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).

North Korea attacks South Korea, killing 2 soldiers and 2 or move civilians. Then they accuse the South Koreans of using civilians as human shields.

Conman posing as a Taliban negotiator scams the United States, NATO and Afghanistan leaders for a substantial amount of money.

Over 7 separate attacks against Christians have been made over the past month in Iraq. Although that may seem like a lot, there were over 46 terrorist attacks in Iraq in the past 30 days, primarily against civilians and Muslims of the wrong stripe. Overall, there were about 130 terrorist attacks in the past 30 days in about a dozen different countries.

19-year-old Somali man is captured by the FBI, before he could put together a bomb plot in Portland.

The U.S. government seizes 75 domain names and shuts down several sites over copyright infringement.

Wikileaks releases more documents, these dealing with American and allied forces relations.

Sophisticated half-mile tunnel used for smuggling in the San Diego area just discovered.

Massachusetts senior senator, John Kerry, who is worth $239 million and has $2.7 million in his campaign war chest, is holding a fundraiser at the Boston Symphony, selling tickets for $75 to $4800 a seat.

45 millionaires sign an open petition calling for the end of the tax cuts adopted since 2001 on those with annual incomes exceeding one million dollars.

Several House Republicans say they will fight hard to stop the $1.15 billion settlement offer to Black farmers who claim the Department of Agriculture discriminated against them.

Velma Hart, the woman who told President Obama that she was tired of defending him, and then walked her remarks back for nearly a week in the press, has been laid off from her job.

Atheists, becoming more evangelistic each year, have placed a billboard outside the Lincoln Tunnel in New Jersey proclaiming, “You KNOW It’s a Myth. This Season, Celebrate REASON.”

Newsweek cover presents the President as a Hindu god, keeping everything in balance.

Whoopi Goldberg: “Right now, everybody can say the Muslims are the terrorists. Two years ago, it was the white people that were the terrorists.”

Whoopi Goldberg, who was quite upset when Bill O’Reilly spoke of the world having a Muslim problem, gave her opinion of organizing a national opt-out day in this way: "I think to me, and may this is a little far-fetched, but to me, that's like an act of terrorism." It’s not just Whoopi; it was everyone on the view.

Howard Dean on Sarah Palin: “She can look you right in the eye and say things that aren't true”

From a recent AP story: “Scientists say emissions overall should be cut 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 to prevent a dangerous temperature rise of more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees F) above preindustrial levels. Temperatures already rose 0.7 degrees C (1.3 degrees F) in the 20th century.” Nothing in this story suggests anything to the contrary.

Former Assistant TSA Admin on Security Checkpoints, Mo McGowan on Fox News: "Nobody likes to have their 4th Amendment violated going through a security line, but truth of the matter is, we're gonna have to do it."

Eric Bolling, when hearing that we ought to pay TSA employees more: “What a surprise—liberals think we should pay them more and that will solve everything.”

U.S. Representative Steve King on the Pigford settlement: "If you're a minority, you deserve a check from the government."

That Fox show about Conservative history has been great. In the 3^rd installment, the Laffer curve was mentioned, where, if you tax 0% you get $0 and if you tax at 100% you get $0; however, somewhere in between is where you get the maximum amount of taxes (for those who have studied maximums and minimums in Calculus, this is an application of that). The show lso mentioned that Pat Buchanan suggested that Gerald Ford choose Nelson Rockefeller as his vice president, to stir up and coalesce the conservative base (against Rockefeller, who is the epitome of the country club Republican). It’s been an outstanding show. These are links to part 3:

Tucker Carson discusses Warren Buffet’s offer to pay more taxes; if you think this is genuine and a good talking point, listen to interview with Greta:

The View all agree that protesting the TSA naked scanners is a bad thing (not the scanners; the protest of the scanners):

Some of the greatest hits of what Democrats have said and done over the past 2 years; direct quotations. X-rating on the background song (which can be silenced):

4 liberal women beat up on Bristol Palin (not there), making a number of very rude remarks about her on Dancing with the Stars. Hollywood is strongly against bullying, unless, of course, it is a Palin kid, and then it’s okay.

Jimmy Fallon interviews Chris Christie (the first part is pretty funny; there is a commercial first):

1) There are 2 theories on the TSA scanning. Rush thinks (based upon an article he read) that these very isolated incidents which are receiving a lot of attention in the press is a way to get us to simply go through the scanner instead, which is less expensive and time-consuming for TSA. Beck offers the more paranoid view that, the government is simply seeing just how far they can push us.

2) Someone else has observed, this administration claims the TSA pat downs are to protect us; yet that same administration revealed all of our CIA documents about enhanced interrogation, which put us at risk. Further, this administration wants to have civil trials of terrorists, which will bring out information we do not want to have out there, because it makes our lives more dangerous.

3) This same administration which thinks our 4^th amendment rights are unimportant, and claims that TSA can violate them, as long as it is for our safety. However, this administration also wants to afford every right to the terrorists who want to destroy us. Does this make any sense?

4) Although some people have been arrested in the airport, no terrorist has been caught as a result of TSA searches and scans.

5) Let me tell you one of the most important considerations for president, which is ignored by almost everyone: staffing. Who the President is able to hire as staff makes a huge difference. When it came to Bush’s cabinet and other appointed positions, he made it look easy, and the attacks against his staff usually had very little to do with reality (the attacks against Karl Rove, who turns out to be intelligent and charming). Or, who wouldn’t love to have Alberto Gonzales again, rather than Eric Holder, who only is concerned with the law if it relates to one of his liberal causes, and says that we are a nation of cowards when it comes to race. Contacts with the real world (that world outside of Washington and outside of politics) are extremely important. This is why former governors often make good presidents; they have already filled a staff, and, they had to have made that work, otherwise, they would not be considered as a serious presidential candidate. One of Obama’s biggest problems, apart from his far left agenda, was his appointees, many of whom had tax problems and a variety of other problems.

6) I still hear people who bemoan the way North and South Korea ended the war, in sort of a stalemate. This was a great thing to occur, because, after 50+ years, we can look at South Korea, which is democratic and practices free enterprise, and compare that to North Korea, which is socialistic and run by a madman. It ought to be simple for any honest person to look at North and South Korea, and make an easy judgment as to which government works, and which does not.

7) I have heard several people point out that, under Bush, people went ballistic over the Patriot Act, concerned about the loss of their civil rights, because the government monitored calls from the U.S. to known terrorists. These same people are surprisingly silent when it comes to illegal search and seizures which are occurring at our airports every single day.

8)Climate Change enthusiasts have found that meeting in snowy Canadian cities tends to introduce far too much irony into the message of a warming world, so they have opted this year to meet in Cancun. So, even though temperatures over the next 10 days are slightly below normal, it will still be actually quite temperate.

9) It has been suggested that the President take his wife and girls in for a filmed pat down, to show how there is no reason to think that TSA has gone too far.

9.6% unemployment after passing the Stimulus Bill, which was touted as being filled with shovel-ready projects. I don’t think there was much offered there for border enforcement, however, which are federal jobs for right now.

Usually after a recession, the economy comes roaring back. Right now, we have had several quarters with annualized growth of 0–2.5%. Most of the time, growth following a recession is in the 5–6% range.

The cost of preserving tax cuts for the “rich” is less than the cost of the Stimulus law.

Obama's job approval rating as calculated by the Zogby Poll has now dropped to 39%,

A Washington Post and ABC poll indicates that 70% of Americans want TSA to profile.

Sarah Palin slipped up and said, "We gotta stand with our North Korean allies." It was clear, in the beginning of what she had to say, that she correctly differentiated between North and South Korea; but she did mistakenly say North Korean allies after clearly distinguishing who was who. When it comes to headlines and stories, of almost all the articles I looked at, none of them point out that this was obviously a slip of the tongue, as opposed to a real mistake. However, the stories where the audio was provided, the audio provided enough context to confirm this was a slip of the tongue.

Prior to the 2008 election, how many people knew that Obama said he had been to 57 states with one more to go? He made a number of similar slip-ups before and after he was elected, but I suspect that Palin’s comment will have a lot more mileage than anything that Obama has said.

Speaking of recent statements, here is Obama, asked a question, and he searches for a thought:

Could you imagine in your wildest dreams, the Newsweek cover presenting George W. Bush as a god balancing 6 different things at once (even though he did a much better job of it than Obama)?

From the AP story on the Climate conference: 15,000 government delegates, environmentalists, business leaders, journalists and others will gather in the meeting halls of this steamy Caribbean resort for the annual conference of the 193-nation U.N. climate treaty. This steamy weather, for the most part, will range between 65–83°F. Oh, again, I pose the question to you: which is the most prominent greenhouse gas? If you know, then you will realize how phony all of this is.

More from this AP story: Researchers point to this summer's historic heat wave in Russia and nationwide floods in Pakistan as portents of things to come. They wonder whether this year's extreme drought in the Amazon is the beginning of an expected drying out of parts of that region. In the Arctic Ocean, the summer melt of the ice cap has reached unprecedented proportions in recent years, and studies suggest the summer ocean may be ice-free as early as this decade. So, who wants to put money on this?

The Democrats and Obama have a chance to make some advances with the middle and with some conservatives. I think the Bush tax cuts are going to be extended for at least a year or two; and realistic Democrats needs to get out in front of this in the lame duck session and extend them; and then the President ought to sign them. And then, for the next 2 years, they could tout, “It was Democrats who gave the American people tax cuts.” That would be a lie, since it is Bush that pioneered the tax cuts; and now, what is at issue is preserving the Bush tax cuts; however, the media would go along with this, and most of them would give credit to the Dems for tax cuts. Some might even call these the Obama tax cuts.

However, this is not in their blood. Many of the more radical Dems remain in Congress, with most of the moderate Dems eliminated; and the president does not want the rich to keep all of their money, so this is not going to happen.

As above; if Obama wanted to move toward the middle, then he would push a presently Democratic Congress to extend the Bush Tax cuts. He will not be able to stop these from happening; however, he is ideologically opposed to extending Bush’s tax cuts, and that will prevent him from doing this. This would be a brilliant political move on Obama’s part. However, that requires flexibility, something which President Clinton had in spades, and which characteristic President Obama lacks.

Lame Duck Congress Will not Tackle Jobs, Economic Growth, the Deficit, the National Debt, and January’s Tax Rates

One of the first things on the House desk with the new Republican majority is going to be a preservation of the tax cuts. It will pass with an overwhelming majority in the House and with a bipartisan majority in the Senate. Obama will veto this bill; and, at that point, it will be about 60-40 in favor of it passing.

There are several problems with the educational system in both Texas and the United States:

● Student discipline problems have escalated to the point where police are stationed on many campuses full time.

● There is very little positive parental involvement. Many of the parents who are involved, we often wish would stay home.

● Despite our increased academic standards, student achievement levels continue to plummet; and those who go to college are, increasingly, taking more and more remedial courses.

● Furthermore, there are fewer and fewer kids who understand tools; they do not understand a hammer, pliers, a socket set, or much of anything else.

● Although moving from a public school system to an open system of competitive schools is a great idea, this cannot be done overnight without great chaos.

I think that I can solve many of those problems, with varying degrees of success, and with two simple steps:

I used to be a math teacher and, as far as I’m concerned, there ought to be minimal standards that a child must achieve in order to graduate from high school, and I don’t believe that knowing algebra ought to be one of them. Or geometry. The kid needs to know how to balance a checkbook; he ought to have some clue as to what the stock market is; what inflation is; and when someone says, this item is one-third off or unemployment is 9.6%, I don’t expect his eyes to glaze over.

In our rush to excellence, we have forgotten some simple principles in education: for every person who has an I.Q. of 115, there is a person with an I.Q. of 85. For that special student who has an I.Q. of 140, there is also that matching student with an I.Q. of 60. We already know that, no matter what we do, at most, 40–50% of our students are going to go to college, and maybe 30–40% will graduate with a degree of some sort.

We need to stop thinking about those kids whose I.Q.’s are higher than 110 and start thinking about those with I.Q.’s below 90. We have mistakenly decided to bow to the insanity of preparing everyone for college or that everyone needs a higher education. They don’t.

In other words, we need to lower our standards. There needs to be a very basic required high school curriculum, which a smart kid should complete in 2 years if he wanted to.

Here’s why: one of my favorite students of years gone by, Sallie (not her real name) took one of my classes, as we had just begun to raise our standards and administer high stakes tests (you pass or you do not graduate). Sallie was not a very smart girl. She was pretty, she was cheerful, she had a wonderful disposition, and she took school seriously; but she wasn’t smart. A year after my class, I interacted with her a few times, and she was having so much trouble with the upcoming test (I think it was the TAAS test then), and she could not seem to pass it, and she wanted to. She wanted her high school diploma. That was the end game. It was a dream that she did not want to give up on.

Later on, she told me that her doctor figured out her problem—she was A.D.D., so they gave her drugs to take every single day, so that she could focus. I had her in my class and she could focus fine. Focusing was not her problem. Book work and abstract thinking was. I never found out if she passed the test or not; but I know that she was going to take these drugs with dogged determinedness, because that I the kind of gal she was. She was willing to try because some adults told her, “You need to take some drugs, and that will fix everything.”

What Sallie needed was lower standards, and that is what all of our schools need, is lower standards.

Now, if you want to give the high school degrees different names, that is fine by me. If you want to identify that students graduated on an academic track, I can live with that. But I want school to be relevant to Sallie again.

There was another problem with our high standards—they weren’t really that high. When I started teaching, I taught a lot of Geometry, and I told my kids, this is your first college-prep course, and I worked them half to death. They did proofs, they did compass and straight edge constructions, and they did proofs within these constructions. It was great. It was a hard class. However, now that everyone has to take Geometry, it is no longer a hard class. The more courses we add to the required curriculum, the more that these courses are dumbed down. So, kids today take a course called geometry, but I can guarantee you, it is not the rigorous course I used to teach.

My first principal used to tell us, “You aren’t teaching a class, you are teaching kids.” We have lost sight of the kids we are teaching. Sure, some are going to college; but most of them are not. That is okay. They are not somehow inferior because they are not going to college. They are different; there is nothing wrong or immoral about being born with an I.Q. below 90, and our schools need to reflect this.

Once we lower our standards, we need more schools more types of schools. Furthermore, we need more freedom and autonomy for the administrators in these schools.

One of the changes which occurred when I was teaching, is there were no more pops (spankings) and it was almost impossible to expel a child from a school district. Let me tell you, expulsion in the old days was fantastic! It was a great tool. This meant that, when some ner-do-well child pushed the envelope too far, we tossed him out on his ear. If his parents were concerned, then they would enroll him in a nearby school district, which often required that the parent and the child spend 30–45 minutes in the car together every single morning and every single afternoon, and I am sure that, now and again, the parent would pontificate on the importance of not getting thrown out of this new school. That is called bonding. It was parental involvement. It was a good thing. The kid might think it is nagging, but it was good for the parent and good for the kid. And, sometimes, when the parent got tired of nagging, and the kid was beginning to do okay, then they would talk. This was a great system. We need to have it back. Most schools could stand to have 5% of their population expelled, because of their disruptive behavior. As a former teacher, I can tell you, once a classroom has 5% recalcitrants, the teacher cannot get anything done.

Over the past 20–30 years, our schools have become very much a one-size-fits-all, where the requirements for graduation are so great, students have little or no choice in what they take in school. Furthermore, and this may surprise some of you, there are some young boys and girls who are not really designed to sit in a chair 6 or 7 hours a day, each an every day, and stare at a book, a teacher or at a computer screen. Some of our kids need to be able to move about and to do things with their hands. It is no shame for a young person to learn how to use tools or how to develop a skill of some sort.

The second thing that we need in education is choice. If I want my kid to go to some school across town because they have a great fine arts program, or to another school because their football team is awesome, then why am I stuck going to whatever government school I happen to live next to?

There is the problem of, how do we implement a school choice system without turning our whole education system upside down? This is an important point. You cannot open all of the schools tomorrow to school choice, and expect that this will be an easy transition. It would be absolute chaos for 5–10 years.

Here is the second proposal, and, this will save the state gobs of money. In year one, every kid has the option of taking $1000 from the state and applying it to the tuition of any private school he is interested in. Here is the savings: the $12,000 or $13,000 a year that kid would take from our school budget, is suddenly reduced to $1000/year. Obviously, a very small percentage of parents would take advantage of this. Probably 1–3% of the student body would be redirected to a private school with this credit.

Year 2, make this a $2000 stipend. More parents are going to use this amount to get their child in a different school. The saving is a little less, but the public schools are facing a slow attrition rate, and private schools are experiencing a slow growth rate.

Year 3, $3000. Etc. I think we could go up to $7000 or maybe as high as $10,000; and we will have slowly changed our no choice system into a high choice system. Lousy schools would not have to be tested and then a lot of steps taken to fix them; they would slowly die out. Smaller schools all around them would pop up, providing a more relevant curriculum for that community, drawing more and more kids away from the failing schools.

Positive parental input increases dramatically. If mom and dad have a say as to where Daryl or Sallie go, they are going to be more involved. Many parents will do their homework, figuring out, what school fits their child the best. That is wonderful parental involvement.

Some schools will become vocational centers. Some will interact with the local community, farming out kids to various businesses as interns. They may or may not get paid, but they will learn valuable people skills and be mentored by businesses that need cheap help and do not mind sharing their skills in exchange for getting some scut work done.

What about this plethora of small private schools and football? We here in Texas love our football (and those other sports), so what will happen here? Solution: we will have school families. Let’s say the public school has enough kids to field a decent team, but the 8 private schools nearby don’t. Alliances could be formed; deals could be struck, and even though Donnie is going to a school which emphasizes refrigeration and building skills, the nearby high school will let Donnie play on their team. Maybe Donnie’s parents will have to cough up $1000–$2000 each year for equipment costs, maybe the state could provide that, and maybe local parents might provide that money in order to get a dynamic team together. There are a lot of options, and rather than the state mandate these options, that they allow for a plethora of approaches.

The two keys to solving many of our problems in education are, lower standards and school choice, which is implemented slowly.

Finally, our legislature and our government needs to get out of our education system, as much as they can. They have become increasingly involved over the past several decades, and costs for educating our students have skyrocketed, and yet, our students are an inferior product today. Government needs to recognize, they cannot do it all. They cannot make some mandate from on high, and some how that will fix everything. They need to be flexible and wise enough to let the free market have a chance to work.

Freedom and innovation will improve education. Top-down requirements and a continual raising of standards does not work, as the past 2 decades in Texas education prove.

If just one state implements these 2 changes, it will revolutionize education all over the United States, because this approach will work.

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people.

I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.

So climate change experts having finally got the message. And the message is: their message sucks. In fact, their "Scare the hell out of us" screed was so awful, researchers claim, that it actually undermined their mission.

Yep, according to Cal-Berkeley shrinks, dire predictions about global warming can "backfire if presented too negatively." Of course that raises one question: how do you present dire predictions, positively?

Look the fact is, people like me questioned global warming evidence because we'd seen this hysteria before - with emotional warnings about the coming ice age, the dangers of nuclear power, artificial sweeteners and DDT.

And this caused us to grow cold to such crap, and overlook real threats like terrorism, the resurgence of malaria, and of course, the rise of Ed Hardy t-shirts.

Worse, with global warming, we saw that anyone who dare to question the hysteria would be labeled a "skeptic," and treated like a "leper."

But the climategate scandal proved that inevitably, these cocky GW experts would overstep the science, get humbled, retreat into therapy. (Have you seen Gore lately?)

So now, finally, shrinks are saying these experts should rethink their messaging.

Of course, this is still not tackling the real problem. Note that the shrinks aren't telling experts to stop exaggerating consequences - instead, they say, "present solutions to global warming."

Meaning: just assume your lies were right all along and push the curly light bulbs.

Lame Duck Agenda begins under Pelosi-Reid last days of power- Lame Duck Congress Watch

[When reading through this, keep in mind, there are several important issues to the American people: jobs, economic growth, the deficit, the national debt, and January’s tax rates]

Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have ambitious goals for the Lame Duck session of congress. Tops on their list would be the attempt to silence the right through the Disclose Act, a campaign reform bill that openly defies Supreme Court rulings from Mccain-Feingold. Other dreams for the progressive machine include the Cap and Trade nightmare that would tax small businesses out of existence and make you and I even more dependent on their central authority government. We have already documented the upcoming vote on Paycheck Fairness, which happens in 8 days. Using congress members who have been rejected by the voters, Pelosi-Reid-Obama intend on pushing through as much of the Obama agenda to fundamentally transform America as they possibly can.

Bush Tax Cuts: In 2001 and 2003, then-President Bush enacted a series of tax cuts on individual income, the so-called "marriage penalty," long-term capital gains and certain qualified dividends...

Estate Tax a.k.a. the "Death Tax": Like the Bush tax cuts, Republican cuts to the estate tax, which apply to the wealth of the deceased upon their death, are scheduled to expire on Jan. 1..

.Taxes, Taxes and More Taxes: Congress will also likely address the so-called "Alternative Minimum Tax," which has been "patched" year-in, year-out so that it won't hit middle class taxpayers with roughly $70 billion in new taxes. Congress will need to patch it or it will apply for next year's tax season...

Doc Fix": By law, Medicare is supposed to keep the rates it reimburses doctors in check. Unfortunately, medical inflation has far outstripped the reimbursement rate increases, and, if Congress hadn't "patched" the rates to match reality eight times in the last ten years, many doctors wouldn't take Medicare patients..

Continuing Resolution: Congress is supposed to fund the government through a series of appropriations bills that address different types of funding - defense, energy, etc..

Food Safety: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has filed cloture already on legislation that would bolster the Food and Drug Administration's authority in dealing with, well, food safety. The legislation has bipartisan support in the Senate, including from some of its most conservative and liberal members.

Defense Reauthorization: This legislation, which authorizes funding for the armed forces, became stalled in the Senate over several issues that include "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," a pay raise for soldiers, and an alternative engine for the F-35 jet fighter..

New START Treaty: The Senate Foreign Relations Committee reported the "New START treaty" out in late September, making it a potential for the lame duck...

Obamacare "1099" Fix: Buried deep in the president's health care legislation is a requirement that businesses report all business-to-business expenses over $600. This provision, which has nothing at all to do with health care, was included to boost tax revenues to help pay for the bill, since it is believed it will help IRS agents track down tax cheats..

Unemployment Benefits: Congress has extended unemployment benefits during the economic recession, but some of those benefits will expire this month. Democrats may opt to extend those benefits in the lame duck, though debate has focused on how to pay the $5 billion per month tab..

Chesapeake Bay Reauthorization: This legislation would grant EPA broad new authorities to tackle pollution in the Chesapeake Bay..

Disclose Act: The lame duck is the last hope for the Democrats' campaign finance bill that would limit outside spending on campaigns in the wake of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. A spokesman for Reid said its passage in the lame duck is unlikely, but there are several reasons to believe it could be the most probable item on the liberal wish list..

Immigration: Reid vowed to bring the "Dream Act" up for a vote in the lame duck in his campaign against Sharron Angle; the legislation would provide a path to citizenship for those who came to America illegally before they were 18...

Cap-and-Trade: Environmentalists, one of the Democrats' top constituencies, are frustrated. They saw health care overtake their dream of combating climate change as the Democrats top priority, and the second-thought push for cap-and-trade failed badly...

"Card Check": Union-backed legislation nicknamed "card check" is quite unlikely, as the legislation was unable to gain hardly any traction throughout the 111th Congress...

Barack Obama is the anti-JFK (excellent article with a lot of links to back it up):

RUSH: It's time for the traditional true story of Thanksgiving, as written by me in my second best seller of 2.5 million copies in hardback: See, I Told You So. "Chapter 6, Dead White Guys, or What the History Books Never Told You: The True Story of Thanksgiving -- The story of the Pilgrims begins in the early part of the seventeenth century ... The Church of England under King James I was persecuting anyone and everyone who did not recognize its absolute civil and spiritual authority. Those who challenged ecclesiastical authority and those who believed strongly in freedom of worship were hunted down, imprisoned, and sometimes executed for their beliefs. A group of separatists first fled to Holland and established a community.

"After eleven years, about forty of them agreed to make a perilous journey to the New World, where they would certainly face hardships, but could live and worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences. On August 1, 1620, the Mayflower set sail. It carried a total of 102 passengers, including forty Pilgrims led by William Bradford. On the journey, Bradford set up an agreement, a contract, that established just and equal laws for all members of the new community, irrespective of their religious beliefs. Where did the revolutionary ideas expressed in the Mayflower Compact come from? From the Bible. The Pilgrims were a people completely steeped in the lessons of the Old and New Testaments. They looked to the ancient Israelites for their example.

"And, because of the biblical precedents set forth in Scripture, they never doubted that their experiment would work. But this was no pleasure cruise, friends. The journey to the New World was a long and arduous one. And when the Pilgrims landed in New England in November, they found, according to Bradford's detailed journal, a cold, barren, desolate wilderness. There were no friends to greet them, he wrote. There were no houses to shelter them. There were no inns where they could refresh themselves. And the sacrifice they had made for freedom was just beginning. During the first winter, half the Pilgrims - including Bradford's own wife - died of either starvation, sickness or exposure. When spring finally came, Indians taught the settlers how to plant corn, fish for cod and skin beavers for coats.

"Life improved for the Pilgrims, but they did not yet prosper! This is important to understand because this is where modern American history lessons often end. Thanksgiving is actually explained in some textbooks as a holiday for which the Pilgrims gave thanks to the Indians for saving their lives, rather than as a devout expression of gratitude grounded in the tradition of both the Old and New Testaments. Here is the part that has been omitted: The original contract the Pilgrims had entered into with their merchant-sponsors in London called for everything they produced to go into a common store, and each member of the community was entitled to one common share. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belonged to the community as well. They were going to distribute it equally. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belonged to the community as well.

"Nobody owned anything. They just had a share in it. It was a commune, folks. It was the forerunner to the communes we saw in the '60s and '70s out in California - and it was complete with organic vegetables, by the way." There's no question they were organic vegetables. "Bradford, who had become the new governor of the colony, recognized that this form of collectivism was as costly and destructive to the Pilgrims as that first harsh winter, which had taken so many lives. He decided to take bold action. Bradford assigned a plot of land to each family to work and manage, thus turning loose the power of the marketplace. That's right. Long before Karl Marx was even born, the Pilgrims had discovered and experimented with what could only be described as socialism. And what happened? It didn't work!" They nearly starved!

"It never has worked! What Bradford and his community found was that the most creative and industrious people had no incentive to work any harder than anyone else, unless they could utilize the power of personal motivation! But while most of the rest of the world has been experimenting with socialism for well over a hundred years - trying to refine it, perfect it, and re-invent it - the Pilgrims decided early on to scrap it permanently. What Bradford wrote about this social experiment should be in every schoolchild's history lesson. If it were, we might prevent much needless suffering in the future," such as that we're enduring now. "'The experience that we had in this common course and condition...'" this is Bradford. "'The experience that we had in this common course and condition tried sundry years...that by taking away property, and bringing community into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing - as if they were wiser than God,' Bradford wrote.

"'For this community [so far as it was] was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any recompense,'" without being paid for it, "'that was thought injustice.' Why should you work for other people when you can't work for yourself?" That's what he was saying. " The Pilgrims found that people could not be expected to do their best work without incentive. So what did Bradford's community try next? They unharnessed the power of good old free enterprise by invoking the undergirding capitalistic principle of private property.

"Every family was assigned its own plot of land to work and permitted to market its own crops and products. And what was the result? 'This had very good success,' wrote Bradford, 'for it made all hands industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.' ... Is it possible that supply-side economics could have existed before the 1980s? Yes. Read the story of Joseph and Pharaoh in Genesis 41. Following Joseph's suggestion (Gen 41:34), Pharaoh reduced the tax on Egyptians to 20% during the 'seven years of plenty' and the 'Earth brought forth in heaps.' (Gen. 41:47) In no time, the Pilgrims found they had more food than they could eat themselves.

"Now, this is where it gets really good, folks, if you're laboring under the misconception that I was, as I was taught in school. So they set up trading posts and exchanged goods with the Indians. The profits allowed them to pay off their debts to the merchants in London. And the success and prosperity of the Plymouth settlement attracted more Europeans and began what came to be known as the 'Great Puritan Migration.' But this story stops when the Indians taught the newly arrived suffering-in-socialism Pilgrims how to plant corn and fish for cod. That's where the original Thanksgiving story stops, and the story basically doesn't even begin there. The real story of Thanksgiving is William Bradford giving thanks to God for the guidance and the inspiration to set up a thriving colony. The bounty was shared with the Indians." They did sit down" and they did have free-range turkey and organic vegetables, "but it was not the Indians who saved the day. It was capitalism and Scripture which saved the day," as acknowledged by George Washington in his first Thanksgiving Proclamation in 1789.

RUSH: How did the Indians teach the Pilgrims how to shoot game when the Indians didn't have guns? Don't forget, it was white European settlers that brought guns and horses and syphilis and racism, environmental destruction. How did this happen? We brought guns. The Indians didn't have 'em. How did the Indians teach us to shoot game? That would be wild animals, for those of you in Rio Linda. Actually, you know this in Rio Linda. Never mind.

How many of you listeners, let me just ask you a question, how many of you are celebrating Native American or Indian Thanksgiving? Now, from Wikipedia, or "Wikipediat," the National Day of Mourning: "The National Day of Mourning is an annual protest organized since 1970 by American Indians of New England on the fourth Thursday of November, the same day as Thanksgiving in the United States of America. It coincides with an unrelated but similar protest, Unthanksgiving Day, held on the West Coast." So that's also going on, and I just want to make sure that you knew about that. "The organizers consider the national holiday of Thanksgiving Day as a reminder of the perceived democide and continued suffering of the Native American peoples. Participants in the National Day of Mourning honor Native ancestors and the struggles of Native peoples to survive today. They want to educate Americans about history. The event was organized in a period of Native American activism and general cultural protests. The protest is organized by the United American Indians of New England (UAINE)."

Now, democide, as genocide, democide, let's check the scoreboard. How many Native Americans were killed by the arrival of the white man through disease and war? All right, now, you're not gonna like hearing this, folks, but we're checking the scoreboard here. Supposedly there was a democide out there. The white man showed up, and the Indians, the Native Americans, started dropping out there. We killed 'em. Horrible. You've seen the movies. All right, what's the number? How many Native Americans, how many Indians were killed by the arrival of the white man through disease and war, and how many people have died since the white man arrived here due to lung cancer thanks to the Indian-invented custom of smoking tobacco? Who are the real killers here? And I say this with all political correctness. I mean it's politically correct to be totally opposed to smoking, totally opposed to tobacco, other than when you're getting tax revenue from it, and I don't. So you tell me. How many Americans have died thanks to an Indian invention versus how many Indians died because we got here? Now, you run the numbers on this. Where are our reparations? I'm just saying. See, I told you to have the kids listen to this show while you're driving around and not listen to some video.

RUSH: There is so much distortion, so many lies, so many untruths taught to our innocent young skulls full of mush throughout American history about Thanksgiving and one of the things that has been taught is that the arrival of the white man, I don't know if it was the Pilgrims or whoever came later, Christopher Columbus even prior to that, and what happened was that the Native Americans were basically slaughtered. They were wiped out. We came in here, we basically took what wasn't ours and it was devastation out there.

But I ask if we could run the numbers on this. Does anybody know the total number of Native Americans killed as a result of the arrival of the white man? When we get that number we need to compare it to the number of tobacco deaths since the white man arrived in this country because it was the Native Americans who figured out what to do with tobacco. Smoke it, and in some cases chew it. And we've been told that tobacco smoking, cigarette smoking, all that, is deadly, lung cancer and so forth. How many millions of people die every year because of it? Add up the number of years, and who really killed who here in the New World? It's just a question. I'm just saying.

CALLER: Thanks for taking my call, Rush. I just wanted to comment on the Native American versus white men casualty comparison that you had.

CALLER: If you are to blame the Native Americans for the white man smoking cigarettes, first of all, the Native Americans never had a choice whether to stay here or to be killed or not, and second of all, the white man has always had a choice whether to --

CALLER: -- smoke cigarettes or not. We have a choice to smoke the cigarette's and don't. Now, if we're gonna blame Native Americans for white men smoking cigarettes, then we need to blame the white men for every gun crime that's ever been committed because we invented the gun, so is it fair to compare, do you not see the hypocrisy?

RUSH: Well, look, I can't disagree with you. I think whoever invented the wheel, look how many people have died because of that, the automobile. I think you're getting somewhere here.

CALLER: It's an individual choice. The choice is the problem. You can't blame that on Native Americans.

RUSH: They invented the product. If they hadn't -- look, somebody had to figure out what to do with tobacco just like somebody had to figure out what to do with the coffee bean. And it was the Indians that did. We got here, we saw 'em smoking it, and we said, "Wow, that looks good, smells good, we want to know how to do it." Yet we started smoking and look what happened to us.

CALLER: They didn't flood 'em with chemicals either like the white man decided to do to the cigarettes nowadays, either. It was much more natural.

RUSH: Doesn't matter. The chemicals just make the product burn without going out. The carcinogens are not amped up because of the chemicals in there.

CALLER: The chemicals keep the bugs off the plants. The chemicals are what keep the animals from eating --

RUSH: Yeah, but it's also what keeps the tobacco burning in the cigarette so you don't have to relight it. A cigar you have to constantly relight because they don't put any chemicals in it.

CALLER: They've taken those chemicals out. If you notice cigarettes now, they burn out. They don't stay lit anymore, Rush.

CALLER: Well, it's the truth. I'm a smoker but I'm not going to blame Native Americans for me smoking cigarettes.

RUSH: Look, it's a think piece out there. I mean we're bombarded every day with how we committed genocide on these people. The white man is being blamed for every evil on this planet.

CALLER: Yeah, that's right, but it's about getting the point that you can't blame whole groups for individual choices. Look at Barack Obama. I mean look how the Republicans are -- (unintelligible) -- all the Democrats because one guy can't stand up to do what's right and what he promised the nation he would do. It's a sickness of the whole country, Rush.

RUSH: Wait a second. What is this about Obama can't stand up? Run that by me again.

CALLER: Well, it's the simple point that people in nature have this urge to blame an entire group for poor decisions for one person.

CALLER: No, he is responsible. But we don't hold him accountable, we hold the Democratic Party accountable. It's the same thing, Rush.

RUSH: I see. What would you say about the Indians contributing to gambling addiction via their casinos?

CALLER: I think that they have a right to gamble just like the Islamic people have a right to build a mosque, granted I don't believe in that, believe they should be able to but they have the freedom to do so.

RUSH: I know they have the freedom to do it, but they're opening the doors and who are their customers? Us.

RUSH: That's my point. It's not the Native Americans. They're the ones who own the casinos, we gave 'em the casinos.

CALLER: Well, we're the ones that gave it to them, you just admitted it yourself, Rush. So how you gonna blame that on Native Americans when we're the ones that gave it to them.

RUSH: It may make no sense to you because you have a bias and prejudice against the white guy. It's obvious.

CALLER: What? Well, I'm half white, I got a lot of Indian in me but I don't hold no prejudice against any race. I hold individuals responsible for their own actions.

RUSH: A lot of people don't know when they're prejudiced and biased and you may be one of them. Most people don't think they are, but you can hear it in them when they speak.

CALLER: What about you, Rush, are you prejudiced and biased? You speak against everything Democrat --

RUSH: Documented to be. William Shatner asked me, "How do you know?" I said, "Because I do. It's my job to know." Now, here. I have, from the Twentieth Century Atlas, the historical body count. We looked it up here. According to actual causes of death in the United States, 2000 Journal of the American Medical Association, 435,000 people died because of tobacco in 2000 alone. According to the Centers for Disease Control, tobacco use is responsible for one in five deaths annually, 443,000 deaths per year in the US. World Health Organization says that worldwide tobacco use causes more than five million deaths per year. Ward Churchill, the pretend Indian plagiarist said that 12 million Indians were killed by the white man. You compare 12 million once to five million per year for however many years and I think you can see what I'm talking about here.

RUSH: Now, let's just review here. According to Ward Churchill, the pretend Indian plagiarist, controversial professor -- he's a professor of ethnic studies, University of Colorado -- he said the reduction of the North American Indian population from an estimated 12 million in 1500 to barely 237,000 in 1900 represents a "vast genocide ... the most sustained on record." So even by Ward Churchill's preposterous calculations, the number of deaths from tobacco dwarf those 'cause it's five million a year since the Pilgrims arrived. I mean we're talking tens of millions here, tobacco deaths.

Now, most sane historians put the number of Indians in all tribal areas north of Mexico at the time of European arrival at a little over one million, not 15 million. Our previous caller, obviously a tobacco apologist -- you heard him -- suggested that we invented the gun, and that led to a lot of Indian deaths, too. It was the Chinese. We might have invented the gun, but we couldn't do anything with it until the ChiComs invented gunpowder. Everybody knows this. And here's something else. How many of you have been taught or how many of your kids have come home telling you that Columbus and his band of marauders brought syphilis with them and also infected the Native Americans with it? It's just the other way around. Columbus and his boys caught syphilis here, and they took it back to the Old World with them. January 15, 2008 by Jia-Rui Chong: "Add Syphilis to Columbus' Discoveries, Study Says -- Columbus and his crew likely brought the bacterium out of the New World leading to its global spread, a genetic analysis finds, that conclusion hotly debated." Of course it is, because it goes against conventional wisdom.

"The spread of syphilis across the globe was probably sparked by Christopher Columbus and his crew, who ferried the bacterium, or a version of it, from the New World to the Old World, according to a new genetic analysis published," a couple of years ago. And this does not even include gonorrhea. This is just syphilis. I mean, we gave 'em smallpox, yeah, small change compared to syphilis. When you start adding all this up I think we're all owed a bunch of casino chips and a couple packs of cigarettes at no tax. (interruption) What do you mean, how did the Indians have syphilis? How did they have syphilis because they were pure, at one with the earth? I don't know. Well, the earth has everything. The earth has syphilis; earth has cancer. Yeah. The earth is air, atmosphere and all of that.

CALLER: You posed a question earlier, what did people do without all the government agencies. I wanted to point out that during our era of Western expansion people did without government at all. There's an article on the net called the, "The Not So Wild, Wild West" that describes the wagon trains, the gold rush, and the cattle companies and how they got along trading an orderly society to protect their property rights even though there was no government, you know, formal government.

RUSH: Yeah. That was my exact point. This is exactly what happened when the Pilgrims arrived. There wasn't any fish and game; there wasn't any FDA; there wasn't any Natural Resources Defense Council; there were no environmentalist wackos; nobody had to get permission to go hunt; nobody had to get a permit to do anything, and it all worked out. Everybody survived, everybody lived, and we ended up with a great country out of it, and the Native Americans also got fed, along with everybody else. So it worked.

RUSH: "George Washington's 1789 Thanksgiving Proclamation." Here it is: "Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor -- and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me 'to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.'" So, the first paragraph of Washington's Thanksgiving Proclamation is essentially thanking God for the Constitution. (interruption) It was! Don't smirk in there, Dawn. Washington was thanking God for our founding and our Constitution.

"Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be -- That we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks -- for His kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation -- for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of His Providence which we experienced in the tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed -- for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted -- for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which He hath been pleased to confer upon us.

"And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions -- to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually -- to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed -- to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn [sic] kindness onto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord -- To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease [sic] of science among them and us -- and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best. -- Given under my hand at the City of New York, the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789."

The Father of our Country. There you have it. That's the first Thanksgiving Proclamation. There's nothing in there about the pilgrims. There's nothing in there about Native Americans. There's nothing in there about a feast. There's nothing in there about communal living and socialism. There's nothing in there about syphilis and starving. There's nothing in there about anything that you think Thanksgiving is about. George Washington. And the number of references to "the Almighty" and to God? Why if a president read that today the ACLU would file suit! A number of other groups would claim oppression over having to listen to it and having it forced upon them. Also, ladies and gentlemen, I must note (before our obscene profit time out) that on the third day of October 1789 A.D. in New York, George Washington gave out not one Butterball turkey.

Zero, zilch, nada Butterball turkeys were given away in New York, including what is now known as Harlem.

RUSH: When you read that first Thanksgiving proclamation, it sure doesn't sound like George Washington believed any "wall of separation," does it, "between church and state"? It doesn't sound like it crossed his mind at all. All those references to God. There's a famous painter I'm reminded of, a famous painter and poet, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Not to be confused with "risotto." This is Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and he said, "The worst moment for the atheist is when he's really thankful and has no one to thank." That's when the atheist wakes up: He's really, really thankful but doesn't have anybody to thank.

RUSH: Lee in Leesburg, Virginia, welcome to the EIB Network. It's nice to have you here.

CALLER: Thanks, Rush. WIXZ dittos. (laughs) I got a question, Rush. Since when in American history did it become taboo to speak about God or Christ in public? I was born in the mid-sixties, born and raised in McKeesport, Pennsylvania --

CALLER: -- and ever since I was a kid it has always been, "Don't mention anything like that," even though I'm surrounded by churches, everybody's going to church on Sunday, we all know where we're going. But to speak outside of that context was always like you were stepping on eggs or something to speak about it. What...? When did that start, and why?

RUSH: Well, it depends on what part of the country you're in. For example, in California you have never been permitted to. (laughing)

RUSH: I was thinking about this. I looked at your call up there, and I'm thinking back. I was born 1951 and all through the sixties -- and I'm in a small town in the Midwest, but -- it was never taboo. We had a nativity scene; Christmas decorations went up. Nobody -- nobody -- ever tried to stop anybody from any public display of the Christmas holiday or talking about God. My best guess, without doing original research on this, would be the sixties. I think most of the maladies that we're undergoing today started with the counterculture '60s.

RUSH: Madalyn Murray O'Hair sued and the Supreme Court ruled in her favor. She was an atheist. That was 1964. At least as far as the schools were concerned, that's where it began. You could not mention God-d in the schools because Madalyn Murray O'Hair had victory at the Supreme Court of the United States. (interruption) Yeah. Eisenhower added "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, and Madalyn Murray O'Hair said, "Take it outta there! You can't put God in there, not in the public schools!" There it began. And then the assault on nativity scenes or any public display of Christianity came under assault, and it was all part of something that continues to this day, and that is simply an attack on the traditions and institutions that built this country.

Now, as I said, there have always been people in this country who don't like it. There have always been atheists. There have always been people upset that God was mentioned, but they shut up about it. You know, they stayed in their little hovels and they complained and moaned to themselves. They felt like victims to themselves. Then suddenly Madalyn Murray O'Hair comes along and all these minorities of people finally decided, "You know what? There are victories in the politics of grievance here and we can get what we want. We can change this society so we don't have to be faced with this stuff that repulses us," and it just grew and grew and grew -- and of course fairness and not wanting to offend anybody and everything, you might say, that was held sacred by people of the country was under assault.

People just said, "You know, it's easier. Okay, you don't want God in the school? Fine. I'll go to the church." People didn't want the confrontation. The people that were opposing all of this were blowing up buildings and so forth as they opposed the Vietnam War. You know, they were burning down buildings and firebombing cars in Chicago and this kind of thing. It is an interesting historical trace. Madalyn Murray O'Hair... Some of you may not know this. Madalyn Murray O'Hair was the chief speechwriter for Larry Flynt's 1984 presidential campaign. She was the first guest on the Phil Donahue show. So you can see that all of this stuff has its roots with Madalyn Murray O'Hair and the '60s, and now there's no culture anymore. All we have is counterculture, the counterculture. We get Obamaites (former Obamaites now) praising Mao Tse-tung at the National Cathedral.

What was her name? Anita Dunn did that. So there is no distinct American culture. That's what's in hiding. The distinct American culture, that's what takes place behind closed doors so nobody's offended. The counterculture today is what dominates -- especially in pop culture, the entertainment community, movies, books, Hollywood stories and so forth. So that's that, the best I can answer the question. Glad you called out there, Lee -- and, folks, we have to run. Like you, many of us have to travel through the woods. Some stop there, some keep going, to get to grandmother's house. But I want to thank all of you again for always being here. Even those of you who claim you're not, we know you are. We thank you. This couldn't be done without you. You are more valuable to all of us here at the EIB Network than we could ever be to you, and we thank you immensely for it, more than we'll ever be able to in a tangible way.

By the way, Madalyn Murray O'Hair founded an atheist radio program in which she criticized religion and theism and a TV show she hosted. American Atheist Forum was on more than 140 cable TV systems. This was under the Fairness Doctrine, by the way.

My father, Rush H. Limbaugh, Jr., delivered this oft-requested address locally a number of times, but it had never before appeared in print until it appeared in The Limbaugh Letter. My dad was renowned for his oratory skills and for his original mind; this speech is, I think, a superb demonstration of both. I will always be grateful to him for instilling in me a passion for the ideas and lives of America's Founders, as well as a deep appreciation for the inspirational power of words which you will see evidenced here:

It was a glorious morning. The sun was shining and the wind was from the southeast. Up especially early, a tall bony, redheaded young Virginian found time to buy a new thermometer, for which he paid three pounds, fifteen shillings. He also bought gloves for Martha, his wife, who was ill at home.

Thomas Jefferson arrived early at the statehouse. The temperature was 72.5 degrees and the horseflies weren't nearly so bad at that hour. It was a lovely room, very large, with gleaming white walls. The chairs were comfortable. Facing the single door were two brass fireplaces, but they would not be used today.

The moment the door was shut, and it was always kept locked, the room became an oven. The tall windows were shut, so that loud quarreling voices could not be heard by passersby. Small openings atop the windows allowed a slight stir of air, and also a large number of horseflies. Jefferson records that "the horseflies were dexterous in finding necks, and the silk of stockings was nothing to them." All discussing was punctuated by the slap of hands on necks.

On the wall at the back, facing the president's desk, was a panoply -- consisting of a drum, swords, and banners seized from Fort Ticonderoga the previous year. Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold had captured the place, shouting that they were taking it "in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress!"

Now Congress got to work, promptly taking up an emergency measure about which there was discussion but no dissension. "Resolved: That an application be made to the Committee of Safety of Pennsylvania for a supply of flints for the troops at New York."

Then Congress transformed itself into a committee of the whole. The Declaration of Independence was read aloud once more, and debate resumed. Though Jefferson was the best writer of all of them, he had been somewhat verbose. Congress hacked the excess away. They did a good job, as a side-by-side comparison of the rough draft and the final text shows. They cut the phrase "by a self-assumed power." "Climb" was replaced by "must read," then "must" was eliminated, then the whole sentence, and soon the whole paragraph was cut. Jefferson groaned as they continued what he later called "their depredations." "Inherent and inalienable rights" came out "certain unalienable rights," and to this day no one knows who suggested the elegant change.

A total of 86 alterations were made. Almost 500 words were eliminated, leaving 1,337. At last, after three days of wrangling, the document was put to a vote.

Here in this hall Patrick Henry had once thundered: "I am no longer a Virginian, sir, but an American." But today the loud, sometimes bitter argument stilled, and without fanfare the vote was taken from north to south by colonies, as was the custom. On July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was adopted.

There were no trumpets blown. No one stood on his chair and cheered. The afternoon was waning and Congress had no thought of delaying the full calendar of routine business on its hands. For several hours they worked on many other problems before adjourning for the day.

What kind of men were the 56 signers who adopted the Declaration of Independence and who, by their signing, committed an act of treason against the crown? To each of you, the names Franklin, Adams, Hancock and Jefferson are almost as familiar as household words. Most of us, however, know nothing of the other signers. Who were they? What happened to them?

I imagine that many of you are somewhat surprised at the names not there: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Patrick Henry. All were elsewhere.

Ben Franklin was the only really old man. Eighteen were under 40; three were in their 20s. Of the 56 almost half - 24 - were judges and lawyers. Eleven were merchants, nine were landowners and farmers, and the remaining 12 were doctors, ministers, and politicians.

With only a few exceptions, such as Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, these were men of substantial property. All but two had families. The vast majority were men of education and standing in their communities. They had economic security as few men had in the 18th Century.

Each had more to lose from revolution than he had to gain by it. John Hancock, one of the richest men in America, already had a price of 500 pounds on his head. He signed in enormous letters so that his Majesty could now read his name without glasses and could now double the reward. Ben Franklin wryly noted: "Indeed we must all hang together, otherwise we shall most assuredly hang separately."

Fat Benjamin Harrison of Virginia told tiny Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts: "With me it will all be over in a minute, but you, you will be dancing on air an hour after I am gone."

These men knew what they risked. The penalty for treason was death by hanging. And remember, a great British fleet was already at anchor in New York Harbor.

They were sober men. There were no dreamy-eyed intellectuals or draft card burners here. They were far from hot-eyed fanatics yammering for an explosion. They simply asked for the status quo. It was change they resisted. It was equality with the mother country they desired. It was taxation with representation they sought. They were all conservatives, yet they rebelled.

It was principle, not property, that had brought these men to Philadelphia. Two of them became presidents of the United States. Seven of them became state governors. One died in office as vice president of the United States. Several would go on to be U.S. Senators. One, the richest man in America, in 1828 founded the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. One, a delegate from Philadelphia, was the only real poet, musician and philosopher of the signers. (It was he, Francis Hopkinson not Betsy Ross who designed the United States flag.)

Richard Henry Lee, a delegate from Virginia, had introduced the resolution to adopt the Declaration of Independence in June of 1776. He was prophetic in his concluding remarks: "Why then sir, why do we longer delay? Why still deliberate? Let this happy day give birth to an American Republic. Let her arise not to devastate and to conquer but to reestablish the reign of peace and law.

"The eyes of Europe are fixed upon us. She demands of us a living example of freedom that may exhibit a contrast in the felicity of the citizen to the ever-increasing tyranny which desolates her polluted shores. She invites us to prepare an asylum where the unhappy may find solace, and the persecuted repost.

"If we are not this day wanting in our duty, the names of the American Legislatures of 1776 will be placed by posterity at the side of all of those whose memory has been and ever will be dear to virtuous men and good citizens."

Though the resolution was formally adopted July 4, it was not until July 8 that two of the states authorized their delegates to sign, and it was not until August 2 that the signers met at Philadelphia to actually put their names to the Declaration.

William Ellery, delegate from Rhode Island, was curious to see the signers' faces as they committed this supreme act of personal courage. He saw some men sign quickly, "but in no face was he able to discern real fear." Stephan Hopkins, Ellery's colleague from Rhode Island, was a man past 60. As he signed with a shaking pen, he declared: "My hand trembles, but my heart does not."

Even before the list was published, the British marked down every member of Congress suspected of having put his name to treason. All of them became the objects of vicious manhunts. Some were taken. Some, like Jefferson, had narrow escapes. All who had property or families near British strongholds suffered.

· Francis Lewis, New York delegate saw his home plundered -- and his estates in what is now Harlem -- completely destroyed by British Soldiers. Mrs. Lewis was captured and treated with great brutality. Though she was later exchanged for two British prisoners through the efforts of Congress, she died from the effects of her abuse.

· William Floyd, another New York delegate, was able to escape with his wife and children across Long Island Sound to Connecticut, where they lived as refugees without income for seven years. When they came home they found a devastated ruin.

· Philips Livingstone had all his great holdings in New York confiscated and his family driven out of their home. Livingstone died in 1778 still working in Congress for the cause.

· Louis Morris, the fourth New York delegate, saw all his timber, crops, and livestock taken. For seven years he was barred from his home and family.

· John Hart of Trenton, New Jersey, risked his life to return home to see his dying wife. Hessian soldiers rode after him, and he escaped in the woods. While his wife lay on her deathbed, the soldiers ruined his farm and wrecked his homestead. Hart, 65, slept in caves and woods as he was hunted across the countryside. When at long last, emaciated by hardship, he was able to sneak home, he found his wife had already been buried, and his 13 children taken away. He never saw them again. He died a broken man in 1779, without ever finding his family.

· Dr. John Witherspoon, signer, was president of the College of New Jersey, later called Princeton. The British occupied the town of Princeton, and billeted troops in the college. They trampled and burned the finest college library in the country.

· Judge Richard Stockton, another New Jersey delegate signer, had rushed back to his estate in an effort to evacuate his wife and children. The family found refuge with friends, but a Tory sympathizer betrayed them. Judge Stockton was pulled from bed in the night and brutally beaten by the arresting soldiers. Thrown into a common jail, he was deliberately starved. Congress finally arranged for Stockton's parole, but his health was ruined. The judge was released as an invalid, when he could no longer harm the British cause. He returned home to find his estate looted and did not live to see the triumph of the Revolution. His family was forced to live off charity.

· Robert Morris, merchant prince of Philadelphia, delegate and signer, met Washington's appeals and pleas for money year after year. He made and raised arms and provisions which made it possible for Washington to cross the Delaware at Trenton. In the process he lost 150 ships at sea, bleeding his own fortune and credit almost dry.

· George Clymer, Pennsylvania signer, escaped with his family from their home, but their property was completely destroyed by the British in the Germantown and Brandywine campaigns.

· Dr. Benjamin Rush, also from Pennsylvania, was forced to flee to Maryland. As a heroic surgeon with the army, Rush had several narrow escapes.

· John Martin, a Tory in his views previous to the debate, lived in a strongly loyalist area of Pennsylvania. When he came out for independence, most of his neighbors and even some of his relatives ostracized him. He was a sensitive and troubled man, and many believed this action killed him. When he died in 1777, his last words to his tormentors were: "Tell them that they will live to see the hour when they shall acknowledge it [the signing] to have been the most glorious service that I have ever rendered to my country."

· William Ellery, Rhode Island delegate, saw his property and home burned to the ground.

· Thomas Lynch, Jr., South Carolina delegate, had his health broken from privation and exposures while serving as a company commander in the military. His doctors ordered him to seek a cure in the West Indies and on the voyage, he and his young bride were drowned at sea.

· Edward Rutledge, Arthur Middleton, and Thomas Heyward, Jr., the other three South Carolina signers, were taken by the British in the siege of Charleston. They were carried as prisoners of war to St. Augustine, Florida, where they were singled out for indignities. They were exchanged at the end of the war, the British in the meantime having completely devastated their large landholdings and estates.

· Thomas Nelson, signer of Virginia, was at the front in command of the Virginia military forces. With British General Charles Cornwallis in Yorktown, fire from 70 heavy American guns began to destroy Yorktown piece by piece. Lord Cornwallis and his staff moved their headquarters into Nelson's palatial home. While American cannonballs were making a shambles of the town, the house of Governor Nelson remained untouched. Nelson turned in rage to the American gunners and asked, "Why do you spare my home?" They replied, "Sir, out of respect to you." Nelson cried, "Give me the cannon!" and fired on his magnificent home himself, smashing it to bits. But Nelson's sacrifice was not quite over. He had raised $2 million for the Revolutionary cause by pledging his own estates. When the loans came due, a newer peacetime Congress refused to honor them, and Nelson's property was forfeited. He was never reimbursed. He died, impoverished, a few years later at the age of 50.

Of those 56 who signed the Declaration of Independence, nine died of wounds or hardships during the war. Five were captured and imprisoned, in each case with brutal treatment. Several lost wives, sons or entire families. One lost his 13 children. Two wives were brutally treated. All were at one time or another the victims of manhunts and driven from their homes. Twelve signers had their homes completely burned. Seventeen lost everything they owned. Yet not one defected or went back on his pledged word. Their honor, and the nation they sacrificed so much to create is still intact.

He gave two sons to the officer corps in the Revolutionary Army. They were captured and sent to that infamous British prison hulk afloat in New York Harbor known as the hell ship Jersey, where 11,000 American captives were to die. The younger Clarks were treated with a special brutality because of their father. One was put in solitary and given no food. With the end almost in sight, with the war almost won, no one could have blamed Abraham Clark for acceding to the British request when they offered him his sons' lives if he would recant and come out for the King and Parliament. The utter despair in this man's heart, the anguish in his very soul, must reach out to each one of us down through 200 years with his answer: "No."

The 56 signers of the Declaration Of Independence proved by their every deed that they made no idle boast when they composed the most magnificent curtain line in history. "And for the support of this Declaration with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."

My friends, I know you have a copy of the Declaration of Independence somewhere around the house - in an old history book (newer ones may well omit it), an encyclopedia, or one of those artificially aged "parchments" we all got in school years ago. I suggest that each of you take the time this month to read through the text of the Declaration, one of the most noble and beautiful political documents in human history.

There is no more profound sentence than this: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness..."

These are far more than mere poetic words. The underlying ideas that infuse every sentence of this treatise have sustained this nation for more than two centuries. They were forged in the crucible of great sacrifice. They are living words that spring from and satisfy the deepest cries for liberty in the human spirit.

"Sacred honor" isn't a phrase we use much these days, but every American life is touched by the bounty of this, the Founders' legacy. It is freedom, tested by blood, and watered with tears.

RUSH: The regime is ecstatic today over the unemployment numbers. Now, I'm sorry to have to do this, but I have the truth about the economic news. It's not good, and I'm debating whether or not to even mention it here day before Thanksgiving, but it is what it is. As usual, we are going to have the true story of Thanksgiving in our final hour, that would be during the two to three p.m. Eastern Time hour of the program today.

RUSH: "The number of people applying for unemployment benefits fell sharply last week to the lowest level since July 2008, a hopeful sign that improvement in the job market is accelerating. The Labor Department said Wednesday that weekly unemployment claims dropped by 34,000 to a seasonally adjusted 407,000 in the week ending Nov. 20. Wall Street analysts expected a much smaller drop." Once again, an unbroken record here of always being wrong on the analyst side of things. Now, for the record here, as usual, last week's unemployment number was quietly revised up to 441,000 from 439,000, and this story, AP, fails to note that. Every week the unemployment number gets revised upward. The first number they put out is hocus-pocus, just as this one is.

"A Labor Department analyst said weekly claims are volatile during the week between the Veteran's Day and Thanksgiving holidays. A key question is whether claims will remain this low in future weeks, or bounce back." Now, they wouldn't be saying that in this news story, they would be posing the possibility of bouncing back unless they knew it was gonna bounce back. They're not gonna allow AP to run a story here mentioning the possibility that unemployment, that's not gonna hold here, it's gonna go back up, unless they know. So we're being prepared here for a large bounce back. "The number of people continuing to claim unemployment aid fell by 142,000 to 4.18 million, the lowest in two years. That doesn't include millions of people receiving extended benefits under an emergency program set up by Congress during the recession." The number of people continuing to claim unemployment aid may not have fallen at all since many, if not most of them, have long since begun collecting the federal extensions, which in most cases kicked in after the first 26 or so weeks of unemployment and extend all the way up to 99 weeks. So it's a hocus-pocus report, but it's one the regime wanted to get out there on the day before Thanksgiving.

But there is other economic news: "Orders to U.S. factories for long-lasting manufactured goods plunged in October by the largest amount in 21 months, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. The drop reflected widespread weakness in a number of areas." Okay, so you keep this in mind. The unemployment number, whoa, it's the best number since July of 2008, yip yip yip yip yahoo. "Orders to U.S. factories for long-lasting manufactured goods plunged in October by the largest amount in 21 months." "The number of people applying for unemployment benefits fell sharply ... The Labor Department said Wednesday that weekly unemployment claims dropped by 34,000." Once again, here is the comparison, and this doesn't include millions of people receiving extended unemployment benefits. Meaning, there hasn't really been any drop.

"Businesses and other employers added jobs in 41 states in October, the best showing in five months. ... California added nearly 39,000 jobs in October. Still, its unemployment rate remained at 12.4 percent, as more people looked for work last month." So they might have added nearly 39,000 jobs, but the unemployment rate didn't change at all. "Debt isn't stressing people as much as it had been, but consumers remain gun-shy about embarking on a big holiday spending spree." Why is that? "An Associated Press-GfK Poll also suggests Americans are more disciplined about using their credit cards. Deep into a stubbornly harsh economic downturn," resisting all the efforts by the administration to fix it, the stubbornly harsh downturn continues to be stubborn.

"More people than last year say they pay off their balances right away. Fewer say they make credit card purchases if they lack enough money at the time. Just 9 percent in the AP-GfK Poll said they plan to spend more this year on holiday purchases than they did a year ago." And the reason for that is they're not working! There's no steady income. "Sales of previously owned homes slipped slightly in October as the housing market struggled in the face of high unemployment and tight credit. The National Association of Realtors said Tuesday that sales of previously owned homes dipped 2.2 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.43 million units." It surprised the analysts, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So great economic news. It's a sign we're coming out of the depression. Everywhere you look. "Americans earned more and spent more last month, a hopeful sign for the economy ahead of the holiday buying season," but we just heard that more people aren't gonna be buying during the holiday season.

"Consumers boosted their spending 0.4 percent in October, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. That was up from a 0.3 percent increase in September. ... Even with the pickup, consumers are still shying away from the type of spending needed to dramatically lower the 9.6 unemployment rate." Whoa! "Consumers are still shying away from the type of spending needed to dramatically lower the unemployment rate." I thought government was going to lower the unemployment rate. I thought the stimulus package, Porkulus one, Porkulus two, all those massive Obama tax cuts, TARP and all that, I thought that was supposed to lower unemployment rate. Now AP tells us that it's gonna be consumer spending, i.e., customers. Now they tell us.

"Federal Reserve officials have become more pessimistic in their economic outlook through next year and have lowered their forecast for growth. The economy will grow only 2.4 percent to 2.5 percent this year, Fed officials said Tuesday in an updated forecast." But the unemployment news out there is really, really good. I mean it's not been this good since July of 2008. It's a hopeful sign that maybe the recession is ending, except for all this other news.

RUSH: Janet Napolitano, who was called on this program yesterday Janet Incompetano, last night on PBS, the Charlie Rose Show, Charlie Rose said to Janet Napolitano, "What does the Secretary think of the concern?" She is the secretary. Why doesn't he say, "What do you think of the concern?" She's sitting right there, he says, "What does the Secretary think of the concern?"

NAPOLITANO: Well, I can understand what -- why people wonder what is this all about, what does it mean for me, I'm a traveler, does it mean I'm gonna be in a long line, am I really safer? And what I say is, look, the threat is real. We know that from last Christmas. The threat is to bring powders or liquids or gels onto a plane to use as an explosive.

NAPOLITANO: The new machines give us a much better chance of finding those kinds of things, and the revised pat-down procedure helps us to make sure that if something appears as an anomaly that we don't -- the screener really can't tell what it is, that we can't resolve that anomaly. And the end result, what it means is that you are safer getting on the plane.

RUSH: Yeah, right. The bottom line here is that, and we had the sound bite, I don't have time to get to it now before the break, but she claims what they're really worried about is homegrown terrorists, like Timothy McVeigh all of a sudden identifying with Al-Qaeda. But the machines can't, they do not detect powders. Charlie Rose is throwing softballs, he wouldn't ask, "Madam Secretary, does the Secretary know that the machines don't detect powders and liquids?" And they don't detect anything in a bodily cavity. If somebody's got a bag of cocaine or whatever up the rectum the machine will not catch it, the machine does not catch it. They only detect hard objects. So, folks, this is not security. This is pure harassment.

RUSH: You know, whether she wins this or not, Bristol Palin has generated ratings for this show like no other contestant, liberal or otherwise has. You have to know that. Do you remember when Obama went swimming in the Gulf with his daughter to show it was safe during the oil spill? How about taking his daughter through a screening? How about Obama take his daughter to the airport and have a TSA grope her, go through the exact routines with Obama's daughter that everybody else's daughter goes through, just to show it's safe for everybody, like he did in the Gulf with the oil spill, hmm?

CALLER: Hello. I'd like to talk to you about something a couple years ago, a name comes up to me with this searching at the airport was called Abu Ghraib where people were so offended and it was morally wrong, and they even called it torture to strip-search terrorists.

CALLER: We are talking about the airports. They think strip-searching is okay with Americans --

RUSH: Oh, you're saying that what we did at Abu Ghraib people got prosecuted for but the agents here are being --

CALLER: Right, because they harassed a few terrorists and made fun of them and stripped them and it was a court-martial offense, it was considered torture, remember?

RUSH: Oh, yeah, yeah. So you're saying that people at the airports are being Abu Ghraibed?

CALLER: And another thing. Do they have a "don't ask, don't tell" policy or are they openly gay at the airports?

RUSH: We don't know. And we won't know about that until they build the human pyramids like they did over there at Abu Ghraib. If they do that, then you never know. Open question.

CALLER: Yeah, Richfield, Illinois. Anyway, I've been in law enforcement most of my life, and the spotlight seems to be on the pat-downs at the airports, and I believe that we need to watch the freight handling and what's put in these airplanes more specifically, because I believe that that's leaving us in a weak area by putting too much emphasis on the other thing that they're concerned about.

RUSH: Well, what do you mean? The way I see it we're looking for things, not profiling people.

CALLER: Well, that's true, too, but you take the spotlight and put it on the pat-downs and so forth, and I think there's a possibility that we may becoming weak in the area of checking the freight and so forth that's going on to these aircraft.

CALLER: I think the Taliban probably knows that, and they might take advantage --

RUSH: Now, why are you assuming that we're giving a half effort to cargo and baggage --

RUSH: -- simply because of what's going on at a terminal? Just because we're patting down people at the terminal why does that mean we're getting lax with baggage and cargo?

CALLER: Well, it just seems to me that they put too much emphasis on that and I think that it might be leaving the other area vulnerable. Just my thoughts.

RUSH: Well, I don't disagree. As I said earlier in my opening-hour monologue, we certainly want hard security. Nobody's opposed to that. But this is not. This is harassment. And clearly inspecting cargo -- I don't know that we're not focusing much on this, I mean, maybe we are, but I don't think you can tell that or ascertain that simply by what's going on inside the terminal. So unless you just want to say that the TSA is generally incompetent and they're focusing all their efforts here on people and thus being lax with cargo. Legitimate concern. I mean a lot of cargo flights carry four times as much freight as passenger planes, and that would mean massive expansion of the inspection system. I know that customs is heavily -- if you're trying to bring something in from overseas, you buy a piece of furniture or whatever, it can take customs weeks to clear it coming through. FedEx has similar problems, UPS, bringing packages across. I mean they have to clear customs.

I know the guy is suggesting we check cargo. I just don't know that we're not. I don't know how just because we're focusing on pat-downs how that means we're not focusing on cargo. And even if we are focusing on cargo, we're not making a big deal of it. We're not showing it. We're not showing pictures. There aren't cameras showing us how the cargo is being inspected, but we are hearing all about the harassment of passengers, which is, as I said yesterday, there's a reason for this, and it's not about security. It's harassment. It's the regime saying this is what it's gonna be like. It's also to move us willingly into scanners.

RUSH: Our last caller from Richfield, Illinois, this business about the cargo, this is where the Dubai Ports deal comes into play. Everybody was worried about the Dubai Ports deal because that was Arabs, and they're gonna let terrorists get terrorism equipment into the country because they ran the ports, it's what everybody was afraid of. The 9/11 Commission recommended that we screen 50% of cargo on passenger aircraft by February of 2009 and 100% of cargo on passenger aircraft by August of 2010.

Now, we aren't anywhere near those numbers, and this is passenger aircraft. True cargo flights carry much more cargo than the cargo that's on passenger jets. I don't think we do a hundred percent screening on cargo of passenger planes anywhere. Ed Markey of Massachusetts is pushing legislation for that. But the airlines say it would be prohibitively expensive and slow down the system tremendously. So that is a vulnerable area, but see, even in light of all this, what is going on? Innocent Americans are being humiliated, and what's the message? The message is: We own you. The message is: Your government controls you. Your government can make you do whatever we want you to do. There is a conditioning taking place. This is the regime showing what it's gonna be like. This is the regime testing what kind of resistance there will be. Not gonna catch any terrorists. All this rotgut about homegrown terrorists they're worried about, let's go to Janet Napolitano. Charlie Rose: "What's changed, Madam Secretary, in terms of the attitude of people who want to engage in terror acts against the US? Are they more intense? Are they having new methods and means? Are there more of them? Are they using more people who have US passports, or, you know, all of that?"

NAPOLITANO: The growth in homegrown terrorists, US citizens who become radicalized to the point of violence, they may go over to the Fatah to Somalia to Yemen, learn trade craft, learn how to build some of these things, learn how to perform one of these operations and then return to the United States, all of these things are now in the mix. What is the process by which a young man in the United States goes from becoming radicalized to becoming radicalized to the point of leaving the United States, going to a camp somewhere for six months --

NAPOLITANO: -- and whatever and then coming back with the intent of murdering his fellow citizens.

RUSH: So there's the explanation for this, homegrown terrorists, you people are leaving here, you're going over to Pakistan and learning jihad and then coming back. Yeah. I don't know how many of you are hanging around mosques after you've gone over and learned jihad. But I mean this is their excuse. Now, here's the problem, though. Obama told us that people only become terrorists because they're so poor. Remember he said that. This has been a favorite theory of the left, that terrorists become terrorists because they're poor, and they're poor because of the United States, that we have raped the land, that we have stolen the oil and the resources from their Navy plants and made them paupers, and they are rising up in anger and disgust out of poverty at their oppressors, and this is why we must understand, they don't have any opportunities. They don't have any opportunities. Terrorism is their only way out.

It's like the left says about dumb white Americans. "Well, they know they can't get educated, this country's economy's gone to hell so they join the military." That's what the elite left says makes up the American military, a bunch of dumb white kids that have no future. And they say about terrorists, "Well, they're just a bunch of Arab kids, they don't have any future because of the United States." Here's Napolitano saying that we're worried about homegrown terrorists. They leave the US, go to Pakistan, learn jihad, and come back. Now, you can't have it both ways. They're either terrorists because they're poor, or terrorists because they're being recruited. How many domestic terrorists are gonna be set off after seeing the way women are treated at the airport? Well, look, let me read to you again this note that I got from a friend of mine that inspired our opening-hour monologue.

The effect of the TSA groping policy is to convince the Islamic -- the effect, not the purpose, a key word here, the effect, the end result of this -- world where even touching a woman is a great insult to a family's honor, that Americans are dishonorable, degenerate, and cowardly. That we will sit around and let our women be treated this way? Now, remember, in the Middle East, women are, you know, half a human. They're half human. I mean they are the lowest of the low. But if you touch one, because they're so low, if you touch one, and look what we're doing to ours. Look what we're doing to our women.

The message being sent here is that we are dishonorable, degenerate, and cowardly. The fact that they will allow their women and children and elderly -- this is what they see -- to be treated this way, the fact that we will allow our women, the fact it can be accomplished by merely launching a few bombers with TNT in their underwear or in their car trunks shows the entire Middle East that America is a society ready to do anything to avoid any conflict or even the smallest risk. This is how they see what we're doing. And then they watch the media treat this as a sensational tabloid curiosity. The media missed the point. What's going on in airports probably does more to weaken American credibility in the Muslim world than anything that's happened since 9/11, 'cause they see us in the process of surrendering. In the eyes of Islamic fundamentalism, this is surrender. We're not defending ourselves, we're not defending our honor; we're blaming ourselves. What a coup these people have pulled off, in their estimation.

RUSH: Okay, Janet Napolitano, she said that she was concerned with homegrown, radicalized young men in the United States. You just heard her. We just played the sound bite, right? So, my question is, why the molestation of children? Why the molestation and humiliation of women, nuns, silver-haired grandmothers? Why remove prosthetics if it is young American men going over to Pakistan and learning jihad? Why the sexual assaults on women? She said she was concerned with men. So she molests everybody else, in addition to that.

RUSH: I've been thinking about this. I got a note today right before the program started which ignited my brain cells. I want to read you this note, and from this note, I started jotting down monologue outline notes.

The effect of the TSA groping policy is to convince the Islamic world -- where even touching a woman is a grave insult to a family's honor -- that Americans are dishonorable, degenerate, and cowardly. The fact that Americans would allow their women, children and elderly to be treated this way and the fact it could be accomplished by merely launching a few bombers with TNT in their underpants or in their car trunks shows the entire Middle East that America, whatever its organized military might, is a society ready to do anything to avoid even the smallest risk. The media that treat the TSA's behavior as just a sensational tabloid curiosity entirely miss the point. What's going on in the airports probably does more to weaken America's credibility in the Muslim world than anything that's happened since 9/11. A country this vulnerable is a country that in Islamic fundamentalist eyes is in the process of surrendering.

And let's review here. Young male Muslim Arabs use box cutters on 9/11, so now everyone has to be checked for sharp objects. Young male Muslim Arabs have tried to get liquid explosive in on airplanes, so now everybody has to be checked for liquids. A young male Muslim Arab put explosives in his underwear, so now everybody has to be checked for explosives in their underwear. Are we missing the most obvious thing to check for here? We are not checking for terrorists. We are checking for things! Long after we have discovered the things, so therefore they're not gonna be used again because the enemy knows we've already discovered them. So we're not even checking for terrorists. We're checking for things.

And as the note I received said, the real danger of all this is that it shows the Muslim world that we will treat our own people like dog doo-doo to avoid even the smallest risk. We treat 'em like garden variety criminals when captured after murdering hundreds of people but put the rest of us through humiliation. We capture these guys that do mass murder and we treat 'em as garden variety, make sure they have their prayer books, make sure they get to prayer, make sure they get their T-shirts or whatever. The rest of us get humiliated. Now, how does that look to Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri? They're in their caves laughing. Let's take stock. In two years we are now manhandled at airports, health care has been stolen from us, our children's futures are being destroyed with Third World-like policies, private property is taken either directly or through high taxes and overly broad regulations. This is the face of liberalism, or authoritarianism or statism, whatever works for you. All-powerful government: destabilizing society and families, spreading anxiety and misery and poverty. This is it. You're looking at it.

Liberalism, the experiment, it's un-American, period. None of this was going on two years ago. None of it. To the degree that it's happening now. Liberalism is destructive. Our country's being destroyed. Liberalism, as I have been pointing out routinely, destroys the individual. It robs people of their humanity. Liberalism destroys economic security. Liberalism destroys institutions. It replaces that which works with that which doesn't, and its proponents are liars. Liberalism has to lie. Liberals have to lie in order to be elected to power. If Obama had ever campaigned on the notion that all of this was going to happen he wouldn't have gotten more than 20% of the vote. Now, we're supposed to sit back and accept all this because, well, the liberals have good intentions, the war on poverty and the civil rights legislation in the sixties and the Great Society, all these great intentions. Well, I don't care if they have good or bad intentions. To me it's beside the point. They are destructive.

We're careful about how we fight wars against those who kill 3,000 of our fellow citizens and thousands of our soldiers, not wanting to offend or upset them. We proceed with caution. But American citizens are being manhandled at airports. Is this what 9/11 was all about? Is this what we learned from 9/11? That we are the enemy and somehow we have to be manhandled? And what does this show the people in the Middle East, what does it show? We are on the brink of surrender. That's what they see. Islamic fundamentalists see that we are in the process of surrendering. We are weakening our own credibility. We've become a laughingstock. What's happening in our health care system? They've taken our doctors, our health care policies from us. They take our money from us to pay off their political friends and allies, i.e., the stimulus, the slush fund. They steal our property from us in the name of the environment. They destroy enterprises of all sizes in the name of sticking it to the rich. And what do we have to show for it? Who, ladies and gentlemen, is benefiting from any of this? Who is benefiting from all of it? I ask a simple question. Who is benefiting? Politicians, except Rangel, and perhaps Maxine Waters down the road. The bureaucracy, special interest groups, unions, they are benefiting from all of this authoritarianism. The individual is not.

The people who make the country work are not benefiting from any of this. We are the ones losing everything we have, everything we've worked for. It is being taken from us under the guise that we don't deserve it, that we've somehow stolen it or come by it by way of ill-gotten means. You want to see authoritarianism, go to the airport today. You want to see authoritarianism, go try and get a home loan today. You want to see authoritarianism, try get a basic health care policy for your son or daughter at college. Look at this. This is from the New York Times: "New Rules Tell Insurers: Spend More On Care -- The Obama administration issued new federal rules on Monday that will require many health insurance companies to spend more on medical care and allocate less to profits, executive compensation, marketing and overhead expenses." We knew this was coming. This was not a surprise. They telegraphed it. They said this was gonna happen.

Some Americans applauded because they hate the insurance companies just like they hate Big Oil, Big Retail, Big Pharmaceutical, big whatever, because the American left has done whatever it can to foment this hate. And Obama says this is justified because this will take billions of dollars out of the evil insurance companies' pockets and put it into the people's pockets. So now if somebody steps up and tries to stop this, then the regime will say that you are taking billions away from the people. This is a typical traditional ploy of tinhorn dictators everywhere throughout the world like Hugo Chavez. So the regime today simply issues an executive order and says you are going to spend less, you're gonna take less profit, you're gonna take less to spend on marketing and so forth and you are going to spend more on health care.

"The rules, intended to benefit consumers, vastly expand federal authority to direct the use of premiums --" this is a jubilant report and the New York Times is ecstatic about this "-- collected by companies like Aetna, Humana, UnitedHealth and WellPoint. While some states have had such requirements, Monday's announcement is the first such mandate by the federal government and grows out of the new national health care law." Yeah, so we might be distracted by pat-downs, Dancing with the Stars, or what have you, but Mr. Obama and his minions never rest. They're simply relentless in their efforts to take over every aspect of our economy and our lives.

"'Millions of Americans will get better value for their health insurance premium dollar,' Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, said in issuing the rules. Ms. Sebelius said the rules would protect nearly 75 million people: 10.6 million with individual policies, 24.2 million with small-group coverage and 40 million covered by large employers." Of course, anybody who contributed to or worked for Mr. Obama or any other Democrats' reelection are welcome to apply for a secret waiver. Don't doubt for a moment that friends of Obama will be granted secret waivers if there are any in the insurance business. So, folks, we are witnessing right in front of our eyes at the airport every day, and if we care to look away while we're being distracted, our health care is being taken from us. Our doctors are being taken from us. In two years, manhandled at airports, health care being stolen from us, children's futures being destroyed with Third World-like policies, private property is taken either directly or through high taxes and overly broad regulations. This is the real face of the Democrat Party. This is the real face of authoritarianism. This is the real face of liberalism, and it is un-American.

Seniors on Medicare are being turned away by doctors, because Medicare funds have been siphoned off to cover more Medicaid patients, because Medicare patients are gonna die. Hello death panels, rationed. Medicaid, poor and young, they will vote a lot more often the rest of their lives than the elderly will. So seniors, seasoned citizens on Medicare are being turned away by doctors because Medicare funds have been siphoned off to cover more Medicaid for the poor. Now, these people, Medicaid recipients paid little or nothing into the medical system. Doctors are being ripped off for their services, are being told to take 20 cents on the dollar. Small insurance companies and hospitals and banks -- there's a story 5,000 banks are gonna shut down. The federal government is gonna shut down 5,000 banks. Bank deserts, just like we've got food deserts, we've gonna have bank deserts out there. They're shutting down 5,000 small banks. All of these things are being consolidated under health care and financial reform. The insurance companies are going kaput, hospitals and banks are going out of business, hello financial regulatory reform and Obamacare.

All of this is killing competition; it's killing choices and making it easier for the federal government to control these industries and impose its dictates. This is liberalism. Nothing more than big government statism. And despite all the caterwauling and despite all the PR and packaging, liberalism is not about people. It's about government. At every turn the liberals' agenda involves more government. They hate the private sector. They smear the private sector and people in it. They seek to control the private sector, and if they can't control it, they'll kill it off. Who regulates the regulators? Who gets to tell the people working for Obama that they're overstepping their bounds? Who? Who legislates against the legislature? Nobody. Go to the airport. You are witnessing the destruction of your country and the rejection of individual liberty, and in the Middle East, Arab Muslim males are excited and laughing. Look at what they're causing. Meanwhile, all of this has failed to capture even one terrorist. And look what's happening to the American people. The Fort Hood bomber is treated with respect, might be a mental illness. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, put him on trial. Treat 'em like garden variety criminals after they have murdered thousands of people. The rest of us are humiliated every day in practically every walk of life.

RUSH: I look at what's happened to this country in two years, and a lot of it is stuff that I would have said to people, "Nah, it will never happen," this much loss of liberty, the crashing of the housing market, the indebtedness, loss of private property rights. We're witnessing the destruction of our country. We're witnessing the rejection, the assault on individual liberty, right in front of our eyes. Go to the airport, you see it. And even that's all a trick. That's designed to get us to agree to go to these scanners.

Meanwhile, the people perpetrating these crimes are ignored. We don't want to hurt their feelings. The rest of us are humiliated. Those of us who love our country and haven't done a damn thing to it, are humiliated. Our children, three years old, strip searched. Now, we want strong security, no question, very strong security, but this is not security at the airports. This is harassment, pure, simple harassment. This is the regime telling us our future. This is the regime telling us what it's going to be like, and it's interesting that it's happened only in the last several months, isn't it? Last several weeks, actually. The same regime that refuses to try a terrorist who murdered hundreds of people in a military tribunal goes to a civilian court and who averted a catastrophe by a single guilty verdict and was found not guilty on 247 charges? A government that refuses to try a suspect like that in a military tribunal cannot be said to be serious about security. Everything's for show. The regime says, "Don't worry about it, we're never gonna let the guy go." Well, then why have the trial? If the guy had been exonerated, found not guilty of all charges, and we're not gonna let him go, what does that say about the vaunted American judicial system to Middle Eastern Arab males? What does it say? Why do we care what they think about our judicial system anyway? When did this become a measure of American might, power, all this restraint.

Middle Eastern Arab males kill 3,000 Americans on one day, have killed numerous thousands of soldiers and Americans over decades, and innocent American citizens are humiliated at airport checkpoints. We treat mass murdering pieces of human debris with kid gloves. Law-abiding passengers are treated as legitimate, genuine murder suspects. You cannot tell me this regime is serious about security. That's not what is going on at the airport. What's going on at the airport is the humiliation of the American people, and it is sending a signal of a weakened America, no credibility in the Muslim world. We're sending a message that we are a vulnerable country in the process of surrendering. That is how they're going to see it. Whether we are in the process of surrendering or not, that's how they will see this. Look at it through their eyes. They hijack three or four airplanes, they murder 3,000 Americans. Ten years later, nine years later, the American people are strip searched, groped, accused, harassed at our own airports, and they sit in their caves or wherever they are, these Middle Eastern Arab males, and they gotta be yukking it up and laughing and planning further attacks, further efforts that will handcuff American society even further.

Now, don't misunderstand me; there ought to be screenings and scanners and even pat-downs. But not like this. Not when we know who the enemy is. We know their approximate ages. We know who they are. We know what they look like. We know what national origins most of them come from. We know these things. That's why we have intelligence agencies. Those agencies profile those countries all the time. For some reason when it comes to air travel we are to suspend all logic and reality and pretend that everybody is the same regardless of these factors. And then we claim to be serious about security. So again, young male Muslim Arabs use box cutters on 9/11 so now everybody has to be checked for sharp objects. Young male Muslim Arabs have tried to get liquid explosives on airplanes, so now everybody has to be checked for liquids. You have to empty your shampoo, for crying out loud. You can only take three ounces of other liquids. Young male Muslim Arab puts explosives in his underwear. Now everybody has to be groped.

We're missing the obvious things to check for. And I'll tell you this. Obama and his family will never experience any of these hardships that he is imposing on the rest of us. Neither will Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid. They don't fly commercial. They're already very wealthy. Their children will be cared for. There is a complete disconnect. Haves and have-nots is no longer the rich and poor. Have and have-nots, those who are working for the government and run the government, and those who don't.

RUSH: It has to be said, ladies and gentlemen, we are treating terrorists with kid gloves, and we are treating innocent American citizens with rubber gloves at the airport. Kid gloves versus rubber gloves.

RUSH: Columbus, Ohio. This is Bob. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello, sir.

CALLER: Hello. Mega dittos and it's a great honor and privilege to converse with you.

CALLER: I also wanted to let you know I'll be thanking for Thanksgiving your existence and what you do for our country and --

CALLER: What I am calling about regards the harassment and humiliation as a form of punishment to the American people. As you'll recall, one of the few times that Obama is permitted to not use the teleprompter, he often slips up and reveals his true self.

CALLER: And he did make that point of we have to reward our friends and punish our enemies.

CALLER: And he is suffering so mentally from the destruction that we just shoved in his face by using the --

RUSH: Well, I know. Look, I've said all along that the enemy to the American left is America. The enemy is American conservatives.

CALLER: And this is proof, what's going on with the airline industry is harassment and punishment of the American people.

RUSH: So you think the harassment at the airports is payback for what happened at the ballot box?

CALLER: I believe Obama has a list of things that he's ready to do, and he just checked this one off and said, "I'm gonna be out of the country, I'm not gonna be able to take any flak for it."

RUSH: Stop and think of this. This guy does not sound like a Looney Toon. This guy does not sound like he escaped the straitjacket at Leavenworth. He calls here and he honestly thinks that this could be the president of the United States getting even with the American people over the election. He honestly thinks that. Whether it's true or not, this is what he thinks. Rasmussen has done a poll. Rasmussen's gonna ask the American people, "Do you think the government is operating outside the limits of the Constitution?" Now, whatever the results of the poll, where do you get the question? Well, obviously from me, but I mean the point is at what other point in American history would a pollster even consider polling the question? The Washington Post yesterday polled a phone poll of Bristol Palin on Dancing with the Stars. They actually did. It's either 31 or 39% of the American people think the government's operating within the Constitution. The rest don't. A majority do not. Let me see if I can find it here very quickly. Yeah, 39% of likely US voters believe the government currently operates within the limits of the Constitution. Forty-four percent disagree, say it's not functioning within the limits and another 17% aren't sure. So it's not a majority. Well, it is a majority, but it's 44%. Still, the question itself, and for the guy from Columbus, Ohio, the new TSA regulations kicked in on November 1st, which is the day before the election. But Obama knew he was gonna get clocked. They knew it. They had their polls out there.

A plurality of Americans believe that the government is now operating outside of the confines of the constitution:

I am not sure if you got the memo, but Momma Obama has been critical of the American meal choices; however, she did give us the go-ahead to eat pies on Thanksgiving:

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

This is one of my favorite lists; this is a list of things which global warming causes (right now, it causes over 800 things—most of these are linked):

100 things we can say goodbye to (or, hello to) because of Global Warming (all of these are linked). They are very serious about these things, by the way:

Conservative blog, but with an eye to the culture and pop culture (there is a lot of stuff here):

Conservative and pop culture blog (last I looked, there were some Beatles’ performances here):

Send this link to the young people you know (try the debt quiz; I only got 6 out of 10 right):

PA Pundits, whose motto is, “the relentless pursuit of common sense” (I used many of the quotations which they gathered)

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 actually a whole list of stories about the side-effects of Obamacare (e.g., Obamacare may be fatal to your health savings account; Medical devices tax will cost jobs; young will pay higher insurance rates, etc.): Send one-a-day of each story to your favorite liberal friends:

http://blog.heritage.org/tag/side-effects/

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 #154	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	November 28, 2010