RUSH: So Obama’s in LA yesterday. I had a friend who landed at LAX about 6:30 — well, that would be 9:30 Eastern, 6:30 local time — and said the place was shut down. He couldn’t get anywhere. Obama was in town. He was starting to loosen up as he was getting in the car heading to wherever he was going from the airport.
So I came across this story: “Witnesses say a pregnant woman in labor was prevented by authorities from crossing a Los Angeles street to a hospital yesterday because the road had been closed for … Obama’s impending motorcade.” In other words, Obama was not nearby. He was going to be passing by the location at some point. He wasn’t there yet.
If you’ve never lived anywhere where a president shows up, you cannot really imagine what happens to that area. They close airports for the time he’s on the ground in many cases. Now, they can’t get away with… Well, sometimes even in New York they do. Now, I remember I went to Houston. It’s where I met Gorbachev. I went to Houston at what was then Reliant Stadium. No, not Reliant Stadium. It was the baseball park.
It was George H. W. Bush’s 80th birthday. They had a whole weekend of festivities and I went to the Saturday night thing. I flew into Houston-Hobby which is one of the two major airports there you can use. I went over to the thing, and it’s where I met Gorbachev. I had my picture taken with Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev.
You know what? That picture… (chuckling) His birthmark was on my forehead when that picture ended up on my website. At any rate, I met Gorbachev, had good time with some people, but I didn’t stay for the whole thing. I left early ’cause I had to fly back. So I went back to the airport thinking, “Cool. I’m gotta get a head start and get outta here.”
I wasn’t allowed to leave until George W. Bush left because the president was also there. Nobody was allowed to take off while he was on the ground at the baseball stadium. So I may as well not have left. I sat on my airplane for three hours before I could get out of there. For street traffic, it’s just as bad. They’ll close down streets hours before the president’s motorcade’s supposed to even get there.
It just makes mess of everything. It was so bad in LA yesterday that people who claimed to be Obama supporters started tweeting angry, frustrated things, and then I saw this story. This “pregnant woman in labor was prevented by authorities from crossing a Los Angeles street to a hospital Wednesday because the road had been closed for … Obama’s impending motorcade.
“The unidentified woman was barred from walking the few hundred feet to the hospital for at least 30 minutes as authorities waited for the president’s motorcade to [show up and] pass by…” One witness said, “I felt bad for her. It does happen when Obama comes to LA or I’m sure anywhere else. It paralyzes the city. It does make it complicated. You can’t do the things you had set out to do because the president is in town,'” which includes, apparently, giving birth.
So I think the Republicans have an ad here: “Obama Denies Woman Reproductive Rights,” and then you could ask a question: “What if she was crossing the street to Planned Parenthood to get an abortion? Do you think they would have let her cross?” (interruption) What are you smirking in there for? I think it’s a darn good question.
Here’s a woman who wants to cross-street and give birth. Can’t. Obama’s due! “I have to get across the street for an abortion, and it has to be done within a few minutes. I gotta go! There’s Planned Parenthood!” Okay, okay. Obama would have approved it. “Come on.” I know it may be a bit of a stretch, but it could be a fun ad.
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