If you receive this and you hate it and you don’t want to ever read it no matter what...that is fine; email me back and you will be deleted from my list (which is almost at the maximum anyway).

I attempt to post a new issue each Sunday by 2 or 3 pm central standard time (I sometimes fail at this attempt).

I try to include factual material only, along with my opinions (it should be clear which is which). I make an attempt to include as much of this week’s news as I possibly can. The first set of columns are intentionally designed for a quick read.

I do not accept any advertising nor do I charge for this publication. I write this principally to blow off steam in a nation where its people seemed have collectively lost their minds.

And if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, always remember: We do not struggle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places (Eph. 6:12).

The House is looking to pass a 1300 page bill (without going through committee) which is a Congressional take over of the of the financial services sector. This is going to give some financial oversight to the organization ACORN. Bailouts will be made permanent at the discretion of the president (without having to go to Congress). This is Barney Frank’s bill. The government will also be in charge of credit.

The final Senate Democrat, Ben Nelson, Democrat from Nebraska, has been brought on board for healthcare reform. It was claimed by some that, had he not played ball, an important military base in Nebraska would have been shut down. This has been denied. However, apparently, any increase cost to his state for the medicaid provision will be paid in perpetuity by the federal government. The cost of increased medicaid to the states is one of the problems in this bill, but not for Nebraska.

$1.1 Trillion Omnibus bill is passed by the Senate and signed into law this week. In this bill were 5,224 earmarks, taxpayer-funded abortions, needle exchange and an end to the (apparently too expensive?) D.C. school voucher program.

Harry Reid found Ben Nelson’s price to get him onboard for the Senate healthcare bill.

President Obama cuts his time short in Copenhagen because of inclement weather (heavy snowstorm in the capitol) in the U.S.

Senator Charles Schumer calls a flight attendant bitch under his breath, because she asks him to turn off his phone, and later apologizes.

George Will on the government stimulating the economy: “Every dollar government siphons out of the economy to spend on the economy comes out of the economy. The sky is dark with dollars flying between consumers, states and Washington. That is not the way to stimulate the economy.”

Al Gore at Copenhagen: “These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”

Prince Charles in Copenhagen: "The future of mankind can be assured only if we rediscover ways in which to live as a part of nature, not apart from her. The grim reality is that our planet has reached a point of crisis and we have only seven years before we lose the levers of control."

Dennis Miller, “Global warming, ironically enough, will not be proven until hell freezes over.”

Dennis Miller on the Copenhagen climate conference, “{As] if this were not an event which is made for a teleconference, when you are talking about the burning of [fossil] fuels.”

S E Cupp on Copenhagen: “The irony does not end there [with the heavy snows in Copenhagen]. They’re using terms like moral imperative. This is a joke and the hypocrisy of the far left. There is no moral imperative for a group which is all about moral relativism. Meat is murder, but abortion is fine...fur is reprehensible, but stem cells...”

"Capitalism is the road to hell," Hugo Chavez said at Copenhagen. "I would exhort the government and the people of the Earth ... to say that if the destructive nature of capitalism exists, let's fight against it and make it obey us."

Kim Kardashian said, “I think that my life was just like it was years ago...I really don’t know what’s going on.”

President Obama speaking to Charlie Gibson about passing the healthcare reform bill: “This will be the single most important piece of domestic legislation that's passed since Social Security. And I have confidence that we're going to pass it. There's a reason why seven presidents and seven Congresses failed to get this done. It is really hard. But it is going to get done.

“And last point I'll make on this: If we don't pass it, here's the guarantee, that the people who are watching tonight, your premiums will go up, your employers are going to load up more costs on you. Potentially they're going to drop your coverage, because they just can't afford an increase of 25 percent, 30 percent in terms of the costs of providing health care to employees each and every year. And the federal government will go bankrupt, because Medicare and Medicaid are on a trajectory that are unsustainable, and this actually provides us the best chance of starting to bend the cost curve on the government expenditures in Medicare and Medicaid.

“So anybody who says that they are concerned about the deficit, concerned about debt, concerned about loading up taxes on future generations, you have to be supportive of this health care bill, because if we don't do this, nobody argues with the fact that health care costs are going to consume the entire federal budget.”

"A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe and guarantee a longer recession, a less robust recovery, and a more uncertain future," Obama said, 10 months ago, about passing the Stimulus Bill.

Zhu Min, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China, said, "The world does not have so much money to buy more US Treasuries."

"Don't think we're not keeping score, brother," Obama told Democratic Representative Peter DeFazio behind closed doors in the White House for not playing ball.

Iran fires off a missile able to strike Israel and most anywhere else in the Mideast, including American air bases.

Iran has already purchased missile defense systems from Russia; however, they have not taken possession of them yet.

Glenn Beck’s Thursday’s show, where he takes FDR’s new bill of rights and matches this up with articles directly from the old Soviet constitution:

Mitch McConnell on the recent healthcare bill, and the 60^th vote which Harry Reid just got:

This vid by Lieutenant Colonel Allen West has been viewed by over a million people so far; great vid:

Last week, I mentioned all of the (mostly pre-manufactured) communist signs at Copenhagen. However, I was unable to find any photos of it. For some reason, despite all the media which was there, pictures of the protestors with communist signs appeared to be non-existent (why is that?). However, here is a video, so you can see, these are communists who have co-oped the Green movement, as their solutions are roughly the same:

In case you have not seen it, Obama has long said, he wants a single-payer system, and that it may take time in order for the government to make that come to pass:

Dennis Miller: “There is no more delicious irony on earth than environmental protestors being led away in plastic handcuffs that have a bio-gradability life of 40,000 years.”

1) See if you can follow this: President Obama has blamed the bankers for causing our present economic crisis by predatory lending practices. Now he wants them to start lending more (which could mean more easy loans). Right now, federal policies make it less risky to borrow at 0% and buy treasury bonds which pay 3%; and that extensive lending today could put them in jail a few years from now when predatory lending practice legislation is passed.

2) Europeans spend $70–100 billion to battle global warming, and their greenhouse emissions went up; the United States spent nothing, and our emissions went down.

3) If you look at what climate change enthusiasts at Copenhagen want, it is simply a redistribution of wealth, which is in keeping with the many anti-capitalist, pro-communist signs which demonstrators carried.

4) http://www.mycongressmanisnuts.com/ is a website which highlights on life of Alan Grayson. Grayson would like this critic placed in jail for 5 years because she does not live in his district and yet uses my in the name of her website. He sent a 4 page letter to Attorney General Eric Holder to deal with this matter.

5) Someone on FoxNews made the brilliant observation that a key part of healthcare is innovation and the discovery of new cures and new kinds of equipment and treatments. This tends to take place in a free market system; not in a government controlled healthcare system. Freedom and profit leads to greater innovation, new discoveries, improved techniques, and lower costs. If you don’t believe this, look at 2 areas of healthcare which are virtually unregulated: laser eye surgery and cosmetic surgery. While healthcare costs keep rising, these costs keep going down, and the results keep getting better. It is called freedom and profit.

6) Illinois officials are touting all of the jobs which will be created if the residents of Gitmo are moved to Illinois. Rush suggests that we begin locking up illegal immigrants, which is going to create a buttload of new jobs (using the same reasoning). Heck, let’s lock up people who get traffic ticket. More jobs. Or, people who make anti Obama posters—lock ‘em up for the economy’s sake.

40,000 copies of Al Gore’s Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis (released about a month before Palin’s book)

50% of likely voters now believe that global warming is caused primarily by long-term planetary trends.

68% of small businesses want torte reform included as part of a healthcare bill.

45% believe that global warming is a proven fact and is mostly caused by emissions from cars and industrial facilities such as power plants and factories.

23% believe that Global warming is a proven fact and is mostly caused by natural changes that have nothing to do with emissions from cars and industrial facilities

See the story on NPR bias. Their fact check program seems to always show that Republicans are wrong and Democrats are right.

The Al Gore science class parody. Not much would have to be made up here, by way of dialogue. Simply cite Al Gore claiming that a few miles down, the earth is several million degrees and that the ice at the north pole will melt within the next 5 years, and go from there.

Democrats know that their healthcare bill is extremely unpopular. However, what Bernie Sanders and Howard Dean are doing, is giving the most radical form of healthcare (which they want), and, in doing so, they make President Obama seem like a centrist. However, what Dean and Sanders want is Obama’s end game as well. Despite all of the rhetoric (which is also the gin up the far left base), Dean and Sanders will vote for this bill, saying, “It’s not perfect, but it is the best we can get at this time.” The reconciliation is between the far, far left, who want single-payer healthcare awhile ago; and the far left, who want single-payer healthcare, but they are willing to wait a decade or so to bring it into being.

It is a dark day for the Democrats, who will vote en masse for the healthcare bill (all 60 will vote to cut off debate, which will be followed by a vote which will require only 51 votes.

Why do you feel as though you must jam your version of healthcare down the throats of Americans who, in the majority, oppose your plan?

Do you think Al Gore is right and that arctic circle ice will be gone in the next 5–7 years?

If you think a government-run healthcare system is going to be cheaper than the free enterprise system.

Al Gore predicts that there is a possibility that the Arctic ice will all be melted within 5 years (during the summers). I certainly do not see that as happening, even if SUV sells are up, and Arabs sell oil for $2/barrel. However, it is always nice to see what other people are predicting for the future.

Prince Charles, not to be outdone, claims that we have only 7 years to go until we lose the levers of control (of climate change).

Okay, here is a real prophecy: the healthcare bill will be passed, regardless of all this stuff we are hearing from the far-left. The crazy far-leftists, like Bernie Sanders and Howard Dean are going to be hauled before Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barrack Obama, and they are going to be told, behind closed doors, “This is the first step to get what we want. We want a single payer system and you want a single payer system.

In fact, what is probably more likely is, Sanders, Pelosi and Dean all understand that this is the best that they can do at this time; and if they do not do this, it will be 20 years until the stars aline themselves again for a government-healthcare system. So, Pelosi, Sanders and Dean are spewing a bunch of rhetoric, only to please their far-left constituency, who do not understand that this is the first step in the march to a single payer, government-run healthcare system. These politicians understand this, and they are simply saying all of this stuff to hold on to their far, far-left base, and to make it appear as though Obama is some centrist, trying to find middle ground.

I think that there is a 60% chance that the House will agree to whatever bill is passed in the Senate. It will happen so fast, we will be amazed. I believe it will be signed into law by Jan. 7^th.

What this healthcare plan will do is, put so many mandates on private insurance, that we will drive most of them out of business, and a public option will have to be brought in because (1) their rates will be allowed to go high enough to allow for a profit or, (2) this bill will drive them out of business. The end result will be, we will need a governmental insurance program to take up the slack.”

The first challenge to the healthcare bill (which I think will be passed) will be its mandate to buy insurance, and this case will go all the way to the Supreme Court and be a landmark decision; which will affect our lives as Americans forever more. And there are 4 liberals on the court who will say, “Requiring one to buy healthcare insurance is exactly the sameas requiring someone to have car insurance” and there are 4 conservatives on the court who will say, “It is not within the scope of the government to force anyone to buy any kind of product, whether from the government or from a private insurance company.” And it will be up to the 9^th member of the Supreme Court who will determine America’s future—one man.

It doesn’t matter what is in the healthcare bill; Obama and Reid want it passed, no matter what, and they will do anything to get it.

We will be so far in debt in 3 years that taxes will have to be raised astronomically by whomever is in office.

In listening to NPR this morning, I thought to myself, for a couple minutes, this is not too bad; it is presenting some of the salient points of the Republican party concerning the healthcare bill. And then they came to their fact check portion of the program. Here is what was fact checked: will the new healthcare bill actually take $450 billion from medicare, thus making medicare less solvent? The fact check person determined, no, and here was her reasoning: when you spend less money, that means you will save more money and it will take long for you to go broke. Or words to that effect, as this particular fact check was not yet posted. If I was only half-listening, and a liberal, I may have thought to myself, another Republican lie put to rest. However, even if you are a liberal, think through this with me for a moment. Here’s this $450 billion over a 10 year period of time; it is going to be taken out of medicare (by whatever means) and then used to help pay for the new healthcare bill provisions. That money is not being saved; instead of being sent to the doctors and hospitals, it will be transferred to pay for the new healthcare bill. Medicare is not saving anything; their bank account is going to be reduced by $450 billion, whether it goes to pay for services that they contracted for or whether this money is transferred to another government program. The end result is, their balance sheet remains the same, whether this money goes to pay Peter or goes to fund Paul. This fact check is nothing but a moderately convoluted lie.

It is just as if the Democrats have sent them some double-talk talking points and they read them over the air.

This did not just happen once. What about the question, could skipping insurance mandate lead to jail time?

Word-for-word, from NPR’s website: The Wall Street Journal reports that House conservatives are saying "people who refuse to buy health insurance could spend five years in prison." After saying that this assertion found its way onto the Senate floor, the NPR fact-checker concludes: Like an earlier accusation that reform would create government "death panels," the claim doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Here is how NPR explains this. What? The House bill would require people to either buy insurance, or face a special 2.5 percent income tax. People who don't buy insurance AND refuse to pay the tax would face the standard punishment for knowingly evading taxes, which is listed in the Internal Revenue Code. By that logic, any change to the tax code could lead to criminal penalties.

People convicted of such crimes "shall be fined not more than $100,000 ($500,000 in the case of a corporation), or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both, together with the costs of prosecution," according to the code.

So, the government requires you to buy healthcare insurance and you say no, and you refuse to pay the fine, their explanation is, it is because you do not pay the fine (your taxes) that you go to jail. Not buying healthcare is a completely different issue.

Do you see how clever this is? If you did not buy healthcare insurance (that sort required by the government—not just any policy), and you were fined and sent to prison if you did not pay the fine, then you are being put in prison essentially for not buying healthcare insurance. However, because this fine is tacked on to your taxes instead, that makes it a separate issue, even though, to you, there is not a dime’s worth of difference.

So, the key is, what this healthcare bill does is put you at odds with the IRS, and going to jail becomes a matter of you not paying your taxes rather than being directly tied to having to purchase mandatory healthcare insurance.

For all intents and purposes, the government could choose to fine you for anything that it wanted to, but require this fine to be paid to the IRS, so that you are no longer being fined and possibly jailed for this thing the government is requiring you to do, but for not paying taxes. It is a slick and fundamentally dishonest maneuver; and NPR radio is not stupid here; this are just giving a very, shall we say, nuanced explanation.

It is interesting that, when a Republican makes a statement, they are always wrong, even if it is some nuanced way. However, when a Democrat makes a statement, according to NPR, they are almost always right.

He talks about how we do not have a moment to lose when it comes to passing the Democratic healthcare bill, because every day, 14,000 Americans lose their healthcare insurance. He fails to mention that (1) these are Americans who are losing their healthcare insurance because they have lost their job because the so-called Stimulus Bill which Durbin helped to pass did not stimulate the economy nor did it provide any increase in jobs. (2) The Democratic healthcare bill will do nothing for any of these people, whether it is passed tomorrow or 10 months from today, because none of the healthcare benefits of this bill kick in until several years down the road (although taxes will begin immediately).

While Durbin talks about healthcare, he is holding what looks to be about 1000–1500 pages of something in his hand, while he demands to see the Republican healthcare bill. The implication is, this is the Democratic healthcare plan in his hand, although it isn’t, because it had not yet been released before Durbin gave this stirring speech. It was released Saturday morning; and Durbin himself has said publically that he has not seen the Democratic healthcare bill, even though he is one of the high-ranking Democrats in the Senate. He fails to mention that the Republicans do have a healthcare plan; and most conservatives could give you 3–5 points of a conservative healthcare plan which would cost not even a fraction of what the Democrat plan would cost.

Durbin also talks about the increased cost of healthcare insurance, failing to note that, the more hospitals and doctors face restrictions on what they can charge to medicare, the more they must charge their other paying customers (insurance companies).

STEPHANOPOULOS: And George, let me just begin with you on this debate we just saw. Every single major issue dealing with the economy has been a partisan issue this year. Both sides are basically all in. All in on the economy.

WILL: They all understand that it's job creation is issue No. 1, two, three. But I think, George, there are probably three reasons why we're not creating jobs. First is, why lend? If you're a bank and you're getting money free from the government, you can turn around and invest in government bonds or blue chip equities or risk-free corporate bonds, why lend to small businessmen who have entrepreneurial dreams but are risky? Second, the economy normally has one great engine, consumer spending. It has one fuel for that. It's debt. But the American people right now are deleveraging, and that's probably over time a good thing to shed that.

Third, people disagree as to why the New Deal failed to cure unemployment, but a plausible explanation is uncertainty paralyzed the business sector. That is, they didn't know what the rules were going to be. Today, we have health care, that's an uncertain mandate for the future. You have cap and trade in the offing. You have contracts being shred as in the Chrysler bailout. You have Congress just this week saying, well, maybe judges should be able to rewrite mortgages. The pandemic uncertainty is freezing business activity.

WILL: The one idea that we seem to have dropped, happily so -- remember the phrase was "shovel-ready"? We were going to create government jobs.

It put me in mind of a great story Milton Friedman used to tell. He went to Asia in the 1960s and was proudly taken by the government to see a public works project. They were building a canal. He was struck everyone was digging the canal with shovels. Friedman says, why no heavy earth-moving equipment?

They said, oh, this is a jobs program. So Friedman says, why don't you give them spoons instead of shovels?

Did you hear Obama give himself a B+ on his own efforts recently? The dude is an egomaniac. This dude is absolutely in love with himself, but unfortunately the kool-aid is starting to wear off with those who voted for him and they seem to have serious “voters’ remorse”. Now, Obama has officially won the crummy-Presidential-end-of-year-award. He’s earned it, too. 49% approve and 46% disapprove of his job performance in the latest USA Today/Gallup Poll.

The President Is No B+

In fact, he's got the worst ratings of any president at the end of his first year.

By Karl Rove

Barack Obama has won a place in history with the worst ratings of any president at the end of his first year: 49% approve and 46% disapprove of his job performance in the latest USA Today/Gallup Poll.

There are many factors that explain it, including weakness abroad, an unprecedented spending binge at home, and making a perfectly awful health-care plan his signature domestic initiative. But something else is happening.

Mr. Obama has not governed as the centrist, deficit-fighting, bipartisan consensus builder he promised to be. And his promise to embody a new kind of politics—free of finger-pointing, pettiness and spin—was a mirage. He has cheapened his office with needless attacks on his predecessor.

Consider Mr. Obama's comment in his interview this past Sunday on CBS's "60 Minutes" that the Bush administration made a mistake in speaking in "a triumphant sense about war."

This was a slap at every president who rallied the nation in dark moments, including Franklin D. Roosevelt ("With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph"); Woodrow Wilson ("Right is more precious than peace and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts"); and John F. Kennedy ("Any hostile move anywhere in the world against the safety and freedom of peoples to whom we are committed . . . will be met by whatever action is needed").

This kind of attack gives Mr. Obama's words a slippery quality. For example, he voted for the bank rescue plan in September 2008 and praised it during the campaign. Yet on Dec. 8 at the Brookings Institution, Mr. Obama called it "flawed" and blamed "the last administration" for launching it "hastily."

Really? Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and New York Fed President Timothy Geithner designed it. If it was "flawed," why did Mr. Obama later nominate Mr. Bernanke to a second term as Fed chairman and make Mr. Geithner his Treasury secretary?

Mr. Obama also claimed at Brookings that he prevented "a second Great Depression" by confronting the financial crisis "largely without the help" of Republicans. Yet his own Treasury secretary suggests otherwise. In a Dec. 9 letter, Mr. Geithner admitted that since taking office, the Obama administration had "committed about $7 billion to banks, much of which went to small institutions." That compares to $240 billion the Bush administration lent banks. Does Mr. Obama really believe his additional $7 billion forestalled "the potential collapse of our financial system"?

About Karl Rove

Karl Rove served as Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush from 2000–2007 and Deputy Chief of Staff from 2004–2007. At the White House he oversaw the Offices of Strategic Initiatives, Political Affairs, Public Liaison, and Intergovernmental Affairs and was Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, coordinating the White House policy-making process.

Before Karl became known as "The Architect" of President Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns, he was president of Karl Rove + Company, an Austin-based public affairs firm that worked for Republican candidates, nonpartisan causes, and nonprofit groups. His clients included over 75 Republican U.S. Senate, Congressional and gubernatorial candidates in 24 states, as well as the Moderate Party of Sweden.

Karl writes a weekly op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, is a Newsweek columnist and is the author of the forthcoming book "Courage and Consequence" (Threshold Editions).

Email the author atKarl@Rove.comor visit him on the web atRove.com. Or, you can send a Tweet to @karlrove.

Mr. Obama continued distorting the record in his "60 Minutes" interview Sunday when he blamed bankers for the financial crisis. They "caused the problem," he insisted before complaining, "I haven't seen a lot of shame on their part" and pledging to put "a regulatory system in place that prevents them from putting us in this kind of pickle again."

But as a freshman senator, Mr. Obama supported a threatened 2005 filibuster of a bill regulating Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He doesn't show "a lot of shame" that he and other Fannie and Freddie defenders blocked "a regulatory system" that might have kept America from getting in such a bad pickle in the first place.

The president's rhetorical tricks don't end there. Mr. Obama also claimed his $787 billion stimulus package "helped us [stem] the panic and get the economy growing again." But 1.5 million more people are unemployed than he said there would be if nothing were done.

And as of yesterday, only $244 billion of the stimulus had been spent. Why was $787 billion needed when less than a third of that figure supposedly got the job done?

Mr. Obama also alleged on "60 Minutes" that health-care reform "will actually bring down the deficit" (which people clearly know it will not). He said his reform reduces "costs and premiums for American families and businesses" (though they will be higher than they would otherwise be). And he claimed 30 million more people will get coverage through "an exchange that allows individuals and small businesses" to purchase insurance (though 15 million of them are covered by being dumped into Medicaid and don't get private insurance).

Mr. Obama may actually believe it when he says, "I think that's a pretty darned good outcome" and congratulates himself that he could succeed where "seven presidents have tried . . . [and] seven presidents have failed."

But voters seem to have a different definition of success. And they are tiring of the president's blame shifting and distortions.

Mr. Obama may believe, as he told Oprah Winfrey in a recent interview, that he deserves a "solid B+" for his first year in office, but the American people beg to differ. A presidency that started with so much promise is receiving unprecedentedly low grades from the country that elected him. He's earned them.

Mr. Rove, the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, is the author of the forthcoming book "Courage and Consequence" (Threshold Editions).

Government guidelines would likely have forbidden the test I used to discover Sheila's cancer.

I recently suggested that seniors will die sooner if Congress actually implements the Medicare cuts in the health-care bill put forward by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. My colleagues who defend the bill-none of whom have practiced medicine-predictably dismissed my concern as a scare tactic. They are wrong. Every American, not just seniors, should know that the rationing provisions in the Reid bill will not only reduce their quality of life, but their life spans as well.

My 25 years as a practicing physician have shown me what happens when government attempts to practice medicine: Doctors respond to government coercion instead of patient cues, and patients die prematurely. Even if the public option is eliminated from the bill, these onerous rationing provisions will remain intact.

For instance, the Reid bill (in sections 3403 and 2021) explicitly empowers Medicare to deny treatment based on cost. An Independent Medicare Advisory Board created by the bill-composed of permanent, unelected and, therefore, unaccountable members-will greatly expand the rationing practices that already occur in the program. Medicare, for example, has limited cancer patients' access to Epogen, a costly but vital drug that stimulates red blood cell production. It has limited the use of virtual, and safer, colonoscopies due to cost concerns. And Medicare refuses medical claims at twice the rate of the largest private insurers.

Section 6301 of the Reid bill creates new comparative effectiveness research (CER) programs. CER panels have been used as rationing commissions in other countries such as the U.K., where 15,000 cancer patients die prematurely every year according to the National Cancer Intelligence Network. CER panels here could effectively dictate coverage options and ration care for plans that participate in the state insurance exchanges created by the bill.

Additionally, the Reid bill depends on the recommendations of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force in no fewer than 14 places. This task force was responsible for advising women under 50 to not undergo annual mammograms. The administration claims the task force recommendations do not carry the force of law, but the Reid bill itself contradicts them in section 2713. The bill explicitly states, on page 17, that health insurance plans "shall provide coverage for" services approved by the task force. This chilling provision represents the government stepping between doctors and patients. When the government asserts the power to provide care, it also asserts the power to deny care.

If the bill expands Medicaid eligibility to 133% of the poverty level, that too will lead to rationing. Because Washington bureaucrats have created a system that underpays doctors, 40% of doctors already restrict access to Medicaid patients, and therefore ration care.

Medicaid demonstrates, tragically in some cases, that access to a government program does not guarantee access to health care. In Maryland, 17,000 Medicaid patients are currently on a waiting list for medical services, and as many as 250 may have died while awaiting care, according to state auditors. Kansas, the home state of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, faces a Medicaid backlog of more than 15,000 applicants.

Other unintended consequences of the Reid bill could wreak havoc on patients' lives. What happens, for instance, when savvy consumers commanded to buy insurance realize the penalty is the de facto premium? It won't take long for younger, healthier Americans to realize it's cheaper to pay a $750 tax for coverage instead of, say, $5,000 in annual premiums when coverage can't be denied if you get sick.

OMB Budget Director Peter Orzsag's belief that mandatory health insurance will become a "cultural norm" is bureaucratic naivete that will produce skyrocketing premiums and reduced care for everyone. My state's own insurance commissioner, a Democrat, recently confirmed this concern to me in a letter noting that "the result will be higher insurance rates due to a higher percentage of insured being higher risk/expense individuals."

But the most fundamental flaw of the Reid bill is best captured by the story of one my patients I'll call Sheila. When Sheila came to me at the age of 33 with a lump in her breast, traditional tests like a mammogram under the standard of care indicated she had a cyst and nothing more. Because I knew her medical history, I wasn't convinced. I aspirated the cyst and discovered she had a highly malignant form of breast cancer. Sheila fought a heroic battle against breast cancer and enjoyed 12 good years with her family before succumbing to the disease.

If I had been practicing under the Reid bill, the government would have likely told me I couldn't have done the test that discovered Sheila's cancer because it wasn't approved under CER. Under the Reid bill, Sheila may have lived another year instead of 12, and her daughters would have missed a decade with their mom.

The bottom line is that under the Reid bill the majority of America's patients might be fine. But some will be like Sheila-patients whose lives hang in the balance and require the care of a doctor who understands the science and art of medicine, and can make decisions without government interference.

The American people are opposing this bill in greater numbers every day because the facts of the bill-not any tactic-are cause for serious concern.

According to recent reports, the Medicare buy-in compromise that Majority leader Reid (D-NV) and President Barack Obama heralded as the grand health care compromise just last week, is now dead. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) is being credited with killing Reid's deal, and some are even suggesting that the entire idea of a public option is dead. But do not be fooled.

Through incremental expansions of government programs like the State Children's Health Insurance (SCHIP) program the left has been slowly moving us closer to single payer government run health care system for decades. Obamacare will only accelerate that trend; the only question is how fast. You can't take the public option out of Obamacare. Obamacare is a public plan. Here are five reasons why:

1. Obamacare Raises, Not Lowers, Health Care Costs. According to President's own Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency in charge of running Medicare and Medicaid, both the House and Senate health bills raise overall health care spending in the United States. The House bill would raise national health expenditures by $289 billion and the Senate bill would raise them by $234 billion.

2. Federal Regulation of Health Insurance. Both the House and Senate bills would result in sweeping and complex federal regulation of health insurance that will create a one-size-fits-all federal health plan that will drive up (not down, as promised by the President) the cost of health insurance.

3. A Ticking Entitlement Time-Bomb. Both the House and Senate would dramatically expand eligibility for Medicaid and extend generous taxpayer-funded subsidies to the middle class. Combined, such commitments are the biggest cost items in the bills would result in scores of Americans dependent on the government to finance their health care. Both bills hide their true costs by claiming cuts and program restrictions that are unlikely to stick. In this regard, the Senate bill is far worse, creating staggering discrepancies between what families with the same incomes would pay for health insurance based on who they bought their insurance through. When future Congress' "fix" these inequalities, the true cost of Obamacare will skyrocket. According to a recent analysis by the Lewin Group (for the Peterson Foundation) just by adding in the doctor fix (which they should), the Senate and House bills will add to the deficit - $196 Billion in the first 10 years and $765 increase in the second decade under the Senate bill.

4. Employer Mandates. Both the House and Senate bills would impose penalties on many employers. An employer mandate would hurt low-income workers and would stifle much-needed economic growth. Our country does not need a job killing employment tax at a time of 10.2% unemployment.

5. Individual Mandates. Both the House and Senate bills would require virtually all people to obtain health care coverage or pay a penalty, an unprecedented an unconstitutional first for the federal government. Those individuals who do not purchase government qualified health care coverage would be subject to new tax penalties and in some cases jail time.

Of course it's the public option. There has never been a doubt since the video of obama came out with his saying that his goal was a "Single Payer System." Anything passed is just a step toward that.

Reserving the right to object to "Obamacare", I object on the basis of "the role of government overall." The President wants to overstep the bounds of the federal government's authority by encroaching on constitutional rights of The States and American Citizens with mandates. To me the most objectionable reason of the five reasons listed above (5. Individual Mandates) a citizen whom is otherwise law-abiding could end up with assets seized or worse behind bars for failure to purchase"Obamacare."

What is that, the IRS will have more power than ever before, Mr. President? I object Mr. President!

This distant of conditions apart from what our Founding Fathers intended to pass down to us is centralizing one size fits all overbearing rule. I express strong objection to this draconian type of rule.

Find a better way to lower cost and provide individuals or families with health care other than this outright assault on freedom!

December 15, 2009 Putting Party And Vanity Above Country « The Divine Lamp writes:

[...] What's in the final bill may become immaterial in this Christmas rush. That's dangerous because the ultimate language remains a mystery after earlier efforts ran afoul of multitudes of objections. The 11th-hour rewrite of the bill will be major version Number Nine since varying editions began surfacing during the summer. With or without a co-called "public option," it's certain that the bill will displace millions.. [...]

Plenty of Republicans have supported the creation of SCHIP and then its expansion.

Instead of encouraging people to work hard, go to college, get a good job so you can provide well for your family . the new mantra will be this:

I'd like to get a job that pays me more, but then I would lose my government-subsidized health insurance. If I improve myself, I will no longer be subsidized.

How many employers are gonna immediately stop paying health coverage for their low-earning workers, and just pay the fine?

In the end, this bill will cause millions to lose their private coverage. It will change the incentives in this country forever.

December 16, 2009 Putting Party and Vanity Above Country | Fix Health Care Policy writes:

Some of you folks obviously missed Obama's jobs summit where he brilliantly observed that "employer's need to stop thinking out of the box and stop worrying about profits."

Losing private coverage IS the goal! How can the government attain total control if you still have options like private healthcare and ultimately private sector jobs?

I think it's funny that Reid, Nelson, Lincoln, Snow, and others are running so fast so they can throw themselves over the cliff for Obama-as he's busy warming up the bus for all the "blue dogs" he needs to runover.

Have I mentioned lately for the first time in my adult life I am no longer proud to be a citizen of this government?

But, Nicole, we're on the precipice of making history! The unfortunate part is that it's the wrong side of history. Make no mistake, I agree with you 150%. Stand up and be counted! Keeping writing letters!

The Government produces nothing of its own. What they offer is no better than a `protection racket' offered by gangsters. They terrify the population and blackmail them through fear to squeeze more money out of them.

One thing I keep hearing from the members in the majority both houses of congress is this; America as the richest nation on earth should be able to provide healthcare for all of it's citizens and join the modernized free western countries enjoying some type of universal care that is affordable.

First, we Americans may have a large economy but we are certainly not rich we owe huge sums of money our government has no income, they leach off our incomes.

Second, free nation are you kidding they rob us of some freedom there in the Capital nearly everyday and the western countries they seek to join are largely socialistic, we don't want to become a dependant class of citizens.

Third, no politician has described how government adds dozens of bureaucracies and millions of healthcare recipients and keeps things affordable.

OR these snakes in the grass are deliberately trying to taken down the last hope of true freedom left in this world;

Our United States of America the land that I love. A great man once said "give me liberty or give me death."

Obama doesn't want Health Care for the poor or needy, he just wants to see the total end of America.

LINFEN, China - Towering eight stories over wheat fields, the Golden Lamp Church was built to serve nearly 50,000 worshippers in the gritty heart of China's coal country.

But that was before hundreds of police and hired thugs descended on the mega-church, smashing doors and windows, seizing Bibles and sending dozens of worshippers to hospitals with serious injuries, members and activists say

Today, the church's co-pastors are in jail. The gates to the church complex in the northern province of Shanxi are locked and a police armored personnel vehicle sits outside.

The closure of what may be China's first mega-church is the most visible sign that the communist government is determined to rein in the rapid spread of Christianity, with a crackdown in recent months that church leaders call the harshest in years.

Authorities describe the actions against churches as stemming from land disputes, but the congregations under attack are among the most successful in China's growing "house church" movement, which rejects the state-controlled church in favor of liturgical independence and a more passionate, evangelical outlook.

While the Chinese constitution guarantees freedom of religion, Christians are required to worship in churches run by state-controlled organizations: The Three-Self Patriotic Movement for Protestants and the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association for Roman Catholics.

But more and more Chinese are opting to choose their own churches, despite them being technically illegal and subject to police harassment. Christians worshipping in China's independent churches are believed to number upwards of 60 million, compared to about 20 million who worship in the state church, according to numbers provided by scholars and church activists.

House churches have been around for decades, but their growth has accelerated in recent decades, producing larger and larger congregations that are far more conspicuous than the small groups of friends and neighbors that used to worship in private homes, giving the movement its name.

Their expansion and growing influence has deeply unsettled China's rulers, always suspicious of any independent social group that could challenge communist authority. Fears that Tibetan Buddhism and Islam promote separatism among Tibetans and Uighurs also drive restrictions on those religions.

"They are so afraid of rallying points developing for gathering of elements of civil society," said Daniel Bays, who follows Chinese Christianity at Calvin College, a religious school in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

While house churches have faced varying degrees of repression depending on the region and political climate, the latest crackdown appears to specifically target the largest congregations.

Authorities want to dismantle large churches "before they grow out of total control," said Bob Fu, a former Communist Party researcher in Beijing who now heads the China Aid Association, a Texas-based church monitoring group.

In Beijing in October, authorities locked parishioners of Shouwang house church out of the space they had rented to worship in. In Shanghai, the Wangbang congregation faced a similar lockout. Both congregations had grown to more than 1,000 members.

Shouwang and Wangbang church leaders have not been detained, but activists fear further arrests are coming.

In a brief phone conversation, Wangbang's pastor Cui Quan said worship continued in small groups while he fought to have their lease restored. He declined to give other details.

Christianity was long associated with foreign interference in traditionally Buddhist and Taoist China, and came under heavy attack after the 1949 Communist revolution.

The most onerous restrictions were lifted after the death of communist leader Mao Zedong in 1976. Although Christians still account for a less than 10 percent of China's 1.3 billion people, recent years have seen rapid growth in house churches in both cities and rural areas,

Adding to official concerns about their numbers, house-church Christians also emphasize missionary work - illegal in China - and some have even operated an underground network to help smuggle North Korean refugees and Uighurs out of China in defiance of the security forces.

The Golden Lamp Church was built by husband and wife evangelists Wang Xiaoguang and Yang Rongli as a permanent home for their followers, whose numbers had soared to more than 50,000.

The couple, administrators at the provincial teachers' college, had been preaching in the region around the city of Linfen since 1992, establishing a network of three dozen communities meeting in improvised spaces such as factory dormitories and greenhouses. They also attracted thousands to tent revival meetings.

According to Bob Fu, Shanxi authorities grumbled as the church was being built last year, but did not try to stop work and offered few, if any, signs that an impending crackdown.

On a rainy Sunday in mid-September, some 400 police officers and hired thugs descended on more than a dozen church properties around Linfen, smashing doors and windows and hauling off computers, Bibles, and church funds, according to accounts posted online by church members and their allies.

Those accounts said worshippers who resisted were beaten, with dozens hospitalized with serious injuries.

Wang, Yang, and three other church leaders were convicted on Nov. 25 on charges including illegally occupying agricultural land and assembling a crowd to disrupt traffic. Yang, 51, received a seven-year sentence, while Wang, 56, and the others received terms of three to four years. Five others were sentenced without trial to two years in a labor camp.

Courts, police and government officials in Linfen refused to comment on the claims of violence and persecution. A local Communist Party spokesman said only that the case centered on the mega-church's lack of planning approval.

"We have always supported and allowed everybody to believe in religion. But the church itself is an illegally constructed building," said the spokesman, who would give only his surname, Wang.

A lawyer for Wang and Yang, Li Fangping, said the church had applied for permits to build the church from the local religious affairs bureau and the land use authority, but received no reply.

Almost three months after the crackdown, people in and around Linfen refuse to discuss the church, and police vehicles remain parked on virtually every corner of the neighborhood where the Golden Lamp is located.

The worst nightmare of the left is about to come true: The United States is about to achieve the carbon emissions goals set by the 1997 Kyoto Accords. Once seemingly beyond reach, the United States is already halfway toward meeting the stringent Kyoto goals for reduction in carbon emissions without a cap-and-trade law or a carbon tax or carbon dioxide being declared a pollutant.

Environmental nightmare? Yes. The goals of the climate change crowd are not reduction in global warming but the enactment of a worldwide system of regulation that puts business under government control and transfers wealth from rich nations to poor ones under the guise of fighting climate change. Should the emissions come down on their own, as they are doing, the excuse for draconian legislation goes, well, up in smoke.

The facts are startling. In 1990, the year chosen as the global benchmark for carbon emissions, the United States emitted 5,007 million metric tons of carbon (mmts).

Kyoto specified that emissions must be reduced to a level 6 percent lower than in 1990. For the U.S., that means 4,700 mmts.

American carbon emissions rose year after year until they peaked in 2007 at 5,967 mmts. But in 2008, they dropped to 5,801, and in 2009, the best estimate is for a reduction to 5,476. So, in two years, U.S. carbon emissions will have gone down by more than 500 mmts - a cut of over 8 percent.

President Barack Obama has pledged to bring U.S. carbon emissions down by 17 percent. He's halfway there.

A combination of the recession and an increased emphasis on cutting emissions is working and may make onerous regulation unnecessary and even redundant.

If 60 percent of American cars were electric, the net savings in carbon would be 450 mmts (even counting the coal burned for the higher levels of electricity required). And if one-third of the truck fleet ran on natural gas, the carbon savings would add another 150-200 mmts.

The point is that public education and increased environmental consciousness - the normal way we Americans respond to challenges - may suffice without the need for government regulation. And what persuasion fails to achieve, higher gasoline prices will do for us to move people to buy electric cars.

Not if you are a socialist banking on climate change as the banner to regulate all utilities and industries in the world.

Their game plan is to use the financial crisis to regulate white-collar businesses like banking, insurance and finance while using fears of climate change to extend government regulation to the blue-collar trades.

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton calls cap-and-trade a "massive redistribution of wealth from the north to the south" (i.e., from the developed northern hemisphere to the less developed southern half of the globe). What the globalists and the one-world crowd had hoped to achieve by foreign aid, they now seek to bring about by cap-and-trade, forcing businesses and utilities to pay rural societies for the right to pollute with carbon.

But market forces are accomplishing what they are hoping only regulation can achieve. And the rationale for the global system of regulation being negotiated at Copenhagen is being made unnecessary even as the agreement is being hammered out.

There is a great deal of justified skepticism about the entire question of whether climate change is going on and, even more, how much human activity is contributing to it.

But while the world divides into those who demand global regulation to fight climate change and those who say it isn't happening, there is now an inconvenient truth - the market is taking care of the problem on its own.

To some observers, the Democrats' race to pass national health care seems irrational -- even suicidal. Don't party leaders understand how much the public opposes the bills currently on the table? Don't they know that voters are likely to take their revenge at the polls next year? Given that, why do they keep rushing ahead?

Just look at the RealClearPolitics average of polls, which shows that Americans oppose the national health care bills currently on the table by a margin of 53 percent to 38 percent. That's not just one poll that might tilt right or left, it's an average of several polls by several pollsters. And the margin of opposition seems to be growing, not diminishing. And yet Democrats seem determined to defy public opinion. Why?

I put the question to a Democratic strategist who asked to remain anonymous. Yes, Democrats certainly understand that voters don't like the current bills, he told me, and they are fully aware they will probably pay a price next year. But they have found a way to view going ahead anyway as the logical thing to do, at least in their eyes.

You have to look at the issue from three different Democratic perspectives: the House of Representatives, the White House and the Senate.

"In the House, the view of [California Rep. Henry] Waxman and [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi is that we've waited two generations to get health care passed, and the 20 or 40 members of Congress who are going to lose their seats as a result are transitional players at best," he said. "This is something the party has wanted since Franklin Roosevelt." In this view, losses are just the price of doing something great and historic. (The strategist also noted that it's easy for Waxman and Pelosi to say that, since they come from safely liberal districts.)

"At the White House, the picture is slightly different," he continued. "Their view is, 'We're all in on this, totally committed, and we don't have to run for re-election next year. There will never be a better time to do it than now.'"

"And in the Senate, they look at the most vulnerable Democrats -- like [Christopher] Dodd and [Majority Leader Harry] Reid -- and say those vulnerabilities will probably not change whether health care reform passes or fails. So in that view, if they pass reform, Democrats will lose the same number of seats they were going to lose before."

All those scenarios have a certain logic (even if the Senate calculation undercounts the number of potentially vulnerable Democrats). But each scenario is premised on passing an unpopular bill that hurts the party. Even if there's a strategic rationale for doing it, why are Democrats dead-set on hurting themselves?

"Because they think they know what's best for the public," the strategist said. "They think the facts are being distorted and the public's being told a story that is not entirely true, and that they are in Congress to be leaders. And they are going to make the decision because Goddammit, it's good for the public."

Of course, going forward has turned out to be harder than many Democrats thought. And now, with various proposals lying wrecked along the road, the true believers are practicing what the strategist calls "principled damage control."

But still, does it make sense? In the end, perhaps the most compelling explanation for Democratic behavior is that they are simply in too deep to do anything else. "Once you've gone this far, what is the cost of failure?" asks the strategist.

At that point -- Republicans will love this -- he compared congressional Democrats with robbers who have passed the point of no return in deciding to hold up a bank. Whatever they do, they're guilty of something. "They're in the bank, they've got their guns out. They can run outside with no money, or they can stick it out, go through the gunfight, and get away with the money."

That's it. Democrats are all in. They're going through with it. Even if it kills them.

CHARLES GIBSON: Mr. President, a year ago today, you were in Chicago. You knew you were going to be president, but you weren't. What didn't you anticipate? What did you underestimate? What didn't you know?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, I think the main thing is we didn't understand the rapidity of job losses in those first three months -- January, February, March -- actually, starting in December. You saw 700,000 jobs lost or 650,000 jobs lost in each of those months. So none of the economists had anticipated that.

By the time we were in legislative session, had actually passed a Recovery Act, you had already seen over 3 million jobs lost, on top of what had been lost the previous year, and that meant that unemployment was going to go up higher, and even as we moved aggressively to start boosting economic growth, we knew at that point that job growth was going to be lagging severely and that that was going to be one of our greatest challenges.

GIBSON: You surprised me a little, because I think -- and I've heard other presidents say -- the thing that you can't anticipate is the weight of the job when it comes to you, particularly when it comes to committing young men and women to war.

OBAMA: Well, I will tell you that, unfortunately, I anticipated the difficulties involved in managing two wars at the same time. I think Iraq has actually gone better than we anticipated, or at least as well as we could have anticipated. And I've been very fortunate to have extraordinary leadership not only in the secretary of defense, Bob Gates, who understood all the ramifications of our wartime policies, but also having Ray Odierno on the ground, who's been doing outstanding work.

So Iraq, I think, we knew we could manage, and we have. Afghanistan we understood was going to be a problem.

Now, we have been disappointed, I think, in the fact that the Taliban had gained more momentum during the course of the year than was anticipated. When General McChrystal came back with his assessment, the sense of what deterioration had taken place on the ground was worse than what had been initially reported.

The weight of making decisions around sending young men and women into war is something that, frankly, I foresaw being difficult. When you're in the midst of making the decisions, though, nothing compares. And when you meet with families and you talk to soldiers who've come home disabled as a consequence of their service, the -- the -- the sheer emotional force of that I think is something that you can't anticipate. It's something that hits you like a ton of bricks.

GIBSON: I've always been fascinated by this question of -- of what it takes and what you have to go through internally to send kids off, as you said a few moments -- when you were in the Nobel speech, you said some will kill and some will be killed.

GIBSON: It's an enormous responsibility. And before Gulf War I, I went to Kuwait, and I talked to the commanders, Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, and I asked them, what does it feel like to commit kids to war? And they all said, "We don't. The president does. It's his job. We just carry out his order."

OBAMA: It is tough. And, you know, probably the most powerful moment of my year was when I traveled up to Dover and not only met with the families who were there in the middle of the night waiting for their loved ones to come home in caskets, but walking up the ramp of the transport plane by myself and seeing those caskets, it's -- it's -- it's indescribable, and it reminds you of the extraordinary courage and sacrifice that these young men and women are willing to make, but it also reminds you that you have the solemn obligation to make the best possible decision that you can make and that there is an element of tragedy involved in war that is inevitable, and that was the topic of what I spoke about last week. And if you don't understand that, if you think that this is all chest-beating and glory, then you're probably not making the best decision as possible.

GIBSON: As you went through that assessment in recent weeks, is there a calculus in your mind? Do you have to go through it? What is this worth in terms of human life?

GIBSON: Is this goal worth 500 lives, 1,000 lives, 1,500 lives? Does that go through your head?

OBAMA: I don't think that you make a decision trying to weigh the value of 1 or 10 or 100 lives, because every life is precious. I think you make decisions based on an assessment of America's national security, the potential for additional lives, thousands of lives potentially being lost if we're not making the right decisions that preserve that national security.

What you want to make sure of is that, in these decisions, you are not making them based on abstractions, notions of, you know, of a battalion here or a battalion there, a brigade here, a brigade there, without understanding that in each of those battalions, in each of those brigades, there are young men and women with their lives ahead of them who you are committing.

And so that is a constant ballast, I think, to making the best possible decisions. But, look, part of the decision I have to make is also what is the absolute best way for us to prevent another 9/11 from happening. What is you know, how do we make sure that we're not in a situation in which a major American city is threatened?

So all these things go into the calculus. In the end, the best you can do is make sure that you've heard every opinion, that you have evaluated and analyzed every aspect of your decision, that you have clarity about what your choices are, understanding that the choices that you have are very rarely the ideal choice versus a terrible choice, but rather a range of choices, all of which have problems with them.

GIBSON: Cost-benefit analysis is what people go through. It's one thing when there's an insurance company or whatever, but when there's human lives at stake...

GIBSON: ... it's just totally different. How did you change from the beginning of that analysis and process that you went through to the end, inside you?

OBAMA: I think that there is a sobriety that overcomes you during the course of a decision like this that -- that's hard to describe. Look, we've had to make a lot of tough decisions this year. You know, there was moments where we thought that the financial system might be on the verge of collapse. There are decisions that you've got to make about intervening in the auto industry, which you know are going to be wildly unpopular.

And so there are a series of decisions that I've made, up until the decision most recently to send additional troops into Afghanistan, in each of those decisions, I could step back a little bit and say, "All right, what's" -- in -- in a fairly calculating, analytical way, what's the best decision to make?"

With this one, you feel it viscerally. You lose sleep. You think about families. You think about history. You walk through Arlington. You're reminded of the image of a mother in the rain sitting in front of a tombstone. And so the -- the gravity of the decision is just of a different quality.

GIBSON: In the West Point speech, you talked about reversing the Taliban's momentum. What if this surge doesn't?

OBAMA: Well, then we're going to have to make additional decisions based on what the situation on the ground is. Look, you know, the thing that prompted by decision was the belief that, if we just sustained the status quo, in the long term, meaning -- or even the medium term, over the course of five to eight years, we'd probably be devoting just as many resources, as many troops because there would never be a clear break, a clear inflection point where we could start to draw down without enormous risks, risks that might not be in America's national interest.

What we did, I think, was find that point where, having built up Afghan capacity, we're then in a position to start reducing our presence because we've built up a partner in the region that can work with us effectively.

There are no guarantees that that works perfectly. In fact, I think it's safe to bet that, no matter how well we do, there are still going to be problems with Afghan governance...

OBAMA: ... there are still going to be problems with Afghan capacity to deal with the Taliban, Al Qaida is still going to be active in the region in some way. So as I said before, my job is to make the best decisions possible given the circumstances. And the circumstances are, you've got a very unruly place in that border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is going to take, I think, a long time for us to reverse the mindset that is leading young Afghans and young Pakistanis and jihadists from the region to direct their anger and frustration at the United States, but what we can do, I think, is create an environment in which those impulses are contained and that, over time, we're reversing this dynamic.

It's going to go in fits and starts. It's not going to be a smooth line; it's not going to be a smooth trajectory. Even in Iraq, as I said, it's gone as well as I think we could have hoped, but you still see the occasional bombing there that kills civilians. You still see enormous -- enormous problems in terms of just getting an election law passed.

So in all these situations, what we're doing is managing a difficult situation, but putting us on a trajectory where you can see the possibilities of long-term change in the region.

GIBSON: The one question about which it seems the United States public is skeptical of what you're doing is the question of whether the U.S. has to defeat the Taliban in order to defeat Al Qaida. People don't see the Taliban necessarily as a threat to the United States.

OBAMA: Well, actually, I've been clear that our job is to degrade Taliban capacity. Look, there are members of the Taliban who don't have some global jihadist view. They're just a member of a tribe. They're looking for a job. They see this as an opportunity. And those are the folks who I think potentially you can reintegrate into Afghan society.

So it's absolutely true -- and this was part of the review process -- that we had to work with our military to define the mission and be clear. Look, our -- our job here is not to get a body count on the Taliban, because that, I think, takes us down an open-ended commitment that is not required for our narrow security interests. What is required is making sure that you don't have an entire nation, Afghanistan, or huge swaths of Afghanistan and Pakistan that are so lawless that it is difficult for us to keep up the pace of offensive activities against Al Qaida.

One of the unwritten stories this year is we have been very successful in going after Al Qaida and keeping them pinned down. And I believe that that has saved American lives and the lives of our allies, because they really can't operate with the kind of impunity that they did prior to 9/11.

But in order to do that, we've got to make sure that we've got a platform in that region that allows us to keep that pressure on. And we can't expect to have that same kind of ability to be on the offensive against Al Qaida if you've got Afghanistan in utter chaos or if you've got a Taliban that is controlling huge parts of the region and are actively engaged in planning with Al Qaida.

GIBSON: Let me turn to health care. When we talked in the White House and throughout the early stages of health care reform discussion, you talked about the absolute need to bend the cost curve of health care, that we had to bring costs into line if we're going to right the country. If there's no government insurance program, if we're not even going to expand Medicare to keep insurance companies competitive, how does the cost curve bend?

OBAMA: Well, a couple of things. Number one -- and something that hasn't been discussed, partly because there's been some broad-based agreement on this -- we're setting up an exchange in which you've got 30 million people and small businesses who are now able to pool their buying power and negotiate, essentially, with insurance companies by choosing the best price from a range of different plans, forcing insurance companies to compete the same way they compete for the business of federal employees. That drives costs down.

Every single what's called game-changer, every idea that's out there about changing delivery systems, how hospitals are built, how doctors are reimbursed, how we can incentivize them to plan better, reduce numbers of tests in order to improve quality of testing and diagnoses, all those things are embodied in the bill.

There was a terrific article in the New Yorker just about a week ago by a doctor, Atul Gawande, who pointed out that there is not an idea out there for cost control that is not in this health care bill. The problem is, is that a lot of these things proceed by trial and error, because what we're trying to do is change behavior of hospitals and doctors and health systems all across the country.

And the goal here is to create a system in which people try things out. Suddenly, somebody says, "You know what? We're saving money. The hospital here is saving money and reducing errors because we've got a protocol or a checklist of procedures in terms of how doctors and nurses work together to deal with a patient in a more effective way." Another hospital down the road starts learning from that, and you start seeing these changes cascade through the system.

So, you know, all I can do is talk to the smartest people in this country, the health economists, people who are involved in health care each and every day, find out from them what ideas they have and make sure that's incorporated into the bill.

GIBSON: And then there's the problem of getting the darn thing passed, which is proving to be devilishly difficult.

GIBSON: You thought you had a compromise last week that was going to expand Medicare to younger people, and Senator Lieberman says, "Well, I'm not sure I want that," and then all of a sudden, we hear it's out of the -- out of the bill. Do you feel as if individual senators are holding you hostage?

OBAMA: I think that what we have right now in the Senate is a situation where the opposition party has made a political decision that we are going to say no to everything, we're going to not be at the table, we're going to just not get involved. What that -- what that...

GIBSON: Anyone can tell you, "If I back off, you have to do what I need you to do."

OBAMA: And -- and it's not just on health care. I mean, there are -- health care is the most prominent example, but, you know, one of the...

OBAMA: And -- and, you know, many of them, I think, sometimes feel that they've got a better idea than we do. We try to incorporate as many as possible. The problem is, each one of them may have ideas that are completely contrary to what the other senator wants.

And so there is a balancing act. But and one of the challenges that we as a country are going to have is that, for our system of government to work, for our deliberative democracy to work, for the Senate especially to work, because of all the arcane procedures that are involved, you have to have a sense that occasionally we're willing to rise above party. You've got to have a sense on the part of each individual senator that -- that every once in a while, we are...

OBAMA: Well, I think it's hard. And -- and -- and there's got to be a sense sometimes that we're willing to rise above our particular interests, our particular ideas in order to get things done. Right now, that culture has, I think, broken down over the last several years, and one of my jobs over the next three years is to try to see if we can revive that. But that's tougher than I would have liked.

GIBSON: But when you need every vote like this, and when senators can do this to you -- and those are my words, not yours -- a lot of people worry that what you're going to wind up with is hash. There's even some Democrats saying now we've got a bill that's so compromised that it's not worth signing.

OBAMA: Let me address that specific point. When I went before the joint session of Congress and talked about what I wanted to see on health care, I asked for some very specific things. I wanted to make sure that it was deficit-neutral. Now, according to the Congressional Budget Office analysis, not only is this deficit-neutral, but it actually reduces the deficit, something that somehow has gotten lost in the debate.

Number two, I said it needs to help reduce premiums and lower costs for families and businesses. And as I indicated before, every health economist that's out there says it does so.

Number three, I said that we have to make sure that insurance company abuses are reformed, you know, not being able to get health insurance because you've got a pre-existing condition, having a bunch of fine print so that when you get sick, suddenly you don't have coverage. We've got the most vigorous health insurance reforms in there.

And, number four, I want to make sure you had the people who did not have health care in this country and small businesses who couldn't get it for themselves or provide it to their employees, that they were able to get health care. Thirty million people, according to the Congressional Budget Office, will get health care if this passes.

Now, if you can tell me that those things are not worth it, then you and I have a very different opinion about -- about what the task is here. This will be the single most important piece of domestic legislation that's passed since Social Security. And I have confidence that we're going to pass it.

There's a reason why seven presidents and seven Congresses failed to get this done. It is really hard. But it is going to get done. And as a consequence, people who have health insurance are going to have more security with the health insurance that they've got and people who don't have health insurance are going to be able to get it.

And last point I'll make on this: If we don't pass it, here's the guarantee, that the people who are watching tonight, your premiums will go up, your employers are going to load up more costs on you. Potentially they're going to drop your coverage, because they just can't afford an increase of 25 percent, 30 percent in terms of the costs of providing health care to employees each and every year. And the federal government will go bankrupt, because Medicare and Medicaid are on a trajectory that are unsustainable, and this actually provides us the best chance of starting to bend the cost curve on the government expenditures in Medicare and Medicaid.

So anybody who says that they are concerned about the deficit, concerned about debt, concerned about loading up taxes on future generations, you have to be supportive of this health care bill, because if we don't do this, nobody argues with the fact that health care costs are going to consume the entire federal budget.

GIBSON: Let me talk to you a little bit about deficit reduction, because that's something that's certainly going to loom very large for you in the next couple years. You're going to get a spending bill with 5,000 earmarks in it worth $4 billion, discretionary spending up 12 percent when inflation is essentially zero. How can you sign such a bill and be serious about deficit reduction?

OBAMA: Well, look, the -- keep in mind that some of the things that are in there are funding for unemployment insurance, veterans affairs, things that we -- are still part of the emergency situation that we are in. The costs -- everybody would acknowledge that the costs of this recession and just providing help to states and families and so forth has added to the deficit.

But people need to understand where our real debt and deficit comes from. It's not the trillion dollars of Recovery Act spending and, you know, the carryover of TARP that we inherited when we came in. It's actually the fact that we have a structural deficit. We take in 18 percent of gross domestic product in taxes, and we spend 23 percent.

So here's what we're going to have to do. I've been very clear -- and this will be reflected in my budget and my State of the Union address next year -- that trying to either raise taxes or cut spending next year would be the wrong thing to do for an economy that's still coming out of a recession and is still very fragile.

What we have to do is identify ways that, mid-term and long term, we are pulling the deficit down and reducing our debt. That has to be a priority. And what are the things that are required to do that? The main priorities are going to have to be dealing with Medicare and Medicaid, our health care costs, and that's why health care is so important. I think that we can reduce non-defense discretionary spending in a significant way. We've got to wind down this war in Iraq on a timely basis. I mean, there are going to be a host of tough decisions that we're going to have to make over the next year, and I'm prepared to make them.

GIBSON: And you've just given me a very good exposition on budgeting in Washington.

GIBSON: The public is fixated on earmarks. They're fixated on discretionary spending.

GIBSON: Why not just say, "Congress, get those out of there, and I'll sign the budget, which is absolutely necessary"?

OBAMA: You know, there may come a point fairly soon in which we have to take that approach. I mean, this is part of the challenge of democracy, is that, you know, I have to deal with 535 members of Congress of both parties who may in the abstract say, "We hate government waste and government spending," but when it comes to that project in their district, they think it's absolutely vital.

And so we are trying to change a culture here. It is not something that is going to happen overnight. We have seen a reduction in earmarks, but, you know, let me take a very specific example. If I've got a defense bill that's presented to me, and defense funding is running out in three days, and I've got troops out there that I've got to make sure are equipped and we have planning for the deployment that's coming up, and somebody says to me, "You know what? I'm not going to vote for this defense bill unless I get this project in there," I've got...

OBAMA: Well, I'm just saying that those are the decisions that you make. And you know, I think the public rightly sort of feels like, "Well, why would you tie those two things together?" Well, that's part of the legislative process that has evolved over time, and this is why, once again, what you hope for is that there are moments where people are able to rise above parochial interests or party interests to make decisions that are right for the country.

It's not happening enough. And, frankly, because a lot of these issues are complicated and cloudy and you've got all this cable chatter that's going on all the time, you know, it's not hard for members of Congress or any elected official to not act responsibly.

GIBSON: Final question. What do you have to do in the next three years to satisfy you, that you've had a successful, worthwhile presidency?

OBAMA: I've got to get, number one, the economy back on track, and I think that we have been successful in averting disaster, and, you know, you don't get a lot of credit for that, because nobody knows how bad it could have been, but what is absolutely true is, is that until people who are out there looking for work can find jobs, they are going to discount whatever progress we've made.

Economic growth was strong in the third quarter. We think it'll be good in the fourth quarter, as well, but job growth has not caught up. So my number-one priority over the next three years is to make sure that we're not only growing the economy in the aggregate, but people are getting hired, and they're able to support their families and their mortgages and sending their kids to college. That's my job number one.

Number two is making sure that Afghanistan is in a decent place so that, if I only serve one term, when I hand it off to the next president, they are on a trajectory in which Afghanistan is more stable, we are able to execute our strategies against Al Qaida, and we're drawing our troops down so that we don't have a perpetual occupation in Afghanistan.

I think number three is making sure that we implement health care effectively, as well as pass it, because this is going to be a big, difficult job. And if I can say at the end of my first term that, you know what, we are poised to deliver on the promise of health care after the legislation has passed, I think that'll be important.

Number four, moving us in a direction of clean energy so that our economy is not subject to the whims of what a bunch of oil-producing countries in the Middle East want. Not only is that critical for our economy, not only is that critical for our environment, but it's critical for our foreign policy, because the less reliant we are on petro-dollars -- or the less reliant we are on petroleum, the less we are feeding, I think, a sense that somehow we are inextricably tied to a region that is volatile, and it would free us up, in terms of our foreign policy, in really important ways over the long term.

So if I can get those things done over the next three years -- and that's a pretty big list -- I will feel really good. And, you know, if I get three out of four, then I'll still feel pretty good about myself.

OBAMA: Charlie, let me say thank you to you for your extraordinary career, and you've always been a class act. It means a lot to be able to sit here and talk to you in your last week.

This link is worthwhile, as it has some of the comments of the public posted, such as:

I agree with my president.
The federal government is going broke, and the cure is to spend $2 trillion more that we don't have!

President Obama told the American people that the Pelosi/Reid stimulus bill would keep unempoyment under 8% when he signed it. Unemployment is now at 10%.

When unemployment skyrocketed this year I began to lose faith in the policies of the Democratic party and I deplore any program that adds to the deficit, which is the only result I observe from the actions that they take.

Let me wrap my economic sense around Obama's statement...we will go broke spending money on healthcare, but we can spend trillions on wasteful pork pet projects, bailing out failed companies, bailing out people that can't afford to live in the overpriced home that the democrats insisted the banks qualify them for. We can kill our economy and jobs with Cap and Tax, we can ship more jobs off to China and India, and he doesn't have a problem with any of this?

Well Obama did say something I agree with: the continued pace of Medicare and healthcare costs are unsustainable as are every other entitlement program, retirement and pension fund for government workers, and that includes the congress and Obama himself. Talk about fat cats. These guys retire with pensions that pay them 100% of what they made while in office.

But we don't dare cut programs as democrats. Why you might lose a vote. So, our plan is to FORCE young people and those that can't afford health insurance to buy it in order to sustain the unsustainable.

Why don't you Obama minions admit that you've been lied to. You were told that this was all to insure 45, no 35, no 30 million uninsured. Well the truth is, this is to prop up a failing government program: Medicare.

Obama doesn't even respect you enough to tell you the truth for months and months you repeated his line of insuring the poor uninsured. You know, those that can't afford it? NOW, the truth finally comes out, and I bet you deny it...

Let Obama and the democrats keep singing their own song. Come Nov 2010 & 12 they will be singing the blues if they keep this up.

Your right wing propaganda would be more believable if everyone on here didn't already know that you're a hired shill for the GOP.

You've already been banned from other many other web sites and if this was my web site I would ban you.

Yup, Obama wants our increased taxes on our employer health insurance policies so the government won't go bankrupt. Here you go Obama--QUIT YOUR FAKE WARS SO OUR GOVERNMENT WON'T GO BANKRUPT. Talk about fear mongering.

Congressional spending on overseas trips continues to rise dramatically, despite the recession:

$1.1 trillion omnibus bill, including earmark standout, and controversial provisions:

It is clear they don't care what's in this bill. I saw Susan Collins and she just epitomizes the problem. She's talking to the press: (paraphrasing) "I think Senator Lieberman has improved this bill. I have been working with everybody, the president and his chief of staff, to improve the bill. We can't just say no. We have to sit here and improve the bill." I want to tear my hair out. You know, we've got to get rid of these RINOs. Getting rid of the RINOs in our party is the key to this. We're going to have a big, big, big election next November, folks. It is going to be huge. The Democrats, I've got stories in the stack, they acknowledge they're going to lose. Pelosi says she's comfortable with losing 40 seats. Thin the herd. She refers to the 30 or 40 seats that they might lose as transitional anyway, meaning they're not the hardcore reliable leftists like Barney Frank and Henry Waxman and Conyers and Hoyer and all those people. The Blue Dogs, all these transitional, the guys that come in there and stay two to four years and then leave, she's totally content to get rid of them. This is a strategery. She said she will sign anything.

Harry Reid and Ben Nelson, Senator Nelson, I don't know if you care, but you're finished if you vote for this. Lieberman's not, but Ben Nelson is finished. If he votes for this, he's finished. I'll tell you what's going on with Nelson. It's not just the abortion language in the bill. There are two things that are happening with Ben Nelson. One is there's a doctor-owned hospital, physician-owned hospital being built south of Omaha, and it's not finished. It has been put on hold. It's under delay. Under this current health bill, it may not be finished because doctor-owned hospitals are going to be legislated out of existence. Doctor-owned hospitals are targeted for elimination. So Ben Nelson says, "I want to finish this hospital." Dingy Harry says, "We'll think about it."

Also, Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha is slated to be closed in the next round of blue ribbon base closing commissions. The next seating, the next convening of a base closing commission is 2013. Offutt Air Force Base, which is where the Strategic Air Command is, was, Offutt Air Force Base is responsible for 10,000 jobs and gazillions of dollars in not just the Omaha area but the Nebraska economy and Ben Nelson is holding out, "You gotta help me on these two things." Dingy Harry and Obama, that won't be any problem. Okay, we'll exempt Offutt, we'll keep it going, we'll think about your physician-owned hospital. And they'll monkey around enough with the abortion language to get his vote. If they get his vote, it's over. Lieberman just today, this morning in Washington on Capitol Hill, he held a press conference.

LIEBERMAN: If, as appears to be happening, the so-called public option, government-run insurance program is out, and the Medicare buy-in, which I thought would jeopardize Medicare, cost taxpayers billions of dollars over the long haul, increase our deficit is out, and there's no other attempts to bring things like that in, then I'm going to be in a position where I can say, I'm getting to that position where I can say what I wanted to say all along, that I'm ready to vote for health care reform.

RUSH: Okay, so they've picked off Lieberman. Now, a lot of people are getting optimistic here, saying, "Whoa, but, Rush, but, Rush, they're getting rid of the public option, they're getting rid of the Medicare buy-in," which would essentially expand Medicare to cover people as young as 55. But remember, this is just the starting point. The stuff that's already in this bill outside those two things, the marriage tax penalty, when people discover this, all of the nanny state regulations, the 114 new bureaucracies in the Senate bill, the fact that the government's going to be controlling even more of the health care system than they do now. What this is is a framework for the destruction of private sector health care, and it's still in place, and this is just year one. Okay, so they get this done, they send it over to Pelosi, who says she'll vote for anything, so they go to conference and they do whatever they do there and they send this up to Obama and it gets signed and it looks like that could happen.

Then they come back next year and guess what they put back in? The public option. And then guess what they put back in? The Medicare buy-in, and who knows what the hell else they add in. There won't be any Blue Dogs around to stop 'em. They'll get rid of the Blue Dogs, the whole point here is to thin the herd, to weed out all the Democrats that cause Pelosi problems and the problem of Democrats in the Senate that cause Reid problems. They're willing to lose a bunch of seats. The logic from their standpoint is somewhat understandable. Byron York writes about it today in the DC Examiner. The logic at the White House is, "We're not up for reelection, we don't give a rat's rear end what happens here. You sign it, you get it up here." In the House, Pelosi would love to get rid of 30 to 40 Blue Dogs and transitional Democrats. She wouldn't even mind losing her majority for a while because she thinks she's going to get it back, and in the Senate Dingy Harry's personal numbers are in the forties in reelection polls in Nevada. But from their standpoint they've been working on this since FDR. They've been working on this since FDR and they're telling themselves that if they don't get it done now, it's gone forever.

The theory is that if Obama and Clinton couldn't get it done, then nobody can get it done. So I think what you need to look at, something is going to get passed out of the Senate called health care reform. And I doubt that very many people there are going to have the slightest idea what's actually in it. Lieberman's going to think that it doesn't have a Medicare buy-in, he's going to think the public option is gone. Ben Nelson is going to think that Offutt Air Force Base is gonna remain untouched, his hospital is going to be finished, and the abortion language is going to be done. My friends, anybody with half a brain who reads this and has any sense of what it is to be an American would get nowhere near passing or signing or voting for this. It's that outrageous. But we actually have, I think, a collection of dunces. We have a radical left Senate. This notion that there are moderate Democrats up there, don't buy that. And as far as Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, you two and a lot of others, you're finished if you vote for this. You are finished. You are not going to be reelected next November.

A lot of Democrats in the Senate that are really pushing this are not up next year anyway, so they think the public will forget by the time their election comes up. I'm sure what Ben Nelson is being told, "Look, Ben, if you lose we'll take care of you. We'll get you a plum lobbyist job, we'll get you a job with George Soros or we'll get you a really flashy federal appointment somewhere, maybe an ambassadorship somewhere." They'll take care of these guys. They have to ask themselves, though, is this what they want for their career, do they want to be shellacked in a landslide defeat because of their vote? It apparently makes no difference to many of these people what their constituents want, apparently makes no difference whatsoever.

RUSH: Let me show you a problem. Let me illustrate for you the problem on the Republican side, because it's sounding like Susan Collins may be the 61st vote for this thing. Here's what I saw her say at a press conference on television before the program starts. There's a lot of noise in this, 'cause this took place in the Rotund of the Capitol Hill and there's a lot of people milling around in there.

COLLINS: Let me say that I'm grateful for the work that Senator Lieberman has done. I believe that his principled stands have improved the bill. I very much would like to see a health care bill -- that is based on lowering costs, expanding access, helping small businesses -- pass.

RUSH: She went on to say that she doesn't believe in this "just say no" business. Now, this goes just goes to show what a...what a... What's a polite word for somebody that's just stupid? What is a polite word? Ignorant, uninformed. She's challenged, ignorant, uninformed. She would like to see a health care bill based on lowering costs? (sigh) Expanding access? It's gonna restrict access, Senator! People are going to be dying because they're going to be denied coverage. Small business is gonna get creamed with this! Everybody's going to get creamed by this. How can she not know this? How can she possibly not know this? Let me give you an illustration of something. Social Security -- and I'm not going to be able to go through all this until after the next break, but stick with me on this. Social Security.

Just to show you how these government programs quietly grow: Social Security passed in 1935 to give some small assistance to the very old and widows with children who are in dire straits. But ever since 1935 Social Security's been amended and enlarged year after year, just like the health care bill will be. Social Security is something people really do or did keep their eyes on. In 1940, benefits paid totaled $35 million. Now, stick with me on this. Payments rose to $961 million in 1950, ten years later. It was $11.2 billion in 1960 and $ 31.9 billion in 1970. All the way up to 2004: $492 billion worth of benefits were paid to 47.5 million beneficiaries. In 2009, nearly 51 million Americans will receive $650 billion in Social Security in a program that originally paid out $35 million. As recently as 1950 it paid out $11 billion. Today it's up to $650 billion since its inception. I don't care if you factor inflation in. This is simply out of control, unsustainable -- and this is exactly what will happen to health care.

RUSH: I don't believe what I just received in the e-mail. It is from the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee. These are the people that run out there and try to get Senators in our party reelected. Democrats have one, too, and they have organizations for both parties in the House. Look, I'm sure they're going to hear about this, and it speaks for itself. It was just sent out at 12:37 Eastern time. It's 12:45 now. So ten minutes ago I got this thing. It's from the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, health care task force.

"Dear supporter: If recent headlines are any indication our efforts to stop the Democrats' government takeover of health care are succeeding with your help," and they cite three headlines. "'Lieberman Rules Out Voting for Health Care Bill,' New York Times. 'Two Senators Doubt Medicare Compromise,' Wall Street Journal. 'High Hurdles Ahead for Health Plan,' Politico." And it's a fundraising letter. They're asking for money. They sent out three quotes from State-Controlled Media outlets. The first one: Joe Lieberman hours ago said he's now going to vote for the health care bill because they took the government option out of it and they got rid of the Medicare expansion. And yet ten minutes ago they send this thing out quoting a New York Times headline: "Lieberman Rules Out Voting for Health Care Bill." Do the Republicans in the Senate not know before this thing goes out that Lieberman a half hour ago or an hour ago said I'm all in for health care now? This is like somebody sending out a press release in the third quarter of last year's Super Bowl saying Arizona Cardinals win because the New York Times headline says: "Arizona Surprises Steelers."

I'm sitting here and I'm stunned. Then they ask you to sign a petition, share it on Facebook, and donate to their efforts. Politico has a story today on Lieberman and it's "Democrats May Drop Medicare Expansion." And this is, of course, posted before they actually told Lieberman they're going to drop the Medicare expansion. "Several senators -- including Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) -- said it appeared Democrats faced with the reality of needing Lieberman's vote to get to the 60 needed for passage, would drop the Medicare expansion. ... Asked if Reid explicitly dropped the Medicare plan from the larger health reform bill, Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) responded, 'That's what it sounded like to me.'" Tom Harkin said it also appears that Democrats are moving toward a bill without the Medicare option, and Senator Feingold, a big supporter of the public option and the Medicare idea, said, "Things are not moving in the right direction."

"Talk of dropping the Medicare expansion angered the party's liberals, who can't believe a senator who no longer considers himself a Democrat is in the position of effectively vetoing a key part of the health reform bill. Liberals supported the Medicare expansion as a way to cover more of the uninsured in a government plan. Already, there was talk of retaliating against Lieberman, much as some Democrats sought to strip him of his Senate Homeland Security Committee chairmanship after he campaigned for Republican Sen. John McCain for president in 2008.

'The anger toward him right now is white hot,' said one senior Democratic aide." They've also reported in this story that Lieberman did support Medicare expansion in the past. He's out there saying, "No, I've never changed my mind on Medicare expansion." Now, I like, as a person, Joe Lieberman. I've met him on a number of occasions. He told a very funny joke at a dinner in April of 2008 at the Waldorf -Hysteria hotel, it was the annual dinner and ball for the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation, which of course I'm a huge donor of, fundraiser for, and supporter of.

I was seated at a table with James Baker and his wife, Susan, and they were already shooting me daggers because I was publicly not endorsing McCain, not for McCain. And Lieberman gets up, he is the guest of honor, he's getting some special award, and he said, "This is a strange year in politics. I can't believe that I am here with a bunch of Marines as an independent former Democrat supporting the Republican candidate for president, and Rush Limbaugh's in the same room and he's not." And the Bakers kind of nudged me with their elbows and nodded and so forth. I mean the pressure was intense, folks, the pressure was intense on me on this. Just to illustrate any independence, I didn't buckle to it. But I like him as a person. But, you know, he taunts us all the time by saying, "You know what, I can't vote for this," and we gotta love Lieberman. And I keep reminding people there's not really an I next to his name, it's a D. Lieberman is a liberal Democrat and at the end of the day that's where his loyalties are always going to be.

So now a guy that they really hated and wanted to get rid of because he supported McCain has affected, at least for now, the structure of the health care bill. The liberal Democrats are fit to be tied over this, as are the fringe nutcases that lurk and troll around all these far-left nutcase websites. The Daily Kos: get rid of Reid, this is the worst thing that's ever happened, pulling out the public option. These people look at the public option being gone and the Medicare expansion being taken out, they look at this as a victory for insurance companies, and you have to understand that hardcore leftists hate capitalism and anybody that is a capitalist, especially corporations. They despise 'em. Just the word "corporate" can ruin their day. If they read the newspapers, the word "corporation," it ruins their day. They want to put every corporation out of business. They think everybody that runs one ought to be in jail and they think Lieberman's in bed with the Big Insurance lobby because they're housed in Connecticut, located there, and so forth.

A funny story here: "Democrats shared the majority leader's frustration. In interviews with POLITICO, senior Democratic aides and senators laid out a range of emotions toward Lieberman -- from outrage over what they believed was Lieberman's blatant attempt to kill the bill to surprise over Lieberman's apparent reversal on the Medicare buy-in, which he has supported in the past." We go to CNN and their political ticker and we find out now that the left is targeting Lieberman's wife, Hadassah. "Sen. Joe Lieberman -- whose opposition to a public insurance option has drawn outrage from liberal groups for months -- is used to finding himself in progressive crosshairs. Now it's his wife's turn. Activists are setting their sights on Hadassah Lieberman, launching a celebrity-studded petition drive to convince the nation's largest breast cancer non-profit to end the Connecticut senator's wife role as a spokeswoman." This is the Susan Komen for the Cure foundation. They're targeting Lieberman's wife now because she's a spokeswoman of the group.

RUSH: We'll start Jacksonville, North Carolina, this is Finley, and it's great to have you here. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, I hope Ben Nelson and everybody else that votes for that health care stuff pays the price at the ballot box, but I don't think they will. I think people are going to think they're getting something for free and, you know, they're going to be grateful. We're telling them this is what you can't have, for very good reasons in my opinion, I'm with you, but everybody else is saying this is what we're going to give you, and I think people are going to say, "Gee, thanks."

RUSH: Well, under normal circumstances I would agree with you, but I'm looking at polling data, and I can't find one poll anywhere -- well, there was some time ago a Washington Post poll, I forget which, that showed something like 59% supported health care -- but every other poll shows support for Obamacare barely at 40%. I think it's different this time around. I think you're right that there are plenty of people out there who think that their health care is going to be whatever they want for no cost because a couple of rich people are going to be paying for it via tax increases. But I don't think that's a majority of people. I think a majority of people actually know what's headed down the pike and they don't like it.

CALLER: Exactly. But something's going to get passed and people are gonna -- then they're going to be presented with, "This is what we did for you," and my comment is on whether they're going to pay the price at the ballot box. And I think once it's passed, and something's going to get passed, unfortunately, then people are going to say, "Gee, thank you, you did something for me, and I'm entitled to it." As much as I love this country, brother, I mean I just think too many people think they're entitled to it and when the Democrats pass this, they're going to be grateful.

RUSH: Like I say, I know why you think that because so many people are not paying income taxes, a lot of people think they're getting something for free and "we do all this for you," but the problem is that whatever is going to be done for people will not start for four years. The tax increases that are in this bill, and it's basically a tax increase bill, will start immediately. But all the so-called freebies and all the people who don't have insurance getting insurance, it's not going to even start until 2013 or 2014. And this bill is going to tax everybody. People who are married, people who are not married, at every income level people are going to face added taxation long before whatever the benefits are. And I realize the president's going to go out there at the big signing ceremony, he's going to go out there and he's gonna say, "Look at what we've done for you. For 40 years, 50 years, since FDR we have been trying. Nobody got this done until I came here. This is massive. We now are going to join the rest of the world in sophistication with our population being provided adequate health care at low charge, low cost." They're going to say all of that.

But Obama's numbers are cratering, too. I think these people know they're going to lose seats. Pelosi's counting on losing some seats. She wants to get rid of the Blue Dogs in the House. There aren't any moderate Democrats in the Senate. You gotta understand, Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, the so-called moderate Democrats, they don't believe any of this. The Senate is now radically left, not just Democrat. Now, here is an interesting post today. Ezra Klein is a young guy and in inside-the-Beltway media circles this guy is a rising star. I don't know why. I just know that he is. He's 24 years old. He's got a blog post at the Washington Post today explaining the timing of getting this done. I want to read it to you.

"Obama administration wants to use the State of the Union as a turning point. Health-care reform would be the shining first year accomplishment, allowing the president to begin the election-year pivot to jobs and the economy and the deficit. But if health-care reform is to pass --" and there, by the way, is Finley's theory, Obama State of the Union: "Look what we've done for you. Here's what you're going to get, we got this done, no president's ever done it before and now we're going to fix the job market and everybody's going to be fine," and so the fear is that there are a sufficient number of people that are on entitlements in this country that are going to buy every lie here and the Democrats are not going to pay a price. Trust me, they are.

So here's the timeline according to rising star Ezra Klein: health care reform has to pass by early next year so Obama can tout it in the State of the Union. "Harry Reid has to finish his bill by the end of next week." Now, the end of next week, Friday, is Christmas Day. "Moving to the manager's amendment -- the 'deal' amendment, as it is -- will take a few days. Voting to replace the underlying bill with the manager's amendment will take a few days. And then voting on the modified bill will take a few days. Each step is delayed by the day or so required for a cloture vote to 'ripen,' and then the 30 hours of post-cloture debate. So an accelerated schedule would see the first cloture vote called Thursday, with the vote to move to the manager's amendment on Saturday. Cloture would then be called to actually vote on the manager's amendment on Sunday, and the manager's amendment would be approved the following Tuesday, the 22nd. And cloture would be called for the actual bill on Wednesday, Dec. 23rd, with the final vote coming, at the earliest, on Friday, the 25th -- Christmas Day."

Now, this is not from the Senate, this is just from a Washington Post blogger, rising star who everybody thinks hung the moon. I don't know why. I'm not saying he doesn't, I just don't know what the reputation is here. But the timeline -- and this is with everything falling into place like clockwork, would require the Senate to be in session on Christmas Day to vote, or maybe come back on Saturday the 26th and vote. And we'll see how that all plays out.

CALLER: Hey, Rush, I'm so happy you took my call. I'm on a cell phone. I don't want to get (unintelligible).

CALLER: I wanted to thank you for all the work you're doing on this health care bill.

RUSH: Well, there's a lot of us trying to do this. A lousy phone line, I can't understand what he's saying, but I appreciate his thanks. It's double down time. I mean, we're the only ones, folks. We are the only ones standing in the way of this. There are no elected officials in the Senate that are really standing in the way of it. Susan Collins even went out there and said today, "Oh, no, we're not 'just say no' here." Which is what they must be, they must be "just say no." She actually went out there and said, "I think Senator Lieberman has improved the bill. I want a bill that lowers costs and expands access. And if we can get that, I'll vote for it." Then there's no way she can vote for it because this bill does just the exact opposite. I sit here, I actually feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone listening to these people talk about the content of the bill and the debate and all this sort of stuff.

RUSH: Here's what Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins don't realize, and again, this goes back to, what do we call these people? Dunce, ignorant, or what have you. What they don't realize is that they are being played as suckers. And they are, by the way, focusing on both of them, as we knew they would. The Democrats are not just going to be content to try to round up 60 in their own party in the Senate. They're going to focus on Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, and their purpose, their sole purpose as far as Harry Reid is concerned is to give one or two Democrats the chance to vote against this to keep their seats. Believe me, if they could get Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins to vote for this, then it will give Ben Nelson an out and he won't have to vote for it. And if they could save Blanche Lincoln doing the same thing by getting the other one, they'd do that, too. And with these two, Collins and Snowe, you just never know. Well, you do know, I'm sad to say. The odds are pretty good at the end of the day where they're going to be. (doing impression) "I'm just not going to just say no. I want a better bill. I think Senator Lieberman has improved the bill. I have talked to the president and his chief of staff, and they have assured me that it will lower costs and provide greater access. I am not just say no. We can't be that."

So get ready. And believe me, if Reid could pull that off and save Nelson and Blanche Lincoln, he'd do it in a minute and then it would be even worse because they could run around and then say it was bipartisan, the greatest expansion of health care reform in American history, bipartisan bill secured by the wondrous messiah, Barack Hussein Obama, mmm, mmm, mmm.

RUSH: I have a question for the president. We have learned, Mitch McConnell put out a press release today, and this, frankly, surprised me. I actually learned it yesterday but I did not know that there isn't a 2,000-page health bill in the Senate. There isn't one. The only people who have seen whatever it is are in the Democrat leadership who have been allowed into Harry Reid's office, but there isn't a bill. There is not something that the whole Senate has seen. It's incredible. And so I have a question for the president today. Since the Senate has not yet finished writing this health care bill and all kinds of deals are being made that will make changes to it, how can you say that you'll sign it when it hasn't even been written yet? And how can Pelosi -- well, she can say she'll sign anything because that opens the door for her not knowing what's in it, but I mean doesn't this prove that you don't really care, Mr. President, about what fate you impose on the people of this country with this debacle of a bill, it's just about scoring some political points, erecting a monument to yourself that you can brag about in the State of the Union show?

The politics of this are very simple. People ask me constantly, "Why are they in such a hurry?" A lot of people still are of the impression that all of this that's done in Washington is done with good faith and good intentions. People who are not steeped in the, shall we say, swamp and the minutia of politics don't understand why the hurry, why the rush. Let me explain it to you. There are five elements to why they're in such a big hurry here. The longer it's in the news, the more people are going to learn about what's being proposed and the more people end up being against it, and they're already way, way down in the polls. There is not one single poll that shows the American people in any way, shape, manner, or form for this health care reform. Most are dead set against it.

The second element of why the rush now: The Democrat leadership knows that when the Congress, senators go back home for Christmas they're going to catch holy hell just like they did at the town halls in August, but 2010 is the real factor here. When Congress comes back it will be 2010, and that's an election year. That will shift their interest and their attention. They'll be much more seriously concerned about their fundraising and their reelections and not doing things that will harm their reelection, and clearly voting for a health care bill will. The fourth element of why they are in such a hurry: They have to get health care passed before they can pass amnesty for illegals and before they can pass cap and trade. They have to get that done first. They can't do amnesty first because that would raise the price of health care too much. They do amnesty, that means all these illegals are now legal and they would qualify. Right now the health care reform bill in the House and the Senate, while they make allowances, if you know how to read the bills for covering illegals, that cost has not been figured in. The CBO has not been asked to score what the cost would be providing insurance for whatever number of illegals you want to use, 12 to 20 million. So they've got to do health care, they gotta get that passed and signed into law before they get into amnesty. And they're going to do amnesty in 2010 because that's important to them for the November elections. They can't do amnesty first. It would raise the price of health care too much and it would just raise the opposition. So they want to have amnesty in time for the 2010 elections.

Delaying health care even further also means delaying other initiatives like cap and trade because they can't talk about new taxes when they're still trying to sell the health care taxes. Now, nothing has changed in terms of the scope of health care and how bad it is and so forth other than you got a lot of people now defecting, Bernie Sanders saying, "I'm not voting for the bill," last night. Today he says, "I'm undecided." Everybody is focusing on Ben Nelson again, too, and now the governor of Nebraska has come out and urged Senator Nelson to not vote for this thing, in other words, to vote against it because the governor says, "It's going to wreck our state's economy." And Schwarzenegger basically said the same thing about California yesterday, "It's going to wreck our economy." Hey, Arnold, it's already wrecked. We're just trying to limit the damage here a little bit. Now, as if that wasn't enough, listen to this. This is Obama last night on ABC's World News Tonight with Charles Gibson, and Gibson said, "There's even some Democrats saying now that we've got a bill that's so compromised, it's not worth signing."

OBAMA: If we don't pass it, here's the guarantee, that the people who are watching tonight, your premiums will go up, your employers are going to load up more costs on you, potentially they're going to drop your coverage 'cause they just can't afford an increase of 25, 30% in terms of the cost of providing health care to employees each and every year, and the federal government will go bankrupt because Medicare and Medicaid are on a trajectory that are unsustainable, and this actually provides us the best chance of starting to bend the cost curve on the government expenditures on Medicare and Medicaid.

RUSH: Now, this is where the president is tone deaf or living in an entirely alternative universe. The people of this country think we're already bankrupt and that passing health care is going to destroy the future for children and grandchildren. They already think we're bankrupt, Mr. President, and we are! You continue to spend money we don't have. It is being printed, and the inflation rate, the producer price index, is going up. A lot of economists think, folks, that we're on the verge here of a huge uptick in inflation. Now, some of these economists may well be surprised if that doesn't happen. You know the rule. Whatever economic news there is, the media's experts are always surprised. Health care premiums are going to go up no matter what, whether we pass this or not. Employers are going to have to off-load their health care plans or go out of business, regardless whether this happens or not. "The federal government will go bankrupt." The world really wants to hear that, don't they?

So the Obama administration is continuing to try to frighten and scare everybody into this. Gibson's next question was, "You thought you had a compromise last week that was gonna expand Medicare to younger people." By the way, their health care bill does expand the problems we already have in Medicare and Medicaid, even without the Medicare buy-in. You have to understand that the long-term objective here is to nationalize single-payer health care. They just want to get something passed so they have a starting point. They're taking out all these things they think people object to so they make it appear as though they are responsive to public opinion on this. But Gibson said, "You thought you had a compromise last week that was going to expand Medicare to younger people. Senator Lieberman says, 'Well, I'm not sure I want that,' then all of a sudden we hear it's out of the bill. Do you feel as if individual senators are holding you hostage?"

OBAMA: The opposition party has made a political decision that we are going to say no to everything, we going to not be at the table, we are gonna just not get involved.

RUSH: Again dumping on the Republicans when he's got his 60 votes. It's the Democrats that can't get unified on this. "The opposition party's made a political decision, gotta say no to everything," and that's wise. Damn straight they have to say "no" to everything. Everything in this administration, just say "no." It's not worth compromising on this. Cap and trade, amnesty, this, just say "no." But here's Charlie Gibson, so sorry, individual senators are holding Obama hostage. Remember, there is no bill. He talks about the Republicans don't want to get involved. Harry Reid won't let 'em be involved, Pelosi won't let 'em be involved.

RUSH: Here is the relevant passage from a press release put out today by Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate: "And here's the most outrageous part: At the end of this rush, they want us to vote on a bill that no one outside the Majority Leader's conference room has even seen. That's right. The final bill we'll vote on isn't even the one we've had on the floor. It's the deal Democrat leaders have been trying to work out in private." And it involves, by the way, Senators Bennett and Wyden. It's a disguised bill to make it look like insurance will be taken care of in the private sector. It does just the exact opposite, and that's why they're holding it. So this process has been totally corrupted, 100% totally corrupted. Look, we have rules in the Senate; we have rules in the House. One of the reasons this country has held together is respect for those rules. That's all been thrown out the window now.

I just was watching MSNBC. Can Obama save the day at Copenhagen? Can Obama get a deal? This is all about Obama and nobody but Obama. It's not about you; it's not about anybody else. Obama says that the country will go bankrupt without health care reform. Well, now, wait a minute. Isn't the real reason GM was going bankrupt was because of their health insurance and benefits? Not the whole reason but it was a large part of it, was it not? Yes, it was. So what was the solution for General Motors? When General Motors was facing bankruptcy in part because of their health insurance and benefit costs, what did they do, did they decide to give more people health insurance and benefits? That's not the way I remember it. They tried to cut 'em back. They off-loaded the pension plan to a government agency. They were going bankrupt because of all these costs and yet Obama says we're going to go bankrupt unless we add to these costs?

RUSH: Checking the e-mail again during the break and this is a good question. I'm glad I got the question so I can explain it to you. A lot of people are saying, "Rush, why is it guaranteed that insurance premiums are going to go up even in the private sector, even if the public option's gone, and even if the Medicare buy-in is gone, what is guaranteed about premiums going up?" Great, great question. And I, El Rushbo, ladies and gentlemen, am happy to provide you the answer. If the bill were signed as it is today, everybody would be mandated to buy insurance from a private insurance company in your state. And right there people say, "Why does that mean prices are going up automatically?" Because of what else is in the bill. The bill mandates that people with preexisting conditions be covered. The bill mandates that people who are gonna die in two weeks be able to get insurance three weeks prior to that.

It's just economic common sense. Insurance companies are not social programs. Insurance companies don't give it away. If you mandate that they cover people who are a guaranteed loss for them, they go out of business. So they have to raise their prices to accommodate the mandates that exist elsewhere in the bill. Now, for some poor people, in the bill there are subsidies for them if they cannot afford to buy insurance on their own, because the bill requires everybody to do so. But if they can't pay the premium based on their medical condition and their health at the time from a private insurance company, if they meet a test -- and, of course, that's a new bureaucracy that's going to get all gummed up -- but if they meet the test, then they get subsidized. By who? Who subsidizes them? The insurance companies. Well, who pays the insurance companies? We do, the rest of us. So the reason prices are going to skyrocket is because of what else is in the bill, the mandate to cover everybody regardless of what their health is. This is like an insurance company being told that they must sell homeowner fire insurance after the house fire has started.

You're away, you come home, you don't have adequate fire protection in your homeowner policy. When you drive up to the block in which your house is, you see it's going up in flames. You call the insurance companies. "I want an insurance policy to cover my house being burned down." And the insurance company says, "What's the situation now?" "Well, it's half gone." And if the government says that the insurance company has to sell somebody fire insurance when their house is burning, guess what they're going to charge for it? Through the roof. This is exactly what's happening in this bill. And the reason it differs is because health now is considered some God-given right that nobody should ever get sick, and if they do get sick, that they should never die, they should always get well. Well, the market doesn't work that way. No entity works that way. You know, I've talked to football coaches. In fact, we talked to Jimmy Johnson once. We interviewed Jimmy Johnson when he was coaching the Dolphins, did an interview with him for the Father's Day issue of the Limbaugh Letter.

I asked him, "Do you treat every player the same on the team?" He said, "No, you can't. Some of them don't have the same ambition. Some of them don't have the same drive. Some of them you don't have to worry about their commitment, others you have to do certain things. If a guy screws up during the week in practice and you de-list him that week and put him on the inactive list, some players are going to react positively to that and say, 'Oh, gotta impress the coach more,' or they're gonna pout. You have to know who you're dealing with." No two people are the same. No two life circumstances are the same. But yet to have some generalized policy on health coverage and insurance coverage mandated by the government is just an excuse, folks, it's a fuse. You lighten the fuse and costs are going to skyrocket.

The dirty little secret is the same truth would exist if there were a public option. If that were the only place you could go, because the rest of the bill mandates that people with preexisting conditions be covered. If you don't even have a preexisting condition, there are even circumstances in both these bills where if you are diagnosed without any indication you're sick, if you're diagnosed with something that could lead to your death in a matter of years, you are able to go out, the insurance companies have to sell you coverage when you haven't had any prior to that. So that's why the prices are going to go up, the federal government, pure and simple, in the health care bill. There's no way anybody's health insurance costs are going to go down when the government's involved in any aspect of this.

RUSH: Look at it this way, ladies and gentlemen. When you are covering known illnesses, you are no longer insuring against something, you are paying a monthly fee so others will cover your existing illness. You're no longer a risk; your illness is a reality. And this is not insurance. It's being called insurance but it's not. It's something entirely different.

RUSH: Now, about the premiums going up and my brilliant dissertation on why prices will go up in the private sector even if the public option is not there and even if the Medicare buy-in is not there, it's not just preconditions that are mandated to be covered in the health care bills in either the House or the Senate. There was a recent amendment that added mandating private insurers to provide mammogram and other women's issues coverage, including spousal abuse! Insurance for spousal abuse and mammograms, even though the mammogram age is going to be raised to the age of 50. Now, you think of all the mandates that will be added on to private insurance, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. For example, if an insurance company cannot discriminate against preconditions, if they can't do it, if you got a preexisting condition, they have to cover you. The premium has to go up. But if they can't discriminate against preconditions, can they still charge more for smokers? Can they charge more for mountain climbers? Can they charge more for race car drivers? Can they charge more for knife thrower assistants? I don't know. If they can, why?

If the insurance companies cannot discriminate against a precondition -- a precondition could be defined as, you smoke, fine, your premium is going to go higher. But if they can't discriminate against preconditions, they have to cover the high-risk people who are smoking 18 packs of cigarettes a day? If they do, if they're forced to cover those kinds of people, if they're forced to cover mountain climbers and race car drivers and other risky life behavior, what do you think the price is going to do? It's gonna skyrocket. And this is a little indication of what this bill is really all about. It's not about health care; it's about controlling your life. And if you can't get insurance because you're a race car driver, what are you going to do? If the insurance companies can discriminate against you then who are you going to sue when they don't discriminate against preexisting conditions? This thing is just an unbridled mess.

Now, I want to expand on this. When you are covering known illnesses, you are no longer insuring against something, you are paying a monthly fee so others will cover your existing illnesses. You're raising prices for everybody. You are no longer a risk, because your illness is a reality. So this really isn't even insurance. It is redistributing wealth, pure and simple. I have always tried to impress upon everybody that this is not about health care. It is about the redistribution of wealth via the controlling of behavior of people and the ability to charge them more for whatever it is they do in their lives that is in the unapproved list that some bureaucracy comes up with. Now, I don't want to be misunderstood here because saying things like this can make people think that I, El Rushbo, am heartless. And of course this is the exact opposite. I have a huge heart. Ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom. I am not dumping on people who have illnesses. Many of us have various illnesses and so forth. But what is being discussed here is not insurance. If using my "your house is on fire" example, if you were allowed to buy a rider to your homeowners insurance that covered fire only after your house fire had started, we're not talking insurance. You're not being insured because the risk has already happened.

We're talking about something entirely different. We're talking about the redistribution of wealth. And this is why, in case you're also asking, "Why does Obama not care? Just get the bill now, just get the bill now." This is why Obama wants anything he can get, any bill that he can get. He sees this as a control issue. If the bill is not as radical as he would like, they'll go back and they'll fix that, they'll make it worse in subsequent years. This bill is horrible, it is very bad, but they're not going to stop there, just like they didn't stop with Medicare. Do you think when they came up with Medicare that they ever intended it to get this big? Probably they did but did they tell us it was going to happen? No. Social Security, ditto. Did Social Security reduce the budget deficit? Did Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, did they keep the country from going bankrupt, or are they contributing factors to the country nearing bankruptcy? Well, we all know the answer to that, and of course what will health care, if passed, end up being but more of the same?

[You may think that Copenhagen is all about the environment, but it is all about Marxism, redistribution of wealth, and the destruction of capitalism]

RUSH: To Copenhagen: Hugo Chavez has the biggest applause line of the whole conference showing you what the global warming conference is really all about. This has a translator, by the way, because he speaks Spanish.

CHAVEZ: There's a ghost lurking. And Karl Marx said -- a ghost running through the streets of Copenhagen. And I think that ghost is silent somewhere in this room amongst us coming through the corridors underneath. And that ghost is a terrible ghost. Nobody wants to name him or her. It's capitalism. Capitalism is that ghost. (applause) Nobody I don't think wants to name it. Capitalism.

RUSH: I wish we'd have left the applause in there because it went on and on and on. That was the biggest applause line of the entire conference so far. The ghost in the room is capitalism. And we're supposed to fork over our money. We are forking over our money to these people! Hillary Clinton announced today a hundred billion dollars a year to these people so that they can come out of this with saying they had some sign of success. This is a conference that is designed purposely, primarily to destroy the United States. This is about the destruction of capitalism, free markets, the United States of America. It gets the biggest applause of any line so far in the conference. Hugo Chavez delivers it. His people are starving. His people are practically in chains in Venezuela. These people applaud his reference to capitalism as a ghost. This tells you exactly what this whole global warming snafu is about. It's about attacking and destroying capitalism and the United States, all these protesters that are over there and all these conference attendees, doesn't matter, they could be at a WTO meeting, they could be at a climate change meeting like they're at now, they could be at any other meeting the UN's in charge of, and all it is about is the destruction of the United States. Then Chavez took a shot at Obama.

CHAVEZ: What they're saying in the streets is if the climate was a bank, they would already have saved it. I think it's true. If the climate were a bank, a capitalist bank, one of the biggest ones, they would have saved it, the rich governments. I think Obama isn't here yet. He got the Peace Prize, the Nobel Peace Prize almost the same day as he sent 30,000 soldiers off to kill innocent people in Afghanistan.

RUSH: And they applauded that as well. So, you know, Obama may think he's cultivating friends among these people. Who knows, he may share their desires. He's certainly taking his stabs at capitalism. He certainly is doing it. What I'd like to see, I'd like Obama to show up actually as Casper the Ghost. When it's time for Obama to show up and make his speech, show up as a ghost and send a little signal to all these attendees that he gets it. That he understands. (interruption) If I can address them, what would I tell 'em? I'd tell 'em to shut up, disperse, go home and take care of themselves. There is no global warming, it's a hoax, and every one of you in this room know it's a hoax. All you want is what the United States has achieved because you're jealous, you know you can't achieve it on your own; you don't want to free your people so that you can create mini-United Stateses in your own countries. You want to control 'em; you want to keep them in bondage, and they can't produce anything that way, therefore you can't get personally rich.

The only way you can get personally rich is to make us feel guilty and have our Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over there write you a check for a hundred billion dollars. Well, we the taxpayers are through paying for it. In this world you take care of yourselves. If there's any destruction of climate going on, it is you poor countries who are not investing in clean technology and so forth like we've done. We are not the problem in the world. We are the world's solution. And until you find a way to be on our side of things, you are shut out, not a penny more for you little Marxist dictators. And I walk out of the room. That's what I would tell 'em.

Mugabe, another evil world leader, slams western capitalism over climate change:

News from Copenhagen (the writer found Chavez’s remarks curious, apparently not understanding what the role of Communism is in all of this):

RUSH: I have been asked to expand on my explanation last hour of why the banks are not lending to the private sector but they are lending to the government. It's not hard to understand. It's very simple, but its complexity is what makes it simple. It requires a baseline understanding of how the whole process is working here. The problem is this. The banks first claimed they were going under and they needed TARP money. So they were required to take $25 million each or billion dollars each, some even didn't need it, like Wells Fargo. Now the banks are starting to pay some of the money back and people say, "Where are they getting the money to pay it back? If they had the money to pay it back, then why did they need it in the first place? Nothing's changed in the year since they took the money. So what's changed?"

Well, I'll tell you what's changed. Interest rates from the Federal Reserve to banks are near zero. They're not near zero for you, at a mortgage or at a credit card, but the interest rate that exists between the Fed and the banks is zero, or pretty much. So the banks can get free money by lending to the government. Now, the government has to borrow from someplace. What the simple explanation is, is that the government is borrowing money from the banks, there's zero interest on that. In exchange for it they're buying Treasury bonds, that's how you borrow or lend to the government, those bonds are a guaranteed 3% return. It's that simple. If you can lend to somebody that's guaranteed to pay you back 3%, as opposed to lending to somebody risky out in the private sector, who may not even be able to collateralize the loan, why would you do it? You got in trouble doing it once on the subprime mortgage business and you were forced to do that if you're a bank. So, if Obama really wants the banks to start lending to people in the private sector, the simple answer is to stop giving banks unlimited amounts of money for essentially free.

Now, let's say as an example, let's say a bank lends the government a million dollars by buying a Treasury bond. Now, the bank's wealth has not gone up a million dollars, but there is a guaranteed 3% return on the loan being paid back. If the Federal Reserve would make a change and raise interest rates to where the banks were not able to get essentially free money from the government, then you might have somebody at a bank interested in loaning some money to somebody other than the government. But as long as the interest rate from Fed to bank is pretty much zero and you get a 3% return on it, why screw with that? And so, again, the answer when Obama goes up and calls the bankers in and wails and moans and everybody else is wailing and moaning, "I can't get a loan, nobody will lend me any money," again the answer is Obama.

The answer is Obama and the Federal Reserve and free money. Stop giving the banks unlimited amounts of money for free in the form of interes-free loans at a guaranteed 3% and, bammo, the way you would do this would be to raise short-term rates for government money to 3%, exactly what the return is now, so that the banks zero out. If it costs them 3% to lend it, and they're only going to get 3% back when the government pays it back, then they zero out. They'll look for other places because nobody lends money without wanting to make money on it unless it was the subprime thing which, again, was the federal government. So the bottom line with all of this is the reason you can't loan money or borrow money, the reason it's tough to is because of your government's policy. And all the while this is being done, guess who Obama continues to beat up? Fat cats on Wall Street, most of whom voted for him. None of this is complicated. Once you understand the underlying baselines of what's going on, none of it's hard to understand.

I can make it simple for you. You just have to trust me and you have to trust yourself. If you want to understand why problems exist in the country today, if you have questions about it, your first answer should always be it's gotta be something the government's doing that's screwing me up, because it is. I'm going to ask these questions again: How many people had health care when Barack Obama became president, and how many lost their health care since he became president because they lost their jobs. What is that number? How many people had homes when Obama became president, and how many have homes today? How many people had homes that were worth something when Obama became president, and how many of those people's homes are now underwater since he became president? How many people had jobs when Obama became president, and how many have jobs today? How many had savings accounts with actual money in the savings accounts when Obama became president, and how many people have savings accounts with money in them today?

The answer to the disaster that is Obama and his policies is not to expand his policies even more. The answer is to change course. The answer to understanding what's going wrong is Obama and the Democrats in the House and the Senate. That is what is going wrong. Who they are ideologically matters. It's not hard to figure out who they are. You just have to believe it. Once you understand that liberals do things as you're seeing them do now, you also have to come to the conclusion that liberals lie. Because they never told you this was going to be the result of what they said. In fact, they said it was going to be the opposite, unemployment would never get higher than 8%. The financial system would be saved. Small business would be able to borrow money. Roads and bridges were going to be repaired. Schools were going to be repaired. Instead now, none of that's happened, but the solution to all that is to go caulk your windows. So it's very simple. It just takes courage to admit what you see. And a lot of people don't want to get ideological.

A lot of people think being ideological is closed minded. No, no, no, no. Being ideological is the epitome of being informed. Being ideological, understanding what a Marxist is, understanding what a liberal is, understanding what a socialist and fascist is, if you understand those things, you understand the modern-day Democrat Party. We're not saying that's what JFK was, we're not saying that's what LBJ was although you could probably peg the beginning of all this to LBJ, and we go to Jimmy Carter and we double down. And now we got Jimmy Carter on steroids, except Carter, he was just a bumbling, doddering old idiot. This is being systematically done on purpose by the so-called progressives.

Let me tell you something. Hugo Chavez, thunderous applause when he attacks capitalism at the climate change conference in Copenhagen, thunderous applause. You can read various chapters in Barack Obama's book and find that he has the same view of capitalism. His first job was as some minion I think at a law firm somewhere or some publication, and he writes of sitting in his cubicle in this private sector business feeling like he'd crossed enemy lines. There's no difference in liberals wherever they are. There's no difference in Marxists wherever they are. There's no difference in socialists wherever they are. They all hate capitalism. And that means they have to have a degree of dislike for the largest capitalist country in the history of human civilization: Us.

RUSH: The timing of this story from Reuters: "Nearly 20 percent of the US population -- or almost 60 million -- went without health insurance at some point since January 2008, according to government estimates..." estimates! Nearly 20%, almost 60 million went without health insurance, according to government estimates released yesterday. "The analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention comes as Democratic senators wrestle to pass their version of health reform legislation before the end of the year to help make good on President Barack Obama's top domestic goal of overhauling the nation's $2.5 trillion healthcare system. Much of the focus so far has been on how to expand access to health insurance in a nation where coverage is closely tied to employment but 10 percent of the work force is unemployed. More than 45 million people are uninsured." Wait. Obama said in his joint speech to Congress it was 30%. My research has produced the fact that there are only 12 million people who want health insurance who don't have to it, and now we're at 45 million?

"While the CDC's findings largely backed that figure, they also found 58.4 million lacked coverage at some point in the year prior to the survey, while 31.9 million -- or nearly 11 percent -- did not have insurance for more than a year." What convenient timing. Later in the story, one bright spot in the report, "more children received health coverage largely through the government." How convenient. What an amazing bit of timing for Reuters to come out with this story today. More children received health coverage largely through the government. I wonder would that be the S-CHIP program where children are calculated to be children up to the age of 25.

RUSH: So the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, whatever the hell they're called, say 60 million uninsured now. Who are they? Who were they? How many illegals? How many lost their jobs under the Democrats and lost health care as a result? What's that statistic, CDC? How many people don't have health insurance because of Barack Obama and Harry Reid and Pelosi and all the other Democrats and their economic policies? How many can afford health care but choose not to buy it right now? They talk about people unemployed. You notice they don't talk about citizens unemployed. And as for these numbers anyway, we're supposed to believe the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, about how many people go without insurance. When it was the CDC that couldn't even predict how bad the swine flu would turn out to be. Who couldn't give proper instructions on how to diagnose it. Who couldn't even get the vaccine program working right. Could not even make it the proper strength, for crying out loud and that is their day job, not figuring who is and who isn't insured. Who the hell are they?

Remember what I said earlier. I actually hate thinking this way. I despise it. But, damn it, it's required because of who these people are. Just because the government announces some figure on anything, your first reaction has got to be from now on suspicion. The same bunch that couldn't predict how bad the swine flu would turn out to be, the same bunch that couldn't even make the vaccine at proper strength, is now telling us how many people didn't have insurance. And getting vaccines right, telling people how to identify and diagnose the disease, that is their day job. What are they doing calculating the unemployed? When did they take over the job of the Labor Department? But the real big question is how many people are unemployed and thus lost their insurance because of Democrat policy, because of Barack Obama, because of Harry Reid?

RUSH: All right, I don't want to give up on this Centers for Disease Control statistic or number that 60 million people -- they didn't specify Americans, they didn't specify citizens -- have been without health care at one time or another, most of them for over a year between 2008 and the present. How many people had health care when Obama became president and how many lost their health care since he became president? What's that number? I want to know what that number is. If the CDC is going to abandon its day job and start counting up numbers of uninsured let them look at that. How many people have lost their health insurance since Obama was elected? How many people had homes when Obama became president and how many have homes today? How many have been foreclosed on? Look up that number, CDC. How many people had jobs when Obama became president? And how many have lost those jobs? How many have jobs today? We know what that number is. How many had savings accounts with money in them when Obama became president and how many have savings accounts with money in them today?

The answer, ladies and gentlemen, to the disaster that is Barack Obama and his policies is not to expand his policies even more. The answer here is to change course, because he is an utter disaster. He and his policies that are enacted by the Democrat Party in the House and Senate are disastrous, by any way you measure: how many people had jobs vs. how many have them now; how many people had health care before and how many don't have it now; how many had savings accounts with money in them, how many people have savings accounts with no money in them, since Obama was elected. He's out there insulting everybody's intelligence telling us the economy is reviving. Yet his administration continually releases information to show that it's not. Unemployment, housing, insurance, look, he wants us to believe he's doing great things, great numbers, and he has the CDC put out this number of 60 million uninsured? We haven't heard that number before. How in hell can he say that the economy is revived? How can he say we're coming back from the brink? Housing, ditto. Insurance, ditto. Unemployment, ditto. These are the questions that CDC ought to be providing our statistics for.

RUSH: From the UK Times. Now, I have yet to see this story in any American State-Controlled Media. I've yet to see it in any American media. It is by "Hannah Devlin, Ben Webster, and Philippe Naughton in Copenhagen -- where, by the way... Let's see. I think record snowfall or some kind of snowing is expected this week in Copenhagen. These people can't even arrange a conference. The Heritage Foundation has a hilarious story today about how these people at Copenhagen can't even run their conference. People with passes are not being allowed in. People are walking out. There are boycotts. All kinds of stuff. Here's the UK Times story: There are many kinds of truth. Al Gore was poleaxed by an inconvenient one yesterday. The former US Vice-President, who became an unlikely," Unlikely? Oh well. Nevermind, "figurehead for the green movement after narrating the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, became entangled in a new climate change 'spin' row. Mr Gore, speaking at the Copenhagen" or Cop-en-hag-gen as Governor Schwarzenegger says "climate change summit, stated the latest research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years." This is what he said. We have a sound bite of it from his remarks yesterday at Copenhagen.

ALGORE: There is a 75% chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years.

RUSH: That, it turns out, is just an abject, bold-faced lie. "In his speech, Mr Gore told the conference: 'These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr. [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.' However, the climatologist whose work Mr. Gore was relying upon dropped the former Vice President in the water with an icy blast. 'It's unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,' Dr. Maslowski said. 'I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.' Mr. Gore's office later admitted that the 75 percent figure was one used by Dr. Maslowksi as a 'ballpark figure' several years ago in a conversation with Mr. Gore. ... Perhaps Mr. Gore had felt the need to gild the lily to buttress resolve. But his speech was roundly criticized by members of the climate science community.

"'This is an exaggeration that opens the science up to criticism from skeptics,' Professor Jim Overland, a leading oceanographer at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said. 'You really don't need to exaggerate the changes in the Arctic.' Others said that, even if quoted correctly, Dr. Maslowski's six-year projection for near-ice-free conditions is at the extreme end of the scale. Most climate scientists agree that a 20- to 30-year timescale is more likely for the near-disappearance of sea ice," and they're full of it, too. "'Maslowski's work is very well respected, but he's a bit out on a limb,' said Professor Peter Wadhams, a specialist in ocean physics at the University of Cambridge. Dr. Maslowki" whose work Gore quoted incorrectly "works at the US Naval Postgraduate School in California, said that his latest results give a six-year projection for the melting of 80 percent of the ice, but he said he expects some ice to remain beyond 2020.

"He added: 'I was very explicit that we were talking about near-ice-free conditions and not completely ice-free conditions in the northern ocean. I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this,' he said. 'It's unclear to me how this figure was arrived at, based on the information I provided to Al Gore's office.' Richard Lindzen, a climate scientist at the Massachusets [sic] Institute of Technology who does not believe that global warming is largely caused by man, said: 'He's just extrapolated from 2007, when there was a big retreat, and got zero.'" So he just makes it up. Now, this ought to make everybody question every other assertion that Algore has made. There's an AP version of the story: "New computer modeling suggests the Arctic Ocean may be nearly ice-free in the summertime as early as 2014, Al Gore said Monday ... One US government scientist Monday questioned the new prediction as too severe, but other researchers previously have projected a quicker end than 2030 to the Arctic summer ice cap." And at the end of this AP story:

"On the other hand, a leading NASA ice scientist, Jay Zwally, said last year that the Arctic could be essentially ice-free within '5 to less than 10 years.' Meanwhile, what's happening to Greenland's titanic ice sheet 'has really surprised us,' said [Dorthe Dahl] Jensen of the University of Copenhagen. She cited one huge glacier in west Greenland, at Jakobshavn, that in recent years has doubled its rate of dumping ice into the sea," blah, blah, blah, blah. "Jensen said the biggest ice sheets -- Greenland and West Antarctica -- were already contributing 1 millimeter (.04 inch) a year

to those rising sea levels. She said this could double within the next decade. 'With global warming, we have woken giants,' she said." So you see, despite -- despite even their own alarmist headline -- according to AP, Gore slip was just a slip of the tongue! The AP is covering for him; the UK Times is roasting him. He made it up. He's lying. He was embarrassed. AP, "Ehhhh, no, no, no, no! It was just a slip of the tongue. Besides, a lot of scientists agree with Gore's original statement anyway. One anyway did, he's a "leading" NASA ice scientist. But note that now suddenly the thickness of the ice is different, if you read all of this. Isn't that convenient, too? The thickness? And we know that's not true, we know that that's been debunked. So even if satellite photographs show that there is actually more ice in the Antarctic and Greenland -- which is what they actually show -- there really is less because it's not as thick, they say. Which is not science. It's simply creative science. Here's Algore, citing the same lie during Senate testimony in January of this year: A 75% chance the entire polar ice cap in the North Pole gone in the summertime.

ALGORE: Professor Wieslav Maslowski at the Naval postgraduate school in Monterey has calculated that there is an 80% chance that the entire north polar ice cap will be completely and totally gone in summer months in less than five years.

RUSH: So I think this is sort of pathological. He gets this stuff in his head. He believes that it's true because he believes it, runs around and reports it, does movies about it embarrassing himself -- scaring children, advancing lies, perpetuating a hoax -- and then gets caught at it at the very conference that is slated to persuade even more people of man-made global warming! And this is one of the leading players with his Oscar that he's got. I know they never ask for Oscars back, but if I were Hollywood, I'd be embarrassed. I'd want it back. They gave their highest award to a documentary that is chock-full of lies, Photoshopped pictures and everything else. That's who the left is: The Universe of Lies. Liberals, leftists must lie to advance their agenda. Honestly announcing it would kill their agenda before an audience of voters who are simple, average Americans.

The government is now monitoring facebook, twitter and other networking sites for tax delinquents, copyright infringers and political protesters.

Arctic summer ice possibly to be gone in 5 years, according to climate scientist Al Gore:

Another example of Chicago politics (but in LA); celebs were being encouraged to go after Lieberman’s wife, because Lieberman was not playing ball.

Even California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recognizes that Obamacare is problematic (mostly because it piles more debt upon debt-ridden states).

CBO estimates that Senate healthcare bill could make a family pay up to $15,200/year for healthcare insurance:

You do understand, of course, the longer that people live, the more their healthcare costs will be, right? So, preventative care will lead to higher costs; in the long run; not to lower costs.

There used to be free cancer screening in some states, but budget constraints have caused a cutback on these services. So, since we do not have enough money to pay for excellent healthcare for every single person in America, what do you think is going to happen? Will healthcare be rationed?

Since there are some links you may want to go back to from time-to-time, I am going to begin a list of them here. This will be a list to which I will add links each week.

This website reveals a lot of information about politicians and their relationship to money. You can find out, among other things, how many earmarks that Harry Reid has been responsible for in any given year; or how much an individual Congressman’s wealth has increased or decreased since taking office.

This is an outstanding website which tells the truth about Obama-care and about what the mainstream media is hiding from you:

Politico.com is a fairly neutral site (or, at the very worst, just a little left of center). They have very good informative videos at:

On Obama (if you have not visited this site, you need to check it out). He is selling a DVD on this site as well called Media Malpractice; I have not viewed it yet, except pieces which I have seen played on tv and on the internet. It looks pretty good to me.

Conservative Review
Issue #106	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	December, 20, 2009