And then E-W-Erickson, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all that social media stuff the kids these days like.
It's an open line Friday.
I'm going to try to be generous with phone calls today.
To start this hour, though, get into something Snerdley and I were bantering back and forth with earlier.
The 2016 presidential election.
Yes, the 2014 just ended, and everyone feels compelled to talk about 2016 now.
You may be tired of it by the time 2016 gets here.
Jeb Bush is now understanding what it's like to run for president.
He's getting the media proctological exam.
The New York Times is releasing his emails.
This Jonathan Martin story from Christmas Eve says that basically in a review of his emails, Jeb Bush wanted to cut the size of government.
He was a very conservative governor.
Here's the thing: this is what you need to know.
This is the only thing you need to know about 2016.
There are a host of candidates who will be running.
Bill Crystal at the Weekly Standard has a piece on it.
The more the merrier, he says.
And I'm just going to list the names of the people whose pictures are here.
You've got Marsha Blackburn, John Bolton, Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Lindsey Graham, Mike Cuckabee, John Kasich.
Is that Steve King?
He's got there, one of them.
Who does he have there?
Yeah, Peter King.
That's the one he's got.
He's got, I'd rather Steve than Peter, nonetheless.
Bobby Jindal, Mike Pence, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, Marco Rubio, Rick Santorum, Joe Scarborough, Scott Walker, Alan West.
He doesn't have Rand Paul.
Bill Crystal doesn't like Rand Paul.
Nonetheless, he's got all these other people here.
I want you to understand what's going to happen, particularly for guys like Chris Christie and Jeb Bush and Lindsey Graham.
And if Joe Scarborough were to run, it would happen to him.
Any of these people, Carly Fiorina, this will happen to all of them.
There are going to be a slew of stories from the Washington Post, from the New York Times, from CNN, from MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, all of them.
These are conservatives who aren't conservative enough for the crazy wingers in the GOP.
These are conservatives who rush Limbaugh, Eric Erickson, like that.
They hate.
They must be good people.
There will be stories like the one in the New York Times that Jeb Bush was a reasonable conservative.
Rand Paul will probably be in there as well.
He'll be the reasonable guy who opposed Ted Cruz, shutting down the government, whatnot.
Ted Cruz, guys like Ted Cruz, Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal, they'll be the epitome, probably Mike Pence as well, the epitome of the crazy radical right-winger.
These will be the guys who will destroy America, lead us back into war, rev up the NSA, read all of your emails, and deny you the right to have an abortion.
They will break up and cause your divorce of your gay marriage.
These are the crazy guys.
Yes, look, I mean, yeah, they'll adopt the Obama NSA policy.
You're right, Mr. Shirley.
So these guys will be the crazy wingers.
The Bushes and the others, they will be the conservatives that the New York Times can rally around until they become the nominee.
And should they become the nominee, the moment Jeb Bush becomes the nominee of the Republican Party, should that happen, the New York Times on day one after he secures the nomination will have a headline above the fold that Jeb Bush eats puppies, kills children, and shoves grandma off cliffs, and that's just for breakfast.
By lunchtime, he annihilates liberals.
He hates gays.
He sits in the backseat of a limo driven by someone in blackface.
He's a total racist.
At night, he sleeps under white sheets.
Hit, hit, hit.
That will be the New York Times the day after any of these people become the Republican nominee.
Look at what they did to Mitt Romney in 2012.
Now, Romney was not my favorite in 2012, but they played Romney as the reasonable guy.
The Rick Perry is just, he's throwing out red meat.
The Herman Kane isn't serious.
The Rick Santorum, well, he hates everybody.
And they would all rise, and then the media would tear them down, and they would fall.
And only after every candidate, this was the thing that struck me about Romney in 2012.
Go back to the Real Clear Politics polling average.
Every candidate had to take the lead first.
And once they had all burned out, ending with Rick Santorum, then Romney was able to consolidate and become the nominee.
And the moment it happened, they were back to Seamus the dog on top of the station wagon and how he's a horrible person and his wife's a horrible person.
His kids are terrible people and on and on and on and on.
The media tries to pick the nominee.
Well, look what they're doing, for example, at Ted Cruz.
Now, I know Ted Cruz.
He's a friend of mine.
I like Ted Cruz.
In fact, so the Atlantic is doing a profile on me.
And I mention in The Atlantic that I think as far as conservatives go, they view Ted Cruz as all the Beatles rolled into one person.
The conservatives love Ted Cruz.
Ted Cruz and Mike Lee were two of the only people willing to stand up and actually force the Senate to debate funding the president's executive amnesty program.
They're willing to fight.
And we need people who are willing to fight.
And those are exactly the people the Republican establishment and the media both hate.
They don't want anyone to fight the status quo.
They like the status quo.
They all profit from the status quo.
There will be story after story after story after story trying to destroy Ted Cruz.
I guarantee you.
I suspect he's going to run for president.
In fact, I wonder.
I went back and looked at stuff I was writing in 2007 at Red State.
And in January of 2007, it was abundantly obvious at that time who all the candidates were going to be.
Right now, the only person officially out of the gate, well, two people, I guess, Rick Santorum is actually out of the gate officially, and now Jeb Bush.
The media ignored Rick Santorum, but Jeb Bush is now out of the gate, and the media has been focused on Jeb Bush.
But there really haven't been a lot of other candidates to come out of the gate yet.
There hasn't been a real focus on the other candidates yet.
They haven't declared yet.
I suspect it'll be coming.
Jeb Bush did it right before the Christmas season.
If you were to announce your presidential campaign between Christmas and New Year's, I don't know that I would blame the media for ignoring your bad timing.
But I suspect they're coming soon.
And I suspect a guy like Ted Cruz is going to run.
You know, there's already, there's a story out today about Marco Rubio possibly running saying that Jeb Bush isn't going to keep him out.
The media believes these set narratives.
We're allowed one guy from Wisconsin, so it can't be Paul Ryan running.
It's got to be Scott Walker running.
We're allowed one guy from Florida.
So it's either got to be Jeb or it's got to be Rubio.
It can't be both.
I'm surprised they haven't done the Texas one with Perry and Cruz.
It's got to be just one of you because only apparently the Constitution says only one person per state can run.
Not that it does, but the media seems to think that.
They're going to do hit jobs on these guys.
They just are.
Except the people the media really likes.
But once that person becomes the nominee, then they'll go all in.
Here's, you know, I want to invite all of these guys because for various reasons, I like a lot of the field.
In fact, most of the people who would be running for president are people since my time at Red State and then on TV and radio, I've actually helped and supported and become friends with.
Bobby Jindal is a friend.
Rick Perry is.
Ted Cruz is.
Mike Pence is.
A lot of these guys I know and like personally and feel it as the success of the conservative movement over time that when we have this field, as Bill Kristol notes, it'll be the most substantial field since 1980.
When you think about it, that's actually true.
Here's the other thing.
Since 1980, with the exception of John McCain in 2008, and I'm not a John McCain fan, but with the exception of McCain, every Republican nominee since 1980 opposed Ronald Reagan in 1980.
And they have been staggeringly unsuccessful, with the exception of George W. Bush, whose father opposed Reagan, but then went on to be his vice presidential candidate, nominee, and became vice president.
Most of the Republicans have been staggeringly unsuccessful.
They have wanted to run as Democrat light.
They have wanted to not make people mad.
They haven't wanted to rock the boat.
They've wanted to play nice with the Democrats.
They've wanted to play nice with the press.
I'm doing my annual Red State thing.
We have a big gathering, we call it the Red State Gathering every year.
We're going to do it in Atlanta in 2015 in August.
I want to invite all these guys to come down and talk about their vision for, you know, it'll be 2020.
Whoever the next president is, their first term will end in 2020.
So what should the country look like?
And here's my advice for them: is those of you who the media are saying nice things about don't believe the media likes you.
For the rest of us, if the media is saying something nice about them, we should be wary of them.
We should be very wary of the people.
I mean, just take, for example, I don't mean to filibuster on Ted Cruz.
I like the guy, and I think he's a good fighter.
The media hates him.
The Republican establishment in Washington hates his guts.
Same with Rick Perry, or same with Bobby Jindal.
I had a conversation with Jindal a while back, and he said one of the most frustrating things in dealing with people in Washington of either party is that they say, well, we just can't do it this way, or we've never done it this way before.
That doesn't mean you can't do it.
It just means you don't want to do it.
It means you don't want to change.
Washington needs to change.
And the guys the media likes are the ones who don't want to change Washington.
The guys the media likes are the ones who are happy with the status quo.
The guys the media likes are the ones who they can play the populist message, but really Wall Street, they're cool with Wall Street.
They're cool with labor unions.
They don't want to rock the boat.
These milquetoast Republicans who don't want to do anything to shake up the establishment.
They're perfectly happy with executive amnesty.
They may think Congress should have done it, but they're okay with the outcome.
I don't want people who are okay with outcomes in Washington.
As conservatives, I don't think any of us should want people who are okay with outcomes in Washington.
It's one of my beefs with Republicans in Congress right now.
They pounded their chest saying, no, no, no, we're going to fight him.
And then the president did his executive amnesty and the Republicans funded it.
And the two guys who stood up to stop him, Cruz and Mike Lee from Utah, well, not only are they attacking them, they put out a hit job on Mike Lee, who's one of the nicest people to ever walk the corridors of Congress.
If you've never met Mike Lee, I mean, the guy could be a living saint.
He's just so generous and kind.
I love the guy.
He's one of the nicest people you'll ever meet.
And they're savaging him as some sort of lunatic.
You've actually got supposed conservatives claiming Mike Lee doesn't know the rules of the Senate.
Mike Lee is one of the, he will be one day, I think, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Probably one of the smartest people in Washington, D.C.
And you've got these people coming out saying he doesn't know the rules of the Senate.
No, he knows the rules.
He just knows the people in Washington don't want to fight for anything, and he's willing to fight for stuff.
So now they're attacking him, calling him a lunatic infringe because he wants to rock the status quo.
I cannot imagine the American people are happy with the status quo in Washington, D.C., which is one of the great things about the 2016 field.
The majority of the people in the Republican Party who will run for president, whether you like them or not, whether you think they're conservative enough or not, one of the great things about them is that the overwhelming majority of them will not be creatures of Washington, D.C., unlike the Democratic Party.
Eric Erickson in for Rush.
We'll be back with your phone calls.
Welcome back, Eric Erickson filling in for Rush Limbaugh.
Merry Christmas to you.
The phone number, 800-282-2882.
It is an open line Friday.
Many of you have found me on Twitter at E.W. Erickson, and you've all got the same question.
It was a Glock 19 fourth generation 9mm.
That was my Christmas present.
I got my wife one for Mother's Day.
I didn't get her bullets.
I was smart enough not to get her bullets with her gun.
Nonetheless, she's decided we should go shooting together, not at each other, but at like silhouette figures.
So she got me one in return for Christmas, and we're good to go.
It all comes out of the same source of funds and whatnot.
So there you have it.
Now, let us go to the phones, shall we?
How about, well, Dick in North Dakota, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Hi, Eric.
Thanks for filling in for Rush.
Longtime listener here.
Excellent.
I've got an uplifting message for this time of the year as we've been hearing lots of kind of discouraging messages.
So anyway, I'd just like to wish everyone, including liberals, a belated Merry Christmas from North Dakota.
Is there snow on the ground there?
I'm sorry about that.
Is there snow?
We have a little bit of snow, but it warmed up and a good amount of it has disappeared.
I see you're benefiting from global warming right there.
It's all the oil you're abstracting.
Anyway, we're giving the gift this year to everybody of lower gas prices, courtesy of North Dakota fracking in the Bakken oil patch.
And then, of course, affordable electric prices, courtesy of North Dakota open-pit coal mines.
Well, you know, Dick, there are a slew of stories out there that someone needs to bomb North Dakota because you're causing global warming and you're causing destabilization of the Middle East.
No good deed goes unpunished, Dick.
You guys are relieving poor Americans of their high energy costs thanks to Barack Obama.
You're relieving Americans of their high fuel costs.
I've got an SUV.
I've got a gas-guzzling Tahoe.
And I mean, it takes a lot for me to get my family around.
And gas prices, because of you people of North Dakota, have come down.
And so I'm thanking you, but liberals hate your guts right now, Dick.
Just they'll never be happy, Dick.
Well, I know they won't, but the interesting thing is that we're able to do all of this with some of the cleanest air in the United States, so it kind of puts a...
Because you're stealing it from the Canadians, Dick.
You're stealing that clean air from the Canadians.
I got my radio producer in Atlanta, he's from Montana, and I tell him the same thing.
The wilderness up there, you're just stealing all the good stuff from Canada.
I'm sure I read that in the New York Times somewhere.
That's why it is up there.
But seriously, there's actually a story that Hawaii had a blizzard.
Believe it or not, the mountains on the big island were covered in snow.
It didn't last long, mind you.
But the big island, the mountains were covered in snow, and immediately the left started blaming global warming.
Mind you, when there's a cold front that comes through the south, as there is every year at this time of year, because it's something called winter, and I point out on Twitter or on radio or anyone else does that we're at record low temperatures, it's just a one-time event.
You can't ridicule it and think global warming doesn't exist.
But the moment there's a snowflake on the top of a peak in Hawaii, by God, it is global warming.
And the left is hysterical over it.
And of course, they're blaming North Dakota.
They're blaming American oil production.
The president has been out there touting that we are producing more oil than we've ever produced.
Whatever happened to peak oil, by the way, back in the 70s, we were supposed to be running out of oil, and all the liberals were excited.
We were going to go back to wind and solar power, just like in the dark ages.
Now, all of a sudden, we're producing all of this oil, and they are absolutely apoplectic that we're daring to do it.
Now, interestingly enough, it's worth noting that when the president goes out and says that we are producing record oil production in the United States, more oil is coming out of land in the United States than ever before.
He's taking credit for something he has done his derndest to stop.
He has shut down any attempt to produce oil from federal lands.
And of course, the federal government owns half of everything west of the Mississippi, it seems like.
It's been private people on private property in North Dakota and Texas and Louisiana and elsewhere producing the oil that is bringing down the oil prices that's helping jumpstart the American economy.
The headlines the other day about how much we're starting to grow again because of cheap oil.
Saudi Arabia is all upset that we're producing this much oil.
People are wondering if there's a conspiracy.
The left will never be happy about this.
And the president's trying to take credit for it.
Something he's done his best to stop, including, as Dick mentioned, the coal in North Dakota.
This White House has declared a war on coal.
They want to shut it all down.
They want to hurt the poor people.
They want to drive up the cost of energy.
And yet, we're doing something right in the country.
Private businesses, private people on private property, when left to their own devices, can do things well.
It's a lesson the Democrats and many Republicans in Washington could stand to learn.
Welcome back.
It is an open line Friday, 800-282-2882.
I'm doing good this time.
I'm not accidentally giving out my cell phone number for people to call.
One observation before I go back to the phones: the New York Times and the Washington Post, they're running all these story atheist screeds.
Jesus isn't real, God isn't real, Christmas is made up.
We shouldn't be celebrating Christmas.
It's just another day for everyone else.
It should be a day for the Christians, just another workday for Christians.
First of all, who doesn't want to give up a day of work?
I mean, seriously, only atheists are complaining.
But the other thing is, I would note that the number of article anti-Christmas articles has gone up in direct proportion to the number of Kwanza articles going down.
It seems like we're finally moving beyond that fabricated holiday from the felon.
One of my, I have to be honest here with no disrespect to any of the other guest hosts of the Rush Limbaugh program.
My longtime favorite, because he was a friend of mine, too, is Tony Snow, who I just adored Tony Snow.
And one of my favorite columns he ever wrote, he was a syndicated columnist, is he wrote the truth about Kwanzaa, which a couple of years after Tony had passed away, I had to pick that back up and write my own article on it to keep the tradition of life that he was brave enough to expose.
I just, oh, a felon came up with it.
I just, it's crazy.
All right, I'm going to be generous and keep taking phone calls.
Alan is calling from Chicago, Illinois.
Alan, how are you?
Good afternoon.
Yes, Chicago, Illinois, the aspiring third world country.
Well, Detroit's got you beat.
I'm a libertarian.
Believe me, I'm trapped here.
I can't wait to leave.
I'll turn the lights out, though, when I go.
You know, I want to go back to the subject you were talking about earlier, and that is the protests that are going on.
I'm 63 years old.
I grew up in Chicago.
There's an area of Chicago called Marquette Park, which is often referred to as the Selma of the North.
The young protesters, many of whom I find, interestingly are not black, don't realize the battle then was a just battle.
They were fighting for open housing.
They were fighting for equality of opportunity.
The right to vote.
Go ahead.
The right to vote.
The right to vote.
There were many just causes.
What these folks want is redistribution.
They want to take your property and make it theirs.
These are selfish people.
These are not people that are there because of the deaths of these young men.
These are opportunists.
And it makes me sick because my father had a business in Chicago in the black community.
Every day I dealt with black folks, deal with them now in my business.
And I find that the older generation is not angry.
They're not willing to go out and protest.
They've lived a good life in a great country and they know it.
And these young people better read their history and realize they're in a much better time than was 50 or 100 years ago.
And thank God.
You know, David, let me say this.
Here we come to the moment of the Rush Limbaugh program where his guest hosts cause us controversy, perhaps.
I grew up in the Middle East.
I grew up in Dubai.
My dad worked for an oil company.
We were there for 10 years, from 5 to 15, basically.
I lived in Dubai.
And I recognize to some degree I have a tenure on this subject.
But I've got to tell you, having lived in Georgia for the last 20 years, gone to school in Georgia, had my host of liberal professors and whatnot, I have a sense that the generational aspect that you're talking about, the younger people protesting, and that reminds me, as a total tangent and aside, in Ferguson, you know, the majority of the people who were arrested there in the protest, they weren't even from Ferguson.
They weren't even from Missouri.
They were a bunch of people bust in from New York City and the like.
Here's the situation.
When you are told forever that you are a victim, that it is not your fault, that you're not to blame for your station in life, that the white man is out to get you, the Republican Party is aligned to get you, the second coming of the KKK.
At some point, you probably will decide, you know what, it isn't my fault.
I'm not to blame.
I'm just the victim here.
I'm going to lash out.
And we see this time and time again around the country.
I mean, look at the devastation democratic policies have wrought in the black community, in the inner city.
And when you raise the subject, like Paul Ryan earlier this year raised the subject about single black mothers and the struggle they face and the breakup of the black family.
And he was pilloried as a racist by the left.
They went on TV to attack him, to denounce him.
Meanwhile, friends of mine in the black community, preachers in the black community, single mothers I know in the black community, and I'm their head.
Yes, there is a problem.
And you're not allowed to talk about it because you're a white guy, you're a Republican, or what have you.
People have profited from the divisions in this country.
People have profited.
You've got Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and the like.
They go out there, they do these protests, they tell these people they're victims, they're not to blame.
And at some point, when you keep hearing over and over and over, the deck is stacked against you, the man is stacked against you, the man is coming after you.
Well, at some point, you decide you don't have to take responsibility for your actions, that you are the victim.
When I was a lawyer, I was a lawyer for about six years, and I had to do indigent criminal defense.
It was part of being a lawyer where I was at the time.
It was mandatory that you had to do indigent criminal defense.
And I will never forget one time I had a guy.
In fact, I believe it was one of my very first indigent defense cases.
And I was pretty sure the guy was crazy because he was arrested.
He had drugs in his car.
He had crack.
He had marijuana.
And I was trying to convince him he needed to plead guilty.
They were in his car.
The bags had his fingerprints on them.
And I kept asking him why he wasn't going to plead guilty.
And he said he was set up.
And I asked him who set him up.
And he said the man set him up.
And I asked him which man.
Now, again, I've told you people, I grew up in the Middle East.
I'm a little bit naive on some of these things.
The guy kept telling me that the man set him up.
And he wouldn't tell me who the man was, but the man looked like me.
And so I finally had to go up to the judge and ask the judge, the DA and I, we go up there and I asked the judge if I can get a psychological evaluation on my client.
She asked me why, and I keep, I'm telling her, well, the drugs found in his car, not in dispute.
Fingerprints on the bags were his, not in dispute.
But he says someone planted them.
It's a conspiracy against him.
And it's some man who did it.
And he seems to know the identity of the man, but he won't tell me the identity of the man.
He just tells me that it looks like me.
And the judge got the funniest smirk on her face, like, oh, you newbie, right out of law school, I'm about to educate you.
And she leans over past me, and she looks at my client, and she says to him, She says, Do you mean the man?
And he nods, the man.
And she looks at me and she says, Mr. Erickson, he means the white man, the police.
True story.
It was just an educational moment for me growing up being a lawyer right out of law school.
That really was one of my first indigent defense cases.
And this guy was convinced the man had set him up.
And that is the rhetoric used so often.
The man is coming to get you.
Well, when you think there is a man and the deck is stacked against you because of that man and that man is going to come get you and ruin you and that's why you're going to jail, well then you decide you don't have to take responsibility for any of your actions.
The moment we can move beyond that and recognize we are responsible for our own actions, we are responsible for our station in life, we don't all just belong to the government, we belong to our communities and our families and whatnot, the moment we get to that point, I think, the moment we will be better off as a society.
But then the Democrats are deeply invested in us never getting to that point.
Eric Erickson in for Rush Limbaugh will be back.
I've got two kids, a nine-year-old daughter and a son who just turned six two weeks ago.
And Santa Claus brought them ginormous bean bags with their names on the sides of them embroidered on the sides.
And so we're headed up to the grandparents' house for Christmas.
And the six-year-old looks very earnestly at his mother and asks if she can take his giant whoopee cushion with us to grandmother's.
Yes.
One day he'll figure out that a beanbag.
Okay, back to the phones.
I'm going to go to San Diego, California on this Open Line Friday on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Gloria, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Thank you for taking my call, and I want to say Happy New Year to all of our retired veterans and all of the military serving around the world.
Happy New Year to everyone.
This is about my dad.
He served in World War II when we had to go at it with Japan.
And this has to do with the Sony Corporation as well, which is a Japanese-owned company.
And they have their Hollywood consorts that seem to have gotten themselves into a whole lot of trouble picking on North Korea.
The Japanese have a long, notorious history of picking on the neighbors and doing little things to get itself in trouble.
It doesn't matter what it is, they can find a way to do it.
And I am really, really upset that that crowd is hiding behind the U.S. Constitution and the First Amendment and their failure in business claiming it's free speech.
No, it isn't.
They had a problem that their insurance isn't going to cover.
So they're going to be able to do that.
Their insurance may actually cover the loss of the public.
So now, let me ask you, Gloria, I'm trying to clarify.
First of all, if I had to guess, I would have guessed that your parents were of the World War II generation because of your first name.
I'm 70 years old.
My dad was out to sea when I was born.
Well, God bless him when the service.
Gloria, let me see if I understand you right.
You think that the Japanese produced this movie to antagonize their neighbors?
Absolutely.
They have a history of doing it.
It doesn't matter what it is.
It could be World Cup.
It doesn't matter what it is.
Well, you know, okay, let me bring some clarity to this if I can.
My understanding is that the Sony Corporation in Japan is pretty arm's length from the Sony Picture Studio in Hollywood, and that these were two Hollywood liberals who want to get a lot of, by the way, the movie is terrible.
I haven't seen it.
North Korea was actually going to do us a favor by denying us the ability to see a movie.
If anything, this movie has just, they've saved Sony pictures as a result.
These two Hollywood actors have completely saved Sony.
I want to say this.
Okay.
If there wasn't anything wrong with that crap they're cranking, why didn't they take it to Japan and let it run there first?
Sony Corporation controls what they do in the Golden Ghetto.
Well, you know, okay, what I have – wow, Gloria.
I read an article the other day that the Japanese involved in Sony were upset about the movie because they're trying to do some sort of negotiations with the North Koreans over some hostages North Korea's been holding, and they felt like the movie was disruptive to their interests.
I don't think that the Sony Corporation in Japan actually really wanted the movie to be made.
I actually, I think it's Hollywood Liberals.
Now, I understand how your father and his view of Japanese from World War II could be compared to the Hollywood liberals.
I totally get that.
They are Hollywood Liberals now the most destructive force since our enemies in World War II, more likely than not.
But I don't think there's actually that correlation there, though.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
See, Gloria, Snerdley's chiming in here, I don't think we should ever, ever think that the North Koreans are on the side of righteousness here.
The North Koreans are not.
I will say this, though.
Our response, let's just go on and give the President of the United States a small bit of credit for disrupting the internet in North Korea for 10 hours in response to them disrupting Sony Pictures.
Our response, our proportionate response, was to disrupt the porn viewing habits of six North Koreans for 10 hours.
That's quite a credible level of response by the President of the United States towards the North Koreans.
We should not say, in fact, the Japanese are now our allies.
They have been very good to us and we have to them.
And it seems the Japanese government was very upset about this movie being made when they found out what it was.
But I think it was actually two tasteless Hollywood liberals with bad senses of humor who put out this movie.
In fact, I dare say that this could have been a sneak plot by North Korea.
Just bear with me, folks.
I've got a theory here.
Let me run this by you.
This could have been a sneak plot by the North Koreans who are so upset by the Senate torture report and what they believe Dianne Feinstein to be saying, that we tortured people, we waterboarded people, we subjected them to terrible music, Katy Perry and the like, that they devised a plot to get us into movie theaters to be waterboarded by, metaphorically speaking,
of course, by two Hollywood actors by sitting through one of the most atrocious movies ever made and us then willingly being able to do it.
In fact, the North Koreans, they were probably at home plotting this out, laughing with a greater sense of humor than Seth Rogan and James Franco by saying they're going to disrupt Sony, make it about the First Amendment, and convince Americans to willingly depart from their money and go be tortured for two hours by a horrible comedy at a movie theater.
I just, they were probably genius.
And the president's response was to disrupt the porn-watching habits on the internet of six North Koreans who are already overfed.
I mean, nobody in North Korea watches the internet.
If you watch the internet in North Korea, it's either state propaganda or you get killed by the North Korean government.
I just, no, Gloria, I got to disagree with you.
I don't think the Japanese were doing this to start a war or harm relations with North Korea, but I think I probably better not go any further.
I don't want to disparage Gloria and her father and their view of the Japanese.
I bet, though, that on Pearl Harbor Day, they don't go out for sushi.
We'll be right back.
Snerdley's going to get me in trouble here.
I was just telling, we were just, we were amazed by just Gloria and her distrust of Japanese because her father fought in World War II.
And I was just saying I may or may not be related to someone who was upset at my suggestion we name our child, in a hypothetical scenario, William, because of Sherman from 150 some odd years ago.
I'm over in Snerdley didn't buy into this story, but I'll tell you guys, I'm staying with my in-laws over in Carrollton, Georgia for a couple days.
We're visiting for Christmas and driving into Atlanta to do the show.
And so my wife's hometown of Carrollton, they've got these, it's a standard southern town with the monument to the Confederate soldiers, and it faces, they all face north.
If you're not sure where the north is and you can't figure it out by the sun and you're in the south, just find a Confederate soldier memorial and they all face towards the north.
And this lovely little downtown area of Carrollton, Georgia, they've got their Confederate war memorial with their statue of their soldier facing north.
And when they remodeled the courthouse, they had to put it on a flatbed truck and move it to a new location.
And every time that truck turned the corner, they had to stop and turn the statue so it always faced north.
The amount of time and energy invested in keeping that sucker facing north.
It's a delightful statue.
Lovely little downtown area.
Wonderful place.
But that's like it all over the south.
So I guess that if some people can cling to these things for 150 years, then Gloria and her dad can cling to distrusting the Japanese 70 years later when they're now our ally against bad guys in North Korea.