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Aug. 8, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:33
August 8, 2005, Monday, Hour #2
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There's always this skepticism, I think, on the part of the audience when one of the one of us guest hosts is in doing the show.
Uh I've got this wobbliness on the estate tax, but I've decided to save it until the third hour so you don't all think I'm a pink ol lefty.
Prior to then, I've been discouraged by the staff from even talking about it.
Don't show weakness on this.
Our audience is real strong in this.
I'm mostly there.
We're going to be dealing with that in the next hour of the program.
A lot of things to cover.
Netanyahu has quit the Israeli cabinet to protest Gaza.
For those of you fearful that we do have a housing bubble in the United States, I do have some good news, but I want to open the hour bite talking for a moment about the death of Peter Jennings, who died last night.
He was diagnosed several months ago with lung cancer, and anyone who has ever experienced a friend or a relative who has had a go-through that knew that the prognosis for him couldn't be very good.
It's just lung cancer's just absolutely terrible.
And it's awful that we haven't been able to figure out a way to stop that.
We've made a lot of progress on other cancers, but lung cancer is a real, real bad one.
And it managed to take out Peter Jennings.
I think he's going to be remembered as really the last of the big dominant TV anchors.
For really 40 to 50 years in the United States, the main anchor man of a television newscast has been one of the most important people in this country.
I suppose it started a little bit with Murrell, but really I think that Huntley and Brinkley on NBC and Cronkite on CBS were the first of the real, real big classic TV anchormen.
Television so dominated our lives in the three major networks, CBS, NBC, and ABC, were really all there was to television for such a long, long time.
It not only was the fact that they anchored that newscast for 30 minutes every night, which everybody used to watch, it was that they were always the ones that were there.
Whenever there was a major breaking news story, be it a space launch or the assassination of President Kennedy or Watergate, whatever the story, whomever the major anchor was there, was the person that was bringing the news, and they became larger-than-life figures in America.
Cronkite was probably the best.
He had that remarkable manner of conveying both authority and also a way of warming him, being endearing to the American people.
You seemed like everybody's grandpa, on the other hand, he was a smart grandpa.
He was in command and he knew things.
He's the classic American anchor man.
And there are others as well.
Jennings probably is the last of that breed.
Dan Rather is gone, discredited, still clinging to some tenuous version of a job at CBS.
Tom Brokow retired from anchoring the newscast, and now with the passing of Peter Jennings, we're really left without any of them.
And I don't think that there will ever be a major anchor man in America again.
The media itself has changed.
Not only do you have a lot more television with all the cable and satellite channels, you have the internet, you have programs like this one, you have so many different ways of getting information.
Nobody watches the nightly newscast anymore.
Their ratings have just fallen completely apart.
Why should you be forced to sit down and watch at 6.30 or 6 o'clock or 5.30 or where it's 7 o'clock or wherever it is shown in your time zone and watch the news then when you can get the news all day anywhere.
There are cable outlets that are providing news 24 hours a day.
The internet has everything right now.
The notion that you're going to wait until an appointed hour and then have one TV network give you the news when they're ready to give it to you, is just outdated.
In terms of coverage of breaking news events, nobody even thinks to turn to the major networks anymore when there's a major story.
You tune to Fox or CNN or one of the other places, maybe you go back to one of the networks, but they've almost become an afterthought.
Those anchors, who were very powerful people within those news divisions, really did have a lot of input and control into what went into the newscasts.
If they chose To exercise that discretion.
In addition, they certainly were in control of the tone that they used in presenting the story.
They really were the final gatekeepers, and that role is just gone now.
Does anyone think for a moment that Bob Schieffer, who succeeded rather at CBS, has any real power at all or that he's setting any agenda?
That's not a knock on Bob Schaefer.
He's just inheriting a position whose time is come and gone.
Is Brian Williams gonna set any agenda in America?
I don't think so.
Who even knows what they're going to do for the long term term at uh at EBC.
So the passing of Peter Jennings, I think really marks the end of an era.
The era in which the major television newscasts were the dominant source of national and international news for Americans, and the end of this era in which one major voice from each network would be the one presenting the news.
Let's see what else is going on today.
Are they still after John Roberts?
Think so.
They're looking for something on Roberts.
They still haven't.
Roberts has got to be a remarkable guy.
He's either the most boring man alive, or a really available have they found anything yet?
Not I mean, there is nothing.
They're looking everywhere.
Drudge reported last week the New York Times was looking at it the adoption records for his kids.
They're going over every memo, they're going over every ruling.
Now, the New York Times is reporting what to them appears to be bad news, and that is that while serving as an attorney, Roberts argued aggressively against the notion of a constitutional right to privacy, but they do find some good news.
We don't know for sure that he doesn't believe there's a constitutional right for privacy.
He may have merely been advocating on the behalf of a client.
Now the to the left, this notion that the Constitution provides some sort of right of privacy is sacred to them.
It's the linchpin for almost every liberal ruling that has come down, and it's the justification that they have had for all rulings that have protected the supposed woman's right to have an abortion.
Privacy is the key to that.
Privacy is this notion that government can't step in and intervene in private lives because we have this right to privacy.
Well, the fact of the matter is is that we don't have that right.
The word privacy is not in the Constitution of the United States.
It is an invented right that was created by the Supreme Court in the Roe v.
Wade ruling so that they could come down with some basis for their ruling on abortion, but it is not in there.
Now, we may believe we have a right to privacy, and you can leak you can legislate privacy rights.
And I certainly think there are many parts of our lives that ought to be private and free from an intrusive government, like, for example, the right to smoke in a bar if you want to.
That right of privacy is being taken away by government.
There are all sorts of other rights the government has stepped in and wrongly taken.
But the Constitution itself doesn't have the notion of privacy rights in it.
The left wants to pretend that it's there, and liberal jurists have pretended that it's there to give themselves some legal basis for what they have ruled.
Now the story in the New York Times uses the uh, I love this, the Bork president.
Robert Bork was blocked in large part because he said in his writings that there was no constitutional right to privacy, said Erwin Chemarinski, a law professor at Duke.
Judge Roberts could face serious trouble, liberal and conservative law professors agreed, if he were to embrace similar views at his confirmation hearings in the Senate next month.
Well, isn't that just great?
So if John Roberts gets up before the Senate Judiciary Committee and says, I don't believe that there is a constitutional right to privacy, then his nomination is in grave trouble.
In other words, for holding a view, which, by the way, most conservatives hold, and anyone who can read would also hold since the word privacy is not in there, that supposedly would torpedo his nomination.
Well, by making determinations like that, you know what you're gonna get?
You're gonna get Roberts in front of that committee.
And he's not going to answer anything.
He's gonna waffle around every single question, so you can't nail him down on the privacy issue without regard to what his position is.
That's sad.
John Roberts ought to be able to get up and tell us exactly what his views are in that general area.
Without talking about specific cases, he could tell us where he comes down on the con the notion of whether or not there are privacy rights in the Constitution, which shouldn't affect whether or not he's confirmed at all.
His confirmation should be based on whether or not he is qualified and whether or not he is fit for the position.
But we're creating all of these standards.
The left loves to decry conservatives who are saying that there's got to be a litmus test on the issue of abortion.
I know Republican president can nominate for any federal judicial post someone who doesn't support the right to life.
It's the left, though, that has all these litmus tests, and now they're creating this as one of them.
If John Roberts dares to say that he doesn't believe in a constitutional right to privacy, why then he can't be confirmed?
They're the ones that have put up all these ideological tests, which is why we play this game.
A game in which the nominees get up and don't answer a doggone thing about anything, and we roll the dice and hope that they're okay.
It's a sad game, but understand that it's the left that's forcing it.
Now, I happen not to share the reservations that some on the right have.
John Roberts, in fact, Ann Coulter's kind of leading that movement of why we need to be terrified that Roberts is another David suitor.
I don't think he is another David suitor because I don't think this President Bush is ever going to make that mistake.
My own guess is that Roberts is going to be far more conservative than the left thinks, and he's going to be an outstanding justice.
You just don't you don't spend your entire life working for the kinds of people Roberts worked for and representing the kind of clients that Roberts represented, unless that's where your beliefs are.
And I think that this guy is going to be a strict constitutionalist and an outstanding justice.
But he can't say that.
He can't say what his true beliefs are, because the liberal ideological bigots in this country do not want to allow someone like that to become a federal judge, even though the views are held by about half the country.
My name is Mark Bellings sitting in for Rush Linbaugh.
Mark Belling sitting in for Rush.
Gotta take a second to congratulate Tony Stewart for winning the race at the Indy uh at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the NASCAR race yesterday.
Tony Stewart's from Indiana.
This is the race that he's always wanted.
They used to call it the brickyard.
Now I think it's the Allstate 400 at the brickyard.
He is a great driver.
He's having a great season.
He may end up winning the points championship.
And he won the race that's most important to him, so congratulations to him for doing that.
You guys don't care, do you?
You don't care at all.
You do.
Breck cares.
Brett's huge.
Nobody else cares.
Nobody else cares.
On the cable news front, I was talking earlier about Jennings being the last of the great American anchormen.
Instead, the uh cable and satellite channels have become more and more important, which, like everything else, has a lot of good aspects to it and a lot of bad aspects to it.
Rita Cosby starting her new show on MSNBC tonight.
She's going to have two of the Michael Jackson jurors on, and they're going to come on and say that they now think he is guilty.
And they're going to argue why Michael Jackson did in fact do it and why he is guilty.
Okay, yeah, that this is the right time to be arguing that.
Argue it on cable TV.
Don't argue that case when you're actually deliberating and part of the jury.
Come up with that conclude.
How long did that trial go on?
And now, now that they realize there's a bigger book deal and arguing that he is guilty, they somehow come to the conclusion that if they were responsible people, they would have argued for in the first place.
But they'll get there for him, and after they do Rita Cosby, they'll do everybody else.
They'll get a book deal.
They'll be interviewed for having this V8 moment.
Yeah, I guess Michael is guilty after all.
In the meantime, Greta is still in Aruba.
Mentioned this to a couple of people earlier today, and evidently they're not Greta viewers because you didn't know that Greta was still at Aruba.
Greta has been in Aruba ever since the uh teenager from Alabama disappeared.
She's been doing her Fox program from Aruba ever since.
This happened in May.
It's now August.
There's some suggestion that Greta's just gold bricking, and Greta is using her pursuit of the Natalie Holloway story to take the longest vacation in the history of the media, but this is working for her.
Greta is now getting monster ratings.
She's right up there with the other programs that Fox has.
She's number one or number two of all the uh cable and satellite programs each night as the American public lusts after the uh after Greta's coverage of the Natalie Holloway story.
First of all, Greta doesn't have to be in Aruba to cover this story.
This is the age of satellites and cameras everywhere.
Greta could be anywhere.
The people that Greta is interviewing are largely a bunch of cops from the United States, retired cops who offer this theory or that theory.
So she could be anywhere, but she's down there, and that makes for better television.
I don't know that there's necessarily anything wrong with this, but I know next to nothing about this story.
I know that this young girl was on a trip to Aruba, a graduation trip, and something terrible happened, and she's missing.
We hope she's alive, but no one really knows.
But the fact of the matter is that because she is a white kid from a middle class family, that it makes for better television.
But in the overall scheme of things, tragedies like this happen all the time.
I don't know.
This all I think started with the Menendez brothers, in which the American people became captivated by certain trials.
Then you had uh who is the congressman from Colorado from uh California who had the missing uh ex interry conduit, that became the and the cable channels always have two or three programs that will focus on a story like this, and they're gonna forget about Natalie Holloway when the next case like this comes down.
In the meantime, Greta is still in Aruba.
I could just catch on, I suppose.
If I ever come back, can I do the show from Aruba and follow the story, bring the whole crew down to Aruba and pretend that we actually care about the case?
Yeah.
We could turn on the rush cam then.
I don't allow the rush.
Is the rush cam still exist?
Oh, there it is.
It the the the ditto cam.
Is it off?
Yes, I demand that it be off for me.
You you uh you do not want to see what's going on here when I'm doing the program.
There's nothing bad.
You just trust me on this, you don't uh uh you don't want to see it.
I've got good news for those of you who are fearful that we are in a housing bubble, and I'm one of them.
I'm one of them.
I try not to be one of these leftist worry warts when it comes to the economy, but I am concerned about the housing market just because it's been so good.
And it's been a great, great, great thing.
Do you realize how many baby boomers who hadn't saved enough for their retirement now have managed because the value of their homes has gone up, or they bought a new home after selling their earlier home and took took a nice profit, how much better off they are financially, they now do have a nest egg.
On the other hand, there are a lot of people who have taken advantage of this by simply borrowing at the new and inflated values of their homes.
If this thing does pop and prices do go down, you've got all these people who are going to be sitting on these second mortgages for three, four, five, six hundred thousand dollars, and in some markets a lot more than that, owing way more than their property is worth, and they're going to be forced to cut back on their spending.
It's going to be a great, great shock for them, and I do have some concern.
This is what's going on.
Anyone who went through the tech stock bubble and NASDAQ, remember when NASDAQ was 5,000?
NASDAQ was 5,000.
I mean, it's recovered nicely to what, 2200.
Anyone who's been through that has to be fearful that that's what's happening with housing.
Now, I don't think housing's going to explode, and I even think there's a chance I'm wrong about all of this, that we're still in the middle stages of a strong, strong, strong run-up in housing, and that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
You've got all the baby boomers.
They all own homes now.
They're all looking at second homes as they plot for their future, and that this just might be a once-in-a-lifetime incredible spurt in the value of something that had been uh underpriced.
So I could be wrong about that.
In any event, I've got good news for those of you who like me are worried about this.
Paul Krugman, columnist for the New York Times writes today that there is a housing bubble.
He has never been right about anything.
So if Krugman says there is a bubble, by the way, he not only says there's a bubble, he says it's beginning to burst.
Starting to hiss away.
Since Krugman's never been right, and he now says there is a bubble, and it is blowing up, that is a strong sign that we don't have one at all.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush Limbaugh on EIB.
This is the segment in which I get to say I told you so.
Rush gets to do that all the time.
This is my chance it will happen in this segment.
Right now we are talking about the housing market in America.
Krugman of the uh New York Times pontificating today, this is the way the bubble ends, not with a pop but with a hiss.
Housing prices move much more slowly than stock prices.
There are no black Mondays when prices fall twenty-three percent in a day.
In fact, prices often keep rising for a while even after a housing boom goes bust.
So that the new so the news that the U.S. housing buzz bubble is over won't come in the form of plunging prices.
It will come in the form of falling sales and rising inventory.
As sellers try to get prices that buyers are no longer willing to pay, the process may already have started and he goes on.
I do have concerns that when you see some of these prices that have gone up a hundred and fifty, two hundred, three hundred percent in some markets in five or six years, that it's going to end.
And it's going to end badly.
On the other hand, there are reasons why it's happened, and unlike tech stocks that had no earnings, these homes are real.
They're sitting on land that has value.
There is a tangible asset that's there that should provide some cover if things do start to decline a little bit.
To a cell phone in Texas, Steve.
Steve, you're on Russia's program with Mark Belling.
Hi, Steve.
All right, we'll give up on Steve.
To uh Lansing, Michigan.
Ruben, Ruben, it's your turn on EIB.
Hello.
Hi.
Hey, uh, I'm a real estate appraiser in Michigan.
And um, you know, I hear a lot of talk in the industry about there being a bubble of such, but I don't really think that one exists.
Why not?
Well, um, because like the like what you just said, the uh um there's scarcity, at least the perception of scarcity with land, and there's a tangible value in the land.
And also the price of money, I think is what has been driving them up so fast that she you know.
Well, I think I think you're right about that.
A lot of things have happened.
First of all, we have very few renters left in America outside of the major cities.
Interest rates are so low that people who in the past thought that they couldn't afford a mortgage, or if they took out a mortgage, didn't see the point of having one since the first three, four, five years of your mortgage, you're only paying back interest.
Well, that started to change.
That put a lot of people into the market.
That started prices going up, and that's just fueled this thing, and it's gone it's turned over again and again and again.
You talk though about the scarcity of land, you see all these high rises in cities, though.
You can put those things up anywhere.
So I I mean, I I do think that there are reasons to be concerned, especially when you see how fast it's gone in certain areas, and that a lot of people are doing what they're doing with mortgages that aren't real smart, these interest-only mortgages in which they're doing nothing to pay down their principal.
If things start to go bad bad for them, they're going to be upside down and they're going to own more on their homes than the homes are worth.
And and that could become a problem.
The one of the things that makes you think that this isn't happening is everybody's been talking about it.
And most of these bubbles don't become bubbles until nobody thinks there is a bubble.
Since so many people are worrying and wringing their hands like I am, maybe there isn't cause for concern, and maybe we've got three, four, five more years in which property values are going to go up.
But this has been a tremendous, tremendous thing for the middle class, especially people who have been able to build some equity and stash away some money that they in a way that is pretty much sheltered from taxation.
It's been a great thing for them.
Springfield, Illinois, and Michael.
Michael, you're on EIB with Mark Belling.
How are you doing, Mark?
I'm great, thank you.
Good.
Yeah, just wanted to point out some facts.
Um, some things going on Illinois just south of you where you're from, especially in the northern part of the state, uh north of Chicago and the suburbs up there in the city of Chicago, where the problem is is that the real estate taxes on the properties are such a high burden, there's no way the values of the properties are going to be able to be maintained at this level.
Well, it's been a windfall for government, too.
Government in states that have high property taxes have been able to take advantage of this since the property taxes are based on a certain on a fixed rate, they've been able to take advantage of this and make a lot a lot more money.
You are right about that.
It is the additional cost of owning that property.
Now, the person who's sitting in a house and they intend to die in that house and they're never going to sell it, they don't get any particular advantage out of this.
But for people for whom your home is something that you're not going to be in for the rest of your life.
If you can buy a house at 150,000 in nineteen ninety and sell it for four hundred and fifty right now, which has happened to a lot of people, if you didn't just take on additional debt during that time, you've built a tremendous nest egg for yourself.
And it's one of the reasons why the economy has been as strong as it is.
The concern that I have is things have gone up so much and nothing ever goes up forever without having a correction to it.
But I've been worried about this for two years, and there's been no real sign of it breaking at all.
Well, what I see is that we see we uh where I work out of the same, but we hear complaints on people who disown regular residential property and their property tax bills are actually higher than their mortgages.
That's that's happening in a lot of places.
Thank you for the call, Michael.
I appreciate it.
To Rahway, New Jersey and Ken, can you run EIB?
Uh good afternoon.
Um, one of the big problems with the theory of this uh market bubble in the real estate business or industry, is the fact that there is no single market.
Unlike the stock market, which is a considered a perfect market where all stocks are traded in the same place at the same time and everyone has the same information.
The real estate market is more like bubble wrap.
It's not like a big single bubble.
There are thousands of little markets.
There are lots of big markets as well.
You're right.
There's hot markets like Miami and San Diego and some big cities, and then there are other places like Salinas, Kansas, where there's been nice appreciation, but not these rocket high type increases.
You are right.
Absolutely correct.
You are right about that.
Well, let's look, though, at those overheated markets.
Las Vegas is another one where housing prices have gone way, way, way, way up.
Do you think there's a bubble there?
I think that the Las Vegas market is a special situation.
How about Miami?
How about San Diego?
Well, Miami is a very broad and diverse economy versus the economy of Las Vegas versus the economy of the New York City megalopolis in the LA area megalopolis.
These areas, while they've gone up, don't forget we've got a tremendous influx of uh immigrants, legal and otherwise, and uh these things are driving prices.
Uh, for example, if you went into the city of Newark, the city of Newark, uh the values have grown exponentially.
Well, you're right.
There are places like Newark where values were way too low that because of problems that were existing in those cities, values went way, way, way down.
If you're able to come in and turn neighborhoods around, you've created tremendous value.
It's one of the ramifications of the incredibly strong economy that President Bush has been presiding over, that we've been able to lower interest rates to the point that we have and still not face any real inflation.
We haven't had to pay a price for this.
That's absolutely correct.
And one of the other unf unforeseen or unvisualized factors in this is that the baby boomers of which I am a member, the jet this generation, the leading edge is now approaching sixty years old.
They have more wealth than almost any other single group in the in the country, and that wealth is now being uh instead of being put into the stock market for its speculative returns, it's being invested into real estate for more or less uh perceived guaranteed res returns.
I think you're right about that, and it's been great for a lot of those people who have done it.
The problem is that some of them have merely borrowed Against whatever their gain is, and they really have nothing to show for it other than, yes, they have a better house that's worth more money, but they also owe a lot more.
Thank you for the call.
I now get to say I told you so.
When I hosted this, I think the first time I did this was early 2003, the first time I sat in for Rush.
I was making all sorts of predictions about the economy.
I guaranteed President Bush was going to be re-elected because I said the economy by the second half of 2004 would be outstanding.
It was at that time that the media was still harping on the recession that we already were out of.
By early 2004, when every economic indicator had turned around, when we were showing record growth year to year, the 2004 numbers versus early 2003, the late 2003 versus late 2002, the year-to-year comparisons were outstanding.
You had John Kerry talking about, well, this is a jobless recovery.
Where are the jobs?
Well, guess what?
The jobs are here.
Now, on this program, I told you the jobs are always the last thing to occur in an economic recovery, just as layoffs are the last thing to occur when there is a recession.
Employers are always fearful that whatever is happening isn't really there.
You don't want to, if you've come out of a slow economic time, immediately expand your employment base if you're not convinced it's real.
Once you see that it is real, once you see that your sales are up, once you see that you have new business opportunities, that's when you hire.
And we are now at the stage of the recovery where there is tremendous hiring.
On Friday, the latest hire the latest employment report came out, and it indicates that we created 207,000 new jobs in uh see, 207,000 in June alone.
All the economists are once again saying the same thing they've been saying for a year.
Well, this is surprising.
At some point, it's no longer a surprise when it keeps happening.
The Fed is likely to raise interest rates another quarter point because they're fearful that all of this is going to lead to inflation.
We now have more workers working than we have ever had at any point in American history, and for all what kind of jobs are they?
That's wrong too.
Pay is going up at high rates.
Not only is there an increase in employment, there is an increase in labor compensation, which is why Greenspan and the Fed are concerned that there's going to be all this inflation.
Once again, exactly as we said it would happen.
When you lower taxes as President Bush and the Republicans in Congress did, you will turn the economy around.
And I'll tell you right now the next thing that's going to happen.
Before the end of Bush's presidency, the annual budget deficit is going to be down to almost nothing.
As all of these people are working, and as their pay goes up, tax receipts into the government are going to continue to grow so long as Congress shows some restraint with regard to spending.
It works this way every single time you lower taxes.
President Bush lowered taxes, the economy turned around, everybody is working, they're now getting healthy raises, exactly as it happens every single time that you do it.
My name is Mark Belling, and I'm sitting in for Rush.
Mark Belling sitting in for Rush.
Newsflash.
President Bush has just signed the energy bill.
He did it somewhere in New Mexico.
That's the wrong place.
We've got all these state fairs going on all across America right now.
He should have gone to one of these state fairs and held it in the pig barn, given how much pork is in this thing.
It's not all bad, but there's just a whole lot of government subsidization going on for all sorts of stuff that isn't any good and rather useless and not enough incentives to increase exploration here in the United States.
Anyway, fairly dramatic developments in Israel.
Benjamin Netanyahu, better known as Bibi, is quitting the Israeli cabinet in a major break with Prime Minister Sharon.
Netanyahu is leaving the Lakud Party government in opposition to the decision to bail out of Gaza, which is going to happen in about a week, I think a week from today, that everybody is supposed to be gone.
8,500 Jewish Israelis are being removed from 21 Gaza settlements over a three-week period.
It's going on now.
Very, very controversial in the Lakud Party in Israel, which is not only the ruling party, but the Conservative Party as to whether or not they're doing the right thing.
In saying that, I'm Netanyahu may well be a demagogue.
But he's a good demagogue because he's usually right.
I think he's probably doing this for political motivations.
He resents the fact that he's not the prime minister.
He's probably going to wage a challenge to Sharon and try to retake power.
All of that is probably true, and I don't even know if he has a deep philosophical problem.
But he is right here.
The Israelis should not have to leave Gaza.
It's an Israel.
If you're an Israeli, you should be allowed to live in Israel.
Instead, what is going to happen is all of these people who moved into these settlements have to leave, and they're going to bulldoze them and knock them over as if they didn't exist.
There's a reason they have to do that, and it's bigotry.
It's Palestinian bigotry.
The Israelis don't stop.
Palestinians who want to live peacefully in Israel.
But in the Palestinian controlled territories of Israel, you not only have to have to satisfy the Palestinians, Palestinian control, there can't be any sign of a Jew.
They've got to literally purge them.
You all have to move out and they've got to knock over their homes.
That's just bigotry.
Can you imagine if in the United States, in a community that was predominantly Christian, that a neighborhood filled with Jewish families was forced to leave to keep the peace in the neighborhood, and then they had a bulldoze over their homes.
We would consider it the most the most incredible act of religious bigotry imaginable.
Yet that is what is happening in Israel.
Now it may be enough, and it may be that vacating the West Bank of the Gaza, as the Israelis are doing, and allowing the Palestinians, which by the all this is is ethnic cleansing, and allow the Palestinians to have these areas not only be under Palestinian control, but be totally purged of Israel, that this may be enough to finally bring peace, which is what the Israelis are hoping for.
They are hoping that if you give them this last demand, evacuate the so-called occupied territories, and not allow any Jews, not allow any Israelis to live there, that it might be the final piece of the puzzle and you can establish some long-term peace.
I'm a skeptic about it.
Nothing has ever worked before, but we are entering a new era in terms of the relationship between the Islamic world and the rest of the world.
What's happened in Iraq and Afghanistan does seem to be changing things, and perhaps terrorism is going to be discredited in among the Palestinians as it is by a number of other Muslims.
You also have the Arafat factor.
Arafat is out of the picture.
So things may actually work out.
I'm skeptical about it.
But whether they do or they don't, if it's a success, it's only because there has been an absolute moral appeasement to some of the worst kind of bigotry.
Israelis ought to be able to live there.
And you shouldn't be forced to move from a land because of your religion.
And the Israelis do not demand this of Palestinians.
They are not saying to the Palestinians that you cannot live anywhere else in Israel.
And if you do live, so if if a Palestinian moves into Tel Aviv, they're not going to make them leave, and they're not going to knock down their house after they go.
But that is what is happening in the occupied territories.
It is an incredible sacrifice that is being made.
It is something that people are being mandated to do, and I applaud Netanyahu for leaving the government over it.
While he is probably doing it for selfish reasons of his own, and he's probably being somewhat demagogic about it.
He is in this case right.
My name is Mark Belling, and I'm sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
Mark Belling sitting in for Rush.
I've had this story sitting in front of me the whole program, and I've hesitated to say anything about it, but for fear that I'm going to say something that I'm going to regret.
There's a news there there's a study from England indicating that men actually do physiologically have a hard time hearing women.
Which would, of course, explain it's men do have trouble hearing women.
Something about the way women speak and the way men's ear.
It would explain a lot of things.
There was happy development over the weekend in the Pacific that struggling Russian submarine was...
the crew was rescued, unlike what happened to the Kursk nearly five years ago, the Russian sub that exploded.
The Russians didn't ask the outside world for help out of pride.
Well, they had another problem, and this time we got to them in time.
The United States and the British bailed them out.
I think we ought to just rent out a crew to the Russians to follow all of their subs around so that when they have a problem, we can bail them out and save their lives and charge them a proper fee for it.
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