Rush Limbaugh Program - July 11, 2006, Tuesday, Hour #2

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July 11, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program

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July 11, 2006, Tuesday, Hour #2

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	Terrorism today in India.
	Bunch of coordinated explosions on the train system in Bombay.
	Nobody's taken credit, but it probably has something to do with the constant dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, terrorists stepping in and acting.
	We're going to talk a little bit about the terrorism issue a little bit later on in the program today.
	The other major story in the country, President Bush this morning.
	Major presentation on the economy.
	He didn't just brag up the tax cuts.
	He also said that Congress needs to give him the power to have a line item veto to cut into spending.
	And he said Congress needs to stop say stop playing politics with Social Security and Medicare, and we need to deal with those problems.
	But the biggest point that he was raising is that the tax cuts that he proposed have worked, and making them permanent will do even more work.
	One thing is clear, and it's not deniable by anyone on the left.
	From the point that the tax cuts were enacted, and particularly now, from the point they were enacted, revenue to the federal government not only did not go down, it has exploded upward.
	The deficit problem that we have is one of spending.
	It is not one of revenue.
	Revenue is rolling into Washington.
	They've got cash all over the place there.
	Just as we Americans have been able to keep more of our cash, the government has gotten more of it.
	Because the more you lower tax rates, the more economic activity you will have.
	The New York Times has an editorial today in which it tries to deny that reality is occurring.
	You can only do that if you manipulate the numbers.
	If you go back to the beginning of the Bush presidency, you can make these numbers look unimpressive.
	But that's only if you average in the 18 months before the tax cuts were enacted.
	The 18 months in which we were saddled with a recession that was a result of policies enacted by Bill Clinton.
	1-800-282-2882 is the telephone number at Russia's program to Atlanta, Georgia, and David.
	David, it's your turn.
	How are you doing?
	Doing great.
	Mark, how are you?
	I'm great.
	Thank you.
	You know, uh I called in and uh just made the the point, which is so obviously uh simple that when you uh when you tax an activity, the uh the frequency of that activity is going to decrease.
	You discourage it, yes.
	Exactly.
	And uh, you know, I was an economics major in college.
	One of the things they never taught me was uh the rule of seventy-two.
	Uh you know, which uh Einstein called compound interest, as I recall, the eighth wonder of the world.
	Well, you're right you you're you're right in that these increases that we're seeing are on top of other increases.
	Exactly.
	Exactly.
	And we're just uh we're just abysmally ignorant as a society of economic principles.
	Um just like I was saying, I was in uh the re the reason we are though is who communicates to us about the economy?
	Politicians, half of whom are Democrats, and the media, ninety-nine percent of which are Democrats.
	And they have this blockage.
	Kennedy was the last Democrat to really understand that if you want to jumpstart the economy, you lower tax rates.
	Ever since the Kennedy period, the Democratic Party has just been obsessed with this whole notion of class warfare, and they argue that they're they're their thing that uh they are most bothered by is that if you lower tax rates, obviously the people who pay the most in taxes are going to benefit the most from that.
	They can't bring themselves to allow that to happen, even if it means everyone benefits from a stronger economy in the process, even if it means government itself gets more revenue.
	Thank you for the call, David.
	You know who the other big beneficiaries of this are?
	The states.
	States are get particularly states that have an income tax.
	They're receiving more revenue.
	Now, in most of these space states, including my own, they're spending it faster than it can come in.
	But revenue is increasing to government everywhere, which it always will be if you have a strong economy, because when there is a strong economy, there is more income, and therefore there is more income to be taxed.
	To Braden in Florida and Kenzie.
	Kenzie, it's your turn on Russia's show.
	I'm Mark Belling.
	How do you do today, sir?
	I'm great, thanks.
	I want to talk about how says George Bush has been president.
	My wages have gone up from say ten dollars an hour when I first started to now they're about twenty-one an hour.
	Now I'm not a I didn't go to uh college or anything like that.
	I work blue-collar.
	But I in my opinion, I've been told that being a Republican is not the thing of a blue-collar man, but I'm sorry, I've always believed in that.
	And my less definition of the liberals, the conservatives, liberals want to give you everything, but conservatives, in my opinion, you earn it.
	You earn everything you get.
	Well, yeah, the reason why you handle me nothing.
	The reason, Kenzie, that your income went up is not directly because of President Bush.
	It's because of you.
	What the lowering of the tax rates has done is made it easier for that to happen for you.
	I don't care how screwed up a government economy is.
	Some people are going to figure out how to make it.
	However, when the government gets out of the way and allows you to keep more of your money and your boss to keep more of your boss's money and the boss's customers to keep more of their money.
	Now that everybody has all this money, it starts changing hands, and you have economic activity, and everyone benefits as a result of that.
	The other thing that's happened here is unemployment has remained remarkably low.
	It's still at 4.6%, which is lower than the average rate in the 70s, the 80s, and yes, in Bill Clinton's nineties.
	Now the media loves to tell us that the Clinton nineties were the boom years.
	They love to tell that story, but they're in denial about this decade, the zero.
	By the way, what are we going to get a name for this decade?
	I guess the zeros is what we're going to have to go with, although it just sounds really bad.
	Thanks, Kenzie.
	I appreciate it.
	Uh let's go next to uh how about Anniston, Alabama and David.
	David, you're on Russia's show.
	Uh, yes, sir.
	How are you doing today?
	I'm great, thank you.
	Uh, I was just coming about how you were talking about the liberals were saying that, you know, the rich stay rich through this tax cut and the the poor in the middle class stay about even.
	Well, me, you know, in my mind and uh the studies I've done is that, you know, there's always going to be a rich class and a poor class and a middle class.
	And with the tax revenues being cut for the uh cut with the rich and more income is coming in, that you know the the middle class and the lower class are getting more money.
	But uh in the long run, you know, yeah, we're not going to be rich, but we are making more money.
	If people can work numbers to have them tell them whatever that you want to tell them.
	For example, a person who may a person who has six hundred thousand dollars in assets, if their assets increase ten thousand dollars, that's sixty thousand dollars that they've got.
	Now they're up to six hundred and sixty thousand.
	A person with sixty thousand assets that goes up ten percent is only at sixty-six.
	So in terms of raw dollars, the inequity between the so-called rich and the non-rich are even greater.
	In terms of tax policy, however, for liberals who want to get as much money out of the rich as they can, they need the rich, the well-off and corporations to be profitable and making money because the more money they make, the more you're going to be able to tax them.
	And this is the thing that I think just flummoxes them.
	They want so badly to redistribute income and take money from the rich and give it to the poor, but the only way that they can take a lot of money from the rich is if the rich are actually making money.
	So the economic recovery that we have seen, which is a result of lowered tax rates, has resulted in a governmental windfall from precisely the people that we were told would benefit the most.
	Yes, they are benefiting the most, but you know who else is benefiting?
	The government.
	Just as most American corporate profits are up, government's profits are up.
	Government's revenues are up.
	The problem that government is facing is not on the revenue end, it is on the spending side, in that they are fat they are spending it just about as fast as it is coming in.
	Thank you for the call, David.
	Let's go to Redwood City, California and Steve.
	Steve, it's your turn on the Rush Limbaugh program.
	Hi, Mark, how are you doing today?
	I'm great, thank you.
	Good.
	Mark, I wanted to make the point about this New York Times article.
	When we talk about using base uh the Clinton years and the Clinton surplus as a base, the Clinton surplus was based mostly on revenue projections that came in as a result of dot com uh earnings.
	And when the dot com bust came, so went the revenue.
	Uh there was never any adjustment allowed for that lack of revenue uh that wasn't going to be coming in after that point.
	And so we you know they projected out that uh uh income uh or uh uh tax revenue that was coming in as a result of that.
	The recession actually the recession actually began in 2000.
	That's when we began to see negative growth in the economy.
	However, Clinton's economy was fairly strong up to that point.
	We then had a bad two-year air pocket, and Bush inherited a good chunk of that air pocket.
	If you're going to use numbers, though, to evaluate the Bush administration's economic performance, if you're actually trying to communicate fairly to people, I think you have to start at the point at which the Bush economic policy took effect, and that was the enactment of the tax cuts.
	But what they're attempting to do is judge the entire Bush administration by larding down his economic performance with that first year, a year in which we didn't yet have the tax cuts because the New York Times and the Democrats were stymieing him, and a year in which we had a terrible attack on this country on 9-11 of 2001.
	If you start the clock ticking at the enactment of the tax cuts, you see an incredible economic performance on in terms of growth in the economy and revenue coming into the government.
	The one thing that Bush can be faulted for, and especially Congress can be faulted for, is the fact that they have been spending that money just about as fast as it has been coming in.
	That's the failure of the Republicans in Congress.
	It's the failure of the Democrats, it's the failure of the president, it's the failure of the political ruling class in this country that they keep on spending money.
	But in terms of us, the American people, and what we're sending them, we're sending them more than ever.
	The less they tax us in terms of the rate of income that we generate, the more they they receive.
	This was particularly true of the capital gains tax cut.
	We cut the capital gains tax nearly in half.
	And you know what?
	Capital gains revenues increased.
	They increased.
	As much as liberals wanted to believe that that would not happen, it in fact was exactly what happened.
	Thank you for the call, Steve.
	My name is Mark Belling, and I'm sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
	I'm Mark Belling Rushes on vacation uh this week.
	Tom Sullivan is going to be here tomorrow and on Thursday and Paul W. Smith on Friday.
	You can keep up with Rush at Rushlimbaug.com twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
	Unless the site gets shut down for maintenance over which I have no control.
	Uh a little bit more economic news.
	You think things are booming in the United States in terms of our economy, China continues to boom.
	The Chinese trade surplus widened in the most recent quarter and last month as well.
	Trade surplus means that you are exporting more than you are importing.
	But that's not because Chinese imports are down.
	In fact, in the most recent reporting period in June, imports, that's things that the Chinese are buying from other nations are up nineteen percent.
	This is a huge aspect of our own economy.
	Our companies are selling more to China than we ever have.
	I mentioned on yesterday's program, Ford Motor Company has doubled in one year sale of automobiles to China.
	But even though Chinese imports, products going into China are up 19%, Chinese exports have soared 23%.
	I mean China in India is where everything in the world is being made.
	As we talk about the North Korean problem, I think we have to understand we've got a little bit of leverage here with China, in that China doesn't want to kill the goose that's laying the golden egg, and that's us.
	It's their trading relationship with the United States that is benefiting them so much.
	In the meantime, China's inner the uh International Energy Agency is calling on China to revamp its electric power industry, claiming that China is wasting too much energy.
	Do you know what the almost the entire basis of the Chinese electrical system is?
	Almost all of their power plants are coal.
	Coal.
	As the economy in China improves, that means they're going to need even more electricity and even more coal.
	I happen to believe that coal is one of the greatest investments that you can look at over the next 15 years.
	It's done very, very well the last five years, probably for the next 15 years as well.
	Look at ourselves here in the United States, and then you look at where the real growth is in China and look at how much coal they are using.
	But that raises a second point.
	You've got these coal-fired plants all over the nation of China.
	You've got economic activity in China exploding.
	We see that their exports are up and their imports are up.
	If you take a look around your own home, you see where everything is being made.
	It's being made in China.
	And as China sells more things to the United States and the rest of the world, the income of Chinese citizens is increasing and they're buying more things.
	And all of this is resulting in a much greater use of electricity than we've seen in China in the past, and that means burning coal.
	Dirty old coal.
	Yes, we're getting better at burning coal, and we even have clean coal here in the United States.
	But they're not burning it very cleanly over in China.
	So you talk about hydrocarbon emissions and you talk about global warming.
	This business of trying to pin all of this on the United States, our lefties who are somehow implying that it's only Americans in their SUVs that are warming the planet, if indeed man is responsible for global warming, which I find dubious.
	Focus on the Chinese for a moment, who were by and large exempt from the Coyota Protocol anyway.
	But I don't see Al Gore opening his film over there in China, because that wouldn't fit the political agenda blaming American industry and blaming Americans for everything that we've got going on in the world.
	I've got to share this story.
	As some of you may know, I'm in a syndicate that owns a number of racehorses.
	Unlike you soccer fans, I am not obsessed with getting the rest of the world interested in horse racing.
	I realize virtually nobody cares about horse racing anymore.
	Pull the delegation.
	Care about horse racing?
	No, no, and no.
	One of the uh horses that some of my partners owns is a weanling.
	That means a baby.
	The sire of the baby, the daddy, is named Devil is due.
	The mother, which is called the Dam, D A M, is named Prado's Mystique.
	So the sire is devil is due, and the dam is Prado's Mystique.
	They came up with a name for this horse that I think is the best horse name in the history of American horse racing.
	Devil Wears Prado.
	See, you get it, the new movie Devil Wears Prada, which is that was the book that was written about, loosely written about Anna Wentur, who's the editor of Vogue, and now there's a movie out.
	Um stars in it.
	I don't even know.
	But Miranda Priestley is the protagonist, and she's based on Anna Wentur, the editor of uh Vogue, and the name of that movie is Devil Wears Proud of this horse's name is Devil Where's Prado.
	All right.
	Now, I realize I'm doing a national program today.
	And that means we're being broadcast in all 50 states.
	We are in all 50 states, right?
	Do we have any black hole state that we're not in, or are we in all 50 states?
	We are in all 50 states.
	So I realize that 49 of you states are not going to care about this, and I'm speaking for the moment only to New Yorkers.
	But isn't there something that you can do about Elliot Spitzer?
	I'm reading here that he's going to be your governor.
	He's the attorney general as it is.
	He's going to be your governor, and he wants to be the president.
	He apparently has an overwhelming favorite to succeed George Pataki, the Republican incumbent who is not running for re-election.
	The prime Republican candidate is a guy who named John Fazo or Fezo, I admit to knowing not much of anything about him, but apparently Spitzer is raising a fortune in campaign contributions and is a heavy favorite to be elected governor of New York.
	And the Democratic Party sees him as their future.
	He's this populist, he's this reformer, he's gone after all the evil corporations.
	Well, let me tell you a story that I have about Elliot Spitzer.
	One of the corporations that he went after is a mutual fund company called Strong Funds, based in my own city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
	The principal of the company was accused of doing trading between the funds.
	Trading and moving money from one fund to another, which was not illegal but was contrary to what the prospectus of the mutual fund advised.
	There was no indication that any shareholder lost a penny as a result of that.
	However, Elliot Spitzer in his crusade to clean up the mutual fund industry went after that firm and levied a monstrous fine on the head of strong funds.
	In order to pay the fine, strong funds was sold.
	And several hundred jobs in my own community were eliminated as the buyer moved the headquarters away.
	That's how Elliot Spitzer is helping the average American.
	He's just a demagog.
	My name is Mark Belling, and I am sitting in for Russian Block.
	Telephone number is 1-800-282-2882 to Olaith, Kansas, and Charlie.
	It's your turn on Russia's show.
	Hi, Mark.
	I had a comment about Elliot Spitzer.
	Um just an observation.
	You know, Elliot Spitzer has basically victimized a number of industries.
	Whenever he has gotten into a courtroom, though, he is lost.
	That's correct.
	His MO is basically to levy a bunch of charges, try to shake down these firms, and they basically they they come to their knees and settle because they want to avoid PR.
	But he's but whenever he's actually gone into a courtroom to try to argue a case, he's lost.
	Or they'll say he's basically a fraud who's in bed with the class action lawsuit, plaintiff's uh bar.
	Sure.
	Spitzer brings the charge, tries to leverage a settlement, knowing that he probably isn't going to win if he goes to court, but the firms realize that they can't afford to spend four, five, six, seven years defending themselves in court, and the public relations nightmare is terrible because Spitzer always levies the charges before he actually brings any charges.
	And this appeals to a lot of people who want to believe that every last corporation in America is corrupt.
	And indeed some corporations were corrupt, and some corporations are corrupt.
	But what he has done is throw the baby out with the bathwater.
	Find an industry that is unpopular, levy a bunch of charges, make it look like he's the guy that's riding in on the white horse to save everything.
	The end result often is, however, when these companies have to pay these settlements that they're sold and people are put out of work, or firms that are in no position to be able to defend themselves have to lay off a lot of people, or the firm itself is devastated because the impact on its public relations status is terrible.
	So he's done this again and again and again and again.
	And anybody who's had any first hand experience watching how he's pulled one of these things would realize that this man is a true demagogue.
	But obviously they're lapping it up in New York State, and he's probably going to be elected governor.
	And after that, who knows where he's going to go?
	I just want the audience in this program to know what Elliot Spitzer is all about.
	And he may he may well be our future, but this is how he conducts his business, and this is what he has done to American business, and he hasn't helped protect anyone in the process.
	But you're right.
	When a company does have the one hundred and fifty million dollars that it needs to fight these cases for three or four or five years and go to court, Spitzer tends not to win, which is why he puts out the bad publicity first, then brings the charges second, and is completely impossible in trying to deal with deal with these corporations because all he ever wants is the settlement.
	Thanks, Charlie.
	Madison, Wisconsin, and Steve, it's your turn on Russia's show.
	Hey, Mark, how are you?
	I'm great.
	Hey, number one, long time Republican.
	Number two, I tend to agree with you folks all the time, but you are dead wrong on this strong deal.
	You mean with regard to you mean with regard to Elliot Spitzer?
	Yeah.
	Watch the language.
	Well, he did.
	Well, watch just watch the language.
	I'm in charge.
	I'm in charge of somebody else's program here, Steve.
	We got to put you on a very, very short lease.
	Everyone understands that terminology, I think.
	Are you going to continue with that terminology or no?
	Then just make your point.
	Make your point.
	Okay.
	All right.
	The point is that Mr. Strong made some mistakes that I I'm sure he admits he made for peanuts for a man of his wealth.
	That's correct.
	And he destroyed a franchise.
	That's not correct.
	Well, he did on his own volition.
	No, that's not correct.
	He allowed late trading in his mutual funds by That's correct.
	That part you're correct about.
	But do but do understand that a lot of firms had the same sort of thing going on.
	The thing that I want that the thing that I want people the thing that it is illegal.
	Why I'm in the industry, it's illegal.
	I just well, first of all, it wasn't actually alleged to be illegal.
	It was alleged to be a violation of the firm's prospectus, which is which perhaps may be quibbling.
	The point that I am making is the settlement that was demanded by Spitzer was so enormous that that company has eliminated the company was sold to another firm, Wells Fargo.
	I know.
	In order to pay the sun in order to pay the settlement, and a number of people lost their jobs as a result of that.
	By by coming up with a settlement that was as extreme as it was, it resulted in people being put out of work.
	The thing that bothers me about guys like Elliot Spitzer is they love to portray themselves as the salvation of the little guy, the savior of the little guy, but you see a whole lot of collateral damage out there when the big shots they try to destroy are actually taken down.
	The other thing that a guy like Spitzer is able to do is that he traffics in an environment in which we did have an Enron.
	We did have a worldcom.
	We did have a lot of corporate corruption going on out there, and it implies that every company in America is somehow corrupt, and because he is somebody who goes after corporate America, he's a hero.
	I just think that the guy is a phony.
	He didn't bring down Enron.
	He didn't bring down WorldCom.
	He didn't bring down any of the real corporate frauds that are out there.
	He goes and he cherry picks individual industries that have a little bit of a public relations problem, gets one or two settlements, and then he moves along.
	Thank you for the call, Steve.
	Not that I want to be obsessed with Elliott Spitzer, but the guy bothers me.
	Now let us turn our attention to North Korea, a subject that may be talked to death, but there's something we've got to think about here.
	We in the United States apparently haven't decided whether or not the North Korean nuclear threat is something to be worried about a lot or a little.
	I'm not sure the administration has fully figured it out.
	The rest of the world seems to be at least a little bit concerned.
	But there's one country that's beside itself.
	Japan.
	Japan, in fact, is criticizing North Korea far more harshly than South Korea is criticizing North Korea.
	And Japan is trying to figure out what its response is going to be.
	After World War Two, the Japanese Constitution said that it would have only a limited military merely to protect itself, and that that military would never be a first strike military.
	This was something that the rest of the world insisted upon following World War II, and something that the Japanese more or less have wanted for the last sixty years.
	But the end result of that is that it's been the responsibility largely of the United States to protect Japan.
	Now, with North Korea developing missiles, and North Korea being more belligerent than ever, the responsibility is once again apparently going to be on the United States to protect Japan.
	This raises a question that I don't have a good answer to.
	Do we want Japan to develop more of a military?
	Do you want Japan to have a first-strike military?
	First of all, they can afford it.
	Japan is a very wealthy nation.
	Does it make any sense for the United States to be almost solely responsible for protecting our allies on the Pacific Rim?
	Or given the fact that Japan has a lot of money, do we want them to start carrying some of the weight themselves?
	And I think a lot of Americans are probably really conflicted about this, as are Japanese.
	The memories of World War II are still there.
	Do we want, for example, Japan to be a nuclear power?
	They certainly have the technology, the understanding.
	I'm sure I'm sure they're going to build all the components over there.
	And they have the money.
	Now we fret over the notion of North Korea becoming a military power because North Korea is unstable and unfriendly to us.
	We fret over the notion of Iran being a nuclear power.
	We're not even all that comfortable with the notion of India being a nuclear power.
	But we're not bothered by the fact that Great Britain is a nuclear power.
	Should we want Japan to be a nation with nuclear capability?
	If it is, we can eliminate a lot of our own responsibility.
	All the nukes that serve as a deterrent in that part of the world right now are ours.
	They're missiles belonging to the United States.
	The reason why we have so many troops protecting South Korea is we're the only country in a position to do it.
	The nuclear defense of Japan is from the United States of America.
	Do we want Japan to go nuclear?
	Do we want Japan to be more proactive?
	Do we want Japan to spend more of its own money protecting itself?
	Or we would we just assume that they not have this?
	I'm not sure what the answer is.
	But I do know this.
	The Japanese are going to make that decision unless the North Korean problem is dealt with.
	Unless we figure out a way to get the North Koreans to become more reasonable and back down on their nuclear ambitions.
	Japan is going to decide to deal with this problem on its own because Japan is the nation that has the most to lose.
	I remain confident that Secretary of State Rice and President Bush are going to be able to pull this off.
	A number of conservatives have gotten very critical of the administration for being too tepid when it comes to North Korea.
	Bill Crystal, column that's being cited by a lot of people in the current issue of the Weekly Standard, implying that the current Bush policy toward North Korea is Clintonian.
	In the meantime, you've got Madeline Albright running around over there trying to rehabilitate her own image, suggesting that it's the Bush administration that screwed everything up in North Korea.
	I talked in the first hour of the program about the economy that President Bush inherited from Clinton.
	Every problem we have had in the last six years has been a problem that was handed over to this country by Bill Clinton's refusal to address it, be it his refusal to address the fact that Social Security was developing a fundamental deficit, Medicare, Al Qaeda, which attacked the United States several times and wasn't addressed by Clinton, and North Korea.
	What did Bill Clinton do about the growing North Korean threat?
	Nothing.
	Jimmy Carter went over there and said, I have a deal.
	And Clinton accepted the deal.
	Clinton then negotiated a second deal.
	North Korea in both instances said it would back down.
	It would back off.
	They didn't back down.
	They didn't back off.
	Now the knock being put on President Bush is that North Korea has developed plutonium under President Bush's watch.
	Well, they didn't develop it last week.
	They never stopped their nuclear program because we kept accepting their assurances and giving them more money in exchange for those assurances.
	It's been that weakness that has given us the problem that we have right now.
	And we're not going to be able to negotiate our way out of this.
	The only answer that I see to the problem in North Korea is for the United States to deal with China and tell the Chinese they better get North Korea to back down.
	Now I do see that there is a visit going on in North Korea right now with the Chinese ambassador.
	And the United States is focusing more of our attention on China.
	I think that's positive.
	And in the end, it's the only answer because the Chinese are the ones that have the leverage necessary to get the North Koreans to back down.
	And it's long past time that the United States got more aggressive in its dealings with China, even if it means putting this throwing economic relationship that we have with China on the table.
	My name is Mark Belling, and I'm sitting in for Russian ball.
	Russia's a new guy who is training to be a broadcast engineer here, and I insulted Mike Mamon, the old guy by asking how he could possibly draw a day's pay just sitting behind the new guy as the new guy to the job, and I see he stormed out of the studio.
	Did he storm out of the studio to get coffee or because he had a task to do, or did he storm out of the studio because I hurt his feeling?
	Okay, so it wasn't any, it wasn't directly anything that I said.
	By the way, I was going to uh come in to the audience's attention, the new CD by the Chili Peppers.
	I love them.
	It's really good, and the hit single Danny California is the best song on there, but the new guy tells me that that's like a rip-off of a Tom Petty song.
	Mary Jane's Last Dance, which was the old pot smoking song.
	Well, I love that song too.
	Now I'm going to have to listen to these two to see if whether or not this is we actually could use a little bit more ripping off, at least if they're ripping off, they're ripping off with good taste.
	Back to the telephones.
	Bozeman Montana, David, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program.
	Hey, Mark, you're doing a great job filling in.
	Thank you.
	Uh, but you said you didn't know what to do about Japan, and uh one thing we can't let Japan do is get a new because that goes against the United States strategy to stabilize the entire globe by limiting the number of weapons of mass destruction.
	I agree with that.
	On the other hand, you know, Japan's got a lot of money.
	And the United States has been the global policeman for that part of the world, and for that matter for them for much of the world.
	Part of me says that we could deal with a big chunk of that problem if we simply told the Japanese to defend themselves, and they certainly have the money to do so, both in terms of nuclear capability and having a more proactive military.
	But I would support you're right.
	You know, Japan of today is friendly to the United States.
	We don't know about the Japan of thirty years from now or the Japan of sixty years ago.
	You know, for all these people that wring their hands over global warming, something that bothers me not in the least, the real problem that we face as a planet is what do we do with the proliferation of weapons that can kill us?
	Long range nukes with massive explosive capability.
	That's the real global warming.
	On the one hand, you'd like to be able to ask the Japanese to just deal with the North Korean problem themselves and not have to be in mortal fear of being attacked by a nation like that.
	On the other hand, we want to keep nukes out of as many hands as possible, even if those are friendly hands.
	To me, I think it's a very difficult question.
	Yeah, and I would I would support them having a military, but any kind of nukes or weapons of mass destruction, um, it's just unstable to have them.
	Uh anywhere in the globe.
	Well, just understand though, North Korea, unless somebody does something about this, is going to have them.
	And the only counter we've been able to see to bad people having nuclear weapons is good people having them.
	Thank you, David.
	Kansas City and Kurt, Kurt, it's your turn on Russia's program.
	Hi, Mark, thanks for taking my call.
	In discussing uh nuclear weapons, I've always wondered how come we never discussed what is an imminent threat to the United States, which is the thousands of warheads in Russia and its former satellites pointed directly at us now.
	And you know, I think the biggest failure that our government has had over the last three administrations is not making sure that the Russian democracy works and it is vile.
	You're asking why we don't ever discuss that.
	I'm not discussing it right now because I was discussing North Korea, but I'm not denying that that's a problem.
	You're right.
	Nukes anywhere is a problem, but if you acknowledge that it's a problem, the nukes that are still sitting there in Russia, particularly with that government not being fully stable, then you've got to acknowledge that gu governments like Iran and North Korea, which are even more frightening, are an even bigger problem when it comes to nuclear expansion.
	I'm Mark Elling sitting in for Rush.
	Now, this is either Mary Jane's Last Dance by Tom Petty or Danny California by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, right?
	I'm told that there's some controversy that the new Danny California song has a rip-off of the Petty song, but I like both of them.
	We're getting a little bit of gas off the air from listeners who are suggesting that I'm blaming Bill Clinton for everything.
	Well, if the shoe fits, if Clinton is indeed to blame for something, the fact that I'm pointing it out isn't my hang up.
	It's simply reflecting reality.
	I will say this.
	Whatever problems that end that that exists after President Bush leaves office, you can hang On him as well.
	I have a concern that we're not going to deal with the immigration problem.
	If if not, that means it is going to be handed over to the next administration.
	I have a concern that Social Security is not going to be dealt with by the time the President Bush leaves office.
	If so, that's something he will have handed over.
	In the case of Clinton, whether it's Al Qaeda, the North Korean threat, or any of these other problems, he swept everything under the rug, and we are paying the price for not dealing with them then, and we're paying that price right now.

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