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Dec. 23, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:16
December 23, 2005, Friday, Hour #3
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Thanks for reminding me about that, Snerdley.
What am I?
About a half hour late here in getting to my John Thewan example on party discipline.
Mind is racing too fast.
I can't get my mind off what people are getting me for Christmas.
Hi, Tom.
It'll be a little kid at Christmas because everybody says, we can't get anything for you.
You're not possible to buy for.
Whatever you want, you can get yourself and probably already have.
I said, yep, so it's a challenge.
Go to it.
Friday, let's roll, folks.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's Open Line Friday.
Yip, Yahoo.
Here we go.
Final hour of Open Line Friday.
Here's the number.
If you would like to be part of it, 800-282-2882.
The email address is rush at EIBnet.com.
I got a couple of Maureen Dowd soundbites here.
She was on MSNBC last.
She was Andrea Mitchell as well.
And it's so obvious what poor Maureen's problem is.
I want to be respectful here.
Life could change dramatically overnight.
It's about as diplomatic a way as I can phrase it.
At any rate, let me get here because you're right.
Snerdley's right.
I forgot to give my example.
We had a good call on party discipline.
Why has Bush lost control of the party?
Why is this a big problem Republicans in the Congress, particularly the Senate?
Why are they bolting and voting against him on things that he wants?
And they talk about party discipline and the president, if you keep these people aligned and challenge their chairmanships or memberships on committees that they treasure, value, don't campaign for when they run for re-election.
There used to be people to do that.
LBJ did it.
He was an enforcer.
Democrats to this day do it.
Let me tell you what happened to the Democrat.
Before I even knew this, I knew it.
I'm out there from the day this program starts in 1988, and I'm telling people how it works if you get elected as a Democrat to the House of Representatives.
Now, this is back in the days when it was run by Tom Foley.
Is he still, by the way, is he still flying on commercial traffic and taking the lunches and dinners that they serve off the airplane with him?
Oh, they don't serve lunch and dinner on commercial flights.
Well, I'm sorry, I haven't asked.
You are more informed than I.
But Tom Foley, we used to be Speaker of the House, and there was a story.
He'd fly commercially, and he'd get off the plane.
He'd ask other people if they're going to eat their lunch or dinner, whatever they serve.
And he said, no, can I have it?
Hey, walk off the plane with it.
Well, he was Speaker.
Then there was Fort Worthless Jim was Speaker.
And when a Democrat got elected, a Democrat was brought in to the Speaker's office or some underling of the Speaker and said, all right, you got two options here.
If you want to go anywhere as a Democrat in this place, you vote the way we tell you.
And if you do, we'll make sure you get re-elected, campaign contributions from outside your district, all kinds of lobbying goodies.
But if you don't, if you want to come up here and be a star and you want to come up and be an independent contractor, you're going to be here for two years.
And the two years that you are here, nobody will be able to find you or talk to you or what have you.
So one day, we're watching 60 Minutes, about four years after I mentioned this, and a newly elected Democrat, well, he's been there second year, second term, Luis Gutierrez from Chicago, does an interview on 60 Minutes and virtually described this very same thing happening to him when he was elected.
So we tried to get him on the program and we're going to interview him for the Limbow letter and he backed out.
And I haven't heard from him since.
I don't know if he's still a Democrat.
I don't know if he's still in Congress.
But since that 60-minutes interview, we haven't heard from Luis Guthieris.
At least not, I can't remember at all, certainly not in a prominent way.
The Democrats, the point is they operate that way.
I don't think that happens.
Now, Delay on the Republican side, delay was called the hammer.
But the way Delay went around and did things was he rounded up votes on the floor.
I mean, he played his own version of hardball, and he got good party discipline in the House.
But note the Democrats, the hammer.
Of course, when Delay did it, it was somehow, it was unfair and under the table tactics.
It was devious.
It's the standard operating procedure for Democrats.
Now, party discipline can also come back and bite you.
You remember the Base Closings Commission?
It seems like the Base Closing Commission is out there working every year closing military bases because we're still under the assumption we're spending the peace dividend, military bases that we don't need.
So in this latest round earlier this year of base closures was a base in South Dakota.
John Theune, newly elected Republican senator who defeated Puff Dashel, who has, again, really just a pathetic piece in the Washington Post today.
If you missed our discussions the first hour, if you missed it, you can consult rushlimbaugh.com later this afternoon when we update the site, see what was said.
But Theune was outraged.
I mean, he was livid, and he threatened to vote against the president on a specific, I forget what the piece of legislation was, but it was important.
And it was, it was, he was, could it have been the same thing?
Voinovich was, was it, was it a, oh, was it a confirmation of somebody?
Is it Bolton?
It might have been, it might have, it might have been the Bolton nomination.
John Theon had been as reliable as everybody who campaigned for him and voted for him thought he would be.
But when they, it was the Bolton issue.
And when they, and when, but when they closed his military base on him, you know, we were, I remember sitting here and emailing some friends.
I said, this just doesn't happen.
Close a military base in some Democrat state.
Don't close a military base in one of your ally states, a new ally that you worked hard to get elected.
Why do this?
And the White House said, this is not political.
We are not getting involved in which bases are closed.
I said to myself, well, you could.
You're commander-in-chief.
You're the president of the United States.
And so far from there being party unity or discipline here, more often than here, the president's gone out and campaigned for Arlen Specter, and that had people scratching their heads.
Now he's going to go up campaign.
Lincoln Chafee, that's got people scratching their heads.
Schwarzenegger's fit to be tied because the White House went out there on a fundraising trip right in the middle of his crunch time fundraising for his ballot initiatives out there.
And it's one of the reasons Schwarzenegger said, all right, screw you, I'm going to go to Democrat chief of staff, which he's done.
So I don't disagree with the whole concept of party unity and party discipline because it can work against you.
You count on loyalty and you get it.
And if you don't end up noticing it and rewarding the people loyal to you, they're going to strike back.
But the people we're talking about trying to hold in line are not the John Theones.
If somebody could come up with a way, the example was given by Rick in Boston of Olympia Snow.
She's on some important committee that she no doubt treasures.
Just tell her, you're going to lose it.
Or have Frist or somebody to senate leadership.
Senator Snow, if you sandbag us on this again, we are going to take your chairmanship away.
Well, you know what would happen?
The biggest firestorm would erupt in the mainstream media because, of course, the news would get out as it should, and the pressure would be brought to bear and news would be reported about Republicans as they've now descended to subhuman levels.
Even though Democrats, you can go out and listen, get Doris Kearns Goodwin on any radio TV show get her talking about LBJ.
You will hear just these kinds of stories and you will hear her marvel over how he was able to do it and how wonderful at it he was, what total control he had over the party when he was president and in the Senate.
But there would be hell to pay if something like that happened on the Republican side.
And I'm just telling you that experience is that when there's hell to pay in the media on the Republican side, there's a genuine general tendency to cave in to the pressure being brought to bear by the Washington culture.
So it's not that I'm opposed to party discipline.
I just, the worst thing you can do is try to enforce it and then cave when the pressure mounts after you do it.
And I, at this point, am not certain that it would hold up if they did try it.
Let's take a brief time out.
We'll come back and continue right after this on the EIB network.
Stay with us.
I want to read an email to you that I just got.
This answer to this could be a public service.
Dear Rush, I too enjoy a good cigar, as you do each and every day at the EIB network.
But I can't stand the smell of stale smoke that gets into the carpets, the clothing inside my house.
I see you smoking in your studios on the Ditto Cam.
How do you or do you keep the stale odors out?
Joel Foreman wrote the email.
Joel, there's a basic premise that you've got wrong here, and that is that there's anything stale about cigar smoke at any time, no matter when you smell it, no matter where it is, it's heavenly.
But I understand that some people disagree with that.
So we have a system, actually have a different system at home that we have here at the EIB network.
Here at the EIB network, we have a basic suction system.
You people watching this program of the Ditto Cam have probably always noticed that the smoke from this cigar goes straight up.
This is because there is a giant fan that's sucking the smoke and it vents outside in the parking lot.
Aside from my car being here, this is how people know I'm here.
They smell it in the parking lot because it takes it out there.
As such, it's not in here long enough to get inside the fabric or the carpeting or any of that, nor much on my clothes.
At home, you can't quite do that.
As I use a different system at home, well, I'm going to have a giant fan in the ceiling.
This fan is recessed while you can't hear it.
But at home, you'd have to have a big enough fan to suck it all out of there and send it down.
It's not what happened.
So we got together with an actual electronic engineer and an HVAC engineer and designed a system called thermal transference.
And what thermal transference basically does, excuse me, the room in which, and I have this in three rooms of the house, what happens is that the floor area of the room is flooded with cold air.
Now, the presence of human beings in the room warms the air.
The air rises and takes the smoke with it out of the house.
There are no fans.
There are no filters or any of that.
It just vanishes.
I have been smoking in my library for, well, 1997.
And people will come over and I have friends come and have a cigar.
And they, you know, this room doesn't smell like cigars.
I just smile and I say, yeah, it must be because it's so big.
I don't know.
Because they get into a detailed explanation of it.
But the bottom line is you come over, you could sniff any of the fabric and the sofas or whatever, and you wouldn't smell a cigar at all.
The fabric smells new.
And it's, you know, it's some restaurants have used it in the past.
It's not certainly exclusive to me, but I looked into it and I found it because it's not noisy.
There are no filters.
There's no recirculation.
These systems that suck the smoke of a room in through a filter and then send it back in.
I mean, that's good for about 10 minutes.
And then the filter becomes infected.
And you've got the odor of the filter coming back into the room.
And I didn't want that.
So thermal transference is a and the guy that designed it for me is a native of Minneapolis, Minnesota, lives a lot of the time in Hawaii.
I'm not going to give you, I don't want this guy's phone to be ringing off the hook here because he's retired.
But he had a design company that worked on solutions like this for a number of people.
And as I say, I've got it in three different rooms.
And leave it on for three hours after the conclusion of the cigar smoking and you'll not have one shred of evidence that cigar smoking is going on in the room.
It's not something you go by at a store.
It's not a device that sits on the floor.
It has to be incorporated into and it's different from, but it's made a part of your central cooling system or central air conditioning system.
And it is kind of complicated and it does require its own pipes, cooling pipes and things, requires its own vents for the air in that room.
I mean, most people's vents are on the wall, on the ceiling or something.
These are not.
These are hidden and recessed, basically not on the floor, but very near walls of the floor on the sides of walls, but they don't look like vents.
You would never see them.
And you can't feel the air.
There's not a, when I say there's a constant flow of cold air, you can't stand next to a vent and actually, well, you'd have to be real quiet and put your hand and you could smell it, but there are so many of them in the room that it just floods the room with this cold air, which rises.
Even if there's not a human being in the room, it'll eventually rise.
Even working in tandem, that's just the trick, though, having it work in tandem with an air conditioning system.
It's also putting cooling air in the room because this will tend to warm the room up.
So it became a challenge.
Okay, down here in Florida in July and August, what do you do to keep this thing working?
And it took about six months trial and error to get it fixed, but now it is just ideal.
It is flawless.
But here where you're watching me, it's a simple suction technique.
Simple fan taking the smoke out of here.
Here is Justin in Brookfield, Ohio.
Hi, Justin.
Welcome to the program.
Hey, Rush, I'm with a unique dilemma here.
I know you've talked about dealing with liberal family members and Democrats over the holidays, but the family members that I'm dealing with are my parents.
And I don't know if I should just kind of like shut up and go along to avoid getting into arguments that might have other repercussions in the house or if I should actually actively engage them.
We have encountered this.
We've encountered this before, and our advice has been sought on this.
Let me ask you a couple of questions.
Yeah, sure.
You live at home year-round, right, at 16, so you're not, okay.
Is this a daily thing?
Your parents sit around and talk politics and it's frustrating to you?
It happens, or maybe not daily, but every couple of days.
I mean, my dad's a Bush basher, so we get into arguments over that a lot.
He's the kind of Democrat that blames Bush for everything in the world that happens.
Okay.
Well, but so this is not something that just happens occasionally.
And you're arguing with him now.
Right, but it's having like the arguments are getting worse.
Yeah.
Sometimes they can cause like, you know, hostility in other parts, like other things.
Like what?
Just give me one example.
I want to know what I'm dealing with here.
Well, if my dad's mad at me or over politics, he'll kind of punish me by making me do more around the house, things like that.
Taking out the trash, that sort of stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just more than normal.
Yeah.
Well, about that, and I'm not trying to be funny with this one.
Don't let that sweat you.
Right.
That's not going to hurt you, being made to do more around that.
That's going to end up actually helping you.
Having to do chores and things like that.
You'll understand as a parent later on down the line about these kinds of things.
Now, if it becomes a form of punishment, though, if it becomes a form of punishment, which it sounds like it is, then you might, as long as you know why it's happening, you can let it bounce off.
I think the key for you here is, and I can't, one thing I'm not going to do is take the place of your parents.
They're your parents, and it's their right and role and responsibility to be.
I don't want to cause a war between you and your parents.
I would never assume to be a surrogate parent in this situation.
But I think that as long as these arguments that you have are not shaking your beliefs or the confidence in your beliefs, I would do my best to just try to internally laugh at it and maybe externally out loud laugh about it.
The more that you let it get to you, the more anybody, parent or not, will see to it that it gets to you and it'll become a way to push your buttons.
And you don't want people to be able to push your buttons.
So I should just continue getting into these conversations, laugh about things that are, you know, when he blames Bush for something that obviously has anything to do with his policies, I should just kind of laugh at it, continue what I've been doing lately.
Yeah, there are other techniques that you could employ.
I mean, you could engage him in discussion, too, on this.
And you could, you know, I don't know what your relationship with your parents is.
I don't know if it's strained at best.
Well, no, I mean, they're good parents.
It's just there's disagreements.
I kind of feel like my parents are enamored with the Democratic Party, like they still consider the Democratic Party the working man's party when we know that the liberals taking over.
Tradition that dies hard.
You know, one thing, are you on the debate team at school?
We don't have one.
I wish we did, but we're kind of a small town.
We have about 400, 500 kids in our high school.
Well, it's too bad because you've got a debate team and take your trophies home for winning.
And look, got to take a break here.
Can you hang on just a second, Justin, because there's a little more information I need to glean here in parceling out how to deal with it.
This is something I have not faced.
I disagree with my parents over things like college and that sort of stuff.
Back in just a second.
Okay, we're back with Justin in Brookfield, Ohio.
He's an oppressed 16-year-old who's living with parents that are very much liberal and disagree with him and argue with him about it.
Question I have for you at the outset.
Do any of these arguments cause you to question what you believe?
Are they shaking your beliefs in what you hold dear?
Actually, no, they're doing the exact opposite.
They're strengthening.
I mean, I've gotten to the point where they're strengthened.
I'm putting my beliefs online.
And I have a blog, and my uncle's actually been the one going.
He's been going on there under names like Crazy Liberal and targeting me on my blog.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, hold it a minute.
Just a minute.
Just a minute.
You have a website, a blog.
Right.
It's rightontheight.com.
Right on the right.
But wait, wait, wait.
You have an uncle, your dad or your mother's sister, brother?
He's my mother's brother.
Your mother's brother is harassing you on your own blog?
Right.
I mean, he'll go up there and he'll put things like he'll put talking points because my parents know about it, but they're not too involved.
But when my uncle found out about it, he's been going on there just to mess with me now.
An uncle messing with the nephew's blog.
This is, why am I surprised these are liberals?
Justin, I'll tell you what, this is, you have to understand something.
You're dealing with people who do not have much of a sense of humor when this stuff comes up, right?
They don't laugh much about politics or these kinds of issues, and they don't tolerate humor well about it, right?
Right.
All right.
So that's one of the reasons.
Next time, next time that you are assigned additional chores or work, I want you to get a sign.
Go make a sign somewhere and have it in your room.
And when you're assigned this extra work, do it carrying this sign.
And the sign says, violating child labor laws.
Or do it or have a sign that says unfair oppression in the home.
As liberals, they will identify with the violation of child labor and the word oppression.
That's a buzzword for liberals.
And if you walk around as an oppressed person, I think it'll smoke them out.
It will not make them sympathize with you.
It'll make them even angrier because you'll be turning their own belief system back on them and challenging because they don't believe in oppression or child labor anywhere, but it's okay for them to do it on their son.
And now your uncle can come taunt you on your own blog.
The right thing to do would be to encourage you in all of this.
The right thing to do would be to praise you and say you're initiative and to encourage you as you go through life this way rather than trying to tear you down.
You live in Brookfield, Ohio.
Make up a sign that says, what's different about this from Abu Ghraib?
Oh, that's great, right?
Oh, yeah.
Have a bunch of series of signs, and then, of course, you've got to behave in such a way that will get you the additional punishment so that you can use the signs that you've made.
Right.
But understand, they're not going to find this funny.
They're going to think you're a smart Alec, and they may discipline you further and so forth.
I just, I find this, I was asking snurdily during the break, can you believe parents would treat a kid this way?
And I stopped myself.
I said, of course they're liberals.
I mean, it's not that they're acting like bad parents.
It's just when political discussions get involved, it's really my dad.
My dad just gets angry.
He's not ready to handle an argument with his son.
Well, okay.
Now, give me an example of the last time this happened, an argument where he starts talking about whatever.
And what do you say back?
What does he say that would you say?
Well, I mean, it's really just like, say if I got an argument over the computer, he would say, well, of course you'd fight over something stupid like that because you like Bush.
You have to be stupid.
You like Bush.
Bush wants to get rid of minimum wage.
And I'm like telling him, well, you know, if you go on things, Bush is the one giving you tax cuts.
Bush is the one, you know, with the economic program that's now.
Okay, so what do you say?
When he says that Bush wants to get rid of the minimum wage and Bush is stupid and Bush is cutting economic programs, what do you say back?
I try to tell him, like, look at the economic stimulus.
Look at the tax cuts.
Look at the tax cuts that are putting more money in your pocket.
And look at the economic programs that are giving a boom that you're receiving the effects of, but you're not willing to admit it.
Even though I know what's coming next, what does he say when you say that?
I mean, at this point, he's just telling me, you know, you don't know the facts.
You're stupid.
Right.
Of course, you're citing facts.
And he tells me, and you tell him that you don't have the facts.
It's he that doesn't have the facts.
I think you ought to actually feel very proud of yourself that you're not buckling under this despite some of these efforts.
This is quite insulting for you to be told you're stupid.
They consider me uneducated and they don't realize how much time I spend researching these issues.
I mean, on the web, there's just all these resources available and I'm researching the issues and I'm realizing, I'm looking through and realizing which talking points are wrong.
And they can't seem to realize that a teenager would be able to find all this information.
Yeah, I know.
And I remember when I was your age, I had arguments with my dad about all kinds, not this stuff, but I had arguments with him about things he thought I should do that I wasn't doing.
And it, of course, made me lame and this sort.
And I was intimidated.
I mean, you don't, most 16-year-olds are not going to sit there and get into a knockdown drag out back and forth with their father because their father is the role model, the authority figure in the house.
And so I bit the bullet more often than not and let my behavior serve as my response.
One of the biggest arguments I had with my dad was about college.
He told me, he gave me a laundry list one day of the things that were going to happen to me and not happen to me because I didn't go to college.
I won't bother you with the list, but it was all rooted, by the way, in the fact that he felt as a failure as a parent because I was not willing to go to college and advance myself.
And he felt he was unable to get through to me.
And so he was a failure.
And that bothered him.
And it also bothered him that he just thought that I just was too much of a maverick and independent, didn't know what was good for me, yet thought that I did.
But every time he told me these things, just like when I was fired seven times and told, you don't have what it takes to succeed in this business.
If you want to stay in radio, go into sales.
I just never doubted myself.
I got upset that others doubted me, but I didn't doubt myself.
I'm in the same situation here, Rush.
I mean, my parents aren't bad parents, but when it comes to politics, they disagree.
They're letting me do it.
They're not prohibiting me from expressing my opinions online and stuff.
But they just don't agree with me.
And there's just this sense that they wish I would do something else.
And that kind of disappoints me, but it doesn't make me question what I'm doing because I know I'm on the right path.
I know that I have the facts and I know what I'm doing.
And even if they disagree with me, I think that they're not going to oppose what I do in any real way, but they're doing a disagree with it.
And I wish there was, you know.
All right.
Well, in that case, the key is that they're not really trying to suppress what you're doing.
They're just arguing with your dad.
He's just arguing with you about it.
But he's not really trying to stop you.
Your uncle's toying around with you on your blog.
But besides that, your dad is not taking your computer away from you.
He just got me a laptop.
He actually got me a laptop.
Oh, well, okay.
So I will wager you that secretly your dad admires you.
I think he likes.
I mean, my mom even said she was impressed what I was doing, even though she disagrees with me.
My dad, on the other hand, hasn't really said anything much about what I'm doing.
He won't, but you argued with me about politics.
You're obviously a bright guy.
You're well adjusted.
You're on the right track.
They feel proud about that.
But it's hard for people to tell people that they love them.
It's hard for people to tell people that they're proud of them.
But I guarantee you he is, because otherwise he wouldn't be getting to the laptop.
But he wouldn't be challenging the way he is.
He'd be trying to keep you from doing what you're doing.
He'd take your computer away from you.
He would monitor what you're reading and take that away from you.
He's not doing any of that.
So the way to deal with this is humor.
Just get those boards.
Those signs up.
All right, you know and and and uh and and, use that as a way of of making light of it.
And never, i'm sure you love your parents right right well, tell them that, all right, when you get into these arguments, dad, I love you, but you know, i've i've looked into it and I just don't find that that.
And don't tell him he's wrong.
Don't don't say dad, you're right.
I just don't see it that way dad, i'm finding other things that that make me think otherwise.
And and uh well, tell him he's wrong if you want to but, but that's up to you.
That's the feel of the situation that you're in.
But uh, you know he's still your parent and and i'm not, so i'm just trying to advise you here how to have a little fun with this, with this uh, with this circumstance.
That might be a better way of responding than getting into real arguments at the dinner table or whenever it happens.
All right thanks, rush.
All right, let us know how this uh works out.
Are you expecting trouble here over the holidays?
You got other relatives coming in or you're going to other relatives places?
Um, i'm spending some time with my relatives.
I mean trouble, trouble's always around the corner things, things come up.
I'm sure my uncle will do something else.
Just today he posted something on on my website, so i'm sure he'll.
He'll probably do it again and tell you what i'm gonna do.
Here's what i'm gonna do.
I'm gonna help you out.
What have you?
Have you gotten them?
Uh, you got christmas presents yet.
Um well, the laptop was an early present there.
No, have you gotten them?
What you're doing them?
Christmas presents yet?
No, I haven't.
Oh well, you have come to the right place, because here's what we're going to do.
I'm going.
Does your dad use a computer?
Uh, not often.
Ah, he only uses it for like, fantasy sports.
In, in the fall, fantasy sport, even even better, even better, because we're not only we're going to solve your problem, we're going to promote family togetherness.
I am going to make you a complimentary subscriber Rushlimbaugh.com and my newsletter, and i'm also going to offer i'm going to let you offer your dad his own complimentary, complimentary subscription as well, if he wants it, all right.
If he doesn't, he can come read the website with you over your shoulders and you can read this website and and listen to program on tape or however you want to do it on the computer uh uh, together and so forth.
Uh, i'm not trying to be the focus here.
I i'm I, this is, that's not the point, because I can imagine.
Does my name come up in these uh discussions?
Um, not very often, but I mean, it has been well, all right.
Well it it it, it may now uh so, so.
But i'm gonna give you this complimentary prescription subscription and you can, you can uh uh, say dad look uh uh and, by the way, show him other things that you use on the computer as well.
But the main thing is, after I give you one I want it you're gonna have access to a second one.
Okay, that your mom and dad can uh also use at no charge.
Uh, if he's worried about the minimum wage being cut, you can tell him.
You told me about that and I don't want this to cost him anything.
All right, all right, show that we conservatives are generous and giving people uh and that uh, and that we we, we want people to.
You know, not just believe us because we say it, we want people to believe.
Believe us because it is.
And here's a resource you can go and find out what is and so forth.
I doubt that they will do that.
Maybe some resistance here, but it's something at least you can offer.
All right.
In addition to whatever else you get.
So hold on.
We'll get you all of the information necessary to make this happen for your subscription and for your dad's.
And obviously, I'm going to give you three.
You give one to your uncle.
Okay.
All right.
Hang on.
We'll get to you with all the information on how to do this right after this break.
And don't hang up the phone out there, Justin.
We'll be back, folks.
Stay with us.
Now, Justin, just remember in all of this, don't be disrespectful.
Have fun with it.
Your parents are your parents, and I am not in any way attempting to step in between the relationship that you have with them.
I would never presume to do that.
One thing you might do, you might consider telling your dad that you have fired off a letter to Senator McCain claiming that you are being tormented and humiliated as a prisoner in your own home.
And say it with a smile on your face.
Or the Abu Grab sign will say much the same thing.
But just have a little fun with it.
Honor your mother and father and make sure that a quiet respect is what you need here.
And you're going to be out of the house soon.
And it's all, I think, a great educational experience for you because whether your dad knows it or not, he is making you think.
And he's helping you to go out and dig up even more information to confirm and validate what you already believe.
Dixie in Sacramento, welcome to the program.
Nice to have you with us.
Hi, Rush.
I think that this experience that Justin's going through at home is excellent experience for college because I have a daughter who attends a local university here who shall remain nameless.
And she's a junior.
And we've had many discussions about papers she's had to write for school about abortion, pornography, all these other different issues.
And she has a conservative point of view.
And she said, Mom, I can't possibly write that and get a good grade.
I have to write what I know the professor believes to get the grade.
And believe me, I can do it.
And she does.
She does exactly that because she wants the grade.
It hasn't changed her beliefs at all.
It hasn't weakened them.
It hasn't changed them.
She's just gotten smarter about how she has to write the paper.
Right.
So you're saying this is going to be good training for Justin for what's to come later.
It's good training for him.
Higher education.
Yes.
Well, no doubt about that.
I know students find their way around these obstacles in a number of different ways.
Some of them argue with the teachers.
Some of them write what the teachers are naturally going to disagree with and so forth.
There's really any number of ways to do this.
It's all dependent on really what the specifics of each circumstance are, which is why it is difficult to offer blanket advice in these circumstances, which is why I seek as much data and evidence as possible for treading into these dangerous waters, folks, because it's dangerous waters.
I mean, it's one thing to tell a husband how to argue with a wife.
I mean, you can't win anyway.
But when his parents, you know, it's a much touchier thing.
Before we get out of here, I want to take a brief moment here.
Thanksgiving is, by definition, when people sit around and give thanks.
For some reason, I'm always more compelled to do that this time of year, always have been.
And over the course of the year, I try to say the same thing that I'm going to say now, which is thank you and to let you know how much all of you are appreciated and loved by all of us here.
We continually hear that this program has meant so much to you.
And I'm ecstatic when I hear that.
But believe me, the fact that you are in the audience and have been there and continue to be for so many years has meant more to my life and my family's life than this program could ever mean to you.
I'm not trying to cancel out your compliment.
I'm trying to return it in a way that is commensurate and understanding.
Also, the staff here is without exception the best that there is in radio.
And I'm grateful for all of you that are here and have hung around.
Well, I mean, have eagerly stayed because there's no place better to be.
I understand that, but still you're here.
And I have an ongoing daily appreciation.
And I want to mention one name because I never have before, but my syndication partner is Craig Kitchen.
You never hear his name, but he is one of the invisible players that makes all of this happen.
And we've put Craig in the last six or seven years through a huge roller coaster.
And he has never fallen off of it.
And he's been there.
And there is no better partner that I could possibly have doing this program.
So I wanted to personally thank Craig and all of his people at Premiere Radio.
I have to take a brief break.
We'll be back in just a second and continue right after this.
Well, Merry Christmas, everybody.
This is the last time I will be with you prior to the new year.
So make the most of the remaining days in the year as I will.
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