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Jan. 16, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:40
January 16, 2009, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Greetings, my friends.
I am Rush Limbaugh.
I am America's anchorman, real anchorman.
I am America's truth detector.
I am the doctor of democracy.
Welcome to the fastest three hours in media.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's Open Line Friday!
And we have three hours of broadcast excellence straight ahead for you on Open Line Friday.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the one day of the week where what you think matters.
Well, that's a harsh way of putting it.
Monday through Thursday, we talk about what I care about.
On Friday, when we go to the phones, this program is all yours.
You can talk about that that you wish.
Even if I haven't brought it up, and even if I don't care about it, I will fake it.
Mr. Snurdley, eagerly standing by, 800-282-2882, and the email address, LRushbo at EIBNet.com.
A couple programming notes.
The Hutch cannot appear today.
I've been trying to get the Hutch on to discuss the championship games.
And I've been emailing the Hutch for the past couple days.
Ken Hutcherson, Dr. Ken Hutcherson in Seattle.
He is in eastern Washington killing birds.
He is hunting.
I think it's birds.
It could be mammals that trod the soil.
Anyway, he's out away from civilization.
Will not be able to join us, but he will be here a week from today.
Well, two weeks from today to discuss the Super Bowl, which is February 1st in Tampa.
Yeah, I'm going to do my picks.
I'll tell you right now, it's going to be the Steelers and the Cardinals.
Yes, it'll be the Steelers and the Cardinals in the Super Bowl.
I'm going to be in Pittsburgh on Friday, Sunday, for the championship game between the Steelers and the Baltimore Ravens.
Let's see.
Oh, yeah, Ann Coulter will be here at 1 o'clock to discuss her new book, Guilty.
Now, I don't know if you have seen any of her interviews so far on television, but they've been predictable.
They're contentious.
And that generally start off, as some interviews with me start off.
You'll have Matt Wauer or whoever asking Ann Coulter essentially, what gives you the right to breathe?
You know, what gives you the right to be alive?
And the interview goes from there.
It's a serious book, but with some serious stuff in it, and we will get into that.
Also, a programming note for all of our affiliates here on the EIB network.
Many of them have been asking us what our inauguration day plans are.
And all week long, we've been doing our best to get in touch with all the affiliates, the management of our loyal and trustworthy affiliates pass along the news.
I figured the best way to do it is to be just to tell you.
We are going to carry live in its entirety the oath of office.
We will carry Obama's speech.
We'll carry Biden's speech unless they're going to have to have some kind of a buzzer bell to get Biden to shut up so this thing finishes on time.
But we will carry live the inauguration address, the address by President Barack or President-elect Barack Obama when it happens on Tuesday.
And as we always do, we will be adding our live commentary as the speech is made.
Many of our affiliates requested this, by the way.
And another programming note, we will be blowing out commercial breaks during the period of time that President-elect Obama is delivering his inaugural address.
We will not stop for commercial address breaks.
This is historic.
And it would be inappropriate to go to our profit center timeouts during such a momentous occasion.
And so we will be here broadcasting the live.
Our microphones will be there.
I checked them out already when I was in Washington on Tuesday, drove by there.
It's a port-a-potty farm.
That's why, Dawn, you didn't hear this yesterday, but a lot of drive-by media outlets have been calling asking me what I'm going to do for the inauguration, not professionally, but celebratory ways, celebratory ways.
I told them, I'm going to get a port-a-potty in here.
I'm going to pretend I'm in Washington.
I'm going to port a potty here in the studio.
I'm going to use it every 15 minutes, which is what will be happening on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol.
And they'll say, you ought to see it.
I mean, they say there's 6,000 of them, but it looks like more than that.
And they've got them all locked now.
You can't get them.
They've got that plastic stuff on them that a box cutter wouldn't cut this stuff.
So they're going to be open up.
You will not find any homeless people.
The D.C. mayor is trying to get the homeless people out of the way.
In fact, a little story on that, finding havens for the homeless by Petula Dvorak in the Washington Post, from the steam grates of Pennsylvania Avenue to the porticos of the city's grand buildings, homeless Washingtonians who live inside the nation's tightest security zone are being encouraged to decamp during the inauguration for shelters in the city's outer neighborhoods.
In other words, clear out.
Scram.
You are not wanted.
You are not desired.
The nation's poorest, the nation's neediest are being told to get the hell out of Dodge on this most historic of American days, the inauguration, the Immaculate Inauguration.
Might even just shorten it to one word.
What did I wrote it down?
The Immaculation.
The Immaculation.
Yes, of Barack Obama.
I wrote it down the other night.
All right.
The crash yesterday of that Airbus 720, U.S. Airways 720.
I don't, people who have watched the coverage of this, I'm sure that you have been told how unlikely such an event is.
A ditching in a Hudson River, icy waters, 20-degree temperatures, wind chill about nine degrees.
Everybody survives.
I don't think people understand how miraculous, and I don't even know you'd call it a miracle.
I mean, a lot of people want to, but this was human skill that made this happen.
From the pilot to the co-pilot to the flight attendants, I've heard a number of passengers on that plane say that there was hardly any panic.
There was some fright.
There was some screaming, but there was an orderly procession out the exit doors, the emergency exit doors and the front and rear doors.
The manufacturer of that airplane, there's a, I don't know how many of you were wondering this.
I myself was, and I was not getting any information from the drive-bys yesterday afternoon and last night while watching this.
How did that airplane stay afloat for so long?
I mean, that is unusual as well.
Now, it came in, obviously, with the landing gear retracted, so those doors were closed, but there is a switch.
This airplane has a switch in the cockpit called a ditch switch.
For those of you who voted for Obama, landing on water is called ditching.
And the ditch switch closes all of the outflow valves.
Air outflow valves, so it just closes them all off.
I'm sure there were some pockets of air in the bulkheads, in the cargo hold, also probably in the insulation, maybe in the overheads.
And of course, the arrival of the first responders, many of them private citizens.
Now, I know Mayor Bloomberg is holding her HELDA ceremony, congratulating everybody.
New York agencies worked, and they did.
I'm not taking anything away from anybody because this is one of the first successful government-involved rescues, quote-unquote, that I can remember being so successful.
Our financial rescues, as you know, have not worked.
Now, I got an email from my good friend Mark Hassara, retired, U.S. Air Force, nicknamed Sluggo.
He is the man who flew with his colleagues an American flag, unbeknownst to me in my honor, in the original bombing runs, attacking Iraq in 2003.
And here's what he wrote me: Sir Rush, he calls me, sir.
My congratulations to all the passengers of Flight 1549.
This incident shows how well the air crews are trained, though.
Incredible skill level of the flight crew, pilots and flight attendants needs to be emphasized here.
A lot of the networks are talking about Chesley Stolenberger, and he does deserve all the accolades he's getting.
But his first officer and the flight attendant should also.
They're in the back of the jet.
They're getting the passengers ready for what's about to happen and then getting them out of a tube filling with very cold water.
It is all about training and in what is ingrained in your head from mission planning to mission debrief.
Now, Mr. Hassara, Colonel Hassara, threw, sorry, flew tankers, the military equivalent of the DC-10 and a number of other tankers.
He was a refueling pilot.
He's flown countless types of aircraft.
He said it's second nature.
Training is second nature.
You are the most surprised when it actually does happen.
And by the way, the pilot is saying most airline pilots go through their entire careers without an incident.
So Colonel Hassara here is correct.
The training is second nature, and the training includes reaction.
All this happens in simulators, by the way, for certification, recertification, initial training.
But you're the most surprised when it actually does happen to you.
We used to say you don't want to get into a situation where you have to use your superior flying skills to get you out of a bad situation that your superior flying skills got you into in the first place.
I do not know how many birds I have hit in my 24 and a half years flying in the Air Force.
A Canada goose is a big bird.
Now, these engines on the Airbus 320 have to be able to withstand a four-pound bird being ingested in the engine, and they can, but a goose weighs a lot more than four pounds.
A goose wrecked both these engines, or multiple geese did.
Colonel Hassara says, the fact that everybody is alive is a miracle.
And he praises the pilot for doing everything he could to avoid Manhattan or Queens or any of the boroughs and to ditch this thing in the Hudson River.
We track birds, track bird strikes in the U.S., by the way.
The KC-135, which is the military equivalent of the 707, has CFM-56 engines like the A320, so I'm very familiar with these engines.
I have only had to shut down a CFM56 engine on my KC-135 twice.
They're very reliable engines, but not with geese banging around in them.
And then he began to describe some of his experiences and what the procedures are when you get a bird strike.
But congratulations to everybody involved.
This is an amazing thing to watch yesterday, particularly with that plane staying afloat, even with all the passengers or a number of them standing on the wings.
Now, Snerdly, Snerdly here getting sarcastic right off the bat here on Open Line Friday, just sends me a little note here.
So rush, this is just the beginning of the miracles.
And I had to go to a dinner party last night at 8 o'clock.
And it was one of these things where I got to stir things up.
I always love those kind of dinner parties.
And I threw it out to the table and said, how long is it going to be before the successful miraculous rescue is tied to the hope and change agenda of Barack Obama?
That all the people involved were so inspired about the upcoming inauguration of Obama that they were doing above their normal level of excellence work.
And then I began to ask, I told people, and this infuriated people, by the way, this really, I was doing this via email with some friends.
I said, you know, after about three hours of watching this, I sent some email to my friends.
I said, you know, there's somebody, there's something, there's an element here being left out totally ignored.
The geese.
The geese.
Well, you know, here's what PETA would say.
And I'll bet you that half the state of California feels this way.
I bet you that there are a lot of animal rights wackos who are extremely conflicted about this.
After all, God made the sky for birds, not us.
Birds, those birds yesterday and a lot of other birds would be alive today if not for us invading geese space.
Just another example of man invading an altering or pristine environment.
Damn us.
I guarantee you there's some animal rights wackos out there that are truly conflicted.
And lo and behold, lo and behold, it didn't take long.
Time magazine this morning headlined the growing hazard of bird strikes.
There's not a growing hazard.
Bird strikes have, we could go back from 1960 forward and calculate bird strikes and find that it's cyclical.
Some airports actually put scarecrows out there.
They play noise.
They do anything they can do.
JFK has done it in the past.
I don't know if they still do.
To try to get flocks of birds out of there.
And the animal rights people have objected.
The growing hazard of bird strikes.
Here's the relevant paragraph.
While officials use radar and radio callers to track bird populations, brace yourselves here, folks.
Habitat destruction and climate change have disrupted migratory patterns.
In other words, were it not for climate change and global warming, those geese yesterday may have been nowhere near where they were.
It is our fault.
It is the fault of man that this accident happened yesterday.
Migratory patterns are changing because of climate change.
And the poor geese, I mean, they hear the plane come and they nothing they can do about it.
Honest to God, there it is.
Commercial airports like New York's JFK, meanwhile, have gotten just as creative.
Hawks and falcons, which fly solo and are therefore less dangerous, are released near runways to scare flocks of seagulls and geese.
Other airports hunt and destroy bird nests and eggs.
Now you wait.
You wait until PETA hears about this.
Ladies and gentlemen, have you thought back to the 2008 election?
Have you asked yourself who was responsible for that loss?
Have you asked yourself who really shoulder the blame and the burden for the defeat of Senator McCain?
A lot of people have been speculating this, a lot of post-mortems on the election.
Let's go to the BBC.
BBC World Service host Stephen Sacker spoke with former McCain campaign manager Rick Davis and asked Rick Davis on whose shoulders rests the burden of the McCain defeat.
We didn't successfully reach out to them.
I mean, but you look at the leadership John McCain gave, which was counter to the direction that the party was headed.
When you have the Rush Limbaughs of the world, who, you know, literally almost feed the nativist attitude toward immigration reform, what do you think the Hispanic voter, the Latina voter, is going to remember?
They're going to remember the attacks, not the efforts by people like John McCain to try and reform.
So there you have it.
Rick Davis, the campaign manager for McCain, has dumped on my shoulders the reason McCain lost because I and others like me alienated Hispanic voters.
This is so wrong on so many levels, but it explains why this campaign was so inept.
A brief timeout.
Just wanted you to hear that so you could stew over it.
Lots to do.
Lots coming up on the EIB network.
Sit tight.
It's Open Line Friday.
Be right back.
Are all of these federal bailouts like TARP, are they even constitutional?
Some people are beginning to say no, led by Dick Army.
And I think he's right when you look at the power invested in the Treasury Secretary to be the sole arbiter in where the money goes.
That gives lawmaking ability to the executive branch.
It's a fascinating question.
We'll look into it.
Is it the Minneapolis Star Tribune that filed for bankruptcy?
I think it is.
Story today from Laura Pabst.
All schools in the Bloomington, Minnesota district are going to be closed today after state-required biodiesel fuel clogged in school buses.
The biodiesel fuel that turned into a gel-like substance at temperatures below 10 clogged about a dozen school discs.
All these great intentions, but the unintended consequences.
All that corn should have been kept for eating.
You may not know this, ladies and gentlemen.
We have a listener comment line here at the EIB network.
You've reached the EIB listener comment line.
At the beep, leave your message.
Rush, this is President-elect Obama, and I wanted to call personally.
This is the only line I had.
I wanted to call and tell you that the reason that I wasn't able to watch the Bush farewell, we had reservations, and we had to be there on time.
And she likes crack crab, and they might run out.
And, you know, you order a medium-rare steak, it could be well done by the time you get there if you're not careful.
So there was a conflict in scheduling, but that I really wasn't worried because I knew that I could listen today and get everything that I needed to know on your show.
So I'll be listening, and maybe we can do dinner sometime.
That was Barack Obama calling.
He's in a little heat, well, some heat, because he went to dinner last night, a 30-second drive, 30-second drive from Blair House.
He went to dinner someplace called Equinox and missed the farewell address by President George W. Bush wanted to let us know why here.
Quick timeout, my friends.
We'll come back and get some of your phone calls in early today since it is Open Line Friday.
It's Open Line Friday, Rush Limbaugh, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Look, I don't want to spend a whole lot of time on the McCain campaign because it's some emails, and Mr. Sterling said, is that all you're going to say about it?
That just proves the ineptitude of the McCain.
I'll say a little bit more, but it's the past.
The thing about McCain that's more interesting to me than why he lost is what I'm hearing from a lot of people.
And that is, you know, the Democrats in the Senate right now have either 58 or 59 seats, depending on what happens in the finals of the Stuart-Smalley Norm Coleman race.
They can have 58 or 59 seats.
And everybody says, well, well, that means they don't have their 60 votes.
Oh, contrary.
You know who's going to get the 60 votes for Obama and the Senate?
You know who's going to get the 60 votes for Harry Reid?
It will be John McCain.
John McCain does not want his legacy to be that he lost the presidential race.
He wants his legacy to be that he's a deal maker.
He wants his legacy to be that he walked across the aisle, that he's bipartisan, that he's bigger than life, blah, blah, blah.
I guarantee you, McCain will be the guy that shepherds wayward liberal Northeastern Republicans to vote with Democrats on some issues, some bills, in order to give the Democrats their filibuster-proof majority of 60 or more votes.
Now, that's in the cards.
I mean, that's, I don't think there's any question about it.
And it's exactly who McCain is, and that's why he lost.
Most Republicans perceived McCain as a Democrat.
When you get right down to it, that's how he was viewed.
To the extent that 55 million people voted for him, a good percentage of those 55 million were simply voting against Obama.
Now, the fact that Rick Davis goes in the BBC to blame me for McCain's loss because of my nativism that I somehow infuriated Hispanics.
I reject the whole notion.
We were talking about illegal immigration.
And McCain, just like in Campaign Finance Reform, had authored legislation that would have granted amnesty to 12 million to 20 million people that we all knew would become Democrats.
We also knew that Republicans succeed not when they go after groups, but when they go after Americans.
Groups are victims.
And when the Republican Party is going to emulate the Democrat Party, say, again, we got to get the Walmart middle-class voters.
And we got to show them we'll spend federal money on them.
And we've got to get women.
And we got to go get blacks and Hispanics, Asians, whatever minorities.
I mean, that's what happened to the Republican Party.
They became Democrat Party light.
McCain gave nobody any substantive reason to vote for him.
Essentially, he ran a Democrat campaign when it came to illegal immigration, global warming, campaign finance, interfering in the private sector.
And this is why McCain is far more comfortable working with congressional Democrats than the Republicans.
And McCain will be the guy that gets Harry Reid his 60 votes in the Senate whenever Reed needs them.
Mark my words.
Now, this immigration issue, sure, minor little things like the rule of law, economic conditions in border states.
There's an exodus of people from California for a whole host of reasons, but among them, it's simply too expensive to do business and live there.
And one of the reasons it's too expensive and live there is because of all the benefits and services that are parceled out to illegals.
We have to refight this all over again.
I just know it because it's going to be at the top of the agenda because these are 12 to 20 million future Democrat voters.
They were never going to be Republican voters, even if McCain had not been criticized on this.
They were being appealed to as liberals.
They were being appealed to, trust us, the government, to take care of you.
That's not the Republican message.
It's not a conservative message, but that's what McCain and the Republicans want because the Republicans don't care how they get them.
They just want votes.
You know, sometimes I think I'm the Republican in name only.
Not those guys anymore.
I think I am.
I'm the last man standing here.
Common sense is gone.
It's blown out the window.
But I enjoy it.
Don't misunderstand.
I'm not complaining about being the last man standing.
Democrats don't care about crime and the decaying culture in border states, economic conditions.
They're driven by their beliefs, not facts.
McCain's no different in this regard.
McCain lost people because he couldn't generate enthusiasm for his candidacy.
You know, people have long memories.
Something that, Rick Davis, you know what you ought to stop and think about too?
When your guy went in the tank for the mainstream media and did everything he could to make the mainstream media love him, calling the mainstream media his base, you Republican consultants are going to have to learn something very fast.
Republican voters that you need to win elections think the mainstream media is as much the enemy as any Democrat candidate is going to be.
And sidling up and trying to get the approval of a bunch of incompetent boobs who have sided with Democrats for the last 50 years is not the way to engender support, ongoing support, and get a mandate.
This campaign never had a prayer, and everybody knew it from the get-go.
It never had a prayer.
I mean, for crying out loud, McCain became somanix.
There wasn't any caffeine around until Palin came along.
But it just wasn't enough.
And now look who they think.
I'm glad at least he didn't blame Palin.
I think he's a little off message.
The Republican Party's message is to blame her.
Stop and think that.
Back to the phones or to the phones.
We haven't been there yet.
Open Line Friday, Temecula, California.
Brittany, welcome.
It's great to have you here.
Thank you.
Glad to speak with you.
And good morning.
Morning.
Good morning.
I'd like to introduce myself.
My name is Brittany.
I am the third oldest of 10 children and first-generation daughter born here in America from two parents who immigrated here from Iraq.
I have two military brother veterans, one on the way to the Marine Corps.
And I would like to speak to you today about Gitmo.
And I would like to say, today I heard on the news that Barack Obama planned, either in the first day or the first week of his term in office, to close Gitmo and move either to Pendleton or somewhere in Kansas.
Nope, No, it won't happen or not.
No, it's not going to happen.
No, well, even if it did happen, I'm just trying to say here that from my perspective of being someone who has relatives in the Middle East and being an American full-heartedly.
It isn't going to happen.
Don't deal in things that aren't real.
Don't get yourself worked up about something.
It isn't going to happen.
We got real things to get worked up about here.
But closing Gitmo isn't going to happen.
It's not going to happen.
It is not going to happen.
They're not going to close Gitmo.
They're not going to pull out of Iraq until they can secure a 100% victory.
They're not going to pull out of there with the possibility the place falls apart.
It ain't going to happen.
They're going to increase troop levels in, well, Bush has increased them.
They're going to take credit for that.
They're going to go kick button of Afghanistan.
But about Club Gitmo, oh, along the same lines, do you remember Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle about a year ago, and we played the audio of this, that his cap and trade program would put the coal business out of business.
It'd be silly for anybody to open a new coal plant.
He's going to close it.
Turns out that's not going to happen either.
Ed Morrissey of hotair.com points out that Obama's statements require an expiration date because let me illustrate this for you.
First, Brittany, so you can relax and the rest of you on Club Gitmo.
Today's lead story in the Washington Post reports that President-select Obama, quote, will consider it a failure if he has not closed the military prison at Guantanamo Bay by the end of his first term in office.
Now, that, for those of you who voted for Obama, is four years, not life.
Four years.
Now, they will issue the executive order on Monday or Tuesday afternoon.
I'll bet you that executive order hits the news while a parade's going on.
Close Gitmo because Obama knows that his looney tune fringe kooks in the asylums known as the left-wing blogosphere will be totally placated by Obama.
We're closing the executive order to close it, but it isn't going to happen for four years.
So this is how he does it.
He does two things at once, both sides of the issue, and gets credit for both, does not end up being criticized.
Now, when it comes to coal, a year ago, Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle, so if somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can.
It's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted.
And he effectively said, we're going to put the coal business out of business.
However, on Wednesday of this week, the BAMST choice to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson, described coal to a Senate panel as, quote, a vital resource for the country.
A day earlier, Obama's nominee to run the energy department, Stephen Chu, referred to coal as a great natural resource.
Two years ago, he called the expansion of coal-fired power plants his worst nightmare.
Is it a flip-flop?
Ed Morrissey has it.
No, it's just that his statements have an expiration date.
And when it expires, it's time for a new statement.
So he's not going to put the coal.
It's saying a bunch of stuff.
Well, no, we can't say he's not going to put the coal industry out of business because these claims by his people also have an expiration date.
We just don't know what it is.
We don't know how long these statements are operative.
But there was never any intention to close Gitmo.
Never.
There's no, as Obama has said, he has learned some of these people down there are really dangerous.
And some of the evidence, though tainted, is true.
Yes, liberals will stand for it.
He's too big to face.
This is a cult, man.
This is a cult.
This is a guy who could get people to go to the Hail Bob Comet with him Tuesday afternoon.
He said that's where he headed.
Quick timeout.
Back after him.
People, you know, I constantly suggest to people that they not doubt me.
Don't doubt me.
I checked the email during the timeout.
People think that the left in this country is going to be outraged when they find out that Obama won't close Guantanamo Bay for four years.
They won't hear that.
It's in the Washington Post today, but that's where it will die.
What they're going to hear is an executive order announced to close it.
They're going to hear that on Tuesday afternoon, and it's a done deal.
Okay, move on to the next thing.
The four years we will remind them of, but they don't want to hear what we say or what we think about it, even if we're quoting their Messiah.
But remember, the Bush administration shredding the Constitution, suspending habeas corpus in that place called Club Gitma, where innocents were being held unfairly without trial, without being told what they're being charged with, without being told when they'll be released.
The Obama administration now hopes, and they, by the way, the Obama administrative campaign, he himself is saying all these things too, hopes to be able to shut the place down by the end of his first term.
Chris in Orlando, Florida.
Great to have you on Open Line Friday.
Hi.
Hey there, thank you.
It's good to talk to you.
I was listening yesterday about what you were saying about Geithner, and I just wanted to know why would it be bad to have somebody running the IRS who doesn't believe in paying income tax?
I mean, it seems kind of like what we want in there.
Well, you know, it's a great funny line.
It really is.
But your question illustrates something I think already exists, and that is liberal elites devising two sets of rules, one for all of us and one set of rules for them.
And we're seeing that when Geithner, this is not an innocent mistake.
This was a calculated effort to avoid paying taxes.
Now, when describing the actions taken by the magnanimous Timothy Geithner and associating with somebody else, we call him a tax cheat.
But that would be harsh.
That would be excessive.
That would not be useful in discussing Timothy Geithner.
So this is instructive.
Yeah, well, I think having him in there would be something that he was put in.
They could point to him throughout the entire administration and just use that as an argument.
Except, no, no, no.
Do you think, do you think that the subjects in Great Britain get to get away with the shenanigans the royal family does?
Well, no.
No, of course not.
You've got to understand here, the liberal elite is, in their own minds, their royalty.
They are above criticism, and you don't have what it takes to emulate them anyway.
When you try to avoid paying your taxes, you go to jail, or you get charged, or you get heavily fined or what have you.
When they do it, it's an innocent mistake that they get to learn from.
Before this is all over, they're going to be saying this experience has added to the qualifications of Timothy Geithner because now he knows how important, just like the holder, pardoning all these criminals, arranging that, it's made him a better lawyer.
Only in the land of the left is abject failure a resume enhancement, but it isn't for you.
So it's a great funny line, but it ain't going to happen.
Here's Stephen, Spartansburg, South Carolina.
You're next in Open Line Friday.
Hi.
Negative Ditto's Rush.
Thank you for all that you do.
You're very welcome, sir.
Wanted to comment on the speech last night from President Bush.
Yes.
Whether you're a fan, supporter, or just observer, one of the things that I liked about it was he spoke, I think, from his heart, as you would at the end of any experience, especially the presidency.
But what he said was, in essence, what he believed in was not in a person, but in what makes America great, and that is the people and their ingenuity.
And I really liked how he said that.
He didn't say, don't put your trust. in a president, but he more or less implied it and meant it.
And I appreciated that and wanted to see if you got to see it last night.
Last night was one of the one of a few times I got the impression he wasn't using a prompter.
And he came off much better.
I've been one of the many who've gotten to know him personally who tell you stories that you would not believe the guy in person based on how you've gotten to know him on television via the camera.
One of the most controversial to the drive-bys and their analysts.
Grab soundbite number 11, Mike.
Here, ladies and gentlemen, is perhaps the most controversial statement the president made last night in his farewell address.
As the years passed, most Americans were able to return to life much as it had been before 9-11.
But I never did.
Every morning, I received a briefing on the threats to our nation.
I vowed to do everything in my power to keep us safe.
David Brooks and Mark Maxey Shields blew up at this on PBS last night.
Brooks saying, I never forgot about it.
I never forgot about it.
And Shields was out there saying, well, he's only time to play the bite.
But he was calling Bush John the Baptist and Obama Christ last night on PBS.
I don't have time to analyze.
And I know what the president means.
Some of you might find fault with it because you haven't forgotten 9-11 because of airport security and the bungled job that is.
Back in just a second.
Stay with us.
Charles Krauthammer, a nice column today, Washington Post.
If George Bush really is so bad, why is Obama hanging on to gates?
Defense, Geithner, no immediate withdrawal from Iraq, hanging on to surveillance powers and not closing Guantanamo Bay for four years.
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