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 5 or 6 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).

Standard and Poor’s warned the United States that it may lose its AAA bond rating. This would make money more difficult to borrow and much more expensive to borrow. Our problem is excessive debt with no clear change of our spending in the near future.

President Obama has directed his Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate oil speculators to see if they are illegally driving up oil prices. Bush and Clinton did the same thing when oil prices went up.

Speaking of investigations, did you know that the Federal Election Commission has been quietly investigating President Obama’s campaign for the past 2 years? Neither did I.

Boeing has almost completed work on a new plant in South Carolina, and thousands have been hired at this new plant. The National Labor Relations Board under President Obama has filed a complaint which has stopped Boeing from moving ahead. This would be a second production line for its new 787 Dreamliner. Boeing is subject to union problems (strikes, negotiations, etc.) in its present plant in Washington state. South Carolina would be a non-union shop. The NRB charges that Boeing is motivated by an unlawful desire to retaliate against union workers for their past strikes in Washington and to discourage future strikes.

There was an immigration reform meeting at the White House. None of the current governors from southern border states were invited.

California Congressman Tom McClintock has offered a bill to prioritize debt interest payments in case of a government shutdown. Unlike these 2000 page Democratic bills, this bill is 1 paragraph long and written in English.

New York state health officials were almost ready to put some strong restrictions on Day camp games like tag, wiffle ball, Red Rover and kickball until, miraculously, some of them realized what idiots they were. There are so many kinds of regulators who need to be fired and their regulatory powers disappeared.

A Toronto comedian and Vancouver restaurant owner were ordered to pay $22,500 by a British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal on Thursday after the standup comic hurled a torrent of sexual insults at a woman and her same-sex partner during a comedy show three years ago.

Some of us Bible-believing types might wonder if Bangladesh is under some kind of divine discipline. Recently, in Bangladesh, an Islamist leader threatened to wage Jihad if child marriage is banned.

Barack Obama: "We can't ignore future deficits, but just as ignoring deficits would mortgage our future, failing to invest in our kids and our infrastructure and our basic research and clean energy, that would be mortgaging our future, as well. And I'm not willing to do it...I'm rooting for everybody to get rich. But I believe that we can't ask everybody to sacrifice and then tell the wealthiest among us, well, you can just relax and go count your money, and don't worry about it. We're not going to ask anything of you."

President Obama: "Instead of subsidizing yesterday's energy sources, we need to invest in tomorrow's." We do not have to subsidize oil production; but we do have to subsidize alternative energies.

Obama: "Everyone likes change in the abstract, but change in the concrete is hard. It's tough."

PBS’s Mark Shields: “The most urgent priority that we have is to find jobs somehow, not simply for Americans, which is an urgent priority, but for young Egyptians.”

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on what would happen if we did not raise the debt limit: "We'd have to stop making payments to our seniors -- Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. We'd have to stop paying veterans' benefits. We'd have to stop paying all the other payments on all the other things the government does. And then we would risk default on our interest payments. If we did that, we'd tip the U.S. economy and the world economy back into recession, depression." None of which is true, of course.

Caroline Heldman, one of the most beautiful liberals on FoxNews, pretty much broke the record for repeating the largest number liberal myths about petrochemicals in less than 5 minutes: “Speculators taking advantage of unrest in the Middle East [is why oil prices are high]...we have 2% of the world’s reserves [of oil]...He [Obama] doesn’t want little kids to get asthma [so he is against burning coal]...if we tap all of our [oil and gas] reserves, we’d be in the same place in 5 years...we have an addiction to fossil fuel.”

Jesse Jackson Jr. on why America is losing jobs; it is the iPad: “It's simple: Because everyone can download books and newspapers, everyone who works at bookstores (he notes Borders going out of business) or the publishing industry, or for textbooks, will lose their jobs to the people making iPads in China.”

Fresh Juice Party (song) sung at fund-raising breakfast for Obama: “We paid our dues; where’s our change?”

California activist Naomi Pitcairn (of the Fresh Juice Party, I believe), as she was escorted out from an Obama $5,000-a-plate breakfast fundraiser: "Free Bradley Manning. I'm leaving. I hope I don't get tortured in jail."

From State-funded Mariatalks website, answering the question "Can I get an abortion in Massachusetts if I'm under 18?": “Planned Parenthood...can...provide you with a free lawyer who will help you go to court and talk to a judge. These hearings are scheduled quickly, are kept completely confidential and so far, no minor who's gone through this process has ever been denied access to an abortion by a judge."”

A letter from the environmentalist group Earth Day Network written to priests: "This year we again invite you to celebrate Earth Day Sunday and share with your parishioners a story of creation care that will impart to them the importance of protecting a nurturing the planet that was provided to us. Earth Day Sunday is a great way to bring your parish together through community building and sharing the faith with those in the community while improving the world around us." This is also Easter Sunday, when Christians celebrate the risen Messiah.

Jesse Jackson Jr.: “I believe that the solution to the long-term unemployment problem is actually in the constitution of the United States...it’s not in the constitution of the United States; it should be in the constitution of the United States and one of these days, we are going to get there. We need to add to the Constitution The right for a family to have a decent home. What would that do to home construction in this nation? What would that do for millions of unemployed people? We need to add to the Constitution the right to medical care. How many doctors would such a right create?"

The College Republican club at the University of Iowa sent out a university-approved blast e-mail regarding its "Conservative Coming out Week," one professor sent back the email: "Fu** You Republicans!"

Various leftists on twitter: “Could somebody please kill Donald Trump?”

“Donald Trump needs to die with that thin comb over hair...”

“Donald Trump can die a slow death he is a puppet.”

“Donald Trump can you please just die already?”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlDeqUJ4x1o

Paul Krugman, who was the first person to blame the uncivil right for the Arizona shooting: “Let's not be civil. Instead, let's have a frank discussion of our differences. In particular, if Democrats believe that Republicans are talking cruel nonsense.”

Californian Rep Loretta Sanchez, mocking new Congressmen she’s met [spoken in a southern accent]: “Well, Loretta, it’s unconstitutional.”

President Obama: “We have to live within our means; we have to reduce our deficit.”

Sarah Palin at a TEA party rally: “And speaking of President Obama, I think we ought to pay tribute to him today on this Tax Day Tea Party because, really, he's the inspiration for why we're here today. That's why the Tea Party movement wouldn't exist without Barack Obama. You see, Candidate Obama didn't have a record while he was in office, but President Obama certainly has a record, and that's why we're here.”

Bernard Goldberg: “I'm not saying Barack Obama has a monopoly on hypocrisy. There are plenty of politicians on the left and on the right who speak out of both sides of their mouth. But Barack Obama sold us. He sold himself to the American people as somebody who was different and better. He's not different. He's not better. He made a great first impression, but you can only make a first impression once, and his act is getting a little old.”

Mitch McConnell: "Over the past two years, the administration has undertaken what can only be described as a war on American energy. It's cancelled dozens of drilling leases. It's declared a moratorium on drilling off the Gulf Coast. It's increased permit fees. It has prolonged public comment periods. In short, it's done just about everything it can to keep our own energy sector from growing. As a result, thousands of U.S. workers have lost their jobs, as companies have been forced to look elsewhere for a better business climate."

Neil Bortz on the hysterical accusations of the left when it comes to reducing the budget: “When you engage in hysterical rhetoric like that, it means that you don’t have a [n alternative] plan.”

California Congressman Tom McClintock: “History offers us not a single example of a nation that has ever spent and borrowed and taxed its way to prosperity—not one. But it offers us many, many examples of nations that have spent and borrowed and taxed their way into economic ruin and bankruptcy.” McClintock is the man who should have been elected governor of California instead of Arnold.

George Will: “I can't, in 40 years in Washington, remember a president submitting a budget and two months later saying, "Oh, never mind" -- say a Mulligan, in effect.”

Matthew Dowd: “The Republicans aren't willing to tell the truth to the American public that we don't have enough revenues to pay for everything that we have. The Democrats are unwilling to tell the truth to the American public that we cannot live anymore with the entitlement programs as they exist today. To me, the president -- he gives a good speech; he does all that; Republicans make these grand announcements, but in the end, they are unwilling to tell the American public the truth. They keep telling the American public they can have it all and they don't have to pay for it. To me, the difference between the two political parties today is you have a Democratic Party that believes in big government that shouldn't be paid for, and you have a Republican Party that believes in a slightly less big government that shouldn't be paid for. That's the problem. ”

Allen West: “What the President of the United States does not understand is that we do not need class warfare rhetoric in the United States of America. We do not need to penalize the people that are out there producing and trying to create the next generation of jobs and growth in our private sector.”

George Will: “this is the 50th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion, I never thought I'd live to see a more feckless use of American power, but lo and 'hold, you live long enough, you get to see something like Libya. We have no coherent exit strategy because we have no coherent objective, other than to get someone else to overturn the existing Libyan government so that people we don't know can take over.”

Allen West: “He [Obama] said, ‘The fourth step of our approach is to reduce spending in the tax code.’ I can’t figure out in Sam Hill what that means? Could it be that the President does not believe that is your money?”

Sarah Palin, to the GOP, when it appears as if they did not put up much of a budget fight: "Stand up, GOP, and fight. Maybe I should ask some of the [Wisconsin] Badger women's hockey team, those champions, maybe I should ask them if we should be suggesting to GOP leaders that they need to learn to fight like a girl."

Donald Trump (after 3 questions on Obama’s birth certificate): “Next question, George.”

Rush Limbaugh: "Obama's reelection doesn't depend on American economic recovery. Contrary to what everybody believes, his reelection depends on making sure the people he's giving money to stay loyal and vote for him."

Rush: "After World War II, we didn't say, 'Okay, Germany, you're ours.' We didn't say, 'France, you're ours.' What did we do? Marshall Plan. We gave them untold amounts of money and let them rebuild. That's just who we are."

Rush: "Obama doesn't have the courage to tell these young skulls full of mush that Medicare won't even exist when they become of age. He leaves that part out of his propaganda."

Rush: "Obama actually said today that we can't spend more than we take in. Now, if you are a rational person who has been paying attention for three years and you hear the president say that, you are incredulous. It's like Colonel Sanders saying we have to stop killing chickens."

Rush: "All liberalism requires is a bunch of fake wording that adds up to how much you care about something, and that's it. You don't have to solve one problem. In fact, you can make problems worse as long as you talk about your good intentions."

Rush: "So Obama basically said that you'd be better off renting, as opposed to buying. Translation: 'Look, I've done so much damage to the housing market, I wouldn't even mess with it if I were you.'"

Rush: "I'm really not trying to be provocative, but I wonder if there are any sane Democrats anymore, or are they all just a bunch of pure, radical ideologues who are totally animated by their hatred for conservative Republicans?"

“Republican” Senator Susan Collins: “I don't happen to support Congressman Ryan's plan but at least he had the courage to put forth a plan to significantly reduce the debt.”

16-year-old has a better handle on the TEA party than many of those I have talked to in California:

Most college students see no problem with a lopsided tax structure as we have now, where the wealthy are taxed way, way more than anyone else. However, they are not quite as generous when it comes to the redistribution of their grades.

ABC actually does a fair job covering the Tax Day TEA parties (commercial first).

Representative Gardner grills EPA assistant administrator. The idea is, the EPA is supposed to do an impact of their regulations with regards to jobs. They really didn’t/

Conan O'Brien: "Obama will participate in a town hall meeting hosted on Facebook. So just like everyone else in America, Obama will be on Facebook when he should be working.”

1) The smartest thing would be for us to not raise the debt ceiling limit. That would indicate to the world (and to Standard and Poor’s) that we have become serious about our debt. If the politicians in Washington simply raise the debt limit, that will communicate to the world a lack of seriousness with regards to our budget. At some point, no matter what we do, austerity measures will follow. It is literally impossible to tax enough money to pay for the entitlements. I am one who would not mind balancing the budget immediately, as opposed to reducing the deficit over the next 10 years (as per the Ryan budget). Right now, the Ryan budget is a little better than nothing, in my view.

2) Our various governmental agencies tend to over-regulate and be guilty of huge amounts of waste, fraud and abuse. There is almost no incentive for them to deal with these problems. This is why every state, city and federal function that can be privatized should be privatized. As long as the result is not a public-private entity like FNMA, private organizations are much better at patrolling waste, fraud and abuse.

3) Standard and Poor’s threat to downgrade United States bonds should have stopped the President dead in his campaigning tracks. He should have returned to Washington and required the same of Congress. Any president serious about the budget and the future of the United States would have done this. Instead, Obama will attend 6 fundraisers, do Oprah, and then do 2 more fundraisers.

4) In working a long day, I occasionally required a power nap (5–10 minutes in duration). Air traffic controllers certainly have breaks; it seems reasonable to me that there is some kind of provision for a power nap.

Less than 15% of Americans pay 10–20% of their income in federal income taxes. Less than 1% of Americans pay more than 20% of their income in federal income taxes.

The amount of revenue expected to come in for taxing the rich? $70–80 billion/year. That is about 4% of the deficit. That is assuming that these additional taxes do not cause those being taxed to change any of their activities (projected tax income is always much higher than the actual revenue generated by new taxes).

The federal government made $125 billion worth of improper payments in 2010. Because it is the government, no one will blink an eye; most news services will not cover this story, and Washington just goes on. No one will be arrested, reprimanded or fired.

It is claimed that there are 20.7 billion barrels of proven oil reserves in the United States.

However, according to the Bureau of Land Management the oil shale in the United States holds an estimated 2.175 trillion barrels of potentially recoverable oil (it is a different kind of oil, but it is useable for energy).

$14,000 of tax dollars were spent on big red capes in Florida in their cape-ability challenge. The idea is, this was supposed to spark something in the unemployed—they were supposed to feel like superheroes until they landed a job. You can swing your fist or a hammer at Mr. Evil Unemployment, which is some kind of a cut-out that they also paid for.

Obama for America spent $2.8 million on lawyers' costs for corrected FEC filings and other activities in the time since he was elected in 2008. No idea about the $2 million that Trump claims that Obama has spent over this birth certificate stuff (I find that to be less credible).

12¢ is the portion of every health care dollar that the person receiving the health care pays, the other 88¢ are paid by someone else. When Jack Kennedy was president, it was 47¢ out of every dollar.

45% of those who make $30,000/year or less, claim they pay too much federal taxes. Most of them get back more than they put in.

Americans trust Republicans in Congress more than Mr. Obama to make the right decisions about reducing the deficit, by a 44% to 39%

72% Americans said that they support increasing federal taxes starting in 2013 for households earning $250,000 a year or more in order to lower the deficit.

"How likely is it that people in the federal government either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East?"

22.6% of Democrats said it was "very likely." 28.2% said it was "somewhat likely."

Most of the conservatives I know think the birther issue is pretty meaningless, and wish Trump would get off of it. But over half of Democrats in 2006 thought it was possible that there was a conspiracy of the United States government to stage 9/11 in order to go to war in the Middle East? That is 100x more nutty.

The Federal Election Commissions 2 year investigation of candidate Obama’s campaign, and not a word of this is found in the Obama Media Complex.

You may recall that, when George Bush was president, the ready job availability was meaningless, because these were just a bunch of dead-end McDonald’s jobs. However, McDonald’s is hiring, and this story today is being touted as more proof that our economy is improving. No longer are these written off as dead-end jobs.

Obama’s answering machine in the White House, receiving calls from places like, Standard and Poor’s, saying the U.S. bond rating is about to fall.

When running for office, you were told that revenues to the government increase when you lower taxes and capital gains taxes. Since you have historic budget deficits, should you not give this a try?

Shared responsibility tour = top 2% of producers and small businesses are being asked to pay even more than they pay already. The other 98% are sharing in their wealth, I guess.

So far, Obama’s approach to simply attack the Republicans over their tax proposals seems to be working quite well. Most of the polling I see, indicates that most people are quite confused about this issue, and really seem to believe that collecting a tiny more from the rich will solve our deficit.

The media is going to be pushing immigration reform over the next few months. It will be as much in the news as energy and the economy (unless the economy picks up).

No matter who gets elected to office and no matter what they say, oil will remain the king of energy for the next 20 years at least. Apart from dramatic scientific achievements, it could be used for the next 50 years or more for vehicles.

Seems like we have had a lot of tornadoes this year. Look for them to be blamed on global warming.

So far, at least Paul Ryan is out speaking, trying to teach the economics. I hope that there are others out there as well?

My most paranoid thought of a year or so ago is that, the TARP funds stole nearly a trillion dollars from the people of the United States. However, it appears as though most of those funds have been repaid. However, the Economic Recovery Act does appear as if it took a trillion dollars from tax payers, funding only a handful of meaningful projects.

Paul Krugman wrote a recent column call the Conscience of a Liberal and inserted this graph to show that, obviously, the rich are not paying their fair share.

Part of what is going on here is the implication that all groups are paying about the same. Therefore, either Krugman is lying or he is unbelievably stupid. I choose the first. When you compare categories of taxpayers, you do not compare 20% increments with 10% or 5% increments. The proper way to compare this is to take the final 4 categories and lump them together.

If you go to the source page, it contains the additional lie that renters pay property taxes, so a person who rents is considered to pay property taxes. Renters pay what the market will bear. In many cases, as in a down market, this is sometimes very little above the owner’s tax rate (I can testify to this). At this point in time, government typically takes $300–400/month per house from me and I make $50–$100/month per house, and sometimes less. Many times, I lose money on a rent house, but the government always takes its share, no matter my gain or loss for that year.

Secondly, nowhere does this graph take into consideration that many of those at the bottom are not making any money whatsoever, but receiving a check from the government. I do believe in taking care of those unable to take care of themselves. However, putting aside those with families, I guesstimate that this is perhaps 1% of our population (as opposed to the 35–45% who simply go to their mailbox in order to get their government check). I have known a few dozen people who are healthy, young and reasonably intelligent, and certainly employable, who have chosen to simply take from the government instead of working (or have allowed the government to subsidize their lives).

In May, Congress will begin debate on our nation's debt limit. The debt limit is an alarm bell built into our nation's laws, which forces members of Congress to confront out-of-control spending when our debt reaches a certain level. Five times in the last four years, we have ignored this alarm bell. This time must be different.

It would irresponsible and reckless for them to even consider raising the limit without also enacting spending cuts and reform. The nation's credit worthiness is directly tied to our fiscal stewardship, not our desire to borrow. America would send a strong signal to global financial markets by taking prudent steps to address our out-of-control spending habits, not by blindly giving ourselves another blank check.

Today's national debt-the public debt that government has accumulated to finance its out-of-control spending-is approximately $14.3 trillion. To put that into perspective, the government's annual budget for 2011, which is in itself bloated, is roughly $3.7 trillion. And to put the future health of our economy in perspective, President Obama proposed in his 2012 Budget proposal that we add $9 trillion to that debt over the next ten years.

Our government borrows nearly 40 cents on every dollar it spends. And the more we borrow, the higher these projections go. In other words, our national debt isn't a problem.it's a crisis.

Many in Washington claim we should, once again, ignore the debt limit alarm bell. They say coupling a debt limit increase with spending cuts and reforms puts the full faith and credit of the United States at risk. This is nonsense.

As Heritage economist J.D. Foster, Ph.D., noted in January: "Refusing to raise the debt limit would not, in and of itself, cause the United States to default on its public debt. Both immediately and long after it reaches the debt limit, the government would have far more than enough revenue coming in that the Secretary of the Treasury could use to pay interest on the debt. Nor would preserving the current debt limit put at risk the full faith and credit of the United States government, as the President's chief economic adviser has claimed. The government would continue to pay net interest as it comes due."

It is critical conservatives do not give in to the scare tactics of the left. They have one goal in mind: Distracting us from our nation's fiscal crisis through fear and intimidation.

Over the past month, Washington began debating this fiscal crisis. First we had the debate on finishing up the 2011 budget, since the last Congress was so irresponsible with your money; they didn't even bother to pass a budget for the first time in modern history. We also debated competing budget proposals and "frameworks."

House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan's (R-Wi.) proposal to reform our tax and entitlement system and get America moving on the right path to eliminating our debt passed largely along party lines on Friday (235-193). Earlier in the week, desperate to have a voice in the conversation he had continually ignored, President Obama offered a "framework," to modify his earlier failed budget proposal, that "set goals" to reduce the debt by $4 trillion over twelve years, mostly through hefty tax hikes on investors and job creators.

Similar to the budget debates, the discussion over the debt limit has been rife with hyperbole, false choices and irresponsible conjecture. It started when White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee said we would risk damaging the "full faith and credit of the United States" by not blindly raising the ceiling. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner warned Congress in January that we would need to act as soon as March 31 to avert a global crisis. That date came and went, as we predicted. Yesterday morning, on Meet the Press, Geithner continued intimidating Congress calling any delays "catastrophic."

President Obama told the AP last week that failure to raise the debt ceiling "could plunge the world economy back into a recession." This hysteria is simply not grounded in reality. The world economy will be in much worse shape if America continues to dishonestly approach its fiscal future.

Congress has time to do the right thing. Members should promptly have a full discussion of the level of debt they want to set and begin immediate, substantial spending cuts to demonstrate the seriousness with which they take the nation's fiscal problems. These should be followed by additional changes such as hard spending caps and entitlement reforms that would return the nation to fiscal sanity and keep it there.

President Obama himself voted against raising the debt ceiling in 2006 saying: "The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure.Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better." First, the White House said he did so because he knew his vote wouldn't count. Courageous. Now, Obama conveniently says that vote was simply a mistake.

Whether he believed it or not, or was merely taking political cheap shots, Obama's rhetoric was closer to reality in 2006. We are shifting "the burden of bad choices onto the backs of our children and grandchildren," and the time to stop doing so is now. The upcoming debt limit vote isn't just a convenient opportunity, but a national obligation.

U.S. households are now getting more in cash handouts from the government than they are paying in taxes for the first time since the Great Depression.

Households received $2.3 trillion in some kind of government support in 2010. That includes expanded unemployment benefits, as well as payments for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and stimulus spending, among other things.

But that's more than the $2.2 trillion households paid in taxes, an amount that has slumped largely due to the recession, according to an analysis by the Fiscal Times.

Also, an estimated 59% of the 308.7 million Americans in this country get at least one federal benefit, according to the Census Bureau, based on 2009 data. An estimated 46.5 million get Social Security; 42.6 million get Medicare; 42.4 million get Medicaid; 36.1 million get food stamps; 12.4 million get housing subsidies; and 3.2 million get Veterans' benefits.

And the handouts from the government have been growing. Government cash handouts account for a whopping 79% of household growth since 2007, even as household tax payments--for things like the income and payroll tax, among other taxes--have fallen by $312 billion.

One of the recurring themes FOX Business has been covering is "how the world has been turned upside down - well, the business world at least," notes FOX Director of Business News, Ray Hennessey. "In a free market, profit is generated by hard work and enterprise," Hennessey notes, adding: "Because of the labor of the worker, companies generally have the ability to prosper and make more money, both for their employees and their owners," which in turn creates tax revenues.

Seems like common sense, right? That's because it is. But not in our country today. Somehow the DNA of our country is changing. Wealth creation is coming from DC, not from America's entrepreneurs.

In short, Americans have the government, not private enterprise, to thank for their wealth growth.

For instance, Hennessey asks, if indeed more households have the government to thank for their wealth, does that mean those households are more inclined to re-elect politicians who are pushing for more government handouts?

Does the workforce erode because it is easier to collect a check than answer to an alarm clock each morning?

Is our competitiveness as a nation hurt because profit is generated not by American capitalism but by European-style socialism? Can we, as taxpayers, afford to carry the burden of government-sponsored wealth creation?

All this comes at a time when a growing number of Wall Street houses, including JPMorgan Chase (JPM: 44.68, +0.12, +0.27%) and Barclays Capital (BCS: 19.71, +0.33, +1.70%), Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) are cutting their U.S. GDP growth forecasts by as much as a percentage point or more.

It also comes as President Barack Obama is already in re-election mode, as he bets his massive spending will woo independents. It also comes as Standard & Poor's has joined the International Monetary Fund and Pimco, which runs the world's biggest bond fund, in downgrading their outlook on US debt.

The negative outlook comes as the government has added the equivalent of Germany and Russia combined in spending from the time Democrat Rep. Nancy Pelosi gaveled in as House Speaker in January 2007. The government, like never before, has put the thumb on the scale as it picks winners and losers.

Yes, the dollar rallied and Treasuries bounced higher after the news that S&P had issued a negative outlook on the U.S. debt picture. Some argued that happened because eventual austerity would slow growth, which is deflationary and in turn good for bonds.

But that ignores the flight away from rocky overseas markets toward the Treasury's safe haven status, which drives yields down. Potential sovereign debt defaults are a huge problem in the Eurozone, particularly in Greece, where yields rocketed above 13% earlier this week.

The bullish view about U.S. bond prices also ignores the fact that the Federal Reserve has been buying Treasury bonds and notes, $600 billion so far this year, more than half of the Treasury Dept.'s issuance. That keeps a lid on bond yields. When bond prices rise, the government doesn't have to lure investors with higher yields. When bond prices fall, the government offers higher yields to reel investors in.

The bullish view about U.S. bond prices also ignores the negative trend in the dollar, which has been weakening.

And it ignores the bond market's brutal reaction to spending under President Bill Clinton, where yields spiked several percentage points higher beginning in 1994, rising from around 5% before topping out above 8%, before then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin forced austerity, leading to welfare reform.

Republicans now want to shrink the U.S. government, but Democrats want to stymie their efforts. This, after the President touted $38 billion in spending cuts as the largest in our nation's history, just four months or so after touting the massive spending increase pushed through in the lame duck Congressional session.

And after the White House shelved the Bowles-Simpson debt commission report, a panel which the President asked for, endorsed and then ignored, hoping such hard decisions might be delayed until after the election.

President Obama had asked for the debt commission to "address the long-term quandary of a government that continually and extravagantly spends more than it takes in," only to initially set aside the commission's recommendations.

And earlier this year the White House first introduced a budget that would have added $6.7 trillion more in deficit spending over the next 10 years, yanking the national debt higher to more than 75% of gross domestic product, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That, until GOP Rep. Paul Ryan offered his $4.4 trillion in spending cuts over ten years, causing the President to offer $4 trillion in cuts over 12 years.

The Fiscal Times reports that "the only other time government income support exceeded taxes paid was from 1931 to 1936." The Times notes that "government transfers of income to households started to overtake personal taxes at the start of 2008, and the gap has been widening."

The difference between what households received and what they paid in taxes is about $125 billion, equal to a little more than "three times the amount Republicans and Democrats agreed to cut from government spending through Sept. 30," the Fiscal Times said. Typically, the gap between government transfers and taxes runs the other way, the Times reports.

"In normal times the household sector gives about eight percentage points more of its income in taxes than it receives in direct transfers," the Times quotes J.P. Morgan economist Michael Feroli as saying, adding that a return to normalcy, or this eight-percentage-point spread, is equal to about $1.2 trillion in income.

So the question is: What government policies will bring the U.S. labor market back to robust health, enough to drive economic growth, consumer spending -- and higher tax revenues?

When will the U.S. government pull back from its intervention into the U.S. economy, so the economy can try to stand on its own?

The top 1% of earners fill the coffers of states like California and New York during a boom-and leave them starved for revenue in a bust.

As Brad Williams walked the halls of the California state capitol in Sacramento on a recent afternoon, he spotted a small crowd of protesters battling state spending cuts. They wore shiny white buttons that said "We Love Jobs!" and argued that looming budget reductions will hurt the Golden State's working class.

The working class may be taking a beating from spending cuts used to close a cavernous deficit, Mr. Williams said, but the root of California's woes is its reliance on taxing the wealthy.

Nearly half of California's income taxes before the recession came from the top 1% of earners: households that took in more than $490,000 a year. High earners, it turns out, have especially volatile incomes-their earnings fell by more than twice as much as the rest of the population's during the recession. When they crashed, they took California's finances down with them.

Mr. Williams, a former economic forecaster for the state, spent more than a decade warning state leaders about California's over-dependence on the rich. "We created a revenue cliff," he said. "We built a large part of our government on the state's most unstable income group."

New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Illinois-states that are the most heavily reliant on the taxes of the wealthy-are now among those with the biggest budget holes. A large population of rich residents was a blessing during the boom, showering states with billions in tax revenue. But it became a curse as their incomes collapsed with financial markets.

Arriving at a time of greatly increased public spending, this reversal highlights the dependence of the states on the outsize incomes of the wealthy. The result for state finances and budgets has been extreme volatility.

Many states are drawing in less money, partly due to lower incomes among high earners. Compare income tax receipts state by state and see the change from 2007 to 2009.

In New York before the recession, the top 1% of earners, who made more than $580,000 a year, paid 41% of the state's income taxes in 2007, up from 25% in 1994, according to state tax data. The top 1% of taxpayers paid 40% or more of state income taxes in New Jersey and Connecticut. In Illinois, which has a flat income-tax rate of 5%, the top 15% paid more than half the state's income taxes.

This growing dependence on wealthy taxpayers is being driven by soaring salaries at the top of the income ladder and by the nation's progressive income taxes, which levy the highest rates on the highest taxable incomes. The top federal income-tax rate has fallen dramatically over the past century, from more than 90% during World War II to 35% today. But the top tax rate-which applies to joint filers reporting $379,000 in taxable income-is still twice as high as the rate for joint filers reporting income of $69,000 or less.

The future of federal income taxes on the wealthy remains in flux. The top tax rate is 35%, following the Congressional tax battle last year. But in 2013, the rate is scheduled to go back to 39.6% unless Congress takes further action.

State income taxes are generally less progressive than federal income taxes, and more than a half-dozen states have no income tax. Yet a number of states have recently hiked taxes on the top earners to raise revenue during the recession. New York, for instance, imposed a "millionaire's tax" in 2009 on those earning $500,000 or more, although the tax is expected to expire at the end of 2011. Connecticut's top income-tax rate has crept up to 6.5% from 4.5% in 2002, while Oregon raised the top tax rate to 11% from 9% for filers with income of more than $500,000.

As they've grown, the incomes of the wealthy have become more unstable. Between 2007 and 2008, the incomes of the top-earning 1% fell 16%, compared to a decline of 4% for U.S. earners as a whole, according to the IRS. Because today's highest salaries are usually linked to financial markets-through stock-based pay or investments-they are more prone to sudden shocks.

The income swings have created more extreme booms and busts for state governments. In New York, the top 1% of taxpayers contribute more to the state's year-to-year tax swings than all the other taxpayers combined, according to a study by the Rockefeller Institute of Government. In its January report downgrading New Jersey's credit rating, Standard & Poor's stated that New Jersey's wealth "translates into a high ability to pay taxes but might also contribute to potential revenue volatility."

State budget shortfalls have other causes, of course, from high unemployment and weak retail sales to falling real-estate values and the rising costs of health-care and pensions. State spending has expanded rapidly over the past decade. California's total spending grew from $99.2 billion in 2000-01 to a projected $136 billion in 2010-11, not including federal funds, according to the state Department of Finance. Though California's spending slipped by 15% during the recession, it has since returned to near prerecession levels.

Some states may get a lifeline this year from the financial markets. Starting late last year, California, New Jersey and others began seeing higher-than-expected income-tax revenues and capital-gains revenues, suggesting the start of the next boom cycle. Still, because many states based their spending plans on the assumption that the windfalls from the wealthy would return every year, they are now grappling with multibillion-dollar shortfalls.

A recent study by the Pew Center on the States and the Rockefeller Institute found that in 2009, states overestimated their revenues by more than $50 billion, due largely to the unexpected fall-off in personal-income taxes. Sales and corporate taxes have also fallen, but they account for a much smaller share of tax revenue in many states.

Tax experts say the problems at the state level could spread to Washington, as the highest earners gain a larger share of both national income and the tax burden. The top 1% paid 38% of federal income taxes in 2008, up from 25% in 1991, and they earned 20% of all national income in 2008, up from 13% in 1991, according to the Tax Foundation.

"These revenues have a narcotic effect on legislatures," said Greg Torres, president of MassINC, a nonpartisan think tank. "They become numb to the trend and think the revenue picture is improving, but they don't realize the money is ephemeral."

Kicking the addiction has proven difficult, since it's so fraught with partisan politics. Republicans advocate lowering taxes on the wealthy to broaden state tax bases and reduce volatility. Democrats oppose the move, saying a less progressive tax system would only add to growing income inequality.

College students and faculty protest budget cuts in Sacramento on March 14. Income taxes account for more than half of California's general revenue.

In a blog post called "The Volatility Monster," California Democratic State Sen. Noreen Evans wrote that "the true response to solving the volatility problem is to make sure Californians are fully employed and decently paid. Preserving the state's progressive tax system is fundamental to combating the rising riches at the top and rising poverty at the bottom. Flattening our tax system would simply increase this already historic income inequality," she wrote.

U.S. Rep. Tom McClintock (R., Calif.) has for years advocated a flat tax in California to reduce volatility and keep high-earners from leaving the state. "California has one of the most steeply disproportionate income taxes in the nation," he said. "A flatter, broader tax rate would help stabilize the most volatile of California's revenues."

Rainy-day funds, which can help bail out governments during recessions, have also run into political opposition or proven too small to save state budgets. A study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that effective rainy day funds should be 15% of state operating expenditures-more than three times the state average before the crisis. Massachusetts, which saw a 75% drop in capital-gains collections during the recession, won plaudits from ratings firms and economists for creating a rainy-day fund in 2010 using future capital-gains revenues.

Economists and state budget chiefs say the best hedge is better planning. Budget staffers in New York, for instance, now spend more time studying Wall Street pay and bonuses to more accurately predict state revenues. The state's budget director avoids overly optimistic forecasts based on a previous year's strong growth.

"We're glad we have the revenue from the wealthy, and we want to encourage these people to stay and prosper," said Robert L. Megna, budget director for New York state. "But we have to recognize that because you have them, you'll have this big volatility."

The story of Mr. Williams, the former chief economist and forecaster for the California Legislative Analyst's Office, shows just how vulnerable states have become to the income shocks among the rich, and why reform has proven difficult.

In the mid-1990s, shortly after taking the job, Mr. Williams discovered he had a problem. Part of his job was to help state politicians plan their budgets and tax projections.

A lanky, 6-foot-4-inch 58-year-old, with piercing blue eyes and a fondness for cycling, Mr. Williams prided himself on his deep data dives. The Wall Street Journal named him California's most accurate forecaster in 1998 for his work the prior decade. He and his team placed a special focus on employment and age data and developed their own econometric models to make improvements.

Historically, California's tax revenues tracked the broader state economy. Yet in the mid-1990s, Mr. Williams noticed that they had started to diverge. Employment was barely growing while income-tax revenue was soaring.

"It was like we suddenly had two different economies," Mr. Williams said. "There was the California economy and then there were personal income taxes."

In all his years of forecasting, he had rarely encountered such a puzzle. He did some economic sleuthing and discovered that most of the growth was coming from a small group of high earners. The average incomes of the top 20% of Californian earners (households making $95,000 in 1998) jumped by an inflation-adjusted 75% between 1980 and 1998, while incomes for the rest of the state grew by less than 3% over the same period. Capital-gains realizations-largely stock sales-quadrupled between 1994 and 1999, to nearly $80 billion.

Mr. Williams reported his findings in early 2000, in a report called "California's Changing Income Distribution," which was widely circulated in the state capital. He wrote that state tax collections would be "subject to more volatility than in the past."

Mr. Williams wasn't the only one noticing the state's dependence on the wealthy. Economists and governors had for years lamented the state's high tax rates on the rich, and in 2009 a bipartisan commission set up by then Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recommended an across-the-board reduction in income-tax rates and a broader sales tax to reduce the state's dependence on the wealthy. The income-tax rate on Californians making more than $1 million a year is 10.3%, compared to less than 6% for those making under $26,600. Combined with the rising share of income going to the top, the state's progressive rates amplify the impact of the income gains or losses of the wealthy.

California's dependence on income taxes has also grown because of its shifting economy. Income taxes now account for more than half of its general revenue, up from about a third in 1981. Because the state's sales and use tax applies mainly to goods, rather than faster-growing services, it has declined in importance. The state's corporate tax has also shrunk relative to income taxes because of tax credits and other changes.

By the late 1990s, Mr. Williams realized that his job had changed. California's future was no longer tied to the broader economy, but to a small group of ultra-earners. To predict the state's revenue, he had to start forecasting the fortunes of the rich. That meant forecasting the performance of stocks-specifically, a handful of high-tech stocks.

He pored over SEC filings for Apple, Oracle and other California tech giants. He met with the financial advisers to the rich, asking them about the investment plans of their clients. He watched daily stock movements and stock sales reported by the state's tax collectors.

Working with the state's tax collectors, he did a geographic breakdown of capital gains. The vast majority were in Silicon Valley.

"We knew there was a bubble," he said, "We just didn't know when it would fall, or by how much."

After the dot-com bust, the state's revenues from capital gains fell by more than two-thirds, to $5 billion in 2003 from $17 billion in 2001, while personal-income taxes fell 15% over the same period. The recession created a mirror image of the boom, with the wealthy leading the crash and dragging tax revenues down with them. By 2002, California had a budget shortfall of more than $20 billion.

The deficit lingered for years, but its lessons seemed to be quickly forgotten in the state capital. By 2005, California was enjoying another surge in spending fed by the incomes of the wealthy.

Mr. Williams started warning of another government crisis. In 2005, he released a report stating that the state's tax revenues could vary by as much as $6 billion in a single year, and that such swings were "more likely than not." He recommended several potential reforms, including flatter income-tax rates, "income averaging," which allows the wealthy to spread their tax payments for unusual windfalls over a longer period of time, and a rainy-day fund.

His proposals failed to gain any traction with the legislature. Many Democrats refused to consider tax hikes on the middle class and lower rates for the rich. In 2009, voters rejected a proposed spending cap, which among other things, would have helped to create a rainy-day fund.

One of the leading advocates for such a fund is Roger Niello, a former Republican assemblyman who has long been among the top 1% of state earners. He and his family own a chain of luxury car dealerships, and during the recession, his income fell by more than half because of the decline of auto sales. Though he's still "fine financially," he said, his personal experience taught him that "people in this income group have the most variable incomes."

Darrell Steinberg, the Democratic leader of the state senate, agrees that the dependence on the wealthy is "one of our most fundamental problems." Yet he concedes that his own spending priorities-including a large expansion of mental-health programs funded by a millionaire's tax-have added to the current mismatch between revenues and spending.

"I have no regrets given the number of people we've helped," he said. "But I guess you could say I did my part with spending."

As time went by, Mr. Williams became increasingly frustrated. To do his job properly, he had to predict the stock market. "And that's impossible," he said. He also felt that all of his research and warnings fell on deaf ears. In 2007, he decided to retire, and he now he works for a consulting firm.

"I was a broken record," he said. "I just kept saying the same thing over and over. And with my job, there was no real pleasure in being right."

With states facing nearly $100 billion in combined budget deficits this year, we're seeing more governors than ever proposing the Barack Obama solution to balancing the budget: Soak the rich. Lawmakers in California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York and Oregon want to raise income tax rates on the top 1% or 2% or 5% of their citizens. New Illinois Gov. Patrick Quinn wants a 50% increase in the income tax rate on the wealthy because this is the "fair" way to close his state's gaping deficit.

Mr. Quinn and other tax-raising governors have been emboldened by recent studies by left-wing groups like the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities that suggest that "tax increases, particularly tax increases on higher-income families, may be the best available option." A recent letter to New York Gov. David Paterson signed by 100 economists advises the Empire State to "raise tax rates for high income families right away."

Here's the problem for states that want to pry more money out of the wallets of rich people. It never works because people, investment capital and businesses are mobile: They can leave tax-unfriendly states and move to tax-friendly states.

And the evidence that we discovered in our new study for the American Legislative Exchange Council, "Rich States, Poor States," published in March, shows that Americans are more sensitive to high taxes than ever before. The tax differential between low-tax and high-tax states is widening, meaning that a relocation from high-tax California or Ohio, to no-income tax Texas or Tennessee, is all the more financially profitable both in terms of lower tax bills and more job opportunities.

Updating some research from Richard Vedder of Ohio University, we found that from 1998 to 2007, more than 1,100 people every day including Sundays and holidays moved from the nine highest income-tax states such as California, New Jersey, New York and Ohio and relocated mostly to the nine tax-haven states with no income tax, including Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire and Texas. We also found that over these same years the no-income tax states created 89% more jobs and had 32% faster personal income growth than their high-tax counterparts.

Did the greater prosperity in low-tax states happen by chance? Is it coincidence that the two highest tax-rate states in the nation, California and New York, have the biggest fiscal holes to repair? No. Dozens of academic studies -- old and new -- have found clear and irrefutable statistical evidence that high state and local taxes repel jobs and businesses.

Martin Feldstein, Harvard economist and former president of the National Bureau of Economic Research, co-authored a famous study in 1998 called "Can State Taxes Redistribute Income?" This should be required reading for today's state legislators. It concludes: "Since individuals can avoid unfavorable taxes by migrating to jurisdictions that offer more favorable tax conditions, a relatively unfavorable tax will cause gross wages to adjust. . . . A more progressive tax thus induces firms to hire fewer high skilled employees and to hire more low skilled employees."

More recently, Barry W. Poulson of the University of Colorado last year examined many factors that explain why some states grew richer than others from 1964 to 2004 and found "a significant negative impact of higher marginal tax rates on state economic growth." In other words, soaking the rich doesn't work. To the contrary, middle-class workers end up taking the hit.

Finally, there is the issue of whether high-income people move away from states that have high income-tax rates. Examining IRS tax return data by state, E.J. McMahon, a fiscal expert at the Manhattan Institute, measured the impact of large income-tax rate increases on the rich ($200,000 income or more) in Connecticut, which raised its tax rate in 2003 to 5% from 4.5%; in New Jersey, which raised its rate in 2004 to 8.97% from 6.35%; and in New York, which raised its tax rate in 2003 to 7.7% from 6.85%. Over the period 2002-2005, in each of these states the "soak the rich" tax hike was followed by a significant reduction in the number of rich people paying taxes in these states relative to the national average. Amazingly, these three states ranked 46th, 49th and 50th among all states in the percentage increase in wealthy tax filers in the years after they tried to soak the rich.

This result was all the more remarkable given that these were years when the stock market boomed and Wall Street gains were in the trillions of dollars. Examining data from a 2008 Princeton study on the New Jersey tax hike on the wealthy, we found that there were 4,000 missing half-millionaires in New Jersey after that tax took effect. New Jersey now has one of the largest budget deficits in the nation.

We believe there are three unintended consequences from states raising tax rates on the rich. First, some rich residents sell their homes and leave the state; second, those who stay in the state report less taxable income on their tax returns; and third, some rich people choose not to locate in a high-tax state. Since many rich people also tend to be successful business owners, jobs leave with them or they never arrive in the first place. This is why high income-tax states have such a tough time creating net new jobs for low-income residents and college graduates.

Those who disapprove of tax competition complain that lower state taxes only create a zero-sum competition where states "race to the bottom" and cut services to the poor as taxes fall to zero. They say that tax cutting inevitably means lower quality schools and police protection as lower tax rates mean starvation of public services.

They're wrong, and New Hampshire is our favorite illustration. The Live Free or Die State has no income or sales tax, yet it has high-quality schools and excellent public services. Students in New Hampshire public schools achieve the fourth-highest test scores in the nation -- even though the state spends about $1,000 a year less per resident on state and local government than the average state and, incredibly, $5,000 less per person than New York. And on the other side of the ledger, California in 2007 had the highest-paid classroom teachers in the nation, and yet the Golden State had the second-lowest test scores.

Or consider the fiasco of New Jersey. In the early 1960s, the state had no state income tax and no state sales tax. It was a rapidly growing state attracting people from everywhere and running budget surpluses. Today its income and sales taxes are among the highest in the nation yet it suffers from perpetual deficits and its schools rank among the worst in the nation -- much worse than those in New Hampshire. Most of the massive infusion of tax dollars over the past 40 years has simply enriched the public-employee unions in the Garden State. People are fleeing the state in droves.

One last point: States aren't simply competing with each other. As Texas Gov. Rick Perry recently told us, "Our state is competing with Germany, France, Japan and China for business. We'd better have a pro-growth tax system or those American jobs will be out-sourced." Gov. Perry and Texas have the jobs and prosperity model exactly right. Texas created more new jobs in 2008 than all other 49 states combined. And Texas is the only state other than Georgia and North Dakota that is cutting taxes this year.

The Texas economic model makes a whole lot more sense than the New Jersey model, and we hope the politicians in California, Delaware, Illinois, Minnesota and New York realize this before it's too late.

A new Washington Post/ABC News poll says that 57 percent of Americans now disapprove of the way the president is handling the economy. Just 42 percent think he's doing a good job in that area.

Now, you would think that would be a catastrophe for a sitting president, the vast majority of the country believing he does not have a handle on the economy. But in order to vote Mr. Obama out, you need an alternative.

In the same poll, Republican-leaning Americans were asked: Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the choice of candidates for the Republican nomination next year? Just 43 percent say they are satisfied; 40 percent dissatisfied.

But even worse for the GOP, President Obama defeats every one of the Republican contenders. The closest is Mitt Romney: 49 percent for Obama; 44 percent for Romney. Donald Trump is beaten 52 to 40; Sarah Palin 55 to 38.

So you can see that while the nation isn't thrilled with Mr. Obama's performance, there is no drive to the opposition party. However, there is no question the Democratic Party is in deep trouble.

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, for the first time since the Great Depression, American households are receiving more money from the feds than they are paying in taxes. That is a nanny state situation, something the Democrats champion.

Also, Standard & Poor's on Monday warned the United States that it could lose its AAA bond rating if the wild spending continues. If that AAA rating goes away, your dollars will be worth less and many people will not buy U.S. bonds, a disaster in the making.

So let me ask you something. How much more evidence do we need for Americans to understand that the country is in dire trouble? I mean, if you are a liberal American, you've got to wake up. Your dollars are in jeopardy, too.

On Tuesday, President Obama held a town hall meeting in northern Virginia and he's still banging the social justice drum:

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I want to live in a society that's fair. Not just out of charitable reasons, but because it improves my life. If there are young people out there who are going to good schools and have opportunity, if I am not, you know, driving by and seeing homeless folks on the streets, why wouldn't I want to have a society where I knew that the American dream was available for everybody?

Respectfully, Mr. President, it is impossible to have the American dream available for everybody. It can't happen. Stop chasing leprechauns.

Some people will not work for a living, will not go to school, will not obey the law. That is reality.

Responsible safety nets are needed, but the nanny state mentality is going to bring this country down unless we get rid of it.

George Bernard Shaw was a perceptive man with a wry wit who apparently knew a little something about politics. Shaw, after all, is the one who said, "A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul."

Or to put it less elegantly, "If you can tax the rich and give their money to everyone who isn't rich, you're not going to get a lot of opposition from the everyone else crowd."

This apparently is what President Obama is counting on as he runs for re-election. The wealthiest Americans, he tells us, need "to pay a little more." The implication is that the wealthy aren't paying - here comes one of those favorite phrases employed by liberal Democrats - "their fair share."

Actually, the wealthiest among us are paying a lot more than their fair share. The top one percent of taxpayers pay almost 40 percent of all federal income taxes. The top five percent pay nearly 60 percent. And the top 10 percent pay about 70 percent.

The bottom 50 percent of taxpayers pretty much don't pay any federal income tax - less than three percent. Those are the ones with no skin in the game. Let's call them Paul.

So it doesn't take a political genius to figure out Barack Obama's re-election strategy. This is the speech - with only a little exaggeration - you will be hearing a lot between now and Election Day 2012:

"If the Republicans have their way, old people will lose their homes. Many of them will be forced to live in cardboard boxes on the street. They will be eating dog food. Yes, we have to cut spending. But not that way. The Republicans will stop funding research that would save the lives of beautiful little children with cancer. That's not the America I want to live in. And why do they want to do this? For just one reason: To make sure millionaires and billionaires don't have to pay just a little more in taxes. If that's the America you want, vote Republican. But I think you're better than that."

Let's remember that you will be hearing some version of that speech from the man who during his first run for the White House, told us he would put an end to "the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long."

From the same man who when he got his party's nomination, said, "One of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other's character and patriotism."

From the same man who on election night said, "I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree."

It would be a waste of time to chastise President Obama for his grandiose hypocrisy. He's hardly the only politician who speaks out of both sides of his mouth. But for sheer cynicism, he's the best.

The same Barack Obama who supposedly abhors partisanship and pettiness practically called Paul Ryan un-American for proposing a budget Mr. Obama doesn't like. And he does this after inviting Mr. Ryan to listen to his speech from a front row seat - an echo of when the President chastised members of the U.S. Supreme Court, who were sitting just a few feet in front of him during his State of the Union message, for a decision he didn't agree with.

If Barack Obama didn't have that great smile and easy-going manner, he would be seen for what he really is: an old fashioned, at times downright nasty, Chicago politician who would throw his minister under the bus if he thought it would further his career.

But with so many people named Paul out there, and with so few Peters, the president's cynical class warfare strategy may work. Besides, incumbents usually win re-election. That's the bad news for Republicans.

The good news is that the last time he ran everything was going his way: John McCain was not an especially attractive candidate. George Bush was an albatross around Mr. McCain's neck. The American people usually don't pick a president from the same party three times in a row. The financial meltdown ended any chance that McCain had.

On top of that, Barack Obama was new and fresh and plenty of people believed him when he said he was not your typical politician. And we haven't even mentioned the slobbering love affair he had with the so-called mainstream media.

So 2008 was something akin to political perfection for Barack Obama, with so many good things falling his way. The problem is you can only make first impressions once. Nothing will ever be that perfect for Barack Obama again. The latest Gallup poll shows President Obama with just a 41 percent job approval. And that ties his low. Maybe even Paul is getting tired of Mr. Obama's act.

The head of the Federal Communications Commission, Michael Copps, says "The news is suffering from a bad case of substance abuse." He says "real journalism" is in decline. He says, "What you and I are getting these days is too much opinion based on opinion and too little news based on fact."

So what does Mr. Copps, a liberal Democrat, want to do about this affront to all right-thinking Americans? He wants the federal government to step in and use its considerable power to make things right.

Copps never said he wants to resurrect the long dead Fairness Doctrine. Not in so many words, anyway. But that's what he was talking about - new rules that would allow the FCC to, at absolute least, influence journalism and political content that comes to us over the airwaves.

Copps made his comment in a speech to the Federal Communications Bar Associations in Washington - and oh yeah, he mentioned two media villains by name: Bill O'Reilly and me. According to the Hill newspaper, Copps said O'Reilly and I are "examples of the problem with today's media landscape," alleging that we have "taken his own words out of context."

What I have said in the past is that liberal Democrats want to bring back the Fairness Doctrine in order to silence conservative voices. That simple, I've said. They have no interest in tamping down on liberal bias on the airwaves. It's only conservatives who are in their crosshairs.

I have also said they're smart enough not to call it the Fairness Doctrine, which was repealed when Ronald Reagan was president. The Fairness Doctrine pretty much called for equal time on the air: if you put on conservative shows, you need to set aside time for liberal voices.

In A Slobbering Love Affair, in a chapter titled "The Unfairness Doctrine, I wrote that, "If the Fairness Doctrine were resurrected now, any radio station that ran, say, Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck or Laura Ingraham - or any other big, profitable conservative talk show - would have to make time for liberal shows. These almost certainly would get crummy ratings and bring in lousy revenues. So we can expect, with a new Fairness Doctrine, that stations will jettison a lot of conservative talk shows, especially the smaller ones .."

So you can see how the very term "Fairness Doctrine" has taken on a stench. And I said they won't use the word "Fairness" when they try to shut down conservatives. Instead, they'll talk about the need for "localism," whereby the federal government would require radio stations around the country to put on local voices if they want their licenses renewed.

According to the Hill, Copps - apparently in an unintended effort to make me look smart - told his audience, the key going forward is "making sure there is media about, and originating from, the local communities a station serves."

And don't think for a nanosecond that those local voices will simply be Ms. Smith from the library or Mr. Jones from the sewer department. They'll mainly be local left-wing political voices. Frankly, I don't care how many left-wingers radio stations put on the air. But when the federal government says you better put them on the air, presumably to balance things out, or lose your license to broadcast and go out of business - that's when things get dangerous.

In their book about the Fairness Doctrine, A Manifesto for Media Freedom, Brian C. Anderson and Adam Thierer wrote this:

"And make no mistake, liberals want to snuff out this exciting, democratic world of analysis and debate and return to the good old days, when you got up in the morning with the New York Times and had dinner with Dan rather - and basically kept quiet while your elite betters told you what to think."

They also wrote that if the Fairness Doctrine or something like it under a different name ever came back to life, "The effects would be seismic - nothing less than wiping out most political talk radio."

Liberals in the U.S. media are hardly in a tizzy over Copps' scary remarks, but his shot across the bow made its way up to Canada, where a conservative Web site, Canada Free Press, pulled back the curtain to see what the wizard was really up to.

"The only reason that Copps is even discussing this is because of the success of Fox News. . Does anyone actually think that the Democrats would be calling for these measures if MSNBC and not Fox was the top rated cable news network?

And the Canadian paper acknowledged what the New York Times and other liberal news organizations will never admit:

"This isn't about . what Copps considers the decline of `real journalism' whatever that means but about the liberals lack of success in the new world order of journalism that has given conservatives more of a voice.

"As a liberal Democrat Copps should be front and center in defending free speech but any government intervention in journalism will do exactly the opposite and stifle opinion."

True enough, but it misses a fundamental point: Too many liberals have forgotten how to be liberal.

Hounded by taxes and regulations, employers in the once-Golden State are moving East.

It wasn't your usual legislative hearing. A group of largely Republican California lawmakers and Democratic Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom traveled here last week to hear from businesses that have left their state to set up shop in Texas.

"We came to learn why they would pick up their roots and move in order to grow their businesses," says GOP Assemblyman Dan Logue, who organized the trip. "Why does Chief Executive magazine rate California the worst state for job and business growth and Texas the best state?"

The contrast is undeniable. Texas has added 165,000 jobs during the last three years while California has lost 1.2 million. California's jobless rate is 12% compared to 8% in Texas.

"I don't see this as a partisan issue," Mr. Newsom told reporters before the group met with Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry. The former San Francisco mayor has many philosophical disagreements with Mr. Perry, but he admitted he was "sick and tired" of hearing about the governor's success luring businesses to Texas.

State Assemblyman Dan Logue, R., and Assembly Minority Leader Connie Conway, R., during a news conference on the Texas meeting.

Hours after the legislators met with Mr. Perry, another business, Fujitsu Frontech, announced that it is abandoning California. "It's the 70th business to leave this year," says California business relocation expert Joe Vranich. "That's an average of 4.7 per week, up from 3.9 a week last year." The Lone Star State was the top destination, with 14 of the 70 moving there.

Andy Puzder, the CEO of Hardee's Restaurants, was one of many witnesses to bemoan California's hostile regulatory climate. He said it takes six months to two years to secure permits to build a new Carl's Jr. restaurant in the Golden State, versus the six weeks it takes in Texas. California is also one of only three states that demands overtime pay after an eight-hour day, rather than after a 40-hour week. Such rules wreak havoc on flexible work schedules based on actual need. If there's a line out the door at a Carl's Jr. while employees are seen resting, it's because they aren't allowed to help: Break time is mandatory.

"You can't build in California, you can't manage in California and you have to pay a big tax," Mr. Puzder told the legislators. "In Texas, it's the opposite-which is why we're building 300 new stores there this year."

Other states are even snatching away parts of California's entertainment industry. The Milken Institute, based in Santa Monica, Calif., reports that 36,000 entertainment jobs have left the state since 1997. The new film "Battle: Los Angeles," which is set in California, was filmed in Louisiana.

"The red tape is ridiculous," says Mark Tolley, the managing partner of B. Knightly Homes, which relocated to Austin from Long Beach in 2005. "Regulators see developers as wearing a black hat and the environmental laws have run amok."

"I'm a pro-jobs Democrat," Mr. Newsom told me. "My party needs to get back into the business of jobs." Mr. Newsom says he's developing an economic development plan to present to Gov. Jerry Brown, who he says "gets it" on the need for business-friendly policies. Mr. Newsom told me that what impressed him most about Mr. Perry and the Texas legislators was their singular focus on job creation.

California, by contrast, seems to constantly lose focus. Several Democrats who agreed to go on the Texas trip were pressured by public-employee unions to drop out-and many did. And just as Texas business leaders were testifying about how the state's tort reforms had improved job creation, word came of California's latest priority: On April 14, the state senate passed a bill mandating that all public school children learn the history of disabled and gay Americans.

One speaker from California shook his head in wonder: "You can have the most liberated lifestyle on the planet, but if you can't afford to put gas in your car or a roof over your head it's somewhat limited."

The most dramatic reform California could make would be to change its boom-and-bust tax system so it doesn't depend on a small number of wealthy residents who can flee the state. The idea would be to broaden the income tax base and lower the state's high rates. It works today in seven states ranging from Colorado to Massachusetts. Of course, the Lone Star State has no state income or capital gains tax at all.

"Texas' economy is far less volatile due to its having neither a progressive income tax system nor a large tax burden," concludes "Rich States, Poor States," a study by the American Legislative Exchange Council. Less volatility also allows Texas to keep expenditures in check. While it shares with California the challenge of a huge budget deficit this year, it's expected to close it without raising taxes. Texas's overall spending burden remains below what it was in 1987-a remarkable feat.

When Jerry Brown ran for president in 1992, he understood the distorting nature of the tax code and proposed a flat tax with deductions only for rent, mortgage interest and charitable contributions. He called it "a silver bullet" for the economy. Mr. Brown has since abandoned that idea, grousing recently to a state legislator that "the flat tax cost me the New York Democratic primary."

But if California continues its economic decline, something Texas-sized in its ambitions may be called for- whether it's a moratorium on new business regulations or a restructuring of the state's dysfunctional unemployment compensation or litigation. Nothing less is likely to stem the outflow of businesses and jobs from the Golden State.

Gregg Easterbrook reasons that, if Obama wants the rich to pay their fair share (39.6%) of their income, then they ought to lead, they ought to set the example for all rich Americans, by paying that additional $183,000 to the government. Gates and Buffet, who also sign on to this program, should lead the way themselves, and give that additional amount of their wealth in taxes.

Union tactics (people are warned of bedbugs at a hotel where there are no such complaints):

Several advertisers pull advertising from Wonkette for an anti Trig Palin article (Trig is the Palin’s son with Downs Syndrome).

RUSH: There's actual global warming news. (laughing) We can't get away from it. There actually is global warming news -- not "climate change" news, but "global warming" news. Up first is a story from the Asian Correspondent: "What Happened to the Climate Refugees?" Now, this story is from last week. I kept it. It's too good to pass up. "In 2005, the United Nations Environment Programme predicted that climate change would create 50 million climate refugees by 2010. " That's kind of like the Ted Danson prediction in 1988 that if we didn't clean up the oceans in ten years, that there'd be death and pestilence everywhere on the seas.

The United Nations five years ago predicted that these climate refugees would be fleeing from areas that "are actually among the fastest growing regions in the world." (laughing) It's just like Paul Ehrlich -- who, I understand, is very irritated every time I talk about him and his book The Population Bomb and the bet that he made with Julian Simon. Frankly, I didn't know that Paul Ehrlich was still around. So I'm happy to know that he is. "In 2005, the United Nations Environment Programme predicted that climate change would create 50 million climate refugees by 2010.

"These people, it was said, would flee a range of disasters including sea level rise, increases in the numbers and severity of hurricanes, and disruption to food production. The UNEP even provided a handy map," and we've got a copy of the map here. Now, it's too small to show you. I guess I can. Here, let me... I'm going to turn the camera off and zoom in on this. I don't want to do the zoom live. Let's see how tight we can get it. Well, it might be okay, might be okay. There it is. Okay, there is... Ah, the legend is too small. I can't read the legend so I can't tell you what the colors mean, but here we go.

There's the map. You see? I think the purple and the yellow is where there were gonna be massive refugees because of climate change. You can see even in the US there's some purple and yellow. I'm sure purple has gotta be one of these because of the sea level rise. You see, Florida would have climate refugees. You see there. So, at any rate, ladies and gentlemen... (chuckles) You're getting nothing but my mouth here, which I know is attractive to some. Let me zoom back out. There we go. I wish I could read the legend here. But it was basically places at most risk. "The map shows us the places most at risk including the very sensitive low lying islands of the Pacific and Caribbean.

"It so happens that just a few of these islands and other places most at risk have since had censuses," and their populations are in fact growing. So the title of the story here is: What Happened to the Climate Refugees?" There are 50 million people missing. "Meanwhile, far from being places where people are fleeing, no fewer than the top six of the very fastest growing cities in China, Shenzhen, Dongguan, Foshan, Zhuhai, Puning and Jinjiang, are absolutely smack bang within the shaded areas identified as being likely sources of climate refugees," but their populations are skyrocketing.

So it's another example: A huge story of the environmentalist wackos being entirely wrong. Imagine they predict 50 million climate refugees, and there are none, and there are no sea level increases. From Reuters: "Scientists Want Climate Change Early-Warning System -- A better monitoring network for greenhouse gases is needed to warn of significant changes and to keep countries that have agreed to cut their emissions honest, scientists said in papers published on Monday. 'What we're hoping to do is see if the warming is feeding the warming, particularly in the Arctic,' said Euan Nisbet, a specialist in methane emissions..."

"Our monitoring network is very, very limited. We feel more observation is needed." Such measurement could warn of possible climate tipping points, scientists said in papers published by Britain's science academy, the Royal Society. ... The Earth's climate in the past has changed in a relatively short period of time, warming rapidly about 12,000 years ago at the end of the most recent glacial period. Scientists are not sure why that happened, and have warned of possible climate tipping points from man-made emissions.

"They are concerned, for example, that as Arctic permafrost melts it would allow plant matter to rot and vent methane, a greenhouse gas which could trigger more warming." Okay, so an "early-warning system for global warming," even though the worst effects are not for 50 years so they say. Then Jon Ham at the John Locke Foundation: "The 'Ozone Hole' Hoax was 'Global Warming' Warm-up act." You may not be old enough to remember this but many of you are. Back in the seventies, eighties, we had to get rid of Freon. We had to stop using aerosol spray cans 'cause that he was creating the hole in the ozone.

Do you remember that, Dawn? You don't. You weren't old enough at the time to remember it.

Folks, the panic over the ozone hole was as big a panic as any of you who remember any panic associated with global warming. I mean, it was big. They had maps, they had charts, they showed the us how big the hole was and it was gonna lead to skin cancers and it was going to lead to global warming. It was going to be an absolute disaster, and the hole was getting bigger! They finally "found out" it was aerosol causing it, so people started making jokes about spraying Right Guard was causing an ozone hole. Of course back then I, your host, was as big a skeptic then as now. I laughed at it.

"What are you talking about? Are you really trying to tell us -- you really want us to believe -- that aerosol spray cans are causing a hole in atmospheric ozone?" And they were dead serious! "The Montreal Protocol to ban Freons was the warm-up exercise for the IPCC. Many current IPCC players gained fame then by stampeding the US Congress into supporting the Montreal Protocol. They learned to use dramatized, phony scientific claims like 'ozone holes over Kennebunkport.' The ozone crusade also had business opportunities for firms like DuPont to market proprietary 'ozone-friendly' refrigerants at much [higher] prices than the conventional (and more easily used) Freons..."

In other words, folks, we got rid of Freon for no reason. The bottom line of this story is, the ozone "hole" is still there, and it's still as big as ever despite all these reforms. We got rid of all those propellants and refrigerants and all the causes. New research shows that it's not changed the hole significantly at all. "This must have far-reaching consequences. If the measurements are correct we can basically no longer say we understand how ozone holes come into being." This is from one of the big scientists who was responsible for this, a guy named Markus Rex, an atmosphere scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Potsdam, Germany.

So, again: They recently measured and the ozone hole's the same size, and it fluctuates. It changes in size year to year. "If the measurements are correct we can basically no longer say we understand how ozone holes come into being." It was the same hoax. It was the same tactic. It was the same technique. In fact, the New York Times, in January of 2010, had a story on how the ozone hole is mending. "That the hole in Earth's ozone layer is slowly mending is considered a big victory for environmental policy makers. But in a new report, scientists say there is a downside: its repair may contribute to global warming." So a year ago, the hole was reducing, but that was causing global warming.

Now, since there's no warming and the hole has opened up again despite getting rid of all "the causes," this klutz previously accepted as a scientific authority: Well, we no longer understand how ozone holes come into being. Look at what economic tumult we caused to try to fix it. Typical. This is more evidence, folks. As I tell you, the simplest thing to do when you hear an apocalyptic, cataclysmic prediction involving the climate or the environment -- or, hell, even economics -- if it's being made by a liberal, just don't believe it. It isn't true. It is being made up.

RUSH: Before the ozone hole it was acid rain, and then it was nuclear winter, and it went from global warming to...compact fluorescent lightbulbs! I'm telling you: Every aspect of it is a lie. Every environmental claim, every one that's apocalyptic, is a lie -- full-fledged, 100% through and through.

Let me add the comments that, your next air conditioning system for your house is going to be much more expensive and it may not be compatible with your present AC system. R22 was stopped because, it was bad for the ozone hole. So, the new stuff, 410a is good for the ozone layer, but bad for global warming. So, just this year, everyone who bought a new system had to move over to a 410a system. However, they will probably disappear and a new system take their place in a year or two. So, don’t be shocked if a shot of Freon becomes quite expensive. Don’t be shocked if your AC can handle one kind of AC system but not another. Don’t be shocked if some AC people can manage to make 2 different systems work together, while others cannot. But, this fixed the environment!

CALLER: Just your premise when you opened about the only entity not being taxed is the government?

CALLER: I read in July of 2010 an excellent article that you did in the Limbaugh Letter, "The Obama Debt Overload."

CALLER: And you made the excellent point that the 2011 budget, at the time when it was submitted, we would be paying $900 billion in interest alone.

CALLER: Now, this would not be money that they take from us and redistribute. That would be paying it back to whoever holds our debt, right?

CALLER: China. And if you use the analogy like we do to our sons about credit cards, isn't it the same thing basically that this huge debt is like a credit card and we are buying things and redistributing things, but we are -- we are not paying the [principal] which I tell our sons that it's like a tax. It's a tax on the people -- us, who are the government -- sending money and not getting anything in return because we can't even pay the principal.

CALLER: For me, you know, all these ignorant people that are interviewing these Republicans who want a balanced budget, that's the first point that people should make. If it's $900 billion and there are 300 million Americans: How much is that per man, woman, and child that we are giving China before we even make the redistribution? That's the point that angers me the most.

CALLER: People don't know the basics and maybe because they don't pay their credit cards. You know, maybe Mr. Obama when he's --

RUSH: No, that's not why. I'll tell you that the primary reason people don't look at it that way is because they don't think that the government can ever default. Who's gonna come take the government's credit card away from them, for example? You might have a credit card company take yours away and penalize you, but nobody thinks the government's gonna stop making payments, nobody thinks the government's gonna default, nobody believes anything other than spending is gonna continue to happen.

CALLER: But isn't the fact that we are very nearing that bankruptcy, say, to where we have not enough coming in to pay the basic functions?

CALLER: I know, so why aren't people...? I wish you could challenge every Republican that you talk to.

RUSH: Well, look at how many of them are benefiting from it! You're talking about average people.

CALLER: Right, but there's a lot of Democrat business owners that need to understand, too. They are taking your money and they're just throwing away so much of it for every --

RUSH: Okay, I'm like you. I wonder where... I don't even wonder why anymore. I wonder if there are any (not to be provocative here, 'cause I really don't mean to say this provocatively) any sane Democrats. Are they all a bunch of pure, radical ideologues who are totally animated by their hatred for conservative Republicans like you? Where are the Democrat small business guys who are going to get creamed like everybody else does? Where are they? Where are the Democrat voters who are getting creamed tax-wise? Where are they? I mean, over half of Wall Street -- over half of wealthy, filthy rich Wall Street -- is liberal Democrats.

They happen to be doing well because of their ability to have crony capitalist ties with Obama, but I know what you mean. I know the kind of people you mean. Who are these people? Where are the traditional Democrats? A lot of them are in the Tea Party, and don't doubt me on that. A lot of the so-called Reagan Democrats are in the Tea Party. But where are the Democrat small businesspeople who are gonna get shellacked with Obama's tax increase income of $250,000 or more? Maybe it is that they don't know. I think a lot of it is blind party loyalty. That's one explanation.

Now, this story that's out there on the Standard & Poor's moving the USA outlook to the negative? The White House is scared to death about this, because now we're getting into territory that starts to answer your question you asked me: "Why don't people understand about the credit card?" When you had a story that says that the credit of the United States is subject to question, then you have people paying attention all of a sudden. This is Standard & Poor's telling Obama he is a disaster. This is Standard & Poor's telling the world Obama is a disaster. This is Standard & Poor's telling the American people Obama is a disaster.

And this is not about raising the debt ceiling. They want it to be thought of as happening commensurate with that as a way to get people to go along without fighting an increase in the debt ceiling. This is about the debt that Obama created. That's what that rating is all about. If Obama was a CEO with a private company, he would be facing an SEC investigation because of his lies about the nation's financial situation. Folks, what he has done here -- I've gotta be very careful in my choice of words. What he has done here borders on the legal. Now, Obama gets his power from government -- that's from government unions, spending tax dollars -- from voters who benefit from redistribution. There's no way Obama's ever going to do what's best for society generally. He'd have to abandon who he is to do what's best for society. He has been trained to be what he has been indoctrinated to be: An agent of an ever-expanding government that limits the power and freedom of the individual.

RUSH: "The Obama administration moved swiftly Monday to downplay ratings agency Standard & Poor's downgrade of its U.S. credit outlook, calling the decision a political judgment that should not be taken too seriously." I told you they're scared to death by this. They're scared to death. They think this is Standard & Poor's telling the world that Obama is a disaster. That's what this is. This is purely a rating based on the Obama debt. This is Goolsbee: "I don't think we should make too much out of that. What the S&P is doing is making a political judgment and it's one that we don't agree with."

Of course you don't agree that you're destroying the country! Why would you? You're telling everybody you're rebuilding it; you're telling everybody we got an economic recovery; we don't expect you to be honest about what you're doing, Goooooolsbee. But I'm gonna tell you something, I'm gonna go through this again because one of the reasons Obama was elected was that he was considered to be a reformer. He was a man of reform. We had the evil Bush, a horrible economy, the Iraq war. It was horrible, people bickering, partisanship, worse than it has ever been since the Civil War -- and the sea level threatened to go up.

All hell was breaking loose, and Obama was gonna come in and be like something never seen before. We'd never had somebody this qualified, this perfect. Let me tell you something, folks, again. I just want to go through this because this is crucial. If you're expecting Obama to reform or even change horses here in the middle of the stream, change directions because of the way he's going, he's not going to do it. He gets his power totally from the government. Totally. For example, from government unions and their donations, spending tax dollars on voters who benefit from redistribution. He's never gonna do what's best for the society generally.

His reelection doesn't depend on American economic recovery, contrary to what everybody believes. Oh, yeah, they'd like to have the unemployment rate at 8%, but it doesn't depend on that. His reelection depends on making sure the people he's giving money to stay loyal and vote for him. It's purely that: The unions, the people to whom he is redistributing things, the minorities. Why do you think he's spending all this time with that kind of group? He's not gonna "reform" this country. It's going exactly the way he wants, and he's trying to create more and more people who depend on it as it is for his reelection. He's not gonna abandon who he is any more than I would abandon who I am.

He's not gonna give up his own power, and he's not going to depower or disempower people who benefit from government expansion. He's not gonna do any of that. He's gonna stay on the same course. The debt situation will worsen. Prospects for economic prosperity will decline. You know, this is Tax Day. I wonder how many of you know that unions are tax exempt. As long as we're talking about taxes and fairness, why not tax labor unions? Tax labor unions. The labor unions are exempt under 501(c)(5) of the Internal Revenue Code. Look it up. Unions are 501(c)(5)s and they are exempt. Now, take a look at all of the Democrat constituency that is subsidized or protected or untaxed. Look at it all.

No doubt more of the people who do not pay taxes vote Democrat. That's why the Democrat Party protects them and seeks to expand their numbers. It's what illegal immigration is all about to them: Amnesty, what have you. Our laws even go so far as to protect trial lawyers. Now, the trial lawyers are among the richest in our society. They can get anywhere between 35 and 44% of an award, the jury or judge award. If the trial lawyers were not considered supporters of the Democrats, do you think any of this would continue? If trial lawyers were Republicans, do you think any of what they're doing would be allowed to continue?

The Democrats would move in there and Obama. They would shut them down or reform them or do whatever is necessary. Anybody sending money to Republicans is gonna be a target. I saw the other day Obama challenged Paul Ryan: "Hey, you want to defund health care? Go for it! Give it a shot. Let's have the debate upfront." Why is he so hell-bent on government-run health care? Beyond the ideology reasons (he's big liberal, Marxist, socialist, and that's a big liberal, Marxist, socialist program) it's because it's good for the people, is it not? That's what he says. It's good for the people. What does it do?

Obamacare redistributes wealth to those who don't pay taxes. Just like the Earned Income Tax Credit Does. Obamacare is strongly supported by unions, 'cause they want the government to hire more and more of their members -- and Obama doesn't mind that either because those more and more members are gonna pay more and more dues, and all that's gonna end up back in Obama's pocket and the Democrat Party (or some Democrat's pocket or a Democrat organization's pocket). It's supported by crony capitalists and states that have overpromised and overcommitted in their labor contracts. They want to offload it all on the rest of us.

None of this is about the best interests of the country, is the point. Not one element of the Obama agenda is for, or in, the best interests of the country. None of this is sustainable. None of this is worthy of support. None of it is worthy of praise. It's cronyism, political, oriented toward power and maintaining it. Obama's not gonna reform anything, folks. What's occurring is exactly the plan. He doesn't like this rating today from Standard & Poor's. He does not like that, because that says that he's a disaster. Obama is using your income to reward his friends, his supporters, his party, and ultimately his own ambitions.

Obama, I think, is fundamentally incapable of dealing with the problems this country faces because the problems... Look at it this way. This is the way maybe everybody will understand this. The problems this country faces are the children of his ideology. Meaning, how many parents do you know that would get their kids out of a murder rap if they could? You know that parents will do anything to protect their kids. It's a bond. It's rare that a parent will turn a kid in. I mean, think what you want, and you might be shouting at me, "No, no, Rush! I'm telling you I know some upstanding people and I know if their kids behaved in a rotten way they'd turn them in."

No, you may think that. The problems this country faces are the children of Barack Obama's ideology, his beliefs. They are problem children, but nevertheless children. One of the reasons I've often stated the reason that so many liberals are angry, miserable, unhappy: A, it's a general state of mind; but B, at this point in time, they are facing the obvious fact that what they believe doesn't work. The country is not improving. Jobs are not being created. The poor are not getting rich. The middle class is not moving. None of this utopian idealism is even close to happening. In fact, it's going the other way.

Everybody knows about problem children. They get off the main track, they're headed down the wrong track or whatever, and what do you do? He is fundamentally incapable of dealing with any of this because it almost has a genetic tie to him. The problems almost have a genetic tie. The problems of this country are the result of his beliefs, and he's never gonna admit that! He's never gonna admit that what he believes is causing all these problems, at least not to people who he's telling that his solutions are for the better. It just isn't gonna happen. So my point here is: Don't expect any reform from Obama no matter what he says. Expect more of the same, which means it's gonna get worse as long as this regime is running the show.

Why Does Global Warming Attract So Many People Who Hate This Country and Want to Destroy It?

RUSH: Charles Manson has broken his silence, 20-year silence to the media. He has broken his silence to rail against the dangers of global warming. Now, look at the nutcases that are somehow aligning themselves or with each other to promote this hoax now that it has been exposed. Here you have Manson, I mean even brainwashers can be brainwashed. That's what Manson was, he was a brainwasher and now he's been brainwashed by the global warming crowd or he could be faking it. He could be trying to get out of jail early. This might be a paean to the parole board, either he's pleading insanity or he's sucking up to a bunch of liberals. But, for crying out loud, back in, what was it, January of 2010, just a little over a year ago, it was Bin Laden who came out of his cave to warn about the dangers of global warming.

Why does global warming attract so many people who want destroy our country? That's a good way to look at it. Global warming attracts any number of international, United Nations, and domestic leftists who want to destroy this country. And it's back with a vengeance. I've got three or four just delicious global warming stories such as this: "U.N. Prepares to Debate Whether 'Mother Earth' Deserves Human Rights Status." Yes, it's from Fox News. "United Nations diplomats on Wednesday," tomorrow, "will set aside pressing issues of international peace and security to devote an entire day debating the rights of Mother Earth. A bloc of mostly socialist governments led by Bolivia have put the issue on the General Assembly's agenda to discuss the creation of a United Nations treaty that would grant the same rights found in a universal declaration of human rights to Mother Nature." Mostly socialist governments, it says here, in case there was still any doubt about the real agenda at work behind the green movement.

So amidst this genuine idiocy here comes Obama out touting the same stuff to these young skulls full of mush, wherever it was, it was a college or a university, one somewhere in northern Virginia. So here's Manson coming out joining Bin Laden and the rest of those who hate America, who want to see America destroyed, joining the global warming hoax. You know, I swear folks, it almost seems like the United Nations is not a serious organization. (laughing) I say this with all due mocking. The United Nations and the environmental movement are really more about the redistribution of money than about saving the planet, and of course destroying United States.

RUSH: No, Charles Manson on the political spectrum I think is the equivalent of Barbara Boxer. Snerdley was asking me to give a name equivalent. You people ought to hear what I go through to do this program, hear the questions I am asked even while I am conducting the program. These people are always trying to incite me; trying to bait me; trying to get me to tweak the media.

RUSH: Michael in Villa Grove, Illinois. Welcome, you're up next. It's great to have you here on the EIB Network.

CALLER: I keep hearing that if the US doesn't raise the debt ceiling we will default on our loans. Now, I definitely agree with you that there's hardly any chance that we would default, but should that happen what actually happens? I know our AAA credit rating would probably go down, and we'd have a much higher interest rate if we borrowed money in the future, but what can actually happen? If we default on our home loan, then the bank can foreclose on our home and take our home, right? But what happens in this case?

RUSH: Yeah, but we can't. Here's the point. It's a scare tactic. It really isn't possible. There is always money coming in. The government can count on tax revenue from any number of sources and activities. There will always be money coming in. They can always print money. This default business is a straw dog. It's a straw man they're throwing out there to you. You want to know what the actual manifestations of an official default would be?

CALLER: Yeah, absolutely, because just looking in recent history we were listening to the media and they were talking about how bad the government shutdown would be.

RUSH: All it means is, we won't be able to borrow any more. That's all it means. All it means is: We've gotta live within our means.

RUSH: No, it's not! I shocked a lot of people yesterday when I said, "Not raising the debt limit is an option." Who's to say it's not? Look, we sit here, the Tea Party gets mobilized and causes huge election results in November predicated on reducing debt -- which means stop spending. At some point we have to! Okay, here's a chance: We gotta raise the debt ceiling. Why is it automatic we have to raise the debt ceiling? Why is it automatic we have to keep spending? All we would have to do is to reduce spending to current revenue levels. That's what everybody else does!

We're being prepped here for another calamity, apocalypse just like they did with TARP and the auto companies and everything else -- and it will probably work. They tried it with the government shutdown. But the debt ceiling is just a de facto Balanced Budget Amendment, is what it is. The debt ceiling says, "You can't borrow any more than this." That means the government has to live within that level of debt. Well, to a lot of people, it's plenty high. It's plenty high enough for us to be able to live with -- and, of course, at some point we are going to have to stop this. Everybody talking about this has got to realize that it's not just words. At some point there has to be some actual realistic behavior associated with the words here.

But even if, even if this was in default that you asked me about which results in our inability to borrow any more money, that still is months away from not lifting the debt ceiling. It's simply... It's not something imminent. There is no apocalypse here. There was no apocalypse with TARP. There was no, "My gosh, we gotta act in 24 hours or the whole world financial system will collapse!" That's the way they get what they want. It's the way they've been operating -- well, the Democrats, forever, but in the recent context -- the last three to four years.

That's how we've ended up where we are is being told that we've got to allow -- stand by and let -- this outrageous emergency spending take place, otherwise it's all over for all of us. When it was not going to be all over. There was no apocalypse for not bailing out GM. Speaking of bailing out GM, now Obama's selling GM stock at an $11 billion loss to the taxpayers. He's getting that out of the way before the reelection campaign starts. You know, every state has to live within its budget. They can't print money, and if it gets so bad that people won't lend the state any money, what happens to the state? They keep functioning. There's no reason to be talked into a panic over this.

RUSH: Patrick, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Hello, sir. Rush Limbaugh. The EIB Network welcomes you here.

CALLER: Good. Hey, longtime listener, first-time caller. I just had a real quick question. You were talking about how it might take a catastrophe to raise the debt ceiling, and my question to you would be: How would the government use, say, a Japan-style catastrophe that would happen here on the continental states? Would that be a case to easily raise the debt ceiling?

RUSH: Wait. It might take a catastrophe to raise the debt ceiling? I didn't say that.

RUSH: What I said about the debt ceiling is it's not the apocalypse if we don't, but I didn't say it would require one. It won't require one.

CALLER: -- I was saying how would they use that? How would the government use that to raise the ceiling?

RUSH: I'm not sure I get that. None of that's gonna be necessary. Obama is just gonna get up one day and raise it, he's not gonna need an event to happen. In fact, most of them -- the vast majority of Republicans and Democrats -- are already resigned to raising it. The Republican position is, "We're gonna get some cuts! We're gonna get some significant budget cuts in exchange for our vote to raise it." Unless I'm misunderstanding something, I think the catastrophic event you're talking about would be something that would cause us not to raise it.

It's gonna require something catastrophic for it not to be raised. The mature among us know it's gonna go up. We're gonna raise the debt ceiling. That's a fait accompli. I just don't think it needs to be! I think an option of not raising it exists, but you could probably put me and the people who think this way in a thimble (a large thimble but still a thimble). There aren't that many of us. But I think conventional wisdom is it's gotta go up. The conventional wisdom is it has gonna go up. The question remains: Just how tough are the Republicans going to be in demanding concessions in spending that it goes up? Thanks, Patrick, for the phone call.

RUSH: I want to remind you of some things that were a reality in 2008 as we talk about this debt ceiling business because I know that I am one of the few people who would make the claim that we don't need to raise the debt ceiling. It's such conventional wisdom. "It's gotta go up, why, the United States will default, why, the United States has to be able to spend money." It won't stop us from spending money. I'm told that there's 90 days of unspent money elsewhere in the budget that would cover 90 days, and even at that there's still revenue coming in. But it's all about how this is sold. It's identical to 2008, 2008, apocalypse. Remember in 2008 the way they got to us was the subprime business and it was in trouble but who was hurting? The Wall Street people were hurting in subprime, that's who had to be bailed out, not us. They asked us to bail them out and they did it by creating this notion that the world financial system would collapse.

But if you will remember back when this subprime stuff became top drawer news and we were talking about it in relationship to this apocalypse, 95% of people who had mortgages were paying them. There was not a crisis in the mortgage market. There were not people defaulting on their mortgages. Ninety-five percent of the people who had 'em were paying them. There was any number of things we could have done, but no, what do we do? We ended up co-opting McCain and Bush, and who did we bail out? We bailed out people who in a vast majority of numbers voted for Obama. We bailed out high finance execs on Wall Street, easily majority of whom voted for Obama. Remember I was joking back then about, well, the reason Paulson's doing this is he's gotta make sure his buddies don't lose their vacation homes in the Hamptons. Folks, that was damn near close to right. It was damn near close to what was going on. A bunch of highfalutin, high rolling people got themselves in trouble in this subprime business. You can trace it back to the government forcing them into this position with the Community Redevelopment Act and all that, still the reality on the ground was that that's who we were bailing out. Paulson was protecting his buddies.

The same thing is happening now. There are people, I don't want to mention names 'cause I want to show up here tomorrow, but there are people, you'd know the names, their financial portfolios benefit from a declining American strength. Some of them are Republican. Some of them are Democrats. They don't define themselves as -- hell, we bailed out General Electric, for crying out loud. We bailed out General Motors. We bailed out the UAW, all of this while we supposedly had an apocalypse on the other side of it. If we didn't bail out GM, if we didn't do TARP, if we didn't bail out all this the world financial system was gonna collapse. None of that was true, and the same scare tactic, the same technique is being ginned up now on the debt ceiling. There is no default imminent if we don't raise the debt ceiling. This is a major moment for our cause. We sit here and say we've got to stop this spending, we have got to reverse it. Here we go, debt ceiling, call a halt to it. The idea that we're out of money is ridiculous. We're not.

RUSH: Steve Wynn was on the Fox Business Channel, the Cavuto show last night. Wynn was on the phone from Vegas. This is what he had to say about his employees and his business.

WYNN: The living standard of my employees has been plummeting. The early results of Obamacare have caused our insurance to increase, our cost of medical, we self-insure, to go from 8% increase a year to 12, and for the first time since we built the business we had to increase the amount of copay of our employees, so some money has been taken out of their pockets, which is tough on them. Everything is more expensive, when they go to Walmart, the clothing, their shoes, everything is more expensive. And so the living standard of the working people of the middle class of America is being materially deteriorating because of the fiscal policy of our government. And that's a very big deal around here.

RUSH: Steve Wynn in Las Vegas. Cavuto says, "Is it the fiscal policy of the government? I mean, this freeze in activity prior to the pickup in the last year predates this administration. So a lot of folks say, 'Well, you know, it's been sort of like a devil may care times of corporate America, partying and having their annual meetings and the like. That is just cooled period.' You don't buy that?"

WYNN: You guys on television use the term "disingenuous" when the president or someone talks about -- says something that's not true. That's a fancy word for lying. The president said millionaires and billionaires should pay their fair share. That completely ignores the truth. And the truth is that in this country the vast majority of small and medium size businesses pay taxes for their business as individuals and chapter S corporations, partnerships, and individual proprietorships. If you want to lie, if you want to misrepresent, you'll call them millionaires and billionaires, but it's the job engine of America, and those are our customers because they work hard and they come and they have disposable income, and they're the people that are creating all the jobs in America.

RUSH: Steve Wynn on Cavuto last night, is exactly right, that millionaires and billionaires -- mentioned this yesterday -- code word for small-business people, millionaires and billionaires. Trying to drum up hatred between the classes as a means of getting votes. Cavuto said, "You think the president does not like rich people?"

WYNN: There's a tremendous prejudice in this administration. Everybody talks about what the government is giving them, but hardly anybody talks about what the government is taking away. And I am telling you, and it's clear in every measurement that you can look at, that the standard of living, the quality of life of the working class of America is being deteriorated in real time because of the falling value of the dollar. The populist rhetoric is very carefully designed to hide the truth. And I find it annoying and disappointing that it's happened that way.

RUSH: So more and more people are starting to get the guts to speak out about this. That's Steve Wynn from Las Vegas on Cavuto last night on the Fox Business Channel.

RUSH: I was talking about gas prices with Snerdley. In fact, I got a number of people e-mailing and instant messaging me about gas prices. The price of gasoline per gallon finally hit five dollars in Washington, but big whoop. How many politicians there will even notice? How many of them drive their own cars or pump their own gas or even pay for their own gas? And, if they do, they're reimbursed for it. I was talking about it with, Snerdley, he came in here and said, "Boy, I'll tell you what, this gas price is getting bad out there. Everybody's talking about it." Are they really? Is everybody talking about it? Here we're getting close to five dollars in many parts of the country. We've gone past it in Washington. We are well over four dollars in many parts of the country, and yet you don't see anything about it on the news, and it's a sad reality.

If you go back during the Bush years, when the gasoline price exceeded three dollars and started its incremental rise on the way to four dollars, the oil price itself was skedaddling upward on its way to $150 a barrel. It's all we heard about. The oil speculators came in for a shellacking. The CEOs of major oil companies, Rex Tillerson at ExxonMobil and all the rest of them were vilified. We heard never-ending stories on windfall profits. And now none of that, none of it. In fact, the stories we're getting on the gasoline price approaching five bucks a gallon -- we had one yesterday -- here are some of the positives associated with this. Here are some of the things that we should be happy about for this. I was reminded all during the Bush years we were in a roaring boom economy, yet the media was reporting that we were on the verge of a recession. They were trying to create a recession in people's minds day in and day out. You talked to people and they thought we were in one, so we'd ask them, "Well, how are you doing?" "Oh, I'm doing fine. I'm having one of my best years, but I watch the news and my neighbors must be in really big trouble." "Well, have you asked 'em?" "Well, no, but the news says that it's really bad out there."

So whereas individuals may be complaining, they may be feeling the pain of rising gas prices, they're not seeing it in the media and so there's no sense of shared experience. So if you are a person that's been profoundly affected by rising gasoline prices you might think you're the only one because you're not seeing the pain-and-suffering stories. It's just like we have an incompetent boob in the White House, and yet we continue to hear nothing other than how eloquent he is and how elegant and how much smarter than all the rest of us he really is. We just can't keep up. In the meantime, we're in the midst of an utter economic disaster. If this were a media that were at all interested in journalism, what they did during the Bush years, which was phony, made up, and exaggerated, all they would have to do was report the truth today. But they're not doing it. So it remains a curiosity. A friend of mine said, "You wait, Rush, I mean it's gonna get really wild out there as these prices keep going up because that's causing the price of food to go up." I know, I don't disagree with any of this. I know it's gonna get wild, but is it going to be reported that it's getting wild?

People somehow are reluctant to assume that what's happening to them is happening to everybody else. They have to be told that it is. And if they don't see it in the news and they don't see it reflected by the media they may not think that it's that widespread. So they're not gonna run around and complain about it because they don't want to be thought of as whiners. The bottom line is the media's doing everything it can to make sure Obama is untouched by this. Look at Libya. LBJ was driven out of office for essentially micromanaging the Vietnam War. Here Obama starts wars and then runs away from 'em. Now the Brits are starting to send in ground troops. Hello, that's how Vietnam started escalating. The French, the Brits, NATO started to escalate the war in Libya. Where's Obama? He doesn't care. You know, he did what he could to get his PR spin and value out of it, now he's off to other things. He's got a Facebook deal this afternoon. What's he doing? Question-and-answer session today on Facebook at 4:45. He never talks to adults anymore.

I found out, by the way, that the number of friends -- Facebook as friends. We have a bunch of on our own Facebook page. And the White House, Obama has his own Facebook page. And I'm told that just 1% of the friends on Obama's Facebook page have signed up essentially to be part of this question-and-answer session today on Facebook. So aside from talking to union goons, he never anymore talks to adults. There must be some kind of fancy psychological name for such a syndrome. You could call it cowardice. But he's not out talking to adults about any of this. So the gas price is rising. We've got the one-year anniversary of the Gulf oil spill. The media is trying to tell us -- I've got stories here -- they're still looking for that oil. It's there. That spilled oil, it's there, and it's wreaking havoc somewhere. They just don't know where it is, but they're gonna find it. Meanwhile, they have not noticed the rising gasoline price. They're still trying to make hay out of a one-year-old oil spill that never amounted to much, and it was not destructive, not nearly the terms they described.

We've got a montage of media people attempting to claim that Bill Clinton's tax increases are what led to the economic boom of the 1990s. So additional assaults on individual liberty and freedom still the order of the day of the Democrat Party. There's a poll out. ABC News/Washington Post poll, and, apparently, folks -- I mean it's bad, but the Drive-Bys are really depressed by this. It is apparently even worse for Obama than it appears to be. His approval number is plummeting. F. Chuck Todd offered an opinion today that one of the reasons Obama's opinion number went down after his speech with Paul Ryan in the audience and where he got exceptionally partisan and mean-spirited the approval number went down and F. Chuck Todd at MSNBC says, (paraphrasing) "You know, it doesn't work for Obama when he goes partisan. He's gotta stay above the fray. When he goes partisan like that, starts getting into partisan attacks, it just doesn't work."

Well, they're doing everything they can to advise this guy on how to avoid the quicksand. (interruption) I know, when is he not partisan?

RUSH: From TheHill.com: "President Obama's approval ratings are plummeting, and the timing is terrible for the White House. Even as Obama skewered Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and the House GOP budget plan, his approval rating dipped in a Gallup poll to 41 percent, the lowest number yet of his presidency. A Washington Post/ABC News poll released [yesterday] shows Obama at 47 percent, down seven points since January. Worse yet for the White House, Gallup shows the president in a nosedive with independents, who are coveted by the Obama-Biden 2012 campaign." Okay. That's TheHill.com story.

From the UK Telegraph by Nile Gardiner: "The omens certainly weren't good for Barack Obama last week with a devastating Gallup survey showing the president with the lowest approval ratings of his presidency -- just 41 percent. And according to RealClearPolitics, the president now has an average disapproval rating across several major polls of nearly 50 percent. The White House received another significant blow [yesterday] with the release of the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll, which revealed deep-seated public unease over his handling of the economy, the number one issue for US voters.

"As The Post noted in a front-page piece headlined (in the print edition): 'Economy is Battering Obama in the polls': ... by a margin of 44 to 28, US voters believe the economy is getting worse under Obama," and that is not insignificant. The general public is catching up to the Tea Party: 44-28. "Perhaps most worryingly for President Obama, just 28 percent of Americans now say they will 'definitely vote' for his re-election in 2012..." The Story continues with this: "It is increasingly clear that the president's heavily panned speech last week on the budget deficit has failed to convince not only the American public, but the markets as well.

"With the huge vote of no confidence on Monday from credit rating agency Standard & Poor's, which cut its outlook for US debt from 'stable' to 'negative', the Obama [regime] is looking remarkably out of its depth in the face of a massive deficit crisis, which it simply refuses to confront." That is A-1, on the money: "[R]emarkably out of its depth in the face of a massive deficit crisis which it simply refuses to confront. Even the International Monetary Fund is laughing at Obama's deficit plans. I've got the story here in the stack. Folks, you can't go on television and say, as he did yesterday, "You can't spend more than you take in. You just can't do it."

I don't know who writes this stuff for him -- and I know that that was a prelude to raising taxes; that's why they said it -- but somebody is totally tone-deaf. From the architect of spending more than you take in, after the fact -- after it's done to the point of destroying the US economy -- the guy goes out and says, "You can't do what I just did for the past two years," as though somebody else did it. "Remarkably out of its depth." MSNBC.com, their First Read yesterday, from NBC's F. Chuck Todd: "Did Last Week's Speech Backfire?" They cite the Washington Post/ABC poll: 47% percent approval.

F. Chuck notes that "Obama usually doesn't get rewarded when he comes off as too partisan. He thinks his lack of focus on jobs may have hurt him." That's F. Chuck's opinion. Really? His lack of focus on jobs. What was their first clue? You know, this is an indictment of you people in the media, too. You people in the media have been trying to trump up this guy and make him sound like Mr. Perfection, the architect of reviving the Bush economy. Obama has all the answers! Obama's above criticism! Obama's unlike anything we've ever had in office before! Obama understands fairness! Obama is focusing laser-like on jobs!

You guys, in the Drive-By Media, have gotta be just as concerned about your own level of influence as you are about Obama's polling numbers because you have been trying to tell the American people the exact opposite of what these polls indicate they think. Imagine! Imagine working in the Drive-By Media and for the last two years you have made it your objective to convince the American people he's the greatest president we've ever had, that this guy is so far ahead of us that we're just fortunate to be alive at the same time he is, to be able to look from afar and to marvel at his brilliance and his talent.

This is the message. This is the image. This is what we've been told. We've been told to be patient. "His plan, his policy, they're gonna finally make it fair, make it even. Utopia is ours!" So wherever you look today, there is panic in the Drive-By Media over this one poll, the ABC News poll and the Gallup poll, too. So panic over two polls. And make no mistake: It's not just panic because of the impact on Obama. It's panic because the people in these polls are essentially saying they haven't bought the drivel the State-Controlled Media has been telling them for two years.

RUSH: From The Politico today: "President Barack Obama dialed back his criticism of Republicans on Tuesday on the first leg of a three-day tour to sell his deficit-cutting plan, saying a 'big philosophical divide' separates the parties but that a deal is possible. Obama panned Republicans for their plan to turn Medicare into a voucher system for people younger than 55. But in a marked departure from his speech last week announcing his deficit-reduction framework, Obama spent less time attacking the GOP plan directly and more time talking up the merits of his proposal."

Now, this is all related back to this ABC News/Washington Post poll where it ain't working, where F. Chuck Todd said, (paraphrasing) "You know what, when Obama goes partisan it doesn't work for him. The independents get angry and his poll numbers fall." So now Obama is dialing back his partisan shots at the Republicans because they are not working. Folks, that's major. That is really major. When Obama's partisan shots aren't working, like saying millionaires and billionaires, that stuff's not working. And the media's concerned about it. So much so, Politico has a story.

RUSH: Kalamazoo, Michigan, next on Open Line Friday. Remember no rules: You get to talk about whatever you want to talk about on Friday. Doesn't have to be anything I care about. Fred, I'm glad you called. Welcome to the program, sir.

CALLER: Hey, thank you, Rush. Thanks for taking my call from WKMI in Kalamazoo. What my comment is is that I think that capitalism is no more than a form of slavery; that entrepreneurs are the ones that create jobs, and once they get to a point of being millionaires or multimillionaires they withdraw from the economy. So there is no... There's no... The tax breaks that millionaires get, there is no growth in that. The only growth they do is anywhere in their pocketbooks. Entrepreneurs, actually, create these jobs.

RUSH: Wait a minute. I want to walk through this. I want you to walk me through the stages of this that you believe. First off, when you say that capitalism... Creates slaves, is that what you said?

RUSH: Okay, entrepreneurs start out, they create jobs. But then at some point they become millionaires, then what happens?

CALLER: Then they start withdrawing from the economy. There's no more growth in job growth, so giving multimillionaires a break --

RUSH: Give me an example, because I need one. Really, now, I don't understand. Entrepreneur A starts a widget business?

RUSH: After a certain amount of time the widget business makes him a millionaire, and then what does he do?

CALLER: Then it becomes...starts to become Self. They get absorbed in themselves and then they -- instead of thinking about the company or the organization, they -- start thinking about Self, and when you start thinking about Self, there's no more growth.

CALLER: So we can throw tax breaks at millionaires and billionaires all we want and there's not even a trickle-down economics to go along with it.

RUSH: Well, stock market, bank, he puts it in a lot of places. What happens to it there?

CALLER: That money is supposed to be sent down to the widget guy, but it's not working.

CALLER: No, to the widget business, but the widget business, the guy that the entrepreneur...

RUSH: Well, the widget business is still operating even though the millionaire guy has... Does he just shut down the widget business -- I'm trying to understand -- and fire all the employees after he becomes a millionaire?

RUSH: So all he was out for was the money and when he gets the money he just shuts the business down and puts all those people on the unemployment line?

CALLER: No, no. He becomes Self. I didn't say the widget business went out of business.

RUSH: Well, can you give me an example of this? Company name. Give me an example of a company name.

CALLER: Okay, a company name would be Am Fab. (bursts out laughing) Am Fab was a local overbed maker in town.

CALLER: It was owned by the Bissell Corporation. We made overbed tables all over the country -- United States, local -- and we had decent profit going. We had decent medical benefits --

CALLER: -- the 10% margin that the company -- that the owner -- wanted to make, he no longer considered that enough and took the company and took it overseas, basically.

RUSH: What is wrong with a company not growing? I don't agree with any aspect of your premise, but I just gotta ask: What's wrong with a company not growing? It's still employing people; it still has value. There are people still employed and earning money.

CALLER: Right, but while the cost of living's going up, he sold his people down so that way self can be self-absorbed. He gets to be fulfilled, but his employees don't.

RUSH: I don't... Where did you learn this? This is the most... I have yet to hear this. This is the first time I have heard this explanation of capitalism and rich people and why they're really evil: Once they get what they want, they quit and their employees just die.

RUSH: Companies continue to grow. They are sometimes bought up by other companies. Others go out of business because they fail for whatever reason, but nothing is static! Everything about capitalism is dynamic!

RUSH: Stagnation only occurs in liberalism. Stagnation only occurs where entrepreneurism is not allowed!

CALLER: -- there's no cost of living in socialism. If you add cost of living into capitalism, it's no more than slavery.

RUSH: Oh, come on! You sound like Spike Lee who claims that LeBron James was a victim of slavery when he left the Cleveland Cavaliers for the Miami Heat for $15 million.

RUSH: They simply stopped growing the Cleveland Cavaliers. The owner stopped trying to win. Poor old LeBron James had nowhere to go but the Miami Heat for $15 million. There's Spike Lee calling it slavery. You have really got to get hold of yourself. You have really gotta start examining yourself. You can't possibly believe what you have just said to me here. You cannot -- intellectually you cannot -- believe that capitalism creates slavery! The slavery in this world is born of tyranny, totalitarianism: Cuba, Soviet Union, China, not here. We used to be the essence, the engine of freedom, and it is capitalism that promotes that.

Now, take your sad-sack employees at this mythical corporation where the owner finally gets his and says, "All right, to heck with it! I'm quitting." Well, what do the employees do? Let them become entrepreneurs. Some of them are gonna sit there and feel sorry for themselves, others are gonna ask the government for help, and others are gonna say, "You know what? I'm gonna build on this." Capitalism allows for the up-flow of anybody who wants to try. Socialism makes everybody a slave. Socialism makes everybody the same. Nameless! Nothing but a number.

Whoa! Capitalism slavery? The rich simply suck everything they want out of the company and then they quit? That's what Obama thinks. "They just can't sit there and count their money. We just can't let the rich sit there and count their money." I don't know who's educated you, and I don't know who's informed you, but you ought to file suit, because you have been lied to. You have been maleducated and misinformed to the point... I don't know what kind of damage this has done to you throughout your life, but I'll guarantee you: You have a lot more potential than somebody ever told you you had. You have felt yourself a prisoner of the freest system ever devised by man for economic prosperity.

RUSH: You know, the history of the world (and we've talked about this on this program) is slavery, bondage, tyranny, until we were freed by capitalism. It's the whole notion of American exceptionalism. People wonder what is meant by American exceptionalism. It's not that we're better people than anybody else. It's not that we're special. It's not that our DNA makes us superior beings. It is that we are the exception to the history of the world. We are free. We have the ability to be the best we can be based on our desire. Some of us want to be slothful, some of us want to be lazy, some of us want to be stupid, some of us want to be dumb.

Some of us want to be great. We can be whatever we want to be. The problem with that is that the slothful and the purposefully lazy then get jealous and angry and envious of those who are not slothful and lazy and want a percentage, and claim that what they normally would have to themselves has been stolen. But look at me. If this previous caller's correct, I would have quit this show in 1993, '94. Well, he said, "You make your million and then you quit and go clip coupons." I'm an entrepreneur. I bucked the trend.

I did something every Wizard of Smart in this business said couldn't be done. They wished me well, don't misunderstand. They said, "If you're gonna do a syndicated radio show, you gotta do it at night. It will never work in the middle of the day. We've all tried it." Yeah, but you didn't try it with me. So everybody was stunned, all the Wizards of Smart and experts. Then it worked, and by this guy's thinking I shoulda quit 18 years ago and left you, Snerdley, and you Dawn just sitting here slaving away with whoever the replacement host would be. You know, personally, folks, this is the difference:

I would much rather see money in the hands of people than in the hands of politicians. That's what it really boils down to. Why in the world do we think money -- gobs and oodles of money -- in the hands of elected officials is gonna end up being more fair and equitable than it is if it's in the hands of people? Politicians squander wealth. The rich, no matter how lazy they are -- and I don't care what you think -- the one thing the rich don't do is squander their money. I'll tell you something else about the rich: You know, the latest year for which there is income tax data just came out is 2008, and the number was 38%.

The top 1% of income earners paid 38% of all taxes, and a lot of people learned for the first time that top 1% is not a static group of people. People move in and out of that 1% all the time. You're not rich forever. Some people are but some people lose it all. I remember when I moved here to Palm Beach I met a man who had made and lost a billion dollars twice. He was a war hero. He gambled on some investments that didn't work out and said, "Okay, well, I'll just start again." He made and lost a billion dollars twice. The point is that just because you're born poor doesn't mean you stay poor.

Just because you're born rich doesn't mean you stay that way. People move in and out of these income quintiles with a lot of fluidity, but the rich don't squander their money. Something useful always gets done with it. This is why this notion of the rich "checking out" is all part of class envy and hatred for achievers and seeing the need to punish them, and as I say: We lost the education infrastructure in this country a hundred years ago, and that guy who called is a direct result of having lost the education institutions at all levels.

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.

American Legislative Exchange Council (Limited government, free markets and federalism):

It is mostly libs who post here, but this way, you get their weird perspective on things political:

Translating Jihad. What is broadcast in the Arabic is one thing; and how it is said in English is something entirely different:

The right weather underground (blog, with some emphasis upon the phony green agenda).

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 #175	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	April 24, 2011