Sorry, folks, you're being late in there watching the Writer Cup.
It's Friday.
Let's hit it.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's Open Line Friday.
Oh, goody-goody gumdrops.
Favorite day of the week.
Open Line Friday when we go to the phones, ladies and gentlemen.
The program is yours.
Telephone number is 800-282-2882.
The rule on Friday is that you don't have to talk about things that interest me or that I am talking about.
You can bring anything up.
It's your day.
If you want to go the email route, it's rush at EIBnet.com.
All right, I hope you're with us at the conclusion of previous hour because I went through the various newspapers, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, and the New York Times with their varying opinions on who won in the detainee bill.
And the New York Times news story is very confusing about it, but claims that the Democrats have stood fast behind McCain and put their trust in McCain and really haven't said anything.
They haven't let McCain do the Bush bashing.
Maybe on this issue, but stunning.
The L.A. Times is convinced that Bush lost, to which the response is that Bush lost.
Then, of course, the Democrats are free to vote for it.
The New York Times editorial is just outraged that the Democrats are not standing up and defending themselves and their side on this.
They claim Bush won.
And the Washington Post is really, really mad.
Torture can continue for really dumping on McCain and the Democrats and Bush for what he wants.
The truth of the matter is that there were some compromises that got this done.
Politically, it was very deft because in the bottom final analysis, it's very hard to say that one side or the other caved, which exposes the Democrats because they didn't take a position which is typical when it comes to actually coming up with policy.
They will criticize Bush from one end of the day to the next, but coming up with their own ideas, they don't do.
Now they're going to have to go on record in an up or down vote on this bill, which does not make them comfortable.
We have some audio soundbites on this.
Here is the president last night in Florida making this announcement about the deal with McCain.
I had a single test for the pending legislation, and that's this.
Would the CIA operators tell me whether they could go forward with the program that is a program to question detainees to be able to get information to protect the American people?
I'm pleased to say that this agreement preserves the single most potent tool we have in protecting America and foiling terrorist attacks.
And that is the CIA program to question the world's most dangerous terrorists and to get their secrets.
So the president clearly views this as a victory.
He allows the program to continue at the same pace and with the same procedures that will permit him to protect the country as he has.
Senator McCain last night, a group of Republican senators held a press conference.
A portion of what Senator McCain said can basically be summed up as, we're all winners.
Get it?
We all won.
Screw you.
The agreement that we've entered into gives the president the tools that he needs to continue to fight the war on terror and bring these evil people to justice.
Stop the tape.
Aha!
So these people are now evil.
That's new.
That's new.
Up till now, we have to protect them.
The McCain-Graham side wanted to protect these terrorists.
Bush has always wanted to protect the American people.
Now these people are evil.
That's movement.
That's progress.
Here's the rest.
I also believe that it's consistent with the standards under the Detainee Treatment Act.
And there is no doubt that the integrity and letter and spirit of the Geneva Conventions have been preserved.
In this business, people say who's the winners and who's the losers.
There's none.
We're all winners because we've been able to come to an agreement through a process of negotiation and consensus.
I don't know about consensus, but because the consensus is the absence of leadership, and there was clearly leadership on this.
Don't know the consensus is relevant.
But regardless, bottom line here is it exposes the Democrats.
The New York Times admits it.
The Washington Post admits it.
They know it's looking bad for their buddies.
Because they're now, by not taking a position, by hiding behind McCain and Graham and Warner, they thought they were giving themselves cover.
The obvious conclusion you have to draw is that if any one side gave up more than the other, it has to be the McCain side because the Democrats are now left alone.
If McCain had prevailed and if the White House had cave where the Democrats' position would be strengthened, but it isn't.
This morning on the Today Show, Matt Wauer interviewed Senator McCain and said, by the way, Wauer is convinced that this is a loss for McCain.
There are a lot of cynics in Washington who say that the senators stood up a couple weeks ago and they took the moral high ground and they said we're willing to risk party unity to stand up for the stand up to the president and say torture will not stand.
But in the end, the president got pretty much everything he wanted.
This is really all about political theater.
How do you respond to that, Senator McCain?
We preserved the Geneva Conventions.
We set up a process for trial and we outlined grave breaches and a way of transparency so we'll know what is being done.
That was our goal.
We achieved it and I'm pleased to do that.
So I'm sorry if you didn't get what you wanted to the critics.
We got what we wanted.
Whoa, ho, Ho-ho, ho-ho!
That also means stop the tape.
That's not Santa Claus.
Ho, ho, ho.
Did you hear that?
That sounds a little testy.
He said to, you didn't hear that, Snoodley?
Yeah, he said, he said, he said to Matt Wauer, so I'm sorry.
And I'm sorry if you didn't get what you wanted to the critics.
That's that's that's you want me back on the show.
Don't ever ask me things like that.
Well, so I'm sorry if you didn't get what you wanted to the critics.
Yeah, that is McCain going after his base, the drive-by media.
The base turned on him with the question.
He goes after the base.
Here's the rest of the bite.
More torture.
There will be no more mistreatment of prisoners that would violate standards of conduct that we would expect of people who work for the United States.
Matt Lauer continues the press.
Well, why didn't you guys stand up and take a stand on specifics?
Why didn't you say, look, okay, there have been reports, for example, with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed at the secret CIA centers that he was waterboarded.
We'll not let that stand, Mr. President.
Why didn't you say that, Senator?
We said exactly that.
There will be no such thing as waterboarding.
We outlined the grave breaches of conduct, and you will never see that again.
And we've stood up and said that cannot be done.
Most importantly, we said we will not change the Geneva Conventions.
We're very proud of what we did.
The ACLU and others don't want the president to be able to question these people.
We think that the program is legitimate.
Waterboarding.
White House, Stephen Hadley, not admitting that, when asked about it, he says, well, we're not going to discuss these individual techniques.
Not going to give away what we do or don't do to the terrorists.
McCain says, no more waterboarding.
It's not going to happen.
Nobody will ever see it again.
I've never seen it.
Let's go back to Brian Ross.
I know colleague Sheikh Mohammed killed 3,000 people and we can't waterboard the guy.
That's all moot.
Now, I think this is a done deal, and whatever has been happening is going to continue, and everybody knows it.
We'll just never see it.
And it's not torture in the first place.
It's a definition that's been so maligned and so mischaracterized, just like the whole NSA domestic spying program was mischaracterized as domestic spying.
When it's not, it's foreign surveillance.
It's the same type of mischaracterization.
But I want to go back to the O'Reilly factor on Wednesday night.
Brian Ross describing what waterboarding did in the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
O'Reilly's question.
So in all 14 cases, coerced interrogation methods being debated in the Senate right now were used.
And in all 14 cases, according to your report, they gave up the information.
The opposition, Human Rights Watch, ACLU, they say it's garbage.
In the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the information was very valuable, particularly names and addresses of people who were involved with al-Qaeda in this country and in Europe, and at one particular plot which would involve an airline attack on the tallest building in Los Angeles known as the Library Tower.
It's clear in several cases with Khalid Sheikh Mohavid, with people that absolutely beyond a doubt are terrorists, terrorist masterminds, it does seem to have an effect, and that's just the bottom line.
Certainly, if you interrupt a plot to bomb a tower in Los Angeles, you've saved lives.
It has worked.
It has thwarted plots.
And we'll be right back and continue.
Open Line Friday.
Your phone calls coming up next.
You dropped a bomb on me, the official theme song of the Islamic Republic of Iran under the leadership of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Welcome back to Open Line Friday, Los Angeles Times headline: As economic mood rises, so may prospects of GOP.
Parentheses, damn it to hell.
This is by Molly Hennessy Fisk.
Americans have become more optimistic about the economy.
Damn it.
And President Bush is getting some of the credit.
Really, damn it.
According to a Los Angeles Times Bloomberg poll, as voters say the economy will influence their choices in November more than any other national issue, including the war in Iraq and terrorism, Republicans seeking re-election could benefit.
Well, yeah, that kind of follows.
If voters say the economy will influence their choices, do you really have to add the bit about Republicans seeking re-election could benefit?
Damn it.
Now, however, the optimists outnumber the pessimists by 10 points when it comes to the economy.
54% say the economy is doing well.
A lot of conflicting indicators, but things seem to be causing and cruising along pretty well, said respondent David Bush, who is a sales executive in Redmond, Washington, who describes himself as an independent voter.
My, you know what, he's an independent voter, just saying, you people, you know, this is this, this, there's no great center in this country.
All these great independents and moderates.
This offends me, you people who call yourselves independents, don't have the guts to sign up because you're afraid of what a pollster is going to think of you or somebody else is going to think of you.
At any rate, what'd this guy say?
We've seen a lot of alarmists talk about housing bubbles bursting and gas prices.
They're going to derail the economy.
Those haven't materialized.
Let me tell you, the Independent doesn't think that way.
The conservative thinks that an Independent does not draw that conclusion.
Seven weeks before the midterm elections, the economy remains the voters' primary focus.
In follow-up interviews, those polled cited a variety of reasons for feeling better about the economy, including unemployment at a low 4.7% nationally, lower gasoline prices this month, and an interest rate freeze by the Federal Reserve.
Although more than half of those polled still disapprove of Bush's handling of the economy, the proportion of those who approve has risen.
43% said they approved up from 38% in July.
So the bottom line here is that to the L.A. Times, this is stunning news.
54% of the people say the economy is good.
And there's also this, there's a point in here that the alarmist talk didn't materialize.
And that is from an independent.
A self-proclaimed, so-called independent.
Well, now, if all the alarm, who was doing all the alarmist talk, was it not our friends in the Democrat Party and on the left in this country?
And by the way, it was far more than alarmist talk.
It was outright fear-mongering.
And that means it was the Democrats who were using fear.
And yet, as I listen to Howard Deansky and John Kariofsky and all of these other Democrats, they're accusing Bush of engaging in fear tactics.
And this self-professed, proclaimed, supposed so-called independent claims to have noticed it.
So the fear obviously has been utilized by the Democrats.
And from the New York Times, Bush leads new offensive featuring economy and linking Democrats to high taxes.
This is by our buddy Jim Rutenberg at the New York Times.
President Bush began, and he is.
He's one of the people there we've run into that's extremely fair.
President Bush began a blistering new political offensive on Thursday, asserting that if Democrats won control of Congress and Republicans, it would mean higher taxes, less money in the pockets of working families, and damage to the economy.
A speech by Mr. Bush in Orlando, he went and saw the Tampa Bay Buccaneers yesterday, Brian.
Did you know that?
Tampa Bay Buccaneers are Brian's favorite team.
And actually threw some passes with Chris Sims out there and told the team to hang tough.
ONTU doesn't mean anything.
They can come back from it.
He knows adversity.
He went out and gave a pep talk.
The speech by Mr. Bush in Orlando, though, in which he belittled Democrats as the party of high taxes, signaled what Republicans described as a new phase of the fall campaign.
Mr. Bush's offensive was backed up by a flood of television advertisements on behalf of Republican candidates.
Now, I know some of you people don't like it when we talk football here, but tough.
I want to give you a football analogy.
It's time to campaign for the midterms.
The president is out there.
You would think that with all of the stuff that happened at the UN this week, with the circus that went on there, he might have gone out to Florida and talked about Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
But no, what did he do?
He went back to the Democrats are going to raise your taxes.
And some people scratching their heads, well, why is he doing this?
I mean, look at all the other stuff that's out there.
Folks, this is the Republicans' bread and butter play.
This is off-tackle right.
And this play has worked every time they've run it.
The Democrats haven't been able to stop off-tackle right.
They're just plunging straight ahead and not running around and not a sweep toss around the end and no flare pass here.
There's no screen pass.
There's no attempt to deceive.
The Republicans are just saying, here's who we are.
The president is, and we're coming right at you.
Off-tackle right.
And the Democrats can't stop it.
They still have been able to stop it.
Why not run that play?
Democrats don't have any new plays in their playbook anyway.
Here is Monica in York, Pennsylvania.
Hi, Monica.
Welcome to the program.
Hi, Rush.
Thanks for taking my call today.
Thank you.
You're welcome for calling.
I would like to talk with you today about the liberal infiltration in the public school system.
And I have a really disturbing example to give you.
When I was a kid, we celebrated Halloween in school and we had Halloween parties.
Well, my children, who are in fourth and sixth grade, they in the past have had Fall Activity Day to celebrate the fall season since you can't do Halloween anymore.
That has since been taken.
Wait, When do they do fall activity?
They do it on Halloween?
It's in October, about the second or third week of October.
Okay, so there's a safe distance from All Hallows Eve.
Pretty much.
Pretty much.
But this year, we have been stripped of Fall Activity Day in favor of celebrating United Nations Day.
Yeah, that's not new.
They've just changed the way they do it.
No, When I was a kid, every Halloween, the school encouraged us to go out there and trick-or-treat, even though there were people in the trailer parks putting razor blades in the apples.
They went because they also told us to take our little cans to trick-or-treat for UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund.
That's how the indoctrination and how great the United Nations is beginning.
Sixth grade, six years, seven years old, first grade, I'm sorry.
UNICEF, United Nations Children's Fund.
That's how we all were made to believe that the UN is doing these great things by feeding poor people all over the world.
And all we needed to do was get these people that were giving us candy to also throw in a couple pennies.
And the UN was going to save people from starvation around the world.
So this is really not new, but they're just changing it around now.
I'd love to hear.
I mean, do you have specific details of what UN Day celebrations are at your school?
I've been unable to find out what they are, but I'm working on that.
And we've also been stripped of friendship, also known as Valentine's Day, in favor of Earth Day this year.
You know, let me think about this during the break.
I'll give you some ideas to suggest to the school for UN Day.
I think we could turn this back on them.
You propose this at the next meeting of the school, see if they don't accept some of our ideas.
Screams of sheer delight at the very mention of my name.
El Rushboat, talent on loan from a God.
Your host for life, America's real anchorman, all combined into one harmless, lovable little fuzzball.
Okay, Monica in York, Pennsylvania.
I know you're troubled out there by UN Day at your daughter's scruple.
They cancel Halloween.
Probably too religious of a holiday, too scary.
All kinds of human debris out there trying to poison the kids, maybe give them some spinach.
By the way, Popeye, not happy.
24 states with E. coli on the spinach.
A couple of babies have died.
You know what my question is?
Where do E. coli come from?
Do they know?
Have they reported where to eat?
Do they know where the E. coli came from?
Hmm.
Well, who's in the fields?
We first have to answer that question.
Maybe not necessarily the fields.
It could happen, I guess, anywhere in the process.
At any rate, UN Day.
First thing, here's what you do, Monica.
You have your daughter take a can of, but do they, in fact, I don't know if you didn't, I don't think you told me this.
I should have asked you if the kids are allowed to dress up in costume on UN Day.
She didn't say that.
Well, try it.
You know, since they've bumped Halloween off the schedule at school, have them dress up.
If your daughter doesn't want to dress up, here's an option.
Have her take a can of motor oil.
Just go to the gas station, get a can of motor oil, and offer to pay for lunch at school that day with the motor oil.
And the people at the catcher go, well, what's this?
Well, it's UN Day, and I'm celebrating the oil for food program.
Folks, let's do this the whole country.
Well, wouldn't that not be great if your kid's being made to have a UN Day at the public school?
Give them a can of motor oil.
Maybe not a whole can.
That's got to be a can.
It has to be a can because they have to say motor oil.
And don't get that synthetic stuff like mobile, whatever it is, mobile one.
Go get the real stuff.
Get 10 weight 30.
Take it in there.
Blame it on me.
If the kid gets in trouble, tell them you heard it on my program.
I'll be glad to take the credit for this.
If you want to dress the kids up, go out there and put together your own Yasser Arafat costume.
Have your kid wear a scruffy beard and get a holster with a fake pistol in it and walk in and threaten to wipe out everybody in the cafeteria unless lunch is given away.
Well, no, no, don't threat that.
Just go in.
Or you could have your kid go as Nikita Khrushchev.
Go out and get a bald plate to put on the kid's head.
Give a kid a little shoe and the kid all day at school bangs the shoe on the desk in the cafeteria, in the classroom.
You know, any number of things like this.
I mean, if you put your thinking caps on, you can come up any number of ways to celebrate United Nations Day.
Yeah, in fact, you can take some sulfur and instead of giving the teacher an apple, give the teacher some sulfur in honor of Hugo Chavez.
Or, you know, Mamaoud Ahmadinejad is only 5'4.
I mean, your kid may be that tall now, depending on what grade.
Just have your kid not bathe for five or six days and wear, do you know he wore the same clothes all week?
Gray suit and a pink shirt?
Just have your kid not bathe for four or five days and show up as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
I don't want to tell him to go to his rape victim from the Congo.
No, no, no.
We don't want to go that far.
And you can't have him show up as a dead person from Rwanda.
Maybe here's what you could do.
Have your kid not eat for four or five days and show up as somebody from Darfur.
Big United Nations problem.
Any number of ways here to celebrate United Nations Day and turn it around on him.
Bob in Manhattan, welcome, sir.
Nice to have you on the program.
Thank you, Rush.
Dittos on all.
Something of a legal question.
The Supreme Court has ruled that flag burning is protected as free speech.
Yeah.
Why don't I have the right to beat the hell out of that flag burner under the fighting words doctrine?
That's a good question.
Probably because the Supreme Court says you can't.
How about if I spanked him?
Depends on whether they press charges or whether you were witnessed.
I would ignore them.
That's the these people are seeking attention.
Yeah.
They're just you have to understand who these people are that burn the flag.
You have to understand who a lot of leftists are.
Let me, I know we've had a sort of a frisky Friday here, but let me get serious for just a minute.
These are people who are first and foremost miserably unhappy.
They do not fit in with normalized society and culture.
They are oddballs and kooks, and they know it.
And they're simply trying to make their lives meaningful.
And they need to get attention for that in order to make themselves feel good about themselves.
So they go out and try to offend the vast majority of people.
They know they're in a very small and rank minority.
And the best way to really get to them is just ignore them.
Now, there are different degrees.
I'll never forget Rick Monday of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Somebody, correct me if I'm wrong on this story.
I'm going to get it partially right, hopefully all the way right.
At Dodger Stadium, Monday, I think, was playing right field, and somebody either threw a flag or a burning flag out on the field, and he went and stamped it out and picked it up and waved it around.
Great, great, great applause.
I mean, something like that, which takes place on a stage, that's appropriate to do when you've got a chance to stamp out the flag.
You got to confront these people to do it.
I just ignore them.
Believe me, I have a lifetime's worth of experience of ignoring people that try to provoke me, and it just irritates them even more, makes them more unhappy, makes them more miserable, and they're just, they're beside themselves.
So that's, you know, I wouldn't pick a fight with them.
I'm a nonviolent guy anyway.
Those are the games you want me to pick.
You want me to pick Jaguars and Colts, the environmental wacko method or just pick the games?
Oh, both.
The environmentalists, Jaguars and Colts.
That's easy.
Jaguars are smitten.
Did you see their injury report?
They got 10 guys questionable.
Now, part of that is because the NFL has these new injury report rules.
And you've got to be more active.
Some coaches have been playing games with the injury reports in recent years to psych out opposing teams.
The NFL says you can't hide people on the injury report, and you've got to put everybody who's got a nick and tuck on there.
And so questionable means 50-50.
Probably means 75-25 the player will play.
Doubtful means 25-75 he'll play.
And out means can't play.
Once he's on the outlook, it's gone.
So they put these guys on there as questionable.
I have you, Jacksonville Jagboards.
That team, that defense is an assault.
I was so impressed with those guys on Monday night against the Steelers.
But I have to tell you, I don't know how they get so up.
Every team, the Bengals, this week is their Steelers week because they got the Steelers in Pittsburgh.
You've got Jaguars.
Last week was Steelers week for them.
And they got up and you could tell they were far more fired up for this game than they were against the Catboys.
I don't know if this game against the Colts, it ought not to be a letdown.
The Colts or the Colts won their division last year.
Don't know how beat up they are either.
These are the normal ways you handicap these.
The Colts rolled over the Houston Texans and didn't have much of a tough time doing it, but they've got some injury problems in a wide receiving core.
And their running game isn't what it is since they got rid of Edger and James.
Let him sign on with the Arizona Cardinals.
Falcons and Saints, that's going to be fascinating.
Opening of the Superdome.
Al Jazeera even applied for a press credential and got it.
Kid you not, Al Jazeera will be covering because of Hurricane Katrina.
Al Jazeera will be in the Superdome.
Those tickets are going for $10,000 at scalper prices.
People want to be in there.
This is going to be a huge, huge night for the reopening of the Superdome.
For the first time in history, the Saints have sold out the Superdome season tickets.
The whole thing sold out with season tickets.
Yeah, this team has really come back.
People outside of New Orleans, too, have ended up buying.
They're playing the Atlanta Falcons, who are on a roll at 2-0.
I think there's a three, Bears and Vikings, that's, why do you care about that?
The Bears and Vikings.
I mean, that's.
They're both undefeated, but there's a difference in a Vikings team 2-0 and a Bears team at 2-0.
Anyway, that's break time.
I got to take a break.
Let me see if I can do some things with this environmental wacko-wise.
Back in just a second.
Stay with us.
Back we are on Open Line Friday.
All right, very quickly, we'll do some environmental wacko picks.
This originally started as a way to encourage women to continue to listen to the program when we started talking sports in the early days.
I heard that women were not interested in sports on these programs.
And so I decided to combine the issues of the day and the traditional thinking of liberals versus conservatives in picking NFL football games.
And I called it the environmental wacko method.
Here is an example.
We have the Indianapolis Colts at home against the Jacksonville Jaguars, and the Jaguars are getting seven points.
Which, in a real analysis, the Colts have always been the toughest opponent for the Jaguars, and especially inside the dome.
We'll throw that out, and we'll look at it instead in the environmentalist wacko method.
This is a real challenge for the environmentalist wackos because both teams' mascots are animals.
The Colts, of course, horses, and the Jaguars, wild cats.
Both sleek, both incredibly fast.
However, you'd have to say that the Colts are at a disadvantage here, but the Colts have allowed humans to domesticate them.
Humans put them in at rodeos.
Humans ride them.
Humans dig spurs into their sides.
The Colts have no self-respect when it comes to human beings.
And of course, human beings are the evil life form on the planet.
The Jaguars, on the other hand, they don't get caught by anybody.
They can outrun anything.
All they do is act as predators against anything else that they run into.
In fact, they're getting sober.
Jaguar is also a mountain lion.
They don't even care if they get close to human beings.
They are slaughtering human beings in California in their own backyards.
You cannot stop the Jaguars.
In addition to that, look at the Colts.
I don't know if you heard about this, but Colts produce miniatures as well.
You can get a miniature Colt, miniature horse.
They're out there.
Joey Porter of the Pittsburgh Steelers has a couple of pit bulls.
And Joey Porter's pit bulls in Pine, Pennsylvania, suburb of Pittsburgh, got loose, and his two pit bulls mauled a miniature horse.
Well, I mean, if a colt, a miniature horse out of a horse, I don't care what size, it can't handle a couple of dogs.
How in the world are they going to handle a couple of jaguars?
So take the jaguars and the seven points.
The Vikings and the Bears.
Now that's a little bit easier for the environmentalist wackos.
Bears, innocent creatures bothering nobody except your car if you leave food in it.
Bears have also, though, allowed themselves to be used by humans in TV commercials that make the bears look silly.
Bears have been mocked, little goldilocks of the three bears.
But the Vikings are hated and despised because they're human beings.
They're blonde.
They're blue-eyed.
They're from Europe.
And as Hugo Chavez said, they came here and they're part of the people that massacred the original inhabitants of this planet, Native Americans, Indians, and black Africans.
So you have to say, well, which of these two has ended up faring better in the world?
The Vikings?
Well, are the Vikings around anymore, except as a football team?
They have offspring that have melded with the citizens of Minnesota, but they're all liberals.
They're all touchy, sensitive liberals.
They're a bunch of pansies.
Even though the Bears have allowed themselves to be humiliated by humans, you still have to take the Bears.
They're on the road giving three points.
Finally, the Saints and the Falcons.
This is easy.
Yes, in terms of environmental wacko Falcon, bird of prey, gorgeous thing.
They're not really tameable.
You can, if you put a hood over their face and fool them, you can teach them into going out there and flying away and coming back to you, but you still have to wear a glove on your arm in your hand, or they will rip you to shreds, and you can't tame them.
And if you try to pet one, you risk your hand and your digits on the other hand of saints.
What are saints?
Well, they're Catholics.
And they're dead Catholics.
And what do we know about the Catholics?
Well, the Catholics are represented by the Pope who names the Saints.
And the Pope and the Catholic extremists are out there blaming Islam, a religion of peace, for all of the problems of the world.
This is no choice.
You take the Falcons minus three against the Saints in the Superdome on Monday night.
That is how the environmentalist wacko pics go, ladies and gentlemen.
And they held up pretty well.
We'll see.
Remember these pics?
We'll see how they do on, well, Tuesday because the Falcons and Saints are a Monday nighter.
Here is Jim in Waynesville, North Carolina.
Welcome to the program.
Hey, Rush.
It's an honor to speak with you.
Thank you from Ditto's from Moonshine Creek, North Carolina.
I love it here.
Moonshine Creek, yeah.
Hey, Rush, I was pleasantly surprised to read the obituary, as bad as that sounds, of Pham Ahn, who was the journalist spy during the Vietnam War that worked for Reuters.
You were pleasantly surprised to read of an obituary.
You were happy about this?
Well, I was until I read about what fellow journalists said about him.
He was the gentleman that was the North Vietnamese and communist espionage spy that was the chief Time magazine news correspondent for the Vietnam War during the war.
And then when Vietnam fell, he went to Hanoi and let people know that he had worked for the Vietnamese government, North Vietnam, and spent the rest of his life in Hanoi.
And his quote, and this is a hero for journalists, if you go to a journalism school, his quote in the obituary was, I fought for two things as a journalist, independence of North Vietnam and social justice.
And what really irritated me and really got me upset because it's not surprising.
Go to any journalism school and ask them why they're there.
I'm here to make the world a better place.
There's social justice.
That's what they all think journalism is.
This guy's not unique.
And you're so right.
I mean, this just is another example of how right you are about these journalists because when they asked, this is in the obituary, former media colleagues expressed mixed feelings from bemusement to a sense of betrayal.
It's irrelevant what they think.
They're as much elitists and disconnected from average Americans as any other group of elitists are.
I'm glad you called out there, Jim.
Sadly, my friends, busy broadcast moments have expired for this segment.