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Dec. 27, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:38
December 27, 2006, Wednesday, Hour #3
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Time Text
I'd like to spend some time at the beginning of the hour talking about the death of President Ford.
Ninety-three years old.
What an American life.
All American football player at Michigan.
Looked like he'd served virtually his entire adult life in the United States House of Representatives.
And then for with remarkable.
Number of coincidental events somehow became president of the United States.
Obituaries generally don't make for good talk radio.
They're not controversial.
There isn't anything that you can speak about with any real passion.
But it is important that we assess President Ford.
And I think he has to be evaluated differently from every other president because the way he became president was different than any other president.
He's the only person to ever serve who was never elected either president or vice president of the United States.
And he came in to office in one of the most tumultuous times in American history.
The 70s was a reaction to the 60s.
We were challenging all sorts of authority and the ultimate authority, the president of the United States had been run out of office.
Many Americans were bitter about that.
The debate was very strong at the time as to whether or not what President Nixon did merited removal from office.
Many Americans at the time felt strongly that Nixon was railroaded, that other presidents had done things just as bad or worse.
On the other hand, the case was made overwhelmingly that Nixon had broken the law, that he had abused the presidency.
We went through this two-year fight that consumed the nation.
The whole Watergate scandal, you had the two sets of hearings, you had the Irvin hearings in 1973, you had the impeachment hearings in 1974.
These things were televised on national television, entire hearings, day after day after day after day, and people actually watched them.
And the whole time the question was, will Nixon survive?
Will Nixon make it?
Nixon himself was such a compelling and polarizing figure, so open to caricature, who provoked such strong emotions.
Then you have the whole Vietnam thing, the after effects of Vietnam, a war that Nixon got us out of in a very controversial fashion, and he leaves.
And we're just left with this thud.
Okay, Nixon's gone.
Now what?
Here's this guy that nobody ever voted for, and he's the president of the United States.
This came about because not only was Nixon forced to resign, a year or so earlier, his vice president Agnew was forced out of office as a result of corruption charges dating back to when he was governor of Maryland.
So Nixon filled the vice presidency with Jerry Ford, who was the ranking Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives, and he became the president.
When you accept that office, coming in in that fashion without the legitimization that's granted by winning election from the public.
it's an almost impossible position to assume.
Expectations were very low.
I don't think you can go back and say that Ford was a great president.
I don't think he can point to this long list of accomplishments.
I don't think you can say that Ford has this tremendous legacy about this and that all occurred because Ford had been the president.
But that's viewing Ford wrongly.
You have to take a look at the circumstances that Ford inherited.
He held the country together.
He came in and the first thing he did was establish credibility that he was someone who could lead the nation.
He was a calming influence both for the American people and for the world.
The two or three things that he's remembered for can be debated forever.
He pardoned President Nixon for the crimes he may have committed While president.
That'll be the act that Ford is most remembered for.
You can go on and on as to whether or not Nixon should have faced criminal prosecution or not.
Did Gerald Ford decide that Richard Nixon was above the law?
But I think in the end that debate was pointless.
Because the fact of the matter is that Nixon's presidency was over, and we needed as a nation to move on.
Was the best way to move on to have Nixon face criminal charges, or was the next best way to move on to just shove it all aside with a pardon.
To this day I'm not sure that I know.
What we do know is that President Ford strongly believed that what he was doing was the right thing.
And the pardon didn't ignore any of Nixon's wrongs.
It merely said that for the good of the nation, we had to move forward.
Contrast that with the remarkably defensive reaction of Democrats to Bill Clinton scandal after Bill Clinton was impeached.
They refused to allow him to be removed from office.
They never abandoned him, and they were determined to fight that thing to the bitter end.
But that was a different era.
What else was Ford remembered for?
What many people do not remember was that he was twice the target of assassination attempts.
Only a couple of months apart, as I recall.
In both cases, women gunmen trying to kill him.
Those were the times in the 70s were nuts.
We were a nation that was in the middle of radical change.
Twice the President of the United States was targeted for assassination.
The economy was all screwed up, and Ford's reaction to it was weird.
Remember the win button?
We had a lot of inflation then.
Ford tried to rally the country to fight inflation, and he came up with this slogan, whip inflation now, win, and he wanted us all to wear these buttons.
Nobody ever had a win button.
He didn't really handle the Soviet Union.
He didn't know how to handle the Soviet Union.
He was not a visionary like Reagan, who knew that the Soviet Union could collapse.
He didn't know how to deal with the emergence of China.
He wasn't someone who had this broad overall vision for the United States.
He held it all together.
He did set the stage for Carter and the disastrous presidency of Jimmy Carter.
The American public wanted to change parties.
Ford didn't do anything to establish that he was the guy that should be in the job for the long haul.
We did get Carter.
It was one of the negative ramifications of Ford's presidency.
So even in evaluating Ford today, you tend to look at him as the guy that came after Nixon and had to deal with the mess left by Nixon and was also the guy that paved the way for Carter and the mess that was created by Carter.
One other comment, though, that I'd have about President Ford.
He is the longest living person ever to serve as President of the United States.
He was the ex-president of this country for 30 years.
He left office in January of 1977, almost exactly 30 years, to the point of his death.
And he handled that position, and it is a position, the ex-presidency, with remarkable grace, dignity.
He was always someone who you could tell was honored by the fact that he was the president of the United States.
He did not attempt to use that platform to influence current events because he realizes, he realized that that wasn't the role for the ex-president.
He didn't run around all over the world ripping America like Jimmy Carter.
He didn't go hang out with every despot.
He didn't meddle in North Korea.
He didn't try to negotiate deals that were not in the American interest.
He didn't try to pretend that he still was somebody.
He knew that that wasn't his place.
He was someone who felt honored by the position that he held, And he was someone who, through his very life after he left office, gave honor to the institution of the presidency.
And for that we are all in his debt.
1 800 282882 is the telephone number on Russia's program.
Let's go to the phones now in Reading, Pennsylvania.
Michael, it's your turn on EIB.
Go ahead, Michael.
Hi.
Um, you're overlooking that he put Stevens on the Supreme Court.
Yes, he did.
And he he was on the Warren Commission and he was appointed president.
Well, he was appointed president he had to be appointed president.
You know, he didn't.
Well, there was no other way to choose a president.
Spiro Agnew had left office.
The vice presidency was vacant.
Nixon had to appoint someone, so he appointed Ford to be his vice president.
It's what the Constitution called for.
You mentioned the fact that he put John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court, who is there to this day, and that's obviously part of Ford's legacy.
There are a lot of things that are there.
Stevens has been a nightmare for everything that I believe in.
I'm not ignoring that.
What I am saying is that given what Gerald Ford was handed, which was one of the most impossible, you know, hard hands that you could get as president, given what he was handed.
He performed admirably.
Do I think he was a great president?
No.
Do I think that he was somebody who advanced conservative causes?
No.
Do I think that he is somebody who slowed down the growth of the welfare state?
No.
Do I think he is someone who handled foreign affairs very well?
No, I don't believe any of those things, but I don't think that we can under we can overstate how important it was for someone to hold the country together at that point in time.
He was not a tremendous visionary.
He was not someone who had an expansive view of the presidency.
He is someone who kept the United States of America together at a time that we were being torn apart as to how he assumed the presidency.
Someone had to get the job.
Nixon chose Ford to be his vice president, and he could have done a lot worse.
My name is Mark Belling, and I'm sitting in for Rush.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
The last caller was correct.
Maybe the thing that is Gerald Ford's longest lasting legacy in terms of policy was the appointment of John Paul Stevens to the United States Supreme Court, and he's still there.
That may well be it.
I want to turn my attention to a story that I think in an odd way is related.
USA Today yesterday ran an editorial criticizing Laura Bush for concealing the fact that she was treated for skin cancer.
I'm going to share with you the editorial and you can decide whether or not they're correct.
The headline is First Lady's Missed Chance.
They write, would you tell your friends about your medical condition via cancer, heart disease, or something else?
If you thought it might help them to avoid the same thing.
Such person-to-person communication is one of the most effective ways to spread potentially life-saving knowledge.
Now let's rephrase the question.
What if you could warn the entire nation at once?
The answer seems obvious, but it wasn't for First Lady Laura Bush, who decided to keep her skin cancer secret until reporters started asking about a bandage on her leg.
The White House then disclosed that she had a squamous cell skin cancer removed shortly after the November elections.
Spokesman Tony Snow bristled at questions about why Mrs. Bush hadn't disclosed the condition, insisting that the cancer was no big deal, and that she's a private citizen with no requirement to disclose, and that other first family members had similarly declined to reveal medical conditions over the years.
It's true that Mrs. Bush's condition, squamous cell carcinoma, like basal cell carcinoma, a similar looking form of skin cancer, is relatively easy to spot and treat.
The first lady had a nickel-sized sore on her leg that wouldn't heal.
Neither is it as serious as melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer.
Even so, squamous cell can be fatal in a tiny percentage of cases if left untreated.
It kills up to 2,500 people a year, according to the Skin Cancer Foundation.
More than one million Americans are diagnosed with some form of skin cancer every year, and nearly 11,000 die.
The first lady could have reminded everyone watch your son exposure, check your skin, and have a doctor look at anything suspicious.
Prominent people, particularly White House occupants, have an extraordinary bully pulpit for spreading public health messages.
Bill Clinton's disclosure of his heart bypass surgery after he had left office prompted thousands of men to get needed checkups.
And other first ladies have not been nearly so shy about using their stature to promote health.
Nancy Reagan, Betty Ford, and Rosalind Carter all disclose their breast cancer or preventive surgery while in the White House.
Laura Bush is not subject to the same disclosure imperatives as her husband is, but she hardly leads a private life.
She has a staff of about twenty, paid for by tax dollars, travels the world at public expense, and courts the news media for her own projects.
She had an obligation to disclose her condition.
Excuse me, she had no obligation to disclose her condition, but she missed an opportunity to educate.
Now I bring this up because I think they're wrong.
What obligation did she have?
Have we become such a tell all society that every time somebody has a skin wart, they've got to go public with it?
First of all, who doesn't know about the risk factors for skin cancer?
If you don't know that you're not supposed to get a lot of exposure to the sun, if you don't know that you're supposed to be concerned if you see a sore that doesn't heal, you've been nowhere.
This is a cheap shot at her.
Laura Bush has handled her position with tremendous class and dignity.
She chose not to make a big deal about something that she didn't feel was a big deal.
The word cancer is so frightening to all of us because it is such a terrible disease.
But the form of skin cancer that she had is almost always never serious.
It was successfully treated and it's over.
Does every president's life have to be such an open book that we now have the right to know the most intimate tales of members of their family?
I remember when I believe it was President Reagan was treated for colon cancer.
I mean, they had diagrams of his colon on page one of the newspaper.
Was there an educational benefit from that?
Perhaps.
But was there an imperative that it be shared?
I don't know.
With regard to the first lady, if she made the personal decision that she didn't want this minor medical condition to be a public spectacle, it's something that we ought to respect.
And as for this argument that she had an obligation to educate people about it, is it the role of the first lady to be fodder for Jane Brody and every other health columnist that's out there?
I want to find out whether or not people agree with me on this because I'm not sure.
Do you guys agree or not?
Do you think she should have disclosed or not?
It would have found out.
I don't I don't believe she did anything wrong, and I don't believe she had any obligation.
Agree or disagree.
1-800-282-2882 is the telephone number at EIB.
Am I right?
Or is USA Today right?
Did First Lady Laura Bush do the right thing in keeping this information private?
Or did she do the wrong thing?
We live lives that are so public now with the internet, with cell phone cameras, with nine zillion media.
If people want to keep some things personal, they ought to have that right, particularly when they are not the elected official themselves.
Let's go to Palm Coast, Florida.
Kevin, it's your turn on EIB.
Hello, thanks for having me on.
Um, what I was saying just a moment ago is that this is it's more than just a cheap shot, and they are taking cheap shots because she's an extraordinary lady.
She uh she holds herself with dignity.
She spends a tremendous amount of time educating the public.
But what they're trying to do, the media, is that they're trying to control her, they're trying to almost punish her for not interacting with them or their way.
Yeah, they're acting like they're acting like the friend whose feelings are hurt because the information wasn't shared.
There is obvious she clearly thought about this.
She could have held a press conference that could have disclosed the entire thing.
She didn't feel comfortable with that kind of examination of her personal life, particularly, you know, when they talk about, well, what about the first ladies who had breast cancer?
That was a far more serious medical condition that had far more grave implications than something like this.
She felt it was something minor, and I think you're right.
I think that this editorial is an opportunity to take a free one, to take a cheap shot.
They come up with this high-minded stuff.
Well, people might have learned, people might have thought to check themselves, it would raise public awareness.
I don't buy any of that.
Everyone knows about this particular condition.
It's a way of taking a cheap shot at a person who has handled her position with a sense of dignity and she didn't want to compromise it.
My name is Mark Belling, and I'm in for Rush.
Who does the show tomorrow?
I do the show tomorrow.
For those of you who don't like this, there's no relief inside.
What about Friday?
Dr. Walter Williams will be here Friday.
When does Rush return?
Anytime soon?
He will be back for the new year, 2007.
1-800-282-2882 is the telephone number to, I hope I'm pronouncing this right, Penrin, California, Cliff, you're on uh EIB.
Hi, Mark.
Thanks for taking my call.
Yeah, I I just wanted to say I I in a way disagree.
I think that she not necessarily had an obligation to tell people, um, but she could use she had a great opportunity to educate people about how serious skin cancers really are.
And the fact that there are so many the the most of the deaths that are due to skin cancer are actually due to the fact that they're not caught in time because people are really ignorant of how serious these things are.
But in her case, it wasn't serious.
Well, that's hard to say without seeing in something else when they're reporting.
In her case, it wasn't serious.
They caught it early and it was treated.
She felt it was no big deal.
She went in for a quick little procedure.
It wasn't a major surgery.
And they put a bandage on her leg.
The idea that we are going to play place a demand like this on Laura Bush is, I think, just an indication of how voyeuristic our society has gotten to be.
And it wasn't going to save any lives.
No one said that.
Yes, I can say that.
When they're removed, always gone forever.
They can recur.
Any dermatologist will tell you that.
They can recur.
Hers may recur in the future.
They can never guarantee.
What does that have to do?
What does that have to do with her holding a press conference and now having to go out and speak and take this on as her great cause?
She doesn't want to.
She's someone who has used her role as first lady to promote the causes that she cares about.
She had a condition that's going on with her body that she felt was private.
I don't know that we've got to dig into absolutely every detail of their lives.
Well, I said it wasn't necessarily her obligation, but she has an excellent opportunity to tell people how serious these things are.
And most skin cancer, the sun damage that results in skin cancer typically occurs before your 18th birthday.
And you see kids all the time out there being overexposed to the middle, very little is not a good idea.
What if she gets naughty if she gets nauseous for two weeks?
Is she supposed to hold a press conference and announce that?
No, it doesn't.
And this can and this condition that she has of your body.
And this condition that she had didn't lead to death either, and no normally normally does not.
You can say it can for anything.
What I'm trying to do is stand up on behalf of a woman who went who went through something that and she handled it in the best way that she felt appropriate.
Thank you for the call.
Let's go to San Diego and Ruth.
Ruth, it's your turn on EIB.
Why should Laura Bill t Bush tell all?
Clinton still hasn't revealed his health papers.
That's a very good.
That's a very good point.
When Bill Clinton ran for office, he didn't do what every candidate does and reveal his medical records.
No one knows why.
A lot of people have suspected why.
I agree with you.
There is an enormous distinction.
The health of the president and the health of candidates for president is a real issue because you're talking about whether or not somebody is going to be able to serve handle the duties of the presidency and serve out their term.
McCain has had a form of skin cancer.
That will be a legitimate area of inquiry as to whether or not he is somebody who is in sufficiently good health to serve as president.
The same thing with Rudy Giuliani, who had prostate cancer.
They are running for president.
Laura Bush is the wife.
Furthermore, it's something that was dealt with in a competent fashion, and she felt as though it was behind her.
But you're right, the people who are making these demands would never have suggested that Bill Clinton was covering anything up.
For all we know, the part of Bill Clinton's medical records he didn't want anybody to know about could have educated people about God knows whatever it is that he didn't want anybody to know that he had.
He had heart problems after he left office.
Well, and their point is that he...
Their point is is that he shared all of that information.
He liked to share stuff like that.
Thank you, Ruth, to Shreveport, Louisiana, and Kathy.
Kathy, it's your turn on Russia's program.
Hi.
Um talking about Laura, um, I would like to talk about Hillary and her obligation to speak out about sexually transmitted diseases and unprotected sex and sexual predators.
I mean, now that's a woman who could really give us information.
Kathy, what a great cheap shot.
You have turned a cheap shot on Laura Bush around to I mean, I don't know that it's possible to cheap shot Bill Clinton.
It seems to me that almost any shot you take at Clinton is probably fair game, but that is coming close to a cheap shot.
You know, we ought to as long as we're looking for all of this full disclosure, let's get oneita Broadwick in and have her talk about uh how one overcomes having been sexually assaulted by someone who goes on to be president of the United States.
You are right that these standards seem to shift, don't they?
Absolutely.
Thank you, Kathy.
To uh Richmond, Virginia, and Karen.
Karen, it's your turn on EIB.
Hi, Mark.
It's a pleasure to talk to you.
I love it when you fill in for Rush.
Thank you.
Um concerning Laura Bush, uh my first thought on this is if she was really trying to conceal this from the public, she would have worn flat.
That's correct.
And secondly, um, had the press been a little more polite and inquired, she might have been a little more open.
Uh, at least said, oh, it's just minor surgery, and you know what I mean?
Well, I always put myself in the other person's shoes.
If this were me, now obviously where I do my show in Wisconsin, I'm a very public person.
Everybody knows who I am.
If I had something like this, would I share it?
And I probably wouldn't have if it were more serious, where it was life-threatening, I probably would share it.
I don't think I'd want it I want everybody to want people to overreact to something that didn't seem serious.
And my guess is this is how Laura Bush viewed it.
The word cancer has such a connotation.
It's a terrifying word.
It's one of the most terrifying words that we have.
She feared that if the word cancer was associated with her, it would become an enormous deal.
Screaming page one headlines.
First lady has cancer, and she didn't feel as though it merited that, because the form of cancer that she has is extremely treatable.
It may be the least serious and least deadly cancer that exists.
They caught it, they patched it up, and she didn't want this to become an enormous news story.
As for this notion that you can do all this good by educating, you're presuming that the media coverage would have been educational.
You for for the way they're reacting here, they probably would have hyped the condition to the point that it would not have added to anyone's understanding of what she had, but actually distorted things by creating the notion that this was a more serious problem that that it in fact really was.
I think that this editorial has a hidden agenda here, and this is all about the Bushes themselves and open season on the bushes rather than anything substantive.
Furthermore, now that everyone knows that this is what Laura Bush has, what's Stopping the media from providing this wonderful educational service now.
They can run all the stories they want about squama cell carcinoma.
They can do all the educating that they want to do because they found out.
So to put this all on Laura Bush is ignoring the fact that they can still report on this particular disease and condition if they want to.
What's stopping them?
Why do they need Laura Bush in order to educate the American people with regard to this?
I mean, we're becoming a society in which we want everybody to be Katie Cork, who handled a tragedy in her own personal life in a very public way.
There's nothing wrong with that.
You can help people by doing it.
Close friend of mine died of cancer, and he was very public in sharing all of that information.
It was a wonderful benefit of what happened to him.
On the other hand, there's no requirement or obligation or expectation that everyone handle things that way.
It's the most personal of decisions, and to take a shot at this in an editorial in one of the most widely read newspapers in America is just cheap, and I think it ought to be responded to.
And someone ought to stand up on behalf of Laura Bush and say that the way that she handled this was just fine.
And I'm glad I was able to do it.
Thank you for the call.
My name is Mark Belling, and I'm sitting in for Rush.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush.
You know, not to belabor this point, but the same crowd that was telling us all of Bill Clinton's dubiously legal behavior was private and doesn't matter, and we don't care what he's doing in his private life.
They're the ones who are now suggesting that Laura Bush's medical condition, which has nothing to do with any sort of inappropriate behavior, is something that ought to be public, and there's an expectation that she give full disclosure.
Can you imagine the things we would have learned if we demanded that Bill Clinton be open about all of the things in his personal life?
God forbid what we would have learned.
To Blairstown, New Jersey, and Walter.
Walter, it's your turn on Russia's program.
Hey Mark, how are you?
I'm great, thanks.
Listen, Senator Tim Johnson had brain surgery recently, and we really don't know what's uh what's going on with him health wise, and that has serious implications for the way the country is veteran.
And I'm just wondering why USA today isn't clamoring for more information about that.
outstanding point.
There has been an almost blackout of the condition of Senator Johnson.
There's been very little that's come from the family.
You've heard a couple of Democratic senators say we think that he's going to be okay.
This is a serious condition and one that has real policy implications.
The fact of the matter is that if he cannot continue in the Senate because of his health condition, the Republicans would regain have the have the potential of regaining control of the United States Senate.
Yet we don't see any demand to know about the extent of Senator Johnson's brain surgery.
Where is the media using this as an opportunity to educate the public about the condition that Senator Johnson had?
Very, very selective.
Yet in the case of Senator Johnson, there are real policy implications with regard to that.
I think you're dead on right, and I'd love to have the USA Today editors explain why they haven't pursued that medical story.
Don't hold your breath.
No, I won't.
Thank you for the call.
Chandler Arizona, Brian, it's your turn on EIB.
Yeah, hi.
Um my comment about uh Laura Bush's uh non-disclosure to the press was given the venom that the uh the uh press has poured on her, or at least her family and her daughters and everything, you know, her thinking might have been well, the press would have treated it like, oh, she's just trying to, you know, use a not so serious condition just to garner sympathy for her husband, or they would have blamed it on up seat global warming and her husband won't do anything about it, so it's all his fault.
Well, you know, the condition that she had, they said it was treated right after the November election.
I'm presuming that means she may have noticed it right before the November election.
If they had come out with a statement right around election time about this condition, yeah, I'm willing to bet that the libs would be suggesting that this was a bid for sympathy.
Why are they talking about it now?
This is an attempt to humanize them.
All of those allegations would have been made.
Either way she handled this.
I think she would have been cheap shot it.
If she had talked about it, they'd be suggesting that she's trying to make a big deal out of something that's normal.
There has been an animosity toward the Bush family from the media and from a lot of Democrats that's been going on forever and they look at every single opportunity to kick at him.
And I think that's what's happening here.
Thank you for the call.
Interesting story in today's Wall Street Journal.
No, I'm America's only moderate on the issue of immigration.
I'm not one of the hardliners who thinks we ought to round up every illegal and throw them out of the country.
I'm also not somebody who thinks that everybody ought to stay and get an amnesty and be patted on the head and told that they're okay.
I do believe that we have to control our borders.
I think that if we're going to have immigration laws, we've got to enforce them, but I think it's impractical to do too to do much about the people who are already here.
But my biggest hangup is the fact that the people who follow the rules, as opposed to the millions who come in illegally, are harassed and face the full weight of the worst parts of the American bureaucracy.
The story in the Wall Street Journal deals with a family who moved to the United States from Brazil.
The father, whose name is Zondro Souza, operates a major restaurant in Martha's Vineyard, which is in Massachusetts.
He and his wife are both working.
They came here legally with regular work visas.
The immigration officials are telling them that there would be no problem in extending their visas and allow them to go on the path toward legal citizenship.
But they are raising questions about whether or not they can extend the stay of their child.
And the reason they cite are reasons that only a bureaucrat could love.
The Sousa's 11-year-old son, his name is Igor, is blind, and he has a lot of other issues that he's described as developmentally disabled.
The Sousa family has been told by immigration officials that they fear that the child could be a drain on the resources of the American taxpayer, obviously has no chance of working or living a productive life.
So they want the whole family to leave and they're facing deportation.
Here's a guy who came to the country legally.
He and his wife operate a successful business, they're employing people, they're paying taxes.
They have a child with all sorts of issues.
And the same government that blindly allows millions of people to come in illegally and then stay for as long as they want and tap into every resource that we have.
They want to throw this family out.
That's my problem on the immigration issue.
We don't make any sense at all.
We take the hardest line possible on people who deserve compassion, who in fact add to the United States, the people who follow the rules, but those who don't follow the rules are given a total pass.
Without regard to where you stand on immigration, we ought to be able to make decisions with regard to the people that are here with a little bit of common sense.
Illegals that come into this country and break the law ought to be a higher priority of this government than figuring out a way to throw out of the country an 11-year-old child just because he's blind.
My name is Mark Belling and I'm in for Rush.
Mark Belling in for Rush Limbaugh.
One other comment about the uh family from Massachusetts facing deportation.
Massachusetts, they're they're represented in the United States Senate by Kerry and Teddy Kennedy.
You know, maybe if they weren't those two weren't so obsessed with criticizing every action of President Bush and they spent a little bit of time doing some constituent service, they could draw attention to this case and actually help out a resident of Massachusetts and maybe, you know, be a senator rather than someone who's constantly criticizing and obsessing over Bush.
Uh talked earlier in the program about the legacy of President Ford.
His wife Betty survives, unlike Laura Bush, who was very private about her medical condition.
Betty Ford, very public about her own issues with regard to addiction, and she did perform an enormous service.
And while it may seem shallow, it's sincere in speaking on behalf of this program that we want to send condolences to the entire Ford family.
And one other story.
Tony Blair was on board a flight, a British Airwise flight, that overshot the runway at Miami International Airport last night.
He's fine, everyone's fine.
But he was riding in first class on the plane and it went over the runway and apparently got stuck in the mud.
Now I know they're a different country than us, but they got a queen in palaces and all that stuff, and the and their leader doesn't have his own plane.
He's flying commercial like the rest of us.
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