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).

President Obama has released his most Nuanced position yet on the Defense of Marriage Act, signed into law by President Bill Clinton. This act states that the marriages between homosexuals in one state do not have to be recognized by another state. Both the President and his Attorney General, Eric Holder, have decided that this law is unconstitutional, and therefore, will not present any federal defense if there is a challenge made to it in court. However, they assure the public that they will continue to enforce this law. This is the same president who has clearly stated that he believes that marriage is between one man and one woman, and yet, also claims to be “struggling” with the concept of gay marriage.

It has been revealed that Obama has not individually talked to 6 of his cabinet members for the past 2 years. Also revealed that union boss, Tumka, has daily communications with the White House.

Kimberly Strassel, of the WSJ, points out that, the 2 million federal employees do not have the power of collective bargaining (thanks to President Jimmy Carter), and this is why President Obama has the ability to, by government fiat, simply freeze their wages without negotiation.

The unions were supposed to have demonstrations in all 50 states yesterday. There was a lot of vicious language, a lot of bullying, and connections to the international socialist, communist and anarchist groups; and even a Mexican flag or two were flown.

A United Nations agency is actively funding the full legalization of prostitution with the support of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Libyan leader Gaddafi is handing out guns an ammunition to pro-government citizens. This appears to be heading for a full-out civil war.

A major Saudi Arabian chemical company largely owned by the country's ruling royal family paid tuition, living and medical expenses for the Lubbock college student charged in a terrorism plot.

Pakistan insists American who shot 2 in alleged robbery attempt is CIA agent. If memory serves, this robbery attempt occurred at an American embassy.

State senators have fled Indiana and Wisconsin to avoid voting on bills that would end collective bargaining for public sector unions.

Communists, socialists rallying support behind Madison protests; Glenn Beck has been talking about this for weeks, and has been called a nut for saying this.

NASA Scientists (as well as those from a number of other institutions) have recently been modeling the effects of a war involving a hundred Hiroshima-level bombs, or 0.03 percent of the world's current nuclear arsenal, according to National Geographic. The research suggests that the explosion of nuclear bombs could actually result in global cooling.

Billionaire financier George Soros stands to make handsome profits with Obama’s green agenda through his newly launched investment fund, established to capitalize on new "green energy"

The CBS drama "The Good Wife" named one of their characters—a ballistics expert, Tea Party member, and Sarah Palin supporter—"Kurt McVeigh," a not so subtle comparison to Timothy McVeigh, the man behind the 1995 Oklahoma City bombings.

John Kerry: "People are ripped. I'm ripped. We've got to respond, we've got to make something happen."

John Kerry, about the House Republicans: "What I saw on the floor in the last 48 hours of the House just made my stomach turn. The lack of thought, the lack of consequence, the lack of connection to the real values of our country, as ideologue after ideologue comes to the floor to chew up the valuable time we have to address these problems."

AFL-CIO boss Richard Tumka: “Democrats live in a fact-based world...they [conservatives] don’t. We live in the reality that’s created by the facts; they create their own reality. So they don’t care about truth. They create a reality, they make all these assertions, and then we go around, supplying the facts that kills ‘em. But, by the time, they already have two more realities out there.”

Headline, McClatchy Newspapers: "Is Obama Failing to Lead, or Leading in a New, Crafty Way?"

AFL-CIO boss Richard Trumka: “I’m at the White House a couple times a week. Two or three times a week. I have conversations everyday with someone in the White House or in the administration. Everyday.”

Trumka: "We need a dedicated source of revenue to create infrastructure in this country...We need to create jobs. The best way to do that is through infrastructure development."

Bob Chanin (NEA General Counsel): "Despite what some among us would like to believe it is

not because of our creative ideas; it is not because of the merit of our positions; it is not because we care about children; and it is not because we have a vision of a great public school for every child. The NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power. And we have power because there are more than 3.2 million people who are willing to pay us hundreds of million of dollars in dues each year because they believe that we are the unions that can most effectively represent them; the union that can protect their rights and advance their interests as education employees. This is not to say that the concern of NEA and its affiliates with closing achievement gaps, reducing drop rate rates, improving teacher quality, and the like are unimportant or inappropriate. To the contrary these are the goals that guide the work we do. But they need not and must not be achieved at the expense of due process, employee rights, or collective bargaining. That is simply too high a price to pay."

Van Jones (former green jobs czar): “On Saturday, the powers-that-be (in both parties) should see a rainbow force coming together: organized workers, business leaders, veterans, students and youth, faith leaders, civil rights fighters, women's rights champions, immigrant rights defenders, LGBTQ stalwarts, environmentalists, academics, artists, celebrities, community activists, elected officials and more -- all standing up for what's right.”

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), said Governor Walker "is basically taking up the posture of a dictator."

Mika Brzezinski to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker: "You're receiving a lot of criticism for only asking the other side to give, and they have given - on health care and pensions. Are you asking people in your state across the board, including the wealthiest, to give, to help deal with the crisis....and I mean tax increases for the wealthy, or in any way, has anyone else been asked to give?"

Randi Weingarten, former social studies teacher and now head of the 1.4 million member American Federation of Teachers: “Let me take you back a step...the average pension in Wisconsin is $26,000/year; that translates to $500/month for a public worker who has worked 20, 30 years.” Obviously, not a former math teacher.

LAWRENCE O'DONNELL (to Jennifer Granholm, former Democratic governor): Governor, I want you to listen to that last line of that Republican attack ad against President Obama one more time.

CLIP OF AD: Stop Obama and his union bosses today. The Republican National Committee is responsible for the content of this advertising.

O'DONNELL: The Republican Party is saying that the President of the United States has bosses, that the union bosses this President around, the unions boss him around. Does that sound to you like they are trying to consciously or subconsciously deliver the racist message that, of course, of course a black man can't be the real boss?

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis: "The fight is on. We work together. We help those embattled states right now where public employees are under assault."

Senior advisor to the President Valerie Jarrett: “Let's not turn what's really a Wisconsin issue into a Washington issue.”

Mike Papantonio (fill-in host for Ed Schultz): “That's what you have here. Look, here, let's not miss this, this is a generational war. You have students at universities that are showing up, you have these senile old boneheads that are ol-, I mean, check, look at the pictures, I don't even have to say, look at the pictures, Rich. Run any film, who is there for the teabaggers?! The people that are being paid for by the Koch brothers are there for the teabaggers, but take a look at the age discrepancy. They've used our school system. They've used our infrastructure. So the American Majority is busing these old feeble nuts to there and so they're called, do you realize there's, there's a, calling our teachers pigs. Calling our teachers pigs and the teachers take it and that's OK, that's what they oughta do because you know what? The more light you shine on these senile, look, you know (laughs) truthfully, they're the last days of their lives, they really are, these old, fuddie-duddies or curmudgeons are at the last days of the lives and you have students there that are in the protest that say, well look, we want to have the same thing you have. We would like to have infrastructure. We'd like to be able to educate our children. We'd like the same quality of life that we gave you. And unfortunately, you know, I guess the bad news is they're not moving through fast enough because we can keep people alive a long time with good medication. But that's who you have showing up as teabaggers.”

Daily Beast reporter Rick Outzen, added, with a laugh, "[We are] Just a few funerals away from a good government."

Union protestor to black TEA party demonstrator:”You’re on Koch’s plantation?”

Union demonstrator in Columbus, OH: "The Tea Party is a bunch of d**k-sucking corporate butt-lickers who want to crush the working people of this country."

Pro-union supporter in Providence, RI, to citizen journalist: "I'll f**k you in the a**, you faggot!"

Larry Scanlon, the head of AFSCME's political operations"We're the big dog. But we don't like to brag." That means, they pay more money to support political campaigns than any other entity.

Newsweek’s Evan Thomas: “Let's look at the situation around the states. Public employee unions have disproportionate power because in a private situation, the shop owner, the store owner will push back because if they give away the store, they lose the store. In a public setting, it's state legislatures who just want to get more contributions from unions. They're happy to say yes, especially for the unfunded stuff down the road. We've gotten ourselves into a tremendous jam here by states saying, "Sure, you can have great pensions down the road, later. Yeah, that's all fine." So there's like $3 trillion of these unfunded pensions. It's a serious situation.”

Andrea Mitchell: “You report that in fact there were a half a dozen cabinet members who had not heard from the president personally, had not gotten a phone call from the president or had an opportunity to be one-on-one with him in the first 2 years.”

Her guest: “...[a] half a dozen of them, have never had a single phone call from the president in the first two years up to that point. That is a pretty dramatic thing because it tells you not only was the president not listening to people outside the administration, he wasn't even listening to senior members of the administration. He was really only listening to a very small group of people."

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: Let me go to the Republican, Senator Grothman. My question of course is why does the Governor pick on the unions that didn't endorse him in the last campaign but give a free ride to the firefighters and the cops who did and the localities? Why did they get off and are allowed to continue to negotiate collectively?

STATE SENATOR GLENN GROTHMAN (R-WISCONSIN): Well one more time you're completely uninformed. The firemen's union around this state have campaigned against Republicans, and the statewide police have repeatedly campaigned against Republicans. Governor Walker is doing this out of financial necessity. And out of financial necessity the state with a $3 billion budget deficit has to do something. Governor Walker as well as the cities, counties and schools which all rely on state money can either lay people off or have everybody take a mild reduction in take home pay. Myself with a mild reduction in take home pay is part of that. Now we understand.

MATTHEWS: Okay, you just said I'm wildly, once again I'm wildly out of, out of, wrong on the facts.

GROTHMAN: Absolutely.

MATTHEWS: You're telling me that there aren't local affiliates, there aren't local union organizations at the county level, municipal level that didn't endorse your governor candidate when he ran. Are you saying they didn't endorse him, the firefighters and the cops?

GROTHMAN: I can think of two small locals. The vast majority, the Wisconsin Professional Police Association, the vast majority of firemen's unions worked against Walker in this campaign and to say otherwise is completely to mislead your listening audience.

The truth is, some small groups supported Walker and others supported his opponent.

http://www.wppa.com/news/05_10/Barrett_endorsed.htm

http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2011/02/21/wisconsin-state-senator-smacks-down-chris-matthews-youre-completely-u

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: So governor, explain to us how this is not an attempt to crush the unions, given that collective bargaining is the last thing on the table? What does collective bargaining have to do with deficits and spending?

(...)

Wisconsin Gov. SCOTT WALKER (R): It is about the budget. Everything we're talking about's the budget. I, for eight-and-a-half years before I was governor was a county elected official, and every time we tried to do things to balance our county budget at the local level, collective bargaining stood in the way of us making reasonable adjustments to pension and health care, and ultimately avoiding layoffs and furlough days. (...) That's what this is all about, balancing the state's budget now, into the future, but also making sure that the local governments, who are going to see state aid cuts in this next state budget, can also balance this budget as well without cutting core services.

Former governor and possible Republican presidential candidate , Tim Pawlenty: "[I’m not one to] question the existence of the president's birth certificate, but when you listen to his policies, don't you at least think, what planet is he from? We don't share President Obama's world view."

Ben Stein: “It isn’t clear why the public sector unions ought to be a pampered class.”

Ralph Peters: “He’s [Obama] really never understood foreign policy and was never taken an interest in it.”

Monica Crowley: “The mad dog of the east [Kadafy] just met the chihuahua of the west [Obama].”

Rush Limbaugh: "Folks, it's time we realize that Wisconsin isn't Egypt -- Wisconsin is Greece."

Rush Limbaugh: "Intellectually, I don't understand how anybody claiming to be an advocate for African-Americans can sit idly by while half of black pregnancies in New York City are aborted."

Rush: "So Barack Obama goes to Ohio and says we have to live within our means, and that's when MSNBC cuts out. I guess they figured not even their pundits would be able to spin that with any kind of credibility."

Rush: "By every and any measure, our public school graduates are as dumb as a bag of hammers. Now, if you or I failed at our jobs as badly as teachers in the public school system clearly have failed, not only would we be fired, we wouldn't be talking about lifetime pensions and health care benefits paid for by somebody else."

The Middle East is like a powder keg. Biden’s original quote about Obama being tested is coming true in spades.

North Korea threatens South Korea again; and the US as well. They are beginning their annual war maneuvers.

I find myself agreeing with Lou Dobbs? Here he is interviewed by Bill O’Reilly, but there is a commercial first:

Allen West on illegal immigration; his position is clear, and he does not try to straddle both sides of the fence:

Although Glenn Beck has been mocked by the left and the right for his “caliphate delusions.” However, he has been a week or two ahead of the curve on the middle east demonstrations. His shows were all pretty good this week:

Bill O’Reilly had an interesting conversation with Paul Rodriguez in L.A. on Friday, but I cannot find this video (and the FoxNews and Fox Nation websites are the worst websites for searches).

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/freedomworks-activist-describes-attack-to-beck-obvious-hatred/ How can a normal male abuse a woman who s such a babe? That simply isn’t normal. I don’t mean to be sexist here, or to overgeneralize, but when I see a beautiful woman, I think, “Beautiful woman alert;” I don’t think about her politics and push her around because we disagree about politics.

Great video of the Washington D.C. rally (about 7 min. and well worth watching):

Letterman interviews Rand Paul; it is not a bad interview, despite Letterman’s liberalism (he is quite civil):

Jay Leno: "I spent Presidents Day acting like a president. I took someone else's money and spent it on something I don't need."

Jodi Miller: “The Huffington Post was purchased by AOL for $350 million, proving that liberals can waste hundred’s of millions of dollars in the private sector too.”

Jodi Miller: “Mubarak’s step down was welcome news to millions of Egyptians. Apparently, they were tired of soaring unemployment, rising debt, and being dictated to by an arrogant out-of-touch narcissistic Muslim. Sound familiar?”

Jodi Miller: “Oprah is asking critics of President Obama to have more respect for the President. She then added, that if conservatives don’t show him more respect, those Nazi, fascist, racist, tea-bagging bastards can all go to hell.”

Jimmy Fallon: "The National Geographic channel has a new show that gives an inside look at the Secret Service. That's right, it's called `Ruining the Whole Point of the Secret Service.'"

David Letterman "They say President Lincoln once walked three miles to pay back a penny. That makes him the last president to do anything about the debt."

1) If I have to choose between Obama’s obscure position on gay marriage, where he appears to be straddling every fence he can find; and Sarah Palin’s, then I am going with Sarah Palin’s position; it is much easier to understand and decipher. I have a college degree. However, I prefer for a politician to lay out his or her positions clearly, and then to stand by these positions.

2) Like many people, I like Michele Bachmann a bit more than I like Sarah Palin. However, what is key for a presidential candidate (if either of them end up running) is staff. Do they have experience with a staff and would they be able to both field and oversee a large staff. Palin has that experience; I don’t know if Bachmann does.

3) I just realized, Palin knows how to handle a gun; do you know which president does not know how to handle a gun?

4) I hope you are paying attention to Herman Cain, another Republican presidential hopeful. He’s the candidate who looks like Muddy Waters.

5) Behind the scenes, Obama ought to be communicating with the Libyan demonstrators, offering, “You tell us where he is, and we will use drone attacks to kill him.”

The unions gave $400 million to Democrats in 2008. Of all types of organizations, public sector unions are the most generous political campaign contributors, which monies ultimately came from taxpayers’ pockets.

In the 1995 government shutdown, 5000 in the social security department worked, and the checks went out. 61,000 went home. Could their budget be a little bit bloated?

GM said they made $4 billion in profit in 2010 (they owe much more than that to the government). Most of our states are somewhere between $1–8 billion short for this coming year. FHLMC just said they need about $500 billion from the federal government to handle their shortfall. This is why I am against quasi-government institutions.

61% of Americans oppose laws taking away the collective bargaining power of public employee unions (which is the proposal of Governor Walker in Wisconsin,

I have to say, I saw these results and I was floored. To me, this is so elementary as to not even require much of an argument to support Walker’s approach. My hope is, many people do not really differentiate public and private unions, particularly in the area of collective bargaining, and do not realize that the person who pays all the bills, the state taxpayer, has almost no say when the state (or county) bargains with public unions. In fact, about half of the time, the public unions and the state representative are fundamentally on the same side.

71% oppose increasing sales, income or other taxes while 27% are in favor that approach.

53% oppose reducing pay or benefits for government workers while 44% are in favor.

48% opposed reducing or eliminating government programs while 47% were in favor of cuts.

Do you think government employees should be represented by labor unions that bargain for higher pay, benefits and pensions, or do you think government employees should not be represented by labor unions?

48% of Likely U.S. Voters agree more with Governor Walker in his dispute with union workers.

Let’s just say that 1 or more oil tycoons were in touch with the White House daily during Bush’s term; Do you think that might have gotten a little more press than union bossman Trumka claiming to talk with the White House daily?

Remember when the Obama media complex and other liberals could not stop talking about harsh rhetoric and awful signs at the TEA party rallies, and on every Sunday show, Republicans would be asked to repudiate this or that sign; this or that issue. The Wisconsin streets were filled with signs comparing Governor Walker to Hitler and to Mubarak, and one had a target on his head, and it read, “Don’t retreat, reload.” Fewer than 1/6th of the stories on Wisconsin covered by the Obama media complex showed these signs, and NO ONE commented on them. Not ABC, NBC, CBS, etc. (FoxNews did, of course).

During the TEA party rallies, the Obama Media Complex looked for the kookiest people they could find, many of whom really weren’t that kookie, but somewhat confrontational. Furthermore, all kinds of claims were made as to things which TEA party people did say, but without any evidence. However, there is a ton of film of things which union demonstrators have said, which are, quite frankly, filthy; and we will not see any of this in the Alphabet Media (= the Obama Media Complex).

At a black tie event over the weekend, White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett mistook the vice chief of staff of the Army for a waiter and asked him to get her a drink. She was, sources said, mortified when she later realized her mistake. So, let’s say the senior advisor to President Bush made this mistake; do you think we would have heard about it? It might have been the leading story on every broadcast for a day or so, with the question, “Just how competent is the Bush staff?” Don’t misunderstand me; I don’t see this as front page stuff—everyone makes a mistake. Had this occurred on Bush’s watch, it would have been treated differently.

Best example I can give to confirm this is, do you recall seeing Bush walking toward a door and trying to open it, and it was locked and he could not open it? I saw this replayed many times, with the idea that, boy, that Bush is dumb, trying to open a locked door; he looks very silly, doesn’t he? On the other hand, President Obama did the same thing when he tried to open a door to the White House and walk in, except that door was a window and not a door, so he could not get in. On film; but you never saw that, did you?

President Obama explains his stance on gay marriage and enforcing DOMA in a press conference.

Jimmy Carter made it illegal for federal employees to have collective bargaining rights.

Working -class (or, middle class) = refers to public employees, most of whom make much more in salary and benefits than the actual working class

Could you justify collective bargaining for public employees and subsequent union donations to the Democratic party?

There is obviously some political chess going on between Governor Walker of Wisconsin, the Democrats of that state (who are still in hiding) and the public sector unions. Walker can possibly cover the budget shortfall by laying off state workers, but, what he cannot do is, freeze or reduce their salaries in order to keep them all working. Freezing or reducing the bloated salaries of public employees (including teachers) would be favorably received in Wisconsin. Firing workers, less so. This is not a new thing; this has been on the chess board for quite awhile. Sending out pink slips makes an Republican governor seem draconian, yet he has no other alternatives, if he wants to balance the budget.

Over and over again, I have heard Democrats on the various talking head shows complaining that the Republicans are going to shut the government down. Government shutdowns have occurred on a number of occasions, without the sky falling in.

When it comes to foreign policy and foreign events, Obama weighs in usually after every other western leader, and often changes his mind.

I am pretty certain that it is the Democrats who are going to shut down the government.

Last week’s story, “The Dishonest Gay Marriage Debate” was read nearly 1700 times with over 200 comments (which is an unusually large number of comments):

To make sense of what's going on in Wisconsin, it helps to understand that the left in America lives in an ideological fantasy world. The dispute between the state government and the unions representing its employees is "about power," Paul Krugman of the New York Times observes accurately, before going off the rails:

Unions are . . . the only large-scale movement left in America that persistently acts as a countervailing power against corporate power. They're the only large-scale movement left that persistently acts in the economic interests of the middle class. . . .

The decline of unions over the past few decades has left corporations and the rich with essentially no powerful opposition. No matter what doubts you might have about unions and their role in the economy, never forget that destroying them destroys the only real organized check on the power of the business community in America. If the last 30 years haven't made that clear, I don't know what will.

There are several problems with this line of thinking. First, to talk of America in terms of "class" is to speak a foreign language. Outside of university faculties and Marxist fringe groups (but we repeat our self), Americans do not divide ourselves up by class; rather, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . ."

When Americans describe themselves as "middle class," the term is a synonym for "ordinary" or "respectable," not part of a taxonomy of division. Actual middle-class Americans don't feel put upon by "corporate power" or "the business community," because by and large, they own the means of production: They run businesses; they hold shares in corporations through their investment and retirement accounts. Some belong to unions, but the vast majority do not: "In 2010, the union membership rate--the percent of wage and salary workers who were members of a union--was 11.9 percent, down from 12.3 percent a year earlier," according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In any case, it seems to have escaped Krugman's and Drum's notice that the Wisconsin dispute has nothing to do with corporations. The unions' antagonist is the state government. "Industrial unions are organized against the might and greed of ownership," writes Time's Joe Klein, a liberal who understands the crucial distinction. "Public employees unions are organized against the might and greed . . . of the public?"

The "labor movement" in America has increasingly come to consist of people who work for government, not private companies. As the BLS notes, the union-participation rate for public-sector workers in 2010 was 36.2%, vs. just 6.9% for private-sector workers.

There is a fundamental difference between private- and public-sector workers. A private-sector labor dispute is a clear clash of competing interests, with management representing shareholders and unions representing workers. In the public sector, as George Will notes, taxpayers--whose position is analogous to that of shareholders--are usually denied a seat at the table:

Collective bargaining in the public sector thus is less a negotiation than a conspiracy to steal money from taxpayers. The notion that this is "in the economic interests of the middle class" for government employees in Wisconsin and elsewhere to get above-market wages and extremely lavish benefits is just laughable. Sure, government employees are "middle class," but so are the vast majority of taxpayers who don't enjoy the special privileges that come from owning the means of coercion.

Commentary's Jennifer Dyer argues that the Wisconsin dispute--likely the first of many, as states and localities face up to the unsustainable costs they have imposed on taxpayers via such collusion with unions--reflects a "crisis of progressivism":

The term "progressive" has been batted around in various incarnations over the last decade, but in its original sense in U.S. politics--the sense popularized by the Wisconsin Progressives and the spinoffs from their movement--progressivism was about enlarging the government's supervisory role over society and entrusting the administration of that role to experts employed in public agencies. . . .

The agencies were sold to the public as a means of taking the corrupt politics out of issues that ought to be decided straightforwardly by disinterested experts. The progressive idea has always been that this stable of public experts should be insulated from the demands of interest groups--even if the interest group in question is a majority of registered voters.

The Wisconsin Republicans are challenging that idea directly. The vociferous political left isn't wrong about that: the crisis in Wisconsin is a power struggle for the future of government, not just a clash of this year's fiscal priorities. If the voting public can, in fact, deny professional autonomy--in this case, the option to organize for collective bargaining--to public employees, the essential premise of progressivism is badly undercut. Public employees, in their professional capacity, would not then have a "right" to anything the voters don't choose to accede to. That would include the scope of their agencies' portfolios as well as the terms of employment for government workers.

It's an intriguing argument, but it doesn't seem quite right to us. Unionized government employees are not, by and large, professional "experts." If any government workers are undercompensated relative to their private-sector counterparts, it is those with special expertise--lawyers, scientists, economists, top administrators. Public-sector union members mostly have commoner abilities, for which they are overpaid.

Here is the contradiction of progressivism. Progressives tell us they want the government to do more. But they can't win elections without public-sector unions. Because they are beholden to those unions, their main priority when in power is to increase the cost, not the scope, of government. Because resources are finite, the result is the worst of both worlds: a government that taxes more without doing more. This is unsustainable economically. Fortunately, as Wisconsin voters showed last November, it's unsustainable politically as well.

"The unions should make their voices heard and push back hard," editorializes the New York Times, one of the few newspapers to support the Wisconsin antitaxpayer revolt unreservedly. "Push back hard" must be a macro on the computers over at the Times editorial page, which demanded back in August that supporters of the Ground Zero Mosque "push back hard" against ordinary Americans. In the meantime, of course, the Times has delivered many a pious lecture on the evil of "incivility" in politics.

It's quite striking the way almost every lie the left ever told about the Tea Party has turned out to be true of the government unionists in Wisconsin and their supporters:

• Extreme rhetoric. The Wisconsin Republican Party has produced what Mediaite.org calls an "incredibly effective" video juxtaposing liberal complaints about allegedly extremist Tea Party rhetoric with unionist signs likening Gov. Walker to Hitler and other dictators. Left-wing journalists are making similar invidious comparisons: "Workers Toppled a Dictator in Egypt, but Might Be Silenced in Wisconsin" read the headline of a Washington Post column by Harold Meyerson last week. The other day on CNN we saw scenes of a Madison crowd chanting, "Kill the bill"--which was said to be violent and invidious a year ago, when "the bill" was ObamaCare.

• Violence. Blogress Ann Althouse, a state employee based in Madison, posted a video of municipal salt trucks blowing their horns in support of the unionists. A YouTube commenter responded (quoting verbatim), "whoever video taped this has no life and should be shot in the head." Unlike Frances Fox Piven, Althouse has never advocated violence, but don't expect the Times to give this the kind of coverage it gave Piven's claims that she had received threatening emails.

• Partisan AstroTurf. That's the Beltway term referring to a fake grassroots movement. Politico reported last week that "the Democratic National Committee's Organizing for America arm--the remnant of the 2008 Obama campaign--is playing an active role in organizing protests." A blogger at the OFA website, BarackObama.com, writes: "To our allies in the labor movement, to our brothers and sisters in public work, we stand with you, and we stand strong." We've also received emails from MoveOn.org, which says it's holding a pro-unionist rally outside our offices later this afternoon. Sorry, MOO, we're working at home today.

• Refusal to accept election results. Although Republicans have a majority in the Wisconsin Senate, Democrats have fled the state, taking advantage of the body's rules to deny the majority a quorum. The Indianapolis Star reports that Democrats from the Indiana House are employing the same tactic. Even Barack Obama, when he was an Illinois senator, usually voted "present."

• Stupidity. Remember "Teabonics," a photo album of misspelled Tea Party signs? The unionists can't spell any better--and some of them are teachers! Althouse got one photo of what we think is a woman holding a sign that reads " 'Open for business' = Closed for Negotiatins [sic]." Also, some of the teachers' tactics--in particular, fraudulently calling in sick and exploiting other people's children by enlisting them as protesters--seem not only unethical but calculated to repel the public. One blessing of low standards for public school teachers is that it ensures many of them are not bright enough to stage an effective protest.

The one exception: So far we haven't seen any evidence of racism by the Wisconsin unionists. But we're watching for it.

A lot of Republicans on Capitol Hill are terrified of a government shutdown. Look at what happened in 1995, they say, when Newt Gingrich forced a showdown with Bill Clinton and got his clock cleaned. It was a disaster the party can't afford to repeat.

But another view is emerging in Republican circles. Perhaps GOP strategists have learned the wrong lesson from 1995. Maybe this time, while Republicans shouldn't seek a shutdown, they shouldn't fear one, either. For five reasons:

One, if shutting down the government in 1995 was such a catastrophe, how come the GOP not only kept control of the House in the 1996 elections but remained the majority party in the House for a decade to come? The voter revenge predicted at the time did not happen.

Two, even if the '95 shutdown hurt the GOP -- and there's no doubt the party suffered wounds inflicted not only by Clinton but also by themselves -- today's voters are in a different mood. "We have fiscal crises at the federal, state, and local level, and voters understand that," says Bill Paxon, a former Republican lawmaker and veteran of the shutdown. "Back in '95, we were whistling into the wind -- we were trying to preach fiscal discipline when voters were saying, 'Hey, there's not a problem.' "

Three, Republicans like House Speaker John Boehner have learned from their mistakes. "Our goal is to cut spending and reduce the size of government, not to shut it down," Boehner said recently -- a statement he has repeated many times. Contrast that to '95, when, Paxon recalls, "We said we wanted to shut down the government, that it was a good thing, that it would get people's attention, that it would advance our cause." Now, it's Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and other Democrats who seem itching for a shutdown.

Fourth, today's media environment is substantially different. "In '95 there was no Internet, no bloggers, no Facebook, no Fox News," says Dick Armey, who was House majority leader during the shutdown. "The discourse of politics today is carried out in a media world that didn't exist in 1995." That doesn't mean there wouldn't be negative coverage of Republicans if a shutdown occurs, just that the overall media picture would be more balanced.

The fifth reason: Barack Obama is no Bill Clinton. "In '95, Clinton was at the table working hard, sleeves rolled up, everybody knew we were having meetings at the White House and the president was engaged," says Armey. "This president is seen as disengaged and aloof from the process. Barack Obama is a rank amateur compared to Bill Clinton."

Looking back, Republicans concede that Clinton had their number. They particularly remember the January 1996 State of the Union address, when, after the shutdown was over -- actually there were two separate shutdowns a few weeks apart -- Clinton laid a trap that still makes them wince today. Praising the dedication and commitment of federal workers, Clinton pointed to a man named Richard Dean, a Social Security employee who was in the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City when it was bombed on April 19, 1995. Escaping the rubble, Dean went back into the building and saved three lives. Clinton brought him to Washington to attend the speech.

When Clinton asked the audience to applaud Dean's service and heroism, lawmakers, including all the Republicans in the room, burst into an extended standing ovation. But Clinton had more to say.

"Richard Dean's story doesn't end there," he continued. "This last November, he was forced out of his office when the government shut down. And the second time the government shut down, he continued helping Social Security recipients, but he was working without pay." For workers like Dean, Clinton said, "I challenge all of you in this chamber: Never, ever shut the federal government down again."

Democrats burst into applause; Gingrich sat on his hands. Republicans knew they had been outfoxed again; ask Paxon how he felt at that moment, and he recalls a single word: "Oops." Clinton later bragged about the "zinger" that stuck it to his opponents. "I didn't think I had to worry about a third government shutdown," he wrote in his memoir, "My Life."

Could it happen again? Possibly. But some of the veterans of 1995 believe Obama is good, but not that good.

None of this is to suggest that a government shutdown would be a good thing. It wouldn't. But Republicans are beginning to think that this time, it might turn out differently.

On Monday, a front-page story in The New York Times said that there could be a backlash against conservatives and Republicans in the budget battle controversy. In the body of the article it says that surveys show most Americans oppose what Gov. Scott Walker is doing in Wisconsin.

A new Rasmussen poll just released says 48 percent of likely U.S. voters agree more with Walker than with the unions; 38 percent oppose the governor.

In addition, Times columnist Paul Krugman, a far-left zealot, says that Wisconsin state workers make less than those doing corresponding jobs in the private sector.

Again, that seems to be false. A state worker in Wisconsin making $48,000 gets a monthly pension of $1,700. A worker in the private sector making $70,000 a year gets $400 less than the state worker, even though earning far more.

The very essence of union-generated benefits is what is bankrupting Wisconsin and other states around the country.

RACHEL MADDOW, HOST, "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW": I'm here to report that there is nothing wrong in the state of Wisconsin. Wisconsin is fine. Wisconsin is great, actually. Despite what you may have heard about Wisconsin's finances, Wisconsin is on track to have a budget surplus this year.

Again, that is false, according to the Politifact.com watchdog group which says: "There should be no debate on whether or not there is a shortfall [in Wisconsin] . The current budget needed to be addressed in some fashion"

So it is becoming apparent that the left-wing media will not report the Wisconsin situation accurately.

Now faced with a situation that is going against the left, President Obama is in a tight spot. Last week, the House voted to defund public broadcasting and Planned Parenthood. The president knows the writing is on the proverbial wall:

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: So, you know, my bottom line is that I think that Planned Parenthood in the past has done good work. If there was a specific problem at this center, it should be addressed. But we shouldn't get so distracted with some of these issues that we ignore what's really going to determine how well our kids do in the future.

It's clear the president is not going to defend Planned Parenthood, and most likely will not defend PBS and NPR either. So it seems that the battle for fiscal responsibility is going against the American left.

Gov. Walker in Wisconsin says he's not going to back down, and according to the Rasmussen poll, likely voters are with him.

So the far-left media can distort all it wants, but big changes are coming all across the USA.

The stakes are huge for the Democratic Party in Wisconsin right now. Thousands of state workers are furious that Gov. Scott Walker is asking for givebacks in their benefits. The governor also wants to cripple labor unions from negotiating in that state. Workers have walked off the job and many schools are shut down.

There are reports that President Obama's political crew, Organizing for America, is encouraging the demonstrations. That would make sense because what is going on in Wisconsin could make or break the Democratic Party in America.

There is no question with a $3.6 billion shortfall, Wisconsin is in trouble economically, so public workers will have to concede some benefits. Even with Gov. Walker's giveback proposal, Wisconsin state workers are far better off than they would be doing the same jobs in the private sector.

But the crucial matter for America is the labor union business. Liberal Democrats need the labor unions to support them. President Obama cannot be re-elected without union money and votes.

The Republican Party says the country is bankrupt because the labor unions have secured so much for their workers that the economy is being strangled.

The Wall Street Journal said on Friday: "The battle of [Madison, Wisconsin] is a seminal showdown over whether government union power can be tamed. The alternative is higher taxes until the middle class is picked clean and the U.S. economy is no longer competitive."

"Talking Points" believes that is basically true, that union wages and benefits have now reached the point where governments can't afford to operate and some private concerns can't make a profit.

Right now there are 22 right-to-work states in America, places like Texas and Florida, where the unions do not control the negotiating process. The fair thing to do in Wisconsin would be to have a referendum. Let the folks vote on union power.

On a personal note, I'm a member of a union, AFTRA, and when I was working at "Inside Edition" some years ago, the King World company tried to renege on pension benefits. AFTRA took them to court and the case was settled. If the shop had been non-union, we might have been stiffed.

So I understand why unions are needed in America. Workers must have protection against greedy companies that would exploit them. But there has to be a middle ground.

There are no unions in China or India, and we must compete economically with those countries. Worker entitlements in Greece, Ireland and Spain have just about ruined those economies.

The Democratic Party does not seem to understand that, but I believe most Americans now do.

Obama Decides Which Laws To Enforce & Which To Ignore. Orders DOJ To Stop Defending DOMA

MSNBC host Ed Schultz discovers that Shepherd Smith and Greta van Susteren, both of FoxNews, are not conservatives:

In case I did not list this story before; public unions spend more money on political campaigns than any other entity:

ObamaCamp! Organizing for America Will Deploy Young Cadres on `Summer Organizing Fellowships'

There were at least 5 significant stories out these past few months about oil resources in the United States. Have you read any of these stories?

RUSH: To Billings, Montana. Hello, Mark. Great to have you on the EIB Network, hello, sir.

CALLER: Yeah. I want to know when collective bargaining became a right rather than a privilege. I have an independent sales business, thanks to you, by the way, and the main company we represent decided to help their bottom line by not offering a bonus this year. And I can either take that or they can get somebody else who will accept that deal. I have no collective bargaining rights, and I don't think most people in this country do.

RUSH: No, they don't. It's not a right. A right is something that can't be taken away from you.

RUSH: You also hear abortion is a right. You also hear that all kinds of things are rights. That term has been diluted and overblown to the point nobody understands what it means anymore. It's purely used politically. There's no right. That's something you have to bargain for, somebody has to agree to give you that in the negotiation, and if they don't want to give you collective bargaining rights, then tough toenails, go somewhere else where they will.

CALLER: Well, I hear that everyday, and I think, that's not a right, it's a privilege that they have the opportunity to bargain that and --

RUSH: Yeah, it's a right or you can call it as something that you win in a negotiation, but it isn't a right, you're absolutely right. By the way, people that have collective bargaining rights usually can only bargain about their salaries anyway.

RUSH: You want to hear something hilariously funny? This is from the Associated Press, State-Run out of Montana. Let me give you the headline: "'Tea Party Vision for Montana Raising Concerns' -- With each bill, newly elected tea party lawmakers are offering Montanans a vision of the future. Their state would be a place where officials can ignore U.S. laws, force FBI agents to get a sheriff's OK before arresting anyone, ban abortions, limit sex education in schools and create armed citizen militias. It's the tea party world. But not everyone is buying their vision." Now, this is not an editorial. It's supposed to be a news article. And when the AP writes that not everyone is buying their vision, or something, that means they disapprove of it and they manage to find a couple of people to quote who share their disapproval. It means the disapproval starts with AP, their premise and their narrative starts with them, and then they go out and try to find a couple people.

It's not that people in Montana are raising hell and AP hears about it and says, "Whoa, we got a story." This is AP creating a story. And what we have here is the Associated Press raging at a bunch of people who are passing laws which would, for example, ignore US laws. What the hell is going on? We have the president of the United States himself saying, (paraphrasing) "That law doesn't count anymore, I'm not gonna defend that law, the Defense of Marriage Act." We have a president of the United States who himself is lawless. We went through this in great detail yesterday. Make no mistake. And it's not arguable. This is a lawless regime. And so here, the AP in Montana is about to have a conniption fit, they are having a conniption fit because of the Tea Party vision for Montana.

"Some residents, Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer and even some Republican lawmakers say the bills are making Montana into a laughingstock. And, they say, the push to nullify federal laws could be dangerous." Well, really? Well, where are you, AP, on the defense of marriage and this regime simply choosing to ignore laws it doesn't like? How about when a president ignores various federal court rulings? A federal judge has ruled Obamacare unconstitutional. No big deal, we're gonna keep implementing it. And you're worried about lawlessness in Montana? We've had an administration that's come out and said, "You know what, this Defense of Marriage Act, it's been around since the Clinton years, we don't like it. We're not gonna defend it anymore." Lawlessness! The president does not have such authority, and yet the AP wants to tell us how off the tracks and wacko they're getting in Montana.

"'We are the United States of America,' said Schweitzer. 'This talk of nullifying is pretty toxic talk. That led to the Civil War.'" It would probably be pointless to point out to Governor Schweitzer that the so-called nullification crisis of the 1830s was actually resolved before the Civil War began. It probably wouldn't do us any good to point out that his analogy is flawed. "Whatever their merits, the ideas are increasingly popping up in legislatures across the nation as a wave of tea party-backed conservatives push their anti-spending, anti-federal government agenda," as though somehow that's criminal, anti-spending, anti-federal government. "Arizona, Missouri and Tennessee are discussing the creation of a joint compact, like a treaty, opposing the 2010 health care law." It's already been declared unconstitutional, AP. "Idaho is considering a plan to nullify it, as is Montana." Why, how radical. All of this is happening within the bounds of the law. They're passing legislation to do this. They are not unilaterally implementing things, such as our president is doing. This is almost as radical as ramming health care reform through Congress via budget reconciliation. That was not intended to be used for actual legislation, either, budget reconciliation wasn't, but they tried it.

RUSH: Jim in Billings, Montana, hello, sir. It's great to have you on Open Line Friday.

CALLER: You wuz talking earlier about Brian Schweitzer and some of the things there he's doing. We here in Montana pretty much support what he's doing. We're tired of having Obama's agenda rammed down our throats.

CALLER: And I don't know if you were aware: Brian Schweitzer, of course, is a Democrat governor. But our lieutenant governor is a Republican. Were you aware of that?

CALLER: Yeah, he caught a lot of flak for it back during the campaign but, nevertheless, he won anyway. And historically, over the last couple of decades here, our local state legislature, the Democrats have been more conservative than our Republican delegates up there. You know, everything goes down to local, of course, in the state level. But, you know, we're relatively pleased with Schweitzer.

RUSH: Well! How about that civility? Civility on display from Montana, and you just had an AP story written about you guys as though you're a bunch of Neanderthals.

CALLER: I know that, and that's kind of okay, too. We'd love for everybody to kind of stay away and leave us alone.

CALLER: Well, welcome back any time you want to and I'll be happy to be a guide for you through Yellowstone if you like.

RUSH: Well, I appreciate that. Thank you very much. I've been to Ketcham. No wait a minute, wait a minute, I'm thinking Idaho. Where have I been in Montana? (muttering) Oh, darn it. A couple summers ago I played golf at a great, great course. I'm having a mental block. But it was blue skies flying all over the place when I saw it. I do need to go there more. You're absolutely right.

RUSH: I'm sure it is. It really is. To be able to shoot people you don't agree with, that's just... I'm just kidding. We have a parody saying that. You know, Walter Brennan talking about Little Luke and so forth going off on the wrong path. Anyway, Jim, thanks. I appreciate the invitation, I really do. It's the end of the day, folks, and the end of the week. We get a little giddy here.

RUSH: You know, the State-Controlled Media must really be worried that the Democrats will be blamed in a government shutdown. Republicans ought to have no worries about this at all, even if they factor in 1995. Byron York has a great piece today in the Washington Examiner. Okay, the budget shut down in 1995, Republicans took the hit, right? Well, they won election 1996. They got welfare reform in Clinton's second term. They continued to win elections. They didn't lose anything because of the budget shutdown. They just lost in the media, which of course they don't like. They don't like being ripped to shreds. But now we've got another government shutdown looming and the State-Controlled Media has a story here to make sure everybody knows the government would not shut down, that it's not really that big a deal, which tells me that they know that it would be the Democrats who would take the hit.

Social Security checks would still go out. The troops would remain at their posts. Furloughed federal workers probably would get paid, though not until later, and virtually every essential government agency like the FBI, the Border Patrol, the Coast Guard, would remain open. That's the little known truth about a government shutdown. The government doesn't shut down. The sun comes up. The sun goes down. Welfare checks are received. Abortions take place. What more could you want? Now, if the Republicans were going to take the hit, if the AP, State-Controlled AP thought Republicans were gonna take the hit on this, you wouldn't have this story about how there's no shutdown. We'd get a story on all the essential services that would be grinding to a halt. Yeah, the Republicans lost something like four seats in the next election after the shutdown in 1996. It wasn't that big a deal.

RUSH: "Why the GOP Shouldn't Fear a Government Shutdown." This Byron York at the DC Examiner. He says, "A lot of Republicans on Capitol Hill are terrified of a government shutdown. Look at what happened in 1995, they say, when Newt Gingrich forced a showdown with Bill Clinton and got his clock cleaned. It was a disaster the party can't afford to repeat. But another view is emerging in Republican circles. Perhaps GOP strategists have learned the wrong lesson from 1995. Maybe this time, while Republicans shouldn't seek a shutdown, they shouldn't fear one, either.

"For five reasons: One, if shutting down the government in 1995 was such a catastrophe, how come the GOP not only kept control of the House in the 1996 elections but remained the majority party in the House for a decade to come? The voter revenge predicted at the time did not happen. Two, even if the '95 shutdown hurt the GOP -- and there's no doubt the party suffered wounds inflicted not only by Clinton but also by themselves -- today's voters are in a different mood. 'We have fiscal crises at the federal, state, and local level, and voters understand that,' says Bill Paxon, a former Republican lawmaker and veteran of the shutdown.

"'Back in '95, we were whistling into the wind -- we were trying to preach fiscal discipline when voters were saying, "Hey, there's not a problem."' Three, Republicans like House Speaker John Boehner have learned from their mistakes. 'Our goal is to cut spending and reduce the size of government, not to shut it down,' Boehner said recently -- a statement he has repeated many times. Contrast that to '95, when, Paxon recalls, 'We said we wanted to shut down the government, that it was a good thing, that it would get people's attention, that it would advance our cause.' Now, it's [Dingy] Harry Reid and other Democrats who seem itching for a shutdown," because they think history will repeat itself.

"Fourth, today's media environment is substantially different. 'In '95 there was no Internet, no bloggers, no Facebook, no Fox News,' says Dick Armey, who was House majority leader during the shutdown. 'The discourse of politics today is carried out in a media world that didn't exist in 1995.' That doesn't mean there wouldn't be negative coverage of Republicans if a shutdown [happens], just that the overall media picture would be more balanced. The fifth reason: Barack Obama is no Bill Clinton. 'In '95, Clinton was at the table working hard, sleeves rolled up, everybody knew we were having meetings at the White House and the president was engaged,' says Armey.

"'This president is seen as disengaged and aloof from the process. Barack Obama is a rank amateur compared to Bill Clinton.' Looking back, Republicans concede that Clinton had their number. They particularly remember the January 1996 State of the Union [show], when, after the shutdown was over -- actually there were two separate shutdowns a few weeks apart -- Clinton laid a trap that still makes them wince today. Praising the dedication and commitment of federal workers, Clinton pointed to a man named Richard Dean, a Social Security employee who was in the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City when it was bombed on April 19, 1995.

"Escaping the rubble, Dean went back into the building and saved three lives. Clinton brought him to Washington to attend the speech. When Clinton asked the audience to applaud Dean's service and heroism, lawmakers, including all the Republicans in the room, burst into an extended standing ovation. But Clinton had more to say. [doing impression] 'Richard Dean's story doesn't end there,' he continued. 'This last November, he was forced out of his office when the government shut down. And the second time the government shut down, he continued helping Social Security recipients, but he was working without pay. ...

"I challenge all of you in this chamber: Never, ever shut the federal government down again.' Democrats burst into applause; Gingrich sat on his hands. Republicans knew they had been outfoxed again." That was only half of them being outfoxed. The other half was Clinton had gotten together with all the unions and said (summarized), "Look, you're going to get your Thanksgiving turkey, you're gonna get your Christmas turkey, you're gonna get your back pay, but I want you to go out there and act like it's the end of your life that you're not gonna be able to make ends meet," and, of course, they did; and they were all over CNN.

Remember, there was no Fox News back then. There was no PMSNBC, to speak of, and they were all over CNN with some of the biggest sob stories you've ever heard. And they were mostly women and minorities that were singing the blues and talking about all the pain that the Republicans had caused, and they're sitting there with the little kids and they made sure to get emaciated kids because the school lunch program supposedly was also being targeted. Now things have changed. And, by the way, Clinton lied, because even the AP admitted that no one -- not one person on Social Security -- lost any money during the government shutdown in 1995.

But as I mentioned in the opening hour of today's excursion into broadcast excellence, the AP today has an entirely different take on the government shutdown. Their headline in their story is: "Psst. No Shutdown During a 'Shutdown.'" They know that if there's a government shutdown this time, it's the Democrats are gonna take the hit, so State-Run AP says it's really not gonna shut down. There's no shutdown if it shuts down. "Social Security checks would still go out." That's the first sentence of the story. "Troops would remain at their posts.

"Furloughed federal workers probably would get paid, though not until later. And virtually every essential government agency, like the FBI, the Border Patrol and the Coast Guard, would remain open." Now, all this is a direction contradiction of the lies that Harry Reid, the rest of the Democrats have been spreading about a possible shutdown -- and then AP says, "That's the little-known truth about a government shutdown. The government doesn't shut down." Psst. Hey! If the Republicans shut down the government, it's not really a shutdown because they know that the Democrats are gonna take the hit on this one.

So it's very simple to explain. Some might not know what the AP is doing here, but we do. "And it won't on March 5," AP says, "even if the combatants on Capitol Hill can't resolve enough differences to pass a stopgap spending bill to fund the government while they hash out legislation to cover the last seven months of the budget year. Fewer than half of the 2.1 million federal workers subject to a shutdown would be forced off the job if the [regime] followed the path taken by presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. And that's not counting 600,000 Postal Service employees or 1.6 million uniformed military personnel exempt from a shutdown."

Folks, even if there is one, there's no shut down. Psst! Proof positive that AP understands full well the Democrats are the ones take the hit.

RUSH: Marion, Ohio. This is Jeff. Great to have you on the program, sir, and welcome.

CALLER: I called to say that with the lady that you had on there earlier in the program about what she was saying about why Obama was talking about the oil problem overseas and that?

CALLER: Yeah. Well, I think sometimes they nitpick too much on the presidents. I don't necessarily care for Obama, but I'm referring in general to whichever president is in there, whether they're Republican or Democrat.

CALLER: That I think that they don't have nothing else to find fault with the president about, so they nitpick and just pick out something like that when the man's got more --

RUSH: Jeff, give me an example of what you mean by the nitpicking, say, of Obama. What have you heard that's nitpicking of Obama?

CALLER: Well, one particular agenda taken care of like, say, that they think that he ought to be -- they were concerned about the unemployment, but then yet he's talking about the oil problem overseas. And they just nitpick on him about just one particular thing, that they're not looking at the whole picture. The man's got more than one problem that he's dealing with.

RUSH: Right. I just want to understand, you think it's nitpicking to say the president is ignoring job creation while focusing on the oil price?

CALLER: I don't think that that's completely true. Because it's like a president of a company, if they're trying to bring in more business in order to keep the workers going, but yet at the same time they've got all the maintenance problems that they gotta pay, they gotta look at the bills, they gotta make sure the money's there, stuff, you know --

RUSH: Well, how would you prefer to hear the president discussed and talked about?

CALLER: I would rather see him take time to address -- I don't want to say each individual problem, 'cause there's a lot of minor stuff, but the more technical stuff, such as the unemployment I think ought to be first.

RUSH: Well, the reason people are, as you say, nitpicking the president on unemployment is because he spent close to a trillion dollars after promising, after boasting that he could do all this at the same time. He could multitask, he could do all this at the same time, he's a very smart guy, smartest president we've ever had, and that he was gonna spend a trillion dollars and make sure that four to five million new jobs were created and the unemployment rate would not go over 8%. He also told us that the world would love us once again. All we had to do is get rid of George W. Bush and close Guantanamo Bay, and the Muslim world would love us, everybody would love us, foreign policy problems would be ended. He has run around apologizing for the country, acknowledging to these foreign leaders what's wrong with America, and look at the world. It's on fire. The flames are erupting in the Middle East. And so people are wondering, well, you spend a trillion dollars, four to five million new jobs, where are they? Where is the unemployment at 8% and where is all the love for America, where is all this foreign policy success? It isn't really nitpicking. It's asking for some performance based on promise and expectation.

CALLER: Well, I think that there's a little bit of a difference here because now you're talking about what the Democratic Party's trying to do in relation to the problem. And to me they ought to forget about the Republican Party and the Democrat Party and sit down and say, "Guys, women, we've got a problem. We need to fix it. We need to take care of the people."

RUSH: Well, it sounds wonderful. Republicans could sit down, Democrats could sit down, "Guys, we got a problem." The problem is, Jeff, the Democrats. I would love to tell you something other than that, but we can't just pretend that Obama has had no impact. We just can't pretend that good intentions are what count. Results do. And the problems facing America today are directly traceable to the American left, the Democrat Party, pure and simple. Case closed. Thanks for calling.

RUSH: Hey, folks, let's pretend for just a second. Pretend that you are the smartest person in the room, the wisest person in the world. Pretend that you are Barack Obama, President of the United States. At this moment in time, what do you focus on? What do you really "focus on like a laser"? With everything going on in the world and the country today, what do you make the biggest priority and the biggest production out of? The jobs we need and aren't getting? The exploding deficit that threatens our future? How about the soaring price of oil and the fact that we have shut down a lot of our own domestic production?

The price of oil around the world is skyrocketing. The Saudis are talking about ramping up their production. How about the crisis in the Middle East? I mean, for heaven's sake, "a crisis is a terrible thing to waste," right? We have a crisis in the Middle East, we have no job creation, the deficit continues to explode, the price of oil is soaring. We are doing nothing about compensating for that in our own country. How about Wisconsin? If you're president, the smartest person in the world, you focus on government unions and how they are choking state budgets? Do you focus on the border where unchecked illegal immigration continues?

Out of all the things going on in the country, in the world today, Obama makes a big production out of gay marriage. This is not... No, this is not a stunt. Obama, he knows how to stir the liberals. He knows how to massage the media. Of all the things going on, what do we get as a primary focus from our own president? Declaring that the Defense of Marriage Act is something he doesn't like anymore, and so he's not gonna defend it. What exactly is Obama's Plan B for oil? If the Middle East erupts entirely, what is his Plan C, what's his Plan D? He doesn't have any plan for it, because everything he does is oriented toward: How can it help him. He's out playing to the base. He's flying out to Silicon Valley last week to raise campaign cash.

It's always about him. He jumps into Arizona to pander to ethnic groups. He jumps into Wisconsin to pander to the NEA, the SEIU, and other unions. We are watching a president of the United States turn this country over to his cronies in and out of government, in and out of business and labor. This is quite a display of arrogance, ideological, self-serving arrogance. I've never seen it before in a president. I've never seen a president that does not put his country first. I've never seen that. But we're watching it right before our very eyes. His first question is always: "What will this do for me?" Whatever the issue is, whatever the story is, whatever the event is: "What will this do for me?"

And of course The Politico gets right in on the action, covering it all as a game. Their headline: "Little Downside Seen for DOMA Call." Little downside for a president acting in an unconstitutional manner simply saying, "You know, I don't like that law, I'm not gonna defend it anymore." It's a law duly passed by the representatives of the people. It has not been challenged at the US Supreme Court. He does not have the authority to declare it unconstitutional. He does not have that power. He does not have the power to say, "I'm not gonna defend it anymore," and the Politico does a story: Can he get hurt by this? We don't think so. "Little Downside Seen for DOMA Call."

Well, okay, then. If there's "little downside seen" for a president to act in ways he is not empowered to according to the law, then the next conservative president can say, based on Obama's precedent, "You know what? Obamacare is unconstitutional. I am therefore directing my attorney general to stop defending it. It doesn't exist. We've looked at it, I've never been comfortable with it, and it's just unconstitutional. We're not gonna defend it anymore." A conservative president could say, "I am directing my attorney general to stop defending the EPA's carbon dioxide regulations. I don't like what they're doing there. It's not their purview. So EPA, stand down. You can't do it. My administration is not gonna defend that anymore."

A conservative president could then say, "I am directing my attorney general to stop defending the so-called financial reform bill. I don't happen to agree with this bill. I don't like it. I never liked it when it was being debated, I never thought it shoulda passed, and so I don't care about anything else: My attorney general has just said that we're not gonna defend it anymore. So if there are parts of the financial reform bill that prevent you from doing something, go ahead and do it now, 'cause I'm not gonna prosecute you. There is no law. I'm just gonna strike it." Can you imagine?

Would the Politico be doing stories, "President Palin, Little Downside Seen for Call on Obamacare"? Can you imagine that? Can you imagine anybody in the media doing a story on the next conservative president: "You know, I don't think this guy's gonna get in any trouble here, seeing Obamacare is not gonna be defended anymore"? It'd be just the opposite. They'd be demanding the impeachment of said president. The next conservative president can say, "I have concluded these laws don't pass constitutional muster. I've decided to drop any defense of them. I! I, the president, don't like these laws. They don't count to me."

So what's happened here is Barack Obama has decided he's not gonna enforce the law. He is not enforcing a federal judge's ruling in Florida because he disagrees with it. Judge Vinson. The constitutionality of Obamacare. He is not enforcing a federal ruling in Louisiana to allow deep offshore drilling. A federal ruling says his moratorium is illegal, but to hell with the federal ruling. Barack Obama disagrees with it. Essentially Barack Obama has said, "You know what? I'm the Supreme Court! We don't need one anymore. I don't like the Defense of Marriage Act. Neither does my attorney general.

"Neither do my gay supporters and contributors. So, you know what? We're not gonna defend it anymore. I don't care what the Supreme Court thinks. It doesn't matter. I have decided." Imagine a conservative president doing this, say, on abortion. This is lawlessness. There's no other way to characterize this. This is lawlessness. He's not securing the southern border. He's not enforcing immigration laws. That is why Arizona is having to act independently -- and what does he do? He sues them! He sues the state of Arizona. He's taken sides against a United States governor in Wisconsin, and will be taking sides against many more governors as the days unfold.

So let's step back. Imagine, for the fun of it, Sarah Palin is elected president. I pick Palin only 'cause they hate her the most (and I'm not running). Imagine that Sarah Palin appoints scores of czars who are not confirmed by the Senate. These czars run the government out of the White House; they bypass the cabinet structure. Imagine that President Palin appoints as attorney general a politically partisan conservative. Imagine that attorney general takes orders from Palin on active cases, and she orders that attorney general to stop defending lawsuits against aspects of Roe v. Wade, to stop defending lawsuits against Obamacare, to stop defending lawsuits against the EPA's greenhouse gas regulations.

Imagine if President Palin directs her attorney general to sue California to enforce border security and to stop granting taxpayer benefits to illegal aliens, in violation of the supremacy clause. Imagine if President Palin did all this. Imagine President Palin ordering the Republican National Committee to work with businesses, managers and executives that contributed tens of millions of dollars to her campaign to defeat her political opponents (especially Big Labor) in places like New York, New Jersey, Michigan, California; intervening in the affairs of states. Obama's doing this. Imagine if President Palin did it. She gets hold of the guy that runs the RNC, says, "I want you to have meetings with businesspeople that contribute a lot of money to my campaign."

Imagine President Palin decides that she will not comply with federal court rulings that she disagrees with, as in Florida and Louisiana. Imagine, if you will, President Palin meeting weekly with CEOs of the oil industry, of the insurance industry, and of the health care industry in order to help them profit and prosper. Imagine if President Palin meets with these groups to try to repair the damage done by the previous president, Barack Obama. Imagine a State of the Union in a House of Representatives chamber: President Palin attacking the sitting justices of the US Supreme Court, humiliating them for a ruling in a case in a manner that she disagrees with.

Imagine President Palin hiring a fashion person and putting her on the public payroll and telling everybody what to eat while she and Todd eat whatever they want on trips to places like Vail, while her husband is eating hamburgers and fries and ice cream. Imagine President Palin sending her kids to the most expensive private school in Washington, while at the same time killing a school choice program for poor minorities in the inner city of Washington -- and, folks, I could go on and on and on. It explains everything, this sickening spectacle that is the left. Whether they pretend to be journalists, whether they are politicians, this is a dangerous force in this nation. We have to continue to expose them. That's all we can do.

RUSH: When you're out there pretending, ladies and gentlemen, that you're Sarah Palin, President Palin, imagine that you don't have a birth certificate, what would happen?

RUSH: There's a great piece on a lot of this. It's long. I'm gonna excerpt some of it. It is a great piece. Best of the Web today from James Taranto, the Wall Street Journal.

"To make sense of what's going on in Wisconsin, it helps to understand that the left in America lives in an ideological fantasy world." Let me give you a pull quote here before getting into the whole piece, 'cause it is great. "Here is the contradiction of progressivism. Progressives tell us they want the government to do more. But they can't win elections without public-sector unions. Because they are beholden to those unions, their main priority when in power is to increase the cost, not the scope, of government. Because resources are finite, the result is the worst of both worlds: a government that taxes more without doing more. This is unsustainable economically. Fortunately, as Wisconsin voters showed last November, it's unsustainable politically as well."

So this illustrates again how phony Obama is. "We all have to live within our means. We all have to tighten the belt. We all have to do with less." Wrong! Because they are beholden to union paymasters, their main priority when in power is to increase the cost of government -- i.e., when you pay these people. By increasing the cost of government, you launder money through the unions and get the dues returned to you. So the Democrats, for all the ideological reasons they want to expand government, also have an economic reason to expand government. Expanding government, increasing the cost of government enhances their power because the unions are essentially money launderers of taxpayer money.

Because where are the public sector unions getting their money? They're not producing anything. They're not making widgets. People are not buying anything. Ends up in the annual household budget of a public sector union worker is taxpayer revenue, pure and simple. It's tax dollars -- and when there isn't enough of that we borrow it; and when we can't borrow any more, we print it. But none of it results from production. It's pure redistribution of wealth. So not only are private sector people being taxed and having their standards of living affected negatively, those dollars they pay the government, more and more end up, at the end their circuitous route, in the Democrat Party. Because the Democrat Party's paymasters are the unions.

Is it any wonder that since Obama was immaculated, the federal workforce has increased by 200,000 people? There are 200,000 brand-new public sector union people paying dues, a portion of which end up with the Democrat Party and with Barack Obama. Now, back to James Taranto: "The dispute between the state government and the unions representing its employees is 'about power,' Paul Krugman of the New York Times observes accurately, before going off the rails: What [Gov. Scott] Walker and his backers are trying to do is to make Wisconsin -- and eventually, America -- less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy. And that's why anyone who believes that we need some counterweight to the political power of big money should be on the demonstrators' side." (chuckles)

That is pure idiocy. It's the exact opposite of that. "Kevin Drum of Mother Jones elaborates: 'Unions are ... the only large-scale movement left in America that persistently acts as a countervailing power against corporate power. They're the only large-scale movement left that persistently acts in the economic interests of the middle class. ... The decline of unions over the past few decades has left corporations and the rich with essentially no powerful opposition. No matter what doubts you might have about unions and their role in the economy, never forget that destroying them destroys the only real organized check on the power of the business community in America. If the last 30 years haven't made that clear, I don't know what will.'

"Here are several problems with this line of thinking. First, to talk of America in terms of 'class' is to speak a foreign language. Outside of university faculties and Marxist fringe groups (but we repeat our self), Americans do not divide ourselves up by class; rather, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . ."' When Americans describe themselves as 'middle class,'" the term is a synonym for 'ordinary' or 'respectable,' not part of a taxonomy of division. Actual middle-class Americans don't feel put upon by 'corporate power' or 'the business community,' because by and large, they own the means of production: They run businesses; they hold shares in corporations through their investment and retirement accounts.

"Some belong to unions, but the vast majority do not: "In 2010, the union membership rate -- the percent of wage and salary workers who were members of a union -- was 11.9 percent, down from 12.3 percent a year earlier," according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. ... The 'labor movement' in America has increasingly come to consist of people who work for government, not private companies. As the BLS notes, the union-participation rate for public-sector workers in 2010 was 36.2%, vs. just 6.9% for private-sector workers. ... In any case, it seems to have escaped Krugman's and Drum's notice that the Wisconsin dispute has nothing to do with corporations.

"The unions' antagonist is the state government," which is the people of Wisconsin, not some evil corporate fat cat! That's my point all along. These people are not negotiating against some fat, filthy rich, cigar-chomping executive who spends all day on the golf course. They are negotiating Wisconsin citizens who are not members of unions. "'Industrial unions are organized against the might and greed of ownership,' writes Time's Joe Klein, a liberal who understands the crucial distinction. 'Public employees unions are organized against the might and greed . . . of the public?'" That's true. Public employees, public employee unions are organized against the public.

RUSH: Collective bargaining in the public sector -- I cannot emphasize this enough -- collective bargaining in the public sector thus is less a negotiation than a conspiracy to steal money from taxpayers. I am so happy this is all coming to light. I'm glad that has happened to Wisconsin. I'm glad finally people are figuring out what collective bargaining with public sector unions means. The negotiations with public sector unions against people who pay them are negotiations between the unions and the citizens of the state of Wisconsin in this case. And it's not a negotiation. It is a conspiracy to steal money from taxpayers. That's where the union workers in the federal and state governments get their money. Corporations are not involved. Evil, bad Walmart, McDonald's, I don't care, name one, they're not involved. This is strictly unionized workers in the state holding hostage the people of the state, and the people of Wisconsin are being held hostage. Their schools are closed because the senators fled the state to avoid democracy, and the teachers walked off the job.

The teachers are union workers. They're holding out for whatever. From who? Their neighbors. Obama says, "They're just your neighbors and people at church." Yeah, what are they trying to do here? They're holding 'em up. It's not a negotiation, as Mr. Taranto says. It's a conspiracy to steal money from taxpayers. The notion that this is in the economic interests of the middle class for government employees of Wisconsin and elsewhere to get above market wages is laughable. Above market wages means wages higher than the people who are paying the wages earn. Where's the justice in that? You earn $50,000 a year. People that work in your state government earn a hundred thousand dollars a year. You are paying it. Where's the justice there? The idea that this is in the economic interests of the middle class for government employees to get above market wages and lavish benefits is laughable. The government employees are middle class but so are the vast majority of taxpayers who are paying them who do not enjoy these special privileges.

Tom in Strasburg, Pennsylvania. You're up. Great to have you on the EIB Network today, sir. Hello.

CALLER: As a conservative Republican here in Pennsylvania, this has really been fun to watch for me. You know, the D's have really painted themselves into a corner here, and are really in uncharted waters. They've been fighting for decades this class warfare, you know, the haves versus the have-nots, the working families versus the rich, for decades. Now the shoe is on the other foot here and the liberals really don't know how to handle the argument, and consequently they just leave the states.

RUSH: Right. And look who is it that now hates government. Look who is it that hates government. Liberal Democrats. They hate government. When it comes to a choice between the unions and government, who do they hate? They hate government. Who's knocking government? All these union workers, all these Democrats are knocking government, criticizing, ripping the government. That's not very civil.

CALLER: No. They don't know how to handle the argument. The bottom line is they don't argue. They can't win. They don't debate. In some cases they try to impugn and destroy the credibility of their opponents or in this case they flee as cowards. They just leave the states. They just run away. And somehow they want to tell us that they're doing this for our benefit against some evil corporation trying to screw them.

RUSH: La Crosse, Wisconsin. Hi, John, great to have you on the program. Welcome.

CALLER: You know, I was just wondering if you had the opportunity to speak to every Wisconsinite, including the WPR listeners, what would you say to them? Why would you say that collective bargaining rights are so important to include in those other than just givebacks for the pension and the health care? And why that's critical to do that?

RUSH: What would I say the collective bargaining rights are so important to include?

CALLER: To include in Scott Walker's bill that they must be taken away for public workers. I mean, my understanding is that the contributions, the additional contributions for health care and pensions only applies to state workers and that this is the best tool that the local governments have to get a handle on their budgets. I mean especially since they're not gonna get as much money from the state.

RUSH: Here's the thing about collective bargaining rights for public union employees. I agree with James Taranto in the Wall Street Journal. Let me read to you how he has categorized it. Collective bargaining in the public sector is less a negotiation than a conspiracy to steal money from taxpayers. You know, there's no evil corporate interest here that you're collectively bargaining with. Public sector unions are collectively bargaining against taxpayers, the taxpayers of the state. In essence it becomes, okay, how much can we score, how much can we steal from these people who are paying us? And they end up paying us more than they make themselves.

CALLER: Yeah, I feel like a peasant that's paying for these new aristocrats that have excellent job security, and it never ends. I mean the nine months, the job security, the benefits that no one else gets.

RUSH: Well, in the case of state public employees, you're right. But it's not that no one else gets them. It's that who's paying it. Absent here is some evil corporate entity. Traditionally the way unions have succeeded is to create sympathy. "Well, yeah, they're up against these rich guys, these fat cats in the boardroom who want them in poverty, who don't want to pay them any money," while they are getting rich as sin! They are the members of the country club. They're the ones that fly around in the corporate jets. They're the ones that have the lives of Riley. But in this case, collective bargaining -- the taxpayers are not flying around in private jets, they're not the members of country clubs, they're not living the lives of Riley. A lot of them are out of work, a lot of them have lost their homes, and the union is ungiving. It is unwilling to compromise at all on some of this. "I don't care if the state goes bankrupt. I'm keeping what I've got." So in this case, the whole notion of the traditional contract negotiation is thrown out the window.

You're asking John Q. Citizen, you're asking Joe Six-Pack to pay you twice what he makes and you want a collective bargaining process which allows you the right to strike, to walk away from your job, which is to teach his kids? Do you expect him to agree with this? He doesn't see himself as a CEO of some giant company running around playing golf half the year, drinking fine adult beverages, smoking cigars, cognac from the corporate jet at 51,000 feet. He sees himself barely able to make ends meet in this economy. And yet his neighbors, who for some reason have no compunction, they'll either leave the state to avoid voting or they'll walk off the job teaching the kids or they'll walk off the job of whatever else it is. John Q. Public's said, "To hell with this. I'm already paying these guys twice what I earn and they're coming in and treating me this way?" So that's the difference. It's money laundering. I don't know how else to say this. It is just a highly sophisticated money laundering operation. Add to it, John, what people are now figuring out is, these John Q. Citizens in Wisconsin are figuring out that at the end of all of this, at the end of this timeline, a portion of their state taxes is ending up in the Democrat Party campaign coffers via the unions because all these state employees are unionized, they pay dues, the dues go to elect and reelect and buy ads for Democrats.

RUSH: Pat in Roseville, Michigan, I'm glad you called, sir. Great to have you on the program.

CALLER: Thank you for taking my call, Rush. By the way, the golf swing looks pretty good.

CALLER: Anyway, sir, I'm a 36-year firefighter in the Detroit area. I've been extensively involved in contract negotiations, both police and fire.

CALLER: And I think we have in Michigan the fairest form of collective bargaining there is, and that's binding arbitration, which is what we're worried they're gonna take away from us in Michigan. Now, in order for us to attain any kind of raise in benefits, we have to go before an arbitrator, and we have to prove ability to pay. And of course the city has a right to show that they don't. If we don't prove ability to pay, we don't win anything, and at the same time --

RUSH: Wait, wait just a second. I want to make sure I understand this. You, the union members, have to prove that the state has the ability to pay you what you're asking?

RUSH: All right. So you have to prove the city has the money to pay you. How in the world do you get hold of that information?

CALLER: You get that through public -- you get that through budgets. You have to do some work sometimes. We found our city for years, there was millions of dollars they didn't collect in taxes. It's a lot of work, but you do have to prove to an arbitrator. And because of the economic conditions of Michigan, it's been a long time since anybody really gets any substantial pay raises from an arbitrator because of that.

CALLER: Yes, I agree, and that's why I'm saying that it's a very fair form. But the problem is now that the state of Michigan, and you know as well as I do, has been run by some real pure idiots in some of these cities, and I think what they want to do is create a bankruptcy type scenario for a city, bring in an emergency financial manager, and throw police and firefighters under the bus without negotiations. And as far as I'm concerned, if all public sector unions adopted binding arbitration, I think a lot of the politics and stuff that's going on would end.

RUSH: Well, yeah, by definition it would have to end if you go to binding arbitration.

CALLER: And it works, because even in my travels I had the honor of meeting Governor Engler years ago, and Governor Engler told me that he offered the teachers here in Michigan binding arbitration and they refused, which I didn't agree with at the time. What it does, again, it's something that you have to prove to the arbitrator. And my concern is they want to go the easy way out.

RUSH: Now, while you're trying to prove that the city, in your case, has the ability to pay, the city's trying to prove that they don't?

CALLER: Correct. Or what they'll do, they'll look at our demands and say, "We can't do their demands based on what we have in the budget," because you see, in a public sector union we can look at budgets, et cetera, unlike private.

CALLER: Years ago, the city I work for is very, very, very poor. They came in, they threw us on the street, they said you're all gone and replaced us with the sheriffs. We were under a petition to go to arbitration, and the judge ruled they can't do what they did to us, which is fair. Because if you're a police officer and a firefighter and you're doing the jobs that we do, and you're worried that tomorrow a financial manager is gonna come in and throw you on your ears without any kind of negotiation, we can't strike and we can't slow down, and we can't use politics. We have to use absolute figures to go before an arbitrator --

RUSH: All right, let me take what you have explained and apparently what you believe and agree with. Let's make you a teacher in Wisconsin. The governor is telling you, "Look, we got a $3.6 billion deficit. In other words, we don't have any money. Now, we want you to contribute five something percent to your health care and 12% to your pension payment and we want to you forgo collective bargaining in the future, otherwise we're gonna have to start laying people off 'cause we don't have the money." And it's apparently public, I mean they're not lying about not having any money. Nobody has any money. Everybody knows no state has any money right now. What would your reaction be to what's going on in Michigan if you're a teacher in Wisconsin and hearing all this?

CALLER: My reaction -- well, I look at my situation, we do contribute to our health care. As a matter of fact, our new members now have 401(k)s. And if you gotta bend, you gotta bend. My concern is, and my only concern is the fact that if you take away collective bargaining, the ability to be at the table and have a referee there, abuse can go the other side, too.

RUSH: Well, you're not really talking about collective -- you're talking binding arbitration. You're not talking collective bargaining. Collective bargaining you could hold somebody up by going -- (crosstalk) if you've got a binding arbitrator who's gonna make a decision and that's that, that's a whole different thing.

CALLER: Well, agree, but I think if this was adopted by pretty much every public sector union, a lot of this stuff, a lot of the politics would end.

RUSH: Well, obviously. So what do you think the odds of that happening, say, in Wisconsin are?

CALLER: It sounds to me that the Democratic Party wants to continue to create demonstrations, et cetera --

CALLER: -- which, as a union man all my life, I totally disagree. You know, your job as a union person, and your only job is to represent the people that voted you in. And that's it. When you start getting into bed with political parties, et cetera, just like you've said a hundred times, you get important, you get to go to conventions, you get to sit up at the front. That's exactly what I've seen.

RUSH: Well, you hit the nail on the head. They want the unrest. They want all of this that's going on. This is a tough thing for people to accept, understand. They can't relate to it, but yet they see it happen. There is an attack. It's a new kind of class warfare. This is no longer an attack on the rich. These unions, public sector, are attacking the middle class. That's who the bad guys are now with this so-called collective bargaining of public sector unions. Who's paying, after all? Middle class is paying, not some evil corporation, not some evil CEO, not some fat cat.

RUSH: Look out there, folks, don't panic over my last conversation with the guy on binding arbitration. I was just having a conversation with him to figure out where he was coming from on all this. Binding arbitration cuts out the taxpayers. If the people want to cut back and the arbitrator disagrees, he's (in essence) a judge, meaning the people that run the city in his case. And of course you might even say the standard he just described is the union has to go in and prove the city can pay them. What if the city says, "I can pay somebody else a lot less than I'm paying you to get the job done"? Why isn't that an acceptable standard?

"Yeah, but I could get somebody to do the same job for less than what I'm paying you."

But at the end of the day this caller, nevertheless, is fully aware there's some kind of conspiracy afoot to create an emergency. There is an emergency. There's no question. And it has been created. And we find ourselves right smack-dab in the middle of it. Look, arbitrators are not gonna solve the money laundering problem, and the money laundering problem remains the big thing. You're still gonna have these people, however they arrive at it, whose dues are still gonna end up in the Democrat Party coffers. Now, as a taxpayer, I don't trust arbitration. It's why we select representatives to do this job. They shouldn't farm it out. So don't misunderstand here.

It's just I think a lot of this stuff needs to be cleaned up. It's too entrenched and out of balance for a particular political party. (chuckles) You know, sometimes I look at how I do business compared to all these other entities, and I just marvel at it. It's not at all the same in terms of employee compensation, benefits packages and so forth. I just have an entirely different mind-set about it than a lot of people do. When I pay people, I expect a bunch of things, and among them is I don't want anybody distracted, and I don't want anybody bothered by traditional compensation problems. I probably pay far more than I have to, but it's worth it to me for the productivity that ends up as a result. It's all worth it to me.

Everybody goes about this in different ways. This is why... If the people that worked for me were members of a union, it would be so different. There wouldn't be any personal relationship that I would have with the employees anything at all. I'd be dealing with people that I would not think are in my best interests, not looking out for me and the company would do well. That would not be their concern. There are so many different business models for doing all of this, which is why I have always said what I've said about joining a union. Free if you want to.

If that's what you want to do, you go right ahead, but understand what happens to you when you do: You have become a vessel for one political party to triumph. You give up your individuality. You're no better than anybody else. Even if you are, it doesn't matter. You're gonna make what everybody else makes 'cause that's the deal, no matter what kind of work you do. If the people working for me had an arbitrator (chuckles), the idea that I could pay them more than what I'm paying them? There's not an arbitrator around who would not agree with that. (interruption) Ummm. (laughing) Does the Official Obama Criticizer have an arbitrator?

No. The Official Obama Criticizer does not have an arbitrator. He doesn't want one, in fact. My point is, let's just take multibillion-dollar company. At this multibillion-dollar company, let's say one of its employees makes $100,000 a year. It clearly has much more than that it can afford to pay somebody. What if an arbitrator said, "Well, you can pay that guy more than a hundred grand," and that's the end of the day? That's the end of it? Bye-bye, business! If that's the only consideration, bye-bye business. That can't possibly work. So I don't want any of you to misunderstand. Binding arbitration is a trap at the end of the day, except maybe in case of year-long impasses and that kind of thing.

RUSH: The other news item that happened in the previous hour that is just now being commented on out there, ladies and gentlemen, is the Defense of Marriage Act. The regime, Obama has told Eric Holder to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act. Obama has decided that it's unconstitutional. So has Eric Holder. He's asked the Justice Department to stop defending it in court. A person briefed on the decision said: "The president believes that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional. They are no longer going to be defending the cases in the first and second circuits. The administration will formally notify Congress later today." The story I have here from National Journal says, "The Act sought to restrict single sex unions."

That is a pathetic explanation here of what this is. The Defense of Marriage Act -- correct me if I'm wrong. And the Defense of Marriage Act goes back to the Clinton era. Clinton signed it. The Defense of Marriage Act allows states to not recognize same-sex marriage if they choose not to. Pure and simple. An act of Congress, duly passed and signed into law by the president, allows states to not recognize same-sex marriage if they don't want to. Now, what's going on here? Well, one of the things that's happening is that the union situation for the Democrats is in trouble -- and make no mistake: this is not coincidental here. There are no coincidences in politics.

The union as a money laundering operation -- public sector unions as money laundering operations for the Democrat Party -- is now under assault. In Wisconsin, in Indiana, coming in Ohio, in New Jersey, it's gonna be happening, 'cause the states don't have any money. And now people are learning that the collective bargaining of public sector unions is simply stealing from the taxpayers of that state. There's no "corporate interest" here that's taking advantage of anybody. This is simply public sector unions stealing from taxpayers under the guise of collective bargaining. So they're looking at this and they say, "We might lose this. We might have the flow of money from taxpayers who don't want to contribute to us who end up donating to us via union salaries, cut."

Here's how this works to put this all in perspective, just so you understand. Start at the very beginning. You, Mr. Taxpayer, go out and you earn your salary. Pick a number. You earn $50,000 a year. You pay taxes on that. Your tax revenue goes to the federal government, goes to the state, goes to the city, wherever. The amount of money that goes to the state is then used for a bunch of reasons in the city. One of the reasons is paying people who are members of unions that work for your state. So your tax dollars are the sole source of income for state union employees. Your neighbors, they just happen to work for the state, are union members, so your tax dollars are the sole source of their income.

And you've now learned that their annual income and benefits package is twice what you who are not in a union make, and you are paying them. But after you pay them, it doesn't stop there. After you pay, via your taxes, the salaries and benefits of all these unionized workers in your state, they are paying dues to the union. Those dues end up as campaign donations to Democrats. So even if you are a Republican nonunion member in a state, your tax dollars are going to the campaign coffers of the Democrat Party in your state, in Washington, and perhaps the Obama regime as well, via union dues, which are also being paid for by you.

Well, people are starting to realize what this is now. It's a money laundering operation. How many of you who are not union in the state of Wisconsin and who are Republican, are learning for the first time that your state income taxes (a portion of it) is ending up in ad campaigns and other spending for Democrat candidates in your state and nationally? Obama and his bunch are figuring out now that people are gonna start learning this. They're gonna start figuring out the money laundering aspect of what's going on here, and they're thinking, "Well, make this... (sigh) You know, we might lose this collective bargaining business. We might lose this source of revenue, or a portion of it." So where do they make it up?

Hello, you are our new best friends, and guess what? We know that you hate the Defense of Marriage Act. We know that you don't like it, and we're gonna agree. We're fine with the whole thing as unconstitutional. You want to get married and there are states out there that won't recognize it? Well, we're gonna say they can't. We're not gonna defend it anymore...send us some money. That's what this is, in part or in toto. This is about either replacing what they think might be some lost union money down the road or just adding to it.

But here's the thing, folks. Irrespective of your view of the Defense of Marriage Act, it is the duty of the executive branch, the Justice Department, to defend in court the laws the US Congress has passed. They can't do what they've done. Obama can't declare it unconstitutional and stop defending it. He can't do that without the Supreme Court arriving at that ruling. Determining the constitutionality of a statute is not the job of the president; it's not the job of the attorney general. They can't do legally what they're doing here. They cannot do it. These are the new left outlaws.

RUSH: Folks, I tell you, this thing in Wisconsin is getting interesting, and it's seminal. This is a seminal moment for the union movement, the labor union movement. If , by chance, the whole concept of public sector unions are blown up, that is effectively the end of unions. In the private sector they make up 8% of the population, 8% of the workforce is private sector unionized. It's about, what, 13% total if you add government employees. And what's happening, Rasmussen has polling data out there, the independents, these precious independents, a sizable majority support the Republican Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin. This morning on the Fox Business Network, Varney & Co. show, Stuart Varney spoke with Scott Rasmussen about the protests in Wisconsin. Varney said, "What about the independent voter? That's a key swing voter in American elections these days. Where do they stand on Governor Walker's proposal in Wisconsin?"

RASMUSSEN: Fifty-six percent support the governor. Hardly any support the unions at this point in time. What we're seeing in independent voters all around the country is a desire to rein in government spending. It's even a little stronger than it is among some other voters. They'd like to see it cut across all sorts of the federal government. One of the big missing stories in all the debate about the budget is that most Americans are serious about cutting spending; they support specific cuts; they're ready to make changes. The question is, will their politicians follow?

RUSH: Rasmussen and, everybody knows, the independents in terms of political consultants, these people that hire themselves out, the supposed expertise to get candidates elected, independents is where they go to work every day, the so-called undecideds, the moderates, independents, whatever you want to call them, the 20%, basically that are not ideologically tied to either the Republican or the Democrat Party, and here they are, they've been siding with Republicans. They've been siding against Democrats is a more accurate way to say this. They've been siding against Democrats since the

middle of last year and going into the November elections of 2010. And, as this unfolds, they have an indefensible position, school teachers out of work, fake doctors notices, legitimately elected Democrat senators leaving the state, running away from the issue, and what people are going to ultimately understand -- and I think they are starting to figure it out -- is that public sector unions, by definition, negotiate against the American people. The American people are their boss in a sense.

This is not the same thing as a private sector union going up against big, bad executives at General Motors or big, bad meanies at Big Oil. This is going up against John Q. Public who makes, on average, half of what these government union people are making, and yet John Q. Public is paying that money. Even someone as idolized by the left as Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, that the whole concept of unionizing government employees could not and would not work. You want to hear what FDR said? This is the one time that the left will not quote FDR. "All government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people."

The employer is the population of the country. The employer is John Q. Public, Joe Six-Pack, Joe the Plumber, El Rushbo the real radio announcer. We are all their employer. They are demonizing us. Obama, one of their big representatives, demonizes us when it comes time to talk turkey. We are the equivalent of big, bad GM management. We are the equivalent of big, bad Big Oil management. When you hear union people lambaste their bosses and talk about how they have no compassion and they're always trying to squeeze an extra dollar of blood, dollop of blood, they're talking about us now, not a bunch of fat cat, cigar-smoking boardroom guys on the golf course half the time. They're talking about us. We are the big, bad, unfair, evil. We are the whole people.

And as FDR said, "The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters. Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of government employees." Tell that to Trumka. Tell that to Andy Stern. Tell that to SEIU. Tell that to Obama. These unions that we are talking about are by definition militants, by definition they are agitators, community organizers or what have you. These are the people that show up and beat up black guys at town hall meetings in St. Louis, black guys in wheelchairs. These are the people that showed up at town halls all over the country and intimidated. These are public sector union enforcers, and who are they intimidating? Us. We are, in common parlance, their boss.

As more and more people begin to realize that in these people's eyes we are the equivalent of all those horrible, rotten fat cat management types against whom the salt of the earth workers have gone on strike against year after year after year, you see, this is what Ronaldus Magnus knew. He fired the air traffic controller union workers because they, A, violated the law, they were not allowed to strike. But, B, they were striking against the citizens, the citizens are the whole people. Again, FDR, "Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of government employees. Upon employees in the federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of government activities." This is not all what's happening. Now these people in the public unions, particularly their leaders, they have been running a scam, they have been gaming the system. They have inserted themselves, essentially, into this huge pile of tax revenue every year that rolls in and they're simply making a claim on it via intimidation and militancy. Rather than go to work, get a job and earn it, they have inserted themselves, and they're not the only ones that do this, by the way.

There's a reason why Arlington, Virginia, and surrounding counties in DC are the wealthiest in the country and are not experiencing any recessionary effect, 'cause all those people got their hands in the till somewhere, somehow. But they have gamed the system, scammed the system, under the guise of public service. This event is revealing who they really are. They aren't teachers. They are people who have gamed the system in an attempt to be paid for very little work, and then after doing very little work, retire and get all of their pension and health care paid for by us. It's being revealed that's the game, that's the purpose here. And the leaders, of course, get the union dues, the big salaries, 500 grand a year, what have you, lots of power. Trumka has access to the Oval Office two to three times a week. Obama, by his own admission -- we've got the sound bite coming up -- Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO, meets with Obama more than his cabinet.

Again, FDR, a reminder, "Upon employees in the federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of government activities. This obligation is paramount. Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable." FDR, patron saint of the American left. So what we have here, folks, is a giant expose taking place in front of everyone's eyes. The truth is being revealed about public sector unions.

What got me started on this was the Reverend Jackson saying that Wisconsin is a Martin Luther King moment and a Gandhi moment. And within a limited context, the Reverend Jackson is right. It is a MLK moment for American taxpayers in the sense that it could be said that we have a dream that one day all Americans -- independents, taxpayers alike -- will rise up and take their country back from greedy public servants. The voters put in office representatives who serve them, not public sector unions. But who is being served? Whose interests are paramount? Whose interests trump those of the country and those of you, the whole people? The public sector unions. And the public sector unions are in the process here of being busted. If that happens, political payoffs to Democrats stop. My friends, that's why Trumka and Obama and Sweeney cannot allow this to happen. They cannot allow Walker to win this. They cannot. They'll cave on the 5.8% increase in pension contributions, 12-point whatever it is percent on health care, they'll cave on that, but the collective bargaining stuff, this could be Egypt. This could be Khadafy.

By the way, speaking of Khadafy. I want to know, how do you spell his last name? There must be 32 different iterations. And until he can figure out how his last name is spelled I don't want to spend much time talking about him. Do you see he made a big appearance today, he wasn't in Venezuela, he's in Tripoli, and he spoke from the unrepaired, bombed-out home where Reagan hit sometime in the eighties after a particular terrorist act. He made it a point to speak from this decrepit, bombed out, unrepaired home of his to show something or other.

RUSH: Orlando, Florida. This is Patrick. Hello, sir. Wonderful to have you on the EIB Network.

CALLER: Hey, I just wanted to say how proud I am of these governors standing their ground. They're quite obviously not worried about getting reelected. They're just worried about getting the job done that they're hired to do.

RUSH: Yeah, I totally agree. In fact, I remember talking to a lot of people last week when the situation in Wisconsin started -- and maybe you're like this, too. "Gee, we hope he sticks to his guns now that he's started down this road. We hope he doesn't cave on any of this," and he's not.

CALLER: I hope he doesn't. I hope they don't give up any concessions, either. What they're asking for is completely fair.

RUSH: Fair, yeah, but it's also, "Hey, the realities of the world are this: We are broke. You know, we don't have the money to pay you what you've been earning, and we cannot continue to keep you employed if you are going to demand this kind of compensation, especially after you've retired and are no longer working." They're talking about busting the union. "He's out to bust the union!" In the old days, busting the union, that was not good. Bust the union? Why, that was wielding power over the unfortunate working guy, the guy who took a shower after work. Today, busting the union is met with, "Yeah! You go, dude," particularly these public sector unions. Look, FDR... We hearken back to his quotes.

Folks, let me tell you, this is not insignificant. This is the patron saint of liberalism today, FDR. (It's a toss-up, you know, Marx and FDR, but they shower each with affection.) FDR, what did he know when he said unionizing government workers can't work? What did he know? No, he knew it would turn people against government, and that was the last thing he could put up with. FDR, people like FDR need people loving, respecting, almost treating government as though it's the next thing to God. The last thing FDR wants is people hating government.

That's why government gives away everything. Government Social Security, retirement, welfare, health care, all this. Get people loving government and the people who run it, i.e., Democrats. He knew that once the people of the country start paying government workers more than they are earning themselves. The last thing he wanted was to turn people against government. That would be the end of liberalism, that would be the end of FDR, that would be the end of Democrat Party. That's what he knew. But the greed of this crop of Democrats ignored the warning.

Their hubris is such that they don't care if we hate the government because government's now a big boot. Listen to Obama, listen to Sheila Jackson Lee, whoever it is. "We'll put their boot on their throats! Put our boot on their throat. We're a boot on the throat of Big Oil" or whatever. They don't care. They want us to fear government. FDR knew that if we turned against government, that was akin to turning against him and the Democrat Party. But if you are the party of government and people hate the government, where are you? That's what he knew.

Here's Kelly in Southern California. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: I've listened to you for many years and I want to say I don't disagree with what you're saying, but I do have a different spin on this, being that, you know, my husband is a police officer here in California. And before we go after the American citizens that are working these positions and living paycheck to paycheck, when are we gonna tackle the illegal immigration that is decimating states like California? Our budget deficit is exactly the amount that we fork out to illegal immigrants in this state.

RUSH: Yeah. Yeah. Well, again, I don't know who you're asking the question of but I can tell you who you should be asking the question, and it certainly isn't me.

RUSH: Democrat Party, and there are some RINO Republicans who are also big on illegal immigration, amnesty and all that. But, you know, the open borders crowd, wherever you find 'em, that's who you need to ask this question of. In the meantime, Scott Walker, he's got a pressing matter: His budget right now. He's gotta deal with that first and foremost and what's causing it.

Wisconsin's teachers required to teach kids labor union and collective bargaining history

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.

In case you want to refer others to this; statistical comparison between gays and straights:

Meadia Research Center where the bias of mainstream news is exposed again and again.

Stuff you probably did not know about greenhouse gases (this is a good link for friends):

The Top 100 Effects of Global Warming (I am fairly certain that this is serious; but it is really hard to tell). It is saying goodbye to French Wines, glaciers, guacamole, mixed nuts, French fries, baseball and Christmas trees and saying hello to cannibalistic polar bears, jellyfish attacks, giant squid attacks, more stray kittens, suffocating lemmings, burning cow poop and acidic oceans.

Comprehensive List of Tax Hikes in Obamacare (this includes individual health insurance costing as much as $695/month by 2016—which is not the only cost):

The Publius Forum (more of a newscast than a blog; located in Chicago, I believe):

Political Affairs, which used to be called the Communist (in case you are interested in what the Democratic Par, I mean, the communist party is up to.

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 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 #167	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	February 27, 2011