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Oct. 29, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:51
October 29, 2007, Monday, Hour #3
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The views expressed by the host on this program, now documented to be almost always right, 98.8% of the time.
I am Rush Limbaugh, America's real anchorman, America's truth detector, and the doctor of democracy, all combined into one harmless, lovable little fuzzball.
Great to have you with us, my friends.
A telephone number if you would like to join us, 800-282-2882, and the email address is uh rush at EIBNet.com.
All right, uh last week we talked about Charles Wrangell's new massive trillion dollar, one trillion dollar tax increase, which, if ever enacted, would be the largest tax increase in American history.
Yesterday on the uh the uh the the round table on Stephanopoulos' show, George Will and uh Stephanopoulos are talking about Wrangell's plan.
They have this exchange.
It sounds to me like the drive-by's are trying to put distance between Hillary and Wrangle.
Charlie Wrangle, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee really, I think through a major cluster of moment of the presidential campaign this week when he announced his tax plan.
He called it the mother of all tax reforms, Republicans pounced and said it was the first major mistake of Democrats in this campaign.
Well, judging by the reaction of the Democratic presidential candidates, they're not thrilled to have a man come in and say, I have a number trillion that I associate with a tax cut.
Well, they may not be thrilled, but they damn well are gonna do it.
What they're not thrilled about is that Wrangell went public with it.
But I I mentioned I told you why.
Wrangle 77.
He's not thinking long term here.
Well, I mean, can we be honest?
I don't mean this to be a cut.
The long term doesn't interest him on this.
Except, you know, it for sake of his legacy and posterity, how he can destroy America.
But he's not going to be around to see it destroyed at 77.
So he's gonna hopefully you'll be able to dream about it.
So last Friday, let's go back to last Friday on CNN's American morning, the anchor John Roberts was interviewing Wrangell.
And Robert says, Is this an indication that if a Democrat gets into the White House for many people in America, your taxes are gonna go up?
Of course not.
You keep saying that the more you say it, the more people want to know whose taxes will be going up.
You know, when you some people's taxes will increase.
If you are receiving a preferential tax treatment that you don't deserve, you can call it what you want a tax increase.
We will be calling it a liberal that you don't deserve.
So are you saying that high income earners are getting a preferential tax break now that they shouldn't be getting?
Well, the only reason that we can bring down the corporate tax rate is because under the higher tax rate, some of the people are paying no taxes at all.
So what we're doing is pulling out the unfairness, lowering the rate, and we're doing the same thing for middle income taxpayers.
This is absurd.
He's lowering the corporate rate, I think from 35 to 31 and a half.
He's gonna he's gonna play his little games of the uh the AMT and then soak anybody 150 grand up if they're single, 200 grand and up if they're married, with an effective tax rate of 44 percent when you combine the uh the uh sunsetting of the current tax cuts, which expire in 2010.
Uh so but how about this language, folks?
Uh if you're receiving a preferential track tax treatment that you don't deserve.
This is how they look at it.
If you're what is preferential tax treatment?
To Charlie Wrangle, it's the reduction of rates in range of 39 to 35 percent.
That's the the on the upper marginal rate.
That's the the top marginal rate.
That was the effect of the Bush tax cuts in both 2001-2003.
So to Charlie Wrangle, that is a that's uh that's a that's a preferential tax treatment you don't deserve.
Well, let's go back to last Thursday night.
You know, Wrangle announced his big plan last week, and uh the Hillary had this big birthday bash at uh where was it?
Beacon theater, beacon something or other in uh in Manhattan.
It was at the beacon.
Very good.
And uh, here's what she had to say about Wrangle.
Leaders like Charlie Wrangle are beginning to make a real change, but they don't have a president on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue who sees the problems, who hears the concerns that we do.
So we're going to begin to reconstruct what it takes to have that sense of positive possibility again.
What is that?
That is a gobbledygook, a mirage of things is no substance whatsoever.
Basically, though, what she's saying, I can translate this because I know liberal.
And uh it's a separate language.
And what uh what she's saying is Wrangle's plan's great.
We just can't have we don't have a guy in a white house who would sign it into law.
So we need to get back in the White House so that we can reconstruct what it takes to have that sense of positive possibility again.
The liberals think that they're wasting away in the wilderness, they're dying away.
All hope has been taken from them.
All hope.
They have no hope.
And there's no hope for even the positive possibilities of possibilities.
And so they got to get somebody in a white house to restore hope and positive possibilities, and enact Charles Wrangle's tax plan.
Uh doesn't sound to me like she's distancing herself from Chuck Wrangell's tax plan to me.
Does it to you?
Let's listen to her husband, Slick Willie.
Uh this was also at the Clinton Birthday Party, Hillary's birthday party at uh at the Beacon Theater.
Uh and this is a portion of his introduction of Hillary.
I especially want to thank uh the Chairman of the House Raisin Means Committee, Charles Rangel.
Literally within hours of Senator Mornihan announcing his retirement, the first New Yorker to call Hillary and urge her to run for the Senate was Charles Rangel.
We owe him this day, and we are grateful to him.
As though she had never thought of it.
She's minding her own business.
Moynihan says, I'm out of here.
Charles Rango gets on the phone.
Hillary, you should run.
Why?
I don't recall ever having thought of that, Charlie.
Thank you.
So Bill thanks Wrangle for getting Hillary into the in the Senate race, then all of a sudden Wrangle comes up with his tax plan has nothing to do with Hillary.
Damn well right it's Hillary's tax plan.
It's every Democrat's tax plan.
What do they do?
They raise rates.
By the way, here's Wrangle on the AMT.
New alternative maximum tax.
You make it, we take it.
Everyone's a winner.
Oh, it's more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
Here's a story from the um Alan Karuba writing at the uh website AnxietyCenter.com, and the headline is eating food will kill you.
Uh I kind of like this story because this uh take off on the point that I have been trying to make with all these scare tactics and stories out there about various types of food killing you and so forth.
Remember, uh, folks, my example of many, many years ago that I have repeated over and over again.
Anyone who's been in an auto accident in the last couple weeks ate carrots within six months prior to the auto.
Anybody that died in the last two days ate carrots in the previous year.
He takes this one step further, eating food will kill you.
It's now proven fact.
Any kind of food will kill you.
No one who's eaten food in the past is alive today, and everybody currently eating food will die.
Therefore, those noble people who seek to save us from eating every kind of food that the earth provides should be hailed and saluted.
Excuse me, for their efforts to keep us alive.
I say this as the son of a woman who taught the art of hote cuisine for over three decades and authored several cookbooks.
That poor woman died at age ninety-eight.
And I'm convinced it was all that fabulous food that killed her.
Ridiculous?
Yes.
These thoughts were occasioned by uh word that two groups, the World Cancer Research Fund International based in the UK, and the American Institute for Cancer Research will likely announce that eating meat will give you some form of cancer at a press conference scheduled the same day as Halloween.
In mid-October, the New York Times ran an article, U.S. cancer death rates are found to be falling.
It cited a decline by an average of 2.1% a year, a near doubling of decreases that began in 1993.
Now, this of course a good news.
The bad news is that smoking appears to be a significant cause of cancer.
In the U.S., cancer remains the second leading cause of death after heart disease.
And bear in mind that at least 100 or 10,000, I'm sorry, 10,000 Americans, on the average, die every day from something.
Not infrequently just old age and the infirmities associated with it.
If you live past 85 or into your 90s, the odds of dying from something are pretty good.
So why is it that meat is so often singled out as lethal?
Well, for one thing, there are any number of vegetarian groups that like some weird religious cult flood the internet and other media with fulminations against eating meat of any kind.
A Google search for meat plus health will turn up links to literally thousands of studies that proclaim that eating meat will cause breast, prostate, colon, and other forms of cancers.
That said, if you search all the studies, you'll also find those that confirm that meat is a healthy part of diet, just as anything else.
For example, the USDA food guide in 2005 and its dietary approaches to stop hypertension eating plan recommended two to three servings a week of lean meat.
What so many of the anti-meat studies do not tell you is that the subjects of their studies were, as often as not, also exposed to other risk factors that might have contributed to whatever form of cancer is being cited.
The correlation between eating meat and the cancer risk is cited as a statistical conclusion, but not necessarily the actual cause.
As often as not, if you read the abstract of these studies, you'll find mitigating phrases such as meat as a suspected cause, and that those who have a diet high in meat may be particularly exposed.
I admire people who devote their lives to unraveling the mysteries of medical science, but I also know that when you do this for a living, you also have to keep finding correlations or find another gig.
And I also know there are organizations whose funding and support is dependent on periodically announcing that just about anything you eat from popcorn to fish will kill you.
What people are rarely told these days is that meat is a great source of high quality proteins that a vegetarian diet is not able to provide.
It also contains all the essential amino acids the body requires.
This is true as well of as well for phosphorus, which is more easily absorbed than that present in cereals and legumes.
Meat is rich in vitamin B12.
Nutritionists will also tell you that in general, preserved meats like ham, bacon, salami, etc., should be avoided because they contain large amounts of fats, salts, nitrites, and nitrites that have been associated with increased rates of cancer.
But damn they taste good, especially bacon.
So food will kill you, folks.
Everybody who has eaten food will die.
Uh Mr. Sturdley, who is a uh vegan vegetarian is what's it do?
Were you vegan?
Vegetarian.
I don't think they're slamming vegetarians, but the vegetarians are they're activists.
Vegetarians are little liberals, the activists.
You you are not.
You know, you're not out here proselytizing when Dawn and Brian are having lunch.
You don't walk in there and say, ew!
You're gonna die.
You ought to stop that and sweep it off the table.
Oh, he does do that?
He does you do do that?
You go in there, you go in there and I've never seen it, pardon me, you go in there and give them grief.
See, we who don't limit our diets to only vegetarian intake, do not preach to you.
You know, we have our Burger Kings and the vegetarians come in and say, you gotta sell soy burgers in there.
No, we don't have to sell so I know you're not one of those, but they are the activists.
You know, meat eaters are not.
It's like liberals versus conservatives.
If you want to eat vegetarians fine and dandy, you want to eat fried cheese and you think it's a vegetarian diet, but you go right ahead.
But don't tell us to get rid of our bacon at the same time because we're gonna die because everybody who eats dead.
Hi, welcome back, my friends.
Great to have you uh with us on the EIB network.
Ronald Brownstein writing in a national journal.
Now, I don't know.
I Ronald Brownstein used to be at the Los Angeles Times, he was a reporter, and his wife works on the McCain campaigns.
They took him off the reporter beat and made him a columnist.
So I don't know if this is just a, you know, make some extra cash column for the National Journal and he's still at the Times or not.
But remember when when um when the uh Obama candidacy was in full bloom, and the drive-bys were just gushing.
And a reporting on how popular and how brilliant and so forth.
They pointed out that Obama was picking up the educated female vote, and Hillary was getting the dumb ones.
And the poor ones.
Well, now Brownstein's piece is Hillary Clinton's surge in the polls is largely due to support from women with college degrees.
An irony of Hillary Rodham Clinton's political career is that the women who resemble her most have uh often appeared to support her the least, but now that's changing.
That's turning around.
College educated and professional women who have more in common with Clinton have been a greater puzzle for her.
Some view her as cold and calculating.
Others think that she betrayed the ideals of feminism by remaining with her husband.
There's been a bigger hurdle to overcome with these upscale women, admits Mark Penn, the chief strategist for Penn's involved in this.
Well, what have we also we've heard from Penn?
Guess what?
We got polling data.
People love Hillary all of a sudden.
And then there were three days of stories about that.
Uh and then now we've got the smart babes are finally gravitating to Hillary.
Probably gonna get some more stories about that.
Uh and then they've more Republican women were vote for Hillary.
Yeah, we've had that story recently.
A lot of Republican women fed up with what they see on the uh on the uh restrict restrictionist and the uh the the the these predators that are Republican candidates and they're switching in droves to uh to Hillary.
Meanwhile, Giuliani has blasted Mrs. Clinton.
Uh it happened yesterday for talking about what she would do on the diplomatic front between her possible election and inauguration.
Now, Mrs. Clinton has told crowds that she would send distinguished Americans of both parties to travel around the world on her behalf with a very simple message to the governments and the people alike.
The era of cowboy diplomacy is over.
This is what she's been saying.
Giuliani, pointing to a story in Sunday's Des Moines register about her statements, said that such comments hurt the United States and undermine the balance of President Bush's term.
Uh, I think it's important that we conduct this debate in a way that we don't interfere with the ability of the country to function in a proper way between the now and this election.
Um paining with his wife Judith, the former New York mayor said that Clinton should retract the statements and respect Bush's responsibility.
Well, Hillary says the hell with that.
Um Rudy misunderstood what she was saying.
Senator Clinton and Mr. Giuliani have a fundamental disagreement.
She will end the war in Iraq, reverse the Bush era cowboy diplomacy, and restore America's standing around the world, said Kathleen Strand.
Giuliani wants to escalate the war in Iraq, supports President Bush's failed foreign policy approach.
Giuliani said, well, last time I checked, Hillary's not president-elect.
And we're going to have something to say about this.
She's not even the nominee of her party yet.
It's very, very premature to be talking about sending ambassadors all around the world, even before she becomes president to interfere with the foreign policy of the United States.
Well, that wouldn't be anything new.
Nancy Pelosi's been doing it for uh for quite a while.
Went over to Syria, you know, try to tell Bashar Assad, hey, don't hold it against us.
We Democrats love you.
Bush uh just get us to chance and to neuter Bush and take care of that, and well, you won't have any problems with uh with us anymore.
I'm surprised she didn't schedule a meeting with bin Laden to basically tell him the uh the same thing.
Well, what do you think about that?
This is folks, I'm gonna say the hubris and the sense of conventional wisdom and inevitability.
Mrs. Clinton out on a send.
Uh distinguished Americans of both parties around the world as ambassadors after she's elected, but before she's inaugurated to tell the rest of the world no more cowboy diplomacy.
Uh bit far reaching, not very professional, but typical of power mad liberals.
And back to the phones now.
Uh Lori in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Nice to have you with us.
I'm glad you waited.
Appreciate your patience.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
Thanks.
This is so exciting.
I haven't talked to you since your local show in New York, so I am just thrilled right now.
Well, did you used to live in New York and then you moved to the U.S.?
I used to live in New Jersey.
We're recent uh escapees to uh the Southwest.
Well, congratulations.
I hope you like rocks and barren countryside.
We love it.
It's great.
There's also really beautiful weather and nice people, and we're really happy here.
I couldn't be happier that you're happy.
I love what people are happy.
Look, um, you were talking about the drought in the Southeast, and I had to call you because I thought of you when I read an article in USA Today about ten days ago.
It was talking about the Southeast drought being caused by two years of weak tropical storm cycles.
Now the article didn't say anything about global warming.
But if you think about it, just exactly two years ago, all these newspapers were telling us after Katrina that global warming was just going to bring us incredibly powerful storms for the next decade.
The Southeast was going to be washed out by now.
And the only thing I can think is that global warming is just not doing its job.
We're supposed to have all this water, and instead we have drought, and yet people are still blaming the drought on global warming.
Which maybe is true if you look at it from the point of view global warming is not doing what it's supposed to.
But it's making my head spin anyway.
So I just wanted to point it out to you.
Well, I appreciate that.
I uh I'm always uh thrilled to be thought of, especially when you're reading USA Today.
That's certainly not what they intend.
Uh and the fact that you think of me even when reading USA Today, you have made my day.
Oh, thanks, Rush.
But let me tell you something here, Lori, about about all of this.
The thing that's very simple to take away from these last two years, be there a drought, uh for whatever reason they want to tell us.
The bottom line is they don't know.
They just don't know.
And the evidence is that after Hurricane Katrina, they predicted ten years.
Ten straight years of such storms and even more intense storms because of global warming.
In these next two years, we've had a total of ten storms.
And uh not all of them have become hurricanes, and not all of them have hit the U.S. coastline.
In fact, this one is lurking out there at the uh in the Caribbean.
It looks like it's gonna miss the U.S. coastline.
It's just uh it's just a tropical storm.
So the bottom line is they're wrong.
They don't know.
So if they if they predict ten years of incredibly massive storms on the scale of Hurricane Katrina, and we get two years of ten puny little storms, well, two cat fives that went down to Mexico and the Yucatan Peninsula, they don't know what they're talking about.
What is global warming, whether it's the drought, I mean, if they start speculating that the drought is because of a weaker than expected tropical storm thievan, well, I can understand that.
There's less rain when you have no tropical storms.
But it th th to show you how seductive this global warming thing is and how effective actually it is seductive, it is a f it is effective, but there is still so much doubt.
There's so much common sense of the part of people that are rejecting some of this.
But when you have a movement that blames every extreme on global warming, and then takes every unusually strong storm or extremely long drought or what have you and calls it extreme, uh without any historical context or perspective, people want to matter.
That the root of this global warming stuff being successful with the people it is successful with the fact that people want to matter.
I mean, a lot of people feel like they're just ants in one of those ant farms that you put on top of the TV.
They're running around and they're climbing up hills and they're falling downhills, and they're doing things and they just everybody wants meaning in their lives.
And too much, too many Americans think that meaning in their lives equals fame.
If you're famous, if you do anything that brings fame to you, then all of a sudden your life has meaning.
Because then after you become famous, you can start waxing eloquent on all these cause-related things because you care about people.
And you can say the stupidest most inane, inaccurate things in the world.
But at the end of the day, you will feel great about yourself and you will love yourself because You've cared.
Well, everybody wants their lives to have meaning.
They want to matter.
Here comes global warming.
What is the root of global warming?
That man, particularly American man and American woman are destroying the planet.
Well, threatening the climate of the planet.
And we're doing it with a reckless disregard for frugality.
We're doing it with a reckless disregard for our environment.
We are selfishly usurping resources that belong to others.
We are wasting them, and they destroy everything that they touch.
And in the process, we can't renew these because these are non-renewable, and we feel guilty.
Therefore, when somebody comes along and says, you can amend your ways, you can absolve yourself of this sin by accepting this.
Then all of a sudden, someone whose life doesn't matter becomes a life that matters to them.
I care about global warming.
I'm important.
You're not.
I'm driving a Prius, and you're not.
You're driving his gas hog.
I care more.
It's the same thing as wearing these ribbons.
Everybody wants to be noticed, and everybody wants to matter, and everybody wants their lives to have meaning.
And sadly, too many people seek the meaning in their lives as a virtue as a result of feedback from others.
And ergo, that's where you get this preoccupation and desire with fame, particularly on the part of young skulls full of mush.
But with the global warming thing, it's it's an it's just it's it's made to order.
Who can be against clean air?
Who can be against clean water?
Who can be against the polar bears dying, or for it?
Who could be for any of these things that uh that that the claim that are happening?
So it's very it's very seductive.
And I think that uh despite that, despite all the seductiveness, despite the the uh 25-year head start these people have had, there's still a whole lot of doubters out there.
This is not taking hold.
We're gonna beat this back.
And I will never forget this the story that these two researchers did from I forget where.
It's in the it's in the website archives uh at my website.
These guys studied media since the late 1800s.
Every 25 to 30 years, the media goes out and finds experts that are predicting either global warming or global cooling.
And it never fails.
And it's always an issue that's out there.
And it's really about nothing more on the science side, getting grants and you know, earning a living.
Uh but with the people, it does want to matter.
People don't want to be nondescript, they don't want to be indivisible, uh uh invisible i i in their own minds.
So global warming and other social causes uh uh by supporting them and and and shouting about them, proselytizing about them, people can make themselves feel like they matter.
And that's that's really I think the one thing here that people misunderstand in terms of why so many people buy into it, because they're not looking at the science of it.
It's it's pure psychological and emotional to a certain sense.
Uh this is Joel in Calumet, Michigan.
You're next on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hey, Rush Bull.
Great to talk to you.
Hey, we had Senator Levin on our local station, WMPL here up in the copper country, and I asked him uh I submitted a direct question to him.
I said, I said it's a one-syllable answer.
That's all it takes, you know.
So most people can figure that out, even if you're in real Linda or no matter where you are.
I said, ask him if we can win in Iraq.
You know, you can be for the war, against the war, anything in between.
And you should be able to answer that yes or no.
Right?
Yes.
Yeah, I do, I agree.
And and also he asked him the question, and he went off on well, if the conditions blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, yada yada yada.
And I thought, you know, and I just commented to the uh the person who asked the question on radio there.
I said, you know, I said that insult all the past veterans, everyone else who says, you know, that America, you talk about many times can't win a war, you know, and uh I don't know.
It's just mat it's mad.
Let me tell you, let me tell you what's really going on.
You call Carl Levin and ask him, it's a one-word answer, Senator.
Can we win the war in Iraq?
And you get, well, it depends on the circumstances.
Here's what's really it's a simple answer.
He cannot afford to say yes.
Because the left wing has this party uh in its own testicle lockbox over Iraq and and uh and winning and losing.
He knows the United States can win.
There's a th there aren't too many of these stories.
This is a uh piece, I think, from the St. Petersburg Times of all places.
Uh and it's by Wes Allison, who is a Times staff writer.
It says SP Times.
At the only group I know of S is the St. Petersburg Times.
So if it's a different paper, I apologize.
But I don't have time to read the whole story here to you, uh, Joel, but what this basically is about is the rift in the Democrat Party.
Uh it's a rare truthful story on the divisions that exist in the Democrat Party, and we don't get these very often.
Now the headline of this story is when left isn't left enough, they rally the troops.
Advocacy groups raise cash and demand action.
Now, bottom line here, folks, there is a there is a a lot more pressure for conformity, ideological conformity in the Democrat Party than there is in the Republican Party.
You don't hear in these debates the Democrats arguing over who's the real liberal, because they all are the real deal.
On the Republican side, you do hear Republicans argue who's the real conservative.
Much more divers and divergent views in the Republican Party and on the Democrat side.
Um this requirement for ideological conformity, rarely addressed by the drive-bys.
This story points out how moveon.org and the uh progressive Democrat caucus in the House are calling for the defeat of anybody deemed insufficiently anti-war.
And you've got the Center for American Prog, all these liberal groups are in on this.
This is you got Cindy Sheehan running against Pelosi.
Now, doubt that she's going to do anything, but this that's a division in the party.
And people and the Democrats, after all these months of giving Cindy Sheehan noted credibility, now treat her as a joke.
But the fact is she represents a division in the party, and these these forces on the left have already triumphed within the party when it comes to issues of abortion and race, uh uh dissent on life on that issue, dissent on affirmative action not tolerated.
If you if you aren't sufficiently pro-choice and uh for affirmative action, you're gonna get drummed out of this party.
You're certainly never gonna have a platform to go anywhere nationally in this party.
Uh some Democrats in this story are even saying it's worth it.
If they get these wrong kind of Democrats out of the house and lose the House.
If the if you're not sufficiently anti-war, you deserve to be defeated.
You deserve to have a primary opponent, and you deserve to lose, even if it means that Democrats lose the House.
That's how virulent.
That's how rabid the anti-war movement is.
Move on.
And so when people like Pelosi or Harry Reed, uh Carl Levin appear and are asked any questions, such as the one you asked, can we win in Iraq?
They can't afford to say yes.
Because move on.org is going to target them.
Harry Reid had the worst three weeks of any politician this side of Richard Nixon.
He just had the word he got it butt-kicked everywhere he went.
The chair kicked him when he sat down.
He got no respite from it.
He can't he's because these they're scared to he goes off and meets with these people on Monday nights under the cover of darkness.
And he probably tries to tell them, look, you guys, we got problems here.
We can they don't want to hear it.
They want to hear anti-war, they want to hear defeat.
Uh you know, so last year, everybody on the Republican side, a lot of people were saying, you know, they deserve to lose.
Show them a lesson, teach them a lesson.
See what happens when a party loses and a Democrats run the show, that'll show them.
Well, that's happening on the left, too.
He says you never hear about it other than this in this uh in this one story.
That's why that's a long answer.
But that's why your senator could not tell you that he sees victory as a possibility.
Back in just a second.
Who's next?
Uh Kathy, a new Canaan, Connecticut.
Welcome to the Rush Slimbaugh program.
Nice to have you here.
Thank you, sir, for taking my call.
Such an honor.
Uh first of all, I'd like to say hi to my husband Tom.
And my question for you, I wanted to get your thoughts about this.
Um, you know, it's a tragic event in Southern California with the fires and all the damage and loss of of uh personal property and so forth, but wouldn't this kind of instill uh a flow of economic uh uh I'm sorry um you're talking about perhaps the uh the fire stimulating economic growth right whether it's the contractors or or
builders or Home Depot or nurseries or landscapers.
I mean, isn't that a good thing?
And I never hear about that from the drive-bys.
Well, I admire your desire to look at this positively.
And, of course, a lot of this will happen.
But this is economic replacement.
This will be growth for some of the industries you're talking about, contractors rebuilding houses and so forth.
But you had a lot of property loss here.
Right.
And it's going to be hell for some of these homeowners to collect on their insurance.
It just is.
And it's going to be a while.
And they're going to have to decide whether they want to rebuild.
If the environmental regulations don't change, you can't thin these forests out.
These things happen.
The Santa Ana winds happen every year.
And the combustibility of these places throughout the state.
I mean, the fire's going to happen.
It can't happen in the same place very soon because, of course, all the fuel has been destroyed.
Now they have to worry about landslides.
Yeah, the mudslides is coming.
Absolutely.
And then, in addition to that, all the ash that will be running down mountains and so forth.
They've got problems out there.
This is a massive, massive rebuilding scale.
Now, you could say that it's good for the economy.
But if you give the homeowners who lost their business, their property and the business owners who lost their businesses, ask them if they would just as soon have a fire every year to stimulate the economy.
They tell you no.
No, no, no.
But I appreciate you're looking at this, trying to find the positive here.
It's a can-do spirit out there in Southern California and the places where this happened.
And they'll do their best to rebuild it, just like San Franciscans did after the earthquake.
Right.
With the Bay Bridge and a number of the interstates out there.
And there'll be people who come in and get some of this done quick.
And it'll surprise everybody.
The records that were set, there'll be bonuses paid for people that come in under budget and early on some of these things.
But it still is a tragic thing.
It's like talking about the economic boom to the area that New Orleans was going to get following Hurricane Katrina.
Speaking of that, we keep hearing about Hurricane Katrina and the comparisons between Hurricane Katrina and the fires.
And Juan Williams was on Fox yesterday.
I don't have time to play the audio, but he's on Fox yesterday saying the race was a factor.
White people out there versus black people in New Orleans.
Rich white people.
government got out there and they were in gear fast and everybody was in gear fast.
You know nobody ever talks about Gulfport Mississippi and all these places in Mississippi that were literally level during Hurricane Katrina.
And they're back on their feet or they're in the process of getting back in their feet you never ever hear uh about the s the the the the misery and the destruction that they with because they're not whining and complaining about it.
They're out there fixing it just like they're doing in California back here in a moment.
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