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).

President Obama gives a speech on Wednesday with notes and without a teleprompter.

Chuck Blahous and Robert Reischauer, the two independent trustees of the Social Security and Medicare Trust Fund, warned that the nation's two most popular entitlements are in serious danger. "The earlier we act to deal with these problems, the better off we're gonna be, certainly better off the vulnerable populations are gonna be," said Blahous, referring to low-income seniors and those already receiving benefits. Senate leader Harry Reid has said there is no impending problem and that we can wait until 2030 or later before dealing with this problem.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 12,000 for the first time since March, driving the stock market lower for the sixth straight week.

Over 24,000 e-mail messages to and from Sarah Palin during her tenure as Alaska's governor were released Friday. This is unprecedented in American history and some news organizations (e.g., the Washington Post and the NY Times) are asking for help to go through these emails. I do not recall this as being the approach to the 2000+ page Stimulus Bill, or to the 2000+ page Obamacare Act, or to the 2000+ Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Bill.

So far, what has been unearthed are, unanswered death threats from leftist nuts; and a lack of partisanship on Palin’s part. Oh, and also, she wanted a tanning bed, which was a story that came out 3 years ago.

Speaking of communicating, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi has written a letter to members of Congress to thank them for criticizing President Obama over his involvement in the NATO-led military campaign in Libya.

Syrian protestors storm Israel’s border; 23 are killed. Allegations that Syrian regime promised to pay them $1000 each.

Pakistani court acquits 70 Muslim radicals of burning 8 Christians alive during 2009 Gojra massacre.

Somali Interior Minister Abdi Shakur Sheikh Hassan has been killed in a suicide attack at his home in the capital, Mogadishu. This attack was carried out by his own teenage niece, who had joined the Islamist militant group al-Shabab.

Hamas is reporting record turnouts for its summer camps for children in 2011. These `summer camps,' combine Islamic indoctrination, paramilitary training, and social activities.

Some 200 Palestinians armed with bats and iron chains raided the illegal West Bank outpost of Gaon HaYarden Friday and burned Jewish holy books at the site, the settlers said.

The Harper Government warns that it will prosecute Canadians who participate in the next Gaza flotilla.

The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has just established the “Freedom and Justice Party.”

Australia is considering awarding carbon credits for killing feral camels as a way to tackle climate change (really). "We're a nation of innovators and we find innovative solutions to our challenges - this is just a classic example," Northwest Carbon managing director Tim Moore told Australian Associated Press.

ExxonMobil Corp has just revealed that they have made one of the largest discoveries of gas and oil in the Gulf of Mexico. The oil giant said 3 discoveries at its exploration project 250 miles southwest of New Orleans have the combined potential for more than 700 million barrels of recoverable oil and gas equivalent.

Scores of protected golden eagles have been killed each year by flying into the blades of about 5,000 wind turbines along the ridgelines of the Bay Area's Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area. These turbines have been located in a region containing one of the highest densities of nesting golden eagles in the United States.

What a surprise; it turns out that Anthony Weiner did tweet a nasty picture of himself. Now even Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is calling upon Weiner to step down.

It is now being reported that Rep. Anthony Weiner may have lied to President Obama directly about this Twitter scandal, definitively denying to Obama by phone that he tweeted a lewd photo of himself to a college student.

A new report from the Institute of Medicine has determined that buildings commonly referred to as "green" could actually be hazardous to your health, according to a new report. The report cautions that climate change can negatively and directly affect indoor air quality in several ways.

Anarchists in Washington state have attempted to intimidate the Olympian (a newspaper) and a photographer for taking pictures of them during their demonstrations (said photos were used by the police to identify some of the anarchists).

Senators Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, and Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut Independent, introduce a resolution to oppose Israel returning to its 1967 borders.

One of California's largest labor unions today advanced a plan to launch a Republican political action committee, in order to keep moderate Republicans from falling prey to the far right.

The Texas House voted Wednesday to deny state funds to public hospitals that perform elective abortions or do business with entities that provide "abortion-related services."

Alabama's governor signed possibly the toughest illegal immigration law which contains provisions requiring public schools to determine students' immigration status and making it a crime to knowingly give an illegal immigrant a ride. The bill also allows police to arrest anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant if they're stopped for any other reason. Alabama employers also are now required to use a federal system called E-Verify to determine if new workers are in the country legally.

Concerning the looming Social Security and Medicare crisis, 71 year old Harry Reid said: "Two decades from now, I'm willing to take a look at it."

Bill Maher, “speaking” to Newt Gingrich: "Let me put your unpopularity in context for you - you're a Republican and you're polling behind a black guy [Herman Cain]."

Thomas Friedman: "...the consumer-driven growth model is broken and we have to move to a more happiness-driven growth model, based on people working less and owning less." Friedman’s house is the photograph below:

Newsman Chris Matthews: on Newt Gingrich “I don't know what his constituency is, I don't know what led him to believe he was a candidate except he's good on television, he does make provocative comments now and then. But people don't like him, and he looks like the devil. I mean, that may not be fair but I always say on this program that he can't be the devil because he looks like him, and everybody knows the devil is going to look like Marilyn Monroe. . .”

Chris Matthews, after Mitt Romney said he believed in global warming: “"He [Romney] believes in science. Republicans on the right hate science, remember? Certainly Rush does. That's ahead. The battle between the college guys and the rubes. ”

Chris Matthews, who is becoming almost a parody of himself: "If [Weiner] stays, [Democrats] never get the leadership [in the House] back. They never get the speakership back. Because the people in the rural areas of this country who are Christian, conservative, culturally - you can say `backward' if you want - they don't like this stuff."

Charles Rangel, in support of Anthony Weiner, "[he] wasn't going with prostitutes. He wasn't going out with little boys."

Alec Baldwin: "My thought on Weiner is that he is a very busy man. Like most, although not all, politicians, he probably spends a great deal of time going to meetings, raising campaign funds and seizing upon every opportunity to remind people of how great he is as a public servant and a human being. It's exhausting. He exists under a constant pressure cooker of self-analysis and public appraisal. Like other politicians, he needs something to take the edge off."

NPR's Nina Totenberg: "If his name weren't Weiner, would we still be talking about this?"

Rachel Maddow: “Why is that ]the John Ensign affair] less of a scandal than Anthony Weiner has bad manners on Facebook.”

Rep. Anthony Weiner's Vegas-based cyber mistress, Lisa Weiss, to Weiner’s wife: "[I ant to express my] deepest apologies for conversing with your husband Congressman Anthony Weiner. I honestly meant no harm and I hope that you and Anthony can work through this."

Janeane Garofalo: "Anthony Weiner deserves to be supported and hopefully he will be mayor of New York one day. I'm serious. He is a Democrat [who] actually fights for the things liberals and progressive and rational people care about. I don't know why he's being thrown under the bus. He hasn't done any - he hasn't broke any laws...everyone lies about sex."

Janeane Garofalo: “Either way, that doesn't, if the media and the hypocrite Republicans didn't keep this going pretending the American people want it, it wouldn't be something you have to discuss with, and I'm sure you don't discuss Anthony Weiner with your kids at the table anyway, even before this.”

Bill Maher: “I’m not one of those who believes in American exceptionalism...”

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: "The world's capitalists, through intensifying excessive consumption and even the creation of false demands with the aim of maximum profits, disrupt the balance of nature. The capitalist establishment and the world's major capitalists, the US in particular, only seek maximum profits and to further reduce the cost of their products, they built production lines that are not compatible with the environment."

Akerson on raising money via higher gasoline taxes: "You know what I'd rather have them do - this will make my Republican friends puke - as gas is going to go down here now, we ought to just sl ap a 50-cent or a dollar tax on a gallon of gas."

General Motors Co. CEO Dan Akers on (with regards to government involvement in GM): "I have nothing but good things to say about them...It's kind of like your in-laws: It was a nice long weekend."

Shaun McCarthy, chairman of the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012, was unhappy that the 2012 Olympic torch is not low carbon: "The promise of a low-carbon torch was made in 2007 and so the excuse of `we ran out of time' is not acceptable."

Barack Obama, on July 14, 2009, in Warren, Michigan: "Now, my administration has a job to do as well, and that job is to get this economy back on its feet. That's my job, and it's a job I gladly accept. I love these folks who helped get us in this mess and then suddenly say, well, this is Obama's economy. That's fine. Give it to me."

Comedian Christopher: “You know what man? I am going to literally - if she [Sarah Palin] gets elected president, I am going to hang out on the grassy knoll all the time, just loaded and ready - because you know what? It's for my country. It's for my country. If I got to sacrifice myself, it's for my country.”

DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz: “[I]f you go back to the year 2000, when we had an obvious disaster and - and saw that our voting process needed refinement, and we did that in the America Votes Act and made sure that we could iron out those kinks, now you have the Republicans, who want to literally drag us all the way back to Jim Crow laws and literally - and very transparently - block access to the polls to voters who are more likely to vote Democratic candidates than Republican candidates. And it's nothing short of that blatant.”

Jon Stewart, after playing a clip of Cain promising to limit congressional bills to just three pages, Stewart attempted to impersonate Cain and then threw up a mock billboard that read: "HERMAN CAIN 2012 - I DON'T LIKE TO READ." Not racist; of course not.

Departing Obama economic advisor Austan Goolsbee: "Our effort now as a government should be to get the private sector, to help them stand up and lead the recovery. The government is not the central driver of recovery."

Senator Al Franken: "I should note that President Obama could nominate a new [FBI] director who would be there for ten years. And by extending you for two years--he is uh--in two years, he may not be the president, so I think that--um--that there's, ah, just a mention."

The women of The View were discussing the photo that reportedly shows Weiner's penis. Joy Behar said she was skeptical it was actually Weiner, since his face could not be seen.

Barbara Walters: "Anthony Weiner has not denied it."

Elisabeth Hasselbeck: "Then it must be a flattering photo."

Walters: "Let me tell you something, It is."

Jacob Goodwin: “You said earlier in your remarks that there's no single portrait of a would-be terrorist, and that the administration has no interest in profiling, and that not only are those policies -- the profiling policies -- illegal, but they are also ineffective. Common sense tells me that in most of the cases since 9-11 that we've made arrests, it wouldn't be profiling to discover that most of the suspects or the convicted parties have been men, typically under 30 or under 35, often Muslim. It's not -- so my question is, is it -- I guess my question is, how do you square what most people would say if they're just talking to you, that common sense would suggest those are appropriate parties to at least focus more attention on, given that those were the parties that most often are arrested? Not to say that all men under 35 who are Muslim are suspect -- not at all -- but I guess my question is, why wouldn't the department focus more of its attention on that category of individual who's turned up most often as the suspect?”

Janet Napolitano: “Well, because you're not using good logic there. You've got to use actual intelligence that you receive. And so you might, you know -- all you've given me is kind of status. You haven't given me a technique, a tactic, a behavior, something that would suggest that somebody is not -- not a Muslim, but is Islamist, and is actually -- has moved into the category of a violent extremist.”

Statement from U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee: "Given its radical and violent ideology, it is deeply disturbing that the Muslim Brotherhood would be recognized in any way as a legitimate political entity. The Muslim Brotherhood is committed to violence and extremism. Neither freedom nor justice will be advanced by any political party established by the Muslim Brotherhood.”

George Soros-funded Think Progress responded with: “Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairperson of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, reacted quickly to the Egyptian government's recognition of the Muslim Brotherhood's political party. In an alarmist statement, she denounced the recognition and called for the U.S. to isolate the Brotherhood...Of course, as actual experts will tell you, the Muslim Brotherhood is not "committed to violence" ("Since the 1970s, the group has not engaged in violent activity."); they are not "radical" ("[T]his is a very conservative movement."); and the U.S. should not be afraid of Brotherhood.”

Senate Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid: "I know Congressman Weiner and I wish there was some way I can defend him, but I can't. OK?"

Reporter: “You didn't say whether you thought Congressman Weiner should resign.”

Reid: “I'm not here to defend Weiner.”

Reporter: “What do you think he should do?”

Reid: “That's all I'm going to say.”

Reporter: “Senator Reid, what advice would you give him if he asked you?”

Reid: “Call somebody else.”

ABC legal correspondent Jan Crawford: "at the end of the day this email release may say a lot more about the press and its views than it does about Palin."

Walter E. Williams: "[T]he welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery could not have done, the harshest Jim Crow laws and racism could not have done, namely break up the black family. That is, today, just slightly over 30 percent of black kids live in two parent families. Historically, from 1870s on up to about 1940s, and depending on the city, 75 to 90 percent of black kids lived in two parent families. Illegitimacy rate is 70 percent among blacks where that is unprecedented in our history."

Sarah Palin: “President Obama wants to give Russia our missile defense secrets because he believes that we can buy their friendship and cooperation with this taxpayer-funded gift. But giving military secrets and technologies to a rival or competitor like Russia is just plain dumb. You can't buy off Russia. And giving them advanced military technology will not create stability”

Stephen Bannon, Palin movie director: “The reason that she [Palin] draws this kind of fire is, she’s an existential threat to the establishment—the vested interests in our country are scared to death of her.”

Stephen Bannon: “We need to have a fight in the Republican party for the soul of the conservative movement.”

Charles Krauthammer on newspapers dissecting Palin’s email: “Unprecedented and it’s a disgrace. The Times and the Washington Post are actually asking readers to go through this...you don’t send this out to strangers to look for gotcha stuff in this, and that’s exactly what the mainstream media are doing and think this is utterly egregious.”

Republican candidate Tim Pawlenty: "We have a president whose policies have failed, and he won't tell the people of the United States of America the truth of what it's really going to take to fix these problems."

Presidential hopeful Herman Cain: “Engage the people. Don't try to pass a 2,700 page bill - and even they didn't read it! You and I didn't have time to read it. We're too busy trying to live - send our kids to school. That's why I am only going to allow small bills - three pages. You'll have time to read that one over the dinner table.” Mr. Cain has since clarified that he will sign some bills that might be longer than 3 pages.

Douglas J. Holtz-Eakin, former Director of the Congressional Budget Office and former chief economic policy adviser to U.S. Senator John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign: "I think you have to cut discretionary spending. I think you have to get the deficit under control quickly. And I don't think I've ever seen a Congress cut so aggressively that it endangers the economy. I live for that moment."

Martin Regalia, of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce: "This administration has tried to boost this economy in fits and starts by addressing a pinpoint here and a pinpoint there. The fact of the matter is, the economy is broad and diverse. And what this government has to do is get out of its way. And if it gets out of its way, the business confidence will return."

Neil Cavuto on government spending to stimulate the economy: “If spending trillions of dollars hasn’t worked, then maybe we should put down the shovels and try something else.” [quoted from memory]

Rush Limbaugh: "The media now loves Mitt Romney over his climate change comment. This is quite instructive, ladies and gentlemen. Apparently, folks, believing in one of the most preposterous hoaxes in the history of the planet -- manmade global warming -- is all that it takes to convince the state control media that you are 'serious' candidate."

Rush Limbaugh: "I don't care if 9 out of 10 scientists agree on something that is true. The fact that they agree is not what makes it true! Scientists agreeing on something cannot make something true that is false."

Rush: "The government cannot create jobs. The government can only destroy wealth. The government cannot create it. The government doesn't produce diddly-squat."

Rush: "If you think that Barack Obama might be change his mind about his own policies because of what's happening to the US economy, forget it. He's doubling down on the damage."

Rush: "Name one thing this regime has done that in a reelection campaign they could promise more of, that people would support? What have they done that you want more of? You can't name anything! Not one thing. In other words, Obama cannot run on his record. He can't run on his achievements."

Rush: "We sit here, we let the media destroy one of our candidates and we move on to somebody the media hasn't destroyed? Somehow that just doesn't sit well with me."

Rush: "Failed liberals in government go back to their overpriced universities to teach liberalism to young skulls full of mush who don't know squat about the real world. These failed intellectual idiots are running what's called higher learning. Yes, Snerdley, I mean exactly that. Goolsbee is fleeing his abject failure and is being welcomed with open arms back into the American academy."

Rush: "I've had so many people tell me they think Sarah Palin's stupid. But the only reason they think that is because of what they're being told by these pompous asses in the media who hold themselves out as the arbiters of smart and who themselves are brain-dead ignoramuses when it comes to basic facts."

Jeff Holmstead, a former Bush EPA air pollution official and Romney supporter: "He realizes it's an issue [global warming]. It's an issue that's real; but I think he's not convinced that the ideas that the environmental community are putting forward is a sensible way of dealing with it."

Glenn Beck spends (most of) an hour with Herman Cain. Cain doesn’t actually come on until Beck has spent some time launching the program, but Beck’s prelude is worth watching.

The panel discusses the search of the mainstream media through Palin’s emails:

Quite frankly, I did not care for O’Reilly’s interview of Herman Cain, as O’Reilly was being rapid fire, and Cain does not tend to be a rapid fire guy.

If you have not seen his announcement that he is running for president, it is an excellent video, and the default video there.

What I did not know is, Herman Cain has been a regular guest on Neil Cavuto for a year or more, showing up there about every onth or so (go to www.youtube.com and search “Cain Cavuto.”). .

“The Undefeated” (a new film about Sarah Palin) previewed on Hannity’s show:

You won’t need to watch this entire vid to figure out, which creates the most American jobs: buying Ford or buying a (n American-made) Toyota?

Jodi Miller: “Close to half of the jobs added last month were from McDonald’s, which shows us 3 things essential for a solid business model: a quality product, strong brand recognition and a waiver from Obamacare.”

About 3% of the U.S. population self-identify as bisexual or homosexual. A tiny, tiny fraction of those are actually interested in becoming married and virtually none of those understand marriage to be what most people understand marriage to be. Do we need to redefine marriage for what amounts to perhaps a twentieth of 1% of the population?

Since the recovery began, 38% of all the jobs created in American have been created in the State of Texas.

The percentage of homeowners dropped sharply, to 66.4% from a peak of 69.2% in 2004. The ownership rate is now back to the level of 1998

28% of homes are now underwater. That is from government meddling. Remove the government and its social engineering, and this would not have happened.

Survey finds that 1 in 3 employers will drop health benefits after Obamacare kicks in.

The government added $5.3 trillion in new financial obligations in 2010, largely for retirement programs such as Medicare and Social Security. That brings to a record $61.6 trillion the total of financial promises not paid for. This works out to be a little less than $600,000/U.S. household. It is possible that we baby boomers and those who are soon to retire with incredible promised state pensions are going to be surprised one day when the government does not have the money to pay for this, and our children decide, “Are you kidding me?”

Candidate Tim Pawlenty has called for:

■ Cutting the top individual income tax rate down to 25 percent;

■ Having just two income tax brackets, 10 percent and 25 percent;

■ Eliminating all taxation on capital gains, dividends, and estates;

■ Cutting the corporate tax rate down to 15 percent

Candidate Herman Cain’s proposals:

■ First, he would slash the US corporate tax rate by 29%, from the current rate of 35% to 25% (still nine points higher than the Canadian corporate income tax rate).

■ Secondly, he would reduce the US capital gains tax rate to zero.

■ Thirdly, he would also reduce the tax on the repatration of profits earned in foreign countries (something really not currently done at all) to zero.

■ Fourth, he would eliminate the 6.2% payroll tax for a period of one year.

■ Fifth, he would attempt to render these tax rates permanent -- or at least indefinite.

Afghan women get death threats for playing soccer, but CNN report does not mention that Islamic fundamentalism as the reason (in fact, the words Muslim and Islam are not even found in the article).

When searching in Google for pawlenty economic tax proposals, EVERY ONE of the first 10 or 12 were anti-Pawlenty articles.

Let’s say some comedian joked, “I am going to hang out at the grassy knoll when President Obama comes to Dallas. I will be locked and loaded.” Do you think their might be some uproar over this? Do you think this might be front-page news in every city? Do you think this might lead nearly every broadcast? Do you think that such a comedian would be continually pestered about such a remark?

So, what is going to be in the news this week? The dire warnings of the independent trustees of Social Security and Medicare, or Sarah Palin’s desire 3 years ago for a tanning bed?

I can’t really give a thumbs up to all of the Democrats who want Weiner to resign, because it is simply in their own interest that he does.

Old worn-out ideas (solutions) of the past = ideas or solutions which have worked in the past.

3 recovery summers later, Obama cannot pivot from his theories of economics. It is outside of his wheelhouse to admit he’s wrong.

The 24,000 emails of Sarah Palin are a gold mine to reporters and to the Obama Media Complex. Expect for perhaps 1–3 weeks for these emails to be discussed by serious news people (if they can find any good stuff which makes Palin look bad); and that way, they cand ownplay the economy, Obama’s economic policies, and the Republican candidates.

The Obama justice department will sue Alabama over its new immigration law. They may try to tie this to the Arizona suit as a blanket suit on state laws on immigration.

President Obama is being weaned off the teleprompter for the upcoming presidential election; look for him to make more speeches from his notes.

The left so badly wants Mitt Romney or Jon Huntsman as Republican candidates; many on the left with cross over in the primaries and vote for them. Look for “newsmen” to consistently say that these are the 2 serious candidates in the Republican primary. The attacks upon Palin will continue because they actually fear her.

Expect a number of racist comments to be made from Herman Cain. Comedians will make slightly more obvious racist comments; newsmen, less so. However, take any of these comments and turn them around and apply them to Obama, and the same people would be crying “foul.”

If Cain picks up steam (and I think he will), expect SNL to have a very slow-talking Cain impersonator, who is stupid and talks about God all of the time. Anything at all that he says which can be interpreted as stupid will be so presented. My hope here is, there is a new black kid on the program who does a dynamite Denzil Washington, and that he will recognize this as racism, and get a good Herman Cain imitation down.

Often I do this by memory, but let me go back to some specific previous issues; from August 31^st, 2008:

Palin will receive scrutiny unlike any other candidate in history, more so even than McCain, and every single gaff she makes will be on every network and in nearly every newspaper.

If Obama is elected and the Congress is a majority of Democrats, there will be no investigation of FNMA or FHLMC and there will be even more corruption associated with these assets, which will be bought by the government.

Gas went from around $3.34 in Oct and fell dramatically to a little over $2/gallon by November.

I predicted a number of international crises to occur to test Obama’s mettle; although there were a number of them, the most important have been quietly continuing (the building of nuclear weapons in Iran and North Korea). However, I guess with any president, there would be international incidents.

Last week, one of the alternatives I gave for Anthony Weiner’s twitter account was:

...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.

Anthony Weiner admitted: “Once I realized I had posted to Twitter, I panicked, I took it down and said that I had been hacked. I then continued with that story to stick to that story, which was a hugely regrettable mistake.”

The Daily Kos has realized the Herman Cain is a force to be reckoned with, and so they did a perfunctory beat down (expect more of these). Of course, they called him a racist.

In July and August of 2008, I really believed that McCain and Palin would win. Foolish me, I had a lot of faith that the American people would see that Obama was an empty suit and would be trounced the following November. I was so wrong on that.

In that time, I also predicted that Hillary Clinton was maneuvering to be put on the ticket as Vice President, and said that if Obama chose some white guy (like Bayne or Biden), he would be beaten badly. There may have been some behind the scenes Obama and Clinton talks, but it was not for vice president.

In September, I predicted a comic strip would emerge on the internet disparaging Palin and her family; I don’t think that happened (if it did, it was not big).

I also predicted that people would give personal testimonies as to what Obama had done for them while he was a community organizer; that never happened.

By October, I was still calling for a McCain/Palin victory, but by less and less of a margin (there were a lot of things he should have done, but he didn’t).

I used to think McCain would win this easily, based alone on Obama’s incredible negatives (with regards to his past, his association, his lack of experience, his philosophies). I must admit to still being dumbfounded at the idea that Obama could win this election.

In the first few months of his regime, Obama surrounded himself with his economic dream team, most of whom have since left his administration, and Obama could have done almost anything he wanted to do. His popularity was at its peak and the Democrats had huge majorities in the Senate and in the House. Having the greatest minds of the greatest learning institutions at his disposal, Obama could have passed anything—and I mean anything—to jump start the economy. He chose to pass the Stimulus Bill, and spend nearly a trillion dollars of borrowed money to kick our economy into high gear.

Today, more people believe that Elvis is alive than believe that Obama’s stimulus plan worked.

I am kind of amazed at listening to various radio callers and even at Bill O’Reilly, talking about the economy as if there is some magic thing that government can do to fix it. O’Reilly has done less of that lately, since it is clear that Obama’s approaches have been complete failures. What sense does it makes to take a trillion dollars out of the economy and give it to the government to decide what to do with it? What idiot ever thought that there was a chance in hell that could work?

I hear people call conservative radio hosts ad complain that (1) we never gave Obama a chance; or (2) Rush wanted him to fail; or (3) we need more time for his economic policies to work. It is as if these people had no concept of what the economy was.

The economy is simply people working, producing stuff, providing services, and other people buying that stuff and paying for those services.

The government, when it spends money, tends to produce very little and provide very little by way of services that we want. It does generate a lot of paperwork and it does make up a lot of regulations, both of which slow down the private economy.

Now, it is not as if government is incapable of producing something. Under FDR, we had the Tennessee Valley Authority and an electrical grid was developed for the United States. We can still look back to the dam projects and the like which FDR spend government money on, and, even though it did not jump start the economy, we can at least say, “This is stuff that we needed.” What in Obama’s nearly trillion dollar stimulus did we need? 20 years from now, or 50 years from now, will people look back and say, “Well, at least Obama built this or that.” He didn’t. He oversaw a bunch of piddling projects as a front, but mostly funneled money into unions to preserve a lot of state jobs for a year.

He could have done something here. The border fence? He could have finished that easily. Huge projects to reduce flooding from the Mississippi River? Run-off channels could have been dug leading into low areas, for the times when the Mississippi overflows. This could have been done, and, even though people would have made fun of him at first; this past year, he would have been called a visionary for initiating such projects. Nearly a trillion dollars was spent, and what visionary projects were included in this mad spending spree? NONE. Not a single one.

As a small businessman, I tend to take much of what I make and pump it back into my small business, which works its way throughout the economy (either through goods that I buy or services which I pay for). That money tends to continue to work its way through the system, keeping Home Depot and Lowes afloat, and the people I pay put this money into the economy themselves. And so it goes.

When government comes and take a lot of money from me, this means I can pump less money into the economy and do less by way of my own business.

There is little or no voodoo about this. When businessmen have money, they often spend it on making more money, or on building up their business, because that is what they do. Even if they spend it on conspicuous consumption, that goes into the economy.

With the government, who knows where all of it goes. Can we point to a trillion dollars worth of production based upon the Stimulus Law? Of course not. Much of it went to union employs, some of which was collected by the government and funneled to unions and union bosses, which then got funneled to the Democratic party. I am not sure that does a whole lot for the economy.

Although I have heard dozens of liberals talk about all the tax breaks in the Stimulus Law, there were no tax breaks in the Stimulus Law. There were bribes. If you do this or that, and file the correct paperwork, the government will pay for part of it.

Cash for Clunkers was hailed as a roaring success, because it beefed up new cars sales for a month. Then, suddenly, when C4C went away, car sales plummeted. All that happened was, future economic decisions were moved up in time; but the number of economic decisions was roughly the same. The only difference was, billions of dollars were spent to change the timing of those decisions by a month or 2 or 3. Democrats bragged about how this program was just brilliant. Are you kidding me?

What has been shown time and time again is, in a free economy, there are bumps in the road; recessions happen (they happen in all economies). In a free economy, when the government keeps its hands off, or lowers tax rates, the economy always comes roaring back.

This economy has been slowly lurching forward, like a slow-motion, brain-dead zombie, which may move forward and may fall over. Right now, we don’t know which. However, the more uncertainty there is, the less likely our economy will move forward.

A lot has been made of the trillions of dollars on the sidelines, not being invested. Well, duh! What would you expect. People invest because they think their money is going to grow. People do not tend to invest when they have no clue what will happen. Right now, we have no clue what will happen. So, those who invest, from the lowest to the highest, tend to hang back. Where is the next bubble? Can we pull out before that bubble bursts?

And yet, Obama moves forward with more regulations, more noises that we need to tax the rich (and small businesses) more; and that unfavored institutions, like oil companies and health insurance companies, need to be punished.

Even if you have an I.Q. around room temperature, you ought to be able to figure out, this is not the way to invigorate the economy; this is not going to stimulate investments; this will not cause people to expand their businesses.

These are simple, tried and true rules: less government, less regulation, less taxation, and more predictability, result in more business activity. That means a stronger economy and more jobs.

Fast-rising GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, the former Godfather's Pizza CEO emerging as a strong contender in the Iowa caucuses, blasted President Barack Obama's leadership abilities in an exclusive Newsmax interview, saying Obama "could not run one Godfather's pizza restaurant."

Cain, who has been rising fast in the polls after his impressive showing in last month's presidential debate in South Carolina, called the president an indecisive leader who has lost most Americans' confidence.

"The president has demonstrated that he lacks leadership in a whole lot of ways [and] could not run a company," Cain told Newsmax. "And I don't mean to be disrespectful: He could not run one Godfather's pizza restaurant.

"Instead of being decisive, he dithers," Cain said. "Instead of having a management structure where he can entrust to some key people responsibility, he has an organization that is unmanageable. When he added 36 czars to go with the ones he already inherited, that is an unmanageable structure. So nobody knows who's in charge."

Although GOP attacks charging Obama with weak leadership have been muted since the successful U.S. operation to take out Osama bin Laden, those complaints have resurfaced with the growing frustration over the lack of a plausible plan from the administration on reining in entitlements and deficit spending.

"So he's not decisive, he dithers. He has a structure that doesn't work," Cain said. "He's inconsistent, and he's broken a lot of promises, and he is losing the confidence not only of a lot of his supporters, but has lost clearly a lot of confidence from the American people."

Cain, a conservative talk-show host and a respected voice in management circles, is a turnaround specialist who is credited with saving Godfather's Pizza from bankruptcy during his tenure as its CEO. Cain also served a stint as chairman of the National Restaurant Association, and was chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City from 1995-1996.

Cain's broadside against Obama might have gone unnoticed before his abrupt emergence on the national political scene. A new Public Policy Polling survey released Wednesday shows Cain is now tied with former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in Iowa, behind only former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who officially announced his candidacy on Thursday.

Palin and Cain each had 15 percent, compared with 21 percent for Romney. Unlike Cain, however, Palin has yet to toss her hat in the ring.

The Public Policy survey was the third poll in the past week showing Cain near the top of the GOP heap - all the more impressive considering that he's still battling relatively low levels of name recognition.

● Regarding criticism that he has stumbled over foreign policy issues, Cain openly concedes: "That's a legitimate criticism of me." But his common-sense experience and problem-solving skills, he says, can overcome any lack of foreign-policy expertise. "People need to keep in mind: What president has ever taken office who knew everything?" Cain asks. He says that he plans to surround himself with foreign-policy experts, and will ask the right questions to pursue a common-sense approach.

●Cain believes the Obama administration has greatly exaggerated the impact failing to raise the debt ceiling would have on the U.S. economy. Cain says that he would consider furloughing federal employees and temporarily shutting down some government operations, rather than increasing the government's authority to borrow more money, about half of which comes from foreign governments. "I would furlough some federal employees. This is what a businessman does, when it comes to having to save a business," he says. "You do what you have to do, and make some tough choices."

●He reiterates that he had no problem with the concept of a TARP program to save the banking system from a global financial meltdown. But the implementation of TARP, he says, "was a disaster," adding: "They picked winners and losers, they used the money for things other than banks, they tried to force money on banks that didn't want it. The administration used it purely as a discretionary tool."

●He predicts that the GOP presidential nominee will be a grass-roots conservative, rather than an establishment Republican. As evidence of the strength of the grass-roots fervor shaping the political process, he tells Newsmax that donations to his campaign "have gone up dramatically."

Cain tells Newsmax he now has "almost 175,000 online volunteers ready to go to work for the Herman Cain presidential campaign."

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:

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 Obama administration is freely giving Russia sensitive information about missile defense that weakens U.S. national security.

President Barack Obama's administration recently threatened to veto the defense budget, citing "serious concerns" over provisions that limit the U.S. missile defense know-how that the White House is permitted to share with Moscow. This is the sort of information that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, in his earlier days, would have assigned his spies to steal. Through its single-minded pursuit of "resetting" relations with Russia, the Obama administration may simply be willing to hand over this information and, in doing so, weaken U.S. national security.

Only two days after issuing the veto threat -- and as Obama tried to warm Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to U.S. missile defense plans at the G-8 Summit in Deauville, France -- the House of Representatives passed the defense bill. It included the provision that the president's team finds so offensive: Section 1228 requires that no funds can be used to provide the Russian Federation with sensitive U.S. missile defense technology.

This act of congressional prudence did not come out of nowhere. The Senate debate over New START raised questions about what the Obama administration may have promised Moscow regarding U.S. missile defense plans. The debate stemmed from the treaty's preamble, which linked offensive and defensive weapons, and a Russian unilateral statement that stated ratification of the treaty was conditional on whether the United States made improvements to its missile defense systems. In a treaty about reducing offensive weapons, it was clear the Russians required the Obama administration to include U.S. defenses in the bargain.

With that issue still unresolved, Congress discovered that the administration has been working on a missile defense agreement with the Russians and that Moscow had requested that the United States share with it loads of sensitive U.S. missile defense technology and operational authority as part of that deal. In the administration's eagerness to please the Kremlin, it may just oblige.

The House of Representatives has given a firm "no" to that prospect through its decision to ignore Obama's veto threat and approve the defense appropriations bill by a veto-proof vote of 322 to 96. The Senate may act similarly. On April 14, 39 Republican senators sent a letter to the president expressing their concern over the administration's consideration of granting to the Russians sensitive U.S. technology and "red button" authority to prevent the interception of incoming missiles headed for U.S. troops or allies. This would allow Russia to deny the United States the ability to intercept a missile Washington had determined to be a threat.

The letter, spearheaded by Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), requested the administration provide the Senate with assurances that it will not share sensitive information with Moscow. The senators cited the problem that sharing this information with Russia poses in light of its history of espionage and technological cooperation with Iran and Syria.

They're right to be concerned. Tehran is thumbing its nose at Washington and doubling down on its missile program. The director of national intelligence, James Clapper, told a congressional panel in March that Iran "would likely choose missile delivery as its preferred method of delivering a nuclear weapon" and that the Islamic Republic "continues to expand the scale, reach and sophistication of its ballistic missile forces, many of which are inherently capable of carrying a nuclear payload."

Russian assistance has contributed to the progress made by Iran's nuclear and missile programs. Should the United States share critical information about its missile defenses with the Russians, a Russian entity -- official or otherwise -- could pass that information along to Tehran, enabling the Iranians to capitalize on the weaknesses in the U.S. system.

Nevertheless, the Obama administration continues to demonstrate its penchant for bargaining away missile defense, and the United States is not currently developing and deploying missile defense technology at the rate and quantity the threat demands.

The proliferation of missiles, especially short-range devices, continues to accelerate. As a result, the United States has a greater need than ever for short-range defensive systems like the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and the Patriot air and missile defense system. The United States, its forces abroad, and its allies are also vulnerable to short-range missiles fired from ships at sea and long-range missiles fired in large quantities. The only system the United States currently has to defend against intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) is the ground-based midcourse defense (GMD) system, which is limited in its ability. The sea-based Aegis system is supposed to complement the GMD system in defending the homeland against long-range missiles by 2020, but the intelligence community continues to estimate that Iran will have an ICBM by 2015.

Leaders in the House, and particularly the Armed Services Committee, deserve commendation for trying to address these weaknesses. The House defense bill added funds for short-range defenses, the GMD system, and Aegis; and perhaps most strikingly, it mandated the administration to conduct a study on the technical and operational feasibility of space-based interceptors -- the ideal type of system to intercept missiles at the optimal point, during their boost phase.

But as the administration's veto threat demonstrates, the future of U.S. missile defense requires more than Congress alone can provide. Here's hoping that the White House comes to its senses and stops trying to use a degradation in U.S. national security to purchase a Russian "reset."

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.

It might not be front-page news in the mainstream media, but according to a new poll, a large majority of Americans are alarmed at the prospect of U.S. debt continuing to grow past its already astronomical $14.3 trillion limit. They're right to be worried, as America's out-of-control spending takes the country down a road to decline. America is on an unsustainable fiscal path, and that's why The Heritage Foundation has released a plan to tackle the problem: "Saving the American Dream: Heritage's Plan to Fix the Debt, Cut Spending, and Restore Prosperity."

Heritage released its plan as part of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation's 2011 Fiscal Summit, in which six research organizations from across the political spectrum provided long-term fiscal plans to solve America's spending crisis. Of all the plans, Heritage's proposal reduces the national debt held by the public the most and keeps federal spending and taxes at the lowest levels.

Heritage today also launched a new website, www.savingthedream.org, to highlight how its fiscal plan would reshape the federal government to better serve young adults, seniors, families, entrepreneurs and low-income workers. Read the full "Saving the American Dream" report here.

Stuart Butler, a co-editor of Heritage's plan and director of Heritage's Center for Policy Innovation, explains the key behind "Saving the American Dream":

“The Heritage plan quickly brings the federal budget in balance, keeps it permanently balanced, and starts paying down the debt-all without increasing taxes. Instead, we solve our spending and debt crises by immediately getting entitlements under control, reshaping the role of government, and creating a simple, growth-oriented tax system with greater savings incentives for all Americans.

We also preserve and strengthen our nation's safety-net programs without imposing massive tax hikes on future generations to do so, which would rob them of the American Dream.”

Heritage's plan stands apart from those of the other five organizations by achieving the lowest debt level by 2035: 30 percent of Gross Domestic Product, which is less than half of the current debt-to-GDP ratio. Getting debt under control is vital. Without fiscal reform, the national debt is projected to reach 91.5 percent of GDP by 2035, according to the baseline adopted by the Peterson Foundation.

The Heritage plan also lowers federal spending-the real cause of the nation's fiscal woes-to 17.7 percent of GDP, falling from expected spending of 28.3 percent by 2035. And it rejects tax increases as a solution to the nation's spending problem, keeping federal tax levels at 18.5 percent of GDP-the lowest among the plans.

By comparison, all the other plans reduced the federal debt and reduced spending, but none went as far as Heritage's plan-and none of them did it without relying on tax increases or at the cost of our national defense. Notably, the Center for American Progress, a liberal organization, did not offer any specifics on how they achieved debt and spending reductions.

Heritage recognizes that America is on the verge of becoming a country in decline. Mounting debt, strangling regulations and an expanding federal bureaucracy are leading to economic stagnation, all on the backs of future generations. But there is time to save the American dream and alter the course of our future. By getting spending under control, balancing the budget and shrinking debt, Heritage's "Saving the American Dream" plan offers real solutions to get America back on a fiscally sustainable path.

Politics: The president has unveiled a plan to cut joblessness with an industrial policy from the 19th century. In this "new" economy, government will pick winners and losers for industry. It didn't work then, it won't work now.

Taking a cue from classical Marxist theory as well as vintage union organizing doctrine, both discounting the value of service work over manufacturing, we now see President Obama touting training for factory jobs over all others, pushing government spending in that area and calling it a jobs recovery plan.

"I see a future where we train workers who make things here in the United States, and continue a important and honorable tradition of folks working with their hands, creating value, not just shuffling paper," he said Wednesday at Northern Virginia Community College, urging students to pack up and go to ... Detroit.

As he announced his public-private "Skills for America" partnership to train and credential 500,000 students for jobs in industries favored by the Obama administration, it bears looking at how at odds this approach is to both history and economic reality.

"We know it means building the infrastructure, the roads and bridges, and manufacturing new products here ... that create good jobs," Obama said. "Above all, it means training and educating our citizens to out-compete workers from other countries."

The Bill Moyers crowd has been touting manufacturing-era nostalgia for years, claiming the world would go back on its axis if America could just shut its market and put everyone back into blue collars, turning gears and listening for the lunch whistle.

Fact is, the more advanced the economy, the greater percentage of the work force that moves out of manufacturing and into services.

Economists call this the "tertiary progression" of development - from farming and fishing, to the Industrial Revolution, to an advanced service economy. Every rich nation has followed this path - every one.

In the U.S., that move started not last decade but more than 70 years ago. In the U.S. there are six times more service workers than factory workers, boasting higher skills and per capita income. U.S. trade data consistently show U.S. surpluses in service exports across the board because that's America's competitive advantage.

Now the president wants us to "give back" all that white collar development and return to a simpler sort of economy premised on manufacturing - one that's more characteristic of today's China or Peru than a developed economy such as America.

Amazingly, he wants this even though he admits state-directed industrial policy has failed. "We've got a lot of programs out there," he said. "If a program does not work in training people for the jobs of the future and getting them a job, we should eliminate that program."

Which defies belief when one recalls he's holding up job-creating free-trade treaties with Colombia, Panama and South Korea for just such a useless training program called "Trade Adjustment Assistance," or TAA.

That program is so bad a 2008 American University study by Kara Reynolds and John Palatucci declared it "of dubious value in terms of helping displaced workers find new, well-paying employment opportunities." Obama is holding up a proven way to create jobs - trade deals - to expand TAA from $2 billion to $7 billion.

It's as if all the economic knowledge acquired in the course of the 20th century never made it to the Obama White House. Obama wants to pick industrial winners while the economy languishes from high taxes, massive new regulatory burdens and his failure on free trade.

The only logic that can explain this is that Obama means to spend more money on vocational education to prepare kids for work in industries dominated by unions - Obama's main base of political support.

Presumably, if enough community college students can be trained for traditionally unionized manufacturers, employers will have no choice but to hire them. That's a win-win-win-win for educational bureaucrats, unions, jobs and Obama's political prospects.

Too bad the rest of the economy - which accounts for three-quarters of all U.S. output - didn't make Obama's list of industrial winners.

Sexual behavior, sexual attraction, and Sexual identify in the United States. Excellent statistical report.

The Obama Economy - Why Are We Here and What Do His Policies Portend for 2012? This is an excellent thumbnail sketch of the Obama economic policies, his predisposition toward governmental decisions, and his filling his economic team with academics who have no idea how the outside world works. Also includes a list of these same academics as they desert the sinking ship called the Obama-economy.

http://floppingaces.net/2011/06/10/obama-economy-why-are-we-here-and-what-do-his-policies-portend-for-2012-reader-post/

A short exchange of emails between Anthony Weiner and an attractive blonde cheerleading instructor at a Young Women’s Christian Organization.

[I have done a couple of columns about exactly where the U.S. crash came from, and what caused it all; this appears to be the book version—not by me)]

RUSH: Folks, there's a new book out, been brought to my attention. I just downloaded it, my iPad on I books. I'm gonna start reading it this afternoon. The book is entitled "Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon," and it's by Gretchen Morgenson (who is an economics writer/business writer to the New York Times) and noted financial analyst Joshua Rosner. And this book apparently is a cover-to-cover indictment of Wall Street and the Democrat Party, Fannie Mae and subprime mortgages. This book answers the question that the American people have: Who is responsible for this debacle?

The American people know somebody really screwed up, but they don't know who. This book provides the answer and in names. One of the big names mentioned is a guy named James Johnson, a huge Democrat Party power broker, facilitator, fundraiser. Barney Frank's name is mentioned. ACORN. La Raza. The Democrat establishment with unbreakable ties to Wall Street. Angelo Mozilo. This book apparently makes it plain that this economic disaster is a pure creation of the Democrat Party and crony capitalist associates on Wall Street. Not the Republican Party. Pure and simple, the Democrat Party. Despite the fact that the lead author is one of the business writers for the New York Times, Gretchen Morgenson.

[Walter Russell Mead] well-known Democrat has reviewed the book. He says that the Republican Party and the Tea Party have just acquired a new weapon of mass destruction (it has nothing to do with Weiner), and that if the deploy the weapon effectively in the next election cycle -- and Mead says it's a big if -- then they've got the biggest opportunity to move the country rightward since Ronald Reagan took the oath of office in 1981. And it is this book, that this book answers the question average Americans have: "Why is what's happening to me happening? Why is my home worthless? Why don't I have a job? Why can't I get a loan? Why is this economy such a mess?"

This book answers it, and answers it with the names of Democrats on Wall Street in the Obama administration: Bill Clinton, Barney Frank, Henry Cisneros, Nancy Pelosi, ACORN, La Raza -- and the big villain: A guy by the name of James Johnson, long one of the most important members of the Democrat establishment. He ran Mondull's campaign with Beckel. He chaired the search of John Kerry (who, by the way, served in Vietnam) for a vice president. He's the guy that settled on the noted anti-poverty warrior, John Edwards. Obama was so impressed with this James Johnson fellow that he reportedly asked him to lead Obama's search in 2008 for a VP, though he withdrew.

Johnson withdrew when word got out that he benefited from the disgraced and disgusting Angelo Mozilo's corrupt program of special mortgages for political people. [Mead] says this story as a killer app for the Republicans. It demonizes Democrats, it lends itself to attack ads, it divides Democrats between their Wall Street and union bases, combines Republican hate figures in ways calculated to unify the Republicans and heighten the intensity of the faithful. "The story illustrates everything the Tea Party thinks about the corrupt Washington establishment and the evils of big government. It demonstrates the limits on the ability of government programs to help the poor. It converts a complicated economic story into a simple morality play -- with Dems as the villain. It allows Republicans to capitalize on public fury at the country's economic problems. It links the Democrats to Wall Street -- the one part of the private sector that the Republican base loathes. It exposes that mix of incompetence and arrogance that is the hallmark of the modern American liberal establishment and links this condescending cluelessness to the real problems of real American families. It links President Obama (through appointments, associations and friendships) with the worst elements of the Clinton legacy and it blunts some key Democratic talking points."

The title of the book is "Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon," and it's still happening. This little exercise here with Obama and coal is one little microcosm, one small little example. James Johnson, as I say, was an official of Fannie Mae -- and for compensation decisions made while he was a board member of United Health Care, one of the nation's biggest medical insurers. So I don't know if you ever heard the name James Johnson but he's one of these apparently huge, behind the scenes (not even so much behind the scenes), big-time Democrat Party power broker. But imagine a book that has the answers is that every American is asking: "Why in the world is this happening to our country?" The book has it in lay terms. You don't need a financial background to understand it, to decipher it -- and then the answers point straight to the Democrat Party and their liberal, crony capitalist buddies on Wall Street.

Time-out, another one. Fastest three hours in media. Speaking of books, Ann Coulter will be here in 45 minutes to discuss her new book, and it's a page-turner, too. It's about the "mob-ocracy" that is the left, the Democrat Party, and how mobs generally define Democrats today and serve as their prime mover.

RUSH: By the way, folks, the review of that book, Reckless Endangerment, was actually Walter Russell Mead. Mead reviewed the book and that's from which I was quoting, and it was Pat Caddell who sent Walter Russell Mead's review around. Just to be clear.

RUSH: Last week's new unemployment claims are up again -- and it was "unexpected," of course. But don't worry, ladies and gentlemen. It's just another bump in the road, sort of the way the Rocky Mountains are a bump in the road on the way to California. You know, it just keeps worsening -- there's no sign of any improvement -- and here we go again Reuters (and I'm convinced these people are still tweaking me): "The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week, according to a report on Thursday that could reinforce fears the labor market recovery has stalled. Initial claims for state jobless benefits increased 1,000 to 427,000, the Labor Department said.

"However, economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims dropping to..." Every week they're wrong and thus every week they are surprised -- and very luckily for these people, "discouraged workers are no longer counted in the Department of Labor's official unemployment numbers," otherwise that's the U6 number that would be much, much bigger. TIME Magazine's Richard Stengel (this is on Morning Joe today), he's the managing editor. They were talking about the new cover for this week's TIME Magazine and the cohost Willie Geist said, "Let's do the big reveal. TIME Magazine, what do we have on the cover here?"

STENGEL: It is the topic that Americans are most concerned about, the topic Americans are always most concerned about: The economy. The cover line is, "What Recovery? The Five Myths About the Economy," because, you know what? The "recovery," such as it is, isn't really happening.

RUSH: They just realized it at TIME Magazine, they just realized it. Remember, now, these are the same people back 1994 or 1995 at TIME Magazine that actually did a cover on men and women are actually different. They're born different! They were stunned. Men and women are actually born different. That was a cover story, meaning that that realization had to be such a shocking bit of news that it warranted a cover story at TIME Magazine -- that men and women were born different. So now the wizards of the media ruling class in New York, TIME Magazine, have concluded that the recovery isn't really happening. But, of course, it's not Obama's fault. The cohost said, "Well, one of the most troubling is the first one on your five myths: A temporary blip, full steam ahead. This is more than a temporary blip, you say."

STENGEL: There's a McKinsey study that shows that basically it will take 60 months for us to get out of this. People think, "What does that mean, get out of it? It will be back like it was before?" Well, it won't be back like it was before. You know, American businesses have $2 trillion that they're sitting on, but if they're gonna spend it you know where they're gonna spend it? They're gonna spend it abroad. There are 450 million middle-class people around the world who will work for less wages than American workers will. If there's money to invest, they're gonna invest it in Brazil or China or Russia, not in the US. We have to understand that.

RUSH: But it's not Obama's fault, you see! America is just over. America's salad days are behind us. It's not Obama's fault, it's just the way it is -- and these evil businesses, they're gonna seek employees who work for less around the world! The American people won't take these grunt jobs. It's beneath them! Of course, that alone is insulting, and it's been empirically disapproved, by the way. We chronicled one example a recent Morning Update that we did, this whole notion that there are certain jobs Americans won't do. They will go to the pastures and the farmlands and they will harvest crops. It's happening in Georgia. They have to because there has been a crackdown on illegal immigrants there.

RUSH: Now TIME Magazine is out with their cover: Hey, yep, there is no recovery, but it's not Obama's fault. It's America. America's just over. The America we knew is just over, we're all gonna have to just get used to it.

Last night again on CNN's Situation Room, Wolf Blitzer speaking with James Carville, fresh off his comments that there might be riots next summer if the employment situation doesn't improve, Blitzer said, "Give me one piece of advice that you would give Obama right now if you were advising him."

CARVILLE: First of all, one of the things that they can't do that they did in 2010 is talking about how what they're doing is working. And the jobs numbers have to sort of improve here. The three-month average is 160,000. I have no idea where it's gonna go in the future but for his sake and the country's sake I hope it goes better.

RUSH: (laughing) Jeez! What kind of tolerance and patience do we have? (impression) "First of all, one of the things they can't do, they can't say that what they're doing is working." Now, imagine that. Now, we all know this, and you and I have discussed this in terms of Obama being landslidable beatable in 2012. Yesterday I asked you to stop and think: "Name one thing this regime has done that in a reelection campaign they could promise more of, that people would support? What have they done that you want more of? You can't name anything! Not one thing." In other words, Obama cannot run on his record. He can't run on his achievements.

Carville is saying so. (impression) "They gotta stop talking about how what they're doing is working, 'cause it isn't working." Okay, so if they can't talk about what they're doing, if they can't say, "Four more years," one of the most common reelection slogans that there is -- "Four more years," they can't say that. Four more years of this? "Yeah, we like 9% unemployment. How about 11%?" They can't do it. So what are they gonna do? What option is open to the Obama reelect people. We're talking about a year from now. Next summer, maybe 15 months, next fall. I don't know how much significant improvement that people can say is indicative of a trend that there can actually be. It's like this guy from TIME Magazine said:

We're gonna need 60 months of robust job-creation to get us back where we were. Sixty months.

CALLER: Hello, Rush. Good to be with you, and good luck with your wedding anniversary coming up.

RUSH: Thank you, sir. Thank you very much, sir. I appreciate that. Even I remembered it.

CALLER: I was just making a point about Obama and his competence. I think he's a very, very good politician as far as tactics. He's a very competent tactician.

CALLER: I don't think, as you do, that he's as incompetent. He may be more incompetent than competent, but I think he's more competent than you and other conservative talk show hosts give him credit for. Uh, what is your view on that? Am I making a valid point here?

RUSH: Well, we're going to have to define "competence." If you want to talk strictly about political tactics, in order to achieve a desired result?

RUSH: I don't know. Everywhere you look a majority of people disagree with Obama. A majority oppose health care.

RUSH: So I think it's a big myth that the guy is competent. I think what fools everybody to think he's competent is that he sounds like an intellectual. He has a manner of speaking that conveys or connotes intellect, high intellect or being an intellectual.

CALLER: Well, I think in a way he does things that he thinks will be advantageous for him. For example, the Osama bin Laden killing or taking out of. I think he knows when to show himself to be a conservative. During the campaign, he showed himself to be very moderate. He said 95% will get a tax cut. He made comments about black fathers needing to be responsible that prompted Jesse Jackson to make that comment that he thought was off microphone.

RUSH: Yeah, but, see, now there's a record to measure all of that stuff against -- and that's where he's going to have big problems and come up short.

CALLER: And I think it's very ironic that the liberal media did not fear not knowing anything about Barack Obama but fear Sarah Palin knowing nothing about her either in the sense that she is competent. She will be a great president, and she will help America move forward -- and that's a very, very blatant showing of what liberals really truly want for America.

RUSH: That is well stated in a number of ways. Because one of the things -- and, again, anecdotal, just the past two, three days, including in the e-mails, all this controversy that has arisen here about Palin ever since Annette called here and said: "Rush, you're missing the boat. The reason why women don't like Palin is she's a "10." She's good looking, and they're just jealous." The firestorm that inspired! It's being talked about on other broadcasts all across the country, and the e-mails I'm getting obviously are in response to that, and the comments are based on that comment. There's maybe two e-mails in this -- and no phone calls -- in this whole period of time (the last two-and-a-half days) disagreeing. Only two people said: "Rush, I don't care about any of that. I just don't think she's qualified."

I've only had two people say, "I don't think she's qualified." Now, maybe that's because her qualifications aren't the subject being discussed, her appearance is. But even so, the door's been open here to tell us why you don't like Sarah Palin and nobody has said she's not qualified. So here we've got Ron saying, "She's going to be the greatest president ever. She's going to move the country forward and do great things," and the media is scared to death that's going to be the case. They didn't know anything about Obama and they don't care where Obama's taking the country. They don't care. He's right about that. We're sitting around, we're watching the country disintegrate in front of our eyes and they don't care. All they care about is, "Will he continue to get away with it?"

Issue by issue it's, "How will this affect Obama? How will this affect this re-election?"

They don't care. They have no interest in that. Because everything in politics is a war. The decency, the goodness, what's right for the country is not what's on the table. The left is circling the wagons to protect their Weiner. They're circling their wagons to protect Obama, they're circling the wagons to protect liberalism. The country? "Meh, we'll deal with that later." The media think Obama is one of them. They think Palin is not one of them, even though she went to journalism school; Obama didn't. The media believed they and Obama are one, that they are from the same class, that they are from the same ideological stripe and so forth. So there's a kinship there. What he's doing to the country policy wise they couldn't care less. In fact, their frustration is that his approval numbers are not higher given how hard he's trying and how "smart" he is and, "Why don't people appreciate him as much as we do?"

RUSH: I just once again checked the e-mail. "Rush, what about this with Obama? You often talk about the question: Is he just full of fettered, leftist ideology or is he incompetent?" This is what this caller just brought up. I think, folks, it's interesting and fun. It's ultimately a waste of time to choose whether or not Obama's incompetent, unqualified, what have you, or ideological. The fact that he is full fledged liberal socialist makes him incompetent as far as I'm concerned. If you have a modicum of intelligence, especially now, you have to understand it doesn't work. So if you have a modicum of intelligence, you understand it doesn't work and you persist with it, then we're not talking about, "Are you an ideologue or are you incompetent?" We're talking about something entirely, entirely different motivation, purpose or what have you.

We're not talking about somebody's accidentally screwing something up here. Whatever is going on, for whatever reason, it is purposeful. But to my way of thinking, incompetent and liberalism are one in the same. Incompetence and stupidity, liberalism, are one in the same within the political realm. That's why it was so easy for me to say, "I hope he fails." It didn't even require much thought. You remember, the genesis of this was the Wall Street Journal, before the immaculation, was asking people to write 400 words on their hopes and dreams for the country and Obama and blah, blah, blah; and I said, "I don't need 400 words. I can do it in four: 'I hope he fails.'" Kablooey! (chuckles) That was January 16th, 2009.

RUSH: Hey, folks, I want you to meet somebody. I spoke to David Mamet yesterday for the next issue of the Limbaugh Letter and I asked him if he could give me five or ten minutes today to come on the program, and I'm happy to welcome him to the program. David, welcome to the EIB Network.

RUSH: David has a book. Folks, I don't want to overdo this, but his new book is "The Secret Knowledge: On the dismantling of American Culture." David Mamet, for the economy of time here, is a traditional Hollywood liberal who is no longer and has written a book about his conversion and transformation -- and it is fascinating. I spent close to 45 minutes with him yesterday afternoon after the program discussing this conversion and how it happened, what inspired it and who the people were. It is a wonderful book for those of us who are conservative, because we look at liberals and have a question: "How can they, A, think the way they do? How can they, B, think the way of us that they do?" This is just a wonderful work in the conversion process. Mr. Mamet did it on his own. I mean, he was influenced by people but he did the work. Who were the people? What were the catalysts that made you even question your liberalism?

MAMET: Well, I think the first one was around the 2004 election, and I went to synagogue, as I do regularly. The rabbi was talking about political civility, and he said it's in the Judeo-Christian tradition that before you criticize someone you have to sit down with them and restate their position to them such that they'll say, "Yes, that's what I mean," and then they have to state your position to you so that you say, "Yes," so you both agree that you understand what the positions are, then you each introduce your facts. So I wanted to... I took the advice to heart. I said: "Well, as a good liberal I better be able to state the conservative position." (chuckles) So I started researching and I started reading, and it dawned on me that I was not a liberal, that although I could state the position of who I thought were my enemies, the conservatives, I could not rationally state the position of the liberals.

RUSH: Okay. (pause) I'll have to tell you my cochlear implant battery just died and I'm totally deaf, but it will not affect this. It might be helpful to you. (laughs)

RUSH: I have a transcriber. I'm able to see what you're saying because I've got a court reporter here transcribing.

RUSH: I wanted to make sure people understood who you are and who we're talking to. Mr. Mamet is a playwright, screenwriter. Glengarry Glen Ross is among his works. Wag the Dog. Oscar nominated for The Verdict. Speed the Plow. The Postman Always Rings Twice. I wanted to point this out at the beginning, and I failed to do so. So you've undergone the process, you've written the book, again, "The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture," and, by the way, the title's kind of clever. There's no "secret knowledge," correct?

MAMET: Yeah, the secret knowledge is there's nobody home but us chickens. The Constitution was written by a bunch of regular guys who tried to get together and thrash out a contract under which they could get together that would keep people together as it has for 230 years. And that when the experts come in claiming to be Messiahs or saviors -- or indeed experts in politician -- what they are, they're either deluded for the most part or they're duplicitous, because they should be there serving our interests; and there is no knowledge greater than that of the citizen.

RUSH: What was it like? Was there a moment when the light went off and you said to yourself, "Everything I've believed for so much of my life I've been wrong about"?

MAMET: Yes, I think so. I'd just started reading Milton Friedman. And I felt, as the phrase has it, "The scales fell from my eyes," because he took what I thought was an impenetrable subject, economics, which was susceptable only to intellectuals and people that understood it.

MAMET: I don't know, because I never looked at it. I knew that it was called "the dismal science" and I knew there were books full of graphs.

RUSH: But you've earned your living in capitalism and science and economics and so forth. It's made you who financially you are.

MAMET: Exactly so! But the realization that I came to is that each citizen for himself or herself understands the economics, which is, "I better make more than I spend and I better put something aside for a rainy day, and I want to get a good idea about what to do with the surplus so that perhaps it can grow while I'm sleeping." Period. And that that's capitalism. Everybody practices it, but half of the country -- those on the left -- deny that it's true.

RUSH: Right, and that's a fascinating thing. People live their lives that way. Most people do, but when it comes time to vote, they'll vote the exact opposite of their interests in that regard. In other words, people are charitable and they'll donate to causes but they will not walk down the street and give money from their pockets to everybody that lives on the street. But they'll vote for people who will do it for them.

MAMET: Exactly so. And the question that they won't ask is: Where does all that money end up? Where does the aid to Africa end up? Most of it ends up diverted into the pockets either of the politicians or crooks. Some of it may get where it's going but just a little bit of it -- and I'll tell you a story. An old friend of mine, who's now in her 90s -- she's a German immigrant -- she and her husband came here after the War without absolutely nothing; not a penny, not a word of the language; and their patron, their sponsor deserted them. So they arrived in this little town and they spent 40 years there and became fixtures in the town; and after September 11th she was knitting sweaters to send to the rescue workers and the relief workers; and I said, "That's such a great charitable act, but don't you...?" These sweaters are magnificent. They're handmade woolen sweaters, great works of arts. I said: "Most of them aren't going to get to the people they're intended to. They're going to disappear along the way."

CALLER: She nodded and she said: "Well, maybe some of them will get through." She had seen much more of life than I had, and she felt it was her duty to do something personal in spite of the fact that it might not work -- and that's kind of how I feel about us citizens. Rather than saying, "Oh, it's not going to work," or, "We can't get together," we have to do what we can in spite of the fact that failure is always possible.

RUSH: Do you have the belief that people on the left are less desirous of getting together? We always hear about "civility" and "we have to get along." People don't like all this "partisanship" and so forth, but the burden always seems to fall on conservatives. We seem to have to be the first ones that are told we must compromise what we believe in order to get this mutual adoration society going. There seems to be an arrogance and a condescension attitudinally among people on the left that seems to prevent them from having any desire to actually commingle.

MAMET: Well, like Lincoln said: "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong," and I feel the same way about the leftist dismantling of the West. If that's not wrong, then nothing is wrong -- and I've got a good model for people saying, "Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between," and that's the state of Israel which has been defending itself daily against constant attack for 60 years from people whose avowed purpose is to kill every Jew in Israel and then to kill the rest of the Jews in the world. People on the left say, "Yes, but obviously if there's two parties to the dispute, the truth must lie somewhere in between," and I don't see where the truth lies in between in Israel and I really don't see where the truth lies in between the liberals and the conservatives. The liberals say, "Are you arguing there must be no government?" Of course not. I'm arguing that the government should be representative of the people's interests.

RUSH: That has to be... For you to say, from where you've come from... You're exactly right. How do you negotiate with evil? How do you compromise with people that want to wipe you out? Where is the middle ground?

RUSH: But at the same token to compare liberals the way they look at things and conservatives, that's what we ask ourselves: How in the world do we compromise on whatever the issue happens to be -- abortion, crime, you name it, where do we compromise? And that's a great point that you're making. But just because somebody has a side makes it legitimate. It could be totally illegitimate.

MAMET: That's right. Dennis Prager says he "prefers 'clarity' to 'agreement.'" I think that's a great phrase to live one's life by. Woodrow Wilson did a lot towards screwing up the world. He said a couple of smart things. One is he said, "You can vote for freedom and you'll probably lose, or you can vote for slavery and you'll absolutely win."

RUSH: What continues to strike me... How long have you known that? Is it something that you've just come across that's part of your conversion or how long have you held the belief that you're sharing with us now that you didn't act on for so many years?

MAMET: I was a liberal, which meant that I voted for the liberal team. It meant that... You know what it meant, Rush? It meant that I was excused from thinking.

MAMET: Sure. My dad was an immigrant kid and a Democrat and a Jew, and we didn't know any Republicans in our group. So I grew up Democratic. My dad was a labor lawyer -- a very hardworking guy, a one horse labor lawyer -- and then I went to hippie college and lived in the bubble. I didn't knowingly meet a conservative until, to my shame, I was 60 years old and sat down and said, "Wow, I don't understand what this guy's talking about, but he has a great civility about him. Perhaps I better investigate this thing."

RUSH: We're talking with a playwright and screenwriter, David Mamet, author of the new book "The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture." It's about his conversion from Hollywood and theater liberalism to conservatism. Are you able to now, since the book has come out -- and you've been public. You're doing interviews and you've been very clear about this. You've had some very clear writing on this. Are you able to talk to liberal friends now that you've, quote/unquote, "come out"? What's the impact been on your friendships?

MAMET: Well, that's a good question. I have a lot of friends. I don't socialize a lot because I've got a family, so I go home at night and I don't socialize a lot. But I see my friends occasionally. We all work together. My definition of a "friend" is, coming from Chicago, someone who says, "Yeah, sure. You know what? Let's talk about what we can talk about. Let's help each other out. Your politics are none of my business."

RUSH: But you now feel the need to proselytize. You've written a book. You're attempting to convert others, correct?

MAMET: Well, I don't know. That's a very good question. I wrote the book to try to figure out what I thought. I said, "I've got to sit down with pencil and paper." It's like taking the car apart to learn how the internal combustion engine works. It's not enough to just take it to the garage and give the guy a couple bucks. I want to know how the car works. So that's what I was doing with my own thought processes -- attempting to do -- and that's what I was doing was attempting to understand what democracy actually is. So as I said at the end of the book, "I wrote this in sympathy with anyone who has been oppressed by big government."

MAMET: And then the hope of drawing the attention of this terror to the fair minded.

RUSH: Well, look, I appreciate your time, and thank you again. Thank you again for yesterday, for the hit on the newsletter, and best of luck with your book, and we'll chat soon. Testify brother! Testify!

RUSH: That's David Mamet, noted screenwriter and playwright -- and there's much more of that, obviously in different directions and even a little bit more depth, in the upcoming issue of The Limbaugh Letter newsletter. It's the most widely read political newsletter in the country.

RUSH: "Utility giant American Electric Power said Thursday that it will shut down five coal-fired power plants and spend billions of dollars to comply with a series of pending Environmental Protection Agency regulations. The company's dramatic plan to comply with the regulations could give Republicans and moderate Democrats ammunition in their ongoing fight against EPA's efforts," that's Obama's efforts, "to impose new regulations aimed at limiting greenhouse gas emissions..." So Obama, to the San Francisco Chronicle Editorial Board, promises to put the coal business out of business by making it impossible to do business.

"Yeah, I'm not going to stop you from starting up a coal fired plant but you'll go bankrupt doing it." That's 2008. Three years later his EPA has instituted regulations that make that real. So here comes the first coal energy company shutting down five coal plants. How many jobs are involved here? The story doesn't say. Just shutting down, folks. Six hundred? Six hundred people will lose their jobs just because this giant, American Electric Power, is going to have to shut down five coal fired power plants -- and even beyond that, spend billions of dollars to comply with the new regs. Now does somebody want to argue with me about this not being intentful, purposeful?

Try this: "Unless shares recover sharply on Friday," this is Wall Street, "they are on track for their sixth straight weekly loss, the longest down series since the fall of 2002," and the DJI dropped. I don't know if it's still below 12,000; it's flirting with the 12,000 level. It's been below it, then hovering just above it, but regardless: It's plummeting. Now, let me take you back. Do you all remember in 2009? In the first six months, Obama does the stimulus and there's a great fear -- the political analysts on our side have this great fear -- that the US economy is resilient; that the American people will not be held down; that despite all of this, the economy will, on its own, rebound and credit will accrue to Obama that he doesn't deserve.

I remember Republican consultants and pundits and analysts all over television worried sick about that, and we all knew Obama's policies were destructive, but the economy, "Look, Rush, you know it's going to happen: There's going to be a recovery and it will be timed in such a way that it will help Obama electorally. It'll either happen late 2009 or 2010 for the midterms -- or at the latest, in late 2010, we're going to start seeing an uptick right in the '12 election and Obama's gonna benefit." I remember people worried about this. The reason they said this is because historically that's been true. Historically, the United States economy has been resilient. It does not stay in recession this long if left alone. The US economy, if left alone, recovers from these recessions. The '90 '91 recession, remember?

There were two recessions in the early '80s, and we came out of both of them in a period of time that's predictable and that's why people were predicting that the recession that we're in now would end -- it would bottom out -- and the trends toward recovery would begin. It hasn't happened, has it? So even what everybody acknowledges as the natural resiliency -- the buoyancy, if you will; the dynamicism and the power of the American economy -- hasn't shown itself. Where is it? What's reality? The reality is that we are headed down. We're talking about now double dip recession. Some people are starting to talk about a genuine depression. If the US economy would have just been left alone, it would have rebounded from this months ago and we would be on the positive track, and people would be worried to death that Obama's leftist policies would be getting the credit for it.

This was the great fear. The great fear was that socialism would appear to be the answer. Guess what, folks? We're seeing right in front of our faces here that socialism, Marxism -- whatever you want to call it, Obamaism -- is the cause, because the reason this country has not rebounded in its normal and timely dynamic and resilient way is precisely because of policies initiated by this administration to prevent that recovery. You know and I know (to just say it again): If this economy is just left alone -- you know, don't start tinkering with things in any way; don't lower taxes, don't raise taxes; leave it alone it rebounds. We should be historically showing an uptick now. We should be on a positive track, but we are not.

This is a willful and purposeful suppression of the US economy, and all the evidence confirms it. I don't even think that it's arguable. And you know the word "failure," people are starting to bandy that word about more and more now. Even Mitt Romney in his announcement said, "The President has failed the American people." I said that I hoped he would fail and he has, if failure is defined by policies improving the US economy. If the measure of truth is policies designed to suppress our recovery, to weaken this country, to hand it off to somebody else in a very weakened state, then he succeeded. So it depends on how you define "success" as to whether or not Obama has failed. I said, "I hope he fails," because I knew that this, what we have now is exactly what he intended. As a liberal.

Not even him personally. It was not based on Obama personally. There were some things maybe. You can't avoid what he learned from Reverend Wright, Frank Marshall Davis and Bill Ayers. But still, he was an uber leftist, a liberal. It means something. It means something very specific -- and I don't want liberalism, because it never does work. Liberalism fails every time it's tried. It's historically proven, and that's why I wanted the country to be better than Obama. I wanted the country to be more dynamic than Obamaism is. I wanted the country to survive, and that's what I meant by hoping Obama fails. Because the socialist agenda is not this country. A socialist agenda fails everywhere it tries. I said that I hoped he would fail because if he succeeded, the nation would be in deep trouble, and we are -- and everybody knew back then what I meant, even those who acted outraged, shocked and stunned.

"Limbaugh's really done it now! We know he's capable of some of these over the line statements, but this! This! This is just unacceptable."

Remember all that? We had Republicans and even pundits in a mad dash for a microphone. "I want the president to succeed. We all want our president to succeed." No! No, my friends, we didn't. We don't want socialism to succeed, but it is. You just stop and think. You know and you know that I know that the resiliency, the dynamicism of this country is such that left alone we're already coming out of this, and we would be on an uptick, but we aren't because there's a giant boot on the throat of the country -- and it's only going to get worse. The Bush tax cuts will eventually expire. New tax increases associated with Obamacare will kick in. Obamacare in general. There's nothing on the horizon. If Obama remains President, nothing on the horizon that indicates an improvement where we are. Nothing, folks. Not a thing.

RUSH: Ron, Birmingham, Alabama, the free side. Great to have you on the program.

CALLER: What I'm calling about today -- and I don't hear anybody talking about, Congress or the President -- is with all the upheaval in the Middle East and Islamists taking over the area over there, what do you think is going to happen? Will they tell us $500 a barrel for oil or no oil?

RUSH: Yeah. You know, I'm glad you brought that up, because OPEC has basically said, "We're doing nothing right now to change our production quotas." So we're guaranteed $100 a barrel for the foreseeable future, and you're right: If the OPEC guys wanted to say, "It's 300 bucks a barrel," they could. The problem with doing that, Ron, is the minute OPEC comes along or any other cartel comes along and says, "Oil is $300 bucks a barrel," somebody is going to come along and say, "Oh, no, here it is for $200." OPEC is not the entire oil market. They do not their cartel does not -- run all of the oil market. So there would be people coming in trying to take advantage of that, but they do control a lot of the supply.

But the question is relevant in the sense that it could be used as a weapon, as an economic weapon -- and if you couple that with the ammunition that this regime is already using on the US economy? These are serious times. Really. People instinctively know it, but still in most people there's a grain of, "It can't happen here. This is the United States of America. Really, it's going to get better. It's going to bottom out. We're going to start rebounding. It's going to happen." There are a lot of policies in place, folks, the purpose of which is to see to it that our economy doesn't rebound. This is the sad, scary reality. There are policies to do that, and more to come. Once Obamacare implements with all the massive new tax increases there. When the Bush tax cuts expire in 2013.

We're looking at, just with that, a top marginal tax rate of 62%. You can kiss job creation goodbye.

RUSH: Ann Coulter, welcome to the EIB Network. Where are you? Are you in New York today; is that right?

RUSH: Yeah, I know, and I gotta ask you about "Demonic." Who's "demonic"? The actual title is "Demonic: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America." Who were you thinking of when you came up with the title "Demonic," the girls on The View?

COULTER: (laughing) That would be one excellent example. I first got the idea for the book because I spend so much time around liberals, as you know -- on college campuses, for example; going to their TV shows -- and they do seem to exhibit mob-like behavior so I --

RUSH: Ann, do you mean...? In "mob," do you mean physical, literal mob-like behavior, or do you mean intellectual mob-like? What kind of mob behavior do you mean here?

COULTER: That's a great question, because it's both, actually. The first quarter of the book is on how liberals are a psychological mob. It has to do with their slogans, how they formulate arguments. They get a lot of slogans, whereas conservatives just don't speak in slogans and we don't understand slogans, and for good reason: It's always sort of glib and superficially appealing, but if you stop and actually think about it for five seconds, slogans never make sense. What does it mean to say, "You can't hug a child with nuclear arms," or, "Pro-choice, pro-child." It means nothing, but that is perfect for appealing to a mob. It's simple-minded. Gustave Le Bon, the father of groupthink, said, "Don't ever use logic with a mob. It confuses them."

RUSH: Gustave Le Bon. I want to ask you to explain who he is and how you came upon him, but your books are a series of many things, and one of them that I would say is, you're constantly trying to define and explain liberals to your readers.

RUSH: Do you foresee the day...? I ask this question because we're all in this in one degree or another. You know, I remain perplexed. We had, for example, eight years of robust economic recovery under Reagan, the eighties, and yet people have forgotten it. Liberalism is so easily seductive. You ever see the day where your books aren't going to be necessary, when people understand who liberals are and how they operate and why?

COULTER: Oh, that's a great question. I used to think, "Yes, someday we're going to persuade them," and every once in a while you feel like you're making progress. But, first of all -- as I now know from learning about mob psychology -- in the moments of a mob, a man and a mob, you can set 'em down, you can educate 'em, you can show 'em the facts, and you finally persuade that one liberal; and then you come back a few days later, and he's right back to spouting the same nonsense; and that itself is an example of groupthink. Having now covered in this book 200 years of the history of liberals, I think, "No, it will always be with us." Mobs are demonic, and they will always be with us. They've been with us for 200 years. The most we can do is warn peaceable Americans that mobs are dangerous.

RUSH: Well, Gustave Le Bon, you stumbled across him as your latest vehicle to try to explain to people how liberals operate, how they achieve or attempt to achieve their objectives. Give us a little historical review of him.

COULTER: Yes. Well, I have this idea in my head that liberals are a mob and so I just started reading everything I could find on mobs, groupthink, herd behavior, riots -- and I'd heard of Gustave Le Bon -- and then finally I read Gustave Le Bon's book, "The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind," and it was so clear, so beautiful; and of course he turns out to be the father of groupthink. He's the first one to notice the psychological characteristics of someone behaving in a mob. Not surprisingly, he was French since the first mob revolt certainly in anything resembling modern times is the French Revolution. I date the beginning of liberalism to the French revolution. Just page after page you read through this book, and it's liberals. It's all of their peculiarities. I almost went back and started inserting some of the other statements from the other books I had read into this book to show that it was more than Le Bon, but he was just so clear and so right. In fact, he was so good -- although the book is a warning about mobs -- both Mussolini and Hitler studied his book in order to learn how to incite mobs.

COULTER: Myth-making, contradictory thinking, creating messiahs and turning those who disagree with you into opponents, simple-mindedness, inability to grasp logic. You see a lot of this in Weinergate. It's funny, now when I watch liberals on TV, whatever they're doing, I think, "Oh, yeah, that's myth making, and that's contradictory thinking." Last night at the beginning of the Rachel Maddow Show she got a long segment denouncing, of course, in the middle of Weinergate: David Vitter, Senator from Louisiana. He is the only Republican ever caught in a sex scandal who didn't resign immediately or lose his reelection, but of course his scandal was very different from every other one I can think of. The DC madam released his name -- I'm sure there were a lot of Democrats on that same list but their names weren't released -- and what we found out was that seven years earlier he had gone to a prostitute twice; told his wife about it, apologized to her, confessed to her, confessed to God. She has forgiven him, the marriage had continued, and seven years later we find this out. As soon as his name, David Vitter's name was released from the DC madam's list he went straight out, apologized, admitted it; held a press conference. He's standing there with his wife saying, "I told her seven years ago. He didn't turn around and start denouncing the press and claiming he'd been hacked -- and after all of this, this on Rachel Maddow denouncing Vitter as if his sex scandal were somehow worse rather than less bad -- I mean, we do have forgiveness -- this Rachel Maddow concerned with, you know, the misogyny and the ugliness of David Vitter having visited prostitutes seven years before we found out, interviews as her expert interview on this Larry Flynt. He's your expert on misogyny here. (laughing)

RUSH: (laughing) Isn't that...? That kinda fits with Woody Allen at one point was held up as the poster boy for Democrat morality back in the early '90s when he ditched his wife for the daughter, for the adopted daughter. Now, would you say the opposition to Governor Walker in Wisconsin, that was a mob? ACORN's a mob; the Arab spring, all of these things that pop up that have mass movements to them. Social media are responsible, it is said, for what happened in Egypt and so forth. That's all mob-oriented. Is somebody organizing all of this stuff. Is there some grand council, Grand Wizard council knows how to manipulate the rank and file, turn the mob out, inform the mob, give it its marching orders and talking points?

COULTER: Yes. I mean, as it's described by historians, for example, who have reviewed various mob movements, it could be anyone. It's the person who shouts the loudest -- and, by the way, you've segued right from psychological mobs into literal mobs. That's part of what makes mob psychology so dangerous: There's always the threat of violence. In the, I guess the last third of the book I look at actual violence here in the United States in a 200-year history, and the violence in America -- political violence -- has always been committed by the left. Liberals keep talking about how terrified they are of Tea Partiers and conservatives and, ooooh, our violent rhetoric. Well, they're afraid of their own fears. That's what we're supposed to worry about, that they're afraid of something. We're afraid of them actually punching us, biting off a finger, or shooting us. Every presidential assassination attempt, for example, has been -- at least the ones that were political at all; some were just committed by pure nuts. The ones that had a political basis were all committed by liberals. Not a single conservative has attempted to assassinate a president, and there are about a dozen of them. Even at the recent Tea Parties and town halls, the only violence was committed by liberals including one liberal biting a guy's finger off.

RUSH: Right, but how would you say that the Tea Party's not a mob in the nonphysical sense? I mean, the Tea Party sprung up, they attended all these town hall meetings. It did effervesce from the grassroots, didn't seem to be any single leader or organizer. I'm sure the liberals who listen to this program in legion are probably shouting at their radios right now, "Hell, the Tea Party's a mob, the way she's talking!" What do you say to them?

COULTER: Well, a mob isn't just any assemblage of like-minded people -- you know, or every book club would be a mob. So, for one thing, there has to be violence or the prospect of violence and so just straight out of the chute you look at these Tea Party rallies, and they leave the parks that they gather in cleaner than when they showed up. But also it is the Tea Party actually is, in keeping with its name, more in the tradition -- or in the tradition, not "more in the tradition;" in the tradition -- of the American Revolution. These are people who are reading the Constitution, who are reading the Federalist Papers, who are making arguments. You know, I list about four dozen, three dozen slogans of the left in Chapter One. I don't know what the Tea Party slogan is. I've seen some signs that are relatively clever, most of the time -- usually, you know, anti-Obamacare -- "Read the bill," that sort of thing. There's no slogan for the Tea Party. There's no violence. It is an argument of ideas, whereas the Democrats are using the Rousseauian method of ginning people up by frightening them -- "They're gonna take your health care way! Here's Representative Ryan pushing an old lady in her wheelchair off a cliff" -- and conservatives are reading things and coming up with arguments. With Medicare and Social Security about to go bankrupt, they're look at a plan, not looking at slogans or pictures of a representative throwing an old lady off a cliff.

RUSH: By the way, welcome back. Ann Coulter is our guest for the remaining part of the hour. You make a point in the book -- you make a case in the book -- that since the civil rights movement of the sixties, the American people lost their natural, inherited aversion to mobs. Now, this is fascinatingly interesting to me because in my lifetime I can remember. Ann, the American people were livid at Kent State. They were livid at what happened. They were livid at the protesters of the sixties. They were livid! They had a total aversion to this kind of behavior. We've lost that aversion now. Now there's a reaction, it seems, culturally where we say, "Well, we must attempt to understand their rage." When did this happen and why?

COULTER: I think it's the civil rights movement because that was the first "mob," so to speak, a street protest, that was on behalf of a good cause. Every other mob there was no sympathy for. In fact, it was Shay's rebellion immediately after the revolution that caused us to become one country rather than 13 confederated states. People were concerned that if there wasn't one central national government there will be no controlling of mobs. Abraham Lincoln sends the troops in to New York City during the Civil War when, of course, Democrats rose up in a rabble and started lynching blacks. Abraham Lincoln crushes the mob, goes back, wins the war, and then he carries New York state. So there have always been these mob uprisings. The first time a mob uprising was on behalf of a good cause was the civil rights movement.

I contrast Martin Luther King with Thurgood Marshall, who suddenly has become sort of a hero for me. When I first read about him in law school he was just signing on to everything with William Brennan and I just thought he was another poopy-headed liberal. But I place Thurgood Marshall in the tradition of the American Revolution. He was making arguments; he was winning cases in court. He won Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 -- and, by the way, we never would have needed a civil rights movement if Richard Nixon had won the 1960 election rather than Kennedy. But these Democrats, because they always appeal to the mob -- and their mob at that time, at least part of it, including racist, segregationist Democrats -- the Democrats, both Kennedy and Johnson, kept dragging their feet on civil rights enforcement. So then you have Martin Luther King's movement.

That was much more in the French revolution tradition. Martin Luther King stages a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, after Bull Connor -- a Democrat who was an insane racist -- had already been voted out of office. First the good people of Birmingham eliminated Bull Connor's office, once they discovered they had an insane public safety officer. He ran for mayor and lost. The Kennedy Justice Department called King and pleaded with him not to stage his march anyway because Bull Connor was still a lame duck public safety officer. The blacks in Birmingham begged Martin Luther King not to stage the protest, but he did it anyway, sending in children against this insane racist Bull Connor. Images are broadcast around the world and this gave a big jolt to Martin Luther King's movement. People were sympathetic because it was a good cause, and now you'll notice liberals every time they run at you in the streets, every time they start smashing Starbucks windows, they say, "Oh, well it's the new civil rights movement!"

RUSH: Yeah. Well, what makes these people so easy to control? I'm down to about two minutes here but I'm always fascinated by this myself. Why are the Democrats or these mobs they use so easily controlled, so easily possessed? How are they able to organize so many people into this groupthink?

COULTER: Well, two things. First of all, look at who their voters are. They openly brag about having the least informed voters. They're very upset when Republicans and other people who don't want voter fraud request IDs simply in order to be able to vote. They want illegal aliens, they want felons, they want soccer moms, they want nonnative English speakers -- they have college kids -- so, you know, they have the most easily fooled, naive, and perpetually alarmed members of the country as their base; and secondly, I have a whole chapter on status anxiety and -- and how some people are really obsessed with what others think of them. And we call them liberals.

COULTER: I give a number of examples of that -- and that's why I think conservatives are, by and large, immune from that because they tend to believe in a real God. So it's an up and down relationship and you don't have to care what people around you think.

RUSH: Well, you're right about that. As I say: If we could get rid of that characteristic in people, worrying about what people think of them, we could come up with a good nominee.

RUSH: Ann Coulter. "Demonic: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America," is out since Tuesday, and we wish you the best of luck with it, and as always, thanks for your time here. You're great.

RUSH: Here's Bob in the Bronx as we hit the phones next. Bob, welcome to the EIB Network, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Thank you. Hey, Rush, I'm calling because you weren't on the air yesterday, but I had tuned into Chris Wallace's show on Sunday and Sarah Palin was the guest, and she just was phenomenal, phenomenal. And again, it shows you of course how the mainstream media twists and pulls the truth in what she says is, and they've been all over her for saying something about, "The British are coming," and Paul Revere's ride and everything else, and she has explained that that's exactly what happened, that she knew exactly what she was talking about. And here, Rush -- again, this is my comment, then I'd like to give you a question. But she is an intelligent, viable candidate if and when she does decide to run. I really feel that, again, the entire nation is being blackballed by what she is not compared to what she is.

RUSH: Is that an opinion you are giving or are you asking me if I think she's a viable candidate?

CALLER: Well, that is my comment, first of all, and then actually my question to you would be: If she were to run, do you think she would be a viable candidate to this Obama?

RUSH: They're trying to destroy her, but I just saw a poll somewhere. It's either Fox or MSNBC 'cause those are the two networks on in here right now --

RUSH: -- and this poll said that 41% of Republicans don't want her to get the nomination.

RUSH: I don't know what it is. I remember we had during the midst of this bus trip, a call from Vinny in Queens. I don't know if you heard it, but I got a little bit ticked off at Vinny 'cause Vinny was willing to throw her overboard simply because the media has successfully destroyed her.

RUSH: I'm running into a lot of woman who can't stand her. Women cannot stand her; they hate her. Republican women. I mean it is visceral and it's intensifying, and one of the things about this that does bother me is that we have people on our side say, "Rush, the media has destroyed her! I don't want to mess with somebody the media's already destroyed. She's guaranteed to lose. I love Sarah Pali, she's very right on, but the media's just destroyed her," aand when I hear people say that, I say, "Okay, well, what are you gonna do when they destroy Romney, and what are you gonna do when they destroy Pawlenty, and what are you gonna do when they destroy Santorum?

"What are you gonna do when they destroy Herman Cain?" At what point, if you're gonna sit around and wait for the Republican they don't destroy or don't try to...? "I don't know, Rush, there's nothing we can do about it. I mean, they set out to destroy her, and they have. She's damaged goods. It's just not possible. People hate her. She's too vitriolic, she's too polarizing and so forth." You know, what bothers me about it is that I'm just sick and tired of the media winning that way. Where is our side saying, "To hell with you destroying our side"? So it tells me that some people don't mind her being destroyed on our side, they just casually let it go, because they don't like her for one reason or another.

Now, this Paul Revere business. I happen to know, folks, a lot about Paul Revere. I happen to know a lot about this. Well, you will soon see why I know a lot about Paul Revere. I'm not stringing you along at all, and let me tell you this Palin thing with Paul Revere. To read about this is just fascinating, because she was right as far as it goes. Paul Revere started his midnight ride as everybody -- well, I can't say "everybody knows, but as most people were taught -- to warn, "The British are coming! The British are coming," and that happened? What did Palin do? She's out there, she comes out of the church, the press, talking about Paul Revere? Oh, yeah, Paul Revere. He warned the British. He warned the British.

"They're not gonna take our guns away from us, those bells are gonna be ringing out there." People said, "Oh, my God, what an idiot! They think Paul Revere was warning the British! My God," and they went nuts. Now, what happened was that Paul Revere got captured. Paul Revere was captured -- and while in captivity, he did warn the British, "You ain't gonna get away with this. We know that you're here. Everybody knows. You're not gonna be able to disarm us. The bells are gonna be ringing out there, and you're not gonna surprise anybody." So she was right. So they went to the historians, the highly respected historians, and to read this was just as humorous as it could be.

The historians in Boston that the news media found had to begrudgingly admit that she was right, but as one of them said (this is classic), "It wasn't due to scholarship. Mrs. Palin accidentally got this right." They made it very clear that very few people really know that Paul Revere, in fact, did warn the British after he was captured. They think that she was either drunk or tired or whatever because they believe she actually said, "I can see Russia from my house." They believe she told Katie Couric. They believe this. So they think that she committed a faux pas, that happened to turn out to be right, so they're saying, "Yes, yes. Actually she's correct about this, but it's not due to scholarship."

Meaning it's not because she knew it, it's because she just happened to say it. "She got lucky," in fact one of them said. "She got very lucky here in her response." If you look at the tape of Palin saying it, it's filled with Palinisms -- these Palinisms that rub people wrong. When she says, for example, "They're gonna be ringing those bells!" people think that's very unsophisticated to speak that way. "They're ringing those bells out there." But in fact the church bells were going to be rung and she was right. I'm not defending her. That's not the point of this. But when the story first hit you could just see it. The first version of it I saw is Andrew Malcolm, who I like.

He's got the blog at the LA Times, and Andrew Malcolm ran the story, and without saying it in his own words the implication (well, the inference as a reader) was clear "Uh-oh! Oh, my God, how could you possibly think that Paul Revere warned the British? My God, what an idiot! Oh, it's confirmed everything everybody ever thought of her," and you keep reading, you read the comments, and the last comment -- and at the time I saw this there must have been must have been 12 or 13 comments. The last comment was from a guy, "Actually, she's right. It happened, and she was right." The real story is that nobody knew it. Nobody knew that Paul Revere actually warned the Brits, too. Nobody stopped to think of when he got captured.

The story of Paul Revere as far as most people know is he's riding through town, warning, "The British are coming! The British are coming," and that's it. They don't know he got captured. They don't know the story of what he did in captivity, how he did warn them. So it was just funny to watch all this fall out. The critics laughing at her had no clue themselves what had really happened. Yeah, "The regulars are coming," and then when they went to the scholars, the scholars begrudgingly, "Yes, Mrs. Palin is right about this, but it wasn't due to scholarship," meaning, "She's still an idiot, she's always an idiot, and this doesn't mean that she's not an idiot. She just lucked into this. Damn it!" The whole thing was just to me hilarious as it could be. It is what it is with her. But, my friends, in terms of whether she get the nomination, I have no clue. All I know is that when I run into more and more Republican women, the hatred for Sarah Palin is visceral. They just don't like her. I don't pretend to understand it.

Well, I know I explained it once, but it's a form of irrationality that I can't hold onto for very long. Can't.

RUSH: You remember there was another occasion where Palin was laughed at and mocked. She was talking to a Tea Party crowd and about waiting for the November election to come up, you know, party like it's 1773. And of course the media went nuts, "Oh, yeah, 1773, yeah, Sarah Palin, Declaration of Independence, she doesn't even know what year the Declaration --" and, of course, 1773 was the year of the Boston Tea Party. She's talking to an audience of Tea Party people, 1773 is a relevant date. Again, she knew what she was talking about. The smart people had no clue what she was talking about and assumed she's an idiot.

So when you start out assuming somebody's a blithering idiot, everything she says is going to end up being a blithering idiot. And again, these are the smart people. I've had had so many people tell me they think that she's stupid. But the only reason they think that is because of what they're being told by these pompous asses in the media who hold themselves out as the arbiters of smart and who themselves are brain-dead ignoramuses when it comes to basic facts. And of course Obama thinks Hirohito was on the deck of the USS Missouri signing the surrender treaty with MacArthur, and he thinks there are 57 states. Well, those are just slips of the tongue.

RUSH: I have a quick question. I just asked Snerdley this, folks. If there were a modern-day Paul Revere, either on his bus or a horse riding through town, what would he be shouting? The original Paul Revere, the Redcoats are coming, the British are coming, what would the modern day Paul Revere be saying? (laughing) It wouldn't be the ChiComs are coming. It wouldn't be the Russians are coming. What would it be?

RUSH: Paul in Charlotte, North Carolina, great to have you, sir, on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Yeah, I think you can use a historical device or historical tool or analytics tool used by historians to actually prove that Sarah Palin didn't make a slip of the tongue, right? Rhetorical criticism you start with what was said, then take it to its larger context. What she said was Paul Revere warned the British, et cetera, et cetera, about the forthcoming doom. Well, her entire tour, bus tour has been about throwing off government, the shackles of government, and basically being a warning to Americans about the greatness we had and what's coming, to throw off the shackles of government. So the fact she said what she said fits perfectly inside of her overall thematic bus tour, which kinda makes her kind of like Paul Revere.

RUSH: Well, yeah. The purpose of the bus tour has been to expand people's historical knowledge of the country as well, and particularly her family's. Now, she happens to go into a place where they tell her about the midnight ride of Paul Revere and everything that happened. So she comes out, and the press, as always, eager to trip her up, (paraphrasing) "Well, what did you learn, Ms. Palin?" "Well, Paul Revere, warned the British, gonna ring those bells," the press goes nuts. She probably had just been told by the people at the museum or wherever it was that she went, the historical site, what had happened, either she didn't know it before she went or did, whatever, it was probably something she had learned, been taught at whatever point, was repeating it.

But because of the arrogance of the media who think they know it all and you start with the premise she doesn't know anything, so whatever she says immediately you chalk it up, she's stupid and uninformed and so forth, because that narrative or that template for her is already out there, so it is what it is. And she turns out in this case to be right, but they just can't handle that, so her being right wasn't due to scholarship. She just got lucky, it's what they say, she just got lucky.

RUSH: Here's Pam in Rolla, Missouri. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: I wanted to talk to you a little bit about one Republican woman's perspective on Sarah Palin.

CALLER: I'm not couple years older than Sarah and I have only four kids, but I think with Sarah Palin for me, there is this transferred feeling of mistrust or misgiving which probably has been shifted onto her instead of being placed on the party structure or the GOP hierarchy, which might be its proper place.

RUSH: What do you mean, "misgiving"? What do you m ean mistrust, misgiving? What do you mean? For her?

CALLER: Well, have you ever been through the conventional, the caucus convention process as a delegate, Rush?

CALLER: Okay. Well, I would say that my experience in 2008 was definitely not that it was gonna be grassroots or bottom-up, as I had hoped, but that it turned out to be a lot of top-down.

RUSH: Okay, I got 30 seconds. How does that affect Palin? What does that have to do with her?

CALLER: Well, Sarah Palin was felt to be acceptable by the GOP hierarchy, as a running mate for a man who, granted, has a recurrence of a very bad type of cancer -- a man in his seventies -- and so what was it about Sarah Palin that these back room kingmakers thought was very acceptable? Did they think that she was really aligned with their ideology or that she could be easily swayed over to their ideology? It's maybe not so much that I, you know, have anything personally against Sarah Palin, but I just wonder. These people don't make these kinds of decisions for no reason at all, and I wonder why.

RUSH: You know, that's interesting, because I don't remember the hierarchy of the Republican Party liking her at all from the get-go. That's what I remember. Gosh, I wish I had more time with you, but I don't.

RUSH: Yeah, I remember the GOP hierarchy being shocked about Palin. I'm gonna tell you this, though: If she runs and if she gets the nomination, she's gonna end up being the one to beat. You mark my words on this. All this stuff notwithstanding.

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 #182	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	June 12, 2011