All Episodes
Previous Next
Aug. 16, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:22
August 16, 2007, Thursday, Hour #1
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Greetings to you, music lovers, thrill seekers, conversationalists all across the fruited plane.
Time for more broadcast excellence here on the most listened-to radio talk show in the country and the fastest week in media.
It's already Thursday.
And I can tell just by looking at Snerdley's eyes.
Late night for you last night.
Here's the telephone number if you want to be on the program, folks, 800-282-2882.
The email address rush at EIBnet.com.
I have a question.
Was the media this excited?
Were they this thrilled?
Were they this riled up when the stock market was scorching hot, climbing through the 14,000 barrier?
And all the way up.
You know, when it hit 14,000, it was twice what it was back in, well, six years ago, back in 2000, five and a half years ago, 2002, something like that.
They can't get enough of this, this plunge.
And I'm going to tell you what's happening here, folks.
They are stoking the flames of economic trouble.
And they're focusing repeatedly on the mortgage market, the subprime market, as they call it.
And the housing starts.
10-year low.
Major lender has to borrow billions from 40 different banks.
Real estate's cyclical like most things are cyclical.
You have people taking some profits here.
Sure, there's some panic going on, but it's a sell-off.
It happens.
But boy, they're stoking the flames of this, and they're doing it in an irresponsible fashion.
But it's typical for the drive-bys.
Their whole purpose, keep everybody riled up, keep them angst, filled with angst and chaos and panic.
I mean, I don't know how long it's going to be, but I guarantee you we'll see some pictures from 1929 of people jumping out their office windows.
That's where this is headed.
And they're driving down the stock market at the same time.
They did nothing to help drive it up.
They ignored it.
They're saying, well, even that's just Wall Street.
That's not helping Main Street.
And of course, you know, the people on Main Street, yeah, yeah, punish those people on Wall Street.
Now you've got people out there feeling good that this is happening while at the same time getting involved in this panic.
And they're trying to widen the impact of the market plunge here to the whole real estate market.
And I think they wouldn't mind killing the economy, damaging the economy before the 08 election in order to help Democrats.
You remember last time this happened, dot-com sell-off member Gephardt, smiling, went out there on TV, rubbed his hands in glee, said, wow, every 100-point loss, we pick up a seat in the House.
So I'm not making this up, and I am not exaggerating.
There are people that are happy about this.
This is the thing about modern liberalism and the Democrat Party.
What's good for America ends up being disastrous for them.
Victory in Iraq, victory in a war on terror.
What's bad for America is good for them.
I'll tell you, I would not want to be in a political party that had set itself up to win or to gain power in such a way.
Now, I had from yesterday stack this.
And by the way, yes, yes.
I'm going to pick up where we left off yesterday.
That last half hour yesterday was one of the, well, actually, the call for the nine-year-old in the first half hour, then the last half hour of that show yesterday.
I mean, it was crazy.
It was fun, crazy, partially owing to Snerdley's choice of callers to give me.
I mean, I'm still marveling here that we had, Cal, you should have heard this.
We had a grandmother call.
It's the last call of the day giving me grief because I was making it sound like it's okay to go out and eat fast food and French fries and potato chips.
And she misunderstood.
I was no, I just don't want the government regulating what we eat.
I don't want the government regulating our behavior any more than they already do.
If you don't want to eat McDonald's, fine.
I don't want to force you to do anything.
That's the point.
I'll leave you alone.
All of us will leave you alone.
Do what you want.
You can't leave us alone.
This woman calls giving me grief over the fact that I'm countering and harming, damaging her efforts to get her grandson to eat the right foods.
And she says, Well, how old's your grandson?
And she said, 26.
And it kind of zoomed by me.
And then I saw on the screen that Dawn transcribes it.
Called and said, Wait, did I just hear you say your grandson's 26 and you are trying to tell him what to eat?
Yes, and you're making it hard for me.
She said, I said, well, when are you going to let him grow up and be an adult?
At any rate, we've got countless other stories along those lines.
We had this effete snob liberal call from San Bernardino yesterday.
You know, one of these, Mr. Limbaugh, don't you think you're really a little over the top with the smoking thing?
Don't you really understand that nobody's attempting to stop anyone from smoking in their homes?
Don't you?
I mean, this isn't that just right-wing paranoia.
You know how these liberals are.
The only thing you didn't do was like the intellectuals on Firing Line used to do.
But it's all over the place.
We got a story out of Hawaii from May.
Headline Homes Next Target for Smoking Ban.
And we've also found where San Francisco is doing the same thing.
And I got lots of emails from people who live in apartments, and that's a home if you live in one.
You can't smoke a cigarette in your apartment, much less a cigar.
So it's already happening.
They're already in the house.
The feds are regulating things.
Anyway, we're going to pick up where we left off on that when we get to it.
But back to the drive-bys in the economy and what's happening.
I had this thing in the stack from yesterday and I didn't get to it, but it's a column from the Denver Post, guest commentary by Julian Friedland.
Julian Friedland teaches philosophy and business ethics at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
And if you are concerned about what is being taught, your young skull's full of mush in academia, in higher academia, then you have a genuine concern.
It's titled Journalism's New Economics.
Let me just give you a couple of excerpts here because I'm going to build on this point that I think they're purposely the drive-bys doing what they can here to create as much panic in your mind for the effect of harming the economy so as to help Democrats.
Last week, the New York Times reduced the width of its pages by an inch and a half, which, by the way, presented a challenge to people at birdcages.
This joined a trend that has reduced both the space devoted to news and commentary and the staff sizes of many daily newspapers throughout the country.
Recently, Rupert Murdoch won the fight to buy the Wall Street Journal.
As the First Amendment to our Constitution reminds us, the success of our form of government requires an educated citizenry reliant on a free press.
And the news corporation, just like every other news company, is free to print whatever it desires.
The problem is that it's funded primarily by advertising.
And advertisers in the major media tend to be large corporations intent on preserving their interests.
Do you get an idea where this is going?
No, I'm not kidding.
I mean, this is just flat out amazing.
Why a sufficient number of these family members finally decided to sell after initially rejecting Murdoch's offer out of hand is a complex matter.
But the upshot is that only two national newspapers are left in this country and are still held by such family trusts, the New York Times and the Washington Post.
And these are widely considered to be the very best news sources in the country.
This is no coincidence by this guy.
And of course, the elite defeat snobs.
Most family medias had been sold to pay for taxes anyway on the inheritance.
At any rate, here's the note.
As it stands, the public mission of the news business is being forsaken in the name of private profit.
It thus stands starkly before us as a modern market failure.
But there is a solution.
Media represent an essential service like education and infrastructure.
As such, media need to be protected from the corrupting influence of private interest, which has finally grown so massive as to exert a crushing grip on journalistic independence.
Who the hell is exerting a crushing grip on journalistic independence?
You know, Dan Rather got this starting.
When Larry Tisch bought CBS, he looked at the books and said, wow, the news division is losing 200 million a year.
We're going to have layoffs.
Rather went out in the street.
He can't do that.
The news division needs to be immune from the bottom line.
Hey, Dan, give back some of your then $6 million salary if you want to get these people back working.
This piece is all about how journalism is being corrupted by advertising.
It's being corrupted by corporate ownership pressures.
It's being corrupted by the need to make a profit.
And as such, its independence has gone down the drain.
If we look to Europe, we can see media independence there is protected by public funds.
And then he cites the BBC.
So the point of sharing this with you is that Nissa College professor, University of Colorado at Boulder, the reason I mentioned this to you is because when I was running my theory by a friend prior to the program that the media wants to destroy the economy or damage it enough to help the Democrats, a friend said, even if it means damaging themselves, hell, they've been doing that for a long time anyway.
But they don't care.
The actual practicing journalists don't care about the financial health of their companies, and they don't care about the falling circulation of their papers.
Obviously, they don't because the content's not changing.
The one business where the customer is always wrong and is stupid to boot.
And when the customer complains about something, the elite snobs in the drive-by say, well, yeah, you don't like it.
Well, here's more of it.
And they cram even more bias and inaccuracy in what they do as a sort of a knee-jerk reaction.
So, yeah, bottom line is, wouldn't surprise me a bit.
They're going to keep on with this, doing everything they can to get the consumer confidence numbers down.
They want people being worried about their next paycheck.
You're going to get stories about we may be facing one of the most serious market fall-offs in recent memory.
And it may trigger for the first time in American history the fact that this generation will not do as well as its parents.
The Bush administration is the lead cause of all this.
Well, I get to see how this is all going to happen.
So you have been warned.
Quick timeout.
Back after this.
Having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
Rush Schlimbaugh on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Talent on loan from God.
You have to say God.
You say God doesn't kick through.
Here's another little trick from the drive-by media.
In markets like this, when the market's down, only the little people are losing money, of course.
The Warren Buffetts and the Bill Gates' and the Henry Kravises.
Oh, they're having problems.
But the little people are giving cream.
Market's up, only the rich make money.
The poor, the middle class, women and minorities, always hardest hit, even during successful times.
Sad, sad story.
Thousands of Elvis Presley fans braved 105-degree heat as they wound down the driveway at Graceland in a graveside procession.
This was yesterday in advance of the 30th anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley, but the heat led to the death of a fan, a 67-year-old woman from New Jersey.
Shelby County Medical Examiner's Office said that the heat did contribute to her death.
This need not have happened.
This out-of-control heat need not have happened, ladies and gentlemen.
If everybody would simply drive the right kind of car, Elvis.
As a snowfly.
At an upscale lot in the best part of town, a liberal guy, a liberal gal, by hybrid.
And they feel good inside.
Because if there's one thing this world needs, it's environmental friends, chilling out the green for a hybrid for a hybrid.
They say, people, don't you understand?
Those suburbans are ruining.
So it really didn't matter how much more we had to pay.
When we put on the brakes, you see, we're charging up the battery.
If all of you were just like us, we'd save the earth today.
Yes, they're so concerned.
Not making any difference, but they're doing their best.
Showing all the world they care more than the rest.
In a hybrid, the toy car wouldn't go.
They swallowed hard and checked the crown.
They love their car, but the battery died.
And as they sat inside, being told by a truck you drank a whole lot of gas, yeah, they knew in the hearts had never gone so fast.
In a hybrid, and the dealer laughs in a hybrid.
Because at the same car lot in the best part of town, another liberal guy, a freaky liberal gal.
My hybrid.
And they forget inside.
Have it, folks.
We've got to keep updating these things.
Formerly in a Yugo.
We still have in a Yugo.
We'll still use it, but now it's in a hybrid.
That's Paul Shanklin as Elvis.
We actually shipped that away to Texas to have it mixed.
Paul told me it took him 27 takes to get the Elvis voice down.
We worked hard on that.
All right, you've got to hear.
We're going to go to the audio soundbite.
You've got to hear, folks, the reaction to Carl Rove's appearance on this program yesterday.
The media is beside itself, but the epitome of it is David Schuster.
Last night on Hardball with Chris Matthews, this is what Schuster said about Rove and his appearance.
And they're really upset, by the way, that Rove called them elite snobs.
That really tore him a new one.
And so here's what David Schuster said.
I'm going to issue a challenge to Karl.
I mean, I love Mike Allen Geerley.
He's a very polite guy, but a polite reporter.
Rush Limbaugh, of course, was teeing it up for Karl Rove.
If Karl Rove is a man, if he's a man and he believes so strongly that Democrats are elite snobs and he believes so strongly that the Bush legacy is terrific, he ought to come on a show like this one, answer some questions about Scooter Libby, answer some questions about what was really going on with this spying program and about the way this administration decided to use executive orders instead of talking to people back then.
All right, now we go to have a montage.
You see how irritated and upset they are.
And this montage features Schuster again.
And it's toward the end of this, and he's the guy that ends up talking about me in the golf.
They showed video of me interviewing Rove yesterday with my cigar in my mouth, like smiling and weaving as Rove is answering questions.
So that's part of this montage.
But this, it just, it drives them nuts that he doesn't care about them.
Rove fired back on the Rush Limbaugh radio show.
It was a lot blunter in what he said to Rush Limbaugh.
Rove goes on Rush Limbaugh show today after he announces his retirement to talk about Hillary Clinton's negatives when his boss is negative to like 65%.
Rove was on Rush Limbaugh's radio show.
He spent much of that time talking about a laundry list of examples that he says shows Hillary Clinton is weak on the issues.
Karl Rove, heading off for the lecture circuit, used his shot on Rush Limbaugh today to attack Bush critics as, I love this phrase, elite effect snobs.
Rove's move?
A chat with Rush Limbaugh.
There's Rush Limbaugh smoking a nice cigar, wearing a golf shirt.
There was another video where you could see the nice watch.
Who's the snob?
He's hiding behind executive privilege, and now he's sitting on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Hillary Clinton is basking in the warm glow of criticism from the man Democrats love to hate, Karl Rove.
He attacked her on the Rush Limbaugh show, and she seemed to enjoy it.
See, these people, Rove calls them elite, defeat snobs as David Schuster.
So look at Limbaugh, golf shirt, cigar, who's the snob?
And a wall, yeah, the watch.
I got a nice watch on.
Who's the snob?
I'll tell you, one of the most fun parts of this job is irritating these people and taking them to a place they'd rather not go, and that is displaying who they really are.
And Rove has that ability.
I, of course, have long had that ability.
And they're upset that they've lost their monopoly.
They're upset that Rove doesn't come talk to them.
And then when he comes and talks to me, he calls them defeat snobs.
By the way, Carville, yeah, Rove goes on a Limbaugh show out there.
Where am I going by to announce their retirement talks about Hillary was negative?
He's both negative like 55%.
This from a man who's got such a great reputation after engineering a presidential victory of 43% for Bill Clinton in 1992.
43%.
Yip, yip, yip, yip, yahoo.
Thank you, Perot.
We'll be back right after this.
A man, a living legend, Nobel Peace Prize nominee, a well-known radio racing tour and general all-around good guy, a harmless, lovable little fuzzball.
Here behind a golden EIB microphone at the prestigious Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Those of you on the phones, be patient.
Get to you as quickly as I can.
It's interesting, this attack on Karl Rove because he attacked Hillary.
You know, I got a Chicago Tribune story here.
We got audio soundbites to back this up.
Obama and John Edwards, the Brett girl, are saying the same things.
It's uncanny.
Both Obama and Edwards are piling on Hillary in much the same way, not quite the detail, but in much the same way as Rove did.
But of course, they don't get highlighted as much because they don't run around call the media effete snobs.
I'm sorry, elite effete snobs.
And there's also something else brewing out there.
This is, you know, the Democrats have a theory here that the Republican Party is doomed for a generation, that it's over because of Karl Rove's base first strategy, meaning focus on the base, get the base wrapped up, and then branch out.
And he's here, listen to Carville explain it, and then I will offer expert analysis.
This is Miles O'Brien on CNN says to Carville, wait a minute, that's a pretty sweeping statement.
You're talking about a whole generation leaving a party.
You're saying an entire generation of young people turned off by this brand of Republicanism?
Really?
Of course they are.
I can prove it.
I got poll after vote after vote.
Every Republican strategist that I know literally is saying we're about to lose an entire generation here.
This is the worst thing that's ever happened to the party.
What he did is the classic thing where you sell your soul for some good something on earth.
He sold a Republican Party down the river to win an election in 2004.
He won that.
But now Republicans are having to live with the consequences of Mr. Rove's base first strategy.
And I think that's pretty clear from the 2006 election.
And I think it's going to be abundantly clear from the 2008 election.
Now, I'm, you know, as everybody knows, I'm not nearly as smart as James Carville when it comes to presidential politics.
But isn't the base first strategy what always happens in primaries?
Isn't it what always happened?
Aren't the Democrats themselves doing it now?
There's this base first strategy, and everybody's picking this up now.
Rove destroyed the party.
You'll see in 2008, base first strategy.
That's code words.
Base first strategy equals Christian right.
Rove sold his soul to the Dobsons of the world and the Falwells and the Robertsons of the world.
And they can't let go of that.
They've been predicting the doom and the end of the Republican Party because of the association with the Christian right for as long as I've been around, and it's based on hope.
But there is, there's no evidence.
The Republicans have lost a whole generation of young people.
Besides that, where is their evidence that if they even have, that the Democrats have picked it up?
All right, now let's go to these sound bites and give you a little flair, a little example of how Hillary is also being ripped by her Democrat opponents.
This is the Brecht girl last night on MSNBC.
Matthews said to him, is Hillary a divisive force because she brings back the continued old war between the Clintons and their critics?
Well, I think the reality is people in this country either love Hillary Clinton or they don't.
And that's just where she is, in many cases, through no fault of her own.
And I think that's probably what Senator Obama's talking about.
Yeah, either you love her or you don't.
It's either love or hate.
He's saying she's polarizing.
See, Obama and Edwards are trying to co-opt Hillary's new theme, which is unity.
We need to end the politics of diversion and division.
We need to bring back the politics of inclusion, unify the nation.
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
It's interesting, too, because I was doing a show prep this morning and I came across two people.
A friend of mine, Pete Wayner, at his blog at Commentary, their website, and a writer at The American Spectator.
And they both touched on the theme.
What is so important about unity in a president?
Go back, as the guy in the American Spectator said, wait a minute, did Thomas Jefferson not get the memo on unity?
Did Abraham Lincoln not get the memo on unity?
It is an interesting thing to talk about.
When politicians talk about unity on the Democrat side, what they really mean is we've got to make Republicans irrelevant.
And we've got to make conservatives irrelevant.
They don't have the, I don't think, the ability to beat us in the arena of ideas, so they use other techniques.
But it is an interesting premise because a lot of people, like this guy that called two days ago, who was getting on me for always being partisan.
You remember this guy?
Can't we all get along?
And he said he was an independent.
Later in the call, I said, what do you stand for?
Duh.
Total silence.
And he thought it was a trick questor.
I said, I'm not tricking you.
This is not a setup.
And he said, what do you mean?
What do I say?
I said, well, give me a core belief that you have.
Well, I stumbled around.
I said, okay, let me help you.
Victory in Iraq.
Right or wrong?
Well, that opens a whole new Canada word.
Would not even give me his opinion on that.
Now, there are a lot of people, these independents, that's why I say you'll never go to the library, find a book, Great Moderates in American History.
And these people don't like the bickering and so forth because it's all about them.
They want to feel good.
And so this unity thing appeals to people like that guy that called.
Yes, we must all get along, but unity is not possible.
We used to have it in times of war, but we don't even have that now with the Democrats so power hungry.
We used to, but we don't.
The idea that unity is something that needs to be first and foremost on the priority list for running the country misses some really tremendous amounts of history and importance.
Reagan didn't care about unity.
He cared about beating Democrats and using them when he had to to get what he wanted done.
But he sort of unified the country with his spirit, with his optimism, made people feel good.
But it wasn't his objective.
He had core beliefs and principles and followed them.
People had confidence in him and so forth and so on.
But unity is a strange thing.
In fact, some of the greatest times in our history have been when we've been divided about things.
That's when you get debate.
That's when you get people shouting and committing with passion what they really believe.
Unity requires somebody to shut up.
Unity is going to require somebody to cave on what they believe in.
Unity is the code word for we need to end the partisan bickering.
And when a liberal says we need to end the partisan bickering, it means conservatives need to shut up.
And if they won't shut up, we'll make them shut up, i.e. fairness doctrine.
One more thing from Edwards here.
Matthews said, well, look, can Hillary change, can she stop being the candidate of the Clinton administration of the 90s and be the candidate of the 21st century?
Or is she yesterday's news?
If she's willing to say we're going to change our behavior, we don't want to trade one crowd of insiders for a different crowd of insiders in Washington.
And she can make a stance, by the way, on that subject by doing what I've asked her to do, which is to join us in saying no to Washington lobbyist money.
But I think she's going to have to make a clear break and make it clear she's not part of the Washington inside crowd.
That's another one of these myths.
There's nobody running for president who's not part of it.
If you're not part of it, you don't stand a chance.
It's absurd.
Here's Obama, Audio Soundbite 11, Ed.
This is in Cedar Falls, Iowa yesterday at a campaign rally.
And Senator Obama, who, by the way, Chris Matthews said yesterday, might be a good president because with a name like Obama, it might help us as a nation relating to the Muslim world.
Here's Obama.
Pardon the sniffles again today, folks.
I know it sounds rude and unprofessional, but you watch.
Since I am the role model for media figures today, sniffing will become an art form, and people will begin imitating even the way I do that.
Here's the Obama bite.
Part of the problem here is not just George Bush and the White House.
We can't just change political parties and continue to do the same kind of thing that we've been doing.
We can't just go about business as usual and think it's going to turn out differently.
We've got to change the nature of our politics.
We must unify the country.
But this is a swipe at Hillary.
So my point is not just Rove that's taking swipes at her.
He just detailed it in a way that's irrefutable.
And that's another thing that bugged them about what he said about her yesterday.
He detailed it, and it was irrefutable.
And that's, you know, when you criticize Democrat, you're not supposed to get away with that.
When you do it unassailably, well, then you really make yourself an even bigger target than you were.
Quick call before we go to the break.
Mr. Snerdley, where are we going?
Cape Coral, Florida.
And Carl, I'm great to have you with us.
Nice to welcome you to the EIB network.
Hello.
Yeah, yeah.
Hey, Carl, what's up?
Oh, Rush.
I didn't know I was on.
I'm at a shooting range about 100 miles west of you, so it was kind of loud here.
I thought your cell connection was going bad, but that's actually you're at a shooting range.
You're shooting bullets?
Shooting real bullets, killing bullets.
We're shooting them here.
We're on a break right now because we have a cold range and we have to set up new targets.
Well, wait a minute.
What are you aiming at?
You're aiming at paper targets.
We're paying attention.
We're holding paper and doing it in a very expensive fashion.
Just checking.
I wanted to make sure.
This is not your local post office over here.
All right, Carl.
Well, I'm glad you took the headphones off, and here we are.
Okay.
I'm a retired New York City police officer, and I was out on vacation.
I was on vacation with my family just recently.
We were out in California.
We were in Monterey.
And having dinner in a small restaurant in Carl, I picked up one of the local newspapers, and they were touting how the local police, the Carl Police Department, just signed their new contract.
And in their new contract, it stipulates that police officers are not allowed to smoke on duty, off-duty, in their own houses, in their private cars, any place.
And they're subject to dismissal if they are caught doing it.
Well, you know, we've got to draw a fine line here.
The police department is an agency of government, and I understand that.
There are a lot of companies, too, that have rules of behavior for their employees.
I know some, I can't think of them off the top of my head, but they've just told their employees, in two years, you can't smoke, period.
You can't smoke in the office now, but in two years, you can't smoke at home.
If you do, you're going to get fired.
Now, that's a little dicey, but that's private enterprise doing it.
And when the government's telling its own employees, that's a thing.
But if you want to be a cop in Carmel, then that's what the requirements are.
My concern is that this is going to be behavior that they will exhibit in our own home.
Well, it's already happening.
And I don't want to repeat myself from yesterday, but more and more people don't smoke.
And so when all these penalties are announced, new policies against people who do smoke, the people who don't think it's not going to have any impact on them and probably hate smokers anyway.
Good, good.
Make them quit.
Make them not smoke around me.
I don't even want to see it.
Raise their taxes.
Right.
If we're going to raise their taxes, and that raising of taxes is going to reduce the consumption and purchase of the product.
And if the taxes of that product, tobacco in this case, are going to fund children's health care, then you had better, if you're a wise guy, government person, you had better figure out that you better make it a usable product that you're taxing.
But more and more, you can't smoke anywhere, and that's one of the reasons for the decline, not just the taxes.
And so, as I said yesterday, when the tax revenue from tobacco and cigarettes fall short for the children's health care program, guess who's next?
All of you that were out there cheering the tax increases on cigarette smokers because there are not going to be enough cigarettes smoked, therefore not purchased in order to fund anything.
So, they're going to come after you next.
Quick timeout.
You have been warned.
Folks, it's happened the drive-bys got what they want.
Breaking news.
ABCNews.com: Dow Jones Industrial Average falls below $12,600 during afternoon trading, marking a 10% loss from the most recent high.
This is the first time since late 2002, the market's seen a correction.
Yes, it's working.
They can't beside themselves out there.
We've got a correction.
A correction is a 10% drop.
So it's happened, and there's excitement all over the place.
Matt and Columbus, Georgia, welcome to the EIB.
In fact, they're more excited about this than they are the hurricane.
Yes, Matt.
Hey, Rush, I have, I guess, more of a question than a comment, but I'm wondering if you think that the housing market slowdown has anything to do with people like Jesse Jackson who years ago with the big affirmative action, you know, saying that certain quotas had to be met, that kind of thing.
And if that has anything to do with people borrowing way too much money than they can't afford, people going in, minorities going in, you know, getting loans that are based, I guess, more on affirmative action.
They're looking at their credit ratings.
Let me take a stab at this.
Let me see if I understand what you're saying.
What you're saying is, what you're asking me is: do I think one of the reasons this has happened is because a bunch of people who had no business getting loans were given loans because there was civil rights pressure put on lenders because there's bias in the lending market.
Yeah, that's my question.
See, this is an example why I'm a host and not a caller.
Brevity is the soul of wit.
Basically, you think the lending banks were intimidated, scared into giving loans to people that they really have no business getting loans to.
Yes.
Yeah.
Well, it's risky to say that because I don't think the only people that are in the subprime market here are minorities.
I don't think it extended to just that.
I think it was who knows what lobbying pressure existed on this.
But here's the way to look at this intelligently and maturely is that people take risks with their money all the time.
And we don't make a habit of bailing them out.
You take a risk, and if it goes south, sorry, Mississippi, it goes south.
Just the other day, I met with one of my many financial advisors, came down here to see me from New York, just busting my chops to put some money in a hedge fund.
And I said, why?
I said, well, he said, well, you know, they don't go up as high in a great market, but they have a lot of protection in a down market.
you won't lose as much i said but isn't it true that if you put your money in a hedge fund and the market does start going down you can't get your money out of it for a year particularly if uh it's it's market related he said yeah yeah i said i'm not interested and this was right where we were at 14 000.
now this was just my instincts i don't know anything about this i mean i'm i don't i'm not a you know i don't manage this stuff daily and so forth but People take risks all the time.
If I'd have accepted the advice, put the money in there, I just had to be patient, wait for the market to rebound, which is what a lot of people don't want to do.
They're taking their profits and selling off, thinking it's going to go even further down.
But we would be talking about bailing out all these people before it's all over.
Then you pay for it.
I wasn't through up there.
All right, folks, first hour is over in the can.
▲
Export Selection