RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, let me begin here with an apology to you. There were a couple of occasions — and maybe more than that — in the previous hour, where I lost my famous composure. I got a little angry. This is something I try to avoid, because on so much of talk radio, so many people do it. They just get on the air and start shouting and raving and ranting and sound like lunatics. I have studiously attempted to avoid that, but there were a couple of instances in the previous hour. One time I even tried to count to ten to avoid exploding, and I only got to five. I didn’t get there. It was conduct unbecoming your host, and, if it bothered you, I apologize for it. I have tried to regain my composure during the top of the hour. I think, ladies and gentlemen, as I look at the fires — and I listen to the Democrats politicize the fires, and try to blame the war in Iraq and blame global warming and blame George W. Bush — I am reminded, as I watch these fires, that this is dangerous. These fires are dangerous. You know, going in and putting these fires out while you’re evacuating — they’ve evacuated 900,000 people and are on the way to evacuating a million.
It’s the largest evacuation in the history of the state of California. The people fighting these fires are in grave, grave danger. It is unsafe. I think it’s time to bring the firefighters home. I think it’s time to bring the firefighters out of there. It’s just too dangerous. They’re in there on a false premise anyway, that they can put out the fire. We can’t win against the fire, folks, just like we can’t win in Iraq. So if the liberals want to politicize this, then I ask them to be consistent and admit defeat to the fire. Admit we can’t beat the fire, and get these brave firefighters out of there and get our brave National Guard troops that are on the job out of there. Get the Marines from Camp Pendleton that were out there fighting. Get ’em out of there because we can’t win this! We’re not going to beat this fire. We have to let it burn itself out. We have no… (interruption) Yeah, it’s just going to be back next year, anyway. We’re never going to get rid of it. The fire is just going to come back. It’s just a shame. Putting so many brave people at risk there, fighting a fire that we can’t win. Sound familiar, ladies and gentlemen?