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).

Ann Coulter was not allowed to speak at a university in Ottowa, Canada because of her hate speech.

Elections were held in Iraq will be challenged by current Prime minister Al-Maliki.

"It's just going to be like Christmas," said DeCarlo Flythe, who lost health coverage for his family when he was laid off almost three years ago. "It's going to be great. You know, no worries (about) the bills. We are going to go ahead and pay our co-pay and be alright."

George Will, “We have become so sophisticated with drawing legislative districts—with gerrymandering—that we have reversed the axiom that the voters choose the representatives; now the representatives pick the voters. In the last 4 election cycles, 95% of incumbents have been reelected”

Reverend Al Sharpton told Fox News: "I think that this began the transforming of the country where the President had promised. This is what he ran on." When the interviewer interjected that many view the vote as a step towards socialism, Sharpton didn't skip a beat, responding: “The American public overwhelmingly voted for socialism when they elected President Obama.”

Rep. Tom Perriello (D-Va.),: “If you don't tie our hands, we'll keep stealing.” (Speaking of Congress continually raiding Social security and other programs where there is money).

President Obama on passing his healthcare bill: “This is what change looks like.”

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on regulatory reform of the financial sector: “This is what change looks like.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: "Jerusalem is not a settlement; it's our capital."

When told that climate change was causing flowers to lose their scent, climatologist Roy Spencer commented, “These researches must have mixed in some mushrooms with these flowers.” (Not an exact quote)

Dennis Miller, concerning Rahm Emanuel, “Everyone in Obama’s inner circle has thug turrets syndrom.”

Rush Limbaugh suggested that we start walking into clinics and hospitals and ask for our free healthcare (as someone has already done). I sent Rush this email: “Suggest that people contact their local Democratic represntative or Senato in order to find out where do they go to get their free healthcare. They are the people to ask. If anyone knows about a free colonoscopy, a Congressman with his head up there will know where to go.”

Mary Katherine Hamm about Obama selling his healthcare plan, “When he’s pitching this on his alleged pr blitz, just changing his verb tense on his 55 healthcare speeches is not going to sell the American people on this.”

Biden to President Obama about passing the healthcare bill: “This is a big f___ deal.”

Charles Krauthammer on Joe Biden’s comment to President Obama: “I think he is the man who, perhaps without intending, has given historical context to this presidency. After all, Obama sees himself as a successor to FDR and Truman, so now we have the historical procession: the New Deal, the Square Deal, and the "Big F**n Deal."

Neil Cavuto, when talking with a reporter about people waiting 4 ½ hours for Palin to speak, said, “I don’t do that for anything, except maybe a Cinnibun opening.”

Mattera interviews Hoyer:

MATTERA: How do you have the stones to tax Americans for not purchasing health care when you have tax cheat Charlie Rangel writing legislation and tax cheat Tim Geithner enforcing it?

HOYER: Uh, the effort we're focused on is -- is -- is making sure that every American has availability to health care. In order to do that, you're asking every American to be involved in the system. We think that's appropriate whoever they are.

MATTERA: You gonna tax them, though --

WOMAN: We gotta go.

MATTERA: -- and you have Charlie Rangel who doesn't pay his own taxes and Tim Geithner. You left-wingers have made hypocrisy an art form.

The sinking of the South Korean ship. It is incidents like this which set off world wars.

The fact that the president is so focused on some apartments being build in Jerusalem on undisputed land, when there is a madman building nuclear weapons in Iran.

North Korea's military warned South Korea and the United States on Friday of "unprecedented nuclear strikes" as it expressed anger over a report the two countries plan to prepare for possible instability in the totalitarian country, a scenario it dismissed as a "pipe dream."

Several agencies believe that Iran is planning at least 2 new nuclear enrichment sites.

This is an excellent interview by Bill O’Reilly with Susan Cole, as to why Ann Coulter should not be allowed to speak at a Canadian University. There is a lot of video of college students who are angry and chanting, and Susan Cole points out certain specifics about these chants, making me think that these chants were well-thought out in advance. Great interview; commercial first.

There were charges that TEA party protestors yelled out the N-word 14 times when members of the Black caucus wandered through the crowds. Andrew Breitbart has found a lot of footage of this event, and none of these have any such language being used. There is a lot of video out there, but none substantiates these claims.

I love Mary Katherine Hamm; this is entitled “Paranormal Legislative Activity.”

Al Sharpton telling us that the people voted for socialism when they voted for Obama:

Max Baucus admits that Obamacare's hidden agenda is the redistribution of wealth:

Representative John Dingle, in a radio interview, says that this legislation is difficult to put together to control the people:

Jason Matera, the author of Obama Zombies, being interviewed on Hannity (there is a commercial first). This includes Matera interviewing Al Franken, Alan Grayson and Robert Gibbs:

I cannot recall if I posted this before, but this is DeeDee commenting on Obama’s 2009 performance:

Jodi Miller: “During a recent crackdown, the Cuban government detained 30 anti-Communist protestors. When told the news, an excited President Obama was like, “You can do that?’ ”

1) I saw Vice President Biden with a teleprompter the other day; maybe this is a new approach?

2) A B Stoddard said that is was the insurance companies raising their rates which gave the Democrats footing in order to pass the healthcare bill; without that, it may not have happened. So, that makes me ask, what went on behind the scenes? Why, during the week before the healthcare bill, did a half dozen insurance companies raise their rates dramatically?

3) Civil Rights, Medicare and social security, as has been pointed out by many, received broad-based support from both parties; and, in many cases, a majority vote from each party. The Senate Healthcare bill is the first major piece of legislation without broad-based support as well as without popular support.

4) I had a section 8 person come by and take a look at a house that I have for rent. She was typical: 40 lbs overweight with 3 children, and government paid most of her bills. The price of the rent was unimportant to her, because section 8 would pay over $1000 for the house. Don’t misunderstand me—I don’t dislike this woman. She was raised in a hyper sexualized society where many people believe that, kids are unable to say no when it comes to sex, so we are better off giving them prophylactics at school. Having children is not a problem, whether you are married or not; marrying the father and staying married is also not really a factor, because Uncle Sam will pay for it. It also gives the father a good excuse not to be too involved or to make the marriage work. This is how she has been brought up to think. Every time the government gives away something for free, no matter what it is, people will take it, whether they need it or not, and they will modify their own behavior with this in mind.

5) Star Parker points out, why, for 30 million people, overhaul a healthcare system where most of 300 million users like what they have. Why not focus on this 30 million?

6) The President recently said that someone losing their house helped no one. This is absolutely false. If the market is allowed to fall to its natural bottom, more and more young people will be able to buy these foreclosures at prices they can afford, and there are hundreds of thousands of people employed because of foreclosures. Houses being foreclosed upon spurs the economy.

7) In the House reconciliation bill, did you know there is going to be a tax on passive income? That is, if your house increases in value, some will be taxed on that increase. If we suddenly go into an inflationary cycle, some people will be taxed so much, they will have to give up their house. Don’t be surprised. Socialists really value rthe notion of private property.

8) So far, Obama’s charm does not seem to be working well with our greatest allies. The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee said that they do not enjoy a special relationship with the United States. Also, this past week, Obama left the Prime Minister of Israel while he went to get some grub for himself.

9) I heard another Democratic strategist this week talk about Bush turning a surplus into a deficit; how can anyone make this kind of an argument, in view of Obama’s budget? I can see being miffed at both men for running a deficit; I can see being more miffed at Obama than Bush, since his deficit as nearly 4X as much; but how is it logical to support Obama and, at the same time, run down President W for running a deficit (the largest of which was under a Democratic Congress).

10) Here’s a new term: Obot plants, referring to Obama supporters going to conservative rallies with the intention of disrupting them.

11) There is a lot going on in politics over the past few months. CNN’s Jack Cafferty has spent 35% of his air time bashing Sarah Palin. That is a little obsessive, don’t you think?

12) I recall being in Sacramento before Arnold was elected, and I heard a Tom McClilntock on the radio, and he made a lot of sense to me; he explained the financial problems with California and how he intended to correct them, and he sounded so clear and so sensible that I knew California would not elect him. I had the same experience just recently listening to Meg Whitman on the Hugh Hewitt show (I was unable to locate the interview online). It sounded pretty simple to me—she is a business woman, she is going to look at the California budget as if she were running a company and trim it so that it is balanced, first looking at the huge number of state workers in California. Again, they way she approach this was, although more general than McClintock’s approach, made perfect sense. I hope the California sucks enough right now, with all that Arnold has done, that maybe they will elect a real conservative this time. This time, I think there is a real possibility. Of course, it is always nice to have thousands of criminals let loose on the streets and for your tax return to be an IOU rather than a check from the California government. Despite the liberals that I know there, and despite Arnold taking a bad situation and making it 10X worse, I think there is a chance that Californians will recognize that someone who knows something about business might be a good choice this time around.

President Obama's fiscal 2011 budget will generate nearly $10 trillion in cumulative budget deficits over the next 10 years, $1.2 trillion more than the administration projected, and raise the federal debt to 90 percent of the nation's economic output by 2020, the Congressional Budget Office reported Thursday.

AT&T, the largest telephone company in the country, will take a one-billion-dollar hit in the current quarter as a result of Obama’s healthcare bill. The farm-equipment company Deere is looking at $150 million in new healthcare-related charges this quarter, and Caterpillar is facing $100 million.

10 years from now, every dollar in the budget will be for interest and entitlements.

I have heard 2 numbers on the new bureaucracies created by the Senate healthcare bill: one claims 50 and another claims 159. In any case, there will be 16,000 new IRS agents hired.

On every news station and in every newspaper, there have been stories about the unsubstantiated claims that TEA party participants yelled out racial epithets at members of the Democratic Black Caucus. How many of those newspapers and news stations carried the story of the Black man who was stomped on and sent to the hospital by a SEIU member at a townhall meeting? This is on videotape. This is what racism actually looks like.

Regarding the Sarah Palin speech in Searchlight, Nevada, CNN reports: 'Hundreds of People, at Least Dozens of People.' Politico Reports 20,000. Is it a shock that, when CNN cannot report simple numbers, that more and more people simply turn to another news station?

See Bozell’s story on how the TEA party protestors are portrayed in the media: At the same time, the so-called Coffee Party, which is going nowhere, got a much different reception. It should not be hard to figure out; if it is about the healthcare bill, President Obama or the Democratic Congress, the alphabet media is going to be positive or, at the very least, sympathetic. However, if it is anything which opposes these things, then the alphabet media takes a very dim view of them.

President Obama has been promising that there would be improve insurance coverage for children in this healthcare bill—they must be taken by the insurance companies with preexisting conditions—and now it turns out, that will not kick in till 2014. Now, this could indicate that Obama does not know what he is doing, but he really did not put this bill together. He was the salesman for the sausage, but he did not make the sausage.

Making insurance companies take on children with preexisting conditions is one of the most expensive parts of the bill. Had that been in the bill, the CBO score would have been a big negative over the first 10 years, and the overall cost would have been well over $1 trillion.

I would not be surprised to know that this bill was given a preliminary score and the end results were too high, so this particular provision was intentionally delayed until 2014.

Now we have a new issue. Do we cover the kids? Do we cover the innocent children? This will be what Democrats run on in 2012—they want to give these kids insurance now, not in 2014, and the mean Republicans will oppose doing this, unless it is paid for. So, the Democrats will portray the Republicans as heartless and the party of no.

In a scene which I do not recall seeing at all recently, several members of the Black caucus and Nancy Pelosi walked through the middle of the TEA party crowd on the day they would sign the Healthcare bill (or the day before?), which was frantically opposed by the TEA party goers. From this outset, this struck me as odd, because I do not recall these particular members of Congress walking through these crowds before (they can come and go without walking in and out the front door of Congress).

They all appeared to have cameras as well (or camera phones)—or almost all. One of them appeared to have his camera held up. TEA party demonstrators also had cams, and they were using them as well.

Then, there is the accusation of racism, along with accusations that TEA party members called out the N-word as well as faggot.

Now, in the midst of this bill being passed, all of a sudden, there are all of these stories in the news about racist homophobes at the TEA parties shouting out curses at their representatives, as well as a spat of brick throwing.

Just as interesting as these people walking through the midst of the TEA party crowd, with cameras everywhere, no one recorded a single instance of either word being used. If memory serves, the N-word was used 14 times and someone spit on James Cliburn, and yet, no video of any of this surfaces.

I think the idea is to (1) shift the discussion from healthcare to crazy, homophobic racist TEA party attendees; and (2) to give the Democratic party some cover. Such a story—particularly run by a sympathetic press—would suck some of the air out of the room (given the newspapers and the alphabet media are finally reporting on the TEA parties from time to time (they found out that people turned to FoxNews when they ignored the TEA party movement entirely).

As an addendum to this, Andrew Breitbart has offered $10,000 to the United Negro College Fund if an video can be produced to substantiate any of the claims of the Black caucus members.

Along these same lines, buses carrying members of the TEA party movement were pelted by eggs from Harry Reid supporters in Nevada.

Moving the country forward = moving the country into more socialism and redistribution of wealth

Inartful comment = (because of the many Dem quotes this week) accidentally saying what you really mean

You recently said that a house that is foreclosed upon helps no one. Do you have any idea how many jobs are involved in the foreclosure business?

For the Stimulus Bill, it was promised unemployment would stay at or below 8.5%; it is at 10% (but the real unemployment numbers are closer to 17%). In the previous mortgage help bill, Obama promised to help out 3–4 million homeowners stay in their homes. In the end, only 170,000 were helped (and I have no idea about the long-term help here). He has no idea what he is doing. He thinks that if he comes up with a governmental solution and spends money, the problem will be fixed.

For whatever reason, Obama thinks he can bully our allies around. He left Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu waiting, while he went out to get dinner. Not taking the Prime Minister is mind-boggling to me. But, at the same time, Obama does not appear to be doing anything about Iran, beyond sanctions.

Now that Obamacare has passed, look for increased unemployment, possibly fewer people insured, and much higher insurance costs. The end game for Obama and the Democratic Congress is a single-payer system, so what they have done is set up something to destroy private insurance companies.

From Charles Krauthammer: Obama’s debt commission will return with a recommendation for a VAT tax.

When Dems go back to campaign, it is going to get a little ugly; however, more evil will be done against conservative candidates, but the news will primarily focus on what happens to Dems.

Healthcare is going to become a mess, now that this bill has passed. People are going to expect to get healthcare, but they won’t. Some will not understand why the are still arguments about it, even thought the bill has passed; taxes and fees will go up; and Democrats will have the audacity to blame Republicans for these things.

Now, you may ask, how can Obama and a Democratic Congress blame Republicans for a failed healthcare state? They are experts in this. Bush, working with a Democratic Congress, ran up the highest deficit of his presidency, and that is continually blamed on Bush, despite the fact that all spending bills are supposed to begin in the House. The economic crisis is blamed on Bush, despite that fact that its origins are in the housing crisis, which was a Democrat + ACORN manufactured problem.

However, just as those issues are too complex for some, this issue will not be too complex. People will look at a Democratic President, a Democratic Congress, a corrupt process, and blame healthcare related problems on them.

Two easy predictions were fulfilled: the media has proclaimed the absolute wonderfulness of Barack Obama and his tenacity in getting the healthcare bill through. That was proclaimed as a front page story on whatever paper is in your city on Monday last.

Also, I said that Stupak was it; his vote and support for Obamacare pushed it over the line.

I would rather that Democrats and Republicans did as little as possible with healthcare reform; I do not trust Congress making things better. I do not see healthcare as getting better, even if the Republicans step in.

Most of us are focused on the wrong things. Of course, Republicans and governors need to object to the requirement that we purchase government-approve products (i.e., from a government-approved insurance program). We do not have any choice but to challenge that and win, because otherwise, the federal government can require us to do anything. However, do not think this worries Obama or Pelosi. They could care less. There are several economic points of dishonesty in the healthcare bill that was just passed. It does not concern the President or the Speaker of the House what happens financially because of this bill. If we are not required to carry insurance, fine. They can live with that. They do not care if this is paid for. Don’t think for a second that being financially responsible is a part of their thought process.

Almost every contract I have signed has a severability clause, which means, if paragraph 4c of section II is determined to be unenforceable (or, in the case of this healthcare bill, if the government cannot force us to buy insurance), the rest of the contract remains intact. Democrats, for the most part, were not concerned about paying for this bill in the first place (hence the phoney claim that a half trillion would be taken out of Medicare in order to pay for half of this bill), similarly, the requirement that we buy insurance as a means of paying for this bill is not of any concern to them. That was how they got the private insurance companies onboard. “Look, we are going to make 30 million people buy your product; you like that, right?” So the insurance companies, for the most part, signed onto Obamacare, despite all of Obama’s angry anti-insurance company rhetoric.

Combined with this mandate are low fines; and, according to at least one source, the enforceability of the insurance mandate is weak, and perhaps non-existent (I have heard it both ways here).

Here’s the end game—encourage people to drop their insurance, encourage employers to drop their insurance, put budget busting requirement on insurance companies, so that, in less than 5 years, most of them will be put out of business.

What does the government do then with the remaining handful of insurers? They take them over. “Listen, you obviously do not know what you are doing; free enterprise has failed again; so we need to take you over. Besides, here is a lot of taxpayer money.” It is what the government did to FNMA, FHLMC, and to GM. Obama’s end-game is for the government to get its fingers into everything it can in just a few years.

There is something else in this bill which is essentially being ignored—the CBO claims that, in the second 10 years, there will be a trillion dollar plus going into the treasury. Now, if, in the first 10 years, there is only $138,000 increase to the treasury for approximately 6 years of benefits (a phoney number), how can this healthcare bill do better in the second decade? How can that be?

Easy—the costs are shifted over to the states. So, we will be dramatically taxed by the federal government for this healthcare bill; and then, the cost will be laid upon the states as an unfunded mandate, so that we will be taxed by the states to pay for this! Essentially, we will be double-taxed to pay for this bill. The state taxes will have to kick in when the states assume the cost of Obamacare.

What happens next? The states cannot borrow to pay for these new costs. They either raise taxes way beyond what we are used to (doubling our state taxes could happen); or they throw themselves at the mercy of the federal government, which is still taking in all of the taxes originally set up to pay for this.

State governments will go broke, drive their constituents broke, and private insurance companies will fold like we have never seen before.

What’s left to do? The federal government steps in to rescue the states, and moves toward a single-payer system.

Anyway, that is the plan, and that is why President Obama was able to sign Dennis Kucinich and the rest or the radical left onto this bill—they know the end game.

What I have described here is, what would happen as long as the Democrats maintain control of all of this. Obviously, this chess game becomes more complex when the other size moves its own chess pieces. The hope is, on the Democratic side is, Republicans do not repeal this bill; and Republicans fund the programs in the bill. When they don’t, they will be portrayed as being on the side of the insurance companies and not on the side of the people.

I have had two wives. My first wife spent too much money and we had some financial difficulties, but we were always able to pay our bills. I had to divorce her because she spent too much money, and someone told me over and over that she lied to me about something. I forget what it was.

I never really appreciated her until I got married the second time. My second wife, from the very beginning, began spending more money than I thought possible. She would grab a credit card and then go run it up to the maximum, purchasing things which did not seem to be important to me. I was told by others (mostly her friends), “She really loves you, and just give her a chance to make the marriage work.” They even accused me of not wanting to make our marriage work. So I did not complain.

A week later, she grabs another credit card and went out and ran it up to its limit, and I could not tell you to this day what it was that she bought, but it sure cost a lot of money and now that money is gone. Now I just owe too much money. In just 20 months, this woman put me further in debt than my previous wife did in 8 years of marriage. Her friends still tell me, “Just give her some time; she really loves you and she will make this marriage work. Let her do what she believes she needs to do. It will all be okay in the end.” One of her friends said that I really had a negative attitude, and I needed to think about my own attitude. Another one of her friends said, “You just don’t like brunettes; that’s your problem.” (my first wife was a blond). I tried to explain my problem with her was, she spent too much money, but her friend still insists it is because my second wife is a brunette.

A week later, she goes to the bank and takes out the largest loan possible, against the value of our house, and now all that money is gone and I am left with a huge mortgage. I could not tell you today what she spend the money on.

When we went in for counseling, she said that spending all this money was important for our financial stability, but now I have lost my job and I have lost my health insurance. So, to solve that problem, she took the remainder of my credit cards and charged them up to the hilt. She says this will solve our problems, but I don’t see how. Her close friends still say, I should give her a chance, but now she is out looking for more credit. They tell me that I need to cooperate with her and work as a team; I just don’t want her to spend more money that I do not have. And again, they accused me of having a bad attitude and saying that I was not really giving her a chance.

Then, the other day, she lectured me on financial discipline, and how we need to get our spending under control. She told me we needed to spend our money responsibly and wisely. Then she took out another huge loan right after lecturing me.

She keeps telling me that all of these things that she is buying (most of which I have never seen till yet), will make our marriage better. I cannot see my way out from under this mountain of debt where we have nothing to show for it.

Congress passed the bill without knowing what was in it. Barack Obama signed it without reading it. Now it looks as though the Associated Press reported on ObamaCare without comprehending its content. Readers will have to scroll far down to discover that the elimination of a key tax break that kept retirees on company prescription-medication plans will mean dumping millions of seniors onto Medicare - and that the AP ignored it until now:

The health care overhaul will cost U.S. companies billions and make them more likely to drop prescription drug coverage for retirees because of a change in how the government subsidizes those benefits.

In the first two days after the law was signed, three major companies - Deere & Co., Caterpillar Inc. and Valero Energy - said they expect to take a total hit of $265 million to account for smaller tax deductions in the future.

With more than 3,500 companies now getting the tax break as an incentive to keep providing coverage, others are almost certain to announce similar cost increases in the weeks ahead as they sort out the impact of the change.

Figuring out what it will mean for retirees will take longer, but analysts said as many as 2 million could lose the prescription drug coverage provided by their former employers, leaving them to enroll in Medicare's program.

Over the past year, I've repeatedly warned about the dangers of static tax analysis. That process considers changes in tax policy without considering its impact on behavior. The closure of this "loophole," as Robert Gibbs called it yesterday, is a perfect example of this stunted thinking.

The Democrats in Congress argued that they would gain $5.4 billion in revenue by eliminating the tax break enacted in the 2003 Medicare Part D program as an incentive for businesses to keep their retirees out of the Medicare system. Instead, they have given businesses a reason to dump their retirees out of the private networks and into the Part D system now. Not only will the expected tax revenues never appear, but now we will have to spend a lot more money covering those prescriptions out of public funds. The seniors in these programs will suffer most of all, as the Part D coverage is vastly inferior to the private plans offered by businesses in the private sector.

Who could have foreseen this? Well, businesses have been trying to get attention to this problem for months, as the AP somewhat belatedly reports:

Industry groups say they lobbied hard against the change in the tax rules before it was added to the health care law over the winter.

"It was in all of our letters and communications that went up to the Hill, and the companies were heavily involved in that," said Dena Battle, a tax specialist with the National Association of Manufacturers.

Nationwide, companies would take a $14 billion hit on their financial statements if all of the roughly 3,500 companies receiving the subsidies continued to do so, according to a study by Towers Watson, a human resources consulting firm.

For months, businesses have warned about the problem, and for months, Democrats have claimed this clause as a $5.4 billion revenue source. One might think that the media would be interested in puncturing some bad assumptions. Apparently not.

First off, we have been correct in our analysis of the health care controversy on all the major points.

You may remember I told Karl Rove early on there would be no public option. We also said that the "deem and pass" ruse would not be used because it would reflect badly on President Obama. Finally, last week we predicted the bill would pass, and it did Sunday night.

There will be legal challenges to Obamacare. Specifically, it could be unconstitutional to force any American to buy health insurance. It's as simple as that.

Also, I believe many Americans will hold a grudge over Obamacare, and the big reason for that is all the backroom deals.

President Obama was elected largely because he promised to bring a new style of leadership to Washington. Yet in the Obamacare process, there were a number of outright bribes.

For example, the state of Louisiana gets $300 million more in Medicare subsidies.

The states of Nevada, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota and Utah will also get more Medicare money - $2 billion more.

Vermont will get $600 million in added Medicaid payments. Massachusetts, almost as much.

And finally, 11 states will get an extra $8.5 billion in Medicaid simply because their representatives supported Obamacare.

With the country now owing $14 trillion, alert Americans understand that all the bribes will put the country in even more danger financially.

The Democratic response is it's always been this way in Washington, deals have been made since the Continental Congress, and that's true.

But the real deal is that President Obama and his party believe the end justifies the means.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Today's vote answers the prayers of every American who has hoped deeply for something to be done about a health care system that works for insurance companies, but not for ordinary people.

Mr. Obama sincerely believes that he did what he had to do to pass a health care law that will help most Americans. The president absolutely is convinced of that.

But reality might prove him wrong. Certainly the Obamacare process has damaged the Democratic Party. There's no doubt about that.

And if Obamacare goes out of control, which it well might, the country will suffer grievous harm. That is the drum that Republicans are pounding.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN, R-ARIZ.: Outside the Beltway, the American people are very angry. And they don't like it, and they're going to - and we're going to try to repeal this. And we are going to have a very spirited campaign coming up between now and November, and there will be a very heavy price to pay for it.

For all the political and economic uncertainties about health reform, at least one thing seems clear: The bill that President Obama signed on Tuesday is the federal government's biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago.

Over most of that period, government policy and market forces have been moving in the same direction, both increasing inequality. The pretax incomes of the wealthy have soared since the late 1970s, while their tax rates have fallen more than rates for the middle class and poor.

Nearly every major aspect of the health bill pushes in the other direction. This fact helps explain why Mr. Obama was willing to spend so much political capital on the issue, even though it did not appear to be his top priority as a presidential candidate. Beyond the health reform's effect on the medical system, it is the centerpiece of his deliberate effort to end what historians have called the age of Reagan.

Speaking to an ebullient audience of Democratic legislators and White House aides at the bill-signing ceremony on Tuesday, Mr. Obama claimed that health reform would "mark a new season in America." He added, "We have now just enshrined, as soon as I sign this bill, the core principle that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their health care."

The bill is the most sweeping piece of federal legislation since Medicare was passed in 1965. It aims to smooth out one of the roughest edges in American society - the inability of many people to afford medical care after they lose a job or get sick. And it would do so in large measure by taxing the rich.

A big chunk of the money to pay for the bill comes from lifting payroll taxes on households making more than $250,000. On average, the annual tax bill for households making more than $1 million a year will rise by $46,000 in 2013, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research group. Another major piece of financing would cut Medicare subsidies for private insurers, ultimately affecting their executives and shareholders.

The benefits, meanwhile, flow mostly to households making less than four times the poverty level - $88,200 for a family of four people. Those without insurance in this group will become eligible to receive subsidies or to join Medicaid. (Many of the poor are already covered by Medicaid.) Insurance costs are also likely to drop for higher-income workers at small companies.

Finally, the bill will also reduce a different kind of inequality. In the broadest sense, insurance is meant to spread the costs of an individual's misfortune - illness, death, fire, flood - across society. Since the late 1970s, though, the share of Americans with health insurance has shrunk. As a result, the gap between the economic well-being of the sick and the healthy has been growing, at virtually every level of the income distribution.

The health reform bill will reverse that trend. By 2019, 95 percent of people are projected to be covered, up from 85 percent today (and about 90 percent in the late 1970s). Even affluent families ineligible for subsidies will benefit if they lose their insurance, by being able to buy a plan that can no longer charge more for pre-existing conditions. In effect, healthy families will be picking up most of the bill - and their insurance will be somewhat more expensive than it otherwise would have been.

Much about health reform remains unknown. Maybe it will deliver Congress to the Republicans this fall, or maybe it will help the Democrats keep power. Maybe the bill's attempts to hold down the recent growth of medical costs will prove a big success, or maybe the results will be modest and inadequate. But the ways in which the bill attacks the inequality of the Reagan era - whether you love them or hate them - will probably be around for a long time.

"Legislative majorities come and go," David Frum, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, lamented on Sunday. "This health care bill is forever."

Since Mr. Obama began his presidential campaign in 2007, he has had a complicated relationship with the Reagan legacy. He has been more willing than many other Democrats to praise President Reagan. "Reagan's central insight - that the liberal welfare state had grown complacent and overly bureaucratic," Mr. Obama wrote in his second book, "contained a good deal of truth." Most notably, he praised Mr. Reagan as a president who "changed the trajectory of America."

But Mr. Obama also argued that the Reagan administration had gone too far, and that if elected, he would try to put the country on a new trajectory. "The project of the next president," he said in an interview during the campaign, "is figuring out how you create bottom-up economic growth, as opposed to the trickle-down economic growth."

Since 1980, median real household income has risen less than 15 percent. The only period of strong middle-class income growth during this time came in the mid- and late 1990s, which by coincidence was also the one time when taxes on the affluent were rising.

For most of the last three decades, tax rates for the wealthy have been falling, while their pretax pay has been rising rapidly. Real incomes at the

99.99th percentile have jumped more than 300 percent since 1980. At the 99th percentile - about $300,000 today - real pay has roughly doubled.

The laissez-faire revolution that Mr. Reagan started did not cause these trends. But its policies - tax cuts, light regulation, a patchwork safety net - have contributed to them.

Health reform hardly solves all of the American economy's problems. Economic growth over the last decade was slower than in any decade since World War II. The tax cuts of the last 30 years, the two current wars, the Great Recession, the stimulus program and the looming retirement of the baby boomers have created huge deficits. Educational gains have slowed, and the planet is getting hotter.

Above all, the central question that both the Reagan and Obama administrations have tried to answer - what is the proper balance between the market and the government? - remains unresolved. But the bill signed on Tuesday certainly shifts our place on that spectrum.

Before he became Mr. Obama's top economic adviser, Lawrence Summers told me a story about helping his daughter study for her Advanced Placement exam in American history. While doing so, Mr. Summers realized that the federal government had not passed major social legislation in decades. There was the frenzy of the New Deal, followed by the G.I. Bill, the Interstate Highway System, civil rights and Medicare - and then nothing worth its own section in the history books.

You can call me a common-sense conservative. My approach to the issues facing my country and the world, issues that we'll discuss today, are rooted in this common-sense conservatism. Common sense conservatism deals with the reality of the world as it is. Complicated and beautiful, tragic and hopeful, we believe in the rights and the responsibilities and the inherent dignity of the individual.

We don't believe that human nature is perfectible; we're suspicious of government efforts to fix problems because often what it's trying to fix is human nature, and that is impossible. It is what it is. But that doesn't mean that we're resigned to, well, any negative destiny. Not at all. I believe in striving for the ideal, but in realistic confines of human nature.

The opposite of a common-sense conservative is a liberalism that holds that there is no human problem that government can't fix if only the right people are put in charge. Unfortunately, history and common sense are not on its side. We don't trust utopian promises; we deal with human nature as it is.

While we might be in the wilderness, conservatives need to defend the free market system and explain what really caused last year's collapse. According to one version of the story, America's economic woes were caused by a lack of government intervention and regulation and therefore the only way to fix the problem, because, of course, every problem can be fixed by a politician, is for more bureaucracy to impose itself further, deeper, forcing itself deeper into the private sector.

I think that's simply wrong. We got into this mess because of government interference in the first place. The mortgage crisis that led to the collapse of the financial market, it was rooted in a good-natured, but wrongheaded, desire to increase home ownership among those who couldn't yet afford to own a home. In so many cases, politicians on the right and the left, they wanted to take credit for an increase in home ownership among those with lower incomes. But the rules of the marketplace are not adaptable to the mere whims of politicians.

Lack of government wasn't the problem. Government policies were the problem. The marketplace didn't fail. It became exactly as common sense would expect it to. The government ordered the loosening of lending standards. The Federal Reserve kept interest rates low. The government forced lending institutions to give loans to people who, as I say, couldn't afford them. Speculators spotted new investment vehicles, jumped on board and rating agencies underestimated risks.

Now even Milton Friedman, he recognized that the free market is truly free when there is a level playing field for all participants, and good financial regulations aim to provide the transparency that we need to ensure the level playing field does exist, but we need not, we need to make sure that this regulatory reform that we're talking about is aimed at the problems on Wall Street and won't attack Main Street.

How can we discuss reform without addressing the government policies at the root of the problems? The root of the collapse? And how can we think that setting up the Fed as the monitor of systemic risk in the financial sector will result in meaningful reform? The words "fox" and "hen house" come to mind. The Fed's decisions helped create the bubble. Look at the root cause of most asset bubbles, and you'll see the Fed somewhere in the background.

Common sense tells you that when you're in a hole, you have to stop digging! A common sense conservative looks to history to find solutions to the problems confronting us, and the good news is that history has shown us a way out of this, a way forward from recession. Ronald Reagan, he was faced with an even worse recession, and he showed us how to get out of here.

If you want real job growth, you cut taxes! And you reduce marginal tax rates on all Americans. Cut payroll taxes, eliminate capital gain taxes and slay the death tax, once and for all. Get federal spending under control, and then you step back and you watch the U.S. economy roar back to life. But it takes more courage for a politician to step back and let the free market correct itself than it does to push through panicky solutions or quick fixes.

I can't wait until we get that Reaganomics sense supplied again because we are going to survive, and we're going to thrive and expand and roar back to life. And as the world sees this, the world will be a healthier, more secure, safer and more prosperous place when this happens.

It seems like some are looking to ever more ways that will actually destroy economic opportunities today. Take for example, Washington's cap-and-trade scheme. I call it the "cap-and-tax" scheme. Right now we have the highest unemployment rate in 25 years, and it's still rising. And yet some in D.C. are pushing a cap-and-tax bill that could cripple our energy industry or energy market and dramatically increase the rates of the unemployed, and that's not just in the energy sector.

American jobs in every industry will be threatened by the rising cost of doing business under this cap-and-tax plan. The cost of farming will certainly increase. That's going to drive up the cost of groceries and drive down farm incomes. The cost of manufacturing, warehousing and transportation will also rise. We are all going to feel the effects. The Americans hardest hit will be those who are already struggling to make ends meet today, much less with this new tax every month.

I am not indifferent to environmental concerns. Far from it. As governor, I created a sub-cabinet to study the impacts of climate change in my state. And I was the first governor to do so. It took us in a new direction.

I'm a supporter of nuclear power and renewables. We can develop these resources without destroying our economy. And we can help the environment and our economy through energy independence.

I seem to have acquired notoriety in national debate. And all because of two words: death panels. And it is a serious term. It was intended to sound a warning about the rationing that is sure to follow if big government tries to simultaneously increase health care coverage while also claiming to decrease costs. Government has just got to be honest with the people about this..

As I said, it's just common sense to realize that government's attempts to solve large problems like the health-care challenges that we have, more often create new ones, and a top down one size fits all plan will not improve the workings of a nationwide health-care system that accounts for some one-fifth of our economy.

Common sense also tells us that passing a trillion dollar new retirement program, that's not the way to reduce health-care spending. Real health-care reform is market oriented, patient centered and result driven. It would give all individuals the same tax benefit, that an ideal plan that I would have in mind, same tax benefits as those who get coverage through their employers. And give Medicare recipients vouchers so that they can buy their own coverage. And reform tort laws and change regulations to allow people to buy insurance across state lines. Rather than another top down government plan, we should give Americans themselves control over their own health care with market friendly responsible ideas.

We engage with a hope that Beijing becomes a responsible stakeholder, but we must take steps in the event that it goes in a different direction. See, we all hope to see a China that is stable and peaceful and prosperous. Optimism that yes, it will be.

Asia is at its best when it is not dominated by a single power. In seeking Asia's continued peace and prosperity, we should seek, as we did in Europe, an Asia whole and free. Free from domination by any one power.

We simply cannot turn a blind eye to Chinese policies and actions that could undermine international peace and security. Here, China has some one thousand missiles aimed at Taiwan and no serious observer though believes that it poses a serious threat to Beijing. Those same Chinese forces make our friends in Japan and Australia kind of nervous.

China provides support for some of the most questionable regimes, from Sudan to Burma to Zimbabwe. China's military buildup, it raises concern from Delhi to Tokyo because it's taking place in the absence of really any discernable threat to it. China, along with Russia, has repeatedly undermined efforts to impose tougher sanctions on Iran for its defiance of the international community in pursuing its nuclear program. And the Chinese food and safety, uh food and product safety record, of course it's raised alarms from East Asia and Europe to the U.S. and domestic instance of unrest. From the protest of Uighurs and Tibetans to Chinese workers throughout the country rightfully makes a lot of people nervous.

The more politically open and just China is, the more Chinese citizens of every ethnic group will be able to settle disputes in court rather than on the streets. The more open it is, the less we'll be concerned about its military buildup and its intentions. The more transparent China is, the more likely it is that they will find a true and lasting friendship based on shared values as well as interests. And I'm not talking about a U.S.-led democracy crusade. [We're] not going to impose our values on other countries. We don't seek to do that. But the ideas of freedom and liberty and respect for human rights, it's not just a U.S. idea. They're very much more than that. They're enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and many other international covenants and treaties.

Our economic interdependence drives our relationship with China. I see a future of more trade with China and more American high tech goods in China. But in order for that to happen, we need China to improve its rule of law, and protect our intellectual property. We need to avoid protectionism and China's flirtation with state assisted national champions. On our part we should be more open to Chinese investment where our national security interests are not threatened. In the end though, our economic relationship will truly thrive when Chinese citizens and foreign corporations can hold the Chinese government accountable when their actions are unjust.

To Sum Up:

Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama have unconstitutionally seized:

•One auto company

•The financial industry

•The student loan industry

•The insurance industry

•The medical industry (1/6th of the economy)

•The mortgage industry

•The water rights of California farmers

Alexandria, VA - The crescendo of bigotry by the left-wing media against the Tea Party movement reached a disgusting pinnacle yesterday with MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann indicting the entire movement as being homophobic racists based on the actions of a few fringe protestors. After describing reports of the "n" word being shouted at Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) and Rep. Andre Carson (D-IN), and a homosexual slur aimed at Rep. Barney Frank, Olbermann looked straight into the camera and exploded:

The media coverage from other networks - particularly ABC and CBS - the past few days has followed suit, attributing to the millions of Americans who fiercely oppose ObamaCare the disgraceful outbursts of a few. See supporting evidence below.

Brent Bozell, President of the Media Research Center, issued the following statement:

"What an exercise in hypocrisy. Some of you in the left-wing so-called `news' media have actively participated in insulting conservatives with vulgar `tea bagging' jokes. You've done it on live national television, snickering at your own snarky gay sense of humor. And if you haven't done that, you have been a coward, doing nothing to condemn your colleagues for their disgusting behavior.

"Don't you dare give us any more lectures on civility. You hypocrites disgust me."

ABC - Anti-ObamaCare Protest "Turned Very Ugly" with "Racial and Homophobic Slurs"

ABC - Diane Sawyer: "Protesters Roaming" DC, "Increasingly Emotional, Yelling Slurs and Epithets"

CBS - "Mean from the Start" Health Debate "Turned Even Nastier Yesterday' with "Racial Epithets" ` and "Sexual Slurs"

MSBNC - Olbermann Renews 'Teabagging' Attack on Scott Brown, Cuts His Victory Speech

Republicans now have a clear message to convey to voters: We will undo the damage.

It is America's misfortune that at a moment in history that required sober, grown-up stewardship and a realistic appraisal of our fiscal trajectory, we elected (by large margins) the party of supplicants and whiners. How appropriate that one of the selling points of Obamacare was the guarantee that children up to the age of 26 can remain on their parents' insurance plans - because the Democrats' whole program is about extending adolescence.

Like teenagers, the Democrats are weak on long-term consequences, saving for the future, and planning for (entirely foreseeable) contingencies. They excel at demanding their allowance, but not so much at earning it. They are the "me" party. Health care, pronounced Nancy Pelosi, is a "right" to be financed by others, not a privilege.

A serious party would grapple with our mounting unfunded obligations. Each year the trustees of the Medicare and Social Security programs issue a report analyzing the costs of those programs. Last year's report put the total unfunded liability of the two programs at $107 trillion, in 2009 dollars. The two programs now consume about 14 percent of tax receipts. By 2030, even without the new Obamacare entitlement, they will chew up half of all federal outlays. By 2060, they will swallow 75 percent. They are, to use the favorite Washington expression, "unsustainable."

Particularly at a time when the battered economy is taking its first tentative steps toward recovery, a responsible government would seek to reduce debt, ease the burdens on businesses, and refrain from introducing more instability and putting unpredictable new burdens on taxpayers.

Instead, the Democrats have charged ahead with their social-democratic vision of a Europeanized America. The past several months have removed any doubt that the Democrats are willing to risk national bankruptcy in pursuit of their white whale - nationalized health care. They may yet compound the error by adding cap-and-trade to the ledger.

Consider the brief nod to fiscal responsibility they offered in February. Excoriating "a decade of profligacy," President Obama signed "paygo" - a measure to require that new spending be balanced by cuts or tax increases so as not to increase the deficit. "It's easy to get up in front of the cameras and rant against exploding deficits," declared the president. "What's hard is actually getting deficits under control. But that's what we must do."

Or not. Paygo exempted some 50 federal programs, including (you guessed it) Social Security, the Medicare "doc fix," and anything the leadership chose to label "emergency" spending. When the Democrats appropriated $10 billion for extension of unemployment insurance and COBRA insurance plans without any offsetting cuts or tax increases, Sen. Jim Bunning protested; he became a piñata for his trouble. Bunning unmasked the truth: To the Democrats, it's all Monopoly money. That's why they can rack up deficits in the trillions without batting an eye.

And they have the gall to claim that passing this 2,700-page monstrosity proves that "they can govern."

This is a clarifying moment. By driving their agenda so relentlessly and to such extremes, the Democrats have redrawn the political map. No longer will it easily be said that there is no relevant distinction between the parties. No longer will conservatives easily disdain the Republican party. Yes, under President Bush, the U.S. accumulated $3.3 trillion in deficits. But based purely on his policies in his first year, Obama is projected to run deficits of $7.6 trillion over eight years - and that may be a low-ball estimate. Republicans now have a clear message to convey to voters: We will undo the damage. It seems likely now that all of the energy represented by the tea-party movement will flow into Republican, not third-party channels.

The Republicans acquitted themselves well throughout this long struggle. Articulate, well-prepared members such as Rep. Paul Ryan, Sen. Tom Coburn, Rep. Mike Pence, Sen. Lamar Alexander, Sen. John Kyl, and others made the case for sensible, market-oriented reform of the health-care system and against the reckless, corrupt, heavy-handed, bankrupting, choice-limiting scheme of the majority party.

When President Obama tilted his chin toward the sky at his inauguration and declared that "change is coming to America," this is what he had in mind - a turn toward a European welfare state and away from the free-market model. The turn has begun. The voters will decide whether it is irreversible.

You have all seen the Joker-Obama picture; according to the Christian Science Monitor, this was originally created by a Dennis Kucinich supporter.

The face of the TEA party movement is female; have you heard anyone else report this?

Paul Krugman admits to enjoying the frustration of right-wingers as the healthcare bill is passed.

The video shows that CNN clearly reported that there were hundreds of people at the Searchlight TEA party rally.

RUSH ARCHIVE: What they're doing here, and you see it happening with the Ann Coulter situation up in Canada, that's possibly our future, they don't have free speech up there. If the people in charge don't like what you're saying they can keep you from saying it, and what they're trying to do is criminalize now all criticism of Obama as hate speech, as being racist or worse.

RUSH: Right on cue, last night Chris Matthews, hard-boiled, he had as his guest Chris Van Hollen, Democrat from Maryland, discussing criticism of President Obama.

MATTHEWS: Would you say that this incitement from the Republican leadership is criminal? I mean, seriously, if people are going to have windows thrown -- bricks -- if they're going to get their lives threatened, if we're getting criminal behavior resulting from their incitement, is the incitement itself criminal?

VAN HOLLEN: There's no denying the fact that they are stoking the flames here and they are not trying to separate themselves, in fact they've embraced the benefits, what they consider to be the political benefits from these activities.

RUSH: I'm not going to repeat all of the examples, all the news stories of all the violence, real violence, hate speech, et al, committed by Democrats in the last six or seven years. I did that in the first hour. I'm just giving you examples. I know what I'm talking about when I talk about these people. One of the examples I saved for this hour is from Chris Matthews himself, last October on the 13th on a morning show on MSNBC. Ask yourself when you listen to this if what Matthews said is criminal.

MATTHEWS: You guys see Live and Let Die, the great Bond film with, um, with Yaphet Kotto was the bad guy, Mr. Big?

MATTHEWS: In the end they jammed a big CO2 pellet in his face, and he blew up. I have to tell you, Rush Limbaugh is beginning to look more and more like Mr. Big. And at some point somebody is going to jam a CO2 pellet into his head and he's going to explode like a giant blimp. That day may come.

RUSH: Is that hate speech? Is that inciting violence? Is that criminal? On television, Chris Matthews actually envisioning with great joy the day somebody jams a gun in my mouth and pulls the trigger. Last night on Hardball with Chris Matthews, he had Mark Halperin, the TIME Magazine senior political analyst, and they were talking about White House criticism of John McCain. Matthews says, "What are they up to with these patronizing comments about the Senator from Arizona from the White House? What's that about?"

HALPERIN: With John McCain he's a special case because they have practice from the campaign of painting him as petulant and erratic, and the more they can do that to any Republican leader, they'll do it to Rush Limbaugh and others as well, they want to do that 'cause they want the public to see the Republican Party led by people who are uncooperative and emotional and petulant.

RUSH: Never forget what this is really all about. This is all about the fact that the Democrats need to paint themselves as victims, they're the ones who do not want to be bothered by their conscience, if they have one. They have to change the focus on this. They want to make themselves innocent victims of an unruly mob of a bunch of tea partiers. They are shaken. And this conservatives-as-violence-prone people narrative is the only way they can cope, because never forget, folks, the real death threat is their legislation. The real death threat to our economy, to the country as founded, to our health care system, the real death threat is the bill Obama signed into law on Tuesday morning. But it's all my fault, it's all the fault of all of us on the radio, Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter, we're inciting all of this. Here's Dylan Ratigan, MSNBC, yesterday afternoon, last night, whenever it was.

RATIGAN: Many fear the angry rhetoric has gone too far among tea partiers and even conservative talk show hosts who seek to stir up that small fringe and incite them to action. One tea party leader promised an Election Day onslaught, Rush Limbaugh inciting his listeners to defeat these bastards and the Alabama tea party warning, "We are all getting our second wind, when we do, you better watch out." Sounds a little bit like a threat.

RUSH: Just amazing, these people have no memory of their own words and their own actions. But make no mistake, this is all coordinated. This is all coordinated from the highest levels of the White House and down through the Democrat Party, the faxes, the talking points, the marching orders have gone out to all the members of the media, that's why they're all saying the same things and that's why they're all citing the same people. And while this is a fringe movement I want to remind you of a CBS News poll out, 62% of the American people want the Republican Party to continue to oppose the health care bill. Sixty-two percent, that ain't fringe. And, yeah, we do want to run these people out of Washington via the ballot box. We do. We want to beat 'em. We want to send 'em packing. A lot of us think that's the only hope the country has.

RUSH: I am reminded of the following by a friend. The great majority of modern presidential and other political assassins have been men and women of the left. Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan, the Farrakhan-supported Muslim killers of Malcolm X and Jerry Ford's would-be killers (Sara Jane Moore and "Squeaky" Fromme) were all leftists. Some people have forgotten that the assassination of McKinley, the assassin of McKinley, Leon Czolgosz, was an anarchist. The man who shot at FDR and missed, killed the mayor of Chicago instead, was Giuseppe Zangara, a political radical. The attempt to kill Truman and blow up the Congress in 1950 was carried out by Puerto Rican nationalists.

And apropos of political violence it's also worth mentioning the KKK was composed almost entirely of Democrats. Robert Byrd and Justice Hugo Black are liberal icons who belonged. So too, briefly, did Harry Truman. All of these assassins, all of these radicals are men and women of the left! When's the last time you ever heard of a conservative riot? Remember this from The Australian, 25 July, 2006: "Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Betty Williams displayed a flash of her feisty Irish spirit yesterday, lashing out at US President George W. Bush during a speech to hundreds of schoolchildren. 'Right now I would love to kill George Bush.' Her young audience at the Brisbane city hall clapped and cheered." Thursday, July 12th, 2007: "Nobel Peace Prize winner Betty Williams came from Ireland to Texas to declare that President Bush should be impeached. 'Right now I could kill George Bush,' she said at the Adams Mark Hotel and Conference Centre in Dallas. 'No, I don't mean that. How could you nonviolently kill?'" But that's the second time she had said it.

RUSH: Hope Mills, North Carolina. This is Nora, great to have you on Open Line Friday on Thursday. Hello.

CALLER: The reason I'm calling is because as soon as I heard some of the tapes of these so-called threatening phone messages --

CALLER: -- my radar went up. I have been calling Congress since 2006, with immigration reform, and I can tell you for a fact that more often than not you're not able to leave a message because you're gonna get an automated voice that says, "Sorry, voice mail is full. Please call later." So it really kind of got my hackles up.

RUSH: Well, they're playing a supposed call. I can't remember the member of Congress.

CALLER: I think it's Congressman Stupak, and I will tell you that I have gotten that sorry "mailbox full" from Congressman Stupak at least three times on Monday.

RUSH: Yeah, it is Stupak. That's correct. You know, this is an interesting point. But it's also possible, it's also possible they could have cleaned the voice mail and left it wide open, hoping that some lunatic would call.

CALLER: Yes, and I'll tell you also -- having been to tea parties, having been in Washington on the 12th of September last year -- we are so polite that we wouldn't stoop to that level. That's where I think they're making a big mistake.

RUSH: Wait just a second here, though. Why are we assuming that the only people that might be upset about this is tea party people? There are more people in the country than just tea party people, and we know there are some Democrats that don't like this. We know there are some pro-life Democrats who believed Stupak when he stood up for his cause, his pro-life cause and then betrayed everybody. We know that there are a lot of Democrats because in his district they elect him. Now, who's to say -- why are we automatically assuming -- that whoever, if anybody, is calling Stupak that they're either a tea partier or a Republican?

RUSH: How about this for a headline here, folks? It's from the State-Controlled Associated Press, and they don't quite believe it themselves. "Retired Couples May Need $250,000 for Health Care," from the time they retire until the time they die.

Now, we're not talking about military retirees. We were just talking about civilian retirees. Their costs are going to skyrocket, which is also going to wipe out their net worth or put a big dent in it. So it's basically the same thing, but note this. While your benefits get cut in half or pared down, members of Congress and other federal employees hold onto their benefits for life after they quit or are defeated or retire.

This is from the AP: "Relief to seniors facing high prescription drug costs is one of the first changes to come under the new health care overhaul. But ultimately that won't offset the relentless increase in retirees' medical expenses. A couple retiring this year will need [$250,000], on average, to cover medical expenses in retirement, according to a study to be released Thursday by Fidelity Investments. ... The study is based on projections for a couple of 65-year-olds retiring this year with Medicare ... and a life expectancy of 85 for women and 82 for men." So, in addition to whatever else your retirement is going to be cost you, it's an additional $250,000 on top of it now to handle the new health care expenses that are in Obamacare.

RUSH: You remember when everybody in the media was just ripping George Bush to pieces 'cause gasoline got to three bucks a gallon? Well, it's there again. Gas prices up a dollar a gallon since Obama was immaculated, and they are expected to go over three dollars a gallon during the summer driving season. The price is expected to be over three dollars a gallon during the summer driving season.

But I want to take you back to April 24th, 2006. Nancy Pelosi: "With skyrocketing gas prices, it is clear the American people can no longer afford the Republican rubberstamp Congress and its failure to stand up to Republican big oil and gas company cronies." The price of gasoline when she made this statement was $2.91. We're headed for over three dollars a gallon. Is there anybody raising a ruckus about this in the media, anybody demanding to know what Big Oil is doing, anybody demanding to know where these obscene profits are going? No.

RUSH: Lisa, Leawood, Kansas, outside Kansas City. It's great to have you on the program. Welcome.

CALLER: Thank you. It's an extreme honor to talk to you, Rush. I just had one thing. I've been listening to you for quite a long time, and it just really drives me crazy when the mainstream press -- and, you know, I don't give them very much credit because I know where they're coming from, but their constant attacks on you and the message that you deliver just drive me crazy.

CALLER: Well, they attack anybody who has a conservative viewpoint, frankly, or doesn't share their viewpoint. A lot of times you can't even talk to somebody who's for all of this socialist agenda. The reason I called is you were talking about the people wanting to move our country more towards a socialist country, and to me, I think, in my head, I'm starting to call these people un-American, because our country is not a socialist country.

CALLER: We're not a European socialist country and if they want to start implementing all these programs here then that's not America, and you can't call those people Americans and you can't call our country America any of them because that does not agree.

RUSH: I understand how you feel, Lisa. I totally understand how you feel. These people are mere stewards, they are not elected to remake, re-form, or reshape the Constitution or our government or our country but they've taken it upon themselves to do it. Since she mentioned all these media attacks, folks, look when there's smoke, there's Rush. That's really the new phrase here: Where there's smoke there's Rush. The reason they attack me and the reason I'm honored by the enemies I have, is they need villains. Their ideas don't sell themselves. They need demons, they need villains, and they always tell us who they fear. They always tell us who they are most afraid of. So let's go to the audio sound bites. Jonathan Karl, ABC's World News last night.

RUSH ARCHIVE: We need to defeat these bastards. We need to wipe them out. We need to chase them out of town.

RUSH: Vitriol. It's vitriol to suggest we need to defeat Democrats. Vitriol. You see, here's the Today Show today, Capitol Hill correspondent Kelly O'Donnell reporting on me.

O'DONNELL: The provocative platform Rush Limbaugh commands can add fuel to the fire!

RUSH ARCHIVE: We need to defeat these bastards. We need to wipe them out. We need to chase them out of town.

RUSH: Kelly O'Donnell, America is standing up and cheering when they hear those words. Fuel to the fire? See, whenever one or two idiots -- and in this case we don't even know that it happened. When one or two idiots are accused of doing something, the media is constantly trolling for people that listen to talk radio when some crime happens or whatever. The people, Ms. O'Donnell, in this country are livid, not because of me. The people of this country are not filled with vitriol because of me. They are filled with vitriol because of Barack Obama and people like you who will not tell them the truth about what's going on. The people of this country are in vitriol and in anger, and they're taking it out on you by not watching your pathetic little network or your pathetic little show, because you're not honest, because you are propagandist. You have no more interest in "speaking truth to power" than you do in having your ratings increase. You have forgotten who your audience is. Your audience is not Matt Lauer and Chris Matthews. Your audience is the American people, and you've lost 'em, and that's why they're angry. You're not doing your job. I am doing mine. They looove me.

RUSH: Now all of a sudden I'm the most dangerous man in America. How can that be? If I lost, how can I be such a threat anymore? Dianne Feinstein has joined the TIME Magazine chorus, "Come on, Republicans, just quit, just give it up, why are you continuing this fight?" Oh, I get it, you guys can struggle for a hundred years to destroy the country and then you can celebrate when you get a next chunk of it passed, and we're supposed to just give up. Is that how it works? That's what they're trying to tell us.

When some nut, when some loco weed walks into a place and shoots it up, the media look for any evidence that they've read conservative books, they're members of the tea party, or that they listen to talk radio. They're said to be racist because one person allegedly says something or because of some sign. In this kind of reporting it only cuts one way. Have you noticed? In fact, they even lie. What was the incident that happened recently? Was it the guy who flew his plane into the IRS office down in Texas? He was a registered Democrat, right? Something like that, and they tried to tie him to the tea parties and everything. Or the Alabama doctor, oh, yeah, these guys are all tea party members. No, they're Democrats. They got Democrats killing themselves, literally committing suicide rather than have their homes foreclosed on them during the Obama administration.

"TARP Watchdog Slams Obama Foreclosure Program." This is CNNmoney.com. "President Obama's foreclosure prevention program will likely fall far short of its goal and may even do more harm than good." I think we've been saying that for a year because government cannot save things like this. Government can't keep you in your home when you're doing nothing to keep yourself in your home. They just can't do it. And now people are committing suicide in Philadelphia, ahead of being foreclosed on. Now, if George Bush were president, that's all we'd be hearing, Bush is killing people, people dying, people killing themselves because of Bush, or any other Republican. Well, how about this? How about this angle? Every person who is abused by government bureaucrats or who is denied government benefits or who the government has supposedly failed, those people don't get any attention whatsoever. How about the sympathy of a person denied something from an insurance company? Oh, we hear about that all the time, all the time.

Single mothers are now the most virtuous people in our country, particularly if they have children named Marcelas. Oh, yeah. I, of course El Rushbo am the most dangerous man in the country now. Oh, yeah, we're to believe that government runs smoothly, it runs efficiently, we're led to believe it means well and it's therefore always good. On the other hand the private sector is full of rich, hateful, greedy people who create nothing and steal from others. Yeah. And that's where Rush Limbaugh happens to live, is in the private sector, so I'm evil, I'm greedy, I'm rich, I take and steal from others, I don't produce anything. I am the enemy to these people.

RUSH: All right, the assaults on your host in the media continued into yesterday afternoon and last night. Let's go to MSNBC Live, the anchor is the pathetic David Shuster.

SHUSTER: Right now it's Rush Limbaugh today once again railing against Democrats, demonizing President Obama, and it may be working. According to a new Harris poll, 67% of Republicans think the president is a socialist, 57% of Republicans think he's Muslim, 45% don't think he was born in this country, 38% of Republicans think President Obama is, quote, "doing what Hitler did," and yet this: 24% say the president of the United States is the anti-Christ. Does Rush Limbaugh speak for the GOP? Republicans must be getting some of this garbage from somewhere. Who are they getting it from?

RUSH: Well, I don't know. (laughing) Anti-Christ and Muslim, I don't know where they're getting that because that's not a part of the program. I haven't really made that one of our topics here, but the methodology of this Harris poll was greatly flawed. I didn't even report the poll yesterday. I knew these guys would be touting it. I didn't report it. Other pollsters are raising a big stink about the methodology of this thing, but it achieved its purpose. I told you on Monday: This all going to happen now. We're going to be the biggest evil enemy in the history of the country now. Now, as far as this Hitler business, one of the first things the National Socialist Party did was try to nationalize health care. I mean, facts are facts: The president is a socialist. The number ought to be much higher than 67%. And we got the New York Times saying so today. We've got what's-her-face, Sebelius, saying so today. We got John Dingell: "Control the people." Worse than socialist. Well, Shuster was mentioning all that to one of his guests, a guy by the name of Mark Levine, who is an attorney (not Mark "Le-vin," Mark "Le-veen") and Shuster said, "Why is it fair to pin this on Limbaugh?"

LEVINE: If you heard Rush Limbaugh today, he specifically compared Barack Obama to Hitler. (sic) This is not rhetoric that's coming out of nowhere. People understand the tea party activists are drawing Hitler mustaches on Obama. They're doing it for a reason. There are a lot of mostly angry, white, Southern, male, fundamentalist Christians who are very angry.

LEVINE: They see their power being taken away, they see blacks in power, they see a woman Speaker of the House, they see a gay man as head of the Financial Services Committee, and they're worried. The irony is this bill will actually help most of the people, they just don't know it.

RUSH: A blooming idiot, a glittering jewel of colossal ignorance. Somebody help me: Did we even mention Adolf Hitler yesterday? It's a total lie. Adolf Hitler was not mentioned on this program yesterday. We didn't even talk about any of these Hitler videos yesterday, right? The word "Hitler" was not uttered on this program. And here comes the cliche: "Mostly angry, white, Southern, male, fundamentalist Christians. Very angry, see their power being taken away." This is what passes for learned analysis. Do these guys get together after the show and do a circle you-know-what, ever? Or are they doing that underneath the desk during the show? What a bunch of blooming idiots, and this guy is an attorney, and it says here he has a radio show of his own? That's probably the problem. Nobody listens to it and he's ticked off about that. Anyway, it continued. We move on to sound bite number 11. "Maude" Behar. And, by the way, let's do sound bite number ten. I get a lot of people asking me, this is a interesting question because of generations, "Where do you get 'Maude' Behar? Where does the 'Maude' come from?" Remember the TV show?

DONNY HATHAWAY (playing "Maude" TV show theme music): Lady Godiva was a freedom rider; she didn't care if the whole world looked. Joan of Arc with the Lord to guide her; she was a sister who really cooked. Isadora was the first bra-burner, and you're glad she showed up.

DONNY HATHAWAY: And when the country was falling apart, Betsy Ross got it all sewed up.

RUSH: It stared Bea Arthur. Maude was a spun-off character from All in the Family, somehow was always berating Archie Bunker on the show. So, you know, Bea Arthur, "Maude" Behar. Anyway, this morning on The View, "Maude" Behar said this about me...

"MAUDE" BEHAR: There's a difference between hate speech and free speech, but hate speech is also protected in the first amendment. But you have to take the hit. If you are a hateful speaker like Rush Limbaugh, people are going to go after you.

RUSH: (chuckles) You know, there is nobody that listens to this program that thinks that there's any hate. There's nothing but love and affection and optimism, good cheer and happiness on this program, which I bet "Maude" hasn't listened to in I don't know how long. Anyway, to the phones. That's just a sample, ladies and gentlemen. (interruption) Yeah, she's still on CNN, but Headline News. It's Headline News, which has more ratings than CNN does, but the Cartoon Network still has more numbers than MSNBC, CNN, and Headline News combined in the cable universe. More people are watching cartoons than are watching those three networks, which are indistinguishable, by the way, which one is the cartoon and which one's the Cartoon Network.

RUSH: And we are back. A couple more sound bites here of "hate speech" aimed at me from MSNBC yesterday. This is David Shuster again with Michael Eric Dyson, a professor at Georgetown University. Now, remember, what they're doing here. You see it happening with the Ann Coulter situation up in Canada. That's possibly our future. They don't have free speech up there. If the people in charge don't like what you're saying, they can keep you from saying it, and what they're trying to do is criminalize now all criticism of Obama as "hate speech," as being racist or worse. It's exactly what they're doing to Coulter. So yesterday or Monday afternoon, here is David Shuster. He said, "Limbaugh then turned to the politics of race," and he played a clip of me saying: "Here's what he's going to say: There are some people who don't like your skin color, who don't think you should be American.

"He's come to divide; he's come to conquer. Is there anybody who now doubts what I meant when I said, 'I hope he fails?'" And then Shuster says, "What goes through your mind, Mr. Dyson when you her that stuff?" Of course what I was talking about there was the coming immigration bill: Amnesty. And no question, Obama's going to run around and -- I'll say it again -- he's going to say (doing impression), "There's some people that don't like your skin color, who don't think you should be an American." Obama has divided us. We're not unified. There's no unity here, not that we were promised. We got no post-partisanship, we got no post-racial presidency. In fact, I actually call him a post-constitutional president! He's a post-constitutional president. And I think something else needs to happen. We need to have at the Smithsonian Institute a wax figure, life-sized wax figure of an insurance salesman and of a drug company researcher, 'cause pretty soon aren't going to be any of them. So anyway, here's what Michael Eric Dyson said to my supposedly "divisive, racist" comment.

DYSON: If anybody is fomenting dissent, it is Rush Limbaugh. The politics of division, the cruel denial of the utter humanity of Mr. Obama. Those who disagree with him have the right to do so. But to disparage his character and to assert these unfounded, uh, ideas and propositions about Mr. 'bama is just, uh, dumbfounding to me. There's nothing in Mr. Obama's demeanor -- uh, uh -- a reaching out to the right, uh, to suggest that he's in any way, uh, inclined to make this an Empire of Color or trying to derail what he sees as the benefit for all Americans of social policies that he puts into legislation.

RUSH: Whatever the hell that means. I never said that's attempting to make an "empire of color." I said he's going to try to pass amnesty by shutting down criticism of it, by claiming that the people who oppose it are racists! I know exactly what he's going to say. He's going to say, "There's some people who don't like your skin color, who don't think you should be an American. They don't." Now, that's clear for what it is. It's talking about immigration. In fact, it's already been said at numerous pro-amnesty rallies that have been held. I mean, I'm not making that up. It's really not that great a prediction because it's been said by other people. So then Shuster spoke with Michael Eric Dyson again. "Here's what else Rush Limbaugh said today in terms of describing the Obama crowd," and he played the clip of me saying, "They look at this country as one big criminal act, one big civil rights, human rights violation. Don't doubt me.

"That is how Obama has been raised to look at this country, and he believes it," and Shuster then turns to Dyson and says, "Well, that's about as loaded as it gets." What is it about the truth that bothers these people? There's no question that this is what animates Obama. Everything he's touching he's destroying. Do you think this is accidental? He says he's going to save the home market. What's happening to it? People are committing suicide in Philadelphia, in advance of being foreclosed. New home sales, all-time record low! Despite all the shovel-ready jobs that we're going to have, construction unemployment is 27.1%. He was gonna keep unemployment at 8%. It's now hovering around 10% generally, 16% if you counts those who have given up looking. Nothing he's doing is working. Everything he's touching he is destroying and changing, and where is this "laser-like focus on jobs," anyway, we were told we were going to get last December? So here's Dyson's reaction to it all.

DYSON: That's ignorant beyond belief. We don't have to demonize each other to disagree. Mr., uh, Limbaugh again is fomenting these politics of opposition and I think the conservatives of good conscience should speak out against him to resort to this kind of shenanigan(s) where Mr. Limbaugh is trying to foment racist animus against Mr. Obama is just remarkably... Rush Limbaugh is trying to foment a universe of bigotocracy (sic), that has no place in American civil discourse and it only foments the kind of dissent that leads to the most attacks on Mr. Obama, the most threats against him of any president (sic) --

DYSON: -- and I think we need to be afraid for the future of our nation, not simply for the health of Mr. Obama.

RUSH: Well, we agree on that. I mean, we are afraid for the future of the nation, but because of Mr. Obama. By the way, the Secret Service says he is not getting more death threats than any other president has, Mr. Dyson, Professor Dyson -- and besides that, your side, Mr. Dyson, did a couple of books and movies on how to assassinate George W. Bush and your media told us these were serious literary works. We had to at least treat them that way. I mean, I have not seen anything like that about Obama. (interruption) What, Mr. Snerdley, you have a question? What? (interruption) Bigotocracy? Well, that's a new word. He's a professor, he can make up words. "Bigotocracy." I make up my own words, feminazi, so he can make up "bigotocracy," if he wants to. But there's no racist comment here. Mr. Dyson looks at this country as one big criminal act! Mr. Dyson looks at this country as one giant violation of civil rights. Mr. Dyson looks at this country this way. That's why he's so angry all the time. What do you think he's teaching in his classroom? The greatness of the Founding Fathers? Ha-ha! Anybody want to lay odds on that? What's happening here is that they are trying to criminalize all criticism to Obama as hate speech from racists or worse, just like they're doing with Coulter.

RUSH: You know, it really is interesting. CNN, MessNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, how many hours have they spent discussing you, or minutes, on the day when their wonderful president had that big F-ing deal signed? Wouldn't you think they'd be in party mode out there? I mean they got their big F-ing deal signed and they should be partying hardy out there. You would think they'd be celebrating, finding people are having Christmas dinners, you'd think they'd be out there finding all these new people who are having Christmas in March with all their new health care coverage. Instead they spend precious broadcast minutes trashing me, lying about me. Why is that, do you think? Why is

that? Because they're liberals, they attack truth-tellers. Liberalism is a lie. It's built on lies. They attack and demonize people who expose the lies. (kissing sound) That simple.

RUSH: I don't even think it's genuine. I think all this was strategized. I don't think anybody spat on Cleaver; I don't think anybody called Barney Frank the F-word; I don't think anybody called John Lewis the N-word. There's no evidence of it other than them. And now the Brits are going through Louise Slaughter's office bill -- well, that's obviously happening, we've seen the pictures, and the brother of some Virginia congressman has had his gas line cut. So now up on the MSNBC, breaking news: "Steny Hoyer and Jim Clyburn, Democrats targeted after health care reform vote." I told you this at the beginning of the show. I'm sorry to sound hysterical here, but at the beginning of the show, "They're going to criminalize all this, and they're going to try to segregate every critic of this health care bill as somebody throwing bricks or threatening lives or what have you," which is not the case.

These people simply know they're facing a majority opposition here, and this is how tyranny happens, this is how statists act, run to the media, whine and cry. I have yet to call a press conference, all the death threats that I've got. I refuse. I have not called a press conference to describe all the security steps I've had to take because of all the meanies that are out there who are threatening me. We could do it every day. But it's the league we play in, and these guys are in the big leagues, too. (crying) "People are criticizing us. (crying) And they're attacking us with words." (crying) And we gotta shut 'em down.

RUSH: Stacy in hiding... is this our insurance babe? Stacy, welcome back. Great to have you here.

RUSH: You came on and you told me that your insurance company was setting up medical operations in Costa Rica, you're going to take the doctors and everything down there and you're going to sell insurance policies if this thing all happened to your customers, and included in the premium would be trips to Costa Rica for medical treatment and so forth. So after having heard you say that, another caller asked me, "What are you going to do if it passes?" "I'm going to go get treated in Costa Rica." And so now everybody thinks I said I'm leaving the country for Costa Rica. So I need to ask you, how soon are you going to get those clinics set up so I can go?

CALLER: I've gotta revise my estimate. We may last two to three years, tops, and let me tell you why. The 85-15 provision that has just been signed into law an hour ago --

CALLER: -- by definition of every state and federal insurance regulator makes us financially unsound.

RUSH: All right, now, I have to take a break here and I want to ask you if you can hold on 'til the top of the next hour where we will get your details on this without any time constraints. Can you hang on?

RUSH: Tell 'em it will be worth it, and if you can't, you tell Snerdley and we'll call you back when you have time, okay?

RUSH: Now, we welcome back from "in hiding" in Atlanta Stacy, who works for an insurance company who's been keeping us updated throughout this past year on the fate of her industry should this thing pass. Now it has passed. Give us the lowdown, Stacy.

CALLER: Okay. For time immemorial, both state and federal regulation -- and also just the industry standard -- has been a 65-45 percentage arrangement: 65 in claims payment and 45 for administration and claims expense. Withholding that you store for, you know, a major catastrophe or something.

CALLER: No, 65% is to pay the claims. Forty-five percent is for everything else.

RUSH: That means 45% is salaries, administration costs, and the offices, all the paperwork, that kind of thing?

CALLER: It's that as well as, you know, we are required to keep a certain amount of cash on hand as a percentage of our claims exposure to pay claims.

CALLER: So, for example, if you have a disaster and you suddenly had 400,000 claims come in, you've gotta have the money to be able to pay those claims immediately.

RUSH: Now, I just want to make sure I understand here. State and federal regulations set those percentages?

RUSH: So if you wanted to have 85% set aside for claims, you couldn't. You had to go at 65%?

RUSH: If you wanted 30% set aside for claims and the rest were administration, you couldn't do it. It had to be 65%.

CALLER: That's illegal, yes. It has to be 65-45, and there's a couple of percentage either way, but generally when an insurance company falls outside of those guidelines, they are considered financially unstable.

CALLER: We're audited by the state insurance departments, primarily. There are some plans that are audited both state and federally, and then you have your private auditors who will come in as part of the stock market and that kind of thing. So we're audited often.

CALLER: At least once a year, you'll have one from the industry auditors, and every three to five perhaps for federal and state.

CALLER: More often if they think that you're unstable, they'll audit you more often. So what Obama just did an hour and a half ago is make every insurance company in the country financially unstable. Remember, the 15% (sic) that we are left has not only to pay salaries, maintenance, upkeep of buildings; it also has to pay the 40% increased taxes that we've got. I mean, there's just no way. You can't do it.

RUSH: Well, you're getting a little bit ahead of me here. What did Obama sign that changes this 65-45 split? In what way did Obama now sign you into permanent instability?

CALLER: The provision in the Senate bill requires that all insurance companies pay 85% of premiums collected every year in claims.

CALLER: Exactly. It doesn't matter how much we increase the premium, it won't matter.

RUSH: And just to satisfy my own curiosity, with the mandates that are in this -- such as you now being required to insure children on their parents' policies to age 26 or 27; and now having to insure (or cover) preexisting conditions -- what's that going to do to your current premium structure starting today?

CALLER: That's my other fear, Rush. I don't know that November is as big a lock as we would hope and here's why. Most group plans renew January 1st of every year. Most people won't see the dramatic premium increases until January 1st. So what they're going to do is all these people who voted for this -- and who likely were swayed by this argument -- are going to run around and say, "Well, look, nothing happened. You're not paying any more. You know, everything's fine. It was just a bunch of, quote, unquote, 'fearmongering,'" and I'm afraid they're going to be reelected.

RUSH: Well, we'll do with that when the time comes. I think there's a lot more in this than just those two provisions that have people outraged and upset, and I know that your fear is that the people that supported this are going to show up in droves and vote for Democrats on the theory that none of the scare stories that were told had happened because this delayed until January, but there are other things that we can work with on this. The Democrat Party's damaged itself in the sense. They just inflicted great harm on the country. Whenever it shows up, it will be realized. Now, I want to take you back to the first thing you said: You originally thought that your industry would survive. You're speaking industry or just your particular company?

CALLER: I would say 99% of all insurance companies, health insurance companies in the country.

RUSH: Okay. So you originated thought you might have three to five years to stay in business under Obama. Now you said it's two to three. Why?

CALLER: Because of the 85-15. Plus the additional expenses we're gonna incur. Additionally, the mandates, what people don't understand when CMS (which is the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare) push a mandate down on insurance companies, we have to pay to complement those mandates. We don't know how many of those are in this monstrosity. So we can have our mandate budget doubled, our taxes already up 40% or whatever it is, and our cash flow immediately cut.

RUSH: Well, how can you know in advance of paying any claims? Because they've now shifted to 65% that you have to set aside for claims to 85%. How in the world can anybody know in advance of paying claims that it's going to amount to 85%?

RUSH: Of course 65%? It seems to be like this is a ridiculous dictate made by people that have no clue how your business works.

CALLER: Well, they don't have a clue. But the way that that amount of money is calculated is you look at the past year, past five years, past ten years, and you see what your claims expense have been those years. Then based on your enrollment and your demographics you project forward into what you expect to be paying in the future, in the next year and the next five years. So you can do that. It's not precise to a dollar, but you usually get pretty close. What he's done is by saying, for example, the preventative services now --

RUSH: What the hell is a preventative service covered by an insurance company anyway?

CALLER: Well, that would be your colonoscopies, your mammograms, your yearly physicals, your lab work.

RUSH: Oh, so those are free now! So if I want to go get a colonoscopy today and I have an insurance policy, I'm not going to pay for it?

RUSH: Well, no, I don't look at a colonoscopy as Christmas. Don't misunderstand.

RUSH: But it is Christmas in the sense that I'm not paying for it. I don't know how you can stay in business even two to three years with this kind of thing happening to you this year alone.

CALLER: I don't think we will and that's why I am seriously considering leaving this industry. I'm updating my resume. You know, people who I work with -- even people who voted for Obama and thought he was the greatest thing since sliced bread -- are shell-shocked.

RUSH: That just frustrates the hell out of me. Anybody with a brain has no reason to be shell-shocked about who this guy is, but it is what it is.

CALLER: Rush, it's not him. I didn't think Congress would sell us down the river like this, especially given the public opinion. When have you ever seen a politician just say, "I don't care that the public doesn't like it and I don't care if I'm reelected"? This is something I have never experienced. I have never seen this, and people that I work with who don't follow politics, who don't know what's going on necessarily, they had no clue this was coming. At least I had an inkling! They had no idea.

RUSH: Well, it's proof positive is that people who don't pay attention to politics are now outraged, upset, and don't quite understand. It's time to make 'em understand. This is who Democrats are. This is who liberals are. You realize, too, I'm sure, that the whole purpose of all these new requirements on you is to put you out of business.

RUSH: The whole purpose is to make it unable for you to stay in business financially, and so the government can come in and say, "Okay, well, you know, these damn insurance companies! We never could depend on them. They're nothing but a bunch of frauds and nothing but a bunch of cheats. They're still cheating people. They're still raping people. We're going to have to do this ourselves."

CALLER: And you know how many people are going to die in the interim, Rush? I say that in all sincerity, because come January 1st you're going to see 200, 300% increases in premiums and people are going to drop their coverage. So you've got the woman who isn't going to go get the mammogram or the man who's not going to get the prostate exam.

CALLER: Not when you drop the coverage because you can't afford three times the premium. Remember, the premiums are going up because of the government, and jobs are being lost because of the government. If you can't pay it, you can't pay it. So people are going to drop it. They're going to drop their insurance before they drop their mortgage.

RUSH: They're going to be clamoring to the government to fix the mean-spirited insurance companies for raising the prices so high and that's where Obama's going to step in and say, "You know what? We have no choice here but than to do it ourselves," and then you get dumped on again first and foremost with Obama portraying the government as the savior. Look, I gotta take a break. Can you hang on a couple minutes?

RUSH: I still have a couple more questions. Stacy, our insurance expert, "hiding" in Atlanta to make the call.

RUSH: We rejoin Stacy in hiding in Atlanta from the insurance industry. You said just a minute ago that you're not all that confident about the November election because all these premium increases, group rates, group policy don't renew 'til January so all of your out-of-pocket expenses are going to start relatively soon but you can't raise premiums until January to recoup them, correct?

RUSH: All right, we just got a story here from The Politico: "Timing Right for Democrats' Midterm Election Hopes -- Voters will get their first taste of the benefits of health care reform only a few short weeks before the November midterm elections. They won't have to swallow most of the bitter pills until much later -- well after President Barack Obama faces voters again in 2012. Match the effective dates of key reform provisions against the election calendar, and it becomes clear that Democrats were as focused on writing a legislative overhaul of the health care system as they were on devising a political road map for selling it to voters." Now, of course, this story is celebrating the brilliance of the Democrats here. Basically this story is, "Okay, yep, Americans you got screwed, but you're not going to know it in time to vote the Democrats out," which is essentially your fear.

CALLER: Yeah, and, you know, Rush, Costa Rica is not going to save us because it doesn't matter where services are rendered, the law is going to cover any policy sold within the United States. So even though we can send folks down to Costa Rica for care, we're still going to be under the 85-15 rule, we're still going to have the additional taxes.

RUSH: Are you the only one that realizes this in your immediate orb within your company?

CALLER: No. Most of us recognize it. The question is, are you willing to move out of state, you know, go somewhere else to find a comparable job, that's the question now for a lot of us.

CALLER: The technology aspect. The technology that we work with is not used commonly in small shops around or whatever.

CALLER: So if we want a position using the technology we use today, we're going to have to leave, and I don't know where I'm going to go.

RUSH: Well, it's a shame. And it's a shame because all of this was predictable based on the details of the legislation. Stacy, feel free to stay in touch any time to update us on this. We really do value your input on this. You sound very confident and know what you're talking about. Well, in fact, you know what, Snerdley has a great idea and we're going to do this. We are going to start collecting our own sob stories, and Stacy you might want to be one of our sob stories. Instead of bringing up individuals who have supposedly been treated harshly because of an unfair country and an unfair insurance industry what we're going to do is create our own roster of sob story people, small businesses who have been put out of business; small business people whose taxes have been raised making it impossible to stay in business for very much longer; people like you, whose entire industry is being targeted for eventual destruction. We're going to do people genuinely hurt by the legislation. And believe me, there will be no shortage. If you want to be one of our sob stories, I hope you're not, but if a sob story happens to you, we, the EIB Network, will happily be your outlet.

RUSH: So I got this e-mail question from the subscriber list: "After listening to Stacy, why aren't the insurance companies not taking out full-page ads detailing all of these deceptive lies to the American people? Why are Wall Street companies not doing the same? Why are they continuing to allow these liberals to demonize them and not fight back?" I can only take a guess, and as far as the insurance companies are concerned, take a look at the stocks. Insurance company stocks right now are skyrocketing and so are drug company stocks because the original few years of this bill mandates 32 million more customers, and the insurance companies are going to pay for them somehow, some way, so they're excited about this. You jump in on the bubble and you cash out. I mean, even if you think you got five years left in business, maximize it all you can and then get the hell out if you don't think you can stop it. Anyway, my guess. What do I know?

RUSH: Today, as we start the radio program, America is hanging by a thread. So we have to see what we can do with a thread. At the end of the day, our freedom has been assaulted. This is the kind of change that people did not think they were going to get when they voted for Barack Obama. Freedom must win the day.

You have to deal with reality here, and that means focusing on the future. Now, there are some people who want to look back at the past and say, "How did we get here?" and that's all fine and dandy, but we know how we got here. Barack Obama was elected president. If you want to go back any further than that, we can, but we are here because Barack Obama was elected president. We are here because the Democrat Party has a majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives.

There's a lot of anger at Bart Stupak today. Bart Stupak was always going to vote for this. The thing that Bart Stupak needs to be hounded out of office for is for misleading an entire nation and giving an entire nation a big, fake feint job that he and his cohorts were somehow going to do something to stop this on the basis of a false premise, anyway. I want you to hear a piece of audio from Stupak. This is October 24th in Cheboygan, Michigan. He held a town hall meeting. This is Internet quality, here. He held a town hall meeting, and he told a questioner, one of his voters, that if he liked everything but the abortion funding he would vote for it. He said this last October.

STUPAK: If everything I want [is] in the final bill, I like everything in the bill except you have public funding for abortion -- and we had a chance to run our amendment and we lost. Okay, I voted my conscience, stayed true to my principles, stayed true to the beliefs of this district. Could I vote for health care? Yes, I still could.

RUSH: And he did. He was always going to, as were the moderate Democrats. There were some of them that were given a chance to vote "no" because they had enough of a majority last night. But up until four o'clock yesterday afternoon, theoretically, Pelosi did not have the votes. I'm asking myself what kind of country are we today. We're not a representative republic. The will of the people was spat upon yesterday. The will of the people is of no concern to the people who now have power and authority from the White House all the way down to Capitol Hill. The will of the people is something to be crushed. So we're not a representative republic. You can't even say, loosely defined, we are much of a democracy. We have to restore these things. We have to do this by getting rid of these people at the ballot box. We must get them out of office. That's the only thing here. I hear people talking about repeal, and that's great, but there's something that has to happen before we can do that. We can't repeal this thing as we sit here today. We don't have the votes. We didn't have the votes to stop it; we're not going to have the votes to repeal it. We have to start winning elections.

But I'm going to tell everybody in the Republican Party that's running around talking about repeal: It had better be more than a campaign slogan. You better mean it. Don't declare something as principle and then play it like a $5 poker chip like Bart Stupak did. Stupak has humiliated and disgraced himself. He lied because he held out the hope to millions of Americans that this travesty would not happen. Bart Stupak has not only humiliated and disgraced himself; he has as big a role in destroying this country as it was founded as Barack Obama does. Last night, Bart Stupak damaged the already crippled Democrat Party more than he knows, more than they know. That executive order? Totally laughable. Stupak just wanted his "Notice me!" moment. Stupak is no different than Neville Chamberlain, who came back with that little letter from Hitler, "Oh, yeah, Hitler says no war between his country and ours."

Well, Stupak got his executive order which is worthless and can be rescinded, but it does not have the ability to counter statute. So whatever's in the Senate bill -- and there is federal funding for abortion in the bill; and folks, make no question: The lies that we have been told about what's in this bill, what's not in this bill, it is an utter disaster. If you want we can spend some time today going through some of these individual items, which we've been doing for a year-and-a-half. The point is, the American people have awakened and they finally have seen what statists look like and what they do and how they act.

Even McCain, who as recently as a year ago wanted to "walk across the aisle" and work with these people, said today he's upset just looking at how happy they are at what they've done. Of course, it need not have happened had we... Well, I don't even want to go there. Focusing on the past is only relevant in terms of how we learn from it and not make the same mistakes in the future. So yep, we repeal -- fine and dandy -- and we take these lawsuits. These lawsuits are an uphill climb. We can't rely on lawsuits to win the day. I mean, they need to be filed and they need to be argued, and we need to push back in every direction, but the focus has to be on defeating Democrats in November in these midterm elections. We have the people. We have the intellectual arguments. We have the commonsense arguments. We have history. But they won yesterday.

They won because they held Congress and the presidency, and therein lies the lesson: We need to defeat these bastards. We need to wipe them out. We need to chase them out of town. But we need to do more than that. We need to elect conservatives. If there are Republican primaries, elect conservatives and then defeat the Democrats -- every last one of them -- and then we start the repeal process. And by "repeal," I mean use every single legislative and bureaucratic tactic we can muster to obstruct, derail, and defeat them. Just saying "repeal" does not make it happen. We're going to have to turn out en masse in November and stop these people. As you have seen, the law will not stop them, the Constitution will not stop them, hoping that they will do the right thing will not stop them because their definition of "the right thing" has nothing in common with ours.

They must, my friends, be hounded out of office. Every single Democrat who voted for this needs to know, safe district or not, that they are going to be exposed and hassled and chased from office. We now have leftist radicals in charge of your health care decisions rather than doctors. I got up today and I said, "We're hanging by a thread," and there's a difficult balancing act on this program today: Dealing with the reality of what has happened, which can't be candy coated, with the need to fight on. The need to fight on and the urging to fight on must have some substance to it and not just be rhetoric and language and lingo. It has to have some substance behind it, because we really are facing the prospect that our country will never be the same after yesterday, if this stands. It will never be the same, and a majority of the American people understood it.

A majority of the American people understand it and know it and are outraged by this. Americans are now eagerly awaiting their insurance premiums to be reduced by $2,500 a year. Obama has been promising this since his presidential campaign of 2008. Americans are now eagerly awaiting for all of the uninsured to magically have health insurance. The American people are now waiting for their premiums to magically go down and for their access to go up. I was listening to some of the Democrats in the media last night. Juan Williams on Fox was just excited. "Oh, my God, this is so wonderful! It's so wonderful! No more preexisting conditions! No more preexisting conditions! Everybody gets insurance," and I'm saying, "Does anybody not understand economics here?" We're not even talking about an insurance business anymore.

What's happened here is not insurance. Insurance is you insure yourself against a catastrophe, something that might happen to wipe you out. This is not insurance. This is simply the insurance companies being captivated or taken over by the government and having their behavior mandated for the express purpose of putting them out of business. Under this bill, as I told you last week, you don't have to buy insurance. You can wait until the accident or the illness happens and then buy it that day, and they have to sell it to you. No matter what. If you get terminal cancer and the doctor gives you three months, they have to sell you your coverage. Except you're not going to have to buy it. If you can't afford it, we -- all your neighbors -- will. No insurance company can stay in business doing this.

It's the same thing with preexisting conditions. No preexisting conditions? The liberals keep talking about automobile insurance companies. What happens to you if you have an automobile policy, you're driving around, and you have an accident and you do a lot of damage? Hey, guess what? You are a higher risk. Your auto insurance premium goes up, right? Why shouldn't that happen with health care? Why shouldn't it? (whining) "It's not fair? No, it's not fair!" Well, it won't now. It won't now. So, yeah, preexisting conditions are going to be covered, but who's going to pay for this? Insurance premiums are going to skyrocket in the next couple of years until they are out of business and the government steps in to take over with the...public option. Which is just waiting a couple of months, couple of days, couple years down the tracks. It's just waiting to happen, because this bill mandates the destruction of the private health insurance business.

This is proof that the private sector can do it better; it is cheaper to put the homeless into a house than it is to put them into a government-run shelter with cots:

Banks will lose millions the government take over of the student loan industry (along with thousands of jobs):

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 an interesting site; it seems to be devoted to the debate of climate change:

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 #120	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	March 28, 2010