Emitting vocal vibrations coast to coast on Friday.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's Open Line Friday.
And we are here to wrap up another busy broadcast week.
You want to be on the program 800-282-2882.
And the email address ilrushbow at EIBnet.com.
Yeah, ABC News has a big story here.
And it can't get any traction.
And the reason it can't get any traction is because Obama and Biden are running around talking about all the new rapes that will take place if the jobs bill doesn't pass.
Then we wiped out Gaddafi.
And then 20 minutes or so ago, Obama announces the end of the Iraq war, that we're pulling all troops out by the end of the year.
Now there are reports surfacing that the banks will be the recipients of fresh bailouts.
Gaddafi's wife is demanding an investigation.
So there are all kinds of news stories out there that are keeping a major ABC investigative story from being prominently exposed.
I have that story here.
It is by Matthew Musk, Brian Ross, and Ronnie Green.
And there are, I actually have two stories here, the dovetail.
First from ABC News, Car Company gets U.S. loan builds cars in Finland.
With the approval of the Obama regime, an electric car company that received a $529 million federal government loan guarantee is assembling its first line of cars in Finland, saying that it could not find a facility in the United States capable of doing the work.
Vice President Biden heralded the energy department's $529 million loan in the startup electric car company called Fisker as a bright new path to thousands of American manufacturing jobs.
But two years after the loan was announced, the job of assembling the flashy electric Fisker Karma sports car has been outsourced to Finland.
And there's a 2009 Wall Street Journal story, September 2009, makes it clear that this was always the plan.
It was always the plan that this electric car financed by the taxpayers would be built in Finland.
So the regime knew this.
They knew the cars would be made in Finland when they gave Fisker the loan.
There was no contract manufacturer in the U.S. that could actually produce our vehicle.
The car company's founder and namesake told ABC News they don't exist here.
Henrik Fisker said the U.S. money so far has been spent on engineering and design work that stayed in the U.S., not on the 500 manufacturing jobs that went to rural Finnish firm Velmet Automotive.
Now, we're not in the business of failing here, Fisker said.
We're in the business of winning.
So we make the right decision for the business.
That's why we went to Finland.
Now, this is a company that Al Gore championed.
And remember that it was well known back at the time of the loan, the taxpayer loan to this electric car company, that these cars would be built in Finland and not America.
And then there's a story from Forbes yesterday, which claims that when you count the true costs of the fossil fuels involved in the manufacturing of the car and everything else, the miles per gallon for the Fisker electric car is 19 miles per gallon, the same as an SUV.
But what does an electric car run on?
Coal.
An electric car is a coal-powered car.
And they are cars built for rich people.
These are not cars for people who are going to be getting the free diapers from Rosa Doloro.
These are status symbol rich elite electric cars.
Sort of like the, along the same lines as the Tesla.
So what do we have here?
And this is a yesterday, this is a breaking investigative story from ABC News, and it can't get any traction because all the other stuff that's out there.
Obama pulling us out of a rock, Gaddafi room temperature, Gaddafi's wife demanding an investigation, Biden running around like a chicken with his head cut off saying rapes are going to increase if the bill's not.
This is what I meant in the first hour when I said, this is so absurd.
Biden and these guys do not really believe rapes are going up.
They're just saying this.
And they're doing it to draw attention away from any number of stories.
And I'm telling you, with Cylindra and all of the misuse of taxpayer money being lent to fraudulent new energy and green energy companies, here's another one, big time, Fisker, which didn't need the money when you get right down to it.
And the administration knew from the get-go that these cars, which will sell for $89,000 a piece, were going to be made in Finland.
Just like George Miller in California, his kid is an executive at a solar firm.
Sun Power is the name of it.
And they're going to be doing their manufacturing in Mexico.
So the green energy, it's nothing more than a giant slush fund.
It's no more than the campaign contribution vehicle.
It's money laundering.
Because the recipients of these loans, Cylindra, George Miller, a number of other places, the recipients of these loans are all fundraisers or bundlers for Obama.
Well, I better be careful saying all.
There might be a couple of them that aren't.
But bottom line here is, is that the vast majority of people that are getting these green energy loans are people that raised money for Obama or bundled money for Obama, and they're being paid back.
They're being paid back with money, a portion of which will come back to Obama again.
In the form of union dues and donations, contributions, what have you.
Wall Street Journal, September 25th, 2009, Tiny Car Company, backed by former Vice President Al Gore, has just gotten a $529 million U.S. government loan to help build a hybrid sports car in Finland that'll sell for about $89,000.
The award this week, the California startup Fisker Automotive will follow a $465 million government loan to Tesla Motors.
You know who two of the investors in Tesla are?
The Google guys.
Now, the Google guys don't need a loan.
Not a government loan.
I mean, if they want to go a margin loan on their assets, they don't need a government loan.
And from Forbes magazine from yesterday, this is Warren Meyer.
In the Clinton administration, Department of Energy created a far superior well-to-wheels MPG metric honestly compares the typical fossil fuel use of an electric versus gasoline car.
All you do is multiply the EPA MPGE by .365 to get a number that truly compares fossil fuel use of an electric car with traditional gasoline engine car on an apples-to-apples basis.
And in the case of the Fisker Karma, $89,000 a piece, we get a true miles per gallon comparison of 19.
So it gets the same miles per gallon that an SUV gets.
And the Forbes article makes it clear this Fisker car is just a status symbol thing.
It's 89 grand.
It's futuristic looking.
It is not a car for the masses.
It's not.
It's, folks, we're being, this whole green energy thing in Obama's Department of Energy is giant slush fund.
Just pure and simple.
And of course, it's cloaked in this wonderfully well-intentioned policy to save the planet and to save the climate and to stop global warming and to stop pollution and all that.
Giant, giant trick.
It's every bit the hoax that climate change and man-made global warming are.
All right.
I got to take a timeout.
It's open line Friday, which means more phone calls than usual.
We get back to them when we get back.
We want to welcome back to the EIB Network our insurance expert, the roving never know exactly where she is, someplace in Georgia, Stacey.
Hi, Rod.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
How are you?
Oh, it's good to have a Friday off.
I wouldn't know.
I wouldn't know.
What's the latest insurance business?
Are you still in it?
Yeah, but I'm desperately looking for a way out.
You know, the thing that killed the Class Act is the same thing that's going to kill off the rest of us.
If the Supreme Court only shuts down the individual mandate and declares it severable, the exact same reason that the Class Act won't work is why private insurance won't work.
And that's a little spooky to depend on a 5-4 decision with that one judge.
I can't even remember his name.
Kennedy.
How can I forget that?
Anthony Kennedy.
Yeah, being the arbiter of the rest of my life kind of makes me want to pull my hair out.
And before we get started, I did want to ask you how your house training is going because I've been house training a puppy too, and that's been one of the more challenging events of my life.
Well, you know, when your house breaking a puppy, you got to catch them at every instance or you lose ground.
Oh, yeah.
And the reason why you catch them every instance because they have to be told somehow informed immediately, it's a no-no.
Are you using a crate?
No.
No?
Oh, the crate was invaluable for me.
You mean to put them in?
Yeah.
No, I have it.
We have an area of the kitchen caged off.
It's the same thing.
I guess it's a larger crate.
Is it a small section?
You know, because puppies at that age are going to have a natural aversion to soiling their sleeping area.
And the logic behind it is you keep them when you can't have your eye on them, you know, every second.
You don't have to do that.
That's exactly what's happening.
But for example, for example, and I'm sure people really want to hear this.
The other night, I let the little puppy out.
The little puppy did its business.
I said, okay, I'm good for at least an hour here.
So rather than leave the thing in the cage in the kitchen, I took it with me to the library.
Within five minutes, it goes up on the sofa and tinkle, tinkle, tinkle.
And I look at that.
You little son of a, how do you have any left?
I wonder if the Congress critter will add diapers for puppies onto her diaper list.
I know.
We had to, not Wellesley, we had to put in diapers when she was in heat.
Oh, I'm getting ready to go through that.
I'm not worried about it.
We had Wellesley back from the event today.
She spade.
No, it's a this one's taking a little bit more time than the other two did.
Well, okay, off the fun stuff.
I was telling Mr. Snerdley, you know, Daryl Isa sent a question to DHHS a while back asking if they had actually procured the database that was discussed way early on in this whole fiasco that would take every American's claim information and ship it off to D.C. Right.
That's part of their health records, too, right?
Right, right.
Electronic health records and all their claims experience was going to go to D.C. and supposedly be used for comparative effectiveness research.
That was the claim.
Right, yeah.
And Mr. Issa sent a request out asking, you know, did you do this?
If so, who got it?
And apparently DHS hasn't answered him.
Last I heard.
So since I had today off of work, and it's been bugging me because in my company, we've been circulating three scenarios for what we'll have to do to meet that requirement.
And until we get final word from Washington, we're just kind of treading water waiting to see.
And Washington has a really bad habit of telling us to pull rabbits out of our butts.
So we try to get a jump on them any chance we can.
I still, you know, we're still waiting to hear, is this happening?
How is this happening?
All this good stuff.
Well, today, since I'm off work, I decided to go online and look it up.
And I actually, I don't know how it is that little old me, nobody here in Georgia can find this, but the whole Republican caucus in Congress can't find it.
It was awarded a $16.5 million contract was awarded to a company called Ingenix.
Now, I don't know anything about them.
I've never heard of them.
But they got that award prior to February of 2011.
Okay, to do what?
I'm having trouble keeping up here.
Database.
To build the database and the infrastructure that would take massive amounts of data.
Every time you go to the doctor, you go to the pharmacist, you go to the hospital.
Every time you have an x-ray, every time you get your cholesterol checked, all of that information for every single human being has to go.
What are you surprised at?
Well, I'm surprised that Congress doesn't know this.
If I can find it, I mean, granted, it wasn't easy to find.
Well, how do you know they don't know it?
Well, if he knew, why is he sending DHS a question about it?
Why isn't he saying who is Ingenix?
How did they get this?
Because I'm here to tell you this much.
I have no idea, but there are I'll just tell you this.
I have a series of doubts, maybe questions about just how opposed to health care are some Republicans, really.
There is not.
I'm not saying this about ISA.
Don't misunderstand.
But you, in fact, if I did a Google search and I could find it, there are plenty of Republicans who have said, no, I don't want to repeal the whole thing.
There are certain elements of this thing that our voters might like.
Rush, you remember when I called you with the hangover the day after the 2012 election?
I took the day off work.
But I'm trying to think you're hungover most times.
I'm trying to remember the time you weren't.
Hey now.
Sometimes I'm on my lunch break.
Be nice.
All right.
No, I called you and I told you that I was really happy, but I was scared to death that they're going to get up there and then they're not going to be serious about it, that they weren't going to do what needs to be done.
Right now, my company is programming triggers into our computer system.
Basically, we're having to create a system beside a system.
It'd be like running the Mac OS versus Windows 2007 on a mainframe scale.
That takes a massive amount of work.
And right now, we don't know if it's for nothing.
We don't know if they're going to flip the switch.
I mean, it's just insanity.
Well, I know.
Stacey, you're not alone here.
This is every business out there doesn't know what they face.
Well, I know, but you know, the mom-and-pop shop on the corner store, who's getting robbed by Superman, they're not going to be shut down by the federal government if they can't go live with this on the date that they're going to be able to do.
They'll be shut down for different reasons.
They'll shut themselves down because they won't be able to afford to stay in business.
Very true.
Very true.
Or they'll shut down because they can't do business with all the added costs they're going to be faced with.
This is what everybody is.
This is why there is such anxiety and fear out there at every level of American business.
Nobody can get a handle on what their costs are going to be, and nobody yet can get a handle on just how big the iron-fisted government's going to be in this.
And one of the reasons is, again, where is the Republican National Committee?
Where is the single voice representing the Republican frame of mind on this or the Republican policy position on this?
Are we about repealing it, or is that just a campaign slogan for our presidential candidates?
This is the thing that's frustrating to me: we've got the greatest opportunity that we've ever had to contrast who we are with this bunch.
This Class Act, not being able to be implemented because they can't afford it, is a great illustration of how the whole thing should have been handled.
If you can't prove the federal government that you've got the funding for this, then you can't implement it.
It was the law that stopped them here.
It was not anything else.
It was the law as written by Judd Gregg in one instance with the Class Act.
And he can make us wish that similar laws had been attached to other parts of the health care bill.
But you're in the insurance business of people who are not in the insurance business essentially.
I don't forget Rick Wagner shortly after he became CEO of General Motors.
And I did not know that the number one responsibility I had was administering a health care program.
I'm supposed to be making cars.
Well, everybody is looking at the same thing.
They're not in the healthcare business like you are, but they're going to be impacted by it one way or the other and to whatever degree, and they don't know.
And because there's not a clear side to choose here, if you are a business, look at the way Obama's co-opting all these people.
The standard operating procedure is to think that big business equals Republicans.
Big business doesn't equal anything other than who's in power.
Like these people on Wall Street, Goldman Sachs, and all these Wall Street firms are in bed with Obama.
They've been bailed out by Obama.
They're going to be bailed out again by Obama if they need to be.
Big business lives with two things: either fear of what opposing a government will do to them or the riches they can get by being in bed with government.
And that's what those are the two options.
And the Republicans, where are they in that equation?
We don't know.
Ergo, there's all kinds of anxiety, angst, and confusion.
Stacey, as always, great to hear from you.
Hungover or not.
And we will be back.
It's Open Line Friday.
Great to have you.
Rush Lindbaugh back, executing assigned host duties flawlessly zero mistakes.
Tony in Tampa, great to have you on the program, sir.
Hi.
Yeah, Rush.
The regime hates the private sector.
The same thing with those stool pigeons on Wall Street.
It was the private sector that put out the P-51 Mustang.
I think North American did that.
It was the private sector that put out the B-17.
Boeing did that, which Barack and his union thugs, they despise that company.
The B-17 decimated Germany.
It was the private sector that put out the P-38 Lightning.
Have you ever seen the P-38 Lightning Rush?
I have seen the P-38 Lightning Rush.
Is that a beautiful airplane?
It is a gorgeous airplane, but I'm partial to P-51 because my dad is.
Your father flew the P-51 with the drop tanks, man.
Another beautiful airplane.
When Goering first saw the P-51 over Berlin, he said the war's over.
So what I'm trying to say is it was a private sector that put these aircraft out, which kept.
Well, you know what Obama would say?
Obama would say, well, you might think so.
But he couldn't have built that P-51 if the government hadn't authorized the expenditure of World War II, and we couldn't, if the government hadn't agreed to pay salaries for some of the workers, and the government provided the roads and the bridges for all the parts to be delivered to the factory and blah, blah, blah.
That's what Obama would say.
Yeah.
Obama doesn't know that it takes people in the private sector to design that aircraft, Barack?
Oh, I think he knows it.
He resents it.
Oh, he does resent it.
He resents the private sector.
He resents the military.
The same thing with those stool pigeons on Wall Street.
If it wasn't for the private sector rush, Barack and those stool pigeons on Wall Street would be living under some brutal, sadistic, violent communist dictator.
Let's see if you like that, Barack.
Well, that's what some of them want.
Obama wants to be the dictator.
The people on Wall Street want to be the subjects.
Some of these people on Wall Street actually want that.
Some of these protesters, they occupy Wall Street now, some of them actually want that.
Some of them actually want to be serfs.
That's how they look at freedom and equality and egalitarianism and so forth.
That's what some of them want.
That's what they've been taught.
And it's superior.
It's fairer.
It's better for everybody.
Others of them just think that the private sector, a lot of them are saying, look, just go ahead and stay in business.
We love what you make.
Just don't make a profit.
Why can't you make iPhones and just break even?
Why do you have to show a profit?
That's their mentality.
Why can't you provide us what we want?
But why do you have to make a profit in the process?
I mean, that's objectifying us.
That's taking advantage of people.
That's overcharging people.
That's just unfair.
Why don't you just do what you do?
This is a very naive thought, but many people have it, particularly young idealistic people.
Why don't you make that car and sell it to us for no more than what it costs you?
And then everybody will be happy.
You'll make the cars.
You'll sell the cars.
We'll be able to buy the cars at a much cheaper price.
And everybody will be able to afford one.
But the minute people start putting profit into it, that's where we have problems.
Because that's exploitation and unfairness.
This is what they're taught.
This is why these people, some people are just oriented toward being slaves, natural born subservient people, and they will give away their freedom as fast as they can, at the same time trying to get you to do the same.
Now, I have a story here.
This is Pajamas Media.
It's a blog, and a lot of people contribute there.
Occupy Barack, Obama has raised more from Wall Street than all of the Republican contenders combined.
They've got a fake logo here, Goldman Sachs with the O in Goldman being the Obama logo.
And they say that this logo is more accurate than we thought.
Obama even raked in more cash from Bain Capital, which Mitt Romney founded, than Romney did.
Despite frosty relations with the Titans of Wall Street, President Obama has still managed to raise far more money this year from the financial and banking sector than Mitt Romney or any other Republican presidential candidate, according to fundraising data.
Obama's key advantage is his ability to collect bigger checks from fewer donors because he raises money for both his own campaign committee and for the Democrat National Committee, which will aid in his reelection effort.
As a result, Obama has brought in more money from employees of banks, hedge funds, and other financial service companies than all the other GOP candidates combined.
And by the way, this is also according to a Washington Post analysis of contribution data.
So Obama now, folks, in case you've forgotten, Obama is the banker of the national student loan program.
The federal government has nationalized that.
They took it over, took it away from the banks.
Wall Street is in his hip pocket and he is in theirs.
And yet these stool pigeons want him re-elected.
Now, the idea here that Obama is somehow removed and repulsed by Wall Street is what is laughable.
Oh, I know he says so.
I know he and the Democrats talk a good game of hating these Wall Street bankers, but they're all in bed with each other.
And it's not in the case, this is where people get confused.
In the case of the banks, hedge funds, financial institutions, ideology has very little to do with it.
Although, people that run Goldman Sachs, commie bastards, a lot of these Wall Street financial people are.
One of the biggest myths out there is that all big business people are conservative, ideological conservatives or Republicans.
Many of them aren't.
To whatever extent they are ideological, they're Democrats or they're liberals.
But before any of that matters, they gravitate to wherever the power is for two reasons, to get in bed with it and to protect themselves from it.
So Obama and Biden and everybody are running around and they are trying to dredge up exactly what's happening with these Occupy Wall Street people, hatred and opposition for the banks.
You'd think in a normal world, the people that run the banks and these Wall Street firms would get mad and say, the hell with you.
We donated to your campaign.
Here you are denigrating us to get these people.
Instead, they donate even more money.
They contribute even more to try to get Obama to leave them alone.
Or there is a wink-wink.
Obama to the bankers and the Wall Street people, look, you know, I have to say this.
I have to do this.
I got my base.
Just go along with it.
When the rubber meets the road, you and I are going to be fine.
That's basically what happens.
General Electric.
Look at Jeffrey Immelt.
Now, GE's market cap is what, $170 billion or something such thing?
Whatever it is.
It's high, and he doesn't need federal subsidies or loans, but he takes them.
Why?
I don't even know what Imelt's ideology is.
It's making it, he makes it look like he's a big liberal Democrat.
I don't know what he is, but if the government's going to come along and spend their money and you don't have to spend yours, there's an operative philosophy.
People who believe in debt, a lot of people who do, yeah, use other people's money to buy what you want.
Get other people's money.
Why use your own?
If you can get somebody else to finance what you want to do, finance your growth, why wouldn't you?
So, this crony capitalism, and it has all kinds of different definitions and applications.
But Obama, as left as he is, as leftist as he is, is the biggest practitioner of crony capitalism since Mussolini.
And I just find it laughable and humorous.
All this is going on, and these blind as a bad protesters have no clue.
The guy they support, the party they support, is actually the number one enabler of the people they hate.
The banks, the money people, the Wall Street.
Because, folks, at the end of the day, when we're talking about people like this, I've often said liberals are liberals first and trying to explain how is it that Jewish people can support Obama after his policies toward Israel.
Or how can any number of groups end up supporting Obama based on how he has attacked things that are very important or near and dear to them?
And I've always said, well, liberals are liberals first, which is true.
But always follow the money.
Always follow the money.
That will explain so much of why Republicans appear to you and me to be ideologically wishy-washy.
They want the money too.
They want to be in charge of who gets the money.
That's the game that's played.
Every four years, we have a vote.
And really, what it's all about is who gets control of the money for the next four years, or maybe eight.
And then after four or eight years, a party is going to lose, and then the next party gets its turn.
Now, while that's going on, these ideological battles are fought on the surface to make it look like that's what it's really all about.
But you and I know that it isn't.
How do we know it isn't?
Because everybody's out there targeting these precious independents when it comes time to win elections.
They're not going ideological.
Now, rank and file, members of Congress, supporters, full-fledged leftists who do indeed, in addition to their quest for money, want to tear down the very structure that creates it and produces it.
Nobody says they're rational.
In fact, they're very irrational.
But I've always found it amazing that people on the left have gotten away with this notion that they're altruistic about their pursuits.
They don't really care about the money.
They care about it more than anybody does.
They care about, in fact, they care about it more and they want money without having to work.
Non-profits, charities, what have you, where they live off the donations of others.
Their lives are nothing more than sending out fundraising letters begging people to send them money that they live off of it.
The ideological divide still exists, and it's real, and it is worth fighting.
And even I think the best victories and the most long-lasting political victories are, in fact, when ideology is what's being fought over, fought about.
That's why I think ideology and principle ought to be part of every Republican election in terms of the campaigns that they run.
But even with all that, and it's still a major factor, you cannot rule out what everybody, every human being, wherever they live, quests for more money, a better lifestyle.
We just have different ways of going about it.
These Wall Street kids want it given to them under the guise that they're Americans and it's not fair that some should have more than they do.
So some big power should come and take away from the people who have too much and give it to those who don't.
I don't have to work for it.
No, no, no, no.
I'm going to work.
It's not fair because those rich people haven't worked for it.
They have stolen from people or they have cheated people or they've inherited or what have you.
But it's still all about money.
And when you have as much money as pours in the federal treasury and as much money is borrowed there and printed there, to have control over that and what you can do with its disbursement in terms of cementing your own power, you just can't ever rule that out.
And you certainly can't take it out of the top two reasons in most cases to explain anything that happens in politics.
But I got to take a break and back and continue.
Open Line Friday rolls right on right after this.
It's funny.
I have been inundated with emails.
I was quoting this piece moments ago from Pajamas Media on a story about how in bed Wall Street, Goldman Sachs, other firms on Wall Street are with Obama.
And I said that there's a logo here, Goldman Sachs with the O and Goldman as the Obama logo.
And I'm getting email.
I've seen that before.
You did it on your website a long time ago.
In my fact, I think, you know, look at this familiar.
And I, sure enough, I get the Coco, April 20th, we ran this logo.
April, we are so on the cutting edge here.
And, you know, we get lifted from all of them.
We get stolen.
And a lot of people out there just run around and they troll the web looking for evidences that people are stealing from them.
And they make a big deal.
And we never do.
We just do our job every day and move on.
But clearly, we've been lifted from on this, but we get lifted from every day.
That's what happens.
That's why I say show prep for the rest of the media.
And I don't take it personally, and I don't get mad about it.
It's not possible to stop.
And it's too time-consuming to even police it and distracting to worry about it.
But I did want to mention this because Coco and the boys and Michelle up there deserve credit because they were the original creators of this mock logo.
In fact, we've got the best creative graphics consistently day-to-day basis at rushlinbog.com, anybody out there.
There's no question about it.
By saying that he's nobody better at crony capitalism than he's closer to Mussolini, call him fascist?
I'm a soul.
So, so what?
I'm fully aware of what I'm saying here.
Not only am I aware of what I'm saying, I like what I say.
I like hearing myself say it, and so do millions of others.
And I don't live in fear of what's going to come out of my mouth.
I used to live in fear of what was going to go in it.
And I'm not even afraid of that anymore.
So I'm not afraid of the mouth as an entry or exit.
I love hearing myself say what I say.
You would too if you're as right as often as I am.
Fascism is simply government control of the means of production.
What would you call it?
These green energy firms where there is no business can't survive without these bogus loans.
And the money first starts out with these bundlers raising campaign donations for Obama.
They send it to Obama.
He gets elected.
They start up these phony green businesses.
Obama sends some of the money back to his donors in the form of a loan that's not to be repaid to do their green energy.
The business goes bankrupt, but the guy never does.
And you keep spreading that around, and it's just a giant money laundering operation.
And whether the business ever runs or not, it still wouldn't have ever had a chance without Benito Obama back after this.
Okay, that's it, my friends.
Not enough time to be fair with another caller in our remaining moments in this hour, nor is there time to be rude to another caller.
So we'll just close it out.
We'll discuss some of the leaks from the upcoming Steve Jobs biography.
Some of them are interesting.
And I give you my thoughts and analysis on that.
Lots of other stuff in the news as well about the protests.