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.

And if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, always remember: We do not struggle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places (Eph. 6:12). If you do not believe in Jesus Christ, let me encourage you to do so: Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life; no man comes to the Father but through Me.” “Believe in Me and you will have eternal life. Believe not, and the wrath of God will abide on you.” (John 14:6 3:16).

The Coalition of African American Pastors has demanded that President Obama meet with the group to address his stance on same-sex marriage. So far, the White House has refused to acknowledge the group's request.

FactCheck.org, a moderately liberal group, gave an anti-Romney Obama ad 4 Pinocchios. So, Stephanie Cutter, of the Obama campaign, sent them a 6 page letter straightening them out. They have put out a new commercial, claiming the same things that a fact checking organization said were false.

GM stock prices have fallen below $20, which increases taxpayer loss to as high as $35 billion. Remember, GM won’t pay any taxes for 10 years (if memory serves).

The United Nations released a report this week proposing mechanisms including a global carbon tax, currency transaction tax and a "billionaire's tax," to finance development and global needs such as combating climate change. Already, I have heard one liberal support this, saying that we need to have some mechanism available to get those billionaires when move from one country to the next for tax reasons. Here’s one quick way to recognize a liberal group: they want your money and they don’t care how they get it.

The Planned Parenthood Federation of America announced on Friday that it is a sponsor of the 2012 ESSENCE Music Festival this weekend in New Orleans, one of the largest African-American entertainment and cultural events in the U.S. Planned Parenthood makes a huge amount of money from the government by aborting Black babies and often sets up shop in minority neighborhoods. Founder Margaret Sanger was a pro-eugenics gal.

Score another for President Obama’s “Betting on America” agenda. The U.S. government is spending $20 million to "help clean energy projects in Africa get started." Those projects include wind farms and solar panels, as per Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s announcement at the recent Rio +20 Conference in Brazil.

Nevada Geothermal Power (NGP), a geothermal energy company with a $98.5 million loan guarantee from the Obama administration looks like it may go belly up.

Continuing with this theme, the Department of Energy recently awarded $25 million to a French company, Soitec, that posted net losses of about $70 million last year, and whose solar division is particularly troubled financially.

For the second time, the Obama administration has associated pro-life groups with terrorists. Now, if you happen to be a Muslim screaming “allah akbar” killing soldiers, we need to step back and make sure that this is not some everyday workplace violence incident.

Bill McKibben, the author of "Fight Global Warming Now" and the founder of a group of global warming enthusiasts, cancelled an ice sculpture exhibit for the Washington D.C. area. That was to be a sculpture of the iced words, “HOAX” to make fun of global warming deniers. However, he feared that, even in the triple digit heat, the sculpture might not melt quickly enough to make his point, in part because some people just have limited attention spans.

Federal immigration authorities have begun granting tentative legal status to illegal immigrants under President Obama's deportation halt - and in some cases are even ignoring the administration's eligibility rules to stop deportations for those who shouldn't qualify. Although the President set up a 5 year mark, people in the country for a shorter amount of time are being granted legal status.

Virginia high school bows to ACLU demands, and removes 10 Commandments display. This is the case where a judge first suggested that the first 4 commandments only be removed.

A small, very liberal town in Maryland, during their 4^th of July parade, reenacts the Romney hair-cutting incident.

A family-owned restaurant in Pennsylvania is under a state discrimination investigation for offering a ten percent discount for diners who present a church bulletin on Sundays.

A voter in Amherst, Ohio, offered to arm wrestle President Obama in exchange for his vote. The president responded he'd prefer a basketball game instead.

I, like most people, have always assumed the stuff about Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings was true. After all, PBS’s Bill Moyer’s cited it as such for the 4^th of July. However, there is a book out that begs to differ.

A Sri Lankan youth employed as a domestic aid has been arrested in Saudi Arabia for worshiping a statue of the Buddha, which is considered an offence according to Shariah law.

A suicide bomber in Iraq detonated an explosives-rigged belt at a gathering of his own family in western Iraq, killing his pro-government cousin and six other relatives.

A 30-year-old woman and two of her children were beheaded overnight in Afghanistan's east, police said, in what appeared to be the latest in a rapidly growing trend of so-called honour killings.

A man Afghan officials say is a member of the Taliban shot dead a woman accused of adultery in front of a crowd near Kabul, a video obtained by Reuters showed, a sign that the austere Islamist group dictates law even near the Afghan capital. In the three-minute video, a turban-clad man approaches a woman kneeling in the dirt and shoots her five times at close range with an automatic rifle, to cheers of jubilation from the 150 or so men watching in a village in Parwan province.

Iran declared that it can destroy nearby U.S. military bases and strike Israel within minutes of an attack on the Islamic Republic, reflecting tensions over Iran's suspect nuclear program.

Demonstration in Pakistan (above); note the shoes. Every news station broadcast the shoes being thrown at Bush. Will we see this on the news? I doubt it.

Egypt: Muslim Brotherhood launches cinema project to counter claims they're extremists, video featured shows Palestinian child talking about killing Jews.

You would think that this is the setup for an SNL skit: A new Egyptian satellite television channel featuring only women wearing a traditional Muslim face-covering will be unveiled later this month. But it’s real.

The zombie action game Resident Evil 5 has at one point in the game world apparently lost a copy of the Koran, the holy book of Islam, on the ground. Some Muslims are openly calling for death (I guess for the makers or distributers of the game).

The very first fatwa to appear by Egypt's highest fatwa council addresses - not social, political, or economic issues in Egypt - but rather frogs. Specifically, it bans Muslims from hunting and killing frogs to sell to those nations that dine on the amphibians. As the fatwa explains, according to Islam's prophet Muhammad as recorded in a hadith, a frog's "croaking is praise [to Allah]." You would think I am just making this stuff up.

An Islamic cleric residing in Europe said that women should not be close to bananas or cucumbers, in order to avoid any "sexual thoughts."

President Obama to a young-looking grandmother: "Let me tell you, first of all. I love nurses. Can I tell you. You look great. This is a good looking woman." Personally, I don’t find this offensive at all, but if Mitt Romney said this, it would be front page news, along with cries of sexism.

DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz: "I'm pretty happy about 28 straight months of job growth in the private sector."

Vice President Joe Biden: "[Romney believes] somehow, that those so-called job creators will make everything okay for the rest of us," Biden said at the National Education Association conference. "We believe that the way to build this country is the way we always have, from the middle out . . . [to] invest in the things that have always made our economy grow: innovation, research, development, infrastructure, and education." Again proving that, even though Obama is a terrible president, he is not the worst president that we could have.

President Obama, explaining how bailouts are his vision for our economy: "Let's talk about my theory, my vision. When the American auto industry was on the brink of collapse, and more than 1 million jobs were on the line, one in eight jobs in Ohio depends on the auto industry - not just the folks in the auto plants, not just the union workers, but all those suppliers up and down the chain - every restaurant outside the plant, every store, every school, depends on those jobs in that industry." I think that most businesses, after having $20 billion+ pumped into them (and not paid back) could be in reasonable shape right now as well.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka of the poor June jobs report: "The cruel reality is Mitt Romney and his Republican allies in Congress are willing to sabotage the recovery in the hope of scoring political points against the President." Someone needs to tell Trumka that Romney is a private citizen, at this point in time, running for an elective position. I suspect that President Obama has just a teeny bit more affect on the economy than Mitt Romney does.

President Obama on the poor June jobs report: "That overall means that businesses have creatd 4.4 million jobs over the past 28 months. That's a step in the right direction. . . But we can't be satisfied because our goal was never to keep on working to get back to where we were in 2007." Whoops, did he just say, get back to the George W. Bush economy?

Vice President Joe Biden: "The very wealthy are just as noble and patriotic as the middle class. But nothing has been asked of them in this horrendous recession. And it's time to just act."

President Obama: "I'll work with anybody who wants to work with me to continue to improve our health care system and our health care laws, but the law I passed is here to stay."

President Obama: "You have to take responsibility, and if you don't, you're going to be penalized for it, and that's the right thing to do. I have consistently kept my promise not to raise taxes on people [making] under $250,000 a year." So, government-mandated stuff will cost you more money, but that is not a tax.

WH press secretary Jay Carney: “...it is simply a fallacy to say that this [penalty] is a broad-based tax. That's not what the opinion stated that was authored by the Chief Justice. The Affordable Care Act is constitutional under Congress's taxing authority, but this is clearly a penalty that affects less than 1 percent of the American population. And it is a penalty you only pay as a matter of choice, if you're in that 1 percent and you can afford health insurance but choose not to.”

Nancy Pelosi, explaining why Obamacare is not a huge new tax: “It’s a penalty which comes under the tax code.”

Jane Lubchenco, who heads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: "Many people around the world are beginning to appreciate that climate change is under way, that it's having consequences that are playing out in real time and, in the United States at least, we are seeing more and more examples of extreme weather and extreme climate-related events."

Jonathan Overpeck, professor of geosciences and atmospheric sciences at the University of Arizona: "This is what global warming looks like at the regional or personal level. The extra heat increases the odds of worse heat waves, droughts, storms and wildfire. This is certainly what I and many other climate scientists have been warning about."

The United States Department of Agriculture explains on its "Outreach Toolkits" page: "Our common goal is to increase participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Our purpose is to ensure that those going through difficult times can feed their families healthy, nutritious food. By working as a team, we can accomplish these goals." Or, to put it more bluntly, 1 in 7 Americans receiving foodstamps is just not enough.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka: “Let's call this right-wing ‘freedom’ catch phrase what it really is: a grossly political strategy to dupe the public, which holds the word ‘freedom’ as something sacred.” He further warned that people might opt out of social security, out of a union or out of paying union dues.

President Obama, when asked about reaching across the aisle: "I suspect that most people...would acknowledge that I've tried real hard, and we just haven't gotten the kind of willingness on the part of the Republicans to engage on a whole range of issues that, I wish had happened, and, part of what I think needs to happen in this election is the voters once again have to send a message, `We want common sense ideas. We don't folks who are just saying no to everything.' Even stuff, traditionally [they] were in favor of. ."

Joe Biden to the National Education Association: "Gov. Romney is a good man. . I assume he cares as much about America and the education system as I do. But the fact of the matter is, we have a fundamentally different view. He doesn't think that you all know much about how to educate. His allies characterize you as not caring about students, but caring about yourselves."

Obama campaign guy David Axelrod: "What happened after Nixon is we as a country said we need a higher level of disclosure. Governor Romney and his campaign have stone-walled and are trying to turn the clock back 50 years on transparency and disclosure."

Michelle Obama: "To anyone who says that church is no place to talk about these issues, you tell them there is no place better - no place better."

Obama: "I remember my favorite vacation when I was a kid, traveling with my mom and my grandma and my sister, and we traveled the country on Greyhound buses, railroads. And once in a while we'd rent a car, not that often, and stay at Howard Johnsons."

Obama campaign guy, Jim Messina: “One hundred million [collected by the Romney campaing] is alarming enough, but it doesn't even include the millions pouring into pro-Romney super PACs - or the fact that, unlike four years ago, it's perfectly legal for the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, Karl Rove, and anonymous billionaires to funnel unlimited money into attacking President Obama in critical battleground states.”

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz: "I'd really like to see Mitt Romney release more than one year of tax records because there's been disturbing reports recently that he's got a . . . secretive Bermuda corporation that no one knows anything about, investment in the Caymans . . . he's got a Swiss bank account...Americans need to ask themselves: why does an American businessman need a Swiss bank account and secretive investments like that?" If I had enough money on hand, I’d have money in other currencies and in foreign banks as well. I will guarantee that Democrat donor George Soros has money stashed all over the place.

Jumping Joe Biden, asking for money:

“Want to have a cup of coffee sometime soon?

I'm sure we'll have a lot to talk about, but mainly I just want to say thanks for helping out.

Make a donation of $3 or whatever you can to grow this grassroots campaign, and be automatically entered for the chance to come hang out - flight, hotel, and coffee on us. You can even bring a guest.”

Russian Alexey Pushkov, chairman of the international affairs committee of the State Duma, and a Putin ally: "We don't think that for us Romney will be an easy partner. We think that Romney will be, on the rhetorical side, a replay of the Bush administration...If he is serious about this, I'm afraid he may choose the neocon-type people. . . In the first year of his presidency, we may have a full-scale crisis."

Posted on BarackObama.com: "I grew up on a plantation in the heart of Klan territory: Lexington, Mississippi, in the 1950s. Emmett Till was killed 35 miles away from where I lived. He was fourteen years old at the time and so was I.” This goes on for awhile, mostly about the right to vote; but no mention is made of the KKK being made up of Democrats.

Chris Rock tweet: “Happy white peoples independence day the slaves weren't free but I'm sure they enjoyed fireworks”

Former Politico write Joe Williams, of his being fired from Politico: "It's the schoolyard bully concept. They're in the business of gathering scalps. They're in the business of pushing independent organizations to their point of view or at least to having to react to their point of view...I think the right has such an agenda here ... that it's impossible for this to be an isolated case." Somehow, right wing conservative media

and organizations caused him to be fired. One of his tweets included the words “Either Ann Romney meant Mitt is flaccid or that when we “unzip him” we’ll find out he’s a dick.” That sounds pretty normal for a news guy, right?

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, when asked if all of the fires in the United States were linked to global warming: "You have to look at climate change over a period of years, not just one summer. You could always have one abnormal summer. But when you see one after another after another then you can see, yeah, there's a pattern here."

NBC Nightly News correspondent Anne Thompson: "Leading some to question if this wildfire season is worse because of climate change."

AP headline in Yahoo News: “Poll: Election winner won't affect economy much”

AP headline and sub-headline: “Most Doubt President Affects Economy” “Poll: Half doubt next president will alter economy”

The Atlantic Wireheadline: “Voters Think the Election Won't Affect The Economy”

If it is a Democratic incumbent, and the gas prices are high and the economy sucks, well, then, the President really does not have much effect on either one of these. However, if this were an incumbent Republican, there would be economic stories featuring the words great depression in the first few paragraphs of many of their stories, even if the economy is rosy.

Norah O'Donnell (NPR?): "...while the president's on a bus, Romney's been on a boat, photographed while on vacation with his family in New Hampshire, and facing criticism from his own party."

Kristin A. Lee of New York Daily News: "...as Mitt Romney continued a family getaway at his multi-million dollar New Hampshire compound on Friday, President Obama recalled riding on Greyhound buses and staying at Howard Johnson hotels on his own childhood vacations." The actual vacations that the President and his First Lady have made apparently were not germane to this story. The fact that the Romney’s paid for their own vacations is probably not important either.

Washington Post’s "In the Loop" columnist: "Summer's in full swing, and unless your family is rather Romney-esque, there's a chance you'll be spending some time in one of the country's hundreds of national parks."

ABC News's Emily Friedman: "...just a few hours after telling reporters the jobs report today was a 'kick in the gut' for Americans, Mitt Romney returned to his vacation, driving his high-power speedboat, filled to the brim with his kids and grandkids, to a nearby home for a dip in Lake Winnipesaukee." In case this is too subtle for you, we have the lousy jobs’ numbers being closely associated with Mitt Romney going on vacation. In the Obama Media Complex, it is just as likely to see an association between Mitt Romney and the jobs’ numbers as President Obama and these jobs’ numbers.

The AP: “If you want a glimpse of some of the worst of global warming, scientists suggest taking a look at U.S. weather in recent weeks. Horrendous wildfires. Oppressive heat waves. Devastating droughts. Flooding from giant deluges. And a powerful freak wind storm called a derecho. These are the kinds of extremes climate scientists have predicted will come with climate change.”

The Washington Post: “No one predicted fires like the current ones, but years ago climate scientists warned state and federal officials that they could start seeing early springs, more hot and dry weather, and frequent and perhaps severe droughts.”

Paula Faris (ABC news) on gas prices going down: “This is great news...And, Amy, the best news, it might drop another 50 cents by Halloween, just in time for the election.”

Lucy Lawless, Xena Princess Warrior, Global Warming Expert, Eco-warrior: "The scientists have been screaming about this for 15 years, and of late, it's unanimous - there's only a few wackos who deny climate change"

Actor Morgan Freeman: "First thing that always pops into my head regarding our president is that all of the people who are setting up this barrier for him . . . they just conveniently forget that Barack had a mama, and she was white - very white American, Kansas, middle of America. There was no argument about who he is or what he is. America's first black president hasn't arisen yet. He's not America's first black president - he's America's first mixed-race president."

President Obama in 2010 of Abound Solar: "Abound Solar Manufacturing,,,will manufacture advanced solar panels at two new plants, creating more than 2,000 construction jobs and 1,500 permanent jobs. A Colorado plant is already underway, and an Indiana plant will be built in what's now an empty Chrysler factory. When fully operational, these plants will produce millions of state-of-the-art solar panels each year. Already, I've seen the payoff from these investments." Shuttered factories are "humming with new workers...rolling up their sleeves to help America win the race for the clean energy economy." Two years later, things aren't looking so good. The company, which was owned by a well-connected top Democratic donor, has declared bankruptcy and is laying off workers. Taxpayers are potentially on the hook for $70 million in funds drawn from the loan guarantee. Abound Solar is now under investigation by the House.

Anita Dunn, then-White House communications director, of Fox News: "We're going to treat them the way we would treat an opponent. As they are undertaking a war against Barack Obama and the White House, we don't need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave."

Candidate Obama running for Senator in 2004, and complaining that 315,000 jobs created under the Bush administration and a 5.6% unemployment rate was good enough: "After three dismal years of job-loss, we all welcome encouraging statistics. But for most Americans, the health of our economy is measured in a different and more personal way: If I lose my job, where will I find one that pays as well and offers real benefits? Can I afford health-care coverage on my own, or the cost of sending my children to college? Will I ever be able to save and retire with dignity and security? These are the questions I hear hardworking people asking. For them, the basic rewards of a middle-class life, rewards that we once took for granted, have become an elusive dream."

Thomas Santa Lucia professor at Amherst, 2009: “One hundred fifty years from now, historians may rate Obama the second best president ever. Lincoln is likely to always be number one. Not even Lincoln, however, has had a more "meteoric rise" than the 44th president-elect. Indeed, it is unprecedented.”

A South Florida representative to the Democratic National Committee and friend to Debbi Wasserman Schultz, from a series of leaked emails: "The illegal . occupation [of Palestine] must end... Slavery was ended. Apartheid was ended, and so this occupation must also end. Code Pink is promoting PEACE and FREEDOM. Get on board...By supporting Israeli occupation with U.S. foreign military aid, we are all complicit and guilty of their crimes against humanity...The continued Israeli occupation of Palestine is ugly, on moral, ethical, religious, and legal grounds, and no amount of marketing will cover up this ugliness. What possible justification you have for continuing this unholy occupation is beyond my understanding."

Stephanie Miller @obamasbestfan: “@billmaher In this country EVERYTHING is a crap shoot with the GOP in control! Wish sum1 would chew their faces off!!!!”

Stephanie Miller @obamasbestfan: @billmaher the GOP has proven anyone can hatef__k anything!!!”

Stephanie Miller @obamasbestfan: “I'll be like Pres. Obama any day rather than those GOP test tube projects gone wrong they are why ABORTION is legal!!”

Stephanie Miller tweet: “Has the GOP all drank the kool aid??? Too bad it wasn't the Jim Jones special!!!”

Stephanie Miller tweet: “better than those GOP vomit buckets Not 1 of them have a wrking head above their shoulders unfort. the 1 btwn the legs seem to wrk fine”

Stephanie Miller is somewhat of an emotional supporter of president Obama, featured on the Obama-Biden election site.

MicCheckWallStreet's website (an Occupy Wall Street group) asking for donations of money so they can throw it out of a window: "Every dollar you donate is guaranteed to be thrown off a building and is tax deductible, what more could you ask for?!" Oh, I don’t know, maybe something that is not so blatantly stupid?

Ansar Dine spokesman Sanda Abu Mohamed on the destruction of historically significant sites in Mali: "We're going to destroy everything before we apply Sharia in this city."

Rev. William Owens, the president of CAAP (the Coalition of African-American Pastors): "By embracing gay marriage, President Obama is leading the country down an immoral path. The Black Church has always been the conscience of America, and today we are calling on black pastors and black Christians to withhold support from President Obama until he corrects course."

CAAP letter to Obama and Holder: "President Obama is the fulfillment of our dreams for our sons. And he has broken our hearts by using his power and position to endorse as a civil right something that is simply wrong. . . Some things are bigger than the next election."

Liz Marlantes of the Christian Science Monitor on Obamacare: “[Obamacare] has been a tricky issue for the Obama White House. Any time you’ve got the White House coming out and saying, ‘We want to get back and talk about the economy,’ you know it’s a bad issue for them.”

Legal immigrant Igor: “I’m living the American dream now. American is the best country in the world. You guys just don’t really know how blessed you are.”

Former Office of Management and Budget Director James Nussle: "Recovery? Recovery? Seriously? ...And Obama's in Ohio right now trying to explain this to a bunch of diners. No way! This doesn't compute to anybody out there. There's no recovery."

CBS’s Mark Knoller tweet: Pres Obama says his accountant says he can afford to pay a little more in taxes and that Romney "can sure pay a little more." I think that is pretty much sums up the Obama economic philosophy.

Mark Knoller tweet: “Unemployment rates: adult men 7.8%; adult women 7.4%; teenagers 23.7%; whites 7.4%; blacks 14.4%; Hispanics 11.0%. Asians 6.3%.”

Mark Knoller tweet: Pres Obama again tells supporters "the other side" will spend more money than ever and rain ads down on them saying "it's all my fault."

Former documentary filmmaker Erick Allen Bell: "The liberal media, which I didn't believe existed before this - I thought that was invented by Rush Limbaugh - there is a liberal media. And they do have a bias. They're not interested in this story. I wrongly thought that the opposition to the mosque was about evangelicals wanting to maintain the home court advantage and just not wanting another religion to have such a big facility in their town. Sure enough, there is no such thing as radical Islam - it doesn't exist. Islam is radical. Muslims, fortunately, in America mostly - not radical. But Islam is radical to the core." Bell originally set out to make a film about the construction of a large mosque in Tennessee. He was going to reveal the religious intolerance of southern evangelicals but, as he pursued this subject further, his original intent was upended and what he discovered about radical Islam while making the film forced him to reconsider his preconceptions.

Jonas Max Farris, centrist liberal economist on Fox News: “We can’t have millionaires leaving our country to avoid taxes.”

Black dude: “Because of political correctness, I am called an African-American; I don’t know s___ about Africa.”

Wolf Blitzer: "The Solicitor General tells the Supreme Court representing the Obama administration it is in fact a tax, it’ll be administered by the IRS, it’ll be collected on April 15^th; why can't you acknowledge that it is in fact a tax?"

Charles Krauthammer: “Obama has to defend the policies he's instituted. Five trillion dollars of debt added leaving us with a 1.7 percent economic expansion. That is a disaster. I think, yes, the Romney argument is not lies. The argument is—“

Krauthammer: “—you conducted a Keynesian experiment - here's the argument - and it did not succeed, because it sprinkled all this money on programs, crony capitalism and government jobs, which is not the key to growth, and that's the major distinction between the policies of the Left and the Right, Democrats and Conservatives.”

Mark Shields, PBS: “Well we do all of this equal time of who's at fault, I just point out one thing: George Herbert Walker Bush dared to raise taxes in 1991. Since that action, 21 years, Republicans have not voted for a single broad-based tax increase, and that's become the theology of the party, the ideology of the party, the definition of the party, and that is irresponsible.”

CBS’s Jeff Glor: “David, you keep calling Mitt Romney the 'outsourcer-in-chief'. We heard what the President said on the trail, indicating that he sent jobs overseas. Fact Check, as you know, looked at this, found no evidence that Mitt Romney, while he was still running Bain Capital shipped American jobs overseas. Is it fair to keep those ads on the air?”

David Axelrod: “Yeah, it absolutely is. First of all, those ads are based on reporting -- assiduous reporting, by the Washington Post, based on documents from the securities and exchange commission. So, we take issue with that particular fact check. The other issue that's in contention is Governor Romney keeps contending that he was not involved with Bain Capital after 1999, and, in fact, he remained as the chief executive and sole owner until 2001, and documents reflect that as well. So he -- you know, he can't run on his record and run from his record at the same time. And we're not going to allow him to do that.”

Glor: David, last night, you said that Mitt Romney was the most secretive candidate since Richard Nixon. You said this to CBS News Radio. I think that would strike a lot of people as extreme. Do you stand by those comments?

Axelrod: “Oh, I absolutely do. Listen, you mentioned the $100 million that Mitt Romney raised. You know, he's the first presidential candidate since that time -- in recent years, Republicans and Democrats have all revealed who's raising money for them - the so-called bundlers. You have no idea, as we sit here, who is raising this money for Mitt Romney. He's the first candidate, Republican or Democrat, who hasn't released a series of years of tax returns. His father was a pioneer in this, when he ran for president, and said, you have to release multiple years or else, people can hide some of what they're doing. We just learned the other day, Jeff, from the Associated Press that Governor Romney has this Bermuda business, and he transferred it to his wife's ownership the day before he became governor of Massachusetts, so he wouldn't have to put it on an ethics form.

This is the most secretive candidate since Richard Nixon. What happened after Nixon was, we, as a country, said we need a higher level of disclosure, so people know who their candidates are, what their entanglements are and we can make judgments on it. Governor Romney and his campaign have stonewalled, and they're trying to turn the clock back 50 years on transparency and disclosure. So I absolutely stand by it, and the real question is, you know, is the news media going to press him on it? And I know that Jan Crawford had an interview with him the other day, and she had a very brief time with him. But I'd like to see those questions asked of him.”

Host: “So many businessmen and others have said that the message has become one of class warfare, attacking the rich, attacking people who make a profit, people who make jobs. Why is that that tone has been set that people believe that this is a class war?”

Valerie Jarrett, presidential aid: “Well, they may be watching one particular network.”

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs in 2010: “at strictly political events we would not use [the presidential seal].”

An Obama campaign official 2012: "it's common practice for sitting presidents to use the presidential seal at campaign events when they are running for re-election."

CNN interviewer: “One of the side arguments [made to the Supreme Court], kind of like the back-up argument, was that it was a tax.”

Obama campaign national press secretary Ben LaBolt: "It never referred to it as a tax; it said that it was a penalty." Which is simply not true.

Democrat Rep. Andre Carson: "America will never tap into educational innovation and ingenuity without looking at the model that we have in our madrassas, in our schools, where innovation is encouraged, where the foundation is the Quran. And that model that we are pushing in some of our schools meets the multiple needs of students."

Carson, when these remarks became public: “My remarks at ICNA call attention to the fact that faith-based schools throughout this country have excelled because of innovative instructional methods and a willingness to engage different learning styles - whether visual, auditory, or kinesthetic. While I do not believe that any particular faith should be the foundation of our public schools, it is important that we take note of the instructional tools these schools utilize to empower their young people. Christian, Jewish, and Islamic schools have experienced notable success by casting off a one-size-fits-all approach to education, and this is a model we must replicate. Having attended a parochial elementary school myself, I've seen these successes first hand. If we are going to take American education to the next level, we must expand successful models and implement the practices that will enable success for our students.”

David Axelrod tweet: “Romney meets w/Murdoch last week, which world only learned from Rupert's tweet. How long does media let Mitt get away w/out pool coverage?”

Mark Knoller tweet: “Same might be asked of @davidaxelrod why press barred from 25 Obama Campaign fundraisers so far this year.”

Allen West: “When you go back and you read the documents, the Declaration of Independence, the full declaration, the full Constitution, you'll understand limited government, you'll understand fiscal responsibility, you'll understand individual sovereignty, free markets . . . strong national defense. But there are people on the other side, and you can call them whatever you wish, you can call it Communism, Progressivism, Socialism, Marxism, or Statism. . . They believe in creating and expanding an entitlement or welfare state.”

Edward Klein, who wrote The Amateur: “It is the hallmark of a political amateur to ignore the advice of wise men and women who tell him what he doesn't want to hear and, instead, embrace those who cater to his inexperience, vanity, and worst instincts. This has been the pattern of the Obama presidency. And that was exactly what happened in the case of ObamaCare.”

Jane Pitt (Brad Pitt’s mom) in a letter to the editor, to News-Leader.com: “I think any Christian should spend much time in prayer before refusing to vote for a family man with high morals, business experience, who is against abortion, and shares Christian conviction concerning homosexuality just because he is a Mormon. Any Christian who does not vote or writes in a name is casting a vote for Romney's opponent, Barack Hussein Obama - a man who sat in Jeremiah Wright's church for years, did not hold a public ceremony to mark the National Day of Prayer, and is a liberal who supports the killing of unborn babies and same-sex marriage.”

Louisiana Gov. Bob Jindal: "The president, his administration, needs to understand what makes

this country great in part is that we're not dependent on government programs. It seems to me like the president measures success by how many people are on food stamp rolls and government-run health care. That's not the American dream."

Mitt Romney: "I said that I agreed with the dissent and the dissent made it very clear that they felt it was unconstitutional. But the dissent lost. It's in the minority. And so now the Supreme Court has spoken, and while I agreed with dissent, it's taken over by the fact that the majority of the court said that it's a tax and therefore it is a tax."

Paula Priesse: “July 8th - Big govt. again "off the rails." Initial budget for the CA rail project was $33 billion. Some now put it at $100B. Mostly state money but fed funds also. Despite this, and ignoring the state auditor's reports, the CA Senate voted Friday to plow full speed ahead. First leg (no environmental complaints) will be between Madera & Bakersfield. Great for viewing coyotes & brush rabbits. This mother of all boondoggles will cost travelers more money & time than airline passengers on similar routes. It will straddle fault lines and its est. completion date is 2033. When CA goes belly up (and it will) we sane folks BETTER NOT get stuck with the tab! Let Hollywood libs pay for it. They're good at fundraisers. And fantasy!”

Mitt Romney: “What the court did not do on its last day in session, I will do on my first.” I.e., repeal Obamacare.

Romney spokesman Ryan Williams. "From our perspective, Obamacare has been and will continue to be a central issue in the campaign. It presents voters with a bright line that divides the two candidates. Gov. Romney is going to repeal Obamacare and President Obama is going to keep it. There is a clear choice in November."

Josh Bolton: “The North Korean patent office—I bet that’s a beehive of activity.”

Neil Cavuto on Fox News: “We’re you looking at the folks behind the vice president? Did it not look like a hostage tape? You’ve got a government already spending a trillion bucks on jobs and it’s not getting much bang for those bucks—now wants to spend more of your bucks on jobs. So, we are asking this morning, what the buck?”

Gary B. Smith, economist on Fox News: “The UN is the only thing that makes our government look efficient.”

Bill O’Reilly on what’s up next: “[Dennis] Miller and [Adam] Corolla up next—I’m tempted to say for mature audiences only, but that would be very misleading.”

Maine Gov. Paul LePage: "We the people have been told there is no choice. You must buy health insurance or pay the new Gestapo - the IRS."

Rush: "The Constitution is the greatest document ever written in the world regarding individual liberty and freedom. It's not taught that way. It's taught as an antiquated piece of out-of-date junk that limits what the government can do for people, giving them this and giving them that and making them eat that for their own benefit and making them drive that for their own benefit."

Rush: "If you're a statist, if you're a dictator, if you're an authoritarian, the Constitution of the United States is your biggest enemy because all it does is tell you what you can't do. It limits you. It limits your power over your citizens, your subjects, your people. We can't have that."

Rush: "Didn't the Democrat Party spend millions advertising for more people to take free handouts from the government? Isn't there a big advertising campaign right now to expand the scope of food stamps to the food free riders? Hell's bells, folks, the Democrat Party is the free rider party."

Rush: "The entire mission of the Democrat Party is to create more and more free riders. Haven't they seen to it that almost half the country doesn't pay income tax, a bunch of free riders? Isn't their goal to get more and more people dependent on the government?"

Rush: "The biggest problem we have is that nobody's gonna get screwed 'til starting in 2014 or 2015. That's when the screw job implements. Nobody's gonna get screwed between now and the election."

Rush: "There is going to remain a top-drawer health care in this country only for the rich because it's gonna be direct pay with no insurance involved or very little insurance, and that's why you don't see any of the super rich upset about this because they know none of it's gonna impact them."

Rush: "If there is a second Obama term, it will be noted for two things: a continuing, long recession, and widespread breakdowns in the implementation of his health reform plan.”

Rush: "You know, if something is unconstitutional, the legislative and presidential branches have violated the Constitution. It's the role of judiciary to uphold the Constitution, not throw it back to the corrupt bunch that created it in the first place. Where's the win-win in that? Where is the silver lining in throwing it back to the corrupt party that gave us this in the first place?"

Rush: "I don't care what John Roberts said, I don't care what Romney's guy says, and I don't care what the argument ends up determining whether it's a tax or a penalty. What are we gonna end up with? We're gonna end up with massive transfers of wealth from individuals to the government."

Rush: "People do not want government-run health care. It forces them into an inferior system. Everybody who knows anything about this bill knows that."

Rush: "Republicans are busy arguing semantics -- tax, penalty, silver lining -- rather than exposing what Obamacare does to every American using health care and every American who's going to use it. It does enormous damage to the Constitution."

Brit Hume of Fox News, about Obama selling Obamacare: “He made dozens of speeches [already]. This is a problem with the dogs don’t like the dog food.”

More and more every day it appears that Mitt's walking into a Reagan-like moment. He better not whiff.

And libs wonder why people think they suck with money.Oh, and they videotaped it, and managed to suck at making a movie as well.

All this while his idiot successor is busy hiring IRS agents to implement his signature achievement.

Former presidential candidate Jon Huntsman: "I will not be attending this year's convention, nor any Republican convention in the future, until the party focuses on a bigger, bolder, more confident future for the United States - a future based on problem solving, inclusiveness, and a willingness to address the trust deficit, which is every bit as corrosive as our fiscal and economic deficits." He released his delegates to Mitt Romney.

I have certainly had misgivings about Mitt Romney from day one, but this ad is (how should I put it?) moving.

Walter E. Williams is a joy to listen to; he often sits in for Rush Limbaugh and he’ll always talk to Thomas Sowell. Hearing both of these economists on the radio is a great thrill. This is Williams speaking before a group.

The wonderful story of Igor. Another example of why conservatives love legal immigrants.

President Obama recounts his first run for office where he dressed up like a minute man (like the TEA party people do).

CNN Anchor Tells Bill Nye He's Losing to Conservatives 'Politicizing' the Climate. Text and video.

Allen West on Fox and Friends talking about the infiltration of many institutions by radical Islamists.

Here is how a civil liberal discusses the issues. I guess I should issue a language warning, or is that pretty much understood?

This is a CNN report from 2008 about President Obama and how Obama knocked out his competition in the mid-1990's.

1) With regards to Obamacare the Chief Justice Roberts’ decision not to void this law: maybe we do not want the highest court of the land to void any law on a 5-4 vote. Maybe it is not a good thing that the courts have been made so political that, a liberal law will be struck down by a conservative court and vice versa. When the people of California voted against same-sex marriage, it was problematic to them that three men in robes overturned the majority will of the people. Maybe Justice Roberts is trying to put some constraints on judicial review, so that whether something remains law or not is not dependent upon which side of the bed Anthony Kennedy wakes up on. No matter what side of the aisle you are on, you certainly cannot believe that the founding fathers intended for Anthony Kennedy (or any other single unelected official) to be the opinion which overrides all others. Since we live in a democracy, the responsibility for what kind of government ought to be on our shoulders, not on the shoulders of the Supreme Court. If we don’t like Obamacare, then it is our responsibility to remove it. If we do, it is our responsibility to retain it.I think this is the message John Roberts wants heard above all others: it is your country; it is your government; if you don’t like what is going on, then you have to change it.

2) I am one of those who could care less whether we will be penalized or taxed regarding Obamacare. It is still money out of my pocket given to the government. Right now, it looks like healthcare policies will cost around $600 per individual (and, since that is a government estimate, expect the real cost to be higher). I presently pay $200 toward my healthcare insurance.

3) Furthermore, I am not simply complaining about my own situation. Millions of people will be thrown off their present healthcare policy by the company that they work for, which company probably pays half or more of their healthcare costs. Those people can expect to pay more as well.

80,000 jobs added this past month and the unemployment rate is 8.2%. As mentioned previously, the monthly job rate needs to be around 150,000 to 200,000 to keep pace with population growth. The reason the unemployment rate does not change is, more and more people just stop looking for work and are not longer counted for the unemployment rate.

U-6 is the total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force. June’s U-6 rate is 14.9%.

While the economy has created 2.6 million jobs since June 2009, fully 3.1 million workers signed up for disability benefits.

The economy created just 80,000 jobs in June, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. But that same month, 85,000 workers left the workforce entirely to enroll in the Social Security Disability Insurance program, according to the Social Security Administration.

309,000 in the demographic of 25 and older with a BA simply dropped out of the labor force in June, which means they neither had a job in June nor actively tried to find one.

Obamacare has 21 new taxes or increases in taxes, and collects an additional $500–600 billion in taxes overall. Add to this, your healthcare insurance is going to be more expensive. Add to this that, whenever the government estimates the cost of anything, they are about a third right.

85% of Americans paid federal income taxes in 1984; now 51% pay federal income taxes.

In 1992, 3.4 million Americans were receiving disability payments; now 8.7 million receive disability payments. That is 1 out of 33 workers in 1992 and 1 out of 15 workers in 2010.

Narcissist-in-chief President Barack Obama used the first-person pronouns "I" and "me" a combined 117 times in a speech that lasted about 25 minutes and 32 seconds.

The number of women unemployed in June was 5,785,000, which is an increase of 780,000 from when Barack Obama was inaugurated in January 2009 - at that time, the number of unemployed women in the United States was 5,005,000.

Unemployment rate among Blacks jumps to 14.4%, Hispanics are at 11% (this does not include those who just quit looking for a job).

The federal government paid $13,242,720 in 2011 for the "preservation and maintenance" of Native American languages.

The IRS, Health and Human Services and many other agencies have already written 13,000 pages of new regulations for Obamacare, and they aren’t done yet. There are about 180 new boards and commissions and bureaus which will be created because of Obamacare.

51% of Likely U.S. Voters describe the political views of the presumptive Republican presidential candidate as mainstream.

18% are not sure. You may recall that the Democrats have been attempting to brand Romney as extreme. This, by the way, conforms to the Kukis rule of Democratic attacks: whatever they accuse conservatives or Republicans of, this means, that is what they are doing.

30% of American Adults think the nation is better off today than it was four years ago.

Americans are more likely to say the 2010 healthcare law upheld by the Supreme Court last week will hurt the national economy (46%) rather than help it (37%), while 18% say they don't know or that it will have no effect.

The top rated issue are the economy (at 31%), jobs (25%), dissatisfaction with government (12%) and the federal budget deficit (11%). Healthcare came in at 6%.

New presidential poll has President Obama in the bottom 10, right below Jimmy Carter. What happened to the days when, within months of being elected, historians were declaring Obama to be one of the greatest presidents ever? Not sure that Obama ever scored as high by others as he has scored himself.

Time magazine demonstrated in its last issue that it was so overwhelmingly thrilled with John Roberts upholding ObamaCare that it put Roberts on the cover with the title "Roberts Rules," touting his "landmark decision." Inside, the magazine gave the ruling 15-plus pages of coverage. In the very same issue, Congress voting to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt for failing to deliver documents on the "Fast & Furious" program—also a landmark occasion—was given two dismissive paragraphs - one less paragraph than Time editor Richard Stengel took to boost Roberts as a chip off the old block of "John Marshall, the greatest of all Chief Justices" in an Editor's Note.

AP does a story on the California rail project which has just gotten approval from California’s congressional bodies. It waits 9 paragraphs before it suggests that California is in a financial crisis and also chooses the lowest estimated figure for the cost of this project.

Something has got to give between fundamentalist Black pastors and congregants and Barack Obama’s stance of gay marriage. I don’t think that Obama will back off on his position, which could (and probably will) end up eating into his lead among African Americans. Right now, such pastors are pushing against the President pretty hard.

We're going to be "gifted" with a health care plan we are forced to purchase and fined if we don't! Which purportedly covers at least ten million more people without adding a single new doctor, but provides for 16,000 new IRS agents, written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn't understand it, passed by a Congress that didn't read it but exempted themselves from it, and signed by a Dumbo President who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes, for which we'll be taxed for four years before any benefits take effect, by a government which has already bankrupted Social Security and Medicare, all to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese , and financed by a country that's broke!!!!!

#2 Senior Wall Street Journal Economics Writer Stephen Moore during an interview with Fox and Friends..

"Again, whatever you want to call it Alisyn, fines, taxes, penalties, but three quarters of those costs will fall on the backs of families who make less than $120,00 a year, so it's a big punch in the stomach to middle class families."

#3 Dr. Elaina George of the Project 21 African-American Conservative Leadership Network

"Because of the mandate, Americans will be forced to pay for a system that will increase costs for patients, remove health care decisions from both the doctor and the patient and lead to rationing. It changes health care as we know it into a system based on one-size-fits-all, cost-controlled and conveyor belt socialized medicine"

"The United States of America took a giant step toward a totalitarian socialist government when the Supreme Court voted to uphold Obamacare, allowing the individual mandate for the government to force American citizens to buy health insurance whether they want to or not."

"This is patently obvious: the power to `regulate' commerce cannot include the power to compel commerce! Those who claim otherwise simply ignore the plain meaning of the Constitution because they don't want to limit federal power in any way. The commerce clause was intended simply to give Congress the power to regulate foreign trade, and also to prevent states from imposing tariffs on interstate goods. In Federalist Paper No. 22, Alexander Hamilton makes it clear the simple intent behind the clause was to prevent states from placing tolls or tariffs on goods as they passed through each state - a practice that had proven particularly destructive across the many principalities of the German empire."

"Today America is threatened with a stage three cancer of socialism, and Obamacare is exhibit 1. There are many of us here who have been fighting this for three years and we don't really want the compassion of the IRS and the efficiency of the post office introduced in our healthcare and we are not going to rest until every single line of this bill is repealed."

"But even if Obama is replaced in the White House, the damage has already been done. With its decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has set a precedent of government control over private paychecks, and that precedent has fundamentally crushed economic freedom in America and opened the door to limitless taxes for everything imaginable. King George III couldn't have done it better."

"You better get on the train or watch your party implode - that's my words of advice to the Republican Party"

"The states simply need to follow Thomas Jefferson's prescription and nullify the entire act. They should just refuse to implement this monstrosity. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has already indicated he will refuse, and other states should follow his lead."

I've never bought medical insurance. The only time a policy has covered me was when it came incidental to a job. The Lord has blessed me with disgustingly good health; then, too, when I was 18, my mother died of a brain tumor that had escaped diagnosis for six years despite excruciating headaches and other symptoms a professor of nursing later described as "classic." If I were bleeding and unconscious, I might wind up in the clutches of the medical establishment, but never of my own volition.

So I deeply and personally resent Roberts's little parlor-trick of a word-game. Forcing me to buy medical insurance is unconstitutional if we call it a "fine" but perfectly OK if it's a "tax."

If Obamacare is fully implemented, 83% will consider leaving the practice of medicine. Sixty-one percent say it's an affront to their ethics. Eighty-five percent say it destroys the doctor-patient relationship. Sixty-five percent say governmental involvement is the cause of the problems in medical care now. Seventy-two percent say the insurance mandate won't result in improved access to medical care. Seventy-four percent say they'll stop accepting Medicare patients, or leave Medicare altogether. Seventy percent say reducing governmental involvement would be the single best fix for healthcare in this country. The negatives of Obamacare went on and on in the results of the survey."

"This decision goes against the very principle that America has a federal government of limited powers; a principle that the Founding Fathers clearly wrote into the Constitution, the supreme law of the land. The Constitution was meant to restrict the power of government precisely for the purpose of protecting your liberty and mine from the overreaching hand of the federal government. This unprecedented decision says that Congress has the authority to force citizens to buy private goods or face fines - a power it has never had in American history, and a power King George III and Parliament didn't have over us when we were mere subjects of Great Britain. Since the federal government itself could never articulate to the court a constitutional limit to this power, Congress has gained an unlimited power to force citizens to buy anything."

So what do you think Obamacare is going to do to the healthcare system in America?

Betrayal is hard to take, whether in our personal lives or in the political life of the nation. Yet there are people in Washington - too often, Republicans - who start living in the Beltway atmosphere, and start forgetting those hundreds of millions of Americans beyond the Beltway who trusted them to do right by them, to use their wisdom instead of their cleverness.

President Bush 41 epitomized these betrayals when he broke his "read my lips, no new taxes" pledge. He paid the price when he quickly went from high approval ratings as president to someone defeated for reelection by a little known governor from Arkansas.

Chief Justice John Roberts need fear no such fate because he has lifetime tenure on the Supreme Court. But conscience can be a more implacable and inescapable punisher - and should be.

The Chief Justice probably made as good a case as could be made for upholding the constitutionality of ObamaCare by defining one of its key features as a "tax."

The legislation didn't call it a tax and Chief Justice Roberts admitted that this might not be the most "natural" reading of the law. But he fell back on the long-standing principle of judicial interpretation that the courts should not declare a law unconstitutional if it can be reasonably read in a way that would make it constitutional, out of "deference" to the legislative branch of government.

But this question, like so many questions in life, is a matter of degree. How far do you bend over backwards to avoid the obvious, that ObamaCare was an unprecedented extension of federal power over the lives of 300 million Americans today and of generations yet unborn?

These are the people that Chief Justice Roberts betrayed when he declared constitutional something that is nowhere authorized in the Constitution of the United States.

John Roberts is no doubt a brainy man, and that seems to carry a lot of weight among the intelligentsia - despite glaring lessons from history, showing very brainy men creating everything from absurdities to catastrophes. Few of the great tragedies of history were created by the village idiot, and many by the village genius.

One of the Chief Justice's admirers said that when others are playing checkers, he is playing chess. How much consolation that will be as a footnote to the story of the decline of individual freedom in America, and the wrecking of the best medical care in the world, is another story.

There are many speculations as to why Chief Justice Roberts did what he did, some attributing noble and far-sighted reasons, and others attributing petty and short-sighted reasons, including personal vanity. But all of that is ultimately irrelevant.

What he did was betray his oath to be faithful to the Constitution of the United States.

Who he betrayed were the hundreds of millions of Americans - past, present and future - whole generations in the past who have fought and died for a freedom that he has put in jeopardy, in a moment of intellectual inspiration and moral forgetfulness, 300 million Americans today whose lives are to be regimented by Washington bureaucrats, and generations yet unborn who may never know the individual freedoms that their ancestors took for granted.

Some claim that Chief Justice Roberts did what he did to save the Supreme Court as an institution from the wrath - and retaliation - of those in Congress who have been railing against Justices who invalidate the laws they have passed. Many in the media and in academia have joined the shrill chorus of those who claim that the Supreme Court does not show proper "deference" to the legislative branch of government.

But what does the Bill of Rights seek to protect the ordinary citizen from? The government! To defer to those who expand government power beyond its constitutional limits is to betray those whose freedom depends on the Bill of Rights.

Similar reasoning was used back in the 1970s to justify the Federal Reserve's inflationary policies. Otherwise, it was said, Congress would destroy the Fed's independence, as it can also change the courts' jurisdiction. But is it better for an institution to undermine its own independence, and freedom along with it, while forfeiting the trust of the people in the process?

In ancient Rome, whenever a general was given a victory parade, he would be accompanied in his chariot by a slave who whispered into his ear, "Heed not the call of the crowds, for all glory is fleeting."

Someone ought to be whispering that advice into Barack Obama's ear right now, for if ever there was a fleeting victory, it was the Supreme Court's ruling that ObamaCare is constitutional-a decision that will lead to the largest tax increase in American history and leave Obama and the entire Democratic ticket vulnerable at the ballot box in November.

But don't count on David Axelrod, the president's top political strategist, to perform the duty of the prudent Roman slave. These days, Axelrod isn't whispering; he's shouting from the rooftops that the Supreme Court ruling is proof that a new, politically skillful Obama has replaced the callow, arrogant incompetent that I describe in my book "The Amateur."

And Obama has joined this chorus of self-congratulation. Minutes after the Supreme Court's ruling, a tweet was sent out by the campaign -- and perhaps even by the president himself -- he tweeted: "Still a BFD"-a reference to Vice President Joe Biden's "big f-king deal" comment when Obama signed the health care legislation.

The notion that Obama has changed his stripes, that he is actually a better and more effective president than any of us suspected, is pure hogwash.

Talk about a "New Obama" reminds me of the effort on the part of Richard Nixon's PR people in the 1960s to repackage him as the "New Nixon." During the presidential election of 1968, voters were treated to TV commercials and carefully planted stories claiming that the old, mean-spirited Nixon had matured, and that a more tolerant, magnanimous "New Nixon" had taken his place. It was a brilliantly orchestrated campaign, but as we learned during Watergate and the subsequent release of Nixon's Oval Office tapes, there never was a "New Nixon."

The example of Richard Nixon's non-makeover makeover should tell us something about the efforts of the Obama political team to reframe his image and resell him to voters. The entire story of ObamaCare-from inception to Supreme Court-reeks of amateurism.

It is the hallmark of a political amateur to ignore the advice of wise men and women who tell him what he doesn't want to hear and, instead, embrace those who cater to his inexperience, vanity, and worst instincts. This has been the pattern of the Obama presidency. And that was exactly what happened in the case of ObamaCare.

Early in his presidency, Barack Obama received ample warning that he was headed for disaster if he went for broke on health care. His then chief of staff Rahm Emanuel urged the president to push for a smaller bill with popular items, such as expanding health coverage for children and young adults. Both his vice president, Joe Biden, and his top political adviser, David Axelrod, sided with Emanuel and raised a red flag.

But Obama wouldn't listen to his wisest and most experienced advisers. Instead, he chose to listen

to his wife Michelle and to Valerie Jarrett, his powerful behind-the-scenes confidante. It was Michelle Obama and Valerie Jarrett who persuaded the president to side with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and her gaggle of far-leftwing Democrats and push for an enormously complex Rube Goldberg health-care bill.

Obama's arrogance, his sense of superiority, and his air of haughtiness-but above all, his amateurism-led him astray and encouraged him to focus initially on a "public option" in his health care bill. Rick Scott, the health care executive who launched and ran the successful campaign to kill the public option in 2009, parlayed that victory into winning the governorship of Florida in 2010.

When Scott and his group, Conservatives for Patients Rights, defeated the public option, Obama was then stuck with going along with an "individual mandate," which he had vigorously campaign against during the Democratic primaries. He denied time after time that the mandate was a tax, only to allow his Solicitor General to argue before the Supreme Court that it is, in fact, a tax.

Only a rank amateur could have turned months and months of debate over a widely unpopular health care bill into something even worse-an onerous tax on the middle class.

Only a rank amateur could have turned a government-run health care system that suffers from hundreds of billions of dollars in annual fraud, and is already on life support, into a $1.5 trillion Rube Goldberg machine that will destroy American medicine and deliver a poorer quality of health care to millions of people.

Only a rank amateur could conceive of a "solution" to our health care problems that cuts benefits to seniors by $500 billion and established rationing boards known as "death panels."

Only a rank amateur could threaten to turn America into Sweden-and possibly even Greece-by passing an ill-conceived piece of legislation whose major goal is to earn him a place in history.

Only a rank amateur could levy a series of new taxes on America's small businesses, under the guise of ObamaCare, that will raise unemployment and stall an already anemic recover.

Only a rank amateur could hand his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, an electoral game changer.

With all the gloomy economic news coming out of late, one bright spot flew under the radar last week: the United States is poised to be the proverbial center of the energy universe.

A recent study by Harvard Research Fellow Leonardo Maugeri found that the United States' incredible shale reserves represent "the most important revolution in the oil sector in decades."

Few Americans are more cognizant of this energy revolution's possibilities than those who live in the towns sitting above the nation's largest shale formations. The Heritage Foundation traveled to Willison, North Dakota, above the massive Bakken shale, to hear first-hand how the oil boom there has improved residents' lives.

But there are forces looking to undermine North Dakota's oil boom. "The area that we worry the most about would be the federal government and regulations," explained Willison Mayor Ward Koeser, "specifically the Environmental Protection Agency."

Koeser's concerns are not without merit. The EPA has a history of wrongfully targeting companies using hydraulic fracturing for supposed environmental contamination. When a top EPA official, Region 6 administrator Al Armedariz, compared his enforcement philosophy to Roman crucifixions, the agency's history of enforcement actions against oil and gas drillers - both use hydraulic fracturing to extract resources from shale - belied Armendariz's subsequent apology and walk-back.

Armendariz just took a job at the Sierra Club, a radical environmentalist group that has undertaken a massive campaign against the extraction of natural gas from shale only a few years after it championed natural gas as a cleaner alternative to coal and oil.

The left's emerging hostility to "fracking" has the potential to derail the amazing economic opportunity that shale presents. So it should come as little surprise that the political consequences of that hostility are bearing themselves out in places like Western Pennsylvania, which sits on huge shale gas reserves.

Roll Call's Stuart Rothenberg reported over the weekend that Pennsylvania, which over the past 20 years has moved further left in terms of its voting patterns, is suddenly more competitive. "Western Pennsylvania increasingly looks like West Virginia or southeastern Ohio," Rothenberg notes.

Rothenberg, appropriately concerned with the political analysis, did not connect the dots: Western Pennsylvania, Southeastern Ohio, and West Virginia are all major energy-producing states (or parts of states). The Utica, Marcellus, and Devonian shale formations, for instance, represent major economic opportunities in those states.

From the federal perspective, then, a sensible energy policy would at least refrain from proactively discouraging those opportunities, as Heritage's Nick Loris has suggested:

But left-wing environmentalists continue to fight against the country's natural gas and oil boom. That boom has the potential not just to revitalize parts of the American economy, but to infuse economic vitality into some of the nation's most economically distressed communities. Don't be surprised when those communities stand up to regulatory overreach and environmental hysteria.

Today, the Obama Administration told Americans "not to read too much into" monthly jobs reports.

As it turns out, they've been encouraging Americans to do that for years. But after 41 straight months of unemployment over 8%, you don't have to read between the lines to see the truth. President Obama's policies have failed to get America working again.

June 2012: "Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report and it is informative to consider each report in the context of other data that are becoming available." (LINK: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/07/06/employment-situation-june)

May 2012: "Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report and it is helpful to consider each report in the context of other data that are becoming available." (LINK: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/06/01/employment-situation-may)

April 2012: "Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report and it is helpful to consider each report in the context of other data that are becoming available." (LINK: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/05/04/employment-situation-april)

March 2012: "Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, and it is helpful to consider each report in the context of other data that are becoming available." (LINK: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/04/06/employment-situation-march)

February 2012: "Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report; nevertheless, the trend in job market indicators over recent months is an encouraging sign." (LINK: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/03/09/employment-situation-february)

January 2012: "Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report; nevertheless, the trend in job market indicators over recent months is an encouraging sign." (LINK: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/02/03/employment-situation-january)

December 2011: "Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report." (LINK: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/01/06/employment-situation-december)

November 2011: "Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report." (LINK: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/12/02/employment-situation-november)

October 2011: "The monthly employment and unemployment numbers are volatile and employment estimates are subject to substantial revision. There is no better example than August's jobs figure, which was initially reported at zero and in the latest revision increased to 104,000. This illustrates why the Administration always stresses it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report." (LINK: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/11/04/employment-situation-october)

September 2011: "Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report." (LINK: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/10/07/employment-situation-september)

August 2011: "Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report." (LINK: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/09/02/employment-situation-august)

July 2011: "Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report." (LINK: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/08/05/employment-situation-july)

June 2011: "Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report." (LINK: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/07/08/employment-situation-june)

May 2011: "Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report." (LINK: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/06/03/employment-situation-may)

April 2011: "Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report." (LINK: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/05/06/employment-situation-april)

March 2011: "Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report." (LINK: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/04/01/employment-situation-march)

February 2011: "Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report." (LINK: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/03/04/employment-situation-february)

January 2011: "Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report." (LINK: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/02/04/employment-situation-january)

December 2010: "Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report." (LINK: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/01/07/employment-situation-december)

November 2010: "Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report." (LINK: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/12/03/employment-situation-november)

October 2010: "Given the volatility in monthly employment and unemployment data, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report." (LINK: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/11/05/employment-situation-october)

September 2010: "Given the volatility in the monthly employment and unemployment data, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report." (LINK: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/10/08/employment-situation-september)

July 2010: "Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative. It is essential that we continue our efforts to move in the right direction and replace job losses with robust job gains." (LINK: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/08/06/employment-situation-july)

August 2010: "Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative." (LINK: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/09/03/employment-situation-august)

June 2010: "As always, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative." (LINK: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/07/02/employment-situation-june)

May 2010: "As always, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative." (LINK: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/06/04/employment-situation-may)

April 2010: "Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative." (LINK: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/05/07/employment-situation-april)

March 2010: "Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative." (LINK: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/04/02/employment-situation-march)

January 2010: "Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative." (LINK: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/02/05/employment-situation-january)

November 2009: "Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative." (LINK: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2009/12/04/employment-situation-november)

This week we celebrate the 236th year of American independence, purchased and defended with the blood of patriots.

We won our Revolution against all odds fighting, what at that time was, the greatest standing army and most powerful navy in the world.

The Spirit of Freedom was strong in the hardy souls who came to the New World to escape tyranny and the class system of the European monarchies, to found a government of the people, by the people and for the people, a place where a common man's vote meant just as much as the aristocrat's.

It had to be the will of Almighty God for there to be a United States of America, otherwise George Washington's half starved, ill-equipped army would never have been victorious against the mighty redcoats.

From the hills of Tennessee, from the fishing villages of the Atlantic coastline, from Boston and New Orleans, from the swamps of South Carolina and the teeming streets of Baltimore they came, bringing their long rifles and their steel determination that this new nation would bow to no foreign power and that none but our own flag would fly above it.

America has always bred this kind of man, who sees his duty and does it. They did it at Guadalcanal, at Midway, in the skies over Tokyo, on the beaches of Normandy. In the Philippines and the sands of Iwo Jima.

They did it in the frozen mountains of Korea, the jungles of Vietnam and the deserts of Southwest Asia.

Some came home with empty sleeves and some with deep psychological wounds that changed the course of their lives. Some didn't come home at all.

This Fourth of July as you enjoy your picnics and cookouts, as you take the family to the beach or slice the watermelon, I want to ask you a favor.

Will you take a few moments to remember and to remind the ones around you that the liberty which you celebrate on this very American holiday has been paid for by the blood of brave men and women who throughout the 236 years of our existence, have put their lives on the line, stood between you and the enemies that would like nothing better than destroying you, your family and the way of life you celebrate today?

And if you're a praying person, would you offer up a prayer for those who remain in harms way, for the families who will forever have an empty place at the table, for those who patrol our skies, who guard our coasts and borders and those who stand ready to do battle on a moment's notice?

In spite of the wrinkles and warts, in spite of the rough patches and uncertain times, we are still the greatest nation the world has ever known and in spite of our disagreements, under our different color skins, our diverse political philosophies and our ethnic backgrounds, we're all Americans.

Voters in 17 states elected new Republican governors in November 2010. This new breed of fiscally-conservative, tea party-supported Republican governors took office in January 2011. Here is how those states have fared since then, in terms of their unemployment rates:

Every single one of these 17 states has seen its unemployment rate decline since January 2011. Three of them have had unemployment drop by more than 2% (Michigan, Florida, and Nevada). The average drop in the unemployment rate in these states was 1.35%. For a comparison, in January 2011 the U.S. national unemployment rate stood at 9.1%. It is currently 8.2%, meaning that the national unemployment rate has declined by just 0.9% since then. Based on these percentages, it can be said that the job market in states with new Republican governors is improving a full 50% faster than the job market nationally.

Now let's look at the eight states that elected new Democratic governors in 2010. Just like their Republican counterparts, these new Democratic governors took office in January 2011. Here's how those states have fared since then, in terms of unemployment:

The average drop in the unemployment rate in these states was 0.95%, approximately the same as the drop seen nationally. It's interesting to note than one of these states (New York) has actually experienced an increase in its unemployment rate since January 2011.

Based on this data, it appears that the policies being implemented at the state level by newly elected Republican governors are having a positive impact in terms of job creation.

1. Individual Mandate Excise Tax(Jan 2014): Starting in 2014, anyone not buying "qualifying" health insurance must pay an income surtax according to the higher of the following. This continues to go up for a few years.

Exemptions for religious objectors, undocumented immigrants, prisoners, those earning less than the poverty line, members of Indian tribes, and hardship cases (determined by HHS)

2. Employer Mandate Tax(Jan 2014): If an employer does not offer health coverage, and at least one employee qualifies for a health tax credit, the employer must pay an additional non-deductible tax of $2000 for all full-time employees. This provision applies to all employers with 50 or more employees. If any employee actually receives coverage through the exchange, the penalty on the employer for that employee rises to $3000. If the employer requires a waiting period to enroll in coverage of 30-60 days, there is a $400 tax per employee ($600 if the period is 60 days or longer).

Combined score of individual and employer mandate tax penalty: $65 billion/10 years

3. Surtax on Investment Income ($123 billion/Jan. 2013): This increase involves the creation of a new, 3.8 percent surtax on investment income earned in households making at least $250,000 ($200,000 single). This would result in the following top tax rates on investment income

*Other unearned income includes (for surtax purposes) gross income from interest, annuities, royalties, net rents, and passive income in partnerships and Subchapter-S corporations. It does not include municipal bond interest or life insurance proceeds, since those do not add to gross income. It does not include active trade or business income, fair market value sales of ownership in pass-through entities, or distributions from retirement plans. The 3.8% surtax does not apply to non-resident aliens.

4. Excise Tax on Comprehensive Health Insurance Plans($32 bil/Jan 2018): Starting in 2018, new 40 percent excise tax on "Cadillac" health insurance plans ($10,200 single/$27,500 family). For early retirees and high-risk professions exists a higher threshold ($11,500 single/$29,450 family). CPI +1 percentage point indexed.

6. Medicine Cabinet Tax($5 bil/Jan 2011): Americans no longer able to use health savings account (HSA), flexible spending account (FSA), or health reimbursement (HRA) pre-tax dollars to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin)

7. HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike($1.4 bil/Jan 2011): Increases additional tax on non-medical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10 to 20 percent, disadvantaging them relative to IRAs and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10 percent.

8. Flexible Spending Account Cap - aka"Special Needs Kids Tax"($13 bil/Jan 2013): Imposes cap

of $2500 (Indexed to inflation after 2013) on FSAs (now unlimited). There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children. There are thousands of families with special needs children in the United States, and many of them use FSAs to pay for special needs education. Tuition rates at one leading school that teaches special needs children in Washington, D.C. (National Child Research Center) can easily exceed $14,000 per year. Under tax rules, FSA dollars can be used to pay for this type of special needs education.

9. Tax on Medical Device Manufacturers($20 bil/Jan 2013): Medical device manufacturers employ 360,000 people in 6000 plants across the country. This law imposes a new 2.3% excise tax. Exemptions include items retailing for less than $100.

10. Raise "Haircut" for Medical Itemized Deduction from 7.5% to 10% of AGI($15.2 bil/Jan 2013): Currently, those facing high medical expenses are allowed a deduction for medical expenses to the extent that those expenses exceed 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income (AGI). The new provision imposes a threshold of 10 percent of AGI; it is waived for 65+ taxpayers in 2013-2016 only.

11. Tax on Indoor Tanning Services($2.7 billion/July 1, 2010): New 10 percent excise tax on Americans using indoor tanning salons

12. Elimination of tax deduction for employer-provided retirement Rx drug coverage in coordination with Medicare Part D($4.5 bil/Jan 2013)

13. Blue Cross/Blue Shield Tax Hike($0.4 bil/Jan 2010): The special tax deduction in current law for Blue Cross/Blue Shield companies would only be allowed if 85 percent or more of premium revenues are spent on clinical services

14. Excise Tax on Charitable Hospitals(Min$/immediate): $50,000 per hospital if they fail to meet new "community health assessment needs," "financial assistance," and "billing and collection" rules set by HHS

15. Tax on Innovator Drug Companies($22.2 bil/Jan 2010): $2.3 billion annual tax on the industry imposed relative to share of sales made that year.

16. Tax on Health Insurers($60.1 bil/Jan 2014): Annual tax on the industry imposed relative to health insurance premiums collected that year. The stipulation phases in gradually until 2018, and is fully-imposed on firms with $50 million in profits.

17. $500,000 Annual Executive Compensation Limit for Health Insurance Executives($0.6 bil/Jan 2013)

18. Employer Reporting of Insurance on W-2(Min$/Jan 2011): Preamble to taxing health benefits on individual tax returns.

19. Corporate 1099-MISC Information Reporting($17.1 bil/Jan 2012): Requires businesses to send 1099-MISC information tax forms to corporations (currently limited to individuals), a huge compliance burden for small employers

20. "Black liquor" tax hike(Tax hike of $23.6 billion). This is a tax increase on a type of bio-fuel.

21. Codification of the "economic substance doctrine"(Tax hike of $4.5 billion). This provision allows the IRS to disallow completely-legal tax deductions and other legal tax-minimizing plans just because the IRS deems that the action lacks "substance" and is merely intended to reduce taxes owed.

This is the same Charles Barron who was endorsed by David Duke because he was impressed with Barron's anti-Semitic views. Takes a lot of Jew-hatred for a devoted white supremacist to endorse a black man.

Obama Contributor Who Ran Fast and Furious Was Also Behind the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban

RUSH: And looky here, folks, from the Cybercast News Service: "Obama Contributor, Who Helped Enact Assault Weapons Ban, Ran `Fast and Furious'" Did you hear that? Let me repeat that for you. Cybercast News Service: "Obama Contributor, Who Helped Enact Assault Weapons Ban, Ran `Fast and Furious' -- Dennis K. Burke, who as a lawyer for the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee in the 1990s was a key player behind the enactment of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, and who then went on to become Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano's chief of staff, and a contributor to Barack Obama's 2008 presidential primary campaign, and then a member of Obama's transition team focusing on border-enforcement issues, ended up in the Obama administration as the US attorney in Arizona responsible for overseeing Operation Fast and Furious."

But wait a minute. Obama didn't know anything about Fast and Furious, and Eric Holder didn't know anything about Fast and Furious. The Democrats tell us this. The media tells us. Obama says it. So Dennis Burke, who is as close to Obama as anybody can get, ran the assault weapons ban in 1994, worked for Janet Napolitano in Arizona, Obama's primary campaign in '08, transition team in '08, ends up as the regime's US attorney in Arizona responsible for overseeing Operation Fast and Furious. "From 1989 to 1994, he was a counsel for the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, working in that capacity for several years on an assault weapons ban, which was finally enacted on Sept. 13, 1994 as the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. That act expired on Sept. 13, 2004." And they have been trying to get it back ever since.

A lot of people, and I'll throw my hat in this ring, think that's what Fast and Furious was all about. And Jay Carney, the White House spokeskid, says it's absurd to think Fast and Furious is about gun control. But Obama's lead US attorney in Arizona oversaw the program. Every day, every day it's a new threatening disaster that strikes this country.

RUSH: From Fox Business: "SCOTUS Ruling Means Bigger, More Intrusive IRS." This is a very long story. I am not going to by any means share it all with you, but I have enough salient excerpts here. "IRS officials on background tell FOX Business the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on health reform gives the IRS even more powers than previously understood." Yeah, guess we had to pass it to find out what was in it. Are you ready, folks? "The IRS now gets to know about a small business's entire payroll, the level of their insurance coverage -- and it gets to know the income of not just the primary breadwinner in your house, but your entire family's income, in order to assess/collect the mandated tax."

Now, this won't start until 2014 or 2015. So from now 'til November we're gonna have stories like this, this is headed your way, but if people look at us as just a bunch of shouting, doubting Thomases, nobody's gonna believe us, 'cause it isn't going to happen until 2014 or 2015. I tell you, once this thing gets fully implemented, folks, the IRS is gonna have a free look at not just the breadwinner's tax return, but everybody in the house so that they can accurately assess and collect the mandated tax. They don't have the right to know all this now. Your tax return's what it is, and they audit you if they do, and you have to prove and confirm what's on the return, but they can't ask you to turn over your kid, your 25-year-old still living with you, for example.

In addition to being able now to learn all about every penny involved in a small business, the IRS will then, because of this law, be able to share all of that information "with all sorts of government agencies, insurance companies and employers. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. 'We expect even more lien and levy powers,' an IRS official says. Even the Taxpayer Advocate is deeply concerned. The IRS army will inexorably increase in size, too. The IRS will now add new agents to hunt down tax cheats, as it has been budgeted to spend $303.5 million building a new system," 4,000, 5,000 new agents and so forth. (interuption) Yeah, they have the authority. Well, I don't know if you don't pay the fine, they have the authority put a lien on your business. He just says even more lien and levy powers. They're not specified here in the whole story. Maybe put a lien on your business if you don't pay the fine. But I don't know that you're gonna even have a choice to pay it.

If you're an employee, it might just be deducted. If you're self-employed you of course will have to pay it. I don't know. For example, will the self-employed small business types be double charged, one for not buying insurance, and two for not providing insurance for your employee, you. If you're self-employed, if you don't buy insurance, you're in trouble, and you're also in trouble for not providing insurance for your employee, which is you. I don't know. I have to think that any question we have that has in any part of question, "Can the IRS do X," the answer is gonna be yes. That's the point of the story here.

"Nina E. Olson, who runs the Taxpayer Advocate Office [TAO], a federal IRS overseer, has warned the new health law may require more IRS intrusions on taxpayer privacy, to determine whether individuals got appropriate health coverage, and whether small businesses provide 'affordable' coverage, all of which is defined by the government." I don't know why you're so surprised in there is. What do you think this bill is? The IRS, there are 16,000 new agents. What are they for? You don't have to buy insurance, folks, you have to buy the right kind. The government will determine how much you need based on your situation. And then they'll determine what that costs. Oh, you're under the impression you get to keep your coverage if you like it? Oh, no, maybe 20% of the people will. If you like your coverage and doctor, no, no, no. That's "the secretary shall determine." Obama lied about that.

Let's say you like your plan. Don't you understand that the whole point of this is to get your company to give up the plan? How can you keep what your employer no longer provides? That's just one instance of how you will not be able to keep your plan if you like it.

The Taxpayer Advocate Office, which I guess is a government institution that oversees the IRS, "has noted Americans must now tell the IRS under the new law: Insurance plan information, including who is covered under the plan and the dates of coverage; The costs of your family's health insurance plans; Whether a taxpayer had an offer of employer-sponsored health insurance; The cost of employer-sponsored insurance; Whether a taxpayer received a premium tax credit; and whether a taxpayer has an exemption from the individual responsibility requirement. The TAO has warned: 'This is different from the type of information the IRS typically deals with, and some taxpayers may feel uncomfortable about sharing it with the IRS.' ... But the TAO has warned that the IRS may not have the necessary skill sets, budget, or staffing to adequately enforce the new health reform law. Olson notes that the federal tax code is already so complex that even the IRS makes numerous mistakes in administering it."

What that all adds up to is that they're gonna have the leeway of being wrong in assessing, and you're gonna have no recourse. The final authority. Look, Snerdley, nobody knows better than I if you're under 30, and you're listening to me, even if you're under 40 and you're listening to me say all this, I know exactly what you're doing. You're pooh-poohing it, and you're thinking that I'm just some hell-bent right-wing partisan trying to scare you. I assure you, I have no desire for you to doubt me. I have no desire to be wrong. There nothing in it for me to mislead anybody about anything, particularly this. If you're under 30 or under 40, you might not even be cognizant of the concept of a big and growing government as a problem. You might think it's cool. You might think it's gonna level the playing field for everybody, it's fair, everyone is gonna get insurance and treatment.

The whole concept of the impact of all this on your freedom you might think is a joke. You might think people who worry about losing their freedom or their liberty are just a bunch of outlier fringe cooks. You might think that. I mean that's what you've been taught. It's how you've been educated. You've been raised and educated to believe that the only word that adequately describes government is benevolent. So, as far as you're concerned, I may be from the Florida militia, some little kook here trying to scare you. "None of that stuff can ever happen, Rush, this is America. You're just so eager to get rid of Obama. You just don't like Democrats."

I'm just telling you what the IRS has told Fox News, pure and simple. That's what the IRS is saying. I don't have the ability to make this up because I don't think of controlling people this way. I couldn't write this script. I don't think this way. I don't even for a second of any day ponder how I can exert power over people. I have no desire to, I don't know how. It's not something I want to do. And nor is it something I want to have happen to me, either. But it is.

"If the IRS finds that you've fallen short of the law --" remember, we just heard that they're understaffed and a lot of people there don't even know what they're doing, and don't understand the tax code. There's probably not a single person alive who does, from cover to cover understand it. "If the IRS finds you have fallen short of the law, it would hit you with a penalty tied to your household income (which may be that of an individual or several family members)." In order to determine what your household income is, they're gonna have to know about every dime of income in your family to properly assess what you owe. This is just on the health care. In the process of finding all this stuff out, what if they think that you've lied to 'em in previous years? 'Cause you know what? We're gonna have to audit you here based on what we've just learned. We've gone back and we've looked at your tax returns and you're not reflecting any of this.

I don't know if you've ever been audited, folks, but you're always guilty on day one, and you have to prove that they're wrong. The assumption is you're lying to them. The assumption is your returned is filled with untruths and you have to go about proving to them, in my case, 14 different ways I have to show them where I was or wasn't every day of the year. New York state. Fourteen different ways, credit cards, computer IP addresses. It's cockeyed, crazy.

RUSH: It's not it's a rhetorical question. I still want to ask, why are there 16,000 new IRS agents if Obamacare's not a tax? I know, I'm just being difficult.

By the way, there is noncourt news. The Wall Street Journal is reporting manufacturing has slowed in America for the first time in three years, and in fact is at as low a point as it's ever been during the recession. It's in bad shape. Manufacturing and prices are plummeting. Now, on the consumer side prices plummeting to an extent is good, but it's not good, it's deflationary if people can't sell what they're manufacturing for a profit. They're not gonna make it. It makes no sense to make something if you can't sell it for a profit. If you can sell it for what it costs you there's no reason to stay in business. Now, the left thinks that would be ideal. "That's right, Mr. Limbaugh, I think Apple should make an iPhone and sell it to us for exactly what it cost them to make it. That would be fair."

"To be fair, so that everybody would be able to enjoy the benefits of the iPhone, Mr. Limbaugh. Why should they have to make any profit doing it? It's gouging people. It's screwing people."

"Well, it's how they... I don't even want to waste my time with you, Mr. New Castrati." Anyway, prices plummeting is okay to a point, but if they get to the manufacturing cost, then they're gonna stop being made altogether and we got nothing. Anyway, it's just more bad economic news. The private sector we're being told is doing great, everything's fine there. It isn't.

Since there are some links you may want to go back to from time-to-time, I am going to begin a list of them here. This will be a list to which I will add links each week.

Conservative Review
Issue #234	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	July 8, 2012