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May 24, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:18
May 24, 2013, Friday, Hour #2
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Newsflash, ladies and gentlemen.
President Obama has just appointed Colonel Sanders to oversee and investigate the slaughter of chickens.
It's Friday.
Let's hit it.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's Open Line Friday.
That's right, folks.
Eric Holder will examine himself.
Eric Holder will investigate himself and his department over the bugging of journalists, telephones, phone records, and emails.
Specifically, James Rosen of Fox and a couple others, AP.
And Barack Obama, President Obama, has said he really doesn't like this.
He doesn't think that journalists doing their job should be criminalized while his administration is criminalizing it.
It's the Limbaugh theorem.
It is what it is.
Obama coming out in publicly opposing everything he's doing.
Same thing at the Code Pink speech yesterday.
Anyway, greetings and welcome back.
It's Open Line Friday.
Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network, and the Limbaugh Institute.
By the way, if you're just really hankering to write some emails to people about your true thoughts of the IRS, this is the day to do it.
They're furloughed.
This is May 24th.
The IRS is furloughed today because of the sequester.
And then, of course, Monday is Memorial Day.
They're not working.
You might have an entire weekend where you can unload.
Plus, Lois Lerner, do you know Lois Lerner in the, whatever it was, three or four years, it's now scrolled out of my vision.
Lois Lerner was paid something like $780,000 over four years or three years where she was engaged in all of this activity that was aimed at denying tax-exempt status to Tea Party groups.
Salary and bonus.
She was earning more than members of Congress.
She was earning more than some senators, some committee chairmen.
And now she's been placed on administrative leave.
Do you know what that means?
Paid vacation.
Not paid leave, paid vacation.
Lois Lerner.
So the IRS, it's the first weekend of the Memorial Day weekend, the first day of the weekend.
And everything's pretty much changed its vibe.
There isn't a whole lot going on.
Everybody psychologically, mentally, already is engaged in the long weekend.
Lois Lerner from 2009 to 2012 earned about $780,000.
That was for a job well done.
Paid more than $740,000 between 2009 and 2012, which is the period that the IRS was targeting the Tea Party.
Her salary therefore averaged more than $185,000 a year, which is higher than congressmen and senators.
And on top of that, she received more than $42,000 in bonuses.
But if she helped Obama get re-elected, and she earned two days ago, three days ago, folks, spent a lot of time.
And by the way, I've now seen this reported in a number of places.
And again, it's cutting-edge stuff.
Three days ago, we've been talking for the longest time, actually, about the phenomenon of the 2012 election.
Obama got millions fewer votes in 2012 than he did in 08.
But so did Romney get many million fewer votes than did McCain.
And up until this IRS scandal hit, the analysis of Romney's low vote turnout centered on white voters.
There were supposedly 4 million white voters who just didn't show up.
And then people began to offer their theories, me included, as to why, based on that statistic.
And you remember the theories, they ran the gamut.
Well, a lot of these people were conservative and didn't like Romney, wasn't conservative enough, and so they sat it out.
The other explanation was that these people were just, they're the ones, they're the backbones of the country.
They're the ones getting up and going to work every day.
They're the ones losing their jobs.
They're the ones that are trying hard to improve, play by the rules, and nobody's paying attention to them.
Everybody's focused on the illegals.
Everybody's focused on gay marriage.
Everybody's focused on all these other things.
Hell with it.
And they just stayed home.
Now we know.
Now we know it may have been all that, but there was also vote suppression.
Major, that's what this IRS scandal is, folks, voter suppression.
This election, the 2012 election, honestly deserves an asterisk next to it.
Lois Lerner and the IRS made, oh, and here's another thing.
It is still going on.
Don't think that it's ended.
You do not.
Let's say you're a Tea Party group and you're applying for tax-exempt status.
You don't have to be denied in order to be discriminated against.
What if your application has been in for years and it's still open and you just haven't heard?
It's the equivalent of being denied.
You still can't get into action.
You can't get into gear.
So this partisan attack on Tea Party and other conservative groups concerning tax exempt status is still going on.
There are groups who have applications in and they're just languishing.
No action has been taken.
So the IRS doesn't have to flat out deny you your status.
They can just delay the approval.
So you're sitting out there in limbo.
And that is continuing to happen.
And the upshot of it is that a lot of Tea Party money was never raised and therefore was never spent on this campaign.
A lot of Tea Party enthusiasm was tamped down.
A lot of religious Tea Party groups never got into gear.
They were never authorized to.
They were never authorized to start.
They needed to be able to fundraise on a tax-exempt way in order to get started and they weren't.
There was a flat out, there's no doubt about it now.
That's what this is all about.
There was a flat out effort to suppress the conservative vote in this election while everybody was listening to the allegation that conservatives wanted to suppress the black vote or the gay vote.
All the attention focused on photo ID to be able to vote.
That's just racism.
That's an effort to suppress the black vote.
You remember all during that campaign, the Democrats worried about Republican vote fraud and suppressing the vote.
Well, where it really happened was the government, the IRS, another political arm of the Obama regime, literally suppressing conservative voting, fundraising, and turnout.
Right?
I'll tell you something.
You know, if I would have been thinking, you know, even I end up taking too much at face value.
The reason that I thought all of the pre-election polling in 2012 was wrong was because they were using 08 turnout for their models.
And I was sitting here telling you, I'm all frustrated.
What about 2010?
Does nobody remember the 2010 midterms?
The 2010 midterms, the Democrat Party got smoked.
And it was the Tea Party that did it.
The Democrat Party got smoked all the way down to local elections where they got beat.
I think the Democrats lost close to 700 seats nationwide, including the Republicans taking back the House.
It was a huge turnaround in 2010.
It was massive.
And I just naturally concluded that that turnout would show up again in 2012 because what was it that inspired that turnout?
Obama care and the stimulus and every other assault that Obama had made on this economy in this country.
Nothing had changed.
It had only gotten worse.
And I kept looking at these pre-election polls, which show Obama winning by five or six.
This doesn't make sense to me.
The election happens.
I look at the exit polling data.
55% still blame Bush for the economy.
I saw that.
I knew it was over.
5 o'clock exit poll.
I knew it.
And then the other question that sealed it for me was that question, cares about people like me.
That one broke out 81 to 19 for Obama.
And that was the 5 o'clock exit poll.
I said, it's over.
This is, and the whole night then, everybody kept waiting for Ohio as the last chance.
So the election's over, and we're analyzing it.
We talk about all this.
And I said, what happened to 2010 turnout?
Well, now we know, folks.
Now we know.
The Democrats did take note of what happened to them in 2010.
They did take note of what the Tea Party did.
And by God, they make sure they weren't going to be able to do it in 2012.
And they did.
And those pre-election polls that were using a 28, 2008 turnout for their modeling.
And you remember, we would marvel here at the samples that would have Democrats plus 11 and plus 8.
And they were basing that on what happened in 2008 and nothing changing in 2012.
So what about 2010?
I said, now, 2010 especially, there wasn't even a Republican on the ballot.
There wasn't a Republican issue on the ballot.
There wasn't a single thing on the ballot that would unite and inspire Republicans.
What that 2010 turnout was about was stopping Obama.
And I thought, well, those people are going to show up again.
And then we were told, nope, Romney made them stay home.
And that never made sense to me.
I'm sorry.
It just never made sense to me.
I never understood intellectually how people who were so opposed to Obama in 2010 because of what was happening to the country could in two years end up having more dislike for Romney.
That just didn't fit.
But we didn't know then what we know now.
We had to accept that explanation.
And I'm feeling like an idiot here for doing so.
Because now we know there was utter, there's no other way to describe this.
It was pure, utter voter suppression.
That's what the IRS was doing.
It was no different than what the Black Panthers, the new Black Panther Party, did at places in Philadelphia.
There was voter intimidation there at those polling places.
So this is, you know, this is really serious stuff, and it's not getting traction really beyond the political class.
Not yet, be honest about it.
Low information voters, the polling did anyway, says they don't care.
Who knows?
But I'll tell you, I never forget that Thomas Edsall piece.
I quoted this over and over.
New York Times column.
It was in November of 2011, which they admitted that Obama was going to abandon the white working class vote and try to suppress it.
That's what the purpose of that column was.
They came out and said what they were going to do.
They were going to try to depress and dispirit the conservative vote while giving up on the white middle class vote.
They were going to give up on getting the vote, but they were going to do what they could to make sure they didn't show up, and they did.
Just another form of election fraud.
Now, in hindsight, nothing you can do about it other than learn from it for the future, but it really is maddening.
Have you seen, ladies and gentlemen, the story about the boyfriend and girlfriend who stabbed each other over what happened on American Idol?
I am holding here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers story from Gawker.
An argument between a Pennsylvania couple over which American Idol finalists deserve to win the contest escalated quickly, resulting in a knife fight that left the pair bloodied and behind bars.
48-year-old Karen Elaine Harrelson, 57-year-old Gregory Stambaugh were hanging out in the basement of Stambaugh's West Manchester Township home last week, watching the American Idol season finale and drinking beer.
According to Stambaugh, it was Harrelson who produced the knife, stabbing him in the left forearm.
He claims that she was accidentally wounded during a subsequent struggle for the weapon.
Though they were found by the police on the porch with their clothes covered in blood, neither has sustained a serious injury.
Their pictures, their mugshots are posted here.
Boyfriend and girlfriend in a knife fight over the.
I mean, what we have here, what we have here, folks, is the epitome of low-information voters.
You should see these mugshots.
In fact, you know what I'm going to do?
I'm going to show them to you on the Ditto Cam.
I'm going to take a break here and I'll set it up.
And if you, it's always, it's always good.
Talk about low-information voters.
It's good to be able to put a face or faces to such human categories.
We'll do it when we come back.
Okay, here we go.
I'm going to turn on the DittoCam now, and I'm going to hold this picture up.
These are the two people in Pennsylvania got into a knife fight during the finale of American Idol ended up.
These are their mugshots, and this is it, folks.
These are, I mean, if you've ever wondered what low-information voters look like, that's it.
There's your, that speaks for itself.
I'm sorry, those of you listening and don't have access to the diddle cam can't see it.
We'll post it at rushlimbaugh.com.
There you go.
I've got to refocus the doodle cam.
I'll get it back on here in just a second.
In the meantime, we start on the phones in Homer, Alaska.
This is Fred, and it's great to have you here, Fred.
Hello, and welcome.
Mr. Limbaugh, it's an honor and a pleasure to be on your show again.
Just a brief reminder: we talked about Dan's bake sale back in 1992.
Way away from the other horse or not.
But anyway, my question is this.
If we take Barack Obama at his word and all the people that are underneath him at their word, my question is: who's running this country?
We have many scandals going on here.
We have the Fast and Furious, Benghazi, IRS, and the list goes on and on, the AP and so on and so forth.
And then you have Barack Obama, the number one most powerful man in the world, and he has all these people underneath them, from Eric Holder to Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, Jay Carney, Joe Biden, Leon Panetta, Lois Lerner, and on and on and on.
And yet, when they're asked questions, they're like, I don't know.
I haven't heard anything.
And then our president gets on national TV and broadcasts to the people.
Well, I get my news from the same place you do.
I just heard about this last week over on the mainstream media.
So if our president is as uninformed as he claims to be, who's running this country?
Well, now you and I know that Obama is running the country and that all of these people are doing exactly what they know Obama wants done.
But that's you and me.
Let me give you a different picture, a different scenario.
Say all of this stuff is going on, all of it, except George Bush is president.
And George Bush is saying, I don't know any about this, and Alberto Gonzalez didn't know any about it, and Cheney didn't know anything about it.
Do you think that the media would be, oh, okay, you guys don't know about it.
Government's too big.
It's really impossible for any one person to know what's going on.
Not for a nanosecond.
So unfortunately, it becomes a cliche, and it oftentimes sounds like it becomes too simplistic, but it always comes back to the media.
It always comes back.
And the reason it does is because low-information voters still patronize the media.
That's their audience.
Plus, they're Obama voters, and they believe him.
They believe him because for five years, Obama hasn't been in charge of anything.
For five years, Obama's been opposing everything.
This is just standard operating procedure part for, of course, nothing new here.
Plus, the government's so big, it's hard for a guy like that.
Okay, so we had the two low-information voters engage in a knife fight in Pennsylvania during the finale of American Idol, and we showed you their mugshots.
A North Carolina mother had her son arrested this week for taking her Pop-Tarts without permission.
A child was busted on a larceny charge, according to the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department, whose officers were summoned Monday night to a Charlotte home by Latasha Renee Love, the accused juvenile's 37-year-old mother.
Police report notes that the known suspect stole Pop-Tarts belonging to his mother at their home.
The suspect was a juvenile, arrested at the home at the time of the offense.
Cops described the stolen goods as valued at $5.
The cops were called in Charlotte, North Carolina, for a $5 theft of Pop-Tarts by a mother on her son.
Low information voters, no doubt.
Can't spank them, but you can call a cops.
A 37-year-old mother, again, the name here is LaTasha Renee Love, reportedly has had discipline issues with the child, apparently received or decided to have him arrested as some kind of a lesson.
By the way, there's a mugshot picture of her here after a September 2009 drunk driving arrest.
The misdemeanor case against the kid will be handled in juvenile court.
Okay, well, the file didn't print.
The mugshot file didn't print of LaTasha Renee Love.
I don't have that.
The people of Venezuela are grappling with a nationwide shortage of toilet paper.
We mentioned this a couple of weeks ago.
An all too common occurrence in socialist states.
But rather than question maybe their economy as the problem, the president, the new president of Venezuela, Nicholas Maduro, said this week that shortages in luxury items.
Did you know that toilet paper is a luxury item?
In Venezuela, apparently it is.
And the shortages in luxury items are the result of a shadowy conspiracy concocted by the rich.
Conservatives and the rich in Venezuela have concocted a conspiracy to commandeer all the toilet paper in Venezuela.
Now, I don't know this for sure, but if I had to guess, I would say that the middle-class voters in Venezuela believe it.
Be my guess.
Here's Robert in Norfolk, Virginia on Open Line Friday.
Welcome, sir.
Great to have you.
Hey, old friend.
I was just calling to brag on one of your advertisers.
My mother's 85.
She lives in Wichita Falls, Texas, and I order those flowers on your flower program for Mother's Day.
And I got to tell you the truth.
I order them so they get there early because she's old.
And I had emailed her to see if she received a package from me.
She said no.
So I said, mom, I'm going to call you back in two minutes.
So I called that flowers, 800 flowers program, and I said, my mom's expecting something.
She doesn't receive them.
And they said they're on the front door.
So I call mom back.
She's 85.
I said, mom, when's the last time you were your front door?
And she said, I never go to my front door.
She's a big old house widow.
So she goes to the front door.
She says, there's two big boxes here, Bobby.
I said, Mom, don't bend down and pick them up.
You're going to fall down.
So she kicks them in.
I talked to mom yesterday, those flowers are still going.
I double the order, mention your name.
It's not a setup, Call America.
I mean, that was, it was a good day.
It was a good day.
That's absolutely fair.
It was a good day.
And when I had emailed, my computer blew out that day.
And the thing is totally shot.
But, I mean, they followed up.
And then, about four hours later, they called to see, did she not get them at the front door?
I told them the story.
Anyway, and I talked to mom today, and I talked to her almost every day.
And she says those flowers are still going.
She stand them down to about 18 out of the two dozen.
I double it, like I said.
And she says they're gorgeous.
All her friends are jealous.
Where does your mother live?
Wichita Falls, Texas.
Wichita Falls.
My dad's a Shepherd Air Force Base.
My old man is, well, he passed.
He was an old phantom pilot.
But she lives out there in Wichita Falls, Texas.
That's up north by the Oklahoma border.
She's got a tornado shelter.
How old is your mom?
85.
And like I said, she didn't get the email.
I didn't know my computer blown out.
But God bless her.
I mean, she loved it.
I said, Mom, I got him off the Rush Limbaugh show.
She said, I listen to him all the time.
All my girlfriends like him.
So, yeah.
Start a blue-haired Bloody Mary gang, like my mom.
Yeah, she's an arthritic, blue-haired, bloody mary.
She's still driving her own car.
She's talking about going into another home.
But you know what?
That was a good thing.
You are, your product, that corporation is exactly what it says.
Well, you know, they're the first.
1-800 Flowers is the first.
They started as just, they owned a couple flower shops and they pioneered the entire overnight delivery with flowers concept.
And in conjunction with their flower shops, in many cases, grow their own and they come up with their own unique bouquets.
And they really are great people.
They've also got a company called a Popcorn Factory.
And they make more flavors and concoctions of popcorn than you can possibly imagine.
I'll be darned.
I'll be darn.
And that's delicious.
I think that's out of Chicago.
I'll be darned.
Well, you know, the thing is, they did exactly what they said.
And when they call me back, they said, didn't she know?
And I said, no, I couldn't get through to her with the email.
And she loves her email.
But I said, Mom, do not bend down and pick.
She said, there are two boxes out here, Bobby.
And I said, Mom, push him in somehow or get my brother over.
And I said, you know, I've got eight brothers and sisters.
I said, the last thing you need to do is find you out there on the sidewalk and blame me for sending you flowers.
Well, that's great.
I can't thank you enough for that.
Did you say your dad flew phantoms?
Do you mean the McDonnell Douglas F-4 phantom?
My dad flew 86s, P-51s.
My dad flew P-51s.
My dad flew with Joe Foss in the South Dakota Air National Guard.
He was his left-wing man.
No kidding.
And my family's from South Dakota.
I was born there.
I never really lived there, but he was a P-51 pilot in the South Dakota Air National Guard.
P-51s, I didn't know your old man flew.
China, Burma.
I'll be darned.
When I was a young man, I met General Claire Chennault.
So that was back a long time ago.
Well, their age.
I can't thank you enough.
I appreciate that.
And the people at 1-800 Flowers are going to adore hearing the story.
We go to great lengths to make sure that the sponsors here who claim certain levels of customer service actually can pull it off.
I don't want to give away our techniques in determining this stuff, but we do it.
We create scenarios like yours and we try it.
And if they're going to claim it, we want to know that it happens.
And that's just, it's fabulous news.
Now, folks, for those of you, you may not know what an F-4 Phantom is, if you happen to see the movie The Right Stuff, there's a scene near the end of the movie where the actor playing Chuck Yeager steals an F4, commandeers an F4, and Jaeger is just dying to go into space, and he missed it by virtue of age.
So he gets in at F4.
Now, the incident didn't really happen the way it's portrayed.
He didn't illegally commandeer an F4 and take off in violation of control tower authority and so forth.
But the plane in that scene, if you recall, that's what a Phantom F4 is, F4 Phantom.
And Jaeger took that thing in the movie as high as it goes.
He's flying that thing straight up.
He wants it as high.
He wants to go into space and ends up having to eject.
And the right stuff is about all the people in the space program who have the right stuff.
But not that the incident is verbatim true to form, but if you remember the movie, that's the aircraft.
That's what the guy's talking about.
I just want you to be able to visualize.
If you don't know what an F4 Phantom is, that was it.
Anyway, Robert, thanks.
I really appreciate it.
Speaking of all this, Catherine and I called a Sweepstakes winners last night for the five-day, four-night, first-class all-a-way trip to Hawaii, latest 2FIT Sweepstakes.
And the winners are Steven and Linda from Texas.
And we called them.
And we knew it was going to go to voicemail because it got the two rings real close together and then the standard steady rings.
And I said, that's just going to voicemail.
So we decided, normally when we get voicemail, we just give them all the data, hang up, and tease them for missing us.
We said, you know, we're going to call you back.
We'll call you back within a couple of hours.
If your phone rings the next couple hours and you don't recognize it, it's us.
So we called back and they picked up and we talked to them.
And it was just, it's so much fun to do that, to actually talk to these people who are entering the contest and winning it, to hear how excited they are.
It turns out they are celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary this year.
They're from Texas and they haven't been to Hawaii in many, many moons, 25 or 30 years.
So they're looking forward to it.
So that was an upper.
That was, oh, and folks, we are sold out of Tumblr's.
I knew this was going to happen.
Those things went like, I mean, these are the $12.99 Turvis Tumblers, this thing right here.
Sold out of them.
They're literally sold out.
Well, the next pressure point is Father's Day.
We don't know if we can restock in time.
And we're trying, and I can't possibly commit to this.
Foxconn does not, these are American-made.
Foxconn does not make Turvis Tumblers.
Turvis makes the Tumblrs.
But I knew this was going to happen.
Once they're out there, and believe me, tens of thousands of them are out there, sold out.
And once people see them at $12.99, they're going to want.
That's what's happening.
And we just, we blew through the original supply.
So we're trying to find a way to get restocked by Father's Day.
And I don't know if we're going to be able to do it.
I'll keep you posted on it.
But it was just a great time.
So I wanted to congratulate Lyndon and Steve again from Texas of Sweepstakes Winners.
And then there are other 10 other grand prize winners that we're going to be calling during the day today, Tay to let them know as well what it is that they have won.
Okay, that's it.
Time out back after this.
All right, now I'm being told that I got it wrong.
It was not an F4 Phantom in the movie, The Right Stuff.
It was an F 104 Starfighter.
And I could have sworn, I could have sworn it was an F4.
I could have sworn I heard Jaeger talking about that scene in the movie, claiming, ah, I didn't steal an F4.
Nobody don't steal an F4.
I could have sworn he said F4.
But now I'm being told here it was an F104, a Lockheed, as opposed to McDonald Douglas.
Sorry for the confusion.
Here's Mike in Greenville, North Carolina.
Great to have you, sir, on Open Line Friday.
Hi.
Thank you, sir.
I really appreciate it.
Mr. Limbaugh, it's a pleasure to be on your show.
And let me do two things.
First of all, some greetings from the good people of North Carolina to you, yourself.
And you can be forgiven for confusing an F4 with a F104 as far as I'm concerned.
Well?
I appreciate that, sir.
Thank you for your understanding and your tolerance.
Yes, of course.
I'm going to try to make some sense here for a moment.
And what I would like to do is make a connection to something that you said yesterday that was interesting and powerful.
And then I would like to try to make a point, which is going to be, I hope, a polite disagreement with you.
So the connection is yesterday, you know, it was interesting that here Obama is in this almost perfect storm, right?
Three major scandals all at the same time.
There's Benghazi, the IRS scandal, scandal concerning securement of AP emails.
And what hasn't happened as a result of that, as you were saying, is that apparently, you know, the polls aren't moving in response to these scandals.
And I scratched my head.
And, you know, you said something I thought compelling, which is that, well, this is a problem of the low-information public, that people aren't.
Yeah, that's the latest polling data is that only 25-26% of the people are paying close attention or even care about any of these scandals.
Yeah.
And that just makes your point.
My point, which is that it's important that people be informed, that they need to know what's happening.
And you and I can certainly agree with that.
So, but here's the point.
And I'm going to ask you, please, sir, to not cut me off.
I just want to make the point.
I wondered very much about what you were saying about the low-information voter.
And that got me to go to a study that has recently been published.
We're running out of time here.
No, sir.
Yeah, the clock is going to cut you off if we don't get to the politeness agreement.
I thought you might do.
I hope you won't, sir.
I hope you won't.
I hope you won't say that you're running out of time.
I think you can do better than that.
Farley Dickinson University, according to their study, Fox viewers are the least knowledgeable audience of any outlet, and they know even less about politics and current events than people who watch no news at all.
What's really interesting about that?
If you're still there, and you're not going to cut me off.
Well, you know what?
If that's the case, if Fairley Dickinson University says that the Fox News audience is the least informed, then I think it's perfectly okay to bug their reporters.
I'll rethink this.
If Fairley Dickinson University says that the Fox News audience is the stupidest and the least informed, then that's cool.
Then it's okay to bug their reporters.
Ladies and gentlemen, this man speaking from the bottom of the barrel in which he lives lied intently to Mr. Snerdley about what he wanted to talk about.
And it took him much longer to get to his point with these endless implications that I was going to cut him off.
And he deserves to be cut off because a liar.
What he said he wanted to ask me was, How can I claim that Obama declared the war on terror is over?
He doesn't think Obama said that.
That's what he claimed he wanted to talk about.
And instead, he wants to insult the Fox audience.
Now, if he would have said he wants to talk about the Fox audience being the least informed, we'd have talked about it with him.
But he thought he had to sneak in here and then imply that I am unfair to callers when I am the most polite and the most tolerant, as I've just demonstrated with this guy.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, a brief timeout, another obscene profit timeout here on the EIB network.
Don't go away.
That's it.
Open Line Friday rolls on.
We've got another big, exciting hour just awaiting its commencement, which will happen immediately after this.
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