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).

Boehner calls for the resignation of Obama economic advisors Geithner and Summers.

Oakland, CA just cut back on its police force, and told its citizens not to expect them to show up if called about a burglary or something minor like that.

Unions continue to fight a Wal-Mart store in Brooklyn, despite the fact that this would provide a great many jobs, as well as a service for the community. It should have been called the Wal-Mart mosque, and it would have been fast-tracked and received special state funding.

Unlike the early protests of the Ground Zero Mosque and the first large TEA parties, which the news media ignored almost completely, Beck’s “Restoring Honor” gathering received a lot of press.

For 15 years now, the New York City has been fighting the tiny Bronx Household of Faith, a small Christian congregation that has been having a difficult time finding a place to meet. It wants, consistent with its reading of the U.S. Constitution - and mine - to meet in a vacant public school space on weekends, just as all other community groups are allowed to. A New York court determined that this was legal back in 2005, and religiously-tolerant Bloomberg continues to fight it.

Joe Biden on the economy: "We're turning this great ship of state around that was wandering out to sea and it's headed back to port. While progress isn't fast enough, there isn't any doubt it's moving in the right direction."

Joe Biden: “Entire new American industries are being born -- the very industries that are going to allow us to lead the world in the 21st century.”

And from the office of the Vice President: “As a result of the Administration's unprecedented commitment to energy efficiency, more than 200,000 low-income families have been able to save money on their energy bills while saving energy, and thousands of people have been put to work.”

From Black America . Com: “[Glenn] Beck has done more harm than good in the arena of racial politics”

Rachel Maddox: “I have been talking for awhile about the Fox strategy of scaring white people in order to score political points and benefit conservative politicians, and one of the hallmarks is that their most potent `scare-white-people' stories are not real news stories. They're stories that they invent out of thin air. That's true about ACORN. That's true about the Shirley Sherrod case. That's true about the fake New Black Panther Party thing. That's true about Van Jones.”

Resurrection: the Ground Zero Mosque, CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said: “The level of anti-Muslim hysteria has gotten out of control over this manufactured controversy.”

Comment from a liberal about the mosque: “This is just another NewsCorp-manufactured controversy meant to whip the ignorant masses into a frenzy and shield them from the real issues.”

Infoshop News (an independent news service) headline: The Muslim Community Center at Ground Zero: a Manufactured Controversy

Blogger Jack Hunter in the Charleston City Paper: “It should be noted the extent to which this story is largely a manufactured controversy, when you consider that the proposed mosque would be built two and a half blocks from Ground Zero-which is further than the current mosque just two blocks away and not too far from another mosque that has been in the same neighborhood for years.”

Justin Elliott headline for a NY Post story: How the "ground zero mosque" fear mongering began

A viciously anti-Muslim blogger, the New York Post and the right-wing media machine: How it all went down.

[Let me add that, none of these people mentioned that there were large demonstrations by New Yorkers against this mosque long before there was any manufactured controversy about the mosque (I received an email about this, and posted it here, weeks before I saw any news stories on it).]

Daisy Kahn, Ground Zero Rauf's wife, said of opposition to the mosque, "It's beyond Islamophobia. It's hatred of Muslims."

Headline of Jeffrey Goldberg’s story in the Atlantic: “The Rise of Shrieking Bigot Pamela Geller” First line of the story: “There is a very depressing story today in The Washington Post about the lunatic racist Pamela Geller, who has been leading the crusade against the so-called Ground Zero mosque.” Pamela Geller is an outspoken blogger who is against the Ground Zero Mosque.

The Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan: “There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that's it.”

Cord Jefferson on NPR: “Little is known about the [Glenn Beck] event except that there will be speeches by Beck and Sarah Palin, and attendees are prohibited from bringing signs. The fear, of course, is that it will turn into a pit of hatred a la the health-care town halls.”

Senator Max Baucus, who wrote the Healthcare bill, said, "I don't think you want me to waste my time to read every page of the health care bill. You know why? It's statutory language. We hire experts."

Doug Shoen (actually, a Democratic pollster): “It’s time for Obama to pull a Clinton.” That is, when Republicans take over the House and possibly the Senate, for him to move toward the middle of the political spectrum.

Paraphrasing Pat Buchanan: “The Thelma and Louise of housing, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are already driving the US taxpayer off the cliff.”

Glenn Beck: “What is God trying to use you for? I bet you haven’t heard that before on TV.”

James Madison: "The future and success of America is not in this Constitution, but in the laws of God upon which this Constitution is founded."

Benjamin Franklin: "History will also afford frequent opportunities of showing the necessity of a public religion...and the excellency of the Christian religion above all others, ancient or modern."

John Adams,: "Suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for their only Law Book, and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited... What a paradise would this region be!"

You may or may not like Sean Hannity, but he did an excellent show called The Green $windle — the Environmental Agenda. If you have an interest in global warming, this is a must-see. Parts 1–6 below:

A good 3 minute coverage of Beck’s rally. This will be followed by a commercial and then by a smaller rally called “Reclaim the Dream;” by Al Sharpton. The speech which you can hear in the background is quite interesting by contrast:

CNN interviews Pamela Geller. Decide for yourself is she is an Islamaphobic racist (google her name if you want to see how she is viciously characterized on a plethora of websites and news sources):

Glenn Beck on the economy; watch at least the first 35 minutes. You may find yourself pulling your money out of the stock market.

Bobby Bright for Congress ad; can you guess which party he belongs to? Note the truck.

Jodi Miller: “America’s debt has not reach $44,000/person. Wow! $44,000! That’s enough to send Michelle Obama on vacation for, like, 3 minutes.”

1) Frank Gaffney examined about 100 mosques, and found that 20 of them were normal religious organizations, and that the rest taught Sharia law.

2) I have heard an interesting suggestion that, the people behind the Ground Zero Mosque are primarily fulfilling their American dream. If they can get someone to pay them $20 million for the GZ mosque site, they make $15 million. In the alternative, if they get funding from overseas, they stand to pocket a lot of money while building the mosque.

3) AIG has a sharia-compliant fund. Since the government runs AIG, it is being sued for mixing church and state.

4) Here is an opportunity to learn something: Los Angeles is about to open up a school complex for 4200 K–12 students which cost nearly $600 million. Here is the difference between public money and private money—how did this get through? Who thought that this would be a good idea? How can a school of this cost be built, and yet, we only hear about this a month before it opens? Why is it that public money can be so easily squandered? A footnote: dozens of schools across the country have cost in excess of $100 million, and yet, teacher layoffs are threatened in nearly every single indebted state.

5) Speaking of brilliant moves by the government, do you recall Cash for Clunkers, where people were bribed to buy a new car, and their old car was destroyed? This cost taxpayers about $40,000/car, if memory serves. Now, a large number of used cars cost about 30% more than they did before cash for clunkers, because their inventory was reduced by C4C. Don’t forget that this was touted as a very successful program.

6) Do you recall one of the other great successes of the Stimulus bill? It weatherized 200,000 homes.

7) I found this to be fascinating: Greta Van Susteren spent 3 days with Sarah Palin and observed that the Palin Machine was Sarah and Todd Palin. She saw no aides, no staff, no large group to manage.

8) Life expectancy is a false argument for or against a public healthcare system. There are hundreds of reasons for a person lives longer in one country than another, and healthcare is only one factor. It is more accurate to take specific diseases, look at how and when they are diagnosed, how fast and how good the treatment is, and the survival rate. There are other factors which come into play, even here, but this more closely matches the pros and cons of a public healthcare system.

9) Michael Savage, not my favorite radio personality, made a good point the other day: make a man immoral and you can do with him whatever you want. Move a society towards immorality, and they will become much more malleable.

10) Being against the Ground Zero Mosque does not make you a racist or anti-Islam. A majority of Americans understand that it is their right, to some degree, to build a mosque anywhere. However, a large majority also believe that it is wrong to build a mosque so close to ground zero.

11) Radio commentator Michael Medved has been suggesting that Republicans run on the slogan a fresh start for the past several years. Perhaps John Boehner was trying it out, when he asked for the resignations of Obama’s economic team (he did use that phrase).

12) Did you know the Congressional staffers do not have to pay off their student loans?

George Soros used to have $25 billion invested in the stock market. He has reduced his stock portfolio to $5 billion.

Los Angeles is opening up the R. F. Kennedy Community Schools (a K–12 public school complex). This school cost nearly $600 million. And here I thought that California was out of money and having to lay off teachers.

Texas has spent $3.7 million to weatherize just 47 homes through December under a program set up by Congress a year ago in economic stimulus legislation. This amounts to a taxpayer cost of $78,000 per home.

Speaking of government expenditures, the Ground Zero mosque may be allowed to raise $70 million by tax-exempt bonds.

187 of the first 200 colleges in America were Christian, Bible teaching institutions.

Existing home sales drop 27%, which is the lowest level in 15 years. Didn’t that government tax credit for buying houses also expire? What a coincidence!

Since the government stepped in to help those people whose mortgages are underwater, there is a 12.5 month surplus of homes on the market. Before the government stepped in to help, this was a 9.5 month surplus.

I read a number of articles about Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally in D.C., most written before the event, and almost every one of them was negative. The word racist found its way into many of these stories. Interestingly enouh, although most of these stories pointed out that this was being on the anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s I have a dream speech, few mentioned that his niece was speaking at the Beck affair (most of them mentioned Palin). The bias in news is revealed in what it tells you and what it leaves out, as well as the people quoted in connection with the story.

The NY Times, to its credit, showed a wide-shot of the crowds who were there, They even included a quote from a woman who was there who spoke of her faith in Jesus Christ and said, “You don’t spend your way out of debt.” The Times also gave a reasonable crowd estimate (at least 300,000) and mentioned, near the bottom of the story, that Alveda King spoke at the “Restoring Honor” rally.

Here’s my vision: there is a neighborhood meeting about the Ground Zero mosque, and the Canadian idol terrorist shows up to give his opinion, sing a song, and do some dance moves.

Jimmy Carter obtains a release for an American imprisoned in North Korea (and I never thought I would have a yay for Carter ever).

Obama knew that the drilling moratorium would kill 23,000 jobs, and yet he went ahead and did it, despite the fact that drilling accidents are rare. What accounts for him doing this? Could this be revenge against the states which voted against him? Or was this just bad judgment on his part?

The natural gas deposits discovered in Israel is going to step up Muslim opposition to Israel and terrorist attacks, which will, if possible, target these gas reserves.

President Obama is going to give a speech this week on Iraq. I know he will not use the words surge or victory. I don’t think that he will use the word Bush either. Maybe he will say predecessor, or previous administration but I don’t expect him to give George Bush any credit. Most news outlets will not point out that President Obama strongly opposed the surge and said that it would not work. Most news outlets will point out that Bush stood almost alone when it came to a surge strategy in Iraq, which turned the war around.

Obama is not yet capable of admitting that he is wrong, and he will not move toward the middle when the House and Senate become Republican; but will then begin to blame the Republicans for being obstructionists. Clinton was able to turn this into a plus for Democrats by balancing the budget. Most people recall Clinton as being the president of the balanced budget, and give no credit to the Republican Congress. Obama could do that same thing, but he won’t.

With unemployment just under 10% and companies sitting on their cash, you would think that sooner or later job growth would take off. I think it's going to be later—much later. Here's why.

Meet Sally (not her real name; details changed to preserve privacy). Sally is a terrific employee, and she happens to be the median person in terms of base pay among the 83 people at my little company in New Jersey, where we provide audio systems for use in educational, commercial and industrial settings. She's been with us for over 15 years. She's a high school graduate with some specialized training. She makes $59,000 a year—on paper. In reality, she makes only $44,000 a year because $15,000 is taken from her thanks to various deductions and taxes, all of which form the steep, sad slope between gross and net pay. Before that money hits her bank, it is reduced by the $2,376 she pays as her share of the medical and dental insurance that my company provides. And then the government takes its due. She pays $126 for state unemployment insurance, $149 for disability insurance and $856 for Medicare. That's the small stuff. New Jersey takes $1,893 in income taxes. The federal government gets $3,661 for Social Security and another $6,250 for income tax withholding. The roughly $13,000 taken from her by various government entities means that some 22% of her gross pay goes to Washington or Trenton. She's lucky she doesn't live in New York City, where the toll would be even higher.

Employing Sally costs plenty too. My company has to write checks for $74,000 so Sally can receive her nominal $59,000 in base pay. Health insurance is a big, added cost: While Sally pays nearly $2,400 for coverage, my company pays the rest—$9,561 for employee/spouse medical and dental. We also provide company-paid life and other insurance premiums amounting to $153. Altogether, company-paid benefits add $9,714 to the cost of employing Sally. Then the federal and state governments want a little something extra. They take $56 for federal unemployment coverage, $149 for disability insurance, $300 for workers' comp and $505 for state unemployment insurance. Finally, the feds make me pay $856 for Sally's Medicare and $3,661 for her Social Security. When you add it all up, it costs $74,000 to put $44,000 in Sally's pocket and to give her $12,000 in benefits.

Bottom line: Governments impose a 33% surtax on Sally's job each year. Because my company has been conscripted by the government and forced to serve as a tax collector, we have lost control of a big chunk of our cost structure. Tax increases, whether cloaked as changes in unemployment or disability insurance, Medicare increases or in any other form can dramatically alter our financial situation. With government spending and deficits growing as fast as they have been, you know that more tax increases are coming—for my company, and even for Sally too.

Companies have also been pressed into serving as providers of health insurance. In a saner world, health insurance would be something that individuals buy for themselves and their families, just as they do with auto insurance. Now, adding to the insanity, there is ObamaCare. Every year, we negotiate a renewal to our health coverage. This year, our provider demanded a 28% increase in premiums—for a lesser plan. This is in part a tax increase that the federal government has co-opted insurance providers to collect. We had never faced an increase anywhere near this large; in each of the last two years, the increase was under 10%. To offset tax increases and steepening rises in health-insurance premiums, my company needs sustainably higher profits and sales—something unlikely in this "summer of recovery." We can't pass the additional costs onto our customers, because the market is too tight and we'd lose sales.

Only governments can raise prices repeatedly and pretend there will be no consequences. And even if the economic outlook were more encouraging, increasing revenues is always uncertain and expensive. As much as I might want to hire new salespeople, engineers and marketing staff in an effort to grow, I would be increasing my company's vulnerability to government decisions to raise taxes, to policies that make health insurance more expensive, and to the difficulties of this economic environment. A life in business is filled with uncertainties, but I can be quite sure that every time I hire someone my obligations to the government go up. From where I sit, the government's message is unmistakable: Creating a new job carries a punishing price.

There are commentaries all over about this article, and much of what is said is unbelievably stupid. One said, much of his costs have nothing to do with Obama; $12,000 are healthcare costs, for which he pays no taxes (I am paraphrasing). The fact that an employer must provide healthcare and do so in a manner which makes it appear to be cheaper than it really is, is a matter of government mandate. The problem with hiring is, there are a wealth of government costs associated with hiring new people, and many of these costs are unknown as of now (remember that Congress has passed several 2000+ page bills so far).

Because of failure to heed the limitations of the U.S. Constitution, which has produced runaway federal spending, our nation sits on the precipice of disaster. Former Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming and Erskine Bowles, White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton, co-chairmen of President Obama's debt and deficit commission, in a Washington Post article "Obama's Debt Commission Warns of Fiscal 'Cancer'" (July 12, 2010) said that "(A)t present, federal revenue is fully consumed by three programs: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The rest of the federal government, including fighting two wars, homeland security, education, art, culture, you name it, veterans - the whole rest of the discretionary budget is being financed by China and other countries."

The commission added the current budget trend is a disaster "that will destroy the country from within" unless checked by tough action in Washington. The tough action required is spending cuts in programs, including the so-called nondiscretionary, eating most of the federal revenues.

According to the Census, around 80 percent of Americans 65 and older own their own homes compared to 43 percent under 35. Twenty-three million households, or 37 percent of all homeowners, own their homes free and clear, and most of these are seniors aged 65 and older. According to the Federal Reserve Board's 2007 "Survey of Consumer Finances," the median net worth of people 65 and over is $232,000, those under 35 years have a net worth of $12,000 and for those 35-44, it's $87,000.

For good reason, older people have accumulated more wealth than younger people; the primary reason is that they've had more time to do it. There is no logical case that can be made for using the tax system to force Americans with less wealth to subsidize those with more wealth. But it's not clear who is subsidizing whom.

Consider an elderly widow, say 70 years old, with a modest retirement income of $18,000 living in a $300,000 house that's fully paid for. She might receive local property tax forgiveness, medical and prescription drug subsidies and other federal, state and local subsidies based upon her age and income.

When subsidies are provided for this lady, whom are we truly benefiting? It's not the lady but her heirs. Conceivably, the lady could make a deal with a financial institution to pay her property taxes, allow her to live in the house for the rest of her life and give her a lump sum cash settlement so that she can live without the handouts. Upon her death, the house becomes the property of the financial institution, not her heirs. Giving the widow handouts allows her to bequeath to her heirs her assets, a $300,000 house. If her children want to inherit the house, they, rather than taxpayers, ought to take care of their mother.

We can start getting the federal spending under control by ending subsidies to people with high net worth that can be ready turned into cash such as a home or business. While seniors might say that they support reduced government spending, they, like other handout recipients, believe they have a right, through government, to live at the expense of others. What's more, they have considerable clout - they vote in large numbers. Only 50 percent of young people vote, but up to 70 percent of seniors vote.

Political guts have always been in short supply and politicians fear senior retaliation at the polls. Moreover, it's a practical matter for seniors and politicians. The true economic calamity won't hit the country until 2030 or 2040. By that time, both today's politicians and seniors will be dead so why should they make sacrifices now to prevent an economic calamity decades off into the future? Seniors might protest my cynicism but they can easily prove me wrong by waging an effective campaign to end handouts based on superannuation.

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

My column titled "What Handouts to Cut?" created a number of angry responses, and for the first time in my life, I had some, not much, sympathy for political cowardice. Most letters were from senior citizens angered by my suggestion that they were receiving handouts and those handouts be cut.

Federal tax receipts for 2009 totaled $2.1 trillion. The largest items in the federal budget were Social Security ($710 billion), national defense ($689 billion), Medicare ($456 billion) and Medicaid ($327 billion). The primary recipients of federal spending are seniors. Some of the letters argued that it's unfair to characterize what seniors are getting as handouts because they worked all their lives and paid into Social Security and Medicare.

Jagadeesh Gokhale, senior economic adviser, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland; and Laurence J. Kotlikoff, professor of Economics at Boston University document the looming Social Security and Medicare crises in "Is War Between Generations Inevitable?". They report that "A male reaching 65 years of age today (in 2000, the year of their study) can expect to receive $71,000 more in government 'transfer' benefits (of all kinds at both the federal and state levels, but mainly from Social Security and Medicare) than he will pay in taxes (of all kinds at both the federal and state levels) before he dies. A 65-year-old female can expect a net gain of more than twice that amount; she can expect $163,000 more in benefits than she will pay in taxes."

The picture is not so rosy for people who entered the labor force in 2000. They will pay far more in taxes than they will receive from transfer programs. Expansion of elderly handouts, such as prescription drugs, will make things worse. "For example: A 20-year-old female can expect to pay $92,000 more in taxes than she will receive in transfer benefits over her lifetime. The future looks more than three times as bleak for her male cohort, who can expect to pay $312,000 more in taxes than he will ever receive in benefits."

Why is Social Security a better deal for today's seniors? Just look at what they paid in.

From 1937 to 1949, the maximum annual Social Security tax was $60. It remained under $200 until 1956. After 1956, Old Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance was added and in 1966, Medicare was added. It wasn't until 1969 that maximum Social Security taxes exceeded $2,000. Today, the maximum annual Social Security tax is $13,000 and the maximum annual benefit is $25,000.

As with any Ponzi scheme, the people who get on board early make out. This is pointed out by Geoffrey Kollmann and Dawn Nuschler of the Congressional Research Service in their report "Social Security Reform" (October 2002) They say, "Until recent years, Social Security recipients received more, often far more, than the value of the Social Security taxes they paid. ... For example, for workers who earned average wages and retired in 1980 at age 65, it took 2.8 years to recover the value of the retirement portion of the combined employee and employer shares of their Social Security taxes plus interest. For their counterparts who retired at age 65 in 2002, it will take 16.9 years. For those retiring in 2020, it will take 20.9 years." My question is: How can anyone who draws out every penny he's put into Social Security in a few years say that he's not living at the expense of another?

In my opinion, it takes a special form of callousness and disregard for the welfare of future generations of Americans for today's senior citizens to fight against reform. Nobody's talking about abolition of federal senior programs. We must accept that serious mistakes were made and we must take compassionate corrective action. But what the heck! As I said in my "What Handouts to Cut?" column, "Both today's politicians and seniors will be dead so why should they make sacrifices now to prevent an economic calamity decades off into the future?"

Walter Williams on the Tyranny of the Majority, the US Federal Budget and Free-Market Thinking

[Walter Williams is a noted economist and he also sits in for Rush Limbaugh from time to time].

The Daily Bell is pleased to present an exclusive interview with Walter Williams (left).

Introduction: Dr. Walter E. Williams is the author of over 150 articles on social topics. Some have appeared in scholarly journals, such as Economic Inquiry, American Economic Review, Georgia Law Review, Journal of Labor Economics, Social Science Quarterly and Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy. Others have appeared in general circulation publications, such as Newsweek, Ideas on Liberty, National Review, Reader's Digest, Cato Journal and Policy Review. Dr. Williams is the author of six books: America: A Minority Viewpoint, The State Against Blacks (the basis for the PBS production "Good Intentions"), All It Takes Is Guts, South Africa's War Against Capitalism, Do the Right Thing: The People's Economist Speaks and More Liberty Means Less Government. Dr. Williams has been named a Hoover Institution National Fellow and a Ford Foundation Fellow. He has received the Foundation for Economic Education Adam Smith Award, the Valley Forge Freedoms Foundation George Washington Medal of Honor, the Veterans of Foreign Wars U.S. News Media Award, the Adam Smith Award, the California State University Distinguished Alumnus Award and the George Mason University Faculty Member of the Year and Alpha Kappa Psi Award.

Walter Williams: Free-market thinking grows out of a respect for the basic principles of individual liberty. If I am free, then I can negotiate, I can trade with anybody I wish to whether that person is American or whether he came from Europe, Mexico, Africa or anywhere else. If any third party interferes, then I am that much less free.

Daily Bell: Can you give us some background? Can you identify any influences early in life that pointed you toward classical liberalism? Were you influenced by the American exponents of the Austrian school, such as Murray Rothbard?

Walter Williams: No, I was not. And if I can identify anybody, it was Thomas Payne, who wrote Common Sense, which I have read a number of times. It was a pamphlet that Thomas Payne wrote to rally the American Colonies to rebel against the Crown.

Walter Williams: I got married in 1960, but I had been drafted into the Army the year before. I was in Korea in 1961 and had a lot of time on my hands. I saw that if I didn't get started on something, I had no future. I told my wife that as soon as I got out of the Army and we had saved $700, we were going to move from Philadelphia to Los Angeles, where I could go to college. I got out of the army July 3, returned to my old job with Yellow Cab, and by December 1 we were on the road to California, where I enrolled at Los Angeles State College. I got a bachelor's degree in three years. Then I transferred to UCLA to study for a Masters degree, but I received so much encouragement that I continued for a Ph.D., which I completed in 1972.

Daily Bell: Some of your writing reveals a righteous anger. Where does that come from?

Walter Williams: Again, it goes back to my ideas on liberty and my respect for individual rights. I try to write so that economics is understandable to the ordinary person. I have had a lot of encouragement to do so and I had a tenacious mentor at UCLA, Armen Alchian, who used to pick on me. We were in the hallway one day and he said, "You know, Williams, the true test of whether somebody understands his subject comes when he can explain it to someone who doesn't know a darn thing about it." I take pride in doing that kind of explaining. At the same time I try to convince readers of the moral value of individual liberty.

Walter Williams: My first encounter with open racial discrimination was in the Army, on my way to an assignment at Fort Stewart, Georgia. I woke up on the bus in the middle of the night at a rest station, where I saw a sign saying, "Colored Waiting Room" and another saying "White Waiting Room". At Fort Stewart, I encountered gross racial discrimination. I just made life hard for those who were discriminating against black soldiers, hard in the sense of being a troublemaker. I have a book coming out this fall, an autobiography. I go into detail about my life in the military and the racial discrimination I encountered. But the best thing one can do to resist discrimination of any type is to be the best that you can possibly be, as opposed to getting on a soap box and preaching.

Walter Williams: I think that black Americans have advanced more swiftly than any other racial group. In 1865 neither slave nor slave-owner would have believed that black people could make the progress that in fact we have made. Today black Americans are among the world's most famous people and the world's wealthiest people. If black America were a country, its GDP would be the 16th or the 17th largest in the world. And now we have a black President. And this kind of progress speaks well of the intestinal fortitude of a people and of America itself. Nothing like it could happen anywhere else in the world.

Walter Williams: Oh, yes, I think they support Barack Obama because today black Americans are a one-party people. They just support whoever is the Democrat. They supported Bill Clinton, they supported Jimmy Carter. It' unfortunate, in a two-party system, because it means that one party, namely the Democrats, will take the black vote for granted and the Republicans won't even try to compete for it.

Walter Williams: The principles of economics don't not change any more than the working of gravity changes. Gravity is the same as when Newton wrote about it. So, economic theory is one thing, but economic systems are another. The most tragic economic change is that the world has come to accept the notion that one person has the right to live at the expense of another person, which I think is despicable. People all around the world - and in the U.S. - believe it's OK for the government to take the property of one citizen and give it to another. If a person did that identical thing privately, we would call it theft. But it's what people routinely ask the government to do.

Daily Bell: Would you characterize yourself as conservative, a libertarian or something else?

Walter Williams: If pushed to choose between the two, I would say libertarian. But I call myself a Jeffersonian liberal. Today the people who call themselves liberals are for the most part fascists. I think libertarians need to take back the meaning of "liberal," because liberal means free. For today's so-called liberals, personal freedom is the last thing on their mind.

Daily Bell: What do you think of anarcho-libertarianism as championed by Rothbard?

Walter Williams: Well, I think his ideas are very good. I met him a number of times and had nothing but respect for him.

Daily Bell: What do you think of Dr. Ron Paul and his impact on the sociopolitical conversation?

Walter Williams: Ron Paul and I are friends and longtime associates. I agree with Ron Paul on most matters, but we part company on issues of foreign policy. I believe in a strong defense, and I believe there are circumstances that call for pre-emptive attack on people who would do us harm.

Daily Bell: What is the difference between a conservative and neo-conservative, if any?

Walter Williams: (Laughing) I don't know. But conservatives, neo or otherwise, and liberals all believe it's all right for government to take the property of one person and give it to another. They prove H.L. Mencken's definition of an election as "...an advance auction on the sale of stolen property." Liberals believe in taking your money and giving it to poor people and poor cities. Conservatives believe in taking your money and giving it to farmers, banks and airlines. They both agree on taking our money, but they disagree on who should get it.

Daily Bell: Was George Bush a good president? Was he conservative? Are there any good presidents?

Walter Williams: Well my hero of all presidents, at least modern day presidents, is Grover Cleveland. He was the "Veto King." He vetoed more legislation than all presidents before him combined. His veto message to Congress often was that "this is not authorized by the United States Constitution." We don't hear presidents today vetoing acts of Congress because they are not authorized by the Constitution.

Few people appreciate how serious our Founding Fathers were about the Constitution. For example, James Madison is considered the Father of the Constitution. In 1794, when Congress appropriated $15,000 for the relief of French refugees who fled from insurrection in San Domingo to Baltimore and Philadelphia, James Madison stood on the floor of the House to object, saying "I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."

Now if you look at the federal budget, two-thirds to three-quarters of it is for benevolence, and it's been the same under all recent Presidents. Whether you are talking about foreign subsidies, bank bailouts, welfare programs, food stamps, Medicare or prescription drugs. There is no tooth fairy or Santa Claus giving the government the money; the only way the government can give one American citizen one dollar is to first take it from some another American. I think it's despicable. It's legalized theft.

Daily Bell: What is your opinion on America's present condition? Is it like Rome in the empire days?

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Walter Williams: Yes. Rome? Spain? Portugal? France? They all went down the tubes for precisely the same reason. Bread and circuses! In 1892, if someone had suggested during Queen Victoria's Jubilee that England would become a 3rd-world power and be challenged on the high seas by a 6th-rate power such as Argentina, he would have been put into an insane asylum. But the British Empire went down the tubes for precisely what we are doing in our country now - what we have been doing for the past 50 years. Bread and circuses and big-government spending.

Walter Williams: Milton Friedman predicted the EU would survive until one or two countries get into trouble. It looks like Greece and the PIGS are having some problems now. There is a real question as to whether the Portuguese and the Greeks will allow their domestic policy to be dictated by Germany.

Daily Bell: Is the Chinese miracle real, or is it built in a sense on state planning and, like the USSR, doomed to fail?

Walter Williams: The Chinese are a true success story, and the country is moving toward freer markets and toward a more open system of capitalism. It is not a true capitalist country yet, but you do find that 300 million people, 400 or 500 hundred million people perhaps, have been lifted out of poverty without any government subsidies. It's just the free market helping them out of poverty, and I hope the people in China continue in the same direction.

Daily Bell: What do you think will come of the current economic crisis -- depression, hyperinflation or both? Or something else?

Walter Williams: If I had an answer to that, I would take a position in the market and become very rich. However, I am not in the crystal ball business.

Walter Williams: No. Read what happened during the Great Depression and the New Deal. in 1938 Roosevelt's Treasury Secretary said, "Mr. President we have spent more money than we have ever spent in the past and it's not doing any good. Unemployment is just as bad as it was and all we've accomplished is we've gotten into more debt and spent more money." That is the same thing Treasurer Secretary Geithner can say today to President Obama, "We have spent more money, but unemployment is the same; in fact it's higher than when he took over."

Walter Williams: They've been headed up, but where they're going is another question. As conditions become more uncertain, people have always sought safety in precious metals such as gold, silver and platinum.

Daily Bell: Do you oppose central banking? Would you like to see America return to the free-banking recommended by George Selgin, George White and Antal Fekete?

Walter Williams: Yes, I would. I believe that the monopoly over money maintained by the Federal Reserve and the legal tender laws have not been good for our country. A central bank allows the government to steal from its citizens with impunity. I have often suggested that anyone who finds himself in court on a charge of counterfeiting should tell the judge he was engaging in monetary policy.

Daily Bell: Are you disappointed that the Fed is not going to receive a more thorough audit?

Walter Williams: Ron Paul has been pushing for it for a number of years, and I agree.

Daily Bell: Would you like to see the Fed abolished? Would you like to return to a gold or a gold and silver standard?

Walter Williams: I am not sure we can go back. The fact that we prospered for a long time without a central bank, from the time of Andrew Jackson and the Second National Bank until the Federal Reserve, shows that the Fed is not absolutely necessary. But getting to a world without the Federal Reserve would be a difficult transition.

Daily Bell: Has the growth of the Internet affected the tone and context of the conversation in America and the world regarding freedom and free markets?

Walter Williams: Yes, definitely. I think the Internet has enhanced freedom all around the world. Now anyone can reach a worldwide audience. This is one of the reasons you hear increasing noise by governments about controlling the Internet.

Walter Williams: Our "intelligence" said that Suddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. That turned out to be false. But the question we have to ask is which kind of mistake is more costly? We assumed he had weapons WMDs when in fact he did not. But we might have assumed he lacked WMDs when in fact he did. I think the latter kind oferror is more costly. Keep in mind that intelligence is fraught with error. This is one of the reasons the Allies spent so much time and effort trying to defeat Hitler before defeating Japan. Our intelligence said that the Germans were close to having nuclear weapons. But after the war, we found that they were nowhere nearly as close as we had thought.

In terms of the war and what is going on now, if I were President, I would have toppled the Iraq regime and left. I wouldn't be involved in nation building. As far as Iran is concerned, and my libertarian friends get upset with me about this, I think that if Iran gets any nuclear weapons it would be very dangerous for the world. But I would not send a single troop there. I would call Ahmadinejad and say, "We know where your facilities are; we have a Trident submarine off your coast; tell your people to get out, because at 10:00 pm two days from now we are going to start destroying your facilities."

Walter Williams: Yes, I would. I would not give them a date. I am not a military person, but I would like an orderly withdrawal.

Walter Williams: I think the growth of government. The amount of money we spend on Medicare, Social Security, Prescription Drugs, etc., eats up the entire federal revenues, and the rest of government lives on borrowed money. We are spending too much. From 1787 until 1920, the federal government spent just 3% of the GDP except during wartime. Today it's close to 30% of GDP. We are in serious trouble because of the spending.

Daily Bell: You mentioned Thomas Paine's Common Sense. Are there other seminal articles or books that you encourage people to read? Where can they be found?

Walter Williams: An important book and certainly one that was a great influence on me was Federic Bastiat's The Law. The book also influenced a number of great thinkers, including Hayek and Friedman. It's available at FEE.org.

Walter Williams: I have two books coming out this year - the autobiography that people have been trying to get me to do for a number of years and a second work called Race and Economics. Both will be published by the Hoover Institution.

Dr. Walter Williams has been a bright light in the US free-market firmament for decades now. Way back in the 1980s and 1990s, even in the 1970s, his was one of only a few "mainstream" voices regularly raised to support freedom and free-markets. We always laughed when we heard his great, booming voice on the radio and the affectionate way he made fun of "Mrs. Williams" - always Mrs. Williams because he was always very respectful of her even when teasing her. It was generally his sense of humor that was so surprising to us, especially once we discovered that he was a black person. This was the anti-Jesse-Jackson, we decided.

Where Jesse Jackson was truculent and always blaming the white race and imputing racism to ever-newer generations, we didn't sense any of this emanating from Dr. Williams. Jesse Jackson was always in the news whenever there was a "racial" incident, explaining how such problems confirmed that America was still a racist society. Implicit in Jackson's perspective (and others like him) was the idea that it was black leaders alone that were "perfected" by the crucible of race-in-America and that he therefore (and a few others) were alone granted the historical moral authority to comment on the United States.

We never got this feeling when hearing Dr. Williams speak. Dr. Williams was not obsessed with race or with being a black man in America (or we couldn't detect it, anyway). He seemed to speak first as a human being, and one who was concerned about HUMAN freedom, rather than black-versus-white freedom. Of course, being a black person in America (and being Dr. Williams) we never got the feeling he hid from the issue either, or was reluctant to mention it. It was just that he kept it in perspective.

He was a human being first and a black person in America second (or maybe third or fourth). He was Mrs. William's husband, a successful educator and also a freedom fighter in no particular order. (He also supported the second amendment, and we knew that because when he expounded on threats to freedom, he would sometimes mention "reaching for my gun" in a tone that was as meaningful as it was humorous.)

He was certainly no "race hustler" in an era where so many other prominent black men were milking money from the federal government especially (and large corporations as well) by institutionalizing black victimization and white guilt. In fact, with his usual sense of humor, he went about making sure that white people were comfortable in his presence by issuing his own proclamation that absolved white people. It reads as follows and can be found on his website:

Proclamation of Amnesty and Pardon Granted to ... All Persons of European Descent

Whereas, Europeans kept my forebears in bondage some three centuries toiling without pay,

Whereas, Europeans ignored the human rights pledges of the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution,

Whereas, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments meant little more than empty words,

Therefore, Americans of European ancestry are guilty of great crimes against my ancestors and their progeny.

But, in the recognition Europeans themselves have been victims of various and sundry human rights violations to wit: the Norman Conquest, the Irish Potato Famine, Decline of the Hapsburg Dynasty, Napoleonic and Czarist adventurism, and gratuitous insults and speculations about the intelligence of Europeans of Polish descent, I, Walter E. Williams, do declare full and general amnesty and pardon to all persons of European ancestry, for both their own grievances, and those of their forebears, against my people.

Therefore, from this day forward Americans of European ancestry can stand straight and proud knowing they are without guilt and thus obliged not to act like damn fools in their relationships with Americans of African ancestry.

This is vintage Walter Williams. He is well aware of the difficulties of race in America but unlike others in his position he never chose to exploit racial divisiveness to make a living. Instead, being a scholar and a gentleman, he acknowledges that the human condition itself is full of exploitation and misery and that white Europeans have experienced their share as well. This is the difference between an educated man who has spent his life raising up civil society and others who spend their lives tearing down civil society brick by brick to make a living.

We could comment on the above interview in many other ways as well, but we really have no wish to. Others are welcome to do so - and we know they can focus on his comments regarding military first strikes, etc. and a lack of pronounced perspective on monetarism. But people should realize when they are doing so that Dr. Williams was making a courageous stand for freedom at a time when few voices were raised on its behalf in the United States. Sure, there were pro-forma celebrations, flag-waving, etc., but Dr. Williams went beyond that, attempting to explain the virtues of free-markets in a substantive way.

Yes, throughout his career Dr. Williams has been a courageous, even lonely, voice, standing against black victimization and for freedom at a time when there were very few voices to be heard sounding his sentiments. He has spent his life attempting to explain "real" economics; he did so at a time when such discussions had all-but-flickered-out. He provided a bridge between that barren age and the incredibly substantive and energetic conversation going on today in the Western world and especially in America. He is a pioneer; we look forward to his autobiography; we are certainly glad we had a chance to interview him.

In what will rank as one of the all-time presidential PR disasters, we're now well over half way through what the White House called "the summer of recovery." And what a recovery it's been.

Earlier this month, first-time claims for unemployment hit a nine-month high. The unemployment rate remains at 9.5% and 18.4% of workers are out of a job, can only get part-time work, or have given up looking for a job altogether. Sales of existing homes dropped 27% from June to July, hitting the lowest point since data were first collected in 1999. The Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index fell to 50.4 in July, continuing a slide that started in February. And the stock market is down 11% from its peak in April.

All of this has helped shatter public confidence in the president. In early May, Mr. Obama's approval on the economy in the YouGov/Polimetrix poll was 42%. By mid-August, it was 35%-a frightening number for Democrats less than 70 days from a midterm election. According to this week's Reuters poll, 72% are "very" worried about jobs and 67% "very concerned" about government spending.

Mr. Obama's credibility is crumbling, and for good reason: He and his people are saying things people don't believe. At the start of his summer of recovery road show, the president flatly asserted that last year's massive stimulus package had "worked." Vice President Joe Biden, not to be outdone, promised monthly job gains of up to 500,000 and insisted that the recovery's pace "continues to increase, not decrease" as stimulus spending was "moving into its highest gear."

It's slightly surreal. "Who are you going to believe," as Groucho Marx once said, "me or your own eyes?"

The administration's claims have collided with reality in other instances as well. Mr. Obama's Council of Economic Advisers Chair Christina Romer-speaking before the 2009 stimulus was approved-said unemployment would top out at 8% by the third quarter of 2009 and decline to less than 7% by the end of 2010. Even the White House now admits that the unemployment rate will stay at or above 9% through 2011.

The White House also frequently asserts that "between 2.3 million and 2.8 million jobs were either saved or created" by the $620 billion in stimulus money spent by June. Set aside the absurdity of the administration inventing the "saved" category and then pretending it can ascertain, with scientific precision, the number of jobs that have been "saved." Since the stimulus passed, 2.6 million Americans have lost their jobs and 1.2 million people have given up even looking for work.

Mr. Obama and his people also mischaracterize where most stimulus dollars go. Their constant prattle about "shovel ready projects" is an attempt to leave the impression that most goes to bricks and mortar. Not true: Only 3.3% of the $814 billion stimulus went to the Federal Highway Administration for highway and bridge projects.

The administration's misleading statements and obfuscations aren't limited to the economy. On health care, for example, Mr. Obama continues saying that (a) health-care reform will reduce costs and the deficit, (b) no one who wants to keep existing coverage will lose it, and (c) the law's cuts in Medicare won't threaten any senior's health care. These assertions are laughable.

The president's habit of exaggeration and misstatement has infected other Democrats. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, for example, routinely talks about how the recently passed "Stimulus II" spending bill protected the jobs of police and firemen.

Stimulus II consisted of two parts: $10 billion for education and $16 billion for Medicaid. States can't spend Medicaid money for anything but Medicaid, and they can only spend the education money on education, i.e., they can't shuffle state funds around. Language allowing Stimulus II dollars to pay for police and firemen didn't make it out of the Senate. Yet Democratic leaders persist in saying that their latest stimulus has helped keep police and firefighters on the job. The claim is flatly untrue.

By overselling the stimulus before its passage in 2009 and exaggerating its benefits with layer upon layer of slippery half-truths in 2010, Mr. Obama has made voters angrier. This is not America's summer of recovery; it is a summer of economic discontent that will ensure that Democrats take a pounding in the midterm elections.

Children's Hospitals plans to cut up to 250 jobs - "The provider - with campuses in Minneapolis and St. Paul - said Wednesday the down economy is forcing more children to rely on Medicaid."

Nearly 400 StarKist Co. cannery workers lose jobs - "StarKist has had to contend with federally mandated minimum wage increases. Butler says other costs are also rising in such areas as utilities and transportation."

Northrop Grumman announces more layoffs - "The Los Angeles-based company said it would reduce its work staff by 642 at its shipbuilding operations in Pascagoula, Miss., or about 5.8% of the facilities total workforce. That follows a notification earlier this month that it would layoff 300 employees at its facilities in Avondale, La., and Tallulah, La."

Janitors protest layoffs in LA's Century City - "Los Angeles police spokesman Richard French said about 300 people rallied outside JP Morgan Chase-owned Century Plaza Thursday afternoon and 13 were arrested for allegedly blocking traffic. He says the arrests were without incident. The custodians and their supporters from SEIU United Service Workers West called on JP Morgan to rehire their cleaning staff."

Layoffs hit employees at county job center - "A Cumberland County government office that helps people find work is itself laying off eight staff members this fall, and the number might have been higher."

Meriter: Public program shortfalls force job cuts- "Meriter Hospital said it's not immune to the tough economy, laying off 57 employees.Meriter said it expects to lose about $57 million in 10 years once Health Care Reform is in place."

13 States That Just Got Slammed With Massive Layoffs - "We've mined through to find the states with the most massive layoff events. A massive layoff event means 50 employees have filed for unemployment within 5-weeks, all from the same company. We've also highlighted July's initial unemployment claims, and examples of layoffs hitting each state."

10 Leading Retailers Close Stores; Exodus of Small Retailers Amidst Signs of "Free Rent"; 700,000 Drop Cable TV Subscriptions - "Signs of weak consumer discretionary spending are popping up in multiple places."

When Rome was "falling," did it feel like it? When all of the tasty, leafy fronds started vanishing, did the dinosaurs say, "So this is what extinction looks like"? When British troops signed up for a quick war, they expected to be "home by Christmas." They certainly didn't say "goodbye to all that" -- in the words of Robert Graves -- until long after they realized "all that" had in fact disappeared.

I'm beginning to wonder if the political moment is much, much, more significant than most of us realize. The rules may have changed in ways no one would have predicted two years ago. And perhaps 10 years from now we'll look back on this moment and it will all seem so obvious.

In 2008, American liberalism seemed poised for its comeback. The pendulum of Arthur Schlesinger's "cycle of history" was swinging back toward a new progressive era. Obama would be the liberal Reagan.

Now that all looks preposterous. Of course, considerable blame can be laid at a White House that seems confused about how to relate to the American people when the American people don't share the White House's ideological agenda. Indeed, the White House seems particularly gifted at generating issues that put it crosswise with the majority of voters, from the Arizona immigration lawsuit to the cotton-mouthed explanations about whether or not it considers NASA's primary mission to be boosting the self-esteem of Muslim youth.

But it would be foolish to over-read the importance of much of that. Politicians are sometimes dealt bad cards and play them well and sometimes they are dealt good cards and play them badly. But the basic political rules stay the same.

But what about when the rules change? For nearly a century now, the rules have said that tough economic times make big government more popular. For more than 40 years it has been a rule that environmental disasters -- and scares over alleged ones -- help environmentalists push tighter regulations. According to the rules, Americans never want to let go of an entitlement once they have it. According to the rules, populism is a force for getting the government to do more, not less. According to the rules, Americans don't care about the deficit during a recession.

And yet none of these rules seem to be applying; at least not too strongly. Big government seems more unpopular today than ever. The Gulf oil spill should be a Gaiasend for environmentalists, and yet three quarters of the American people oppose Obama's drilling ban. Sixty percent of likely voters want their newly minted right to health care repealed. Unlike Europe, where protestors take to the streets to save their cushy perks and protect a large welfare state, the Tea Party protestors have been taking to the streets to trim back government.

But even on the continent the rules are changing. European governments have turned into deficit hawks to the point where the American president feels the need to lecture them on their stinginess.

Of course, he increasingly feels the same need here at home as our out-of-control debt is becoming a live issue, despite the fact that voters should be clamoring -- according to the rules -- for more taxpayer-funded jobs.

Barack Obama recently recruited Bill Clinton to stump for the Democrats as a surrogate because the former president is more popular than the current one. It's ironic because candidate Obama had once disparaged the Clinton presidency as not ambitious enough. Obama wanted to be a liberal Reagan who would reverse the rising conservative tide in American politics (just as he would reverse the rise of the oceans), not be the sort of president who accepted the tide and merely navigated its currents.

But is it really so outlandish to imagine that Bill Clinton, a creature spawned from politics like a golem from clay, had a better sense of political reality than the ivory tower intellectual currently occupying the White House? Clinton proclaimed the era of Big Government was over, and left office quite popular. Barack Obama said, in effect, "Oh no it's not" and his presidency and his party are in freefall, despite an economic climate that, according to the rules, says he should be not only running the table but be popular for it.

As a conservative, I'm very reluctant to believe that the rules change easily or often. And there's no end of explanations for the political climate that would leave the rules intact. But it's just becoming harder and harder to shake the feeling that something bigger than politics as usual is at work.

A speech by Geert Wilders (Chairman, Party for Freedom, the Netherlands ), at the Four Seasons, New York , introducing an Alliance of Patriots and announcing the Facing Jihad Conference in Jerusalem .

I come to America with a mission. All is not well in the old world. There is a tremendous danger looming, and it is very difficult to be optimistic. We might be in the final stages of the Islamization of Europe. This not only is a clear and present danger to the future of Europe itself, it is a threat to America and the sheer survival of the West. The United States as the last bastion of Western civilization, facing an Islamic Europe.

First I will describe the situation on the ground in Europe . Then, I will say a few things about Islam. To close I will tell you about a meeting in Jerusalem .

You have probably seen the landmarks. But in all of these cities, sometimes a few blocks away from your tourist destination, there is another world. It is the world of the parallel society created by Muslim mass-migration.

All throughout Europe a new reality is rising: entire Muslim neighborhoods where very few indigenous people reside or are even seen. And if they are, they might regret it. This goes for the police as well. It's the world of head scarves, where women walk around in figure-less tents, with baby strollers and a group of children. Their husbands, or slaveholders if you prefer, walk three steps ahead. With mosques on many street corners. The shops have signs you and I cannot read. You will be hard-pressed to find any economic activity. These are Muslim ghettos controlled by religious fanatics. These are Muslim neighborhoods, and they are mushrooming in every city across Europe . These are the building-blocks for territorial control of increasingly larger portions of Europe , street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, city by city.

There are now thousands of mosques throughout Europe . With larger congregations than there are in churches. And in every European city there are plans to build super-mosques that will dwarf every church in the region. Clearly, the signal is: we rule.

Many European cities are already one-quarter Muslim: just take Amsterdam, Marseilles and Malmo in Sweden . In many cities the majority of the under-18 population is Muslim. Paris is now surrounded by a ring of Muslim neighborhoods. Mohammad is the most popular name among boys in many cities.

In some elementary schools in Amsterdam the farm can no longer be mentioned, because that would also mean mentioning the pig, and that would be an insult to Muslims.

Many state schools in Belgium and Denmark only serve halal food to all pupils. In once-tolerant Amsterdam gays are beaten up almost exclusively by Muslims. Non-Muslim women routinely hear 'whore, whore'. Satellite dishes are not pointed to local TV stations, but to stations in the country of origin. In France school teachers are advised to avoid authors deemed offensive to Muslims, including Voltaire and Diderot; the same is increasingly true of Darwin . The history of the Holocaust can no longer be taught because of Muslim sensitivity.

In England sharia courts are now officially part of the British legal system. Many neighborhoods in France are no-go areas for women without head scarves. Last week a man almost died after being beaten up by Muslims in Brussels , because he was drinking during the Ramadan.

Jews are fleeing France in record numbers, on the run for the worst wave of anti-Semitism since World War II. French is now commonly spoken on the streets of Tel Aviv and Netanya , Israel . I could go on forever with stories like this. Stories about Islamization.

A total of fifty-four million Muslims now live in Europe . San Diego University recently calculated that a staggering 25 percent of the population in Europe will be Muslim just 12 years from now. Bernhard Lewis has predicted a Muslim majority by the end of this century.

Now these are just numbers. And the numbers would not be threatening if the Muslim-immigrants had a strong desire to assimilate. But there are few signs of that. The Pew Research Center reported that half of French Muslims see their loyalty to Islam as greater than their loyalty to France . One-third of French Muslims do not object to suicide attacks. The British Centre for Social Cohesion reported that one-third of British Muslim students are in favor of a worldwide caliphate. Muslims demand what they call 'respect'. And this is how we give them respect. We have Muslim official state holidays.

The Christian-Democratic attorney general is willing to accept sharia in the Netherlands if there is a Muslim majority. We have cabinet members with passports from Morocco and Turkey.

Muslim demands are supported by unlawful behavior, ranging from petty crimes and random violence, for example against ambulance workers and bus drivers, to small-scale riots. Paris has seen its uprising in the low-income suburbs, the banlieus. I call the perpetrators 'settlers'. Because that is what they are. They do not come to integrate into our societies; they come to integrate our society into their Dar-al-Islam. Therefore, they are settlers.

Much of this street violence I mentioned is directed exclusively against non-Muslims, forcing many native people to leave their neighborhoods, their cities, their countries. Moreover, Muslims are now a swing vote not to be ignored.

The second thing you need to know is the importance of Mohammed the prophet. His behavior is an example to all Muslims and cannot be criticized.. Now, if Mohammed had been a man of peace, let us say like Ghandi and Mother Theresa wrapped in one, there would be no problem. But Mohammed was a warlord, a mass murderer, a pedophile, and had several marriages - at the same time. Islamic tradition tells us how he fought in battles, how he had his enemies murdered and even had prisoners of war executed. Mohammed himself slaughtered the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza. If it is good for Islam, it is good. If it is bad for Islam, it is bad.

Let no one fool you about Islam being a religion. Sure, it has a god, and a here-after, and 72 virgins. But in its essence Islam is a political ideology. It is a system that lays down detailed rules for society and the life of every person. Islam wants to dictate every aspect of life.. Islam means 'submission'. Islam is not compatible with freedom and democracy, because what it strives for is sharia. If you want to compare Islam to anything, compare it to communism or national-socialism, these are all totalitarian ideologies.

Now you know why Winston Churchill called Islam 'the most retrograde force in the world', and why he compared Mein Kampf to the Quran.The public has wholeheartedly accepted the Palestinian narrative, and sees Israel as the aggressor. I have lived in this country and visited it dozens of times. I support Israel . First, because it is the Jewish homeland after two thousand years of exile up to and including Auschwitz, second because it is a democracy, and third because Israel is our first line of defense.

This tiny country is situated on the fault line of jihad, frustrating Islam's territorial advance. Israel is facing the front lines of jihad, like Kashmir, Kosovo, the Philippines , Southern Thailand, Darfur in Sudan , Lebanon , and Aceh in Indonesia . Israel is simply in the way. The same way West-Berlin was during the Cold War.

The war against Israel is not a war against Israel . It is a war against the West. It is jihad. Israel is simply receiving the blows that are meant for all of us. If there would have been no Israel , Islamic imperialism would have found other venues to release its energy and its desire for conquest. Thanks to Israeli parents who send their children to the army and lay awake at night, parents in Europe and America can sleep well and dream, unaware of the dangers looming.

Many in Europe argue in favor of abandoning Israel in order to address the grievances of our Muslim minorities. But if Israel were, God forbid, to go down, it would not bring any solace to the West. It would not mean our Muslim minorities would all of a sudden change their behavior, and accept our values. On the contrary, the end of Israel would give enormous encouragement to the forces of Islam. They would, and rightly so, see the demise of Israel as proof that the West is weak, and doomed. The end of Israel would not mean the end of our problems with Islam, but only the beginning. It would mean the start of the final battle for world domination. If they can get Israel , they can get everything. So-called journalists volunteer to label any and all critics of Islamization as a 'right-wing extremists' or 'racists'. In my country, the Netherlands , 60 percent of the population now sees the mass immigration of Muslims as the number one policy mistake since World War II. And another 60 percent sees Islam as the biggest threat. Yet there is a greater danger than terrorist attacks, the scenario of America as the last man standing. The lights may go out in Europe faster than you can imagine. An Islamic Europe means a Europe without freedom and democracy, an economic wasteland, an intellectual nightmare, and a loss of military might for America - as its allies will turn into enemies, enemies with atomic bombs. With an Islamic Europe, it would be up to America alone to preserve the heritage of Rome, Athens and Jerusalem .

Dear friends, liberty is the most precious of gifts. My generation never had to fight for this freedom, it was offered to us on a silver platter, by people who fought for it with their lives. All throughout Europe , American cemeteries remind us of the young boys who never made it home, and whose memory we cherish. My generation does not own this freedom; we are merely its custodians. We can only hand over this hard won liberty to Europe 's children in the same state in which it was offered to us. We cannot strike a deal with mullahs and imams. Future generations would never forgive us. We cannot squander our liberties. We simply do not have the right to do so.

We have to take the necessary action now to stop this Islamic stupidity from destroying the free world that we know.

If George W. Bush had doubled the national debt, which had taken more than two centuries to accumulate, in one year, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had then proposed to double the debt again within 10 years, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had criticized a state law that he admitted he never even read, would you think that he is just an ignorant hot head?

If George W. Bush joined the country of Mexico and sued a state in the United States to force that state to continue to allow illegal immigration, would you question his patriotism and wonder who's side he was on?

If George W. Bush had put 87000 workers out of work by arbitrarily placing a moratorium on offshore oil drilling on companies that have one of the best safety records of any industry because one company had an accident would you have agreed?

If George W. Bush had used a forged document as the basis of the moratorium that would render 87000 American workers unemployed would you support him?

If George W. Bush had been the first President to need a "TelePrompter" installed to be able to get through a press conference, would you have laughed and said this is more proof of how inept he is on his own and is really controlled by smarter men behind the scenes?

If George W. Bush had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to take Laura Bush to a play in NYC, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had reduced your retirement plan's holdings of GM stock by 90% and given the unions a majority stake in GM, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had made a joke at the expense of the Special Olympics, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had given Gordon Brown a set of inexpensive and incorrectly formatted DVDs, when Gordon Brown had given him a thoughtful and historically significant gift, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had given the Queen of England an iPod containing videos of his speeches, would you have thought this embarrassingly narcissistic and tacky?

If George W. Bush had bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had visited Austria and made reference to the nonexistent "Austrian language," would you have brushed it off as a minor slip?

If George W. Bush had filled his cabinet and circle of advisers with people who cannot seem to keep current in their income taxes, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had stated that there were 57 states in the United States, would you have said that he is clueless?

If George W. Bush would have flown all the way to Denmark to make a five minute speech about how the Olympics would benefit him walking out his front door in Texas, would you have thought he was a self important, conceited, egotistical jerk?

If George W. Bush had been so Spanish illiterate as to refer to "Cinco de Cuatro" ("the 5th of 4"?) in front of the Mexican ambassador when it was the "Cinco de Mayo" (the 5th of May), and continued to flub it when he tried again, would you have winced in embarrassment?

If George W. Bush had misspelled the word "advice" would you have hammered him for it for years like Dan Quayle and potatoes as proof of what a dunce he is?

If George W. Bush had burned 9,000 gallons of jet fuel to go plant a single tree on Earth Day, would you have concluded he's a hypocrite?

If George W. Bush's administration had okayed Air Force One flying low over millions of people followed by a jet fighter in downtown Manhattan causing widespread panic, would you have wondered whether they actually get what happened on 9-11?

If George W. Bush had failed to send relief aid to flood victims throughout the Midwest with more people killed or made homeless than in New Orleans, would you want it made into a major ongoing political issue with claims of racism and incompetence?

If George W. Bush had created the position of 32 Czars who report directly to him, bypassing the House and Senate on much of what is happening in America, would you have approved.

If George W. Bush had ordered the firing of the CEO of a major corporation, even though he had no constitutional authority to do so, would you have approved?

So, tell me again, what is it about Obama that makes him so brilliant and impressive?

Don't worry. He's done all this in 15 months -- you still have two years & nine months to come up with an answer.

[Every statement and event above is factual and directly attributable to Barrack Hussein Obama.]

The sad fact, the fact no one wants to deal with but which the Ground Zero mosque debate has forced to the fore, is that Qaradawi is a moderate. So is Feisal Rauf, who endorses the Qaradawi position - the mainstream Islamic position - that sharia is a nonnegotiable requirement. Rauf wins the coveted "moderate" designation because he strains, at least when speaking for Western consumption, to paper over the incompatibility between sharia societies and Western societies.

Qaradawi and Rauf are "moderates" because we've abandoned reason. Our opinion elites are happy to paper over the gulf between "reformist" Islam and the "reformist" approval of mass-murder attacks. That's why it matters not a whit to them that Imam Rauf refuses to renounce Hamas: If you're going to give a pass to Qaradawi, the guy who actively promotes Hamas terrorists, how can you complain about a guy who merely refuses to condemn the terrorists?

When we are rational, we have confidence in our own frame of reference. We judge what is moderate based on a detached, commonsense understanding of what "moderate" means. We're not rigging the outcome; we just want to know where we stand.

If we were in that objective frame of mind, we would easily see that a freedom culture requires separation of the spiritual from the secular. We would also see that sharia - with dictates that contradict liberty and equality while sanctioning cruel punishments and holy war - is not moderate. Consequently, no one who advocates sharia can be a moderate, no matter how well-meaning he may be, no matter how heartfelt may be his conviction that this is God's will, and no matter how much higher on the food chain he may be than Osama bin Laden.

Instead, abandoning reason, we have deep-sixed our own frame of reference and substituted mainstream Islam's. If that backward compass is to be our guide, then sure, Qaradawi and Rauf are moderates. But know this: When you capitulate to the authority and influence of Qaradawi and Rauf, you kill meaningful Islamic reform.

There is no moderate Islam in the mainstream of Muslim life, not in the doctrinal sense. There are millions of moderate Muslims who crave reform. Yet the fact that they seek real reform, rather than what Georgetown is content to call reform, means they are trying to invent something that does not currently exist.

Real reform can also be found in some Muslim sects. The Ahmadi, for example, hold some unorthodox views and reject violent jihad. Witness what happens: They are brutally persecuted by Muslims in Pakistan, as well as in Indonesia and other purported hubs of moderation.

Meanwhile, individual Muslim reformers are branded apostates, meaning not only that they are discredited, but that their lives are threatened as well. The signal to other Muslims is clear: Follow the reformers and experience the same fury. As Qaradawi put it in the 2005 interview, public apostates are "the gravest danger" to Islamic society; therefore, Muslims must snuff them out, lest their reforms "spread like wildfire in a field of thorns."

Today, "moderate Islam" is an illusion. There is hardly a spark, much less a wildfire. Making moderation real will take more than wishing upon a star. It calls for a gut check, a willingness to face down not just al-Qaeda but the Qaradawis and their sharia campaign. It means saying: Not here.

To journalists, fifth anniversaries are irresistible. They are "a good time for taking stock," but, more important, they're predictable: you can schedule the logistics and the coverage in advance and avoid last-minute airfares. (Why else do political conventions still get airtime?) So, on this fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the near drowning of New Orleans, as the media revisits certain pre-determined themes, here are five myths about the disaster that you should keep in mind-because the talking heads aren't always right.

MYTH 1: What happened to New Orleans at the end of August 2005 was a natural disaster.

There was definitely a disaster directly related to Hurricane Katrina, but that catastrophe occurred on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, where the storm came ashore as a Category 3. In one day, towns such as Bay St. Louis, Pass Christian, and Biloxi were flattened by high winds and waves. The next day, cleanup started.

When Katrina passed east of New Orleans (the hurricane was not a direct hit), the storm was likely a Category 1 or a Category 2. Check the final report by the National Hurricane Center for verification. Yet 80 percent of the city was flooded, and the city wasn't "unwatered"-to use Army Corps of Engineers terminology-for up to six weeks.

Two independent teams of scientists and engineers investigated the cause of the flooding, and they reached remarkably similar conclusions. The event, they agreed, was a man-made disaster-the result of more than four

decades' worth of mistakes, misjudgments, and misfeasance by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency tasked by Congress to build a hurricane protection system for the city. Had the system worked correctly, one of the investigators said, the worst effect of Katrina on New Orleans would have been "wet ankles."

It's easy to argue that Louisiana is in the big leagues of corruption, along with Illinois (several governors imprisoned) and New Jersey (you talkin' to me?), among other states. People are wondering if U.S. attorney Jim Letten may soon be stalking the corridors of city hall like the grim reaper, carrying a scythe with former mayor Ray Nagin's name on it. But local and state government had minimal involvement with the design and construction of the hurricane protection system. That responsibility rested firmly with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The local levee boards, responsible for keeping the grass mowed, have been totally reformed in the wake of the flood, and now have a cadre of professionals bird-dogging the Corps's work.

It's true that most of those killed by the floodwaters were the poor, the old, and the sick. But when almost all of a metropolitan area is underwater, it's equally true that the victims are black and white and Creole and Vietnamese, and rich, poor, and middle class. Television crews had an easy freeway off-ramp to the Superdome and the Convention Center, but they didn't know how to get to neighboring St. Bernard Parish, a suburb where working-class white folks spent four days on their roofs in 100-degree heat with no food and water-a parish where nearly 90 percent of the housing was destroyed. Of course, recovery was easier for people with resources, whether family, neighbors, the wonderful volunteers, insurance, or checks from the Road Home. But recovery wasn't easy for anyone.

That's the Barbara Bush notion, first uttered when evacuees were spread across the floor of the Houston Astrodome. It reflected, to be polite, a strong imaginative vision. Amazingly, almost five years later, we have nothing more substantial to guide us on this subject. There is no authoritative census or directory of those who were bused, trained, or choppered out of harm's way on a one-way trip to no-one-knew-where. We have anecdotal data-a friend who works in New Orleans's housing department says her phone rings "off the hook" every day with people who want to return-but no comprehensive idea about how many of the evacuees are happier in their new locales, and how many ache to come home.

MYTH 5: The primary government failure in Katrina was the response, and Bush is responsible.

Well, President Bush was primarily responsible for the FEMA meltdown, although Michael "Heckuva Job" Brown, the head of the agency at the time, was a human piñata hung out for the media to pummel. His boss, then secretary of homeland security Michael Chertoff, attended a bird-flu briefing in Atlanta the day after Katrina hit, without any negative media coverage. Chertoff now heads a security consulting firm that sells high-priced full-body scanners for airports to the government. (Ask the Israelis why they don't use the machines.) The primary government failure in Katrina was the failed hurricane protection system, designed and constructed under administrations of both parties. There was plenty political about this catastrophe, but nothing partisan.

And, in the New Orleans tradition of "lagniappe" (like a 13th donut when buying a dozen), here's a BONUS MYTH: The American news media did a great job covering Katrina, putting the suffering on live television and speaking truth to power. Yes, Louisiana senator Mary Landrieu got a good stern talking-to, but, starting with a startling ignorance about the city's geography ("I'm here in the French Quarter," said a CNN reporter in the Central Business District on August 29, 2005) and widening out to a primary philosophical problem-"We just think the emotional stories are more compelling for our audience," one anchor told me-the American media matched its credulous, embed-me-first performance during the Iraq-war runup with another basic failure. At least the Times and the Post apologized about Iraq.

Pamela Geller wants to run some ads against the Ground Zero mosque; and NYC is against her using 9/11 images.

The mainstream media has deliberately ignored the fact that there is legitimate basis for fear of mosques - as it is a demonstrable fact that mosques and Muslims have been disproportionately connected to terrorism in this country and around the world, a fact that the media won't report.

Auster notes, "To say that moderate Islam is the solution to radical Islam implies several things: that moderate Islam exists; that it represents the true (though perhaps currently disregarded) norm of Islam; and that radical Islam is a departure from that norm."

Van Jones “Color of Change” group, which looks to fight FoxNews and the TEA party types, of course, lies about FoxNews and about the TEA party.

If you think your state is broke now, just wait until the pension bomb explodes:

I live near Houston, so this is a local story for me. Apparently, our voting machines got burned up here only days after fraud allegations. I have not heard any local news story mention the fraud allegations.

RUSH: Andrew Breitbart's Big Peace website has a story here from Andrea Lafferty. We've heard this happening a lot, but it happened again at the rallies for the mosque on Sunday in New York. She writes, "On Sunday I was honored to be a speaker at the rally against building the mosque at ground zero put on by the Coalition to Honor Ground Zero. As the rally concluded, thousands of the participants marched the one block from the rally site to the actual site of Ground Zero. I noticed a man in black shirt with a phone camera aggressively questioning and haranguing a gentleman with the sign, 'No Sharia Here.' He was very aggressive, disrespectful and condescending; apparently, he did not like the gentlemen's answers about Shariah and pushed the point: 'Why do you feel threatened? What are you afraid of? Why can't you answer my questions?'

"My instincts told me to document the scene, and I took out my camera. I originally thought he was a supporter of the mosque (they'd gathered in much smaller numbers a few blocks away), or some kind of fringe reporter for a small, even fringier leftist paper. When I challenged the man in the black shirt, asking him to tell me what media outlet he worked for, he refused to answer. He walked away. But there was cameraman was standing nearby, watching the scene play out. When I asked, he said he worked for ABC News. I then asked if the man in the black shirt was with him. The ABC cameraman said, 'yes.' Sure enough, a few blocks away, I observed the man in the black shirt getting into an ABC News truck and putting on the sound equipment. When he saw me with my camera, he attempted to hide. At that time it became clear the man in the black shirt was an employee of ABC News. The ABC cameraman also witnessed his colleague's aggressive behavior -- and did nothing to stop him. Clearly, the ABC employee's role at the rally was to provoke a confrontation with participants so ABC News cameras could record it and then use the footage. The ABC employee was literally making news."

You have an ABC guy dressed up like a protester. There's a picture of him here, long haired that's been cut, maggot infested dope smoking FM type and he's got a cell phone camera, nothing to identify himself as a member of the press. He's engaging some guy carrying a sign in conversation and trying to provoke this guy into taking action that would look bad on television. He's trying to make himself out just to be an average protester when in fact he was a so-called journalist at ABC. ABC's been known to try things like this. What was the supermarket chain in Georgia where they sent some people in there disguised as customers? Food Lion. They tried to go into the supermarket and create all kinds of havoc as customers, when in fact they were undercover ABC journalists. There was nothing going on 'til they showed up and they tried to create a scene and report it as though it was spontaneous, and this is exactly what they were doing at the protests around the mosque area on Sunday. It used to be the journalist would tell you, "Hi, I'm out to screw you from ABC News." Now they just show up looking like you or trying to look like you and to get you to act in such a way as you otherwise wouldn't if they hadn't approached you and then do a news story on what a complete wacko and creep you are. Standard Drive-By Media technique.

RUSH: Richie in Raleigh, North Carolina, welcome to Open Line Friday on Thursday. Hi.

CALLER: Hi. Good afternoon, Rush. You mentioned about an hour ago an incident that happened by the mosque and an ABC News reporter. Well, I was sitting on a chair and almost fell off of it because it gave me a flashback from 40 years ago. I used to work in the downtown Manhattan area, and at that time there were a lot of anti-war and war protests in that area across from the stock exchange on Wall Street. Well, there was a young ABC News reporter, and it just so happens the same day that there was an anti-war protest there was sort of a pro-military, pro-USA protest, mostly construction workers at that end of it versus college students. And there was a young ABC News reporter that did almost the same thing that you mentioned an hour ago.

CALLER: Yeah, ABC Eyewitness News. And basically at that time it was the NBC station Channel 4 versus 7, and they would try to outdo each other on news reports.

CALLER: And this young ABC News reporter, about 37 years old, was in front of 40 Wall Street, which is diagonally from the New York Stock Exchange at 11 Wall Street. There was a protest going on, and it ended very peacefully. Well, this news reported wanted to get some film video footage for his Eyewitness News that evening, and he tried to get together both the anti-war protesters and the protesters and the pro-military protesters together and wave their signs and start shouting at each other. It didn't work.

CALLER: Something to do with that station and even 40 years later it still happens.

RUSH: I know. Manufactured news, nothing's happened, make it happen. You gotta say one thing for Geraldo though. Forty years and that jaw line has remained intact. I mean that makes me jealous.

RUSH: Now, Andy McCarthy, National Review Online, one of the editors over there, I mean this is a great, great piece. His headline: "Inventing Moderate Islam -- It can't be done without confronting mainstream Islam and its Sharia agenda." It's a long piece, but McCarthy says we're being force-fed the idea there are moderate Muslims pouring out of our elite, totally bought-off universities. And McCarthy explains there's no such thing as a moderate Muslim. Now wait 'til the Drive-Bys get hold of this piece. I mean they're going to literally freak out. It is a long, long piece. But the point is there's no such thing as moderate Islam. One of the things McCarthy says taught him this -- as we've discussed countless times in the program -- Andy McCarthy was on the US attorney's staff, the US attorney's office prosecuting the blind sheik. And in preparing for the trials, he listened and read what the blind sheik, Omar Abdel Rahman had said, some of the most incendiary, provocative, violence-inducing things he had said.

McCarthy said, (paraphrasing) "We're obviously dealing with a kook here. So I want to find out just how far off the reservation of Islam this guy is." So he took some of the most outrageous things that Omar Abdel Rahman had said and went looking for what the counterpart could be

in the Koran. And McCarthy said that he was bowled over, he was shocked that there wasn't any exaggeration, that everything the sheik was saying, all these claims, all these threats, he could find every one of them in the Koran. He said, "My gosh, we're not dealing with a kook here. This is a mainstream Islamist who wanted to blow up subways and so forth in New York, the World Trade Center back in the nineties." So there's a wide disparity here once again between the ruling class and everybody else over who these people are. This is why I believe we're looking here at almost a reincarnation of the Cold War. We've got the Russians, the Soviets, and the American elite, the academics and everybody else thinking, "Oh, they're harmless people. In fact, it's a great system if we just get the right people running it. It's all about fairness and equality."

Meanwhile, the rest of the people see that people are slaughtered in communist countries, they build walls to keep 'em in. They kill 'em and they put 'em in jail if they don't toe the party line. And we're saying how can our elites look at this and find anything admirable in it, anything they want to emulate. And we're at a loss. Then Ronald Reagan comes along, starts calling the evil empire and the people in the ruling class literally start having cows. Reagan makes jokes before taping a Saturday radio address, "Tell the Russians the bombing starts in five minutes." They literally had a cow Reagan was gonna start a nuclear war with these people. Gorbachev was the savior. Gorbachev was the man that was gonna save the world from nuclear disaster. Reagan was gonna cause it, he was the cowboy. So you have this great divide, and you've got the same thing now. You've got Bloomberg and the pro-mosque people thinking that this is nothing more than a freedom of worship issue, a freedom of religion issue, when they don't care about that in the first place anyway. Versus the rest of the country that says, wait a minute, now, 2700 Americans died on that site, something here doesn't compute with those of us who live in the world of common sense.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. I'm thinking to myself that if McCarthy is right and there's no such thing as moderate Islam, then we know Barack Obama, uh, is not a Muslim, because he hasn't honor-killed his wife for showing too much skin yet or either of his daughters for any of the naughty things that I'm sure they've done. So that settles the whole Barack-Obama-is-a-Muslim issue. But, um, as far as --

RUSH: No, no, no. Wait a minute. You gotta start here at the beginning. I'm not sure I was able to follow your "brilliance" on this.

CALLER: Then by now Barack Obama surely would have had his wife honor-killed for showing too much skin in some of those dresses she wears or wearing a bikini or something like that, right?

RUSH: I, frankly, hadn't looked at it that way. You're looking at this through a prism that not even I, El Rushbo, am looking at it through.

CALLER: (snickering) Well, anyway, let's get to the Cordoba House because I heard you say yesterday that of course they have the right, just as the West Baptist ministers have the right to shout their foolery at the soldiers' funerals. But are you going to come out and defend them for it? Well, I think the difference here is that there the West Baptist ministers are the bad guys. Here, liberals like myself argue that Muslims that are trying to reach across the divide and that regret that 9/11 ever happened, they're the good guys. They're the guys that we need on our side. So I guess my question to you would be: Is there any Muslim anywhere on earth that you would feel okay opening up a mosque near Ground Zero, and if you can't identify a Muslim, should we deny Christians the right to go to Auschwitz since Christians perpetuated... (sic)

RUSH: No, wait a minute. The burden of proof is not on me. The question really needs to be asked of people like you. "What are the Westboro protesters doing wrong?" The people that show up at soldiers' funerals and say they deserved to die or whatever, what are they doing wrong?

CALLER: (snickers) They're screaming outrageously offensive things and elevating --

RUSH: Wait a second. Isn't the problem that they are being insensitive to the dead soldiers. When they show up at military funerals and say they deserve to die and have all these offensive signs, isn't the problem they're being insensitive to the dead soldiers?

CALLER: I wouldn't characterize it as that. I would say they're being very, very selfish in elevating their own political-religious agenda above that of the families that are grieving.

RUSH: No, no. That's not the point. The point is they have the right to do it. I simply ask: Is it proper? Is it sensitive? Does it make sense? How is that any different?

CALLER: What I'm saying to you is that my problem with the West Baptists... I have no problem with those, folks, although I do see they have the right. I think it's wrong, but what they are doing is wrong. I don't think what the (pause) Rauf guy is doing is wrong. He's trying to bridge a divide between, you know, Americans that were hurt by 9/11 --

RUSH: Let me tell you something. Mike, you are epitomizing the real fundamental problem we have in this country. You are a leftist, and you want to side every chance you get against your country. If they were really interested in bridging a divide, they would not build the mosque. They can see the polling data. They can see that most of the Americans whom they want to build a bridge to do not want the mosque at Ground Zero. They're not opposed to the mosque anywhere in the country, but they don't want it there. Now, if they're really interested in bridging a divide, then they would listen and not do it there. The fact that they are not listening means they are purposely trying to provoke. There's no difference in these guys and carrying signs like the Westboro gang at dead soldiers' funerals, mocking it. There's no difference whatsoever. The fact that you, as an American liberal, somehow don't see this is the epitome of the problem our country faces. You pose a much bigger threat to this country's future as it exists than this imam ever will.

RUSH: A quick question, ladies and gentlemen. Somebody help me out with this. Can anybody anywhere recall for me the last time the American left stood up for the right of any other religion? When have they stood up for Catholicism? When has the American left stood up for Judaism? When has the American left stood up for Mormons? Last I heard they're trying to tear down Mitt Romney and Mormons. Can anybody name for me anywhere, any time the American left has stood up for the right of any other religion? I can't. Now, is that because Islam is the first anti-American, anti-Western religion? Could it be that the American left and liberals like our caller stand up for Islam because it is an anti-American, anti-Western religion, and they identify with it? And they look at them as a minority, as victims, oppressed by Western civilization. Howard Fineman called Mitt Romney a back-stabbing throat cutter.

Now, there's also another possibility to explain the American left's newfound love of religion, 'cause it is, the American left's newfound devotion to religion, specifically Islam. As I have just illustrated, the American left really doesn't like any religion. But they hate conservatism more. The American left hates conservatives more than they hate religion generically. In the Hamasque issue, the American left sees conservatives opposed to it, and therefore since they hate us more than they hate anybody else, they have to support the mosque. 'Cause, frankly, I don't think they care. This is the first time I've ever heard the American left be so devoted to defending a religion. I don't remember it. I can't think of a time. Mostly the American left acts scared to death of it. Separation, church and state, I mean what the hell's the purpose of the ACLU? What's the purpose of Barry Lynn? The purpose is to wipe out religion. The Southern Poverty Law Center, all of these groups exist basically attacking right-wing religious people. They do it under the guise of racism, bigotry, being opposed to all that. But now all of a sudden out of the blue, the biggest supporters of a mosque and Islam are the American left. Even if you were to tell 'em, "Hey, hey, hey, hey, there's no separation of church and state in Islam," it wouldn't matter. They oppose us. They hate us more than they hate anything else.

The American left -- let's be honest about it -- the American left considers us a greater threat than Al-Qaeda. Well, that's a question that's always puzzled me. How can the leftist females in this country, the NAGs, the NOW gang, how in the world can they intellectually, honestly support Islam, with what happens to women in Islamic countries? And yet not a word because conservatives, to them, pose a greater threat. They hate us. And this notion that Islam is a minority, it's the largest religion in the world, but yet they look at Islam as an oppressed minority because they consider America the world's greatest oppressor and conservatives are part and parcel of that.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. It's an honor to talk to you. God bless you and your work, sir.

CALLER: When I heard there's no such thing as a moderate Muslim my ears perked up because I've long thought that, but you never, ever hear it. When you compared it to the Cold War I know what you're saying, and I don't disagree with you, but I think that could be nuanced a little bit because I think that it is infinitely more dangerous than the Cold War.

CALLER: Primarily because of the fundamental ideology of Islam versus a Judeo-Christian mind-set. Even though many communist people were suppressed for years and years with their religion, it still didn't change what's in their hearts and minds as right and wrong and how to go about achieving their worldview. They saw communism, they saw the falseness of communism after a while, and yet Gorbachev was a big help in this, but I think it's infinitely more dangerous because that ideology, I don't know how they can be reconciled, the Judeo-Christian ideology and the Islam ideology --

RUSH: Well, wait a minute. You couldn't reconcile communism. Communism has to get rid of all religion. If you take 'em outside the United States, communists hate Muslims, too, because they're religious. I mean who was it that was battling the Mujahideen in Afghanistan? It was the Soviets. Who was it that was causing trouble for the Muslim Serbs and so forth? The Soviet Union was behind all this. The communists have to wipe out God. The state replaces God in communism.

CALLER: Right. But people that were suppressed by communism, they are different than the people who are suppressed by Islam. Their basic ideology is different.

RUSH: No, no, I get it now. The people who follow communism are not following their religion. They're oppressed and really would like to get out of it. The people following Islam are big believers.

CALLER: The mind-set is different. I mean it's to proselytize the world. There's no building bridges. Your last caller talked about building bridges, and I agree with you, when are some people gonna get it through their thick heads that they don't view it as building a bridge. They can talk about breaking down divisions but in reality whether it's active or whether it's under the table and quiet and kind of stealth, there are no building bridges. Their basic ideology is to just convert the world and that's not getting along with other people. You know, you see other faiths doing that. They disagree on many things but they try to get along. That's not the basic premise here and I don't remember anything on a wide scale where Islam --

RUSH: I understand what you're doing. You're separating leadership from rank-and-file. I understand your point here, but in terms of communism's leaders versus Islam's leaders the communists are trying to convert everybody. The communists are trying to defeat all opposition. And that's what Sharia law is all about in Islam.

RUSH: I just want to clarify something Andy McCarthy said. He did not say that there aren't any moderate Muslims. He says in his piece that there are millions of moderate Muslims. What he says is there's no moderate Islam, that the doctrine is not moderate for all the reasons we've been detailing, i.e., separation church and state. For example, what does the ICLU say about all this, the Islamic Civil Liberties Union? There isn't one. We have an ACLU but there is not an Islamic Civil Liberties Union getting in to help adjudicate disputes within the religion.

RUSH: Just a couple of more things on all of this, 'cause I really do think... I'm gonna try this when some time passes, just to test my theorem, and that is I'm gonna come out against something that I would normally be for. It'll just be between you and me. Psst! Don't tell anybody. Just to see the media's reaction and the left's reaction. For example, I don't even have to do it. All McCain has to do is come out and rip his own party and they love him. McCain tacks to the right of JD Hayworth, "Ohhhh, too bad! We've lost McCain. What a horrible guy." Remember for the first half hour when I endorsed Clinton back in 1992, they thought, "Whoooa, Limbaugh may be cool. Look at this." They were excited about it.

I did my endorsement back in 1992. My broadcast partners panicked. Hee-hee-hee-hee. They did. People who had tickets to the Rush to Excellence Tour were calling and threatening to burn 'em because I endorsed Clinton. Now, a couple things here. You remember when the Danes published a bunch of cartoons that depicted the prophet Mohammed in an unfavorable light. Remember the outcry? Virtually all the mainstream media refrained from publishing those cartoons. We weren't allowed to see what the controversy was all about, and the reason they gave was that publishing the cartoons would offend Muslim sensibilities and sensitivities. "We don't want to offend the Muslims."

When was the last time they were worried about offending you? Thomas Jefferson was sent to Europe to deal with the Muslim Barbary Coast pirate problem before he even became president. Would you like to know what Thomas Jefferson learned? I'll tell you what he wrote. Islam "was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Quran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every (Muslim) who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise." This is what Thomas Jefferson learned before he even became president.

And Thomas Jefferson ended up going to war with the Muslims rather than pay them tribute, the Barbary pirates. So there isn't anything new here. What's new here is the leftist, the American left's reaction. I ask my question again: Name for me the last time the American left went gaga over religion? When did they stand up for it, like it, encourage it? They don't. Oh, they might. If the Reverends Jackson or Sharpton say something from the pulpit, they might go along with that, but they don't. But we are a bigger enemy. American conservatism is a bigger enemy to the American left than any international threat that the country faces.

RUSH: Monday night on Mess NBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews. He and Howard Fineman are blaming me for the Obama Muslim poll. They're blaming me for the fact that about 20, 25% of the American people think Obama's a Muslim and that fewer and fewer Americans believe that Obama is a Christian.

RUSH ARCHIVE: What is the only proof we have that Obama's a Christian? Well, okay, his word, his word, but Jeremiah Wright is the only proof that we have that he's a Christian. Obama described Wright as his spiritual mentor. Well, sorry, media, we've heard Jeremiah Wright. We know what Jeremiah Wright said. We know what he thinks of America.

MATTHEWS: Does everybody know what's happening here? He didn't answer the question. Rush has an IQ probably as high as anybody's around. He's a smart guy. He knows exactly what he's doing here. He switched the topic from what a man says his religion is to how much do we hate Jeremiah Wright.

RUSH: Well, that's not what I was doing. These guys are outthinking me by half here. To put this back in context, I was trying to explain to these people why the poll was what it was. Don't forget, it's not us that took the poll. I'm in the wake of this. I had nothing to do with the shaping of opinion on this poll. The only time I have referenced Obama being a Muslim was when I was quoting Khadafy. I've never put it out there myself that Obama is a Muslim. I've quoted Moammar Khadafy for saying so. I'm trying to explain to these people in the media, "You want to know why the American people think this, let me help you." What do we know about Obama being a Christian? The only thing we know is that he has said so. But we don't see him going to church. We don't hear him talk about it like other presidents have. But we do know that his pastor for 20 years was Jeremiah Wright. And the American people have heard what Jeremiah Wright said, America's chickens have come home to roost and all of that. And we also have heard Obama say he never heard Wright say any of these things. Well, sorry, media. We just don't believe that a parishioner does not hear the pastor for 20 years. Sorry. We may be rubes, but that doesn't compute with us. I mean those of us that go to church know what the pastor says. One of the reasons we go is to hear what the priest or what the pastor says.

This Pew poll was taken back in July. Now, I never said anything about Obama being a Muslim until the last few days. Here's another question. If the Pew people want to do another poll, I got the question for you. Who is it that hates the United States more, Muslim clerics or Jeremiah Wright? The "I don't know's" would probably be pretty high in that poll. So Howard Fineman chipped in with his thoughts on what Matthews had just said.

FINEMAN: Everybody who watches this show knows exactly what's going on, because we're explaining it to them and this has a deep history of fearing the other, of fearing the outsider. Look, Barack Obama came in as a president representing something new. This scares the heck out of these people and they'll use any element of fear they can. Sometimes I think Rush Limbaugh's amusing. Sometimes I think he's useful in the conversation. This is wrong.

RUSH: I'm useful in the conversation sometimes. Yeah, Obama came in as a president representing something new. But he didn't. You told us he represented something new. You told us he was something we've never seen before in American politics. You told us there is going to be post-partisanship, post-racial, post all this sort of stuff. We were told he was a great unifier. None of it's shaken out. My question, Mr. Matthews and Mr. Fineman, a question for you: How can America be Islamophobic? We elected Obama, didn't we? If this is a nation that is Islamophobic, how do we elect a man whose name is Barack Hussein Obama? 'Cause don't give me this Islamophobic business. Remember this poll was done back in July. I'm in the wake of this story. It's not often that I say this. Normally I'm on the cutting edge. But on this I'm at the back of the boat. Obama told us he was a committed Christian, a moderate. And after he does this, he goes out and insults the bitter clingers, people who cling to their religion and their guns and so forth when times get tough. I mean, people in the country simply listen to what they hear, and they're not rubes. Now, yesterday morning on Scarborough's program on Mess NBC, the guest was TIME Magazine senior political analyst Mark Halperin who said this about the mosque story.

HALPERIN: This story's gone a little bit underground. It's not on the network news in the evening every night, it's not on the front page of the papers to counteract what's going on on talk radio every day, on Rush Limbaugh and other talk radio, and on the Internet. So how often happens in these stories is, talk radio starts it, it migrates to the old media, all sides get in, then it disappears from the old media, but it continues below the radar. So I think it's incredibly important for shows like this to talk about it in a way that doesn't just have the disinformation and the hate.

RUSH: What disinformation and what hate? We're simply telling about the imam, Alger Hiss 2.0, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. What is the disinformation here? We've played videotape, audiotape of Mr. Rauf saying that there's more American blood in the world than there is Al-Qaeda blood. We've played his own words. This is Mark Halperin. This is the guy who advised the Republicans to avoid the 9/11 Hamas battle for their own good, stay out of it, don't get anywhere near it, it's gonna harm the Republican Party. I don't assume that Mr. Halperin or Mr. Fineman or Mr. Matthews are interested in Republican Party success. So when they warn us to stay away from this for our own good, I said, well, they're not interested in our own good. I mean these guys are on the political left. They're out to defeat us, conservatives, New Media, what have you. If all we've got to go on with Obama is he said he's not a socialist, he's not a socialist, right? There isn't any socialism going on here 'cause Obama has said that he's not a socialist.

From Fox News: "State Department officials say they are aware of the controversial remarks Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf made in a 2005 conference in Australia." We played the audio of this on Monday where the imam said, "We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than Al Qaeda has on its hands of innocent non-Muslims." You remember that the US led sanctions in Iraq led to the death of over a half million Iraqi children. This has been documented by the United Nations. Wait a minute. I thought we went to Bosnia-Serbia in defense of Muslims. Somehow we're Islamophobic. P. J. Crowley, State Department spokesman, said, "We are aware of those remarks. I would just caution any of you that choose to write on this that once again you have a case where a blogger has pulled out one passage from a very lengthy speech, if you read the entire speech, you will discover exactly why we think he is rightfully participating in this international speaking tour."

Now, Crowley, as usual, is misinformed. These remarks probably carry even more weight because they were off text. They were not on the prompter. They were not part of his prepared remarks. These remarks about blood and Iraq and Al-Qaeda and so forth, the United Nations agreeing, those are off the cuff, really didn't mean to say those things. They weren't on his prepared text. In fact, "if you read the rest of Mr. Rauf's remarks you will be further convinced that he is the wrong man to be speaking for the US in the Middle East." He's an emissary. We sent him out there as an envoy. "On the substance of Rauf's 2005 accusations, none other than former President Bill Clinton has defended the sanctions, some of which took place during his years in the White House." These are the Iraqi sanctions that said to have resulted in the death of 500,000 Iraqi children.

"Clinton and other diplomats assert that Saddam Hussein's regime corrupted the sanctions and denied humanitarian aid to his own people. Crowley also revealed Rauf's activities over the next few days, which the State Department had been reluctant to do before Tuesday. Imam Feisal has arrived in Doha, Qatar. He will be giving remarks and attending a traditional event of handing out gifts and treats to children at the Doha youth center. He has a full range of other private events that include a lecture at a university, meetings with government officials, Non Governmental Organizations, and participation in services at mosques and Ramadan activities." Wonderful.

Then we have Asra Q. Nomani, The Daily Beast, asking, "Is the mosque story one that doesn't even really exist, is it the new balloon boy story of the summer?" "With less than $9,000 raised and a chaotic PR strategy, the 'ground zero mosque' is nowhere close to becoming a reality. As debate rages over the "ground zero" mosque, the media has once again whipped itself into a frenzy over a story that doesn't really exist. Without money, a nonprofit organizational structure, or a coherent PR strategy, the plan to build an Islamic center and mosque near ground zero, dubbed Park51, remains nothing more than a pipe dream. And the growing media brouhaha is a little reminiscent of last year's storm over 'Balloon Boy,' the Fort Collins, Colorado, child whose parents claimed he had drifted away in a helium balloon. ... The truth is that the Park51 plan is much more nascent than the story has been played in the media -- and that's nobody's fault; it's just the hallmark of any fledgling operation." Yet it continues to be controversial.

CALLER: It's "Pear Land," Texas. Hey I was just listening that last segment I was in my car and I heard that guy said that the ideas were off the radar when you talk about them on the radio and I almost drove off the road. (laughing) It's like, you have more people listening to you than a lot of these liberal programs combined. How could anything you say be "off the radar"?

RUSH: Go back and grab sound bite number five. Sound bite number five is Fineman. This sums it up. If you want to know how they look at themselves.

RUSH: All right, now, he's talking about The Chris Matthews Show, which... Oh, forget commenting on its audience size. He says, "Everybody who watches this show knows exactly what's going on because we're explaining it to them." Now, the implication is that you don't know anything going on because I'm lying to you or because I'm propagandizing you or something. But if you listen to MSNBC, you know what's going on because they're the smart people, and they are explaining what's going on. There's a giant disconnect because that's the last thing most Americans think they're getting from the media. Most Americans think they're getting... If anybody's off the radar, it's these people. Most people think they're getting propaganda.

When they say that we are "scared", that Obama "came in as a president representing something new and this scares of heck out of us," what scares us about Obama is his policy. For crying out loud, do these people not see what's happening to this country's economy? Do they not see what is happening to the country? Do they not see the fundamental negative change that is occurring precisely because of the policies of Barack Obama? They're the ones that are ostriches. They have their heads in the sand. They got one of their guys in, and that's it. There are no questions; there's no curiosity. There's just this demand that we all toe the line and go along. We're bigots; we're afraid of change? We are opposed to this kind of change -- and, by the way, the people that voted for Obama were not told that this was going to be the kind of change they were gonna get. So to say that the opposition to Obama is unbalanced or unjustified or irrational is just wrong. It's the blind, continuing, unquestioned support for Obama that is off the radar and unbalanced and inexplicable.

RUSH: Back to Mess NBC yesterday morning On the Scarborough show, they were talking to BBC News correspondent "Katty" Kay. The cohost, Mika Brzezinski. "I have to tell you, when I see in here what the Republicans have had to say when it comes to kind of taking this mosque business to a vitriolic level, all I can see is that they're purposefully damaging our society in order to gain politically." Now, how in the world can a reasonable person see it that way? "The Republicans ... are purposefully damaging our society in order to gain politically"? We are trying to damage the society? We're trying to save it. Anyway, here is what the BBC correspondent, the Brit Katty Kay, had to say about Republicans "purposefully damaging American society."

KAY: Moooslims start hearing the kind of talk that has come out of some public officials and some leading Republicans and they start becoming more radicalized, and I think that is a real risk for this country. You want to try and protect your moderate Moooslim population, and you've got to have outspoken public defenders of mod'rate Moooslims and of Moooslims in general in America. And where are they here? That's what I find alarming is that, as this debate has gone on -- and, as Mark has said, on, you know, conservative talk radio you're hearing this. There are not many outspoken public voices saying, "This is not acceptable."

RUSH: All right, so Katty Kay of the BBC says that America should protect its moderate Muslims. So I guess moderate Muslims are victims. Moderate Muslims are lesser people who need to be protected by the ruling class. I was just going to say, "The Brits are overrun here." Let me give you a thought. This is a good point from a friend of mine that just flashed me a quick e-mail. Put aside the subjective term "moderate Islam." Just put it aside for a moment and let's focus on an uncontested the fact. There is no separation of church and state in Islam. Now, as you know, to the American ruling class and the American left "separation of church and state"is one of the most important things they believe exists in this country. They don't want any religious person having one damn thing to say about anything political in this country.

And all of these people, from Katty Kay on up or down depending on where you want to put her in the scale here, look at religious people with slanted eyes, with distrust. They look at them through grimaces. There's a suspicion of religious people. They don't like them. "Separation of church and state!" They've even defined that in a way it was never meant constitutionally. "Separation of church and state," and yet here they are supporting "moderate Islam." Ms. Kay, do you realize there is no separation of church and state in Islam? It's one and the same. Are you going to demand separation of church and state among Muslims or Islamists in this country or in your own country of the UK? Every religious building in action in Islam is political.

That's how they look at it. It's the core reason there should not be a mosque built at Ground Zero. There's no separation of church and state here with this bunch -- and yet with the ruling class in this country, the American left, "Separation of church and state, why, that's fundamental! We gotta have separation of church and state. We can't have any Pat Robertsons running around. We can't have any Billy Grahams running around impacting policy. We -- we -- we can't have it! We -- we can't elect these rabid, right-wing Christians! We can't have this. They're not allowed." But Islamists are not separated from the church in any way. The defining thing is the religion. Some might say the religion is the government.

Obama administration officials knew that a drilling moratorium would kill 23,000 jobs.

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

This is an odd blog; conservativism, bikinis and whatever else posted by either a P.I. or the brother of a P.I.:

News Organization (I mention them because I have seen 2 honest stories on their website, which shocked and surprised me):

Even though this group leans left, if you need to know what happened each day, and you are a busy person, here is where you can find the day’s news given in 100 seconds:

Weatherman Underground 1969 “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

Janine Turner’s website (I’m serious; and the website is serious too). This is if you have an interest in real American history:

Judith Miller is one of the moderate and fairly level-headed voices for FoxNews:

Info Wars, because there is a war on for your mind (this site may be a little crazy??):

The Magic Negro Watch (this is peppered with obscenities and angry conservative rhetoric):

Do you want to watch what is happening on our border? These are actual videos of observations cams along the border:

No matter what your political stripe, you will like this; evaluate your Congressman or Senator on the issues:

AC/DC economics (start with the oldest lessons first; economics in 60 second bites):

The Freedom Project (most a conservative news and opinion site which appears to concentrate on matters financial)

This appears to be a daily pork report, apparently as pork in Washington bills is discovered, it gets posted at Tom Coburg’s website:

Weekly poll, asking you to identify what we ought to cut in governmental spending:

This is indispensable: the Wall Street Journal’s guide to Obama-care (all of their pertinent articles arranged by date—send one a day to your liberal friends):

Obamacare class action suit (as of today, joining in on the suit costs you whatever you want to donate, if I understand the form correctly):

A Muslim apologetic site (they will write out letters to express your feelings, and all you have to do is sign them, and they will send them on):

Since this will be with us for a long time, the timeline of the BP gulf oil spill:

This is cool: a continuous timeline of the spill, with the daily info and the expansion of the oil, and the response:

Army Ranger Michael Behenna sentenced to 25 years in prison for 25 years for shooting Al Qaeda operative

Maybe the White House does not need to hold press conferences? It releases exclusive articles daily right here:

This is quite helpful; it is a list of all leftist groups, with links to background information on each of these groups (when I checked, 879 groups were listed). This is a fantastic resource.

In case you need to reference this, here are the photos of all those on the JournoList:

Are you tired of all the unfocused news and lame talking heads yelling at one another? Just grab a cup of coffee, sit back, and see what is really going on in the world:

Conservative New Media (it is so-so; I must admit to getting tired of seeing the interviewer high-fiving Carly Fiorina 3 or 4 times during an interview):

One of the more radical people from the right, calling for the impeachment of Obama:

The Center for Freedom and Prosperity, a free enterprise site (there are several videos on the flat tax):

This is a pretty radical site which alleges that Obama is a Marxist hell-bent in taking over our country:

1982 interview with Larry Grathwohl on Ayers' plan for American re-education camps and the need to kill millions

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.

We watch FOX so you don't have to). Be clear on this; they do not want you to watch FoxNews.

Conservative Review
Issue #141	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	August 29, 2010