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Sept. 29, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:01
September 29, 2009, Tuesday, Hour #2
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And we're back.
Great to have you here.
Rush Limbaugh, as always, smiling and booiant with optimism here on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network from the distinguished and prestigious Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
A thrill and a delight for you to be here.
I know the telephone number is 800-282-2882 and the email address lrushbo at EIBnet.com.
So I got I have my what?
Doesn't believe what?
Oh, oh, that I can't tell them that.
I mean, that would constitute one of the biggest betrayals.
I don't know if I could tell him that.
I got the personal seamstress coming by this afternoon, take some clothes in.
What was I doing?
What am I?
What are you talking about?
Oh, all right.
I told Snerdley.
See, we went to a wedding on Saturday.
Dawn got married, now on her honeymoon.
I went out there.
It was out in Wellington.
And we went to the reception at the Players Club.
And Snerdley just told me, he says, guys, you know, all these people came up to me after you left.
He says, you know, how much weight does he got to lose?
Is he going to keep losing weight?
Snerdley says, yeah, he's going to keep going until people think he's really sick.
That's his objective.
That's his goal.
And I said, they really said that.
And he said, yeah, I said, well, I got to tell you what happened yesterday.
I'm sitting there.
We're getting ready for Monday Night Football.
It's about, I guess, 7.25 or so.
And I get a text message from Katie.
She says, babe, I'm coming by to pick you up.
She's coming over to watch the game.
I'm coming by to pick you up.
You've got to go.
We've got to go down to the end of the street.
We've got to see the sunset.
We just have to see this.
It's the most beautiful sunset I've ever seen.
So I ran out, got in the car, drove down there, had the dog in the back of the car, got down there, got out, looked at sunset right there at the inlet.
And I said to her, I said, you know what?
Why don't you follow me back?
I'm going to jog back.
I need you to follow me back so you can open a gate and let me in.
She kind of looked at me like I'd gone insane, too.
She said, okay, okay.
So, bam, I jogged back.
It wasn't long.
I'm at maybe a fifth of a mile.
It wasn't long.
So I jogged back.
And Snerdley, I guess you just told Brian Bryan doesn't believe this.
You still don't believe the story?
I was wearing the shorts I wore yesterday.
I was wearing a pair of loudmouth golf shorts, yes.
And jogged back.
So, big deal.
I don't know.
I just got the urge.
It looked, it was inviting.
The street was empty except one lone bicyclist coming along and zoomed right past, and that was that.
And now back to the program.
Thanks again, staff.
Now back to the program.
U.S. income gap widens as the poor take a hit in a recession.
The recession has hit middle-income and poor families hardest, widening the economic gap between the richest and poorest Americans as rippling job layoffs ravaged household budgets.
The wealthiest 10% of Americans, those making more than $138,000 every year, earned 11.4 times the roughly $12,000 made by those living near or below the poverty line in 2008, according to newly released census figures.
That ratio was an increase from 11.2% in 2007, the previous high of 11.22 in 2003.
Poverty jumped sharply to 13.2%, an 11-year high.
Richard Freeman, an economist at Harvard, said, no one should be surprised at the increased disparity.
Unemployment hurts normal workers who don't have the golden parachutes the folks at the top have.
This guy is an idiot.
He's blooming it.
This guy is at Harvard.
He's an economist.
Unemployment hurts when the people who make investments to start companies and hire workers can't keep up with government regulations and taxes to keep people employed.
Small business people do not have golden parachutes, you doofus.
Small business people are hurting too.
The minimum wage is hurting the poor.
It has caused additional layoffs.
We had the number yesterday, 52%.
Young people, highest unemployment rate ever since 1948, when records were taken.
But I thought Obama was going to stop all this.
I thought he was going to take from the rich and give to the poor so that we will all be equally mediocre.
Shouldn't, by that theory, shouldn't the poor be better off?
I really am confused here.
So lowering the boat of the rich, you know, rising tide lifts all boats.
So lowering the tide so rich boats are sinking a little lower also lowers the dinghies that the poor are floating around in.
I mean, there's more in this article.
Analysts attributed the widening gap to the wave of layoffs and the economic downturn that have devastated household budgets.
They said that while the richest Americans may be seeing reductions in executive pay, those at the bottom of the income ladder are often unemployed and struggling to get by.
Are they really ratcheting up this class envy here?
The richest may be seeing reductions in executives.
Not every rich person is an executive for crying out loud.
And there have been a bunch of executives been laid off, and their pay is in the process of being capped right now by the pay car.
This is all about the fact that he's destroying the private sector.
And small businesses, every business is down.
Well, not every, but for the vast majority of business sectors, business is down.
They have to lay off workers to stay in business.
There's not an endless pot of gold in the bank that these small business people are hoarding, selfishly keeping it to themselves and not paying it to their quote-unquote workers.
And that's another thing.
I've been mentioning this since I started this show.
Workers is a communist word.
Workers is a social.
It's a Karl Marx word.
Workers of the World United.
Workers.
We don't have workers.
We have citizens.
We have employees.
We have associates.
Remember, when I worked at the Kansas City Royals, a team was opened by Ewing Kaufman, owned by Ewing Kaufman, who also owned Marion Labs.
He never called one person a worker or an employee.
Everybody was an associate from the custodial staff on up.
We have workers.
All this little leftist lingo trickling into our lexicon.
It's unclear, says the AP, whether income inequality will continue to worsen in major cities, said William Fry, a demographer at the Brookings Institution.
Many Americans are staying put for now in traditional cities to look for jobs and because of frozen lines of credit.
Wait, I thought Obama said that all this was over.
I thought we'd hit the brinker coming back from the brinker.
Whatever.
Fry said, during the years of the housing bubble, there was a middle-class movement from unaffordable metros with high income inequality.
Now that the bubble burst, more of the population may be headed back to the high inequality areas, stemming their middle-class losses.
This is hopelessly uninformed and naive.
But this guy is just a demographer, at least.
He's not teaching at Harvard.
The guy teaching at Harvard, unemployment hurts normal workers who do not have golden parachutes, the folks at the top have.
You mean to tell me, let's go back to the second paragraph.
The wealthiest 10% of Americans, those making more than $138,000 each year, you make $138,000 in this year in this country.
You're in the top 10% of wage earners.
Those people have golden parachutes?
Those are people at the top.
Oh, folks, I need some advice here.
I need some advice.
I received an official request yesterday to be a judge in the Miss America pageant.
It is January 24th through 31st next year.
It takes place in Las Vegas.
It is a week-long commitment.
I would be away from the golden EIB microphone for a week.
I think.
Maybe there's a way to do a show from 9 to noon out there, but they make it sound like it's full-fledged all day, every day, with meetings, meeting with the contestants, judging the swimsuit, evening gown, talent portions, and so forth, asking questions of the contestants.
Because you see, what you see on television is just the end of an intense week for the pageant contestants.
And I think they said there's seven other judges, a total of eight, or is it seven other judges?
I don't know the names of any others because I don't know who else has committed to it.
But I'm looking forward to the calendar January 24th.
You know, that's a big NFL playoff week that we're leading up to the Super Bowl.
The celebrity golf tournaments.
I haven't played any in a couple years, but I might this year.
But it's, well, the State of the Union shows.
Yeah, sometimes it's in that in that period of time.
Yeah, yeah, for, yeah, because it was in February this year since it was only immaculated in January 21st.
Yeah, so there'd probably be a State of the Union show in there.
And I can hear, no, Rush, come on, don't, don't, don't, don't, a week away?
You can't, we can't, country can't handle the week.
You can't, you can't.
I know, but there's still something that's intriguing about this from the standpoint that, you know, everybody thinks I'm this chauvinist sexist, so forth.
Here I am out there judging the Miss America pageant.
I don't know.
I gotta, I have to think about this.
You think I, well, of course, the people on the other side of the glass, whoa, we think you should go because why?
Why should I go?
Certainly wants to go.
You know, it's all expenses paid, which is no big deal to me.
But it's at the Hard Rot Hotel and Casino.
Is it the Hard Rot?
Is it Hard Rot HO?
H-R?
No, it's the Planet Hollywood.
Planet Hollywood Hotel and Casino.
All right.
Well, I just wanted to let you know, and I'm accepting feedback from any and all who care to offer it via the email.
Andy Williams, this is in the UK Telegraph.
Andy Williams, 81 years old.
Andy Williams has done a reverse Rush Limbaugh.
Andy Williams, the veteran pop singer, has accused Barack Obama of following Marxist theory and wanting the country to fail.
Now, that's God.
We got to say, Andy Williams, and he sang the song Born Free, which in the early days of this program was our animal rights update theme, with all the animal sounds in there and machine gun fire and bombs going off.
And the people that owned the rights to the lyrics of the song called us and said, well, you can't use the song that way.
They denied us permission.
We snuck it in there on our 20th anniversary show.
But Andy Williams, hey, it's fine with me.
I love what you're doing with it.
You know, he's got the Andy Williams Theater in Branson, Missouri, still very active.
He's over there doing TV shows on the BBC.
And he told the Radio Times that he thought Obama wanted to turn the U.S. into a socialist country.
Obama's following Marxist theory.
I don't like him at all.
I think he wants to create a socialist country.
The people he associates with are very left-wing.
One's registered as a communist.
Obama wants a country to fail.
Andy Williams, a reverse Rush Limbaugh, but nevertheless, on the same team.
All right, indoctrination of screw students continues.
All that coming up after the break.
Well, here's the first email response to my asking, my request for input as to whether or not I should judge the Miss America pageant next January.
Come on, Rush.
You're not even qualified for this.
You're not gay, and you're not irrelevant enough to be a judge in one of these things.
You either have to be gay or totally irrelevant to be a judge.
Others are saying it's a White House plot to keep me off the air for a week.
Others are saying this is so beneath you.
I can't believe it.
It's not even, I don't even think of you, the realm in which you live.
I do not even think of you as a pageant judge.
Why?
Why I can't believe this.
Okay, that's why I'm seeking feedback on this, folks.
And it is pouring in.
And the vast majority of it I read during the break, and I took a lot of time reading it.
And the emails are pouring.
The overwhelming sentiment is do it.
Just saying, okay, September this year, Asheville, North Carolina, at the Sand Hill Venable Elementary School PTO meeting.
Here's a group of skulls full of mush reciting a poem in honor of Obama at a PTO meeting.
Change has come.
Change has come.
Hope.
Uniting blacks and whites.
Hope.
Being both, Obama could not take side.
Hope.
Don't worry, Sandhope, but I will be your bridge.
In time, hope will be the bridge father.
Hope will last enough for you to make a difference.
Change has come.
Change has come.
Keep your eyes open.
Education is the key.
Education is the secret.
Education is the way.
Education is the path.
Can I make America better?
Can I make America better?
Can we make America better?
Yes, yes, we can.
Yes, yes, we can.
Another scripted song poem in praise of our dear supreme leader, Barack Hussein Obama.
Again, that's from September 2009, Asheville, North Carolina, Sandhill Venable Elementary School PTO meeting.
Here are New Jersey's kids singing the praises of the one in June in Burlington, New Jersey.
He said we all seven hands are making country stronger.
He said we all take care.
Make sure everyone gets a chance.
For Rockstar, he said, We'll black one for people in the sidewalk.
Yes!
For Rob Shayla!
At the same school, this is at the B. Bernice Young Elementary School, Burlington, New Jersey, June 2009, they sing another song to the tune of Battle Hymn of the Republic.
And I have to wonder, do they even know the lyrics to that song?
We are here.
Today is going to call me Donald Gears.
Hooray, Mr. President.
We're really proud of you.
And you can't for all the raised ones.
I guarantee you now, when parents see these pictures, I mean, this, this, a good thing this is getting out.
But folks, this is not even the half of it.
There is an album.
These are just a couple of hits from the entire album that's out there.
Kids Songs of the Revolution as a whole album out there.
And we've only heard a couple of hits being sung at these schools, but what else is going on that we have yet to learn of?
So you had kids here singing the songs.
And we meant to get to this yesterday and I didn't get to it.
Obama is among those making the case that American kids aren't spending enough time in school.
It wants to get rid of the summer vacation and have kids in school year-round.
Has anybody thought about we all know why he wants this done?
This is just more indoctrination time.
Plus, it's a way to get raises for the teachers, which is a big union supporter.
More raises.
I mean, I got a teacher around now.
Oh, we need more money.
Well, of course, that's the whole plan.
And more time to be indoctrinated into Obama-ism and so forth.
But has anybody thought about the unintended consequences of this?
No, no, no, seriously now.
Look at how much more it's going to cost the school lunch program to operate the schools to keep, and you're talking summertime in a lot of places.
I don't know anymore how many schools are aircraft.
Mine never were.
I know a lot of them are now, but mine never were.
But those that are, think of those utility bills.
Think of all the carbon footprint damage.
What about the whole concept of the family summer vacation?
Do you realize what's going to happen to places like Disney World and Disneyland and all these other theme parks?
The whole tourism bill, what's going to happen to the hotel business, the whole leisure time dollar business?
What's going to happen to it?
What's going to happen to mom and dad taking a 2.8 to the ballpark?
I've got to get a loan to do that now, but still, if you're in school all day, you got to get up early in the morning.
Have anybody really thought about this?
All right, to the phones we go.
This is Chris from Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
Welcome, sir.
It's an honor to have you on the program.
Hello.
Thanks for taking my call, Rush.
I just wanted to call and weigh in on Afghanistan and the troop increase issue.
You're talking about a country roughly the size of Texas.
Now, we've had 27,000 troops over there for the majority of the time.
We were waging an unconventional war against smallpox and Taliban targeting leaders.
Well, the Taliban has adapted to our tactics.
They have grown stronger, and they have a larger footprint in the country now.
We need more troops over there.
The first thing that needs to be done is we need to secure the borders.
We have an abundance of fighters continually funneling in from Pakistan into Afghanistan, causing the problems over there.
You've been there, I trust.
I've been there four times.
Yes, sir.
You're U.S. military.
You've served there four times.
Yes, sir.
So, you know, the idea of not giving the commanders what they're requesting over there is seems to me like it's politically driven.
And if we're going to make a decisive decision to go and win this war, then we need to support the commanders.
Well, of course it's politically driven because Obama doesn't want to anger his fringe lunatic base who are anti-military, anti-war, anti-victory.
He needs them supporting his health care agenda and so forth.
You understand the concept of victory is not – in fact, did you hear Obama say today that this is not an American war?
This is a NATO war.
Did you hear him say that?
It is, but who's been taking the lead the entire time?
It's been a U.S.
It's been U.S. funded.
It is our responsibility.
We are over there for one reason and one reason only, to secure that country so that Taliban insurgents cannot set up a stronghold in that country, have free reign to launch attacks to the rest of the world.
Chris here is exactly right.
Stateless nations are exactly the kind of places that the, as Obama would say, the Taliban and al-Qaeda target.
That's why they went to Afghanistan in the first place.
It was a stateless place.
They could take it over.
The Taliban did.
That's why Somalia was attractive to them.
I got a note.
This is funny.
I got a note from my good friend Andy McCarthy, who is at National Review Online.
He said, Rush, I got to respectfully disagree with you here.
I think it's great Obama saying this is not America's war.
That's the best chance we have of winning it.
Stop and think about this.
Now, Andy, you know, we've had him on the program.
Andy was in the prosecutorial team that put the blind sheikh, Omar Abdel-Rahman, behind bars.
He has spent his life studying these people.
Rush, I got to disagree with you.
With Obama saying it's not America's war, it's the first chance we might have, really have here to win it.
Since America can't be victorious, but NATO can.
All these international, this is Andy's point, all these international institutions, global institutions, yeah, let them win.
That's great.
Bad when America does it.
Making a little point.
Paul in Blue Island, Illinois, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi.
Rush, how you doing?
Fine.
Listen, I just want to challenge your assertion on, you know, politicians, I hear you say once in a while how smart and educated and informed the American people are.
I really don't think they are.
I think that some people are just not wired to understand politics.
Obviously, 60-something million wouldn't have voted for Obama.
Well, you know, this comes up periodically and has over the course of my 21 star-studded years here.
And the cycle is, Rush, you always say you're going to put your faith in the American people to do the right thing at the end of the day.
Well, that's a hard thing to do.
I know, I know, because people call Russia, most American people are not.
They're stupid.
They're just ignorant.
They're stupid.
Well, listen, I'm a political junkie.
I have conversations with people all the time.
The Democrats and liberals I have conversations with seem to repeat something they heard somebody say or the talking points or they see a caption on the bottom of a picture and then that's their opinion.
Well, I know, but you have to understand liberalism is not an intellectual pursuit.
It's an emotional pursuit.
Oh, I understand that.
I understand that.
Conservatism is an intellectual pursuit, but look at, I have to tell you, I'm heartened by all of the polling data that shows Obama losing on every important agenda item he's trying to push.
Right.
I understand not everybody is a junkie.
It's very frustrating to have a conversations that I have with liberals, they always end up when you throw facts and figures in their face, they always end up storming out of the room.
I'm constantly being people walking out on me.
Well, I know.
But you can't dispute the facts.
It's text coming to remove a wish.
I know.
I know.
Facts get in the way.
They live in an emotional cocoon that they've constructed for a safe worldview.
Plus, you couple it with the fact that they think they are the smartest people in the room.
All they are is arrogant and condescending.
Right.
It is frustrating.
I don't, I mean, I have some liberal friends I love to, you know, tease and provoke and toy with, but I don't really ever expect to persuade a bunch of them.
There aren't, they're not a majority of the country.
You think they are because of the election returns, but they're not.
They're not a majority of the country, not yet.
If they were, now listen to me on this Paul, I'm being dead serious.
If liberalism was a majority of the country, Obama wouldn't have to start sounding like a moderate.
He wouldn't have to lie about what his agenda item is.
Liberals would not have to call themselves progressives or moderates or whatever.
They could be openly honest about what they're going to do.
And they can't afford to do it.
Now, one thing that's happening now is that the congressional libs, the Barney Franks and the Pelosis, are telling us.
And people don't want it.
They don't like it.
And that's why, look at, I'm always going to have faith in a majority of the American people.
I have to because I'm speaking to them.
And if I thought I was just flapping my gums here for no reason, you know, then I would, like I said yesterday, I'd hang it up.
I let whoever wants to take over the show take over, and I'd set out on spending all my money and making sure my last check was to the IRS and it bounced.
But I'm not doing that.
It's too much to fight for to hold on to.
It's under assault, like it never has been internally.
And to me, it just revs and ramps me up even further.
Look at how off the wall they're getting.
Here's Patrick Kennedy.
This is last Saturday, audio summary number four in Providence, Rhode Island.
He spoke about the need for health care reform at the AARP and the State Nurses Association's perspectives on healthcare reform.
I read about this.
I think there were 75 people in the audience.
Here's what he said.
First of two bites here.
The protest that occurred a couple weeks ago in the mall is that they broadered on really violent rhetoric.
You know, it was bury Obamacare with Kennedy and that kind of ugly, ugly, violent rhetoric.
And that doesn't serve our country.
We've had, my family's seen it up close too much with assassinations and violence in political life.
Now, this, I mean, even for this dud, this is a bit beneath the pale.
Invoking the Kennedy assassinations and linking them to opponents of socialized health care reform, bury Obamacare with Kennedy.
That's uncivil.
I'm sorry, Kennedy had died.
Was going to be buried.
It was his signature issue.
It's a bad plan.
It's a bad policy.
See, they will tell us what we're doing that's working.
I know it was just one sign.
One sign out of millions, but they'll still tell us what's working.
This is my whole point.
We all, you know, too many people look, oh, no, oh, no, look at that sign.
It's destroying our cause.
It's destroying.
They're focusing on that.
They're focusing on it for a reason.
It scares them.
It's effective.
The sign was effective.
Well, how many words is it?
One, two, four words.
And this guy's doing a town hall meeting about it.
Four words.
Brevity is the soul of wit.
The fewer number of words required to make a point, the more powerful the point.
He wasn't through.
He said the debate here is dangerous to the fabric of our country.
So no debate.
The debate is dangerous.
The debate is dangerous to the fabric.
We're supposed to just shut up, sit down, get out of the way, so these Marxists can have their way with no opposition and do whatever they want to do.
And it doesn't work that way, Congressman Kennedy.
It's a terrible thing when people think that in order to get their point across, they have to go to the edge of violent rhetoric and attack people personally and attack their motivations without attacking just the issue.
They go and stoop to the level of the coarse kind of vitriolic rhetoric that we've seen this debate turn up.
It's very, I think, dangerous to the fabric of our country.
That's all we need to hear.
He's just described his own side.
Go to the edge of violent rhetoric, attack people personally, attack their motivations without attacking just the issue.
We are attacking the issue.
We're not attacking any of you people personally.
That's what you do.
Simple case of projection.
I got to run.
Quick timeout.
We'll be back.
Stay with us.
All right, listen to this email regarding my invitation to judge the Miss America pageant.
Any second now, you will be announcing that you're giving up cigars, football, and golf, replacing it with tofu, sunsets, and yoga.
I'm so sad to be losing the one last real man in the public arena.
I'm going to start calling you Alan Alda.
There's not a doubt you have fallen victim to chickification, and I am so depressed about it.
Just because I announced I had an invitation to Miss America pageant.
Oh, take it back, that I went out looking at a sunset and jogged home a fifth of a mile.
I knew, snurdly, you were right.
This is a betrayal rush.
You shouldn't say this because people are not going to think this is not something you're doing.
They're going to think you're being ordered to do this, that you're henpecked or whatever, that this is not a betrayal, folks.
It was a whim.
Tina in Bethan Rouge, Louisiana.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Hello.
Oh, Ditto's Rush.
It's so nice to talk to you again.
Thank you.
I just wanted to say that I think it is absolutely pathetically comical that if we're being made fun of by the French, they're laughing at us.
My God.
Hang on.
It's a new low.
It is, but I think there's something else really going on.
I did laugh about this myself.
That it's, you know, when the French national anthem is surrender and the French president Is going public with what a naive, inept little kid we have as a president.
I think what's really going on here is the French know full well what the world becomes if we stand down.
I don't think the French are laughing at us.
I think the French, the French, and the British are scared of Obama, and if anything, they're laughing at him, but it's not really so much laughters of comedy or laughter of comedy.
It's nervous.
Nervous laughter.
Exactly.
That's what I was just thinking.
Nervous laughter.
The rest of the free world knows they're sunk if we check out.
I guarantee you.
Scared to death.
The rest, the European socialists, they are free to dabble in all of the stupid, silly socialism they dabble in, ruining their own economies.
Because if somebody ever gets too belligerent with them militarily, like in Bosnia, somewhere in their neighborhood, it's always going to be us that shows up.
But now, after they heard Obama's UN speech, then they're not going to have the freedom to go out and be a bunch of grown-up children and adolescents practicing their own academic theories as they implement them in the lives of their own citizens.
Now they're going to have to shape up and be serious about things, whereas they haven't had to be because we've always been there to save the day.
But they're not.
You can't blame them.
No, I know.
You can't.
I'm scared.
We all are scared.
I mean, this cause doesn't do anything.
Yes, he does.
He does.
She had a disconnect there.
She hung up or something happened.
But he's not doing anything.
He's doing, folks.
This guy's gobbling up things faster than anybody's ever remembered.
David Broder, I didn't get to this yesterday.
David Broder in the Washington Post on Sunday had a column.
He read a piece.
I'll have to find this.
He read a piece that fascinated him.
Two conservatives had written about the unprecedented way that Obama and his progressives have this giant jaws-like agenda, just trying to gobble up everything as fast as they can.
And Broder agreed with these two conservative authors who came to the conclusion that the only thing standing in Obama's way is this pesky little thing called the Constitution.
And that's true.
And believe me, when I tell you that Obama looks at the Constitution as an obstacle and a problem, don't doubt me.
You know, a whole theory that the Bill of Rights is a negative set of rights.
The Bill of Rights tells the government what it cannot do to us.
Obama doesn't like that.
He wants a Constitution that spells out what the government can do to us or for us, as he would say.
Right now, it's the Constitution that's standing in his way, to the extent that he's willing to respect it.
But all these czars that he has are, if not unconstitutional, certainly extra-constitutional.
Be right back.
Okay, when we get back in the next hour, a series of soundbites confirming our first caller today saying that I, in large part, this is not an ego thing.
It's just confirming what the caller said, set the media agenda.
This is people reacting to my reaction to Bill Clinton saying the evil vast right-wing conspiracy was back.
And remember, the biggest success we had is getting his semen.
My buddies and I, in a vast right-wing conspiracy, got his semen and put it on that blue dress of Lewinsky.
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