In this Issue:

American Rights Conferred to Enemy Combatants?

Chris Wallace Sunday AM

Has Bush strengthened Iran? (by Richard O'Leary)

Is Juan Williams Reading Conservative Review?

Housing Crisis Part 15

Goodbye, Tim

More Links

The Rush Section

Rush: McCain Steals Rush’s Lines

Rush on Whining Baby Boomers

Rush: Didn’t LBJ Already Fix Poverty?

Rush Explains Windfall Profits

Rush: Bonfire Ban in Washington

Rush Links

Obama School of Oratory Excellence

Too much happened this week!

Enjoy...

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 quickly deleted from my list (which is almost at the maximum anyway).

I'm listening to Rush Limbaugh and what he is saying just sounds too fantastic: the Supreme Court of the United States has conferred legal rights to enemy combatants. I do not know the extent of this, but it just does not make sense. We have our soldiers on the front lines, fighting a battle. Instead of killing everyone, they take some of these men prisons. This enemy combatants are transferred from the battlefield to Club Gitmo (or someplace similar). They are not wearing a uniform; they are not carrying a card which says "I am an enemy of the United States."

What is going to be done to keep these men in jail? Will we have to bring witnesses from our armed forces who were actually there and observed what happened. Will these soldiers, on the battlefield, have to collect evidence? Where will this evidence be stored? Will men be required to bring video cameras onto the battle field? Will there be a CSI team which will travel into battle areas? Is there any thought as to how many American lives are going to be endangered by this?

What will happen when we get into a real war where we are dealing with 1000's of prisoners rather than just 300?

The courts gave the President and Congress some time to determine what sort of a system should be set up to deal with the 300 men at Club Gitmo. They did, and the Supreme Court (5 members of the Supreme Court) decided to overrule both the President and Congress. This is what happens when you appoint activist judges. At first, they are going to make decisions which liberals like, and they will have no problems that the right thing is done. However, here more and more people even from the middle and the left recognize just how ridiculous and how problematic this act of Judicial power will be. There were reasonable laws in place to deal with our prisoners-of-war. Are a handful of them innocent? That is certainly possible. However, we have released 30 men who went out and killed as a result of being released. There is always the problem that, anytime anyone is jailed, that some people will be innocent. That is just a fact of life, even with an excellent justice system.

Now, what did we really need? Psychologists and psychiatrists, carefully evaluating these prisoners. We need men who speak their language who can figure out if we have a killer or an innocent locked up.

At some point in time, liberals and moderates are going to have to realize that we want judges who are going to carefully evaluate our laws and powers in light of our given constitution, rather than those who are going to make up laws and rights which are not found in our constitution. When it comes to legislation, even though it is sometimes slow, we need to depend upon Congress to make our laws and the President to sign these legislate packets into law. We cannot have a handful of men and women making our laws, whether we approve of their opinions or not.

Will this be the day in history where Americans where we have officially lost our minds?

The last thing that I want to do is set up a villain, and blame everything upon this villain. We have several players.

First of all, this is a world market, and there are a huge number of oil companies. ExxonMobil in the US is a pretty big company; with respect to the world, they are much less influential as an oil company. I know that there are people out there who have seen Syriana, Who Killed the Electric Car?, Crude Awakening, The World is not Enough; and they believe that Big Oil is as devious and as villainous the force as are Islamic Nazis. People love to demonize—particularly on the left—and the left loves to demonize Big Oil. Big Oil destroys our environment, they fill up the skies with greenhouse gases, they pay their executives far too much, and they will do anything (and I mean, anything) to keep it going.

Then Democrats haul oil executives into their televised hearings and excoriate them for their sins. And the Democratic solution? More taxes (a windfall profit tax) in order to fund more Democratic projects; and more oversight and regulations. If you have half a brain, you will recognize that, the government pocketing more oil money will not bring the price of gas down. It may reduce production, it may limit the supply, and it will probably drive up prices, but no one at the gas pump is going to realize a better price.

Or, the government is going to fund pet projects for alternative energy. That is another brilliant Democratic solution. What has resulted from this? Ethanol, higher food prices and no decrease in gas prices.

What about the speculators? I must admit to being at a loss here. These are people who put in 7% of what they bid, placing a price on oil off in the future, with an agreement to buy or sell oil at such and such a price. Quite frankly, I have listened to several opinions on this all week long, from those who think these speculators are the guys in the black hats, to those who think they do little to move the market. I really don’t have an opinion, apart from thinking that 7% seems to be too low to me. I would not object to legislation which bumped this up to 25%. By the way, my understanding is, 90% of the people who speculate in futures lose money.

Furthermore, realize this: you can get involved in futures in every area there is: corn, wheal, pork bellies, etc. Even though corn is going up, it is not going up as fast as oil is. Just because there is a future’s market, does not mean that the future’s market is the villain. It may be a contributing factor.

In a free market economy, supply and demand rules. If it costs a company $20 to pump a barrel of oil out of the ground, and there is more oil on the market than we know what to do with it, then it is going to sell at a price close to $20. If there are shortages at any point (in oil or in the refined products), prices are going to be higher. Right this moment, supply seems to be pretty close to demand. What is problematic for the US is, we now produce about 40% less of our oil than we did 20 years ago (quite frankly, I don’t know if our actual production is 40% less than what it used to be or if we now only supply 60% of our own oil needs). In any case, our need for gas and oil steadily goes up, and when we have to buy it from outside of the US, then there are going to be additional charges to get it here.

In case you did not know this, gas sales at the pump are often a loss-leader in order to bring people into their little mart. That place where you buy your gas is not making big bucks off your gas purchase. In fact, ExxonMobil is getting out of this part of the business, because they don’t make any money from it.

Arabs in the Middle East realize that they are in a difficult situation. It is unclear how much longer their oil supplies are going to last, but, once they sell their oil, many Arab countries have little else besides sand to sell (the U.A.E. is developing alternate income streams, as is Dubia). However, oil is the only cash cow for some Middle Eastern nations, so, if they can charge an extra dime for their oil, they will; and if they can charge an extra $60 for their oil, they will do that as well. With huge markets opening up in nearby India and China, they have new buyers, and this gives them some latitude when it comes to setting prices.

When they are able to sell their own oil at $160/barrel, then no other producer is going to sell their oil for $100/barrel, especially if supply and demand are quite close.

What will solve this problem? Free enterprise. In the US, we need to drill for more oil and we need to refine more of our oil. Right now, 57% of Americans now are willing to allow oil companies to start additional drilling in the US. More supply is going to reduce the price and quell some of the upward speculation.

Reduce restrictions and regulations associated with oil exploration, drilling and refining; increase the regulations for speculation (set 20–25% as the requirement for future speculators).

Increase nuclear power. Fewer people die as a result of nuclear power as opposed ot coal power; and it is cleaner and more environmentally friendly. Nearly 60% of our power requirements is for buildings (heating, cooling and electricity); the more that nuclear provides, the less oil that is required.

Be realistic about wind and solar power. If these were good alternatives, then why don’t they provide most of our power?

FInally, anyone who can come up with an alternative way of producing a fuel or a fuel substitute is going to become a multi-billionaire. No one needs money from the government in their pocket to do this. Anyone who develops a vehicle engine which runs on water, salt water, hydrogen, nuclear power, or mulch is going to be a multi-billionaire as well. We live in the greatest country in the world. The number of innovations to come from our citizens has been absolutely mind-boggling. Don’t think that big oil is going to send out secret operatives to destroy those who pursue alternate forms of energy. Trust in America.

Obama has spoken of his Trinity Church as being a Christian church and of Reverend Wright leading him to Christ. However, he has also said something along the lines of, "

He's said, “I’m a Christian. What that means for me is that I believe Jesus Christ died for my sins, and, uh, and, and, uh, his grace and his mercy and his power, through him, I can achieve everlasting life.”

and then added, “I think it’s very important to think that you do not have to have the same faith as me to be a moral person – there are a lot of Jewish people who are as moral, or more moral than I am, there are a lot of Muslims who are decent kind people. I don’t think they are any less children of God.”

I have heard Obama speak of being redeemed by Christ (or language similar to that), and then quickly add, "...but more important than this, is demonstrating your faith by working in the community" (not his exact words).

One example is an interview which he gave this past January: "I am a Christian, and I am a devout Christian. I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life. But most importantly, I believe in the example that Jesus set by feeding the hungry and healing the sick and always prioritizing the least of these over the powerful. I didn't 'fall out in church' as they say, but there was a very strong awakening in me of the importance of these issues in my life. I didn't want to walk alone on this journey. Accepting Jesus Christ in my life has been a powerful guide for my conduct and my values and my ideals."

WIth respect to being a Muslim, Obama also said, "There is one thing that I want to mention that I think is important. Part of what we've been seeing during the course this campaign is some scurrilous e-mails that have been sent out, denying my faith, talking about me being a Muslim, suggesting that I got sworn in the U.S. Senate with a Quran in my hand or that I don't pledge allegiance to the flag. I think it's really important for your readers to know that I have been a member of the same church for almost 20 years, and I have never practiced Islam. I am respectful of the religion, but it's not my own."

Before his church became more public, and, as a result, more controversial, Obama said, "During this holiday season and during this political season I'm continually reminded that the values that I learned at Trinity and as part of the UCC community are values that can't just stay in church but have to be applied outside of church."

An Obama quote from that article: "I'm rooted in the Christian tradition," said Obama. He then adds something most Christians will see as universalism: "I believe there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people."

When a journalist quotes John 14:6 and asks Obama what about Jesus saying of Himself, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Obama responded with "That sounds exclusive, but it depends on how this verse is heard." (I don't think this is an exact quote). I guess the idea here is, perhaps Jesus was speaking on "Opposite day."

David Brody reveals that Obama's campaign is now specifically on the move to get the evangelical vote:

Jimmy Carter did roughly the same thing, and garnered much of the evangelical vote.

In any case, Obama is certainly not a Muslim, although he does have some philosophical ties to American Muslims. Nor is he a Christian, exactly, although he certainly has ties to Christian activism.

Cal Thomas concludes with: Obama can call himself anything he likes, but there is a clear requirement for one to qualify as a Christian and Obama doesn't meet that requirement. One cannot deny central tenets of the Christian faith, including the deity and uniqueness of Christ as the sole mediator between God and Man and be a Christian. Such people do have a label applied to them in Scripture. They are called "false prophets."

For those of you who have a hankering for the Sunday talk shows, don’t miss Chris Wallace’s “FOX News Sunday.” This is first broadcast on the regular Fox channel Sunday in the morning; and then rebroadcast on the FOXNews Channel in the afternoon.

Today, we had a Democrat, a Republican and an oil executive discussing oil prices and solutions for the high oil prices. They really needed a stock analyst and future’s trader there as well. However, I was still an excellent show, as always. Chris is always fair to his guests, although he dares to ask them tough questions.

While watching Kay Baily Hutchison, I must admit that I wondered, will this be McCain’s VP choice? She smart, well-spoken, and she understands the issues. She might be a good choice, whether Obama is the Democratic nominee or not.

One of the talking points this election season is the claim that George Bush's policies have strengthened our enemies, particularly Iran. I'm curious; just what has he done that has enhanced Iran's position?

Bush avowed, standing on the rubble left of the twin towers, never to negotiate with terrorist states. He has stood firmly by that promise.

Bush's Administration has promoted sanctions against Iran, but the U.N., and several superpowers, have ignored those measures. It is their support that keeps Iran on the front burner. Our military in Iraq has made it clear that Iran is supplying weapons and logistics that are killing Americans there. Persuant to Bush's orders, they have run those Iranian insurgents aground, and spread the word of Iran's involvement in that war. Our navy cruises off the Iranian coast as a constant reminder that America is on the prod, and Iran is the probable prey.

Which of these policies has strengthened Iran? More importantly; what policies from the political grab bag will a liberal President persue that promise more effectivness?

Yes, it's true. Iran is stronger and more influencial today than ever before, but to lay the blame on Geroge Bush is the height of stupidity, and ignorance of the world's political environment.

As noted in the past, Jimmy Carter is solely responsible for Iran's enmity, and their dangerous adventures. Beyond that fact, the braggadocio of that punk who heads the Iranian dictatorship is a direct result of the support from China, Russia, France, Germany, and several other nations. Of course he is defiant! Who wouldn't be, with the combined logistics from several of the most powerful nations on Earth, not to mention the General Electric Corp?

Obama is promising that his "era of change" will include a dialogue with Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and other of or enemies. And this strategy is expected to accomplish what Bush's policies have allegedly failed to do? Anyone who believes that is a moron, and worse. High on that list is the leader of Hammas and bin Laden's lieutenant. They have both said that Obama would make a great President.

Duh...and they hope for an Obama Presidency because he will bring about their demise? Or perhaps they really want peace and reconciliation, and they hope a nice guy gets elected in America that they can deal with?

These people have made it manifestly clear that they will destroy Israel. It follows logically that their support of any American politician is, in their view, a move in that direction. What's more, they are driven not by a generic hatred of America, but religious fanatacism. Obama won't win their hearts from Allah.

The sum of world terrorism have been honing their skills of violence and deception for thousands of years, and this political rookie thinks he can change human corruption, and the function of the sin nature, with his soothing words? Even Jesus Christ couldn't do
that, because free will is in play.

I dare say Obama overestimates his abilities. A monumental ego, and a flare for bull****, is no antidote for evil. In fact, it is tantamount to throwing gasoline on the fire. Those evil doers will eat Mr. Obama's lunch, and belch in his face.

Two weeks ago, I wrote an article telling Obama what he needed to say with regards to his church and his questionable associations at this church. I said that he had to admit that he did wrong and that he used this church in order to get some political viability.

I have alluded to the several positions which Obama took after Wright’s views became more universally known.

Juan Williams, in a column written June 6, 2008, gives us the various positions which Obama has taken on his church and his pastor (which positions were first made public by Karl Rove) and then Juan suggested that Obama can only solve this problem by owning up to his political expediency in attending this church. I took it a bit further, but I am glad to see that Juan is on the right track.

In any case, Obama does not need to worry about the fallout from an honest speech; the media is going to again proclaim this the greatest speech since the Gettysburg Address, suggest that this speech be memorized by children in our public schools, and they will tell us, “Finally, a politician tells the truth; Obama is a politician like no other.”

Being that I used to be a realtor and still have ties to that community, I actually know 3 families who have lost their mortgage. In 2 of those cases, there was more going on than simply not being able to pay their mortgage. In all 3 cases, they were brought in on an ARM loan, something which I NEVER allowed any of my buyers to do when I was a realtor. At least two of these people bypassed a realtor and bought a new house with very favorable financing. On the one family where I was able to see their credit report, I must admit to being amazed that they could get a loan. I would not have leased a house to them without a hefty deposit. In a good market, I would not even consider renting to people like this.

Now, quite frankly, I do not know how these people get loans. Being in the business for a long time, I would have never taken these people even to a mortgage officer, because, at that time, they would not have had a chance. As I have mentioned in the past, there are new mortgage companies who offer what appears to be government backed loans with little or no money down, and with any sort of credit. How this came to pass, I assume is due to legislation. You cannot have government money without some legistlation to release it (or to give assurances of the loan being backed) without some kind of legislation. The only legislation that I am aware of is preferential treatment being given to minority loans. So, apparently the government okayed and backed loans with people that you and I would not trust; and then they turn around and act shocked when these people walk away from their mortgages (the government did the same with the oil companies--the Congress restricted drilling and refining in the US, and then they are shocked when oil prices skyrocket).

I believe that I have already mentioned the section 8 program where the government pays all or a portion of a tenant's rent for them (at one time, over half of my houses were section 8 properties). Let's say that, rent is $1000, a tenant might pay $200 of that. So, what our magnanimous government does is, match that $200 month after month and them let them apply that to the down payment of a house which they can purchase on a preferential loan.

What I find more shocking is, I don't find any news organizations investigating this situation. 60 Minutes did a short and very superificial piece on the current "mortgage crisis" and that is as much as I have seen.

How many of these loans which are gonig bad are investor loans? How many of these loans are government programs? How many of these loans are given out to people with sucky credit? Where are our news organizations? Do they investigate anything anymore?

Finally, why should we look to government to fix this supposed crisis if it is government which may be the cause of it in the first place?

I am a recent convert to Meet the Press. I first observed CNN news in Thailand many years ago and realized, “No wonder some foreigners hate us.” I have watched some network news and have been so disappointed as to its naked bias. I watched debate after debate, and it seemed to the questions for the Democrats came from a different planet than those delivered to the Republicans, even though these debates were mediated by the same people. Then, about 10 or so debates into this process, Tim Russert and George Stephanopoulos host a Democratic debate, and I must admit, my jaw dropped. They gave the Democrats real questions and they expected to hear real answers. When the candidate wandered off into talking points, Tim or George would reel them back in, and say, “Now, this was the question which I originally asked you; do you intend to answer that question?” Or they would ask them a reasonable and penetrating follow-up question. It did not bother me that Russert and Stephanopoulos had previous ties to the Democratic party—so what? They were attempting to elicit real answers from these Democratic candidates, and not just 60 seconds worth of well-prepared talking points.

After this debate, I began to watch the Sunday morning talk shows: This Week with George Stephanopoulos and Meet the Press with Tim Russert. I thoroughly enjoyed both shows. I felt that the moderators were fair, tough, and the panel discussions were reasonable. It did not seem to matter if they were interviewing a Democrat or a Republican, both Russert and Stephanopoulos would real questions and tough questions, with good follow up. They did not beat a person down, even if their answers to the original question and the follow-up question were lame; they allowed us, the viewing public, to make this call.

I also appreciated that there was no demagoguery and no simplistic answers or slogans offered up by Russert and Stephanopoulos. They stepped back and let us decide, unlike, for instance, Chris “Hardball” Matthews or Keith Olbermann.

Tim Russert, dead at age 58, will be missed tremendously by political afficionados, conservative, moderate and liberal alike.

Can you even imagine what would happen if Senator John McCain ever uttered these exact same words? His campaign would be over! Every newspaper would carry the front page story, “McCain is too old!” or “McCain Cannot Follow his Own Train of Thought” or “McCain’s Train of Thought Left the Station before He did.”

RUSH: The Democrats are beside themselves that the guy Obama hired to vet his vice presidential possibilities, some guy named Johnson, has got all kinds of scandal problems, and he's a lobbyist and all these things that Obama has just washed his hands of. Yeah, that's right, he gets a sweetheart loan from Countrywide, and we all hate Countrywide, the home mortgage bunch that made sure everybody is now living in a tent. We hate 'em. So Obama has gone out and gotten this guy to vet his vice presidential people. There's nothing new about this. The guy has been around Washington for decades. I got a note from a good friend of mine, said, "How in the world does a guy like Obama go get this guy, make this kind of mistake?" And given how contradictory this guy's record is with what Obama states that they're not going to be any lobbyists, any PAC money and all that in his campaign, I said, "I don't want you to take this wrong way, but I don't think there's some magical Oz behind the curtain running Obama, but I don't think running for president was totally his idea. There's somebody behind this." He's been in Washington three years. He doesn't know what he's doing. He doesn't know who to go out and hire to vet for vice president. This is a Democrat Party hack. Somebody turned him on to this. He doesn't know what he's doing. He hasn't got enough experience.

All he can do is speak in platitudes written for him by David Axelrod, but coming down to these nuts-and-bolts decisions, he goes back to the traditional Democrat Party hierarchy? Somebody's behind this. I don't mean that in a sinister way, because everybody has sponsors. Reagan had his kitchen cabinet, but there's somebody that went to Obama somewhere, said, "Son, you'd be a great front man for my idea to take over the country. You can speak well. You got a skin color that people can't afford to assail. We gotta get rid of Hillary and Bill Clinton once and for all, and if we put the right words in your mouth, you can do it, especially after we test-marketed you with your speech at the 2004 Democrat convention." So anyway, I think that Obama here is just, there's something we don't know. It's not a conspiracy. It's politics as usual. Don't misunderstand. Now, after he said this, that John McCain's running to serve out a third Bush term, McCain was on the Nightly News last night, and he's had enough, he doesn't like Obama saying that he's just going to be Bush 2. Let me go back to May 21st on this program, three weeks ago, and we will listen to me talking about the Obama presidency.

RUSH ARCHIVE: It's going to be Jimmy Carter's second term. They don't care about ruining the country. We're running against people who want doom and gloom to happen.

RUSH: Last night on the MSNBC Nightly News with Brian Williams -- oh, did you hear about his commencement address at Ohio State University? Did you hear about Brian Williams' commencement address at Ohio State University? He told the graduates this country is broken, and he listed all the reasons, and we need you to fix it. Brian Williams, who I like -- well, yeah, he didn't say government should fix it, but wait 'til you hear the whole thing. It's frustrating. It's worse than frustrating. Anyway, McCain, after I on May 21st said, this is Jimmy Carter's second term, this is what McCain said last night to Williams. Williams said, "Is it going to be tough to run with an incumbent party for the White House given this economic backdrop?"

MCCAIN: Senator Obama says that I'm running for Bush's third term. It seems to me he's running for Jimmy Carter's second.

RUSH: Peter Schweitzer has a book out that's a very long title. I'm gonna collapse the title here: Makers and Takers: conservatives work harder, feel happier, have closer families, give more generously, blah, blah, blah, blah, than do liberals. And his column, a little excerpt from it here today: "'Modern Liberals, Whine Connoisseurs' -- Barack Obama is many things -- a senator, a gifted orator, and a charismatic figure. But he's also a whiner. ... Michelle Obama whines about the burdens of paying for piano lessons and summer camp for the kids, and the paying off the student loans for her two Ivy League degrees. ... But the Obamas' penchant for whining didn't begin with the presidential campaign. Michelle Obama, in her Princeton undergraduate thesis titled 'Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community', complains of 'further integration and/or assimilation into a white cultural and social structure that will only allow me to remain on the periphery of society.'" It's a full whine.

Now, here's the point. I do think that it would be politically potent and advantageous -- it would never happen -- for the Republican Party to actually target these people on the left for what they are. They are whiners. This is why the whiners are on the left, and Schweitzer makes this point. The worst thing about whiners is that they almost always expect other people to do what is necessary to make 'em feel better. They don't undertake these things themselves. For example -- and this is what I meant with my Baby Boomer reference mere moments ago -- here we have a gasoline problem. A lot of people, by the way, are worried about rationing -- according to polling data -- more than they're worried about prices. They're worried about another shortage. People lived through it back in the seventies, contrived shortage. There is not a shortage. So it would have been to be a contrived shortage. But we have all these Baby Boomers who have grown up spoiled rotten. I've always contended this. I am a Baby Boomer. I know this to be true.

Baby Boomers have so much time on their hands that they can make their whole lives, every moment of every day, about them. They never had to learn early on in life or even now that there are things in life larger than they are, 'cause that's not possible. They are the center of the universe. Their parents raised them that way. Their parents really went through hell in order to give us the life that we have, so we've had to invent our traumas. Attention deficit disorder, all these other things, we've had to invent them to make ourselves think that we've had challenges, life's been tough. And, of course, these things are relative, but if you get an attitude that says this is impossible, this is tough, I can't stand the pressure, you're really feeling it, so it turns out to be real, but in a comparative analysis of what people lived through in the Depression and the Korean War, World War II and the Cold War, and defeated all those things, that was real pressure. They didn't want to have their kids to have to experience those things, so they grew up real fast, and they wanted a better life for their kids, and they provided it on balance.

RUSH: I watched a little bit of Obama today. There was a web feed of an Obama appearance somewhere -- and they were running it, of course, on DNCTV. They're doing Obama telethons each of the next ten or 12 Tuesdays leading up to the convention. I mean, they're not calling it Obamathons, but that's what they are. Super Tuesday is devoted entirely to the presidential race, which is all they do 24/7 there anyway. At any rate, I'm watching and he's talking about the health problems in this country, specific health insurance and he started talking about (and I spotted this, by the way, because I'm good at this). I spotted the tactic immediately. He started talking about the "underinsured." Now, this is a new category. The number ranges from anywhere, what, 40 to 43 million uninsured, and that was the number that Bill Clinton was using starting in the campaign of 1992, which dovetails with Jeffrey Lord here in a second.

That number has gone up despite eight years of Clinton, but now all of a sudden the "underinsured," people who have health insurance but they don't have enough. And, lo and behold, a story from today from HealthDailyNews.com. "The number of American adults who have inadequate health insurance to cover their medical expenses rose 60% from 2003 to 2007, from 16 million to more than 25 million people." So if you have insurance and you are not worried about the issue, you now are part of the problem. You are underinsured and you are putting stress on the system, and you are going to be targeted, even those of you who have insurance but Obama and his people think not enough; you're going to have to get it somewhere and they're going to turn you to the government to get it. The underinsured are 25 million, added now to the 43 to 45 million uninsured. And, lo and behold, we're up to around 65 to 70 million people with a health insurance problem in this country. And Obama's going to fix it. Do you see the tactic here?

Jeffrey Lord's piece: "Somewhere Lyndon B. Johnson has to be insulted," and he quotes Obama here from that acceptance speech Tuesday night of last week, wherever he was, St. Paul. "'[I]f we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal...' Excuse me? You mean all those LBJ Great Society programs didn't provide care for the sick, secure good jobs for the jobless and take care of the environment? On the off-chance the Internet has a space limitation, let's settle for a partial listing of LBJ's efforts for the sick, the jobless, the environment and more as reflected in the list of legislation he proudly compiled and boasted of in his presidential memoir The Vantage Point."

I only have a minute before the break, and I don't have enough time to list for you every program or every area for which there are multiple programs in the Great Society and the war on poverty. "Clean Air. Vocational Training. Indian Vocational Training. Manpower Training." This is from LBJ's own book. "Federal Airport Aid. Farm Program. Pesticide Controls. International Development Association. Urban Mass Transit. Water Resources Research. Federal Highway. Civil Service Pay Raise. War on Poverty. Truth-in-Securities. Medicine Bow National Forest. ... Food Stamps. Housing Act. Nurse Training. Revenues for Recreation. Library Services. Federal Employee Health Benefits. Wilderness Areas." That's a partial list, and Obama is out there saying it hasn't worked because we are a compassionless country. We haven't had the right charismatic messiah healing everybody with the power of his personality.

RUSH: If you're just joining us, I was going through a piece by Jeffrey Lord right before the end of the previous hour in the American Spectator today (www.spectator.org) about Obama and his ongoing theory that the jobless can't find work, that the sick cannot get well, that the oceans cannot be rolled back -- and only with his election and with his messianic talents can all of these problems plaguing our once-great nation be fixed. Lord's point here is: Wait a second, Obama. You have just insulted one of the Democrat Party's heroes, LBJ, who authored the Great Society and the War on Poverty for the expressed purpose of healing the sick, finding work for the jobless, making sure the environment stayed clean and all of these things. Now, my point is focusing on all this is not so much to focus on Obama because it's not a surprise that Obama -- as a leftist -- would be promoting Big Government, promoting the idea that America is in a permanent, constant state of decline.

That's who they are. My point in focusing on this is to remind people just how much the government has spent, how many programs there are, and how ineffective they have been; and yet here we have another election where the point from the libs is, "We're a heartless bunch of people. We don't have any compassion. We have major suffering! We're in a constant state of decline. We need government to move in where the Bush administration has failed." The government is what has failed, and that's what's illustrated by Jeffrey Lord's piece. It's sort of like this demagoguery that's going on with Big Oil. Let me just ask you people a question. I know that you in this audience know this. I would love to go onto a college campus into a history class -- a science class, a biology class, a political science class -- and I would like to ask these young skulls full of mush in there one question:

"Could you name for me the organizations who are, A, producing oil for you?" Could you name for me the organizations, companies or what have you, that are doing their best to make sure when you pull up to the gas station, that there's something there for you to put in your tank. And of course you would hope that they would say, "Well, Big Oil," to which I would then reply, "Well, then would you tell me why it is that your professors, probably -- and the Democrats in the US Congress -- are criticizing and trying to harm the only group of guys that's involved in trying to create supplies of oil for your use? How does it figure?" It's just a matter of common sense. How does it figure that of the people who are responsible for making sure when you pull up there's gasoline -- when you get on the airplane there's jet fuel in your airliner, when you need home heating oil there it is -- the one group of guys doing anything to making happen, we have villainized. Not trying, we have!

We're trying to destroy these people. It literally makes no sense. Has any college professor made it possible for you to fill up? Has any United States Senator or member of the House of Representatives made it possible for you to fill up? Has the president, any president, made it possible for you to fill up? No. Quite the contrary. A combination of these people are standing in the way of more supply at a lower price so that you can fill up at a price that's not going to make you alter the rest of your life and the way you live it. And yet who have you been told to be mad at? The guys that are making it possible for you to get around. And it's worked on so many people, the hatred for Big Oil, the suspicion that there's some Oz behind this magic curtain that has the power to throw a switch and the price skyrockets, and we have wizards in the media even on our side who do entire programs on trying to find out who this Oz is, when there isn't an Oz.

It would be tantamount to you needing surgery. Let's say you need your appendix out, and it's a crisis situation, and you go to the hospital and you've listened to nothing but Barack Obama and Ted Kennedy and all the other Democrats complain, whine -- and Hillary Clinton -- about health care, and you're wheeled into the operating room, and it's before that they have given you your sedation, and you start complaining and whining and moaning at them about whatever it's going to cost to save your life. Imagine the doctors saying, "Okay, fine. Call Hillary Clinton. I'm going to go play golf. You get her in here and have your appendix taken out, or call Barack Obama." Now, back to Jeffrey Lord on the same principle here. I went through a list of just 1963 and half of 1964 from LBJ's own memoir called The Vantage Point. Here are others:

"Let's move on to 1965, again with space prohibiting a full listing of what Senator Obama seems to feel were LBJ's inadequacies in just not getting the job done: Medicare. Aid to Education. Higher Education. Four Year Farm Program. Department of Housing and Urban Development [creation]. Housing Act. Social Security Increase. Fair Immigration Law. Older Americans. Heart, Cancer, Stroke Program." Let me stop on that. Just how many -- since 1965, when I was 14, I'm sitting here trying to remember how many times have I heard, in a State of the Union speech, for example, or a response, "We need to get started getting tough on cancer and heart disease"? Well, we've been doing that for most of our modern existence. It seems like people forget. It isn't enough, because people are still dying from cancer and heart disease. And, see, the Democrats need people to believe that that's going to stop happening. And so when people keep dying, "We're just not doing enough! We need government to do more."

We need government to do less! Just like yesterday, Dianne Feinstein said, "We gotta shut down the government-run Senate dining room. It's losing money. It needs a $250,000 infusion. If we don't get it, our prices are going up 25%." These are multimillionaires serving in the Senate worried about already-subsidized prices going up 25%. So they're going to privatize it. They can't run their own dining room! They want to run health care. They want to run the environment, they want to run, you name it. Just keep going.

"Drug Controls. Mental Health Facilities. Health Professions. Medical Libraries. Vocational Rehabilitation. Anti-Poverty Program." Now, remember, we've already got in 1964 the War on Poverty, which was its own program. In '65, we added to it with "Anti-Poverty Program. Arts and Humanities Foundation. Aid to Appalachia." To this day, Appalachia is what it is! It's a cultural thing. We've been trying to fix Appalachia, and Appalachia says, "Screw it, we like who we are!" There's a new program, because Appalachia didn't vote for Obama. So we're going to get a new program for Appalachia. We had what's-her-face -- what's-her-face? -- Mrs. Greenspan, Andrea Mitchell referring to Appalachia and southern Virginia types as "rednecks," and she had to apologize for it five days later. We're going to get to that. "Water Pollution Control," 1965. "High Speed Transit." Oh, yeah. All those light rail systems out there. High Speed Transit? I don't know what it is. "Water Resources Council. Water desalting." That would be desalinization. "Juvenile Delinquency Control. Retirement for Public Servants."

Now, Jeffrey Lord says wait, wait, wait, wait. "Stop! Stop with the list already! OK. But I warn you, we're not even done with 1965 yet. With 1966, 1967 and 1968 still to go; I hate to leave out things like Child Nutrition, Rent Supplements, Clean Rivers, Child Safety, Narcotics Rehabilitation, Water Research, Water for Peace, Air Pollution Control, Education Act, Deaf-Blind Center, Safe Streets, Wholesome Poultry, School Breakfasts, Aircraft Noise Abatement, Better Housing, Oil Revenues for Recreation, Juvenile Delinquency Protection, Guaranteed Student Loans, Gun Controls, Aid-to-Handicapped Children, Hazardous Radiation Protection, and Dangerous Drugs Control." Now, after hearing all of this, "Is it any wonder that the ghost of LBJ is fuming? All of this and more, oh so much more, and suddenly here comes this Obama guy insisting that only by electing him can America 'begin' to 'provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless' and cite the Obama-era as the time 'our planet began to heal...'"

He has just effectively admitted that his own party's great effort to fix all social ills, has failed. 'Cause we have to "begin." Now, obviously, Obama doesn't mean that. This is Democrat rhetoric. It's built on the whole class envy business, built on the whole notion that they have tried to make as many Americans believe that we're in a constant state of decline; that despite our prosperity, you are not paying enough. You are not contributing or "investing" enough to help your fellow citizens who are in dire need. They're in dire need despite transfers. Do you know what the total transfer now from the producers to non-producers, including the war on poverty and the Great Society. It's over $6 trillion that has been transferred in the form of tax increases and benefits packages. It hasn't worked. I mean, the percentages of people in poverty are still the same. And even if it had worked, the Democrats would still be clamoring for more, the leftists.

All of this can be placed underneath that umbrella, which was the big theme of yesterday's program, that there is a very casual but direct onslaught on the concept of individual liberty and freedom -- and it is being led by extreme, advanced leftists who have now taken over the Democrat Party. Joe Lieberman is a liberal, and they've kicked him out. It is extreme leftists who have hoped for, who have promoted the concept of America's defeat in Iraq; promoted the concept that America's heroes of today, the military, are criminals, rapists, and liars, thugs, murderers. It is those people who are doing everything they can to make you feel guilty enough that you'll give up a liiiittle liberty here and a liiiittle liberty there, all of it based on a failed system of managing people in our politics and our affairs. It's failed everywhere in the world it's been tried; everybody knows that it has failed. And yet people can be captivated by a messianic-like young figure, particularly when there's no opposition.

When the opposition, rather than fighting this and standing up for it, seeks to accept these premises and then tweak them a little bit and try to give a little conservative flavor to it because they've bought the notion the American people have already bought into this, they already think this is true; it's a wasting of time trying to educate them and tell 'em it's not. But it's never too late to educate people and tell 'em that they're being lied to. You don't have to "revise" conservatism. It doesn't have to be "adapted." We don't have to get rid of Ronald Reagan. The left never talks about getting rid of FDR. They never say that FDR is over with; the era of FDR is behind us. They never do that, but our side does, our own intelligentsia, conservative intelligentsia, "Well, we gotta get past Reagan." We can't get past Reagan because the underlying foundation of Reagan was the concept that individual liberty and freedom never gets old. It never has to be reformed. It never has to be updated. It never has to be adapted. It has to be paid attention to because individual liberty and freedom is the root of all else that is conservatism.

RUSH: Conservatism is under siege, it needs to be defended, and it needs to go on offense, and any Republican or any pseudo-conservative in our own media, in our own party running for office, any, any Republican, slash, conservative who thinks we need to add to this list of things that LBJ did is not conservative. Anybody who thinks we need a new program for unwed mothers, we got five. Anybody who thinks we need to a new program for the sick or for poverty, we've got 14. And any Republican, any conservative in the media, in the party who says we need more of these programs is not a conservative and should not be allowed to be called one because he or she is not.

RUSH: My North Carolina mistress just sent me an e-mail. Aside from telling me that the me she knows from yesterday is true to form, she said, "Would you explain the difference between profit and windfall profit?" I will do my best as a layperson not formally educated in classical economics. A windfall profit is a profit gained by a company for an activity in which they had no role in creating the activity. There was no investment. There was no work done. There was no involvement whatsoever, but something happened that caused that company to reap a windfall profit even though they had not made one investment in whatever the activity was. Therefore, it is not possible, it is impossible for it to be said oil companies are making windfall profits because the price of oil is going up, because that's their job. They produce it. They invest in it. They have shareholders who are investing. They are the people, the one group of people trying to create oil and we're trying to destroy 'em. The Democrats are trying to tax 'em out of business. It's asinine and absurd. But it's not possible for Big Oil to reap windfall profits in a business they are already engaged in. They are investing. They are drilling. They are researching. They're exploring. When they find, they see if it makes sense to bring it up. If they bring it up, there are all kinds of costs associated with this.

If later on down the road the price of the product that they're bringing out of the ground goes way, way up, well, that's not a windfall profit. They were involved in bringing it up in the first place. They were involved in refining it. So there can be no such thing as a windfall profit for Big Oil. Now, let's try to concoct something here off the top of my head. (interruption) That's a good point, Mr. Snerdley. The true beneficiaries, the true agents of windfall profits would be your government. Mine, too. What do they do? Do they do one thing that has a direct result on gasoline being in your pump, oil coming out of the ground? No. They are obstacles. The people that do bring the oil out of the ground and do ship it around the world and do refine it have to work through governments all over the world. After all of this work is done and you drive up to the friendly Kwik Shop, to the self-serve pump, old Harry Reid and Dick Durbin and George Bush, they're just sitting there, and the cash register goes ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching. They haven't been involved in the production, distribution, creation, discovery of the product, and yet, they're making gazillions. That is a windfall profit.

RUSH: I want to ask all of you a question, and I would like to be able to ask this question to everybody who is not listening to the program right now. What's it going to take? How long is it going to be before you all have had enough of the encroachment of your freedom and your liberty? How long is it going to be before you stand up and tell the leftists in this country, "Stop, shut up. Go back home. We are not going to let you ruin this country." At what point, and this is not even about Obama. I'm not talking about Obama. I saw something in the newspaper Friday after I finished this program. Seattle, Washington, they are thinking of banning bonfires on beaches in Seattle, Washington, because of global warming. I cannot tell you how infuriated I have been and am and was made even more so by that story. Bonfires equaling global warming? At what point, and look, I know that people living in Seattle are primarily liberals, and bonfires on the beach don't cause any problem whatsoever with global warming. This is absurd!

At some point, and I fear we're not there yet, most of the times when freedom is taken away slowly, under false premises such as saving the planet or securing this or that or for whatever reason people gladly, without question, give away a little liberty a lot of the time. And when they finally realize that they have given a lot of it away, it's too late to get it back without a serious upheaval of elected representation in Washington and state capitals. It is time for people to say they're fed up. Bonfires on the beach lead to global warming. It's absurd, it's stupid and it's illustrative of what the true agenda is on the part of America's leftists, and that is to make sure that this country is in a constant state of decline. To make sure that the people in this country are brought down to size. The rest of the world needs to see the American economy shrink and the American people be punished for their sins of prosperity for all of these centuries and decades. At some point, folks, we don't have any elected leadership in Washington that's going to stand up and do this. At some point, we're going to have to do it ourselves.

"Seattle Parks and Recreation might do what even this week's chilly weather couldn't -- douse the long tradition of beach bonfires at [two different beaches]. Park department staff is recommending reducing bonfires at the two beaches this summer and possibly banning them altogether next year. The park board will hear the recommendation Thursday, and the city plans to run public-service announcements and hand out brochures later this month about the effects of bonfires on global warming." At what point are all of us collectively going to stand up and just say, "Stop"? At what point are we going to tell these people that their ideas are absurd but that our personal liberty is more important, and that it is our liberty and freedom which has made this the greatest country on the face of the earth -- and the friendliest to the most nations on the earth in the history of world history, in the history of the planet?

At what point are we going to stand up and say, and laugh, "Are you serious? Bonfires cause global warming! The carbon footprint from bonfires causes global warming! And people just going to sit around and say, "Okay. No more bonfires." In New York, out on Long Island, they have. Bonfires are banned for a certain time each year to protect a bird, the piping plover. There

was a story over the weekend about drought in California. It turns out the reason for the drought is a federal judge who made a decision in January to stop the flow of water from the Sacramento Delta to the southern part of the state because a fish had gotten somehow entangled in the pumps. And so for half the year, maybe seven months, the people of California had to deal with less water so that a fish would not be harmed by pumps! I know that I joke about the circumstance here in Florida -- all along the East Coast -- with the turtle lights and so forth, but it's all the same.

And it never stops, and it's happening incrementally. Our liberty, our freedom, is being eroded. It is being taken from us, and we are buying into this because they are doing it and ladling it out with guilt. We have sinned! We have lived too prosperously. We have lived too carelessly. Despite the fact that we are the cleanest major industrial nation in the world. We clean up our messes better than any other nation in the industrialized world that has any significant size whatsoever. The piping plover, the bonfires, and I'm sure you can think of a number of recent examples. In Minneapolis: "The Minneapolis City Council and Mayor R.T. Rybak approved changes Friday, to the city's vehicle idling ordinance that aims to reduce air pollution. The ordinance limits most vehicle idling to three minutes, except in traffic." Global warming. You can't idle your car longer than three minutes. It's none of their damn business -- and note where they're doing all of this stuff first. It's in these far leftist states.

RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, let me tackle this bonfire thing. In my normal way of doing this, we've tried to refute this on the science of it, or the logic of it, or the spirituality of it, or what have you. But at some point, that's going to have to change because it's not working. Well, I don't think it's working. I'm not quite certain about this, but I'm optimistic. Let's look at this bonfire business. In Seattle on two beaches, they're going to ban bonfires. They're going to limit them this year and maybe ban them next year. Why? Global warming. Folks, this is Marxism. This is not about science! It can't possibly be about science.

Turn on your television and look at a wildfire that destroys homes in Southern California, in Northern California. They happen every spring, and how do they start? Lightning! Do we do the lightning? Can we start lightning strikes? Can we stop them? No! And yet, has anybody said we need to ban lightning, because lightning leads to forest fires and wildfires? You talk about carbon footprints? How about natural grass fires that agriculture does on purpose, controlled grass burns? Have you ever seen one of those? I am from the middle part of this country in the state of Missouri. I saw grass fires all the time. They stink! There's lots of smoke, but they are necessary agriculturally. There are far more "pollutants," quote unquote, than from a series of bonfires. This is absurd as when Southern California tried to ban outdoor grilling some years ago -- this'd be in the 80s, the late 80s -- under the theory that everybody at the same time, between a two-hour period say between 5 at the 7 p.m. at night would light up their outdoor charcoal barbecue pits and that the pollution would rock the stability of our climate.

And people refused to put up with that then. This is not science! This is not about pollution. This is not about keeping things clean. This is Marxism! This is leftists on the prowl, on the march, who despise this country's greatness; who seek to cut it down to size. And one of the ways they do so is to punish our economy. And by punishing the economy -- and one of the only ways to punish the economy and lower it, to attack -- is to deny all of us our personal freedom. A story from the French News Agency just now: "Families in the United States have to save more if the country is to reduce a deficit in payments with the rest of the world, the World Trade Organization said on Monday. In a review of US trade policy, the WTO said that if consumers saved more and spent less, then there would be less demand for imported goods. That would help to reduce a deficit on the balance of payments into and out of the country, it said. ...

"'The United States may require to raise its savings rate while maintaining its traditional openness, which allows US producers and consumers to access goods, services, and capital from abroad at the best conditions.'" So now the World Trade Organization wants to control our imports and exports and our personal saving, and who is it that runs the World Trade Organization or anything to do with the United Nations? They are not liberals. They are not Democrats. They are Marxists! They are leftists. Three minutes. You can only idle your car three minutes in Minneapolis. Do you notice where altogether of these things start? They all start in very liberal states. Here's the story on the water in California. It was from June 7th in the New York Times. "Water-Starved California Slows Development." This is not an accident. "Water-starved California" is starved because of a federal judge.

"As California faces one of its worst droughts in two decades, building projects are being curtailed for the first time under state law by the inability of developers to find long-term water supplies. Water authorities and other government agencies scattered throughout the state, including here in sprawling Riverside County, east of Los Angeles, have begun denying, delaying or challenging authorization for dozens of housing tracts and other developments under a state law that requires a 20-year water supply as a condition for building." So you keep reading and you keep reading and you keep reading and you keep reading and then you find this: "Even more significant, a judge in federal district court last year issued a curtailment in pumping from the California Delta -- where the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers meet and provide water to roughly 25 million Californians..."

Now, how many people are in California? There are 37 million, and 25 million of them are without water, primarily south of Sacramento. The reason the judge "issued a curtailment in pumping from the California Delta south was to protect a species of endangered smelt that were becoming trapped in the pumps. Those reductions, from December to June, cut back the state's water reserves this winter by about one third..." Therefore, no building can be permitted because they can't guarantee a 20-year water supply. "The smelt problem," says the New York Times, "was a powerful indicator of the environmental fallout from the delta's water system, which was constructed over 50 years ago for a far smaller population." I don't know how many of you know this, and I don't mean this as a cut. This is not criticism. But if you were a rational human being and this country was not populated but it was geographically today or 100 years ago like it was then or now, and you were looking at it from a satellite or from whatever vantage point you wanted to, there was no way that you would say, "Put the second largest city where Los Angeles is," because there's no water.

There's no water! You wouldn't do it. But it's a beautiful place, and they did it, and the water has to come from someplace elsewhere. The Colorado River. That's why they built the delta. The northern Californians love to joke that Southern California wouldn't exist without them and their water, and they're right. This is not a cut. It's a tremendous engineering feat that we were able to do as human beings, so it's all well and good. But a federal judge can shut it all down to protect a stupid smelt! So the atmosphere is worth more than you. Bonfires! Absolutely... I am so close, I am practicing restraint like I haven't practiced since last night when I was explaining why I'm so mad to somebody. And they said, "Rush, do you really think there are people who don't like this country and are trying to harm it?"

I said, "Absolutely." Too much of this has gone on for too long. This is not coincidental. These are not well-intentioned -- but misguided -- people. These are mean people. These are people with a destructive purpose, and their destruction is aimed at the liberty and freedom of the United States population. Because it is only then that they are able to realize their true dream -- which is a massive, Big State; a massive Big Government with all kinds of controls over everybody and everything. But they want to cut this country down to size. It's too big, too powerful, too meeeean. We steal all the world's resources. And the sad thing and the maddening and the frustrating thing about it is, we go along with it! We go along with it. I could spend the next 20 minutes talking to you about the turtle light thing here on Palm Beach, and I don't want to make this personal and I don't want you to think that I'm engaging in all this simply because I have a situation that I want to fix.

I'm going to leave it out because I've talked about it enough. This is happening all over the country in so many ways, and we've had the stories for 20 years about the curtailment of private property rights because of some protected species -- or worse: declaring your property a wetlands and you can't touch it. And it's hard to fight. The Democrats and the leftists have incorporated a lot of class envy in this, so even in this country there are people who want people who they consider to be unfairly affluent and wealthy to suffer. They want them to be punished for their affluence. The leftists have been planting the seeds in the minds of people in this country for years, for decades. What's scary is that for the first time they now have been entire political party, the Democrat Party, advancing their agenda. It used to be they were considered wackos, environmentalist wackos, animal rights wackos, other kinds of "extremists." Guess what? They are the Democrat Party today! I read a piece over the weekend in the American Thinker, and I'm going to post this.

It's a long piece. It prints out to six pages. It's at the American Thinker. It's by Rocco DiPippo and it is a history of this country from 2001 forward -- 9/11 forward. There's a little stuff before that, but it is excellent. It's nothing that you don't know. It's nothing that you haven't felt. But it's on paper and it's done in such a way that your memory is inspired. You remember all of these things. Let me tell you how it starts -- and I'm paraphrasing this. In an America 30 years ago, 40 years ago, do you realize that a candidate such as Barak Obama would not last a week in the Democrat primary after it was learned that his preacher of 20 years hated America? Twenty, 30, 40 years ago, Barak Obama would have been drummed out of the primaries by his own party and by the American people.

And if he had survived that, when we learned that his best buddies are terrorists and people who bombed the Pentagon and the United States, and, when we learned that he has the support and the tacit endorsement of our enemies around the world, he would be gone and people would be outraged. His political career would be over. Today, he's their nominee. How many of you last night watched this great Discovery program called When We Left Earth? It's six hours; the first two were last night. They have gotten to the cold storage vaults of NASA. They have 500 hours of film. Some of it is not before seen. Most of it has been if you know where to look. Some of it's new, only it hasn't been seen. They remastered it in HD and they started the first two episodes last night. I was alive during all this. I remembered all of it. I remembered every one of those Gemini launches. I remembered the Mercury loses. I remember Gus Grissom losing his space capsule when he blew the hatch early on his Mercury flight. What I had forgotten, even though I instinctively knew it -- and what reminded me because I've been speaking about it recently -- was how damn proud everybody in this country was, including the media, of what we were doing with the manned space program.

RUSH: So I'm watching When We Left Earth last night on the Discovery Channel. I, of course, as a powerful influential member of the media, am watching it in HD on my big screen and I can't pull myself away from it, even though I know it all, I've seen it. But the things I'd forgotten a little, just how damn proud everybody in this country was and around the world in listening to commentary. They went out and interviewed media people of that time, Jay Barbree, NBC, he was their guy on the spot, so excited, so proud. NBC had a reporter at NASA that was so proud of what this country was doing. Now I know it was an effort inspired by JFK, Democrat and so forth, but that really didn't have much to do with it.

In the '60s, even during the Vietnam War, there were days we were proud of this country, and the media led the way in many areas. True, there was a goal to get to the moon, and there was competition with the Russians. We ought to have a goal today. If we had elected leadership, we would have a goal today. You know what the goal would be? Drill here; drill now. The goal would be to stop depending on people who don't have our best interest at heart for petroleum energy when we have our own. We can do it. We have elected leadership stopping us. The afore mentioned extremists, leftists, who have now taken over the Democrat party who want to punish this country, if you doubt me when I say this, what party was it that wanted to lose in Iraq and still does? What country was it that waved the white flag to surrender and still does? What party was it that owns the defeat in Iraq if it happens? The Democratic Party.

What is the party that has lied to the American people repeatedly about circumstances involved? It's not George W. Bush and weapons of mass destruction; it's not George Bush and intelligence. It's the Democratic Party which has been taken over by extreme leftists. We have been taught over the years in this country to hate the following: Big Oil. Big Pharmaceutical. Big Retail. Big Insurance. Big Health. Virtually anything in the private sector. We have been told to despise it because it's out to screw us. It is out to cheat us. In the process, the American will, the American sense of pride in the greatness and the traditions and the institutions of their own country, has been broken down to the point that people are distrustful. They're distrustful of the things that have made and kept this country great. The only thing we're told to love, the only thing we're told to trust, the place we are to go, the place we are sent to get even for things that don't go right in our lives, the government, the benevolent government and the 535 dolts that run the place. The 535 elected dolts and the literally hundreds of thousands of unelected bureaucrats who over the past seven years with the tacit approval and support of both the Democratic Party and the Drive-By Media have sought to undermine the US national interest at every possible turn not only domestically, but across the oceans.

We're told to hate the auto industry. The auto industry is destroying our planet, don't you see? Big Oil is cheating us and destroying the planet at the same time. We're being told we're running out of time. We're being told that we do not have the greatness to deal with these problems; that our greatness is over, that we're in a constant state of decline, that we need to back up our expectations. Thirty years ago Barak Obama would be disqualified on the basis of one video of Jeremiah Wright. "Goddamn America? Screw you, buddy. Nobody says that about our country. You are finished!" Today we're told to either overlook it or to try to understand his rage or that he didn't really mean that. He's just saying that for the crowd.

RUSH: Let me read you just a couple of paragraphs from the American Thinker piece by Rocco DiPippo that ran on June the 7th. I printed this baby out at 12:21 in the morning. "There was a pre-Lewinsky time, before moral relativism blurred America's vision, when associating with people like Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers would have automatically excluded someone from attaining the [presidency]. Back then, anyone with well-known connections to such America-averse personalities would have been rejected by a super-majority of the electorate during primary season and almost certainly blocked by the Democratic Party before they could have gotten to within a mile of the White House. But those days -- when patriotic, true liberals like Joe Lieberman were considered typical Democratic Party politicians -- are gone. Now politicians like Lieberman are banished to the Party's periphery and leftists, not liberals, like Dennis Kucinich, Bernie Sanders, Jim McDermott, John Kerry, (who served in Vietnam), Jim McGovern, Patrick Leahy, Richard Durbin, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have replaced them.

"Until recently in our history, a President Barack Obama would have been an impossibility. But given the political and ideological climate that exists today in America, the ascension of a leftist like Barack Obama into presidential politics makes perfect sense. Beliefs like domestic terrorist William Ayers's and racist, anti-US preacher Jeremiah Wright's are no longer met with utter scorn or a trip to behind the woodshed, but are embraced, promoted and defended by many Americans. Think MoveOn, International ANSWER, think hordes of young neo-communists and their indoctrinating, puppet-master Marx-spouting professors. Think Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, Noam Chomsky, Ward Churchill and his acolytes. Think NYU, Columbia, The New School and Harvard. Most importantly, ponder the makeup and direction of the Democratic Party leadership. Like Barack Obama and his radical friends, it is appallingly far Left.

"Ideological descendants of Marx and Rousseau now lead the Democratic Party and they have turned it into a disloyal opposition to an increasingly accommodating GOP," and that, by the way, hits on a serious problem. "[T]hey have turned it into a disloyal opposition to an increasingly accommodating GOP. They have molded the Party into a force working stridently and unashamedly against a Commander-in-Chief during wartime. They have made it a den of treachery devoted to American defeat in Iraq. They preside over an institution advised and influenced by moneyed, non-governmental groups and individuals with unquestionably anti-US agendas who help make the [Democrat] Party a pseudo-intellectual sinkhole filled with perverse, tried-and-failed ideas repulsive to the majority of Americans. Those ideas are shaped into agendas which are then forced on the public by an activist left-wing judiciary and by a major media and arts consortium shot through with utter disrespect, indeed contempt, for traditional American values, religions and institutions.

"The Democratic Party has devolved into a club for the illegitimately aggrieved, the self-absorbed, the self-hating and the perpetually [angry]. It is a sanctuary where solipsistic malcontents and their disjointed causes find refuge and support. It has long ceased being an earnest gathering of broad minds where man's timeless problems are examined against the backdrop of the Constitution and solutions to them proposed based on the actual realities of the human condition. It is now the political province of the intellectually deceased, where frightened, lock-step ideologues and other small men and women concoct and promote divisive, destructive, weird and cowardly policies developed within a not-so-quaint, quasi-Marxist stricture of gender, class and race. So what does all of that have to do with the propulsion of Barack Obama... Everything.

"It could not have happened without the existence of a substantial, organized, internal anti-US Left and the approval and guidance of the Democratic leadership I describe. Obama is in step with that radical element and with that leadership. His views reflect their views, and he is now a central figure in the deceptive, destructive strategy to restore the Democrats to power, a strategy that has been in play since the US Supreme Court declared Albert Gore the loser of the 2000 presidential contest. 'Don't call me a liberal,' says Obama. In a precise, lawyerly sort of way he is being honest -- he truly isn't a liberal, but he is a leftist." The piece goes on. It describes what has happened since 9/11. When the left was discouraged and alarmed at the ultimately high approval numbers that George W. Bush had in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, and that they began then -- and we have talked about it and we have documented it on this program -- a systematic plan to destroy his popularity, to destroy every initiative and agenda item that he had, all for the expressed purpose of convincing the American people that indeed their country is a sinkhole.

And it is a sinkhole because of George Bush, a sinkhole because of Republicans and conservatives. They have done their best to demoralize and destroy every institution for good that they can get their hands on, all for the purposes of weakening the resolve of the American people and destroying the confidence the American people in their own country, thereby setting up the 2006 elections and setting up Barak Obama as their standard-bearer. Now, one thing. It has almost happened in a vacuum. Yes, we in the conservative media and those of you who are part of it are fully aware of what's happened, and you are frustrated and you want to stand up and you want to just -- as Buckley did once to history -- "Just say, 'Stop!'" You're fed up with your individual freedoms being attacked and your liberty being lost. The question is: When is the rest of America going to see this? When is the rest of America going to stand up and say enough? You're telling me I can't do a bonfire when there are eight billion lightning strikes a year that cause massive fires in this country? Go ban lightning before you tell me to ban my bonfire!

There are any number of examples and I don't want to bore you with the list because we have done this for years, the list of things that constitute subtle but significant losses of property rights and other forms of liberty -- inspired and controlled by the leftist-controlled Democrat Party. But it's only been allowed to happen or it has only been gotten away with because the Republican Party has been acquiescent. The Republican Party hasn't stood up and said, "Stop!" Nowhere -- nowhere, nowhere -- from elected Republican leadership. Nowhere from elected conservative leadership has anybody stood up on a daily basis and challenged the lies that constitute the primary reporting of the Drive-By Media in the country for the last seven, eight years. Nobody has stood up and said, "No! I'm not going to put out my bonfire. Screw you." No elected leadership has stood up and attempted to impugn or laugh at or criticize some of these things. No, because our party has got this weak-spined idea that the way to deal with this is to accept some of these premises and then try to tweak 'em. Back to this TV show on the Discovery Channel last night.

Jay Barbree, NBC news, who covered much of the space program up until recently and still does some consulting work for them, talked about NASA being the most exciting place there is. We were launching Gemini rockets every six weeks. We did some of the most incredible things. We accomplished some of the most unimaginable objectives -- and all the while, we had a media echo chamber that was telling us, "Yes, these are good things and we should be proud." Today, we don't have that. Today we have a Drive-By Media that echoes and perhaps is intimately involved in structuring, the anti-American, leftist agenda. The eyes of the world were on John Glenn, they reported. People were on their hands and knees on Cocoa Beach praying for John Glenn and the first orbital flight. These things don't happen anymore, and I believe -- I was telling somebody last night -- I said, "Yeah, I think the media could easily turn the tide here; if the media were once again proud of the country, proud of the institutions and led people to loving their country."

I said, "No, I'm talking about the institution and it's capabilities. I'm not talking about this current crop. Of course not this current crop."

But I do think that the media can rally people to be positive because I am media and we've done it here. I know it can be done, because I know that people need leadership and they want it and crave it and they respond to it. That show last night -- and there are two more episodes the next two Sunday nights at 9:00 Eastern -- shows America at its best. People dropped to their knees and prayed. NASA was the greatest place in the world. These guys, these astronauts, they were all heroes. You know who our heroes are today? You know who the heroes are today? Che Guevera -- to the American left. (interruption) Okay, Snerdley, give me one of their heroes. Give me a hero that the American left routinely cites. One of our heroes is Ronald Reagan. What does our own side tell us? "Get over him! Forget Reagan! The era of Reagan has passed!" Their heroes are older than Reagan. We never hear them say, "Get over FDR! Get over JFK! Get over Teddy Kennedy." Our own side, our own party, tells us to get over Ronald Reagan!

Ronald Reagan is one of our heroes. Not a cult figure hero, a substantive hero. Where are the heroes today? Well, how many hundreds of thousands of them are in Iraq, and what the hell is said about them by the leftists and by the Democratic Party, by John Murtha, by Dick Durbin, by John Kerry? You name it! They are murderers! They are rapists! They are thugs! You think this stuff doesn't resonate all over the country? And look at the leftists on college campuses, high school campuses and wherever else you find idle time. They hate the US military! They have been taught and brainwashed to hate the US Military, which is protecting their silly right to say these stupid things. They have an official home: the Democrat Party. They have an official house organ: the New York Times, and the rest of the Drive-By Media. And these are the people who are trying to tell you to stop doing bonfires, to have your car only idle for three minutes at a time.

They're telling you to stop having kids because it's going to pollute the planet even more! They're blaming you for your attempt at a better standard of living and prosperity, for destroying the climate. These are negative, unhappy, miserable people trying to spread as much of all three of those qualities to as many people as possible. They do despise this country. They do purposely seek to cut it down to size. They do purposely and, by design, seek to take away -- little by little so you won't notice or care -- your freedom. They seek to place that which they have taken from you in Big Government where controls over even more of your freedom will be instituted because in all of this huge giant equation, the only place that is benevolent -- the only institution worthy of our respect, in fact our prayers, and getting down on our hands and knees, and saying, "Thank God!" -- is for government. Government wants to give us healthcare. Do you realize...?

We need a goal today like they had a goal in the '60s. We need a goal. Energy and independence, our own oil. Drill it! Drill it here and drill it now! Who's going to stand in the way? The very people who don't want our independence. The very people who want us to be dependent on other sources of oil. They say it's because they're afraid of pollution. How many oil wells are in the Gulf of Mexico, near the Gulf Coast? How many were damaged or ruined during Hurricane Katrina? How many oil spills were there? Hundreds were damaged or ruined and there were no oil spills! It's a phony argument to say that oil wells offshore will end up polluting and destroying the country and the environment and the planet. These are people who, while taking away your freedom and liberty -- at the same time, by definition because you and I are the ones who make the country work, our ambition, our industriousness and productivity. Take away our freedom to do that and guess what happens? The country's productivity shrinks. That, they want. It's not fear we're so big.

RUSH: I'm going to read you a little passage here, ladies and gentlemen, a little quote from one of our heroes, Ronald Reagan, whom our own side is telling us to get over. He said: "We should always remember that our strength still lies in our faith in the good sense of the American people. And that the climate in Washington is still opposed to those enduring values, those 'permanent things' that we've always believed in. ... But Washington is a place of fads and one-week stories. It's also a company town, and the company's name is government, big government. ... In the discussion of federal spending, the time has come to put to rest the sob sister attempts to portray our desire to get government spending under control as a hard-hearted attack on the poor people of America."

To this day, we have a federal budget over $3 trillion. Any mention of cutting it is still said to be aimed at the poor, minorities and women, hardest-hit. We don't change anything in Washington unless a Reagan comes along. Obama isn't going to change anything. Obama is going to do what leftists and liberals have done for eons, and that's to try to grow the government to as large as it can, raise taxes on as many people as possible, and eliminate as much personal freedom and liberty as he can. There's nothing new about Obama. Reagan was change. "The climate in Washington is still opposed to those enduring values, those 'permanent things' that we've always believed in. ... But Washington is a place of fads and one-week stories." Does that not describe Barack Obama? We have all of these examples, countless examples of government failing in every mission it takes, be it fixing and restoring and maintaining levees in New Orleans, to reducing poverty, to streamlining healthcare. There is no evidence that government is fit to run it. In fact, the Senate dining room, wait until you hear this. Dianne Feinstein has ordered the Senate dining room to go private. It's losing money. It loses millions. The food's lousy and if they don't go private, Senator's lunch prices will go up 25%. The House already did it.

Unemployment just spiked to 5.5% What is the culprit? The increase of minimum wage.

One of the biggest problems with liberalism is the law of unintended consequences. Some feel-good legislation is passed, and either the opposite of the intended effect occurs, or something else which far outweighs the cure. Take, for instance...

Finkelstein mistakes news broadcaster in the background for an Obama spokesperson:

Take note: it is not the high gas prices which are the problem, but that they went up so fast (as per Obama’s opinion):

Conservative Review
Issue #29	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	June 15, 2008