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).

Georgia representative Sanford Bishop is the second Democrat found to have given CBC scholarships to relatives.

The President has decided that another Stimulus Bill is what is needed to turn the economy around. At this point, Pelosi and Reid have not commented one way or the other.

As far as I know, Pastor Terry Jones is still enjoying his 15 minutes of fame and has not burned any Koran’s yet.

Here’s something out of left field (meaning, I had no idea): John Bolton, former UN secretary under Bush, is thinking of running for president.

It turns out that the nutty pastor in Florida who talked about burning Koran’s was in the same high school class as Rush Limbaugh. They played in the same baseball league.

When asked about Democrats running away from the president and running campaign messages in opposition to Washington and to the president’s policies, Tim Kane said, “People ought to be proud to be Democrats.”

Howard Dean: "We thought that Fox [news] worked for the Republican Party, now we know that Fox really runs the Republican Party"

Christina Romer: “The only surefire ways for policymakers to substantially increase aggregate demand in the short run are for the government to spend more and tax less. In my view, we should be moving forward on both fronts.”

Senate majority leader, Harry Reid: “It would take a real stretch to think I caused the problems with the economy...I don't have any hand in what took place during the Bush administration. I tried to rein that in." Reid was senate majority leader during the final 2 years of the Bush administration.

Harry Reid: “I think there is a significant hate wing of the Republican party, including the talk show hosts like Glenn Beck and Laura Ingraham and Rush Limbaugh.”

Rep. Keith Ellison "The people who are leading the anti-mosque effort are people who openly proclaim that Barack Obama is not a citizen. The real organizers of this thing are people who are just proponents of religious bigotry. Nothing more, nothing less."

Cynthia Tucker, who understands almost everything in life as related to race: "We haven't talked about the elephant in the room, and I don't mean the Republicans: race. Changing demographics. Fear of a white minority...That's what this crazy summer has been all about. Anti-mosque construction. Anti-immigrant ravings. It, that fear is very difficult for Obama to overcome."

Robert McChesney, founder of the Free Press: “Advertising is the voice of capital. We need to do whatever we can to limit capitalist propaganda, regulate it, minimize it, and perhaps even eliminate it.”

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius: “We will also keep track of insurers with a record of unjustified rate increases: those plans may be excluded from health insurance Exchanges in 2014. Simply stated, we will not stand idly by as insurers blame their premium hikes and increased profits on the requirement that they provide consumers with basic protections.”

Fareed Zakaria’s headline to a Newsweek story: "It's clear we overreacted to 9/11."

Howard Fineman, Newsweek: Well, sitting there in the press conference today with President Obama, you could almost hear sort of the classical music in the background. You know, I don't mean to be facetious...

Chris Matthews, Host: No, I get you...

Fineman: But, you know what I mean. It was a stately thing, and a mature discussion, you could agree or disagree, let's all be reasonable about this...

Matthews: This is an Oxford don, he's so well turned...

Fineman: Yeah!

Matthews: ...he comes in there elegantly, presenting himself elegantly, presenting himself on a very high-level tone...

Fineman: And he gave a very...

Matthews: ...against this menagerie...

Fineman: Yeah!

Matthews: ...that's biting at his heals.

Fineman: That's why I'm saying, those people that you cited, Boehner and Gingrich and Palin, are not playing the same ballgame that Barack Obama is.

Matthews: I shouldn't them the Three Stooges, they're a lot smarter than that. I think they know it. They're not stooges.

Fineman: Sure they know what they're doing.

Matthews: Stooges are the people that buy their act.

CBS News anchor and co-host Harry Smith: "...[Muslims now] feel like strangers in their own country, Muslims shocked by the growing opposition to new mosques....building a mosque has suddenly become a hot-button issue in many communities."

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: "Western countries should not support (Israel) so much. The life of this regime has come to an end"

Michael Moore: “I am opposed to the building of the "mosque" two blocks from Ground Zero. I want it built on Ground Zero. ” and “There is a McDonald's two blocks from Ground Zero. Trust me, McDonald's has killed far more people than the terrorists.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton "[Our national debt] poses a national security threat in two ways: it undermines our capacity to act in our own interest, and it does constrain us where constraint may be undesirable."

Ed Schultz: “I don't think this [Koran burning] has been managed properly. I don't think they've handled this right. I want to know if General Petraeus made all these comments about this nutjob pastor down in Florida before the White House knew about it. Because all that did was inflame the situation! It's almost as if they want the radical world to start going nuts and helding (sic) all these demonstrations across the world. Does this make sense to you 'cause that's where I'm at.”

Alan Colmes” "Every 9/11 it's become like a national day of remembrance, which I understand from an emotional standpoint, but I wonder if it's such a good idea that every year we make such a big deal on the media of it being 9/11."

Judith Miller: "The reason you do it is to remember why we have the counter-terrorism policies we have...We need to be reminded why we're doing this."

Colmes: "9/11 should not be revered as some kind of national almost holiday."

Miller: "It's not revered. It's commemorated."

David Limbaugh: “In that speech, he [Obama] says he’s committed to fiscal responsibility. What planet migh the be inhabiting right now?”

Sean Hannity (referring to President Obama): “He is so far left, he is out of step with the Democratic party.”

Laura Ingraham, describing liberal philosophy: “It’s a save the whales, abort the babies approach to life.”

Dennis Miller on Obama being treated like a dog: “Who’s been treated with more kid gloves than this cat?”

Chris Christie talks to the teachers (in the words of Rush Limbaugh; is it wrong for a man to love another man?):

Here's why candidates should lay off crystal meth. GOP candidate Phil Davidson, Stark County Treasurer Speech (check out the hand gestures):

Dana Loesch and some lefty discuss Glenn Beck’s rally on Anderson Cooper 360 (who doesn’t like watching a babe do a slap down):

Here’s a debate you will never see or here on television (turn off the sound and tell me who is the conservative and who is the liberal):

Ed Schultz guest suspects that Palin and Gingrich’s fingers were all over Terry Jones’ proposed Koran burning.

FoxNews has a lot of blond babes, but they are smart blond babes; more of Monica Crowley on the Obama Iraq war speech:

This is from awhile ago, but it is a great show; John Stossel “What’s Great About America.” (Several parts):

President Obama: “We knew healthcare costs were going to go up” and Candidate Obama promising to lower healthcare costs.

CNN story about the Vanity Fair writer who uses anonymous sources to skewer Palin:

Jodi Miller: “The new carpet that President Obama had installed in the oval office is historically incorrect, as it wrongly attributes a quotation to Martin Luther King. Wow! Apparently even Obama’s carpet needs a teleprompter.”

Jodi Miller: “In Cuba, Fidel Castro recently held his first major rally in years. The aging dictator was too weak to write his own speech praising socialism, so he just used one of President Obama’s.”

1) When it comes to business and free enterprise, the president is way out of his comfort zone. He wants an economy regulated, guided and run by government agencies. He has never had his own business, he has never had to make payroll, and he has never had to lay off anyone because of economic hard times. He has stated on several occasions that there is a point at which a person does not need any more money; he has spoken about spreading the wealth around; and he has talk on many occasions about a bottom up recovery, meaning, if he funnels enough money to the bottom, they will spend it and get the economy going. He sincerely believes that, at elast in some areas, profit is just wrong—e.g., with medical insurance companies. What he particularly does not get is, an efficiently run business is far better for our economy than a non-profit and/or government-run anything. There may be no profit and no profit motive in the government-run enterprise, but, at the same time, there is no interest in running the enterprise efficiently. This is why public schools can pay $15,000 and more per student per year and turn out a dramatically inferior product to that which was produced 1 or 2 decades ago. Given all this, our president has not even a clue as to how to get our economy out of the ditch he keeps saying Republicans drove us into.

2) The lack of knowledge of Obama’s economic crew is scary. Tim Geithner has been in government for almost his entire life; Christina Romer (who is departing) has been an academic all of her life. How can 2 people like this have any clue about business and how business works? Peter Orszag has been a government man all of his life as well, although, to his credit, he says we ought to extend the Bush tax cuts.

3) Here is an amazing thing! There is no severance clause in the healthcare bill. For a person who deals with contracts, what a severance clause does is, this or that paragraph may be deemed unenforceable or a violation of the constitution, and that only invalidates that paragraph. However, without a severance clause (which I had earlier assumed had to be included), one wrong paragraph invalidates the entire law—all 2000+ pages.

4) Honesty matters. Let’s say, I was an undecided voter. Let’s say I had no leanings. I have heard nearly a dozen Democrats say, “Republicans have no plan” for this or that. I also know that, for every single major proposal or bill, Republicans have always offered up a conservative alternative proposal. What would be honest is to say, “This is the Republican plan, and I disagree with it for these reasons.” What is dishonest is to say, “The Republicans are the party of no; they offer up no alternative.”

5) President Obama has, on several occasions, referred to Republican ideas as being old, outdated, tried and failed (indicating that he, at least, recognizes that such proposals have been offered up, although he never deals with the specifically). These ideas are old fashioned; the idea is, the Republicans are attempting to line up with our founding fathers on their approach.

6) There are 2 Democratic talking points when it comes to former President Ronald Reagan: it took him more than 2 years to turn the economy around and he left the nation with high debt and deficit. Reagan determined that tax cuts were the way to go, but Congress chose to phase them in, waiting until (if memory serves) 1983 for them to become effective. That is when the economy suddenly turned around and took off like a rocket. Obama’s solution was to pass a gigantic stimulus bill almost on day one, and more people believe in flying saucers than believe that the Stimulus bill worked. More people think that Obama is a Muslim than think his Stimulus bill worked. On the second point, Reagan worked with a Democratic Congress for most of his 2 terms (8 years of a Democratic House, where the spending bills originate; and 4 yeas of a Democratic Senate). Revenue to the government dramatically increased, and for every additional $1 that came into to the treasury, Congress spent $1.83.

7) It is interesting that, one of our nuttiest Christian minsters backed off on burning the Koran; but, the moderate Muslim of note, can’t back off on building a mosque next to ground zero.

8) Michael Medved is the first person I heard who suggested that Obama get the nutty pastor and the nutty imam together and get them both to back off.

9) I’ve tried to explain this to every liberal I know, but most don’t seem to get it. When Democrats are running the show (exception, Bill Clinton), poverty increases. When Republicans are in power, poverty decreases. The same is true of Black unemployment and inner city unemployment; it goes up under Democrats and down under Republicans. Right now, all indicators are, there will be a record gain in US poverty for 2009.

The deficit spending from George Washington to Ronald Reagan is not quite as much as the deficit spending of Barack Obama so far (after 19 months).

0 Democrats are running ads touting how they voted for the Stimulus bill and for the economic reforms of Wall Street.

The staff of Organizing for America (one set of Obama foot soldiers in 2008) has shrunk from 6,000 to 300.

During the same time period, 1 terror attack in the name of all other religions combined (1 dead)

68% of U.S. voters prefer a smaller government with fewer services and lower taxes

I have heard several liberal political pundits blame all of the mosque protests are a result of the stoking of this fire by the media. This is a lie perpetrated by many liberals in the media and it is a damned lie! The media tried to ignore this story. If you will recall, a month or more ago, I spoke of this mosque, the protests about it, and how there was a media blackout on these protests. I heard about it via email and was somewhat skeptical, until I found an article with gobs of photos online. The media tried to bury this story.

ABC’s Sunday morning political program, with the Christiane Amanpour would be easy to lampoon. This woman, after asking a question, starts doing things with her lips that just doesn’t seem right. Then there is that overeducated ferret Paul Krugman, whose solution to the first gigantic stimulus bill is to pass an even larger stimulus bill. And then, Cynthia Tucker, who is not actually here, but on a another Sunday morning show, needs to be a panelist, as she is able to find racism and hatred everywhere. Time magazine’s Joe Klein would have to show up in Obama gear, head ot foot. Now that Jay Leno and Jon Stewart are finally making run of Obama and liberals, will the edgy SNL be able to take that plunge this coming season?

Democrats Conrad, Nelson and Bayh and independent Lieberman have all spoken out publically in favor of extending the Bush tax cuts.

Tax cut (I know I listed this already) is actually a government incentive: “You do this, and we, the government, will give you back some of your taxes.” Later, that same tax cut, really a tax incentive, will be called a tax loophole, and the same person who proposed it may rail against it 4 or 5 years from now.

Krauthammer defined a tax loophole as a tax cut which has outlived its political usefulness.

You want Congress to pass a $50 billion infrastructure bill, which will pay for the repair of some highways. What do we pay gas taxes for?

Critics from the right say your $850 billion Stimulus Bill failed to create jobs because it did not stimulate the economy as promised. Your critics on the left say it was too small. How is a $50 billion stimulus supposed to help?

You are not calling your $50billion stimulus bill a stimulus bill; how is it different from the $850 billion which you passed at the beginning of your term?

You have complained incessantly about Republicans and their old ideas and them standing in the way. You have called out John Boehner by name on many occasions. Are you saying that you cannot work with a Speaker of the House John Boehner?

If Republicans take the House this year, what can you get done? Can you agree on anything with Republicans? Can you give some examples?

Monica Crowley predicted a long time ago that Hillary Clinton will run for president in 2012. Let e add, this primary will be close. I lean toward Hillary as winning that primary.

After the Republicans take the House and Senate (barring any incredible October surprise), Obama will be unable to work with Congress. There are almost no conservative programs or ideas that the president agrees with, and he cannot pivot like Bill Clinton did (Clinton was far less of an ideologue).

Sarah Palin will run for president. Whether she gets the nomination or not, she will do speaking tours during the campaign, and she will outdraw every other candidate on either side. The Obama crowds of 2008 won’t be there this time around. Any Republican who wants exposure, will ask her to show up at his or her rallies.

Despite the constant attacks against George Bush over a period of 10 years, using every dirty trick in Saul Alinsky’s book, there are areas where his popularity is now greater than Obama’s (including a recent poll taken in Ohio, asking who would you vote for, Obama or Bush?).

I continue to be concern whether Republicans will repeal the Stimulus, Healthcare, and Financial Regulatory laws. I would love to see a President and Congress come into office and reduce their powers, in light of the constitution.

Pelosi and Reid will not say they support Obama’s new (don’t call it a) stimulus proposal

Education is filled with problems today. Lax discipline, unions, lousy teachers, lousy parents, single-parent homes, drugs, and the sad spiritual state of our country.

So what do Democrats think we should do? Send more money to the schools and raise the standards. What do Republicans think we should do? Send less money to the schools and raise the standards.

Why doesn’t Congress pass a law for all SUV’s to be completely safe and get 50 miles per gallon? Why doesn’t Congress pass a law that all jobs must pay at least $75,000/year and mandate every state to have 100% employment? If fact, why does Congress outlaw death, in order to reduce medical costs? The reason is, these things cannot be mandated. Simply passing a law won’t make it so.

You cannot mandate that students have higher standards and that everyone maintain these higher standards. You cannot simply mandate that standards be raised and figure, standards will be raised. Here is what happens (and I can testify to this, as I was a teacher for 29 years): on the high school level, when I began teaching, 1 year of math was required and it could be a low, low level course. When I left teaching, all high school students had to take 3 years of math and they had to be tough courses, which included Algebra I, Geometry and Algebra II.

At one time, Geometry marked out those who were going to college; and those who did not take Geometry, probably would not go to college (or, at least, not in any of the hard sciences).

Now, let’s think about this for a moment. Nearly 40% of kids go off to college and complete their college education. Maybe another 10% go to college, but never complete a degree (these are rough numbers). So, now my school (as a result of Texas legislators) are requiring all kids to take a set college prep classes, and what do you think was the result? Our dropout rate increased and continues to increase. A 30–50% dropout rate is not unusual for any school district now (schools all over have done the same thing).

What else happened? The curriculum for all of these college-prep courses was watered down. You simply do not mandate from on high that all kids, no matter what their abilities, will take college prep courses. This was one of the worst changes in our system.

And what did not happen? Kids did not go to college in greater numbers and kids were not better prepared for college (I know this because the remedial courses at our local community college increased in number during this same time period).

Why is this? Algebra II was no longer Algebra II; Geometry was no longer geometry. Since every kid had to take these classes, these courses got watered down, year after year after year.

Every kid deserves a decent education. 50% of the students in any high school have an I.Q. below 100. So, the last thing a school district ought to do is structure its curriculum for only half of the students.

I had one gal in one of my classes, and let me just call her Sadie (not her real name). Sadie was a darling little girl, and she worked hard and she paid attention and she took school seriously, and Sadie was not very bright. She could not pass the standardized exit exam to save her life (she was no longer my student at this time). This was a little girl who was seriously stressed, and she was made to feel like she was a 2^nd class person because of this.

She came to me and told me her problem had been diagnosed and that she suffered from A.D.D. (attention deficit disorder) and she was going to be give drugs to help her concentrate.

Here, I failed her as a former teacher. I didn’t know what to say to her. Could I tell her, “Don’t take the drugs.” This was the result of many people making this decision, and I felt horrible that I did not know what to say to her, in order to dissuade her. It is 10 years later and I still feel badly about that situation.

There are millions of girls like Sadie. They do not need college prep courses. They do not need drugs to help them concentrate. They need a curriculum which is designed for them.

It is because of girls like Sadie that 30% and more kids drop out of high school as our standards are increased. School is not relevant to them. They are taking classes which are not related to them in any way. They are being pushed to do things that most of them cannot do.

When there is a top-down imposed curriculum (from the state or federal government), in which each school trying to outdo the others in academic excellence, they forget about Sadie. After all, you have academics trying to impress other academics pushing that which they understand: academia.

Sadie doesn’t need 3 or 4 years of English; she needs maybe 2. She does not need 3 years of math, starting with Algebra I and working her way up; she needs 1—some reasonably easy course of applied arithmetic.

More than this, Sadie needs options. Maybe she is talented in band or basketball; maybe she should be in foods or autoshop. As long as her high school is not oppressive and does not attempt to prepare her for college, she will work hard and enjoy her high school years. If she has 1, 2 or 3 open periods each year, she can explore a variety of classes or hands-on work or get a job on the outside and have that count as school credit (once, a very common approach for girls like Sadie).

Schools need to have a minimal curriculum, and parents and students need options. Teddy may want to go into computers; Sadie into foods; and Bill into academia. Today, most kids have to go to a particular public school, and they have no choice in the matter. It might be good and it might be lousy; but that is their one option (unless their parents are rich enough to pay for a private school). That’s simply wrong. We need minimal standards and a variety of options. We do not need high standards geared toward college.

One idea which I believe is used in Belgium is, every kid has $7000 (or whatever) each year which follows him around. He can go to any school in his city and that money goes to that school. It might be a Christian school, it might be a vocational school, it might be the school with the toughest football team in the county. Will some public schools be shut down? You bet. Thousands of them. What will happen to those campuses? Probably a successful private school will decide, that is about the right size for us and they will buy it or rent it.

Nearby, where I live, there are about 6 different supermarkets I can go to. I like that. If I decide that this or that store is not giving me what I want, I go elsewhere. These supermarkets all seem to be busy and prosperous. It is how our schools need to be.

President Obama is talking about yet another stimulus plan, and this one will include $50 billion in infrastructure spending. On every issue, the left has only two answers: more federal spending and more federal control. Conservatives have not and should not shy away from opposing these policies. But conservatives also must offer an alternative vision of America's future. One that is consistent with our nation's founding principles and empowers the people to compete in the 21st century. Today, The Heritage Foundation is releasing just such an alternative: Solutions for America.

Heritage Foundation President Ed Feulner describes Solutions as "a comprehensive guide for getting our nation back on the right track. Some of the policy recommendations are groundbreaking. Others are familiar. Some are being debated right now. They all have two things in common: They return power to the people, and they are all transformational ideas." For example, Solutions recommends:

Cap Federal Spending: Washington has no enforceable limits on its spending and discretionary spending has nearly doubled since Congress let its spending caps expire in 2002. Congress should enact a firm cap on the annual increase in total government spending, limited to inflation plus population growth. Lawmakers should exert all effort to keep overall federal spending to less than 20 percent of U.S. GDP, the historical post-World War II average for federal spending.

End the Era of Entitlements: Currently spending on the Big Three entitlements (Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid) is on autopilot -- increasing automatically every year without any budgetary scrutiny. Congress must bring entitlement spending into the congressional budgetary process. We should raise the Social Security retirement age, and encourage people to work longer by eliminating payroll taxes for those over the retirement age. We shuld let needy families choose how to spend their Medicaid dollars and establish a new Medicare "defined contribution" system as we transition away from today's costly and inefficient fee-for-service system.

Restore Our Free Economy: Our corporate income tax rate, currently the second highest in the developed world, must be cut to restore U.S. competitiveness. The corporate tax rate should be set at or below the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development average of 26 percent to eliminate the incentive for businesses and jobs to move overseas. We should also stop taxing businesses as individuals, but rather reduce rates to 25 percent, which would help business to grow and create jobs.

Revive Federalism: Over the course of the 20th century, the administration of government has been increasingly centralized under the federal government. In 1900 almost 60% of government spending took place at the state and local levels. Today, the federal government spends more than twice as much as all other levels of government combined. Washington must cede vast swatches of its policymaking authority-and the funding that goes with it-to states willing to reassume leadership in traditional state roles such as transportation, education, health, homeland security, and law enforcement.

Invest in Peace through Strength: A robust military is the surest way to deter aggression and reinforce U.S. diplomacy. To accomplish this, the Pentagon procurement holiday must end. Congress must refurbish our armed forces, especially our depleted Navy fleet and vital missile defenses.

These are just some of the ideas contained in the more than 20 chapters and more than 120 specific policy recommendations contained in Solutions for America. Contrary to what the President says, these ideas are not based on fear, but on faith in the American people and the vision of our nation's founders. The policies articulated in Solutions are calculated to make that vision a reality, to build an America where freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and civil society flourish.

This week brought more Subprime Stimulus from an administration attempting to ignite the economy with a burnt-out match. The Obama proposal to allow the expensing 100 percent of investment in plant and equipment is fine, but something that might've occurred to the administration years ago as an obvious first step, in the sense of, you know, just walking through a door before breaking a wall down instead.

Apart from this belated revelation regarding enterprise and the calculus behind why some people might wake up one day and decide to hire other people, Obama's economic program fundamentally consists of fostering a compulsory "Declaration of Dependence" on the part of America's wealth-creating sector. Washington is all about the institutionalization of Government Steering While the Market Rows.

Despite bad economic news and Obama's policy of talking about business like a dog, it's only 2010, and America's real wealth is yet to be created if we correct course.

However if policymakers don't confront regulation as well as spending, they are missing most of the story behind today's expanding state.

Congressional reformers need to institute massive, unprecedented doses of economic liberalization. America requires massive deregulation in sectors like basic manufacturing, telecommunications, electricity, frontier science, and energy and the elimination of policymakers that stand in the way, regardless of party. We have to re-appreciate how it was that the U.S.-now only 235 years old-became richer than the rest of the world in a historical eye-blink, and how that remarkable achievement can be recaptured.

Performing this function-and consciously maintaining a sensible wall of separation between state and economics forevermore-must guide the agenda for strengthening private manufacturing, services and R&D, for small and large business alike. Some steps include the obvious, like systematically evaluating and reducing tax burdens that everybody talks about. Here are others:

Fifty billion dollars more on infrastructure and transportation stimulus? Please! Instead, tearing down decades-old regulatory silos separating great network industries like electricity, communications, energy, water, airlines, rail and transportation has great potential for bolstering those industries, rationalizing rights of way, and energizing all the sectors that depends upon them.

Infrastructure can be boosted by rejecting compulsory access mandates (such as "net neutrality" in telecommunications, or "retail wheeling" in electricity) that undermine infrastructure wealth creation. This would create opportunities for grand-scale joint ventures to invest in new power lines, fiber to the home, roads, bridges, airports, satellite and low earth orbit ventures, toll roads and on and on. America's infrastructure needs the free enterprise treatment, not the public-utility treatment.

Tax breaks are one thing, but conversely, aggressive taxpayer subsidization of scientific and manufacturing research is incompatible with prosperity, wealth creation and a lightly regulated future. Yet this is what Congress is up to with the COMPETE Act. Politics has trouble balancing tradeoffs: When to subsidize nanotech? Or biotech? Or a national broadband plan? Or fuel cells and the hydrogen economy? Or robotics?

Rather than trying to improve speeds by picking the particular economic horses to run on the racetrack, Washington should improve the rutted business and regulatory track so everyone can go faster, and let jockeys keep more of their earnings.

-Subsidies create conflicts over public access to spoils; over merits of basic vs. applied research, government vs. industry science; over who owns the intellectual property.

-Taxpayer funding can wrongly foster a view of technology as a zero sum global race;

-Taxpayer funding can undermine safety since market disciplines like liability and insurance need to evolve alongside technology-or we revert back to heavy-handed and inferior "safety" regulation.

Fundamentally reject all contemporary economic manipulation schemes: A good starting point is repudiating EPA endangerment regulations, the recent slate of crippling energy regulations like cap and trade and renewable mandates, "net neutrality" in the telecom sector, centrally directed "smart grids," cybersecurity mandates, privacy regulations and so on. Future agency implementation of the fallout from the healthcare and financial services legislation, the hail of major regulations to come, should be subjected to congressional vote.

This is serious: Without re-establishing some economic certainty by getting off the Random-Regulation Railroad, no recovery is possible.

Bright foreign students want to stay and create US jobs after graduating here; that's a better way to address global competition and energize employment.

One jokester pointed out the number of stair accidents, and the lives potentially saved by banning two-story houses.

We don't regulate everything just because somebody somewhere can imagine a plausible benefit. On top of cost and the hazards of a nanny state, regulations can make people behave in a more risky manner, or have negative impacts, such as CAFÉ standards that force people into smaller cars to conserve oil, or food labeling regulations that undermine "safety" as an explicitly competitive feature. Many frontier fields like nanotechology can make our environment cleaner. Exaggerating risks overlooks hazards of stagnation.

Privatize: During the 1990s, it was proposed that commercial aspects of federal labs be offered to the industries they benefit, or to allow research employee buyouts. Commercial fields belong in the private sector. Sometimes you have to get rid of NASA in order to have a competitive, vibrant space program, so to speak.

Antitrust is often a highly predatory anti-business and anti-consumer phenomenon. It often constrains and distorts our most productive firms in ways the market never intended, hobbles entire industry sectors, and undermines the wealth creation process itself by depriving consumers of the otherwise necessary competitive reactions to the supposed monopolistic behavior.

No firm is "larger" than the rivals, upstream suppliers, downstream business customers downstream purchasers, partners, consumers, Wall Street, advertisers, future competitors, global competitors, media watchdogs, trade press, and global capital markets. All these discipline behavior, arrayed against the firm if it misbehaves.

Typically, regulations should sunset or expire like a carton of milk unless congress reapproves them. Legislation proposing that should be re-introduced. For now,

(1) Congress should implement a moratorium freezing non-essential new rulemaking;

(2) Congress should implement a bipartisan regulatory reduction commission to review the regulatory state as a whole and enact a non-amendable package of cuts and purges. Phil Gramm created a comprehensive plan for this in the 90s that was ignored.

(3) Delegation of lawmaking power to unelected agencies is out of control. Congress should have to approve all controversial future major business regulations like EPA's endangerment finding or FCC "net neutrality" shenanigans or energy efficiency rules.

Implementing basic regulatory housekeeping also includes inventorying all regulations and adding flexibility for smaller business; requiring supermajority points of order for unfunded mandates; and creating a basic Regulatory Report Card to accompany the federal fiscal budget.

We're in a fairly deep hole now. As Friedrich Hayek pointed out, the politicians blamed during an inevitably bumpy transition to something closer to laissez-faire will be the ones who stop interest-group benefits, stop labor union benefits, or stop the inflation, stop the mal-investment created by earlier government interventions and favoritism, and so on-not the ones who started those costly processes decades ago.

Leadership requires making the attempt rather than more spendulus to nowhere that adds to the problem.

The Barack Obama that most Hoosiers remember voting for can still be found on YouTube. He stands before a cheering Elkhart high school gymnasium in August 2008, tireless, aspirational, promising a new America of jobs and hope. "We can choose another future," says the newcomer with the funny name. "So I ask you to join me."

Today that view of Obama is harder to find in Indiana. A couple of weeks back and a dozen miles west of Elkhart, hundreds gathered in another school gym - except this time it was for a job fair. With the local unemployment rate above 12% and rising again this summer, about a third of the employer display tables stood empty. Julie Griffin, who voted for Obama in '08, sat down at the room's edge, well dressed and discouraged. After 23 years as a payroll administrator at a local RV plant, she got laid off 18 months ago. "Really, what has he been doing?" she said when I asked about Obama's efforts to help people like her. "I guess I don't know what he is doing."

Across the gym floor, Joe Donnelly, Elkhart's pro-life, pro-gun Democratic Congressman, worked the crowd. He was part of the moderate wave that won Congress for Nancy Pelosi in '06, and he was re-elected with 67% of the vote while campaigning for Obama in '08. The President has since returned to the region three times, but Donnelly is nonetheless fighting for his political life. In a recent television ad, an unflattering photo of Obama and Pelosi flashes while Donnelly condemns "the Washington crowd." This is basically a Democratic campaign slogan now: Don't blame me for Obama and Pelosi. "I'm not one of them," Donnelly told me when I caught up with him. "I'm one of us." (See the top 10 Obama backlash moments.)

This shift in perception - from Obama as political savior to Obama as creature of Washington - can be seen elsewhere. When Obama arrived in office in January '09, his Gallup approval rating stood at 68%, a high for a newly elected leader not seen since John Kennedy in 1961. Today Obama's job approval has been hovering in the mid-40s, which means that at least 1 in 4 Americans has changed his or her mind. The plunge has been particularly dramatic among independents, whites and those under age 30. With midterm elections just nine weeks off, instead of the generational transformation some Democrats predicted after 2008, the President's party teeters on the brink of a broad setback in November, including the possible loss of both houses of Congress. By a 10-point margin, people say they will vote for Republicans over Democrats in Congress, the largest such gap ever recorded by Gallup.

White House aides explain this change as a largely inevitable reflection of the cycles of history. Midterms are almost always bad for first-term Presidents, and worse in hard times. "The public is rightly frustrated and angry with the economy," says Dan Pfeiffer, Obama's communications director, explaining the White House line. "There is no small tactical shift we could have made at any point that would have solved that problem." In more confiding moments, aides admit that the peak of Obama's popularity may have been inflated, a fleeting result of elation at the prospect of change and national pride in electing the first African-American President. As one White House aide puts it, "It was sort of fake."

But while these explanations may be valid, they are also incomplete. A sense of disappointment, bordering on betrayal, has been growing across the country, especially in moderate states like Indiana, where people now openly say they didn't quite understand the President they voted for in 2008. The fear most often expressed is that Obama is taking the country somewhere they don't want to go. "We bought what he said. He offered a lot of hope," says Fred Ferlic, an Obama voter and orthopedic surgeon in South Bend who has since soured on his choice. Ferlic talks about the messy compromises in health care reform, his sense of an inhospitable business climate and the growth of government spending under Obama. "He's trying to Europeanize us, and the Europeans are going the other way," continues Ferlic, a former Democratic campaign donor who plans to vote Republican this year. "The entire American spirit is being broken."

One explanation for Obama's steep decline is that his presidency rests on what Gallup's Frank Newport calls a "paradox" between Obama and the electorate. In 2008, Newport notes, trust in the federal government was at a historic low, dropping to around 25%, where it still remains. Yet Obama has offered government as the primary solution to most of the nation's woes, calling for big new investments in health care, education, infrastructure and energy. Some voters bucked at the incongruity, repeatedly telling pollsters that even programs that have clearly helped the economy, like the $787 billion stimulus, did no such thing. Meanwhile, the resulting spike in deficits, which has been greatly magnified by tax revenue lost to the economic downturn, has spooked a broad sweep of the country, which simply does not trust Washington to responsibly handle such a massive liability.

Rather than address these concerns as the economic crisis grew, Obama made a conscious choice to go big with government reforms of health care and energy. The bailouts of the auto companies, the rescue of Wall Street and the new regulation of banks and the financial industry only deepened the public's skepticism, especially among independent voters. Rather than dwell on the political problems, the President pushed his team forward, believing, in the words of top adviser David Axelrod, that "ultimately the best politics was to do that which he thought was right."

It wasn't long before deep cracks in Obama's coalition began to appear. This past June, Peter Brodnitz of the Benenson Strategy Group, a firm that also polls for the White House, asked voters which they preferred: "new government investments" or "cutting taxes for business" as the better approach to jump-start job creation. Even among those who voted for Obama, nearly 38% preferred tax cuts. When Brodnitz offered a choice between government spending cuts to reduce the deficit and investments in "research, innovation and new technologies," one-third of Obama voters chose the cuts. The evidence throughout the poll, commissioned by the think tank Third Way, was unmistakable: roughly 1 in 3 of the President's 2008 supporters had serious questions about government spending solutions for the economy. In Nevada, a state Obama won with 55% of the vote, only 29% of likely voters this year think the President's actions have helped the economy, according to a recent poll by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research. "A lot of this was really inevitable, or at least pretty predictable," says Indiana Senator and former governor Evan Bayh, a Democratic expert at getting elected in the Rust Belt. "We have a lot of government activism at a time when skepticism of government efficiency is at an all-time high."

It's not as if the White House didn't see this coming. After a meeting in December 2008 about the severity of the economic crisis, Axelrod pulled Obama aside. He recalls saying, "Enjoy these great poll numbers you have, because two years from now, they are not going to look anything like this." But even as Obama aides were aware of a growing disconnect, it didn't seem to worry their boss. Instead, the ambitious legislative goals usually trumped other priorities. Both in the original stimulus package and then in the health care and energy measures, the White House ceded most of its clout to the liberal lions who controlled the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. That maneuver helped assure passage of reforms, but it also confirmed some of the worst fears about how Washington works. "I'd rather be a one-term President and do big things than a two-term President and just do small things," he told his team after Republican Scott Brown was elected Senator in liberal Massachusetts and some in the Administration suggested pulling back on health reform.

For Democrats in conservative districts, like Representative Jason Altmire in western Pennsylvania, the President's approach always spelled trouble. "Even though the leaders in Congress understood that a lot of these things are not going to be popular, they were at a point in their careers where they realized that this is what they have been waiting for," says Altmire, who is favored to win this year, in part because he voted against most of the President's agenda, including health reform. "It was true overreach."

For someone who so carefully read the political mood as a candidate, Obama has been unexpectedly passive at moments as President. Whereas other Democrats had hoped to spend the late summer talking about two things - jobs and the unpopularity of many Republican policies - the White House has been distracted by a string of unrelated issues, from immigration reform to a mishandled dismissal of a longtime USDA official to the furor over the proposed Islamic cultural center and mosque near Ground Zero. On Aug. 31, Obama gave a prime-time speech about the partial troop pullout from Iraq, touching on jobs only tangentially, before spending the following day in an intensive effort to restart the Middle East peace process. "It is inconceivable that a team so disciplined during the presidential campaign can't carry a message with the bully pulpit of the White House," says one Democratic strategist working on the midterm elections. "It's politically irresponsible, and Americans have little patience for it."

As his poll numbers fell, Obama responded with his perpetual cool. His appeals to the grass-roots army that he started, through online videos for Organizing for America, took on a formal, emotionless tone. He acted less like an action-oriented President than a Prime Minister overseeing some vast but balky legislative machinery. When challenged about his declining popularity, the President tended to deflect the blame - to the state of the economy, the ferocity of the news cycle and right-wing misinformation campaigns. Aides treated the problem as a communications concern more than a policy matter. They increased his travel schedule to key states and limited his prime-time addresses. They struggled to explain large, unpopular legislative packages to the American people, who opposed the measures despite supporting many of the component parts, like extending health insurance to patients with pre-existing conditions or preventing teacher layoffs. "When you package it all together, it can be too big to succeed as a public-relations matter," says Axelrod.

Instead of shifting course, Obama spoke dismissively about Republican efforts to play "short-term politics." He continued the near weekly visits to new green energy manufacturing plants, repeating promises of an economic rebirth that remains, for many, months or years away. And he missed opportunities to strengthen his connections with his supporters: local political capos complained privately that Obama had a tendency to touch down in their backyards, give a speech and scoot after less than an hour. By the end of the summer, the disconnect had grown so severe that only 1 in 3 Americans in a Pew poll accurately identified him as a Christian, down from 51% in October 2008. At the same time, the base voters Obama had energized so well in '08 went back into hibernation. They were nowhere to be found in the '09 gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, tracking instead with pre-Obama historical patterns. While liberals attacked him from the left on cable television, many of his core supporters weren't paying attention. In a rich irony, many of the same groups Obama turned out for the first time in record numbers had suffered the most from the recession and were the most likely to tune politics out. "One of the challenges on the Democratic side is, it's been very hard for [voters] to make connections between what is happening in Washington and what is happening in their lives," says Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster.

At the White House, advisers take comfort in the fact that at this point in their presidencies, both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton scored slightly lower approval ratings than Obama. And the dominant analogy for the past few months has focused not on 1994, when Clinton lost a Democratic Congress in a huge Republican wave, but on '82, when Reagan lost just 26 seats in the House. Like Obama, Reagan was facing rising discontent at the midterm, driven by huge unemployment numbers that peaked at 10.8% at year's end. But as the economy rebounded, Reagan's governing philosophy, "Stay the course," was vindicated. He won re-election by an enormous margin.

Outside the White House, only a few of the President's Democratic allies take much solace in this history, in part because the current economic slump appears far more lasting than the one Reagan faced. Most experts from both parties say Obama will have to rebalance his politics in 2011 to be re-elected in '12. That's partly because of the growing belief that the Republicans will win the House in November and, if their stars align, have a good shot at taking the Senate as well. Elsewhere, in state houses and in governors' races, Republicans are poised for a broad comeback. Regardless of the exact outcome, it is clear that Obama's brief window of one-party rule has closed. That outcome alone may vindicate Obama's decision to make the massive reforms while he still had the votes. It will never be known for certain just how much a more centrist legislative strategy would have improved the Democrats' midterm outlook.

But two years is the equivalent of multiple lifetimes in politics, and there are signs that Obama is already pivoting away from plans to engineer massive reforms in energy policy, global-warming response and immigration law to less-stirring, more-popular challenges like reducing the deficit and reforming taxation and entitlements. What little margins Obama does have to push major reforms through are sure to shrink away in the coming months. "I think the next couple of years, we've got to focus on debt and deficits," Obama told NBC News after his summer vacation. "We've got to focus on making sure that we make the recovery stronger. And a lot of that is attracting private investment."

Back in Indiana, the evidence of Obama's political failure is particularly glaring. During his early, heady days in office, the President decided to make Elkhart a personal cause. A once thriving manufacturing center of 50,000 on the Michigan-Indiana border, famous for its musical instruments and recreational vehicles, the Elkhart region saw the steepest jump in unemployment of any metropolitan area in the nation during the economic crisis. That helped Obama win Donnelly's district by 9 points, nearly George W. Bush's margin in 2004, and Obama returned to Elkhart just weeks after taking office. "I promised you back then that if elected President, I would do everything I could to help this community recover," he announced. "And that's why I've come back today."

Since then, he has been back twice more, once to speak at Notre Dame and once to herald a new electric-vehicle plant that would be built with federal support. In the southern end of the district, thousands of jobs at parts plants were saved when Obama decided to bail out the auto companies.

Yet all of Obama's personal and financial appeals have been swamped by the depth of the recession and have had little visible effect. Donnelly, who flies home every weekend to work in his district, felt obliged to run against Obama to save his job. And his Republican opponent, Jackie Walorski, says she is often approached by Obama voters who want to vent. "This has burned people," she says. "Their words, not mine: 'Betrayed by the health care vote.' 'What are they thinking when it comes to spending?' 'Broken promises when it comes to jobs.' " At one recent Walorski house party, held at dusk beside a cornfield, two attendees, Matthew and Frances Napieralski, identified themselves as former supporters of the President. "He's not what I voted for," said Matthew, who runs a plastic-injection-molding shop in town. "It's a shame that they led us to believe one thing," said Frances, "and then everything changes."

For now, Obama's aides hope that the controversial reforms in health care and financial rules will produce benefits felt by voters, if not by November 2010, then two years later. That would vindicate the President's vision of government as a solution and not just a problem. Even in Indiana, the disappointment is matched by a real yearning for a leader who can make a difference. "I think he's trying," says Griffin, the laid-off payroll administrator who said she didn't know what Obama had done for her. "Nobody can turn it around overnight."

[Correction: The original version of this story referred to a poll that gave Obama voters a choice between tax cuts to reduce the deficit and investments in "research, innovation and new technologies." The actual choice was between those investments and government spending cuts to reduce the deficit.]

Whether or not Ground Zero mosque is built, U.S. Muslims have access to the American Dream

Let us get one thing straight: Barring difficulties in fund-raising, the Park51 project, the so-called "Ground Zero mosque" will be built. Despite the fact that roughly 70% of the American people oppose it, U.S. laws ensure that not even the project's most bitter foes will be able to stop it.

That's the reason why the question of whether America is "Islamophobic" - now bandied about so casually, as though opposition to the mosque has revealed a nasty strain in the American psyche, akin to the terrible racism or anti-Semitism that once ran wild - is so deeply offensive. This loathsome term is nothing more than a thought-terminating cliche conceived in the bowels of Muslim think tanks for the purpose of beating down critics.

Muslims are everywhere in this country, doing practically everything. There are Muslim doctors, lawyers and businessmen - like Park51 developer Sharif El-Gamal, who went from waiting tables just a few years ago to being a multimillionaire. There are Muslim soldiers and CIA agents.

Muslims have approximately 2,000 mosques across America, of which many have adjoining schools. Muslim children often receive the most elite educations this country has to offer. (My thoughts here go to convicted terrorist supporter Sami Al-Arian. Al-Arian railed against America from a cushy teaching position in Florida; his daughter later earned a master's degree from Columbia, and his son is working toward a Ph.D. from Georgetown.)

Surveys have shown that Muslims in this country are above average in both education and living standards. They are living the American Dream. Nothing and no one can (or should) legally bar them from what Abraham Lincoln called "the right to rise."

Given all this, how did the narrative of "oppression" and so called "Islamophobia" take root so strongly among American Muslims?

It began when Muslims began coming to this country in large numbers in the mid-1960s, after civil rights legislation opened the borders to Muslim countries. Like all new arrivals, they sought to find their footing in the new land and to locate allies. To that end, they immediately developed a close relationship with African-American Muslim leadership, some of whom had earlier come through the Black Muslim movement. They saw great advantage in attaching themselves to this movement's cultural icons - including personalities like Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X.

The term "Muslim-American" was created and put into use in order to racialize Muslims. (Indeed, where are the "Buddhist Americans" or "Hindu-Americans"? There may be "Jewish-Americans," but this term is used far more rarely.) This term gave many different groups of Muslims - Arabs, Pakistanis, Bosnians, etc. - a common "race" around which to bond.

This sense of victimization has now reached a point - especially given the consistent rhetoric of groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations - that many rank-and-file Muslims now genuinely believe that they are a persecuted and oppressed group.

Has there been some ugly anti-Muslim rhetoric, particularly surrounding the Park51 project? Certainly. Are there some abhorrent, though exceedingly rare, acts of violence against Muslim people on the basis of their religion? Yes. Are some Americans ignorant of Islam and concerned about extremists in their midst? Yes.

But is there any consistent pattern of systemic discrimination akin to what other groups have seen at other periods in American history? Absolutely not.

Black Muslim leadership has foisted an ideology of victimization on immigrant Muslims, and it has stuck. Now we see these same leaders, fearing they have outlived their usefulness to the immigrant Muslim establishment, announcing the formation of a "Coalition of African American Muslims" that supports the mosque. It includes anti-Semitic race-baiter Louis Farrakhan and Siraj Wahhaj, who has defended the 1993 WTC bomb plotters and called the FBI and CIA the "real terrorists."

Critics of the Park51 project should see this for what it is: an attempt to conflate all opposition to this particular mosque with blanket hatred of the Muslim religion.

When Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour told us this week that the 2012 GOP presidential field will be "wide open," we had no idea just how many Republicans might be marching to Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada for the opening caucuses and primaries. Including Barbour, who will decide after the fall midterm elections but who is expected to run in 2012, Washington political insiders tell us that nine Republicans are almost a lock to run and another eight are considering a presidential bid.

Many former presidential campaign organizers say that now is the time to be considering a bid because by spring of next year, the list of announced candidates will be firm and those in will be divvying up staff and raising money.

The top tier of candidates includes many in the news like Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney, but some newbies have scratched their way into the category like budget-slashing New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Long shots include some who've already made trips to Iowa, like former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum.

"A starting place. That's all anybody has," said Barbour, dismissing talk of front-runners this far out of the election.

- Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the front-runner, largely because he was the runner-up to Sen. John McCain in 2008.

- Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who has recently made a name for herself by endorsing winning Tea Party candidates.

- Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, a fiscal conservative in his second term. [He would probably be great, but he is a boring guy, so no one will vote for him].

- Mike Huckabee, a Fox host and former 2008 presidential candidate. [They don’t mention that he is Arkansas’s longest serving governor?]

- South Dakota Sen. John Thune, a conservative and darling of the party for defeating former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle in 2004.

- New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, whose budget cutting in his first year has impressed many in GOP ranks who want him to apply his touch to Washington.

- Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, already running and showing his conservative side.

- South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, a Palinesque conservative who's helped steer the U.S. Senate to the right.

- Texas Rep. Ron Paul, the gadfly 2008 candidate who kept a very loyal following.

- South Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley, who hasn't even won yet but is being heralded as the new Sarah Palin.

- Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush who has rejected a run but who still gets kudos for being the "smart Bush" for his successful two terms in Florida.

- Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who'd be the social conservative in the race.

- Former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton, a foreign policy hawk who conservatives adore.

- Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal whose effort to protect his shores from the Gulf Oil Spill won him notoriety lost when he gave a lackluster national political address in 2009.

[I see the top candidates as Palin, Gingrich, and Ron Paul of course. I am not a fan of Romney, but he will be in the mix. They may be joined by John Boehner and Paul Ryan. ]

Nine years ago today, we saw the world stand still. We saw the innocence of a nation crumble to the ground. We saw the face of evil form in plumes of smoke and ash. It was Sept. 11, 2001.

I heard a thousand gasps of a thousand people standing stock still in the normally bustling Times Square as they watched the second plane hit the second tower on a JumboTron in Times Square.

I saw images of small figures that looked liked birds outside the towers. Only they weren't birds, they were people, forced out by the flames, forced to make an impossible choice under impossible circumstances.

We all watched the towers collapse, completely, falling from the skies above into a cloud below - horrific and awesome, breathtaking and unbelievable.

I felt myself grow numb, but I refused to be afraid. My attitude that day was the same as most Americans: the terrorists must not be allowed to win. America would not be cowed. We would rise, our greatness would shine, and our ideas of freedom would remain a beacon to the world.

That is why the debate these past few weeks over Islam in America - from the proposed Islamic community center in Lower Manhattan to talk of the burning of Korans - has been so hard to watch. Too much of the debate seems to be centered around the sensitivities of terrorists a world away who have hijacked the passions of a faith, who would see us destroyed and who want to attract more damaged souls to their cause.

I understand, in theory, the idea of not stirring the hornet's nest while our troops are still in harm's way. But I chafe at the idea that great American debates, in all their ugliness and splendor, should be tempered for terrorists and their attempts to recruit.

It is true that we seem to be experiencing a new sense of paranoia about these extremists and the threats they pose.

According to an ABC News/Washington Post poll released this week, the percentage of people who say that the country is safer now from terrorism compared with before Sept. 11, 2001, has reached a new low.

But we simply cannot allow this new wave of fear to make us into something that we're not. We are a country of freedoms, a country where religious freedom and freedom of speech hold equal standing, a country in which the construction of a building and the destruction of a book are rights extended to all, even if opposed by most.

Free expressions are not always pleasant, but they must ever be protected, with no regard to the proclivities of the enemy.

If, in a county where President Obama won 69% of the vote less than two years ago, the President cannot fill a Community College Recreational Center with a scheduled event, you might consider that to be newsworthy. Apparently the Mainstream Media did not.

If you want to read the other side, this unsigned article is about how Lebanon is more American than America:

RUSH: I'll tell you, the American people have Democrats on the run. This is going to be a bloodbath. There's a Rasmussen poll out, 68% favor smaller government and lower taxes. Another way of saying this is that 68% want conservative principles. And there are a lot of Republicans running for office who are trying to make a big deal out of the fact that they are not conservatives, and the Republican establishment in Washington is encouraging some of these non-conservative Republicans to run.

The Mike Castle race in Delaware has become a focal point of controversy. His opponent is O'Donnell. A lot of conservatives are dumping on her for -- I mean, it's almost universal. The inside-the-Beltway conservative media dumping all over her, despite the fact that Mike Castle is proud as a member of Congress to have voted for 99% of the Obama agenda. He voted for the stimulus, and the people are saying, "Well, we need to get control of the Senate, Rush, and if it's gonna take a guy like Mike Castle in Delaware to get control of the Senate, then we're going to have to go for that, we're going to have to do it." Mike Castle gives us 51 votes, then we're in there. In there with what? I mean, I don't know. I think a lot of people have become party people here, rather than conservatives, and are somehow imagining that just getting hold of their chairmanships is the objective here, rather than reversing course. I mean, the overriding concern ought to be defeating liberals wherever they are and however it's done. There's no contest here: Obama and the left have to go, they have to be defeated. The Republican Party does not need to be propped up first and foremost; Obama's gotta go. The left has to go.

RUSH: Homewood, Illinois, Gail, you're up first. Great to have you on the program today.

CALLER: You're welcome. I am absolutely flabbergasted and angered that the American people have not picked up on this. Obama is using the presidency and our money like he's won the lottery with all the trips he takes. They weren't even unpacked at the White House and they were already on their way to Europe to go so shopping.

RUSH: What makes you think the American people haven't figured this out? Have you seen his poll numbers?

CALLER: Well, the poll numbers, but no one's mentioned the fact that he's spending money like there is no tomorrow, and it happens to be our money.

RUSH: Well, okay, I'll make a note of that, nobody is talking about how much money Obama is spending. We'll start talking about that on the program.

CALLER: You have done that, but, like his mind-set, like it's his money, that he's allowed to spend it how he wants to.

CALLER: Well, what I wanted to call and tell you is, you said that the conservatives in Delaware were dumping on Christine O'Donnell, and --

RUSH: I said inside-the-Beltway media, Washington media, conservative media is dumping on Christine O'Donnell.

CALLER: Yeah, the conservatives here in Delaware are supporting her 100%. We are doing battle against the media here in this state, which is very pro-Mike Castle and against the established Republican Party here that is just tearing her to shreds.

RUSH: Well, here's the thinking on all this, and I've examined it in some detail. They're saying that Delaware is a northeastern state; that this is the Biden seat, and for a Republican, any Republican to win the Biden seat, why, that's nirvana, that's huge, that's big. Besides, a conservative really can't win in Delaware, just like they say about Carly Fiorina in California. "Rush, it's California. She's going to have to be a little liberal out there if she's gonna win." Well, okay, fine. If we want to start rebuilding the Republican Senate with a bunch of Arlen Specter types, then go for it. That's what we're looking at here. If having a majority of Republicans, like getting 51, takes seven or eight Arlen Specter types, where are we?

CALLER: That's right. That's what we're thinking here in Delaware. There's no way. We already made the mistake of foisting Joe Biden on the rest of the nation. We don't want to foist Mike Castle on the rest of the nation.

CALLER: Just how liberal he is. I mean he gets on there and says that he's a fiscal conservative and all the things that he does, and look at his voting record.

RUSH: Well, now, somebody mentioned to me today that Castle votes with the Republicans 88% of the time. However, he voted for TARP.

RUSH: -- on his Second Amendment grade, and he voted for cap and trade, he's in favor of that. But other than that he supposedly votes with the Republicans.

CALLER: Right. Right. Absolutely he doesn't. I mean, you said it yourself, he voted, what, 99% of the time for Obama? We all know that here. We are fighting against this. We even have a club here called the ABC Club, Anybody But Castle. I mean the people in Delaware just don't want him, and --

CALLER: It's all been fiscal, like she doesn't have her own personal finances in order, but we're at the point now where we're willing to overlook that. Everybody makes mistakes in their lives. It's nothing major. She talks a very good conservative line, and if she goes to Congress and votes the way she talks, conservatives finally win in this state.

RUSH: Okay, well, it's a big bone of contention with a lot of conservatives. Somebody asked me about this when I got back from Hawaii on Monday, so I've been delving into this race. As you know, I do not endorse in primaries. My theory, politicians come and go. I am forever. You know, they're all too flaky to tie yourselves to. You just can't. So I sit back, particularly during primaries. But I have been struck by the unity and the symmetry of the opposition to Christine O'Donnell in conservative media, the blogosphere, the Wall Street Journal, some other places. They're all saying the same things and they're quoting a line from Bill Buckley. Buckley said he would always vote for the conservative who could win. And they're using Buckley to suggest that he would not have voted for Christine O'Donnell because she can't win, she might be able to beat Castle but she won't beat the Democrat in the general, that's the prevailing theory. But when you look at Buckley, he supported a lot of losers. He supported Barry Goldwater in 1964. He supported Reagan in 1976.

CALLER: Well, conservatives have to take a stand at some point. We don't want another Arlen Specter or anything like that. We have to stand up and sooner or later take a stand and say enough is enough. Republicans, if you aren't going to follow the Conservative Party line, that's it, we don't want your candidate, either.

RUSH: Well, it does boil down to the -- and this is something that's worried me, that all of this is gonna lead to a third party down the line because I think that people like you throughout the country are willing to throw the Republican Party overboard as well as the Democrats in order to get conservatives in positions of power, because we've tried career politicians. We've tried people whose number one goal is to maintain their chairmanship or to keep their status inside the Beltway, and we're at a precipice here. We're at the cliff. We have an administration that is seeking to change fundamentally the kind of country this is, and there's opposition rising to it throughout this country at the grassroots level. The Tea Party typifies it and you can hear Lynn's voice here. I mean this is not politics as usual. It's not Democrat versus Republican. This is conservative versus liberal.

CALLER: Absolutely. And we feel that way. We also have someone to replace Mike Castle in the House by the name of Glen Urquhart who's extremely conservative, that we feel if he gets in Congress, he's going to make a difference for us.

RUSH: Well, here's another way to look at this. Mike Castle voted with the Republicans 88% of the time. A lot of people saying, "Hey, got no problem with him." Well, McCain votes with the party 95% of the time. So you could say that Castle isn't even as loyal to the GOP as McCain has been. I don't know. The times are unique. Circumstances are unique. This is not the usual Democrat versus Republican. Obama's not just the latest Democrat to occupy the office. We've never had an administration with objectives and goals like this one. And it's gonna require principled conservative people to stop this. I mean the best policy, to me: Vote for the most conservative viable candidate because whatever's in the drinking water when they get there in Washington, they're gonna move left no matter who they are. It just seems to happen.

RUSH: Get this from today's Washington Post: "The last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the United States is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison's innovations in the 1870s. The remaining 200 workers at the plant [in Winchester, Virginia] will lose their jobs." One of the workers said, "Now what're we going to do?" ... "But as the lighting industry shows, even when the government pushes companies toward environmental innovations and Americans come up with them, the manufacture of the next generation technology can still end up overseas. What made the plant here vulnerable is, in part, a 2007 energy conservation measure passed by Congress that set standards essentially banning ordinary incandescents by 2014." I don't know about you, I'm hoarding the things.

"The law will force millions of American households to switch to more efficient bulbs. The resulting savings in energy and greenhouse-gas emissions are expected to be immense," but no one knows exactly. There's a global warming story out just today. Guess what? Greenland and some of the ice floes, they're only going to melt half as much as originally forecast. So the polar bears are still going to have a place to live. I don't think they're going to melt, period. All of this is a sham. So here we have a story in the Washington Post highlighting bad thing after bad thing after bad thing that documents what an utter failure for this country Democrats are, what an utter failure for this country liberals are. What made the plant vulnerable "in part" is a 2007 energy conservation -- in part? Congress banned what they were making at this plant. There's no "in part" about it. A bunch of liberals acting in panic based on a hoax, man-made global warming. The idea that incandescent light bulbs are going to destroy the environment, are gonna cause the globe to warm to the point that we can't survive, it is ridiculous.

So the very people, the very Democrats who are talking jobs, jobs, jobs, Obama's out there, we're going to create all these jobs, all this stimulus. All that's happening in this country is that people are losing jobs because of Democrats. They're losing jobs left and right because of Democrats, liberals, socialists, what have you. And this little plant in Winchester, Virginia, is just one of many examples. I see stories like this, and I see so much of this all based on a hoax, and then I get to issues like, is Christine O'Donnell electable versus Mike Castle? What in the world are we talking about here? What is the point of electoral politics, to make sure that we know people in power in Washington so we can feel big and important? Or at this point in time is the point to get people elected who will arrest and stop and reverse this dangerous course that we're on?

I've been doing this for 22 years. For many of those 22 years there have been constant laments about elected officials, both parties. On our side it's Republicans, Republicans-in-name-only, RINO. We sit there and we complain about them, and this complaint, a series of complaints inspires a bunch of people who otherwise would never even think about it to run for office. They are by nature, by definition, not professional politicians. They are average Americans about whom the Founding Fathers had in mind. So then they decide, okay, Republicans-in-name-only are a rotten thing, the Republican Party's being destroyed from within, there's not a dime's worth of difference between the parties is what some people believe, and so they say, "Okay, I'm going to run for office. I'm going to try to make a difference." And so what happens? The very people, in some cases who have been complaining, whining and moaning about Republicans-in-name-only, turn their attack on the newcomers because they're not what? Professional enough; clean enough; pure enough; they don't know the ins and outs of the political business, or they embarrass us for whatever host of reasons.

I just remember all of the caterwauling over Arlen Specter and what's his name, Christopher Shays, and all these Republicans-in-name-only. And now we have some people, I guess on our side who want to support candidates just like that because the newcomers embarrass them somehow, like in some cases Sarah Palin embarrasses people. Now, let me ask you a question. When I hear people on our side mouth criticisms of Palin that echo criticisms of the left, I scratch my head. Now, in my mind, if you jump forward to 2012, put any name in there, put in Gingrich, Palin, I don't care who, put in Mr. Hicksville from South Carolina, anybody would be better than Obama! We have got to get rid of this bunch of people! We have to get rid of the American left. We've got to politically destroy these people, otherwise they're gonna destroy the country.

It's serious. This is bone crunching time. Then I hear talk that some Republicans really don't want to reverse health care, don't want to even talk about repealing health care because they don't want to give up the power that they are going to have once they get the majority. It's the same argument that I've always advanced, you're never going to get serious tax code reform with this current bunch of politicians. They're never gonna give up the power of social architecture they have in writing the tax code. So whether you got a great plan or not, Fair Tax, Flat Tax, whatever it is, with this current crop, both parties, you're never gonna get fundamental change. They're never gonna give up the power they've got that the tax code provides them.

I think the country is in a fight for its life. I don't think I'm overstating this at all. We're in a fight for our liberty. These are not just casually uttered words here. I mean liberty with a capital L. I mean freedom with a capital F, with 15 exclamation points behind each. We are in a fight for all of that, our freedom, our liberty for the country as it was founded. And this fight is gonna go on long past this November. It's gonna go on long past 2012 because the left isn't going away. They're not going anywhere. Things have gone so far in the wrong direction, for so long, this fight to reclaim the country is gonna make the war on terror look like a Sunday stroll in Central Park and we're gonna need every ideologue we can get on our side. We're gonna need every conservative we can get willing to take it to the left. Not willing to compromise with them. Not willing to cross the aisle and work with them. We know that doesn't work. All this talk about the American people want the parties to get along, it's all a crock. The American people don't like the partisanship. What the American people don't like is the country being taken to hell. What the American people don't like is the private sector being destroyed. What the American people don't like is a bunch of inbred, inside-the-Beltway politicians trading power every four years, but nothing really changing. That's what they don't like.

I remember this New York Times cover story on me that Zev Chafets wrote. He talked to Karl Rove, and Rove said about me, "You know, Rush isn't a party man," meaning I'm not a Republican. Karl's right about that. And I find it interesting that people still think that I do the Republican Party's bidding. Truth be known, a lot of people in the upper branches, echelons of the Republican Party are not that comfortable with me, just like people in the upper echelons of the Democrat Party are not that comfortable with me. But when you read any story, what the ruling class media has to say about Sarah Palin or any new Tea Party candidate, put your own name in her place. Imagine if it was you. Imagine if you've heard all this talk. How many of you can say that you've never been in debt? How many of you can say that you have lived lives clean and pure as the wind-driven snow? How many of you can say that if you ran for office, you would not present a target because of something in your life in the past?

How many of you could survive a media anal exam? None of us could! None of us conservatives could. So why do we have and attach this standard to people who have decided they want to get involved. Whatever they say about Palin, imagine if it was you they're talking about? If you had decided to seek office, or whatever they say about -- I don't know, pick somebody. Sharron Angle. Whatever they're saying about Sharron, imagine if it was you that they were saying that about. It's exactly what they would think of you, you're not a professional politician, you're not from inside the Beltway, you're not somebody that can grant anybody access. Imagine if it was you instead of Sharron Angle or you instead of Christine O'Donnell, you instead of Sarah Palin, imagine what they'd say about you and your family. Conservative families are fair game, unlike everybody else. They can not only destroy you but your family. And yet we've got people on our side willing to risk this because they think it's important enough to try to save the country. So you have people on the left that are naturally gonna take their shots at these people because they're afraid of them, afraid of them winning. And we got some people on our side, the professional Republican politicians in the Beltway, some of them are also afraid of these outsider upstarts winning. So they gotta join in and tar and feather 'em as somehow oddball, freak kooks of nature.

In fact, as you're talking about qualifications for serving in elective office, if you've been in debt and if you've had the IRS chasing you, fairly or unfairly, maybe you have more of an ability to relate to more people than you don't. If you have failed to pay the electric bill now and then or if you've failed to pay some taxes on some maid or nanny that you have, imagine anything that you've done in your life being brought up as a disqualification, and yet most of what you've done is shared by the vast majority of other Americans which enables you to relate to them, and yet all that is said to be disqualifying.

We're shutting down light bulb factories now for absolutely no reason whatsoever, just a full-fledged, 100% hoax. And people who have the guts to stand up against this are somehow categorized as out of the mainstream, Rush, global warming, we have to realize a lot of Americans believe global warming and we've gotta treat it as so. No. If Americans believe it they've gotta be told they've been lied to, they've gotta be told that they're victims of a hoax, because at some point the vast majority of the American people are not willing to lose their jobs and their futures and their lifestyles for a hoax.

RUSH: Ever since I got back into town over the weekend, and I guess starting on Monday in my e-mail, I have received notes from friends of mine lobbying me against this O'Donnell woman in Delaware. It doesn't matter the names. (interruption) No. I don't mean people asking what I think. I'm talking about people who are telling me what I should say. "Rush, she's even worse. There's going to be stuff coming out that you don't even know. Stay away from this. It's just horrible. It's more important to take the Biden seat." So I got curious. I got friends of mine telling me to stay away from it or if I get into it, to ram this woman O'Donnell because she's got all this baggage, and I said, "Well, who doesn't have baggage?" And that's when I started to think, "Well, what if it's you instead of her, or you instead of Sarah Palin?" What if you run? You care as much about the country as they do. What if you decide to run; they're going to say the same thing about you. Does that mean you're disqualified? And it kind of hits close to home.

In New York 1 there's a man running in the Republican primary names George Demos. Does that name ring a bell? He might pronounce it Demos. But he's another example of a conservative that the GOP power structure is trying to run out, just like the Dede Scozzafava race, New York 23. They're saying he can't win. Now, this guy's a literal Rush Baby. This guy is a subscriber to my e-mail. He sent a letter to my newsletter in 1995. We had an issue in my newsletter in 1995 that put me on the cover as a four-star general, and George Demos wrote a note: "As a mere 18-year-old private of the Dittohead reserves forgive me for pointing out an error on the cover of the January issue of the Limbaugh Letter. Your helmet's missing its fifth star," he wrote. "Certainly after having led the American people to their greatest victory in the last two centuries..." this is the '94 congressional race "... there is no honor high enough for you. EIB salutes, George Demos, New York."

Now, this guy's running for office in New York 1, a literal Rush Baby. And the Republican establishment has turned on him, "he can't win." He's all concerned about Ground Zero and the mosque and so forth. So the state party, Republican state party has sent Christopher Cox, Nixon's grandson, and a guy who was a Green Party pro-choice Republican in New Jersey before they shipped him out to Suffolk County to run against George Demos. So you got a couple pro-choice country club, blue-blood Republicans in the primary because they're in the Northeast and it's sad that only those kinds of Republicans can win in the Northeast. It's silly only those kinds of Republicans can win in California. A conservative can't win in the Northeast. A conservative can't take the Biden seat. A conservative cannot take Boxer's seat. "Rush you're going to have to realize here that these people are not professionals, they've got too much baggage, they're gonna be made mincemeat by the Democrats. We've gotta have people who can win."

Well, okay, fine. What if we all got behind 'em, you think they could win? Didn't they tell us we're never going to get a conservative as governor of New Jersey? That was never going to happen. "Rush, you're never gonna get a guy like Chris Christie, don't even dream about it. You're not gonna get this guy in Virginia, this guy doesn't have a prayer, Rush. You think a Republican's gonna take the Kennedy seat? Come on, Rush, get real here." All these people say it can't be done and if it does happen it's a mistake, so we've gotta stick with the RINOs, 'cause they allow the Republicans to have a majority. But what good is it?

RUSH: And we're back, on the cutting edge of societal evolution. George Demos, by the way, a literal Rush Baby, running for the Republican primary, Republican nomination New York 1, that's eastern Long Island, he wrote a letter. Again, I want to repeat this. He was a subscriber to The Limbaugh Letter in 1995, 18 years old. We put an artist's rendering of me on the cover of my newsletter -- I'm on it every month, folks, it would be an upset if I weren't -- and put me on the cover as a four-star general. He writes a letter, "You need a fifth star for what you've done," a literal Rush Baby. He's a former Securities and Exchange Commission prosecutor. He prosecuted white-collar fraud as a prosecutor, US Securities Exchange Commission between 2002-2009, and John Jay LaValle, the Suffolk County Republican chairman, back in February said that George Demos was a qualified, extraordinary candidate for the Republican Party nomination to be a congressman in the first district from eastern Long Island. But the DC GOP sent a bunch of people in to run against him who are pro-choice, country club, blue-blood Republican types. So this stuff, you know, I'm personally attached to it. People who have been listening to this program have been inspired.

Look, I don't talk about this because I don't divulge everything on this program. I would love to be able to tell you the number of sitting politicians, some of them who are governors, who have written me letters telling me I'm the one that inspired them to get into politics. That carries, as far as I'm concerned, a responsibility. If the things that I'm espousing as passionate personal beliefs on this program are inspiring people to get involved in this mess, I'm not going to turn my backs on them simply because they may have baggage. Joe Biden didn't have baggage? Joe Biden didn't have baggage? Obama doesn't have baggage? Are the Democrats clean and pure as the wind-driven snow? Most people in this country have baggage because they've run up against some government agency somewhere along the line. But that's not the point. The point is everybody's got baggage that could be exploited, in a campaign ad or what have you. That's why fewer and fewer people want to get involved in this mess because they don't want to go through the media anal because if they're Republicans their families are going to be included in it as well.

So it's a different day. This is not solely about -- in fact, I'd go so far as to say that one of the problems in this country is the professional politician of either party. The professional politician, that's what the uprising is against here. And what's brought it to a head here is that the professional politicians on the left have finally taken the mask off and everybody now sees what and who the professional politicians on the left are. They are Marxist, socialist liberals. And what people now realize is if the professional politicians on the right do not see what they see out in the hinterlands, then the professional politicians on the right are going to have to go, too. The Republicans have got to understand here that people who get up and live and work every day in this country who cannot tap into the gazillions of dollars that end up in Washington every day, who have to go out and earn it, are finding fewer and fewer opportunities to do that 'cause they can't get jobs. Why? Because of the professional politicians on the left, led by Obama who are destroying the engine that creates jobs, it's called the American private sector. And if this is happening to average, ordinary Americans, and if they don't see the opposition party standing up and opposing it as much as they do, then guess what the opposition party's going to be worth to them? It's not complicated.

So when they are told, "Now, you gotta get Mike Castle in there so the Republicans can hold onto their chairmanships," the guy who's lost his job doesn't care about somebody's chairmanship. He cares about the future of the country and whether he's going to have job and whether his kids are going to have an opportunity to make something of themselves. He doesn't care whether the Republicans have a fundraising advantage or have a majority here or there because if they're not gonna use the majority to stop this, because the majority is made up of people who don't disagree with this, then what good's the majority? That's what they're asking themselves. Okay, so hypothetically let's say we got 55 Republicans -- it's not going to happen but I'm picking a round number -- we get 55 Republicans in the Senate but ten of them do not disagree with what Obama is doing, what good's the 55? So the Republicans are kind of at the crossroads here because the Democrats, the liberals have so exposed themselves, that average, ordinary Americans now see what liberalism is and where it's taking the country 'cause they're living it and they want it stopped, and they're not going to be bought off with the notion, "Well, just give us the majority and we'll stop this stuff." How you gonna stop it if your majority is not made up of people who disagree with it? It's not complicated.

So it's not the American people out of touch. It's not the people who make the country work who are out of touch. They fully understand what's going on and they're not interested in being part of the ruling class inside the Beltway. They're not interested in being part of the power structure. They just want government-placed obstacles out of their way so that they can once again go to work, perhaps start down the road to acquiring wealth, bequeath some to their kids, their kids and grandkids have the same opportunity, the same uncluttered road to success, which is being obliterated each and every day the longer Democrats remain in power. The average, ordinary American that's involved -- I'm not talking about people whose main objective is to read People magazine. I'm talking about people who are involved in this every day. They full well understand what they're up against. And if they think that the party that they support does not understand what they're up against, they're not going to support it. Hence the Tea Party, hence Americans who never once thought they'd be such active people in politics, they are rising up.

They're rising up because of actual events. They're not rising up because of extremism. They're not rising up because of anything other than the impact that professional politicians are having on their lives. That may be one of the reasons why in certain parts of the country Democrats are still leading Republicans in fundraising, even in this climate. What did I see the other day? Republican National Committee -- I never know whether to believe these numbers 'cause they change every time a news story comes up. What did I see, RNC has $5 million on hand or some such thing. Or they're $5 million down because Steele's running around doing whatever he's doing. Well, how in the world can the opposition party be underfunded given the current circumstances? The Republican Party ought to be Rockefellers right now given what the Obama people are doing. People ought to be throwing dollars at Republicans. Why aren't they?

RUSH: Now, look. I've been kind of tough on the Republicans here. Even if they are behind in fundraising -- and I'm not sure that they are -- but even if they are, at least they're not instituting death panels to cut off funding from any of their candidates that are too far behind in the polls. The Democrats have set up triage and the candidates they don't think can win are being shut out. Now, the National Journal Hotline says the National Republican Congressional Committee outraised its Democrat counterpart in each of the last four months. That's on the House side, I don't know about the Senate Republican committee versus the Democrat Senate Republican committee. I know about the RNC versus the DNC. And even if I saw a figure today it would change tomorrow. There seems to be no continuity or consistency in these fundraising numbers. At any rate, all I know is that the Rasmussen people are out there, 68% of the American people favor smaller government and lower taxes. That means 68% of the American people want conservative principles, which tells me that a campaign based on those is a winning campaign.

RUSH: Here's Angel, Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. It's great to have you on the EIB Network. Hi.

CALLER: Thanks, Rush. I really appreciate you having me on. I wanted to talk about Mike Castle. He's refusing to debate Christine O'Donnell. We have organized a group of all the conservative people in Delaware, all the conservative groups. We've tried... Today, we hand-delivered to his office -- we mailed, faxed and we sent Facebook requests -- to try to get him to debate her. He refuses to do it.

RUSH: Well, that's not that uncommon. In his mind, he's the incumbent and he's a member of the House, and he's got nothing to win by debating her. It wouldn't just be Castle that would refuse to debate. I mean, anybody in his situation probably would 'cause there's nothing he can gain. All he's going to do is give her exposure if he does and he doesn't want to do that.

CALLER: Oh, it's certainly a shame because he's trying to say that he's here to represent Delaware, but he refuses to meet with the people of Delaware and show us that he's the best candidate.

RUSH: It's better to have people think that than to see him in action and maybe question it.

CALLER: Yeah. Agreed. He keeps insisting -- this is a quote -- "She's not a viable candidate."

CALLER: That one I can't tell you, but he is insisting she's not a viable candidate, and it seems to me like the Tea Party Express endorsement -- being talked about by people like you and Mark Levin, it seems to me -- that makes her viable.

RUSH: Well, she's on the ballot, right? So she's viable. I mean, she's gonna get some votes, so she's viable, right?

RUSH: Yeah. All right. Well, look, Angel, thanks for the call. Thanks for the update. "Castle Refuses to Debate O'Donnell in Delaware," is the headline.

RUSH: Where is this pastor? The guy that wants to burn the Korans, he's in Gainesville, Florida? On 9/11 between six and nine p.m. he wants to burn the Koran. So a lot of people are reacting to this. Hillary Clinton said this yesterday in Washington about the idea.

HILLARY: The news is carrying reports that a pastor down in Gainesville, Florida, plans to burn the Holy Koran on September 11th. I am heartened by the clear unequivocal condemnation of this disrespectful, disgraceful act that has come from American religious leaders of all faiths. Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation.

RUSH: And then the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, held a press conference yesterday in the city and said this.

BLOOMBERG: In a strange way, I'm here to defend his right to do that. I happen to think that it is distasteful. I don't think he would like it if somebody burnt a book that in his religion he thinks is holy, but the First Amendment protects everybody. And you can't say that we're going to apply the First Amendment to only those cases where we are in agreement.

RUSH: Okay, so Hillary finds it reprehensible, Bloomberg finds it reprehensible, but he doesn't think it's worth enough to stop it, First Amendment. So the pastor down there in Gainesville seeking prayer and guidance whether they should burn the Koran. I like to put stories like this in perspective. The reason I want to put stories like this in perspective, when I was over in Hawaii with my golf buddies, I forget what it was, but I went on a tirade and a rant one afternoon. We'd finished playing golf, we're out on my buddy's deck, we're waiting for dinner to be fixed, and somebody said something about something in the news, and I said, "I don't believe it! It's the media. I don't react to anything in the media. It's all fake. It's all trumped up. The media is not about what's news anymore."

The media is not sitting around watching what's happening and reporting it. They're moving agenda items and so forth and so on, and I wasn't even gonna talk about this, but I got sucked in by it. I decided I'd go do some research on this. And I have two stories. First, Monday, May 4th, of 2009, this is Al Jazeera: "A former Afghan prime minister has called for an inquiry after Al Jazeera broadcast footage showing Christian US soldiers appearing to be preparing to try and convert Muslims in Afghanistan. Ahmed Shah Ahmedzai said there must be a 'serious investigation' after military chaplains stationed in the US air base at Bagram were filmed discussing how to distribute copies of the Bible printed in the country's main Pashto and Dari languages. ... Ahmed Shah Ahmedzai told Al Jazeera from Kabul on Monday: 'This is a complete deviation from what they [the US military] are supposed to be doing. I don't think even the US constitution would allow what they are doing ... it is completely against all regulations.'"

So Al Jazeera, back in 2009 was accusing our troops of trying to convert Muslims to Christianity by printing Bibles in native languages, and they were being taught in seminars how to do the conversions. Ahmed Shah Ahmedzai said, "This is very damaging for diplomatic relations between the two counties ... everyone knows people are very conservative here, very faithful to Islam. They will never accept any other religion. ... Someone who leaves Islam is sentenced very severely -- the death penalty [is imposed]. There must be a serious investigation now that it has come out into the public and [into the] press." So they were demanding an investigation of the US military for trying to convert Muslims to Christianity in Afghanistan 2009. And Ahmed Shah Ahmedzai said, "Look, they're not going to shift, if they do, they get killed. Somebody who leaves Islam is sentenced to death."

"Sayed Aalam Uddin Asser, of the Islamic Front for Peace and Understanding in Kabul, told Al Jazeera: 'It's a national security issue ... our constitution says nothing can take place in Afghanistan against Islam. If people come and propaganda other religions, which have no followers in Afghanistan [then] it creates problems for the people, for peace, for stability.'" This was all on Al Jazeera. "The footage, shot about a year ago by Brian Hughes, a documentary maker and former member of the US military who spent several days in Bagram near Kabul, was obtained by Al Jazeera's James Bays, who has covered Afghanistan extensively. ... It is not clear that the Bibles were distributed to Afghans, but Hughes said that none of the people he recorded in a series of sermons and Bible study classes appeared to able to speak Pashto or Dari. Hughes said: 'The only reason they would have these documents there was to distribute them to the Afghan people and I knew it was wrong, and I knew that filming it ... documenting it would be important.' ... Questioned about the footage, Greg Julian, a US colonel in Afghanistan, told Al Jazeera: 'Most of this is taken out of context ... this is irresponsible and inappropriate journalism. This footage was taken a year ago ... the bibles were taken into custody and not distributed.'" The Bibles were taken into custody. These are the Bibles reprinted in native languages, taken into custody and not distributed.

Now, that was from May 4th of 2009. Reuters the next day, May 5th, 2009: "Bibles in Afghan languages sent to a U.S. soldier at a base in Afghanistan were confiscated and destroyed to ensure that troops did not breach regulations which forbid proselytising, a military spokeswoman said. The U.S. military has denied its soldiers tried to convert Afghans to Christianity, after Qatar-based Al Jazeera television showed soldiers at a bible class ... U.S. Central Command's General Order Number 1 forbids troops on active duty from trying to convert people to another religion."

Do you know how they destroyed the Bibles? They burned 'em. They did. The US military burned the Bibles in a foreign language. Now, I'm just trying to bring a little perspective to this. I can now confirm the Bibles shown in Al Jazeera's clip were in fact collected by the chaplains and later destroyed. They were never distributed. Now, you compare and contrast this event with the current outrage over some crackpot's plans to burn a couple Korans in Florida on September 11th. State Department spokesman called the pastor's idea un-American. Do you remember any outrage when the US government destroyed Bibles in order to avoid offending the sensitivities of Muslims in Afghanistan? I don't think you remember that, do you? You're probably just hearing about this for the first time. The pastor in Gainesville has 50 congregants. That's how many people in his flock at his church in Gainesville.

RUSH: By the way, has the ACLU weighed in yet on the Gainesville pastor who wants to burn the Koran? Why not? I mean, if the ACLU would be consistent they'd move in there and defend this Gainesville pastor's right to burn the Koran. Maybe the ACLU's finally found a religious text that they want to protect. Who knew?

CALLER: Glad to hear it. The point I have today is with all these campaigns and elections, the candidates that we need to be skeptical of are the ones who wish to label themselves as fiscal conservatives. My thought on the matter is, why make that distinguishment? If you're a conservative, then you're already a fiscal conservative. If you're not, then maybe you're a social liberal.

RUSH: Fiscal conservative is somebody who wishes the social issues would not rear their head in politics or --

RUSH: Look, folks, this is really nothing new. If we can go back to the archives of this program, even during the beginning of the Obama regime, I talked about the divisions in the Republican Party, and I told you that the social issues are the dividing point. I told you. I told you there are a bunch of country club, blue-blooders who don't want the social issues to be anywhere near Republican Party politics. They don't want anything to do with it. This is one of the things that's so frustrating people. Here's Obama, he's up there again, he's out in Parma, Ohio. He's delivering a speech on the economy. (imitating Obama) "We tried it their way. Last ten years. All those policies got us in this mess. They want us to go back." Utter lies. Utter, utter lies. We're in this mess because of him. Nineteen, 20, whatever it is, months of him, is why we're in this mess. Right now the whole notion of Republicans saying, "We'll, it's the social issues." Broom 'em if you want to, but I mean don't sit there and try to get them out of the political sphere. It's a shame that they're in there, but they are. It's a reality that's going to have to be dealt with. But I guarantee the vast majority of Americans right now are not opposed to Obama because he may be pro-choice. Anyway, thanks for the call out there, Josh.

This is Patrick in Wasilla, Alaska. Great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Like I told your screener I think that this November's election will go down as the war against the incumbent in history. I mean there's a lot of new registration to vote, you know, coming out of the last three years, national interest and everything and a lot of these people coming out to vote, they haven't been politically indoctrinated, they're not using political logic, they're using common sense. And their common sense is telling them that the people who are responsible for how a job has gotten done are the people who have been doing it.

RUSH: Do you think that these new arrivals are holding all incumbents equally responsible?

CALLER: Yes. They are. I mean common sense, you know, it does dictate that they are responsible. They're the ones that's there, they're the ones that --

RUSH: Wait a minute. But there are conservative incumbents who are not gonna lose. This is a war against liberalism. We're in this mess because of three and a half years of the Democrats controlling the purse strings in Congress. We're in this mess because of Obama being in charge of the government along with Pelosi and Reid for the last 19, 20 months. They've had it for a couple years before that. The media would love you to believe this is a war against incumbents, but it's a war against liberalism.

CALLER: Well, if you want to consider liberalism growing more dependent state by state on federal funding, okay, I mean basically we've grown our dependency on federal funding in each state by making it the name of the game, okay, we've been electing politicians over years that are saying they're gonna go back and get us the most money, not free up the most opportunity in this country, okay, not like free market capitalism, you know, where we go get opportunity for our state. Instead we're just going and getting the cash, which all's that's doing is growing our dependency.

CALLER: Okay. Now, we have all kinds of resources, especially in Alaska. We want those resources freed up so that we can grow private sector wealth, grow private sector jobs, okay, and we're not going to do that by continuing to have our federal government say, "Well, no, don't take that, take this cash instead," okay? We need to get away from that. We need to get away from --

RUSH: I understand what you're saying. I totally agree, but that is ideological. You've got some Republicans who believe in that kind of stuff that you just described, but they're not conservative Republicans and they are vulnerable. It's what this is all about. This is a war against liberalism! This is a war against socialism. It's not just a war against -- you can call it statism, you've just described statism. You just described the government giving benefits away in exchange for votes. Yeah, there's some Republicans that have done that, and they may be vulnerable as well. But they aren't conservatives. Dependency on the government is liberalism, socialism, or even worse. Patrick, thanks much. I appreciate it.

CALLER: Hello, Rush. Okay, I believe that Obama is 100% the cause of this recession mess we're in, and I am disappointed that Republicans and talk radio let Obama get away with blaming Bush and the Republicans for the mess he inherited. Bush did a good job even with a Democrat Congress. If you look at the timeline the economy was in a nosedive when Clinton left office. Even with 9/11, hurricanes, earthquakes, forest fires, and floods --

CALLER: -- the third year of the Bush second term, unemployment was only 5%. Home foreclosures were only 5%. Obama started running for office in the fourth year of Bush's second administration. He talked about taxing the rich. He talked about taxing the corporations. He talked about raising the capital gains tax and as a result the rich started taking their money out of the stock market and the stock market went down the tubes, the corporations started laying people off, therefore the unemployment rate skyrocketed, and with people out of work they could no longer pay for the homes and the loans that they had incurred.

RUSH: Nobody disputes that, but your premise is that nobody's getting on the Democrats or Obama for blaming Bush. And a lot of people are. A lot of people are telling Obama, "Grow up. You can't keep blaming everything on Bush." Anyway, appreciate the call.

RUSH: I've been watching Obama here during the break. Those of you watching on the Dittocam today, I've got to apologize. I'm yawning. For some reason I'm fighting fatigue here. I'm watching Obama and I almost fell asleep. The audience is almost asleep in this speech out in Parma, Ohio. (imitating Obama) "I think you need a break. We gotta have these middle-class tax cuts, need to be permanent, you need a break." Smattering applause. It's listless. And he's attacking Boehner. I don't think the people in the crowd care. Anyway, we'll have audio sound bites from this either later this afternoon, probably tomorrow.

"Even America's Liberal Elites Concede that Obama's Presidency is Crumbling." It's a headline today from the UK Telegraph by Niles Gardiner. Here's how it begins: "Democrats in Congress are no longer asking themselves whether this is going to be a bad election year for them and their party. They are asking whether it is going to be a disaster. The GOP pushed deep into Democratic-held territory over the summer, to the point where the party is well within range of picking up the 39 seats it would need to take control of the House. Overall, as many as 80 House seats could be at risk, and fewer than a dozen of these are held by Republicans. Political handicappers now say it is conceivable that the Republicans could also win the 10 seats they need to take back the Senate. Not since 1930 has the House changed hands without the Senate following suit. Is this a piece from National Review, The Weekly Standard, The Wall Street Journal or Fox News.com, all major conservative news outlets in the United States? No. It's a direct quote from yesterday's Washington Post, usually viewed by conservatives as a flagship of the liberal establishment inside the Beltway." Last sentence of the story: "What was once a perspective confined largely to Fox News, online conservative news sites, or talk radio is now gaining ground in the liberal US print media as well -- historic change is coming to America, though not quite the version promised by Barack Obama."

And then CNNMoney.com: "Obama's Jobs Pitch Fails to Dazzle Washington." If you can't dazzle CNN anymore, you are in deep doo-doo. I mean the Obama magic has gotta be gone, if you can't dazzle CNN?

CALLER: Mr. Limbaugh, I have the greatest respect for you. You're one of my heroes. But you said something a few minutes ago that I do take umbrage with.

CALLER: I am very much so but I couldn't care less if Mary Ellen has a baby or she has an abortion. I don't care if Tom and Harry get married. What I care about is Obama spending my grandchildren's money. That's all I care about, and I resent being called a liberal. Even a hyphenated liberal I resent.

RUSH: It was a caller. I didn't call you (laughing) a hyphenated liberal. What this guy was --

CALLER: All right. If you're not calling me a "hyphenated liberal," I forgive you.

RUSH: (laughing) I understand where you're coming from. You don't want any social issues to matter.

CALLER: I couldn't care less. What does it mean to me if Harry and Tom get married?

RUSH: No, I know that, but there are some people who when they describe themselves as "fiscal conservatives" --

RUSH: -- are trying to say they are pro-choice/pro-abortion, and this is what the guy was saying.

CALLER: But if you really are fiscally conservative, that's as conservative as you really have to be. Couldn't care less. What difference does it make what other people do with their lives? As long as they don't affect us and don't affect us in a way that's negative, that's all.

RUSH: Well, to some people it does matter but I understand where you're coming from, particularly at this point in our country's history and the crossroads where we're at. You know, whether Tom sleeps with Dick is really not the big thing right now. What Obama's doing to destroy the country is. Nobody disagrees with you about that. His point was... I don't have time to explain it. But all I can tell you is, I didn't call you a hyphenated American.

RUSH: Hyphenated conservative, liberal, whatever. I didn't use the word. It wasn't me!

RUSH: It's ironic to me, folks. It's amazing. A man who has such large ears could be so tone deaf to the American people. This speech in which he just launched a personal vendetta against Boehner is just going to elevate Boehner for no reason. This is all about fixing Obama's image. It wasn't about fixing the American economy or anything else.

RUSH: Knoxville, Tennessee, James, great to have you on the program. Hello, sir.

CALLER: Wonderful pictures on Facebook. But that's not why I wanted to call. It's the first time ever I made it through and I'm excited. You're always an optimist, and I really appreciate that about you, but there's one area that I heard you somewhat pessimistically dismiss the FairTax. It was created by economists, it would take a lot of the corruption out of politics because of the way they enact these laws that give special interest groups breaks in taxes. In a survey of foreign companies showed that 80% of foreign companies would build their next plant here if the FairTax were passed, and 20% would relocate entirely. I mean that's jobs in the economy coming back, that's taking all the political hacks and robbing them of their power, which is why that was where you were pessimistic. You were saying that it would never happen. And a lot of great ideas would have never happened if people didn't stand up --

RUSH: Well, I can understand why you thought I said that. I said it would never happen with the current bunch of people in Congress.

RUSH: Let me expand on that, 'cause it relates to some of the things going on with some of these newcomers running for office. I did not criticize any of the particular tax plans, the FairTax, the flat tax, or whatever. What I said was that the idea that existing members of Congress would ever give up the kind of power they have using the current tax code is silly. They're never gonna give that up. The only way to get rid of the current tax code is a clean sweep of Congress.

RUSH: Well, November can be a start. But here's one of the things that -- let's look at the Christine O'Donnell race versus Mike Castle.

RUSH: This is shaping up in the -- let's call it the conservative blogosphere on the Internet, some on talk radio, this is becoming quite a controversial race. And one of the reasons it's becoming controversial is because there are some conservative people who do not want this O'Donnell woman anywhere near elective office because she's either inexperienced or she's got some baggage in her past or she filed suit against a think tank or something. And they say we much rather have a RINO, a Republican-in-name-only 'cause at least this guy is a professional. And we've had some people say, Sharron Angle out in Nevada, "Eh..." Here's the problem. You can't have it both ways. You can't sit there and say the current crop is our problem and then when others are inspired who have never been in this business before to seek office and then you cream 'em and you impugn them, you're basically standing up to the status quo while criticizing it at the same time. One of the reasons this is important to me, it relates to your FairTax and fat tax, or whatever tax reform period.

CALLER: Specifically H.R. 52, the one that would require the repealment of the 16th Amendment that was written by, I believe, John Linder.

RUSH: John Linder, yeah, and Neal Boortz is big on that, helped with the book. But we're in an era -- look what's happening politically. Independents, people who have paid scant attention to politics before are now involved. Young people are involved and what are they doing? They're voting anti-Democrat. There is a golden opportunity to get rid of a lot of these professional politicians, ruling class types, both parties, who do not want any applecarts upset. So after years and years and years of conservatives complaining about -- and being for term limits, we've been all for term limits and so forth, complaining about the career politician, okay, here come some people, and now we're turning on them. We're passing up a real opportunity here. I want to think of a better way to say this.

CALLER: But isn't it the pundits that are, you know, pushing them to the side? It's not the people --

RUSH: That's what I mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Some of the pundits. Not all of them, but some of the pundits are. Yeah, pundit media type thing. You know, what you have here, you've got average ordinary Tea Party people. I mean these are the essence of the American citizenry. And they're out there, they're organizing and they're rallying and they're protesting and they're voting. And they are solid conservatives. And we are now attracting millions of people who were not Republican and who were not involved. They're being attracted to politics because they just abhor what the Democrats and Obama are doing. They see the future of the country going down the tubes, it's being mortgaged, their kids and grandkids, so we have exactly what we've always wanted, new blood, new people getting involved, people that don't care about politics finally getting involved on our side. And we do have some pundits who don't want them involved now because they're not sophisticated enough, not professional enough, or because they got baggage or what have you. And now some are telling us to turn our backs on them. And some are telling them, "We don't want you. Yeah, we talked about how we don't like the Democrats professional politicians, but, you know, we don't want you unless you're going to go to the establishment Republican Party," and so forth.

I have talked about this ever since Obama was immaculated because, remember, James, and everybody else, there have been lots of times -- we'll have to go to archives of this program and prove that while we've been talking and whining and complaining about Obama, we have problems in the Republican Party because a lot of Republicans don't like all these new conservatives. They don't, because of the social issues, they don't want pro-lifers, they don't want the moral majority of this kind of people involved. They don't want people who are not part of the professional class. They don't like Reagan. You know, Reagan was not an elite. They were embarrassed of him. But we have a great opportunity, everybody banging the drum.

So the way it correlates to you is, without naming any names, it is going to require a whole lot of fresh blood to reverse all this. And if you're talking about implementing tax reform to the extent of your H.R.52, the FairTax or a flat tax of Steve Forbes, you're going to need a whole bunch of new blood in there because the current crop is not going to willingly give up the power the tax code offers them. Think of the power you have, you're on ways and means and then it comes time to vote for any tax policy up or down, you deal with lobbyists. I mean when you can determine something like mortgage interest being deductible, look at the power that gives you, look at who loves you, the homeowners industry loves you, the lending industry loves you, a lot of homeowners will love you. Imagine taking that away. You got a lot of enemies when you do that. But imagine the power that writing tax law has. It's like asking a king to abdicate. They just don't step down. You have to overthrow 'em.

Heritage dot org quiz (I missed 1 out of 6; I should have gone with my instincts!):

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.

The anti-Jihad resistence (which appears to be a set of links to similar websites):

Mostly a liberal blogger, who says vicious things about most conservatives; and yet, says something sensible, e.g. posting many of the things which the healthcare bill does to us.

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:

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

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

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 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 #143	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	September 12, 2010