If you receive this and you hate it and you don’t want to ever read it no matter what...that is fine; email me back and you will be deleted from my list (which is almost at the maximum anyway).

Since the determination of when life begins is above your pay grade, why don’t you then err on the side of life? If you do not know when life actually begins, how can you support abortion, when it is possible that is the destruction of human life?

Russian invades Georgia, Obama and McCain both issue statements, and then Obama releases another statement concerning McCain. George Will comments: “Obama doesn’t go after the jugular; he goes after the capillaries. He has a more subtle approach. There is a war going on in Europe, so he expresses concern over a lobbyist in McCain’s campaign.”

The Saddleback Showdown on Fox and on other stations. Rick Warren questions both Obama and McCain with the same set of questions, separately, but on the same stage. If you have an interest in the election, this is a don’t miss event. It is being replayed today (Sunday) on CNN at 8 pm EST and 5 pm Pacific time. It will be rebroadcast twice on CNN late Sunday night and early Monday morning. It is a 2 hour event, and both candidates were at the top of their games. For all intents and purposes, this was the first debate, although McCain and Obama were only on stage together momentarily. It is well worth recording this program if you missed it.

"I think this President has shown a remarkable disrespect for his office, for the moral dimensions of leadership, for his friends, for his wife, for his precious daughter. It is breathtaking to me the level to which that disrespect has risen." - John Edwards, Feb. 12, 1999 commenting on Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinski.

This is called blood for oil, and do not expect anyone to be demonstrating in the streets, big signs proclaiming, no blood for oil.

Reagan beat down Russia with an arms race. The USSR had a first-rate military, but they ran out of money competing with us. At some point, they simply ran out of money. The leopard did not change its spots; the leopard ran out of money.

What has happened as of late is, Russia has a lot of oil; oil prices have skyrocketed, and Europe depends upon Russia for its oil.

in Georgia, there is a huge oil pipeline, and Russian wants to control this pipeline. This pipeline supplies several major countries which split from the USSR.

Right now is Russia’s only shot. Oil prices need to be high, Russia needs to control as much oil as possible, and Europe needs to be neutralized to some degree (since they need Russia’s oil). Russian can have the money to build up its military once again.

Tough diplomacy, big sticks and big carrots are not going to dissuade Russia. This is a very big deal; probably more so than radical Islam. This could start up World War III.

The Democratic Convention is coming August 25–28^th, and the Clinton’s have pressed Obama hard for a little face-time, as well as putting Clinton’s name on the ballot, and Obama caved. What are they after? It is one of two things: Obama has been politically out-maneuvered and pushed around on several occasions already, by his own party, and this is an example of same. Senator Clinton either wants the nomination (which will require her to put Obama on as her VP, to quell the rioting); or, she is going to show her support to be so strong, as to force Obama to put her on the ticket as his VP. Now, for Democrats, this is the dream ticket. For Obama, this is the worst thing which could happen to him. If Obama runs with Clinton, look for the Clinton’s to play him like a fiddle for the next 4 years, and look for him to leave office disgraced (he does have a better chance of being elected as the president or the Vice President with Clinton than without).

If it is just Obama and some white dude (like Bayne or Biden), then he will get beat bad in this election. McCain will take about 40 states.

We live in the greatest nation in world history. We have freedoms and material blessings beyond what any nation has ever had ever. Even contemporary nations which have a higher per capita income than us live in inferior nations.

When Bush was elected president, a number of celebrities and non-celebrities [stupidly] said, “I don’t know if I can continue living in America; I may have to leave this country.” Or words to that effect. Was there a great migration out of the country? Unfortunately, few of those people did anything about what they stupidly said. Although any American at any time can pack up his or her things and leave this country (many of us have the means to do so), very few people ever do. When you live in the greatest country that God has ever allowed, and it would take an incredible amount of personal stupidity for someone to leave this country because of some sort of political anger.

Kings of even 100 years ago would give anything to live like our middle class lives. Just having air conditioning and a car sitting out in front of the 1500–2500 sq. ft. house, along with an ice box filled with food is more than kings have had historically.

That there are warning signs everywhere that you look is an understatement. Let me tick them off for you:

Russia is on the move, and there is very little that we can do about it. Russian can go out and conquer nearly all of the countries which spun off because of economic chaos and the firm opposition of Ronald Reagan, because oil is at a price which will make Russia rich. Can we do anything? We have a tiny military and we do not have the will to attack Russia with nuclear weapons. Will NATO or the UN do anything? Surely you are kidding. I know that people love to depend upon international organizations and tough diplomacy with big carrots and big sticks, but if any nation like Russia wants to begin taking over this or that country, they can do it, and with very few problems. Russia needs to continue to sell oil to Europe, Europe needs oil; so now Russia is simply going to consolidate oil sources and oil pipelines, and maintain enough diplomacy to exploit their own oil. Look for Russia to take 3 steps forward and 1 step back as it conquers country after country. It will take 1 step back in order to continue to trade with Europe (i.e., sell them oil). And what can a united Europe do? Practically nothing, as they lack the will.

Radical Islam is always on the move. In this past week, there were 42 Jihad attacks and in this past month, 200 Jihad attacks which have taken place in 22 countries, killing nearly 1000 people. Obviously you have never heard of these incidents because, if it bleeds, it leads tv journalism ignores Jihad attacks. Every day of the week, the leading stories could be the latest Jihad attacks for that day and the news stories could cover 5–6 new attacks each day. They won’t, of course. And we just blithely go on our way, ignoring this, thinking, if it is not on tv, then it just can’t be that important.

We now have evidence of internet, do-it-yourself radical Islam terror cells. As we continue on our way, look for these cells to pop up closer and closer to home (Canada, Mexico and in the US) and look for the news to downplay the kinds of groups which are making these attacks (as they have been over the past 6 years).

Every time we go to the gas station, we should recognize what’s happening. There is the economic discomfort to us, but, since drilling for oil is bad (in the minds of many), that not only means high gas prices all over the world, but inordinate amounts of money going to Middle Eastern countries and Russia. This means more money for Jihad and more money for Russia’s army.

There are other signs as well, including our huge national debt and our huge personal debt.

The problem is spiritual. God looks at several things related to a country: the number of people who have believed in Jesus Christ; the number of believers who are growing spiritually; and there are other factors, such as, our attitude toward Israel and the Jews in general, personal morality and child rearing, which things also figure into the mix. By the way, religious activity is not necessarily a positive factor.

You may think that I spend all week writing this e–zine, and you would be wrong. I primarily study the Old Testament, which records a great many historic trends.

Most people know that, God took a group of slaves out of the nation Egypt, a group of people He had chosen hundreds of years before, and He gave them the Mosaic Law and then He gave them a plot of ground in the Middle East. What you probably don’t know is, before the Jews stepped into the Land of Promise, God told them under what circumstances He would discipline them as a nation. In Lev. 26, God laid out steps which He would take when Israel began to stray from Him.

The United States is not Israel, obviously. However, what is established in the Bible are historical trends and cycles of discipline.

For instance, throughout history, specific nations have been greatly blessed at various times. The Roman Empire (SPQR), Spain, Ireland, Scotland, Britain and the United States have all enjoyed great periods of prosperity (remember the slogan, the sun never sets on the union jack?). These periods of prosperity always coincide with Christianity and spiritual function within that nation. When a nation goes down, that is simultaneous with spiritual degeneracy.

The key is not religion or religious activity; the key is related to Christianity. The number of people who have believed in Jesus Christ is a factor when God deals with a nation. More importantly is, spiritual growth. We are commanded to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, which spiritual growth is becoming more and more rare. At one time, all kinds of people knew portions of the Bible—even those who were antagonistic toward religion; now, it is difficult to even find a church where the Bible is taught verse by verse.

1) Most people know approximately the number of people who have died in Iraq but they would have no idea as to how many fetuses are aborted each year (about a half million in the United States each and every year). We can argue all that we want about, when is a fetus important enough to worry about—but it was God Who designed a 9 month incubation period, and how we think that we have the right to disturb this process is beyond me. A person who believes in evolution should have even less reason to destroy a fetus. To an evolutionist, life does not begin with God breathes life into a child, so how can this person arbitrarily decide what is in the womb is not life?

2) Our schools were primarily founded to teach a variety of things, including the Bible. In fact, spiritual education was the original primary function of the Ivy League schools. Today, teaching the Bible, creationism, intelligent design, or even singing Christmas hymns, although not prohibited, can result in expensive lawsuits being filed against a school district (often by the ACLU, which uses our tax dollars to file these suits).

3) The tenth commandment tells us not to lust after the things which our neighbor has. One political party in this country, to which a third of the United States belongs to, is based upon lusting after those things which belong to someone else. Exxon-mobile or Wal-mart are vilified as evil, even though these corporations provide jobs and products which we depend upon. Several Democrats have set their sights on seizing the legal and legitimate profits of Exxon-mobile, even though the government already collects more money from this company now than the company actually makes.

4) People are made to think that, just because they work hard, that, somehow, they should be rich overnight, and, if they are not, that means the system must be broken. Throughout this past political campaign, how many times have you seen some single mother trotted out on stage, and she is working so hard and raising 1 or more children, and she cannot seem to get ahead or spend enough time with her children; and that, somehow, by electing the Democrats, this is going to be fixed. Have we lost our minds? If you want to struggle in the United States, then have a child out of wedlock (or several), or become a divorced mother with children (or become an alcoholic or a drug addict). These are individual steps guaranteed to move you to poverty level, and no political party will change that, apart from full-on socialism, which will just move everyone to poverty level.

5) More and more people are raising their children without any sort of spiritual direction. Militant atheists are doing everything they can to keep spiritual information out of our schools.

6) Parents are expecting government to raise their children. It started with sex-education. Teaching your child about sex is, quite obviously, a difficult task (as is everything about child-rearing). How did we ever get to a point where we thought the public schools could do a better job? Now, our public schools actually feed huge numbers of our children at public expense. And we think we are being compassionate. We are taking a normal parental responsibility and putting it on the federal government, which puts the burden on the taxpayers. Could you imagine a parent so heartless as to not feed their own children? We should never expect federal government to do the things which we ought to do for ourselves.

7) Child discipline—there was a time when a mother could haul 4 children into a food store and keep these children in tow. There was a time when parents were the authority in the home. There was a time when, a child could actually be spanked for repeated misbehavior. Now, we have whole families where their children have never been spanked for any reason; and these children, as young as age 4, are making demands on their parents. We now have grammar school teachers who are assaulted by children; and we have chaos at many middle schools and high schools. When a child is raised with no concept of authority, the school is not going to be able to fix that.

These are just symptoms of what is wrong with our country. All around us, there are black clouds hovering. All it takes is just one or two generations to change the direction of a country. Our country was founded by godly men who saw government as a necessary evil. The less government the better. The purpose of our constitution was to limit government. Freedom was paramount and worth dying for. All it takes is for a couple of godless generations of young people who think that they deserve what others have worked for, and that government should take the material wealth of others and give it to them. If this is the way that we have raised our children, we will have a front-row seat to observe military and economic calamity come to the United States, which national discipline the Bible warns us about.

This movie is being released on DVD October 21^st. If you go to websites like www.megacritic.com or www.rottentomatoes.com, you will find that, not only is this one of the lowest rated movies by the critics for this year, it is one of the lowest rated movies of all time. Ebert and Roper would not even review this movie on their show, fearing that this might cause people to go see it. Even though it was given a very low rating by the Chicago Sun-Times, it will not be on Roper’s Top Ten Worst Films of the Year list.

This year, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of unwatchable, meaningless films. Expelled is not one of these films. You may not like what it has to say, and you may get angry watching it (depending upon your point of view), but it is a totally enjoyable, compelling film, and it is far less slanted than any Michael Moore film.

One of the points-of-view suggested in this film is the tie between evolution and Naziism. That is a bitter pill for some people to swallow. So many people have been blithely comparing George W. Bush to Hitler, that this should be quite the attention getter so see Hitler’s concept of a master race to comport so well with the concept of evolution. If nature does not weed out the undesirables, maybe we, as man, ought to. But don’t be so quick to self-righteously condemn Hitler for such thinking; what happens when an American mother finds out that her child-to-be has Down’s Syndrom? We have decided as a nation who ought to be born and who ought not to be born. Maybe this, in part, explains why so many critics hate this film. It may strike us too close to home.

This is the assumption of every liberal program which is related to African-Americans. They have far too many children, and it is cheaper to abort these babies today than to pay for them tomorrow on welfare. So, one out of four Black babies are aborted. A Black fetus is 3x more likely to be aborted than a white fetus.

Blacks are unable to get through school, get into college and get a job without a hand up by white liberals. In fact, they are so inferior as a people, it is easier for a Mexican who cannot speak the language, to come over our border, and go further in life than Blacks can—in the view of liberals. We bend over backwards to give African-Americans a break in life, because, in the liberal mind, they are unable to do this for themselves.

And to me, the most insulting of all liberal policies: we do not believe that Black men and women can act responsibly, so the bulk of our welfare programs is directed toward Black women, who are first made dependents upon welfare, and then are penalized for marriage. On top of this, we now feed their children, under the impression that Black women do not have enough sense or compassion to feed their own children.

Did you know that before the Great Depression, unemployment among African-Americans was lower than unemployment among whites? The Black family unit was much stronger and their children were raised with much higher standards, until we decided to make them equal.

Welfare, for the most part, is racist. Abortion is racist. Planned Parenthood is racist. Free breakfast and free lunch programs at school are racist. Section 8 housing is racist.

The government needs to get out of the lives of African-Americans. The government needs to stop giving them a leg up and giving them an excessive amount of welfare, which has destroyed the Black family.

What we have done in the name of liberalism, compassion, and justice has been a long list of racist programs and it needs to stop. You put the responsibility for education, for getting a job and for feeding their own children back into the hands of African-American individuals, and stop treating them as if they are damaged and inferior, as if they are helpless and hapless victims, and in one or two generations, they will achieve and move forward just like anyone else in American does.

You have no doubt heard by this time that the book The Obama Nation premiered on the NY Times bestseller list at #1.

The Washington Post of carefully examined Corsi’s background and previous works (you don’t really need to click on these):

All Corsi did was write a book, and, in two days, the Washington Post puts out 5 articles on him, examining his background, his history, mistakes and/or lies.

Barack Obama is running for president. He aspires to be the most powerful person in the free world. He wants to lead our nation during a time when the stakes are high. The Washington Post is obviously able to do investigative reporting. So, when Obama began to look like he might become the presumptive Democratic nominee, how many articles examined his background carefully and critically? When he first signed on to run for president, how many articles could you find in the Washington Post which were not puff pieces?

It does not matter, for the most part, what newspaper you pick up. On Aug. 14–15, each newspaper will carry several stories about how untrustworthy Corsi is (which is fine; newspapers should do this). Why was not the same careful analysis applied to Barack Obama?

If you live in Houston, you may have read the article which carefully examined Obama’s political history. If you have been reading this ezine since its inception, then you may recall an article summarizing Obama’s early political history. What other newspaper has carried this story? What other newspaper has told you how Obama won his elections? What other newspaper told you how Obama suddenly sponsored a boat-load of legislation during one particular year as a state legislator?

pp. 4–5 are devoted to selections from those who reviewed Corsi’s book. Now, what side of this controversy do you think the mainstream media came down on?

Now, if I were disputing the facts of a political smear book, I would take certain inaccuracies, like the date of the Obama marriage or the legality of the marriage of Obama’s parents and put these things at the very end of a response, These are certainly inaccuracies, but they are rather unimportant inaccuracies. Leading with these strikes me as poor planning. However, perhaps they are dealing with this book in the order in which it is written.

In any case, I would certainly, if reading Corsi’s book, also read the Obama response side-by-side. What is not disputed would be even more interesting to note.

By the way, it is important to note that, this book began as #1 on the NY Times bestseller list. This indicates to me that there are a lot of people out there who know that the mainstream news has given us a sanitized version of Obama and they simply want another side. It is unfortunate that Corsi’s book seems to be preeminent here.

Edward’s affair back in 2006 was known by some back in 2006 (that is when the Enquirer first reported on it). Anything like this ought to have been investigated by the mainstream media, but they did not.

Right now is the best time possible to reveal this information. The Olympics are going on, and Obama has not named his vice president yet. The press could not take the chance that Obama names Edwards as his VP. That would destroy the Democratic ticket, and call Obama’s judgment into question once again.

Therefore, now the press can jump all over Edwards in a self-righteous way, and look as though they are acting in an even-handed way.

How do we know the press is not even-handed about these things? Clinton had nearly scores of women claiming to have had an affair with him and one even charging him with rape. Where was the self-righteous press at that time? Where were their investigative reporters? It had to come to a point where it was impossible to deny his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

Dick Durbin, Democratic Illinois Senator, went off on the oil companies last week, complaining about their profits, apparently not realizing that we live in a country which runs of free enterprise, where profits are allowed (and, to most people, profits are a good thing). He complained that the oil companies were not putting enough of their money into exploration and they were plowing all of their money into paying dividends, executive salaries, and buying back their own stock.

What is sad is, some people buy into this, and mutter to themselves, “Yeah, yeah; big oil is so bad; kick ‘em again!”

Oil prices have shot up for two reasons: Liberals have blocked domestic drilling off shore and in ANWR, and we suddenly hit a point where, world supply equaled world demand, suddenly sending the price skyward (note, this happens when the Dems control Congress).

What seems to elude Durbin is, it is okay for oil companies to pay their executives and to pay their non-executives salaries. This is how a business works. Being in Congress for so long (since 1992), this aspect of business may have eluded Durbin.

Why isn’t big oil putting its money out there right now? They know that, within the next 10 years, they will be drilling offshore and possibly in ANWR. This will mean more oil profits, when oil is found, and oil exploration money will be required. This is called being smart; this is called having good business sense. A Senator is confused by this because, if they want more money for anything, they just vote for it.

I have seen Floyd Brown, who puts ads out for conservatives, slandered on several web sites. Therefore, I would assume that he might have something to say.

Regarding the ad above, the following comment was posted: Wow this video does an excellent job of reaching out to people who are afraid of immigrants! I guess Obama just lost the racist, xenophobic redneck vote!

It’s a good ad. Obama people hate it when you quote Obama, his wife or any other major supporter.

RUSH: Yesterday on this program, ladies and gentlemen, I suggested, mark my words, the latest in this Georgia situation, we are going to be blamed. The libs are going to draw a moral equivalence between Georgia and Iraq, and they are going to say, "How can we criticize what the Russians have done in Georgia after what we did in Iraq." Let's go to the audio sound bites starting at number 2, Ed. This is Fox News Channel's Your World with Neil Cavuto. He spoke with Obama supporter Mike Papantonio, and Cavuto said -- this is a softball, this question, Cavuto had to be wanting this answer. "Vladimir Putin invaded another country and kept his soldiers there. Does that reek of the Cold War to you again?"

PAPANTONIO: You know what's out there today, how dare you criticize us when you took unilateral approach to Iraq. That's -- we knew they were going to say that when McCain came out with his Rambo language. It's a problem for McCain in the long run, I think.

RUSH: It's a problem for McCain? If you look at the three people who have spoken about this, McCain had a statement yesterday, I have the text of the statement, I'm going to share it with you as the program unfolds today, McCain's the only guy -- he's been there, he's been to Georgia a number of times, he gave a brief history lesson of Georgia doing a town hall appearance yesterday, he's the only guy -- well, between he and Obama -- it's not a contest. Obama I don't think knows where Georgia is on the map. "Obama, where's Georgia?" He'd look for Atlanta and he'd say, "It's right there, it's where Dr. King's church is." At any rate, ladies and gentlemen, so here we come, the United States is to blame. We can't criticize this. We can't criticize naked aggression. If a sovereign nation with a duly elected leadership gets overrun by the Russian bear, hey, hey, we can't say a word; look at what we did in Iraq.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, a quick question, "Did the Russians go to the UN Security Council and show where the Georgians had violated 14 resolutions? Did they spend a year-and-a-half jawboning with the French and others to try to get us some assistance so that we could go in and enforce UN resolutions that Saddam Hussein had broken or that the Georgians in this case," no. There is no parallel whatsoever. There's no moral equivalence, but leave it to the blame-America-first left to come up with it. And last night on America's home of communism, you almost have to say that, I know it may be a little bold, but right at America's home of communism on PBS, on the Charlie Rose Show, he interviewed Vitaly Churkin. Do you remember Vitaly Churkin? I will tell you a funny little story about Vitaly Churkin. I have interviewed Vitaly Churkin. Back in the eighties during the Reagan administration with all this glasnost and perestroika and the dying Russian premiers and Reagan refusing to meet and so forth, Vitaly Churkin was a regular on Nightline, and he spoke perfect English. He was treated by the US media as the smartest man in America. He was an attache, obviously KGB, but I even asked if he was KGB and he started chuckling at me.

I interviewed him in Washington when I worked at Sacramento. They set it up with the Russian embassy where he worked. Folks, you're going to think I'm nuts or crazier than I already am. I'm staying at The Mayflower and I'm in my hotel room the night before, and I'm thinking the room's bugged by the Russians since they got this guy coming on my show, so I started talking to the bugs. I said, "Churkin, don't chicken out. Please show up." Anyway, Vitaly Churkin has survived everything that's gone on over there. Vitaly Churkin has survived Yeltsin, he has survived Putin. In fact, the very fact that Russia hasn't changed much to me is proven by the fact that Vitaly Churkin is still around doing everything he's been doing since the eighties. I asked him when I interviewed him, I said, "Vitaly, where do you live?" "I live out in Arlington with the natives." I said, "You're kidding! Are you KGB?" And he just started laughing, and he started defending the committee for state security, which is what KGB stands for. Anyway he was on Charlie Rose last night, and just as I predicted about the American left, a leftist is a leftist and Churkin is a leftist, and so they had this exchange about the whole situation. Churkin now, by the way, permanent representative, that's ambassador of the Russian Federation.

ROSE: Some would argue that this is about regime change. This is a Russian effort to change the regime in Georgia because they want somebody a little bit more open to the Russian positions.

CHURKIN: You know, we -- we are not about changing regimes. Some other countries have invented this saying, you know, removing people, putting people in office and palace -- we don't do that.

RUSH: (laughing) So even the Russians say, hey, don't talk to us, we don't do regime change like you do, we don't throw people out of office. No, you just kill them. You poison them with radioactive polonium. I'm sorry for laughing. Folks, sometimes all you can do is laugh at this. They did. They made it clear they want Saakashvili out. But they're saying they're not going to go kill him. But they want him out of office. They want him in exile. They want him out of power, there's no question. But again, Churkin lied, Russians are lying, it's our fault. What have we done to so destabilize the world? By the way, we have a statement from Vladimir Putin exclusively for you and the EIB Network audience.

RUSH: Now, here is Dimitri Simes. Dimitri Simes is a good guy. Don't misunderstand here. I love Dimitri Simes. If you're old enough, you probably remember him being on the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour a lot, and Nightline a lot. I love the guy. I loved hearing him speak as you will hear him speak in a moment. I loved the way he pronounced President Bush -- Bush 41 is the Bush he was always commenting on -- "Boooosh." Anyway, he's also on PBS, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer last night, and he's from the Nixon Center, and this is what Dimitri Simes says about Russia invasion of Georgia.

SIMES: This is not black and white. There are no good guys in this situation, and we have to be very careful not to allow the participation like with Iraq. When we don't care about the facts, when we say Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and then it doesn't matter. Are there weapons of mass destruction? Is he supporting terrorists? These things are very important.

RUSH: So what is it, the mantra now, the narrative, the template? "Hey, we have no room to talk here, because look what we did in Iraq, and facts didn't matter in Iraq. There weren't any weapons of mass destruction, and Saddam wasn't helping terrorists and we went in there anyway, and we did regime change. We have nothing to say to Vladimir Putin about this. We have no moral authority whatsoever." This seems to be the pattern here. Let's go to Richard Holbrooke who has just -- this guy has craved, he has coveted secretary of state in every presidential election since 1996. Co-host Margaret Warner talking to Holbrooke, and she said, "Do you think that there's been a rush to judgment in the West here about Russia being the bad guy and Georgia being the good guy victim?"

HOLBROOKE: Quite the contrary. The Russians have succeeded in disseminating confusion about what happened. The Bush administration's response here has been wholly inadequate until today.

HOLBROOKE: Ten years ago there was a similar crisis between Russia and Georgia over the two enclaves. President Clinton dispatched the deputy secretary of state, Strobe Talbott -- who was also well-known as one of his closest friends -- who shuttled back and forth between Moscow and Tbilisi, who calmed it down and resolved it for the time being. This time around, this administration sent no one to Moscow. It was Sarkozy who did the good job today.

RUSH: Oh, okay! Now it gets even thicker. The plot thickens. Now we get on the official home of liberalism and communism in American media, PBS, Richard Holbrooke saying, "If only Clinton were still president with Strobe Talbott going over to Moscow. Nothing good happened until Sarkozy went there." Hey, I'm not buying any of this. The Clinton administration did not take on any major initiatives. They were afraid of harming their precious little approval rating and so forth. I guess Clinton's efforts here as described by Richard Holbrooke to make sure that violence did not break out between Russia and Georgia, that happened the same time that Clinton was devoting every ounce of his energy to getting Bin Laden, right? (doing Clinton impression) "That's right. I -- I -- I never worked harder on anything in my life than to get Bin Laden, and then when they gave him to me I said (sigh), 'Well, I don't have any legal basis of holding him.' I had to let him go, but I still kept trying to get him. I bombed those janitors over there Saturday night in Baghdad. I did everything I could, but I -- I -- I didn't get him. Afghanistan. But I stopped that thing from breaking out over there. I sure did. Holbrooke's right about that." Mmm-hmm. So you can see how this is shaping out. The US is to blame. It's just utterly predictable. It is utterly predictable that in the Drive-By Media it's all our fault, and if we only had Bill Clinton back.

RUSH: You know, ladies and gentlemen, several of my 35 Undeniable Truths of Life apply to events today, one of them in particular. Undeniable Truth of Life: "Ours is a world governed by the aggressive use of force." It is. There is no alternative. There's no mistaking it. It is totally true. You know, world citizen Barack Obama can sit there and talk all he wants and blame America and think it's going to shape the world up and stop these kinds of things, but he's dead wrong. Interestingly, the UK Guardian -- which is a very leftist publication -- has an entirely different take on what happened with Russia and Georgia and who bears some responsibility for it. Everybody plays blame games in situations like this. For example, Obama and the Democrats blame Bush. Some of them blame McCain for starting this war to help his election campaign. I'm not kidding you.

But it's all our fault. It's America's fault. Really if it's anybody's fault, it's Russia's. Or as Dimitri Simes says, there are no good guys here; both of these parties behaved in provocative ways, and of course Georgia being the smaller is going to take it on the chin. But the UK Guardian has another take on this. Let's go back to the April 3rd edition of the New York Times. Dateline, Bucharest, Romania: "President Bush threw the NATO summit meeting here off-script on Wednesday by lobbying hard to extend membership to Ukraine and Georgia, but he failed to rally support for the move among key allies. Mr. Bush's position -- that Ukraine and Georgia should be welcomed into a Membership Action Plan, or MAP, that prepares nations for NATO membership -- directly contradicted German and French government positions stated earlier this week." So Bush went out on a limb and said we need to get these people started down the path toward membership in NATO, speaking of Ukraine and Georgia.

Now, the Guardian yesterday, Michael Williams the story: 'In April this year, an embattled American president went to the NATO summit in Bucharest and asked NATO allies to offer Ukraine and Georgia a membership action plan (MAP). Bush had been warned that European allies would not agree to the proposal, but he tried anyway. Back in Washington, European rejection of the MAP was greeted with disgust. As one left-wing foreign policy expert told me the fact that France was talking about a 'balance of power with eastern Europe' illustrated that the organisation was becoming a joke. The Europeans, he said, 'have not woken up to the realities of the world'. He was livid, to say the least, about the refusal to offer a MAP to either country. And he, like myself," writes Mr. Michael Williams, "was a Democrat." I'll summarize the story for you in the Guardian.

It is the very countries that Acting President Barack Obama wants us to give veto power over our decisions, as they vetoed Georgia's NATO membership -- and the UK Guardian proffers the point that this encouraged Putin and the Russians that they could attack Georgia with impunity. The point of the UK Guardian story is that "'old' Europe" has a hand in this, too. So there's a lot of different analyses of all this going on, but no matter. When you get down to the bottom line, the Russians are behaving as the Russians always have, and they're the ones taking the action. This is a world governed by the aggressive use force. Now, let's go back to audiotape from yesterday on the Fox News Channel's Fox & Friends, Gretchen Carlson talking to "The Eyebrow," the governor of Virginia, Tim Kaine. She asked him, "How would you be advising Obama if in fact you were his pick as VP with this international crisis? Do you think his response was the right one?"

KAINE: It was a bad crisis for the world, it required tough words but also a smart approach to call on the international community to step in, and I'm very, very happy that the senator's request for a ceasefire has been complied with.

RUSH: Somebody needs to tell The Eyebrow that there may have been a ceasefire, but it's not been upheld. The Russians are continuing on to move, and they've surrounded -- last I heard, have surrounded -- the town of Gori. Which, is that not aptly named, given what's going on? So they haven't stopped. They didn't listen to Obama. So it's time for Obama to either tell 'em again to stop -- you know, once he gets off the surfboard out there in Hawaii. Tell 'em again to stop, 'cause they apparently didn't listen the first time. Here's McCain yesterday speaking with reporters.

MCCAIN: I know from speaking this morning to the president of Georgia, Misha Saakashvili, who I have known for many years, that he knows that the thoughts and the prayers and support of the American people are with that brave little nation as they struggle today for their freedom and independence. I know I speak for every American when I say to him, "Today, we are all Georgians."

RUSH: All right. All right. Now, that did not sit well. That didn't sit well with members of the left. Tim Kaine, nobody is talking about Obama's diplomacy in Georgia now. Nobody's talking about it except you. Let's go to the audiotape late yesterday. The president of Georgia, Misha Saakashvili said this.

SAAKASHVILI: John McCain said that Americans are supporting Georgia. McCain said, "We are Georgians today," everybody are Georgians today.

RUSH: Misha Saakashvili did not quote Obama, Tim Kaine. The Eyebrow needs to revisit this. Misha Saakashvili quoted McCain, not Obama. Now, Saakashvili made his appearances on American television today. He was on CNN's American Morning today, and he had this to say about what America should do.

SAAKASHVILI: What America should do now first of all, clearly make known their intentions and we know that they're considering all kind of different options -- then clearly send peacekeepers on the ground. Secure lifeline at least for the capital at this stage and push very hard to overcome the situation. Who else can stand up for liberty in the world?

RUSH: Whewwwww. That, folks, is the question of the day, and it is a question the American left does not want to hear. They don't want the responsibility. "Who else can stand up for liberty in the world?" No one else but us. Europeans aren't going to do it. NATO isn't going to do it. And if you listen to the Democrats and their presidential candidate, you don't don't get any confidence they're going to do anything but give those kinds of people veto power over whatever decisions we might make. Then, Misha Saakashvili said this about the Russians.

SAAKASHVILI: Well, the implications are that the Russians are encroaching upon the capital. They're making a circle, and they are rushing in, you know, because their plan was always to take over the whole Georgia. Their plan was to establish their own government in Tbilisi, and their plan was to kill our democracy. They're in the process of coldblooded murder, and the world seems to just be watching it, you know, and not doing anything about it.

RUSH: Pretty much the case. Nobody's doing much of anything about it. Nobody's done much about any of the wanton acts of violence of the Putin regime from the murdering of KGB agents in London who go off-path, to journalists that are being murdered and assassinated and poisoned. Nobody's doing anything. What do you expect Putin to do? He's getting away with all of these things with impunity. He knows while the Olympics are going on, he knows we're in the middle of a presidential campaign, he knows we're fighting a war in Afghanistan that there's not a whole lot we can do militarily -- or he doesn't think that we will. I'll tell you, Bush spoke again today. And it sounded to me like Bush was throwing down the gauntlet. I want you to listen to a couple of sound bites we have of the president from the Rose Garden this morning.

THE PRESIDENT: The United States of America stands with the democratically elected government of Georgia. We insist that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia be respected. Russia has stated that changing the government of Georgia is not its goal. The United States and the world expect Russia to honor that commitment. Russia has also stated that it has halted military operations and agreed to a provisional ceasefire. Unfortunately, we are receiving reports of Russian actions that are inconsistent with these statements.

THE PRESIDENT: I'm sending Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to France where she will confer with President Sarkozy. She will then travel to Tbilisi where she will personally convey America's unwavering support for Georgia's democratic government. On this trip she will continue our efforts to rally the free world in the defense of a free Georgia. I've also directed Secretary of Defense Bob Gates to begin a humanitarian mission to the people of Georgia headed by the United States Military. This mission will be vigorous and ongoing.

RUSH: You see why it sounds to me like he's throwing down the gauntlet. We're going to use the military ostensibly here for Meals on Wheels. We're sending in food and relief efforts, medical supplies and this sort of thing. There have been significant civilian casualties and deaths in Georgia and the neighboring environs, and so the US military, we're flying C-17s in there. We've told the Russians, "We're coming, and you better not do anything about it." But the Russians are going to say, "Wait a minute! You're sending military in? There are going to be uniformed military from the United States here flying in here on Meals on Wheels?" Now, I know the Russians, and the Russians aren't going to buy this Meals on Wheels thing. They're not. (laughing) I guarantee you. They don't use their military that way, and they don't think we'll use ours that way against them.

RUSH: Some things here, folks, that are just unbelievable that are happening out there that have just left the world stunned. The ChiComs are being accused of lying about the age of their gymnasts and Russia is accused of lying about the ceasefire in Georgia. What's stunning about this is that communists lie. When did that start? When did it start that communists lie? I'm being facetious, Mr. Snerdley. The question is, since the Russians are lying and since the ChiComs are lying, the real question from the Obama camp is, "What is America doing to cause this? What have we done to bring about all of this lying?" You know, the country's not what it once was, ladies and gentlemen. What's happened to us? The Chinese and the Russians are now lying. Somebody better get a hold of the governor of Virginia, Tim Kaine, the eyebrow, and let him know that Obama needs to repeat his demand that the Russians cease their advance in Georgia, 'cause the Russians said that they were going to stop and then they kept going. We're really condemning now. We're going to send Condoleezza Rice to Paris. That's how serious we are about this. We're going to send her over here to talk with the frogs about making sure this ceasefire gets done.

Obama needs to make a blanket apology here, folks, for America. I mean the ChiComs don't normally lie. They're lying about the age of their gymnasts and so forth. They're lying about the number of people going to go to games. They can't get people in there. Well, they could, but they're not using the kind of force communists are known for, but the games are not attracting crowds, and even the big space in Beijing where the games are taking place, they thought it would be overrun with people, there's hardly anybody there. The ChiComs made it very clear that if you showed up, you were a suspect of something and they're going to treat you as such, and people said, "Okay, to hell with it." So anyway, maybe with Obama, we haven't talked to the Chinese enough, we haven't talked to the Russians enough, and the Bush administration's hard-nosed policy here is causing both of these people to lie, just like we've made Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a liar about his nuclear program to produce electricity and so forth. So it's big question that we face.

RUSH: Now, sticking on the subject of oil, can I now discuss the war between Russia and Georgia? I can, because it is my show. As I said earlier this week, this war between Russia and Georgia is about many things. At the top of the list is oil. This is a war for oil. Have I got your attention? Let me explain it to you. Charles Krauthammer writes about it very well today in a column that I have from the National Review website. He describes what Russia is trying to do as the Finlandization of Georgia, the isolation of Georgia. If they succeed -- and they want Saakashvili out, this is about regime change. Despite what Vitaly Churkin said yesterday, this is totally about regime change. It's Putin being able to put a Russian puppet in to run Georgia. That would give Russia control of a huge oil pipeline, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan. That pipeline is "the only significant European-bound route for Caspian Sea oil and gas that does not go through Russia." They want it. "Pipelines are the economic lifelines of such former Soviet republics as Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan that live off energy exports."

Moscow, if they succeed in isolating Georgia and basically installing a puppet Russian leader to run the country, would become the master of the Caspian basin. So they would be in charge of every oil pipeline feeding Europe to the West. Folks, this is a different Russia than when the wall came down. That Russia was broke. This Russia is flush. This Russia has lots of money via its own oil sales. So this war, while it's all about Russia asserting itself and Russia trying to rebuild its empire, not the Soviet Union, but it's empire, while it's all about testing the West, it's all about seeing what we will do, will we do anything besides words, that's what they want to find out. There's some things that we could do, but it doesn't look like Europeans or even State Department Americans want to do anything to stop this. It doesn't look like Obama has the slightest bit of understanding what this is about or how to deal with it or that he even finds it wrong. But this, ladies and gentlemen, is about that pipeline. The Russians reportedly just barely missed when they bombed that pipeline. I don't think it was like a bare miss. I think it was right on target. I think it's a warning shot. So put this in your pipe and smoke it. While the Russians are trying to co-opt and conquer a country for an oil pipeline that will give them total control of all the oil and gas pipelines that feed western Europe, while they are doing everything they can to strengthen their oil producers, while they are doing everything they can to strengthen their oil business, we are doing everything we can to weaken ours.

RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, my computer IT guy, Scott Schaefer, sent me an e-mail note about 7:59 last night, said, "You gotta turn on the History Channel because they're doing one of their Modern Marvels series," and it was a show devoted to everything that we get from oil and how it is made. I watched this thing last night and I was mesmerized. In a broad base, I knew it all, but to see it spelled out and to see how the refining process takes place, to see all of the ancillary products -- for example, ladies, do you know how Maybelline, the cosmetics company, came to be in existence? Some woman decided to mix some product with Vaseline, which is a derivative of oil, in a fascinating way, and Maybelline -- her name was Mabel -- Maybelline was born. You put lipstick on? It wouldn't be possible without oil. Eye shadow, foundation, whatever the makeup stuff is, wouldn't be possible without oil. Plastics, I mean, it just is incredible. When you watch this show -- and I'm going to go back through it. I would love to get permission from the History Channel to play the audio of this, or some audio from it because it was profound.

Toward the end of their show they had to do the politically correct stuff and start showing us the windmills, but even doing that, they made it plain 1% of our energy now comes from wind. They made it plain we're nowhere near replacing it. We all instinctively know this. When you see it spelled out this way, and you see what we would lose if -- like Obama is saying we want to be off of oil in ten years. Folks, it's not possible and remain the country we are. I mean, not even close. We'll have to stop building roads, at least with asphalt. It would be the end of most plastics, containers. There's so much that is derived from a single barrel of oil that it would blow your mind to see this presented to you with pictures, rat-tat-tat, so I'm going to watch it again when I have time. I got really busy last night after it was over. I intended to do this last night and didn't get to it. I'm going to take written notes of everything that they say and I'm going to come in here with a list. By the way, I think it's going to be rebroadcast Saturday... (interruption) what are you chuckling at in there? It would be great for kids to see this. It would be great for stupid liberal Democrats to see this. It would be great for Obama to watch this.

You know, I sit here and I wonder, how in the world -- I was thinking about this the other day -- you go back to JFK, what's happened from the time John Fitzgerald Kennedy said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country"? What's happened since then to cause us to get to the point where both political candidates are telling us what government must do for us? It's not just a liberal problem, and one of the things is that political leadership has just vanished, and what we got instead is pandering. If the American people don't want oil, fine, we'll get rid of oil. The American people don't want to go to war, fine, we won't go to war. If the American people want everybody to get two homeless people off the street and put 'em in their house, fine, that's what we'll do, but there's no leadership whatsoever. There's absolutely none with any guts or courage to counter any of this, and so it's a pander race, and it's very frustrating. The problem is I don't think a majority of Americans are the ones being pandered to. It's a minority of Americans. If the majority of Americans had checked out our economy would have stopped growing. If a majority of Americans had decided that the best way to satisfy their wants and needs was for the government to provide it, then we would already be showing a dramatic economic slowdown. I refuse to believe that a majority of the people have accepted the notion that the government's there to do things for us. Way too many people that have adopted that but I refuse to believe it's a majority.

So the point is that we're pandering to a minority of people because they're the victims, of course, and we feel sorry for them. The political candidates want to make sure that they let everybody know that they can relate to the suffering, all of the hardship that's out there and we're becoming a nation of whiners and babies. Phil Gramm says that and, bam, McCain throws him off the list. But you know it and I know it. It's a big problem. When you get to talking about getting off of oil in ten years, that alone should be a disqualifier for somebody to be qualified as competent to be president of the United States. It's not possible. I'll tell you what, you watch this show, and I'm going to find out when it actually re-airs. I've got it here in the computer somewhere, Saturday or Sunday night, History Channel. You watch this show, and you will come to the inescapable conclusion that there is no way that we can get off of oil for 50 or 75 years, if then, because the elements of our economy and culture, the things that you use, that we all use and do in our daily lives that are now considered necessities that we take for granted, they're not even luxuries, some of them are. When you see this, you, too, will be beat upside the head.

By the way, they have all of these experts, all these professionals at the refineries explaining what they do, explaining how the process works. It's just fascinating. It let me know that Big Oil itself could be doing a much better PR job explaining its own business. (interruption) What now, Snerdley? I'm getting some of the weirdest looks on the other side of the glass. Hm-hm. Hm-hm. Right -- no, no, no. Snerdley is saying that the solution to all this is very simple, if we just ban makeup. Ban makeup, Nancy Pelosi would have to come around quickly. It's an interesting joke. At any rate, there's also an interview that Rex Tillerson, the CEO of ExxonMobil -- I think ExxonMobil has the best names of their CEOs. Rex Tillerson, does that not just sound like a perfect name for a guy running a big oil company? Rex Tillerson. I forget the name of the guy he replaced who retired, and everybody got mad because he got the $400 million golden parachute when he quit, but had a great name, too, and he had a great face. He had a face right out of the early 1900s when all these big barons were sort of bulbous and that was a sign of success back then when you were obese or overweight, that was a sign that you really were living the good life. Today, of course, if you're rail thin and could be pushed over by the wind from a windmill then you are considered to be the epitome of in good health.

But the interview with Charles Gibson on ABC, and they write this up at the ABC website: "ExxonMobil CEO and chairman Rex Tillerson defended his company's staggering $11.7 billion in profits for the second quarter, saying that the company's earnings reflected the magnitude of its business operation. 'I saw someone characterize our profits the other day in terms of $1,400 in profit per second. Well, they also need to understand we paid $4,000 a second in taxes, and we spent $15,000 a second in cost,' Tillerson told ABC News' Charles Gibson. 'We spend $1 billion a day just running our business. So this is a business where large numbers are just characteristic of it.'" So they're starting to do a little bit better on their own PR. Okay, so the profit was $1,400 a second, taxes $4,000 a second, $15,000 a second in costs, a billion dollars a day just to run the business. He goes on, "'I can understand why people are very upset and why they're very worried and concerned about their ability to deal with these high prices. It does bother me that much of that is directed at us. Our job is to provide energy, to provide it in a means that is reliable. And we hope we can provide it in a means that's convenient as well to the consumer.' When asked whether he agreed with Phil Gramm, Sen. John McCain's former economic adviser, who labeled America as a 'nation of whiners,' Tillerson said he empathizes with American consumers. 'I don't think there's any question that if these prices -- $3.50, $4 a gallon for gasoline -- and the follow-through effects on the cost of electricity [are] causing a lot of problems for a lot of Americans. ... Their budgets just are very difficult for them to accommodate this.'"

Right, which, ladies and gentlemen, once again cements the notion that the economy could be the Republican issue, and particularly the price of gasoline, because the Democrats -- by the way, I have two pieces in my stack today, one from the New Republic. They're getting worried. They're worried about their convention and they're worried that Obama is blowing the economy issue. I forget who this author is, "When's the last time we heard Obama talk about Social Security? When's the last time we heard Obama talking about national health care? He's losing the economy issue. We gotta get back to the economy." They're very concerned that they're losing a traditional issue for them.

RUSH: Some interesting tidbits from the website, The History Channel website, on this program. I have a little overview here. If we stop driving our cars tomorrow -- if every American stopped driving a car tomorrow, for good -- we would still need five million barrels of oil a day to supply our other needs: rubber, plastic, nylon, aerosols, rosins, solvents, lubricants. None can exist without oil. In fact, even these windmills and all of these alternative energy things still need some form of oil for lubrication of the moving parts.

"You will discover how a cutting-edge recycling technique breathes new life into used motor oil." They re-refine it. They do the refining process in reverse, and they "take you back to the 1870s to see how an unemployed whale oil salesman turning a greasy oil by-product into a household staple Vaseline," which then led to Maybelline. It's a fascinating program; it really is. It will open everybody's eyes about the reality and the truth concerning oil, and not our desire for it, but our literal need for the stuff. How much of our society, how much of our lifestyle has been positively impacted by this product; it's just amazing. So make sure you TiVo it or watch it Saturday night, August 23, seven o'clock Eastern Time, on the History Channel.

RUSH: Sam in Kalamazoo, Michigan, welcome to the program, sir. Nice to have you with us.

CALLER: I heard your discussion at the top of the show regarding the Modern Marvels show.

CALLER: No, but I think I've seen it before. I've seen a lot of Modern Marvel shows, but the essence of the show is that oil is a precious resource, that it's critical for many products in our lives, and I mean we all love oil. It does all kinds of wonderful things --

CALLER: I think we do. It's just that people like me recognize that if we want to keep oil, keep its benefits, what we need to do is aggressively search for alternate forms of energy that will let us make the oil we have last much longer for ourselves and for future generations.

RUSH: Which we are doing. This is the great myth that we are sitting around doing nothing in the field of alternatives or renewables. It's just the market hasn't found anything that is anywhere close to replacing or even supplementing oil.

CALLER: Oh, that's absolutely not true, Rush. I mean wind energy right now is producing tremendous amounts of electricity.

RUSH: -- is produced by wind. We're talking right now. We've been working on wind energy for how many decades?

RUSH: I'm not criticizing it. I'm saying we need a dose of reality. We're never going to be able to drive cars with wind. We're never going to be able to fly airplanes with wind. We're not going to be able to launch missiles with wind. We're not going to be able to steer ships. We're not going to be able to power ships. We're not going to have a military with wind or with alternatives. Look it, I'm going to cease this right now, ladies and gentlemen, because I fear that my IQ is subject to being damaged. If I spend any more time talking with people who fail to understand, who want to portray oil as an enemy, I really worry I'm going to lose part of my IQ, and if that happens you never know if you're going to get it back.

RUSH: The Democrats are very, very worried over the lack of Obama's dominance in the polls. In fact, The Politico has this story, apparently this Jerome Corsi book that's been opening at number one on the New York Times list, the anti-Obama book, and they put John Kerry on the Swift Boat team now to rebut these attacks, because they said Kerry didn't do it fast enough, Obama is not doing it fast enough, they're not going to sit by and let happen to Obama what happened to John Kerry. This whole story features so much double-talk and pseudo action by Kerry, threatened at and hinted at and so forth. Obama, there's an easy way around all this. Instead of looking stupid -- this is really beneath The Politico to run a hack story like this. Obama, if you don't like the book just sit down and do some interviews. You know, there are a lot of things people would like to know about you, and if you you're going to let somebody define you, you can easily get around that by just sitting down and doing some interviews and answering some questions other than in your messiah mode. They're really concerned out there, and now they're going to the usual suspects, they're blaming all of his lack of big lead in the polls on race. Let's go back and review from August the 7th. We have a little montage here of the Drive-Bys perplexed at the lack of Obama's big lead.

RUSH: The presumptuousness of this is mind-boggling. The answer is they think he should be far ahead because they've done nothing but try to put him there. So last night on CNN's Larry King Alive, Larry was talking to the Council on Foreign Relations' Peter Beinart, and he said, "Peter, in essence, capsulize it for me. You were saying what today?"

BEINART: There remains a significant percentage of white Americans, hard to know how many, but perhaps 20% who might normally vote Democratic who seem, because of racial anxiety, so far to be unwilling to support Barack Obama. People won't say it about themselves, but if you ask them, will people they know not vote for Barack Obama, then you get about the percentage of 20%. Barack Obama has a huge lead on almost all of the issues, and Democrats have a huge generic advantage. So why is his advantage so small? I think -- although one cannot be a hundred percent sure -- I think there is increasing circumstantial evidence that he is being weighed down, as so many African-American candidates have in the past, by racial anxiety or outright racism.

RUSH: I told you way back this was going to happen. I said that contrary to everybody thinking Obama's nomination and election would bring an end to the race business in America, it would only exacerbate it and make it worse. Of course it can't be the fact that he's out ripping his own country in Berlin. It can't be the fact that he is avoiding meeting with military people in hospitals. It can't be that he's arrogant and condescending. It can't be that his best friends have a virulent hatred for the United States of America and have made careers on it. It can't be that his wife is angry as hell about America and needs a makeover in order to tone that down. It can't possibly be that he tells 7-year-olds who ask him what he wants to be president for that his country is less than it once was, oh, it can't possibly be due to anything with Obama and who he is because he is The Messiah, and everybody loves Democrats, and everybody hates Bush, and Obama's new and unique and we've never had anybody like him before. So obviously it must be the Klan is still alive. It can't possibly be that a lot of Americans have seen Obama as The Messiah and they don't have any more emotion for it and they're ready for some substance from the guy, and they haven't gotten any. It can't be that the American people might be going through a backlash over the wanton, naked, brazenness of the Drive-By Media trying to make this guy president before we've had the election. Oh, it couldn't be any of these things. No, no, no, no, no. Can't be this.

It has to be, as the erudite and elite Peter Beinart said, increasingly circumstantial evidence, by the way, that he's being weighed down as so many African-American candidates have in the past, by racial anxiety or outright racism (crying). We wanted to get so past that, and America so disappoints. America's so much a racist state. (crying) There you have the Drive-By Media attitude about this. By the way, Mr. Beinart, it couldn't be that to the extent that race is in the campaign, Obama himself brought it in trying to alternately play a racial victim. Could it be that the American people don't want to hear a highly successful individual complain and whine that there are going to be people criticize him because he doesn't look like all the other presidents on the dollar bill? Is that a racial comment? Was that Obama playing the race card? What race is Jeremiah Wright, Mr. Beinart? I know I say this constantly. I'm past and beyond the point of being surprised at what is the stupidity, the narrow or closed-mindedness and genuine ignorance of people in the media and many scholars. But it just keeps getting worse.

This Walter Shapiro piece today in Salon where he admits to being totally fooled by the myth that was John Edwards, and he admits he didn't know a thing about Edwards, he fell for the story that Edwards put out. I asked when I reported that, "Well, might you examine the story you manufactured about Obama?" Obama's running two campaigns. He's running a postracial campaign and a racial campaign, and he goes to either one whenever he thinks it's necessary. Lest we all remember, the notion of race, as far as this campaign is concerned, has been totally owned and dominated by the Democrat Party in their primaries, as has, I might add, sexism. All of the ugliness that has taken place in this campaign can be found on the Democrat side. And yet, it can't possibly be due to any of the lack of experience that shows incompetence, that nobody knows anything about Obama, can't be that. Nope. Racism. America is still imperfect, lots of work to do.

RUSH: I'd like to ask a question here of Peter Beinart, who is just ringing his hands and practically in tears over the fact that there's racial anxiety -- maybe even outright racism -- in this country, which explains why Obama is still basically tied with McCain. Somebody ask Mr. Beinart, "What percentage of minorities won't vote for McCain because of race?" What are we hearing, about 92, 93% blacks are going to vote for Obama? Well, isn't that blatant racism? I mean, 92% of whites are not going to vote for McCain. How about that, Beinart? If you're going to throw around the race card, throw it at everybody. Now, Beinart is just another one of these self-aggrandizing pundits who has no clue what America thinks in his ivory tower at the Council on Foreign Relations. It's something I think is pretty common about all of the media. They're really detached and they're distant. It's a foreign country to them, outside of both coasts. So Beinart looks at Middle America the same way that Obama does -- and Obama said he looks at it when he was in San Francisco at that fundraiser. All the while they claim they represent blue-collar America, when in truth they detest 'em. Who is he calling racists but blue-collar Americans?

RUSH: Well, let's move on to politics, folks. I teased this at the conclusion of the previous hour. The Atlantic Monthly blog by Marc Ambinder reporting that Hillary Clinton's name will likely be placed in nomination at the convention. This is already the Clinton convention. They got two nights of it. Hillary's got Tuesday night, Bill's got Wednesday night. Edwards is nowhere to be found. Oh, and there is some juicy stuff on that coming up today. This story is not going away. Now, what we're getting, at least two Drive-By journalists are now writing how embarrassed they are to have totally misjudged John Edwards. Well, I'm not kidding. Let's stick with Clinton here first. The Messiah, the Most Merciful Lord Barack Obama, has consented to the Clintons having her name placed in nomination. Now, let's move forward, shall we? Let's go to Wednesday night at the convention, after Bill Clinton has spoken, and they start the roll call, and we have all the Drive-By commentators watching this. And as you know, ladies and gentlemen, this delegate count, if you throw out the supers, the delegate count is damn close. And I can just see, if they put her name in nomination, and her delegates stick with her, you know what's going to become quite apparent, and not even the Drive-By commentators are going to be able to ignore it.

I can just see it now, the Drive-By commentators, "Well, looky here, Brian, why, this is looking to be a little closer than we thought it was going to be here during our roll call. This could be causing some heartburn in various parts of the convention hall tonight, Tom, why, look at how close this is turning. I mean, halfway through the roll call, Mrs. Clinton's actually leading based on the alphabetical order of the states being called here. This I'm sure is not how the convention planners intended this to come out here, and then we're going to get word there's something going on back here in a smoke-filled room. Well, no smoke in a Democrat convention, but back there in the all-green food rooms where the supers, "This is looking bad, I mean this is closer than we thought we were going to go." Then we're going to realize as of Wednesday, nobody's seen or heard from Obama, it's all been the Clintons up until that time. Well, Michelle Obama will show up with Pelosi on Monday. That's going to be a real draw. They're going to open the convention, I understand, Pelosi and Michelle Obama. So this is going to be just hilarious if they do this, if this happens, because everybody is going to be reminded how he couldn't close this out, how it was the superdelegates that had to wipe her out.

Until they actually vote, I mean, folks, I said this all during the primaries, they can change their intentions right up until they vote at the convention. Now, you put this together with the fact that there's all kinds of media analysis and consternation over the fact that Obama does not have a significant lead in the polls, and people wondering what the hell has happened and why not -- Oh, and by the way, Peter Beinart writing in the Washington Post has come up with a reason why Obama does not have a big lead. I called this one, folks, I told you. The answer is race. America is just racist and will not vote for a black man. So Beinart has an idea. Beinart wants Obama to offer a significant change in affirmative action. Beinart's idea for Obama is for him to change affirmative action so it's no longer based on race but rather on class and income. To take race out of the equation, because he thinks -- doesn't say this specifically -- there's still a bunch of angry Jesse Helms types that won't vote for Obama because they hate affirmative action. So, ladies and gentlemen, this is shaping up here to be quite an interesting Democrat convention, if this all happens.

RUSH: I have here, ladies and gentlemen, a story from today's USA Today. Get this: 'Psychologists Determine What it Means to Think 'Green' -- Those who make human behavior their business aim to make living 'green' your business. Armed with new research into what makes some people environmentally conscious and others less so, the 148,000-member American Psychological Association is stepping up efforts to foster a broader sense of eco-sensitivity that the group believes will translate into more public action to protect the planet. 'We know how to change behavior and attitudes. That is what we do,' says Yale University psychologist Alan Kazdin, association president. 'We know what messages will work and what will not.'" "We know how to change behavior and attitudes." We know, in other words, how to brainwash people.

"During a four-day meeting that begins today in Boston, an expected 16,000 attendees will hear presentations, including studies that explore how people experience the environment..." How can you not experience it? Where do you go to escape it? I'd like to know. (laughing) Where do you go to escape the environment so that you don't experience it? What do you mean, "experience the environment"? It's already psychobabble and we're only in the third paragraph. Okay, so they're going to "explore how people experience the environment, their attitudes about climate change and what social barriers prevent conservation of resources. Among the yet-unpublished findings: Walking outside rather than inside - even for just 15 minutes - makes you feel happier, more energetic and more protective of the environment, found two studies involving 220 students conducted by psychologists at Carleton University in Ottawa.

"Researcher Elizabeth Nisbet suggests the findings have broader implications for well-being and mental health. [Rush debuts an Elizabeth Nisbet impression] 'People know outside is going to feel much better for them but underpredict how happy they're going to feel after being outside in nature even 15 minutes,' she says. 'The people inside overestimate their happiness about being inside. It's this error in judgment people have about how happy they are in a different environment that may explain why people don't spend more time in nature.'" You're too stupid to know how you feel if you're outside. If you're inside, you feel better if you're outside; and if you're inside, you're not with nature. You're only with nature when you're outside. So I guess that's how you escape the environment, you go inside?

See? Read far enough, and you will learn anything you want in a Drive-By news story. How to escape the environment: stay inside. "Negative feedback can backfire. In two studies, psychologist Amara Brook of California's Santa Clara University and colleague Jennifer Crocker of the University of Michigan asked 212 undergraduates about their ecological footprint. For those not heavily invested in the environment, negative feedback about their ecological footprint actually undermines their environmental behavior, they found." Do you believe this? is the question. This is unreal. It is just unreal. "By editing CNN and PBS news stories so that some saw a skeptic included in the report, others saw a story in which the skeptic was edited out and another group saw no video, Krosnick found that adding 45 seconds of a skeptic to one news story caused 11% of Americans to shift their opinions about the scientific consensus.

"Rather than 58% believing a perceived scientific agreement, inclusion of the skeptic caused the perceived amount of agreement to drop to 47%," according to the American Psychological Association. Now, there is no proof of manmade global warming. That's why they say "consensus." And as we all know, there cannot be a consensus if there is science. Science is not up to a vote. So what they're saying here is that we gotta keep skeptics out of the news reporters global warming because that makes people doubt the issue.

"American Psychological Association leaders say they want to launch a national initiative specifically targeting behavior changes, including developing media messages that will help people reduce their carbon footprint and pay more attention to ways they can conserve. They want to work with other organizations and enlist congressional support to help fund the effort." So the "greening" of education will now move from the classroom to the media and psychologists' and psychiatrists' offices. Now you will be, if you go to therapy or whatever, subjected -- if these people get their way -- to your environmental mental health as part of your treatment. This is brainwashing. They're actually admitting that they want to do this. We can call it greenwashing. But they want to brainwash as many people as possible into believing something that cannot be proved. This, ladies and gentlemen, is your modern American left.

RUSH: The Drive-Bys, don't you love this, the Drive-Bys are now digging deep into this. Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, has dug deep and found out that Edwards has been lying about when he told his wife he was having the affair and when he was having the affair and not having the affair, when his wife knew about it and so forth. And you know that the Enquirer is just gloating, but what remains outstanding, and still I have this question, do you see how the Democrats are preparing to celebrate the Clintons? The Clintons have scored two nights of this convention away from The Messiah. By the way, Maureen Dowd today in the New York Times just destroys Hillary. I will share highlights in mere moments. But here's Bill Clinton, who is going to be celebrated with an entire night practically in his honor at the Democrat convention. What did he do? Well, he had numerous sexual encounters with a woman barely half his age, an intern, in fact, lied about it to his staff, lied about it to the American people. Only when the stained blue dress popped up was the truth known.

We've had allegations of numerous affairs. Gennifer Flowers and a parade of women have made allegations, including one, Juanita Broaddrick, who alleged rape. Now here we come, the Breck Girl who had one little affair, might have sired a child, and they don't want him anywhere near the Democrat convention. Now, I don't understand these Democrats. In normal times, what Edwards has done, as the case with Clinton, would be a resume enhancement. But they don't want him anywhere near this convention while they're going to welcome Bill Clinton, give him a whole night, then Hillary has the night before that. The big question remains, as far as the Breck Girl is concerned, whose baby is this?

RUSH: Now, ladies and gentlemen, it just won't go away. The Breck Girl story continues to effervesce. It is amazing. The Drive-By Media -- which wanted nothing to do with this story for the longest time, strictly because it was a Democrat. We played the sound bites for you yesterday of the Drive-Bys going, "Whew, man, imagine where we'd be if he got the nomination!" They were just scared to death. "Imagine if he'd have pulled this off, where would we be now? The Democrat Party would be in big trouble." Well, he didn't, and it looks like that now the Drive-Bys have figured since the Enquirer did the dirty work and somebody managed to get the story outside what the Drive-Bys consider to be the gutter (which is the Enquirer and tabloids), now they can put the full force of their own investigative teams on the story. So we move to the CBS Early Show today. Pigeon O'Brien, who is a friend of Reille Hunter, was the guest. (interruption) Yeah, that's her name: Pigeon O'Brien. She also appeared on Fox. I saw her on Fox later on, but the cohost, Maggie Rodriguez said to Pigeon O'Brien, friend of Reille Hunter, "Is John Edwards lying? She told you that the affair started in February or March of 2006. He says it started five months later when his campaign hired her."

O'BRIEN: No, that's not true. That's not true. It started in the winter of '06. They became involved at that point, not later in the summer when she was hired to work for the political action committee.

RODRIGUEZ: 'Cause that's when he was announcing his candidacy -- and, as we see in these pictures, she's still working for him at the time even though he says this is when the affair was winding down.

RUSH: The Drive-Bys, they just didn't want to believe it. The babes at the CBS Early Show just didn't want to believe it. But Pigeon O'Brien was not flying away from her assertion. She remained grounded in this assertion, and she wasn't even flustered or rattled here. Later on, on the same show, the CBS Early Show, Pigeon O'Brien, friend of Reille Hunter, was asked this by the cohost, Maggie Rodriguez: "Do you think that John Edwards is the father of the daughter?"

O'BRIEN: I don't see any other explanation. She would not have a child with someone that she didn't love, and she loves him.

RUSH: Ohhh. "Don't tell me. Don't tell me. Is it mine?" So Pigeon O'Brien, it's his kid. She didn't love anybody else, she wouldn't have a baby with anybody else that she didn't love, and she loves him. All sorts of sordid things are coming out now. She's quoted as telling people that she fully expected them to get married "once the wife was out of the way," quote, unquote, meaning Elizabeth. I know it's really very unpleasant. It's seedy. It really is. Now, on the Today Show today (not MSNBC, which has no audience) Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, filed this report on the Breck Girl.

MITCHELL: NBC News has learned from a source in the Edwards campaign that John Edwards only confessed his affair to his wife after she confronted him -- and only after he was already announcing for president. He told the truth slowly and not until they were in the frenzy of the campaign's official launch in late December 2006. In fact, Edwards only revealed his affair on New Year's Eve 2006, days after he had announced. Elizabeth Edwards' brother told People, the uncertainty of her own mortality, her cancer diagnosis -- and, People reported, the reality that her young children will one day no longer have a mother -- led her to stay with her husband.

RUSH: Ooh, Andrea Mitchell digging into the Edwards affair. After ignoring the story for months, they're now out after the Breck Girl in full force. He's gotta be wondering what happened. You know, this guy scheduled this appearance of his on Nightline on Friday night, and he knew nobody would be watching because of the Olympics, and then ABC went out and publicized it! They promoted what they had, and everybody found out about it before the Olympics started. So everybody knew about it, and the Breck Girl actually said he was mad at ABC. He thought he had an understanding with them that they wouldn't do anything before the interview aired, which is another illustration of the symbiotic relationship that many Democrats think that they have with the Drive-By Media.

RUSH: The fallout continues now on the Breck Girl story. This is from the Raleigh News and Observer: "The former campaign finance chairman for John Edwards said this morning he was unaware of Edwards' affair with campaign videographer Rielle Hunter when he paid to move her to California last year." Now, how can this possibly be true? How in the world could he be unaware of Edwards' affair when he paid to move this babe to California last year? "In an e-mail this morning to The News & Observer, Dallas lawyer Fred Baron wrote, 'I will re-state what I have previously stated on one point: I learned of the affair only a few weeks ago and had previously presumed that the "tabloid" stuff was all bogus.' ... Baron declined to comment further this morning, but in an interview posted online by the publication Texas Lawyer, Baron said he paid for several months' rent for Hunter and the Youngs without informing Edwards. Baron denied media reports that he was paying as much as $15,000 a month. According to an article published Sunday, Baron told The New York Post that Hunter, Young --" Young is, again, Edwards' buddy that supposedly is saying he fathered the kid here, that "they lived together in California until tension in the household grew." Well, stop and think of this now.

This guy, Andrew Young, says, "I'm the father, John Edwards is not the father. I'm the father of the kid," and so Andrew Young takes his wife and kids and moves into a house with Rielle Hunter in California and then says they had to get out of there because the tensions grew. Do you not think that that kind of tension might happen when you move the mistress and baby in with the wife and legitimate kids? What are these people thinking? How could there not be tension? "They lived in a single house most of the time and split to two houses recently," said Fred Baron to the New York Post. And in more fallout, you know, Edwards established a center for poverty at Chapel Hill, a think tank that was going to deal with poverty. He actually said one time -- I'm going to have to paraphrase this -- but he actually said one time that, "The words we put out here are really good for the poor. We're helping the poor here because we're putting out good words, we're putting out good think pieces and people are doing a lot of good work here."

At any rate, the think tank that once provided Edwards a platform to discuss poverty in this two Americas theme of his is not counting on him to return to the fold. Interesting. The University of North Carolina Center on Poverty, Work, and Opportunity was launched in 2005. Edwards served as its director until he quit at the end of 2006 to launch his presidential run. Edwards' disclosure Friday he had an affair has had no impact on contributions or grants to the nonpartisan -- oh, of course not, why would anybody think that the disclosure of the affair would have any impact on donations to Edwards' think tank? The only real question here, folks -- and this article does not address it -- how will the poor survive now without John Edwards thinking and paying others to think at his think tank at the University of North Carolina?

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Senator, I'm going to have you sit while I ask you another question, if you don't mind. Thank you. And while this is not exactly a confessional, there are a whole bunch of people out there -- we certainly have enough clergy here -- so I'll ask you this. What is the biggest sin...

Owell’s Children are Growing up; has the left completely rejected the concepts of true and false? Excellent article:

The spectacle of yet another Leftist Democrat, John Edwards, looking the American people dead in the eye and lying to them is nothing new. The news spinners of the mainstream media have tried to portray the Edwards Affair as a sex scandal. It is not. It is a truth scandal. It is, in fact, part of a spiraling truth scandal that seems to have engulfed the Left.

Wrong; Clinton will force herself onto the ticket, or Obama will man-up and take on Biden or Bayne.

More bad news for global warming enthusiasts: fewest 90°+ in Chicago since 1930. Someone in the mainstream media is actually allowing this to be printed?

Obama (a blast from the past): “...we can’t drive our SUV’s and eat as much as we want, and keep our homes at 72°...”

Obama parody: Are we at fault for everyone else lying? A message from his Hawaiian vacation:

Conservative Review
Issue #36	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	August 17, 2008