LIZ: Well, we never were really asked to sacrifice anything about the Iraq war. I mean, right after 9/11 President Bush’s advice was that we should go out and spend more money and keep business going and keep everything status quo.

JOAN: Did you do that, Liz?

LIZ: You know, actually I did. I bought stocks right after 9/11 when the stock market was tanking, because I thought it was a patriotic thing to do. Now I think I was just a jerk.

JOAN: What did you do, Whoopi?

WHOOPI: What did I do after 9/11?

JOAN: Did you go out shopping?

WHOOPI: I packed. Came home.

JOAN: You were away from New York?

WHOOPI: The sacrifices that people are making, I think, have to do with their children and have to do with a lot of things. They’re not the kinds of sacrifices that we remember.

LIZ: No. It’s only these young men and women that are being killed and wounded so mortally and what we’ve done to our own domestic economy as a result of all of this.

WHOOPI: And I don’t understand why no one is screaming. I mean, I know that this idea of tax … I understand the taxes. I didn’t know rich people paid less because I still pay 50 percent. And I’m paying 50 percent, you know, of … not Oprah Winfrey money. You know, not Bill Gates money. But enough. And I’ve got five people … 12 people to support.

JOAN: Whoopi, I think these people are paying, I don’t know — 15 percent, 10 percent? They aren’t paying anywhere near what you’re paying.

WHOOPI: But why isn’t that the issue? Why isn’t someone saying we all have to pay the 50 percent? If you make this much money, this is what you have to pay?

JOAN: I think that’s what Obama and Hillary are trying to say. But they can’t say it on television in case the rich people hear them and dispatch the Frank Sinatra dudes to kill them.

WHOOPI: Good Lord. Then they’re just going to have to come kill me because I’m not going to, you know, I don’t want to turn into a sneak.

LIZ: I don’t think anybody really does. I want to pay my taxes. But I’d like everybody else to pay theirs.

WHOOPI: To pay theirs, too.

JOAN: I believe that paying one’s taxes and burying one’s dead are the two most profound acts one can commit. And that they bring all good things. But that means nothing good can happen for the rich. I’m disgusted that the rich don’t pay taxes like the rest of us do. I’m disgusted when I meet interns, young people between 20 and 30, who are paying off college loans that are like $40,000, $50,000. Who are paying off 600 bucks interest-only, every month.

LIZ: I know. It’s just outrageous. That’s another outrageous thing. We don’t want to invest anything in education, when higher education is the only thing that probably would save this country in the future — for us to develop real scientists and engineers and creative people. And you’ve got to go to school to do that. And we make them pay through the nose so badly that they can’t even get themselves established. I’m surprised any young people come to New York anymore, like they used to, to write plays and to dance and to act and to invent. There’s no place for them to live. There’s nothing anybody can afford.