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).

The 5^th most powerful earthquake in the past 100 years struck Japan, sending dramatic waves all the way to the cost of California and Oregon, traveling at the speed of a jet airplane. The death toll will surpass 10,000.

A terrorist came into the house of an Israeli family in the middle of the night and murdered 3 children (ages 11, 3 and a baby) along with their parents. An Hamas spokesperson explained that the attack "came as a response to Israel's continues hostile policy toward the Palestinian people."

A well-known Pakistani actress Saturday said she had received death threats from militants after appearing on the Indian equivalent of hit reality television show "Big Brother".

The Wisconsin Democrat Senators returned home right after Governor Walker passed a bill which restricted collective bargaining for public employees. Some are calling them the fleebaggers.

President Obama has authorized a resumption of military tribunals to be held in Guantanamo Bay. Again, he copies Bush. However, the President one up’s Bush by signing an executive order to allow him to permanently incarcerate any Guantanamo Bay prisoner, even if acquitted in court.

Obama is still thinking about a no-fly zone over Libya. He has cover, at this point. The Arab league backs a no-fly zone.

U.S. Uncut is a new movement, touted as the progressive tea party. The idea is, they want to remove “corporate tax dodging” so that things will not have to be cut from our government budgets. According to their own spokesman, eliminating all of the corporate tax breaks would net them $100 billion/year. So, all hey have to do is find 14 more places where they can bring in that kind of cash, and they will allow for Obama-spending to continue at its current rate.

The President, facing our weakest economy in the last 50 years, and a middle east which is on fire as never before, and a national debt and deficit which are out of control, began talking about rolling out a new bullying program for our schools.

In an undercover sting, NPR executive makes a slew of anti-TEA party statements, calling them racists. He later explained that this was not the opinion or NPR nor was it his opinion.

A same-sex marriage bill dies in Maryland, which AP calls “a deeply Catholic state.”

Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn), a child of Holocaust survivors and the Assembly representative of the largest contingent of Holocaust survivors, is leading the charge to have the word Holocaust removed from the name of the Holocaust Resource Center of Manhattan College.

The Council of Islamic Ideology in Pakistan has protested the use of padded and colourful bras by Muslim women, and recommended that Pakistani Muslim researchers should try to invent an innerwear that makes female assets unnoticeable.

The Dayton Police Department is lowering its testing standards for recruits. Previously, candidates had to get a 66% on part one of the exam and a 72% on part two. The D.O.J. just approved new scoring policy only requires potential police officers to get a 58% and a 63%. That's the equivalent of an `F' and a `D'.

Former President Clinton criticizes Obama for dragging his feet on approving drilling permits in the gulf. Although the White House has come out and touted that we have a record amount of drilling and oil being produced in the United States, this is because of Clinton and Bush policies, which are coming to fruition. Obama’s policies will hit us about 5 years from now.

Wisconsin union thugs begin to threat private businesses in Wisconsin with boycott.

Although the United States’ oil reserve is designed to help the United States during an emergency, President Obama is now considering that high prices might be an emergency.

News reporter Chris Matthews on the Japan disaster: “Was this sort of a good opportunity for the President to remind everybody that he grew up in the United States and Hawaii? That’s the first thing that I thought of.”

Senate leader Harry Reid on the Republicans budget which cuts too much from the budget: "The mean-spirited bill, H.R. 1, eliminates National Public Broadcasting. It eliminates the National Endowment of the Humanities, National Endowment of the Arts. These programs create jobs. The National Endowment of the Humanities is the reason we have in northern Nevada every January a cowboy poetry festival. Had that program not been around, the tens of thousands of people who come there every year would not exist."

Paul Krugman: “[T]he nation is not, in fact, "broke." The federal government is having no trouble raising money, and the price of that money - the interest rate on federal borrowing - is very low by historical standards. So there's no need to scramble to slash spending now now now; we can and should be willing to spend now if it will produce savings in the long run.”

CNN’s Ali Velshi: “Let's put aside Peter King's seemingly strange obsession with Islam and Islamists, or whatever you want to call it. I don't quite understand how when you put an -ist at the end of it, it changes the subject.”

Mark Potok, Spokesman, Southern Poverty Low Center, when asked about the threat of radical Muslims: “Well, I think, well, it's not our biggest domestic terror threat. I think that pretty clearly comes from the radical right in this country.”

Jesse Jackson: “Governor Wallace believed in state’s rights against worker’s rights and blocked school doors. So, from Wallace to Walker, same tactics...very undemocratic...the whole idea is a kinda confederate agenda.”

Michael Moore: “I mean really, this is really, this is war. This is a class war that's been leveled against the working people of this country and at some point people are just going to have to stand up and say - nonviolently - `This is enough, we're not taking it anymore.'”

I recognize that if you are a liberal, you may think to yourself, taking quotes from Michael Moore is like shooting fish in a barrel. Nobody takes him seriously. So let me add a quote from CNN reporter Joe Johns, commenting on Moore’s speech: “Well, it was a speech and it was really pretty incredible....I mean, it was riveting, whether you're a supporter or a critic or somewhere in between, and it's really gotten enormous buzz on the Internet...[He had] very big audience, well received by a supporting crowd.....he's just sort of added his voice to those on the left who say Wisconsin's the start of something really big and, you know, one of the lines that's been quoted a lot from him there is that Wisconsin has aroused a sleeping giant.”

NPR executive Ron Schiller: "The current Republican Party, particularly the Tea Party, is fanatically involved in people's personal lives and very fundamental Christian - I wouldn't even call it Christian. It's this weird evangelical kind of move."

Ron Schiller: "Tea Party people" aren't "just Islamaphobic, but really xenophobic, I mean basically they are, they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting. I mean, it's scary. They're seriously racist, racist people."

Schiller: "Well frankly, it is clear that we would be better off in the long-run without federal funding."

Schiller on the firing of Juan Williams: "What NPR stood for is non-racist, non-bigoted, straightforward telling of the news and our feeling is that if a person expresses his or her opinion, which anyone is entitled to do in a free society, they are compromised as a journalist. They can no longer fairly report."

Keith Ellison’s tearful testimony about Mohammed Hamdani, a genuine Muslim hero during 9/11: “After the tragedy some people tried to smear his character solely because of his Islamic faith. Some people spread false rumors and speculated that he was in league with the attackers only because he was Muslim. It was only when his remains were identified that these lies were fully exposed.” This would have been an excellent point, had it not been completely false.

Mike Papantonio: “Well, not really. Let me ask you, no, this is interesting, Brad. Do you think, you think you're going to replace those teachers with National Guard armory? You think you're going to bring in the National Guard to teach physics and biology? It was like, it's like the PATCO (Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization) strike. Do you realize how many deaths there almost were because of the PATCO strike because you had an old senile man who was owned by corporate America wanting to prove that he was the toughest guy on the block, wanting to bust strikers?”

Ann Alehouse: “Do you wonda who won, duh, in the rotunda; we won, duh. Let me say it in the rotunda, in case you wonda, we won, duh, in the rotunda.”

More from the civil left; an email sent to the mean Republicans in Wisconsin:

From: XXXX

Sent: Wed 3/9/2011 9:18 PM

To: Sen.Kapanke; Sen.Darling; Sen.Cowles; Sen.Ellis; Sen.Fitzgerald; Sen.Galloway; Sen.Grothman; Sen.Harsdorf; Sen.Hopper; Sen.Kedzie; Sen.Lasee; Sen.Lazich; Sen.Leibham; Sen.Moulton; Sen.Olsen

Subject: Atten: Death threat!!!! Bomb!!!!

Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your familes will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks. Please explain to them that this is because if we get rid of you and your families then it will save the rights of 300,000 people and also be able to close the deficit that you have created. I hope you have a good time in hell. Read below for more information on possible scenarios in which you will die.

WE want to make this perfectly clear. Because of your actions today and in the past couple of weeks I and the group of people that are working with me have decided that we've had enough. We feel that you and the people that support the dictator have to die. We have tried many other ways of dealing with your corruption but you have taken things too far and we will not stand for it any longer. So, this is how it's going to happen: I as well as many others know where you and your family live, it's a matter of public records. We have all planned to assult you by arriving at your house and putting a nice little bullet in your head. However, we decided that we wouldn't leave it there. We also have decided that this may not be enough to send the message to you since you are so "high" on Koch and have decided that you are now going to single handedly make this a dictatorship instead of a demorcratic process. So we have also built several bombs that we have placed in various locations around the areas in which we know that you frequent.

This includes, your house, your car, the state capitol, and well I won't tell you all of them because that's just no fun. Since we know that you are not smart enough to figure out why this is happening to you we have decided to make it perfectly clear to you. If you and your goonies feel that it's necessary to strip the rights of 300,000 people and ruin their lives, making them unable to feed, clothe, and provide the necessities to their families and themselves then We Will "get rid of" (in which I mean kill) you. Please understand that this does not include the heroic Rep. Senator that risked everything to go aganist what you and your goonies wanted him to do. We feel that it's worth our lives to do this, because we would be saving the lives of 300,000 people. Please make your peace with God as soon as possible and say goodbye to your loved ones we will not wait any longer. YOU WILL DIE!!!!"

The Associated Press: “A bill to legalize gay marriage in Maryland fell short Friday after supporters failed to find enough votes to overcome Republican opposition and misgivings by some Democrats in the deeply Catholic state.”

Obama on the economy and unemployment: "It's an epidemic that demands relentless and sustained response from us. I won't rest until we are doing just that helping out the middle class."

Senator Joe Manchin on Democratic and Republican budget proposals: “Why are we doing all this when the most powerful person in all these negotiations, our President, has failed to lead this debate.”

Bill Maher (interviewing Keith Ellison): “Let me give you the reasons why I jotted down why. One, it's been going on a thousand years this problem between Islam and the west. We are dealing with a culture that is in its medieval era. It comes from a hate-filled holy book, the Koran, which is taken very literally by its people. They are trying to get nuclear weapons. I don't think Tim McVeigh would ever have tried to get a nuclear weapon because I think right-wing nuts they think they love this country and they are not trying to destroy this country. They want to get it away from the people they see as hijacking it. That's different than Muslim extremists who want to destroy it. And also, it's a culture of suicide bombing, which is hard to deter from people who want to kill themselves.”

Lindsay Lohan in her eHarmony profile: “So, if you think you can handle a redhead with a little bit of sass—by that I mean, a redhead who’s crazy—I mean, don’t pretend like you don’t know me; we’ve all read about it.”

Bob Garfield, NPR media show co-host: “As a practical political matter, if you hired Roger Ailes himself and brought Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck in to host All Things Considered, do you think that you have the capacity to change anybody's perceptions?”

Joyce Slocum, NPR's General Counsel and Senior Vice President of Legal Affairs: “Well there are hardened critics who are never going to change their perception. but the really amazing thing that happens with a lot of people who have misperceptions about NPR.is all it takes to change that perception is to turn on their local member station and listen for a couple of hours.”

Out of NPR’s 17 or 18 on-air news persons, one is a moderate Republican. That moderate Republican is David Brooks, who just said, “"I thought it [NPR] was really biased ten years ago, but now I think it's pretty straight."

Brooke Gladstone, `On the Media' Co-host, NPR: About 25 years ago, I was asked to do a piece, "Is NPR Biased to the Left?" And I couldn't find a metric to apply to the question in order to answer it.

Ira Glass, `The American Life' Host, NPR: I don't know the methodology somebody would use, but I feel like public radio should address this directly, because I think anybody who listens to our stations knows that what they're hearing is mainstream media reporting. We have nothing to fear from a discussion of what is the news coverage we're doing.

Mitch McConnell: “If government spending would stimulate the economy, we'd be in the middle of a boom”

Rick Santorum, possible Presidential candidate: "Jihadism is evil and...We need to define it and say what it is. And it is evil. Sharia law is incompatible with American jurisprudence and our Constitution."

Judge Andrew Napolitano: “Would you own, invest in, or voluntarily patronize a business that operates the way the government does?”

Napolitano: “They sold this package of big government to the public by calling it progressive as if to suggest that this was progress. I like Professor Thomas Sowell's explanation of that word. He's remarked that the progressive income tax is progressive the way a disease is progressive: the longer it's around, the worse it gets.”

Charles Krauthammer: “In Washington, a gaff is when politician actually tells the truth.” (From memory)

Krauthammer: “[Obama’s reversal on Gitmo trials] exposes how irresponsible and hypocritical he and Democrats were in the early years of the war on terror, attacking everything that the Bush administration had done, the Patriot Act, Guantanamo, military commissions, rendition, detention without trial, all of which, once in office after hearing the reports of the intelligence agencies and having their hair stand on end, all of which, the Democrats have now adopted as national law and policy.

George Will: “We learned this week redundantly that NPR is run by people who don't like people like me. Which is fine. The problem is there are 14,000 radio stations in this country. The government shouldn't be subsidizing neither entertainment, certainly not journalism. In fact, this is a solution in search of a problem.”

And it's also a kind of homage to the Bush administration. It created this entire infrastructure out of nothing, out of 9/11. Where we were caught off-guard, we had no infrastructure. It created Guantanamo and commissions, it improvised. And with some tweaks and amendments that the Supreme Court indicated were required, essentially it got it right. And that's what the Obama administration is admitting after all of these irresponsible and hypocritical attacks in the past.”

Senator Jim DeMint: "Now, I love poetry and cowboys as much as anyone else. But we're looking at bankrupting our nation."

In support of his national right to work bill, Jim DeMint said, "No American should be forced to join a union and pay dues to get a job in this country."

Dick Morris: “They [the White House] have reduced unemployment by convincing 5 million people to stop looking for work and they have slashed immigration by destroying their jobs.” (Quoted from memory).

Krauthammer: “If the product [the NPR broadcast] is so superior, why does it have to live on the tit of the state?”

Bill O’Reilly: “We are 7 months away from the end of this [fiscal] year and we don’t have a budget—that’s ridiculous!” (Quoted from memory).

Alan Simpson, co-chair of Obama’s debt commissions, suggests why some grandparents are not that concerned about the future debt of their grandchildren: “If they care at all about their children or grandchildren, and sometimes I doubt that--I think, you know, grandchildren now don't write a thank-you for the Christmas presents, they're walking on their pants with the cap on backwards listening to the enema man and Snoopy Snoopy Poop Dogg, and they don't like them!”

Jodi Miller: “Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are trying to start a revolution by using Facebook. Even their women are joining in by posting on can-show-our facebook.”

Rush Limbaugh: "If they had polling data that suggests that the Democrats won big in Wisconsin, that would have been 90% of the content of this presser. And it didn't even come up. Napoleon didn't have a press conference either after Waterloo."

Limbaugh: "Did you hear what Obama said? Obama issued a statement where he referred to our alliance with Japan as 'unshakable'. What a tin ear."

Limbaugh: "You people at Mediaite, do not misquote me on this. If you want to misquote me, wait until what I said is on my website so you can misquote me accurately."

Limbaugh: "Obama said the United States has to stop funding programs that don't work. Now, that is truly radical, because if he meant it, what would be left? And I'm only 10% joking here."

Limbaugh: "Sarah Palin has more courage in her little finger than our presidential field. Same thing with Michele Bachmann. The gonads on our team happen to be wearing skirts."

Limbaugh: "Why does anybody believe Obama when he talks about caring about private sector jobs? Why does anybody believe Obama when he talks about wanting economic growth? Where's the evidence? Why does anybody believe anything Obama says about his stated goals and intentions? Because, folks, if he had been honest he wouldn't have been elected."

Limbaugh: "How did I know they weren't gonna close Gitmo? My answer is not gonna satisfy anybody, but it's not complicated. They're liberals and they lie. It was simply a campaign talking point. It was simply a bone they were throwing to their base."

Limbaugh: "So Obama says he took a course in international relations as an undergrad. Fine. Okay. My mom made me take out the trash, so I know about waste removal."

Limbaugh: "The payment of unemployment benefits is almost as high as Social Security in this country. Folks, we are not going to survive as a nation -- not with this kind of sloth and laziness and feeding at the public trough."

Senator Lisa Murkowski, making Alaskans proud that they voted her in as a write-in candidate: “I believe Planned Parenthood provides vital services to those in need and disagree with their funding cuts in the bill.”

The president is doing nothing to engender good will between the United States and these Middle Eastern nations who are revolting. We do not want an anti-American calliphate in the Middle East.

This ought to make you smile; Senator Harry Reid justifying Congressional spending so that the Cowboy Poetry Festival in Nevada can be funded:

Michelle Bachmann tells about the $105 billion funding for Obamacare was hidden within the bill, thus bypassing appropriations. There are other things hidden in Obamacare that Bachmann reveals.

I came across this bit of history with a discussion between Frances Fox Piven, Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell (they are all pretty young, and Sowell is both funny and brilliant). There are several videos of Sowell here.

Free to choose, the power of the market, by Milton Friedman (part I of X). This is an hour long.

In case you are interested in this story, this is a debate, chiefly between Charles Krauthammer and Nina Totenberg about whether or not the federal government ought to subsidize NPR (text and video):

Mark Steyn (regarding Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboy Poets):

An ol' cowpoke went ridin' out one dark and windy day

Upon a ridge he rested as he went along his way

When all at once he spied a posse from the GOP

A-hangin' from that ol' mesquite his fed'ral subsidy

His pen was still a-fire and he knew how to spell "git"

But an ol' paint can't outride a trillion-dollar deficit

If only Harry Reid can head 'em off at that there pass

`Cuz he hasn't finished paying off creative-writing class

Yipp-ki-o yippi-ki-ay

Cow Poets On The Dole

Yipp-ki-o yippi-ki-ay

Cow Poets On The Dole

SNL on Kaddafy: “Just look at the guy—it’s as if Tony Shallub had a baby with ET.”

Jodi Miller: “Dan Rather now claims he was fired from CBS for telling the uncomfortable truth about George Bush. Yeah, right. Because the liberal media never tolerates anyone saying anything bad about Bush.”

1) Let me repeat; the unions made a big mistake when they threw a fit in Wisconsin. Although the nation is certainly not educated on collective bargaining and the public sector, more people grasp that, this is just like George Bush getting a million dollar contribution from Haliburton, and then turning around and giving $100 million of taxpayer funded contracts to Haliburton.

2) I must admit that, for quite awhile, I thought that the riots that we have seen in Greece could not happen in the United States. The people here are too sensible. I’ve changed my mind about this since the union demonstrations in Wisconsin.

3) In watching all of these demonstrations in Wisconsin by union members, I kept asking myself, “Do these people have jobs?”

4) We are the only country in the world that can simply print money and it is worth what we say it is worth. This is because the dollar is the currency of choice all over the world. If this changes, our life in American will change overnight. Bad fiscal policies and mismanagement of public funds in the United States could cause this to happen. Surely, the President knows this? Surely some advisor has talked to him and old him this?

5) You do know, I assume, that there is no such thing as a social security trust fund, right? There is no trust fund; there is no lockbox. All of the money paid in the social security as been spent by the government. The baby boomers will get social security only if the much smaller generation below them agrees to pay for them.

35% of Americans live on government payouts (e.g., social security, medicare and unemployment insurance} today.

According to the Center for Public Integrity, the National Education Association, a teachers union, has 31 people who make more than $200,000 a year in pay and benefits. The union president, Dennis Van Roekel, makes close to $400,000 a year. And in the last election cycle, the NEA donated close to $4 million to political campaigns; 98% of the money went to Democrats.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees has 10 people making more than $200,000 a year. Its president, Gerald McEntee, was paid close to $500,000 in 2009. In the past two years, that union has donated $2.3 million to Democrats, just $13,000 to the Republicans.

The day that Obama took office, the average price for gas was $1.83/gallon. Remember the good old days?

USA Today/Gallup poll conducted on Feb. 21 in which Americans were asked about a plan in Wisconsin to " . . . take away some of the collective bargaining rights of most public unions, including the state teachers' union." The results showed 33% in favor with 61% opposed.

A separate Gallup poll conducted March 3-6 in which Americans were asked about a plan (Wisconsin not specified) that would involve "Changing state laws to limit the bargaining power of state employee unions." The results showed 49% in favor, 45% opposed.

The Nation (a magazine) on the Progressive Tea party (in Britain): Instead of the fake populism of the Tea Party, there is a movement based on real populism [the progressive tea party]. No bias there, right?

Do you recall how the press howled over rising gas prices under President Bush? They seem to be quite quiet now.

Speaking of keeping quiet, you know those threats made on Wisconsin lawmakers? Ignored by ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR and MSNBC. Think back on all the hookah about all the violent rhetoric of the right which was touted when Congresswoman Giffords was shot. Within hours, everyone from Rush Limbaugh to Sarah Palin had been blamed for this shooting. However, a clear death threat made against Republicans; not as important as a made-up issue.

Rush pointed this out: for 3 weeks, the main political story has been Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, reduced benefits for public workers, and the hiding Democrats. So, before the great earthquake of Japan, there is a press conference with the President, who has already made some statements about the Wisconsin situation. How many questions did these reporters have for the President after Walker passes the collective bargaining limitations bill? None. Zero. After 3 weeks of being the political story, one which caught the attention of the president, and Walker and the state congress make a bold move. “What do you think about that, Mr. President?” Wasn’t asked.

I mentioned this in the news program: President Obama, facing our weakest economy in the last 50 years, and a middle east which is on fire as never before, and a national debt and deficit which are out of control, began talking about rolling out a new bullying program for our schools. Do you think the press might have some tough questions about his priorities? No.

Here is what I suggest, at a press conference, reporters ask questions about the real issues of today, and all he can talk about is his new bullying program.

Here, is the trick—how do you demagogue your opponents for all of the cuts they want to make to Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, and yet avoid talking about the huge budget hole we are in? That will be how 2012 all plays out when it comes to political issues (assuming that nothing incredible happens before then, like the abandonment of the dollar as the world’s currency). The Obama Media Complex will be filled with news on the cuts that evil Republicans ant to make, replete with personal testimonies of people who will be hurt by these cuts.

With all that is going on in the world, President Obama seems most focused on his bullying program (which was carried by almost all news stations).

By the way, what is the Obama doctrine? Do everything possible to destroy the dollar by racking up huge debt? Reduce oil production so that, in 5–10 years we will be in a great domestic oil crisis? Flip coins to determine which Arab

leaders we support. Do this several times a day. Make certain that we do not do anything in Egypt or Libya to gain the rust or respect of their rebelling peoples?

The Progressive Tea Party is going to become the new coffee party (remember them?).

Do you remember how Sarah Palin was asked whether or not she agreed with the Bush doctrine, and was slammed for not being able to delineate the Bush doctrine and give her opinion of it? Let me make this bold prediction: No one will ever ask any Democrat about the Obama Doctrine and whether or not they support it.

All the Wisconsin Democrats returned this week. I expected that they would return for a different reason. However, Governor Walker forced their hand.

Club Gitmo is still open. Obama’s policies on terrorists are not much different from Bush’s although, initially, he did try to change them.

You think that President Obama has any clue about what to do about the Middle East or about the debt and deficit in the United States.

John Hawkins: Do you believe a flat tax would help produce more economic growth than the progressive tax system that we currently have? If so, can you explain why?

Thomas Sowell: A flat tax would not penalize additional efforts at an increasingly higher rate. This would reduce the discouragements to such efforts and to the taking of risks.

Thomas Sowell: Like all forms of price control, rent control leads to a simultaneous increase in the amount demanded and a reduction in the amount supplied. The resulting shortage then means that landlords need not spend as much money maintaining rented premises, because there are more applicants than apartments, thus leading to a faster deterioration over time. Meanwhile, fewer replacements -- sometimes none -- are built because of low or non-existent profits. This scenario has been played out in countries around the world -- in Australia, Sweden, France, England, the United States, for example.

John Hawkins: Do you think a Balanced Budget Amendment or some other sort of legislation that forces government to control spending will be necessary to get the budget deficit under control long-term? If so, would you recommend a Balanced Budget Amendment or something else?

Thomas Sowell: Balanced budget requirements seem more likely to produce accounting ingenuity than genuinely balanced budgets. The real goal should be reduced government spending, rather than balanced budgets achieved by ever rising tax rates to cover ever rising spending. For this, the only policy that seems promising is "eternal vigilance," the price we must pay for freedom in general.

John Hawkins: Can you explain why protectionist tariffs on let's say steel or textiles actually end up costing America more jobs than they save?

Thomas Sowell: The number of jobs in the steel is exceeded many times over in industries making steel products, from automobiles to oil rigs, refrigerators, locomotives, etc., etc. Tariffs that save jobs in the steel industry mean higher steel prices, which in turn means fewer sales of American steel products around the world and losses of far more jobs than are saved.

John Hawkins: One thing you've said that I found intriguing was that,"if you gave every poor person enough money to stop being poor, that would cost a fraction of what our welfare state programs and bureaucracies cost". Do you have any numbers on that and in your opinion, even if that's not a good idea, would it be a better idea than what we're doing currently?

Thomas Sowell: Professor Walter Williams of George Mason University has done the calculations of the cost of raising every poor person above the poverty level by directly giving them money and found it to be a fraction of the cost of the numerous programs ostensibly aimed at helping the poor.

John Hawkins: Joe Lieberman has said that he would limit "insurance company profits to 2 percent a year in order to reduce the cost of health care". If Mr. Lieberman's plan were implemented, what do you think the effects would be?

Thomas Sowell: Profit restrictions mean that investments flow to other sectors of the economy, leading to non-price rationing of inadequately funded insurance. The underlying confusion is between price and costs. They are by no means the same things. The costs of providing insurance remain unchanged when its price is controlled. A failure to pay these costs then means either a lesser quantity or a lesser quality of insurance. Actually lowering the cost of insurance would be accomplished by such things as making it harder for lawyers to win frivolous lawsuits against insurance companies.

John Hawkins: If we were to actually start enforcing our laws against illegal immigration and were successful in preventing most of them from being able to get a job in the United States, how much of an impact do you believe that would have on the US economy?

Thomas Sowell: Illegal immigrants are not simply "taking jobs that Americans don't want." Stopping illegal immigration would mean that wages would have to rise to a level where Americans would want the jobs currently taken by illegal aliens.

John Hawkins: Do you think the US would be better off having a strong dollar, a weak dollar, or one just as good as the other? Why so?

Thomas Sowell: Whether a currency is "strong" or "weak" tells very little by itself. These are among the many emotional-laden words used in discussing of international transactions which obscure more than they reveal.

John Hawkins: Overall, do you believe Affirmative Action has had a more positive or negative impact on the lives of black Americans?

Thomas Sowell: Affirmative action has been a boon to those blacks who were already affluent and particularly for those who were rich but has done little or nothing for those blacks who are neither. Moreover empirical data from other countries around the world shows the same general pattern from group preferences.

Thomas Sowell: The people made worse off by slavery were those who were enslaved. Their descendants would have been worse off today if born in Africa instead of America. Put differently, the terrible fate of their ancestors benefitted them. If those who were enslaved were alive, they would deserve huge reparations and their captors would deserve worse punishments than our laws allow. But death has put both beyond our reach. Frustrating as that may be, creating new injustices among the living will not change that.

Abstract: With Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker attempting to rein in the unbalanced power of government unions, and given the fierce stranglehold that union members have on their ever-increasing taxpayer-provided benefits, now is a crucial time for Americans to understand the difference between private-sector and public-sector unions. Collective bargaining in the private sphere-where companies face competition-is a world away from collective bargaining in government-which faces no competition, and where unions have a legal monopoly. Heritage Foundation labor expert James Sherk explains why it is time to restore voter control over elected government, and how it can be done.

Collective bargaining by unions takes place very differently in government than it does in the private sector. Private-sector unions have competitors and bargain over the profits they help create. The government earns no profits. Government unions have a legal monopoly and bargain for a greater share of tax dollars. Collective bargaining in government means that voters' elected representatives must agree on tax and spending decisions with union representatives.

Collective bargaining also politicizes the civil service. Government unions negotiate contract provisions that force workers to join and subsidize their fundraising. These subsidies have made them the top political spenders in the country. They use that money to lobby for higher taxes and protect their inflated compensation.

America can no longer afford these special-interest subsidies. State and local governments should:

• Restore voter control over government spending by ending collective bargaining with government unions.

• Restore a nonpartisan civil service by ending subsidies for union fundraising and giving workers the choice of paying union dues. Voters should tell the government how to spend their money, not the other way around.

Under collective bargaining, a union is designated as the employees' "exclusive bargaining representative." The employer must negotiate with the union over pay, benefits, and work rules. The employer may not employ workers for anything other than the union-negotiated terms. This gives the union a monopoly on the labor supplied to an employer. Even if other workers would take the job, the employer may not hire them for anything other than union rates.

The Private and Public Sectors. The labor movement grew out of the difficult working conditions of the industrial revolution. The founders of the labor movement saw unions as a way to prevent employers from exploiting workers. They also believed that labor and capital were opposed to one another. They believed that workers and management fought to divide the profits they mutually created. Labor leaders wanted monopoly bargaining power to gain clout to win more of those profits. Competition moderates union demands in the private sector. Unions know that excessive pay makes their employer uncompetitive and puts their jobs at risk.

The government operates very differently. Government employees need not fear exploitive bosses. Since the late 1800s, public employees have enjoyed the protection of civil service laws. The government also creates no profits over which to bargain. Government unions bargain for a greater share of taxes to go to their members. Since the government has no competitors and no profits, unions have little reason to restrain their demands and government has little incentive to resist them. Taxpayers, not government leaders, bear the cost of concessions.

The arguments for unions in the private sector do not apply to government. Up through the 1950s, the union movement recognized and agreed with this analysis. Movement supporters believed, as AFL-CIO president George Meany did, that "It is impossible to bargain collectively with government."[1] President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who signed the National Labor Relations Act, had the same view. In his words, "the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service."[2]

Strikes Paralyze Public Services. Private businesses have competitors. Consequently, private-sector strikes have a limited effect on the general public. Consumers can buy from another company during a strike. A strike by the United Auto Workers against General Motors does not shut down the auto industry-Americans simply buy cars from Ford or Toyota instead.

The government generally has no competition. The public cannot purchase alternative police; alternatives to public education and mass transit are not accessible to everyone. A monopoly on essential services gives government unions tremendous leverage to force concessions from the public. Unless the voters' elected representatives give in, they can grind large parts of the economy to a halt.

Unions are willing to use this leverage. Detroit public school teachers went on strike illegally in 2006. The teachers union ignored the Michigan law prohibiting teacher strikes. As a result, 130,000 students started the school year late while the union pressed for concessions.[3] The final contract gave the Detroit teachers raises. In

December 2005, New York City transit workers went on strike over a proposal to increase their contributions to their pension plans. The strike paralyzed New York City during the busiest shopping days of the year and cost the city an estimated $400 million a day.[4] The government ultimately agreed to a new contract that did not increase pension contributions.

President Roosevelt deplored the possibility of strikes if government bargained collectively: "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."[5]

Binding Arbitration Imposes Terms. Many states recognize the danger of public-sector strikes and have passed laws that prohibit government unions from striking. Instead, "binding arbitration" resolves disputes between the government and unions. Under binding arbitration both unions and management make their case to an arbitrator. The arbitrator considers their arguments and hands down a contract which is binding on both sides. The voters' elected representatives may not choose a different plan. The taxpayers must pay whatever the arbitrator awards, which is often quite generous. Studies show that binding arbitration significantly raises the cost of employing government workers.[6]

Representative Government Undermined. Collective bargaining gives unions a monopoly on the labor supplied to government. This takes away the final say on government policy from the voters' elected representatives. Elected representatives must negotiate with unions over acceptable spending and policy decisions. State and local governments cannot hire nonunion employees to work for different terms.[7] If the government and unions disagree, the union can strike against the public or call in an arbitrator to impose terms.

Collective bargaining forces elected representatives to negotiate a contract with union leaders, excluding all other citizens and potential workers from the bargaining table. Voters' representatives do not fully control spending and tax decisions. They must reach agreement with union leaders who are unaccountable to the general public. This undermines the principle of voter sovereignty. Union leaders once recognized and opposed this. As recently as 1959, the AFL-CIO Executive Council stated flatly that "In terms of accepted collective bargaining procedures, government workers have no right beyond the authority to petition Congress-a right available to every citizen."[8]

Inflated Government Pay. Nonetheless, many state governments decided to bargain collectively. As a result, state and local government employees now earn above-market compensation.

In terms of cash wages, state and local government employees' earnings are comparable to similar private-sector workers, but they receive much more generous benefits. As of February 2011, for instance, government employees in Wisconsin contributed almost nothing to their defined-benefit pension plans, and paid only 6 percent of their health care premiums. In the private sector, workers pay 18 percent of their premiums for single plans and 29 percent for family plans.[9] Including the value of these benefits, state and local government employees earn noticeably more than their private-sector counterparts.[10]

The public pays for these benefits with higher taxes and less spending on other priorities. Some union-funded organizations, such as the Economic Policy Institute, contend that state and local government employees are underpaid. These groups arrive at this conclusion using data from the National Compensation Survey (NCS). The NCS measures private-sector compensation accurately. But for government compensation, it only measures employer pay expenditures-not the value of what the government promises to pay. Thus, the NCS ignores the value of promised pension benefits for which the government has not set aside enough money. It also ignores the value of retiree health benefits.[11]

These benefits systematically inflate government pay. The NCS also omits the value of the strong job security that government employees receive. Studies based on NCS data systematically undercount the value of government benefits, which leads to the claim that state workers are underpaid.

Using Government to Serve Private Interests. Government unions use collective bargaining to profit at the public's expense in ways that go beyond pay. Unions can negotiate contract provisions that direct public resources to the union. The Wisconsin Education Association (WEA) runs a health insurance plan known as WEA Trust. WEA Trust premiums outstrip those of competing insurance carriers. During collective bargaining, however, WEA presses school districts to purchase health insurance through WEA Trust. Currently 64 percent of Wisconsin school districts do so.[12] Allowing school districts to purchase competitively priced health insurance would save Wisconsin taxpayers $68 million a year.[13]

Collective bargaining also enables unions to negotiate work rules that benefit their members at the expense of quality public services. During negotiations, government unions typically insist on seniority pay and job security. No matter how hard or little they work, they will earn the same amount. This eliminates most of the incentive to shine on the job.

Standard pay regardless of performance also hurts the public. School districts find it almost impossible to reward good teachers or fire bad ones. One study has found that merely replacing the worst performing 5 percent of teachers with average quality teachers would move the U.S. near the top of international math and science rankings.[14] Union contracts that prevent schools from replacing failing teachers hurt children.

Unions further negotiate provisions that benefit them institutionally at their members' expense. Many government employees oppose their union's agenda. In the 28 states without right-to-work laws, however, unions negotiate contracts that require government employees to pay union dues or lose their jobs. Unions also negotiate large subsidies for their fundraising. They negotiate for the government to collect union dues through its payroll system. This spares unions the expense of doing their own fundraising.

Without these provisions unions would bring in far less money. Federal law gives most federal employees the choice of belonging to a union. Most choose not to join. The federal unionization rate is only 18 percent-far lower than for states like Wisconsin, where 50 percent of state and local government employees belong to unions.[15]

Politicized Civil Service. America has embraced the principle of a nonpartisan civil service for more than a century. Government employees should serve the public under the law and under lawful direction of elected officials-not the interests of the union or whichever political party the union favors. Collective bargaining in government politicizes the civil service-because government unions negotiate and decide how much voters and taxpayers will pay for government services. To achieve greater concessions, they campaign for supportive politicians to be their bosses. When they succeed, unions control both sides of the bargaining table: Labor and management will collude to raise government salaries at taxpayer expense.

Unions' special legal privileges give them enormous financial clout. Nationwide, 5.5 million state and local government employees must either pay union dues or lose their jobs.[16] The government subsidizes the collection of these forced dues with its payroll system, raising billions of dollars for government unions.

Part of this money goes to pay union leaders' generous salaries. Gerald McEntee, President of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) earned $376,000 in base salary in 2009.[17] But government unions spend far more of their money on politics. In the election year of 2008, AFSCME's national headquarters spent 32 percent of its budget-$63.3 million-on political activities and lobbying.[18] Local AFSCME chapters spent millions more.

Government-employee unions now spend more than any other outside group on U.S. elections. Of the five largest spenders in the 2010 election cycle outside of political parties, three were unions that represent government employees. AFSCME took the top spot, spending $91 million to elect its members' bosses. That total dwarfed the Chamber of Commerce's $75 million, and the $65 million raised by Republican Party-allied groups. As Larry Scanlon, head of AFSCME's political operation said: "We're the big dog, but we don't like to brag."[19] This spending gives government unions significant political power.

Government unions use this power to campaign for higher taxes and more government employees- in order to increase union membership and the amount of money flowing to the union from dues. They are the driving force behind most campaigns to raise taxes and prevent budget cuts.[20] They attempt to make government expansion the path of least political resistance. If politicians refuse to support this agenda, government unions will use their power to defeat them.

At times they state this openly. A Service Employees International Union (SEIU) representative told California legislators that "We helped to get you into office, and we got a good memory. And come November, if you don't back our program, we'll help get you out of office."[21] Collective bargaining has thoroughly politicized the civil service in many states. Increasingly-and contrary to basic democratic principles-it is union leaders, not elected officials, who essentially decide how much taxes people pay, and how the government will spend those taxes.

Institutional collective bargaining was a policy decision made by state and local governments. Labor unions had traditionally opposed collective bargaining in government. During the 1950s, private-sector union membership peaked and began to decline. The union movement then came to see government employees as valuable new dues-paying members. It reversed its stance on government bargaining in the late 1950s. Beginning with New York City in 1958 and Wisconsin in 1959, many state and local governments across the country began to bargain collectively, largely as a result of union pressure.[22]

Many other states concluded that this decision was a mistake. While 25 states have comprehensive collective-bargaining laws, the remaining 25 states limit collective bargaining for some or all classes of government employees.[23] Voters can exercise full control over their government. Some states, such as Virginia, ban collective bargaining by government unions outright.

Restoring Voter Control and a Nonpartisan Civil Service. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has proposed restoring voters' control over their elected government. He proposes eliminating negotiations over government benefits and work rules, and requires voters to approve any wage increases beyond inflation. These changes allow Governor Walker to reduce the generosity of government health and pension benefits to close Wisconsin's budget gap.

Walker also proposes significant steps to restore a nonpartisan civil service: He would allow government employees in Wisconsin to keep their jobs without paying union dues. Unions would have to demonstrate support among employees in an annual secret-ballot vote in order to remain recognized as the employees' bargaining representative. The state government would also end collection of union dues through its payroll system. The changes would remove the special privileges that inflate government unions' political clout.

Other states should follow Wisconsin's lead and cease collective bargaining with government unions. Government collective bargaining raises the cost of public services, politicizes the civil service, and directs tax dollars to special interests. The arguments in favor of collective bargaining do not apply to government: The government earns no profits and has a monopoly on its services. Government unions bargain to get more money from taxpayers. This does not serve the public's interests. Elected representatives, not unions, should have the final say on government policy.

States should also stop subsidizing union politicking. The law should not force government employees to hand over hundreds of dollars a year to unions, and should not subsidize union fundraising. Stopping this would go a long way toward restoring a nonpartisan civil service. American government should once again serve the needs of the people.

Guess who said the following: "It is incredible that a system of taxation which permits a man with an income of $1,000,000 a year to pay not one cent to his Government should remain unaltered."

Not even close. It was Andrew Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury under conservative Republican President Calvin Coolidge.

What was Mellon's point? That high tax rates do not necessarily result in high tax revenues to the government. "It is time to face the facts," he said. Merely having high tax rates on large incomes will not bring in more tax revenues to the treasury, because of "the flight of capital away from taxable investments."

This was all said in 1924, in Mellon's book, "Taxation: The People's Business." Yet here we are, more than 80 years later, still not facing those facts.

It is not just a question of what Andrew Mellon said. It is a question of hard facts, easily checked in official documents available to all - and ignored all these years.

Internal Revenue Service data show that there were 206 people who reported annual incomes of $1 million or more in 1916. But, as the tax rate on high incomes skyrocketed under the Woodrow Wilson administration, that number plummeted to just 21 people reporting $1 million a year in income five years later.

What happened to all those millionaires? Did they flee the country? Were they stricken with fatal diseases? Did they meet with foul play?

Not to worry. Right after Congress enacted the cuts in tax rates that Mellon had been urging, there were suddenly 207 people reporting taxable incomes of $1 million or more in 1925. As Casey Stengel used to say, "You could look it up." It is on page 21 of an Internal Revenue publication titled "Statistics of Income from Returns of Net Income for 1925."

Where had all the income of those millionaires been hiding? In tax-exempt securities like state and local bonds, among other places.

Mellon had urged Congress to end tax exemptions for such securities, even before he got them to cut tax rates. But he succeeded only with the latter, and only after a political struggle with those who made the same kinds of arguments that are still being made today by those who cry out against "tax cuts for the rich."

Still, one out of two is not bad when it comes to getting Congress to do something that makes sense economically rather than something that looks good politically.

The government, which collected less than $50 million in taxes on capital gains in 1924, suddenly collected more than $100 million in capital gains taxes in 1925. At lower tax rates, it no longer made sense to keep so much invested in tax-exempt securities, when more money could be made by investing in the economy.

As for "the rich" - who really were rich in those days, when $100,000 was worth more than $1 million is worth today - those in the highest income brackets paid 30 percent of all taxes in 1920 and 65 percent of all taxes by 1929, after "tax cuts for the rich."

How can that be? Because high tax rates on paper, which many people avoid, often does not bring in as much tax revenue as lower tax rates that more people actually pay after it is safe to come out of tax shelters and earn higher rates of taxable income.

The investors do this because it makes them better off, on net balance, even after they pay more money in taxes on incomes that have gone up. More important, the economy benefits when there is more investment in things that create more jobs and rising output.

None of this was unique to the 1920s. The same scenario played out again in later years, during the Kennedy, Reagan and Bush 43 administrations.

But economic success is not the same as political success. As former House Majority Leader Dick Armey put it, "Demagoguery beats data."

As long as the voters keep buying the "tax cuts for the rich" demagoguery, politicians will keep selling it. And it will keep selling as long as it goes unanswered. The question is whether today's Republicans understand that as well as Andrew Mellon did back in the 1920s.

'This is the Obama conception of the U.S. role in the world-to work through multilateral organizations and bilateral relationships to make sure that the steps we are taking are amplified."

-White House National Security Council spokesman Ben Rhodes, March 10, 2011, as quoted in the Washington Post

"They bombed us with tanks, airplanes, missiles coming from every direction. . . . We need international support, at least a no-fly zone. Why is the world not supporting us?"

-Libyan rebel Mahmoud Abdel Hamid, March 10, 2011, as quoted in The Wall Street Journal

Whatever else one might say about President Obama's Libya policy, it has succeeded brilliantly in achieving its oft-stated goal of not leading the world. No one can any longer doubt the U.S. determination not to act before the Italians do, or until the Saudis approve, or without a U.N. resolution. This White House is forthright for followership.

That message also couldn't be clearer to Moammar Gadhafi and his sons, who are busy bombing and killing their way to victory against the Libyan opposition. As the U.S. defers to the world, the world can't decide what to do, and the vacuum is filled by a dictator and his hard men who have concluded that no one will stop them. "Hear it now. I have only two words for our brothers and sisters in the east: We're coming," said Gadhafi's son, Saif al-Islam, on Thursday.

Three weeks into the Libyan uprising, here are some of the live action highlights from what Mr. Obama likes to call "the international community":

• The United Nations Security Council has imposed an arms embargo, but with enough ambiguity that no one knows whether it applies only to Gadhafi or also to the opposition. Even the U.S. State Department and White House don't agree.

• The U.N. has referred events to the International Criminal Court for a war crimes investigation. Mr. Obama said yesterday this sent a message to Gadhafi that "the world is watching," as if Gadhafi didn't know. But it also sends a message that leaving Libya without bloodshed is not an option, because he and his sons will still be pursued for war crimes. Had Reagan pursued this strategy in the Philippines, Marcos might never have gone into exile.

• France has recognized the opposition National Council in Benghazi, though the U.S. is only now sending envoys to meet with the opposition for the first time. Dozens of Western reporters can get rebel leaders on the phone, an opposition delegation has visited French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris, but the U.S. is still trying to figure out who these people are. The American envoys better hurry because the rebels may soon be dead.

• The French want a no-fly zone, but the Italians and Germans object. NATO is having "a series of conversations about a wide range of options," as President Obama put it yesterday, but NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen emerged from a meeting of defense ministers in Brussels on Thursday saying that "We considered . . . initial options regarding a possible no-fly zone in case NATO were to receive a clear U.N. mandate" (our emphasis). The latter isn't likely because both China and Russia object, but no doubt NATO will keep conversing about the "range of options" next week.

• Even as opposition leaders were asking for help, U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the world on Thursday that Gadhafi is likely to win in the long-term. The Administration scrambled to say this was merely a factual judgment about the balance of military power, but the message couldn't be clearer to any of Gadhafi's generals who might consider defecting: Do so at your peril because you will join the losing side.

We could go on, but you get the idea. When the U.S. fails to lead, the world reverts to its default mode as a diplomatic Tower of Babel. Everyone discusses "options" and "contingencies" but no one has the will to act, while the predators march.

This was true in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s until the U.S. shamed Europe and NATO into using force with or without a U.N. resolution. And it has been true in every case in which the world finally resisted tyrants or terrorists, from the Gulf War to Afghanistan to Iraq. When the U.S. chooses to act like everyone else, the result is Rwanda, Darfur and now Libya.

One difference in Libya is that the damage from a Gadhafi victory would not merely be humanitarian, though that would be awful enough. The only way Gadhafi can subdue Benghazi and the east now is with a door-to-door purge and systematic murder. The flow of refugees heading for Southern Europe would also not be small.

If Gadhafi survives after Mr. Obama has told him to go, the blow to U.S. prestige and world order would be enormous. Dictators will learn that the way to keep America from acting is to keep its diplomats and citizens around, while mowing down your opponents as the world debates contingencies. By the time the Babelers make a decision, it will be too late. This is a dangerous message to send at any time, but especially with a Middle East in the throes of revolution.

There is still time for Mr. Obama to salvage his Libya policy, though the costs of doing so are rising every day. Libya today is what a world without U.S. leadership looks like.

No one has done more to revive the reputation of Bush-era antiterror policies than the Obama Administration. In its latest policy reversal, yesterday Mr. Obama said the U.S. would resume the military tribunals for Guantanamo terrorists that he unilaterally suspended two years ago, and he may even begin referring new charges to military commissions within days or weeks.

The political left is enraged by what it claims is a betrayal, but we're glad to see Mr. Obama bowing to security reality and erring on the side of keeping the country safe-with one exception, about which more below.

On a conference call yesterday, senior Administration officials tried to sell their military commissions process as more "credible" than Mr. Bush's, but their policy changes are de minimis. In 2009, Congress made technical reforms for handling testimony and classified information. By executive order, a new panel will now also conduct a "periodic review" of detentions. But the bipartisan Military Commissions Act of 2006, or MCA, had already included "administrative review boards" dedicated to the same goal.

The White House yesterday also stressed its commitment to civilian terror prosecutions going forward, but that also doesn't mean much. Last year the Democratic Congress barred funding for transferring enemy combatants from Gitmo to the U.S., and that won't change with a Republican House.

The real news here is the final repudiation of Attorney General Eric Holder's attempt to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other 9/11 plotters as criminal defendants on U.S. soil. The killers at Guantanamo will now be brought to justice via a process that the President once depicted as akin to the Ministry of Love in "1984." On the campaign trail in 2008, Mr. Obama claimed that Mr. Bush "runs prisons which lock people away without ever telling them why they're there or what they're charged with."

In an August 2007 speech that his advisers touted at the time, Mr. Obama promised to repeal this "legal framework that does not work." He even claimed that Bush policies undermined "our Constitution and our freedom" and that the Bush Administration had pressed a "false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand," a line he recycled in his Inaugural Address. He went out of his way to vote against the Military Commissions Act.

So much for all that. Yesterday the senior Administration officials even praised the "bipartisan effort" that produced that law. They're right. The MCA was a serious and painstaking compromise under the constitutional guidance of the Supreme Court's Hamdan decision, but the anti-antiterror lobby-including candidate Obama-maintained it was an affront to American values. The real test of Mr. Obama's new maturity will be if he puts the guts back into the tribunal process, restoring the funding and talent necessary to handle complex prosecutions that have been lost over the years amid the assault on Gitmo.

The other note of trouble is Mr. Obama's decision, also announced yesterday, to treat as legally binding part of a radical 1977 revision to the 1949 Geneva Conventions known as Article 75 of Additional Protocol 1. President Reagan repudiated Protocol 1 in 1987 because it vitiated the distinction between lawful and unlawful enemy combatants. Terrorists fight out of uniform and target civilians and thus do not deserve traditional prisoner-of-war protections. This was the two-decade political consensus until the Bush Presidency. Both the New York Times and the Washington Post editorialized in favor of Reagan's Protocol 1 decision.

Our guess is that Mr. Obama has adopted this part of Protocol 1 to appease the domestic left and especially the "international community" that will be dismayed by his new embrace of Gitmo and George W. Bush's policies. Remember the moralizing Europeans? (See here.) Mr. Obama is nonetheless complicating the task of U.S. terror fighters, and encouraging further barbarism, by extending the laws of war to terrorists who hold combat restrictions in contempt.

Mr. Obama's antiterror policy migration may be startling but it does have a historic precedent. Republican isolationists opposed much of Harry Truman's policy framework at the dawn of the Cold War, only to have Dwight Eisenhower ratify nearly all of it when he became President. The responsibilities of power, and the realities of a dangerous world, tend to be educational.

Everyone knows that the U.S. budget is being devoured by entitlements. Everyone also knows that of the Big Three - Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security - Social Security is the most solvable.

Back-of-an-envelope solvable: Raise the retirement age, tweak the indexing formula (from wage inflation to price inflation) and means-test so that Warren Buffett's check gets redirected to a senior in need.

The relative ease of the fix is what makes the Obama administration's Social Security strategy so shocking. The new line from the White House is: no need to fix it because there is no problem. As Office of Management and Budget Director Jack Lew wrote in USA Today just a few weeks ago, the trust fund is solvent until 2037. Therefore, Social Security is now off the table in debt-reduction talks.

The pretense is that a flush trust fund will pay retirees for the next 26 years. Lovely, except for one thing: The Social Security trust fund is a fiction.

If you don't believe me, listen to the OMB's own explanation (in the Clinton administration budget for fiscal 2000 under then-Director Jack Lew, the very same). The OMB explained that these trust fund "balances" are nothing more than a "bookkeeping" device. "They do not consist of real economic assets that can be drawn down in the future to fund benefits."

Here's why. When your FICA tax is taken out of your paycheck, it does not get squirreled away in some lockbox in West Virginia where it's kept until you and your contemporaries retire. Most goes out immediately to pay current retirees, and the rest (say, $100) goes to the U.S. Treasury - and is spent. On roads, bridges, national defense, public television, whatever - spent, gone.

In return for that $100, the Treasury sends the Social Security Administration a piece of paper that says: IOU $100. There are countless such pieces of paper in the lockbox. They are called "special issue" bonds.

Special they are: They are worthless. As the OMB explained, they are nothing more than "claims on the Treasury [i.e., promises] that, when redeemed [when you retire and are awaiting your check], will have to be financed by raising taxes, borrowing from the public, or reducing benefits or other expenditures." That's what it means to have a so-called trust fund with no "real economic assets." When you retire, the "trust fund" will have to go to the Treasury for the money for your Social Security check.

Bottom line? The OMB again: "The existence of large trust fund balances, therefore, does not, by itself, have any impact on the government's ability to pay benefits." No impact: The lockbox, the balances, the little pieces of paper, amount to nothing.

So that when Jack Lew tells you that there are trillions in this lockbox that keep the system solvent until 2037, he is perpetrating a fiction certified as such by his own OMB. What happens when you retire? Your Social Security will come out of the taxes and borrowing of that fiscal year.

Why is this a problem? Because as of 2010, the pay-as-you-go Social Security system is in the red. For decades it had been in the black, taking in more in FICA taxes than it sent out in Social Security benefits. The surplus, scooped up by the Treasury, reduced the federal debt by tens of billions. But demography is destiny. The ratio of workers to retirees is shrinking year by year. Instead of Social Security producing annual surpluses that reduce the federal deficit, it is now producing shortfalls that increase the federal deficit - $37 billion in 2010. It will only get worse as the baby boomers retire.

That's what makes this administration's claim that Social Security is solvent so cynical. The Republicans have said that their April budget will contain real entitlement reform. President Obama is preparing the ground to demagogue Social Security right through the 2012 elections. The ad writes itself: Those heartless Republicans don't just want to throw granny in the snow, they want to throw granny in the snow to solve a problem that doesn't even exist! Vote Obama.

On Tuesday, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia denounced Obama for lack of leadership on the debt. It's worse than that. Obama is showing leadership. With Lew's preposterous claim that Social Security is solvent for 26 years, Obama is preparing to lead the charge against entitlement reform as his ticket to reelection.

This week the House Homeland Security Committee will begin hearings on whether Muslim terrorism is gaining ground in America. The hearings will be open, will feature the testimony of many different people, and there's a good chance we'll all learn something.

But some on the left adamantly oppose the hearings, and go even further than that. They are denying that the Muslim jihad is the world's biggest terror threat.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What do you think of this hearing? Is Al Qaeda radicalizing Muslims? Is that our biggest homegrown terrorism threat right now?

MARK POTOK, SPOKESMAN, SOUTHERN POVERTY LOW CENTER: Well, I think, well, it's not our biggest domestic terror threat. I think that pretty clearly comes from the radical right in this country.

Are you kidding me? The radical right? The last terror act assigned to them was the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995.

I mean, think about this. Muslim terrorists have killed tens of thousands of people all over the world, correct? How many people have the radical right killed? And Mr. Potok, who runs a human rights agency, says right-wing loons are worse than the jihadists? Again, unbelievable.

And he's not alone. Far left Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein apparently feels the same way.

PAT BUCHANAN, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Major Hasan killed 13 Army guys and wounded 41.

EZRA KLEIN, BLOGGER, WASHINGTON POST: But there's not a ton of evidence that was a radical issue in American.

So it's the young Christians who are more dangerous than the jihadists. Simply stunning.

It all goes back to America being the world's biggest villain. The far left believes that the United States has provoked Muslim extremists by backing Israel and doing business with the oil sheiks. To radicals on the left, the jihadists are simply misguided and would stop their terrible killings if only we understood them and changed our foreign and domestic policies.

That's what the far left truly believes, and that's why you're hearing all of this absurd nonsense.

The jihad hearings in Washington might turn into a circus. They could accomplish nothing. If that becomes the case, I'll hammer them.

But certainly Americans need to know the extent of the jihad as it exists inside the United States. There's no question we need to know that. This is yet another example of the radical left opposing common sense protections.

NPR CEO: “Adding Beck and O’Reilly wouldn’t change conservative perceptions of NPR.”

Wisconsin union thugs begin to threat private businesses in Wisconsin with boycott:

Poll confirms that Americans are caught up an entitlement culture, including TEA party patriots.

RUSH: You know what I hope, folks? You know what I'm really hoping right now? I hope CNN has our old buddy Nic Robertson on the first plane out to Japan. I can't wait for Nic Robertson to hit the ground in Japan, run up to people in the earthquake region and ask them if they have a message for President Obama.

RUSH: (imitating Robertson) "Why, Nic Robertson here with Keiku. Keiku, what is your message for President Obama?" He's got a press conference here in about 25 minutes, right in the middle of this program. We might JIP a little bit of it just to have fun. But how long is it gonna be before the press starts talking about this earthquake and the tsunami and how it impacts Obama? Everything does. Did you hear what Obama said? What a tin ear. Obama issued a statement and he referred to our alliance with Japan as unshakable, on the day a record earthquake hits, 8.9 on the Andy Richter scale. Eight-point-nine and our alliance with the Japanese is unshakable.

RUSH: So, as you've heard by now, Japan was hit by an earthquake. It was either 8.4 or 8.9 on the Andy Richter scale depending on whom you listen to. Now, in any case, it is said to be the biggest earthquake to hit Japan ever. It's also supposed to be the seventh largest earthquake ever recorded. They're saying that there has never been a tsunami like this, as far as anyone knows. The waves are just now starting to hit the US Left Coast. Our cameras are out there watching the waves roll in. You got some surfers out there taking advantage of it. Geologists are saying this earthquake is 900 times the size of the Northridge, California, earthquake, just to put it in a little perspective. (interruption) Do you remember the Northridge earthquake? Okay, when was the Northridge earthquake? You claim to remember it, when was it? In 1979-80? Are you thinking of the earthquake where the whole section of the Bay Bridge plunked? Is that what you're thinking of or are you thinking of a different one? (interruption) The apartment building in LA. Okay, so you've got the right one. All right, I don't remember the Northridge earthquake. But you do. (interruption) Oh. Oh. Well, you gotta be pretty smug then. Your friends moved to California to probably get away from hurricanes and stuff and they move out there and the Northridge earthquake happened. They moved right back to the East Coast. That's the way it generally happens.

Some of that footage, that whirlpool in the ocean, I thought I was reading the Book of Revelation when I looked at that. It looked like the end times out there, either that or the special effects of a movie. But, folks, this has to be a tough call out there for the environmentalists around the world. They're scrambling right now to blame this on global warming, they're gonna try to find a way, but much of the damage in Japan seems to have happened in that part of Japan most heavily involved in manufacturing cars. So do the environmentalists cheer or do they pretend to be saddened by this? Well, it's a legitimate question. I don't know if the Prius is made in that particular area. That would really be a dilemma for 'em if the Prius or maybe electric cars are made in that area of Japan.

RUSH: By the way, the Prius is made in the area of the earthquake in Japan. So is the Nissan Leaf, the full-fledged electronic buggy. The Northridge earthquake was in 1994, by the way, Mr. Snerdley. So there you have it.

RUSH: By the way, what is the impact these videos make on you when you look at them? It makes me feel so insignificant to look at this -- and I can't help attaching, you know, political reaction to this. Here we've got these never-ending scare tactics: Global warming is gonna raise the sea levels, manmade destruction and all that. This is a bunch of people sitting around minding their own business. This is just the earth. It just happened. I have no doubt they're gonna try to claim global warming had something to do with the earthquake and the tsunami. Well of course they will. That's the only thing they've got is to try to tie natural disasters to what they have been forecasting. But you look at some of this video and you find out how insignificant we are.

We're powerless. It's just nothing but good luck that we make it through every day here. I know. There's thousands of people being killed here. The death toll right now is 300; there are thousands. They're gonna be finding bodies here for who knows how long. It is incredible some of these videos, some of this refuse and debris washing across what looks like agricultural lands. Houses floating in the middle of it, automobiles floating in the middle of it, trashed. Nothing can stop it. Now they're evacuating people near a nuclear plant. That's it. You can say good-bye to any nuclear plants in this country. This is like China Syndrome for real here, even though it had nothing to do with it.

You got a nuclear plant that is in the danger zone here. But it just to me illustrates, man, it's just sheer luck in many ways that we make it through every day here -- and I'm talking about on the planet. I will make a prediction to you about blame for this thing. Make a note here, Snerdley, and the rest of you. This is the 11th of March; it is Eastern time 1:37. By the way, we go on daylight time Saturday night. Just FYI. I don't know how long it's going to take, but at some point fracking will be blamed, particularly maybe fracking in the Dakotas. Fracking is a way to get oil. It's a relatively new technique for extracting oil from very hard-to-get-it-from places, and we're doing it in the United States.

It's only a question of time before somebody -- and it could be a Looney Tune who makes the accusation -- and somebody in the press corps goes, "Yeah!" and we'll get a whole series of new reports on fracking and the inherent dangers, and is it possible -- experts are uncertain at this time, but is it possible -- that the efforts to claim oil from the Bakken reserves via fracking had any role in this destructive earthquake in Japan?" You watch, because there's not a thing that happens in the world that isn't tied to the left's political agenda or that they don't attempt to link to their political agenda. You watch. It isn't going to be long before we get analysis of this press conference today and how Obama's reaction to the earthquake helps him in his reelection bid.

It won't be long before we have reporters in Tokyo asking citizens, "Did you hear what President Obama said? Did you hear him pledge solidarity and assistance on behalf of the American people? What message do you have for President Obama?" Don't be surprised when it happens. Now, if you have a globe in your house or your orifice, a miniature planet, go look at it and find (if you can) North and South Dakota on your globe; and then go find Japan and find out where Japan is in relationship to the Dakotas on your globe. You might find that Japan is on the exact opposite side of the globe from the Dakotas.

It won't take long for a liberal journalist to be pointed in this direction and then to start asking the question. Remember, the nature of the evidence is not the concern here. The seriousness of the charge is what matters. It won't be long before there's a question, "Could it be? I mean, we gotta look at all options, Mr. Limbaugh. Could it be that fracking in the Dakotas could have played a role here?" (interruption) Snerdley, don't give me that look. You know this is much more likely than it is unlikely. You do. That's why you're getting all... (interruption) I know how sickening the thought is. I'm the one has to come up with it! But don't doubt me.

RUSH: Have you ever been tempted to take your plane and do a flyover in one of these big natural disasters to see it firsthand? I've done it during the oil spill in the Gulf. I had to go to California. The route takes us across the Florida peninsula into the Gulf. I asked for clearance to fly a little low for a while. It's not always granted, not that low. I wanted to see it. I wanted to actually see the oil on the surface. I wanted to see how bad it really was. (interruption) Yeah, you could see it. You could see it. It was way out. There wasn't a whole lot of it near shore at the time I flew over. But you mean like hop the jet to Japan and fly over that? No. I could get there nonstop but I don't want to go 'cause I'd have to land after getting there.

We can do... With just me on there and the very, very limited provisions that I would require, we'd probably get there in 15 hours, but you'd have to land after that somewhere. Nothing against Japan, don't misunderstand. I have, on occasion, requested a route that would be out of what has been assigned so as to see a hurricane from above it -- and I've seen that, yeah. (interruption) No, I've not seen a volcano, other than the Big Island, Hawaii, but that thing's been erupting every day for a number of years. It's just sort of like pus coming out of a zit compared to the giant Pompeii eruption that you think of with a volcano.

But it's amazing what you can see up there. It's amazing what things do look like at an altitude.

RUSH: There's a story in the New York Times today, it's unbelievable. I want to go back and play for you a sound bite from this program, actually me, your host, on October 20th, 2009, year and a half ago or so. Anita Dunn had just gone up to the national cathedral to wish somebody good-bye, or maybe she was talking to students, I forget who, but she was telling us how much she admired Mao Tse-tung. Remember? And a lot of people were shocked and stunned by this. And I said, "Why?" I mean that's who these people are. Mao Tse-tung, Castro, all these guys, that was the point of the sound bite. This is what I said.

RUSH ARCHIVE: Can you think of any other administration in this country where a president or a communications specialist or anybody else would run around and start praising Mao Tse-tung as a role model, as a philosopher to follow? Can you think of any administration who would have previously cited Stalin or Lenin or Castro? This administration idolizes all these people. I'm not suggesting they're mass murderers. I'm saying they envy the total control, the tyrannical control that Mao Tse-tung had.

RUSH: I have often said to people who ask, "I don't understand. Cuba's a country falling apart. Why do these people, all these actors, why do they idolize Castro?" 'Cause he's got total control. One hundred percent total control. So Anita Dunn had gone out there and praised Mao Tse-tung. There was reaction to it. A New York Times story from yesterday, actually. It's by Mark Landler and Helene Cooper. And the headline of this story: "Obama Seeks a Course of Pragmatism in the Middle East." And it goes on and on and on. It prints out to three or four pages. Then you get to the last paragraph of this story. Now, keep in mind the sound bite that you just heard. Last paragraph: "How Mr. Obama manages to do that while also balancing American interests is a question that officials acknowledge will plague this historic president for months to come. Mr. Obama has told people that it would be so much easier to be the president of China. As one official put it, 'No one is scrutinizing Hu Jintao's words in Tahrir Square.'"

So the regime has put out news that Obama envies Hu Jintao, 'cause Hu Jintao doesn't have to answer to anybody and they don't analyze what Hu Jintao says if they want to stay alive. They're pointing out over in Egypt, all this pressure for Obama to say something in Cairo. Now say something about Libya. And Obama is sitting there in the White House going, "Awe, gee, why couldn't I be Hu Jintao? Nobody cares what he says, nobody's monitoring his words. Why couldn't I have and consolidate that kind of power?" Yeah, America is a tough place, Mr. President. It really is a tough place. You know what the problem Obama faces? You know what this Hu Jintao comment really shows? The real telling of this is, the meaning, in Libya, in Cairo, in Iran, anywhere, you go around the world, nobody's looking to Hu Jintao to help them with their freedom fight, but they all are looking to the United States for help with their freedom fight. That has been our role in the world, one of the many characteristics of American exceptionalism.

People seeking freedom around the world have always looked to the United States. They don't look to Hu Jintao. So Hu Jintao doesn't have the burden of helping people gain their freedom, quite obviously. Hu Jintao's a bully, by the way. As a totalitarian, authoritarian figure, Hu Jintao's a bully. I wonder how Hu Jintao feels about Obama and Michelle (My Belle) running around now ripping bullies? So I think this is quite telling, he's feeling the stress and here it is in the New York Times, he's feeling the stress, people are actually paying attention to what he says, people around the world who want their freedom. "Ah, gee, why are they calling me? Gosh, I wish I were Hu Jintao. Nobody pays any attention to what he says."

RUSH: I just listened to a little bit of Obama's press conference opening spreading his "calm" on the troubled waters between here and Japan, and he pointed out that we are at one with the Japanese people. The American people, through him, offer our condolences, and we will do anything. He said we're sending an aircraft carrier over there to help them. He didn't identify the aircraft carrier. I happen to know which one it is. It's the USS Ronald Reagan. Obama didn't identify it. I don't know if that was purposeful or a faux pas or he thought it was not relevant but just so you know: It's the USS Ronaldus Magnus that's now steaming its way to Japan.

RUSH: All right, here's a little review of Obama's press conference so far. He opened by bragging about increased domestic oil production. He said that he's gonna be monitoring price gouging. He'll be looking at it. Spoken like a true community organizer. Of all the things going on, what does he see? Price gouging. He's gonna be monitoring that, mind you. He's not gonna make sure we got more supply, no, no, no. He's gonna monitor price gouging. Of course, Big Oil out to rip everybody off during this unfortunate time. So that's one. Then he started bragging about increased domestic oil production. That's a story they put out. They say their oil production is up even with the moratoriums. I saw that story last week, maybe the week before. Yeah, we're supposed to believe it, by 300,000 barrels, a month or a week or something, oil production, way, way up after Obama's drilling moratorium. He says he's encouraging oil production but he is doing it responsibly. That's what they always say. Whatever they're doing, we're doing it smarter than our predecessor; we're doing it intelligently.

He also said that he's now looking into new oil from Alaska. By the way, I know a little bit about this. I think I can safely reveal that there has been in the Democrat Party a softening in their opposition to drilling in ANWR. While I can't tell you how, just don't doubt me. This is not etched in stone. I said I have sensed a softening in their opposition to drilling in ANWR. No, it has nothing to do with the oil price, per se. There might be some connection, but it's largely unrelated to that. It has other political attachments to it. And, again, you people at Mediaite and other places, do not misquote me on this. If you want to misquote me, wait 'til it's on my website so you can misquote me accurately. I'm saying the Democrats have not changed their minds and are willing to support drilling in ANWR. I'm saying I am sensing a softening of opposition to it, an openness to it. However, there might be some tradeoffs, obviously.

But even after Obama said he's looking at a new oil from Alaska, he then said in the next minute that drilling is not a long-term solution. It's the only short-term, long-term, period, solution. But what he's setting up here is windmills. That's the long-term solution, windmills and solar panels. I had a story last week, somebody where there's a bunch of windmills, they're being driven insane by the noise. The noise of the turbines is driving them literally insane. They close the windows. It's so loud they can't escape the noise. This windmills stuff, no pun intended, isn't gonna fly. But the long-term solution he means is windmills and solar panels, when he says drilling is not a long-term solution. Look, you have a president here, a community organizer, a party that is politically opposed to oil. Don't ask me to explain it logically. It doesn't make any sense. After saying that we are looking into new oil from Alaska, that drilling is not the long-term solution, the next minute Obama said that we have to gradually reduce demand. That's tantamount to saying I'm not really concerned about the rising prices if they are slow. If prices increase slowly, that's fine, if that reduces demand, that's cool. If we have to deny free markets and do what we can to reduce demand by elevating price, we'll do it 'cause that will take us closer to our dream of solar panels and windmills.

He said that green tech is the answer to this energy crisis that we're facing. You knew this was gonna happen. Here you've got a skyrocketing oil price, a momentary blip in it, it's fallen a little bit, but you know they've been waiting for this. Hello Chevy Volt. Hello all the reasons that you don't want to buy these cars, the market seems to be creating them. Green tech is the answer. Solar, wind -- (interruption) yeah, just like Spain. It isn't the answer. There is no place, not one country, not one county, not one place in this world that has its needs met with solar or wind. Now, keep in mind we're told that our young president here is moving to the center. What we have here is environmentalist wackism right at the forefront of this press conference, and there is nothing center right about environmentalist wackoism. So what Obama has done is double down on failure. He's doubled down on failure when it comes to increasing America's energy, sources, supply. He wants to reduce our consumption and need, and he wants to do this by tampering with the market and elevate prices.

Now, we had a story just three days ago. "Today, the Department of Energy's independent U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released their latest Short Term Energy Outlook for projected crude oil production in the Gulf of Mexico. Despite the misleading comments made by Interior Secretary Salazar last week, GOM crude oil production has continued to significantly decline since the Obama Administration's de facto moratorium. EIA's latest numbers also show the Obama Administration's anti-energy policies have made us more vulnerable to energy price spikes as we have become increasingly reliant on unstable foreign energy." So they're out there lying through their teeth telling us that oil production is up despite their moratoriums. It isn't. Oil production is down. It's from the US House Committee on Natural Resources. That's the source.

RUSH: Obama says the Republicans want cuts in the budget that he won't accept, and Obama said he's tired of people using the budget to advance ideological and political objectives. Can you believe the outrage that somebody would do that? He totally opposes using the budget to advance anybody's ideological objectives. He only says this when the Republicans are in charge of writing the budget, by the way. His whole budget, all of it, every dime that we don't have that he spends is about advancing his totalitarian agenda.

RUSH: Obama said the United States has to stop funding programs that don't work. Now, that is truly radical, because if he meant it, what would be left? Name one that does! I'm only 10% joking here. Name one that really does what it was and is designed to do.

I haven't been able to watch this. I've been hosting the program. I might have missed them, but I haven't heard any questions to Obama about what happened in Wisconsin. And I'm wondering if the press corps has been told to avoid the subject. I'm just gonna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, if there are no questions about Wisconsin, or if there are just a few, and if they come very late in this presser, let me tell you what that means. It means the internal polls must be really bad for the unions, and they don't want to bring this up, they do not want to have Obama talk about it. Now, we have staff rolling on this, keeping a sharp eye. I want all of you watching this to keep a sharp eye and let me know the minute there's a question about Wisconsin. This press conference started pretty much on time, at 12:30 Eastern time.

Obama's answer to what Khadafy is doing to his citizens is to say that we're gonna maintain a 24-hour surveillance on what's going on over there. We're gonna keep a sharp eye, Obama said we're watching. Spoken like true spectator-in-chief. Remember he really can't do much because he spent so much time denigrating US involvement in the Middle East as a candidate. He ripped George W. Bush a new one, all the Democrats did, for imposing freedom, for imposing our way of life on Iraq and Afghanistan. So to go in there and do something about Khadafy would make him in the eyes of his base a hypocrite. So he keeps talking about we need to be in consultation with the international community. Well, look, Obama's a community organizer, he's an agitator. He's not a leader here. He doesn't want the US to lead in this circumstance. He's perfectly fine being a spectator, and of course wagging that finger and issuing warnings to Khadafy. And of course Khadafy, who may be totally stoned by now, who knows, Khadafy's over there supposedly really threatened 'cause Obama says, (imitating Obama) "We're watching, pal. We are watching, and furthermore, we are taking notes." Now, listen to this. We have a sound bite here. We have three of them from the press conference from the last half hour. This is the first. Just listen to it.

OBAMA: Three years ago, before the recession hit, a combination of factors, including rising demand from emerging economies like China, drove gas prices to more than four dollars a gallon. The worldwide recession and the decrease in demand pushed prices back down. But over the past year, as the economy's picked up steam and global demand for oil has increased, prices have increased again. America is better prepared for supply disruptions than we used to be. Today we use 7% less oil than we did it in 2005, even as our economy has grown since then. Partly because our economy as a whole is more efficient, we're adapting. We're producing more oil and we're importing less.

RUSH: That's not true. It simply is not true. I've got the charts and graphs to demo it. I can't show them to do on the Dittocam. It's too hard for me to do and too hard for you to follow. But it's not true. We are not producing more oil. We got moratoriums, for crying out loud, and we are not importing less. But the whole theme of this bite, gasoline prices are up because of our economic recovery? That's akin to saying we have succeeded in reducing demand and we want to further reduce demand. Let me translate that for you. That means continued recession. If there is a reduction in the demand for energy, that means there's no economic growth, and that's not an opinion. That's mathematics. Geometry. Trigonometry.

We use 7% less oil than in 2005 and we're supposed to be out of the recession? This is make-believe. This is pure man behind the curtain Wizard of Oz make-believe. You know what this guy is trying to do? The stimulus worked, we're creating new jobs, the recession is over. As far as he's concerned and wants you to believe, everything he's done to revive this economy is working, and it's going so well that gasoline prices are up. We now have to look at rising gasoline prices and thank him because it's a sign that the economy is coming back. It's a sign there's an economic recovery. Now, here he elaborates on the fact that he has increased oil production.

OBAMA: Our oil production reached its highest level in seven years. Oil production from federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico reached an all-time high. For the first time in more than a decade, imports accounted for less than half of what we consumed. So any notion that my administration has shut down oil production might make for a good political sound bite, but it doesn't match up with reality. The industry holds leases on tens of millions of acres, both offshore and on land where they aren't producing a thing. So I directed the interior department to determine just how many of these leases are going undeveloped and report back to me within two weeks so that we can encourage companies to develop the leases they hold and produce American energy.

RUSH: Yeah, with the rising price, it makes perfect sense for them to do this now, right? So we got the leader of the regime who is demanding that these guys start bringing oil out of the ground at these prices, guaranteed to not be a profit situation. Folks, I don't know how to deal with this. We're not talking about some mayor running out there and bragging about trash collection here. We've got the president of the United States telling us that oil production reached its highest level in seven years? In the Gulf of Mexico is an all-time high production? And for the first time in more than ten years imports account for less than half of what we're consuming? If that's true, it's because we're consuming less, because our economy is not growing, because prices are going up.

Man, this guy puts you in an awkward position. It's like I've been saying all week, nobody wants to believe a president that doesn't believe in economic growth in the traditional American way and all that. I can't believe he's lying like this. "What do you mean, Rush?" This is so brazen. And of course you've got this compliant press corps there just lapping this up, their tongues are on the floor, just sucking it all up, they can't get enough of it.

Anybody heard a question yet on Wisconsin at this press conference? Has there been a question on Wisconsin yet? Means the internal polling data is not good for the unions.

OBAMA: Even if we tap every single reserve available to us, we can't escape the fact that we only control 2% of the world's oil but we consume over a quarter of the world's oil.

OBAMA: -- and I don't think anybody would consider him unfriendly to drilling, was right when he said that this is one emergency we can't drill our way out of. We can't place our long-term bets on the finite resources that we only control 2% of, especially resources that are vulnerable to hurricanes, war, and political turmoil.

RUSH: This is the kind of day I don't even want to do this. We've got more oil in the Bakken Reserve. If we could go get it with fracking but they don't like fracking because the environmentalists don't like it. We have more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia has. Not in traditional deposits, but we've got it. It's there. In fact, in North Dakota, South Dakota, where this Bakken range is, unemployment's at 3%. It's a boom time up there as people are signing on to start working for people trying to figure out a way to get this oil out of the ground. Two percent of the world's oil? And here's that old statistic, we're 2% of the world's population, 2% of the world's oil, using 25%. My gosh, I've been hearing that for 20 years. It's the environmentalist lament. It's rooted in this whole belief that America's a bully; that America's a thief; that America's selfish and we're too big and we've taken more than our share. It's time to give it back. It's time we suffered like other people in the world have suffered, because of us. That's the underlying belief that makes somebody say something like this. Man, we consume too much of the world's oil. That's right. We're just rotten people and we gotta find out what the rest of the world feels like, the way they live. We gotta find out.

RUSH: Not one question about Wisconsin in the Obama presser. I don't think there was a question about Wisconsin. Folks, that's collusion. You can't tell me that there wasn't one person in the White House press "corpse" who had any interest in what happened Wisconsin. I mean, it was only the news of the week! It's only the big news for the past month. The Democrat Party and their allies went all in with everything they had to stop this. Obama had Organizing for America implemented. They were deployed. It's over. Not one question about it. Now, this tells me that the corpse, it may have been suggesting that they not broach the subject. After all, there are far more important things like the tsunami and earthquake in Japan.

RUSH: All right. It's official. There were no questions on Wisconsin asked of the regime at the press conference today. Now, come on, folks, please. It's only been the rallying cry of the Democrat Party. We've only had Obama joining the debate saying we shouldn't vilify or denigrate public sector union people, they're our neighbors and so forth. He got involved. It's his website, Organizing for America, that organized all of the spittle-flecked protesters that were out there. Not one question. Not one statement made by Obama. Again, let me tell you what this means. I'll explain it by doing it the opposite way. Had there been questions and had there been answers, had Obama made a statement, it would have meant that the polling data was clearly on his side, that the Republicans were really taking it in the shorts in the polls, and that it was a golden opportunity to hammer this whole business of destroying collective bargaining rights for unions.

If they had polling data that suggests that the Democrats won big in this thing that would have been 90% of the content of this presser. And it didn't even come up. This is Waterloo. This is Obama's army defeated at Waterloo. Napoleon didn't have a press conference either after Waterloo. They must be quaking in their boots over the polling data out of Wisconsin, not just in Wisconsin but around the country on this. Don't doubt me. Snerdley, do not doubt me on this. If it were otherwise, they would have been beating their chests like Tarzan. Obama would have been out there talking to Jane and Cheetah and they'd be having a party swinging vine to vine to vine, but no, they can't even bring it up.

RUSH: I just want to review here. Let me see if I have this straight. From the Obama press conference where the subject of Wisconsin did not come up (either as a question or as a statement), Obama is blocking drilling in the Gulf of Mexico but we are producing more oil and gas than ever. That's what he said. Obama wants us to reduce our use of fossil fuels, but we are producing more oil and gas than ever. That's what he said. Obama is killing jobs and industry, but we are producing more oil and gas than ever. Does this add up to anyone? Our economy is increasingly the use (and therefore the cost) of fuel. He says the price of gasoline, folks -- in case you missed it -- is going up because of his economic recovery.

His economic recovery means rising gas prices, and to him he's very happy! That means reduced demand. The higher the price, the less people will want to use it. He likes that because that equals no economic growth. In other words: A continued recession. There's no other outcome. If our energy production is not increasing -- and forget that. If our demands for energy are being reduced, then there's no way our economy is growing. I don't care what anybody says. So our economy is increasing the use (and therefore the cost) of fuel. We had 5% unemployment a few years ago. We have 9% today, so how can any of this that he said be?

RUSH: Holy cow, folks. Barack Obama is morphing into Dick Cheney on Gitmo. I can't tell the difference between the two now. Barack Obama, Dick Cheney on Club Gitmo. I'll tell you what. Obama owes Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld an apology here. And I am due a lot of huzzahs. I am due a lot of attaboys. I am due a lot of, "Way to call it, Rush," on this whole Gitmo business.

RUSH: I'll tell you what, folks, watch now for the uptick in terrorist recruiting all around the world. Remember Obama said that Gitmo and Biden, the Democrats all said that Club Gitmo was one of the largest terror recruitment things that we could have done. Keeping it open, why, it just shows how unfair we are.

Remember all that talk about America denying its own values? I never got so damn sick of hearing a bunch of drivel as I heard about how America was sacrificing its values or diluting its values by having Club Gitmo open as a prison and all it was doing was recruiting terrorists. Obama said he's not gonna close it now. He said he wasn't gonna close it. I want to take you back to January 16th. This was even before he had the signing ceremony with Greg Craig. Now, if you remember the signing ceremony had an executive order announcing that Gitmo would be closed within the next 12 months. And he's reading the executive order, and he gets lost in the process of reading it, and there's some things he's reading he doesn't obviously understand, so he turns to Greg Craig, the White House counsel at the time who actually wrote the executive order, "What do we mean by that here, Greg?" And Craig steps in and explains what Obama means. "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, so we're gonna close it, executive order," and January 16th is before the immaculation. January 16th is before Gitmo, before Obama's inaugurated. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is what I said on January 16th.

RUSH ARCHIVE: Don't deal in things that aren't real. Don't get yourself worked up about something that isn't gonna happen. We got real things to get worked up about here. But closing Gitmo isn't gonna happen. It is not gonna happen. It is not going to happen. They're not gonna close Gitmo.

RUSH: How did I know they weren't gonna close Gitmo? My answer is not gonna satisfy anybody, but it's not complicated. They're liberals and they lie. They're liberals and they lie, and they were talking about this all through the war in Iraq. It was simply a campaign talking point. It was simply a bone they were throwing to their base. What I knew was that once power transferred to them, they were not going to openly preside over defeat. They would more than happily saddle defeat around Bush's neck. If they could have secured defeat in Iraq while Bush was still in the White House, they woulda done it. If they could have succeeded in a humiliating United States military defeat in Iraq or in Afghanistan while they were not in power in the White House, they would have done it.

By the way, did I also not tell you, I don't care what the exit date he says for Afghanistan, don't believe that, either. Well, yesterday they announced we're gonna be there long past the 2014 drop dead get out of there date. It's this summer, by the way, this summer, later part of this year that we're supposed to begin the drawdown of troops in Afghanistan. It's not gonna happen. All of these dates thrown out, once they are in charge of this they are not going to openly secure defeat when that defeat ultimately would fall on their shoulders. They're just not gonna do it. And another reason I knew they weren't gonna close Gitmo is because I also knew that everything they were saying about the war on terror was a lie, everything they were saying about Gitmo being a recruitment tool, all it was was political posturing. They didn't really believe any of it. You go back and find these people when they really believe something, go back to 1998 when Clinton's president. These guys, the Democrats were the first to stand up and excoriate Saddam Hussein for having weapons of mass destruction. They were the first to support Clinton's call for military action to get rid of him. It's not complicated and it's not difficult.

Another reason is because they made such a big show of it. Because they made such a big show of it, I knew it wasn't going to happen. All they were doing was trying to buy off their base, which they didn't care about servicing for the next four years with an immediate attempted policy directive designed to satisfy 'em. So for three, four years all during the Bush bad years, all during the campaign against the Iraq war all they had done is campaign against Gitmo, and they had their lawyers out there trying to sabotage what was going on and portray the United States as the focus of evil in the world. Well, they had to do something once they're immaculated. Okay, that's off the table for a while. I'll deal with the problems of it not closing later on when it happens. Guess what? He's doing it right now, announcing that it's not gonna close, as we ramp up the presidential election year, and he knows that his base, ah, where else they gonna go? They might get ticked off at him for not closing Gitmo, but when it comes down to reelecting him they're gonna be right there. (interruption) Who? You doubted me, H.R.? I did not know this. My chief of staff is admitting for the first time here over the IFB that he doubted me on both of these.

When you say the war, what else are you saying that you doubted me on? Hm-hm. Hm-hm. Hm-hm. Hm-hm. Hm-hm. Right. Got you, okay. I also said the Iraq war would not be an election issue in the campaign of 2008. H.R. is telling me he didn't believe me on that, and he didn't believe me when I said Gitmo was not gonna close 'cause I was the only guy saying it. I'm going to resist calls to fire the chief of staff. Some people are already saying that I can't have such dissension and doubts in the ranks. I'm gonna resist the immediate -- these are just emotional calls to fire the -- (interruption) Snerdley is sitting here saying, "You don't understand how huge it is." I really don't. This is my problem. I guess 'cause I live in Literalville, I don't know why anybody believed him in the first place. That's the big thing, why did anybody believe him? The entire world was not on our butt about Gitmo. You are falling prey to all the gunk that was in the media. If the rest of the world was on our tail about Gitmo, how come when it came time for rest of the world to take some of the prisoners they didn't take 'em? Don't think Obama didn't try, by the way. He tried to get some of these guys expatriated. Their home countries don't want 'em. Other countries do not want these detainees.

Remember, we were told that they were just a harmless bunch of falsely imprisoned, falsely charged young people that were plucked from unfortunate socioeconomic circumstances in the desert, in the depths of poverty, there was no just cause. We had no legal reason to charge 'em, no legal reason to hold 'em, yet we won't let 'em go. If they're so harmless why wouldn't anybody else in the rest of the world take 'em when we wanted to get rid of 'em? They know what's in there. There's another thing going on here. I'm sorry, the Peter King hearings. Now, folks, how many decades has this country been under assault from terrorists acting in the name of Islam, in the name of Allah? How many decades have gone by, and Congress is just now getting around to having hearings on the problem and people are upset that there are going to be hearings? They're not upset at how long it's taken to address this subject, but there are going to be hearings is what has 'em all ticked off? Now, this is crazy. Everything's 180 degrees out of phase. These hearings should have been done decades ago. We're just now getting around to it and we're upset that the hearings are even taking place.

I would say to you, like Snerdley said, "How did you know? This is a bigger deal than you were even admitting to." Why does anybody believe 'em? What did they not lie about when it came to the war in Iraq? They were calling our troops terrorists. It was just unconscionably horrid what these people were saying. Why would anybody believe them? Why does anybody believe liberals? That's my question. The question is not what big secret did I know. They lie. How did I know global warming is a hoax? 'Cause of who's behind pushing it. Liberals. They lie. Now we got two satellites, two years to the day, same problem, fails to open. Satellite's, instead of being in orbit now at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean near Antarctica. You know what they were up there to do? You know what they were up there to study? They were up there to study whether or not there are naturally occurring events that might cause climate change. Well, now, they can't find whether or not there are naturally occurring things, meaning also they were there to investigate whether there is a manmade component to climate change. Well, can't find that out now. Well, who benefits? I don't want to go getting off into conspiracy stuff here, but two satellites, two years to the date apart, both end up in the same spot? Who benefits?

One of my old axioms, always follow the money. One of the reasons that there is this big, never ending push for manmade global warming is 'cause that's who gets the money. When the grant money comes around, if you believe manmade global warming, you get your share of it. Well, the last thing that bunch needs is scientific proof that man has nothing to do with it. If there ever is scientific proof -- and see, I don't need scientific proof because to me the people who are promoting manmade global warming are a bunch of frauds. They are liberals. They lie. It's not a generalization. It is an Undeniable Truth of Life. So whereas you might find it odd that I would be so confident that Obama did not mean it when he said Club Gitmo is gonna close, I turn right around to you and ask, why did you believe him in the first place?

Why does anybody believe Obama when he talks about caring about private sector jobs? Why does anybody believe him? Why does anybody believe Obama when he talks about wanting economic growth? Where's the evidence? Why does anybody believe him? Why does anybody believe anything Obama says about his stated goals and intentions? Because, folks, if he had been honest he wouldn't have been elected. And if he was being honest since he's been elected, he would have been impeached because none of it is what anybody bargained for when they went to the polls in 2008. And it's not just Obama. The Democrat Party at large, liberalism at large, why does anybody believe 'em? The safe bet is to never believe 'em. You'll be wrong a lot less than if you do believe 'em.

RUSH: By the way, the AP story -- I'm looking for it here -- on the closure of Club Gitmo is amazingly forgiving. Oh, yeah! Folks, they don't hold Obama accountable here at all. Now, they're not happy at the Washington Post (Dana Milbank is not too crazy about it) but the AP is amazingly forgiving. Yeah, yeah. Oh, oh! Here it is. Let's see. Yeah. "Obama Restarts Guantanamo Trials -- President Barack Obama reversed course Monday and ordered a resumption of military trials for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, making his once ironclad promise to close the isolated prison look even more distant. ...

"Obama made the change with clear reluctance, bowing to the reality that Congress' vehement opposition to trying detainees on U.S. soil leaves them nowhere else to go." So, you see, it's not even his fault! It's the fault of the Republicans in Congress. Now, you remember, don't you, that story from way back when the Associated Press explained that it was Congress' fault that George H. W. Bush reneged on his "Read my lips: No new taxes" promise? Oh, yeah, I remember that story! Bush said, "Read my lips: No new taxes," and all of a sudden changed his mind, he raised taxes, and the AP had a story: "Don't blame Bush! It was Tom Foley in Congress. They were responsible! They gave him no wiggle room."

You don't remember that story? Well, good, 'cause that story didn't happen. But here is the AP, blaming Republicans in Congress. Republicans in Congress refused to allow Obama to conduct military trials on U.S. soil. So poor old Obama, our young, poor man-child president sadly (sigh) had no choice. No choice whatsoever! He had to break his promise. Ho-ho-ho. (sobbing) That's so sad. It's just sad! We have done his dand. It was a meddling impress, ladies and gentlemen. Poor Obama. So I guess Gitmo is no longer the source of terrorism recruitment, right? Month after month, year after year, story after year, repeating the liberal mantra about Gitmo -- even McCain took the bait, for crying out loud! -- and now Obama "reverses course." He's not closing it. Now, what about all those terrorists there who will be held indefinitely against their will? Let me tell you it's another reason, Snerdley, they're keeping Gitmo open.

RUSH: A story from CNBC. This really bothers me. It bothers me. It tugs at my heart. It bothers me I can't tell you how much. "Handouts..." This headline alone: "Government Handouts," welfare, whatever you want to call it, "Make Up One-Third of US Wages." One-third! Of course we're really not talking "wages," but I understand the use of the word in this story and in the headline. One-third of us don't earn anything. One-third of us live totally on handouts. One-third of our great country lives on handouts -- and even this story, at the end, says it really isn't that bad. It could be worse. It could be like Europe.

RUSH: "Government payouts -- including Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance -- make up more than a third of total wages and salaries of the U.S. population, a record figure that will only increase if action isn't taken before the majority of Baby Boomers enter retirement." Now, we had that chart, we put it up on the website last week, and we showed the three biggest entitlements in this country. We all know Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, but unemployment compensation? The payment of unemployment benefits is almost as high as Social Security in this country. Folks, we are not going to survive as a nation, not the way we've been founded, with this kind of sloth and laziness and feeding at the public trough.

It just cannot happen. And to even call this "wages" -- I'm actually kinda glad they did because it points out how ludicrous this is and how dangerous it is. "Handouts," handouts, the redistribution of wealth "makes up one-third of U.S. wages." Social welfare spending has increased three and a half times since 1960. We declared war on poverty, and it's given us this. We declared war on poverty, and what do we have? Thirty-five percent of our people living on the dole! Thirty-five percent of American citizens living on "handouts," and where are the handouts coming from? Their fellow citizens. That's what's never talked about here. It's all, "Oh, it comes from the government, Mr. Limbaugh."

It comes from their neighbors! It comes from fellow citizens! This is intolerable. How did we ever survive before? How did this nation get along? How did the people in this country get by before the great War on Poverty declared by Lyndon Johnson? How did it happen? How come we're always told we can't afford any war -- we can't afford Vietnam, we can't afford Iraq, we can't afford Afghanistan -- but we always have plenty of money for the War on Poverty? And look what it has done to us! "Even as the economy has recovered, social welfare benefits make up 35 percent of wages and salaries this year, up from 21 percent in 2000 and 10 percent in 1960, according to TrimTabs Investment Research using Bureau of Economic Analysis data."

In other words, social welfare spending has increased 3-1/2 times since 1960. Unsustainable. How did we ever get by before all this? How did anybody ever survive? "'The U.S. economy has become alarmingly dependent on government stimulus,' said Madeline Schnapp, director of Macroeconomic Research at TrimTabs, in a note to clients." Government economy? Thirty-five percent of the American public "has become alarmingly dependent on" its neighbors! "'Consumption supported by wages and salaries is a much stronger foundation for economic growth than consumption based on social welfare benefits.'" No kidding! But not according to Nancy Pelosi and Austan Goolsbee.

Pelosi and Goolsbee say that this unemployment compensation generates a buck and a half return for every dollar-of-benefits. It's an out-and-out lie. (interruption) No! This makes me so mad because we're destroying people's lives. Snerdley, that's why it makes me mad! One-third of the people of this country are being denied their full opportunity to reach their own potential -- and this is on purpose. This is a direct result of liberalism, the Democrat Party: Create as much dependence as possible. And it's increasing. Cloward-Piven, I don't care what you want to call it: Put so much stress on the system, the system eventually implodes because it's not capable. Thirty-five percent.

What happens if the payments stop? (interruption) Riots happen. Exactly right. Riots happen if the payments stop. Riots and who knows whatever the hell else happens (with the full support, by the way, of the Democrat Party and the American left who are responsible for this boondoggle). So, "The economist" here, Madeline Schnapp, "gives the country two stark choices. In order to get welfare back to its pre-recession ratio of 26 percent of pay, 'either wages and salaries would have to increase $2.3 trillion, or 35 percent, to $8.8 trillion, or social welfare benefits would have to decline $500 billion, or 23 percent, to $1.7 trillion,' she said. ...

"Social welfare benefits have increased by $514 billion over the last two years, according to TrimTabs figures, in part because of measures implemented to fight the financial crisis," and measures implemented to buy votes, frankly. But then there's this, and this is the kicker -- and this is from, again, Madeleine Schnapp: "At the very least, we can take solace in the fact that we're not quite at the state welfare levels of Europe. In the U.K., social welfare benefits make up 44 percent of wages and salaries, according to TrimTabs' Schnapp," and that's right where we're headed, by design, and the big secret is that Europe's going the other way.

They've reached the point of tipping. They cannot sustain it. They are cutting back benefits. They're cutting back tuitions. They're getting the riots! We're getting mini-versions of riots in Wisconsin. They're coming to Ohio. They're coming to Indiana. Europe is going the opposite direction. They have realized they can't sustain it anymore. Europe is trying to get rid of its version of Obamacare, but we have Obamacare yet to fully implement. All the other goodies that Obama is handing out from his "stash," that number is gonna hit 44% before you can say "social justice!" (interruption) Yes, it infuriates me. It infuriates me for these people. (interruption)

No, I'm not so much mad at them. I mean, that's a waste of time getting mad at them. Sure, some of the 35% are general born freeloaders (every society is gonna have some of those), but a lot of these people have been manufactured. They've been created. A lot of people think this is what they are due as Americans, that this is their entitlement. They haven't been taught the founding. They haven't been taught industriousness. They haven't been taught self-reliance. All that stuff's sneered at. They haven't been taught the beauty of work and achievement, accomplishment, and self-esteem that way. Folks, this is a crime. There's not very much could make me cry but this could. This to me is totally unacceptable.

I saw this yesterday and I said, "I just..." I mean it's something that you instinctively know. We all know there's a lot of welfare. We all know that Democrat Party is promoting it. We all know that, but to see one-third -- one-third! -- of what we would all consider salaries, "wages," is welfare checks? I don't care what you call it, "unemployment compensation," I don't care. It's welfare checks! It's the redistribution of wealth, pure and simple. The idea that this is desired and being done on purpose by an entire political party in this country?

Then you realize the Democrats want more people dependent on government, dependent on them so they can keep their phony baloney jobs. Now the... the... (interruption) Yeah, the preferred politically correct term is "income transfers." BS! It's welfare. My friends, I'm just gonna tell you here: When you have, in the budget pie on the expenditure side, "unemployment compensation" as an entitlement? It's there. It's listed as an entitlement, and it costs as much as Social Security. (snorts) Whoa! At least with Social Security there is the ruse, there is the illusion that people have contributed to some of it. You gonna pay people 99 weeks not to work or longer, guess what? They're not gonna work. Pure and simple.

I gotta take a break. We'll do that, we'll get back in a jiffy before you know it.

RUSH: Well, yeah, I know it's depressing, folks. I mean some people are so lazy that they will only be unemployed if they're paid to be unemployed. I mean that's where we're headed. They're only gonna be unemployed if they're paid to be, and they're gonna expect some kind of entitlement. Yeah, the worse you tell 'em the economy is the more evidence they think they have for not even trying to find a job, but they still have to eat and live and it's somebody's responsibility, it's not theirs. It's the Wall Street guys, it's the rich, it's Big Oil. I mean this is the result of what the Democrat rhetoric has been all these years. You know, if unemployment checks would stop, some people, not all, would be so incensed at being expected to sit around the house for nothing they'd probably do something about it, either protest like in Greece or Wisconsin or maybe they'd even go get a job.

RUSH: Here's Bob in Glenwood, Illinois. Bob, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello, sir.

CALLER: Long-time listener. And I just want to say it's an honor to speak with you.

CALLER: I have a question for you. You know, I'm kind of caught between a rock and a hard place. I've been a conservative all my life.

CALLER: I ran into a little bit of an issue a few years ago when I got some severe cancer and battled it for a couple years. I'm cancer free right now, but unfortunately I cannot work and I had to go on disability.

CALLER: And I was just wondering, you know, like I say I'm kinda in conflict with myself because --

RUSH: No, you're not. You're in conflict with me and what I just said. Let me ask you a question.

CALLER: Well, no, sir, I've always been told that, you know, tax money and this and that goes to, in case anything like this comes up --

RUSH: Okay. I don't think that. I'm not talking about people like you, but there are people who fudge this disability business. I had a story not long ago about a bunch of drunks --

CALLER: No, sir, I agree with that, sir. But, you know, I want our country to survive, and, you know, I just don't know where we can get --

RUSH: Well, we are a compassionate country. There is not a person in this country that does not want somebody who cannot provide for themselves to go empty. There's not a person in the world who wants that. You don't fall under the headline definition freeloader or what have you. And if you're bothered by it, it's life. A lot of things affect a lot of people. But we're not talking about you. And you are not the majority of that 35% on the dole anyway. You're a small percentage of it. You're not the problem we're talking about.

RUSH: The share of US population receiving Social Security disability insurance benefits is rising, and it is rising rapidly, but it's got a long way to go to get to 35%. Details are coming up plus the other two hours. Who knows what they hold.

RUSH: Here you go from the National Bureau of Economic Research, and this is a bunch of leftists who decide when it is recessions begin and when they end. Keep in mind that these are the clowns that told us the recession actually started back during the Bush years when it didn't. Anyway, according to this bunch of leftists, the share of the US population receiving Social Security disability insurance -- SSDI -- has risen rapidly over the past 20 years from 2.2% of adults, 25-64, that was in 1985, 4.1% of adults, 25-64, in 2005. Disabled workers make up more than 15% of those receiving Social Security. That's the bottom-line figure. The most important factor is the liberalization of the disability screening process, and this occurred due to a 1984 law. This law directed the Social Security Administration to place more weight on applicants' reported pain and discomfort, relax their screening of mental illness, consider applicants with multiple non-severe ailments and give more credence to medical evidence provided by the applicant's doctor.

So there is, we must say, there is a working system. There's a system for people to get on disability insurance, Social Security. There's a pathway. It's been spelled out, sort of like the Americans with Disability Act itself which has allowed a lot of people to jump on the dole. Sorry to say it, folks, but that's the case. And it just irritates me, and again, the reason why this irritates me is above and beyond the fact that it's not sustainable. Remember when I defined conservatism during my CPAC speech? I said we conservatives love everybody. We want everybody to be great. We want everybody to be happy and content. We want everybody to have a shot. We want everybody to have unfettered opportunity at their version of the American dream. We don't define the American dream as welfare. We want people to be productive; to experience all that life can offer.

And I'll tell you, it just grates on me that we are in a war with a political party that does not share that view of people, and furthermore, that that party somehow has been able to claim the mantle of compassion. They're the ones that everybody thinks care about everybody. And it's the exact opposite. They're dooming people to lives of abject misery, all for their own benefit, the politicians' benefit. It just really grates on me. This is not in any way a foundation for a great country. This is building a foundation for tearing down a great country, tearing it apart, pure and simple. This waste of humanity, this utter waste of human potential in the freest country ever to exist, it just makes me sick. It just does. We sit here and talk about nothing's real. One-third, 35%, one-third -- (interruption) what is being done to them is a waste. I didn't call 'em waste. Their lives are being wasted. It's a damn shame.

We all only get one life. We get one life. We conservatives want people to maximize it. It's just one. There's only one and you don't get yesterday back. Whatever happened yesterday happened. You don't get do-overs. And they all add up. One day your life is over. And look what we have consigned one-third of our people to, basically a life of servitude, indentured or otherwise. Now, this is not how it's supposed to be. We have more opportunity for human achievement, accomplishment, greatness in this country than anywhere the world has ever known. And we have a political system which has relegated 35% of our population to circumstances where they will likely never know what awaits them, what they've been cheated out of or what they're going to miss or what have you. So it's just a shame. I'm sorry. I take it personally. This stuff does grate on me.

If I were a presidential candidate, this would be issue number one. National security, of course, but if you really care about people, if you really want the best for 'em, you cannot look at this statistic and be tolerable of it. And to know that there are people who are not only tolerant of it but are encouraging it and are attempting to feed off of it, benefit from it themselves, it makes me even angrier.

RUSH: Mark in Marshall, Texas, as we go back to the phones. Great to have you on the EIB Network, sir. Hello.

CALLER: I guess I had one point I wanted clarification on and then I had a quick question. You were talking earlier -- and I don't care, I don't know what you call Social Security. You were kind of lumping people that were drawing Social Security that had worked all their life paying into Social Security into the same group of people who were drawing unemployment and other, uh, free handouts, and I just kind of took offense to that a little bit --

RUSH: No, that's not what I said. What I said the unemployment compensation, the cost of paying it --

CALLER: You know, I've worked all my life, and I worked for a government -- in fact, a local government; and, knock on wood, we've had a balanced budget for 21 years that I've been there. I wish the Feds could say that.

CALLER: But I guess my question was -- and this is total different than what we were just talking about; I guess I just misunderstood what you were saying earlier about Social Security, because I feel like it is an "entitlement" in a sense because I feel like I am "entitled" to it.

CALLER: And don't... I hate the way the government... I mean, I'm as conservative as they come. I feel like, "You don't work, you don't eat," you know? Or you eat dirt or whatever, you know? But if you can't -- you know, like the guy earlier that was disabled -- I feel like it's our obligation, almost, to take care of people like that. But my question, I guess, was on the unemployment issue. Whenever they figure the unemployment, do they actually get the number of people who have exceeded it, even though it's now 99 weeks? I mean, I know there's people out there that have drawn unemployment for 99 weeks (I can't believe that, but they do) and they go past that point, are they still counted in those numbers, in the unemployment rate?

RUSH: It depends. After a certain passage of time people are simply "dropped "from the category of unemployed, and there's a category "unemployed but not looking for work anymore," and that number is the U-6 figure. The monthly unemployment number that we get from the federal categorization is called the U-3 (U dash 3) number. Right now that number is 8.9%; and that number does not include the numbers of people who have simply given up trying to find a job after who knows how long. We assume it's 99 weeks, but we don't know. We can't find out. We do not know how they know who has stopped looking for work.

They don't tell us this. They just assume that after unemployment benefits have run out, people stop looking for work, I guess. So we really don't know. But the U-6 unemployment number that includes people who are out of work and no longer looking is about 17 or 18%, not 8.9%. Now, I want to go back to this "entitlement" versus unemployed, Social Security, and so forth and so on. I know there's a lot of sensitivity about this. I know that the way I talk about this, no politician ever could (which I think is emblematic of one of the things wrong with politics). From a budget-writer standpoint, an entitlement is something they can't touch. Social Security is an entitlement. That means it's written into law: There cannot be any cuts to it. You can't pare it down.

It's just there. It's like it's etched in stone like the Ten Commandments. (That's what they mean by an "entitlement.") To other people an entitlement is something a bunch of lazy people think is theirs simply because they were born in America, and that, as Americans, they are entitled to their country giving them enough for these to live on. There are two distinct definitions here. What I'm talking about is the overall number. I don't care what the subdivisions are: 35% of the American people are living on something produced by somebody else, not themselves. Now, contrary to the knee-jerk reaction that people have when I say this, I am not first condemning those people.

I could, and I would eventually get to it in my priority list, but that's not my concern.

My concern is for the country at large. Thirty-five percent of people who have money coming in are not earning it! I don't want to hear the sob stories. You know, we got Social Security disability and I understand that there are people that can't work, and nobody is saying, "Don't take care of them." Nobody with common sense. I don't even want to have to waste time defending that. I'm talking about the United States of America as a structured system whereby a population manages its affairs, whereby a nation maintains itself as a superpower, whereas a nation maintains a manufacturing base, whereas a nation maintains itself as an economic power.

I'm simply saying that 35% (and growing, by the way) of the American people receiving money that they are not earning is not a way to sustain anything that anybody thinks is great about this country. Not possible. And in this story we're told: Well, it could be worse. I mean Europe, 44%! Yeah, and look at Europe. Are they a world power, a leader in anything? They have lost their countries. They've lost their borders. They're losing their cultures. They have all these cradle-to-grave programs. They've got 14% unemployment. They've got rampant poverty. They've got people that cannot get treated for months in line for simple medical procedures. So to the point: They are reversing direction. They're trying to cut back on some of these programs they can no longer afford.

We, on the other hand, are headed in the direction they are now trying to reverse. If we were 35% and falling, let's throw a party. We're 35% and growing, and we're growing fast. And I am terribly sorry if the knee-jerk reaction to this is somebody taking it so personally they're thinking I'm insulting them. I am not. But I could if you want. When I get to my list of things on the priority list that bother me about this, at some point there's a group of people out there could very well be working and are not, and we all know it -- and I don't think that it somehow violates some contract to mention it. Even Snerdley is looking at me, "I can't believe you're saying this!" Why? You don't think that there are people out there capable of working who aren't, scamming the system?

Okay. Well, they are. But the aggregate of this, the aggregate... Maybe I'm personalizing this too much. I will acknowledge that. I don't know how I can avoid doing it, though, but I think we all personalize things like this. I'll just tell you, and I mentioned this before: I can't stand gifts. I don't like the obligation of having somebody give me something. Birthday, Christmas is a different thing, but you know what I'm talking about. I don't like it. I just don't like the obligation. (sigh) That's why I can never run for office. You gotta ask people for money, and they're gonna want to be paid back somehow. (interruption) Well... (interruption) Oh, now Snerdley says that I'm different because I always have to be on the lookout for people trying to bribe or scam or use me or what have you.

Well, that's true, but I've had this attitude long before that aspect of my life became paramount. I know I'm weird. (interruption) Well, not only... (interruption) Well, whatever it is, I know it's strange -- and I also realize how really fortunate I've been. I realize not everybody can live their way the way I've sought to and have succeeded in doing. I'm not suggesting that I'm any kind of a model to live by. I'm saying from the standpoint of a country -- and also making it personal, I do look at my own life. I've been broke couple times, and I've been stretched thin. I've had my house payment and my MasterCard bill due in the same two-week period of the month and I could not pay 'em both no matter what I did.

So I'm not speaking from a silver spoon standpoint such as the Kennedys might or some such thing. I just genuinely do, because of the great fortune that I have had happen to me because I am an American -- because I live here -- I would love nothing more than for as many millions of people as possible to experience it themselves. And in the process of that happening, the greatness of this country would be undoubted, it would be unquestioned, and it would be prospering. We would be continuing to grow. The opportunity for prosperity, the greatest amount of freedom any human beings have ever had since the beginning of time, is the United States of America.

And to see it squandered by a political party promoting it because this is how they get votes and maintain not just power, but control over people? I guess that's it: I don't desire to have any control over anybody. I don't. I have no desire to have power over a single human being. I really am, "I'll take care of myself and you take care of yourself, and whatever happens, happens." I'm not in any way, shape, manner, or form into manipulation, domination, or any of that. But I know I'm also odd in that regard, too. I can't tell you number of people that are into that kind of thing: Power, manipulation, domination, or what have you. I have no interest in that whatsoever. I'm speaking purely and simply as a small little speck of a citizen here who has fortunately experienced all the great opportunities this country has to offer.

When I see 35% and growing! I've said for 23 years, we talk about, what? We talk about the things that are posing threats to this country's existence, be it Obama, be it liberalism, be it what have you. Here we're dealt with a slap upside the head: 35% and growing the American people are living off of somebody else. Okay, we want to be Greece? Go for it! But we don't, do we? Do we want to be France, do we want to be the UK, do we want to be the EU? Sadly, some of our leaders want to do head in that direction. "What's wrong with those countries, Mr. Limbaugh?" Nothing's wrong with those countries, but the free people of the world can't depend on 'em and the free people of those countries can't depend on their own governments.

They have to depend on us. The whole freedom aspect as part of this recipe is crucial as well. So for all of you taking this personally and thinking that I, El Rushbo, sitting behind my Golden EIB Microphone am personally insulting you and calling you a freeloader: Well, if it fits, fine. Wear it. But that's not my point here. I'm looking beyond individuals here. As far as my perspective is concerned, I'm looking at this as an American. If I'm failing to communicate what about this really bothers me then it's my problem and I'll continue to work at it to the point that nobody has any confusion about what I'm saying. In the meantime, you freeloaders know who you are. If your loafers fit, wear 'em.

RUSH: One more time, to me 35% -- and to have some of this called wages, folks, we're losing -- 35% of American adults on the dole, to me, is the single reason why I have been doing this show since I started in Sacramento, hoping that number would never be more than 20, 25%. It's the single reason. That number, 35%, everything you want to know about what's wrong with American politics is in that number. Everything you want to know that's wrong with the Democrat Party and liberalism is in that number. Everything you want to know about what's wrong with the way this country is managing its affairs is to be found in that number. Everything you want to know about whether or not we have a military that can defend this country is found in this number.

Everything you want to know about whether or not we're gonna continue to win medals, gold medals at the Olympics can be found in that number. Everything you want to know about what's wrong and the future of American education can be found in that number. Everything you want to know to explain why so many manufacturing jobs have left America can be found in that number. Everything you want to know to explain how in the world did we ever get to the point where our government was demanding that banks loan money to buy houses people would never be able to repay can be found in that number. It's Tocqueville. Once it has been established that that many people figure out that they can get whatever they get for nothing, then America as we've known it is severely threatened and in peril. It's that simple.

DEMINT: Other countries even today are looking at us and wanting to be free, as violence erupts around the world to try to overthrow authoritarian regimes, so people can live in freedom. But at the same time other countries strive to be like America, America seems to be determined, at least at the political level, to push our way towards a Third World country that's so in debt and so dependent that we no longer can determine our own destiny. 'Cause today America is literally on its knees to China and other countries for the credit we need to run our economy. We're also on our knees to the Middle East, which is very unstable right now, for the energy we need to run our country, to even take our food to market, the essentials here at home.

RUSH: He went on and on and on. The whole theme of the thing here was America on its knees. I'm telling you, go back, this number, 35% of our population living off of what others earn. The answer to so many problems can be found right in that number, the explanation. How many of you, when you first heard about the subprime mortgage crisis -- I'll admit to being naive, "You mean to tell me we had a program where people who demonstrably could not pay the money back were ordered to be lent money? We had a government program requiring banks to loan money to those people? And we knew they would never be able to pay it back?" Well, when I first heard about that I ran it through my filter. Okay, liberalism on the march here, Barney Frank, affordable housing, this is how you equalize the unfairness of some people having houses and money and some people not having it. But it's a death knell.

So if you look at that, 35% of the people living off somebody else, what's the difference in getting a loan you never have to pay back? It's all there. America on its knees to the ChiComs, to the Saudis, I don't know about you, folks, there might be some people you wouldn't mind being on your knees for, but I can't see it here, the ChiComs or the Saudis. But that's just me.

RUSH: The New York Times -- (laughing) -- I mean the whole paper today. "Rising Gas Cost Finds the Nation Better Prepared." (laughing) Yes. "The increase in energy prices is beginning to resemble the rise in 2008. But this time, the American economy may be better prepared for higher fuel costs. ... While the latest surge in energy prices is likely to cause some pain and slow the recovery from the recession, economists say the spike is unlikely to derail the rebound unless prices rise a lot further. One big reason is that consumers and businesses have learned lessons from the last oil shock. ... Industries like airlines and trucking, which are most severely affected by fuel prices, have passed on their higher costs almost immediately instead of waiting for the price increases to hammer profits. And much of the rest of the United States economy is far less dependent on oil than it used to be." (laughing) It's not possible, but that's what they're saying.

"Ronnie Undeberg, 50, of Summerfield, Fla., started driving less in December, when gas hit $3 a gallon. 'I started planning my errands,' he said. If gas reaches $4, Mr. Undeberg, a discipline clerk at Lake Weir Middle School, said he would scale back his cable television package and cut his cellphone use." He's a discipline clerk at a middle school. What is that? Dawn, you've had kids in middle school. Did you have a discipline clerk there? You don't know what that is? Does anybody know? A clerk is somebody on the other side of a desk in a bureaucracy. "But so far, consumers and businesses seem to have adapted to the higher prices much more quickly than in 2008." So you see, folks, it isn't a problem and you're not even that bothered by it and the economy is not even gonna slow down. It's a beautiful thing. It's totally unlike when gasoline prices rose under George W. Bush. But everything's so much better now with Obama. We're far more mature. We're far greater understanding of our problems and we're better able to deal. The unemployed are better prepared, hell, yes, Snerdley, you've got it, you've nailed it. The unemployed are better prepared to deal with it, more time with their families here, if you can't drive. Oh, it's all a positive. It's all a positive.

Folks, I haven't even scratched the surface. We got a whole series of stories here that you could title, "It's really not that bad out there." A bunch of stories that would fit under that rubric, "It's really not that bad."

RUSH: The template here that I have detected as I pore through State-Controlled Media outlets today is: Everything's fine; everything's okay. It's actually much better than it would otherwise be, because we have Obama. And the first story from this template I've shared with you: "Rising Gasoline Cost Finds the Nation Better Prepared." Everything's cool! I mean, even the homeless do not care that the price of Sterno is going up. Everything's just peachy. Everybody involved has adjusted well to rising gasoline prices and there's no problem. Nothing to see there. Also in this template Everything is Fine.

USA Today: "Report: Pensions Not Bankrupting States -- A two-part series by McClatchy Newspaper examines public- and private-sector pension plans and delivers this conclusion: 'There's simply no evidence that state pensions are the current burden to public finances that their critics claim.'" Nothing to see here.

There really isn't a problem with all of these underfunded pensions. I don't know who told you that, but whoever told you that is wrong or they're lying to you. "Pension contributions from state and local employers aren't blowing up budgets. ... [S]tate and local pension contributions approximate the burden shouldered by private companies."

There's nothing. There's nothing to worry about here. That's USA Today. From Bloomberg News: "Bonds Show Why Boehner Saying 'We're Broke' is a Figure of Speech." Hey, everything's fine, here! This analyst says we can't possibly be broke if people will lend us money. If somebody will lend you money you can't possibly be broke. You can always raise taxes even if you are broke. So... Greece, now, that's broke, but we're not broke. We're doing fine here. Nothing wrong. From The Politico: "Poll: Americans Want a Budget Compromise," but, "If there were to be a shutdown, Americans see Republicans more likely to win political points," 45% to 34%. That's a Bloomberg poll of 1,001 adults.

That's not so particularly good as far as these people are concerned. In the meantime -- while everything's fine; nothing to see here.

RUSH: Don in Chicago as we start on the phones today. Great to have you with us, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Your opening story has an obvious contradiction. It said that the rising gas prices is not having an adverse effect on the economy because businesses are passing off the costs to their consumers a lot faster than they did in the past.

RUSH: It's not just that, it's silly. I mean to sit here and say that businesses are not as affected here because they're passing off costs to their customers sooner, a lot faster than they did in the past?

RUSH: It's totally crazy. But the whole story is crazy, the whole story is crazy. Rising gas price, not a problem, everybody is prepared this time, everything's fine, everything's cool, everything's hunky-dory. There's not one problem. You're right, doing things like that would be inflationary. But it also is not happening. And if businesses are passing costs along that ultimately has an impact on whoever's paying those costs. They're either not buying or buying less or whatever. It ain't fine. But get ready. We warned you of this. We told you. The rising gas price, it's gonna be a Bush problem that poor old Obama inherited, but everything is actually okay. We know a lot more about this now than we did with Bush. Everything's fine. So what they're really telling you, "Don't start complaining about the gasoline price to us because we're not gonna do any stories on it; no compassion for you. If rising gas prices hurts you, it's your tough luck. Everybody else has learned how to deal with it, why haven't you?"

'I'm still in love with Bill': Friends say why Monica Lewinsky has never got married or had kids (this is not a joke):

Secret WH memo: Why aren't any high schools asking Obama to speak at commencement this year?

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

The Other Half of History (the history which is ignored in the modern classroom):

Liberty’s Army (mostly economic and middle eastern revolutionary news right now):

The Iowahawk, which is a blog, at times, heavy with stats, and at other times, it is hard to tell:

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 #169	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	March 13, 2011