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March 10, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:25
March 10, 2006, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
I told everybody, I told you people yesterday on this program that the ports deal wasn't over.
You will not believe.
You will not believe where this is headed now in the media.
But I told you, this is going to have legs.
It's going to have a lasting effect.
Greetings, my friends, and welcome to EIB Network, America's Anchorman, Rush Limbaugh.
It's Friday.
Let's go.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's Open Line Friday.
And I have to turn your four-time ecstatic, and I'm happy that the ports deal is still in the news.
Something about this story I just love because there's so much more here than what the reactionary reaction to this caused.
At any rate, Open Line Friday, let me explain the rules for those of you who are new to the game.
Monday through Thursday, we only talk about what I care about.
I'm not going to sit here and be bored Monday through Thursday, and you would be bored if I sat here and talked about things I don't care about.
But on Friday, I take a tremendous career risk because when we go to the phones, I will engage phone calls from people who might want to talk about things I don't care about.
It's your golden opportunity here to talk about whatever.
If you think something hasn't been discussed, it needs to be, if you whatever, question or comment, this is the day to do it.
Telephone number 800-282-2882 is the number.
If you want to go the email route, it's rush at EIBnet.com.
All right.
You have to hear this.
It happened on Good Morning America this morning.
We have a montage of the host, the estimable Charlie Gibson, ABC News correspondent Claire Shipman, and correspondent Jessica Yellen.
Listen to this.
Did the White House secretly kill the deal?
ABC News has learned the White House asked the Dubai company to back out in order to save the president political embarrassment.
There's a new question this morning, and that is whether the company pulled the plug on the deal at the request of the White House.
This morning, ABC News has learned from a source close to the negotiations that the White House made it clear to Dubai Ports that they should withdraw from this deal and save the president from political embarrassment.
All right.
Now, is this not amazing?
Here in the media, the Democrats got exactly what they wanted, and now they're going to try to turn this around and say, Bush pulled a fast one on us.
Bush snuck this bias.
The deal is done.
Dubai Ports is out.
The royal family of the United Arab Emirates is angry.
They're threatening of withdrawing all kinds of support.
They're threatening today to make us pull all of our military bases and so forth out of the United Arab Emirates.
I doubt that'll happen.
And now all of a sudden, all of a sudden, they want to sniff around and find some secret deal that Bush made with the ports people to pull the deal.
In the meantime, what Congress did yesterday, it just boggles the mind, folks.
This whole story just boggles the mind.
And now they're looking around to try to implicate Bush in something that's not a scandal.
Would it be a scandal if Bush did ask the port people to pull out of it?
I'll tell you what, if you don't feel manipulated by this whole story by now, you are never going to end up feeling manipulated.
And thus, you will not understand what's actually happened here.
We have a bunch of paranoid protectionists.
This is almost a repeat of what Perot was talking about back in 1992, that giant sucking sound.
You know, all we're doing, we're just in the midst of Numerous economic cycles, and in these cycles, that there are certain American businesses that have hard times.
And here come these fear mongers that drive by media, and everybody is throwing bullets and mortar fire into the crowd and shaking everybody.
Ooh, protectionism.
We're losing jobs.
We're losing manufacturing.
Now we're going to be attacked by terrorists if this company bought the ports.
And it's not even ports, it's terminals.
His story's still, and you know what's throughout the media?
I've got a bunch of stacks of stuff today.
And in the stacks are all the details that make it okay.
We're getting the LA Times has an editorial, the San Francisco Chronicle has a story.
What's that?
Washington Post has an editorial.
It was all, it was a good deal.
There was nothing to be afraid of.
Where you been the past three weeks?
This is a classic.
The drive-by media did everything they could to kill the deal.
Now the deal is dead.
And now they're running stories.
You know, this wouldn't have been a bad thing to do.
And you've even got the Democrats up there admitting that they played off of people's xenophobia and racism.
Yes, siri Bobkin.
Right here, it's in this San Francisco Chronicle story.
The collapse of the Dubai port deal was a victory for the politics of fear.
This is Mark Sandalow, who is the Chronicle's Washington Bureau chief.
Democrats saw an opportunity to exploit the terrorism anxieties that have been.
You know, I'm reading these stories.
It is everything I told you people the last three weeks about this.
Everything.
Now, all of a sudden, this stuff comes out after the deal is done.
This story also blames Bush for the racism, just as the Democrats.
We played the soundbite for you earlier this week.
Oh, yeah.
Bush has used the club of fear ever since 9/11 to get Americans to hate Arabs.
And that's why the country reacted.
It's Bush's fault.
So that's a theme that this story also has.
Bush's unrelenting, exaggerated campaign against terrorism.
Unrelenting and exaggerated campaign against terrorism underpinned the environment that doomed the port deal.
Elevated terror warnings from the Department of Homeland Security, the war in Iraq, and regular admonitions and presidential speeches of the looming danger have conditioned many Americans to anticipate the worst.
ABC, Washington Post news poll published Thursday, found that one in three Americans believe mainstream Islam encourages violence against non-Muslims.
Nearly half of Americans surveyed have an unfavorable opinion of the religion.
The anti-Muslim views are stronger than those expressed even during the anxious months immediately following the 2001 terror attack.
So Bush started all this.
Bush got what he deserved, but the deal really wasn't that bad.
And then this racism, privately, many Democrats conceded the xenophobic and anti-Arab strains to their own rhetoric made them uncomfortable.
So they're admitting it.
They're admitting that they were xenophobic and racist.
Privately, many Democrats conceded the xenophobic and anti-Arab strains to their rhetoric made them uncomfortable.
But opinion polls that showed the issue hurting Bush's popularity and GOP chances in November prompted them to step up their xenophobic and racist attacks.
So what we get here is the Democrats, it was perfectly okay.
They're a little uncomfortable, but it's perfectly okay to be xenophobic and racist because you, the American people, were, and all they were doing was reflecting you.
But it's not your fault.
It's Bush's, because Bush made you xenophobic and racist against Arabs and Muslims because he's had an unrelenting and exaggerated focus on terrorism ever since 9-11.
And as I told you, resistance to foreign ownership of U.S. port operations spilled over to the aviation arena when a congressional committee told the Bush administration to postpone a plan to allow more foreign control of domestic airlines.
This is such an abomination of a lead.
First place, there is no foreign ownership of U.S. ports.
I've got a description today of what happens at a port, what happens at a terminal, who owns them, who operates them, what happens at every level, what the security is.
I'm going to run through it for you here in just a moment.
Because nobody's talking about foreign ownership of U.S. ports.
And nobody is talking about foreign control of domestic airlines.
But regardless, it doesn't matter because the xenophobia, the racism, the protectionism, the fear, the hysteria is now going to bleed over to this airline deal.
All this is the U.S. airline industry has never, the industry as a whole, has never shown a profit in a single year.
Individual airlines have, but the industry has not.
And we keep hearing stories.
Somebody, this airline lost a billion dollars yesterday, $2 billion the day before that.
Yet the airplanes are full and so forth.
And the airlines are just seeking other investors.
We don't allow foreign investors, people to loan money or invest in there, but nobody's talking about control.
What difference does it make?
Foreign-owned airlines land in this country every day from the United Arab Emirates, from Saudi Arabia.
They ought to cancel those flights.
We ought to not allow them to lie.
I mean, the 19 hijackers were Saudis.
This is so silly.
It was a disgrace.
What happened yesterday?
And I hear people, no, Rush, you're missing the point on this.
You're missing the point.
This was not a disgrace.
This was the American people getting what they want.
Yeah, well, and Rush, you're also missing a point.
We are a sovereign nation, and it's our responsibility to protect our sovereignty.
This is so short-sighted a view.
It is so paranoid.
And it just doesn't bother me for the Dubai people.
I mean, the reaction that we saw in Congress yesterday, both parties, and the hysteria that was generated by so many Americans against this deal without any knowledge at all of what it was, combined with the fear of politicians getting re-elected in election year.
This is not, this is not one of our finest moments.
If you're feeling proud about this when America finally stood up for itself, you're making a grave error.
This is nothing to be proud of.
It's something to be ashamed of.
Quick timeout.
We'll be back and continue Open Line Friday right after this.
Seriously, have you heard Soros's latest?
He's going after Dr. James Dobson as having ties to Abramoff.
It gets an election year, folks.
They're going to get brutal out there.
Welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, saving and serving humanity.
I don't know about saving.
Maybe too late.
We're still going to try.
Telephone number 800-282-2882 as usual.
Half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
Now we're going to talk about other things, the port deal, because it's Open Line Friday.
And you can talk about it.
If you're sick of the port deal, the easiest way to get around it is call and talk about something else.
But I have just a few more things to say about it.
Just to give you an idea, some things on tap today.
The Wall Street Journal has a fascinating piece today on happiness and housework.
Do you realize the myths associated with feminism are all blowing up now?
I mean, it is, it is, here's the latest one.
The division of chores does not cause much marital discord after all.
We've all been told that women hate marriage and they can't see it because a husband doesn't do enough around the house.
Doesn't help with the chores.
Bunk doesn't mean anything.
Has no effect on happiness in the marital home.
Women are content to do housework.
They are content to stay home and raise the kids rather than go to work.
They're content being women.
The feminists tried to change all this.
Housework in my home is not a challenge.
Somebody dragged out an iron the other day.
It had been so long since I've seen one.
What is that?
Found another animal, the rat squirrel.
Rat squirrel is not extinct after all.
It has the face of a rat, the tail of a skinny squirrel.
Scientists say this creature discovered living in central Laos is pretty special.
It's a species believed to have been extinct for 11 million years.
These people don't know diddly squat.
We have discovered how many new species on these deserted islands somewhere that you got to land a helicopter 11,000 feet up.
So they found the rat squirrel.
There's a picture of it.
It is one.
It's a combination of cute and ugly.
It looks as cute as a squirrel, except it does have a rat head or a mouse head.
So now the challenge is to go trap some of these things and calculate how many of them still exist to tell whether the species is endangered.
Harvard, what do we talk about on this program?
Well, optimism, good cheer.
Can't go to the library and find a book on how to fail because everybody knows how to do that.
The books on how to succeed sell millions.
Power of positive thinking sells millions, anybody.
Motivational speaker earns millions, hundreds of thousands, whatever.
But, you know, books on how to be depressed, how to be in a bad mood.
You won't find them in the library because everybody knows how to do it.
Harvard, they've got one of their most crowded courses is positive psychology, drawing students in droves.
The most popular course at Harvard this semester teaches happiness.
The final numbers came in this week.
Positive psychology, a class whose content resembles that of many a self-help book, but grounded in serious psychological research, has enrolled 885, or 855, 855 students, beating out even introductory economics.
I'm not going to comment on whether it's good news or not.
It's just news right now.
I think I'm not really sure I believe it.
Harvard and happiness just don't go together to me.
That's what they're teaching.
Happiness psychology.
Yeah.
Washington Post cutting 80 newsroom jobs today.
The Washington Post plans to cut at least 80 newsroom jobs through attrition and buyouts, according to the sources at the paper who said editors began giving staffers the bad news yesterday in meetings.
The bad news will continue today.
My understanding is that the editors, the managing editors brought this up with other issues of downsizing, but with no layoffs, no layoffs.
We're going to buy them out or we're just going to kick them out.
It looks like through attrition and buyouts.
So they have 800 editorial employees, so 10% of them are getting whacked.
On the weekend, the Sopranos new season debuts.
And now, you know what they'll say when they get around to officially announcing this will not affect the quality of our journalism.
Getting rid of 10% of our staff.
It's the quality of the journalism that is leading to the business losses in an otherwise roaring economy that is causing all of these major communications empires, particularly in print, to downsize, lay people off, cut back costs wherever they can.
Mike, Selcall South Dakota, you're up first on Open Line Friday.
Welcome.
Oh, thank you, Rush.
It's an honor and a privilege to speak with you.
I miss your question.
Thank you, sir.
I understand.
Yes, yes.
Miss your TV show.
I really enjoyed growing up with that.
On the Dubai ports deal, and if Congress does, you know, go and try to pass this bill or amendment to basically outlaw foreign companies to manage the ports for the port authorities.
Would that now then also allow an employer to discriminate against an individual because of their national origin, saying, you know, I feel you may be a security risk, so I'm not going to hire you?
Who knows where this is going to lead?
That's entirely possible.
It is entirely possible since that's the basis on which the deal was killed.
And it's entirely possible.
The reason I said yesterday that the story is not over is because of the ramifications.
And I can't predict them.
Nobody can.
But this is intellectually defending this is going to be a tough thing because based on the reasoning that we kicked the Dubai Ports World people out, how can we allow any foreign country to have any investment in this country if they have ties to terrorism or if they're threatening us in an economic or military way like the Shikams?
And the United Arab Emirates has never even threatened us.
We're an ally.
It boggles the mind.
But how can we let Air Saudi land in New York?
How can we let the United Arab Emirates Airlines?
How can we land any ship that is loaded on any port owned by DPW elsewhere around into this country?
I mean, this is just indefensible in an intellectual sense, in an economic sense.
It's entirely indefensible.
And it may lead to this kind of discrimination that is allowed on the basis, well, we must protect our sovereignty.
We are entitled to be racist.
Bush made us rape.
Bush made us hate Arabs.
He did because he's been exaggerating the terrorism threat for four years.
You watch, folks.
This is politics is what screwed this up.
That's why it's embarrassing to me.
Back in a moment.
Redefining hipness on the radio, Rush Limbaugh with talent on loan from God.
All right, so the latest on this ports deal is that Bush actually snuck one by everybody.
It was Bush.
It was Bush that called the DPWP.
You got to pull a deal.
Save me the political embarrassment.
The media is sniffing around trying to find evidence that Bush might be involved in another scandal by getting the DPW out of the port deal.
This morning on PMS NBC Live, a reporter Ett interviewed named Nora O'Donnell interviewed the Treasury Secretary Jon Snow.
She said, Let me ask you, let me ask you about the statement made by Edward Bilke.
He's the CEO, Edward Muhammad Bilke, CEO of DPW.
He said, quote, this decision is based on an understanding that DP World will have time to affect the transfer in an orderly fashion and DP World will not suffer economic loss.
We look forward to working with the Department of Treasury to implement this decision.
What does that mean?
Won't suffer any economic loss.
Does that mean the Treasury Department's guaranteed DP World something?
No, no.
And I shouldn't be trying to interpret that statement for the company.
They're the best source on their own.
They're not talking.
But presumably what Mr. Bilke meant there is simply that they don't want to engage in a fire sale.
Lee, I mean, folks, this is just as irresponsible and unprofessional as we would expect the mainstream press to be.
We hate these people so much.
We want them to suffer a loss, Ms. O'Donnell.
What does that mean?
Won't suffer any economic loss.
You want them to suffer an economic loss?
Here's Mike in Hayden, Idaho.
Mike, welcome to the program.
Hey, Rush.
Ditto from arguably the most conservative state in the nation.
But what I have to say about this is I think the press started this whole thing.
I know that my initial reaction to the reports that I heard was negative.
I was afraid that we were giving the ports away.
And I think that the idea that the American people got what they want is ridiculous because the American people don't even know what it was about.
We never even had a chance to hear what it was about because it was immediately anti-Bush.
Bush thought of it.
It's Bush's idea.
It must be bad.
Well, there's a look.
Let me tell you, there are a lot of bad actors in this deal.
There are a lot of, I mean, they could say the press did it, but you can't leave out members of Congress.
And by the way, by the way, folks, this new angle that the press is sniffing around, that Bush and Rove pulled the port deal secretly in a scandal that occurred under the cover of darkness.
Wait a minute.
Wait till Chuck Schumer hears that, because Chuck Schumer is out there trying to make himself the face of opposition to the port deal.
Our brave, our courageous, our thick-spined Republicans in the House, they think they stopped the port deal.
There's a lot of people that want the credit for this, and they all deserve it.
It was a group effort that secured this bunch of insanity.
You know, I haven't been this worked up about something since the Clinton years.
This is just, well, yeah, I was mad about campaign finance reform.
Yeah, I was.
You're exactly right.
I was mad about that because it featured the same thing.
It featured a bunch of ignoramuses being caught up in fear.
We got to get the money out of politics.
We got to get the money out of politics.
And you see what happened.
All we did was we empowered George Soros to be more powerful to the Democratic Party.
Here's Tony in Billings, Montana.
Tony, welcome to the program.
Hey, Rush, thanks a lot.
I just want you to know how much I appreciate you over the years.
Thank you, sir.
I grew up on you, and I really appreciate your sense of humor.
Thank you, sir.
One thing, thinking about this, you look at the GOP bailing on this deal and how quickly they turned.
And, you know, I don't think it's any coincidence with Bush's poll numbers, whether they're accurate or not, coming out, and these people trying to distance themselves instead of having to.
Oh, there's no question.
No question.
You're absolutely right.
I don't know why nobody's brought that up.
I mean, everybody tried to protect their election time.
I begged, it was the focus of the program yesterday, so much so that even my own staff was begging me, would you drop the porch deal story and move on to something else?
Could we talk about the mating habits of the Australian rabid bat?
Anything but the porch.
That's exactly what happened.
There was a race, Republicans and Democrats in a race to see who could cross the finish line first and say, I stopped the port deal.
It was driven by a lot of things.
It was driven by the president's poll numbers.
It was driven by the massive response that constituents Sent in to their elected officials was driven by the media, but I'll tell you that the truth is that I don't think these guys in Congress needed to be driven by constituent email or phone calls because my recollection is that their initial reaction was exactly that anyway.
They were just all over.
I can't believe Schumer was out there and the actually the Democrats used it to get themselves on the so-called right side of national security.
And then the Republicans, oh my God, we've ceded our one issue.
So we got to get on the other side of the Democrats.
It just began, they all started chasing the tails without any, any knowledge of what the deal was.
All right, two stories here.
I have a piece in the American Thinker.
It's one of my favorite and most thoughtful blogs.
John B. Dwyer.
After the fact of the demise of the U.S., did you say that I'm being called an elitist now?
I'm being called an elitist.
Oh, wonderful.
Well, at least it's not profane.
I'm an elitist because I'm in the 10% that doesn't like what happened yesterday.
And 90% of the people have spoken.
90% of the people want what happened to happen.
And I think I'm smarter than everybody.
I don't think I'm smarter than anybody.
I'm more informed on this.
If that makes me smarter, then I'll lay claim to it.
I'm not smarter than anybody else.
I'm just more informed than 90% of the people in Washington who we're dealing with.
At any rate, after the fact of the demise of the U.S. terminals dealt, yes, I said terminals, not ports.
Nobody was going to be controlling these ports.
Let's take a look at an excerpt of the fact sheet that's been posted at the Homeland Security website for a while.
Of course, arrogant, Bush-hating, manipulative, re-election-obsessed congressmen and senators couldn't be bothered with these facts.
Coast Guard, this is actually on the DHS website.
Coast Guard.
The Coast Guard routinely inspects and assesses the security of U.S. ports in accordance with the Maritime Transportation and Security Act and the Ports and Waterways Security Act.
Every regulated U.S. port facility is required to establish and implement a comprehensive security plan that outlines procedures for controlling access to the facility, verifying credentials of port workers, inspecting cargo for tampering, designating.
We didn't forget about the story yesterday that we got all these truck drivers that drive in and out of the ports in New York and New Jersey.
They haven't even cleared security yet.
Terminal operator.
Whether a person or a corporation, the terminal operator is responsible for operating its particular terminal within the port.
A terminal operator is responsible for the area within the port that serves as a loading, unloading, or transfer point for the cargo.
This includes storage and repair facilities and management offices.
The cranes they use may be their own or they may lease them from the port authority.
Wait, port authority?
What's the port authority?
Well, it happens to be next on the list here.
Port Authority is an entity of a local, state, or national government that owns, manages, and maintains the physical infrastructure of a port, a seaport, an airport, a bus terminal.
This includes wharves, docks, piers, transit sheds, loading equipment, and warehouses.
And that is not what is owned by any foreign country or company.
Those are all owned by governments, state, federal, you name it.
Ports often provide additional security for their own facility.
The role of the port authority is to facilitate and expand the movement of cargo through the port, provide facilities and services that are competitive, safe, and commercially viable.
Then it goes on to talk about all the different defense mechanisms and security and screening and inspection mechanisms that are involved here.
Then it lists what DP World will operate and at the following terminal, the terminals, within six U.S. ports currently operated by the United Kingdom company P ⁇ O.
Now you're going to go through all that.
Mr. Dwyer concludes, I've been working on some doggerel descriptive of the terminals deal fiasco, but could only come up with the last lines.
And if congressional brains were cargo, there'd be nothing to unload.
Now we go to the Washington Post.
One of these stories that didn't appear during the argument over this during the debate, the headline, oversees firms entrenched in ports.
Despite Dubai Company's withdrawal, others are likely to stay put.
What's interesting in this story, there is an important reason why terminals are usually managed by foreigners.
The shipping companies themselves are largely foreign, and they have generally sought to control terminals so they can be certain of having the most reliable, efficient facilities possible for loading and unloading their vessels quickly to reduce costly time in port.
That arrangement has suited local port authorities.
They want to ensure that their ports will draw enough traffic to generate revenue and employment.
But keeping the foreign-owned companies in the ports may be essential for another reason.
The nation's need for financing to increase port capacity.
Foreign shipping companies, eager to increase their business, will presumably be willing to provide the funding.
It is unclear whether enough money can be obtained domestically.
It goes on to cite other statistics that explain in black and white why all this has happened, why who owns what, why they own it, how often and how frequently they expand.
It makes the point that these companies are just businesses.
They're just businesses.
They're not terrorist organizations.
Okay, back into me.
Open Line Friday, El Rushbow.
I want you people, this argument that I'm an elitist and 90% of the American people, you know, they're the real smart ones, but I think I'm smarter than everybody else.
Let me say what this is leading up to.
I will guarantee you that there are some members of Congress that know this thing was okay, but they didn't think they had the time and they didn't have the guts to try to properly inform the American people on this.
And one of the things about that, and now the Democrats, in a story today that's in the San Francisco Chronicle, Democrats admit that they had racist and xenophobic reaction and it was Bush's fault, and that they actually played that up because they knew that the American people were having the same reaction, and they played it up because that would help them win politically on the deal.
So the Democrats have admitted now that you can be xenophobic and racist and even profile if it helps you politically.
Besides, it's all Bush's fault anyway because he's been so exaggerated fighting terrorism, he's made all of us xenophobes and racists against Arabs and Muslims.
What's going to happen before this is all over with, we're going to find out it was a good deal.
It made all kinds of sense.
But the American people were just too stupid to understand it.
That's what will be said.
Well, we didn't have time to teach American.
Americans are too sophisticated.
American people couldn't understand it.
Same old liberal talking point.
People are to be viewed with contempt and condescension because they're too dumb to do what's right in life.
So we, the anointed elite, we must lead their lives for them as best we can, blah, blah, blah.
And don't lump me in with those elites.
I mean, as you people know, I am your biggest defender.
I am the one who has the ultimate respect for your abilities and your intelligence, which is why I have spent three weeks on the ports deal, giving you all the details on it that I could learn.
Here's Bob in Tallahassee, Florida.
Welcome to the program.
Greetings, sir, from a former Cobra pilot.
Quick question is easy for you.
Vince Flynn, you started me on him.
Besides him, who else do you enjoy reading?
And have you ever talked to him on the radio, or do you see the potential?
Oh, I've met Vince a couple times out on the set of the Fox Thriller 24.
Vince, in fact, the pictures from that event.
There's a picture of me and Vince on the website.
I'll have Coco put that picture up so you can see what Vince looks like.
Vince was out there.
It was about a year ago, and he was on a two-week consultancy with them as they were plotting this current season.
Vince lives in Minnesota, and I will be seeing him on the night of the 29th at a lavish and just going to be a big-time dinner.
I bet it will be an interesting segment between the two of you on the radio.
Well, it wouldn't, except I don't do guests except when the president or vice president call and want to get on the program.
I understand.
Under.
Yeah.
I haven't, I don't think there is anybody else in his field.
Tom Clancy is, of course, brilliant and great.
And I don't know if he's working on a new book right now or not.
But there's another author out there that when the book comes out, I get it, David Baldacci.
Yeah, Camel's Lair, Camel's Back, whatever.
They're all excellent books, but they don't have, you know, they're not about international espionage and all that.
I haven't had, I really haven't been reading too many novels lately.
What with I go through cycles.
I'll read them voraciously and omnivorously, and then I'll not read any for six months or so.
It depends on the ebb and flow of the program here and how much work is required in prepping it.
And Vince, a young guy.
And he looks like he could be Mitch Rapp.
The guy's a hunk.
He is really.
We'll put that picture up on the website and just keep checking it periodically.
Coco will get it up there, the webmaster, and you'll get a chance to see Vince and me together.
And I think with Joel Cernow out on the set of 24th.
Stephen in St. Louis, you're next.
Welcome to the program.
Rush, Mega Ditto's from Arnold, Missouri, home of the city council that banned smoking and brought us the first red light camera and forced intersections in the state.
Well, thank you, sir.
Thank you for calling.
It's great to know you still chose to live there despite all that.
It's a great place to live.
Rush, I have a question.
I'm a former aircraft dispatcher, and I've always been curious when you're traveling in EIB-1, do you ever get special handling from air traffic controllers?
And I mean like good or bad from controllers that recognize the aircraft's registration.
The registration, well, no, the answer is there was one time, one time we were, I forget where I was coming back from, I think coming back from California, and we got into the Jacksonville Center control area, and the guy there recognized a tail number.
Or he didn't recognize it.
He thought it was something else, and the pilot told him who it was.
And I had to go up the cockpit and talk to the guy.
It was a lot of fun, but I'm not aware of any special treatment.
I've never asked for it.
If it's been given, I'm not aware of it.
Airplane.
Yeah, I got to run here because of time.
Dispatch.
I don't have time to explain it, but I will.
But I've got to take a break.
Back after this, folks.
Okay, folks, let me send you off into the top-of-the-hour wonderland here with this headline from the Los Angeles Times.
Poll shows more support for illegal immigrants.
Majority believe such residents have a favorable impact.
This is just wonderful.
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