled in off the fields. Youve been around so long, youre talking lunar cycles. By the way we need to do this. Stephi. Stephanie whats that heavy breathing i hear . Why, could it be . Hump days with hal sparks. Yes yes and we need to do this. His is so much sexier than mine. Come on, get jacki hal i actually, for anybody who was old enough to have a par tridge familyish crush, was it susan dey . She went on to be on l. A. Law. Turns out to be a sexy song. See what i mean . I would have worn my bellbottoms if i had known. Hal were on the radio and even the cameras from current cant see below so make it up. I have bellbottoms on. It is the theatre of the pants. It is not pantsfree friday yet. Hal that doesnt matter. With jim you dont know. It is a crapshoot. Will he have pants today or not . I forgot. Hal sometimes ill call in and chris, is it a pants day. Hell go nope. Ill have to pay whoever is in the car with me 5. Hosen day. Hal speaking of later hosen, no, i was leading the no pants area, it was just we all had to get slightly dressed up this weekend because we all had balls. Even jacki. Jacki and i had balls. I did not have balls this weekend. No balls. Didnt want to wear a tux. Okay. I dont have a tux. You can rent a tux. I didnt want to travel with a tux. You can rent a tux. Did you not go to prom . It took a month to fit him for a tux. Have to bring in extra shoulder fabric and create enormous instead of taking it in, take it out a little bit. It would look like jamie gumms neighbors house. I got that reference. That was silence of the lambs. On the way over to d. C. , i was sitting next to this enormous woman. I thought it would be better on the flight back. Then i was sitting next to chris. Theres popeye. I gave you plenty of room. Did he, actually. He had to because quite frankly you take up a decent amount of space, young man. The two of you were hilarious next to each other. I walked by them on the plane. Were they elbowing even other . It was like brothers. Get off me no thats my armrest i had to eat my lunch like this. Like a trex. Like a tyrannosaurus using chopsticks. You had a middle seat . Oh, thats unfortunate. There should be a law against that. Thats what you get for not having balls. Tiny man next to me in the aisle seat. Please let me have the aisle seat i need it hal i do what i call punk first class. I highly recommend this to everybody. If you are especially if youre physically spelt like myself to fit normally, bring your own movie in the form of an ipad or laptop or Something Like that. Get your own food in the airport or even bring it from home if you choose to. Bring it. Hal bring your own little blanket. If you need a pillow, you have your own little nest. When i traveled overseas, i spent 3,000 for a plane ticket, save the money. Spend it where youre going. You can have a whole day of spaing and have tons of money left over. It makes no sense. You dont spend 10 on a couple of movies, put it on your ipad. You get to keep them. Unlike the ones on the movie that your cart swipe never works. It doesnt work. Well, can i can you try it . Ill go upfront. You know what . I just gave you the movie. I dont want to hear from you anymore. Gte airphone. Im calling from you the plane. Its 45 a second. Ive never seen anybody use those things. Ive used them. Why . Was there an air emergency . Theyve taken them out. This was in whatever, 2002 probably the last time i used one because now actually, if youre in a situation, you would just have your ipad and you would be able ive been able to either skype or face time our flight yesterday yeah, lets just say an airline that runs with shunited doesnt feature wifi. It is so bizarre. Do you have a butter churn . How do you make the food . A major east to west route from d. C. To los angeles, you dont have wifi . You do realize these are rich people problems. First world problems. Absolutely. They should be. Thats the whole point of actually emvating your society past a certain point. Were a beacon to the rest of the world. I was shocked there were no restrooms. I had to climb out on the wing and squat. There are no chickens on the plane. Youre flying from the middle of pennsylvania to upstate michigan into the upper and people with crates of chickens, thats fine. We dont normally fly but they wont allow us to have our wagons on the open highways. Fair enough. Hal we of course had the sexy liberal show. So much fun hal dana in maryland was with us. Dana, are you there . Caller yes, i am. Hal how was it . Caller how are you . Hal im spectacular. Caller how are you guys doing . Hal were a little tired. We came in last night. Caller first, i want to stay just thank you, thank you, thank you and it was so cool to meet you guys. It was amazing. And my best friend bought us front row seats and she surprised me and it was awesome. You guys were hilarious. And it was great to meet everybody. Hal, steph mentioned you were with likeminded people. It is so refreshing. Sitting in a restaurant with Rocky Mountain mike and sue from ann arbor and all of the chatters that i chat with every day. And that were chatting during the show. Hal social chattering. Caller we do. We talk to steph through the chat. She told me to be quiet too. I deserved it. Hal i saw that part. Caller i told my best friend im not sure theyre going to know who i am. John did his tea bagger thing and i raised my hand. Didnt you stand up and said you take pride in your oh hes like thats you. Hal thats why he invited you backstage. Caller it was hilarious. My best friend said ill bet their back stage going that must be dana from maryland. Shes a tea bagger. Thats it. Hal thank you so much, dana. Caller wait, wait, one more thing though. My topic i wanted to talk about was abortion. Oh caller rachel, i didnt know the small little legislative laws like the woman has to listen to the tape of the heart beat. Oh, yeah. Caller tape her reaction, her physical reaction. And i wanted to ask you hal smalltown kid, how do you deal with that . Hal you know, before roe v. Wade and before it was a protected right in this country a lot of women handled this quite frankly like Patrick Swayzes dance partner in dirty dancing. Through a shady doctor or no doctor at all. Caller but they did it on the kitchen table. Hal exactly. Or well people who could pretend they didnt have to do these kind of things would send their daughter to visit a cousin and she would come back without the child anymore. Caller theres one clinic in each of these four states and some women have to drive five hours. They have to wait 72 hours and drive back. It is disgusting. Hal absolutely. Caller i love you guys. Love you too, dana. Thanks for coming on saturday. Hal you know, thats been the drip, drip of legislaturewise across this country. And unfortunately, we were talking a lot about this about the fact that the focal point was on the president because of the inauguration and this idea that you know, hes our primary representative. I was not comfortable im never using the word leader because i dont feel as a human being i need one. Our primary representative. Thats fair enough. Hal even our lead representative. If aliens landed, i wouldnt go take me to your leader. I kind of pick my own. The dude in charge. Hal if you want to talk to somebody who knows where the military stuff is, hes over there. In this case, theres so much focus on the president. Especially in terms of how progressives view him. That the republicans in the house have gotten away with everything even though they have a bad rating, it doesnt affect their chance of being reelected. Unfortunately, they have been stacking in state legislatures and in the house of representatives, all of these antichoice laws that are every egregious wiggle they can come in. None of them, by the way would stand up against roe v. Wade because there are so many price of concerns in the fetal heart beat bill. Theyre adding things like she has to be taped listening to it. The fact shes in the office being scrutinized or filmed while shes getting a medical procedure or it is a violation of privacy. Hal it is absurd. They do things even so much as i dont know if its law necessarily or if its just the doctors preference to find out how far along the woman is but theyll have you get a sonogram and that can be traumatic. Yeah. Just making that decision, having to see what is growing at that moment can be traumatic for a woman. Unless youre in that position, it is inappropriate for someone to make that change on your behalf. Hal i believe that to be the goal. That make the woman uncomfortable is the entire point. Thats the only point. Hal well be back right after this on the Stephanie Miller show. Stephanie is away but the mice will play. Announcer theres something funny going on in talk radio. Its the Stephanie Miller show. We tackle the big issues here in our nations capital. Stephanie miller. I am the warrior well, i am the warrior hal welcome back to the Stephanie Miller show. 1800steph12 is our number. Stephanie is with her mom who is turning 90 years old in the last 24 hours. Yesterday, i believe it was. Hal like i said she gets to celebrate all month if she wants. Absolutely. Once you hit 90, actually every minute is a celebration. Pretty much. Hal pretty amazing. Right now secretary clinton is actually testifying on benghazi. Our response from the state department. The libyan government. So i saw firsthand what ambassador pickering and former chairman mullen called timely and exceptional coordination. No delays in decisionmaking no denials of support from washington or from our military and i want to echo the review boards praise for the valor and courage of our people on the ground especially the Security Professionals in benghazi and tripoli. The board said the response saved american lives in real time and it did. The very next morning, i told the American People that heavilyarmed militants assaulted our compound. And i vowed to bring them to justice. And i stood with president obama in the rose garden as he spoke of an act of terror. Its also important to recall that in that same period, we were seeing Violent Attacks on our embassies in cairo tunis khartoum as well as large protests outside many other posts where thousands of our diplomats served. Shes doing good i ordered a review around the world with particular scrutiny for highthreat posts. I asked the department of defense to join interagencies security assessment teams and to dispatch hundreds of additional Marine Security guards. I named the first Deputy Assistant secretary of state for highthreat posts so missions in dangerous places get the attention they need. And we reached out to congress to help address physical vulnerabilities including risks from fire and to hire additional Diplomatic Security personnel. Second, even as we took these steps, i hurried to appoint the accountability review board led by ambassador pickering and admiral mullen. So we could more fully understand from objective independent examination what went wrong and how to fix it. Hal this is the basis of the republican Conspiracy Theory around benghazi has varies from ludicrous and dismissive of reality to violently conspiratorial and almost aliens have taken over our military base level. The main one being that obama watched and ive seen this one floated on fox news. Weve played it in rightwing world. Obama sat there and watched it while it happened. Hal for seven hours. Didnt do anything. Insisted on not doing anything. A, obama doesnt have time to watch anything for seven hours. Hal right. What they were trying to do was make it arguably bushs 911 mistake about saying i just saw a plane fly into the towers when he wouldnt have been able to see them fly into the towers because he was sitting in front of the school when he said it. That kind of thing which you know, is one of the fundamental pinnings of loose change and those things that point to the 911 conspiracies. The right, i think arguably is very upset. They dont have one of those situations. They also dont have a president who is going to make the same mistake that bill clinton made. So they want to find any needlepoint that they can find to get inside and try to make him look as corrupt as they are. Quite frankly. Shes doing so well today because she faked that illness a hand all of that time to prepare for today. Hal for rehearsal. While theyre pretending to do surgery on her skull. She was preparing. But you saw the right go after bill clinton for the Monica Lewinsky thing but his Approval Ratings shot up. So why are they trying to find Something Else to go after exactly. I dont understand that. Dont they get history . Hal apparently not. Dont we have a quote from Mitch Mcconnell about his this is his response to the president s inaugural address which is, by the way not the state of the union, not a presentation of policy or whatever but an overall view of the presidency from his point of view about what he has committed to over the next four years. This is which was all about equality. About equality protection. One of the primary tenants. This is what Mitch Mcconnell heard. The era of liberalism is back. Unabashedly far left of Center Inauguration speech certainly brings back memories of the Democratic Party of ages past. Well then it is far left according to Mitch Mcconnell. Hal because everything he said is soundly within the populous. Arguably it is what president obama ran on and won on hal absolutely. This is their idea that somehow the myth of the center right he also mentioned that later in the same statement was that the president is out of touch because clearly were a center right country. He said actually it was interesting. The words were we still believe were a center right country which is interesting because if you look at the polls at all in any legitimate way you dont thats not what you see. Even in gay marriage, even amongst republicans even in background checks, youre seeing the 70 of gun owners saying theyre for universal background checks at gun shows and private sales. They have no problem with it whatsoever. It is soundly in that direction. If you ask Mitch Mcconnell what it was, he would probably tell you the opposite is true. 30 are for it and 70 are against it and vehemently so and believe their Second Amendment rights are taken away by that very act. We still believe were in the 19th century. [ laughter ] it is taking him so long to walk to the 19th c