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Bill Cunningham, the Grand American.
Of course, today reds Baseball is off.

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They're in Milwaukee Friday, Saturday,
and Sunday in the Big Tree Game

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set reds Andy. You play their
best then. But until then, on

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January the eleventh, I can recall
when this event took place. A metro

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bus driver is facing only misdemeanor charges
in the crash that happened on January the

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eleventh. His name is forty seven
year old Dion Willis. He's been charged

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for four counts of vehicular homicide,
one count of vehicular homicide and a crash

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that killed eighty seven year old Beverly
Kenny. And this fine woman was in

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a crosswalk with the signal and for
some reason unknown, the bus was attempting

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to turn right on a Duck Creek
Road from Dana and failed to yield to

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a pedestrian inside the crosswalk with a
walk signal in her favor. And joining

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us now is Rex Elliott. He's
the fine personal injury attorney representing the family.

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And Rex Elliott Welcome to the Bill
Cunningham Show. And Rex, can

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you tell the American people? I
kind of briefly went over some of the

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facts. What are the facts as
you know them to be at this point,

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Yeah, Bill, The reality is
that Beverly Kenny. First, let

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me tell you about her. She
was an eighty seven year old going on

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fifty. She walked four to five
miles a day. She was scheduled to

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go on a three hundred and thirty
mile Pike ride from Pittsburgh to DC.

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A week ago. She volunteered at
you know, Kennedy's all throughout the city

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of Cincinnati. This stamp not only
lost an extraordinary person, the community of

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Cincinnati lost the servant. What happened
on January eleventh is she was headed down

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the construction side of the new Cincinnati
Public Radio to check it out. She

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was on her daily walk, perfectly
sunny day. She was on her way

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back home. Dion willison Is fourteen
to sixteen ton City bus saw her the

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entire way as he was approaching that
intersection. He sat at that intersection for

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twenty five seconds while Beverly was standing
right there on the corner. She got

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the green walk light with about ten
feet across the road and Dion Willis made

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that wide turn and ran rover killed
her. And then by the way after

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he ran her over he got out
of his bus, he checked it out,

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went back in the bus, and
backed it up again, with the

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human life beneath his machine. Now
the reality is that Dion willis Is driving

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history indicated that he never should have
even been hired by Sorda. He had

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been fired from two prior garbage truck
jobs for safety violations. He had six

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licensed suspensions and three crashes on his
record before he even applied with Soorda.

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And then he gets to Soorta and
during training he said, he told him

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he has tunnel vision. They said
he doesn't multitask well. They said he

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takes un necessarily wide turns. They
had all kinds of problems with him in

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the training situation, and then they
hire him in February of twenty and eighteen,

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And in December of twenty and eighteen, he runs a red light and

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puts a twenty four year old kid, to Carlo Fowler, in a wheelchair

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for the rest of his life.
To Carlo Fowler was broadsided by Willis.

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He spent two months in a coma, two years in a hospital, and

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is now in a wheelchair for the
rest of his life. He had a

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long list of driving citations another six
crashes while he was a sort of driver,

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and at the time he hit Beverly
Kenney on January eleventh, he was

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driving on a suspended license. I
mean, it's unfathomable how this guy was

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behind the wheel of the city bus
as far as Beverly herself eighty seven years

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old, going on fifty five.
It is miles from the incident site to

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the new construction of Public Radio downtown. So this woman had to be vibrant

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and alive and walking around the city. And as many do, especially when

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you get elderly, you pay attention
to signals. It says walk or don't

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walk, And you're saying Beverly waited
until the walk light came on. Then

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she walked into a mark crosswalk.
And there's every indication the drivers, the

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driver knew she was there, right. It was a perfectly sunny afternoon.

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Her shadow stretched across the street.
And we're talking about a rule follower here.

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Beverly Kenny, on her daily walks, would many days pick up crash

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along the road. That was her
mission was to improve the city of Cincinnati.

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She volunteered at La Soup, a
soup can kitchen. She volunteered at

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ten thousand villages, an apparel and
you know, sort of a trinket place

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for underprivileged folks. She was a
talk about a great American. She volunteered

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at Cincinnati Public Radio. She was
a rule follower. This guy was about

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as reckless as I said it the
other day. I wouldn't have put this

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guy behind the wheel of a golf
cart, let alone the city bus.

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He couldn't. He couldn't operate garbage
trucks. And by the way, by

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the way, Rex, I have
great respect for Rumky and the garbage men.

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I have a pretty good relationship with
the guy that picks up my garbage.

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The Rumpky driver up every day at
four o'clock in the morning, working

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hard in rain and snow and ice
and hot hauling around garbage. I have

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great respect for garbage trucks, but
I want to have more respect for metro

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drivers actually driving buses, affecting human
lives. And you're saying that Dion Willis

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didn't have enough skills to operate a
garbage truck. He didn't, and he

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didn't have it. He didn't have
enough skills to operate a big wheel,

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for God's sake, And by the
way, Sorida had a long history of

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putting bad drivers in the position.
Back in twenty sixteen, they had a

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driver by the name of Tyrone Patrick
who killed a guy named Stephen Frank under

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almost the exact same circle. Sants
that Tyrone Patrick ran over Stephen Frank and

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his daughter Emily Frank in a cross
walk on January twenty seven, twenty sixteen.

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Tyrone Pratt Patrick had been involved in
thirty nine crashes as a metro driver

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before he mowed down Stephen Krank.
Frank sort of didn't learn their lesson.

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They've been to put Dion Willicks behind
the wheel of a buck. He then

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mowed down, you know, to
Carlo Fowler, who's in a wheelchair today,

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and then kills Beverly Kenny on January
eleventh, twenty twenty four. It

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was Frankly a miracle that he didn't
kill somebody else before he killed Beverly.

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It's a travesty and a senseless and
unnecessary depth. The reality is, we

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don't put, you know, pilots
behind the control of the airplane. We

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don't say, hey, one or
two is okay? One or two planes

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going down are okay? We got
to pay a little more attention to the

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safety of the drivers that were putting
behind these fison machine you know, Rex

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Elliott. Sometimes the argument has made
an injury cases that the person is old,

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they don't have much life to live. Their life is not as valuable

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as someone who's thirty five or forty
years old. Many times you have to

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reduce the present value someone's life.
So if someone forty years old gets tragically

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killed, you say, got thirty
years of life, you make fifty thousand

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a year, that's one point five
million, reduce it to present value at

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five percentage? Ters how much money
is that? And so I hear the

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other side of the argument, that
is, if you're older, life is

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more precious when there's less of it
to waste. And so how would you

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respond to the argument that somehow,
well, after all, she was eighty

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seven years old and she didn't have
much economic value left, and what the

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hell? How would you respond to
that? Yeah? Well, I couldn't

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agree with you more. First of
all, if you have had the ability

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to navigate the treacherous waters of life
for eighty seven years, you have the

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right to go out on your own
terms, not because of some stupidity like

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this. Secondly, you know,
in my interviews with Beverly's grandchildren, they

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told me they expected that she would
outlive them. And even more importantly,

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Bill this community, the city of
You know, many times people die and

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the family's had a tragic, terrible
loss. In this particular case, the

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city of Cincinnati lost a tremendous servant, somebody. You know. This is

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a person that every day on her
walk, she made it a point to

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say hello to people, whether they
set hello to her or not. This

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is the value of this life.
Was is about as extraordinary as I've seen

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in thirty five years doing this kind
of work. Now, lastly, he's

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only charged with misdemeanors. Would you
look forward to this, Dion willis character

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getting more than a misdemeanor because in
Cincinnati today, those who are convicted of

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misdemeanors seldom have ever gone to jail. If what you're saying is accurate,

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I have no reason to believe it
isn't shouldn't it be charged with a felony?

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I believe he may well be charged
with a felony for this reason.

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On he was driving on a suspended
license. Statutorily, that gives the prosecutor

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the ability to charge him with a
felony. He was operating his personal vehicle

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eighty eight miles an hour in a
fifty five in Franklin County in November twenty

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twenty three. He blew off the
court day, so they suspended his license.

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He went in on December thirteenth and
paid the fine, but they told

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him they gave him a slip of
paper that said, your license is suspended.

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It is not going to be reinstated
until you take more steps, including

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paying the reinstatemency. It was still
suspended. On January eleventh, Dion Willis

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killed Beverly Kenney. And you know
what he did. The very next day,

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he runs to the DMV and pays
his reinstatementcy. You know why,

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because I guarantee you. In his
own mind, he said, uh,

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oh, I'm in trouble now.
I killed her on a suspended license.

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I got to clean this up,
and I think that's going to be the

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basis for a felony charge. To
go back to your first comments, Are

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you saying that Dion Willis hit her
and then got out, got back in

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the bus and rolled back over her
again. Yeah, well we don't know

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if you rolled back over her,
but we know that she was underneath the

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bus. The video, By the
way, we have dash camp video,

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inside video of the bus, outside
video of the bus. It is as

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horrific and gruesome as any video I've
seen, and I've seen a lot of

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bad video. He hit her,
she was underneath the bus. He jumps

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out of the bus on the video, runs back in the bus, hits

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it, reversing, takes the bucks
back a few feet with the human life

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underneath his bucks. I mean,
it's just, you know, it's just

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crazy that somebody like this is behind
the wheel of a metro bus. Somebody

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had to begin to take a look
at SORTA and the driving record of some

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of these folks. They're there,
you know. SORTA is funded largely by

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you know, state and local you
know taxes, along with some federal fundings.

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Somebody, did they Cincinnati City Council. Somebody's got to start taking a

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look at sort of because all sort
of set up to now is hey,

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we're sorry for the family. I
don't get any indication that they're going to

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dig in and find out how in
the world this guy was still driving.

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Well, for those who ride buses, for those who enter running to have

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interplay with buses. The best in
the brides should be bus drivers. We

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used to have a caller here named
Don who was a wonderful metro bus driver

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that spent his entire career and had
no accidents whatsoever. And Don has moved

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on to his rewards in heaven.
But I would hope that Dean Willis receives

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a full measure of justice. And
once again, Rex Elliott, personal injury

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Attorney, Rex Elliott, thank you
for coming on the Bill Cunningham showing good

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luck to you. Thank you,
Bill. It's been an honor God bless

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America. Thank you, Rex.
Let's continue with more if line becomes available.

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Five three, seven, four nine, seven thousand. Don't cunning into

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Great American Live. It's roam of
the Reds and the Bengals. Here's Radio

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seven hundred WULW. Meanwhile, in
the entrespid forest, a beautiful princess is

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walking around with a frog. He
says, if I kiss him, he'll

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turn into a prince. Did you
give it a try? Of course not.

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Guys will say anything for some smooches. It sounds like you don't trust

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men. I trust Eddie and Rocky
to make me laugh every day. They're

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funny, But what about your little
green friend looks like it's frog legs for

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dinner. Eddie and Rocky give your
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