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Dec. 20, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:16
December 20, 2013, Friday, Hour #3
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Welcome.
Thank you.
It is Eric Erickson in for Rush Lamboy.
A delight and honor to be here.
I kid you, people not.
I'm not one of those people who makes a lot of life goals.
I was a lawyer for six years.
And one of the partners at my law firm said we should divide things up in three years, five years, ten years, and we should be able to get these goals done.
And everyone I knew who did that was one of the most miserable people ever.
I just go where the good Lord leads.
Just you go.
He'll provide and get you where you need to go.
Just do your best, work hard.
And now I'm behind the golden EIB microphone in the Attila of the Hun chair.
The one thing I've always wanted to do, it is the only goal I've actually had.
Some of you may think that is pathetic.
I think it is awesome.
I'm so excited to be here.
And it's Open Line Friday, 1-800-282-2882.
You can reach out to me through the series of tubes known as the internet to Twitter or Facebook.
You can go to E-W-Erickson, E-W-E-R-I-C-K-S-O-N, and you can get me on Twitter or Facebook.
Yell at me if you must.
You can email me, eric at redstate.com.
You can call into the show here on Open Line Friday.
So if you're just tuning in, the very end of the last hour, this story.
An Oklahoma man proposed to his girlfriend during an arrest.
The officer spotted Justin Harrell of Elk City in a local park last Friday, discovered he had outstanding warrants out of two counties for obtaining cash or merchandise by bogus check.
Maybe he helped build the healthcare.gov website.
So Harold resisted arrest at first because he was trying to propose to his girlfriend.
So the officer took him into custody.
Harold explained he was trying to propose to the girlfriend, asked if he could go ahead with it.
So the officer let him do it.
Now there's this curious sentence in the AP.
Thank you, Journalism School.
Harold then asked the officer to get the engagement ring from his coat pocket and give it to her.
I guess we can accurately say based on that sentence, although the AP doesn't tell us because I'm sure someone at the Columbia Journalism School messed up in teaching.
I bet Harold, James Harrell, or Justin Harrell was in handcuffs.
So the officer had to get the ring out of his coat pocket.
Was he able to kneel?
Did the officer taser him to ensure that he kneeled properly?
He might have been kneeling already.
So the officer handed the ring to the girlfriend and she eventually said yes.
That's actually, that's in the story.
Harold's girlfriend eventually said, now, consider this.
Consider this.
Your boyfriend is being led away in handcuffs with outstanding warrants.
And he wants you to marry him.
And you say, now, is she saying yes just to make his like life in prison better?
Or is she saying yes because she really wants to marry him?
Or is she saying yes because she knows she's going to have five to ten years to rethink this thing before it gets out?
This is probably a very smart woman and people are looking at this saying, why did she say yes to this guy going to jail?
Because she's smart.
She's got options.
She does.
This is amazing.
Now, in a completely separate and unrelated story, this is the crime segment here at the EIB network.
Obama has pardoned Deval Patrick's cousin.
Now, this is the Massachusetts governor.
Oh, where did I see this?
Credit where it's due.
Jamie Ware and Fools.
Jammy WF.com.
They've got this story.
A buddy of mine sent it to me earlier.
Might have been anyway.
The Massachusetts governor denied.
This is like Obama's cousin.
Deval Patrick, the governor of Massachusetts, has a crack-dealing cousin who's been in jail for life for dealing crack.
The governor has no recollection of meeting the guy, Reynolds Allen Wintersmith Jr., 39 years old.
Some of you will be upset to know he's older than me.
39 years old, only by a year, who is serving life sentence for drug trafficking, been in jail since 94.
The governor's office released a statement that says he has no recollection of meeting Mr. Wintersmith.
So about that, let's see.
Wintersmith's father and Deval Patrick's mother are brother and sister.
And while Deval Patrick was growing up on the south side of Chicago, they lived under the same roof.
Maybe he's an imaginary cousin, and that's why he doesn't remember him.
Maybe he's just like fiction, fictionalized.
What is it with these guys?
So Barack Obama plagiarizes from Deval Patrick that the words mean things.
He plagiarizes from Deval Patrick.
And now Deval Patrick is plagiarizing from Barack Obama.
You got, what is it, Uncle Omar or whoever, who President Obama claims?
I never laid eyes on him.
I never laid eyes on him.
Back when I was growing up in Kenya, I never, I'm kidding, I'm kidding.
I'm sorry.
I'm kidding.
He says he's never seen his uncle, never seen him, and yet he lived with him.
And now the White House is having to admit it.
How long before?
What is it with these Democratic politicians?
I mean, I got relatives I don't claim.
No offense.
But I just seriously.
My mother's at home right now listening to the show.
Who is it?
He doesn't claim in the family.
I mean, but I'm not president of the United States or governor of Massachusetts.
I'm more powerful than that because I'm sitting behind the EIB microphone today.
I can't launch a cruise missile, but by God, there are 15 million people.
All right.
So we have a president who plagiarizes from the governor of Massachusetts.
And now the governor of Massachusetts plagiarizing from Barack Obama.
I guess Deval Patrick's going to challenge Hillary Clinton.
I guess he's going to try to challenge her.
Forget the what's communist lady up there?
Warren.
Yes, Elizabeth Warren.
You didn't build that.
Deval Patrick's going to be the one to do.
I mean, stealing from the president of the United States, the line, the plausible deniability.
I mean, look, we all have skeletons in our closet.
To quote Phil Robertson, we all fall short of the glory of God.
Wait a second.
That was, that's Paul, St. Paul.
Any of it.
We all, we're all sinners.
We all like sheep have gone astray.
We've all got people in the closet we don't want coming out of the closet.
Just not that closet, you glad people.
No, the other closet, the family closet.
But just be honest.
You're going to get caught.
Particularly if you're in politics, just be honest.
Just be honest.
I don't know.
Okay.
I'm shifting gears dramatically.
I'm going where I told no one I was going to go because I feel compelled to do this.
Because it is, we're headed into Christmas week.
You people are stressing out right now with your last-minute Christmas gifts.
I know because I got a five-year-old just turned five, too, and an eight-year-old, and they're already running circles around me.
My kids are both going to be lawyers.
It's just, it is crazy.
And I'm struggling, and I know you are.
And this goes directly back to the beginning of this program today when we were talking about Duck Dynasty.
It does.
I'm tying Christmas into Duck Dynasty.
You got all these people out there who are so hostile to what this season is actually about, what it actually means.
You know, I grew up, and I'm sure many of you grew up thinking that the reason Christmas is on December 25th is because way back when those old wily Christians, they decided to steal pagan holidays and co-op people into their religion.
I mean, I grew up learning that Saturnalia or Sol Invictus, the feast of the unconquered son, that Constantine, when the emperor converted, he made everyone else convert and he switched over all this.
That's what we all learned.
Did you know that's not true?
I mean, we all grew up learning this.
I grew up learning this.
I'm from a Bible-thumping household, proudly so.
And I heard this in school.
And, you know, so I started digging in this, writing a newspaper column about why Christmas is on December 25th.
Did you know that way back when, you know, when the early Christians, they were much more interested in the end of Jesus' life, not the beginning.
They were interested in the date of the crucifixion.
And so they figured out, according to them, I mean, you're talking Tertullian back in the AD 200 had it set at March 25th.
March 25th was the day Jesus was crucified.
Well, way back when, follow along with me here, folks.
It's not hard, but you've probably never heard this before in your government school.
Way back when, they believed that a martyr died on the same day he was conceived, on the anniversary of his conception.
So it was really easy to do the math.
If Jesus was nailed to the cross on March 25th, that means he had been conceived on a March 25th.
So go nine months from there.
What's the date?
December 25th.
But wait, it gets better.
See, you can also, if you go into the book of Luke, Zachariah, John the Baptist's dad, was supposedly in the temple.
Angel Gabriel came to him, gets out of the temple.
His wife gets pregnant.
And the Bible says, six months later, Gabriel appeared to Mary, told her she was pregnant.
Well, you know, they were able to, they knew the class of priest that Zachariah was in.
They knew the class of priests in AD 70 when the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans.
So they did the math way back.
They figured out Zachariah had to be in the temple towards the end of September.
So he gets out.
His wife gets pregnant.
Six months later, Mary's pregnant.
What would that be?
That'd be March.
Go forward nine months.
What do you have?
December 25th.
So all this hokeum smokeum that you learn in school from all these people about the Christians were just co-opting pagan holidays, well before that even started appearing as an accusation.
They already had two different paths to get to December 25th.
So, you know, it's amazing the things you learn in school.
It's kind of like the Big Bang theory, not the TV show.
Awesome TV show, by the way, but the theory.
Did you know it was a priest, a Catholic priest, who came up with the idea of the Big Bang theory?
And the scientific community ridiculed him and said, oh, you're just trying to justify Genesis 1.
Let there be light.
That's why you came up with this.
And now suddenly it's scientific wisdom.
You just, the moral of the story here is don't believe things that you hear that are common knowledge, including Barack Obama had never met his uncle.
I don't think we can play that song.
I mean, I realize it doesn't have the words, but it has the line, make the Yuletai gay.
I don't know that we can, I don't know.
Someone somewhere will be upset with us.
Welcome back.
It's Eric Erickson.
I won't describe what's going on in the other room.
Yes, it was a hand signal.
It was a hand signal.
You know, it's one that I see from drivers down New York City a whole lot when I'm walking across the street when the lights are.
I just, in any event, welcome back.
It's Eric Erickson here.
In for Rush Limbaugh, who is on Christmas vacation unlike the rest of us.
And you know what?
You people are actually going to have to suffer through me again on Christmas Eve.
You will.
It is Open Line Friday, 1-800-282-2882.
Let's go to the phones.
Jennifer and Danbury, Connecticut.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Hi, Eric.
Yes?
Oh, okay.
I had just gone.
I was on my way home.
I made a purchase today of Charles Krauthammer's Things That Matter.
Yes.
Really excited me to buy that book that there was one available.
But when I was on my way home I heard you talking to somebody, a caller, that was talking about the, the how the values and have changed within our country and how people are being taught things or not being taught the right things, and I just I just had to say that I look at this person, our administrative leader, our president.
It's the office I respect, but totally stripping away everything that is really the best parts of the human race, stripping away religion, freedom, privacy, and everything else, and wants to recreate it in his own image because of, in my opinion, his messianic complex.
The Obama Siah.
You know, here's the thing.
I think Barack Obama looks at the United States and the world and believes that the world would be a better place if the United States was just one of 198 or so countries instead of being the last best hope for mankind.
I really believe he believes that.
I think Barack Obama goes out and he tells people that we're the greatest country in the world because he's got to say that.
If the president comes out and badmouths the country to us, you know, it's kind of like Yasser Arafat.
Yasser Arafat.
I think it's a shame.
As a Catholic, as a Roman Catholic, and I am a Vietnam veteran.
God bless you for your service.
I have circumnavigated the globe three times.
I've been to different countries, different cultures, engaged in the world.
Hey, so is he, and he's apologized for us and every one of them.
And with a very open mind to everything.
But I've always loved to come back home, and it really hurts me to see that everything that we were is being stripped away piece by piece by piece, only to rebuild it in the image of one individual.
Well, you know, the brilliance of that is that, well, maybe not so brilliant, but it'll be largely empty if it's created in his image.
But, you know, my brilliant point, I was going to Yasser Arafat and Barack Obama.
You know, Yasser Arafat used to go all over the world talking about peace with Israel, peace with the Jews, and then he'd go back home and start speaking to his own people, say, kill them all, kill them all.
And everyone would give him a pass.
This is a man who the American media has given him a pass going on the world apology tour, apologizing for everything the United States has ever done.
And then he comes home, oh, oh, no, I didn't bow to anybody.
Yes, you did.
We have to photographic evidence of the media.
Telegraph it to Vladimir.
Yes, you're doing all these things.
He has been apologizing for the United States.
I'm absolutely convinced that this president firmly and fully believes that the world would be safer if we were devalued as a nation, if we were reduced as a nation.
That's why you see him letting Iran go on and get the bomb.
That's why you see him refusing to play tough with China.
And, oh, we're going to play tough with Russia, though.
We're going to send a bunch of delegates who are gay to the Olympics.
That's how we're going to, yeah.
Okay.
Is it, should I say, yes.
Is it news to anyone that Brian Boitano is gay?
Because that was apparently a big story yesterday.
I thought it had been announced years ago.
But the president wants to send these people to Russia as some sort of protest.
Vladimir Putin is just laughing at us.
Well, he's not laughing at us.
He's laughing at the president.
He's laughing at us for re-electing the guy.
Barack Obama will not be satisfied until the United States is diminished as well.
He's speaking right now.
You people who are listening to me, I realize I've got a voice for print, but it is a whole lot better than having to listen to him speak up there, mumbling around, trying to justify.
Oh, it's going to be his final news conference of 2013.
And the press is out there.
Oh, oh, he's talking to us.
He's talking to us.
The nags at MSNBC are in rapture over Barack Obama deigning to come out and speak.
I just, oh, I, you know, Jennifer, you're absolutely right.
He doesn't want to remake it in his image, though.
He wants to remake it in the left's image, which is just an empty head filled with nothing and everything at the same time.
Let's go to Ron and Russell, Kansas.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Hey, Eric.
What's going on?
I just wanted to get my point right away, and it has to do with the A ⁇ E and Phil debacle.
You know, I think Phil is a pretty intelligent guy, and I don't think he's real happy with the contract he has with A ⁇ E.
I agree.
Simply because, you know, I've heard some interviews with him, and he doesn't like the fact that they didn't want them to prey on the show.
A ⁇ E wanted them to have internal fighting within the family.
Phil didn't agree.
And, you know, the A ⁇ E was bleeping certain words that didn't need to be bleeped just to make these people sound like people they weren't.
And I think this may be a business boy in an order to get out of the contract with A ⁇ E because let's face it, Phil doesn't need A ⁇ E as much as A ⁇ E needs Phil and Duck Dynasty.
I think any network would be more than happy to pick up Phil.
A ⁇ E can always go back to biography.
I mean, they can just run episode after episode of biography.
But Ron, yeah, you're right.
You're absolutely right.
They've got 14 million people watching a bunch of bearded guys in camo who make duck calls.
I mean, that's the show, a day in the life of some guys who make duck calls and talk about Jesus.
And they got 14 million people watching.
They knew what they were getting.
See, that's the thing.
These liberals who are in charge of popular culture, they're perfectly happy to use people like the Robertsons until it starts to offend their friends.
I read somewhere that A ⁇ E, they're just going to ride them.
This is all about them.
No, this is all about religion.
It's not about the money.
A ⁇ E is just being faithful to its religion in the same way Phil Robertson is being faithful to his religion.
I mean, God bless them for putting their religions ahead of prophets.
But A ⁇ E is putting its religion ahead of prophets.
Now, what's its religion?
Its religion is the secular left-wing religion of Hollywood.
Culture, you know, is upstream from politics.
Things happen in culture and over time trickle down into politics.
And the left makes everything political in culture.
They never liked having the Robertsons on.
They only liked the money.
They were ashamed to have them on.
I guarantee you, the executives at A ⁇ E weren't making eye contact at their parties, and now they can make eye contact again.
The Robertsons will wind up doing quite well, though.
They'll wind up somewhere.
I just, you know, it's unsurprising.
All right.
We got to take a profit center timeout.
Here are the angels reigning pennies from heaven here at the EIB network.
Eric Erickson in for Rush.
It is Eric Erickson in for Rush.
It is Open Line Friday as well.
1-800-282-2882.
I had a moment of brilliance earlier.
Yes, I did.
Look, I'm from the South.
I take them when I can get them.
I told you people, events change things.
Events do change things.
I mean, throughout the course of history, events have always changed things.
Those of you who are convinced the Democrats that they've got to lock on things, the Republicans were convinced they had a lock on things too.
And events change things.
Events change things for the Democrats as well.
There is a story.
These people, they just, they're the gift that keeps on giving.
Now, we don't want a lot of what they're giving us, but the New York Times.
With Obama in need, aides rethink plans to quit.
Yes, they're all looking at me in the controller like, it's there, they're, yes, yes, yes.
Some of President Obama's closest advisors are rethinking their plans to leave the White House to help him regain his political standing and avoid perceptions that staff members are escaping or being forced out.
I'm sorry.
I, I, I. I'm sorry.
Okay, so they've destroyed his presidency.
He's at like Richard Nixon levels of popularity.
I mean, George Bush is that Vanity Fair is running news articles about how George Bush is suddenly popular again.
So the people who have helped him screw everything up are saying, hey, let's stick around and keep screwing stuff up.
Well, you know, they've done everything wrong.
You know, even a blind squirrel can find a nut every once in a while.
A stop clock is right twice.
I mean, they can.
You can't make this stuff.
Isn't what this White House needs is like a laxative on staff?
Get them out of there?
No, they're going to keep them constipated in the White House.
They're going to keep the staff locked up in there and help the president keep screwing things up.
You can't events change things.
You can't make this stuff up.
They bring in what's his name, Podesta from the Clinton White House, who, let's be real honest.
Podesta came into the Clinton White House to help wrap it up.
They're bringing him in to help him wrap it up.
Now, Podesta, they brought him in and put him in charge of the Clinton White House.
After the elections, I do believe, if I remember that right, they're bringing him in now to go on and wrap up Obama's White House before the election.
This has got to be deeply galling to the Democrats.
I love it.
I mean, this is a man who has never helped Democrats get reelected.
I mean, before his reelection in 2012, every Democrat he campaigned for lost.
You've got Democrats.
He's like the bubonic plague coming in.
They don't want this guy anywhere around them.
You know, you people on the left, you can pat yourself on the back and say, we love our Obama Saya.
Obama Lackbar.
I mean, you can go out there and say whatever you want about how wonderful he is, but look at what's happening on the ground in these places.
They are running from him.
They're bringing in Podesta to begin winding it up.
And now, at a time where he should be rebuilding.
He should be legacy building.
What are they doing?
They're staying.
The real reason they're staying is because in Barack Obama's America, they can't get a job nowhere, as we would say in the South.
They can't.
There are no jobs unless they want to go to lobby.
And I guess they could go lobby, but you got Democrats in Congress so mad at them for screwing things up for them.
They don't want to hear from them.
Valerie Jared will stick around and make it all wonderful.
It must be great to be a president in this little bubble where you don't get told your poll numbers and everyone tells you it's all okay.
I mean, he's still talking, by the way.
I understand that there are some stations that have interrupted me to play the president.
Some of you are going to have to be medicated after listening to this man at this press conference.
And just remember, the same people who screwed it all up are staying.
How about we go take another phone call?
Why, it's someone else from Georgia, Danny and Cumming Georgia.
Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Hey, Eric, thanks for taking my call.
I just wanted to call and say it appears that we're watching a version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers right now with Paul Ryan.
I'm confused, and I'm just wondering if his motivation is that the establishment Republicans are saying that you're going to be our guy in 2016, and that he's hoping for that.
And that's the reason that he's going along the lines that he is.
Well, okay.
See, Danny, I have to tread carefully here because I don't want to say something and cause Rush to get a bunch of angry phone calls about something I've said.
So let me be diplomatic.
Paul Ryan voted for Medicare Part D, I believe.
He voted to restrict the income of CEOs of companies.
He voted for the General Motors bailout.
See, Paul Ryan is a conservative.
Let's just put that out there to keep everyone at ease.
But on the big issues of the day, he has a tendency of not siding with the conservatives.
I mean, look at the Ryan Murray plan.
He's had to twist himself in knots to claim a tax increase isn't a tax increase.
I think that Paul Ryan, it's not that he is backed by the establishment and gaming for 26.
I actually think he's gaming for Speaker.
He now wants to be in charge of the Ways and Means Committee.
I see, I still don't think that John Boehner is coming back.
I mean, maybe he is.
Just me personally, I wrote about this at RedState.com.
I just, you don't go out and go to war with conservatives as the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives if you want to continue to be a speaker.
At least I don't think so.
I think what's happening here is that they are angling for amnesty.
I think they're laying out their battle plans for amnesty.
I really, really do.
Let me explain what I mean, Danny.
What's happening here is that the Republican leaders are desperate for amnesty.
Ted Cruz the other day said if they pass amnesty, Harry Reid will keep the Senate.
I think he's right.
But I think that they are convinced they've got to have it.
And I think they're convinced that the conservatives are the ones who are making it impossible for them to do.
Same like when George Bush was president.
So what they did is the speaker had two press conferences where he started bashing conservatives.
My good friend Mike Needham over at Heritage Action for America, a wonderful, wonderful guy.
Coming after him, my buddy Matt Hoskins, the Senate Conservatives Fund, they're coming after these guys individually, naming them, naming their organizations, trying to discredit them because these are the groups leading the fight against amnesty.
They're the guys leading the fight against this immigration plan.
And so they're trying to make them the unpopular kids.
They're trying to get all of the fence seats to come over on their side into the pro-amnesty camp and then run through the elections and battle conservatives around the country, these primaries, because they're going to have primary fights around the country.
And then once that's over and conservatives say, hey, no, no, the elections may be over, but we don't want amnesty, they're going to say, well, you fence sitters, are you going to go sit at the unpopular kids' table or are you going to sit with us?
Are you going to go sit back with the kids you turned your back on?
Or are you going to stay with us?
I dare you to go sit at the unpopular kids' table.
I just, I think that, look, I mentioned earlier this polling that conservatives are upset with Republicans in Congress.
And I think that these Republicans who are upset with members of Congress, they're going to go into the primary season in 2014, and they're going to have a fight on their hands with the Republicans.
You're going to see intra-party fighting, something the Democrats aren't doing, by the way.
Again, events can change things, even for the Republicans.
But then we're going to have, once the primaries are over and conservatives can't challenge the establishment guys, then we'll get on to amnesty.
I mean, it's already being predicted.
I see it in the cars.
Look, I was a lawyer for six years.
I was an elected city councilman.
I just threw a pin at the Golden EIB microphone on accident.
They're sclaring at me now.
It didn't stick.
It didn't stick.
And I was a political consultant for a number of years.
I ran campaigns all over the country.
I see the playbook happening.
You've got to convince conservatives that the guys they think they like really aren't as cool as they think they like.
Because people, it's all about personality now.
Make the conservatives the unpopular guys, bring them into leadership, and then they'll say, You really want to go sit at the kids' table?
I don't think, I don't think it's a good idea.
Eric Erickson, in for Rush Limbaugh, folks.
We'll be back with more calls in a minute.
Eric Erickson, in for Rush Limbaugh, open line Friday, 1-800-282-2882.
Okay.
So if I sounded a little bit distracted in the last segment, I have a confession.
So I'm sitting in the Attila of the Huncher, looking through the glass into the control room, and I just see Snerdley in there just angry.
And I thought, my goodness, what have I said?
I'm never, they're not going to let me back on the air for Christmas Eve.
He's doing it again.
And I thought, oh my gosh, I'm in trouble.
So I went in there on break.
I said, what did I say to get myself in trouble?
No, it's some idiot caller that Snerdley just can't handle.
And holy cow, note to my call screener who is listening at home.
You need to take lessons from he's eating collars for lunch.
I mean, this is impressive.
Okay, I totally need to deviate because for some of you, you're going into Christmas.
You're going to be so overwhelmed next week.
While I'm coming back on Christmas Eve, unless I'm totally screwed things up, some of you are going to be so distracted.
So I just, I feel like I should spend a minute not going Phil Robertson on you, but just saying, I am a dad with two kids, an eight-year-old and a five-year-old.
My wife is at home.
My parents are in visiting.
I'm in New York.
They're in Georgia.
I'm flying back.
I know this is a crazy time of year.
Some of you, because of Barack Obama's economy, are just worried you're not going to be able to get nice things for Christmas.
You're absolutely stressed out.
This is the one time of year you shouldn't be stressed out.
You know, you really shouldn't be stressed out at Christmas.
But we as a society, we have made ourselves stressed out.
A buddy of mine wrote a book one time called God of the Mundane.
And it points out in the book that, you know, people that nowadays, particularly on TV, you get the preacher on TV on with Piers Morgan or something and give it all to Jesus and your life will be wonderful and you'll be a millionaire.
You'll be healthy, wealthy, and wise if you just give it all to Jesus.
That's not the way it works.
And, you know, my wife is a stay-at-home mom now.
Years ago, back in 2006, this week, actually, of 2006, my wife was given six months to live.
It was a mistake, thank goodness, but it was Christmas time 2006.
Let me tell you, I know about being worried at this time of year.
I know about the struggles of this time of year.
I've lived it, and I got to tell you, the world in life is so much bigger.
And we stress ourselves out.
I can look out the window and I can see people carrying bags all over the place.
Everybody out doing their last minute Christmas shopping.
And, you know, you hear the guy on TV saying, if you just love Jesus, you'll get healthy, wealthy, and wise.
You know, if you're at home changing diapers, if you're trying to balance your checkbook to make ends meet, you know, he's for you too.
And we forget the reason for this season.
And it sounds so ridiculous.
I'm not a rhyming guy.
I'm not a Dr. Seuss guy.
The whole reason for the season thing.
But, you know, I mean, just look at the first part of the word Christmas and you'll be able to figure it out.
And we lose all of that.
It's now become this commercial holiday.
I took my wife to London a couple of weeks ago.
We were, I was asked to speak at the Oxford Union.
I was asked to be a debater at the Oxford Union.
It'd been going on since 1823.
It was Black Tie Affair on a Thursday night.
My wife had never been to England.
We went to the stores.
My wife is a quilter.
Half my income goes to fabric so that she can make these wonderful quilts and things.
And so she wanted to go to this particular store.
It's a fabric store she loves, and they had a collection of Christmas stuff.
I mean, I struggled to find a nativity.
There were reindeer and there were icicles and there were green balls and red balls and blue balls and silver bells and you name it, but there were no nativity.
We just, we've totally lost it at this time of year as a society.
It's become so commercialized.
And you people are stressed out.
I'm stressed out.
I got to go down the street to FAO Schwartz before I get out of here and figure out how to lug stuff home in my suitcase tonight on the airplane.
Delta hopefully will be lenient with me.
And I got to go to the Met to get the Christmas ornament for this year for my wife so she doesn't like make me cook and do the dishes for the next three weeks.
There's no reason to be stressed out right now.
And you'll have to forgive me for deviating from politics and all that right now, but I just, I want to tell you, I'm there with you.
With the kids, with the shopping, with the gifts, with the struggle.
And I've had very bad Christmases.
I've had a Christmas where my wife was given six months to live.
Thank God it didn't turn out that way.
But I totally understand those of you who you're shivering in the mud in the rain, crying right now because something bad has happened to you.
There's a whole lot bigger than that.
And we look at this Phil Robertson thing.
We look at Deck Dynasty.
We look at what happened with that.
And we see people, good people, who the world just doesn't like.
You know, the Pope, I guess it was the last Pope.
Because, yeah, the last Pope, Ratziger, Benedict, said the most radical thing in the 21st century is to actually follow Christ because the world wants you to follow it.
Pop culture, God help us.
Too many people want to follow pop culture.
They want to get their hair cut like Justin Bieber and do that Miley Cyrus dance thing, whatever the heck that was.
My kid is horrified that she discovered Miley Cyrus was Hannah Montana.
Horrified by it, I tell you.
I just, there's so much more to life.
Don't be stressed out about buying presents.
You may not be able to buy the presents you want, but this time of year is about getting together with your family.
Enjoy them if you can.
Enjoy others if you don't have family around.
There's just so much more to it.
If you don't like your family, go get a new one, I guess.
But just enjoy the people you're with this holiday season.
I'm going long and getting sappy.
Eric Erickson in for Rush.
We'll be back.
It is no coincidence.
That man is still speaking.
I've been preempted by the president.
I swear to you, people, he's done it on purpose.
He has done it on purpose.
I started talking about how he wants us to be one of 198 countries and not the last best hope for mankind, but he can't really say, what does he do?
He rushes to the microphone.
I get bounced off the air and he's still speaking.
I guarantogon to you, in about two minutes and 30 seconds or so, he'll stop speaking.
Why?
Because the golden EIB microphone will go silent for the weekend.
Here's what's going to happen.
We're going into Christmas week.
This man is about to do a document dump to end all document dumps.
I guarantee you.
They're going to take advantage of Christmas week.
Every dirty, dark little secret people have been trying to pry out of them.
As soon as the golden EIB microphone goes on, they're going to do a document dump.
So they think they can't be held accountable.
You know what?
I'm coming back on Christmas Eve.
We'll hold them accountable.
We absolutely will hold them accountable.
It's just, this is what happens.
You pay attention.
Every administration does this.
They go into a big holiday weekend and they release all the stuff they don't want you to pay attention to that makes them look bad.
You stay vigilant over the weekend, people.
Stay vigilant.
It's going to happen.
I am Eric Erickson.
This is my very first time behind the Golden EIB microphone.
I appreciate you sticking around and listening.
Rush, well, he won't be back next week.
It'll be more of us.
There will be some marks.
I guarantee you.
If you're playing the lotto on Rush Guessos, always bet on Mark because there's going to be one.
And I will be back Christmas Eve.
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