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Jan. 2, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:33
January 2, 2008, Wednesday, Hour #3
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I'm getting it from all sides, which means I am right.
When you're getting it from all sides, it means bullseye.
Greetings and ladies and gentlemen and welcome back.
I am Rush Limbaugh, and this, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Fast as three hours in media, here we are, already starting the third hour.
It's such a it's such a delight to be back.
I missed you people.
And I know that you missed me.
Telephone number 800-282-2882 if you want to be on the program, and our email address is L Rushbow at EIBNet.com.
All right, uh I want to I want to go back to the call, Rick from Kansas City.
Uh I want to play 55 seconds of his call, because I did not have time to respond.
Uh had I known more of what he was going to say, I would have delayed taking his call because I only gave him about a minute or a minute and a half.
Uh but let me now respond to it here again, 55 seconds of what he had to say just a moment ago.
First of all, I want to ask you, priority-wise, which is a more important issue to you, the abortion issue or the tax issue.
See, I don't separate them.
Right.
I don't see you you've got you've got these people.
Well, I'm a fiscal conservative, but I'm a social liberal.
You've just described for me a Northeastern Republican.
Right.
A moderate Republican.
And I don't, you know, conservatism is what it is.
You don't pick and choose and say this aspect is more important.
It's a whole package.
Right.
Just real briefly, Rush.
You know, I agree with you that if you give people the fruit of their labors, that uh technically this country should prosper.
But I'm not a single issue voter, but I am a priority issue voter.
And to me, as a as someone who believes in God, I believe that if this nation allows the unfettered wholesale slaughter of the most innocent little land.
Right.
Okay, that's it.
Uh we had now I had to say we had to interrupt the call.
Um we've we've talked about abortion on this program countless times, the sanctity of life, and how it is the root of uh of many things.
But in terms of electing a president, there is uh a couple things a president can do about abortion, one of them substantive, the other uh is somewhat ephemeral.
The substantive thing that a president can do about abortion is to nominate judges.
Uh primarily Supreme Court justices.
Uh that's it.
Now a president can lead, a president can try to inspire and motivate, change hearts and so forth, but in a substantive way, there's not much a president can do about abortion.
This this uh Rick from Kansas City was a uh a good illustration, a good example of what I mean when I describe Senator or Governor Huckabee as as campaigning on identity politics.
Uh there are some people uh who will overlook every aspect of Governor Huckabee that is really uh something in which is total opposition to most of their beliefs, um, because all they will see is the the Christian characteristic, particularly if it fits right with the uh with the abortion issue.
Uh now, my friends, I'm sorry here.
Uh uh I I haven't spent a lifetime, and particularly the last twenty-three years on radio, advocating conservative principles only to throw them away, to embrace some candidate.
I don't support open borders and amnesty, as does Governor Huckabee.
I don't support the release of hundreds of criminals.
I don't support repeated increases in taxes.
I don't support national health care.
I don't care what you call it, whether it's in the name of the children or not.
I don't support anti-war rhetoric that sounds as if it was written by Nancy Pelosi.
And yet I'm being asked to put all that aside.
In the midst of a Republican primary.
As I've tried to point out countless times, the primary is the time to sort these things out.
Now, I speaking for myself, am not going to put aside my principles to accommodate a single politician or campaign operative, period.
Uh too much is at stake here.
Uh and And being asked to do this to put all this aside for any single issue is not the point.
Now, I don't want somebody in in the White House who has no problem with abortion.
I don't want anybody in the White House who thinks that it's okay and that we ought not to do anything about it.
Don't misunderstand.
But I also don't want anybody to misunderstand what a president can actually do about it and how far a president can actually take the issue.
It's about judges if your concern is overtain overturning Roe versus Wade.
If it's not, if you realize that's going to be a ways down the line, and yet we want to do something about abortion prior to that, then it's about changing minds and hearts.
And there are there are several ways of going about doing that.
Um and uh one of the ways is not wagging your finger in people's faces and telling them they're sinning or telling them they're wrong.
You're just going to steal their resolve against you.
I think we're in the process of changing minds and hearts.
I think abortion figures are falling.
I think as generations grow and change, there's a uh uh uh greater repugnance attached to the whole practice.
It is not an 80% majority issue, pro-choice isn't, it's not even 50% now.
Progress is being made uh on this.
But I'm not gonna sit here and put aside all of these things that I believe in and have worked for and that I know work.
I'll I'm gonna tell you what the full one of the most frustrating things to me is about this entire Republican primary.
And it's sitting out there right in front of us for all of us to see.
We go back, if I don't care how far you want to go back, if you want to go back to Buckley and Russell Kirk, if you want to go back to Edmund Burke, if you want to go back to Goldwater, you can do that, and you can find how conservatism has positively influenced change in this country.
But all you have to do, if you don't want to go that far back, all you gotta do is go back to 1980.
Now I realize a lot of people get sick and tired of hearing about Ronald Reagan because there isn't another Reagan out there, and Reagan was a unique individual and so forth.
And I'm not pining away for somebody to be Ronald Reagan.
What I am asking some Republican to see is that Ronald Reagan won two landslides, coming off of a Jimmy Carter four years of melees, following Ronald Reagan uh in 1993, uh in the election in 1994, took back the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years, and we did this with conservative principles.
What frustrates me is why the latest current crop of Republicans wants to ignore that and think that there's a better way.
When the evidence that shows progress, both economic, social, you name it, national security, defeating the Soviets in the Cold War, it's all there.
And why it is eschewed, why it is ignored, uh is something I've I've long told you this and in in different different ways.
Uh starting in the early days of this primary campaign, I warned you one of the things that concerns me most about all this is how conservatism is going to be redefined so as to fit whatever the current crop of candidates said as it is.
I mean, there's a bunch of these guys running around saying they're Reagan, none of them are.
There's not one Reagan conservative, well, now I can't say there's not one, but I mean there's maybe one.
But the bottom line, the point is that the lessons are clear on whatever issue you want to raise.
National security, taxes, economics, individual prosperity, uh, domestic security.
It's all there.
How to beat liberals, how to beat Democrats, how to take power from them.
It's all there.
And the frustrating thing to me is it's being ignored.
Or some people are trying to redefine it.
And I think I understand why, given some of the candidates here get based on the geography of their lives and where they live, it's embarrassing to admit they're a conservative because it's causes them to be identified with a bunch of people they don't want to be identified with when they go to parties or engage in their social life or what have you.
All of which is profoundly frustrating to me, which is one I'm called an elite, I have to just chuckle.
So that's what's frustrating to me.
But I'll tell you something else that's frustrating to me.
Been behind this microphone 19 and a half years, behind a microphone during this type of show for twenty three years, going back to 1984, and yet identity politics, which is that politics practiced by the left, uh, still is not seen through.
Single issue can cause people to end up choosing or supporting somebody, some thing, some candidate, that is truly anathema to the rest of the lives that they lead.
But we keep plugging away.
But just don't ask me to compromise my principles.
You want to compromise yours, fine.
But don't ask yourself to make don't ask me to make you feel better by joining you.
Be back after this.
Stay with us.
Ha!
We are back.
Time zipping by here on the EIB network.
All right, let's move on to the Democrats, shall we, ladies and gentlemen, as the Hawkeye Cawka get underway tomorrow.
Uh, from news just after I left the microphone on the Friday before Christmas, Hillary Clinton predicted on Saturday, December 22nd, that just electing her would cut the price of oil.
When the world hears her commitment at her inauguration about ending American dependence on foreign oil, she said oil pumping countries will lower prices to stifle America's incentive to develop alternative energy.
I predict to you, she said the oil producing countries will drop the price of oil.
They'll once again assume once the cost pressure is off Americans and our political process will recede.
Now I have to tell you, Mrs. Clinton has said a number of things which are just downright ignorant.
She has said a bunch of things which are downright scary.
This, right up at the top of things that she has said that are ignorant and stupid.
If you take this at face fact, and I know what she's doing.
She's out campaigning, she said this in New Hampshire, and she's out campaigning just as the Brick girl is on the notion that the middle class is being shafted, and that the elites in this country are in bed with the oil-producing sheikhs in the Middle East.
And but they're gonna realize when we get a woman with a testicle lockbox in the Oval Office, that they're gonna be scared to death, and they're gonna lower the price of oil because they're not gonna be afraid and will be afraid to deal with Mrs. Clinton.
Item number one, the oil-producing countries do not determine the price of oil.
There is not one producer of oil that determines the price.
It is not the director of OPEC, it is not the Yamir of Abu Dhabi, it's not Sheikh Maktoom of Dubai.
It is not Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.
No matter it's not anybody in Canada, there is not one producer of oil that determines the price.
There are two things that determine the price of oil on the world markets today.
One, the good old laws of supply and demand.
Number two, the oil speculators, the commodities market, which are bidding up the price of oil on the futures market, which affects the prices, the barrel price in any number of untold ways.
But for Mrs. Clinton to suggest that the aura of her presence, and the no nuns testicle lock box of her presidency, will frighten these producers to finally being fair, is simply ignorant.
Now let's move on to the Benazir Bhutto assassination.
Mrs. Clinton told so many whoppers about being good friends with Benazir Bhutto and having known her for twelve years and so forth.
She said, I have known Benazir Bhutto for more than twelve years.
She's someone whom I was honored to visit as first lady when she was prime minister.
Certainly on a personal level for those of us who knew her, who were impressed by her commitment, her dedication, her willingness to pick up the mantle of her father, who was also assassinated, it is a terrible, terrible tragedy.
Uh uh tragedy.
In the case of Benazir Bhutto's assassination, Mrs. Clinton sought to do what the Clintons do with every big news story and make it about her.
Make it about them.
Here is Benazir Bhutto, who has more cojones than Hillary Clinton's got, even in her testicle lockbox.
She is assassinated by militant Islamists.
And by the way, I don't I've been away for a while.
I don't know if anybody's added this perspective.
If they have, I apologize for being redundant.
But if anybody doubts the aspect of her gender in her assassination in a militant Islamic country, then you are missing one of the key elements of the enemy that we face.
Militant Islamists.
Yes, they opposed her because of her desire for quasi democracy in Pakistan.
They opposed her as well because she's a woman.
She was uppity.
She had no business trying to run a country.
The militant Islamist, the seventh century extreme Muslim, despises women, hates them, actually fears them, and the fear then is the result of the hate, or the hate results from the fear.
The feminists in this country who analyze world events and domestic events from their prism of gender politics, discrimination, and all this, should realize full well, based on this assassination, the full scope of the evil that we face in the enemy that is these militant Islamo fascists, the Al Qaeda types.
And yet, Mrs. Clinton had to make this about her.
Over the course of recent days, Mrs. Clinton has made it plain that she wants her own independent investigation because we can't trust Pervez Musharraf, who happens to be our ally.
She has made the big blunder of suggesting that Benazir Bhutto was killed so that Musharraf would be unopposed on the ballot because the other opponent's not going to run at all.
Musharf is not on the ballot.
He was elected in October.
Mrs. Clinton, so much experience, has traveled so extensively with her husband, was instrument.
Oh, in Kosovo.
Remember that trip into Kosovo.
She was brave.
She was courageous.
She was on a C 130 that had to corkscrew in there because of terrorist gunfire.
She wasn't anything of the sort.
She was on with Cheryl Crow and the comedian Sinbad and her daughter.
And we're supposed to believe that the Clinton White House said, Well, it's really dangerous over there.
We need somebody somebody with guts, send Hillary.
Manufacturing out of whole cloth, a trip to Bosnia, how dangerous it was when none of it was as she represented it to be.
Now to say that Pervez Musharraf may have something to do with Benazir Bhutto's death because he didn't want to run opposed in the next elections.
He's not on the ballot, ladies and gentlemen.
Pervez Musharraf was elected in October.
These elections in Pakistan that come up, they've now been delayed a month, by the way.
These elections are parliamentary.
Even Joe Biden suggested yesterday that Mrs. Clinton doesn't adequately understand recent events in Pakistan.
He said we have a number of candidates who are well intentioned but don't understand Pakistan.
One of the leading candidates, Godlover, he said, talking about Hillary.
They're good people running, but to say Musharif is up for election, Musharf was elected fairly or unfairly president six months ago.
It's a parliamentary election.
He is not on the ballot.
But Mrs. Clinton said on Stephanopoulos' show Sunday, Musharv could be the only person on the ballot.
I don't think that's a real election.
She is clueless.
Your guiding light.
Ladies and gentlemen.
Rushlinbaugh, a general all-round good guy and harmless lovable little fuzzball.
Here's the story.
This is from Newsday, New York News Day on New Year's Eve.
Ever since Barack Obama suggested Mrs. Clinton's eight years as First Lady were a glorified tea party a few days back.
She's looked for an opening to strike back on Saturday night in Dubuque, Iowa.
She argued that she risked her life on White House missions in the 1990s, including a hair-raising flight into Bosnia that ended in a corkscrew landing and a sprint off the tarmac to dodge snipers.
I don't remember anyone offering me tea, she quipped.
The dictum around the Oval Office of the 1990s, Hillary Clinton said was, quote, if a place was too dangerous, too poor or too small, send the first lady.
Yeah, right, the Clintons would purposely send his wife to most that's actually quite possible.
That I think of it's actually quite possible.
Bill Clinton is that place dangerous over there.
Could, said Hillary.
That's entirely possible.
But I digress.
She was not alone on this corkscrew landing.
By the way, for those of you who don't know what a corkscrew landing is, I was told when I did my Afghan troop visit that there might be one.
Turned out there wasn't.
We flew in uh to Kabul on a United Nations DC nine.
But nevertheless, a corkscrew landing is you're up there, and rather than have the traditional arrival approach of a steady and slow descent, you get your way up high, and you come almost straight down corkscrewing to avoid making your aircraft a target for terrorists.
And at the proper moment, you pull up and you land.
Uh it turns out here that Mrs. Clinton was leading a goodwill entourage, not flying solo into harm's way.
On board her plane, the C-17 was Sinbad, the singer Cheryl Crow, and Clinton's own daughter Chelsea, who was then 15, according to an account of the trip in her own autobiography.
Called Living History.
As the plane approached the runway, the pilot ordered the Clintons into the armored front of the plane, Clinton writes.
What's not clear is whether Sinbad or Crow were invited to the cockpit or had to brave it out in the unprotected rear.
Ed Morrissey Captain's Quarters has more on this.
He reprints an email from um a commenter on his blog.
Jonathan Saban.
I was part of Task Force Eagle in Bosnia during this time of Mrs. Clinton's corkscrew landing.
I was part of then M. G. William Nash, First Armored Division Security Detail.
I take two issues with her statement.
First and most blatantly checkable was the year she states.
She's a year off.
It was actually March 96.
We didn't go into Bosnia until after the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords, which was the fall of 95, November, I think.
I remember it because it ruined Christmas for just about the entire 2nd Brigade, 1st A.D. in Baumholder, Germany.
Then President Clinton actually came to Baumholder right before Christmas to make a speech.
Should be easily checkable.
Secondly, she landed at Eagle Base in Tuzla, Bosnia, in a C-17.
At that time it was the most secure location in the country.
It was an old Russian MiG base.
The compound was very well fortified.
Snipers were not an issue for us there.
They never were during the entire mission, except maybe in Sarajevo.
Our biggest issue was landmines, again, Not an issue at Eagle Base, as it had been very well cleared.
Shameless self-promotion is just stupid when things like that are so easily verifiable.
So um it's this classic Clintonism, making it all up as time goes on, trying to make herself look experienced and brave and relevant all at the same time, and it's just a pack of lies.
It's just a pack of lies.
I I'll tell you this business about Musharif.
You know, and I know what she's doing.
She's in she's concluding that the Democrat anti-war left hates Musharraf because he's an ally of us, meaning an ally of Bush, and he thinks she thinks that they're stupid.
It's just like Clinton.
You know, uh uh if you notice Clinton went out there and said, uh this is long before we took the break.
Uh he was asked what what's the first thing Hillary's gonna do?
He said, well, first thing that she's gonna do is she's gonna send me and George H. W. Bush around the world to repair America's image in the world, and say America's open for business again.
Well, then of course George H. W. Bush pipes up, they haven't spoken to me about this, I wouldn't go anywhere.
I like our foreign policy.
As though George H. W. Bush would agree to this and basically trash his own son's administration and foreign policy.
And not a bleep.
Not a bleep about it.
And by the way, Huckabee is getting away with this same kind of thing because the drive-bys don't want to call attention to his weaknesses in that way.
Saying things that just could be easily it's just absurd.
That's the Clintons for you.
Here's an interesting story.
This is from the French news agency.
On the first of January, Clinton's defining moment.
Hillary Clinton's moment of destiny is nigh when her tilted history and the prize of the White House will rest for the first time on the sober judgment of voters.
A decade and a half of dominance of the Democrat Party with the ultimate Washington power couples also on the line, as are the hopes of her two-term presidential husband Bill Clinton of shaping his own legacy.
Clinton presenting herself as an agent of change for a new century despite looking back to the nineties for much of her political philosophy.
She's the woman Americans most admire, according to a recent poll, yet she provokes venomous attacks by enemies on rolling hours of bile on conservative talk radio.
I don't know who wrote this, it's the French news agency.
Bottom line is she's she has the m the greatest negative, the highest negatives of any person that's ever sought the White House.
I guess this is the fault of the rolling hours of Bile on conservative talk radio.
Um but let's take a look at some of Hillary's defining moments.
They say this is her defining moment running for president.
I can't think of all the examples, ladies and gentlemen.
There are so many examples of Hillary defining moments, it blows my mind.
But how about just taking a second to really look at the way that Hillary reacts to the defining moments of her life?
Her husband Bill accused of sexual misdeeds and infidelity while running for president.
What does Hillary do?
Go on national TV to insult Tammy Wynette and homemakers in general.
She says, I'm not some Tammy Wynette standing by my man at home in a kitchen baking cookies.
A defining moment.
Hillary wants to give jobs to friends.
So she smears the long sty longtime staff of the travel office and has them fired.
Whenever she is questioned forcefully about anything, another defining moment, she can't remember.
Her mind is jello.
Her husband lies to the country, his cabinet, a grand jury.
Hillary blames the vast right wing conspiracy.
A defining moment.
Government-controlled health care goes down in flames.
Hillary disappears.
Remember, she disappeared, then started acting the very first lady-ish when it didn't work.
And the last line in this French agency news piece, quote, how many people have we had come in from outside promising change and it not working out?
Just look at Jimmy Carter, he said, referring to the 70s Democrat president chided by history.
How many people have we had come in from outside promising change and it not Working out, just look at Jimmy Carter.
Mrs. Clinton claims to be from the outside, yet at the same time on the inside, and yet coming in promising change while hearkening back to her years of experience in the 90s.
A lot of sops out there, a lot of people who will overlook these kinds of specifics, again, because of identity politics.
In this case, Democrat woman, uh Bill Clinton's wife, what she says, what she stands for, what she intends to do is of no consequence to a lot of people, but it is to me, and it is to you as well as what all these Democrats would do is to all of us.
Brief timeout.
We'll be back.
Setting the stage for Mrs. Clinton losing Iowa is this headline in politico.com.
Should Hillary Clinton have skipped Iowa.
If she loses the cockeye here on Thursday, would her campaign wish it listened to the advice it got last May to take a hike on the Hawkeye State?
It won't be that.
What the the what the uh uh headline will be is is Iowa really that important anymore?
Or does Iowa really matter anymore?
That's what the headline will be.
Novak's predicting her to come in third.
Barack Obama number one and the Breck Girl number two.
That's his.
What's the press for Obama going to be like if he wins?
Well, um, it's interesting.
There's there's a couple of stories about Obama that they've got here in the Hillary stack.
Uh, one of the stories the Washington Post says it's independent voters that may give him the edge in uh in Iowa.
If that's true, it means you're gonna have a lot of people that usually don't participate in the caucus, participating in the caucus for the first time.
Another story in um uh another stack, this is from the uh New York Times.
Obama pulling away from Hillary, tied among women and Hillary hurting with the male vote.
Uh no surprise there.
Then there's this paragraph.
Mrs. Clinton bests her two rivals only among those with no more than a high school diploma.
And those who identify themselves as Democrats.
So she's she's uh exceeding with the stupid vote.
She is losing the male vote.
And remember, they they said all along that she had the educated women.
I don't know that that's whatever that means, but she's uh she's hurting with men, no surprise there.
Uh if if Obama wins, I it there will be some exalting.
There'll be some happiness.
Uh well, I don't know if it's all over for.
I I but the here's the thing.
Inevitable candidates don't lose.
If inevitable candidates lose, then they're not inevitable.
But it depends on whether the drive-by's choose to write that story as to whether or not it damages her uh tremendously.
Have to wait and see.
Can't be good.
Uh they're gonna spin it.
In fact, they're already spinning it.
In fact, if she comes in third to Edwards, that'd be good.
If Edwards is second, that'd be fine if Obama wins.
They've they're spinning this any number of ways to explain how a loss is actually a good thing.
And if it's neck and neck, as it is now going in in all these polls, uh, then they'll say, well, you know, there really isn't a winner here.
We have to go on to the next state.
But don't look at a lot of us, you know, get interested in here whether or not Mrs. Clinton's fortunes are going to be damaged.
You gotta understand here.
When you get to the drive-by's and a Democrat political elite, the power politics, the people that determ delegates at the convention, it's Mrs. Clinton.
That's who they want.
That's who they're gonna try to make it be.
All of this is just, you know, some some games here.
She's she's got a struggle, but uh make no mistake that one loss will send all of her supporters running for the tall grass to support somebody else.
All right, uh Fredericksburg, Virginia.
People have been waiting patiently.
Got to go to phones here.
Will nice to have you on the program, sir.
Thank you very much, Rush Ditto from uh an evangelical who supports conservative Mike Huckabee for president, and I really appreciate you uh being gracious enough to allow some of us on the air today.
Absolutely.
Go ahead, sir.
Well, uh my point is that you've been talking a lot about uh Identity politics.
And I do identify with Mike Huckabee as an evangelical, but it is because his positions on the issues that cause me to agree with him and identify with him.
It is not simply because he is a Christian and an evangelical, but because his positions on the issues flow out of that and affect his political worldview in such a way that uh he is conservative on the full range of issues.
When you look at the three pillars of the Republican Party of social conservatism, uh national defense, and even economic conservatism, uh I believe he gets certainly high marks with regard to social conservatism or national defense.
I I you need to help me out here.
Maybe I'm maybe I'm misunderstanding.
National defense, national security, uh, Governor Huckabee supports open borders and amnesty.
Uh I believe that he does.
I don't believe that's his position at all.
Uh he's if you look at his plan, it's a very well informed plan to secure our borders, and uh that national security is what drives his position on doing that.
But his position allows for all kinds of taxpayer aid to the children of illegals.
Well, that's a more different thing than saying that he's going to open the borders and it's insecure borders and it's for amnesty.
Well, when you provide an incentive to people to cross the borders illegally because their kids can get all kinds of education, freebies, and goodies, you're not really closing the borders.
I think that's he has he has supported repeated tax increases in Arkansas.
But the tax rate was the same when he left as when he got there.
And the thing about it is I allege wholeheartedly that as a rule he is a conservative on economic issues because he is committed not to raising taxes on the federal level, where spending is totally out of control.
whereas on the state level, there is nondiscretionary spending that you're responsible for.
There has to be something to be able to pay for that.
But I think he did that in a very fiscally responsible way.
And from the perspective of someone who is an economic conservative.
He said to the legislature of Arkansas, send me any tax increase, send it up here.
Now you you can say look at the reason why.
It would be the same reason that Ronald Reagan did the same thing, raising taxes in California, because there are certain uh functions that the government is required to provide, and they are required to have a balanced budget.
And so I think that that's the rationale for someone who's conservative.
See, true conservatism cuts taxes to raise revenue.
Uh and you can talk you can talk about Governor Huckabee and his national intentions and what he states he'll do is as president, but but you've got to balance that with what he's actually done.
Um, you know, what somebody's done versus what they say they're going to do, uh, you gotta you gotta wait what they've done.
Uh but look, I I I I appreciate you're trying to make the case for your guy.
I understand you feel the need to, and I'm happy that uh gave you the opportunity to do so here on the program.
I have to run now because of the constraints of time.
But Will, thanks very much.
It's nice to have you on the program.
We'll be back and continue here in just a second.
Conservatism, ladies and gentlemen, true.
Conservatism balances budgets by cutting government, not by raising taxes.
Governor Huckabee is opposed to school choice.
And he said we should treat dictators and terrorists with the golden rule.
I have to go.
We'll be back tomorrow, ladies and gentlemen, the fastest week in media.
Ill Rush Ball.
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