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July 5, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:26
July 5, 2006, Wednesday, Hour #3
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Time Text
Well, interesting.
We're now being told that the Tapadong 2 missile, the one that's capable of hitting us at a 9,000-plus mile range, failed a minute before liftoff.
And the others that were launched were these little low-range scud-type things at Saddam Hussein.
By the way, if you're just joining us, Enron, founder and chairman Ken Lay has died.
Democrats, hardest hit.
Greetings and welcome Rush Limbaugh at 800-282-2882.
If you want to call, the email address is rush at EIBnet.com.
Before we get to the incredibly pregnant lifestyle section today, look, I mean, here it is.
I'm holding it up, but it's El Fico.
I want to share with you the details of this piece by Mary O'Grady at opinionjournal.com today on the Mexican election.
Just some excerpts.
Felipe Calderon, and Calderón is the Limbaugh guy running.
He'd be the conservative Republican.
National Action Party hasn't any doubt that he won Sunday's presidential election, and he says that his adversary, Andres Manuel López Obrador of the Democratic Revolutionary Party, knows it.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal at his campaign headquarters yesterday, Mr. Calderon appeared rested and confident.
I'm not going to get into personalities, he told me, but all the parties have copies of the tally sheets showing the voting, and the PRD knows that it lost.
Mr. Calderón's numbers jibe with those of Mexico's Federal Electoral Institute, and it seems almost certain that he won.
But as we go to press, an official announcement hasn't yet been made.
A preliminary ruling is scheduled for today, but with the official decision to come on Friday.
And even then, the country may be in for weeks of the Mexican equivalent of challenges to hanging Chads.
Big victory in this race goes to the IFE in carrying out a spectacularly clean, transparent, and well-organized election.
If institutions matter to development, as Nobel laureate Douglas North contends, then Mexico is well on the way to progress.
Mr. Calderon echoed the sentiments of millions of Mexicans when he told me yesterday that watching the electoral process made him proud to be a Mexican.
Mexico's next test will be how it stands up to Mr. Lopez Obrador's threat to call street protests if the IFE decision goes against him.
For the past four months, this nation has been bracing for a nail biter of an election.
The chief concern was that Mr. Lopez Obrador, a renowned sore loser, what liberal isn't, would respond in a manner detrimental to Mexican democracy if he were edged out by the competition.
The problem for Mr. Lopez Obrador is that in order to prevail, he has to do more than convince Mexicans that Mr. Calderon is a thieving opponent who managed a massive conspiracy against the will of the people.
He also has to portray the IFE and the thousands of citizen volunteers who on Sunday put on a clinic for the rest of the world on how to run a transparent and orderly election as enemies of the Mexican people.
And that won't be easy, and public opinion is fast turning against Mr. Obrador.
The Sunday vote was an amazing electoral symphony featuring thousands of small polling stations all over the sprawling metropolis of Mexico City in private homes, scruels, and community centers.
I passed by or visited a mere fraction of them, yet my impressions were confirmed by wider press reports and independent observers.
Everywhere I went, from well-to-do districts in the north and south to the popular neighborhoods downtown to the scene, was one of saintly patience and first world order.
The summer downpour didn't faze voters one bit.
They covered their heads with newspapers, shared umbrellas, and they waited.
The city was voting to fill six seats, including that of the president and the mayor.
Voters presented identification cards.
They were handed six large ballots, one for each open office.
The names of candidates were also color-coded to assist the illiterate.
Voting booths were small, waist-high writing tables enclosed by hanging plastic sheets printed with the reassuring words, the vote is free and secret.
Voters emerged from the booths, folded the ballots, slid each one into the box corresponding to the contested seat.
To complete the process, thumbs were marked with indelible ink and ID cards were returned.
Observers from each party monitored the flow.
As a former resident of this city, renowned for its ungovernability, I was profoundly impressed by the precision of this exercise, and official observers echoed my anecdotal observations on Sunday night.
Mexico pulled off a near 10 in electoral order.
It is doubtful.
Oh, oh, get this.
Get this.
One of their excerpts.
Mr. Lopez Obrador smelled defeat and swung into action with Plan B. Just after Mr. Ugalde asked the candidates not to declare victory yet while they continue to count, Mr. Obrador jumped in front of the cameras like Chuck Schumer and told all of Mexico that he had won, adding that he had information from the quick count showing he was up by 500,000 votes.
It's after the Mexican authorities said, look, both you guys just shut up till we figure this out.
Obrador sprung into action, claiming, I've won.
I'm 500,000 votes up.
This sets up his plan to tell everybody, his supporters, that he has had the election stolen from him.
It's doubtful, writes Mario Grady, that Mr. Obrador had any such information.
Rather, it looked like classic Lopez Obrador working to arouse suspicion among his supporters that the establishment had carried out a plot against them.
So that's pretty much the latest on the Mexican elections.
And it's interesting to note how it went off so well with everybody involved having to show ID and get indelible ink on their thumbs so they couldn't vote twice.
Fascinating.
And there were observers all over the place.
All right, now, ladies and gentlemen, to the lifestyle section, a new stack.
Whenever we have it, it's going to be separated and put in its own segment, such as this.
First thing I want to say, before we get to the lifestyle stack, I haven't commented much on Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, but there's something that strikes me here that's clever, funny, and shows them to be a little hypocritical.
At least, well, Mr. Buffett.
Do you realize that Warren Buffett, that $30 million that he gave, added to the Gates $30 billion, is not only $60 billion, it will also screw the estate tax collectors out of, I don't know, whatever the rate is around.
The rate's 55% on an uncertain amount above, for these guys, a paltry sum.
But this $60 billion that these guys have taken and put into this charitable foundation means tax collectors get none of it ever for anything.
So while these guys, well, Gates' dad is big in this.
I don't know where Gates hasn't stated his position publicly, but Gates' dad and Buffett are out there saying we should not abolish the estate tax.
It needs to be redistributed to the rest of the country.
We need to eliminate this acquisition of wealth by people who haven't earned it, blah, blah, i.e., siblings and offspring and this sort of thing.
And yet, rather than have their own money redistributed by the government, they don't want the government getting theirs either.
This $60 billion of that $60 billion, how much of it is insulated?
So they're doing what they can to avoid it.
And by the way, it's legal.
I mean, you can do this too.
If you want to, you can set up a foundation and put whatever money you want into it whenever you want.
You just have to give away a small percentage of it every year to charity, but it's forever untaxable after that.
And it will qualify as a big deduction the first year you make that donation.
So, I mean, you've got to have a little bit of a nest egg to be able to do it.
It's not illegal.
In fact, asset managers and wealth planners advocate doing this all over the place.
As you can see, the one thing you do when you do it, you take the money away from yourself, too.
You can't access it for anything, but you're also shielding it from the government, which is, you know, asset managers love to tell you how you can screw the government.
You also screw yourself in the process by not, well, you don't screw yourself, but you can't touch your own money after you put it in this foundation.
Well, I take that back.
There are.
There are.
Look, I know that the.
I'm not going to get into it.
Bottom line here is these guys, these guys, while preaching that your estate should not be immune from estate taxes, have made sure that at least $60 billion of their estates are immune from estate taxes.
Little irony just wanted to point it out.
Be back after this.
Stay with us.
Talent on loan from God.
Rush Limbaugh from the EIB Southern Command, heavily bunkered and well secured in a super secret private location unmarked.
800-282-2882.
All right.
Here we go to the lifestyle stack.
Two environmentalists became the first people to reach the North Pole by canoe and on foot in summer in an expedition aimed at drawing attention to how global warming is threatening polar bears with extinction.
The explorers said this in a satellite phone interview.
When they got there on Saturday, the pole was covered with water.
What really surprised us was the state of the ocean, said Alani Dupre, 45, a carpenter from Minnesota.
We've seen the ocean bursting up under our feet.
We expected flat condensed ice from about 86 degrees north, but when we got here, the ice was completely pressured and fractured everywhere.
The 700-mile trek was fraught with peril as the pair pulled their canoes through a blinding fog that blurred the line between the earth and sky and over ice that cracked beneath their skis and shot up out of the water.
It was the morning before they reached the pole that they encountered their first polar bear.
A young male polar bear had followed their ski tracks, staying downwind, hiding behind drifts before circling their camp in loops.
Eric Larson, 35, woke to the sound of the footsteps of the male polar bear outside their red tent at about 4 a.m.
He grabbed a flare, which Dupre grabbed, while Dupre grabbed a video camera.
The bear lumbered off slowly and seemed more curious than aggressive.
Dupre said, it was like the polar bear was coming by to say thank you for what we're doing.
It was kind of symbolic.
All right.
What does this remind me of?
Well, it reminds me of a story once in Pennsylvania where some stupid dumb cows left the field and walked out onto what they thought was a frozen over lake, but it wasn't.
And one of the cows fell through the ice.
Somehow, human beings were nearby, and they brought equipment and a hoist to extract this cow from the lake after having plunged through a hole in the ice.
A newspaper reporter was there watching.
The newspaper reporter said, other cows looked on with concern.
I'm sorry, other cows looked on with fear and hope.
Now, folks, you've got to know something here.
There's no bigger animal lover than I am.
I'm a softy when it comes, but I also know how stupid they are.
They were looking on.
They probably didn't even know it was another cow that had fallen.
They were just watching for crying out loud.
They're probably thinking of jumping in themselves, looking on with fear and hope.
Now these two clowns are up at the North Pole after kayaking and canoeing up there and skiing up there to find evidence of global warming.
And a polar bear comes up and thanks them.
Just circle the tent, want to thank you for coming up here to help us.
And they believe this, and they put it out.
This is a French news agency story.
And we're all supposed to go, oh, these animals, they know, they understand and they appreciate what we are doing.
It's designed to soften all of us up so that we will be blamed.
Because we all know the polar bears can't help themselves.
They can't.
If we even communicate with them, if we can say, polar bear, global warming and your habitat's about to be destroyed, it wouldn't know anything.
It would just, it'd move wherever it had to move.
It couldn't stop the problem whatsoever.
Yet, it has the intelligence to thank a couple of idiots who have wandered up there in the summertime for stopping global warming.
Don't haven't seen any pictures.
There were no pictures accompanying the story.
You know, put them in the Bronx Zoo.
I went to the Central Park Zoo once.
I got a couple polar bears in there, and they just throw a bunch of ice blocks, and the bears lounge on them, and they're just happy as they can be.
And I went there in the summertime.
Bears don't know any different.
Just keep the water cold, constantly shove ice in there, big blocks of ice, and the polar bears are fine.
They don't know any difference.
Like the spotted owl who lives at a Kmart sign if it can't find an old tree.
Did the rolling hunger strike?
Don't want to belabor that anymore.
Let's see.
I'm trying to go here in order.
I'm trying to find the story on spelling.
Must have it near the top here.
Ah, here we go.
I'll get the spelling in a minute.
Headline, Little Mr. Apricot Flips Off Crowd, Loses Title.
Story from Patterson, California.
Big Brouhaha in Stanislaus County as a pageant winner in Patterson is stripped of his crown.
Heather Hudgens reports it all started with apricots and a finger foul-up.
It was another weekend of royalty in Patterson.
The parade queens were on their best behavior.
I would never do it.
It's not queenworthy, said one of the queens.
What she's talking about is what happened last month at the Apricot Festival when the newly crowned little Mr. Apricot, four-year-old Matthew Burgess, raised his middle finger to the crowd at Mills Cafe.
Now all the talk is what happened next when Matthew was unceremoniously relieved of his crown, the reason, the unfortunate flip of the finger.
Matthew's mom understands why the apricot board took his title, but wishes some of the townsfolk would just get over it.
I think it's ridiculous.
He's a four-year-old.
Well, yes, ma'am, but he learned it somewhere.
He learned how to flip people off.
But here's the thing.
If my mother, when I was four, had made me enter something, the Little Mr. Apricot pageant, I would have been flipping everybody off, especially if I had suffered the embarrassment of winning the thing.
Who wants to have it known about them that they were little Mr. Apricot?
Can you imagine what somebody could do with this information when this kid's 18?
Hey, weren't you once little Mr. Apricot?
And he'd be flipping them off.
Good thing.
I'm glad the four-year-old had the presence of mind to understand that this was ridiculous.
We got more in the stack, but we'll go to phones now.
Catherine in Livingston, California, welcome to the EIB Network.
Nice to have you with us.
Multitasking Army recruiter Mom Dittos from the left coast.
Thank you.
Hey, I've been listening to what's been going on with the Mexican election both on the English stations and on the Spanish stations.
And there's one little, it's almost like a dirty little secret that I never hear anyone talking about.
What's that?
And that is the fact that not all Mexicans who were born and raised in Mexico in a voting age speak Spanish.
What do they speak?
Well, there are many sections in Mexico where they speak whole towns and populations where they speak their indigenous languages like Nesteco or Zapoteco or Trique or many of the other indigenous people.
So, Catherine, what is the point?
That even those who don't speak Spanish went and voted?
It could very well be.
It could very well be that those who did not speak Spanish had someone come with them as a translator to help them vote.
I'm not trying to be rude, but so what?
I still get the point.
What am I missing?
Well, I guess my point is that there are some places in Mexico, and there are some people, that truly may not have understood the ballot.
Oh, I get it.
I get it.
You're describing the Buchanan voters in Palm Beach County, people who thought they were voting for John Kerry, who voted for Pat Buchanan.
Yes, we call them the condo commandos down here.
Yes, All right, I finally get it.
See, this is why you have to have patience as a host to stick with it, to find out exactly what every caller intends to say, what the point is.
I appreciate that.
I just have one observation.
They talk about how clean this election was, and I'm all happy about that.
But I want to vote in Mexican elections.
Mexicans can vote in our elections.
The Democrats are out there trying to see to it.
I, El Rushbo, want to be able to vote in theirs, but I don't think their laws allow it.
Serving humanity all the while executing assigned host duties flawlessly with zero mistakes.
800-282-2882.
Back to the phones to Flint, Michigan.
This is Jeff.
Welcome, sir.
Nice to have you with us.
Megadittos there, Doctor.
First time, long time.
I've followed you since 1991.
Thank you, sir.
My reason for calling, I was gone over the weekend celebrating the 4th with some friends of mine at an automatic weapon shoot.
And when I came back, I noticed that they decided not to charge you with the Viagra pills.
And I had a question about that.
My question was, do you now have to return all the samples back to the Clinton Library?
He remembers.
I told the people at Customs, look, I got these at the Clinton Library gift shop.
They told me they were blue M ⁇ Ms. Yeah, I just I just seeing some of the media coverage of this in the last, what was it, the last half hour that they're maybe the last hour that it started.
My friends, you know, I have always been able to rise above it all.
And this is just another example.
But let me tell you about this because this was surreal.
This really was.
Last December, I don't know how much I should.
I mean, this is purely personal.
Last December, a friend said, you got to get, that's not.
All right.
All right.
Nor at least is not personal anymore.
You may as well.
One thing about, I'm looking at the media coverage of this, and they are regurgitating facts that have nothing to do with anything in this story.
This story, purely and simply, is that there was nothing illegal about what happened, and thus there aren't any charges.
There was nothing illegal here.
This never had anything to do with the previous deal that I had made with the state attorney's office down here.
And the media has been hoping and praying that this would lead.
And by the way, I understand they hate me, folks.
As I said last week, I expect them to want bad things to happen to me, and I expect them to not like me.
I have targeted them for 18 years.
It's quite natural that they do this.
Do not expect objectivity or fairness from these people where I'm concerned at all.
So don't think that, you know, don't get mad about this.
But I just, I find it interesting that they continue to regurgitate facts, had nothing to do with anything in this story.
And what happened is that somebody, and I assume it's at customs, leaked this.
How else is this discovered?
You know, all this talk about being a watchdog on government, the media, a watchdog on government.
They're going to make sure the government doesn't overstep its bounds, doesn't spy on citizens.
Media is going to make sure that government does not endanger people's civil liberties.
Well, I guess when it comes to mind, they get thrown out the window.
Somebody in the government leaked this against me, and then they kept regurgitating it, and it was just used to attack me.
As I say, I have risen above it all each and every time.
I'm just a private citizen in this circumstance coming back into the country.
Mine was the only luggage search that day, from what I'm told, at Customs.
If my name had been Valerie Plame, I will guarantee you this story would have been written differently, and it would read differently.
And there'd be all kinds of who in the government is leaking the identity and the details of this.
He is an average, ordinary, common citizen, blah, blah, blah.
But of course, that's not the angle with me, which I fully understand.
Now, there's so many aspects of this story, and this is understandable.
I can understand how people would assume incorrect things because it's a quite natural thing to do.
On Monday, a week ago Monday, get back from three days, two and a half days in the Dominican Republic, and most of the time spent touring cigar factories and cigar farms.
I had this bottle of Viagra in my briefcase.
I've had it in there since December.
Forgot it was even in there.
There were 30 pills prescribed, and when they counted them out, there were 29.
And yet, everybody thinks I loaded up on this stuff for a trip to the Dominican Republic.
And that's what everybody was, wow, what went on in the Dominican Republic?
In fact, when I cleared customs, there was this.
I'm going to be very restrained in describing the agent.
But save that for another time.
I pointed out, I have a briefcase that's got many different zippers.
It's not a top that closes over a bottom.
It's this thing that stands up.
It's got side pockets and all that.
And I opened the primary compartment where most of the things in the briefcase are just to be cooperative.
And she pulls in there and pulls out this bottle.
So, what have we here?
With 25 people in the room.
What have we here?
Viagra, she shouts.
And look, it's not your name on the bottle.
This is a crime.
This is a violation of law.
She's shouting this all over the customs office.
And the whole room has come to a dead stop.
And she races behind some closed door to her supervisor.
Supervisor comes out.
How many other prescriptions do you have?
Sir, I've got two.
They have your name on it.
Yes.
What are they?
I look at them.
He said, well, what's this?
I said, I had an intestinal blockage in December for that.
Oh, how much cash are you carrying?
I started to pull my cash out.
I don't care to see it.
Just tell me.
And I said, less than $1,500.
Okay.
I had a little white bag of things, and he opened it.
What's this?
And I said, those are cufflinks and golf balls from President Bush.
I had lunch with him last Friday in the White House and dinner with your boss, Secretary Chertoff, the night before at the Supreme Court.
Well, sir, I have to tell you that this is a violation of law.
And we have called authorities in Miami and blah, blah, and they detained me for three or four hours and whatever it was.
And it was a state attorney's office here that ended the whole thing by sending some sheriff deputies over and finally getting a statement from me and taking the case under their jurisdiction.
And they today said there's no crime here.
And they've announced it, but the media is still reporting all over the place that all the effects of the deal that could have been thwarted had this been prosecuted and regurgitating facts that were not part of this story at all.
I had some friends with me and they were standing aside.
This actually started this way.
When you come into customs in Palm Beach on a private airplane, this is one of the few customs offices that I've ever dealt with.
And they know you're coming, by the way, because you have to give them your passport name and ID, passport number, date of birth, and all this stuff of all the passengers on the airplane a week before you depart.
So there's an inbound list and they know who's coming in that day.
It's required by law.
So somebody in there knew I was coming in.
And from what I was told from people that were there during the time I was there, mine was the only luggage that was searched.
In fact, they didn't search the luggage.
They just searched my briefcase in a little white bag.
And they made me open my computer.
But they bring all the bags off of the airplane.
I had four guys with me, and they were going on to Miami.
I was going to put them on the airplane to take them to Miami to catch commercial flight to Los Angeles.
So we get in the customer's office, get my stamp on the passport as having re-entered the country.
And I start helping the luggage guys distinguish my luggage from all the others because they've mixed it.
They've got three carts.
So I want my luggage on one cart since I'm leaving and the other four guys' luggage on other carts.
They go straight out to the airplane.
And I'm over there helping.
And this agent says, what are you doing?
This is customs.
You haven't been cleared.
And I smiled.
I said, I'm just trying to expedite my friends getting out of here when we finish because they're going to.
So I went over there, and that's when this whole process started.
So somebody in there had to be, I mean, I think this was leaked before I got out of there.
I think it was in the news before I actually was in the car on the way home.
But anyway, there was never any there there.
It is not illegal to possess Viagra.
Like, like being said, it's illegal to possess Prilosec or some other non-controlled, uncontrolled substance that's prescribed for things like Prilosec for, and acid medicine or what have you.
So that's it.
I appreciate the call out there, Jeff, but it's over now.
But folks, I'm going to be honest with you about something here.
This incident has taught me, I had a golf trip planned for Spain in August, and I have canceled it.
I am not going to involve myself with United States customs for the next year and a half until this so-called probationary period evaporates.
I'll tell you, the election cycles of 06 and 08, especially 08, I think it's going to be one of the most vicious and filthy of our lifetimes.
And I know I'm going to offend some of you customs people out there with what I'm going to say next, because I know most of you are.
In fact, this was the first one I've ever encountered like this.
But it takes one time, and I've got red flags up, and I'm not going to put myself in a position of being framed.
Most places, they come on the airplane and do you, they process you there, and they stamp your passport and search whatever they want to search.
And sometimes they'll search the airplane, some take the seats out, you know, depending on where you're coming from.
Well, you can't watch them do that.
You're supposed to keep your distance.
You can't leave the airplane, but you can't watch them do that.
And with all this obvious partisanship that's out there, I'm just not going to make it easy for people to frame me or whatever.
So I've canceled that trip to Spain.
And I know when I told the guys I was going with, I said, you may laugh about it.
And I hate thinking this way, but it's the only smart thing to do.
It just takes one experience.
And, you know, you've got, you've got, I would have somebody that would, political enemies theoretically everywhere I would go and come back in the country.
Normally, when I clear customs, when I come back from Europe, it's banger because you've got to stop for fuel.
They're great there.
Atlanta, Teterboro, they have been fabulous up in New Jersey, in the New York area.
But this was unreal.
This experience was totally unreal.
Anyway, that's it for that.
Quick timeout, more phone calls and more lifestyle stuff when we get back.
Stay with us.
And back to the lifestyle stack on the EIB network.
This is a study from Duke University and the University of Arizona found that most Americans have only two close confidants.
With the rise of the internet, an increase in work hours and long commutes and technology that discourages face-to-face interaction, the average American's connection to his or her community is weakening.
In other words, Americans are lonelier than ever.
Despite the perceived decrease in meaningful social connections, the study also showed that the bond between spouses has grown stronger, partially due to the fact that more households are comprised of two working parents.
The study also indicated that Americans use their entire social network when making a major life decision.
I'm telling you, it's a sociological gobbledygook, Mr. Snerdley.
What do you mean?
What does that mean?
Americans are lonelier than ever.
We're spending too much time.
It ran in the New York Times.
They're bashing the internet.
It's a bashed internet story.
We're spending too much time alone.
And we are not making social contact with people and so forth.
You know, I think it's absurd.
I'm overwhelmed.
I don't know about your spam email.
I watch television commercials, all these dating services out there.
People are dying to meet people.
People aren't holding up as hermits.
They're not out there just hibernating like I do.
Well, Snerdley wishes we had the dating services when he was a good deal.
I don't want to get here is the this is perhaps the PSA resistance.
I like the story where the polar bear came up and thanked the two wackos of the North Pole for trying to save them with global warming.
But this one, this is from Newsday.
A push for simpler spelling persists.
When say and they and way rhyme, but bomb, comb, and tomb don't, wouldn't it make more sense to spell words the way they sound?
Those in favor of simplified spelling say that children would learn faster and illiteracy rates would drop.
Opponents say a new system would make spelling even more confusing.
Either way, the concept has yet to catch the public's imagination.
Oh, my God.
What was it that Moynihan said, defining deviancy down?
Now we're going to take people who can't spell, who can't read and write, say, it's normal.
We have failed to educate you.
It's too hard.
Just like we failed to deal with certain kinds of crime, so we'll just say, well, that's just part of society in the modern era.
If you can't spell tomb and don't know the difference between tomb and comb and bomb, it's the language's fault.
It's too tough for you.
And as such, spell it however it sounds to you, and we will figure it out.
I mean, these ideas are coming from educators in some instances.
But here's the bottom line.
Don't tell anybody about this, folks, but the kids are not going to learn any faster.
They're just going to learn a lot less.
This is just a gimmick to make it easier for the teachers.
It's like outcome-based education.
This is ridiculous.
Simplified spelling.
A push for simpler spelling persists.
Richard in Naples, Florida.
You are next on the EIB network, sir.
Hello.
Hey, Megado, Rush.
Thank you, sir.
I want to talk to you on the day after Independence Day.
Thank you, sir.
Reason I was calling, you were commenting about your experiences you had at customs over at PBI.
Wait, just a second.
Hang on just a second.
A little inside baseball talk.
For those of you in Rio Linda, that's the West Palm Beach Airport.
Okay, go ahead, Richard.
Oh, sorry about that.
I'm trying to also do my banking to keep my employees coming to work the next few days.
Got to do their payroll here.
So I've done two things at once.
So I do apologize.
One of the things I did was I had a charter company, and we used to fly people to and from places in the Bahamas.
And one time I was taking the bass guitarist for ACDC.
And, you know, these gentlemen have long since stopped partying or anything like that.
He is with his family.
He's got his wife, his two small children with him.
And we're clearing customs in Palm Beach.
And the way that the customs officers treated this gentleman, it was like he was some sort of drug dealer that they were about to arrest.
They talked down to him.
They put him in a corner.
They were playing.
They were just, I mean, they cut him down.
I don't know how many different ways right in front of his two small children.
On that day, I was so embarrassed as an American, I cannot even tell you how it made me feel.
Well, you're not alone with this, and I've seen it before.
I've heard.
I've normally don't use Palm Beach customs because I come into the country from Europe.
You have to stop at the first port of entry by law unless you get overflight permission, which you can get.
So sometimes it's either Teterboro or Banger, Maine.
They're great in Banger, and they're great in Teterboro.
And they were fabulous in Atlanta.
But this was the first time it's been this way.
And I know why.
I mean, I'm under no illusion as to why.
They didn't treat me as badly as the way you described the ACDC guy.
The one thing that's funny about this is you may be wondering, why didn't you just fly straight to Miami and get your friends dropped off there?
It's because my pilot said you don't want to mess with Miami Customs.
He said they don't like corporate planes at Miami Customs.
You'll be waiting, you'll get hassled.
So my pilot recommended Long Beach Customs in this case.
You live and learn.
But anyway, I appreciate the call, Richard.
I'm not surprised.
This office does apparently have this kind of reputation.
At least, I don't know if they got the ACDC guy on anything, but this is the first I've heard of it.
So unlike in my case, they didn't leak it in his case.
Back in just a second.
All right, that's it, folks.
Great to be back with you today.
Looking forward to tomorrow and next after that to Open Line Friday.
Again, thanks to all of you for all of your phone calls.
And again, yes, I'm aware of the news that's out there.
I, of course, am the subject, and that is the state attorney's office has declined to pursue any action against me on this Viagra business because there were no laws broken.
If this story, however, continues and persists for over four hours, please call your local editor or your physician.
We'll be back tomorrow.
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