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Aug. 28, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:46
August 28, 2009, Friday, Hour #2
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Lots of storms in the East Coast.
You got Tropical Storm Danny moving up there, and you got other storms moving in.
And I'm just waiting.
In fact, I'm going to make a prediction to you that somebody like Andrea Mitchell, NBC, Washington, or Chris Matthews, who on Wednesday proclaimed Barack Obama the last remaining Kennedy brother.
I will predict to you that sometime this weekend, somebody in state-controlled media will tell us that these East Coast storms, that Tropical Storm Danny arriving just in time for the Kennedy funeral, is symbolic of the heavens crying for Ted Kennedy.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's open lines Friday!
There aren't any lines open, and there very rarely are lines open.
But I give you the phone number anyway.
There's a trick.
See, we're on a delay here in case a caller utters a profanity or in case I tell a Kennedy joke today.
I've told a broadcast engineer to hit the delay button if I slip up and tell a Kennedy joke.
But you got to know how long the delay is, and we don't tell you that.
So you got to anticipate when I'm about to hang up on a call before you dial.
I mean, it really is an art getting into this program.
And I'll give you the number anyway, 800-282-2882.
And then when you get in, then you have to go through the heartwarming and wonderful experience of dealing with both Snerdley, the official screener of calls.
On Friday, when we go to the phones, whatever you want to talk about is fair game.
Not the case Monday through Thursday.
Monday through Thursday, we only talk about things I care about because I don't want to sit here and be bored.
And you won't listen if I'm bored.
But on Friday, I take a great career risk and open it up.
And if you call about something I don't care about, I will fake it.
And you'll never know unless I announce I'm faking it.
And I wouldn't do that because that would be insulting to the caller.
What did you say?
No, I'm not.
Well, yes, Snerdley wants a sample Kennedy joke that I wouldn't tell.
Well, that makes a lot of sense.
Just don't give the punchline just the beginning.
Well, I could do that.
I could do the punchline and don't do the joke.
That might be a way to do it.
The punch.
Anyway, here's the pig flu story.
I'll think about that.
Here's the pig flu story.
It's from state-controlled associated media.
Pig flu is more serious for blacks and Hispanics, not women.
I was wrong about that.
This is according to a study.
Pig flu, four times more likely to send blacks and Hispanics to the hospital than white people, according to a study in Chicago that offers one of the first looks at how the virus has affected different racial groups.
Did you know that the pig flu is obviously a racist virus?
I mean, the pig flu knows that when it somehow ends up in the body of a black or Hispanic, to get even worse than when it gets in the body of a white.
So in addition to everything else about this thing, it's a racist virus.
According to a study in Chicago, the report echoes some unpublished information from Boston that found that three out of four Bostonians hospitalized from pig flu were black or Hispanic.
Now, that might be why there were so few blacks on the caravan route yesterday.
I was playing a drinking game with myself in honor of Ted Kennedy and Of the funeral caravan there up to the Kennedy Library for every black I saw along the route, I was going to take a drink.
And at the end of the whole thing, I watched the replay of it when I got home.
At the end of the time, I was sober.
And now I know why, because all the blacks are in the hospital because of pig flu.
The cause for the difference is probably not genetic, health officials say.
Of course not.
The pig flu's got to be racist then.
More likely, it's because blacks and Hispanics suffer disproportionately from asthma, diabetes, and other health problems that make people more vulnerable to the pig flu.
Well, then maybe that's what the hell needs to be studied rather than race.
It's not clear if a racial or ethnic difference will hold up when more complete national data is available.
It should be R available, one federal health official said.
The findings are based on fairly small numbers of solutions.
It's a nothing story.
They don't even know if it's true or not.
Just get the template story out there that, oh, it's worse for blacks.
It's worse for Hispanics.
What a rotten country.
What a rotten country sucks anyway.
And now we've got a pig flu virus going around.
A pig flu, just like the rest of the country, targets minorities.
That's the point of the story from state-controlled Associated Press.
Over at theamericanthinker.com, C. Edmund Wright has really written a decent parody, really funny parody on the Kennedy Robert Bork speech.
He took the speech and made it about today and Obama.
And here's a sample of it: Barack Obama's America is a land in which all of us would be forced to pay for any and all abortions.
Blacks would sit at acorn voter registration counters.
Rogue union thugs could break the teeth of conservative black protesters in midday raids.
Schoolchildren would be taught to put condoms on bananas.
Writers and artists getting all wee-weed up over crucifixes would be subsidized at the whim of government.
And the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of Americans who dared to attempt to exercise their freedom to take care of themselves and their families and not need government assistance.
President Obama is still our president, but he shouldn't be able to reach out from the muck of Chicago, pay-to-play power, reach into the muck of American hating black separatism, and impose his reactionary view of the Constitution on this and the next generation of Americans.
No care would be better than Obamacare.
That is well done.
C. Edmund Wright.
And he starts the piece.
Maybe David Brooks is right after all.
Maybe we should indeed use Ted Kennedy's behavior during the Reagan years as our blueprint for promoting unabashed, unapologetic conservatism during these Obama years.
That's not to say that Brooks knows anything about unapologetic conservatism since he spends most of his time apologizing for conservatism, but we might want to heed his advice.
You might have missed this yesterday.
David Brooks, the New York Times official conservative, was on the news hour with Jim Ora.
And David Brooks actually said, now David Brooks, remember, is one of the architects of the notion the era of Reagan is over.
We need to move beyond Reagan, we conservatives do.
And he said that we need to learn, we conservatives need to learn from Ted Kennedy during the Reagan years, how we should behave during the Obama years.
And then we played the Bork speech that Kennedy gave.
Oh, is this how we're supposed to?
Okay, Dave, we'll play it that way.
So C. Edmund Wright does this.
Speaking of that, I read a piece, another piece out there on how we conservatives can learn from Ted Kennedy in dealing with Obama.
And I read it and I read it and I read it.
And then I looked, who wrote this?
And it was written by a, it was written by a Clinton hack.
What was it, Bruce Reed?
I started crying out loud.
When is the last time anybody ever said that liberals need to learn from us and the way we behave?
Simply amazing.
Fortney Pete Stark.
Forteny Pete Stark, who is deranged.
He's a Bay Area, California Democrat.
And he says that Blue Dog Democrats pushing for changes in health care legislation are looking for campaign donations from insurance companies.
Forteny Pete Stark, who heads a key health subcommittee, said the Blue Dogs are brain-dead and they just want to cause trouble.
Now, a spokeswoman for the Blue Dog Coalition says that they've played an active and productive role and believe it's more important to get legislation on such an important issue right than to pass it quickly.
Forteney Pete Stark, Blue Dogs are brain-dead.
Audio soundbite time.
This from CNN, last night, Anderson Cooper 180, the correspondent Tom Foreman playing a clip of an unidentified man along the processional route for Senator Kennedy's body.
I do think there is a window for President Obama to rally Democrats, and he can begin doing that.
Wrong soundbite.
That was David Rodam Gergen, who's next.
Go to soundbite number two, 3, 2, 1.
We wanted to turn out and pay tribute to the senator.
He's done so much for organized labor and for all labor, organized or not, you know, for all working people.
So, you know, we thought it fitting to come out and stand out today with the procession.
A union thug reduced the snivels along the processional route saying, yeah, we just wanted to come out and show.
What do you bet?
There was a memo that went out to make sure that there were people lining the streets, just as there are memos from the Obama White House making sure that there are pro-Obama supporters at town hall meetings, and they're coming from the various unions.
Now, here's David Rodham Gergen also.
On Anderson Cooper 180 last night, Cooper said, look, Vice President Biden said perhaps that Senator Kennedy's death would be a catalyst to push through health care reform.
Do you see that's a possibility?
And certainly that's something some folks would not be comfortable with.
I do think there is a window for President Obama to rally Democrats, and he can begin doing that a little bit in his eulogy on Saturday.
But most importantly, when President Obama comes back to Washington, he's got a small window to rally Democrats in the name of Teddy Kennedy, and maybe he can move it.
Yeah, small window.
More importantly, when Obama comes back to Washington, small window to rally Democrats in the name of Teddy Kennedy, and maybe he can move it.
But there is dissension in the ranks.
Way off over there on the left fringe is Dennis Kucinich.
And he was on Neil Cavuto's Fox show.
Cavuto said a lot of advocates are saying, do this for Teddy.
Get health care for Teddy.
Many are saying, debate this aggressively.
It would be what Teddy would have wanted.
Are we overdoing this, Congressman Kucinich?
We have to be very careful that his passing isn't seen as an opportunity to appropriate his memory for a specific course of action at this time.
Once his funeral services have concluded, then I think it's appropriate that we get back to the debate.
And I think that we, those of us who've worked with him for years, understand his sentiments on the issue of health care.
But it's really a question of propriety right now.
And we've got to be very careful that his passing not just be used as a simple opportunity to advance an issue.
And then afterwards, we'll have plenty of time to remind people what he has stood for throughout his whole life.
Too late, Congressman.
I don't think that your idea has a prayer.
I don't think your party can help itself.
Let's go back, shall we?
Let's go back to the archives, the grooveyard of forgotten hits.
Let's go to some sound bites from the Wellstone Memorial.
Just to give you an idea of what that was and what is probably coming.
Here's a montage of Senator Wellstone's son, Mark.
None of the we will wins that you will hear here are repeated.
We will carry on the fight.
We will carry on the struggle.
We will carry on the tradition.
We will carry on the pride.
We will carry on the struggle.
And we will carry on the legacy.
And we will do it for Paul.
And I'll tell you what, Mom, Mom, you're right.
And they proceeded to lose.
Wellstone's, it was Walderolf Mondahl ran in place of Wellstone.
Mondahl lost to Norm Coleman, and the Democrats lost big.
These were midterm elections.
They lost big because this thing just rubbed everybody around.
The memorial service for a guy who died in a plane crash.
And here they're turning it into a political rally.
Here is a montage of Rick Kahn, a former Wellstone student and treasurer of his campaign.
He needs you now.
I am begging you, please, let the people of this state hear your voice on his behalf to keep his legacy alive and help us win this election for Paul Wellstone.
I can still hear that strong, clear voice calling to me that it is now our time to stand up for the people he fought for.
That we need to stand up for our children.
We must stand up for our seniors.
We have to stand up.
We are going to stand up together.
And then we're going to organize.
We're going to organize.
This was a funeral.
This was a memorial service for Paul Wellstone.
Here's more of Rick Kahn.
Tonight, we are filled to overflowing with overwhelming grief and sorrow.
If Paul Wellstone's legacy and the Senate comes to an end within just days after this unspeakable tragedy, then our spirits will be crushed and we will drown in a river of tears.
We are begging you to not let this happen.
We are begging you to help us win this Senate election for Paul Wellstone.
We can be the answer to his prayers if you help us win this election for Paul Wellstone.
You see, the unspeakable tragedy here wasn't Wellstone's death.
It was the possibility of losing a Senate seat.
That's what had them all up tight.
And a piece déresistance.
Senator Tom Harkin.
By the way, do you remember that Trent Lott and some Republicans showed up and they got booed when they walked in and they got jostled and they had to leave?
And they were colleagues of Wellstone.
But the revelers at the Wellstone, the organizers of the Wellstone Memorial wanted to know part of it.
Tom Harkin brought down the house.
For Paul Wellstone, will you stand up and keep fighting for social and economic justice?
Say yes.
For Paul!
For Paul, will you stand up and keep fighting for better wages for those who mop our floors and clean our bathrooms, for those who take care of our elderly, take care of our sick, teach our kids, and help our homeless?
Say yes!
For Paul, will you stand up and keep fighting for cleaner air and cleaner water, for a cleaner environment for our children and our future?
Say yes for Paul for Paul.
Will you stand up and keep fighting for peace and understanding and to stop the exploitation of women and children around the world?
Say yes for Paul.
For Paul, will you stand up and keep fighting?
Yes, indiscriminately.
Stop it.
If I don't stop it now, I got to play 18 minutes in a row of commercials.
We'll be back.
I'll finish.
It's unbelievable.
It's unbelievable.
Peoria, Arizona, Syracuse, Indiana.
And we got a call coming up from Canton, Michigan.
Everybody knows that Canton's in Ohio.
I never knew there was a Canton, Michigan until today.
Rebecca, you're coming up here in just a second.
As you listen to the rest of Tom Harkin here, I gotta ask yourself: do these people sound like they live in the same country we do?
Let's carry on the fight, carry on the struggle for the women and the children and the blacks and the homeless.
And don't carry on the struggle.
For who?
What about what's the struggle?
They sound like they sound like they're in Castro's Cuba.
They sound like they're in jail.
They sound like they're in prison trying to break out of some shackles here.
They say they love the country.
Do they sound these people from the Wellstone Memorial like they love the country?
Listen to the rest of Harkin here.
Based on race, gender, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation, say yes for Paul.
For Paul, will you stand up and keep fighting for the poor, the homeless, and those left on the roadside of life?
Say yes.
Now, let's all get on that bus together, that green bus.
That bus of hope.
They're on a gentleman.
Let's keep it moving.
They're on a little bit.
Keep.
Keep standing up.
Keep fighting.
Keep saying yes to justice.
To hope for people.
For Paul.
I swear.
We got it.
I swear they sound like they live in Cuba.
Do they sound like they live in the same country we do?
It's just oh, and grab audio soundbite number 23.
This just happened this afternoon on PMS, NBC.
The host of Dr. Nancy Snyderman spoke with the doyen of Washington Social Life Sally Quinn about Kennedy.
Snyderman said, Hey, one thing that seems to separate Ted Kennedy from all the rest is that average ordinary people have a Ted Kennedy story.
Oh, what a line that is.
Bobby was very passionate and very compassionate, and Jack was very sophisticated and urbane.
Teddy was somebody that everyone could identify with.
I mean, he was kind of the kid, you know, the one who had to look at all these older brothers to look up to and to carry the torch.
And he somehow managed to remain a man of the people.
He never took his Kennedy-ness seriously.
He never took his Kennedy-ness seriously.
He didn't have to take his Kennedy-ness seriously.
You people in Washington, a Northeast Corridor, and the media did it for him.
And by the way, everybody could identify with Ted Kennedy.
I don't know anybody that's left in a car, driven off the bridge.
Sorry, I don't know anybody.
I want to revise and extend my remarks on Ted Kennedy, man of the people.
People can identify with him.
He certainly was a man of the people, especially if they had big boobs.
Does that pass the delay test?
Don't need to delay that, do we?
Okay, good.
Here's Rebecca in Canton, Michigan, as we go to the phones open line Friday.
Thank you for waving, Rebecca.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
It is a real honor to speak with you.
And I have to tell you that the day you finally grace the cover of People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive issue will be a good date.
Such will never happen.
I don't think I'll ever be in People Magazine other than if some scandal comes up.
Oh, well, it would be a great day.
I wanted to respectfully take you to task for the response that you gave to Christine on Wednesday.
Oh, no.
Just very respectfully, because before she got carried away...
Now I'm beginning to think that everything you said before now just wasn't true.
No, it is very true.
But she brought up a very good point.
She brought up a very good point that I haven't heard you or anybody else addressing.
I don't think that's possible, but I'll listen.
It was a short point before she got, you know, petty.
But anyway, the bottom line is that health care in this country is prohibitively expensive.
And there are reasons for that.
And unless we start talking about the underlying reasons for the problems, we'll never fix them.
And you, Rush, are usually a really great educator on free market economics.
But I haven't heard you educating much here on one of the most significant reasons that health care in our country is so expensive.
This is surreal.
I do it all the time.
This is like Christine telling me she spoke five words for every one word I spoke that she couldn't get a word in.
You're telling me I don't.
How many times on this show, just this week, have we talked about the relationship to price when the customer deals directly with the provider of the service or the manufacturer of the product?
Without admitting.
Health savings accounts, getting the price.
The whole point of conservative health care reform is oriented precisely around that point.
And the only reason the costs are so prohibitively high right now is because most people don't think they're paying for it.
Insurance is, government is.
In Christine's case, she thinks her neighbors ought to pay for it.
That was so bothersome about her call.
Yes, yes, I agree.
But I hear you praising the insurance companies that are in our country right now, and they are contributing to the high cost of the health care because it cripples the free market economy.
Yes, it does.
No, no, no, no.
You don't hear me praising insurance companies.
You hear me defending private sector free market capitalism from an attack by a leftist radical president.
Oh, that I definitely agree with.
I am in no way in favor of the government taking it upon themselves to wipe out one-sixth of our economy.
However, I do think that we as the people need to stop buying routine medical care and employers need to stop providing health benefits to their employees because all these middlemen have crippled the free market as it applies to health care.
No, the middleman that's screwed this all up is the government, not the insurance companies.
The insurance companies can't sell policies like you just described.
Something else I have long advocated, when you got to go for a checkup, pay for it.
When you got to go get a $20 bottle of blood pressure medicine, pay for it.
And if you're going to have an insurance policy for that, pay for that too.
But whatever, pay for it.
And keep the really catastrophic events reserved for major insurance policies.
Because an insurance politician is trying to mitigate as much risk as you can.
But nobody has the right to good health.
Nobody has the right to good health.
I mean, we live under so many misconceptions in this whole thing.
Healthcare is a right.
Government or employer should provide it.
There would be a revolt if the employers of this country just decided, you know, we're going to provide it anymore.
And that will be the case when Obama gets his public option.
They will upload it.
And then you're going to only have one place to go to have any health insurance, and that's the government.
And that's the plan.
And that's not going to do anything for prices.
Rebecca, thanks much for the call.
Appreciate it.
Peter in Sierra Vista, California.
Great to have you with us.
I'm in service to Arizona Rush.
Mega did it in a long time.
Gee, where is Sierra Vista, Arizona?
Everybody knows Sierra Vista's in California.
Well, apparently I'm in the one from Arizona.
All right.
Well, I'm glad to have you on the program.
Rush, it's Open Line Friday, and I'm going to blow your mind here.
Have at it.
I have been listening to you for 21 years since I was 10 years old because of Ted Kennedy.
When I was 10 years old, I come from Massachusetts.
Families, you know, everybody in Massachusetts, I mean, how can you re-elect a murderer that many times without being in love with the family?
And everybody from Massachusetts is in love with the family.
My grandmother had a bust of JFK on a shelf.
So I grew up, you know, thinking, wow, Kennedys.
Found out Ted Kennedy was going to be speaking at a synagogue up the street from me.
Asked my mom, said, Mom, I really want to go and hear him talk.
You know, he's a Kennedy.
So my mom said, all right, well, I'll take you.
And so she took me.
I sat there and I listened.
He told jokes.
You're 10 years old when this happened, right?
10 years old.
Told jokes, and he's going on about stuff that was way over my head at the time.
Don't really remember too much what he was talking about.
Afterwards, my mother was a little bit more.
I guarantee you it was taxing the rich.
I didn't know about that.
Giving away money to the poor, something like that.
He was a Kennedy.
That's all I cared about.
So after the speech, my mom brought me over to the rabbi there and said, you know, hey, can you introduce my son to the senator, please?
And so the rabbi said, oh, absolutely.
Rabbi brought me over.
Senator, I'd love to introduce you to one of our youngest neighborhood kids around here who's really interested in getting into politics, stuff like that.
And the senator barely acknowledged me, tapped me on the shoulder, sort of like patting me on the back, and then immediately went on, started shaking other people's hands, didn't say hi.
And, you know, for me as a 10-year-old kid, it was kind of devastating.
And a couple months later, your show goes national, and I turn you on, you know, because I like to listen to AM radio when I was a kid, still do, and turned it on and started listening.
And I'll tell you what, if I hadn't had that eye-opening experience with Senator Kennedy, I probably would have been just like any other, you know, brainwashed liberal kid and would have said, I'm not going to listen to this guy.
I mean, he says bad things about Democrats and the Kennedys and whatever else.
You know, so it was kind of an eye-opener for me.
So I really feel like I owe him at least a debt of gratitude.
Well, a very interesting story.
Senator Kennedy basically sloughed you off.
That was it, Rush.
And it broke my heart.
Broke my heart.
21 years.
Right.
Busted JFK in your house.
You go to meet Senator Kennedy and he acted like he didn't care.
And then a couple weeks later, you hear me.
Well, that's an interesting story.
I'm glad that you called.
You're now 31 years old, so this happened 21 years ago.
Yeah, yeah.
And I've actually got a two-year-old of my own.
And every time we're in the car, I've got you on.
I've got Rush 24-7.
So anytime we're in the car, we're popping on the iPod and listening to Rush.
Thank you very much.
No, thank you, Rush.
Appreciate it.
Have a great weekend.
I appreciate the call.
I really do.
By the way, I'm thinking about something as I'm sitting here talking to Peter from Sierra Vista, Arizona, about our call from Rebecca.
And there's a common theme.
All of these people who are calling upset about insurance agencies and insurance companies.
And they keep talking about the middleman.
And we got to get rid of the middleman.
And that's what Obama says.
And that's what is a common theme among communists and socialists.
Take out the middlemen and let's have you deal directly with us in the government.
And when I hear Rebecca jumping all over the insurance companies, I think, okay, well, that part of Obama's plan is working on some Americans.
He's demonized the doctors.
The doctors cut off your foot, and they don't have to get 30 or 40 grand.
Of course, no doctor gets 30 or 40 grand for cutting off a foot.
Takes out kids' tonsils unnecessarily just to line their pockets.
He's demonizing everybody.
He's demonizing.
I mean, the Democrat Party enemies list is the private sector.
From Walmart, big retail, to big oil, to big pharmaceutical, to now big insurance.
Look at the Democrat Party's enemy list.
They're trying to demonize and individuals too, like me, but they're demonizing all of these industries.
And now, all these middlemen, the private sector middlemen, they are the problem.
We need to get rid of the private sector middlemen and just open the door so we can deal directly with our beloved benevolent government, which, of course, is only here to help us.
This is unbelievable, folks.
This is just unbelievable.
This is just too good.
Calvin Woodward from State Controlled Associated Press.
Nixon dug deep for dirt on Ted Kennedy.
President Richard Nixon considered Ted Kennedy such a threat that he tried to catch Kennedy cheating on his wife, even ordering aides to recruit Secret Service agents to spill secrets on the senator's behavior.
Nixon asked his aide John Ehrlichman, do you have anybody in the Secret Service you can get?
How could they miss this?
Kennedy was cheating on his wife all the time.
Why do you need Secret Service?
I can't believe Nixon missed this.
Oh, geez.
Nixon wanted a sharp and private eye kept on Ted Kennedy's movements after the Chappaquittick scandal, hoping to expose another misstep with a woman other than his wife, Joan.
Gee, maybe if Nixon had intervened sooner, Ms. Kopeckny would be alive today.
Same as if he'd been driving a Volkswagen.
Well, remember, that was a national lampoon ad.
Volkswagen got mad, made him pull it.
And what they actually said was: if he'd been driving a Volkswagen, he'd be president today.
They didn't say in their ad.
So you have to dig up Richard Nixon here again on the day before Ted Kennedy's funeral, say Nixon botched it, trying to dig up dirt.
How hard could it have been?
Is my point.
And here from ABC, ABC News, Susan Donaldson James, wife Joan Kennedy, casually of Camelot.
Ted Kennedy's first wife battled alcohol, infidelities, being a political wife to family dynasty.
Today at 72, living independently after struggling with a lifelong alcohol addiction, the mother of Kennedy's three kids, still invisible as the world mourns the passing of the senator.
Trying not to intrude, yet to honor the life of her ex-husband, Joan Kennedy attended a Thursday Mass in the big house at the Kennedy compound, according to her sister.
While her ex-husband fought a brain tumor at the big house, the Kennedy compound this summer, the once striking blonde who in the heyday of her beauty resembled Betty Draper in the TV show Madmen, she rented a nearby home on Squaw Island that once belonged to her own wealthy family.
She's a very private person, and she's been sort of victimized by the press, who never left her alone.
I'm sorry, it was not the press who victimized Joan Kennedy.
The press victimized her?
Yeah.
Well, Dawn just said to me, I can't believe that you can tell all these stories and we can't play parodies.
This is in state-controlled media.
I'm not making this up.
If state-controlled media starts running parodies, then I'll do parodies.
The state-controlled media, though, is they're reporting this.
I think it's outrageous.
Joan Kennedy victimized by the press, according to a family member.
Lawrence Lemur wrote a book in 1994, The Kennedy Women, the saga of an American family.
She blames her alcoholism on the Kennedys and says Chappaquiddick put her over the top.
And meanwhile, Nixon can't find anything.
I'm still stuck.
Nixon and Erling can't find.
They found a way to break in a Democrat National Committee headquarters.
They can't find dirt on Ted Kennedy.
She blames her alcoholism on the Kennedys.
She says Chapaquittick put her over the top.
But she was already a problem drinker, Lemur told ABCNews.com.
An entire generation, almost all of them, has had alcohol and drug problems.
Meaning the Kennedys.
For a few months, everyone had to put on this show, and then I just didn't care anymore, Joan Kennedy told Lemur.
I just saw no future.
That's when I truly became an alcoholic.
She didn't know that she would have to take on the whole family when she married Ted.
She's a very private person, and it was thrust into the limelight.
The Kennedys weren't the best of husbands.
Yeah, but she was victimized by the press.
The Kennedys weren't the best of husbands for crying out loud.
You got Jack out there who knows what Bobby was doing, Teddy, all over the place, and Nixon and Ehrlichman fumbling around, not able to dig up the dirt.
I'm sorry, I just find it hilarious.
As I find this hilarious, our buddy Barney Frank, yesterday on MSNBC, and Graham Mitchell, NBC News, asked him the question, we recently saw the way you handled protesters at a healthcare forum.
How would Ted Kennedy have handled protesters at a similar event?
I mean, do you believe the question?
Listen to the answer here.
I think he would have allowed them to voice their feelings, but not be intimidated by them.
And I think in those kind of situations, he would have been very calm.
Now, there were problems earlier in his life.
Let's be, you know, explicit.
This is a man, two of whose brothers were murdered by political opponents, extreme and crazy political opponents.
Political opponents?
Sirhan Sirhan.
Sirhan Sirhan.
By the way, do you know that Obama's buddy Bill Ayers dedicated his book, one of his books to Sirhan Sirhan?
Do you know this?
You had forgotten that, but I hadn't forgotten because I have a flawless memory.
And Lee Harvey Oswald was a freaking communist.
Political opponents.
Barney Frank tries to make it look like the Kennedys are murdered by Republicans with this company.
And there's a couple other people out there doing that.
Sirhan Sirhan.
Book written by Obama buddy Bill Ayers dedicated to the guy.
And of course, Lee Harvey Oswald was a communist.
Look at JFK.
That was either Castro getting even for the Bay of Pigs or it was a mob getting even for all the women that they had corrupted him with.
I don't know what it was, but it was either a mob or a communist.
It certainly wasn't a right-wing political opponent.
Bob in Port St. Lucie, Florida.
Port St. Lucie.
We got a call from Port St. Luc.
Bob in Port St. Lucie.
Hi, it's Bud Rush.
Hi, how are you?
Listen, I got a questionnaire.
I do support the Republican Party.
I got a questionnaire, special questionnaire for RNC members only.
Are you a member of the RNC?
Yes.
Okay.
Now, which part of the Obama-Pelosi-Reed agenda do you most forcefully oppose?
Now, let me just tell you what's not on the list.
Obamacare is not on the list.
Cap and tax, not on the list.
Illegal immigration, not there.
$787 billion stimulus.
Not there.
Bud, bud.
You know, I didn't notice the clock when I took your call.
I've got very few precious seconds left, and I don't want to have to be rude.
Can you hold on?
Sure.
Okay.
It's going to be the next hour, but I'll get to you right after the show open in the next hour if you can hang on.
You sound a little tired, too.
Are you okay?
I'm fine.
All right.
I'm just mad at that they're not mentioning these issues.
Hey, it's the Republicans.
Get used to it.
That shouldn't be a surprise.
Well, people are throwing excrement at me in the email.
You misunderstood Rebecca's call.
She had a great point, the high cost of insurance.
You just, don't be an idiot here.
I'm being flooded with this stuff.
So now I'm going to have to explain insurance companies when we come back.
So I got to talk to Bud, and I got to explain insurance companies.
I'm getting tired of repeating stuff, folks.
It's been 21 years.
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