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).

Japan continues to dig itself out from its catastrophe and continues to deal with it affected nuclear plants.

Hundreds of Islamists hurled stones at secular opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei as he went to cast his ballot in a referendum in Egypt's capital on Saturday

President Obama informs us of his opinion of who the final four will be in the NCAA tournament.

President Obama begins to set up a no-fly zone over Libya, the first strikes being made by the French. This was suggested by Sarah Palin Feb. 23^rd in an interview with Sean Hannity.

The New York Times redefines its non-fiction best-seller list in order to remove the conservative books of Mike Huckabee, Frank Luntz, and Dick Morris. Their books, all in the top ten and near the top, were moved over to the “How to” list. This will impact the sales of these books negatively and they will not be placed in prominent positions in book stores because they are no longer on the Times Bestseller list.

The President goes to Brazil and other South American countries this week, but will snub Columbia (and I don’t believe that a free trade agreement between the U.S. and Columbia has been put in place yet). Large demonstrations against the President in Brazil are already underway.

The House Republicans held a job creation forum this past week. Actual job creators spoke at this get-together.

The President required that the Dayton Police Department lower its test standards so that more minorities would be hired.

Amtrak is renaming the train station in Wilmington, Del., after stimulus "sheriff" Vice President Joe Biden - after the project received $20 million in stimulus money and came in $5.7 million over the initial announced budget. Amtrak CEO Joe Boardman was stuck on the train to the ceremony, so he had to drive.

As Obama begins a war in Libya, peace activists demonstrate in front of the White House against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I believe I mentioned this before, but it showed up again in the news: The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.

In a press release issued Thursday, Sodexo USA announced that the company has filed a civil lawsuit against the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) under the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act., accusing the union of engaging in an "illegal campaign of extortion."

Feel-good story of the day: Two Nigerian Islamists killed by their own bomb while trying to plant it outside church.

Two former leaders of the Oakland County Democratic Party are facing a total of nine felonies for allegedly forging election paperwork to get fake Tea Party candidates on November's ballot.

The White House is now proposing a Hollywood version of the Patriot Act - legislation that would allow copyright wiretaps against website owners who post copyrighted materials.

President Obama, about Brazil’s President Dilma: "I have told her that the United States wants to be a major customer [of Brazilian oil], which can be a win-win for both our countries."

President Obama on his gun-control record: "My administration has not curtailed the rights of gun owners, it has expanded them, including allowing people to carry their guns in national parks and wildlife refuges."

Reporter Tina Brown: “With the world exploding as it is, I must say that Obama has the worst inbox of any president in history.” Miss Brown has apparently forgotten about the economic conditions which greeted President Reagan on day 1; WWII and the depression during the time of FDR, a dissolving union facing Lincoln, and W facing back to back recessions and 9/11 within the first 2 years of his presidency.

Harry Reid [defending federal funding for NPR]: “They had a great piece on public radio before the race started; it was really very, very good, about why the [sled dog] race takes place.”

Nancy Pelosi: "Democrats have long fought for fiscal responsibility as a top priority of this Congress. We won’t go into the history right now, but it’s well known."

Nancy Pelosi: "I think this debate is on a higher ground of our values. It's not about money. It's about the morality of what we're doing."

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."

Top security advisor John Brennan: "Closing Guantanamo Bay is important for our national security interests. But there are many, many complex complex elements to Guantanamo Bay that truly are going to make it very difficult to move swiftly with the closing of that facility."

A disenchanted Louis Farrakhan"And I warn my brother [Obama] don't you let these wicked demons move you in a direction that will absolutely ruin your future with your people in Africa and throughout the world. . . . You can't order him to step down and get out - who the hell do you think you are? - that you can talk to a man that built a country over 42 years and ask him to step down and get out - can anybody ask you?"

Joe Biden at a virtual townhall meeting to political activists and union members: "Let's get something straight. The only people who have the capacity - organizational capacity and muscle - to keep, as they say, the barbarians from the gate, is organized labor. And make no mistake about it, the guys on the other team get it. They know if they cripple labor, the gate is open, man. The gate is wide open. And we know that too."

Joe Biden, shooting from the hip again: "When a woman got raped, blame her because she was wearing a skirt too short, she looked the wrong way or she wasn't home in time to make the dinner. We've gotten by that. But it's amazing how these Republicans, the right wing of this party - whose philosophy threw us into this God-awful hole we're in, gave us the tremendous deficit we've inherited - that they're now using, now attempting to use, the very economic condition they have created to blame the victim - whether it's organized labor or ordinary middle-class working men and women. It's bizarre. It's bizarre."

Rob Andrews, the ranking member of the House Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions Subcommittee: “Drilling for oil off the coast is a problem, not a solution.”

Muammar Ghaddafi, in a letter to the President: "To our son, his excellency, Mr Barack Hussein Obama. I have said to you before, that even if Libya and the United States of America enter into a war, god forbid, you will always remain a son. Your picture will not be changed."

Bill Maher: “Governing this country with Republicans is like rooming with a meth addict. Every black person scares you unless they look like Urkel, talk like Colin Powell and wear Bill Cosby sweaters”

Bill Maher: "Did you hear this - Sarah Palin finally heard what happened in Japan and she's demanding that we invade `Tsunami. I mean she said, `These `Tsunamians' will not get away with this.' Oh speaking of dumb twats, did you..."

Tweet from Mikeclark2, another from the civil left: JamesOKeefeIII someone needs to f***g find you and assassinate you, like, seriously, you get off by f***g up the truth. I should do it.

Helen Thomas: “Well, there's no understanding of the Palestinians at all. I mean, they're living there and these people want to come and take their homes and land and water and kill their children and kill them....I want people to understand why the Palestinians are upset. They are incarcerated and living in an open prison. I say to the Israelis, "Get out of people's homes!" It's unacceptable to have soldiers knocking on a door at three in the morning and saying, "This is my home." And forcing people out of homes they've lived in for centuries? What is this? How can anybody accept it?”

Michael Moore is unhappy about the no-fly zone being established over Libya, but his tweets on this subject seem to be directed more at Bush than at Obama: “Khadaffy must’ve threatened to kill somebody’s daddy” “Khadaffy must’ve had WMD!” “Khadaffy must’ve planned 9/11!” etc.

Dayton NAACP President Derrick Forward said about lowering the test scores to allow more minority applicants to become policemen: "The NAACP does not support individuals failing a test and then having the opportunity to be gainfully employed. If you lower the score for any group of people, you're not getting the best qualified people for the job." I don’t know if Forward is a liberal or not; I just assume so, since he belongs to the NAACP.

Jon Meacham regarding Obama filling out his NCAA tournament brackets: “My only point is that Bush would have gotten more barbecued for this.”

Louis Farrakhan on Obama: "You are the instrument that God is gonna use to bring about universal change. And that is why Barack has captured the youth...When the messiah speaks, the youth will hear. And the Messiah is absolutely speaking"

Bill Maher, about 6 months ago: "I mean, Brazil got off oil in the last 30 years, we certainly could have."

Ed Scultz before the 2010 election: “I think the best way for the 99ers to get the attention of the Congress is to form an unemployed coalition and just flat-out tell the Democrats, we're not voting in the midterm...And I'm announcing today, I'm not gonna vote in the midterm. I'm not gonna do it!”

Playboy: Do you acknowledge that some Palestinian behavior over the years, including hijacking and the use of suicide bombers, has been wrong and has added to the problem?

Helen Thomas: In an ideal world passive resistance and world disarmament would be great. Unfortunately we don't live in that world. Of course I don't condone any violence against anyone. But who wouldn't fight for their country? What would any American do if their land was being taken? Remember Pearl Harbor. The Palestinian violence is to protect what little remains of Palestine. The suicide bombers act out of despair and desperation. Three generations of Palestinians have been forced out of their homes-by Israelis-and into refugee camps. And the Israelis are still bulldozing Palestinians' homes in East Jerusalem. Remember, Menachem Begin invented terrorism as his MO-and bragged about it in his first book. That's how Israel was created, aided and abetted by U.S. money and arms. To annex and usurp an occupied people's country is illegal under international law. The Israelis know that, but their superior military force has always prevailed against the indigenous people.

President Obama, this week: "I've taken this decision with the confidence that action is necessary, and that we will not be acting alone. Our goal is focused. Our cause is just. And our coalition is strong."

President Bush, 10 years ago: "To all the men and women in our military ... I say this: Your mission is defined. Your objectives are clear. Your goal is just."

President Obama: "The United States did not seek this outcome. Our decisions have been driven by Qaddafi's refusal to respect the rights of his people and the potential for mass murder of innocent civilians."

President Bush: "We did not ask for this mission, but we will fulfill it. ... We defend not only our precious freedoms, but also the freedom of people everywhere to live and raise their children free from fear."

Paul Krugman: “On the other side, we've been assured that spending cuts would do wonders for business confidence. But that hasn't happened in any of the countries currently pursuing harsh austerity programs. Notably, when the Cameron government in Britain announced austerity measures last May, it received fawning praise from U.S. deficit hawks. But British business confidence plunged, and it has not recovered.”

According to KPMG: “Preview figures from the Global Business Outlook survey, compiled by Markit Economics on behalf of KPMG, show that 68% of manufacturing industry respondents expect activity to improve during the next 12 months, compared with just 8% anticipating a decrease.”

Hillary Clinton: "They are not asking for ground troops, they don't want us to get in the fight. Nobody wants to see an arms race in Libya, but it's not a fair fight."

President Obama: "I've dispatched Hillary to the Middle East to talk about how these countries can transition to new leaders - though, I've got to be honest, she's gotten a little passionate about the subject. These past few weeks it's been tough falling asleep with Hillary out there on Pennsylvania Avenue shouting, throwing rocks at the window."

Wolf Blitzer’s questions for Hillary Clinton: "If the President is reelected, do you want to serve a second term as Secretary of State?"

"No."

"Would you like to serve as Secretary of Defense?"

"No."

"Would you like to be vice president of the United States?"

"No."

"Would you like to be president of the United States?"

"No."

Mrs. Clinton said, "No."

Sarah Palin: “It's not government business to spend the working man's tax dollars recklessly - & certainly not government's business to centrally "plan" an economy & control an entrepreneurial spirit! That doesn't work. Government should lay infrastructure, level the playing field, then get out of the way.”

Newt Gingrich on Obama’s slow reaction to Libya: "Well, I think what is increasingly clear is that we have a spectator in chief instead of a commander in chief."

Newt Gingrich, clearly running for president, remarking on Sarkozy’s lead in Libya: "I was, frankly, very disappointed that [Nicolas] Sarkozy did not share with us his Final Four picks. And i think it's his failure to understand the Final Four that allowed him to focus on Libya on a way tha. Clearly, if he had understood the American system he would have understood that his is not a good week to deal with Libya because this is the week to deal with Kansas, Ohio State, and you know things that were really important."

Herman Cain: “That’s what will happen in this Republican competition, the butter will rise to the top because the American people are churning the candidates who are there.”

Former UN Secretary John Bolton: "When President Obama took the office on Jan. 20, 2009, when it came to foreign policy and national security, he wasn't qualified to be president. Today, more than two years later, he's still not qualified."

Andrew Breitbart: “I actually like NPR’s programming; I just don’t believe that we the people should be paying for it...I do believe that they put our a superior liberal product, and if I want to hear what liberals have to say, there’s no better place to go than NPR.”

Gary Kukis “Michael Moore will lead the revolution, if it goes by a donut shop.”

Michele Bachmann: "What I love about New Hampshire and what we have in common is our extreme love for liberty. You're the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord." This turns out to be incorrect, and she was corrected by many newspapers (I would assume mostly by people who did not know this fact either).

Michele responded on her Facebook: "So I misplaced the battles Concord and Lexington by saying they were in New Hampshire. It was my mistake. And by the way... That will be the last time I borrow President Obama's teleprompter!"

Carl Gatton, Alaska State lawmaker, when presenting a bill to outlaw Sharia law: "As a kid, we had Italian neighborhoods, Irish neighborhoods . . . but they didn't impose their own laws. When these neighborhoods are occupied by people from the Middle East, they do establish their own laws."

Jodi Miller: “Now that Guantanamo Bay will remain open indefinitely, the Obama administration has requested that Gitmo trials be restarted. So, liberals, are you now ready to impeach Obama?”

Rush Limbaugh: "I know this is probably not possible, but I would like somehow to have a calculation on how many people in this country actually work for a living rather than siphon for a living."

Rush: "They should ask: 'Mr. Obama, you were not in favor of regime change in Iraq, but you have said Mubarak has to go, and you now think Khadafy has to go. Was Saddam not as bad as Khadafy?'"

Rush: "So we're borrowing $5 billion a day just to service the debt, and the House wants kudos for a continuing resolution that cuts $6 billion in three weeks. It doesn't add up."

Rush: "Obama's just so smart, so advanced, just lives on a different astral plane than we do, and we can't hope to understand. We should just be thankful we're alive at the time he is."

Rush: "David Brooks was smitten with Obama because of the freaking crease in his pants. He said that! And these are the intellectuals." [Recall that David Brooks is NPR’s lone “conservative”]

Rush: "Remember how they said Gitmo was going to create a whole new generation of terrorists? Well, how about this? Any criticism of the Tea Party will create a whole new generation of freedom lovers."

Who will eventually control various nations in the Middle East. Is anything being covertly done about this?

According to Michael Moore, filmmaker and sometime economist, the United States is not broke yet because there are people who still have money. So, Mary Katharine Hamm, formerly of Ham-nation and now of Hammer time, explains to him the simple economics of it all. Great vid and lots of excellent comments as well:

Jimmy Fallon: "In a speech Obama said women earn 75 cents for each dollar a man makes, to which Sarah Palin said, `Have you met Todd?'"

Jimmy Fallon: "President Obama went on ESPN to announce his NCAA tournament picks. Or, as Japan put it, `Really?'"

Jay Leno: "The situation is deteriorating in Libya and Japan and the stock market is collapsing worldwide. President Obama finally took decisive action. He named Duke, Kansas, Ohio State and Pittsburgh as his Final Four."

Rush Limbaugh: "I just got an e-mail from somebody in Rio Linda thanking me for telling them what a 'super moon' is. This person in Rio Linda thought a 'super moon' was when a fat guy drops trou."

1) Some liberals do not want to move forward in nuclear energy unless it is very nearly 100% safe. I think a good conservative response would be, we will not support any federal program unless it can be shown to be 100% free of waste and fraud, both now and in the future.

2) One of the few times Rush Limbaugh is wrong. He observed that several conservatives of import (like Charles Krauthammer) have been knocking Sarah Palin, and he has asked why, and put forth a few theories. Here’s mine: if Sarah Palin runs for President, she will probably get the Republican nomination (present polls mean nothing). These conservative intellectuals (Will and Krauthammer) do not believe that she is electable; that her negatives are too high. Therefore, they go by the William F. Buckley tenet, “Vote for the more conservative person who can win.” So, several prominent conservatives want to get Palin out of the race from the beginning. They do not even want her to throw her hat into the ring.

3) As far as I can tell, the Obama Middle East policy is, “I am a secret Muslim, just like you guys;” “I am reasonable, unlike Bush;” “I tried to close Gitmo, but I couldn’t;” and “let’s just talk about things.” However, there is something more insidious going on. Obama called for the removal of Mubarak immediately, but he waited for weeks to talk about Kadafy (not even calling him by name at first). Iran had an uprising, which he all but ignored. He has not inserted himself into the Libya until 3 weeks too late, which destroyed the momentum of the Libyan uprising.

4) I certainly enjoy NPR and believe that it is a great, national treasure. I feel the same way about Fox News. Neither should be publically funded.

5) On the one hand, Obama has shut down a lot of U.S. drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, but, he is floating a large loan to Brazil to drill deep water wells in the gulf so that we can buy oil from them. Makes sense.

6) Obama seems to be voting present on Libya and the budget; but certainly not on (liberal) gender equality or on bullying.

It is my understanding that the fed is now buying 70% of the national debt (elsewhere, I ready that this was 80%). In the past, they typically purchased 10% of the national debt. I must admit that I have a hard time understanding that; it is like we owe ourselves money and are holding the debt on what we owe ourselves (even though the fed is supposed to be independently owned). Now, as independently owned, can they sabotage the United States, if they so choose?

There were 15 minutes between the earthquake and the tsunami hitting Japan’s coast.

663 illegal aliens from countries with ties to terrorism arrested along southwest border in 2010

President Obama's budget projects that 2011 will see the biggest one-year debt jump in history, or nearly $2 trillion, to reach $15.476 trillion by Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year. That would be 102.6 percent of GDP - the first time since World War II that figure has been reached.

There were 35 fatalities associated with wind turbines in the United States from 1970 through 2010. Nuclear energy, by contrast, did not kill a single American in that time. There is no comparison, by the way, between the amount of energy these two approaches produce.

50% of registered voters said they would definitely or probably vote for someone else other than Obama,

20% of adults would be willing to pay higher taxes to help reduce the federal budget deficit.

The media has talked over and over again about a nuclear meltdown and the nuclear disaster in Japan.

I recall hearing several days worth of news on the peaceniks demonstrating in front of President Bush’s ranch. Did you hear about the peace demonstration in front on the White House? There were several held all over the United States; did you read about any of them?

Speaking of ignoring what is happening; there are many anti-Obama rallies going on in Brazil; have you heard anything about any one of them? However, several news organizations covered in great detail the riots and demonstrations against President Bush in Brazil in 2007. It is not a matter of there being too much Japan news crowding this out. These same media outlets are covering Obama’s brackets and his trip to Brazil.

CBS finally covers NPR scandal...on 4 A.M. news program. The Washington Post also publishes a slanted news story with 2 editorials supporting NPR.

NPR run a story on the “Texas Death Machine” about the death penalty in Texas. When? 2000. Funded by? George Soros.

NY City Councilman and tax evasion—guess which party he belongs to? Here’s the key: if he is a Republican, that will be found in the first paragraph; if he is a Democrat, that might not even be a part of the story.

Newt Gingrich is beginning to feel some of the media attack dogs on his 3 marriages; however, Catholic Andrew Cuomo was painted by the NY Times as having no real conflict with the Catholic church, despite his female live-in girlfriend.

An Obama press conference with questions about what is going on in the world, and him giving his opinion of which basketball team will be in the final four.

The left has been very good at defining dozens of things as being rights, as of late (e.g., collective bargaining right, homosexual marriage rights, a right to food, to medical care and to housing.

There is a lot going on, and Obama seems to be voting present on most of it. It took him 3 weeks to make a decision in Libya, which is very problematic, because, 3 weeks ago, the momentum was on the side of the rebels. We need them to think kindly of the United States.

If you think Obama has any interest or competence with regards to foreign policy. What is his foreign policy? What is the Obama doctrine?

Although the NY Times will write no pieces critical of Catholic governor Andrew Cuomo, expect for them to write several hit pieces on New Gingrich’s marriages and affairs.

One knock on Barack Obama in the 2008 election was his record as an Illinois state senator, where he repeatedly ducked tough issues by voting "present." It seems old habits die hard.

If you'd like to know where the leader of the free world stands on those NCAA rankings, just turn on ESPN. ("I think Kansas has more firepower," he explained as he filled out his bracket.) Wondering what the commander in chief thinks about gun laws? Don't worry-he's in favor of those already on the books, according to a recent op-ed.

If, however, you are curious about where the most powerful man in the universe stands on Libya, radiation, a possible government shutdown, the future of Social Security, or rising oil prices, don't look to the White House. Those issues are tough. Those issues risk mistakes. Those issues might mean unhappy voters. And right now, it's approval ratings the White House cares about.

Obama advisers are spinning their excuses for the president's absence (he needs to stay above the fray, he believes in international agreement). Conservatives, for their part, are beginning to argue the "incompetence" line. A combination of all is probably at work, along with an even greater impulse: political safety. Mr. Obama got a taste of falling approval ratings last year. The White House has worked hard to get those numbers back up and wants to keep them there until Mr. Obama has a GOP opponent and can go into campaign mode-where he's at his best.

And so as Moammar Gadhafi has visited a bloodbath on opposition forces, the White House has for weeks spun its wheels at the United Nations, waiting for someone else to go first. The

White House has argued intervention might provoke an Arab backlash against the U.S., and it could be it actually believes such crazy talk. Yet it seems equally concerned that any U.S.-led military action in Libya-no matter how minor-will invite comparisons to the dreaded Bush warmongers and prove unpopular.

And as Congress lurches from one budget crisis to the next, President Obama leaves negotiations to Vice President Joe Biden. It has been clear for weeks the only way this gets settled is for Mr. Obama and House Speaker John Boehner to find a fiscal 2011 spending-cut number that gets bipartisan support. But Mr. Obama worries that number will be too much for the left, and not enough for the right, and that means . . . controversy.

Today he instead leaves for a five-day Latin American tour. On that trip he will not be visiting Colombia or Panama, whose trade deals he's squelched since he took office. Trade deals, after all, don't always sit well with the public (and rarely with unions).

It took until yesterday for Mr. Obama to address Japan's nuclear problem, and only then to clarify that Americans should and should not be worried about radiation, while also knowing that U.S. power plants are and aren't safe. The president had been touting a new love for nuclear energy (to coax Republicans into a "clean-energy" deal), but the White House is now worried Japan is the hydrogen version of the BP oil spill, and thinking the safest short-term policy is incoherence.

Entitlement reform? Are you people nuts? Who ever won an election on entitlement reform?

The White House's greater interest right now seems to be throwing little bones to its left. A quip here about the Wisconsin labor dispute, a gun-control op-ed there. A promise to quit defending the Defense Against Marriage Act. Yet even these are tiny bones, designed not to hugely upset the broader public.

Careful is the word. Compare this to George W. Bush, who ordered an Iraq surge despite dismal approval ratings.

A "present" strategy didn't hurt the Illinois state senator, who went on to become president-and that may be what's guiding the president's team now. Then again, the White House is discovering there are greater consequences for a "present" president. The administration is realizing, for instance, that a victorious Gadhafi is not in fact to Mr. Obama's, or the world's, advantage-one reason it is now adopting a more aggressive posture.

It also hardly seems a winning strategy for the White House to keep the president's approval ratings below the 50% he needs for re-election. He in particular risks alienating congressional Democrats, who are wearying of being left to handle public criticism. If they start to believe the president is looking out only for himself, they'll do the same. Even if that means undermining pieces of his agenda.

There is another way, of course. The Americans who voted in 2008 didn't vote "present." They voted for a leader. They might even reward Mr. Obama for doing that job.

With the terrible earthquake and resulting tsunami that have devastated Japan, the only good news is that anyone exposed to excess radiation from the nuclear power plants is now probably much less likely to get cancer.

This only seems counterintuitive because of media hysteria for the past 20 years trying to convince Americans that radiation at any dose is bad. There is, however, burgeoning evidence that excess radiation operates as a sort of cancer vaccine.

As The New York Times science section reported in 2001, an increasing number of scientists believe that at some level -- much higher than the minimums set by the U.S. government -- radiation is good for you. "They theorize," the Times said, that "these doses protect against cancer by activating cells' natural defense mechanisms."

Among the studies mentioned by the Times was one in Canada finding that tuberculosis patients subjected to multiple chest X-rays had much lower rates of breast cancer than the general population.

A $10 million Department of Energy study from 1991 examined 10 years of epidemiological research by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health on 700,000 shipyard workers, some of whom had been exposed to 10 times more radiation than the others from their work on the ships' nuclear reactors. The workers exposed to excess radiation had a 24 percent lower death rate and a 25 percent lower cancer mortality than the non-irradiated workers.

Isn't that just incredible? I mean, that the Department of Energy spent $10 million doing something useful? Amazing, right?

In 1983, a series of apartment buildings in Taiwan were accidentally constructed with massive amounts of cobalt 60, a radioactive substance. After 16 years, the buildings' 10,000 occupants developed only five cases of cancer. The cancer rate for the same age group in the general Taiwanese population over that time period predicted 170 cancers.

The people in those buildings had been exposed to radiation nearly five times the maximum "safe" level according to the U.S. government. But they ended up with a cancer rate 96 percent lower than the general population.

Bernard L. Cohen, a physics professor at the University of Pittsburgh, compared radon exposure and lung cancer rates in 1,729 counties covering 90 percent of the U.S. population. His study in the 1990s found far fewer cases of lung cancer in those counties with the highest amounts of radon -- a correlation that could not be explained by smoking rates.

Tom Bethell, author of the The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science has been writing for years about the beneficial effects of some radiation, or "hormesis." A few years ago, he reported on a group of scientists who concluded their conference on hormesis at the University of Massachusetts by repairing to a spa in Boulder, Mont., specifically in order to expose themselves to excess radiation.

At the Free Enterprise Radon Health Mine in Boulder, people pay $5 to descend 85 feet into an old mining pit to be irradiated with more than 400 times the EPA-recommended level of radon. In the summer, 50 people a day visit the mine hoping for relief from chronic pain and autoimmune disorders.

Amazingly, even the Soviet-engineered disaster at Chernobyl in 1986 can be directly blamed for the deaths of no more than the 31 people inside the plant who died in the explosion. Although news reports generally claimed a few thousand people died as a result of Chernobyl -- far fewer than the tens of thousands initially predicted -- that hasn't been confirmed by studies.

Indeed, after endless investigations, including by the United Nations, Manhattan Project veteran Theodore Rockwell summarized the reports to Bethell in 2002, saying, "They have not yet reported any deaths outside of the 30 who died in the plant."

Even the thyroid cancers in people who lived near the reactor were attributed to low iodine in the Russian diet -- and consequently had no effect on the cancer rate.

Meanwhile, the animals around the Chernobyl reactor, who were not evacuated, are "thriving," according to scientists quoted in the April 28, 2002 Sunday Times (UK).

Dr. Dade W. Moeller, a radiation expert and professor emeritus at Harvard, told The New York Times that it's been hard to find excess cancers even from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, particularly because one-third of the population will get cancer anyway. There were about 90,000 survivors of the atomic bombs in 1945 and, more than 50 years later, half of them were still alive. (Other scientists say there were 700 excess cancer deaths among the 90,000.)

Although it is hardly a settled scientific fact that excess radiation is a health benefit, there's certainly evidence that it decreases the risk of some cancers -- and there are plenty of scientists willing to say so. But Jenny McCarthy's vaccine theories get more press than Harvard physics professors' studies on the potential benefits of radiation. (And they say conservatives are anti-science!)

I guess good radiation stories are not as exciting as news anchors warning of mutant humans and scary nuclear power plants -- news anchors who, by the way, have injected small amounts of poison into their foreheads to stave off wrinkles. Which is to say: The general theory that small amounts of toxins can be healthy is widely accepted --except in the case of radiation.

Every day Americans pop multivitamins containing trace amount of zinc, magnesium, selenium, copper, manganese, chromium, molybdenum, nickel, boron -- all poisons.

They get flu shots. They'll drink copious amounts of coffee to ingest a poison: caffeine. (Back in the '70s, Professor Cohen offered to eat as much plutonium as Ralph Nader would eat caffeine -- an offer Nader never accepted.)

But in the case of radiation, the media have Americans convinced that the minutest amount is always deadly.

Although reporters love to issue sensationalized reports about the danger from Japan's nuclear reactors, remember that, so far, thousands have died only because of Mother Nature. And the survivors may outlive all of us over here in hermetically sealed, radiation-free America.

Many Americans get angry at the suggestion that Social Security should be on the table for this year's budget debate. That's not surprising. They've repeatedly been told that while the program might have long-term problems, it's absolutely fine now and has nothing to do with the deficit.

President Obama's budget director, Jacob Lew, said as much last week during his briefing on the president's budget. Obama wants to find ways to "work together to find a solution to the long-term issues in Social Security," Lew told reporters, but the program "does not contribute to the deficit in the short term."

Social Security is a cash-in/cash-out program. It went into the red last year, when payroll tax revenue came up about $37 billion short of the benefits paid to retirees. Initially, that shortfall seemed a temporary consequence of the recession. But new projections from the Congressional Budget Office show that factors such as the payroll tax cut Obama and congressional Republicans agreed to last year mean that Social Security will instead come up short every year from now on - at least $45 billion this year, and a staggering half a trillion dollars over the next decade.

In fact, Lew's own budget shows Social Security paying out $56 billion more than it takes in this year. That's serious money - almost as much as House Republicans just voted to cut from discretionary spending programs in the name of deficit reduction.

A powerful combination of beneficiaries, interest groups such as AARP, and congressional Democrats insist Social Security isn't really losing money but merely withdrawing cash from the trust fund it has built up with excess payroll taxes since 1983.

That's half true. Since 1983, Americans have indeed paid far more taxes than Social Security needed to pay benefits. In theory, at least, the trust fund contains about $2.6 trillion and would keep the program solvent until approximately 2037 - if the fund were real. Sadly, the trust fund is, at least in cash terms, a fiction.

In reality, the trust fund is no more than a collection of IOUs. The money went out the door as soon as it was collected to pay for roads and bridges and aircraft carriers and food inspection and everything else the government does. While they lasted, the Social Security surpluses made deficits seem smaller. But they didn't get saved.

So now that it's time to make up the difference between the money Social Security takes in and the checks it pays out, withdrawing money from the trust fund means borrowing it and adding it to the deficit. The problem will only get worse as Baby Boomers retire.

Reflecting political reality and simple fairness, most reform plans wouldn't affect current beneficiaries' basic benefits or make significant changes for people currently nearing retirement. The way to save big money down the road is to phase in relatively modest changes such as raising the retirement age for able-bodied workers, adjusting the cost-of-living formula and lifting the cap on income subject to Social Security taxes.

The important thing is to start now, both to protect future retirees and assure financial markets that the U.S. is getting a grip on its debts. The steps needed to save Social Security get far tougher the longer they're delayed. Pretending the trust fund can put those changes off for decades will only make the day of reckoning far worse when it finally, inevitably arrives.

The New York Times's idea of a conservative is a guy who loves to puff Barack Obama. "I remember distinctly an image of--we were sitting on his couches, and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant," David Brooks told The New Republic two years ago, reminiscing about an encounter from 2005, when Obama was a newly elected U.S. senator. "And I'm thinking, a) he's going to be president and b) he'll be a very good president."

How's that working out? Pretty well, to go by Brooks's column today. Obama is the dynamic young John F. Kennedy and the wise old Dwight Eisenhower all rolled into one: "The campaign of 2008 was marked by soaring calls for transformation. Now the administration spends much of its time reacting to events and counseling restraint." Here is an anecdote that, to Brooks's mind, captures Obama's Ikelikeness:

"Prudence is always a nice trait in a leader, especially in the face of a thorny problem like Libya," Brooks writes. But is it really prudent to stand idly while a vicious dictator reasserts power--especially when the president blustered just a week and a half ago that Moammar Gadhafi "must go"?

Far from likening his prudence to Ike's, we'd say Obama's passivity is a worrying flaw. Actually, we'd put it a lot more strongly than that. We just borrowed the language in this paragraph's topic sentence from Brooks's column--from the penultimate sentence, meaning only people who didn't get bored by Brooks's cheerleading (or who get paid to read this stuff, as we do) got to it.

Actually, though, "passivity" doesn't quite tell the whole story. Obama is passive about the big things that really matter: the Middle East crisis, the ballooning national debt. He was manically active--JFK-like, in Brooks's taxonomy--when he had a Democratic Congress that was willing to pass ruinous left-wing legislation. Now that voters have placed a check on his power, he still has his manic side, but it's devoted to comparatively trivial matters:

On Saturday, the day after his no-news conference on Libya, he delivered an address to the nation in which, according to the White House website, he "pays homage to former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, commends the great strides that have been made to create a more equal American society, and reaffirms his resolve to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act."

On Sunday he penned an op-ed piece for Tucson's Arizona Daily Star calling for "at least . . . the beginning of a new discussion on how we can keep America safe for all our people"--which is Obamaspeak for stricter gun-control laws.

Today, notes National Review's Jim Geraghty, quoting Politico's Mike Allen, he "will tape interviews from the Map Room with KOAT Albuquerque, KDKA Pittsburgh and WVEC Hampton Roads on education reform and the need to fix No Child Left Behind." He also "is taping his NCAA [basketball] picks today, and they'll be revealed tomorrow on ESPN."

Forbes reports that this weekend, amid crises in the Middle East and Japan, Obama will travel overseas--to Brazil.

And this past Saturday, ABC News reported, "for the second week in a row, the most powerful man in the world stepped away from the White House to hit the golf course."

I appreciate getting to see some of your magnificent city - this is 1st time here & I sincerely hope it won't be my last! During my brief time here I've enjoyed India's famous "Gift for Hospitality." And next time, I want to visit the Taj Mahal with my husband, Todd. Considering how patiently he's endured during my political career & been so supportive, it would be nice to reinforce our teamwork/commitment before that monument to eternal love. Todd is here with us tonight.

When I had the honour of meeting your Prime Minister a few years ago, I expressed my admiration for your country's rich history & culture & most recent achievements! I now am humbled with this opportunity to express that to you, here, in this beautiful ancient land. This has so captured the imaginations of artists & poets & explorers throughout human history. Todd & I are honoured to be here to see the site of some of the world's oldest civilizations...the birthplace of major religions, the crossroads of the ancient "Spice Route & Silk Road".

All those precious resources of their day: spices, pepper, silk, indigo - My country was essentially "discovered" in the age of exploration, because Western Europeans were looking for a route to your country to exchange & enjoy those resources! (Yes, the connection between our two countries was there from the beginning!)

During the flight here, between our countries, it did not escape me that Japan lies about halfway between my Alaskan home & India. I trust you will join me in expressing solidarity with the Japanese people as they recover from such tragic events. Their determination & resiliency won't fail them. The world community stands united to offer help to them in the "Land of the Rising Sun". Thoughts and prayers are with you, Japan. Life is fragile - precious - we're in this together; may Japan know our caring heart at this time.

I've been asked to speak today about my vision for America, & share with you a little about my background.

I grew up in a very small town, perhaps like some of you (though half-a-world-away). My town's tucked between two grand mountain ranges, in a valley quite far from the avenues of political power. There, in my home state of Alaska, we're so proud of nature's beauty & our towering mountains, but certainly here relatively near the spectacular Himalayas can I appreciate an even greater sense of nature's enormity!

One of the mountains near my home (I see it everyday from my kitchen window!) is called "Pioneer Peak" - named in honour of the brave pioneers who settled our Valley just a few generations ago. By the sweat of their brow & rugged work ethic - they turned raw land into a valuable agriculture community.

I have loved my upbringing there—a big family, Todd's from a big family. I was a school teacher's kid, loved sports & anything outdoor. I tell my parents the greatest gift they ever gave me was this upbringing in AK, the young, 49th state of the United States.

AK is known as the "Last Frontier" & it's a place that IS rugged & you can still feel an optimistic, pioneering spirit - like the spirit that had inspired Americans to carve a nation out of the wilderness! It was "pioneer families" - strong & hopeful - who made a good life (though not an easy one) for themselves in the Northern Wilds!

That "pioneering spirit" shaped me. It instilled in me a sense of independence & self-reliance. And: a belief in the 'Power of Ordinary People' working together to help one another.

In a small community in such a vast state (AK's about half the size of India), you learn to help your neighbour; & to help yourself. And you learn to value (& have faith in) personal freedom - especially the freedom to chart your own course! So, it was there I learned there's no limit to what you can achieve with strong work ethic. That optimism & respect for (& empowerment of) individual liberty shaped both my political beliefs & my vision for my country.

I started in politics on the local level two decades ago; inspired by a desire to serve the ordinary folks in my hometown! As a city councilman, then a city mayor, I led the fastest growing area in our state. I experienced firsthand the power & success of the free market, & the proper role of government in fostering economic growth. I cut property taxes, I invited business in & focused on building infrastructure (roads, water & sewer systems); not a lot of glamour in that - but I have a solid belief in what government's proper role is & it shouldn't be glamorous.

It's not government business to spend the working man's tax dollars recklessly - & certainly not government's business to centrally "plan" an economy & control an entrepreneurial spirit! That doesn't work. Government should lay infrastructure, level the playing field, then get out of the way. Allow the private sector to grow/thrive/create jobs & generate wealth!

Then as governor of my state, my goal was to clean up corruption & develop our rich natural resources: Our abundant oil, gas, minerals & our robust fisheries! An important project that was a 'center-point' was jumpstarting a natural gas pipeline project that had been stalled for decades. We brought all stakeholders together for mutual benefit - our state, the energy industry, our neighboring country, consumers & together with ordinary citizens (who are the resource owners) & major energy producers who 'bid on the right to develop our resources', AK was finally able to move forward on a project that can help lead America towards energy independence.

Through my work in AK (as an oil & gas regulator, then as governor), I've seen firsthand how energy development, job creation & national security are inextricably linked. Access to affordable, reliable energy is the key to economic growth, which is the key to job growth. Securing that stable domestic supply of fuel will lead to a more peaceful & prosperous America - an America that's not subject to the whims of foreign dictators who could cut off energy supplies & seek to control.

Of course, energy issues are critical to the whole world's stability & economic opportunities! By 2030, the world's energy consumption will increase by 50% & almost half of that will come from here in India & from China. We all face similar challenges in this arena & this makes America's quest for energy security all the more crucial as we seek to stabilize our economy, secure our homeland & cooperate with our allies who would also seek peace on earth.

Energy is key! My vision for a free & prosperous America has much to do with energy.

Now, we hear a lot about "green energy" today. And I am a true believer in environmental conservation & responsible stewardship of our lands. (It's why I live in AK! A pristine environment to be passed on to future generations - I don't want to mess it up! I am a conservationist. I married into an Alaska native family, where Todd's connection to the land through his Yupik Eskimo heritage, an indigenous people, reinforces my respect for God's creation. And we've made our living off the land - as commercial fishermen & Todd working in North Slope oil fields - so we don't want to mess it up!)

So, I'm in favour of "all-of-the-above" approach to energy security. But "all-of-the-above" means including "conventional" resources! That means, the kind we actually use to reliably fuel our economy. That means crude oil, for example. And our natural gas, our coal, nuclear power.

Unfortunately, some have stymied resource development - like responsible domestic oil drilling. As a result, hundreds of thousands of well-paying jobs won't be created in the U.S. until we change course; it means Americans get hit with huge gas prices at the pump unless we change course; it means we're continuing to transfer hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars to foreign regimes to purchase energy from them - regimes that don't have our best interests at heart.

And I'm not just talking about gasoline here. Remember that 'petroleum products' are all around you! Look at your everyday surroundings - the foodstuffs; the agriculture products grown with fertilizer; the plastics all around you; medical supplies; the transportation of all these products. It's not just gas that increases as the price of crude increases: Everything is affected. Basic commodities.

So as government locks up land & we lose good jobs in the 'Conventional Resource' arena, you may hear that "green jobs" will be the saviour! But look around the world & try telling that to the thousands of English & Scottish workers who've lost jobs as a result of government investments in "green energy" projects. A recent UK study shows that for every "green job" created, nearly four jobs were lost elsewhere in the economy due to lack of affordable energy! Same story in Spain - investment in "green jobs" brought massive debt, skyrocketing energy costs & 20% unemployment.

This push for 'green' at the expense of 'conventional, reliable' sources is not a credible energy policy or economic policy. It's "Social Engineering" by Central Government Planners. And it leads to nothing but more debt & more job loss. And taxpayers will be stuck subsidizing the failure and paying more for energy.

The good news is there's a choice/another option! Instead of funding non-viable special interest projects, Americans can capitalize on our own viable resources that are just waiting to be tapped - they're right on our doorstep! Billions of barrels of oil warehoused underground in AK!

And so much natural gas - Clean, green, affordable! Easy to transport, abundant across the U.S. - Whether used conventionally, or to power natural gas cars, or run power plants that charge electric cars, natural gas is an ideal "bridge fuel" to the future. (A future when renewable gas can someday become more available, reliable & affordable.)

I warn Americans so often: it's a 'false, utopian fairytale' told that would want you to believe we don't need to drill for oil today. No, government manipulating energy supplies? Manipulating any aspect of an economy - it leads to more people becoming more dependent upon government to meet needs - it is social engineering, it's immoral, & it's a problem we-the-people must be brave enough to take on.

Our need for energy independence is only one of the strategic challenges we face today. The other is an unsustainable government debt which hampers economic growth.

On this: there are no "easy" solutions, but there are "simple" ones, if we just apply courage & political will to confront the problem squarely. Obviously, we need to stop digging the hole we're in; cut spending; cut government back down to size; get rid of overly-burdensome regulations. And most of all, we need job growth! And that won't come from 'top-down government planning'! It'll come from the 'Free Market Ingenuity' of ordinary American entrepreneurs!

To release creative energy, we need to do on a national level what President Ronald Reagan did in the 1980's. It's what I believed in as a 'Reforming Mayor & Governor' in my state, because I want the free economic choices of ordinary men & women to power the marketplace - rather than distant bureaucrats thinking they can plan & grow an economy by "government decree". (That just doesn't work!)

I know you understand this, because in the early 1990's, due to clear, commonsense, pro free-market reforms, India's economy took off!

You abolished import licenses; cut import duties; removed investment caps & broke the union's grip on industry.

You unleashed the creativity & hard work of the Indian people; you turned away from a system where 'Central Government' sets targets for all sectors of the economy, to a system that lets the market set its own targets. That works.

People no longer speak of India as a "struggling economy" as they would have 30 years ago. Today we speak of India as a "dynamic & vibrant economy". You empowered individuals & in doing so, you've reminded America of the free, entrepreneurial model that made our country great, prosperous & exceptional!

See, if we unshackle the creative energy of our workers, & entrepreneurs, there is no reason in the world why we can't get back to rapid growth & prosperity!

Friends: some people want to claim that the geopolitical stage is 'so changing' & some actually claim 'America is in decline'. "The United States," they'd say, "will soon be a shadow of its former self." I completely reject this! It represents wrong-headed thinking by some friends & wishful thinking by our enemies! America's demise has been predicted before. It didn't happen then. It won't happen now.

No, America is not in decline! What is in decline? It is the idea of a 'Tax-&-Spend, Centralized Bureaucracy' that has brought America to the point of debt & deficits in the first place. These "Big Government" ideas are once again being consigned to the ash heap of history - though they won't go quietly to the grave.

From the beginning: my faith has never been in Big Govt. My faith is in the American people, & we are turning things around!

All great nations face the challenges that come with a changing economy, demographics, & new technologies. The nations that succeed in the face of these challenges are the ones that show innovation & ingenuity - & will empower a free power! These qualities are the hallmarks of the "American Experience" & the unique strengths of the American people.

My vision for my country is a strong America that unleashes those strengths & confidently engages in leadership in the world & can welcome the healthy competition & partnership of rising economic powers in a democracy, like India.

The relationship between our countries could shape the course of the next century! Tilting it in the direction of free people & free markets! The future lies with us! We're half-a-world apart geographically, but connected with much in common!

We both have deep & historical 'democratic traditions'. We are the world's most diverse, tolerant & dynamic societies. Our peoples enjoy very close ties (& in recent years our governments have been catching up!) There are few limits to what India & America can do together to allow a more peaceful & prosperous world.

Tragically, we have both been the targets of terrorism. We have both witnessed the courage of our people in combating terror. Both our peoples want it defeated.

And we both want to ensure that China's rise is peaceful - while hedging against risks that it could be otherwise.

We both want to expand trade & investment with allies in a liberal international order that will soon boast India as its fastest-growing major economy.

Our diplomatic, military & political ties are deepening, because we have a genuine strategic partnership! But it is our people who are driving this relationship!

Indian entrepreneurs are investing in the U.S., even as U.S. businesses expand here.

Indian students are throughout American universities & more Americans seek to study here - including through an expanded Fulbright programme.

Our tech companies are working together in impressive ways. And our ethical partnerships could transform both our development trajectories.

Our ties & bonds are deep! And they're not driven so much by "political leadership summits" & bureaucrats - they're driven by free people & free markets! That's why there are no natural limits to the future of U.S.- India relations. And that is why the world's largest democracies - NOT its largest autocracy - will lead the 21st century.

We will lead because we are on the side of empowering individuals to make choices for themselves. Not government /not some New World Order organization making decisions & decrees for us.

We are on the side of religious tolerance & women's rights! (And in recent years, India has helped lead by example in the area of women's education by narrowing the gender gap in women's literacy. You've helped remind the world that a culture cannot advance when it holds back half its creative & intellectual power!)

And its political power! I admire India's tradition of strong women leaders - at home & abroad! In fact, last year, I had the honour of supporting a strong American woman of Indian descent when I endorsed the candidacy of South Carolina's new governor - their first female - Nikki Haley!

I met Nikki's parents & was impressed by their story, work ethic! And, by Nikki's upbringing that led her to become part of a 'grassroots movement in American politics' that's known as "The Tea Party"! (I'm proud to be a part of this movement as well.)

The "Tea Party" is named after that famous event in American politics that was a precursor to our Independence! In 1773, when American patriots were upset about British taxes, they dumped tea into the Boston Harbor. (The British had forced a monopoly on the American people that prevented us from importing tea from anyone but the British East India Company. See, even back then we believed in free trade!) Today's "Tea Party" is a strong & vibrant movement in the U.S. & it's only going to grow & become more influential!

India Conclave: the theme of this conference is the "Changing Balance of Power". Well, the present day Tea Party is a perfect example of that! It's all about the empowerment of ordinary, everyday, independent patriots who are rising up & making their voices heard to positively change the "Balance of Power"! To protect our U.S. Constitution & live out our Declaration of Independence!

It reminds our 'Central Govt' that our Constitution gives great power to our 50 individual states - and to individual citizens - & that these powers (these God-given 'RIGHTS') aren't to be trampled on.

The "Changing Balance of Power" throughout the world today is driven by the empowerment of the individual - & mankind's desire for freedom!

Back home in AK, where the fresh snow blankets the ground today, where my kids texted me to report they see a Mama Moose & her two baby calves outside our door by the firewood pile: There at home, I have a beautiful pencil drawing on my kitchen wall. A framed drawing by Robin Coran. It's a picture of Mother Teresa, of Calcutta. She's holding a precious child (a baby).

It was said of Mother Teresa that "perhaps the greatest message she has given to the world is the value & dignity of human life!" From India, she was able to share this crucial message with the world! And it is a crucial message because the freedom & empowerment of the individual is rooted in an understanding of every man & woman's inherent dignity & worth! I looked at the picture as I typed out this speech on my home computer set up there in the kitchen.

I was struck with this: Countries that deny that message of individual worth (& destiny) inevitably stifle their own advancement because the fire of human progress is spaked by the aspirations of ordinary men& women seeking a better life!

These simple "working class" aspirations for a good job, a home, a good education for our children are what motivate economic progress & positive change! Not bureaucrats! Not 'Central Planners'! Not government decrees! Just hard-working women & men seeking the freedom to chart their own course & succeed by their own merits!

When people realise even the briefest glimpse of this freedom & opportunity - even a hint that they can succeed through honest hard work - they run towards it! They embrace the promise of "better days ahead!" They will sacrifice today for a better tomorrow for their children & grandchildren. With individual responsibility, drive & determination, they will work together to carve a life for themselves out of the wilderness!

They'll voluntarily contribute to help their neighbours even those half-a-world-away!

That's the 'Optimistic/Pioneering Spirit of America's Frontier'! That's the spirit of India's progress too.

America has long been famous for our rags-to-riches stories. Now India is, too. Take pride in this - it's inspiring! Together, as the worlds' largest democracies, we are a testament to the positive force of human aspirations!

Today, all across the world, we see individuals, "ordinary" men & women, rising up/moving to advance (& a great tool they're using in this 'demand of human rights' is social media).

We don't know where all of this will lead. But we should look at it as opportunity to advance the cause of human freedom - not naively, but optimistically.

Friends: our two democracies understand this struggle for freedom. It's the struggle of those who defiantly dumped tea in Boston Harbor to protest a British tea tax. & it's the struggle of those who courageously marched to the seacoast near Don-dee to make their own salt in defiance of a British salt tax!

This hunger for 'Freedom & Opportunity' is proof that what we call the "American Dream" is not just "American." It is the universal dream of people everywhere! I believe it's created within us! And that is where the march for freedom has found its most eager advocates: 'ordinary people' who have 'extraordinary determination' to seek justice & make a better life for their families. This is as true in AK, as in Andhra Pradesh.

My 'Vision for America' is one of a country that lives that dream! And, in turn, inspires & empowers women & men around the world to live it, too! We can lead by example.

What America can show the world is what is possible - the potential of human possibilities when women & men are free? Yes, may we be free!

20 days of thuggery in Wisconsin; when will the media call for a cease fire? Filled with pictures and videos.

Egyptian Children’s TV show talks about liberating Jerusalem from the disgusting Jews:

The rich don’t pay their fair share...good article, poor graphics, good discussion:

Our oil companies may have trouble getting the go-ahead to drill in the gulf, but not Brazilian companies:

“Republican” Lisa Murkowski and Harry Reid both support federal funding for NPR:

RUSH: Here's the story out of Wisconsin from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi issued a temporary restraining order Friday, halting Gov. Scott Walker's law that would sharply curtail collective bargaining for public employees. ... Sumi's order will prevent Secretary of State Doug La Follette from publishing the law -- and allowing it to take effect -- until she can rule on the merits of the case. Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne, a Democrat, is seeking to block the law because he says a legislative committee violated the state's open meetings law in passing the measure, which Walker signed on Friday. Sumi ... said Ozanne was likely to succeed on the merits.

"'It seems to me the public policy behind effective enforcement of the open meeting law is so strong that it does outweigh the interest, at least at this time, which may exist in favor of sustaining the validity of the (law),' she said. The judge's finding -- at least for now -- is a setback to Walker, a Republican, and a victory for opponents, who have spent weeks in the Capitol to protest the bill."

RUSH: So a county judge can tell the Wisconsin legislature how to do their business. Is that right? Is this how democracy works? A county judge in Wisconsin can tell the Wisconsin legislature how to do its job? The Milwaukee Urinal Sentinel article points out that the complaint is the Senate violated its rules.

The Wisconsin Senate can do whatever the hell it wants to do! Look at the US Congress: They change their rules all the time. What is this open meetings law violation? And now they got this liberal judge saying, "Yep, I think there's a problem. I think I might have to vacate the law." Fine, either ignore it, or now that the Democrats in the Senate are back in town, let's just revote it. Why not just do that? Why not just revote it? The Democrats are back. Or will they flee again, and try to create the same set of circumstances? I don't know, folks. This stuff, it's bothered me for the longest time. This whole notion, living off of others, under the guise that you're helping them -- under the doubly offensive guise that they couldn't get along without you if you weren't paying them to help you.

Meanwhile, everybody is aware that their state and local taxes (not to mention federal) are going through the roof, property taxes and what have you, and look what happens? It's never enough, is it? The teachers will walk off the job, and then they'll use the kids as pawns -- the students as pawns. So everybody's being recalled in Wisconsin. We got a recall effort going against the governor and some Republicans. They're very quiet proceedings going on, but there's an effort here on the part of the Wisconsinites to recall these Democrats who fled. Let's recall this judge! If that's how we're gonna do it, let's just recall this activist judge, this county judge telling the Wisconsin legislature how to do its business.

RUSH: This Judge Sumi, the same Wisconsin judge who back in February in the middle of a statewide debate regarding labor unions, collective bargaining, this is the judge that refused the Madison school district's request to send the teachers back to work. They went on strike, the Madison school district, "Judge, will you send these teachers back to work so that the youths of Wisconsin could go through the motions of at least attempting to learn things here, to be taught?" The district asked this judge to impose a temporary restraining order to bar teachers from participating in further work stoppages. It referred to the teachers' protests in the capital as a strike, which are illegal under state law. The judge, Judge Sumi, the county judge, refused to categorize the work stoppage as a strike and said the district could not prove irreparable harm had been caused by the teachers walking out. Oh, okay, so they're not necessary, then. No irreparable harm to the students, to the pupils, the precious children, no irreparable harm by the teachers not showing up and doing their jobs? Fine, I guess the judge says that means they're not needed.

It's sort of like we're gonna lay off half the newsroom. Only nonessential people will be let go. Oh, so half your newsroom you don't need? I wonder how that makes the plagiarists who get laid off feel. Judge Sumi is a district county judge. We looked it up. She's got a very long history of judicial activism, and the complaint here again is that the Senate violated its own rules, open meeting rules. So they don't even need the Democrats to vote. Just give 24-hour notice and vote again. They don't need the Democrats. But the Democrats are back. Let 'em in there if they want. Just give 24 hours' notice. You know, my memory of this is that there was open access for this, access for additional people the meeting was denied, when they filled up. There wasn't any more room for them. Where was this judge when those 14 Democrats were violating the rules of the Wisconsin Senate by hiding out in another state? I wonder what woulda happened if somebody would have brought an action before her. She no doubt would have found in favor of the senators who had fled and were at the DMZ, the demilitarized zone between Wisconsin and Illinois.

RUSH: I've consulted with some legal experts that I know to try to explain what happened here in Wisconsin. Here's the best guess in the form of analysis right now. This judge, Judge Sumi, a county judge, issued a temporary restraining order against the Wisconsin law. The purported justification is to consider whether the procedure by which it was passed violated the state's open meetings law. So the judge said there's a question as to whether or not this happened legally, so we're gonna stop the law. We're gonna put a temporary stay on this law while we look and see whether or not it happened legally. Now, the governor, Scott Walker thinks this is all BS.

It turns out that they got procedural advice from the state Senate's chief clerk (who is said not be a partisan guy, has worked for both parties) and the state Senate, Wisconsin state senate's chief clerk laid out the rules for passage of the law -- which, after laying out those rules, the Republican senators complied with. Now, to us acts of the legislature are presumptively valid. I haven't read the Wisconsin Constitution, which is why I raised the specter of separation of powers. I don't know if they have anything quirky on that score, but generally speaking, courts do not exist to be a supervisor of the legislature. We've been through this countless times.

The courts are only supposed to get involved if someone's rights have been violated -- and until that is proved to have had happened they are supposed to assume the legislature and the governor who signed the law acted properly. That's the assumption under which they are supposed to proceed. Imagine... Look at it another way. Imagine the hell to pay there would be if presidents or governors routinely disregarded court decisions rather than assuming the judge has acted properly. (chuckling) We sorta have that happening, do we not? Heh, heh, heh. Imagine the hell to pay if presidents or governors disregarded court decisions rather than assuming the judges acted properly.

Imagine if a governor said to the legislator, "Screw you! I don't like the way you did this. I'm not signing it. I'm not even vetoing it. What you did here is not even valid because I don't like the way that you did it." Assuming that peer branches acted properly unless and until it's proved otherwise is the deference each branch of government owes to the others. Until there's proof that it didn't happen, you don't change anything. Now, there's a situation with the rules are different. If you want to get into a lot of minutia about this, a litigant has to show that: A) He's almost certain to win on his claim that a law is invalid; B) if the law is allowed to operate until a final judicial determination on his claim that the law's invalid, he will be irreparably harmed.

That is if this goes on and you know it's gonna get blown up but you don't stop it and this guy suffers irreparable harm in the process, then you're not entitled to have the judge issue a temporary restraining order. You get to sue like everybody else. It looks instead like what this judge did, is this judge treated this circumstance as a standard situation. That is, instead of assuming the legislature acted validly she has assumed the legislature acted invalidly and has halted operation of the law for no better reason than somebody filed a lawsuit. Does McDonald's have to stop selling coffee when an old woman claims that she spilled some and burned her arm?

No. Does the state of Wisconsin have to temporarily suspend this law because somebody has told this judge, "You know what, the open meeting law was violated"? No. But the judge has taken it upon herself to assume just based on the lawsuit alone that the way the law was passed makes it invalid. This is judicial activism on parade. Now, let's pretend, just for the sake of this discussion, that the law really is invalid. Let's just pretend. I think that's BS. I think what we've got here is unadulterated, pure liberal activism. The left-wing blogs (I checked 'em at the top of the hour) are ecstatic. They are celebrating this as a triumph of the rule of law. It is the exact opposite of that. But let's say the law is invalid.

What's the harm of letting it operate until there is a final legal determination of that? The worst thing that can happen is that any deals bargained in that time could be struck down and everybody would be back to the bargaining table. No irreparable harm in that. Now, this is the funny part. Contrast this with Obamacare. The Obama administration is continuing to enforce the law even though a court has made a final determination that it is invalid. Judge Vinson has said this law's unconstitutional. He vacated it. He gave 'em seven days and they spat on that. He gave 'em seven days to write it. There is no indication that the law is invalid here.

Obamacare has been said by a judge to be invalid. The judge in Wisconsin has not said the law's invalid. She has just responded to some complaint from a liberal that the open meetings law was violated. So they just filed a lawsuit, and yet the judge has ordered a halt to the operation of the law. That is patently ridiculous. This is not how it happens unless you've got judicial activism to the extreme or to the max going on.

RUSH: Okay, one more thing about what's going on in Wisconsin, and it is very simple. This judge, Judge Sumi, liberal activist judge, is wrong. From the rules of the Wisconsin Senate: "Senate Rule 93. Special, extended or extraordinary sessions. Unless otherwise provided by the senate for a specific special, extended or extraordinary session, the rules of the senate adopted for the regular session shall, with the following modifications, apply to each special session called by the governor," blah, blah, blah. "No notice of hearing before a committee shall be required ... and no bulletin of committee hearings shall be published," if the senate is in special session. It was in special session. No notice was required. Right there in Wisconsin Senate Rule number 93. So in layman's terms, Senate Rule 93, state of Wisconsin clearly states no notice has to be given during a special or extraordinary committee hearing.

Even so, the Democrats were e-mailed about the hearing. It was posted on the Senate bulletin board. They were advised. As I mentioned to you, the chief clerk, the state senate chief clerk, who's not a partisan guy, worked for both parties, laid out the rules for passage to the governor. "Okay, here's what you gotta do, you have a special session, this, this, this, and this," and that's what they did. They did this, this, and this. They followed the law. They followed senate rules. Rule 93 Wisconsin senate clearly states no notice has to be given during a special or extraordinary committee hearing. The Democrats were e-mailed about the hearing. It was posted on the bulletin board. Essentially this judge is saying the open meeting law was violated. It wasn't. No rule was broken. So once again, put a boulder in the road, but the rule is clear, state law is clear, a judge has interceded and given the way things are with liberals on courts we don't know how this is gonna end up even though we know full well all is bogus, everything about this suit, everything about the temporary restraining order, it is a hundred percent bogus.

CALLER: It is an honor to talk to you and dittos from a conservative Christian woman in Arkansas.

CALLER: You were kind of getting to my point right before the break a little bit, I think, in that I'm frustrated 'cause I don't understand what makes all of these union workers think that they have the right to dictate to their employers how much they're going to make. The way I see it if you're lucky enough in this economy to have someone offer you a job, and they offer to pay you a wage and you agree to work for that, that's your choice.

RUSH: Well, this cuts so many ways. In the case of a union where you have so-called collective bargaining, that means there aren't any individuals being negotiated with, it's a unit, and it all depends on the leverage that you can get.

CALLER: Yes, I understand that, but I mean if you don't like what you're being paid, you need to find another job.

CALLER: I mean those are your choices. You either work for what your employer is gonna pay you or you find a job to pay you what you want.

RUSH: This how most people do it. If you're working someplace and you want more pay you go in and say, "Okay, I deserve a raise." If they tell you to pound sand, you go someplace else, or you try to.

RUSH: It's that simple. You're quite right. Your sensibilities are offended here by somebody, "Well, I demand you pay me." That's the nature of unions.

CALLER: I think that a lot of it boils down to is that people no longer live on what they're able to make. They try to make what they want to live on.

RUSH: Well, yeah, there's a lot of factors that go into it. In this case you cannot discount union dues. You cannot discount that in terms of the importance and the relevance of union dues to what all is going on here. The National Education Association spent $8 million in 2008 on politics, but they did not accurately report it to the IRS. This is important. The unions are tax exempt, but the money they take in dues and use on partisan political activity is not tax exempt, with some exceptions. Now, the NEA spent $8 million in 2008, and they did not pay a cent in taxes on that money, and they did not report exactly what they were doing with the money. Now, this was all discovered by the Landmark Legal Foundation. The Landmark Legal Foundation took action and got a favorable ruling here. You remember we had the audiotape, this NEA general counsel that retired and made those infamous statements about power. He said we're effective not because we care about the kids. We're effective not because we've done this. Our effectiveness comes from our power. And the guy went on to attack the Landmark Legal Foundation by name and that's because they'd filed a whole bunch of past complaints resulting in audits and fines of the NEA by IRS and others. So it's a money laundering operation, and all of these Democrat members of the public sector unions know full well what their objective is and what their purpose is.

RUSH: Once again here are the usual standards to get a temporary restraining order. To get one, "A plaintiff must prove four elements." If you want to shut down a law, you have to prove: "(1) likelihood of success on the merits; (2) irreparable harm,absent the order; (3) that less harm will result to the defendant if the TRO issues than to the plaintiffs if the TRO does not issue; and (4) that the public interest, if any, weighs in favor." Those are the four requirements to get a temporary restraining order. Well, obviously the likelihood of success on the merits cannot be proven here. Irreparable harm cannot be proven. The complaint was filed by a guy named Peter Barca who is a Democrat hack. He's not a Wisconsin state senator. He served in the Wisconsin House, recently reelected, now back in the House, but he's not a senator. He's the hack that's come along. He can't prove any irreparable harm here. So you just have a coordinated attack, and you got a liberal judge, county judge who claims now to supersede the Wisconsin legislature. But beyond all that, nothing that was done was illegal according to the rules of the Wisconsin Senate. Nothing. Zip, zero, nada. I tell you, folks, some days I just detest these SOBs. I just detest 'em.

RUSH: Remember, we had the audio yesterday, these teachers leading students in an anti-Walker chant, "Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Scott Walker's gotta go!" Can we get rid of the myth once and for all that school teachers, anymore, are these average, ordinary (as Obama wants to say), next-door neighbors who are just doing everything they can to further the educational experience of your children?

That's not who they are. They are left-wing activists, active members of unions who are oriented first by a political agenda, second by their own well-being, and your kids come last. Can we just get that out in the open? And it's been apparent since this whole thing started. Now they're taking these little students and turning them into pawns to advance the union agenda. And it's all about -- I know I'm gonna get in trouble for this but it's all about -- people who know full well that they're getting a deal their states can't afford, being paid for by people who aren't earning half as much as what they are paying these public sector employees.

We saw the protests in this state, we've seen them in Greece, we're going to see them in Ohio and Indiana, and it's a moment of truth. It's a moment of truth in defining what kind of country we're gonna be going forward. Are we finally gonna put the foot down and say, "There's gonna have to be some reason and sensible action, behavior, here on how public sector employees are paid. Or is the country going to exist -- are the taxpayers of this country going to have as their first responsibility -- the lifestyle support of public sector union members?" Is that the primary reason for the existence of taxpayers?

Could these people who are making what they're making as a result of state and federal accidents, could they earn that money in the private sector on their own? Do they have the skills? Do they have the talent? Could they? Do they have the ability to even do what they're doing now reasonably well? You see them leading the students in these protests, so let's throw out the window here this Norman Rockwell version of Miss Carter in the second grade with the little students bringing in the apples. "Hi, Miss Carter! Hi, Miss Carter! I'm ready for my math test today." That's not what's going on.

The whole educational system has been co-opted by people who have found an easy way to a good living, and they realize it and they don't want to give it up without a fight. It's always about the money, particularly from people on the left who claim they are motivated by everything but money. They're motivated by good intentions, by their big hearts. They're inspired and motivated by their desire for good works. It's always about the money -- and as easy money as they can get. "Yeah, let's form a nonprofit! Let's form a little charity here. We'll start asking people to donate to our cause and we'll siphon some of it off and call it 'salary,' and that will be our living and we'll convince people we're oriented toward good works and a good cause."

I know this is probably not possible. I would like somehow to have a calculation on how many people in this country actually WORK for a living rather than siphon for a living. I have a sneaking suspicion that the number of people actually working for a living is decreasing and the number of people who siphon for a living is rising, 'cause it's considered easy money -- and along the way, you automatically get to call yourself an expert! Yeah, all you gotta do is start a foundation. All you gotta do is start a 501(c)(3) or whatever and start asking for donations for the purpose of your cause. You only have to give away 10% every year. The rest you can take for salaries, or "expenses," or what have you.

You know how some of the charities, you've seen the numbers, the net that actually ends up going to the so-called cause. Which is why, by the way, all the charities we associate with on this program are basically "pass-throughs," where 95 to 100% percent dollars go to where you intend the donation to go.

RUSH: Stevens Point, Wisconsin, we start with Joe on the phones today, Open Line Friday. Great to have you here, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Okay, Rush, I love you. It's a dream come true to talk to you, and I mean I just wanted to tell you, though, that's why this hurts. Because I love you like a brother and I've been listening to you since I was 18 years old, but you gotta stop with the broadside attacks against teachers because there's a lot of good that happens, even in the public schools, and there's a lot of talented people working in them, and I'm one of them, and the fact that I'm, you know, where I am at the salary scale, I would never apologize for it. I believe if I was working in a private business, if I worked as hard as I do I would probably make a lot more. I mean I just want you to know, Rush, I love you like a brother but there's a lot of good teachers out here and a lot of us are conservative.

RUSH: Then where are you? How come we never hear from you conservative teachers when the school systems are being torn apart, when they're being ripped apart, when these bad apples are running the show and getting away with it? How come I only hear you when you call the program? I never see you on television. I never see you taking issue with the way the bad apples -- you're acting like I'm the one giving you guys a bad name when I'm not. I'm just reporting what I see.

CALLER: Oh, no, but I mean in general, Rush. There's a lot of good education that goes on in Wisconsin public schools, and the Stevens Point district itself. I mean we have a lot of good achievement. So I mean don't act as if like the American education is falling apart or anything like that. That's a lot of hype. I mean there's a lot of good happening, but, you know, I think the reason you don't see or hear from conservative teachers, I know because you can't really be out there that much. I mean you can't imagine how hard it is to be a conservative teacher in this atmosphere.

RUSH: Yeah, I can. 'Cause I know how hard it is to be a conservative media guy. I know hard it is to be a conservative anywhere in this country. I'm working in a business like you do that's dominated by people that don't like me.

CALLER: Yeah, that's true, but believe me, Rush, on the issue of pay, I really believe, yeah, if I worked in the corporate world for 20 years as hard as I have worked, I really don't think I have to apologize for the salary I make. And if I have to go out to the private sector, I'm not afraid of that.

RUSH: Wait a second, now, it's the second time you mentioned that, so that must be something I said that either offended you, irritated you, or bothered you.

CALLER: Well, it's an argument often repeated in this whole debate about teacher salaries and stuff like that, and would they be commensurate if they worked in the private sector, or would they be talented enough. I mean, there are teachers who work in the public schools who wouldn't be talented enough to go out into the private sector and make the kind of money they make. I will.

RUSH: That's not my question. See, this is what I can't relate to. I can't relate to somebody who makes a hundred thousand dollars a year paying me $200,000. I can't relate to that.

CALLER: I'm willing to take a cut for now, Rush, but honestly, I have high expectations, and if the public sector didn't pay me enough I would go and seek other places to make better money. It's pretty simple that way. But we also have to be on guard, Rush. This kind of atmosphere we're in is gonna almost guarantee liberal domination of education, for a long time.

RUSH: Yeah. But if you guys aren't gonna speak up about it, and if you can't, who can? Don't you have tenure? Can you be fired?

CALLER: You know, I don't even know what that circumstance is anymore. I'm 18 years in, so I mean I have tenure, but I mean I don't know the circumstances under which I can be let go.

CALLER: I don't worry about it, frankly, because if it's gonna happen, then there's a lot of other things I can go do. But I'm hoping that this opens up a door in that conservatives have a bigger voice in education, Rush, but I'm fearing that it's going to produce an even more reactionary left that gets even more political and dilutes the curriculum with a lot of political things instead of substance.

RUSH: Wait a minute, now. Wait a second now. If we operate on that basis all of us conservatives should just shut up. If all of us conservatives believe that speaking up against liberalism is just going to produce even more reactionary liberalism that gets even more political, what is the point of being conservative and believing in it? In my case, how many times have I said here I'm talking about bad apples, about liberals, about union bosses? If you can make more money in the private sector, then do it. You know, what is the problem? You say you're willing to take a cut, and that's the problem. It's not about what you're willing to take from the taxpayers. It's what the taxpayers are able to pay. Somehow I have not been able to make myself clear on that. It's not about what you will accept, conservative or liberal or wherever. It's about what can be afforded to be paid and we are way beyond what can be afforded, which is the problem.

RUSH: It's teachable moment in a series of never-ending teachable moments. The left does not stop with the law. The left doesn't care.

They will do whatever. They will get these teachers, these people they want us to think of as the kind of people we see in a Norman Rockwell painting -- and they'll bring the little students up to the capitol building and make them say, "Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Scott Walker's gotta go! Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Scott Walker's gotta go!" So the left is showing us once again who they are, and what is it they're trying to preserve? What are they trying to preserve? Snerdley, what are they...? (interruption) They are trying to preserve the union money laundering operation. That is what's going on here. Never forget that that's what the public sector unions are.

They are money laundering operations. They are doing their best and pulling out all the stops to make sure the money keeps flowing. This is all about union dues. It's all about union dues which end up as campaign donations to the Democrat Party in Wisconsin and Washington, where have you. That's what's at stake. Secondarily, make no mistake. This is a close second, and I know people don't like this word. It fits for the perception I wish to create, and that is: The freeloaders don't want to give up the gravy train. So you got freeloaders who don't want to get thrown off the gravy train.

I'm talking about the teachers, all right? Let me put it right out there: The freeloaders don't want to give up the gravy train, and the unions and the Democrats don't want to give up the money laundering operation.

I'll answer this as often as it's asked, even if it is asked by me. This is not about what the teachers are willing to take from the taxpayers in terms of salary and benefits. It's not about that. It is about what the taxpayers are able to pay. Wisconsin's taxpayers cannot afford what they are paying for a lot of things. Federal taxpayers can no longer afford what they are paying. Now, when it comes to public sector union members, we all know that when you combine the salaries and benefit packages and the pensions and the health care until you die, their total package is (on average) twice what the people who pay them are making.

So it doesn't matter when the public sector union, whoever it is, or employee says, "I'd be able to take a little less. I'm willing to take a few dollars less." It's not about what you're willing to take! It's about what taxpayers are able to pay. Again, I, El Rushbo, live in Literalville. Realville. (sigh) I don't know. This is a bugaboo of mine, and I know that it's not gonna create a whole lot of friends for me. I know this. But I just don't have it in me to know that somebody making $100,000 a year is paying me $200,000 -- and I certainly would not be belligerent in demanding it, and I wouldn't have the guts to run around and act like I'm owed it. But that's just me. It's just me. I also don't think things can sustain themselves this way. I just...

CALLER: Well, I was just calling to tell you that I'm doing what you have charged me to do. I'm teaching our viewpoint. I have to counteract other liberals that I work with.

CALLER: No, never, ever. I just counteract what they say, if a teacher teaches science in my school and she uses Algore's movie to teach it, when they come to my class I have to contradict what they're learning in that science class. I teach language arts, so it gives me a lot of time to have discussions with my students.

RUSH: Snuck in and out. Nobody knew I was there when I was there, but I was there. All right, Claire, I appreciate it.

This is Baron, Pensacola, Florida, next on the EIB Network. Open Line Friday. Hi.

CALLER: Yes, I was calling in reference to unions and what they develop. What I was saying was, my term for unions is they're social fetuses not for all people that are in the union, because the majority of people in the unions take a job, they appreciate the pay, they like the benefits, they're loyal where they work, but there are --

RUSH: Wait a minute. I want to make sure I heard you right here, Baron. You believe that unions are like the fetus of the Mafia?

CALLER: The structure is the same. The structure is the same. The development comes from a development to create a need and they have an entitlement and they get committed to that, and they're frustrated to think that they'd lose it. When you talked about in the Mafia, they want to dirty a guy, they dirty him, and then he's protected, and he knows that, you know, his --

RUSH: This is Baron's way of explaining the money laundering operation and how it works. When they dirty a guy up, they corrupt you, they own you, then you're paying them protection and all that. It's a problem because these fetuses are never aborted. That's your one problem with your comparison.

RUSH: Speaking of oil and moratoriums: "The U.S. Interior Department said on Thursday it gave final approval for Petrobras," the Mexican oil company, "to use the first ever deepwater floating production storage facility in the Gulf of Mexico. The facility will be used when the company begins oil and natural gas production at its Chinook-Cascade project in the near future, the department said. Petrobras is based in Brazil." So a Brazilian company that is already profiting from Obama's illegal drilling moratorium, we can't drill here, but they are drilling in the Gulf, and they have found a huge deposit of oil. A Brazilian company is gonna profit some more from their work in the Gulf.

Petrobras has enjoyed a very cozy relationship with Obama because Soros is a big investor of Petrobras and supporter of Obama. The US is reported to be backing loans to Petrobras for more offshore drilling. Remember that story? We're backing something like $10 billion in loans for Brazil to continue to drill. Folks, this is why the questions are raised. If he hates oil and if it's not the energy of the future, why is he helping Brazil and other nations, Mexico and the ChiComs, why is he helping them, lending them money and not stopping them on any environmental regulation, why is he not stopping any of these other countries from drilling and stopping us? This question is what's leading to the answers that people come up with, maybe he's got chip on his shoulder about this country.

What could possibly be the reason for bending over backwards or forwards or whatever to let every other nation in our region go get as much oil as they can and put moratoriums on domestic companies and domestic production? Now, this is storage for oil. Obama has allowed storage to use the first ever deepwater floating production storage facility. This guy doesn't like offshore platforms, but this is the first of its kind, a deepwater floating production storage facility, Obama has said, fine, Petrobras, go ahead and do it if there's no risk to the environment if they leak, this is what the regime is saying. Apparently Brazilian drilled oil is good for the environment, I guess. Unlike oil drilled by companies the US might profit from. I guess Brazilian oil is fine. It doesn't hurt if it leaks. It's all very curious. As I say, it's what leads people to question the motives and the intentions of this president.

One of the things about Petrobras that I want to make clear ('cause it's a little bit confusing): The regime, the Obama administration has given permission to Petrobras to have a floating underwater storage facility in the Gulf of Mexico that will hold 80,000 barrels of oil and 16 million cubic feet of gas. A floating underwater storage facility. No worries about leakage. No problem. We have to shut down our Gulf drilling because of a fire on board a rig. But we okay a floating underwater storage facility. Well, since it's a Brazilian company which has gotten heavy investments from George Soros, apparently there are no possible risks to the environment here. It just seems like all the obstacles that this administration seeks to place in people's way happen to be in the way of the United States.

CALLER: Oh, the pleasure is all mine, Rush. I'm really glad to finally be able to speak with you.

CALLER: Thank you. And I wanted to get to my point. You know, I ponder and I view and I see what an awful job Barack Obama is doing, really what an empty suit he is.

CALLER: (laughing) And you look around the world, you see all these different issues going on in the world, and if you individualize them and look at 'em separately, I know how George Bush would have handled most of these issues, but I go back even to Bill Clinton, and I say, well, you know, as much as I disliked and disagreed with most of what he did, you'd have to think we'd be in a much better place if we had someone even like Bill Clinton running the country.

RUSH: Why this comparison? Why are you comparing Obama to Clinton? There's no wrong answer here. This is just the host being curious. Why not compare Obama to one of the Republican presidential nominees?

CALLER: Well, there would be no comparison. The Republican nominees that I'm aware of are pretty concise and they would really know --

RUSH: Okay. So your point is that even a Democrat, even a socialist Democrat like Hillary would be better off than this guy when it comes to foreign policy because she's more serious about it?

CALLER: Foreign policy, domestic policy, I see the mood -- I'm a middle class American and I see the mood in the country, and the folks I meet with on a daily basis, I'm in sales --

CALLER: -- are down, and we feel like we're defeated. I know there's light at the end of the tunnel, I believe in the American dream if you keep pushing forward, but this guy seems at every corner to pull that from us.

RUSH: Well, not only that, I think really it isn't complicated. It's just tough to believe. The reason you and everybody else are having trouble, even the Clintons, Mrs. Clinton, are having trouble understanding the lack of decision say on Libya or anything else, the root of it is the view of this country that Obama holds. If he is a guy who does not believe in American exceptionalism, if he is a guy who thinks it's been his duty to run around the world and apologize for the United States, if he believes that the United States has achieved its superpower position illegitimately, then where's the logical connection? Why would we expect him to think at all in terms of the United States as a solution to the world's problems? We got a guy who thinks the United States has been the problem. Okay, so here's Libya. He doesn't even seem to care much less do anything about it, and people chalk it up to traditional explanations. "Well, he's looking at polling data, can't go in there because he criticized Bush, would look bad," all the standard conventional wisdom stuff of people trying to come up with the explanation. That's not it.

It's very simple. He doesn't look at America as the solution. We're the problem. He doesn't think the United States has any moral authority in places like Libya. In fact, I would venture to say that if you get Obama to be honest, he'd tell you that there have been times in our history when we have been Libya. We're no different. He probably thinks, who are we telling Khadafy what to do? Who are we to stand up for people around the world who want freedom? Hell, the way Obama looks at it, we've been denying freedom to our own citizens for who knows how long. I'm serious. I think the explanations for Obama's inaction, indecision are quite simple. He just doesn't have the view of America as an exceptional place, as a solution to the world's problems. He just doesn't. I think I'm like most people. I think I'm like you. When I lie awake in bed at night or when I'm daydreaming in the afternoon, when I get home from work and I'm reviewing the day, whatever, I occupy my mind with my job, "How could I get better at it. How can I do a better job?" Well, I do do this.

At the end of every program I review it and say, "What could I have done better? How could I have stayed more energized in the third hour," or whatever it is. I don't get the impression Barack Obama does this at all. I don't think Barack Obama is introspective about the job he's doing at all. I think his ego is such that the whole concept of not doing a good job is foreign to him. His ego is such that his presence equals greatness. Not his actions. His aura. So, Libya, you name it, the BP oil spill, all of these things, if they don't present a political opportunity to advance his agenda, then they're nagging problems, they're just distractions, like Afghanistan. You look at how long it took to figure out what to do there. I have no doubt in my mind that as far as Obama's concerned that Afghanistan's just a whole distraction. He really rather not have to deal with it at all. His mind-set is, all he's gotta do is show up. And sometimes not even that. You know, he's really not even voting "present" on Libya.

Look at Gitmo. Yeah, executive order, yeah, he's gonna close it, yeah, it's gonna satisfy the base. But look, it's still open, which I, by the way, knew would be the case, as you well know. But he seems to be detached, to me, in a bubble. I wasn't gonna play it but grab sound bite five. This is last night. He went to another party last night, a fundraiser for the Democrats, and this is about as far as he'll commit to anything in this Japan business.

OBAMA: We're at a moment in time where obviously all of us are heartbroken by the images of what's happening in Japan, and we're reminded of how American leadership is critical to our closest allies, even if those allies are themselves economically advanced and powerful, there are moments where they need our help and we're bound together by a common humanity.

RUSH: He's uttering the words. There's no backup here. What is this, even if those allies are themselves economically advanced and powerful? What he's really saying is let 'em help themselves, to hell with them. In fact, Jay Carney, I heard this last night or did we play it on the air yesterday, Jay Carney, the press yesterday, I think we had it yesterday, some reporter asked him a question about Japan, and Carney said, "Go talk to your own news agency. You got reporters over there." You had the White House press secretary telling reporters in the daily press briefing, (paraphrasing) "Don't ask me. Don't ask your government. Don't ask your regime about what's going on in Japan. Ask your own reporters. You've got reporters over there. Your reporters know more about what's going on than we do." He didn't say it, but, "You guys care more than we do." I remember how they called Reagan lazy. Went to sleep all the time, fell asleep in cabinet meetings, old doddering fool. Look at all that Reagan accomplished, and he never voted present, and he was never AWOL. Situations like we face today.

RUSH: Lincoln, Nebraska, a place I have been numerous times. Keith, great to have you on the program, sir. Hi.

RUSH: Ah, you're right. You know what? That's my fault. I misread that. I've not been to Lincoln, Kansas.

CALLER: Oh, it's beautiful. It's the limestone capital of the world. I would like to implant in my brain the Rush Limbaugh computer chip for excellence in journalism, and with your empathizing I would like three topics real quick. I would like to be able to give you my top three on presidential, the Libya, and Japan. Here's my top three. I would go with a nonpolitician, Herman Cain, Rand Paul, Scott Walker, and on Libya I would have never been indecisive, I woulda done just what I'd done in North Korea when they sunk the 53 South Koreans on the ship, I woulda hit a nuclear facility, I would go into Libya and I would dispose of Khadafy, militarily, I would hold and be there to have fair elections.

RUSH: Hold on a minute. I want to ask you, if you were president of the United States, why would you care what Khadafy's doing?

CALLER: I care because if we don't do it now, five, ten, 15 years from now we're gonna do the same thing we did in Iraq where there's hundreds of thousands of innocent protesters begging for us to come in there and help them. Help us establish our standing in the world again, like in Bahrain, Iran, if they decided to protest or even North Korea, I want 'em to know, the United States is still there, they're powerful, and they're gonna do something about it, they're not gonna be dithering and they're gonna start just --

RUSH: Have you ever asked yourself at any time in your life, you're young and growing up and you start paying attention to the news, and any time something happens around the world in any country large or small there was always one faction of the story that had to do with what the United States was going to do. Have you ever asked yourself, "Why does that matter?" For example, let's pick Bahrain. You're growing up in Bahrain and you read of some protests going on in the Philippines. If you live in Bahrain, do you ever wonder, "What are we gonna do about that?" The people of the United States uniquely ask themselves, "What are we going to do about that?" especially when it comes to people's freedom being oppressed. Were you like that growing up? What do we have to do with this? When I was young, that was one of the first questions I had when I was reading or absorbing news from places around the world, there was always a United States angle or component to it. It took me awhile to understand the nature of a superpower and our role in it, even outside the notion that we had a competitor in the Soviet Union, here we just automatically as Americans, "Okay, got problems in Libya, we have to do something." I don't think any people of any nation in the world think that when something happens outside their country. Why is that?

CALLER: Well, when I was growing up in junior high in Manhattan, Kansas, there was a guy by the name of Mel Davis, a friend of mine. Everybody made fun of him because of his glasses, the way he dressed, but he was a genius, and I said to myself, "What can I do to help this young man?" and I became his best friend and he's one of my best friends I ever had in my life, and it's the way I look at life in general. It's just like in Japan you ask if you're caring. Rush, yes, you care about the $14.3 trillion debt, you care about the 1.7 deficit, you care about original bills, no earmarks, drill domestically, let's get energy independence. You do care. But what can you do? What can you do about it, Rush? I mean you addressed the problem, you hit it right on the head, and the thing about Japan is these people getting 3200 microsieverts of radiation, the average person gets 6200 a year, a hundred thousand in their lifetime it takes to have health problems, 50,000 in a lifetime is your average radioactivity that you will receive. So do I care, do I empathize, do I have sympathy for Japan? Yes, I do. But you know what though? It's gonna all turn out to be sensationalism in journalism.

RUSH: Well, that's part of it, but I'm basically focusing on what it is to be an American and we do think there's something we could do in Japan, some think there's something we should do. There are a lot of us that think only we can do it. It's relatively new in this country that we have leaders who say, "Hey, you can print your own money, go ahead and handle it yourself." That's new. It's really new to have a president who basically tunes out, makes a speech now and then and that supposedly fixes it, solves it, covers it, or what have you. I find it incredibly noteworthy that we are the only country in the world where an event outside our country happens -- I don't care what, it could be large or small, like Somalia. I'll never forget how that happened. The New York Times publishes a picture on the front page, black and white picture of an obviously starving Somali child with insects hovering around his head, and that was it. The president was forced to send the military over there in a Meals on Wheels operation. The American people demanded it. Pictures are very powerful things.

I dare say that on that continent there wasn't one country upon seeing that picture, "Well, we gotta do something about this." They probably said, "The US has gotta do something about this," or "We'll join the US if they do," but I doubt the Brits get up and say, "Gosh, look at all the suffering in Somalia, we gotta do something." But they're closest to us in that, and they're very crucial and important allies. That's what it boils down. I'm asking everybody, okay, yeah, Khadafy and the downing of Pan Am jet, Khadafy and worldwide terrorism, Khadafy -- yeah, I can understand we've got our grievances with Khadafy, but all of a sudden we've got some rebels there, why in the world do we care? The answer always boils down to morality. The United States has always been the moral force for freedom and goodness and decency. Isn't that why so many of us just revolt at the view of this country held by the left and our current regime? They find our country flawed. They don't think we have any moral superiority when it comes to freedom and liberty.

They may say the words. Their policies don't follow it up. But folks, it's not only that when we see events around the world happen that we say to ourselves, "What are we gonna do about it?" We just naturally assume that there's something we could or should do about it. Everybody else in the world is looking to us, too. Everybody else, "What's the United States gonna do?" Who is the first on the scene when there's a disaster? It's always us. American exceptionalism, American superpower status, economic might, moral superiority, whatever you want to call it, but it is that moral superiority that gives the left problems. They don't believe it. They look at this country as immoral, and they'll tell you why. Slavery, racism, sexism, bigotry, lack of agreement to same-sex marriage, you name it. The fact that we don't grant amnesty, the fact that we don't open our borders and let virtually anybody in, how can we claim any moral superiority, the moral force of the world when we are so inherently flawed ourselves? It leads to these internal battles between ourselves inside the country.

Meanwhile, if we don't take action somewhere, this is why Libya's important, what is the Middle East gonna become if we stay out of it? And that's too frightening to contemplate. If you throw the United States in the mix of this, within the rubric of our moral obligation and our moral -- maybe superiority is the wrong word, but we do have a moral standing, particularly in the areas of standing for liberty and freedom, people who want to escape tyranny and oppression. We've always been the country around the world where that happened. Freedom was up to us. It's why it was so important to maintain and guarantee our own. If we didn't do that, it was worthless to anybody else. So if we just say, okay, well, the Middle East, what right do we have to be there? If we're not there, what does it become? And in that regard, how are our interests affected? And it could be disastrous if we stay out of it.

A lot of people confuse our desire to do something with Khadafy as us trying to impose our will on a bunch of people who have no desire to see that imposition, which is really not in the old days the expressed purpose of US foreign policy. The purpose of US foreign policy was to protect our own national interests. Now, in the case of the Middle East, what if a multination total Al-Qaeda or Taliban- run Middle East is the result of what goes on there? After Khadafy, after Mubarak, whatever happens in Bahrain, suppose the militant Islamists get hold of the Saudi oil supply, and next Abu Dhabi, or Qatar. We can't allow it to happen, but not just because of our selfishness, but because the free flow of oil around the world at market prices is in fact the fuel of the engine of freedom. And if we punt, it's not just that we're getting out of it because we have no business there, they have self-determination. The people in these countries are not exhibiting self-determination. The rebels in Libya may, in fact, be trying to express self-determination. We'll still trying to figure out what it all means in Egypt. But it's best to have a role in this for our own national interests and the interests of freedom and liberty here and around the world.

But if you don't have a leader articulating that, if you don't have an administration with that as a guiding principle or foreign policy, then you're gonna have nothing but mud, murkiness, and confusion, which is gonna lead to dispiritedness and a loss of a sense of purpose of the United States. And I'll tell you, I'm really worried that that is what's happening now, that around the world people are questioning the purpose of the United States, where they never did before. They're questioning our commitment as a people and as a nation, the concept of freedom. Now, those of you who are young, born in this country and never been anywhere else, you don't know the rest of the world. You don't know the story of humanity. Sadly, it's not being taught to you in schools. You hear the term "American exceptionalism," and it can mean many things, but it does not mean that we are better people than anybody else in the world. It does not mean that we are special because we were born here.

If you look at history, the story of humanity has been poverty, misery, imprisonment, tyranny, dictatorship, starvation, massive suffering. The exception to that is the United States. That's why, to me, we are exceptional. And why has human freedom been the dominant theme of this country? Why has realizing individual dreams? Ninety-five percent of all human beings who have lived since creation were denied the opportunity to fulfill their dreams. Their main, number one objective was surviving, against the stranglehold of other human beings. That has never been a concern of people in the UnitedStates. Our concerns are much less dangerous. Our concerns are, "Can I be first in line to get the new iPad?" Our concerns are, "How do I prolong my life and get better health care?" I'm not belittling our concerns. I'm trying to draw a contrast here and to stipulate what's special about this country, why we are looked at the way we are and why we're looked to the way we are and what is exceptional about us.

What's frightening is that we don't now have an administration that accepts or believes any of that, nothing special about this country. In fact, our crimes, if you will, our transgressions far outweigh whatever goodness there has been in this country. It's time for us to pay a price. That's what this current regime believes in many ways. The Middle East is on fire. Let's go play golf. Let's go to ESPN, give you my brackets. Send Mrs. Clinton over there, without a message, without a mission, that so upsets her she wants to check out of everything, which is the only benefit.

RUSH: The UK, the Brits, ladies and gentlemen, when they were a superpower -- and they voluntarily gave it up. They voluntarily withdrew from the world, and almost simultaneously they opened their borders, and it's been downhill ever since. But when they were a superpower, they used to concern themselves with the problems of the world. Does the name "Wilberforce" mean anything to you? Have you ever heard the name, William Wilberforce? He is the guy who abolished slavery in the world. He was a Brit. A beautiful, wonderful movie was made about it. It didn't get a whole lot of attention. I saw the screener. I talked about it on the program.

He was just a trader, and he helped rid the world of slavery and the slave trade in the UK, William Wilberforce. Philip Anschutz company made the movie about it. But if you spend any time... I marvel. Every time I go to European, go to the UK, turn on Sky News, BBC. If I go to Italy, wherever I've been in the world, it's incredible: Every news story has to do with what the United States will do about whatever the problem of the day is. I don't care where you go. Every news story (particularly foreign policy) will deal with some quote from some American foreign policy person about what the US role in that story is going to be.

It's probably the same all over the world. Everybody looks to us. So it's shocking to see headlines about how we're waiting for a UN resolution about going into Libya. This is just not who we are! We're the ones going to the UN trying to get a coalition put together, as in Iraq. Now, in Libya it's a tough call, which is why Obama's by no means qualified. In Libya, the opposition is probably largely influenced by Al-Qaeda. The rebels in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are largely Shi'ites which is influenced by Iran. Now, these are tough calls, what side to come down on. It's not a show. It's not a speech. It's why we need somebody with good judgment at the helm who has an interest in US interests, and it doesn't appear that that's the case.

RUSH: Let me expand on this just a little bit, something I mentioned at the close of the previous hour. In this situation in Libya, who are the rebels? We see Khadafy, we see bad guy. We see "rebels," we see good guys. Anybody who wants to get rid of Khadafy's gotta be a good guy. Well, in the context here of US foreign policy, the Mideast on fire, what is it going to become? We do have a vested interest in this.

RUSH: Back to this situation in Libya. This is very interesting because the opposition, the rebels (this is not known for certain) may be largely influenced by Al-Qaeda. You know, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the automatic assumption was that this is a democracy movement, an uprising for freedom. So we had Clapper from this administration say (summarized) "Well, the Muslim Brotherhood, they're secular! They're really they're not a problem. They're good guys, essentially." Which is, A, wrong. B, it's dangerous to have somebody in our administration who thinks that, much less says it. But it still isn't known, and we might have the most fervent hopes and desires that a democracy movement is rising, but the odds of this in the Middle East without our involvement? I don't know. I don't trust it.

We had a democracy movement in Iraq. We took it to Iraq. We delivered it. Libya sent fighters to help the "insurgents" in Iraq. The people that we were employing the surge against, Libya was sending fighters to support. So to assume that simply because we oversaw (one might say implemented) a democracy movement in Iraq and that it's gonna automatically arise elsewhere is a wonderful hope, but you can't count on it, particularly without any kind of involvement. But yet, so many people this country said, "Mubarak has got to go!" Mubarak, when everything was measured, was more of an ally than he wasn't to us.

He didn't treat his people well, but there again comes this balance of foreign policy in this region. You don't want a calf I forget ate over there, and there arguments, some people think that a caliphate is in the process of being put together, and others say, "That's silly. There not gonna be a caliphate!" Can you take the chance? Can't just sit back and take the chance that a caliphate will never happen. Sharia caliphate I'm talking about. You just can't sit around and take the chance that that's not what's happening. So, the rebels in Libya. They are largely influenced by Al-Qaeda, but up the road in Bahrain they've got rebels there, too.

They've got rebels in Saudi Arabia. Now, that's unique, too. The royal family in Saudi Arabia is the closest thing to a steel trap that there is in the world today outside of the ChiComs and North Koreans. For them to be uprisings there is quite telling. The rebels in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are Shi'ites. The Shi'ites, obviously, are largely influenced by Iran. So look at the competing forces here: Al-Qaeda, probably in Libya. Iran, everywhere, but particularly now in Libya. These are tough calls. Who do you support? Conventional wisdom: Don't support Khadafy. Gotta go. Pan Am, the downing of the Pan Am jetliner, Libya, Khadafy responsible for it. (interruption)

Well, we did have him contained, but, remember, after George W. Bush and the move into Iraq, Libya disarmed. Khadafy got scared to death. We had Libya contained, until this regime assumes power. Now, you can say whatever you want Khadafy, but we can quote him. He thinks Obama's one of them. I don't care whether it is or not, and I'm not saying it. Doesn't matter what I think in this regard. Khadafy is saying he thinks Obama's one of them. So he's acting like it, too. (Thank me.) He's acting like it. And so far what is he to think? He's done a lot of huffing and puffing. They sent Mrs. Clinton over there. Big whoop!

So what are we gonna do? Tough calls. It's why you need people with real good judgment and a lot of experience. The United States foreign policy-wise in the past was always looked to for many reasons (our power, obviously, our money) but we were also viewed as honest brokers. On balance, people around the world thought they were gonna get a fair shake. Look at our foreign aid budget. We give foreign aid to scoundrels. I would change that as we've been through many, many times. Bottom line is: I don't think Obama thinks the US has been honest brokers.

I think in every realm, the way we think of our country -- having moral standing in the world, a force for good against evil, a solution to the world's problems -- I don't think that this regime, certainly not Obama, I don't believe he believes it. We got Reverend Wright. I'm sure Reverend Wright and Farrakhan have probably told Khadafy things that make Khadafy think he's safe behaving this way. Khadafy's been given awards by Farrakhan. Farrakhan's a nut, so's Khadafy, but they're associates -- and Jeremiah Wright doesn't see a problem with Khadafy. Obama went to the guy's church 20 years.

But he never heard anything he said so we don't have to worry about it. (Well, that's the story.) So if we have a president who doesn't think that we are honest brokers and that we never have been, and we got the region on fire, that's why a lot of people are concerned -- equally about that as well as what's going on in Japan. So, when the president dashes off to Rio, when he says, "I gotta do my Sweet 16 picks..." I'll tell you something else about that. If you took a look at his picks... I don't do this, but I have a lot of sports friends. I got people love the NCAAs, they just love 'em, and I got some e-mails from some of them that said, "This guy's the biggest wimp on the face of the earth. He picked every #1 seed in the Final Four! People serious about this don't do that. That's gutless. Anybody can pick the #1 seeds!"

So he's even among those who get into this, he's not getting a whole lot of love respect from those people from whom he's trying to build a bridge. Well, let's go to the audio sound bites. It is not just me, ladies and gentlemen. (interruption) I know. Hillary and Obama say Khadafy has to go. Well, once upon a time the Clintons said Saddam has to go, too, but he never went anywhere -- and the only effort we made to get rid of Saddam was bombing a building on Saturday night, which injured a janitor in Baghdad. But once they took care of the Monica situation then Saddam didn't matter anymore. These people over there have long memories. In Egypt we've placed one dictator with another. Mubarak's gone in exchange now for the Egyptian military (and that's if we're lucky, if they hold on).

But here. This is a montage of media types from last night and this morning and they're starting to use the F-word about Obama.

SPITZER: What does this say about Barack Obama and his political leadership, and will this become a metaphor for his failure to lead?

WILLIAMS: If you want to talk about problems on leadership, let's talk about his failure.

RUSH: Whoa! That's F. Chuck Todd at the end, Juan Williams at the beginning, and Client No. 9 led off: Eliot Spitzer. All three guys, we're talking about failure. Can we go back to January 16th, 2009, this program.

RUSH ARCHIVE: I don't need 400 words. I need four: I hope he fails. What you are laughing at? See, now, here's the point. Everybody thinks it's outrageous to say. Even my staff, "Oh, you can't do that!" Why not? Why is it any different -- what's new, what is unfair about my saying I hope liberalism fails? Liberalism is our problem. Liberalism is what's gotten us dangerously close to the precipice here. Why do I want more of it? I don't care what the Drive-By story is. I would be honored if the Drive-By Media headlined me all day long, "Limbaugh: 'I hope Obama fails.'" Somebody's gotta say it.

RUSH: I said it. Now these other guys are asking it, but this is not how I meant failure. This is not the kind of failure I had in mind. So it goes on. David "Rodham" Gergen (who probably also really admired the crease in Obama's pants at one point) last night, was on CNN, The Arena. That's the new name of Client No. 9's show since he got rid of the skirt, Kathleen Parker. So now he owns the show with his own cadre of rotating guests. So he said, Spitzer says to Gergen, "We've heard President Obama say repeatedly, 'Khadafy has to go, Khadafy has no legitimacy,' yet Khadafy's still there, and we're doing nothing to help the opposition. Can you explain this?"

GERGEN: Difficult. You almost invite the rebels to keep fighting because they think you're gonna be there at their side, and here then when you let them be crushed -- and they are about to be crushed; it's too late for a no-fly zone -- then it's the humiliation for the president and it's an embarrassment in many ways.

RUSH: See, this is the thing: Why is it an embarrassment for US president when something in Libya happens? The fact is it is. It is. It's just because of our power . Now, again the rebels in this case are Al-Qaeda. So David "Rodham" Gergen here is: Well, you know, we're gonna let Al-Qaeda get crushed. So this a toughie. You help Khadafy and you support -- it's not guaranteed, but best guesses are that these rebels are backed by Al-Qaeda. So Eliot Spitzer said, "Well, look what's the hesitancy? What's creating this lack of decision? The Arab League said, 'Do a no-fly zone!' I mean, Obama's been asked by the Arabs to do it. He's been invited in by the Arabs. Why doesn't he do anything?"

GERGEN: There has been no American leadership with this. To have the headline in the Washington Post: "On Libya, Obama Wants Others to Lead"? To you and me as traditionalists, that's sort of, "What?" It's very, uh, hard to understand. The Wall Street Journal in its editorial made a really important point the other day: "This is what the world is gonna start looking like without American leadership."

RUSH: Bingo! Bingo! And don't think Obama doesn't know it. Don't think he's not aware of it.

RUSH: This is unbelievable. This is unbelievable. Barack Obama made an unannounced visit to the embassy of Japan, the Japanese embassy in Washington and signed the condolence book for lives lost in the earthquake and the tsunami. He took up an entire page of the condolence book. That's what he thinks is leadership. And they got video of it, Fox is showing video, there's Obama writing a whole page in the condolence book. See, he cares. What a great guy. Man, are we lucky to have such leadership. He went over and wrote in the condolence book at the Japanese embassy. (interruption) Take credit for what? Oh, come on. He's not doing this 'cause of me. No way is he doing this 'cause of me. He's not doing this because of any criticism. Well, if he is, that's even worse. But this is just what he thinks is leadership.

RUSH: "US housing starts posted their biggest decline in 27 years in February while building permits dropped to their lowest level on record, suggesting the beleaguered real estate sector has yet to rebound." What's your first clue, Reuters? Suggesting the beleaguered real estate sector has yet to rebound? See, we're in the midst of this roaring recovery, but somehow the housing people haven't figured that out. Now, what happened to all the federal aid for this industry? The mortgage industry, the foreclosure program, what happened? How in the hell can all of this federal assistance have led to this? Better stated is, maybe all this federal assistance did lead to this.

Now, this news, I guarantee you, housing starts, biggest drop since 1984, this news will be blamed on the problems in the Middle East and the Japan earthquake and the tsunami, nuclear problems. Because the recession's been over for two years, they keep telling us. So we've got golf. We've got parties. We got vacation, Rio de Janeiro this weekend. We got NCAA picks. We got meetings with unions. We got golf. We got parties. We got vacations. We got trips to Rio this weekend. We got vacations. We got meeting with unions. It's a never-ending loop. "Housing Starts See Biggest Drop Since 1984 -- Deepest Slump in Modern History."

I wonder if David Brooks ever considered this: Because Obama has that perfect crease in his pants, it's an indication he's not a hard worker. A leader with a perfect crease in his pants is like a farmer with perfectly smooth hands and no evidence of being in the sun. See, I'm a real guy. If I see a guy with a perfect crease in his pants, I say either he sits in his underwear at his desk and only puts 'em on when he's gonna meet people or he doesn't work very hard. All I'm telling you is my pants are wrinkled in the first five minutes. Once I'm in the car, it's over. How about yours, Snerdley? You don't even wear pants with creases in 'em. Never mind. (laughing) Really? Did David Brooks ever think maybe that a perfectly pressed pair of slacks means no work?

Let's see, what else do we have? Higher prices at the gas pump. I wonder. We got higher food prices. That's out there now, soaring food prices. And I told you about this, I warned you about this during the Egypt business, and everybody pooh-poohed it. "Wholesale Prices Up 1.6% on Steep Rise in Food." "Inflation Pressures Build on Surge in Energy and Food," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I wonder if food prices are rising at a pace agreeable with President Obama. They must be, because he's not concerned with gasoline prices, and gasoline prices are related to food prices. Remember, when gasoline was surging to four dollars a gallon, the president, "I don't mind that, I'm just unhappy with how fast the price got there." So I wonder what his opinion is of the rising price in food. Is it happening too fast for Obama? Higher prices at the pump please him, as long as they don't rise too quickly. Rising gas prices always translate to rising food prices. Palin understands this. She has a piece on it at Facebook today. But the fact is this president wants higher gas prices, which means he wants higher food prices. So he got his NCAA picks done today, got it on ESPN, got rising food prices, rising gasoline prices. President Obama ought to be a happy man today. He got it all.

RUSH: Well, it's just like higher gas prices will make us better people who can serve more, higher prices will making better people because we'll have to eat less as Martha Stewart said. It's all good, Moochelle Obama, it's all good. It's why brainiacs like David Brooks say the ways of Obama are mysterious to all of us. But they work in the end.

RUSH: Just a couple of other things I want to focus on here before we get to those other items. A reminder here from Dr. Spencer, our official climatologist: "Practical Energy Sources." See, this is the thing: "Practical." It's such an important word, and it is so absent. Practicality takes a long vacation during an event like this. Here we are in the middle of a major news event, and the news cannot be relied on for clear thinking and facts. That's the basic problem -- and that's why, ladies and gentlemen, I am endeavoring to deal with this as I am. I can't tell you any more about the tsunami, I can't show you anything in addition to what you've seen video-wise, but I can be relied on for clear thinking and facts.

That's what we do here: We make the complex understandable. We bring common sense when it is in such short supply. This is Dr. Spencer, our official climatologist. Dr. Roy Spencer, University of Alabama-Huntsville points out, 'Practical energy sources are inherently risky. There is risk associated with virtually everything, particularly in energy production -- and the reason is is that we need so much of it. There's no way to provide it without using concentrated forms of it. Petroleum, natural gas, coal, nuclear, those are all concentrated." Think of concentrated frozen orange juice in your can and the way you make it is you dump that into a pitcher of water and you stir it.

Our energy sources, before we refine them and prepare them for practical use, are really concentrated in their power. A barrel of oil, natural gas, coal, what have you. "Solar and wind never compete because they produce so little energy. When you look at it, say, per acre of land required it's just not practical. We get less than 1% of our nation's energy from solar and wind, even now. Thirty percent in this country comes from nuclear. The rest, sorry to tell you, is fossil fuel. Oil, natural gas, and all the derivatives -- and we have an appetite for it. And we better be producing it to meet our demand and growth. Otherwise our economy is going to stagnate. We cannot have a growing economy and stagnating energy production at the same time. It cannot happen.

We cannot grow an economy with wind energy or solar. It isn't practical. There is no concentrated form of it. You can't even guarantee it. The wind will stop blowing; the sun will be obscured by the clouds. So all of our energy sources, all of our options have dangers, have risks inherent to their existence. Look at the deaths due to coal mine disasters. That's all in the name of fulfilling our energy needs. Natural gas explosions? Even the occasional oil rig explosion, the occasional oil tanker springing a leak. In the context of all this, nuclear really is our safest option in the long term, especially with newer technologies.

These Japanese reactors were over 40 years old, and they didn't fail because of them being inherently flawed. I'll tell you something else the Japanese are doing to illustrate their genuine concern for humanity. These are boiling water reactors, for the most part. They're destroying them. You throw saltwater into these things with boron, boric acid, and you're destroying the nuclear power plant. It's history. They'll never produce another kilowatt of energy after this. But they have to do this in order to protect the population and limit any further damage, danger, destruction from any fallout, what have you. You start throwing saltwater in there to cool the core...

They still don't know with some of these explosions, they don't know if these explosions are being maintained inside the containment buildings or not. The explosions are happening. They think some fuel rods have been totally exposed and are melting, but they're not sure. But regardless they're taking steps to limit the damage, and in the process they're wiping out these nuke plants. They'll never produce again. So my point is you can't get rid of the risk. So to me, being adult about this, being mature, juxtapose this with the media panic that we're getting, which is to say, "Nuclear is now not even an option. Why, look at this! Nuclear is awful."

The China Syndrome movie, it's a never-ending panic. Anti-nuclear energy is as much a part of the leftist agenda as public sector unions are. Stopping them, being opposed to nuclear power plants, they are as adamantly opposed as they are in favor of public sector unions -- or anything else in their agenda. And I'm sorry, folks, when there's a political agenda attached to anything, "Hello, El Rushbo?" That's when we get into gear, because these people (media, leftists, whoever) want to try to hide behind the notion they have no agenda, that they're just reporting the news; and they're just concerned about people, just concerned about public safety.

Yeah, just like they were with the War on Poverty and the Great Society, all these wonderful things that are going to help people, have done just the opposite. So, yeah, I have a bias. My bias is based on intelligence guided by experience. Liberalism fails. I don't care what these people are for or against, take the opposite side. It's so simple that it seems complex. There are three separate and distinct issues facing Japan. The earthquake was one (one of the worst in history) followed by the tsunami (one of the worst in history), and then and only then, the third crisis: The nuclear problems. The nuclear problems are not number one and two.

The nuclear problems result from the earthquake and the tsunami, neither of which (I don't care what anybody says) we have anything to do with. We can't stop 'em and we can't cause 'em. We simply have to deal with them. There have been earthquakes, tsunamis since the beginning of time -- and when the destruction results in no destruction, it's no big deal. But when there are houses and cars and boats and planes and so forth in the way, "Oh, look how horrible this is!" But when a valley of nothing, vegetation gets swamped, "Wow, it's really cool." So the perspective is damage happens 'cause we chose to put things there, but the earth is the earth and the earth does what it does, and there are tsunamis and there are earthquakes.

Everything associated with life is two things: Risk and compromise. People who build houses on the beach in Hurricane Alley, knowingly take a risk. It happens. People say it's worth the risk 'cause it's beautiful to live there, but it's an absolute risk. It's not the earth's fault if houses happen to get destroyed when these things happen 'cause the earth is what it is. A tiger is a tiger. These things happen. It's terrible, it's tragic, but you can't take the risk out of human life. You can't take the risk out of anything anyone does. It's not possible. And so much of liberalism is fabricated on a false pretense that they can create a utopia that is risk-free; that there is never, ever going to be anything horrible that happens.

There won't even be a risk to the risk if you just leave it to them. Everything will be pristine and beautiful as it was intended to be, before humanity came along and started tampering with things. I said earlier on in this program: Fear kills. We cannot develop a hysterical fear of nuclear power because of the risk of an accident. We will. We're gonna do that. We're going to develop a hysterical fear of nuclear power because of the risk of an accident. Now, the Japanese more than any other nation know the dangers of nuclear power in any number of ways. They also realize that we have to harness it. They have no alternative. They don't have any oil. They don't have any natural gas.

You talk about dependence on foreign oil? They are a hundred percent dependent unless they go nuke. Japan has, as I mentioned three crises: The earthquake, the tsunami, nuclear problems. They got a fourth one now. They have the highest debt of any country in the world: 200% of GDP. And one of the reasons they have got 200% of GDP debt is because they tried what we're trying now: Endless "stimulation." Endless stimulus, quantitative easing, printing money, what have you -- and that's gonna cause a lot of problems when they have to rebuild in a crisis like this, 'cause they are going to have to rebuild. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the real lesson Obama should learn from this: That we cannot run up debt for idiotic reasons.

We cannot go into tremendous, incalculable debt spending on idiotic programs, because someday we are gonna have to need that money when we have a real crisis. Something like this... Well, we've had our Northridge quakes, we've had our quakes, we've had 9/11, we've had Katrina. We're gonna have another one. Japan is a socialist country: 200% of their GDP is debt. Better stated, the debt is 200% of GDP. That is the better way to put that. So many major events are in the news, from Wisconsin, to Tokyo, to Tripoli. I made a command decision this weekend, for you: I gave up playing golf this weekend. Show prep trumps golf. That's the Golden Rule here at the Golden Microphone, and you know how much I love golf. (interruption) What do you mean am I serious? Yes, I'm serious, but I also know that the president of the United States did not give up his weekend golf game.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. It's great to talk to you. Thank you, sir, for the work that you and those like you do.

CALLER: Yeah, concerning this fracking. I'm sure I saw an article a few weeks ago on the Fox website. I thought it was Arkansas, I don't quite remember. They were fracking for I think natural gas somewhere, and they had some earth tremors and the scientists were already wondering if that had to do with the fracking. So this was something that they're already working on.

RUSH: Yeah, it's exactly right. I saw that, too. Like you, I don't recall if it's Arkansas or wherever, but it is something that's routine now.

CALLER: Well, I know. This is the buildup. This is how it starts. Of course I don't have to tell you this. I'm actually writing a novel on how it's gonna be in another 50 or 75 years if things keep going the way they are.

RUSH: Look, it gets back, folks, to what I was talking about mere moments ago regarding risk. The left would have you believe that there are risk-free ways to eat; there are risk-free ways to produce energy; there are risk-free ways to live; there are risk-free ways to build a house, all this, whatever it is, if you just let them be in charge of it. I don't think people think this way. They're too busy leading their lives. I've often thought about the people we've never met, the people that we've never heard of who make this country work. The production of so much of what we need -- forget our wants and desires, sybaritic pursuits -- just the production of things that we need. The amounts involved are unimaginable. The human brain is not capable of calculating it all. We hear how many barrels of oil a day that we use. I dare say none of us can picture it. Just one day. Imagine uninterrupted for as long as you live, you go to the gas station, it's gonna be there. You adjust your thermostat, it's gonna matter.

Whatever it is, where energy is concerned, or any other need, it's there in this country. You don't even question it until it isn't there or until the price goes up so high that having it there is a choice that you have to make. But with all those factors, nevertheless it has to be made available, it has to be produced, it has to be found. In many cases, it has to be refined, then it has to be distributed. This boggles my mind. The people that do this, the people who take the risk at finding the stuff, talking about fracking for oil or natural gas. Let me stay focused on that. There is no mistaking our need. Whether we're talking about American citizens and their desires and their expectations for comfort, their desires and expectations of security, their desires and expectations of economic affordability, producing all of this requires risk. Add to this the political force known as the left trying as best they can at every point to stop this, to make it more difficult, for whatever their reason, it's destroying the planet, it's too expensive, it's not fairly distributed, whatever. You got an entire political force trying to stop those who do this production, who take these risks. It is an amount of energy that we cannot humanly fathom. Yet it's met every day and it is met every day with the expectation it's gonna be there tomorrow.

We have people today designing aircraft that will not go into production for ten years that are assuming there will be jet fuel ten years from now. Why design and manufacture something that will never get off the ground because we're gonna run out of the fuel? They are expecting it. Plus I think they happen to know that it's there and will be there. So here we have some people who have come along and found deposits of oil and natural gas in places that five years ago, ten years ago, fifteen years ago we had no hope of getting, we didn't have the technology to do so, and at the early stages of the invention of said technology it was still so expensive it made no practical sense, if it cost $150 a barrel to get it via fracking, and the price a barrel's 80 bucks, why? Makes no economic sense, you're not gonna do it. Well, you sit around, you get your patents and permits, and you wait. Market forces eventually make it profitable to go get the stuff. Ergo here we are. We're going out there now because there is this demand and there is this expectation, and not just here, the Europeans have it, the Chinese are starting to have it, the Indians are starting to have it, expecting it to be there every day. Just as turning on the tap there's gonna be water coming out, they expect it. Somebody has to produce it. Some evil corporation, some group of people, somebody has to transport it.

So now amidst all this talk of running out, there's a finite life supply of oil and natural gas, oh, no, that's why we gotta go green and all that rotgut where there is no concentrated form of it, there is no market for it, it doesn't exist yet as a viable source of any perceptible energy need or desire, it just isn't there. And we got a regime totally pushing it at the expense of these other things. Ergo, here come these guys, these companies, whoever they are, come up with this fracking to get more natural gas, to meet these expectations, more oil to meet these demands. And now what do we have? We have a bunch of pantywaists who couldn't produce a damn thing for themselves if they have to trying to stop it by claiming it's causing earth tremors, which could lead to earthquakes. Panic mode in full tilt. Economists, TV today, 46% chance San Andreas fault blows in 30 years. Forty-six percent chance. Well, there's risk with everything, and these guys that are trying to stand in the way of the production, the discovery, and transport of all of this stuff that you and I expect, demand on a daily basis are gonna try to shut it down. They're gonna try to stop it and shut it down using fear, innuendo.

And here we are, isn't the timing wonderful? So we had an earthquake over in Japan. Guess what? Fracking might have caused it. So we have enemies, enemies of our energy needs. And they happen to have their friends and allies in the Democrat Party. Yet they say people, Tea Party, we're a bunch of fearmongers. We're not fearmongers. The fearmongers among us are found on the American left and the worldwide left. It's gotten to the point where you expect the gasoline to be there at an affordable price. You expect a thermostat to make a difference when you change it. You want it hotter or colder in your house, apartment, whatever, you expect it to happen. The people who make that possible are portrayed as your enemies -- Big Oil, Big Retail, Big Gas -- by the people who are promising you that they can provide these wants and needs and desires for you risk-free if you just listen to 'em. They also want to ban toilet paper, have you start using leaves, and I'm not making it up.

Look, we have serious choices here, and as a rational human being you cannot expect that human life, even in as an advanced country as ours to be without risk. You just can't expect it. Disasters, horrible unfortunate things are going to happen. Just like beautiful, wonderful, unbelievable things happen. It's a mix. But this desire, or this hope, whatever, to take the risk out of things because it is the risk that is threatening people's lives, and threatening their happiness, it's the exact opposite. It is the risk that leads to the reward. And in our case it's the highest standard of living in the history of civilization. And when you understand that, United States, the highest standard of living in 250 years of existence -- other civilizations have been around thousands of years -- 250 or less for us, highest standard of living in human history, however the hell long it is, and we have enemies on our own shores, in our own country we have people who are trying to bring that aspect of life in America to a screeching halt, for whatever convoluted, sick reasons. They're feeling guilty, it's unfair that we should live as well as we do when others around the world don't, when that's not our doing. In fact, to the extent that standards of living around the world have risen, it's because of us, because of the risk-taking and the ingenuity, the freedom to be that has existed in this country.

So there's an economic terrorism going on. These people now on this anti-fracking business, just to use an example, same thing with the anti-nuclear business, what have you, they're just using scare tactics trying to stop progress. And that's really what it boils down to. You have a group of people trying to tell us that progress is deadly, progress kills. I don't know about you, just offends my sensibilities profoundly. These are not the kind of people I would want to depend on in any aspect for anything in my life, for two reasons: One, I just wouldn't want to depend. I see 'em, I hear 'em, I listen to 'em, I know that they're not capable, and two, their track record. Whenever they've been in charge, particularly unfettered, you have poverty, disaster, tyranny, totalitarianism, dungeons, political prisons, what have you, when they are in charge. Because of course theirs is a false promise. There is no utopia. There is no risk-free existence. And people who are originally befuddled and taken in by this promise of theirs soon enough realize that it's phony and they want out. So these people portraying themselves as our saviors build walls to keep people in who want to leave, dungeons and prisons. It's the history of the world. We are that exception.

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 #170	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	March 20, 2011