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).

Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born Islamic militant cleric who became a prominent figure in al-Qaida's most active branch, using his fluent English and Internet savvy to draw recruits to carry out attacks in the United States, was killed Friday in the mountains of Yemen.

NATO captured Haji Mali Khan, a senior leader of the al-Qaida- and Taliban-allied Haqqani network in Afghanistan.

Muslim American Rezwan Ferdaus was arrested in a plot to us large military-jet replicas, guided by GPS devices and capable of speeds over 100 m.p.h. to attack the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol using remote controls.

Over the last 18 months, 6 of the 7 cartels have established command and control facilities in Texas cities.

Republican candidates Ron Paul and Gary Johnson expressed concern over this action, saying that it may set a dangerous precedent. The ACLU has also objected, but it appears as if only a statement was made, and no legal action was taken.

The Wall Street protest continues, their numbers increasing to about 2000 when Radio head was said to be doing a concert there.

There are rumors that the Department of Justice may dissolve the ATF. ATF ran Operation Fast and Furious, but the planning and orders for this plan came from above. Right now, the DOJ is offering very little help by way of cooperation and determining whose incredibly stupid idea this was.

The Obama Justice Department lawyers have sued Arizona and Alabama and are also considering legal challenges in Georgia, Indiana and South Carolina, according to court documents and government officials.

Neither Democrats and Republicans are supporting President Obama’s new jobs plan. There is no rush to sponsor or co-sponsor this bill, and Senate majority leader, Democrat Harry Reid, says the bill ought to come up for a vote sometime in October.

Michelle Obama, who has become known for her extravagance, just happened to be in Target the other day and an AP photographer happened to be there and snapped a picture of her. I have no doubt that the First Lady lacked Lysol or whatever, to do some Fall cleaning at the White House, and had to pop into Target to pick up supplies. Only the cashier recognized her; and the AP photographer, who is said to have worked his sources in order to get the photos.

Rufus Gifford, the National Finance Director for Obama for America, has revealed that, at Obama’s re-election campaign headquarters in Chicago, they are eating junk food and coffee.

Although a court has slightly modified a very strong anti-illegal immigration bill in Alabama, some very tough provisions were allowed to stand. There has been a sudden noticeable disappearance of Hispanic students from their public schools.

There is a Keystone Pipeline which carries raw petroleum from Canada into the United States to be refined in Port Arthur and Houston, TX. Another pipeline, called the Keystone XL, was proposed in 2008, and is close to being built. However, the problem is, it will run directly over one of the world's largest and most pristine aquifers. To my untrained eye, this could have been positioned in such a way as to miss more of the aquifer to begin with; but the project managers chose not to. Although I am not a rabid environmentalist, it seems like this would have been a good idea to explore an alternate route to begin with.

Researchers have found that voting machines all over the United States can be hacked. A $26 item can change the votes from about a half mile away. There is a better lock available, apparently, which can frustrate this hacking.

Billionaire Warren Buffet held a $10,000/plate fund-raising dinner for President Obama and one guest called the turnout disappointing.

San Francisco has new window requirements for all new construction to protect birds from flying into them. It appears that this may apply to windows being replaced. Of course, a “window replacement permit” will be required for existing buildings, which I assume comes with an inspection. When California struggles with their budget problems, one threat you will never hear is, “We might have to retract our new window requirements and lay off our window inspectors and close the replacement window permit department.” Nope. What they will threaten is, “We will have to lay off teachers, firemen and police and then set all the criminals free.” The reason given for this is Phoenix, the parrot from The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, who flew into a closed window. In Texas, right now, if we are handy, we replace the windows ourselves (they cost $50–$100) or we get really cool windows installed for about $300–$400 each installed. No inspections, no permits. These sorts of things illustrate the difference between liberals and conservatives; liberals want to control every part of your life, unless it involves sex, and then, anything goes. You want to have a huge homosexual parade where some of the performers simulate homosexual sex out in the open? No problem. But if you want to install the wrong kind of window, well, that’s a whole different matter.

Hallmark Greeting cards develops a number of new cards around the theme of condolences over the loss of your job.

Sarah Palin, via a letter from her lawyers, has laid the groundwork for a possible suit against the publishers of The Rogue. It is very difficult for a celebrity of any sort to win on such a lawsuit, although a few have. Surprising (at least to me), quite a number of book reviewers panned this book. Stuart Applebaum, the spokesman for Crown Publishers sent ABC News this statement: "We are confident that the reporting in THE ROGUE is solid, reliable, and well-substantiated. We stand by our publication and our author."

Ford Motors puts out an ad where a real customer chose Ford because they did not take bailout money. Ford pulls this ad and some claim the White House had something to do with it. Both Ford and the WH deny this.

A Christian pastor has been sentenced to death in Pakistan for refusing to renounce Jesus Christ and return to his Muslim faith.

In Cairo, Egypt, a 3,000-strong mob of hard-line and Salafi Muslims gutted the Mar Gerges Church in the Elmarenab village of Aswan, then demolished much of its remains, multiple witnesses at the scene said. The mob also razed four homes near the church and two businesses, all Christian-owned. Looting was also reported. This is a new story; which seems to be repeated week after week after week. This wonderful Arab Spring doesn’t appear to be too wonderful for Christians.

Kainat Soomro is a 17-year-old Pakistani girl who has become a local celebrity of sorts in her battle for justice in the Pakistani courts, a daring move for a woman of any age in this country, let alone a teenager. She was raped several years ago by several young men, and she is asking for justice. According to the Kainat family's account, the tribal elders declared her kari, (which literally means black female), for losing her virginity outside marriage.

The United States Congress has blocked nearly $200 million in aid for the Palestinians.

President Barack Obama, for about the 100^th time: "This jobs bill is fully paid for. This jobs bill contains the kinds of proposals that Democrats and Republicans have supported in the past. And now, I want it back. It is time for Congress to get its act together and pass this jobs bill so I can sign it into law."

Valerie Jarrett “[President Obama’s] vision [is] based very deeply in values. And taking care of the least of these, and making sure that we are creating a country that is a country for everybody not just for the very very wealthy. We are working hard to lift people out of poverty and give them a better life, and a footing, and that's what government is suppose to do.”

President Barack Obama: "If we don't get our fiscal house in order in a way that is fair and equitable, so that everybody feels like they have responsibilities to not only themselves and their families but also to the country that has given them so much opportunity, we're going to have problems.”

WH press secretary Jay Carney "The president didn't watch the [Republican] debates." You may recall that the president has made several statements about the Republican debates, which Carney has commented on as well.

President Obama to the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay rights organization: "You want to be commander in chief? You can start by standing up for the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States, even when it's not politically convenient."

President Obama: "We believe in a big America, a tolerant America, a just America, an equal America. We don't believe in a small America. We don't believe in the kind of smallness that believes that a stage full of political leaders - one of whom could end up being president of the United States - being silent when an American is booed."

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.): "I think [Obama] got carried away. He got fired up. [Obama] got off script and got a little bit beside himself but I certainly don't believe that he thinks the Congressional Black Caucus is sitting around in house slippers and bed slippers and whatever those things are - I don't own them and I don't understand the image that was described there...I think he just got a little bit of the teleprompter."

Ex-Google employee Doug Edwards to Obama: "Would you please raise my taxes?" Edwards has given $300,000 to Democrat politicians since 2000.

President Obama on Michelle’s down-home modesty: "She always jokes about my motorcade. She gets embarrassed when she goes out with me because there's an ambulance and a caboose and a dogsled. It trails for about a mile behind me."

Michelle Obama at a fundraiser: “Yay to me! Yay! (Applause.) Oh, my goodness...When we talk about how this bill will give tax cuts to 6 million

small businesses, we're talking about folks who run the restaurants and the stores and the startups that create two-thirds of all new jobs each year. Two-thirds. We're talking about people who work themselves to the bone during the day every day, then head home and pore over the books late into the night, determined to make those numbers add up. We're talking about a tax cut that could mean the difference between providing for their families or not, the difference between hiring new employees or handing out pink slips, between keeping their doors open, or closing up shop for good. That's what's at stake in this election.”

Bev Purdue, Democratic governor of North Carolina: "I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won't hold it against them, whatever decisions they make."

Peter title for a new article for The New Republic: "Why we need less democracy." In this article, he writes: “To solve the serious problems facing our country, we need to minimize the harm from legislative inertia by relying more on automatic policies and depoliticized commissions for certain policy decisions. In other words, radical as it sounds, we need to counter the gridlock of our political institutions by making them a bit less democratic.”

Film maker and millionaire Michael Moore: “[capitalism] is not American...it's not Christian, it's not Jewish."

Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren: "You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."

Actress Roseanne Barr: "I do say i am for the return of the guillotine, and that is for the worst of the worst of the guilty....I, first, would allow the guilty bankers to pay back anything over $100 million (in) personal wealth, because I believe in the maximum wealth of $100 million. If they're unable to live on that amount, they should go to re-education camps. And if that doesn't work, they should be beheaded."

Actress Susan Sarandon: “People who are rightfully upset about the inequality economically and all of the world developments...I mean, I don’t know that much about Wall Street, but if I was running a business and I made that big of a mistake and lost that many people’s future, I don’t think I’d get a bonus, or keep my job, so something’s wrong.” Said proudly by the actress who returned her salary when participating in a lousy movie (just a joke).

Dreadlocked 20-year-old Wall Street protestor who identified himself as Pigpen: "I actually think it's kind of ridiculous. The only reason 500 people are here is because they think Radiohead is going to be here."

Pamela Thompson of Anchorage, Alaska on a sign: "Wall Street makes me feel like vomiting."

A 10-year-old girl giving her presidential platform: "I will ax the rich people to give some of their money to the government and ax the government to give the people, who really need the money." I am guessing on the age.

Good Morning America's John Hendren on Herman Cain’s surprise victory in the Florida straw poll: “The week's big winner in the Republican primary is nobody."

CBS's Erica Hill to Herman Cain, after his victory in Florida: "A number of the Republicans who voted in that poll...said, you know, we really don't expect him to be able to go on and be the nominee....[Y]ou thought a couple times about dropping out, and most people would say- look, you may have something people respond to, but your chances of actually getting that nomination—pretty slim. So why stick with it then?"

MSNBC host Martin Bashir: "John Boehner and his Republican majority decided to gut the food safety and inspection service....Cut, cut, cut. Now the results are in. 16 people have lost their lives."

Washington Post column by Al Kamen speaks about Chris Christie's "girth" and cites the "weight stigma" specialist Rebecca Puhl of Yale: “ ‘There are so many negative weight-based stereotypes - people think overweight and obese people are lazy, out of control, or lacking in discipline and willpower’ ”

On the same day, liberal columnist Eugene Robinson writes: "I'd just like to offer him a bit of unsolicited, nonpartisan, sincere advice: Eat a salad and take a walk."

Interviewer on the Keiser Report, after Roseanna Barr spoke of her desire to bring back the guillotine: “You’re singing to the choir here; we’ve been advocating the guillotine for years now.”

Vice President Joe Biden in 2009: "I'm really happy to announce today that we've closed a $535 million loan guarantee for Solyndra, more than half a billion dollars. This is the first in what the Secretary is going to be announcing the Dept. of Energy will be making available for more than $30B in loan guarantees the Recovery Act is providing and will provide to American companies that are leading the way to a new, clean energy future. The loan to Solyndra will allow you to build a new manufacturing facility and with it almost immediately generate 3000 new well paying construction jobs"

Joe Biden again in 2009: "This announcement today is part of the unprecedented investment this Administration is making in renewable energy and exactly what the Recovery Act is all about. By investing in the infrastructure and technology of the future, we are not only creating jobs today, but laying the foundation for long-term growth in the 21st-century economy."

Joe Biden when announcing the Solyndra jobs: "These jobs are gonna be permanent jobs. These are the jobs of the future. These are the green jobs. These are the jobs that won't be exported."

The NY Times, Oct. 19, 2001: “They are among the most influential voices of Muslim America, a diverse and sometimes fractious community that was often openly critical of the United States. Now these same spiritual leaders are calling on their colleagues to tone down the incendiary anti-American messages that have long been a staple at some Muslim events. Some have gone so far as to retract their own hard words. ” One of this new generation? “Imam Anwar Al-Awlaki, spiritual leader at the Dar al-Hijra mosque in Virginia, one of the nation's largest, which draws about 3,000 worshipers for communal prayers each Friday.”

Evan Thomas, Politico: “Christie would be a very appealing candidate except that he weighs too much. I mean, it's an issue that everybody is uncomfortable with but it's really an issue. [...]”

Colby King, Washington Post: “He's a guy that I would love to have breakfast, lunch, and dinner with at the same setting.”

Mark Shields, PBS: “Now, the weight thing is a problem, and I can say that when you sit in the bathtub, and the water level in the toilet does rise, it's a pretty good indication that you probably ought to cut the second dessert. And I think that's a problem with the Governor.”

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka about Governor Scott Walker: "Would I support going after Lucifer? Of course we're going to be there [in Wisconsin]. I mean, the guy has overreached, he's been a bad governor. He tried to use a contrived deficit to take people out."

Bill Maher: “So then they dropped her and convinced Rick Perry to run. Oh, yes, finally the conservative they were all looking for, but then something horrible happened: Rick started talking, and he sounded so dumb that now they're even considering voting for a black guy.”

Desperate Housewives star Eva Longoria: “[Obama] keeps getting beat up lately because there's such an extremist movement happening and it's a very dangerous- For me, it's very dangerous because it's not the character of America. It's really under attack. And he's been governing in, like, a state of emergency since the time he went into office so we haven't really seen him do what he can do.”

Janeane Garofalo: "Herman Cain is probably well liked by some of the Republicans because it hides the racist elements of the Republican party. Conservative movement and tea party movement, one in the same. People like Karl Rove liked to keep the racism very covert. And so Herman Cain provides this great opportunity say you can say 'Look, this is not a racist, anti-immigrant, anti-female, anti-gay movement. Look we have a black man.'"

Van Jones about Republicans who oppose giving money to Solyndra: “These are not patriots; these are not patriots.”

Dr. Salah Sultan, a member of Yusuf al-Qaradawi's International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt: "Every Zionist who enters Egypt--tourist or not--should be killed."

Shaykh Abu-Ishaq al-Huwayni on the Egyptian satellite television station al-Hikma on 7 July 2011: “Whoever insults the Prophet (PBUH), if he later comes and apologizes, and kisses the shoes (of the ruler), and says, "I want all Muslims, every one, to return and strike me with the soles of their feet"-does the ruler have the right to accept this? I bring up this question, as it was asked of me. The answer is that it is not permissible for anyone to accept this. Then what do we do with him? We kill him! But he told you that he repented. We still kill him, even if he repents!”

Popular Egyptian Salafi Shaykh Muhammad Hassan explains in this video clip posted on YouTube: “If there are two men, and one of them is stronger spiritually, while the other is stronger physically, (the latter) is more beneficial to that nation. In war, for example, the strong man offers his courage, even if he is immoral or licentious. The weak man (only) offers his impotence, even if he is faithful.”

Egyptian Shaykh Sa'id 'Abd-al-'Azim: “I want to say that democracy is a bad idea. We should not feel ashamed to say it. It is a bad, backward, and retarded idea, which is taken from Greece. Democracy is spoken of like it's a modern discovery, but it's not.”

Hamas leader Khaled Meshal: "Palestinians must resort to resistance no matter how costly it is, until Palestine is free and Israel is destroyed."

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, speaking at the same conference: "Palestine spans from the river (Jordan) to the sea (Mediterranean), nothing less." Khamenei claimed that a two state solution would mean "giving in to the demand of the Zionists" and that it would "trample the rights of the Palestinian people" to live on their land. He also called Israel a "cancerous tumor" that should be removed.

Statement from the Dar Al Hijrah mosque, where Al Awlaki was an imam: "[Al Awlaki] was known for his interfaith outreach, civic engagement and tolerance in the Northern Virginia community."

Hassan Mohamed, 62, worshiper at Dar Al Hijrah: "I don't know why he should be killed. I don't approve of my government going around the world to kill innocent people."

Newsweek editor Tina Brown: "Actually, I just hope he doesn't, because in the end, you know, his tremendous misgivings, maybe he is right. I mean, We had this with Obama. He wasn't ready, it turns out, really."

Kirstan Powers: “Yeah, they’re hypocrites” about those on the left who threw a fit over waterboarding, but don’t seem to have any problem with Obama’s kill orders on high-ranking Al Qaeda members.

Joe Biden: "What's relevant is we're in charge [of the White House]. And right now, we are the ones in charge and it's gotten better but it hasn't gotten good enough and in states like Florida it's become even more stagnant because of the real estate market."

Mary's Pal from Hershey, PA with regards to the Wall Street protests: "99.9% of the people who work in the financial industry are NOT these so-called elite. They are hard working people who struggle to support their families and, heck, just to keep their jobs.”

Larry King: “It would be great -- the one thing good about it if Romney or Huntsman got it is a Mormon against a black, what does the South do? What do they do? You`re in Alabama, oh, my gosh.”

Unidentified male: There are some members of the Tea Party who are black, some prominent members: Allen West, Herman Cain.

President Obama: “This is a great, great country that had gotten a little soft and we didn't have that same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades. We need to get back on track."

Charles Krauthammer: "[Obama is] having trouble governing, he is seen as not having good stewardship or the ability to govern and he blames America? ...He is seen as someone who is compounding condescension, incompetence and narcissism all in one sentence."

Dennis Miller: “If you were running [for president], I’d be in the VEEP slot.”

Bill Maher, Host: “No, I know why you're happy tonight. President bad ass has done it again. A predator drone killed Anwar al-Awlaki. You can applaud that if you like. [Applause] He is Al-Awlaki, is the, well United States citizen is what he is. He was living in Yemen, became the world's most wanted terrorist. And it just shows once again do not f--k with Obama.”

Bill Maher: “-- we have to -- you have to -- many -- any of them. They were all tried in courts in America and all put away. You know, I, if I was a criminal or a terrorist, whatever you want to call them, yes, I would fear the most a prosecutor -- a seasoned federal prosecutor in our system, you know, like Eliot Spitzer was, those kinds of guys.”

Maher: “Yes, tough. And there's a reason they've put them all away and a reason they will -- they will never get out of prison, because if there's one thing we can still do in this country, it's put people in prison and keep them there.”

What could account for the change? Could it be that, this was the approach of the Obama administration in 2010?

Newt Gingrich: “[Obama] doesn’t learn, he doesn’t listen, he doesn’t understand America.”

Newt: “[Obama has] given up being president and he runs around campaigning all the time.”

Herman Cain: "Many African-Americans have been brainwashed into not being open-minded, not even considering a conservative point of view. I have received some of that same vitriol simply because I am running for the Republican nomination as a conservative."

Texas Radio talk host Lores Ripscalla: “We conservatives in Texas know that [Perry] ’s not a true conservative.”

Charles Krauthammer on the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki: “It’s the ultimate term-limit.”

Rush Limbaugh on ABC doing an honest story on Solyndra: “It is possible that ABC practiced a random act of journalism.” [quoted from memory]

Conservative newsman Byron York: “The definition of a gaff in Washington is when you accidentally tell the truth.” (Quoted from memory).

Populist newsman Bill O’Reilly: "I think everybody understands that black Americans vote for the Democrats because of entitlement spending. I think they all have that."

Marco Rubio: "While there has been some good documentation of this [human rights violations in Iran] by a few in the media and in the human rights arena, there has unfortunately been a cowardly silence by the UN and most of the international community in this case and others."

Former Vice President Dick Cheney: "The thing I am waiting for is for the administration to go back and correct something they said two years ago, when they criticized us for quote overreacting to the events of 9/11. They in effect said we had walked away from our ideals, taking policy contrary to our ideals when we had enhanced interrogation techniques. They have clearly moved in the direction of taking robust action when they feel it is justified. In this case, it was. They need to go back and reconsider what the president said in Cairo [in 2009]."

Daughter Liz Cheney: "He slandered the nation, and I think he owes an apology to the American people. those are the policies that kept us safe"

Herman Cain’s communications director Ellen Carmichael has just resigned, but she said: "I am incredibly fond of Mister Cain. I think he's a fantastic candidate and a great person of the highest character. And I think he has an important voice and an important message. My decision to leave is not a reflection of any sort of displeasure with Mister Cain."

Rush Limbaugh: "Do they have to send the First Lady to Target for Lysol for the White House? What a phony-baloney plastic banana good time rock and roll photo op this was."

Rush Limbaugh: "We are rooted in the truth here. We are engaged in a relentless unstoppable pursuit of the truth. The left's only hope is to blur the truth."

Rush Limbaugh: "Does anybody stop and think that maybe we can't afford to be a player in 'the global clean energy race' if it's $16 million a job?"

Rush: "Nothing in the Republican Party is different today than it was in '76 or 1980. A conservative nominee is considered a threat to the Republican establishment and must be done away with."

Rush: "State and local governments collect another $3 trillion a year from us. This is a grand total of $6 trillion in taxes per year. Why isn't $6 trillion a year enough to fix potholes and bridges and the sort? We ought to be able to fill 'em up with diamonds and platinum for that money."

Rush: "This is not a jobs bill; it's a tax increase bill, and the president wrote it specifically so that it would not pass."

Rush: "You want to know why Herman Cain won the straw poll in Florida? 'Cause you can't find one example of Herman Cain, at any point in this campaign, not being a conservative."

Rush: "There's nothing unifying about socialism. Socialism has to be imposed on people. Freedom doesn't."

Rush: "The pro-choice position is pro-abortion, but they can't survive being known as pro-abortion. It's never been the case that the majority of people in this country are for abortion on demand as a means of birth control. And as a result of that show, we now have 'Choose Life' license plates."

Rush: "In a sane world states would be rewarded for lowering the food stamp rolls. In Oregon a 60 percent increase in food stamp usages in four years and they've promised to work even harder to keep getting the awards."

Rush: "There's no way the prices are going down when a liberal is in charge of the program. It's just not humanly possible."

Bill O’Reilly on the Jon Stewart show (always a good time had by all—full show, commercial first):

Here is how the left justifies Solyndra on Bill Maher’s program (it is called a noble effort):

Herman Cain on This Week; 2 minutes spent of a 8 minute interview on the booing of a gay soldier (or booing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell). Christiane Amanpour also wanted to talk about where Rick Perry went hunting and Blacks being brainwashed. These are the big issues today. She did give 2 minutes to his 9-9-9 plan.

Dennis Miller, when asked about the people protesting in underwear in Salt Lake City (the Undie Run 2011): “Listen, in brief, here’s what I have to say about the Boxer Rebellion. One thing about this race is, you can definitely tell the Mormon from the less-man now.”

Just in case you are the only person who has not seen this vid, here is a Taiwanese man who dropped his young daughter to try to catch a foul ball; and the reaction of his wife.

1) Rush made the simple point that, none of the things promised by the government come for free. When President Obama said that kids could stay on their parents healthcare plan until age 26 comes with higher premiums; cutting back on one set of bank fees ends up with a new set of fees being assessed.

2) When Herman Cain explains his 9-9-9 plan, he needs to deal with our economy as being dynamic. Changing the taxing method will also change the economy.

3) How can anyone on the left support Obama killing radical Muslims, without a trial, and yet, oppose waterboarding? This is illogical. I support the waterboarding and I support Obama putting out kill orders, where appropriate, on Muslim leaders who have declared war on the United States.

4) At one time, Al Qaeda leaders could promise whatever to suicide bombers, and be far, far away from the action. With the Bush and Obama policies, that is no longer the case. Both Bush and Obama favored finding high-ranking Muslim leaders and dispatching them quickly to their 72 virgins.

5) Michael Medved explained Governor Rick Perry’s decision to give instate tuition to illegal aliens who have lived in the state of Texas for 3 years or more (and no one in Perry’s campaign will admit to this): Texas is a state with a lot of Hispanics. If conservatives are seen as being opposed to Hispanic causes in all cases, Texas would turn to a blue state almost overnight. So, Perry has to justify it for other reasons, but the main reason is to keep Texas red.

6) You know what I hate? Congressional legislation which is long, references 200 other documents, and is unreadable by a normal person.

7) Pat Cadell pointed out that, if you are a voting block who always votes for the same party, your vote will be taken for granted.

9) President Obama deserves credit for continuing and even stepping up President Bush’s aggressive war on terror. Everyone on the right ought to be willing to admit to that. However, everyone on the left needs to recognize that these are Bush/Cheney policies that Obama is building upon; and even though the President does not waterboard, he still kills.

10) Michael Medved had a spokesman from the Wall Street demonstrations on his program a few days ago, and the protestor would not speak in anything but generalities. Medved pushed him on several issues, but he got very little out of him other than, there is a problem with Wall Street and our political system (which all would agree with) and that demonstrating is part of the democratic system, which almost everyone would agree with. However, if you look at the signs carried by the people there, they are very anti-capitalism which would make them pro-socialism, pro-communism and/or pro-union. I believe that the intent of keeping their actual political views hidden was to also attract TEA party types to their protest.

11) If the liberal press is beginning to realize that Obama could lose his bid for his second term, will they push Mitt Romney on us?

The Obama Administration is giving $737 million to Tonopah Solar, a subsidiary of California-based SolarReserve. 45 permanent jobs will be created and, their #2 man is Nancy Pelosi’s brother-in-law. Probably just a coincidence.

In fact, there were 9 companies green lighted for loan approvals by the federal government, at a total of $6.5 billion with 283 permanent jobs created, which is $23 million/job.

Based on what has happened in Spain, 2.2 private economy jobs are lost for each new green job created. The cost of their energy has increased by 100% since 2004.

Bill Clinton receive 83% and 84% of the Black vote. Al Gore won 90% of the Black vote. John Kerry won 88% of the African American vote. Obama got 96% of the Black vote.

According to the Justice Department’s National Youth Gang Center, since 1980 the growth of gangs in the United States has been incredibly rapid, from an estimated 286 jurisdictions, which reported the presence of approximately 2,000 gangs made up of nearly 100,000 members in 1980 to over 30,000 gangs with more than 1 million members in 2011.

About 25 percent of the federal prison population in 2010 was comprised of 55,000 foreign nationals.

A general, whose name I did not catch, on Greta, said that there are at least 10,000 cartel members operating in Texas right now.

49% of Americans say the Republican Party is better equipped to protect the U.S. from global military and terrorist threats while

A record 81% of Americans are dissatisfied with government. This may help to explain why Herman Cain, a non-politician, actually has a chance to become the next president.

Herman Cain enjoys only about 51% name recognition. Most of the other top candidates have about an 80% name recognition.

There was all kinds of coverage on the Florida straw poll, prior to; where I observed on at least two occasions Florida Governor Scott telling us that this will probably be the next president of the United States. However, after Herman Cain handily won the straw poll, he received barely a

mention by Donna Brazil on one Sunday show, as an aside comment; and not mentioned at all on another network’s Sunday show. In both cases, the Perry versus Romney struggle was highlighted and discussed. No one that I saw, except on FoxNews, expressed any surprise over the Florida straw poll, even though the outcome was quite a surprise. It is as if the media has already decided who the front-runners are, and there aren’t any others, no matter what the polls say.

If Sarah Palin was not blasted by the Obama Media complex for calling Herman Cain Herb Cain on Greta, that means they are much less afraid of her now.

CNN published an article about Herman Cain calling African Americans brainwashed. They quote percentages of black voters who voted for Eisenhower and Nixon; but then did not give any percentages of elections more recent than 50 years ago.

Black unemployment and black poverty almost always increase under a Democratic president; do you see many news stories about this?

Excellent Media Matters this past week; the news response to Herman Cain winning the Florida straw polls is quite amazing.

President Obama, when speaking to a black audience, told them to stop cryin’ and complain’ so, AP printed the transcript of that message just as Obama said those words; without the g’s on the end. MSNBC called AP racist for dropping these g’s. Obama, dropping his g’s in front of a Black audience? No problem with that. AP revealing that in a transcript; now that is racist!

Media casts G. W. Bush as a human rights abuser; but gloss over Obama killing a U.S. citizen.

CBS is covering the “Fast and Furious” story. Other news outlets apparently do not find it to be a compelling narrative. CBS is actually asking the ultimate question: “Who authorized ‘Operation Fast and Furious’?”

It appears as though both the left and the establishment right wants this to be just a two-man primary: Romney versus Perry.

Solyndra, LightSquared, and Fast and Furious; SNL can’t think of anything to do on these?

Who was the highest-ranking person who green-lighted the Solyndra loan, and was he aware of the predictions that Solyndra would go out of business when it did?

getting our fiscal house in order in a way that is fair and equitable = a redistribution of wealth

The newspapers and the pro-Obama press has really blown it. There is so much juicy stuff that could have been used against Rick Perry in the main election; and too much of it is coming out now, in the primary.

Putting out a jobs bill that even Democrats won’t back? Is that the right approach in this coming election?

The Obama Media Complex will gently push Mitt Romney as the Republican candidate. During the actual election, they will come at him pretty hard, but they will be soft on him during the primary.

The Arab Spring in Egypt has been filled with hatred and anger toward Jews and Christians.

'The way I think about it," Barack Obama told a TV station in Orlando, "is, you know, this is a great, great country that had gotten a little soft."

He has a point. This is a great, great country that got so soft that 53% of electors voted for a ludicrously unqualified chief executive who would be regarded as a joke candidate in any serious nation.

One should not begrudge a man who seizes his opportunity. But one should certainly hold in contempt those who allow him to seize it on the basis of such flaccid generalities as "hope" and "change": That's more than "a little" soft.

"He's probably the smartest guy ever to become president," declared presidential historian Michael Beschloss the day after the 2008 election. But you don't have to be that smart to put one over on all the smart guys.

"I'm a sap, a specific kind of sap. I'm an Obama Sap," admits David Brooks, the softest touch at the New York Times. Tina Brown, editor of Newsweek, now says of the president: "He wasn't ready, it turns out, really."

If you're a tenured columnist at the Times, you can just about afford the consequences of your sappiness. But among the hundreds of thousands of your readers who didn't know you were a sap until you told them three years later, soft choices have hard consequences.

If you're one of Obama's core constituencies, those who looked so photogenic at all the hopeychangey rallies, things are really hard: "Young Becoming 'Lost Generation' Amid Recession" (CBS News). Tough luck, rubes. You got a bumper sticker; he got to make things worse.

But don't worry, it's not much better at the other end of the spectrum: "Obama's Wall Street Donors Look Elsewhere" (UPI).

Gee, aren't you the fellows who, when you buy a company, do something called "due diligence"? But you sunk everything into stock in Obamania Inc. on the basis of his "perfectly creased pant leg" or whatever David Brooks was drooling about that day? You handed a multitrillion-dollar economy to a community organizer and you're surprised that it led to more taxes, more bureaucracy, more regulation, more barnacles on an already rusting hulk?

Regulation is about cleaner air, healthier restaurants, safer children's toys. Sounds so nice. But federal regulation alone sucks up 10% of GDP. That's to say, Americans take the equivalent of the Canadian economy and toss it down the toilet just in complying with federal paperwork. Obama and the great toxic alphabet soup of federal regulation - EPA, OSHA, SEC, DHSS - want to take that 10% and crank it up to 12%, 14%, 15%.

Who could have foreseen that? The most dismal thing about that David Brooks column conceding that "yes, I'm a sap ... remember, I'm a sap ... as you know, I'm a sap" was the headline his New York Times editors chose to append to it: "Obama Rejects Obamaism."

In other words, even in a column remorselessly cataloguing how one of its smartest smart guys had been repeatedly suckered by Obama on jobs, on Medicare, on deficits, on tax reform, etc., the New York Times chose to insist that there's still something called "Obamaism" - prudent, centrist, responsible - that for some perverse reason the man for whom this political philosophy is named insists on betraying, 24/7, week in, month out, spring, summer, autumn, tax season. You can set your clock by Obama's rejection of "Obamaism."

"Obamaism" was the Emperor's new centrism: To a fool such as your average talk-radio host, His Majesty appears to be a man of minimal accomplishments other than self-promotion marinated in a radical faculty-lounge view of the world and the role of government. But, to a wise man such as your average presidential historian or New York Times columnist, he is the smartest guy ever to become president.

In part, this is a natural extension of an ever more conformist and unrepresentative establishment's view of where "the center" is. On issues from abortion to climate change, a Times man or Hollywood activist or media professor's notion of "centrism" is well to the left of where American opinion is.

That's one reason why a supposedly "center-right" nation has wound up regulated into sclerosis, drowning in debt and embarking on its last decade as the world's leading economy.

But in the case of Obama the chasm between soft, seductive, politico-media "centrism" and hard, grim reality is too big to bridge, and getting wider all the time.

You would think this might prompt some sober reflection from an American mainstream media dying in part because of its dreary ideological conformity. After all, a key reason why 53% voted for a man who was not, in Tina Brown's word, "ready" is that Tina and all her pals assured us he was.

Occidental, Columbia, Harvard Law, a little light community organizing, a couple of years timeserving in a state legislature: That's what America's elites regard as an impressive resume rather than a bleak indictment of contemporary notions of "accomplishment."

Obama would not have withstood scrutiny in any society with a healthy, skeptical press. Yet, like the high-rolling Wall Street moneybags, they failed to do due diligence.

Three years on, nothing has changed. Obama is proposing to raise taxes because of some cockamamie yarn Warren Buffett has been peddling about his allegedly overtaxed secretary. Yet the court eunuchs of the media persist in taking Buffett seriously as a archetypal exemplar of the "American business community" rather than as an especially well-connected crony.

Sometimes, Obama cronyism is merely fiscally wasteful, as in the still underreported Solyndra "green jobs" scandal. One sympathizes with reporters assigned to the story: It's hard to get all the public monies and Solyndra-exec White House visit logs lined up in digestible form for the casual reader.

But sometimes Obama cronyism is murderous: Eric Holder, a man unfit to be attorney general of the United States, continues to stonewall the "Fast and Furious" investigation into taxpayer-funded government gun-running to Mexican drug cartels.

It is alleged that the administration chose to facilitate the sale of American weapons to crime kingpins south of the border in order to support a case for gun control north of the border. Evidence keeps piling up:

The other day, a letter emerged from ATF supervisor David Voth authorizing Special Agent John Dodson to buy Draco pistols to sell directly to known criminals. Over 200 Mexicans are believed to have been killed by "Fast and Furious" weapons - that is to say, they were killed by a U.S. government program.

Doesn't the New York Times care about dead Mexicans? Doesn't Newsweek or CBS News? Isn't Obamaism with a body-count sufficiently eye-catching even for the U.S. press? Or, three years in, are the enablers of Obama still so cynical that they accept it as a necessary price to pay for "change you can believe in"? You can't make a hopenchange omelette without breaking a couple hundred Mexican eggs?

Obama says America has "gotten a little soft." But there's nothing soft about a dead-parrot economy, a flat-line jobs market, regulatory sclerosis, "green jobs" multibillion-dollar squandering and a mountain of dead Mexicans. In a soft nation, "centrist" government is hard and cruel. Only the coverage is soft-focus.

You hear the same thing said about Herman Cain all the time: Herman Cain has some really interesting ideas, but . . .

At best, the answer has to do with that cloudy word "electability." Or that Mr. Cain has never held elected political office.

In 2004, Mr. Cain ran for the GOP's U.S. Senate nomination in Georgia. He lost to Johnny Isakson. Last weekend, Mr. Cain ran away with the Florida straw poll vote, winning with 37%. He torched both the "Southern" candidate, Rick Perry of Texas, who worked hard to win the vote, and Mitt Romney, who in 2008 campaigned everywhere in Florida.

The time is overdue to plumb the mystery of Herman Cain's "interesting, but" candidacy. Let's start at the top-in the top-tier candidacy of Mitt Romney.

Though he's got the governorship credential, Mr. Romney's emphasis in this campaign is on his private-sector experience. It's good, despite the knock on Bain Capital's business model. But measured by résumés, Herman Cain's looks deeper in terms of working on the private sector's front lines.

In the late 1970s, Mr. Cain was recruited from Coca-Cola in Atlanta, his first job in business, to work for Pillsbury in Minneapolis. His rise was rapid and well-regarded. He joined the company's restaurant and foods group in 1978 as director of business analysis. In the early 1980s, Pillsbury sent him to learn the hamburger business at a Burger King in Hopkins, Minn. Then they assigned him, at age 36, to revive Pillsbury's stumbling, franchise Burger King business in the Philadelphia region. He succeeded. According to a 1987 account in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Pillsbury's then-president Win Wallin said: "He was an excellent bet. Herman always seemed to have his act together."

In 1986, Pillsbury sent the 41-year-old Mr. Cain to turn around their Godfather's Pizza business, headquartered in Omaha. The Herman Cain who arrived there April 1 sounded like the same man who roused voters last Sunday in Florida: "I'm Herman Cain and this ain't no April Fool's joke. We are not dead. Our objective is to prove to Pillsbury and everyone else that we will survive."

Pillsbury sold Godfather's to Mr. Cain and some of his managers in 1988. He ran it until 1996 and served as CEO of the National Restaurant Association from 1996-1999. This June, Mr. Cain visited with the Journal's editors and put the issue of health-insurance availability inside the context of the restaurant industry. He said the restaurant association tried hard to devise a health-insurance program able to serve the needs of an industry whose work force is complex-executives and managers, full-time workers, part-timers, students and so forth. Any conceivable insurance system would require great flexibility in plan-choice and design.

It's from this period that one finds the famous 1994 video, now on YouTube, of Herman Cain on a TV screen from Omaha debating Bill Clinton about his national health legislation during a town-hall meeting. After the president estimates the profitability of Mr. Cain's company, suggesting he can afford the legislation, Mr. Cain essentially dismantles the Clinton math, in detail. "The cost of your plan . . . will cause us to eliminate jobs."

None of this can be put across in the televised debates' explain-everything-in-30 seconds format. Nor is there any chance to elaborate his Sept. 7 debate remark that he admires Chile's private-public social security system. Or his flat-tax "9-9-9" proposal. (Or any of the candidates' policy ideas for that matter.) So voters get nothing, and Mr. Cain flounders.

When Mr. Cain talked to the Journal's editors, the most startling thing he said, and which he's been repeating lately, was that he could win one-third of the black vote. Seeing Herman Cain make his case to black audiences would be interesting, period. Years ago, describing his chauffeur father's influence on him in Atlanta, Mr. Cain said: "My father gave me a sense of pride. He was the best damn chauffeur. He knew it, and everybody else knew it." Here's guessing he'd get more of this vote than past GOP candidates.

Does a résumé like Herman Cain's add up to an American presidency? I used to think not. But after watching the American Idol system we've fallen into for discovering a president-with opinion polls, tongue slips and media caprice deciding front-runners and even presidents-I'm rewriting my presidential-selection software.

Conventional wisdom holds that this week's Chris Christie boomlet means the GOP is desperate for a savior. The reality is that, at some point, Republicans will have to start drilling deeper on their own into the candidates they've got.

Put it this way: The GOP nominee is running against the incumbent president. Unlike the incumbent, Herman Cain has at least twice identified the causes of a large failing enterprise, designed goals, achieved them, and by all accounts inspired the people he was supposed to lead. Not least, Mr. Cain's life experience suggests that, unlike the incumbent, he will adjust his ideas to reality.

Herman Cain is a credible candidate. Whether he deserves to be president is something voters will decide. But he deserves a serious look.

BILL CLINTON declared last week that Americans "look like a joke'' because leading Republican presidential contenders decline to embrace the agenda of the global-warming alarmists. Presumably he had in mind Texas Governor Rick Perry, who says that "global warming has been politicized'' and calls claims of a decisive human role in climate change an unproven theory. "You can't win the nomination of a major political party in the US,'' fumed the former president, "unless you deny science?''

To which Marc Morano, publisher of the irreverently skeptical website Climate Depot, promptly replied: "Bill is correct! No Democratic presidential candidate could get the nomination unless they deny the large role that natural variability plays in climate.''

In truth, global-warming alarmism is not science at all - not in the way that electromagnetic radiation or the laws of planetary motion or molecular biology is science. Catastrophic climate change is an interpretation

of certain scientific data, an interpretation based on theories about the causes and effects of growing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It is not "denying science'' to have doubts about the correctness of that interpretation any more than it is "denying economics'' to have doubts about the efficacy of Kenyesian pump-priming.

You don't have to look far to see that impeccable scientific standards can go hand-in-hand with skepticism about global warming. Ivar Giaever, a 1973 Nobel laureate in physics, resigned this month as a fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) to protest the organization's official position that evidence of manmade climate change is "incontrovertible'' and cause for alarm. In an e-mail explaining his resignation, Giaever challenged the view that any scientific assertion is so sacred that it cannot be contested.

"In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves,'' Giaever wrote, incredulous, "but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?''

Nor does Giaever share the society's view that carbon emissions threaten "significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security, and human health.'' In fact, the very concept of a "global'' temperature is one he questions:

"The claim (how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?) is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degrees Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me . that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this "warming' period.''

By now, only ideologues and political propagandists insist that all reputable scientists agree on the human responsibility for climate change. Even within the American Physical Society, the editor of "Physics and Society'' (an APS publication) has acknowledged that "there is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree . that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are . primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution.''

Giaever is only one of many distinguished scientists who dissent from the alarmist view on climate change. Among the others are Richard Lindzen of MIT and John Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville, both noted climatologists; the eminent physicist Freeman Dyson of Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study; and S. Fred Singer, professor emeritus of environmental science at the University of Virginia. As for the population of weather experts best known to the public - broadcast meteorologists - The New York Times reported last year that skepticism of the prevailing anthropogenic global-warming theory "appears to be widespread.''

This past week, President Obama tried to sell his new "millionaires' tax" to the Rust Belt. "What's great about this country is our belief that anyone can make it," he said in Cincinnati on Thursday, praising "the idea that any one of us can open a business or have an idea that could make us millionaires." But who are the millionaires Obama is talking about? And will a tax on them help the economy? Let's examine a few presumptions about the man with the monocle on the Monopoly board.

Being rich has gotten more expensive. A $1 million fortune was unusual in the early 19th century. The word "millionaire" wasn't even coined until 1827 by novelist (and future British prime minister) Benjamin Disraeli. In 1845, Moses Y. Beach, editor of the New York Sun, published a small pamphlet called "Wealth and Biography of the Wealthy Citizens of New York City." The price of admission to Beach's list, which was wildly popular, was a mere $100,000.

By the time the first Forbes 400 list of the richest people in America was published in 1982, the smallest fortune featured was $75 million. There has been so much wealth creation in the past 30 years - much of it thanks to the microprocessor behind modern-day fortunes such as Dell, Microsoft and Bloomberg - that only billionaires are on the list. Today, $1 million in the bank generates only about $50,000 per year in interest. That isn't chump change, but it's roughly equal to the 2010 median household income.

"Rich," like "poor," is a relative term. A family living on the American median income of $50,000 a year might think that one living on $500,000 is rich. But that second family, which probably knows families far better off than they are, thinks that you need $5 million a year to be truly rich, and so on.

On Thursday, 44 percent of people voting in an online survey as part of the GOP debate coverage said that a $1 million annual income made a person "rich." In a 2008 survey of affluent Chicago households, only 22 percent thought a nest egg of $1 million was rich. In March, four out of 10 millionaires surveyed by Fidelity Investments said they do not feel rich. That same month, a majority of investment advisers surveyed in a Scottrade poll said that $1 million isn't enough for retirement.

Though the average American family is rich beyond the wildest dreams of the average family in Bangladesh, where per capita income recently rose above $700, it's not much compared with those who summer on beachfront properties in the Hamptons. When John D. Rockefeller learned in 1913 that the late J.P. Morgan had left an estate of $60 million, including a fabulous art collection, he reportedly said: "And to think - he wasn't even rich."

In a speech on Monday, Obama said raising taxes on millionaires isn't class warfare, but "math." His math may be off: According to the IRS, those with adjusted gross incomes of more than $1 million paid an average of 23.3 percent in federal income taxes in 2008; those earning between $100,000 and $200,000 paid 12.7 percent; and those earning between $50,000 and $100,000 paid 8.9 percent. Nearly half of American families don't make enough money to pay federal income taxes at all.

Why do people think millionaires pay less? One cause of confusion is that stock dividends and capital gains are taxed at a maximum of 15 percent, while regular income in their bracket is taxed at a maximum of 35 percent. The rich often earn more dividend and capital gains income than regular income, so it's tempting to wrongly conclude, as Warren Buffet has, that millionaires "wouldn't mind being told to pay more in taxes." But dividends are paid out of corporate profits that have already been taxed. So Buffet's equity earnings are doubly taxed: He pays 35 percent at the corporate level and 15 percent on his own return.

That might have been true in pre-revolutionary France, where the nobility was exempt from most taxation (and why so many were subject to a brief meeting with Dr. Guillotin's lethal invention). But it is certainly not true in 21st-century America, where political opinions among the rich are just as diverse as they are among the less well-off.

Just consider George Soros and the Koch brothers. They are listed high on the Forbes 400 list, but Soros funds Democratic campaigns, while the Koches helped foment the tea party revolution. Income can't be used to predict political opinion. In 2008, for example, Obama won the votes of 60 percent of those with a family income under $50,000 and 52 percent of those earning more than than $200,000. McCain carried the middle class.

In America, millionaires have always had the freedom to disagree - even in the White House. Franklin Roosevelt, called one of the 10 richest presidents by Forbes in 2010, was denounced as a traitor to his class for instituting the New Deal. Also on Forbes's list: famous trust-buster Theodore Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, who proposed a "War on Poverty" days before he was assassinated.

That's the line of reasoning that the administration is using. On Monday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told reporters that the president's plan wouldn't hurt growth. "I am very confident that the modest changes we're suggesting in terms of revenues .?.?. would make the economy stronger in the long term, not weaker in the long term," he said.

Geithner's confidence is somewhat misplaced. According to a 2001 congressional study that confirmed a basic tenet of macroeconomics, "each $1 of marginal tax rate cuts would save the private economy at least $1.25 as deadweight losses fall and economic efficiency increases." Taxes distort investment decisions. Why throw money into productive assets - corporate securities, a rental property or new employees for a small business - if the income they generate will be taxed away?

Taxes on the rich are taxes on people who create jobs. And jobs are an unalloyed good thing for an economy. Excessively taxing the capital that makes the economy go is poor public policy. And we have a recent example of how the opposite works well: Unemployment declined by a third in the four years after the Bush tax cuts were fully implemented in 2003, dropping to 4.2 percent from 6.2 percent. Meanwhile, federal revenue increased 44 percent in those years. If these tax cuts put people to work and generated money for the government, shouldn't Obama consider the possibility that tax increases should be avoided?

Behind the president's whining to the Black Caucus, begging them to "quit grumbling," is a decline in his personal popularity among African-American voters that could portend catastrophe for his fading re-election chances.

According to a Washington Post- ABC News survey, his favorability rating among African-Americans has dropped off a cliff plunging from 83 percent five months ago, to a mere 58 percent today -- a drop of 25 points, a bit more than a point per week!

Nothing is more crucial to the president's re-election strategy than a super-strong showing among black voters. In the election of 2008, he was able to increase African-American participation from 11 percent of the total vote in 2004 to 14 percent. He carried 98 percent of them. This swing accounted for fully half of his gain over the showing of John Kerry. Now, his ability to repeat this performance is in doubt.

And the emergence of Herman Cain as a serious Republican candidate could not have come at a worse time for the embattled president. Cain's alternate narrative -- self-help, entrepreneurial skill, hard work and self-improvement -- stands in stark contrast to the victimization and class warfare argument that the president has adopted.

Over all, how's that class warfare working out for you, Mr. president? Well, here are some unpleasant numbers for you:

Before Obama's speech to Congress and the nation --watched by 34 million families -- his job approval averaged 44 percent. Now it averages 43 percent, according to realclearpolitics.com. He deployed his ultimate weapon -- a nationally televised speech to Congress -- and came up empty.

The president's personal favorability has taken a big hit even as his job approval has shown no gain. The Washington Post-ABC News poll has his rating down to 47 percent, the first time in his presidency it has dropped below 50 percent. Clearly, the spectacle of a class warrior leading the country is grating on most Americans.

Usually, despite drops in his job approval, his personal ratings have stayed high. Not anymore. The most recent New York Times-CBS poll had his favorability actually lagging behind his job approval by 4 points -- the first time it has ever done so in their polling.

Young people, the core of Obama's base, now hold equally favorable and unfavorable views of the president they once adored. And his favorability among self-described liberal Democrats has also dropped. The percentage of those who say they are strongly favorable has fallen from 69 percent in April to 52 percent now. For a president whose re-election chances hinge on his ability to turn out his base, these numbers are depressing, indeed.

Obama's advisors likely think that fervent appeals to liberal views, including class warfare, are the best way to repair the gaping holes that are now appearing in his political base. But this is a conviction born of instinct and intuition, not generated by polling data. The fact is that as the president has ratcheted up his class warfare rhetoric, his personal popularity has fallen and his job approval has slightly edged down.

Obama stepped on his own jobs initiative speech a week after he delivered it by proposing a class based tax revenue plan. He poured on the class rhetoric, dwarfing any focus on the job creating aspirations of his spending program. So the message we get is that the president proposes to solve our economic problems by taxing rich people. To some this is counter-intuitive since the top 2 percent spend 33 percent of the money in this country. To others, it seems like an irrelevancy as the president once again indulges his agenda for social reform rather than promoting economic recovery.

With only 26 percent of Americans approving of Obama's handling of the economy (Fox News poll), the president's ratings are bound to drop further until and unless he can post real economic gains on the scoreboard, something his rhetoric alienating the GOP House of Representatives and scaring the daylights out of the business community is unlikely to achieve.

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.

-President Abraham Lincoln, Message to Congress, December, 1862

This quote from Abraham Lincoln is appropriate because the crisis we face is deeper and broader than any crisis since the 1860s.

The 2012 election is not a political election in any normal sense of ambitious people competing for power within an accepted framework of values and principles.

It is an historic election in which the outcome will potentially change the nature of America for generations to come.

No simple set of slogans or "jobs programs" or poll driven gimmicks will meet the needs of America in 2012.

•an anti-American energy policy that kills jobs, endangers our national security and sends $400 billion plus overseas every year thus weakening the dollar and the economy;

• a tax, regulatory, and litigation system that is killing American manufacturing and putting our national security at risk as we rely more and more on foreign countries for manufactured goods;

• Washington bureaucracies that dictate destructive policies and treat us as subjects rather than citizens;

• a regulatory-litigation bureaucratic system which makes it virtually impossible for our government to be effective or agile or even just competent;

• schools that no longer teach American history and generally fail to prepare young Americans for either citizenship or work (leading to a Nation at Risk, as the Reagan Administration described the effect of our schools 28 years ago and it is worse now);

• increasingly radical judges who impose anti-American values on the American people in a repetition of the British tyrannical judges who were the second most frequently cited complaint of the American colonists;

• a radical elite which has contempt for the American people, sympathy for America's enemies, and overt hostility to American values and which dominates the universities, the news rooms, and increasingly the bureaucracies and the courts.

Three large facts come from these ten specific challenges to the survival of America as the freest, most prosperous, and safest country in the world:

1. No single, narrow solution can meet our challenges. These problems are so pervasive and so widespread that only a comprehensive strategy can break through and force the changes needed for America's survival as a free, prosperous, safe country based on the principles of the Founding Fathers.

2.The combined forces of the elites-in the news media, the government employee unions, the bureaucracies, the courts, the academic world, and in public office-will fight bitterly and ruthlessly to protect their world from being changed by the American people.

3.Therefore any election victory in 2012 will be the beginning and not the end of the struggle. It will take eight years or more of relentless, determined, intelligent effort to uproot and change the system of the elites-laws, bureaucracies, courts, schools-- and replace it with laws and systems based on historic American values and policies.

The scale of the challenge and the intensity of the opposition require that we approach a 21st Century Contract with America with a much more profound and serious strategy than the original 1994 Contract with America.

The 21st Century Contract with America will therefore be much larger than the original, and will consist of four parts.

1.A set of legislative proposals to shift America back to job creation, prosperity, freedom, and safety;

2.A "First Day" project of Executive Orders to be signed on inauguration day to immediately transform the way the executive branch works;

3.A training program for the transition teams and the appointees who will lead the shift back to Constitutional, limited government;

4.A system of citizen involvement to help us sustain grassroots support for change and help implement the change through 2021;

The center of activity for these four components exists at www.newt.org/contract.

The first test of the 21st Contract has to be its effectiveness. Assuming its implementation as outlined, does the Contract include everything that is required to put America back on the right track.

The second test of the 21st Century Contract has to be its potential for popular support.

Putting America back on the right track will be an enormous, protracted struggle with entrenched elites. The American people have to decide that the struggle is legitimate and necessary and that they are determined that the elites will be defeated and their laws and systems will be replaced.

We have had seven decisive changes in American history (Founding Fathers, the Federalists, the Jeffersonians, the Jacksonians, the Lincoln Republicans, the Progressives, and the New Deal). Each has involved a deep intense struggle. In each case it took the will of the American people expressed at the ballot box to impose change on a hostile, entrenched, reactionary elite. In each case the struggle lasted for years and required flexibility and innovation from the reforming side.

The primary purpose of the 21st Century Contract with America is to lay out the scale of change that is necessary and give the American people profound reasons to believe that with courageous, systematic effort we can get America back on the right track.

The secondary purpose of the 21st Century Contract with America is to create a general management guidance so that everyone who wants to know where we are going and what we are trying to achieve will have a clear sense of purpose and definition.

There are three primary differences between the 21st Century Contract with America and the original 1994 Contract with America:

1.Since the problems today are much bigger and the institutions have grown even more elitist, the Contract has to be much bigger and more fundamental in the changes it proposes;

2.The 1994 Contract grew out of Reagan's philosophy and could be presented as a completed document but the 21st Century Contract is based on Lincoln's principle that "As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew." Therefore the new contract has to be a work in progress which will be developed over the next year and finally unveiled in a completed form on September 27, 2012. The other reason for a more participatory, developmental approach is that after the secretly drafted stimulus and the secretly drafted Obamacare the American people are tired of imposed solutions they don't understand and haven't helped develop;

3.Because the 21st Century Contract calls for dramatically broader and deeper change, it requires much more emphasis on implementation and so three of the four areas of the Contract (Executive Orders on the First Day, training for appointees, a citizen based movement to insist on implementation and to help monitor implementation for eight years).

There are three primary similarities between the 21st Century Contract with America and the original 1994 Contract with America:

1.Both contracts are premised on the belief that a successful turnaround in the direction of our country is possible. When I was sworn in as the first Republican Speaker of the House in forty years in January 1995, the Congressional Budget Office projected that over the next decade the cumulative federal budget deficits would total $2.7 trillion. Shortly after I left office in January 1999, CBO projected that over the next decade that federal surpluses would total over $2.2 trillion- a four-year turnaround in the fiscal outlook of the United States of nearly $5 trillion. A comparable four-year improvement in the U.S fiscal outlook today would total over $8 trillion (as % of GDP).

2. Both contracts are premised on the belief that a successful national turnaround begins with profound policy turnaround. The 1994 Contract focused on balanced budgets, welfare reform, and controlled spending. The result was 11 million new jobs, four balanced budgets, welfare reform, and paying down of over $400 billion in national debt.

3. Both contracts are premised on the belief that a policy turnaround is only possible when the American people are presented during a political campaign with a clear set of choices -- and persuasive reasons why the country should move in a particular direction -- which they then endorse on Election Day.

It is because of the very scale, seriousness, and intensity of the historic mission before the American people that I never ask people to be for me.

When people are for a candidate they vote and then go home expecting the candidate to get the job done.

The American Constitution does not give any leader the ability to impose this much change.

This kind of change only occurs when the American people are fully mobilized and focused on insisting that their elected officials follow through and get the job done.

Furthermore, the American people will have to monitor implementation and help us identify when things aren't working right. They will also have to help come up with better solutions when the first set sometimes fail to get the job done.

No one person can achieve change on this scale but millions of mobilized citizens can.

Finally, as we enforce the Tenth Amendment and shrink the Washington bureaucracy and return power to the states, citizens will have to rise and fill the gap left by the decline of bureaucracies.

For all these reasons I ask people to be with me for the next eight year in implementing the 21st Century Contract with America. Please join me at www.newt.org/contract.

It's now clear that President Obama's re-election strategy hinges on convincing working Americans that he is looking out for them and that the Republicans don't care about regular folks. That will be the central theme of Mr. Obama's campaign.

But the strategy is already teeing off some Americans, even folks who supported President Obama in the past. For example, a man named Ted Leonsis, former vice chairman of America Online and present owner of the Washington Wizards basketball team, was a big Obama supporter. Now, however, he's fed up with the class warfare deal.

Writing on his website, Mr. Leonsis says: "I voted for our president. I have maxed out on personal donations to his re-election campaign. I forgot his campaign wants to raise $1 billion. THAT is a lot of money. It blows my mind when I am asked for money as a donation at the same time I am getting blasted as being a bad guy! Someone needs to talk our president down off of this rhetoric about good vs. evil, about two classes and math. Our country was founded on the premise of 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.' Is anyone happy right now with all of this?"

As we reported Tuesday night, the only way President Obama can get re-elected is to put together a coalition of the willing, with apologies to George W. Bush. That is special interest groups that will support Mr. Obama because he promises them rewards.

Alan Colmes says these groups are not special interest; they represent the majority of Americans. But "Talking Points" disagrees. If you are speaking to Hispanic-Americans telling them you're going to push immigration, then you go over to the Congressional Black Caucus and tell them you're going to target jobs for African-Americans, and then you go to the unions telling them you're going to pass legislation that "shares the wealth," that's special interest pandering, is it not?

Everyone expects the campaign of 2012, obviously already underway, to be one of the dirtiest in the nation's history. When you pit one American against another, rich against poor, union against taxpayer, you're going to get nasty stuff; there's going to be malice in the air.

America is already a nation divided between secular progressives and traditionalists. Now our incomes are going to separate us even further. Not a good scenario in the land of the free.

Nobody likes buying oil from OPEC. Nobody likes coal dust dropping from the sky. We all know that pollution is bad, and greedy oil sheiks are not looking out for us. The problem is, we don't have a realistic alternative fuel option. So we have to live with a bad situation.

President Obama has fast-tracked green energy projects, and the results, thus far, have been awful. The Solyndra scandal is the best example. The feds provided this solar panel company $528 million in loans. Shortly after that, the company declared bankruptcy. See you later, a half-billion taxpayer dollars.

Many Americans were upset by this colossal waste of money, but not The New York Times editorial page. It headlined: "One company's failure should not deter robust public investments in clean energy." Now we know why the nation is more than $14 trillion in debt.

The Times editorial goes on to urge the government to pour more money into "green" industry in conjunction with raising fuel taxes, because that's what's good for America. "The surest way to guarantee that America gets its fair share of (green) business ... would be to enact a comprehensive energy strategy that raised the price of older, dirtier fuels."

Swell. Americans are already taxed to the max, and the Times wants the feds to impose even more taxes to discourage "dirty" fuel use. So, folks who have to drive would pay more as the government artificially drives up the price of energy. That would help the bad economy, wouldn't it? Consumers saddled with higher utility and gasoline costs. Yeah, that's the ticket to an economic rebound for sure.

But The New York Times doesn't care. The paper wants global warming to stop right now! And it blames fossil fuels for the heat wave. So, whatever it takes to get green energy on everybody's plate is going to be supported by the paper and some others on the liberal side even if it means wrecking the economy and running up massive debt.

A few months ago, I had an interesting conversation with T. Boone Pickens, the billionaire investor. He put up his own money to develop a massive wind power project in the heartland. T. Boone thought he'd found the answer: Wind would drive the clean energy movement. But the windmills couldn't deliver enough energy to make a profit. So Pickens folded and put the wind deal up for sale.

If the United States could develop green energy, I'd be first in line to buy some. I recognize the need for clean, efficient fuel. But you don't punish hardworking Americans by wasting their tax dollars and raising their taxes to fund the green dreamscape. That is irresponsible and brutally unfair. With literally trillions of dollars to be made, the private marketplace is where alternative energy should be developed.

Did you know that Paul Krugman is more compassionate than you are? Or so he says.

In fact, just about everybody who is left of center is more compassionate than everybody who is right of center, Krugman explained in a recent New York Times editorial.

"American politics is fundamentally about different moral visions," he wrote. If you identify with Milton Friedman's "Free to Choose" vision you are today part of the "free to die" crowd.

That last bit is a reference to Republican presidential candidates foolishly stumbling over a Wolf Blitzer question about what should be done with a man who willfully chooses to be uninsured and then discovers needs lifesaving medical care. No, in case you are wondering, none of them said "let him die." But Krugman would like you to believe that is the position of the entire Republican Party.

[Democrats, by the way, would also have trouble with that question. In fact there is nothing in Obama Care that guarantees health care for someone who ignores the government mandate and remains uninsured.]

Krugman is not alone. Writing at Health Affairs the other day, Princeton University economist Uwe E. Reinhardt described the current budget impasse in Washington by declaring that this country has been in:

.a long ideological war fought over the distribution of economic privilege in this country, a war that has been raging unabated for over three decades now.

One side in this war believes that the current distribution of income and wealth in this country is fair, as it rewards generously those who contribute commensurately to the economy and properly gives short shrift for those who do not - e.g., unskilled workers.

The opposing faction believes that the current distribution of income and wealth no longer is the product of a genuine meritocracy, and even if it were, that health care, education and legal care are so-called social goods to which rich and poor should have access on roughly equal terms, regardless of their own ability to pay.

Although Reinhardt doesn't engage in the kind of ad hominem personal character attacks that are Krugman's stock in trade, the message is still the same: one side cares about the unfortunate and the other side doesn't.

Before going further, there is something you should know. There is no evidence whatsoever - zero evidence - that liberals are more compassionate than conservatives. In fact all the evidence points in the other direction. More about that in a moment.

Since Krugman is a Nobel Prize winning economist, I would like to turn first to the science of economics, just as Adam Smith did more than 200 years ago. What Smith realized was that it's not compassion, or any other feeling that is going to eliminate most deprivation and suffering around the world. It's sound economic policies, produced by rational thought.

Several years ago, I was at a conference at the Vatican and I heard another Nobel laureate, University of Chicago economist Gary Becker, make a remarkable statement. Becker said, "I believe in capitalism. The reason: capitalism confers its greatest benefits on those at the bottom of the income ladder. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't be a capitalist. And Milton Friedman thinks the same way."

Non-economists are generally unaware of how much evidence there isin support of the Becker/Friedman position. If you look around the world, you will find that the bottom 10% of the income distribution gets about the same percent of national income in countries with the least economic freedom (2.5%) as they do in the countries with the most economic freedom (2.6%). Whether a country is capitalist or socialist doesn't seem to matter. But there is a huge difference in the absolute level of income. In fact, the bottom 10% gets almost ten times more income ($8,474 per persons per year vs. $910) in capitalist countries than in non-capitalist countries.

Given that disparity, what is the most compassionate economic system? It is the system advocated by the University of Chicago economists and other classical liberals: a system that leaves people free to use their intelligence, their creativity and their innovative ability to pursue their own interests. In other words, it is a system in which people are "free to choose."

That freedom and free enterprise are good for poor people is a fact of economic science. It has nothing in particular to do with compassion. But since the issue has been raised, who are the most compassionate people? It turns out, they are not liberals. In an exhaustive study of this issue American Enterprise institute president Arthur Brooks discovered that:

In 2000, households headed by a conservative gave, on average, 30 percent more money to charity than households headed by a liberal ($1,600 to $1,227). This discrepancy is not simply an artifact of income differences; on the contrary, liberal families earned an average of 6 percent more per year than conservative families, and conservative families gave more than liberal families within every income class, from poor to middle class to rich.

The differences go beyond money and time. Take blood donations, for example. In 2002, conservative Americans were more likely to donate blood each year, and did so more often, than liberals. If liberals and moderates gave blood at the same rate as conservative, the blood supply in the United States would jump by about 45 percent.

What about Krugman, personally? I don't know him. But the next time he is on television, mute the sound and focus on the image on the screen. Is there anything about Paul Krugman that seems to be the least bit compassionate? Not to me.

NONE OF THIS IS A MYSTERY! We are now getting exactly what was bargained for by electing Obama.no surprises! The mystery is how did Obama get elected in the first place. Apparently, the vetting process was corrupt to begin with. We were not allowed to talk about Obama's past at all, or his voting records or the lack there of, we were not allowed to talk about his relationships (and there are many) with know Marxist or anyone else, for that matter, that was and is anti-America. THERE ARE NO SURPRISES HERE AT ALL!

So, my question to you all is this.after witnessing over 70% of the US free market economy being taken over by this regime (and that number is predicted to grow to almost 80% before he is finished), unemployment at record highs, with no end in sight, taxes being raised to an unbelievable, unsustainable levels.again, with no end in sight, more deficit spending being run-up monthly, again, with no end in sight.how could anyone in their right mind vote for another democrat / progressive candidate ever again at any level? We have witnessed first hand what unchecked Liberalism / Progressivism is.tax and spend.tax and spend some more!

My college educated, 30 something year old children have realized.over this past year. that they have been placed into involuntary indentured servitude, most likely for the rest of their lives to pay for the Marxist programs Obama has initiated.

People being thrown off their land and having their houses burned in the name of environmentalism and global warming:

The GOP’s Pledge to America; do you think they really kept any of these promises?

The Official Obama Criticizer Responds to the President's Congressional Black Caucus Speech

RUSH: (summarized) "Stop complainin'! Press on! Take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes. Shake it off, stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying, we're gonna press on. If asking a billionaire to pay the same tax rate as a Jew -- uh, janitor -- makes me a warrior for the working class, I wear that with a badge of honor. We used big infrastructure builders in this country! The intercontinental railroad." This, ladies and gentlemen, is a task for the Official Obama Criticizer: Mr. Bo Snerdley.

SNERDLEY: Good afternoon. This is Bo Snerdley, Official Obama Criticizer, "certified black enough" to criticize with 100% pure organic slave blood in the mix. I have a statement, y'all. Refreshed from his most recent vacation to Martha's Vineyard, Mr. Obama's now concerned with jobs -- or, more accurately, the lack of jobs under his administration. At the CBC Awards Dinner he promised that very small business owners, including a hundred thousand black owned businesses, will get a tax cut under his so-called jobs bill. This is a victory of sorts because finally Mr. Obama has rediscovered there are black people in America.

SNERDLEY: And then he told his rediscovered black audience to take off their bedroom slippers, "put on their marching shoes, shake it off, stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying. We've got work to do. We have to press on." How utterly sad. There was no other audience who rates this unseemly presidential lecture from Barack Obama, and yet the push-back from the CBC has been tame -- and now a translation for EIB brothers and sisters in the hood.

Oh, no, he di'in't! Oh, no, he di'in't. Oh, yeah, he did. You heard him, B! He and 'celly partying like it's 1999 every week up in the White House, up at Martha's, on the Cape; and now that he's in our grill, telling us to shake it off, stop whining, stop complying, stop crying. Stop crying? What's up with that? You better step off, yo, and to relook this situation, dog. First of all, you know what it's like out here? We got massive no jobs! No, okay? Massive no jobs, yo. Check that out, okay? We got so many empty houses that have been foreclosed on, man, we could start a new hood in the old hood -- and homey's talking about, "Stop crying, stop complain, stop grumbling"? Check this out. Do you go to the Hispanic audience Obama and tell 'em to stop whining about jumping the fence, yo? No. Do you tell the Jew janitors, yo, to, you know, stifle it? No. The soccer moms? No. Your Wall Street posse? No.

Do you tell them to shut up? No. Stop complaining? No. But you come to our leaders... Well, you come to our... Well, you show up at the CBC and then all of a sudden you tell 'em, in other words, S-T-F-U? You all know what that means? Well, never mind, okay? Check this out. Yo, right it's time to take off the bedroom slippers put on the boots but we marching with you down to the White House, yo, to protest you and what you've done! You hooked up your union boys, you hooked up your Wall Street posse, you hooked up your crew, but you left the hood out of it 'til right now and the only thing you got to tell us is "shut up, stop complaining"? You better come better than that, bro, otherwise next November, it's gonna be real cold up there -- and you can't run to Martha's in the winter. I'm out, yo. Peace.

RUSH: Okay, we're back, and we're gonna start on the phones, and that will be College Park, Maryland. Hi, Jeff. Great to have you on the program. Welcome, sir.

CALLER: She isn't telling the whole story. She says that the roads are built and, you know, we all pay taxes so nobody got rich by themselves. She's right as far as that goes, but she's also missing... I mean, this guy is a perfect example; he's living off dividends. He's not digging ditches. He didn't get rich because he dug more ditches than anyone else. He got rich and most people in the country get rich because they've got other people working for them, which means they're selling the labor of these other people for more than they're paying for it. They're paying a guy $8 to dig a ditch, and they're charging somebody else $20 for that ditch. Abraham Lincoln said that "before there's capital there's labor, and all capital comes from work that real human beings do." This guy is sitting home collecting six -- dividends from other people's labor. American Express's biggest corporate priority is making sure that people don't unionize because they know their corporation is profiting by selling the labor of their workers for more than they're paying. So nobody in this country has gotten rich without putting other people to work and paying them less than what they're actually worth. So when we're talking about class warfare...

RUSH: (laughs) I like your characterization. Wait a second, now. I like your characterization: "Paying them less than they're actually worth." Most --

CALLER: Right. Which -- and all capitalism comes from labor. I guess what I don't understand is that when we're talking about class warfare and people that work all of their lives and paid for the Social Security and they've paid for their Medicare, it's not class warfare when people talk about taking that away from them -- you know, increasing eligibility age or, uhhh, you know, eliminating the cost of living adjustment; even though Social Security's return is only 2.5%. It's not class warfare when we're taking money out of the pockets of people that need it, millions of people; but it is class warfare when we ask rich people in this country that have gotten the money that they have by selling other people's labor for more than what they're paying for it, that is class warfare? I mean -- I mean ex... explain -- explain it.

RUSH: But Obama is the one talking about taking away Medicare! Obama is the one who actually is cutting Medicare.

CALLER: And you support him. (laughing) Ah, ah, as far as that goes, you'd love to take away entitlements. You think entitlements are warfare and that people that paid for it don't deserve it for some reason.

RUSH: Well, there are a lot of holes in what you're saying, because you're making some equal assumptions about circumstances where there are a lot of variables, and no two situations alike. This is the problem that you socialists have or that you Marxists have. You cannot calculate the dynamism, and so you refuse to calculate the dynamism that exists in any set of economic circumstances. Anyway, I know what he means with his "labor" comment. I'll explain when we come back.

RUSH: This guy, our last caller, ladies and gentlemen, was reading from (sigh) the fringe, left-wing website "the Daily Kos;" or "Koz," I don't know how you pronounce it. I've never known how you pronounce this. They produced an e-mail that circulated back in 2009 that is Abraham Lincoln talking about labor versus slavery. And what they've done is take this thing out of context, and they've urged every one of their readers to print this thing out and send it to as many people as they know -- and, if they can, get on radio talk shows and read it. It's from January 29, 2009: "Abe Lincoln, Pro-Labor: Send This to Your Republican Friends." That's the link to it from the Daily Kos, and they have to take Lincoln out of context. It's labor versus SLAVERY.

Lincoln was talking about the immorality of slave labor, which costs nothing. You didn't pay them anything other than their room and board. That was pure and simple. But if you apply this to the real world today, it breaks down. Here's a great example. This guy believes (I'll use myself here as an example) that I am getting rich -- and I'm not admitting that, by the way -- by paying the people who work for me less than what they are worth (not what they deserve, less than what they're worth) and getting rich off of it. Therefore, I am screwing the people who work for me. Now, let's use Mr. Snerdley as an example. These people would believe that Snerdley is worth far more than I pay him.

No matter what I'm paying him (and they have no clue), Snerdley is worth far more than I pay him; and I am getting rich on Snerdley's back because I'm not paying him anywhere near what he is worth. The belief is that labor comes before anything else. So the answer to it is, Mr. Snerdley (let's look at him specifically). Could Mr. Snerdley make more money screening calls for himself? Could the United Autoworker make more money building cars for himself? Could you, wherever you work, make more money doing what you do for yourself? If you think so, go for it! There's nothing wrong with it. Give it a shot. The cost of labor in any business is not calculated on value or worth except in some circumstances. Every situation is different, every hire is different -- except for a union hire.

They are all the same! That's why I've never wanted to be a member of a union, or a trade union, labor union. They don't explain the phenomenon of "genius." They say it's irrelevant. They say that the genius has been used to trick other people. They say the genius has been used to exploit other people. The genius is not a factor in their achievement. Genius is making them smarter than everybody else so they're able to exploit their workers. This is right out of Marx. Once you understand Elizabeth Warren... I've always said, folks, if you just understand these liberals, all of this makes sense -- and if you understand that they lie and make things up (if you understand what it is that animates them), then everything makes sense; and you'll never, ever vote for one.

You would never even consider it. No matter how bad anybody else is, you would never, ever vote for a liberal if you're properly informed and properly educated. So the whole point here is let's talk about labor, cost, and so forth and so on. In every company large and small, there are people who do work. There are people who have jobs more important than other people. Therefore, there is work that is more valuable than other work. This is the first thing that ticks the left off. They don't like that division. They don't like the classifications. They don't like the fact that somebody is more important than somebody else. That's really at the root of it. That's unfair, that's discriminatory, that's mean, or what have you. It leads to people not having same advantages as other people.

And liberals never believe that that difference in value or worth is born of reality. It's always born of favoritism or some other thing that could be bought, negotiated, or purchased; rather than real, qualitative assessments of somebody's work. Now, the purpose of a business is not to employ people. The purpose of a business is not to provide health care. The purpose of a business is not to make a great community. That's not why anybody starts one. Now, that may be why a lot of businesses fold because a lot of liberals might start companies with that premise, and they won't last long if that's why they go into business. What propels a business or a service is a passion on the part of (generally) one person who starts it who's got a passion for something.

That person loves doing it, thinks other people would love doing it or having it, and embarks on a process of manufacturing it and selling it -- and who knows? People make correct assessments of what the public wants and incorrect assessments all the time. Businesses come and go. Successful businesses fade. Successful businesses grow. It's never the same. It cannot be plugged into a formula. Everybody who runs a business looks at paying people who work for them differently. I would bet you that if the way I run EIB and the way I, quote, unquote, "pay labor" were ever analyzed, I'd be told I'm an idiot. I'd be told, "You can't do it this way! You can't make any money doing that! That's... that's... that's absurd! You gonna pay 'em that? For what?"

See, I have my own personal preferences and desires and things I don't like to do, and there are other things I love doing. The things I don't want to do, if somebody else will do them, that's worth a hell of a lot to me. It's time I don't have to spend doing things I don't want to do -- and if they do it well, and if I don't want to have it worry about them being stolen away or leaving or going somewhere else, I'll pay above market value. I'll pay happy and gladly, just so I don't have to worry about it ever again. I don't like worrying. I refuse to worry! I will pay not to worry. Now, other people that run businesses don't do it. A lot of people, they'll go by the book and if people don't do the job, fine.

"You're gone. I'll get somebody else to do it," and they love the process of dealing with it. I hate the process of anything, the process of anything. Nothing will make me run away faster than having to get involved in the process of something. But there are people that love process, and if they can do my portion of the process and I don't have to worry about it and I have total confidence I'm gonna be represented correctly and properly and fairly, fine. I'll pay 'em commensurately to keep me out of it. I don't know how many other people do that, 'cause I've never really discussed all this in great detail with other people in my position.

But I do know that in most places labor cost is the most expensive, and therefore it's the one that's watched over the most closely, and it's for as little as you can get it. I'll give you the opposite end of what I just described to you. When I worked at the Kansas City Royals (and this is not to put them down), it didn't matter how well I did that job. I was gonna make X and not a penny more. It didn't matter how much they liked me. Now, maybe I would get promoted to a different and higher-paying job. That was going to be up to me.

But the job that I had, if I was gonna sit there and lose sleep over how much I wasn't making, I was beating my head against the wall because that job was worth X to them -- and they could find thousands of other people to do it one minute after they let me go if I didn't want to do it anymore (and in many cases for less than they were paying me, which at the time was $12,000 a year). That's a job that happens to attract groupies. (interruption) You thought I was gonna...? No, it wasn't.

That $12,000 back then is about $35,000 today. This is 1979 that I'm talking about, ran the inflation calculator on it, but the point is, they were just thinking, "Okay, this job is worth X, and we don't have to pay any more for this job -- and we're not gonna pay on anything other than what this job costs."

Now, this guy that just called me, that's the kind of situation where he would say they were exploiting me because they were not paying me for my labor what it was actually worth. They were getting far more out of me than they were paying me. That's the way the Marxists would look at it, the way this guy would look at it, and he was reading what the Daily Kos post said to read, could be president, he read it pretty well. But the reality is, in the business world the job is worth what somebody will take. So I'm making 12. Let's say I fall in disfavor, and somebody can come along and say they'll do it for ten. They're some years younger than me, will do anything to get their foot in the door and they'll take it for ten.

Guess what the job's worth has just become? Not what Marx says it is, and not what some formula says it is, but the reality on the ground says that job's worth $10,000 a year because somebody out there will do it for that. "Well, Rush, what about somebody who would do it for nothing?" Oh, there would have been plenty of people who would do it for nothing for a while, but nobody's allowed to pay anybody nothing. There are laws about that. Twelve thousand in '79 is $37,000 today. But the dynamics of all this and the real-world aspect of every single job, the dynamics involved are something that escapes theoreticians. (interruption) Well, interns -- Snerdley, by definition don't get paid anything. Of course Monica Lewinsky got paid, and she paid as well.

That's the whole thing. I mean every position has its own inherent worth and value based on that circumstance, not what some blogger thinks or not what you can take Abraham Lincoln out of context to mean or to say. But there is the belief these people have that every business owner has gotten wealthy by screwing the employee. This is how they keep themselves in a perpetually ticked- off, angry, enraged state of mind. It's simply a total lack of understanding, and it's based on a principle that everything has to be handed to you, and that you ought to be able to get something that's fair and just for not doing anything for it, just showing up for work.

RUSH: This is Bill in Houston. Welcome, sir, to the EIB Network. Great to have you here.

CALLER: Howdy, Rush. You know, I'm not sure the last time you've been down my way is, but if you drive on Houston roads I mean they're littered with potholes. We've just had a brutal summer. There's been no rain, water mains are busting everywhere. Our city infrastructure is falling apart and in the meantime there's this jobs bill that's just sitting there. I just wanted to ask, when will Republicans, conservatives, Tea Party people just put down politics for one day, do what's right and put some money in people's pockets.

CALLER: If you were a congressman it would be your job to give the opportunity of employment to people who are without employment.

CALLER: If there's a jobs bill that guarantees people jobs and employment, then they should pass it.

CALLER: It's a tax cuts bill. There's plenty of tax cuts, Rush, and there's plenty of infrastructure jobs available.

RUSH: Then why don't your local construction people and why don't your local city government want to patch the potholes?

CALLER: Well, Rush, if I was a millionaire and if I was paying lower tax rates than, you know, my secretary, then I would gladly pay a little more so more folks would be able to seek employment.

CALLER: Rush, I own my own business. I make six figures a year. I would be subject to, you know, possibly a one or two percent tax increase sometimes, you know, I would be fine with that if that meant the unemployed could find jobs and get hired --

RUSH: Well, do you realize if Congress and the president were actually responsible for jobs in this country, we should never have unemployment. It should be simple, you pass a jobs bill, people go to work, earn enough money to fill potholes and we're done.

CALLER: Yeah, if things were that simple, Rush, that would be great, but sadly you have one fringe group of people in Congress who are determined to make sure that Obama fails at any cost necessary, even if it means depriving people of a chance to have employment.

RUSH: Let me ask you, are you serious about this, or are you just putting me on?

CALLER: No, I'm absolutely serious, Rush. You should come down to Houston and see these roads. You should see these water mains.

RUSH: I've been to Houston, and I'm telling you it's not my problem. Houston doesn't have the problem it has because I'm not paying enough taxes, I'll tell you that. Houston doesn't have the problems it has because Republicans refuse to sign a jobs bill. That's not why Houston has the problems it has.

CALLER: Houston has the problems it has because our infrastructure is falling apart, hasn't been improved since the New Deal, Rush.

CALLER: We haven't had infrastructure improvements since the New Deal, Rush. And this jobs bill would have those infrastructure improvements --

RUSH: Oh, improvement, I thought you said approve since the New Deal. Infrastructure hasn't been improved since the New Deal? Sir, that is a crock of absolute BS. You cannot travel the freaking highways of this country without encountering construction delays of years. Infrastructure hasn't been improved? I'll tell you what. Go out and buy a construction company, do it yourself and stop bitching at us. It's about time you took responsibility for where you live and fix it instead of looking to everybody else. We can't make Obama a failure. He's done it on his own.

RUSH: You know, poor old Abe Lincoln, this guy has been misquoted and taken out of text more than any president I know of. Ever since I've been doing this show, for example, 23 plus years, there is an e-mail, a blast e-mail going around, ten things that Lincoln said, except he never said them. I used to reply to everybody who sent me that thing, calling them everything but an idiot for believing it. And finally I gave up. There were just too many of 'em. I used to respond to blast e-mails and I finally figured it's a losing proposition, it's a losing cause. And now this thing from the Daily Kos. Lincoln is speaking of slave labor, and if these people at Daily Kos actually knew what Lincoln was talking about they would not have posted this.

But here's the Lincoln quote that they think spread all over the country will convince everybody that unions are the way to go. "Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."

This was an emergency message to Congress December 3rd of 1861. And what Lincoln was talking about here essentially was that slave laborers had as much right for their labor as the capitalists, as the slave owners had to their property, if not more. He was specifically laying the case out for what was inherently wrong about slave labor. Slave labor, of course, was uncompensated.

But even beyond that, like this last guy from Houston -- by the way, Snerdley, thank you for seminar caller day. We've had, what, three calls today that have all been a bunch of creeps. What is this, creep caller day? This is what's out there today? Snerdley says, "I want you to see what's out there." This is all that's out there? Well, it may be a spam campaign. It could well be. But like this last guy from Houston that just called, the federal government already collects nearly $3 trillion a year from us, and they spend a trillion and a half more than that. They collect nearly three trillion, they're gonna spend four and a half. But we're not through. State and local governments collect another $3 trillion a year from us. This is a grand total of $6 trillion in taxes per year.

Why isn't $6 trillion a year enough to fix potholes and bridges and the sort? We ought to be able to fill 'em up with diamonds and platinum for that money. One of the things I always thought, when I lived in New York, in Manhattan, you look at the number of people who live per city block in these high-rise apartments and condos and if you look at the property tax that has to be collected per city block in New York, the roads ought to be paved with gold. Every school ought to be a palace.

But why are there potholes in Houston? Why is there no infrastructure? Why haven't there been any repairs? It's not for lack of money. This is the whole point. The money is not being spent on those things. The money is being spent to buy votes. The money is being spent to make people worthless. The money is being spent to create dependency. The money is being spent robbing Americans of their humanity and their dignity by making 'em wards of the state. The Democrat Party is spending all of that money or a great portion of it so people can sit around and do nothing as long as they vote Democrat. And this has been going on for 50 years or more.

We don't have a shortage of finances in this country. We don't have a shortage of revenue. We've got a spending problem out the wazoo and the spending that's taking place in large measure, majority portion of it is being wasted, being spent to destroy the lives of people. "How is that, Mr. Limbaugh? How can money spent on people destroy the lives of people?" Because it robs them of their initiative, it robs them of motivation, it robs them of inspiration, it robs them of desire. You give them just enough to get by and they live their lives in constant anger and rage so you keep feeding that rage by telling them their conditions are because the Republicans don't care enough about them or what have you, they constantly vote Democrat, and that's how you destroy a country, it's how you destroy a culture, it's how you destroy a great society. You let the Democrats and a bunch of liberals run it.

If I had to say one word that has had the most disastrous effect on the advancement of everybody in this culture, that word would be compassion. The crap that's been done in the name of compassion in this country has robbed people of their dignity, of their chance, of their opportunity at their own greatness in using their own ambition and desire. It has taken it from them. It has made them not have to use any of that. We have lowered the expectations of so many Americans because that's the way liberals look at people, as incompetent and incapable anyway. As far as liberal Democrats are concerned, the stupider you are the better off for them, the more ignorant you are, the better off for them. The less you have, the better off for them. The more hate-filled you are, the better off for them. All of the rotten human characteristics that exist they profit from.

RUSH: So I got this e-mail: "Rush, you explained it well. Marxists think that the market -- labor, goods, and services -- is rational and can be rationally set and can be rationally controlled. That's what killed the Soviet Union. As you explain, the market is not rational. Everything -- emotions, tradeoffs, reason, irrational choices -- is thrown into the market. And the real world market calculates all this." And this guy, that's brevity, and that's the soul of wit, and that's good, and let me explain what he means. I spent last hour, five minutes, describing for you how I deal with employees here at the EIB Network.

In the process I told you that there probably aren't too many places that do it the way I do, but there are some. The point is there is no book, there is no textbook that says, "Here's how you treat employees. Here's what you pay labor." None of that is a factor to me. What somebody else says is not the way I do it. I do it 'cause I'm selfish. I know why this works and anybody who can do the stuff that I don't want to do so I can stay focused on what I do do, I'm gonna pay 'em. I'm gonna pay 'em more than they can get anywhere else so they don't leave because I don't want to worry about replacing them, and I'm probably not gonna have to worry about 'em being malcontents because there's nowhere else they can go to get any better thing. That's just the way I choose to do it. This guy's point is, that's the market. I may be totally irrational in the way I'm running this, but it works for me. And so, I'm gonna keep doing it that way. It may be unlike any other set of circumstances at any other small business in the country. Who knows. I don't. 'Cause I don't care how anybody else does it.

And I'm not a busybody, and I'm not trying to worm my way into anybody else. Now, sometimes, I'll talk to other people who own businesses, and you share sob stories and this kind of thing 'cause everybody talks, but I do this 'cause I'm selfish. And I don't want to be misunderstood. I happen to know what makes all this go. For example, if Snerdley ever came to me... This is just an example. It could be Brian. It could be Cookie. If anybody came to me and said, "I think I'm underpaid," I'd say, "Fine, go do it for yourself -- and if you can do it better, do it." I have this great understanding of why this works, and anything that distracts me from doing what I do that makes this work is not helpful. Therefore, if I find somebody who can do the stuff that has to be done that I hate doing, that I don't like doing?

Like I have a guy who has one job. It's to say "no" to everybody who calls wanting me to do something. His second job is to say "no" when they call back. The third job is to say "no" again when they call back. I don't want to have to answer the phone and say, "No, sorry, don't want to do that." He does it. "Well, gee, Rush, do you always say 'no' to everything?" Ninety-nine percent of it. "Why?" 'Cause I don't want to do it! There are three or four television shows that call here every day wanting me to guest -- every day, offering full half hours if I'll go on. "No. I don't want to do it," and I got a guy who tells 'em "no." That's his job. He's got a couple other things to do, but that's his job.

I have a "no" man, not a "yes" man. I don't like telling people "no," so I pay somebody to do it. It helps me stay focused. Now, that probably is pretty irrational in a textbook sense -- and to these libs, everything is textbook manageable. The market to them makes sense, it's rational, and it makes sense under their phony baloney precepts -- and that is, "Labor's always getting shaft. Management's always cheating everybody." This is the context in which they operate, and they think if they were just put in charge of managing it, why, everybody would be treated fairly and we'd have utopia. We're witnessing a guy who thinks he can turn the country into something idealistic and utopian.

We're dealing with what happens when you've got some narcissist micromanager who thinks that he's got all the answers for everything and anybody who ever did anything before him screwed it up, didn't know what they were doing or purposely screwed it up. Now we've got a guy who doesn't have the slightest idea what he's doing but believes he's got all the answers, believes that he is more profoundly correct about everything simply because everybody else is a cheat -- and this is what you get. But this free market economy is "unmanageable" by definition, but the free market left alone will sort all these things out.

Now, you have to have rules and regulations and punishment when rules are violated and so forth, and nobody's opposed to that. But you don't have Central Planning. It doesn't work. It has never worked wherever it's been tried, when talking about nations. Just doesn't work. The market is too vibrant. It's too free flowing, and it's too irrational. The best way to describe the market is it's just irrational.

RUSH: President Obama says he's going to keep pounding away at Congress to pass his $447 billion jobs plan. If lawmakers don't do enough to help the economy, he says, then we'll get a new Congress. Now, we're gonna get a new president at the same time that we get a new Congress. Speaking of Obama's jobs bill, while he's pressing Congress to pass it, Dingy Harry said last night that when the Senate returns from a week-long vacation they will work instead on a bill that would push to label China a currency manipulator. That's gonna take precedence over Obama's jobs bill. They're gonna go on vacation first, they got another week off, which is all fine with us, and then when they come back Obama's jobs bill is not going to be the focus.

Here is Dingy Harry. This is from this morning, a Capitol Hill press conference. Reporter said, "[Dingy] Harry, can you tell us when you're gonna take up the president's jobs bill?"

REID: I don't think there's anything more important for a jobs measure than China trade. That's what we're gonna work on next week. We understand that there's conversations going on about the president's jobs bill, which I support, I introduced it, and we'll get to that. But let's get some of these things done that we have to get done first.

RUSH: They don't want any part of that jobs bill, folks. Dingy Harry is the Senate sponsor but he doesn't want anything to do with it, and the Washington Times has a story about the media being shocked here that Dingy Harry is not making Obama's jobs bill a priority. Now, Dingy Harry is the sole sponsor of Obama's jobs bill in the Senate, and it's gonna have to wait 'til they come back from vacation and after they take up the effort to get the Treasury department to denounce the ChiComs and their currency manipulation.

Wait 'til you see what the ChiComs have done. The ChiComs have pulled a smart, slick play with electric cars and other things. They've said, "Well, yeah, we'll build the electric car, but not 'til you give us the technology." So the UAW and GM are gonna give the ChiComs essentially the technology to built Volts. No, no, that's what's gonna happen here. No question about it. (interruption) What do you mean how can they agree with it? As far as they're concerned it's a good deal. Let me find this story here, because it just happened to come off the top of my head. You know, we've got this idiot who used to work for Google that's out there asking Obama to raise his taxes. Remember we had the sound bite last week from Elizabeth Warren? That has gone viral now. Obama is quoting her without mentioning her and using that idiot from Google who stood up and asked for his taxes to be raised as the evidence for it.

General Motors and the UAW have got some deal with the ChiComs to build electric cars over there. The ChiComs set some requirement that they get the technology, we're gonna give it to 'em. I don't

know how big a deal the technology is, but it is going to happen. But back to this Treasury department denouncing China's currency manipulation, I mean that is a meaningless, meaningless gesture. They don't want to take up the jobs bill. No Democrat in the House wants his name on it, no Democrat in the House wants any part of it, and Dingy Harry doesn't want any part of this. This is all for show. It is all for show. They don't ever want this thing coming up for a vote because it doesn't stand a prayer. And they don't want one of two things to happen: They don't want it going down in flames. That will look bad for Obama. And they don't want the occasional Democrat here voting for it because that would hurt them and their reelection effort.

So this bill, this $447 tax bill, not a jobs bill, let's be clear about that, it is not a jobs bill. In fact, let's be clear about something else. Obama has never submitted a jobs bill. There is not one piece of legislation, whether it's the stimulus bill or Porkulus bill, whatever, there has not been one jobs bill submitted by Obama, and this one isn't, either. This is for show. This is all it's for, is talking points on the stump. It is designed to exist in principal only. It's designed to exist so that Obama can lie about what it really is 'cause it's not a jobs bill, and it exists so that the lack of action on it can be blamed on the Republicans as he does his combo Harry Truman/FDR campaign, Truman running against the do-nothing Congress, and FDR just growing government on steroids.

So it's nothing more than an optic, it's a talking point. And Dingy Harry's lack of urgency is further proof that there's no intention here for this thing ever to even come up for debate. They don't even really want that to happen. It's all just for show. The Democrats want to put off the vote on Obama's tax bill, his jobs plan for as long as they can so they can demagogue against the Republicans for opposing it, pure and simple. Now, there will be a vote at some point. I mean at some point they're gonna have to make it look like there's action on this thing, and when that happens you're going to see Democrats vote against it, and it will be at a time late on a Friday when it won't get reported, there won't be much attention paid to it, maybe it will happen on the day of a Republican debate. Doubt that but anything's possible, any day where there will be other news that could cast a shadow over this.

CALLER: I first started listening to you when you had your television show. It was a long time ago, but great.

CALLER: I miss seeing you on TV, so I'm glad you have the Dittocam. I appreciate that.

CALLER: The reason for my call is I've listened to the spin that's coming out of the administration

on Solyndra, and I thought I would give you a different take on this from someone who is in this industry. I've been a tech entrepreneur for a long time, been in the semiconductor industry for over 30 years, and I've made investments and been on the board with several start-up solar companies. And the spin that I hear, which is you know they're blaming China for its failure is just so far from the truth. And there's actually a hidden story in this. And it goes to the administration's sort of war on coal and some of the other sources of power, generate power we have in the US.

CALLER: And basically the industry has known for over 10 years to make solar panels viable, they need to have the panels cost $1 per watt for the consumer. That's the way that it's competitive and actually gives you a return on investment over a 20-year expected life. And they're nowhere near that. And China's nowhere near that.

CALLER: Exactly. So the failure of Solyndra was, one, it's a bad business model to begin with, and its incompetent management, which may be criminal.

RUSH: Let me tell you something, the more I learn about it and look at it, I'm beginning to wonder if solar energy was ever the real purpose of this whole thing. Because the more I look at this, this is just a giant slush fund. All of these solar energy loans, companies getting federal loans, they're all made up of Obama bundlers and donors, they're all being paid back for what they donated. They're getting their campaign contributions back under the guise of trying to create some clean energy. They're going bankrupt, going through federal money, and now they're clamming up, not saying anything. Obama in the midst of this keeps handing out more money to his bundlers and donors and the money will come back to him, at least a little of it is in the form of donations and so forth. I smell a giant rat with all of this. I think the last thing anybody was actually trying to do here was create solar panels.

CALLER: You're exactly right. And the other part of this is what they're trying to do to restrict coal and natural gas, because in the US our costs per kilowatt hour right now is about ten cents on an average. If you look at Europe, it's 30 cents. And look at what happened to Europe when the government took away its subsidy. Even at 30 cents a kilowatt hour, you would think that would make panels more competitive. But when they took the subsidies away the whole thing crashed.

RUSH: Precisely. What does that tell you? It means there's no business there. It means there's no market for it.

CALLER: So if you take away our cheap source of power in the United States here, coal and natural gas, and even nuclear, you force the price up, which is what they're trying to do. Because if you can't make the panels any cheaper --

CALLER: -- you raise the price of the alternative to the point where people have to expense it.

RUSH: Where is the government grant for fracking? Fracking is horizontal drilling. It's a way of extracting oil. It's causing a boom in the Dakotas. It's causing a boom in a number of places, and it's American. It can provide us enough energy for a century and the regime is fighting it every way and every day that they can. They don't want any part of this, because it's oil. And there's no subsidies. This is not about energy. We've got a genuine case of crony capitalism corruption here that would rival anything that's happened in any previous administration. This is redundant, too. It's happening more and more. More and more solar companies, more and more people, more and more bundlers, donors, contributors to Obama. It just keeps adding up here. As you point, there's no business.

They were manufacturing their solar panels at Solyndra for six bucks and selling them for three, and hoping to make it up on volume while at the same time telling us they couldn't compete with the Chicoms, because the Chicoms are underselling them. How in the world are they ever gonna get any volume sales? Now they won't say a word about it. This whole thing just stinks to high heaven. Add to that the fact that we've got this idealistic theoretical utopian grand plan of clean energy. The recent grants totaling over a billion dollars, one outfit's getting $737 billion, solar energy plant. They're going to create 55 permanent jobs.

It's going to cost in the neighborhood of between 16 and $22 million per permanent job if the business works. And this is said to be advanced thinking, forward thinking. It's the new way. It's clearly not about energy. It's not about green energy. This is just the PR selling point to convince people to support it and not oppose it, go along with it. It's not sustainable. It doesn't make any economic sense. There's no business there. This is the old adage, follow the money. Nine times out of ten, 99 times out of 100 you'll always find the answer to whatever perplexes you, if you're able to follow the money. Thanks for the call out there.

RUSH: White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said today that Steven Chu, the Energy Secretary, has Obama's "full confidence." Steven Chu is charged with implementing all of these subsidy programs to the solar energy outfits. This can cut two ways. In sports, when a coach or the manager gets a full vote of confidence from the owner, he's gone. In politics, it can also be the same way: Some energy secretary gets a full vote of confidence from the President, won't be long before he's seeking a job in the private sector.

RUSH: The Drive-By Media, the regime ecstatic. "New claims for U.S. jobless benefits fell sharply last week to their lowest level since April although..." There's always an "although" or a "but." "although a Labor Department official said government statisticians had problems seasonally adjusting the data." Well, then why publish the news? "New claims for U.S. jobless benefits fell sharply last week to their lowest level since April although a Labor Department official said

government statisticians had problems seasonally adjusting the data." Every week, every month, every quarter we get government reports that are revised in the next cycle. They're never accurate, so why publish them? What's the hurry to put out bad numbers? In this case they think they're good numbers.

The number of claims is under 400,000, but they don't know for sure, which they even admit. It doesn't matter anyway. It's just to get the number out there because they know that's all that will be remembered about this. And that's all we're going to say about it. Because here's companion news from a Pew study: "Hispanics Make Up Largest Group of Children in Poverty." Hispanic children are now the largest group of kids who only have one cell phone, "marking the first time in U.S. history that poor white children are outnumbered by another race or ethnicity." It's just not fair.

The majority of poor people are white kids and now all of a sudden it's Hispanic for the first time and that just isn't fair. This is from the Pew Hispanic Center and this is another feather in Obama's already festooned hat, folks. This is exactly the kind of news he needs. The Democrats need poor dependent people if they're going to stay in business, and if we don't have enough poverty at home, we'll import it. That's what our open borders policy is all about. Importing poverty and importing the number of potential registered voters for the Democrat Party.

By the way, big news out of Venezuela, and it's really contradictory. The first bit of news is from the UK Telegraph: "Hugo Chavez, who has been fighting cancer, was rushed to a military hospital for emergency care following kidney failure," and it's reportedly very, very bad. Then there's an AP story that says Chavez is calling everybody denying it. "No, don't believe these rumors. The president's fine." "I'm going to be out of here pretty soon. I'm going to have licked this cancer." It doesn't matter. The Chavez regime is denying that he's been hospitalized, saying the earlier reports are just a bunch of jokes or hyperbole or sarcasm, like Beverly Perdue says that she was just being sarcastic with her comment that congressional elections be suspended.

You know who is really following this story? The Drive-Bys. The Drive-Bys are doing some interesting things here. The Drive-Bys are not letting this Bev Perdue story go. The local Drive-Bys in Raleigh, in North Carolina, and the national State-Controlled Media. It's almost like they want to get rid of this woman. They're harping on this as though she were a Republican. I mean the locals tried to cover for her, but the Obama-Controlled Media is not letting up.

And ABC News, a long story here in a sec, ABC News is going after the regime on all of these solar energy companies that are being lent money by the taxpayers and the crony connections they have. All of these people getting the money are big bundlers or donors to Obama. The numbers are incredible, not only the amount of money being given away, but to whom, the ties they have to energy department. ABC News is leading the pack on this. This story is quite lengthy. I'll get to it as the program unfolds before your eyes and ears.

Another story here, this one from Gallup. "Democrats Dispirited About Voting in 2012." This is bad news for the President. "The Democrats' net enthusiasm now trails Republicans' net enthusiasm." The way Gallup writes this, the Democrat net enthusiasm is plus one. The Republican net enthusiasm is plus 28. So there's a 27 percentage point advantage in enthusiasm, voter enthusiasm for the Republicans. "Given that President Obama's job approval rating continues to hover around 40% and that he appears vulnerable in the general election, it is not surprising that Democrats are currently less enthusiastic than Republicans about voting in 2012."

I've been trying to give you reasons why I'm right in speculating how bad it really is for Obama. Their internal polling shows his approval numbers and his re-elect numbers, they're far worse than what is being reported by the news media polling unit. And I think the fact that he's saying and doing the things he's doing in the campaign, the class warfare business trying to shore up the base, yesterday showing up at a Washington high school with nothing but black students in the frame sitting behind him. That's never been done before. It's always been a diverse group, mostly white students sitting behind him. Now, because the Congressional Black Caucasians are not happy with Obama, he's got to shore that up.

Now you've got this voter enthusiasm thing. And this is Gallup and the regime would tend to believe this. So what we've seen is the New York Times and a number of other State-Controlled Media outlets, worried that Obama is taking their ideology with him down the tubes. And they don't want their ideology going down. They don't want socialism, Marxism, liberalism being discredited here. And if they have to jettison Obama in order to save the ideology, they'll do that. Obama is failing his own party right now.

So let's give you a little timeline. Rush Limbaugh, January 2009: "I hope he fails." Democrats, Gallup poll 2011: "We know he failed. Rush was right again. Damn!" That's the timeline, here. By the way, this "Democrats Dispirited About Voting in 2012," it doesn't matter who the Republican nominee is. This is a generic thing. It's not Obama versus Herman Cain or Obama versus Perry or Obama versus Christie. No, it's just Obama versus "a Republican." What this points out here is if Obama ran against Herman Cain if the election was held tomorrow, Cain might very well win. Why? Because Democrat voters have bedroom-slipper intensity and the rest of us have marching-shoe intensity. You know, the regime likes to look at things in intensity of shoes.

They have their other shoe strategy for the Palestinians and Israelis, and Obama's out there telling The Congressional Black Caucasians that they've gotta get out of their bedroom slippers and into their marching shoes. Well, we never have been in our bedroom slippers. Our marching boots are on each and every day. Now, Herman Cain may trail Obama by a few points in a head-to-head poll that's out there right now, but voter enthusiasm is so strong for Republicans and so weak for Democrats that Cain (if the election were tomorrow) might very well overcome his current deficit from the polling data, as it seems might any other Republican. I'm just harping on Herman Cain because that tends to irritate the Democrats the most.

Janeane Garofalo, well-known high-foreheaded comedienne, is out there saying the Republican support for Herman Cain is just to mask their racism. It's sort of a twist on the "Magic Negro" thinking that a bunch of guilty white liberals voted for Obama because they felt guilty and they didn't want anybody thinking they were racist and they wanted to get rid of the nation's racist heritage. So they voted for him with no other concerns being given any weight. So now the theory is that Republican support for Herman Cain is just to hide the fact that Republican voters are a bunch of racists, and to diffuse people of thinking we're racist we'll support Herman Cain. (interruption)

No. You mean, other than looking at things through the prism of race? (interruption) No. That's an excellent point, El Snerdbo. The prism through which Democrats look at everything is identity. They see skin color first then they see gender and then they see sexual orientation. Yeah, they tend to put everybody in a group and then make that group victims of something. It is. That's a good point. That is how they look at the world. Anyway, the Gallup poll here says, "Republicans' enthusiasm for voting matches 2004 and exceeds 2008." It doesn't talk too much here about 2010 -- understandably so, because in 2010 the enthusiasm for the Republicans was off the chart.

RUSH: Folks, one of the major reasons that the media to the extent... Like ABC. ABC is treating this Solyndra business as though the president were a Republican. I'm going to get to this as the program unfolds. I'm not trying to tease you with it. I'm just trying to stay organized here, and it's coming up when I say it's coming up. But they're going after him here on this and ABC is taking the lead and others are picking it up. Very slowly, but it's starting to happen. And I think a major reason why is that the State-Controlled Media and the Congressional Black Caucasians are really laying into Obama. They don't want him moving to the center. They want him out there on the left edge. They want him defending and promoting the ideology. They don't want him doing anything that waters it down.

They are convinced that it will win. They're convinced that if he moves to the center he will lose, and they want an Obama re-election to be a triumph of their ideology. It's a warning shot, actually, is what this is. It says, "Barack, there's going to be more of this unless you stay true to the cause." It's just my two cents, but of course you know my two cents is worth anybody else's dollar bill.

Senate Democrats Block Obama's "Pass This Now" Tax Hike Bill Because They Want to Keep Big Oil Subsidies!

RUSH: Dick Durbin says they don't have the votes for Obama's jobs bill in the Senate. They never were going to have the votes! They don't ever intend to vote on this in the Senate. That's not the point. They don't ever intend to vote on this in the Senate. That's not the point. In fact, Durbin even goes so far -- this is a story out of our blowtorch affiliate Chicago WLS -- goes so far to say that it really is a tax bill.

This is a huge See, I Told You So on several counts. "On Tuesday, President Obama tried to keep pressure on Congress to consider his nearly $450 billion jobs bill, saying it had been two weeks since he sent the bill to Capitol Hill 'and now I want it back. I want it back, passed, so I can sign this bill and start putting people back to work.'" So why have the Democrats delayed action? Well, Bill Cameron, WLS Chicago, reports his own party has delayed action in the Senate, and he talked to Dick Durbin about it, and Durbin told WLS, "The oil-producing state senators don't like eliminating or reducing the subsidy for oil companies." Really?

You mean to tell me that after all of this hubbub, Obama running around saying we've got to stop subsidizing big oil, that there are some Democrat senators who don't want to get rid of the subsidy. Mary Landrieu first in line, that's right, from Louisiana. Right. And they're never going to vote for a tax increase. "There are some senators who are up for election who say I'm never gonna vote for a tax increase while I'm up for election," said Durbin, "even on the wealthiest people." Whoa, I mean it is a slap-down of major proportions on Chicago radio, Obama's hometown. "So, we're not gonna have 100% Democratic senators," Durbin said. "That's why it needs to be bi-partisan and I hope we can find some Republicans who will join us to make it happen."

In other words, we need some political cover for this debacle. Nobody is going to vote for Obama's tax increase bill, which is what Durbin has just essentially admitted it is. Well, with friends like this, you know, Obama needs to start hanging around with Bev Perdue.

RUSH: So anyway, Durbin said the job bills stalled in the Senate, not going anywhere unless there are Republican votes for it. And there aren't going to be any Republican votes for it. There never intended to be any votes on this. This is not intended to pass. It would be a real panic if it did because that's not its intent. It's supposed to sit there and Durbin's playing it right, "Yeah, we can't get any Republican support for this. Can't get any bipartisanship on this. Republicans once again just refusing to cooperate.

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.

In case someone tells a fib about Obama, we need to turn that person in. Luckily, the President has provided for us such a website:

The Obama Diary. This appears to be a pretty serious site, dedicated to telling you what the president is doing right:

Workforce Fairness Institute (it sounds like a liberal group, but it looks like a conservative group):

Wrote Left Turn and measures media bias as well as individuals. There is a 40 question test to measure your political quotient and the quotient of various media outlets are given.

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 #197	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	October 1, 2011