And I'd say the media can barely keep its pants up.
All right, the jury instructions are next in the Zimmerman trial.
They just can't wait.
Although I don't think the media wants a verdict today because they're getting lost over the weekend, maybe the Sunday shows.
They'd rather have the verdict on Monday so they can use the whole week to trash the country.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's open live Friday.
Yeah, plus the riots are scheduled for Monday.
They probably don't have the rioters ready to go today.
But they still, they can't help themselves.
I mean, folks, it's amazing.
Closing arguments are finished, and then the prosecution did their rebuttal closing arguments, and a judge next are going to charge the jury.
For those of you who are real in it, it doesn't mean arrest them.
That means you're going to give them their instructions.
And then the jury's off.
What if it's like the OJ jury and they come back in like an hour?
Friday is a better day for a riot.
The jury has been sequestered a lot.
They may just want to get out of there and take the occasion of Friday to run away from town and hide.
It's hard to predict what's going to happen.
Well, Monday or Friday, what difference did they make to a rioter?
No, no, a big difference.
Even if you get media coverage of your riot on Saturday, it's not as impactful as you get media coverage on a Monday or Tuesday.
So the rioters, they're not going to be revved up to go today.
The rioters, I'm sure the bus reservations and the hotels, well, no, they'll trash those.
Oh, I think the DOJ's probably already done the organizational aspect of the riots.
Yeah, you know, this is this is if CNN, well, let me tell you what happened.
And this is HR just asked me if CNN does it, will they blow the verdict again?
Go back to the Michael Jackson trial.
That the, what, the child molestation trial out in L.A.?
The media was convinced that he was guilty.
And I remember, folks, I kept nobody likes to predict juries, but I was fearless in telling you that I won't be surprised if he's acquitted because I don't think they made the case.
Remember that?
Snerdley, I don't remember where you came down on this.
Were you the same or were you thinking that he was going to be I never I know but but but did you think that okay, so we were on the same page.
I I didn't think that the prosecution made the case.
I thought this is a an example of an overreaching zealous prosecution that was relying on media.
And anyway, literally a few short minutes before the jury came in, Jeffrey Toobin goes on seeing it and predicts a massive conviction.
And in just minutes, he was proved wrong.
The jury acquitted.
So when HR said to me, is CNN going to come out and do the same thing?
I don't know, but I'm just going to tell you, folks, the media is invested in a guilty verdict with the max punishment possible.
It's what they've been hoping for, planning for, trying to make sure that happens since this whole case began.
This case serves a lot of purposes.
Also, is an opportunity to make up for what went wrong in the Duke La Crosse case.
And now it's wall-to-wall analysis of what the judge is going to say in her instructions and in wall-to-wall analysis of what the jury is going to be doing while they are deliberating.
It's been a long time for the drive-bys.
There haven't been any real decent riots since Rodney King.
I mean, if you really might have to go back to Rodney King to find some really decent, really qualified riots in terms of the way the media looks at these things.
Yeah, not just a sports championship riot doesn't count because that's engendered really by joy and happiness.
And, you know, if people want to tear down their town because their team wins, that's one thing.
But if they tear down their town because they think they've just been given a racial shaft or something, that's made to order.
Well, that riot in Brazil doesn't count because nobody saw any pictures of that.
Remember earlier this week, folks, I had a short little story from AP, and it was written as though this happens every day.
There was nothing remarkable about the story.
I mean, the way it was reported, there was no emphasis.
There was nothing.
It was a story about how when somebody turned on the faucet, the water ran.
But the details were unlike anything I've ever seen before.
In a soccer game down in Brazil, a referee stabbed a player that he had ejected from the game.
Fans stormed the field and killed the referee, sliced him up into four pieces, decapitated him, and put his head on a steak.
Now, that is a riot the media could sink its teeth into if that happens here.
But that happened in a soccer game, all because the star player got tossed out by the referee.
This they're just hoping.
I mean, they, as I say, they haven't had any real good riots since Rodney King.
They're long overdue.
What are you shaking your head at in there, Don?
Do you think that's not true?
No, I'm not.
Now, we don't the media.
I'm talking about the media needs.
I don't want any riots.
But I said they're long overdue.
From the media perspective, we haven't had a good riot in this country and I don't know how long.
A riot is an opportunity for the media to show how unjust and unfair, basically how sucky the country is.
And there hasn't been that chance.
Okay, we had this as our morning update today, but here are here, in case you missed it, screw officials in Carmel Clay, Indiana, said that they lost $300,000 last scruel year because students are rejecting the healthy menu changes brought on by the first lady, Muchel Obama, and her federal lunch regulations.
I've had a lot of complaints, especially with the little guys, said Linda Weierman, a food service director for North White School Corporation.
They get a three-quarters cup of vegetables, but if it's something they don't like, it goes down to garbage disposal.
There are a lot of complaints that they're going home hungry.
Amy Anderson, the food service director for the Scruel District, said the rules made her feel less like an educator, more like a food cop.
The changes have even made her consider retiring early.
Laurie Shoffroth, the Tippecanoe Screw Corporation Food Service Director.
Why do they need these people with Muchel running the show?
Look at all these food directors they've got.
Here's another one.
Laurie Shoffroth, the Tippecanoe Screw Corporation Food Service Director, said that many students are throwing food away, putting a dent in the district's budget.
They're teaching our kids with this meal pattern.
It's okay to throw stuff away, she said.
Now, we did a waste study on three different schools, and there was a huge amount of food wasted.
And that's just with the produce, the fruit, the vegetables, or the milk.
The kids hate it.
Other students aren't eating lunches at all, resulting in a $300,000 loss for the district.
Now, earlier this week, we had a story about a school in New York that was getting rid of the Muchel Obama way of feeding kids because they were hungry at the end of school.
They didn't like the food.
They weren't eating it.
There wasn't enough of it.
Now we have this other district here in Indiana losing hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to comply and failing because the kids hate it.
You know, pretty soon they're going to have to come up with a limbaugh theorem for Muchel because this is all being blamed on her.
And that's not the way this regime works.
When things go wrong, Obama does not get the blame for it.
He's not even attached to it.
But this school lunch debacle is really being blamed all on Muchel, and rightly so.
But again, I have to ask a question.
And I may be the only one with the guts to publicly ask it.
But who made her the expert in this?
Don't give me this first lady business.
So what?
Being first lady means that she is qualified to design a school lunch menu for the whole country?
You know, what experience?
What's the resume say that her experience track record in this field?
She's got two girls.
That's right.
She got two girls in a garden.
That's all you need.
That's right.
Okay, so she is.
And she's first lady.
She's wife of Barack.
So Barack knows more than anybody about the health care industry.
Barack knows more than anybody about coal.
He knows more than anybody about energy.
He knows more than anybody about taxes.
He knows more than anybody about greed and jobs.
Guys, people don't know diddly squat.
They are the least qualified you could find who are otherwise educated to be in charge of anything.
I know they won elections or he did.
But seriously, why is she in charge?
I know first ladies have to do things and they've got to be altruistic or charitable or, you know, like learning to read or don't do drugs or whatever.
But seriously, what are her qualifications?
Now, we've got kids all over the country claiming they hate the menu.
They're not eating it.
They're going home hungry.
Okay, so her arms are toned and she knows about exercise.
Do you think Michelle is hungry?
Do you think her kids are hungry?
You think her daughter?
Hell no and hell no twice.
Say what it is.
No way her kids are hungry and no way she is hungry, right?
But if you're Michelle Obama and if you are convinced the country has a morbid obesity problem among the Utes, isn't the point that they should be hungry?
Sorry, folks, you can't go on a diet without being hungry.
There hasn't been one made.
Unless they can give you some speed to suppress the appetite.
Outside of that, which, you know, a little riddle in here, a little Edderole, you never know.
Nice little side effect.
But outside of that, there's not a diet that does that.
I mean, if you're going to lose weight, if you're morbidly obese, you're going to have to face the consequence.
You're going to be hungry.
But we don't want the little children to suffer.
But anyway, that's not what this is about.
This is Michelle.
She knows better than anybody else about healthy foods because she has a garden.
Big whoop.
You know, the proofs in the pudding.
When her husband gets the chance to eat the way he wants to eat, what does he do?
He adds to these three guys' burger place and gorges on five guys, whatever it is, and gorges on triple-decker cheeseburgers and fries, and he takes heads of state with him.
He doesn't care.
They probably got him eating berries and twigs and leaves and everything, too, and he's probably starving.
That may be one of the problems.
By the way, folks, I mentioned yesterday that the interviewer, the next issue at a limbo letter, is Conrad Black and his book, The Flight of the Eagle, The Grand Strategies, Made This Country What It Is.
The previous issue interview was Dr. Helen Smith.
And I read this piece today by the guy in the American Spectator, Matthew Flynn, on what's wrong in our culture vis-a-vis men.
Helen Smith is PhD from Knoxville, Tennessee, and she's got a book, Men on Strike, Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream and Why It Matters.
And it is excellent.
And I'll tell you, this is something that more and more people need to seriously think about.
The whole concept of manly is being erased from our culture.
And that's been going on for quite a while.
And it has serious, serious consequences, and we're living them.
So her book is Men on Strike, Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, the American Dream, Why It Matters is Dr. Helen Smith.
Okay, to the Fawns, it's promised.
Joanne in Virginia Beach.
I'm glad you waited.
I really appreciate your patience.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
Thank you so much.
I was in dentistry for 26 years, and I find this whole thing absolutely ludicrous.
The wife, I saw on the dinner cam, she's not unattractive.
Maybe a little lifestyle lift, you know, get her back to where she thinks she needs to be, but it's definitely an Issue between their marriage.
If the husband thinks that he might have an affair with an employee because she's attractive, give me a break.
It's ridiculous.
Let me play devil's advocate with you here.
Okay.
There are some women who might think this guy's wonderful.
There's some women who might think this guy is great, that he saw a temptation, that he took steps to remove it in order to preserve and protect his marriage, that he was admitting a weakness, that he might have fallen and done great damage to his marriage, and so he took a proactive step and got the temptation out of the way.
Well, I think that's a bunch of horse hockey.
I think that if their marriage is strong and if they have a good relationship and that they have good communication, nothing can come between the two of them.
So, okay, can I infer from that that you think there might have been something wrong with the marriage to begin with?
Absolutely.
I worked for dentists for 26 years.
Well, what does that guy ever ever date a dentist?
They're insane.
Oh, okay.
I was just going to ask you what that has to do with anything.
So dentists are insane.
Well, there's a certain type of personality that goes into dentistry, and a lot of them are perfectionists.
And, you know, I worked for some lot of really good dentists, but they have their own particular quirks.
You know, just like there's some industries where it takes a certain type of personality to do that particular job.
Well, it's like this career.
I'm telling you, you have to be off-kilter psychologically to succeed at this job, the one I've got.
I absolutely, I have to agree with you.
You have to lie to yourself every day.
Well, you have to, otherwise, you can make yourself crazy because everything that's, you know, I'm not that much younger than you are.
Yeah.
And I'm watching right turn into wrong, wrong turn into right, up is down, down is up.
And I'm like, what happened to the society I grew up in?
And for this couple to go ahead and take, you know, this person's livelihood away because she's attractive, I mean, she did her job.
She was good at her job.
That's true, there was no.
She wasn't flirting with the dentist.
I mean, that's right.
was no complaint about her job performance.
And the court acknowledged that this was not about anything other than feelings.
This guy was allowed to make this move because of feelings.
Well, if that's the case, could he fire an unattractive female assistant because she makes him nervous for some other reason?
Well, I'm sure.
I mean, this opens Pandora's box to whatever.
I mean, it's ridiculous.
I've been fired from jobs before for non-performance or attitude, you know, when I was younger, but never because of personal appearance.
I mean, it's just, I think there's something wrong with their marriage, something wrong with their relationship, and she was just a convenient excuse.
I think they need to work on whatever it is because no employee in his office is safe until he retires.
Joanne, thanks.
I appreciate your input on that.
Again, the court said that such firings do not count as illegal sex discrimination because this is all motivated by feelings, not gender.
So you could, as I did, you could infer that employers can now fire unattractive people because of the feelings that they generate.
Why not?
Kevin in Blandon, Pennsylvania.
Welcome, sir.
Great to have you on Open Line Friday.
Hi.
Thanks, Rosh.
Megadittos from Blandin.
My question is a sidebar to the George Zimmerman trial.
When X NFL star Aaron Hernandez comes up for trial, can we expect the mainstream media to refer to him as a white Hispanic?
Excellent question.
Let's see now.
You know what?
He did.
Well, the deceased in that case is an African-American.
Yeah, there's a lot of parallels here.
African-American, scrawny-looking guy from the pictures versus this NFL muscle man, incredible Hulk kind of guy.
It's not a leap to consider that he too, Aaron Hernandez.
By the way, he's from Connecticut.
You know, white people live in cold weather.
So you need a white Hispanic?
It's not.
That door's been open now.
That's an excellent, excellent question.
Will the media refer to Aaron Hernandez as a white Hispanic?
Are they even going to care about that case?
Another interesting aspect.
In the meantime, another obscene profit timeout.
We'll be right back.
So I checked the email during the break.
I'm glad I did.
Somebody said, Rush, you were talking about major crimes earlier.
I just wanted to make a note.
I watched this show.
Major crimes, I like it.
I just wanted to tell you this, it's a great, it's a funny cop show.
It's the replacement for The Closer.
And everybody on this show is good.
They've got this character, actor G.W. Bailey, who was in, I think it was an Animal House or something.
Maybe not Animal House, but something.
The guy is funny as hell.
And I just, I made a note.
For some reason, I just wanted to mention it to you.
I was watching this week's episode, and I just, season three of The Closer, they had one of the funniest episodes I have ever seen on television.
Now, it would take me too long to tell you about it, and I got too many people here waiting.
Been patient.
It's Open Line Friday.
Here's, well, there's nobody signified here, so I guess none of these calls are worth it.
Oh, Eli in Lule.
Great to have you on the program, Eli.
Welcome to the program.
Hi, Rush.
I'm 15 years old, and I'm telling you not to give up on the future generation.
I've been watching you since I was five years old.
My dad is conservative, and I cannot wait till I'm able to vote when I turn 18, which will be in the next election, which will hopefully be a conservative.
Why are you going to wait?
If you're a Democrat, they'd have you voting by now.
No, no.
I'm only 15.
Well, that's actually good.
Where did you get the impression?
Or maybe you didn't.
Maybe you're just saying so.
But where do you get the impression that we're giving up on the younger generation here?
Well, it just seems like that in the last election, a lot of the kids that I know have seemed to think that voting for Obama is the cool thing to do.
That's always.
You are an exception to the rule, and God bless you.
But most young people are motivated by hip and cool and pop culture things and feelings.
Most young people are, by virtue of being too young, just not that informed yet.
They haven't been alive long enough to have acquired certain information, education, and matured around it.
I mean, I have honestly thought about just getting an education and leaving the country.
I mean, it's been horrible.
It's just my family's farm has been taxed that.
They can't even grow things.
They can't even get a profit.
You know, I know how you feel, and you're not alone.
I did an interview with a guy for my newsletter two days ago.
His name is Conrad Black, and he has written an extensive book on the history of America from the perspective of from the founding to present day, how it became the greatest nation on earth, how it became the world's real lone superpower.
And it's heavy reading, but it's exceptionally good.
I think you probably, there aren't too many 15-year-olds that would read it and stick with it, but you probably could.
It's called the flight of the eagle, if you're interested.
But the point I wanted to make to you was that I asked him, because most people, Eli, most people's historical perspective begins with the day they were born, and they put everything that's happening in that universe.
For example, every generation, Eli, thinks that it's in the last days.
Every generation thinks that what's going wrong is worse than it's ever gone wrong ever.
Every generation thinks this.
You can make a book on it.
Every generation has people who think that the times in which they're living are worse than they've ever been.
So I asked Mr. Black, has it ever been worse in this?
He said, oh, yes.
The decade leading up to the Civil War was far worse than what's going on now.
However, and this is important, he said, and just what you know and what your family knows, this nation is in decline right now.
It is in a serious decline.
And it is a decline that is being helped along.
It's a decline that may be occurring on purpose.
And what really has people upset, Eli, and this is what I think, even at 15, I know you instinctively get this.
The problem is that the institutions that have been built into this country to guard against this are failing.
The Constitution is failing.
Well, it's not that the Constitution is failing.
It's that the people charged with defending it are failing it.
And all of the marriage, all of the cultural things that are supposed to keep this country on its lofty perch aren't working or they're not being used.
And they're not being used by the nation's leaders.
And this is what has people nonplussed.
It has them panicked and scared.
I had an eighth grade teacher, my social study teacher, who had a very strange interpretation.
She was a liberal of the Constitution, and I did not agree with that.
I mean, excuse me, like the interpretation just did not make sense at all.
Well, of course not.
If she's liberal, she probably thinks the Constitution is bad, unfair, unjust, and needs to be changed, I'm sure, because there are parts of it written in those ancient times that don't and can't possibly apply to today.
And by the way, those people are all over the place.
They own education.
Those kind of people, Eli, own it.
Just today, we learned that Janet Napolitano, who runs the Homeland Security Department, has just been hired the first woman to head up the entire University of California system throughout the state, not just Berkeley, but every university part of the UC system.
She's as far left-wing as anybody.
This is a job that no conservative would ever be offered, but it's a job that a conservative needs to fill in order to fix it.
But you're going to be surrounded by these people.
I hope, Eli, that you are able to, what's the proper word?
I hope you're able to fend them off.
I hope that they don't get inside your head.
I'll try.
Please do, because I'm going to tell you a little short story.
Way back in the first two or three, four years of this program, we had a call from a young man in North Dakota, and his uncle, I believe, was a member of Congress.
And this man was about your age, maybe a little younger, and he was great.
He thought his uncle was just full of it.
He thought his uncle was just an absolute joke, and he called here and gave us every reason why.
And 10 years later, we heard from him again, and he was embarrassed that he had called.
He had done a 180, total 180.
Somebody gotten to him, and he had become exactly what he had called here criticizing.
Family had gotten to him.
My point is, Eli, you're great, but the pressure, especially when you leave home to go to school or whatever, and you're separated from your parents, the pressure on you is going to be immense.
And I hope that you're able to fight it off.
I will try my best.
And I hope you don't leave the country because the country is going to need people like you.
No, no.
I'm not just saying that, Eli.
It's going to need people like you.
If it's going to remote, there's always going to be an America, Eli.
But is it going to be the kind of America your parents and grandparents grew up in?
And is it going to be the kind of country that you're going to be able to grow up in, that you want it to be?
It's going to take people like you doing what they can to preserve it and beat back these forces of change that are trying to take this country in an entirely different direction.
Are you, I'll call you a conservative because it facilitates conversation.
Are you a conservative because your whole family is?
Have they influenced you tremendously on all this?
Well, I've self-informed myself a lot, but my entire family, extended family and everything, is conservative.
Well, that's good.
That means you've got a great, you're going to have a great support system there.
What do you, you said they're farmers?
Yes.
Well, I'm not a farmer myself.
My grandparents are.
And they've had to cut their hogs off.
Now they're just to wheat, beans, and corn, and they can't support any livestock.
They just can't make a profit off.
I know.
They're just too high.
I know.
I know.
Farmers have been hit.
What do you want to do?
Do you know yet?
I'm deciding between an architect, politician.
That sounds, I don't really know yet.
I need to decide that.
Well, there's nothing that says you have to know yet.
But at some point, whatever you love and really, really are passionate about will reveal itself to you.
And then it's up to you to follow it.
But whatever it is, you keep thinking about things the way you are now.
And another thing I tell people like you, just live your life the way you think it should be.
And you'll influence more people than you'll ever know.
You don't have to talk to people and convince them in order to persuade them.
You can do that also by setting an example in the way you live and the way you act, the way you lead.
So you have tremendous potential.
And the sky's your limit, whatever you want to be.
Don't let anybody tell you differently.
Well, thank you for that.
Well, I'm glad you called.
You like computers, Eli?
I do.
You have an iPad?
I have the earliest one.
The early?
You get the antique iPad.
Okay.
I have the antique.
Yeah, the antique.
Well, what would you say?
Let's see.
I got a new little.
Why don't I say would you rather?
Let me give you your choice.
A Retina 15-inch MacBook Pro laptop computer, an iPad 4, which is the full-size retina, or an iPad Mini.
Which would you prefer?
I would love to have the MacBook Pro.
MacBook Pro?
Yes.
Great.
I need one of those for high school.
Great, great call.
Okay, this one's maxed out.
It's got the fastest processor, the largest solid-state drive, 767 gigabytes.
So you hang on, and we will get your, we'll have it shipped, and it'll arrive to you tomorrow if you want it Saturday.
Now, don't hang up.
Snurdley will get your address so that we can get it out to you.
Eli, thanks for calling.
It's great to have you out there, okay?
Thank you so much.
You bet.
Be right back.
Don't go away.
Hi, welcome back, El Rushboe, and it's Open Line Friday here on the EIB Network.
I mean, I'm also going to send Eli in Louisville.
I'm going to send him a couple of these really cool Turvis tumblers that have the Revered Rush on one side behind the golden EIB microphone and the Rush Revere 2F by T legend and Icon on the other.
You can even put coffee in them.
I mean, they keep hot beverages hot, cold beverages cold.
Ice doesn't melt.
The tumbler doesn't sweat.
You've probably heard of these things, these Turvis tumblers, particularly people in hot climates that do a lot of outdoor activity.
They're fabulous because they don't sweat.
The ice doesn't melt so fast it dilute everything.
But the fact they don't drip all over you, that's the big deal to me.
Dale in Jacksonville, Florida.
Hi, great to have you on the program.
Hello.
Hey, Rush.
Megadata Dittos from Jacksonville, Florida.
Thank you, sir.
Thanks for having me on.
You bet.
It's all about the low-information voters.
That's what you've talked about all the time.
Oh, yeah.
I've got a suggestion, a solution that you might be able to get through to them.
I think you ought to travel around the country over the course of a week and go on a Rush Limbaugh low-information voter bus tour.
And each day of the week, you do your show from a different city, and maybe you interview the Kardashians or Paris Hilton.
You know, you get some of the people that they're looking to for their information on your show.
And also, if you would allow me, I'd love to tell you about my book.
It has a breaking story aspect, and my agent's currently pitching it to publishers.
I'd appreciate that.
It'd be awesome to have that break on your show.
Okay, briefly.
Okay.
Well, the book, it won't sound believable, Rush, but it is.
I live in Realville, just like you do.
You're the mayor.
I'm one of the citizens.
Three years of research, and the evidence backs all this up.
It's going to sound fantastical, but it's Vincent Van Gogh was Jack the Ripper.
And the website, if you'll allow me, is vincentaliasjack.com.
I know it sounds hard to believe, but I've done the research.
You have irrefutable evidence that Vincent Van Gogh was Jack the Ripper?
Yes, sir.
It all started.
I'm an artist.
It all started with discovering hidden images in a Van Gogh painting that relate to Jack the Ripper.
In fact, it was one of his victims named Mary Kelly.
Did Vincent Van Gogh rip himself?
Well, he did.
He did cut his ear.
Yeah.
And he also cut some of the, Jack the Ripper cut some of his victims' ears.
Rya, you're trying to get publishers to, your agent's trying to pitch the book to publishers?
Yes, sir.
Yeah.
Vincent Van Gogh as Jack the Ripper.
That could work in a low-information market.
Well, no, might not know who Vincent Van Gogh is.
Anyway, the idea of a bus tour through low-information, what, communities, neighborhoods, interviews, interviewing Kardashians and so forth, it sounds good, but that's actually the least effective way of spreading the word.
And it becomes a distraction.
Plus, folks, I don't really like interviewing people.
That's the problem.
That's why I don't have guests.
I don't really care what anybody else thinks.
At least not enough to talk to people every day, other than you on the phones, of course.
There was something on the tip of my tongue that I've been wanting to mention, and it's let me take a timeout here, and maybe it'll come to me during the break.
Sit tight, do not go away.
This is what it was.
A cost, a tentative agreement.
Tentative agreement to overhaul the federal student loan program was close to collapsing last night after the Congressional Budget Office said that the proposal would cost the Treasury $22 billion over 10 years.
What this means is, and this is the New York Times, it means that lowering the student loan rate to 3.4% would cost the Treasury $22 billion, and we can't do it.
And furthermore, it's the Republicans' fault.
The New York Times version of the story is the Republican Party wants to do damage and raise the deficit by lowering the student loan.
This is incredible.
And the students are blaming the Republicans.
A Georgetown University student blamed Republicans for allowing student loan rates to double, while another student said that all Republicans should be put to death.
Campus Reform interviewed Georgetown students about their thoughts on student loan reform, and the Republican Party is taking the hit for this when, in fact,