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).

Charlie Rangel took a leave of absence from his post as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. Californian Pete Stark replaces Rangel. In 2007, Stark accused Republicans of sending soldiers to Iraq "to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement."

Pete Stark stepped aside for 78-year-old Michigan Rep. Sander Levin to step in as the chairman. It is unclear whether he is the official chairman right now or not.

The unemployment rate increased in February 2010, and this was blamed in almost every news source on blizzards and snow storms. Before the unemployment numbers were released, Larry Summers and others were out there giving this explanation.

President Obama Nominates Scott M. Matheson, Jr. to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, in what appears to be a lifetime appointment.

There are ten House Democrats who voted against the health care bill in November at the White House; so Obama has invited them all to the White House for a meeting, with the intention of trying to persuade them to switch their votes to yes. One of the ten is Jim Matheson of Utah, brother of Scott Matheson.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts that Obama's budget plans would generate deficits over the upcoming decade that would total $9.8 trillion, which is $1.2 trillion more than predicted by the administration.

Iraq is holding elections after 3 weeks of campaigning. There have been some bombings and some candidates have been killed.

Gunman opens fire in Pentagon; Christian Science Monitor suggests that he might be a right-wing extremist.

A math teacher in a school district near San Diego has a variety of signs up in his classroom, like “One Nation Under God” and “God Bless America.” This is a school where there are anti-war posters, gay rights promotion, and several other posters and signs of that nature. Of course, the teacher with slogans with God’s name in them is taken to court. The court ruled in his favor.

Mostly liberals and radical types this week (it is good to see what these people actually say and write):

Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan warned this week that "The white right is trying to set Barack up to be assassinated...There are Christians praying for God to kill Obama."

Bill Mahr over the nutjob who tried to shoot some people at the Pentagon: “You know, it’s sad; when we see crazy, senseless deaths like this, we can only ask why, why, why, why couldn’t it have been Glenn Beck?”

Before the February jobs numbers were released, White House economic adviser Larry Summers said on Monday "The blizzards that affected much of the country during the last month are likely to distort the statistics. So it's going to be very important ... to look past whatever the next figures are to gauge the underlying trends."

Canadian official Danny Williams unapologetically explaining why he came to the U.S. for a heart operation: "This was my heart, my choice and my health; I did not sign away my right to get the best possible health care for myself when I entered politics."

Report from Jeffrey Kuhlman, physician to the president: “Continue smoking cessation efforts, a daily exercise program, healthy diet, moderation in alcohol intake, periodic dental care and remain up-to-date with recommended immunizations.” (Emphasis mine)

Roseanna Barr comforted the Osmund family with these words: "Marie Osmond’s poor gay son killed himself because he had been told how wrong and how sick he was every day of his life by his church and the people in it. Calling that `depression' is a lie!"

Tom Brokaw, recalling history: “Kent State proved to all of us that we didn't have free speech. Our country, our National Guard would open fire on any student and not just those who protested. If we didn't agree to die in Vietnam - they'd kill us here instead.”

Michael Moore: “Chile had an earthquake this past week that was 500 times greater than the earthquake in Haiti. But here's the big difference. In Chile, they have various -- very serious regulations when it comes to building codes. So a thousand people died, sadly, but a thousand people died with a 500 times greater earthquake. And in Haiti, where there are no building codes, no regulations -- a Republican's paradise -- a quarter of a million people died.”

Van Jones, in one of his most honest statements: “One of the things that has happened I think too often to progressives is that we don't understand the relationship between minimum goals and maximum goals. Uh, right after Rosa parks, uh refused to give up her seat, if the civil rights leaders had jumped out and said ok now we want, uh, reparations for slavery, we want redistribution of all wealth, and we want to legalize mixed marriages, that had been their, they would have come out with a maximum program, the very next day, they would have been laughed at, um instead they came out with a very minimum program, uh, you know we just want to integrate these buses, uh, the students a few years later dame out with a very minimum program. We just want to sit at the lunch counter, but, inside that minimum demand was a very radical kernel that eventually meant that from 1954-1968, you know, complete revolution was on the table, uh, for this country and I think that this green movement has to pursue those same steps, and stages.

Right now we're saying we want, uh, to move from suicidal grey capitalism to some kind of uh, eco-capitalism where, uh, you know, at least we're not; you know fast-tracking destruction of the whole planet. Um, will that be enough? No it won't be enough, we want to go beyond ex-systems of exploitation and oppression altogether but that's a process, and I think what's great about uh, the movement that's beginning to emerge is that the crisis is so severe in terms of joblessness, violence, and now ecological threats that people are willing to be both very pragmatic and very visionary and uh, so the green economy will start off as a small subset and uh, we're going to push it and push it and push it um, until it becomes an engine for transforming the whole society.”

President Obama’s opinion of reconciliation back in 2005: “A change in the Senate rules that really, uh, I think would change the character of the Senate, uh, forever. [snip] Uhhh, and what I worry about would be th-th-that you essentially still have two chambers, the House and the Senate, but you have simply majoritarian, uhhh, absolute power on either side, and that's just not what the Founders intended.”

Obama in 2006: “Those big-ticket items, fixing our health care system. You know, one of the arguments that sometimes I get with, uhh, my fellow progressives and -- and some of these have -- have flashed up in the blog communities on occasion -- is this notion that we should function sort of like Karl Rove, where we -- we identify our core base, we throw 'em red meat, we get a 50-plus-one, uhhh, victory. See, Karl Rove doesn't need a broad consensus because he doesn't believe in government. If we want to transform the country, though, that requires a -- a sizeable majority.”

Obama in 2007: “The bottom line is is that our health care plans are similar. The question, once again, is: Who can get it done? Who can build a movement for change? This is an area where we're going to have to have a 60% majority in the Senate and the House in order to actually get a bill to my desk. We're going to have to have a majority to get a bill to my desk that is not just a 50-plus-one majority.”

Also, in 2007: “ You gotta break out of what I call the sort of 50-plus-one pattern of presidential politics. Maybe you eke out a victory with 50-plus-one but you can't govern. You know, you get Air Force One and a lot of nice perks as president but you can't -- you can't deliver on health -- we're not going to pass universal health care with a -- with a 50-plus-one strategy.”

Speaking of the President, Barack “Cap and Trade” Obama on the Chilean earthquake, "We can't control nature."

Dennis Miller, “We’re a joke out here [in California]; the least shaky thing in this state is the San Andreas Fault; the entire state is out to lunch, and guess what, now it turns out it’s a free lunch. I live in moochville.”

One of Glenn Beck’s best programs, on education (the first vid or two is not the show):

Speaking of Beck, I just saw this particular program of his. In case you are a person who cannot stand Beck or you know someone like that, recommend this program to them:

Parker Griffith, a doctor, who was previously a Democrat and changed parties, gives a short message on Washington healthcare (2.5 minutes):

A 30 second video which summarizes the healthcare debate (blue is for and red is against):

Eric Holder is at least honest about the progressive movement (when this ad was going to be played on Fox, the WH release the names of the Al Qaeda lawyers working for the justice department):

This is a fascinating interview between O’Reilly and Jehmu Greene NCAA pulling Focus on the Family ad. Even though Greene says that the ad was benign, Focus on the Family runs this ad in order to lure people to their homophobic website.

Here is the tape on Obama and his many statements against using reconciliation:

Dennis Miller (this will make more sense if you watched he Jehmu Greene interview above): “Who would have ever thought that Big Brother would appear in the unlikely guise of the electively righteous sister.”

And, “It’s been a weird week for healthcare; it started off last week at that cluster shtup of a round table where Pelosi was more indecipherable than George “the Animal” Steele singing Louie Louie in Farsi while on Amyl Nitrate.”

1) Louis Farrakhan warning that the white right is trying to get Obama assassinated through prayer, seems to have forgotten two things: Biden and Pelosi. The only person who could possibly be worse as President than Obama would be Joe Biden; and the only person who could be possibly worse as president than Joe Biden would be Nancy Pelosi (#3 in line to be president). Since Farrakhan focuses on race, in his world view, he does not realize that Obama has given himself a great deal of protection even from the craziest of right wing nuts by naming Biden as his VP.

2) The unions have figured out that, when they push for higher salaries and benefits in the private sector, there are 2 limiting factors: the company may not have enough money to pay what they want; and, if the company over-promises, that company will go out of business. However, when pushing for higher salaries and better benefits in the federal government (and in state governments), there is almost no upper limit. No one has to make a profit and we’re all comrades here. What has happened is the generous retirement packages which have been negotiated over the years are now driving states into bankruptcy. The next time your state threatens to lay off police officers, teachers and let all the criminals go free, bear in mind, the real problem are retired state workers who make much more in retirement than the state can afford to pay.

3) The government can, to some extent, control medicare prices, but they cannot control medicare costs. If you do not understand the difference, that means you are a liberal. Medical attention is going to cost what it is going to cost. However, government can determine that it will only pay so much, even if clinics, doctors and hospitals lose money by accepting medicare and medicaid patients.

4) Bulls and Bears pointed out that we have recently been encouraged to turn in family and friends that we think are cheating on their taxes. However, there are 1000's working for the government who have underpaid their federal obligations by billions, and there does not seem to be a mechanism for ferreting them out and making them pay.

5) Either Obama understands how damaging his spending is to the United States or he does not. Either way, he will do more financial damage to the United States than any previous president. Plain folk who show up to these rallies waving, you know, these tea bags around, they get this. They understand that this is a problem.

6) One of my cousins recently emailed me and mentioned that she considered Glenn Beck to be a dangerous man (or one of the most dangerous men; I forget her wording). Another cousin of mine also spoke disparagingly of Glenn, about how she can barely stand to watch him. Then, when I recommended Beck’s education program on Friday to my mom, she told me, she hated him. Now, I know almost for a fact that my mom has never seen a Glenn Beck show. She may have seen a clip or two of him, but never a whole show. I don’t think the first cousin of mine has ever seen a complete show of his either. The second cousin of mine will watch a variety of things on TV, so she may have. However, I found it to be amusing, startling, unusual for them to have such strong feelings about someone whose show at least 2 of them have probably never seen. Personally, I will watch 15–30 minutes of Rachel Maddow or Chris Matthews at a time, and, although they leave my mouth hanging open from time to time, I don’t hate them. It is disappointing to me that MSNBC seems to portray Matthews as a newsman, but Maddow is clearly ideological in all that she says and does. But I have watched these people, and I have listened to what they say, and have tried to evaluate their reasoning fairly in my own mind.

7) I had the same experience a few years back, before I became interested in politics, and I forwarded an Ann Coulter column to several friends. What she said made sense, but I did not know her from Adam. I had never heard her before, had never seen her, had no opinion of her; but this article that she wrote made perfect sense, so I sent it along. The response I got was rather dramatic. One person I have known for nearly 40 years told me what a horrible person that Ann was. Since I did not know anything about Ann at that time, I wrote back, “Whoever this woman is, doesn’t her article make sense to you?” (or words to that effect). In any case, these highly emotional responses to certain people, like Beck and Coulter, to the point of expressing outright hatred of them, I find to be rather disconcerting.

8) You ought to be suspicious of either political party which scapegoats some industry or organization, claiming that the solution for this, is them.

Remember Mark Foley? ABC, NBC and CBX did 152 stories on the Mark Foley scandal. How many have they done on Charlie Rangel so far (which is arguably much more significant)? How many have they done on Eric Massa so far (have you even heard of Massa)?

$67,691 was the average pay for federal workers in 2008 for a set of occupations that exist both in government and the private sector.

$60,046 was the average pay for the same mix of jobs in the private sector in 2008,

The CBO estimates that the national debt will be at 90% of the national economy by 2020, if we keep going the way we are going. They also estimate that interest payments would be $800.000/year (at today’s interest rates). However, if interest rates go up, we pretty much go bankrupt.

ABC spent 6x as much time on distorting what Bunning said and did on the Senate floor than they did reporting on Charlie Rangel. Bunning was courageous, and he did not get much support from his Republican brothers on this; Rangel is corrupt,

Too often, the classroom has been a battleground in which science loses out to ideology...

John Patrick Bedell: Did right-wing extremism lead to shooting? (Bedell is/was a registered Democrat who hated Bush and apparently was a 9/11 truther as well)

I’ve already told you about the teacher in San Diego with the banners in his room, which have common sayings from our history with God being extolled in these sayings. Here is how this story was presented in the Examiner:

At first glance, this seems to be an open and shut case: Bradley Johnson, a math teacher at Westview High School in the San Diego county community of Poway, had strung up 2 large banners in class that advocated his faith and school district officials ordered him to take it down. That seems like an appropriate decision on the district's part since promotion of religion by a public employee violates the constitutionally-mandated separation of church and state. Yet when Johnson sued the school district saying that his right to freedom of speech had been violated, the judge ruled in Johnson's...

Notice what is not found here: what the signs actually said. Notice the inaccuracy: “Advocated his faith...” I can tell that this guy probably believes in God, but I couldn’t tell you if he is a Catholic, a Mormon or a Baptist. The story also leaves out what other kinds of posters, flags and banners are found throughout the school and it does not mention that this teacher has had these banners there for 17 years.

Instead, they write: ...school district officials ordered him to take it down. That seems like an appropriate decision on the district's part since promotion of religion by a public employee violates the constitutionally-mandated separation of church and state.

The Mercury News said what the banners read, but left out all the other information. Ditto for the San Diego Signon News.

The most complete story was on O’Reilly’s show (on a 1.5 minute segment) and the Orthodox Net News:

They actually did a reasonable job with Obama opening up the program talking about healthcare, which the country has rejected as a whole. Nervous laughs from the audience, however.

Obama had no intention of somehow incorporating Republican ideas into a bill which has already been passed by the Senate. The whole purpose of this healthcare session a week and a half ago was to appear reasonable, and then to say, “We can’t start over, we’ve come too far; our differences are too great. I am offering here some Republican ideas, but they will not meet me halfway.” (not an exact quote). This gives him cover to move forward on the Senate bill. His own bill, which was posted online, is not really a bill, and not an issue here at all (see The Healthcare Debacle below).

I think that part of his strategy was to offer up another set of ideas, so that the public might be distracted by this new set of ideas, and conflate his bill with the one which is actually being considered.

The Republicans did fairly well with this challenge, and simply dealt with the bills at hand, but without clearly distinguishing between the variety of bills which are out there.

The President (and others) have proclaimed that starting over (on the massive healthcare bill) is code for doing nothing. Even though it is not, the Obama administration used simple phrases and slogans to get him elected, so they are continuing with that approach in his administration.

Simple majority (also called an up or down vote) is what is also known as reconciliation, where the Democrats called the nuclear option a few years ago, and which President Obama (then Senator Obama) spoke passionately against.

PAYGO = a word uttered when a politician wants to raise your taxes yet again. On occasion, this word is used when conservatives propose to spend money on something or to give tax cuts.

Unsustainable = we have chosen to fundamentally transform the structure of this entity, so we must first declare the rising cost of it as unsustainable. This is very similar to the word broken.

How many of those 30 million newly covered people in your healthcare bill are covered as a result of a mandate to them?

What could the public do or say to change your mind about pushing this healthcare bill?

Obama has a pre-set agenda (healthcare, cap and trade, and education), and, no matter what happens, he is moving forward on these fronts.

Obama and his inner circle are in a circular firing squad right now. Some are trying to save their own jobs by attacking the President himself.

You think Obama is doing anything about jobs. It is all about healthcare, which he wants to be his signature piece of legislation, no matter what.

The Obama Deficit Commission is going to come with a recommendation that we raise taxes.

I think that the nation is ready for an honest president, who will, most of the time, tell it like it is. I predict that 2 or 3 Republicans will run and say things which are not popular, particularly, they will promise to reduce benefits.

Several have predicted this already (I may have, in fact): Obama is going to use immigration reform in order to improve his numbers and to get him reelected. Look for major legislation to start moving through Congress right after the next election (circa 2011).

Do you recall that many spokesmen for the Obama administration came out and said jobs, jobs, jobs and how they would focus like a laser beam on jobs. I told you that they wouldn’t and that they would continue to push healthcare.

We are a long ways from being out of the woods in terms of unemployment. What the Obama administration wanted was a steady decline in the rate of jobs lost each month. February reversed that trend.

Senator Jim Bunning (R, KY) recently raised an objection to the (relatively) tiny $10 billion expenditure to extend unemployment benefits. Recently, Congress passed PAYGO, which is a bill which says, every expenditure must be matched with a corresponding cut in another area or an additional tax or fee to pay for that expenditure. To Congress, $10 billion is a fairly small number, given that the that the 2009 deficit is $1.4 trillion (which is 140X the size of this unemployment bill).

Senate leader Harry Reid could have brushed off Bunning like a pesky fly, and held the vote and passed this bill, as the votes were there (without going utilizing PAYGO). He chose not to. Reid allowed enough time to pass for the press to kick into action.

Larry O'donnell: Bunning is regarded as a very, very strange man with a nasty temper.

Dana Bash: (background noise) Bunning does not have a good relationship with his Republican leadership.

Jonathan Karl: Known for throwing brush-back pitches and isn't afraid to ruffle feathers.

Andrea Mitchell: Jim Bunning... He has a track record of saying terrible, terrible things.

Vice President Joe Biden was quoted in the media as saying, “One of Bill's colleagues is standing on the floor of the United States as we speak. He's standing there, and preventing the Senate from being able to move forward on doing the kind of thing we're doing here today. What's that mean? (angry) Four hundred thousand people will be kicked off the rolls this month if he has his way!” of course, some media carried this impassioned quote.

Of course, Robert Gibbs was able to makes some comments, since the bill was left hanging, by one lone Republican: “I think what we're trying to draw attention to is the fact that hundreds of thousands of people who've lost their job and lost their health care because of that and their unemployment benefits, all that is threatened because one person has decided to stop the entire process. It's hard to bargain with somebody when, if you say, ‘I won't do that because of this,’ and you say, "Well, how about we vote on that?" and you (sic) say, ‘I object?’”

Harry Reid, of course, needs to say a few words, so he finds a media outlet which will put him on camera: “My friends on the other side of the aisle are opposing extending unemployment benefits for people who are out of work. Where was my friend from Kentucky when we had two wars that were unpaid for during the Bush administration; tax cuts that cost more than a trillion dollars, unpaid for? Where was my friend and the Republicans objecting to that? I hope Republicans will reconsider, think about their constituents standing in the unemployment line as we speak.”

And, “My friend just is... He's throwing around words like "hypocrite." People can make their own decision as to who is a hypocrite. I'm not calling anyone "hypocrite," although I'm just stating the facts. Someone boasts about the good effects of paygo but votes against it, talks about the doc fix but votes against it. So I would think that, uh, my friend from Kentucky should get a different historian to help him with his facts because they're simply wrong. So I object.”

Dick Durbin gets his face and voice out there into the media as well: “When the victims in the middle of the debate are unemployed people, I don't think that's fair. This one young man, David Senor, showed me a list of 300 applications that he had made to try to find a job during the last year. He said, ‘I go online every day,’ and this is a man who had worked for years, had a strong work record until he was laid off, and he said, ‘I just can't find anything. I'm desperate. I'm trying everything I can think of and now you're going to cut off my unemployment benefits.’”

Now, I understood the issue immediately; Bunning was saying, “If we can’t find $10 billion to pay for something that we all support, we will never pay for anything on the floor of this U.S. Senate.” This is a fairly simple, 10 second video clip, which clip almost every news organization chose not to play (perhaps they saw it as irrelevant?).

One of the things which I saw was 2 reporters from ABC chasing Bunning down the hallway, demanding to know why he wanted to cut off unemployment benefits for so many suffering people out there. Obviously, anyone listening to Bunning’s simple words could understand his point.

Larry O'donnell: Bunning is regarded as a very, very strange man with a nasty temper.

Dana Bash: (background noise) Bunning does not have a good relationship with his Republican leadership.

Andrea Mitchell: Jim Bunning... He has a track record of saying terrible, terrible things.

CNN runs a story about a poor woman with children whom Bunning is keeping benefits from:

CBS's Schieffer characterizes Bunning blocking this bill as 'unconscionable,' just 'politics,' and being without 'substance'

Rachel Maddow, unsurprisingly, calls this a bizarre turn of events in the Senate, and characterizes Bunning’s behavior as being bizarre. She says that he does not simply hold a few extreme views, but that he exhibits literally strange behavior.

CNN ran another story on location where even his basebase skills were questioned (he used to be a baseball player). To CNN’s credit, they had a man-on-the-street give more incisive opinion than their own. To CNN’s shame, in a 4 minute story about Senator Bunning, do you know who we never hear from? Senator Bunning.

And all Bunning said was, We just passed PAYGO, so let’s actually apply it; if we cannot find the money in our budget for this, when can we find the money? [That’s the essence of Bunning’s point, not an exact quote].

There is one place where this story was aired, and you actually heard full, complete quotes from Senator Bunning, giving his actual opinion: On FoxNews:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJKsozXoRHY (this clip includes Bunning’s clear statement from the floor of the Senate, and comments from Jon Stewart on the Daily Show (one of Jon’s slimiest attacks), another CNN hit piece, ABC’s coverage).

Neil Cavuto does a fair piece on his show, along with an actual interview with Bunning (this is a bit slower piece):

If you are watching any of the news outlets cited above, then they are not informing you; they have an agenda, and you are, in their opinion, a useful idiot. They make little or no attempt to present the facts of this story.

If you watch the news and you are uninformed, then it is your fault. There is an alternative to the alphabet media.

I listen to a pastor-teacher who has since passed away, and was listening to a lesson from about 30 years ago. He said that the U.S. constitution was one of the 3 greatest documents ever drafted because it requires responsibility and honor among the people. When the people lose this, the country is lost as well.

I never completely understood the bashing of America historically until this week. Many history classes now in the schools portray America as an evil nation, destroying the good and pure Indian, in order for us to fill the skies with ugly, black soot. Of course, this view of history pretty much ignores the fact that nearly every plot of ground was taken from someone else at some point in time. However, what brings this home is listening to interviews of our President trashing the constitution because it is a document filled with negative rights. If we were a good country, then the constitution would be filled with all of the wonderful things that the government would promise to do for us.

Along with this are many schools which want to begin American history around the Civil War, so that they can fi everything in.

It is all related. This is not a big conspiracy, per se, but the point of view of progressives, which is an all-encompassing philosophy: America is broken, our constitution is a poorly defined document, and our history is filled with relatively evil people. Since it would be difficult to really distort our history, it might be better to start out our history courses by ignoring most of it, along with the greatness and bravery of our founding fathers, and the historical and religious context of the United States Constitution. If you present a short, distorted view of history (we took the United States from the Indians and we practiced slavery) and couple this with our constitution as being a very imperfect document, then you can use this view of history to distort the thinking of our young people.

If you want to see the direction our country is heading in, watch the education of our young people.

This should help to explain why President Obama, who believes strongly in education, is against educational programs which fall outside of federal and state controls. We already know that kids get a much better education in private schools for about half the money that public schools spend. We know that dedicated parents raise more learned children at home through home schooling than our school system can do. More kids from private schools and home schooling go off to college than those from public schools. The drop out rate is dramatically less as well. But, just because it is better and cheaper, that does not mean we ought to support it.

Why not? Less governmental control. And this aspect of private education and home schooling is something our president and the Democratic Congress cannot abide.

There are at least 3 viable healthcare bills and one healthcare proposal out there. There was a bill passed in the Senate which could not be passed in the Senate today. There is a House bill passed in the House which the Senate could not pass today.

The Republicans have a much shorter bill which they have had online for about 6 or 8 months.

President Obama has presented a bill—well, sort of. It is not really a bill but a collection of ideas, not that different from the Senate bill, and a document which cannot be scored by the CBO (the Congressional Budget Office).

The Obama bill is just slight of hand; it does not mean anything, it is not being drafted into legislation. Obama’s “bill” it is something which may have had some meaning had he come out with it prior to the House and Senate bills, to indicate that it is the target they ought to be aiming for. However, it is about 1 year too late for that.

About a week later, the President gave some remarks about healthcare, surrounded by doctors and nurses, all wearing lab coats and scrubs so that we know who they are. In this talk, he essentially says that it is time to act.

All of Obama’s speech here means little or nothing because he is talking about his proposal. His proposal is not a bill, it is not being drafted into being a bill, and on one is going to vote on it. It is a smokescreen.

I think the idea is, the public sees Obama’s speech, and conflates it with Senate and House bill. Maybe he wants us to forget what the real bills are?

There has been talk of reconciliation. Here is the only way that reconciliation can be used: the House must pass the Senate Bill, the President signs it into law, and then, parts of that bill would be changed in the Senate on a simple majority vote (these changes are supposed to deal with budgetary matters only).

However, here is what is going on behind the scenes. There will be no Republican bill, no incremental approach (as of right now). There will be no starting over (as of right now). The House bill is dead. It is not going anywhere. The Senate will not pass that bill. They do not have the 60 votes necessary to pass the House Bill, thank you Scott Brown. And again, Obama’s bill that he has posted online, has talked to Republicans about, and gave a speech about, is not a bill.

What this leaves is the Senate healthcare bill, and here is what is being done: behind the scenes, there is massive arm-twisting being done, to get the votes in the House to pass this. The intention is to pass the Senate bill in the House, Obama will sign it, and game over. There will be no reconciliation bill. The Senate cannot be convinced to pass budget changes which the House likes that they do not. At best, House members will be led to believe that these measures will be passed.

If the House cannot get up the votes, then a supplementary bill will be written in the Senate, and 51 Senators will have to give their assurances that they will pass this bill, and it will be the reconciliation bill. This will be incentive for House members to sign this HC bill from the Senate, but it will not in anyway guarantee that the Senate will pass this other bill, despite their assurances.

Obama’s proposals: smoke and mirrors; not really a bill; no one is voting on it.

The Senate Bill: on life support, but it may yet be passed. This is where attention ought to be focused. This bill is in the House right now, and the House passing this bill or not is what is really going on.

I gave the names of those in the House in the previous issue who can still be persuaded one way or the other.

This is a link to the names and phone numbers of those House members who are on the fence:

One more thing about the Senate bill, and very few people are telling you this: this is the bill with the Cornhusker kickback and the Louisiana Purchase and the very unfair treatment of non-union workers with good medical coverage (they will be taxes; union workers with the exact same plan will not—not until 2018, if then). The Senate Bill passed because of those 3 things. Those bribes will remain in the bill that goes into law. Unless the Senate runs a separate bill through under reconciliation and removes these provisions (which legitimately could be removed under reconciliation), they will be the law of the land.

'Every argument has been made. Everything that there is to say about health care has been said, and just about everybody has said it," President Obama declared yesterday as he urged Democrats to steamroll his plan through Congress. What hasn't been heard, however, is even a shred of White House honesty about the true costs of ObamaCare, or its fiscal consequences.

Nearby, we reprint Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan's remarks at the health summit last week, which methodically dismantle the falsehoods-there is no other way of putting it-that Mr. Obama has used to sell "reform" and repeated again yesterday. No one in the political class has even tried to refute Mr. Ryan's arguments, though he made them directly to the President and his allies, no doubt because they are irrefutable. If Democrats are willing to ignore overwhelming public opposition to ObamaCare and pass it anyway, then what's a trifling dispute over a couple of trillion dollars?

At his press conference yesterday, Mr. Obama claimed that "my proposal would bring down the cost of health care for millions-families, businesses and the federal government." He said it is "fully paid for" and "brings down our deficit by up to $1 trillion over the next two decades." Never before has a vast new entitlement been sold on the basis of fiscal responsibility, and one reason ObamaCare is so unpopular is that Americans understand the contradiction between untold new government subsidies and claims of spending restraint. They know a Big Con when they hear one.

Mr. Obama's fiscal assertions are possible only because of the fraudulent accounting and budget gimmicks that Democrats spent months calibrating. Readers can find the gory details in Mr. Ryan's pre-emptive rebuttal nearby, though one of the most egregious deceptions is that the bill counts 10 years of taxes but only six years of spending.

The real cost over a decade is about $2.3 trillion on paper, Mr. Ryan estimates, and even that is a lowball estimate considering how many people will flood to "free" health care and how many businesses will be induced to drop coverage. Mr. Obama claimed yesterday that the plan will cost "about $100 billion per year," but in fact the costs ramp up each year the program exists. The far more likely deficits are $460 billion over the first 10 years, and $1.4 trillion over the next 10.

What Mr. Ryan calls "probably the most cynical gimmick" deserves special attention, which is known in Washington as the "doc fix." Next month Medicare physician payments are scheduled to be cut by 22% and deeper thereafter, though Congress is sure to postpone the reductions as it always does. Failing to account for this inevitability takes nearly a quarter-trillion dollars off the ObamaCare books and by itself wipes out the "savings" that the White House continues to take credit for.

Some in the liberal cheering section now claim that this Medicare ruse isn't Mr. Obama's problem because it was first promised by Republicans and Bill Clinton in 1997. But then why did Democrats include the "doc fix" in all early versions of the bill to buy the support of the American Medical Association, only to dump this pricey item later when hiding it would make it easier to fake-reduce the deficit?

The President was (miraculously) struck dumb by Mr. Ryan's critique, and in his response drifted off into an irrelevant tangent about Medicare Advantage, while California Democrat Xavier Becerra claimed "you essentially said you can't trust the Congressional Budget Office." But Mr. Ryan was careful to note that he didn't doubt the professionalism of CBO, only the truthfulness of the Democratic gimmicks that the budget gnomes are asked to score.

Yesterday Mr. Obama again invoked the "nonpartisan, independent" authority of CBO, which misses the reality that if you feed the agency phony premises, you are going to get phony results at the other end.

The President also claimed the reason his plan is in trouble, and the reason Democrats must abuse the Senate's rules to ram this plan into law, is that "many Republicans in Congress just have a fundamental disagreement over whether we should have more or less oversight of insurance companies." So most of Mr. Obama's first year in office has been paralyzed over nothing more than minor regulatory hair-splitting. This is so preposterous that the President can't possibly believe it.

Congress's spring break begins on March 29, and Democratic leaders plan on jamming this monster through Congress before then. Americans have to hope that enough rank-and-file Democrats aren't as deaf to fiscal honesty as this President.

Posted March 5th, 2010 at 9:28am in Enterprise and Free Markets with 38 commentsPrint This Post Print This Post

Last week President Barack Obama hosted a seven-and-a-half-hour televised health care summit. This week the President launched his "final" campaign for passage of his health care plan. Next week, President Obama will travel to Missouri and Pennsylvania to continue this "final" effort to jam his unpopular plan through Congress. With this all-health-care-all-the-time White House agenda it seems like eons ago that the Obama administration announced, following the complete rejection of its health care plan in the Massachusetts Senate special election, that President Obama's first State of the Union would mark a "pivot" from health care and to a "razor sharp focus on jobs". So how is that pivot to jobs going? Well, the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly jobs report this morning and it showed the U.S. economy shed another 36,000 net jobs last month. Our nation's unemployment rate is still at 9.7%.

So why is our economy having such a tough time pulling out of recession? Here are the facts: the most recent data available show that the U.S. economy actually lost fewer jobs during this recession than were lost during the 2001 recession. Specifically, 50.8 million jobs were lost through the first six months of the `01 recession while 48.2 million jobs were lost through the first six months of this recession.

But if out economy is losing fewer jobs this time, then why is our unemployment rate so much higher under President Obama's stewardship of the economy? The answer: job creation. Or actually the lack thereof. Back to the BLS data: through the first six quarters of the 2001 recession 47.6 million jobs were created, while only 40.3 million jobs have been created through the second quarter of 2009. That's a 7.9 million jobs gap. The reason our unemployment rate is so much higher now is low job creation, not high job loss. So why aren't businesses creating jobs? Here is what entrepreneurs have been trying to tell the Obama administration:

♦At one of President Obama's many jobs summits, Fred Lampropoulos told The New York Times that businesses were uncertain about investment because "there's such an aggressive legislative agenda that businesspeople don't really know what they ought to do." That uncertainty, he added, "is really what's holding back the jobs."

♦Dan DiMicco, CEO of steelmaker Nucor Corp, told the Wall Street Journal: "Companies large and small are saying, `I am not going to do anything until these things - health care, climate legislation - go away or are resolved.'"

♦Porta-King CEO Steve Schulte told USA Today his company is not investing because "proposals in Congress to tackle climate change and overhaul health care would raise costs."

♦The New York Post's Charles Gasparino reported on the 600 companies stock analyst Peter Sidoti covers: "`There hasn't been one bankruptcy,' he tells me. How did they survive the recession? By cutting costs and hoarding cash, not expanding their business and hiring more people, even as the economy now is starting to recover. During other recoveries, Sidoti says, firms like these would be hiring workers in droves as demand picks up for goods and services. This time around, they're not - because `they don't know what their costs are going to be.'"

♦National Federation of Independent Business chief economist Bill Dunkelberg writes: "The horizon is filled with cost unknowns, from healthcare to cap and trade to yawning deficits and the need to come to grips with them, from paid family and medical leave to card check, from expiration of the Bush tax cuts to state decisions about their finances. Washington cannot expect small business owners, facing difficult economic circumstances anyway, to commit themselves to investing in new employees or equipment and vehicles without acknowledging and revealing the policy-inspired costs that will be imposed on them. It is all about uncertainty and confidence."

Our economy's job creators have been trying to send a message to the Obama administration for months: stop creating so much uncertainty in the tax and regulatory environment so that we can figure out how to invest our money and start creating jobs. Stop taking over car companies. Stop shedding financing contracts. Stop taking over 1/6th of our economy. Stop raising taxes on our energy sector. Just stop.

Our economy will eventually recover and start producing jobs again, probably very soon. But that recovery has already been delayed by an administration that saw this recession as an opportunity to fundamentally rewrite our nation's relationship with the federal government. Unless this administration completely abandons its far reaching transformation agenda, this recovery will be a very slow one.

Through a series of supposedly random but arguably deliberate chain of events, America is poised to jettison 220 years of a free market system called capitalism, in favor of the tried and failed system of socialism. This writer, and others, are now starting to question how we reached this point.

Last summer, as McCain and Obama were in the midst of their campaigns to capture the presidency, a series of events dramatically changed the focus of the campaign from Iraq to the economy. From that point on, Obama took the lead and eventually won the presidency.

June 26, 2008: Democrat Chuck Schumer leaked a memo questioning the solvency of IndyMac bank. This memo precipitated a run on IndyMac which led to its failure. Federal regulators pointedly cited U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., in explaining the bank's failure. "The immediate cause of the closing was a deposit run that began and continued after the public release of a June 26 letter to the OTS and the FDIC from Senator Charles Schumer of New York."

This event, coupled with the Lehman Brothers collapse in September, marked the beginning of the current economic meltdown and provided the ammunition for massive government intervention in the private market.

July 12, 2008: The federal government takes control of the $32 billion IndyMac Bank. *

Sept. 6, 2008: Fannie Mae begins its downward spiral, which will end with a crash in November. This crash was avoidable, as the problems with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were identified in June of 2006, when 15 Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee introduced legislation to address the problem. Democrats, led by Barney Frank, killed the reform efforts.

Sept. 15, 2008: Obama and McCain are virtually tied in their race for the presidency. Out of no-where, in the space of less than 2 hours, the Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous drawdown of money market accounts in the U.S. to the tune of $550 billion. Rep. Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania said that if authorities had not closed the banks, $5.5 trillion would have been withdrawn from US banks, which would have caused the collapse of the US within 24 hours.

This seminal event marked the ascendancy of Obama's candidacy, and eventually resulted in his election as president.

Fast forward to this week. The markets reacted to Obama's proposal to bail-out mortgages and Senator Christopher Dodd's talk of nationalizing banks by reaching 11-year lows.

Obama continues to stoke the fears of imminent crisis, actually using the word 'crisis' a total of 26 times in one speech.

Enter George Soros. The infamous one-worlder, billionaire George Soros adds his voice to the media doomsayers by opining that the world financial system has effectively disintegrated, adding that there is yet no prospect of near-term resolution to the crisis.

Soros said the turbulence is more severe than during the Great Depression, comparing the current situation to the demise of the Soviet Union.

He may be right. The series of 'inadvertent errors', deliberate obstruction, political shenanigans, behind the scenes manipulation of the money markets and non-stop calls for immediate infusions of taxpayer cash have brought the U.S. to its knees.

With one voice, politicians, economists and 'experts' agree by unspoken consensus that government is the only solution. No one points out the fact that every single step taken so far by the government has exacerbated the problem, effectively bringing America one step closer to centralized government control. Which, coincidentally, Obama favors.

I am not an economist. But I will challenge any expert to dispute the fact that if President Obama took to the airwaves tomorrow and announced the Bush tax cuts would be extended and a capital gains tax cut was under consideration, the markets would immediately turn around.

That no-one is proposing this common sense solution is alarming. That no free market solutions are even under consideration is more alarming. That no-one is questioning who was responsible for the Sept. 15 run on money market accounts, or why the media was silent on it, lends credence to the possibility that our current economic crisis might not have been the result of a series of random events.

The economic meltdown is undoubtedly responsible for Obama becoming president. It is also responsible for the current consideration of socialistic solutions, if not outright socialism. Without a doubt, this crisis has strengthened the Democratic party. Yet to connect the dots and suggest that this crisis isn't a result of capitalism gone bad risks branding this author with the title of paranoid conspiracist.

Color me paranoid. Was this current crisis manufactured? I don't know. Does the possibility exist? You decide.

* Six months later, Jan 2, 2009, a seven-member group of investors agreed to buy the remnants of failed lender IndyMac for $13.9 billion. Other investors included a fund controlled by billionaire George Soros' Fund Management.

Yesterday as I was leaving the hotel I was staying in while training in Boston this week; I picked up a complementary copy of USA Today. An article by Dennis Cauchon on the front page piqued my attention and I had meant to address it yesterday.

The headline read, "Federal pay ahead of private industry." I had to reread that headline a couple of times to be sure I didn't misread it. Cauchon reporting on data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics wrote:

Federal employees earn higher average salaries than private-sector workers in more than eight out of 10 occupations, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data finds.

Accountants, nurses, chemists, surveyors, cooks, clerks and janitors are among the wide range of jobs that get paid more on average in the federal government than in the private sector.

Overall, federal workers earned an average salary of $67,691 in 2008 for occupations that exist both in government and the private sector, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The average pay for the same mix of jobs in the private sector was $60,046 in 2008, the most recent data available.

Now it is possible that things have changed in 2009, but with the recession and stimulus package that did pretty much nothing but bolster government employment I would wager that the disparity gap has grown.

While the base salary disparity is bad enough the real kicker is in fringe benefits, the article continued:

That is outrageous since it is being provided by taxpayers. The story was slightly different with state and local government workers:

We have seen this disparity locally when The Des Moines Register reported that the Des Moines mayor and city council members' health insurance costs taxpayers $80,000. They are part-time:

Des Moines' seven part-time City Council members receive discounts for their health insurance premiums, paying $420 annually for family coverage that costs more than $13,000.

One elected official said the mayor and council should set an example and pay more for their insurance, a benefit that costs taxpayers about $80,000 a year.

Most on the seven-member council say they will consider paying more out-of-pocket for their insurance, particularly since other city employees have been asked to do the same.

I wonder why part-timers are getting insurance offered at all? Does that happen anywhere in the private sector?

These are examples of how government budgets from the local level to the federal level have ballooned. But instead of making a better business environment at the federal or at the state level here in Iowa budgets are ballooned. Millions in taxpayer money is spent to create save mostly government jobs while the private sector which is the engine of our economy suffers.

I guess why should we be surprised by this when yesterday Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called yesterday a good day for the American private sector. Only 36,000 lost their jobs.

In the years after the the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the subsequent failure to find WMD, the American media flagellated itself publicly over its lack of skepticism of Bush administration cassus belli claims. We endured reams of essays about the supine nature of the corporate-owned media, the supposed disinformation campaign of the White House, the "lies" on WMD claims (that had also been made by Democrats in Congress from 1998 until the invasion), and so on. To this day, the American media still considers their self-described blind acceptance of claims about intelligence without sufficient investigation as an indictment on their industry - and a consequence of the Internet-driven changes to the media market.

After wearing sackcloth and ashes for so long, one might believe that the American national media would leap at the chance to show its newfound mission of skepticism and challenge to authority. Unfortunately, US journalists have missed a grand opportunity to demonstrate that it learned a lesson about swallowing a story from the government without question, if indeed that is what happened in 2002 on Iraq. We know this because their colleagues across the pond in the United Kingdom have not missed the chance to speak a little truth to power, both in their own government and to multilateral organizations that issued faulty analyses, false data, bad research, and hysterical demands for action.

Do I refer to our military efforts in Afghanistan? In Pakistan? Fiscal policy among the G-20? No. The Australian and British press have eaten the American media's lunch on the collapse of credibility at the IPCC and in the anthropogenic global-warming (AGW) movement. In the past four months, media outlets like the Times of London, the Telegraph, the Australian Herald-Sun, and even the Left-leaning paper The Guardian have broken important stories (along with bloggers) exposing the fraud, mismanagement, and unscientific behavior of the core group of AGW advocates, such as:

•University of East Anglia e-mails that exposed data destruction, attempts to hide contradictory data, and conspiracies to sabotage the work of skeptical scientists

•The East Anglia CRU threw out their raw data, undermining any effort to check their work

• No rise in atmospheric carbon fraction over the last 150 years: University of Bristol

• IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri knew Himalayan claim was bogus for months before exposure

• Amazonian rainforest conclusions not based on scientific research but on advocacy group claims

• Mountain glacier claims based on unsubstantiated student theses and anecdotes from climber magazine

• Search of IPCC report footnotes exposes ten more student dissertations presented as peer-reviewed research

• Medieval Warming Period temperatures may have been global, undermining entire AGW case

• Measurements used for AGW case were influenced by urbanization, poor location, bad data sets

• IPCC researchers excluded Southern Hemisphere data to exaggerate effects of warming on hurricanes

• Hurricane claims further exposed as false by actual peer-reviewed research - including by some AGW researchers

• Major scientific group concludes IPCC-linked researchers "complicit in the alleged scientific malpractices"

None of these - none - were exposed by a major American media outlet. The efforts of the American press, with a couple of rare exceptions such as the Washington Times and the Wall Street Journal, have mainly been to play down the significance of every revelation and to emphasize their view of scientific AGW "consensus." When the Washington Post finally got around to reporting on the East Anglia scandal, it provided only a straightforward but superficial recounting of the journalism done in the UK and Australia. The New York Times didn't even bother to do that much, saying that the collapse of the basis of Obama administration policy didn't amount to a "three-alarm story."

To this day, the American media has had almost nothing to add to the growing list of exposés accomplished by their Anglospheric cousins. Bear in mind that our current government plans an unprecedented intrusion into the energy sector, entirely on the basis of the IPCC report that has been systematically dismantled by bastions of journalistic accomplishment like the Times of London, who got many of the above scoops. Such a policy would give the federal government vast power over the economy and allow it to accrue massive amounts of fees and taxes, while dictating the rationing of both retail energy use and the means of producing it.

With all of that at stake, shouldn't the American media have deployed its storied skepticism to some use on the AGW movement and the IPCC? After all, it was only a few years ago - after the invasion over which the media wailed and self-criticized its credulousness - that we discovered that the UN had conducted the largest fraud in human history, the Oil-for-Food program that put billions of dollars into the pockets of Saddam Hussein while impoverishing the Iraqis the program was designed to protect. Shouldn't the American media have been even more skeptical, given the track record of accountability at Turtle Bay over the last decade?

Indeed it should - and indeed it didn't, and still hasn't. Curiously, the American media has been almost entirely AWOL on the collapse of the IPCC and anthropogenic global-warming hysteria as its intelligence has been proven not just wrong, as the WMD intel from multiple Western nations was in Iraq, but blatantly fraudulent. It has been exposed as mainly comprised of bad anecdotal recording, biased manipulations of data, and collations of hysterical claims by environmental extremists.

Forget learning "the lessons of Iraq." When will the American media take a cue from its colleagues in Britain and Australia and start learning the lessons of the IPCC and of Oil-for-Food?

This is a huge week for the president, as he will tell the nation how he's going to deliver health care reform.

The latest Rasmussen Daily Tracking Poll says that after last week's health care summit, the president got a slight bump: 44 percent now want Obamacare, as opposed to 41 percent the week before.

But - and this is a big but - 52 percent of Americans do not want Obamacare for a variety of reasons.

"Talking Points" says no to the multitrillion-dollar entitlement, primarily because of the cost and the chaos factor.

Let me take you back to July of 2008 when Congressman Barney Frank, in charge of the House Finance Committee, said this about the financial positions of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the federal mortgage concerns:

BARNEY FRANK: I think this is a case where Fannie and Freddie are fundamentally sound, that they are not in danger of going under. They're not the best investment these days from the long-term standpoint going back. I think they would be okay going forward.

Obviously that was a colossal mistake on the part of Congressman Frank. In the last quarter, Fannie Mae lost $16 billion taxpayer dollars - $16 billion in three months.

Sadly, "Talking Points" believes the same thing would happen with Obamacare. The president says it will cost a trillion dollars. Dick Morris says it will cost as much as six trillion. The truth is nobody knows, but it won't be one trillion.

Late last Friday afternoon, the Treasury Department issued a very disturbing report. They timed it so you would not see it, but we did and here it is: The USA is now $11.5 trillion in the red. Last year the deficit rose an enormous 12 percent, the highest in history and more than double the previous yearly record.

So there is no question that the United States of America could soon become bankrupt. Obviously that would erode our power and badly damage our economy. That cannot happen. Thus Obamacare in its present form cannot happen. We don't have the money.

Speaker Pelosi says she does have the votes to pass health care reform in the House. It is likely to pass the Senate. But Politico says Mrs. Pelosi does not have the votes, and we should all pray that is true.

America is in grave danger because of financial irresponsibility on the part of our leadership. That is the truth. And while it is very difficult to watch our fellow citizens suffer without health care, the greater good must rule. The feds are spending this country into bankruptcy. It must stop.

We analyze the news for a living here, and have been very successful for more than 13 years. But I can honestly tell you I do not know what is true and what is false when it comes to financing Obamacare.

That's because it's impossible to know. No one knows, yet both sides are trying to convince us they have the facts.

The president said Wednesday that higher taxes on the wealthy and more efficient spending on things like Medicare and Medicaid would pay for the trillion-dollar health care reform legislation. Mr. Obama says he has it under control.

Republicans say not true. Dick Morris estimates Obamacare will cost $6 trillion and the feds will never be able to pay for it.

On Thursday in The Wall Street Journal, Republican Congressman Paul Ryan makes the following points: that President Obama is misleading the nation because he is using 10 years of revenue and spending cuts to cover six years of health care entitlements. Ryan claims that when you honestly add up the cost, Obamacare would lead to about $500 billion in deficit spending over 10 years.

"Talking Points" knows a few things for sure: that both Medicare and Medicaid are going bankrupt. Even if there is no health care reform, the feds will have to find trillions of dollars to keep those things afloat.

Social Security is also running out of money, and with 77 million baby boomers about to start collecting, another fiscal crisis looms.

President Obama sincerely believes that health care reform will make America stronger. The man really believes that. Just as President Bush sincerely believed Saddam Hussein was a threat to the world.

But both could be wrong, and it is very possible that Obamacare will cause mass chaos in our medical system and drive the Treasury into bankruptcy.

The president must know Obamacare is a huge risk for the country, and at this point, I believe the risk is not worth taking. Strict government oversight and new rules on health insurance companies does not cost anything. Try private reform first, even as you figure out how to pay for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Statistics out this week say 10 percent of Americans now pay more than 70 percent of federal income tax, and 50 percent of Americans pay close to nothing. That means that affluent Americans are pretty much tapped out. Draconian tax increases against them will likely lead to more economic chaos.

Unlike some who disagree with President Obama, I do not believe his intentions are bad. But I do believe he is taking a huge risk with all of our lives by the colossal spending that's coming down the road.

It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.

Of course, we would still need to deal with the national security risks of our growing dependence on a global oil market dominated by dwindling reserves in the most unstable region of the world, and the economic risks of sending hundreds of billions of dollars a year overseas in return for that oil. And we would still trail China in the race to develop smart grids, fast trains, solar power, wind, geothermal and other renewable sources of energy - the most important sources of new jobs in the 21st century.

But what a burden would be lifted! We would no longer have to worry that our grandchildren would one day look back on us as a criminal generation that had selfishly and blithely ignored clear warnings that their fate was in our hands. We could instead celebrate the naysayers who had doggedly persisted in proving that every major National Academy of Sciences report on climate change had simply made a huge mistake.

I, for one, genuinely wish that the climate crisis were an illusion. But unfortunately, the reality of the danger we are courting has not been changed by the discovery of at least two mistakes in the thousands of pages of careful scientific work over the last 22 years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In fact, the crisis is still growing because we are continuing to dump 90 million tons of global-warming pollution every 24 hours into the atmosphere - as if it were an open sewer.

It is true that the climate panel published a flawed overestimate of the melting rate of debris-covered glaciers in the Himalayas, and used information about the Netherlands provided to it by the government, which was later found to be partly inaccurate. In addition, e-mail messages stolen from the University of East Anglia in Britain showed that scientists besieged by an onslaught of hostile, make-work demands from climate skeptics may not have adequately followed the requirements of the British freedom of information law.

But the scientific enterprise will never be completely free of mistakes. What is important is that the overwhelming consensus on global warming remains unchanged. It is also worth noting that the panel's scientists - acting in good faith on the best information then available to them - probably underestimated the range of sea-level rise in this century, the speed with which the Arctic ice cap is disappearing and the speed with which some of the large glacial flows in Antarctica and Greenland are melting and racing to the sea.

Because these and other effects of global warming are distributed globally, they are difficult to identify and interpret in any particular location. For example, January was seen as unusually cold in much of the United States. Yet from a global perspective, it was the second-hottest January since surface temperatures were first measured 130 years ago.

Similarly, even though climate deniers have speciously argued for several years that there has been no warming in the last decade, scientists confirmed last month that the last 10 years were the hottest decade since modern records have been kept.

The heavy snowfalls this month have been used as fodder for ridicule by those who argue that global warming is a myth, yet scientists have long pointed out that warmer global temperatures have been increasing the rate of evaporation from the oceans, putting significantly more moisture into the atmosphere - thus causing heavier downfalls of both rain and snow in particular regions, including the Northeastern United States. Just as it's important not to miss the forest for the trees, neither should we miss the climate for the snowstorm.

Here is what scientists have found is happening to our climate: man-made global-warming pollution traps heat from the sun and increases atmospheric temperatures. These pollutants - especially carbon dioxide - have been increasing rapidly with the growth in the burning of coal, oil, natural gas and forests, and temperatures have increased over the same period. Almost all of the ice-covered regions of the Earth are melting - and seas are rising. Hurricanes are predicted to grow stronger and more destructive, though their number is expected to decrease. Droughts are getting longer and deeper in many mid-continent regions, even as the severity of flooding increases. The seasonal predictability of rainfall and temperatures is being disrupted, posing serious threats to agriculture. The rate of species extinction is accelerating to dangerous levels.

Though there have been impressive efforts by many business leaders, hundreds of millions of individuals and families throughout the world and many national, regional and local governments, our civilization is still failing miserably to slow the rate at which these emissions are increasing - much less reduce them.

And in spite of President Obama's efforts at the Copenhagen climate summit meeting in December, global leaders failed to muster anything more than a decision to "take note" of an intention to act.

Because the world still relies on leadership from the United States, the failure by the Senate to pass legislation intended to cap American emissions before the Copenhagen meeting guaranteed that the outcome would fall far short of even the minimum needed to build momentum toward a meaningful solution.

The political paralysis that is now so painfully evident in Washington has thus far prevented action by the Senate - not only on climate and energy legislation, but also on health care reform, financial regulatory reform and a host of other pressing issues.

This comes with painful costs. China, now the world's largest and fastest-growing source of global-warming pollution, had privately signaled early last year that if the United States passed meaningful legislation, it would join in serious efforts to produce an effective treaty. When the Senate failed to follow the lead of the House of Representatives, forcing the president to go to Copenhagen without a new law in hand, the Chinese balked. With the two largest polluters refusing to act, the world community was paralyzed.

Some analysts attribute the failure to an inherent flaw in the design of the chosen solution - arguing that a cap-and-trade approach is too unwieldy and difficult to put in place. Moreover, these critics add, the financial crisis that began in 2008 shook the world's confidence in the use of any market-based solution.

But there are two big problems with this critique: First, there is no readily apparent alternative that would be any easier politically. It is difficult to imagine a globally harmonized carbon tax or a coordinated multilateral regulatory effort. The flexibility of a global market-based policy - supplemented by regulation and revenue-neutral tax policies - is the option that has by far the best chance of success. The fact that it is extremely difficult does not mean that we should simply give up.

Second, we should have no illusions about the difficulty and the time needed to convince the rest of the world to adopt a completely new approach. The lags in the global climate system, including the buildup of heat in the oceans from which it is slowly reintroduced into the atmosphere, means that we can create conditions that make large and destructive consequences inevitable long before their awful manifestations become apparent: the displacement of hundreds of millions of climate refugees, civil unrest, chaos and the collapse of governance in many developing countries, large-scale crop failures and the spread of deadly diseases.

It's important to point out that the United States is not alone in its inaction. Global political paralysis has thus far stymied work not only on climate, but on trade and other pressing issues that require coordinated international action.

The reasons for this are primarily economic. The globalization of the economy, coupled with the outsourcing of jobs from industrial countries, has simultaneously heightened fears of further job losses in the industrial world and encouraged rising expectations in emerging economies. The result? Heightened opposition, in both the industrial and developing worlds, to any constraints on the use of carbon-based fuels, which remain our principal source of energy.

The decisive victory of democratic capitalism over communism in the 1990s led to a period of philosophical dominance for market economics worldwide and the illusion of a unipolar world. It also led, in the United States, to a hubristic "bubble" of market fundamentalism that encouraged opponents of regulatory constraints to mount an aggressive effort to shift the internal boundary between the democracy sphere and the market sphere. Over time, markets would most efficiently solve most problems, they argued. Laws and regulations interfering with the operations of the market carried a faint odor of the discredited statist adversary we had just defeated.

This period of market triumphalism coincided with confirmation by scientists that earlier fears about global warming had been grossly understated. But by then, the political context in which this debate took form was tilted heavily toward the views of market fundamentalists, who fought to weaken existing constraints and scoffed at the possibility that global constraints would be needed to halt the dangerous dumping of global-warming pollution into the atmosphere.

Over the years, as the science has become clearer and clearer, some industries and companies whose business plans are dependent on unrestrained pollution of the atmospheric commons have become ever more entrenched. They are ferociously fighting against the mildest regulation - just as tobacco companies blocked constraints on the marketing of cigarettes for four decades after science confirmed the link of cigarettes to diseases of the lung and the heart.

Simultaneously, changes in America's political system - including the replacement of newspapers and magazines by television as the dominant medium of communication - conferred powerful advantages on wealthy advocates of unrestrained markets and weakened advocates of legal and regulatory reforms. Some news media organizations now present showmen masquerading as political thinkers who package hatred and divisiveness as entertainment. And as in times past, that has proved to be a potent drug in the veins of the body politic. Their most consistent theme is to label as "socialist" any proposal to reform exploitive behavior in the marketplace.

From the standpoint of governance, what is at stake is our ability to use the rule of law as an instrument of human redemption. After all has been said and so little done, the truth about the climate crisis - inconvenient as ever - must still be faced.

The pathway to success is still open, though it tracks the outer boundary of what we are capable of doing. It begins with a choice by the United States to pass a law establishing a cost for global warming pollution. The House of Representatives has already passed legislation, with some Republican support, to take the first halting steps for pricing greenhouse gas emissions.

Later this week, Senators John Kerry, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman are expected to present for consideration similar cap-and-trade legislation.

I hope that it will place a true cap on carbon emissions and stimulate the rapid development of low-carbon sources of energy.

We have overcome existential threats before. Winston Churchill is widely quoted as having said, "Sometimes doing your best is not good enough. Sometimes, you must do what is required." Now is that time. Public officials must rise to this challenge by doing what is required; and the public must demand that they do so - or must replace them.

Incidentally, Al Gore was worth approximately $2 million in the year 2000 and he is worth well over $100 million today. Global warming has been very good to Mr. Gore.

Thank you very much, but we can think for ourselves: African-American women and choice

In an attempt to exploit racial fears and perhaps assume for themselves the broad legitimacy of a civil rights movement, anti-choice activists are now targeting African-Americans - claiming that the exercise of reproductive freedom by African-American women is effecting a "genocide" in the African-American community. According to proponents of this strategy, family planning clinics are disproportionately located in African-American communities so as to facilitate this "genocide."

While I do not dispute the sincerity of many in the pro-life movement, this attempt is cynical, misguided, and dangerous.

To argue that abortion rates among African-American women are higher because of a "racial conspiracy" is to ignore the reality of health care options (or the lack thereof) in that community. African-American women are less likely than their white counterparts to have access to affordable care - including affordable birth control options. They are also more likely to die of breast cancer, more likely to contract HIV and more likely to be diagnosed with hypertension. Infant mortality rates, too, are higher in the African-American than in the White community. To focus solely on the issue of higher abortion rates is to ignore the broader reality that the problem of inadequate access to health care is particularly acute in communities of color.

While anti-choice activists may condemn the location of family planning clinics, such as Planned Parenthood, in these communities, this condemnation is itself further evidence of their cynicism - and of their indifference to the actual health care needs of low-income women (a disproportionate number of whom are African-American). The majority of health care services provided by Planned Parenthood, for instance, are non-abortion related and include cancer screening, STD testing, and other preventive health services. We may agree to disagree about the morality of abortion but I do hope there is no legitimate disagreement about the need for low-income women to have access to these health resources.

There is yet another element of this campaign that I find particularly unsettling. Implicit in this strategy is the assumption that the womb of an African-American woman is somehow "community property" - and that our family planning and reproductive decisions cannot properly be based upon individual choices and circumstances but must instead take into account the need to "propagate the race." It seems as if anti-choice strategists are suggesting that African-American women need to be saved from themselves and their own freely made choices - or worse yet, that the African-American community needs to be saved from its women. Forgive me, but the time for that sort of racial paternalism is long since past.

There are real issues of concern affecting African-Americans today - inadequate access to health care, disproportionate incarceration rates, a substandard public education system (which is the only option for many of its children), and numerous others. Cynical attempts to exploit those problems so as to gain advantage in a contentious debate are no substitute for the real attention our community deserves.

[To me, it is fascinating that, in one paragraph, African-American women just do not have easy access to birth control products and healthcare; and, in the next paragraph, it just so happens the Planned Parenthood has most of their clinics in African-American neighborhoods.]

The leading cause of death among African Americans since 1973 is abortion. Not cancer, not shootings, not crime, not accidents.

Congress and its allies on the left are hell bent to overhaul the health care of every American. They have focused strongly on increasing regulation of insurance companies. They get the most of the blame for increasing premiums and skyrocketing health spending. Though certain targeted and technical reforms of the health insurance market are sorely needed, making insurers the scapegoat for out-of-control costs in our current health system misses the point.

Recent premium increases in health plans offered by Anthem Blue Cross in California have attracted federal scrutiny of insurers, but experts attribute increases to external factors beyond the control of insurance companies. New state mandated benefits increase the minimum level of coverage an individual can purchase. As Americans embrace frugality in response to high unemployment and economic hardship, many choose to forego health insurance, especially among younger and healthier populations. Removing these individuals from insurance risk pools leaves behind a greater concentration of sick and costly patients, so that insurers have little choice but to increase premiums in order to maintain solvency.

In a recent briefing paper, Milliman lies out the internal factors which affect premium costs. Rates are set according to actual claims and "benefit cost trend", which reflects the future cost of benefits. Affecting benefit cost trend are factors such as medical inflation, provider contracts, use of services, mix and intensity of services, and cost-sharing. Of further consequence are changes in member characteristics, as mentioned above, and administrative costs and taxes. Insurer profits account for a small fraction of the factors behind increasing costs.

A study recently published in Health Affairs describes the evermore prevalent effect of increasing provider rates in California. Robert A. Berenson et al. explain how demand in the insurance market for greater provider choice has given providers greater clout in negotiations with insurers, allowing them to increase their rates. The formation of accountable care organizations, consisting of multi-specialty groups of providers collaborating to offer efficient and better quality care to their patients, largely accounts for this.

The mission of accountable care organizations is honorable; however, the effect these provider groups have on rising premiums could negate the benefits of their creation. According to Berenson et al., "If accountable care organizations lead to more integrated provider groups that are able to exert market power in negotiations-both by encouraging providers to join organizations and by expanding the proportion of patients for whom provider groups can negotiate rates-private insurers could wind up paying more, even if care is delivered more efficiently."

In order to address rising costs in health care and the subsequent rises in premiums, Berenson et al. suggest that if the market cannot be altered to discipline providers, the government should impose price controls on insurers and providers both. This profoundly flawed tactic is reflected in the President's recent proposal for health care reform, which would require a "Health Insurance Rate Authority" to regulate premium increases. This approach is doomed to failure, not only due to very nature of price controls, which is the most recurrent economic policy failure in history, and a guarantor of shortages and related miseries, but also because it fails to acknowledge that other factors contribute to the problem of increasing premiums. Milliman warns that "Simplistically limiting premiums rate increases to some predetermined inflation index fails to recognize the fundamental elements involved in setting health insurance rates, and would likely have severe consequences within a short period of time."

According to Berenson et al. "The shift in who holds the upper hand in negotiating payments-once held by health insurance plans but now resting with health care providers-has had a major impact on California premium trends". To reverse this game of tug-of-war, the "upper hand" must be given to the consumer. In order for the market to adequately respond to the laws of supply and demand, patients must own and control their own care. Only when patients are put in charge of the flow of dollars spent on health care can a just equilibrium be achieved. Insurance price controls that do not take into account all drivers of increasing cost cannot possibly achieve this.

Media Bias 101 summarizes more than 25 years of survey research showing how journalists vote, what journalists think, what the public thinks about the media, and what journalists say about media bias. The following links take you to more than 40 different surveys, with key findings and illustrative charts.

Britain’s weather office proposes a do-over when it comes to climate science. And here, I thought the debate was over and that this was settled science?

I missed this when it first played; Barbara Walters hosts “This Week” with George Will, Arianna Huffington, Paul Krugman, and Roger Ailes. Scott Brown had just been elected (the first interview) and you would think that Krugman was about to break out into tears because this meant healthcare would not come to pass (as was thought on that day). The round table starts about a third of the way down.

Do you recall how Obama was supposed to reset our relations with Islam so that we might find a more peaceful reconciliation? That does not seem to be happening. Indonesian students protest Barack Obama's visit. They are throwing their shoes at his picture and branding him as an anti-Islamic imperialist.

The president may not be doing much by way of job creation in the United States, but he is going to explore job creation in Islamic countries:

Interestingly enough, Hispanic and black businesses are receiving a disproportionately small number of federal stimulus contracts.

The physician’s report to the president (now, it may be sort of a boilerplate approach to recommend moderation of alcohol use?):

RUSH: We're going to start in Cincinnati. This is Jerry, it's great to have you here, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Hello, sir. How are you? I was watching Hannity Sunday night, and they had two guys on there that were talking about how bad things are and the economy and spending money and all this and that and how there is a tipping point to where we will not be able to recover from. And I'll be honest with you. I've never felt this bad about the situation that we're in since I was in the third grade in school and --

CALLER: I know. And I have the same stupid feeling, like, what is going to happen? You know. Is it too late, or what's going on?

RUSH: I'd be in New Zealand if it was too late. I'll tell you when it's too late. I'll tell you when it's time to panic. I'll tell you when we reach the tipping point. We're nowhere near it. We're still the United States of America. A majority of American people have clearly expressed they don't want a shred of what's happening here, and we will stop it.

RUSH: The American people still, in the end, get what they want. This is not what they thought they were getting. They have been scammed totally. They thought they were getting something postpartisan, postbickering, postracial. They thought they were getting smooth talking and everybody was going to love us. They've gotten nothing, nothing, zilch. Nobody, nobody -- I mean you got some statistically 20, 30% -- nobody is happy. The left thought they were getting somebody who was gonna stop the war in Iraq and close Gitmo the first day in office and put Bush and Cheney in jail and so forth. They're unhappy. You have people in the middle who thought, oh, wow, okay, we're going to get rid of the extremes on all sides, we're going to be reasonable here, we're going to get along and put people back to work. Whatever people's expectations were that voted for the guy have not anywhere near been met.

CALLER: Well, thanks for your efforts because you're one of the few lights out there still shining.

RUSH: Well, it's a real dilemma for me here, a challenge, because those of you who have listened to this program since its interception -- that would be its beginning for those of you in Port St. Lucie and Rio Linda -- know that one of the defining characteristics of this program has been optimism, can-do, best country on earth, best people on earth, most opportunity on earth, everything's going to be okay kind of program, encouragement, good cheer, all this kind of stuff. But at the same time we have not delved into false optimism. I have not told you things that I think are better than they are just for the sake of saying it. We're at a time now where it's a delicate balance because to define honestly the circumstances we face and be optimistic about it is a tough challenge. 'Cause I'm not optimistic about where we are, I don't like where we are. The optimism is that we can stop it because we have. But it's never going to stop coming at us.

Liberalism has been on the march for centuries. It's just never gotten this close to power in this country before. But I am encouraged. Now, after the election last year, if you woulda pinned me down and said, "Are you depressed?" I would have said, "Yeah," because I knew, and a number of us knew, that Obama was a 100% fraud, and it was frightening that so many people got taken in by the guy, 'cause that makes us think, oh, we've lost the country. If you lose the people, if the people decide they want to go Europe socialism, they decide they want to be wards of the state, then we're finished. And I was wondering, has that happened? 'Cause I knew exactly who Obama was, what he was going to do, and it was easy for anybody to spot, just look at who he's hung around with, just look at who raised him, who's educated him. He was apologizing for the country while he was campaigning. He was apologizing for the country all over the world, in Berlin, wherever he went he was apologizing for America and his buddies were doing the same thing. So he was not a mystery to me, but the fact that so many people got fooled by the guy really depressed me.

So then in January even before the guy is immaculated, the Wall Street Journal says, "Can we have 400 words from you on your hopes for the Obama administration." "I got four for you: I hope he fails." And the tide began to turn. And even people on my side, "Rush, you can't do that!" Somebody had to say it. I said it 'cause I meant it from the moment he won the election. His brand of politics, his view of the world, his view of the country has got to fail. So, as usual, my friends, I was out in front, this time by about six months. Then the tea parties sprung up and nobody led them, I mean those tea party people effervesced right out of the grassroots. A lot of them were people who had never, ever been to a town hall, had never been to a town meeting, were really casually invested in politics. But they knew, they said, "This is not our country, this is not what we voted for," or what have you. This kind of debt that's being run up, this spending, it's gonna trap us all, it's going to roll back our lifestyles and opportunities for kids and grandkids, people instinctively knew this.

So for the sake of time here, my depression evaporated very soon once I learned, once it became apparent that a clear and sizeable majority wants no part of Barack Obama's agenda. So America is still America. America is the people. The people are who make this country work, and the people are hurting. Many millions are out of work and are forced to depend on government to get by, and a lot of them are embarrassed by it and don't like it. But it's their only hope, it's their only chance. They see that nothing is being done from their government to facilitate a change in their lives for the better. They see it continually deteriorating. As such, more and more people are joining the clear majority who want no part of this. So are we at a tipping point? Well, you have to define the tipping point. But if the tipping point is an aroused populace who's simply not going to take it anymore, yeah, we're there, and you'll see the result in November and even before.

It's going to be an ongoing daily struggle because these people are on the march, and they have only one intention, and that's to manage America's decline and see to it that it happens, because they think we deserve to be a nation in decline. If I could wave a magic wand one time and make everybody believe something for just two minutes, it would be this bunch of people in the White House and throughout Washington who are with Obama, been appointed by him or whatever, do not like this country as founded, they resent it, they think it's unfair, immoral, unjust, from our military to our capitalist system, and they are out to change it because we deserve a comeuppance. We've been too rich, we have stolen all the goods and services from around the world, we've kept the rest of the world poor while enriching ourselves, and even the people that really made this country, they've gotten the shaft, too, the blue-collar world, these people are going to fix it. They're going to give this country a bitch slap.

CALLER: I'm doing well. First-time caller, longtime listener, and I wanted to tug your ear on this issue about China. We've talked a lot about how in debt we are to China.

CALLER: And I wanted to know, how much are we in debt to China? And then I have a follow-up question. Depending on how much that is, why can't we use this unspent stimulus money to pay off that debt?

RUSH: The debt to China is that they have purchased -- now it's Japan because they started selling some of the T-bills, but Japan is the largest holder of our debt, meaning they are buying Treasury bills at a interest rate, and that's where the debt is. We're essentially financing our deficit with money that we don't have by selling futures, by selling Treasury bills that they buy that they can hopefully at some point down the road when they redeem 'em they'll show a gain on them. And they're very worried here because we keep adding to the debt and adding to the debt, which makes their percentage of it worth less at the time, and they can't call it because they need us for their own economic growth so they're in a little bit of a catch-22, but they are showing signs of selling it off. They did sell off about -- I forget the exact number, $75 billion worth of T-bills, which makes the Japanese the number one holders. I don't really know the exact number of Treasury bills that they hold. I think it's in the seven or $800 billion range, but that's a wild guess. I'm gonna have to look that up.

RUSH: No. If we pay China off we're just paying somebody else to assume their debt, we're not solving anything.

CALLER: Well, why is it such a big deal that -- I mean I think in the political arena, you know, we've talked about, you know, China is owning us and with this huge foreign debt to China it is such a big deal, it's always talked about, and it's like we can never get out from under it, it seems.

RUSH: And if they decide to turn it against us and use it as a hammer there's not a whole lot we can do other than nuke 'em.

RUSH: The bottom line here -- look, David, the bottom line is the reason we're in this problem is that we've gone in debt to get further in debt. This stimulus money, we don't have it. The stimulus money was printed or borrowed. We're not paying anybody back. We're paying interest, but we're not retiring our principal. This is like a credit card you pay the minimum for the rest of your life and the principal keeps going up. That's what we're doing. We don't have this money. The stimulus is a great example. In fact, the whole concept of government stimulating the economy is absurd. The only way that would work, David, is if somewhere in Washington there is some actual money that has full value that's stashed somewhere that is not borrowed and not printed. And we take that money and we inject it in the private sector, that would put more money, more capital into the private sector, and then you would have stimulus. But that's not what we did.

To get that $787 billion of stimulus we had to take it out of the private sector. It comes in the form of taxes or we borrow it. But there's no new money, there's no additional capital in the private sector. In fact, capital has been taken out, it hasn't been put back in. Less than 30% of the stimulus has been spent. It's in Washington. It's used to grow government. Federal workers now earn more than private sector workers on average. The federal workforce is growing. The unemployment rate there is only 3%. In the private sector it's 10%. The government's growing. They're stimulating nothing but themselves, the Democrat Party and their belief in expansionist government. They're not stimulating anything in the economy. And they know it. When I hear people say, "Well, you know, Obama just doesn't get it." Yes, he does! And if he doesn't know what he's doing the people advising him to do this know what they're doing. There's not one sane individual who would do what they are doing if they honestly wanted the private sector to grow. Not one person.

Obama, he talks Alinsky very well. (imitating Obama) "Private sector? That's where all jobs are, we need to grow the private sector." Well, then do it, get out of the way, get out of their way. They're telling you you are in their way. Your expansionist government plans, cap and tax, health care, amnesty for illegals, they don't know what they're dealing with here. They're not going to invest in growth until all this shakes out. And if it shakes out with Obama getting everything he wants, they're going to close shop. This is purposeful, managing the decline. Think of it that way. If it's a little easier for you to get your arms around and have it not be so disturbing: "They're managing the nation's decline." If, "They're destroying the country on purpose," is just too coarse and too harsh, you don't want to believe that, then "managing America's decline." Because you have to agree we're in decline, don't you? Would you all agree with me that we're in decline? Well, we certainly aren't ascending.

The one thing that's ascending right now is conservatism. But you have a job, your prospects look good, gonna flood the market with three million more college graduates, and this bunch, they think the minute they have the diploma in their hands, that a $250,000-a-year job and a $500,000 house is waiting for them the next Monday. The Baby Boomers, they don't want to quit. They don't want to retire. They like working. And even if they wanted to quit, they can't. If they wanted to retire, they can't. So they're not going to leave their jobs, unless they get canned and get laid off or what you. And in addition to that, these Baby Boomers are going to start putting all kinds of new pressure on entitlements: Social Security and Medicare and all the rest. I hope that helps, David. Debt is a bad thing, personally, for a family, for a country. The only difference is, a government can print more money and go into greater debt on its own. A state can't do it, you can't do it, personally or in your family.

Here is Kevin in Slayton, Minnesota. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Very good. My question, Rush, is I became aware that a neighboring state, South Dakota, a state attorney made a news announcement concerning joining 17 other states and looking into possible legal ramifications with the federal government over this health care program.

RUSH: There are a lot of states that are trying to opt out of it. There are a lot of states that are trying to constitutionally insulate themselves from it. I think the number 17 is right. It may be a little higher now. It's on a constitutional basis and John Boehner, by the way, is being very vocal about the fact that all this is unconstitutional. The federal government cannot mandate you buy anything. This whole health care bill, if it were to be challenged constitutionally could be wiped out, but somebody has to bring the challenge. Somebody has to bring it, and you have to wait 'til it actually happens before the challenge is brought. Sort of like you can't go to the police and say, "Hey, my house is going to get robbed Saturday, I heard people talking." "Well, we can't do anything about it 'til it actually happens." Same thing here. I'm confident there are people you and I have never heard of that are working on ways to defeat this that you and I probably haven't considered.

You know, folks, I was thinking about something in the last break, because I'm getting not a lot, but a decent number of e-mails today: "Thanks for the help, Rush; thanks for the encouragement; really, Rush, why, you've convinced me there's no hope," this kind of stuff. Let me tell you the truth of things out there, ladies and gentlemen. Even if -- I want you to hear this, Snerdley -- even if I said to you today, "Folks, it's over, we can't stop it, we've gotten beyond the point of no return," that would not affect what's gonna happen. People in this country are going to continue because it's their life. People are not mind-numbed robots here. The people who oppose Obama do not oppose Obama because they've been told to, because they have been hypnotized or any of that, they oppose him because in their hearts, in their good old American hearts they know this is not their country.

We are not a nation of people that's going to roll over and say, "Okay, have at us, have your way," no matter what I say. The people inside the Beltway, even our smartest political minds there, do not understand that aspect of the American mind-set today. There's a bubble when you're in DC and you don't really see the things going on outside the place. But trust me, it is a severe and serious outrage that is bubbling up out there. People are not going to accept this. They'll do whatever they have to, to stop it.

RUSH: RUSH: Hey, folks, I was wrong. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. No! I was not wrong. I didn't know something. The ChiComs are still the largest holders of US debt, and they're proud of it. (laughing) They're upset that the Japanese have the title. So I have here the ChiCom Post: "The government now says that [the ChiComs] did not lose its place in December as the largest foreign holder of U.S. Treasury debt. The Treasury Department said that under annual benchmark revisions released Friday," this is a February 28 story "China's holdings of U.S. Treasury securities stood at $894.8 billion at the end of December, keeping it in first place ahead of Japan." (laughing) I frankly am stunned! The ChiComs are bragging. They don't want to lose the title as the number one holder of American debt. (laughing) Folks, that's like you wanting to have the largest balance MasterCard has ever seen and they believe along and announce that your neighbor has the largest balance. "Oh, no, no, no! I still have the largest balance."

CALLER: Rush, it's just a question, a quickie, and it's a change of pace. I thought yesterday when you closed your program you said you had something interesting about Governor Christie.

RUSH: No, I'm just kidding. He made a great speech. I'm glad you actually reminded me of this by calling. He made a great speech on February 24th at the statehouse in Trenton to the New Jersey league of municipalities, and I've got some sound bites. I've got some excerpts of it. Marie, thanks for calling and reminding me. Chris Christie, the new governor of New Jersey. Let's just get started in listening to what he told the New Jersey League of Municipalities. He's talking here to mayors here and town managers and so forth.

CHRISTIE: Our citizens are already the most overtaxed citizens in America. The public appetite for ever increasing taxes has reached an end. So now when we freeze $475 million in school aid, I'm hearing the reverberations from school boards saying, "Well now you're just going to force us to raise taxes." I'm tired of hearing school superintendents and school board members complain that there are no other options other than raising property taxes. There are other options. There has to be parity between what's happening in the real world and what's happening in the public sector world. The money doesn't grow on trees outside this building or outside your municipal building. It comes from the hardworking people of our communities who are suffering and hurting right now.

RUSH: And the next bite, February 24th, this year, Trenton, New Jersey, Governor Christie targets the political class.

CHRISTIE: The political class -- which unfortunately for us all of us are a member of. The political class is lagging behind the public on this. The public is ready to hear that tough choices have to be made. They're not going to like it. Let me not confuse the two. But they are ready to hear the truth. In fact, they find it refreshing to hear the truth and the pabulum that gets spewed sometimes about, "Don't worry, I can save you from the pain," they've been hearing that for a decade. As we've borrowed and spent and taxed our way into oblivion. We have done every quick fix in the book that you can do, and now we are left literally holding the bag.

RUSH: This is amazingly great! One more bite. No difference between Republicans and Democrats, eh? Huh? Do any Democrats say this?

CHRISTIE: You all know that these raises that are being given to public employees of all stripes we can't afford, you all know the state can't continue to spend money that it doesn't have, and you all know that the appetite for tax increases among our constituents has come to an end. And so the path to reform and success is clear. We know what it is. We just have to have the courage to go there. What we're doing is showing people that government can work again for them, not for us. Government has worked for the political class for much too long. There's no time left. We have no room left to borrow. We have no room left to tax.

RUSH: Right on, right on, right on. That's Governor Christie and that's why he won: A Republican in New Jersey.

RUSH: Kathryn in Colleyville, Texas. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: I was calling about Medicare and the slow erosion of freedom within the doctor community. Basically over the past two or three months, cardiology has been taken incredible pay cuts, which are impacting the practice of medicine.

CALLER: Specifically, a couple of months ago the imaging that is performed in cardiologists' office took a 40% pay cut, and that was followed up this past Monday with a 20% pay cut to all physicians. It's really affecting how patients are getting taken care of. We had to lay off some employees, and it's really touch and go whether we'll be able to continue to see Medicare patients.

CALLER: Well, there is an out, which a lot of cardiologists -- about, probably, 30% -- have already accepted. Hospitals are buying out cardiology practices, only to become employees of hospitals.

RUSH: But once you opt out of Medicare you can't take a Medicare patient ever again, right?

CALLER: I'm not sure all the rules. I'm probably out of my territory there, but there are specific rules for not taking care of Medicare patients. But the problem is that once you're an employee of a hospital you've lost your freedom, and some practices that have been bought out have already been told by the hospitals that, "Oh, well, we're going to have to cut your pay 15%, and you have no recourse."

RUSH: All right. I want to try to put what you've said here into an understandable context for the audience.

RUSH: No, no, no. Stay on the line here because I need you to tell me if I'm right or wrong on this.

RUSH: The odds are I'm right (I'm very seldom wrong) but I still want you there to correct me. Now, the very people who just yesterday in a big dog and pony show said, "We're going to expand coverage, we're going to insure 31 million more people, we're going to lower costs," the same people are reducing what they are paying you and your husband, cardiologists, to the point that you cannot keep your practices going?

CALLER: That's basically it. It's a huge part of this. Probably 50% of local cardiology business is Medicare.

CALLER: It's a very successful business. Let me tell you that over the past ten years... You know, heart disease was the number one killer ten years ago. But do you know that in the last ten years the mortality has dropped 30% because of cardiology care?

RUSH: Yeah. Oh, I'm not surprised. Despite all these horrors like childhood obesity, the life expectancy just continues to edge upward in this country.

RUSH: But my point with you, Kathryn, is that the very people who claim they know how to fix this are breaking what we have now.

CALLER: Exactly. What we have now is already so broken that basically insurance companies and government have doctor groups fighting among ourselves for what's left of our 8% of the Medicare dollar. About 8% of what goes through Medicare actually makes it to doctors. Everything else is wasted.

RUSH: Thank you, Kathryn. I want to make another point about this, ladies and gentlemen. I want to go back to my old buddy Howard Fineman and his piece earlier this week in Newsweek in which he wondered, "Where's all the money going?" Where's all the money going if they're cutting the doctors? Well, the money isn't there. We don't have it. We have a $1.5 trillion deficit. The money is owed. The money is going to debt. But this is the real point. You listen to this doctor. I could do this all three hours any day I wanted. I could take calls from doctor after doctor after doctor who would tell the same story: Medicare payments, copayments are being cut back to the point that they can't continue to keep the office open on what the government is paying them.

You have cardiology patients, heart patients, going in to get treated, and some far-off bureaucrat somewhere... Not an insurance company. We're talking Medicare here, not some evil insurance company. Some federal bureaucrat is deciding what the cardiologist is going to get paid. That's not a free market. There's no relationship to Kathryn's patients and the price of Kathryn's service. The patient isn't paying diddly-squat, or very little on Medicare and even less on Medicaid if we lump that in. We'll leave Medicaid out of it for now. There's absolutely no relationship. These people walk in with a heart problem. The service and the fee attached to it by Kathryn and her husband the cardiologists is not based on that woman's ability to pay or the patient's ability to pay or the patient's level of care that's needed, treatment, what have you.

Some bureaucrat that nobody knows, sitting far away in some dank federal office, is using a computer with printouts and models -- formulas and so forth -- to determine what the doctor rendering the service is going to be paid. This is price fixing. This is government control. We already have this. This is why it's messed up. Now, we can get lost in the details here of the doctor's only getting reimbursed this or they're having their payments bundled here or what have you. That's not the point. The problem is, imagine if you had to check into a hotel this way and the room is 400 bucks a night, and some federal bureaucrat says, "We're only going to pay the hotel a hundred bucks for this," and the hotel has to give you the room! It can't be sustained.

RUSH: Steve in Rockford, Illinois, you're next. It's great to have you here, sir. Hello.

CALLER: I was wondering why nobody is even bringing up -- it just seems like the logical progression to this thing if Obama is doing this all on purpose -- that the first ones that are going to be sucked into this government option are all the government unions.

RUSH: Wait, what? The reason Obama is doing what is for government unions...? Say that again.

CALLER: Ramming the health care through and basically destroying the economy. The first ones are going to get sucked into his government-option health care plan are going to be the government unions. All teachers, all workers of state universities, everybody who works for the government -- and the government unions, they'll be the first ones sucked into the government option.

RUSH: Uhhhh. Yeah, but everybody's going to get sucked into the government option.

RUSH: I mean, in ten years there's not going to be any other option but the government.

CALLER: Right. But their base, they gotta have a base to operate from first, and the first ones they're going to take in will be the government employees --

RUSH: State governments, state governments can off-load...? Well, look, there are a lot of reasons why Obama wants this. It's no accident that he wore a purple tie yesterday. Purple is the official color of the SEIU. It's like Clinton. Have we forgotten? Clinton used to signal Monica Lewinsky, "Today is a good day," by wearing a certain color tie. Remember that? This is Andy Stern, union driven. Folks, the union heads and the leaders of these unions, essentially, are communists. They don't like this country. I'm talking about government union people. I'm not talking about the UAW and Teamsters, although they might be. I'm talking about unions that exist in the federal government. These are Obama's buddies, but the overall reason (we've discussed this) that Obama wants this, is expansive government that he controls, limiting the freedom of Americans. I'm getting blue in the face here saying all this over and over and over. Put quite simply, Barack Obama does not like this country as it was founded and he wants to transform it, and he has said so. But this has to be stopped because if he gets this, then he's got 90% of his objective done. Because everything about human behavior can be regulated because it has relationship to health care costs, which they -- Obama -- are going to have total control over.

Look, the bottom line on the SEIU, the Service Employees International Union, they represent more than 900,000 caregivers and hospital employees, including about a 110,000 nurses and 40,000 doctors in public, private, and nonprofit medical institutions. What Andy Stern wants, the head of the SEIU, is to unionize doctors. He wants their dues. He wants to have a union control the whole health care industry here, and they're just now getting started. Obama is his blood brother. The energy behind this is more than just focused in Obama. It is concentrated in all of these unions, and they are the largest union of health care workers in the country, and they're just getting started. That's also at play here, too.

CALLER: Hello there. There is another sinister side to this Medicare problem, Rush, I believe. When Obama said he was going to fundamentally change America, I think that might include less health care for Medicare recipients, because if you're older and you have less care, you die. So once a certain number of people are gone out of the system, it lightens up the load on Medicare, it lightens up on Social Security, and --

RUSH: I want to know exactly when. There's no wrong answer here. I'm just genuinely curious. At what point and how did you arrive at this conclusion?

CALLER: Well, you just see that tightening up on the doctors, putting them in the strain to treat Medicare and --

RUSH: Well, two months ago, six years ago, when did you figure out that if the government controls Medicare, they could determine whether or not you live or die by denying or giving you care? When did that realization hit you?

RUSH: Because that's exactly -- forget the reasons why, culling the herd, or what have you, the whole point of getting control of health care is to regulate everybody's life, and look at how they decide now whether somebody should get treated or not: age, how sick are you, how much it's going to cost to invest in your recovery, are you going to recover. And when the government is in charge of making those decisions and not you and your doctor --

CALLER: Didn't he also, now, I'm not sure about this man's name, but wasn't it Sunstein back there, one of the czars early on said that the world would be better off if we had a third less people?

RUSH: -- you're talking about Cass Sunstein. He's a constitutional bomb detonator.

RUSH: There are a lot of Democrats that have said things like that, Paul Ehrlich in The Population Bomb back in 1976. That's part of the global warming argument, it's part of the health care argument, it's part of every -- look, as far as the left is concerned, the only corrupting influence in the universe is human beings, Republican and conservative human beings are the only corrupting influence. Everything else is pristine, clean and pure as the wind driven snow.

CALLER: Got a question for you. I tried to get through to you all day yesterday and actually since the health care summit last Thursday, what you said when you first came on today, I was trying to get through to you to let you know that yesterday, because I couldn't find any new bill. And if there is no new bill --

CALLER: -- and you say is right, and I believe 200% that you are right, that's what they're trying to do, why isn't Mitch McConnell, Eric Cantor, all the Republicans, why aren't they telling people this? Why aren't they telling them that there is no bill, that if the House passes this, it's done?

RUSH: Well, because there's still the possibility that there will be what Obama wants in a reconciled bill. Now, they could go out and say there isn't one now but Boehner just said he expects the Senate bill to arrive on the House floor within days and for the House to begin debating it, and essentially vote on it or not vote on it. All this means is they don't have the votes for this yet but they can't go out and say there is no Obama plan, he's lying because what Obama said could end up in there. It's a technical point. I could retire and I could have three times the wealth I have if I could just get a dollar for every time I've been asked, "Why don't the Republicans do X?"

RUSH: But I want you to try to get your arms around this by imagining going into Walmart and having a sales tax 21% on everything you buy in there. The New York Times has a blog today called Dot Earth is the name of the blog. The writer here is Sindya N. Bhanoo: "To meet the Obama administration's targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, some researchers say, Americans may have to experience a sobering reality: gas at $7 a gallon. To reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the transportation sector 14 percent from 2005 levels by 2020," which is what Obama has mandated, "the cost of driving must simply increase, according to a forthcoming report by researchers at Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. The 14 percent target was set in the Environmental Protection Agency's budget for fiscal 2010," which Obama wrote, so you must feel pain. If we're going to save the climate, if we're going to reduce the greenhouse gases and if we're going to perpetuate this hoax, you people have to feel the pain, you people are going to have to suffer seven-dollar-a-gallon gasoline recommended by some researchers at Harvard. Those are the people Obama loves. Those are the people Obama listens to.

Do not think for a moment that this is out of the realm of possibility. Take a look at where we are now after just over a year and then realize we haven't even gotten to the bad stuff yet that this guy has planned. (interruption) Well, Snerdley just shouted in my ear over the IFB "Americans will not stand for seven dollars a gallon." I have been saying the last 20 years that Americans will not stand for X, and they're standing for it. This is the first major push-back. Well, '94, but that was the post office scandal in the House and the bank and just a bunch of corruption stuff. This is the first real big -- in my life. Now, there have been others, don't misunderstand, but this is a huge push-back. And they're going to ram down here our throats anyway. Make no mistake, they're going to try to do it. They're dead serious about this about this and they do not care about the outcome.

CALLER: Hi, Rush, thank you for taking my call, and I love to speak to you when I can, and I'm actually driving from Omaha to Lincoln on Route 80 and my comment is that it's fine for the people on the east and west coasts in those densely populated areas; they can pay $7 a gallon for gas. That will cut their driving, if they have access to mass transportation. But I think the rest of us in the rural states ought to be exempt. There is no mass transportation here in Nebraska to speak of, for example. So I think we should be exempt from that. Let the liberal people who built all their mass transportation systems enjoy the fruits of it.

RUSH: Yeah. At least you're honest about it, in the same spirit here as Senator Nelson. The way this would happen, of course, would be a "carbon tax," an initial federal tax on every gallon of gas. They couldn't just proclaim the price to be seven bucks. If they wanted it to be a constant $7 they'd have to have a floating tax but, they won't. They'll have a tax that will get it to of is dollars or even higher. I understand the point you're making because the people have been advocating for this are the people, the leftists, who live in these big urban centers on the coasts. "Okay, you want it? You got it."

CALLER: That's right. You know, I actually just left the job communicate 95 miles each way, three days a week. There was absolutely... I mean, how could you do that without a car? You know, there is no mass transportation.

RUSH: You couldn't. To do it you would have to change your lifestyle so dramatically.

CALLER: Yeah, and I started it when the gas was like about $4 a gallon so it was kind of painful little bit, but, yeah, I did it.

RUSH: Well, we have learned that $4 a gallon is a tipping point for people in this country. The point of this story -- remember, now, these are recommendations to the government from some egghead researchers at Harvard, and it's all based on a faulty premise and a hoax, and that is that man-made greenhouse gases are causing climate change, global warming or whatever. That is just the vehicle. This is the one of the greatest ways they could limit freedom: You limit mobility, you limit freedom, you create even more dependence on other things to get by. This is where we're headed with this administration.

CALLER: We're still driving on the ice and drilling holes and fishing and enjoying our great outdoors here.

CALLER: I'd like to comment on this gas thing, you know, 'cause these guys are gonna put everybody in the RV industry in Indiana out of business, all of the recreational parks will be out of business. Nobody will be going anywhere anymore --

CALLER: Millions more. I mean it will be worse than the Carter recession, and they almost killed the RV industry at that time.

RUSH: Yeah, well, they're coming back to kill it for sure this time. Now, people, don't panic yet. This is just in a little Dot Earth blog in the New York Times. Some eggheads at Harvard have looked at the EPA budget, reducing carbon emissions to 2005 levels by 2020 and they say a key ingredient to doing that is seven-dollar-a-gallon gasoline with a vast increase in the federal gasoline tax. So I think it's just a proposal from Harvard, but Clinton had this idea, carbon tax, one of the first things he proposed in the first six months. Look, Democrats are Democrats, liberals are liberals, and this is what they're proposing, and this is what they want to do. They want to create -- I keep reading, the dream is to create a European welfare state. Europe is pikers compared to what these people want to do. These people want to permanently transform the greatest country on earth and turn it into a basic unrecognizable stepchild. They don't like this country. This country is unjust and immoral. This country has stolen things that doesn't belong to it. All the oil that we use, all the trees that we've cut down, and all the disease and disaster we've caused.

RUSH: Guess what, folks? His latest health care speech, number 442,000, is going to be surrounded by doctors and nurses. I hope they remember to bring the lab coats this time. Remember the last time they did one of these in the Rose Garden they had to pass out lab coats to the doctors? Of course, that wasn't a prop. Oh, no, no. That wasn't a prop. But when Eric Cantor brought the actual bill to the health care summit, that was a "talking point" and a "prop." So he's going to be surrounded by doctors and nurses.

RUSH: Now, here's the latest on this, and none of this is a surprise but it's going to be interesting. "Sen. Tom Harkin told POLITICO that Senate Democratic leaders have decided to go the reconciliation route. The House, he said, will first pass the Senate bill after Senate leaders demonstrate to House leaders that they have the votes to pass reconciliation in the Senate." There's still a little tizzy here about who's going to go first. None of these guys really want to fall on the sword for this but they have to. So there's an argument, okay, who's gotta go first? In this case, the House will first pass the Senate bill, and they don't want to do that. They want the Senate to go first. The Senate wants the House to go first. So the House will pass the Senate bill first, Senate leaders will demonstrate to House leaders they've got the votes to pass reconciliation. "Harkin made the comments after a meeting in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's office including Harkin and Sens. Baucus, Dodd, Durbin, Schumer and Murray."

Now, I'm pretty sure I'm right about this. This means that the House has to pass its bill. So we are back to having the Cornhusker Kickback and all the other bad things Obama said he opposed still in it. We're talking the Senate bill, and there's not a new one. They can't take those out under reconciliation. Every one of those things is up for debate if the Republicans want to try to stop this in parliamentary procedures, they can throughout the process. However, the parliamentarian can be overruled by Biden, who is the president of the Senate. We know what Biden's going to do here. So if they go reconciliation, all the stuff that Obama's going to say in 20 minutes is simply nonsense, whatever he says. He's going to have the doctors and the nurses out there. As I say, I hope they remember the lab coats. They forgot 'em last time.

I have also just had it made available to me some excerpts from Obama's speech coming up here in about 20 minutes. It's released by the White House and he's using the doctors and nurses as a prop for atmosphere and as a prop in the speech. Here is the obligatory Alinsky line and this is the first paragraph the White House has released. "I don't believe we should give government bureaucrats or insurance company bureaucrats more control over health care in America." He precisely believes that! He precisely believes that a government bureaucrat, namely himself, should have control over health care. That's what this is all about, but you're going to hear him say, "I don't believe we should give government bureaucrats, insurance company bureaucrats more control over health care in America." He wants control of it. This is pure Alinsky. You speak in the language of your audience. He knows that his audience does not want what he is prepared to give them so he's going to try to convince his audience that he's going to give them what they want. He's going to lie, which he can't help. He's a liberal! He has to lie.

He's going to use this lie, this throwaway line to paint the insurance companies as the villain here, with not one word about how government intrusions have totally screwed up the market and driven up costs. I take you back to Howard Fineman's column yesterday in Newsweek about his medical emergency down in Argentina. We find ourselves accepting so many premises that are ludicrous. It's been 24 hours, and not one person -- and I begged for one person, anybody, somebody tell me what it is that qualifies the most inexperienced, unqualified guy in whatever room he walks into, Barack Obama, to run a two-and-a-half trillion-dollar segment of our economy? Would somebody show me the resume? Would somebody show me that he understands how drugs are developed and brought to market? Would somebody show me that he understands the patent process? Would somebody show me that he understands how the MRI came to be, what its purpose is? Can somebody show me that he knows how to run a hospital? Can somebody show me at any point in his life where he has had any experience with our health care system other than as a blood money sucking patient? No. Nobody can, because he doesn't have any. And yet, we're sitting here debating a premise, Obamacare, when Obama hasn't the slightest idea how to do this.

There is no business in this country that would hire Barack Obama to run it. They might hire him as a rainmaker. They might hire him as a PR guy. But nobody would ever hire this guy to run any aspect of their business. And yet we're sitting here debating this whole notion that Obama is the guy to set this up while he lies to us and says we have to give government bureaucrats or insurance company bureaucrats less control over health care in America. He's going to wipe out insurance bureaucrats. He's going to expand bureaucratic power in Washington, mainly by giving it to himself. So it's the same old BS here, folks, hold the insurance companies accountable. But no one holds the government accountable. Nobody is looking at this in any kind of a rational way. Oh, yeah, we look at the bill, we look at the details, and the spending, and the deficits, and the redistribution. All that's fine, we've done this all year.

The real question is, who the heck is this guy to say, (imitating Obama) "I'm gonna devise a system, I'm going to run it, and I'm the only one who can." Who the heck is he? What's he ever done? He gets nagged by his wife, for crying out loud, over cholesterol. That's why he nags us about it. Same old BS. He said: "My proposal also gets rid of many of the provisions that had no place in health care reform, provisions that were more about winning individual votes in Congress than improving health care for all Americans." Okay. I assume that means the Louisiana Purchase and the Cornhusker Kickback are gone? I don't know. I don't know how it can be gone given reconciliation. He's gonna lie about saying if you like your plan you get to keep your plan when in fact his plan's going to drive our plans out of existence, by design and on purpose. Who is this guy?

RUSH: A note to our affiliates, 'cause I don't know what the affiliates on the EIB Network are going to do. Some of them might cover the whole thing. We're gonna JIP it. We'll JIP it, but I'm telling you what he's going to say in advance right now. Using White House own excerpts, and I'm analyzing it right now. We'll JIP it but we're not going to go wall-to-wall coverage on this thing. I mean, that's what this guy wants. This is not an accident that the thing is scheduled for 1:45, right smack-dab in the middle of the EIB Network's broadcast comprehension of the day. So we'll JIP it. Our microphones are there, but we're not going to go wall to wall and I'm not going to walk out of the room for the 15 to 20 minutes it will take him to do this. We'll comment on it as it goes. (sigh) I'm watching them now, the lab coats are filing in now, they remembered to have the doctors in the lab coats.

Are the nurses in nurse uniforms? Anybody in there on a stretcher? Anybody in there on life support? Anybody in there who was just canceled by an insurance company, preexisting condition or denied? They ought to go for broke, wheel in somebody that just died this morning, that you might be able to blame it on an insurance company. I mean, that's about how desperate these people have become.

RUSH: so he's going to say, in addition to everything else I have a told you he's going to say, "At stake is not just this problem but our ability to solve any problem."

Uh, he doesn't get it, or maybe he won't get it. See, we think government CAUSES the problems. We don't need government to solve it. We just want governments out of our way, Mr. President. We don't look to government to solve problems. Those who do are continually disappointed and borderline insane. You cause the problems. (impression) "I don't believe we should give government bureaucrats or insurance company bureaucrats more control over health care in America." That's the Alinsky line. That's where he's just lying through his teeth. Of course he's going to run the insurance bureaucrats out of business and empower one bureaucrat, primarily himself. But then he's going to say this. Get this. (impression) "So this is our proposal. This is where we've ended up. It's an approach that's been debated and changed, and I believe improved over the last year. It incorporates the best ideas from Democrats" there aren't any "and the best ideas from the Republicans. Now, what are these best ideas of the Republicans? Well, here you go.

"Including some of the ideas Republicans offered during the health care summit, like funding state grants on medical malpractice reform." What is he talking about? Medical malpractice reform does not require government funding! What is that? Funding state grants on medical malpractice reform? You just change the tort law. Here's the second Republican idea. Now, brace yourself. The second Republican idea that came up (this from Tom Coburn during the health care summit) is "curbing waste, fraud, and abuse in the health care system." Does that mean if the Republicans hadn't brought it up, they were going to leave it in? If the Republicans had not brought up the concept of getting rid of waste, fraud, and abuse, the Democrats would have it as part of the plan? This is a Republican-only idea, getting rid of waste, fraud...? Well, in practice it probably is (laughs) but it illustrates the problem. So there you have it. As I say, we'll JIP it. For our affiliates down the line, we're going to have to go to the break a little earlier like in a couple minutes, maybe three, in order to JIP the very beginning of this thing. Let's go to Virginia Beach and Dee. It's great to have you on the program, Dee. Welcome to the EIB Network.

CALLER: Here's the thing. The -- you talking about Obama being a hypocrite, but -- for not passing the bill with 60 votes. The bill was already passed on Christmas Eve with 60 votes in the Senate. So how is he a hypocrite?

RUSH: They don't have 60 votes now, and they couldn't get a compromise. The House bill and the Senate bill are two different bills. They couldn't compromise them, they couldn't conference them. They're too different. The Senate bill is not communist enough for the House bill, it doesn't have the public option in it and all that sort of stuff. It doesn't destroy the country fast enough, soon enough, on the Senate side. So they couldn't get agreement, and then Scott Brown wins, and there goes any attempt to get 60 votes.

CALLER: Yeah, I understand that, but the bill passed already. All they have to do is -- is merge them together.

CALLER: He didn't pass the whole bill through re-conciliation (sic), and that's not (cell garbled).

RUSH: It doesn't matter. That was then. That was then. This is now. They didn't merge the bills, and now they don't have the 60 votes. They're nowhere near 60 votes anymore.

CALLER: But he's not going to pass the whole bill through re-conciliation. That's the thing. The bill was already passed through the House and the Senate.

RUSH: Nope, nope. You're my understanding this. One bill and one bill only gets passed, and then the reconciliation process begins, and that's where the fun starts. There is no conference. There is no merging these two things. That's why there's a bit of panic on the House side because they gotta pass the Senate bill, and they don't like it. And they are going to have to trust Senate Democrat leaders that they can make the changes in reconciliation 'cause they don't have the 60 votes. Look, I understand that you are a slave to liberalism, but you gotta get your facts right. It's like one of your idols Harry Reid says: "You're entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts," and they don't have 60 votes, and the thing that they got passed with 60 votes is never, ever going to see the light of day -- and they're losing votes left and right in the House, which is why they have to go reconciliation. They basically don't have the votes for this, Dee, which means they're going to rewrite rules in the middle of it to say they can pass it however they wish and dare anybody to stop them. Pure and simple. You are watching the evaporation of your freedom and liberty and your country as you've known it vanish, dissolve right before your very eyes, and you call and argue with me. I can't cancel your insurance. I can't deny you coverage. I cannot raise your taxes. I am not your problem. But I do want to offer you a gift, since you care about health care. Mr. Snerdley will give this to you. Five free stitches for the wound of your choice any time you need it for the rest of your life.

RUSH: As we breathlessly await the arrival of Dr. Obama to the podium where there are doctors and nurses, we presume clean water, and probably some sick patients on life support as props.

The ultimate irony of using reconciliation. Reconciliation was originally sold as a way to bring down the deficit. You even heard Obama reference it that way. Its real name is budget reconciliation. And, meanwhile, here the Democrat Party is going to use budget reconciliation to expand the deficit like never before even imagined. I want you to remember this. How many of you are part of an HMO? And you hate it, don't you? Many of you hate your HMO. Guess who gave us the HMOs? The same people in this room at the White House, it was Ted Kennedy's deal, Ted Kennedy created the health maintenance organization, same people, absolutely same people. Who's next? We're waiting for Obama. I'm getting e-mails, by the way: "Don't JIP it, don't JIP it, I came home specifically to listen to you." I'm not going to get out of the picture here. Don't worry, I'll be here when we JIP it and I'll be the judge. I'll use my editorial and highly trained broadcast skills to determine just when it's time to get out of this, and it's not going to be long. Trust me. The whole thing is an exercise. He's a compulsive liar.

RUSH: Oh. Okay. Here comes the procession. Blue-clad nurses, here comes a doctor. Oh. Oh. No props here, right? No props. I wonder how much they paid these people, or I wonder how much these people have donated to Obama. Is that how you get selected for this? They're all coming out, they're standing, let's see, three, four, five, six of them. It's pretty diverse. They got three women, one who's black and then three white guys. That's a miscalculation. You gotta at least have a black guy in there. Tavis Smiley is not going to be happy. Here is the president now to a standing ovation. Looks like he's in the East Room again. These doctors look like they deal with the insane. Well, you know, I've seen movies about doctors that deal with the insane. I know what they look like. All right, let's JIP it, let's see what's happening here. Our microphones are there.

OBAMA: -- standing behind me, physicians, physician assistants, and nurses who understand how important it is for us to make much needed changes in our health care system. I want to thank all of you who are here today. I want to especially recognize two people who have been working tirelessly on this effort, my secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius. (applause)

RUSH: Another incompetent, clueless. What about the swine flu emergency, hmm? How about the swine flu? Where is that?

OBAMA: As well as our quarterback for health reform out of the White House, Nancy-Ann DeParle.

OBAMA: -- in this room with doctors and nurses who know the system best, and so it's fitting to be joined by all of you --

OBAMA: -- at a summit where Democrats and Republicans engaged in a public and very substantive discussion.

OBAMA: This meeting capped off a debate that began with a similar summit nearly one year ago. Since then --

OBAMA: Everything there is to say about health care has been said, and just about everybody has said it. So now is the time to make a decision --

OBAMA: Not just for the insurance companies, but for America's families and America's businesses.

OBAMA: And where both sides say they agree is that the status quo is not working for the American people. Health insurance is becoming more expensive by the day. Families can't afford it --

OBAMA: -- businesses can't afford it. Smaller businesses and individuals who don't get coverage at work are squeezed especially hard. And insurance companies freely ration health care based on who's sick and who's healthy, who can pay and who can't.

OBAMA: Democrats and Republicans agree that this is a serious problem for America and we agree that if --

RUSH: I am not giving up an obscene profit commercial break for this guy. We are not going to blow through a commercial break.

OBAMA: More Americans will lose their family's health insurance if they switch jobs or lose their job.

OBAMA: More small businesses will be forced to choose between health care and hiring.

OBAMA: More insurance companies will deny people coverage who have preexisting conditions.

OBAMA: And the rising cost of Medicare and Medicaid will sink our government deeper and deeper and deeper into debt. On all of this we agree. So the question is, what do we do about it?

OBAMA: On one end of the spectrum there are some who suggested scrapping our system of private insurance and replacing it with a government-run health care system.

OBAMA: And though many other countries have such a system, in America it would be neither practical nor realistic.

RUSH: Right. But you're still going to do it. Okay, that's it. Stop the JIP. That's exactly what he's going to do. There is going to be a public option. That's the only reason to do this. There isn't going to be private insurance. He's Saul Alinsky Jr. here. I've had enough. I didn't really need this much.

RUSH: The audacity here, "Everything on health care has been said, everything's been said." So the message from the president of the United States is, "Shut up, debate over, bend over. Everything's been said." This, after he and his tyrannical party have decided to ignore and overrule the explicit things being said by the American people, which is, "Hell, no, we don't want this." He just got through saying, (imitating Obama) "It passed in the Senate by 60 votes, passed in the House by a sizeable majority, now we going to do it." Well, if it passed why don't we have it? And then he starts this, "Bush got his tax cuts with a simple majority. We need health care with a simple majority." after we've got eight sound bites of him decrying, criticizing, demanding that the very rule he's going to break never be broken. It's like I said the other day, folks, you have rules and you have Democrats, and that means you have no rules.

So it will be interesting to see what kind of fallout there is from this on the part of the American people, 'cause this was... I mean, I have never heard health care presented in a rosier fashion. (imitating Obama) "We're gonna reduce costs. We're going to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars over two decades, and these are not my numbers, these are the CBO numbers, and they're the referee to determine how much stuff costs here." It's not true. It simply isn't true. He says if you want to keep your doctor and keep your plan, you can. No. I don't know what plan he's got, but every plan that's out there, either one of them, the House or Senate version -- we're beating a dead horse here. How long before we have a doctors union with these kind of people in the room? We're on the path to single payer, folks. That's what this is. And everything he said to the contrary is an out-and-out lie.

Now, while you're out there keeping track of the number of times Nancy Pelosi is going to declare that she can get Obama's health care plan passed, remember there's a lot of illusion going on out here. For a year Pelosi and Reid have both said, "Oh, yeah, we got the votes, oh, yeah." They've never had the votes. They're going to be out there doing it again. "Oh, we gotta go reconciliation, though, but we got the votes, we're gonna get it done." While you keep track of the number of times Pelosi says that she can get the votes for Obama's health care plan, to get it passed, make sure you take note of the Senate-passed jobs bill last week, more of the same spend-as-we-go and proof positive that the number of ideas in the wheelhouse of this administration is very few. If the first $800 billion did not affect the unemployment figures -- well, the first $800 billion did affect the unemployment numbers. They went up. If the unemployment numbers rising as rapidly as they have baffled and surprised the so-called economists, then why would more money thrown at the same problem in the same way work again?

What we need here are new ideas. We need people and organizations to get them into the arena, and there is an organization that is a warehouse for ideas. It's the Heritage Foundation, and I just want to give you a heads-up, later today or first thing in the morning, they are going to have the most authentic, detailed, right-on analysis of this drivel that we just heard than anybody else has. That's not to put anybody down, but the Heritage Foundation -- it's where I'm going to go. AskHeritage.org is where I'm going to go because right now the brainiacs in this place are tearing down this speech word by word, lie by lie. They're going to have the truth of what was really said here today at some point at AskHeritage.org. They're going to have not just an analysis but they will have genuine free market solutions and ideas on how to create jobs and how to stop this massive health care plan. I'll tell you, if you want more than a sneak peek, you can go to the Heritage Foundation website right now and you don't need to be a member. You're not going to be able to see nearly a smidgen, barely a smidgen of what they have there, you need to join AskHeritage.org. Just become a member, $25 donation. Now is the time. Greatest bunch of people. I can't wait for them to break this down. I mean if I weren't working on this program I'd break it down myself. Obviously I have my commitments and responsibilities here.

But tomorrow -- ha-ha-ha-ha -- it's Hiroshima time, folks, it's Nagasaki. He thinks he's going nuclear, wait 'til we get to this tomorrow. (interruption) Hm-hm. He said that? He said this is not about the next election? And the one after that? And it's not about politics? My plan would stop arbitrary premium -- oh, price controls. Yeah, that really has worked, price controls. We have Medicare and Medicaid price controls, that's really worked, hasn't it? Look, there's a lot of funny stuff in the speech, too. We recorded a lot of good Republican ideas from the summit. Like state grants for tort -- medical malpractice reform? What is that? What are state grants for medical malpractice reform? And then he said the next great idea the Republicans had was eliminating fraud and waste, as though if the Republicans hadn't proposed it, fraud and waste would still be in his health care plan. That's a Republican idea? Sadly it is, but I mean that's not a Republican idea. That's a family budget common sense idea. And then in his summary he was talking about all the Republican ideas that have been incorporated, and then he had to start bashing 'em. (imitating Obama) "Republican plan would only insure three million. My plan, 31 million. And, by the way, we'll cut the deficit a trillion dollars at the same time." Numbers won't work. They don't add up.

CALLER: You know, what has really bothered me about these folks all along is these are the people that think they can tax their way to prosperity, and this plan they have to tax America and then not spend health care funds until 2014, I guess, that can't work. These guys are deficit spenders. They're going to blow our money before health care even starts. The MO of these folks is they think they can spend their way out of trouble, and they're gonna save our money?

RUSH: You know, this is what I have a problem with. Nobody is this stupid to think that this is going to end our trouble. Nobody is this stupid. Now, they may be this ideologically blind, but nobody's this stupid, particularly after 14 months of utter destruction to the US private sector. That's why I maintain this is purposeful. This is being done for a specific reason, and they're not saying what it is. I am, but they're not. This is not about lowering your insurance costs or lowering your premium. This is not about making sure that you get treated for whatever you want, whenever you want it, and you're not going to have to pay for it. This is not about improving health care in America, because none of that happens with this. This is about destruction. Barack Obama is the most unknown person to be elected president in this country's history. What do we know about him? We don't know what his grades were.

We know who his associates were and so forth, but he's the least vetted candidate that we've ever had. Now, those of us who no longer pay attention to the Drive-Bys, we found out as much as we needed to know about this guy. The first thing we needed to know is he's a liberal. He was never a centrist. He's never been a centrist about anything. He speaks a good centrist game but he has never been one. He's never been a unifier. Barack Obama has never unified anybody. Never. He's never brought anybody together. It's never happened. Yet there were enough saps in this country who bought the drivel and thought it would be oh-so-nice if it could happen, but this is not the guy to do it. We also found out that Barack Obama is a guy doesn't like this country. It's the way he's been educated, the way he was brought up. He thinks this country is almost criminal in the way it has behaved. It has stolen resources from around the world, from other countries, that weren't ours. We have pursued a rich and unwarranted lifestyle while causing poverty around the world.

Our military has committed murder around the world. Our CIA has committed murder around the world. We have militarized space. We have created the deadliest weapons. We have stolen the genuine wealth of the true earners of that wealth in this country. All the rich people in this country are only rich because they stole it from the people who did the real work and should have been paid the real money. And so by golly, by God, it's payback time now. It's payback time, and everybody who loves this country and who thinks it's the greatest country that's ever been is going to have to get their mind right, because we don't deserve that, as immoral and as unjust and as imperialistic as we have been. That's his mind-set. That's the mind-set of his preacher. It's the mind-set of Calypso Louie, another friend of his. It's the mind-set of half the union leaders, if not more! It is the mind-set of many of his professors at Harvard and many of your kids' professors at what have school they're going to. It's what he's been taught. And his #1 influence is a guy named Frank Marshall Davis, who also hated this country. He was an avowed communist and Marxist who hated this country -- while living in Hawaii! Go figure.

[this is not brain surgery; if you subsidize unemployment, what will you get more of?]

RUSH: Last night on the Kudlow Report, CNBC, spoke to Alan Reynolds, Cato Institute senior fellow. Kudlow said, "You're saying that the stimulus is raising unemployment, and I think you're saying longer we have unemployment, the compensation benefits, the worse the unemployment rate gets. Is that right?"

REYNOLDS: Absolutely. I quote the Federal Reserve. The latest FOMC minutes, say, probably added at least a percentage point, the extension of unemployment benefits. Punched it up. Larry Summers himself said unemployment is about one and a half percentage points higher than we can explain by the usual GDP figures. Alan Krueger in the Treasury department has done research on this subject. The OECD says the evidence is totally clear. Look, if you subsidize something you get more of it. We are subsidizing very, very, long extended periods of unemployment. And we're getting what we paid for.

RUSH: Duh! Duh! You subsidize what you get you're going to get more of it. Same thing. If you tax more of something, you're going to get less of it. If you tax something less, you're going to get more of it. Economics 101. Free market 101. Kudlow says, "Well, we used to have unemployment benefits for six months. Now it's, what, 18 months?"

REYNOLDS: It was 18 months until November, and what we're dealing with here is an extra 13 weeks, which takes it out to almost two years. So we would be rolling back, and only in a couple dozen states, because this only applies to states that have very high unemployment. In a couple dozen states you would have to go back to only 79 weeks of unemployment benefits. My data may be slightly out of date, but Canada had a maximum of nine months last time I looked in a 2007 OECD report, Sweden was 14 months, Britain was 6, Japan was something like 10. I mean this is an unusually long period, and it basically, it gets people to not leave Michigan, to not leave California and go to Utah. Utah only pays 46 weeks, they have an unemployment rate of 6.7.

RUSH: Well, I like hearing that, that backs up something else I've always said and that is most of the limitations that we have in life are self-imposed. For example -- I'll just use myself. There is no way that I would have realized my career dreams if I had decided to stay where I was born. Too small a town. It would not have happened. I had to leave, had to move. Now, some people don't want to, some people to want stay with their families and friends and so forth, that's totally fine. But it's a limitation if what you want to do is not there, if the opportunity to be the best at it is not there. This is a great example of a great education here today on this program, costing you zilch. Finally, Kudlow says, "You say the Fed has acknowledged all this in print. You say the Organization for Economic Development has said the same thing. So why do Republicans and Democrats in Washington keep extending unemployment benefits, except for Jim Bunning? Why do they keep doing it?"

REYNOLDS: I think it has to do with natural sympathy. I mean you want to help people who are in trouble and one can make an argument that, well, if they have a little more time to look they might get a better job. We're talking two years, there's just an awful lot of research that says the intensity of job search really picks up in the last four weeks or so before the benefits run out. The benefits are in -- in California, it's $4.75 an hour, it's about $25,000 a year, that's my salary, that's serious money, and in New Jersey it's closer to $30,000 a year. If somebody else in the family is working you just are not in a real big hurry to get off of that gravy train. Plus you're likely to lose Medicaid, other benefits, some health benefits and some housing benefits, perhaps, food stamps.

RUSH: I knew I'd heard this somewhere. Alan Reynolds there has just said that in New Jersey it's $30,000 a year on unemployment benefits, and if you have two people in the house unemployed that's $60. You're not in a big hurry to get off the gravy train. If you do you lose Medicaid or other benefits, food stamps and so forth. All makes sense. So finally Kudlow says, "The 90% working are financing the 10% unemployed out to two years. Is that what's happening here?"

REYNOLDS: Yeah. And it's really getting to -- the balance is tilting pretty badly. The ratio of transfer payments including Social Security, Medicaid, is now 40% as large as all private wages and salaries combined.

REYNOLDS: The amount of individual income tax was barely even with the amount of transfer payments, federal and state, that were paid out last year, about $2.1 trillion. We're reaching a tripping point where those who are doing the paying in and those who are taking out, I mean it makes a lot of people want to step over the edge and join the other camp.

RUSH: And there's a story in the Washington Times today about how never before have as many Americans been dependent on the government for their daily existence as they are today. It's at an all-time high. And make no mistake, that's by design. We've been headed this way ever since FDR and the New Deal, and this has been the objective of it. The theory is that all these people are going to vote for whoever keeps the money flowing, and that's Democrats. That's been the theory.

RUSH: Here is Ross in Cincinnati. I'm glad you called, sir. You're on the Rush Limbaugh program. Great to have you here.

CALLER: I would like to bring to your attention a little predicament in which health insurance is being imposed on me. I am attending the University of Cincinnati, and in order for a student to attend at least six credit hours per quarter to attend, they must have health insurance. And in order to enforce this, they, by default, impose on your educational bill a health insurance premium for the University of Cincinnati student health insurance.

RUSH: So if you, say, have to take out a student loan, that just goes out of what you have to pay back.

CALLER: I'm not entirely certain. I have an idea. I believe that the student health insurance is intermingled with the staff health insurance, so by adding a bunch of young blooded healthy people to their health insurance premium plans, they bring down the premiums for the staff.

RUSH: Are you saying? Are you reveling the accusation on this program that those tightwad administrators, professors, graduate assistants and administrative types are trying to glom on to you healthy young kids in order to get their health insurance premiums down by imposing costs on you that you otherwise would not impose on yourself?

CALLER: Well, it gets better. In order to not pay theirs, you have to have insurance and you have to sign a waiver. You can't just say, "I don't want it." You have to sign this little document that has a little clause that says, "I understand that if my insurance policy does not meet their minimum requirements, my health insurance waiver will be declined and I will be responsible for paying a student health insurance premium," and in their requirement, they allow at least 20 mental health visits per year. Now, I did a little research --

RUSH: Wait. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. In the requirement...? What do you mean, allow 20 mental visits?

CALLER: Yeah, saying out loud I feel like I need one of those mental health visits right now. But I did a little research and our state health insurance that we provide for our state elected officials --

CALLER: -- does not meet this minimum requirement. It only allows for ten mental health visits per year.

RUSH: What do you mean "allows"? You mean if you think you're going...? You mean it's part of the coverage. It's part of the plan?

CALLER: The insurance company has to cover it, yes. That's part of their requirement.

CALLER: In addition to this, in order to waive it you have to provide them with all of your insurance company's information, including your insurance company's name, the telephone number for the insurance company, your policy number, the name of the policyholder. So if you're not the policyholder but your parent is you have to give them their information.

RUSH: You can't go? What? What if you drop your coverage after you're already enrolled and you're taking classes? They kick you out?

RUSH: You know what this sounds like to me? I'll tell you something. It has nothing to do with insurance. This was way back when in the early days of my broadcast career. Everybody thinks that it was all a bowl of cherries because nobody knows (sigh) all the trouble I've seen. But I worked at a place once... I'm even a little recalcitrant in mentioning this, but I worked at a place that sounds like this university, trying to make you think you're crazy. I worked at a place once where the guy that ran it came up to me and said, "You seem depressed. Is everything okay?"

Well, the upshot is he wanted me to check-in to a mental health place and end up doing commercials for it. He wanted me to spend two weeks in the place to do commercials for it. It was a ruse to make me think I was losing my mind just to get a new client. (interruption) Well... (laughing) We didn't do live remotes in those days. I fortunately graduated to live remotes. At any rate, you know, we all have to eat the excrement sandwiches out there. Some days you get the mustard and mayonnaise, and some days you don't.

RUSH: This is not going to surprise you, ladies and gentlemen. But it's still infuriating. "Report Finds College Students Fail Basic Civics Test -- 'Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it' is one of the most oft-quoted aphorisms of Edmund Burke, an 18th-century Irish-born member of the British Parliament and fearless friend of liberty. Judging from the results of a recent survey conducted by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), most of the 14,000 college students who participated sadly will be repeating history. Considering that most of the 14,000 students who completed the exam (7,000 seniors and 7,000 freshmen) scored an F on the portion of the test covering basic American history and institutions, not only will they be repeating history, but with test scores like that, they'll be repeating history class, as well."

No, they won't be. "ISI, a conservative non-profit educational organization, has recently published the results of this sweeping survey in a 32-page report entitled 'The Shaping of the American Mind: The Diverging Influences of the College Degree and Civic Learning on American Beliefs.' ... Here are a few frightening figures certain to keep you up at night: * 71% of Americans failed the civics knowledge test; * 51% of Americans could not name the three branches of government; * The average score for college seniors on the civics knowledge test was 54.2% (an 'F' by any standard); * The average student's test score improved only 3.8 points from freshman to senior year; * Freshmen at Cornell, Yale, Princeton, and Duke scored better than seniors on the civics knowledge test. * 79% of elected officials that took the civics knowledge quiz did not know the Bill of Rights expressly prohibits the government from establishing a religion." Seventy-nine percent!

"30% of office holders did not know that 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' are the inalienable rights referred to in the Declaration of Independence," and I wonder how many of them know what "inalienable" means. Snerdley, what does "inalienable" mean? (laughing) Brian, what does "inalienable" mean? "We are all endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights, among them are..." What does "inalienable" mean? (interruption) No. "Can't be taken away." Exactly right. H.R., with the answer. They can't be taken away. It's not the immigration bill. They can't be taken away. "27% of politicians could not name even one right or freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment. * 43% did not know the purpose of the Electoral College. * 39% of lawmakers believe the power of declaring war belongs to the president," and it goes on and on and on -- and then here is a companion story.

You combine this college civics disaster story with Senator Lindsey Grahamnesty's plea for cap and tax based on the feeling... Listen to this. Graham explains, "I have been to enough college campuses to know if at that if you're 30 or younger, this climate issue is not a debate. It's a value. These young people grew up with recycling and a sensitivity to the environment and the world will be better off for it. They're not brainwashed." From a Republican. They are. It's a hoax, Senator! So you combine the basic ignorance of so many college students with the fact that they do believe that global warming isn't a hoax -- they have been brainwashed -- and you find out why it is that so many Democrats and others going to youth vote to try to get them on their side because they're easy. They don't know anything. They haven't been taught properly.

CALLER: Hi. I have a comment about what you were saying about kids in college and what they don't know about the First Amendment, what they don't know about government, and what they don't know about politics. Now I'm 56 years old, Rush. When I was 25, 30 years old, say 20, I didn't go to college. But I can tell you that the First Amendment and what the First Amendment said wasn't at the top of my list of what I thought I needed to know. What I needed to know is how to work, how to survive, how to take care of a family. I have friends that went to college. I have friends who have PhD. That wasn't... I only think if you're taking political science or you're that involved in politics or under your family's influence --

RUSH: You -- you -- Wait a minute. (crosstalk) No, no. Wait a minute. Are you calling after being referred to us by the Obama seminar caller website?

CALLER: Oh, gosh, no, Rush. I'm a hundred percent behind you. I'm a hundred percent. I am a conservative. So what I'm saying is in the real world, look what it costs for kids to even go to college nowadays. They are more concerned -- and at the top of their list isn't even how much taxes they're paying --

CALLER: And I don't think until you get older do you even get that involved in what's going on. Now, I'm a big fan of yours, Rush. I've only been listening for three months. My husband's listened to you forever. And you know what I used to say? "Will you turn that off because that is so negative." But now, I see why you're there and what you're trying to tell us and how you educate us, Rush. No, that's my opponent. But in the reality of a child's world, that's where they're at.

RUSH: Well, if that's true, we are in greater jeopardy and peril than I even thought.

CALLER: We are, Rush. We are. We have a 40-year-old daughter and a 32-year-old daughter.

RUSH: Because what we're talking about here is not politics. We're talking about understanding the root of our freedom. If we lose that, we lose the country.

RUSH: I really don't want to embarrass our previous caller, but to say, "Ah, it's not important to kids about the Bill of Rights and what the freedoms in the Bill of Rights are. That's not their world right now." Well, you know, my dog doesn't like eating the dog food, either, but I cram it down its throat. Your kids don't like milk, but you make 'em drink it -- and, for crying out loud, you're supposed to learn this stuff in junior high school! You're supposed to learn this stuff in elementary school, for crying out loud. All it is is understanding the foundation of our country and why it works and that you have the freedom to not be concerned with anything except being first in line at Blockbuster on Friday.

Over half the people in this survey, these kids, did not know when the War of 1812 was fought, much less who was in it! They didn't even ask them who was in it when they found out half of them didn't even know when the War of 1812 was fought. This is not minor stuff. It is evidence of the dumbing down of the country at the youngest ages so that liberalism, socialism, and the Democrat Party can wreak havoc in this country with impunity because half of the people are too stupid or ignorant to know the damage they are causing. And when the Democrat Party screws up it's not violating the Constitution. It's when they finally try to force things down people's throat that they instinctively don't want, which is what's happening now.

RUSH: Ashley, 23 years old from Gainesville, Florida. Nice to have you on the program. Hi.

CALLER: Thanks, Rush! I was calling because I had a comment. You were talking about the civics classes and how so many college students couldn't answer the questions and didn't know anything about the Bill of Rights. For one of my classes, a comparative politics class, one of our assignments was to create a new Bill of Rights, and being an online class we get to look at the discussions, and most of the class put that health care would be included in the Bill of Rights, because health care is a right to all citizens as well as a good education. Most of them wanted a college education to be something everyone has and it's free.

CALLER: Yeah, health care and education. Everyone should have a college education.

RUSH: Yeah. And everybody should have two houses: One for the wintertime and one for the summer. It's only fair.

CALLER: A lot of people were quoting FDR's addition to the Bill of Rights where everyone should be entitled to a decent house and a good education --

CALLER: Yes, everyone should be given it. It's a right. It's not just free, it's a right.

RUSH: Yeah, it sounds wonderful. You know, it's only been tried about a gazillion times in human history and it just has led to poverty.

RUSH: Stupidity, ignorance, and scientists who forecast tsunamis that don't exist.

CALLER: Oh, it's really frustrating to me. I read all these responses, and I just don't understand how people think that's a right. I don't think they understand what the Bill of Rights is or what --

RUSH: It's because they haven't been taught what the first Bill of Rights really means. They haven't been taught anything about capitalism.

CALLER: Oh, yeah. It's pretty frustrating when I'm on the other side of what all these people are wanting and having and I'm the only one in the class that has the opposite opinion. So...

CALLER: Well, it's an online class so we do forums so we get to read, but I always comment on them, and ask them what do they consider a decent home, when my decent home could be just a little random little house and theirs might be a mansion on the beach. Who's to decide what that is? But I never get any responses back. (chuckles)

CALLER: Mmm-hmm. But how do you set the standard? I just don't think they realize the whole Constitution is to protect us from the government, and they want the government to do everything for us.

RUSH: And Obama looks at it that way, too. There is a line of thinking that's been around a long time that views the Constitution as a "negative" set of liberties, which statists and big government people would only naturally see the Constitution in a negative light. Because the Constitution tells statists and big government people what they cannot do, by design. That's why and how we were founded. But they don't like that, because they want a new Bill of Rights, to basically say what they can do -- and they keep saying "for" us, but it's "to" us. They're just power zealots and so forth. Well, I appreciate you hanging in there on this because I can imagine how frustrating it is. You ought to try laughing at them in your replies, ridicule. You know, go Saul Alinsky on them. Just ridicule them. Just say that you're having the most fun reading some of these posts that you've had since you listened to me that day. That will really set 'em off. "You know, I haven't had this much fun since I was listening to, Rush, today. You people make my day. Do you honestly believe this?"

And just get out of the way for the next set of responses and whatever they are, just fire back with some more laughter. "Oh, you're kidding, right? You're just trying to pollute the message boards, right? You don't really believe this." Say stuff like that at them. Don't argue with them. They're not smart enough to be persuadable. These people have been brainwashed. Their minds are "right." You have to ridicule them and shame 'em and have them realize that they've been had and that they've been stupid. Since nobody wants to believe they're stupid -- you ever heard anybody admit it? "Yeah, yeah, I'm stupid." Nobody admits it, 'cause they don't want to feel it. So you have to make them feel stupid, and you can have fun doing it. That's what I do with the liberals that call here, and wherever I run into them. They last about 30 seconds and then they start personal insults and all that. So hang in there, Ashley, and have fun with that.

CALLER: Oh, thank you! It's just an honor to talk to you. I can't believe it. (giggles)

CALLER: Oh, I tried so many times over the years and this is the first time. But anyway I'm calling about this dumbing down of America thing that you've been talking about with different people. I teach remedial math at a local community college, and in the class I teach they're not allowed to use calculators, and you would be surprised (or probably you would be surprised) how many cannot add, subtract, multiply, and divide without a calculator. It's just been mind-boggling to me to realize the degree of ignorance. I mean, it's not just about the Constitution; it's about everything. I also work in the testing center, and when they come in there, they have to look up at an analog clock and write down the time, and you would be surprised how many cannot read an analog clock.

CALLER: Yeah. They look up there and they don't have a clue, and we have finally put a little digital clock there about the sign-in thing because they can't read the analog clock.

RUSH: Well, look, there's certain aspect of the digital age, calculators and so forth.

RUSH: But when you say you're teaching remedial math, what are you trying to remedy besides the calculator usage?

CALLER: Okay. Well, the math I'm teaching is call "prealgebra," and they have to come up to speed before they can take a college level course.

RUSH: Evelyn, I'm really sorry about that. I was using a digital clock, and I screwed up. I have no problem with analogs, but digitals sometimes give me a problem. We have both here. I wanted to give you a chance to conclude what you're saying.

CALLER: Oh, that's all. You know, the math that I teach is basic. These are high school graduates wanting to begin college, and the math I teach is middle school. It's basically middle school math.

CALLER: I love what I do. It's just a shame that there's so many that need what I do, you know what I mean?

RUSH: I do. It's important to love what you do. I've heard every pole dancer say that as well. It's true of every profession. Thanks, Evelyn, very much.

I had a verbal faux pas a moment ago when discussing negative and positive rights versus the Bill of Rights. It is our side, the good guys, who believe the Constitution is a document of negative rights, that is, the government has limited authority, not that we do. Our rights don't come from the Constitution. They come from God. The Constitution limits government authority. It does not create rights like the right to health care. The left means positive rights because they mean that it creates material rights for people which the government is to provide, and that's what they want to do with the Second Bill of Rights. Okay, now... (sigh) I promised I'm going to get into this Global Warming Stack, and I'm going to get into it in a minute. I'm putting it off for as long as I can. But I'm going to do it. But first, back to St. Louis and Annette. I'm glad you called. Great to have you here.

CALLER: Rush, I am so honored to speak with you. I'm afraid I'm going to trip over my tongue. I am calling about the --

CALLER: Oh, yeah. Well, I'm nervous. I am so honored and you're a patriot. I listen to you all the time. I'm also a member. I'm calling about the education problem. Last week you had a caller, a teacher from Kansas, and she said that history would no longer be taught in the schools. I am your age. My parents moved around a lot when I was little and I had the Missouri Constitution and the United States Constitution four times in four different schools, both private and public. In none of those classes was it taught that this would be important to us in our future. It was all dry facts. So if that many years ago it was so deteriorated, what do you think is happening now? It's not being taught at all, I fear.

RUSH: It's not, and I'll tell you why it's not. It's not being taught now because the left does not want young people to learn of socialism's failures. They do not want young kids to learn of communism's failures. They do not want the young to learn anything about the positive nature of capitalism, the great success brought about by the Reagan years and so forth. They don't want to teach it. So they lie about what really happened in the eighties and so forth and so on. It's a hideous thing. It's not about leadership. It's purely and simply about control. But Snerdley had an interesting observation about the woman -- what was her name, I'm having a mental block -- Jan that called last hour. She said that it wasn't important. They're not interested in the Constitution right now. That will happen when they get older.

Snerdley said, "You were so immersed in that point that you missed a biggie that she made."

He said, "You didn't hear her say that, up until three months ago, she made her husband turn the radio off when you were on because all you were was negative, negative, negative, and she didn't want to hear it. And then all of a sudden three months ago, when everything started to fall apart in the country, she started listening to you, and now you are teaching her and you are informing her?"

"Well, it didn't make a big deal to you because that happens all the time but imagine a Democrat listening to that from their point of view. That is scary, because they think all kinds of people hate you and think you're a maniac and what not. Now people who used to think that are getting their information from you, and that's gotta be blowing their minds and probably is one of the reasons why Obama set up that spam website, WhiteHouse.gov."

"Oh, yeah. They're flooding in here. I don't put nearly as many up as I could because that's all there would be." He said, "I limit calls praising you to no more than ten an hour. Any more than that and I think the people get tired of it."

I said, "Well, that's pretty good judgment on your part. Try to keep it at ten an hour. Anything beyond that probably would rub people the wrong way."

Anyway, I thought Snerdley had an excellent point. She said she was oblivious. She didn't like hearing about politics because it was all argument, it was all confrontation. She did not even like hearing about it. It was all negative. She made her husband turn the radio off. She was just oblivious to it, didn't matter. But now it's important -- and that's happening, I think, all over the country in many ways. In that regard, it's worse for the Democrats than they even know, electorally. But again they don't care when it comes to health. They do not care.

Excellent article on Obama’s latest healthcare speech (flanked by doctor-props), and how all of his promises have been shown to be nothing more than rhetoric:

This is fascinating. I have heard some people directly disparage the TEA party movement because they do not know what the original TEA party movement was all about (twice from friends and relatives and at least twice in the media). Now there is this Coffee Party, which is put out there as another grass roots movement (against tax on coffee???). Turns out, the organizer is an Obama political operative (as I have said in the past, whenever the left accuses the right of doing something questionable, that is something the left is already doing).

Do you recall that photo of the desperate polar bears drifting off miles from nowhere because of global warming?

There are real victims of global warming; this is a baby girl who survived her parents suicide pact, which was inspired by fears of coming global warming disasters (they shot their own baby girl in the chest):

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 is a news site which I just discovered; they gave 3 minute coverage to Obama’s healthcare summit and seemed to give a pretty decent overall view of it, without slanting one way or the other:

I have glanced through their website and it seems to be quite professional and reasonable. They have apparently been around since 1942.

This is fantastic; Florida (the Sunshine State) is now putting its state budget online:

Suzanne Somers s supposed to be older than Bill O’Reilly? He interviewed her this week, and she looked, well, hot. She is big into vitamins and human growth hormones.

The National Journal, which is a political journal (which, at first glance, seems to be pretty even-handed):

And I am hoping that most people see this as non-partisan: Citizens Against Government Waste:

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 #117	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	March 7, 2010