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Oct. 13, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:15
October 13, 2006, Friday, Hour #3
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Time Text
You think that's all it was?
They just threw some sticks of dynamite or TNT in a hole and uh and we're talking about the um the Norcoms.
Little Kim Jong il.
Anyway, greetings, uh, my good buddies.
Welcome, broadcast excellence, all yours next three, our next sorry.
Next hour, it's Friday with live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open Friday.
Yep.
Bach duch.
All right.
You know the uh you know the rules.
Open line Friday when we go to the phones, it's all yours.
Ask me anything, you can make a point, whether I care about it or not.
I'll do my best to act interested even if I'm not.
Telephone number 800-282-2882, and the email address is Rush at EIB net.com.
All right, well, let's see.
We were talking about the um what did I do with this?
We were talking about it.
Snerder and I were talking about the North Koreans and uh and their their uh their test.
There's gonna be a sanction vote tomorrow, and once again, ladies and gentlemen, we have been shafted by the uh uh the Russians and the and the Chinese.
Uh the vote on sanctions is tomorrow, and Fox had a breaking news story this morning saying that an arms embargo will not be added to UN resolutions.
There will be no ban on where the Norcoms can fly in the resolution.
Uh I mean, this is really watered down stuff to be voted on tomorrow morning.
Now, all of this is supposed to deter North Korea.
All of this is supposed to deter Iran.
Make no mistake about something on this.
Uh the Iranians are watching all this very carefully just as they were watching the uh Israeli Hezbollah war.
Probably started that one just to check everybody's resolve.
And I've I I did an interview with Joel Rosenberg uh earlier this week for an upcoming issue of the limbaugh letter in Joel.
I mean, he's convinced that the the the Chicoms and the Norcoms have an alliance, but he really believes that uh the North Korea thing is uh uh something being sponsored by Iran to test everybody in the world's reaction to it.
Uh just to see if we have the will anymore to stop rogue regimes like this from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Now it appears that this uh little Kim Jong il may be pulling a Saddam Hussein, doesn't have a weapon yet, trying to make everybody believe that he does.
Uh Saddam trying to be the big guy, the big anti-American guy in the Middle East, and here's uh here's Kim Jong il, who just wants some respect, and I'm sick and tired of hearing Democrats go on television at night.
We just want some respect.
If we would just grant him some respect, why should we have to grant these guys respect?
What have they done to earn it?
You've seen the satellite photo, haven't you?
Rumsfeld showed this picture the other day at a press conference.
Nighttime satellite picture shows lights blazing all over South Korea.
In North Korea, it is entirely dark except for a little pin point of light where Kim Jong il lives in Pyongyang.
It is it is said that the lights in uh North Korea have to go off at nine o'clock every night because they just don't have the electricity.
They are a backwards stone age country.
People journalists that have been over there and have been granted certain access say it is the most is the most mind-boggling thing to watch North Korea people go about their business.
They walk looking at their shoes.
They do not make eye contact with one another.
They are robotic.
They are afraid to stand out.
They're they're deathly afraid of being shot, being killed, imprisoned, or whatever, for looking at something the wrong way.
What in the world is it that engenders respect about this regime, particularly from liberals who I thought were so concerned about human rights.
You know, liberals ought to be leading the charge for reform of places like this and the Middle East.
And once again, they're exposed as the phonies and the hypocrites that they are.
I mean, but in a way, I can't help but think that this this watered down resolution is a little pathetic.
We go to the UN.
China and Russia dilute our efforts and we get nowhere, and yet we keep going there.
We don't have to go there, and we ought not go there.
But we do.
Because we got to explore all the diplomatic options first before we do anything next.
Now my guess uh is that one of the reasons we might be willing to accept a watered down resolution is because the guy hasn't really blown up a nuke.
That he just, you know, threw some essentially some sticks of dynamite, probably called the Acme Dynamite Cup.
Probably call the same outfit that uh Weil E. Coyote calls and had a sh had a box of dynamite, acme dynamite shipped over there and and or a couple, and blew them up because nobody can find any traces of radioactivity.
My guess is that behind the scenes uh people sitting around and say this really what a nuclear test, and let's not overreact and so forth, but I think that's uh potentially a mistake.
U.S. News and World uh report uh some Republican strategists are increasingly upset with what they consider the overconfidence of President Bush and his senior advisors about the midterm elections.
The concern aggravated by the president's news conference this week.
A GOP insider who informally counsels the West Wing told U.S. News they aren't even planning for if they lose, said a GOP insider.
The Bush White House has no relationship with Congress, said a Bush ally.
Beyond the Democrats, wait till they see how the Republicans, the ones that survive, treat them if they lose next month.
GOP insiders are upset by Bush's seeming inability to come up with new ideas or fresh approaches.
There's even a heightened sensitivity to the way Bush talks about advisors who served his father.
At the president's news conference on Wednesday, allies of his father complained the president seemed dismissive, the former Secretary of State James Baker, who remains close to his dad and is co-chairman of a bipartisan panel studying the war in Iraq.
I think it's good to have some of our elder statesmen, I hate to call Baker an elder statesman, but to go over there and take a look, come back and make recommendations, Bush said.
A prominent GOP insider said he had nothing to say at that press conference.
My question is why call it?
Boy, I'll tell you what.
You you Washington insiders have got to get outside of that town.
The problem with you Republican Washington insiders is that that's exactly what you are.
If you didn't see how the people in the Republican voting base reacted to the president's press conference this week.
I mean, there were some things about it that that uh they didn't particularly like all the talk about going to the UN, but if you don't think the Republican base liked that press conference, and let me tell you about James Baker.
Now, I I have uh I I I know James Baker.
I can't say I know him.
I've he's an acquaintance.
I've I was with him at uh at uh Bush 41's birthday party in Houston.
In fact, he's the one that told me Gorbachev wanted a picture with me.
Uh uh, and and I've I've I've been to a couple social things with him.
But I'm gonna I'm just speak for myself here to hell with these Washington insiders.
One of the things that James A. Baker III said this week is that victory is not possible in Iraq.
Now, I'm sorry, but I don't subscribe.
And I don't know how in the world you come out and say that when 3,000 brave souls have gone over there and lost their lives.
What for, if not for victory?
I can totally understand why the president, who is never getting he's never, he hasn't gotten off the dime yet about we're going to be victorious there.
And he's got everybody in the world trying to talk him out of it.
And he's got some little lily livered Republicans apparently now getting all worried about the midterm of what the hell are they doing?
What are the hell are these brilliant Republican insiders doing to help engineer a victory.
Anybody can sit around and whine and moan and complain.
And I'll tell I have I have hardly any patience for it.
What's wrong with thinking positive?
What in the world do you want to sit around and focus on losing for?
Why in the world is it brilliant politics to send Republicans out on the Sunday shows and predict the number of seats we're going to lose?
Who in the world does that?
Not even the Democrats in all of their futility and stupidity do that.
They never go on television and say, yep, yep, we expect to lose anywhere between seven and thirty seats.
Maybe fifty.
Who does that?
Why in the world?
What is the point?
Before the election.
Who are you trying to impress?
Who are these nameless GOP insiders?
Who are so enamored of defeat.
What do they want?
The president talking about a plan, a contingency plan if we lose.
Well, Russia gotta make plans if you lose and so forth.
Well, yeah, maybe they have.
Who knows what they're doing in the White House.
But what in the world is wrong with focusing on winning?
I'm I this this stuff dumb fan.
It's U.S. News.
They're not as liberal as the other two news magazines are.
So you have to consider the possibility some of these quotes are misquotes and out-of-context quotes.
It is the drive-by media nevertheless.
But I I'm telling you, I uh I get so worn out with all this talk about defeat.
It's bad enough when we hear about hear about it from the Democrats, but it just frosts me when people on our side seem seem captured by it.
The whole concept of defeat.
And I'm not joining the team, and I'm not playing ball that way.
And I'm not, that's why I don't want to become an insider.
I don't want to have to worry about impressing other insiders to hell with that.
This is just here's the headline.
Bush is said to have no plan if GOP loses.
You know who else doesn't want the uh uh the uh Democrats to win?
Hillary Clinton.
She doesn't want the Democrats to win the House.
She has no clue or no desire for that to happen.
Come on, Rush, what are you talking?
Do you think Mrs. Clinton wants a bunch of rabid dog liberals winning the house and making a mockery of things the next two years while she prepares to run for president and has to be compared to these clowns.
There is uh we never hear about that.
John Fund will tell you, but we never hear about that, so we never hear about the Democrats hoping they lose.
But boy, we have no trouble finding a bunch of Republican insiders who can't wait to predict defeat or to say that victory is not possible.
So, sorry, but I don't blame Bush for being a little less than embracing of James A. Baker III.
Back in just a second.
Stay with us.
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It's called EIB.
It's an airborne phenomenon, spread by casual contact, and once you get it, you are cured.
Before I am through, everyone will have EIB.
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800-282-2882.
Get this.
From Columbus, Ohio, a man who couldn't find steady work came up with a plan to make it through the next few years until he could collect social security.
He robbed a bank and then handed the money to a guard and waited for the cops.
On Wednesday, Timothy Bowers told a judge a three-year prison sentence would suit him and a judge obliged.
At my age, the jobs available to me are minimum wage jobs.
There is age discrimination out there, said Bowers, who turned 63 in a few weeks.
The judge Angela White told him it's unfortunate you feel this is the only way to deal with the situation.
Bowers said that he had been able to find only odd jobs after being the drug wholesaler he made deliveries for closed in 2003.
So he walked over to a bank, handed a teller a note demanding cash in an envelope, teller gave him uh four twenty dollar bills and pushed a silent alarm.
He handed the money to a security guard standing in a lobby, told him it was his day to be a hero.
He pleaded guilty to robbery and a court ordered psych exam found him competent.
Well, this sounds like uh almost a replica of that TV show on Fox called Prison Break.
Except the angle there was a guy wanted to get caught robbing a bank to get into prison to help his brother escape.
Three years for 80 bucks.
And well you figure it out, folks, it's not hard for you probably advertise um be able to buy food stamps while he's in prison.
Mike, in Lake Tahoe, California, well is it Nevada, which side you on?
Uh South Lake Tahoe.
South Lake Tahoe.
Okay, great to have you.
Yeah, thank you, sir.
You know, uh I understand fully the rules of engagement on Open Line Friday and and quite frankly I know it's my job to make you look better as the host.
And uh no no no no not not on Friday.
That that that out the window because if you talk about something I don't care about that's hard to look for me to look good.
Well the under the underpinning but I mean but along that line of making you look good, sir, you've been hitting on all twelve this week it's been phenomenal.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
Thank you.
Especially that gal whose father or whatever never told her she could amount to something you know kind of choked me up as a dad so uh I tip to you I got a speaking of that I got a uh a thank you note from her and she she included a picture she's 30th birthday I think is yesterday or today and uh she was just as nice as she could be in the um in the in the email and that guy by the way that what that we sent a computer to should get it today if he has it already.
Well, you know, my question to the screener was, you know, we hear all the time that we as Americans consume 80 percent of the world's natural resources.
So then my question is, well, how much wealth do we generate in the world?
You know, what's the figure on that?
Well, it's profound.
You know, this is an argument, by the way, Mike.
And he's talked, by the way, there's a story we did earlier this week that 300 million Americans will happen soon.
We're going to reach the 300 million mark in population.
Nobody knows quite exactly when.
All we know is where it'll happen.
And that is at the southern border, probably in California with Mexico.
Maybe Texas.
But that's where we'll reach 300 million people.
And the story went on to say, this is just not fair.
America can't sustain this on its own.
It has to steal and rob and plunder resources from around the world.
that the third world forever stays poor and yes death America is 25 or 5% of the world's population it's 25% of the world three fourths that's why they're so responsible for global warming and destruction of the planet blah blah blah blah blah been hearing this for twenty years I don't know if it was Paul Ehrlich in his book The Population Bomb in the 70s that got this line of thinking started but if not it was right around then and it is just with simple observation it is absurd.
We feed the planet.
We repair the planet.
We have liberated over a billion oppressed people.
We rebuilt Europe after World War II, after it was destroyed by a European, a German, by the name of Adolf Hitler.
We are single-handedly responsible for helping people after the tsunami, earthquakes and disasters around the world.
We are first on the scene.
We have, with our space program starting in the 60s, people forget this, but the inventions that were necessary to make space flight possible found their way into daily life once the products and systems became affordable.
And the lifestyle, the standard of living for the world has improved dramatically as a result.
You can't just take a look at what happened in the 20th century alone.
My grandfather was born in the 1890s.
And in the 1890s, they barely had electricity.
There was hardly, I mean, the phones were just weird.
Everybody got around on horse and buggy or train.
In the 104 years that my grandfather lived, he saw the most incredible grandkids.
growth.
He saw the most technical human progress.
He saw life expectancy expand all because of the freedom to produce in this country, the freedom to invent entrepreneurial freedom, scientific freedom, you name it.
He saw the invention of the airplane, the invention of the automobile.
He saw the practical common use for everybody of the telephone.
He saw space flight.
Well, I'll continue this in a minute.
Real close.
Snuggle on up there.
All right, now let's look at this resources business from another angle, ladies and gentlemen.
Because a sad sack laden with guilt, miserably unhappy, useful idiot liberals, love to run around and say we're destroying the planet.
We are so thought, Mr. Limbaugh, we are so greedy.
The new Castrati, ladies and gentlemen.
Victims of the feminized culture in Western societies.
Mr. Limbaugh, we so greedy because we just have no concern for others.
All about us ourselves.
So we steal Oliver Thartha from the ref, we steal oranges, and we steal fruit, we even steal coffee from Brazil.
We feel everything is horrible.
Right.
Okay.
Now, according to these liberals, one of the most damaging resources out there, of course, created by God is oil.
I mean, that stuff, rotten that stuff.
That's a killer.
It's deadly.
It's just, it's right up there with tobacco.
All right, so we are blamed for stealing the resources of the world.
Uh well, uh, being only 5% of the world's population and using 25%.
Let's just apply that oil.
We do import over half of our oil.
But we don't steal it.
We pay for it.
The people who sell it love to sell it.
Look at who they are, by the way.
You want to talk about a big trick that God's played on the good guys?
All the bad guys in the world have the oil.
What's God thinking?
Hugo Chavez?
The Middle East uh Sheiks.
Let's talk about them for a second.
OPEC.
Well, they love selling oil for as high a price per barrel as they can.
And we buy it because we need it.
We are a growing, expanding economy.
Oil is the fuel of the engine of capitalism and freedom and democracy.
We pay them for it.
Now, is it our fault that they use the money to build themselves three million square foot palaces, go out and buy fleets of 747s, fly off to the Bahamas or wherever to pretend that they're not Muslims, and don't do diddly squat for their own people?
Is it our fault?
We are spreading the wealth, gang.
We are enabling some of these dirt poor, otherwise third world countries to have roaringly wealthy societies themselves.
But how come it doesn't happen?
Is that our fault?
Is it our fault that your average Middle Easterner lives a third world life from the seventh century?
It's not that we're stealing anything.
We're using it.
If we weren't buying it, somebody would, Chicoms or whoever else.
I think people have this just distorted view, and it it is rooted in guilt.
A hundred percent rooted in guilt over our affluence.
Do you know I was talking about the things my grandfather saw as a human being from the time he was born till he died, the advancements in standards of living, lifestyles of the human condition were incomprehensible.
Do you realize the advances that we in America and thus shared with the world, made in the 20th century alone, outpaced the previous thousand years.
You could take all the human advancement from phones, electricity.
I'm just the basics here.
Phones, electricity, air f air travel, jet travel then, supersonic travel for a while, space flight, space exploration, satellites.
You know what they enable you to do in your ordinary everyday life?
You may not even know.
But I'm I'm telling you that the thousand years previous saw a smidgen of that kind of advancement in the human condition.
Medicine, health.
It's it's incomparable what happened.
And where did it start?
Right here.
United States of America.
Now I realize some of the Western European uh cultures had had great contributions, and I'm not diminishing them.
Art, dining, cooking, architecture.
I mean, I'm not really, I'm not putting this all down.
But they still haven't caught us with basic plumbing.
I hate to say it.
And if you ever tried to use one of their phone systems over there, it's still a pain in it.
You're better off taking a world cell phone, a GSM cell phone, than trying to use a hotel on the phone over there in Europe.
And try getting in a car over there that's larger than a lawnmower.
I'm sorry for I I but Rush, but Rush, petrol over there costs so much in the streets are so narrow.
Not our problem.
Just because we choose to build streets that are wider than a than a than a little Peugeot is not our fault.
I have no patience for these people who want to whine and moan about prosperity and claim it's a sin, or that we are somehow denying others.
The world is not a zero-sum game.
No economic model is a zero-sum game.
The left believes that if some in in in in a in the economic pie, if somebody takes a piece out of it, that the pie has thus gotten smaller.
Likewise, they believe if somebody gets fired, uh a job is lost.
If they believe uh if when taxes are cut, they think revenue depletes.
They do not understand that this is not a zero-sum game.
And you can look at the federal budget every year, and you can look at the gross domestic product of the country every year and understand that there are people fired every year and people taking big, big chunks out of the pie.
I mean, that the Forbes 400 now is all billionaires, and yet the GDP of the country keeps going, the middle class keeps expanding, wealth keeps expanding.
How's this possible if life is a zero-sum game?
This is why you cannot listen to the tripe and the gloom and doom and the apocalyptic predictions and the overall just flat-out miserable nature of liberal Democrats.
It'll destroy you.
It'll depress you, it'll make you make you wonder why you're getting up in the morning.
What's the point?
I mean, they're already asking themselves that, and don't join them.
Glenn in Green Bay, welcome to the EIV network.
Hello.
Hey, Rush, how are you?
Fine, sir.
Thank you.
Uh I wanted to call about the um the bankruptcy of Air America.
I read about that today, and uh was wondering what your thoughts on it were.
Uh just uh yet another uh attempt at the liberal radio uh failure.
Uh well, I'm sorry we discussed that uh quite extensively in the last hour, but all I can tell you is I'm I'm not.
It says here you wanted to talk about Democrats leaking fully new read story, what what is are you Glenn and Green Bay?
No, I'm not.
I'm Tom in Philadelphia.
That explains it.
Your time and so Grant Glenn and Green Bay hung up.
Uh and so you just you haven't even been screened.
You haven't even talked to the call screener, right?
Uh they just told me to hold on.
They told you to hold on.
All right, what's going on up there?
This this is a major breed.
It's not your fault.
It's not your fault, Glenn, and and uh what do I think of Air America?
I'm not surprised.
It was doomed to fail.
It was never a broadcasting enterprise, it never had legitimate broadcasters.
What?
What?
Uh uh I snurdly wants HR suspended because you think HR did far worse here than what you did by yelling at.
All right, well, how we'll deal with this here in just a second.
It's doomed to fail.
What you're your Tom from Philadelphia, is that what you said?
Hello.
Testing.
Now what?
Did he did he go away?
What's happening here?
This is, I mean, I know it's open line Friday.
All right, I'll finish it anyway.
It never had a chance.
They were not a broadcasting concern to begin with.
Their motivation was flawed.
They went into business to affect elections.
That's not why you go into radio.
You go into radio so you can amass the largest audience possible so as to charge confiscatory advertising rates to sponsors so that they get great success.
It's a business, it's a way to make a living.
The purpose here is not to affect the outcome of elections.
The purpose here is not to have one's future determined by who wins elections.
They had they were they never ever had a prayer.
It was a joke from the get go.
I could really launch on this, folks, if if I'm not careful.
Because I'll tell you what embarrasses me about this is the entire U.S. broadcast industry, even thinking that this was a legitimate enterprise in the first place and giving them the time of day.
The whole Air America experiment has been an insult to the entire broadcast industry as far as I'm concerned.
Uh it it it their existence, by virtue of their existence, has diminished the importance of everybody who takes this seriously, other than me, because I didn't care about them.
Uh and a lot of people were just obsessed and absorbed.
I couldn't have cared less, and I still don't.
And I wouldn't have brought it up if it weren't open line Friday, and you people were calling about it.
If this had happened yesterday, I wouldn't have still said a syllable about them.
I still got lots to do here, folks.
We've got to ram through a bunch of stuff.
New York Times.
Federal Reserve reports resiliency in economy.
Basically, uh, there are rising prices in slow consumer spending.
Not.
Gasoline prices are plummeting, consumer confidence is up.
And in fact, let's listen to this.
Consumers spent freely taking vacations and shopping for bank to screw items.
Wage growth described as generally modest.
Let me translate this for you.
Miserable people spent freely as wages rose.
That's what the New York Times means.
China drafts law to boost unions and end labor abuse.
Also make layoffs more difficult.
China planning to adopt a new law that seeks to crack down on sweatshops and protect workers' rights by giving labor unions real power for the first time since it introduced market forces in the 1980s.
It would apply to all companies in China, but its emphasis is on foreign owned companies.
It's about Walmart.
This is about Walmart, and let me tell you something.
This is we're exporting liberalism.
The ChaiCom's now going to get unionized.
And let me tell you what's going to happen because of that.
Their prices are going to go up over there, and it's going to become a bit of a challenge for the Chicons to maintain this low-wage market attractive to international manufacturers.
I said the other day, a question, I asked you a question.
Have we lost the will that we used to have?
The guy called and disagreed with me, but I said in the old days, attitudinally, when North Korea sets off a bomber does something, we wouldn't have put up with it.
Guy called, well, it's not really true, Rush.
We didn't have rampant uh, you know, unilateral military action, whatever.
That's true.
But here's a quote from John Kennedy, October 22nd, 1962, a Democrat, by the way.
It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Soviet Union.
The equivalent to this would be Kim Jong-il.
If you test a nuclear weapon, North Korea will thus become a parking lot.
That's what I meant, talking about the America of old.
Now I know these Russian missiles, Soviet missiles were 90 miles away, but uh we don't talk tough like this anymore.
And at some point uh we'll have the consequences to pay for it.
Food stamp program finally speaks their language, food stamps in four hours.
Illegals welcome.
It's a right and a privilege.
Yes, a Spanish language news report and television ad campaign have spurred thousands of immigrants in Orange County, California over the last several weeks to contact a nonprofit organization that offers a Spanish language class called Food Stamps in Four Hours.
We are teaching illegals how to join the food stamp program.
We're doing it in four hours.
Do you know why?
Because they're so scared they won't show up and ask for food stamps on their own.
And so we have to be humanitarian and we have to teach them how to do this.
Chris Wallace turns out a card-carrying Democrat.
He has been a registered Democrat for twenty years.
Wonder what Bill Clinton will uh do when he realizes that.
And let's see.
This is let me grab this call real quick.
Uh Matt in Grand Rapids, uh, Michigan.
Welcome, sir.
Nice to have you on the program.
Hey, Detroit Tiger Ditto's Rush.
Thank you, sir.
Uh Rush, I'm having some uh some difficulty here.
I've been thinking I had the day off today of work, and I'm thinking I can't come up with an environmentalist wacko pick for the Tiger Athlete uh athletics game tonight in Detroit.
It's real difficult.
I have a short list of um characteristics of each, but but then I get stuck.
You see, you you can't come up environment.
Well, we don't do a baseball environmental picks, but we'll do one in this case uh since the Tigers uh going for the sweep today in the American League Championship series.
You're having trouble coming up with the equivalent for the athletics.
Yeah, because because uh if you look at the Tigers and Athletics, they're both beautiful, they're both God's creation, they can both be considered.
No, no, no.
What wait a minute.
What is an athletic what no no?
You're talking about athletes.
What is an athlete Well, yeah, well, that's what is an athletic.
I don't know.
Well, well, obviously we're talking jock straps here.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah, absolutely right.
So if you're gonna do the environmental wacko pick, this is Tigers versus Jockstraps, and I'm sorry, there's no uh contest.
Take the Tigers, the points or whatever.
Uh who's next on this uh on this program?
Where are we going next?
We're going, I guess Rich up, Jim in Grand Junction, Colorado.
Welcome to the program.
Yes, good afternoon, sir.
It's a pleasure to talk.
Pleasure to talk with you.
Thank you, sir.
Uh, my wife and I are great fans, and uh, we call you Saint Rush around our house.
I appreciate that.
Thank you.
Uh my comment, I I thought it might be interesting.
In the last few days, you have talked more than twice about uh North Korea uh being black while uh uh dark while Yeah, be careful here.
Dark I caught that one.
Um Madonna is not going there to get her latest Hollywood accessory.
There you go.
Yep.
So uh anyway, with uh South Korea being uh having electricity and and uh having lights on and so forth, and and North Korea being being dark.
Uh one of the reasons that North Korea is dark is because in uh about mid of mid-September of 1952, a B-29 aircraft uh number 080 out of Yokota Air Force Base in Japan uh dropped a 2,000 pound semi-armor piercing bomb right down the powerhouse smokestack at the Saweho Hydroelectric Plant up on the Yalu River that provides all of the power for North Korea.
Let me guess, you're the pilot.
No, sir.
You're the bombardier.
The pilot was Captain Eugene Donley out of uh Seattle, Washington.
Co-pilot Vince Bergman.
I was the central fire control gunner on that airplane, and my job at that particular time uh in the mission was to look out the the uh uh porthole in the aft bomb bay and to call uh that the Bombay was clear when bombs were away, and then watch and call impact when the bombs uh in fact.
Okay, now I don't mean to be rude here, Jim, but I've got thirty seconds and I want to because I think I know where you're going.
Oh, I'm going is this just an interesting story.
That's it.
Are you but are you are you telling me that the bomb your B-29 dropped is responsible for the light still being out there today, or that you just I know not, but that that uh uh hydroelectric plant was like Boulder Dam.
It was a huge, it's just a gigantic hydroelectric plant.
And I have the strike photos.
I still haven't maintained the strike photos to this day.
That in an album that shows the bomb go right down the smokestack, and we also put uh two or three into the face of the dam.
Those bombs were semi-armor piercing programs.
I wish I wish I had more time here to convey to you the uh feelings I have hearing this story.
I got tingles the way you tell this.
I have to run because I'm simply out of time.
But um, gee, God bless you.
Thank you for calling.
Back here in just a second.
Hope you have a wonderful weekend, folks.
Um I always try to do that myself.
Whatever happens, we'll see you on Monday and be here on the cutting edge.
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