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).

You may have heard of Anthony Weiner and seen photo of his lovely wife, Huma Abedin, chief of staff to Hillary Clinton. So far, I have only seen this by one source, but the Muslim Brotherhood has a secret women's division - known as the Muslim Sisterhood or International Women's Organization (IWO). Huma’s mother is a part of this organization (which is apparently well-known in the Muslim world). There are more connections of her family to Muslim infiltration throughout the world. Do you recall the past, when reporters got an inkling of this and they chased down these stories? Now, they all too busy reading Sarah Palin’s emails.

Classified in Weasel Zippers under “What could possibly go wrong?” UN scientists are investigating global warming solutions, which include seeding the ocean with iron, scattering heat-reflecting particles in the stratosphere, building towers to suck carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the atmosphere, and erecting a giant sunshade in space.

So far, 11 tunnels under the U.S.-Mexico border have been discovered this year. They are used to smuggle drugs, weapons and people.

Pentagon Police arrested one person Friday and closed several roads around the US Department of Defense headquarters after officers stopped a suspicious vehicle and discovered a backpack believed to contain ammonium nitrate. Police were searching for one, or possibly two, other people who fled the vehicle when it was stopped by police. Reports are sketchy, but it appears that this man was a naturalized US citizen who came to the US from Ethiopia.

More than two years after President Obama took office vowing to banish "special interests" from his administration, nearly 200 of his biggest donors have landed plum government jobs and advisory posts, won federal contracts worth millions of dollars for their business interests. Although this has happened under both Republicans and Democrats, this has been even more dramatic under the Obama administration, which repeatedly promised to change Washington.

Vice President Joe Biden vowed that staff would work “around the clock” on budget and debt negotiations. This means that there will be 3 meetings next week for 3 hours rather than normal 2.

President Obama made a 4 hour stop in Puerto Rico, pocketed $1 million in donations and left.

It is now the 1 year anniversary of ATF’s Operation Fast and Furious. They intentionally allowed guns to go from the United States into Mexico, which guns have been used to kill at least one border agent and who knows how many Mexican nationals. A year later, one would expect the hammer to come down and remove the idiot who thought this operation out. So far, all we have is a Congressional report which was just released condemning this operation.

Several Republican candidates debated on CNN last Monday, with no clear winner (in my opinion). CNN tried a few things; a shortened response time, but no bells or lights to stop the candidate (but the moderator did this instead, so it was no less irritating).

A lemonade stand outside of the U.S. Open was shut down by the authorities and the parents of the children were fined $500 (which fine, may be reduced, as more people hear about this).

Many of the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay have taken to throwing their own feces and urine at guards, to voice their displeasure. This has been going on for awhile. The latest thing is, the put their own excrement in their nose, while on a hunger strike, so that medics have to clean it out in order to feed them with a tube.

A terrorist group targeted a bank in Islamabad the week because its floor tiles and their design were strikingly analogous to the sacred name, Allah. Since the bank did not change these tiles after complaints to its management. A suicide bombing attack against the bank was the end result of this disagreement.

The pro-life pledge signed by Bachman, Gingrich, Paul, Pawlenty and Santorum Cain, Johnson and Romney did not sign it.

A judge in Corpus Christi, Texas sentenced Rosalina Gonzales to 5 years probation for a felony charge of injury to a child for what prosecutors had described as a "pretty simple, straightforward spanking case." They noted she didn't use a belt or leave any bruises, just some red marks. "You don't spank children today," warned Judge Jose Longoria. "In the old days, maybe we got spanked, but there was a different quarrel. You don't spank children."

Apparently, the 2^nd issue of Foreskin Man, a superhero who is against circumcision, has just come out. He is a creation of Matthew Hess, who got the anti-circumcision measure on San Francisco’s ballot.

President Barack Obama, helping to explain the devastating unemployment numbers: "There's some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers...You see it when you go to a bank and ... you use an ATM, you don't go to a bank teller. Or you go to the airport, and you're using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate"

Obama report: "U.S. forces are playing a constrained and supporting role in a multinational coalition, whose operations are both legitimated by and limited to the terms of a United Nations Security Council Resolution that authorizes the use of force solely to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under attack or threat of attack and to enforce a no-fly zone and an arms embargo."

DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, answering, at what point do you (the Democratic party under Barack Obama) own the economy: "We own the economy. We own the beginning of the turnaround and we want to make sure that we continue that pace of recovery, not go back to the policies of the past under the Bush administration that put us in the ditch in the first place."

Texas Congresswoman Shirley Jackson Lee: "Are you familiar with the Christian militants? Can one might say that they might possibly want to undermine this country because right now the right for women to choose is a Constitutional right but people disagree with it but here is an individual trying to undermine the protections that are given to women? Would you suggest that might be compared to trying to undermine this country? That's a possibility, is it not?"

Christopher Hahn, liberal business commentator on FoxNews: “[We need to] Return to the Clinton level of taxes to create jobs.”

Former Vice President Al Gore, who pays weak lip service to the cause of global warming in his personal life, wrote of Mitt Romney’s belief in global warming: "Good for Mitt Romney - though we've long passed the point where weak lip-service is enough on the Climate Crisis. While other Republicans are running from the truth, he is sticking to his guns in the face of the anti-science wing of the Republican Party."

Michelle Obama, of her teleprompter-toting husband: "See, what you all need to know about the President you helped to elect is that when it comes to the people he meets, Barack has a memory like a steel trap. He has a gift in that way, able to retain information, know more than those who are briefing him, asking critical questions, because all of those wins and losses are not wins and losses for him [but] they are wins and losses for the folks whose stories he carries with him, the folks that he worries about and prays about before he goes to bed at night,"

Senate leader Harry Reid: "My most harrowing, one of my most difficult, scariest experiences of my life, there was a time when - still do- Las Vegas had a minor league hockey team, and I was asked to go out in the middle of that ice and drop a puck," said Reid who noted he had been raised in the desert far from ice and snow. “To walk out on that ice was my only heroism in hockey, my own heroism in convincing myself I should go out there."

Chris Matthews, of Dick Cheney: “By the way, his name’s CHEE-nee, not CHAY-nay.”

NPR's “Newswoman” Andrea Seabrook reminisced about Anthony Weiner, calling him a "scrappy and passionate defender of heroes."

Luke Russert on NBC's Today on Weiner: "...this is really a sad ending, a lot would say, to what was once a bright, promising political career."

Barbara Walters on Weiner’s resignation: "In a way it's a tragedy. He's never had another job. What does he do after this?"

NBC’s congressional correspondent Kelly O'Donnell: "Anthony Weiner showed much of his strength as a Congressman in what he talked about just now in trying to talk about a message that was something other than this scandal."

NBC’s Chuck Todd added: "...he [Weiner] was serving as sort of the bombastic angry progressive, you know, trying to almost be the anti-Tea Party liberal in Congress taking on these folks. He'd become sort of a hero to the more progressive left, who were always upset that Democrats don't stand up for themselves. So here was the guy that had all this potential to become a huge political figure..."

Chris Matthews suggested that Anthony Weiner's resignation press conference was "sort of like the hanging of Saddam Hussein."

Speaking of Weiner, Huffington Post's Howard Fineman told MSNBC's Chris Matthews Friday, "I also don't think a lot of people loved the fact that he was on Fox a lot"

CNN host Fareed Zakaria, in a Time magazine article, wrote: "Conservatives now espouse ideas drawn from abstract principles with little regard to the realities of America's present or past."

Howard Dean, of the TEA party: “The values that they have sure aren’t the values of America today. But they are an ever-shrinking minority and they will get more dangerous, more desperate as they shrink because demographics are not on their side; neither is intolerance or hate the way to build a great nation...this is about building a stronger American and turning away from the hate-wing of the Republican party. Stop using fear and hate to motivate us...the future is ours; it does not belong to the TEA party, over 55, white and Christian.”

Chris Matthews: "The scariest thing, a guy of limited mental power, George W. Bush, talked this country [into the war in Iraq].”

Bill Maher: “Dick Cheney used to go out and shoot birds by the hundreds that were like in a cage. To me, that's a lot more psychotic than anything Anthony Weiner ever did.”

Chris Shelton, vice president of Communication Workers of America District 1: "Welcome to Nazi Germany! We have Adolf Christie and his two generals [Democratic state legislative leaders] trying to make New Jersey Nazi Germany. Are we going to let them?" He later added: “It's going to take World War III to get rid of Adolph Christie.” He has since apologized for these remarks.

Bill Maher of Governor Chris Christie: "He should be Governor Fat Fatty;..this guy is a Sumo wrestler."

Woman refusing to sign a petition to ban ATM machines: “Do you know how stupid that sounds?” I am only guessing she is a liberal.

Steve Colbert to Keith Olbermann: “Has it been painful in the last 145 days [of not being on the air] to live with the knowledge that Bill O’Reilly won? ...let’s face it, he jacked you so hard, you landed in Current TV.”

Kevin Nealon: "...there's a difference between tweeting pictures of your penis and [Christie] just not being able to control his weight." I am assuming that he is a liberal.

White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley on Obama’s bureaucratic regulations: "Sometimes you can't defend the indefensible."

Bill Jacobson's blogs: “The Washington Post thinks it's "harassment" to request Michael Mann's files from the University of Virginia (their Memorial Day editorial) but it's cool with requesting and obtaining and asking for citizen-journalists to go through 24,000 of the State of Alaska's emails involving Sarah Palin.”

Michele Bachman: "President Bachmann will allow you to buy any light bulb you want." I believe this is the year that incandescent bulbs will be phased out entirely.

Dennis Miller, commenting on CNN’s lame personal choice questions of the Republican candidates: “CNN or no TV in your house?”

John Layfield, FoxNews commentator: “Technology destroyed the entire outhouse cleaning industry.”

Heard on Forbes on Fox: “The Obama administration is pay for play on steroids.”

Degan McDowell, explaining the message of the many naked bikeriders this past week: “These folks just want to be nekid.”

Rush Limbaugh: "The welfare state destroys things and then claims to exist to provide a safety net for people whose lives they've destroyed."

Rush Limbaugh: "The redistribution of wealth does not cause wealth creation. This is plain old common sense."

Rush: "Weren't the failed policies of the past under Bush far better than the failed policies of today under Obama? I mean, for crying out loud, folks, let's be real. The failed policies of the past, George W. Bush, okay, unemployment 5% versus 9.1% with Obama. A GDP that was three times what it is today. A deficit that was minuscule compared to Obama's deficit."

Rush: "How far along the line are we that a lot of Americans view the primary purpose of the federal government is to equalize outcomes in life, not opportunity, but to equalize outcomes?"

Ronald Reagan: "The government is never more dangerous than when our desire to have it help us blinds us to it's great power to harm us."

Herman Cain at the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans (about a 20 minute speech, in all):

Neil Cavuto interviews Democrat Chaka Fattah about how we ought to fix the economy (excellent 8 minute interview which distinguishes between Conservatives and Liberals):

This is new to me—the ghost cities of China (dateline video and photographs and text):

Even though Jon Stewart tries to present himself as a moderate, turns out that he really isn’t (not much of a surprise):

Weiner's Huge Retirement Package (this is a legitimate news video, aptly named):

Massachusetts mom complains to FoxNews about survey her middle school children being quizzed on their sexual behavior (this fulfilled a grant requirment).

David Letterman's "Top Ten Questions to Ask Before Tweeting a Photo of Yourself"

Dennis Miller, on the candidate he wished to be at the Republican debate: “I wish Chris Christie were there. If you’re going to have someone driving the bus, they might as well look like Ralph Kramden.”

Jodi Miller: “The New York Times asked its readers to comb through 24,000 pages of Sarah Palin’s emails from when she was Alaska’s governor. 24,000 pages—that’s like 1 page for every reader who still reads the New York Times.”

1) Our retirement package is based upon the investment vehicle which we choose. Not so for Congressmen like, for instance, Anthony Weiner. He’s not investing his own money and it is not guaranteed by a good choice of investments, but guaranteed by us, the taxpayer.

2) It is very difficult for farmers to make any sort of money today. They may face crop failure for this or that reason; water may be withheld from them and destroy their farms; and there is a low profit margin. However, farmers who are subsidized by the government, e.g. those who get ethanol subsidies, make tons of money.

3) Whereas, Texas has some of the most remarkable Congressmen in the United States, like Ron Paul or my Congressman, Ted Poe; we also have people like Shirley Jackson Lee, who you may or may not know, but you have seen, because, at any public event, she will make sure to be in as many TV camera shots as is possible. Recently, at Peter King’s Muslim hearings, she warned about demonstrable Christian terrorism within the United States.

4) How about this for a debate format? 1 general topic per candidate is chosen. The candidates are permutated, in groups of 3 or 4, so each candidate comes up first at least once to speak to that topic. 3 minute time limit on each candidate (with some sort of flashing light to indicate they are coming to the end of their time). “Job creation—Mr. Santorum, you’re first up—go.” And then Rick Santorum talks for up to 3 minutes on that topic. 4 candidates are chosen, at random, to speak to that topic. Another 3 minutes at the end is given for disagreements, rebuttals and clarification. Not every candidate is going to talk for 3 minutes (Herman Cain, for instance, will answer many questions in 40 seconds). Let the moderator step in and interrupt a candidate when they stray from the topic. Post-debate interviews would certainly allow for candidates to elaborate in their views, or to touch on topics that they did not speak to.

5) Various realistic options to social security, medicare and medicaid need to be drawn up, in relative simple terms, and debated throughout the country. Democrats will never take the lead in this, so Republicans ought to draw up a half-dozen options, and suggest that Democrats do the same. No one ought to be exempt from FICA taxes, wherever they are set.

6) Since I have lived in Texas for the past 30 years, I cannot give a big thumbs up to Rick Perry. Now, quite obviously, no matter who is the Republican candidate, they will be preferable over Obama, who has no clue about the economy and no coherent foreign policy. Perry is not a bad governor, by any means; but I don’t see much done about school choice and I see a whole lot of waste when it comes to public assistance. On the other hand, Texas has been in good economic shape for a very long time. That is, if you want a job, you can find one in Texas. Some of our stores actually have help wanted signs in their windows (when I first moved here, there were help wanted signs virtually everywhere).

7) Walking away from a house, when you are able to pay for it, is a moral issue. As someone pointed out this week, this same person, when they drive a new car off the lot, ends up with a car that is “under water” for several years.

8) We need to get the federal government out of all welfare-related activity, e.g. food stamps, section 8 housing, and unemployment. Whatever sort of a footprint they have, this has to be done away with. Then we figure out Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare.

Federal spending under Obama is 25% of GDP, much higher than the historic 19% average.

Anthony Weiner will receive a $1.3 million retirement package for 12 years of government service. One commentator quipped that he had weiner-envy.

The Misery Index is unemployment + inflation rate. Under Obama, that is, 9.1% + 3.6% = 12.7 misery index. This is the highest misery index since 1983.

Overall, 184 of 556, or about ⅓, of Obama bundlers or their spouses joined the administration in some role. Nearly 80% of those who collected more than $500,000 for Obama took "key administration posts," as defined by the White House. More than half the ambassador nominees who were bundlers raised more than half a million.

Some Obama bundlers have ties to companies that stand to gain financially from the president's policy agenda, particularly in clean energy and telecommunications, and some already have done so. Level 3 Communications, for instance, snared $13.8 million in stimulus money. At least 18 other bundlers have ties to businesses poised to profit from government spending to promote clean energy, telecommunications and other key administration priorities.

Less than 6% of the Stimulus Law was spent on “shovel-ready” jobs. That’s $47 billion out of an $800+ billion bill. The media did a great job of telling us this (although, not much time was given to anyone to examine the bill before it was passed).

National Council of La Raza groups received $4.1 million in federal dollars in 2009. Cecilia Munoz, La Raza's senior vice president and lobbyist, joined the Obama administration in 2009 and now these groups receive $11 million.

Nancy Pelosi has a net worth increase of 62% this past year (which she attributes to her husband’s real estate dealings in this depressed real estate market).

Small businesses paid 81% of business tort liability costs in 2008. On average, a small business earning $1 million must spend $20,000 annually on lawsuits.

48% of respondents believe that Obama's policies are "somewhat" responsible for the condition of the economy,

Speaking of which, Politico, a so-called unbiased political information site, has written story after story attacking Palin (you can add them to the list of people who insanely blamed Palin, Beck, et al for the shooting of Gabby Giffords):

Speaking of which, Sarah Palin, as was noted here and elsewhere, used the term “blood libel” correctly and correctly spoke of the history of Paul Revere; and was still attacked. One famous pundit, as I recall, finally huffed, “Well, certainly she used the term blood-libel correctly, but there is nothing in her background which indicates that she knew that she was using it correctly.” (Or words o that effect).

Although an honest economic news story slips out from the Obama Press corps, mostly there is very little by way of honest evaluation of where we stand economically. Furthermore, I have yet to see an honest story on the debt ceiling (which would, if unchanged, automatically balance the budget without us going into default). Perhaps this is why some people can watch Jon Stewart or Steve Colbert, and think that they are getting a reasonable semblance of the news.

Yonathan Melaku was caught in Arlington Cemetery with suspicious material and a notebook praising the Taliban. ABC's World News and the NBC Nightly News described him as "Marine Lance Corporal," "the suspect" as a "Marine reservist," "a 22-year old Ethiopian American" and a "lone wolf." The descriptor they did not use: Muslim.

Do you recall newsman after newsman lamenting the loss of Mark Foley (or, any other Republican who has stepped down after a scandal)?

Both Politico and NPR have disparaged the current crop of Republican presidential candidates. An article in Politio said they couldn’t even carry their own states.

There is a new report by the AAA Solar Physics Division in Las Cruzes, New Mexico suggesting that sun spot activity on the sun will be reduced for awhile, bringing on a mini-ice age. FNC and FBN reported this story; ABC, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, and PBS did not. You think politics has not co-opted “science”?

Outgoing editor of the NY Times recently wrote: “However tempting the newsworthy havoc of a Palin presidency, I'm pretty sure most journalists would recoil in horror from the idea.” There’s no bias here in the news.

Since we have historical evidence that lowering tax rates across the board improves the economy, will you ever try that approach?

The recovery that we are experiencing is the slowest in history (apart from FDR’s); are you doing something wrong?

Social security and medicare are presented by Democrats as programs which do not have to be changed and as something which we have earned, since we paid into them. However, we have not paid in nearly what the average person will take out, which is, in the private sector, akin to a Ponzi scheme. It is going to be difficult for conservatives to prove that, the government simply cannot pay for medicare, medicaid and social security at their current trajectories.

The reason for these 2000+ page bills is so that unelected bureaucrats can further the liberal agenda via regulations, regardless of who is in charge of Congress or the White House. Right now, the financial sector and the health sector of our economy is potentially run by bureaucrats because of the Dodd-Frank Bill and Obamacare.

A no-brainer: Rick Perry will run for president and shake up the Republican race. He will be among the top 3 or 4 candidates.

There is a reasonable chance that this race could go for quite awhile before a real front-runner emerges (I don’t see Romney as a front-runner, as, right now, his popularity is based upon name recognition).

Conservatism is by today's standards closely associated with Edmund Burke's philosophy. I think it goes beyond that, in that it is more than merely a political doctrine. It is, in my estimation, a way of life, a code of conduct that associates one's property with one's liberty. For how can one truly be a free man when his property is not his to do with as he wishes? Russell Kirk, a man who has had a big impact on 20thcentury conservatism and has helped to shape it going into the new millennia was quoted as saying that conservatism is "the negation of ideology."

How is that `negation of ideology' translated into today's conservative movement? By its very nature, conservative is derived from the Latin verb, conservare, meaning to preserve or to save. So how do we arrive at what seems to be an oxy-moron such as `modern conservatism?' How does one combine 21stcentury thinking with a traditional approach to life and politics? It's not that difficult, really. I think Kirk was onto something important when he called it `the negation of ideology.' For if one is to look at the Statist's modus operandi, it is clear that amassing power and expanding the role of government in the life of the "masses" is his number one priority. It has been said that the far left, which is the controlling faction of the Democratic Party at this time, is part and parcel with big government. In other words, the Democratic Party needs big government for power and big government needs the Democratic Party to exist. It is a symbiotic relationship that is troubling to say the least and dangerous in the extreme.

To be honest, some Republican Presidents have increased government spending as well. Let's look at Ronald Reagan. He did increase government, but he did it in a slightly different way. Reagan dramatically cut the role of the Federal Government in domestic programs and shifted the focus to increasing the military. Of course, this is well known today to be one of the leading reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union. So this begs the question, did Reagan increase or decrease the role of government in our lives? On the domestic front, he dramatically decreased it, so the argument can be made that he was a small-government conservative. If one takes into the account the expanded size of the Federal Government due to the military build-up during the Reagan years then the answer seems less clear unless you remember one key factor, our Constitution. It specifically calls for the Federal Government to provide for the common defense; it does not call for entitlements, or other socialistic programs. So in retrospect, Reagan was definitely a true conservative. It is very unfortunate that we do not have a true conservative in the White House at this time.

Obama is the most pure statist in American history to ever occupy the Oval Office. If you look at the unprecedented spending undertaken by this administration, then you see that we are on a course of financial ruin.

To assail his critics, Obama promised to find $17 billion in cuts from his obscenely bloated budget. If it weren't so scary, it would be laughable. As Senator Judd Gregg (R N-H) said, "It's as if you took a teaspoon of water out of the bathtub while you left the spigot on at full speed."

But it actually gets worse. Projections from the General Accountability Office and the Congressional Budget Office show that spending on entitlements will outpace economic growth from 147% to a whopping 331% by 2030. That means with our Gross Domestic Productat 72%, we will be spinning our wheels as a nation to try and cover the unfunded liabilities of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, not to mention Obamacare which is a boondoggle of gargantuan proportions.

So what we, the American public have been stuck with is the bill for a pure Statist's Utopian dream. Can we afford this? Can our children or our grand-children afford this? The answer is no and it is only one of the many reasons why we need conservatism so much right now. So let us choose carefully who we decide to put into the Oval Office in 2012. We can ill afford another term of statism on steroids; and that is exactly what has happened. President Obama has led our country down the winding road of socialism. He made a promise to "fundamentally transform the United States of America," and that is unfortunately the one campaign promise he has attempted to keep.

Remember as we approach the presidential primaries, we need a candidate that will unabashedly fly the flag of conservatism. Choose carefully my friends, choose carefully.

At last count, the U.S. has 5.2 millionaire households, and somewhere around three million individual millionaires. That is by far the largest number for any country in the world. And the individuals represent about 1% of the population.

There is, of course, no ideal number of millionaires. All we have is public opinion. And a recent Gallup poll on wealth shows that Americans, for the most part, think the U.S. has just the right amount of millionaires.

When asked, "Do we have too many rich people in this country, just the right amount or too few," 42% (the largest number) said "just right." Another 31% said "too many" (down from 37% in 2007) and 21% said "too few" (up from 17% in 2007).

And the trend is turning slightly back in favor of the wealthy after the recession.

The key issue, though, isn't how many millionaires we have, but how much wealth do they have relative to the rest of the country. Fully 57% of Americans believe wealth should be more evenly distributed, compared with the 35% who believe the distribution is "fair."

Yet even on the distribution issue, America is looking more favorably on the wealthy. That 57% is down from 68% in 2008. In fact, the number of Americans wanting a more fair distribution of wealth is at the lowest point since 2001.

I have written several columns in the past on the topic of, how did we get into this economic housing mess. This book does a much more thorough job:

Shirley Jackson Lee warns about Christian terrorists (which is worth reading simply for all of the comments about her point of view):

Working “around the clock” (Biden’s words) is equivalent to 3 3-hour meetings this coming week.

RUSH: Chris Christie last night, in New Jersey on public TV, "Christie on the Line." This is why people like the guy. In a prerecorded videotaped question, a woman named "Gail" says (sniveling), "You don't send your kids to public schools, you send 'em to private schools. So I was wondering, Governor, why do you think it's fair to be cutting school funding to public schools?"

CHRISTIE: Hey, Gail? You know what? First off: It's none of your business. I don't ask you where you send your kids to school; don't bother me about where I send mine. Secondly: I pay $38,000 a year in property taxes for a public school predominantly in Mendham that my wife and I don't choose to utilize because we believe -- we've decided -- as parents that we believe a religious education should be part of our children's everyday education. So we send our children to parochial school. Third: I, as governor, am responsible for every child in this state, not just my own, and the decisions that I make are to try to improve the educational opportunities of every child in this state. So with all due respect, Gail, it's none of your business.

RUSH: Now, who talks to constituents that way? See here you have this snooty constituent (sniveling), "You don't send your kid to public schools. So who are you? You're rich! You send your kid to private school, so I was wondering: Why do you think it's fair to be cutting school funding from public schools? You don't send your kids there, nyah, nyah, nyah," and the governor -- talking to a voter! -- says (paraphrasing), "Hey, you know what? It's none of your business. Shut up. None of your business. I don't ask you where you send your kids at school so don't bother me about where I send mine." That's Chris Christie. I'm playing the sound bite just as an example here, but it's why people like the guy. "I spend $38,000 a year on taxes for a public school system I don't even utilize. It's none of your business what I do with my kids. It's none of your business where I send my kids. As governor, I've gotta pay attention to the education for every kid in this state. Where I send my kids is none of your business. I don't call you and ask you where you're sending your kids, so shut up."

RUSH: This is reminiscent of something that happened at Port St. Lucie, Florida, a few years ago, maybe two years now. "Georgia Woman Calls 911 to Report Delivery of a Wrong Order from Chinese Food Restaurant -- The Savannah-Chatham Metro Police released an audio recording of the recent call to local media to highlight the type of calls people should not be making to 911. 'I need the police. It's this Hong Kong restaurant type restaurant to go,' the woman said when asked what was the emergency. 'I ordered food and they done bring the wrong food. I done brought it outside and they ain't going to give me my money and I need my money. Uh-uh, I need to someone to handle this,' she said. 'They ain't going to do me in any kind of way.'"

So they release that call showing how stupid citizens are wasting their time and resources. In Port St. Lucie, they call 911 when they're out of Chicken McNuggets, is that what it was? In Savannah, they're calling 911 when the Hong Kong Chinese restaurant delivers the incorrect stuff. They call 911! Where does this start? Seriously, now. Where does a citizen get the idea you call 911 for a wrong food order? (interruption) That's exactly right: The government fixes everything. Exactly right, Mr. Snerdley: The government fixes everything. So if the Chinese restaurant screws you and doesn't bring you the egg foo young that you want -- they brought you the kung pao chicken -- and they won't change your order and give you what you want?

You call 911! If McDonald's doesn't have Chicken McNuggets? You call 911! Government fixes everything -- from Obama's stash. "Authorities say making this kind of call can result in help being delayed to those who really need it - and that can be the difference between life and death. While the woman could have been charged with abusing 911 -- a misdemeanor -- cops let her off with a warning." Too dumb to charge, basically. I mean, why would you want this person in your jail? You know, you're the cops. It's bad enough the dregs of society and human debris you see every day, why would you want this kind of idiocy in your jail or even in your court system? I don't know, folks. Some days you just have to wonder.

RUSH: I'm waiting on the audio of this. I don't have the audio yet. I gotta send it up to Cookie. "Authorities have released a 911 recording of a 41-year-old man asking for a canine unit to help him after not getting the correct change in a drug deal. In the Friday morning audio recording, Dexter White tells the dispatcher that a drug dealer did not give him the correct amount of narcotics during a purchase Thursday night." It's from May 5th of last month. (laughing) The government fixes everything, drug deal, you didn't get the right change.

RUSH: We go to Traverse City, Michigan. Hello, Pete. It's great to have you with us, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, I appreciate the points you're trying to make about people going to the government to try to solve all their problems, but I really don't think this 911 call is a good example.

CALLER: The one where the lady called 911 'cause she ordered and paid for one item and got another and then the retailer or the restaurant refused to make it right. In that instance I personally, if it happened to me, would want to take the person to court and I would call the police just to get a police report made out. Now, here's the problem. In most places in the US there's no outside numbers published for the police department for nonemergency numbers. The only choice is to call 911.

RUSH: Wait a minute, now, hold it just a second. We're talking here about a mistake. You order egg foo young and they bring you kung pao chicken or whatever and the first thing you want to do is call the cops?

CALLER: No, the first thing I want is to make it right with the restaurant manager, but in this instance he refused to deal with her. He refused to give her money back. He refused to make the order correct and basically told her she was out of luck. That amounts to retail fraud, doesn't it?

CALLER: I understand it's a low amount, and I understand it's not a serious thing, but still it amounts to retail fraud. And to pursue that matter in a court, I would want a police report on record.

RUSH: I don't think that this woman had one iota of that thought process firing with her neurons in her cranial -- I just don't think the woman was thinking a police report. I don't think she's thinking cops. She's just thinking, "I got screwed here and who's gonna make it right? I'm gonna call the number everybody knows." It's government. She doesn't know what government it is, believe me, I do think it's symptomatic of decades of promulgating this notion that the government makes everything right for you, if something's not right, that you're getting shafted, getting screwed, call the government, government will make it right. That's what this woman obviously thought.

CALLER: Well, we don't know that for sure. I mean I'll grant you that that is definitely within the realm of possibility. I just know that if I applied it in my instance, that's what I woulda done and the first thing I woulda done when I called 911 and they answered, I'd say, "This is not an emergency, but I do need an officer for a police report."

RUSH: You gotta be putting me on. The only way you're not putting me on is if you're a lawyer. You're telling me that a woman who wanted egg foo young and got kung pao chicken feels so aggrieved that she wants a police report?

CALLER: You don't know her economic condition, Rush. This might be the one time every two months that she gets to go out for a meal and reward herself where she's pinching pennies. We don't know 'cause neither one of us was there. I mean some of us go out to eat every night, yeah, we get something wrong, no big teal, nothing to it, but this might be her only time she goes out to eat once every two months. She orders a meal that she's looking forward to, the restauranteur brings her something else --

RUSH: You are insistent here -- (laughing) -- I love this. You insist here on trying to make an intellectual case for this woman calling 911 over egg foo young.

CALLER: I'm just saying, Rush, that we don't know the circumstances. What you're saying could be absolutely correct.

RUSH: No, we don't. But we use intelligence guided by experience. And we usually end up at the right place, but I appreciate it, Pete. Passionate guy there, Traverse City, Michigan. Pete, thanks very much.

CALLER: I just wanted to get back to the idea that the government is gonna fix all the problems and take care of all of us. I'm 25 years old. I got married last August, and I quit my job in October. I was coordinator and was responsible for giving out entitlements. So I am just kind of concerned about my generation because --

RUSH: Oh, oh, oh. You didn't want to have to... Oh, I got it. You didn't want to have to be the one giving away these entitlements?

CALLER: That and also my boss, in my opinion, was committing Medicare fraud -- you know, charges for services that weren't being given. But, at any rate, my biggest problem is that my colleagues... You know, me being unemployed, my colleagues and people my age have this idea that the government can save us and take care of us, and I kid you not: I've been told more than once that right now, since I'm unemployed, it would be a great time for me to have children. Because, you know, you get food stamps and all kinds of government entitlements.

RUSH: Well, you know, it's very seductive. There are people that push this, and I know that they're out there. You're describing it. I would urge you to resist it. Anybody who has just the slightest bit of ambition -- and you sound like you've got a lot. Anybody who has any desire whatsoever to be productive, to accomplish things, to live a life of achievement, contentment, and happiness: Do not fall prey to the notion that you are entitled to anything because you're an American citizen. It's gonna lead to a life of utter misery, disappointment, and dissatisfaction. You're never gonna reach your potential if your attitude is you're owed something by some entity in government. So my hat's off to you. I hope you're able to maintain the integrity here that you've got, because you'll be much better off for the rest of your life for having been that way.

RUSH: You know, folks, there are dead-end jobs and then there are dead-end lives -- and depending on the government for your life will lead you to a dead-end life.

CALLER: Hey, I'm gonna get to this real quick. I'm not gonna mention any names. I have received a letter from a lender -- a very large learned -- in the United States, and what they are proposing to me in this letter is that they would refinance my house even with zero equity at 125% of the value of the home. Now, I think everybody understands: Even if the interest rate went down, you've gotta understand that would put a person underwater.

CALLER: Well, here, let me continue one more thing. What they're doing is they're doing is in conjunction with the home affordable refinance program which is HARP. Now, when you lose that home, here's my question: Who owns it, the lender or the government?

RUSH: What they're trying to do with this... In fact, I got a note from a friend of mine in the banking business after listening to yesterday's program when we were talking about this Wall Street Journal piece --

RUSH: -- in which the focus was, "Hey, it's not what we don't know policy-wise that's retarding growth; it's what we already do know. It's not so much uncertainty over what's coming; it's a problem with what already exists in terms of Obama policy," and the point that he made to me was that you can do everything in the world, but until there is consumer demand for anything, you're not gonna have any kind of economic growth. So offering you that deal, they're trying to get you and any number of people to take it so they can illustrate that there's some demand going on in the market.

RUSH: No, no, don't get me wrong. There's demand in the marketplace. There's demand for iPad. There is demand for iPhones. (There is demand for Two If By Tea.) But there is not a demand for borrowing money. We're talking about investment in business growth, large or small, but primarily small business growth. Remember, now, we had the piece in the Wall Street Journal (gosh, the days are running together here) either yesterday or the day before, and it was a brilliant point. Everybody says that businesses are waiting to hire people or to invest in growth in other ways because they don't know what's coming down the pike policy-wise with health care or taxes. There's uncertainty. And this guy's point was: Yeah, that's true, but there's also a lot of certainty over how rotten current policies are.

It's a double whammy. There's uncertainty over what's down the pike, but the devastating reality that the policies we currently have -- that this administration has put into place -- are not conducive to growth of any kind. So my good friend who still dabbles in the banking business but that was the primary business, sends me this note and says, "I think that too many pundits forget the intelligence of the American consumer. Business is not going to expand, invest, or grow without demand. Demand was slowed down by the consumer starting in 2007 as they saw the absurdities of the mortgage market," and this friend of mine has two sons.

He said, "They played the refinance game constantly, and the mortgage brokers discounted their fees because they were repeat customers -- and although only 3% defaulted, my sons began thinking of selling and monetizing their gains as they realized this ever-increasing valuation couldn't continue. They're just mere examples of a larger sample of Americans who, with each refinance of their home, took on more debt at a slightly lower interest rate but usually with a slightly -- very slightly -- increase in monthly payments. Suddenly, they took stock and they started to stop spending on other things. Bammo! Obama is elected. This same category of American smart consumer really pulled the plug on spending and withdrew from the consuming market, even though some of them voted for him."

But even at then, it was not really a vote for Obama in '08 as it was so much a vote against Bush. You know, just a vote for "change" coupled with the empty canvas Obama was. You could paint him to be whatever you wanted him to be. So now you hear the left-wing pundits from Paul Krugman to Robert B. Reich get on businesses: "Hey, why don't you start loaning money? You're sitting on all this cash! Why don't you do something. Hire people," as though, "Yeah, okay. That's all it takes." But the point is, there isn't any demand. Before a business is going to go borrow money, there has to be consumer demand for the product.

Likewise, before somebody is going to ask for a loan to grow a business, there has to be a demand for the product or service provided that business -- and if there isn't, then all the rest of it's academic. That has been the problem. You know, there is disdain for the American consumer throughout all levels of elite political circles -- Republican, Democrat -- and of course in Washington. The elite look at flyover country as flyover country in every aspect of their lives, and they do not understand (or they do not factor) the real sophistication and intelligence of the American consumer when it comes to demand. You can sit there and demand that the banks start loaning money or demand that businesses start hiring people, but if there isn't any demand on the part of the consumer?

The consumer will tell you when there's a recovery going on, and the reason I know that there's no recovery going on is that there isn't any demand. There's demand for a few items (as I say: iPhones, iPods, and now Two If By Tea), but there's not a demand for growing businesses. There's pent-up, frustrated desire for demand. So all of this relates to the last caller we had. He gets this note from a lending institution offering 125% value, blah, blah, blah, at no interest rate or whatever. They're just trying to create demand, to make it look like there's consumer demand because they do know that with the illusion of consumer demand then they can then do stories on the illusion of an economic recovery taking place.

"The consumers are starting to now overcome the fear and beginning to take the risk," when it really isn't happening. Reality is what it is, and there are a lot of people who wish to ignore it because the consumer is not the smartest guy in the room. The consumer is always the dupe. The consumer is always the guy... In the eyes of the elite, the consumer is who you trick with your advertising plan. The consumer is who you trick with your marketing plan. The consumer is who you trick into voting for you or what have you. There's a disdain that is present in looking at the consumer. That's why all this pressure on businesses: "Hey! Hire people!" Things don't happen in a vacuum.

RUSH: Dan in Raleigh, North Carolina, welcome to the EIB Network. Great to have you with us, sir.

CALLER: Thank you, sir. I want to use the housing scenario as just a microcosm of the overall problem. Regardless of the mortgage company or the bank and the regulation allowing no verification for qualification, regardless of all that, it came down to an individual at some point had to sign his name on the contract stating that he made money. Regardless of the mortgage guy saying you have to come up with 10% down if you want this $250,000 house because you only make X. If you made Y you wouldn't have to come up with any money. Well, that individual had to make the choice at that point to lie about it to get the house that he couldn't afford. So at a $200,000 house -- and this is broad strokes -- becomes worth $300 or 400,000. But the house (unintelligible) been at $400,000 because the income was never there. Now there's exceptions to people --

CALLER: Well, the point is the problem isn't the government -- hold on for a second -- the government's just a symptom of the people. I was considering running for Congress --

RUSH: Okay, I know philosophically what you're saying, people get what they want, and so forth. In this case, yeah, they lied, taking lessons from the government. Even philosophically with all due respect I disagree with you. They showed up in the first place to lie because they were lured in there with a promise they'd get money knowing full well they had no ability to pay it back.

RUSH: Let me go back to the previous caller. I understand the point he was making. He was saying, "Look, you can talk about the government being involved in the housing mess all you want, but it wouldn't happen if people hadn't-a shown up and lied on their applications." I get his point. His point is about these people's avarice, their desire for a quick buck, their desire for wealth. I think he's talking, in a lot of cases, about "flippers." There was a lot of in the housing market: Go in and buy and sell it real quick and try to take advantage of the uptick in the market. What he was saying was that the avarice of these people that were lying on their applications drove the price of housing up artificially, and the thing that you have to keep in mind...

I understand that people want to defend the government here and I'm sure part and parcel of what he was gonna say to me is, "Look, you're always talking about personal responsibility. How come, when it comes to the housing mess, you want to treat all these people that showed up to buy houses when they didn't have any money to pay back mortgages as victims?" It's a good question, but the reason is the government wanted these people to lie! Read the book "Reckless Endangerment." I have read it; I recommend it to you. It's a New York Times writer explaining all of this. Folks, this whole subprime and even lending outside the subprime arena was a giant scam rooted in -- on the surface -- social justice, fairness.

"Everybody should have a home, the American dream;" and under the surface it was get rich quick for people that worked at Fannie Mae, to an extent Freddie Mac, and people that worked on Wall Street. But my point is that these people walking in to get a loan (subprime or otherwise) yeah, okay, some of them lied. They wouldn't have walked in the door in the first place if the government hadn't wanted them in there. Remember, the government was demanding that lending institutions loan money to people who were not qualified. The government wanted people in there borrowing money, and they didn't care if they lied. In fact, that is more true than you can possibly understand. They didn't care if they lied. They didn't care if they lied.

In fact, it helped out if they did. There weren't any requirements in the first place. Even Obama (I'm blessed with a great memory) told La Raza that he knew most poor people were tricked into getting mortgages they couldn't afford, and that was being said because at the time when all the excrement hit the fan here, of course, it was: Blame Wall Street, blame the bankers, blame the fat cats. The government was largely responsible for this -- just like they were largely responsible for the levee failures in New Orleans and Katrina -- all of a sudden become spectators. "Why, what happened here? Why, we had no idea this was going," and yet they conduct all these investigations, exempting themselves from the inquiry.

So you focus on the bankers, focus on Wall Street people, and you turn them into "predatory lenders" when it was the government that got the people in the door in the first place! Then they're telling these, "Yeah, we knew you were tricked! You were tricked into getting mortgages you couldn't afford." Every time I heard Obama say that, I about blew a gasket. Because people were not "tricked;" they were promised -- and it's a huge difference, and it's why we're sitting here in this mess today. People were encouraged to go assume loans that they couldn't pay back. I know you think that makes no sense. It doesn't make any sense, but there were all kinds of ways that the lenders were able to make money. I discussed this at great length yesterday.

There were all kinds of ways they were able to make money without the income stream of mortgage monthly repayments and send it down the road -- and, remember, for the first two or three years, people were making their payments. They had these adjustable-rate mortgages and finally the excrement hit the fan, and we all know what happened when they couldn't make the payments. They either walked out or were allowed to stay in the house. Now, another problem that nobody really addresses is that just like with the costs of medical treatment, the government's involvement in housing simply ratcheted up the cost of housing to the point where it's still not where it ought to be in relation to people's ability to pay.

We are witnessing in the housing market exactly what happened in the health care industry. I'm sure you've heard the stories of people my age telling you that when we were kids you went to the doctor, they sent you a bill at the end of the month, and it was totally affordable. There was no such thing as insurance. I mean, even if you had to go to the hospital for surgery, you worked out a deal; you had a monthly payment structure, and you paid it back. The whole notion of insurance and massive costs didn't happen 'til the government got involved. Hello, Medicare -- and then later on, Medicaid. Now the same thing's happening in the housing market or has happened a long time. So the government's getting involved.

Now, folks, throughout our nation's history, you've always heard of the "starter home." Allowing for geographical anomalies (real estate values in places like San Francisco in the eighties, California and Boston, were over the top and made no sense whatsoever), for the most part throughout the country and throughout our history, the average cost of a house -- a starter house -- has been solid as a rock. I can't remember the figure but it's always been around $200,000 in today's dollars. In real dollars. The people who were able to plop down 20% for a down payment was a steady percentage of the workforce who were able to buy a home because the price of a home was pretty constant. That has changed, and now the whole notion of a starter home for most people is out of the realm of affordability.

The housing market is not gonna be normal until the price of housing normalizes, and it still has a long way to go -- and the biggest obstacle to that happening is the government being involved, just like they got involved in health care and started distorting values in any number of ways, either with subsidizing via FHA or subsidizing via subprime or what have you. Even if you want to claim that they had "the best of intentions," I don't care. The end result once again was to make a mess. What was the story yesterday? The housing situation in this country is as bad as it was during the Great Depression -- and this is after Obama has had how many programs to help people with their mortgages, how many programs to keep people in their homes?

The more the government gets involved -- and it's not just because of these people running the government. It's just structurally, the government does not facilitate efficiency. It does not lower the cost of anything. It does not improve the efficiency of anything. It's, by definition, a series and a maze of bureaucracies made up of people who have to construct reasons to be employed. "This regulation must be followed. That department must be visited. This agency must approve." It's a never-ending cycle, and it goes on -- and there's value added at every level to the point that real value of whatever you're talking about is distorted. If this ever happens to hotels, we're sunk. It's happened to health care, and now it's happening in housing. It's just a heartbreaking shame out there, is what it is.

RUSH: Here is Jim in Boiling Springs, South Carolina. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: You were talking earlier about the lending, and I'm an appraiser here in South Carolina, real estate broker and a former real estate developer, and I price commercial and residential.

CALLER: And I also deal with the mortgage market since my daughter works for a good friend of mine, there's no longer anything as a mortgage broker. The federal government made it illegal for mortgage brokers to be in business in April, and he's a direct lender. But what I called to tell you is they are still making loans hot and heavy to unqualified people.

RUSH: I know. I did not know that until I read that in this book. I thought the process had been buttoned down, but it hasn't, you're right.

CALLER: Paul Revere, you are. I gotta tell you, man, it's so depressing out here for those of us who are striving to be Americans, and it's such a battle every day --

RUSH: I know. It is heartbreaking because we're watching it happen right in front of our eyes, and people are asking, "What's happening to our country?"

CALLER: I go to somebody's house, I appraise their house, and I pray, I pray to God they don't have a shotgun, because when they find out what the value of their house is worth since what's-his-name got in the White House and it's worth 60% less than what they thought it was worth, man, they want to kill me. I mean I'm not joking, either.

RUSH: How many of these people that you're talking about actually bought a house because they really wanted to or because they were told or advised or they thought that that's the best place to park money, that this is a great investment, it's always gonna at least hold its value if not appreciate in value. How many people really are in their homes because they wanted to be, it was an active decision.

CALLER: I've never met anybody that didn't dream for a house. I mean contrary to what we hear that renting is the best thing since sliced cheese, damn, pisses me off. I'm sorry, but it does.

CALLER: Well, if people knew the trillions of dollars of personal wealth which generates the economy and pushes it forward -- and I'm not a big economist, but I do know that real estate is the foundation of our economy for our country. It puts the money and the power of the economy in the hands of the little guy because he's borrowing money, he's paying -- (crosstalk) -- the banks are able to lend to other people, other people are allowed to do businesses, buy cars, buy whatever they need to drive our economy. If you kill the real estate industry, you're killing Americans, plain and simple. And these people are having it stolen out of their back pocket. You know, I'm hearing statistics of 40 to 60% of the appraisers are out of the business in the past three years, and some of them were scumbags, needed to go, don't get me wrong, but that's a lot of money gone.

RUSH: It is an ongoing tragedy, and I just cringe to see what's happening to our country every day, see evidence of it, so unnecessary. I am worn out trying to describe how I feel about it. By the way, they're being stolen from their front pockets. They're seeing it. They're not being pickpocketed. Makes it even worse. They see what's being done to 'em. They know it's happening. Some of them may not be able to understand why, but they still know that it is. Thanks for the call, Jim. I appreciate it.

A reminder, a website that you've been paying attention to this past week, DirtySpendingSecrets.com, it's a site continually releasing new and different spending abuses by the federal government. Their latest releases include the additional dollars that you and I are spending to upgrade federal workers from coach to first class when they travel on government business, $146 million every year is spent upgrade government workers from coach to first class. We spent some $3 billion to restore sand to beaches this past year as well. I don't know about you, there's a whole list of egregious spending going on, and this website chronicles it, all of it, the dirtiest of it. It's well worth the visit. DirtySpendingSecrets.com is the website.

Now, there's a petition, by the way, that you can sign where you can tell your congressman enough is enough. Sixty thousand people signed this thing this week. Don't tell me that people are not aware of what's going on and are fed up with it and are demanding change. I'll tell you, the root to success for the Republican Party is there, it's obvious, it's being spelled out in letters that are as large and clear as any ever written. And this website proves, these numbers add up, DirtySpendingSecrets.com.

The wealthiest county in America now is suburban Washington County in Virginia. There is no recession in Washington, DC. The unemployment in the Washington, DC, area, Maryland, Virginia, DC area, like 3%. Classic statism here, folks. Classic examples of how tyranny operates. You're losing the value of your house, and you are paying aggregately $146 million a year to upgrade federal employees from coach to first class. All of this is done on your dime, and they almost exhibit an entitlement to that.

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.

Conservative Review
Issue #183	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	June 19`, 2011