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Dec. 1, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:33
December 1, 2008, Monday, Hour #2
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Time Text
I don't know, man.
I might have come close to breaking that string a couple of shows ago.
I don't know.
Kidding, I hope.
Hi, Mark Davis in for Rush.
Hopefully, just for one day.
Just under the weather, man.
Just got the bug.
And the bar for Rush is set pretty high.
So it must have him in its grips.
And hopefully it'll be a brief 24-hour episode.
And he is back, rested and ready after a five-day Thanksgiving weekend on tomorrow's broadcast.
I hope that's the case.
In the meantime, though, we get to spend time together, and I'm very pleased about that.
It's Mark Davis out of WBAP Dallas, Fort Worth.
So I hope all is well with you.
And phone number is 1-800-282-2882.
That never changes.
1-800-282-2882.
In a couple of minutes, I have audio from President-elect Obama's unveiling of the so-called national security team.
And it's funny.
I don't want to be too snarky about that because, again, it sure could be worse than Hillary Clinton.
And I'm enormously fond of Defense Secretary Gates.
So Secretary of State Hillary scares me a lot less than some others could have.
And Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is actually reassuring.
As invoked in the last hour, though, it's funny.
Secretary of Homeland Security, how important is it really?
Homeland Security is enormously important, but Secretary of, I mean, please, is Michael Chertoff?
I am a good guy, a genuinely good guy.
And in fact, in the last year, year and a half, seemingly suddenly interested in actually finding illegal immigrants and arresting them.
Imagine that.
Will the new Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, Democrat governor of Arizona, will she be as ardent about that, as conscientious about it as her predecessor was for at least the last 18 months?
I don't see any way how she can.
I'll tell you why here in a minute.
We'll talk a little bit about the team.
Clinton Gates holder Jones Napolitano.
Dr. Susan Rice is U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. I'll have some audio from President-elect Obama talking about both Hillary and Secretary Gates.
But first, but first, as advertised, we mentioned that we wanted to spend some time in Georgia because there's a big runoff tomorrow between Saxby Shambliss, the incumbent Republican, and Jim Martin, the Democrat, who came within three points of him, but nobody broke 50.
So there's your runoff in Georgia joining us from Augusta, Georgia.
Amy hung on through the news, and we are grateful.
Hey, Amy, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Mark Davis, how are you?
I am thrilled.
I am very thrilled to be here.
Thanks.
Thrilled to have you.
I'm sorry, what?
I said thrilled to have you.
Sarah Palin is in your state.
Four stops, I believe, with Senator Shambliss there down in Peach Country.
Yep, and we were the first stop, and we really enjoyed her.
She got the big Georgia welcome, and I was just enthusiastic about what she said.
And just want to encourage all the Georgia Republicans to go out there and vote tomorrow.
Did you go?
Did you watch it on the tube or did you actually go?
No, we actually went.
We were standing in line a quarter after seven in 36-degree windshield.
Oh, man, which doesn't happen in Augusta often.
So where was the venue?
Let's get inside the event here because I'm going somewhere with this, and it involves Governor Palin, whom everyone is just breathlessly trying to figure out where her future lies.
And maybe there's a clue or two from her day spent in Georgia with Saxby Shambliss.
So where was the location there in Augusta?
It was at the James Brown Arena in downtown Augusta.
Very cool.
And there was a long, long line.
Was pretty well filled.
And people were chanting for Sarah.
There were buttons for Sarah.
People were buying it.
And I don't know.
I hope I'm not preempting you here, but everybody was just so enthusiastic for her.
I mean, people were enthusiastic for Zaxby because it is a very important race.
Well, sure.
But she's a bigger star than he is.
So it's all.
Oh, yeah.
It was kind of like Prince Charles and Lady Diana.
Wow.
Good guy, but not exactly a spine-tingling fella.
But the lady.
Now, there's where the excitement is.
So that's a golden, golden analogy.
Well, we, you know, it's like I just admire what she did.
I think she's our conservative voice, and we're just so, you know, thrilled for her.
And there's 2012 t-shirts.
And, you know, readjust sort of the Palin 2012 t-shirts.
Yeah.
Were there, was anybody else's name on there?
I've seen me Palin Jindal t-shirts.
Some of them are actually Jindal Palin.
You can argue about that if you want.
Or was it just basically Palin 2012 and we'll talk running mate later on?
Palin 2012 and we'll talk running mate later on.
That works for many.
Does it work for you?
Is there a, as a fan, here's the universal question.
As vice president, she would have been magnificent.
And the four years as John McCain's vice president would have made her more than ready to be the actual president in 2012.
Without that, do you have the feeling might like her to bolster that resume some way before heading into a field that'll probably contain Bobby Jindal, Charlie Christ, maybe Rudy, maybe Rodney, maybe who knows?
Or is she just fine with you as is?
Don't need the apprenticeship.
Just four more years of, you know, just good public visibility and running Alaska well, and you'll be ready for her in 2012.
I was ready for her in 2008.
I think.
To be vice president.
Well, I got excited to be a Republic again when she was put on the ticket.
Here's why that's a special question.
Because in God bless Senator McCain, we will honor him forever for his service to this country.
But compared to the ideological mixed bag that Senator McCain was, Governor Palin provided that incredible breath of fresh conservative air of unapologetic, down-the-line, reliable conservatism that we haven't had in forever.
That's exactly right.
And she mentioned that, you know, that this is the start of reforming the Republican Party.
You know, that tomorrow, hopefully, we Georgians will say, yes, this is what we want, and make a big, bold statement, not only having the balance of power, you know, within our government, but just to say, you know, this is what we want.
Absolutely.
Well, Amy, get to take 10 people to go vote and have them bring 10 too.
Your state of Georgia supported the McCain-Palin ticket, 5247.
Without that pesky third-party thing, just an actual head-to-head between Shambliss and Martin of early voting is certainly less of a factor this time.
It certainly looks like a Shambliss win, but do not rest on that laurel.
Pretend you're down by 10 and vote accordingly.
Amen.
All right.
Well, God bless you.
Thank you very, very much.
Appreciate the story from the front lines of Georgia.
And let me see if let's see if this works.
I think it will.
Since the event was at the James Brown Coliseum or something, stand by, guys.
This will only take 20 seconds.
Wow!
I feel good.
I feel good.
Oh, I feel good.
I feel good.
I feel good.
You want me to say, I feel good?
I feel good.
I feel good.
Yeah, doesn't that just sort of put a spring in your step?
That work out okay for you?
All right.
Well, let's segue from the hardest working man in show business to the president-elect, shall we?
And listen, I was talking to Kit and Mike before doing the show here.
Does anybody remember?
Let me ask all of you.
Eight years ago with President Bush, 16 years ago, golly, with the incoming President Clinton, and before that, you know, who knows?
Bush 41 wouldn't have.
Reagan in the 80s certainly didn't.
You know where I'm headed here?
Did anybody spend their entire speaking life during the transition at a lectern with an enormous dark blue placard, just in case you didn't know who the guy was, with a big thing emblazoned with the letters, Office of the President Elect?
Or is that just a new thing?
And again, the very next thing I have to do, the very next thing I must do, and we all should do, is ask ourselves the test question: would it bug me if McCain had won and done it?
If it were John McCain, and he slapped the big placard out front, I would suggest that even still, I would be saying, you know, Senator, you won, and I'm glad, and we know.
We know who you are.
But I'll tell you what, it comes against the backdrop that it comes against is John McCain never fashioned for himself a sort of a new wave, a quasi-presidential seal to slap on the airplane.
That was an Obama thing.
So the guy does love the imagery.
Okay, we've got a minute.
This just takes a bit because he spends about a minute on Hillary and about a minute on Bob Gates.
Of course, I may extend that a little bit by pausing at various moments.
This was from about 10.45 Eastern Time this morning.
I have known Hillary Clinton as a friend, a colleague, a source of counsel, and a tough campaign opponent.
She possesses an extraordinary intelligence and a remarkable work ethic.
I am proud that she will be our next Secretary of State.
She's an American of tremendous stature who will have my complete confidence, who knows many of the world's leaders, who will command respect in every capital, and who will clearly have the ability to advance our interests around the world.
Let's spend a moment on commanding respect in every capital.
Now, she has been preceded by another woman, so it's an interesting question now, because a lot of people said when Condi Rice ascended to Secretary of State, a lot of people said, as they will say, when we have a woman president at some point, how will a woman be received in the portions of the world where women are second or arguably fifth class citizens?
Does it help you in, oh, just to pick a part of the world, the Muslim world, to be sending a woman in to many countries where women are scarcely allowed to speak in public?
I guess there are two schools of thought on that.
One is it shows that part of the world that we're just more evolved than they are and they need to kind of get with the program.
And I guess, I don't know, that's good, depending on how in your face you want to be.
But the other one is that they pretty well disregard whatever the good lady says, whether it's someone with an enormous brain and usually good instincts like Condi Rice, or someone whose instincts we hope are half as good, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Since there is no evidence I think that you can find, if you think so, call me, that Condi Rice, as a woman, has faced hurdles based on her gender, then I think that's probably off the table.
And Hillary Clinton's womanhood is probably not much at issue.
Hillary's appointment is a sign to friend and foe of the seriousness of my commitment to renew American diplomacy and restore our alliances.
There's much to do, from preventing the spread of nuclear weapons to Iran and North Korea to seeking a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
By giving in to everything the Palestinians want, just you watch, to strengthening international institutions.
I have no doubt that Hillary Clinton is the right person to lead our State Department and to work with me in tackling this ambitious foreign policy agenda.
Now, as he introduces Secretary Gates, whom he's actually holding over from the Bush administration, the words have a little trouble getting out of his mouth.
I don't want to overanalyze, but I did chuckle here.
At a time when we face unprecedented transition amidst two wars, I've asked Secretary Robert Gates to continue as Secretary of Defense, and I'm pleased that he's accepted.
Two years ago, he took over the Pentagon at a difficult time.
He restored accountability.
He won the confidence of military commanders and the trust of our brave men and women in uniform.
By supporting a surge that you, Mr. President-elect, still say was a mistake.
I'm getting emails that are saying, Mark, why in the world would Robert Gates even agree to serve in an administration headed by someone who spoke so darkly and so ill-advisedly of the troops and their mission?
And the best answer I can come up with is to hope to God that he listens because there are going to be some interesting arguments, I guess, as President Obama and Secretary of Defense Gates go toe-to-toe over how to do some things.
Or maybe President Obama's epiphany is complete and he now truly wants to win the war.
After all, it's his war now.
Might as well win it.
Oh, when it's another guy's war, it is to be pilloried and chastised and condemned.
But if it's mine, hey, let's come on.
Let's go for the troops.
Let's win one.
Let's do it.
And notice how the entire Democrat landscape is suddenly silent on how dreadful the war is because it now belongs to their guy.
I just hope that on those occasions where there's a difference of opinion between a president-elect where the only experience he has in war is being wrong about it, where in his disagreements with the Secretary of Defense who has helped to win it, I hope in those disagreements that Gates wins.
Mark Davis in for Rush.
Be right back on the EIB network.
1-800-282-2882.
Mark Davis in for Rush.
Hopefully just today, because Rush is under the weather, and hopefully he'll be, oh, I don't know, above the weather tomorrow.
What's the source of that term?
1-800-282-2882.
Back to your calls.
We are in Logan, Ohio.
Hi, Kim, Mark Davis.
Nice to have you on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Hello.
Hi, Mark.
I've been waiting for forever to get this point across, but hopefully Russia's sitting at home and resting and listening to this.
I have a big beef with Walmart.
I'm probably one of the few Republicans that do, mostly because they walk in and wipe out small towns.
What would be a small town that they've wiped out?
My small town.
And Jill, since you're officially calling from, I know you mean metaphorically or whatever.
In what way?
Describe the wipeout, please.
We were a really, really neat mom-and-pop old town.
Right.
And Walmart, what they do with the small towns, I don't mind in the city.
You go in and you plop your store down across from their biggest competitor, and it keeps prices on us.
It's good competition.
It's good for the economy.
Right.
Capitalism at its absolute finest.
Unfortunately, on the flip side of that, what they do with small towns, they build a store on the outskirts of town so that nobody has to go in town anymore.
They can if they want to.
They can if they want to.
And I do agree with that.
And I stopped doing that about six years ago after listening to Rush say that, well, their parking lots are always full.
So I was one.
I'm one less customer there.
I understand.
And that's a choice that you got to make.
And consumer choice is what liberty is all about.
I mean, if you're here to tell me that you kind of wish that your town still had that mom-and-pop feel, I don't begrudge you that.
Of course, I understand.
But if you're here to somehow blame, not blame Walmart, but here to speak ill of this development as if it has ill-served the community, it hasn't.
People are exercising their choices.
They're just not the choices you want them to make.
I understand that part.
But the town above us in Lancaster, it was put to the voters.
Do you want a Walmart in your community?
It was actually on the ballot several years ago, and I apologize for not having the actual turret there.
That's all.
Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
Let me finish.
They said no, and they overwhelmingly voted it down.
What Walmart did was go out and buy a plot on the outskirts of town, then went to the city council and asked to be annexed in.
Which they had every right to do.
And which the city had every right to, and which voters had every right to oppose.
You know what?
They didn't.
Enough people wanted that Walmart there.
The voters did not know they overwhelmingly did.
All they had to do was go to the city council, and instead of having a thousand or two thousand people say yes, they only needed four or five.
Understand.
So that's where they went.
And hopefully those voters remembered that those city council members were the ones that said, and hopefully they voted them out of office.
You know what those voters are probably remembering?
And here's, I mean, the marketplace is never wrong.
It's never wrong.
It doesn't always give us the messages we want to hear, but the marketplace is never wrong.
And rather than taking those, I mean, there may be the occasional person who wants to take those scoundrels out and who just wishes that everything was Mayberry like it used to be.
But what people probably have a memory of now is the thousands of dollars a year they save because the Walmart is there.
That's what they remember.
And that will obliterate most memories that they ever had of wistful feelings about the mom and pop store.
I'm an enormous fan of the mom and pop store.
I love mom and pop stores.
And in this era of Walmart, mom and pop have to do things a little differently, offer some things, a little more personal service, a little more this and that.
Be right back.
It is the Rush Limbaugh Show for this first day of December 2008.
I'm Mark Davis filling in down in Texas at WBAP Dallas-Fort Worth.
Hope all is well with you.
And I really hope all is well with Rush, too.
He's got that rarity of all rarities, a Limbaugh sick day.
You know, golf tournaments, ribbon cuttings, tributes to him and his amazing legacy.
That's why I'm usually here.
And that's why Jason up in Minneapolis is usually here.
But a sick day is rare.
But he's got one today, and I hope he's all better and back tomorrow.
All righty, 1-800-282-2882-1-800-282-2882.
Let's get back to Georgia, Georgia on our minds.
Georgia in the news, certainly after tomorrow's runoff between Saxby Shandliss and Jim Martin and Sarah Palin down there in Georgia campaigning for Saxby Shandliss.
Now, might President-elect Obama go down there for Mr. Martin?
That would be new, but there has been a Jim Martin radio ad essentially saying, you know, Jim Martin will help me do everything I've said I'm going to do.
Excellent.
I want that ad to run four times an hour on every radio station in Georgia because in a 5247 McCain state, Shambliss wins tomorrow.
But again, don't take my word for it.
We are in Atlanta.
Michael, Mark Davis, you are on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
How are you?
I'm all right.
How are you?
Very good.
Thanks.
I'm actually just pulled into Glennett Arena here to go to the Saxby Sarah rally.
This is tremendous.
A lady who attended the Augusta event earlier was there, and now here you are getting ready to head on in.
It's going to be a party.
Yes, it is.
My point was that it's interesting that it seems to me the biggest heavyweight, if you will, that Saxby has brought on this last day before the runoff is Sarah Palin.
No doubt.
I think that debunks all of, as Rush calls them, the lizard of smarts on our side that think that she was a drag on our ticket.
I think that it reaffirms the fact that Saxby knows she's a winner and he needs to get with the program.
Absolutely right.
You don't bring someone on the day before election day that you think the base of your voters have mixed feelings about.
And listen, at what point do you achieve mixed feelings?
There may have been some Republicans who were not thrilled with her as vice president, but there's no way to go through the time tunnel and have McCain run with somebody else.
But I'm confident that if he had, he would have been beaten worse.
Sarah Palin brought a freshness and an unapologetic upbeat conservatism to the ticket that was not sufficiently there for many Republican voters.
So she is just the right person to bring through to march through Georgia.
Yes, I absolutely agree.
And it's been great speaking with you.
And I'm going to get my son out of the car now and we're going to go over here and stand in line.
Very cool.
Now, this gets to another issue.
This is exciting.
If I can borrow you for a couple of minutes more, how old is the boy?
Seven and a half weeks.
Well, there goes that school issue I was going to talk about.
Good for you.
Give him a big kiss and tell him, tell him when he's, I don't know, maybe four or eight or something like that, that he went and saw the first woman president of the United States back when she was just starting her fame.
Thank you, Michael.
Appreciate it very, very much.
Here's where I was going with that.
If there is anything that I have dragged through my career, it is a belief that but for a very small list of things, if do I want to bring this up?
Do I want to bring this up on the Limbaugh Show?
I'm going to do it.
Guess what?
Your kids need to be in school.
I don't want to hear about vacations during school time.
I don't want to hear about grandma or anything like that, unless grandma dies.
Obviously, funerals, enormous family obligations, a wedding, one-time things.
Well, most weddings are one-time, at least still, aren't they?
That's fine.
But if there's anything that's driven me nuts, it is the message that we deliver to our kids by haphazardly pulling them out of school, public, private, whatever.
I don't care.
If school is in session, your kids need to be in school.
Now, what is the list of things that's okay to bring them out?
We will all have different lists, and maybe we're about to start compiling some now.
Matters of historical significance.
The visit of a major political figure to your town or to your state for a major political event.
That's why if the last gentleman's son had been seven years old, I would have been more than fine with it because you can learn more from a one-day political event.
And I'd say this if somebody was pulling something out for a Jim Martin rally, I got no problem with that.
That is a big deal.
It's history happening right in front of their faces.
I got no problem with that.
Let's see, is this history?
Huge events that are, all right, for example, this is dicey with weather and everything, but there aren't too many of these left.
Space shuttle launch.
Gonna grab the kids out and run down to Florida to see a space shuttle launch.
My parents, I badgered them so hard.
I sit here with you today as a first-hand witness of the launches of Apollo 14 in January 1971, 16 in April 1972, and the third Skylab mission in November 1973.
Missed a couple of days of school in every case.
Knew it way ahead of time, did all the work ahead of time, and I'll remember it for the rest of my life.
Things like that are okay.
And the third category, this is the one where I get affectionately, maybe not so affectionately, ribbed here in Dallas, Fort Worth.
Baseball's opening day.
I think if you take your kid out to go to a regular season game, you know, in May, that's a problem.
Opening day, and maybe this is just to me, is cut from a special slice of Americana.
And most stadiums, even where the team is incapable of winning, like here in Texas Rangers land, we have a B1 bomber flyover and some bald eagle runs out and does something and flies across the stadium and back to his handler.
You get a heck of a spine-tingling star-spangled banner, and then America's pastime.
So for a good many years here, on opening day for the Rangers, my kids are with me.
And this is another example of where you know it's coming.
You get the work done ahead of time.
Oh, and by the way, school does also need to kind of be okay with this.
So that's that.
So that's really that.
But a major campaign swinging through your town absolutely passes musters.
So if you've now, obviously, make sure they get the work done ahead of time.
Make sure it's good with the teachers.
But if you got your kids heading for either a Saxby Shambless or a Jim Martin event in Georgia, good on you.
No problem.
Alrighty, 1-800-282-2882-1-800-282-2882.
We are in Oneida, New York.
Corky, Mark Davis, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Hello.
Hello, sir.
I wanted to tell you that you were 100% on as far as disparaging the troops if you're not with their mission.
Yeah, I mean, sorry, that's just it.
Yeah, I was involved with the mission with Libya back in the 80s.
Wow, thank you.
And when we did the bombing, there were a few days there when we were pretty nervous about what we did and how it was going to be accepted back home.
We did what we were called to do, but we weren't sure how everyone was going to handle it.
And we heard some negative, and it really, really hurt.
We did hear a lot of positive, and that helped.
Yeah, I mean, in a country with free speech, if you give, there wasn't a whole lot of CNN out there in Libya, but now it's everywhere.
And with cable news, you'll hear the voices of people and even media voices.
And, you know, you can turn off CNN if you want to, which is probably a good idea in any war zone.
But in a country of free speech, that's okay.
I mean, it drives me nuts, but it's all right.
What really just doesn't just cross the line, but obliterates the line, is when elected officials tasked with doing what is right for America at all times.
And opinions can differ on what's right for America.
Higher taxes, lower taxes.
You know, go green or embrace those fossil fuels.
We can have disagreements about that all the time.
As someone some decades ago said, a gentleman from Michigan, I believe, in the Senate, that our disagreements should stop at the water's edge.
When we are at war, the time for disagreement has ended.
And anyone who says or does anything that makes victory less attainable has done something that is genuinely shameful.
And for me to say it is one thing, but hearing your testimony is particularly, particularly meaningful.
Thank you, Corky, for your call and for your service to the country.
He invokes Libya, which is kind of interesting.
Seems like just a hiccup of time ago, doesn't it?
23 years, mid-80s or so.
24 years ago, I was just starting the first show I ever did.
Proud Limbaugh Affiliate, a different frequency at that time, W-O-K-V in Jacksonville.
And the Mayport Naval Air Station was the proud home of the USS Saratoga.
And the phone call came one day, hey, do you want to fly out to the Saratoga?
Flight will take about an hour and a half for the last three days of the Saratoga's trip in to the Mayport Naval Air Station.
Jumped on it with zest and gusto.
And so I flew out there and spent in the midst of this entire, they were just coming back from the Mediterranean, just coming back from the Mid.
And these guys were so proud of having served.
And some of them got their high school diplomas on the ship.
There was a ceremony and not a dry eye in the house.
And this is an old and familiar custom.
For those of you in the Navy, you'll know about it.
And I knew about it, but had never experienced it.
When the Saratoga rolls in and the horizon appears, and you're still nowhere close to there, you still got a long time to go pack your stuff and get on up and get ready to watch as the Florida coast grew closer and closer and closer.
And as this massive ship that was the USS Saratoga pulled in and docked with everyone in their dress whites rimming the perimeter of the deck, the first people off of that ship were not the admiral, were not the executive officer, were not the captain, were not the brass.
The first people off of that ship walked down a ramp to one of two tents, a blue tent and a pink tent.
The first people off the USS Saratoga after six months in the Mediterranean, fighting the threat of Qaddafi and others were the men who had become fathers while away.
And that image will never leave me.
Hope it never leaves you now because I can scarcely talk.
I can scarcely get through the story.
There's a reason I brought that up, and that is that Libya and Gaddafi are a fascinating case study, aren't they?
It takes time.
It takes time, but it is doable.
Wasn't Qaddafi, I mean, he was like the bin Laden starter kit, wasn't he?
I mean, before there was bin Laden, before there was Saddam, who was the go-to guy in that crazy, murderous part of the world?
That's Gaddafi.
It's a good guy today.
I mean, we have high praise for him, you know, because he has learned a lesson or two or three, and it came from American toughness.
And I hope that lesson lasts a very long time.
And I hope people think about that a little bit when, you know, the war is hard.
It's taken five years.
When?
Toughen up, man.
It's a long struggle, and we're at war against people who don't mind fighting us for five centuries.
So take a whiff of that, and we'll be back in just a moment on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Mark Davis in today.
Hopefully, just today, he'll be better tomorrow, I hope, here on the EIB network.
See what I've started?
See what kind of a mess I've created.
I hope it's entertaining.
Hi, Mark Davis, in for Rush Limbaugh today.
Hopefully, rush back tomorrow.
Got a little one-day illness, and I hope it's a one-day illness.
All right, in setting up that list of when is it okay to yank the kids out of school, I don't know how this is going to go.
The answer is it depends.
So let's go.
This bodes well for the tone of the call.
In Defiance, Ohio, Mike is about to make an argument for an overseas trip.
Okay, Mike, the court is open.
What kind of overseas trip?
Where, how long, and when?
Well, we take trips, you know, cruises and stuff, you know, and we've been to different parts, you know, different islands.
And matter of fact, in 2005, we went through the Panama Canal.
You know, and those type of trips is only like certain times of the year, and fortunately, most of the time during school year, you know, during well, that's what I wanted to ask because the one condition or criterion that I would attach is: is the experience in any way replicatable when school is not in session?
Because a lot of times people are talking about, well, we do this, we do that.
I go, hey, that's why God made summer.
Okay.
So the Panama Canal thing, that's intriguing.
And I'm a big believer in kids seeing the world.
And boy, you bet, I'm right there with you.
But it's just of the trips you've taken, how many of them, and maybe just that one.
They don't do the Panama Canal in summer?
Yeah, it was in May.
But they do not do it in June, July, or August?
Well, we go on a certain cruise, you know, certain cruise line.
And that cruise line does not do June, July, or August?
No, no.
Can I mention the name?
Sure.
Disney Cruise Line.
Okay.
You know, and they have like certain trips they have all the time.
And then they come out with trips like to the Panama Canal.
Right.
And it was the first time they went through the Panama Canal in May.
You bet.
You know, wait, and what exactly is the enormous earth-shattering difference between going through it in May as opposed to going through it one month later when school is out?
Well, see, the thing was, they brought the boat up to the LA area, okay?
And they ran Mexican cruises for so many weeks, and then they brought the boat back through the canal.
And he would have been back in school by the time they took the boat back through again.
Gotcha.
You know, and my son is 14 years old.
You bet.
And he's been to most, he's been to a lot of places that most young people haven't been to.
I mean, I bet he is, just in view of the dad you seem to be and the life he seems to be living, sharp as a tack enough where he can be gone for a week and not miss a beat on the schoolwork and get it done ahead of time and all that good stuff.
Yeah, he got the work done before and during the trip.
Then great.
I mean, then seriously.
In general, and that is great.
I probably don't need 475 calls about, oh, we went to Sweden.
Okay, that's great.
Generally speaking, if it just generally speaks, and God bless you, sir, and God bless your son.
That's a lucky, lucky young man.
Generally speaking, go when school's out.
That's just a good thing to do.
Go when school's out.
Now, here's why.
Here's why.
It's more crowded when school's out.
I know.
Go when school's out.
Because if you bring the bar down, if you don't really make an effort to keep your kid's butt in the seat where he's expected to be, except under really extraordinary or very special or almost unreplicatable circumstances, that's a message that later on when he's 25 and gets up and goes, do I need to go to work?
And not necessarily that leads to, well, I could go to work or play golf.
I don't think I'll play golf because after all, dad took me to the Panama Canal in May.
That's not an apples and apples, not at all.
And this guy made a great point.
And listen, international travel with their, please, can we get our kids some international travel so they can actually see the world and be able to talk about it firsthand?
I'm a huge fan of that.
But I'm greedy here.
I want your kids to see the world, and I want them to see it when school's not in session, so that they can both learn about the world and learn about meeting the expectations of the society into which they will grow up.
All righty.
Oh, 1-800-282-2882.
I'd love to think I've settled this, but I somehow fear that I have not.
We'll take care of some other topical matter for a little while, though, and resume it when we return from this brief pause on the EIB network.
Well, I am establishing a trend here.
That is of leaving myself precious little time.
I may not slice it as close as the actual host.
God bless you, Rush.
Get well.
Come back tomorrow.
Meantime, though, I am Mark Davis of WBAP.
Dallas, Fort Worth, will have a bunch more of your calls and your thoughts intermingled with mine in one more golden hour here on the EIB Network.
And that's coming up in just a couple of minutes.
So don't move.
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