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Jan. 4, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:48
January 4, 2010, Monday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Happy New Year, America.
January 4th, 2010.
This was supposed to be Rush's first day back after his Christmas break.
But as uh pretty much the whole world knows, he wound up spending a couple of days in hospital in Honolulu.
Don't worry, he's fine.
Uh everything's working.
He's past inspection, and America's anchor man will be back behind the golden EIB microphone live on Wednesday.
Uh until then, this is your undocumented Anchorman, Mark Stein sitting in and happy to be here.
I flew in this morning in the crotch of a Yemeni jihadist, just landed at Newark.
Um still blinking and adjusting to the daylight, but I am glad to be here.
Now I know many, many, many of you want to send your good wishes to Rush, but we're gonna stick with the uh the ditto system instituted by uh Walter Williams last week because the system worked, as Janet in Competano would say, the system worked.
Uh so we'll take your dittoes as best wishes to rush and your megaditos as best wishes plus a bouquet of flowers and a box of uh chocolates.
Uh because um that way you can all uh get your best wishes in, uh, but it won't cut into peripheral matters uh such as uh the United States government uh uh plunge of this country into ongoing sclerosis uh and the collapse of global civilization, which we want to have time to get to in the last few minutes of the program.
By the way, the the best comment, I thought the best comment of all the comments out there on the internet uh about about Russia's uh little health blip last week, when he came out of hospital on I think it was Saturday he came out of hospital.
Uh he came out of uh hospital, Kathy Shadel, who is a great Canadian uh blogger, she posted in the in the little uh bar at the top of the page that says the name of the website.
Uh she just posted the two-word expression when Rush came out of hospital, ditto's God.
Absolutely ditto, mega ditto's God.
Um lots of uh lots of ill health around.
Senator John Kerry is going in for hip replacement surgery.
Uh hey, wait a minute, isn't that what the uh the Democrats uh did?
In in 2004, they ran John Kerry for president, and then they thought, boy, he needs a hip replacement, so they got Barack Obama.
But anyway, he's going in, he's apparently gone in for a uh another one.
Rush has said, um the quote, uh the treatment I received here was the best that the world has to offer, Limbaugh said.
Based on what happened here to me, I don't think there's one thing wrong with the American health care system.
It's working just fine, just dandy, unquote.
Limbaugh said that despite his celebrity, he received the same treatment as anyone else who would have called 911 and been taken to the hospital in his condition.
Quote, I got no special treatment, he said, adding that the care he received was nonetheless confidence inspiring.
I just feel very grateful and thankful to be an American and have this happen to be, he said.
And and people have been critical of Rush for the uh for this point.
They've said that uh they uh he doesn't understand what it's like to be uh regular guy and just call 911 and go to hospital and and all the rest of it.
Uh and the and then uh some other people, mean-spirited types, one might say, uh, suggested that what a pity it wasn't uh the case that Obamacare uh was already in place and then they might find a reason to deny treatment to him.
And that seems like a cute joke if you just want to get at Rush.
But in fact it gets to the heart of what is the problem of government healthcare systems, which is that bureaucrats can deny you treatment on the basis of uh all kinds of uh uh uh uh business uh that is unrelated essentially uh to your health needs.
And then there are the systemic things.
I only just want to mention this uh briefly.
Uh Rush, as you know, he had an angiogram.
He he had chest pains and he went into hospital.
And I don't want to I don't want to get into details of Rush's condition and all the all the rest of it, because it's one of the embarrassing things when you're famous and you go to hospital, is that the world expects uh to have the right to know every little bit of you that's been prodded and poked and examined and to have uh live pictures uh sc screened from the examining room.
And so I don't want to get into any of the details.
But Rush, as I understand it, had an angiogram.
Now, if you have an angiogram in Windsor, Ontario, and they determine that you need an angioplasty, they then drive you to Detroit, Michigan for that.
If you are in Windsor, Ontario, which is a big city, they m they make a lot of the so-called American automobiles that appear under the uh the the GM banner and the Ford banner and all the rest of it.
They're just across the the river from Detroit.
You require heart treatment in that city, they ship you to Detroit.
And that sounds great.
You ha you they you you you this this lady came up.
Do you remember that lady who was on the air HR when I was here a few weeks ago, the big liberal lady who complained that Rush's plane had been buzzing her in her backyard.
I don't know what that was about.
She was sunbathing topless and Rush's uh Rush's jet was flying back and forth over her backyard or something.
I don't know what she was.
But at one point she said uh she was talking about how she was all in favor of socialized health care.
And I pointed out that if you required an angioplasty in Windsor, Ontario, they had to ship you to Detroit, Michigan.
And she said her response was that, well, maybe it's just a cultural thing.
You know, it's like uh a clitorectomy in in the Sudan.
It's just uh the the that's a great place, the Sudan, it's a great place to get a clitorectomy, but probably not an angioplasty, and that these c these are cultural variations we have to take into account.
That the Canadians, they just have a cultural revulsion against angioplasties, so if you need one, it's understandable that you'd have to go uh to Detroit, Michigan, because it's not part of Ontario's culture to give you an angioplasty.
But there's all kinds of complications.
If if you did what Rush did the other day, uh, and you just call 911, they determine you uh you've got heart problems.
Uh a guy called, he was a big shot union guy, uh, with the auto workers in Windsor, Ontario.
He was 49 years old.
He had a heart attack, they put him in the hospital in Windsor to take him to Detroit, Michigan, to Henry Ford Hospital, and as he's crossing the border, the ambulance with its lights flashing is pulled over for secondary screening.
They um the the ambulance lights are flashing, and the uh homeland security guys, ever vigilant, uh pull in the ambulance driver to make him go into the shed and produce some paperwork, and they open up the doors of the hospital, of the ambulance, and require uh this big union guy, Rick Laporte, to identify himself.
He's lying there having a heart attack.
It i when you have heart problems, by the way, the absolute th most important thing is time, time, time.
The time you get to the hospital, because otherwise, every minute that's wasted, your heart muscle deteriorates, damages, dies.
Uh this guy's heart had already stopped twice.
He'd been brought back from the dead twice.
But Homeland Security pull this ambulance over for secondary screening and demand as he's lying there under oxygen masks that he produces some form of identity.
Uh so there are worse places to have chest pains than Honolulu, Hawaii.
And if you're in the situation that this big auto worker guy, Rick Laporte was, and you find yourself you're you you have a heart attack, and uh uh the the system allows for the intersection of an incompetent uh uh a a uh a a bureaucratic and uh Canadian healthcare system meets an incompetent American homeland security system, you gonna die.
So this guy, this guy, the ambulance is pulled, because we all know, yeah, uh an ambulance with a police escort.
That fits the terrorist profile.
A Yemeni A Yemeni with a barely detectable bulge in his underwear, that's nothing to worry about.
But an ambulance with a police escort, we should certainly pull them over for secondary screening.
So things could have gone a lot worse when you have chest pains, things things could have gone uh things could have gone a lot uh worse for for Rush.
But he'll be he'll be here on Wednesday.
He's he's uh he's resting up, he's raring a go, uh, and I'm sure he regrets as uh much as you do that he's not here to kick off another year of live shows from the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, and you've got to have a little bit of substitute host level excellence in broadcasting for a couple more days.
But he is fit, he is fine, he is ready to go.
Uh there's lots of things that have been happening over the weekend that we're going to talk about.
1-800-282-2882.
There's kind of good news and bad news.
The good news is that the TSA has actually started uh profiling.
They're not calling it profiling, obviously.
But they're subjecting uh persons from fourteen countries of interest uh to secondary screening now.
They're not just doing it to ambulances with patients having half heart attacks uh coming in from Ontario anymore.
They're also doing it with uh lively young men who have connections with Yemen uh with Saudi Arabia, with Pakistan and various other countries.
Fourteen nations.
Actually, quite an interesting list of fourteen nations.
We'll get into that in a bit.
That's the good news.
The bad news is this lockdown at Newark that they had last night.
I don't know whether you saw this, but uh basically, you know that little bit, the sec there's the secure air area.
As you leave a plane, you come through the secure area, there's a door that says you're leaving the secure area, you can't get back into this now, and then you go pick up your bag and and leave the airport.
This time round, a guy went up the ramp through the exit from the security area, uh uh secure area, and got into the secure area.
Now they've they've been looking for this guy ever since this happened yesterday evening.
So they've been looking for him now for getting on for 18 hours.
And they still don't know who he is or where he is.
He got through there, they got him on the video tape, they've no idea where he went or what he did.
But the but they responded as the Transport Security Administration always does.
They locked down the airport, they pulled thousands of people off planes, they made them go through screen screening again.
They did that thing that that uh the Department of Homeland Security does so well.
They herded thousands of people who've got nothing to do with terrorism into a room and they treated them like garbage.
So you had the system the system worked because we made newborn mothers sit in a room where they had no uh access to water or food for their babies.
The babies are getting far worse treatment than all these people who complain about Rush getting special treatment in uh hospital.
Why don't you worry about the poor little baby who gets yanked off the plane at Newark Airport because the Transport Security Administration screws up.
They subjected thousands and thousands of people to a nightmare for no reason.
And um and and this is something that the TSA uh just can't get beyond.
Just can't get beyond.
These bone-crushingly stupid uh uh uh uh brain-dead uh lockdown procedures it inflicts on thousands and thousands of innocent people.
And too many of you, by the way, too many of you uh put up with it.
You seem to think, well, if they're treating me lousily, oh, they must be treating the Yemity uh jihadist lousily.
No, it doesn't work like that.
Because every minute they're screwing you around is a minute that they're not devoting to the guy with the fully loaded underpants uh on uh getting on the plane.
Uh this idea that by oh, you know, they treat millions of people, it's so fair, it's the American way.
We treat millions of people equally lousily.
No, no, no.
You no system that does what it did at Newark Airport last night.
Uh and by the way, it's called Liberty International.
That's a joke name for a start.
Liberty International.
You have no liberty.
A government, a a government bureaucrat determines by law that you have to stay in a room for hours on end.
You can't use the bathroom, you can't get any food, you can't get any uh milk for your baby, you can't do anything.
Where's the liberty in that?
There's a joke name, Liberty International, Liberty and it's an affront to Liberty, the name of that airport.
Uh we'll get into that.
1-800-282-2882, Mark Stein in for a resting rush on the EIB network.
Rush will be back here live on Wednesday.
Mark Stein Inforush.
Don't forget, if you go to Rush Limbaugh.com, you can see uh the video of Rush's press conference when he got out of the uh uh what's it called?
The Queen's Hospital in Honolulu.
That's That's what it's uh that's what it's called.
God, it's like it's good.
They've even got for some reason they've got Canadian hospital names in Hawaii.
I don't know why that even why that is, but it's the Queen's Hospital, I take it.
No, I know.
I d I know it's that Hawaiian queen, the one who uh the the the one who was the the big shot queen before the uh Americans took it over.
Queen uh what was her name?
Queen Rana Valona.
No, hang on, that's the uh that's the Queen of Madagascar who was the insane uh sex fiend.
Uh I can't remember the name, whichever whichever Hawaiian queen it is.
But anyway, the Queen's Hospital in Honolulu, if you go to Rush Limbaugh.com, you can see the uh press conference uh on video uh of Rush as he left uh hospital, and you can also read his message to listeners of the Rush Limbaugh Show, and Rush himself will be back here on uh Wednesday.
Uh I saw this story, by the way.
I love this.
A this is from Rome, Reuters.
A uh a Sicilian man stole candy and a packet of chewing gum so he could get arrested and spend New Year's Eve in a jail cell rather than be with his wife and relatives.
The thirty-five-year-old Sicilian first showed up at a police station on Thursday asking to be arrested because he preferred spending the night in prison rather than with his family.
But he was rebuffed because he had not committed a crime.
The man immediately went to a tobacco shop next door where he threatened the owner with a box cutter as he grabbed some candy and a packet of gum.
He then waited until police arrived to arrest him for robbery.
I was I was talking about this with Mr. Snerdley the other day.
I was saying that if you these European Christmases, where you get Christmas Day off, Boxing Day off, Christmas bank holiday Tuesday off, New Year's Eve off, New Year's Day off, the day after Hogmanay off, all the it's like today.
Today is what?
January the fourth?
This is a public holiday in Scotland.
These three week Christmases they have over there, and I said the last time I'd spent a Christmas in Britain, it was the nearest I hoped ever to ever get to experiencing my own s uh personal hostage crisis.
It's like seasonal Stockholm syndrome when you're stuck there uh in this uh uh Christmas hell hold up with your relatives for weeks on end.
So I'm very sympathetic.
And s and Snerdley didn't like the sound of it either when you put it like that.
So I'm very sympathetic uh to uh this uh poor old Sicilian fellow who didn't want to spend New Year with his family, so committed a crime to get himself thrown in jail.
Uh we're talking about these these new health uh these new uh security proposals and uh that they've just introduced at uh profiling people from uh different countries.
This is absolutely critical.
We have s wasted eight years profiling things, profiling things instead of profiling people.
Uh to the absurdity was a related last week, I get my snow globe that I buy in New Zealand confiscated because you can't fly with snow globes, and now you're not gonna be able to fly with underwear.
We had all that stuff since the panty bomber came along.
Uh they're gonna have to check you to see whether your underwear's been modified.
And actually, given the types of underwear some people uh wear these days, who can tell whether it's been modified?
There's all kinds of pouches and openings and things that people have in in their underwear these days just for personal ease.
Who knows what it's about?
Uh and finally the TSA has uh has wised up and has decreed that now there's th they accept that uh uh somebody flying in with a a snow globe from New Zealand may not necessarily be as critical to homeland security as, say, a guy from Sudan who mysteriously takes frequent trips to Yemen.
Uh they've they've finally begun to wise up.
Well, we're still not quite there yet.
Uh I was uh I there's a story, I think it's in the Toronto Star today, in which an Israeli security guy explains what's doing what we're doing wrong in North America.
We do everything but look at the people.
He says he says the most important thing they do at security at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel is look people in the eye.
Look people in the eye.
And if you notice when you're standing in these stupid lines at Newark or anywhere else, that's the one thing they don't do.
I was uh I flew down uh from Vermont uh to do the show uh today.
And at the airport in Vermont, as you enter, you hand over your ID, and I hand it over my driver's license, and the guy gets out this little thing.
It makes him look Like a sort of jeweler looking to see whether it's a real diamond or whatever there.
He's looking at he's he's examining my driver's license to see, I suppose, whether it's an authentic New Hampshire driver's license.
That's a complete waste of time.
Who what terrorists struck because he faked a driver's license?
What terrorist ever struck uh for that?
The guys uh the guys who boarded the planes on 9-11 had genuine American paperwork.
That's the disgrace.
They didn't have faked Virginia driver's licenses.
They they boarded the plane with real Virginia's driver's licenses.
The shoe bomber had a real passport.
This isn't anything even post-9-11.
Ahmed Rassam uh at the Washington State border got into this country with a real Canadian passport.
But we have this stupid thing now.
The guy's looking at my driver's license to see if it's a genuine New Hampshire driver's license.
And in the course of doing all that, he doesn't once look me in the eye and make a human judgment about who I am.
That's the problem.
Great to be with you.
Don't forget Rush is back live Wednesday on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Let's go to David in Hopkinton, Massachusetts.
David, you're live on the Rush Limbo Show.
Great to have you with us.
Hey Mark, how are you?
Thanks for having me.
I'm I'm doing good.
Where which part of Massachusetts is Hopkinton now?
Hopkinton is the uh it's 26 miles west of Boston, start of the Boston Marathon.
Oh, right, okay.
That's uh that's that's that's good to know.
So you're in a far south from you.
Yeah, you're near Logan Airport.
Uh twenty-six miles west.
And uh and uh what's it like when you when you try to fly in in today's American after after 911, my name, which is a uh kind of a common Middle Eastern name, uh showed up on the uh on the watch list, one of five hundred and fifty thousand or so, I guess is the number on there now.
Right.
And uh so at first, you know, when you first start going through all the post-9 eleven issues of greater security, it's not that big of a deal.
You know, you figure it's okay, and you know, basically what they said at the at the counter was that there were two known terrorists with the with the same name or very similar name to my common Middle Eastern name.
Now this is your surname.
That's correct, yeah.
I was born in I was born in Massachusetts, I've never lived outside of Massachusetts.
Right.
Both of my parents were born here.
My grandparents came over from Lebanon about a hundred and twenty years ago.
That's my connection to the Middle East.
Right, right.
And which is which is not uncommon in New England.
Uh uh I mean, at one uh the last Senate race in New Hampshire, for example, pitted uh two Lebanese immigrants against uh uh the people of Lebanese descent against each other, John Sununu versus uh Jean Shaheen.
That's uh they're they're both uh uh Lebanese uh surnames, and uh that's that's not uncommon in in the United States.
Uh so after so I can't go to like Providence Airport or Manchester Logan.
I can't print like a boarding pass ahead of time.
I have to go through whether I'm I've got check on bags or not.
I have to go through security or excuse me, go through a line and check in, and they have to check my ID, they get a supervisor over, clear my name through some sort of a space system.
Just let me understand this.
You've been going through a supervisor, basically, for uh whatever it is now, eight, eight, eight and a half years.
Correct.
Correct.
So I talked to them, they said, listen, just talk to you know, contact TSA.
There's a system you can go through to get your name off the list.
You should not be on the list any longer.
And did the system work, as Janet and Competon would say?
Well, here's the thing.
So I I contacted Homeland Security, uh and they said, uh well, there's a form, uh a redress form.
It's called the TRIP program, T R. I P. It's a redress program that they have.
You fill out this form, they ask you a series of questions, and then they take that application and they'll they'll review it.
So months and months later, I followed up with a phone call and they said, Well, the problem is this.
You said that you felt that you were being discriminated against or that you were being profiled, which simple I I am.
I mean, that's the thing.
They're using my name only.
You know, uh uh and so they take my name.
It's similar to some Middle Eastern names that may or may not be on an actual uh terror list, and because that's the only reason why.
So what they've done is they said, okay, well, uh he can't just fly without being checked either, you know, tighter security, whatever it's going to be.
So when I uh uh so I go through the process of the redress, and six months later I called them, they said, Because you said you're being uh um discriminated against, you're being investigated by six six federal agencies.
I said, What six federal agencies?
They said we can't tell you.
I said, So I put in the the request for redress.
You're investigating me because of the answers they provide you, which were certainly uh just simply that I I feel like I'm being discriminated because of my name.
And uh so that triggered an investigation by six federal agencies because you can't tell me who it is.
Well, David, you may you may mock, but I feel safer already.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, most countries would just have one government agency investigating you.
But in this country, we've got six investigating you.
We go the extra mile.
Right.
So now I I got a letter just about a month ago from Homeland Security.
I've got it here saying basically give you a redress control number.
Right.
Take a redress control number.
Right.
So now when I'm not sure, that's longer than the check-in line.
And that's supposed to make it simpler for me.
So my point is this.
Here we've got a half a million people like me that are on this list.
You know, and I joke about it with all my friends.
They all give me a hard time, and it's funny.
But the point is, you know, here's the federal government.
They've got six agencies in investigating a guy I've lived in the state my entire time.
I use I've used the same American Express card for twenty-five years to book a flight.
Right.
If I'm traveling with my kids to Disney, I can't I can't, you know, do anything but go through the long line of people like everybody else, even if I've got bags or not, you know.
Right, right.
But if you're traveling in from Yemen, you can get on a plane without a problem.
Yeah, yeah.
But I can't so they're gonna spend all these resources investigating and tracking people like me.
Well, you know what's impressive about this, David, is that you've been complaining about this basically since the fall of two thousand and one?
Uh I started complaining about it about uh about two and a half or three years ago.
Three years.
Okay, it's time, you know.
You put you kinda yeah, you you put up with it for like the first five or six years.
Right.
Right.
So they've been they've you've now been trying to get because you're not a terrorist.
I I try not to be.
You you you you're you were born in Massachusetts.
Right.
Uh you have a common surname.
Yep.
Uh you you have a clear track record, you don't have any suspicious stamps from Yemen in your passport or anything like that.
No.
And you have been unable to get off this terrorist watch list for three years.
Correct.
Right.
That's great, isn't it?
So the Department of Homeland Security and the six guys, the six agencies who are investigating you.
Right.
And if any of the guys investigating you are out there, I'd love I'd love you to call in 1800-282-2882, because I'd just love to know when you think this investigation will be complete.
Like uh will David be like seventy-eight, eighty-seven, a hundred and twelve, and you'll you'll decide that, well, he isn't a terrorist after all, and you can get him off the watch list next.
That's the problem right there.
Six federal bureaucracies can't get you off the stupid list after three years.
That is that is an amazing story, David.
Do you do you fly less than you used to?
Uh I don't fly that often.
I maybe half a dozen, ten times a year.
You know, not that much.
So, you know, uh but the thing is again, it's it's always traveling out of the same airports.
Yeah.
You know, it it's mostly domestic stuff.
Very rarely do I go anywhere out of the country at all.
So it's just simple.
Well, that's that's your problem, right?
That's your problem right there.
If you were to fly to uh if you were to make, say, six trips a year to Yemen, you'd you'd just breeze through security.
I that's that's would that would be my recommendation.
That would be probably the quickest way of clearing your name uh would be to would may be to make more trips to Yemen and Somalia.
David, that is an astonishing story.
Uh and it testifies actually, I think, to the sclerosis uh that is infected uh this uh this this bureaucracy, that it cannot.
It's one thing to wind up on these lists by accident.
But you know, the fact that they can't get you off it after three years, is it we need a like a life lock type thing.
We need like watchlock or something that would get you off that will will fix your problems if you happen to wind up on one of these uh terrorist watch lists.
Well you would do anything for me.
Well well I wish I had some look, I'm an undo I'm an undocumented alien myself.
It's all it's all I can do.
I mean, I'm on the express lane because I when I fly in, I I I travel in Yemeni underwear, so obviously I'm fast tracked through security.
Right.
Other other than uh other than uh giving you the name of uh some guy in Yemen and getting you to and getting you to crouch in his pouch for the whole of the flight.
I really can't I'm I'm afraid I uh I don't I'll I'll try.
I'll mention I'll mention it to I'll I'll I'll raise it with people in the administration, but oddly enough they're not taking my calls.
Uh thank you very much for your thank you very much for your call, David.
That is a horrifying story.
And you know, um HR was was telling me that his four-year-old kid wa uh uh uh was uh got on the wound up on the terrorist uh watch list.
Which is good, you know, because I think the the the real trick here is to identify individuals and uh and get them uh before they're radicalized by being part of jihadist networks.
So I think uh I think profiling these four-year-olds uh is uh is an excellent start.
But uh every time so every time H.R. went to the airport with with his four-year-old, uh they would uh they would they would call out the guy's name.
There would be like a big sort of panic at the airport, and then they'd uh all the all the important people from the airline would s would circ circle around them and say, which one of you can we can we name your Yeah, they'd go, which one of you is Jesse?
Because I don't want to get him back on the watch list.
Because they might have said, hey, this guy, we uh we had him uh he was under surveillance by six federal agency, but he slipped out of sight, so we uh I don't want to get him back on the watch list.
But so they'd say, which one of you is Jesse?
And then they'd all uh circle around and they'd uh and they'd the uh uh HR would say, well, he's the four-year-old, and then they would require him to go through secondary screening and to sign the forms uh and to do the full background check.
And of course, you know makes a uh makes a yeah.
Exact exactly.
I mean, there's a guy you can pretty much rely that his underwear will be loaded at that uh at that age.
Oh no, that's unfair.
He's a four-year-old.
He should be.
But if he'd like been the two-year-old, if they'd had him on the two-year-old he's got a how many did had Jesse been made a lot of trips back to Yemen?
I don't know.
It's uh Yeah, no, no credit history, and he appeared nervous when questioned.
That's so uh but HR, I don't know what HR did, but he pulled some strings and he uh and he and he got uh and he got the four-year-old off the uh off the terror watch list by the time he was twenty-eight or whatever.
So the system worked.
The system worked, as Janet and Competano would say.
Uh this is crazy.
This is we have got we have got thousands and thousands and thousands of people like this on lists, on stupid lists that they can't get off.
Uh and in the meantime, uh people who have huge great long track records, uh like the Pantybomber, uh they can't stop him.
If they can't stop the panty bomber, they this guy, this pathetic guy, John Brennan, did you see him, the guy who was on Meet the Press?
Uh he said there was no smoking gun.
No.
You know why?
Because usually the gun is only smoking after it's gone off and everybody's dead.
And if you're in the intelligence business, you're supposed to stop the people before they fire the gun and it starts smoking.
Uh and if they can't connect these dots, if they can't connect uh a guy uh who is already banned in uh countries of our allies, who actually whose father, whose father?
I don't know, maybe there's five hundred thousand names of this.
I didn't particularly get on with my father for when I was a young man, but to the best of my knowledge, he never turned me into the CIA.
I would imagine that's a relatively small demographic group.
Uh young men whose fathers turn them into the CIA.
He didn't just go along to the United States embassy in in uh Lagos and s and take uh take a number.
What what what what what was the w what did uh David call it?
A redress number.
He didn't just take a redress number and get in the six-month line.
He actually went to the uh embassy in Lagos and asked to speak to the CIA guy.
And the CIA guy sat down and have a col had a conversation with him.
And they're now saying, well, you know, the CIA guy wasn't that wasn't that senior.
That's why I didn't get fast-tracked up the line.
I mean, this is this is important thing to remember if you're in some basket case third world capital and you decide to seek out the CIA.
Don't get don't don't allow yourself to be sloughed off with some minor no-name CIA janitor.
Ask to speak to the head guy in there, because otherwise they're not going to pay any attention.
So th this guy uh the this his father, his father goes to see the CIA, sits down with the CIA.
How many how many people are are fingered to the CIA by their own dads.
How many people then uh go to Yemen uh and uh and have training in Yemen?
How many people then their name is on a is on a watch list, but we're now told, oh, it's not really the watch list.
It's like, you know, it's like if you're trying to make uh get a good table at Le Cirque and you don't really know anyone.
I mean the exclusive list.
You can't really get on.
You can't really get on the main watch list.
You know, you're just on a a kind of reservation list.
It's like standby at LaGuardia.
You're on the list to get on the list.
It's like David's Yeah.
That's right.
That's right.
They got Paul Yeah, maybe that's where when your dad leaks your name to the CIA, HR HR thinks the problem may be that Mr. uh w what is Abdel Mutalab, his name was uh his name was on the list next to the next to HR's four-year-old, and that's why.
He slipped through the crack.
He was just in the he was just on the list of pre-kindergarten jihadists.
So it wasn't expected that he would turn up.
We'll have lost straight ahead.
1-800-282-2882, Rushback Wednesday.
Mark Stein in for Rush.
Uh let's go to Mark in Hollywood, Florida, one of the uh few Marks in the lower 48 who is not a designated Rush Limbaugh guest host.
Uh but Mark, it is great to have you with us.
You're live on the air.
Mark, an honor and a pleasure, sir.
My my pleasure my pleasure to have you on.
You uh l in lovely Hollywood, Florida.
I take it you don't have to fly too many other places too often.
Yeah, sunny Hollywood, Florida.
Well, it's it's supposed to be a low of uh forty something degrees tonight.
Kind of kind of cold for the natives here, but uh coming from New York last night, uh not too bad.
Oh, right.
You flew down.
You flew down from New York just yesterday, then.
Yes, I did.
And actually that's why I'm calling.
I'm a bit livid, and I'm livid because uh because the terrorists are winning, and I'm sorry to digress from the watch list that you were discussing.
But uh I'll tell you a quick story.
Last night, my wife and I, my wife was pregnant, eight months with our first child.
Uh we were checking in at the Jet Blue Counter to come home from LaGuardia.
And while we're checking in, a gentleman uh right next to us at the counter, uh dark complexion, uh didn't have any check luggage, and was paying with cash, said he wanted a one-way ticket to uh to uh Florida.
And my wife and I kind of looked at each other and were like, oh man, I hope he's not on our plane.
Anyway And was he was he pulled over for secondary uh examination or anything?
So I we didn't get that far.
We kept an eye on him after he got through security.
It seemed, it seemed like he did take a little longer to get through security, which which kind of gave uh a relieving feeling to me and my wife.
Um, but we weren't sure what plane he was on.
So we're like, yeah, he's he's on our plane, don't worry.
Anyway, we get into our seats on the plane, we're sitting down, lo and behold, the guy shows up on our plane, and my wife starts to panic.
She's having a panic attack, and she starts crying and she's sobbing, and I'm trying to console her, and uh and nothing is helping.
And the truth of the matter is I was trying to play it cool and be the tough guy and be like, listen, he they went through a rigorous check in security, he's okay.
The bottom line is I was panicking a little bit too.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because all these so-called red flags are neutralized according to who the person is who's setting off the red flags.
If you're David in Hopkinton, Massachusetts...
You'll you'll trigger all the red flags.
But if you're uh someone who just turns up at the counter, no luggage, one-way ticket, bought with cash, uh, then they they don't want to uh and you might appear possibly Yemeni, Sudanese, who knows what else.
They don't want to they don't want to make a big deal at that, because everybody at the check-in counter knows there'll be a hate crime suit and you'll be in s uh sensitivity training hell for the next six uh next six months.
And that's the way.
Thank thanks thanks for your call, Ma.
We we gotta run.
I I just want to say one thing quickly on this.
That's the way if they'd kept this stupid paperback book prohibition.
You know when the TSA announced you wouldn't be able to have a paperback book on your lap for the last hour of the flight?
I would love to see them confiscate the first Koran from the first Imam who said that he wasn't gonna uh he wasn't gonna give up his paperback book.
Because any uh air stewardess who does that uh from US Air or American Airlines is gonna be in sensitivity training hell for the next six months.
These These stupid laws are not even enforced uh equally, and that is why uh profiling things uh it makes less sense than actually looking for the people who are most likely uh to turn out to be terrorists.
Lots more straight ahead on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Happy New Year.
Lots to look forward to in 2010.
Uh this is from Reuters.
A dismal job market, a crippled real estate sector, and hobbled banks will keep a lid on U.S. economic growth over the coming what, over the coming six months, over the coming year?
No, over the coming decade.
Uh that's what some of the nation's leading economists said on Sunday.
We'll get into that and some of the other prospects for the year and the decade ahead as the Rush Limbaugh Show continues on the EIB network.
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