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Jan. 7, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:25
January 7, 2009, Wednesday, Hour #2
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Greetings, my friends, and welcome back.
You are tuned to the most fun, the most informative, the most educational, the most penetrating, the most provocative, the most addictive radio talk show in America, hosted by me, Rush Limbaugh, the all-knowing, all-caring, all-sensing, all-feeling.
Maha Rushi.
Telephone number is 800-282-2882.
If you want to be on the program, the email address, ilrushbow at EIBNet.com.
Quick question, ladies and gentlemen.
If Barack Obama is so confident in his plan for the economy, why is he so gloomy?
He had a press conference today to announce his new reinvent government person.
And it just, it was like an undertaker out there.
There was no excitement.
There was no upbeat attitude about this at all.
There was no positive.
It was all doom and gloom.
It was all continue the crisis.
In the New York Times today, Obama warns trillion-dollar deficit potential, and that is without counting his stimulus package.
He actually said that his stimulus package will not alleviate trillion-dollar deficits for years to come.
Now, wouldn't a legitimate stimulus plan prevent these kinds of deficits?
This is why I say that the main point here, ladies and gentlemen, is that Obama has admitted that he is clueless when it comes to the economy and job growth.
You know, as I look forward, everybody wants something here positive.
I'll give you something positive.
I think the Democrats are in big trouble in 2010.
Promising.
Obama, the president-elect, is promising.
He is assuring us trillion-dollar deficits.
Democrats are in charge of D.C., so these predictions are promises.
This should open some eyes.
I mean, this promise will act as a permanent anchor on the financial markets.
I mean, to buoy, what's the stock market?
It's down big today.
Well, 100 and some odd points.
But, I mean, if you want to buoy the stock markets, you have to work toward balanced budgets.
Ask Clinton about that.
Clinton became obsessed with balancing the budget when the Republicans won the House in 1994.
I mean, he even understood that.
You balance budgets or you try, at least.
You put forth the image and good things happen.
But the bigger point here is that Barack Obama is predicting that his stimulus package will not work.
Why would we have trillion-dollar deficits for years to come if Congress passes Obama's brilliant plan, ladies and gentlemen?
What's with all the hype about the geniuses that he has nominated?
These are the wizards of smart after all.
One would think a stimulus plan would bring in more revenue, right?
Stimulus of what?
They want to stimulate the economy.
That's what they say.
If you stimulate the economy, you're going to reduce deficits.
But they are not stimulating the economy.
See, this, ladies and gentlemen, is where you need me, somebody who can read the stitches on the fastball.
Yeah, he wants a trillion-dollar stimulus of the government.
He says that he wants to spend a trillion dollars to create or save 3 million jobs.
It used to be 2 million, and it was 2.5.
So the numbers keep changing, of course, because Obama does not know what he's doing.
He really does not know what he's doing here.
But let's just take the number 3 million jobs in a trillion-dollar stimulus package, okay?
I think that comes out to $333,333 per job created or saved.
If you run the numbers, I think that's what you'll come up with.
So to spend a trillion dollars to create 3 million jobs, $333,000 a job.
Do you think every job created is going to earn that much money?
Fat chance.
Ladies and gentlemen, I thought Obama was going to cut all, and he says he's going to cut out all the pork.
He's going to go through there and streamline government, find the programs that don't work anymore.
He was going to go line by line, remember?
He was going to go line by line through the budget to eliminate waste.
And with all of that, we're still going to get trillion-dollar deficits.
And he's being supported in this by the New York Times today.
Obama warns trillion-dollar deficit potential, and that's without counting the stimulus package.
Let's go to page two.
While economists almost universally support running large deficits to combat the kind of steep recession the country is grappling with now, they are increasingly expressing alarm at the prospect of sustained imbalances heading into a period in which the aging of the population will create huge budgetary strains because of Medicare and Social Security, two giant Ponzi schemes that make Madoff look like a piker.
Obama was not specific about the size of the deficit he expects beyond his reference to a trillion-dollar deficit.
AIDS said later that the estimate, in line with what economists have been anticipating, given the economy's rapid deterioration, did not include the costs of his proposed stimulus package.
That's where he's admitting that his package won't work.
Stimulus package will not work.
Now, get this.
One thing investors have to be thinking is what's the exit strategy here?
This is where I, investors, the markets, people who invest in the growth of things, they need to see some effort at fiscal restraint.
They need to see some effort to try to balance the budget, some move in that direction.
Obama's making none.
They're saying just the opposite.
They need to spend all this money to keep the economy from tanking.
Robert Bixby, director of the Concord Coalition, said, I would analogize this to what the government's doing with the auto companies.
Congress said, we'll give you the money, but you have to show us a plan for sustainability.
Now, the government's in the same position as the auto companies, but they haven't come up with a plan for sustainability.
And that's exactly right.
Go tell the auto companies, everybody else is getting a bailout what they have to do to get the money, but the government will not tell itself what it has to do to get the money.
Also in the New York Times today, economists warmed government spending, but debate its form.
The upshot of this story is that rampant government spending is now mainstream thinking.
That's from Janet Yellen, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
The new enthusiasm for fiscal stimulus and particularly government spending represents a huge evolution in mainstream thinking.
Well, Shazam, folks, this just happened overnight.
Do you realize just overnight, starting in October with the October surprise, all of a sudden, mainstream thought has now come to embody huge, huge government spending for years and years and years.
And then, ladies and gentlemen, listen to this page two of this New York Times story.
This is from Peter Gottschalk, labor economist at Boston College.
Our models, our economic models, are built on the assumption that on average, on average, people have rationally behaved.
And they do the right thing.
But this time, people did very much the wrong thing.
It's like thinking you have a disease under control and then being hit with a new strain of it.
People didn't do the wrong thing.
Government did the wrong thing.
Government enabled people doing the wrong thing in the subprime mortgage business.
Government encouraged them to do the wrong thing.
Government sold them to do the wrong thing.
People didn't do the wrong thing.
This is outrageous.
This is just our models are based on individuals doing the right thing, and those models have to be changed because the individual doesn't do.
So the government is blaming you.
All of these think tank economists are blaming you for the economic crisis that we're in because you can't be relied on to do the right thing anymore.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, represents a supreme triumph of one of the building blocks of liberalism, and that is elitism.
And that is that you are incompetent.
You are incapable.
You have to be protected from yourself.
Government, some big state organization, some nanny-like person or bureaucracy has to do things for you because you can't do it.
And so now these economists have to change their models because their models were always predicated on the assumption that people behave rationally and they do the right thing, but you didn't this time.
And you've blown it.
So the New York Times with two different stories today providing cover for Barack Obama and never-ending deficits of a trillion dollars or more.
Where does this leave the Republicans?
Well, my friends, this is once again a huge, huge, huge redefine, re-establish, provide a new launching pad opportunity for the Republican Party.
But instead, what I'm hearing from the Republicans is let's give the guy a chance.
Let's give the guy a chance.
Let's not be critical.
There's a tax cut in there.
There is not a tax cut.
Maybe a couple of genuine tax cuts.
It's a welfare transfer payment, these tax cuts.
The Republicans are buying this little piece of bait, hook line, and sinker.
This prevailing attitude is, we've got to let him get into office, and we've got to let him start.
We all hope he does well.
And every Republican with the ability to be honest knows full well where all of this is going to lead.
Socialism is socialism.
Collectivism is collectivism.
Transfer of payments is transfer of payments.
Wealth redistribution and redistribution is what it is.
You don't need to wait to see it happen here because we have evidence around the world throughout human history what happens.
This is the time for opposition leadership.
They have to get on their chairs.
They have to stand on the top of the Capitol.
They have to do whatever it takes to get on television and tell the world that this plan is a disaster.
There's nothing they can do anyway, folks.
What's the risk here?
They're barely present in the House of Representatives.
Pelosi is going to shut them out from being able to change anything, offer amendments.
They've got nothing to lose.
They have no power anyway.
They're going to have 58 Senates until Frankenstein in Minnesota to give them 59.
There is nothing they can do in the Senate, really, because there's plenty of rhino Republicans in there to give Dingy Harry his 60 votes on things that matter.
With the fear that Republicans are manifesting these days of being called racists because they dare to disagree with the immaculate inauguration and the immaculate administration and the immaculate first hundred days.
There's nothing they can do anyway.
They've got to stand up and take this opportunity, seize it for what it is.
Signing on to trillion-dollar deficits for years to come is insanity.
The Republican Party is largely where it is because it was forced to go along without a control spending for the last six years because their president was largely leading the way there and that politically they had to go along.
But now with the Democrats willing to single-handedly drive this economy into the ditch, the last thing the Republicans need to do is be on the train.
People that vote for Republicans look at this whole thing as insanity.
If Republicans get on board, they're not going to get one vote from anybody that doesn't already vote for them by appearing nice, by appearing cooperative, by appearing to join the consensus.
People that vote for Republicans want leadership.
They want somebody they can vote for and stand up and say, I believe in what they're doing.
And one thing Republicans and conservatives do not believe in is trillion-dollar deficits with no discipline for year after year after year.
It's not about just protecting themselves, though.
This is about protecting the country.
Republicans have to at least pretend.
At least pretend.
Can't believe I'm saying that.
They have to at least pretend they are intellectually offended by what Barack Obama is proposing.
What he is proposing is as stupid as cap and trade.
This is as foolish as the Kyoto Protocol.
Massive government spending on pork barrel may build some bridges.
It may help some nearby conservative and convenience stores, but it will drive this country so far into debt that we may never be able to recover.
And Obama has admitted as much.
Where's the math on this?
Where are the charts?
The Republicans ought to stand up and say, show us how this country gets beyond trillion-dollar deficits.
Show us how this economy grows.
Show us how all this infrastructure spending is going to grow this economy.
And by the way, will you show us that?
Make sure you show us the numbers.
$40 billion from taxes and fees raised for roads and bridges and a total of $13 billion being spent on it.
Show us where the money is going.
This is an unnecessary and dangerous, irresponsible gamble with the money and the labor and the fruits of the labor of the American people.
Where is the plan?
The New York Times just said it.
They don't even have a plan to spend this trillion dollars.
They're just going to spend it.
They're demanding everybody else taking a bailout, come up with a plan before they'll give them the money.
But of course, the wizards are smart and our little Lord Fauntleroy royal presence in the House and Senate.
Well, don't bug us with these details.
You can't understand what we do, just like you can't understand what journalists do.
Remember what the car companies were told?
They were told to put together a plan that showed how they would become solvent.
Well, where's that same plan to make the United States solvent?
Where is the plan to make the United States economy whole once again?
The country cannot take bankruptcy like the car companies.
Barack Obama sat in a chair yesterday.
He told the nation, and it wasn't eloquent and he did not look elegant, that we would have trillion-dollar deficits for years to come, even with his stimulus program.
All right?
Then go back to work.
What are you going to slash in your budget?
Make some demands.
Where's the sacrifice by the public sector in any of this?
And why won't your plan stimulate growth to avoid this unacceptable result?
That's a question that needs to be asked of the Messiah right now.
Why will your plan not reduce these deficits?
What the hell are we doing?
Folks, what are we doing?
Are the Republicans all just so scared, so beaten, so down and out that they are accepting this, that they are okay with this, that they're okay with trillion or larger dollar deficits for the unforeseeable future?
I'm telling you, this is a golden opportunity.
There were two or three of them in the campaign, too, that were not used.
Republicans need to get on this, and not just for their own political salvation.
The bus is going off the cliff.
The doors are locked.
I happen to want off the bus.
I don't want to go off the cliff with Barack Obama, the Democrat Party, and where they're taking this country.
And everybody who understands what Obama is saying would want off the bus.
But see, it isn't what he says, it's how he says it.
We'll be back.
We have a short segment coming up here, folks, because I didn't want to interrupt that brilliant call to arms monologue of mere moments ago.
By the way, waiting at a press conference, Roland Burris, we will jip that press conference, join it in progress if it occurs during program content time.
We're only going to stick with it for as long as it takes you to say that all this had nothing to do with race, which should take about 10 seconds.
Here's George in Charleston, South Carolina.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
Hello.
How are you doing?
Excellent.
Obama says he's going to keep the earmarks out of the stimulus bill.
How can he do that?
What do you mean, how can he do it?
He's a Messiah.
But, I mean, Reagan couldn't.
Well, yeah, because he didn't have the line item veto.
Line item veto.
I thought that's what conservatives were always fighting for.
Yeah.
Look at Obama.
I don't, earmarks, pork.
You know, an earmark is something that can't be voted on.
Pork is something else.
But they're really the same when you get right down to it.
My contention is, George, and I think that you will, to use an old liberal trick here, I think you'll agree with me when I say the whole stimulus plan's a pork barrel project.
If we were not in a recession, George, you would look at this spending bill and say this is filled with pork.
Whether you want to call it earmarks or not, this spending is designed to expand government and move this country B-line.
As far left as Obama can take it as fast as he can get there.
Okay, folks, here's Roland Burris at his press conference.
Let's see how long it takes him to mention that race had nothing to do with any of this.
Joe Bit now.
And therefore, when we get these two matters, as you heard in his press conference, out of the way, the signature on my good friend, and I say my good friend Secretary Jesse White, because we are friends.
And of course, my testimony before the impeachment committee tomorrow in Springfield.
You've got to be careful about this.
We'll proceed then to submit our documentation to the Senate.
And as you heard Chairman President Reed say, this will go to the Rules Committee, and they will then assess it and let me know what the outcome is.
So I'm very pleased this afternoon.
I'm happy.
My whole interest in this experience has been to be prepared, Roland, to represent my great state.
And that is my love.
That is my desire.
And very shortly, I will have the opportunity to do that as a junior senator from the fifth largest state in this great country of ours.
I'm going to cry.
Great.
Thank you so very much.
Couple questions.
I have a question.
I have a question.
Now, Mr. Burris, when you are seated, will you be an authentic senator?
And what's totally opposing you to apparently supporting the idea of your filling your seat?
And Jack, that you'd have to ask them because all I know is when I sat down in that room with them, it was as if I'd known Durbin for 30 years, but as if I'd known Senator Reed for 30 years.
I mean, they were very warm.
They were very charming.
And so you have to ask them that question.
I don't know what pressure they were under, but they have to keep the integrity of the Senate.
This guy can follow orders.
Burris can follow orders.
I mean, that was screwed up.
That was great.
That was fabulous.
That couldn't be worse than what this situation was presented before.
Leslie, yes, Lynn.
Yes, sweet.
Thank you so much.
Towards that end, I know one of the things they were interested in is the testimony tomorrow of the House and the Committee.
Yes.
Because I think if you want to know what kinds of contacts, if any, we had before I read the affidavit that you sent, but I have a question a little deeper.
I was under the impartial that when it was discussed, that you did want to put yourself in play for.
Can you hear the question?
I can't hear with a question.
You know, you know what a question is?
I had no contact with the governor.
How are you putting yourself behind them?
Who did you talk to specifically?
Oh, I was pretty much.
Well, okay, that's it.
That's Roland Burris, who's looking forward to everything now, being the junior senator of Illinois.
You get the signature of his good friend, Jesse White.
He's known Harry Reid after being in there for 10 minutes with him for 30 years now.
He's known Durbin for a long time.
It's great.
This is just, God, this is God.
I'm smiling.
It's great.
It is.
It is great.
Just great.
Just great.
All you got to do is testify, and then he's got to go to the rules committee, and then the whole Senate has to vote.
It's just, I love America.
I just do.
Here's Carl in La Quinta, California.
Nice to have you on the program, sir.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
How are you this morning?
Good, sir.
Thank you.
I want to do first, Angie, ATT, Mega Dittos, from the Celebrity Rotation.
We certainly love having you up there every year.
Oh, you mean in the golf tournament?
Absolutely.
Thank you, sir.
I'm not going to be able to make it this year, nor the Bob Hope.
Well, we will miss you.
The reason I called, I wanted to talk about the big dig that they had up in Boston, Tip O'Neill's boondoggle.
John Kerry's boondoggle.
Yes, and the original budget was $1.5 trillion.
It ended up being over $15 trillion.
I don't remember what the numbers were, but it was exorbitant.
It was certainly 10 times over the original previous.
And the thing collapsed in the midst of the construction.
These are the guys who are going to rebuild the infrastructure.
And, you know, if you just look at, I think if you like Illinois politics and pay to play, I think we should probably just take it national with this new program that they're going to do.
You know, pay to play, it's interesting.
If you go back to after the 2006 congressional elections, when Nancy Pelosi was sworn in as Speaker of the House, she promised something called PAYGO.
And PAYGO meant, well, we're not going to have a new program unless we can pay for it either with a tax increase or eliminating something from the budget.
Look how long that lasted.
We're being sold so many bills of goods with all of this.
This is why I said the Republicans have a golden opportunity, but they have a responsibility as well to stand up and stop this or do what they can to stop it.
The American economy, think of it as a bus, is on its way to the cliff, and we're all on the bus.
I don't want to go off the cliff.
You know, ladies and gentlemen, let me put it in these terms.
We are witnessing the growing of a massive government spending bubble.
Now, we had the tech bubble, and it burst, right?
And then we had the housing bubble.
People thought prices would just continue to rise, values would go up and up and up.
It burst.
And by the way, what forced, what caused the bubble to burst?
Wasn't it something called debt?
Well, here comes the government spending bubble, and it will burst as well.
And when it does, the American people will be told that they have to pay for it with higher taxes, massively higher taxes.
Didn't we just learn through this entire bank financial subprime mortgage problem?
Didn't we just learn through all of these crises the hard way that massive debt cannot be repaid, that it is a disaster waiting to happen?
Didn't we just learn this just a few short months ago?
Didn't we just learn that massive debt that cannot be repaid is a disaster?
What do you mean, Rush?
I don't know what you're talking about.
How about all of the subprime mortgages that were worthless because the people who were granted those mortgages never had a ghost's chance of paying them back?
And those pieces of paper were then worthless.
So try to make them worthless.
Financial wizards of SMART came up with all kinds of new products to sell to try to put some worth to the valueless paper those mortgages were.
And debt was piled upon debt, and nobody thought it would ever come due because prices were continuing to go up and the economy was roaring along.
But finally, the crush of the debt, nobody had anything.
All of these financial houses, they didn't have anything.
They needed to be bailed out.
The banks needed to be bailed out.
They didn't have anything.
Everything was an empty suit because of what?
Because of debt.
Massive debt.
We are in this circumstance.
This is insanity what we are doing here.
We are in this circumstance because of massive debt.
And we are replicating it with Obama's spending plan.
We just learned the hard way that massive debt that cannot be repaid is a disaster.
This is deja vu.
We just left this party.
What happened to all that talk about paying down debt?
What happened to all that talk about living within our means?
There's a story in the stack today.
This never ends.
Guess what?
People are saving too much now.
It was just a month ago we had a story that people aren't saving enough.
And we've had that story for ad infinitum.
And now all of a sudden, people are saving too much.
You people can't win.
No matter what you do, you screw up this economy.
Yes, you're saving too much because you're afraid to spend.
Well, when you don't spend, the economy slows down.
You people do not know how irresponsible you are.
You just do not know how to do the right thing.
You save when you shouldn't save, and you don't save when you should.
Of course, they never talked about the savings that are represented by your 401k that this crisis built on massive debt has devalued.
You saved, you had your 401k, and look what's happened to it.
And you're being blamed now.
You're not saving enough.
You're not spending enough.
Retailers may go bankrupt.
They may not be able to stay afloat.
This is just a few short months ago, and we are replicating all of this with Obama's spending plan, the federal spending, government spending bubble.
A couple of months after all this, we now don't have enough debt.
And all of this, this trillion-dollar stimulus, this deficit, annual deficit of over a trillion dollars, that's being tacked on top of the certain bankruptcy of Social Security and Medicare.
Massive debt that cannot be repaid got us where we are just two months ago.
And yet everybody seems to be clapping their hands.
Yeah, yeah, we got a stimulus coming, man.
We're going to get out of this.
We're quintupling our problem.
This is so obviously stupid.
We've got a guy who's trying to replicate FDR here.
We've got the Great Depression, the Japanese economy in the 90s as a guide.
We know this public work spending does not work.
Take us back.
It does work.
It did work.
FDR and his New Deal worked, in fact, precisely as he intended it to.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal is the model for Barack Obama's Raw Deal.
And FDR's New Deal was a champ.
There may have never been anything like it until the October surprise of last October, which led to the New New Deal equaling the Raw Deal.
No, I know, folks.
I know the New Deal did not get us out of the Depression.
I'm not saying that that's its measure of success.
The New Deal worked for Franklin Delano Roosevelt like a charm, though.
It empowered the Democrat Party with unbeatable majorities in the House and Senate for 40 years.
It worked like a champ.
And that's what this stimulus is about.
This stimulus and these never-ending deficits and an ongoing recession, an ongoing crisis.
The real purpose is the reestablishment of 50 years of unbeatable Democrat Party majority control.
Half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
Rush Limbaugh emitting vocal dulcet vibrations.
Coast to coast from behind this, the golden EIB microphone.
Ladies and gentlemen, we're welcoming a new partner to the EIB network this month.
It's the Heritage Foundation.
I want to tell you a little bit about the Heritage Foundation.
And I want to go back to my early days doing this program because I came out of nowhere.
You know, as I've talked about, I'm not a networker.
I have never used contacts to get where I wanted to go.
I've just labored away.
I did it what I thought you had to do.
I thought you had to be good to get a job.
I thought you had to be accomplished and achieved.
And even then, somebody might fire you or what have you.
But I never wanted to get anywhere on the basis of fraud or as a fake.
I didn't want to get anywhere on the basis of nepotism or anything of the sort.
So as a result, I just kept my head down and plowed ahead and didn't really network.
So when my radio show went national in 1988, nobody ever heard of me outside of the places I had worked.
And they were all stunned when this happened.
And shortly after the show began, you know, maybe year, year and a half, I started getting press inquiries from people.
They said, well, you worked at the baseball team.
You were a disc jockey.
They said, where'd you learn this political stuff?
I said, well, I've always been interested in it.
My family was immersed in it.
And it's just, it's always been a passion of mine.
It's just, it wasn't until 1984 when I moved to Sacramento that I finally got the freedom in my radio career to talk about the things I really loved and cared about.
Well, where did you learn all this?
I said, well, from all kinds of people, but family was the foundation and so forth.
But I remember I was getting all these accolades and I was getting all this attention.
And there were a lot of people who nobody ever heard of who were responsible for people like me all over the country amassing and acquiring knowledge that's not available in a classroom anywhere or not very many classrooms and then able being able to explain it to people who have not been able to access that information.
And these are academics, people that work at think tanks, laboring in the basements in anonymity, writing, researching, publishing, so that people like me, I include Mr. Buckley, but he was well known.
But there are all kinds of people who were producing brilliant things, research, opinion pieces that I was able to access.
And I was an omnivorous and voluminous reader when it came to public policy and current events and history and things.
And one of the places that was invaluable to me in acquiring a bedrock or foundation understanding of conservatism, and Mr. Buckley was one, of course, Ronald Reagan, but the Heritage Foundation.
And to this day, we quote work that comes out of the Heritage Foundation.
Bob Rector works there.
He has done some of the most marvelous research, poverty in this country and around the world, demographics.
But they know no bounds.
The Heritage Foundation, it's run by a good friend of mine named Ed Fullner.
They were in large part responsible for many policies that came out of the Reagan administration.
And we are welcoming the Heritage Foundation as a new partner to the EIB network this month.
And you can join the Heritage Foundation.
And you can have access to all of this research that they do.
Now, you are the most informed and intelligent media audience, according to the Pew Research Center.
The Heritage Foundation is a group of smart thinkers and scholars, excellent writers, and they churn stuff out faster than you can keep up with it.
How to move the country forward, how to provide information that people can digest and then spread to others.
All you have to do is go to www.askheritage.org.
Just go to that website.
Just go there.
Ask them a question.
Submit.
Take advantage of this.
You can become a member today by signing up.
You start to enjoy all the information that has been made available for so many years to this program and to countless conservatives in America.
There are 400,000 members, and of course, there should be many more, and that's what this is about.
This is, you put this together with my website, and you have an encyclopedia you cannot buy anywhere.
Askheritage.org.
There will also be a link at rushlimbaugh.com.
Try it.
You ready on Sunsite 31?
All right, Andrea Mitchell had to be listening to this program early today.
This is Andrea Mitchell analyzing Dingy Harry.
Clarence, it was quite a scene still today.
An extremely nice man.
Excuse me, Clarence.
But he all but said he was clean and articulate.
I mean, it sounded a little patronizing.
She's talking about Harry Reid's comments on Roland Burris.
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