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Aug. 12, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:30
August 12, 2009, Wednesday, Hour #2
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Time Text
Yeah, I knew it.
I knew it.
George Bernard Shaw, all great truths began as blasphemies.
I am so far ahead.
I am 10 steps ahead of where most people are.
And that's why, well, that's just why.
Greetings.
Great to have you back.
Rush Limbaugh.
This is the one and only Excellence in Broadcasting Network coming to you today behind the Golden EIB microphone at the distinguished and prestigious Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Telephone number, if you want to join us, is 800-282-2882.
The email address lrushbo at EIBnet.com.
Now, what I have here is very long.
I cannot read the entire thing, but there are summaries that I can read.
This is a piece entitled What the Healthcare Bill Actually Says, and it was put together by John David Lewis.
It is from the website Classical Ideals.
John David Lewis is a professor of classics at Duke University.
And here is how he introduces his analysis.
What does the bill, H.R. 3200, short titled America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, actually say about major health care issues?
I here pose a few questions in no particular order, citing relevant passages and offering a brief evaluation after each set of passages.
The bill is 1,017 pages long.
It is knee-deep in legalese and references to other federal regulations and laws.
I have only touched pieces of the bill here.
For instance, I have not considered the establishment of one, Health Choices Commissioner, Section 141.
Number two, a health insurance exchange, Section 201, basically a government-run insurance scheme to coordinate all insurance activity.
Three, a public health insurance option, Section 221, and similar provisions.
This is the evaluation of someone who is neither a physician nor a legal professional.
I'm a citizen.
I'm concerned about this bill's effects on my freedom as an American.
I would rather have used my time in other ways, but this is too important to ignore.
We may answer one question up front.
How will the government pay for all this?
Higher taxes, more borrowing, printing money, cutting payments, or rationing services?
There are no other options.
We will all pay for this, enrolled in the government option or not.
So when we talk about how we're going to pay for it, how will the government pay for it?
All of the following.
Higher taxes, more borrowing, printing money, cutting payments, rationing.
There are no other options to pay for this.
We will all pay for it, whether we're enrolled in the government option or not.
The first question that he wanted to discover here reading the plan is, will the plan ration medical care?
Then he cites the relevant passages from the bill and then evaluates the passages in real language, not the legalese that he found.
This section, rationing medical care, this section amends the Social Security Act.
Number two, the government has the power in this bill to determine what constitutes an applicable medical condition.
Number three, the government has the power to determine who is allowed readmission into a hospital.
Number four, this determination will be made by statistics.
When enough people have been discharged for the same condition, an individual may be readmitted.
In other words, there's nothing personal about this.
That's why Obama's answer to the woman with a 100-year-old mother, are you going to take into account the spunk and spirit will to live?
I don't think we can do that.
It's going to be statistic-based.
Number five, the evaluation.
This is government rationing, pure, simple, and straight up.
There is no other way to analyze this section of the bill.
Number six, there can be no judicial review of decisions made here.
The secretary is above the courts.
Number seven, the plan, all this language is in this page, this piece.
The language from the bill is in the piece.
I'm just going to read that to you.
I'm reading his evaluation, stripping away the legalese, what it all means.
And number seven, the plan allows the government to prohibit hospitals from expanding without federal permission.
That's on page 317, page 318.
The next question that the classics professor at Duke researched is, will the plan punish Americans who try to opt out?
And then he gives the relevant portions from the bill as it's written, followed by his evaluation.
Number one, and remember the question here is, will the plan punish Americans who try to opt out?
This section of the bill amends the internal revenue code.
Number two, anyone caught without acceptable coverage as defined by the government and not in the government plan will pay a special tax.
Now, this, we know, we've seen this ourselves.
Number three, the IRS will be a major enforcement mechanism for health care as written in this bill.
The IRS will be a major enforcer.
Next section that he analyzed, what constitutes acceptable coverage?
Because in the previous passage, anyone caught without acceptable coverage and not in the government plan will pay a special tax.
So what is acceptable coverage?
Here are the relevant passages, sentences from the bill.
The evaluation.
The bill defines acceptable coverage and leaves no room for choice in this regard.
Number two, by setting a minimum 70% actuarial value of benefits, the bill makes health plans in which individuals pay for routine services but carry insurance only for catastrophic events, like health safeties accounts, illegal.
Let me read that again.
The bill defines acceptable coverage and leaves no room for choice in this regard.
By setting a minimum 70% actuarial value of benefits, the bill makes health plans in which individuals pay for routine services for their own pocket, but carry insurance only for catastrophic events illegal.
That is one of the solutions to the problem we have now.
Pay for what you want when it's a standard checkup, a standard visit to the doctor, catastrophic insurance for when that could break your bank.
Doing that will be illegal in the House bill.
In other words, paying for your own routine day-to-day services, but only having insurance for catastrophic events will be illegal.
The next section that our classics professor, an average citizen, was curious about, will the plan destroy private health insurance?
Here's what it requires for businesses with payrolls greater than $400,000 a year.
And by the way, the bill uses the word contribution to refer to mandatory payments to the government plan.
This is pages 149 and 150, section 313, employer contributions in lieu of coverage.
And then the relevant passages from the bill.
Here are or is the evaluation of those passages.
And again, what we're talking about here is will the plan destroy private health insurance.
One, the bill does not prohibit a person from buying private insurance.
Number two, small businesses with say eight to ten employees will either have to provide insurance up to federal standards or pay an 8% payroll tax.
Business costs for health care are higher than this, especially considering administrative costs.
Any competitive business that tries to stay with a private plan will pay and face a payroll disadvantage against competitors who go with the government option.
Now, let me explain this.
Small businesses, say 8 to 10 employees, will either have to provide insurance up to federal standards.
If they don't, they will pay an additional 8% payroll tax.
Well, business costs for health care are higher than what will be charged, especially considering administrative costs.
Any competitive business that tries to stay with a private plan will face a payroll disadvantage against competitors who go with the government option.
They go to the government option, they're fine.
If you don't and you stay private, you're going to pay a penalty.
The penalty will make it ridiculous and stupid business-wise to stay with your private plan.
Therefore, you will, your small business will be forced out of private insurance onto the government option.
The pressure for business owners to terminate private plans will be enormous, the financial pressure, the business pressure.
With employers thus ending plans, millions of Americans will lose their private coverage and fewer companies will offer it.
Now, none of this is anything new.
Everybody showing up at these town halls knows this.
This is nothing that hasn't already been learned when discussing.
That's why when Obama's saying, if you like your plan, you can keep it.
It's not true because the meat and potatoes of the bill are going to make it impossible.
If your private plans from an employer, your employer is going to find it very difficult to hold on to private insurance and remain competitive with businesses that opt out and go in the government option.
And this is what when Barney Frank says, well, Obama himself says, well, we can't do this immediately.
It's going to take 10 to 15 years.
This is what they're talking about.
Eventually forcing small businesses and others out of private insurance because they won't be able to remain competitive with competitors who go the public option.
Number five, in this evaluation, the commissioner, meaning always the bureaucrats, the commissioner will determine whether a particular network of physicians, hospitals, and insurance is acceptable, even if you do stay private.
With private insurance starved, many people enrolled in the government option will have no place else to go if they don't like it.
So all this talk from Obama about adding to competition is the exact opposite, which is what everybody who's read this understands, and which is why they know he's lying to them when he says, if you like your plan, you can keep it.
And another way to look at that, if you like your plan, you can keep it.
What if everybody decided to do that?
But he says the health care plan, the system we have now is unsustainable.
It's horrible.
Yet, if you like your plan, you can keep it.
How do those two go together?
The next question that our classics, Professor Duke, wanted to figure out by reading the bill: does the plan tax successful Americans more than others?
Here's what the bill says: pages 197, 198, section 441, surcharge on high-income individuals.
And then it has the legalese.
Here's the evaluation of what it says.
This health care bill, again, amends the internal revenue code.
Tax surcharges are levied on those with the highest incomes.
The plan manipulates the tax code to redistribute their wealth.
Successful business owners will bear the highest cost of this plan.
Successful small business owners will bear the highest cost of the plan.
Does the plan allow the government to set fees for services?
What it says about this: page 124, section 223, payment rates for items and services.
Then the legalese in the bill, the analysis or evaluation, the government's authority to set payments is basically unlimited.
The official, the commissioner, the bureaucrats, will decide what constitutes excessive, deficient, and efficient payments and services.
Next, will the plan increase the power of government officials to scrutinize our private affairs?
What it says, pages 195, 196, section 431, disclosures to carry out health insurance exchange subsidies.
Then the legalese in the bill, the evaluation.
This section again amends the internal revenue code.
Number two, the bill opens up income tax return information to all federal officials.
Number three, any stated limits to such information are circumvented by item V, which allows federal officials to decide what information they need.
Number four, employers are required to report whatever information the government says it needs to enforce the government plan.
Meaning your medical records, your employment records, how you're living your life, what kind of risk that's posing to the health care system.
Next, does the plan automatically enroll Americans in the government plan?
What it says, page 102, section 205, outreach and enrollment of exchange eligible individuals and employers in exchange for participating in health benefits plans, then the legalese.
Here's the evaluation.
If you do nothing, you are in the government plan.
Employers are responsible for automatically enrolling people who still work.
Does the plan exempt federal officials from court review?
What it says, page 124, section 223, payment rates for items and services, then the legalese and the evaluation.
Section 1123 amends the Social Security Act to allow the Secretary to identify areas of the country that underutilize the government's plan based on per capita spending.
Parts of the plan are set above the review of courts.
So the question: does the plan exempt federal officials and court review parts of the plan, though?
This is Mr. Lewis again.
His name is John David Lewis, professor of classics at Duke University.
He's a common average citizen.
He's not a lawyer, not a doctor.
What this goes to show is that just about anybody can figure out what's in this bill if they just take the time to read it.
And a lot of people have.
And the people showing up at these town hall meetings saying no already know what this bill says and the elements to it or of it that I just shared with you.
Quick timeout now.
with your phone calls after this.
Half my brain tied behind my back.
Just to make it fair, Rush Limbaugh here on the cutting edge of societal evolution.
Remember this, by the way, back on June 5th in 2007, Foxnews.com.
Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Tuesday that the Bush administration has done nothing to defuse a quiet riot.
among blacks that threatens to erupt just as riots did in Los Angeles 15 years ago.
The first term senator said that with black people from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast still displaced 20 months after Hurricane Katrina, frustration and resentments are building.
This administration was colorblind in its incompetence, Obama said at a conference of black clergy, but the poverty and the hopelessness was there long before the hurricane.
All the hurricane did was to pull the curtain back for all the world to see.
Obama got an ovation from 8,000 people.
He mentioned quiet riots three times in this speech because Bush wasn't doing enough for the victims of Katrina.
And yet, Obama critic, their Obama supporters, and people in the state-controlled media say that anybody who opposes Obama is racist.
To the phones, Christine in Haverhill, Massachusetts.
I'm glad you waited.
You're up first today.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
Hi.
I've been a fan for 19 years, and it's such an honor to speak to you.
Thank you very much.
Okay, I was there yesterday in Portsmouth and got there about 7 a.m. and we were shocked to see at least six chartered buses with people coming on, coming off for Organizing for America.
They all had their manufactured signs.
Organizing for America is Obama's group with their own White House.gov website that is organizing all the union people to show up and cause trouble here or to counter the genuine opposition at these town halls.
Yep, and me and my fellow Patriots were worried about our cars getting towed from the parking lot.
But anyway, there were opposing sides.
Opposing sides were on opposite sides of the street, and it made for some spirited heckling back and forth.
But we had some brilliant people with bullhorns on our side, and of course they had bullhorns too, but the unions didn't provide them with very good quality ones.
Well, the subject has been raised here.
Was this event staged in Portsmouth, New Hampshire yesterday?
And more and more people are convinced that it was.
And Obama even addressed the possibility that it was.
I've got people telling me, oh, he admitted it was staged.
I've got the soundbite.
I don't hear him admitting it, that it was staged.
I've got to take a break here.
I'll let you hear it when we come back after this brief time out at the bottom of the air.
We know that little girl was staged.
We know she's the daughter of a huge Obama contributor and supporter.
We'll be back right after this.
Well, the old reliable Joe Klein, Time magazine, blog post scaring seniors is reprehensible.
Sarah Palin talking about the death panels is just reprehensible.
Rush Limbaugh telling people that the government will decide whether or not it's worth investing in their health care.
It's just reprehensible.
My entire adult life, including, of course, the period of time I have served as a national figure behind the golden EIB microphone every two years during every political campaign.
I have had to listen from Alan Cranston to George Mitchell to every Democrat I know, even Lawton Childs in Florida, threaten and tell senior citizens every two to four years that Republicans want to cut their Social Security, that Republicans want to kick them out of their homes.
I remember Lawton Childs doing it in a debate with Jeb Bush.
I remember Alan Cranston doing it.
I remember leading up into the 88th presidential election, Bush versus, I guess it was the loser, Dukakis.
Yeah.
Scaring seniors?
Reprehensive.
We're warning them.
We are warning seniors.
Joe, you dofus.
Good Lord, what has happened to the mainstream media?
It's as though all of this has never happened before, except this time it's genuine.
There's no fear-mongering.
There is a warning.
We are shouting it from the mountaintops.
Hey, Joe, you might want to go over to Tina Brown's website because there's a post there by a guy named Lee Siegel.
Obama's euthanasia mistake.
This guy is a huge lib.
He's big-time pro national health care.
For those of us who believe that the absence of universal health care is America's burning shame, the spectacle of opposition to Obama's health care plan is Alice in Wonderland bewildering and also enraging.
But on one point, the plan's critics are absolutely correct.
One of the key ideas under consideration, which can be read as expressing sympathy for limitations on end-of-life care, is morally revolting.
And it's helping to kill the plan.
Make no mistake about it.
Determining which treatments are cost-effective at the end of a person's life and which are not is one of Obama's priorities.
It's one of the principal ways he counts on saving money and making universal health care affordable.
Obama's euthanasia mistake.
Lee Siegel.
I don't know who Lee Siegel is.
I didn't click on the bio, but it's at Tina Brown's website, The Daily Beast.
And there's much more said, the quotes from Obama, what he told Diane Sawyer and so forth.
This guy, you know, he thinks the second greatest sin in America after slavery is we don't have national health care.
Obama's killing it.
He said, there's no way.
He said, let me give you a quote.
Poole quote.
This is the big brother nightmare of oppressive government that the shrewd propagandists on the right are always blattering on about, except that this time they could not be more right.
Propagandists.
But anyway, what's in the bill is in the bill.
And Obama could deny it all at once.
I don't even think he...
This performance yesterday was as undisciplined, unprofessional, as detached from reality.
It just summed up why Axelrod tethers this guy to a teleprompter at every occasion.
And when he doesn't, I guarantee you they're done there biting their nails off to the quick.
Backstage, this is this, would you spell it for me?
I don't want to mispronounce this.
Should be two O's in there.
Dr. Poole from Sykeston, Missouri, which is 30 miles down the road from where I grew up, Cape Girardeau, Missouri.
Doctor, welcome to the program.
Nice to have you here.
Thank you, Rush.
It's an honor to speak to you.
Appreciate that.
I'm, like you said, I'm a doctor, board-certified and OBGYN, born and raised here in Sykeston, and have practiced here since 1983.
That means you know the prominent Montgomery family very well.
Very well.
Yes.
They're friends of ours.
And I went to the town hall meeting at Popper Bluff, and I just want to say that you would be proud of how the people acted.
You know, I'm glad you said that, Doctor, because I mentioned yesterday that I'm proud of the American people showing up at the Spectre Town Hall and wherever they're happening.
I'll bet I would have been proud.
Was McCaskill there in Popper Bluff?
Yes, she was.
And two words to describe the crowd, which was mostly against the health care reform bill, would be passionate and frustrated.
Many of us came there prepared to talk about the proposed bill, the one that they tried to hammer through before the August recess.
And I even took the whole bill with me, and I've read the whole bill, and those things that you spoke about a few minutes ago are all in there.
We were not allowed to raise our hand to ask a question or shout out, even though obviously people did shout out anyway.
They drew questions from a basket.
But one of the questions that she was asked was, you know, about House Bill 3200, those things that you were just talking about.
And her response when they asked if she had read these was not a yes or no.
It was first, those things are not in there.
They're all distortions, misrepresentations.
Doctor, let me stop you here just a second.
You're saying a woman got up and asked Senator McCaskill with a copy.
They read some of the things.
Have you read this?
And McCaskill said those are not in the bill.
That's exactly right.
And that those are lies and distortions.
Exactly.
She said there were five bills at the present time, and she held up her laptop and said, this is the bill that just came out of Senate committee.
And I have read all of this, and I can promise you that none of those things are in it and that none of those things are in the bills that have been proposed so far.
Now, one thing, though, she's got an out here.
That woman held up the House bill.
That's the only bill anybody can possibly print out.
And Claire McCaskill is not in the House.
She's in the Senate.
So she can say that's not in the bill because she's a senator.
There are four bills in the Senate, five total with the one in the House.
And the one she held up is a Senate bill, and she can tell us all day long that what's in the House bill is in the Senate bill because we don't know.
We haven't seen it yet.
That's exactly right.
And one of the next questioners got up and asked, or said, we came here prepared to talk to you about the bill that was almost pushed through before the August recess.
And now you're telling us about one that none of us have read and none of us can talk to you about.
So how can we have a discussion?
And she said, well, I can only tell you that this is the one that I've read and it has none of those things in it.
And by the way, at Arlen Specter's thing yesterday, when he was asked about a Senate bill, he said there was none, that there was not a Senate bill.
Well, there isn't technically.
There are four committees that are working on putting together a bill.
And those four committees, that's where they've been having trouble in one of the committees with three Republicans coming up with bipartisan consensus.
And they just were unable to get one bill out of those four committees done before the August recess.
The House was able to, but they weren't able to force the vote.
But let's take McCaskill at her word here.
She may be talking about one bill that she may not know what's in the other three in the Senate, but it doesn't matter, Doctor, because once the Senate gets its bill, and I'm going to tell you, I have seen excerpts of what's in the Kennedy version of the bill, and it's as bad as what's in the House bill.
I'm sure it is.
But once this happens, then whatever the final product in the Senate is, they go to a conference with the people in the House.
And the people in the House, that's Pelosi and Waxman, are not just going to sit there and let the Senate tear their bill up.
So Senator McCaskill took the easy way out in refusing to address her constituents' concerns about the only bill they've read yesterday and tell him, no, no, no, no, that is not in the bill.
She ducked it.
She ducked the issue then.
Exactly.
And the frustration comes from that, that we can't seem to be able to read what they keep talking about.
And when the president came on yesterday and kept saying, my plan and my proposal has this in it, nobody can read that.
Well, he doesn't have one.
He hasn't even written one.
Because it's not written down anywhere.
No, he doesn't have a plan.
And for doctors in particular, it's frustrating.
We hear him say things like yesterday, and he's done this before.
He said his proposal will make insurance companies pay for mammograms and colonoscopies, not colonoscopies, and that that will help us find breast cancer and prostate cancer early.
And you would think with all his advisors, some of whom are doctors, including Rahm Emanuel's brother, somebody would tell him that colonoscopies don't find prostate cancer.
That's not what it's for.
And it's frustrating.
You dare, you dare to challenge our dear leader on the most listened to media program today of its kind.
And.
And you've identified yourself by name.
You, sir, are very brave.
I'm on a list, I'm sure.
Yes.
But it's frustrating when we're told that those of us who, whoever us is, who made the miss, need to stop talking and get out of the way where he can clean it up.
I know he's not a doctor, but he is the president, and he has lots of advisors.
And if he's going to stand up and tell us that he is going to fix health care, he at least needs to have his facts together, and he just does not seem to do that.
It isn't about facts, Doctor.
If I may be so bold, with the left, facts are simply things used by losers.
Words are the tools.
Well, we have a class site for my high school class, and there are conservatives and liberals both on it.
And after I read the bill, I sent an email to everybody saying that I had read House Bill 3200, and that, you know, I pointed out these things that you just pointed out.
And one of my very good friends, who is a liberal, sent back and said I had the conservative version of the bill.
I don't know.
That's what's frustrating because otherwise intelligent people who just close the world off to themselves.
Right.
For whatever reason.
Well, I don't blame you for being frustrated.
I'm glad for the report on Senator McCaskill because she knew that sounds like a strategy to avoid anything and yet be able to say she was being totally honest in her answers.
And like you've said before, it's changed from what it was originally planned to be, a way to help give health care to everyone, to a direct attack on the insurance companies and making the insurance companies the enemies of all.
Doctor, it's never been about health care for all.
If they wanted health insurance for all, it could take some of the stimulus money and done it.
It's not about health insurance.
Even after the Washington Post even ran a numbers doctor in a chart last week, even after 10 years, if the House bill is signed into law as is after 10 years, still 17 million Americans uninsured.
Exactly.
After 10 years.
Right.
In the Senate bill, 36 million uninsured after 10.
They're past in their current form.
This is not about ensuring everybody, it's not about anything of the sort.
And this is not about health care.
This is strictly about remaking the fundamental building block structure of this country.
We'll be back.
Stay with us.
Yeah, I forgot.
Here's that soundbite.
I want to preface this soundbite.
Frankly, the soundbite kind of leaves me confused.
I don't think we ought to jump at straws here and say, hey, Obama's admitting the thing was staged.
We all know it was, but to run out of say he's admitting it is a bit of a stretch.
But here's my reaction.
I was watching the town hall yesterday in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and that little 13-year-old girl, a young girl, got up and asked this question, reading the question for a little notepad.
I said, This is like everything else about this, this is not legitimate.
And this, just to refresh your memory with my analysis and observation, a little girl of early teenage stood up.
Obama said, When do you go back to school?
She said, September 3rd.
You know, her question was: when I was walking in, I saw all of these signs opposing health care reform.
Mean signs, mean signs opposing health care reform.
Why aren't people against something that will make their lives better?
Or some such thing as that.
And then how can we know what's true?
Now, I'm sorry, folks.
13-year-old, 14, 15, I don't care.
Nothing about that computes.
I've seen these mean signs.
Why are people so opposed to something to help them?
How do we know what is true?
And now we've learned that her mom is a bright Obama groupie gave money, $636 to Obama, which is, you know, it's nowhere near the limit, but there are pictures of her at inaugural events, the mom and so forth, of Obama sitting next to the kid.
So here's yesterday in Portsmouth, this is Obama, and he said this about audience members.
And the reason people think that he's admitting that there were plants and staged events is because he's answering a charge during the town hall itself that had not been leveled yet.
You know, so when you defend yourself against a charge that hasn't been made, people then go, oh, there must be something to it.
Here's what he said.
Somebody here who has a concern about health care that has not been raised or is skeptical and suspicious and wants to make sure that, because I don't want people thinking I just have a bunch of plants in here.
So he's running around asking for people to disagree with him because it's amazing he couldn't find anybody with tough questions.
He found these robots and says, I just, I don't want people thinking I got a bunch of plants in here.
Well, that's what ignited everybody's curiosity about, oh, he brought up the idea of plants.
I just don't want everybody thinking I got plants in here.
This in the same town hall where he said, hey, you know, UPS, FedEx, they're doing all right at post office sucks.
Yeah, you want to tell us about a government agency that can't stay afloat selling government-run health care?
Axelrod's back there going, Damn it to hell.
Why didn't we bring the prompter?
I love this, folks.
Absolutely, absolutely love it.
Here's Brian in North Barrington, Illinois.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Mega Dato's Rush.
Thanks for taking my call.
Thank you.
Hey, you know, I'm glad you got back to that.
You know, this has nothing to do with health care.
You know, what you read earlier in the hour is nothing short, in my mind, of a declaration of war.
It's a war against our Constitution, and the people are so frustrated at these events is because we're under attack.
What is the difference of Germany taking over France or Japan taking over Philip?
Well, wait a minute.
In the case of Germany, they did it with tanks, armaments.
This is, if you want to say that Obama and his people declared war on the founding of the country, and so I understand what you mean.
I do think people can understand liberals.
If you listen to liberals, if you listen to media, conservatives are a bigger threat to this country than, say, Ahmadine Zad.
Well, you never hear Obama talking about Ahmadine Zad or the drive-by media talking about Ahmadine Zad the way they talk about me, for example.
And I don't have any divisions.
You know, well, I don't have, I don't have, no, Snirdly, come on.
I don't have armed divisions.
I can't order people.
It's the fastest three hours on media, and two of them are already in the can and on the way over to the museum where we house archives for the Limbaugh Museum of Broadcasting.
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