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.

There was a shooting at a midnight showing of the new Batman film. Not too long after the shooting, Brian Ross of ABC news, without any proof whatsoever, suggests that this might be a TEA party member, simply because they have the same name. Some on the left blamed Rush Limbaugh (and Sean Hannity to a lesser degree). Many blamed gun ownership. One conservative blamed our nation falling away from God (which I would agree with). There is now a second person of interest in this case. It is now coming out that the shooter is a registered Democrat, Obama supporter, and an Occupy Black Bloc member.

Hawaiian official swears that there is no official Obama birth certificate. earlier, this week, Sheriff Joe Arpao claimed that this Obama birth certificate is a phoney as well. Is this possible? Could all of those birthers be right?

Senator Frank Lautenberg did something which is possibly unprecedented: he called publicly for a boycott of his own constituents, simply because its owners disagree with him politically.

The families of three U.S. citizens killed in drone strikes in Yemen last year, including militant cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, filed a lawsuit this week that accuses top CIA and U.S. military officials of violating the constitutional rights of those killed. The lawsuit, which was prepared in part by the American Civil Liberties Union, represents the most direct legal challenge yet to the Obama administration's decision to kill U.S. citizens in counter-terrorism operations without open due process measures or scrutiny from courts.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi was emphatic: Mitt Romney's refusal to release more than two years of his personal tax returns, she said, makes him unfit to win confirmation as a member of the president's Cabinet, let alone to hold the high office himself. Sen. Harry Reid went further: Romney's refusal to make public more of his tax records makes him unfit to be a dogcatcher. They do not, however, think that standard of transparency should apply to them. Just 17 out of the 535 members of Congress released their most recent tax forms or provided some similar documentation of their tax liabilities in response to requests from McClatchy Newspapers over the last three months.

Amid a heavy barrage of advertising by opposing "super" political groups, President Barack Obama's re-election campaign spent more than it collected in June. However, they were outraised by Republican Mitt Romney. June was the second consecutive month in which Romney brought in more money than Obama, finance reports filed Friday show. Romney's money advantage prompted Obama's campaign advisers to warn earlier this month that the president could lose the election if the financial disparity continued.

National Democrats have repeatedly touted their stand against taking corporate money for their convention in September, and so it was striking to see two emails from the DNC host committee referring to the Charlotte venue where President Obama will speak as "Panthers Stadium." It's the place where the Panthers play, but it's actually called Bank of America stadium. A recent email from the host committee signed by former Al Gore campaign manager Donna Brazile urged people to win a trip to Charlotte for the event, which will wrap "Thursday night at Panthers Stadium with President Obama."

President Obama's bizarre marriage-theme fund-raising scheme - where he asks couples to request campaign donations from their guests in lieu of wedding gifts - has been a total flop. The desperate initiative, dubbed "the Event Registry," is being mocked by event planners and couples - and shows how desperate the Obama campaign is to keep up with GOP contender Mitt Romney's fund-raising. Social media sites, often strong supporters of the President, have ignored this novel ploy for campaign donations.

Retail and food service sales decreased 0.5% last month to a seasonally adjusted $401.52 billion, the Commerce Department reported Monday. That is the first time since the depths of the recession in 2008 that retail sales have fallen three months in a row.

The Mexican government has been working with the United States Department of Agriculture to increase participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps.

An audit conducted by the Energy Department's Office of Inspector General was "unable to locate" $500,000 worth of equipment purchased with stimulus money by a recipient of funds distributed through the department's "Advanced Batteries and Hybrid Components Program." The DOE said it would not be "appropriate" to release the name of stimulus-money recipient where the $500,000 worth of equipment could not be located. What are the chances that might be an Obama donor or bundler?

Ways and Means Committee Ranking Member Sander Levin (D-MI) is preparing legislation to amend the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 to require presidential candidates to make public 10 years of tax returns and disclose overseas accounts. The legislation, to be introduced in the coming weeks, comes as Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney continues to balk at releasing a broad set of tax returns and fails to come forward with a full disclosure of accounts he has held overseas.

Massachusetts’s governor Deval Patrick's office asked town officials to dispatch road crews this week to fill potholes near his Berkshires mansion to pave the way for a smooth ride for first lady Michelle Obama when she arrives at the Bay State for a $20,000/head fundraiser for the president at the governor's getaway next month.

FBI agents staged a middle-of-the-night raid Wednesday at the home of Trenton's mayor, whose administration of the state's impoverished capital city has been marked by accusations of cronyism and reckless spending. They also searched the home of his brother and a convicted sex offender who was one of his biggest early campaign donors.

Kerry Kennedy, 52, the ex-wife of Gov. Cuomo and daughter of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, was charged with driving while ability impaired by drugs after cops said they found her unable to walk, talk or see straight minutes after a harrowing drive on Interstate 684. A law-enforcement source familiar with the case said, "The family is so aggressive, they act like some organized-crime family. They come right out playing hardball with bare knuckles - they don't even know the facts."

A federal judge has ordered the New York City Fire Department to implement racial quotas to address grievances from minorities who failed entrance exams. This ruling requires two of every five newly hired fireman to be black and one of every five, Hispanic - until the department has fulfilled the court-ordered quota of 186 black and 107 Hispanic hires. The ruling allows back pay - totaling an estimated $128.7 million - for minorities who failed written tests.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is not a fan of a key provision of the federal program that allows state and local police to enforce federal immigration laws, and just this week, removed the “success stories” from the Homeland Security website. What is weird is, people from the left, right and middle support deporting and/or incarcerating illegal aliens who are involved in criminal acts.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says his organization is pushing for a ”Second Bill of Rights" for the United States of America. The first Bill of Rights, sponsored by James Madison in the U.S. House of Representatives, protected, among other things, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, the free exercise of religion, the right to keep and bear arms, the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, and the right not to have one's private property taken by the government unless for a public use and with just compensation. Trumka and the AFL-CIO are calling for a new bill of rights that would guarantee "full employment," a "living wage," and a "healthy future." These are “rights” guaranteed by most socialist and communist governments.

Amonix, which designs and manufactures concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) commercial solar power systems, has received $6 Million in Federal tax credits and a $15.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. And, after being in business for 14 months, they have closed up shop. So, will you read this story or will you hear more stories about Romney and Bain Capital this week?

In an attempt to `stop global warming', scientists have been experimenting with dumping several tons of iron into the Antarctic ocean in order to potentially fertilize the development of plankton. Despite raising a multitude of red flags raised from leading scientific organizations and health watch organizations, a new study is now calling for the practice to be even further extended as a worldwide `geoengineering' strategy to alter the climate via dumping hundreds of tons of iron dust into the ocean. Previous research found that by dumping the heavy metal into oceans worldwide it could not only devastate the marine life population, but deplete oxygen levels and explode the growth of certain unwanted organisms.

National Public Radio has hired the lobbying firm Navigators Global to lobby for more taxpayer funds. Their lobbying firm will be paid with taxpayer funds.

New York police believe Iranian Revolutionary Guards or their proxies have been involved so far this year in nine plots against Israeli or Jewish targets around the world, according to restricted police documents obtained by Reuters. Reports prepared this week by intelligence analysts for the New York Police Department (NYPD) say three plots were foiled in January, three in February and another three since late June. Iran has repeatedly denied supporting militant attacks abroad.

Iranian police shut down dozens of restaurants and coffee shops over the weekend, Iranian media reported, in a renewed crackdown on what the state sees as immoral and un-Islamic behaviour.

A 17-year-old shouted `Allahu Akbar' - Arabic for `God is Great' - as he unsuccessfully tried to grab the Olympic torch during a stretch of the flame's route through Maidstone towards Redgill. Vid

A lanky, long-haired man wearing a baseball cap and plaid shorts had a fake Michigan driver's license which possibly enabled him to carry out a deadly suicide attack against a bus full of Israeli vacationers in Bulgaria. As an aside, Michigan (Dearborn in particular) has a huge population of Shia Muslims from Iraq and Lebanon, many or whom are sympathetic to the Shia terror group Hezbollah, and it's Hezbollah who Israel believes is behind the attack. It turns out that the Swedish suicide bomber who carried out the Bulgaria attack on Israeli tourists was freed from Gitmo after heavy pressure from Sweden's liberal government, and treated like a "rock star" upon his return.

A boy and a girl were found killed on Wednesday in Jahanian, a sub district of Khanewal. The two were accused of having eloped on Tuesday night. Police have arrested the girl's brother, Waqas, and her uncle, Mulazim Hussain, on a complaint by the boy's brother, Khalid. Some other members of the girl's family, including her father, have also been named in the case. Police said 10th class student, Nosheen, and first year student, Muhammad Ajmal, had been shot. The bodies also bore sharp weapon wounds. Police claimed to have recovered an axe from the house of one of the girl's relatives. They speculated that the axe was used in the crime.

A suicide bomber struck the National Security building in the Syrian capital Wednesday, killing the defense minister, Dawoud Rajha, 65, a former army general. He is the most senior government official to be killed in the Syrian civil war. Rajha was the most senior Christian government official in Syria.

President Obama: "Sometimes when I'm in a big important international meeting and you see me writing stuff down it might be that I'm just drawing some folks." Can you imagine if Bush said this? Front page everywhere.

Michelle Obama: “I mean, hope doesn't get actualized in three and a half years.” Especially when your husband is doodling during important meetings.

President Obama, finally walking back his remarks of last week: "What I said was together we build roads and we build bridges. That's the point I've made millions of times, and by the way, that's a point Mr. Romney has made as well, so this is just a bogus issue."

President Obama in an ad to target those in rural America: "My grandparents came from the Midwest and so when I travel to rural areas of the country, what always strikes me is how hard people work and resilient they are, and how much they are worried about being able to pass on that way of life to the next generation. Those core middle class values that helped to build America, I think they're still out there in every corner of this country. People still believe in hard work. They still believe in personal responsibility. And that's why we've spent a lot of time on how we build on the strengths of rural America, making sure that folks out there have access to health care, the ability to export their goods to markets. I want a young person, if they want to teach, if they want to be an entrepreneur - young people can say to themselves, we can succeed here just like we can in the big city." Does he even have a clue as to how patronizing that is?

President Obama: "In 2008, I tried to only making promises that I could keep or work on keeping. I told you that I was not a perfect man and I wouldn't be a perfect president but I also told you that I would always tell you what I thought, I'd always tell you where I stood and most of all, I would wake up every single day, every single day and spend every waking hour thinking about you fighting for as hard as I knew for you."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), apparently suffering a flashback: "Well, Vice President Cheney's up here. We know that before he became vice president, he worked for Halliburton. Halliburton did extremely well during his time as vice president, and I assume there's going to be some concern about Halliburton again in this conversation they're going to have today,"

President Obama, edited down from about a 8 minute speech: “Well, let me, first of all, say how grateful I am...how much we appreciate...I know that...And so I want all of you to know how appreciative I am...And I know many of you...I was looking forward to having a fun conversation with you...And I had a chance to speak with...not just on behalf of Michelle and myself, but the entire American family...I'm sure that...the same reaction that I did when I heard this news. My daughters go to the movies. What if Malia and Sasha had been at the theater...Michelle and I will be fortunate enough to hug our girls a little tighter tonight, and I'm sure you will do the same with your children...So, again, I am so grateful that all of you are here. I am so moved by your support...This, I think, is a day for prayer and reflection...So what I'd ask everybody to do, I'd like us to pause in a moment of silence...I hope all of you will...I am grateful to all of you, and I hope that as a consequence of today's events, as you leave here, you spend a little time thinking about the incredible blessings that God has given us.” On the first count, “I” occurred about 18 times.

Jay Carney, President Obama's spokesman: "I would say as you know the president believes we need to take common sense measures that protect the Second Amendment rights of Americans while ensuring that those who should not have guns under existing laws do not get them." Don’t forget to add, war is peace, freedom is slavery.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky statement: "My deep condolences today are extended to all those who had a loved one killed, injured or terrorized by the senseless, horrifying tragedy in Aurora, Colorado...Places that we expect to be safe for our families and children - movie theatres, schools - should never become the scene of such wanton violence. I hope my colleagues in Congress will consider the proliferation of weapons in our neighborhoods and the increasingly easy access to deadly weapons.”

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, on the Colorado shootings: "Soothing words are nice. But maybe it's time the two people who want to be president of the United States stand up and tell us what they're going to do about it, because this is obviously a problem across the country...I mean, there's so many murders with guns every day. It's just gotta stop. And instead of these two people, President [Barack] Obama and governor [Mitt] Romney talking in broad things about, they want to make the world a better place. OK. Tell us how. And this is a problem. No matter where you stand on the Second Amendment, no matter where you stand on guns, we have a right to hear from both of them, concretely, not just in generalities, specifically, what are they going to do about guns?"

President Obama, answering what his greatest achieve as president have been, bypassed Obamacare, and answered: "You know, my proudest achievement is actually stabilizing the economy to avert a great depression. Because if I don't do that, nothing else matters."

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.): "If you talk to economists, they will tell you there are two things that are the most stimulative that you can do - one's unemployment insurance, the other's food stamps."

Part Indian and Senatorial candidate Elizabeth Warren, of Obama’s “you didn’t build your business on your own”: "I think the basic notion is right. Nobody got rich on their own. Nobody. People worked hard, they build a business...but they moved their goods on roads the rest of us helped build, they hired employees the rest of us helped educate, they plugged into a power grid the rest of us helped build. The rest of us made those investments because we wanted businesses to flourish, we wanted them to grow, we wanted them to create opportunity for all of us. That's what we do together. We get richer as a country when we make those investments." And who pays the taxes for these things? The top 10% pays about 70% of the taxes.

President Obama: "It's less a tax or a penalty than it is a principle - which is you can't be a freeloader on other folks when it comes to your health care, if you can afford it." Buddy, better let the news services spin this; they are professions.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.): "If we're talking about fiscal stability, the Affordable Care Act is an act of fiscal stability."

President Obama: "I don't know about you, but in my life what I've found, you know, sometimes I do boneheaded things, I make mistakes. I find, when I try something that doesn't work, then I don't try it again. I don't - you don't go back to doing something that didn't work." Less than 10 minutes later, the president pledged that continuing to "invest" in green energy would be part of his agenda if reelected.

Vice President Joe Biden: "Don't tell me that you value and are deeply concerned about seniors if in fact you eviscerate the things that you know they rely on not only for their well being - I'll return to this - but for their dignity, for their dignity and their pride."

Stephanie Cutter, Obama's deputy campaign manager, to Mitt Romney: “Stop whining.”

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, DNC head: "And we're re-fighting the same cultural and social battles with the Republicans because they're controlled by the extremists in the Tea Party.”

President Barack Obama: "They'll have a bunch of ads with the scary voices and you know, most of what you hear you can just go mute. Just press the mute button. That's a good thing about the remote. Or you can use the DVR and fast forward. And the reason why you don't have to pay much attention is because these ads are going to say the same thing over and over again. They know, the other side knows they can't sell their economic plan because we tried it and it didn't work."

Nancy Pelosi fund-raising email: “It's nearly President Obama's birthday! My Democratic colleagues and I would like to collect 51,000 signatures for the President's 51st birthday. Will you add your name?”

Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter: "If you look at the discussion we were having, last week it was revealed that Mitt Romney signed his name on SEC documents saying he was chairman, CEO, president and full owner of Bain Capital. But he's also telling the American people that he's not responsible for anything that happened there. So we're simply pointing out that both things can't be true. If you were signing documents to the federal government, as we all know, that you knowingly know aren't true, that is a criminal offense. But we are not suggesting that Romney committed a crime here, we're actually suggesting he's not being upfront with the American people about his involvement in Bain."

DNC spokesman Brad Woodhouse: "Our use of the Romneys' dressage horse was not meant to offend Mrs. Romney in any way, and we regret it if it did. We were simply making a point about Governor Romney's failure to give straight answers on a variety of issues in this race. We have no plans to invoke the horse any further to avoid misinterpretation." This was a video which, under the surface, also made fun of Mrs. Romney’s using horse riding for her multiple sclerosis.

Washington state Democratic Sen. Patty Murray: "So if we can't get a good deal, a balanced deal that calls on the wealthy to pay their fair share, then I will absolutely continue this debate into 2013 rather than lock in a long-term deal this year that throws middle-class families under the bus...If middle-class families start seeing more money coming out of their paychecks next year - are Republicans really going to stand up and fight for new tax cuts for the rich? Are they going to continue opposing the Democrats' middle-class tax cut once the slate has been wiped clean? I think they know that that would be an untenable political position. And I hope this pushes them to come to the table with real revenue now before being forced to the table if we don't get a deal before the New Year."

Barack Obama: “My vision says we're going to invest in education and we're going to hire new teachers, especially in math and science; open up 2 million more slots for folks to go to community colleges to get trained in the jobs that businesses are hiring for right now. (Applause.) We already helped to make sure that student loan rates didn't double, but now we've got to work more to lower tuition costs so young people aren't burdened with debt. (Applause.) So we're going to invest in education. We're going to invest in American energy. Yes, we want to continue to expand our production of oil and natural gas, but I also want to make sure that we are the leaders in solar and wind and biodiesel, the energy of the future that can help reduce our dependence on foreign oil. (Applause.) American manufacturing, change our tax code, provide incentives for companies to invest here, invest in basic research and science so that we are at the cutting-edge -- because whoever has got the best technology, will ultimately have the best economy. (Applause.) We've got to make those investments. Rebuilding our infrastructure -- I know you've got some bridges around here that need repair. (Applause.) You've got some roads that need a repair. Let's put construction workers back to work. (Applause.)” Or, as WZ translated it: "My vision" for my second term is to spend, spend, spend.

George Lakoff and Elisabeth Wehling: “That this is a metaphor is clear. Imagine that you want to buy a horse. You pay for a horse, and what is delivered to you is a fertilized horse egg. You would probably feel cheated. You can't ride or race a fertilized horse egg. It isn't a horse. Even in Texas. You need a mare and a lot of development. A single cell isn't a horse, a cluster of undifferentiated cells (technically, a "blastocyst") isn't a horse, a cluster of differentiated cells isn't a horse, a horse embryo isn't a horse, and a horse fetus isn't a horse. You would feel cheated if you were sold any of them.” This is their explanation why a fetus should never be spoken of using any sort of human terms.

George Lakoff and Elisabeth Wehling: “Here's what progressives need to do: Never use the Cells Are People metaphor, even in arguing against conservative policy. Never use the term baby or unborn child to refer to a blastocyst, embryo, or fetus. Stop using the term abortion. It has misleading properties...Never use the expression partial birth abortion. It's a conservative political tool, not a medical reality...Whenever possible, avoid the term morning-after pill. It evokes a prototypical frame of immoral behavior, bad decision-making, the inability to ‘just say no’ at a party or during a date. It excludes the fact that the treatment can help rape victims prevent development, be used in cases where other birth control methods failed, and so on.” Entire context is here. As an aside, NO ONE uses the morning-after pill “where other birth control methods failed.” That they failed is not known for several weeks. Talking about rape or a condom that broke is talking about less than 1% of the times a morning-after pill is used (an approach liberals love to use). Language is most important to progressives; if they used honest language, no one would agree to their ideas.

PETA statement over boy scouts banning openly gay scouts and scout masters: "That's why we're

offering gay young men (and all compassionate young people) our PETA merit badge, along with information on how they can build character, be healthier, and become responsible citizens, all while helping to end cruelty to animals."

Mayor Thomas M. Menino is vowing to block Chick-fil-A from bringing its Southern-fried fast-food empire to Boston - possibly to a popular tourist spot just steps from the Freedom Trail: "Chick-fil-A doesn't belong in Boston. You can't have a business in the city of Boston that discriminates against a population. We're an open city, we're a city that's at the forefront of inclusion...That's the Freedom Trail. That's where it all started right here. And we're not going to have a company, Chick-fil-A or whatever the hell the name is, on our Freedom Trail."

Dion Rabouin of the Huffington Post: “This summer 34,500 people were forced to evacuate their homes in my home state of Colorado. I watched as a dozen wildfires raged through the state with some contained in days or weeks, while others are still not extinguished. The extremely hot weather, dry climate and dramatically reduced water supply that all led to the wildfires are part of a pattern that has been unfolding for more than a decade. In fact, the past 10 years have been unequivocally the hottest on record in the history of weather record keeping. But even that heat is dwarfed by what we've seen this year. According to the the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) the first six months of 2012 have been the hottest January-through-June period on record for the contiguous United States. The national temperatures averaged "4.5 degrees above the long-term average," the NOAA said in a statement last week. None of this is a coincidence. It is the result of a manmade pandemic that could very well destroy the planet. It's called climate change and it is very real and it is happening right now. Make no mistake, this is a black issue. The National Council of Churches Eco-Justice program has found that African Americans are at a higher risk for the short- and long-term effects of global warming. Cities will be hit harder by climate change because of what's known as the "heat island" effect. Urban areas are covered in surfaces like asphalt and concrete that retain heat and as a result temperatures in these areas are higher, especially during heat waves. Heat waves have stronger effects on urban populations and especially the urban poor. African Americans are more than twice as likely as whites to live in the inner city and nearly twice as likely as whites to live in poverty.”

Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.): "If we are serious about reducing catastrophic wildfires, we must first acknowledge there is a link between climate change and wildfires."

Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.): "Batman may be rising in theaters, but icebergs and heat records are falling across the globe as our folly of global-warming inaction is finally coming back to haunt us. When Republicans like Mitt Romney reject the science surrounding climate change, and block the solutions to this grave challenge, they become complicit in the acceleration and intensification of extreme weather events around the world and here in America."

Bob Herbert said on MSNBC's "Rachel Maddow Show": "The Republican party has been a safe house for bigotry for decades. That's what the Southern Strategy was all about. We're in the process now of canonizing George H. W. Bush, but it was George H. W. Bush who gave us those Willie Horton ads in 1988. And Ronald Reagan, who has already achieved sainthood in the GOP, he started his general campaign in 1980 in Philadelphia, Mississippi and that's where those three civil rights workers were killed and that was just, to me, a reprehensible thing to do."

Richard Kim, commentator on MSNBC: "The Dark Knight takes place in a failed state. because elites are corrupt, law enforcement's corrupt. But the thing that really marks it as a failed state is that the state has lost its monopoly on violence. And in that situation, right, you have vigilantes like Batman, you have organized crime, you have terrorists. And what the movie depicts is that it's very difficult in a failed state to tell what is just and unjust violence, right? When you have people like George Zimmerman encouraged to vigilantism because we've cut all these police forces, you have the shards of a failed state so I think that's a very profound, a very profound, sort of reflection, a dark reflection, really. Do we want to live in that night?"

Debbie Wasserman Schultz: “The president has an incredible record of support and advocacy on the issues, domestically, that Jews care about-fighting, for example, to make sure that women have the right to make their own reproductive choices; fighting to pass the Affordable Care Act, to make sure that being a woman is not a pre-existing condition, and that insurance companies can't drop us or deny us coverage, making sure that we have access to affordable birth control without a deductible or a co-pay, while Mitt Romney and the Republicans fought to take us back to a time when we couldn't make our own reproductive choices, when you didn't have access to birth control.” Jews love abortion? Jewish women think the taxpayer ought to pay for their birth control?

NBC Rock Center’s campaign correspondent Peter Alexander: "Their life of privilege, plus a reported $100 million trust fund, continues to draw harsh scrutiny....The criticism is that a family like yours, the Romneys, can't really understand what the average American family is dealing with right now....are you out of touch?" And similar questions have been asked of Barack Obama when?

On PBS, Nina Totenberg, a correspondent for NPR: “You do have two views of the economy, and one of the reasons I think that the tax thing does play, other than all the obvious reasons, is, we have the latest banking scandal, the Libor scandal, and business thinks that Obama's the enemy. But bankers and business increasingly are distanced from the American public. They're the super-rich. They're the super-crooked, it appears...”

NBC’s Michael Isikioff: “...the powerful National Rifle Association has blocked any move for stricter gun laws, meaning that, for now, beefed-up security and greater vigilance may be the best protection against horrific attacks like the one in Aurora.”

LA Times headline: “Romney campaign's attacks on Obama play on 'birther' fears”

New York Times Charles Blow: “Listen, he would renounce being a sentient being on the planet if it would get him into the White House. This is the kind of man that Mitt Romney is. This man does not have a soul. If you opened up, you know, his chest, there's probably a gold ticking watch in there and not even a heart. This is not a person. This is just a robot who will do whatever it takes, whatever he's told to do, to make it to the White House. And he will take whatever push in the back from whatever nasty person is pushing him and move him further in that direction.”

PBS’s Bill Moyers: “We are after all a country which began with the forced subjugation into slavery of millions of Africans and the reliance on arms against Native Americans for its Westward expansion. In truth, more settlers traveling the Oregon Trail died from accidental, self-inflicted gunshots wounds than Indian attacks - we were not only bloodthirsty but also inept. Nonetheless, we have become so gun loving, so blasé about home-grown violence that in my lifetime alone, far more Americans have been casualties of domestic gunfire than have died in all our wars combined. In Arizona last year, just days after the Gabby Giffords shooting, sales of the weapon used in the slaughter - a 9 millimeter Glock semi-automatic pistol - doubled...The killer in Colorado waited only for an opportunity, and there you have it - the arsenal of democracy transformed into the arsenal of death and the NRA -- the NRA is the enabler of death -- paranoid, delusional, and as venomous as a scorpion. With the weak-kneed acquiescence of our politicians, the National Rifle Association has turned the Second Amendment of the Constitution into a cruel hoax, a cruel and deadly hoax.”

MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell, when Limbaugh pointed out that Obama admitted to smoking weed and snorting cocaine: “And so Rush decided to teach Mitt how to go after a minority. Rush thinks Mitt should be hitting Barack Obama as a lazy, drug-taking beneficiary of affirmative action. Rush didn't use the word shiftless, but Rush threw in every racist stereotype he could in his advice to Mitt.”

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews: "Obama Is the Perfect Father, the Perfect Husband, the Perfect American"

MSNBC statement: "MSNBC would like to set the record straight following some misinformation presented by Fox News during the interview with George Zimmerman last night. Reverend Al Sharpton never 'rushed to judgment,' as stated by Mr. Hannity. Reverend Sharpton repeatedly called for calm and for a more thorough investigation in the wake of the tragic events. Ultimately, the authorities agreed an arrest was warranted."

Actor and political analyst Mark Hamill (who played Luke Skywalker): "I knew nothing about Mexican history or anything. But just the idea of a privileged person fighting for the underdog - there's something very romantic about that. I guess it goes back to Robin Hood. People that are fighting for the middle class and for the Have-Nots. It's something that we see even playing out in the presidential race...And if you don't vote for Barack Obama, you're insane, cause without him, I think the middle class will completely disappear. And you look at Romney and I'm sure he's a nice guy, but I think he's like The Thing ‼ he only imitates human behavior. He's not actually human himself."

Actor Morgan Freeman: "President Obama has done a remarkable job in historically difficult circumstances. He ended combat operations in Iraq, put in place sensible reforms of Wall Street, saved the auto industry and protected the health care of every American. He has led our nation to be more tolerant and placed impressive, accomplished women on the Supreme Court. In return, he is the target of hundreds of millions of dollars from right-wing sources. I am proud to lend my voice - and support - to those who defend him. Priorities USA Action is doing a great job of protecting the values I believe in. I am happy to help them and I hope others will join me." This was Freeman’s statement when he joined the million dollar club, giving one of Obama’s pacs $1 million

Singer Alicia Keys: "President Obama cares about the issues we care about. That's something I know deep in my core and I think we all relate to. You see him speak, whether it's on TV or if you get a chance to see him in person, you know that there's a really genuine spirit that comes from him, it's a really human spirit. That's the spirit of a person that I'd like to see run the country - someone that's human. Thank you! Give me someone human!"

Talk show host Jerry Springer: "I was honored to meet with President Obama today and felt the meeting was substantive. He's so competent and so smart, I just don't see why we wouldn't want him for four more years as president."

Bill Maher tweet (about the Colorado shooting): Rt wingers luv to tout American Exceptionalism - today is a reminder that so many of the things that make us exceptional these days are bad

Michael Moore tweet: 9:30 am today from American Rifleman, the official journal of the NRA RT @NRA_Rifleman Good morning, shooters. Happy Friday! Weekend plans?

Cher tweet: OBAMA! 2day He talked bout his Great Sadness off top oh his head! Romney needed 2 READ Cards 2 tell how SAD he was

Senator Barack Obama in 2009: ''He has spent the last few weeks of the campaign calling me every name in the book. Every name, everything but a child of God, because that's how you play the game in Washington. When you can't win on your own ideas, you try to make up ideas about the other person.'' A similar speech from that era. So he said about probably one of the most honorable and respectful candidates in presidential history.

President Obama: "One of the things that's been striking about this Jobs Council is how focused and how hard-working everybody has been around this table. This has not been a show council. This has been a work council.” And, although Obama thinks about us all the time and about jobs all the time, it’s been 6 months since he met with this council.

Barack Obama, 2010: “A solar panel company, a solar power company called Amonix received approximately a $6 million tax credit for new facilities they’re building in the Las Vegas area, a tax credit they were able to match with approximately $12 million in private capital. That’s happening right now. And that’s just one of over 180 projects that received tax credits in over 40 states.”

Actress Ellen Barkin tweet: Gotta go to bed.Work in morning.I love everybody...except u right wing f___ morons.X

President Obama: "That's the difference between myself and my opponent: As long as I'm commander in chief we're going to make sure that our veterans are properly cared for."

Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi: "What I would like to see is reduce the roll of money in campaigns, increase the level of civility - I promise you, we will elect more women to office."

Bill Maher tweet: I c the Tea People who drifted back to the attic to have sex with their half sisters after winning 2010 r back calling Obama foreign - jeez

Bill Burton, head of Priorities USA Action, and Obama Super PAC: "People are starting to see that [Romney's] business record was about screwing middle-class Americans so that he and his partners could make millions of dollars."

Jon Lovitz makes fun of the President and gets a lot of vicious tweets. Do not criticize Barry.

The left attacks and criticizes Ann Romney for saying, “You people.” However she did not say that. Obama did. Some example tweets:

obamadailywire @obamadailywire tweet: I don't know whose more dislike in America right now Michele Bachmann or Ann Romney #YouPeople

Lydia @Chula615 tweet: #youpeople stop talking about @AnnRomney she has a lot to handle right now like, butlers, maids, hair appointments, fund raisers, horses??

David Schlesinger @stone mirror tweet: Reportedly, Ann Romney doesn't think too much of #YouPeople - you know, the ones without two Cadillacs and a Swiss bank account.

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, regarding the deaths of Israelis in a terror bombing in Bulgaria: "The bitter enemies of the Iranian people and the Islamic Revolution have recruited most of their forces in order to harm us. They have indeed succeeded in inflicting blows upon us more than once, but have been rewarded with a far stronger response. The enemy believes it can achieve its aims in a long, persistent struggle against the Iranian people, but in the end it will not. We are working to ensure that."

President Obama, on Ramadan: "This year, Ramadan holds special meaning for those citizens in the Middle East and North Africa who are courageously achieving democracy and self-determination and for those who are still struggling to achieve their universal rights. The United States continues to stand with those who seek the chance to decide their own destiny, to live free from fear and violence, and to practice their faith freely.” This new movement toward democracy has been marked by all kinds of violence against non-Muslim religions.

Mark Knoller tweet: Pres Obama said "the other side" blames him for the economy - but said their policy proposals don't have "persuasive power."

Donnie Box, star of anti-Romney ad: "I could really care less about Obama. I think Obama is a jerk, a pantywaist, a lightweight, a blowhard. He hasn't done a __damn thing that he said he would do. When he had a Democratic Senate and Democratic Congress, he didn't do a damn thing. He doesn't have the guts to say what's on his mind."

Jon Lovitz tweet: @SWilli03 I don't hate the President. I hate blatant pandering and lying, from anybody.

Jon Lovitz tweet: @tyme11 I couldn't agree with you more! My parents and teachers and other actors helped me... Not the government!!!!

Jon Lovitz tweet: @buvox The lower the capital gains tax, the more tax revenue is created for the government.

Jon Lovitz tweet: If the government helped me build my career & 99% of the country is hurting, why aren't they blaming the government for not helping them?

24-year-old James Holmes, who had dyed his hair like The Joker, to the police: “I’m the joker.”

Representative Paul Ryan: “...Remember, these tax policies have been in place for a decade, Charlie, so they're really not tax cuts. We're just talking about keeping taxes where they are. A year and a half ago, the President said, the last thing you want to do in a soft economy is raise taxes. We agree. The economy is worse now than it was then. So, we're going to, next week, pass an extension of the tax code for another year, and we've already passed two bills dealing with the sequester, all of which are sitting over in the Senate, which hasn't done anything for three years - no budget for three years; no sequester mitigation plan for three years.”

The CBS correspondent Norah O'Donnell: “Congressman, you're calling them tax policies and tax code. You're afraid to call them tax cuts—“

Ryan: “—They're not tax cuts, Norah, because they've been the current tax policy for ten years—“

O'Donnell: “(laughs) Oh, Congressman, come on! Come on, Congressman—“ [Good argument, by the way]

Ryan: “No -- so here -- no, no. Honestly, Norah, keeping taxes where they are is not cutting taxes. Preventing a tax increase is preventing a tax increase. It's not actually cutting taxes. So, we're saying, don't raise taxes, especially in this soft economy. And, more importantly, Norah, eight out of ten businesses in America pay their taxes on the individual side of the code.”

Only the liberal mind thinks that not raising taxes is equivalent to an Obama tax cut.

Stephanopoulos: “I'm going to go to Brian Ross. You've been investigating the background of Jim Holmes here. You found something that might be significant.”

ABC Reporter Brian Ross: “There's a Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colo., page on the Colorado Tea Party site as well, talking about him joining the tea party last year. Now, we don't know if this is the same Jim Holmes. But it's Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colo.”

Stephanopoulos: “OK, we'll keep looking at that. Brian Ross thanks very much.”

What Stephanopoulos should have said (if, for instance, Aaron Sorokin were rewriting the news): “Are you flipping kidding me, Brian? We are on national television right now. Are you simply going to suggest that someone with the same common name who lives in the same city might be the same guy? Do you have any idea how stupid you must sound to the average discerning viewer right now?”

Colorado Tea Party Patriots member Jim Holmes: "What kind of idiot makes that kind of statement? Really, seriously, how do we take a journalist seriously when it's pretty clear they really haven't done any sort of check on their facts?"

Far left Gawker: “When there's breaking news, especially about terrorism and national security, ABC News' Brian Ross is there. And under no circumstances should you listen to anything he says. His latest breathtakingly reckless report: Some Tea Party guy on the internet has the same name as the Dark Knight Rises shooter, so, you know, they have the same name. So there you go. Tea Party...OK then! There's some guy on the internet with the same name. That is literally all Ross had-no other connection, not one reason to even remotely suspect that it's the same Holmes. Just that there is a guy with that name, on the internet.”

John Hayward, of Human Events, tweet: The guy Brian Ross incorrectly fingered as the Colorado killer had to shut his phone off because of all the threats he's receiving.

Colorado Tea Party Patriots released this statement: “The Colorado Tea Party Patriots and the Tea Party Patriots are saddened to hear of the death and wounding of theater goers in Aurora, Colorado. The member of the Colorado Tea Party Patriots, Jim Holmes, age 52 is not the same person who has been identified as the shooter. The attempts of some media organizations to characterize the shooter as a Tea Party member without having made any effort to contact our organization are shameless and reprehensible.”

Brian Ross via twitter: Earlier I reported incorrectly that the shooting suspect might be tied to the Tea Party. I apologize for the mistake

John Kosich of WEWS-ABC of Romney: "If his name was on SEC filings yet he says he was not in charge, does that elevate to a felony? Should the Justice Department be looking at this?"

President Obama: "I think that the issue here is simply for Mr. Romney to talk about his business background in a way that jives with the facts."

Sonya @SWilli03 19 Jul 12 tweet: @realjonlovitz You are a poor excuse for FUNNY! Just be happy that you have a career and $! Ppl are suffering out here! You are Sickening!

Jon Lovitz tweet: @SWilli03 Why are are you mad at me? I voted for Obama. I opened a business and created jobs 3 years ago. I didn't create the bad Economy.

Ben Labolt: “Mitt Romney is campaigning against the American people when he wants to repeal the affordable care act. By a 10- to 15-point margin, the American people disagree with him-and he's proposed no alternative. He says he's campaigning on replace-“

Russert: “There's a lot of polls that show that the American people are not in favor of the affordable care act, especially amongst independent voters.”

Labolt: “They're certainly not in favor of repeal and they believe that this is a settled debate, if you look at the polling, and they support the individual provisions within it. Mitt Romney has made the central premise of his candidacy with his record at Bain.”

Senator Chuck Schumer to fed chairman Ben Bernanke, after spending 4 minutes bashing Republicans for their intransigence: "I think you have done a superb job...Get to work Mr. Chairman." 30 jobs bills from the House have not even been put up for a vote in the Senate.

Cavuto, interpreting what Bernanke was thinking while Schumer is talking, “I can’t believe what an ass you are, by the smile on his face.”

Sean Hannity: “What do you say to Spike Lee, who didn't know the facts of the case? What do you say to Al Sharpton and those who rushed to judgement? What do you think their motives were?”

George Zimmerman: “I can't guess as to what their motives are. I would just ask for an apology. I mean if I did something that was wrong I would apologize.”

President Obama, at the end of his speech today, referring to the victims of the Colorado shooting: "May the Lord bring them comfort and healing in hard days to come."

"I think it's a little unfortunate, even in a situation like this, [when] he leads a public prayer to a deity that it pretty recognizably the Christian God, much as you can understand the emotional context of it, he's still sending to some degree a message of exclusion to other religions who don't call their god "Lord" and to non-religious Americans. By the very act of praying, that's a message of exclusion. If I'm a public official, I think I'm going to look around in the morning and conclude that, `hey, this religion thing is just too hot to handle, I should stay away from it in my official capacity.'"

Fox Business News’ Charles Gasperino regarding the concept of year-round school: “I think one of the probes is these kids aren’t working [in the summer]. They sit around, drink beer, smoke pot and eat.”

Dagen McDowell, FoxNews commentator: “We’re talking about 3^rd graders, Charlie.”

George Lopez: “And while we're at it Sheriff Joe in Arizona - f-k you you f-king puto. How about that? F-k you. You fat mother f-ker. F-k you. I said I was going to talk some s-t. F-k you Sheriff Joe you f-king puto. F-k you. F-k you.” Yes, this was from last week.

Barack Obama: If you have been successful, you didn't get there on your own. If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so then all the companies could make money off the internet.

Charles Krauthammer: Spoken by a man who never created or ran so much as a candy store. And it's completely a straw man argument, as if conservatives and the Republicans are arguing to disband the fire department and the police department so we can all do it individually on our own. The idea that infrastructure is necessary and good is as old as the republic. It's older than that. The Romans had the Via Appia. It wasn't exactly a new idea. And they had the sewers as well.

The question is, what do you do with the money once you build the infrastructure? You heard Obama talk about the moon shot. This is not on that clip but in that speech. He went through a list of the great achievements that the government has done, the moon shot. Obama shut down the moon program, manned space program so that today we have to outsource our access to space for any American astronaut who wants to go to the space station we have to pay Russian dollars $15 million a shot. He spoke about the invention of the Internet, which he neglected to say was the work of Al Gore. In fact, it wasn't the government that invented it in general, it was the defense department, a part of the government. And what has Obama done as he sprinkled billions of dollars on all the other departments in government? He shrunk the Defense Department and it's now looking at draconian cuts.

This is a man that spent $1 trillion and left not a residue. He could have for example done something about the electric grid. He did nothing on that. Instead he sprinkled the money on cronies, pie in the sky ideological fetishes, like solar panels and electric cars, which is the future but it ain't here and it won't happen now. Money wasted, water on the sand. He did not leave behind residue on all that, but he speaks of about infrastructure. All of us want infrastructure, but real infrastructure, and leave the rest of life to the private individual and the entrepreneur.

Krauthammer: Occasionally, occasionally Obama gets me somewhat revved. He did it on the weekend again. I now have the rest of the week to recover.

I think people were probably with him on the great teacher and on the bridges and the roads. But to say you build a business, you didn't build it, whatever it is, you can't take credit for it, you didn't make it successful is a mistake. It's making of an ad. You could combine it with the private sector doing fine. It's a very, it's a big political error to say that.

But it probably is a good setup for Mitt Romney to make the case that this is the defining argument that president Obama truly believed that without government there really won't be a private sector, there won't be an economic recovery without a leg up and an arm up for everybody along the way.

Jonah Goldberg: I'm largely with Charles on this one. There are so many fallacies crammed into this it's like a rhetorical clown car. It's simultaneously incredibly banal and absolutely outrageous. The banal part is, as Charles said, everybody believes in infrastructure and roads.

The outrageous part is -- and this is consistent with things that Obama said in the past. He has a social justice division of the economy. He believes that government is the other word for all the things we do together, which is ludicrous. He said if one person has a problem we all have a problem, which is crazy. You should come to my house and fix my screen door. But it is vision that he has about the role of government that government subsumes and gets into everything. That is why the life with Julia website from a few months ago was so creepy. It is a fairly holistic view that government needs to be involved in everything and no man's accomplishment is on its own.

CBS’s Scott Pelley: "This is the worst economic recovery America has ever had"

Mark Steyn subbing for Rush Limbaugh “The definition of a ‘nano-second, is the time between a mass shooting and some guy from the left blaming it on talk radio, or Sarah Palin, or Fox News.’ "

George Will: “The killer in Aurora, Colorado, was very intelligent and farsighted and meticulous. I defy you to write a gun control law that would prevent someone like this with a long time horizon and great planning capability from getting the arms he wants. I just think this is a mistake.”

Georgia Congressman Tom Price (R): "The media especially on the left tries to take advantage of every single activity, positive or negative. And it's destructive. It's destructive to the discussion we have from a political standpoint. It's destructive to the body politic. It's destructive to the country. The motives for those individuals escapes me, but I do know the American people are smarter than that. They understand that people like the person who was responsible for this are deranged, and it has nothing to do with their politics."

Mark Levin: “Most of us when something as tragic as what happened in Aurora this morning takes place, our hearts go out to the dead, to the families, to those who are injured. We want to know who they are, we want to know who did this, we want to know why it was done and so forth. Some of us say a prayer. What most of us don't do is search for political scapegoats. And the scapegoat seems to always be the same - us. Somehow those of us who are law-abiding, who preach the value of the individual, who oppose things like abortion and defend the greatest healthcare system in the world because we embrace a culture of life, somehow we're to blame. It doesn't matter if the murderer is mentally ill as in the Tucson case, if he's disgruntled about something including himself or whatever. They look for reasons to find out if he has any connections to us. So the media go hunting for reasons to make disgusting allegations. It's cold-blooded, there's no compassion, they're looking to make news, they're looking to drive ratings. This is just bizarre, and it's time to call them out on it...When you have rogue, politically-motivated reporters like Brian Ross and George Stephanopoulos - and somehow Stephanopoulos is getting a pass - both of ABC News trying to turn this into yet another disgusting attack on the Tea Party, trying to draw connections between the killer and the Tea Party, it doesn't get any lower than that. Boy these people hate us, don't they? I mean, they really hate us.”

Ben Stein on our economic future: “I think what we an look forward to is an extremely difficult patch for the economy. I’m extremely worried about it. Congress doesn’t know what they’re doing, Mr. Bernanke’s tools are extremely limited; Mr. Obama doesn’t really care a lot about it; and I’m extremely worried.”

Rich Lowry on the support of youth for Obama: "Rarely has a politician owed so much to a constituency he has served so poorly."

John Sununu: "[Obama] has no idea how the American system functions, and we shouldn't be surprised about that, because he spent his early years in Hawaii smoking something, spent the next set of years in Indonesia, and when he came to the U.S. worked as a community organizer - which is a socialized structure - and then got into politics in Chicago. There has been no experience in his life in which he's earned a private-sector paycheck that meant anything."

John Sununu: "It's amazing to me that this president would introduce the word felon into the discourse. This is a president who wallowed in Chicago in the murky soup of politics and felons, a region where the politicians quite often end up as felons in jail. This is a president who cut a very snarky real estate deal with Tony Rezko, who is now in prison for trying to extort some money on a political basis. Why would the president want to give people an opportunity to raise his wallowing with felons in the past by raising that question?"

From President Obama, who said: “You didn’t build that; government helped a lot.” (Paraphrasing his words)

FoxNews Business guy, Charles Gasparino: “President Obama was saying that the way out of this is government. If you believe that, then you vote for this president and if you don’t, we hope that Mitt Romney makes the opposite argument. I think that the president did a great thing here. He drew the ideological lines very starkly and now, you the American people have a choice.”

Charles Gasparino: “Nobody here—not even the TEA party—is outraged about police and firemen. What they are outraged about is the massive encroachment of government in our lives and the fact that the solutions to our economic problems from this administration and often Republicans involved taxpayer money and government and not the private sector. The president did us a great favor by saying, ‘If you want that, then vote for me.’ ”

Jonah Goldberg, on Obama explaining how business owners did not build their business on their own: "There are so many ideological fallacies there, it’s like a rhetorical clown car."

IBD's Andrew Malcolm: “How embarrassing this must be for President Obama, whose major speech theme so far this campaign season has been that every single American, no matter how rich, should pay their "fair share" of taxes...A new report just out from the Internal Revenue Service reveals that 36 of President Obama's executive office staff owe the country $833,970 in back taxes. These people working for Mr. Fair Share apparently haven't paid any share, let alone their fair share.”

Mitt Romney, regarding the President view "if you've got a business - you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.": "It wasn't a gaffe. It was instead his ideology."

Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul: "President Obama has based his entire reelection campaign on a vicious, dishonest assault on Mitt Romney's business career. The real question for President Obama is this: if Bain Capital is so bad, why have you taken nearly $120,000 in donations from them? President Obama's actions are the height of hypocrisy."

Romney advisor of Obama: "I mean, this is a guy who admitted to cocaine use, had a sweetheart deal with his house in Chicago, and was associated and worked with Rod Blagojevich to get Valerie Jarrett appointed to the Senate. The bottom line is there'll be counterattacks."

Paula Priesse posting: July 19th - Jobless claims up "unexpectedly" last week. Asked why O's "Jobs Council" hasn't met in 6 months, WH Press Secretary Jay Carney responded that President Obama has " a lot on his plate." I'll say. In this same period O attended 106 fundraisers & played golf 10 times. O's broken economic promises: 1) Unemployment w/stimulus to be now at 5.6% (today 8.2%) 2) Deficit to be cut in half (deficit 5 TIMES higher than projected) 3) Will build a strong middle class (avg. household income has dropped $4300) & 4) Will lift Americans out of poverty (14.3 million more on food stamps). So although O refuses to give business owners their due, let's give O full credit for the economy. HE BUILT IT! HE MADE IT HAPPEN! P

Paula Priesse posting: July 18th - A new Obama campaign ad asks: "What is Mitt Romney hiding?" Mitt will get back to you as soon as O releases (for starters): 1) his college transcripts 2) his IL Senate papers 3) his medical records & 4) "Fast & Furious" documents now sealed by executive privilege. O's folks (and the media) sure are obsessed with Bain Capital. Good thing their guy is so clean. Well, except for that drug use thing. And those Ayers, Dohrn & Wright connections. And that sweetheart Rezko land deal. And contacting Blago about a Valerie Jarrett Senate appointment. And the billions in green tech "stimulus" dollars awarded to O campaign contributors. Yep, the President is as clean as a whistle! Must be, just ask the media. P

Paula Priesse posting: July 17th - In his RCP article titled "Barack Obama Fails The Young" Rich Lowry

writes, "Rarely has a politician owed so much to a constituency he has served so poorly." Good news Rich, O's support with young voters is fading fast! Smart kids are deciding that gay marriage isn't worth being jobless. Or a bankrupt future. As for the majority of young folks who still support O? Victims of schools and a popular culture spoon-feeding them PC pabulum their whole lives. Thus sadly incapable of independent thought. Poor whippersnappers, still waiting for the hip dude to give them "Hope & Change." Sorry, but it ain't happening. Time to get angry & smell the Starbucks! Ignorant & unemployed is no way to go through life. P

Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton: "This is obviously a very dangerous period for Israel with the civil war in Syria, refugees reported going across the border into Lebanon, and Hezbollah well armed with rockets on Israel's northern border. So I think if there were ever a time to retaliate, and directly against Iran this time, this is it."

Kukis: “I’m smart and I work hard and there’s a road in front of my house. So where’s my business?”

Marco Rubio tweet: Listening to @BarackObama wage #classwarfare in #Jacksonville #Florida.Parts of it sound like speech by left-wing 3rd world leader.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry: "In labeling the Texas voter ID law as a `poll tax,' Eric Holder purposefully used language designed to inflame passions and incite racial tension."

Rush: "The Democrat Party, Obama, need a permanent underclass. They need a growing, permanent underclass that is in total dependence upon them. That's why they are so radically opposed to upward mobility."

Rush: "No matter what Romney says or does in a press availability, the questions are always gonna be taken back and tried to be linked or tied to the Obama agenda and Obama's talking points. It's journalistic malpractice. It is blatant incompetence."

Rush: "By the way, you know this was a good speech done by Romney 'cause you haven't seen anything about it anywhere, have you? The Drive-Bys aren't covering this. It's not anywhere to be found in the State-Controlled Media."

Rush: "Elizabeth Warren is back doubling down on this whole notion that if you got a road in front of your business, that road and the people that built it are the reason you succeeded. You have nothing to do with it. She's back; they're doubling down on it."

Rush: "I hope Romney is keeping track of who on our side is caving to Obama's demands. I hope he understands it's the Tea Party sticking by him and not the establishment Republicans. I hope Romney understands that, as the Tea Party and the conservative base supports him on this tax return issue, it's the Republican establishment and their associated media allies which are trying to acquiesce to demands from the Obama campaign."

Rush: "I think that's all Obama thinks happens in an economy: You build roads and bridges. He seems to talk about this all the time.”

Rush: "This [economy] is what real people are living, what real people are talking about. And what real people are starting to understand is Obama doesn't care about them. And even if he did, they're starting to realize there's nothing he could do about it 'cause he doesn't know how and he doesn't really care."

Rush: "There is a new Mitt Romney. Now, we need more than two days out of this. This needs to be the real new Mitt Romney for the rest of the campaign."

Rush: "I can't intellectually understand why anybody would hate this country. The freedom, the opportunity... The freedom is such a big deal. That's why the rest of the world still wants to get here."

Does this mean Obama's white half is racist against his black half because he wrote about it in his own book?

Obama: "We are running a whole slew of positive ads" CNN Says He Ran 19,000+ Negative Ads And Less Than 150 Positive Spots Last Week Alone. Anderson Cooper is tough on David Axelrod.

This is a great video by Bill Whittle on Obama and the magical things that Obama falls into.

A warning, this is 10 min. long, but it covers the Affordable Care Act, and tells you what certain pages say, such as the government will have access to our bank accounts (and all personal accounts and personal records). You can tell that a few liberals had this in their desk drawers and they want to get every bit of power that they can possible get. “Page 203...reads ‘The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as a tax.”

George Will and Jennifer Rubin Demolish Time's Joe Klein on Gun Control Laws; video and text.

This is hilarious. The Obama campaign runs an ad accusing Mitt Romney of running a false and misleading ad...and Romney quotes Obama verbatim. The story, the Obama ad, and what Obama said, all on the same page. What is also weird is, the Obama ad, which accuses Romney of lying, could just as easily be a Romney ad, with very little editing.

Several prominent Democrats called for Mitt Romney to release more tax returns. One of them, Nancy Pelosi, had the tables turned on her, and asked about her tax returns. So she said that the media possibly needs to release their tax returns as well.

Ben Bernanke warns that our growth over the next few years will be frustratingly slow.

This is pretty weird. These are Libyan rebels with the body of Gaddafi, using him as a ventriloquist doll.

This is an unusual anti-Romney ad, put on the AFL-CIO website. Periodically, people are essentially complaining about the Obama economy.

1:44 mark - Woman in USW shirt: "This country needs help. It needs to be rebuilt."

1:55 mark - Man: "In the last three years I have worked a total of 7 months. So, eventually, I am going to lose my home, umm, and I guess I am going to be on the street."

2:44 mark - Second woman: "With this upcoming election I see it as everything. It means everything. It means our future for me personally. Will I ever be able to get back to work?"

3:05 mark - Second man: "People think the country is going in the wrong direction. The future of our children is looking bleaker all of the time."

3:09 mark - Woman in USW shirt: "No children in this country should be worrying about things that they do today. It is not what this country should be like."

3:16 mark - Second woman: "It is hard to sell whole `get your education to get a better job' thing when they see me with a good education and I am not getting any job."

Jay Leno: "Russia has announced plans to bury Lenin, whose body has been on public display since 1924. This breaks the previous record held by Cher."

1) Regarding Stephen King's open message to Mitt Romney: Of course, Mitt Romney made it in America, and of course he is grateful. It seems silly to imply otherwise. However, the more government controls there are, there fewer people there will be in the United States who succeed like Romney or succeed to a lesser degree. We succeed because of freedom, not because of government regulations; we succeed because of law and order, not because excessive taxes were paid; we succeed because of a legitimate infrastructure was built, but not because billions of dollars were given to Obama donors and bundlers who just happen to head up "green" companies.

President Obama has accepted $34,250 from employees of Bain Capital so far this cycle.

Donors who list their employer as "Internal Revenue Service" or "IRS" have donated $26,538 to President Obama's campaign, and just $2,340 to Mitt Romney's campaign. That is a ratio of 11 to 1.

• Throughout the first 1,257 days of his presidency, Mr. Obama has spent just 412 hours in economic meetings or briefings of any kind

• In 2012, so far Obama has spent just 24 total hours in economic meetings of any kind

• Assuming a six day, 10-hour workweek, Obama has spent less than 4 percent of his total time in economic meetings or briefings of any kind

• There were 773 days (72 percent), excluding Sundays, in which he had no economic meetings

• Mr. Obama has spent an average of 138 minutes a week in economic meetings. According to a study published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, new dog owners spent an average of 130 minutes a week walking their dogs

Currently, the average Canadian household is more than $40,000 richer than the average American household. The net worth of the average Canadian household in 2011 was $363,202, compared to around $320,000 for Americans.

64% say that Obama’s policies have contributed at least partially to the economic downturn

57% of Likely U.S. Voters believe venture capital companies are better at creating jobs than government programs are.

83% of American Adults favor a work requirement as a condition for receiving welfare aid.

AP does a story on Chick-Fil-A restaurants and how they support concepts like the nuclear family, but without including the tenor of Boston Mayor Menino as a part of their story.

“Tax cuts” = not increasing taxes after they have been at the same rate for about a decade.

Progressive genius warns liberals to avoid saying "Abortion, baby, or unborn child" when making case for pro-abortion policies. Whatever you do, try not to call it what it actually is.

Now that three California cities have declared bankruptcy, perhaps it's time to consider the lessons of Wisconsin.

One of the reasons Wisconsin Democrats couldn't unseat Republican Gov. Scott Walker in the state's recall election was that his challenger exemplified how Walker's narrowing of collective bargaining privileges for government workers benefited the state.

As mayor of Milwaukee, Tom Barrett had relied on Walker's reforms to balance his city's budget. And Barrett wasn't alone among Wisconsin officials. Walker comfortably defeated Barrett in large part because in the 11 months that the governor's reforms were in effect, Wisconsinites got a good glimpse of how they worked, even in Milwaukee, where the savings allowed government to remain solvent and avoid widespread layoffs.

When Walker introduced his so-called budget repair bill in February 2011, he argued that the biggest beneficiaries of his plan would be cities, towns and school districts, which would gain the flexibility to cut costs without having to negotiate every change in compensation or work rules with local unions. His legislation specifically eliminated collective bargaining by government workers for benefits and required greater contributions from them toward pensions.

How local officials employed those changes to cut costs proved revealing. The state's teachers union, Wisconsinites learned, had used its power to collectively bargain for healthcare benefits to demand that local school districts provide coverage through a nonprofit insurer affiliated with the union. Once the state ended bargaining on healthcare, school boards began competitively bidding out their health insurance.

By the opening of the new school year in September, just two months after the budget bill went into effect, 23 districts had rebid their contracts, saving $16 million, or an average of $211 per student. The MacIver Institute, a Madison-based think tank, estimated that if all the state's districts were able to negotiate similar deals once their contracts with the union-affiliated insurer expire, schools could save $186 million.

As mayor of Milwaukee, Barrett employed Walker's reforms before he knew he'd be facing the governor in the recall election. In mid-August 2011, barely a month after the changes went into effect, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that the city would save as much as $36 million in its next budget from "healthcare benefit changes it didn't have to negotiate with unions" as a result of the new state legislation. When asked whether Walker's reforms should be credited for the savings, Barrett brushed aside the question and asserted that virtually everyone was in favor of having workers contribute more to their healthcare.

Local governments that couldn't immediately employ Walker's savings faced dire consequences. The Milwaukee public school system, for example, had negotiated a new contract with its teachers union right before Walker's budget reform bill was passed. In the wake of Walker's bill, the school system went to the union and tried to work out concessions in line with the savings that would have been possible under the new legislation. But the union refused to negotiate, and two days later the district laid off 519 employees, including 334 teachers. The school system had estimated that if employees agreed to contribute 5.8% of their salaries toward pensions, as mandated by the new state law, that would have saved $20 million, enough to avoid 200 teacher layoffs.

Walker has said he was motivated in part because the cost of employing a public sector worker in Wisconsin (and many other places) has soared thanks to rising pension and health costs in particular. Without the flexibility to move quickly to control those costs, local governments faced a long-term budget pinch in which employee compensation squeezes out other spending and drives taxes higher.

Californians should understand those fiscal pressures. Average annual pay for a local government employee in the state rose by 60%, to $61,185 (excluding benefits), between 1999 and 2008, according to the Little Hoover Commission on California State Government Organization and Economy. That's about 70% more than the increase in private sector wages in the state over the same period. Average pay for cops and firefighters climbed 69%, to $89,056, again excluding benefits, in the same period.

Benefit costs have soared even more than wages. The annual cost of funding pensions in California's 20 largest municipalities has grown from $1.3 billion in 1999 to $5.1 billion last year, according to a study by Stanford University professor Joe Nation. That's an annual growth rate of better than 11%.

Faced with such increases, municipalities in California haven't had nearly the flexibility to mend their budgets that officials in Wisconsin have.

In San Jose, where the average cost of employing a city worker, including benefits, has soared to an extraordinary $142,000 annually, Mayor Chuck Reed had to fight long and hard for a ballot measure to reduce pension costs that was passed by voters in June. In the three years before the vote, the city had to lay off about 2,000 employees and cut back on parks, libraries and other services.

In Stockton, which declared bankruptcy in June, for every dollar the city spent on salaries, it spent another dollar on employee benefits. Facing unsustainable employee costs and an intransigent police union that was demanding the city pay retired officers about $300,000 for unused sick and vacation time, Stockton cut a quarter of its public safety forces and still couldn't meet its obligations.

No wonder that state and local government employment slumped nearly 6% in California from the beginning of 2009 through the close of 2011. That's nearly double the rate of decline among state and municipal workers nationwide in the same period.

Without pension reform in Sacramento, and with local contracts that make it impossible to cut costs without concessions from unions, cities and school districts in the Golden State are left with few good choices to balance their budgets. That was pretty much the case in Wisconsin too until Scott Walker came along.

Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod and his hatchet people are still yammering about GOP presidential rival Mitt Romney's overseas investments. It's time for the Romney campaign to educate voters about all the shady financial institutions embraced by Democrats right here on American soil.

The fat-cat narrative attacks on Republicans won't go away by making nice with the White House - or by relying on Beltway journalists to drop their double standards and vet the president's own bad bank entanglements. Indeed, The New York Times admitted this week that their staff and other political journalists from every major media outlet submit their work to the White House for unprecedented review, editing and "veto power."

Fortunately, the truth manipulators and message massagers haven't gotten to this column yet. So, let's talk sleazy Democratic Party-backed banks, shall we?

Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac. Forget Switzerland. The mother and father of all financial industry outrages are rooted in Washington, D.C. And Obama Democrats are among the biggest winners of lavish, out-of-control compensation packages from fraud-plagued Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Obama confidante James Johnson raked in $21 million. Former Obama chief of staff and current Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel "earned" at least $320,000 for a brief 14-month gig at Freddie Mac. And Clinton Fannie Mae head and Obama economic confidante Franklin Raines bagged some $90 million in pay and stock options earned during the government-sponsored institution's Enron-style accounting scandal on the public dime.

Self-appointed banking policewoman and DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz has, uncharacteristically, kept her mouth shut about these wealthy barons.

Superior Bank. One of the Obamas' oldest Chicago friends and wealthiest billionaire bundlers, former Obama national finance chairwoman Penny Pritzker, headed up this subprime lender. Even after it went under in 2001 and left 1,400 customers destitute, Pritzker was pushing to expand its toxic subprime loan business. Pritzker and her family escaped accountability by forking over $460 million over 15 years. Obama happily accepted the nearly $800 million in campaign and inaugural funding Pritzker drummed up for him. To protect her family's multibillion dollar fortune, Pritzker's enterprises park their money in the very same kind of offshore trusts her candidate is attacking Romney over.

Broadway Bank. In 2010, President and Mrs. Obama personally raised money for their Chicago friend and fundraiser Alexi Giannoulias, who ran unsuccessfully for Obama's old Illinois Senate seat. As I reported then, Giannoulias' Greek immigrant family founded Chicago-based Broadway Bank, a now-defunct financial institution that loaned tens of millions of dollars to convicted mafia felons and faced bankruptcy after decades of engaging in risky, high-flying behavior. It's the place where Obama parked his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign funds. And it's the same place where a mutual friend of Obama and Giannoulias - convicted Obama fundraiser and slumlord Tony Rezko - used to bounce nearly $500,000 in bad checks written to Las Vegas casinos.

Chicago's former inspector general blasted Giannoulias and his family for tapping $70 million worth of dividends in 2007 and 2008 as the real estate crash loomed. Broadway Bank was sitting on an estimated $250 million in bad loans. The cost to taxpayers after the bank was shut down two years ago: an estimated $390 million.

ShoreBank. The "progressive" Chicago-based community development bank, a "green" financial institution whose mission was to "create economic equity and a healthy environment," folded in August 2010. Obama personally had endorsed the politically connected bank and appeared in a video promoting its Kenyan microlending project. But it was a doomed social justice experiment. After regulators shut it down, Obama crony companies including Bank of America and Goldman Sachs took over the mess courtesy of taxpayer subsidies.

Countrywide/Bank of America. Earlier this month, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released a report on corruption-plagued Countrywide Financial Corp., which was bailed out by taxpayer-bailed-out Bank of America. The House investigation confirmed the notorious favor-trading scheme, which involved sweetheart home loan deals for members of Congress and their staff, top government officials and executives of doomed mortgage giant Fannie Mae.

"These relationships helped (Countrywide CEO and Democratic subprime loan king Angelo) Mozilo increase his own company's profits while dumping the risk of bad loans on taxpayers," according to the new report. Mozilo copped a $67.5 million plea to avert a high-stakes public trial in the heat of the 2010 midterm election season. Since then, Obama's Justice Department has taken no action to prosecute Countrywide officials on federal bribery charges.

Among the influence-peddling operation's most prominent beneficiaries: the aforementioned Obama top adviser Jim Johnson, who accepted more than $7 million in below-market-rate Countrywide loans, and former Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, whose ill-fated 2010 re-election bid was personally endorsed by Obama. Obama stood by Dodd even as sordid details of his two discounted Countrywide loans and record Countrywide PAC donations mounted.

Bank of Democratic America, which raked in $45 billion in Obama-supported TARP bailout funds and billions more in secret emergency federal loans, footed the $50 million restitution payment bill for Mozilo and another Countrywide official. In 2008, BofA's political action committee gave its biggest contributions to Obama, totaling $421,000. And as I noted in January, Bank of America supplied the Democrats with a $15 million revolving line of credit, along with an additional $17 million loan during the 2010 midterms.

Embarrassed by the party's ties to shady Bank of America, progressives are now trying to rebrand the Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, N.C., where Obama will give his nomination acceptance address. They're referring to it as "Panthers Stadium" instead.

Obama's copious crooked friends and funders are going to need a lot more whitewash than that to cover up their ill-gotten gains.

Addendum: And, of course, there's OneUnited, the minority-owned bank in Los Angeles and Boston at the center of the long-delayed ethics trial of Democrat crony of color Maxine Waters.

OneUnited received $12 million in TARP money under smelly circumstances. The banks' executives donated $12,500 to her congressional campaigns. Her husband, Sidney Williams, was an investor in one of the banks that merged into One United. The WSJ reported on their handsome profits:

"Congressional financial-disclosure forms show Ms. Waters acquired OneUnited stock worth between $250,000 and $500,000 in March 2004, as did Mr. Williams. Mr. Williams joined the board of OneUnited that year. Each sold shares in September 2004 - including Ms. Waters's entire stake - but Mr. Williams continued to hold varying amount of the company's stock. In the lawmaker's most recent financial-disclosure form, dated May 2008 and covering the prior year, Ms. Waters reported that her husband held between $250,000 and $500,000 worth of the bank's stock. Mr. Williams also received interest payments from a separate holding at the bank, also worth between $250,000 and $500,000. The 2008 form doesn't specify what that is. Mr. Williams stepped down from the bank's board last spring. It couldn't be learned whether he still owns stock in the bank. Mr. Williams didn't return calls seeking comment."

Waters (along with Rep. Frank) participated directly in pressuring the feds for OneUnited's piece of the bailout pie. She personally contacted the Treasury Department last December requesting $50 million for the company- and failed to disclose her ties to the bank to them. The government ended up coughing up $12 million in TARP funding for OneUnited - despite another government agency rapping the bank in October 2008 for "operating without effective underwriting standards and practices," "operating without an effective loan documentation program" and "engaging in speculative investment practices."

The favored bank of Maxine Waters was also penalized for alleged excessive executive compensation. The FDIC ordered the bank to "sell all bank-owned automobiles," require reimbursement for executives' car purchases (according to the Boston Business Journal, OneUnited CEO Kevin Cohee was cruising around in a 2008 Porsche SUV), and cease payments on a $6 million Santa Monica beachfront home purchased by Cohee, his wife who served as bank president, and others.

In August 2010, the House Ethics Committee filed three charges against Waters for using her influence to gain special favors for OneUnited, which sought a stealth government bailout after squandering nearly $52 million of its bank capital on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac preferred stock. After the federal bailout of those troubled financial behemoths, OneUnited's securities in the government-sponsored enterprises plunged to a value estimated at less than $5 million. OneUnited initially demanded $41 million from the feds in exchange for unloading the junk stock. Thebank was already in dire straits before the feds put Fannie/Freddie into receivership for its unsound lending practices and lavish executive benefits.

Only through Rep. Waters' direct intervention was OneUnited Bank able to secure an emergency meeting with Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Treasury, according to the ethics probe. The Treasury Department said so itself. At the confab, Waters' pals purported to represent the 130-member "National Bankers Association." But records obtained by congressional investigators show that OneUnited Bank's legal counsel, vice president and president (the latter two are married to each other) spearheaded the meeting, directed its agenda, and drafted the talking points/briefing material for Rep. Waters at her request - so that she could "speak intelligently" about their demands.

In her defense, Rep. Waters pooh-poohs the OneUnited Bank rescue as a pittance compared to the rest of the monstrous TARP bailout. She'd have a teensy more credibility on the fiscal responsibility front if she had opposed TARP from the start, instead of playing an instrumental role in throwing the Congressional Black Caucus's full support behind it.

Like all of Malkin’s articles, this is filled with hyperlinks to substantiate her claims, which I did not include.

Give the Obama Youth credit for this: At least they didn't vote their self-interest.

The cadres of college students and recent graduates who swooned and fainted for Barack Obama four years ago will long be remembered for one of the most ill-considered fliers in the annals of self-defeating enthusiasms. In the cold light of day, the youthful idealists, believers, and activists of 2008 look like the lamentable saps, patsies, and suckers of 2012.

Rarely has a politician owed so much to a constituency he has served so poorly. The president promised young voters the moon, and all they got was their old childhood bedroom back in their parents' house. He fired them with an inspirational vision that didn't include struggling to find a job to begin to pay off their onerous student loans. He sold a new kind of politics and gave them more debt and more entitlement spending that they will labor to fund all their working lives. He talked of hope and change - and gave it to them good and hard.

Obama's inability to deliver a recovery worthy of the name has devastated recent college graduates. By one count, half of them are unemployed or underemployed. More of them are carrying debt from college - more than 60 percent - than have full-time employment. Studies show that graduating into such a weak economy has a long-lasting dampening effect on the earnings of young people. They bear the brunt of the economic failure of their champion.

If man doesn't live by bread alone, neither does the youthful Obama voter. He is attracted to the president's social views, to his supposedly forward-looking progressivism, to what his historic election symbolized in 2008, to his cool and cerebral style. Obama hasn't created the conditions for them to get a decent job, but he can represent their mutual values. In effect, the president's approach is, "Let them eat gay marriage."

Based on fiscal calculations alone, it would take a clinical psychologist, not a political scientist, to understand the young Obama voter. He isn't sticking it to his elders or to the establishment; he is sticking it to himself. The basic dynamic of the entitlement state favors the old over the young. It is natural that retirees and baby boomers would be fiercely protective of the entitlement status quo that they will benefit from at someone else's expense. It is less natural for the someone else - i.e., the young worker - to volunteer for the privilege of getting fleeced.

Older Americans needn't worry about the unsustainability of our fiscal commitments. It is of little concern that interest payments on the debt alone are projected to consume almost 10 percent of GDP by 2037. It is of only theoretical interest that the 75-year unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare are $8.6 trillion and $26.4 trillion, respectively. John Maynard Keynes famously said, "In the long run we are all dead." For youthful Obama supporters, the long run won't come soon enough to save them from the consequences of today's policies.

They qualify as double victims of the president's Keynesian-inflected deficit spending; they suffer from the still-anemic economy now, yet must pay the $5 trillion bill later. They are Generation Debt. On the current trajectory, they will inherit the country after the locusts have eaten. But, hey, did you see the president "slow jam" the news on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon?

Crumbs from the president's giveaways - like low-interest Stafford college loans - can't possibly compensate for this larger picture. Some young people notice. A New York Times article reported that the president is encountering more youthful skepticism than in 2008: "The nation's first-time voters are less enthusiastic about him, are significantly more likely to identify as conservative and cite a growing lack of faith in government in general."

For all that, the president is still performing well among voters under 30. They were fooled once, and will be fooled again. They are Obama's dupes.

When President Barack Obama hauled off and slapped American small-business owners in the mouth the other day, I wanted to dream of my father.

But I didn't have to close my eyes to see my dad. I could do it with my eyes open.

All I had to do was think of the driveway of our home, and my dad's car gone before dawn, that old white Chrysler with a push-button transmission. It always started, but there was a hole in the floor and his feet got wet in the rain. So he patched it with concrete mix and kept on driving it to the little supermarket he ran with my Uncle George.

He'd return home long after dark, physically and mentally exhausted, take a plate of food, talk with us for a few minutes, then flop in that big chair in front of the TV. Even before his cigarette was out, he'd begin to snore.

The next day he'd wake up and do it again. Day after day, decade after decade. Weekdays and weekends, no vacations, no time to see our games, no money for extras, not even for McDonald's. My dad and Uncle George, and my mom and my late Aunt Mary, killing themselves in their small supermarket on the South Side of Chicago.

There was no federal bailout money for us. No Republican corporate welfare. No Democratic handouts. No bipartisan lobbyists working the angles. No Tony Rezkos. No offshore accounts. No Obama bucks.

Just two immigrant brothers and their families risking everything, balancing on the economic high wire, building a business in America. They sacrificed, paid their bills, counted pennies to pay rent and purchase health care and food and not much else. And for their troubles they were muscled by the politicos, by the city inspectors and the chiselers and the weasels, all those smiling extortionists who held the government hammer over all of our heads.

I thought about this after I heard what Obama told a campaign crowd the other day, speaking about business owners and why they were successful.

"You didn't get there on your own," Obama said. "I'm always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something - there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

"If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet."

If you've got a business, you didn't build that? Somebody else made that happen?

One of my earliest memories as a boy at the store was that of the government men coming from City Hall. One was tall and beefy. The other was wiry. They wanted steaks.

We didn't eat red steaks at home or yellow bananas. We took home the brown bananas and the brown steaks because we couldn't sell them. But the government men liked the big, red steaks, the fat rib-eyes two to a shrink-wrapped package. You could put 20 or so in a shopping bag.

We didn't go to movies or out to restaurants. Everything went into the business. Uncle George and dad never bought what they could not afford. The store employed people, and the workers fed their families and educated their children and put them through college. They were good people, all of them. We worked together and worked hard, but none worked harder than the bosses.

It's the same story with so many other businesses in America, immigrants and native-born. The entrepreneurs risk everything, their homes, their children's college funds, their hearts, all for a chance at the dream: independence, and a small business of their own.

Most often, they fail and fall to the ground without a government parachute. But some get up and start again.

When I was grown and gone from home, my parents finally managed to save a little money. After all those years of hard work and denying themselves things, they had enough to buy a place in Florida and a fishing boat in retirement. Dad died only a few years later. You wouldn't call them rich. But Obama might.

Obama's changed. Gone is that young knight drawing the sword from the stone, selling Hopium to the adoring media, preaching an end to the broken politics of the past. These days, he wears a new presidential persona: the multimillionaire with the Chicago clout, playing the class warrior, fighting for that second term.

And he offers an American dream much different from my father's. Open your eyes and you can see it too. He stands there at the front of the mob, in his shirt sleeves, swinging that government hammer, exhorting the crowd to use its votes and take what it wants.

One of the many great things about Paul Johnson's magisterial A History of the American People is that he begins that history in the Sixteenth Century. There was an identifiable, culturally distinguishable American People long before there was a Revolutionary War, a Constitution, or a central government. The American People, by their industry and ingenuity, didn't just build successful businesses. they built the most successful nation in history - and all, somehow, without HUD, Fannie, Freddie, the EPA, OSHA.

In one of a thousand vignettes, Johnson tells the story of the founding of Springfield:

Elijah Miles, who moved to the Sangamon River country in 1823, left a record of how he founded Springfield. It was then only a stake in the ground. He marked out an 18-foot-square site for a store, went to St. Louis to buy a 25-ton stock of goods, chartered a boat, shipped his stock to the mouth of the Sangamon, and then had his boat and goods towed upriver by five men with a 300 foot tow-rope. Leaving his goods on the riverside - "As no one lived near, I had no fear of thieves" - he walked 50 miles to Springfield, hired waggons and teams, and so got his stuff to the new "town,"where his store was the first to open. It was the only one in a district later divided into fourteen counties, so "many had to come more than 80 miles to trade. Springfield grew up around him.

The president can try telling Americans they can't build businesses, careers, communities and lives without his broke and broken Leviathan, but history and common sense prove him wrong every time. I've listened to some of this debate with fascination. Not at Obama - there is nothing surprising about his cockamamie claim that individual Americans could not have built their successful ventures without his central-planners providing the infrastructure of roads, bridges, police, firemen, schools and the like. What surprises me is the response of some on our side who argue that it was the other way around - that it was the successful ventures that prompted all the infrastructure.

Why would we concede the infrastructure to Obama? When it comes to human beings living in society and helping each other, why do we allow the president to treat we/us as if it were synonymous with the federal government. We built roads and bridges, policed our communities, put out fires, taught our children, and built our businesses before there ever was a federal government.

It is certainly true that, in modern times, the government has gotten itself involved in the infrastructure business. Very often, that has not been a positive development. At Reason, Matt Welch has a very interesting column about the building of the Golden Gate Bridge - which Obama likes to cite as a federal government success story that "benefitted everyone" and, so the story goes, made possible the success of the evil one-percenters.

The story is fiction. As Welch shows, the federal government did everything it could to prevent the Golden Gate from being built. The local people and businesses wanted it; but the Defense Department did not want it built and owned the land on either side of the channel, which it refused for a long time to sell. When it finally agreed to sell, it would not sell to the developers, only to a state commission. And the feds did not participate. other than to try to derail the project. That is, federal contractor unions held up the works, trying to extort their piece of the pie. Finally, because of the market's collapse and the Great Depression, the bond financing ran into trouble, resulting in more delay until, finally, private capital - the personal wealth of A.P. Giannini - came to the rescue. The bridge was completed $1.7 million under budget, Welch recounts, "using non-union labor and private contractors."

Welch ends with a fabulous point. In today's dollars, the $35 million cost of the Golden Gate Bridge translates into $530 million. That's "far less than one percent of Obama's stimulus package. So," he asks, "where the hell are our new Golden Gates? What exactly has been the return on all this added `investment'?"

Human beings are social beings who act in their individual self-interest - which, common sense tells us, is often but far from always personal gain. Obama thinks the individual American, particularly if he is an entrepreneur, compares unfavorably to the noble federal government - as if the government were some altruistic "we" just looking to help. When the feds "help," however, they are often an overbearing presence that depresses individual initiative. Those who run government are in it to wield power, mainly redistributing benefits to their favored, connected cronies. Government stifles the individual more than it empowers him.

The president should not be able to get away with equating such a self-interested behemoth with "us" - the people who help each other and make their communities, and ultimately the country, work. And the thought that the behemoth has become benevolent under Obama, and that we somehow would not have infrastructure without it, is laughable.

1.Fast and Furious documents. Obama used executive privilege to save AG Eric Holder's behind.

2.Health reform negotiations. Obama made back-room deals worth millions with lobbyists and legislators.

3.FOIA requests. Obama is "the worst" at complying with Freedom of Information Act requests.

4.Real White House guest list. Many visits are secret. Met with lobbyists off-site.

5.Rashid Khalidi tape. Obama attended a 2003 party for Rashid Khalidi in which a lot of anti-Israel rhetoric was featured. Nobody is releasing the tape. LA Times story.

6.Small dollar donors. Obama refused to release names of contributors who donated less than $200 even though he's accused of receiving illegal foreign contributions. McCain did this in 2008, why couldn't Obama?

7.Medical records. John McCain released thousands of pages of medical records. All Obama released was a one-page doctor's note even though he has a history of drug abuse and smoking.

8.Book proposal. Obama's literary agent said he was "born in Kenya". Why hasn't anybody released the original book proposal.

10.State senate papers. Obama never produced any papers from his eight years as a state senator. He says "they could have been thrown out."

Below is a list of Obama's documented lies so far with the most recent lies first. If you see we are missing a documented lie Submit the lie here.

I will walk on that picket line with you, if workers are denied the right to bargain.

In his 2012 State of the Union Address, President Obama said that American oil production is the highest that it's been in eight years.

Obama aided Islamic Extremists take over of Egypt/ Libya - Weapons pour into Gaza

"Every idea that we've put forward are ones that traditionally have been supported by Democrats and Republicans alike."

You have 80 percent of the American people who support a balanced approach. Eighty percent of the American people support an approach that includes revenues and includes cuts. So the notion that somehow the American people aren't sold is not the problem

These are obligations that the United States has taken on in the past. Congress has run up the credit card, and we now have an obligation to pay our bills.

Then you've got their(GOP)which is dirtier air, dirtier water, less people with health insurance

I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven't resolved this issue. Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it.

Obama claimed the SCOTUS decision in Citizens United v. FEC, "open[ed] the floodgates for special interests - including foreign corporations - to spend without limit in our elections.

No signing statements to nullify or undermine congressional instructions as enacted into law

Anyone that has worked with the AC-130 gunship can tell you, you need spotters to let aircraft know where the targets are. Usually it is Special Forces, Rangers etc trained for this mission. It's CIA Agents in Libya on the ground

Reform will also rein in the abuse and excess that nearly brought down our financial system. It will finally bring transparency to the kinds of complex, risky transactions that helped trigger the financial crisis.

All Americans WILL BE were, "surprised, disappointed and angry" about lockerbie bomber

"Under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place."

Now suddenly if you don't have your papers and you took your kid out to get ice cream, you can be harassed, that's something that could potentially happen.

Doctors choose amputation because they get better compensation. Greedy Doctors taking out tonsils for more money.

Republicans don't have a single idea that's different from George Bush's ideas - not one.

We began by passing a Recovery Act that has already saved or created over 150,000 jobs." - caught cooking the books and now changed to `jobs supported' versus `created/saved'

Number one, we inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit. . That wasn't me." - Congress, under Democratic control in 2007 and 2008, controlled the purse strings that led to the deficit Obama inherited.Obama supported the emergency bailout package in Bush's final months - a package Democratic leaders wanted to make bigger.

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

We have launched a housing plan that will help responsible families facing the threat of foreclosure lower their monthly payments and refinance their mortgages.

I will walk the picket line with you, if workers are denied the right to bargain

Mr. Ayers as "a guy who lives in my neighborhood," but "not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.

I had a uncle who was one of the, who was part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz and liberate the concentration camps

Ann Dunham spent the months before her death in 1995 fighting with insurance companies that sought to deny her the coverage she needed to pay for treatment.

We will go through our federal budget - page by page, line by line - eliminating those programs we don't need, and insisting that those we do operate in a sensible cost-effective way.

When a bill lands on my Desk, The American people will have 5 days to review it before I sign it.

Would not vote for any bill supporting troop funding without a firm withdrawal commitment from the Bush Administration.

He has done nothing but continue the Bush admins strategy and to explain how the "surges total failure" has now become his greatest achievement.

Barack was never an ACORN trainer and never worked for ACORN in any other capacity.

First President to apply for college aid as a foreign student, then deny he was a foreigner.

First President to have a social security number from a state he has never lived in.

First President to preside over a cut to the credit-rating of the United States.

First President to be held in contempt of court for illegally obstructing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

First President to defy a Federal Judge's court order to cease implementing the Health Care Reform Law.

First President to require all Americans to purchase a product from a third party, a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

First President to spend a trillion dollars on `shovel-ready' jobs when there was no such thing as `shovel-ready' jobs.

First President to recommend changing our National Anthem as it portrays and promotes violence and is warlike in its theme.

First President to initiate a Cash for Clunkers Program to clean up exhaust that adds to global warming, then extended it because it was so popular - wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.

First President to abrogate bankruptcy law to turn over control of companies to his union supporters.

First President to bypass Congress and implement the Dream Act through executive fiat.

First President to order a secret amnesty program that stopped the deportation of illegal immigrants across the U.S., including those with criminal convictions.

First President to demand a company hand over $20 billion to one of his political appointees.

First President to arbitrarily declare an existing law unconstitutional and refuse to enforce it.

First President to threaten insurance companies if they publicly spoke out on the reasons for their rate increases.

First President to tell a major manufacturing company which state they are allowed to locate a factory in.

First President to file lawsuits against the states he swore an oath to protect (AZ, WI, OH, IN).

First President to withdraw an existing coal permit that had been properly issued years ago.

First President to fire an inspector general of Americorps for catching one of his friends in a corruption case.

First President to golf 73 separate times in his first two and a half years in office, 90 to date.

First President to pledge complete transparency while campaigning, then hide his medical, educational,and travel records.

First President to go on 17 lavish vacations, including date nights and Wednesday evening White House parties for his friends; paid for by the taxpayer.

First President to keep a dog trainer on retainer for $102,000 a year at taxpayer expense.

First President to repeat the Holy Qur'an and tells us that the early morning Islamic call to worship is the most beautiful sound on earth.

Now it is up to us Freedom-loving Americans to see to it that he is voted out after his FIRST term. May God bless America again. Stay safe, and be aware of your surroundings.

Now that Brit Hume, perhaps the best network anchor of our time, is on record that it's fair to say that we know more (after the Roanoke speech) than we ever have about the President's view of business and the economy," the real Obama is finally starting to be recognized in the truly mass media. While Mr. Hume and many others have been reticent, Obama of Roanoke has been out there for all to see for years quite frankly.

What might be "fair to say" is that Obama let slip in a momentous way what many of us knew all along about him.

Ayn Rand saw Obama of Roanoke coming way back in the 1950's, before Barry Soetoro was even born. Ronald Reagan saw him coming in the 60s and 70s -- and was especially prescient on how he would use the medical industry to advance his goals -- even though our current President was but a choom boy "doing some blow" back in the day.

Obama of Roanoke, understand, is not merely a specific person named Barack Hussein Obama. He is Van Jones. He is Elizabeth Warren. He is Valerie Jarrett. He is Steven Chu and Cass Sunstein. He is Jeremiah Wright and Frank Marshall Davis and Karl Marx and many others. Obama of Roanoke is not some benign elegant speaker. Obama of Roanoke is a malignant mindset. His fingerprints are all over the biggest disasters in world history. For this reason, he was and is utterly predictable long before Friday last.

And many utterly predicted him, though for some reason they are not among the elite pundit wizards of smart or among elected Republicans for the most part.

All through the campaign of 2008 Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity and Joe the Plumber saw him coming. Why do you think Rush said "I hope he fails." The millions who flocked to see "Atlas Shrugged" also saw him. And here, in early 2009,

I outlined why we were systematically dismembering my business of 20 years -- that I actually did build by the way -- and why I knew instinctively that millions of others would do some iteration of the same thing we were doing.

Why did we do this and how did we know it was the thing to do? Obama of Roanoke, that's why. It mattered not at all that he waited until July of 2012 to give the Roanoke speech. Obama of Roanoke is exactly who he has always been and he has done exactly as many of us expected him to do. The Roanoke speech was not a contextual problem nor was it an aberration or a teleprompter misprint.

Roanoke was Obama, and Obama is Roanoke. As I paraphrased before inauguration, we already had in place plans to avoid those who naively think that "we didn't do that" in our business:

Atlas has shrugged all over the country. Like many business owners, we are no longer willing to take all of the financial and legal risks and put up with all of the aggravation of owning and running a business. Not with the prospects of even higher taxes, more regulation, more litigation and more emboldened bureaucrats on the horizon.

It is no secret that owners circulated endless emails leading up to election day discussing lay off plans were Obama to win. Entrepreneurs instinctively understand the danger posed by larger liberal majorities... the risk-reward equation and fierce independence spirit of start up businesses are anathema to the class warfare, equality of outcome and spread the wealth mentality of the left. [...]

Now at the time, we had not met folks like Jones and Chu and Sunstein. It didn't matter. We knew Obama of Roanoke and we knew exactly what kinds of people would be put in charge of our lives without having to know the specific names.

And Roanoke may now become synonymous with the moment that others figured this out too.

Yes, history has a way of soft morphing big truths into events or even speeches, and I suspect that the term 'Roanoke' will cease to connote a small town in Virginia populated by Hokie football fans and will instead live throughout this entire campaign and perhaps even have a long life in the annals of Presidential politics as a seminal moment.

It may well be the moment that Mitt Romney and his advisors and the so called conservative pundit class finally had to admit that this particular emperor has not a stitch of proper economic or even pro American clothing. It may be the moment where on some level, the elites in Washington and Manhattan had to come out of the closet of ideological denial and join the enlightenment that so many so-called normal average folks had from the get go.

It may well be the moment when the budding momentum by Democrats to shun the Charlotte Convention and to leave Obama there all by himself reached critical mass. As we saw in 2008 when all Republicans ran against George W. Bush, a party that runs against its own President is a party in deep trouble. The same was true in 1976 with Carter and Ford (Nixon).

It may also be the moment that the independents and the moderates finally 'got it.' It may be a turning point of realization that their problem is not what Mitt Romney was doing with his money, but is what Obama of Roanoke is intentionally and systematically doing to their dreams to ever earn and keep some of their own money. It could be the time where they say to themselves "hell yeah, I hope I can one day send my money to the Caymans too!"

And because of Roanoke, I am ironically more confident than I was in January of 2009

Maybe Roanoke will be the term that defines when that "over 50%" tide started to turn. Maybe it will be the day the beltway Republicans realized that while Obama of Roanoke is many people, but he is not the same old Democrat Party of Tip O'Neil. It may be the day that Obama's electoral coffin - and the coffins of many other statist liberals, were nailed shut by a rare act of candor.

President Obama's record of rewarding political donors with taxpayer dollars and plum administration posts is facing a new round of scrutiny thanks to GOP challenger Mitt Romney's effort to make it a central issue of the campaign.

"[President Obama] thinks it's his right to give taxpayer money to those who have supported him financially," former Gov. John Sununu (R., N.H.) said Tuesday on a conference call hosted by the Romney campaign. "It's insulting to hard-working entrepreneurs who really do create jobs."

The most publicized instance of so-called "crony capitalism"-investing taxpayer dollars in firms tied to political donors-is the failed solar panel company Solyndra. The Fremont, Calif., firm was the first to receive a taxpayer-backed loan guarantee from the Department of Energy (DOE) in September 2009, worth more than $530 million. The funding for the loan was allocated in the controversial stimulus package passed earlier that year.

Obama bundler George Kaiser was a major stakeholder in Solyndra through his Kaiser Family Foundation, and made several trips to the White House in March 2009 to meet with senior administration officials. In July 2009, Kaiser bragged about securing face time with "all the key players in the West Wing of the White House," as well as his "almost unique advantage" when it came to steering taxpayer funds toward his pet causes.

"There's never been more money shoved out of the government's door in world history, and probably never will be again, than in the last few months and in the next 18 months," Kaiser told members of the Tulsa Rotary Club. "And our selfish parochial goal is to get as much as it for Tulsa and Oklahoma as we possibly can."

Although things did not pan out for Solyndra-the company filed for bankruptcy in September 2011-Kaiser can expect to see a better return on his investment than American taxpayers. As part of an agreement to restructure Solyndra's loan agreement in 2010, Obama's DOE granted priority status to private investors like Kaiser with respect to the first $75 million recovered in the event of the firm's bankruptcy, a move that many suspect violated federal law.

Taxpayers, meanwhile, are unlikely to recover much of the money invested on their behalf.

Emails uncovered by Congressional investigators reveal that Solyndra helped secure its $535 million loan guarantee with the help of Steve Spinner, another prominent Obama donor. After bundling more than $500,000 for Obama in 2008, Spinner was named to the White House transition team and later served as "chief strategic operations officer" of the DOE loan program that funded Solyndra.

Spinner's wife Allison worked for a law firm that represented Solyndra and several other green energy outfits that applied for taxpayer funding. Records show that her firm, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, received $2.4 million in federal funds in legal fees associated with Solyndra's loan application.

Spinner left the administration in September 2010 to become a senior fellow at the left-wing Center for American Progress, and has already bundled more than $500,000 for the president's reelection campaign.

Solyndra is just one of many examples of quid pro quo in the DOE loans program; even the liberal Washington Post editorial board has described it as a "real scandal."

"You can call it crony capitalism or venture socialism-but by whatever name, the Energy Department's loan guarantee program privatizes profits and socializes losses," the paper wrote in November 2011.

More than 70 percent of DOE and loans under Obama went to Democratic donors and bundlers, Peter Schweizer reported in Throw Them All Out.

A confidential 2009 memo authored by former White House economic adviser Larry Summers paints a damning picture of the administration's approach to crafting the stimulus package.

"The short-run economic imperative was to identify as many campaign promises or high priority items that would spend out quickly and be inherently temporary," Summers wrote. "The stimulus package is a key tool for advancing clean energy goals and fulfilling a number of campaign commitments."

In several cases, including Solyndra, advancing the president's green energy agenda went hand in hand with providing financial payoffs to prominent campaign donors.

California investment guru John Doerr, for example, has personally contributed more than $170,000 to Democratic campaigns and committees since 2008, and more than $2 million over the past 20 years. His investment firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), which lists former Vice President Al Gore as a partner, has given more than $1 million to Democrats since 2005.

An early and outspoken advocate for federal investment in "green" technology, Doerr was named to the president's Economic Recovery Advisory Board in 2009, where he helped craft the $787 billion stimulus package. Of the 27 companies list in KPCB's "green-tech" portfolio, 16 received some form of taxpayer support.

Another prominent Obama donor who has benefitted handsomely from the president's policies is Steve Westly. A frequent guest at White House events and state dinners, Westley served as California co-chair and a National Finance Committee member of Obama's 2008 campaign and currently sits on the DOE's Energy Advisory Board.

He has bundled at least $700,000 in campaign donations for Obama since 2008 and personally given about $260,000 to Democratic campaigns and committees since 2007.

Westly's investment firm, the Westly Group, had a financial stake in four green energy companies that received more than half a billion dollars in federal funding in 2009. The group's website once touted the firm as being "uniquely positioned" to take advantage of the influx of taxpayer funding in green technology, and currently notes that "To win in the clean technology space, a company must navigate the halls of government."

Westly has openly acknowledged that knowledge of federal policy is key to investing in green technology. In response to a reporter's question about which green energy companies he likes to invest in, Westly said: "Who cares what I think. Let's talk about `what does Obama like? Here's what he likes,' because here's where the federal government is putting money. And let me tell you, whatever he likes, that's what I like."

One of the companies Obama "liked" was the Exelon Corporation, a Chicago-based utility and recipient of hundreds of millions of dollars in stimulus funding. One of the most politically connected firms in the country, Exelon employees have made up one of President Obama's top sources of campaign contributions throughout his career.

Exelon was Obama's fourth-largest campaign donor when he ran for Senate in 2004, contributing more than $73,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The firm donated $326,000 to Obama's presidential campaign in 2008. The firm has ties to several top Obama bundlers, as well as to Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod and former White House chief of staff and current Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel.

As the Washington Free Beacon reported in June, an Exelon subsidiary was recently awarded a lucrative 20-year contract to install solar panels manufactured by federal inmates on government facilities.

Such cronyism is not exclusive to the green energy sector. DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg has bundled at least $500,000 for Obama's reelection campaign, and is the largest contributor to Priorities USA, the Obama-allied Super PAC.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is currently investigating whether DreamWorks made illegal payments to Chinese officials in order to secure exclusive film rights in the communist nation. The New York Times reported that Katzenberg, as well as Vice President Joe Biden, were intimately involved in negotiating an agreement under which China would up its annual quota of foreign-produced films from 20 to 34 and allow studios to keep a greater percentage of box-office revenue.

DreamWorks announced a $2 billion deal with the Chinese government in February to build a production studio in Shanghai just days after Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping held an extensive meeting with Barack Obama in Washington, D.C.

Obama's penchant for crony capitalism, critics say, explains his comment over the weekend that "If you've got a business, you did not build that-somebody else made that happen."

"He thinks that government is there to pick who should succeed and who should fail," Sununu said on the conference call. "It's in his political genes."

"Big government lends itself to big cronyism," said political analyst Jay Cost. "In Obama's legislation, we see vast payoffs to interest groups that have benefitted the Democratic Party."

Listen to this. President Obama is making a big deal out of Mitt Romney's Bain Capital tenure, you know that. The Obama campaign accusing Romney of being a big outsource guy. Encouraging the companies Bain invested in to send jobs abroad. Romney denies that but the attacks just keep on coming.

RAHM EMANUEL (D), MAYOR OF CHICAGO: Stop whining, if you want to claim Bain Capital is your calling card to the White House. Then defend what happened to Bain Capital and what happened to those jobs that went overseas, those jobs that were actually cut and eliminated the companies that went into bankruptcy.

O'REILLY: According to analysis by FactCheck.org, Bain Capital under Romney did invest in companies that did outsource. But that's not unusual. So did the Obama administration and Rahm Emanuel was right there. And that's the rub. How can President Obama attack Romney for outsourcing when he did the exact same thing? The Obama administration has continued to make billions of taxpayer dollars available to the General Electric Corporation, mostly through loans but there were some grants for green energy projects.

G.E. employs about 300,000 people. Fewer than half, 131,000 are working in the USA. Let me repeat. Less than half of G.E.'s workforce are employed in America. G.E. has 277 plants in 43 countries and keeps overseas profits overseas. Thereby avoiding U.S. income tax. In fact, General Electric paid zero federal income tax in 2010 according to the "New York Times."

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I am so proud and pleased that Jeff has agreed to chair this panel. My council on jobs and competitiveness because we think G.E. has something to teach businesses all across America.

O'REILLY: Well, "Talking Points" would like to know exactly what G.E. could teach corporations across America? How to create jobs overseas? How to avoid U.S. corporate income taxes? How to borrow billions from the taxpayers? What lessons are we talking about, Mr. President?

So how can the Obama team be outraged over Mitt Romney's outsource exposure when it champions General Electric, an outsourcing kingdom? A simple question because I am a simple man. Here is the end game. Outsourcing a fact of life in capitalism. I don't like it but it's legal and companies profit from it the Obama administration has embraced corporations that practice outsourcing big time and so did Mitt Romney.

So I would call it a tie with the Obama campaign having some deep explaining to do.

Big debate nationwide because President Obama is putting forth that affluent Americans owe their country more than they are giving. Last Friday the President said this about business people.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Because if you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so then all the companies could make money off the Internet.

O'REILLY: Apparently the President believes that the federal government should take more in taxes from wealthy Americans and business owners because the feds make individual success possible. That of course, is prompting some outrage.

Here is my take. No man is an island. Everybody needs help to develop their potential, that's true. However, individual achievement is just that. Barack Obama did not help me develop "The Factor." No federal agency helped me go to college. I paid my own way. I painted houses. Federal government, had nothing to do with it. They didn't give me the paint, didn't give me the brush, didn't help me up the ladder.

Yes, the founding fathers gave me freedom of speech to bloviate here, and I owe the debt of gratitude to my country for that. I am grateful and I am willing to pay 40 percent of my wages to Caesar, to the powers that be... 40 percent.

But President Obama wants far more than that. And, I believe, that punishes achievement. Also, that's absolutely not what the founding fathers had in mind. Because of my personal success, I employ a lot of people. Because of the Fox News Channel's success, it provides jobs for thousands of Americans.

I pay my taxes. And I give millions of dollars to charity. I give back. Not enough for President Obama... not enough. He wants me and other high income folks to finance a massive redistribution of wealth in this country.

Right now the feds can't do that because the country owes $16 trillion, so the President has to raise taxes on those who have to finance his social justice programs. Today the Congressional Budget Office reports that the richest five percent in this country pay 64 percent of all the federal income tax. The other 95 percent pick up 36 percent of the tab.

So, there is no question that affluent Americans are paying their fair share in carrying a heavy load. Most wealthy Americans are not evading their responsibility. But sadly, that's not what the President is saying. He wants to redistribute income on the backs of the achievers. And that's the truth.

The President's comments last week about success in America are very important because they show how he really feels about capitalism. If you listen to the anti-Obama forces on talk radio and cable TV, you will hear over and over again that the President is a socialist or a communist.

"Talking Points" has never bought that. It is far too simplistic. Instead, the President is a reluctant capitalist, a man who believes our economic system is stacked against the poor and working class and always has been. Like many liberal people, the President believes American capitalism is often predatory, rewarding the wealthy and exploiting the workers.

So what the President wants to do is restrain capitalism through taxation. If you score big, he wants a big piece of the action. So he can give what you get to other people. Also Mr. Obama wants to regulate how commerce is done in the USA.

Now, I see no evidence that the President wants to seize private property, which is what communists do. Also the feds are not running the Fox News Channel as they would be in a socialistic system, like the one Hugo Chavez has imposed in Venezuela.

Now, I could be wrong about this, but I think Mr. Obama allows historical grievances, things like slavery, bad treatment for native Americans, U.S. exploitation of third world countries to shape his economic thinking. Rather than seeing the USA as basically noble, he gives the bad things about America far too much weight, leading to his desire to redistribute wealth, there by correcting historical grievance. All of this is pretty philosophical, but it directly affects you.

The facts are these... The President's big spending policies have not helped the economy. Mr. Obama's liberal economic vision has run up enormous debt and that threatens everybody single one of us. Yet the President doesn't seem very concerned about that. His focus continues to be to take from those have and spread the money around.

In a brand-new Fox News poll, Americans were asked, has the Obama administration made the economy better or worse? 37 percent say better; 49 percent worse; 10 percent believe the President's policies have made no difference.

However, in the same poll, Americans support a tax increase on the wealthy by a 52-42 margin. So to some extent, the President's class warfare posture has worked.

In order to defeat the President, Mitt Romney will have to convince you, the American public, that we will all be much better under robust capitalism. That if Mr. Obama is voted out, the private marketplace will rebound, creating decent paying jobs. The President will counter with the status quo, which of course is shaky.

Summing up Mr. Obama is not a socialist. He's not a communist. He's a social justice anti-capitalist. And that's what he is.

Senate Minority Leader McConnell to Democrats: Let's not play Russian Roulette with the economy

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, FOX NEWS HOST: Now to Capitol Hill, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell warning the Democrats not to be playing Russian Roulette. What is he talking about? We spoke with Senator McConnell a short time ago.

VAN SUSTEREN: Looks like a little bit like the showdown at the OK corral over these taxes. Senator Patty Murray says that she's essentially going to let all the tax cuts expire and put it on the Republicans that the Republicans are raising taxes for everybody.

MCCONNELL: Look, this really ought to be about the economy. We know we've got a fiscal cliff coming at the end of the year. If everybody's taxes go up and the sequester kicks in, you're going to have a major recession.

So we ought to quit playing games with this and settle the country down. And step one would be say, Let's extend the current tax rates for one more year. And during that year, do what everybody on a bipartisan basis says they want to do, which is to have comprehensive tax reform. It'd take about year to do that correctly.

Secondly, we need to sit down and figure out if we want to turn off the sequester, how to pay for it. We had a lot discussions last year about how to pay for these kinds of things. They're all still on the table. We ought not to scare the country half to death. They've got enough uncertainty going on with 40 straight months of unemployment above 8 percent.

VAN SUSTEREN: Well, it seems to me both parties have a little bit of selling to do to the American people. The Democrats have the problem in that according to the -- what they propose, president proposes, where taxes go up for everybody over $250,000, that means that the government is financed for eight days. And so they need to sell the American people why the eight days offsets any sort of stimulus effect of having people use that money for business.

The Republicans, on the other hand, need to explain why the people who are very wealthy who may not need tax cuts, why they would feel so inspired to use the tax cuts to create more jobs.

MCCONNELL: Well, you certainly made the point about the president's proposal. It doesn't do anything for deficit reduction, just pay for the government for four or five days. So it's not a serious proposal. It's all about class warfare.

Our point is, when the president says we're going to raise taxes on people making over $250,000 a year, he in fact hits over a million small businesses that don't pay taxes as corporations, they pay taxes as individuals.

MCCONNELL: Yes. They are -- they are corporations organized in such a way -- S Corps, LLCs -- that they pay taxes at the individual rate. That is some of our most successful small businesses in America. In fact, it's 53 percent of small business income and 25 percent of the workforce.

And here we are going after the biggest job creators in America, small businesses, under the guise of raising taxes on rich people. It's just a nonsense proposal. It'd be bad for the economy. We ought not raise anybody's taxes and the end of the year and use that year to begin to rationalize the whole tax code, which really needs it. Corporate tax rates now in America are the highest of any country in the world. That's not competitive.

VAN SUSTEREN: Well, let me take the other side, is that -- is that why should the American people believe that Washington really is going to reform the tax code? It has had many opportunities and people have known it's been bad and it hasn't been done. And if you do the tax cuts, extend them fully one more year, that still doesn't sort of build in the stability that money business operators need in order to make plannings about capital investments.

MCCONNELL: Well, comprehensive tax reform is actually something Democrats and Republicans agree that we ought to do. It's just that you can't do it in a couple of months. It takes about a year to rationally work our way through it. Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill did this on a bipartisan basis in the '80s. It's time to do it again. This is one of the things that we actually agree on, it's just that you can't do it on the back of an envelope over a couple of months.

VAN SUSTEREN: Who's going to blink first? I mean, because this really is sort of a showdown. Either the Republicans are going to blink first on this or the Democrats on this tax. Right now, the Democrats have sort of drawn the line in the sand, saying, Either Republicans agree to our way, or we're going to let all the taxes go up and stick the Republicans with the blame.

MCCONNELL: Look, I don't think playing Russian Roulette with the economy is a smart thing to do. We need to be responsible here. Everybody knows what we need to do at the end of the year. We need not to raise anybody's taxes, particularly do we not want to raise taxes on almost a million of our most important and effective small businesses.

That would settle us down in terms of the fear that rates are going up. And then sit down and talk about how -- if we want to turn the so-called sequester off, there are ways to pay for that. Let's do it as responsible adults and not play Russian Roulette with the American economy.

VAN SUSTEREN: Can we have that done before the election, I mean, before the lame duck because, you know, the American business people, whether you raise the taxes or not, they're sort of sitting on the sidelines, trying to figure out what to do. And every month that goes by as we watch what goes on in Washington, business people really feel apprehensive about making decisions.

MCCONNELL: Well, the House is going to vote, and I think they will approve extending the current tax rates. We are going to make sure we have that vote in the Senate. I can't guarantee the outcome, but I know there are at least six to eight Democrats in the Senate who've said they don't even agree that $250,000 over is rich.

In fact, they're having an internal debate about what's the definition of rich. Some people say a million, some people say 250, some say 500.

Maybe we ought to just come together and extend the current tax rates for a year with an important commitment of the American people that we're going to do something we say we're all for anyway, which is to go through comprehensive tax reform again because we're in an uncompetitive situation with a corporate tax rate that's the highest in the world.

VAN SUSTEREN: All right, let me turn to another topic, the Disclose Act. Your thoughts on the Disclose Act?

MCCONNELL: Well, the latest absurdity. I mean, here they've managed to come up with a bill that's opposed by everybody from the ACLU to the NRA. It's got broad-based opposition. Why? Because it's designed by our Democratic friends to try to punish people who are supportive of Republicans and advantage their biggest ally, the labor unions, which The Wall Street Journal says have spent over $4 billion in money on campaigns over the last six or eight years.

So it's a kind of jerry-rigged proposal to give the government information it needs to go after its political adversaries. And they've already been doing that through the IRS, through the SEC, through the FCC, through the White House itself, which was floating a memorandum that they were going to send out to all the government contractors telling them, in effect, You better disclose, the implication being you won't be able to do business with the government, an outrageous proposal.

It was defeated tonight, and they'll probably make us vote on it again tomorrow and it'll be defeated again tomorrow.

VAN SUSTEREN: Am I correct, reducing it to sound bites, if this is correct, that the Republicans see it as the Democrats wanting transparency as to Republican contributors but not to Democratic contributors? Is it -- is that an unfair...

MCCONNELL: No, that's basically it. And what they want to do is have a carve-out for groups that are supporting Democrats so it doesn't apply to them and only apply to groups that are more likely to support Republicans.

VAN SUSTEREN: If it were across the board, including the carve-outs, would you be in favor of it, including the Democratic carve-out, the transparency?

MCCONNELL: Well, this is small group of those who are involved in the overall political discussion. And I think it's an interesting debate as to whether or not so-called 501(C)4 social welfare organizations should go down this path. If you do, it's going to cover a lot of people.

There was a Supreme Court case right on point back in 1958, NAACP versus the Alabama, where the state of Alabama was trying to get its hands on the donor list and the membership of the NAACP, and the Supreme Court said no.

So that's an interesting debate to have. Most political contributions are already disclosed, those to candidates, those to parties, those to super-PACs that support the presidential candidates. We all know who's contributing because they're already disclosed.

This is one of the saddest things you will ever see; pictures of a Palestinian Kindergarten class graduating. They are destroying these little souls.

RUSH: Hutchinson, Kansas, is where we start on the phones today. This is Dawn. Dawn, it's great to have you. Thank you for waiting.

CALLER: Yes, sir. Hey, I strongly believe Obama will never go back on his word because he believes what he said. The only way he got up there into the White House was using everybody to get up there. So he feels that anybody who has a successful business must have used tons of people, or whoever they could, just to get a little bit ahead of everybody else and that's how they got up there. He's projecting.

RUSH: Yeah, but he didn't say that in 2008. He didn't get elected on that basis. That's why this is standing out now.

CALLER: Yeah, but I really feel that he knows that this is the only reason he got up there.

RUSH: No, no, no, no. No, no, no. Obama got up there 'cause he's the Smartest Guy in the World. Obama got up there 'cause this country and this world needs him. Obama got up there and was elected because it's about time somebody came along and saved this mess, and got rid of all this discrimination, and got rid of all the unfairness, and got rid of all the stuff where people didn't get what they rightfully deserved. We needed somebody to come along and really make government do what was intended!

No, you're dealing with an egomaniac here. You're not dealing with somebody who thinks he got there on the back of other people. He thinks he's bringing people along with him. I know your theory is that because it happened to him, he thinks everybody else does it the same way, using the old the projection business. No, no, no, no. Obama's not that way. This is deceit. That whole 2008 campaign was deceit. The Obama team figured out that what he was was an empty canvas.

The media did such a good job of depressing everybody that Obama quickly found out he could just go out there and say a bunch of platitudes and not get specific about anything other than lies, like (impression), "I'm gonna get rid of political disagreement forever! We're gonna have a new politics and we're all gonna get along, and -- and -- and the world's gonna love America again! And we're gonna lower the sea levels, and we're gonna save the planet from global warming and climate change. We're gonna stop all these political arguments and we're gonna get along and we're gonna have progress!'"

He spoke a bunch of platitudes, and then people could make him whatever they wanted him to be. They were so depressed, and they allowed that to happen.

RUSH: Hi. How are you? And we are back. Half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.

Ladies and gentlemen, you've heard people describe Obama as a community organizer. You heard Rudy laugh about Obama being a community organizer at the Republican convention in Minnesota in 2008. And a lot of people prior to Obama, they didn't know what a community organizer was. On Friday night in Roanoke, when Obama's out there saying, "You got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen," that is what a community organizer does. What Obama was doing was agitating. He was trying to organize that crowd. He was trying to whip that crowd into an anti-capitalist frenzy. He was pitting a group of Americans against another.

This is a man conducting a war on achievers. Not just a war on achievers. Obama is conducting a war on people striving for success. And he's talking to that crowd in Roanoke, that's what a community agitator or organizer does. He was trying to agitate those people, to organize them, whip up a frenzy. He's telling those people: You are justified in resenting the people that own businesses in your town. You're justified, 'cause they didn't do it. You did. You made it all happen for 'em. And what are you getting out of it? You get nothing. But I'm here for you. I'm gonna show you how to get what's rightfully yours. I can only do that in the White House. I need you to send me back there, and I'll get it back for you.

That's the kind of stuff that agitators say. This is the kind of stuff that people say that creates unrest in a population. That was Obama at his most authentic. That's when the guard, for some reason, came to town. That's when the curtain dropped and the Wizard of Oz was exposed for what he really is, an agitator, a born agitator. That's what he did on the south side of Chicago. That's what ACORN does. That's what all of Obama's precious groups do.

RUSH: I don't want to get on a tangent here, but I know that there's been this ongoing discussion of whether or not Romney ought to release more tax returns. I got home yesterday afternoon and I saw practically the entire Republican establishment thinks he should. What an asinine thing to suggest. The National Review, a big, long editorial explaining why Romney should do this. It was silly. I'm convinced people on our side in the establishment don't know who we're up against. This is not commonplace politics-as-usual. You can't reason with these people.

So Obama and the Democrats are demanding that Romney release more tax returns. And people on our side, "Well, I think he should. I think he should get the issue off the table." It's not gonna get the issue off the table. The Obama people don't want Romney's tax returns released so they can find out if they're aboveboard. It doesn't matter what they say. They're going to be mischaracterized and used to hurt Romney. Romney's right to hang in tough on this. I couldn't believe this was even a matter that people would think about for longer than five or ten seconds 'til I saw all these names of people on our side. National Review, George Will, I mean the list is long, Bill Kristol, people that think Romney ought to do this.

You can't reason with these people. Why would we want to acquiesce to their demands? Why would we want to please them? Why would we want to get their approval? We ought to be the ones making demands that Obama release things and come clean. We ought to be making demands that the media finally go vet the guy and tell us all who he really is. We already know. They continue to try to hide it.

I love these guys. This is really hard. National Review was crucially important to my conservative education. As you all know, one of the biggest thrills of my life was to have been able to meet William F. Buckley Jr. And sometimes they do things over there that I just don't understand, and yesterday they had this big editorial where they join the chorus with the Democrats demanding that Romney release all of his tax returns back to the day he was born, probably before. I hope Romney is keeping track of who on our side is caving to Obama's demands. I hope he understands it's the Tea Party sticking by him and not the establishment Republicans. I hope Romney understands that it's the Tea Party and the conservative base that is supporting him on this tax return issue. That it's the Republican establishment and their associated media allies which are trying to acquiesce to demands from the Obama campaign, from the White House.

This is not commonplace politics. This is not going to make the issue go away. All these guys want the issue to go away. They want the issue of Romney's tax returns to go away. It's almost as though the tax returns are their own and they just want it to go away. How they don't understand that all it will do is amplify the tax issue, the wealth issue, and give Obama, the Democrats hundreds of thousands of pages of stuff to lie about, to distort. How this is not understood is peculiar to me. But I guess it shouldn't be. I do think that it's an indication there are still people on our side who do not understand who these people are. They're not just the Democrats of the day.

This is not the Democrat Party of Joe Lieberman. Joe Lieberman, who was Algore's running mate in 2000, has been drummed out of this party. He had to run as an independent for his own Senate seat, whenever the last time he ran. This is not the Democrat Party of Bob Strauss, all these old guys that go out and have a cocktail at the end of the day and talk about how wonderful it is to run Washington and so forth. These are radical, monothematic ideologues who have no desire to be reasoned with. They have no desire to be treated reasonably. That's a sucker bet.

I guess it shouldn't after this many years, but it still surprises me that so many fall for this. I guess, you know, the realization to the Republican establishment is that a full-fledged conservative nominee is a guaranteed loss because, to them, a full-fledged conservative nominee equals a Goldwater-landslide defeat. For some reason, they don't associate full-fledged conservatism with Reagan-landslide wins. They see Goldwater. They see independents getting nervous and not liking conservatives.

They see the same things the liberals see in many cases. It's, I think, the result of never getting out of Washington. It's living in that place where there is definitely a political culture, a social culture that is insulated from the rest of the country. We're in a war here with no rules. We're in a political war with no rules, where truth and being reasonable and taking the high road doesn't get you anything, with the other side. Taking the high road and trying to reason with these people is not gonna get their respect.

RUSH: This tax return business, you people in the Republican establishment, you know what you've done with this? Well, let's just look at this particular campaign. What would you say, Snerdley, the last two years the Republican establishment -- I say this without judgment -- have been pushing Romney, right? The Republican establishment, it's been clear as a bell, they've wanted Romney all along. They've done everything they can to split the conservative vote in the primaries. They did everything they could to denigrate genuine conservatives in the primary. They wanted Romney, Mr. Moderate, Mr. Mainstream, Mr. Establishment, Mr. Respectful, whatever, they wanted him, fine and dandy. The establishment media on our side, they're the ones that were pushing Romney, fine and dandy. As I say, I'm not making a judgment here.

But now those same people who were telling all of us, "It's Romney, it's Romney," are now telling us that Romney hasn't done what's necessary to establish his validity as a candidate and therefore needs to release his tax returns? Where was this two years ago? Why now? Why now do you want to undercut the guy you told us was the only chance we had? No, I'm dead serious. The Republican establishment was obviously pushing Romney, and now that Obama and the Democrats are squealing about his tax returns, for some reason they get scared about that, and all of a sudden after two years of telling us Romney's the guy, now they tell us, "Well, Romney's got some more to prove." Really? Interesting position that you've put yourselves in. You push a guy that you tell us now has not been fully vetted and it's up to him to do it.

We need to turn this around. It's Obama who should release his loan and mortgage records in the Rezko deal. That hospital where Michelle was hired, the no-show job for 300 grand because her husband was a state senator. Let's see those hospital records. Let's see the history of Michelle Obama's being hired at that hospital. Let's see the truth of how that happened, since everybody's making a demand for records of some kind here. How about the admissions offices that accepted Obama into Occidental and Columbia and Harvard. How about releasing all of their records as well as his transcripts. We haven't seen Obama's medical records, his health report, other than the annual physical from the White House doctor. We haven't seen anything on paper which would establish all these wonderful credentials the elites in our culture have told us Obama possesses.

I think everybody who currently works for Obama, who worked at Bain or Goldman Sachs or other investment firms ought to release all their tax returns for the last ten years. "Democrats Attack Romney Over Layoffs Made by Obama Bundler." In 2001 a steel plant in Kansas City run by Bain Capital laid a bunch of people off. The guy running Bain Capital at the time is now a bundler and fundraiser for Obama. Romney left in 1999. In 2001, Bain closes down this steel plant. The media and the Democrats now are attacking Romney over layoffs orchestrated by Bain Capital when an Obama bundler was running the place. How's that for chutzpah? Well, there's a lot of paperwork that Obama could release that would help us validate all these claims that have been made about Obama that we haven't seen any evidence of.

RUSH: When Obama goes out, after three 3-1/2 years of all this and basically (in context or out) denigrates and verbally assaults the engine of the world's only superpower, then you kinda get a hint here that he's not into this country.

He was raised by Marxists and communists. And whoever's out there saying he was blowing weed and snorting coke, he was. He wrote about it! He wrote about how much fun it was. He wrote in his own autobiography about how college was a snap. He didn't have to do anything. He could sit there in the car with the windows rolled up, pass the joints around, and listen to the Doobie Brothers. He wrote about it. The people that influenced this guy, the people that educated him and informed him, also didn't like this country for a host of reasons. So 3-1/2 years of Obama with all these wonderful things, and then you couple those 3-1/2 years with this...

OBAMA: You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by people who think, "Well, it must be because I was just so smart!"

OBAMA: There are a lot of smart people out there. "It must be because I worked harder than everybody else." Let me tell you something. There are a whole bunch of hardworkin' people out there!

OBAMA: Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges! If you've got a business, you -- you didn't build that!

OBAMA: Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

RUSH: Okay, so 3-1/2 years of a supposed burning desire to create jobs, invest in small businesses, and have them grow. Of course, we have all the tax increases on these people, the health care responsibilities that they're gonna have to assume, the indecision and the uncertainty over the future. That's all leading people to hoard what they've got and not invest in their own businesses. They're basically trying to pay themselves so they can stay in business.

Now the regime's people are saying that we've taken all of this "out of context."

It's filled with "people ought to be ashamed of their success," in tone. It's filled with, "You didn't do anything on your own. You had help! Nobody does anything on their own!" Everybody knows what this is all about. Obama is basically attempting to buttress life's losers and say, "Hey, stick with me, 'cause I'm with you. You would be successful if it weren't for these people stealing your labor and not paying you fairly and stealing your business and stealing whatever."

He's setting it up so when he finally comes to confiscate all the money that he can from the successful, he'll have support of people who he's told that this is moral. It's only fair because these people didn't earn anything. They didn't work hard. Everybody else paved the way, the road for them. Well, now, they claim that we're taking him "out of context." When Obama says, "You got a business, you didn't build that," they claim you gotta go back to the prior sentence.

They say it's where he says, "Somebody helped create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you got a business, you didn't build that." They're claiming he means the roads and bridges, not the business, and that we're taking him out of context. Let me tell you what's going on. Whether we're taking him "out of context" or not, we got somebody who cannot communicate.

The supposed Smartest Guy in the Room, Smartest Guy Ever, cannot speak in a way that's understandable (at least to make the point he wants to make). He's got a whole country here thinking that he has just said to people that start their own businesses, "You didn't do that! Somebody else made that happen." The fact that you've gotta bend yourselves into pretzels here to try to tell us, "No, no, you're misunderstanding the Great Leader!" is absurd.

All it takes now is the courage of millions to finally accept the truth of who he is and who he is telling us he is.

RUSH: Play sound bite number two. This is what we're bouncing off of. I'm still nonplussed when I hear this. I mean, I've known it, I've known who this guy is from before his presidential campaign, 'cause I know liberals. I know who they are. I know particularly the radicalized ideologues that today's liberal Democrats are. I know they don't like this country as founded. I know they resent it. I know that they've sworn to get rid of the capitalist system. I know exactly what they're all about. Here's Obama out now admitting it, and I hear him say this, and I just...

OBAMA: If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.

RUSH: Now, they claim we're taking him out of context; he was talking about roads and bridges that he mentioned in the previous sentence, but I don't buy it. And even if it's true, you got a guy that can't communicate properly because everybody's thinking that he just said if you got a business, you didn't build it, that somebody else made it happen, because everything else he said in that 49-second sound bite is oriented toward the same thing. You are nothing on your own. You are nothing. You don't amount to a smithereens hill of beans on your own, and he's followed that up with his typical straw man construction.

He's out now saying that there are a lot of wealthy -- this is a quote -- there are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me because they want to give something back. If you've been successful you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own. He's repeating it. And now telling us that he's got all these wealthy people coming up, "I agree with you, Mr. President. I want to give something back." Let me tell you, the achievers and the successful are not those who ought to be giving anything back. They already do, by virtue of their success, by virtue of their achievement. They are giving back. They share it. The old cliche about a rising tide lifts all boats.

I've always been bothered by this "give something back." Oh, it sounds wonderful. Man, it sounds big-hearted, and it sounds selfless. But I like what our old buddy Walter Williams says. You want to start talking about giving something back, well, who ought to give it back is the thieves, criminals, life's reprobates who've taken what isn't theirs. They're the ones that ought to be giving back. Government, the ultimate sponge. But anyway, he quotes from the same speech. It's the Roanoke speech. He just followed it up. He's got this straw man, probably one rich guy. If you want to give it back, write a check, but keep your hand out of everybody else's pocket.

He says a lot of wealthy people want their taxes raised. Who cares? You know, a lot of people don't want their taxes raised, too. I would venture to say that there are more people who do not want their taxes raised than there are people who do. But here's the thing, folks. Obama is targeting people who are not wealthy. He's targeting small-business people. He's targeting families and individuals who have the temerity not to buy health care. You're gonna have a penalty or a fine if you don't buy health insurance, or a tax now. He wants to raise taxes on everybody. He's just fooling the middle class and everybody else by making them think he's only targeting the rich.

There's not a person in this country who will not have their taxes raised if Obama is reelected or if any Democrat is reelected. Maybe you have the temerity to work for somebody who provides you a so-called Cadillac health insurance policy, and you don't need to buy one on your own. Obama is targeting people who mine coal. He's targeting people who drill oil wells. He's targeting people who work on assembly lines. He is attacking anybody and everybody who earns a paycheck or who runs a business. Everybody is in his crosshairs, not just the rich. People who owe nothing to the government.

Where is this idea, everybody owes something to the government? This country was founded on the exact opposite proposition. That's why he went on this rant Friday in Roanoke, to tell all of you that you owe what you have, or what you are going to get, you owe it to him. You owe it to liberals. You owe it to bureaucrats. You owe it to politicians. You owe it to the beloved Democrat Party. But not your own individual labor. You don't owe it. It's not from the private sector. Not the American dream. No, no, no. You don't get anything you want from that. It all comes to you from the government. That's why he went on that rant.

He wants you ashamed of your success. He wants you thinking your success is undeserved because it has been come by in ill-gotten ways. He wants you embarrassed and ashamed of your success, and he wants you hiding it. He doesn't want you flaunting it. He wants you embarrassed of it. He wants everybody else to think of your success the way people thought of an SUV not too many years ago, as something destroying the climate. He wants to stigmatize success, as something that's undeserved and uncalled for and illegitimate. It isn't right that some people should succeed when others don't. And in true Democrat liberal fashion, instead of seeing people at different levels of economic success and wanting to equalize it or improve it by raising everybody, Obama wants to lower the people at the top so that we all have shared, equal misery.

The Democrats have never been about elevating. The Democrat Party, Obama, need a permanent underclass. They need a growing, permanent underclass that is in total dependence upon them. That's why they are so radically opposed to upward mobility. Upward mobility takes people out of dependence. It is why the Democrats are totally in favor of whatever cultural rot that comes along that busts up the family, because, as families are busted up, Obama and the government get to move in and take over the role of provider, be that from the mother or father, whichever. There shall be no upward mobility, and those who experience it shall be ashamed and shall be embarrassed of it. And those who do not experience upward mobility will be justified in resenting those who are improving their lives. That's why he went on that rant Friday. To tell all of you that you owe whatever you have or whatever you're going to get to him and his decision to let you have it and keep it, or to liberals, or to bureaucrats, politicians, the government.

By the way, this tax return business, you people in the Republican establishment, you know what you've done with this? Well, let's just look at this particular campaign. What would you say, Snerdley, the last two years the Republican establishment -- I say this without judgment -- have been pushing Romney, right? The Republican establishment, it's been clear as a bell, they've wanted Romney all along. They've done everything they can to split the conservative vote in the primaries. They did everything they could to denigrate genuine conservatives in the primary. They wanted Romney, Mr. Moderate, Mr. Mainstream, Mr. Establishment, Mr. Respectful, whatever, they wanted him, fine and dandy. The establishment media on our side, they're the ones that were pushing Romney, fine and dandy. As I say, I'm not making a judgment here.

CALLER: I don't understand how the critics and people are saying that what Obama said is being taken out of context. But, first of all, he's saying what they want to hear. And second of all, they don't seem to get it and neither does he, that the roads and the teachers, we don't have those without the businesses and without the work and without the taxes.

RUSH: We don't have the roads and bridges without people earning money that's taxed in the first place to build the things.

CALLER: Well, if you think about frontier days, businesses were very successful without the government and without paved roads.

We played the sound bite yesterday: If all you needed was a road in front of your business for it to be successful, everybody would have a successful business. We're really listening to the words of a child. We're really listening to the words of a neophyte. When Sununu says, "He doesn't understand," to a certain extent that's true. I think his lack of understanding is what makes possible his resentment. He doesn't understand it. He just thinks it's a golden goose that's always gonna be there. It's immoral and unjustified by virtue of its own existence -- the private sector, I mean -- and therefore he can tax it forever.

RUSH: There is a way to fix this economy. There are multiple ways. There are many ways to reverse this unemployment trend. I have written about many of them in the Wall Street Journal, way back in 2009.

A lot of people know what to do to turn this around. Romney knows what to do. You know what to do. Get the government out of everybody's way. Reduce the size. Limit its role. Go back to the founding. There are many ways to stimulate an economy. Tried and tested. They've been done before. There's a track record. There's a track record for this, too. This has been tried, what Obama's doing has been tried all over the world, since the beginning of time. It's never worked. Unless you have a different objective. If your intention really isn't to create jobs, if you really don't want to grow the economy, if you would rather transform it, if you want power to shift from people to the government, this is exactly what you would do. You take as much money out of the private sector as you can. And that's what Obama's done.

Let's go back to the original stimulus. My friend sent me a note a couple days ago. If you didn't hear it, what he said to me, was, "Rush, look, you know it and I know it. It's simple math. It's over. It's only a question of time. When you get tired of spitting into the wind, call me, and let's get together and see what we can do to protect our families from what everybody knows is coming, 'cause it's math, it's just math. This can't be sustained." His theory is that at some point the government is going to be forced to go take every dollar everybody has, some way, somehow, or as much as they can. They're asking Bernanke to print some more money now. They're asking Bernanke for another quantitative easing, more printing of money, third stimulus.

Whatever they're trying ostensibly to turn the economy around isn't working. And it won't work. It can't work. And that's what my buddy is saying. No, I'm not tired of spitting into the wind. I don't look at it that way. He's a little bit of a fatalist. He's retired, and when you're retired you have more time on your hands to think about these kind of things. But regardless, he's right about it being math if something's not done pretty quickly. Look at the first stimulus. We were told that we're gonna put essentially a trillion dollars into the economy, and that trillion dollars is gonna stimulate all kinds of economic activity.

The theory was that there were shovel-ready jobs out there, construction, infrastructure type jobs. You know, the old stand-bys, building roads, building bridges. I think that's all Obama thinks happens in an economy, is you build roads and bridges. He seems to talk about it all the time. No, that didn't happen. There weren't any shovel-ready jobs. I mean later he's caught joking about that. The money, in reality, was a slush fund. It was just a trillion dollars that was redistributed to Obama allies and friends, teachers, public sector unions, states run by Democrat governors to help them with their budget problems. It was never about growing the economy. But beyond that, it couldn't have. The math.

Here's a trillion dollars, and we're gonna put that trillion dollars in the private sector. Now, where does the government get the trillion dollars? It doesn't have it. We have a deficit of $1.8 trillion every year. We're $16 trillion in debt. Where does the government theoretically get the money? Well, it has to borrow it from the ChiComs or the Japanese or print it. But regardless, folks, it's taking that money out of the private sector and then putting it back in. There is no new stimulus. There's no brand-new money that wasn't there before being injected into the economy. For that trillion dollars to be injected into the economy, it first has to be taken out of the economy. It's a wash. If anything, it ends up being a negative because that trillion dollars is taken away from private sector usage.

These businesspeople that Romney had assembled on the conference call, that's money they can't borrow, that's money they can't use to grow their business or to hire people, or to give existing employees raises. The government's taken that money. And then magically, out of nowhere, a trillion dollars gets put into the economy. Now, theoretically, if you could find a way to put a trillion dollars that wasn't in the economy into it, well, yeah, then maybe we could talk about it. But you can't do that. You can only do it artificially and on paper. You can't do it in reality. The trillion dollars has to first be taken from the economy before it can be put there because the economy is where it all comes from. And that's what these four business owners are trying to tell these lame break journalists.

The government's the freeloader. The government's the free rider. The government's sitting there doing nothing, siphoning off a percentage of what everybody else is producing. They don't produce anything. Even these precious roads and bridges are built with money earned, created, and produced by people in the private sector economy. It is then taxed, and the government allocates it. But it doesn't just have a trillion dollars hanging around not doing anything. "Oh, you know what, let's put that trillion dollars in the economy." That's what Obama wanted everybody to believe was happening, and he succeeded because economics education is woefully inadequate in this country. So a lot of people thought, "Ohhh, we're gonna stimulate the economy." Well, if you could do it the way he said, give a business a trillion dollars, give 'em a billion, you're gonna see growth, by definition. It's math.

Well, it's also math here. A trillion dollars in only happens after a trillion dollars comes out. Even if it's printed, that's debt that the private sector's incurring in the name of government. So there was no way, it didn't have a chance. This is why I said before he's immaculated, "I hope he fails." 'Cause none of his ideas work in ways he professes to want them to work. By the way, whatever happened to Obama's jobs council? I looked it up. The last meeting of the jobs council was in January. Remember all those study groups the first year of Obama's regime? They'd meet in the White House, and the media, the Drive-Bys would take their cameras in there, they got all excited, and their tongues are hitting the floor (panting) everybody panting away, Obama's having work groups. Yeah.

They had the mass group there, then they'd be subdivided into smaller subgroups, and they go over to a corner of the room, and they would meet, and they would discuss. They had brilliant people in there like Thomas "Loopy" Friedman of the New York Times and Laurence Tribe from Harvard Law. They'd go gather in a corner with some others and they'd start talking, theorizing about how to create jobs. They'd write down some of what they said on paper. At the end of the day, three hours later, they all reported back to the teacher, to Obama, and they hand in their reports, problem solved.

And Obama had a press conference at the end of the day or a press availability and said (impression), "Well, we fixed the job problem today! We had several work groups and came up with some brilliant ideas we're gonna be working on. This, combined with the stimulus, means I think we've turned the corner. We've had our backs up against the wall, but now we're on the way back." Every year we've heard this, and it was a bunch of academics who don't know the first thing about what they're talking about.

They were talking amongst themselves in their little subgroups, reporting back to Obama, and everything was said to have been fixed. And then after that, they created this jobs council. And the jobs council meets. I don't know who's on it. Doesn't matter. They don't know what they're doing, either. These are people that admire Mao Tse-tung. They admire the total control over his country that he had. They've said so. My only point is if you really want to create jobs, there are ways to do it.

If you really want economic growth, there are things to do that are tried and proven to work. Some are faster than others, but they work. What is widely known is that what we've been doing for the last 3-1/2 years has never worked. And therefore the question arises, "Well, is it really intended to?"

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 #236	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	July 22, 2012