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Dec. 1, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:24
December 1, 2005, Thursday, Hour #3
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Yes, and we're back.
We've got another exciting hour of broadcast excellence.
We are ditto camming, by the way.
We've been ditto camming since the second hour began at rushlimbaugh.com.
And remember, starting on December the 12th, the morning update, a 90-second commentary that airs in the morning on our affiliate radio stations will be sent as a free video podcast, along with the podcast of that day's radio program to subscribers at rushlimbaugh.com.
Great to have you with us, my friends.
Go ahead and admit it.
You are addicted to this show.
It's called EIB.
It's an airborne phenomenon spread by casual contact.
When you get it, you are cured.
800-282-2882, if you want to call the program, rush at EIBnet.com, if you want to email, this is just so great.
We had a discussion last week about all these hybrids, and I've told people ever since I heard about it, I talked to a high-ranking automobile executive who said, you know, this hybrid stuff is crazy.
If we could make every automobile in America a hybrid today, in five years, we would be right back to using the same amount of gasoline and oil that we're using today.
It's not going to save anything.
So this little column appeared in the Wall Street Journal yesterday by Holman W. Jenkins Jr.
It's called Dear Valued Hybrid Customer.
We at the Toyota Motor Corporation are writing to address certain misconceptions that have arisen about your Toyota Prius model, which we are proud to note is driven by many celebrities, including Prince Charles and HBO's Larry David.
Our pioneering gasoline electric hybrid introduced in 1999 has become an object of adoration to the world's enlightened car buyers.
Our competitors, including America's big three, are rushing out hybrid vehicles of their own.
Unconfirmed media reports say that we at Toyota intend to double our hybrid output to 500,000 vehicles next year.
Along with other members of the auto industry, we will be lobbying for tax breaks and HOV privileges for hybrid vehicles.
However, any romance entering its seventh year tends to go stale.
Some purchasers have begun to question the practical value of our hybrid synergy drives technology.
You may be aware that a survey by Consumer Reports found that our vehicles achieve considerably less mileage, some 26% less, than the sticker rating implies.
And this has led to some unflattering media stories.
Let us assure you that the Prius remains one of the most fuel-efficient cars on the road.
Toyota applauds your willingness to spend $9,500 over the price of any comparable vehicle for the privilege of saving at current prices approximately $580 a year in gasoline.
And should the price of gasoline rise to $5 after 10 years and or 130,000 miles of driving, you might come close to breaking even on your investment in our hybrid technology.
Yeah, so the price of gas would have to rise $5 after 10 years and or $130,000.
You'd have to drive one of these things 130,000 miles to get back the overpriced you paid to be technically and environmentally correct.
Now, we at Toyota recognize that our customers have an emotional relationship with their vehicles.
That transcends even the regrettable truth that driving a fuel-efficient car does not yield any substantial benefits for society if it doesn't save the owner any money.
Contrary to any loose statements made by our marketing partners in the environmental community and media, petroleum not consumed by Prius owners is not saved.
It does not remain in the ground.
It is consumed by somebody else.
Greenhouse pollutants are released.
Also, please note that the warranty and owner's manual say nothing about reducing America's dependence on foreign oil just because you bought this car.
And this is not an oversight.
The Prius is an oil-dependent vehicle.
It runs on gasoline, supplied by the same world market that fuels other vehicles.
The Toyota Corporation regrets any misunderstanding our marketing may inadvertently have caused or may cause in the future.
And this is, if I may take a brief pause here for reading the column, this is just classic because you know these people are out buying this car think they're doing so much to save the planet.
And they're not saving themselves any money.
They're not saving appreciable amounts of gasoline.
The thing doesn't get the mileage that it is promised to get.
And besides, somebody's using the oil anyway.
They're not doing diddly squat.
Now, we at Toyota share your belief that the days of the internal combustion engine are numbered.
Further research by our economists suggests this will happen when the price of gasoline rises high enough to make alternative technologies cheaper than gasoline-powered cars.
So we at Toyota want you to know that we recognize this effect and we've taken steps to compensate with the rest of our vehicle lineup.
Our 2006 Tundra pickup will be equipped with Toyota's new eight-cylinder engine, making it every bit as much of a gas guzzler as any American pickup.
We are also redirecting our efforts to use our hybrid synergy drive to increase power output rather than reduce gasoline consumption because too many Prius drivers are complaining it has no get up and go.
So we're going to give it more get up and go.
It'll use more gasoline, but you can still be proud you're driving a Prius.
Take our new hybrid SUV, for example.
It produces 38 more horsepower, but gets the same mileage as our conventional engine.
A New York Times reviewer wrote, one question lingers after driving the 2006 Lexus RX400H.
How did it come to this that Toyota is now selling a hybrid gas electric vehicle with no tangible fuel economy benefits?
Oh, we hope this corrects any misimpression caused by our latest slogan, commute with nature.
Hybrid technology is not green technology.
Like heated seats or flashy exterior trim, it's merely an expensive option that generates large markups for the Toyota Corporation and its dealers, and we are thankful that you support both.
We will share our pride in the latest figures from J.D. Power and Associates, which show that the Prius continues to move off a dealer's lot in just eight days compared to 36 days for a Honda Civic hybrid.
Clearly, our customers are willing to pay handsomely for the privilege of showing themselves behind the wheel of so conspicuously virtuous a vehicle.
We are also a far-seeing corporation here at Toyota.
We recognize that the Prius's distinctiveness may be a wasting asset for reasons outlined in this letter.
Other motorists may see the Prius operator and think sucker.
Our lawyers advise us this may affect your car's resale value.
We at Toyota regret any inconvenience.
And we want you to know that Toyota remains committed to advancing hybrid technology just as long as our customers are willing to make it worth our while.
Our esteemed competitor, Nissan, was recently quoted as saying, there's such a buzz today that no CEO of a car manufacturer dares to say his real opinion of hybrid because he's accused of being retarded.
Another esteemed competitor, General Motors, has suggested that hybrid technology is best deployed in city buses, where large fuel consumption and stop-and-go driving might actually make it economically sensible.
These are just two examples of the short-sighted, stick-in-the-mud marketing instincts of our fellow automakers that are helping to make Toyota the largest car company in the world.
Yours truly, the Toyota Corporation.
So the bottom line here is that people that are buying Priuses are doing it for glamour reasons.
They want to appear virtuous, but they're accomplishing nothing.
They're overpaying.
They're not saving any money.
They're not saving any fuel.
They're not advancing a new technology.
This is not going to be the end of the internal combustion engine.
And most of them that buy these cars are liberals.
So it all makes sense.
We'll be back after this.
You're listening to Rush Limbaugh on the Excellence in Podcasting Network.
Okay, to the phones, Corpus Christi, Texas.
Andrew, welcome.
Nice to have you on the program, sir.
Hi there.
How are you doing?
Good.
Never better, sir.
Yeah, I'd just like to point out that, you know, you say that only liberals buy Priuses and that it doesn't have get up and go.
And I think before you say something like that, you should really go try one for yourself.
Sir, I wouldn't be caught dead in one of those things.
They look ugly to boot.
I mean, aside from, you know, that's part of the intrigue of these things that they've tried to design these things as a car that the Jetsons would drive.
These liberals think that they're ahead of the game on so many things, and they're just suckers.
I think if you like it, I'm not trying to talk you out of it.
I mean, you are more than welcome to it.
That's what the letter from Toyota to their Prius customers was all about.
Well, I will agree.
It is an ugly-looking car, and I kind of had the same opinion when my parents bought it.
I told them, no, you're just buying that, you know, the greenie car.
And my parents aren't greenies.
They're hardcore conservatives, and they voted for Bush.
But my dad did, he did all the math on it.
He looked up prices.
He looked up how much he would save.
And he did come to the conclusion that he would save a little bit of money.
And he is kind of a skin flint.
Yeah.
Well, the whole economic reason, I think, is a lot of fun.
All I can do is the Prius costs basically $10,000 more than something comparable.
It would take 130,000 miles to make that price difference up in whatever you save in gasoline.
So you've got to own and drive this thing a lot before it actually saves you any money.
But if it makes you feel good and it makes your dad feel good, makes feel he's contributing, that's fine.
I don't want to burst any bubbles here, but it's like any other car.
Buy it because you like it, but don't think that you are saving the planet, saving the environment, making anybody else safer or not, because there's no economic advantage to it unless it saves whoever buys it money, and it can't be demonstrated that it does.
Well, you're saying 130,000 miles is a lot.
I mean, for most people, that's eight or nine years of driving.
That doesn't seem like a whole lot to me.
Well, I don't know what the average American puts in terms of mileage on the lifetime of a car.
I'm not average in any way.
I have had my current car for two years, and it's probably got 4,000 miles on it.
I've had a car since I've got a 1977 car that's basically, I think it's got 8,000 miles on it.
So I don't do a whole lot of driving.
The Prius is not a – I think the Prius is a – what would you call it?
It's a high-end buy for people that want to show off their consistency.
It's no different than these people that wear these colored ribbons.
Those colored ribbons, whatever they represent.
I care more than you because I'm wearing this ribbon.
I don't see you wearing a ribbon so you're cold, heartless, and cruel, but I care.
See this ribbon?
It's the same thing with the Prius.
I'm driving a Prius.
I may be a sucker, but I care about the environment and you don't.
So forth.
I just, I want to go on the record.
I am never going to buy a car that gets anything over 14 miles a gallon on average because it's going to be too small.
It's going to be, it's going to be, it's going to be too risky.
You won't see me in it.
But if you, if that's the point, we all have choice.
And what's happening here is, see, people can attack me and people like me for the cars we drive all day long.
You can go out and you can try to destroy the SUV industry.
You can attack the SUV.
You can attack the drivers.
There's been a media campaign for seven years along the environmentalists to destroy the SUV.
Now here comes one guy in the Wall Street Journal and I am amplifying him raising questions about the Prius.
You can't do that.
You can't do that.
Wait, wait, it's a good catcher.
Hey, if you're going to buy a car and some people aren't going to like it, you've got to learn to live with that.
I appreciate the call, though.
Here's Mark in Bethesda, Maryland.
Welcome to the EIB network, sir.
Great to have you with us.
Hey, Rush.
Boy, this is a good birthday present for me to get to talk to you.
Well, happy birthday, sir.
Thank you.
I am a Prius owner.
I am almost as far to the right as you can go.
And my wife also drives a Honda hybrid.
We bought these two years ago because my wife wanted to make a statement as far as not being dependent on foreign oil.
I'd like to say on the air what her statement was.
See?
Look at how much good your conservatism is doing you.
Well, the problem is so many liberals kept stopping me in the parking lot thinking I was a liberal and a greenie.
So what I had to do to fight back is I had to pay to get a vanity plate that has the Hebrew word on it, shamran, which means conservative.
I couldn't take it anymore.
But I will say this, Rush, I enjoy my car a lot.
It does not have any pickup.
I don't care.
I keep a worksheet and I get anywhere from 35 to 50 miles per gallon per tank.
I'm happy.
And when I bought the car in 2003, state of Maryland, I did not have to pay sales tax on either car.
And at that time, the federal government also on your Schedule A gave you a benefit also.
I don't know what this is.
Yeah, I'm sure.
The government's trying to get people into these things because it's all a political issue.
But see, they have to do that because people on their own are not going to go out and buy them.
Nobody really wants them.
Well, I mean, when I say nobody, I mean, the vast majority of Americans do not want them.
And so they have to offer all these incentives.
And the real interesting thing about that column from the guy in the Wall Street Journal is all the other automakers know this.
They know it, like the automobile manufacturer that I spoke to.
He said this hybrid thing is an absolute joke.
But since Toyota is making such a big deal out of it, they feel competitive pressure to get in the game.
And if they go out and they tell the truth about this car, a whole environmental and green industry is going to jump down their throats and call them retarded and dumb and polluters and this sort of stuff.
So it's a political issue, too.
The hybrid is every bit the political issue that the SUV has become for the left.
And in both cases, note the similarity and note what's in common.
The left is after people to do things that they otherwise wouldn't do on their own.
If you just put the Prius out there and advertise it without this accompanying campaign, you will save the planet.
You will reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
You will produce fewer greenhouse gases.
You will help prevent global warming.
Nobody would buy the thing.
Nobody would buy it.
And all that stuff is a bunch of crock.
But you said, sir, that this is Mark from Bethesda, Maryland.
He is a conservative.
But his wife bought it for totally green reasons.
And you heard me say to him, well, a lot of good your conservatism did you.
You might be interested in a little email I got here, Mark.
It's a series of emails from a computer customer to a company, and the company's reply: Dear tech support, last year I upgraded from Girlfriend 7.0 to WIFE 1.0, and I soon noticed that the new program began unexpected child processing.
It took up a lot of space and valuable resources.
In addition, WIFE 1.0 installed itself into all other programs and now monitors all other system activity.
Applications such as Poker Knight 10.3, Football 5.0, Hunting and Fishing 7.5, and Racing 3.6.
I can't seem to keep Wife 1.0 in the background while attempting to run my favorite applications.
I'm thinking about going back to Girlfriend 7.0, but the uninstall doesn't work on Wife 1.0.
Please help.
Dear troubled user, this is a very common problem that men complain about.
Many people upgrade from Girlfriend 7.0 to WIFE 1.0 thinking it's just a utilities and entertainment program.
WIFE 1.0 is an operating system.
It's designed by its creator to run everything.
It is also impossible to delete WIFE 1.0 and to return to Girlfriend 7.0.
It's impossible to uninstall or purge the program files from the system once installed.
You can't go back to Girlfriend 7.0 because WIFE 1.0 is designed to not allow this.
Look in your WIFE 1.0 manual under Warnings Alimony Child Support.
I recommend that you keep WIFE 1.0 and work on improving the situation.
I suggest installing the background application Yes Dear to alleviate software augmentation.
The best course of action to enter the command C slash apologize because ultimately you will have to give the apologize command before the system will return to normal anyway in WIFE 1.0.
WIFE 1.0 is a great program, but it tends to be very high maintenance.
Wife 1.0 comes with several support programs such as Clean and Sweep 3.0, Cook It 1.5, and Do Bills 4.2.
However, be very careful how you use these programs.
Improper use will cause the system to launch the program NAGNAG 9.5.
And once this happens, the only way to improve the performance of WIFE 1.0 is to purchase additional software.
We recommend Flowers 2.1 and Diamonds 5.0.
Warning, though, do not, under any circumstances, install Secretary with Short Skirt 3.3.
This application is not supported by WIFE 1.0 and will cause irreversible damage to the operating system.
Best of luck, tech support.
So, Wife 1.0 demands a Prius.
You are going to get a Prius.
We'll be back after this.
Stay with us.
Okay, here's one for you, Prius owners.
When the love affair ends, when the love affair ends with your hybrid, I don't mean to pick on the Prius.
I mean, that's Toyota, but the whole hybrid technology.
Anyway, when the love affair with that ends, try this.
A Canadian company has an idea for motorists worried about global warming.
Put a cow in your tank.
A $12 million factory near Montreal started producing biodiesel fuel two weeks ago from the bones, innards, and other parts of farm animals like cattle, pigs, or chickens that Canadians don't eat.
Yeah, we're using animal waste to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, said marketing director Ron Wardop.
Sorry, Ron Wardrop of Rothsay, which runs the plant.
We need more of this type of thing, he said.
This company is a unit of Maple Leaf Foods, is also making biodiesel at the plant by recycling oil from fast food restaurants, like from the deep fryers used to cook french fries.
Biodiesel emits little of the smog and conventional gasoline or diesel fuel and almost none of the heat-trapping gases that most scientists say are driving up temperatures and could cause more flood storms.
Most scientists.
So, this is where we're headed.
This is you, you alternative fuels people, cows, chickens, pigs, you name it.
Go slaughter them, put them in a chipper, throw them down the gas tank, put some diesel in there, and go driving off into paradise.
Yip, yip, yip, yip, yahoo.
I'm going to get somebody calling me defending this lunacy, too.
This biodiesel stuff can be made from farm crops like soy or canola.
Germany's Rudolph Diesel, who built the first diesel engines in the 1890s, designed them to run on peanut oil.
At the Ville St. Catherine plant, the animal in fat waste arrives from a rendering plant as a thick brown liquid with a gut-wrenchingly rancid smell.
It leaves an almost odorless, clear yellow fuel.
Biodiesel is produced by combining natural oils or fats with alcohols such as methanol or ethanol.
The process leaves two products, biodiesel and glycerin.
Then you drive, some people say it smells like popcorn or french fries, but so what?
Well, how much weight does your car gain from having all this fat?
Jeez.
Denise in Tucson, you're next on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
Hi.
From Tucson, Arizona.
Well, it's great to have you on the program, Denise.
Nice to have you with us.
I'm a first-time caller and absolutely thrilled to speak with you.
Thank you.
I am comforted to know that there are so many conservatives and Bush supporters that drive Prius.
I didn't know that there were that many of us out there.
And it's Denise, you're the third.
I'm only the third?
You're only the third that we've heard from.
Well, you know, I worried my father.
He lives in New Jersey, and he's one of your biggest fans.
Yeah.
Hi, Dad.
And he is a staunch conservative.
And I think my husband and I worried him when we first got this.
I think he was worried that we converted to tree hugger and environmental wacko.
And we are.
Well, why did you buy it?
If that's not the reason, why did you buy it?
Just because we liked it.
Just because we liked it.
See, to me, that's fine.
I mean, if you want to go, if you go on a car lot and you look around and this car appeals to you, by all means, buy it if you can afford it and this is what you want.
I have no complaint.
It's when people start preaching to me that they're better people than anybody else because they're driving these things around when they think they're saving all kinds of things and they're not saving anything.
Including themselves money.
Yeah, we don't, we didn't buy it to make a statement.
We don't have unrealistic expectations of it.
And to tell you the truth, we're pretty disgusted with the other Prius owners that are so smug.
I mean, they're even smug with other Prius owners.
Wait a second.
Wait, wait, wait.
Where do you run into other Prius owners?
Do these cars congregate someplace with the drivers?
Well, I thought it would feel like a club mentality where we just would kind of enjoy our Prius together.
But, you know, there's a lot of Prius out here in Tucson now.
And they don't even look at you.
They don't even give you a thumbs up.
They don't even give you a high hello.
There's like this competitiveness for uniqueness, and they're very, very smug towards all cars, including other Prius.
Doesn't surprise me at all.
You're talking about liberals.
They think they're better people.
They think they're better people than even other Prius owners.
But I'm surprised that during the elections, I expected there to be a lot of Prius owners that had carry bumper stickers, and it wasn't the case.
I see, I would like, I'd actually like to get some ideas from you.
Well, conservative people who drive Prius, do you have any kind of fun little bumper sticker idea that we could identify with and share on our cars?
Sure.
Just go out and get a bumper sticker that says, I bought this, but I know I'm not saving the environment.
I just like it.
Or get a bumper sticker that says, this car having no impact on the environment one way or the other.
But just put another Prius driver is going to see that and you're going to ruin their day.
They might get in a road rage with you, so you have to think about that.
I think the reason these carry people don't go out and put bumper stickers is they're already embarrassed that they're driving a Prius.
Why embarrass themselves further with a carry bumper sticker?
It's either that or they don't want the additional weight slowing the thing down.
It's tough to get it up to 60 miles an hour.
So the more weight you tag on in there, like in a bumper sticker, it has a direct effect on the car.
Look, I'm glad you called out there.
Denise, Snerdley just says, do people drive the kind of car I drive?
Do we wave at each other?
And do we have a little club?
Well, I don't know.
I only know one other person that has the kind of car I've got, and I've never seen him driving it at the same time I'm driving mine.
Now, I know there are more of them.
I think there are about 400 cars in the country, like the kind I have.
But there may be more here, but I never see the guy I know that's got one too, I never see him driving it.
So I've never had a chance to wave at him.
But I'll tell you what does happen.
What's really funny is here in Palm Beach, you have all these 65 and 70-year-old people in Ferraris and beamers.
And they're driving them 30 miles an hour because that's the speed limit.
But what happens is you get one of these, and even some of the young Turks go out and get some of these young sports car things, and they'll pull up at a red light.
And you're sitting there, and you can just see they think they're hot.
They're driving the latest.
It's brand new.
They probably just got it from the dealership yesterday or the day before.
They pull up next to my car and they can't take their eyes off of it.
I see this out of the corner of my eye.
I'll go driving around town and people will wave out their windows and give me this circle finger.
All right, man, great.
That happens to me all the time.
I wave back to them.
I don't sit there and pretend like I ignore them.
I'm not like a Prius driver.
That's the point.
I don't ignore these people.
I don't run around feeling smug because of what I'm in.
And some days I take the old cars.
Some days I take the Mercedes.
You know, it's 2003.
So I'll get any old car, the convertible, and I'll go tooling around.
And I don't feel smug.
People, no, I'm not into this.
But these Prius drivers, it doesn't surprise me a bit that they're smug because they bought it in the first place because they're trying to make a statement about themselves.
They think they're gods.
You know, gods don't respond to gestures.
Gods don't answer letters.
Gods don't, and they think they're gods.
They are saving the planet.
They are better people.
They're not going to acknowledge you, even another Prius owner, because they're going to question your motivation for having one.
Or they're going to be angry that you've got one because they want to be the only one in the neighborhood with one because they want to be considered the only good people in the neighborhood.
I know these people.
Quick time out.
We'll be back.
Stay with us.
Okay, a couple other items here before we go back to the phone calls.
We got Prius owners and people complaining about Prius cars, hybrid cars on the phone.
But first, we went back on the air in New Orleans yesterday.
They went back to normal at WWL, and we programmed heard for the first time yesterday since Hurricane Katrina a couple of stories here about New Orleans.
This is a tragic story.
This is from Metairie.
Frank Evans thought that the tiny blue tarped roofs, little toppled fences, and miniature piles of hurricane debris that he included in the Christmas display he builds every year for a suburban New Orleans mall struck just the right humorous tone.
Mall management decided otherwise and told him, he's a landscape architect from nearby Gretna, Louisiana, to dismantle it.
Although most people did enjoy the decorations, a few customers found the display to be in poor taste, said a statement Tuesday night issued by Lakeside Shopping Center in Metairie.
Evans videotaped the display before dismantling it.
The creation sat since mid-November among a grand, more traditional display of gleaming Christmas trees, colored gifts wrapped in holiday paper, and Santa's elves on carousel horses.
So I have a picture of it here, one picture, and the guy's little town inside a train track.
And all the towns have blue, the houses, they're destroyed, tarped roofs and junk and garbage all around.
And he thought I was funny.
And they didn't see it that way at the mall.
I can kind of see it both ways.
At some point, you just have to laugh, but the point, I guess, has not yet been reached in New Orleans because the humor here is associated with tragedy.
The other story is from the Arkansas leader, Mike or Mikel, I'm sorry, Mikel Brooks is part of a two-man team putting a new roof on the Yali Cedebuds old chopsticks restaurant in Jacksonville.
Three months ago, the Cersei resident, an Arkansas National Guardsman, was falsely quoted as saying 30 or 40 people were killed at Ernest Ann Moriel Convention Center in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
A now discredited and fired reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune wrote a sizzling first-person account that included great drama, but apparently not much fact, a story that was picked up and repeated around the world by news organizations, including CNN.
But specialist Brooks told the Arkansas leader on Monday that he saw only four bodies, and that's what he told a reporter and others in the Arkansas Guards 39th Infantry Brigade, Brigade, had backed him up.
Brooks and several other guardsmen said they had not seen between 30 and 40 more bodies in the convention center's freezer.
Not so, Brooks, a bald knob native, said Monday.
Brooks and his fellow guardsmen dropped into the New Orleans Superdome parking garage on September 2nd, and they moved the next day through Highwaters to help provide security during its evacuation.
We evacuated about 4,000 Hurricane victims in school buses.
Oh, so the National Guard was able to use the school buses, but school bus Reagan Nagan wasn't able to.
First, I've heard of this.
The National Guard used school buses to evacuate, and yet the mayor, nobody's running around blaming Bush and FEMA.
So the Times-Picayune reporter was fired for making up news.
Now, and this is in the Arkansas leader.
I just happened to stumble across this in my feverish show prep.
Have you heard about this anywhere else?
I haven't.
Why did this reporter feel it necessary to inflate the numbers and hype the story?
Why?
What do you think the reason for this was?
Well, why do you think all the news in Iraq is inflated negative?
Because that's what advances the story.
The template out of New Orleans was utter destruction.
It was going to be a dead city for six months.
Six months, there were going to be 50,000 deaths.
It was going to be uninhabitable.
There was going to be a toxic soup from all the polluted water.
None of that happened.
But that became the template.
And anything other than that, of course, would not advance the story.
And this is a story about the convention center where supposedly this reporter said 30 to 40 bodies found in a freezer.
I remember that.
I remember that being reported.
But then I remember later somebody debunking the whole story of all these supposed deaths, but not this one specifically.
Michael Irvin has been suspended by ESPN for one week following his arrest last week on a misdemeanor drug paraphernalia charge.
Irvin was issued a citation by Plano police on Friday for possession of a drug pipe after he was stopped for speeding.
Wednesday night, Irvin said it wasn't mine.
It was a friend of mine who came up from Houston who left a drug rehab program.
And I can't have that kind of stuff in my house.
I'm trying to keep these demons away from my kids.
So I put it in a car and I was going to throw it away and I forgot it.
And Wednesday night, last night, the pastor of one of the largest churches in Houston confirmed to the Dallas Morning News that Irvin recently did send a friend to a church-sponsored drug rehab program, but the friend checked out within 24 hours.
The Reverend I.V. Hilliard said, I can validate that Michael's friend came and he didn't stay.
The guy would not abide by our program and he left.
He didn't even stay a whole day.
The story that Michael's telling about his friend being here and leaving is absolutely true.
So ESPN suspends him for a week.
Now, that's laughable.
It is absolutely laughable.
But I think I know why.
They've got a cred problem because the NFL is what Irvin reports on.
And when you get caught up in drugs and this kind of thing in the NFL, there is a four-game suspension.
And I think there's some concern that there can't be.
It's ludicrous.
This is the only thing I can think of, a suspension for a week?
What good is that going to do?
It just, I don't know.
It's literally makes no sense to me.
But I got to get some calls here before we go.
Los Angeles and Donald, welcome.
You're on the EIB network.
Hello.
Oh, thanks, Rush.
Out here in California, if you have a hybrid and you pay a fee to the state, they will allow you to ride by yourself in the carpool lane.
Yeah, because you're supposedly saving gas when you're not.
You're not.
But you also have to pay a special fee to drive it around any HOV lane.
Right.
Now, the problem is they get better mileage in town than they do on the highway.
So you're actually getting worse mileage with the hybrid in the carpool lane.
It would make more sense to put the SUVs in the carpool lane and put the hybrids in traffic.
Well, this isn't about sense.
This is about good feelings.
This is about feeling like a good person.
I am a good person.
I'm driving by such a good person.
I'm being rewarded by being allowed to pay the state a fee even more than my car costs to be able to drive in the high-occupancy vehicle lane alone because I'm a good person.
And that's what's motivated.
By the way, from Philadelphia, the growing popularity of hybrid vehicles is a step toward cleaner air and less dependence on gasoline.
No, it's not.
See?
Media template.
But for rescuers at accident scenes, hybrids represent a potential new danger, a network of high-voltage circuitry that may require some precise cutting to save a trapped victim.
Yeah, you don't want to go crushing anything with hydraulic tools, said Sam Carluzzi, an assistant chief with the Norristown Fire Department outside Philadelphia.
It's enough to kill you from what they're telling us in training.
Hybrids draw power from two sources, typically a gas or diesel engine combined with an electric motor.
By the way, you know what happens when a battery pack in one of these things dies on you?
Try $4,500 for a battery pack.
I understand they might reduce the price to $3,000.
Okay, try that.
$3,000 for a battery pack.
Now rescuers are being told, hey, got to be careful.
Jaws of life or metal conduct electricity.
You don't want the rescue workers electrocuted going in there to save somebody in one of these.
But I'm surprised that hybrids even have accidents.
Oh, other drivers.
I'm sorry.
Back in just a second.
Dow Jones Industrial Average is getting ever closer to 11,000.
It is up basically 107 points today and some change to what the latest figure is 10,913.
So it's going to, of course, another sign the economy out there is booming.
The DNC Times will tell us tomorrow, no doubt, why this portends bad news.
At any rate, folks, it's been great being with you.
It's always a thrill and a delight, and we'll look forward already.
Open Line Friday is upon us tomorrow.
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