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).

I believe that it will be this week when the 15^th jobs bill will pass in the House, and also the 15^th bill to be ignored by the Senate majority leader (and, therefore, the Senate), by President Obama, and by the mainstream media.

Governor Jerry Brown, who bears a great deal of responsibility for California’s financial woes, as public sector collective bargaining occurred under his watch, has proposed sweeping reforms of the public sector in California, raising retirement age from 60 to 67 and requiring employees to contribute 50% toward their pension benefits. This is a plan Meg Whitman, his Republican opponent in the last election, would have been proud to submit.

Early winter storm strikes the northeastern United States. This is expected to be the earliest storm of this magnitude in New York since the Civil war. It is the first 1 inch snow to fall on New York City since records began.

The president has used his authority to decree several items to increase employment, working apart from Congress. The Obama administration extended the length of time unemployed borrowers can suspend mortgage payments without being foreclosed to 12 months from 4 months. Student loan borrowers in a year will be able to reduce monthly student loan payments to 10 percent of their discretionary income, and debt balances will be forgiven after 20 years of payments. The president has not said who will actually pay for these things.

Americans in search of federal employment can go to a website called USAJobs.gov, which matches openings with applicants. Since 2004, the feds have outsourced the site's operation to Monster.com. Good call by whoever was in charge in 2004. Monster.com is the private company that pioneered employment websites and is today the largest job search engine in the world. However, 18 months ago the "smart" Obama Office of Personnel Management decided the federal government could do a better job of running USAJobs.gov. It spent some $6 million developing a new in-house version of the site, promising to improve the job-search experience. It unveiled its creation two weeks ago. Needless to say, there are many more problems with the new site than with the old.

The Department of Justice has decided that it is legitimate to lie to the public when a FOIA (freedom of information) request is made. They have decided to say that, “This document does not exist” if they do not want to release it.

Democrats have decided not to include the term Obamacare on any of their mail-outs.

Congresswoman DeLauro has proposed an economic recovery bill which includes the federal government distribute free diapers through daycare centers. It's called the Diaper Investment and Aid to Promote Economic Recovery Act -- or DIAPER Act. She cited the cost of diapers, $100 per month, as too much for some families.

Obamacare has proven to be filled with new surprises. On a fairly average income level, there are government subsidies for those without healthcare insurance to help them pay for healthcare insurance. However, these subsidies are structured in such a way so that married woman who works would not qualify for the same subsidies than she would if single and worked.

Michele Bachmann, who has acquitted herself quite well, for the most part, on the campaign trail, has recently accused Rick Perry of being behind a tea party affiliated group that called on her to end her presidential run. "People have told us, that these are Perry supporters and they went out with this and this was meant to be a stealth move and it was clumsy," Bachmann said on CNN's The Situation Room. "If Governor Perry has something to stay to me, he can come out to the debates and he can say it."

A George Washington University law professor who filed a human rights complaint against Catholic University this summer when it eliminated coed dorm floors has filed a second complaint against the school, saying the rights of Muslim students are being violated. No Muslims have actually complained to either him or to the Catholic University.

The Richmond TEA Party is demanding a refund from the city for $10,000 it spent on for permits, portable toilets, police presence and emergency personnel for three rallies held at same plaza where the Occupy Richmond squatters set up their camp—for free.

There has been a rise in shootings in New York City, because the police are concentrated in the Occupy Wall Street area. However, Vice President Joe Biden is not going to tell the OWS types to go home, saying, “I wish they knew what it was like staring at the other end of a gun, or a 200 lbs person standing over you telling you to submit.”

Multimillionaire music mogul Russell Simmons has come out in favor of the 99% (the OWS movement) attending polo matches. A picture of Simmons’ gold toilet is below.

A New York police officer's union is threatening to sue Occupy Wall Street protesters if any more of its 5,000 members are injured during demonstrations.

There was another attempted sexual assault in Zuccotti Park in New York City against one of the occupiers. They have chosen to handle crimes internally, and this was not reported to the police.

Occupy Madison has temporarily been denied an extension in their protesting permit because members of the movement violated "public health and safety conditions." The group also did not properly fill out the form. There were repeated complains from a nearby hotel that protesters were "publicly masturbating" in full view of passersby.

A woman is accused of pimping a 16-year-old girl she met in Victory Park during the Occupy NH demonstrations.

In Denver, CO, witnesses say some in the occupy crowd were throwing objects at police, and that a few officers patrolling the protest on motorcycles were pushed off their bikes.

Palestinians send rockets into southern Israel; Israel uses drone attacks to take out those launching the rockets.

13 NATO service members killed in a suicide bombing in the Afghan capital of Kabul. All were American troops who died because of a car bomb which struck their convoy.

China is having a housing bubble and a credit bubble, both of which are collapsing.

President Obama: "The average income for the top one percent of Americans has risen almost seven times faster than the income of the average middle class family. And this has happened during a period where the cost of everything from health care to college has skyrocketed."

President Obama: "Now, in this country, we don't begrudge anyone wealth or success - we encourage it. We celebrate it. But America is better off when everyone has had the chance to get ahead - not just those at the top of the income scale. The more Americans who prosper, the more America prospers." No one can argue with those sentiments. How, how exactly government spending $1.4 trillion more than it takes in accomplishes that, is quite a different matter.

President Barack Obama: "The one thing that we absolutely know for sure is that if we don't work even harder than we did in 2008, then we're going to have a government that tells the American people, `you are on your own.'"

President Obama: "I intend to do everything in my power right now to act on behalf of the American people with or without Congress. We can't wait for Congress to do its job. So where they won't act, I will."

Obama: "The truth is, we can no longer wait for Congress to do its job. The middle-class families who've been struggling for years are tired of waiting. They need help now. So where Congress won't act, I will."

President Obama: “[Americans with federal loans] could see their payments go down by hundreds [of dollars] per month...[and] it won't cost taxpayers a dime."

President Obama on the changes which he unilaterally instituted: "[These changes] won't cost taxpayers a dime but will save you money and will save you time."

Michelle Obama: “Let's not forget about what it meant when my husband appointed those two brilliant Supreme Court justices - (applause) - and for the first time in history, our daughters - and our sons - watched three women take their seats on our nation's highest court. (Applause.) But more importantly, let's not forget the impact those decisions will have on our lives for decades to come - on our privacy and security, on whether we can speak freely, worship openly, and love whomever we choose. That is what's at stake here”

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz : "My hair is an asset. As a politician, it helps me get noticed. It helps me get talked about."

President Obama: "I am biased, but I think Nancy was one of the best Speakers of the House this country ever had."

Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi: "It's no use asking me about specific things until we see the whole package. I`m not making any judgment about any package until I see the fuller package that it's a part of."

Pelosi: "The American people are rejecting the Tea Party Republican agenda that puts tax breaks for the wealthiest people in our country ahead of creating jobs."

Vice President Joe Biden at a Democrat party meeting in Walt Disney resorts: "It's time to stand up. It's time to fight back. We are looking for this fight."

Former President Bill Clinton: "I have a pretty good idea how the 21^st century works and (pause) there's not a single successful country on the planet that operates on the theory that the government is the problem (pause) not one. Every successful country has both a strong private economy and a smart, strong government that work together to provide economic opportunity, educational opportunity, provide decent health care and get into the future."

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka: "These `supercommittee' Democrats have put all their concessions on the table up front in the vain hope that the Republicans might reciprocate, but it doesn't work that way. In this political climate, concessions beget more concessions - not a workable compromise."

Eric Holder, U.s. Attorney General: “In this state, too many are willing to turn their backs on our immigrant past. By the way, we're not going to let that happen at the United States Department of Justice.”

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.): "When you listen to his [Obama’s] speeches, I think he really understands the message, the purpose and the goals of the [occupy] movement."

Some Oakland occupiers chanting to the police: “This is why we call you pigs.”

Occupier Michael McCarthy, a former Navy medic in Providence, of the temperature drop in New York: "Everyone's been calling it our Valley Forge moment."

Occupy Phoenix flier: “Pick any example of abuse of power, whether it is the fascist "war on drugs," the police thuggery that has become so common, the random stops and searches now routinely carried out in the name of "security" (e.g., at airports, "border checkpoints" that aren't even at the border, "sobriety checkpoints," and so on), or anything else. Now ask yourself the uncomfortable question: If it is wrong for cops to do these things, doesn't that imply that the people have a right to RESIST such actions? Of course, state mercenaries don't take kindly to being resisted, even non-violently. If you question their right to detain you, interrogate you, search you, invade your home, and so on, you are very likely to be tasered, physically assaulted, kidnapped, put in a cage, or shot. If a cop decides to treat you like livestock, whether he does it "legally" or not, you will usually have only two options: submit, or kill the cop. You can't resist a cop "just a little" and get away with it. He will always call in more of his fellow gang members, until you are subdued or dead.”

Occupy Wall Street protester Daniel Zetah "If we fail, this civilization that is known as America will collapse. It will turn into a police state and I will flee back to Australia and live in my little community in Tasmania and hope that it doesn't reach over there."

White House press secretary Jay Carney: "The president has said that he understands peoples' frustration [from the Occupy Wall Street movment], he understands that those frustrations are are felt very broadly by the American people - at least those frustrations that have to do with the fact that the economy isn't strong enough, the fact that unemployment is too high and the fact that Washington is dysfunctional."

Bill Maher: “New rule, this Halloween stop fretting that some stranger's going to put drugs in your kid's candy and put the drugs in there yourself. Come on, this is America. Acid will be the healthiest thing they eat all day. Do it, put drugs in the Halloween candy. Now I know what you're thinking: Bill Maher, what a thing to say. We all know that too much of any drug can cause permanent damage. Just look at Rush Limbaugh. You can't just decide to give a bunch of innocent, drug-free kids some sort of psychedelic. What if it interacts badly with their Wellbutrin, their Abilify, their Adderall, their Ritalin, and their monster energy drink? The kids are on drugs, all right. The problem is they're on the wrong drugs. They're on a combination of processed sugar so they can be mini coke fiends and mind narrowing pharmaceutical crap like Ritalin that doesn't open up their minds. It levels and controls them. These drugs are all about keeping bratty children in check, or as we used to call it. parenting.”

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews explains what Republicans want: “Here’s a party [the Republican Party]—I’m just keeping the list—they want more people to fry, they love executions. The want people who don't have insurance to die on the gurney in the hospital bed—they want that to happen. They want—forget about illegal aliens—gay soldiers—forget about it, they’re there to be booed. If you’re homeless, foreclose—if you have a home, foreclose on the people. If you’re a teacher, a fireman or a cop, get rid of the guy! I mean this attitude of causing cruel pain on people and getting cheers for it.”

Mark Shields, PBS: “In 2005 and 2007, the after-tax income of the top fifth was greater than all the income of the other 80 percent. Now I don't know why anybody objects to this because a rising tide lifts all yachts, and that's really what we're looking at. And I think that the distribution of income, its inequality, is in the final analysis a national security issue, and it has to be examined that way.”

MSNBC’s Martin Bashir: “So here's a message to the House leadership, Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Mr. Cantor. 68 percent of Americans and 68 percent of all millionaires believe that it's time to raise taxes on the wealthiest individuals so that this nation's economy can start moving again. And if you're not prepared to do anything in response, then isn't it time that you two did the honorable thing [and resign]?”

Meet the Press’s David Gregory:: "The problem [with Rick Perry's flat tax proposal] is, this does help the rich. It hurts a lot of the poor and the middle class.”

Len Burman of Forbes Magazine: Headline “Why is Anyone Taking Herman Cain Seriously?” In the body of the story: “But GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain is taking stupid tax policy to a whole new level with his "9-9-9 tax plan.”

Karen Finney, MSNBC news analyst: "One of the things about Herman Cain is, I think that he makes that white Republican base of the party feel okay, feel like they are not racist because they can like this guy. I think he giving that base a free pass. And I think they like him because they think he's a black man who knows his place. I know that's harsh, but that's how it sure seems to me."

CBS’s Bob Schieffer on the subliminal messages of the Herman Cain “smoking” ad: "It sends the signal that it's cool to smoke."

After Cain remarked that some found the ad funny, Schieffer shot back "Let me just tell you, it's not funny to me. I am a cancer survivor like you. I had cancer that's smoking related. I don't think it serves the country well - and this is an editorial opinion here - to show somebody smoking a cigarette. You are the frontrunner now. And it seems to me you have a responsibility not to take that kind of tone."

Washington Post humorist Alexandra Petri writes an entire column on how Herman Cain is a Joke candidate. Somehow, I was unable to uncover any humor in her piece.

Democratic congressman Elijah Cummings of Maryland on NBC's Meet the Press: "I think when [members of the TEA Party] can vote for a Herman Cain and hear him say the things that he says they feel like, `Well, you know, I can, I support this guy and...so it shows that I'm not racist and I'm supportive.' "

ABC’s Donna Brazile: “[Herman Cain] reminds me of one of my uncles, who you pretty much like, but you don’t want him coming out to the house.”

Joy Behar to Herman Cain: “The Republican party hasn’t been black-friendly over the many centuries in this country.”

Toure from Time Magazine (I quoted this last week, but it is worth seeing again): “This presidential election has not lacked for clowns, and in a circus Herman Cain fits right in. But as the Black clown, Cain's foot-in-mouth moments mostly involve insulting the Black community.” Title of that article: “Is Herman Cain the Most Unctuous Black Man Alive?”

President Bill Clinton in 1996: “We will meet these challenges, not through big government. The era of big government is over, but we can't go back to a time when our citizens were just left to fend for themselves.”

Time Magazine’s Joe Klein: “I know what I'm about to say is impolite, but Herman Cain strikes me as something of a jerk and an ignoramus.”

Andrew Sullivan of the Daily Beast, speaking of Herman Cain: “We'll see again tonight if his [Cain’s] moronic marketing slogans can sustain his momentum. I'd merely note that he is less of a farce than Palin was - and she was anointed by the establishment. When the rot in a party has gone this deep, and when its presidential line-up is this thin, absurdities like Cain will keep emerging.”

James Carville on the economic numbers: “Nobody’s gotten elected with these kinds of numbers.”

NBC’s David Gregory: “Mitch McConnell said something several weeks ago that I think really resonated, which is: the president got everything that he wanted and it didn't work. He got a big stimulus. He got health care reform, he got financial reform. The economy hasn't moved.”

Marine Corps Sergeant Shamar Thomas about the police brutality toward the Wall Street occupiers: “Well, initially, you know, I had the idea that, you know, it's just a few, few, you know, bad police officers out of the crowd who don't know how to control themselves in these situations because a lot of police officers aren't necessarily, you know, trained to deal with peace. They're trained to deal with, you know, actual riots that are not peaceful.”

Billy Bob Thorton when asked about OWS: "Like when they asked Elvis Presley what he thought about the Vietnam War, he said `To tell you the truth sir, I'm just an entertainer.` I don't know enough about anything to comment on anything. Honestly. I'm not that bright and not that informed."

Fox 5 News reporter John Huddy of a new Occupy Wall Street friend that he has met: "This is somebody I've come across several times for the last few days. He threatened to stab me in the throat with a pen. He ripped the mic out of my hand." Huddy pointed out that this guy, who was arrested, was not representative of the protestors as a group.

CNBC's Maria Bartiromo: "How important are concessions about the regulatory environment? This is the final question here on this murky environment that we're seeing. CEOs tell me all the time that they don't know the details of Dodd Frank. It's the law of the land and we're still writing the rules. We've got the EPA making decisions and legislations. Supposed to come from Congress and it seems like we're going around things and the EPA is coming out with its own rules. You've got the labor relations board, the situation with Boeing. I mean, for starters, do you think it's right that Boeing has to close down that plant in South Carolina because it's non-union?"

Nancy Pelosi: "Yes. I don't think they close it down. I would hope they would make it union."

Bartiromo: "But this is a corporate decision. Should government be getting involved in corporate decisions like that?"

Dan Joseph of the Media Research Center: Who do you think is more dangerous to American society, Rush Limbaugh or Al-Qaeda?

Woman: Because he has a greater effect. He's on TV every day speaking to us. Al-Qaeda's not.

Piers Morgan: “I just one to pin you down on one thing. I need you to admit the bleeding obvious, I need you to sit here and say, ‘I’m in the 1% [highest income bracket].’ ”

Michael Moore, filmmaker and self-proclaimed revolutionary: “Well, I can’t; I’m not.”

Moore: “Listen, I do really well. I do well...even though I do well, I don’t associate myself with those who do well. I am devoting my life to those who have less, who have been crapped upon by the system. And that is how I spent my time, my energy, my money on trying to upend this system, which I think is a system of violence, it’s a system that’s unfair, to the average working person of this country and itw as a mistake to ever give me a dime...[to do] Roger and Me [his first film].”

Michael Moore later, in his blog, sort of admitted to being a millionaire, but didn’t really come clean even there:

Bill Maher, comedian, television show host, in 2011: “Since 2005, I think, the number of drone missions has gone up by something like 1200 percent, and for good reason. You know, we can do it a lot cheaper. It's cheaper, we can get closer to the target and therefore kill less civilians. They can stay up longer. I'm sold. I'm going down to the dealership tomorrow. I'm hoping they have a hybrid...And I've heard people say, "Well, this is not good because, you know, this is like a video game." Good. Why is that a bad thing that it's like a video game? I don't understand why it's a bad thing. I know the argument is, "Well, you know, it makes us more likely to go to war if we don't have to, you know, risk our troops." How could we be more likely to go to war than we've already been?”

Bill Maher, 2001: "We have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly."

Greg Gutfeld of the man who is suing the Catholic University because there are crosses and pictures of Jesus, which might upset the Muslims: “It’s like going to a Halloween party and being upset there are costumes there.”

Presidential candidate Herman Cain: “We of the nation have complained about the tax code since dirt, but no one wanted to just throw it out and start with something fresh.”

Speaker of the House John Boehner: “We've got the 15 bills that have been passed by the House and continue to sit in the United States Senate. Many of these bills passed the House with bipartisan support, 15 common-sense bills that will help get our economy moving again. The president says `we can't wait' to take action on jobs, and I agree. Mr. President, help us with the United States Senate to pass these bipartisan, common-sense bills that will get our economy moving once again.'"

Toby Smith on Fox’s Bulls & Bears: “Investment is the lifeblood of an economy.” [quoted from memory]

Charles Gasperino of the FoxBusiness Channel: “Stock traders are notoriously stupid and short-sighted.” [quoted from memory]

John Layfield, FoxNews commentator and radio show host, imitating a new Congressman: “Oh, my gosh, I’m here in my office and what should I do? Let’s throw digits and give away free diapers.” [quoted from memory]

James Taranto, WSJ writer: “The thing about Biden, is when you don't give him a script, he says the most wonderfully absurd and entertaining things. ”

Rush Limbaugh: “You know, it’s amazing. These 20-year-old, 22-year-old punk kids, if they think college is expensive, wait ‘til they get divorced.”

Rush Limbaugh: "My personal slogan when it came to going to college: 'Resist We Much!' Even before I knew that was my slogan, that was my slogan."

Rush Limbaugh: "I understand liberals. I know how they try to control. I know how they try to limit people's freedom. I know how they try to dumb down people in order to get them compliant and dependent. Gosh, the damage they've done to this country and the people of this country is just incalculable. It breaks my heart and ticks me off at the same time."

Jon Huntsman: "You can't be a perfectly lubricated weather vane on the important issues of the day. Romney has been missing in action in terms of showing any kind of leadership."

Mary Matalin on Mitt Romney’s core beliefs: “In the core of their concern is what you’ve just raised—what is his core?”

Rush Limbaugh: "Do you know that if you earn $50,000 a year or more, you are in the upper 10% of wage earners in America? I love telling people that statistic. They don't believe it."

Rush Limbaugh: "Obama's ideas are unworkable. His policies are stupid. His ideas are naive and dangerous. His record is a disaster. He is the most unqualified, irresponsible, disastrous candidate."

Rush Limbaugh: "You note that nobody ever, ever really criticizes Big Education for its out-of-control price increases, never, ever. Because that's where the Chosen Ones work: Liberal unionized professors."

Rush Limbaugh: "When candidates like Cain and Perry start talking about seriously changing the tax code, they are talking about the bread and butter of the elites -- and that's when the long knives come out, and that's when the criticism rises up and mounts and that's when we start hearing, 'What a kook!'"

Rush Limbaugh: "So here we have the Occupy Wall Street cooks, now part of the 1%. (laughing) They're the haves. They're part of the 1% who won't feed the homeless. They won't share the organic wealth."

Rush: "With a half million dollars in the bank, isn't Occupy Wall Street part of the 1% now?"

Rush: "Yes, my friends, the Occupy Wall Street crowd has a stash. They got 500 grand but they're not redistributing the money to all the protesters. That's right, the top 1% of the protesters have the money, and you know what they did with it? They put it in a bank. (laughing) Banks are what they are protesting."

Rush: "Folks, you're gonna have to have a really tough backbone for the next 12-13 months, because any news like we had with this 2.5% growth rate, the media will say, 'We're back! See? It was worse than we knew when Obama was inaugurated, and it's taking longer for his policies to work than we knew -- and now they're finally working, so don't change horses.'"

Rush: "Folks, we're gonna have to have job creation at 150,000 a month for four years just to get down to eight or seven percent unemployment! We're nowhere near getting back down to the 4.7 or 5% that we had just three years ago before Obama assumed office."

I missed this; a Time interview with Herman Cain; it is a pretty good interview; 6 minutes and you will have to click off an ad that will cover it):

The best explanation of the OWS as a political movement and what they believe (6 mins.):

You really need to see the video of this; the guy seems pretty normal and rational (even though he is on the Rosie O’Donnell show); and then you will see him giving his “speech” on the street.

Who would have thought that Howard Stern would actually have fun with the OWS types? He has found that OWS is filled with excellent material.

Jodi Miller: “President Obama continues to criticize Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan—racist!”

1) You may have heard of that veteran who was hurt in Oakland? Here is a website of his (I hate the Marines):

2) The moral hazard of the government coming in to take care of this or that is a moral hazard on two levels: (1) the person or entity being bailed out is not facing any consequences for its action and (2) we are past the point where the money is actually there to bail out anyone or anything. All of this will either bankrupt our nation or the children who come after us.

3) The private Chilean retirement fund, started 30 years ago, has a 9% annual return.

4) The slippery slope: at first, schools stepped in and told parents, “Don’t worry about the sex talk; we’ll take care of that for you.” Now, government will also “pay” for food and the hospital care of children. And, most recently, one lawmaker has suggested that the government pay for diapers as well.

5) Almost all state budgets are in trouble, and all of this goes back to the government-caused housing bubble. Housing values went way up, which meant that state revenue went way up. Very few state governments saw this as a good time to set money aside for a rainy day—most of them just spent all of this extra income. Since then, housing prices dropped 30–40%, and so did revenue from property taxes. However, the big spending from the mid-2000's were still in place.

6) You may recall that, when the first people who occupied Wall Street were marching, very few of them had any ideas about what they really wanted. Most of them knew they did not like the banks or Wall Street, but had no real clear ideas beyond that. Now, they have become more focused. It is as if there were people who planned this, wanted to get large numbers of people out on the street first, and then come in with their doctrines and ideas. Several Occupy groups are now coming out for a Robin Hood tax, which seems to be some sort of a global tax on things like transactions involving shares, bonds and derivatives. This could become a tax on cash withdrawals and similar banking functions. This may explain why these occupy movements were so anti-bank and anti-finance, but did not seem to see any reason to march on Washington, which bailed out the banks.

7) Is there anyone in the anti-capitalism Wall Street protest movement who can articulate what is wrong with the banks and with capitalism, besides saying the banks were bailed out and they owe a lot of student debt? Apart from the moral hazard of bailing out the banks, which is not capitalism, this money has been paid back. So, unlike the Stimulus Bill, we will not pay for the bank bail out. All they have besides this is income inequity; but this is always true in any society—even socialist societies have their elite, who are far better off than the hoi polloi.

We had a 2.5% (annualized) growth rate this past quarter, which roughly keep pace with population growth. Under Reagan, when we came out of the Carter recession, it was with 5 and 6% growth rates.

Obama’s “we can’t wait” mortgage plan will save borrowers an average of $26/month. His college loan program will save the average graduate between $4.50 and $7.75 per month.

The Democrats in the super-committee have called for an additional $1.5 trillion in tax hikes. I would assume that this is over a 10 year period of time.

Tuition at the University of California, Berkeley, was about $700 a year back in the 1970s. Today, U.C. Berkeley students pay around $15,000 per year. That's a 2,000% increase.

10,000 pages of environmental and governmental studies on the feasability of the Keystone pipeline (from Canada down to the Texas gulf coast).

$7 million in federal dollars went to the Oregon forestry service. They used this money to hire 254 foreign workers and 0 American workers.

$50 million in loans from the administration's clean-energy loan program will go to an investment firm whose vice chairman has been an adviser and fundraiser for President Obama. Washington-based Perseus says its affiliation with James A. Johnson, a major fundraiser for Obama's campaign, played no role in persuading the Energy Department to award the loan to Vehicle Production Group, a Miami start-up that is manufacturing wheelchair-accessible cars and taxis.

The first financial report of the Occupy Wall Street demonstration in New York City shows protesters have raised more than $454,000 and have spent slightly more than $50,000 in the movement's first five weeks.

54% of Asian American teenagers said they were bullied in the classroom, 31.3% of whites report being picked on.

(these are normal, scientific polls, and not internet polls or polls of FoxNews watchers)

8% for National security, such as ensuring a strong military and America's position in the world

If you were in Congress, how would you have voted on President Obama's recently proposed $450 billion dollar stimulus package aimed at creating jobs?

Which of the following best describes why the economy is not doing better under Barack Obama's leadership?

If you could send just one of the following two messages to the federal government right now, would it be "lend me a hand" or would it be "leave me alone"?

Would you rather see your child grow up to be a Wall Street executive or an Occupy Wall Street protester? (If no children: "Well, if you had children, would you .")

Recently President Obama's teleprompter was stolen. What do you think he should do -- replace it with another teleprompter, use note cards instead, speak off-the-cuff, or stop giving speeches?

Do you consider yourself a supporter of the Wall Street protests, or are you not a supporter of

Dr. Costas Panagopoulos, a professor of political science at Fordham University, recently conducted a survey of the Occupy Wall Street protesters in New York.

80% described themselves as liberal; half of those said they were extremely liberal

Can you imagine anyone in the press using words like these to describe Barack Obama? Stupid tax policy, jerk and an ignoramus. moronic marketing slogans, absurdities like Cain? Do you think we would hear words like racism? Of course! You can attack and malign a conservative using any kind of language that you want; but if you use any language like that against Obama, it is racism and harsh and unreasonable.

Nearly everyone in America has heard about President Obama’s jobs bill, which is mostly a tax revenue plan. Nearly no one has heard anything about the 15 jobs bills which have been passed by the House of Representatives.

The same Washington Post that made Sarah Palin’s emails available, grumbled about a racist rock (while ignoring Jeremiah Wright, during the 2008 election) wrote a hit piece on Florida Senator Marco Rubio. They attempted to detract from his Cuban parents as desiring a life outside of Castro’s Cuba. See:

On NBC’s Today show, White House correspondent Kristen Welker gave 23 seconds to the State Department buying up $70,000 worth of President Obama's various books. However, on October 21, investigative correspondent Michael Isikoff offered a full report about Herman Cain's presidential campaign buying copies of the businessman's new book.

NBC, the NY Times and others have been doing articles and shows about the rich getting richer, in support of the Wall Street Occupiers. However, they don’t seem to find the time to mention that, taking all the money from rich people will run the government for a year. Although many studies have been done on taking larger portions of the money of the rich will contribute very little to our problem of national debt, these stations ignore this in order to run potentially incendiary “news” stories instead.

Several different networks speak out in favor of the HPV shots for both young girls and young men; but they tend to leave out the part that gay sex may be one of the strongest contributing factors to the spread various diseases (including cancer) which the HPV vaccination purports to prevent.

I have mentioned this before, but here are some official numbers. The main 3 TV networks have devoted far more attention to Occupy Wall Street than they did to the TEA party, according to a new study by the Washington-based Media Research Center. CBS, NBC and ABC reported a mere 13 times on the tea party throughout all of its first year, 2009. In contrast, they ran 33 stories or segments about Occupy within 11 days. Furthermore, the coverage of OWS has been mostly favorable. CBS, NBC and ABC, most of the interview sound bites - 109 clips, or 87 percent - were from either protesters or supporters of Occupy, whereas only 6 percent were critical of the movement. Morning-show coverage has also been favorable, with seven guests expressing sympathy for protesters and none opposing or criticizing them. The TEA party never got such good press.

What demands or proposals of the Occupy Wall Street protesters do you agree with?

Governor Rick Perry’s continued attacks against fellow candidate Mitt Romney are foolish. Their support comes from different wings of the Republican party. Mitt Romney has been hovering in the 20–25% range since he began running for president back in 2007. For all intents and purposes, he is the Republican establishment candidate, and, 20 years ago, he would have simply ascended to the throne. However, that is no longer the case. However, Rick Perry’s supporters went to Herman Cain, and most are staying there. About half of Republican voters are undecided or semi-undecided; and that is who Perry (and others) should be trying to persuade.

Jon Huntsman, on the other hand, recognizes that the voters he wants right now support Mitt Romney, so he is going after those voters in particular.

You think the Occupy Wall Street types are sensible people with good ideas and the TEA party types are the nutty radicals.

You know what a mess the government made of the home mortgage industry? Now, because of Obamacare, the government is in charge of student loans. Unless this is changed, expect college tuition to grow much faster than the economy and for there to be a bubble followed by a huge mess. Yea, government!

Recall that Rush predicted that this snow is going to drive out the Occupy types.

You may not recall this, but, before anything negative happened in our economy, there was story after story about our economy under Bush and the word the Great Depression were thrown in (Google “Bush Great Depression” and notice the dates). This has already begun, but it will continue; you are going to read a lot of stories about the improvement in our economy. Bush economy with 5% unemployment—it’s the Great Depression; Obama economy with 9% unemployment—we are recovering and moving in the right direction. As we move closer and closer to the election, you will be able to Google “Obama recovery” and there are going to be gobs of stories.

This was pretty obvious; when Cain emerges as a serious candidate, the gloves come off and the press has been attacking him unmercifully.

We're here today to explore the American Idea, and I can't think of a better venue for this topic. The mission of the Heritage Foundation is to promote the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.

These are the principles that define the American Idea. And this mission has never been timelier, because these principles are very much under threat from policies here in Washington.

The American Idea belongs to all of us - inherited from our nation's Founders, preserved by the countless sacrifices of our veterans, and advanced by visionary leaders, past and present.

What makes America exceptional - what gives life to the American Idea - is our dedication to the self-evident truth that we are all created equal, giving us equal rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And that means opportunity.

The perfection of our union, especially our commitment to equality of opportunity, has been a story of constant striving to live up to our Founding principles. This is what Abraham Lincoln meant when he said, "In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free - honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve."

This commitment to liberty and equality is something we take for granted during times of prosperity, when a growing economic pie gives all Americans the opportunity to pursue their dreams, to provide brighter futures for their kids, or maybe just to meet their families' needs.

These are tough times. We know all too well that too many Americans are hurting today. And these hardships have reopened our longstanding national debate over what it means to be an exceptional nation. Have those periods of unprecedented prosperity in America's past been the product of our Founding principles?

Or, as some would argue, have we made it this far only in spite of our outdated values? Are we still an exceptional nation? Should we even seek to be unique? Or should we become more like the rest of the world - more bureaucratic, less hopeful, and less free?

The American Idea is not tried in times of prosperity. Instead, it is tested when times are tough: when the pie is shrinking, when businesses are closing, and when workers are losing their jobs.

Those are the times when America's commitment to equality of opportunity is called into question. That's when the temptation to exploit fear and envy returns - when many in Washington use the politics of division to evade responsibility for their failures and to advance their own narrow political interests.

To my great disappointment, it appears that the politics of division are making a big comeback. Many Americans share my disappointment - especially those who were filled with great hope a few years ago, when then-Senator Obama announced his candidacy in Springfield, Illinois.

Do you remember what he said? He said that what's stopped us from meeting our nation's greatest challenges is, quote, "the failure of leadership, the smallness of our politics - the ease with which we're distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle big problems."

• Petty and trivial? Just last week, the President told a crowd in North Carolina that Republicans are in favor of, quote, "dirtier air, dirtier water, and less people with health insurance." Can you think of a pettier way to describe sincere disagreements between the two parties on regulation and health care?

• Chronic avoidance of tough decisions? The President still has not put forward a credible plan to tackle the threat of ever-rising spending and debt, and it's been over 900 days since his party passed a budget in the Senate.

• A preference for scoring cheap political points instead of consensus-building? This is the same President who is currently campaigning against a do-nothing Congress, when in fact, the House of Representatives has passed over a dozen bills to help get the economy moving and deal with the debt, only to see the President's party kill those bills in the do-nothing Senate.

Look, we put our cards on the table. Earlier this year, the House of Representatives advanced a far-reaching plan filled with common-sense reforms aimed at putting the budget on the path to balance and the economy on the path to prosperity.

But instead of working together where we agree, the President has opted for divisive rhetoric and the broken politics of the past. He is going from town to town, impugning the motives of Republicans, setting up straw men and scapegoats, and engaging in intellectually lazy arguments, as he tries to build support for punitive tax hikes on job creators.

The tax increases proposed by Senate Democrats and endorsed by the President - when combined with the new taxes in the health-care law, and the President's other tax preferences - would push the top federal tax rate to roughly 50 percent in just 14 months, while doing nothing to promote job creation.

This tax increase on so-called "millionaires and billionaires" would actually constitute a huge tax hike on the nation's most successful small businesses. According to the Tax Foundation, the surtax would hit roughly 35 percent of small-business income.

As P.J. O'Rourke put it, "The good news is that, according to the Obama administration, the rich will pay for everything. The bad news is that, according to the Obama administration, you're rich."

Actually, the news is even worse. As a practical matter, when you try to chase ever-higher spending with ever-higher tax increases, you eventually run into a brick wall of math.

The President has been talking a lot about math lately. He's been saying that, quote, "If we're not willing to ask those who've done extraordinarily well to help America close the deficit. the math says. we've got to put the entire burden on the middle class and the poor."

This is really a stunning assertion from the President. When you look at the actual math, you quickly realize that the way out of this mess is to combine economic growth with reasonable, responsible spending restraint. Yet neither of these things factors into the President's zero-sum logic.

According to the President's logic, we should give up on trying to reform our tax code to grow the economy and get more revenue that way. Instead, these goals are taking a backseat to the President's misguided understanding of fairness.

Remember that 2008 debate, when ABC's Charlie Gibson pointed out that raising the capital gains tax rate actually tends to drive revenues down?

Obama replied: "Well, Charlie, what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness." That's the kind of logic we are unfortunately seeing today.

Also according to the President's logic, spending restraint is incompatible with a strong, well-functioning safety net. The belief that recipients of government aid are better off the more we spend on them is remarkably persistent. No matter how many times this central tenet of liberalism gets debunked, like Brett Favre, it just keeps coming back.

The President has wrongly framed Republican efforts to get government spending under control as hard-hearted attacks on the poor. In reality, spending on programs for seniors and for lower-income families continues to grow every year under the House-passed budget - it just grows at a sustainable rate. We direct tax dollars where they're needed most, and stop spending money we don't have on boondoggles we don't need.

The President's political math is a muddled mix of false accusations and false choices. The actual math is apolitical, and it's clear: By the time my kids are my age, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office projects that the size of government will be double what it is today.

Government health care programs alone will have grown to consume 45 percent of federal spending. The primary driver of this increase is runaway inflation in health care costs, which are rising at 2 to 3 times the rate of GDP.

It's impossible to keep funding health care expenditures at this rate. Even President Obama has said, quote, "If you look at the numbers, Medicare in particular will run out of money, and we will not be able to sustain that program no matter how much taxes go up."

So the real debate is about how best to control these unsustainable costs. And if I could sum up that disagreement in a couple of sentences, I would say this: Our plan is to empower patients. Their plan is to empower bureaucrats.

The Republican plan gives individuals the power to put market pressure on providers and make them compete.

The President's plan is to give 15 unelected bureaucrats in Washington the power to cut Medicare in ways that, according to Medicare's own chief actuary, would simply drive providers out of business. This would result in harsh disruptions and denied care for seniors.

Pain like this simply can't be sustained. So when it comes to out-of-control spending on entitlements, the President's math simply doesn't add up.

And his math is no better on the tax side. Let's say we took all the income from those the President calls "rich" - those making $250,000 or more. A 100 percent tax rate on their total annual income would only fund the government for six months. Just six months!

What about some of the other tax hikes the President likes to talk about? Under the President's policies, deficits are set to rise by a whopping $9.5 trillion over the next 10 years.

• Letting the top two tax rates expire would equal roughly 8 percent of that planned deficit increase.

• Eliminating tax subsidies for oil and gas companies would only equal 0.5 percent of the President's planned deficits.

• And what about corporate jet owners? That provision would reduce those deficits by just 0.03 percent.

Look, I'm all for closing tax loopholes - but you can't close our nation's deficits by chasing ever-higher spending with politically motivated tax hikes here and there. Instead, tax reform must broaden the base and lower rates.

This policy approach, which has attracted strong bipartisan support, would bolster our fiscal health by increasing competitiveness and encouraging more investment and job creation.

Lately, the President has been fond of taking Ronald Reagan quotes out of context, in an effort to persuade Republicans that Reagan would have agreed with the idea of using fear and envy to push a partisan agenda of permanently higher taxes.

Every time he does this, I can picture Reagan shaking his head: "There you go again."

Obama quotes Reagan as saying that bus drivers shouldn't pay a higher effective tax rate than millionaires. Well, that's a no-brainer. Nobody disagrees with that.

But it is simply disingenuous to use this quote as evidence that Reagan would have supported the tax increases that Obama wants Congress to pass.

Reagan was attempting to build support for the landmark 1986 tax reform, a revenue-neutral law that reformed the tax code by lowering tax rates while broadening the tax base.

Reagan's point - which President Obama clearly missed - was not that we should raise tax rates to chase out-of-control spending in Washington.

His point was that we should get rid of loopholes that are exploited by the few, so that we could lower everyone's tax rates and help the economy grow.

The House-passed budget includes this kind of tax reform, which many agree would provide an immediate boost to the economy. Our budget proposed getting rid of scores of loopholes, lowering the hurdles for job creation and economic growth, and making our tax code fair, simple, and competitive.

In his address to Congress last month, the President said he agrees in principle with this kind of reform, especially when it comes to the uncompetitive way we tax our businesses.

This made Republicans think, well, we might have an opportunity here for the kind of genuine consensus-building that the President talked about as a candidate.

Yet he chose not to pursue this kind of tax reform. Instead, he sent us a partisan bill filled with the same stimulus proposals that failed two years ago, only this time he also asked for permanent tax hikes to go with them.

He's also failed to work with us on another area where one would think we could find common ground: ending the lavish subsidies and government benefits that go to those who are already successful.

The House-passed budget was full of proposals to get rid of corporate welfare and crony capitalism.

• Why are tax dollars being wasted on bankrupt, politically-connected solar energy firms?

• Why have we extended an endless supply of taxpayer credit to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, instead of demanding that their government guarantee be wound down and their taxpayer subsidies ended?

Rather than raising taxes and making it more difficult for Americans to become wealthy, let's lower the amount of government spending the wealthy now receive.

The President likes to use Warren Buffett and his secretary as an example of why we should raise taxes on the rich.

Well, Warren Buffett gets the same health and retirement benefits from the government as his secretary.

But our proposals to modestly income-adjust Social Security and Medicare benefits have been met with sheer demagoguery by leading members of the President's party.

The politics of division have always struck me as odd: the eagerness to take more, combined with the refusal to subsidize less.

Instead of working with us on these common-sense reforms, the President is barnstorming swing states, pushing a divisive message that pits one group of Americans against another on the basis of class.

This just won't work in America. Class is not a fixed designation in this country. We are an upwardly mobile society with a lot of movement between income groups.

The Treasury Department's latest study on income mobility in America found that during the ten-year period starting in 1996, roughly half of the taxpayers who started in the bottom 20 percent had moved up to a higher income group by 2005.

Meanwhile, half of all taxpayers ended up in a different income group at the end of ten years. Many moved up, and some moved down, but economic growth resulted in rising incomes for most people over this period.

Another recent survey of over 500 successful entrepreneurs found that 93 percent came from middle-class or lower-class backgrounds. The majority were the first in their families to launch a business.

Their stories are the American story: Millions of immigrants fled from the closed societies of the Old World to the security of equal rights in this land of upward mobility.

Telling Americans they are stuck in their current station in life, that they are victims of circumstances beyond their control, and that government's role is to help them cope with it - well, that's not who we are. That's not what we do.

Our Founding Fathers rejected this mentality. In societies marked by class structure, an elite class made up of rich and powerful patrons supplies the needs of a large client underclass that toils, but cannot own. The unfairness of closed societies is the kindling for class warfare, where the interests of "capital" and "labor" are perpetually in conflict. What one class wins, the other loses.

The legacy of this tradition can still be seen in Europe today: Top-heavy welfare states have replaced the traditional aristocracies, and masses of the long-term unemployed are locked into the new lower class.

The United States was destined to break out of this bleak history. Our future would not be staked on traditional class structures, but on civic solidarity. Gone would be the struggle of class against class.

Instead, Americans would work, compete, and co-operate in an open market, climb the ladder of opportunity, and keep the fruits of their efforts.

Self-government and the rule of law would secure our equal, God-given rights. Our political and economic systems - rooted in freedom and responsibility - would reward, and thus cultivate, traditional virtues.

Given that the President's policies have moved us closer to the European model, I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that his class-based rhetoric has followed suit.

We shouldn't be surprised. but we have every right to be disappointed. Instead of appealing to the hope and optimism that were hallmarks of his first campaign, he has launched his second campaign by preying on the emotions of fear, envy, and resentment.

This has the potential to be just as damaging as his misguided policies. Sowing social unrest and class resentment makes America weaker, not stronger. Pitting one group against another only distracts us from the true sources of inequity in this country - corporate welfare that enriches the powerful, and empty promises that betray the powerless.

Ironically, equality of outcome is a form of inequality - one that is based on political influence and bureaucratic favoritism.

That's the real class warfare that threatens us: A class of bureaucrats and connected crony capitalists trying to rise above the rest of us, call the shots, rig the rules, and preserve their place atop society. And their gains will come at the expense of working Americans, entrepreneurs, and that small businesswoman who has the gall to take on the corporate chieftain.

It's disappointing that this President's actions have exacerbated this form of class warfare in so many ways:

• While the EPA is busy punishing commercially competitive sources of energy, a class of bureaucrats at the Department of Energy has been acting like the world's worst venture capital fund, spending recklessly on politically favored alternatives.

• While the unemployment rate remains stuck above 9 percent, a class of bureaucrats at the National Labor Relations Board is threatening hundreds of jobs by suing an American employer for politically motivated reasons.

• And while millions of Americans are left wondering whether their employers will drop their health insurance because of the new health care law, a class of bureaucrats at HHS has handed out over 1,400 waivers to those firms and unions with the political connections to lobby for them.

These actions starkly highlight the difference between the two parties that lies at the heart of the matter: Whether we are a nation that still believes in equality of opportunity, or whether we are moving away from that, and towards an insistence on equality of outcome.

If you believe in the former, you follow the American Idea that justice is done when we level the playing field at the starting line, and rewards are proportionate to merit and effort.

If you believe in the latter kind of equality, you think most differences in wealth and rewards are matters of luck or exploitation, and that few really deserve what they have.

That's the moral basis of class warfare - a false morality that confuses fairness with redistribution, and promotes class envy instead of social mobility.

I'd like to introduce President Obama to the Ronald Reagan he isn't so eager to quote - the man who said,

President Reagan was absolutely right. Instead of policies that make it harder for Americans to rise, let's lower the hurdles to upward mobility.

That's what the American Idea is all about. You know, in the midst of all the joys and sorrows of our everyday lives, I think we sometimes forget why America was considered such an exceptional nation at its Founding, and why it remains so.

To me, the results of the Founders' exceptional vision can be summed up in a single sentence: Throughout human history, the American Idea has done more to help the poor than any other economic system ever designed.

Americans, guided by our ideals, have sacrificed everything to combat tyranny and brutal dictators; we've expanded opportunity, opened markets, and inspired others to resist oppression; we've exported innovation and imagination; and we've welcomed immigrants seeking a fresh start.

Here in America - unlike most places on earth - all citizens have the right to rise. Thank you.

While Obama readies an ugly campaign, Paul Ryan gives a serious account of what ails America.

People are increasingly fearing the divisions within, even the potential coming apart of, our country. Rich/poor, black/white, young/old, red/blue: The things that divide us are not new, yet there's a sense now that the glue that held us together for more than two centuries has thinned and cracked with age. That it was allowed to thin and crack, that the modern era wore it out.

What was the glue? A love of country based on a shared knowledge of how and why it began; a broad feeling among our citizens that there was something providential in our beginnings; a gratitude that left us with a sense that we should comport ourselves in a way unlike the other nations of the world, that more was expected of us, and not unjustly-"To whom much is given much is expected"; a general understanding that we were something new in history, a nation founded on ideals and aspirations-liberty, equality-and not mere grunting tribal wants. We were from Europe but would not be European: No formal class structure here, no limits, from the time you touched ground all roads would lead forward. You would be treated not as your father was but as you deserved. That's from "The Killer Angels," a historical novel about the civil war fought to right a wrong the Founders didn't right. We did in time, and at great cost. What a country.

But there is a broad fear out there that we are coming apart, or rather living through the moment we'll look back on as the beginning of the Great Coming Apart. Economic crisis, cultural stresses: "Half the country isn't speaking to the other half," a moderate Democrat said the other day. She was referring to liberals of her acquaintance who know little of the South and who don't wish to know of it, who write it off as apart from them, maybe beneath them.

To add to the unease, in New York at least, there's a lot of cognitive dissonance. If you are a New Yorker, chances are pretty high you hate what the great investment firms did the past 15 years or so to upend the economy. Yet you feel on some level like you have to be protective of them, because Wall Street pays the bills of the City of New York. Wall Street tax receipts and Wall Street business-restaurants, stores-keep the city afloat. So you want them up and operating and vital, you don't want them to leave-that would only make things worse for people in trouble, people just getting by, and young people starting out. You know you have to preserve them just when you'd most like to deck them.

Where is the president in all this? He doesn't seem to be as worried about his country's continuance as his own. He's out campaigning and talking of our problems, but he seems oddly oblivious to or detached from America's deeper fears. And so he feels free to exploit divisions. It's all "the rich versus the rest," and there are a lot more of the latter.

Twenty twelve won't be "as sexy" as 2008, he said this week. It will be all brute force. Which will only add to the feeling of unease.

Occupy Wall Street makes an economic critique that echoes the president's, though more bluntly: the rich are bad, down with the elites. It's all ad hoc, more poetry slam than platform. Too bad it's not serious in its substance.

There's a lot to rebel against, to want to throw off. If they want to make a serious economic and political critique, they should make the one Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner make in "Reckless Endangerment": that real elites in Washington rigged the system for themselves and their friends, became rich and powerful, caused the great catering, and then "slipped quietly from the scene."

It is a blow-by-blow recounting of how politicians-Democrats and Republicans-passed the laws that encouraged the banks to make the loans that would never be repaid, and that would result in your lost job. Specifically it is the story of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage insurers, and how their politically connected CEOs, especially Fannie's Franklin Raines and James Johnson, took actions that tanked the American economy and walked away rich. It began in the early 1990s, in the Clinton administration, and continued under the Bush administration, with the help of an entrenched Congress that wanted only two things: to receive campaign contributions and to be re-elected.

The story is a scandal, and the book should be the bible of Occupy Wall Street. But they seem as incapable of seeing government as part of the problem as Republicans seem of seeing business as part of the problem.

Which gets us to Rep. Paul Ryan. Mr. Ryan receives much praise, but I don't think his role in the current moment has been fully recognized. He is doing something unique in national politics. He thinks. He studies. He reads. Then he comes forward to speak, calmly and at some length, about what he believes to be true. He defines a problem and offers solutions, often providing the intellectual and philosophical rationale behind them. Conservatives naturally like him-they agree with him-but liberals and journalists inclined to disagree with him take him seriously and treat him with respect.

This week he spoke on "The American Idea" at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. He scored the president as too small for the moment, as "petty" in his arguments and avoidant of the decisions entailed in leadership. At times like this, he said, "the temptation to exploit fear and envy returns." Politicians divide in order to "evade responsibility for their failures" and to advance their interests.

The president, he said, has made a shift in his appeal to the electorate. "Instead of appealing to the hope and optimism that were hallmarks of his first campaign, he has launched his second campaign by preying on the emotions of fear, envy and resentment."

But Republicans, in their desire to defend free economic activity, shouldn't be snookered by unthinking fealty to big business. They should never defend-they should actively oppose-the kind of economic activity that has contributed so heavily to the crisis. Here Mr. Ryan slammed "corporate welfare and crony capitalism."

"Why have we extended an endless supply of taxpayer credit to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, instead of demanding that their government guarantee be wound down and their taxpayer subsidies ended?" Why are tax dollars being wasted on bankrupt, politically connected solar energy firms like Solyndra? "Why is Washington wasting your money on entrenched agribusiness?"

Rather than raise taxes on individuals, we should "lower the amount of government spending the wealthy now receive." The "true sources of inequity in this country," he continued, are policies "that enriches the powerful, and empty promises that betray the powerless." The real class warfare that threatens us is "a class of bureaucrats and connected crony capitalists trying to rise above the rest of us, call the shots, rig the rules, and preserve their place atop society."

If more Republicans thought-and spoke-like this, the party would flourish. People would be less fearful for the future. And Mr. Obama wouldn't be seeing his numbers go up.

[The 53% are those who pay all of the taxes; there are hundreds of personal testimonies at this site]

• My mom was a compulsive hoarder that took me out of school when I was 6 and refused to let me attend any school.

• I went to the library on my own each day, checked out a stack of books and taught myself.

• My father refused to get a job and for a number of months we had a tortilla and a slice of cheese each day as our one meal of the day.

• I went and got my GED, associates degree, and bachelors degree, and willingly got some student loans for a MARKETABLE SKILL, USEFUL TO OTHERS in order to FEED MY FAMILY. I worked full time while going to school full time.

• Then I got cancer, and was cured by those "evil" drug companies that saved my life because they sold me cure that would otherwise not be available because nobody would have been motivated to research and find the cure.

• I worked my butt off doing overtime while doing chemotherapy, so that I could keep up with my bills.

• I now work full time, own my own home, keep the mortgage current, and have paid off in excess of $230,000 in medical bills, and student loans.

• I now make $90,000 per year, own my own side business in addition to my day job, and the government takes over a third of my income. I have $19,000 left in debt and am WORKING hard to meet MY RESPONSIBILITIES that I CHOSE and AGREED to take on.

• NO ONE SAID LIFE IS EASY, BUT YOU TOO CAN BE SUCCESSFUL AS YOU CAN ASPIRE TO, IF YOU WORK FOR IT!

This is one testimony of hundreds. It is in response to the “99%” OWS types.

1) The Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act (H.R 872) - Reduces overlapping and unnecessary regulation on

2) The Energy Tax Prevention Act (H.R. 910) - Prohibits the federal government from regulating

greenhouse gas emissions; thereby by preventing a needless increase in energy prices for American

3) A Resolution of Disapproval Regarding FCC’s Regulation (H.J. Res. 37) - Prevents the federal

4) Restarting American Offshore Leasing Now Act (H.R 1230) – Helps to reduce energy prices and

promote job creation by expediting offshore oil and natural gas exploration in the Gulf of Mexico and the

5) Putting the Gulf of Mexico Back to Work Act (H.R. 1229) – Promotes job creation and reduces energy

6) Reversing President Obama’s Offshore Moratorium Act (H.R 1231) – Promotes lower energy costs and

job creation by allowing drilling in at least 50 percent of the Outer Continental Shelf areas known to contain

7) The Jobs and Energy Permitting Act (H.R 2021) – Promotes job growth and reduces energy costs by

8) The Clean Water Cooperative Federalism Act (H.R 2018) - Prevents the federal government from

interfering with a state’s water quality program once that state has already met existing federal standards;

9) The Consumer Financial Protection Safety and Soundness Improvement Act of 2011 (H.R. 1315) - Improves consumer protection and provides greater economic stability by allowing the Financial Stability

10) The North American-Made Energy Security Act (H.R. 1938) – Promotes job creation and energy

security by ending the needless delay of the construction and operation of the Keystone XL pipeline.

11) The Protecting Jobs From Government Interference Act (H.R. 2587) - Seeks to guarantee private

companies the flexibility to develop their businesses in the state that offers the best opportunities for

12) The Transparency in Regulatory Analysis of Impacts (TRAIN) Act (H.R. 2401) - establishes an

interagency committee to evaluate the economic impacts of EPA regulations and delay the final dates for

both the maximum achievable control technology (Utility MACT) standards and the cross-state air pollution

rule (CSAPR) until the full impact has been studied. Both regulations would cost consumers and

13) The Cement Sector Regulatory Relief Act (H.R. 2681) – provides a stay of the EPA’s overly burdensome

rules and allows for the implementation of effective regulation that protects communities both

14) The EPA Regulatory Relief Act (H.R. 2250) – alleviates the excessive regulatory burden placed on

employers by the EPA’s Boiler MACT rules, potentially costing companies $14 billion and 224,000

American jobs, and replacing them with sensible, achievable rules that do not destroy jobs.

15) The Coal Residuals Reuse and Management Act (H.R. 2273) – bipartisan legislation providing

consistent, safe management of coal combustion residuals in a way that protects jobs and encourages

Michael Vick went to prison for staging dogfights, but for presidential debates, it's legal.

Politics, like any guilty pleasure, breeds nightmares. One of late is that we'll soon elect an American president based mostly on what people know from reading Yahoo! headlines and the three lines below them.

The nightmare got worse. The Yahoo! headlines started to look like a deep dive after Twitter's 140-character tweets started to define the political debate.

This being politics, it got worse yet. After watching umpteen debates, it looks as if the Republican Party may choose someone to run for the presidency of the United States based on who can explain the world and all its troubles in 30 seconds.

The TV debates create buzz and interest, and that's good. But most people don't eat seven appetizers and call it a meal. The debates are producing half-baked versions of candidates running for the presidency.

Did I say candidates? I misspoke. The U.S. has a long tradition of fringe candidates like Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul, but no previous system forced us to endure them once the laughing stopped. Two debates ago, I started surfing over to ESPN whenever Ron Paul talks. Yeah, let Iran have its own bomb.

Michael Vick went to prison for staging dog fights. With the U.S. presidency, it's legal and even encouraged. So we get Rick Perry accusing Mitt Romney of hiring "illegal gardeners." Mr. Romney, you have 30 seconds to respond. And that gives me 30 more seconds with the Florida International game.

When the moment arrives for a dollop of depth, the dazed and confused candidates revert to Linus-like security blankets of campaign boilerplate.

These dark thoughts came forth earlier this week when a group at The Wall Street Journal's editorial page spent some 75 minutes talking to candidate Jon Huntsman. He's the one they stick on the end of the podium.

Say this: Jon Huntsman may or may not deserve to be the nominee, but he's better than the back of the line.

After starting with a horrifyingly robotic recitation of his resume (exactly as he's said in every debate), the former Utah governor took us on an intriguing tour of his thinking on a range of issues.

Mr. Huntsman said the U.S. likely would have to intervene militarily against Iran's nuclear program in the next four or five years, a remarkable assertion. He said this in an Oct. 10 speech in New Hampshire, but even in our super-saturated media age, trees fall silently in an empty forest.

He supports "regime change in Syria" through diplomatic and covert means. We should try to make Iraq a "buffer" between Iran and Syria.

He supports the details of the Ryan Plan on entitlement reform. Like Rep. Ryan, he says this contest is "not a normal election"; if the Republicans lose, he said, the U.S. could be on course to repeat Japan's 10 years of moribund economic growth.

There was more, some of it impressive, some not (for ideas on economic policy, he talks to his brother, an entrepreneur). The point is that one left the meeting with a basis to think about Mr. Huntsman as president, rather than the thumbs-down vote he's gotten from the Roman Colosseum of the TV debates.

Michael Vick went to prison for staging dogfights, but for presidential debates, it's legal.

Anyone who spent an hour with Tim Pawlenty could see he was informed, prepared and articulate-ready to give Barack Obama a good debate on anything. Before any Republican cast a real vote, the early debates sank him, with little of these attributes able to break through the tight formats. He sank himself, too, bowing to what's become conventional belief that a debate's purpose is to "take down" your main opponent. That Mr. Pawlenty dropped out after wasting his time arguing with Michele Bachmann was a loss to the selection process.

When Herman Cain visited the Journal in June, he described at length the National Restaurant Association's effort to craft health-insurance plans suited to its complex work force. It was an eye-opening case study. At no point in the debates has Mr. Cain had time to discuss this.

Newt Gingrich's extended performance at last weekend's little-seen Faith and Freedom Forum from Iowa by many reports was astute and impressive.

GOP voters and contributors are famously unhappy with their choices. But this is the choice. And the fact is that some of these candidates are more interesting than they've been allowed to show. But how would anyone know? A paradox of the Information Age is how little useful information actually gets through.

The assumption that every cat and dog must be in the debate means 90 minutes divided by seven will produce Babel. Still, that's no excuse. With the economy the No. 1 issue, why-oh-why are we grinding endlessly through illegal immigration? Give each of them up to five minutes to talk directly at us about their economic ideas, if they can. We're adults. We can take our candidates straight, no chaser.

The candidates could stage their own debates. Let's see if a Romney would duck a Gingrich invitation to go one-one-one via Skype from a rented studio. Surely other ideas abound.

Honey, we've shrunk the biggest U.S. election in memory to half-minute spurts of ankle-chewing. Something's wrong with this picture.

	Name	Pop.	% Mus-lims
1	Afghanistan	18M	99%
2	Albania	2.3M	75%
3	Algeria	22M	98%
4	Bahrain	.220M	99%
5	Bangladesh	100M	85%
6	Cameroon	6.2M	55%
7	Central African Republic	2M	55%
8	Chad	4M	85%
9	Dahomey	3M	60%
10	Egypt	51M	93%
11	Ethiopia	27M	65%
12	Gambia	.4M	85%
13	Guinea	4.3M	95%
14	Guinea-Bissau	.81M	70%
15	Indonesia	161M	95%
16	Iran	48M	98%
17	Iraq	14.5M	95%
18	Ivory Coast	5M	55%
19	Jordan	3M	95%
20	Kuwait	1M	98%
21	Lebanon	3M	57%
22	Libya	3M	100%
23	Malaysia	14.5M	52%
24	Maldive Islands	12M	100%
25	Mali	6M	90%
26	Mauritania	2M	100%
27	Morocco	24M	99%
28	Niger	4.5M	91%
29	Nigeria	100M	75%
30	Oman	.75M	100%
31	Pakistan	90M	97%
32	Qatar	.18M	100%
33	Saudi Arabia	10.5M	100
34	Senegal	7M	95%
35	Sierra Leone	3M	65%
36	Somalia	5M	100%
37	South Yemen	1.5M	95%
38	Sudan	22M	85%
39	Syria	11M	87%
40	Tanzania	15M	65%
41	Togo	2.1M	55%
42	Tunisia	7M	95%
43	Turkey	66M	99%
44	U.A.E	.32M	100%
45	Upper Volta	6M	56%
46	North Yemen	6M	99%

GROUP	CAUSE	LOCATION	DESIG-NATOR
Abu Nidal Organization (ANO)	Islamist	Lebanon	U.S.
Abu Sayyaf Group	Islamist	Philippines	U.S.
al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades	Islamist	Palestine	U.S.
AntiFascist Resistance Groups First of October (GRAPO)	Narxist	Spain	E.U.
Armed Islamic Group (GIA)	Islamist	Algeria	U.S.
Asbat al-Ansar	Islamist	Algeria	U.S.
Aska Tasuna	Basque/ Marxist/ Islamist	Spain	E.U.
Aum Shinrikyo	Cult	Japan	U.S., E.U.
Babbar Khalsa	Sikh Independence	India	E.U.
Basque Fatherland and Liberty (ETA)	Basque/ Marxist/ Islamist	Spain	U.S., E.U.
Gama’a al-Islamiyya (Islamic Group)	Islamist	Egypt	U.S., E.U.
HAMAS (Islamic Resistance Movement)	Islamist	Palestine	U.S., E.U.
Harakat ul-Mujahidin (HUM)	Islamist	Pakistan	U.S.
Hizballah (Party of God)	Islamist	Lebanon	U.S.
International Sikh Youth Federation (ISYF)	Sikh Indepen-dence	India	E.U.
Irish Republican Army - Continuity (CIRA)	Indepen-dence	No. Ireland	E.U.
Irish Republican Army - Real	Indepen-dence	No. Ireland	U.S., E.U.
Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU)	Islamist	Uzbekistan	U.S.
Jaish e-Mohammed (JEM)	Islamist	Kashmir	U.S.
al-Jihad (Egyptian Islamic Jihad)	Islamist	Egypt	U.S.
Kahane Chai (Kach)	Jewish	Israel	U.S.
Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)	Marxist	Turkey	U.S., E.U.
Lashkar e-Tayyiba, (Army of the Righteous) (LET)	Islamist	Kashmir	U.S., E.U.
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)	Indepen-dence	Sri Lanka	U.S.
Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF)	Indepen-dence	No. Ireland	E.U.
Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK)	Marxist	Iran	U.S., E.U.
National Liberation Army (ELN)	Marxist	Columbia	U.S.
Orange Volunteers (OV)	Anti-IRA	No. Ireland	E.U.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)	Islamist	Palestine	U.S., E.U.
Palestine Liberation Front (PLF)	Islamist	Palestine	U.S.
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)	Islamist	Palestine	U.S., E.U.
PFLP-General Command (PFLP-GC)	Islamist	Palestine	U.S.
al-Qa’ida	Islamist	Afghnistan	U.S., E.U.
Red Hand Defenders (RHD)	Anti-IRA	No. Ireland	E.U.
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)	Marxist	Columbia	U.S.
Revolutionary Nuclei (formerly ELA)	Marxist	Greece	U.S., E.U.
Revolutionary Organization 17 November	Marxist	Columbia	U.S., E.U.
Revolutionary People’s Liberation Army/Front (DHKP/C)	Marxist	Turkey	U.S., E.U.
Salafist Group	Islamist	Lebanon	U.S.
Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso, SL)	Marxist	Peru	U.S., E.U.
Ulster Defense Association/Ulster Freedom Fighters	Anti-IRA	No. Ireland	E.U.
United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC)	Drugs	Columbia	U.S., E.U.

Steps that Muslims go through in each country, as their power and population increases:

3) When they have a large enough population, governments are influenced. Armed confrontations begin.

4) When they have a plurality, they institute Muslim law or violent overthrow begins (whichever is easier).

5) If they couldn't institute Muslim law in step 4, they eventually get around to it. At this point, they oppress the religious and ethnic minorities.

A new Fox News poll among likely Republican primary voters has Herman Cain in the lead 24-20 over Mitt Romney, with Newt Gingrich at 12 percent and Rick Perry at 10 percent. The rest of the candidates are in single digits.

Mr. Cain's rise is interesting. He's taken supporters directly from Michele Bachmann and Governor Perry as conservatives rally to the businessman's engaging and direct manner. Even though Herman Cain is running a non-traditional campaign, his popularity is the story of the race thus far.

But Thursday the "New York Times" reported that Cain has just six - six - paid workers in New Hampshire and Iowa combined. The story went on to say that his campaign is disorganized in the extreme. Be that as it may, there is a stunning difference between the national and state-by-state polling among Republicans.

According to a CNN/Time magazine poll in New Hampshire, Romney is at 40 percent, Cain at 13 percent. In South Carolina: Romney 25, Cain 23 percent. In Florida: Romney 30 percent, Cain 18 percent. And in Iowa, Romney polls at 24 percent, Herman Cain 21 percent.

But Mr. Cain may have a secret weapon against Mitt Romney, and that is Rick Perry. There's no question that Governor Perry is targeting Romney and has millions of dollars to spend on advertising. Mr. Perry is highlighting Romney's big weakness, a history of changing his mind.

TEXAS GOV. RICK PERRY, GOP PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: How do you change, at the age of 50 or 60, positions on life, positions on guns, positions on traditional marriage? I mean, those aren't minor issues, Bill. So, to change those at age of 50 or 60 tells you all you need to know about that.

Now, there is a chance that Rick Perry will become the new best friend of both Herman Cain and Barack Obama. The governor's poll numbers have been slow to rise, even after he unveiled his tax plan earlier this week. But Perry is in it to win it and will aggressively campaign in the months to come. He could do enormous damage to Mitt Romney or even to Herman Cain if he chooses to do so.

Politics is a contact sport. And there are some very hard hits coming down the road.

A supposed weakness in the barrier between the spirit and material worlds made Halloween a time when people tried to predict the future. By throwing wet hazelnuts into a fire, melting lead into cold water or even bobbing for apples, people tried to figure out what would happen in the year ahead. These methods may seem quaint, but given the inaccuracy of the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) projections, perhaps the agency should drop the Keynesian economic models and invest in a barrel of apples instead.

The CBO's consistently flawed scoring of the cost of bills is used by Congress to justify legislation that rarely performs as promised and drags down the economy.

Whether it scores the recent healthcare bill or the cost of the Capitol Hill Visitor Center, an ambitious three-floor underground facility, the price for taxpayers always ends up larger than originally predicted.

Take Medicare spending: the CBO's long-term projections of Medicare spending have steadily increased, even in recent years and over short periods of time. In 2005, the CBO projected that Medicare would cost $1.5 trillion in 2050. Two years later the same CBO projected that this cost would reach $2.8 trillion in 2050. And in 2009, it projected that it would be $3 trillion instead. The program's projected cost doubled in four years.

To be sure, the law that tells CBO how to score bills is partially responsible for this. Under current law, the agency must score bills as written by Congress, which means that it has to include the unrealistic assumptions and gimmicks adopted by lawmakers. That's how, in the case of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the CBO ended up predicting the bill would reduce the deficit by $143 billion over the next 10 years. Many experts were skeptical.

To its credit, CBO was skeptical too, noting, "these projections assume that the proposals are enacted and remain unchanged throughout the next two decades, which is often not the case for major legislation." The agency even produced an alternative scenario.

And then of course, there is politics. As budget guru Stan Collender recently emailed me, "CBO and its directors have been heavily criticized literally since the organization was established by the Congressional Budget Act. CBO's first director - Alice Rivlin - was repeatedly condemned when she said things that Congress didn't like."

But the CBO isn't without responsibility for its failed predictions. Like many economists, its analysts suffer from a misplaced belief in their forecasting prowess. For instance, in the case of the ACA predictions, CBO was only skeptical about lawmakers' ability to implement the law as written - not about the fallibility of its model.

It should be. CBO relies heavily on Keynesian economic models, like the ones it used during the stimulus debate. Forecasters at the agency predicted the stimulus package would create more than 3 million jobs. And in August 2010, the CBO estimated that the stimulus had indeed created between 1.4 million and 3.6 million extra jobs.

But unemployment stubbornly remained around 10 percent. What was wrong with the CBO's numbers?

"When the upper limit of your estimate is almost three times the lower limit, you know it is not a very precise estimate," George Mason University economist Russ Roberts emphasized in congressional testimony in February.

The truth is, there is no way to know the real number of jobs "created or saved" by the stimulus. For that, the CBO would have had to collect data on output and employment while holding other factors constant. But the CBO didn't do that, because that's different from its job of "scoring" the possible results of proposed legislation. As the CBO explained in a November 2009 report: "Isolating the effects would require knowing what path the economy would have taken in the absence of the law. Because that path cannot be observed, the new data add only limited information about [the law's] impact."

No one knows what economic output would have been without the stimulus, and no models can tell us the answer. But this lack of firm knowledge didn't stop CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf from talking as though he knew for a fact that these stimulus jobs had materialized.

Worst of all, it won't stop there. The CBO will keep predicting and all of us will keep using the predictions as if they were accurate. Yet, the stimulus and the ACA should serve as yet more evidence that Congress should take budget scores and economic projections with a grain of salt. What looks good in the spirit world of the computer model may be very bad in the material realm of real life because people react to changes in policies in ways unaccounted for in these models.

As everyone is predicting the future, I think I'll join in: CBO will continue to make inaccurate predictions and Congress will continue to rely upon them, passing expensive bills that will drag down the economy even further. And that should scare you, even at Halloween.

A collection of the Occupy Movement rap sheet so far. They list 100 incidents, with links to news reports about each one. If you know someone who has a favorable opinion of these people, copy and paste this lest and send it to them. Imagine if the TEA party had been guilty of even one of these things:

RUSH: I want you to hear these sound bites. The media is going nuts over the Herman Cain ad. First, here is a montage from yesterday and last night, and the reaction, the State-Run Media hyperventilating over Herman Cain's smoking ad. It tells you so much about how insane our society has become about smoking and political correctness. There is a humorless doom-and-gloomism out there, and if you drag on cigarette, if you show a picture of somebody dragging on -- I mean Hollywood is famous, everybody in every movie it seems smokes. Have you noticed? You can't watch a Hollywood movie without somebody picking up a cigarette a number of times throughout the movie. And you never hear Chris Matthews and the rest of the media elite going nuts over that. But here's Herman Cain and his ad. Listen to this montage.

BLITZER: He survived stage 4 colon cancer. Anyone promoting smoking, not necessarily a good idea.

HUME: What do you get out of having some miscellaneous middle-aged guy smoking a cigarette and saying you're the right candidate?

RUSH: They just can't believe it. That was John King, "To celebrate smoking at the end of a video I find reprehensible." Can you imagine how uptight these people's lives are? Can you imagine what it's like to be these people? I just think about how tightly wound and uptight these people are. Folks, I'm telling you this is who they are, this is a great illustration of how you have this holier-than-thou, superior bunch of people who are willing to condemn everything that you do that they disapprove of. There's no freedom. There's no living your life on your own. You're gonna be harassed if these people find out about it.

And then there's Obama. He doesn't know how much he helped us with this comment of his yesterday. (paraphrasing) "Yeah, what the Republicans are saying, if they win, you're on your own." Damn right we're on our own. Hallelujah! That's exactly what we want to be is on our own. And he's out there trying to warn people, "If the Republicans win they're basically saying you're on your own." Exactly right we're on our own. We want to be on our own. We do much better for ourselves than you do, you dolt, look what you've done. I love it.

Anyway, there's one more sound bite on this smoking business. It's from the Cain campaign. This was yesterday on Fox, Megyn Kelly talking to Herman Cain's chief of staff Mark Block about the ad, and she asked him what the message behind the ad was.

BLOCK: The message behind the ad was to our supporters that we're on a roll, we are excited about what's happening. There was so subliminal message. In fact, I personally would encourage people not to smoke, it's just that I'm a smoker, and as a lot of the people on the staff said, "Just let Block be Block." That's what it was all about.

RUSH: Mark Block is the guy's name, just let Block be Block. I smoke, what the hell, none of your business. It was an ad. There's no secondhand smoke in an ad. If you want to talk about influencing the kids then let's talk movies and let's talk rock music, and let's talk music videos, and if you want to talk about influencing the kids, that's all just a crock.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. It's a pleasure to talk to the voice of reason, even though you're more dangerous than Al-Qaeda.

CALLER: And that's why I'm so pleased to talk to you. Maybe you can help me, enlighten me. I'm a little confused because of the reaction to the Cain political campaign ad.

CALLER: The left's response seems puzzling to me, and I hope you could help me out. Why aren't they hailing the campaign manager as a hero? Is he not doing what he wants with his own body by having a cigarette? Isn't he exercising --

RUSH: The only people who get to do with their body what they want are women who are gonna have abortions. A woman who's not gonna have an abortion doesn't have the freedom to do with her body whatever she wants.

CALLER: So a man who wants to have a cigarette does not have a freedom of choice?

RUSH: Absolutely right. Absolutely right. You heard the evidence. Everybody on the left is having a cow. It's despicable. It's reprehensible. You heard 'em.

CALLER: As I was holding I also -- correct me if I'm wrong, Rush, but doesn't our fearless leader smoke?

RUSH: Well, there are reports that he's quit, and then there are reports that something happened and Michelle yelled at him and he started again, sneaks out behind the White House. Another reports says, no, he's really quit for good. Don't really know, other than he did. One thing, Herman Cain's getting a lot of mileage out of this. He got a lot more mileage out of this than what the ad cost 'em. That's not too dumb.

RUSH: All right, I have that ad. I have the Herman Cain smoking ad. If you are a child 26 years of age or younger, turn off your radio. John King of CNN, you, too, if you're listening, turn off your radio. This is despicable, this is unacceptable, this is Mark Block, chief of staff for Herman Cain.

BLOCK: Mark Block here. Since January I've had the privilege of being the chief of staff to Herman Cain and the chief operating officer of the Friends of Herman Cain. Tomorrow is one day closer to the White House. I really believe that Herman Cain will put "united" back in the United States of America, and if I didn't believe that, I wouldn't be here. We've run a campaign like nobody's ever seen, but then America's never seen a candidate like Herman Cain. We need you to get involved, because, together, we can do this. We can take this country back.

RUSH: And he's smoking in that ad, and I just wanted to courageously air that ad, complete with Mark Block smoking, just to be the renegade that I am. If you're a child 26 years of age or under and you had to hear this, I'm sorry, but sometimes life can be tough. Mark Block risking his life for Herman Cain's election.

RUSH: Jean in West Palm Beach, Florida, across the bridge. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: I really enjoyed your remarks to a previous caller about paying back those student loans. Been there, down that, and it's worth it. Congratulations to them.

CALLER: Your remarks to them were very valuable to all of us. I feel silly with my little remark because it's just about the smoker commercial for Herman Cain.

CALLER: I have to chuckle when I saw all the chatter because when I saw it, my gut reaction was, "You know, there's a guy who's comfortable in his own skin," and the guy with the cigarette just kind of reminded me of the Marlboro man and I thought, "Well, you know, if I was a union worker, I'd kinda sit back and feel a little comfortable thinking a little more about this Herman Cain and take another look at him." So that was my reaction, and I thought the little smile at the end just kind of was the frosting on the cake. So...

RUSH: I want to find this sound bite again, the montage with all the media people who were going bonkers here over the fact that there was smoking in the ad. Here, listen to this again. This is a montage of media people reacting to the Herman Cain smoking ad.

BLITZER: He survived stage 4 colon cancer. Anyone promoting smoking, not necessarily a good idea.

HUME: What you get out of having some miscellaneous middle-aged guy smoking a cigarette and saying you're the right candidate?

RUSH: It's as though it's a crime! Some great injustice has been perpetrated here? It's just mind-boggling to me. What a bunch of wusses this country's become.

CALLER: It's ridiculous -- and I might add, I come from a long line of nonsmokers, so I just (laughing) had to chuckle when I saw it -- and that grin at the end I thought I was looking at Magnum there for a second, it was funny.

RUSH: Here's Victor in Atlanta. You're next on the Rush Limbaugh program. Hello, sir.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. Sorry if I talk too fast. I'm a little excited being on your show.

CALLER: Well, I appreciate you having me. I have a message for James Carville. You know, I am an American, and I'm of Mexican descent, first generation American -- and not only that, I'm a Tea Party conservative, and I'm embarrassed if they think that Romney is the only choice we have. My first two guys are Cain and Perry; and I am a little more partial to Cain because I want somebody who has the business acumen and has the fortitude to go forward and say, "Hey, you know what? I may not have all the Washington experience that all these other guys have," and Cain said it best: Look where that's gotten us. It's working out great, isn't it?

CALLER: So I mean having Cain -- and I'll tell you this, Rush, I'm a student of history. I love and adore Ronald Reagan, and when I look back at some of Ronald Reagan's speeches and then I look at Herman Cain, I see a connect there that Herman has with people, and he enjoys the connect and he enjoys being in front of people. He enjoys talking with people. Ronald Reagan did, too. You know, the Democrats back then -- including the Republican establishment -- they went after Ronald Reagan. They called him, "Oh, he's an actor running for president! Oh, what's he gonna do?"

CALLER: "He's got this radical tax plan." Well, you know what? Herman Cain, yeah, maybe he's a businessman and they like to call him "pizza boy," but here's a man who worked for the department of Navy on radar systems, targeting systems, and then he took businesses and turned them around.

CALLER: (laughing) Yeah. Exactly and his dad didn't get a chip on his shoulder. You know, my biggest influence and the person I adore so much is my father. My father came here from Mexico, couldn't speak a word of English, but he came here on a student visa, he learned the English language. He went to school. He worked two, three, four jobs. I mean it's amazing to hear the story that he tells me -- and this man, he retired CEO of a major company here in Atlanta. Now, if my father can come here from Mexico and not know English and you're born here and you're gonna tell me you can't make it in this country? Well, there's a problem.

CALLER: The government didn't make this country great. The people did. We, the people. You know, 9-9-9 --

CALLER: Hey, Rush. Thanks for taking my call. We've been listening to you since the days of KFBK.

CALLER: Yes. I just wanted to bring up, I remember seeing on the campaign trail Obama had a guy called the "body man" who kept his BlackBerry and --

RUSH: That's exactly right! We elected a smoker! These sanctimonious, holier-than-thou media types are going crazy over Herman Cain's ad, and we elected a smoker! They say he quit. They "say" he quit. Doesn't matter. He was smoking when we elected him, and the media didn't have a problem with it now. "Oh, so sorry! He was doing everything he can to quit. It's so hard, it's so terribly hard!

RUSH: Now, a couple days ago, might have even been yesterday, our buddies at the Media Research Center, Brent Bozell, they sent a guy down to Ground Zero, the Occupy Wall Street. By the way, folks, let me ask you something. I don't know about you. I'm getting Occupy Wall Street fatigue. I've had it since Day One. That's not a problem for the media. They're hanging on the every action that the Occupy Wall Street people are taking, and I'm convinced that the media is hanging on here hoping and praying that we get the equivalent of a car wreck. They're hoping some sort of Kent State-type massacre is gonna take place. They are hoping that there's going to be some kind of civil disobedience. They are hoping that general unrest is gonna take place, the riot is gonna start, the cops are gonna go in there to try to quell the riot. I think that's what they're hoping for. This is the chaos that everybody is looking for.

Have you seen the photos? Have you seen the photos of these parks after the occupation protests have been forced, to de-occupy 'em so people can go in there and clean 'em up? Where's all the recycling? Where is all the saving the environment? Where's all the organic stuff? Where's whatever these people claim is necessary to save the planet? I can't tell if these are pictures from Occupy Wall Street or from that earthquake in Turkey. These people are pigs! They're leaving their places an absolute mess -- and there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of recycling going on, unless you count recycling bunch of hippie nonsense from the sixties in terms of attitude and behavior. I thought these are the people that love Gaia. I thought these are the people that love Mother Earth. I thought these are the people that didn't like any pollution, didn't like any trash, didn't like any garbage. Look at the mess they're making wherever they are, and you didn't see these kind of messes following Tea Party rallies.

Anyway, the people at Media Research Center sent one of their reporters down there yesterday (Dan Joseph is his name) and he went around and asked them a simple question: "Who do you think is more dangerous to American society, Rush Limbaugh or Al-Qaeda?" And here's what he got.

JOSEPH: Who do you think is more dangerous to American society, Rush Limbaugh or Al-Qaeda?

WOMAN: Because he has a greater effect. He's on TV every day speaking to us. Al-Qaeda's not.

RUSH: This... (laughing) I don't know. (laughing) (interruption) You mean about being on TV every day? I am on TV every day! I am on TV practically every day. There are snippets. (interruption) No, no. She didn't specify that. There are snippets from the Dittocam taken every day, and they are played all over cable news networks. I am on television every day. I'm not being paid for it (and of course not doing any extra work for it, either), but I am on television every day. I'm probably the most recognizable radio person ever, 'cause I am on television every day. So these people... You know, I went back and forth about whether to even play this or not because it's silly, "Rush Limbaugh or Al-Qaeda?" But I wanted you to hear this one woman: "Limbaugh is worse," and there's another bite here, one more, I think.

MAN: They both inspire hated, so, ahhh, Al-Qaeda's sliding its way out; Rush Limbaugh seems to be going up in popularity.

MAN 3: We see things such as Fox News and CNN but we're not seeing what's going on in the world and in fact we're the terrorists going to other countries such as Iraq and Iran and overthrowing their governments to institute a -- a -- a -- a democracy, so to speak, and something that can obviously be not be worked with, at least at the level that they're at. So, ultimately, Americans are the terrorists.

RUSH: Right out of the thought process of Jeremiah Wright: "So, ultimately, the Americans are the terrorists." I decided to go ahead and air this once again just to illustrate in their own words who these people are, how utterly dumb they are, how purely stupid they are. And they're products of their education. They've been taught this. They believe it.

RUSH: "Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy has declared Thursday 'Diaper Need Awareness Day' as part of a campaign by The Nutmeg State to pressure Washington into providing free diapers to low-income families." That would be low-income families with day care, that would be Rosa DeLauro's law. Can you believe this? Day Three of this diaper business, Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy declared Diaper Need Awareness Day tomorrow. "Supporters will host a fundraiser and a panel discussion in New Haven on the public health risks for babies whose diapers aren't changed frequently enough." How long is it gonna be before a bunch of geezers in nursing homes are gonna be demanding free diapers?

"The move follows legislation introduced earlier this month by Rep. Rosa DeLauro that would amend the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act of 1990. ... DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat, estimates that families pay about $100 a month to cover babies' bottoms," and it ought to be free. The state of Connecticut, folks, has declared tomorrow Diaper Need Awareness Day, and there is a fundraiser and a panel discussion in New Haven on the public health risks for babies. Can you imagine this panel discussion? Will this be on C-SPAN? Who will the experts be? Can you imagine watching a panel discussion on the health risks for babies whose diapers are not changed frequently enough?

By the way, somebody help me out. Is a hundred dollars a month for diapers a lot or not? Brian, you should know this or do you even care? A hundred dollars a month is cheap for diapers? I, of course, wouldn't know. "The maker of Huggies on Monday cut its sales outlook in the U.S. and other developed markets, citing a low birth rate due to the economic downturn." So the diaper business is in the toilet. Nothing's good. Nothing is good out there. (interruption) A hundred dollars a month for diapers is about right. Okay, but how often do you change a diaper? Do you need this seminar? Five diapers a day? Five diapers a day times 30 days, a hundred dollars a month? Seventy-five cents is what the diapers are, 75 cents? I wouldn't know.

We had to go out and get some diapers for one of the puppies. Failed to get one of the dogs spayed, went into heat, bad news, so had to go out and put the dog in diapers -- talk about funny -- for about three weeks. I, of course, didn't buy them. I paid for them but I didn't buy them. (interruption) Yeah, I did, I put the diaper on the dog a couple times. I did. I put the diaper on the dog a couple times. (interruption) I do. I do. But sometimes I was the only one there and it had to be done. You had to take the diaper off and let the dog out. The dog comes back in and you gotta put the diaper back on. I was lucky I had a cooperative dog. If the dog hadn't been cooperative I don't know.

RUSH: I want to talk about the conservative Republican media intelligentsia. These are the people who were dead wrong when the Arab Spring popped up. These are the people who could not have been more incorrect. They told us what was happening in Egypt was marvelous, wonderful, it's an outbreak of democracy, and we need to get behind it, and we need to support it. All the while, Obama was trying to get out in front of it and make it look like what was happening in Tahrir Square was just an extension of his campaign from 2008. The conservative intelligentsia on our side is doing much the same thing, claiming that the Arab Spring was this wonderful breakout of democracy that we should support, and they're dead wrong. They're dead wrong about what the Arab Spring was. Now we've got Sharia law that's gonna be enforced in Libya. Sharia law is probably gonna become the law of the land in Egypt. The enemies of Israel are lining up and joining forces.

Now, my point is our conservative intelligentsia was as wrong as they could be, and yet they continue to pass judgment on all of these candidates: Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry -- and specifically when talking about Herman Cain. They're claiming now Herman Cain doesn't have the slightest idea what he's talking about with foreign policy, and Herman Cain is an embarrassment, and, "Herman Cain is not qualified to be president! All he did was run a company, but he's never been in politics," which is a business, "and his qualifications on foreign policy are very, very dubious." Who's saying this? The people who totally missed what this Arab spring is all about. The so-called experts on our side who told us, "Get behind it. It's an outbreak of democracy over there! This is a wonderful thing, an extension of the Bush policy. It's Iraq: The flowering in democracy in Egypt and so forth!"

It's not. It's the outbreak of Sharia law throughout that region. So our intelligentsia -- and not to drum it home. I don't want to be redundant here to the point of boredom. But these are the people set themselves up as lofty experts claiming Herman Cain doesn't know what he's talking about, he's not qualified. Not Romney. They're not criticizing Romney. Cain, Santorum, Perry, Bachmann, they don't know what they're talking about, and neither do the people who are criticizing them -- and I think it's an important point to make. These are the same people who were wrong about the debt ceiling. They told us we ought go along with the debt ceiling. They told Boehner, "No, no, no! Don't fight Obama on this. We've gotta raise the debt ceiling. We have to do it."

The same people who attacked the Tea Party, talk radio, conservatives. They said, "We gotta go along. You know, let Obama and Boehner come to an agreement here on the debt deal." Okay, so where did that take us? We've got this super committee which has as part of its task either raising $500 billion in revenue or cutting $500 billion in defense, which is a disastrous choice and a huge trap and this is what our own experts gave us -- and they tell us... After a series of blunders that they've made, misjudgments that they've made, they sit there and pass judgment on these candidates who are actually presenting some pretty good ideas, compared to what we're dealing with, compared to what we've got in the White House? What they ought to be talking about is the poor judgment of Obama, the lack of qualification of Obama, the lack of competence of Obama, instead of ripping our own people.

But they're ripping our own people 'cause they're ripping conservatives -- and they're not conservative even though they want everybody to think that they are. I mean, fine. If you want to question Herman Cain's foreign policy qualifications and credentials, cool. But let's talk about yours at the same time. Arab spring an outbreak of democracy? Where is it? Didn't quite happen that way. Sharia law now looks like it's gonna end up being the law of the land in Libya. Now we have some really good proposals coming from Herman Cain and now Rick Perry, pushing forward a flat tax. In either case, both of them are talking about serious tax reform, limited federal intrusion via the IRS -- and the same crowd is attacking this stuff on the basis that it's too "simplistic" or joining critics of the left when they say that certain people who don't pay taxes will continue not to pay taxes, and on and on and on.

What it really boils down to is that certain elements of our own intelligentsia are making the case, defending big chunks of the status quo, 'cause they like big government, and they like "an active executive," quote, unquote; and they like their turn in charge of the money. We have some conservatives running for president who are proposing serious, substantive, compelling ideas for addressing big problems, and they are, of course, set upon by the usual liberal suspects. But they also are hit on by Republican operatives, so-called conservative strategists and so forth on the basis that, "Weeeell, they don't know who... They're inexperienced, lack qualifications, really don't know what they're talking about," and of course they're not infallible themselves. I can continue to point out areas in analysis where they themselves have been wrong, and yet they continue to occupy these lofty perches of wise men.

They and only they know -- and yet they're not right, either. I just wish that people on our side could get unified and understand that the problem is not Herman Cain, the problem is not Rick Perry, the problem is not Rick Santorum, the problem is not any of our people. The problem is Barack Obama and what he has done so far to this country and what he will continue to do if given the chance. So a brief time-out. We'll come back and... (interruption) What? What? (interruption) No, I haven't. I'm not gonna go to Washington any time soon, and if I... (interruption) I don't see these people when I go there anyway -- and, by the way, have I mentioned any names? How do you even know who I'm talking about? Yeah, you might think you know who I'm talking about.

RUSH: I do. I think the focus ought to never leave Barack Obama. But our inside-the-Beltway intelligentsia sees fit to have to go out and attack Perry or Cain, Santorum, Bachmann as "unqualified, unprepared, don't know what they're doing," when any of them would be a 2,000% improvement over Obama -- who is what? Barack Obama is the least experienced president we've ever had -- even after two-and-a-half years in office, 'cause he learns nothing. His ideas are unworkable. His policies are stupid. His ideas are naive and dangerous. His record is a disaster. He is the most unqualified, irresponsible, disastrous candidate. Not the conservatives! Not the people on our side running for office! They are such a step and cut above Obama, it's laughable. Let's take a look Santorum, Rick Santorum, just as an example.

He's way down in the polls, but other than the liberals and the inside-the-Beltway conservative intelligencia, most of us know full well he'd be a very good president, far superior to Obama. His views on economics and the judiciary are very sound. Yet he's attacked. Michele Bachmann. She's trailing in the polls, but she's solid. She was among the first to build opposition against Obamacare in the House. She was a leader at the Tea Party rallies. She's articulate, and she was right about virtually everything she said respecting domestic and foreign policy. She'd be a very good president, especially compared to what we've got now. Newt. Successful Speaker of the House; big, solid ideas, would be a very good president. Rick Perry just came out with what I think is a really good tax reform plan. It's not unlike Steve Forbes plan in the past.

He's got an energy plan that would unleash our own vast resources. He would make a very good president. Herman Cain is not just an experienced businessman; he's a brilliant businessman. He turned around failing franchises and companies. He is both intuitively and substantively conservative and would be a very good president, and Herman Cain has also begun the great debate about tax reform with his 9-9-9 plan -- which, to me, is not something to sneer at and laugh at. It's refreshing. It's necessary. It's long overdue, if we're serious about all of this -- and we are. There's so much to like about all this. Nevertheless, this group of people that I have just highlighted here -- these people -- we're told that they are the inexperienced, uninformed, inarticulate, weak conservative candidates.

They're repeatedly attacked by the liberals, repeatedly attacked by the media -- and, in some cases, attacked by the Republican establishment. But at the end of the day I would trust any of these conservatives serving as president of the United States. I would trust any of them. I would be confident with any of them. I would be happy with any of them. Furthermore, I am certain that this country would be reinvigorated if any one of these were president. Major reinvigorated -- and I have no doubt, by the way, folks, that the liberals, the media, and even some in the Republican establishment would despise their presidencies. But that's good! That's not a bad thing. That's not a disqualifying fact.

Just because the Washington establishment, I don't care what party they're in, oppose this and just because they wouldn't be happy? Who cares. Any one of these people would be such a vast improvement over what we have now. And they've all thrown their hat in the ring, they've all taken the plunge, they've all been willing to take the media anal exam. They all think that there is a desperate need for what they have to offer, and the people criticizing them are no better than they are. The people criticizing them don't have any better records when it comes to foreign policy or domestic policy than these candidates do. The difference is the candidates have accountability. The critics don't. Nobody holds them accountable. Nobody even remembers when their criticisms have been incorrect or erroneous or what have you. Now, I've not mentioned Romney in this; I don't want anybody to get upset.

I haven't mentioned Romney because he's not being attacked. Romney's not being attacked as an inexperienced conservative ideological, et cetera, et cetera. All these other people are. Newt, Perry, Cain, Bachmann, Santorum, they're all being attacked as inexperienced or unqualified. They "come up short" in one area or another. Foreign policy, domestic policy, or what have you. But I didn't mention Romney, and I didn't leave him out on purpose. I just didn't mention him because he's not a target. Nobody's attacking Romney. But this constant refrain that the Republican field is "weak" compared to the "brilliant and vibrant" Obama-Biden team? I can't sit by while that takes hold. That's something that needs to be constantly, vigorously challenged. We've got the most incompetent, dangerous group of people running this country in my lifetime and beyond, and anybody on our side seeking to displace them would be a 2,000% improvement.

RUSH: Let's do the opposite of walking on eggshells. Let's go to last Friday night, Fox Business Network, the Neil Cavuto show, and he's talking to casino mogul Steve Wynn, and Cavuto said, "The president will be having a campaign rally at the Bellagio. Safe to say that one casino executive who will not be there is the guy that used to own the Bellagio, Steve Wynn."

WYNN: The policies of this administration have destroyed the working -- the living standard of the working -- class in America. What is ostensibly the base of the Democratic Party is taking the worst hit in history because of the unbelievably uninformed policies of this president and his colleagues who have fostered this ridiculous class warfare, these nonsensical policies that have been proven to be ineffective and unsuccessful everywhere they've ever been tried in the world.

RUSH: That is Steve Wynn who owns numerous casinos in Las Vegas, also in Macao. Then Cavuto said, "So is Obamacare the biggest factor to you, Steve, as far as making decisions down the road and helping out these two Israeli gentlemen, I guess to expand there, you just wouldn't do it, you couldn't do it because you don't see the light here?"

WYNN: I can't see the light. I'm frightened to death about the future of business. My friend Harry Reid hung up on me the other day for the first time in 40 years. That's what it's come to. I supported a Democrat congresswoman named Shelley Berkley. I called her during Obamacare. I said, "Shelley, what are you doing? How do you do this? This is killing the unions and all of us who are supplying health care to our employees," and she said to me quote -- quote; now, this is not hearsay. Shelley said to me -- and she's running for the Senate, "Steve, I know it's terrible. My husband's a doctor. He hates it, too. But if I don't vote for it, she will punish me." "She" being Nancy Pelosi. If any businessman or any working person doesn't understand that this is a turning point in American history, then I'm afraid we're gonna get what we deserve.

RUSH: Steve Wynn in Las Vegas. So Harry Reid hung up on him. Look, the obvious question is, "Why is he still voting Democrat after all this?" That would be my obvious question. "Why are you still voting for these people?" And you know what I bet the answer would be, "They're going to win, and I need to be in good with the winners." But here it hasn't helped, with Obama it didn't help. This is amazing, talking about Democrat congresswoman Shelley Berkley. "I called her during Obamacare. I said, 'Shelley, what are you doing?' She said, 'I know, I know, it's horrible. My husband, he's a doctor, he hates it, too, it's terrible, but if I don't vote for it she will punish me," meaning Pelosi. "If I don't vote for it, she will punish me." Nancy Pelosi. Steve Wynn, by the way, is somebody who actually cares deeply about his employees.

One of the raps that big CEOs and large business operators get is that they don't care about their employees, that they exploit them just like they exploit the customers and everything. Steve Wynn cares deeply about his employees. I've met a bunch of people who work for the guy, and they all love him. They all love the heck out of him. Now, you've got malcontents here and there in every business. It's not universal. But he's pretty much universally liked and adored and respected by people that work for him, and he has a deep concern for them, and he tries to pay them as much as he can and keep his business profitable and operating. But I only have one quibble with him. The working class hasn't been the base of the Democrat Party since FDR. The base of the Democrat Party doesn't work. The base doesn't work. That's exactly how they want it, too, by the way.

RUSH: You know, they're doing thermal imaging at night of the Occupy protesters in various places, London, Oakland. Thermal imaging will show who's inside a tent and who's not at night. Ninety percent of the Occupy protest tents in London are empty at night. They're going back to their comfortable homes and coming back and joining the protests during the day.

And this is from the New York Post: "The Occupy Wall Street volunteer kitchen staff launched a 'counter' revolution yesterday -- because they're angry about working 18-hour days to provide food for 'professional homeless' people and ex-cons masquerading as protesters." (laughing) That would be most of the protesters, right? (laughing) Aren't you cooks being a little selfish here? After all, you have food and the homeless people don't have food. Where's the social justice in that? Of course, if you've got food in your kitchen and there are people that don't have food and they show up and want food, aren't you obligated to share your food with them?

"For three days beginning tomorrow, the cooks will serve only brown rice and other spartan grub instead of the usual menu of organic chicken and vegetables, spaghetti Bolognese, and roasted beet and sheep's-milk-cheese salad." If these people want gourmet meals so bad, why don't they go to Club Gitmo? "They will also provide directions to local soup kitchens for the vagrants, criminals and other freeloaders who have been descending on Zuccotti Park in increasing numbers every day." (laughing) Ah, folks, I love it. So these protesters who are demanding income redistribution, an end to income and wealth inequality, are attracting criminals, the homeless, a veritable endless parade of human debris who want food, and the cooks are saying, "To hell with you." So here we have the Occupy Wall Street cooks, now part of the 1%. (laughing) They're the haves. They're part of the 1% who won't feed the homeless. They won't share the organic wealth.

And then there's this. The cops somewhere are suing the protesters. A cops union is suing the protesters somewhere in... I think it's New York. Anyway, liberal-on-liberal lawsuits. We got somebody suing Arianna Huffington for stealing their idea, New York Times or somebody. Arianna Huffing and Puffington is being sued, claiming that the idea of her website was stolen from some other people. And now a cops union is suing protesters at Occupy Wall Street. We find out the Occupy protesters are not staying in tents at night, the homeless and a criminal element are showing up for free spaghetti Bolognese -- (laughing) and the cooks say, "To hell with you, here's some brown rice." (laughing) Isn't irony ironic?

And, by the way, the story goes on to say the protesters organized a ten-member security force to confront the homeless people, to chase 'em out from Occupy Wall Street. It's a vigilante, they're setting up their own police force. Now, who are more sacred to the left than the homeless? The homeless! They're among the most approved disadvantaged groups in the country. The leftists are the first to scream bloody murder when the homeless are roused by the cops. But when it comes to sharing their food with them, forget about it. (interruption) I don't know if the homeless are minorities or not. You see, Snerdley, this is an excellent question. I wasn't even curious about that. You see, my mind doesn't even go there. You're in there wondering if the homeless are basically minorities, let's cut to the chase. You're asking me if the homeless are black? Okay. Okay. That's an interesting perspective.

So Snerdley is sitting here saying if young, effete, lazy, white hippies are kicking black homeless people out of their enclave, he wants to know about it. Snerdley wants pictures 'cause all this is happening, this is all Obama's people. Make no mistake, Obama even did an Occupy protest in Chicago. I forget the date. But Obama led one of these just like this when he was a community organizer. It might have been after he was in the State Senate in Illinois, maybe before that. But this is right out of the David Axelrod's Astroturf handbook.

You see, folks, if you're homeless, would you rather eat scraps from a Dumpster or if there are a bunch of people cooking spaghetti Bolognese down the street, where you gonna go? It's kind of like your dog, once you let your dog taste human food scraps, why is your dog gonna eat the garbage you put in his bowl ever again? We'll look into it, Snerdley, we'll find the racial makeup for you as to who the homeless are who are being so viciously treated, so unceremoniously disrespected when they show up and just want to be shared with.

David in Memphis, I'm glad you waited, sir, welcome to the EIB Network, nice to have you with us.

CALLER: Pleasure to talk to you, Rush. Been trying to get through for years. I've got a point about these Wall Street protesters. Their favorite term to use against the Tea Party is terrorists. Well, two can play at that game. They were afraid when the Tea Party came along, Christian militias and Klan rallies were right around the corner, right?

CALLER: Well, I know a little bit about terrorism, Rush. Ever since 9/11 I've made it sort of a hobby to study it.

CALLER: When terrorism isn't fueled by Islam, it's usually fueled by left-wing student protest movements. If you look at the history, the Baader-Meinhof gang in Germany, the Red Brigades in Italy, the Weather Underground here in America --

CALLER: They're worried about the violence the Tea Party will perpetuate, yet these kids are clashing with the cops on camera, and nobody is marching experts in front of the media to fret about the violence these kids could perpetuate.

RUSH: Right. Well, in this instance, though, in this instance the media wants a little violence.

RUSH: They want it, and they want it because they want to be able to say that the violence is anger erupting at Republicans opposing Obama's jobs bill. The Republicans try to repeal Obama's health care. That is the optic they're trying to create, the image they're trying to perpetuate here.

CALLER: The problem is you always fail to anticipate just how dangerous some of these people can actually be.

CALLER: Well, you look at the Baader-Meinhof gang, for instance, the people who founded it, one of them was a left-wing journalist who thought West Germany was a capitalist, imperialist system.

RUSH: Well, right now this is a ragtag bunch, most of them who don't even know why they're there.

RUSH: But they're trying to have something made of it. They're trying to make it look like it's homegrown, effervescent, spontaneous, and it's not. This is Astroturfed. This is planned, it is orchestrated, and it's disappointing actually when you get down to brass tacks. The numbers are quite small. They're having to show all of these different cities to make it look like there's any significant size here. Still, this is actually a very, very small bunch of people. I appreciate the call, David. Thanks very much.

RUSH: Here's Joe, Sandy Hook, Connecticut. Welcome. I'm glad you waited, sir. You're on the EIB Network.

RUSH: (laughing) Yeah, diapers! Now third day in a row we've mentioned diapers here.

CALLER: Rush, my point is prior to your call coming on there was a talk show I was listening to. They interviewed an "Occupier." He just graduated college with a degree in economics, and he's $20,000 in debt.

CALLER: My point is, if this man enlisted into the military, he could pay that off within a year, and the government still takes care of him.

RUSH: He's got his economics degree, he's got his degree, but he's $20,000 in debt and that's why he's protesting?

RUSH: All right, sir. So it cost him 20 grand at least in debt. What's the problem?

RUSH: He knowingly incurred the debt. I know they say they want the debt forgiven, but that's --

CALLER: Well, apparently doesn't want to pay for it. I mean, my point is I mean people that buy a new car, if they finance it they're over $20,000 in debt.

CALLER: Exactly. Who do these people want? I mean, what is the Utopian world for these people? I mean, what do they want?

RUSH: What else could it be? They want an exemption from reality. I'll guarantee you... I didn't hear this guy, but I will guarantee you that he is part of a crowd that has been made to believe that education is a fundamental requirement and a right and ought not cost anybody anything.

RUSH: He probably thinks, "Look, my parents made me go. My culture, my society is telling me I have to do this if I have a chance to get ahead. Why should I go in debt to have to do this? Why shouldn't this be provided for me? If this is what they're telling me I need, if this is what they're telling me is necessary be a good citizen, why should I have to pay for it?" I'll bet you a dollar to a doughnut that's the guy's thinking on it. Everybody's telling him it's a necessity. Everybody's telling him he doesn't have a chance in life if he doesn't do this. So if they're making him do it, essentially, why should he have to pay for it? Why shouldn't everybody else pay for it? If his getting an education is what's necessary to keep this country growing and great and blah, blah, blah, then why should he have to pay for it? I'll guarantee you he's had a couple professors telling him that -- and, of course, all of his buddies.

RUSH: You know, it's amazing. These 20-year-old, 22-year-old punk kids, if they think college is expensive, wait 'til they get divorced. They have so much to learn, and they think they know it all.

RUSH: Some economic news. "The number of people seeking unemployment benefits dipped slightly last week, though not by enough to suggest that hiring is picking up. Weekly applications for unemployment benefits declined 2,000 to a seasonally adjusted 402,000." Still over 400,000.

Now, folks, for the last two weeks I have seen e-mails. Gallup has subscribers. You can be an e-mail subscriber. I don't think it costs anything. It's just like checking off a box on their website and they'll send you updates, newsletters, whatever it is. For the last two weeks I have seen unemployment data, little blurbs three or four lines from Gallup, and the one that came in just today predicts, based on their own unemployment figures, Gallup's, their own surveys, they are expecting the government to report an unemployment figure of under 9% this week.

Then there is a story out there that the US economy has expanded at a two and a half percent rate. This is a Wall Street Journal news alert: "US Gross domestic product grew at an inflation-adjusted annual rate of 2.5% from July through September, the strongest performance in a year." Where? Where is this 2.5% government growth? Nobody sees it. And if the unemployment rate, if Gallup's right, and this story from AP does not tend to indicate that that's gonna be true, I mean if we're still at 402,000 applications for unemployment. And you know this is gonna be revised upward next week. They're always wrong on the low side. So, if this week's new claims number is revised up by the amount it usually is, it will turn out to have gone up.

Now, for the record, the previous week's number was revised up, of course, always is. Not reported. They revised it by 1,000 last week, which is lower than the usual 3,000 to 4,000 that they revise it by. But we're still over 400,000, 402,000. Folks, I'm waiting for this. Remember, now, the reelect magic number on unemployment is 8%. No president has ever been reelected in the modern era with the unemployment rate higher than 8%. And if the unemployment number gets below nine, if it's 8.9% -- forget the .9 -- all the media is gonna see is that 8. And they're gonna go to town with it. And they're gonna say, "It's finally working. The first stimulus." And so the reelection campaign premise of "I need more time" will be set up, will be established. "We thought this would happen sooner than it's happening. We need more time."

Remember, my original forecast and prediction on what the Obama reelection campaign would basically be is "It was worse than we thought, normally our fixes, our stimulus would have kicked in immediately, but it was so much worse than we knew, it's taking that much longer. And now that it's just starting to work, now that we're just seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, is this the time to change horses? We don't want to change horses in the middle of the stream." That will be combined with massive attacks on whoever the Republican nominee is. So if they can get that unemployment number at any time between now and next summer to eight point whatever, the reality on the ground isn't gonna matter a hill of beans to the media. The optics, to be able to say unemployment under 9%, there's the magic number. Forget the .9, forget if it's .8, forget that, it's eight, after being nine two, nine four, nine one. It's finally working! Obamanomics finally working. It took longer than we thought. We need more time.

So when I saw that coupled with this expansion rate, the growth rate of two and a half percent, where is the growth? If there is such growth, it is on the public sector side, it's on the government side. There is no private sector growth. When Gibson guitar has its door kicked down and its wood removed, who do they thank? When the borders are not secured, illegal aliens pour over, the drug lords are sold automatic weapons at the direction of the government, who do we thank again? When our public schools fail to educate a large percentage of the children who attend them, who do we thank? When government policy destroys the housing market, who do we thank for this? When our health care costs skyrocket as a result of Obamacare, who do we thank for this?

To whom do we show our gratitude? To whom do we express our appreciation? As for the cops, would this be the same cops that are being attacked by the left for trying to keep peace and order down there at Occupy Wall Street and Oakland, wherever it is? These Occupy crowds are now starting to make mayhem. Who do we thank here for this? To whom do we bestow the credit for all of this? Obama and his regime. That's who.

RUSH: I just got this from ABC News. The GDP surged two and a half percent, according to State-Controlled ABC, not credited to Obama policy yet. "John Bowler, the director of Country Risk Service with The Economist Intelligence Unit said that purchasing managers' indices --" for those of you in Rio Linda, that's the plural of "index." It just doesn't sound good to say indexes, although you probably do. It's "indices." Anyway, "-- for the manufacturing and the services sectors had suggested an improvement in September's activity. Private consumption and industrial production have been rising. He said that on balance the data suggests some improvement in economic conditions which can largely be traced to a fall in oil prices in recent months.

"The resolution of supply chain bottlenecks stemming from the natural disasters in Japan and an end to the uncertainty created by the debt ceiling debate in Congress in early August, employers created a total of 103,000 jobs in September which Bowler called a mildly encouraging sign, but he said at least 150,000 jobs will need to be created each month if the unemployment rate is to start falling. Bowler said he sees little reduction in the jobless rate over the next 18 months." I'm still telling you, folks, Gallup for two weeks in a row now has sent out the little blurb here, based on their own unemployment number survey where they clearly predict -- well, they don't predict but they say that it wouldn't be surprising if the government reports an unemployment number of under 9%. Even this week, even tomorrow. We shall see.

RUSH: We've got the sound bites coming up. The media is having an orgasm over this 2.5% growth rate. "The economy is back!" All right. In fact, here. Grab sound bite four. This is Stephanopoulos. This is last night, ABC's World News Tonight.

STEPHANOPOULOS: (giddy) All day today they were hard to miss, perhaps because we hope for them so much, signs of life in our economy! Starting with the stock market, on a tear of 340 points today! October is now on track to be the single best month in 25 years -- 25 years! We learned today that the American economy grew faster than expected over the summer, not roaring yet but a growth spurt that see has tamped down fears of a second recession!

RUSH: Oh, yeah, 2.5%! They're excited as hell. "That means it's okay for Obama!" It means nothing of the sort. Obama's not trending upward. Don't believe anybody who tells you he is. But do believe this. Stock market, 340 points? The stock market is way ahead. People with skin in the game are way ahead. The stock market is already reacting to the very real possibility Obama will not win a second term. That's why the market is up, and we will be back.

RUSH: A story by James Pethokoukis. We cite James Pethokoukis often. Last I knew he was blogging and posting at Reuters and he's been a number of other places. Now, the Drive-Bys are excited. You just heard Stephanopoulos barely able to contain himself in his underwear. Going on and on and on, oh, the economy, oh, my God, 340 points, Wall Street, wow, best month in 25 years, 25 years, Stephanopoulos said. Hopping up and down in his little anchor chair. And we learned today the American economy grew faster than expected over the summer. Ah, ah, ah, ah. James Pethokoukis, "The Obama Boom?" Disposable income adjusted for inflation fell 0.1% in September after being down minus 0.3% in July and minus 0.4% in August.

"Disposable income," meaning that's most people's reality (How much money do you have to spend after you've paid the bills?) and it's not increasing. So they can sit out there and lie to themselves and fool themselves all day long with a 2.5% growth rate, and they can tell themselves the stock market is booming. Since when did they care about that anyway? I mean, they're organized against Wall Street! The very people who are pushing the Occupy Wall Street protesters, the very people hoping for a Kent State moment -- the very people hoping for violence, the very people hoping that some hell breaks loose down there! Stephanopoulos and the left are now talking to us about the stock market being up 340 points and how great that is?

Oh, wait! Maybe they're being all enthusiastic about it to tick off the Occupy Wall Street protesters so they'll start blowing up bank buildings like they were doing in the sixties. But I talked to some people whose life is the market, and there's a (I wouldn't call it "conventional wisdom) popular opinion that the market is actually reacting to long-term view that Obama's not gonna be reelected and that the Democrats are gonna lose the Senate. I think both those things are entirely possible. I absolutely do. I'll take it. I just wish for a stronger conservative leadership on Capitol Hill, but regardless. Folks, you're gonna need a really tough backbone from now on (the next 12 months, 13 months) because any news like what we had, this 2.5% growth rate?

"We're back!" I'm gonna tell you what it's gonna be: "See? It was worse than we knew when Obama was inaugurated, and it's taking longer for his policies to work than anybody knew -- and they're finally starting to work! Look at it all now: Stock market going through it roof, GDP up 2.5%. It took longer than any of us knew, but we can't afford start change horses now! We can't change horses in the middle of the stream." You're gonna see Obama approval numbers start inching up, and you might see unemployment come down. I'm still waiting for the government to report a below 9% unemployment figure, and if that happens -- and even if the below 9% number is 8.9%, forget the .9. It will be the eight that they focus on. They can't wait for it. They're setting it up. But they are all lying to themselves, or better stated, they are fooling themselves. Here's another example. On last night's ABC's World News Tonight, they have a reporter there, a correspondent by the name of Dan Harris. Here is a portion of his report about the economy...

HARRIS: (excited) The American economy grew at a 2.5% rate from July to September! (rollercoaster sound-effect) Before today, the American economy was on an unsettling roller coaster ride! But today the rollercoaster appeared to be heading back uphill! So we're not gonna solve the massive unemployment problem right now, but we are heading in the right direction!

HARRIS: So why are economists optimistic about jobs? Because as consumer spending picks up, companies have to hire more people to meet that demand, and that creates a virtuous cycle of more employment and more spending and more employment and more spending --

HARRIS: -- COULD be back -- at normal levels of unemployment in three to four years.

RUSH: Oh, really? You see how this is now starting to manifest itself? But note: Yeah, yeah, this is the ABC reporter. So why are economists optimistic about jobs? "Well, because as consumer spending picks up..." Where's that happened? I didn't think so. "As consumer spending picks up, companies have to hire more people to meet that demand, and that creates a virtuous cycle: More employment and more spending and more employment and more spending..." You mean this all happens in the private sector? You mean this is not happening because of stimulus? This is not happening because of Obamanomics?

This is happening because what's going on in the private sector? Does this guy realize how he's just screwed up royally? Even if none of it's true, "They say we could be back at normal levels of unemployment in three to four years." Folks, we're gonna have to have job creation at 150,000 a month for four years just to get down to eight or seven percent unemployment! We're nowhere near getting back down to the 4.7 or 5% that we had just three years ago before Obama assumed office. (interruption) That's a good point. How many times is this now that we've "turned the corner"? How many times is this that we're finally "back from the brink"? About 20 times?

RUSH: Here's F. Chuck Todd on The Daily Rundown today on MSNBC on... Well, wait a minute. Oh, he had a guest from CNBC on, Andrew Ross Sorkin, and F. Chuck, he's all excited, too, about the economy, what it might mean.

TODD: (giddy) We're gonna have to best October in decades! Does that mean anything for the US economy?

SORKIN: Well, the good news is it means that we're not going into near Lehman-like moment, and I think the market clearly surged yesterday off of this European deal. However today we're having a little bit of a hangover. Uh, markets opening up, uh... Well, it's almost flat, a little down, and that's really a function of the fact that people are now digesting what's happened in Europe and they're saying, 'There might be some questions about how this deal all gets done." So I think w-w-we're not out of the woods yet.

RUSH: Damn! Damn it! F. Chuck is unhappy: "Not out of the woods yet." His question: "We're gonna have the best October in decades, does that mean anything for the US economy?" No, F. Chuck. They're all focusing on that stock market being up 340 points. Remember, remember, this is the same bunch that wants all these Wall Street people in jail. The stock market goes up 340 points, what do you think benefits? They're not thinking so much shareholders. They're thinking the traders, they're thinking the bankers, and they're all excited. They're so excited, they're so desirous that the economy popped back so it can make Obama look good, that they'll shelve for a moment the very idea that they are ticked off that it's the Wall Street people that are benefiting.

RUSH: I tell you, you students with college loans and you parents of students with college loans, do you realize what dupes you are to the regime? It is amazing. The student loan program "reform," it's amazing. We got a random act of journalism here by the Atlantic Monthly that illustrates just how few people this affects, how hugely expensive it is. It's a farce. It's a total farce. It misleads and it deceives students, and it's gonna end up saving students $8. This is one of the biggest jokes to come down the pike in a long time, and I'm gonna set it straight. It's a convoluted, intricately woven web of deceit. But that's what I do here is make the complex understandable.

All right, we have a random act of journalism from the Atlantic Monthly, of all places, left-wing rag with a couple of faux, pseudo-conservatives writing now and then for so-called balance. They published an article yesterday about Obama's student loan bailout, and their headline is this: "Obama's Student Loan Order Saves the Average Grad Less Than $10 a Month." So that's what Obama thinks it costs to buy their vote. You students, you parents of students, your votes can be had for eight bucks. Now, granted, you wouldn't know this if I, El Rushbo, wasn't about to tell you because I don't think you read Atlantic Monthly, and I wouldn't blame you if you don't. It's one of the reasons I get combat pay. I do. I'm gonna explain it to you. But that's what your vote is worth.

Now, obviously they think that you believe you're going to get much more help and much more assistance and relief than eight bucks. But you're not. The subheadline in the Atlantic Monthly story spells out how even $10 is overly optimistic. Here's what it says. "The monthly impact of the president's new effort for most Americans paying off college debt will be between $4 and $8." The article goes on to talk about how outrageous the cost of a college education is, how outrageously it's gone up, which has caused student loans to have grown by 511% since 1999, and most student loan debt -- get this, now. This is interesting. Most student loan debt was accrued over the past ten years. Eighty-two percent of all student loans from the get-go, from the beginning of student loans, 82% of all debt has been accrued over the past ten years, and they go on to say that Obama's proposals are basically meaningless, which is what we tried to say here yesterday, but it's nice to see that others are noticing it, too.

So here's a pretty good overview of the whole situation. And, by the way, this is all being done by executive order. And I am here to tell you that if Bush or any Republican was using the executive order process this way there would be howling from all corners. Bypassing Congress, executive fiat, who does he think he is? What does he think this is? A dictatorship? Those kinds of headlines and questions would be out there. The Drive-Bys would be filled with cries of imperial executive branch actions. But with Obama, all you hear is the crickets chirping, even if you hear that.

"Obama's Student Loan Order Saves the Average Grad Less Than $10 a Month -- The monthly impact of the president's new effort for most Americans paying off college debt will be between $4 and $8. Of the many long-term problems the U.S. economy faces, student loans are a big one. Education costs are rising very quickly and incomes aren't. As a result, students will have to borrow more and more money to obtain university degrees and will have a tougher time paying their loans. President Obama seeks to respond to this question with an executive order in the next part of his 'We Can't Wait' unilateral stimulus effort."

The Atlantic Monthly is doing what they can to throw him a bone: "While the president's heart may be in the right place, his effort isn't like to have much impact. The cost of college is growing rapidly. That wouldn't be a problem if incomes were growing as quickly as tuition and fees. They aren't. In order to cope with the growing expense of college, more students are relying on bigger loans." And, by the way, folks, what are they getting for these loans, for these educations, for these degrees? What are they getting? You know, Suzy Creamcheese gets into George Washington University and borrows from the government the requisite $212,000 to obtain an undergraduate degree, and what is Suzy Creamcheese's degree in? She spent it on a degree in Oppressed People in the Orient, some meaningless degree like Conflict Resolution 505, whatever, some meaningless, worthless degree. She's comes out after borrowing $212,000 with no marketable skills, and the only thing she has learned at Bill Ayers University is it's all America's fault.

She goes in, gets a stupid degree, worthless education, $210,000 in debt, and she has no marketable skills. And it's America's fault after she's borrowed all this money. So now here comes Obama riding to the rescue after his buddies in academe -- i.e., the Bill Ayers types -- have taken these young skulls full of mush and turned them into basically pizza. That's a little bone thrown to Herman Cain. They come out, they have worthless degrees and they're profoundly in debt and Obama says, "Don't worry, don't worry, I'm here and I'll make it okay." Bigger loans, higher tuition, and, by the way, nobody ever complains that the colleges are charging tuition and fees that are rising out of the realm of reasonableness. Never happens. Student loans have grown by 511% since 1999. Disposable income has grown by just 73%.

There's a chart here that accompanies this that illustrates that most outstanding loan debt, 82% of it, was accrued by students in the last ten years. Now, that is a stunning fact, folks. Tallying up all of the student loan debt in history, 82% of it was accrued in the last ten years.

So here's Obama now out promoting a fraudulent solution, just like everything else he does is fraudulent. He's not going to create jobs with his tax bill. He's not gonna improve the housing market with that housing executive order. He has not gonna help students with the student loan executive order. It's all about more lies. It's all about more promises. Now, Obama's executive orders. "The president seeks to make the situation a little bit easier for some of those graduates. He's gonna create an executive order that has three components. Number one: Obama "will clear the way for borrowers with direct government loans and government-backed private loans to consolidate their balances. The White House estimates that this will cut the effective interest rate on student loans by up to 0.5%," as in "Big whoop!"

Number two: His executive order "will limit the amount of student loan payments to 10% of a graduate's income. (Currently, the limit is 15%.)" So the maximum payment that you would make is 10% of your income. Well, if you're Suzy Cheesecake and you come out with that Diversity in the Orient degree after spending $212,000, you're probably gonna get a job that might pay you $8,000 a year at some social services outfit or a nonprofit -- and so that's what your 10% repayment schedule is based on. In another executive order, Obama "will allow debt still outstanding after 20 years to be forgiven. (Currently, forgiveness occurs after 25 years.)" Now, the question: Why pay anything? Why pay off anything? These student loans are gonna end up costing the taxpayers anywhere between $800,000 and $900,000 per student.

The student, on the loan repayment, if they make the payment, will save eight to $10 maximum a month -- four to $8, more realistically, a month -- while Obama is out giving the impression that basically the student loan is gonna end up being free and forgiven, if you don't pay it off in 20 years. The loan forgiveness section... Of all of these parts of Obama's executive order, the loan forgiveness aspect will have the least impact, according to The Atlantic. "By moving the timeline from 25 to 20 years it could be significant in the long run but it won't be felt for decades." Remember: 82% of the current student loan debt outstanding was accrued in just the past ten years. So it will be at least another ten years before any of those borrowers have hit their 20-year mark in their student loan payments.

(interruption) "Why is a student loan more important than a mortgage?" The reason that a student loan is more important than a mortgage is as a campaign issue. That's all this is. This is all a fraud. That's my point in giving you all these numbers. The numbers we're giving you here are real and illustrate the fraudulent aspects of this. Obama realizes... (interruption) Snerdley, we prove it. Every time I start talking about education on this program, the phones melt. It matters to people. The education of their children matters to people like nothing else does. They are very concerned about it. Obama knows it, so here he comes with this magical student loan reform, and the point is (impression), "I've taken it over! Yeah, don't worry about it. It's not gonna cost you anything."

The point is, "Don't worry about it, I'm in charge, your student loan's fine, we're reforming the program, we're gonna make it easy for you to make payments." It's a fraud. The real shame here is by the time it's all implemented, the few number of people that will really affect is shocking. It's like the mortgage and the underwater-foreclosure program -- yeah, mortgage modification. Look at all the grandiose designs and promises, look at how many people actually participate in it -- and then of that few, that small number, look at how many people actually got any assistance. Zilch, zero, nada. Same thing here. Campaign issue, pure and simple. Student loan more important than a mortgage because education's a huge campaign issue to people. It really isn't any more complicated than that. (interruption)

That's right. You have to pay your mortgage off and you have to pay their student loans off. Exactly right. That's exactly right. You've nailed it. You pay your mortgage, you pay it on time and then you're gonna pay off their student loans. Well, that's exactly what Obama stands for. Obama's proposal was geared to getting the best headlines for the least amount of money. It's all about optics. It's all about compassion. It's all about making the student loan community think that he cares. Fox News has a great interpretation of the Obama plan, and here's the headline: "Obama Caps Taxpayers For Student Stimulus -- Obama looks to wring stimulus from saturated student loan market." One trillion dollars is the estimated amount of student loan debt owed by Americans -- $1 trillion, and 82% of it accrued in the last ten years.

"In keeping with his new campaign, 'We can't wait,' Obama today rolled out the plan..." and he's seeking to use this power of the executive order to obtain a taxpayer-financed stimulus that Congress won't approve. This is Chris Stirewalt at Fox. He says, "Take this example: If Suzy Creamcheese gets into George Washington University and borrows from the government the requisite $212,000 to obtain an undergraduate degree, her repayment schedule will be based on what she earns. If Suzy opts to heed the president's call for public service..." This is one of the prerequisites to getting a good student loan, that after you graduate you go into public service. "If Suzy opts to heed the president's call for public service, and takes a job as a city social worker earning $25,000, her payments would be limited to $1,411 a year after the $10,890 of poverty-level income is subtracted from her total exposure."

So you take her $25,000, subtract ten-eight from it for the poverty level. "Twenty years at that rate would have taxpayers recoup only $28,220 of their $212,000 loan to Suzy." That's how all this works. "The president will also allow student debtors to refinance and consolidate loans on more favorable terms, further decreasing the payoff for taxpayers," and all this comes at a moment when a lot of economists are warning of a "college debt bubble" that is distorting college tuition rates and threatening to further damage credit markets. The bottom line is it's a huge fraud. It's not gonna save anybody any money on the student side and the taxpayers get screwed royally. It's another transfer, redistribution of wealth. It's an optics move. It's designed to make the recipients here think the government is taking care of 'em. They're not gonna have to worry about their student loans anymore. "The Democrat Party's great! Obama's great! It's a reelection issue, and it's a fraud.

RUSH: Look, if you want to understand this, think of it as reverse amortization. Think of it as the subprime mortgage crisis comes to student loans. That is how to look at this. The subprime mortgage technique, the subprime mortgage philosophy comes to student loans: You give money to people who will never be able to repay it on the basis that it's not fair they can't go to college, on the basis that everybody should go to college. You drum into people's heads for generation after generation that your only ticket out of the murk and the mess that is the United States of America is a college education.

You get that drilled into every parent's head, you get it drilled into every kid's head, and you make college a mandatory life requirement -- and then you put your buddies in charge of the colleges. You put your buddies in charge of curricula at the colleges, you put your buddies in the classrooms as professors, and you make sure that the tuition fees and all the costs associated with attending these colleges skyrocket year after year after year. You make sure that you never put any pressure on the university system, on Big Education, to lower their prices. You never accuse them of "gouging" like you accuse Walmart or Big Oil or Big Drug.

Big Education's off-limits. As much as they want to charge, as much as they can charge, you support it -- and the way you deal with it is the student loan program. So you convince everybody and every kid that the only hope, the only prayer they've got is an education. Then you get 'em in these classrooms and you teach 'em absolutely worthless drivel. They come out thinking America sucks, and they blame everybody else for making America suck. In the meantime, they owe somebody hundreds of thousands of dollars that they're going to be paying the rest of their lives. Meaning, they are into whoever financed all this for 'em. What a scam they have created here!

RUSH: Rasmussen went out and asked people what they thought of the whole notion of forgiving student loans. Sixty-six percent oppose forgiveness of student loans. One of the loudest demands of the Occupy Wall Street protesters is forgiveness of the nearly $1 trillion worth of student loans, but Rasmussen, as I say, went out and surveyed and they found that 66% of Americans opposed the whole thing. You know, it really is a racket. It's an interesting loop or circle for generation after generation. We've all been pressured. I've told the story numbers of times.

My father, up until the last five years of his life thought he was a failure because he was unable to convince me to go to college. Formative experience, two of them in his life, the Great Depression and World War II. Great Depression, it was true, if you were without a college degree in and around that period of time, you really did face long odds in getting a job. Of course when I was growing up there was no Great Depression; there was nothing like it. But it was such a formative experience for people that lived through it that it became a value system. It was a huge thing and it always has been a huge thing: got to go to college. My problem with it has always been, college to me never equaled education. Learning equaled education. And I always had a problem learning in forced, mass circumstances like schools where everybody had to conform and everybody was taught the same thing, and what you were interested in was of secondary importance.

College. If I could have audited classes, meaning if I coulda gone and just picked the courses I wanted to go to, things I really cared about, go in there, learn what was being lectured or taught, not take a test, don't get any credit for it, just go in, leave, whatever, it would have been far more preferable to me. But, no, no, no, no, that wouldn't work because you didn't have any proof. You didn't have a degree. So there was social status attached with a degree, all the things wrapped up into it. While this is going on, every generation is under -- well, it was pressure, but it was almost a cultural requirement, systemic norm that you had to go to college. If you didn't go to college, you were hopeless. Your prospects were dimmed. You weren't going to learn anything. I can't tell you the things I was warned were gonna happen to me if I didn't get a college degree.

The pressure was intense and I continued to resist it because I wasn't interested in it. I knew way before college what I wanted to do, and all I wanted to do was things oriented toward advancing what I had already found out that I loved, and there wasn't one thing -- well, not true. There were maybe two or three areas of college that were interesting to me, and I did excel in 'em. But it wasn't enough to overshadow the F's I got in all the other classes. I just never equated it with learning. I still love learning to this day. It's one of the most exhilarating things. And I think learning is key, keeping your mind active, to remaining young at heart, rather than stagnating, and if you like learning you're gonna have a much easier time of it if you have the time, the freedom, the ability to focus on what it is you want to learn. It's impossible to know everything. (interruption) What do you mean, too much truth? I'm not saying that.

Snerdley's afraid that I'm hitting you people with too much truth, that I am setting a bad example for the young skulls full of mush listening to this program. They're now gonna walk into their parents' house, "See, see? Look at Rush, he doesn't like college, he didn't go to the college, I don't want to go." And you're gonna get mad at me for undue, improper influence of your young children. Well, that's not my intention here. I'm merely sharing my passions with you. I'm sharing my own experiences, and as I always do, my own opinions. (interruption) No, I was never scared that I didn't finish college. The one thing when I left home, I looked at it as a challenge.

I left home at age 20, after two basically worthless semesters of college. The story is now legion. I flunked speech class twice. I, El Rushbo, el primo communicator in America, flunked speech class. You know why? Because it wasn't a speech class. This is exactly my point. It was an outline class. I showed up. I gave every speech. But I didn't outline 'em. I had already developed another technique for giving speeches. I ad-libbed 'em. I gave speeches on subjects I knew about. I didn't need notes. Well, I flunked 'cause I didn't follow the course. This is the kind of stuff, I said, "This is a waste of my time." But I understood, the educators gotta have systems for dealing with large groups and masses of people. They can't tailor education to individuals when you got 200 of them in the classroom.

Okay. So I just figured it wasn't for me. But what happened to me, when I finally left home at age 20, after one year of accomplishing nothing, essentially, in college, I realized, sort of like a slap to the face, I realized at that point that I was going to have to be able to demonstrate my education. I wasn't gonna have a diploma that said, "This is an educated person." I was gonna have to demonstrate it. So I became an omnivorous, voluminous reader, and that worked well with my career because show prep has always been show prep, and I've always had a never-ending quest to keep learning, to know things. So it was a challenge. Demonstrating what I knew meant being able to use the language properly. Read it, write it, spell it, all of these things. And it became a personal challenge to me.

My whole life has been show prep, essentially, being prepared to have to demonstrate what I know because I don't have this magical piece of paper which says so. I also knew that I was not gonna be able to seek careers in places that required that piece of paper. Okay, fine. That limits. I didn't want to do it anyway. Cool. If I wanted to do it I'd have stayed in college. Now, I'm not suggesting that everybody punt college. 'Cause I realize for most people, college is a weigh station. It's the next thing you do when you don't know what you want to do. You go there, society says that's where you go, and this is what happens when you go there. You come out, you're educated; you're well-rounded; you're informed; you learn social skills, all that rot, and you are prepared, and, you know, all of these things that are attached to it that equal social status.

So people go to these colleges, universities as a weigh station, hoping that while they're there they find out their passion, they discover it, what they want to do. Some people know it when they go there. Again, not everybody's the same. But I just look at it now, the student loan business run by Obama, and I think I see the racket that this is. Now, I am fully aware that there are great institutions for education in this country. There are plenty of good universities and colleges. It's not all a racket. But I just find it fascinating that while the price of gasoline goes up we target a whole industry, Big Oil.

The subprime loan business happens, so what do we do? We protest on the lawns of executives at Wall Street firms that people have been made to believe had a role in the subprime mortgage thing. If the price of anything goes up, we protest that industry. The Democrat Party and the American left have their enemies list, and it's basically any private sector industry that is a success. The one institution in this country that is immune from such attack is education. Those people can charge whatever they want! Tuition could go up 200% and there's never one peep about it. The Democrat Party and the American left never make Big Education justify what they're doing. They never try to drum up hate for them. They never demonize them. They never try to get you to despise 'em.

They never try to get you to distrust 'em. They want people paying these exorbitant fees when it comes to college tuition, and what's the system to make it possible? Student loans! It's like the subprime mortgage business. "You can't afford a house? That's not fair. We're gonna see to it that you can get into one anyway." "You can't afford to go to college? That's not fair. You don't have a chance if you don't go to college. We're gonna make sure you can go there. Here's a student loan. You're gonna go for four years. We're gonna teach you nothing that's worthwhile. We're gonna teach you nothing useful. You're gonna be indebted to us $200,000 when it's all over. The rest of your working life is gonna be spent paying us off. You owe us," meaning the Democrat Party.

"All of our friends are in higher education: The teachers, the teachers' assistants, the professors. They are the ones who benefit from this never-ending tuition price increase, fee increases, what have you. It's the one American industry that is never demonized. No matter what it does. Price goes up? It would be the equivalent of if the Democrat Party and the American left had an incestuous relationship with Big Oil: The price of gasoline jumps up one day a buck a gallon let's say, and everybody in the country's whining and moaning. "How can this be?" and instead of the Democrat Party joining that chorus and bringing the Big Oil execs up and grilling 'em and accusing them of raping people and ripping 'em off, the government comes up with gasoline insurance, or gas loans.

"Here, we'll loan you money to buy the gasoline -- and after 20 years, if you can't pay it off, we'll forgive it and we'll make the other taxpayers pay it off for you," and I'm just saying that the racket (and it is one) works well because for all of these generations it is axiomatic: "Our children must go to college. Must." Almost as axiomatic now as: "Everyone must have health care. Must! It's a constitutional right, just like the right to a lawyer." If going to college equaled education, I'd have a lot fewer problems with it. But it doesn't. Too often it's an indoctrination or a propagandization or what have you. I'm not trying to get anybody irritated here, and I'm not trying to be too honest. It's just... Folks, I understand liberals. I know how they try to control. I know how they try to limit people's freedom. I know how they try to dumb down people in order to get them compliant and dependent. Gosh, the damage they've done to this country and the people of this country is just incalculable. It breaks my heart and ticks me off at the same time.

RUSH: You know, for many people -- and I mean this -- a student loan itself is one of the biggest education events in their lives. A student loan is, "Welcome to the real world, kid." Getting that big a loan, being responsible for it, having to pay it off. You know, another industry that's not demonized is Hollywood. Hollywood can charge you whatever they want at the box office, for DVDs. I don't care what they do. They are not even demonized for content. They used to be a couple of groups now and then have congressional hearings on some of the content. Very, very, very rarely. They also are immune. They are approved. I think in way too many places college, higher education, is just a branch office to the Democrat National Committee.

We know that the Ivy League is used to train people to live and work in government as a career from the Big Government perspective, that government's the center of the universe, that government's the center of the world, that government's the center of everybody's life. That's the purpose of the Ivy League education. What do you think the purpose of the Kennedy School is at Harvard, the Kennedy School of Government? It's to train you where to go to buy the right shoes if you work in the State Department; where to go to buy the right suit; on what occasion do you wear the tails. All the social, finer points and s, all the language, all the techniques.

They find you for the CIA there, they find you for the State Department there, they find you for any number of places there. (chuckles) Yes, yeah. At Yale you can join the Skulls. Well, the Skulls find you. Skull and Bones. It's a racket. It's a racket. Now, obviously there's a benefit to it for a lot of people. I'm not universally panning it. I'm just trying to make a point here that you check the Democrat Party and every industry they demonize the minute the price of their product goes up a penny or the minute they get a tax break, and then you look at how silent they are when the price of an education quadruples every year and their solution to it is for you to go into more debt to be able to have access to it. That's all I'm saying. Nothing more, nothing less.

RUSH: My personal slogan when it came to going to college: "Resist We Much!" Even before I knew that was my slogan, that I was my slogan.

RUSH: Yeah, I think that's true. There are other reasons why college tuitions are so expensive. A, you have all those scholarships out there. However, a football scholarship probably pays for itself how many times over. You have the college scholarships, and then you have the mandatory student aid that's out there. I don't know. I'm still amazed, folks. With all the money, still the universities are there soliciting donations and contributions and (sigh) I marvel at the amount of money circulating throughout every area of our society, and no matter what area we're talking about, they're all "underfunded." I don't care if it's education, if it's medicine, it's pensions, everything's underfunded! In other words, we're spending more than anybody is taking in -- and it contributes to this whole notion that nothing is real. It's all been built on dreams, loans, debt, what have you -- I mean, exorbitantly so. Don't forget, look, a lot of these institutions of higher learning have these endowments. Harvard, Columbia. Sometimes earning 20, 22% on their endowment investments. And they don't pay any taxes on their Wall Street profits. I'm telling you, folks, it's an ingenious racket.

NY Post: Occupy Wall Street kitchen staff protesting fixing food for freeloaders

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.

The Right Scoop, where there are a number of videos, mostly of recent speeches of presidential candidates.

Stop the Machine under October 2011, which apparently had permits for months for October. This is very organized; these are not people who just showed up suddenly. Their issues: protect the planet, healthcare for all, end wars, tax the rich and end corporate welfare.

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 #201	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	October 29, 2011