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).

The stock market was everywhere these past few weeks. At one time, there was, over 2 weeks, a net 1850 point drop in the Dow Jones Average. On 4 days, there were 400 point swings one way or the other (a record, I believe).

It appears as though QE3 (Quantitative easing) will start up soon. This means that the fed will begin to just “print money” and inject it into the economic system. It is unclear to me who makes this decision. I would guess Bernanke and Obama.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) announced today that she has assigned Assistant Democratic Leader James E. Clyburn (S.C.), Democratic Caucus Vice Chairman Xavier Becerra (Calif.) and Budget Committee Ranking Member Chris Van Hollen (Md.) to serve on the Congressional debt panel. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had named Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.), Sen. John Kerry (Mass.) and Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (Mont.) to also serve on the committee. Based upon their records from last year, all 6 of these appointees received an F rating from the National Taxpayer’s Union. They scored between 2 and 9% on the NTU’s evaluation instrument.

The LA Times reports, there no longer is a formal economic briefing in the Oval Office every morning, a gathering in which Summers, Romer, Geithner and other key advisors assessed the data and batted around ideas with Obama.

The National Labor Relations Board apparently ignored a summons from the House of Representatives, where Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) Was asking for documents related to the panel's legal complaint against airplane manufacturer Boeing.

The Iowa straw poll ended with Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul in a virtual dead heat for first and second. Tim Pawlenty, who has spent the most time in Iowa, came in a distant third, with less than half the votes of Ron Paul. There are reports out there that Pawlenty may drop out of the race.

A U.S. appeals court ruled this past Friday, 2 to 1, that President Obama's health care law requiring Americans to buy health care insurance or face a penalty was unconstitutional. This is the first appellant court to make such a decision.

Investor’s Business Daily estimates that, an oversight in the Obama Healthcare Law, means approximately $500 billion cost overrun in the first 10 years. This brings the overall cost, beyond taxes and other revenues, to about $1 trillion over the first 10 years.

The Detroit Police Department raided 90 homes, arrested over 600 people and confiscate $3.5 million in drugs.

Shepard Fairey, the Obama-hope poster artist, was beaten by a group of angry thugs in Denmark. They called Fairey "Obama illuminati" and then proceeded to beat up him and a friend after the opening of his exhibition in Copenhagen, leaving the world famous graffiti artist with a black eye and a bruised rib.

On his 3^rd dive, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin amazingly dives approximately 6 ft. down and emerges from the water with two ancient Greek urns. One commentator suggested, that either Putin and his cronies think that the world is dumb as dirt; or, more disturbingly, Putin believes this was a legitimate find. Fortunately, this was all caught on film.

The commander of Iran's Basij Force says it is ready to deploy peacekeeper forces in London as the unrest in the British capital.

A radical Muslim sect operating in the northeast section of Nigeria has shot dead another prominent cleric from the region, which is the latest in a string of targeted assassinations terrifying the area. The victim was 65-year-old Liman Bana, who died Friday night after sustaining gunshot wounds while walking home from conducting prayers at the main mosque in Ngala, a Nigerian border town with Chad.

150 Muslims torch a Catholic church and a government building in Nigeria after members of a radical sect are arrested.

There was another work-related accident in Gaza, where a man was most likely killed while preparing an explosive device. This is about the 3^rd in 3 weeks.

The White House's published guest list for this year's Ramadan Iftar dinner was much shorter than previous years' roster. Some in attendance who have unsavory associations with radical Muslim groups were not named.

It looks like Hollywood is going to release a movie on the killing of Bin Laden in October 2012.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.), the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee: "All of the Republican candidates have made clear their allegiance to the Tea Party, supporting extreme policies that would hurt the middle class, seniors, and students. The only winner tonight was the Tea Party." One thing which you should learn about the left; whatever they accuse conservatives of doing, that is their modus operandi.

Wasserman Schultz: "Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul represent the extreme right wing, which is the core of the Republican Party today." Again, almost every attack that they make is a description of themselves.

President Barack Obama: "So, when Congress gets back in September I want to move quickly on things that will help the economy create jobs right now. Extending the payroll tax credit to put a thousand dollars in the pocket of the average American worker. Extending unemployment insurance to help people get back on their feet. Putting construction workers back to work rebuilding America. Those are all steps we can take right now that will make a difference and there is no contradiction between us taking some steps to put people to work right now and getting our long-term fiscal house in order. In fact, the more we grow the easier it will be to reduce our deficits." This man is in charge of the largest financial entity in human history, and this is his point of view. If you are a liberal reading this, thinking, “Yeah, this makes sense;” our precarious economy becomes quite explicable.

Stanley Marcus, U.S. Court of Appeals, dissenting view: "[The court] has ignored the undeniable fact that Congress' commerce power has grown exponentially over the past two centuries and is now generally accepted as having afforded Congress the authority to create rules regulating large areas of our national economy."

Senator John F. Kerry said “[This ruling] flies in the face of recent precedent and longstanding jurisprudence."

Sen. John Kerry, D-mass.: “I believe this is, without question, the Tea Party downgrade. This is the Tea Party downgrade because a minority of people in the House of Representatives countered even the will of many Republicans in the United States Senate who were prepared to do a bigger deal.”

David Axelrod, Obama Campaign Adviser: “The fact of the matter is that this is essentially a Tea Party downgrade. The Tea Party brought us to the brink of -- of a default. And by the way, you said before, the president said this -- if we had defaulted on our debt, the consequences would have been dramatic and lasting.” So, somehow the TEA party, which makes up what, maybe 10–20% of the elected Republicans at this time, who desire a balanced budget, are somehow responsible for years of political irresponsibility?

Rep. James Clyburn, who is now on the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction: "In 1963, Dr. [Martin Luther] King [Jr.] expressed disbelief that the vault of opportunity in this great country was empty. Yet in 2011, the gap continues to grow wider between those who enjoy great wealth and those who struggle to get by with little thought of ever getting ahead. Too often, the human side gets lost in the Washington debates about our nation's debt and deficits. I will seek to keep those interests on the table."

Ben LaBolt, the Obama campaign's press secretary: "Governor Perry's economic policies are a carbon copy of the economic policies of Washington Republicans."

President Obama: "Look what's happening in Holland, Mich.. Every day, hundreds of people are going to work on the technologies that are helping us fight our way out of this recession. Every day you're building high-tech batteries so that we lead the world in manufacturing the best cars and the best trucks - that just doesn't mean jobs in Michigan. You're buying equipment and parts from suppliers in Florida and New Mexico and Ohio and Wisconsin, all across America." This high tech company that Obama speaks so highly of created 150 jobs after being given $300 million in stimulus funds.

When asked if he should reconvene Congress to deal with our economic problems, President Obama responded with: “The last thing we need is Congress spending more time arguing in D.C..” Obama did not mention his upcoming vacation in Martha’s Vineyard in his response.

President Obama told a crowd at a battery plant in Holland, Michigan, that Republicans must "find a way to put country ahead of party." Then he flew off to do 2 fundraisers.

A recent AP story by Peter Orsi described Cuban dictator Castro as a "revolutionary icon" with an "outsize persona," who in his prime was "a gregarious public speaker," and while in retirement remains a "prolific writer."

Washington Post religious editor Lisa Miller: “Obama rejected the idea of American exceptionalism - that God has special plans for this country...[quoting Obama] ‘I believe that [God's plans] are a little too mysterious for me to grasp,’ he said in 2007, ‘and so what I try to do is, as best I can, be an instrument of his will.’ What a relief this was for millions of believers exhausted by the mean certainties of the religious right. Here was a man who would strive for perfection even as he failed to achieve it, and who would use government as the instrument of that striving. ” She did, however, castigate the President for compromising too much.

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Martin Bashr, religion expert for MSNBC: “Barack Obama is going to be reelected and reelected with a big margin, because I think that people understand, a lot of ordinary Americans who aren't on the religious right understand something and that is as the first African-American president, he has been up against a racist white bloc in the Republican Party that has come dressed as the Tea Party, the religious right, all sorts of excuses. What they really want is to see him fail...Most Americans understand that in a second term, he is going to come out swinging and do a lot more than in the first term when the obstructionists have been swept out of the way. And I predict that.”

Joan Walsh, Salon: “[Obama] did a great job fighting the Paul Ryan budget, I believe it was back in April, Chris. You and I both talked about it. He really sounded like a Democrat. He really explained to Paul Ryan why he was making a lot of mistaken assumptions about the way America works. That was awesome, and he backed away from that. I think he was, it was right to try to compromise. It was right to take office in 2009 and try to reach out to the other side and believe that there were Republicans. . .”

Chris Matthews, MSNBC Host: “Yeah, but that was easy. But that was easier, Joan. Joan, he made himself a tackling dummy. Paul Ryan stuck his neck out, and this guy punched his head off. But this time around, he's up against shrewd, tough customers. Those guys fronting for the Tea Party, Ron, knew what they were doing. They had enough people behind them to give them bulk, and they went at the President saying, ‘We're going to knock you off here. We don't care what you think. We're going to knock you off unless you say Uncle.' "

New York Times columnist Charles Blow: "I must confess that every time Representative Michele Bachmann uttered the phrase 'as president of the United States' during Thursday's Republican presidential debate I blacked out a little bit, so I'm sure that I missed some things."

Prominent Democratic strategist aligned with the White House "Unless things change and Obama can run on accomplishments, he will have to kill Romney." [there have been disputes as to the prominence of this Democratic strategist].

Chris Matthews of Rick Perry: “He looks like a clown...he dresses very fancy, there’s something the way about he puts himself together, he doesn’t look authentic, he looks like a wax figure pretending to be a governor or something...there is something that doesn’t add up to me; maybe it is this Texas BS, this boots, boots and tuxedo thing that they do down there...is it, ignorance is bliss down there? ...[Perry] deliberately was ignorant....

Steve Harvey on Cornel West and Tavis Smiley's Poverty Tour: "Where are you getting the money for these buses?" And He added that he'd spotted an Uncle Tom driving a bus and that Cornel West and Tavis Smiley were "poverty pimps."

U.S. Court of Appeals on the insurance purchase mandate: "This economic mandate represents a wholly novel and potentially unbounded assertion of congressional authority: the ability to compel Americans to purchase an expensive health insurance product they have elected not to buy, and to make them re-purchase that insurance product every month for their entire lives."

Survey director Richard Curtin: "Never before in the history of the surveys have so many consumers spontaneously mentioned negative aspects of the government's role. This was more than the simple recognition that traditional monetary and fiscal policy measures were largely spent. It was the realization that the government was unable or unwilling to act."

Wall Street Journal's Laura Meckler asked Jay Carney: "I understand why extending unemployment insurance provides relief to people who need it, but how does that create jobs?"

Jay Carney: "Oh, uh, it is by, uh, I would expect a reporter from the Wall Street Journal would know this as part of the entrance exam."

"There are few other ways that can directly put money into the economy than applying unemployment insurance...no, seriously, it is one of the most direct ways to infuse money directly into the economy because people who are unemployed and obviously aren't running a paycheck are going to spend the money that they get. They're not going to save it, they're going to spend it. And with unemployment insurance, that way, the money goes directly back into the economy, dollar for dollar virtually. So, when it goes back into the economy, everywhere... every place that, that money is spent has added business and that creates growth and income for businesses that leads them to decisions about jobs, more hiring. So, there are few other ways that can directly put money into the economy than applying unemployment insurance.”

Meckler: “Then why, since this has been extended, has employment not dropped?”

Carney: “What we have seen is 2.4 million private sector jobs created? ...economic analysts totally unaffiliated with this administration tell you and told you way back last year, the combination of the payroll tax cut and the extension of unemployment insurance would have a direct measurable impact upon job creation so that, of the jobs created this year, a certain number, however many tens or hundreds of thousands, jobs can be attributed to those actions taken by the president last year, which is why he feels so strongly that they ought to be done again as we continue to emerge from this recession."

Carney also says this is only one item of a "variety of things to grow the economy and create jobs."

"This is one thing that economists of all stripes agree will directly affect growth, a half-percentage point I believe, economists believe is the payroll tax cut," Carney also said.

Paul Krugman, New York Times columnist and Nobel prize winner in economics: “Think about World War II, right? That was actually negative social product spending, and yet it brought us out.

I mean, probably because you want to put these things together, if we say, ‘Look, we could use some inflation.’ Ken and I are both saying that, which is, of course, anathema to a lot of people in Washington but is, in fact, what the basic logic says.

It's very hard to get inflation in a depressed economy. But if you had a program of government spending plus an expansionary policy by the Fed, you could get that. So, if you think about using all of these things together, you could accomplish, you know, a great deal.

If we discovered that, you know, space aliens were planning to attack and we needed a massive buildup to counter the space alien threat and really inflation and budget deficits took secondary place to that, this slump would be over in 18 months. And then if we discovered, oops, we made a mistake, there aren't any aliens, we'd be better -“

Kenneth Rogoff, Professor of Economics, Harvard University: “And we need Orson Welles, is what you're saying.”

Krugman: “No, there was a ‘Twilight Zone’ episode like this in which scientists fake an alien threat in order to achieve world peace. Well, this time, we don't need it, we need it in order to get some fiscal stimulus.”

CNN’s Don Lemon: Speaking over on the soapbox, and really giving some interesting - and straightforward talk. And we had a - let's say a passionate conversation afterwards. And the reason we did is because you said you were an against-all-odds person, and quite honestly I said to you do you think in a party - in a mostly-white party in a mostly-white state, did you really stand a chance, not only of a nomination, of becoming President?

Herman Cain, GOP presidential candidate: I really think that I have a chance of - getting the nomination, becoming President, because my experience from 2004, when I ran for the United States Senate, and I've traveled to all 159 counties in Georgia, color didn't matter. It wasn't about color.

Lemon: You will be up against someone who has a majority of the African-American vote, and who has - will have, probably, the majority of the liberal vote.

Cain: Let's just say he temporarily has the majority of the African-American vote. Based upon my experience of being on the radio for five years, I know that is changing. And so I don't believe he's going to capture the majority of the African-American vote if I - when I get the nomination.

Lemon: You had a very tough back-and-forth last night, I have to say, explaining what you meant about Sharia Law and about mosques should be banned, should be able to be banned in the United States. Do you want to clarify or talk about that?

Cain: Absolutely. First of all, what I said originally, and what I intended got misconstrued, which happens sometimes when it goes from story to story to story. Here's my position. Number one, I believe in the First Amendment. Number two, I believe in freedom of religion in America. We are a nation that recognizes and appreciates all religions. However, if there is a part of a religion that is going to basically try and change our culture or hurt this nation, I'm going to be the first one to stand in the way. And so this is why I was emphatic about the fact that if there's an element out there that wants Sharia Law to be considered in the courts of the United States of America, I'm against that. American laws in American courts.

Cain: Not categorically, no. It depends on what it's being used for. Not all of them necessarily are being used for just religious purposes.

Lemon: All right, I want to talk about religion. Because Mormonism as well, you said people didn't understand Mitt Romney, and about John Huntsman, religion. The New York Magazine calls them Cain and Abel, two brothers, Cain and Abel of American politics. Mitt Romney, John Huntsman are rich Mormon ex-governors who can't stand each other either might be able to beat Obama, but only if they don't kill each other first. You had to talk about that, because you said most people don't understand Mormonism and you didn't believe that they still have a chance.

Cain: Well I know, having grown up in the South, and living in the South then, that many of them don't understand the Mormon religion. That's not my problem. I don't have a problem with it. But, now, go back to this article that you just showed. This is an attempt to sensationalize something that I don't even think exists between these two guys. And so the fact that they are trying to turn this into a story - I don't think the American people are going to fall for it.

Cain: No! No, because it's true. I mean, I've had people tell me this. So I was basically reflecting what people have told me, that's all. They don't really understand it, and when people don't understand something, they are suspicious of something.

Senator Jim DeMint: "We saw within a few days that this President was going to be heavy-handed, he was going to implement his agenda and pay back his political allies, and it just went on from there to ObamaCare and then to Dodd-Frank. It has been the most anti-business and I consider anti-American administration in my lifetime. Things that are just so anathema to the principles of freedom, and everything he has come up with centralizes more power in Washington, creates more socialist-style, collectivist policies. This president is doing something that's so far out of the realm of anything Republicans ever did wrong, it's hard to even imagine."

George Will: “It’s not clear what will work [to fix the economy]; it is pretty clear what won’t work: we’ve had a stimulus, and there are now 2 million more unemployed than when the stimulus was passed. We now have a record of 1 in 7 American households on food stamps. We have wagered this economy on the mistaken view of the multiplier affect of federal dollars spend to create jobs. It didn’t work. Let’s try something else.”

Jason Chaffetz: “We’re not just one good tax increase away from prosperity. We need stability in our government. We need predictability.”

Hugh Hewitt: “The most disturbing aspect of our current income tax system is that more than a majority of Americans pay no income taxes at all. These citizens can afford to be indifferent to the size and cost of the national government because, outside of payroll deductions, they are not paying any portion of their income to the Feds. In fact this 51% have every incentive to demand more in the way of services and transfer payments because they aren't picking up even a tiny fraction of the costs.”

Amilya Antonetti on Barrack Obama (I think I listed the video for this last week): “He's not going to be known as the first black president, he's going to be known as the president who had a downgrade; that's what he's going to be known for. Doesn't matter; I inherit a mess every day as the CEO of my company. Every day I inherit a mess. That is my job title; to fix problems. To get people to work together in harmony for one common goal. He can't get the people in the White House. I don't care if you are a red or blue, your job is to make people work together in harmony for one common goal. The common goal is that this country is a safe, secure country to come to; this is the `American Dream'. WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO OUR COUNTRY? Get these people together, not on vacation, and get them around the table, and come up with a plan; understand how you build a plan, what is the plan, what are the steps, how are we going to get there. Why can't you put together a plan?”

Bill O’Reilly on Democrats blaming the TEA party for the United States credit downgrade: “They are appealing to people who don’t know anything.” [quoted from memory]

Sean Hannity: “[Obama’s] never blamed Bush for inheriting a 5.9% unemployment rate from him.” [quoted from memory]

Amilya Antoinette: “It is not the rich who will be hosed by the tax increases.” [quoted from memory]

Sarah Palin: "Could I support somebody like Mitt Romney? Yeah...I'm of the mind of ABO - Anybody But Obama, at this time."

Michelle Malkin on Patty Murray, one of the liberals named to the debt super-committee: “Derided for her earmark addiction by both conservative and liberal civic groups, she has cemented her position as the Senate Queen of Pork over 18 gluttonous years in office. Murray takes perverse pride in increasing debt limits on pet projects in her home state. Her solution to our fiscal crisis: Spend, borrow, spend and borrow some more! In 2009, she stuffed the Obama porkulus with a $3.25 billion provision benefiting the federal Bonneville Power Administration by massively expanding its spending authority. Murray then claimed to have spurred immediate job creation. ”

Thomas Sowell: “Theodore Roosevelt said that his foreign policy was to speak softly and carry a big stick. Barack Obama's foreign policy in Libya has been to speak loudly and carry a little stick. Too often Obama's foreign policy around the world looks like children happily playing with fire.”

Thomas Sowell: “My favorite birthday card this year said on the outside, Ageing is Inevitable - and, on the inside: Maturity is optional.”

Sowell: “President Obama often talks about wanting to raise taxes on "millionaires and billionaires" but - in his actual tax proposals - higher taxes usually begin with couples earning $250,000 between them. Apparently that makes you a millionaire or a billionaire.”

Sowell: “At one time, it was well understood that adversity taught valuable lessons, which reduce the probability of repeating foolish decisions. But, today, the welfare state shields people from the consequences of their own mistakes, allowing irresponsibility to continue and to flourish among ever wider circles of people.”

Sowell: “Amid all the concerns about the skyrocketing government debt, a front-page headline in the Wall Street Journal said: "Families Slice Debt to Lowest In 6 Years." It is remarkable how differently people behave when they are spending their own money compared to the way politicians behave when spending the government's money.”

Rick Perry: “[global warming is] all one contrived phony mess that is falling apart under its own weight."

Rush Limbaugh: "What we're seeing in Britain is the chickens of socialism, Obamanomics, Obamageddon, Barackalypse Now. That's what's coming home to roost, brought to us by a Debt Man Walking."

Rush Limbaugh: "At this point in his first term George W. Bush had held seven fundraisers; Obama's now held 38. It will be 39 or 40 by next week."

Rush Limbaugh: "Do you realize that the United States economy, our GDP is smaller today than it was in 2007? Think about that. That is a stunning fact."

Rush: "We've had a AAA credit rating since 1917, all the way through World War I. The Great Depression, we had a AAA credit rating. World War II, we had a AAA credit rating."

Rush: "There is no happiness in socialism. There is no nirvana. There is no utopia."

Rush: "The Tea Party is about reducing the size of government and getting it out of people's lives, rejecting the notion that only government can make the right decisions for people."

Rush: "I don't know, ladies and gentlemen, what Obama's got against Mother Earth that he wants us to the poison the planet with so many damn batteries."

Rush: "I'm sorry, but this Ron Paul is gonna destroy this party if they keep him in there. This is nuts on parade. The media loves this guy 'cause he's nuts on parade. They want the whole Republican Party to be identified with the kookiness of Ron Paul."

Ronald Reagan: “Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn't so.”

Ronald Reagan: “One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It's very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project.”

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough: “I got it all off my chest. Michele Bachmann, she is a joke. And now I will pass it on to you. Her answer is a joke. Her candidacy is a joke, and anybody that sits here and says, she has any chance of winning anything is out of their mind. Take your straw poll, take your caucus, but Iowa, if you let her win, you prove your irrelevance once again.” Scarborough is the resident Republican RHINO on MSNBC.

Ron Paul: "Even our own CIA gives me this information that they have no evidence that they [Iran scientists] are working on a weapon."

Jay Carney explains how unemployment insurance benefits being extended helps our economy:

Chris Matthews dumping all over Rick Perry, and one of the political experts talking about the failure of Perry’s opposition in the last election without even mentioning Perry’s chief opponent.

Jodi Miller: “Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers says that there is a 1 in 3 chance that America is headed for another recession. Then again, no one will notice because we are already in a recession.”

Jodi Miller: “Senator Harry Reid called the rise of the TEA party ‘very, very disconcerting.’ He’s got a point, because if the voters rise up and actually influence policy, no Democrat may ever get elected again.”

1) First speech by new Republican President Perry (or, whomever): “I hereby challenge every member of Congress to find a $100 million or higher real cut that can be made in the budget this year. If you are unable to do this, then either resign or go back to your district and apologize for your incompetence.”

2) Some of you don’t believe in God; or you don’t believe in Jesus Christ. However, there is a spiritual dimension to our lives which is hard to deny. All kinds of protestors were concerned that Governor Rick Perry attended a meeting to publically pray for our nation. Now, if I don’t believe in God, why on earth would I waste my time protesting Rick Perry at a prayer vigil? Pastor John Hagee, who apparently is a fairly high profile pastor, has to have some of the tightest security around. During a Wednesday night Bible class, a gunman walked into his church threatening to kill him (and fired the gun several times at nearly point blank range). Both he and Glenn Beck face all kinds of threats of all sorts (death threats, family threats, bomb threats). Now, if these people who stand for faith in God and faith in the Bible are just nutcase who believe in some Man in the sky, why bother with them? From where does all this hatred come from? If these are nutjobs who believe in things that don’t exist, the intelligent approach is to debate them in the arena of ideas. If they are nutballs and you are a sound rational thinker, then certainly, you will win the argument, won’t you?

3) I know lots of liberals. I believe them to be so totally wrong, that it is amazing to me that they believe what they do. However, hating them or striking out in anger seems so silly. I know I have the best arguments; I know I am right. For me, that is more than enough.

In his weekend address, Obama sung the praises of the "high-tech factory in Michigan" that he claims is "showing us a path out of the worst recession in generations." Obama's stimulus granted $300 million to Johnson Controls Inc. and they then created 150 jobs at a cost of $2 million per job. Look, give me $300 million and I will create 200 jobs.

The SEIU will spend $1.5 million on an ad campaign this August recess to call on Republican lawmakers to focus on job creation.

Last year, Michelle Obama spent 1 out of every 9 days on vacation. This includes trips to Panama City, Fla., Martha's Vineyard, Hawaii, South Africa, Latin America, Vail, Colo., and her visit this week to her brother in Corvallis, Ore. This total does not include a nine day sojourn in Martha's Vineyard that the Obamas will enjoy this month. Nor does it include a trip she made to Ireland and Great Britain in May, which is counted as official travel.

70% of Americans either believe Barack Obama has "tried but failed" to solve "the major problems facing the country" or has actually "made problems worse."

71% percent of Americans in a December 2008 Pew Center poll who thought the same of outgoing President Bush.

46% of registered voters said they definitely will not vote for Obama's reelection.

CBS's Early Show had a strange way of picking guests around the Republican presidential debate on Fox News. On Thursday morning, they interviewed former candidate Steve Forbes about the economy, but had no current candidates. On the day after the debate, CBS brought on Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod to denounce the GOP candidates -- but didn't invite any actual GOP candidates to appear.

Yael Cohen, of the women's magazine Marie Claire, interviewed, FoxNews anchor Megyn Kelly, asking her: " I assume you believe in free speech. How do you feel about the fact that Sarah Palin doesn't talk to the press unless it's Fox News?" Palin is found mostly on FoxNews because she works for FoxNews (although she has granted interviews to other news outlets), and free speech has nothing to do with whom one chooses to speak to.

Almost all of us recall news stories several months ago about the union uprisings against Scott Walker. In many reports, the destructive union mobs, many of whom were bused to the capitol, were shown as good people upholding the middle class. In the past week, there were several recall elections where $30 million was invested by the left to recall those horrible Republicans. So, what were the results of these elections? MRC's Brent Bozell reports that "CBS, one story. The totality of NBC: 45 seconds. ABC? Nothing!" So, how did those elections turn out? Guess.

Tax windfalls = being able to keep nearly 50% of what you have earned, if the government allows you to.

“Since the government needs more money, and tax cuts tend to spur the economy and bring in higher revenues, are you ready to try tax cuts yet?”

So far, with the help of the News, the downgrading is being sold to many as a TEA party and a Republican party fault. That is getting some traction.

I will admit; I really blew it with Donald Trump. I thought that he would enter the presidential race and walk away with it. My mistake was, Trump unfiltered is pretty hard to take. He is the only man who could go toe-to-toe with President Obama on the excessive use of the 1^st person singular pronoun. On his TV show, because he has good editors, he comes across well. Out in the real world, he doesn’t.

On the other hand, there is Rick Perry, who will not simply enter the presidential race, but he is going to suck from Romney much of his support. Romney was the default candidate; he looks presidential, he sounds reasonable, and he knows a lot about the business world. However, he has Romney-care hanging around his neck, which was the reason I expected him to eventually fade out of the Republican primary. What Perry has is a pretty well-established record in Texas, the last bastion of freedom in the United States. Personally, he is way too liberal and polished for me, being a big fan of Herman Cain; but how do you argue with the governor who “created” 40% of the jobs in the United States in a state with less than 10% of the nation’s population? Furthermore, even though he is not the perfect conservative (like Bush), he is the perfect foil for the highly doctrinaire Obama.

If I am to guess, I would say that Obama would like to run against Romney (because of Romneycare) or Michele Bachmann (because her lack of executive experience is almost as striking as the President’s). Perry is a different matter. So, look for there to be attacks against him from the get-go. He will be painted as another George Bush, governor of Texas. Expect stories like “Carbon Copy of Bush” “Not another Texas governor” “Perry and Bush—no difference” and “George Bush II (the Sequel).” They cannot come out in a full-on attack, so these will be stories and editorials in the news, and off-handed responses to questions like “What do you think now that Perry has gotten in the race?” I have not seen the Sunday talking head shows yet, but I would not be surprised to see these questions and parallels begin to be drawn today. Right now, the White House is working on a slick short statement, for which they are legend (“Hope and Change” “McSame” “More of the Same”).

If they try to draw too much of a line between Perry and “Cut, Cap and Balance;” they will regret that approach.

I’ve got the book name; who will write it before the election? Entitlement Nation.

The Obama team does not have much on which they can run in the general election (they could sell their accomplishments to the left, but not to independents). Therefore, their campaign is going to have to be extremely negative against the Republican candidate. Expect anything that the Republican candidate has ever said or done to find its way into the press megaphone, along with a flurry of distortions as well. The President will come out with a few negative quips about his opponent, but the majority of the negative campaign will be run by the press and incumbent Senate Democrats who are not up for reelection.

I would not be surprised if Joe Biden, having put in roughly 150 years in public service, to retire to spend more time with his family, and for a more polished and more centrist candidate to run as Obama’s VP, like Jim Webb or Joe Manchin.

Dick Morris predicts that the next election will take place during a recession when unemployment is at 10%.

Make a prediction about Sarah Palin getting into the Republican race? Not a chance. However, 2 things do not bode well for her changes. She made a gaff a week ago which was ignored by the press; and she did not receive any write-in votes (insofar as I know) at the Iowa straw poll. I lean toward her not getting into the race and, if she does, not doing well. But this is one unpredictable lady.

This wasn’t too difficult to have predicted; Rick Perry would get into the presidential race after the prayer thing.

In the Bible, prior to Adam’s sin, Adam had at least 2 jobs to do: he was to name all of the animals and then he was to keep and cultivate the Garden of Eden. This is called work, and work has been fundamental to mankind from the very beginning.

After Adam sinned, God told him that he would feed himself by the sweat of his brow—again, that is work. Man in innocence or fallen man are supposed to produce in order to eat.

What did Cain and Abel do? Cain was a farmer and Abel raised animals. They both had jobs.

Solomon, in Proverbs, told us to observe the ant and how it works, seemingly without a foreman, preparing for the winter.

Paul told the Thessalonians, “If a man does not work, then he should not eat.”

I had two women that I leased to, a mother and daughter, and government supported them. Their job was to get up every morning, light up a cigarette, and plop themselves down in front of the big screen tv. The kids ran wild and the house became infested with bugs and filth. I don’t know if you realized, but, roach droppings have a very distinctive smell; and when those roach droppings are 1–2 inches high, as they were on the tops of the kitchen cabinets, that smell permeates the entire house. Uncle Sugar paid their way, and this is how these women lived.

I had another 2 women who received checks from the government—one received unemployment insurance and the other got nearly $3000/month in social security benefits (she was maybe half way to age 65). These women were the biggest pains that I have every had as tenants. They would literal break things in the house in order to get me to work, and then complain about it before, during and after.

Recently, there have been riots all over Europe; and, in recent weeks, in Great Britain. People who go to work everyday don’t riot. It is people who do not work who riot (ask Philadelphia Mayor Nutter about that).

Just this past week, both the President and his press secretary somehow tied unemployment insurance to economic growth. It is like living in Bizarre world: “More people we fire, better the economy gets. And we make more stuff.” It is positively insane. This is the very same party that accused Ronald Reagan of voodoo economics (to be fair, George H. W. Bush coined this term first, and the liberals picked up on it).

Just in case you are confused, and you think what Obama and Carney say about unemployment insurance benefits and the economy makes sense, bear in mind that an economy is built upon production, not the handing out of money. Generally speaking, the more you produce, the stronger your economy is. If unemployment insurance was so great, why not mandate everyone go on unemployment for the next year to give our economy a super boost? Well, that would be stupid; even most liberals understand that. People working and producing goods and services that other people want, drives the economy. Charlie Brown walking out to his mail box to get his unemployment check does not drive the economy in any way, shape or form, because that $1000 check ultimately came out of someone else’s pocket—today, it is partially coming out of the pockets of people not even born yet.

Sometimes you can understand how dumb an argument is by taking it to the absurd: why doesn’t the government just put $1 trillion into every single person’s bank account? Wouldn’t that drive the economy? People would be buying car, airplanes, investing in businesses, etc., right? This would not work because the government does not actually create any real wealth. Our government can get away with some quantitative easing and other tricks (like buying our own debt) because we produce so much in our economy. However, as our economy produces less, these governmental tricks become nothing more than a sleight of hand. We all know that it is senseless for the government to give every person a trillion dollars; but that is what unemployment is, but on a much smaller scale.

One of our problems is government mandated unemployment insurance. Government-mandated anything, by its very name, is probably going to end up being a bad thing, and so it is with unemployment insurance. You have a sucky economy where not much is being produced; so the solution to this is to take those who are not working and offer them money to continue not to work? Are you kidding me?

Look, I’m a conservative, and reasonably productive. Through most of my life, I have held 2–4 jobs (I only have one right now). But, let’s say the government sent me a letter promising to give me $5000 every single month (in cash, rent subsidies and food stamps) if I would stop working. Well, I would probably stop working. Today, millions of people subsist on the government dole. 51% don’t pay taxes and as much as 70% take more from the government than they pay in taxes. 15% of Americans get food stamps. This payments make people unproductive. These payments encourage sloth. These economic subsidies damage the soul.

Here is an idea which I have had for quite awhile, and recently one of the Republicans candidates suggested it: make unemployment insurance a private business. Do you want to purchase it? You can. Do you want to take a chance and not purchase it? You can choose that as well. If you habitually use your unemployment insurance, then you will be charged more the next time that you try to purchase some. If you tend to work for decades on end without being laid off, unemployment insurance is cheaper for you. Let the private market dictate the cost and terms. Since it would be difficult to do this all at once, why not let individual states tinker with this concept? A state can choose to leave government-mandated unemployment insurance altogether, and privatize it within the state. The insurance companies are already in place and they would certainly be willing to produce a product like this. The idea that someone can collect unemployment benefits for 99 and more weeks is absolutely absurd; and politicians claiming that this helps the economy adds a certain Salvador Dali dimension to it.

Politicians are great at making promises. A fair deal, a square deal, a chicken in every pot, the new deal and the great society—all promises by presidential candidates. At some point, being that we are at the brink of bankruptcy, we have to recognize that government cannot provide everything that we think it can. Maybe government cannot provide 99 weeks of unemployment benefits. Maybe government really cannot afford to be the surrogate father for millions of unwed mother. Maybe the government cannot afford to pay everyone retirement from age 65 to age 80 or 90. Maybe

the government cannot afford to pick up our medical bills at age 65 and thereafter. I know, you think you paid into it, but what if the money is not there?

You may think the key is taxing the rich, but it has been shown over and over again that, Obama’s plan for taxing the rich (going back to Clinton’s tax rates for the rich) will bring in maybe $70 billion, which is 5% of the deficit. That’s nothing! The Wall Street Journal has shown that, if we simply take all the income that the rich makes, we can almost cover one year’s deficit.

Right now, with tens of millions of baby boomers retiring, we have some tough choices before us. If you think that we can just keep going the way we are going, and tax the rich a little more, you are sadly mistaken. In your lifetime, you will see the economic collapse of this nation.

We are almost out of options. Printing money out of thin air, buying our own debt and trying to sell our debt to nations who are no longer interested in it, can only be done for so long. I think we are to the point, with $1.6 trillion deficits, where we are looking at a few years, not a few decades.

Who will make this call? The baby boomers. We are the largest chunk of the U.S. population, and, up until now, we have gotten pretty much everything we wanted. We were born into a tremendously prosperous nation, having no real clue as to the hardships our own parents faced. Do we run this ship into the ground, saying, “We want what we want when we want it. We paid taxes all our lives; now give us social security and medicare.” Or do we do what our parents did? They did everything that they could to provide a better world for us. Maybe we ought to think about doing the same for our children. Do we baby boomers have it in us to stop raiding the future salaries of our children and their children?

The moral choices that we make, we will live long enough to see how it all works out.

That seems to be the pained reaction of the Obama administration to the financial woes that led to the downgrading of America's credit rating, for the first time in history.

There are people who see no connection between what they have done and the consequences that follow. But Barack Obama is not likely to be one of them. He is a savvy politician who will undoubtedly be satisfied if enough voters fail to see a connection between what he has done and the consequences that followed.

To a remarkable extent, he has succeeded, with the help of his friends in the media and the Republicans' failure to articulate their case. Polls find more people blaming the Republicans for the financial crisis than are blaming the President.

Why was there a financial crisis in the first place? Because of runaway spending that sent the national debt up against the legal limit. But when all the big spending bills were being rushed through Congress, the Democrats had such an overwhelming majority in both houses of Congress that nothing the Republicans could do made the slightest difference.

Yet polls show that many people today are blaming the Republicans for the country's financial problems. But, by the time Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives, and thus became involved in negotiations over raising the national debt ceiling, the spending which caused that crisis in the first place had already been done - and done by Democrats.

Had the Republicans gone along with President Obama's original request for a "clean" bill - one simply raising the debt ceiling without any provisions about controlling federal spending - would that have spared the country the embarrassment of having its government bonds downgraded by Standard & Poor's credit-rating agency?

To believe that would be to believe that it was the debt ceiling, rather than the runaway spending, that made Standard & Poor's think that we were no longer as good a credit risk for buyers of U.S. government bonds. In other words, to believe that is to believe that a Congressional blank check for continued record spending would have made Standard & Poor's think that we were a better credit risk.

If that is true, then why is Standard & Poor's still warning that it might have to downgrade America's credit rating yet again? Is that because of the national debt ceiling or because of the likelihood of continued runaway spending?

The national debt ceiling is just one of the many false assurances that the government gives the voting public. The national debt ceiling has never actually stopped the spending that causes the national debt to rise to the point where it is getting near that ceiling. The ceiling simply gets raised when that happens.

Just a week before the budget deal was made at the eleventh hour, it looked like the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives had scored a victory by getting the President and the Congressional Democrats to give up the idea of raising the tax rates - and to cut spending instead. But now that the details are coming out, that "victory" looks very temporary, if not illusory.

The price of getting that deal has been having the Republicans agree to sitting on a special bipartisan Congressional committee that will either come to an agreement on spending cuts before Thanksgiving or have the budgets of both the Defense Department and Medicare cut drastically.

Since neither side can afford to be blamed for a disaster like that, this virtually guarantees that the Republicans will have to either go along with whatever new spending and taxing that the Democrats demand or risk losing the 2012 election by sharing the blame for another financial disaster.

In short, the Republicans have now been maneuvered into being held responsible for the spending orgy that Democrats alone had the votes to create. Republicans have been had - and so has the country. The recent, short-lived budget deal turns out to be not even a Pyrrhic victory for the Republicans. It has the earmarks of a Pyrrhic defeat.

Many liberals think of profit as evil. They see it as the product of "corporate greed," something that needs to be harshly taxed. Yet the desire to earn a profit is what impels innovators to solve some of our most important social problems.

I don't think that getting rich is the main motivation of entrepreneurs - the possibility of changing the world may be an even stronger desire. However, you can almost guarantee there will be no entrepreneurship if you do two things: (a) eliminate all possibility of getting rich, and (b) make it impossible to change anything without the approval of an intractable bureaucracy.

That in a nutshell is my explanation for why our two most visibly dysfunctional social systems - health care and public education - remain so dysfunctional.

I meet entrepreneurs in health care almost every day. Their novel ideas are invariably focused on helping some entity - a hospital, insurer, employer, etc. - solve a problem. They are rarely focused on how to solve an overall social problem, however. Because our health care system is so dysfunctional, in solving the problem for a client, they may be making our social problems worse than they would have been.

Solving social problems in health care with innovative policy proposals is what I do. It is a lonely field. But it would be a lot less lonely if we allowed people to get rich doing it.

To take one example, it is often asserted that one-third of all health care spending is wasteful. Suppose Bill Gates was able to write a computer program that would find the waste and eliminate it. Society as a whole would save more than $800 billion. So how much should we be willing to pay Bill Gates? A tenth of the overall benefit he creates ($80 billion)? One-half the benefit ($400 billion)?

Perhaps you're thinking that we shouldn't pay Bill Gates anything. Maybe you think he should give us the program for free, as an altruistic gesture. Or, maybe you think the most he should get back is a 1% or 2% return - something close to the return paid by government bonds. If this is your viewpoint, welcome to the world of health policy. You will find all kinds of people who think just like you do.

In general, there is no limit to how much people can make in health care by successfully exploiting reimbursement formulas. But the federal government is in the process of limiting what insurance companies can earn, effectively reducing them to the role of public utilities.

Howdy. Thank you, Erick (Erickson, editor of RedState). It is great to be at RedState. And I'll tell you what, it's even better to be governor of the largest red state in America.

It's sure good to be back in the Palmetto State, in South Carolina. I enjoy coming to places where people elect folks like Nikki Haley, true conservatives. And also where they love the greatest fighting force on the face of the earth—the United States Military.

And I want to take a moment and ask you to just take a silence, think about those young Navy SEALs and the other special operators who gave it all in the service of their country. Just take a moment to say Thank you, Lord, that we have those kind of selfless, sacrificial men and women. Their sacrifice was immeasurable, their dedication profound, and we will never, ever forget them.

I stand before you today as the governor of Texas. But I also stand before you the son of two tenant farmers, Ray Perry, who came home after 35 bombing missions over Europe to work his little corner of land out there, and Amelia who made sure my sister Milla and I had everything that we needed, including hand-sewing my clothes until I went off to college.

I am also the product of a place called Paint Creek. Doesn't have a zip code. It's too small to be called a town along the rolling plains of Texas. We grew dryland cotton and wheat, and when I wasn't farming or attending Paint Creek Rural School, I was generally over at Troop 48 working on my Eagle Scout award.

Around the age of 8, I was blessed - didn't realize it, but I was blessed to meet my future wife, Anita Thigpen, at a piano recital. We had our first date eight years later. And she finally agreed to marry me 16 years after that. Nobody says I am not persistent.

There is no greater way to live life than with someone you love, and my first love is with us today, my lovely wife Anita. We're also blessed to have two incredible children, Griffin and Sydney, and they are also with us today, and our wonderful daughter-in-law Meredith. I'd just like to introduce those two. Thank you.

What I learned growing up on the farm was a way of life that was centered on hard work, and on faith and on thrift. Those values have stuck with me my whole life. But it wasn't until I graduated from Texas A&M University and joined the United States Air Force, flying C-130's all around the globe, that I truly appreciated the blessings of freedom.

To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan, I realized that the United States of America really is the last great hope of mankind. What I saw was systems of government that elevated rulers at the expense of the people. Socialist systems cloaked maybe in good intentions but were delivering misery and stagnation. And I learned that not everyone values life like we do in America, or the rights that are endowed to every human being by a loving God.

You see, as Americans we're not defined by class, and we will never be told our place. What makes our nation exceptional is that anyone, from any background, can climb the highest of heights. As Americans, we don't see the role of government as guaranteeing outcomes, but allowing free men and women to flourish based on their own vision, their hard work and their personal responsibility. And as Americans, we realize there is no taxpayer money that wasn't first earned by the sweat and toil of one of our citizens.

That's why we reject this President's unbridled fixation on taking more money out of the wallets and pocketbooks of American families and employers and giving it to a central government. "Spreading the wealth" punishes success while setting America on course to greater dependency on government. Washington's insatiable desire to spend our children's inheritance on failed "stimulus" plans and other misguided economic theories have given us record debt and left us with far too many unemployed.

But this sure doesn't feel like a recovery to more than nine percent of Americans out there who are unemployed, or the sixteen percent of African Americans and 11 percent of Hispanics in the same position, or the millions more who can only find part-time work, or those who have stopped even looking for a job.

One in six work-eligible Americans cannot find a full-time job. That is not a recovery. That is an economic disaster.

If you think about it, for those Americans who do have full-time jobs, they aren't experiencing economic recovery with the rising fuel costs and the food prices that are going up. Recovery is a meaningless word if the bank has foreclosed on your home, if you are under water on your mortgage, or if you are up to the max on your credit card debt. Those Americans know that this President and his big-spending, big-government policies have prolonged our national misery, not alleviated it.

And what do we say to our children? Y'all figure it out? Don't worry, Washington's created 17 debt and entitlement commissions in 30 years, but the fact of the matter is they just didn't have the courage to make the decisions to allow you to have the future that you actually deserve? That Washington wouldn't even make modest entitlement program reforms in this last debate? And the President even refused to lay out a plan, for fear of the next election? How can the wealthiest nation in the history of civilization fail so miserably to pay its bills? How does that happen?

Well, Mr. President, let us tell you something: you can't win the future by selling America off to foreign creditors.

We cannot afford four more years of this rudderless leadership. Last week, that leadership failed, and the tax and spend and borrow agenda of this President led to the first ever downgrade of the credit rating of the United States of America.

In reality though, this is just the most recent downgrade. The fact is for nearly three years President Obama has been downgrading American jobs. He's been downgrading our standing in the world. He's been downgrading our financial stability. He's been downgrading our confidence, and downgrading the hope for a better future for our children. That's a fact.

His policies are not only a threat to this economy, so are his appointees - a threat. You see he stacked the National Labor Relations Board with anti-business cronies who want to dictate to a private company, Boeing, where they can build a plant. No president, no president should kill jobs in South Carolina, or any other state for that matter, simply because they choose to go to a right-to-work state.

You see, when the Obama Administration is not stifling economic growth with over-regulation, they are achieving the same through their reckless spending. Debt is not only a threat to our economy, but also to our security.

America's standing in the world is in peril, not only because of disastrous economic policies, but from the incoherent muddle that they call foreign policy. Our president has insulted our friends and he's encouraged our enemies, thumbing his nose at traditional allies like Israel. He seeks to dictate new borders for the Middle East and the oldest democracy there, Israel, while he is an abject failure in his constitutional duty to protect our borders in the United States.

His foreign policy seems to be based on alienating our traditional allies, while basing our domestic agenda on importing those failed Western European social values. We don't need a president who apologizes for America. We need a president who protects and projects those values.

Look, it's pretty simple: we're going to stand with those who stand with us, and we will vigorously defend our interests. And those who threaten our interests, harm our citizens - we will simply not be scolding you, we will defeat you.

Our nation cannot and it must not endure four more years of aimless foreign policy. We cannot and must not endure four more years of rising unemployment, rising taxes, rising debt, rising energy dependence on nations that intend us harm.

It is time to get America working again. To get citizens - to get our citizens working in good jobs and getting the government to working for the people again.

Page one of any economic plan to get America working is to give a pink slip to the current resident in the White House.

Listen, we just got to get back to the basic truths of economic success. As Governor, I've had to deal with the consequences of this national recession. In 2003, and again this year, my state faced billions of dollars in budget shortfalls. But we worked hard, we made tough decisions, we balanced our budget. Not by raising taxes, but by setting priorities and cutting government spending. It can and it must be done in Washington, DC.

Dr. Schwertner (State Representative, R-Williamson County, TX), we have led Texas based on some just really pretty simple guiding principles. One is don't spend all of the money. Two is keeping the taxes low and under control. Three is you have your regulatory climate fair and predictable. Four is reform the legal system so frivolous lawsuits don't paralyze employers that are trying to create jobs.

Over the years, we have followed this recipe to produce the strongest economy in the nation. Since June of 2009, Texas is responsible for more than 40 percent of all of the new jobs created in America.

Now think about that. We're home to less than 10 percent of the population in America, but forty percent of all the new jobs were created in that state.

I've cut taxes. I have delivered historic property tax reductions. I was the first governor since World War II to cut general revenue spending in our state budget. We passed lawsuit reform, including just this last session a "loser pays" law to stop the frivolous lawsuits that were happening.

And I know I've talked a lot about Texas here in the last little bit. I'm a Texan and proud of it. But first, and foremost, I'm an incredibly proud American.

We need balanced budgets. We need lower taxes. We need less regulation. And we need civil justice reform - those same four principles. Our country's most urgent need is to revitalize our economy, stop the generational theft that is going on with this record debt.

I come to South Carolina because I will not sit back and accept the path that America is on. Because a great country requires a better direction. Because a renewed nation needs a new president.

It is time to get America working again. And that's why, with the support of my family, and an unwavering belief in the goodness of America, I declare to you today as a candidate for President of the United States.

It's time for America to believe again. It's time to believe that the promise of our future is far greater than even our best days behind us. It's time to believe again in the potential of private enterprise, set free from the shackles of overbearing federal government. And it's time to truly restore our standing in the world, and renew our faith in freedom as the best hope for peace in this world that's beset with strife.

The change we seek will never emanate out of Washington, D.C. It will come from the windswept prairies of Middle America, the farms and factories across this great land, from the hearts and minds of the goodhearted Americans who will accept not a future that is less than our past, patriots - patriots who will not be consigned to a fate of less freedom in exchange for more government.

We do not have to accept our current circumstances. We will change them. We are Americans. That's what we do. We roll up our sleeves. We go to work. We fix things.

We stand up and proudly proclaim that Washington is not our caretaker and we reject the state that, in Margaret Thatcher's words, she said a state that takes too much from us in order to do too much for us. We will not stand for that any longer.

We're dismayed at the injustice that nearly half of all Americans don't even pay any income tax. And you know the liberals out there are saying that we need to pay more. We are indignant about leaders who do not listen and spend money faster than they can print it.

In America, the people are not subjects of government. The government is subject to the people. And it is up to us, to this present generation of Americans, to take a stand for freedom, to send a message to Washington that we're taking our future back from the grips of central planners who would control our healthcare, who would spend our treasure, who downgrade our future and micro-manage our lives.

It is time to limit and simplify the taxes in this country. We have to quit spending money we don't have. We need to get our fiscal house in order and restore our good credit. And we will repeal this President's misguided, one-size-fits-all government healthcare plan immediately.

We'll create jobs. We'll get America working again. We'll create jobs and we'll build wealth, we'll truly educate and innovate in science, and in technology, engineering and math. We'll create the jobs and the progress needed to get America working again.

And I'll promise you this: I'll work every day to make Washington, D.C. as inconsequential in your life as I can. And at the same time, we'll be freeing our families and small businesses and states from the burdensome and costly federal government so those groups can create, innovate and succeed.

I believe in America. I believe in Her purpose and Her promise. I believe Her best days have not yet been lived. I believe Her greatest deeds are reserved for the generations to come. With the help and the courage of the American people, we will get our country working again. God bless you and God bless the United States of America.

On the 8th of this month, Obama gave a speech whereby he claimed that extending unemployment insurance would create jobs, (Click to See the Video). Then, today, the President's spokesperson, Jay Carney, reiterated that claim by saying that extending unemployment benefits would actually create a million new jobs (Click here to See that Video). But, this is not a new idea for any Democrat. Just last year, that wizard of economics, Nancy Pelosi, said exactly the same thing (Click to See that Video).

By implication, Pelosi, Carney, and the President seem to be saying that unemployment is a good thing. In fact, one could deduce that if every American lost their job, millions of new jobs would be created; simply thanks to unemployment insurance. That's not Keynesian economics. In fact, it's not even Voodoo economics. It's just plain "Idiot" economics.

Our economy is 70% driven by consumer spending. When someone loses their job and goes on unemployment insurance, at the very minimum, half their previous income is just completely gone from any consumer spending activity. If anything, this loss of consumer spending will have a ripple effect in creating even more job losses. It certainly doesn't create any new jobs (except, of course, more and more government "union" jobs to handle all the new and continued unemployment claims). The only real benefit that unemployment insurance has to the "overall" economy is that it slows down the ripple effect so that unemployment doesn't completely spiral out of control by feeding on itself.

With that, you can now understand why this President and the Democrats can't get this economy growing again!

In her autobiography, Helen Gahagan Douglas recalled telling President Franklin D. Roosevelt about her visits to the camps of migrant workers. She was especially poignant about the children and their lack of Christmas toys when the president tried to stop her. "Don't tell me any more, Helen," FDR told the woman who is probably best known for losing a dirty Senate race to Richard Nixon. She was stunned. Roosevelt was crying. Can anyone imagine Barack Obama doing anything similar?

The answer - at least my answer - is no. And this is quite amazing when you think about it. FDR was a Hudson River squire - down to his cigarette holder and cape. Nonetheless, he could connect to the less fortunate. Obama, in contrast, was raised in the great American muddle, not rich and not poor. Yet when the stock market fell more than 500 points last week and the image that night was of the president whooping it up at his birthday party, the juxtaposition - just bad timing, of course - seemed appropriate. He does not seem to care.

This quality of Obama's, this inability to communicate what many of us think he must be feeling, has lately cost many trees their dear lives - reams of essays and op-ed pieces. One of the more interesting ones, by Drew Westen, a psychology professor at Emory University, ran in Sunday's New York Times. It cited Obama's frequent inability or unwillingness to explain himself or to appear empathetic. All this is true. But Westen's most salient point was contained in the title: "What Happened to Obama?" The answer: Nothing.

Obama has always been the man he is today. He is the very personification of cognitive dissonance - the gap between what we (especially liberals) expected of the first serious African American presidential candidate and the man he in fact is. He has next to none of the rhetorical qualities of the old-time black politicians. He would eschew the cliche, but he feels little of their pain. In this sense, he has been patronized by liberals who looked at a man and saw black and has been reviled by those who looked at a black man and saw "other."

Westen faults Obama for his lack of storytelling abilities. But this is because Obama is himself the story. Consider for a moment that Obama's account of how he had to fight to get medical coverage for his dying mother is not exactly true. The White House's response to this revelation was grudging silence. It did not dispute the story and it soon died. This was because the Obama story is not what he says but who he is. That remains unchanged, and so the very people who would pummel a Republican for such a mischaracterization were silent about Obama's. Obama did not deign to reply. He does not have to.

Obama's communications handicap, his loathing for the pornography of politics, could cost him a second term. In the current New York Review of Books, Andrew Hacker cites the findings of the University of Virginia's Larry Sabato to point out that "an usually high proportion" of Obama's 2008 majority came from new voters, "notably students and minorities." If a large number of these Obama voters are no longer elated by the historic novelty of the candidate and/or are disappointed by his performance, turnout will be depressed and Obama will be in peril. The passion of his haters is fearsome; his admirers cannot be tepid.

Only the GOP can save Obama. His political shortcomings cannot be fixed because he is who he is. He can rely on running against a party that has the soul of an actuarial table and will cut programs that the poor and the middle class adore. Whoever that Republican candidate may be, he or she will be stuck in the amber of the early primaries and caucuses where extremism runs rampant and moderates go to die. Neither Jon Huntsman nor Mitt Romney has so far shown the political dexterity to squiggle out of the box that is the Iowa or South Carolina contests.

Obama is the very soul of common sense. As he talks, I nod my head in agreement. Mostly, I think, he has done the right thing. But I doubt anyone will ever recount how he cried in the Oval Office any more than I can recall a soaring passage from a speech. This president got elected because he was cool. He could be defeated because he is cold.

Philly Mayor Nutter has been dealing with flash mobs all this past week, most of which arise out of liberal policies in big cities. However, every adult and semi-adult still stands on his own feet, and that is what Nutter addressed (video link follows text of the speech):

Now I must say first: two things. One: Some of you may know that 30 Americans died overseas, an elite unit of our military. Whether you agree with our foreign policy or not, I certainly ask that you would pray for the men and women who risk their lives each and every day to make sure that we can enjoy the freedoms, as Americans, that some of us seem to take for granted. They're serving their country. Other people make the decision about what they do and where they go, but they're doing their job. And unfortunately, one of those 30 is the son of a Philadelphia police officer. So I would ask that you would keep all of them, but especially that Philadelphia family that's been affected, in your hearts.

Now, I'm gonna say some things this morning that I know, from time to time, many of you think but may not say. It will not be PC, but I told Reverend Campbell that I will recognize that I'm in church and I'm in his pulpit, so I will certainly be respectful. On the other hand there are some words that we know that are also found in the Bible, and I may use a few of those. Pastor mentioned that we've had some incidents in Philadelphia, the most recent of which was the Friday before last, 20, 30 kids running around Center City, and it's happened in other parts of Philadelphia as well. A 16-, a 17-, a 19-year-old, and yes, an 11-year-old. And while I may have been out of my office, I was not out of communication. And I sent a message to Police Commissioner Ramsey first thing that morning, as soon as I heard that report, read that report, that we have to do something, and we put our team together that day, to start working on some things, and so I want to share my thoughts.

The first is, this nonsense must stop. It must stop. If you want to act like a butthead, your butt is going to get locked up. And if you want to act like an idiot, move, move out of this city. We don't want you here anymore. First, I want to apologize. I want to apologize to all the good, hard-working, caring people here in this city, and especially our good young people, here in Philadelphia. But I have to tell you this morning, that I am forced by the stupid, ignorant, dumb actions of a few, that we will announce tomorrow actions that we will take that, unfortunately, will affect many here in our city.

Parents, get your act together. Get it together. Get it together right now. You need to get hold of your kids before we have to. Parents who neglect their children, who don't know where they are, who don't know what they're doing, who don't know who they're hanging out with, you're gonna find yourselves spending some quality time with your kids, in jail, together. Together.

Now this stupid behavior requires a strong response. But I can assure you that we are not just going to be responding. We're going to be much more proactive in our activities, and we're going to try our best to anticipate some of these senseless, teenage, insane acts that we've been seeing over the past few months.

Parents, mothers, and fathers. Now I happen to know that raising children is kind of tough. I've got two kids, one of whom is a teenager right now. If you need help, we have help for you. The department of human services, community behavioral health, and many other social-service agencies. Do not be afraid, do not be ashamed, to reach out and ask for help, counsel, guidance, or support. But you need to get the help now, before it's too late for the help to help you. Get some help.

Fathers, fathers. Fathers have a particularly important role to play. Not more important than mothers, but just as important. You know you're not a father just because you have a kid, or two, or three. That doesn't make you a father. A father is a person who's around, participating in a child's life. He's a teacher who helps to guide and shape and mold that young person, someone for that young person to talk to, to share with, their ups and their downs, their fears and their concerns. A father has to provide a structure to a young boy, on how to become a good man. A good man. A father also has to be a good role model, and help a young girl be a strong woman.

Now let me just say this, if you're not doing those things, if you're just hanging out out there, maybe you're sending a check or bringing some cash by, that's not being a father. You're just a human ATM. You're just an ATM. And if you're not providing the guidance, and you're not sending any money, you're just a sperm donor. You're just a sperm donor. You're what the girls call out in the street: "That's my baby-daddy. That's my baby-daddy." That's not good enough. Don't be that. Don't be that. You can do better than that.

And you know something, that's part of the problem in our community. Let me speak plain. That's part of the problem in the black community. And many other communities. But a particular problem in the black communities, we have too many men making too many babies that they don't want to take care of and then we end up dealing with your children. We're not running a big babysitting service. We're running a big government and a great city. Take care of your children. All of them. All of them.

You know, you're sitting around with your jaws tight, oh she got two, three other guys around; well, if you were doing what you were supposed to be doing she wouldn't be with those two or three guys in the first place because you would be there, taking care of all of your children. Now, you are around for the sex. Now be around for the parenting. Be around for the parenting. Because let me tell you something - the immaculate conception of our Lord Jesus Christ took place a long time ago, and it didn't happen here in Philadelphia. So, every one of these kids has two parents who were around and participating at the time. You need to be around now. There ain't no immaculate conception happening up in here.

Parents, you need to step up, before we have to step to you. Now tomorrow, at twelve noon on Dilworth Plaza, we'll be making a series of announcements. Got a ton of folks involved in this effort. It's not a one-time thing, it's not a summertime thing. I heard a child say "Amen." Some of them smarter than some of these adults running around here. Tomorrow we're going to announce a series of steps and actions that will be taken. Some will be positive, and some you won't like. Unfortunately, that's the way it goes. But some of the more positive things we're looking at is programs and services and activities at our rec centers, other supports we may be able to provide, we're going to get our social-service agencies involved, but also the D.A. will be more involved, and the courts will be more involved. We took a whole lot of stuff, a couple years back, and by the way, every one of those libraries is open. Tell your children: Get a book. Read a book. Learn something. Schools open September 6, on Tuesday, the day after Labor Day. Spend the next month reading. I'd like to try that for a change.

And whatever you do, just stay out of trouble. Think for yourself. Don't do stupid stuff. Now, some of you know, I grew up nine blocks from here, 5519 Larchwood Avenue. I'm gonna be West Philly, no matter where I live, no matter what I do, for the rest of my life. But before I ever heard of the Philadelphia Code or the Pennsylvania Code or any other code, I was very familiar with the Basil and Catalina Code. That was the code of my parents. Now, I have to tell you. When I heard this particular report, and we've had other instances, but it is inconceivable to me, inconceivable to me, that in my teenage years, that I would be out somewhere, let alone downtown, at nine o'clock at night. Impossible for me to fathom. Because my mother said: "Boy, I know you have a watch. But if the watch stops working, if you forget to wind it, if the battery breaks, there's only one thing you need to do. Look up. When that light goes on, have your butt on the steps. I don't care whether it's Eastern Standard Time, Daylight Savings Time, Pacific Time, Mid-Atlantic Time, North Pole time. When that light goes on, have your butt on the steps. Don't let me have to look for you." Now, that's what she said. It was really easy. Real simple. And you know, I know a lot has happened in the 40 years since I was an early teen. I know that some things have changed. But now there are a few things that don't - or shouldn't - change. Respect other people. Keep your hands to yourself. Don't touch what doesn't belong to you, or what you didn't earn. Keep your butt in the house, or on the steps, until you're told otherwise. And mind your manners. Now, my parents made it very clear that these were their rules, and that as long as I lived in their house, that was it. See, because I didn't own anything in that house, and I had a job, and I bought stuff with my own money, but when I crossed that threshold, it was theirs. That room - we're letting you sleep in that room. This air conditioning - we let you have some of that air conditioning. That heat that I paid for, we let you have some of that heat. Those clothes on your back, I bought those clothes. I brought you in here, I'll take you out of here. So let's be very clear about the rules. Now, when you get old enough, and you move out, then you can do what you want to do. But as long as you're living in this house, you do what I tell you to do. And that's the way it was.

Now, parents, please talk to your children. Talk to them today after service, talk to them tonight, talk to them tomorrow, because things are going to change. This is some serious stuff. This is not a joke, this is not a game, we're not funning. Curfew is going to be enforced. Other things are going to happen. And they need to understand that there are serious consequences to aggressive, violent, idiotic, stupid behavior - not only for the teen, but also for the parents and the guardians. Everybody is going to be held accountable in this one. We're taking these steps for the safety of all of our citizens, and our teenagers. And out teenagers. We want to make sure that they don't either do something that's going to get them in trouble, or be somewhere where they may get hurt. This is about all of us. It's about everybody. And so let me say it again. The bottom line: This nonsense must stop. Right now. Right now.

And lastly, to our teenagers, you know, young people always talk about "Well, I gotta get respect." You get respect when you give respect. That's how you get respect. And I believe in my heart and in my soul that 99 percent of the young people here in this city of Philadelphia are good and have good intentions in their heart. So I don't want anyone to think that we've got thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and untold numbers of bad young people running round, because we don't. We have some really great young people in this city. They go to school. They try to get good grades, they try to graduate and go on with their lives. They participate in sports, art, music, poetry, cultural services. They're out tutoring. Some of them have jobs and are working. Some are taking care of their siblings, parents, and even grandparents. Unfortunately, there's a few - could be a hundred, could be a couple hundred, could be a thousand (that's still less than 1 percent) - but there's some really bad ones. And, unfortunately, they engage in violent behavior. They're lawless, they act with ignorance, they don't care about anybody else, and their behavior is outrageous.

Well, we're not going to tolerate that. We won't tolerate it, and we're not going to excuse it, because there is no excuse for it. Sense and nonsense cannot exist in the same place, in the same city, in the same world, and is not going to happen here in Philadelphia. You can't have both at the same time. Can't have both. And so, this behavior could have actually resulted in even more injuries, or worse. They could have killed somebody. Oh, then they'd really be in a world of trouble. Then all the sudden, they'd be crying: I want my mom, I need my dad, I need somebody. No, it's too late then. No, no, we're past that. It's too late. It's too late. You've damaged yourself, you've damaged another person, you've damaged your peers, and quite honestly you've damaged your own race. You damaged your own race. So, to our young people. If you want black folks, if you want white folks, Latinos, Asians, or anybody else to respect you, and not be afraid when they see you walking down the street, then leave the innocent people who are walking down the street, minding their own damn business, leave them alone. Stop it. Cut it out. We've had enough of this nonsense going on. We've had enough. Some of them should be ashamed of their behavior. And some of them have made shame on our race. I'm speaking plainly. I'm telling you what's on my heart. It's a disgrace, what's going on. Not one of these victims, not one, did anything to any one of those young people. They weren't bothering them, they didn't say anything to them, they were minding their business, some were out enjoying themselves, some were just coming from work, they didn't do one thing. And then all of the sudden, for the cowards that some of them are, in the crowd, thought they were anonymous, jumped up and started beating on people, assaulting them, in the streets of this city.

Well you know, now, if that was one of their friends, if that was their brother, if that was their sister, their moms, their grandmoms, somebody, they'd say, "Oh, that ain't right, that's wrong." Well, it's wrong when you do it too. It's wrong when you do it too. And so if you want to be aggressive, we're going to be aggressive. And let me just share this with you: We got the biggest, baddest gang in town - a committed group of citizens and a committed government and we're working together and we're not going to have this nonsense anymore. And lastly let me say, some of those young folks are lucky. They're lucky that one of those citizens didn't jump up and start whipping their butt, which, clearly, they did not have enough of when they were young themselves. They're lucky they didn't get themselves beat up with this nonsense. So, let me close. We want a safe city. We will not tolerate ignorant, stupid, out-of-control behavior. It hurts our citizens, damages property, and besmirches our reputation as a great city. And so to all of our young people, but a particular message to our young African-American boys and girls, let me say this:

If you want all of us - black, white, or any other color - if you want us to respect you, if you want us to look at you in a different way, if you want us not to be afraid to walk down the same side of the street with you, if you want folks not to jump out of the elevator when you get on, if you want folks to stop following you around in stores when you're out shopping, if you want somebody to offer you a job or an internship somewhere, if you don't want folks to be looking in or trying to go in a different direction when they see two or twenty of you coming down the street, then stop acting like idiots and fools, out in the streets of the city of Philadelphia. Just cut it out. And another thing. Take those doggone hoodies down, especially in the summer. Pull your pants up and buy a belt, because no one wants to see your underwear or the crack of your butt. Nobody. Buy a belt. Buy a belt. Nobody wants to see your underwear. Comb your hair. And get some grooming skills. Comb your hair. Running round here with your hair all over the place. Learn some manners. Keep your butt in school, graduate from high school, go on to college so you can go and make something of yourself and be a good citizen, here in this city. And why don't you work on extending your English vocabulary. Extend your English vocabulary beyond the few curse words that you know, some other grunts and grumbles and other things that none of us can understand what you're saying. And if you go to look for a job, don't go blame it on the white folks, or anybody else. If you walk in somebody's office with your hair uncombed and a pick in the back and your shoes untied and your pants half down, tattoos up and down your arm, on your face, on your neck, and you wonder why somebody won't hire you. They don't hire you because you look like you're crazy. That's why they're not hiring you.

So, you do those things, and act like you got some sense, and you'd be surprised what opportunities will open up to you. That's what was on my mind. That's all I've got to say.

The riots in Great Britain are a reminder that there are people who will physically destroy society if they think they can get away with it. At this point, British authorities are under siege. They say jails are overflowing because more than 1,200 thugs have been arrested this week. Damage will be in the hundreds of millions, and the entire country is on edge.

The same thing happened in America back in 1992 when 58 people were killed and more than 2,000 injured after Los Angeles police beat a black motorist, Rodney King. The riots caused a billion dollars worth of damage. Some neighborhoods in L.A. still have not recovered.

I was right in the middle of those riots in L.A. and I can tell you that once violence gets out of control, some people turn into animals. That's what's going on right now in England.

The BBC caught up with two young women who were actually condoning the violence:

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's not even a riot. It's showing the police we can do what we want. That's what it's all about: showing the police we can do what we want. And now we have.

HOSEA: But these are like local people. I mean, why is it targeting local people and your own people?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's the rich people, the people that got businesses. And that's why all of this is happened because of the rich people. We're just showing the rich people we can do what we want.

The takeaway from that: Rich people are responsible for the riots in Great Britain. Rich people are the villains.

That kind of class warfare is also in play in Washington, as some believe that the so-called tax cuts for the rich are harming the economy. They bang that drum over and over and over, and a new CNN poll says the message is getting through. Sixty-three percent of Americans now believe there should be tax increases on businesses and higher-income Americans. Just 36 percent say there should not be. Eighty-seven percent of Americans say the middle class and lower-income Americans should not be taxed anymore. Just 12 percent say they should. That poll certainly will fuel class warfare.

With the U.S. economy in dire trouble, it may be just a matter of time before violence breaks out in this country. People are angry. Some are blaming the rich; others are blaming President Obama; some are even blaming the Tea Party. But the blame game is everywhere.

Instead of calming things down, President Obama seems confused. He doesn't really have an economic message. Raising taxes on the wealthy and business at this point may harm the economy further. Yet the president seems to be willing to take that chance. The big culprit is rampant government spending and out-of-control medical costs. A tax rise does not address those problems.

As "Talking Points" stated earlier this week, the entire tax code should be revamped so the government could get more revenue without harming the economy. And programs like Medicare and Social Security have to be revised for younger Americans, at least somewhat.

Finally, Great Britain is a quasi-nanny state. They have free health care, generous pensions and safety nets all over the place. Yet their society is on fire. No question that is a warning to us.

The charge against Michele Bachmann is, she did not sway her own party far enough to the right, which means she is not a leader. This sort of question was posed to her on NBC, which station has featured Bachmann 6 times this year, more than any other GOP candidate.

Perry announces his run for presidency, the Daily Beast fires its first attack, and PJ Media responds:

Obama blames bad habits in Washington for his inability to affect real change in Washington D.C.

Jay Carney, in 2001, blasts President Bush for his excessive vacations and using the time for photo ops.

RUSH: Let me count the pages here. One, two, three, four, five, six pages -- six pages -- of news headlines and stories.

Obama Blames Arab Spring and Japan's Earthquake on Struggling Economy and Job Situation, August 5th, 2011. Obama Blames Messy Democracy for His Failed Policies, August 3rd, 2011; remarks by the president at a DNC event. Obama Blames Congress for US Debt Mess; Obama news conference, June 29th, 2011. Obama Blames Republicans for Slow Pace on Immigration Reform, July 25th, 2011. (This was page one.) Page two: Obama Blames Media for Lack of Compromise in Washington; remarks by Obama at a town hall meeting July 22nd, 2011. Obama Blames Technology for Struggling Economy; June 14th, 2011, NBC Today interview. Obama Blames Oil Spectators for High Oil Prices; April 19th, 2011, remarks by Obama at a town hall meeting.

Obama Blames Reagan for America's Out of Control Debt and Spending; remarks by President Obama April 13th, 2011, Federal News Service. Obama Blames Bush and Congress for Lack of Fiscal Discipline, April 13th, 2011; remarks by Obama, Federal News Service. Obama Blames Bush-Congress for Putting Off Tough Decisions, August 17th, 2010; remarks at a fundraiser for Patty Murray. Obama Blames Bush for Tax Cuts, Deficits; Obama town hall meeting on the economy in Racine, Wisconsin, June 30th, 2010. Obama Blames Bush for Deficits, June 8th, 2010; remarks by Obama at a second fundraising reception for Senator Barbara Boxer.

Obama Blames GOP for Events that Led to Gulf Oil Spill; remarks by President Obama June 3rd, 2010, Federal News Service. Obama Blames Republicans for America Not Being Able to Solve Problems; remarks by President Obama June 3rd, 2010, Federal News Service. Obama Blames Corporations for Everybody's Problems, June 3rd, 2010, Federal News Service. He said, "If you're a Wall Street Journal bank or an insurance company or oil company, you pretty much get to play by your own rules regardless of the consequences for everybody else." Blames corporations for everybody's problems. Obama Blames Bush for Overall Standing of American Economy, April 19th, 2010, at a fundraising reception for Senator Boxer. Obama Blames Bush, Congress for Deficits, February 1, 2010, delivering remarks on the budget. Obama Blames Bush for Regulatory Policies; January 17th, 2010, remarks by the president at an event with attorney general Martha Coakley in Massachusetts.

RUSH: Yeah, I'm gonna read the rest of the Obama blames. By the way, folks, do a Google search on it. "Obama blames" as a Google search term returns more than 490,000 hits. "Obama blames," no quotes -- just "Obama blames" -- returns 6,920,000 results on Google. Obama blames, Obama blames...everybody but himself. Obama is a man-child; immature, over his head, out of his league, unqualified.

RUSH: You want me to continue with this blame stuff? I'm only halfway through. Obama Blames Corporations for Everybody Else's Problems, June 3rd, 2010; remarks by President Obama. Obama Blames Bush for Overall Standing of Economy and American Standing, April 19th of 2010.

Obama delivering remarks at a fundraising reception for Senator Boxer and the DNC. Obama Blames Bush and Congress for Deficits, February 1st, 2010, in remarks delivered on the budget. Obama Blames Bush for Regulatory Policies, January 17th, 2010, remarks by the president at an event with Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley. Obama Blames Wall Street Fat Cats for Economic Disaster, December 13th, 2009, CBS News' 60 Minutes. Obama Blames Bush for Overall Economy, September 27th, 2009, remarks by the president at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's annual dinner. Obama Blames Bush for Stifling Unions, September 7th, 2009; remarks by the president at the AFL-CIO Labor Day picnic.

Obama Blames Bush for Prescription Drug Bill; remarks by the president, health insurance reform town hall, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, August 11th, 2009. Obama Blames Bush for Jobs, July 22nd, 2009; news conferences by the president. Obama Blames Bush for Failure to Recognize Europe's Leading Role in the World, April 3rd, 2009; remarks by President Obama at a Strasbourg town hall, and in those remarks he said this: "So we must be honest with ourselves. In recent years we've allowed our alliance to drift. I know that there have been honest disagreements over policy, but we also know that there's something more that has crept into our relationship.

"In America there's a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world, instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive of you." That's Barack Obama, speaking in Europe at Strasbourg, blaming Bush for a failure to recognize Europe's leading role in the world, April 3rd, 2009. Obama Blames Bush for Deficits, February 23rd, 2009; Obama delivering opening remarks at fiscal responsibility summit. Candidate Obama Blames Fox News for his Elitist Label, New York Times, October 2008.

Candidate Obama Blames Fox News for Likely Loss in Kentucky Primary, May 2008. Candidate Obama Blames Washington for High Gas Prices, April 25th, 2008; remarks of Senator Barack Obama, press availability on energy plan, 25 April 2008. There you have six pages of "Obama blames."

RUSH: This interesting paragraph, this is Drew Westen yesterday in the New York Times. After basically saying that Obama's not tough enough, not confrontational enough, he actually says Obama's not liberal enough. That's his problem. He hasn't been liberal enough. These people are deranged! They're delusional. But this guy had one interesting paragraph, and here it is. Psychology Professor Drew Westen. I haven't heard of the guy. The New York Times found him; he had this piece in the New York Times yesterday. "A second possibility is that Obama is simply not up to the task by virtue of his lack of experience and a character defect that might not have been so debilitating at some other time in history.

"Those of us who were bewitched by his eloquence on the campaign trail chose to ignore some disquieting aspects of his biography, that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state. That he had singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago Law School other than an autobiography, and that before joining the United States Senate he had voted present instead of yay or nay 130 times, sometimes dodging difficult issues." Now, you in this audience know all of that. We discussed all of that. The Drive-By Media never said a syllable of any of that during the campaign, and that's just one little paragraph in an otherwise long essay blaming Obama for not being liberal enough, not being tough enough.

But maybe it boils down to he just isn't qualified. He's never done anything. Many people have made the point before: Obama taught law for 12 years at the University of Chicago, and many people have pointed out have you ever heard -- has the media ever found -- a student of Obama's who talks about how inspired he was by Obama? No. There is no such person. The media has not found one such student or anybody from Harvard where Obama was on Law Review, and there also didn't publish anything. They haven't found one student or one colleague or one associate who said they were inspired, mesmerized, or motivated whatsoever by Barack Obama. He has almost a blank slate past.

So you ask in retrospect, how did he get elected? (snorts) That's not hard to explain. The media drummed up such hatred for George W. Bush, combined with the phony spin package that The Messiah had come and attached to Obama, and, voila! Here we are. I want to go back. Grab audio sound bite 31. This is interesting. As you know, the regime first tried to say -- I think it was the little tax cheat, Tim Geithner; somebody in the regime tried to say -- that the downgrade of our credit rating by Standard & Poor's was a $2 trillion math error, remember that? Sometime over the weekend. Yeah, that was Geithner, yeah, $2 trillion. This is not the first time this regime has claimed such a thing. I want you to go back, listen to me, myself, August 24th, 2009. On Friday, August 21st, Obama had left for vacation on Martha's Vineyard. On Friday August 21st. Then on the following Monday, August 24th, I said the following.

RUSH AUGUST 24, 2009: Folks, we live in two parallel worlds here. We live in the real world, and then we live in the Obama-snorting world. In the real world, we just learned in a document dump late Friday afternoon, that the national debt would increase not by one or two billion dollars, not by ten or 20 billion, but by $2,000 billion, $2 trillion. That's how much we are going to be adding to the national debt via the deficit, annual budget deficit: $2,000 billion. But in the Obama-snorting world out there with the State-Controlled Media, we hear that Obama's "fiscally responsible," and we hear that he will "cut deficits." And he says it persuasively, elegantly, believably. It happens. He speaks within the expertise of his audience's understanding. Meanwhile, the debt is piling up at record rate, unseen in this nation ever. Yet we hear that Obama is responsible, that he's fiscally responsible, that he's going to be cutting these deficits and that's why we have to do health care. That $2,000 billion more -- $2 trillion, $2,000 billion more in debt -- is before the additional $1,000 billion to $2,000 billion more that Obamacare will add to it. The new debt figure was the biggest news of the year, and so far it's the least reported news of the year.

RUSH: That was August 24th of 2009, almost two years ago on this program. This, folks, is what I mean when I say, "We've doubled down and tripled down on what doesn't work." Whatever doesn't work, we do it again -- even more vigorously than we did it the first time -- and if doesn't work the second time we get even more excited and we triple down on it. This regime has taken what doesn't work and added to it. So on Friday, August 21st, Obama leaves for vacation. They have a little document dump and say, "Oh, by the way, we had a little miscalculation. We were wrong the other day. Our national debt's gonna go up by $2 trillion as a result of policies to date." That was as of two years ago. Folks, that is his first year!

He was immaculated in January of 2009, this is August. In eight months the White House announced on Friday in August before he goes on vacation, the national debt has been added $2 trillion. Now where we are? Two years after that, nearly two years after that we've come down and lost our AAA credit rating. Does anybody still want to try to maintain to me, "Well, this is just... You know, they haven't spent enough yet, Mr. Limbaugh. Keynesian economics doesn't work, sir! They just haven't spent enough money, and the Tea Party is ultimately responsible for it." The Tea Party? The Tea Party! Did you see Obama's campaign manager, Axelrod, was on one of the talking head shows over the weekend? He blamed the Tea Party for the S&P downgrade! He called it the Tea Party downgrade.

Now, there are some lies that are so outrageous it's almost impossible to believe anybody would utter them until you remember that Axelrod used to be a journalist, and then it's easy to accept that he would utter such a lie! But let's review, because it's not just Axelrod. It's that stupid, long faced John Kerry (who served in Vietnam), and a number of others are trying to blame them. Dingy Harry is trying to blame the Tea Party. The Tea Party is the only group that has ever pushed for real deficit reduction! In fact, the Tea Party is the only group to offer a plan to reduce the deficit. It was called Cut, Cap, and Balance. Yet, according to Axelrod, the downgrade is all the Tea Party's fault!

That's what liberals call "logic," and the rest of the world calls laughable bald-faced lies.

Speaking of liars, it's only natural that John Kerry (who served in Vietnam) would parrot Axelrod's lines. After all, Kerry got his start in politics parroting the most outrageous lies about soldiers in Vietnam. Is also amusing to hear Howard Dean say the Tea Party's out of touch with reality. Howard Dean! He went on to mock the only people who pushed for a reduction in spending. The group that forced this debt discussion in the first place, the only group to offer an actual plan to reduce the deficit: The Tea Party. By the way, where is David Axelrod's plan to reduce the deficit? Where is John F. Kerry's plan to reduce the deficit? And where is Obama's plan to reduce the deficit? And where is Nancy Pelosi's plan, and where is Steny Hoyer's plan? Where is Maxine Waters' plan?

They haven't presented a budget in over 800 days. They have no plan whatsoever other than to preside over this disaster. None of these Democrat luminaries have the slightest idea what to do. All they can do is smear the only people who are trying to fix the problem. Now, the White House did put out a hilarious trial balloon over the weekend via TheHill.com. The headline was: "White House: S&P Downgrade is Why Obama Pushed for Grand Bargain." Ha! (laughing) Funny, but if this was so important to saving the country maybe the regime should have written something down and had a plan about it!

The S&P downgrade is why Obama Pushed for grand bargain? The bipartisan House of Representatives passed a bill the S&P has said would have prevented the downgrade: The Cut, Cap, and Balance bill. Guess what, Mr. President? The S&P said Cut, Cap, and Balance, if you'd have passed that (and it was bipartisan) it would have prevented the downgrade. But Obama and his allies wouldn't even discuss it, let alone allow it to come up for a vote. Why? They are not interested in what works. That is so obvious. All it takes is the courage to admit it. So what the Democrats are trying now is to use the downgrade just like they use every crisis: As an excuse to raise taxes.

That is always job one. Meanwhile, we are supposed to forget the Democrats had supermajorities in both houses of Congress and the White House for most of the last two years, and they didn't once pass one bill to raise taxes. They had their chance, but the Democrats don't want to raise taxes unless they can blame the Republicans for it. That's how concerned they are about saving the country. In fact, they're not concerned about saving the country. Barackalypse Now, Obamageddon, has as the primary purpose the discrediting of the Tea Party and Republicans, conservatives -- and, of course, the destruction of United States capitalism.

RUSH: Do any of you wonder why what's happening in London is happening? Let me just ask you, Dawn. You don't have to say anything, just nod yes or no: Do you know why the London riots are happening? Say yes or no. There's no... No, it's not a trick question. I'm just doing a survey. Don't be afraid to answer. Okay, forget it. Dawn, I didn't ask you. Okay, no. Snerdley, do you know why they're happening? Why are they happening, why are the London riots happening? Mmm-hmm. Right. Okay, forget "allegedly." What's it really all about? Hmm? Okay, really? Hooliganism? Brian, do you know why the London riots are about? No clue whatsoever. Most people have no clue whatsoever what the London riots are really about, and it's not hooliganism. Hooliganism is the result. Hooliganism is what's happening, but it isn't why. I'm gonna play for you why, and what you're about to listen to is the equivalent of Obama voters in this country and we're not far from this. This is last night on the BBC. During the riots, the BBC's Leana Hosea interviewed two unidentified women protesters, and this is how it sounded.

WOMAN 1: It's not even a right. We're showing the police we can do what we want.

HOSEA: These are, like, local people. I mean, why is it targeting local people and your own people?

WOMAN 2: It's the rich people, the people that got businesses, and that's why all of this is happening, because of rich people. So we're just showing the rich people we can do what we want.

RUSH: Conservatives. Rich people. The riots in London. They want you to believe that this is about some out-of-control police action, that the cops did something. It's the corporate jet owners. It's the corporate jet owners and those people not paying their fair share. Specifically, it's rich people, "the people that got businesses." If you got a business, you are a rich person. Now, this, folks, is what we have in store. We're on this path. We're on this track. I'm glad you're laughing in there, Snerdley. We're on this track. We already have near race riots at the Wisconsin State Fair in a state where that kind of thing is not known for. I'm telling you. These are the equivalent of Obama voters in the United States, people you just heard here on the BBC.

RUSH: Back to this BBC thing. The way the BBC introduced that segment was this. "Croydon," an area of town, "was one of several areas plagued by unrest on Monday night, on a third night of riots in the capital." Plagued by unrest. Spontaneous unrest. Stuff just happens. Now, listen to the bite again from Leana Hosea of the BBC talking to unidentified drunk women in London.

WOMAN 1: It's not even a right. We're showing the police we can do what we want.

HOSEA: These are, like, local people. I mean, why is it targeting local people and your own people?

WOMAN 2: It's the rich people, the people that got businesses, and that's why all of this is happening, because of rich people. So we're just showing the rich people we can do what we want.

RUSH: "We are just showing the rich people we can do what we want. That's the telling aspect of that. We're just showing the rich people we can do what we want. All this is happening 'cause of rich people, the people that got businesses, the conservatives." That's why all this is happening. You're dubious about this. They burn down the stores to show the rich people we can destroy what they have so that they will have nothing, too. We can burn down the property of the rich people so that they've got nothing, either. You're missing the point here. Yeah, they have insurance. Point is, these people have everything. They've got free health care. They've just recently had to start paying for their education.

They live in a full-fledged socialist country. They have their equivalent of food stamps. They have interminable unemployment. They have free medical care (ostensibly). This is what they were promised. These were the people that bought into the false promises of socialism. These are the people that bought into the false promises of utopia, and who are they mad at? They are mad at people who didn't! They are mad at people who are self-reliant. They're mad at people who are making something of themselves independently. They think they have been defrauded. What they don't understand is they think that it is the successful portion of the population that has defrauded them not their government, and they are being fueled by whoever they listen to, to believe that rich people and businesses equal conservatism. I don't think it's a laughing matter.

Clearly the women are funny. They're drunk and they don't know at what they're talking about. It's not a laughing matter. This is, in my estimation, precisely what we're headed for -- and I think if this were to happen, Obama would not be upset. Obama wants it. In fact, we've seen elements of this. We've seen his union thugs show up at Tea Party events and start engaging in thuggery, beating people up. It is starting to happen here. There is no happiness in socialism. There is no nirvana, there is no utopia. There is no happiness in liberalism. It's all a false promise, and when that reality suddenly hits you -- as an individual or as a member of a group -- that's a hard, cold reality. To understand that everything you've been promised, everything you've been told, and everything you have believed in leaves you with nothing.

RUSH: I don't mean to harp on this, but, another night of rioting. It's coming up on eight o'clock in London, and they're rioting again, against the rich and against business owners. They are rioting in London. This stuff just popped up out of nowhere, and everybody says, "Why is this happening?" And of course a sound bite today told us why. It's not because some cop randomly shot somebody. It's being orchestrated and ginned up against capitalists, business owners, the so-called rich. Why aren't we rioting? A lot of Americans have just had a big chunk taken out of their 401(k)s and their pension plans. Shouldn't Americans be out rioting and looting? Instead everybody just got up and those that have jobs went to work as usual. Rioting and looting is strictly the privilege of the new leisured class, meaning the wards of the state.

RUSH: John in Weston, Virginia, as we return to the phones on Open Line Friday. Hello, sir.

CALLER: Hey, Rush, I know it's been a big day for the debate, but I know what all those people are gonna say by listening to you just about every day.

CALLER: But, with that said, I was listening to you yesterday when you were talking about Chris Matthews --

CALLER: I think when you said one of your typically, uhh, hyperbolic statements. You said, "It's not about this or that or that. It's about getting the government off our backs and getting them away from being the central focus of our life." I gotta tell you, if any of your listeners out there that aren't in the military make the government the central focus of their life, they're a little bit sick. They're kind of like stalkers. Because, you know, what? The central focus in my life is my wife and my kids and my job.

RUSH: Don't do this. You know there's whole bunch of people who the central focus of their life is the government. That's a problem! Everything they've got comes from the government, they get up and they look to

Washington, they get up and they listen to what happens in politics in terms it means what they're gonna get. Way too many people. You know what is meant by that statement. You call it hyperbole but it's not hyperbole.

CALLER: I don't think any of your listeners, if they truly looked at their lives, can say that the government is impacting it in any seriously negative way.

CALLER: Really. U-unless you're a coal miner and you hate the idea that you have to keep your miners safe, or unless you're a, y-y-y-you know, a forester --

RUSH: Okay, you have just told me that you're not serious. You have just told me you're a card-carrying leftist with the coal miner comment, that the only people can think there's too much government are the coal miner industry who are told they have to keep their workers safe. I don't need to hear any more from you. See, sir, I've come to conclusion that I don't want to try to compromise with you. It's not possible. I'm gonna beat you and not talk to you about it. You're gonna wake up one day, and you're not gonna realize it's happened until it's too late. I'm through talking to people like you. It doesn't work, it doesn't matter, you can't even be honest. (interruption) What? What? Do I...? (interruption) No, I'm not gonna debate the guy anymore! What's the point?

This is my whole point: This is a great illustration of exactly what I'm talking about. This guy and I have no common ground. There's no area of commonality there to find any compromise. None whatsoever. Zilch, zero, nada. It doesn't make any sense to talk to him. It's a waste of time to... (interruption) Of course they're unreachable, but I don't care whether they're reachable or not. They can be beaten whether you reach 'em or not. We do our best to reach 'em here, Snerdley. Nobody reaches out better than we reach out and if our outreach doesn't work, fine! Then they are targeted for defeat. It's pure and simple. I don't know what's so hard to understand about this. If you live in New York City the government takes more than 65% of your income! You don't think that impacts your life? I left a place because of its impact on my life. I chose to live someplace because of the lesser impact on my life by virtue of living there, and a lot of people are making similar decisions. For crying out loud, the EPA alone is changing the way everybody lives! The FDA is changing the way everybody lives. (long sigh)

Who's next? People have been waiting a long time. See, Ron in Santa Barbara right up the road here. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello, sir.

RUSH: You can't smoke on your front step in New York City, and he said the government doesn't impact your life?

RUSH: For criminitly's sake, I'm going to get ticked off here and start uttering obscenities if I keep thinking this because the thing I can't suffer is stupidity -- willful stupidity -- and that's what liberals are. They are willfully stupid, and I don't have patience, especially today suffering the ravages of some virus. I'm sorry, what were you saying?

CALLER: Well, Rush, listen, I understand. I'm a recovering communist myself, and you've been like my sponsor for the last 20 years.

RUSH: You can't get salt in a restaurant in New York City because the government won't let you eat it!

RUSH: We got Michelle Obama trying to tell you and your kids what you can't eat, and the government doesn't affect your life?

RUSH: I'm your sponsor. I heard you. I'm your sponsor for 20 years of Reaganism. Way to go.

CALLER: And you're helping remove some of the burdensome government from our lives. Listen, Rush, your inside baseball comments Monday before last. After the deficit compromise discussion that weekend, you had been talking with a couple of your friends who are also radio hosts and talking about the challenge of being informative and entertaining every day -- and you do that in spades every day. You said it was harder today than ever because Reality Heights tells you there's so much bad news: Housing, unemployment, just the fact that people receive unemployment now for 99 weeks. We understand it's harder, Rush, but it's more important than ever, and Ronaldus Magnus loved to quote Tom Paine: "Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered. The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly," and without you, Rush, we would not have had the Gingrich revolution, we would not have had welfare reform, we would not have had the balanced budgets of the late nineties, and Reality Heights tells me that you're the one who often, too often is the forge that puts some steel in the spine of Republicans. Now it may be harder, but it's more important than it's ever been. Without you we wouldn't have Allen West, we wouldn't have Marco Rubio, Jim DeMint, Paul Ryan. We wouldn't even have Scott Brown, and they're the hope for our nation's future. You're the real voice of hope and change.

RUSH: Colorado Springs, Colorado. Amy, thank you for calling, thanks for waiting, you're next on the EIB Network. Hello. Open Line Friday.

CALLER: I listened to your show earlier this week and you came out with some statements about Obamacare which is going to start allowing for women to have free access to birth control, and you came out against it. Now, my question for kind of just the Republicans in general I'm trying to reconcile is how can they be against birth control and abortion, yet at the same time be against raising children on welfare and having to pay for that debt to society our entire lives and filling our prison systems, and how do you reconcile this?

RUSH: I don't think the two have anything to do with one another. You asked first off: Against raising children on welfare. This is a cultural thing. It has to do with the best way to raise kids. Single parent families, single-mother children just don't have a chance in this country. It's statistically documented. What happened? Why do these people's fathers -- or mothers, in that case -- run off? You know, our problem is not that the government doesn't help out. The government has become the missing parent. The government has become the parents, and does not inculcate any values. The kids in this country that have no chance are the kids being cared for by government because their families have grown apart.

CALLER: Rush, I agree with not raising them on welfare but then how can you oppose -- be opposed to women getting free birth control which would prevent theme women, these children from being born?

RUSH: (sigh) You're asking me...? Do you really want me to sit here and say I'm in favor of abortion so we don't have welfare?

RUSH: No, no. No, no. You're trying to maneuver me in some abortion question. Of course the government has no business providing birth control! The government has no business encouraging the activity that leads to the cultural rot that is really responsible for all of these destroyed lives. The government is the reason that all of this is wrong. The government needs to get out of it. Churches used to do this. There was never welfare in this country before the mid-1930s. How did people get along? How did women get along without health care and birth control? They did it with family and churches, but all that's broken down. All that's laughed at and impugned and made fun of now.

Now the government has to do it or else it's not legitimate. The government, as an entity -- because it doesn't care about anything about how those people vote -- is destroying the opportunity that people in those financial circumstances have under the guise of compassion and saving them; and a lot of us are just fed up with it. Not because of the money it's costing, primarily, but because the human cost. We love people. We want the best for everybody! This is the greatest country ever devised by mankind, with the blessings of God, and we are in the process -- and have been for 50 plus years -- of ripping it apart, ripping the foundational building blocks of this country apart, and we wonder why certain people, kids, end up as they do?

The guardrails are gone from our society. There's nobody around to tell 'em they're wrong. There's nobody around to love them. There's nobody around to care about them, nobody around to give them high expectations. No! We're worried about whether or not the mother is gonna get an RU-486 pill the next day as she runs around and abandons HER responsibility, to herself and culture and society. There's no contradictions here. It all makes sense if you just broom the prejudice and the bias that you've been taught (A, about conservatives), and start thinking of people in purely human terms, there is no way you can look at what the welfare state has wrought and say that there's anything about it that is worth financing further.

Because all it's doing is producing people who vote Democrat, with a false promise that they're gonna be cared for, the false promise that they're going to have prosperity, the false promise that whoever is discriminating against them is gonna get theirs; they're gonna get taken care of. It turns out that all these promises have been made for 50 years, and these people have been hearing the same promises for 50 years, and they're still complaining about the same broken promises for 50 years. Yet they keep voting the same way. It's utter insanity. Now, you're talking to somebody who wants the best for everybody. You're talking to somebody who wants everybody to be able to access the opportunities for economic opportunity, education, whatever.

This is the best place on this planet there has ever been for humanity to be born. The greatest gift a human being in this world has is to be born in America, to be born in the United States. It's not going to be true very much longer if we keep treating people we claim to have compassion for the way we're treating them, if we look at them first and foremost as political tools. "Oh, yeah, I'm gonna make sure she gets an RU-486 pill! She'll vote for me! Women's rights, abortion rights, yeah! That's what we're for!" No. What about the concern for life, quality of life, the sanctity of life? There are people that have that, and they used to be those that people turned to when times got tough. They're called church, they're called family. But the left's busted up families and the left is busting up churches, or trying to.

RUSH: I'll tell you where that last call came from. Here's a story on CNN which broke the news: "According to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius the decision [we're gonna demand that the insurance companies provide birth control for free] is a part of the Affordable Care Act's move to 'stop problems before they start,'" which is exactly my point! Babies are "problems," and Obamacare is gonna stop 'em! How's Obamacare going to stop problems? We're gonna give out free abortion and morning after pills -- and by the way, we're gonna demand that the insurance companies provide birth control for free. Now, my attitude is real simple: Is there a problem in this country getting birth control? Is there a problem getting birth control pills or devices? There's not, is there? Now it's a right for which we all have to pay? My attitude is: If you want to abort your baby, you go get your own pill -- and if you want your own birth control, you go get your own condom or whatever device you want to use and you pay for it. They are in plentiful supply. The rest of society does not need to subsidize your behavior.

RUSH: The next story we have from CNN Money: "Tax Increase on the Rich Would Impact Just 3% of Taxpayers." What's happening here? It's small, but two stories in a row is some kind of a record. A breakout here of truth from the State-Controlled Media. "As the government looks for ways to climb out of its massive hole of debt, all eyes are on the rich." No, they're not! All eyes are on government. All eyes are not on the rich. But it's CNN.

"President Obama and many of his fellow Democrats continue to call for higher taxes on the wealthy, and, according to the results of a CNN/ORC International Poll released yesterday, many Americans agree that's the only way the country can dig itself out of its current economic mess. About 63% of the 1,008 people interviewed over the phone said they think that the new bipartisan committee should raise taxes on higher income Americans and businesses. But, asks CNN, just how many of these rich people are there?" Now, you people know this, as regular listeners here. Not only do you know how many of them there are who earn over ten million a year (a little over 8,000), you know what their combined total tax payments are. Well, let's see. Let's read further together here and see what CNN says.

"Just how many of these rich people are there, and, are there enough of them for a tax increase to really make a dent for the US trillions of dollars in debt. President Obama has defined the nation's wealthy as those who make $200,000 or more. According to a recent report from the IRS, that leaves out about 97% of the taxpaying population." Well, shazam! So they're accurate here: 3% is who we're talking about. "A report which provides a complete breakdown and analysis from returns from the 2009 tax year found that only a mere 3% of tax returns were filed by people earning a gross adjusted income of 200 grand or more. Americans earning $1 million or more were even more rare, pricing just two-tenths of 1% of the population, of tax filers, accounting for a mere 236,000 of the 140 million tax returns received in 2009."

So the number of millionaires filing taxes -- uh, people that earn more than a million dollars, 236,000 -- compared to 140 million tax returns received in 2009. "The wealthiest taxpayers, those earning $10 million or more in adjusted gross income are even less prevalent. There were only 8,274 people belonging to that elite club, according to the IRS." CNN gets it right here. They're a week behind, but they got it right. "Yet, even though these high income earners are a minority, Obama says the proposed tax increases would boost revenues by $750 billion over a decade, not quite the multitrillion-dollar figure the US needs to pay off the deficit, but for many of those who responded to the CNN/ORC International Poll, it's evidently a good enough start."

So the class envy works. At least CNN got the number right: Taxes on the rich would impact just 3%. Now, what they are trying to say is, "Go ahead and do it! My God, only gonna affect 3%? Soak 'em!" Let them have it.

The government just about ruined my business; I am a landlord. Now there is talk of the government becoming the largest landlord agency in the world. I am sure that will work.

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.

Sunshine State News (almost the only news service which ran a story on Mack’s Penny Plan). They are not a conservative news source, by the way.

Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis (a number of fairly easy to understand article on economic matters):

Start Thinking Right, a mostly conservative blog, but he does not support every single conservative in each and every case:

Watts Up With That (a lot of recent scientific news is posted here—there were 9 stories for July 5^th alone):

If you are a small business and you want to air out your problems with how government has hampered your business, here’s the place to go (enjoy the video):

Framing the Dialogue (mostly individually produced blog postings and interesting articles):

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 the Democratic Par, I mean, the communist party is up to.

This is one of my favorite lists; this is a list of things which global warming causes (right now, it causes over 800 things—most of these are linked):

100 things we can say goodbye to (or, hello to) because of Global Warming (all of these are linked). They are very serious about these things, by the way:

Conservative blog, but with an eye to the culture and pop culture (there is a lot of stuff here):

Conservative and pop culture blog (last I looked, there were some Beatles’ performances here):

Send this link to the young people you know (try the debt quiz; I only got 6 out of 10 right):

PA Pundits, whose motto is, “the relentless pursuit of common sense” (I used many of the quotations which they gathered)

The anti-Jihad resistence (which appears to be a set of links to similar websites):

Mostly a liberal blogger, who says vicious things about most conservatives; and yet, says something sensible, e.g. posting many of the things which the healthcare bill does to us.

News Organization (I mention them because I have seen 2 honest stories on their website, which shocked and surprised me):

Even though this group leans left, if you need to know what happened each day, and you are a busy person, here is where you can find the day’s news given in 100 seconds:

Weatherman Underground 1969 “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

Janine Turner’s website (I’m serious; and the website is serious too). This is if you have an interest in real American history:

Judith Miller is one of the moderate and fairly level-headed voices for FoxNews:

This is an odd blog; conservativism, bikinis and whatever else posted by either a P.I. or the brother of a P.I.:

Info Wars, because there is a war on for your mind (this site may be a little crazy??):

The Magic Negro Watch (this is peppered with obscenities and angry conservative rhetoric):

Do you want to watch what is happening on our border? These are actual videos of observations cams along the border:

No matter what your political stripe, you will like this; evaluate your Congressman or Senator on the issues:

AC/DC economics (start with the oldest lessons first; economics in 60 second bites):

The Freedom Project (most a conservative news and opinion site which appears to concentrate on matters financial)

This appears to be a daily pork report, apparently as pork in Washington bills is discovered, it gets posted at Tom Coburg’s website:

Weekly poll, asking you to identify what we ought to cut in governmental spending:

This is an interesting site; it seems to be devoted to the debate of climate change:

This is indispensable: the Wall Street Journal’s guide to Obama-care (all of their pertinent articles arranged by date—send one a day to your liberal friends):

Obamacare class action suit (as of today, joining in on the suit costs you whatever you want to donate, if I understand the form correctly):

A Muslim apologetic site (they will write out letters to express your feelings, and all you have to do is sign them, and they will send them on):

Since this will be with us for a long time, the timeline of the BP gulf oil spill:

This is cool: a continuous timeline of the spill, with the daily info and the expansion of the oil, and the response:

Army Ranger Michael Behenna sentenced to 25 years in prison for 25 years for shooting Al Qaeda operative

Maybe the White House does not need to hold press conferences? It releases exclusive articles daily right here:

This is quite helpful; it is a list of all leftist groups, with links to background information on each of these groups (when I checked, 879 groups were listed). This is a fantastic resource.

In case you need to reference this, here are the photos of all those on the JournoList:

Are you tired of all the unfocused news and lame talking heads yelling at one another? Just grab a cup of coffee, sit back, and see what is really going on in the world:

Conservative New Media (it is so-so; I must admit to getting tired of seeing the interviewer high-fiving Carly Fiorina 3 or 4 times during an interview):

One of the more radical people from the right, calling for the impeachment of Obama:

The Center for Freedom and Prosperity, a free enterprise site (there are several videos on the flat tax):

This is a pretty radical site which alleges that Obama is a Marxist hell-bent in taking over our country:

1982 interview with Larry Grathwohl on Ayers' plan for American re-education camps and the need to kill millions

This is a news site which I just discovered; they gave 3 minute coverage to Obama’s healthcare summit and seemed to give a pretty decent overall view of it, without slanting one way or the other:

I have glanced through their website and it seems to be quite professional and reasonable. They have apparently been around since 1942.

This is fantastic; Florida (the Sunshine State) is now putting its state budget online:

Suzanne Somers s supposed to be older than Bill O’Reilly? He interviewed her this week, and she looked, well, hot. She is big into vitamins and human growth hormones.

The National Journal, which is a political journal (which, at first glance, seems to be pretty even-handed):

And I am hoping that most people see this as non-partisan: Citizens Against Government Waste:

This website reveals a lot of information about politicians and their relationship to money. You can find out, among other things, how many earmarks that Harry Reid has been responsible for in any given year; or how much an individual Congressman’s wealth has increased or decreased since taking office.

This is an outstanding website which tells the truth about Obama-care and about what the mainstream media is hiding from you:

Politico.com is a fairly neutral site (or, at the very worst, just a little left of center). They have very good informative videos at:

On Obama (if you have not visited this site, you need to check it out). He is selling a DVD on this site as well called Media Malpractice; I have not viewed it yet, except pieces which I have seen played on tv and on the internet. It looks pretty good to me.

Liberal filter for FoxNews: News Hounds (motto: We watch FOX so you don't have to). Be clear on this; they do not want you to watch FoxNews.

Conservative Review
Issue #191	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	August 15, 2011