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).

Probably the most significant event is Putin’s meeting with Chavez, which could result in Chavez getting nuclear technology.

Social Security is officially broke now (it pays out more money than it takes in)

Two interesting events this past week: a donor to the Democratic part threatens to kill Republican whip Eric Cantor; another donor to the Republican party gets reimbursed for going to a racy club. Which of these stories did you hear about in the media and which was virtually ignored? Simultaneous to these 2 events, was story after story about violence, threatened violence and questionable language and symbols which may intimate violence (in the eyes of the imaginative) between political parties (almost all of these stories were about imagined or intimated violence of the right against the left).

Speaking of ignored news, ACORN, the infamous political organization which claimed it was going out of business, is resurfacing, but with different names in California, Texas, Arkansas, Massachusetts, Missouri and New York.

It seems to be pretty clear that, although members of the Democratic party, taking a stroll through TEA town in front of the House, are making up the 14 or 15 times they claim racial slurs were hurled at them, along with a “spitting” incident. Although there were cameras recording the entire time, no one has any video with the N-word being used, and the video of the “spitting incident” is questionable (the “spitter” was engaged in enthusiastic discourse with the “spittee”; this was not someone intentionally spitting on someone else). Breitbart upped his offer to $100,000 for footage where the N-word can be heard, and still no takers.

Joe Biden: "It's a simple proposition to us: Everyone is entitled to adequate medical health care. If you call that a `redistribution of income' - well, so be it. I don't call it that. I call it just being fair - giving the middle class taxpayers an even break that the wealthy have been getting."

Max Baucus: "Too often, much of late, the last couple three years, the mal-distribution of income in American is gone up way too much, the wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy and the middle income class is left behind. Wages have not kept up with increased income of the highest income in America. This legislation will have the effect of addressing that mal-distribution of income in America."

Howard Dean, “The question is, in a democracy, where does the right balance between those at the top, 20% of the people do most of the consumer spending and so forth, and those at the bottom. When it gets out of whack as it did in the twenties and has now, you have to do some redistribution. This is a form of redistribution.”

Insurance regulator, Mila Kofman, this week, said "We are the super-cops on the street. I take that responsibility as an insurance regulator very seriously."

Ben Stein, with regards to the economy: “We have already reached a breaking point.”

Jim Geraghty: “If you want to reduce unemployment, stop passing legislation that kicks the snot out of employers.”

President Obama, concerning Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, “It's pretty apparent and it's troublesome. But keep in mind that there have been periods in American history where this kind of vitriol comes out. It happens often when you've got an economy that is making people more anxious and people are feeling as if there's a lot of change that needs to take place. But that's not the vast majority of Americans. I think the vast majority of Americans know that we're trying hard, that I want what's best for the country.”

Candidate Obama in 2008: “If They Bring a Knife to the Fight, We Bring a Gun.”

Candidate Obama to his supporters in 2008: "I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors. I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face."

Jason Mattera, author of "Obama Zombies" and newly appointed editor of Human Events, said "Members in the media treat leftist politicians as though they are at a Jonas Brothers concert."

Sarah Palin: “A contested primary is not a civil war, it is democracy in action.”

Wayne Rogers, in making a point about freedom, said, “If I want to go out and eat dog doo, I ought to have this right.” Sharp film editor put John Layfield’s expression up on the split screen, which was a cringed look of apprehension.

Ahmadinejad, with regards to Obama’s proposed sanctions against Iran: "Don't imagine that you can stop Iran's progress."

Putin increases his oil and defense ties with Venezuela. This could include nuclear technology. It’s times like these, I would feel much safer with McCain as president.

This is great, although it is 10 minutes long. This is the Reverend Wayne Perryman talking about the true history of slavery. Give him 1 minute or 2 and you will want to see the whole thing.

Phil Hare, Democratic Congressman, says he does not care about the constitution (this is almost the entire interview):

This is one of many reasons why we ought not to listen to celebrities when it comes foreign affairs:

Dennis Miller: “The American dream is now in the hands of day dreamers and we are now going from sea to shining C minus. It would appear to me that the only malady not covered by Obamacare is busting your ass.”

1) Whenever Democrats control the White House, those who are evil in the world take advantage of the situation. Note Russia’s activities of this week.

2) Looking at the CBS poll, I still find it amazing that people thought, based upon Obama’s intelligence and speeches, that he actually knew something about economic matters, when he has never really functioned in the free economy in any meaningful way.

3) I am not an anti-Post Office conservative. This is a governmental organization which has to break even, or change things up; and they have allowed other companies to be in competition with them. Going to 5-day-a-week service is fine by me.

4) Someone else recently pointed this out: when was the last time you saw colleges and universities cutting back? When was the last time that they reduced spending, cut back on teacher’s salaries, or went through any set of cost-cutting measures?

5) One of the selling points of Obamacare is, right now, people flood the emergency rooms, and we all pay for this anyway. What has happened in Massachusetts? They have their own form of Obamacare, and both cost and usage of the emergency room is up significantly since the passage of Romneycare (17% in the past 2 years).

6) A study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that the insured accounted for 83 percent of emergency-room visits, reflecting their share of the population. After Massachusetts adopted universal insurance, emergency-room use remained higher than the national average, an Urban Institute study found. More than two-fifths of visits represented non-emergencies. Of those, a majority of adult respondents to a survey said it was "more convenient" to go to the emergency room or they couldn't "get [a doctor's] appointment as soon as needed."

7) In Obama’s first attempt at a mortgage rescue program, he promised that 3–4 million people would be helped. When all was said and done, only 170,000 were helped by his program. This was a $75 billion program. So, do we want to have to enact another mortgage program?

8) It was the conservative website, Dailycaller.com, which broke the Republican stripper club story. It is called, policing your own.

9) It is estimated that, within 10 years, every dollar taken in by taxes will be spend on the interest on our debt or on entitlements.

10) For most of my life, I have worked between 2 and 4 jobs at a time. For my most productive years, a 60 hour work week was typical. I have a friend, and she likes to socialize. So, she has various places that she likes to go to throughout the week—particular bars, particular events. Throughout her productive years, which are still continuing, she works about 15 hours a week (during the weeks that she actually works). She likes the idea of Obamacare. Why shouldn’t she? She has done nothing with respect to looking forward in her life or making any investments. She has no money to invest. She wants to break even this month and then next month as well. But getting a full-time, real job? Nope. Not interested in doing that. This is the kind of person Obamacare is going to help; this is the kind of person who is rewarded for working very few hours each week.

11) Most of the people who have been driving out-of-control Toyotas have been older people. They put their foot on the brake, and the car speeds up; and they press the brake down even further, and, the car goes even faster. Hmm, maybe this is not a Toyota problem?

12) When was the last time you heard about a liberal, socialist or communist speaker being denied the chance to speak at a university? I am thinking never. However, almost every week, this or that conservative speaker is prevented from speaking to college students, even when invited and when no one is forced to go here such a one. This is free speech, in the eyes of the left. Shut down anyone else with a different point of view.

13) I have not fully investigated Obama’s exploration for oil off the Virginian coast, but what I do know is, there is tons of oil in ANWR, off the coast of Florida and off the coast of California. I have heard that there was already a deal in the works to do some exploration in Virginia. My understanding is, an oil company can literally start drilling and bring oil online within 2–3 years, and not in 7–10 years. This seems to be a meaningless sop thrown to the right to grab a couple of votes for cap and trade, on of Obama’s causes.

14) I always find Ben Stein interesting, whether I agree with him or not. This past week, he says we have gone beyond the breaking point in our economy, and that inflation is our only way out of this mess.

15) One of the provisions of Obama care is to require large businesses to provide a nice place for pregnant women to pump their breast milk.

Employers added 162,000 nonfarm jobs last month. 40,000 of these are temporary jobs and 48,000 are census (government) workers.

2500 Sallie Mae people in the private sector are laid off in the student loan business because President Obama took over the Student Loan market.

Remember when virtually every news organization ignored the videos which revealed how absolutely corrupt ACORN is? These same people ignored the investigations going on in New Orleans, of the small office in which 200 or so nonprofit and 1 profit organization shared, all of which were related to ACORN. These same news organizations are ignoring the fact the ACORN is resurfacing, but with a litany of new names in several states.

Like you, I have seen story after story about the Republican donor who got reimbursed $2000 for going to a strip club of some sort (the story is usually so brief as to include the words Republican, strip club and $2000, but with little other information. However, the story which is ignored is the Democratic donor who has made death threats against Republican Eric Cantor—despite the fact that this is a week when crazy violent political types are being highlighted (to the point of pointing out that, on Sarah Palin’s facebook, she has bulls eyes over certain states, a certain call to violence in some people’s eyes; which accusation others see as a lot of bull).

What was the #1 economic headline this past week? 162,000 new jobs created. First line in the NY Times story about this: The clouds have parted. The real story? Unemployment is still at 9.7%. Real unemployment still hovers around 17%.

Speaking of biased news, it was reported that, when Ann Coulter was asked by a seventeen-year-old Muslim student at the University of Western Ontario last Monday, "[S]ince I don't have a magic carpet, what other modes [of transportation] do you suggest," Coulter responded, "Take a camel."

This was not the full story. The girl’s question covered more ground, and Ann gave a much more meaningful answer, until, due to the crowd yelling, gave the more punchy answer, “Take a camel.”

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/03/28/media-badly-misrepresent-ann-coulters-take-camel-line

Obama’s 17 minute answer to the comment, “We are taxed too much already” would be easy to lampoon. Certainly, he could talk about Biden saying, “BFD” and then mention how he has BFD shirts for sale on BarackObama.com and then mention how there is a special sale going on there, and what items can be gotten. Of course, he could start to complain about Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, and when she butts in to say, “I am asking you about my taxes, which are too high already,” and Obama says, “Wait, wait; hold on there, little missy, I am answering your question, if you would just give me some time to talk.” And then he can continue going off on all of these tangents about what is in or not in the healthcare bill, and what Pelosi meant when she said, “We will find out what is in the bill after we pass it.”

The promise of oil exploration off the coast of Virginia seems to be Obama just throwing a meaningless bone to get a couple of Republican votes.

'Vitriol' Against Me A Product Of The Economy means that people are making very good arguments against Obama’s presidency and Obamacare; therefore, the President has to classify this as vitriol.

What should be the top combined tax rate for the most wealthy in America; do you believe there is an upper limit?

President Obama takes control of the Student Loan market, when there was no crisis and on reason to do so. You may argue that this indicates who he is, as opposed to him being just an amateur.

Putin and/or Chavez will blackmail the United States with the threat of nuclear technology going into the hands of Chavez. If Russia decides to take bits and pieces of its country back, it will use these things to get the United States to back off.

Cap and Trade will be touted as starting up a whole bunch of jobs, just as Obamacare and the Stimulus Bill were. Of course, if passed, it will be a jobs killer.

Despite all of the media clamor, everything I have read about what the iPads do makes me think, this is going nowhere. Give it a couple weeks, or maybe even a couple months, and the demand for these things is going to drop off to almost nothing.

Despite all that rhetoric about pivoting to jobs and the economy, there is no pivoting toward these 2 issues by the Obama administration.

There will be a massive union of the nations of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela with the intent of taking down the United States—and that this will occur on Obama’s watch.

We have the mistaken notion that, the more that government does for us, the more freedom that we have. If government provides our food and our housing and our medical care, then we are more free to pursue that which we really want to pursue (rather than being tied down to a job we really do not like).

The problem with a safety net is, this affects the behavior of people and makes them less productive. Let me give you a few examples:

One family which rented a home from me, was a mother, her 20 year old daughter, and her daughter’s 2 children. Government provided them a safety net. Government paid for their housing and for their food. So, what was their job? Every morning, they got up around 10 or so, sat down on their couche, and watched TV for much of the day, while smoking cigarettes, that they were somehow able to pay for. Now, you would think that two adult women, home all day, would have raised some pretty good children, and kept the house clean. Not at all. When I was there doing this or that repair, the kids ran about unsupervised. I do not recall a time when either their mother or grandmother actually got with one of the kids and suggested an activity that they do together. When they moved out, this house was one of the grossest houses I ever took back. Roach feces were literally an inch thick on top of their kitchen cabinets. You cannot imagine the smell from such roach droppings. It took about 6 spraying to rid the home of roaches.

The government safety net gave these women a choice—they could go out into the world and find jobs, or, they could sit at home and watch TV; they chose the latter. Government programs where things are given away for free affect a person’s choices.

Another woman I recently met, who came to look at one of my houses for lease, had 3 children and was overweight by at least 40 lbs. It was obvious that she had not gone hungry for a long time. Since the government paid for her housing, she was now looking for government to pay for a nicer house than she lived in at this moment. There was no indication that this woman worked, but she was well-taken care of.

Let me offer up 2 general areas where behavior is affected. When a man fathers a child, while married or out of wedlock, if that child does not depend upon the father’s finances, it is more likely the child will grow up without this father in his life. The man will not marry or stay married to the mother of his child, if he knows that Uncle Sam will step in and take up the slack. Statistically, it can be shown that far more people are in jail or on drugs who have come from a single-parent home, as opposed of those who came from a home with 2 parents. It is a mistake to try to claim that prejudice or skin color plays some part in our criminal system, because, when single parenthood is removed from the equation, there is no longer a disparity between Blacks, whites and any other race in our criminal justice system. Since there are far more Black households parented by a single mother, there are far more Black criminals. All of this is a result of well-meaning legislation which takes care of single mothers—often for decades and sometimes for several generations.

Medicare, social security and retirements were designed to give a person a few years off at the end of their lives without having to work. What has happened with many retirees is, they retire anywhere from age 50 to 65, they live for another 20–40 years without working, and they take in far more resources than they put into the system. There have been times in our history where we could get away with this—primarily when people lived about 2 or 3 years into their retirement years. Now we have people who are retired for decades, and who are not producing anything. If you are older, if you are tired of working, and if government has things set up so that you can live for the next 10, 20 or 30 years without working, then, why not? If you have some savings, some assets, and the government is going to pay you a stipend and pay for your medical care, then why work?

There are helpless people in this world, and there are people who need a temporary hand up. I have no problem with this. We live in a very generous society (the most generous on earth), and for many years prior to social security, people were still taken care of. Given the prosperity that our nation has enjoyed, I suspect that, even without all of these various government benefits, even more people will be taken care of.

On the other hand, there are a huge number of people out there who are healthy, able to work, and produce nothing because government had provided them with a safety net. Every time that safety net gets larger, the population of these types also gets larger.

In short, that is the problem with the safety net concept. People are not static. They react, to some degree, to the government programs and provisions which are offered them. The more the government gives people for free, the less many people will do for themselves.

I was asked that question recently by a friend in California via email, and I admit, this was something I have pondered a lot. Rush Limbaugh believes that Obama is intentionally destroying our economic system, so that, the largest structure, government, can simply pick up the pieces and take over, once our nation collapses.

There is one big problem with this theory: maybe it is true and maybe it is false, but this approach is unlikely to convince an independent, who is sitting on the fence, unsure about what is going on.

Calling Obama a Communist or a Marxist or likening him to Hitler will elicit the same response. First of all, he is certainly not a Marxist, although he has some Marxist ideas and leanings, and I seriously doubt that the President is going to start putting Jews into interment camps. Sure, he might abandon Israel, but that is no different than Carter.

Even calling Obama a socialist is not a convincing approach. First of all, there is a large segment of our population who actually believe that there is social and economic justice to be found in some sort of a socialist system, simply because there are huge numbers of people who are not very smart about history—or, even current events. Our president probably is, more than anything else, a European-style socialist, but this label simply is much less damaging than the reality of our becoming a European-style, socialist democracy.

My point here is, you may still think Obama is a Marxist and has this great plan to destroy the United States through making our economy collapse, but I would not use these ideas to speak to those who are on the fence about his presidency.

Instead, I would focus on what is clearly true: President Obama has never run anything before in his life. He has not had a large business, a small business, or even a lemonade stand. So, when it comes to running the most powerful corporation in the world—the United States—he is simply ill-equipped to do so. Now that is an easy argument to make to someone else.

Furthermore, President Obama is fundamentally fixed on big government solutions. If something breaks, if something isn’t right, if there is some inequity in the nation, this is something to be solved by more taxes, by more governmental agencies, and more governmental control. And he will promise that, all he will have to do is tax the rich a couple more dollars—they can afford it—and everything will be all better, because his administration will act “carefully and decisively to fix the problem.”

By this time in Obama’s presidency, if someone is willing to discuss politics with you rationally, and knows something, then those are two easy points to make (1) Obama has no experience and (2) he defaults to a big government solution. It is not difficult to show anyone with an open mind, this is what is going on.

Our economy was in recession, and the President sold us on a stimulus bill plan which was about 6X larger than any stimulus bill that had ever been passed previously, and at no time in our history has a stimulus bill ever clearly jump-started the economy.

He promised that unemployment would go no higher than 8.5%, and then come back down again; he told us that both conservative and liberal economists believed that this was a good approach to the problem (conservative economists which I read were very much against the bill), and the end result was a bill which spent $800 billion with no measurable positive results (apart from his people getting out there and saying, after the fact, “Well, the recession would have been much worse”).

If you want to go further into this particular bill, blue districts received about twice the money that red districts received, and yet, there is no discernable difference in the economic impact between red and blue districts.

This pattern has continued throughout the past year + of his presidency. He took of GM motors, he proposed to tell Chrysler how to survive their problems, and, in the recent healthcare bill, he took over the entire student loan industry, which will put tens of thousands of people out of work.

The pattern is the same: he exudes great confidence about things which he knows nothing about; he has no experience in these areas which he proposes to fix, and his incompetence is clearly seen in the results.

Another example is Obama’s mortgage program, where $75 billion was to be spend by the government in order to help 3–4 million good Americans stay in their homes. This was known as the Home Affordable Modification Program

(HAMP). Again, more and more federal bureaucracies, lots of money spend, a big government solution, and the end result? Less than 20% of those Obama promised to help got help. Furthermore, we do not know the long-term results of those who were helped. Will they actually stay in their houses, or, a few months or years down the road, will they end up defaulting again?

The passing of the recent healthcare bill is the same. Because of some women who was wearing her dead sister’s old dentures and other such sad stories, President Obama proposes to take over the healthcare system, put over 100 new government agencies in charge of it, and spend billions of dollars, and yet somehow, almost magically, he promises that healthcare will become more affordable to all, more people will have healthcare insurance, that this will reduce the deficit, and healthcare will be made all better. More government, more government spending by a man who knows nearly nothing about running anything.

So, among your conservative friends, it might be enjoyable to shoot the bull, and discuss what President Obama envisions for America and whether or not he wants to bring our country down. Does he worship at the altar of Karl Marx? Might be fun to argue over a glass of wine. I would not suggest that this is a good approach when speaking to others who are not like-minded.

What is clear, and not hard to argue to anyone with an open mind is, the President has no executive experience, but he favors big government solutions and dramatic spending by the government, but without clear, positive results. About 60–70% of our population understands that you do not put somewhat with no experience in the pilot’s cockpit. That percentage would prefer less government, not more. That percentage would prefer less government spending, not more. It is this overwhelming percentage who will change history by electing a new Congress and, in less than 3 years, a new president.

One way this can be done is by outlawing unfunded mandates. This ought to be a constitutional amendment.

(1) All social engineering bills change behavior. So, whatever estimates are made as to cost, cannot take into consideration behavior change. The larger and more complex the social engineering, the more difficult it is to determine the change of behavior.

(2) This bill is going to be hugely expensive. If 30 million more people are insured; if the minimal requirements for insurance companies are increased; if small businesses are subsidized; then it will clearly cost a lot of money. There will be 12,000 new employees (some report 16,000 and other 17,000 new)of the IRS in order to enforce some of the provisions of the new healthcare bill. There will be 111 new federal bureaucracies and agencies created by the Senate bill (or is that the House bill?). All of this costs a great deal of money.

(3) Like most conservatives, I am not totally anti-government. I don’t hate the post office or the DMV (or the DPS or whatever it is called in your state). The post office has to be self-sustaining, and that is a good thing. But, the IRS is not my favorite federal organization. Their power will be expanded under this bill.

(4) It is well known that there were dozens of deals struck behind closed doors in order to pass this bill. A bill which is good does not require backdoor deals for support. I may personally oppose this bill philosophically, but Democrats should not have opposed it, if it was any good. The excuse that these various states were special situations—Mississippi got hit with hurricanes as did Louisiana; Texas got hit with 2 hurricanes, one of which essentially flattened entire neighborhoods. I have heard the explanation for the Louisiana purchase, and everything that was said could have been applied to Texas or to Mississippi, but was not.

(5) The Senate bill is 2700 pages long and the reconciliation bill is 2500 pages. I am uncomfortable with any bill which is this long, no matter who writes it.

(6) There are a number of things which most Republicans and Democrats agree on with respect to healthcare; which provisions are favored by the majority of the people. Why did not the House and Senate concentrate on these sorts of provisions?

(7) Congress will never take a half a trillion dollars out of Medicare, and it might not even be legal for Congress to do this. This, along with the doctrine fix, will add to our ever increasing deficit. Without this healthcare bill, Obama’s deficit tripled Bush’s highest deficit.

Most of us have seen the recently-made, faux presidential reunion with mostly former SNL stars, directed by Ron Howard. It is found here:

There was a message to be found here—a political message—that the credit cards are ripping the people off, and that President Obama needs to pass the Consumer Protection Act.

ACTOR DAN AYKROYD AS FORMER PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: Mr. President, you've got to establish the Consumer Finance Protection Agency. People are tired of being ripped off by credit card companies and banks.

Never could get this right.

ACTOR JIM CARREY AS FORMER PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: There you go again.

ACTOR CHEVY CHASE AS FORMER PRESIDENT GERALD FORD: The only way to stop these corrupt banks and credit card companies is to pardon Richard Nixon.

AYKROYD: He means you better get that Consumer Protection Act through Congress.

Part of what is going to happen, according to the WSJ, is that this is going to make it more difficult for small and independent banks to do business. The red tape and hoops which they have to jump through is going to require time and expense which a large conglomerate bank can deal with (e.g., Bank of America, Citi-bank, etc.).

Now, thank about what you have observed over the past few years, under both Obama and Bush: small banks are being shut down, left and right; but, if there are problems with a huge bank conglomerate, government bails them out.

Why is that? What we get is something of a symbiotic relationship between government and large conglomerates. The president can call in a dozen representatives from the largest banks, and work out deals behind closed doors. But they cannot do that same thing with Independent Bank of Greater Podunk County. These large banks enjoy ability to screw up in whatever way, and then, government can step in and save them. In return, when government wants something, they have to deliver as well. You cannot do this with several thousand independent banks. So, slowly but surely, these independent banks are being swallowed up by larger ones, sometimes being helped along by the FDIC.

And what better way to sell this than get a bunch of stupid comedians, some of whom actually think that Carter was a good president, to make this palatable to their public.

This is just more of the same; it is sold to us as one thing, but there is something else going on behind the hype.

STATEMENT: "We've got a philosophical difference, which we've debated repeatedly, and that is that Senator Clinton believes the only way to achieve universal health care is to force everybody to purchase it. And my belief is, the reason that people don't have it is not because they don't want it but because they can't afford it." Barack Obama, speaking at a Democratic presidential debate, February 21, 2008.

EXPIRATION DATE: On March 23, 2010, Obama signed the individual mandate into law.

STATEMENT: "These negotiations will be on C-SPAN, and so the public will be part of the conversation and will see the decisions that are being made." January 20, 2008, and seven other times.

EXPIRATION DATE: Throughout the summer, fall, and winter of 2009 and 2010; when John McCain asked about it during the health care summit February 26, Obama dismissed the issue by declaring, "the campaign is over, John."

STATEMENT: "No family making less than $250,000 will see any form of tax increase." (multiple times on the campaign trail)

EXPIRATION DATE: Broken multiple times, including the raised taxes on tobacco, a new tax on indoor tanning salons, but most prominently on February 11, 2010: "President Barack Obama said he is "agnostic" about raising taxes on households making less than $250,000 as part of a broad effort to rein in the budget deficit."

STATEMENT: Then-Senator Obama declared that a recess appointment is "damaged goods" and has "less credibility" than a normal appointment. August 25, 2005.

EXPIRATION DATE: March 27, 2010: "If, in the interest of scoring political points, Republicans in the Senate refuse to exercise that responsibility, I must act in the interest of the American people and exercise my authority to fill these positions on an interim basis."

STATEMENT: "We need tougher border security, and a renewed focus on busting up gangs and traffickers crossing our border. . . . That begins at home, with comprehensive immigration reform. That means securing our border and passing tough employer enforcement laws." then-candidate Obama, discussing the need for border security, speaking in Miami on May 23, 2008:

EXPIRATION DATE: March 17, 2010: The Obama administration halted new work on a "virtual fence" on the U.S.-Mexican border, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced Tuesday, diverting $50 million in planned economic stimulus funds for the project to other purposes.

STATEMENT: Executive Order stating, "The detention facilities at Guantánamo for individuals covered by this order shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order." January 22, 2009.

EXPIRATION DATE: November 19, 2009: "Guantánamo, we had a specific deadline that was missed."

STATEMENT: "Somebody like Khalid Sheik Mohammad is gonna get basically, a full military trial with all the bells and whistles." September 27, 2006

EXPIRATION DATE: Ongoing. "President Obama is planning to insert himself into the debate about where to try the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, three administration officials said Thursday, signaling a recognition that the administration had mishandled the process and triggered a political backlash. Obama initially had asked Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to choose the site of the trial in an effort to maintain an independent Justice Department. But the White House has been taken aback by the intense criticism from political opponents and local officials of Holder's decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in a civilian courtroom in New York."

STATEMENT: "We will launch a sweeping effort to root out waste, inefficiency, and unnecessary spending in our government, and every American will be able to see how and where we spend taxpayer dollars by going to a new website called recovery.gov." - President Obama, January 28, 2009

EXPIRATION DATE: "More than two months after some of the funds were released, [Recovery.gov] offers little detail on where the money is going. The government [spent] $84 million on a website that doesn't have a search function, when its purpose is to `root out waste, inefficiency, and unnecessary spending in our government.'" April 2, 2009

3. Opposed a Colombian Free Trade Agreement because advocates ignore that "labor leaders have been targeted for assassination on a fairly consistent basis."

4. "Now, what I've done throughout this campaign is to propose a net spending cut."

5. "If we see money being misspent, we're going to put a stop to it, and we will call it out and we will publicize it."

6. "Yesterday, Jim, the head of Caterpillar, said that if Congress passes our plan, this company will be able to rehire some of the folks who were just laid off."

7. "I want to go line by line through every item in the Federal budget and eliminate programs that don't work, and make sure that those that do work work better and cheaper."

8. "[My plan] will not help speculators who took risky bets on a rising market and bought homes not to live in but to sell."

9. "Instead of allowing lobbyists to slip big corporate tax breaks into bills during the dead of night, we will make sure every single tax break and earmark is available to every American online."

10. "We can no longer accept a process that doles out earmarks based on a member of Congress's seniority, rather than the merit of the project."

11. "If your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime."

12. "Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe the United States has to be frank with the Chinese about such failings and will press them to respect human rights."

13. "We must take out Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants if we have them in our sights."

15. "The real gamble in this election is playing the same Washington game with the same Washington players and expecting a different result."

16. "I'll make oil companies like Exxon pay a tax on their windfall profits, and we'll use the money to help families pay for their skyrocketing energy costs and other bills."

17. "Obama will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days." Obama is 1-for-11 on this promise so far.

18. A special one on the 100th day, "the first thing I'd do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That's the first thing I'd do."

STATEMENT: "Based on the conversations we've had internally as well as external reports, we believe that you can get one to two brigades out a month. At that pace, the forces would be out in approximately 16 months from the time that we began. That would be the time frame that I would be setting up," Obama to the New York Times, November 1, 2007

EXPIRATION DATE: March 7, 2008: Obama foreign policy adviser Samantha Power, to the BBC: "You can't make a commitment in whatever month we're in now, in March of 2008 about what circumstances are gonna be like in Jan. 2009. We can't even tell what Bush is up to in terms of troop pauses and so forth. He will of course not rely upon some plan that he's crafted as a presidential candidate or as a US senator."

Also: July 3, 2008: "My 16-month timeline, if you examine everything I've said, was always premised on making sure our troops were safe," Obama told reporters as his campaign plane landed in North Dakota. "And my guiding approach continues to be that we've got to make sure that our troops are safe, and that Iraq is stable. And I'm going to continue to gather information to find out whether those conditions still hold."

STATEMENT: On June 14, Obama foreign policy adviser Susan Rice called the RNC's argument that Obama needed to go to Iraq to get a firsthand look "complete garbage."

EXPIRATION DATE: On June 16, Obama announced he would go to Iraq and Afghanistan "so he can see first hand the progress of the wars he would inherit if he's elected president."

STATEMENT: May 16, 2008: "If John McCain wants to meet me, anywhere, anytime to have a debate about our respective policies in Iraq, Iran, the Middle East or around the world that is a conversation I'm happy to have."

EXPIRATION DATE: June 13, 2008: Obama campaign manager David Plouffe: "Barack Obama offered to meet John McCain at five joint appearances between now and Election Day-the three traditional debates plus a joint town hall on the economy in July [on the Fourth of July] and an in-depth debate on foreign policy in August."

STATEMENT: "We can, then, more effectively deal with what I consider to be one of the greatest threats to the United States, to Israel, and world peace, and that is Iran," Obama speaking to American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Chicago, March 5, 2007

EXPIRATION DATE: "Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, these countries are tiny...They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us." - May 20, 2008

STATEMENT: Question at the YouTube debate, as the video depicted leaders of the countries, including Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: "Would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea?....."

EXPIRATION DATE: May 10, 2008: Susan E. Rice, a former State Department and National Security Council official who is a foreign policy adviser to the Democratic candidate: "But nobody said he would initiate contacts at the presidential level; that requires due preparation and advance work."

STATEMENT: "I could no more disown Jeremiah Wright than I could disown my own grandmother."

EXPIRATION DATE: on April 28, 2008, cut all ties to Wright, declaring, "based on his remarks yesterday, well, I may not know him as well as I thought."

STATEMENT: Obama said that his church, "Trinity United "embodies the black community in its entirety" and that his church was being caricatured on March 18, 2008.

EXPIRATION DATE: On May 31, 2008, Obama resigned his membership at Trinity United Church.

STATEMENT: Criticism of running mate vetter Jim Johnson loan from Countrywide was "a game" and that his vice-presidential vetting team "aren't folks who are working for me." June 10, 2008

STATEMENT: Obama spokesman Bill Burton on October 24, 2007: "To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies."

EXPIRATION DATE: June 20, 2008: "Given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as president, I will carefully monitor the program."

STATEMENT: "I am not a nuclear energy proponent." Barack Obama, December 30, 2007

EXPIRATION DATE: The above statement actually was the expiration date for his previous position, "I actually think we should explore nuclear power as part of the energy mix," expressed on July 23, 2007; the above statement expired when he told Democratic governors he thought it is "worth investigating its further development" on June 20, 2008.

STATEMENT: Tim Russert:: Senator Obama . . . Simple question: Will you, as president, say to Canada and Mexico, "This has not worked for us; we are out"?

Obama: "I will make sure that we renegotiate, in the same way that Senator Clinton talked about. And I think actually Senator Clinton's answer on this one is right. I think we should use the hammer of a potential opt-out as leverage to ensure that we actually get labor and environmental standards that are enforced. And that is not what has been happening so far." February 23, 2008

EXPIRATION DATE: June 18, 2008, Fortune magazine: "Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified," he conceded, after I reminded him that he had called NAFTA "devastating" and "a big mistake," despite nonpartisan studies concluding that the trade zone has had a mild, positive effect on the U.S. economy.

Does that mean his rhetoric was overheated and amplified? "Politicians are always guilty of that, and I don't exempt myself," he answered.

"I'm not a big believer in doing things unilaterally," Obama said. "I'm a big believer in opening up a dialogue and figuring out how we can make this work for all people."

STATEMENT: "If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election." Also, a Common Cause questionnaire dated November 27, 2007, asked "If you are nominated for President in 2008 and your major opponents agree to forgo private funding in the general election campaign, will you participate in the presidential public financing system?", Obama checked, "Yes."

EXPIRATION DATE: June 19, 2008: Obama announced he would not participate in the presidential public financing system.

STATEMENT: "What I've said is, at the point where I'm the nominee, at the point where it's appropriate, I will sit down with John McCain and make sure that we have a system that works for everybody."Obama to Tim Russert, Febuary 27.

EXPIRATION DATE: When Obama announced his decision to break his public financing pledge June 19, no meeting between the Democratic nominee and McCain had occurred.

STATEMENT: "I probably would not have supported the federal legislation [to overhaul welfare], because I think it had some problems." Obama on the floor of the Illinois Senate, May 31, 1997

EXPIRATION DATE: April 11, 2008: Asked if he would have vetoed the 1996 law, Mr. Obama said, "I won't second guess President Clinton for signing" it. Obama to the New York Times.

STATEMENT: "Barack Obama has always believed that same-sex couples should enjoy equal rights under the law, and he will continue to fight for civil unions as president. He respects the decision of the California Supreme Court, and continues to believe that states should make their own decisions when it comes to the issue of marriage." - campaign spokesman, May 5, 2008

EXPIRATION DATE: June 29, 2008: "I oppose the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California Constitution, and similar efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution or those of other states. Finally, I want to congratulate all of you who have shown your love for each other by getting married these last few weeks." - letter to the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club

STATEMENT: "Now, I don't think that 'mental distress' qualifies as the health of the mother. I think it has to be a serious physical issue that arises in pregnancy, where there are real, significant problems to the mother carrying that child to term." - Interview with Relevant magazine, July 1, 2008

EXPIRATION DATE: July 5, 2008: "My only point is that in an area like partial-birth abortion having a mental, having a health exception can be defined rigorously. It can be defined through physical health, It can be defined by serious clinical mental-health diseases." statement to reporters.

STATEMENT: "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided." - speech before AIPAC, June 4, 2008

EXPIRATION DATE: June 6, 2008: "Jerusalem is a final status issue, which means it has to be negotiated between the two parties" as part of "an agreement that they both can live with." - an Obama adviser clarifying his remarks to the Jerusalem Post.

Abstract: The Senate health care bill would overhaul the entire health care sector of the U.S. economy by erecting massive federal controls over private health insurance, dictating the content of insurance benefit packages and the use of medical treatments, procedures, and medical devices. It would alter the relationship between the federal government and the states, transferring massive regulatory power to the federal government. The bill would also restrict the personal and economic freedom of American citizens by imposing controversial and unprecedented mandates on businesses and individuals, including an individual mandate to buy insurance.

The U.S. Senate is locked in an intense floor debate over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590), a massive 2,074-page health care bill that would directly affect every man, woman, and child in the United States. Its enactment would shape the character and quality of life in America for generations to come.

The Senate bill's complex and sweeping provisions would affect virtually every aspect of the huge health care sector of the U.S. economy.

Like the House bill,[1] it would transfer massive regulatory authority from the states to the federal government and make enormous changes in the nation's health insurance markets;

It would dramatically alter the financing and content of employer-provided and individual health insurance and significantly change Medicare and Medicaid;

It would change how hospitals, doctors, and other medical professionals are paid and how physicians and other medical professionals deliver care; and

It would impose controversial and unprecedented mandates on businesses and individuals, including an individual mandate to buy insurance,[2] thus restricting the personal and economic freedom of American citizens.

In effect, the Senate bill would produce the greatest concentration of political and economic power over one major sector of the U.S. economy in the nation's history.

It is not surprising that the Senate bill is highly unpopular.[3] For ordinary Americans, the legislative process has definitely not been a demonstration of the way a law is made as portrayed in civics textbooks or the kind of rational deliberation envisioned by the Founding Fathers. Surprising provisions, unintended consequences, and unreliable assumptions characterize this proposal. Key provisions, such as the provision of a "public plan" to compete against private health plans, are particularly controversial, and the Senate leadership is rapidly floating and rejecting new schemes to secure the 60 votes necessary to end the debate and quickly pass the bill.

Without the benefit of legislative language, hearings, expert testimony, or committee deliberation and debate, various untested proposals have been floated for press and popular consumption. Writing of the latest scheme to secure a compromise, the editors of The Washington Post noted, "The only thing more unsettling than watching legislative sausage being made is watching it being made on the fly."[4]

Regardless of one's views of the Senate bill, it does not comport with the broad popular themes articulated by President Barack Obama and the many congressional leaders who have championed these policies. Contrary to the President's repeated promises to the American people,[5] the Senate bill, like its House counterpart, would:

* Cause many Americans to lose their current health insurance. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that up to 10 million Americans would no longer be covered by their employers.[6] Given the bill's incentives for employers to discontinue job-based coverage, independent analysts expect the loss of employer-based coverage to be much higher.

* Bend the cost curve up. According to independent analysts and government actuaries, the bill would substantially increase total health care spending instead of reducing it as promised. Richard Foster, Chief Actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), recently judged the projected savings from the Medicare updates as "doubtful" and estimated that the total national spending on health care would increase.[7]

* Impose many new taxes on middle-class Americans. The Senate bill contains over a dozen new taxes, including a 40 percent excise tax on high-priced health plans and special fees and taxes on insurance, drugs, medical devices, and anyone who violates the new mandates.[8]

* Reduce many seniors' access to Medicare benefits and services. The bill would reduce Medicare payments by an estimated $493 billion over 10 years,[9] including payment reductions for Medicare Advantage, hospital care, home health care, and nursing homes.

* Provide federal funding for abortion. Contrary to the President's clear statement to Congress and the nation on health care reform,[10] the Senate bill would provide funding for abortion. The House would prohibit using taxpayers' dollars to finance abortion, but a similar amendment to the Senate bill was tabled without even a floor vote.[11]

Surveys consistently show that the American people clearly want health care reform but do not support the bills sponsored by the House and Senate leadership. While they want Congress to enact policies that would increase choice and competition, and thereby help to control costs and rectify inequities in the health insurance markets, they do not favor a federal takeover of the health care system. Nor do they want the power to make key health care decisions transferred from individuals, families, and medical professionals to government agencies, departments, commissions, and advisory boards.

Much better options are available. Reform of the tax treatment of health insurance is a top priority. Eliminating the federal tax code's discrimination against workers who do not or cannot obtain health insurance through the workplace would expand health insurance coverage; today these persons get no tax relief for the purchase of health insurance coverage. Removing the legal barriers to individuals and families who wish to buy health insurance in a state other than their state of residence would also open health insurance markets to real free-market competition. Promoting state-based health insurance market reforms, designed by state and not federal officials, could dramatically expand coverage, cope with adverse selection in the markets, and secure affordable health insurance under the varying conditions that prevail within the states for the poorest and most vulnerable members of society.

Beyond these options, if Congress were truly serious about "bending the cost curve down," it should focus on the huge and growing programs under its direct jurisdiction: Medicare and Medicaid. This means initiating serious entitlement reform that goes well beyond modifying administrative payment systems and cutting physician and hospital reimbursements.

When Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) unveiled his bill, he claimed that the massive reform package would fall under the $900 billion cost threshold promised by President Obama. But Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) recently conceded that the real cost of the bill was much higher: "Just for a second-- health care reform, whether you use a ten year number or when you start in 2010 or start in 2014, wherever you start at, so it is still either $1 trillion or it's $2.5 trillion, depending on where you start."[12]

There is a simple reason for this public confusion over cost. The bill uses budget gimmicks, unrealistic assumptions, and highly unreliable projected savings to stay under the stated threshold. Among these are four egregious "budget tricks."

The Costly "Doctor Fix." Every year, because of congressionally created formulas in Medicare physician payment, Congress must vote to suspend these pre-ordained payment systems that would automatically cut Medicare payments to physicians. If enacted this year, these cuts would reduce physician payment rates by 21 percent.

Physicians believe, correctly, that unless there is a fundamental reform of Medicare payment, many physicians will reduce their Medicare practice or stop seeing new Medicare patients, thereby reducing the accessibility of Medicare beneficiaries to physician care. Both the House and the Senate have acknowledged this as part of their agendas for health care reform.

However, to make their bills appear less costly, the leadership of both houses has removed the doctor fix and its more than $200 billion price tag from their health care bills and presented it as a separate bill. This enables Senator Reid to claim that his bill will reduce the deficit, but the CBO estimates that the House bill (H.R. 3961), combined with the "doctor fix" bill (H.R. 3962), would "add $89 billion to budget deficits over the 2010-2019 period."[13] The Senate bill plays the same shell game, creating the appearance of deficit reduction by ignoring the inevitable cost of the doctor fix.

The True Costs of the CLASS Act. The Senate bill, like the House bill, includes the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act, which would create a new government health care program for long-term health insurance. This provision creates a national insurance trust that would provide benefits for seniors and the disabled by creating a payment update in Medicare for skilled nursing facilities and home health care providers.

The CLASS Act is intended to pay for itself with collected premiums. The premiums would produce positive revenues for the government for the first 10 years, appearing to reduce the federal deficit during this time. However, as the CBO points out, while "the program's cash flows would show net receipts for a number of years, [this would be] followed by net outlays in subsequent decades."[14] Thus, the CLASS Act appears self-sufficient for the first 10 years but starts running a deficit soon thereafter.

Delays of Costly Benefits. The Senate health care bill is paid for by newly enacted taxes and spending cuts. However, to meet President Obama's $900 billion maximum over the first 10 years, new spending does not begin until years after new taxes and spending cuts are enacted.

This clever design allows Congress to collect revenues (higher taxes, fees, and other offsets) for the full 10-year window but pay out the major benefits over only the last six years. This spending cushion makes the bill appear much less costly than it would if 10 years of spending were included. The true costs of the bill would quickly become apparent in the second 10 years of enactment. Moreover, as with most government programs, it will almost certainly cost more than originally promised.

Unreliable Medicare Cuts. The Senate bill depends on cutting Medicare to pay for its $1.2 trillion coverage expansion. Concerning the impact on Medicare enrollees, as CBO Director Doug Elemendorf explained, the bill would require a substantial reduction in the future growth of per capita beneficiary spending over the next 20 years compared to the previous 20 years. [15]

Proponents of the Senate legislation claim that Medicare spending reductions would result in higher efficiencies. But as James C. Capretta, a Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, argues, "despite all of the talk of 'delivery system reform,' the Senate Democratic plan would not transform American medicine to make it more efficient."[16] The dramatic savings depend on conventional Medicare provider cuts, not on meaningful Medicare reform. Furthermore, as demonstrated by the ongoing effort to correct the Medicare physician payment formula, it is unlikely that Congress would allow such deep cuts to occur in Medicare.

Moreover, these Medicare cuts include more than $100 billion in "savings" from changes in Medicare Advantage plans, a move that would directly affect the benefits of millions of seniors. In his analysis of the Senate bill, Foster confirmed that these changes would result in "less generous packages" and that enrollment "would decrease by about 33 percent."[17]

Bending the Cost Curve Up. According the Office of the Actuary, the Senate bill would increase, not decrease, health care spending by $234 billion between 2010 and 2019.[18] The Senate bill, like its House counterpart, would cost far more than the President's $900 billion limit, likely running up a tab in the trillions of dollars. Assuming both full funding and spending over the first 10 years and that both are combined, as Senator Baucus conceded, the bill would cost $2.5 trillion. Capretta estimates the true cost of the bill at $4.9 trillion over 20 years.[19]

First, Senator Reid's bill relies on "bracket creep" to raise taxes to pay for its costs. The new 40 percent excise tax on high-cost insurance plans is indexed to general inflation plus 1 percent, which is lower than health care cost inflation.[20] This means that as health care costs grow, more Americans will pay the tax.

Second, the bill increases the Medicare payroll tax for individuals making $200,000 and families making $250,000 per year. This tax hike is not indexed to inflation, which means that inflation will steadily push more middle-class Americans into that tax bracket. Thus, Senator Reid plans to finance $2.2 trillion of his health care bill by continuously raising taxes on more and more Americans.

In the second 10 years of enactment, the bill's coverage provisions would cost $3.1 trillion.[21] When the additional Medicare spending for the so-called doctor fix is included in the calculation, the cost over 20 years would total $4.9 trillion.

Clearly, raising taxes alone will not cover this, so the remainder is expected to be funded by big cuts in Medicare (assuming they actually occur). The Senate bill would require raising taxes on middle-class Americans and cutting senior citizens' health benefits by nearly $5 trillion. As often happens in Washington, D.C., a bill touted for saving money will end up costing the taxpayers a fortune.

In a remarkable twist in public policy, the Senate bill would use taxes and penalties to punish uninsured Americans and companies that hire workers from low-income families.

The Individual Mandate. The Senate bill includes an unprecedented act of Congress to force Americans to buy a commodity: health insurance.[22] The "individual responsibility" provision in Section 1501 requires anyone who fails to obtain a qualifying health plan to pay an annual tax penalty of $750 per adult family member and $375 per child, up to a maximum penalty of $2,250 per family. These penalties would be phased in from 2014 to 2016 and then indexed for inflation, which means they would likely increase every year.

Because these new taxes are fixed amounts based on family size, families of the same size will pay the same amount regardless of income, although the poor may qualify for exemptions. This is different from the House bill, which would impose a 2.5 percent tax on modified adjusted gross income above the minimum income at which filing a tax return is required. A family of two adults and two children is actually worse off under the Senate bill if they make less than $99,350 per year and worse off under the House bill if they make more.

The bill provides for only a few exemptions. For example, a person can be exempt if the lowest available premium for a bare-bones plan, as defined by federal authorities, is more than 8 percent of one's income. However, this would apply only to those making less than $28,125 per year.

The Employer Mandate. Sections 1511-1513 of the Senate bill contain an "employer responsibility" provision that requires companies with more than 50 employees to offer qualified health plans-- as defined by government bureaucrats--to their full-time employees or to pay a tax of $750 per full-time employee. Since the penalty is much cheaper than providing health insurance, employers are likely to just pay the $750 tax. For employees, however, this means they lose their employer contribution toward their premium costs.

There is another catch. An employer who offers qualifying insurance must pay a penalty of $3,000 for every employee from a low-income family who qualifies for and accepts a premium subsidy in the "health insurance exchange."[23] The employer's total penalty is capped at $750 times the total number of full-time employees if more than a quarter of the employees receive the subsidy.

In summary, if a company employs many low-income workers, it can save money by dropping its health plan and paying the $750-per-employee tax or by reducing as many employees as possible to working part-time. However, if a company has mostly middle-income workers, it faces a $3,000-per-year penalty for hiring a worker from a low-income family who elects the subsidy. Also, this penalty applies to the employee's family income, not the income that the employee is paid by any particular company.

Therefore, a company would save $3,000 by hiring someone with a working spouse or a teenager with working parents whose family income is higher instead of a single mother with three children. Even worse, if one-fourth of its employees qualify for a premium subsidy based on income and family size, the company would still pay the $750-per-employee tax whether it offers insurance or not.

The Senate bill would create many perverse incentives that would encourage companies with many low-income employees to drop their health plans entirely. Unlike the lower-income workers who would qualify for the subsidies, higher-income workers would have to obtain coverage on their own with no assistance.[24]

The Senate bill provides for federal micromanagement of all private health insurance. It would subject all private health insurance, whether purchased from an insurance company by employer groups or individuals or provided through an employer or union self-insured plan, to detailed federal regulation. These "insurance reform" provisions amount to a de facto nationalization of health insurance, whether or not Congress creates a government-run health insurance plan. Instead of protecting patients, heavy regulation will stifle choice and competition in the health insurance market.

Benefit Control. Of particular concern to patients, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) would decide the details of their health insurance coverage. Americans recently received a foretaste of what such federal regulation would look like when the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force downgraded its recommendation for breast cancer screening (mammography) for women ages 40 to 50 from "B" (recommended) to "C" (not recommended).

Normally, such recommendations would not create controversy, because until now they have merely been suggestions to guide providers and health plans, which make their own decisions for their patients and members. However, the proposed legislation would give such recommendations the force of law because it would require all plans to provide coverage (with no patient co-pays) for "items or services that have in effect a rating of 'A' or 'B' in the current recommendations of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force."[25]

Thus, a recommendation on a specific medical service by the heretofore obscure HHS task force would carry the force of law and impose additional costs on insurers and employer health plans. Conversely, a "C" or "D" rating, such as the recent decision on breast cancer screening, would give insurers and employers justification to discontinue coverage.

Cost Impact. Over time, the more specific HHS is in its benefit requirements--driving up the cost of coverage--the greater the incentive will be for insurers and employers to control the escalating costs by covering only what federal law requires. The eventual result will be little to no variation among private health insurance plans and little variation in cost. At that point, Congress will effectively have nationalized the entire American health insurance system under HHS supervision without formally setting up another government-run health insurance program.

The original version of the Senate health bill contained a "public option," a new government-run health plan to "compete" against private health plans within a federally designed system of state health insurance exchanges. Recently, the Senate leadership agreed to remove that provision and replace it with a Medicare expansion--on top of the Medicaid expansion--and a new health plan option sponsored by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the federal agency that runs the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP). Then, in response to political opposition from "moderate" Senate Democrats, the Senate leadership recently announced that they were dropping the Medicare expansion.

Mandatory State Health Exchanges. Under Section 1311 of the bill, the Secretary of Health and Human Services would be required to provide states with grants to establish American Health Benefit Exchanges. By 2014, states would be required to establish these exchanges for the purchase of "qualified" health plans. Plans would be qualified only if they met federal rules governing benefit packages, provider networks, "essential community providers," quality standards and measures of uniformity of enrollment procedures, rating systems, outreach, reinsurance and risk adjustment, and a variety of other requirements.

States could require the qualified health plans to offer additional benefits, which would make the health plans more expensive, but they could not allow benefit changes that differ from the federal standards. Administration of the exchanges would have to be "self-sustaining," so the states would be allowed to impose assessments or fees on health plans and enrollees to cover the administrative costs.

Section 1321 requires states to implement standards for the health exchanges by 2014. If a state fails or refuses to implement an exchange in accordance with federal rules, the HHS Secretary is required to intervene in the state, operate an exchange, and unilaterally implement the federal standards.

Co-ops. Section 1322 requires the HHS Secretary to award loans and grant monies to "member-run" nonprofits that offer "qualified health plans." In effect, this would create a federal "co-op" option. The co-ops would make purchasing decisions but could not fix provider payment rates. Under the terms of the bill, neither existing private health insurance companies nor government organizations could set up co-ops. The bill directs the U.S. Comptroller General to appoint an advisory board to oversee this new program and provides $6 billion in federal funding for start-up costs.

As Heritage analysts have noted, none of this is necessary. A change in federal tax law would allow private-sector co-ops to offer health insurance.[26]

A Broken Compromise.Section 1323 of the original version of the bill would have required the HHS Secretary to create a "community health insurance option" to participate through the authorized health insurance exchanges.[27] This is the government-run plan that would compete against private insurance, but states could opt out of offering the prescribed public health plan in the state-based exchanges.[28]

More recently, Senator Reid has proposed a compromise that would replace this government-run plan with a couple of private nonprofit health plans sponsored by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. According to press accounts, these OPM-sponsored plans would compete nationwide in the state-based health insurance exchanges created under the bill just as the recently discarded "public option" would have under the original version of the bill.

The Senate leadership's OPM proposal is novel. The OPM administers the FEHBP, a consumer-driven system of hundreds of competing private health plans that serve federal workers, federal retirees, and their dependents. As the federal paymaster, the OPM provides federal enrollees with a defined contribution, which they use to purchase the private plans. The OPM acts as an umpire, enforcing the rules of the market competition.

However, Senator Reid and his colleagues apparently would have the OPM play a much different role as the sponsor and overseer of "at least two" nonprofit health plans that would compete against private plans.[29] Presumably, they would compete in the state-based health insurance exchanges.

Two key issues in this proposal need to be clarified: How would the OPM set premiums for the two plans, and would these plans be eligible for taxpayer subsidies to cover any shortfalls? If the OPM could set premiums below market prices to undercut private health plans and access taxpayer subsidies, then the two nonprofit plans could erode private and employer-based coverage much as a Medicare-style public plan would.

Briefly, the Senate leadership also promoted and then quickly jettisoned a major Medicare expansion--expanding eligibility to citizens between the ages of 55 and 64. The reasons for the Senate leadership's decision to discard the Medicare "buy in" are not hard to fathom. The proposal was burdened by a number of practical difficulties.

The New York Times reported that the program would have been quickly initiated in 2011 but restricted to individuals, not families. It would have been financed by premiums, estimated at $7,600 per person and $15,200 per couple.[30] But for many persons in that age category, such premiums would have been unaffordable without special government subsidies to offset their costs. This could have added significantly to the cost of the bill. But without such subsidies, premiums for enrollees could have been higher than those obtained in private health plans.

Worse, Medicare is already deficient as a health care plan because it does not cover many needed benefits, such as catastrophic coverage. Nine out of 10 current Medicare beneficiaries rely on private, employer-based, or supplemental coverage as a "wrap-around" plan for Medicare. A common concern among health policy analysts was that the Medicare expansion provision could further erode employment-based coverage among older workers while adding significantly to Medicare costs.

Federal Control. Beyond the provisions for a "public plan" or its potential substitutes, the Senate bill sets up a federally designed system of health insurance exchanges modeled after the provisions of a bill reported out of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee in July. The federal government would control the creation, design, and operation of health insurance exchanges and, depending on whether states opt out, enter as a direct competitor against private health plans. While states would become vehicles of federal health policy, they could pursue independent arrangements in health insurance only by seeking a "waiver" from federal authorities.

Thus, the Senate health care bill would radically centralize power and control over the content of health benefits packages and health insurance in Washington. In other words, the very text of the bill and the powers it would confer on the federal government would, for all intents and purposes, constitute a "public plan" without even the formal creation of such an institution.

The Senate bill creates a host of new taxes, totaling $370.2 billion in taxes and another $36 billion in taxes from the individual mandate penalty over the next 10 years. The government would start collecting many of these taxes in 2010, even as the economy continues to struggle.

The most significant is a 0.5 percent increase in the payroll tax on earnings above $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for couples filing joint returns. The new tax provisions would also permanently sever the link between the Medicare payroll tax and Medicare benefits because the additional revenue would go to the general fund for health care instead of directly to Medicare payments.

This is a bad decision and represents a major policy shift. It means that Medicare taxes would no longer be dedicated solely to social insurance and safeguarding Medicare. Instead, Medicare payroll taxes would be used for other government programs. It is ironic that congressional liberals have proposed this shift because liberal champions of social insurance historically have worried about turning social insurance programs into welfare programs that redistribute wealth. The Senate payroll tax is a giant step down that road of using social insurance payroll taxes to transfer income.

The Senate bill would also impose an excise tax on "high value" health care plans. This tax is expected to be almost $150 billion and is very similar to the tax reported earlier out of the Senate Finance Committee, but it uses a higher threshold level. While the health benefits packages of corporate plans may be rich, it does not follow that the subscribers are wealthy. This tax will disproportionately affect middle-income households.

The Senate bill would also impose a host of new taxes on the health insurance industry, ranging from a tax on branded drugs to a tax on medical devices. These new taxes would increase medical costs and premiums for individuals regardless of income. They would only raise the cost of health care because companies would pass these tax increases on to health care consumers.

* A 40 percent excise tax on "high value" health care plans of $8,500 or more for an individual and $23,000 or more for a couple ($149.1 billion in new taxes over the next 10 years);

* A 0.5 percent hike in the Medicare payroll tax for single earners over $200,000 and joint earners over $250,000 ($53.8 billion);

* Changes in health savings accounts (HSAs), Archer Medical Spending Accounts, health flexible spending accounts (FSAs), and health reimbursement arrangements ($5 billion);

* An increase from 10 percent to 20 percent in the penalty for early non-qualified HSA withdrawals ($1.3 billion);

* A tax on companies that manufacture or import medical devices ($19.3 billion);

* An increase in the floor of the medical expenses deduction from 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income to 10 percent, except for seniors, who will stay at 7.5 percent ($15.2 billion);

* Elimination of the Medicare Part D (prescription drug) deduction ($5.4 billion);

* A $500,000 cap on the tax deduction for the salaries of employees of health insurance companies ($0.6 billion over 10 years)[32]; and

* A mandate on companies with more than 50 employees to provide health coverage or pay a $750 penalty per employee for those who obtain coverage through the insurance exchange ($36 billion over 10 years) and a mandate on individuals to obtain coverage or pay a tax penalty.[33]

The Senate health care bill generally follows the earlier versions, which would expand Medicaid and create a new health care program, the CLASS Act.

More Welfare. The Senate bill expands Medicaid eligibility to all Americans below 133 percent of the federal poverty level, changing it to a purely income-based federal entitlement. It also changes the federal matching rates for different populations and states. For example, Section 2006, a special provision aimed at Louisiana, provides a special "disaster recovery" match rate for states that have had a major disaster declared. The CBO estimates that this will increase total Medicaid spending by $25 billion.

Of course, millions of persons at or below 133 percent of the federal poverty level carry private health insurance. The Senate bill, based on all previous experience, would further crowd out private health care coverage. It would also encourage employers to drop coverage for employees that would qualify for Medicaid after the expansion, compounding this effect.

Less State Authority.States should be alarmed at the aggressive federal encroachment on state authority over the management of Medicaid. Section 2801 is clearly intended to increase the federal government's direct control of the program. In addition, states would become vulnerable to federal lawsuits by individuals under the expanded definition of medical assistance in Section 2304. This would likely be used to overturn recent federal court decisions won by states that limit private lawsuits against them.

The Senate makes another major exception to current law governing the eligibility of immigrants for welfare benefits. Previously, legal immigrants have been prohibited from receiving public benefits, including Medicaid, until five years after their date of entry into the United States. The Senate bill would reverse this, making legal immigrants immediately eligible for the new federal subsidies upon enactment. This raises an equity issue that has been overlooked: 60 million U.S. citizens would be excluded from the generous federal subsidies.

Class-Based Inequity. Instead of expanding high-quality coverage to all, the Senate bill would create a rigid, two-tiered health care system. Individuals at the lowest income levels would be forced into Medicaid, while individuals just above the poverty level would qualify for generous subsidies worth more than Medicaid on a per capita basis. The Senate bill further promotes this inequity by giving non-citizens the federal subsidies that are denied to the lowest-income Americans.

A New Program. The CLASS Act has been included in the Senate bill despite criticism that it is not fiscally sound over the long term. The CLASS Act would create a new federal program for long-term health care insurance to compete against private insurance. Individuals who pay into the program for five years and experience limitations in their daily activities would become eligible for cash benefits. These limitations do not meet the current disability test, which opens the program to abuse. Perhaps more problematic, according to the CMS, the program is particularly vulnerable to adverse selection, which would make it "unsustainable."[34]

The CLASS Act also serves as a budget gimmick, enabling the federal government to collect revenues for five years before paying out any benefits. As noted, this up-front revenue collection, along with other taxes and fees, allows the Senate sponsors to claim that the bill is fiscally responsible and offsets the cost of the Senate bill by $72 billion over the first 10 years. The problem is that the program's costs will explode when the benefit payouts start to accumulate. As the CMS has indicated, the program will generate net costs, not net savings.[35]

The Senate is engaged in a deadly serious debate on a 2,074-page bill that would overhaul the entire health care sector of the economy, profoundly affecting the personal lives of 300 million Americans. It would erect massive federal controls over private health insurance, dictating the content of insurance benefit packages and the use of medical treatments, procedures, and medical devices.

The bill would also make major changes in payments to doctors, hospitals, and medical professionals in Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs; establish new federal agencies, bureaus, and commissions to oversee various aspects of the health care system, including how physicians and other medical professionals deliver care; and alter the relationship between the federal government and the states, transferring massive regulatory power to the federal government while reducing the flexibility of state officials to manage Medicaid and limiting their capacity to initiate health insurance reforms within their own states.

The Senate bill would impose enormous costs on the American people, totaling at least $2.5 trillion for the first 10 years. After the first 10 years, as costs escalated, Congress would need to impose additional major tax increases and impose major cuts in benefits to pay for this health care agenda.

The American people want and need health reform, but the Senate bill is clearly not what they have in mind.

[Recently, there have been numerous stories all about the hateful rhetoric and threats of violence, and some are claiming that most of this is coming from the far right; and that Limbaugh and Beck and Palin are all stoking up this anger. TEA party participants have been accused of using the N-word 14 or 15 times against Black House members, and it has been forgotten all of the real hatred and the real threats made against President George Bush not but a few years ago; I will include some of the photos herein, and a link to see the others.]

On Wednesday, August 12, a man holding a sign that said "Death to Obama" at a town hall meeting in Maryland was detained and turned over to the Secret Service which will likely soon charge him with threatening the president.

As well they should. I fully and absolutely agree with the Secret Service pursuing this case, since anyone who threatens the president is breaking the law and should be prosecuted. It doesn't matter that Obama was not at the meeting nor that the man was unarmed: the threat all on its own is a federal crime, according to the United States Code.

I support the arrest and prosecution of any person who threatens Obama or any president of the United States.

But the story of this arrest got me to thinking: Why was no one ever arrested for threatening President Bush at protests, when they displayed signs in public that called for his death?

Many readers may naively think, "The answer is obvious: no protester was ever arrested for threatening Bush at a protest because no one ever threatened him at a protest. Who would be that stupid? I certainly never heard of any such threats."

Alas, if only it were that simple. Because the bald fact is that people threatened Bush at protests all the time by displaying menacing signs and messages - exactly as the anti-Obama protester just did in Maryland. Yet for reasons that are not entirely clear, none of those Bush-threateners at protests was ever arrested, questioned, or investigated (at least as far as I could tell).

Don't believe me? Then keep reading. Because this essay exists for one reason only: To prove beyond any doubt that explicit and implicit threats to Bush's life were commonly displayed at public protests throughout his term as president. Below this introduction you will find dozens of examples of such threats - unaltered photographs from a wide variety of sources, along with links verifying their authenticity.

If you want to get straight to the action and not bother with reading the rest of this introduction, simply scroll down a short way to see the pictures right now. But if you're outraged by the very existence of this report, or curious about my motivations for publishing it, then please take a few minutes to read the following explanation.

I am not publishing this essay in order to make excuses for anyone who has threatened President Obama, or who plans to threaten him in the future.

This is not some wrongheaded attempt at a tu quoque logical fallacy; in other words, I'm not trying to claim that death threats against Bush in the past justify threats against Obama now. Not at all. What I'm saying is that present-day threats to Obama at protests should be investigated - yet previous threats to Bush at protests weren't investigated, which I think is inexcusable. Threats to the president aren't excusable now, and weren't excusable in the past - and yet death threats against Bush at protests seem to have been routinely ignored for years (and readers who have any evidence showing that the threateners depicted below were ever prosecuted for threatening the president, please tell me and I'll update this essay with the new info). Why the discrepancy?

No - I am not calling the Secret Service incompetent. In fact, I'm pointing the finger of blame in an entirely different direction. I'm quite sure that the Secret Service always dutifully investigates any threat to the president of which it becomes aware. But that's the key right there: of which it becomes aware. The Secret Service has only a limited budget and a limited number of investigators, and so can't be present to witness every potential threat as it appears. Often, the Secret Service is only alerted to a possible threat by reports in the media. And the media is the weak link.

I contend that the media is aggressively reporting on, highlighting and pursuing any and all possible threats to President Obama - and even hints of threats - but they purposely glossed over, ignored or failed to report similar threats to President Bush. Why? I believe it is part of an ideological bias: most mainstream networks and newspapers tried their best during the Bush administration to portray the anti-war movement as mainstream and moderate; whereas now they are trying to portray the anti-tax and anti-health-care-bill protesters as extremists and as fringe kooks. To achieve these goals, they essentially suppressed any mentions of the violent signage (including threats to Bush) at anti-war rallies, but have highlighted anything that could even conceivably be construed as a threat at anti-Obama events.

I believe this partly accounts for the 400% increase in reported threats against Obama over those against President Bush. Part of that reported increase in investigated threats is undoubtedly due to an increase in actual threats; but part of it is almost certainly due to an increase in threats which get reported by the media and are therefore brought to the Secret Service's attention.

(This is similar to the famous paradox about rape awareness programs. Researchers were long mystified as to why incidents of rape in a city or a social group seemed to invariably rise after rape awareness campaigns drew attention to the problem in order to help solve it. The answer turned out to be obvious: It's not that the number of actual rapes went up - it's that the number of rapes which got reported went up, as women had more awareness and less shame about reporting the crime.)

The end result is that more threats to Obama are being reported. After scanning the pictures below of death threats against Bush, ask yourself: Holy cow - why was I never aware of these at the time? The reason: Because the media intentionally failed to report on them. Which is why both the average American and the Secret Service never became aware of many of these protest threats.

So now when a single protester shows up at an anti-Obama rally displaying a death threat, he is immediately pounced upon by the media and the Secret Service. Whereas in the past when protesters by the dozen threatened Bush, the media turned a blind eye, and the threateners got off scot-free.

Every threat to Obama is now vigorously pursued, trumpeted and dissected by the media and the blogs, and roundly condemned. And I condemn such threats as well.

But in the past, whenever someone threatened Bush at a protest, there was a deafening silence on the part of the media and the left-leaning blogs, and consequently very little (if any) follow-through on the part of the Secret Service. Which I find quite distressing. I was condemning those threats in the past (as best I could, by drawing attention to them on my blog) - but few people were joining me in my condemnation.

I am NOT (repeat: NOT) defending anyone who threatens a president's life. That's the whole point. I say that anone who threatens Obama should be arrested and/or investigated. All I am saying is that threats to Bush should have been similarly pursued - but weren't.

And the only reason I'm publishing the essay is that many Obama supporters - to my astonishment - now claim that Bush was never threatened at protests. Before we can have a rational discussion on this topic, we need to have a shared factual basis. The evidence below will establish that basis.

If you truly, truly cared about presidents' lives being threatened, you would be just as incensed by people threatening Bush's life at protests as you are about (the far less frequent instances of) Obama's life being threatened at protests.

Were any people ever arrested or questioned for threatening to kill Bush during his term in office? Of course. Every president is the target of numerous threats, and many of them do get investigated. Examples include:

- A man who in 2008 made verbal threats towards Bush at the White House fence where he left a suspicious package;

- A student who was quoted in a 2007 school publication as saying, "I would like to shoot George W. Bush, because in my opinion he is the worst president ever. After that was accomplished, I would be known as a national hero";

- A mentally deranged man who threatened to blow up the White House in January of 2009;

- A guy who was turned in to the authorities by his own girlfriend after he threatened to kill Bush during a phone call;

However, all these instances of Bush-threateners being arrested happened outside of a protest setting. This article is about protesters with threatening protest signs - not about all threats in all settings.

The key question is: Were any protesters ever arrested or questioned for displaying threatening messages about President Bush at a protest? And the answer is: No, not as far as I could tell. In the very few instances that I could uncover, the incident was either misconstrued by the media, or the protester was at an actual presidential appearance (where there are special security concerns) - or people were detained for other reasons totally aside from their protest messages.

The most famous case was that of Brett Bursey, who was arrested in 2002 outside a Bush speech. The media dishonestly implied that he was arrested simply for carrying a sign that said "No War For Oil" - a message which was commonplace and nonthreatening. Turns out, though, that he was arrested not because of his sign but because he refused to leave a restricted area cordoned off by the Secret Service under Title 18, Section 1752(a)(1)(ii) of the U.S. Code. In other words, it was not his sign which got him arrested, but rather his presence in a restricted area and his refusal to move. (Even in a puff piece article about Bursey in the New York Times, the only "evidence" offered that his sign led to his arrest was the later uncorroborated statement of Bursey himself.) And note that some of the same politicians feigning outrage over the recent health-care protests actually defended Bursey's right to protest in this manner (quoting from the link above): "A few weeks ago Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank and 10 other members of Congress wrote a letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft condemning the arrest. They wrote: `This prosecution smacks of the use of the Sedition Acts two hundred years ago to protect the President from political discomfort. It was wrong then and it is wrong now. We urge you to drop this prosecution based so clearly on the political views being expressed by the individual who is being prosecuted.' "

In another case, a woman with a t-shirt that read "President Bush You Killed My Son" was removed from a speech being given by Laura Bush. But once again, it was not her message which got her arrested, but the fact that she disrupted the speech and refused to leave when asked - leading to a charge of trespassing. Yet the media falsely implied that she was arrested simply due to the nature of her t-shirt message.

An artist who painted a series of postage stamps showing Bush being shot had Secret Service agents inspect his art at one gallery opening and had the painting taken down by administrators at another - but he was never arrested or questioned. So once again, that is not an example of someone being arrested for a protest message against Bush.

I'm open to facts: If anyone can find evidence that ANY of the protesters shown on this page threatening President Bush were ever investigated or arrested, please post the evidentiary links in the comments section below; I will update this post accordingly. Until then, we must assume that the perpetrators went unpunished.

Please also note that at the bottom of this essay I have a "Counter-Examples" section showing the tiny handful of incidents in which Obama threateners were ignored and "got away with" threatening the president - the scarcity of such examples only further strengthening my contention.

Sorry for the long introduction, but I felt it was necessary because this is such a sensitive and highly charged subject. But now that we've gotten that out of the way - it's time for the evidence. Below you will find pictures of death threats made by protesters against President Bush during his term. Most of the pictures were taken at anti-war and anti-Bush protests; but lower down on the page are additional threats made in other settings that also seem to have gone uninvestigated. Wherever possible, I link to the source of the photo and give the location and date of the protest; however, in a handful of cases some details are missing.

Important note, just to make things perfectly clear: I did NOT make any of the signs depicted on this page, nor do I approve of them, nor do I have any information about any of the people who made them. I am reposting these images not in order to threaten Bush but rather to express my disappointment that such threats seem to have never been investigated.

[So, your whining about pictures of joker-Obama and Hitler-Obama—the same was done to Bush—just doesn’t move me; your hand ringing about bulls eyes on certain states on Sarah Palin’s facebook, just does not concern me very much.]

The job market is showing signs of life, though its slow recovery suggests unemployment will remain high for years to come.

Employers added 162,000 jobs in March, the biggest monthly gain in three years, with one-third of the growth coming from the government's hiring of 48,000 temporary workers for the 2010 Census. Despite those gains, the jobless rate held steady at 9.7% as new workers entered the job market and people who had previously quit the labor force returned.

The average length of unemployment rose last month to the highest point since record keeping began in 1948: more than 31 weeks. The number of workers out of work for six months or more rose sharply.

The latest report, which marks the third month since November in which payrolls increased, indicates the labor market is pulling out of a deep downturn that slashed more than eight million jobs since the recession hit in late 2007.

"It confirms that the economy has turned an important corner," says J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. chief economist Bruce Kasman. "It's been growing for a while, but I think what we're seeing is that this growth is now broadening out to include jobs."

The stock market was closed Friday for a holiday, but the jobs report sent stock futures climbing during a morning session. As investors anticipate a stronger economy-and look ahead to an eventual Federal Reserve rate hike-they pushed down Treasury debt prices, sending the yield on 10-year Treasury notes, the benchmark for corporate and consumer borrowing, to 3.94%, the highest since June.

Among those who have landed jobs lately is New York Web developer Philip John Basile, although, as with many other new hires, it is a temporary six-month assignment with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. He had been searching in earnest for three months, he says. "I'm still looking for a permanent job, but this is a good middle ground," he says.

Many employers are reluctant to hire until they see stronger evidence of an economic recovery. Private-sector payrolls increased by 123,000 in March, but much of that boost was a bounce back from employment depressed in February by snowstorms. The government said overall payrolls increased by an average of 54,000 a month over the last three months.

The economic recovery so far remains heavily reliant on government support, which is visible in the jobs numbers. Hiring for the decennial census is expected to add hundreds of thousands of temporary jobs in the coming months. Other forms of government intervention also remain crucial. The housing sector's boost is being driven in part by tax breaks and extensive government support for the mortgage market. And last year's $787 billion stimulus is temporarily preventing even deeper job losses in fields from construction to education.

"We don't expect it to get worse, but we're not seeing a rebound yet," says Donald Stone Jr., chief executive of Dewberry & Davis, a Fairfax, Va.-based engineering firm. The closely held company is hiring 30 right now, but doesn't expect employment to return to its peak anytime soon, Mr. Stone says. Dewberry employed 1,800 in 2009, about 10% below its prerecession high.

While stimulus projects have bolstered its business with the federal government, state and local governments still seem strapped for cash, Mr. Stone says. Dewberry's private development work also has remained scarce. "Projects have been very sporadic and certainly not what I would call a rebound," he says.

Catholic Health Initiatives, a nonprofit national health-care provider based in Denver, is taking a wait-and-see approach to hiring. Over the last 18 months, the company laid off about 2,000, leaving its work force at 70,000, says chief operating officer Michael Rowan. With inpatient admissions down 3.5% this year, Mr. Rowan expects staffing to grow only 1%, and that will happen through acquisitions.

Health care was one of the few sectors adding jobs during the downturn. But in March, the gains were broad-based.

The retail sector added 14,900 jobs. Temporary employment-a positive indicator for the labor market, since many employers increase temp hiring as a prelude to adding permanent jobs-increased by 40,200. Construction added jobs for the first time since mid-2007, although the gains likely were the result of a bounce back from February's weather slowdown. Manufacturing added 17,000 jobs, the third straight month of gains.

Replacing the more than eight million jobs lost since the recession started likely will take much of the next decade. The economy needs to create at least 100,000 jobs a month just to keep the unemployment rate flat, due to population growth. Because of the downturn, millions of Americans quit searching for work or dropped out of the labor force. A broader measure of unemployment, which includes people who stopped looking for work and those settling for part-time jobs, rose to 16.9% in March.

The government's March jobs report showed strong gains over recent months. Despite additional census jobs, the report was slightly weaker than expected, but with stock markets closed for Good Friday, the report's full impact will be more apparent next week.

The improving economy is certain to draw more job seekers back into the market, one factor likely to keep the unemployment rate from dropping quickly. The labor force-those working or looking for work-grew by 398,000 in March, the third straight monthly increase.

Federal Reserve officials expect the jobless rate to remain above 9% through this year and above 8% throughout 2011. The large pool of available labor is likely to constrain wage growth in the coming years. The report showed that average hourly earnings declined 0.1% during the month, although the average work week and total hours worked grew. For that reason, even with the latest turn toward job growth, the Fed isn't likely to raise interest rates until late this year at the earliest.

If some reports are to be believed, the Democrats will pass the Senate health care bill with some reconciliation changes later today. Thus, it is worthwhile to take a comprehensive look at the freedoms we will lose.

Of course, the bill is supposed to provide us with security. But it will result in skyrocketing insurance costs and physicians leaving the field in droves, making it harder to afford and find medical care. We may be about to live Benjamin Franklin's adage, "People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both."

The sections described below are taken from HR 3590 as agreed to by the Senate and from the reconciliation bill as displayed by the Rules Committee.

1. You are young and don't want health insurance? You are starting up a small business and need to minimize expenses, and one way to do that is to forego health insurance? Tough. You have to pay $750 annually for the "privilege." (Section 1501)

2. You are young and healthy and want to pay for insurance that reflects that status? Tough. You'll have to pay for premiums that cover not only you, but also the guy who smokes three packs a day, drink a gallon of whiskey and eats chicken fat off the floor. That's because insurance companies will no longer be able to underwrite on the basis of a person's health status. (Section 2701).

3. You would like to pay less in premiums by buying insurance with lifetime or annual limits on coverage? Tough. Health insurers will no longer be able to offer such policies, even if that is what customers prefer. (Section 2711).

4. Think you'd like a policy that is cheaper because it doesn't cover preventive care or requires cost-sharing for such care? Tough. Health insurers will no longer be able to offer policies that do not cover preventive services or offer them with cost-sharing, even if that's what the customer wants. (Section 2712).

5. You are an employer and you would like to offer coverage that doesn't allow your employees' slacker children to stay on the policy until age 26? Tough. (Section 2714).

6. You must buy a policy that covers ambulatory patient services, emergency services, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance use disorder services, including behavioral health treatment; prescription drugs; rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices; laboratory services; preventive and wellness services; chronic disease management; and pediatric services, including oral and vision care.

You're a single guy without children? Tough, your policy must cover pediatric services. You're a woman who can't have children? Tough, your policy must cover maternity services. You're a teetotaler? Tough, your policy must cover substance abuse treatment. (Add your own violation of personal freedom here.) (Section 1302).

7. Do you want a plan with lots of cost-sharing and low premiums? Well, the best you can do is a "Bronze plan," which has benefits that provide benefits that are actuarially equivalent to 60% of the full actuarial value of the benefits provided under the plan. Anything lower than that, tough. (Section 1302 (d)(1)(A))

8. You are an employer in the small-group insurance market and you'd like to offer policies with deductibles higher than $2,000 for individuals and $4,000 for families? Tough. (Section 1302 (c) (2) (A).

9. If you are a large employer (defined as at least 50 employees) and you do not want to provide health insurance to your employee, then you will pay a $750 fine per employee (It could be $2,000 to $3,000 under the reconciliation changes). Think you know how to better spend that money? Tough. (Section 1513).

10. You are an employer who offers health flexible spending arrangements and your employees want to deduct more than $2,500 from their salaries for it? Sorry, can't do that. (Section 9005 (i)).

11. If you are a physician and you don't want the government looking over your shoulder? Tough. The Secretary of Health and Human Services is authorized to use your claims data to issue you reports that measure the resources you use, provide information on the quality of care you provide, and compare the resources you use to those used by other physicians. Of course, this will all be just for informational purposes. It's not like the government will ever use it to intervene in your practice and patients' care. Of course not. (Section 3003 (i))

12. If you are a physician and you want to own your own hospital, you must be an owner and have a "Medicare provider agreement" by Feb. 1, 2010. (Dec. 31, 2010 in the reconciliation changes.) If you didn't have those by then, you are out of luck. (Section 6001 (i) (1) (A)).

13. If you are a physician owner and you want to expand your hospital? Well, you can't (Section 6001 (i) (1) (B). Unless, it is located in a county where, over the last five years, population growth has been 150% of what it has been in the state (Section 6601 (i) (3) ( E)). And then you cannot increase your capacity by more than 200% (Section 6001 (i) (3) (C)).

14. You are a health insurer and you want to raise premiums to meet costs? Well, if that increase is deemed "unreasonable" by the Secretary of Health and Human Services it will be subject to review and can be denied. (Section 1003)

15. The government will extract a fee of $2.3 billion annually from the pharmaceutical industry. If you are a pharmaceutical company what you will pay depends on the ratio of the number of brand-name drugs you sell to the total number of brand-name drugs sold in the U.S. So, if you sell 10% of the brand-name drugs in the U.S., what you pay will be 10% multiplied by $2.3 billion, or $230,000,000. (Under reconciliation, it starts at $2.55 billion, jumps to $3 billion in 2012, then to $3.5 billion in 2017 and $4.2 billion in 2018, before settling at $2.8 billion in 2019 (Section 1404)). Think you, as a pharmaceutical executive, know how to better use that money, say for research and development? Tough. (Section 9008 (b)).

16. The government will extract a fee of $2 billion annually from medical device makers. If you are a medical device maker what you will pay depends on your share of medical device sales in the U.S. So, if you sell 10% of the medical devices in the U.S., what you pay will be 10% multiplied by $2 billion, or $200,000,000. Think you, as a medical device maker, know how to better use that money, say for R&D? Tough. (Section 9009 (b)).

The reconciliation package turns that into a 2.9% excise tax for medical device makers. Think you, as a medical device maker, know how to better use that money, say for research and development? Tough. (Section 1405).

17. The government will extract a fee of $6.7 billion annually from insurance companies. If you are an insurer, what you will pay depends on your share of net premiums plus 200% of your administrative costs. So, if your net premiums and administrative costs are equal to 10% of the total, you will pay 10% of $6.7 billion, or $670,000,000. In the reconciliation bill, the fee will start at $8 billion in 2014, $11.3 billion in 2015, $1.9 billion in 2017, and $14.3 billion in 2018 (Section 1406).Think you, as an insurance executive, know how to better spend that money? Tough.(Section 9010 (b) (1) (A and B).)

18. If an insurance company board or its stockholders think the CEO is worth more than $500,000 in deferred compensation? Tough.(Section 9014).

19. You will have to pay an additional 0.5% payroll tax on any dollar you make over $250,000 if you file a joint return and $200,000 if you file an individual return. What? You think you know how to spend the money you earned better than the government? Tough. (Section 9015).

That amount will rise to a 3.8% tax if reconciliation passes. It will also apply to investment income, estates, and trusts. You think you know how to spend the money you earned better than the government? Like you need to ask. (Section 1402).

20. If you go for cosmetic surgery, you will pay an additional 5% tax on the cost of the procedure. Think you know how to spend that money you earned better than the government? Tough. (Section 9017).

Because Companies Said Obamacare Will Hit Them, Henry Waxman Is Launching A War On Accounting

Accounting basics: when a company experiences what accountants call "a material adverse impact" on its expected future earnings, and those changes affect an item that is already on the balance sheet, the company is required to record the negative impact--"to take the charge against earnings"--as soon as it knows that the change is reasonably likely to occur.

This makes good accounting sense. The asset on the balance sheet is now less valuable, so you should record a charge. Otherwise, you'd be misleading investors.

The Democrats, however, seem to believe that Generally Accepted Accounting Principals are some sort of conspiracy against Obamacare, and all that is good and right in America.

Here's the story: one of the provisions in the new health care law forces companies to treat the current subsidies for retiree health benefits as taxable income. This strikes me as dumb policy; there's not much point in giving someone a subsidy, and then taxing it back, unless you just like doing extra paperwork. And since the total cost of the subsidy, and any implied tax subsidy, is still less than we pay for an average Medicare Part D beneficiary, we may simply be encouraging companies to dump their retiree benefits and put everyone into Part D, costing us taxpayers extra money.

But this is neither here nor there, because Congress already did it. And now a bunch of companies with generous retiree drug benefits have announced that they are taking large charges to reflect the cost of the change in the tax law.

Henry Waxman thinks that's mean, and he's summoning the heads of those companies to Washington to explain themselves. It's not clear what they're supposed to explain. What they did is required by GAAP. And I've watched congressional hearings. There's no chance that four CEO's are going to explain the accounting

code to the fine folks in Congress; explaining how to boil water would challenge the format.

Now, it's entirely possible that these companies are taking as large a charge as possible, because that's what companies like to do--if they have to recognize a negative event, they try to make it as big as possible. Firms like to recognize as many upside surprises as possible, while minimizing the number of unexpected adverse charges. It is better to take one "big bath" then dribble out seven "Oops, we underestimated the size of the problem" notices. And, of course, companies have some discretion over when they "recognize" that the charge they took was too big, which allows them to use a "conservative" (very large) charge to smooth out future earnings somewhat.

But these charges aren't going to have much impact on the stock price, or anything else; they're non-cash charges, the costs will be spread over a number of years, and they're not a huge surprise to investors. I doubt it's even going to have much impact on the popularity of the health care plan.

As accounting sins go, this is the corporate equivalent of moving your printer ink purchases up by two days in order to deduct them in the current tax year. It certainly does not warrant congressional investigation. What AT&T, Caterpillar, et al did was appropriate. It's earnings season, and they offered guidance about , um, their earnings.

Obviously, Waxman is incensed because this seems to put the lie to the promise that if you like your current plan, nothing will change. But this was never true. Medicare Advantage beneficiaries are basically going to see their generous benefits slashed, retiree drug benefits suddenly cost more and may now be discontinued, and ultimately, more than a few employers will almost certainly find it cheaper to shut down their plans. If Congress didn't want those things to happen, it should have passed a different law.

If Congress thinks that it made the right tradeoffs--or at least, justifiable choices--then our Congressmen should step up and accept responsibility for what they've done. At the very least, I think we can ask that they refrain from trying to force companies to join them in denying reality by threatening congressional investigation of any company who dares to notify investors that this thing is going to cost them money.

From TheAtlantic - shaping the national debate on the most critical issues of our times, from politics, business, and the economy, to technology, arts, and culture.

Here are some of the companies and their announced losses:

AT&T- $1 billion

3M- $90 million

Farm-equipment manufacturer John Deere "said it expects its expenses to rise by around $150 million on an after-tax basis, mainly in the second quarter, as a result of the legislation."

Verizon "told employees in an email Tuesday that Verizon's costs will go up in the near term, pinpointing a tax-subsidy reduction for retiree health benefits."

Heavy-equipment manufacturer Caterpillar "said that its first-quarter earnings will be hit with a $100 million after-tax charge under tax law changes attached to the new health care reform legislation."

AK Steele Holding Corp., "the third largest U.S. steelmaker by sales, said it will record a non-cash charge of about $31 million resulting from the health-care overhaul signed into law by President Barack Obama. The charge will be recorded in the first quarter of 2010."

Valero Energy "will take a $15 million to $20 million charge to second-quarter earnings for the same reason."

Medical-device maker Medtronic "warned that new taxes on its products could force it to lay off a thousand workers."

On Friday, I asked Rush Limbaugh for his response to President Obama's description of him as "troublesome" and of his program as "vitriol." Limbaugh told me he does not believe Obama is trying to do what is best for the country and added, "Never in my life have I seen a regime like this, governing against the will of the people, purposely."

By using the word "regime," Limbaugh was doing something he does all the time: throwing the language of the opposition back in their faces. In the Bush years, we often heard the phrase "Bush regime" from some quarters of the left. So Limbaugh applied it to Obama.

Apparently some people didn't get it. On MSNBC, Chris Matthews appeared deeply troubled by the word. "I've never seen language like this in the American press," he said, "referring to an elected representative government, elected in a totally fair, democratic, American election -- we will have another one in November, we'll have another one for president in a couple years -- fair, free, and wonderful democracy we have in this country.. We know that word, 'regime.' It was used by George Bush, 'regime change.' You go to war with regimes. Regimes are tyrannies. They're juntas. They're military coups. The use of the word 'regime' in American political parlance is unacceptable, and someone should tell the walrus [Limbaugh] to stop using it."

Matthews didn't stop there. "I never heard the word 'regime,' before, have you?" he said to NBC's Chuck Todd. "I don't even think Joe McCarthy ever called this government a 'regime.'"

It appears that Matthews has suffered a major memory loss. I don't have the facilities to search for every utterance of Joe McCarthy, but a look at more recent times reveals many, many, many examples of the phrase "Bush regime." In fact, a search of the Nexis database for "Bush regime" yields 6,769 examples from January 20, 2001 to the present.

It was used 16 times in the New York Times, beginning with an April 4, 2001 column by Maureen Dowd -- who wrote, "Seventy-five days into the Bush regime and I'm a wreck" -- and ending with a March 6, 2009 editorial denouncing the "frightening legal claim advanced by the Bush regime to justify holding [accused terrorist Ali al-Marri]."

"Bush regime" was used 24 times in the Washington Post, beginning with a January 22, 2001 profile of Marshall Wittmann by Howard Kurtz -- who noted that Wittmann served as "a Health and Human Services deputy assistant secretary in the first Bush regime" -- and ending with an October 6, 2009 column by Dana Milbank which quoted far-left antiwar protester Medea Benjamin questioning whether the Obama administration "looks very different from the Bush regime."

Perhaps Matthews missed all of those references. If he did, he still might have heard the phrase the many times it was uttered on his own network, MSNBC. For example, on January 8 of this year, Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak said that, "In George Bush's regime, only one million jobs had been created." On August 21, 2009, MSNBC's Ed Schultz referred to something that happened in 2006, when "the Bush regime was still in power." On October 8, 2007, Democratic strategist Steve McMahon said that "the middle class has not fared quite as well under Bush regime as." On August 10, 2007, MSNBC played a clip of anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan referring to "the people of Iraq and Afghanistan that have been tragically harmed by the Bush regime." On September 21, 2006, a guest referred to liberals "expressing their dissatisfaction with the Bush regime." On July 7, 2004, Ralph Nader -- appearing with Matthews on "Hardball" -- discussed how he would "take apart the Bush regime." On May 26, 2003, Joe Scarborough noted a left-wing website that "has published a deck of Bush regime playing cards." A September 26, 2002 program featured a viewer email that said, "The Bush regime rhetoric gets goofier and more desperate every day."

Finally -- you knew this was coming -- on June 14, 2002, Chris Matthews himself introduced a panel discussion about a letter signed by many prominent leftists condemning the Bush administration's conduct of the war on terror. "Let's go to the Reverend Al Sharpton," Matthews said. "Reverend Sharpton, what do you make of this letter and this panoply of the left condemning the Bush regime?"

Oops. Perhaps Joe McCarthy never called the U.S. government a regime, but Chris Matthews did. And a lot of other people did, too. So now we are supposed to believe him when he expresses disgust at Rush Limbaugh doing the same?

CHARLOTTE - Even by President Obama's loquacious standards, an answer he gave here on health care Friday was a doozy.

Toward the end of a question-and-answer session with workers at an advanced battery technology manufacturer, a woman named Doris stood to ask the president whether it was a "wise decision to add more taxes to us with the health care" package.

Obama started out feisty. "Well, let's talk about that, because this is an area where there's been just a whole lot of misinformation, and I'm going to have to work hard over the next several months to clean up a lot of the misapprehensions that people have," the president said.

He then spent the next 17 minutes and 12 seconds lulling the crowd into a daze. His discursive answer - more than 2,500 words long -- wandered from topic to topic, including commentary on the deficit, pay-as-you-go rules passed by Congress, Congressional Budget Office reports on Medicare waste, COBRA coverage, the Recovery Act and Federal Medical Assistance Percentages (he referred to this last item by its inside-the-Beltway name, "F-Map"). He talked about the notion of eliminating foreign aid (not worth it, he said). He invoked Warren Buffett, earmarks and the payroll tax that funds Medicare (referring to it, in fluent Washington lingo, as "FICA").

Always fond of lists, Obama ticked off his approach to health care -- twice. "Number one is that we are the only -- we have been, up until last week, the only advanced country that allows 50 million of its citizens to not have any health insurance," he said.

A few minutes later he got to the next point, which seemed awfully similar to the first. "Number two, you don't know who might end up being in that situation," he said, then carried on explaining further still.

"Point number three is that the way insurance companies have been operating, even if you've got health insurance you don't always know what you got, because what has been increasingly the practice is that if you're not lucky enough to work for a big company that is a big pool, that essentially is almost a self-insurer, then what's happening is, is you're going out on the marketplace, you may be buying insurance, you think you're covered, but then when you get sick they decide to drop the insurance right when you need it," Obama continued, winding on with the answer.

But Obama wasn't finished. He had a "final point," before starting again with another list -- of three points.

"What we said is, number one, we'll have the basic principle that everybody gets coverage," he said, before launching into the next two points, for a grand total of seven.

His wandering approach might not matter if Obama weren't being billed as the chief salesman of the health-care overhaul. Public opinion on the bill remains divided, and Democratic officials are planning to send Obama into the country to persuade wary citizens that it will work for them in the long run.

It was not evident that he changed any minds at Friday's event. The audience sat politely, but people in the back of the room began to wander off.

Even Obama seemed to recognize that he had gone on too long. He apologized -- in keeping with the spirit of the moment, not once, but twice. "Boy, that was a long answer. I'm sorry," he said, drawing nervous laughter that sounded somewhat like relief as he wrapped up.

One of the comments:

Once again the President impressed us with his listening ability. He went into his usual preplanned dialog and completely ignored the question. If you noticed, nowhere in his 17 minute rant did he answer the question posed about over-taxation. Is he deaf or what? Maybe in November he will learn to listen to the voters and their concerns over the Democratic Party bullying, government takeovers, and disregard for the Constitution.

Posted by: bdemonte1

Doctor suggests that those who voted for Obama go elsewhere for their healthcare:

Doctor hangs up sign which says, “If you voted for Obama, go elsewhere for treatment” (or words to that effect). Anderson Cooper interviews Alan Grayson on this, who compares this to not serving Black people (the doctor does treat those who voted for Obama, by the way):

Some scientists now blame the plagues of ancient Egypt on climate change: (you would think this is a story from the Onion or from Harvard Lampoon, but it is a real story)

If you want to purchase a “Healthcare Reform is a BFD” they are being sold at Barackobama.com:

Another link to email to your Democrat friends: Disgruntled Democrats join TEA Party:

You may or may not recall Vitoria Jackson from SNL of 10 or more seasons ago, but she went to Searchlight, Nevada, and recorded her thoughts here:

RUSH: By the way, this incident on the health care Sunday, the faked incident where nobody shouted the N-word at anybody, where nobody spit on anybody, at Searchlight, Nevada, during the Harry Reid campaign event out there, of course a bus of tea party people showed up, and the tea party bus was peppered with eggs, and the egg throwing was blamed on Andrew Breitbart of BigGovernment.com. Well, Andrew Breitbart has cameras everywhere he goes. It turns out that the guy who accused Breitbart lied to investigative officers. The man is the director of the Democrat Party statewide in Nevada. He threw the eggs and then blamed Breitbart for it, tried to blame the tea party people for causing problems and trouble and unrest. And of course the media ran with that, "Tea party people, Breitbart threw eggs at innocent people, trying to target Harry Reid supporters," when in fact it was a Harry Reid supporter and a union member who threw the eggs and then told cops that somebody else did.

So you tea party people, I'm sure you know this, but they are trying to get you provoked so that you act in ways similar to the way they're accusing you. If you don't do it, they are faking the incidents and reporting to the media that you are acting as accused when you're not. Therefore do not give them any evidence whatsoever, just keep doing what you're doing when you're out there, be polite, be respectful, clean up the mess as you always do and be aware, videotape everything with whatever equipment you have, because they are trying to set up incidents here. If you aren't provoked the way they want you provoked and if you don't act like they're trying to get you to act, then they will fake an incident and say that it was you. They have a willing accomplice, compliant media. There still has been no retraction, after how many days since health care Sunday, and still no evidence at the same time.

RUSH: By the way, Andrew Breitbart sent me a note here. He's not sure that it was actually the field director for the Nevada Democrat Party. His name is -- what is his name? Doesn't matter. Can't find his name here. Dimarzio. Field director of the Nevada Democrat Party. Font is very small on the print. Breitbart says, "Look it, we're not sure he threw the eggs," but this guy, the field director, was in the middle of it, and he called the cops, he was talking to cops on camera, blaming Breitbart for it, when Breitbart was actually the target of the eggs, and the Tea Party Express was the target of the eggs. So this guy lied to investigators, lied to law enforcement.

CALLER: I have a question that I cannot seem to find the answer to anywhere on the political pundit circuit. Why are the Democrats not afraid of us? You know, they see these tea parties, they know that we're all roused up. They don't have a care in the world about us. Why are they not afraid of us?

RUSH: Yeah. I think they are afraid. That's why they're doing what they're doing. They know that they cannot govern with the will of the people because the will of the people isn't with them. They're deathly afraid of us. But they're using their power -- I mean they're a regime.

RUSH: We no longer have an administration. This is a regime. And it's been perfectly illustrated here by what happened with the CEOs that say they're going to take a first quarter hit, like AT&T, billion dollars, Verizon's out today, they're going to take a hit of $750 million, so Henry Waxman, who is the head honcho of the regime sends 'em a letter. It's equivalent of a subpoena. You get yourselves up here and you explain yourselves and you bring your books. Now, they're damned if they do and damned if they don't, because if they don't take the charge, then the SEC comes after 'em and fines them and sues them. If they do obey the law and do what they did then they hear from Waxman. So the regime is gonna get you one way or the other. They are afraid of us. This is why they're acting in a totalitarian way. They know that they do not have any cooperation or agreement from us. Why do you think they're spending so much time trying to create incidents?

RUSH: Why are they trying to demonize everybody who opposes them? Because they are afraid. They're afraid of Sarah Palin. They always tell us who they fear. It's that they just react to their fear differently than you would expect normal people to react to. Their movement has no conscience.

RUSH: The ends justify the means. They have a morally superior view of their agenda and of themselves. They look at anything that opposes them as evil, and with evil you must do whatever it takes, ends justify the means to wipe it out.

CALLER: Yes, I do. I'm mad as hell. I'm almost 70 years old, and my country doesn't look like what I grew up in. And I feel like I have been stolen from, stolen. My grandchildren, great-grandchildren will never know the America that I knew growing up. And that angers me immensely, Mr. Limbaugh.

RUSH: You are exactly right. You are seeing your country stolen from you right before your eyes from your grandchildren, from your children. This is why there are so many millions of Americans like you, exactly like you. They have the same anger and vitriol that the leader of the regime finds troublesome. Something else about the Democrats, deep in their hearts they know that we are law-abiding people. They know that we don't make messes. That's why they're trying to stoke lawbreaking behavior from the tea party people because they know that we obey the law. They don't. They have just trashed the US Constitution to govern against the will of the people.

RUSH: To the phones we go, Nikki, Davenport, Iowa, great to have you on the program.

RUSH: Sorry. I could only read what's written for me up there. The teleprompter --

CALLER: You were talking about vitriol. Well, I have a good example. There was a cartoon in one of the local papers, and the first column showed a very angry little man holding a sign that said "kill the bill." And a second panel, he was even angrier. He kinda looked like the Tasmanian devil, and the sign said "just kill the." And then in the third panel he looked totally berserk and the sign just said "kill." Now, if some loony out there goes and hurts somebody, who are they sending out to take the blame?

RUSH: The cartoonist. I mean to follow their logic the cartoonist will have blood on his hands. I know what you're getting at.

RUSH: They're trying to incite incidents with tea party people to get them to behave in ways, like shouting the N-word or throwing eggs at people and so forth, and when that doesn't happen they have to make up and lie about the incidents. So this editorial cartoonist is doing much the same thing.

CALLER: Right. It made me very angry and I called the editor, and he just kind of laughed it off.

RUSH: Well, of course. The news business is the only business where the customer is always wrong. The news business is the only business where you have no clue how hard their job is, you don't understand in any way, shape, manner, or form how they do what they do. Your criticism is irrelevant.

RUSH: Kathleen in Ellicott City, Maryland. I'm glad you called. Welcome to the program.

CALLER: Thank you so much, Rush, for taking my call. I'm a first-time caller. I'm very nervous here.

CALLER: Well, I'm one of those tea partiers that since last April, I've been to our state capital and to DC several times, and there is verbal attack during the tea partiers. I can tell you because it happened to my friend and myself. I was at 9/12, I was at various different ones, but the tea partiers, those of us who are law-abiding citizens and pay our taxes and work two jobs and are totally screwed by our government, our current government, not one piece of trash was left on the ground, not one name was called, everybody was very patriotic and therefore, you know, against high government, this and that. Anyway, the day that the bill was pushed through by Pelosi and her gang, my girlfriend and I were leaving the rally heading towards the metro and out of nowhere this guy, I'm 5'2", he was about six and a half feet tall, starts saying, "Where the hell were you eight years ago?" And I go, "What?" He said, "Where were you eight years ago? You weren't here, this is war, this is war." I said, "No, it's not, it's about government-run health care, it's about socialism." He said, "This is not about socialism. I'm from a socialist country." And just about then some lady came with an Obama hat and started walking with him and started cussing me out and saying all kinds of things that I won't repeat, against me. So there is attacking, but it's from the other side.

RUSH: Oh, it's even worse than that, and it's going to get worse than that. What's going to happen here is that Obamaites and SEIU people are going to be fake members of the tea party. They're going to dress up, they're going to be clean, they're going to look just like all the other tea partiers do, and they're going to start throwing eggs, and they're going to start beating people up or what have you, or they're going to start shouting the N-word whenever they have the chance. They will do anything they can to discredit the tea party. Those of you in the tea party who go to these rallies, I'm sure you're aware of the effort to besmirch you by accusing you of shouting the N-word at John Lewis.

RUSH: I know it didn't happen, there's no evidence it happened. if they had videotape evidence that it happened they would have shown it, they don't have it. They were trying to create it. They were being provocative, they were being contentious. There's no reason that that group of people from Congress had to walk through the crowd. They never go to the Capitol that way. They get there in the underground tunnels. And Pelosi carrying that big gavel with that excrement-eating grin on her face, they were trying to provoke everybody into an incident and when it didn't happen they said it did anyway. But I tell you, out in Searchlight, Nevada, at the Harry Reid thing, they started throwing eggs at the tea party people and tried to blame it on the tea party people. It's gonna get even worse. I mean this is in the handbook. Remember, they have to discredit their enemies. They cannot win a debate on ideas in the arena of ideas. They have to discredit and destroy the people that disagree with them. Anyway, I'm glad you called.

RUSH: I wonder if today over at CBS they are on drugs or if they are drinking. They have a poll out today on Obama's approval rating and health care that I'm sure is just ripping their hearts out. "Obama's Approval Rating Hits New Low -- Last week, President Obama signed historic health care reform legislation into law -- but his legislative success doesn't seem to have helped his image with the American public. The latest CBS News Poll, conducted between March 29 and April 1, found Americans unhappier than ever with Mr. Obama's handling of health care -- and still worried about the state of the economy. President Obama's overall job approval rating has fallen to an all-time low of 44 percent, down five points from late March." Down five points since the health care bill passed. All these experts were telling us he was going to get a big bump, and how about all these Democrats that were told, "If you don't pass health care you don't have a chance of being reelected in November." So his numbers are down to 44% in the CBS poll. Americans unhappier than ever with the handling of his health care bill. "It's down 24 points since his all-time high last April. Forty-one percent of those polled said they disapproved."

So he's 44 approval, 41 disapprove, and once again evidence abounds that Obama has divided America. He has come to divide. He is not a unifier. He has never unified anything or any people or any group that he's been a part of. "When it comes to health care, the President's approval rating is even lower -- and is also a new all-time low. Only 34 percent approved, while 55 percent said they disapproved. Americans are still worried about the economy, with 84 percent telling CBS they thought it was still in bad condition. However, even that high number represents an improvement: nine in ten thought the economy was bad." Okay, 84% think the economy is still in trouble, bad condition, and that's an improvement? Hubba hubba. There you have it.

I guess I need a new title for myself. I need to start calling myself the Troublesome Rush Limbaugh, because the president said that comments I make are troublesome. Harry Smith, certainly no Edward R. Murrow here, doing great journalism. I wonder if it's too late to redo the Peabody awards so that Harry Smith could get one. A basketball court backyard interview with Obama, Harry Smith asks this question.

SMITH: I've been spending time out and about listening to talk radio. The kindest of terms you're sometimes referred to out in America is a socialist. The worst of which I've heard is called a Nazi. Are you aware of the level of enmity that crosses the airwaves and that people have made their daily conversation about you?

RUSH: Who has called him a Nazi? Who do we know that has called him a Nazi? Socialist? Yeah. Stalinist? Yeah. Marxist? Yeah. Nazi? We have compared health care in America to what the Nazis tried to do in Germany and get the control of the people going in that regard. Anyway, here is President Obama's response to the brilliant probing insightful question of Harry Smith who actually is intelligent in one way. He knew that talk radio across the country, which has 15,000 times the audience of his piddling little morning show on CBS would give him all kinds of publicity. And it's worked. We don't mind. Happy to help our favorite liberal at CBS, Harry Smith. Here's Obama's answer.

OBAMA: It's pretty apparent and it's troublesome. But keep in mind that there have been periods in American history where this kind of vitriol comes out. It happens often when you've got an economy that is making people more anxious and people are feeling as if there's a lot of change that needs to take place. But that's not the vast majority of Americans. I think the vast majority of Americans know that we're trying hard, that I want what's best for the country.

RUSH: All right. So I am the Troublesome Rush Limbaugh, vitriol. Let me say that I, we at the EIB Network have yet to have a year that was down from a previous year. Every year we've had improvement, economically we've been up. There is no economic anxiety here at the EIB Network. What there is is fear for the United States of America. The American people do not think that Barack Obama is doing what's best for the country. They do not believe that in the slightest. Never in my life have I seen a regime like this governing so against the will of the people, purposely. I have never known more people personally who literally fear for the country. I have never before in my life witnessed a media so supportive of a regime amassing such power, and for Barack Obama to run around and say that this show and Beck and all of talk radio is filled with vitriol? Barack Obama sat in Jeremiah Wright's church for 20 years and never once complained about the tone of Jeremiah Wright's bigoted, anti-American, racist rants.

One of my theories about President Obama is that he has been filled with anger from day one, that he has a chip on his shoulder about something. It's laugh-out-loud funny to hear him pretend to be concerned about dissent from the people he has insulted, people he has provoked and ridiculed and run over. A domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers, is one of his best buddies. Jeremiah Wright was one of the most important people in his life, as was Frank Marshall Davis, an avowed communist who raised him. Barack Obama always honors the infamous Jewish hater, Louis Farrakhan with the title "minister." This guy's worried about truthful, informed political speech? Of course he is, because all radical leftists have to shut up and shut down anybody who stands in their way. They clear the field. They don't look at leveling the field. They clear it. And now they have the State-Controlled Media to help 'em out.

Look at the language toward Republicans that his own party uses. Look at the false claims of racism at the tea party people on Sunday, the date the health care bill was signed. They faked an incident. They were trying to provoke an incident. There's no reason to walk above ground to get to the Capitol building from their offices. There are tunnels underneath with trains, subways and so forth. The Congressional Black Caucus and Pelosi walking over there with a big gavel trying to provoke an incident. When an incident didn't happen, they made it up. The media reported the incident without one shred of evidence. There still is no evidence that anybody shouted the N-word to anybody. There was video being taken by hundreds of people of these incidents. Not one of those videos shows the incident to have occurred. These are the kind of tactics that Barack Obama inspires. In Philadelphia during the campaign Barack Obama: "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun." Is that vitriol? Barack Obama, Jim Messina, deputy chief of staff: "If you get hit, we're going to punch back twice as hard." Barack Obama: "You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done." This he said to top Republican leaders whom he had invited to the White House to discuss his failed $1 trillion Porkulus bill.

In San Francisco, Barack Obama: "You go into these small towns of Pennsylvania like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them and they fell through the Clinton administration and the Bush administration, each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are going to regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising, then, that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustration." Is that vitriol? Barack Obama daily insults the American people. There's no question. Barack Obama: "I do think everybody has a responsibility, Democrats and Republicans, to tone down some of this rhetoric, some of these comments." He needs to start with himself. He needs to start with Reverend Wright. He needs to start with any number of his party members.

And the media, as I say, I always thought the media was supposed to be suspicious of power. I've never seen a media like this so supportive of a regime amassing such power. They're almost giddy about it. But the American people are not a bunch of extremists. The American people are not a bunch of freaks. They're not bitter clingers, and they're not overly anxious about the economy and the country. They are overly anxious about Obama's agenda. They are scared to death of Obama's agenda. They do not understand how it is that a man was elected like Obama who willingly, purposely governs against the will of the people, oversees the destruction of the private sector where their jobs and the future jobs of their children and grandchildren were supposed to be.

RUSH: It's really funny how we never heard from our State-Controlled Media about the real Nazi skinhead groups when they were out there protesting Bush and the Iraq war. You go to the Daily Kos website or whatever it's called, and you'll see the word "Nazi" I don't know how many times, do a Google search, they call everybody on the right Nazis over there. And remember that joke Wanda Sykes told about me when she did the White House Correspondents Dinner? It involved me dying, and Obama sat there and laughed at it. He was the guest of honor at that thing. So I would suggest if this vitriol exists it is not the responsibility of the Troublesome Rush Limbaugh. This country has been divided and roiled on purpose to create chaos for the express purpose of the expansion of government to fix the problems that they are causing. I told the broadcast engineer I need to hear a song today reminiscent of the situation I now find myself in.

Lindsey Buckingham solo there, part of Fleetwood Mac. You can fade the tune down now. Think I'm in Trouble. So let's see now, I've had Harry Reid honoring me on the Senate floor, I've had Dick Durbin honoring me on the Senate floor, I've had Tom "Dung Heap" Harkin honor me on the Senate floor. I've had Barack Obama honor me two or three times, most recently yesterday with Harry Smith. Obama warned lawmakers at the White House not to listen to me, that's not how things get done, and is now calling me out by name in the press. Not bad for a little kid from Missouri. I wish my parents were alive to hear all of this. The only person that has not honored me is Pelosi. I don't think she has ever, and I will not consider my career a full success until I'm called out by the Speaker of the House as George Soros pronounces her name, Nozi Pelosi.

RUSH: We've got some sound bites here regarding I, El Rushbo, being troublesome, vitriolic. Here is the Wanda Sykes cut, May 9th, last year, White House Correspondents Dinner.

SYKES: Rush Limbaugh, one of your (unintelligible). Boy, Rush Limbaugh said he hopes this administration fails. Like, I don't care about people losing their homes or jobs or our soldiers in Iraq, he just wants the country to fail. To me that's treason. He's not saying anything differently than what Osama Bin Laden is saying. You know, you might want to look into this, sir, 'cause I think maybe Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker, but he was just so strung out on OxyContin he missed his flight. Rush Limbaugh, I hope the country fails. I hope his kidneys fail, how about that? Needs a little waterboarding, that's what he needs.

RUSH: Yeah, that's not troublesome and that's not vitriolic, and, of course, Obama was shown on camera laughing heartily at Wanda Sykes. Here's Obama back on the CBS morning show today with Harry Smith, and this is his comment about criticism of him.

OBAMA: It used to be that somebody who said something crazy, they might be saying it to their next-door neighbor or it might be on some late night AM station at the very end of the radio dial. I am concerned about a political climate in which the other side is demonized. I'm concerned about it when Democrats do it. I'm concerned about it when Republicans do it. I do think there is a tone and tenor that needs to change, where we can disagree without being disagreeable or making wild accusations about the other side. I think that's what most Americans would like to see as well.

RUSH: Now, there's an -- oh, I think that's what most Americans -- most Americans know that we're trying to do what's best for the country, most Americans think that we're trying to do the best, we ought to tone it down -- demonize? Demonize? He wants to end demonization? Who does he think started this? It is almost the exclusive tactic of his administration, the Democrat Party. And, of course, the president himself has demonized many. The insurance industry. He has demonized Big Oil. He now has demonized health insurance. He has demonized doctors. Remember this.

OBAMA: If a family care physician works with his or her patient to help them lose weight, modify diet, monitors whether they're taking their medications in a timely fashion, they might get reimbursed a pittance. But if that same diabetic ends up getting their foot amputated, that's 30,000, 40, $50,000 immediately the surgeon is reimbursed.

RUSH: So he accuses surgeons of unnecessary amputations for the express purpose of stuffing their back pockets with money. That's the demonization of doctors, surgeons, pediatricians. Here is Obama demonizing fat cats on Wall Street.

OBAMA: I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of, you know, fat cat bankers on Wall Street. The people on Wall Street still don't get it. They don't get it. They're still puzzled, why is it that people are mad at the banks? Well, let's see. You know, you guys are drawing down 10, 20 million-dollar bonuses after America went through the worst economic year that it's gone through in -- in decades, and you guys caused the problem? And we got 10% unemployment? Why do you think people might be a little frustrated?

RUSH: Demonizing Wall Street. And here is Obama not wanting to quell the anger at the execs at AIG who were receiving bonuses. This was March 18th last year on the South Lawn of the White House. Reporters said, "Mr. President, a new round of bonuses from these contracts are coming out. What could you say to the American people to quell the anger? Because people are angry about this new round that's coming out. There's more bonuses it's said to be coming for AIG executives."

OBAMA: I don't want to quell anger. I think people are right to be angry. I'm angry. What I want us to do, though, is channel our anger in a constructive way. It's very important to remind ourselves that there are a whole bunch of folks now who are feigning outrage about these bonuses that a year ago or two years ago or three years ago said, "Well, we should never meddle in these compensation plans, these are the best and the brightest, they know what they're doing, that's part of the market," and now suddenly they're outraged.

RUSH: Yeah, so anger and vitriol were just fine and dandy when rent-a-mobs from ACORN were on the lawns of AIG executives: "I don't want to quell the anger, I think people are right to be angry." Well, they are right to be angry at your agenda, Mr. President, and they are scared of their agenda because they see that the Constitution does not matter anymore to your party or to you. And why do you care? Why does Obama care what the American people think anyway? You're not listening to the American people, you're approval numbers show it, you're governing against the will of the people on purpose, so why do you even care when they think? It makes no sense.

Now, let's go back to his book, The Audacity of Hope. "Still, it's hard to deny that all the sound and fury, magnified through television and the Internet, coarsens the political culture. It makes tempers flare, helps breed distrust. And whether we politicians like to admit it or not, the constant vitriol can wear on the spirit. Oddly enough, the cruder broadsides you don't worry about too much; if Rush Limbaugh's listeners love hearing him call me 'Osama Obama'"-- I didn't, it was Ted Kennedy that did that -- "my attitude is, let them have their fun. It's the more sophisticated practitioners who can sting you, in part because they have more credibility with the general public, in part because of the skill with which they can pounce on your words and make you seem like a jerk."

So he wasn't too concerned about it when he wrote his book. Wasn't too concerned about it at all. Now he's changed his tune. I think, in fact, ladies and gentlemen, I inherited a vitriolic world the minute this guy was elected. I was sitting here minding my own business -- actually, I inherited a vitriolic world when I first heard the Jeremiah Wright sound bites. You talk about vitriol! So I think I inherited this, and we've done a marvelous job of dealing with it. Here's another, here's the bitter clinger comment.

OBAMA: They get bitter, and they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them.

OBAMA: I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors, I want you to talk to them whether they're independent or whether they are Republican, I want you to argue with them and get in their face.

RUSH: Argue with them, get in their face, that's September 17th, 2008, Elko, Nevada, at a campaign event. And we will never forget Pelosi, August 4th, 2009 -- where was Harry Smith when she said this?

PELOSI: I think they're Astroturf. You be the judge, of carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care.

RUSH: So Nancy Pelosi calls tea party people Nazis! "Carrying swastikas" and all of that. Finally, before we go to the break, Obama on the Early Show, CBS, Harry Smith said, "There are plenty around you, even people within that building, who said, 'Let's do health care piecemeal, let's do it one piece at a time.'"

OBAMA: The one thing I don't do, Harry, is to think short term based on day-to-day polls. I look at what does the country need long-term. My attitude was that if I didn't make an effort now to change how we deliver health care, this country was going to go bankrupt.

RUSH: Gonna go bankrupt? It is bankrupt! You have bankrupted the country, Mr. President, and the American people know it, and they're angry about it, and they're frightened. And they deserve to be. They have earned this anger. They see you dividing the country. They see your party attempting to smear innocent people. They see your party just governing against their will, basically spitting in their face, politically. And you wonder why there's vitriol.

RUSH: You know, it seems to me Barack Obama was much more forgiving of Jeremiah Wright's anger and vitriol than he was his own grandmother, typical white woman. He was much more forgiving of the 9/11 terrorists' anger than he is of me and any of his domestic critics. Well, yeah, we were told that we need to understand why they hate us. There may be a reason they're doing this, there maybe a justified reason why they're doing this. We have to understand why they don't like us, why they are angry. But when it comes to us, there's no desire to understand why we're angry. There's no forgiving tolerance of our anger. No, we're called troublesome. Troublesome. King Henry VIII said of one of his primary political critics, Thomas Becket, King Henry VIII getting rid of the Catholic Church, starting the Church of England, Thomas Becket, Sir Thomas More, a lot of people, no, no, no, we're not going to support you in this, King Henry. And King Henry VIII said, "Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?" And four of his guards assumed that Henry VIII wanted him dead so they murdered him. The word "troublesome." Well, I am the troublesome, vitriolic Rush Limbaugh, archenemy of the regime.

RUSH: Folks, I misspoke. It was not Henry VIII who said, "Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?" It was Henry VII. And now I'm going to get notes, "No, it wasn't Henry the VII. It was Henry II." I misspoke. It was King Henry II who said of Thomas Becket, "Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?" It was just verbal dyslexia, but critics are waiting to pounce on how I always get facts wrong and make 'em up so I shoulda said Henry XVI. I don't think there was one. April 2nd Fool's Day.

RUSH: This is -- oh-ho-ho-ho. Lorraine X, Lorraine X. It's been a long time, happily so, but here she is back from San Diego to the EIB Network. Hello, Lorraine.

CALLER: Well hello, Rush. You know, as one of your more famous liberal callers to this show, I want to first say to all the liberals out there, don't you dare try to hang the racist tag on Rush Limbaugh because I'm going to tell you he's not. He just has a big mouth. Now, having said that, Rush, I'm going to let you have it here. Rush, you tea baggers are out of your frigging minds. Caravanning all around the country on buses and holding rallies as if you are some sort of a black civil rights --

RUSH: No, no, no, that's not what a tea bagger is. The tea party people are tea party people.

RUSH: -- I need to have my finger on the bleep button. Do you know what a tea bagger actually is, Lorraine X?

CALLER: Well, I'm going to tell you this, we don't drink tea in this country; we drink coffee. I think it's awful British of you guys to place -- the whole idea of the -- (cross talk)

CALLER: -- tea party thing years ago was to get rid of the British tea, okay? You guys are extorting the virtues and naming, you know, and extorting yourselves after the tea party, and the Boston Tea Party was not about that, it was against tea, so why are you using tea parties?

CALLER: The whole idea of calling themselves tea partiers. That's British. Call yourself the Coffee Party.

CALLER: Well, I can tell you this, Rush, this whole idea of these tea partiers -- and, by the way, there's nothing wrong with socialism, by the way. It's working quite well in other countries. It works in France. It works in England, and by the way, it also workers in Israel.

RUSH: If he were socialist I could almost breathe a sigh of relief, but it's worse than that, Lorraine.

CALLER: President Obama is the best president this country has ever seen and I'm going to tell you this. We are not going to fall for all these people (unintelligible) so-called tea party leaders out there trying to tell the world that there's something wrong with this health care that he's passed. And also, where were the tea partiers, okay, when George Bush was going around taking away and spying on all of our rights years ago?

RUSH: I'm just so sorry. I thought I could handle this and deal with it, but not today.

RUSH: Let me ask you a question. If George W. Bush got on Air Force One and flew over the state of Rhode Island where they have experienced a flood that they haven't had in 200 years, homes almost completely submerged, people genuinely homeless in the state of Rhode Island, if George Bush had flown over all that at altitude he couldn't even really even see it on his way to two fundraisers in Maine, do you think we would have heard about it? Oh, yeah. Well, that happened yesterday, except it was Obama who flew over flood-ravaged Rhode Island. The FEMA director was nowhere near. He was at some hot conference in Orlando where I understand they've got a lot of babes that play the field, the cocktail and pancake waitresses and so forth. You never know. Never know. So we have the situation where Obama said, "We'll stop on the way back." He calls 'em in Massachusetts and then heads on back to the White House. And not even Fox is pointing this out.

One of the reasons I think is we didn't see the actual suffering people. We didn't see people on the roofs of their houses being plucked by helicopters. No shooting helicopters. We didn't hear of any rapes and that sorta stuff going on inside these homes. And of course this wasn't sexy. Floods are just not sexy to the media when they happen to middle-class people. They're just not sexy. And I guess Obama doesn't care about white people. That's what they said about George W. Bush, he didn't care about black people. I guess Obama just doesn't care, the regime doesn't care about white people that got flooded out.

DINGELL: Paul W. (Smith), we're not ready to be doing it, but let me remind you, this has been going on for years. We are bringing it to a halt. The harsh fact of the matter is when you're going to pass legislation that will cover 300 American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.

RUSH: To control the people. And a great illustration of controlling the people is this phony promise of offshore oil drilling. It is a feint, it is a head fake. Here's all you need to know: "The Los Angeles Times, citing administration officials, summed up the four biggest elements of the plan: Eventually open two-thirds of the eastern Gulf's oil and gas resources for drilling. Proceed with drilling off Virginia, provided the project clears environmental and military reviews." Each one of these things has an out. "Study the viability of drilling off the mid- and southern Atlantic coasts. Study the viability of drilling in Alaska's Beaufort and Chukchi seas -- areas hotly defended by environmentalists." We know where there is oil and none of that area is being drilled, none of it. ANWR, lots of oil. Not being drilled there.

This is a head fake. This is designed to show Obama as a moderate guy, position him as a moderate in favor of developing America's natural resources. It's an attempt to draw RINOs into a cap and tax agreement and it's no accident that Obama is going to Maine today to sell the health care bill. Why sell the health care bill? Why after the fact? What's the big deal? Well, very simple. Two names: Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. You go up there and you attempt to get them to fall in line on his other stuff. I think Obama's probably going into their backyard to show them how he can hurt them. He wants to pick 'em off for other stuff to show he is bipartisan. Remember, folks, independents -- a little politics here -- independents are leaving Obama in droves. The congressional generic ballot again, the survey is out, and Republicans are over the top big in this, and it's only happened three times in history that the Republicans have won the generic ballot. It's huge, the portend for the November elections.

So this offshore drilling, this is designed to mollify swing voters by misleading them again. I think it's a test of political instinct, a test for the hopelessly gullible. Anybody upon hearing this saying, "Hey, maybe we misjudged the president, gotta give him credit out there what he does something right." Now, if that's you, you have flunked. The people fooled by this sophistry will be duped again when we get closer to November. Look, Obama is a radical leftist. He still wants cap and trade. They're going to accelerate the new CAFE standards from 2020 to 2016 which means that corporate fleets must average 35 miles a gallon. All this talk about reducing dependence on foreign oil, if you really wanted to do it there's all kinds of oil in places we know it to exist, including North Dakota. Is that where the big shale oil deposit is? This is just temporary. It's like the nuclear plants. He's not going to do it, and he's not going to drill. He's not going to have any new nuclear plants. All of this is designed to counter the allegations by people like me and other critics that Obama is a radical leftist, period.

He has been in office over a year. He has not done a thing, not one thing to make this country more prosperous. Why would anybody think that he's interested in doing that now? Everything is designed to grow government. Everything is designed to weaken the private sector and fool the gullible, the brilliant and ever reasonable independents and moderates among us. And that's the thing that you have to remember. Now, here's a quote, statement from the Competitive Enterprise Institute. They put a press release out on this. "Most of Alaska, all of the Pacific coast, and other areas that could yield affordable energy for American consumers are still closed off from any development. Rather than a painful compromise, this is therefore actually a step back from what the American people thought had been achieved in 2008. 'When gas reached four dollars a gallon, the American people were shocked to discover that most of our domestic oil reserves were locked up by the federal government. They demanded change,' said Competitive Enterprise Institute Director of Energy Policy Myron Ebell. In 2008, President George W. Bush revoked his father's executive order barring new offshore energy development and the Department of the Interior prepared a five year offshore leasing plan. The Democratic Congress co-operated by dropping the long-time moratorium which banned offshore oil production everywhere except in the western Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic Ocean off Alaska."

Now, remember when they caved on this, I'll never forget it, four-dollar-a-gallon gasoline, and they caved on this, and right after they caved on it there were a lot of Democrats running around saying, "We really didn't mean to do this. We didn't want to do this and we're going to put this back. We're going to bring this moratorium back as soon as we can." "The Obama administration, however, suspended the Interior plan and delayed a planned lease auction scheduled for 2011. It is now proposing a new plan that is much more limited." So they have put the moratorium back on and they've opened it up in these other areas again with the words "study, eventually, hopefully, and maybe." This is Myron Ebell, the Director of Energy Policy at Competitive Enterprise Institute: "Anyone who sees this as a step in the right direction should remember that President Obama still supports energy-rationing policies to address global warming --" Oh, by the way, Arctic sea ice traditionally starts melting about this time of year, naturally. It is still freezing. Arctic sea ice is expanding and it is not melting.

RUSH: Back to Myron Ebell's statement here: "Anyone who sees this as a step in the right direction should remember that President Obama still supports energy-rationing policies to address global warming that would cause electricity prices to, in his own words, 'necessarily skyrocket' and would require gas prices of at least seven dollars a gallon according to a recent Harvard study." I remember reporting that seven dollars a gallon Harvard study.

RUSH: Let's go to Casper, Wyoming. Samuel, welcome to the EIB Network. Great to have you here.

CALLER: Fantastic. Well, like you said, I'm in Wyoming, so we're not afraid we're going to tip over and capsize at any point. I called about the offshore drilling --

CALLER: -- that Obama was talking about. It's a bit of a misnomer. Two weeks ago they canceled 38,000 federal drilling leases in eastern Montana.

CALLER: Those are probably on the Bakken Formation. Are you familiar with the Bakken Formation?

CALLER: Okay, 1.7 trillion in oil, 155% of what's in Yemen. If we can get 10% of it. That's just 10%. They spend a lot of time talking about offshore drilling and none of their time talking about drilling inland.

CALLER: We have enough oil in the Bakken Formation if we can recover just 10% of it for export.

RUSH: Well, exactly. We've got oil at Prudhoe Bay. We've got oil at ANWR. All of the places where we know oil exists he's not drilling. The most recent data for the areas that Obama has opened up -- by the way, folks, none of this is going to happen if Congress doesn't vote for it. He could issue an executive order but he won't on this, Congress has to approve this, they have to vote for it. Do you think the environmentalist lobby is going to let him get away with this? He knows full well they won't, same thing with all the time it will take of going through the process of getting a nuclear power plant through permits and certification. The most recent data we have on some of these areas that he's opened up for possible drilling is 30 years old. We're not even sure what we're going for in these areas. The whole thing is a giant scam.

RUSH: Do you remember this story? This is from August 5th of 2009. We reported it on this program. "US ready to finance oil drilling in Brazil." Up to $10 billion in loans to finance the development of massive hydrocarbon reserves off Brazil's coast, and this also was in league with George Soros. This was not to study. They were not exploring. They were not testing. This was to drill. So we're happy to help other nations do this, and he just performs tricks on the American people where "drill, baby, drill" is concerned.

CALLER: This oil exploration that Obama's doing, I think we can all deem that as BS. But the nuclear part of it, strangely enough in the Sports Illustrated from 1979, there's a full-page ad having all industrialized countries going nuclear and only America has been slow to decide its energy future. I don't think we went too much further then. I think we're getting ourselves behind the eight ball, so to speak.

RUSH: Oh, we've been behind the eight ball for a long time. One movie shut down the nuclear industry in this company, The China Syndrome.

RUSH: Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, shut it down, Michael Douglas, was he in that? Jane Fonda, that's all you need to know. That one movie shut us down. When you say we're behind the eight bail, we've been behind the eight ball on energy I don't know for how long. I mean all of this moratorium on offshore drilling, moratorium on providing our own energy, and oil being portrayed as the worst scum of the earth that's destroying the planet, when oil, the internal combustion engine, all of the technology resulting has lead to the most productive, enhanced lifestyle humanity has ever known around the world, not just here. And yet oil is being demonized. I mean these windmills, they freeze up, they don't run when there's not enough wind and you can't make wind, and they're not efficient anyway. The left has just gotten hold of all of this, and their desire is to cut this country down to size. They don't like our superpower status. They don't like it because they think it's not fair that we should have so much and the rest of the world should have so little. They think we've stolen it from the rest of the world. They don't understand capitalism, they hate it. They don't understand the concept of productivity. All they understand is the redistribution of wealth. But they resent the creation of it. And you can't redistribute what you don't have. And we don't have what we are redistributing now. We are printing it, we are borrowing it, and we're running up a debt that at some point's going to come due. The situation is dire. We are a great nation at risk in a dangerous world. The fact of the matter is that the biggest threat we now face is internal, our own radical left.

Sallie Mae lays off 2500 employees, due to Obama seizing the student loan industry:

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 #121	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	April 4, 2010