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March 20, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
32:53
March 20, 2008, Thursday, Hour #2
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The views expressed by the host on this program, documented to be almost always right 98.8% of the time.
The latest opinion audit from the Sullivan Group, official opinion auditing firm in Sacramento, California.
Greetings, my friends, and welcome back.
It is the award-winning, thrill-packed, ever-exciting, increasingly popular, growing by leaps and bounds, Rush Limbaugh program.
On the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, Operation Chaos continues unabated.
You know, every time I say award-winning, what awards do you win, Limbaugh?
Well, I just won one.
Last week, there's a trade magazine called Radio and Records, and they have their annual talk radio seminar in Washington.
And I, your host, El Rushbow, the all-knowing, all-caring, all-sensing, all-feeling, all-concerned, all-everything, Maha-Rushi, won the Syndicated Radio Personality of the Year award.
I think this is my third one from Radio and Records.
I've also won three Marconi awards.
Fourth?
There's been so many of them, I've lost count.
You have three hanging on a wall.
Well, this is going to be the fourth one, and there's a three Marconi award.
Are you talking Marconi's?
Radio and Records.
Okay, then there's three Marconi's, and that's the National Association of Broadcasters.
So this is the award-winning, thrill-packed, ever-exciting, increasingly popular, growing by leaps and bounds, Rush Limbaugh program.
Here's the phone number if you'd like to join us.
800-282-2882.
And the email address is El Rushbo at EIBnet.com.
Geraldine Ferraro is still on the warpath.
She is livid at Barack Obama.
Former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro said yesterday she objected to the comparison that Senator Barack Obama drew between her and his former pastor in his speech on race relations on Tuesday.
In the speech, Obama, as you know, sought to place the inflammatory remarks of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
By the way, Mike, standby on Jeremiah was my pastor.
It's coming up real quick.
Obama sought to place the remarks of Reverend Wright in a broader context, in part by placing them on a continuum with Ferraro's recent marks to the Daily Breeze newspaper that Obama is lucky to be black.
She said that, which is not exactly what she said.
She said that if he were not a black man, he wouldn't be at this point in the presidential campaign.
So Ferraro, of course, he had to resign in disgrace.
And she went down firing both barrels, and she's still doing so.
She said this.
To equate what I said with what this racist bigot has said from the pulpit is unbelievable.
He gave a very good speech on race relations, but he did not address the fact that this man is up there spewing hatred.
That's exactly right.
This was not even about race.
Jeremiah Wright is about anti-American hatred and separatism from the Pope.
I haven't seen this anywhere else.
But I was in the midst of show prep this morning, diligently working, getting ready for today's program, and I saw a little crawl go across the TV screen that the Reverend Jeremiah Wright is about to be honored by somebody for 40 years of distinguished service in his ministry.
Still trying to find details.
So Geraldine Ferraro is still not happy, and still, ladies and gentlemen, properly characterizing Reverend Wright as a hate monger.
Now, the drive-bys are doing everything they can to save Barack Obama's campaign.
Make no mistake about it.
The drive-bys are in a tank for Obama.
And they're doing everything they can to extricate himself.
And one of the techniques here is to say, well, this guy, Reverend Wright, no different than Rush Limbaugh and all these right-wing talk radio people.
Tuesday night, Anderson Cooper 180, CNN, fill-in host Campbell Brown spoke with Duval Patrick, the governor of Massachusetts, in her question.
He knew how controversial Reverend Wright's views are.
Why did Obama seem so surprised when they became public and this turned into such furor?
It reminds me a little bit of that wonderful old saying of, I think it was Louis Pasteur, that education is learning to listen to anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
There are candidates, I'm sure, who listen to the most virulent of the conservative radio talk show hosts.
I know occasionally my wife listens to that stuff while she's driving in the car.
But it doesn't mean that she accepts those points of view.
Yeah, so it's a moral equivalence here that they're trying to establish, which everybody who listens to this program knows is frankly absurd.
Suzanne Malvo was on the situation room with Wolf Blitzer last night on CNN, and we have a little montage of her.
She basically makes the same point.
On the table, black anger, white resentment, and its expression behind closed doors.
That anger may not get expressed in public in front of white co-workers or white friends, but it does find voice in the barber shop or the beauty shop around the kitchen table.
A similar anger exists within segments of the white community.
That anger, among a host of other emotions, is now being unleashed, including conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who took on Obama's comments regarding the challenges of growing up biracial.
He has to trash his grandmother for being a racist.
It's part of who he is.
No, it's not.
He's trying to tell us he knows so much hatred and so much racial bias and so much segregation that he's the guy to fix it.
When he is the agent, not the agent of the healing, he's the product of healing.
The question remains whether Obama's call to seriously deal with America's racism will be answered.
His call.
We've been asked to deal with this for my whole adult life.
And every time I hear we need to have a conversation on race, the racial progress that's being made in this country is undeniable, and Obama's candidacy is one of the many examples of it.
Now, folks, I want to deviate here for just a minute.
There's a fascinating story I found at Associated Press and the headline here, not just sex, why men see prostitutes.
Now, why do you think this story has hit now?
Well, obviously, Ariel Elliot Spitzer, it's just like when Clinton was lying through his teeth, we got stories in the 90s about how lying is good for us.
And it spares people's feelings.
It's not just Spitzer now, it's Patterson.
You know, the new governor of New York, who came out and admitted an affair, and they found the husband of the woman he was having an affair with, and this guy didn't know about it.
He was throwing, they were throwing, he was throwing recycle bins at the drive-by photographers.
Yes.
Oh, it's the new, oh, he was, he was living.
Get out of my property.
Get off my.
He didn't want to deal with it.
I'll tell you what, if Patterson would be wise never to run into this guy, because I think he just learned about this.
Anyway, the story here is high-definition pornography is a mouse click away.
Assignations with multiple partners are advertised on Craigslist.
And if celebrities are any indication, underwear is strictly optional.
Sex, it seems, is everywhere.
It's on the internet.
It's in chat rooms.
Girls have gone wild.
Buses in hotel rooms and governor's mansions.
It's come a long way from darkened peep shows and plain brown wrappers.
So in this hyper-sexualized time, one might wonder, what's the point of going through the elaborate, illegal, and stigmatized motions of hiring a prostitute.
Elliot Spitzer's alleged choice to partake in the hobby, as men who solicit prostitutes call it, cost him his governor's seat.
Why will some men risk everything for secret trysts with sex workers?
The answer may seem obvious, but experts say it's not just about easy sex.
Some might be drawn to adventure.
Some are attracted to the level of secrecy they think will come with a paid prostitute.
Others are looking for a sense of control.
You see where this is going?
We're practically AP is practically trying to explain it in a justifiable way.
It could say that they don't know how to be intimate, said Bevs.
Oh, of course.
The Johns have a reason.
They don't know how to be intimate, and you don't have to be intimate with a prostitute.
Bev Smallwood quoted here, psychologist in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
She said it could also say that they have a sexual addiction, that they have become desensitized to sex within a more appropriate context, and that they're seeking one more thrill of the chase.
Now, but this, let me go, let me, let me go, let me get deeper here to the story, because this, ladies and gentlemen, the PS Vera distance.
For those of you in Riolinda, that means this is the nut graph.
They probably don't know what that is either.
This is the big point for those of you in Riolinda.
This is the point of the story.
There's little threat of rejection with paid sex.
If you want your wife to behave in ways that push certain boundaries, you might get turned down.
If you pick somebody up at a bar and try to ease her out of her comfort zone, you might get partial results.
But with a prostitute, you get what you pay for.
So the wife is to blame.
See, she just won't go all out.
She just won't put out, won't go out, won't entertain her fantasy.
So the guy has got to go out, buy the prostitute, get what he pays for, and then she leaves.
It's the Rush Limbaugh program.
Operation Chaos, meeting and surpassing all objectives.
This is white comedian Paul Shanklin at a vocal portrayal of Bill Clinton parodying the Spitzer mess.
It is Texas Christian University's Bright Divinity School that will honor Obama's fiery pastor Jeremiah Wright.
Stories in the Dallas Morning News: Bright Divinity School in Fort Worth sticking by a decision to honor Jeremiah Wright despite controversy over his pulpit rhetoric and relationship with Barack Obama.
Texas Christian University decided months ago to salute Dr. Wright at an event later this month for his long career in the ministry.
Congratulations, Dr. Wright.
I think it's fabulous.
I think the more this guy is recognized for his great work, the more Operation Chaos will be effective.
And by the way, why did I do that prostitution story?
I just wanted to hear the song, the Spitzer song, and there was really no way to work it in there.
But now, during the break, I found something.
Show prep never stops on this program.
Are humans meant to be monogamous?
This is from livescience.com.
News of politicians, news of Democrat politicians, extramarital affairs seems to be in no short supply lately.
But if humans were cut from exactly the same cloth as other mammals, a faithful spouse would be an unusual phenomenon.
Only 3% to 5% of the roughly 5,000 species of mammals, including humans, are known to form lifelong monogamous bonds with the loyal superstars, including beavers, wolves, and bats.
By the way, I didn't comment on this.
I did not comment on this, but the Daily Mail in the UK ran a story on Botox and how it's destroying Hollywood actresses' ability to be subtle with facial expressions.
And they had a picture of Nicole Kidman.
And it said, look at what Botox has done to her.
She's got a rat face.
And they had a picture of a rat, a bat, bat face.
And they had a picture of a bat right next to her to illustrate how she looked like a bat.
I just was reminded of that.
At any rate, yeah, beavers are monogamous.
Wolves are monogamous.
And some bats.
Social monogamy is a team or term rather referring to creatures that pair up to mate and raise offspring but still have flings.
Sexual monogamous pairs mate with only one partner.
So a cheating husband who detours for a romantic romp yet returns home in time to tuck in the kids at night would be considered socially monogamous.
Well fabulous.
We're redefining the terms here.
Does this kind of story ever happen when some Republican minister is discovered to be flitting around with a man or woman?
Does this kind of story ever happen?
Do we ever get one of these?
Say after Bob Livingston says that he's not going to accept a speakership because he had an affair.
Do we ever get stories like this thing?
It's fine.
As long as he got home to tuck in the kids, there's no problem.
He's still monogamous.
No, my friends, we don't get those kind of stories.
It's only after these Democrats get involved.
Because I've, why do I need in my mind?
I've got, snurdly, do you realize the great thing this has been for manhood?
This story?
I can print it out again.
This story has lifelong application for all of us, guys.
Thanks to Elliot Spitzer and David Patterson.
Just keep a copy of this story in your pocket.
Go out there.
Don't even, you know, prostitute or whatever.
Go out there and do whatever.
And then when you called on it, no, no, no, no, look.
Look.
Science says I'm still monogamous.
And science says that global warming is happening.
And you believe that, honey, this is more fun than a human being should be allowed.
Operation Chaos continues.
John in Somerset, Pennsylvania.
I'm glad you called, sir.
Welcome to the program.
Rush, Mayor Army Hood Dittos.
Thank you very much, sir.
Hey, I'm a Pennsylvania Republican, and I considered your idea of crossing over to vote in the Democratic primary.
I know what you're going to say.
I know what you're going to say, but there are too many important down-ballot elections on the Republican side to sit them out.
Right.
I have a very important election in my district for a state representative, and there's a couple of rhinos that are running, and then there's a conservative.
And I want to make sure that the conservative is the one that's going to be.
I understand that.
I understand.
That's a concern for some people in North Carolina, too.
Right.
Where there are some Republicans that they want to get elected on a down ballot after you vote for the presidential prime.
I understand that.
Hey, look, that's why these are not marching orders.
That's why you are not my number of butts.
You are free on this program, even though I am a benevolent dictator.
You are free to choose your choice in life.
Oh, yeah.
Screams of joy and/or panic at the very mention of my name, Rush Limbo, with talent on loan from God.
Back to the phones, Norma Jean in Lewiston, Pennsylvania.
Great to have you here.
Well, thank you.
I had a phone call last week.
I thought you might really be interested in.
Tell me about it.
It was a political survey.
They said they were just going to talk about the congressional race in the state, but we went to the presidential elections really quick, and then we had the issues, you know, the war, the economy, what.
Then the next question was, do you go to church?
Once in a while, every day, every Sunday, special occasions, never.
Wait a second here.
Norma Jean, who was it?
All I know is it was a political survey, but I'd be interested in answering some political questions.
All right, so it was a polling company, not a candidate.
Yes.
Okay.
So then after that, it was, are you a conservative or a liberal?
And what I thought you would be interested in is the next question.
Do you listen to Rush Limbaugh?
How often or never?
Well, we'd like to have the answers to this, Norman Jean, if you can remember what you told them.
Yes, I said almost always, as much as I can.
And that was the end of the survey.
Thank you.
Good morning.
They stopped asking you questions?
Or do you think that was the legitimate end of the politics?
Yes.
Well, you know, you're very brave.
A lot of people lie to pollsters.
That's known as the Bradley effect or the Wilder effect.
In the case of Doug Wilder running for the governorship in Virginia, Tom Bradley running for governor of California, in pre-election polls, they had huge leads.
And going into Election Day, it was assumed both candidates are black and both were going to win.
They both lost by sizable percentages.
And the pollsters decided, well, you know, we've been lied to here, but people didn't want us to think that they were racist, so they told us they're going to vote for Bradley or Wilder when they really had no intention of it.
And so it's interesting to how many people are actually answering questions about Obama that way.
For example, thanks, Norman Jean.
I appreciate that for you being honest with them.
I really do.
In Politico.com today on their website, there's a story about how people in Pennsylvania are just fed up with all this race stuff in the Democrat Party.
People are not happy in Pennsylvania with, quote, that race stuff.
Stephanie Gill, a bartender in a white working-class neighborhood in Philadelphia, noticed the shift immediately.
A week ago, her customers at Rauchat's Tavern, I hope I'm pronouncing that right, didn't have much to say about Barack Obama, but when she returned to work on Wednesday, a day after the speech, the reaction inside the corner bar was raw and unapologetic.
People are not happy with Obama, said Stephanie Gill.
It's the race stuff.
More than a dozen interviews Wednesday found voters unmoved by Obama's plea to move beyond racial divisions of the past.
He lied to Anderson Cooper, said Rodhika Maitreya, an aesthetician, aesthetician.
What is this?
I've never said, what the hell is an aesthetician?
Oh, the root words aesthetics.
So people who do facials are now called aestheticians.
Sort of like window washers are called vision control coordinators.
Masseus are now massage therapists.
Well, I'm all for upgrading names.
I had to self-esteem.
I'm fine.
I don't misunderstand.
I'm not making fun of it.
I just never seen it.
Radhika Maitreya, an aesthetician?
Yeah, yeah.
Aesthetician.
Good.
Rodhika Maitreya, when I get through this here, Rodica Maitreya, an esthetician and immigrant from Romania, said Obama lied to Anderson Cooper, referring to an Obama interview Friday with the CNN anchor.
And then there's another guy quoted here, Peter, somebody says Peter, Peter, Peter, Peter, who Peter doesn't really matter because we've never heard of him.
Glenn Peter, Peter's last name, is 54, a patron at the tavern, said he heard finger-pointing, not reconciliation, after Obama's speech.
He took issue with Obama's explaining that his reverend's observations of a racist America were reflecting the racial scars of the past.
I don't want to hear that.
I don't want to hear that you're blaming us for your reverence saying that, said Glenn Peter, who is white and worked at an auto parts factory until it was shuttered several years ago.
This was, we were forewarned about this.
You'll remember this, Mr. Snurdley.
We were forewarned about this by the governor of Pennsylvania himself, Fast Eddie Rindell, who said he knew the people of Pennsylvania and they had not prepared to vote for a black candidate.
That was in the last month or so.
And it was a firestorm over that.
And Fast Eddie had to do a quick Fast Eddie shuffle to get back on the high moral ground here.
And people in the Democrats, I worried about this going into Philadelphia.
Not Pennsylvania, but in Philadelphia.
Blue-collar, white workers.
It has always been thought that this was going to be a problem for Obama once they got to Pennsylvania.
And Hillary's leading big in Pennsylvania anyway.
But with that demographic, apparently, this stuff is anecdotal in the Politico.com.
It didn't work.
And remember, this speech, people are forgetting this aspect of the speech that Obama gave.
This was a speech in the context of a presidential campaign, specifically in the context of Pennsylvania primary.
It was not a Martin Luther King, I have a dream speech.
And by the way, folks, it didn't even approach that.
It was not even the same tone.
It didn't have the same objective.
Whereas Martin Luther King's was uplifting, this was not that.
This was finger pointing and blaming and then saying we've all got to get together and share our mutual blame for this.
And that's going backwards.
But at any rate, in the calculation of whether or not it's been a success for Obama within the confines of a presidential race and a particular state and its primary, Pennsylvania, jury is still out on that.
Now, the esthetician is back at the end of this story, Maitreya.
And she was on her cigarette break outside the Beauty Works Salon and Day Spa in the Mayfair section of Philadelphia.
She said she watched the whole speech.
And before the controversy over Wright's sermons, Maitreya said she was 55% for Clinton, 45% for Obama.
Now I am 100% for Clinton and 0% for Obama, said Maitreya.
She's an immigrant who is now a citizen, and she said she took offense to Wright's comments that God bless America should be God bleep America.
I love America.
I thank God I'm here.
I live a free life.
Obama should have severed all relations with his pastor, Maitreya said.
So, again, ladies and gentlemen, simply anecdotal.
But, again, more evidence.
Operation Chaos.
John in Burlington, Iowa.
Nice to have you on the program, sir.
Thank you for waiting and welcome.
Yes.
Hi, Rush.
Thank you for letting me on.
You bet.
Rush, first of all, let me preface my comments.
I'm a conservative.
I can't stand the Clintons and Obama.
I subscribe to much of what you say, but I have to respond to the ignorance in your comments on ethanol and the price of food in this country and the agriculture that's behind it.
Well, I'm not surprised that you have this opinion and you're calling from Iowa about it.
Remember, the primary story here that I quoted is about California, but it does mention Iowa.
Walter Williams is talking about it as a universal story nationwide.
I'm sure.
And from my viewpoint, urban folks like yourself and Walter Williams and your numbers or Legion are absolutely uninformed and uneducated and ignorant about the business of agriculture in this country.
I am one of the biggest supporters of agricultures.
I came from an agricultural community.
I understand that.
And I live in a town of 20,000 people.
Well, maybe 40.
It's not exactly urban.
Well, no, but you're urbanized now, Rush.
I understand.
Okay, look, I don't mean to interrupt.
In fact, can you hold me and take a break?
Because I'm going to have to take a break in a couple minutes anyway, and you deserve more time than this.
So can you hang on?
Yes, I sure can.
All right, we'll be back.
And I'm going to give you some of the stories, details, rather, in this Sacramento Bee story, and you can explain why they're wrong if you wish, okay?
Good.
No, no.
You can do that without any...
I'm not going to stand in your way.
Whatever you want to say will be fine.
Okay.
No, I'm still going to be here after the commercial break.
Ha, how are you?
We are back.
Rush Limbaugh, commanding officer from the headquarters of Operation Chaos.
And now we're rejoining John in Burlington, Iowa.
Let me give you just a couple of opening paragraphs.
It might be easier for you to respond to this knowing what it says, because I didn't detail any of what it said.
It's by Dale Kasler or Kessler, it's a K-A-S-L-E-R, Sacramento Bee, published today.
The cash crunch at Sacramento's Pacific Ethanol Incorporated spotlights the swift decline of an industry battered by too much supply, too expensive corn, and too many increases in plant construction costs.
Ethanol, hailed by some as a green fuel that would reduce America's dependence on foreign oil, is in a major slump here and nationwide.
Across California, profit margins are vanishing.
New plants are being canceled.
Some existing facilities are struggling.
The state's first major plant opened in Tulare County in 2005 has suspended operations, and it goes on from there.
But you get the drift of this story.
Yes.
Walter Williams, a couple paragraphs from him.
Ethanol contains water that distillation can't remove.
As such, it can cause major damage to automobile engines not specifically designed to burn ethanol.
The water content of ethanol also risks pipeline corrosion and thus must be shipped by truck, rail car, or barge.
These shipping methods are far more expensive than pipelines.
Okay, that's, I think, enough for you to register what your disagreements with both these pieces are.
Okay.
Well, first of all, and there are other studies out there, such as the Pimento study, that go through and try and designate ethanol as an inefficient product that goes through an inefficient process, that it actually costs more energy and more money to produce than it does to use.
That's what Walter Williams' piece basically is.
He says it's so costly it wouldn't make it in a free market, which is why Congress has enacted subsidies about $1.05 to $1.38 a gallon, which is no less than a tax on consumers.
In fact, he says there's a double tax, one in the form of ethanol subsidies and another in the form of handouts to corn farmers to the tune of $9.5 billion in 2005.
Part of the problem with some of these studies, Rush, is that some of their information in there is flawed.
If you want to talk about bad science, just one example with the Pimentoll study, when they start adding up the cost that goes into producing a gallon of ethanol, they even include a cost for the sunlight that the corn crop takes to produce a bushel of corn.
Now, that sunlight is free, and that cost shouldn't even be included in there.
And that's just one example of how some of these studies are flawed.
How are they calculating the cost of sunlight?
You got me.
All right, then here's these are probably some of the same scientists that ascribed a global warming, right?
Well, here's another passage in Walter Williams.
Ethanol is 20 to 30 percent less efficient than gasoline, making it more expensive per highway mile.
It takes 450 pounds of corn to produce the ethanol to fill one SUV tank.
450 pounds of corn is enough corn to feed one person for a year.
Is that accurate?
The energy figure I wouldn't necessarily prescribe as being quite that high.
I use 10% ethanol personally and I have for years.
In fact, my last pickup that I had, I had over 242,000 miles on it before it was traded off, and the engine was never touched.
And that engine had practically nothing but ethanol run all the way through it, the lifetime of the truck.
Well, see, my problem with ethanol is that I think it's part of the global warming hoax.
And what has happened is, in fact, I remember there was a story on the American Spectator website from a person like you who lived in Iowa, was a Republican, and was highly critical of Republican critics of ethanol.
His question was, where do you think Republican votes come from?
And his point was, it doesn't matter what ethanol is or isn't.
You need the votes.
If the Republicans are to win, we need the votes of people who make money off of it.
And I looked at that and I said, no wonder we're in trouble.
Whether it works or not, whether it's costly, whether it adds a tax, we still, in order to get Republicans elected, have to go ahead and invest in something that may be not at all what it's claimed to be, not even be beneficial, and may be harmful, in fact, in other areas of the economy.
And that makes Republicans no different than Democrats.
If Republicans are going to say we need to subsidize some of our voters to get their votes, they might as well join the Democrat Party.
Well, that part, yeah, I'd agree with that.
I think another part of the problem is, and part of the problem that you're ascribing to the increase in the cost of food is transportation costs.
The problem isn't so much ethanol.
There is plenty of...
No, but wheat.
No, it's corn and wheat.
And ethanol is taking corn out of the food markets.
No, it's not.
No, it's not.
Well, are we producing more corn?
We are.
Well, why is the price going up?
Because partially because of overseas demand, partially because where gas is concerned, partially the problem with the price of food is not ethanol because there's plenty of corn to go around.
There's plenty of corn to feed our livestock.
There's plenty of corn to go into everything else we use.
Okay.
When corn costs $4 a bushel, and it's a little higher than that right now, but I don't have current figures.
When corn costs $4 a bushel, corn only contributes 28 cents to the price of a dozen eggs.
Okay, so but less than a minute here.
So what would you say?
Are you an agriculturist?
Are you in the business?
I've been involved with agriculture all my life, yes.
I'm a sales manager in the seed corn business.
I figured.
Now, full disclosure, it was important we get that out.
You have obviously an explanation then that exempts corn from rising food prices.
What is it?
A lot of it's transportation.
19 cents of each food dollar right now goes back to farmers.
The remaining 81 cents is spent on labor, packaging, energy, transportation, and marketing.
Okay, by the way, in this discussion of food prices going up, nobody is that I've heard, and I certainly didn't mean to imply, nor for you to infer, that rising food prices are going to the farmers and that farmers are gouging.
That's not how agriculture works.
That's not at all what I meant.
I'm just saying we've got a lot of stuff going on in the environment that has been promulgated primarily by liberals to help the little guy and to save the planet.
And it's causing more.
It's common.
The unintended consequences or the known intended consequences, which is even more sinister, of liberal policies, which all fail, is just a sight to behold.
Everybody can see it if they just be honest enough to.
Okay, another hour, exciting hour, an unpredictable hour of broadcast excellence is in the can, my friends.
But patience, chill out.
We've got one more to go.
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