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).

According to CNS news (and I don’t know if this is true or not): China has dropped 97% of its holdings in U.S. Treasury bills, decreasing its ownership of the short-term U.S. government securities from a peak of $210.4 billion in May 2009 to $5.69 billion in March 2011, the most recent month reported by the U.S. Treasury.

Speaker of the House John Boehner has demanded that President Obama abide by the war powers act. They will also play golf together in the near future.

Former presidential candidate John Edwards is indicted by a federal grand jury, allegedly for spending nearly a million dollars in campaign funs to hide his mistress during the presidential campaign.

A federal appeals court has lifted a ban on public prayer at a Texas high school graduation. This ruling on Friday reverses the decision of a lower court that sided with an agnostic family who sued the school district. The new ruling allows students at the high school to say the words "amen" and to invite the audience to pray during Saturday's graduation ceremony.

British intelligence agency, M16, has hacked into an al-Qaeda online magazine and replaced bomb-making instructions with a recipe for cupcakes.

Iran President Ahmanutjob meets with leaders of Egypt's Muslim brotherhood in Tehran. In a related story, Muslim extremists in Egypt are forming a new Nazi party. Maybe Glenn Beck isn’t so nutty?

Al Qaeda’s military brain Illyas Kashmiri appears to have been killed by a drone attack in Pakistan.

35-year-old Samira Abdalla Salim was arrested, accused of stabbing two people at the Oxboro Library in Bloomington, MN. This is where Salim handed out Korans previously and spoke to passers-by about religion. CBS video called this a random attack, and her religion and handing out korans was not mentioned.

Did you know that there is actually a story out there about Sarah Palin using Obama’s preferred font on her website?

Research from North Carolina State University shows that so-called biodegradable products are likely doing more harm than good in landfills, because they are releasing methane, a greenhouse gas, as they break down.

Representative Anthony Weiner claims that he did not tweet a picture of his personal package to a Seattle College coed named Gennette. He will not say whether or not the photograph is of him.

Russellville Middle School yearbook lists as the 5 worst people in the world (in order): Adolph Hitler, Osama Bin Laden, and Charles Manson, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Superintendent Randall Williams calls the list "an oversight." An attempt was made to put black tape over it.

President Obama wolfs down two chili dogs and fries... the day after his wife unveils new dietary guide

AP Fact Check: “Obama has not apologized for America. What he has done, in travels early in his presidency and since, is to make clear his belief that the U.S. is not beyond reproach.”

President Barack Obama: "Chrysler has repaid every dime and more of what it owes the American taxpayer from the investment we made during my watch."

Vice President Joe Biden: “All in all we're going to be creating somewhere between 100[,000] and 200,000 jobs next month, I predict.”

Senate Majority leader Harry Reid: “I am encouraged that the private sector is continuing to grow and add jobs.”

Thomas Friedman: "Netanyahu, look, he can get a standing ovation in the U.S. Congress if he reads the D.C. phone book just like the Palestinians can get a standing ovation at the UN if they read the New York phone book. What kind of ovation do you think he'd get at the University of California, University of Minnesota? That's what matters to me."

Barney Frank (and you will think that I made this up): “I don't care for Seinfeld. I'm bothered by the character of Kramer. I find it hard to watch shows where there is one character that is so obnoxious that no one would hang out with him. That's also my problem with Will & Grace. I don't understand why Jack was his best friend. He's unpleasant and dishonest. Why would anyone want to put up with a Jack or a Kramer? It's discordant for me to think about.”

Bill Maher: “I think, first of all that, he [Anthony Weiner] wants ot be mayor of New York; I think he’d be a great mayor of New York. I happen to be a big fan of Anthony Weiner.”

Father Clete Kiley: “The sky is falling on poor people in this country. The sky is falling. This time it really is. In the past, when we've done deficit reduction - and we've done it before - we've done poverty reduction at the same time. You can do both together. And every previous attempt there has been a bipartisan agreement to a given, a principle, that poor and low income people are not the ones to make hurt more when you're making tough decisions. . They don't bear the brunt of our fiscal irresponsibility because they didn't cause it. We did not get into fiscal trouble because of poor people. . The poor didn't cause this. Let's not make them pay for it.”

Adam Gadahn, a highly influential al Qaeda figure born in America, has issued a call to arms for U.S. Muslims: "Do not rely on others, take the task upon yourself. What are you waiting for? America is absolutely awash with easily obtainable firearms." He calls for Muslims in the West to stockpile assault rifles and "target major institutions and public figures."

In case you wonder, why do I list Muslims in with liberals—Muslim Americans vote about 90% or more with Democrats.

Fareed Zakaria: “Whenever we have a problem, we tend to think that our constitution is the best in the world. The people who wrote the Constitution were demi-gods, it never needs to be changed. Our political system is the best in the world. The truth is we have a pretty complicated, antiquated system that's grown pretty dysfunctional.”

Newswoman Katie Couric tweeted: "I'm curious if anybody thinks this Anthony Weiner Twitter scandal is a legit news story or just fodder for late-night comedians...thoughts?"

Randi Rhodes: “Then she goes to New York City— suddenly, she’s a Jew. Did you see she was wearing a giant, diamond star of David around her neck?”

Richard Gere on Barack Obama: "Overall, I think he's done an extraordinary job. I think he's going to go down probably as one of our great presidents."

Sigourney Weaver: “You might think that a force as sweeping as global warming would be an equal opportunity threat: that it would endanger men and women alike. But the fact is climate change exacts a heavier toll on women...Studies have found that women are 14 times more likely to die as a result of storms and other extreme weather than men.”

Joy Behar: “Well, somebody is out to get him [Anthony Weiner], apparently, 'cause they don't like his politics.”

Bill Maher: “Between the Bush tax cuts when he was in office and now the extension it's something like $2.8 trillion to the richest one percent who don't feel that at all.” It is estimated that Maher is off by about $2 trillion. However, even if we accepted his figure, that would almost cover 2 years of Obama deficits.

Randi Rhodes: ”Sarah Palin is one of those people that does not want to talk to the media...because she can’t answer a question about anything that people need to hear a solution for—she has no solutions for anything.”

Howard Dean on Sarah Palin: "I think she could win. She wouldn't be my first choice if I were a Republican but I think she could win."

PBS's Mark Shields: "What the hell is a member of Congress, who wants to be mayor of New York, having portrait galleries of his crotch available for distribution?"

Barack Obama: “Adam Smith’s central insight remains true today: there is no greater generator of wealth and innovation than a system of free enterprise that unleashes the full potential of individuals—men and women.”

Thomas Friedman: "The worst thing in the world would be if Israel permanently controls the West Bank and basically because of demographics in a very short time, you'll have a Jewish minority ruling over an Arab majority.”

CNBC: “It's apartheid.”’

Friedman: “That's what it will be called in the world. And that would be what we call on college campuses and all over the world. That is a fundamental threat to the Israel. I didn't fall off a turnip truck last night. I get the region. Okay?”

Former Congressman Rick Lazio: Mitt Romney unlike Barack Obama has 25 years of private sector experience. I think when you're looking at an economy.

Melissa Harris Perry, MSNBC contributor: And that worked out, Wall Street's doing great.

Lazio: ...that just created 15,000 jobs. If you compare this, this, this recovery compared to the last ten recoveries, we would have created, if we went to the same average, we would have created about 14 or 15 million more jobs. If we went back to '82, in 1982 Reagan inherited a ten or eleven percent unemployment rate. Coming out of that recession, they ended up creating about 14 million jobs.

Melissa Harris Perry: I'll put my Obama deficit next to your Reagan deficit any day of the week. Right, so.

Lazio: I will too, because it's about a trillion and a half dollars this year alone for Obama.

Donald Trump: “...if they (the GOP) "put up a stiff, if they do I would certainly consider running in a three person race where I would probably do better than in a two person race." I am pretty sure Trump is referring to Romney.

Sarah Palin: "The truth is that President Obama is lying. He's not just misstating. He's not just misconstruing some facts or some data. No, he's lying when he says that those with Down Syndrome, that those with autism, those that need that safety net will be left on their own if the Republicans have their way. That is not true."

Masha Blackburn: "I am deeply disturbed by the revelations of collusion between the FCC and Free Press on the net-neutrality issue. The FCC has moved against the will of the people, the wisdom of Congress and the order of the courts, to nationalize our most productive marketplace."

Geert Wilders: “...the Netherlands is under threat of Islam. As I have argued many times, Islam is chiefly an ideology. An ideology of hatred, of destruction, of conquest. It is my strong conviction that Islam is a threat to Western values, to freedom of speech, to the equality of men and women, of heterosexuals and homosexuals, of believers and unbelievers.”

Sarah Palin on Romney’s burden of Romneycare: "I think that he'll have maybe a bit more challenges with independents who make up the tea party movement, wanting to make sure we are not going to -- we won't have any excuses or perceived political reasons to grow government. In my opinion, any mandate coming from government is not a good thing, obviously, and I am not the only one to say so. But obviously there will be more explanation coming from Governor Romney for his support of government mandates."

Rush Limbaugh: "Okay, the Memorial Day weekend is over, ladies and gentlemen, which means that we are now officially in our third Summer of Recovery, and the question is: How many more Recovery Summers can our economy stand before it all goes kaput?"

Rush Limbaugh: "The status of the US economy, to me, is proof positive that we can't afford not to change horses in midstream. The status of the US economy means that we must change horses in the middle of the stream. Whatever Obama is doing, that horse ain't working."

Rush: "If Keynesian economics worked, if pumping government money into a faltering economy worked, there would never be a faltering economy."

Rush: "We were told during the campaign that Obama would fundamentally change the way the US economy works -- and he has. We are getting to see exactly what he meant."

Rush: "There's not a single person living in the real world who believes we have been in a recovery.”

Rush: "Even knowing the biases and knowing what State-Controlled Media is, I am still surprised they are so willing to make fools of themselves by trying to act and speak as though there has been an economic recovery in the last two and a half years."

Frank Borman: “Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without hell.”

Mitt Romney at a town hall in New Hampshire: "The world is getting warmer, and I believe that humans have contributed to that...It's important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may be significant contributors."

Some of Glenn Beck’s greatest shows are on the history of this or that. This is all about the Muslim Brotherhood. If you are a liberal, and have been convinced that Beck is just some idiot, don’t bother to watch this—continue to believe what you have been taught to believe.

Beck's explosive video vindication: socialists explain how they worked with Muslim brotherhood & Islamic extremists in the Mid-east revolutions to unite arab world against USA, Britain & Israel

Chris Matthews thinks that calling Obama a European style socialist is just another racial slur. Michael Steele tries to disabuse him of this notion.

Obama advisor seems to think that we put too much emphasis upon the constitution (includes a rebut of the things he says):

Are you worried that changing out your light bulbs may not be enough to solve global warming? So is a U.K. psychologist, who has designed the perfect eco-living quarters for one person. This is not a joke; it is a CBS report.

Various Muslim speaking about the Ayatollah Khomeini on the anniversary of his death:

Former Congressman Cynthia McKinney wants a stronger government to make the correct changes that she believes that we need:

Jodi Miller: “Europe is still dealing with all of the ash pollutant from the Icelandic volcano. In fact, the Icelandic volcano’s carbon footprint was so large that experts mistook it for one of Al Gore’s houses.”

Jodi Miller: “Chris Matthews asked if Paul’s Ryan’s Medicare plan is a death certificate for the GOP. Hey, Chris, Medicare is a death certificate for Medicare.”

1) Government wanted to give poorer people a more fair shot at the American dream of owning a home. The result has been a housing bubble, an economic collapse, and a reduced rate of home ownership in America. Do we want to apply this same expertise to our medical care?

3) I am not 100% anti-government nor am I against some limited government involvement in the market. I would have no problem for FHA to continue as a government program, with a very targeted audience (like first-time home buyers) as long as they (1) were limited in scope (no more than 5% of the market) and (2) had to turn a profit. Any FHA director who could not turn a profit would be given the lowest federal salary out there. An FHA director who turns a profit would be given a percentage of that profit.

4) Anthony Weiner is not responding like someone who has been hacked and his reputation besmirched. I can think of three reasonable explanations for him acting the way he is acting: (1) the picture is his, he was hacked, and he has no idea how this happened; (2) he accidentally sent this photo to the wrong person, and the first thing he claimed was, “I was hacked” and he has to stick by that story. (3) He thinks that a friend of his may have done the hacking, and he does not want to get this friend in trouble.

5) So far, what I do not see in a presidential candidate is someone who is clearly and unequivocally calling for a smaller federal government footprint (apart from maybe Herman Cain). I don’t see anyone promising to limit federal power in any way. If you are a liberal, you may love the idea that Obama has done so much with his power, but always remember, whatever he can do with his power, someone you hate can get elected and do the same sort of things that you hate (like the Supreme Court calling for California to fix its prison system of let go of 45,000 prisoners).

6) You can say what you want about FDR—and he was certainly a controversial historical figure, despite the sugar coating that he gets in the history books—yet, he left a real legacy behind when it came to actual government projects: there were many dams that were built, and power became a reality for almost all Americans because of him. What can we look back in Obama’s 4 years and say, “Well, I am not so sure if I like him, but these things are a lasting legacy to him.” What will he leave behind? Hyper-regulatory boards? Will that be his legacy?

US has to create 250k jobs a month for 66 months to return to December 2007 unemployment by end of Obama's second term

26 is the number of questions Jay Carney was unable to answer in one press conference:

The Environmental Protection Agency has given at least $1,285,535 in grants to China to promote environmental research in the country.

A person puts in about $55,000 into Medicare and takes out about $161,000. Simply a governmental accounting error, time 350 million.

Chrysler received the following loans from the federal government:

January 2009: Chrysler receives $4 billion loan from TARP

January 2009: Chrysler financial receives $1.5 billion from the Treasury Department

May 2009: Chrysler receives a $1.9 billion debtor in possession loan from the Treasury Department

June 2009: Chrysler receives a $6.6 billion loan from the Treasury Department

Total loaned to Chrysler: $14 billion

Chrysler made the following payments to the federal government:

May 2010: Chrysler pays the Treasury Department $1.9 billion to settle their January 2009 loan.

May 2011: Chrysler pays the Treasury Department $5.1 billion as partial settlement for June 2009 loan.

June 2011: Chrysler pays the Treasury Department $560 million to settle the rest of the June 2009 loan.

Total paid back by Chrysler: $7.56 billion

Documented:

http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/2011/06/taxpayers-lost-644-billion-chrysler-bailout?utm_source=feedburner+BeltwayConfidential&utm_medium=feed+Beltway+Confidential&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BeltwayConfidential+%28Beltway+Confidential%29

U.S. adults, on average, estimate that 25% of Americans are gay or lesbian. More specifically, over half of Americans (52%) estimate that at least one in five Americans are gay or lesbian, including 35% who estimate that more than one in four are. Thirty percent put the figure at less than 15%. There is actually a 1.4% population which see themselves as gay and a 1.8% who classify themselves as bisexual. About 4% of Americans are even close to being able to guess the percentage of gays in America.

According to Gallup, 80% of Americans plan to continue to work past their retirement age.

53% of Americans now believe the federal government is more of a threat to individual rights than a protector.

Weasel Zipper poll has, in the top 3 places for Republican candidates, 2 African-Americans and 1 woman. Are conservatives supposed to be racist and misogynistic?

Remember under the Bush economy, the stories about how, many of the jobs available were just hamburger flipping jobs. This month, MacDonald’s provided half of the 54,000 new jobs in the private sector...which newspaper or news station will emphasize or even report this?

Twice in the last two weeks has Time magazine devoted a page to Mark Halperin's oddsmaking on who will be the Republican nominee, and each time has left out candidate Herman Cain. Cain participated in the first presidential debate on May and was thought by many to be the star of that debate.

In their initial news coverage, neither ABC nor NBC reported that John Edwards was a Democrat, simply calling him a "former presidential candidate."

Critic of the driving of the Palin bus. By the way, many of this information comes from angry journalists who do not like Palin and do not like that she has not given them a time schedule and a list of destinations.

Front cover of Newsweek: The Mormon Moment Can you think of any magazine cover of Obama where he looked goofy or his head was superimposed on a goofy body? I can think of one (out of about 500 covers).

The other day, when driving back home from work, Mark Levin played sound byte after sound byte of stupid thing Obama has said. This was about a 45 minute segment of his program. It would be so easy for SNL, for instance, to portray Obama as a very stupid man, lost without his teleprompter; but, of course, that is never the approach that they take. He has to be presented as brilliant, and Republican figures and candidates are portrayed as complete dunces. The news hides many Obamaisms, but they are out there, and every one of them can be found on YouTube. See Obamaisms below.

Shared sacrifice = not taxing the 47% who do not pay federal income tax and taxing small business and those who are rich.

Targeted investments = more government spending on pet projects and to reward the loyal base.

Is there any point in time that you foresee recognizing that your economic policies are not working?

The Democrats have done a good job (aided by their right arm, the press) to move much of the political discussion to medicare (about 50% of Americans are concerned about the economy; about 8% are worked up about healthcare and medicare). Notice that there are few stories about the economic problems as related to Obama and the Democratic party, but a lot of stories all about the Paul Ryan medicare plan.

My hope is, conservatives will let this be milked as far as it can be milked, and then hit the economy hard the last month prior to the election.

Given Adam Gadahn’s call to arms for U.S. Muslims, I would reasonably expect there to be a flurry of random attacks by Muslims with assault rifles in the United States. I would think these would begin in early September.

I think/hope Republican strategy is to let the Medicare issue play out in the media, and then pivot to jobs and the economy about a month or two before the next election.

As more and more people begin to pay attention, watch for Mitt Romney’s support to stall or erode and for Herman Cain’s to advance.

This is obviously not a done deal, but I think that Sarah Palin is more interested in becoming energy secretary than President of the United States.

This is the story of a bona fide American, an American who lived the American dream; the son of a chauffeur and a domestic worker, Herman Cain is running for the office of the presidency. He calls himself the dark horse:

One who achieves unexpected support and success as a political candidate, typically during a party's convention. (Free Online Dictionary)

and yes, he is coming out of nowhere, at least in terms of public awareness, and is now near the top of the list of Republican contenders. On the race track, he would be considered a long shot that is gaining on the leader on the backside with momentum, class, and stamina on his side. He is in an excellent position at this stage of the race. He knows by experience, that those who dash to the lead early in the race can rarely maintain the pace in a long race, they often spit the bit and stick their toes in the ground at the head of the stretch; those with conditioning and stamina will fight for position coming into the stretch and the horse with class and heart will hold the lead in that stretch run to the wire, that is what makes a winner.

Herman Cain is a proven winner with heart and class. He has been a top executive of Pillsbury, Burger King, Coca Cola, and Godfather's Pizza. He brought Godfather's back from the precipice of bankruptcy. His first nine months at Burger King were spent flipping burgers, so that he could learn the fast food business from the bottom up and he managed to turn his regional district he was working in, from the worst performing to the highest performing in the country.

The man knows business and he knows what it takes to meet a payroll and turn a profit. He has a love of country, ability, humility, and experience: the main personality components that Obama is missing.

Have I mentioned that he is a Black Man: a Black Man that is comfortable and secure in his own identity as a Black Man. A man that can handle criticism without pouting about racism. Cain is not an ideologue with Marxist roots who views America as just another country with multiple faults that he needs to apologize for: no, not at all, he is a proud American, who believes in American exceptionalism. He is diametrically different from the adolescent narcissist currently occupying the White House; could you imagine Obama flipping burgers or turning a major corporation back from bankruptcy. Unlike Obama, Herman Cain is a man of the people, the American people, not some quasi-Socialist leader of the people of the world. Americans want a leader that can rebuild America, who has the actual tools and ability instead of running on empty with nothing but a Marxist philosophy. He is a man who knows the importance of calling on men of substance and accomplishment for an administration, instead of Marxist radicals who have accomplished nothing and seem more interested in destroying America instead of building a vibrant America.

Cain is the one Republican candidate that can speak with authority and explain to American Blacks and describe how Democrats have kept them on the virtual plantation since the days of LBJ with entitlement programs and how they need to recognize and believe in their own individual abilities instead of the notion of a collective entitlement philosophy. Cain said, "We can take this from an entitlement society to an empowerment society." He has also maintained, "Hope and Change is not a job", a realization that is settling in on Obama voters facing the economic realities of four more years of poverty and despair.

Herman Cain is willing to reassure Americans, "I am not going to allow America to become number 2 economically or militarily". Americans are anxious to feel the greatness of the past rather than sacrificing in order for other countries to share in America's wealth. We are not responsible for the corruption and ineptness of every failed Socialist government in the world.

Believing in America does not mean penalizing a state for trying to remain solvent to avoid being over run by illegal aliens: Cain said, "The last thing I will do is sue a state," he suggested instead, we send Arizona "a peace prize."

To a business man, loaning Brazil $2 billion dollars and pleading that we hope to be your best customer, while preventing American oil companies from drilling off shore is ludicrous. He has promised that he would never loan a foreign country money while promising to be their best customer.

In support of Israel, he criticized Obama's punch below the belt of calling for Israel to accept the

pre-'67 borders, a suicidal move for Israel, as a condition for getting the terrorists to the negotiating table; a move that is in effect capitulating to the Muslim Terrorists, a group that doesn't exist in Obama World. He professed, "I know you don't throw your friends under the bus, You don't need years in the statehouse to know that." He stated the "Cain Doctrine": "If you mess with Israel, you're messing with the United States."

Cain has the ability to fire up a crowd without the women fainting on camera cue and he does it without a teleprompter. His speeches are flawless and flowing in context and emotion; instead of the disjointed, wandering, and meaningless babble of Obama when he is caught without his teleprompter.

Yes, Herman Cain is a Dark Horse or a long shot, but he is a winner who believes in America instead of Marxist philosophy. Obama came into the White house with no experience other than being a Community Agitator and he continued on with the same job skills and Marxist philosophy that he has studied his whole life and the country is showing the effects of this failed philosophy. America may not be able to withstand four more years of a clueless ideologue; it is time for a man with faith in America and its Constitution, who has the skills to move America forward. It is time for a man like Herman Cain.

The nation's increasingly visible and influential gay community embraces the notion of sexual orientation as an innate, immutable characteristic, like left-handedness or eye color. But a major federal sex survey suggests a far more fluid, varied life experience for those who acknowledge same-sex attraction.

The results of this scientific research shouldn't undermine the hard-won respect recently achieved by gay Americans, but they do suggest that choice and change play larger roles in sexual identity than commonly assumed. The prestigious study in question (released in March by the National Center for Health Statistics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) discovered a much smaller number of "gays, lesbians and homosexuals" than generally reported by the news media. While pop-culture frequently cites the figure of one in 10 (based on 60-year-old, widely discredited conclusions from pioneering sex researcher Alfred Kinsey) the new study finds only 1.4% of the population identifying with same-sex orientation.

In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes a variety of opinions from outside writers. On political and policy matters, we publish opinions from across the political spectrum.

Moreover, even among those who describe themselves as homosexual or bisexual (a grand total of 3.7% of the 18-44 age group), overwhelming majorities (81%) say they've experienced sex with partners of the opposite gender. Among those who call themselves heterosexual, on the other hand, only a tiny minority (6%) ever engaged in physical intimacy of any kind with a member of the same sex These figure indicate that 94% of those living heterosexual lives felt no physical attraction to members of the same sex, but the great bulk of self-identified homosexuals and bisexuals feel enough intimate interest in the opposite gender to engage in erotic contact at some stage in their development.

Gay pride advocates applaud the courage of those who "come out," discovering their true nature as homosexual after many years of heterosexual experience. But enlightened opinion denies a similar possibility of change in the other direction, deriding anyone who claims straight orientation after even the briefest interlude of homosexual behavior and insisting they are phony and self-deluding. By this logic, heterosexual orientation among those with past gay relationships is always the product of repression and denial, but homosexual commitment after a straight background is invariably natural and healthy. In fact, numbers show huge majorities of those who "ever had same sex sexual contact" do not identify long-term as gay. Among women 18-44, for instance, 12.5% report some form of same sex contact at some point in their lives, but among the older segment of that group (35-44), only 0.7% identify as homosexual and 1.1% as bisexual.

In other words, for the minority who may have experimented with gay relationships at some juncture in their lives, well over 80% explicitly renounced homosexual (or even bisexual) self-identification by age of 35. For the clear majority of males (as well as women) who report gay encounters, homosexual activity appears to represent a passing phase, or even a fleeting episode, rather than an unshakable, genetically pre-determined orientation.

The once popular phrase "sexual preference" has been indignantly replaced with the term "sexual orientation" because political correctness now insists there is no factor of willfulness or volition in the development of erotic identity. This may well be the case for the 94% of males and 87% of females (ages 18-44) who have never experienced same-sex contact of any kind and may never have questioned their unwavering straight outlook - an outlook deemed "normal" in an earlier age.

For the less than 2% of men and women who see themselves as gay, however, the issue of sexual orientation remains vastly more complicated. Within a month of the release of the CDC/NCHS report, one of the world's most respected think tanks on gay life confirmed some of its most surprising findings, without specifically referencing the recent government study. UCLA's Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy offered a new estimate of homosexual identification: concluding that 1.7% of Americans say they're gay, and a slightly larger group (1.8%) identified as bisexual - by definition attracted to both genders and shaping their sexual behavior through some mixture of inclination and preference.

Brad Sears of the Williams Institute defended the accuracy of these numbers, suggesting gay leaders "let go" of previous, unrealistic estimates of homosexual orientation. He told the Associated Press that "with other populations of a similar size of 2% to 4%, we don't question whether there are too many or too few." For instance, no one suggests Jewish Americans should be treated with contempt or dismissed as irrelevant to the Christian majority because they number below 2% of the U.S. population. Nor would the news media shy away from reporting that in an age of religious conversion, choice plays a role in adding to and subtracting from the Jewish community.

Religious identity arises from birth, upbringing, instinct, even destiny, but the fact that it almost always includes some element of choice doesn't entitle the believer to less respect. By the same token, it's no sign of hostility or homophobia to point to recent data suggesting that life experience and personal decisions play roles alongside inborn inclination in the complex, sometimes inconclusive, emergence of the gay and lesbian identity.

Paul Ryan shares with the Founding Fathers the badge of honor called liberal disdain

It's not uncommon to hear liberals ridicule conservatives for wanting a Constitutional government by suggesting that they are seeking to return to a time when blacks were considered 3/5 of a person and that the Constitution is somehow permanently damaged because it did not outlaw slavery. (At the time of the Constitution's ratification in 1789 slavery was still legal in the British and French Empires - although not in England and France themselves - Spain, Denmark & Norway as well as most of the Middle East, Africa and Asia.)

This liberal narrative suggests that the Founding Fathers had the opportunity to outlaw slavery and simply chose not to do so because they didn't see blacks as fully human. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. While a majority may have been skeptical of suggestions of equality between races, there were a number of eloquent anti-slavery members of the Constitutional Convention, including one of the most influential, Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania who called slavery: A "nefarious institution, the curse of heaven on the states where it prevailed" as well as Virginian George Mason who said: "Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant.. I hold it essential . that the general government should have the power to prevent the increase of slavery."

At the end of the day, the liberal notion that the 3/5 Compromise was a mistake is simply wrong. Outlawing slavery or counting slaves as whole persons was never an option.

The 3/5 Compromise was itself the result of another compromise, the Connecticut Compromise, which gave us a Senate with equal representation and a House with proportionate representation. This arrangement provided smaller states like Rhode Island and Delaware with the confidence that they were not going to be steamrolled by the bigger and more populous states like Virginia and Pennsylvania.

It is that proportional representation that begat the 3/5 Compromise. The Constitution apportions taxes and representation by population. As such, there was a dichotomy of opinion on slaves. Northerners wanted slaves counted whole for taxes and not at all for representation. Southerners wanted slaves counted whole for representation purposes, but not for taxes. (Note: Race was not the issue: Free blacks were counted as whole persons.)

The result was the 3/5 Compromise: Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

The 3/5 Compromise resulted in southern states having a disproportionate representation in the House for the next 70 years. Had slaves been counted as whole persons that imbalance and the Southern power would have been even greater than it was, a situation the North would never have accepted. As difficult as it might be for 21st century liberals to understand, the choice was never between a Constitution that outlawed slavery and one that counted slaves as 3/5 of a free man for representation and taxation purposes, but rather the choice was between a Constitution with a 3/5 Compromise and one that could not gain ratification.

The demonstration of this comes from the words of none other than Gouverneur Morris himself. In noting that the Constitution was to be willingly entered into he said: "But as the Compact was to be voluntary, it is in vain for the Eastern States to insist on what the Southern States will never agree to." And to see exactly where the Southern states stood on the issue there is North Carolina's William Davie who said of the representation of slaves: "(He) Was sure North Carolina would never confederate on any terms that did not rate them at least as 3/5. If the Eastern States meant therefore to exclude them altogether the business (Writing of the Constitution) was at an end.

Therefore the question today might be, were slaves and their progeny better off as part of a union that included abolitionists as part of the government and polity who were actively seeking to abolish the practice or would they have been better off as part of a country or countries where slavery was an accepted basic element of the culture and where there was no significant dissent? In addition one might ask the question of whether anyone on the continent would have been better off had the 13 colonies not ratified the Constitution and the continent split into a mosaic of nations resembling Europe and it's perpetual wars?

To bring this full circle, whether looking back at history or ahead into the future, liberals rarely let the reality of life get in the way of their theories on how the world works. Once again they are proffering a false narrative, only this time they are discussing the future of the country. Paul Ryan has taken the first step in recognizing the unsustainability of America's entitlement programs as they are currently configured and has laid out a viable solution for addressing the problem. Democrats on the other hand believe that the programs are just fine and the problem is simply that the rich are not paying their fair share in taxes.

Like their take on the 3/5 Compromise, liberals once again have the wrong narrative. The choice facing America's mushrooming entitlement costs is not between increasing taxes on the rich and throwing grandma off a cliff, but rather it's between fixing the programs and not fixing them, in which case the federal government would finally implode under the weight of its unsustainable promises.

The difference of course is that while we can't impact history, the actions taken today can impact what happens tomorrow. Liberals could learn much from the Founding Fathers in terms of examining the real choices at hand when it comes to choosing which path to follow. It may not be as much fun as peddling simple minded populist solutions, but it sets a foundation for real progress.

The upheaval in Yemen and the possibility that al-Qaida might take over, turning that country into a stronger terrorist base than it already is, should give pause to American and European policy in the Arab world.

At its recently concluded G-8 meeting of industrial economies in Deauville, France, Western governments pledged $40 billion to "newly democratic" nations in North Africa and the Middle East. One might as well throw money at Chicago and hope for electoral reform so the dead are no longer allowed to vote on Election Day.

In spring, one usually cultivates a lawn so that new vegetation can take root and grow. In the Arab world where this money is targeted the only roots you'll find are the roots of oppression and terrorism. If Western nations think what is happening in Tunisia and Egypt will lead to real democracy where competing political parties, ideologies and faiths have a fair and equal opportunity of being debated they are seriously deluded. The money would have a better chance of financing a winning streak in a Las Vegas casino.

If these countries were seriously pursuing democracy and needed only money to complete their transformation, there is plenty of money in the region that could be used to help them. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, OPEC income is expected to rise this year above the $200 billion increase of 2010. That would be around $833 billion, the Energy Information Administration forecasts. That's money the United States and the rest of the G-8 have paid oil-producing nations at prices ranging from $4 to $7 a gallon, depending on the country.

If money alone could foster democracy in North Africa and the Middle East, there are plenty of Arab countries with loads of it -- chiefly Saudi Arabia. Yet the Saudis have shown very little interest in an "Arab spring," preferring to remain instead in the doldrums of an Arab winter.

Democracy doesn't spring up of its own accord. It must have a base from which it can blossom. That was a point made by Timur Kuran, a professor of economics and political science at Duke University, in a recent op-ed column for The New York Times entitled "The Weak Foundations of Arab Democracy." Kuran wrote, "Democracy requires checks and balances, and it is largely through civil society that citizens protect their rights as individuals, force policymakers to accommodate their interests, and limit abuses of state authority. Civil society also promotes a culture of bargaining and gives future leaders the skills to articulate ideas, form coalitions and govern."

None of this exists in any of the nations to which the G-8 has pledged its support. In Egypt, supposedly the most progressive of the Arab states, fundamentalist Muslims still persecute Coptic Christians. The radical Muslim Brotherhood, which at the start of the revolution claimed no interest in political power, is now active in its pursuit of victory in the upcoming election and hints that it might revoke Egypt's peace treaty with Israel.

The problems in North Africa and the Middle East can't be solved by money. What's needed is a change in outlook. Radical Islam forces women into second-class status; it is rooted, not in optimism, but in pessimism. Radical Islamists appear to serve an angry God who commands them to kill those who do not believe as they do, but this belief will do little to lift the Arab world out of the religious and political deep freeze that holds it back from true progress.

In C.S. Lewis' "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," Narnia has been transformed by a white witch into a land where it is "always winter, but never Christmas." That pretty much describes the lands of North Africa and the Middle East where the "white witch" is radical Islam and spring will never arrive as long as it holds sway over the minds and hearts of the people.

"We're not trying to push financial reform because we begrudge success that's fairly earned. I mean, I do think at a certain point you've made enough money. But, you know, part of the American way is, you know, you can just keep on making it if you're providing a good product or providing good service. We don't want people to stop, ah, fulfilling the core responsibilities of the financial system to help grow our economy." -on Wall Street reform, Quincy, Ill., April 29, 2010

"One such translator was an American of Haitian descent, representative of the extraordinary work that our men and women in uniform do all around the world -- Navy Corpse-Man Christian Brossard." -mispronouncing "Corpsman" (the "ps" is silent) during a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, Washington, D.C., Feb. 5, 2010 (The Corpsman's name is also Christopher, not Christian)

"The Middle East is obviously an issue that has plagued the region for centuries." --Tampa, Fla., Jan. 28, 2010

"UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right? It's the Post Office that's always having problems." -attempting to make the case for government-run healthcare, while simultaneously undercutting his own argument, Portsmouth, N.H., Aug. 11, 2009

"The Cambridge police acted stupidly." -commenting on a white police officer's arrest of black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. at his home in Cambridge, Mass., at a news conference, July 22, 2009

"The reforms we seek would bring greater competition, choice, savings and inefficiencies to our health care system." --in remarks after a health care roundtable with physicians, nurses and health care providers, Washington, D.C., July 20, 2009

"It was also interesting to see that political interaction in Europe is not that different from the United States Senate. There's a lot of -- I don't know what the term is in Austrian, wheeling and dealing." --confusing German for "Austrian," a language which does not exist, Strasbourg, France, April 6, 2009

"No, no. I have been practicing...I bowled a 129. It's like -- it was like Special Olympics, or something." --making an off-hand joke during an appearance on "The Tonight Show", March 19, 2009 (Obama later called the head of the Special Olympics to apologize)

"I didn't want to get into a Nancy Reagan thing about doing any seances." --after saying he had spoken with all the living presidents as he prepared to take office, Washington, D.C., Nov. 7, 2008 (Obama later called Nancy Reagan to apologize)

"I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody." -- defending his tax plan to Joe the Plumber, who argued that Obama's policy hurts small-business owners like himself, Toledo, Ohio, Oct. 12, 2008

"What I was suggesting -- you're absolutely right that John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith..." --in an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, who jumped in to correct Obama by saying "your Christian faith," which Obama quickly clarified (Watch video clip)

"I'm here with the Girardo family here in St. Louis." --speaking via satellite to the Democratic National Convention, while in Kansas City, Missouri, Aug. 25, 2008

"Let me introduce to you the next President -- the next Vice President of the United States of America, Joe Biden." --slipping up while introducing Joe Biden at their first joint campaign rally, Springfield, Illinois, Aug. 23, 2008

"Just this past week, we passed out of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee -- which is my committee -- a bill to call for divestment from Iran as way of ratcheting up the pressure to ensure that they don't obtain a nuclear weapon." --referring to a committee he is not on, Sderot, Israel, July 23, 2008

"Let me be absolutely clear. Israel is a strong friend of Israel's. It will be a strong friend of Israel's under a McCain...administration. It will be a strong friend of Israel's under an Obama administration. So that policy is not going to change." --Amman, Jordan, July 22, 2008

"On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes -- and I see many of them in the audience here today -- our sense of patriotism is particularly strong."

"Hold on one second, sweetie, we're going to do -- we'll do a press avail." --to a female reporter for ABC's Detroit affiliate who asked about his plan to help American autoworkers (Watch video clip)

"I've now been in 57 states -- I think one left to go." --at a campaign event in Beaverton, Oregon (Watch video clip)

"Why can't I just eat my waffle?" --after being asked a foreign policy question by a reporter while visiting a diner in Pennsylvania

"It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." --explaining his troubles winning over some working-class voters

"The point I was making was not that Grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn't. But she is a typical white person, who, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know, you know, there's a reaction that's been bred in our experiences that don't go away and that sometimes come out in the wrong way, and that's just the nature of race in our society."

"Come on! I just answered, like, eight questions." --exasperated by reporters after a news conference

"In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died -- an entire town destroyed." --on a Kansas tornado that killed 12 people

Political advantage can be fleeting. A couple of months ago, during the winter quarter, job gains looked to be picking up, unemployment was easing lower, and President Obama's reelection hopes looked more secure. But things sure have changed.

In recent weeks, a whole bunch of new economic stats have been pointing to a sputtering economy - maybe even an inflation-prone, less-than-2-percent-growth recession. Stocks have dropped five straight weeks, as they look toward slower growth, jobs, and profits out to year end. And Friday's jobs report didn't buck these trends.

"Anemic" is the adjective being tossed around the media. According to the Labor Department, nonfarm payrolls increased a meager 54,000 in May, while private payrolls gained only 83,000. A week or two ago, Wall Street expected 200,000-plus new jobs. Didn't happen.

Perhaps the most telling weakness in the jobs report comes from the household survey, which is made up of self-employed workers. Think of mom-and-pop owned stores and small businesses. Think of the Main Street entrepreneurial families who make up the backbone of the economy, and for the matter the country. And they vote, too.

Well, household jobs increased a paltry 105,000 in May, after falling 190,000 in April. The jobless rate is determined by the household survey, and you really need a couple hundred thousand new household jobs a month - at least - to lower unemployment. And you really need about 300,000 household jobs a month to put a little torque behind the Main Street economy. But with the lackluster May report, the unemployment rate edged up to 9.1 percent from last month's 9 percent and March's 8.8 percent.

Suddenly President Obama has gone from reelect to big trouble. The economic rug has been pulled out from underneath him.

So what changed in the last couple of months or so? Answer: A nasty oil-, gasoline-, and commodity-price shock. It's eating away at economic growth and jobs. It's stalling the economy. And it has cut into consumer real incomes and business profits.

Much of this problem can be traced to the failure of the Federal Reserve's QE2 pump-priming campaign. QE2 has not produced growth, but it has produced inflation. In fact, the consumer price index over the past four or five months has been running close to 6 percent annually.

And most of that new Fed money has served merely to depreciate the dollar. And most of those cheaper dollars are on deposit at the Federal Reserve, where banks are earning 25 basis points for safety and risk aversion. In other words, the majority of that new money is not circulating throughout the economy. It's a boneheaded Fed stimulus, and it has done more harm than good.

That said, in a larger sense, the failure to ignite small-business job creation has to be laid at the doorstep of the Obama administration, and the economic policies that threaten higher taxes and regulations virtually across the board. On Thursday this week, the president again promised House Democrats to raise taxes on successful top small-business owners. What a great new idea.

So mom and pop don't feel like taking a risk in this environment. Higher tax-and-regulatory costs have put these entrepreneurs in survival mode. They're playing their economic cards so close to the vest, business activity has buttoned up tight.

What you want is for people to take their suit jackets off, roll up their shirt sleeves, and go out there and build. But people are hunkering down, not building.

Since the household-survey employment peak back in November 2007, 6.8 million jobs have been lost. Since the so-called end of the recession in June 2009, 199,000 jobs, on balance, have disappeared. And so far this year, household employment has increased by a total of 573,000, which is about 115,000 a month. That's only one-third of what's needed to bring down unemployment significantly.

The bottom line is that there hasn't really been a jobs recovery. President Obama is going to have to own that. But the question is, both in Congress and on the campaign trail, does the GOP have a pro-growth jobs program that will get Main Street mom and pops to roll up their sleeves once again?

Newsflash from The New York Times: President Barack Obama's stimulus did not work. No, the Times doesn't say that in so many words, but in an op-ed this morning, the paper laments the sputtering economy and the fact that Washington just isn't doing enough to help the economy grow. The problem, of course, is that Washington has done too much of the wrong things to get the economy moving again.

The economic news that's really sticking in the Old Gray Lady's craw is revised data released last week that shows the economy's growth stuck at 1.8 percent, slow consumer spending, stagnant wages, higher prices for gas and food, the poor housing market, flagging consumer confidence and a recent Labor Department report showing a higher-than-expected rise in claims for jobless benefits. The Times complains:

What the Times forgot to mention, though, is that Washington over the past two years has done a lot-a whole lot-with the biggest ticket item being the Obama-Reid-Pelosi $787 billion stimulus that was designed to "create or save" 3.5 million new jobs by 2011. Despite the extraordinarily high cost, that didn't happen, and unemployment has increased to 9 percent.

But don't tell that to the Obama stimulus apologists, though. In an interview on Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace remarked that in light of the dismal economic numbers, the Obama Administration's policies and near $1 trillion stimulus "isn't working" and asked Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD), a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus to respond. For her, those dots just don't connect:

For the American people, though, that reality is hitting home. Joseph Lupton, an economist at JP Morgan Chase and Company, says, "There are pretty big costs to not really generating a sizeable recovery." And as The Wall Street Journal reports, those costs are high unemployment, with 5.8 million people out of work for more than six months.

The House GOP last week issued a proposal to spur job growth, including reducing regulation and taxes and promoting free trade - essentially aimed at making it easier for businesses to grow, thereby growing the economy and reducing unemployment. And, like clockwork, the left went on the attack claiming that it's nothing more than "old ideas, fancy new clip art," while the Times described it as "more of the same `fixes' that Republicans always recommend no matter the problem." Ironically, though, the left is calling for more of their same ideas - "government help" must come to the rescue, the Times says.

And how do they plan to pay for it? Higher taxes to finance more spending, with "a combined federal and state top tax rate on earnings of 62%." The government needs to stay home. Brian Riedl explained why government intervention to boost the economy doesn't work:

There are no-cost ways to get the economy moving again, such as reforming regulations to reduce unnecessary business costs, reforming the tort system, removing barriers to energy production, reducing taxes on companies' foreign earnings if they bring their earnings home, and passing pending free trade agreements. And with Congress confronting spiraling debt, they need to get their economic house in order.

Despite all the "help" President Obama delivered in the first two years of his presidency, the economy is stuck in the mud and can't get out. It is overburdened by taxes and regulations, and businesses don't want to move forward into the dark abyss absent some certainty that the government won't shackle them with more taxes and regulations down the road. America has had enough of that brand of "help." It's time for something different.

RUSH: Thomas Friedman, the New York Times, who travels the world for the New York Times, writes about foreign policy. Thomas Friedman thinks that the country that is the be all, end all right now is China. We need to be more like the ChiComs. Well, Tom Friedman was on CNBC's Squawk Box today. They had a discussion about the unemployment numbers. The cohost Becky Quick said to Thomas Friedman, "Iran's trying to turn back the clock right now. They're creating their own Iran net [Internet] where you can only see what they want you to see. Can they do that, Tom? Tom, can they do that?" So Friedman was being asked by CNBC, can the Iranians do that? Is that fair, Tom, can they set up their own Internet?

FRIEDMAN: One of the things we've missed and it relates to the job picture a little bit is that this great what I call inflection, this technology diffusion and penetration has gone to a whole new degree. It's affecting productivity. We see that it's driving productivity at higher and higher levels. Companies able to do more and more things with fewer and fewer people. And it's having huge geopolitical consequences. But we've been so caught up with our recession, that I think we've missed something pretty big.

RUSH: Yeah, but I'll be damned if he can tell us what we've missed because I don't know what he's talking about. Did any of that make any sense to any of you? Well, it's affecting productivity. We see that. I mean it's driving productivity higher and higher levels, companies able to do more and more things with fewer and fewer people, and it's having a huge geopolitical consequence out there. But we've been so caught up with our recession I think we've missed something pretty big. So this is kinda along the lines of the AP story we had yesterday, stop whining and realize the world's better off, just stop whining.

Oh. There's a story, I can't wait to get to this one. Somebody from the Obama administration, they're in court answering charges on the mandate to buy health insurance. And a guy from the regime actually says, (paraphrasing) "Look, if you have a problem with it, just don't earn a lot of money. There is a level at which if you don't exceed that in earnings, then you aren't affected by it. So if you don't like the mandate, just don't earn a lot of money." I'm not kidding. That's the regime's answer to this in court. Yeah, there's an easy way around the mandate, stay poor 'cause at a certain level of income you don't have to buy it. We exempt you.

Now, Thomas L. Friedman lives in a multi-million dollar mansion in a wealthy Washington suburb, it's actually in Maryland, while he preaches green socialist policies and celebrates the tyranny of the ChiComs and he married his wealth, which is fine, I'm just passing along information to you. Working at the New York Times is great, but you don't buy mansions with what they pay you. He went the John Kerry route. Yeah, except I think Friedman got in on the first shot, Kerry, you know, took two or three stabs at it. And didn't Kerry, I think he did try to open his own lollipop store or something, or ice cream store at some point? Didn't he, somewhere in Boston? For some reason lollipops sticks in my mind.

So Friedman's got it made, but he still preaches austerity for everybody else. And the point is we're too obsessed with our recession. We're just too obsessed with ourselves, we're too obsessed. We're spending too much time whining 'cause there is no recession for Thomas L. Friedman. He's not really participating in it. But all the rest of you, well, you're wasting too much time on it, you're obsessed and you're missing all these important geopolitical shifts taking place out there.

So the other cohost on this show, Joe Kernen said to Thomas L. Friedman, "You saw the media and political reaction to the President's proposal for the 1967 border when Netanyahu was here. Bipartisan supporters of Israel reacted vehemently to those proposals. I've seen some of your columns about Mubarak and the similarities to Netanyahu. Are we wrong if we support Israel to take Netanyahu's side on this? Make the President's case for me."

FRIEDMAN: What is the greatest threat to Israel today? I believe that it no longer is a Jewish democracy. There are 300,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank, another 200,000 in East Jerusalem. There are 2.4 million Palestinians. For me as a Jew, as a supporter of Israel, the worst thing in the world would be Israel permanently controls the West Bank and basically because of demographics in a very short time, you'll have a Jewish minority ruling over an Arab majority. Look, Netanyahu can get a standing ovation in the US Congress if he reads the DC phone book just like the Palestinians can get a standing ovation at the UN if they read the New York phone book. So the question I'd ask Netanyahu is what kind of ovation do you think you'd get speaking at the University of Minnesota? University of California? That's what really matters to me.

RUSH: Unbelievable. Netanyahu, standing O, US Congress, Thomas L. Friedman not impressed. Now, to prove it to Thomas L. Friedman, Netanyahu should go to University of California, University of Minnesota, see what he gets there, that's what really matters to Thomas L. Friedman. Here's Friedman, you know, you've heard the term self loathing. It just isn't right, this isn't right, 2.4 million Palestinians, and 300,000 Jewish settlers, we're the minority, we shouldn't be running anything. That's not fair. That makes me very nervous. No assessment of good guys, bad guys, or any of that, just utter blather, pure pap.

RUSH: I have a little bit of an analogy for you based on Thomas L. Friedman and his guilt that is driving him to say ridiculous things about Israel. I'm told, folks, that in about 75 years we will have a Mexican majority in our country. Seventy-five years. So why don't we just cut a deal right now with Mexico? I mean, they make claims on Texas, California, New Mexico, and Arizona, why don't we just give it to 'em? Because in 75 years they're gonna be the majority anyway. You see the stories about demographics in this country, where we're headed. The replacement birth levels aren't where they are. Immigration, any number of things are causing these demographic changes to take place -- and what can we do?

We can start by, instead of "Arizona," we'll just call it "Occupied Territory Number One;" Texas, "Occupied Territory Number Two;" New Mexico, "Occupied Territory Number Three;" California, "Occupied Territory Number Four," and so on -- and we can call our citizens in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas "settlers," and we'll just turn these places over to Mexico, because Mexico is gonna be the majority of our country in 75 years anyway. So why don't we just realize where we're headed and be done with it? That's what Thomas L. Friedman is suggesting happens in Israel.

"The Jews are, eh? Chump change! Just 200,000 or 300,000 settlers on the West Bank. It's not fair, it's not fair." Thomas Friedman, you see, my friends, is typical Ruling Class. He does not have to live the life that he demands others live, like the Jews on the West Bank of Israel, or like the people of China who have to live under the ChiCom dictators. He doesn't have to live like the way he advocates everybody else live. 'Cause Thomas Friedman's protected by our Constitution. His mansion is protected by our belief in property rights. There aren't any terrorists or others making claim to Thomas Friedman's wealth or his property. Nobody's telling Thomas Friedman how to live. But this is the arrogance and the conceit and ignorance of the left epitomized by Friedman because he -- smarter and better than everybody else -- is telling everybody else how they should leave. He says, "Look, I'm Jewish. I support Israel. What I say counts."

CALLER: Thank you very much, Mr. Limbaugh. A pleasure to talk to you. Mega dittos.

CALLER: My comment is about the global implications of the Internet that Friedman talked about. He said that productivity, of course, was dramatically increased for business and services and all that, which I agree. I think he was probably also right that we've missed the global implications of the Internet because the American exceptionalism that, like, won World War II or executed the Berlin airlift, the Marshall Plan and all that has been somewhat blotted out by Obama's apologetic trips he's taken around the world, while the North Koreans and the Arabs and these countries have actually used the Internet to control the aggression of their people if nothing else, while we've let (unintelligible) such things as Radio Free Europe or (unintelligible) and all this (unintelligible) American flag, so it seems that the White House (unintelligible) still bowing to Hugo Chavez or PLO, and Al Jazeera is getting more global currency than we are because we don't use the Internet. We're reluctant to use it for the propaganda of freedom. And in that case Friedman may be correct about some things that we are missing, that they are not. Using it against us.

RUSH: I'm having a real tough time understanding you because you're on a cell phone. It's not your problem. It's mine.

RUSH: Are you saying that other countries are creatively properly using the Internet and we aren't?

CALLER: Right. That as a country we're not using it, but as a country, the North Koreans and the Middle Easterners are using it, and to great effect. Which again --

CALLER: Oh, not productively as far as industry is concerned, but in controlling their social environment.

RUSH: So you want the federal government to control our social environment with the Internet?

CALLER: Absolutely not. But to advertise us, the beacon of freedom, to the rest of the world as a country.

CALLER: We instead use it, or the White House to let the PLO and everybody else know that we're just as bad as they say we are.

RUSH: Well, does this not sort of make sense, given who's running our country right now?

RUSH: You got a guy, you have a president who's running around apologizing for the country. You have a president with a chip on his shoulder about this country and its illegitimacy as a superpower, does it sorta stand to reason, therefore, that this guy would not want to start using the Internet to sing your version of the praises of America, 'cause he doesn't see it that way.

CALLER: Absolutely. I agree 100%, and I think Friedman almost agreed and just didn't realize it when he said we were missing something. I think that's what we're missing.

RUSH: Of course not. There's no way. Friedman extols the virtues of China, but I don't see him moving there. You know, these people are too smart by half. Thomas Friedman is never, ever going to have the kind of control over his life that he advocates over everybody else's life, because he's a classic elitist in this sense. He is above being controlled. He doesn't need to be. He's smart enough to do the right thing on his own. But the rest of you hoi polloi, great unwashed, you don't know enough. It's the same arrogant condescension that the Democrat Party looks at its very constituents. They're too stupid, too uneducated, too unsophisticated to understand how to get through each and every day making the right decisions not just for yourselves, but for the state.

Now, Friedman talks about missing the global implications of the Internet, that we miss the global implications, what does that mean? Does "we" mean the government? The point is that if you free up people from having to work so hard to pay their taxes or to make ends meet by encouraging wealth creation and innovation, which will result from free enterprise, then this "we" stuff, which means government managed and directed objectives is meaningless, and it isn't necessary. But you have these guys like Friedman and Obama, frankly, and others who look over the great unwashed, and they see total incompetence. You can't get across the street without them setting up a mechanism for you to do it safely. Consequentially you're not capable of entrepreneurism, you're not capable of making proper decisions. So they have to manage it for you.

You can't manage them. Oh, no. They are not going to be subjugated. They are not going to be subordinated to your rules. They're gonna be way above them. Friedman talks all the time and he is illustrative in this, as if we have some kind of all knowing dictatorship in this country, if we would have this, if we would only do that, if we can only incorporate some of the wonderful things about the ChiComs, with the right people making the decisions, why, then we could create new technologies and great innovations and products and services, and we could be a great country again. If just the right few number cabal of people were running the show. That's what this all means. You know, to hell with them. This country wouldn't last a week with these people in charge of it.

RUSH: I don't know, I still can't get past this Thomas freedom business in telling everybody else how to live, the ChiComs have all the answers, and centralized planning with a select elite few. Folks, I know who makes this country work, and you know, if you've listened to me long enough, you know exactly who I'm talking about. I'm talking about people that you've never heard of. They labor away in anonymity. They're not seeking fame or stardom or anything. They have their dreams, their sense of responsibility. They have their passions, God bless em, and they go about doing things.

Now, I don't know how many of these intellectual giants, these elite geniuses, I don't know how many of them, for example, have ever started a business or run a business or have the slightest idea what it is to bring a product to market and what all you have to go through to do that today. I know that in the Obama administration there is nobody among his czars or cabinet people that have worked in the private sector. They are theoreticians from academia. I don't know how many of them have invented anything or have created some innovation, service. I don't know how many of them have milked a cow or fed a chicken or driven a truck or how many of them even clean their own homes, and I don't know how many of them actually even raise their own kids. But if you listen to 'em, they know how to do everything, and they're the only ones that know the right way to do everything. And they, therefore, know how to tell all the rest of us how to live.

Now, the way you create new technologies, services, innovations, products, or what have you, is not by some columnist or government czar or some other bureaucrat telling us how to do it. You do it by allowing tens of millions of people to make hundreds of millions of daily decisions in freedom. You allow people to follow their ambitions and their desires. And you celebrate that, for crying out, and you get out of their way. And then you don't punish them when they succeed. The ruling class people like Friedman would rather see this country run by communist Chinese than people like Sarah Palin. And don't doubt me on that. Sarah Palin represents a greater threat to them than the ChiComs running this country. Don't doubt me.

RUSH: The AP: "The economy is tiring again." The press, they're so depressed because Obama had a week of "no negatives." There were no negatives, and then all this rotten economic news hit. This rotten economic news never went away! This rotten economic news has been what has defined this administration since the stimulus bill. There hasn't been any good economic news since this bunch assumed power. One of the biggest lies, one of the biggest myths in the last two-and-a-half years is that there has ever been a recovery. There has not been, statistically or otherwise. In terms of real people and their lives, there has not been an economic recovery. The AP says today, "The economy is tiring again.

"Reports Wednesday on manufacturing and company hiring were so weak that many economists immediately downgraded their forecasts for Friday's jobs report for May. Some analysts also slashed their estimates for growth in the April-June quarter." Now you got people out there talking about another recession. You've got some Democrats talking about perhaps a Great Depression. So now the doom and gloom is surfacing -- and believe me, this is not what the regime wanted. This is not part and parcel of the giant plan here. You don't have miracle economic recoveries from this baseline, but they're trying to set something like that up.

Here are three examples, for instance, of the bad economic news over the last few days just from CNBC. "Horror for US Economy as Data Falls Off Cliff." "Wall Street Baffled by Slowing Economy, Low Yields." Trader: Prepare for More Money Printing: Analysts." This last article reported that QE3 is about to start. That's Quantitative Easing 3. This is like a heroin addiction to people on Wall Street. It is the printing of money. Quantitative Easing 2 that kept stock prices up. You saw what happened. Stock prices were down demonstrably lower yesterday; this creating a panic. They're down again today. And so now the Wall Street people say, "Hey, give us more money, Ben! Pump some more money in! Start printing some more money." All of these official fixes have done nothing to revitalize the economy. Let's go to the audio sound bites and give a listen to this. A panic is beginning to set in out there and the media spin is that we're in recovery and they couldn't sustain it. The numbers don't lie. We have never been in a recovery. This is CNBC's Squawk on the Street today.

YASTROW: What we've got right now is almost near panic going on with money managers and people who are responsible for money. Ben Bernanke's not a magician. We're on the verge of a Great, Great Depression. The Fed knows it. We have many, many homeowners who are totally underwater here and cannot get out from under. The technology frontier is limited right now. We definitely have an innovation slowdown, and the economy's gonna suffer -- and all the Fed tweaking and all the interest rate tweaking and all of the tax adjustments are actually not going to be able to save us if we cannot get a cost of labor that's in line with the rest of the planet and we can't get our productivity levels high enough to justify the wages we're already being paid. It's not that complicated.

RUSH: That is Peter Yastrow, by the way, Peter Yastrow, he's a market, DT trading market strategerist just, you know, one of the analyst talking heads from the Street. Got a panic out there, nothing's working, the recovery is gone. There never was one. Who are these people to miss real life right in front of them. Here's former labor secretary Robert B. Reichhhh last night on MSNBC during a discussion about the debt ceiling. The host said, "Explain what uncertainty is over the debt limit deadline and what it could do ultimately to the economy if we drag this out until August 2^nd?"

REICH: This debate is becoming increasingly disconnected from where most people in this economy are. I mean, the reason that the stock market plunged today is because, uh, ADP -- which is a payroll...employee payroll firm, -- uh, projected that in this month -- that is, last month of May -- ehhh, there were only 38,000 jobs created. We're in an economic crisis right now. We're heading back toward a double-dip recession, the whole recovery is stalling, and Washington is debating budget deficits five or ten years from now. This is ridiculous!

RUSH: It's not what Washington is debating, Secretary Reich. We are in this mess precisely because of economists like you. We're in this mess precisely because people with your beliefs have been running the economy and running the show for two-and-a-half years now -- actually longer in the House of Representatives starting in 2007. It's an abject mess because your ideas are flawed and do not work. We can't continue to raise the debt ceiling, we cannot continue to spend money we don't have and borrow money we don't have. We just cannot continue on this path. We can't kick this can down the road. It's what everybody seems to want to do.

Debt ceiling? You know, nobody expected the debt ceiling vote to be the way it was. Everybody expected the Republicans to cave, and it was the exact opposite. Here's David "Rodham" Gergen, last night CNN on In the Arena. (chuckles) Democrat and a member of their client culture of erection, Eliot Spitzer asked David "Rodham" Gergen, "Isn't there a problem now, 'cause the president's entire political debate relates to the deficit -- and yet in order to get out of the economic quagmire that we're in right now he may need a second stimulus, a second round of fiscal policies. There's no political argument that he's making or that will carry Congress toward those policies right now. Isn't he sort of in a bind right now?"

GERGEN: It is really this picture darkens, and it is -- was particularly stark today with manufacturing, with housing, auto sales, jobs, all of these issues. We obviously have a -- an economy that's stalling out, and we're in very great danger of a double-dip here now which would be a very big disaster for an awful lot of Americans. As the news comes in there's gonna be a jolt out of this. I mean, all of us are looking at this, "Oh, my goodness, this is terrible. We've got to get this economy up and running again." You have to have a good-running economy, you've got to get some growth in order to deal with the deficits.

RUSH: Such wizardry! Well, you believe that? You gotta get some growth in order to deal with it? What happened to the increased taxes argument, Mr. Gergen? I guess that's kind of out the window now? Yeah. Growth is a new idea to you guys. All of a sudden now we need growth? Where's that been for the last two-and-a-half years? Oh, we've had growth? Oh, I'm so sorry! Oh, we have been in a recovery, right. Let me tell you something: Obama's stimulus plan has had about as much effect on this economy as the Weiner photo would have on a woman: zilch, zero, nada. In fact it's a turnoff, not a turn-on! What a derelict. So now there's abject panic setting in. Look at the lies these people are willing to tell themselves.

You have to be filled with self-loathing to lie to yourself that these past two-and-a-half years that we have been in a recovery. You talk about a major, major disconnect opinion? Folks, it looks like even Obama's staunchest acolytes in the media are giving up trying to spin these unemployment numbers now. The AP has come out with an article this morning that basically says the unemployment numbers are only as low as 9% 'cause of all the shirkers who aren't even bothering to look for work. They actually have a story about all the people who quit looking. AP can't carry the water anymore. They have run out of "unexpectedly," "surprisingly." They've run their gamut on it. Did you see...? This was funny. I don't know if you saw this, Snerdley.

But earlier this week Michael Barone had a column in which he chronicled all of these instances where the media's experts have expressed shock and surprise over the performance of the economy, as though somebody had just discovered that. We've been having fun with that for how many years here? But they can't even go back to that well. "In surprisingly unexpected news, job creation was unexpectedly lower than expected." They've expired, they have run through every possible credible explanation. Now AP finally says: You know, it's really even worse than this because people have stopped looking for work -- which is something else we've known for a long time. Yep, unemployment is only as low as it is because of all the shirkers who aren't even bothering to look for work.

AP tells us: If everybody who has given up looking for work were counted, the real unemployment number would be 11.5%. This is AP. These are the shock troops from Obama's Praetorian guard, and they can't carry the water anymore. Speaking of unemployment, there were only 422,000 new unemployment claims last week. By the way, remember Biden? He said 500,000 new jobs a months, that's what was gonna happen here? I've got quotes from Biden here. He can't believe how great the stimulus was working, never dreamed it would work this well. I've got it all here, folks. We're gonna run through it. Obama: "We've begun remaking America," April 29th, 2009. "President marks end of a hundred days, says he's pleased with progress but not satisfied."

Newsweek: "The Macho Democrat -- Obama looks unbeatable now, but the GOP sees weak spots." "The Fast Fix: Is Obama Now Unbeatable? This is CNN: "Cancel the Election! CNN Anchor Asks, 'Obama Unbeatable in 2012?'" That's one series of stories. Then we've got Biden and his promise of 500,000 jobs. The AP headline is: "More Job Seekers Give Up," finally admitting what we've been pointing out for a year and a half. They say that there were "only" 422,000 new unemployment claims last week. That means that they're down by, what, a whapping 6,000 claims -- and never mind, folks, that the previous week's number was quietly revised up by 4,000 just like it always is.

But there's no hope (you have to keep this in mind) for any real reduction in the unemployment rate as long as that number is above 400,000, and economists are saying it will be for years to come. That 400,000, you have to get sickle below that before you even start talking about replacement level jobs. It's a disaster. The real question is whether or not this is what Obama intends. The real question is: "Is this the objective?" I still maintain that that must be seriously examined, because nobody in their right mind-- with a modicum of experience, economic intelligence, and education -- would ever double down, triple down on failed policies like this, to whom this mess can be directly traceable. Something is really, drastically wrong with all of this, and it's not the United States of America. This is not deserved, this is not called for, this is not just what happens to be up next for us.

RUSH: Here's a David in Norwood, ah. David, great to have you on the program, sir.

RUSH: You're 43. At what age were you -- no wrong answers here, don't misunderstand, I'm trying to ascertain what might be your baseline of experience, knowledge, and paying attention to things. At what age were you when you started caring about any of this?

RUSH: Twenty-eight. Okay, so you have roughly been paying attention here for, what, 15 years?

RUSH: Okay, so those 15 years takes you back basically to the Bill Clinton administration. You know nothing prior to the Bill Clinton administration in terms of --

CALLER: No, no, I'm quite affiliate -- I'm a teacher. So, yeah, I know all about all of that, but I'm scared 'cause lately --

RUSH: Well, I want to try to help you come up with this. I could tell you this in 30 seconds. I want you to come up with this yourself. At what point in your past was the economy healthy, in good shape, roaring, and very little of it concerned you, how old were you, what were you doing, and where were you?

CALLER: It was during the Reagan administration. I was fine with Reagan, and then something keyed off, something went off kilter, and I suddenly as a teacher for, you know, I've been teaching for --

RUSH: No, two things, Reagan worked. Reagan's policies posed the biggest threat to the Democrat Party they could ever imagine. The Democrat Party right now needs Reagan. Obama needs Reagan. That's why these clowns are now all of a sudden starting to talk about growth 'cause they got reelect numbers internal. I finally heard Pat Caddell say this. I knew it was the case. Pat Caddell has said that the internal reelect polling numbers the White House are awful. They are awful, and what they need is economic growth. That's what Reaganomics gave us. But economic growth with reduced tax rates, smaller government, less government involvement in people's lives, argues against the need for liberals. They could not allow that. So revision history began, writing what a dunce Reagan was, how bad those policies were, killed America, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If you want to fix the US economy, then you defeat every person with a D next to their name every November election there is.

RUSH: We were told during the campaign that Barack Obama would fundamentally change the way the United States economy works, and he has. We are finding out, getting to see exactly what he meant.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. It's an honor always. Before I get to my point, I can't agree with you more. My husband's in a small business in charge of several -- it's an LLC of, you know, Hilton's, and they would love to be hiring, and when they extended the tax rates, my husband says, "Yeah, great, except we make five- to ten-year plans, not two-year plans." They'd love to be hiring, but they're not. But my point was that I called about is that I'm really sick of these kind of Krauthammer and Karl Rove -- I have to put him in there, too, because as much as I like him, I'm sorry -- holier-than-thou Washington crowd who are just so quick to diss people who aren't Washington or aren't them like Sarah Palin. And I hate it.

CALLER: Because she's not from their ilk. That's the only thing I can think of. But they do have an air about them that they think, you know, "We've been in politics our whole life, and she's only done this," or, "Just because she's right on every damn issue doesn't give her enough credibility."

RUSH: You know, not to do an "I told you so" here, I really don't like doing those, but I think I've been pretty clear for the last two years of the internecine battles in the Republican Party. There's a struggle there. In the midst of Obama and the Democrats imploding, there is not unity on the Republican side for the answer to it. Conservatism in the Republican Party is still considered an outsider no matter who you are. If you're a conservative you're an outsider -- I mean a genuine conservative. Yeah, there's some class aspects here. I think that's what you're talking about -- you know, being "of" Washington, being "of" the political elites and so forth. No question that that's true. This comes as a surprise to people because a lot of people thought for many years the Republican Party is conservative and it's united behind conservative candidates. I think the way Palin has been treated has really been a shock and an eye-opener for a lot of Republicans, because it really has been vicious. It is breathtakingly mean-spirited from the Republican side what's been done to Palin, not just the Democrats where you would expect it to come from.

CALLER: Well, you know what, though, Rush? A lot of people when she drew the crowd she drew with McCain? I think people who actually voted for McCain were voting more for Palin than they were for him.

RUSH: I think so. Yeah, there's no question. She's in Massachusetts today and there's a story (I just read it in the Boston Herald) that she is drawing mobs of people, and not one protester. She is drawing mobs. It is hilarious, folks, to read some of the press about Palin. They just are bugged to no end, accusing her of creating traffic dangers with her bus convoy! You know, she snuck out of the hotel in Gettysburg. She snuck out the back door to head up to New York, I think maybe to meet Trump or something. She beat the media out and they're livid that she gave them the slip. They just can't believe that she got away with that. They can't believe she gave 'em the slip. They can't believe that she would even try to give 'em the slip.

They can't believe she succeeded in giving them the slip because she's not that smart -- and then she goes these places, and she's loved and adored. Throngs of people show up, and they all want autographs and pictures and they all want to be close to her. There aren't any protest signs. There aren't any anti-Palin people showing up. They just are beside themselves. She really has them running in circles. She has got them so discombobulated, folks, it's hilarious to watch. I'm looking for something here. There's a piece by Martin Bashir who, I guess, works at PMSNBC in the afternoon. Yeah. Get this. I found this at Real Clear Politics. Martin Bashir: "It's time now to Clear the Air and to ask a question: what is the purpose behind Sarah Palin's current bus tour?

"It's difficult to ask that question directly because Sarah Palin specializes in checkbook journalism. That is, she only gives interviews to a network that pays her in excess of $1 million a year. So we're forced to make judgements [sic] from the outside and it all looks like the precursor to a presidential campaign." Then he goes on to say that her bus tour might be in breach of federal law! The bus tour "could be in breach of a federal law because the United States Flag Code establishes important rules for the use and display of the stars and stripes, the flag of the United States. Under standards of respect and etiquette, it's made clear that the flag of the United States should never be used for any advertising purpose whatsoever.

"Yet that's precisely what Sarah Palin is doing. She's using the flag of the United States for her own financial purposes. She drapes herself in the stars and stripes and makes millions of dollars in the process." When was the last time any of us heard anybody in the Drive-Bys worried at all about the flag? (interruption) That's even a better question: When was the first time the Drive-Bys were worried about the flag? You know what else they're ticked off? Palin and Trump had a meal, had pizza, and she ate hers with a knife and fork, and they are saying (snorts), it's unsophisticated, it's un-American, it proves that she's not in touch with anybody.

They're ragging on her for eating pizza with knife and fork, and Trump, too. Trump is being ripped for eating pizza with a knife and fork. That story at Yahoo or somewhere, it's the top story of the day at some websites aggregation. I was flying back from my super-secret meeting yesterday and, you know, I hadn't eaten all day. It was middle of the afternoon, late afternoon getting back, and there was a miniature little pizza there. So I grabbed that and I ate it with a knife and fork. I never pick up a pizza and eat it with my hands. I always use a knife and fork. They're ticked off at her about that. This guy, Martin Bashir, is dead serious. She's in violation of flag law!

She is driving them insane. In fact, this story in the Boston Herald makes mention of the fact that Romney's not too happy about this because this is his big coming out day, his big announcement. She's up there stealing his thunder in a different part of the state. He's in New Hampshire announcing. She's drawing all the crowds; says that she's not concerned about the party; she's not concerned about delegates and this, that, and the other thing. You know, I have never met Sarah Palin. I've spoken to her twice in interviews. I don't know her. People ask me for insight. I couldn't tell you. So I don't know. People ask me, "Is she doing this stuff because she has a score to settle with the Republicans, too?

"Does she think they were unkind to her during the campaign with some of the stuff they put out or let get out about the wardrobe?" and I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. I don't know if she's settling scores. I don't know if what she's doing is, quote, unquote, "establishing the brand" and making money. I don't know if what she's doing is having fun tweaking the media. Well, yeah, I do know she's having fun doing that -- and I think that represents a stunning reversal. That she's able to is a stunning reversal. She has them on the run, she has them on defensive, she has them making themselves look like utter high school gossip-mongering fools. It actually is hilarious to look at the dander these people have been worked into.

RUSH: Look, we know that Obama's stimulus plan, Obama's stimulus was nothing more than a money laundering slush fund. We know that now. We know that in any number of ways, learning it most recently from Wisconsin. A full 80% of the money that Wisconsin got went to the public sector unions -- and, of course, that money, a percentage of that just goes right back to the Democrat Party. But let's say -- just for the sake of discussion, playing devil's advocate, let's -- that Obama is simply is a misguided, well-intentioned statist; and he really believes that massive government spending to the tune of a trillion dollars will grow an economy and create jobs and all that. You need to first ask a question: How do we define growth? Is growth not the pie getting bigger?

Economic growth that the gross domestic product -- the economic output, the sum total of it -- increases, meaning brand-new jobs are created. People with jobs are compensated with raises, higher incomes. New products are invented, and the pie grows. That's what economic growth is. It can be nothing else. Otherwise you have stagnation -- or if you have depression, you've got negative growth, which is the economy shrinking, getting smaller, which in fact is what's happening. Okay, so we've defined growth. Now we ask ourselves: How does it happen? The government wants our economic pie to get bigger -- and here comes Obama, saying, "Oh, I got the plan.

"We're gonna spend a trillion bucks, and we're gonna but that trillion bucks to work immediately. We're gonna inject that trillion bucks right into the economy." Ooh! Cool! But is it going to be a trillion dollars that's not in the economy already? In other words: Where's the government going to get the money? If the government is going to take the money from somewhere else in the economy and spend it somewhere else in the economy what you have is not growth but shifting, but you have no growth -- and that's what the stimulus bill purportedly was. That's not even what it ended up doing, but that was how they sold it.

"Keynesian spending! We're gonna grow the economy! We're gonna put a trillion bucks in it."

Where'd they get it? They had to borrow it, print it, tax it, or what have you. But it wasn't created out of growth. In fact, the way the money was procured would lead to economic stagnation, if anything; it would not lead to growth. Never has. If Keynesian economics worked, if pumping government money into a faltering economy worked, there would never be a faltering economy. We woulda learned it the first time, it woulda worked, and every recession that came along or every near depression that came along, all we'd have to do is pump some money into it and, voila! It'd be over with. It never works, does it? A guy at the Heritage Foundation, Brian Riedl, came up with an analogy to explain why government intervention to boost the economy doesn't work. He used a swimming pool.

Removing water from one end of a swimming pool and pouring it in the other end will not raise the overall water level. In fact, it won't change anything after a while. It might make the deeper end deeper for a brief time -- it might make the shallow end shallower for a brief, brief time -- but then it all levels out. Well, it's the same premise. If you take dollars from one part of the economy (i.e, the rich) and you distribute those dollars to another part of the economy, you're not growing anything. You're simply redistributing. And if in the process the recipients of your redistribution are getting it for not doing anything -- if there's no accompanying activity to warrant the receipt of that money other than they're just sitting there and they happen to be Democrat voters -- then you really screwing yourself.

And under the best laid plans that's what the stimulus was, being totally well-intentioned. We know that's not what it was and we know it was a slush fund. We know, folks, it was nothing more than a money laundering scheme. We know that now. But if they really were just mistaken, and they thought they could inject a trillion dollars by redistributing it, it doesn't work. It has never worked, and it will never work. So the question is: Do these guys know that and they're just lying to us, or are they really economically ignorant and utopian fools who really believe this stuff? At this point I don't care. All I know is that they're dead wrong, and what they're doing has been destructive and it's gotta stop.

They're destroying the housing market; they've destroyed the job market. They have made a college education worthless. It really is. I mean, look at the stories you get on that now. College education? It doesn't mean anything to people you had a degree now. What was one of the big stories last week, Peter Thiel, one of the cofounders of PayPal. He's paying people scholarships not to go to the college. "You know what? I'll give you a hundred grand to sit around and be an entrepreneur. I'll give you money. You can apply for a grant and I'll give you a hundred grand to sit there and develop an idea you really feel passionate about. Screw college."

There were twenty-four recipients of this idea. I'm sure some of them will make something out of it, too. You know, passion and desire being major ingredients of success. So in the midst of this (and the Heritage people point this out in their Morning Bell blog today), last week the House Republicans came up with a proposal to actually create job growth. They wanted to reduce regulations and taxes; they wanted to promote free trade. Essentially, they wanted to make it easier for businesses to grow, to invest in themselves, to hire people, which would thus grow the economy, reduce unemployment -- and the left, like clockwork, went on the attack, claiming, "Eh, it's the same old ideas with fancy new clip art."

The New York Times described it as "more of the same fixes the Republicans always recommend no matter the problem." But ironically, it's the left calling for more of their same ideas, and they responded with policies last week that would -- if you add 'em up -- equal a combined federal and state top tax rate on earnings of 62%. That would be the top rate. Hello. 1970s! You know, Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, the top marginal rate was 70%. The Democrats want to go back there. By the time you take away the charitable deduction and all that and the other plans that they have in mind, you have a top effective rate of 62%, top marginal rate. Now, if you got a rate like that I guarantee you there isn't gonna be any job growth.

Nobody is gonna be trying to earn the dollars that are taxed at 62%. You're gonna say, "The hell with it." You'd be a fool, you would be an absolute fool to spend a lot of time and industry earning dollars that you get to keep 38 cents of! Wherever that rate kicks in, whatever income level kicks in at, that's where you stop busting your butt and don't care about it. It's senseless. That's why Reagan cut the 70% rate to 50 and then the 28. Look what happened when he did? Economic growth out the wazoo! Democrats panic and revisionist historians got into gear and trying to tell us that trickle-down economics didn't work.

No. We're supposed to revel in what's happening now. We're supposed to have faith in what's happening now. We're supposed to be patient! "Don't change horses in the middle of the stream. Why, our plans are just now starting to take root." If we stay with these plans, the sight is not going to be pretty. It is going to be a wanton economic destruction that's so unnecessary brought about by people who have a grudge or a chip on their shoulder or whatever it is about this country that they can't stand, and then they think it's time that this country paid the price for whatever transgressions these people think the United States has committed. In the meantime look at what's happening.

Wherever you go, wherever the economic news is, it's not just bad, it is disastrous. Utter disaster is happening right before our eyes. The only growth that this regime is interested in is in the growth of government and those who are dependent on it. That's the growth they care about. They want more people earning less money, depending more for supplemental income on the government. That equals voters. How well, ladies and gentlemen, would it have worked for General Motors to have borrowed money from Ford to try to get out of their bad debts and pensions? How would that have worked? Well, what are we doing but borrowing money from our economic competitors the ChiComs? That's what we're doing. Whether it's accidental or whether it's by design, we're on the wrong horse, and we need not just to change horses in the middle of the stream. We need to reverse direction.

We need to turn around with somebody else on the horse! Illinois just raised their top tax rate to 66%, and it still isn't working, and there is an increase in exits from the state of Illinois. They're in worse shape than ever. Why would it work for the US government? The only difference is, you cannot leave the United States. You can leave Illinois. Well, you can leave the United States but nobody wants to have to do that. What kind of option is that? It's silly to have to bring it up.

RUSH: There's a great piece today. I'm gonna get to this in the first hour of the program today. It's actually a column by a Yale professor who ended up on a train or an airplane with a small business owner, and the Yale professor said, "You know, this is really worth my while. We professors deal in the abstract. We don't deal with human dynamism." One of the most-often leveled observations and complaints by me on this program: Faceless people, statistics, plug them into policies and watch them behave according to the way a computer or a statistical mathematical formula would say they would behave.

But you put a real person into it or a real business owner and start tacking on taxes and regulations. I really gotta praise the Yale prof for being honest about what he learned from a small business owner about why the small business owner will not hire. Now, the Yale prof also, in a continuation of yesterday, thinks the economy's growing when it's not -- and, by the way, there's another 60%. I'll guarantee you, 65% of the American people do not think that we're in recovery yet. The Democrats are in a minority on issue after issue after issue, and it's time for us to understand it and act like it.

Stephen L. Carter, a professor at Yale: "Economic Stagnation Explained, at 30,000 Feet." Straight from the horse's mouth. A businessman in the heartland explains why he and others like him are not hiring. Stephen L. Carter is a professor of law at Yale who found himself on an airplane recently. "The man in the aisle seat is trying to tell me why he refuses to hire anybody. His business is successful, he says, as the 737 cruises smoothly eastward. Demand for his product is up. But he still won't hire. 'Why not?' 'Because I don't know how much it will cost,' he explains. 'How can I hire new workers today, when I don't know how much they will cost me tomorrow?' He's referring not to wages, but to regulation: He has no way of telling what new rules will go into effect when.

"His business, although it covers several states, operates on low margins. He can't afford to take the chance of losing what little profit there is to the next round of regulatory changes. And so he's hiring nobody until he has some certainty about cost. It's a little odd," writes Mr. Carter, the Yale law professor, "to be having this conversation as the news media keep insisting that private employment is picking up. But as economists have pointed out to all who will listen, the only real change is that the rate of layoffs has slowed. Fewer than one of six small businesses added jobs last year, and not many more expect to do so this year.

"The private sector is creating no more new jobs than it was a year ago; the man in the aisle seat is trying to tell me why. He is trim and white-haired and bursting with energy. He's proud of the business he has built: not large by the way things are measured these days, but certainly successful. He shows me sales figures, award citations, stories from trade magazines. I congratulate him, then turn to the window and enjoy the view for a bit. We are flying over the Midwest, away from the setting sun and toward the darkness. America stretches beneath us in every direction, flat and broad and beautiful. My seat-mate has just discovered that I am a law professor: That is the reason for his discourse.

"'I don't understand why Washington does this to us,' he resumes. By 'us,' he means people who run businesses of less-than-Fortune-500 size. He tells me that it doesn't much matter which party is in office. Every change of power means a whole new set of rules to which he and those like him must respond. 'I don't understand,' he continues, 'why Washington won't just get out of our way and let us hire.' There are a lot of responses I could offer at this point. But I am interested now; I prefer to let him talk. It isn't just hiring that is too unpredictable, he says. He feels the same way about investing.

"He has never liked stock markets; he prefers to put cash directly into businesses he likes in return for a small stake, acting, in short, as a small-time venture capitalist. 'Can't do that now,' he says. For people like him -- people who aren't filthy rich -- it has become too hard to pick winners. But he doesn't blame the great information advantages enjoyed by insiders. He blames Washington, once more, for creating a climate of uncertainty. Why Not Sell? Growing bold -- or maybe rude -- I ask why, if the climate is so terrible, he doesn't just sell his company. This brings a smile. 'I think about retirement a lot,' he says. 'But I can't.'

"I wait to hear about how much he loves the business he founded, or about his responsibilities to his employees, or perhaps to the town, somewhere in the Dakotas, where his factory is located." In other words, the professor waits for all the cliches. "Instead, he tells me that it's impossible to make a sensible decision about winding down his firm when he doesn't even know from one year to the next what the capital gains rate is going to be. I argue a bit. Surely government isn't all bad. It protects property, the environment, civil rights ... My seat-mate seems to think that I'm missing the point. He's not anti-government.

"He's not anti-regulation. He just needs to know as he makes his plans that the rules aren't going to change radically. Big businesses don't face the same problem, he says. They have lots of customers to spread costs over. They have 'installed base.'" Now, remember here, small business is the primary job-creator in the private sector, not the big guys. "For medium-sized firms like his, however, there is little wiggle room to absorb the costs of regulatory change. Because he possesses neither lobbyists nor clout, he says, Washington doesn't care whether he hires more workers or closes up shop. We will be landing shortly in Minneapolis. I ask him what, precisely, he thinks is the proper role of government as it relates to business.

"'Invisible,' he says. 'I know there are things the government has to do. But they need to find a way to do them without people like me having to bump into a new regulation every time we turn a corner.' He reflects for a moment, then finds the analogy he seeks. 'Government should act like my assistant, not my boss.' We are at the gate. We exchange business cards. On the way to my connection, I ponder. As an academic with an interest in policy, I tend to see businesses as abstractions, fitting into a theory or a data set. Most policymakers do the same. We rarely encounter the simple human face of the less-than-giant businesses we constantly extol" or regulate.

"And when they refuse to hire, we would often rather go on television and call them greedy than sit and talk to them about their challenges. Recessions have complex causes, but, as the man on the [plane] reminded me, we do nothing to make things better when the companies on which we rely see Washington as adversary rather than partner." Now, Mr. Carter, I'm sure, is a great guy, and I don't know how old he is. But he's a professor of law at Yale, and he had an epiphany. This late, he had an epiphany -- and God bless him for writing this piece. This piece appears at Bloomberg.com. God bless him for writing the piece. God bless him for admitting this.

But what was it that constitutes the epiphany? That there are human beings affected by these regulations, that these businesses are not abstract, that these are not automatons or robots who are blindly following every regulation as it's passed. The hubris that's involved in the regulator, "We're doing this for you. We're doing this to help, 'cause we know more than you do," when the regulators don't. So these small-business people are just up against it each and every day, and Mr. Carter here learns at whatever stage in life he is, that government's adversarial -- and this seatmate of his across the aisle on the plane was not ideological.

It wasn't about left or right, or maybe the seatmate was just saying so so as to be unprovocative, nonprovocative. If you start making it left-versus-right, it would take the conversation a whole different area than he wanted it to go. I mean, I would have to assume this guy is not a liberal if he's got this view of government getting in his way all the time, but regardless it's what we always talk about here. These people in Washington, they come up with taxes, regulations, laws, and they don't score them dynamically. They score them statically, without any concern that human beings on the other end of the regulations will have to live by them or get around them somehow.

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.

Shadow Government Statistic; excellent economics site (some information is free, but this is a subscription site):

A George Soros funded site to go after specific Fox anchors through their advertisers (is there any parallel to this on the right?):

Men with Foil Hats (occasionally borders on conspiratorial without being completely nuts; mostly a repository of news stories from elsewhere):

iwatch news is a repository of interesting news items; there might be a slight left slant? It is hard to tell.

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

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 #181	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	June 5, 2011