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.

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.

The Obama 2012 team hosted an off-the-record briefing for Mitt Romney's press corps at Chicago headquarters. Will we hear about that on any other channel than Fox?

A Virginia middle school teacher recently assigned his students to support President Barack Obama's re-election campaign by conducting opposition research in class against the Republican presidential candidates.

Candidate Romney wins Illinois by a wide margin. Candidate Santorum wins Louisiana by a wide margin as well.

Congress has passed the Stock Act, which is apparently a little watered down, but includes limitations on FNMA and FHLMC bonuses. What was happening was, legislation would be drafted that would hurt or help various companies or sectors, and that Congressmen, Democrats and Republicans, would invest or sell short accordingly. Although this act has been around since the Bush era, a report by 60 Minutes suddenly kicked things into high gear.

For the past couple of years, Vice President Joe Biden has quietly assembled an A-team of advisers who would be reasonably thought to be the nucleus of a 2016 presidential campaign, when Biden will be 73.

One very important law and order story which has arisen is the killing of 17 year old Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, a self-proclaimed neighborhood watch captain for his neighborhood. The New Black Panther Party is now circulating a Wanted Dead or Alive poster for Zimmerman. They have pledged to recruit 10,000 men to hunt Zimmerman down. There is one eyewitness testimony which paints a very different picture of this case. No idea as to the accuracy here. Spike Lee retweets Zimmerman’s address, sparking death threats.

Republican Paul Ryan offers up another conservative budget to reduce our deficit and debt. Mitt Romney is the only candidate, at this time, to fully embrace this plan.

Even after the tax hikes, Illinois is still broke and now it has a lottery to take in more money. We did this in Texas; you cannot finance schools with sin; it will not help. Nearby Wisconsin has civil unrest, but the budget is balanced and some people are getting reduced property taxes.

There are some recently released emails which suggest that former New Jersey governor Jon Corzine had a hand in the disappearing money from MF Global.

Highest Average Gas Price in History so far for the Month of March. Since the month is only 2/3^rds done, it may beat the high price again.

President Obama says that we are producing huge amounts of gas and oil, but that we are unable to transport it to get it where it should go. So, goes his speech by the Cushing Pipeline, which is one of the links in the Keystone XL pipeline.

The Bloomberg administration is now taking the term "food police" to new depths, blocking food donations to all government-run facilities that serve the city's homeless. Since they cannot assess the nutritional content of donated food, shelters have to turn away food from good Samaritans. To be fair, it is possible that some of these laws were already on the books and they are just being followed. However, I would assume that Bloomberg could change that policy.

The Los Angeles City Council members are getting closer to being the first city in the nation to adopt a resolution condemning certain types of speech on public airwaves. It’s all about Rush.

Obama state department condemns anti-gay remarks made by Nobel Price Winner; does not condemn anti-Semitic remarks of EU minister.

The Department of Education has partnered with billionaire George Soros' Open Society Institute to promote a global education initiative that seeks "a world where each and every person on Earth can access and contribute to the sum of all human knowledge."

Speaking of freedom of speech, the 17 minute Obama movie, The Road We’ve Traveled, is carefully censoring viewer comments.

If I understand the arguments correctly, some global warming enthusiasts were arguing that global warming from CO₂ build up had caused Hurricane Katrina. An oil company was the defendant and the suit was thrown out.

First Solar, a heavily subsidized solar company, has received a U.S. taxpayer loan guarantee to sell solar panels to itself.

San Francisco-based Ecotality, which received $126.2 million in stimulus taxpayer funds from the Obama administration through the U. S. Department of Energy, is under investigation for insider trading according to a federal subpoena obtained by CBS News. The company, which makes and installs chargers for electric cars, was supposed to install 14,000 electric car chargers in five states. To date the company says they have installed 6,400, less than half. LIKE this if you think taxpayer money should not be given away to companies so frivolously.

In sunny California, Minnesota-based U.S. Bank has closed its branch office on the UC Davis campus because of chronic disruption of business by Occupy movement activists and authorities' refusal to disperse protesters.

More than 100 people have been murdered in Chicago this year, reaching that mark this past week. Chicago has some of the strictest gun laws in the United States.

Fox Business' Charles Gasparino reports that General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt, the head of President Obama's Jobs Board, plans to vote for Mitt Romney. Related story.

Oprah Winfrey cancelled Rosie O'Donnell's talk show and fired about 30 employees and is expected to lose $143 million this year. Rush suggests that she follow the Obama model.

Largest Obama campaign donors in February were Wall Street bankers From Wells Fargo, JP Morgan, and Goldman Sachs.

China closes down 13 of its 300 Wal-Mart stores, arrests two, and levels some heavy fines.

Four Al-Qaeda gunmen stormed a church in western Baghdad, killing three security guards.

A Muslim cleric, in southern Russian, who criticized radical Islamists, has been killed by an explosion.

Islamic extremists are engaged in "ethnic cleansing" of Christians in the Syrian city of Homs

Al-Qaeda in Iraq goes on a coordinated bombing and shooting spree, 12 cities attacked simultaneously, and at least 60 killed.

We have recently found out that a Bin Laden adviser hated Fox News and complained about MSNBC firing Keith Olbermann.

Iran is providing Syria's Assad regime with an array of weaponry, intelligence, and training to crush rebel forces.

French Jews are leaving France for Israel due to persecution by Arab immigrants there.

The Muslim fanatic who killed seven people in France was so proud of his evil that he uploaded sickening video to the Internet showing him executing a helpless, terrified 8-year-old girl.

Congress has blocked funding to any military movement in Egypt; yet it appears that President Obama is going to somehow bypass Congress and fund the Muslim Brotherhood there anyway.

Peter King, who has been holding the radical Muslim hearings in Congress, believes that there are hundreds of radical operatives in the United States.

President Obama: "But my main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. You know, if I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon."

President Obama: "If I put an oil rig on the South Lawn [of the White House], if we put one next to the Washington Monument, we would still have to buy the rest of our needs from somewhere else."

Obama: "Unfortunately, Congress decided they wanted their own timeline. Not the company, not the experts, but members of Congress who decided this might be a fun political issue decided to try to intervene and make it impossible for us to make an informed decision."

President Barack Obama, who cannot let go of a “good line”: "These folks dismiss the promise of solar power and wind power and fuel-efficient cars. They make jokes about it. One member of Congress who shall remain unnamed called these jobs `phony.' If these people were around when Columbus set sail, they would've been founding members of the Flat Earth Society."

President Obama’s weekly speech: “Under my Administration, we're producing more oil than at any other time in the last eight years. We've quadrupled the number of operating oil rigs to a record high. And we've added enough oil and gas pipeline to circle the entire Earth and then some. Those are the facts. But as I've been saying all week, even though America uses around 20 percent of the world's oil, we only have around 2 percent of the world's known oil reserves. So even if we drilled everywhere, we'd still be relying on other countries for oil.”

President Obama: "If you hear anybody on TV saying that somehow we are against drilling for oil, then you will know that they either don't know what they are talking about or they are not telling you the truth. We are drilling all over the place. That's the reason we have been able to reduce our dependence on foreign oil every year since I took office."

Michelle Obama: “For us, it's the values. The thing that we try to do is make sure - the residence is on the second and the third floor of the White House. And what we want to have happen is when they get off that elevator and walk in to our residence that it feels like the south side of Chicago, the same values, the same rules, the same sense of responsibility.”

David Axelrod: "Well, let me say that the Republicans are very good at fanning the flames of discontent. Their whole campaign is predicated on fanning flames of discontent, so it's not surprising that they do that here." The Democrats own NBC, CBS, ABC, the Washington Post, the NY Times, MSNBC, CNN; and yet, the Republicans are masters at getting out their message.

President Obama when welcoming Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny to the White House: "You will notice that even though technically it is not St. Patrick's Day, we like to prolong the party around here."

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney: "The president is not concerned about who gets the blame, the president is concerned about making sure that we have the right policies to deal with this challenge for the long-term."

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney on Paul Ryan's budget, which cuts many green programs: "You have to be aggressively and deliberately ignorant of the world economy not to know and understand that clean energy technologies are going to play a huge role in the 21st century. You have to have severely diminished capacity to understand what drives economic growth in industrialized countries in this century if you do not understand that education is the key that unlocks the door to prosperity."

Daniel Weiss, director of climate strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund: "You don't have to be James Carville to figure out that talking about people's health and the health of their children is going to make a difference to the average voter." Seems like the words “global warming” and “climate change” are temporarily shelved.

Joe Biden on Obana giving the okay to take out Osama: “You can go back 500 years. You cannot find a more audacious plan. Never knowing for certain. We never had more than a 48 percent probability that he was there...Do any one of you have a doubt that if that raid failed that this guy would be a one-term president? ...This guy is willing to do the right thing and risk losing.”

Jay Carney about celebrating the 2 year anniversary of Obamacare: "I don't anticipate a presidential marking of an anniversary that only those who toil inside the Beltway focus on. What this President is focused on and what his administration is focused on with regards to the Affordable Care Act is the implementation of the Affordable Care Act."

House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi: "This is what our founders had in mind - ever expanding opportunity for people. You want to be a photographer or a writer or a musician, whatever - an artist, you want to be self-employed, if you want to start a business, you want to change jobs, you no longer are prohibited from doing that because you can't have access to health care, especially because you do not want to put your family at risk."

Nancy Pelosi: "We knew that what we were doing when we passed this bill was iron-clad constitutionally."

Senior White House advisor David Pouffe: "I am convinced that at the end of this decade, Republicans are going to regret turning this into `ObamaCare.'"

Debbie Wasserman-Schultz: "They [businesses] have more opportunities for coverage and employees - small businesses in particular will have an opportunity to get a 50-percent premium tax credit which they don't have available to them now. So this is actually a boon to small businesses."

Obama: "[Solandra] was not our program, per se. Congress - Democrats and Republicans - put together a loan guarantee program because they understood historically that when you get new industries, it's easy to raise money for startups, but if you want to take them to scale, oftentimes there's a lot of risk involved, and what the loan guarantee program was designed to do was to help start up companies get to scale."

California governor Jerry Brown: "Solyndra thought the market was one price, and the price was lower; Hallelujah! California installed 500 megawatts of solar last year and we'll do more this year." He forgot to add, “and besides, this is only government money.”

Rep. Jackie Speier: "American women have been second-class citizens when it comes to health care. In fact, women pay a billion dollars more per year for health care than do men. But with the passage of the Affordable Health Care Act, starting in 2014, no longer will women be second-class citizens."

Michelle Obama: "[Barack] watched his own grandmother - a woman with a high school education - watched her work her way up to become the vice president at a little, bitty community bank. And she worked hard, and she was good at what she did, but like so many women, she hit that glass ceiling and watched men no more qualified than she was - men she had actually trained - climb up the corporate ladder ahead of her." Obama’s grandmother was the first female VP at the bank where she worked.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi: "A healthier life, the liberty to pursue happiness, free of the constraints that lack of healthcare might provide to a family," she said. "If you want to be photographer, a writer, an artist, a musician, you can do so. If you what to start a business, if you want to change jobs, under the Affordable Care Act, you have that liberty to pursue your happiness. And so that is why I'm so pleased that this week we can celebrate the two-year anniversary of the Affordable Care Act."

Sandra Fluke: "There should be a litmus test that they be pro-women so our votes have to include that requirement at least, and it should be a litmus test that applies to male candidates as well. Numerous American women have actually written to me in the last few weeks saying that I should run for office, and maybe someday I will."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of the highway funding bill: "[The House members] are so disorganized, in such a state of disrepair, the House of Representatives, that they can't even extend the highway bill. I don't know what's in their minds. Over in the big dark hole we now refer to as the Tea Party-dominated House of Representatives, we couldn't do it. Republicans in the House are talking as if it's some socialist program that was developed at Harvard or some other radically liberal place. I can't imagine what their mindset is." Reid did not discuss the 30 job’s bills and the budgets which are not being discussed or voted on in the Senate.

Obama dinner winner: "Suddenly we heard the President talking to the staff of the restaurant-he was in the building! I think we all stopped breathing.”

British Prime Minister David Cameron: "Barack went to the back of the plane and explained to my private secretary and the team `don't worry, the British Prime Minister is fine I have just tucked him up in bed'. I don't think that has happened before."

Petition from Feminist writer Gloria Steinem and the anti war activist group Code Pink for First Lady Michelle Obama and others: "We, American women and our allies, join with Iranian, Israeli and Palestinian women to oppose the inflammatory rhetoric of war and the recently publicized plan of the Israeli government to attack Iran."

Liberal radio talker Thom Hartmann: “Well, actually crime was going up during the Reagan administration and I would submit to you that it was going up because he had destroyed the economy. And, and, you know, a lot of people felt that that was the only option that they had was, you know, to steal something or whatever the crime may be.”

Radical activist Frances Fox Piven: "There is room for all of us. Religious leftists, people who think peace is the answer, those who think that wholesome food is what we really need, ecologists and old-fashioned Democrats, Democratic Socialists, Socialists and Communists."

Rep. Diana DeGette: "The Republican majority that has now won the House are again and again proposing extreme and divisive legislation targeted at women's health. The level of these attacks on women's health that we've seen make a lot of us wonder whether we're in the dark ages or in fact whether we're in the 21st Century"

Rep. Gwen Moore about Ryan's plans to repeal elements of the health law: "is a political thing on the part of the Republicans, but it has real consequences for real people, whether you're a senior, whether you're a child, whether you're a woman, whether you're a small business, where small businesses can get tax credits toward providing health care. There are consequences."

Nancy Pelosi email: “It all comes down to this. March 31st is the first quarterly Federal Election Commission (FEC) deadline of 2012 and the first since the Republicans' unprecedented assault on women's rights. The national media and our opponents will use our grassroots fundraising totals to measure the strength of our opposition to the Republicans' War on Women. If we are able to show overwhelming support for this cause, then we will be able to send a clear message that we will not tolerate or stand by while Republicans wage war on women's rights.”

David Axelrod: “The difference here is that Rush Limbaugh singled out this - first of all, I'll condemn anyone who uses that kind of language or depictions of people who are vulnerable or anybody who doesn't deserve that and they're words that don't belong and characterizations that just don't belong. I'm happy to say that. I will say it about anyone no matter what side of the political debate they're on. The Limbaugh case was a particularly egregious incident because he took this young woman, who was expressing herself and depicted her in the worst possible way. And in a very coarse and perverse way. And really, what was disappointing was how few leaders of the Republican party were willing to say that was wrong. And I think that was a test of leadership.”

MSNBC’s Karen Finney: “People, in Trayvon Martin's case, a teenager walking home from the store, are dehumanized into some form of other, unworthy of respect and it's justified as a way to make people some kind of separate and unequal status. So, when Newt Gingrich, presidential candidate Newt Gingrich says that, quote, "really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works. They have no habit of I do this and you give me cash, unless it's illegal," or Rick Santorum says, "I don't want to make black people's lives easier," or Rush Limbaugh calls a

presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama a magic negro, or Mitt Romney says nothing at all, the effect is dangerous, because they reinforce and validate old stereotypes that associate the poor and welfare as criminal behavior with African-Americans and people of color, calling us lazy, undeserving recipients of public assistance. In the case of Trayvon, those festering stereotypes had lethal consequences.”

Civil rights activist Jesse Jackson: "There was this feeling that we were kind of beyond racism. That's not true. His victory [Obama’s election win] has triggered tremendous backlash." Jackson said this in light of the killing of Trayvon Martin, along with young Black children being saddled with student loan debt.

Al Sharpton: “Don’t talk to us like we stupid; don’t talk to us like we ignut.” I couldn’t help it.

Chicago Tribune's front page, above the fold, headline: “Pricey gas seen as good, in a way.”

Same story on the Los Angeles Times's Web site, with the title: "Gas prices' jump attests to upbeat economy."

In the same NY Times: “It goes without saying that Target is not the kind of store one might envision, say, Ann Romney pulling up to in one of the Cadillacs that her husband says she drives.”

NY Times Stanley Fish on the Limbaugh/Maher controversy: “Two Cheers for Double Standards...Rather than relaxing or soft-pedaling your convictions about what is right and wrong, stay with them, and treat people you see as morally different differently. Condemn Limbaugh and say that Schultz and Maher may have gone a bit too far but that they're basically O.K. If you do that you will not be displaying a double standard; you will be affirming a single standard, and moreover it will be a moral one because you will be going with what you think is good rather than what you think is fair. ”

CNN commentator Dean Obeid allah: "Political comedians must be afforded the unfettered right to satirize our politicians - even if their jokes include crude words such as the ones that Maher and C.K. used about Sarah Palin. When you're attacking a public figure, someone in politics, someone like Sarah Palin who would run to be a heartbeat away from the leader of the free world, you know what? It comes with the territory."

CNN legal expert Jeffrey Toobin expects possibly an 8-1 decision in favor of Obamacare by the Supreme Court: “Well that's certainly a possibility, and certainly the four Democratic appointees will vote to uphold the law. I actually think that Chief Justice Roberts and perhaps even Justice Scalia and Justice Alito might join Justice Kennedy in upholding the law. In striking this law down, it would really be a big change in Constitutional law, and I'm not sure this court is ready to do it.”

Nation sports editor Dave Zirin on MSNBC on Tim Tebow being traded to the New York Jets: "There are a lot of LGBT people that live in New York City who are also football fans and they might want to know why the new, possibly, starting quarterback for the New York Jets wants them to move backwards 30 or 40 years."

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough: “If the city manager will not fire this police officer and hire one who will arrest this man that gunned down a seventeen year old boy, then the attorney general of the state of Florida and the governor of the state of Florida need to step in. This is an embarrassment to my home state.”

Mika Brzezinski: “I'd go further. I'd go further. Because if this unfolds the way it appears it's unfolding, you know, in a country where its leader can talk about a radio host calling someone a name, we ought to be looking at ourselves and this situation really closely from the top down. And, quite frankly, it is, they're looking at audio tapes right now of the cell phone, and there might have been a racial epithet.” Somehow, in someway, this shooting is related to Rush Limbaugh calling Sandra Fluke a name.

George Clooney: “I would be selling all of the, you know, you saved the auto industry and you got Osama bin Laden and you passed a health care bill that nobody could pass - if that was a Republican issue. I would be able to sell his presidency as a very successful one. But Democrats are bad at that. We like to pick each other apart.” Republicans are excellent at messaging.

Actor Robert De Niro: "Callista Gingrich. Karen Santorum. Ann Romney. Now do you really think our country is ready for a white first lady?"

Eva Longoria: “Mitt Romney is probably the one on the wrong side of every issue pertaining to Latinos, education, the economy, healthcare access. He's campaigning with -- he's calling the anti-immigration law from Arizona a model law for the rest of this- the country. He's campaigning with the author of it. That is polarizing to Latinos. He wants to veto the D.R.E.A.M. Act if he was in office. That is dangerous for our community. And Obama for me is the only one that understands that the success of the future of America is intricately tied to the success of the Hispanic community.” Eva Longoria is now the national co-chair for Obama's reelection campaign so we will be seeing more of her.

Susan Sarandon: “Limbaugh will just say anything to get his ratings up. He doesn't care who he endangers or what it means. Are the Republicans suggesting that they take care of all the children that are born when you don't have birth control available to you when you're a poor woman? Do these guys not understand what it takes to raise a child, financially and timewise? They sound like complete idiots! Does Rush Limbaugh have children? I mean he certainly isn't against drugs!”

According to journalist David Corn's new book, "Showdown, The Inside Story of How Obama Fought Back Against Boehner, Cantor, and the Tea Party," Obama said something to the effect that: "Fed by Fox News, they hear Obama is a Muslim 24/7, and it begins to seep in. The Republicans have been at this for 40 years. They have new resources, but the strategy is old."

Barack Obama, 1995: “In an environment of scarcity, where the cost of living is rising, folks begin to get angry and bitter and look for scapegoats. Historically, instead of looking at the top 5% of this country that controls all the wealth, we turn towards each other, and the Republicans have added to the fire.”

Richard Glover, The Sydney Morning Herald: “Surely it's time for climate-change deniers to have their opinions forcibly tattooed on their bodies.”

Jill Singer in the Herald Sun: “I'm prepared to keep an open mind and propose another stunt for climate sceptics: put your strong views to the test by exposing yourselves to high concentrations of either carbon dioxide or some other colourless, odourless gas say, carbon monoxide.”

James Hansen, the chief scientist for NASA in the US, testifying to the Iowa Utilities Board: “If we cannot stop the building of more coal-fired power plants, those coal trains will be death trains, no less gruesome than if they were boxcars headed to crematoria, loaded with uncountable irreplaceable species.”

MSNBC host Ed Schultz blamed former Gov. Jeb Bush, R-Fla., for the death of Trayvon Martin: "Jeb Bush helped pave the way for this senseless tragedy and remains silent. What a political tragedy."

Debbie Wasserman Schultz: "The Romney-Ryan budget would be devastating to seniors and older Americans. It is a Republican path to poverty that would pass like a tornado through America's nursing homes where millions of America's seniors receive long-term and end-of-life care." What is particularly sad here is, Debbie is signing Romney onto this plan even before he signs onto it.

MSNBC’s Karen Finney, linking the Koch brothers to the killing of the Trayvon shooting: “How do we go from one state to 30? Who was the Typhoid Mary for this horrible outbreak? Try not to be surprised. It's the usual suspects: the Koch brothers, the NRA, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and Clinton vets, remember the Scaife family? Oh, yeah. These are the same people who stymied gun regulation at every point who funded and ghost write these laws and others that have become a core of the conservative agenda that is being implemented across our country. It's the same group that also wrote the voter I.D. laws which threaten to disenfranchise some 5 million american voters, many of them African-American.”

Van Jones: "I was there [in the Obama administration] for 6 months. Best 6 months of my life, followed by the worst two weeks...I saw some of the most beautiful people, some of the most well intentioned people, some of the smartest people ever to serve in our government, be stopped in their tracks, stopped in their tracks, by people who mean us no good. People who claim to be patriots but seem to hate everybody in America."

brooklynbadboy: “The GOP is so demented and racist...[Republicans have] become a party of paranoid conspiracy freaks, religious kooks, bigots, the marginally insane, and amateur grifters like Joe the Plumber. If Palin were running in the primary election for president, there is no doubt that she would be winning it, probably handily...This is a party unhinged from reality. This is the party of Palin...”

MrTrueLiberal: “...that Hitler would have felt at home...Overtly bigoted and racist speak doesn't play well in...most places in America. Hitler didn't know from codespeak or dog whistles. He didn't understand that to reach into the hearts and minds of religious America, you have to invoke the names of God and Jesus Christ. He wouldn't have understood that Republican men and a few Republican women see the female species as a threat to be subdued and controlled. But although he was fixated on Jews, he would have grasped immediately the right wing hatred and fear of Hispanics and Muslims. And a black President of the United States. Those he could have worked with...Maybe the spirit of Hitler exists in his full Nazi brown-shirted glory and [is] providing consulting services to right wing media and their political candidates...”

Beetwasher: “Republicans are about to engage in terrorism...There have been diaries on the subject of stochastic terrorism and I can't help but think of the Repubs odd behavior without putting it in this context. The leaders by actions that are seemingly bizarre and illogical and suicidal [are] sending a signal. Now is the time to go all in. And we have their leader seemingly under siege. (Limbaugh)...We have the bizarre double down crazy all in Ryan budget. Reality is closing in around some very sick people, their world view is being challenged, they are about to be trounced and repudiated in a big way come Nov. The tide of history is against them. You cannot. Stop. Progress. On some level they must know or suspect this. They are desperate, and sick and crazy...”

Michael Alton Gottlieb: “[H]omegrown terror of the Patriot movement kind is considered the biggest threat to the Government. And with a trillion guns and most of their brains eaten away with fear and loathing, I don't doubt the veracity of the threat. But why? Are they really patriots concerned about loss of liberty, abrogation of the Constitution, encroaching militarism and creeping totalitarianism? Or are they just Rush Limbaugh clones who await their marching orders from fascist clowns without a thought in their heads?”

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, has recently undergone heart transplant surgery. As is not surprising, hate has been pouring out from the left. Most of these posts would require too much cleaning up for me to post, so check them out if you want. Expect to find the f-word more often than the word “the.”

The brother of the al-Qaeda member who murdered seven people including three kids: "I am very proud of my brother. I regret nothing for him and approve of what he did."

Interviewer: “Is it permissible to kill `Alawites - their women and their children - in retaliation for their actions?”

Muhammad Badi' Moussa “: Yes, my brother. We have issued a communiqué to the `Alawites, in which we gave them a strong warning, which may be the last. Our brothers in the Free Syrian Army sent queries to scholars in exile, asking whether they were allowed to raid `Alawite villages, like the Zahra, Eqrima, and Nuzha suburbs of Homs. Our brothers in the Free Syrian Army asked several sheiks and scholars for a fatwa on whether they are allowed to kill ['Alawite] women and children, just as they are killing our women and children. The snipers are coming from the `Alawite suburbs, and the free Muslim women who were raped and kidnapped are being held in `Alawite suburbs. All the scholars said: Have a little patience. They must be warned first. We don't want a civil, sectarian war to rage in Syria. [The 'Alawites] know that they are a minority in our country, and that all the sects hate them and want to get rid of them. It is not in their best interest to follow the regime.”

Bill Maher: "Let's have an amnesty - from the left and the right - on every made-up, fake, totally insincere, playacted hurt, insult, slight and affront. Let's make this Sunday the National Day of No Outrage. One day a year when you will not find some tiny thing someone did or said and pretend you can barely continue functioning until they apologize. When did we get it in our heads that we have the right to never hear anything we don't like?" he wrote, adding that "If you see or hear something you don't like in the media, just go on with your life. Turn the page or flip the dial.” I agree with Maher; but wouldn’t it be nice if such a big deal was not made out of what Rush said? Seems like we never discuss anything like this unless it is said by someone on the right. Now that Maher and Obama and Carney are being hit by questions, now is the time to say, “Stop feigning outrage.”

Penny Lee and Kirsten Powers in response: “We're both women who have worked in Democratic politics and the media for decades and find Bill Maher's misogynist treatment of women candidates deeply disturbing. Coincidentally we both hail from Alaska - where women are treated as equals - so perhaps our threshold for this kind of behavior is less than here in the Lower 48. Mr. Maher has implicitly attempted to tie his own demeaning attacks on women to the unrelated issue of partisan-motivated fake outrage, which we agree is tiring. While others have been held to account for their sexism, Mr. Maher remains unrepentant for his attacks on women in public life. How can we expect women to run for office when they are essentially told to "lighten up about" and accept misogynist attacks? The Women's Media Center has found that such attacks on women candidates have a measurable negative effect on how voters view them.”

Interestingly enough, the NY Times, which printed Maher’s column, has not yet mentioned to its readers what Bill Maher actually said about Sarah Palin.

CNN’s Fareed Zakaria: “For those who despair at the role of money in politics, the simplest way to get the corruption out of Washington is to remove the prize that members of Congress give away - preferential tax treatment. A flatter tax code with almost no exemptions does that. The simplest fix to our tax code would be would be to lower the income tax dramatically, lower the corporate tax, and instead raise revenues through a national sales tax, or a value-added tax (VAT). The U.S. is the only rich country in the world without a national sales tax. Germany has one at 19%, Britain at 20%, Korea at 10%. What's the appeal of a consumption tax? First, it is efficient. Most studies, including one by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), suggest that the federal government loses several hundred billion dollars a year to tax fraud. This is much tougher to pull off with a consumption tax. Second, it provides the government with a more stable form of revenue than income taxes. Income taxes fluctuate greatly between boom and bust years. Third, American's consume too much, often using credit and leverage to do so. A consumption tax would moderate this behavior. Government will always get less of a behavior it taxes and more of what it subsidies.” Have I just stepped into a parallel universe?

Charane Odho, a 37-year-old grandma, of the Occupy Miami crowd who have moved into her semi-occupied building: "It's like we live in a huge crack house now! They poop on the walls, they poop in the back of the building and wipe themselves with socks. Who are these people? We don't know who the hell they are."

George Carlin from I don’t know when: "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."

A young female college student to Mitt Romney: "You're all for like 'yay freedom and all this stuff and yay pursuit of happiness. You know what would make me happy? Free birth control."

Mitt Romney: "Let me tell you something, if you're looking for free stuff that you don't have to pay for, vote for the other guy. That's what he's all about. Politicians get up and promise you all kinds of free stuff, more and more stuff that you won't have to pay for and you know what? We get elected that way, in many cases, politicians do, that's not something I subscribe to.”

Mark Shields, PBS: “It is in fact ten trillion dollars in tax cuts for the next ten years. We extend the Bush tax cuts in perpetuity under Paul Ryan. The reality is there are no spelled out eliminations of tax expenditures. That is the bold. That would be courageous. Are you going to do home mortgage? Are you going to do charitable deductions? Are you going to do state and local taxes? Because that's where the money is when I see some vertebrae. And make one thing absolutely clear about Simpson-Bowles that Charles referenced and that is it had at its guiding principle that it would not increase poverty, and it would not increase the income disparity. And it does.”

Charles Krauthammer: “Talk about absence of spine, your guys haven't introduced a budget at all on anything, haven't done anything on Medicare, on Social Security or anything on tax reform. Zero. That is the definition of an absence of spine.”

Former New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse: “...mainstream journalism has learned to navigate those challenges, choosing evolution over "intelligent design," for example, and treating climate change naysayers as cranks...Court cases are trickier. It's one thing to engage in prediction that flows from analysis: which side is most likely to win? It's quite another to let readers in on the fact that one side's argument is so manifestly weak that it doesn't deserve to win. Journalistic accounts of court cases, at least in advance of a definitive ruling, understandably tend to take the safe course and treat the arguments on both sides with equal dignity. So it's perhaps not surprising that just about half the public apparently believes that the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate is unconstitutional. Free of convention, and fresh from reading the main briefs in the case to be argued before the Supreme Court next week, I'm here to tell you: that belief is simply wrong. The constitutional challenge to the law's requirement for people to buy health insurance -- specifically, the argument that the mandate exceeds Congress's power under the Commerce Clause -- is rhetorically powerful but analytically so weak that it dissolves on close inspection. There's just no there there.”

James Taranto commented on her column as "a liberal legal legend's ludicrous ObamaCare defense" and added that her opinion on Obama-care is "shallow, disingenuous and silly."

FoxNews Ed Henry: “Two other quick things. On Ben's question about health care -- it's supposed to be the President's signature domestic achievement, so the idea that he may not speak about this on the anniversary seems odd. And I wonder, with the polling data -- I think ABC News has a poll out today -- when you add it up, 67 percent of the public either wants to throw out the whole bill or just throw out the mandate, not the whole bill. The White House has been talking for two years about educating the public, talking about the benefits of this. Doesn't this polling data suggest that people are not buying it?”

Jay Carney: “Well, the polling data suggest in part the hundreds of millions of dollars that was spent attacking it. And what we're focusing on is implementing it so that more and more Americans see the benefits that it brings.”

Economist Paul Krugman: “First, the lie: No, President Obama did not say, as many Republicans now claim, that he wanted higher gasoline prices. He did once say that a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions would cause electricity prices to "skyrocket" -- an unfortunate word choice. But saying that such a system would raise energy prices was just a factual statement, not a declaration of intent to punish American consumers. The claim that Mr. Obama wanted higher prices is a lie, pure and simple.”

Candidate Obama said in 2007: "I think it is important for us to send some price signals, to change behavior" and that "it's not going to be painless....a lot of us who can afford are going to have to pay more per unit of electricity" to cover the higher cost of green energy production.

Darryle Issa: Now, let me just ask one basic question, in an earlier hearing, you gave yourself an A-minus. In weatherization, do you give yourself an A-minus?

Issa: In controlling the cost of gasoline at the pump, do you give yourself an A-minus?

Chu: Well, the tools we have at our disposal are limited, but I would say, I would give myself a little higher in that since I became secretary of Energy, I've been doing everything I can to get long-term solutions.

Joe Scarborough: “Steve Rattner, what's the president doing on energy here?”

Obama Car Czar Steve Rattner: “Well, first of all, what you just referred to really doesn't have a lot to do honestly with what this president did or previous presidents. We effectively have no energy policy. This is really the market at work. This is higher prices bringing out more supply, higher prices causing people to drive less-the resession having a huge impact on energy demand in this country. The president is saying like every president, we need to do something. And he is saying that what we need to do should be a mix of everything, that we need to drill, that we need to have solar, we need alternatives, we need conservation. He is trying to go down the middle and say we should have every piece of the energy puzzle. But the fact is, we haven't done anything at a government level to develop any of those things.”

Rep. Trey Gowdy: "If this were the last debt ceiling request you could ask for . the final one and you had to make it large enough for all current and future obligations, what would the request need to be?"

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner: "I don't know how to answer that question...I'd have to get to you in writing, I can't do it in my head though."

Sandra Fluke at an event in Washington D.C., condemned "conservative commentators" for trying to silence women by using "sexist rhetoric," adding that "that kind of treatment of women will not be tolerated."

After speaking, CNSNews.com asked: "You said we shouldn't tolerate demeaning language for women. Should we tolerate Bill Maher for calling Sarah Palin some of the stuff he's said?"

Sandra Fluke: "I'm not going to speak about particular labels that have been applied to particular women. But no matter who is demeaning women, it's always unacceptable."

CONGRESSMAN KEITH ELLISON (D-MINNESOTA): No, they [Iran] don't have a weapon. They have not made a decision to do one. The inspections.

BILL O'REILLY, HOST: How would you know they have not made a decision to do one? How would you know that?

ELLISON: Because. I'm glad you asked. Because we have satellite technology. We have technology that can detect.

O'REILLY: They're underground. The satellites can't penetrate the earth. They're underground.

O'REILLY. No there haven't. They went two weeks ago and they wouldn't let them go in.

ELLISON: Well, Bill, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to back a war based on a maybe. 4,409 Americans are dead because somebody-

O'REILLY: Congressman, the reason we like you as a guest is because you're an honest man, But I will point to history. I will point to history. The same mindset was taken when dealing with Nazi Germany. We're not going to go in aggressive action. We don't believe they're going to do this. We don't believe they're going to do that. And they absolutely did everything. So I think you've got to learn from history.

ELLISON: Let me tell you in World War II, in World War II they attacked Pearl Harbor. That would be enough.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz on June 5th, 2011: "Now you have the Republicans, who want to literally drag us all the way back to Jim Crow laws..."

MRC Reporter: “You said that the GOP's trying to turn back to the days of Jim Crow - about the voter ID laws?”

Narrator Tom Hanks: "He knew from experience the cost of waiting [on health care reform]."

President Obama : "When my mom got cancer, she wasn't a wealthy woman and it pretty much drained all her resources"

Michelle Obama: "She developed ovarian cancer, never really had good, consistent insurance. That's a tough thing to deal with, watching your mother die of something that could have been prevented. I don't think he wants to see anyone go through that."

Hanks: "And he remembered the millions of families like of his who feel the pressure of rising costs and the fear of being denied or dropped from coverage."

Turns out that this scenario might not be accurate. Reporting by left-leaning WaPo.

Ben Stein: “We are staring default in the face. We need to have a brave man who will stand up” [quoted from memory]

Paula Priesse: “Trust in the media has hit an all time low. Some friendly advice: 1) Cover innocent victims of gang violence with as much passion as a teen killed by someone you now label as a "White Hispanic" 2) Honor the lives of fallen soldiers as you would dead celebrities 3) Start

viewing us as Americans, rather than as Women, Blacks, Whites, Hispanics, Asians, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Gays or whatever 4) Stop assuming any criticism of minority politicians is inherently "racist" 5) End your cynical attempts to drive up "ratings" by trying to tear us apart & 6) Promote time-tested American values that might, just might, bring us closer together That is all. P”

Romney's communications director Eric Fehrnstromon: "Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It's almost like an Etch-A-Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all of over again. But I will say, if you look at the exit polling data in Illinois, you'll see that Mitt Romney is broadly acceptable to most of the factions in the party. You have to do that in order to become the nominee."

[to be fair, the question he was asked was from CNN”s John Fugelsang: "Is there a concern that [Rick] Santorum and [Newt] Gingrich might force the governor to tack so far to the right it would hurt him with moderate voters in the general election?"]

Jodi Miller: “White House spokesman Jay Carney said, that most of President Obama’s time is not spent campaigning, and he’s right. Most of the president’s time is spent playing golf, vacationing, apologizing to our enemies, and running our economy into the ground.”

Jodi Miller: “The head of Lubbock, Texas’ Planned Parenthood was just arrested for indecent exposure. See, Planned Parenthood does provide services besides abortion.”

Rep. Allen West: "Until we, as a nation, are able to correctly and openly identify our enemy, we will continue to put our men and women on the ground in harm's way without a clear mission for success. On this 21st Century Battlefield we are not fighting against a single organization, a single leader, or a single nation. We are fighting against Islamic fundamentalism, which knows no country, recognizes no borders, and wears no uniform...[Islam is a] theocratic-political totalitarian ideology no different from Nazism, Fascism, and Communism which threatens the free world."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell: "The bottom line is this: This health care law is a mess."

Mike Huckabee: “As he jets around on Air Force One, he isn’t using algae.” [quoted from memory]

Rush Limbaugh: "The daily assault on conservatism in the media is actually nothing more than a bunch of daily lies about the strength of the economy and how great Obama's doing."

Rush Limbaugh: "So we've gone from a jobless recovery to a recovery-less job growth. Neither one make any sense. But the efforts that the media are going to find any shred of bad news and turn it into good news is happening. They're taking every opportunity to do it, and it's designed to dispirit you and to keep Obama's base enthused."

Rush Limbaugh: "If by some miracle Obama did see the light and he did try to lower the price of gasoline, he would be undoing everything he and the Democrats have worked so hard to

accomplish over the last three years. They want high gasoline prices so that you'll eventually go buy a Chevy Volt. They want high gasoline prices so you'll go buy a hybrid or an electric car, or you'll take mass transit. They want you out of your internal combustion engine machine. They've made no secret about it."

Rush Limbaugh: "It's a little too late for the media to go back and actually do their jobs in the right way because they've blown the trust. They've squandered the trust that they maybe used to have with their customers, i.e., the American citizens."

Rush Limbaugh: "From the Associated Press: 'Unhappy Public Not Sure Who to Blame for Gas Prices.' Really? Well, this unhappy public has been told for three-and-a-half years that every problem they have can be solved by Barack Obama and his caring cabinet and czars, and every other Democrat who has a big heart and compassion."

Rush Limbaugh: "The guy who steadfastly opposes drilling for oil and has not issued any permits to speak of, particularly since it's Gulf oil drilling moratorium -- the guy who has made his name opposing the Keystone pipeline -- is now out taking credit for it. And he's trying to make people believe in this country that the entire Keystone pipeline, today, has just been authorized, and oil is going to be flowing through it."

Rush Limbaugh: "I'm almost speechless here with the absolute brazenness of this. I wouldn't be surprised if Obama says, 'I've laid more pipe than any president except Bill Clinton.' That's where we're headed with this."

Rush Limbaugh: "Without the media, Barack Obama would be a national joke. But he has the media. He has the largest propaganda arm that a president has ever had."

Rush Limbaugh: "If I were you, I would regard every AP story, particularly this year, as nothing more than a propaganda piece for the reelection of Barack Obama."

Rush Limbaugh: "I have a sense of you things in this country. I believe there's a great silent majority. The silent majority is made up of people who are not represented by the Democrat Party or the mainstream media. The silent majority are the people who get up and go to work, try to play by the rules, try to do everything right according to their morality and sense of ethics and their right and wrong."

Rush Limbaugh: "What is discriminatory about producing a photo ID to vote and not discriminatory about producing a photo ID to get on an airplane or to get married? Why is one discriminatory and the other is not? Well, we all know the answer to this. The answer is vote fraud. The answer is the Democrats want to cheat, and a photo ID goes a long way towards stopping voter fraud."

Rush Limbaugh: "The idea that having to have a photo ID is discriminatory and intimidating should mean that it's discriminatory and intimidating everywhere you have to display one. The Democrats never say that. It's only when you vote."

Rush Limbaugh: "Can you think of anything you do in your life where you do not need a photo ID? You need a photo ID to cash a check. You need a photo ID to get on an airplane. You need a photo ID for everything. For the most mundane things in life, you need a photo ID. But yet, Eric Holder and his gang tell us that to require a photo ID when one votes is intimidation, and it is discrimination."

Rush Limbaugh: "Dana Milbank in the Washington Post is out today with his review of the Ryan budget, and as predictable as the sun coming up, Milbank and the Washington Post compare Ryan's budgeting to a Dickens novel where the poor get everything they have taken away from them. Ryan's gonna starve the poor, take away all their programs, take away all their money. That's how Ryan's budget's being reported."

Rush Limbaugh: "Anything good for America, they don't like. That's the position the Democrat Party is in. I wouldn't want to be in that position. Anything that happens that's good for America they have to oppose. Anything bad for America, they support. That's Obama's base."

FoxNews’s Kimberly Guilfoyle on the Supreme Court possibly ruling the Obamacare mandate unconstitutional: “For all you campers out there: tent, pole, collapse.”

This is short and quite funny: White House press laughs when Carney is asked about Biden calling the Bin Laden Raid the most "audacious" plan in 500 years.

This is a short GOP ad, but well worth watching. In the beginning, President Obama takes credit for Solandra; in the second clip, after Solandra had gone bad, he had nothing to do with it.

Is it my imagination, or are these political ads becoming little mini-masterpieces? This is a Santorum ad.

Remember the video of “Paul Ryan” tossing a senior citizen off a cliff. Here is the new one. This is the longer version.

Anti-Ryan budget plan ad; it is reasonably funny with “Weekend with Bernie” thrown in.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz on FoxNews (video and story). Remember that this little blondes on FoxNews are presented on SNL as bimbos. See how this bimbo does with Wasserman Schultz.

Nancy Pelosi, teaching a little theology and saying that the designation food stamp president is a badge of honor.

This is both an article backed up with tons of videos. It shows how the media sold Obamacare to us. Sell the need, sell the plan, praise its supporters, demonize its opponents and then celebrate its passage. This is really well-researched and you cannot deny how integral the media was in selling Obama’s Affordable Care Act to the public.

Leaked footage cut from the Obama job’s speech. “My Fellow Americans. The real problem with my economic system is that the folks who are getting free stuff don't like the folks who are paying for the free stuff, because the folks who are paying for the free stuff, can no longer afford to pay for both the free stuff and their own stuff, and the folks who are paying for the free stuff want the free stuff to stop, and the folks who are getting the free stuff, want even MORE free stuff on top of the free stuff they're already getting!” There’s more.

This is a foreign news/editorial broadcast from Denmark, of President Obama telling all of our allies that they “Punch above their weight.”

1) On several occasions, the President is seemingly taking credit for things that he has no actual influence. He has talked over and over again about how drilling is increasing in the United States, and has implied that has occurred under his administration. This additional drilling is taking place on private and state lands; so there is not much the president can do. The president recently showed up at the bottom leg of the Keystone XL pipeline in Cushing, and acted as if he had something to do with this leg of the pipeline. This is preposterous; this was already in the works, it did not require presidential or congressional approval; and he simply showed up to make a speech and to appear as if this was his idea.

2) Secondly, this administration has been lying about the effect that a president can have on the cost of gas. When an oil company drills on federal lands, there are all kinds of things a president can do. Even with the Keystone Pipeline addition, the President could give the okay, with requirements related to the price of gas within the United States. As I pointed out previously, $1/gallon gas is typical throughout the Middle East oil-rich countries. Sarah Palin made deals with oil companies in Alaska such that, in exchange for their ability to drill, they had to pay Alaskans royalties. So, the idea that the president can do nothing is blatantly false.

3) I am certainly not Romney’s biggest supporter; I find his looming nomination to be disappointing at best, even though I will vote for him. There is far too much being made of his aide’s etch-a-sketch remark, however.

4) Rush made an outstanding observation this week. We have been told that our government is capable of solving the recession, the student loan business, healthcare, car companies going broke, alternative energy, lower the seas, etc. etc. But, there is no magic bullet when it comes to gas prices. No idea what a president might do about that.

In January, the percent of increase of food stamp usage under Obama was 42%, As of the latest numbers, it is up 45%.

100% of the income of the top 10% comes to about $3.4 trillion. This does not cover even one year of an Obama budget. Furthermore, much of their money is already being taxed, so taking 100% of it would actually yield an increase of around $2.6 trillion (that is 75% of $3.4 T). What do you do about the year after that, when the economy collapses? Remember that Britain recently increased their taxes on the rich to 50% and now they have less revenue coming in than before.

The idea that the highest money earners pay less taxes by percentage is wrong. The top 1% does, but in every other category, increased income means increased taxation. The Ryan budget plan would probably remove most of those tax loopholes.

Bush added $4 trillion to the national debt in 8 years. President Obama has done that in less than 4. In fact, it appears that Obama will add approximately $5 trillion to the national debt in 3 years + 2months. When on the campaign trail, Obama labeled Bush as unpatriotic for this debt.

According to GAO, 157 of the nearly 700 renewable energy initiatives in fiscal year 2010 were either created by the stimulus law, received expanded funding or were modified under it and the futures of some programs are uncertain because of a draw-down in funding - or because they were already set to expire.

The Buffet Tax Rule (tax the rich more) is estimated to bring in about $31 billion over 10 years...which is a rounding error in a $4 trillion budget.

The Copper Mountain Solar 1 plant was built in late 2010 at a cost of $141 million. Funding included $42 million in federal-government tax credits and $12 million in tax-rebate commitments from the state of Nevada., There are 5 full-time employees at this plant. The plant, owned by San Diego-based energy company Sempra,

New drug introduction is down by 2/3rds and new medical devices in the United States is down by 40% over the past 2 years. Hmm, what happened 2 years ago?

31,487 American scientists have signed this petition, including 9,029 with PhDs have signed onto the petition which says that there is no convincing scientific evidence that the human release of greenhouse gases will cause a catastrophic warming of the earth’s temperature.

At least 943 Pakistani women and girls were murdered last year in what are known as “honor killings.” This is up from 791 "honor killings" in 2010.

Gordon Brown's Labour Party government launched a 50% rate in income taxes in Great Britain in order to bring in more revenue. However, collections fell by $800 million compared to income tax payments a year earlier.

56% of Egyptians now see closer relations with the U.S. as a bad thing for their country, up sharply from 40% in December 2011

As an aside, the president is about to sidestep Congress and send Egypt $1.5 billion in aid.

A Gallup survey this past week shows that the more often a person goes to church, the happier that person is, and the less they like President Obama.

67% of Americans Want Supreme Court to Invalidate all of Obamacare, or at least invalidate the insurance mandate (upon which the entire plan stands).

By a margin of 48% to 38%, voters believe that Obama’s policies will increase joblessness rather than put people back to work.

By a margin of 46% to 36%, voters believe that Obama’s policies will cause the United States to become even more dependent on foreign oil.

Interestingly enough, this poll showed that white voters expected all of Obama’s policies to fail and a majority or plurality of Black voters expect his policies to succeed. Wasn’t it Herman Cain who suggested that Black voters were brainwashed?

26% of American Adults would be willing to pay higher taxes to help reduce the federal budget deficit.

51% of Republicans believe the warmer U.S. winter was due to normal variations in year-to-year temperatures.

43% of Democrats believe that this past season's temperate temperatures were caused by global warming,

37% said that the temperatures were due to normal variations in year-to-year temperature.

A couple weeks ago, I posted the story of MSNBC Ed Schultz receiving $200,000 from the unions. O’Reilly mentioned it this week. Have you seen this mentioned elsewhere on any other network?

Under the Compliant Obama Press, there were headlines for the Chicago Tribute and the Los Angeles Times, both touting high gas prices as a sign of the economic recovery. No doubt both papers also warned of coming Armageddon because of George Bush’s 4–5% unemployment economy.

Jon Corzine looks like he might be responsible for the missing millions of dollars from his company MF Global. Bloomberg's report identifies Corzine as a Democrat in its fourteenth paragraph. There was no mention of his party affiliation in the Associated Press, United Press International, MarketWatch.com, and CNBC. It is likely that no new agency identified Corzine as an Obama bundler. If a Republican does wrong, that word Republican will be in the title of the story or in the first paragraph.

The AP does a story on high gas prices and they interview many people on the street, who all seem to have one thing in common: in their opinion, it’s not Obama’s fault. What are the chances that you would interview, say, 10 random people, and all of them agree that high gas prices cannot be controlled at all by the president?

MRC's Tim Graham and Neil Cavuto Compare Coverage of Gas Prices (Bush vs. Obama) on Fox News

ABC, CBS, and NBC covered the far-left Occupy Wall Street movement with glee during 2011, devoting 33 stories on the air during the first eleven days of October alone to publicizing the protests. However, the Big Three networks have yet to mention the planned demonstrations in 140 cities across the U.S. today at noon local time against the Obama administration's sterilization, abortifacient, and contraception mandate.

In a related story, the big 3 networks are down in viewership just recently due to daylight savings time and from last year as well. You cannot distort the news and expect people to keep turning in.

Here is a simple example of “Fact Check” services distorting the truth. FactCheck.org compares increase in food stamps under Obama versus Bush and concludes, number-wise, that more people signed up for food stamps under Bush. Here is what is so dishonest about this article; Bush food stamp usage increased by 14.7 million over 8 years time, versus Obama food stamp increase by 14.2 million in less than 3 years time. An honest site would say, “Per year, the is a much greater increase in food stamp usage under Obama.” They don’t. This article quotes a myriad of facts and figures, yet, does not even mention that a fair comparison between the two presidents would be an annualized increase by percent by year. That is just flat out dishonest. Other things ignored by this “fact checking”: the food stamp program can run independently of the president, like most federal programs; and why do we have a continued upswing in food stamp usage during a time of “recovery”?

25 Gannett Wisconsin media journalists caught signing petition to recall Governor Walker. Article includes the ethical conduct clause, which would forbid this.

AP story on Ryan budget informs us that it will cut more than is necessary. What an ideal time to compare and contrast with the President’s budget. They don’t.

President Obama’s partial solution to oil usage has been to suggest that we inflate our tires, get tuneups, turn to algae, and, most recently, he is touting on leg of the Keystone Pipeline—a leg that he actually has no control over. Are you telling me that SNL cannot work with this material?

Unless Sandra Fluke gets a private sector job paying a lot of money, expect her to run for Congress.

I really believe that Muslim fanaticism is reaching a tipping point in the Middle East. In Psalm 21 and elsewhere, God weeds out certain types of people. I would not be shocked for quite a dramatic war—possibly a world war—to break out in the next, say, 20 years, with a lot of deaths.

One of the paranoid thoughts I expressed was that politicians are shoveling money out the door as quickly as they possibly can. The more we find out about the Stimulus package, the more this appears to be turning out to be true. This bill funded about 25% of all “green energy” projects, 80% of which were head by or closely associated with Obama bunders and donors.

from the Washington Time about climate alarmists who were suing an oil company because of Hurricane Katrina.

The Obama 2012 team hosted an off-the-record briefing for Mitt Romney's press corps

Democrat and Obama Bundler Jon Corzine May Be Responsible for Missing Funds at MF Global

The national average for gas prices is almost $3.60 per gallon, increasing 40 cents from a year ago and jumping 20 cents from just one month ago.[1] Prices are already surpassing $4 per gallon in some states and could threaten the country's economic recovery. Higher gas prices drive up production costs for goods reliant on transportation, and more money spent at the pump means less money spent at restaurants and movie theaters. Buying fewer goods and services tightens the economic vice and holds back job creation.

Almost 70 percent of the price of gasoline comes from the price of crude oil, with excise taxes, refining costs, and retail/distribution making up the other 30 percent.[2] Exporting refined petroleum products comprises a small percentage of total domestic gas production and marginally impacts prices. Despite demand for oil falling in the United States as a result of a weaker economy and a warm winter curbing the use of heating oil, the industrial rise of China and India continue to put upward pressure on the price of oil. The threat of Iran restricting oil exports to Europe is also driving up the global price, impacting gas prices in the U.S.

President Obama addressed these issues Thursday, February 23, in a speech on gas prices[3] in which he continued to take many facts out of context. While the President said that there is no quick fix to high gas prices and the nation cannot drill its way out of the problem, he creates a false dichotomy that suggests that micromanaging the solution from Washington by subsidizing uneconomical technologies and sources of energy would work. This approach would do little to provide America with new, reliable, and economical sources of energy and in fact would cause more harm than good to the consumer and taxpayer. America knows what works to effectively combat high gas prices: allowing the market to work by opening access to the country's own oil and gas reserves, reducing onerous regulations, and allowing producers and consumers to respond to energy prices without Washington's interference. Here are five half-truths that one continually hears about gas prices and five actions that Congress and the Administration can take to effectively combat high gas prices.

Increased oil and gas production in the U.S. is a great development, but this is a result of increased production on private lands in North Dakota, Texas, and Alaska. On federal lands and offshore, the story is much grimmer. Production on federal lands and offshore could have yielded more output, increasing supply and therefore putting downward pressure on oil prices. Poor administrative decisions-such as refusing to open areas to exploration and production, cancelling or delaying lease sales, and the offshore drilling moratorium and subsequent "permitorium"-significantly reduced oil production, destroying jobs and reducing economic activity in the process.

If there is an economic interest to produce this oil, Washington should allow companies to do so. In North Dakota, oil production is booming and unemployment is low. There should be more stories like this.

Half-truth #2: Increasing oil production takes too long and would not impact the market for at least a decade.

This has been the mantra of the anti-drilling crowd for years, and the longer politicians listen to the message, the longer the nation's oil resources will remain undeveloped. If access to areas that are currently off limits is increased, it will take time to explore and extract that oil. But that does not change the fact that the nation needs it today and also in the future. Furthermore, some of this oil can reach the market in much less than a decade if the permitting process is streamlined and the Keystone XL pipeline-which could bring up to 830,000 barrels of oil per day from Canada to the Gulf Coast refineries-is built.

Half-truth #3: Oil is not enough. America has only 2 percent of the world's oil reserves.

President Obama frequently uses this number to push federal investments in alternative sources of energy that cannot stand the test of the market. The reality is that he uses this number deceptively. According to the Institute for Energy Research:

[A]lthough the U.S. is said to have only 20 billion barrels of oil in reserves, the amount of oil that is technically recoverable in the U.S. is more than 1.4 trillion barrels, with the largest deposits located offshore, in portions of Alaska, and in shale in the Rocky Mountain West. When combined with resources from Canada and Mexico, total recoverable oil in North America exceeds 1.7 trillion barrels, or more than the world has used since the first oil well was drilled over 150 years ago in Titusville, Pennsylvania. To put this in context, Saudi Arabia has about 260 billion barrels of oil in proved reserves.

One reason to view "reserves" estimates with caution is the fact that they are constantly in flux. In 1980, the U.S. had oil reserves of roughly 30 billion barrels. Yet from 1980 through 2010, it produced over 77 billion barrels of oil. In other words, over the last 30 years, the U.S. produced over 150 percent of the proved reserves that it had in 1980. If the massive quantities of U.S. oil are made available to explore and produce, the current estimated reserves of 20 billion barrels would certainly increase, providing much more production over decades to come. In other words, reserves are not a stagnant number.[4]

Half-truth #4: Oil is not enough. The country needs an "all-of-the-above" approach to reduce its dependence on oil.

President Obama mentioned this approach in his 2012 State of the Union address, saying, "This country needs an all-out, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy."[5] But a market-based strategy is the only all-of-the-above approach. It allows all energy sources to compete, drives innovation, and results in the best possible supply and pricing. Sadly, all-of-the-above is often just an excuse to subsidize uneconomical and politically preferred technologies and energy sources, which leads to a "pigs-at-the-trough" strategy.

Whether they are for biofuels, electric vehicles, or natural gas vehicles, subsidies for alternative fuel and vehicle technologies waste taxpayer dollars, misallocate labor and capital, and create a dependence on government that promotes crony capitalism. The world petroleum market is a multi-trillion-dollar one; whatever technology can capture a portion of that market will not need help from taxpayers.

Half-truth #5: Speculators are driving up the price of gas, and they need to be reined in.

Finger-pointing at speculators and investigating prices at the pump ignore the real cause of rising gas prices: supply and demand. Oil futures markets can affect prices at the pump by changing the amount of gasoline delivered to gas stations. If producers anticipate higher prices in the future, they might take some oil off the market today and wait to sell it later. This may be happening to some degree (although there has been little historical evidence of this[6]), especially given Iranian threats to cut off supply to European markets, but it would cause only a marginal short-run increase in prices, because at some point businesses have to unload the inventories they accumulate.

Get moving on permits. As the only country in the world that places a majority of its territorial waters off-limits to oil and gas exploration, the U.S. should at the very least be drilling in the areas where access is permitted. Removing the de facto moratorium on drilling would immediately increase supply, create jobs, and bring in royalty revenue to federal and state governments.

Require lease sales when ready. Congress should open areas that are off-limits: the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, Alaska's offshore, the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, and lands out West. Congress should require the Secretary of the Interior to conduct lease sales if a commercial interest exists to explore and drill. Congress should also provide the funding necessary to lease new onshore and offshore areas to oil and gas companies. Although it would take time for the federal government to lease these areas and for the energy companies to develop them, at least the process could begin.

Create a sensible review processes. Placing a 270-day time limit on environmental reviews would ensure a quick review process for energy projects on federal lands. Construction projects on federal lands take an average of 4.4 years. The 270 days would allow for a thorough environmental review process but would not prevent investments from moving forward.[7]

Remove regulatory delays and limit litigation. Environmental activists delay new energy projects by filing endless administrative appeals and lawsuits. Creating a manageable time frame for permitting and for groups or individuals to contest energy plans would keep potentially cost-effective ventures from being tied up for years in litigation while allowing the public and interested parties to voice opposition or support for these projects.

Approve the Keystone XL Pipeline. Congress should use its authority to regulate commerce with foreign nations to accept the State Department's conclusion that construction of the pipeline would pose minimal environmental risk.[8] Approving the pipeline would create jobs and increase energy production-both of which the nation desperately needs-from a friendly supplier and ally.

The market would respond if Congress and the Obama Administration allowed it to work. Oil companies would respond by increasing their production, and consumers would switch to more fuel-efficient cars without any need to mandate more fuel-efficient trucks and cars. If the price of gasoline continues to rise, it will make alternative technologies all the more economically competitive. But policies that restrict oil exploration, refining, and production should not artificially drive that price higher.

Canada news sources are carrying several stories on this issue, because what the president has chosen to do affects both Canadians and Americans.

Originally published in the Spring 2003 edition of Free Inquiry Magazine and appears to be calling for a “people’s revolt” against George Bush. A former student of mine posted it. The characteristics of fascism were designed to fit the “Bush” model; what needed to be altered, was; and what needed to be left out, was.

Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. He found 14 defining characteristics common to each:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

There is the ubiquitous Obama symbol seen everywhere. There have been Obama songs sung in grade schools. With regards to slogans, we have “Yes we can” and “hope and change;” words which mean very little.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

Although there have been songs and movies calling for the killing of various conservatives, what has been more often used in our country have been attacks on free speech and upon the 2^nd amendment. I have communicated with a number of liberals who believe in free speech, but still believe that Rush Limbaugh should be banned and that FoxNews ought to be regulated by the government.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

Most recently, these people have been bankers, hedge fund managers, the rich, and those of the 1%. In the past several years, many radical groups have demonstrated out in front of individual’s homes. It has been clearly demonstrated again and again, taxing the rich or even confiscating the wealth of the 1% will not balance our budget or come anywhere close.

4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

President Obama has tried to develop an organization of young people that would be paid by the government and who would do the government’s bidding. Early on, Obama called for a civilian security force which was just as strong and just as well-funded as the military (if you don’t recall this, it is a 21 second clip).

5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

Although I don’t buy into this entirely, because the strong family unit is a good thing; we have incessant attacks on conservative women by the left in the most hateful language possible.

6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

This White House began early on to vilify FoxNews and to suggest that they were not even a news organization. This came from both the White House and from auxiliary “independent” organizations. There was even an organization of journalists who met online regularly to plan out strategy and approaches to certain stories. This Journolist should have been the biggest story of 2010, but it was ignored by most media outlets.

The TEA party protests were at first ignored by the most of the media, as were the Ground Zero protests (which I first heard about in an email that I thought was spurious).

7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

Or, how about the fear of global warming, which is taught in nearly every school in America? And, what a coincidence, the solution just happens to line up with left wing ideology. What a happy coincidence!

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

Recently, Catholic organizations were told, when it comes to a government mandate and your religious views, the government mandate trumps religious doctrine. So far, the President has not backed down on his insurance mandates.

9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

This has been a big problem with Republican and Democratic administrations. One of the man examples is, when a large bank is in trouble, the government bails that bank out; it does not break it up into smaller banks. However, when a small bank seems to be in trouble, the government has a larger bank buy out the smaller bank.

President Obama may lambast Wall Street, but big financial institutions give lots of money to him.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

I don’t know that I buy into this one. President Obama has used Labor Power and labor funds as an integral part of his power. And the way this is done is, money is taken out of labor members’ checks right to begin with and given over to labor unions. In public sector unions, union leaders often find themselves “negotiating” with the surrorgates of the very politicians that they support.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

Or, arts and intellectuals are brought into the fold. School loans were recently brought under the purview of the Obama administration, so that there would be a strong relationship between colleges and government.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

In the case of the Obama regime, the executive branch has seized more power than at any other time in American history, outside of wartime. He has taken over the $1 trillion student loan industry, he continues to support FNMA and FHLMC (which organizations are not his fault); he has taken control of the medical industry, to the point where he can mandate whatever service he chooses to; 2 car companies; and he has given out and spent money more than any president has every done at any time.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

Election fraud did occur in 2008. And, in a close race in Minnesota, votes disappeared daily from the Republican side and went to the Democrat Senate candidate. In not one instance did a new “discovery” of votes work against the Democrat.

For the upcoming election, voter I.D. laws are being passed by states and challenged repeatedly by this administration. Providing some proof of identify seems to be too much to ask, in the opinion of the Democratic party, despite the widespread popularity of voter ID laws.

What this article ignored completely, because it did not match up with their presuppositions (they were trying to show that George Bush was running a fascist government), is the fundamental necessity of a dynamic, charismatic leader. That is essential to a fascist regime.

On one side, the left pounded on George Bush’s presidency and destroyed his power; so, they could not claim that he was this great charismatic leader who was powerful based on charisma.

Another thing ignored by this article is, German fascism is national socialism. Most leftist organizations who decry fascism leave out this little fact.

Last month, at a Raeford, N.C., elementary school, a teacher confiscated the lunch of a 5-year-old girl because it didn't meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines and therefore was deemed nonnutritious. She replaced it with school cafeteria chicken nuggets. The girl's home-prepared lunch was nutritious; it consisted of a turkey and cheese sandwich, potato chips, a banana and apple juice. But whether her lunch was nutritious or not is not the issue. The issue is governmental usurpation of parental authority.

In a number of states, pregnant teenage girls may be given abortions without the notification or the permission of parents. The issue is neither abortion nor whether a pregnant teenager should have an abortion. The issue is this: What gives the government the authority to usurp parental authority?

Part of the problem is that people who act as instruments of government do not pay a personal price for usurping parental authority. The reason is Americans, unlike Americans of yesteryear, have become timid and, as such, come to accept all manner of intrusive governmental acts. Can you imagine what a rugged American, such as one portrayed by John Wayne, would have done to a government tyrant who confiscated his daughter's lunch or facilitated her abortion without his permission?

I believe that the anti-tobacco movement partially accounts for today's compliant American. Tobacco zealots started out with "reasonable" demands, such as the surgeon general's warning on cigarette packs. Then they demanded nonsmoking sections on airplanes. Emboldened by that success, they demanded no smoking at all on airplanes and then airports and then restaurants and then workplaces - all in the name of health. Seeing the compliant nature of smokers, they've moved to ban smoking on beaches, in parks and on sidewalks in some cities. Now they're calling for higher health insurance premiums for smokers. Had the tobacco zealots demanded their full agenda when they started out, they would not have achieved anything.

Using the anti-tobacco crusade as their template and finding Americans so compliant, zealots and would-be tyrants are extending their agenda. Why not control what we eat? San Francisco, Chicago and several other cities have outlawed or are seeking to outlaw serving foie gras in restaurants. Here's my challenge to these people: Don't be a coward and use the state to accomplish your agenda. If you see Williams eating foie gras, just come up and take it off his plate.

Other food tyrants want to stop us from eating Dove and Haagen-Dazs ice cream, Mrs. Fields cookies and McDonald's Chicken McNuggets. San Francisco has already banned McDonald's from selling Happy Meals with toys in them as sales pitches to children. Seeing San Franciscan compliance may have been the source of inspiration for the North Carolina schoolteacher who took the 5-year-old girl's lunch.

Americans have become compliant in nation-crippling ways. Over the past several years, gasoline prices have been shooting through the roof, but not to worry. President Barack Obama's current secretary of energy, Steven Chu, said in December 2008, "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe." That translates to $8 or $9 a gallon. During a recent hearing on the Department of Energy's budget, Rep. Alan Nunnelee, R-Miss., asked Secretary Chu whether it is the DOE's "overall goal" to lower gasoline prices. "No," Chu responded. "The overall goal is to decrease our dependency on oil, to build and strengthen our economy."

Because Americans are so compliant and willing to suffer silently at the gasoline pump, the Obama administration is willing to press on as handmaidens of environmental extremists who want to halt the exploration of our country's vast oil supplies, which are estimated to be triple those of Saudi Arabia. The Obama administration would rather pour more taxpayer dollars into risky alternative crony energy suppliers and electric cars. The OPEC nations have to be laughing at us, and I wouldn't be surprised if it were revealed that they are making under-the-table payments to environmental wackos.

The Affordable Care Act claims federal power is unlimited. Now the High Court must decide.

Few legal cases in the modern era are as consequential, or as defining, as the challenges to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that the Supreme Court hears beginning Monday. The powers that the Obama Administration is claiming change the structure of the American government as it has existed for 225 years. Thus has the health-care law provoked an unprecedented and unnecessary constitutional showdown that endangers individual liberty.

It is a remarkable moment. The High Court has scheduled the longest oral arguments in nearly a half-century: five and a half hours, spread over three days. Yet Democrats, the liberal legal establishment and the press corps spent most of 2010 and 2011 deriding the government of limited and enumerated powers of Article I as a quaint artifact of the 18th century. Now even President Obama and his staff seem to grasp their constitutional gamble.

Consider a White House strategy memo that leaked this month, revealing that senior Administration officials are coordinating with liberal advocacy groups to pressure the Court. "Frame the Supreme Court oral arguments in terms of real people and real benefits that would be lost if the law were overturned," the memo notes, rather than "the individual responsibility piece of the law and the legal precedence [sic]." Those nonpolitical details are merely what "lawyers will be talking about."

The White House is even organizing demonstrations during the proceedings, including a "'prayerful witness' encircling the Supreme Court." The executive branch is supposed to speak to the Court through the Solicitor General, not agitprop and crowds in the streets.

The Supreme Court will not be ruling about matters of partisan conviction, or the President's re-election campaign, or even about health care at all. The lawsuit filed by 26 states and the National Federation of Independent Business is about the outer boundaries of federal power and the architecture of the U.S. political system.

The argument against the individual mandate-the requirement that everyone buy health insurance or pay a penalty-is carefully anchored in constitutional precedent and American history. The Commerce Clause that the government invokes to defend such regulation has always applied to commercial and economic transactions, not to individuals as members of society.

This distinction is crucial. The health-care and health-insurance markets are classic interstate commerce. The federal government can regulate broadly-though not without limit-and it has. It could even mandate that people use insurance to purchase the services of doctors and hospitals, because then it would be regulating market participation. But with ObamaCare the government is asserting for the first time that it can compel people to enter those markets, and only then to regulate how they consume health care and health insurance. In a word, the government is claiming it can create commerce so it has something to regulate.

This is another way of describing plenary police powers-regulations of private behavior to advance public order and welfare. The problem is that with two explicit exceptions (military conscription and jury duty) the Constitution withholds such power from a central government and vests that authority in the states. It is a black-letter axiom: Congress and the President can make rules for actions and objects; states can make rules for citizens.

The framers feared arbitrary and centralized power, so they designed the federalist system-which predates the Bill of Rights-to diffuse and limit power and to guarantee accountability. Upholding the ObamaCare mandate requires a vision on the Commerce Clause so broad that it would erase dual sovereignty and extend the new reach of federal general police powers into every sphere of what used to be individual autonomy.

These federalist protections have endured despite the shifting definition and scope of interstate commerce and activities that substantially affect it. The Commerce Clause was initially seen as a modest power, meant to eliminate the interstate tariffs that prevailed under the Articles of Confederation. James Madison noted in Federalist No. 45 that it was "an addition which few oppose, and from which no apprehensions are entertained." The Father of the Constitution also noted that the powers of the states are "numerous and infinite" while the federal government's are "few and defined."

That view changed in the New Deal era as the Supreme Court blessed the expansive powers of federal economic regulation understood today. A famous 1942 ruling, Wickard v. Filburn, held that Congress could regulate growing wheat for personal consumption because in the aggregate such farming would affect interstate wheat prices. The Court reaffirmed that precedent as recently as 2005, in Gonzales v. Raich, regarding homegrown marijuana.

The Court, however, has never held that the Commerce Clause is an ad hoc license for anything the government wants to do. In 1995, in Lopez, it gave the clause more definition by striking down a Congressional ban on carrying guns near schools, which didn't rise to the level of influencing interstate commerce. It did the same in 2000, in Morrison, about a federal violence against women statute.

A thread that runs through all these cases is that the Court has always required some limiting principle that is meaningful and can be enforced by the legal system. As the Affordable Care Act suits have ascended through the courts, the Justice Department has been repeatedly asked to articulate some benchmark that distinguishes this specific individual mandate from some other purchase mandate that would be unconstitutional. Justice has tried and failed, because a limiting principle does not exist.

The best the government can do is to claim that health care is unique. It is not. Other industries also have high costs that mean buyers and sellers risk potentially catastrophic expenses-think of housing, or credit-card debt. Health costs are unpredictable-but all markets are inherently unpredictable. The uninsured can make insurance pools more expensive and transfer their costs to those with coverage-though then again, similar cost-shifting is the foundation of bankruptcy law.

The reality is that every decision not to buy some good or service has some effect on the interstate market for that good or service. The government is asserting that because there are ultimate economic consequences it has the power to control the most basic decisions about how people spend their own money in their day-to-day lives. The next stops on this outbound train could be mortgages, college tuition, credit, investment, saving for retirement, Treasurys, and who knows what else.

Confronted with these concerns, the Administration has echoed Nancy Pelosi when she was asked if the individual mandate was constitutional: "Are you serious?" The political class, the Administration says, would never abuse police powers to create the proverbial broccoli mandate or force people to buy a U.S.-made car.

But who could have predicted that the government would pass a health plan mandate that is opposed by two of three voters? The argument is self-refuting, and it shows why upholding the rule of law and defending the structural checks and balances of the separation of powers is more vital than ever.

Another Administration fallback is the Constitution's Necessary and Proper Clause, which says Congress can pass laws to execute its other powers. Yet the Court has never hesitated to strike down laws that are not based on an enumerated power even if they're part of an otherwise proper scheme. This clause isn't some ticket to justify inherently unconstitutional actions.

In this context, the Administration says the individual mandate is necessary so that the Affordable Care Act's other regulations "work." Those regulations make insurance more expensive. So the younger and healthier must buy insurance that they may not need or want to cross-subsidize the older and sicker who are likely to need costly care. But that doesn't make the other regulations more "effective." The individual mandate is meant to offset their intended financial effects.

Some good-faith critics have also warned that overturning the law would amount to conservative "judicial activism," saying that the dispute is only political. This is reductive reasoning. Laws obey the Constitution or they don't. The courts ought to defer to the will of lawmakers who pass bills and the Presidents who sign them, except when those bills violate the founding document.

As for respect of the democratic process, there are plenty of ordinary, perfectly constitutional ways the Obama Democrats could have reformed health care and achieved the same result. They could have raised taxes to fund national health care or to make direct cross-subsidy transfers to sick people. They chose not to avail themselves of those options because they'd be politically unpopular. The individual mandate was in that sense a deliberate evasion of the accountability the Constitution's separation of powers is meant to protect.

Meanwhile, some on the right are treating this case as a libertarian seminar and rooting for the end of the New Deal precedents. But the Court need not abridge stare decisis and the plaintiffs are not asking it to do so. The Great Depression farmer in Wickard, Roscoe Filburn, was prohibited from growing wheat, and that ban, however unwise, could be reinstated today. Even during the New Deal the government never claimed that nonconsumers of wheat were affecting interstate wheat prices, or contemplated forcing everyone to buy wheat in order to do so.

The crux of the matter is that by arrogating to itself plenary police powers, the government crossed a line that Justice Anthony Kennedy drew in his Lopez concurrence. The "federal balance," he wrote, "is too essential a part of our constitutional structure and plays too vital a role in securing freedom for us to admit inability to intervene when one or the other level of government has tipped the scale too far."

The constitutional questions the Affordable Care Act poses are great, novel and grave, as much today as they were when they were first posed in an op-ed on these pages by the Washington lawyers David Rivkin and Lee Casey on September 18, 2009. The appellate circuits are split, as are legal experts of all interpretative persuasions.

The Obama Administration and its allies are already planning to attack the Court's credibility and legitimacy if it overturns the Affordable Care Act. They will claim it is a purely political decision, but this should not sway the Justices any more than should the law's unpopularity with the public.

The stakes are much larger than one law or one President. It is not an exaggeration to say that the Supreme Court's answers may constitute a hinge in the history of American liberty and limited and enumerated government. The Justices must decide if those principles still mean something.

If I were the Prince of Darkness I would want to engulf the whole earth in darkness.

I'd have a third of its real estate and four-fifths of its population, but I would not be happy until I had seized the ripest apple on the tree.

With the wisdom of a serpent, I would whispers to you as I whispered to Eve, "Do as you please."

To the young I would whisper "The Bible is a myth." I would convince them that "man created God," instead of the other way around. I would confide that "what is bad is good and what is good is square."

In the ears of the young married I would whisper that work is debasing, that cocktail parties are good for you. I would caution them not to be "extreme" in religion, in patriotism, in moral conduct.

And the old I would teach to pray - to say after me - "Our father which are in Washington."

I'd educate authors in how to make lurid literature exciting so that anything else would appear dull, uninteresting.

I'd infiltrate unions and urge more loafing, less work. Idle hands usually work for me.

I'd peddle narcotics to whom I could, I'd sell alcohol to ladies and gentlemen of distinction, I'd tranquilize the rest with pills.

If I were the Devil, I would encourage schools to refine young intellects, but neglect to discipline emotions; let those run wild.

I'd designate an atheist to front for me before the highest courts and I'd get preachers to say, "She's right."

With flattery and promises of power I would get the courts to vote against God and in favor of pornography.

Thus I would evict God from the courthouse, then from the schoolhouse, then from the Houses of Congress.

Then in his own churches I'd substitute psychology for religion and deify science.

If I were the Devil I'd take from those who have and give to those who wanted until I had killed the incentive of the ambitious. Then my police state would force everybody back to work.

Then I would separate families, putting children in uniform, women in coal mines and objectors in slave-labor camps.

If I were Satan I'd just keep doing what I'm doing and the whole world go to hell as sure as the Devil.

If I were the prince of darkness, I would want to engulf the whole world in darkness.

I'd have a third of its real estate and four-fifths of its population, but I would not be happy until I had seized the ripest apple on the tree - thee.

With the wisdom of a serpent, I would whisper to you as I whispered to Eve: "Do as you please."

To the young, I would whisper that the Bible is a myth. I would convince the children that man created God instead of the other way around. I'd confide that what's bad is good and what's good is square.

And the old, I would teach to pray after me, "Our Father, which are in Washington ..."

Then, I'd get organized, I'd educate authors in how to make lurid literature exciting so that anything else would appear dull and uninteresting.

I'd peddle narcotics to whom I could. I'd sell alcohol to ladies and gentlemen of distinction. I'd tranquilize the rest with pills.

If I were the devil, I'd soon have families at war with themselves, churches at war with themselves and nations at war with themselves until each, in its turn, was consumed.

And with promises of higher ratings, I'd have mesmerizing media fanning the flames.

If I were the devil, I would encourage schools to refine young intellect but neglect to discipline emotions. I'd tell teachers to let those students run wil. And before you knew it, you'd have drug-sniffing dogs and metal detectors at every schoolhouse door.

With a decade, I'd have prisons overflowing and judges promoting pornography. Soon, I would evict God from the courthouse and the schoolhouse and them from the houses of Congress.

In his own churches, I would substitute psychology for religion and deify science. I'd lure priests and pastors into misusing boys and girls and church money.

If I were the devil, I'd take from those who have and give to those who wanted until I had killed the incentive of the ambitious.

What'll you bet I couldn't get whole states to promote gambling as the way to get rich?

I'd convince the young that marriage is old-fashioned, that swinging is more fun and that what you see on television is the way to be.

And thus, I could undress you in public and lure you into bed with diseases for which there are no cures.

In other words, if I were the devil, I'd just keep right on doing what he's doing.

I am a special education teacher working with the most challenging students in my school district. I spend my professional life fighting for my students and against the odds they face for failure. You are a part of our community and here is what I have to say to you and your family:

Thank you for the payroll tax deduction-it does make a difference. Please keep fighting for all us middle-class Americans.

Thank Michelle for her hard work on the food pyramid, as it reflects how we should be working towards health and how we inspire our students to improve their health.

Thank you for demonstrating what American family values are really about-you and Michelle are role models in my mind.

Thank you for taking a stand and saying that you represent most of America rather than the top 1%.

Thank you for keeping your lovely daughters in school and out of the limelight-it is what they deserve.

Thank you for participating in the basketball bracket-I always come in last in my pool and I know it is too late to learn from you this year.

Thank you for the last four years of hope, not fear and hate. This is the gift I would like to bestow on my child.

Lastly, you are most welcome to come to my house for dinner if you have the time.

P.S. Hug your kids, as kids grow up fast and deserve every bit of love you can give them.

You don't know my telephone number, but I hope your staff is busy trying to find it. Ever since you called Sandra Fluke after Rush Limbaugh called her a slut, I figured I might be next. You explained to reporters you called her because you were thinking of your two daughters, Malia and Sasha. After all, you didn't want them to think it was okay for men to treat them that way:

"One of the things I want them to do as they get older is engage in issues they care about, even ones I may not agree with them on," you said. "I want them to be able to speak their mind in a civil and thoughtful way. And I don't want them attacked or called horrible names because they're being good citizens."

And I totally agree your kids should be able to speak their minds and engage the culture. I look forward to seeing what good things Malia and Sasha end up doing with their lives.

But here's why I'm a little surprised my phone hasn't rung. Your $1,000,000 donor Bill Maher has said reprehensible things about my family. He's made fun of my brother because of his Down's Syndrome. He's said I was "f--d so hard a baby fell out." (In a classy move, he did this while his producers put up the cover of my book, which tells about the forgiveness and redemption I've found in God after my past - very public - mistakes.)

If Maher talked about Malia and Sasha that way, you'd return his dirty money and the Secret Service would probably have to restrain you. After all, I've always felt you understood my plight more than most because your mom was a teenager. That's why you stood up for me when you were campaigning against Sen. McCain and my mom - you said vicious attacks on me should be off limits.

Yet I wonder if the Presidency has changed you. Now that you're in office, it seems you're only willing to defend certain women. You're only willing to take a moral stand when you know your liberal supporters will stand behind you.

What if you did something radical and wildly unpopular with your base and took a stand against the denigration of all women. even if they're just single moms? Even if they're Republicans?

I'm not expecting your SuperPAC to return the money. You're going to need every dime to hang on to your presidency. I'm not even really expecting a call. But would it be too much to expect a little consistency? After all, you're President of all Americans, not just the liberals.

I posted this link before, She-PAC, but just in case you did not see this great video before.

It's not actually about the First Daughter, per se, who according to serially vanishing stories has been vacationing with a group of friends in Mexico - a country for which the State Department just last month issued a new warning to all U.S. travelers.

It's about the judgment of the White House, which apparently deems there is "no vital news interest" to this story.

Let us set aside the obvious hypocrisy of a president who denounces the "1%" and calls for Americans to tighten their belts, while members of his own family summer on a Martha's Vineyard estate, spend Christmas beachside at Oahu, and travel for fun to the ski slopes of Colorado, the luxury suites of Marbella, and now, scenic spots in Mexico. If that is the image Obama wants to cultivate, or those are the family pleasures with which he wishes to balance the rigors of his presidency, so be it.

Let us set aside, for the moment, the queasy feeling it brings, reminiscent of the air-brushed politburo photos of Mao's China, to see news stories erased, one after another, at the behest of the White House. Doubtless there are security concerns here. Though, especially in the information age, it suggests an odd obliviousness to think that an optional holiday, entailing security concerns presumably serious enough to warrant erasing news stories, should not qualify as a legitimate story.

Let us even set aside the cost to taxpayers of dispatching Secret Service agents - reportedly, 25 of them - to Mexico, not for official White House business, not for something that clearly benefits belt-tightening U.S. taxpayers, but for the pleasure trip of a family member. There is a case to be made, persuasive or not, that the presidency should not be such a burden as to preclude whatever the first family can manage in the way of reasonable socializing and entertainment.

Let us also set aside any tut-tutting about parental discretion in letting teenagers travel to places under a travel warning from the State Department. The First Family is in a good position to weigh the risks to its members, and is doubtless well acquainted with the first-rate competence of the Secret Service to provide security, which, when factored into the equation, presumably goes far to lower the risk for the vacationing First Family member.

But that brings us to the risks faced by those traveling secret service agents - whether 25 in number, or whatever the precise total might be. Yes, their job is to protect the First Family, and that includes taking a bullet or laying down their lives, if need be, to ensure that not a hair on a First Head is harmed. We can expect to hear no complaints from the Secret Service. But those Secret Service agents quite likely have families, too. They have now been dispatched to do their job not within U.S. shores where American authorities have enormous powers to minimize the risks, nor in a place which the State Department at least regards as routinely secure for Americans to amuse themselves on spring breaks.

Instead, these Secret Service agents have been sent to provide security in Mexico, where the State Department warns that due to transnational criminal organizations, "crime and violence are serious problems throughout the country" including "homicide, gun battles, kidnapping, carjacking and highway robbery." State reports that "gun battles have occurred in broad daylight on streets and in other public venues, such as restaurants and clubs." Of particular concern are "kidnappings and disappearances throughout Mexico," with local police in some cases implicated. State adds that U.S. government personnel and their families "are prohibited from travel" to some of the most dangerous areas. And though the holiday destination reported in the vanishing new stories is not on the list of Mexican provinces totally taboo for personal travel of government personnel, State warns that in Mexico, "even if no advisories are in effect for a given state, crime and violence can occur anywhere."

Perhaps one way the White House is entitled to regard the Secret Service is that there should be no constraints on the risks its agents are asked to run, for whatever reason. Certainly if the president wants to visit Afghanistan (which he's done twice, on highly secured "surprise" visits, during his presidency), or go to Mexico on official business, it's appropriate that Secret Service agents are expected to go with him, and do their jobs, at higher risk, to protect him and any family members in tow. But - hoping that all goes safely and smoothly with this Mexican spring break, and trusting to the Secret Service to ensure the safety of members of the First Family, wherever they might go - may we ask, nonetheless, a question:

In the terrible event that State's warning proves relevant, and in the course of doing whatever it takes to provide security, any of those 25 or so American Secret Service agents are wounded or even killed in the line of fire, would the White House still consider the context a non-story? Would it be irrelevant that they had been asked to run such risks not to safeguard official business, but to enable a personal holiday trip to a place under a U.S. government travel warning? One need not quarrel over whether the White House, or anyone in it, is entitled to organize holiday trips to just about anywhere on the planet. But being entitled to do something does not necessarily mean it's a good idea to do it. Where's the sense of responsibility to those who serve? Where's the judgment?

The White House confirms that they tried to scrub the internet of all references to this vacation in Mexico.

Pond scum stinks. And so do the Obama administration's enormous, taxpayer-funded "investments" in politically connected biofuel companies. While the president embarks on a green rehabilitation tour this week to quell growing public outrage about big green boondoggles, the White House continues to cultivate a cozy algae racket.

Obama's promotion of algae as a fuel source at a campaign speech in Miami last month caught the nation's attention. But algae companies have been banking on administration support from Day One. In December 2008, the White House announced the nomination Steven Chu to head the Energy Department - and the CEO of Florida-based biofuels startup Algenol, Paul Woods, exulted to Time magazine: "You see this smile on my face? It's not going away. Everyone is really excited by this."

The next year, Woods and Algenol - dubbed "Obama's favorite algae company" by Forbes magazine - racked up $25 million in federal stimulus grants from Chu. Say cheese.

Another algae-based biofuels developer, Sapphire Energy, has absorbed $105 million in stimulus funds and loan guarantees even as doubts about the practicality, efficiency and viability of pond-scum fuels multiply. Sapphire's CEO, Jason Pyle, has donated exclusively to Democratic campaigns, candidates and committees.

One more prominent Energy Department recipient in the world of blue-green sludge: San Francisco-based Solazyme. The manufacturer of algae-based renewable fuels has scooped up more than $21 million in federal stimulus grants and contracts. Solazyme's ties to the White House and the Democratic establishment in Washington are myriad.

As blogger J.E. Dyer at HotAir.com reported in December, Solazyme's "strategic advisers" include TJ Glauthier - a member of the Obama presidential transition team who just happened to work "on the energy-sector portion of the 2009 stimulus bill."

Andrew Stiles of the Washington Free Beacon reports that "Solazyme officials including Glauthier have contributed at least $360,000 to Democrats since 2007."

Wait, that's not all. The head of Solazyme's Washington lobbying office is Drew Littman, former chief of staff for Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.). Littman's old pal, entrenched DC lobbyist and Obama appointee Michael Meehan, feted Littman earlier this year and bragged that "we couldn't be more thrilled to be working on a daily basis with Drew and the Solazyme team."

Thanks to one of President Obama's executive orders, Solazyme secured a $12 million contract with the US Navy to unload hundreds of thousands of gallons of biofuel - priced at an estimated four to seven times the normal cost of regular jet fuel.

This self-sustaining crony ecosystem, powered by administrative fiat and wealth redistribution, gives new meaning to the phrase "green crude."

The Hydra was a mythical swamp beast whose multiple heads grew back after being severed. Obamacare is a real Washington monster whose countless hidden bureaucracies keep sprouting forth even after they're rooted out. As soon as combatants lop off one of the law's unconstitutional agencies, another takes its place.

On Thursday, as the behemoth federal health care law marked its second anniversary, House Republicans repealed the infamous Independent Payment Advisory Board. The mother of all death panels, IPAB would have unprecedented authority over health care spending through a rogue board of 15 Medicare spending czars. The House repeal has a snowball's chance in hell of surviving the Senate. But IPAB's legality is being challenged in federal court by the conservative Arizona-based Goldwater Institute. And the more the public knows about these freedom-usurping, taxpayer-soaking institutions buried in the health care law the less they like it.

Seven House Democrats crossed the aisle to vote for the GOP majority rollback. Analysts on both sides of the political aisle have decried IPAB's complete lack of accountability and insulation from judicial review. Critical decisions about public and private health insurance payment rates would be freed from the normal administrative rules process - public notice, public comment, public review -- that governs every other federal commission in existence. Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., summed up bipartisan opposition: "IPAB embodies the very thing Americans fear most about ObamaCare -- unaccountable Washington bureaucrats meeting behind closed doors to make unilateral decisions that should be made by patients and their doctors."

The problem with piecemeal repeal is that for every old IPAB, there's a new, multibillion-dollar bureaucracy waiting in the Obamacare wings. Senate Republicans and fellow medical doctors Tom Coburn and John Barrasso point to a $10 billion entity called the "Innovation Center" that "would test innovative payment and service delivery models to reduce program expenditures under Medicare, Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP)."

According to a new Congressional Research Service analysis of this little known office to be operated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, there would be "no administrative or judicial review" of the director's payment experiments. Coburn and Barrasso explain that "(t)his means that the administrator of CMS is the sole individual in the entire federal government with the power to decide whether or not models tested negatively impact seniors' quality of care and meet the financial requirements spelled out in law."

This "innovation" super-czar would be allowed to tinker behind closed doors -- and then impose whatever experiments the "innovation center" chooses without any checks or balances on the methods or results. Moreover, at least two other sub-offices within CMS (subject to normal open meetings and open records rules) have already been tasked with researching payment and delivery models. Health care blogger Tevi Troy at NationalReview.com warns: "The 'innovation' center appears to be one more way in which the health-care law is going to interfere with the practice of medicine, and one that physicians should start paying more attention to."

It's not just physicians who need to pay attention. Every taxpayer has a stake. At the end of the month, this shadowy agency will start doling out $1 billion in grants to payment experiment groups and data-tracking system builders. Sounds like yet another pipeline for political payoffs and Chicago-style boodle that will result in less patient autonomy, fewer health care choices, more government intrusion and lower-quality care.

Final diagnosis: The Obamacare beast won't die until it's eradicated completely, root and branch.

1. LOCALIZE: Move Protest into neighborhoods and schools. "What people have been figuring out how to do is to move the protest into the neighborhoods, into the workplaces, into the schools." ~Piven

2. OCCUPY FORECLOSED HOMES AND FACTORIES: Broaden agenda to those most affected by the economic collapse.

"I think, in the end, it may turn out that evicting the occupations was the precipitant of expanding the movement, because the movement's agenda has broadened, and they're now experimenting with reoccupying foreclosed homes, for example, with ways of rallying to the defense of workers who are locked out or on strike."~Piven

3. RECRUIT YOUTH: Use the Universities and Professors as spearheads of Recruitment to broaden movement.

"And with the spring, I think there's going to be a lot of protest in the universities and the colleges. Young people are very responsive to the appeals of Occupy, to their cultural style."~Piven

4. ORGANIZE WITH LABOR: Further integration between Occupy and the traditional Unions, teamsters and community organizing, leftist organizations.

"And I think it's part of how we think about combining the horizontal energy and vision and passion of Occupy with the more vertical traditional community- and labor-based groups. And when the two of them meet, we'll get the combustion of saying Wall Street is drowning the country, and they're doing it in neighborhoods and communities all over."~Lerner

5. OCCUPY DEMOCRATS: Specifically target the DNC convention, being held at Bank Of America Arena, to make a point that this is not a partisan movement. In spite of the fact that scores of Democrats have praised the Occupy movement, including President Obama.

"And occupiers and community groups and environmentalists and people from all over the country are going to be coming to Charlotte. And in a way, I think we can think about it as the first convention."~Lerner

It used to be that liberals are the most ardent advocates of free speech. The ACLU is in business to promote speech, or so they say.

But now the far-left is a primary source of censorship in America. Simply put, they do not want to hear opposing points of view. Enter the vicious Media Matters outfit which is in business of demonizing anyone with whom they disagree. As you may know Media Matters is heavily funded by far-left zealots like George Soros and they are dishonest to the core.

Last week we showed you a clip they used of me analyzing gas prices only they cut out the part where I criticize Republicans trying to persuade folks that I'm being unfair to President Obama. That "Talking Points" is available on BillOReilly.com and proves beyond any doubt that Media Matters has no integrity whatsoever.

Their latest campaign is against Rush Limbaugh. Media Matters is spending about $100,000 to run radio ads targeting stations that carry Mr. Limbaugh.

PROGRESSIVE AD: Local station, WLS, broadcasts a radio host who repeatedly attacked a female student for no other reason than her participation in a public debate about women's health. WLS shouldn't talk about women this way. Our community deserves better than this.

O'REILLY: Now, a Limbaugh spokesman has issued a statement, quote: "These Media Matters mobs bear simple message "Renounce our enemies or become one of them." They barrage small business with threats until they cancel their advertising", unquote.

Media Matters was somewhat successful in damaging Glenn Beck's brand although he is prospering right now on the net. Emboldened by that, they are going after Limbaugh who is target number one for liberal America.

There is something very fascist about all of this. Shut down your opposition, don't let them speak. Punish people who support them. In every totalitarian state in the world that is tactic number one. Silence the opposition.

Last week "Talking Points" suggested to the Media Research Center, a conservative group, that they re-think their call for some MSNBC people to be fired. The point is the same. Silencing those with whom you disagree does not help the country. The marketplace should handle it. Nobody has to listen to Rush Limbaugh or to MSNBC and in the latter case, few do.

Unless an opinion is violent, or slanderous, it should be allowed. There's no question Mr. Limbaugh got hurt and he has apologized for his Sandra Fluke comments. Also, no question that the marketplace dictated that apology and that's the way things should work in a free society.

Up-to-date economic changes since Obama took office; this should have been boiled down into a graph, but this document has all of the numbers and all of the sources for these numbers.

From the Nextgen Journal: Paul Ryan Wants To Kill Your Grandmother (And Four Other Liberal Lies)

More links between Obama as he is coming up in the world. These are links between him and very radical anti-Israeli Rabbi. From the Washington Free Beacon.

NBC: Kardashian flour-bombed is 'Terrifying'; GOP candidates glitter-bombed is a campaign gaffe.

ABC Touts the 'message' Tyler Clementi case sends, even if it goes 'Beyond the facts' It is not about news or information; it is about getting you to think in a certain way.

Story on a Muslim marriage guide with such handy tidbits as, a wife cannot leave "his house without his permission," and that his wife must "fulfil his desires" and "not allow herself to be untidy . but should beautify herself for him ." In one of my own rent houses, I became un unwitting accomplis to such a marriage. The home came with burglar bars which were not only designed to keep people out, but, it would be difficult for a person to exit without the key. When working over there doing some outside work, I asked if I could use the bathroom, and the wife confessed that she did not have a key to the burglar bars. Anyway, when it comes to punishment, this same book advises that a husband may scold his wife, "beat by hand or stick," withhold money from her or "pull (her) by the ears," but should "refrain from beating her excessively."

NPR 'Listener Advocate' Slams Listeners Offended by Pope Jokes; They're Like Muslim Extremists??

In case you are interested, here is a very tortured explanation as to why it is okay to like Bill Maher and still condemn Rush Limbaugh.

RUSH: I've never seen anything like it, folks. I've never seen this kind of a mid-course correction. I don't even think I saw one like this from Bill Clinton. Suddenly the biggest believer in the Keystone pipeline (or half of it), the biggest believer in drilling for oil, the biggest believer in expanding domestic oil supplies happens to be Barack Obama! Who just two days ago (and every day prior to that) hated the very idea and was trying to dissuade anybody from believing that drilling for oil or pipelining oil would make any difference whatsoever in the gasoline price.

I'm gonna wade through this mess and try to make the complex understandable. Well, I'm not gonna "try;" I'm gonna do it. That's what we do here at the EIB Network. I'll tell you, Obama's campaign staff at the Associated Press never sleep. I don't think they even take naps. The latest from the Associated Press. (I'm gonna give you sort of a headline rundown here, and then we'll get into the specifics.) Headline from the Associated Press: "Obama Defends Handling of Keystone as He Puts Another Oil Pipeline on Fast Track." He's the obstacle! The American people know he's the obstacle! The media know that the people know that Obama's the obstacle.

Yet here's the AP! Folks, if I were you, I wouldn't believe a single word that I read in any AP story. I simply would regard it... I already do this. If I were you, I would regard every AP story, particularly this year, as nothing more than a propaganda piece for the reelection of Barack Obama. This is laughable: "Obama Defends Handling of Keystone as He Puts Another Oil Pipeline on Fast Track." Another! Another? When was the first one? He opposes Keystone! And what he did today -- we told you yesterday this is coming -- is already happening.

It was already happening, this particular portion of the pipeline. This is breathtaking! "Obama Defends Handling of Keystone as He Puts Another Oil Pipeline on Fast Track." There's a story also in the Stack here today that the American people... No. I take it back. The CNN story is "Rising Gas Prices Aren't as Bad as You Think." Do you ever remember seeing a story like that when gas prices were going up with any previous president, including Jimmy Carter? Did you ever see we had gasoline prices going up, and here's CNN: Well, you know, it's not as bad as you think. Could be worse! You could live in a different part of the world.

Ed Henry at Fox News has noted that Obama has suddenly dropped the phrase "There is no silver bullet" on lowering the cost of gasoline from his campaign speeches. And he was using that as recently as this week, "There's no silver bullet." Now all of a sudden: "Obama Defends Handling of Keystone as He Puts Another Oil Pipeline on Fast Track." What an amazing guy! Here's another one from AP: "Breaking News! US President Obama Directs Federal Agencies to Fast Track Oil Pipeline from Oklahoma to Texas." Now, maybe I'm mistaken (that's doubtful), but has there been a huge problem getting oil from Oklahoma all the way to Texas?

What a mean feat our courageous president's pulled off here! Do you realize that before he acted there wasn't any way to get oil from Oklahoma to Texas, even though the states border each other? For those of you in Rio Linda, the northern border of Texas brushes up against Oklahoma and vice-a-versa. But up until Barack Obama saw the light, we had no way of getting oil from Oklahoma to Texas. "US President Obama Directs Federal Agencies to Fast Track Oil Pipeline from Oklahoma to Texas." It's the same story as the previous headline, "Obama Defends Handling..." It's the same event, two different stories: "Obama Defends Handling of Keystone as He Puts Another..." (laughing)

I think I'm gonna go insane. I look at this, and I imagine you reading this stuff on your own, and I hope and I pray that you have the same reaction to this that I do, that it's just patently absurd. It's not even news. This isn't even journalism. This is not even a pretense of news or journalism. This is just pure campaign support propaganda from a new organization called the Associated Press. Speaking of Obama's energy tour... He's on an energy tour out there. Anybody remember that Obama doubled the Department of Energy budget in 2009? He gave 'em untold sums of money via the stimulus bill. What did they do with all that money? Can anybody else tell us what they did?

Apart from giving loans to Obama's donors that soon went bankrupt, like Solyndra and other solar people, what happened? Oh! Steve Chu told us we should paint our roofs white. Remember that? To deflect the heat, we should paint our roofs white. That advice was probably worth a couple billions right there. So I guess now what we've got here is Obama lobbied for the Keystone pipeline before he lobbied against it. Now, there's a poll out. You might be wondering, what is this all about? Oh, I hold here right in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers the polling data from Gallup. And this is why Obama's on his energy tour this week. This is why he's in Oklahoma (laughing) "putting another key oil pipeline on fast track."

I'm going nuts. I'm officially going crazy here with this: "Americans who say they are very closely following news about the Keystone XL pipeline overwhelmingly think the government should approve the building of it, 78% to 22%." Seventy-eight to 22% the American people paying attention to this want the Keystone pipeline. And overall, 44% of Democrats want the Keystone pipeline. "A solid majority of Americans think the U.S. government should approve of building the Keystone XL pipeline, while 29% think it should not. Republicans are almost twice as likely as Democrats to want the government to approve the oil pipeline."

And that is why Obama is in Oklahoma. That is why, ladies and gentlemen, there is this so-called

fast track to have Obama complete this pipeline. "Americans who say they are very closely following news about the Keystone XL pipeline overwhelmingly think the government should approve the building of it, 78% to 22%." I don't know what percentage of Americans are "closely following" it. It's a ten-page poll here, and I just got it, so I just pulled out the highlights in order to explain all of this.

From the Nevada Journal in Boulder City, Nevada: "President Obama will tout investments in 'renewable' energy Wednesday at the local Copper Mountain Solar 1 plant, although the plant has only five full-time employees," and it's gonna be bankrupt by the time he finishes.

"The plant, owned by San Diego-based energy company Sempra, was built in late 2010 at a cost of $141 million. Funding included $42 million in federal-government tax credits and $12 million in tax-rebate commitments from the state of Nevada. Construction of the plant involved over 300 part-time jobs, but currently only five full-time employees operate the plant, a Sempra spokeswoman confirmed. That comes out to $10.8 million in tax-dollar subsidies per employee." That's what it cost at a solar plant. Obama was there yesterday as part of the energy tour. Back in 2011 -- in fact, just a little over a year ago -- Bill Clinton, from The Politico:

"Former President Bill Clinton said Friday that delays in offshore oil and gas drilling permits are 'ridiculous' at a time when the economy is still rebuilding, according to attendees at" some conference. "Clinton spoke on a panel with former President George W. Bush that was closed to the media. Video of their moderated talk was ... also prohibited." Apparently Bill Clinton doesn't read the newspapers, 'cause if he did he would know that drilling in the US does not lower the gas price. One year ago Bill Clinton was out there saying we've gotta get these permits up and we've gotta start drilling for oil because it will affect the gas price.

Ever since then, Obama has been saying, "There's no magic bullet! There's no silver bullet! You can't go out and drill for oil. That's not gonna do a thing to the gas price," and the media repeated it. There's a story on that. There's a huge story from some news agency today that drilling for oil over the last 30 years has not mattered a whit to the price of gasoline. I mean, they've pulled out all the stops. Bye-bye, fact! Bye-bye, curiosity! Bye-bye, serving your customers (i.e., the consumers of news). This is full-fledged, whatever Barack Obama says is now going to be backed up with publications disguised as news stories. Nothing more than that.

"Obama Defends Handling of Keystone as He Puts Another Oil Pipeline on Fast Track." Folks, I told you yesterday, this part of the pipeline from Oklahoma to Texas was already in the works. It's already done. It's already approved. Obama is doing nothing but showing up and glomming onto it, but this is not completing the Keystone pipeline. The Keystone pipeline goes to Canada. Obama is still opposed and has put the brakes on and is not permitting oil from Canada to get to Oklahoma so that it can get to Texas. There is no approval of the Keystone pipeline.

And that's what makes this AP headline so incompetent. It's journalistic malpractice. "Another Oil Pipeline on Fast Track." The Keystone pipeline has not been approved. He still opposes it. This is a pure political move to satisfy 78% of the American people who want it done. So Obama's doing nothing, and he's got a very supportive news media out there trying to convince you and everybody else that he just today authorized the Keystone pipeline. That's what's going on. It's as dishonest as possible. It's as dishonest and misleading as possible.

There's another little piece of information you need to know: Obama couldn't stop this leg that he's out taking credit for. It was in the works. It was happening. He's simply there glomming on to what was already happening. And furthermore, he couldn't stop it if he wanted to. And he did want to! This is totally out of his control. It's is such... I don't know how to describe this. This so brazen. This is a slap in the face of the truth and of decency. It's just brazen. If you want to hear, I have some sound bites of Obama in Cushing, Oklahoma.

We may listen to a couple of those, 'cause that'll just add a little fuel to this fire.

RUSH: Obama could not stop this pipeline if he wanted to. This leg of the pipeline from Oklahoma to Texas was in the works. He doesn't have the authority to stop it. Not that that would stop him, by the way, but he doesn't have the authority to stop it. According to the US House Energy and Commerce Committee, there is only one category of pipeline that requires presidential approval. That's an international pipeline like the originally proposed version of Keystone XL, which would be from Canada (which, for those of you in Rio Linda, would make it international) down through Nebraska and other Northern Plains states into Oklahoma and then into Texas.

So Obama could not have stopped this leg of the Keystone pipeline if he'd wanted to.

He's simply there... There's no other way to say it. He's just glomming onto it. It's like trying to be present when the Ten Commandments are given at the burning bush and claiming you wrote 'em. I'm almost speechless here with the absolute brazenness of this. I wouldn't be surprised if Obama says, "I've laid more pipe than any president except Bill Clinton." That's where we're heading with this. The guy who steadfastly opposes drilling for oil and has not issued any permits to speak of, particularly since Gulf oil drilling moratorium -- the guy who has made his name opposing the Keystone pipeline -- is now out taking credit for it.

And he's trying to make people believe in this country that the entire Keystone pipeline, today, has just been authorized, and oil is going to be flowing through it. Never has it been more obvious that without the media, Barack Obama would not have a chance. Without the media, Barack Obama would be a national joke. But he has the media. He has the largest propaganda arm that a president has ever had. He has people willing to lie. He has people willing to publish his lies. He has people willing to work with him against the best interests of the people of this country. I've been alive 61 years, and I have never seen anything like this. I'm telling you.

There's always been media bias, and the media were sickeningly slavish to things like Camelot, to JFK and Clinton. But this is unprecedented. I know they carried the water for Clinton for a while with Monica Lewinsky and that whole event, but even they drew some lines there. This has no boundaries. Whatever it takes. The only thing that a president can stop, again, is an international pipeline. In fact, the Keystone XL Pipeline is the first international pipeline that has ever been denied by a president. Keystone is the first international pipeline ever denied!

And he was denying it as recently as Monday. And he was criticizing it as recently as Tuesday. And he was telling people that there was no silver bullet or magic bullet to any new oil in this country however we got it, via drilling or via pipeline. And in a space of less than 48 hours, we have had the equivalent of an atheist become the pope on oil and on energy. The Keystone XL Pipeline is the first time in history a presidential permit for a cross-border pipeline has ever been denied.

And that's why I think it isn't gonna be long before Obama starts bragging about how much pipe he's laid. He'll start comparing himself to other presidents. "I've laid more pipe than any president except Bill Clinton." He's gotta throw Clinton in there for credibility. Obama does not control this segment of the pipeline's permitting process. It also says something about the guy's character. He's gonna go out there and take credit for this when people like him would not allow it if they had the chance? Hardworking, private sector Americans have done this to try to overcome the obstacle that he represents and now he's out taking credit for their work?

RUSH: "In his speech this morning, Obama said, 'Producing more oil and gas here at home will continue to be a critical part of our energy strategy.'" Will continue to be! This is the guy standing in the way of oil and gas production. This is the guy throwing money away on wind and solar and electric cars. I saw a story earlier this week: "Will the Volt be Obama's Edsel?" And then I thought: How many people reading that story know what the Edsel is? It "will continue to be a critical part of our energy strategy"? Obama is "producing more oil and gas here at home"?

This is what the Democrats do, folks. This is what the left does. There is no moral core. There's no concern for truth and there's no concern for being caught lying, because Obama knows that his number one support group's not gonna call him on it. The only people who are gonna call him on it are people like me, and they're not worried about that. They've got the AP on their side. They've got the Washington Post, the New York Times. They don't care. But what it indicates is the good news about this: They know how deep the trouble Obama is in. They know how deep it is. They know the problems he's got.

We have this: 78% of the people following this want the Keystone pipeline, and Obama's in the 22% opposing it. And his 22% counts for a hundred percent because he can stop it, and he has stopped it. So now he's out trying to make this little connection between Oklahoma and Texas appear to be the whole thing having been authorized. They're in deep trouble. They have the support, when you boil it all down, of no more than 30% of people in this country. When you boil it all down, Obama and the Democrats have no more than 30%. Why do they get more votes than that? Well, once again: How many people do you think are going to hear this stuff today and think it's true?

He lies. The lie is carried forward. It's amplified, and it's codified. It has the stamp of journalistic approval on it. It's "true." So we're left to hope that people figure this out on their own, and therein resides the fear that people have for the future of the country. It's wrapped up right in that whole concept: Will a majority of the American people see through this and understand what we're dealing with, not just on the oil-gas pipeline issue, but Obama and policy after policy after policy? Health care, you name it. Will the American people finally wake up? Are they waking up? Will they see through it? The 2010 election results say, "Yes, they do."

Let's go to the sound bites. Let's listen to some of this. It's unbelievable, folks. Incumbent in you listening to this is you must understand that for Obama to go out to Cushing, Oklahoma, and say what he said today -- for the AP to write the headlines I shared with you -- they must believe that you're stupid. They are counting on your ignorance. They're counting on it. They believe you're stupid anyway. Obama, leftists, Democrats have contempt for self-reliant average Americans anyway. They go into this thinking you're stupid. But you have to understand that for him to say the things you're gonna hear him say, the foundation for this is that he believes you're so stupid and so gullible and so ignorant that you will believe what he says about this.

OBAMA: Today I'm directing my administration to cut through the red tape, break through the bureaucrat hurdles, and make this project a priority, to go ahead and get it done. Now, you wouldn't know all this from listenin' to the television set.

RUSH: Stop the tape. I'm sorry, but I can't let this thing go without stopping it. Cue it back up to the top. "I'm directing my administration to cut through the red tape..." There isn't any. To the extent that there's red tape in the Keystone pipeline, it's his. "I'm directing my administration to cut through the red tape, break through the bureaucrat hurdles..." Who puts them up? Who are the bureaucrats? They're not private sector people. Bureaucrats, by definition, work for the government. They're his! "I'm directing my administration to cut through the red tape, break through the bureaucrat hurdles, and make this project a priority..." It already was. It's almost already done.

OBAMA: Today I'm directing my administration to cut through the red tape, break through the bureaucrat hurdles and make this project a priority, to go ahead and get it done. Now, you wouldn't know all it is from listenin' to the television set. This whole issue of the Keystone pipeline has generated, obviously, a lot of controversy and a lot of politics. Our experts said that we needed a certain amount of time to review the project. Unfortunately, Congress decided they wanted their own timeline. Not the company, not the experts. But members of Congress who decided this might be a fun political issue, decided to try to intervene and make it impossible for us to make an informed decision.

RUSH: Now, that's the northern half of the pipeline, again. Remember, what he's out there taking credit for today was already in the pipeline. It was already in the works. He can't stop this, and he didn't have anything to do with approving it. There is no Keystone pipeline, folks. The leg from Canada to the United States is still in limbo. He has not authorized it, and he won't until after he's reelected. Now it's "blame this on Congress." They wanted it done within a certain amount of time! It's just all... Every word of this... Whew! I have to find a different way of dealing with this. I have to find a different way of trying to persuade people. I have been doing this for 23 years and these people, they keep getting away with it. Here's the next bite. Got three more to go. Here's the next one.

OBAMA: Today we're making this new pipeline from Cushing to the Gulf a priority. So the southern leg of it we're makin' a priority and we're going to go ahead and get that done. The northern portion of it, we're gonna have to review properly to make sure that the health and safety of the American people are protected. That's common sense.

RUSH: Yeah, these pipelines rupture every day, you know. I mean, you heard about the pipeline ruptured yesterday, right? It killed a bunch of snail darters. It seeped onto Highway 70 in Missouri! You shoulda seen the traffic accident. All the cars that slipped off the highway. These pipelines, they rupture every day. You know that, don't you? We gotta be protecting the people and their safety and health. 'Cause what's in that pipe? Oil! That dirty, rotten filthy stuff. Oil. We can't have that. (muttering)

OBAMA: If you guys are talkin' to your friends, your neighbors, your coworkers, your aunts or uncles and they're wonderin' what's going on in terms of oil production, you just tell 'em: Anybody who suggests that somehow we're suppressin' domestic oil production isn't paying attention. I want everybody to understand this: We use 20% of the world's oil; we only produce 2% of the world's oil. Even if we opened up every inch of the country, if I put a -- an oil rig on the South Lawn; if we had one right next to the Washington Monument; even if we drilled every little bit of this great country of ours -- we'd still have to buy the rest of our needs from someplace else if we keep on usin' the same amount of energy, the same amount of oil.

RUSH: None of that is true, folks. We've had documented stories with the facts, this week and last and in previous days, on domestic oil production, and here they are again. Domestic oil production on privately owned land where Big Oil has its rigs and smaller oil companies have their rigs, that oil production is way up. Oil production on federally owned lands is near an all-time low because that's what he has ordered. In addition there are no permits being granted for private sector firms to go drill for, find, explore, whatever, oil on federally owned lands. The third thing is, with shale oil and its discoveries in the Northern Plains of this country, we now have more oil.

This 2% has been blown out of the water, too. We now have, accessible to us, more oil than Saudi Arabia. We now have, accessible to us, more than the Saudis! I had the news from the Investor's Business Daily; they got it from the Oil Institute. We have enough oil in the lower 48 -- well, let's count Alaska in this -- to provide enough oil at current annual consumption rates to power this country for over 200 years. That's how much oil we have. We wouldn't have to buy any. We wouldn't have to import any. He's very sensitive to this charge about oil production being down, and he ought to be because it is down on land that he has control of.

(impression) "You guys talking to your friends and neighbors, coworkers, and you tell 'em anybody suggests somehow we're suppressing domestic oil, they don't pay attention!" See, Mr. President, your problem is we are paying attention, and we know how you're making all this up. We know where the oil is being produced in this country and where it's being stifled by you. Come on, folks. You know that just two days ago, and every day prior to that, this man has opposed oil with every fiber of his existence. He's opposed getting more of it; he's opposed finding more of it. He is opposed to using it.

Now with a Gallup poll showing 78% of the American people paying close attention to this want the Keystone pipeline, guess who's making it happen? Well, he isn't. That's right. Our brave, courageous president -- up against such mean people as Rush Limbaugh -- is overcoming profound obstacles put in his way by mean people like Rush Limbaugh. Yep! That's what he's fighting. He's doing it for you. I tell you, his logic here is just laughable. More oil won't help? Or it will? Which is it? This is shifting now by the hour! On the one hand, he says, "We can get all the oil that we have, and we would still have to buy some."

On the other hand, he's out there trying to take credit for the Keystone pipeline 'cause we need more oil. If all the oil we have would not change the equation, why? What's the whole point of this? More oil won't help, but he's gotta go out to Oklahoma to take credit for getting more oil. How is this possible? Now, according to the Heritage Foundation, "Oil and gas production on federal lands under Obama is down by more than 40% compared to ten years ago. And the year 2010 had the lowest number of onshore leases issued since 1984. And the Obama administration has held only one offshore lease sale in 2011." None this year.

One more bite. Nah, let's go to the break. That would be the responsible thing to do. We have sponsors who want their messages heard.

RUSH: Rising gasoline prices: They are not as bad as you think. That's coming up. One more bite. This is Obama. Gas prices have nothing to do with oil. That's the last bite, the last sound bite we have. The gas price had nothing to do with oil. He's out there okaying what he wants you to think is the whole Keystone pipeline. We could get all the oil we have in this country, and it wouldn't matter because we'd still have to buy some from somewhere else. But yet we're still gotta go do this. We've got to go get this oil pipeline going. Except we aren't. We're not gonna really complete it, but this Oklahoma-to-Texas thing, which is already happening, I'm out there and I'm gonna take credit for it.

Even though I couldn't stop it. Oh, I'd love to. It'd happen without me, but I'm happy to go glom onto this. I'm gonna insert myself. I'm gonna make sure that I get the credit for this when I nothing to do with it. This is Obama. I'm still gonna invest in all this wind and solar stuff. I'm still gonna give tax credits and taxpayer subsidies to stuff that you don't want to buy so you'll buy it. The Keystone pipeline could generate up to 20,000 jobs. I'm not interested in that right now 'cause I gotta keep my base happy, and they don't want that 'cause they hate oil. So I have to hate oil to get the votes of my base, so I'm moving heaven and earth today to make you think that I alone am seeing to it that oil gets from Oklahoma to Texas 'cause we desperately need it.

OBAMA: The price of oil will still be set by the global market, and that means every time there's tensions that rise in the Middle East, which is what's happening right now, so will the price of gas. The main reason the gas prices are high right now is because people are worried about what's happening with Iran. It doesn't have to do with domestic oil production. It has to do with the oil markets lookin' and sayin', "You know what? If something happens, there could be trouble and so we're gonna price oil higher just in case."

RUSH: So why, then, are you doing anything? The way I heard that, we don't have any to say about it. We have no control over the price of oil or gas. There's nothing we can do. So what's going on here? "The price of oil will still be set by the global market." Well, this is global oil added to the supply. CNNMoney.com: "Gas prices are once again dominating the national debate. But despite rhetoric, high gas prices aren't hurting as much as they used to." No! Did you know that? "In 1981, when oil prices spiked following the Iranian Revolution, gasoline represented nearly 5% of the nation's spending, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

"In 2011, only 3.7% of spending went to gas, even though prices averaged at their highest level ever that year." Now, even if that's true, all this really suggests is that the price of everything else -- housing, food and so forth -- has gone up and through the roof since 1981 because we all know the cost of living hasn't gone down, has it? If it has, I would like to know. We know the cost of living hasn't gone down, yet supposedly gasoline represented only 3.7% of the nation's spending as opposed to 5% back in 1981. If the cost of living isn't going down, then the price of something else has to have been going way up, right? Housing, food, other things. "In addition to spending less, we're driving more than ever, 90% more than compared to the early eighties." Folks, I guess CNN says: Don't worry about the gas price. It's not nearly as bad as you think. Doesn't really matter as much anymore.

And the only reason why is that there's a Democrat president who needs to be reelected.

RUSH: CNN says in this story, folks, that people are only mad about the price of gasoline because they're being encouraged to get mad by some in the media, political pollsters, and because Republicans are exploiting the issue. Honest to God! After exploiting nonexistent rising gas prices all during the 2000s, they now claim you're only mad about gasoline prices because Republicans are exploiting it and the media is exposing it.

RUSH: How many of you've heard about the trials and tribulations of Rosie O'Donnell with Oprah? Rosie O'Donnell is a classic illustration of a point that I've made frequently about liberals, and that is failure is a resume enhancement. You fail as a Democrat -- politician or whatever -- fail as a liberal, and you get promoted. It's almost like your failure has made you a victim, particularly if it's in the private sector. Then your failure is because of evil conservatives who haven't signed on to whatever it is you're doing. Or stupid, idiotic Southerners who refuse to watch your show, or what have you. But you gave it your best shot. You tried. You put Rosie on the air.

Even though she's yet to have a successful talk show, Oprah hires her and puts her out there. It bombs. It bombs big time. They put Rosie on at seven p.m. on Oprah's network, the OWN network. O-W-N: Oprah Winfrey Network. Nobody does a talk show at seven o'clock, and nobody's gonna watch a talk show at seven o'clock on a network nobody knows exists. But everybody thinks in media that Oprah is gold, so all you gotta do is have a story on Entertainment Tonight and in the New York Post TV section that Oprah has a network, and the world will know. Then you announce on Entertainment Tonight and the New York Post TV section that you've hired Rosie. And then the world will know and they will flock to the network and the show.

So now they've fired Rosie. Rosie wanted to move her show from Chicago where Oprah's network is to New York. They said "no." But they didn't just fire Rosie. "Oprah Winfrey has cut 30 full-time employees from its struggling OWN Network, a move that represents a loss of nearly a fifth of its workforce. After the latest round of cuts, about 90 people remain on the OWN payroll, down from 150 employees at its peak. 'It is difficult to make tough business decisions that affect people's lives,' Winfrey, OWN's CEO and chief creative officer said in a written statement Monday. 'But the economics of a start-up cable network just don't work with the cost structure that was in place."

No, Oprah, they don't work with Rosie O'Donnell. They were not talking mass appeal here!

But this is not my point. I'm just giving you facts. Just giving you data. My point is: Why is Oprah laying off workers? Why is Oprah ignoring the Obama way? Why is Oprah ignoring Keynesian-inspired deficit spending to spur growth at her network? Why isn't Oprah out saying, "You know what? I'm gonna spend and spend! I'm gonna keep hiring! Even though my network's not making a dime and nobody's watching Rosie, I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna hire even more people. I have camera-ready jobs here. I got control-board-ready jobs here. I got stage-manager-ready jobs here. Uh, I'm just gonna keep hiring. I'm gonna keep spending. I'm going to do it the Obama way. I'm gonna spend money I don't have, and that's how I'm gonna grow my network."

Why didn't she do exactly what the president she endorsed has been doing? This really disappoints me. I thought all good liberals understood that when times get tough -- when growth is stymied, when jobs are needed -- the last thing you do is cut costs. The last thing you do is fire people. No, when your business is tanking just like your country, what do you do? You borrow more money and you spend more money and then you give it to union people! Why couldn't Oprah do that? Has she not learned anything from watching Obama? This is called "investing in the future." You deficit spend. Camera-ready jobs in Oprah's case.

And Oprah decided, "You know what? Obama's way won't work for me. If I could spend Obama's money doing this, I would do it, but I have to spend my own. So I'm not going to deficit spend for more camera-ready jobs. I'm not gonna give Rosie a raise. I'm not gonna go out and hire three more hosts to do three more shows and expand my network like Obama would, because I'm not gonna spend my own money irresponsibly."

So in the real world -- in the real world of the private sector -- Oprah Winfrey would no more do what Barack Obama's doing with this country's economy with her own company than anybody else would. She's doing what must be done: Cutting costs, canceling failed shows, getting rid of employees that she can't afford who aren't doing any work. 'Cause that's the real world. No, Oprah knows. She lives in the real world.

He's in a fantasy make-believe world. When audience share is down, when you're up against hard times, what would Obama do? Double down on spending! Hire more people! Triple down on spending! Go borrow more money! Hire your way out of this, Oprah. Do it the Obama way! It worked wonders for him, didn't it? Why aren't you deficit spending? Are you afraid of a little bankruptcy, Oprah? Come on, hire up! Watch your ratings go through the roof. You haven't busted enough budgets yet to see results. Spend, baby, spend! You're not spending enough money. That's the problem with your network.

originalRUSH: The Associated Press: "A bill designed to enact President Barack Obama's plan for a 'Buffett Rule' tax on the wealthy would rake in just $31 billion over the next 11 years..." The Buffett Rule. You've heard Obama tout this. We have to close the deficit! We have to reduce the deficit and the national debt, and the rich are not paying their fair share! So Warren Buffett stepped into the slime with an idea, and Obama picked up on it and called it The Buffett Rule. And basically it's a surcharge, a surtax on people earning more than $1 million a year. It's a new tax above and beyond the already existing tax rate for those people.

And it would rake in -- dadelut dadelut dadelut dadelut! -- $31 billion over the next 11 years. This is "an estimate by Congress' official tax analysts obtained by The Associated Press. That figure would be a drop in the bucket of the over $7 trillion in federal budget deficits projected during that period." This from AP, folks! AP, unknowingly here, is killing the Buffett Rule. Over the next 11 years, we're gonna have $7 trillion in federal budget deficits, and the solution -- the Buffett Rule -- will raise $31 billion. Not even a thimbleful. "It is also miniscule compared to the many hundreds of billions it would cost to repeal the alternative minimum tax, which Obama's budget last month said he would replace with the Buffett Rule tax."

So another Obama lie's been put to bed, replacing the AMT with the Buffett Rule loses money.

RUSH: A massive, long story at the top of the fold on the front page of the Washington Post yesterday on last summer's very feisty debt limit battle. It is a story. It's very long. No way would I even recommend you read the whole thing. Well, I might recommend you read the whole thing. I wouldn't read it to you; I couldn't. It prints out to ten pages. Front page Washington Post. And what this story points out is that Obama purposely, intentionally lied to the American people when he told us that the Republicans were not interested in raising taxes, that they wanted a cuts-only solution to the debt crisis. It turns out that John Boehner and Eric Cantor had indeed offered $808 billion in tax increases. Obama lied. He just flat-out lied to the American people about the Republicans and their position in the debt negotiations. He flat-out lied.

That's on the front page of the Washington Post. You have to read awhile to get to that in the story. There are a couple-three other things that were momentous about it as well. So that's yesterday, front page Washington Post. This story paints Harry Reid and Pelosi as practically irrelevant. Where everybody thinks they're part of the problem, part of the obstacles problem, this story makes it clear that they're just up there to do Obama's bidding but that Obama doesn't know how to negotiate. This story points out that Obama's incompetent when he negotiates because he lies. He told Boehner and he told the country that the Republicans were not willing to compromise in an area, and they were all along.

Boehner said, "I don't know what to do about this." By the way, I had a meeting with Boehner not long before that. This was last summer sometime, and I had a meeting with Boehner here at the EIB Southern Command some months before that. I just casually asked him what it was like working with Harry Reid. And he said, "You know, it'd surprise you. If it were just Reid and me we could get a deal done." Of course I thought he was off. "Oh, gosh. Don't tell me he really believes this." He did. He said, "If it was just Reid and me we'd get a deal." He said, "Harry gets it." I said, "Oh my. (groan)" This story says that. Or pretty close to it.

This story in the front page of the Washington Post pretty much says that Boehner and Reid could and did work together, and that Obama is the whole problem. Obama was campaigning. Obama had to give his base something. Obama, the whole debt limit thing was a phony baloney, plastic banana, good-time rock 'n' roller diversion. Yeah, he wanted the debt sealing raised but he could not afford for his base, lunatic fringe base, to see him as compromising at all. This is the bunch that talks about "compromise." This is the bunch (along with the Republican establishment, too,) heralding the beauties and the wonders of compromise.

And here was Obama making it look like he was willing to compromise. He was the stone wall, and he lied in a national address to the nation! He lied in a prime-time address to the nation. And don't take my word for it if you don't want to. It's the Washington Post.

RUSH: Now, this debt deal. I'm gonna spend a little bit more time on this. I'm not gonna get into the whole nine-page story. But don't forget: Obama wanted to be able to run against a do-nothing Congress. There was never -- and I remember telling everybody in this audience back then -- a time that I thought this. Let me take a break, and I'll come back and tell you what I believe. The Republicans held all the cards. It was Obama that needed the deal. It was Obama that wants to spend the money beyond the debt limit. They held all the cards. But they believe they gotta compromise. "The American people," their consultants told them, "think we gotta compromise." So they tried to compromise and Obama still stuck it to 'em, all because he had to be able to run against a do-nothing Congress. There was no way he was gonna ever agree to a deal. That was the point.

RUSH: Now, this debt deal. Folks, it is profound what the Washington Post reported. And the fact is, I don't think MSNBC has talked about it. The Politico has a little bit of a piece on it, but I remember Mark Halperin, TIME Magazine, got suspended from MSNBC for couple days because he said that Obama had acted like a male body part. On this debt deal. He said, yeah, "Obama acted like a d---." Male body part. Halperin's point was that Obama didn't want any grand bargain. It was all just posturing. Halperin has been vindicated now. Obama was acting that way.

And this is what I said. It was June 30th, after playing the clip from MSNBC, Halperin's remark. I said, "Now, after they stopped giggling on the Scarborough show, Halperin made a good point. Obama does not want a deal. He really doesn't want a deal. He wants the chaos. He wants all this to continue and that's what generates happiness for him." He cannot permit a deal with Congress when he's setting up a campaign this year to run against a do-nothing Congress. There was never any way he was gonna deal. And what happened was Boehner said, "Okay, I'll give you some tax increases," and Obama panicked. "Oh, my God! Okay," then he went out and lied to the country. That's all he knew to do.

RUSH: Now, folks, I want to add another interesting ingredient to this debt deal. Now that I'm not so compressed for time, let's start at the beginning. Washington Post, huge front-page story. It's by Peter Wallsten and two other Drive-By reporters. This Wallsten guy apparently has a very solid reputation. That might be at risk now since I've praised him, but that's the breaks of the game. It can happen to Drive-By journalists. If I praise them they lose favor with all of their friends. But so be it. Wallsten and two others write this huge piece on the front page of the Washington Post.

Which, if you slog through it (and you don't have to because I did), you learn that Obama intentionally lied to the American people in a prime-time address announcing the failure of the negotiations to expand the debt limit last summer. What this story points out that is that the Obama lie was telling the American people that the Republicans were demanding cuts to the budget only as a means of expanding the debt limit. "We'll give you the debt limit increase, but you have to have some budget cuts." Obama lied to the American people and said that was the intractable Republican position. When, in fact, Boehner and Eric Cantor had offered tax increases in the $800 billion range.

Now, to take you back nine months ago, I thought it was Obama who needed the deal. I thought the Republicans held all the cards. I thought that Boehner and the boys could hold out and demand anything. It's Obama whose job is spending money. It's Obama who needs the debt limit increased so he can continue to buy votes, expand government, whatever his plan is. What Boehner and the boys decided to do was essentially call his bluff. He was setting up to run against a do-nothing Congress. They said, "Okay, here you go." Obama rejected it and then addressed the nation and lied. He told the American people that the Republicans were intractable, inflexible.

It was their way or the highway. They wouldn't give an inch. When in fact they had given Obama -- this is the key -- everything he wanted. And that's what he couldn't afford. The trick that they played on Obama was giving him what he wanted. They forced Obama to reject that, then go do a national address -- a prime-time address to the nation -- and lie about it. Mark Halperin goes on MSNBC and calls Obama a male body part and gets suspended for a couple days for this, but ends up being vindicated. This story also, if you slog through it, illustrates that Obama is incompetent as a negotiator. What this story says is that he's profoundly arrogant and afraid at the same time.

And also the story says that he doesn't know nearly what he thinks he knows. He's... I'll use the word "ignorant." Arrogant and ignorant. Arrogant condescension is the way Obama's portrayed in this story in dealing with the Republicans. Also it points out that Reid and Pelosi were nonfactors. They took the heat but they had to follow Obama's lead. So not only is he incompetent, he's dishonest. Once he got what he asked for he moved the goalposts and did it in a prime-time address to the nation. But the story didn't end there. From the New York Times, this is a story in July, July 23rd.

"Debt Ceiling Costs Collapse as Boehner Walks Out." Then in August is when the country debt ceiling had its credit rating downgraded, August of 2011. We lost our AAA credit rating because the debt ceiling fell through, and we now know (thanks to the Washington Post) that it fell through because Obama refused to accept it. It had everything in it he wanted and that was the problem. His bluff was called. I think toward the end of the negotiations, Boehner and the Republicans just decided, "Okay, let's see what happens," because it was proving impossible to negotiate with him. Every day that they negotiated, Boehner and Cantor would hear things that had not been agreed to.

They would listen to Obama recount things that had not been discussed, basically making it up every day as a negotiating tactic to keep them off balance. Nobody would know this to this day. We'd only have speculation. Well, Boehner and the guys know it but had they made a big deal out of it, they would have just been accused of being crybabies and whiners. So, I don't know the purpose of the story. I don't know why the Washington Post ran this thing yesterday, and I don't know why they spent so much time on it.

I don't know why the Washington Post basically lets anybody who reads this story know that Obama was the single problem here; that he's incompetent, arrogant and he lied to the nation in a prime-time address. I don't know why they're running this story. But, folks, I'm just gonna tell you here that there's abject panic in the White House. And again, things can turn on a dime in the business of politics. Republicans could screw up tomorrow (that's quite easy) and Obama would be back on a wave that nobody could stop him.

But as of right now, the polling data continues to just be devastating, including this piece at TheHill.com today which I shared with you in the previous half hour of the program.

RUSH: Okay, that's why. That's why. I'm sitting here trying to figure out why the Washington Post would run such a story. Folks, it's profound. I'm overusing that word. It's remarkable because of its length. It's a front-page story on Sunday, the most read issue of the week. Front page, top of the fold, right in the center of the page. Well, it turns out that the New York Times is going to do a story on the same subject. Now, I don't know why. I don't know why all of a sudden the debt deal from last summer has become such a matter of great interest. Bob Woodward is going to write a book on these debt negotiations. I don't know why this has become such a big deal.

You know, we could hope. It was really a debacle. It's a disaster. There's a debt limit for a reason. Limit! The way Obama's playing along (hell, all of Washington plays along) is the limit exists to be broken, the limit exists to be exceeded. Why even have a debt limit? But with this, this was... I don't know how often presidents have intentionally lied, like this, in prime-time addresses to the American people. This was brazen. Because, again, Boehner and Cantor had given Obama everything he wanted, and he panicked. He rejected it because he didn't want a deal. He wanted the Republicans as the ongoing enemy, the Republicans as the obstacles to good government, the Republicans as obstacles to welfare checks going out.

Remember Social Security checks? Remember all that? Obama said the government was going to shut down. The Republicans were shutting it down. That's what he wanted was everybody thinking the Republicans gonna shut down the government. They gave him everything he wanted. So you've got the New York Times coming out with a story and Woodward writing a book about it. But Obama didn't just lie. He referred to the Republicans as "hostage-takers." Joe Biden, I think (my memory, I'm blessed with a good one) even said the Republicans were acting like "terrorists" during all of this. But it was Obama that called the congressional negotiators "hostage-takers" in the Bush tax cut debate December 2010 in the lame duck session.

That's what he called them "hostage-takers." But Biden did call them "terrorists" last August during the debt ceiling negotiations. Biden said the Republicans were "acting like terrorists" when they gave Obama everything he wanted. The New York Times story is gonna be in their magazine. They're waiting eight months to do this? I'm gonna find a reason. I'm gonna find out what the answer to this question is. I'm fascinated. Why now? They could forget this. Nobody would ever go back to this. Maybe that's it. Maybe somebody's planning on it.

Conservative Review
Issue #221	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	March 25, 2012