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July 25, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:26
July 25, 2005, Monday, Hour #3
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Done two hours of the program today so far and going over my list of the mistakes that I've made on the show, which is usually a long, long, long one.
Now, early on I mentioned we're having a little bit of a problem with the temperature here in the studio.
It was way too cold, then I complained and it got way too warm.
It happens right now to be perfect, but here's the big mistake.
You know, it's like a hundred degrees everywhere in America today.
There are people listening to me who are working outside in demanding physically stressful jobs.
Imagine, for example, right now, working on an asphalt paving crew, you know, layering that hot tart out of the, and then here's the guy with headphones on, listening to me, belly ache because I'm sitting in a studio and the temperature and a climate-controlled studio and the temperature is off by two or three degrees.
I I understand why I would be hated and despised in my in my weeniness here.
That actually is the only grave mistake I've made so far.
We had a caller who demanded to know cases that John Roberts argued before the Supreme Court.
I couldn't come up with any off the top of my head, so I had to bluff my way through that.
Other than that, pretty good so far.
We have a ruling from the state Supreme Court of California, as reported today in the Wall Street Journal.
The California Supreme Court has ruled that a manager who has affairs with subordinates can create a work climate that constitutes sexual harassment even for individuals not involved in the relationship.
Case was brought by employees of a prison in the state of California.
It turns out that one of the employees of the prison, a manager, was having sexual relationships with several of the women who worked for him.
Other women who were not involved in this brought a lawsuit alleging sexual harassment.
A lower court ruled one way and the California Supreme Court overturned them, arguing that sexual harassment victims can include those that were not part of the sexual relationship were not part of the inappropriate relationship, that they too can be victims of sexual harassment.
The reasoning of the court is this, that if an employee learns that a co-worker is having a relationship with the boss, that employee may presume that in order to get ahead, you need to have a relationship with the boss.
So therefore, the harassment extends to the employee who was not involved in the relationship, even if the boss never sought a relationship, even if there was no inappropriate contact between the boss and the other employee, that other employee can be construed to be a victim of sexual harassment.
No, while I am tempted to joke about this, there's actually pretty broad ramifications here.
I can't imagine any employer now allowing any kind of workplace relationships between someone and an immediate subordinate.
If you're going to have the potential of co-workers who have nothing to do with this, bringing a cause of legal action against them.
This is a California court ruling and not federal, so it only matters in California, but can one imagine if this ruling was in effect when Clinton was president.
This would literally mean that Janet Reno was sexually harassed.
Impossible as that concept is to imagine that anyone would ever sexually harass Janet Reno, but given that Clinton was having at least one sexual relationship with a subordinate.
that means that all other women who were not part of any kind of sexual liaisons with President Clinton, admittedly probably a small group, that any of them could perceive themselves as victims themselves.
Therefore, using the logic or lack thereof of the California Supreme Court, Bill Clinton sexually harassed Janet Reno.
We have a report from Hong Kong, which now officially is Communist China, Dozens of stray dogs roaming around the new Walt Disney theme park in Hong Kong have been rounded up and put down as the company prepares to open the park in September, according to the South China Morning Post.
Apparently there's been a stray dog problem on the work site for the new Disney theme park.
So they've rounded up these dogs and they've had to kill them there.
So the new attraction at the uh Disney Park is going to be 65 Dalmatians rather than 101 Dalmatians.
All right.
All right, I'll move on.
Fascinating development involving the AFL CIO, which is having its annual convention this week, I believe in Chicago.
The AFL CIO is facing the greatest schism since the CIO merged with the AFL.
There have been unions in the past that have left the parent organization, the AFL CIO.
For years the Teamsters was not affiliated with the AFL CIO, and I believe the United Auto Workers for a time was not in the AFL CIO.
You now, however, have several different labor organizations saying they are boycotting the convention, have serious disagreements with the direction of the national organization, and are threatening that they may leave among the employees,
among the unions that are boycotting the convention, the Service Employees Union, the Food and Commercial Workers Union, the Teamsters, and then a union called Unite Here, which represents apparel hotel and restaurant employees.
They say they are shunning the convention because, in their view, according to the New York Times, the Federation under the leadership of AFL CIO President John Sweeney has been ineffective in halting the decades-long slide of organized labor.
Several other unions also say that they are unhappy even though they will not boycott the convention.
The AFL CIO has enormous problems.
The biggest reason for it is that the organization represents two different kinds of workers.
Government employees and private sector employees.
Private sector union representation is at an all-time low.
Eight percent of the private sector workforce in the United States is now unionized.
On the other hand, virtually all of the government workforce in non-management non-managerial positions, virtually the entire state and local government workforce, teachers, cops, firefighters, bureaucrats, they're all unionized.
Those workers have very, very strong bargaining positions.
You can't outsource the police department to China.
You can't really reduce the numbers of the bureaucracy all that much.
So those unions, their members are in very, very strong bargaining positions.
On the other hand, you have the private sector unions whose employers are facing all sorts of competition and are in a completely different category.
What has happened as the private sector workforce that is unionized has declined, and the government sector workforce that is unionized has increased, is the government unions have pretty much taken over the organization.
The teachers union has way more clout right now than most other labor unions do in the larger organization, given the fact that the teachers union is seeing an increase in its numbers, whereas using as an example, the UAW, given the continuing layoffs by the automakers and the outsourcing by the auto parts companies, is seeing a decline in its members.
You can't have a parent organization that represents the views of only one sector trying to speak for the entire organization.
So this schism is going to develop.
In addition to that, The union movement itself is losing touch with a huge base of its own membership.
You've got the so-called Reagan Democrats, the union members who've been in the union because they attributed their benefits and their job security to the union, but disagree on just about everything else.
And they see the union leadership speaking in a way that does not reflect them.
Most union leaders, particularly at the AFL CIO level, are more obsessed with criticizing President Bush than they are in doing anything for their members.
Look at the issues that they speak about.
I mean, they're commenting on the war in Iraq, which may appease the very liberal people who are members of the government unionized workforce, but has nothing to do with any of the desires of the majority of the members.
The one issue on which they may have the ability to rally that now disenfranchised rank and file is trade.
There's a lot of frustration among trade unionists, steel workers, auto workers, and so on, about the outsourcing of jobs to other nations.
But they haven't spent much time dealing with that because they're so busy ripping on the president on just about everything else.
So there's been this huge disconnect.
The final problem that they face is with regard to the private sector.
Unions are killing jobs and thus killing their own members.
Find a sick industry in this country and you will find a unionized industry.
Look at all the industries that are facing problems.
Look at all the industries that are looking to outsource overseas.
Look at all the industries that have simply seen major layoffs because of problems that the employer has, and there's unions everywhere.
Now look at the growth sectors of the American economy.
Almost none of them have even a hint of union representation.
The areas where our economy is growing, sales, service, technology, consulting, none of the health care.
In most cases, there isn't much unionization there at all.
Little bit in health care with nurses, otherwise almost a completely non-unionized area and sector.
What the unions have managed to do by creating workplace rules, job protections, and just their general obnoxiousness is create an incentive for the employers to use anyone but union labor.
Thus they outsource their positions.
They've literally written their own obituary.
I don't know that they're ever going to be able to fix this, particularly as they see their role to be in all of this political activism rather than representing the true interests and needs of their workers.
Every two years, the union's bank role, massive television televised advertise campaign, television advertising campaigns aimed at electing Democratic politicians.
This becomes their sole focus.
It seems like the only thing the leadership of the unions care about, but that has nothing to do with workplace issues of the rank and file.
So you wonder then why this disconnect occurs.
And I don't see any reason to believe that the union movement in this country is going to evolve into anything other than government workers.
In terms of private sector workers, I think the union movement in this country is virtually dead.
My name is Mark Belling and I'm sitting in for Rush.
Mark Belling sitting in for Rush.
I don't believe I've given the telephone number once during the program.
Is that a mistake, too?
Should I add that to the list of errors committed today by the host?
1-800-282-2882.
I'm going to try to avoid a future error here.
I need some help.
Remind me to do the do the New York Times correction before the program is over.
The best New York Times correction ever.
I'll share with the audience before the end of today's program.
We're discussing a boycott of the National AFL CIO convention by four major unions, and I think it portends major problems For the national organization.
Boston, Jim, you're on Russia's program with Mark Belling.
Mark, this differentiation between government uh unions and private sector is very interesting, and I'll tell you why.
Look at the teachers union.
The teachers' union is unique because essentially union and management, which is the local government school bureaucracy, are on the same side.
Same thing.
You're exactly right about that, particularly with regard to the teachers' unions.
Teachers' unions have tremendous power in influencing local school board elections because they understand the importance to them.
Most school board members and certainly most school administrators share the same general beliefs of the teachers and they all want to get more money for themselves.
That is a completely foreign concept to people who work in the private sector where there's a much more adversarial relationship.
Given the fact that the average teachers union member never worries about job security and has tremendous benefits, you can see why their focus in terms of labor organizations' goals would be completely different.
Now you tell me what they have in common with somebody who works for an auto parts manufacturer that is looking at moving fifteen to twenty to forty percent of its labor production overseas.
They have nothing in common, yet you've got this one organization that purports to speak for both, and it just doesn't work.
Yeah, and Mark, and what's interesting, in a typical typical situation, you need the union to fight management.
But the school boards, they actually use the uh teachers' union as an excuse to seek more money.
Exactly.
They're on the same page.
The teachers union wants more money, the superintendents want more money, and the school boards want more money.
So you don't have any kind of an adversarial relationship there.
That's the case at many levels of government unionization, which is completely different from what is happening in the private sector.
Thank you for the call, Jim.
Appreciate it.
To Eugene Oregon and Dave.
Dave, you're on Russia's program with Mark Belling.
Yeah, Mark, I think you got a half right and half wrong.
I'm a retired letter carrier, so I belong to my union when I was in the post office.
My two youngest daughters are organizers for SEIU.
Now that's service employees.
That's service employees international.
Service service employees international.
Yeah, they have a lot of government, but they're interested in organizing the unorganized.
Um, my daughters work in health care, they work in hospitals and nursing homes.
And they want to and uh on the West Coast especially, you have a lot of problems with uh undocumented workers, so you have two strikes against you.
You're trying to organize people who may or may not be legal.
That's why the carpenters actually bolted from the AFL CIO a few years ago because they have to.
Okay, so where are we going with this, Dave?
Huh?
Where are we going with this?
Well, they have to organize the ones that are t stepping out of the AFL CIO are the ones that want to organize the people that the industrial unions don't care about.
And uh Andy Stern, who's the president of SEIU, has actually said that organizing is more important than politics.
He's kind of fed up with the Well, why do you think it is they're having such a hard time organizing right now?
Well, it's very hard.
My daughters work seventy hours a week.
Well, I mean, I don't want to insult your daughter, Dave, but the f the fact of the matter is that most Americans don't want to be part of a union anymore.
Well, no, if you don't work for government, there is a tremendous desire to not be part of an organization that takes a big chunk of money out of your paycheck and simply uses it to lobby for liberal causes.
Furthermore, people look around and they see what's going on.
The automobile industry is in far worse shape than it was thirty years ago, heavily unionized.
The steel industry, a lot of steel production is now offshore, heavily unionized.
The auto parts industry is dying in America, heavily unionized.
The only unions that seem to thrive are those that have monopolies, and that isn't many of them anymore.
But there are more and more Americans who just don't want to associate with the union.
If that were not the case, you'd have higher than eight percent of the private sector workforce unionized.
Thanks for the call, Dave.
To Lavonia, Michigan, Mike on a cell phone, you're on EIB with Mark Belling.
Mark, uh, I think it's entirely appropriate that uh that led by the Carpenters in 2001, first leaving the AFL CIO, and now these uh teamsters and the service workers, uh, they realize that uh the government workers are controlling too much of the agenda, and they're the and for them to go out and to break away so if they have to compete every day in the marketplace, which is different than the government workers, that they needed to have some autonomy and get away.
Uh I I will say that uh Well, I I I I understand the point that you're I understand the point that you're making.
Now, the one sector of unionized workers who understand they have to be on the same page as management are the trades, the painters, workers like that, construction workers.
They only have work if the employer has work.
Too many members of labor unions are determined to create these adversarial relationships that end up killing their own jobs and making it unattractive to employ union labor.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush.
Mark Belling sitting in for Rush on EIB when Russia's away.com, the uh complete section of Club Gitmo apparel is available.
And I've been presented with my own Club Gitmo t-shirt here.
This is a medium.
This is very wishful thinking on someone's part, but I am the proud owner of a club Gitmo um t-shirt.
Shall wear it with pride even if it is ill-fitting.
Remarkable headline in today's New York Times.
And I'll read it for Batum.
SUNY's to end Iraq charter boycott, semicolon.
Bomb kills dozens.
Now, normally the way that headline is written, bomb kills dozens in Iraq, semicolon, Sunnis to end Iraq charter boycott.
The uh Sunnis have agreed now to participate in the formation of a new constitution in Iraq, which is a major development, and there were more terrorist killings yesterday.
Normally they would lead with the terrorist attack and miss the more substantive news.
In this instance, the headline actually first says SUNY's to end Iraq charter boycott.
They must have hired somebody new over the weekend, and that guy is going to be reassigned.
It's not the way that you are supposed to do that.
Uh want to talk about the energy bill.
Congress looks like it's finally going to pass an energy bill.
You've got the House and Senate in conference committee trying to piece together final legislation on a national energy bill after several years of prodding from the Bush administration.
If you take a look at what's in there and what it is that they're arguing about, you'll realize that this is not an energy bill.
This is a farm bill.
And it's being put together the way we put together farm bills in this country.
It's just one hunk of pork after pork after pork after pork.
There's no energy policy here.
It's simply a matter of who we're going to give money to and who we're going to reward.
A real energy bill will address things that have something to do with America's energy needs.
Among the things that are not in there, they don't address at all whether or not we are going to encourage or continue to ban drilling in Alaska.
They don't address at all whether or not America ought to reconsider nuclear power for our energy needs.
We haven't built a new nuclear power plant in this country in about a quarter century.
A lot of people think that given the fact that nuclear is non-polluting, that we ought to once again encourage utility companies to build nuclear plants.
We have nuclear plants that are operating all over America.
They don't have any problems.
There hasn't been a real issue since Three Mile Island, but that's not in the energy bill.
We also have Americans paying the highest gasoline prices of their lives, but there's nothing in there that's going to address that.
Instead, they're debating whether or not oil companies are going to be protected from lawsuits over MTBE.
Instead, they have mandates for the use of ethanol, which is simply pork for corn farmers in Iowa.
You have tax credits for those that are involved in alternative forms of energy.
Put together a wind plant will give you a tax credit.
Use solar power will give you a tax credit.
There's nothing substantive in the legislation at all.
It's all about who it is that we can give this to rather than come up with any kind of comprehensive energy policy at all for this country.
We're facing dramatic changes in the energy environment.
Natural gas prices have been going up steadily for the last several years.
Why?
Because there's an increase in demand with no increase in supply.
Every new house built in America is heated by natural gas.
More and more electrical generation for in America is being done with natural gas plants.
You've got great increases in demand for natural gas, but an absolute cap on supply.
It is very hard to import natural gas from overseas.
You've got to liquefy it, which is extremely expensive, then bring it over on tanker ships, and then you've got to accept it at liquefied natural gas plants built at certain ports, which is an environmental problem.
No community wants it.
So we're kind of stuck with the natural gas that we produce here in North America.
Yet the left has discouraged us from drilling for new natural gas.
They certainly don't want us to do it in Alaska, and they aren't real happy about doing it offshore.
So you've seen major increases in natural gas prices.
This issue is barely addressed at all in the energy bill.
Now take a look at the price of oil.
Flirting with $60 a barrel.
I don't see that changing.
My own prediction is that we will have oil hit $85 a barrel sometime between now and the end of next year.
Why?
Dramatic increases in demand.
China is going from a country in which nobody drove an automobile to a country in which everybody drives an automobile.
Automobile use in China was restricted to about 3% of the population.
They're building roads.
People are buying cars.
There's an auto industry developing in China.
The American automakers and others want to import cars to China.
In addition to that, the manufacturing sector in China is booming.
China makes everything the world uses now.
Huge increases in energy there.
Same thing in India.
And if we do succeed in ending the terrible poverty in Central Africa, if we do get the kind of economic development that Bono wants us to have in Central Africa, you're going to see dramatic increases in energy usage there where there presently is almost none.
You've got all of this increase in demand, yet not a lot being done to increase the supply, particularly here in the United States.
Now the reason none of those things are in the energy bill is because they're controversial.
So Congress just punts and they sit around and they decide which lobbyists we're going to reward with this and who's going to get that.
So we throw the SOP to the corn growers and give them tax credits for ethanol and mandate that there's going to be ethanol production.
We take care of the oil companies so that MTBE, which is one of the alternative fuels that they developed, supposedly to not pollute, that they not be sued over that.
It turns out MTBE causes cancer, and we have no real substantive energy policy in this country at all.
Because nobody wants to make the hard decisions required to deal with the fact that we have tremendous energy needs, but have not come up with ways to increase the supply.
To Massachusetts and Steve.
Steve, you're on EIB with Mark Belling.
Yes, the uh nuclear power plant thing.
We do need some plants and more energy.
You refer to no uh no waste, no pollution here, forgetting about uh no way to dispose of the spent fuel rods that take hundreds of tens of thousands of years to deteriorate or rerunning harmless again.
And also uh homes built in the northeast, most of them are are also uh heating oil fueled uh not only natural gas, whatever.
Not a lot of the new ones, though.
Not a lot of the new ones and look at office buildings, they're all being fueled with natural gas.
I'm not even saying that nuclear is the answer.
The problem that you mentioned with regard to nuclear waste is real.
It's not a scientific problem because we have ways of burying it secured.
It's a political problem.
Congress has been unable to reach agreement for years on a long-term solution as to what to do with with the spent fuel rods.
The Nevada site continues to be held up.
All of that is real.
The point that I'm making, though, is that we can't have an energy policy in this country unless we start focusing on ways to produce More energy.
And that answer isn't solar panels and it's not ethanol.
But because there are downsides to all of these things, we end up being paralyzed and we don't have any energy policy at all, other than to twiddle our thumbs and wonder why gasoline prices go through the roof.
Wonder how we're going to stop oil from being sixty dollars a barrel.
Well, guess what?
It's soon going to be 70.
Then it's going to be 80.
And in the meantime, we come up with no answers other than we're going to start mandating the use of ethanol, which doesn't even do any good because it's such a lousy fuel.
Yeah.
That uh still again there uh you can't go bearing this stuff, but it's gonna, you know, they're still having problem with that.
It's gonna wind up by sometimes seeping out through the containers of stored in the case.
That happened that hasn't happened yet, Steve.
Thank you for the call.
To Nebraska and Dan on a cell phone.
Dan, you're on Russia's program with Mark Belling.
Yeah, good morning.
Uh afternoon, I'm sorry.
Uh well, we didn't have an energy policy for 25 years on Democrats and But ethanol, you're gaining at least a hundred percent, 160% over oil.
Uh Brazil runs most of their cars on eighty five fifteen bland.
We got uh the car manufacturers can put them out, and it'll help everybody reduce oil by half.
Well, that's been the great promise of ethanol.
Instead of having to drill for oil and instead of having to buy oil from the Middle East, and instead of having to pay these incredibly high prices for oil, let's just use corn that farmers grow.
The problem with that is, Dan, is that ethanol is a lousy fuel.
It's not very fuel efficient, so it ends up being more polluting because you have to burn more of it than if you were simply using gasoline.
It's not uh nobody wants to run their car 100% on it because it doesn't do any good with high performance engines.
It would be nice if ethanol was the answer, but it isn't.
What it is is a great windfall for farmers and a huge windfall for the companies that convert the uh the the the corn into fuel, the Archer Daniels Midlands of the world.
What it has not ever done is solve the nation's energy problems.
Furthermore, we don't have enough corn to fuel all the cars in America.
If every farmer we had simply raised corn for ethanol production rather than to feed cattle and to feed people, there still wouldn't be enough of it given that you have to use a whole lot of corn in order in order to produce ethanol.
The whole reason we have an ethanol issue at all in America is the first primary for presidential candidates is in Iowa.
So all the candidates go out to Iowa, they all promise the moon that when they're elected president, yes, we're going to mandate the use of ethanol, we're gonna put up quotas in twelve percent is the number that's used in this energy bill.
If Iowa wasn't the first state, there wouldn't be this pressure at all for I for for ethanol because it's not a very good fuel.
But if that's gonna become the backbone of our energy policy, because there are votes to be gained in Iowa and Nebraska, and we don't address anything else, then we're not accomplishing anything via the passage of this energy bill.
Thank you for the call, Dan.
My name is Mark Belling, and I'm sitting in for Rush.
Mark Belling's sitting in for rush.
It is impossible to have a problem in this country that requires congressional action without it turning into legislation that satisfies special interests.
We have this energy bill.
It's been the desire of President Bush to come up with a comprehensive national energy policy, and there are some good things in there.
I mean, they open up the door to the notion of more nuclear power plants.
They create some incentives to do it.
But it's primarily billions of dollars in subsidies and tax credits to oil and gas producers who aren't opening any new fields, subsidies for wind, solar, and geothermal.
Imagine the amount of tax money that's going to be pumped into wind power, solar power, and geothermal power, and relate it to the amount of energy that we're actually going to get out of all of that effort.
Almost nothing.
So what the bill becomes is not a serious attempt to deal with the nation's energy needs, but a way to curry favor with special interests who produce boutique forms of energy that don't do anything to solve the real problems because the way we fuel this country is with oil, with natural gas, with coal, and to some extent with nuclear.
And every one of those fuels is a downside Associated to it.
There are no real votes to be gained by making those tough decisions.
But boy, if we can buy some corn farmers' votes and we can get some campaign contributions out of ADM, let's go with the ethanol.
To Lamora, California and Tom.
Tom, you're on EIB.
Hi, Mark.
How are you doing?
I'm great.
Thank you.
Mark, I was listening to your commentary earlier on the deficiencies in the energy bill, how it doesn't address actually long-term production of energy, if I understood you correctly.
Yes.
Well, is the do you think the president will sign this if it gets to his desk?
Yeah, he's been pushing for it because he wants something, and I'm not suggesting that there aren't some good things in there.
Obviously there are.
But in the end, it doesn't do a whole lot to solve any problems, but it gives the president some of what he wants, so he'll sign it.
Maybe it's uh take one small step and then perhaps take another step a little later on.
The problem with it is is that it's if we at $60 a barrel oil and natural gas prices at a record still aren't willing to encourage drilling here in the United States in areas that are controversial, like Alaska and offshore.
If we're not going to do it with high natural gas prices in $60 a barrel oil and a Republican Senate and a Republican House and a Republican president, I just don't know when that's going to happen.
Thank you for the call.
Let's go to Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania.
Dick, Dick, you're on EIB.
Yes, sir.
You were saying about alcohol is not good for high performance engines.
Don't you watch races, any?
The high performance race car engines today are all running alcohol.
Yeah, they are they are running an ethanol or methanol.
You are correct about that.
But most of the internal combustion automobiles that we drive don't run that well on it.
Well, my 2003 Dodge is set up for E 85.
All you have to do is open the gas lid and look, tell you right there, right there on any Dodge land.
Every automaker will tell you that if you use more than a 10% ethanol mix, it's not good for the automobiles and the marketplace is speaking in that regard.
We are going to be going toward it, we are going to be going toward more ethanol in America, but it's only going to be because of political pressure.
The fact that Congress is going to pass this mandate here tells you that ethanol is not that good.
If ethanol was the answer, you wouldn't need to see Congress mandate its use.
Charlotte, North Carolina, and Donald.
Donald, you're on EIB.
Hi, I'm on the College Debate Theme, and this is interesting.
Last year, uh the national debate topic was energy policy, and we had to advocate something to do other than fossil fuels.
And my I advocated ethanol and hydrogen to uh to work together, but after a while I realized that ethanol actually requires more energy burn than it produces when you raise corn and all that.
That's the real problem with ethanol.
You end up using more fuel rather than less because it isn't as efficient.
Hydrogen is a great idea.
The problem is that we're in the year 2005, and before they have hydrogen in a position in which we can mass produce it and run automobiles, it's probably going to be 2050 and doesn't deal with any immediate concerns.
I uh still have the mother of all New York Times corrections to share with the audience.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for rush.
Mark Belling sitting in for Rush.
Now, I'm an aficionado of the New York Times corrections.
They're usually better than the rest of the paper.
They're normally like this.
The lead correction in today's paper reads: An article on Saturday about Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's visit to Israel and Lebanon referred incorrectly to the home of Hezbollah, which the United States considers a terrorist group.
Okay, we consider it.
It is a Lebanese group, not Palestinian.
Because of an editing error, the article also described incorrectly a comment by an Israeli official about the Palestinians' need to move goods quickly by truck from Gaza into Israel.
The official said that Israel does not want to pay for a sophisticated security system after Israel leaves Gaza, not after the trucks leave Gaza.
So they misstate the nature of Hezbollah and what its origin is.
They completely screw up the substance of the story, and they don't want to use the word terrorist group.
That's fine.
Here's the correction that wins the award for all-time best New York Times correction.
The poker column on July 9th.
The fact that they have to correct something in a poker column speaks volumes.
The poker column on July 9th, about presidents and generals who have played poker, misstated the position of Secretary of State James Burns on the use of the atomic bomb during World War II.
He supported using the bomb against Japan.
He did not oppose it.
General bad rule of newspapering.
Don't let the poker columnists write about whether or not the bomb should have been dropped on Japan in World War II.
My name is Mark Belling.
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