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June 21, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:33
June 21, 2010, Monday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of The Rush 24 7 Podcast.
Holy cow!
Holy cow, folks, I cannot believe Joe Barton.
He must have hit a home run out there, the way these people are reacting to this.
Talking about the slush funding, you know, apologizing last week to the BP execs for uh being shaken down by the uh the regime.
And the reaction to this, I mean, look at this.
Washington Post as midterm elections loom, Democrats zero in on a GOP apology to BP.
Uh it was a shakedown.
It was a shakedown pure and simple.
And uh somebody had the audacity to call it what it was, and everybody's running for the hills.
Hey, great to have you with us, folks.
We're back to normal here.
I got the weddings out of the way.
I got a bunch of other stuff out of the way.
The only thing coming up is the Haney Project.
Uh Hank Haney Project starting next month in uh in July.
But we're back to five day normalcy here on the uh EIB Network.
Great to be with you.
Telephone numbers 800 282-2882 and the email address, Lrushball at EIB net.com.
So we're not to Sun Valley, Idaho uh this weekend.
That's where I flew out on Thursday afternoon.
I had never been there.
I'd been to Court Elaine uh last summer for 18 hours to play golf, but good friend of mine, Mike Hartley, his wife Sandy, their daughter Ricky got married to R. J. Brown on uh on Saturday night at a family home in Sun Valley.
This is the place.
This is the friend of mine who's uh right next door to John F. Carey in Sun Valley, who's who served in Vietnam, by the way.
And uh I I told a uh heard a whole bunch of funny stories about what they were trying to do in Sun Valley back in 2004 when they were assuming that Sun Valley, Idaho was going to become the summer White House.
The U.S. government was trying to buy up all the adjacent properties next to the Teresa Hines home, which is where Carrie lives, because he's the uh he's the husband and the would-be president all fell fell a uh apart, of course.
But uh anyway, it was it was just a great wedding of the family home in the background in the backyard.
About 200 people there.
Uh and just uh just a word, parked the plane at the airport.
What do you mean where I parked the plane at the airport?
Well, I uh where did I park the pl.
Sun Val.
Do you know who started Sun Valley?
Do you know who who built W. Averill Harriman?
W. Averill, the I remember him, the first time I've ever heard of Avril Harriman was when LBJ appointed him to do something uh back in the 60s.
His father was a big railroad robber baron type guy.
There was immense wealth.
He was once married to Pamela Digby Harriman Churchill, you know, the the blonde that made the rounds of the diplomatic circles.
Uh and he he built the first ever ski lift in the United States.
Yeah, one of the golf courses we played was right at it.
Um Mr. Hartley pointed it all out to us.
So we got back uh late yesterday afternoon, last night sometime, and now we're back to normalcy, but I just wanted to tell you we talked about this a little bit on what was the last name of Thursday.
Um the golf channel, as part of their U.S. open coverage on Thursday, a little three-minute interview at uh 10 a.m. Eastern time when they were all out at Pebble Beach to announce that I am the next project, I'm the next amateur that the professional teacher Hank Haney is going to try to improve.
His first student was Charles Barkley.
I don't think it's possible to improve Barclay on the golf course.
Next was Ray Romano, and I'm up third, and we start taping this in July, and it's a lot of time.
It's the the I think the series, I'm not sure when it starts.
I've heard conflicting parts next spring or in January.
But it is it is a lot of hours.
We'll have to be doing this on weekends.
I get to choose the places that we go.
And it starts sometime next month.
Uh the taping of this.
And it that's this is gonna be the absolute hoot.
And I I cannot tell you, the golf channel might have what, until my show airs, uh, they're gonna have 20 million viewers, but uh up until then, it might have 150 viewers.
I'm just joking.
But I heard from everybody I've ever known, and people I don't know who think they know me, talking about this.
Half of them wanted to horn in and be part of the show.
Uh, you know, I have set up a little auto reply uh on my email, and the auto reply is Mooch, get your own gig at EIB net.com.
Uh that's that's that's what the email address.
I've I mean, it's I have never been, I have never been uh manipulated like this, all for my own good, of course.
Oh, yeah, it's all for my own good.
But I'm looking forward to that, and and that's uh that's gonna start in July.
And it's good.
This would be my caddy.
I I I don't know.
Hopefully the golf cart uh will be the caddy, but I don't I don't know if golf carts.
I'm starting aerobic training this week.
Uh yeah, it's uh it's because I Hank Haney works they work ya.
Hank Haney, this is this is gonna be this is gonna be a big, big, big deal out there.
I'm gonna start some aerobic training.
I gotta be able to do this.
This is television, snurly.
I gotta be able to pull this off.
I'm looking forward to it.
It's gonna be uh it's gonna be tremendous fun.
Okay, the BP oil spill.
There's a let me start with Michael Michael Baron today.
This is uh National Review Online, published today, Obama's thuggery is useless in fighting the spill.
Not only is it thuggery, it's ineffective thuggery.
Now, this is a this is a prelude, uh, ladies and gentlemen, to the outrage, the feigned outrage from everybody in the media, to even some Republicans to Joe Barton.
Apologizing to BP for being shaken down by the U.S. government.
Thuggery, writes Baron, is unattractive.
Ineffective thuggery, even more so, which may be one reason so many Americans have been reacting negatively to the response of Obama and his administration to BP's golf oil spill.
Let me tell you something else that is not escaping people.
You people in the drive-by media and the state-controlled media, you can go ahead and you can talk all you want about Tony Hayward, the BP CEO being out there yachting.
And you can go ahead and ignore the fact that Obama's playing golf on Friday, playing golf on Father.
You can ignore all of that you want, but everybody knows Obama's out there playing golf.
Everybody knows he's out there bowling.
Everybody uh it is Obama is clearly not going to let an environmental disaster or massive unemployment, the largest deficits in human history, Iran's nuclear arms race, none of that is gonna get in the way of a round of golf.
You know, I take more heat for playing golf for my audience than Obama does.
You know, I go out and I play golf, I come back and tell you about it, and I start talking about it, and the email is flat.
Stick to the issues.
We don't care about that rich man elitist game golf.
I'm I'll bet you just the limited time I spoke about the Haney Project.
When I checked the email at the break, it's gonna be stick to the issues.
Obama, he gets to pass it.
He can't even play.
One of the things I'm thinking of doing is inviting Obama to be on an episode, and I'll play blindfolded and still beat him.
And if he won't go golf, I'll go bowling with him blindfolded.
I can do a 36 on a bowling alley, which is his score, blindfolded.
So he's out there bowling, he's shooting hoops, he's playing golf, and he's got the audacity to give Tony Hayward a bunch of grief for being on a yacht after the congressional appearance.
So last week he went on a camp.
This is Obama.
Last week he went on a campaign trail uh in a trip lying about the recovery, the economic recovery.
He's focused on a lawsuit against Arizona's immigration bill.
Hillary Clinton of all people announced this.
They're gonna sue Arizona.
He tells John Kyle that the reason he's not gonna close the borders is because that would give the Republicans uh uh room not to participate in comprehensive immigration.
He's putting the um the enforcement of U.S. law behind his own political agenda.
Same thing happening with the golf.
There are a lot of people, Obama's out playing golf, complaining about Tony Hayward, and a lot of people are starting to maybe, maybe this oil spill's not a priority.
Maybe cleaning it up, maybe ending it is not a priority for Obama.
Well, I don't think it is because it furthers his uh his his agenda.
So he's focused on campaigning, lying about the recovery on a lawsuit against Arizona's immigration bill, he's pushing cap and trade.
He played 18 holes over the weekend, and I thought he said he's spending his every moment focused on the oils bill.
And he said he has been focused on it like a laser since day one.
Oh, and he's been watching soccer, too.
He'd been watching the FIFA World Cup.
By the way, the USA got jobbed on that call against Slovenia.
What a weird league this FIFA is.
They have a ref who's never refereed anything like a World Cup game or match.
And these refs apparently can call anything without having to tell anybody what the call was.
And then the refs never have to face anybody.
So the Americans clearly got jobbed here by the Slovenians, or by the ref.
It's the weirdest thing.
Nobody knows what the call was.
But anyway, Obama's out there watching it, and I'm sure that it is having this referee at the World Cup that jobbed the USA is kind of like having an inexperienced person become president of the United States.
I think, folks, honest to gosh, and I mean this, I believe Obama has more free time on his hands than I do.
Golfing, bowling, campaigning, lying about the recovery.
Uh walking the beach looking for tarballs.
Big whoop.
What if you find one, Barack?
What are you going to do?
Anyway, back to Baron.
I have not lost my place.
Many of you people think that I have, but I haven't.
Take Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's remark that he would keep his boot on the neck of BP, which brings to mind George Orwell's definition of totalitarianism as a boot stamping on a human face forever.
Except that Salazar's boot hasn't gotten much in the way of results yet.
Or consider Obama's undoubtedly carefully considered statement to Mao O'er that he was consulting with experts, so I know who's ass to kick.
By the way, he's put together a commissioner's not one oil engineer or oil expert on it.
Pure politics.
Attacking others is a standard campaign tactic when you're in political trouble.
Certainly BP is an attractive target, but you don't always win arguments that way.
The Obama White House gleefully took on Dick Cheney on the issue of terrorist interrogations, but turned out that more Americans agreed with Cheney's stand despite his low poll numbers than Obama's.
Eight of the cited experts, this we talked about this last week, have said they opposed the moratorium on offshore drilling as more economically devastating than the oil spill and counterproductive to safety.
This was blatant dishonesty by the administration.
They go ask these guys, what do you think about our moratorium?
And because they didn't ask him about the moratorium.
They got these guys to sign essentially black piece of paper to put out whatever they wanted to put us, saying these experts agreed with Obama's moratorium on offshore oil drilling, and they had not.
That is blatant dishonesty by the administration on an Orwellian scale, writes Baron, and its dishonesty in defense of a policy that has all the earmarks of mindless panic that penalizes companies, individuals guilty of no wrongdoing, meaning the moratorium on offshore drilling, and will worsen rather than improve our energy situation is ineffective thuggery.
The more plausible explanation is that this refusal is a sop to the maritime unions.
This is the Jones Act.
This is Baron's reaction to rejecting the help of the Netherlands because they're non-union American employees that would come over to help.
And they're now considering this assistance, by the way.
Now there are already laws in place to ensure that BP will be held responsible for damages.
The company has said it will comply, so what we have is government transferring property from one party, and admittedly unattractive when BP, to others, not based on pre-existing laws, but on decisions by one man, the Pazar Kenneth Feinberg.
Feinberg gets good reviews from everybody, but the Constitution does not command no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, except by the decision of a person's wise and capable of Kenneth Feinberg.
The framers stopped at due process.
But uh Obama has added the wise counsel of Kenneth Feinberg to it.
So Obama doesn't.
If he sees any impropriety in politicians ordering executives about upstaging the courts and threatening confiscation, he's not said so.
Write the editors of The Economist, who then suggest that markets see Obama as an American version of Vladimir Putin, except that Putin is an effective thug.
The economist says Obama is not.
So the bottom line here is this was Chicago thuggery.
Now, I'm Barone carries a lot of credibility with Inside the Beltway with people.
This is stuff we all talked about last week.
Barton talks about the slush fund.
And yet, uh, ladies and gentlemen, the reaction to this thing that Joe Barton did, and I'm thrown in the mix here too.
Uh when people start squealing like stuck pigs, they're stuck pigs, and pigs get stuck for a reason.
Gotta take a brief time out.
We'll come back.
We'll continue after all with all the rest of today's program right after this.
Where did I park my airplane?
In an airport.
What do you think I flew into the front yard?
I told you, check this email, dear rush.
Listen to what you said.
Shame on Obama for playing golf.
Well, you're going to divert your attention away from possibly our last election to save this once great country to go play golf.
I am not going to miss any programs to go play golf.
It's the point.
Do this either during vacation schedule, which was already scheduled, uh, or on weekends.
That's the whole point.
Anyway, it is uh gonna be funny.
I I want to modify it slightly something Baron said.
I don't think this is strictly Chicago thug politics.
It is far more than thugocracy.
It's far more than Chicago politics.
This is ideology.
This is far more ideological.
This this treatment of BP and the look at it's it what he's doing to BP is no different than what he's doing to the whole private sector, folks.
How is it how's that job search going for you?
Where's the private sector growth anywhere?
He's shutting down more and more of it every day, and now offshore drilling.
I mean, this is this is this is straight out of communist manifesto.
I know people don't want to hear that, but it is.
Smearing your opponents, smearing capitalism, the same tactics you see uh used by Hugo Chavez, the Castros, the whole Soviet uh Union leadership.
This is this is simply more than bullying people.
It is that.
I mean, these guys are being bullied.
But it's Chicago politics is about pushing people around, getting kickbacks, making deals against the people.
What Obama is about is all that, but more.
He's about destroying the society that rewarded him with the presidency.
He's about imposing an ideology on us.
Now, this this this this so-called shakedown that Barton of Texas had to apologize for.
We don't have all the facts yet, but shakedown would appear to be the correct term if BP surrendered 20 billion dollars to the White House under duress.
And let me ask you a question.
Would BP have done this on their own?
They were already complying with existing law on liability.
They were already up to sixty-five million dollars on their way to much higher figure.
Now, somehow the BP execs get uh called into the White House.
What if there were threats, threats of legal action, receivership, take over the cunt uh company?
Uh, you know, what what I don't know what else you would call this.
BP is gonna turn over money without a contract or a settlement agreement that the courts would enforce.
To describe this arrangement as escrow is entirely improper.
And you legal people know exactly what I mean.
This is not an escrow account.
It's essentially five billion dollars a year for 20 years.
Escrow involves a holding by a neutral third party pending a contingency.
Under escrow, the first party, the grant or the promise or the obligor, delivers something of value, a deed, money, document to a third party who holds it until the happening of sort of like when you buy a house.
You have to put uh down payment goes in escrow until a deal closes, nobody gets the money.
Feinberg is not independent.
He's not somebody that has no ties to one of the two parties here.
He has a direct tie to the regime.
He's the Pazar.
He also was in charge of the payouts to 9-11 families.
You know, I think, you know, thugs...
It's clear exactly what happened here, even though we don't have all the details.
And the fact that everybody's in an outrage over the fact that it would be called what it is, to me is simply evidence that it is what it is.
If a false accusation's been made, you don't react the way these guys are reacting.
You laugh at it.
You poke fun at the people making the reaction, but you do not run around and try to destroy the people who are telling the truth, which is standard operating procedure for the American left.
Ask me about it.
It's been going on for almost 21 years.
Back right after this.
Right after we take a break, telephone number coming up 800 282-2882.
Sit with us.
Folks, I'm going to tell you something else about this.
And I'm I'm dead serious, and this is not this is not to defend Joe Barton, and it's certainly not to defend British petroleum.
It's to stand up for principles.
And uh and the American way.
What BP did to its stockholders here by forking over by agreeing under duress to fork over 20 billion dollars is acting beyond their authority as a corporation.
The shareholders, if they want, and a lot of them are British and American retirees.
They have the right to sue BP management for caving to the White House.
And I'm not predicting a lawsuit, but I won't be surprised if there is one down the road.
But let me tell you the real reason that Barton can't be allowed to call this shakedown what it is.
And I'm not going to back off because there's no question it was a shakedown.
The reason Barton cannot be allowed to call this a shakedown is because that goes against one of the fundamental tenets of Marxism and Olinsky, and that is he who controls the language controls the argument.
So any time somebody on our side of the aisle happens to properly and accurately characterize these people, they've got to be called on it.
They've got to be creamed.
They have to be discredited, they have to be embarrassed and humiliated, because the only way that leftism and Marxism, Alinsky is the only way this thing can prosper is if they control a language.
That's why the media being in bed with these people is so crucial.
It is exactly why there is no criticism of Obama at all for watching baseball, watching soccer, playing golf.
At the same time, Tony Hayward's on a yacht.
The template is Hayward, BP, bad, horrible, villain, devil, El Diablo.
Obama, good angelic cares, wants people to all this gorgeous rot.
So you can't, you can't let the truth out there controlling the language for liberals is to perpetuate lies.
Now, everybody happens to love this shakedown.
This is one of the problems.
I saw some polling data out there that explains why everybody in politics and in media is jumping on BP, and that is it's become the number one issue in the minds of the American people.
59% of the American people think the most important thing going on out there is the oil spill, and the BP is responsible for it.
You know where the economy shows up in this poll right now?
4%.
4% of the American people think the economy is a big issue right now.
With American unemployment at 10%.
That's why Obama loves this.
This is the greatest distraction to the destruction of the private sector that he is the author of that you can imagine.
That's why he doesn't want a solution here.
That's why it's politically fine to go after Joe Barton.
Everybody happens to love this shakedown.
Well over half the American people love the shakedown.
They think it's a great thing.
If it was a shakedown, even better.
They want thuggery directed at corporations.
There have been 50 years of anti-corporate lingo coming from the American left.
The question is, will they love the next shakedown?
And the one after that.
Presidents are just like small children.
They get away with something, they keep doing it.
If you can take over General Motors and Chrysler, If you can tell Wall Street how to behave, you can I mean where's where where does it end?
So far we have Joe Wilson.
Remember him, you lie.
You had to go destroy him, and he was telling the truth.
Now we got Joe Barton, who's saying essentially, you extort.
The only two guys who would stand and vocalize what the rest of them are thinking.
Everybody's everybody criticizing Barton's thinking the same thing.
Now, I've done a little research.
I've also found that in the Republican leadership, Barton's never been that popular a guy anyway.
Last week, on Friday, Thursday night, Friday, a lot of people were just stunned when the House Republican leadership just popped up and said to Barton, you apologize, you retract that.
That's horrible.
We don't agree with it.
We don't stand by that.
And that told me, I said, okay, I gotta find out what the polling data on this is.
And that's when I found out 59, 60 percent of the American people think this BP oil spill is the biggest problem that BP is to blame for it, which is totally understandable.
I mean, I'm and I still say to you, I got no brief for BP.
I'm not trying to hold them up as heroes, not trying to defend what they're doing or have done any s any waste, shape, manner, or form.
Just telling you the people that you think are out there working hard to stop this, they're not doing diddly squat.
They're prolonging it, using it as a political tool.
They're playing golf, they're watching soccer, and they're watching baseball.
Let's go to the audio soundbite.
Here's the Washington Post as midterm elections loom.
Democrats zero in on a GOP apology to BP.
Audio soundbites, here's a montage yesterday and this morning of a bunch of state-controlled media people going after the yacht race.
Tony Hayward's in while ignoring Obama.
What was CEO Tony Hayward thinking when he set sail this weekend on his private yacht?
While the oil keeps on gushing, Tony Hayward, the CEO of BP, took a break and went yawking in cleaner waters off the coast of England.
After Tony Hayward turned in a poor performance on Capitol Hill, he appears to have made matters worse by attending a yacht race.
Tony Hayward's participation in that yacht race.
Enjoying a yacht race off the coast of England on Saturday while oil spill relief workers sweated it out.
Hayward's day on his yacht.
BP CEO Tony Hayward at a yacht race.
It's embattled CEO comes under renewed fire this time for attending a glamorous yacht race.
The CEO's 52-foot yacht came in fourth.
Yeah, well, no mention there of Obama on the golf course.
No mention is controlling the language, controlling the debate, controlling what everybody thinks about this, no mention of Obama watching soccer.
Three hours watching baseball.
Yesterday on the uh this week on ABC, fill in host Jake Tapper talked to Rahmanuel about whom everybody's making a big deal that he's leaving in December.
They all leave after the first two years, a lot of chiefs of staff do.
Nevertheless, Jake Tapper said, look, before we start the questions, I'm interested in your reaction to photographs from Saturday's BP CEO Tony Hayward in a yacht race off the Isle of Wight in the clean waters off southern England.
What goes through your mind when you see those pictures?
We can all conclude that Tony Hayward is not going to have a second career in PR consulting.
This has just been a part of a long line of PR gaffes and mistakes.
This is a mistake, and it's a big mistake.
Like others he's done in a sense when he said himself as Tony, he's got his life back.
Well, that's what's more important is do the people down there in that area have their life back.
Do they have their livelihood back?
So you can see the one-sided effort here to portray BP's heartless and unconcerned while our own president was out there playing golf.
And let's not forget.
Let's not forget that FDR was on the presidential yacht throughout the Great Depression, throughout World War II.
FDR used to go out on that yacht all the time.
And of course, Ron Emmanuel, master of public relations, right?
A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.
Here's more.
And I if this doesn't define shakedown, you tell me what does.
Jake Tapper said, are you satisfied with what BP has done so far in terms of capping the well?
BP originally was going to do one relief well.
We forced them to do a second relief well.
They weren't gonna do that.
BP originally had a plan on capturing a certain amount of oil.
We forced that, as you know, today's reports, they're up to 25,000.
They originally weren't thinking about 20 billion dollars, and they were originally weren't thinking about an escrow account and forcing them to do that.
There are certain things that they had to be pushed, not certain things, a k A lot of things that they had to be pushed to do.
Oh, can they were pushed?
What the hell are we talking about here?
See, words mean things, folks.
I'm a stickler for word.
Words are my business.
And I study and marvel at the way people use them to manipulate, to inspire, to motivate, or to uh mischaracterize in Ron and Manual.
Oh, yeah, they weren't gonna do anything right, so we told them they weren't gonna do anything.
Only real one relief well.
We told them they had to drill two.
Who in your crowd, Rom knows about relief wells?
Yeah, they weren't gonna spend enough money.
We told them they had to spend this is a down payment.
We told them they had you told them.
We forced BP to make the slush fund.
Uh we don't know what they were gonna do without us.
Does this not essentially say that it was a shakedown?
Uh Jake Tapper again to Immanuel, Congressman Barton later apologized for his comments after some pressure from House Republican leaders, but this Vengali of the President's political arm, David Plough has called for him to step down as ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Do you agree with that?
You can say it's a political gift for us.
And it is.
But it's dangerous for the American people.
Because while the ranking Republican who would have oversight in the energy industry, and if the Republicans were the majority would have actually the gavel and the chairmanship?
That's not a political gap.
Those were preparatory marks.
That is a philosophy.
Well, Joe Barton did is remind the American people, in case they forgot, this is how the Republicans would govern.
Yeah.
Republicans are dangerous.
You can't let them back in charge.
Rom Emanuel.
The essence of innocence, clean and pure as the wind-driven snow, only made it motivated by a big heart and compassion and love for all.
And we're back, Rush Limbaugh, this the excellence in broadcasting network, and as usual.
To make things fair.
Half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
My friends, I have been playing with the new iPhone software upgrade, iOS 4.
For the past uh four or five days.
It is officially released in twelve minutes.
So goes the story via iTunes at one o'clock Eastern time this afternoon.
And it it is a major, major, major upgrade.
It is cool.
I'll have to show you, Snerdly, what uh what all they've done with it because it's uh just it's astounding.
It literally is astounding what all they've Wi-Fi continues to connect you even when the phone's asleep.
Unified email inbox so that all of your accounts show up at once and have to switch back and forth.
Multitasking, which is genuine multitasking.
Genuine it works.
You got a page open in Safari, you leave it to go check your email, go back to Safari, same email page is loaded, doesn't have to reload.
Uh folders, you know, got all these app icons on your desktop.
You can put them, you think all your utilities are all of your in my case, um flight tracker information apps, put them all in one folder so they're all right there, so you get rid of some of the clutter.
Uh it's just oh.
Yeah, this just on a 3GS phone.
I don't have a new phone.
This is just a software upgrade on the existing phone.
It even makes the camera in the existing 3GS sharper and better.
It's got a five times zoom in it.
And when you email photographs now, you can ask you can determine what size you want.
You can send a full see you know what the full resolution size of an iPhone photo is?
One megabyte.
It's one you ought to see it when you when you email a full thing.
Normally, in this current software, you can only email uh the you know the 139 kilobyte version of whatever photo you take.
I mean it's we took some pictures with the thing out in Sun Valley over the weekend and emailed a one megabyte version of them, and it's I mean, the software upgrade alone makes the 3GS camera 100% better.
And well, I'm getting a new phone, yeah, but nobody gets a new phone before Thursday.
But the software that's gonna be on the new phone uh is available in now 11 minutes via iTunes for existing 3G and 3GS phones.
But well, because why because you you need why go through the rigmarole if you're gonna get the new phone on a couple days.
Well, you may not get the new phone in a couple days because who knows how soon people are gonna get the phones.
It was a massive order screw up because of demand.
It's you.
Yeah, well, that counts for a lot in certain places.
Well, it's available to developers.
It's available to developers.
I happen to know developers.
And the Golden Master version went out to the developers and to the phones that they're going to be delivering on Thursday sometime early last week.
But occasionally I'm just, you know, I'm just a run-of-the-mill average peon citizen when it comes to iPhones.
I mean, I have I had five people, including me, from 8 a.m. till 11 p.m. on Tuesday, June 15th, trying to order a couple of phones on the website.
Never once got through there.
So people say I have lost touch.
Ha!
Fat chance.
Yeah, the email crowd.
Why aren't you sticking to the issues?
Anyway, there's another reason to play with this is to get used to it when you do get the new phone, but the new phone's got uh hardware features that the current phone doesn't have that add even more to the software.
Uh there's this actual video conferencing is now available as a front-facing camera.
And you have to have an iPhone four and talk to somebody on iPhone 4 for this to work.
It's Wi-Fi only doesn't cost any cellular minutes.
And be talking to somebody the doing the same thing, if that kind of thing intrigues you.
Let me grab a con a phone call here, folks.
People want to weigh in on this.
We'll start with Daniel in Tyler, Texas, 20 years old.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
Hello.
Hey, Russ.
Uh, I'm a uh accounting major at the University of Texas at Austin Born.
And I'll thanks for having me on.
You bet, sir.
Glad to have you here.
Well, I just wanted to say something about uh Barton and the whole shakedown thing.
I mean, of course, he's calling it what it is, but uh thing I wanted to say was I'm just kinda I'm a free market conservative, you know, I voted Republican almost every in every election, but I'm just kind of you know, for the past few years I've been fed up with the Republican Party because I just feel like they have no spine.
And um I just wish that they would have given Barton a little support for calling it what it is.
And another thing, I just don't get why he apologized for what he said, because the people in his district in Texas wouldn't give a uh, you know wouldn't care what he said, you know.
They probably support him 100%.
Okay.
Now you you believe all this, and a lot of other people believe all this, so why do you think he did it?
Why do you think why do you think the Republicans jumped on him to apologize or re or to retract the apology?
Why do you think he did it?
Um I don't uh you know I think they are walking on thin ice right now, and they're they're still under you think they're still under the big pet block feed or trying not to scare people away.
Well, they're not walking on thin ice.
They think they're walking on thin ice, but they're not walking on thin ice.
Uh what there are a number of factors here.
I look at I can only speculate and and guess as a highly trained broadcast specialist as well as a well-homed political analyst.
All you have to do is looking at the look at the polling.
When we're talking about Republicans inside the beltway, all you have to do is look at the polling data and the media coverage and find out what they're gonna do.
This is not an issue that Republicans want to go to the mattresses on regarding the election.
They see that I mean the the bottom line is as I mentioned mere moments ago, that the vast majority of the American people like the shakedown.
That's all you have to know.
Sixty percent of the American people are just hacked off at BP like you can't believe this issue is the number one issue on people's minds.
The economy is now number one to three to four percent of the people.
And so the Republicans do not want to appear to be on the wrong side of this.
They're not about this this to them is not an issue uh that is a teachable moment.
This is something to just let's not even be heard on this.
Let's just let's just slither away under the rock here, and uh we'll let Joe Barton get eaten by the Democrat lizards on this, and we'll protect ourselves.
I mean, it's this is this is politics, and it's one of many reasons why true believers have so much trouble With politics.
It's just that simple and no more complicated than that.
It's real simple, folks.
It's all about the Republicans not wanting to give the Democrat National Committee a cheap campaign ad featuring Barton and so forth.
Unfortunately, the ill-informed would buy the ad, buy the whole premise.
And uh that's that's and it angers people and it frustrates, especially the young, who are in this for the purity of conservatism.
And they believe elected Republicans are in the same thing.
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