You are tuned to the Rush Limbaugh Program, a program that meets and surpasses all audience expectations on a daily basis.
It's Friday, so let's roll.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's Open Line Friday!
You know, it's just sitting here thinking, you people get to experience something that I never do.
And I know it's just, it's got to be spine-tingling.
You get to hear my voice on a radio every day.
I don't get to do that.
I know how comforting it is and how exciting it is.
I just, I wish I could share it with you.
Okay, Open Line Friday, 800-282-2882.
You ought to see Dawn rolling her eyes.
Dawn, how long have you been here?
Have you been here?
It's been like three or four years now, right?
A little over four years.
Dawn's the only babe.
Snerdly's in there, Brian's in there, and me.
And she's become one of the guys.
She really has.
And she loves it.
Okay, whatever you want to discuss, folks, feel free when we go to the phones.
That's the rules for Open Line Friday.
I've got a couple soundbites before I get to these stories on mainstream press being so upset with the Democrats.
The first is Katie Couric and Tim Russert today on the Today Show.
I find this as humorous and maddening as I find my stacks of stuff today.
As I mentioned at the top of the program, you go through the news today and you find all these stories on how harmless the pork deal would have been and how necessary foreign investment is and how many foreign countries own facilities at our ports and banks and hotels.
And I said, where was this stuff during the tsunami of hysteria?
You got the Washington Post editorializing for the deal.
You've got the L.A. Times editorializing for the deal.
Rush, doesn't it bother you?
No.
Doesn't it bother you to be the same side of Jimmy Carter?
No.
My decision and thinking on this has nothing to do with what they think.
In fact, I do think that the Clinton angle of this is the bigger story, but I'm not going to rehash my steps on that.
So, Katie Couric, after this disgraceful display we saw of both parties on Capitol Hill yesterday, Katie Couric asks Tim Russert, what about Congress, Tim?
The fact of the matter is only 5% of the cargo coming into this country is checked.
I mean, it might be one of the biggest national security threats we face as a nation in terms of terrorist attacks.
And then she adds this.
Do they look feckless and misdirected by obsessing so much on this issue and not perhaps looking at the big picture?
Well, the commission on September 11th said exactly that.
And in the grading that they gave Congress and the administration very recently, they said this is still the one area that is so woefully insecure.
If a terrorist is going to bring a dirty bomb into the country, this is how they would do it.
It's one of the ways they could do it.
Katie, where were you?
Where were you last three weeks?
Does Congress look feckless?
Congress thinks that they've never been more heroic than they were yesterday.
I'm just, I know there are detectors for radiation in every single port, but we don't, we don't, we only check 5%.
So they say, I'm not even sure if that's true.
I hear all these things get thrown around.
I don't even know if that's true.
We need, like I said, we need a new regulation.
Everybody shipping something into this country that we're going to take in via one of our ports, the cargo, the box, the container, what it has to say, big yellow sign.
There is no WMD in this crate.
And that way, we won't have to open it and look at it.
There are ways to do this.
The bottom line here is that if we, that's right, we kill the terrorists, they're not going to be mailing us anything.
But this is, my reaction is still, Katie, where were you?
Now she's talking about how this wasn't any big deal.
It's Congress perhaps being feckless.
Good Lord.
You combine this with the fact that now that they're trying to find a scandal in the fact that Bush and Roa might have actually interceded under cover of darkness and told the DPW people to yank the deal.
All right.
Here's something funny.
This is Chris Matthews with Margaret Carlson last night on the hard ball.
The liberals are foaming at the mouth.
Margaret and Chris are tangling over here whether Matthews actually mentions Katrina in his laundry list of Bush's problems.
Margaret, I look at a pattern of events, and they come out of people's mouths, conservatives or liberals or whatever.
Katrina, the competence question.
Myers, that nomination for the Supreme Court that was so bad, we've almost forgotten it.
The chainy weirdness of a guy not even checking in with the boss after something like that.
And now the ports issue.
Is there a pattern of not being on base, as we say in baseball, being caught off base by the president?
And you forgot Katrina.
I started with that.
Oh, sorry.
And it took you so long, I'd forgotten what you first said.
Sorry.
Chris, your questions are too long.
Nobody can remember.
All right.
On we go.
This is from the Los Angeles Times, Rosa Brooks.
I guess she's one of their rotating columnists.
They can't even win a war of words.
Democrats are mired in smallness.
How hard can it be to craft a message of passion?
Who is this, babe?
I don't even.
I didn't print out the third page, so I don't get her.
It doesn't matter.
Together, America can do better.
When you hear that, do you feel inspired?
I didn't think so, she writes.
The Democratic Party's current slogan seems to be leaving most people cold.
It apparently went down well in focus groups, but that's only because the focus groups probably consisted of the recently embalmed, and the alternative slogan was, together, America can achieve mediocrity.
Watching the Democrats stumbling around in search of a message is the only thing more agonizing than watching the Republicans destroy the country.
This isn't the L.A. Times.
This is some left-wing blog.
Five years of Republican-controlled government have brought us an unwinnable war, a global reputation in tatters, incomprehensibly irresponsible fiscal policies, shameful neglect of our neediest citizens, and a government incapable of coping with either natural disaster or terrorist threats.
Yet somehow the...
Does she really mean...
Ha ha ha!
Yet somehow the Democratic Party still can't do any better than America can do better.
You can do better is what you say to a dim child whose grades are even worse than expected.
Is this really the Democrats' message to the nation that we don't need to be quite as pathetic as we are now through excellence is certainly beyond our reach?
This slogan speaks not of hope, but of hopelessness, of scaled-down ambitions, of dreams deferred and dreams denied.
You know what?
She's onto something here, but she doesn't know it.
She has just nailed the Democratic Party, the no hope, doom and gloom crowd, no ambitions, dreams deferred, dreams.
They don't believe anything's possible in this country because they have contempt for the people.
They use condescension and arrogance at the same time.
That's their view.
They don't think things are possible.
Everything's doom and gloom.
They thrive on making as many people believe that as possible.
She continues, it's the smallness of it that kills me.
This nation began with a dream, a crazy, risky, breathtaking dream of freedom, justice, and equality.
Sure, we've never truly achieved that dream.
Haven't?
We haven't?
I'm sorry I keep interrupting myself reading this, folks, but it makes me incredulous.
Sure, we've never truly achieved that dream, but for much of the last century, it's been the Democratic Party that has helped keep that dream alive.
Not only do they not have a message, what they think they believe is so god-awful wrong that they are hopeless.
I have tried to help them on this show throughout the years.
I've constantly tried, and I'm not worried about continuing to try to help because they will not listen.
Part of the problem is ambition and cowardice, which together make a lethal combination.
Too many would-be Democratic leaders think that playing it safe is the way to go.
They're fine with criticizing the administration.
But the minute they take any flack themselves, they go scurrying back into their holes.
In place of a willingness to take risks and speak from the heart, they offer a craven and misguided dependence on polls, focus groups, and expert strategists.
Exhibit A for this was John Kerry, who, by the way, served in Vietnam, and his astonishing campaign trail failure to stand up for his own anti-Vietnam War beliefs.
Yes, it would have been wonderful had we had that.
As far as his campaign strategerists were concerned, the only permissible references to Kerry and Vietnam were those lauding his military valor.
But Kerry's worrisome inability to own his own past beliefs left even many Democrats queasy about his candidacy and rendered him vulnerable to Republican charges of hypocrisy and disingenuousness.
Had Kerry spoke out honestly and courageously, instead of just playing games with flags and stage salutes at the convention, the smear campaign of the swift boat Veterans for Truth would have gotten no traction and Kerry might be president.
So far, the Democratic Party seems to have learned little from Kerry's defeat.
Hillary Clinton continues to parse her words on a rock while saving her carefully calibrated enthusiasm for a ban on flag burning.
If Democrats really want a better message, they got to stop being so technocratic and careful and learn how to be passionate and brave.
Of course they need policies.
They also need a little poetry.
The irony is that for, oh, that's bring that on.
Oh, yeah, let's have a campaign of competing poems.
I hated poetry in Sky.
Don't give me this gibberish.
Just tell me what you mean.
I don't have to spend an hour in a class translating it or deciphering it.
But rush, it's beautiful literature.
We find that somewhere else.
So far, the Democratic Party has failed.
And if Democrats really want a better message, they've got to stop being so technocratic.
The irony is that for a brief moment in the summer of 2004, Kerry actually hit upon a decent campaign slogan.
Let America be America again.
A phrase inspired by Langston Hughes' poem of the same name.
Now, the right quickly attacked using Hughes' 1930 flirtation with communism to discredit the poet, the poem, and any phrases or sentiments inspired by it.
Result, Kerry disowned the slogan as quickly as he had disowned his own past anti-war convictions.
So she wants them to go back and rescue this poem.
I'm not going to bother reading the poem.
I hate poetry so much.
I don't even want to read it to you.
Anyway, that's what's her name, Rosa Brooks in the LA Times.
Up next at USA Today, a guy named Chuck Rush, and he's really fed up with him.
Advice for Democrats, find new focus, stop wonking.
Basically, his advice can be summed up this way.
You got to go out and promote and understand economic populism in the South.
Don't be extremists on abortion and learn to speak American.
Well, I can't do any of those.
They are repulsed by the South.
Abortion is the sacrament of liberalism.
And speak American, they wouldn't condescend to speak American.
It embarrasses them.
We'll be back.
Stay with us.
Welcome back, Rushlin Boy.
Half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
From the Los Angeles Times today, new poll shows more support for illegal immigrants.
The majority of Californians support a guest worker program for illegal immigrants and do not believe that they are taking jobs from the state's residents, according to a statewide poll released yesterday.
In addition, those surveyed hold a more positive view of illegal immigrants than in previous years.
This is the Field poll.
It is a nonpartisan poll.
47.
47% of those surveyed last month believe that undocumented immigrants are having a favorable impact on California compared to 19% who thought that way in 1982.
Voters and non-voters, however, hold dramatically different views on the subject.
About 36% of voters believe illegal immigrants have a favorable impact on the state compared to 64% of non-voters.
That's the point.
If you go out and talk to people that don't vote, you get an entirely different view.
If you ask voters, it's the exact opposite of what I'm telling you.
But yet the headline poll shows more support for illegal immigrants.
That'll shake them up out there.
Bill and Tallahassee, I appreciate your patience.
Thank you for holding on.
Hey, Megan Ditto's Rush.
How are you today?
Fine, sir.
Thanks very much.
I've been listening to you for a long time, since B.C., before Clinton even.
I can remember back when the CHICOMs took over the ports in California and the port and the Panama Canal.
I was livid, and you were livid too.
But now you seem to be making the same arguments that you were making then, you're making now.
I just want to know if there's a little bit of consistency going on.
No, in fact, your memory is better than I. I'm not denying it.
I don't remember a sustained and intense opposition to the CHICOMs in the ports in California.
I might have been.
I don't remember it.
But I'll tell you this.
To this day, I have a far greater fear of something deleterious happening via the CHICOMs than I do the United Arab Emirates.
The Chikoms pose a huge threat in a whole number of ways, but I also think that we've neutralized it a bit with our trade with them.
We are chipping away ever so slowly at their socialist communist system with the influx of our economic capitalism into their market.
And as we continue to export liberalism to them, we're going to screw them up even more.
Get them off on abortion debates and give them their own version of the ACLU over there, and we can screw them up even more.
But I'm like Reagan in this regard, I have a genuine fear of, well, respect and fear for the communists.
And I don't put them in the same league as this little United Arab Emirates Company.
I'm inclined to agree with you on the Chinese communists, but I still think that we've got to be careful who's running the ports.
Well, we're being very careful about that.
We're being very careful about who runs the ports.
So far, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey runs that port.
The Port Authority of Philadelphia runs that port.
We're being very careful about who runs the ports.
You're talking about terminals.
But look, it's a done deal.
I lost and everybody won on this.
And so you ought to feel good.
I'm just thinking that what we're going to have to do here is start examining every port, airport, seaport, grain port, because we've got to be consistent here.
But you know what?
I know we won't.
Because here's the dirty little secret.
For these Democrats, this had nothing to do with national security.
Chuck Schumer is an outright fraud.
And people on our side that were associating with this guy embarrassed me.
Members of Congress standing side by side with this guy while Schumer is trying to destroy Bush and them.
They finally did an end run on him in Congress yesterday in the House by being the first to cross the finish line saying, I stopped the port deal.
I stopped the port deal.
But don't doubt me for one second, folks.
Don't doubt me.
The Democratic side of this, it had nothing to do with security.
They don't care about national security, and I came up with the way to prove it.
But the gutless Wonder Republicans wouldn't challenge them on it because they're too scared of their own survival.
And I'll go so far as to say half the members of Congress on the Republican side who opposed this deal did not do so for security reasons.
They did it because they have associations with powerful union members who contribute mightily to their campaigns.
They did it in response to a hysterical tsunami outcry from uninformed citizens who thought they were doing and saying the right thing.
But the idea that if this is about security, then it is time to get every Arab company out of our ports, airports, every Arab airline.
I'm telling you, get every Arab cab driver out of the cab in New York today.
If this was about security, then I expect to see a wholesale house cleaning, which we won't see.
Back in a moment.
Talent.
So much talent on loan from God.
If you hear that, Limbaugh guy is just a braggart.
I don't brag.
It ain't bragging if you can do it.
800-282-2882.
I just checked the email, the subscriber email, Rush24-7 email.
That guy has a great point.
You remember the movie Network?
What a great movie.
Have you seen that movie, Brian?
Have you seen it, Dawn?
Oh, Dawn, you've got to see that movie.
There's this insane TV anchor by the name of Howard Beale.
And his money line was yelling the camera, I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.
And he had the whole country opening their windows at night, shouting out their windows, we're mad as hell.
We're not going to take it anymore.
And his wacko TV executive played by Faye Dunaway, who loved it, and her esteemed erstwhile boss with whom she was having an affair, William Holden, who thought, oh my God, our business has gone to hell.
But this Howard Beale guy was on a rant.
His rant was, this is 30 years ago.
We're losing the country.
We're being bought up by foreigners.
We're being bought up by all these people.
And it started to have severe economic circumstances for Howard Beale's network, the UBS network, the United Broadcast System.
So one of my favorite scenes in this movie, Ned Beatty, remember Ned Beatty's deliverance?
He's the CEO of the UBS Network.
And he brings Beale into the conference room.
It's one of the great performances in moviedom.
He knows he's talking to a lunatic.
He knows he's talking to somebody genuinely insane.
So he's got to reach out to him on that level.
And he starts prancing around and shouting and making fists and trying to sound as exalted and out of this world as possible.
And he says to Howard Beale, Mr. Beale, the Japanese have taken millions of dollars out of this country.
It's only natural for them to now put it back.
This is in the midst of this fear panic we were having of the Japanese book.
And Howard Beale, this insane lunatic TV anchor, I think there are probably a bunch of Howard Beals out there now, thinks that he has received a message from God.
And it turns his worldview around.
And the audience starts plummeting.
And they try to jack up the show with all kinds of added characters and wacko segments.
And it doesn't work.
And finally, Howard Beale is assassinated in his studio on the air by some Middle Eastern-looking terrorist type person.
But the line is the Japanese have taken millions of dollars out of this country.
It's only natural for them to now put it back.
Well, you can apply that to foreign investment, specifically to the ports deal.
Everybody's worried about how much money we're sending out, going away over there for oil purchases and this sort of thing.
Here came the Emirates wanting to give us 6.8.
Actually, not us.
They were giving it, the Brits.
But it was still an investment in this company, country.
And so, just amazing to me when I got this email reminding me of this, how cycles end up repeating themselves.
All right.
I mentioned to you at the top of the program that the Washington Post today is laying off 80 newsroom jobs, at least 80 newsroom jobs.
There are 800 of them.
So 10% are gone.
They're being fired.
Now, they'll say, this will not affect journalism.
At which you could reply, well, then what did you have them there in the first place for?
Now the Washington Post's top newspaper guild leader is saying the paper's plan will make it tougher to cover news, especially with the Post's expanding multimedia approach.
Our concern is that the fewer of us there are, the harder it is to accomplish the core mission of reporting and writing the tough accountability story.
Don't make me choke.
Can I translate that for the core mission of reporting and writing a tough accountability story?
How can we get the goods on Bush and not end up looking like Dan Rather?
Guy who said this is Rick Weiss, the co-chair of the Post's unit of the Washington Baltimore Newspaper Guild, which represents about 600 of the paper's 800 newsroom staffers.
It is going to have a negative impact on the quantity and quality of journalism we do.
Okay, so if the Post management comes out and says it won't, this is the antique media, the drive-by media falling apart right before our very eyes, while all around us economic news in other industries is roaring.
Here, try these headlines.
Reuters, stocks set to rise, buoyed by February jobs data.
AP, employers add 243,000 to payrolls in February.
Not at the Washington Post.
Reuters again, payrolls grow, but jobless rate up at the Washington Post.
You want to try this story.
This is.
Did I sound like I was laughing at people losing their jobs?
I'm not laughing at people losing their jobs.
I've lost my job before.
No, I'm not laughing at people losing their jobs.
Okay, try this, folks.
A group of lawmakers, our esteemed congressmen, today said that an industrial bank owned by Walmart, the world's largest retailer, could threaten the stability of the U.S. financial system and drive community banks out of business.
In a highly critical letter to the acting chairman of the FDIC obtained by Reuters, a group of more than 30 Congress members asked the bank regulator to reject Walmart's application to open a bank in Utah.
Walmart's plan to have its bank process hundreds of billions in transactions for its own stores could threaten the stability of the nation's payments system.
Good grief.
It has gotten out of hand.
You know, a long time ago, look at, I guarantee you, these are Democrats, and I will guarantee you, as I've said, look at the enemies list that they have Walmart, big oil, Dubai Ports World, big pharmaceutical, big tobacco.
Anything, any successful, important American business is on their hit list.
Now, these poor little Walmart people, just Arkansas people, they just want to buy a bank in Utah.
And Congress, members of Congress are aligning it.
It could upset the balance of payments system or the payments system.
It could just wipe out a bunch of mom-and-pop banks out there, just like Walmart's wiped out a bunch of mom-and-pop stores.
Any of you paying attention to this world baseball, world base classic?
I'm not, but I've got a story here about it.
Cuba played the Netherlands in Puerto Rico.
Was it Puerto Rico?
Yep, it's San Juan.
And now these games are being televised to all these countries represented by teams, so that the game televised to Cuba.
A guy in the stands held up a sign, and the TV cameras caught it.
The sign said Abajo Fidel.
That means down with Fidel.
A top Cuban official at the game rushed into the stands to confront this man, but Puerto Rican police quickly intervened and took the Cuban official, Ángel Iglesias, who is vice president of Cuba's National Institute of Sports.
They took him to a nearby police station where they lectured him about free speech.
We explained to him that here in Puerto Rico, the constitutional right to free expression exists and that that's not a crime.
The brouhaha gathered steam today when Cuba's Communist Party newspaper Grandma called the sign waving a cowardly incident.
Cuba's revolutionary sports movement exhorted Cubans to demonstrate in Havana late today, saying U.S. and Puerto Rican authorities were involved in the cynical counter-revolutionary provocations.
One little sign and it just totally destroyed Cuba and Fidel.
I got a picture of it right here.
Abajo Fidel.
Love this story.
And I love the cops lecturing some Cuban government official on how free speech is not a crime.
Here's Scott in Jackson, Mississippi.
Welcome to the program, sir.
Great to have you with us.
Thank you, Rush.
I wanted to bring up one quick point, then I want to hear what you have to say about it.
This is something I'm sure that you already know, but I want to make sure all your listeners are fully aware of it.
The 5% number for all the containers that are inspected at our ports by U.S. Customs, there's a reason for that number.
There's no need to check 100%.
Most of what comes through our ports are from countries that we trust.
They're going to destinations that we're aware of.
There's nothing suspicious about them.
That 5% represents the top most suspicious, most risky containers that they check.
And you wouldn't want to check 100%.
And let's bear in mind, unlike at the airports where profiling might be a civil rights question, you can profile a container based on who it's going to or where it's coming from.
And a container doesn't have civil rights.
Not yet.
It's true.
Not yet, but today it doesn't.
Sometimes I laugh even at myself.
I apologize.
You know, I'm not even, is the 5% figure accurate?
Because I've heard from different customs people saying that they inspect far more than 5%.
And maybe it's the basis of what you just said, that they know going in which ones are okay and which ones are not because of manifests.
And Chuck Schubert calls them manifolds, but manifests and so forth.
But I'll tell you what, you say we can't check 100% of them.
These lunatics in Congress have asked somebody, I don't know who, has actually proposed a new bureaucracy to be part of the Department of Homeland Security called the Department of Cargo Security and Inspection.
It was one of those two, it was a senator that did, Menendez or Biden, Robert Menendez.
By the way, Menendez, there's two companies that two U.S. companies here on a short list operate these terminals, SSA Marine and MAR Terminals, MAHAR, M-A-H-E-R, and they appear to be the candidates.
And Menendez, the new senator from New Jersey, is out there, and he is doing everything he can to get the gig for the MAR terminals outfit.
If you go to the Menendez website and look at all the people who have donated, you'll see thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars from this company and related companies to Robert Menendez.
Ain't going to get it for a song.
They will.
This is, folks, when the dust clears and when the shroud of mystery has been removed from this story, I predict many of you will be shocked and stunned to learn what really happened here and why.
Back in just a second.
Speaking of Walmart, with retail giant Walmart under fire to improve its labor and health care policies, one Democrat with deep ties to the company, Senator Hillary Rodham Rodham, has started feeling her share of the political heat.
Clinton served on Walmart's board of directors for six years when her husband was the governor of Arkansas.
It was with Jennifer Flowers.
The Rose Law Firm, where she was a partner, handled many of the Arkansas-based company's legal affairs.
Clinton had kind words for Walmart as recently as 2004 when she told an audience at the convention of the National Retail Federation her time on the board was a great experience in every respect.
That's just two years ago.
But in recent months, as the company has become a target for Democrats, who is this?
This is Beth Fuye.
I can't believe this is AP.
Something's up with this, folks.
In recent months, as the company has become a target for Democrat activists, she has largely steered clear of any mention of Walmart.
And late last year, Clinton's re-election campaign returned a $5,000 contribution from Walmart, citing serious differences with current company practices.
As Clinton sheds her Arkansas past and looks ahead to a possible 2008 presidential run, comma, the Walmart issue presents an exquisite dilemma.
How to reconcile the political demands that she faces today with her histoi at a company many American consumers depend upon, but many Democrat activists revile.
It is twice in the story.
The interesting question is not just Hillary Clinton's history at Walmart, but why it's delicate for her to talk about Walmart, says Charles Fishman, author of The Walmart Effect, a book on the company's impact on the national economy.
Plenty of Democrats denounce Walmart, but there are also plenty of people who need it, who love it, and rely on it.
There's also, let me find it here.
Another story in the stack here about Hillary.
Let me search for it while I'm also, because I can multitask, take a phone call.
Wayne in Sun City Center, Florida.
Welcome, sir.
Nice to have you with us.
Mega Ditto's Rush.
It's a long sought-after pleasure to speak with you today.
Thank you, sir.
I was amazed at how expediently Congressman King could act and get an amendment to the spending bill to essentially kill the port deal.
Could we now get another amendment attached to it since there's so much anti-Arab sentiment in the country?
Let's just jam this down their throats and drill in ANWAR.
That'd be great.
I had an idea yesterday along the same lines that the Senate, you know, the Republicans ought to come up with a spending bill that is an automatic pass and attach an amendment to it so the Democrats will continue to support the president's NSA foreign intelligence gathering program.
And that'd flush them out.
That'd flush out this whole notion that they're interested in national security.
Here's this story, and I'm not going to have time to go into much detail about it, so we will link to it at rushlimbaugh.com or you can go straight to National Review online, nro.com, to read this.
Byron York, great story here, which ties Hillary to sweatshops and Jack Abramoff.
Senator pushes for Walmart's contribution to workers' health plan, but is unclear whether she took that stand as retailer's board member.
So this is all about giving back the $5,000 contribution, but she also apparently has ties with some guy named Tan or Ton, T-A-N, who runs a sweatshop somewhere over there, the Pacific Rim.
And there's an Abramoff connection to it.
As I say, I don't have time to get into the details now because it would just, it wouldn't be professional broadcasting.
But I wanted to call it to your attention so you can read it on your own.
So there are three, actually four stories in the stack today in antique media, drive-by media, and friendly media about the problems that the Democrats have with their own people and Hillary's emerging problems here, Walmart and other things.
Quick timeouts back after this.
You know, this inspection business, I just remembered, I've bought some new, well, I've bought some things overseas, a house or whatever, and they ship it in, and it goes into Port of Miami.
And oftentimes it's at customs for three weeks before they'll release it.