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Feb. 13, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:22
February 13, 2007, Tuesday, Hour #3
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And greetings once again, music lovers, thrill seekers, and conversationalists, all across the fruited plain, this, the number one most listened to radio talk show in America, the Rush Limbaugh Program.
I am your host, a highly trained broadcast specialist, meeting and surpassing all audience expectations on a daily basis.
Telephone number, if you want to be on the program today, 800-282-2882.
And the email address is rush at EIBnet.com.
Still suffering the ravages of the common cold virus.
The ravages of that virus have been tempered considerably by the Zycam swabs.
This is as bad a chest cold as I have ever had.
You know, the kind of congestion in there that when you cough, it feels like you're just being stabbed with a knife.
And this stuff started loosening up even Sunday night when it was in the progress of worsening, process of worsening.
Now I've got to go through this whole week-long process of blowing the nose and the congestion and all that sort of stuff.
So I apologize.
There will occasionally be hacking coughs that I will not be able to mute and other things.
So please bear with me.
I decided what would be better, to stay home and not subject you to this or to show up as a professional and do the program while not 100%.
And I figured that obviously the latter would be the best course of action.
Now, let me explain my Obama comments.
I know Obama said the troops' lives are wasted.
I know he made his presidential announcement.
I know he spoke in platitudes.
But the best way for me to describe this is it's something I think Karl Roe said.
This whole process has begun so soon.
All these candidates are going to end up as caricatures before all this is done with and over with.
And I have a much greater concern, frankly, than Obama or Hillary or whoever else at this point in time, at this stage of the game.
And I alluded to this in the first hour of the program.
And it is this.
There's a big move underway to redefine conservatism in a way that fits the candidacy of one or other of the Republican candidates.
What's happening here is they're conflating electability with a serious discussion of conservatism.
And most of it's coming from the New York and Washington, D.C. conservative elite.
And none of these candidates is a down-the-wall, down-the-list conservative.
And the supporters of these candidates are trying, well, that's okay.
Conservatism bends and shapes.
Conservatism has to ebb and flow because there is no Reagan, of course.
I don't know why you can back a candidate without pretending they're true conservatives, but trying to say your guy's a true conservative is what offends me and what bothers me because we start watering down and redefining conservatism, then it doesn't matter who the Democrats nominate.
You know, it's we made this mistake with Bush.
A lot of us did, attempted to define him as a conservative when he wasn't a conservative.
He was conservative on some issues, but he was not a conservative.
And the same mistake is in the process of being made now.
You know, we will never get to where we need to be with situational politics.
If we're going to take a candidate that we like and say, this guy is the best we can do conservative-wise, we're never going to advance conservatism this way.
Maybe advancing the Republican Party, although I don't think that's going to be the case either.
We even back these people without saying they are conservatives or redefining conservatism.
Left never redefines liberalism.
Do they talk about their leaders as unique?
Do they talk about FDR as a once-in-a-lifetime liberal?
No.
There are no once-in-a-lifetime liberals.
They never smash their icons or try to diminish their icons.
They don't try to take their great libs of the past and say that there was only one of them, which is what the mistake some conservatives are making here, that there was only one Reagan and there can never be another one.
And it's this attitude that leads to a perpetual attitude of secondary status.
And that concerns me far more than what Obama happens to be saying, because frankly, what Obama is saying is predictable.
Obama's no more qualified to be president than any of you people are.
He's been in the Senate a year and a half, a year, whatever, two years.
Illinois legislature before that.
Look at some of the things this guy has supported and voted on and then compare it to his words.
And he's a full-fledged, 100% Class A liberal.
And they're trying to mask this.
See, what the libs do with liberals is they try to camouflage and mask them so that you won't know who they are, present them as something other than that.
But they don't redefine what liberalism is in the process.
Because once these libs get elected, it's pedal to the metal liberalism.
But since so many of you are interested in Obama, let's start.
I've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
I was given 11 Obama bites today.
So let's get rolling.
Let's start with Saturday in Chicago, a portion of Senator Barack Obama's announcing his candidacy for president.
That is why, in the shadow of the old state capitol, where Lincoln once called on a house divided to stand together, where common hopes and common dreams still live, I stand before you today to announce my candidacy for president of the United States of America.
Yip, yip, yip, yip, yahoo.
So what do we have here in the shadow of the old state capitol, where Lincoln once called on a house divided to stand together, where common hopes and common dreams.
Does he realize quoting Lincoln is not going to really help with the Jesse Jackson crowd?
Well, let's move on.
We don't have a whole lot of time for this.
Here is a montage of some of his remarks during his candidacy announcement.
And I just, again, we're being told this guy is brand new.
He's unique.
Fresh.
Well, we haven't heard this before.
This is something historic.
Tell me what's new here.
Let's recruit a new army of teachers and give them better pay.
Let's make college more affordable.
Let's invest in scientific research.
Let's lay down broadband lines through the heart of inner cities.
Let's make it possible for hardworking Americans to save for retirement.
Let's allow our unions and their organizers to lift up this country's middle class again.
Let's be the generation that ends poverty in America.
Every single person willing to work should be able to get job training that leads to a job and earn a living wage.
Let's be the generation that says right here, right now, we will have universal health care in America by the end of the next president's first term.
Yay!
Yay!
I'm all for it.
Goody goody gumdrops.
Okay, want to go through this?
Let's go through this.
Let's recruit a new army of teachers and give them better pay.
That's really new.
Let's make college more affordable.
Yeah, well, you mean like the Senate is going to do here by making more of the tuition deductible?
It's just going to allow your college professor buddies, Barack, to raise tuition.
You know what this little game is all about.
College more affordable.
Let's make government's going to do all this.
Government's going to demand all this happen.
Libs have been trying to fix all this stuff for all these years, and all they've done is made it all worse.
Let's invest in scientific research.
What are we investing in now?
Let's invest in science.
You guys are trying to shut down as much scientific research as you can when it's made by big drug.
Let's lay down broadband lines to the hearts of inner cities.
My gosh, this goes back to let's build phone lines out in the sticks so that farmers back in the 30s and 40s can get telephones, and we're still paying the tax on that.
And then Al Gore had his same proposal: let's make sure every school's wired for the internet.
And I thought he and Clinton did that.
We saw him actually pounding the nails.
Now we have to get broadband into the hearts of our inner cities.
Nothing about the kidneys of our inner cities or the testicles of our inner cities, but the hearts of our inner cities.
Let's make it possible for hardworking Americans to save for retirement.
Then they're done that's called the 401k, Kiel Plan, Barack.
People have already done this.
Allow our unions and their organizers to lift up this country's middle class.
Barack, middle class is thriving.
Union membership down to like 7 or 9%.
What is it?
7% non-governmental union memberships plummeting.
They don't define the middle class anymore.
Let's be the generation that ends poverty.
I mean, there's nothing new here, folks.
There's nothing going, wow, we yet had it.
And then there's one more before we go to the break.
This is Sunday in Ames, Iowa, Iowa State University.
Barack Obama talking about the war in Iraq.
Should have never been waged and to which we now have spent $400 billion and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted.
Now, Barack is out saying, you know, they really mean that because there's no such thing as wasted lives and so forth.
And he's typical.
I think there's a, there's a, I don't know if this was invented on Oprah or whatever.
Well, that's not really who I am.
I, I, that's not, that's not what I really think.
Well, you said it, and you probably meant it in politics when the gaffes probably represent truth.
And you got to go out and massage the truth.
He's on 60 Minutes Sunday night.
Steve Croft said, your mother was white, your father was African, you're raised in a white household, yet at some point you decided you were black.
I'm not sure I decided it.
I think, you know, if you look African-American in this society, you're treated as an African-American.
And when you're a child in particular, that is how you begin to identify yourself.
So what do we conclude here that he didn't define himself as black, that the way he looks does.
Okay, this we got more.
We've got Obama's wife in there.
We've got John Howard from Australia coming up, but I'm not sure I decided it.
Well, if you didn't decide it, then how did it happen?
Well, just when you look like that, that's what you are.
Well, renounce it then.
If it's not something you want to be, if you didn't decide it, renounce it.
Become white.
Just say so.
Okay, back to our Barack Obama audio soundbite marathon.
What are we up to now?
Let's see.
Oh, yeah.
Obama just said he wasn't sure that he decided he was black.
That if you look African American in this society, you're treated as an African-American.
And when you're a child in particular, that's how you begin to identify yourself.
If you don't like it, you can switch.
Well, I mean, that's the way I see it.
It's got 50-50 in there because, no, I'm white.
Obama's wife got in the act 60 minutes last.
What's her name, Michelle?
And Croft says to her, Michelle, this is a tough question to ask, but a number of years ago, Colin Powell was thinking about running for president.
His wife, Alma, really didn't want him to run.
She was worried about some crazy person with a gun.
Is that something that you think about?
I don't lose sleep over it because the realities are that, you know, as a black man, you know, Barack can get shot going to the gas station.
You know, so you, you know, you can't, you know, you can't make decisions based on fear and the possibility of what might happen.
We just weren't raised that way.
And moving on now to Saturday and Ames.
Actually, we're going backwards in time now.
That was Sunday night.
This is Ames, Iowa, in his speech before thousands at Iowa State.
And he gets heckled here.
Energy.
We know.
All right, guys.
Hey, guys, come on, man.
You know, you made your point.
No, We don't want to get murdered.
We're all in the same place.
All I'm asking is just the courtesy to let me finish until we start addressing your point.
That's all I'm asking for.
What were they shouting?
Could you tell what they were saying?
It's a bunch of energy protesters there just out of Iraq now, runs with our anti-war guys.
All right.
Well, Barack will address their concerns after he makes his point.
We're not going to hang around long enough to hear that.
John Howard, the Prime Minister of Australia of Australia, on Saturday said this about Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama.
He's a long way from being president of the United States.
I think he's wrong.
I think that would just encourage those who wanted completely to stabilize and destroy Iraq and create chaos in a victory for the terrorists to hang on and hope for an Obama victory.
I mean, if I were running al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and pray as many times as possible for a victory not only for Obama, but also for the Democrats.
Well, this didn't sit well with Barack.
Didn't sit well with Obama.
Yesterday, Chicago, at a press conference, he was asked about what John Howard said, and this is what Obama said in response.
I think it's flattering that one of George Bush's allies on the other side of the world started attacking me a day after I announced.
I take that as a compliment.
So if he's ginned up to fight the good fight in Iraq, I would suggest that he calls up another 20,000 Australians and sends them to Iraq.
Wait a second.
No, that doesn't.
I know it sounds like a pretty good put-down to some people, but it doesn't jibe intellectually.
Because Obama wants to pull out of there forthwith.
Unilateral withdrawal now.
Probably a little shocked by this comment from John Howard.
Now we've got two more of these, and this is just not going to matter to anybody.
We're just going to get it out there on the record in case you haven't heard it.
Obama on Meet the Press, January 22nd, 2006.
I will serve out my full six-year term.
So you will not run for president or vice president in 2008.
I will not.
I will not run.
Telling you, folks, there is more of this couple in candidacy that reminds me of the Clintons than I can begin to tell you.
Here's Obama two years ago, this at a press conference, saying he didn't have the experience to run for president.
I am a believer in knowing what you're doing when you apply for a job.
And I think that if I were to seriously consider running on a national ticket, I would essentially have to start now before having served a day in the Senate.
Now, there are some people who might be comfortable doing that, but I'm not one of those people.
It says November 8th, 2004.
Said he wasn't running, didn't have the experience.
But of course, none of that matters now.
And this is not going to matter to anybody.
Because that was then and this is now.
And I'm telling you, the similarities here between the Obama's and the Clintons is stunning in more ways than one.
Obama also said on, let's say, February 11th, I guess it would be Sunday in Iowa Falls, Iowa.
This is really mystifying to me.
Barack Obama said Sunday name recognition would be his toughest challenge in the 2008 presidential campaign.
Really?
Name recognition?
Who in the world is not going to forget or remember Barack Obama, Barack Hussein Obama?
Well, but I mean, Ted Kennedy, yeah, but I mean, the idea there's going to be name recognition problem here is absurd.
The poor guy has hurdles, but this isn't one of them.
Let's see.
What did he say?
His first-term senator said, well, they have an infrastructure.
He's talking about Hillary and John Edwards.
They have an infrastructure and name recognition higher than mine.
So there will probably be a higher burden of proof for me.
Yeah, but look, old clean one, the drive-bys don't love them as much as they love you.
And so you will not have to go as far and work as hard to establish your own name recognition, which I can't.
Such a nonsensical comment in the first place.
But anyway, look at that's that's the Obama stack.
Those are the Obama soundbites.
And those were my witty comments concerning them.
Brief timeout.
Sorry about that.
Continue here in just a second.
A man, a living legend, and a way of life.
Back to the phone to Redding, California.
This is Robert.
Welcome, sir.
Nice to have you on the program.
Rush, 16 years of ditto's birthdays and anniversaries.
Thank you, sir.
And by the way, it couldn't be your kid.
It'd be a pay cut.
You wouldn't get any money out of it.
You'd have to give money.
Probably true.
That's right.
How much would a trillion dollars do going towards missile defense, speaking of that Kim John-Hill money that we're going to spend over there?
Well, it's a good question.
I think there's a lot of hope invested in diplomacy.
And people say maybe we can get rid of this threat and so forth.
There are people looking for an instant success, by the way, In a troubled area, and this can be passed off as an instant success.
Okay, you got the nukes of North Korea off table.
Well, progress taking place here.
And I think that's part of one of the part of the motivational process to get this done.
But is your point, we could give them a trillion dollars, we can invest it into a missile defense and not have to give them the free aid and so forth.
Yeah, and then we'd be protected from every two-bit wacko.
Well, true.
If it works, you know, it does work, but we're by no means ready to deploy it.
I don't know.
Look, I'm going to have to look into this a little more because I've got a couple of things I've received email-wise today trying to tell me why it is a different and a good thing.
Others, John Bolton's on television today saying this is not, this isn't, this is not.
It's totally reneging on a plan he put in place while at the United Nations that contains stiff sanctions and so forth.
But look, in my addled condition here, riddled here by the ravages of the common cold, I must tell you people, I look at everything in the news today as a cynic.
I just look at it as it's all BS.
And well, it's not that way every day.
Snurdley says, how does that differ from every other day?
But this, this North Korea, I just think the bottom line here is that there are people, Bush administration, wherever, that want to be able to claim a success in an area of nuclear proliferation.
And they can say here, okay, we've taken the North Koreans off-table and we brought all these other countries into the deal.
We brought South Korea in, we brought the Shikoms in, we brought the Japanese in.
So now if the North Koreans reneg on a deal, they're actually reneging against the Shikoms and a number of others.
Not that that would stop this stupid little pot-bellied dictator, but I don't know.
The game may be enough of a pervert that if he got enough cognac in a deal and enough pornography tapes and DVDs and so forth, plus enough food to keep his population from rioting for a while longer, it may keep him quiet.
Who knows?
And whatever hairpiece stuff he wears to keep his head looking like, what do you call it, buffant?
We're dealing with a obviously a deranged individual, but he may be quite crafty at the same time.
Beth in Kansas City, Missouri, you're next on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hey, Rush.
Hi.
I am a very unique animal.
I am a 47-year-old woman.
I've never voted Democrat in my life, so I really don't care what Obama or Hillary has to say.
However, Mitt Romney today announced his candidacy for president.
And I was wondering, is he going to follow in the footsteps of Ronald Reagan and be a good conservative?
Well, tell you what, let's listen to his announcement because we happen to have that here.
And we can also show you what MSNBC did in following his announcement.
So you hang on here, Beth, and we'll go through this together.
This is this morning in Dearborn, Michigan.
Romney made this announcement as part of his thing.
I love America, and I believe in the people of America.
I believe in God.
And I believe that every person in this great country and every person on this great planet is a child of God.
I believe that we're all sisters and brothers.
I believe that the family is the foundation of America and that it needs to be protected and strengthened.
I believe in the sanctity of human life.
I believe that people and their elected representatives should make the laws, not unelected judges.
I believe that we're overtaxed and government is overfed.
Washington is spending too much money.
I believe that homeland security begins with securing our borders.
And I believe that our best days are before us because I believe in America.
Yay!
What do you think of that, Beth?
Well, it sounds good, but is there any follow-up to that?
What do you think is there any follow-up?
Well, has he proven in the past that what he says, that he walks the walk?
I'm from Missouri.
He's like a lot of the Republicans that are in the race.
He used to believe certain things at one time and has now switched his mind on them.
Some of the social conservative issues like abortion, he was of one mind and changed his mind later.
And the people that believe in Romney are saying, well, Reagan used to be a Democrat and became a Republican.
I mean, it happens.
So Giuliani's people are out putting forth the message, hey, yeah, yeah, you know, I've got, I do have these things in my resume, being somewhat liberal on the social side of things, but I'm for the judges, and I think abortion ought to be decided by the people and so forth.
All of the candidates except McCain are doing what they can.
McCain is a different animal here, but all of them are trying to moderate their pasts and meld their pasts into a current mold of conservatism.
What about physically?
Will he be a physical conservative?
You mean fiscally?
Yes.
And money.
Yes.
I have a cold, too, so I feel your pain.
Oh, thank you.
Well, it's a shame that you're feeling what I'm feeling.
I wouldn't wish it on anybody.
But nevertheless, yeah, he's got a pretty good fiscal conservative record.
He does.
I want you to listen to MSNBC, though, Dyson Slice This.
This was Chip Reid after the announcement, and he was talking with Anna Marie Cox of Time magazine, and this is how that exchange went.
He's barely out of the starting blocks, and I'm going to go right for his knees.
Number one, he's a Mormon, and evangelicals have problems.
Number two, he's a flip-flopper.
He was pro-choice, and he was to the left of Ted Kennedy on gay rights in Massachusetts, and now he's to the far right, and he has no foreign policy experience.
How does he stand a chance?
So this is the – now, you didn't hear any of that in – there was none of that in following up after Barack Obama made his announcement, for example.
This is – This is just what happens.
Look, I don't know how to tell you this.
I mean, I just am not into it yet.
You know, this stuff's all going to shake out, and I've not studied enough of these people to tell you which one of them are better conservatives or better on this issue or better.
And that's what I was trying to say earlier.
I think what troubles me is that all of these candidates by their supporters are being molded into, well, he can be a conservative.
And he, Rudy, he can be a conservative.
And Mitt can be as to be conservative is to be conservative.
And frankly, folks, I'm going to tell you there's not a full-fledged pure conservative out there in the race as of now.
So the chosen candidate is going to be a compromise.
Pardon?
I need to just keep listening to you.
And as things happen, not only will I watch and wait, but I'll listen.
Well, but feel free to make up your own mind.
Oh, don't worry, I will.
Well, as a woman, I know you will.
But I appreciate the confidence that you vest in me to tell you what to think.
It's well placed.
And I will do my best to earn that as I have over the past 18 and a half years.
Folks, don't misunderstand me on this.
This is maybe seem like a small thing to some of you, but it seems to me that there's a big move underway now to redefine conservatism.
For example, I'm not going to give a name, but let's say there's a so-called Republican candidate who is not really conservative when it comes to fiscal issues.
Well, the tendency is to say, yeah, he's a good conservative, even because the supporters of these candidates want to fit them into conservatism in such a way that conservatism has to be redefined in order to accommodate the so-called conservatism of the candidate.
And what's happening here is that people are looking at these different candidates and they're looking at electability.
And they're conflating that with a serious discussion of conservatism.
Now, look at it.
You can back a candidate without pretending that they are true conservatives.
And that's what's going to have to happen in this race.
But I am not going to sit here, as I've done in the past and made mistakes.
I am not going to sit here and tell you candidate A is conservative if I don't think he is.
I'm not going to create a bunch of false hopes and images so that when these guys behave as they are in ways which are not conservative, I don't want people to be surprised.
Now, we've made that mistake in the past, and it's time to stop making the mistake.
And the mistake is made by people of good intentions who want to know conservatism is an important factor in primaries, and the supporters of these candidates all want their candidates to win, and so we redefine conservatism to fit whatever characteristics the candidate has.
I'm just telling you that I'm not going to do.
So if one of these guys is going to end up being the preferred candidate, I'm going to be making a choice between one of these guys.
I don't know when, but I'm not going to tell you the choice is made on the basis that this is the conservative in the race if I don't think the guy is, pure and simple, which is all I'm saying.
And it's in addition to all that, so soon here that there's plenty of time for some shaking out to occur.
And it's just way too soon to get behind anybody.
Just I don't know how else to say it other than that.
I'll think of different ways to illustrate the point as we go on here.
But as I've said, there's so much out there that's going to happen that we can't predict.
You've got potential dark horses that are going to come out of nowhere like Jimmy Carter did for the Democrats in 1976.
Who knows?
You could have Duncan Hunter come out of Newt Gingrich could pop out of nowhere and start dazzling people left and right as a full-fledged candidate.
Who knows?
And it's still so, so early.
And I think the earliness that this presidential race is going to end up being a detriment to this whole thing because people are going to be fed up with the presidential race before it actually ever gets started.
And I am going to try to see to it that at least you people on this show are not fed up with it because we're not going to get on board and start it now as though it's the most important thing we face because it isn't.
Back in a sec.
Let me see if I can build on this point I'm trying to make about redefining conservatism so that it fits a particular candidate, which I think is bad news and is unnecessary.
We're never going to get to where we need to be with situational politics.
And by situational politics, I mean taking somebody who's not a conservative and calling them a conservative because they're close enough.
In the process, we redefine conservatism, and that's, for those of us who believe in conservatism anyway, for the long haul, it's not good.
We water it down.
It's something libs never, ever do.
They don't destroy their icons.
They don't try to redefine liberal.
They've got a great scam going.
They know they all are full-fledged, 100% grade A libs.
Their only trick is try to convince as many people out there as possible that they're not that.
But they don't.
You take a look at anybody.
Think of Bob Casey, the former governor of Pennsylvania, who was pro-life, wouldn't let him into their convention.
They don't, there's no tolerance for the non-lib in the Democrat Party or in the quote-unquote liberal movement.
But we conservatives will water it down or whatever to let some candidate in who's not a full-fledged conservative.
Like Romney is arguing that he fits into the traditional conservative mold, including his conversion on abortion.
McCain and Rudy are trying to redefine conservatism to accommodate their views, while they both are modifying their own positions to move right to some extent.
McCain's potential fatal decision was to side with the D.C. liberals and the media against his own party for so many years as a means of drawing attention to himself.
And in the process, he was running for president then rather than the GOP nomination.
He thought he could double back.
And after he had gotten the approval of the D.C. Dems and the media, they could double back and get the Republican base in the nomination.
But what's going to happen is that the D.C. Democrats and the media elite will discard him, and they've already begun to do so faster than he can sneeze.
One reason right now that Rudy has an upper hand on McCain is that he has spent the last few years campaigning for conservatives.
And he's been helping to rebuild the Republican Party's coffers.
But he has been out there working for conservatives.
That's not the only reason, but that's important to party types who have a great deal of influence on delegate selection by the time you get to the convention.
Rudy has simply been a much better Republican than McCain has.
Now, in a recent column, George Will called Rudy a conservative.
In a column that ran Sunday, he says that Reagan really wasn't.
Or that Reagan was a once-in-a-lifetime thing that we're never going to have again.
I've got that column in the stack, and I didn't get to it today, but I will hopefully later in the week because it's really fascinating in a whole bunch of different ways.
And I want to dissect it and break it down for you.
But I just, there's too much argument.
And even in conservatism right now, there are arguments among people who want to be the leaders of the conservative movement over what is a conservative.
And all these allowances for the less than ideal conservative or the less than pure conservative are being made on the assumption it's the best we can get.
And that's just something you never see the left doing.
I mean, look at when it came time, they nominated John Kerry.
I mean, they went.
You can't get any more liberty in every which way.
Dour, sour, anti-America, hates the country, willing to protest.
All this stuff they've put him out there.
And they thought because he wore a military uniform, he'd fool people and get elected.
At any rate, I'm out of time here for this segment.
Let me take a brief break, be back, and close it out right after this.
Don't go away.
Okay, folks, before we skate out of here, a reminder, the Rush Babe onboard signs are now available at the EIB store at rushlimbaugh.com, as well as the two t-shirts signifying and proclaiming my Nobel Peace Prize nomination, which was acknowledged today by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, much to the chagrin of many on the left in this country.
Two great t-shirts on sale at the EIB store, as well as the Rush Babe onboard signs.
We've got to go, but we'll be back 21 hours from now.
Do it all over again, hopefully with reduced coughing spasms.
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