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Feb. 11, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:36
February 11, 2009, Wednesday, Hour #2
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Greetings to you, music lovers, thrill seekers, and conversationalists all across the fruited plane.
Rush Limbaugh and the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Where each day we meet and surpass audience expectations.
And I promise we will get to your phone calls soon.
Telephone number 800 282-2882.
Email address is L Rushbo at EIBNet.com.
Two fascinating stories here that illustrate how the left, how liberals look at corporate America, as though we don't know.
But these are both fascinating stories.
First from San Francisco, a column by Callie Milner.
It's too easy to make fun of the people who packed room 400 in San Francisco's City Hall to stop the company American Apparel from opening a store on Valencia Street in the mission district last week.
What you have here, there's a there's a there's a company called American Apparel, and they wanted to open a store in the mission district.
And a bunch of people lived there showed up at City Hall to oppose it.
Ms. Milner says these are not serious people.
They live in a world where facts, like twenty-seven vacant storefronts on Valencia Street, and 9.3% unemployment statewide, nearly 600,000 jobs lost nationally last month, don't matter.
The few who read books know no authors beyond Naomi Klein.
And I never heard of who's Naomi Klein.
You ever heard of Naomi Klein?
You've heard of Naomi Klein?
Who's Naomi Klein?
You've heard of her?
Well, who is she?
You No, that's Naomi Wolf.
See, you've never heard of Naomi Klein either.
They do not believe that the world has changed since the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle.
What they want is magic.
The word magic kept recurring during the hours of public comment at the planning commission meeting where the American Apparel store's permit was up for vote.
One speaker said Valencia Street's a magical place.
Our neighborhood's a dream, a delicate flower.
Others spoke of American apparel as a parasite on their ecosystem.
Several local business owners testified it was their dream to operate in such a magical place and noted with horror that they might have to make alterations to their business plans if a new store opened in the area.
As it happens, American Apparel is somewhat of a magical company.
They make its clothing in downtown Los Angeles.
They employ mostly Latino and Asian immigrants.
They offer their workers health care.
They pay more than twice the federal minimum wage.
These used to be called progressive values, and I noticed that some of the people who did not want American apparel bringing these values to the mission district understood that they should make an attempt to hide this fact.
Stephen Elliott, the founder of the Stop American Apparel website, said this is not about American apparel.
Yet he insisted that if you allow American apparel to come in, you're going to have a much harder time saying no to the gap.
The mission district has 27 vacant storefronts.
The people live there do not want those storefronts filled other than by people who are going to fail.
You know, cheap little arts and craft businesses and this kind of thing.
Though some claim that this was always about formula retail, as I sat watching the planning commission meeting, I noticed something else.
Most of these people were happy to sacrifice other people's lives, other people's dreams for their idea of magic.
When a young man stood before the board and said that he only had health care because of his job in American Apparel, a voice in the overflow room said, get a job somewhere else.
Another employee told a story about a young Latino man who was able to send money to his family in Central America.
This news was met with sneers.
An American apparel representative told the board that he had gotten messages from people threatening to throw a brick through the store window in the crowd at The meeting laughed.
The commission voted against issuing the permit.
And American Apparel is actually lucky.
What a burden it would have been to have a store in a magical place with nasty elves.
Callie Milner and a chronicle editorial writer ripping up her own population.
This is the liberal view of corporate America.
They want blight.
There's magic in blight.
Do you remember after Hurricane Katrina, the left saying we got to restore the ninth ward to what it was?
It was.
It was decrepit poverty.
But they talked about the culture and the history there.
And they wanted it rebuilt exactly as it was.
Next story.
Walmart wants to once again try to open a store in Chicago proper.
Big news in bad times.
A major retailer wants to bring thousands of jobs to Chicago.
But Walmart's offer is running into the same roadblocks it hit several years ago.
CBS2 Eyeball News in Chicago is pointing out that the you think the city would be begging people like Walmart to bring jobs to Chicago, not putting up barriers.
We'll think again.
There's quite a crowd on a rainy night at Chicago's only Walmart.
It's on the west side.
Built in one of the areas known as food desserts, where there are few other options for people.
Now that it's here in our own community, we're hoping to keep the money inside the community.
More than 400 people work at Chicago's Walmart.
They're paid an average of 11 and a quarter an hour.
Success on the West Side prompted Walmart to propose another store on the South Side in the in the ward of Alderman Howard Brookens.
The attorneys wrote the letter saying we would like to go to 83rd and Stewart in 2008.
City said no.
The city's former planning commissioner says that Walmart wasn't exactly turned down.
They're just told to go back to the city council where it lost a bruising battle years before.
So Walmart went elsewhere.
Now it has sent feelers to the city about five new stores, which had cost $120 million to build with union labor and eventually creating 2,500 new retail jobs, and city labor leaders say no thanks.
We're in a recession.
Barack Obama of Chicago says erroneously that it's the worst economy economic time since the Great Depression.
Everywhere I turn in this country where there is genuine private sector stimulus, or there is private sector stimulus proposed, Democrats are standing in the way of it.
Where there are new jobs to be created in the private sector, Democrats somewhere are standing in the way of it.
All because of an irrational hatred of a retailer called Walmart.
And all because Walmart is not unionized.
So just as in San Francisco, in the mission district, where a bunch of Looney Tunes will fight to keep a business out of their community because it's too big, it's too corporate.
Chicago turns down 120 million dollars, 2500 union jobs to build the five stores, and all the employment that would result.
It reminded me of a story that I saw not long ago, coming back from vacation, and it was posted at the New York Post on February 7th by a man named Charles Platt.
Now, Charles Platt is a journalist.
And let me get his actual slug lift.
Former senior writer for Wired Magazine.
Charles Platt went undercover.
He went to a Walmart to apply for a job.
He wanted to find out just what goes on there.
He had heard so much criticism of Walmart.
He had heard Walmart was destroying Mom and Pops and destroying the greatness of America, some of the foundational building blocks of America.
He didn't understand the irrational hatred of Walmart.
So he applied for entry-level job.
To find out what it was all about.
And he started at the bottom.
He went to, I think Phoenix.
It's a long story.
We will link to this at Rush Limbaugh.com.
He writes, some people, usually community activists loathe Walmart.
Others, like the family of four struggling to make ends meet, are in love with the chain.
I, meanwhile, am in awe of it.
With more than 7,000 facilities worldwide, coordinating more than two million employees in its fanatical mission to maintain an inventory for more than 60,000 American suppliers.
It has become a system containing more components than the space shuttle, yet it runs as reliably as a Timex watch.
Sheltered by rabble rousers who forced Walmart's CEO to admit that it wasn't worth the effort to try to open in Queens or anywhere else in the city.
New Yorkers may not fully realize the unique, irreplaceable status of the world's largest retailer in rural and suburban America.
Merchandise from Walmart has become as ubiquitous as the water supply, yet still the company is rebuked and reviled by anyone claiming a social conscience, is lambasted by legislators as if bad behavior places it somewhere between investment bankers and the Taliban.
Considering this is a company that is helping families ride out the economic downturn, which is providing jobs and stimulus, while Congress bickers, which had sales growth of two percent the last quarter, while other companies struggled, you have to wonder why all the criticism.
At least I wondered why.
And in that spirit of curiosity, I applied for an entry-level position at my local Walmart.
Getting hired turned out to be a challenge.
The personnel manager told me she had received more than a hundred applications during that month alone, chasing just a handful of jobs.
Thus the mystery deepened.
If Walmart is such an exploiter of the working poor, why are the working poor so eager to be exploited?
And after they were hired, why did they seem so happy to be there?
Anytime I shopped at the store, blue clad Walmartians encouraged me to have a nice day with the sincerity of the Pope issuing a benediction.
Well, I found my first clue in the application screening process.
A diabolically ingenious quiz probed for my slightest hesitation or uncertainty regarding four big no-nos of retailing theft, insubordination, poor timekeeping, and substance abuse.
The quiz also tried to make sure that I wasn't accident prone.
After I cleared that hurdle, I was called in for an interview.
At the Flagstaff Arizona store where I applied, this took place in a vinyl floored, gray walled, windowless room, tucked away at the back of the store and crowded with people sitting on cheap folding chairs at cheap folding tables.
Some of these people were talking on phones, some were doing job interviews, some were typing on computer terminals, and some seemed to be eating lunch.
I sat at a table that was covered in untrimmed fabric under a protective layer of sticky transparent vinyl.
Goes on to describe this whole process of being interviewed and finally getting the job.
After two additional interviews followed by a drug test, I received formal approval.
It may have been one of the most intense hiring processes I've ever been through.
Hardly the schedule of a company that didn't care who had hired, or employees who didn't care about getting a job.
Goes on to describe how everything the customer sees at Walmart is actually true.
The people there are happy, and they are happy to see the customers.
And they want the customers to walk out of there happy.
On average, anybody walking into Walmart is likely to spend more than two hundred thousand dollars at the store during the rest of his life.
The employees are told this, and it is that is why so much attention is made and given to the customer.
Any clueless employee who alienates a customer that's going to spend two hundred grand over his lifetime will cost the store around a quarter Million dollars.
If we don't remember that our customers are in charge, our trainer warned us we turn into Kmart.
She made that sound like devolving into some lesser being, a toad.
Or an amoeba.
And then we came to the Walmart pledge.
Solemnly, each of us raised one hand and intoned, if a customer comes within ten feet of me, I'm going to look him in the eye.
I'm going to smile and I'm going to greet him.
Having pledged ourselves, we encountered the aspect of Walmart employment that impressed me most.
The telxon, the pronounced telzon.
It's a hard-held barcode scanner with a wireless connection to the store's computer when pointed at any product.
The device would reveal astonishing amounts of information.
The quantity that should be on the shelf, the availability for the nearest warehouse, the retail price, and the markup.
And what this guy found is that these people at Walmart have the ability.
They each have their own departments they run, and they are autonomous.
They can run their departments as they wish.
They can order restock.
They can order any number of items on the shelves they want based on demand.
They don't have to go through layers of bureaucracy to have the steel the shelves restocked.
They can do it themselves.
They're trained to do it.
They are made to feel like they are part of the management of the company.
They are associates.
They are not schlubs.
I found myself reaching an inescapable conclusion low wages are not a Walmart problem.
They are an industry-wide problem afflicting all unskilled entry-level jobs, and the reason should be obvious.
In our free enterprise system, employees are valued largely in terms of what they can do.
This is why teenagers fresh out of hat screw often go to vocational training institutes to become auto mechanics or electricians.
They understand the basic principle that seems to elude social commentators, politicians, and union organizers.
If you want better pay, you need to learn skills that are in demand.
The blunt tools of legislation or union power can force a corporation to pay higher wages, but if employees don't create an equal amount of value, there's no net gain.
All other factors remaining equal, the store will have to charge higher prices for its merchandise and its competitive position will suffer.
Walmart hires the best people they can find and then turns them loose.
You have to wonder then why the store has such a terrible reputation.
And I have to tell you, so far as I can determine, trade unions have done most of the mud slinging.
If more than one million Walmart employees in the U.S. could be induced to join a union by my calculation, they'd be compelled to pay more than a half billion dollars every year in dues.
As a customer, I don't see why I should protect a business from the harsh realities of commerce if it can't maintain a good inventory.
He talked about the mom and pop stores here.
Mr. Platt writing about Walmart about how this mom and pop business that Walmart's putting them on a business is bogus.
Back after this.
Stay right where you are.
All right, we're wrap this up, but I'm gonna get to have to phone calls next.
But this is Charles Platt, New York Post.
On February 2nd, I think it was writing about Walmart.
He went undercover as a journalist applied for entry-level job in Arizona.
Got it, because he just wanted to find out what the hell is with this company.
That uh public sentiment seems to despise well, political sentiment seems to despise.
Uh the public loves the outfit.
And one of the uh things that he concludes with in the P series in Mom and stop, mom and pomp stores.
Um one of the main ways that a uh a Walmart is opposed in a community is it'll destroy Main Street, the mom and pomps.
Let me ask you people a question.
How many in your lifetimes you've gone into a mom and pop electronic store, a mom and pop anything store, and they've got items there.
And so I want that TV.
Okay, we'll have to order that for you.
We'll be in ten days or so.
You come we'll give you a call when it comes in.
You go to Walmart, say, well, this item, okay, fine, we'll box it up and you can take it out today.
Mr. Plant says, Why should I why should I bankroll?
Why should I go to a mom and pop business that's not even gonna put enough of their uh financial uh backing into an inventory?
As a customer, I don't see why I should protect a business from the harsh realities of commerce if it can't maintain a good inventory at a competitive price.
As an employee, I see no advantage in working at a small place where I'm subject to the quixotic moods of a sole proprietor and can never appeal to his superior because there isn't one.
This is just efficiency in the marketplace.
He ends up by say but that that story happened to me.
I was in Pittsburgh, and a new zenith TV came out.
I wanted to go get one.
I said, went in there.
Oh, well, fine.
We'll have to order that for you.
It'll be I had to go to the warehouse and get it myself two weeks later.
I cared more about getting it than they did selling it.
Anyway, I reached a conclusion.
I came to regard Walmart as one of the all-time enlightened American employers right up there with IBM.
It's not the enemy.
Walmart's the best friend we could ask for.
I got to make a name correction here.
I read the story from the San Francisco Chronicle and I mispronounced the first name of the reporterette.
I called her Callie Milner, and her name is actually pronounced Kai.
It's C-A-I-L-L E. And uh I Deborah Saunders, my good buddy, who writes a columnist out there, sent me this note.
I wouldn't describe it as scathing, but it was not, hey Rush, how are you?
By the way, it was her name is pronounced Kai, as in kayak.
Okay.
So I wrote back and I said, How the hell can anybody get that from the way this name is spelled?
She wrote back, it's French, you uneducated, you know, parentheses or implied you uneducated boob, it's French.
Everybody knows that that's Kai.
It's French.
And I said, I wrote back, I'm German.
Screw the French.
So anyway, it's Kai Milner, who wrote the great story about American apparel being run out of the mission district before they even got there.
And it really is a uh a great piece.
Kai Milner, C-A-I-L-L-E.
You know, if if I ran newspapers and magazines, I'd put pronunciations by everything that looks odd.
Not that I don't mean odd, but sorry, Deborah.
It doesn't look like anything uh that you would you just need more pronunciation guides out there.
Yeah, I mean, everything French needs to be need to have a pronunciation guide with it.
Okay, Sean in Middleburg, Virginia, you're up first as we go to the phones today.
Great to have you with us on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hey, Rush, how are you?
First time caller, longtime listener.
It's actually Pennsylvania.
But I started listening to you in Chico, California back in 1990.
However, you made an impact on my life.
You told me, you told everyone, be your man.
Never rely on government for anything in your life.
Get up, go to work every day, work hard, make a difference, and it'll you know, it'll happen.
And I remember you saying your grandfather never cashed social security checks because he never wanted money from the government.
And I believe that everybody goes through a level of prosperity in their life.
But if you work hard every single day and make a difference, you'll move up those levels of prosperity, and things will come true.
It's the American way.
It's Newton's law in this country.
And why liberals want to create a utopian dream when it already exists.
Well, not to them because they're not in charge of it.
But I, you know, I want to I want to thank you.
You uh you remember 19 years ago, he said that I he remembers me saying, don't depend on the government or anybody else for anything.
Make it yourself.
Don't be obligated to anybody.
I almost feel like I ought to apologize to you now, though.
Because while you went out there and did that, now you're a target of the very government I told you not to pay any attention to.
That's right.
And I was 18 years old, and I'm curious.
And I'm an investment advisor, and I say, invest in Ross, because you better pay your taxes today, because when we're gonna pay for it down the road.
There's no doubt about it.
Well, no, see, that's not not everybody has to pay taxes now either.
At least not on time.
That's true.
Um, look at Sean, I appreciate the call.
That's that's that's really nice.
Nineteen years ago, he um he remembers me, you know, and that I do these pep talks frequently.
You know, you you start depending on government, you look to Washington for what you're gonna do.
You end up like that poor Henrietta.
This we I've we gotta revisit this.
I I just folks, this I don't often get depressed.
By the way, I've got an email here.
You know, Russia talk about Walmart all the time.
Have you ever been in one?
No, I haven't.
But I recognize the success story.
I mean, I I I didn't go to Moon either, but I realized what a great achievement it was.
No, I've not been in a Walmart.
I am a member of Sam's Club, but I don't go.
I I send others.
I'm not saying that Walmart's as far away to the moon as is is is to me.
No, I'm just to say that I've never been to a Walmart is no different to say I've never been to a bed bath and beyond.
Is that I have never been to a circuit city.
I don't I can't, no, I can't I can't, I don't, I mean, I can't go walking around these places.
And I don't I'm not a shopper anyway.
You know, the um occasional jewelry store.
But um other places I I've never been, but doesn't mean I can't recognize how great they are.
By the way, there's a story in the stack here.
I don't have it written up top.
But in the stimulus bill, they're buying a bunch of vehicles that are all electric that look like golf carts.
The story has a picture of Hillary in one.
It's a golf cart with a big roof on top of it of a windshield.
Apparently goes 25 miles an hour, no carbon emissions.
I forget how many they're buying and what this thing's what they cost, but it looked intriguing to me.
Snurley, I'm actually thinking of getting a couple of these to tool around the estate in, because I could get from one end of the property in one of these things a lot sooner, and I had to just walk it.
And I imagine the imagine the credit I would get for purchasing two of these vehicles that have no carbon footprint whatsoever.
You imagine the accolade which would accrue to me for caring and compassion.
Yeah, yes, they would.
I would make sure that I I'd make sure I would pose in it for pictures for the local newspaper.
You know, as I'm going from one edge of the property to the next to investigate the day's work.
Uh and and uh I think I I think I could I could probably enhance my public relations with the environmentalist this way.
Where is poor Henrietta?
Guess we're gonna start with this this guy Julio, too.
This was Henrietta Hughes.
Is this it?
Yeah.
Well, we'll get to it in a second.
I I was genuinely depressed when I when I saw this yesterday.
Let me go to more phones.
I've been promising that.
Mark in Lincoln, Nebraska.
It's great to have you with us, sir.
Hello.
Rush, Megadetto, 20-year listener, third-time caller.
My concern is almost reaching a point, it seems, that the non-producers of this country are outnumbering the producers, the ones who want to do it right.
And needless to say, that that's kind of turning an iceberg, if you might, upside down.
I'm afraid this whole thing's just we're just at the tip of the iceberg, right?
Well, yeah, I agree.
I think it's it, but I don't know that we've reached that point yet where there are more non-producers than producers.
And that's because of the illegal alien population.
But yes, I said it.
Uh but your point is well taken.
We'll be back after this, David.
All right, the ongoing saga of the back and forth with Deborah Saunders at the San Francisco Chronicle did a story by a woman I thought name and pronounce Callie Milner.
Get a note, it's Kai as in kayak.
I wrote back, who the hell could figure that out from the way it's spelled.
She wrote back it's French.
I wrote back, screw the French, I'm German.
She just replied, think Cajun.
So now Kai is Cajun, not quite French, it's a mixture.
So my reply will be upcoming.
Think Cajun, I think Katrina.
Not Kai.
800.
If I'd gone to what?
Diversity school?
If I've gone to diversity school, I can understand that C A I L L E is pronounced Kai, as in Kayak.
If I went to diversity school.
I've never seen it.
I've never said you learned something each and every day.
First it was French, now it's Cajun.
I'm also thinking Carville, which makes me think of UFOs.
So at any rate, we're talking about shopping a minute ago.
I have not been to a Walmart, Bed Bath and Beyond and so forth.
Also haven't been to flower store.
Folks, let me get Valentine's Day coming up, and I know look at you may I you know one of the things I do, I I I resist the tug of public sentiment, popular sentiment, and I sometimes say things that everybody thinks but would never articulate.
Unless Valentine's Day is one of these holidays.
It's yeah, you have to.
It's a you have to holiday.
Unless you don't have a honey, and in that case, you're you're home free.
If you got a honey, you have to.
You just have to.
Not because you feel it, not because society mandates you have to.
And in a half-to holiday, and by the way, I don't want to leave out you people who are genuinely in love and want to participate.
That's great too.
Don't misunderstand.
I'm not saying that that that there aren't people like that.
I know that there are people who are genuinely in love.
Valentine's Day is a great day, great fun, great opportunity.
I understand.
This applies to either one.
You want to have fla flowers are part of a part of Valentine's Day in addition to whatever else you do.
And the flowers can be the best and the easiest way to fulfill either an obligation or a desire when it comes to Valentine's Day.
Proflowers.com has got a special Valentine's Day sale right now.
You have your choice between one dozen red roses in a free ruby red vase or two dozen assorted roses in a free clear glass vase.
Each bouquet comes with free truffles, just 3999.
Save over 20 bucks that way.
But here's the thing.
Do you know?
When I was first told this, I I didn't believe it, but it has been proven to me.
Do you know that you can have flowers shipped from ProFlowers that arrive by overnight courier that are fresher and will last longer than if you go to a store.
Not to put down the stores.
It's just they get them first.
Proflower sort of eliminates middleman.
And it's amazing.
They are beautiful.
The aroma is pungent.
You will well, it's arrow matter.
It's strong.
They're great.
1-800 ProFlowers is the uh P R O flowers, or go to you know rushproflowers.com.
We got our own website at the company because we're big.
Rushproflowers.com, but this is a fast way.
You don't have much time because Valentine's Day is Saturday, and you have to hurry on this, but it's a fabulous, fabulous deal, and you will be, if you haven't tried these flowers, send some to yourself and you'll see what I'm talking about.
They're flat out amazing.
You'll be amazed that something this fresh that lasts this long will be delivered to your front door in a box.
Proflowers.
Rush Proflowers.com 1800, P R O Flowers.
The George in South Windsor, Connecticut.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Hello.
Yes, Republican Daddy Ditto's Rush.
Thank you, sir.
Nice to have you with us.
Same here.
I would have tried to say him like Carvel, but my accent's not quite as good as his.
But um anyway, you know, I just wanted to.
I remember that Friday before you left on vacation, Carol called, Laugh Collar of the Day.
Big Steeler fan.
And um fortunately she wasn't in a financial situation to go.
And impromptu, like you always do, um, and as generous as you are, you ended up, you know, finding a way to get her tickets to the game.
I'd love to know how she made out.
But then, you know, I kind of compare to the woman at the press conference yesterday, who I think is a plant.
Now, I feel bad for her situation, and I think there's millions of people like that.
But you know, Barack's gives her a kiss on the cheek for patronizing reasons.
He wanted something.
By the way, did you watch this or did you just read about it?
I saw it on TV.
Did you notice when you're watching on TV when Obama goes up to give Henrietta the peck on the cheek?
The woman uh in the background mouths, I love you, Barack.
Oh.
Did you notice that?
Yeah, clearly.
Well, I didn't know what she said, but you could see the little thing.
Yeah, it's I love you, Barack or it's I love you, Obama.
Or so she was swooning.
And and and you know, again, that was calculated as far as I'm what you did for that woman, Carol was just it was genuine, it was impromptu, and and everything that he does is so calculating, and for such a reason, and it's to to tuck at someone's heart strings, or or you know, just victimize people again in it.
You you may have a point here, the um the this that that that whole town meeting in Fort Myers, Florida, look like the Oprah show.
This is the kind of stuff Oprah does.
Bring in the downtrodden, the disadvantaged of people have been victimized by evil Republicans, uh, and then give them what they don't have.
And everybody starts crying.
And then everybody's happy until the recipients find out they have to pay the gift tax or the imputed income tax, and they give it all back.
You know, because Obama because Oprah doesn't go all the way.
Remember, she gave away all those cars, and the people gave them back because she wasn't paying the sales tax on the cars.
Uh and and it there was imputed income.
Which is what got Dashel in trouble.
At any rate, let me let me tell you the story about Carol.
I appreciate your kind words.
Let me tell you the story about Carol, uh because it ended up famously, but I want to tell you it almost never got started.
It was the last call of the day on a Friday before the Super Bowl, and I have my call screener uh computer display here to my left, and as I'm we're in the middle of the break, and I look just to get an idea who's coming next, and Snerdley has Carol from Pensacola, and I don't remember the subject line what is about the Super Bowl, the Steelers, and we had spent most of the hour talking about that, so I would wrap up with that.
I turned back to the computer to do even more show prep, even though there was only two minutes left in the show.
I never stop.
I turned back, and Snerdley has switched on me, and he's moved to a caller at the bottom of the list.
I don't remember what the caller was.
Now normally I follow Snerdley's instincts on this.
For some reason, on the IFB, I said, Why did you switch the caller?
I want to I want to take the woman from Pensacola.
So he switched it back up there.
I had no idea what she's gonna say, and she had turned out she'd been out of work, she's from Pittsburgh, she'd been out of work for a year, fifty-eight years old, living with uh one of her kids, uh sister or brother, or uh sister uh uh son or daughter trying to make ends meet, and she was very complimentary of me.
She said, I've I'd uh even more than seeing the Steelers, I'd love to, you know, meet and talk with you.
It was really she was very sweet and very nice.
Well, I had an internet chat line open with uh uh Catherine, who was working the Super Bowl, and she's listening to the program, and she said, I get a couple tickets in a lower end zone.
And uh I I said, Oh, bye, Carol, we got we'd get you a couple tickets.
How many do you need?
Well, I'd like to get five, but I wouldn't dare ask for that many.
I gotta we can't get five, Catherine said, but I can get two.
And then the next note, well, I'm Carol's now starting to cry.
And I said, Carol, guess what?
We get you a hotel room for you and your son.
Well, that's great, but I don't think we can afford to get this.
Don't worry, we'll take care of that.
Uh it turned out that she drove down and we uh we compensated uh her and her son for the gasoline.
So they came down and and uh I had a bunch of clients over there for the game.
Uh and on Saturday night, the clients hosted Carol and her and her son, and I had told them Friday night when I hosted dinner for Ooh, I got a ticket.
Am I gonna go break now or got a half hour?
Yeah, I've got a half minute.
So the Carol and her son spent Friday or Saturday night with with uh my my guests over there, and uh just had a ball and they and it went to the game and so forth.
It it worked out, it was perfect.
It was just and she got to see her Steelers win one of the greatest Super Bowls uh ever played.
So it was um and she sent me a great thank you note, but uh it was if it hadn't been for me, if I'd have left it up to Snerdley, the call would have never made it on the air.
The mayor of Las Vegas, Oscar Goldman, who I happen to like.
I I love Oscar, he's a Democrat, but I like Oscar Goldman.
He's he's asking Obama to apologize.
The President of the United States is telling people not to go to Las Vegas.
And Oscar Goldman says, Why what the hell is this?
This is not the job of the president of the United States.
And try to tell people not to come here or anywhere else.
I have details, that and much more.
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