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Sept. 23, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:50
September 23, 2011, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Yes, America's Anchorman is away today, and this is your undocumented anchor man sitting in Mark Stein.
Honored to be here.
No supporting paperwork whatsoever.
I'm a foreign exchange student at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
It's a great program.
Guys like me get to study here, and in return, the Obama administration gets to tank the entire global economy.
So it all works out.
We're going to get to the Republican debate in Florida last night.
I didn't think it was the greatest debate in the world, to be honest.
A lot of stuff going on out there in what we loosely call the world.
I love this headline from CNBC: Global meltdown.
Investors are dumping nearly everything.
So now it would be a good time to buy nearly everything if you're interested in getting into what's left of the market.
Wall Street Journal, World Bank's Zealic.
This is the guy who runs the World Bank.
World in Danger Zone, World in Danger Zone.
Didn't get a lot of the urgency.
Didn't get a lot of the urgency from that Republican debate last night.
And the biggest line of the night turns out to be the guy.
Who's this guy?
What's he called?
Mr. Snerdley, the fellow from New Mexico, like the 12th place candidate, the exciting new guy.
What's he called?
The none of the above guy?
What's he called?
Yeah, him, him.
That's right.
Governor Gary, I think that's it.
Gary Wassname from New Mexico.
Yeah, he, him, him.
That's right.
Him.
Governor him, Governor Gary Him from New Mexico.
He qualified for the debate because he registered at 1% in the polls.
If you get 1% in the polls in a basket of polls, if you get a combined total of 1% in the basket of polls, well, I don't even understand because that's within the margin of error anyway.
But if you come within Gary Johnson, that's the guy, Gary Johnson, Governor Gary Johnson.
I knew it was Gary Johnson.
I'm paid to be up on these things.
I knew, but I just thought I'd call him Gary Gary Wassname.
Gary 1%.
He's the 1% guy.
But the 1% guy got the 100% laugh line with a lie that you may have heard a few hours earlier on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network when he said that his next-door neighbor's dogs had generated more shovel-ready projects than the Obama administration, which was, of course, a line that Rush used around about this time yesterday.
So I don't know whether that's what Rush is doing.
Is he out writing more Boffo lines for Governor Gary Wassname of New Mexico?
I don't know.
But Rush will return live at the microphone Monday.
We will talk about if there's anything other memorable that happened in the Republican debate other than Governor Gary Wassname of New Mexico using Rush's line about the dogs and the shovel-ready projects, do let me know because there wasn't a lot to discern in it.
But it is the end of the week, and you know what that means.
Live from New York City, it's open live Friday.
Yes, in fact, we're not live from New York.
We're live from Ice Station EIB in northern New Hampshire.
But the economy is so dead, we cannot even afford to have a new ident made.
It's a shovel-ready project.
The ident that would say live from New Hampshire, it's a shovel-ready project.
It's ready to go, but we cannot get stimulus funding.
It's the only shovel-ready ready project in New Hampshire that cannot get stimulus funding from the Obama administration, the new ident.
But we're here, 1-800-282-2882.
We're here at Ice Station EIB in New Hampshire.
The way it works is it goes from here to Mr. Snerdley, who's running the show from sunny South Florida, and then it goes from Mr. Snerdley up to our New York studios, and then from, I think it goes from New York over to somewhere in California, and then up to the big satellite and out to you.
So it's a very complicated process.
And at any point in this, in the slender, thin piece of string connecting me in New Hampshire with Mr. Snerdley in Florida, the whole thing could go barely up.
But 1-800-282-2882, you know how Open Line Friday works.
Monday to Thursday, the contents of the show are under the control of a highly trained broadcast specialist.
Amateurs are not allowed to distort and derail the content of the show.
But there is no highly trained broadcast specialist here today, just some minimum wage illegal immigrant.
So we turn it over to you.
Authentic all-American content supplied by you, the all-American radio listener.
1-800-282-2882, whatever you want to talk about.
You know how it goes.
Anything.
Go on.
Throw it at me.
Ballet, cricket.
I don't care.
I'll take it all.
1-800-282-2882.
And, of course, if you want to talk about what's going on in the Republican presidential debate, boy, Rick Perry, he's not where he was a month ago, is he?
He was like the desperately seeking anything but Romney candidate a few weeks ago.
The desperately seeking Anything But Romney candidate got in the race.
And now we're back to looking for a new none of the above guy.
I don't think Gary Johnson is going to do it, notwithstanding his big laugh he got with the rush line about the dogs and the shovel ready project.
Here's my problem with the debate the way it was last night.
I thought a certain level, you know, it was ridiculous.
In 10 years' time, someone will be rummaging through the ruins of the Republic and they will find an old video cassette or whatever they use now of this debate and stick it in whatever.
Then they'll look for a rusted up video machine to play it in and they will look at this stuff.
Questioners asking one of the questions was one of the questions about gays in the military.
Seems like a kind of odd thing to be asking about when the president's proposing another half trillion dollars in useless spending when the global economy is going through the floor when we don't even actually know where the floor is.
We've fallen through the floor and we don't know how many sub-level basement stories there are to go to until we hit bottom.
And there's no sense of that in these debates.
It's weird.
And I'm not even blaming the candidates for this.
I find the kind of questions on this whole business complacent.
It's bizarre to me that in these times, we are not talking about real core questions facing the United States as the leader of the global economy, the crisis in jobs in this country, the crisis of economic sclerosis in this country.
And instead, we're just listening to questions about gays in the military.
Don't get me wrong, I understand it's important to establish.
It's critically important to establish whether when a guy puts himself up for president, he's sufficiently non-homophobic to be willing to license a team of cracked lesbian paratroopers to rape down the sides of the Chinese treasury in Beijing and break in there and crack open the safe and burn the ever-swelling mountain of our IOUs in the Chinese safe.
Understand that's important, but there ought to be room for a few other issues to be discussed.
And there were a lot of things that went unsaid last night, and we didn't even get to.
There were only 15 minutes on foreign policy.
And what I found interesting about that is that actually half the candidates on the stage aren't interested in foreign policy.
And I don't just mean like you're on Paul isolationists and your Gary Wassname, Governor Him from New Mexico, the one Gary 1% from New Mexico.
It's not just that they're not interested in foreign policy.
You know, even Rick Perry isn't that interested in foreign policy.
And the other thing that I think Rick Perry has to be a little bit careful about is when he's basically adopted the Democrat line now on the whole illegal immigration issue.
He says that, you know, if you want to demonize him for providing education to elite the children of illegal immigrants at in-state tuition rates, then you don't have any heart.
You know, he's beginning.
That's a Democrat talking point.
When he says that if you're opposed to what he did with immigration, it's because you're not comfortable.
You're up some uptight waspy type with a name like I don't know, Gary Johnson.
You're some uptight waspy type with a name like Gary Johnson, who can't handle that we now have fellas called Jose in this country.
That's a Democrat talking point.
That kind of cheap racism is a Democrat talking point.
And I don't kind of get that.
In a two-party system, we're covered on that.
The Democrats will do the cheap racism demagoguery that you don't like people called Jose and you don't have any heart.
We should have an alternative to that on the other side in a two-party system.
By the way, you know, the racism about President Obama is getting out of control.
Listen to this.
This is a response to the president's United Nations speech.
He was talking because, as you know, it was UN General Assembly Dictator of the Week week in New York all this week.
And so the president went along and gave a big speech at the General Assembly.
And this is how it was reported.
This is what one commentator said.
Quote, the black president's speech was blacker than the tar thrown at the Palestinians because his main concern is to guarantee Jewish votes and APAC's financial and propagandist support, unquote.
This is just outrageous racism.
And I was wondering which Tea Party guy, which right-wing talk radio nut had been responsible for this.
The black president's speech was blacker than the tar thrown at the Palestinians.
And it turns out to be from Adele Abd al-Rahman, a Palestinian reporter from Al-Hayat al-Jadida, which is the official daily newspaper of the Palestinian Authority.
Thank you, Mr. Abd al-Rahman.
The black president's speech was blacker than the tar thrown at the Palestinians.
I don't know.
Nobody does racism like the official newspaper of the Palestinian Authority.
And good grief, thank goodness, nobody at the Tea Party would say anything, anything like that.
So we'll talk about that.
We'll talk about the President's UN speech.
We'll talk about the Republican debate.
We'll talk about Dictator of the Week week at the UN General Assembly.
And we will talk about the Twilight of the Republic as reflected in the topics that come up on the Republican presidential debate.
1-800-282-2882, Mark Stein in for rush on the EIB network.
Mark Stein in for rush on the EIB network.
We have our first outraged liberal of the day.
Someone just called in and hung up very peremptorily, claiming I'd mispronounced the president's name.
I'd said Obama rather than Obama.
I don't think I did, did I?
Bob Beckel told me off for that live on TV.
He said, in the early days, I think when Obama had just been elected as a senator, he'd been a senator for 20 minutes and was beginning to plan his run for president because he was bored with being a senator for 20 minutes.
And I think I referred to him as Barack Obama then, and Bob Beckle corrected me and said, I know you're a foreigner, but you could at least learn to pronounce the names properly of distinguished men who've been in the United States Senate for 20 minutes.
It's Obama, Obama.
I think it's one of those Pakistan-Pakistan things.
And I have enough long A's.
And I like to roll my R's from time to time.
And apparently I should put more of a log A and an R in Obama.
Obama, I'm falling under your spell.
But this outraged liberal hung up about that.
Now, I was critical of Rick Perry a moment ago because I'm sick of it.
Actually, I'm sick of this cheap glib demonization on the basis of Democrat talking points.
If you want to give in-state tuition rates to illegal immigrants, you can at least find your own lousy talking points for it instead of saying, oh, it's about the heart.
It's all about the heart.
And if you object to that, it must be because you don't like people called Jose.
I'm sick of that.
We got the Democrats covered on that.
Find your own lousy glib, cheap, demonizing talking points on that.
Let's go to Mitt Romney.
My problem with Mitt, my problem with Mitt, I think Mitt has a habit of trimming according to whatever office he happens to be in the running for.
I don't, I'm not saying anything particularly new about this, but I mean, there's a significant distinction between running when he was campaigning to be a senator in Massachusetts and then a governor in Massachusetts, and since he decided he was going to run for president of the United States.
And I don't, I think that reflects nothing more than the fact that the electorate in Massachusetts happens to be one kind of the electorate, and the electorate in the United States as a whole happens to be a fairly different kind of electorate.
But the problem here is that it means he's kind of slightly behind the curve on a lot of issues.
And I'm not sure that's really going to get us where we need to be in terms of the general election.
We need a guy who's willing to make the running.
I mean, this is an existential crisis for the United States of America.
The guy who is elected next November is going to be the first president of the United States since Grover Cleveland in his first term, who will not be a president presiding over the world's leading economy.
This is if the IMF is right and China's economy overtakes America's economy by the year 2016.
That means that this guy will be in a position that no American president has been in since Grover Cleveland in his first term.
He will be the number two guy.
So we are living in incredibly fast-moving times.
And there's something slightly off to me about a guy who's kind of not willing to actually move the meter on some of these issues.
This is what I like about, you know, they always say, oh, what you really need is a guy who moves towards the middle.
I prefer a guy like President Reagan.
I prefer someone like Mrs. Thatcher who moves the middle toward you.
In other words, President Reagan says things and the media say, wow, this is extremist.
This is crazy.
This is way out beyond anybody's comfort zone.
And the next thing you know is that people have moved towards him and suddenly the center of the discussion has moved.
You need people who are willing to move the center of the discussion.
And for all his faults, on certain issues like Social Security, Rick Perry was actually pretty good at that.
Rick Perry's problem is that he's given three lackluster performances in three debates in a row now.
I don't quite get it.
He came in as the star candidate.
Everybody was waiting for him.
Everybody was waiting for him to jump in.
He's transformed the dynamic of the debate because now these candidates, the candidates who before used to beat up on Tim Paulenti or whoever are now beating up on Rick Perry.
Romney is just kind of cruising along there.
Nobody's interested in going after Romney.
Michelle Bachman goes after Rick Perry.
Rick Santorum goes after Rick Perry.
But in the meantime, this guy has given three lackluster performances.
Look at this guy in these debates and really think, I don't know.
This guy had a tough nomination battle.
He was up against, in Texas, he was up against Kay Bailey Hutchinson.
And all the Bush crowd backed dear old Kay and were behind Kay, and he clobbered Kay, and he won that nomination.
So presumably he can do it.
I mean, I didn't follow any of those Texas debates.
If you're listening in Texas and you want to explain to me how Rick Perry managed to clobber Kay Bailey Hutchinson, and there's been no sign of that in these last three debates, I'd be interested to hear what the difference is and why the difference is.
I mean, it seems to me a lot of it is just that he's not actually engaged by particular issues.
He seems to have no particular interest in, as I said, in foreign policy.
But look at this guy and then figure out whether that guy is really going to be able to stick it to Barack Obama when we get into the big national debates.
He's really got it.
He can't afford a fourth performance like this.
So that's the thing.
Romney is just like great.
His hair looks fabulous.
His hair looks better and better.
It's like the hair of Dorian Gray.
It's like his hair looks better and better as all the anyone but Romney candidates shrivel.
But the guy, I have a guy does not seem to me to quite grasp the urgency of the times.
And that is the problem when you're someone who's just used to trimming and calibrating your position according to what your particular view of the electorate is.
The problem is that when you do that, you tend also to govern like that.
That's how he governed Massachusetts.
In the end, Romney might as well not have been governor of Massachusetts.
In the end, it wouldn't have mattered if a Democrat had been governor of Massachusetts for whatever it was, the one term that he was there for.
So it's not enough.
And at some point, these debates have to catch fire.
And the electorate has to understand what is at stake here.
We're a nation with $15 trillion of debt in which we spent the entire summer in a clenched teeth showdown that cut $7 billion of debt out of the 2012 budget.
And then the president swans into Congress and airily proposes another half trillion dollars, so much for the $7 billion of savings.
Yes, Oben Line Friday, 1-800-282-2882.
Baby, everything is all right, uptight, and out of sight.
Much like America's debt mountain.
That is way up there.
That is way out of sight, but there's no need to get uptight about it.
Open Line Friday on the Rush Limbaugh show.
JC Dugard is suing the federal government for failing to monitor the convicted sex offender who kidnapped her and held her captive for 18 years.
The complaint filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco on Thursday says the failures by federal parole officers in the handling of Philip Garrido's case are as outrageous and inexcusable as they are numerous.
Garrido was on patrol, on parole, when he kidnapped Dugard in 1991.
He fathered her two children while holding her captive.
And Garrido and his wife Nancy are in prison after pleading guilty in Dugard's case.
Dugard is seeking unspecified damages.
She and her daughters have already received a $20 million settlement from the state of California.
You know, I was JC Dugard's book came out, whatever it was, about two months ago, I think, a couple of weeks before mine.
And we were jostling together.
I was just underneath her on the bestseller list.
And in fact, I think up in Canada, I eventually overtook her.
It was kind of JC Dugard and me went kind of neck and neck on the Canadian bestseller list, and then I snuck past her.
But in the U.S., I think she kept on, she kept on.
I never quite managed to outsell JC Dugard.
And I remember saying to my publicist, well, you know, say what you like, but JC, dear old JC, went through a lot more to get her bestseller than I had to.
So I couldn't really begrudge her that.
I didn't really begrudge her her numbers.
But I was not aware that she had received a $20 million settlement from the state of California.
And now she is going after another, presumably even bigger settlement, because let's face it, this is the federal government.
So, you know, why not add another zero onto that?
She's going for another settlement from the federal government.
And I'm sorry, but, you know, it's tough.
There's really no, for what she's been through, it is literally, for most of us, inconceivable that you could basically spend the best part of two decades as some sick freaks captive in the course of which he does whatever he wants with you.
And yeah, I mean, that is something that most of us could not conceive of.
But the idea that there is a price on that, that there is a financial sum you can place on that, and that the government should somehow be, which means you, by the way, which means you and me, we're all basically paying now.
It's not Philip Garrido.
Philip Garrido doesn't have to pay for what was done to JC Dugard.
The taxpayers of California do.
The taxpayers of California, who are screwed over by every other stupid burden that's placed on them by Sacramento and at the county level and all the rest of it, including the latest bed sheet regime, where they want to criminalize bed sheets in California hotels.
It's going to be a crime if you run a motel or hotel in California to fit the bed with a non-fitted bed sheet.
If you use a non-Mr. Sternly doesn't believe this.
You know, California, that big broke lump out on the West Coast, you know, that great big dead, festering, dying, great wasteland out on the West Coast.
That California?
They've decided that their priority is they want to have now a state bed sheet regime.
There's going to be a state bed sheet police, a state bedsheet SWAT team that if you're running the Ocono Lodge out on Highway 372 and you're putting non-fitted sheets on the bed, they are going to kick the door down and they are going to arrest you in the act of putting non-fitted sheets in those beds.
Mr. Sternley can't believe this.
Mr. Stern, by the way, for all you racists out there, if you're going to a big Klan rally out in California this weekend, make sure you wear an elasticated sheet on your head because otherwise you will be in non-compliance with the California bed sheet regime.
They have decided.
It has been ruled that Their sense of priority, their ability to prioritize is uncanny, and they've decided that when you're broke and you're driving your productive class beyond your borders, the best thing you need to do is to install a state bed sheet regime that criminalizes non-elasticated sheets in California hotels.
This is what the geniuses who run California do.
I mentioned it to a Mexican illegal immigrant friend of mine when I was down in Tijuana a couple of weeks ago.
And he said, Oh, no, it's nothing new to me.
California is renowned throughout Mexico for its sheet government.
So, you know, maybe it's entirely expected after all.
Anyway, JC Dugard now has already added another $20 million onto the cost of whatever the California bed sheet police has added to the cost of California government.
And she's now going for more money from the federal government.
And this, by the way, this is a deformed idea of the relationship between the citizen and the state.
Garrito has to pay no price for this.
He's a sick freak.
I'm sure he'll be getting his jollies in whatever state penitentiary he's in at the moment.
And likewise, his wife.
He doesn't have to pay for this.
But the idea is that California citizens have already paid $20 million for what happened to JC Dugard, and federal taxpayers are now going to be paying even more.
Mark Stein, Infra Rush, let us go to Lisa.
We are coming to you live from the great state of New Hampshire today, and so is Lisa.
Lisa is in Candia.
And if you know your New Hampshire towns, you'll know that she is down in the southeastern part of the state, and I'm whatever they call it, kitty corner to her in the northwestern part of the state.
So, Lisa from Candia, great to have a fellow granite stater on the line.
Welcome to the show.
Thank you.
I called because I've watched all three debates, and I'm in such a quandary because no one, none of the candidates, the next candidate, the next president of the United States is going to have to get us out of this mess that we're in as a country, or we fall into the abyss.
And I don't think that any of them can do it.
I don't see none of them, in my estimation, the only two that I like are Lon Paul and Herman Kane.
And everywhere you look, you're being told, well, they don't have a chance and they're not electable.
And all the other ones, they're not constitutionalists.
They're not going to get us out of this mess that they're in.
They're just going to maybe, maybe slow it down a little bit.
Yeah, and that's what's being offered.
Basically, the Democrats are saying we want to plunge into the abyss at full throttle, and the sensible, moderate position is to plunge into the abyss in second or third gear, which is what the distinction between, say, Romney and Huntsman is.
Huntsman wants to go over the cliff in third gear, and Romney thinks that's a bit excessive, and he's willing to go over the cliff in second gear.
And you're right, but you know, it's not about finding someone.
Here's the difference, though, Lisa.
I don't think anybody can, any candidate, no single man or woman elected president is going to is going to be able to transform this single-handedly.
But the point of the political process is to at least have the conversation in the correct ballpark.
And this is what's driving me crazy.
That's what the candidates need to do.
The candidates need to be moving the ball to the center of the field on this issue so that we're holding it in the realm of sanity.
No, and it's and in fairness, and The one other point to bear in mind, Lisa, is that in fairness to these candidates, it's not so much them.
The questions are insane.
The questions are insane.
We are in a...
They need to use their skill and move the questions.
You know, I'm not going to hold my nose and vote for a John McCain again because that's who my party nominates.
I'm not going to do it.
I'm just not going to vote if what they give me is a Rick Perry or a Romney.
I live next door to Romney.
I know what his fate is like.
And, you know, Rick Perry just isn't my guy.
And those are the only two that they're even putting forth as possibilities at this point.
Well, these are early days, Lisa.
Don't forget that this time around in the last process, the Romney guy, the guy in the lead, the two guys in the lead this time in the previous, in the 2008 season, were Giuliani and Fred Thompson.
And as you well know, by the time those guys came to tramp the snows of New Hampshire on New Hampshire Primary Day, they were nowhere in the running.
A lot can still change.
But what's more important than any individual is for the conversation to change.
And I agree with you.
I think they should just say, when they're asked a stupid question, they should openly express their contempt for some of these questions.
Because these questions are ridiculous.
We're gambling with the future of the entire global economy, with Western civilization, with 70 years of post-war prosperity.
We are putting all of that up for grabs.
We are saying to our children and grandchildren, we're going to leave you guys to take an almighty flyer on the future because we don't care.
We're happy to just drive off the abyss.
And we've got a functioning two-party system that says you can vote for the party that wants to go at 120 miles an hour over the cliff, and you can vote for the prudent, responsible, centrist, moderate, slightly righter center party that wants to go over the cliff in third gear.
And we're teaching a very dangerous lesson here, by the way, because the point about the last couple of years, Lisa, is that we changed.
Ordinary people changed the conversation in this country.
In 2009, Time and Newsweek and all these people were running cover stories on how, was it Time or Newsweek?
Had the cover story, we are all socialists now.
They had Obama photoshopped as FDR with the top hat and the cigarette holder riding to his inauguration.
It was big government, big government.
We were all for big government.
Small government conservatism was dead.
Ordinary people in town hall meetings and in the Tea Party movement changed the conversation and won a great victory in November 2010 because it wasn't a presidential election.
The minute it becomes a presidential election, it's not about millions of people with no names at town hall meetings.
It's about half a dozen individuals who are all calibrating their messages according to what the focus groups say.
And the minute you do that, the minute it all becomes reined in, it all becomes tentative.
It all becomes cautious.
We need to keep that spirit of 2009, 2010, keep moving the meter on public debate.
Thank you very much for your call, my fellow Granite Stater Lisa in Candia.
It sounds like Canada, but in fact it is in southeastern New Hampshire.
It sounds like Candida.
Big hit for Tony Orlando and Dawn.
But in fact, it is a far more mellifluous and musical place than anything in Tony Orlando's wildest imagination.
Mark Stein on the EIB network.
More to come.
Mark Stein, in for Rush on the EIB network.
Obenline Friday, 1-800-282-2882.
Hey, let's go to Anthony in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Anthony, you're live on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Great to have you with us.
Hi, Mark.
Listen, I'm a long listener to Rush.
And, you know, I've been hearing all this debate stuff is going on.
But nobody ever mentions about housing.
Now, I think housing and jobs, they're related together.
Without housing, there won't be no jobs.
And if there's no jobs, I can't own a house.
How come they don't debate that?
That's very important.
Well, you live in a state where I think it's between 60 and 65 percent of all mortgages are underwater, right?
That's where you've got the old negative equity.
That's Harry Reid's, what Harry Reid has done for the Nevada housing market.
Obama came into office promising to lower the rise of the oceans.
In fact, he's successfully managed two years on to flood the entire Nevada desert.
Thanks a lot, Genius.
So we've got two-thirds of mortgages underwater in your great state of Nevada.
There's about twice, in the country at large, there's about twice as many large family homes, as that's to say, you know, three or four bedroom houses, as anybody's going to need for the foreseeable future.
So when you say without housing, there's not going to be any jobs, you mean that we need people to work in construction.
So you need carpenters, you need plasterers, you need excavators.
The housing market generates a lot of jobs.
Is that the point you were making?
Yes, I am.
That's one of the points.
But also is how come the banks do not work with the housing people that they're all on the water?
And the problem is that, you know, Obama, he took care of the banks.
He took care of everybody else.
But the people who got these homes, if they're underwater, they can't refinance because the house is not worth anything.
It's in my case.
I bought a house that's $250,000 when I bought it.
It was appraised for $350,000 at that particular time.
Now it's only worth $110,000.
Now, how can you want the people to stay in their homes and keep on paying mortgages and the houses is going down and down?
And every penny that you put into that housing, you keep on losing it.
So why does somebody come and help the people who are underwater or give them a chance to refinance it on the level that it is now?
But you know, Anthony, that's a fascinating point because what the government did, and this is where Americans should be mad, by the way, the government, in the interests of social engineering, chose to intervene in the housing market of the United States.
And they destroyed it.
The subprime mortgage, by the way, is unique to the United States of America.
Canada has a whole bunch of other issues, but Canada's property market is not in the same tank as America because there's no subprime mortgage in America.
The subprime mortgage was invented by government in the interests of social justice, social engineering, in a way to deny the government, in effect, prevented banks from making honest assessments of risk.
When there's a guy sitting across the desk from you and he tells you he lives on a welfare check and he's got a $500 a week cocaine habit and he has no plans to get a job anytime soon, the government says, okay, no problem.
You might not want to give that guy a half million dollar home, but we, the government, are telling you you've got to give it the guy a half million dollar home.
If you have a credit boom.
Credit, the whole, we think of credit as a financial instrument.
In fact, credit is a moral concept.
It depends on trust and trust presupposes responsibility.
So if you have a credit boom in an age in which the government is in effect criminalized personal responsibility, it's not difficult to see where it's going to end.
So we have absolutely hollowed out the housing market in this country.
Government crippled the housing market in this country.
Government clobbered it.
And as property is one of the bedrocks of a free society, that is not an insignificant thing.
It's not even an economic issue.
It's a liberty issue.
When government takes a cudgel to property, you're in big trouble.
More to come.
Mark Steinen for Rush.
By the way, if Anthony's interested in Obama's general sympathy towards his property issues, how about this quote from the president?
Quote, I'm not interested in the suburbs.
The suburbs bore me.
Stop, unquote.
The young Barack Obama told the Associated Press in the early 1990s.
Don't think he's going to be worrying about your home's value anytime soon, Anthony.
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