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).

Plane crash in Russia takes the life of the Polish Prime Minister and several members of the Polish government.

Mitt Romney wins Southern Leadership Convention straw poll by 1 vote (Ron Paul, with very enthusiastic supporters) was second. Romney did not speak at this convention.

U.S. consumers are coming to the end of cheap credit. We are probably bottomed out on mortgage rates.

Tiny new species of animals, who possibly survive without oxygen, just discovered deep in the Mediterranean Sea.

Thai army clashes with red-shirt protestors (those who object to the military ousting Thaksin, Thailand’s previous Prime Minister and who are calling for a new election); 15 are dead.

Liberal Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens announces his retirement. Stevens was appointed by President Ford.

It appears as though the executive branch is declaring non-paying internships as illegal. The Labor Department's Nancy J. Leppink told the New York Times, "If...you want to pursue an internship with a for-profit employer, there aren't going to be many circumstances where you can have an internship and not be paid and still be in compliance with the law."

One witness has come forward to say that he observed TEA party attendees spitting on members of Congress and using the N-word. Interestingly enough, this witness is AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka. I was unaware until this past weekend that he walked through the TEA party crowd with Pelosi and the Congressmen.

In the National Security Strategy document, not yet written in full, but leaked in part, there will apparently be no mention of Islamic radicalism or Islamic extremism, but global warming will be prominent as a threat to the United States. Presently, this document states "The struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century." (from the Bush administration).

I missed this from a week ago, but Gitmo prisoners have been found with photographs of CIA agents, apparently provided to them by their lawyers. This is a real security breach, unlike the phoney one with Valerie Plame, who was so upset over her outing (falsely attributed to Karl Rove), that she appeared in dozens of magazines and news articles with her photo prominently featured by news organizations who shared in her outrages of being outed.

People are walking into doctor’s offices all over the United States asking for their free Obamacare.

Earlier this week, Palin said of Obama's nuclear weapons policy, "It's kinda like getting out there on a playground, a bunch of kids, getting ready to fight, and one of the kids saying, 'Go ahead, punch me in the face and I'm not going to retaliate. Go ahead and do what you want to with me."

Palin criticized Obama’s nuclear policy, and when asked about this, Obama responded with, "Last I checked, Sarah Palin's not much of an expert on nuclear issues,"

Palin shot back at the President during the Southern Republican Leadership Conference Friday: "Obama, with all the vast nuclear experience that he acquired as a `community organizer.'"

Texas Governor Rick Perry gave the following advice to Republicans running for Congress this year, “Look your constituents right in the eyes and say, ‘Elect me to Congress and I will try to make Washington D.C. as inconsequential as possible in your life.’ ”

He also said, “What government’s role is, it’s as servant not as master; it’s as protector, not as provider.”

Ben Stein, “The government has a business model that can’t be beat; you pay or go to jail.”

“I am mostly concerned about the changing role of government from protector of freedoms to provider of entitlements,” said a young guest on Glenn Beck’s Friday show.

“Pedophiles are more popular than Congress right now,” said Governor Huckabee.

Newt Gingrich: “Do you want 16,000 more IRS agents? Vote Democrat; if you don’t, vote Republican.”

Bernie Goldberg: “When you no longer care about the accuracy [in media reporting], that is corruption.”

Steve Cohen, D Tennessee Congressman, said on a radio interview: “The Tea Party people are kind of, without robes and hoods, they have really shown a very hardcore angry side of America that is against any type of diversity. And we saw opposition to African Americans, hostility toward gays, hostility to anybody who wasn't just, you know, a clone of George Wallace's fan club. And I'm afraid they've taken over the Republican Party.” To remind you, this is not some angry blogger sitting in his mom’s basement writing diatribes, but this is an elected United States Congressman who was previously a member of the Tennessee legislature for 24 years.

From Keith Olbermann’s report: "The man arrested yesterday on charges of threatening House Speaker Nancy Pelosi about passage of health care reform got his ideas from Fox News. We know this because in our fourth story tonight: the defendant`s mother says so." And laer in the same story, “The mother of the man accused of threatening Nancy Pelosi says he was driven to it in part by Fox News.” And later in the same broadcast: “If Fox News viewers are crazy enough or easily led enough, which is the principle to it, to believe that America is under assault from within by essentially a fraudulent government, isn`t taking arms up to defend America versus the government, isn`t that, if the premise could be illogical but the follow-up is logical, and that`s the danger, right?”

New York editor David Remnick “There's a real kind of racialist and racist tinge to the far end of the tea party movement...I mean there's a completely legitimate conservative opposition I may not agree with, but there are extremists who see in Obama, because he's named what he's named, because he looks the way he looks, as a threat to American-ness as they understand it.”

Roseanna Barr: “I am starting to think that any parent who takes their kids to catholic churches from now on should lose custody. Taking your kid where you know sex offenders hang out is inexcusable!!!”

Is there something fishy about the plane crash which killed the Polish Prime Minister?

A time to be heard; Glenn Beck has a bunch of conservative college students on his show (there is a commercial first). It is a good show, but not great.

Also from Beck’s show; the Free Press is pushing for a limitation on the free press (it doesn’t get more Orwellian than this):

Beck methodically goes through to explain Obama’s early influences suggest that he was raised by socialists and Marxists:

In case you think too much has been made of Steve Cohen’s interview, this is the full interview, uncut, with the Young Turks, with the text at the bottom of the screen:

Debbie Wasserman Shultz telling her constituents that the new healthcare law does not require anyone to buy healthcare insurance:

Maxine Waters, now and then—how she complained about the meanness of the TEA party protestors edited with protests against President Bush that she has been involved in:

Jodi Miller, “Charlie Sheen may be leaving Two and a Half Men. But don’t worry, Sheen fans, if he does leave, you can still catch him on the next 3 seasons of Cops.

1) Government spending does not cause a net increase in jobs over the long run; it costs jobs. Every dollar the government spends is either taxed or borrowed from the private sector, which means it "crowds out" private sector job creation. And because government spending is less efficient than private sector spending, the economy actually grows more slowly in the long run as the government gets bigger. (I lifted this from the story Government Gone Wild below)

2) China is such a good example of a country with authoritarian rule that results in unintended consequences. China restricted the birthrate of families to one child, which has resulted in males outnumbering females in many classrooms at over 2 to 1 (and as high as 4 to 1). Not only have millions of unborn girls been killed, but China will end up, in 10 or 20 years, with the largest and most expendable army in the world.

3) I watched a few of the Republican speakers at the Southern Republican Conference in New Orleans, and I could not help but notice how goofy the people were in the background. The camera pointed toward them, and they began waiving or jumping up and down; unless, of course, they were deep in a conversation on their cellphone during this event.

4) One of the very quiet changes which has been made is, if you have an R22 type Air Conditioning system, you will not be able to replace an individual part on this system (which repair can cost $500-2000 for the most part). Now you will have to repair the entire AC system, which will cost you somewhere between $2000 and $5000.

5) The current CBO director has publically stated that current U.S. spending policy is unsustainable. So, do you think that President Obama will cut back on his spending?

6) Did you know that George W. Bush cut back on the number of IRS investigators?

7) One of the commentators on Fox’s Wall Street Journal said, the discussion we are having now, as a country, is, do we want to be Europe? That pretty much sums it up.

8) Do you recall that Louisiana was hit by Hurricane Katrina, and how inept everything seemed to be? Of course, much of it was blamed on George W. Bush. Since then, there has been a dramatic change in government there, where many conservatives have been elected. The current governor, Bobby Jindal, has cut taxes and spending and how Louisiana is one of the states with unemployment below the U.S. norm. Is this some kind of a secret that other politicians do not know about?

9) As some of you are aware, there was a child who was bullied and she took her own life. What happens often is, new laws are presented to deal with this. However, there are already laws present on the books to deal with this, as those who bullied her have been arrested. When legislators pass laws to deal with a problem which has already been dealt with (like the so-called hate crimes legislation), what results is unintended consequences, through provisions snuck into the bill, or through provisions which are difficult to interpret.

10) It is fascinating how distorted the news is. You can google Valerie Plame and Karl Rove, and there were dozens of stories by outraged journalists about how Karl rove outed Plame as a CIA agent. Plame herself was so upset over this, that she wrote a book about it, and prominently featured her picture on the cover of this book. However, what is more difficult to find are stories by these same outraged journalists about the John Adams Project, where the ACLU and the NACDL have combined forces to not just defend Gitmo terrorists, but to provide them with photographs of real covert CIA agents, putting these agents and their families in real danger.

17% of adults believe most Americans would be willing to make major cutbacks in their lifestyle in order to help save the environment.

There was a lot of news coverage on unconfirmed reports of racism exhibited by TEA party members. There are many examples of racism from Democrats and liberals which have been ignored by the press.

President Obama and Sarah Palin had a recent exchange of words, but SNL is not going to do a take-off of this, since he got the worst of it.

Here is a very tricky situation for both Obama and Republicans: who will replace John Paul Stevens and how much opposition should the Republicans want to give Obama’s pick? I don’t think that Obama is able to pick a moderate; I just don’t think that he has that in him. He might be able to pick someone who is not an avowed Communist, but that will be the only moderate aspect to their thinking.

The key is, how do the Republicans approach this pick (and there may be more than one pick). Conservative Republicans want them to make a big deal of this. Some moderates and independents still have this notion that we can work together, and expect things not to be too rancourous.

On the plus side for Republicans, people rae becoming more politically savvy, because of Obama, and are, therefore, paying closer attention.

Obama cannot pick someone who would deep six his healthcare bill, so how does he thread that needle without actually asking that question directly? This will probably be through an intermediary, a meeting which we may or may not know about.

Along the same lines, Republicans need to explore that question, as it is not a hypothetical; there will be a case before the Supreme Court dealing with the constitutionality of the federal government requiring us to buy federally approved healthcare insurance.

This will also be a tough Supreme Court decision simply because Congress has become more and more intrusive as to what we can and cannot buy.

One more question of interest would be, “What do you think of judicial review” which would be a pre-emptive move on the part of the Court, if they simply chose to take up the healthcare law questions without a case being brought before them.

In any case, this s an easy one for Democrats; they simply support the President on whomever he picks, no matter how radical she is.

The economy is turning a corner = we are not really sure what is happening with the economy, but the stock market is going up.

The healthcare bill which you recently signed, was opposed by the majority of the American people in every poll. Do you not believe in siding with the majority of the American people?

Are there any meaningful limits on Congressional power gotten through the commerce clause? (Question from Laura Ingraham)

Don’t you think the American people are taxed enough already? (I will give you only 15 minutes to answer this question).

The United Auto Workers is now suing General Motors for $450 million. Before Obama took over GM, this would have never happened. There is no use in suing someone with empty pockets. However, now, GM has lots of money, all provided by the government, so the UAW can not only sue, but win this suit; and the money comes out of our pockets. So, not only has GM been bailed out with billions in taxpayer dollars, but we could not be on the line for a few million more.

It appears as if President Obama is unilaterally banning unpaid internships, again showing that he has no understanding of how free enterprise works. These students gain valuable skills when they are taken on as interns, and are often hired by these same companies (the internship is somewhat of a trial for the prospective employees).

If you think there is someone who can be elected to any level of government who can cause the left and the right to work together. We are so far apart at this time to make such a thing impossible.

Rush Limbaugh predicts very little talk about a VAT tax from the White House until after the 2010 election, at which point, it may become a priority. However, let me add, several interviewers are going to pester WH talking heads about this.

There is something suspicious about the death of these Polish civil and military leaders when trying to land their plane in Russia.

This is not exactly a prophecy, but I have been saying over and over again, how the subprime mortgages as encouraged by FNMA and FHLMC caused our economic crash, and this has been confirmed by Greenspan.

Allegations of Spitting and Racial Slurs at Capitol Protest Merit More Reporting

In the Bible (please don’t stop reading at this point), there are 4 divine institutions which are designed for the protection and perpetuation of the human race, and this applies to all people, believers and unbelievers alike: volition, marriage, family and nation. I realize that I am going to lose some of you at this point, but I believe in a real Satan—although not the cloven-hoofed version with the red epidermis and the pointed tail. I am referring to the most intelligent, creative, attractive and personable creature to come from the hand of God, and he attacks our freedom in every way that he can.

The first divine institution is volition, which is also known by that great word, freedom. God designed man with freedom, and that is the most important aspect of our lives to preserve. Theologically speaking, this is the freedom to choose for or against God (more specifically, for or against Jesus Christ); and one of the reasons our nation has been so blessed is because of the value which we place upon the freedom given to us by God. This is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. - That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men... This is a key right and a foundational principle in our government, that we be allowed to use our volition, our freedom, our liberty; that we be allowed to make meaningful personal and moral choices. This also sets up one of the chief purposes of government, to protect these rights, one of the most fundamental being freedom.

This is completely in line with the Bible, which is a book which is, on the one hand, all about human freedom. The Bible teaches about the concept of freedom, from the sin of Adam all the way to Nicodemus, who was faced with the ultimate human decision, whether or not to believe in Jesus Christ.

Our Declaration of Independence recognized the importance of freedom, that freedom comes from God, and that one of government’s primary functions is to preserve that freedom.

One of these attacks is a redefinition of freedom, something which the left does all of the time with a great many principles. They redefine freedom as a lack of responsibility. In the Bible, freedom cannot be separated from the concept of responsibility. We are responsible for our every decision. However, Nancy Pelosi offers up freedom without responsibility: free healthcare, so that if you are a frustrated artist, you do not have to be tied to some job interacting with the public, in order to be able to buy healthcare insurance. In Speaker Pelosi’s world, freedom is being able to do whatever you want, without taking into consideration the consequences of those decisions. You do whatever you want to do, and if that ends up not producing any income, then someone else will pick up the tab for you. Food, housing, medical care? No problem. Obama will give it to you from his stash. This is not the teaching of the Bible. As Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, “If someone chooses not to work, then let him choose not to eat as well.” (2Thess. 3:10). The father who does not work to provide for his family is worse than an infidel (1Thess. 5:8). Even the welfare system in the Old Testament involved working for food—the poor went to the nearest field of produce and they harvested what was left behind.

The other side of the coin of freedom is personal responsibility. This is not a difficult concept to understand. If you have a teen son with a clear sense of responsibility, you give him more freedom in his life. You will be more likely to lend him the car or you allow him to go to a party unsupervised. If you have a teen son with no sense of responsibility, then you curtail his freedom—you keep your eye on him every minute.

The left does not like this. They want to remove the concept of responsibility from freedom, and they are doing this at a very young age. I was a teacher for years, and, at one time, poor student performance was mostly attributed to the student and solving that problem was the student’s responsibility. We adults (the student’s parents, counselor, principal and I) would be involved in his process of taking responsibility, but, for the most part, he had to shoulder it. During that last few years that I taught, whether a student was successful or not became my responsibility, and if I was unable to teach and/or motivate them, I was at fault. The student being required to take responsibility for his actions (for the use of his freedom up until that conference) became less and less of a factor.

When young people hook up and get pregnant nowadays, the school sometimes gets to decide whether or not to contact the parents about getting the child an abortion. No responsibility! If she becomes a young adult with children and no husband, the state often steps in and provides a safety net of sorts (food and housing), a safety net which often becomes a lifestyle. Even though the person made a series of bad decisions, she is not expected to bear the full responsibility for those decisions.

Another attack upon our freedom is the requirement that we all purchase healthcare insurance and we are required to purchase the type of insurance which the government deems be be proper. Now, because I am not independently wealthy, I believe in catastrophic insurance, but I see no reason to buy insurance to cover simple doctor visits. Young and healthy kids often see no reason to buy any kind of healthcare insurance during their youthful years of indestructibility. This is freedom associated with responsibility; we make choices and we enjoy (or suffer) the consequences of our actions. However, with the new healthcare bill, the government has stepped in to limit our freedoms in this respect.

If this is allowed to stand, there is no end to government’s powers. Can we be required to have a gym membership? Can we be required to go to this gym? Can we be required to buy certain kinds of food? If it is the “public” paying for our healthcare insurance, then just how far can we take this? Can we be required to be involved in state-sponsored camps, for our health? How far can this be taken?

An issue which has not been taken up as fully as it ought to be is, economic freedom. The more we are taxed and the more we are regulated, the less economic freedom that we have. Obviously, if we do not have a job (and cannot find a job), our freedom is further curtailed. If you carry catastrophic healthcare insurance, as I do, then you pay a small amount for that insurance. If you are required to buy a heftier policy, with bells and whistles that you do not want, the cost can be easily 5x as much. Again, this curtails our freedom.

The court battle many states are taking up against the recent healthcare law goes after the most insidious aspect of this legislation—that we be required to buy something which we do not want to buy, and the outcome of this battle will fundamentally affect this nation’s understanding and protection of freedom, as well as the notion of personal responsibility.

Back in February, the government said that its $787 billion stimulus bill would create 3.5 million new jobs. This was at the very highest end of the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) estimate of 1.2 to 3.6 million new jobs.

But even this high-end estimate of U.S. job creation is penny ante, when compared to a leaked memo from Gordon Brown, the British prime minister. He proposed a $2 trillion European stimulus plan that was supposedly going to create 19 million jobs. In other words, Europe can create a new job with just $105,000 of government spending per job, while the U.S. needs $219,000.

But all of this is just a pipe dream. Government spending does not cause a net increase in jobs over the long run; it costs jobs. Every dollar the government spends is either taxed or borrowed from the private sector, which means it "crowds out" private sector job creation. And because government spending is less efficient than private sector spending, the economy actually grows more slowly in the long run as the government gets bigger.

What's interesting is how all these numbers are being bandied about with very little pushback from the press. In recent years, the press has complained loudly about $200 billion deficits as far as the eye can see. And almost everyone in the media suggested that budget deficits lifted interest rates and hurt the economy. But in recent weeks, the press seems to have forgotten its old argument.

The new massive government spending plans are especially frightening with the U.S. now facing $1 trillion deficits. President Obama says that this is all OK, and that he is cutting the deficit in half (to $533 billion using administration math, or $672 billion according to the CBO) in just four years. What he doesn't say, and what no one seems willing to say, is that without his new budget the deficit would have been cut by 75% in four years to about $250 billion. The budget deficit and the size of the government are exploding and no one seems to care.

But it doesn't end there. Americans are the most generous people on the face of the earth, when measured in dollars donated to charities. At the same time, private charity does a great deal of good and often does it more effectively than government. But now the government wants to limit deductions for charitable contributions.

Some conservatives have argued that this might be a good trade-off if marginal tax rates were lowered. They argue that the benefits of higher GDP (resulting from lower tax rates) would outweigh the losses from slimmer donations (as a share of income). That is an economic

But this time around, the government wants to limit the charitable deductions and raise tax rates to make way for more spending. What government is really saying is that it doesn't like the competition from private charities. It wants more people to depend on government.

Another area where the government has gone wild is in bailouts for failed companies. Ultimately, in order to assist "losing" companies, government has to collect more resources (meaning taxes) from "winning" companies and individuals.

With bailouts, jobs will be saved in certain sectors, like autos, and politicians will be able to easily count the number of jobs they have saved. Meanwhile, many other sectors will face higher taxes and a higher cost of capital, resulting in slower job gains and some outright job losses in industries across the country. The problem is that no one will be able to identify with any certainty those who are worse off because the government bailed out someone else.

President Barack Obama has repeatedly claimed that his budget would cut the deficit by half by the end of his term. But as Heritage analyst Brian Riedl has pointed out, given that Obama has already helped quadruple the deficit with his stimulus package, pledging to halve it by 2013 is hardly ambitious. The Washington Post has a great graphic which helps put President Obama's budget deficits in context of President Bush's.

* President Bush expanded the federal budget by a historic $700 billion through 2008. President Obama would add another $1 trillion.

* President Bush began a string of expensive financial bailouts. President Obama is accelerating that course.

* President Bush created a Medicare drug entitle-ment that will cost an estimated $800 billion in its first decade. President Obama has proposed a $634 billion down payment on a new govern-ment health care fund.

* President Bush increased federal education spending 58 percent faster than inflation. Presi-dent Obama would double it.

* President Bush became the first President to spend 3 percent of GDP on federal antipoverty programs. President Obama has already in-creased this spending by 20 percent.

* President Bush tilted the income tax burden more toward upper-income taxpayers. President Obama would continue that trend.

* President Bush presided over a $2.5 trillion increase in the public debt through 2008. Setting aside 2009 (for which Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for an additional $2.6 trillion in public debt), President Obama's budget would add $4.9 trillion in public debt from the beginning of 2010 through 2016.

UPDATE: Many Obama defenders in the comments are claiming that the numbers above do not include spending on Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush years. They most certainly do. While Bush did fund the wars through emergency supplementals (not the regular budget process), that spending did not simply vanish. It is included in the numbers above. Also, some Obama defenders are claiming the graphic above represents biased Heritage Foundation numbers. While we stand behind the numbers we put out 100%, the numbers, and the graphic itself, above are from the Washington Post. We originally left out the link to WaPo. It has now been added.

CLARIFICATION: Of course, this Washington Post graphic does not perfectly delineate budget surpluses and deficits by administration. President Bush took office in January 2001, and therefore played a lead role in crafting the FY 2002-2008 budgets. Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for the FY 2009 budget deficit that overlaps their administrations, before President Obama assumes full budgetary responsibility beginning in FY 2010. Overall, President Obama's budget would add twice as much debt as President Bush over the same number of years.

According to reports, President Barack Obama plans to convene his Cabinet for the first time today, where he will order members to identify a combined $100 million in budget cuts over the next 90 days. Just how laughable is Obama's latest stunt to try to maintain his "fiscal responsibility" credentials? This graphic from Heritage's John Fleming might help:

To put those numbers in perspective, imagine that the head of a household with annual spending of $100,000 called everyone in the family together to deal with a $34,000 budget shortfall. How much would he or she announce that spending had to be cut? By $3 over the course of the year-approximately the cost of one latte at Starbucks. The other $33,997? We can put that on the family credit card and worry about it next year."

GLENN BECK, HOST: Hello, America. The boycotts are gathering steam. To date, I believe there is at least one Internet report that we have lost 7,832,000 sponsors. And yet, through the charitable kindness of this network, we are still here.

You know what? The fact is I haven't felt this good and positive in a long time. Why? Because the boycott attempts are the most transparent "Astroturf" attacks I have ever seen or ever heard of.

Who is it that currently is launching these efforts against me and this show? Well, let's see - we have radical union organizer Andy Stern. Say hi to the people, Andy. Hi, Andy. There he is. He is the adviser to the president, the most frequent visitor to the White House and the "workers of the world unite," anti-capitalist guy. Him - Andy Stern.

Then there is the group that Van Jones founded whose boycott effort now - can we bring up the clock? There it is - is in its 251st day at a boycott. There it is. Former adviser to the president - I'm going to put here for radical 1960s kind of guy. And this is a current communist.

Then, there is the current spiritual and policy adviser to the president, Jim Wallis. Jim is a Marxist for Jesus. This is such a blatant - oh, did I - also an adviser.

Such a blatantly "Astroturf" from-the-top-down attack that the boycott form letters from SEIU and Van Jones' group - they are actually the same. It's weird, isn't it?

Is it a coincidence that all of the above are or were advisers to the president? By the way, [Van Jones] was an adviser to the president and now he's with George Soros' group.

Is it possible that maybe, by pointing out every night that there are radicals, Marxists and communists in the White House, maybe that struck a nerve?

Has someone decided that they must destroy my career and silence me because we've stumbled on to something? Here's the gist - another attack we found out moments ago from the president of the AFL-CIO; don't have a picture of him because this just came in.

AFL-CIO - unions. Don't have an adviser to the president - union. Richard Trumka - this from prepared remarks he's going to give tonight at the Harvard Club - quote: "So now, a lot of Americans are angry and we should be angry. And we have just seen throughout history there are plenty of purveyors of hate and division looking for profit from our hurt and our anger."

He goes on to say: "We're working to counter the Glenn Beck effect and turn our anger into action for real change."

And in all of the attacks on me, which nearly always involve angry, hateful rhetoric or, you know - "he's crazy" - in all of these we have seen, not one has ever mentioned the White House let [Van Jones] go. And now, he's working for George Soros. But also, never mentioned that he's a communist.

Jim Wallis, not one - nobody has ever mentioned - no, no, Glenn Beck has got it wrong. He's not a Marxist. Andy Stern, not a radical 1960s guy from SDS. Never mentioned, that one.

See, wouldn't it be easy to disprove these things, you know, from rantings of a crazy man if they were untrue? I think so.

Be a lot easier than coordinating from the Oval Office or from the White House or maybe he doesn't know. I'm sure that's very, very possible. Wouldn't it be easier just to say, "No, that's not true and here is the evidence" than coordinating an attack? It would sure be cheaper.

They can't do that because the facts reveal otherwise - their own words. I never said they said things. I played them on tape.

Truth is not hateful rhetoric. Jim Wallis, Andy Stern, Van Jones - none of them could come on this show and disavow redistribution of wealth or embrace the American free market principles that built this country. They can't come on the show and accept that charity comes from individuals or church groups, not the government.

Is it possible, then, that the White House has absolutely no knowledge, no involvement in these boycotts whatsoever?

Has there ever been a case in American history outside of the hard core radical progressive Woodrow Wilson where an American president and administration tried to destroy the livelihood of a private citizen with whom they disagree? Can't think of any.

Much has been made over the years and rightly so of Richard Nixon's enemies list. It's been chronicled over and over again by the mainstream media. But isn't this the same thing?

think it's going to stop with me? Really? Once they get me, what happens to you? Is there absolutely no chance whatsoever that you might be a target at some point in the future? What is that poem: "First they came for the Jews and I stayed silent"?

BECK: Today is a very special anti-Glenn Beck day. In addition to the White House advisor-led boycotts here, here and here - oh, and now, AFL-CIO is in there. I didn't have a picture of the guy but he looked angry.

Thanks to Jim Wallis stoking the flames and bearing false witness against his neighbor - me - today was "send an anti-Glenn Beck haiku" day on Twitter.

You have no idea how hateful a haiku can be if it's in the hands of the wrong people.

To give you some sort of inkling of the anguish this has caused me, I will share a few of the Haiku attacks. Here is the first one:

Who would release such a vicious vitriol? Surprisingly enough, it's religious group, a group called the Jewish Funds for Justice. It's ironic, it really is. Barack Obama and his administration continue to obliterate our relationship with one of our closest allies, Israel, and I'm attacked by a Jewish group as I continue to vehemently support and defend Israel.

But anyway, when you look at with, you know, whom the Jewish Funds for Justice are partnered, it does become just a little bit easier to understand:

ACORN; hey AFL-CIO - aren't these, that's weird; Center for American Progress - that is, that's George Soros, that is weird. And then, of course, the Interfaith Worker Justice and Progressive Christians, Progressive Clergy, Progressive - it's so progressive, isn't it? It's great.

It's almost like you and I are really close to hitting home. I think we are making progress. We're on to them. This is their progressive "Astroturf" way of doing something about it because this is the way this guy does this.

We will resist the total transformation of our country but we will do it peacefully. Yes. People did it under [Woodrow Wilson] and people did that here. Well, not so much because the people who are in [President Obama's] administration hated [Richard Nixon] and they didn't resist peacefully; they were setting bombs off. But we will resist peacefully.

I have to tell you the truth. I have never seen anything like this. I have never seen anything like this. I can't believe - I mean, if this was happening to Katie Couric, I would be standing up.

You're kidding me. Somebody who has a differing opinion and administration people are set out to destroy his career? Wow.

But I want you to know, America, I'm going to come clean to you. This boycott has been devastating to me. It's been hell. It's been hell.

In fact, you might read all about the devastation coming out on Friday. I'm on the cover of Forbes magazine. My career is in a wreck. I have no problem being capitalist and making money. It's weird how many people do nowadays. I've just always thought if I make a good product and I'm honest in all of my business dealings, I will be successful. But that boycott is sure devastating to me.

JUAN WILLIAMS: Well, it looks to me that, you know, where I invest my money on Wall Street that the people on Wall Street see right now a winning streak in place. They seem optimistic.

It seems to me that if you look at the way that this economy's going, it has been very shaky. We were on the edge of the precipice with depression possible before we had the stimulus package. And now it seems to me -- why are so many people on this panel so negative about the fact that things are starting to rebound?

I mean, it seems to me on this day of faith we should say, "Wow, this is the start of something that has potential." It's not as if it's going to take off like a rocket. I don't think that. But I do think that we now see some reasons for optimism and consumer confidence growing.

I think we're starting to see people now more confident about hiring. I mean, we had a plus in terms of private sector payroll in this last report. To me, these are positive signs.

When the White House talks, they talk in terms of things like more infrastructure spending, green jobs, more energy efficient jobs, things that would help with the decline in the manufacturing sector. But if you look at health care sector, education sector, low paying jobs in terms of hospitality, leisure -- those things are up, and those may be the new growth sectors for the American economy.

CHRIS WALLACE: What to you think of the White House's ideas as translated by Juan Williams?

BRIT HUME: I think he's given a pretty good summary of some ideas that will do very little good. This is an administration that seems beset by kind of an economic illiteracy.

I don't think the president nor those immediately around him really have a grasp -- surprisingly, have very little grasp of what the private -- how the private sector works, what -- how incentives work and how disincentives work.

I mean, they talk about the effect of the stimulus. I think the stimulus has been remarkably ineffective when you -- and you know, their analyses never seem to include the effect of what the Federal Reserve has been doing -- unprecedented efforts to inject cash into the economy. A lot of it has gotten into the economy. That, I think, has provided whatever buoyancy we have.

And even that has been hindered by the regulatory atmosphere. You talk to bankers across the country, you talk to potential borrowers across the country. They're all saying the same thing, even now, that credit still remains for many of these potential borrowers a tremendous problem. Credit is tight, and that restricts their ability to invest and to grow and, naturally, therefore, to hire.

And that is part of what is holding this recovery back. This economy needs to be unleashed. What has happened over the past year or so is that it has been leashed.

[Liberal media was very upset over these things and there is a lot of liberal commentary regarding this show to be found on the internet]

Dissatisfaction with the economy and the country's direction cuts across racial lines.

There is danger for Democrats in recent attempts to dismiss the tea party movement as violent racists deserving of contempt. Demonizing these folks may energize the Democrats' left-wing base. But it is a big turnoff to voters who have problems with the Democratic agenda that have nothing to do with racism.

Putting a racial lens on the tea party activists may also help Democrats by painting congressional Republicans into a corner as debate begins on immigration reform. Hispanic voters are going to be looking at Republicans and their tea party supporters for evidence of racism in any effort to block reform.

But Democrats cannot win elections without capturing the votes of independent-minded swing voters. And that is where writing off the tea party as a bunch of racist kooks becomes self-destructive. The tea party outrage over health-care reform, deficit spending and entitlements run amok is no fringe concern. And it is insulting to all voters to suggest that criticism of President Obama, even by people who want to throw him out of office, is motivated by racism.

It is a fact that the tea party is an overwhelmingly older, white and suburban crowd. It is true that Republicans in Congress are almost completely white. And it is also true, according to some black and gay Democrats, that a tea party rally against health-care reform at the Capitol degenerated into ugly scenes in which racial and homophobic epithets were used and spit flew on some members of Congress. There are suspicions that tea party anger boiled over into the spate of personal threats against Democrats who voted for the health-care bill.

That is despicable and deserving of condemnation. And the leaders of the tea party movement have to be careful about rhetoric that feeds fringe, militia-type anger that leads to violence.

Yet opposition to health-care reform from the tea party is not based on racism but self-interest. The older, whiter segment of the American demographic was at the heart of opposition to the president's health-care proposal because they feared cuts in their Medicare benefits or taxes hikes eroding their income.

Tea party activists are surprisingly mainstream when it comes to their grievances about politics. They fit right in with most American voters who tell pollsters the country has been headed in the wrong direction under both Presidents Bush and Obama. A Pew poll in early March found 71% of Americans "dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country today." Republicans and Democrats in Congress have low ratings -23% and 31% approval respectively, according to Pew.

A Fox poll in February found that 59% say they don't trust the federal government. A CNN poll the same month reported results that suggest 56% are well beyond mere mistrust: They agree that the federal government is "so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens."

Tea party style discontent appears also to be an accurate representation of voter unhappiness-across political and racial lines-with banks and financial institutions. Pew reports finding 48% saying they are "angry" over the government bailout for institutions that "made poor financial decisions." Overall, Pew found 68% of Americans view these big-money institutions unfavorably.

When Pew asked Americans in February about the tea party they found 33% had a favorable opinion and 25% an unfavorable view. A large number of respondents didn't rate the tea party or had never heard of them.

The tea party is not the problem. Whether you like them or not they do seem to have captured the political angst in the electorate, without regard to skin color.

Where race comes into this picture of American political discontent is that a majority of whites, 52% according to a Gallup poll last month, say they see health-care reform as helping the poor, and that means lots of racial minorities. Only 20% of whites said the health-care reform will help their families. Majorities of Blacks and Hispanics, however, see the bill as helping their families.

That racial divide over health-care reform is exacerbated by the recession's tremendous damage to employment for blue-collar workers. Black unemployment remains nearly double unemployment among whites (16.2% to 9.7%), but that does not diminish the economic and emotional devastation being felt by whites, who are still the majority of the population and the majority of voters.

White men, in particular, got pushed out of nearly half of all jobs lost during the downturn, and blue-collar white men lost about a third of those disappearing jobs.

That is a key shift in this recession-white men, notably working-class white men, being hit hard and concerned that their needs are not a priority in Washington. A top White House official told me recently that working-class white men are going through today the kind of economic pain, and the social breakdown that comes with it, that black men went through in the recession of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

This all makes for populist anger, embodied in the tea party movement, at politicians who are not focused on the jobs agenda. The politician at the top of the totem pole right now is Barack Obama. He is black. But the relevant point to critics white and black is not his skin color but the persistent high unemployment rate and the government's focus on Wall Street bailouts and health-care reform.

Ever since the Tea Party protests began last summer, the left-wing media in America has been attacking the movement.

At first, Tea Party folks were labeled stupid, too dumb to understand complicated issues. Then, as the protests grew, some in the media actually began calling Tea Party people dirty names, trying to diminish the movement with vile innuendo. Finally, the media turned to ideology, saying that many Tea Party people are racist and far-right cranks.

Now comes a new Gallup poll that says 43 percent of Tea Party supporters in the USA are independents, eight percent are Democrats and 49 percent are Republicans. When you add 43 and eight, you get 51 percent. That means the majority of Tea Party supporters in America are not Republicans.

Also, Gallup says that 55 percent of those supporting the Tea Party are in the higher income brackets, an interesting stat.

Nevertheless, liberal media people and politicians continue their vicious attacks on the Tea Party:

REP. STEVE COHEN, D-TENN.: The Tea Party people are kind of like without robes and hoods. They have really shown a very hardcore, angry side of America that is against any type of diversity. And we saw opposition to African-Americans, hostility toward gays, hostility to anybody who wasn't just, you know, a clone of George Wallace's fan club. And I'm afraid they've taken over the Republican Party."

Again, with 51 percent of Tea Party supporters non-Republican according to Gallup, Congressman Cohen is either misinformed, a pinhead, or both.

You may have seen me and Bernie Goldberg discuss media corruption - not bias, outright corruption - last week on "The Factor," and the Tea Party media situation is the best example of that.

From the jump, the Tea Party protesters never had a chance. As soon as they objected to President Obama's big government vision, the left-wing media moved in. And as you know, liberals dominate the national media in this country, so the loon label was quickly applied to the Tea Party people. And some Americans are buying it, but not as many as you might think.

Gallup says that right now 28 percent of Americans support the Tea Party, 26 percent oppose it, and 38 percent do not support or oppose, which means there is a persuasion option here.

And that's why the left-wing media is so biased against the Tea Party. They fear more Americans will sign on.

But it's not the media's job to engineer political thinking in this country, and that's what is happening in some quarters. If you oppose the Obama administration, you must be demeaned and neutralized. That is corruption, and there's no doubt it is in play.

Once again, the far left in America is demanding an effective anti-terror program - missiles fired at the bad guys from drones - be stopped.

Notre Dame professor Mary Ellen O'Connell is leading the charge in academia, saying the drone program violates international law and that it is unlawful killing. Former Sen. Fritz Hollings says the drone action creates more terrorists than it kills, a preposterous statement. And, of course, the ACLU is suing to make public who is ordering the attacks and other information about them.

By all accounts, the drone program has been the most effective anti-terror strategy we have and has badly damaged the Al Qaeda and Taliban leadership. In fact, President Obama has dramatically increased drone attacks. There are about two a week now.

But the far left does not want the USA to defeat terrorism. New York Times columnist Roger Cohen calls the action revenge and wants the drone program stopped immediately. Mr. Cohen wants all the terrorists arrested.

What the far left has not done is call the president a war criminal, which it certainly did in the case of President Bush. No, even though Barack Obama - to his credit - is the power behind the missile attacks, the far left pulls its punches when the president's name comes up.

But all Americans should know that there are major quislings in this country, people who believe the USA is the evil force and the terrorists are just responding to that.

There is no better example of far-left nuttiness than this campaign against the drone attacks.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Sketches of potential candidates to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, listed alphabetically, with their pros and cons:

CURRENT JOB: Judge on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

BACKGROUND: Garland was born in Chicago in 1952. Then-President Bill Clinton nominated him in 1997 to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. A Harvard law graduate, Garland clerked for Supreme Court Justice William Brennan in 1978-79 before entering government service as a special assistant U.S. attorney general. Garland left the Justice Department in 1981 and worked in private practice in Washington until 1993. He took a three-year break during that time to work as an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. He was promoted to deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's criminal division in 1993 and in 1994 became principal associate deputy U.S. attorney general, a position he held until his court nomination.

PROS: Respected by conservative and liberal experts following his management of the investigation of the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building and subsequent prosecution of bomber Timothy McVeigh. Moderate legal positions would not likely lead to filibuster threats from Republican senators.

CONS: Moderate legal positions would not excite hard-core liberals as congressional elections come up this year. Was not a finalist in the White House's last search for a Supreme Court nominee, which produced Justice Sonia Sotomayor. President Barack Obama may want to put another woman or minority on the court, instead.

BACKGROUND: Granholm was born in 1959 in Vancouver, British Columbia. She earned her law degree from Harvard University in 1987 and broke into the political world as a full-time aide for the Michigan campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis in 1988. She entered the legal world in 1988 through her job as an executive assistant for criminal justice issues in the Wayne County executive office. Granholm started work as a prosecutor in the U.S. attorney's office in Detroit in 1990, where she stayed until her appointment as Wayne County, Mich., corporation counsel in 1995. She became Michigan's attorney general in 1999 and governor in January 2003.

PROS: Would bring nonjudicial experience to the Supreme Court, which several senators say is needed. Would bring the number of female Supreme Court justices to three, an all-time high. Would bring political and prosecutorial experience.

CONS: No judicial experience. Has said nomination would be a great opportunity but, "I just don't think that's going to happen." Was not a finalist in the White House's last search for a nominee. Questions about her stewardship of Michigan, which was hit hard during the recession, could come up.

BACKGROUND: Kagan was born in 1960 in New York City. She received a law degree from Harvard Law School in 1986, then worked as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Kagan went into private practice in Washington from 1989 until 1991, when she became a professor at the University of Chicago law school. She became associate counsel to Clinton in 1995 and climbed the ladder to deputy assistant to Clinton for domestic policy and deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council in 1997. Clinton nominated her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1999, but she never received a confirmation hearing from the Senate Judiciary Committee. She became a professor at Harvard Law School since 1999 and the school's dean in 2003. She was confirmed as solicitor general last year.

PROS: Respected by conservative and liberal lawyers after time at Harvard Law School. One conservative activist last year called Kagan "less extreme than most of President Obama's leading candidates for the Supreme Court." Already known as "Tenth Justice" because the solicitor general is the executive branch's chief lawyer before the high court. Was a finalist in the White House's last search for a nominee and was interviewed by the president. Would bring the number of female justices to three.

CONS: No judicial experience. Thirty-one Republicans voted against her for solicitor general. Republicans refused to hold a hearing for her nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals in 1999, a seat that went to John Roberts, now chief justice of the Supreme Court. Logged first Supreme Court argument experience in 2009 as solicitor general. Her stand against military recruitment at Harvard Law School because of the armed forces' "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy is sure to be a talking point against her.

BACKGROUND: Koh was born in Boston in 1954. He earned his law degree from Harvard, then served as law clerk for Justice Harry Blackmun in 1981-82. He worked in private practice in Washington for a year before being hired on at the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department. He left government to become a law professor in 1985 at Yale University, where he stayed until he became assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor in 1998. He became Yale's law school dean in 2001. He left Yale to work for the State Department after Obama was elected.

PROS: Would make history as the first Asian-American Supreme Court nominee. Would excite hard-core liberals looking to swing the courts to the left. Would bring nonjudicial experience to the Supreme Court.

CONS: No judicial experience. Liberal stances would guarantee a fierce confirmation fight with Republicans in the Senate, who have enough votes to filibuster a nominee if they want.

BACKGROUND: Napolitano was born in 1957 in New York City and got her law degree at the University of Virginia in 1983. She then clerked for Mary Schroeder at 9th U.S Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco for a year before going into private practice in Phoenix. Napolitano was named U.S. attorney for Arizona in 1993 and stayed in that position until she returned to private practice in 1997. In 1999, she became Arizona's attorney general, a position she held until she became governor in 2003. Obama tapped her to head the Homeland Security Department last year.

PROS: Was a finalist in the White House's last search for a nominee and was interviewed by the president. Would bring the number of female justices to three. Would bring political and prosecutorial experience to the high court.

CONS: No judicial experience. Nomination would bring questions about her comment that "the system worked" after the failed Christmas Day terrorist attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253. She likely would also face criticism for a draft department threat assessment in 2009 that implied military veterans could be susceptible to extremist recruiters or commit lone acts of violence.

BACKGROUND: Patrick was born in 1956 in Chicago. He earned a law degree from Harvard in 1982. He was a lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund from 1983 to 1986 before entering private practice. He stayed in the private sector except for a Justice Department stint in 1994-97. As the Clinton administration's assistant attorney general for civil rights, he led a federal investigation of church burnings throughout the South. Patrick left government to become chairman of Texaco Inc.'s Equality and Fairness Task Force, then was named vice president and general counsel for Texaco Inc. in 1999. He was executive vice president and general counsel for The Coca-Cola Co. from 2001 to 2004 before winning the Massachusetts governorship as a Democrat in 2006.

PROS: Personal friend of Obama and like the president, is a Chicagoan, Harvard Law graduate and African-American. Would increase the number of black justices to two. Would bring political and prosecutorial experience to the high court.

CONS: No judicial experience. Would face questions about the political and financial status of Massachusetts, which has a statewide health care plan similar to the nationwide plan just passed by Congress and signed into law by Obama.

BACKGROUND: Wood was born in 1950 in Plainfield, N.J. Clinton nominated her to the 7th Circuit in 1995. She earned her law degree from the University of Texas School of Law before clerking for Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun from 1976-1977. She went to work as a lawyer-adviser in the State Department's Office of the Legal Adviser from 1977-1978 before working in private practice in Washington in 1978-1980. She became a professor at Georgetown University during 1980-1981, then a professor at the University of Chicago from 1981-1995, where she also served as associate dean from 1989-1992. She re-entered government service at the Justice Department as special assistant to the associate attorney general during 1985-1987, and as the Antitrust Division's deputy assistant attorney general for international, appellate and policy matters from 1993-1995 before becoming a federal judge.

PROS: Was a finalist in the White House's last search for a nominee and was interviewed by the president. Would bring the number of female justices to three.

CONS: Would ignite a battle over abortion rights during the confirmation process. Anti-abortion activists portray Wood as being hostile to their cause.

Pres. Barack Obama has an unsettling defense of his health-care reform - it's merely a version of the plan implemented by Massachusetts.

Obama wants to associate his reform with the one championed by Mitt Romney in 2006 when he was governor of the Bay State. If the liberal Democrat Obama and the conservative Republican Romney passed similar plans, what can be so radical about Obama's reform?

This is superficially clever. It not only gives Obama's plan a centrist patina, it shines a light on a significant obstacle to Romney's likely repeat bid for the Republican presidential nomination.

If the states are the laboratories of democracy, Obamacare's Menlo Park is about to blow up. Unsustainably high costs and high insurance premiums are leading inexorably toward price controls and rationing. Obama might as well boast that he's adopted a version of the California fiscal plan, or the Michigan economic-recovery plan.

Obama is correct that his plan and Romney's share essential features: a mandate that individuals buy insurance, fines on businesses for not offering coverage, heavily regulated insurance exchanges, and large-scale insurance subsidies and Medicaid expansion. They share something else - utterly fanciful notions of cost control.

Romney believed - and still maintains to this day - that emergency-room visits by the uninsured shifted costs onto everyone else. Never mind that in post-reform Massachusetts there are just as many non-emergency visits to the emergency room as previously, even though only 3 percent of people are uninsured. Many of these patients simply have trouble finding a doctor, a shortage the Massachusetts reform only exacerbates.

Massachusetts has created a different cost-shift problem through its Obamacare-style guarantee that people can wait to get coverage until they're sick or want medical procedures. The Boston Globe reports, "Thousands of consumers are gaming Massachusetts' 2006 health insurance law by buying insurance when they need to cover pricey medical care, such as fertility treatments and knee surgery, and then swiftly dropping coverage, a practice that insurance executives say is driving up costs for other people and small businesses."

Predictably, costs in Massachusetts - always high - have only gone higher; the state now spends about 30 percent more per capita on health care than the rest of the nation. Predictably, the insurance regulations have only made insurance more expensive, as has been the case elsewhere; premiums in the individual market have been growing at a 30 percent annual rate. Predictably, the new health-care program has cost more than expected; spending grew by about 40 percent from 2006 to 2009.

At first, Massachusetts plugged the holes with more taxes and fees. Now, just as Obama is hailing the state as his opening act, it is moving to the next inevitable phase: unapologetic price controls.

The state's regulators have rejected 235 of 274 premium increases proposed by insurers, an extraordinary exercise of a power that had sat idle on the books since 1977. As the Wall Street Journal points out, the big insurers in Massachusetts are nonprofits like Blue Cross Blue Shield and Harvard Pilgrim, hardly the comic-book villains of liberal rhetoric. The state's arbitrary clamp-down on rates will force insurers to cut access to care, or go out of business. As subtle as a kneecapping, the state's move is rationing by proxy.

Insurers have taken to the courts, and most of them have stopped offering new coverage for individuals and small businesses pending a ruling on their request for an injunction. Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, meanwhile, wants the power to review the rates of hospitals and doctors and disallow those deemed too high.

And so the free lunch promised Massachusetts in 2006 devolves toward a fiscally beleaguered government setting prices and limiting care, exactly the downward spiral critics fear from Obamacare. At least Romney can say he didn't know how his experiment would end. Obama has been warned, and still he embraces Massachusetts as our national future.

For months, media outlets like the New York Times scolded conservatives over their concerns about rationed medical care. Sarah Palin outraged them by referring to "death panels" when the ObamaCare bill wound up containing language enabling "comparative effectiveness" boards as guiding lights for medical care decisions. Last July I wrote about comparative effectiveness, a medical-care rationing system, by asking the question of who says "no" in a government-run medical system. Today, the New York Times gives the same answer I did, conveniently after the passage of ObamaCare:

How can we learn to say no?

The federal government is now starting to build the institutions that will try to reduce the soaring growth of health care costs. There will be a group to compare the effectiveness of different treatments, a so-called Medicare innovation center and a Medicare oversight board that can set payment rates.

But all these groups will face the same basic problem. Deep down, Americans tend to believe that more care is better care. We recoil from efforts to restrict care. .

From an economic perspective, health reform will fail if we can't sometimes push back against the try-anything instinct. The new agencies will be hounded by accusations of rationing, and Medicare's long-term budget deficit will grow.

So figuring out how we can say no may be the single toughest and most important task facing the people who will be in charge of carrying out reform. "Being able to say no," Dr. Alan Garber of Stanford says, "is the heart of the issue."

David Leonhardt goes on to praise ObamaCare as the start of saying "no" to people who want more health care. That's an interesting tack for the Times to take, especially after its screeching over the use of "death panels" by critics, which meant exactly the same thing. Now they admit that the "most important task" of the people running the ObamaCare reform is to deny people medical care - under circumstances where a group of elites decide it's not worth it.

Once again, we have people looking at this from the notion of a shortage, crisis market. If we want to solve the problem of overutilization, which is what ObamaCare purports to do, we're going about it in exactly the wrong manner. We need to restore pricing signals in order to make consumers aware of the consequences of their decisions, not shield those costs even further by having taxpayers subsidize even more of those costs. That would require getting insurance out of the way of normal, routine medical care and using it only for catastrophic issues, and providing tax-free shelters for medical-care funds controlled by individual consumers.

Instead, we're slowly turning the entire medical system into an HMO, only this time with Congress and the executive branch running it. It will suck so many resources out of the middle class that only the wealthy will have any real options outside of the government-controlled network in a few years as insurers go broke under Obama's regime of price-fixing. Once that medical care becomes an entitlement for everyone, no one will have any reason to exercise cost controls, and the comparative effectiveness policies created will wind up becoming the Dr. No of ObamaCare.

Even though there is still no clear evidence of racism in the TEA party movement, there is clear evidence of such racism from the left:

Atheist author, although not converted, goes underground with Christian group, and claims that they are wrongly portrayed as brainwashed, simple-minded and angry.

This is quite good; President’s Ford’s address to Congress, requesting aid for the Vietnamese, along with the responses he received:

RUSH: Wait 'til you hear some of the regulations in cap and trade. There's a piece at The American Thinker.com today that goes on and on about the purpose of cap and trade to reduce all the CO2 that we're putting in the atmosphere and we got a goal here to reduce it and the way to reduce it, of course, is to regulate the amount of carbon dioxide that any device produces. And one of the things, there's going to be hundreds of regulations requiring brand-new appliances, from heaters, to water heaters, to refrigerators to microwave ovens to televisions, you name it, over 130 of them. But there's a reason for this. And this is what's onerous, and these are Department of Energy regulations. This is not legislation. This is going to be enacted at the cabinet level.

"Unfortunately there's more beneath the surface, and it's another Obama land mine, because like everything else this administration has told us thus far, they're only telling us part of the story. What's actually going to happen is that anyone who tries to sell their home is going to need to replace that perfectly good water heater, and lots of other electrical devices in their homes," with these new ones that are more energy efficient, in order to legally sell your house. What did you say, Rush? That's what I said. "If that last sentence surprises you, then you're not aware of the fact that Obama is planning to force us to register our homes, just like our cars, and get them inspected by an authorized agent of the DOE in order to get an 'Inspection Label' for the home." They will come into your home and take a look at your appliances and see what you got. So the author of the piece here says, "I suggest that you all read the Cap & Trade bill which was passed by the House last June, and which President Barack Obama is probably going to try to ram through the Senate shortly." This is what's taking precedence over amnesty right now. "That abomination of a bill requires us to bring our homes into compliance with each of the new standards for all regulated appliances, in order to legally sell them.

"And if that's not enough, it's not just about water, or home heaters either: 'Since President Barack Obama came to office, the DOE has issued or codified new efficiency standards for more than twenty different products, which will save consumers between $250 and $300 billion on their energy bills through 2030.'" And it goes on to say that, "14 consumer and commercial products with standards prescribed in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA 2007), including dishwashers, general service incandescent lamps and residential clothes washers, microwaves, kitchen ranges and ovens, general service fluorescent lamps and incandescent reflector lamps, commercial heating, air-conditioning and water-heating equipment," all these things are going to come under strict regulation and control.

Now, the second-to-last item, small electric motors, "Watch out for the second to the last item listed above, because almost every electrical device you use has a 'small electric motor' inside. When you add the value of the millions of perfectly good appliances that are going to wind up on the trash heap, to the other costs of this bill, you'll realize how damaging this is going to be to our country. And now you may have it answered for you, why the CEO of General Electric, Jeffrey Immelt, is one of Obama's big boosters. They are one of the biggest manufacturers of appliances and under these new regs your perfectly fine appliances, you're going to have to toss 'em and buy new ones if you want to get your home approved, if you want to pass inspection or if you want to sell. They're going to come in, inspect your home and put a sticker on it that says you've passed inspection, just like your car.

RUSH: I have a friend whose relative was from Cuba, got out of there. Home inspections are the order of the day from the Castro regime. It's exactly what the Department of Energy has in store for us. Everybody in Cuba had to have their entire houses checked before they could sell the house. Now, what surprises me about this, even if they fail, what the hell are they gonna replace the appliances with? I mean, the guy gives out rice cookers. (interruption) Oh, you're not even allowed to sell it now? Oh. Okay. Okay. So they just have to do the inspection. Snerdley, I don't even want to think about how much it would cost me to replace my air-conditioning unit. And, of course, do you think I'm going to pass anything when Obama or the regime DOE guy comes into my house? The census can't find me but I'll bet that clown could.

These appliances are not yet made. These appliances in the smaller carbon footprint are on the drawing board and it's all to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by 1%. All this will do is reduce CO2 by 1%, and the global warming is not happening. The whole thing is based on a hoax here. This is gonna cause people to sell their houses before they want to, just to beat these regulations, if this happens. I shudder. (interruption) You have to take out a loan. If you don't have the money, you have to take out a loan, and I'm guessing about this, but I don't think you can put this in the sale price because you have to have the house approved for sale before it can be sold. Now, you can try to recoup your expense in the sale price, but the buyer is gonna know what's going on. It's Draconian, to say the least. This bill makes the secretary of energy -- his name is Steven Chu -- the most powerful man in America outside of Obama. It grants him power never before given to any elected official, including under FDR. This guy, secretary of energy, will become the second most powerful man in the regime with this kind of authority.

RUSH: Now, let's go back to this Department of Energy thing very quickly. This house sale requirement, all these new appliances, it's another great example of everything Obama does is designed to do the opposite of what's needed. We need to make health care more affordable, what's going to happen to it? We need to build the housing market back up, what are we going to do to it? And Snerdley, you asked me, "Oh, my gosh, do you know what it costs to replace an air conditioner?" This is not about cost, in the end. It's not really about cost. The goal here is a continued transformation, making America poorer, reversing industrial production (except for GE), leaving more resources for the rest of the world. And since the private sector is what grows the economy and makes life easier, this regime needs to impose it's will to reverse the course of the nation. Because, remember, America must be cut down to size. We've been immoral and unfair, basically America is a crime in Obama's view. So we're in for it, folks. Yeah, it's about costs, but it's also about making you and everybody else poorer and making the private sector smaller, enhancing government control over virtually as much as they can get.

RUSH: By the way, I left out something very salient in the new Department of Energy, register your house, approve your appliance and so forth, the poor -- and how we define the poor is they get increasingly richer -- the poor are exempted. The poor are exempted from paying for it. They'll be subsidized, which means there's redistribution going on. It all adds up to a loss of a little bit more liberty and freedom.

RUSH: We were talking about these new Department of Energy regulations coming requiring even more energy efficient appliances. Could Steven Chu, the secretary of energy, become the second most powerful man in the regime? Your house will have to be inspected for emissions and proper appliances, carbon footprint and all that just as your car is. And if you don't pass you have to totally refit every appliance in your house until you're in compliance, at your expense.

From the Seattle Times, back on March 26th: "Federal investigators who submitted phony products, such as a gasoline-powered alarm clock, to the government's energy-efficiency certification program found it easy to obtain approval and say the program is 'vulnerable to fraud and abuse.'" A gasoline powered alarm clock was approved as a new energy efficient device. "Investigators with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said they obtained Energy Star approval for 15 of 20 fictitious products they submitted for certification with fake energy-savings claims. Two were rejected and three did not receive a response. ... Among the phony products that obtained Energy Star certification was a 'room air cleaner' that, in a picture prominently displayed on the Web site of a bogus company, showed an electric space heater with a feather duster and strips of fly paper attached to it." I'm not kidding.

Now, we wonder why does government do everything badly? Yesterday I posed the question, how is it that in the private sector most of the things government does is a crime and people who perpetrate them are charged and sometimes convicted, but when government does those very same things, they are lauded with virtue and compassion. I think one of the reasons, ladies and gentlemen, that the government does everything poorly is they have no competition and there's no accountability. There is no accountability, and if they don't do it right, where do you go? There's nowhere else. So here they are, approving phony, fictitious new appliances as compliant with the new Energy Star program. A gasoline powered alarm clock. That just doesn't compute with me. How does even the most incompetent bureaucrat you've ever heard of in the Department of Energy ever think that a gasoline powered alarm clock -- I mean, that's in your house. A gasoline powered alarm clock got approval as an energy-saving device. So this whole program is bogus and it proves the point here, this is not about anything other than the continued transformation of the country, making us poorer and less free, pure and simple.

RUSH: All right, look, folks, the biggest news, or the most important news of the day is not Stupak. It's close. We predicted this would happen, said Stupak would be hounded out of office the day after the House passed the bill. And the biggest news of the day is not how they're trying to cover up the Stupak announcement. That's the retirement of Justice Stevens.

Okay, so Stupak's quitting. He says the tea party had nothing to do with it, which means the tea party has everything to do with it. One story says he's scared. The truth is he has no prayer of being reelected, zip, zero, nada. He's just the first of many dominos to fall here in this regard. I just hope all of these Democrats remember, Bill Clinton, Obama, everybody saying, "You better vote for health care if you want to get reelected. We lost the House in '94 because we failed to get it done." And now the Gallup poll has the Democrat Party's image at the lowest point it's been in memory. John Paul Stevens is quitting, no big deal, predictable, he's been leaking it, been talking about it. I think the timing is interesting. They're going to lose their majorities in November, probably want to get some radical, wild haired liberal nominated and confirmed, if they can, before the November elections, or certainly before next January when the new Congress is sworn in. But the big, really important thing that's out there today is in the Wall Street Journal, because this is something that affects you and your family. It is the health care reality check that is taking place in Massachusetts.

Massachusetts and the health care plan they have is the role model, it is a miniature laboratory, if you will, for Obamacare. Even Democrats have described it that way. Insurance rates are going through the roof. The governor has imposed price controls. The insurance companies who asked for their rates to be raised are nonprofit companies, nonprofit. Today Massachusetts, tomorrow the rest of the nation. "This week it became impossible in Massachusetts for small businesses and individuals to buy health-care coverage after Governor Deval Patrick imposed price controls on premiums. Read on, because under Obamacare this kind of political showdown will soon be coming to an insurance market near you. The Massachusetts small-group market that serves about 800,000 residents shut down after Mr. Patrick kicked off his re-election campaign by presumptively rejecting about 90% of the premium increases the state's insurers had asked regulators to approve." They have to go get approval to raise their rates. Deval Patrick said hell, no, and started tarring and feathering the companies as part of his reelection campaign, same thing Obama has done is demonize these people. These are nonprofit companies.

"Health costs have run off the rails since former GOP Governor Mitt Romney and Beacon Hill passed universal coverage in 2006, and Mr. Patrick now claims price controls are the sensible response to this ostensibly industry greed," exactly what we were discussing yesterday. There is no greed in industry. These are nonprofits. They're trying to make enough money here to stay in operation in Massachusetts. The real greed can be found inside most Congresses and legislatures in these states. That's where the greed is. Not in the free market. "Yet all of the major Massachusetts insurers are nonprofits. Three of largest four -- Blue Cross Blue Shield, Tufts Health Plan and Fallon Community Health -- posted operating losses in 2009. In an emergency suit heard in Boston superior court yesterday, they argued that the arbitrary rate cap will result in another $100 million in collective losses this year and make it impossible to pay the anticipated cost of claims." And this gets even better. Stick with me. "It may even threaten the near-term solvency of some companies. So until the matter is resolved, the insurers have simply stopped selling new policies."

They're not selling anything. That's their response. Now, let's extrapolate. In Massachusetts, the government can't take over for the insurance companies or doesn't want to. In the case of Obama, when this happens, as we predicted, as a lot of people predicted, when this happens in America's private sector, nationwide, that's when Obama will move in, if this happens, and get his single payer. When the insurance companies can no longer stay in business even if they're nonprofits, they're just gonna quit. That's the objective -- mark my words -- of the Obamacare problem. "A court decision is expected by Monday, but state officials have demanded that the insurers -- under the threat of fines and other regulatory punishments -- resume offering quotes by today and to revert to year-old base premiums." So the State of Massachusetts, "You're not selling policies? Fine. You better start quoting for people that want to buy, and you're going to quote last year's prices." And they talk about greed in the private sector?

"Let that one sink in: Mr. Patrick has made the health insurance business so painful the government actually has to order private companies to sell their products (albeit at sub-market costs). One irony is that Mr. Patrick's own Attorney General and his insurance regulators have concluded -- to their apparent surprise -- that the reason Massachusetts premiums are the highest in the nation is the underlying cost of health care, not the supposed industry abuses that Mr. Patrick and his political mentor President Obama like to cite." And they're actually acting surprised. They're stunned to learn that these costs going up are related to the price of health care. They say they're surprised. See, their template, their narrative has been the insurance companies are evil, they've been demonizing, they're raising prices without any regard for the consumer, raising prices without any regard for true market forces, they're just greedy. And now the attorney general and Deval Patrick all of a sudden learn, no, no, no, the cost of health care is just skyrocketing. And you'll hear why, this gets even better in just a moment.

"On top of that, like ObamaCare, integral to the Massachusetts overhaul are mandates that require insurers to cover anyone who applies regardless of health status or pre-existing conditions and to charge everyone about the same rates. This allows people to wait until they're about to incur major medical expenses," such as getting sick or right after they have the car crash, before they buy insurance. So they buy the insurance only when they need to, and then after the catastrophe has passed, they are selling, they're getting out, they're canceling the policies. "This week Blue Cross Blue Shield reported a big uptick in short-term customers who ran up costs more than four times the average, only to drop the coverage within three months. Last July, Charlie Baker detailed similar gaming at Harvard Pilgrim, the health plan he used to run. Between April 2008 and March 2009, about 40% of its new enrollees stayed with it for fewer than five months and on average incurred costs about 600% higher than the company would have otherwise expected."

Well, bingo, this is perfectly allowed under Obamacare. The only difference here is if you don't buy the insurance -- there's a mandate that you buy it -- if you don't, you get fined. We know now the IRS will take the value of your fine, the amount of it, from your so-called IRS refund, your income tax refund. And then when you need the insurance, doctor tells you you got a bad problem, illness, or the minute you have the wreck call the insurance company and they have to insure you just like they have to in Massachusetts, at controlled prices. Well, this is what's causing prices to skyrocket in Massachusetts. This is why these insurance companies have asked the commission for rate increases from anywhere from eight to 32% and Deval Patrick said no way as part of his opening salvo in his reelection campaign. So the insurance companies, "We can't do business like this." They're nonprofits don't forget, so they stop selling policies. And the governor has ordered them to start quoting prices at last year's premiums. Well, folks, they can't stay in business this way. It's not possible. This is a 100% microcosm. This is just one of the many aspects that is rife throughout Obamacare.

"Mr. Baker is almost certain to be Mr. Patrick's GOP opponent in the fall election. The Governor's lurch toward price controls is obviously part of a bid to tar the former CEO as an industry villain." We know that's going to happen because, "David Plouffe, the architect of Mr. Obama's Presidential campaign, has signed on as a Patrick 2010 consultant. These kinds of collisions between politics and health care are going to occur constantly across the country as ObamaCare kicks in." The thing you have to realize is, this is by design. I don't know if it's by design in Massachusetts, but this is by design in Obamacare. And who knows. Patrick may be using this the same way that Obama intends to use it, and that is to continue to tar and feather the insurance companies, to blame them for being involved in greed, making obscene profits and so forth, basically to run 'em out of business because single payer is where they want to go and I don't know if they want to head that way in Massachusetts, but regardless, you can't buy insurance there today. You can't buy health insurance. The companies that sell it refuse to sell it, and they're nonprofit. All they're trying to do is make enough money to stay in operation. And, by the way, this is exactly how Obama envisions the private sector. There shouldn't be any profit. A company exists to provide health care and jobs. And if they make exactly what it costs them to operate, then that's fine, that's fair and that's the way it ought to be. It is profit that is the evil thing, gets a bull's-eye painted on your back.

RUSH: Nicholas in Dallas, start with you. Welcome to the EIB Network, sir. Hello.

CALLER: I work with specialists in medicine, cardiology, neurosurgery, allergy, any kind of specialist that's not primary care, and I can tell you that this bill is going to destroy those specialists that are the hardest to replace in medicine. What will happen is he'll say, "Oh, we can promote nurses, we can have physicians assistants to be those primary care physicians." But the problem is when you need to go get an aneurysm taken care of or something to that point, they're already doing charity by accepting Medicare. Some of these guys are posting a hundred to a $200 loss for every Medicare patient that they see.

RUSH: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but wait a minute, wait a minute. The Democrats say that they're gonna do the doc fix. But even with the doc fix they're on the losing end of the proposition, right?

CALLER: They're taking a loss now! They're already doing charity, and they do it because they love their patients. I mean these guys didn't get to start working until they were 36. Sixteen years of additional college, and now you want to say, "Well, we're going to make all your patients charity. Congratulations." Yeah, this is a recipe for disaster of epic portions. And here in Dallas, this is the best medical market in the nation right now as far as reimbursements and stuff go, and I'm already helping people plan their exits.

CALLER: Absolutely. Because they can't just leave, there's a bunch of hurdles that they have to achieve. But most of them can get out within 18 months. So I'm already helping these guys plan these things out.

RUSH: What are they going to do when they leave? What career are they going to go into?

CALLER: A lot of them have side investments that they're working on, they're going to sell the big house, they're going to just have to cut back and wait 'til things pass out, if things get too much worse.

RUSH: Well, I don't think this is by design. I know a lot of this health care plan is by design, but I don't think that the regime intends to force specialists out. There's nothing in it for the regime for that to happen. I mean, that's the kind of stuff, if there aren't any doctors no matter who's paying for it, that's the stuff that revolts are made of, and the regime doesn't even want to contemplate revolts.

RUSH: I just got an e-mail from a member of the Government-Run Media who says, "I heard you bashed Romneycare today. Where can I get a transcript?" (laughing) Ah, see, the template here is: "El Rushbo, leader of the Republicans, bashes Massachusetts health care plan." I did mention Romney's name once, but mainly it was Deval Patrick and what he's done, the insurance commission and so forth. But they want to take the occasion to bash Romney and try to take him out based on this. Obama himself has been pointing everybody to Massachusetts, "That's what you should look at, that's our role model, that's what this is." Well, that's what we're doing, we're taking a look at Massachusetts. So if you want to try indict Romney with this, go ahead, but at the same time it's Democrats that are running this show.

RUSH: Here's Kathy in Kansas City, as we go back to the phones on Open Line Friday. Great to have you here.

CALLER: Yes, good afternoon, Rush. I am so glad that the only way in which you are liberal is in your open mic Friday. That's a good thing.

CALLER: Listen, I called in because I'm an attorney and a nurse and I had an experience the day before yesterday of actual Obamacare. I went to an Obama clone doctor -- of course I didn't know ahead of time he was -- and I can tell you that I was so horrified that I did what I have never done in my life as a patient or a nurse, I ended up telling the doctor to please stop treating me, that I did not trust that he had my best interests at heart, that he had an agenda, and I left the office, and I notified them that I will be filing a formal complaint with the Board of Healing Arts here in Kansas City and Missouri.

CALLER: (laughing) Yes. Anyway, my primary doctor was sure that I had it, and I'm pretty sure, too, but you have to go to a neurologist to get an EMG, right?

CALLER: So he referred me to this guy, and when I went in there, he began to talk about -- he thought that I was a lawyer so he started asking about capital punishment and we were discussing it, and he shocked me by saying that he didn't even understand why there was a fuss about capital punishment, because it had been clear to him for some years that there were any number of people, not just criminals, but people who have, in his words, clearly demonstrated that they're not much of use or they don't conform, you know. And he said they should just be put out of the way. And I was somewhat shocked, but that was nothing compared to what he went on to tell me.

RUSH: Wait a minute. I'm trying to maintain here the context because you first started out by saying you saw in advance Obamacare.

CALLER: I saw a doctor who loves it and that's how he practices. And that's how he tried to practice on me.

RUSH: I know. Okay. So you were recommended to this guy, there you go. How do you know he likes it? Did he tell you point-blank he likes Obamacare?

CALLER: Oh, yeah, the minute I went in he started to discuss stuff like this with me.

CALLER: Well, I'll tell you outright exactly how it went because I immediately burst in and said, "Well, but, you know, there is the dignity of every individual human life." I said, "When somebody is sentenced to death we want to be really, really sure that they are guilty," and I said it's like with, you know -- I didn't know he was for Obamacare, so I said it's like with abortion, with individual babies, or with, you know, older people. He broke in and that's where he said the thing about capital punishment and how we shouldn't even really bother too much about it, there shouldn't even be such a long appeal process because not only criminals, he said, but people who are useless in society, said it's really clear to me for some time that they should just be, quote, put out of the way. I brought up the mammographies, none until you're 50 years of age, at which point he told me it's true that a lot of young women would probably die or have breast cancer and it would go undiagnosed, he said, but, you know what, I'm originally from Canada, so I really like that model because we really can't give such great care as we give, we have too many MRIs floating all over the place. I said to him, "Look, I understand." I said, "I'm a lawyer for tort reform, I don't want doctors practicing defensive medicine." He said, "But that's not enough. We just have to realize that people cannot get this great care they think they're entitled to."

CALLER: Well, I don't know why he's for it. He kept saying that he was from Canada and how great Canada was. I asked him, "Well, how come you're practicing here?" No answer.

RUSH: Wait. If he's talking about how great Canada is then goes on to cite, yeah, we don't waste care on people that don't need it, we don't give mammograms, I mean people aren't entitled to all the coverage they want, they just think they're going to get it for nothing, but they're not. That's exactly what happens in Canada.

CALLER: Exactly. He was perfectly clear, and he was totally cool with that. I can't tell you what it feels like to be flat on your back, you know, they've got these different needles in you when you're getting an EMG and you're kind of a captive audience and I started to realize with such horror that that was how he was treating me. And he was true to his word. Because when I had come in he said, "I'm reading the thing from your doctor, I'm sure that you need to have the surgery, both sides," he said, but at the end he became very angry with me because I had shot his arguments all to pieces. I told him about Zeke Emanuel saying how the problem with our care system is that doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously.

CALLER: He was cool with that. He was cool with that. He was cool with Zeke Emanuel saying when a doctor takes care of a patient they shouldn't be going all out to take care of that individual patient. They should be thinking to themselves, "Hmm, how could this money be better spent? Perhaps my community needs an art museum."

CALLER: I said, "Can you stop treating me, Doctor? I don't want to be treated by you."

CALLER: It wouldn't matter anyhow. He did, but it wouldn't make any difference anyhow. Then he got mad at me and wanted to punish me. When we finished, he told me, "Well, yeah, you do have carpal tunnel syndrome, but you know what? I just don't have the numbers here which I need." I said, "What are you talking about, the numbers?" I mean I'm a nurse besides a lawyer. He says, "Well, your primary care doctor told you all wrong. The surgery doesn't have a very good success rate, and anyway, I don't like people to be a candidate 'til the numbers are higher, 'til they have it really, really, really severely, and then there's only a 60% chance." And I said, "But that's the reason that you do it before it gets to be so severe that you can't even use your arms or your hands."

RUSH: This guy is already practicing, you nailed it at the very beginning of your call, you have seen Obamacare and you were treated by an Obamacare doctor. This guy is practicing Obamacare.

CALLER: That is correct, and that's what is in store for every single one of us.

CALLER: That is correct and I called them back when I recovered my composure, and I said, "I do not trust one thing he did for me. Do not bill me. Do not bill my insurer, and I am considering a formal claim against this man. He belongs nowhere near healing people." And you figure this. I'm a nurse, I'm an attorney, I'm a grown woman. I had the ability to challenge these things with a certain level of knowledge and I wasn't in terrible pain or suffering from something which was potentially catastrophic.

CALLER: Now, you imagine all these people who are gonna -- this is what we will have and you're going to go in and when you're sick and when you're in pain and when you're afraid, you are extremely vulnerable. And people are going to die and die and die.

RUSH: Yeah, the only difference is that the doctors under Obamacare will be calling some bureaucrat somewhere at some health panel for instructions on procedure, and it will be the bureaucrat which will dictate to the doctor this kind of behavior. Your doctor just happens to come by it naturally.

CALLER: Apparently. I have to tell you, it was one of the most horrifying examples --

RUSH: I can imagine. And you're right out there, Kathy. Can you imagine these people that are walking into doctors' offices now saying, "Where's my free health care?" Can you imagine when they walk in and they've got what you've got, carpal tunnel, bilateral, and the doctor says, "It's not bad enough to do anything about it yet." "But I can't work!"

RUSH: "The chart says it's not bad enough. You don't have it bad enough for us to do anything about it, get outta here."

CALLER: Well, you know what, Rush, before this happened I had the horrible job of reading the previous health care bills because a couple of organizations asked me to so I could, as a lawyer and a nurse, present, you know, to them what the likely outcomes would be.

CALLER: And it's beyond horror. One of the things that nobody knows about is that, guess what the protocols are for treating cancer? Guess what, you don't get to have surgical intervention until the cancer is invasive. And of course once cancer is invasive, Rush, you're pretty much dead.

RUSH: Yeah. Well, let me ask you a question. Did this doctor -- I have to go real quick here 'cause I'm way long.

RUSH: Did this doctor give you any pain medication? Did he say, "Take a pain pill?"

RUSH: Oh. Oh, because Obama said maybe we could give people like you a pain pill. That's why I was just wondering if this doctor had that part down pat, too. Thank you, Kathy.

RUSH: I got this note from a friend of mine, it dovetails with the last caller. "I had to go to the dentist this morning. It was unpleasant; the Novocain didn't work; I was in pain and a bad mood. When I got done, the receptionist demanded $600. Usually they submit it to the insurance and bill me for whatever isn't covered. Today they were insisting on a credit card immediately, which rubbed me the wrong way, so I refused. I said, 'I thought Obama was going to pay for all this. Get your money from him,' and I stormed out of the office. It felt really good, but I'll probably have to find a new dentist." (laughing)

RUSH: You know, folks, we've been telling you, Alan Greenspan has been testifying in front of this committee, this blue ribbon bunch looking into the financial crisis. It's led by Phil Angelides, who I know, from Sacramento, ran for governor of California, didn't make it. And the Republican on the committee, lead Republican is Bill Thomas, former Ways and Means chairman, good guy from California. Now, Greenspan went up there -- at the end of their careers or when they know that they're not depending on the town anymore and they're not depending on all the players in the game for their reputation, they can tell the truth. And Greenspan went up there and said the real problem here is the subprime mortgage crisis. We had Congress -- and he's testifying to this special committee -- we had Congress and members of two administrations demanding that banks lend money to people who had no business being lent to. Those are my words, but he said it point-blank. And nobody's reported it, other than I, El Rushbo, nobody heard him say it. And we haven't had Barney Frank or Chris Dodd run out there and say he's lying about it, nobody's disputing what he said. Nobody's reporting it, either. So it's interesting how you get the truth from people when they're leaving the game. Another example of this, Daniel Mudd, I think he's the son of Roger Mudd, he ran Fannie Mae. Yeah, he was the former Fannie Mae president and CEO. And here's a little bit of his testimony from this morning on the same thing.

MUDD: I believe in retrospect that there was overinvestment in housing. I believe in retrospect origination standards slipped. Home ownership rates probably rose too high.

MUDD: In doing so, they contributed to the crisis, but they did not precipitate it.

RUSH: Now, technically he is right. He's sitting over there at Fannie Mae, Barney Frank's Fanny Mae. And he's getting orders -- GSE means government sponsored entities. They tried to say that these were private sector companies run by the government, which, if the government runs it, it's not private sector. So you had Chris Dodd and Barney Frank in the Senate and the House respectively demanding that under the title of affordable housing, they had to get people in homes that had no business being in homes because they couldn't afford it. But it was unfair they couldn't afford it, so we're going to get 'em in there anyway. The banks were forced to make loans, Fannie Mae was forced to buy the mortgages like they do. That led to the creation of mortgage-backed securities, all kinds of new investment products, insurance for what everybody knew was bad paper, and so here's Mudd, he's basically saying the same thing Greenspan did, overinvestment in housing.

Translation: We put too many people in houses that had no business being in houses. "I believe in retrospect origination standards slipped," meaning we didn't look at who was being put houses. In fact, we looked the other way. We did not disqualify anybody that wanted to get into a house. We just lent them the money. "Home ownership rates probably rose too high." Well, that means we had too many people in houses that didn't belong there, which, by the way, elevated and led to the bubble, led to the housing prices going up. And then he says the GSEs, which Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, were chartered to expand and increase home ownership. So they were told to go right along with the banks in the subprime deal. And he says in doing so, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac contributed to the crisis but they didn't precipitate it. What he means is don't blame us, we were just following orders, we didn't start this, this wasn't our idea. This idea actually originated with Clinton. I remember Janet Reno calling banks and threatening big investigations if they didn't continue to make these loans.

What we're learning here, all of this financial crisis stuff, what people are admitting to now, it wasn't Wall Street per se, like Obama and everybody has been blaming. They're not blameless, but now that the truth is being told by people who are no longer part of the game, we are learning that the subprime lending was actually the problem that started all the other dominoes to fall, and I've thought it a long time and a lot of other people have, which means ultimately that the fault of all this can go back to Bill Clinton, Barney Frank, and Chris Dodd. You'll remember that Bush actually tried to get a bunch of regulators in there and testifying to stop this, and Barney Frank just ran roughshod over 'em. I remember seeing some of the videotape from the hearings.

Now, it's fascinating because Angelides, when the microphones are off, after Greenspan finished, there was a little audio from the former chairman. Angelides said that Greenspan had given a lights-out performance. And that's in the Politico: "Greenspan Defends Legacy, Jabs Hill." So Angelides, Democrat, he told the truth. It's just fascinating. Well, it's not fascinating. It's interesting to point out that when they're leaving the game, when Washington and the culture there can no longer do anything for them, they tell the truth. In the middle of the scandal don't dare tell the truth if you want to remain a player in the game.

Tell me, folks, a quick question here. You know, we know that a value-added tax is coming, and we know that the income tax is not going to be cut or no other tax is going to be cut. We know this is a tax upon other taxes. Now, would somebody explain to me why? Because Obama and the Democrats told us that the health care bill was going to cut the deficit. Obama and the Democrats told us it was going to cut the deficit, gonna get the size of government down, that health care was bankrupting the country, and we had to pass this bill 'cause the CBO said, "Oh, yeah! It's gonna cut the deficit!" If the health care bill cuts the deficit, what's all this talk about a VAT tax?

I have an idea. I've been thinking about this, and I think -- you know, we still all have too much reverence for the federal government as an entity. We look at it with way too much reverence. We should apply the same SEC, FTC, and other regulatory standards imposed on private enterprise on the government. For example, why is fraud criminalized when applied to the private sector, but praised as compassion when practiced by the federal government and liberal politicians? I'm sure by now you've heard of the AP story out today, 47% of Americans do not pay any income tax. Forty-seven percent. What the hell do you think is happening? Who do you think's running and supporting the country? Seventy-three percent, 73% of all income tax rated revenues are being paid by 10% of the population. Right there is a fraud. Right there is generational theft. We have the people who are producing in this country dwindling in number, they are still targeted by the Democrats as the problem in the country. We are raising taxes on everybody who works, I don't care what class you're in, your taxes are going to skyrocket because of health care, because of the VAT, all the other hidden tax increases coming, the sunset of the Bush tax cuts, and the money is being redistributed to people who are not paying any taxes at all, who still remain the darlings, who still remain the "rightful owners" of the nation's wealth.

This is 25,000 times worse than anything Bernie Madoff ever thought about doing. And Bernie Madoff is serving how many life terms? Just got beat up by somebody the other day. Why is it that if you are a crook in the private sector for applying liberal policies to your business activities, you're a progressive and compassionate politician in government for doing the same thing? If you go take somebody else's money and give it to somebody else, you are a thief. Why is the government not held to the same standards as those of us in the private sector? By liberal policies, I mean taking money from people, lying to them about it, lying to them about what you're actually doing, cooking the books, fixing the numbers, bribes and payoffs. If you or I tried just one move like the Cornhusker Kickback, if you and I tried one thing in the private sector, like the Louisiana Purchase, we would be indicted and sent up to jail and made an example of. Crime has become institutionalized in Washington, as run by this regime, and they call it compassion, and they tell us, the people working in this country, that it's our responsibility to make sure that our neighbors, who are cast as some helpless, poor, incompetent lot of people, depend on it 'cause they are the real owners of the country, they are the ones who rightfully own the nation's wealth. They're only poor because we have screwed them. We have extorted from them. We have taken advantage of them. This is the liberal playbook.

Is there any doubt that if Nancy Pelosi were chairman or CEO of some big company, that all the lies she told about health care would be considered material misrepresentations for which she would be criminally accountable in the private sector? You let any CEO lie, a publicly held company, lie and offer bribes and kickbacks to advance whatever the CEO's agenda is throughout the company, make sure the shareholders don't find out about it, they get screwed -- she wouldn't last a week in that position. We seem to have one code of ethics and law for the private sector, which is consistent with our moral and religious beliefs. We have another code of ethics and law for the public sector, which is consistent with what can be called nothing other than criminal behavior. We have to call it for what it is.

Why is Obama historic for all the damage he has done to our society? Why is Obama historic for all the damage he has done to our economy, to our finances? But then Bernie Madoff is a hated criminal? Madoff was a crook, no doubt about it, but who's done more damage to more people, today and in the future, Madoff or Obama? Madoff or Pelosi? Madoff or Harry Reid? I'm just putting it to you straight up. Bernie Madoff is a piker compared to this regime and the damage that they have inflicted on all of us, our society, our economy, our finances, and now, with the signing of this stupid treaty today, our national security.

The problem we have is that statism, which is this regime, takes what would otherwise be criminal behavior, and treats it as a virtue. The media treats it as a virtue, all of this criminal behavior. They have institutionalized fraud, and they call it progress. And there's no sign that it's gonna stop.

RUSH: In the first hour, I threw down all inhibitions and made the point that what is happening in this regime and in Congress is nothing different than what would be called crime and fraud for which you would go to jail in the private sector. Stealing, bribes, payoffs, virtually every way that they used to get this health care bill passed involved criminal activity if it took place at a corporation or a small business or in your neighborhood. Now, these guys make Bernie Madoff look like a piker. And these guys -- Obama, Pelosi, Reid -- they are hurting more people than Bernie Madoff ever dreamed of hurting. They are bilking more people than Madoff ever dreamed of bilking. And yet when they do it, it's called compassion. It's almost virtuous the way they are described. "Look at what they do for people, look at how much they care." They are stealing! They are printing money that they don't have. They are bankrupting the country. They are destroying the very engine of wealth creation that has enabled them to redistribute this wealth in the first place. And as they continue to destroy that, they are gonna continue to run this country into the ground with more and more debt, higher deficits. It's a never-ending cycle if the policies of this regime are not stopped.

Here's another example. Insurance companies. The states have laws on insurance companies. We've had this call from our insurance babe in Georgia. They have a requirement that they have certain cash reserves on hand to pay out claims in case of an emergency or something that involves a lot of claims being paid off at one time. Shouldn't that apply to government health care? Shouldn't the federal government have the same requirement that insurance companies have? Shouldn't they be required to have a cash reserve on hand? Well, no, they will not have a cash reserve on hand because they don't have any cash. They are bankrupt. We don't have any money. All they'll do is print it or borrow it from someplace, somebody, and spend it. And they will run these poor private insurance people out of business because the government does not have to make a profit, which is a good thing, 'cause there's nobody there that knows how to.

In fact, most of the people in this regime look at profit and sneer. They see profit as greed. You know where the real greed is? The real greed is at the White House. The real greed is in Pelosi's office. The real greed is in Harry Reid's office. The real greed is throughout Washington, DC. When they talk about rich corporations, greedy corporations, what are they saying? "They're exploiting the proletariat, they're exploiting people by high prices, lousy service, and killing them with bad cars and so forth, and it's just the pursuit of greed." What the hell is what they are doing if it isn't greed? They have the power to act on their greed by stealing other people's money, calling it the tax code or calling it printing money they don't have. You talk about greed, these are the people that don't spend a dime of their own money but give yours away in order to buy votes to keep themselves in power.

That's another thing, you try that in a corporation, see how long you survive if the SEC hears about it. Greed, corporate sector? No. Pursuit of profit? Yeah. But that's even been demonized. These people in the White House, these people in Congress sneer at the very fact of profit. They somehow believe that a company will stay in business with a zero balance sheet. They spend as much as they earn, and they'll keep doing it so the company will stay in business, and they need it to stay in business so they can continue to fleece it. And yet the thing that allows them to fleece it -- profit -- they attack.

RUSH: I'm getting bombarded with this, people are genuinely upset. This guy that threatened Pelosi, he's not all there mentally. KGO Television in San Francisco is reporting that the mother of this -- his name is Greg Giusti -- the mother, Eleanor Giusti, is 83, believes that he got his radical ideas from watching Fox News. And that's what's being reported. So they are now criminalizing Fox News; they're trying to criminalize talk radio. Let me ask you a question. What did Fox News do except tell the truth about the health care bill? Do you people in the White House, do you people in the media, do you ever stop to consider that you have an intelligent, informed electorate who simply doesn't like being raped, and being raped is what is happening to people in this country by their government. No other way to put this.

Do you think it's quite possible that people know what's happened here, they know the financial condition of the country, they know this can't be sustained, they know that this government is governing against their will, they know that 55% oppose this, and you expect them not to be mad? You think it takes a Fox News or talk radio to work 'em up? They're worked up on their own. These are Americans. They're far more informed of what's going on than most of you in the media are. Learn it, love it, live it. And stop trying to criminalize citizenship, because it's all that's going on out there.

RUSH: Here is Patrick in St. George, Utah. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: First what I wanted to say is I actually haven't listened to the news or anything for about two years, and I've been going to college, and two weeks ago I actually quit college because my wife is still in the business and we need more help there. And that's when I actually started listening to your station, and I give you congrats. Everything that you say, I believe, just because that's my feelings on it, too. Now, to get to the point, earlier you were talking about the housing market, and I've done real estate and stuff like that, and I believe that the regime is putting a blanket over our eyes, saying that the market's going to come back with the foreclosure rate slowing down, but I don't think people understand that there are more than just the three-year adjustable-rate mortgages that put us into this situation, that next year we're coming up on to the five-year adjustable-rate mortgages, six-year adjustable-rate mortgages, that's just going to add to another big wave of foreclosures that will add to the permanent underclass that you keep talking about. What do you have to say about that?

RUSH: Well, my theory is a little different on it, but that could be a valid reason. I think the reason why there could be a second housing bubble is because the unemployment numbers are going to keep going up, people simply aren't going to be able to pay for the homes that they're in, and therefore home prices are going to continue to fall. Look at all the homes that are underwater now. And, folks, try as you might want to believe it -- well, I know none of you in this audience believe it, but the government cannot stop any of this kind of stuff. The government can't make you whole; the government can't pay your mortgage. Now, this bunch, this regime will tell you they're going to do it, but they're not.

Folks, look, there may be a bright side to all this. I remember growing up, I got so sick and tired, my parents warning me, telling me about the Depression, "You better save your money, son, you better save your money." "Why, Dad?" I got all these horror stories of the Depression. "Dad, I didn't live through it. I appreciate the warning, but I can't relate to it." Well, maybe so, maybe in a few short years we're going to be able to nag our kids and grandkids about our own Great Recession and maybe get back at 'em.

RUSH: Well, it's come to this. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa says all city departments except police, public safety and those that make money" I wonder which ones those are "must close two days a week because of a budget crisis." They're outta cash. "On Monday City Controller Wendy Greuel" we told you about this "warned that within a month Los Angeles would be unable to pay employees or vendors. She urged the city to transfer $90 million from its reserves. The city's financial crisis worsened this week after the Department of Water and Power failed to make a $73 million payment to the city. The agency says it needs to raise rates significantly to make such a payment." What in the hell has gone on out there? My God, folks, this state is an utter fiscal disaster. The utility can't pay the civil...? I guarantee you nobody's not paying the utility. If they're not paying the utility, they're getting cut off. What's the utility doing with the money that people are paying them?

There's also a story in the stack today that three California pensions are underfunded by a total of $550 billion. That is over a half a trillion. The Public Employee Retirement System in hock, the pension. They don't have the money. The State Teachers Retirement System, so it's PERS and STRS, and there's one other, $550 billion underfunded in the pensions. Now, those people that are public teachers and public employees have been contributing to this. They have directors that oversee both of these agencies to invest and grow the funds in the pension plan. What the hell has been going on? Schwarzenegger ordered this review 'cause he wanted to find out what it was all about. It's worse than anybody imagined. Somebody at Stanford University did the research, did the study, $550 billion. The City of LA is shutting down two days a week, the utility in arrears for $73 million to the city? And I'll bet this is only the tip of the iceberg. When you look at the whole state's fiscal situation, has the whole thing been a house of cards?

Since the left took over and has been running that state, has everything been phony? Have they just been spending money left and right on all their union buddies when that money has never been there in the first place? That has to have been what's happened. It's just like what's happened in Washington now. We don't have any of the money we're spending. We don't have any money to build schools in Islamic radical -- uh, Muslim countries. We don't have money to give 'em health care. We don't have money to start building roads and bridges. We don't even have the money to do it in our country. The whole state of California must be a house of cards. I tell you what, I hope you don't have any LA municipal bonds, folks. Nothing's worth anything out there. Nothing's real, $550 billion underfunded pension plan. And these are great and courageous union workers. (interruption)

Snerdley wants to know if we're going to have to pay for it eventually. Yeah, I'll tell you what's going to happen. And I'll tell you why I think some of this is by design. As we have to bail out the states, as the federal government has to bail out the states, what does that mean? It means that local control has failed. This whole process is going to enrich and further expand the already over the top, unacceptable power of the federal government. When we start bailing out states -- and that's the only thing we can do here, with money we don't have, now your great-grandchildren's taxes are being spent -- that means that whoever is in charge of the federal government when it happens can say, "Look, you people of California have proven that you can't run the show. We're going to take it over. Now, you're still going to have a governor and you're still going to have this, but if you want to do anything, you gotta get us to sign off on it." Meanwhile, the federal government is becoming more and more and more unpopular. Yet it is amassing all of this power, and the regime stands to expand itself even further if we have to start bailing out states like California. I'm going to put this $550 billion in perspective. I need to find the story. I'll do that in a break. But I want to go grab a couple of phone calls here. We'll start in Sandy Springs, California, with Mark. Great to have you here, sir. Hello.

RUSH: You're right. We have an antiquated screen. I mean, the font on this thing is like 1988. You know, like those green screen computers used to be? So I'm sorry. I knew there wasn't a Sandy Springs, California.

CALLER: No problem. The great thing about Sandy Springs is we created the city a few years ago and privatized everything so all our public employees are private contracted employees, we don't have pension problems. So we're not going to have the problems they have out in California.

RUSH: We had calls from people in your-yet-to-be-named town on this program, I remember that.

CALLER: Well, it's been very successful so far, and I expect it to just keep getting better.

RUSH: Well, I didn't have to fly all the way to hell's half acre. (laughing) It's right there in Sandy Springs, Georgia.

CALLER: That's correct. But, Rush, I wanted to talk about our Treasury clown, Geithner, going out through Asia with hat in hand begging the Indians and the Chinese and wherever else he's got to buy our debt. I don't think people really can conceive exactly how much $1.5 trillion is, and that's what our deficit is projected to be this year. And we're issuing, you know, 75, a hundred billion dollars of new debt every week, and after a couple of bad auctions, all of a sudden he's off to Asia and China, you know, begging 'em to buy our debt. If they don't keep buying our debt... I mean, you keep saying, "We don't have any money. We don't have any money." They are our bankers. They're the ones who are providing us with the money to pay our troops, to pay our bills, to build our roads, to do whatever it is the government does. And if they stop buying our debt, Treasuries are going to get hammered and it's going to be Jimmy Carter years all over again

CALLER: -- but this time on steroids, and that's just going to lead to massive tax increases. Even Volcker was out there yesterday saying we need a VAT tax and an energy tax. We gotta do something about these deficits, but they're not going to do anything about it.

RUSH: No, because the problem with the deficits is not taxation and insufficient taxation. The problem with the deficits is out-of-control spending by the regime.

CALLER: Right. And they're not going to do anything about it. It's just going to be worse, and -- as you say over and over again -- it's gotta be by design. And one more point I would like to make.

CALLER: I'm all for breaking up these big banks and stuff, but the mainstream media line is that Wall Street took over Washington. That's wrong. Washington took over Wall Street, and now they're using Wall Street to take over Main Street.

RUSH: Exactly right. Excellent timing. That's a great call from Mark in Georgia.

RUSH: All right, let's put this in perspective out there: $535 billion shortfall in the state pension plans at the state Public Employees Retirement System, the state teachers retirement system, and one other; $535 billion is more than the gross domestic product of Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Switzerland, or Poland? Saudi Arabia is an oil giant. I thought every sheik had $535 billion, but they don't. Five-hundred-thirty-five billion, unfunded, underfunded pension, how does this happen? And also on a related story: "The pension plans at General Motors and Chrysler are underfunded by a total of $17 billion and could fail if the automakers do not return to profitability," and they aren't. Obama Motors reported a first quarter loss of $4.3 billion. Now, what the hell was the bailout if not to protect these pension plans? Wasn't the bailout of GM and Chrysler essentially to make sure that the unions health care plans stayed intact? What did they do, forget to fund the pensions? They bailed out these companies, what, 25 or $50 billion, they're still $17 billion underfunded in the pensions?

Now, back to California. $535 billion. It was never real. It could never have been real. The money supply in California could never have been real. They were spending money they never had. It's almost like the House Bank back in the old days in the late eighties. It didn't matter what your salary was, you could write a check for an unlimited amount on your account and never get an overdraft notice. It sounds like this is the way the libs in California have been running the state. How come these state pension plans, which include health care, are so expensive, and yet the federal health care system is going to be so cheap? How can the two be in the same sentence? "Well, yeah, we're going to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars with Obamacare." Yeah, right. Uh-kuh. And yet just the public employees in the state teachers in California pension, underfunded $535 billion. The truth of the matter is, nobody's gonna notice if LA closes its offices for two days a week. They're only going to shut down "nonessential" people right? If they're not essential why are they there in the first place?

Remember when they closed the government because of snowstorms a bunch of times in Washington and 240,000 nonessential people were told don't show up, including Congress. If they're nonessential, why do you employ 'em? Now, they are going to have a problem. There will be people that will notice LA shut down for two days a week, and that will be the poor who line up for their benefits. They're going to be lining up in front of closed offices. Remember the Rodney King riots? There was a line that they were using in the State-Controlled Media after the Rodney King riots. They called the people standing in line for their welfare checks "an example of the indomitable human spirit." (interruption) Oh, the poor get their checks through direct deposit now? Well, what if you don't have a bank? (interruption) Everywhere? Even if you don't have a bank, they start a bank account? Look, I'm just going to tell you something. Snerdley, if you're telling me that people don't line up at welfare offices all over the country, they do. And that's who's going to notice it when LA shuts down for two days a week, otherwise nobody will. Now, wait 'til these health care mandates kick in in California. I mean, you think it's bad now? Wait 'til the Obama health care mandates kick in out there, because the states are going to have to pick up the tab. Because of the health care bill, the states are going to have to pick up an ever increasing share of Medicaid and Medicare.

RUSH: Eighteen states have now joined the lawsuit to oppose Obamacare. Folks, Obama has come to divide. Even Pete Wehner! Pete Wehner is a good friend of mine who worked for Rove in the Bush White House and used to work for Bill Bennett over at Empower America. Pete Wehner, and he's one of us, but for Pete to write what he wrote today about "Obama the Divider" is akin to the pope uttering a profanity. Pete, he's very reserved and so forth, and it's not an over-the-top piece, but it's becoming clearer and clearer. Michael Ledeen has a great piece today on Obama. I'll read it to you as the program unfolds. Basically he's just your typical undergrad, little idealist here. He never got out of school and only knows what he's been taught, which is basically a theory of mine.

RUSH: Nancy Pelosi, quote of the day: "It's like the back of the refrigerator. You see all these wires and the rest..." Now, let me stop there. When is the last time you looked at the back of your refrigerator? My refrigerators, I have a lot of them, are built in. I can't look behind 'em. But in the old days, when I could look behind my refrigerator, I saw one wire. Well, I saw two, maybe: A copper wire for water for the ice maker and the power cord. What bunch of wires is on the back of a refrigerator? Now with that thought, let me resume the quote. "It's like the back of the refrigerator. You see all these wires and the rest... all you need to know is, you open the door. The light goes on. You open this door, you go through a whole different path, in terms of access to quality, affordable healthcare for all Americans." That's Pelosi explaining how her constituents can understand the health care bill that she recently passed in the House: Compare it to opening the door of the refrigerator, and all the goodies inside (all the food that you love!) is illuminated by a bright light, and you have all of those choices. But you'll never see that if you look at all the wires coming out of the back of the refrigerator.

With that in mind, from the McClatchy Washington News Bureau (Snerdley, we got our wish): "Health Care Overhaul Spawns Mass Confusion for Public." It is happening. "Two weeks after President Barack Obama signed the big health care overhaul into law, Americans are struggling to understand how -- and when -- the sweeping measure will affect them. Questions reflecting confusion have flooded insurance companies, doctors' offices, human resource departments and business groups. 'They're saying, "Where do we get the free Obamacare, and how do I sign up for that?"' said Carrie McLean, a licensed agent for eHealthInsurance.com."

I love it, folks. I was hoping. When Dawn told me that she saw this happening at the breast center, I said, "Whoa, I hope this is happening all over the country." We even urged people (in a miniature Operation Chaos) who understand the bill to show up somewhere and ask, "Where's my free Obamacare?" Who knows how many of our people are actually doing this? I don't know. But I also know a whole bunch of legitimate people are doing it as well: "Where do we get the free Obamacare? How do I sign up for that?"

"[Carrie] McLean said the call center had been inundated by uninsured consumers who were hoping that the overhaul would translate into instant, affordable coverage" as in free. "That widespread misconception may have originated in part from distorted rhetoric about the legislation bubbling up from the hyper-partisan debate..." No! The reason people think this is 'cause Obama was lying to them! The "hyperpartisan debate" was us trying to tell people the truth about this! Obama was the one telling people all these wonderful things about his health care plan and giving the impression that it was going to be paid for by a couple of millionaires. "'We tell them it's not free, that there are going to be things in place that help people who are low-income, but that ultimately most of that is not taking place until 2014.'" I hope it's millions of people. I hope it is millions of people showing up, expecting their freebie, expecting their insurance coverage and being told, "Oh, no, no, no! That's not going to happen for four years!"

"Adults with pre-existing conditions are frustrated to learn that insurers won't have to cover them until 2014 (though those under 18 will be protected in September); then they become both hopeful and confused upon learning that a federal high-risk pool for them will be established in the next few months. 'Health insurance is so confusing. You add this on top of it and it makes it even more confusing,'" said the person that works for the insurance company. "The Obama administration is embarking on a years-long public..." Years long? Oh? Really?

By the way, whatever happened to the jobs push? Is Obama going to be focusing laser-like on jobs while he's in Prague signing the giveaway arms deal with the Russians? Whatever happened to that?

"The Obama administration is embarking on a years-long public education campaign about the overhaul, including a Web component. However, much of the guidance will depend on the Department of Health and Human Services regulations that are still being developed." It's a nightmare. It's a total nightmare out there. The "distorted rhetoric" on all this probably began during the Obama-Hillary campaign. They both claimed it would be free. They both gave the impression. If they didn't state it directly, they both gave the impression it was going to be free. So did John Edwards, the Breck Girl. These people, they are just incorrigible.

I'll tell you, you know what you ought to do, people, if you voted for Obama on the premise that you supported his health care overhaul because you thought it was going to be free and you were going to get it immediately, you ought to go in and demand it. Don't just go in and ask, "When do I get it?" Go in and demand it! You know, pretend you're Obama, pretend you're a community agitator or community organizer. Go in and demand it! You're an American! You are entitled to it! They passed the bill! The evil Republicans tried to stop 'em. As far as you're concerned, that means the whole thing's legit! So go in there and demand it. Wait until they find out that their tax refund has been cut to punish them for not having insurance.

Speaking of which, may I make an observation about that? Something that went right over my head yesterday (this normally does not happen) in telling you the story of the IRS commissioner saying the way they're going to assess the fines on people who do not buy health insurance is via their tax refund. They're just going to purloin all of it, or whatever amount of it they need, to satisfy the debt you owe if you haven't paid your fine for not buying health insurance. Now, what does that mean? It means very simply that if you get a refund on your income tax return, what does that make you? It makes you a taxpayer. Obama said 95% of the American people would not see "one dime" of an increase in their taxes. Yet the IRS commissioner yesterday just blew that up and smoked that one full of holes.

So we have the mass confusion on the public's part, because they were led to believe some things that were not true about this, they did not apparently get the memo explaining what all this was really all about. "Americans who already have good coverage aren't so worried about the immediate implications, but some admit that they're plenty confused. 'Why does it take so long for certain health care things to take effect?' said Sandra Preston, a state employee in Patterson, NJ. Ben Wiesen, a software engineer who works for a small company in Tarrytown, NY, said he'd read up on the overhaul but remained concerned about the unknowns."

For those of you who want to know why it takes four years for things to implement, I can explain it very quickly. Obama, in order to sell this, needed the price tag to be reported at something under a trillion dollars. So benefits, so-called benefits of health care reform -- the actual stuff you think you're going to get free -- doesn't kick in for four years. So there's only six years of accounting for the costs. The taxes that we're all going to pay to support this start now, immediately. But for four years, you get nothing for it. The true cost of ten years of benefits, so-called, and ten years of cost, spending, is $2.5 trillion.

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 #122	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	April 11, 2010