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“You build conservative solutions on the same time-honored principles of limited government, belief in free markets, belief in the sanctity of life and belief in the sanctity of marriage.” Mike Pence, Congressman Indian. He voted against the Bush Bailout bill.

“Atheism has nothing to say to a dying child.“ An Christian author discussing faith and choices we make.

Greta Van Susteren interviewed Sarah Palin for about 3 hours (I don’t know the actual length of time of the raw interview). There is no script, no prompters, no talking points; there are no gotcha questions and no careful editing to make Palin look good or bad. Most of the time of the interview, Palin is making lunch for what appears to be a pretty large crowd. This should have been her first interview, not her post-election interview.

Palin speaking at the Republican Governors Association. 7 minutes and it is excellent.

I think that we are at about the bottom for gas and oil prices, which is problematic for Russia, the Middle East and Venezuela. Democrats will do nothing about additional drilling in the United States. They may even reinstate their ban on offshore drilling. The Mid East will reduce their production, and I think our prices will move back up to around $3–3.40/gallon February or March.

Obama will push immigration reform and/or health care reform, one of which will result in free health care for illegal aliens. Recall that, when Obama was giving the numbers of people in the United States who lacked health care, his numbers included illegal aliens.

[A disclaimer: I do not have the gift of prophecy—no one does at this time—but these are reasonable predictions based upon the political climate and being able to read the historical trends of the day]

Okay, maybe I am wrong about Obama shutting down Guantanamo (in my opinion, I do not think that he would do it). I based my prediction upon (1) Rahm Emmanuel being a moderate (I was wrong about that) and (2) it is an incredibly stupid idea. I am not sure how it has come out that Obama might shut down Guantanamo. Maybe he is floating the idea out there first to see what the response is? At this point, I think that Obama could say anything, take any position, and all, but those on the far-left, will say, “that makes sense” even if this is Bush’s position.

#1: When Obama held his 19 minute economic conference, standing right behind him was a top GM executive. Do you think Obama is going to bail out Michigan’s unionized auto industry?

#2: “Change” Obama looks like he will fill up his staff with Clinton people. So far, the majority of Obama’s staff are former Clinton people. Personally, this is fine with me; this is much better than Wright, Ayers, Meeks, Walsh, Pfleger, Farrakhan, or Khalidi.

#3: Feminism is no longer about women having the same opportunities and freedom as men; feminism is all about the right to abort. No matter what you are, if you oppose abortion, feminists will attack you.

#4: When Joe the Plumber’s privacy was invaded and this personal information given to the media and made news fodder, the ACLU was nowhere to be found.

#5: The Republican Governors Association is generally ignored by the media. On a good year, there might be 2 camera crews there. This year, there were 23 camera crews. Why? Sarah Palin.

Observations #2–4 from commentators on FoxNews; #5 from the Wall Street Journal Report.

#6: If someone strongly disagreed with Ayers and firebombed his house, how would he feel about this? Despite what Ayers has said about his non-violent approach, I guarantee you that he would call the cops. And, so there is no misunderstanding, such an act would be absolutely wrong. This is one place where the left and right ought to agree.

#7: Obama was invited to meet with various leaders at this international economic summit. He sent others in his place. Is he beginning to get a handle on what he is in for as the most powerful person in the world?

#8: Bush—a lame-duck president—called an economic summit; all 19 countries showed up. You may disagree with Bush or not (and I certainly do with regards to the bailout package), but he is not going to twiddle his thumbs for the next 2 months.

#9: Gay rights activists in California have been demonstrating in front of many different churches, including the Saddleback church. However, the key demographic which passed prop 8 in California was the Black vote. They turned out in droves to support Obama and voted for a traditional marriage amendment, 70% of them favoring the traditional marriage. None of these gay rights activists are picketing in front of Black churches and yelling at the Black Congregants (which probably were 80–90% in favor of prop 8). Roseanne Barr showed a few stones when she wrote in her blog on Nov. 10^th, They [California Black voters] showed themselves every inch as bigoted and ignorant as their white christian right wing counterpartners who voted for mccain-palin and bush-cheney.

Okay, okay, I stole this name from a commentator on FoxNews Wall Street Journal Report. Missiles just launched from Iran, and the word is, they are able to reach southern Europe. Are you keeping count? I told you there would be at least 3–5 world crises ready and waiting for Obama on January 20^th.

We are all products, to some degree, of our education and background. Obama has never owned a business and has never had to make payroll. For some of his projects, he simply got more money from the government.

Obama’s mother was quite radical, the people which he hung with, either closely or tangentially, were quite radical; and he has a Harvard education. And what I mean by radical is, people who are not just liberal, but ubër-liberal, who are concerned about inequity and tend to believe that government can and should help that inequity. I think that Obama has bought into this. At the very least, much of his rhetoric was about government taking money legitimately earned and spreading it around. He indicated time and time again that, if you give those at the bottom more opportunity (i.e., money), this will help the economy from the bottom up.

What about T. Bone Pickens? Isn’t he a capitalist and isn’t he advising Obama? T. Bone obviously has Obama’s ear, and T. Bone is surely a capitalist. He is also a realist. T. Bone understands that, when the government becomes more and more involved in the economic arena, that is where he goes to make more money. Pickens sees wind as one of the big things in the future, so whatever furthers that end is fine with him. If the government is going to start taxing Big Oil and high producers for producing, then T. Bone is going to be first in line for government subsidies to build more wind turbines. He has positioned himself on the ground floor and the government is going to push wind farms, so that will be how he gets this thing going. He is a realist who likes to make money, and I certainly have nothing against that.

Obama has two economic models to go by: the Great Depression, made worse by Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the economic problems which Reagan inherited and solved. The problem is, Obama’s background. I was raised to believe that FDR fixed the Great Depression, and I believed that for a very long time. However, after some research, I no longer believe that. However, I suspect the President-elect Obama does. And, what did FDR do? He taxed the hell out of the rich, instituted a gazillion federal job programs, and the economy suffered for a full decade. What does Obama plan to do? He has suggested a gazillion types of public service occupations (green jobs, infrastructure jobs, peace corps type jobs, community organizer type jobs). His list of public works jobs had about 12 or so categories (the military making up one of these categories). And these were just the public-service categories. This is a man who is profoundly uneducated in the real world. A man starts a business, and works to make money. When he needs to, he hires people to work for him. The raw materials and supplies which he purchases, the jobs which he produces, and the money that he and his workers spend as private citizens, all feed into the economy. A $30,000/year job which he provides will cost the government about 4x that amount, because government is inefficient. Government has no reason to be efficient. Government does not have to cut corners; government does not have to be all that concerned about graft and corruption because there is no bottom line loss; they just take more money.

As a conservative, I would love to see Obama successful. I would love for him to figure out that greed and capitalism and hard work are not bad things. If Joe the Plumber works 60–80 hours a week to make $250 thousand, it is flat out wrong to require him to pay part of his salary to subsidize someone who is working 20 hours per week. I wish the Obama understood this, but I don’t think that he does.

If Obama cannot figure out basic economics by the time January 20^th rolls around, the newspapers and media is going to support him, for the most part. If unemployment climbs to 10%, if interest rates are at 10%, much of the press will lavish praise upon Obama for his energy policy or for all that he does for college students. They will call him even-tempered, forward thinking, and I think they will get a lot of mileage out of “George Bush ruined the economy; we can’t fix it overnight.”

At one time, www.change.gov was Obama’s site where his policies from his campaign site were simply transferred over. Now, it is simply a repository for press releases. Let me give you Obama’s entire plan:

President-Elect Obama and Vice President-Elect Biden have developed innovative approaches to challenge the status quo in Washington and to bring about the kind of change America needs.

The Obama Administration has a comprehensive and detailed agenda to carry out its policies. The principal priorities of the Obama Administration include: a plan to revive the economy, to fix our health care, education, and social security systems, to define a clear path to energy independence, to end the war in Iraq responsibly and finish our mission in Afghanistan, and to work with our allies to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, among many other domestic and foreign policy objectives.

As I mentioned earlier, I was brought up to believe that FDR fixed our economy during his tenure in office. However, the stock market did not completely recover to its pre-crash numbers until 1955 during Eisenhower’s presidency. Unemployment hovered around 15–25% throughout all of FDR’s presidency until we entered the war; then unemployment dramatically dropped. So, no matter how you feel about FDR, he did not solve the economic crisis of his day.

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t think that FDR was a bad guy or that he had evil intent. I don’t even think that he was particularly stupid. That was a unique environment. The stock market, where many Americans had been investing, suddenly dropped, and unemployment jumped in a couple year’s time from 3% to nearly 25%. As I have had several people from the era tell me, “If you had a job, then you did fine in the depression.”

• Those who owned stocks were in highly leveraged positions. That is, they may have paid $15 to own $100 worth of stock (I don’t know the exact percentages). However, when the bottom dropped out of the market, they suddenly owed money, and often more money than they had.

• Communism was viewed differently then. Many people were Communists or Socialists. It seemed like the smart thing to do. The government has a handle on everything, and the government guides the economy and everything else. FDR had people in his administration who were very socialistic. Many had traveled to Russia and they got a dog and pony show tour. That Russians were starving by the millions, that the government was unable to keep the stores stocked with food and goods, that dissedents were being killed by the millions—these things were not as widely known. Today, if you know something about history, you know that Communism fails everywhere it is tried, and millions of people die because of it.

• Very few people had electricity. The utilities which we take for granted today were not found in every household. FDR figured out that we needed power and that we needed a lot of it. One thing which FDR did which was undeniably great is, he powered up America. His various projects got hydro-electric energy started in a national way, and then he wired up most of the houses in America. This was a phenomenal achievement.

So, here is a brilliant man, with no reason to think that government control was not a good option; he had no reason to believe in capitalism; and there were things which needed to get done. So Roosevelt experimented and some experiments helped and some did not.

• Government cannot take money from those who create jobs and create government jobs with this wealth. FDR did that big time, and it did not work. A world war worked to reduce unemployment. government jobs did not.

• Markets do not like uncertainty. FDR experimented. He personally adjusted the value of gold and silver, and basically did it on a whim. Those with money to invest tended not to enter into the market because there was no telling what FDR would do.

The so-called Bush tax cuts for the rich was simple and it worked. Our economy has grown for 26 quarters of the past 27, and a lot of that has to do with Bush’s tax cuts.

However, like any president, Bush has strengths and weaknesses. He gets some things right and some things wrong.

At heart, Bush is a moderately free-market Democrat. He believe that if government steps in and throws money at a problem, that will fix the problem. We saw this in New Orleans. He threw a buttload of money at New Orleans and it is very slowly recovering. Individuals and charitable organizations who have gone into New Orleans are making a difference. Government money thrown at the problem by Bush has solved very little. I’ve met people who moved here from New Orleans to Houston. Many of them are takers. Government paid their ride in New Orleans; and once they got here to Houston, the work capital of the world, they stayed on the dole. Government pays for their rent and government pays for their food.

This economic bailouts of Bush’s strikes me as being the biggest mistake of his presidency. According the Newt Gingrich, we are loaning AIG 10X the amount it would have cost to buy them. This makes no sense to me (assuming that his numbers are accurate; he says proposed loans to the auto industry is 3X the cost of owning them).

Capitalism is about success and failure. Freedom is all about success and failure. If a business is too big to fail, then what ever happened to trust-busting? We are rewarding businesses for bad business practices. How does this make any sense?

I’ve gone over the failure of FNMA and FHLMC, and have tried to convey in past issues just how large and widespread this failure is. I am all for loosening up credit. However, I do not want more credit be extended to people who have lousy credit. Nor do I want credit extended to large businesses which fail.

These mortgage holders need to be divided up and sold. They were too big and too closely tied to government.

Again, I like Bush and I like his initial address prior to the global meeting; however, I do not agree that we should just spread money around to failing businesses.

Money is being thrown around left and right, and the auto industry wants their fair share. Well, that is not exactly true. The big 3 in Michigan want to be bailed out. The auto industry elsewhere in the United States is doing great.

What should the US government do? Get union leaders, representatives for retired workers, GM management and the top stock holders of GM all in the same room and say, “Work it out, because if you don’t, we will sell you off for parts.” That would mean, no more union, no more retirement, and no more GM. Repeat as necessary for Chrysler and Ford. I can guarantee you, if there is no loan or bailout to be had, they will work it out.

We are given a way to contact Obama at his website, and so I do. This is what I wrote him this week:

If you shut down Guantanamo Bay Prison, you will not be able to change your mind if this turns out to be a mistake. The press will cover for you if you leave it up and running. However, if you close it down, if terrorists end up being released into our society, and if terrorists clog up our legal system, some of the press is going to report that.

You also have the obvious problem of, what do we do with our prisoner's of war, particularly those who have intelligence that we need.

Every time that you change a Bush policy, remember that all of the consequences will fall on your judgment or our lack thereof. If you make 2 or 3 sweeping changes, there will be unintended results which will be hung around your neck in 2012.

I took a pundit’s word on the idea that Rahm Emmanuel was a moderate. Turns out that I should not have believed this. Essentially, the most moderate thing which he has done is recruited moderate Democrats to run for office in 2006 to get more Democrats elected. His own votes have been very liberal, for the most part.

For instance, his votes have been very liberal with respect to abortion, just as Obama’s votes have been. Although he has a 100% NARAL rating (as does Obama), he did not vote for allowing a partial birth abortion, unless the mother’s life was actually in danger. Obama is on record letting the mother make this decision.

There are many examples I could give, but, in short, Rahm has anything but a moderate voting record.

In researching his record, I cam across an excellent site called www.ontheissues.org which lists votes, the fundamental propositions of each bill is available, as well as full quotes by the various politicians. One of the best aspects of this site, instead of just giving a simple yes or no, more complex positions were given, like Obama being unable to take a stand when human rights ought to be given to a person (although, he has clear voted over and over again that a fetus in the womb has absolutely no rights whatsoever). For instance, harming the fetus of a woman during a crime is not in itself a crime (Rahm and Obama’s positions).

[I know that this is one of Michael Savage’s slogans; and here is someone else who says the same thing. A gal (Bonnie) at a Bible website that I go to found this article (I do not have a link for it)]:

WASHINGTON ? Just when liberals thought it was safe to start identifying themselves as such, an acclaimed, veteran psychiatrist is making the case that the ideology motivating them is actually a mental disorder.

"Based on strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions, modern liberals relentlessly undermine the most important principles on which our freedoms were founded," says Dr. Lyle Rossiter, author of the new book, "The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness." "Like spoiled, angry children, they rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave."

While political activists on the other side of the spectrum have made similar observations, Rossiter boasts professional credentials and a life virtually free of activism and links to "the vast right-wing conspiracy."

For more than 35 years he has diagnosed and treated more than 1,500 patients as a board-certified clinical psychiatrist and examined more than 2,700 civil and criminal cases as a board-certified forensic psychiatrist. He received his medical and psychiatric training at the University of Chicago.

Rossiter says the kind of liberalism being displayed by the two major candidates for the Democratic Party presidential nomination can only be understood as a psychological disorder.

"A social scientist who understands human nature will not dismiss the vital roles of free choice, voluntary cooperation and moral integrity ? as liberals do," he says. "A political leader who understands human nature will not ignore individual differences in talent, drive, personal appeal and work ethic, and then try to impose economic and social equality on the population ? as liberals do. And a legislator who understands human nature will not create an environment of rules which over-regulates and over-taxes the nation's citizens, corrupts their character and reduces them to wards of the state ? as liberals do."

Dr. Rossiter says the liberal agenda preys on weakness and feelings of inferiority in the population by:

* rejecting the sovereignty of the individual, subordinating him to the will of the government.

"The roots of liberalism ? and its associated madness ? can be clearly identified by understanding how children develop from infancy to adulthood and how distorted development produces the irrational beliefs of the liberal mind," he says. "When the modern liberal mind whines about imaginary victims, rages against imaginary villains and seeks above all else to run the lives of persons competent to run their own lives, the neurosis of the liberal mind becomes painfully obvious."

It is called supply and demand; OPEC will cut oil production to raise the price of oil:

Everyone wants some of that bailout; 3 mayors believe that they ought to get some of it too:

On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

On the other hand, In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years. Here’s the article.

It is going to come down to this—who do you believe, your own eyes (or your own cold ears) or what the newspapers tell you?

Pelosi: “Give the automakers money.” I agree that what Bush did with the bailout plan cannot be defended; let’s see what a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress does:

RUSH: CNBC today had a video clip, a segment I should say, that deals with the auto industry since they're being talked about in terms of being bailed out. They had a chart and I got hold of it here. When you look at the chart, it's no wonder that General Motors and Ford and Chrysler are having financial problems. Their costs are 53% higher than Toyota and 132% higher than other manufacturing. The cost per hour to manufacture at the Big Three auto companies is $73.20, and that's total compensation per hour, selected workers, 2007-2008. At Toyota, it's $48 an hour, management and professional, $47.57, goods producing, $31.59. All workers, $28.48 an hour, average out all workers and it costs the Big Three auto companies $73.20 an hour, and a lot of this is they're paying people that no longer work for them, and these pensions and the unions -- if we bail out the auto companies, let me ask you a quick question.

If today all three auto companies received, what they were talking about, $25 or $50 billion, they divvy up, what change do you expect from these companies? What change would you expect? Well, there won't be any right off the bat. They've already got $25 billion that has been pledged for retooling and rebuilding, but do you realize what's happened, the federal government and these executives, they are so strained with these union contracts. This is not a bailout of the Big Three, this is a bailout of the United Autoworkers Union. That's what this is all about, folks. It is a bailout of the United Autoworkers Union. It is a Democrat sop to Jennifer Granholm to make sure that her reputation doesn't get sullied 'cause she's already running a state in recession that she helped put there, along with her party. This is a bailout of the United Auto Workers and the union contracts and everything else that goes hand in hand here. The executives are in such trouble at these companies, they are promising everything. "Well, of course, we'll make all kinds of cars that get better mileage and we will limit executive pay, and we will end golden parachutes."

Liberal Democrats are infecting and perverting elements of the private sector and the free market private sector that I never dreamed would ever happen in my lifetime. We're bailing out unions, is what we're doing, and we're going to be bailing out credit card companies and whoever else. You wouldn't believe the number of lobbyists that are signing up to get their hands on the bailout money. Lobbyists for various companies are lobbying the Treasury department for their companies to get a percentage of the bailout. Why should it be any different with a bailout than it is any other pile of money? Congress sits there with a budget every year of three trillion bucks, lobbyists and everybody else. This is not against lobbyists, by the way, you're never going to get rid of them. I don't care what any politician says, you're never going to get rid of them, they do what they do. Most of them actually perform a service. At any rate, I don't want to get off on a tangent with that. But why did everybody expect purity and comity and seriousness when you throw a pile of $700 billion at people?

Every year they get three trillion and everybody starts divvying that up, who's going to get that portion, lobbyists start lobbying Congress, "Oh, this group needs some money, we need to build a bridge out there." Congressman and Senators do their own lobbying. So now we've got the $700 billion bailout bill, which could not wait, it was a crisis, it was definitely this country's future, its very existence rested on this bailout being passed in 24 hours. And then as weeks went by before it was passed or a couple weeks, everything kept chugging along, people kept getting up and going at work, stores had food in them, gas stations had gasoline, but it was a crisis, and we had to deal with it, we had to deal with it immediately, otherwise the country would simply implode and cease to exist. But the country kept on working. So now the original purpose of the bailout has been broomed, the Treasury secretary says, nah, we're not going to buy up that bad paper. He begged banks to start lending today, and then he apologized to the world for the United States failing to meet its responsibilities and obligations and having contributed to the global financial collapse.

Well, all that means is that all these little tinhorn dictators and every other hapless fool leader around the world is, "Okay, you take the blame for it? Fine, well we've been irreparably harmed by your immoral behavior as a superpower. Where is my damage payment?" So we're going to have the world coming at us with their hands out. They already come at us now through the United Nations in stealth ways. Now they're just going to be open about it. Well, the Treasury secretary apologized. He said the United States is responsible for all this hell that's going globally and the financial markets and other areas of economics. He said the United States is to blame for it. So in the meantime we're going to bail out the United Auto Workers and we're going to bail out credit card companies and in the process the federal government, run by Democrats, are going to have their fingers in every business they can get them in, and they're not going to ever let go of it.

And so they couldn't actually muster the votes for limits on executive pay. And some of you, by the way, may say, "Well, Rush, that's pretty good, that might actually help employees like management a little better. You know, there's a lot of resentment out there, Rush, 'cause these executives pay themselves all this money and the workers don't get very much at all." Fine. Okay, so you're going to limit executive pay. The last time they tried this, it led to stock options. They'll find ways around this. There are always ways around this. But even if there aren't any ways around, even if executive pay is limited, it ain't going to make the workers any happier. Their paychecks aren't going to get any bigger. That's not the result. We're not going to have a trickle-down, if you will. So all these years we've wanted to eliminate executive pay, now executives are going right along with it, and Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank, these people are designing cars.

RUSH: Welcome to the Obama years. Speaking of the Obama years, gay marriage is now legal in Connecticut because a judge says so. So this judge is like the Treasury secretary and they're going to start performing gay marriages in Connecticut pretty soon. This is only the beginning, folks. Wait until Obama appoints hundreds more like this judge. The American people voted for this. They may not realize yet that they voted for this, but they did.

Me: I’ve got a lot of liberal friends, and they do not care how something gets done, just so it gets done. They are not concerned that 1 or 4 or 5 judges can essentially make the law. They like that. To their way of thinking, this is what “checks and balances” is all about. Just wait until we have a judicial system filled with judges who feel it is their duty to make law that the legislature won’t. When a handful of judges begin to make the law, we are no longer a democracy.

RUSH: According to the Washington Post, folks, dozens of immigrant advocates gathered in Washington this week. They are demanding that the incoming Obama administration halt immigration raids and offer amnesty to illegals. One advocate said, "We voted in the millions and now we're going to demand progress in the millions." To drive the point home they're planning a massive rally on the Washington mall the day after Obama is sworn in. You see, folks, elections have consequences out there. Now it's payback time. Democrats have long complained that Republicans are beholden to special interests, such as businesses trying to shield themselves from higher taxes, burdensome regulations, mandates, all that stuff that cripple our ability to compete. Groups seeking to shore up rights once assumed to be constitutionally protected like Second Amendment rights or the right to life itself. But, the Democrat special interests, their immigration advocates who demand the right for millions to break the law and steal citizenship rights.

Another Democrat special interest is the feminazis. They demand the right to destroy life to the level of the human embryo. Labor unions, they demand the right to kill the secret ballot. Teachers unions who demand the right to propagandize with no accountability in failing schools. And, of course, the tort bar, the good old trial lawyers, liberal lawyers and judges who demand the right to trample the US Constitution. In short, Republican special interests are givers who add to our prosperity and quality of life. Liberal special interests are takers, takers of life, takers of liberties, and takers of the pursuit of happiness. These people, they're not even happy, how can we be happy being around them? Even now they're not happy. They say they're running around giddy, but they're not happy. They're all worried about all kinds of things.

RUSH: We're joined now by Bill Gertz, another book, a prolific writer. Bill, it's a long title. I'm going to mention the title in full once, and I'm just going to call it The Failure Factory after that.

The Failure Factory: How Unelected Bureaucrats, Liberal Democrats, and Big Government Republicans are Undermining America's Security and Leading Us to War. Now, your focus is the Pentagon, that's your beat for the Washington Times, but you cover in this book the financial sector in a way. I mean, you write about Henry Paulson, you refer to them as "the Goldman Sachs gang." Tell people what's in your book about the current circumstance.

GERTZ: Yeah, this is a different look for me in terms of in the past I've focused on national security issues, mostly threats from abroad, North Korea and China. This is really a look at a broken, bloated, highly politicized in the leftward direction, government bureaucracy. And I argue that it's not simply a nuisance or a fetter to effective government, that it's actually dangerous in that it's creating policies that are projecting weakness and weakness is provocative, and I think we're in real trouble. It's gotta be one of the highest priorities to try and fix this bureaucracy.

RUSH: Well, the problem, the bureaucracy gets bloated with career appointees. Bill, tell people -- I tell 'em, they'll hear it from you, you're an expert -- all during the run-up to the Iraq war and after it started, we would see battle plans leaked, front page New York Times, front page Washington Post. Some of them were factual, some of them were incorrect. But the point was to undermine the effort. Now, those leaks had to come from the Pentagon, they had to come from State or CIA. These are people undermining the Bush policy here, and people think that the president populates these places with his people and his team and they don't understand how this operates.

GERTZ: Exactly. It's kind of like the inmates running the asylum in this case. You have these bureaucrats that are out of control, they're predominantly left liberal in political outlook, and, most importantly, they're conservative haters. They hate conservatives, they hate conservative policies, and that's really their focus in trying to change things in a liberal direction, whether it's on the Iraq war, whether it's on the war of ideas against Islamist extremism, or, as we've seen in the policy that Paulson did towards China, a completely appeasement-oriented policy towards China.

RUSH: The bureaucracy that you write about is now clearly ecstatic, I would think, with the incoming Obama administration. What does that portend? I mean, how is this going to lead to us war? That's in your title.

GERTZ: Yes. Basically my argument in The Failure Factory is that the bureaucrats do not want the United States to be a strong power, and they want to project weakness, conciliation. We're going to see arms control policies that have failed 100% of the time in the past, because as is always the case, the US abides by these agreements, and the people that we do these agreements with violate them, whether it's North Korea or Russia in the past. So we've got to make sure and, you know, this is the role of the press and talk radio is to expose these policies.

RUSH: People don't want their tax cuts now. They're willing to delay the tax cuts because Obama has such a hard job ahead. In fact, they're not even that concerned about getting out of Iraq now. AP poll today, the press is gonna hold the bureaucracy accountable? They're going to build 'em up. They're going to help hide what goes on in there. I mean the press and the bureaucrats are practically joined at the hip.

GERTZ: Exactly. Hopefully the Washington Times, my paper, won't be in that position.

RUSH: Well, no, but as such you'll be like the rest in talk radio and you'll be attacked. What's the most devastating thing in this book? People read this, I don't want you to give it all away, but --

GERTZ: Sure. The most important thing is the broken intelligence community. Basically, I report on this recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, but this was really a power play by liberal intelligence analysts to undermine international pressure on Iran to halt its illegal nuclear program. That's the most significant case. And this had far-reaching consequences. We now are facing an Iran with missiles of increasing range and very soon down the road in a matter of months or years, a nuclear weapon for those missiles.

RUSH: Moscow announced yesterday, Bill, that Raul Castro will visit Moscow in January or February, early next year. There's no word on whether Raul will stop in Washington and pick up Barack Obama for the trip. But it's deja vu here. We've got the KGB back running Russia; we got 'em making deals now trying to form a new alliance with Cuba. We got the Drive-By Media salivating over the fact that Camelot is back, which means that civil rights leaders, black civil rights leaders will be wiretapped, we just don't know who. What are we to make, seriously, of the effort by Russia and China to form another alliance?

GERTZ: Oh, this is part of an anti-US alliance that's emerging. China is basically the leader of it.

RUSH: But wait a minute. If we're going to be so nice, if we're going to disarm, if we're going to make all these deals, if we're going to appease, if we're going to cut our own selves down to size, could you explain if there is an answer to this, the motivation of the left? Why do they think that this country needs to be torn down? What benefit to the country and to the world is there for this to happen, and then, when they do all these things and it still doesn't result in us being loved, we have these deals like the Russians and the Cubans trying to put together an alliance and so forth, what is there to gain by doing this? What is their motivation?

GERTZ: It's clear to me that it's become an ideology of the liberal left that the United States is the cause of the world's problems. These are the blame-America-first liberals. They are now in power, and we're going to see an aggressive campaign to basically denigrate the United States. Now, they will couch their things by saying, "Oh, yes, we love America, we want America to be great," but we are going to see anti-Americanism fostered around world by this lack of soft power. We often hear about the liberals talk about soft power. Soft power is great, but we don't have any capability for that right now. The State Department is basically a diplomatic post. They don't understand the threats facing the world, the enemies that are out there that want to destroy this country.

GERTZ: Yes. It's part of this emerging anti-US axis that we're seeing. The Chinese are tacitly behind it, but they don't want to disrupt trade to make money from us, but really I think when historians look back they're going to talk about who lost Russia in much the way they talked about who lost China. We had a great opportunity to coax China in a Democratic direction, and just through neglect of the past ten years or so we've seen Russia slide back into anti-democratic, anti-US policies.

RUSH: Well, nobody seems to be doing anything about it. Hugo Chavez ditto. We watch these circumstances percolate all around the world, terrorism is still rife and so forth, and the enemies of this country are making it very clear who they are and what their intentions are. And yet we get stories in the paper: "The world is waiting for Barack Obama. The world now loves the United States of America." We're being prepped here with an image, demagoguery, charismatic demagoguery. We don't even know who this guy is. Well, some of us know who he is, but it's a frightening international situation. Are you at all confident, do you have any thoughts on whether the Obama people, and whoever you think he's going to name at State and in the Pentagon, do you think that they have what it takes to understand reality when it hits them in the face?

GERTZ: Absolutely not. That's the biggest problem. We're going to see what his policies will be by the people he chooses. I point out in the book that one of his key advisors was a guy named John Hollum, who was one of the most appeasement oriented arms controllers during the Clinton administration who basically tried to extend the anti-ballistic missile treaty to cover short-range missile defenses, which horrified most of the people in the Pentagon, who said, "Look, we need defenses against short-range missiles." So that's the kind of thing we're going to see. We're already seeing differences emerge with the Obama transition people and the Polish leader on needed missile defenses in Europe.

RUSH: Bill Gertz, I appreciate your time. It's always nice to talk to you. The name of the book is The Failure Factory: How Unelected Bureaucrats, Liberal Democrats, and Big Government Republicans are Undermining America's Security and Leading Us to War. By the way, two more questions before I have to go to the break. What war, where's the war going to be, and is there any way that this can be stopped, is there any way we can deal with this?

GERTZ: Yeah. I think the biggest threat facing the country is a future war with China. The Chinese are building up their military forces on a war footing, they're cranking out new submarines like sausages, and our leadership is basically in a delusionary mode by claiming over and over again that there's no threat from China, and that is projecting weakness, which is going to lead to some miscalculation down the road, I predict, in the not-too-distant future. The solution is we need tough policies. We need to project peace through strength. We need to get back to the Reagan principles of conservative national security policy.

RUSH: Well, we're going to have to wait on that for a while because Obama clearly does not hold those views to be compatible with his own. Bill, thanks very much. I appreciate it.

RUSH: "Auto Makers Force Bailout Issue -- The auto-industry crisis is forcing a broader debate over how far the government should go to prop up ailing industries, as the Bush administration resists Democrats' request to use part of the $700 billion financial-rescue fund to aid Detroit's three struggling car makers. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, in a letter Saturday, formally requested that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson consider giving 'temporary assistance to the auto industry' using money originally appropriated to shore up the banking system. The Democratic lawmakers said federal aid should come," get this, "with 'strong conditions,' such as requirements that car makers build more fuel-efficient vehicles, and equity stakes for the government so taxpayers could profit if the companies recover."

(snorts) Do I need to translate this? Reid and Pelosi are saying to the Big Three, "You let us have financial stake in the companies. You let us design the cars. You have gotta make more fuel-efficient cars!" This is what, in part -- it's not the sole reason but this is what in part -- has led the Big Three to the problems that they have. Do you know that their businesses around the world are thriving, General Motors and Ford? I'm not sure about Chrysler. I think it's true for them, too. In China... The favorite car in China is a Buick. In Europe, they make all kinds of General Motors and Ford cars, and people buy 'em left and right. One of the reasons is that there aren't as many restrictions on mileage and CAFE standards and all this other gobbledygook that people who have no idea about building cars and designing them have forced on the domestic production of US automobiles.

It seems like such a long time ago, but remember when the phrase was, "As goes GM, so goes the country"? Whatever happened to that? What happened to that is that there's no more capitalism in the auto industry. Now it's, "As goes the US government, so goes GM," and Ford, Chrysler and so forth. These auto manufacturers and CEOs are in dire straits, and here come Pelosi and Obama pressuring Bush. "All right, we want stakes. We want ownership! And you better get in gear. You better get in gear making cars we say you ought to make." How many of you want to buy a Nancy Pelosi-designed car? How many of you would hire Harry Reid to design a car you wanted to build? Get serious out here, ladies and gentlemen. But here is the thing, besides all that, that is the most offensive.

Reid and Pelosi said they want "equity stakes for the government so taxpayers could profit if the companies recover." Now, that just insults my intelligence. When they talk about money coming into the government from a situation like this, all of a sudden it's ours. In the normal ebb and flow of Washington day, no money is ours. It's all Washington's, and as I said yesterday, they then start calculating what the government "cost" of every rule in the tax code is. "What's the cost to us, the government, for the mortgage interest deduction? What's the cost to us of having 401(k)s? What's the cost to us of allowing people to have their health care benefits not called income and therefore not taxable?" Government looks at every dollar in this country as its own, and they look at the cost to the government of what your income is, what your taxes are, and so forth and so on.

But now, now all of a sudden if they invest in General Motors and Ford -- and if General Motors and Ford show a profit, and are able to pay back some of the loan -- why, you and I, folks, we're going to benefit. Which is a crock! Taxpayers would profit? Let me ask you a question. Let's say they bail out General Motors and Ford. General Motors and Ford, like Chrysler of Lee Iacocca fame, happen to turn it around and repay the loans all back to the federal government. And then let's assume that the federal government does relinquish its stake in the auto companies (don't count on that, but let's just hypothetically say they do) and all of this profit starts coming back. A great investment the government made in the Big Three!

Is your paycheck going to get any bigger? No! You're not going to see a dime of it. "But, Rush! But, Rush! The Treasury would swell; income would roll in." Right, and what's going to happen to that money? We're going to be so far in debt, it's just going to be debt service. There's not going to be any profit, folks. The government doesn't know how to create profit. The government only knows debt. The government only knows limitless spending and debt. They do not know profit. All they know is how to tax profit. All they know is how to punish profit. All they know is how to set up obstacles in the way of profit. This notion that we, the taxpayers, might profit if the government bails out the Big Three and that somehow we're supposed to go along with this on that basis, insults my intelligence.

But, hell, it's over anyway, because the Big Three auto CEOs are on their hands and knees, and they're saying, "Not only will we build more fuel efficient cars -- not only will we do that -- we will agree to limit CEO pay." The CEOs of the Big Three have agreed. They've really, literally bent over, grabbed the ankles, and said, "Okay, you give us the bailout and we'll go along limiting executive pay in the auto industry." That's how desperate they are to get the goods. I remember when the focus in this country used to be on the private sector. In the good old days, what was good for GM was good for America. Now we're told, "What's good according to the Treasury Secretary is good for America." The singular focus on Washington is the problem.

Do you know the market is down 267? The Obama recession continues, and why is this happening? 'Cause there's no stability! The markets are frozen waiting for Paulson to say something. The Treasury Secretary has all the power here. The markets are frozen because they really don't know how fast Obama is gonna embark on his own destruction of the US economy, via his tax increases. There is so much government interference, there is so much government control, there is no incentive to plan for next week if you're one of these businesses -- unless you're desperately trying to stay alive by asking the government for a bailout, then you're trying to get it next week. But there is no incentive to plan for much, the next five years out. We have a situation where the federal government is Daddy and all these corporate entities are now Junior, and Daddy is trying to figure out what Junior's allowance is going to be, or if he is going to be given enough of an allowance to go buy the car.

Meanwhile, Junior has no clue what's coming his way, so he can't go buy the car. He can't go borrow it, can't rent it, can't do whatever. So Junior is sitting around waiting for Daddy to make up his mind, and Dad is sitting there getting drunk every night with all the money he's got, trying to figure out where it's going to go. And you got Obama calling him every night saying, "This is where I want the money to go. This is where I want you to send it, and I want you to do it before I'm inaugurated." So think of yourselves as Junior; think of the government as Daddy; and you're sitting around and you're begging for an allowance. Your allowance could be to pay your mortgage or to give you a house or to fill your gas tank. We have Veterans Day. Maybe we can find a day to salute those in the private sector who used to be leaders in America's pursuit of happiness. I'm serious. We need to seriously consider establishing Capitalism Day so that we never forget what it was.

RUSH: This is from today's website, Politico.com: "Barack Obama promised he would lower taxes for 95 percent of Americans and presumably raise them for the 5 percent who benefited most under President Bush's tax policies. But, remarkably, the most affluent 5 percent supported Obama and that was perhaps the key to his victory last week. This group -- and the rise of a new elite class of voters -- is at the heart of the fast-paced changes in demographics affecting the political, sociological and economic landscape of the country. While there has been some inflation over the past 12 years, the exit poll demographics show that the fastest growing group of voters in America has been those making over $100,000 a year in income." Well, now, hell's bells, folks! What does that tell you about all this rigmarole we've been hearing for six years about how rotten the economy is? We've been living in soup line America, they've been telling us. People are losing their jobs, having to choose between dog food, cat food, and real food; and medicine.

They've been talking recession, recession, recession for six years. They have been talking gas price up, people being laid off, people can't afford to drive as much. You remember all these stories. It was relentless for six years, and yet, now, in the exit polling data, the fastest growing group of voters in America has been those making over a hundred thousand dollars a year. That is superb news, and it's happened in the Bush economy. "We gotta change these policies," Obama says. "We gotta get rid of these policies." "The failed policies of the past eight years," they say. Yet look at all of this increase in income. Get this: "In 1996, only 9 percent of the electorate said their family income was that high. Last week it had grown to 26 percent -- more than one in four voters. And those making over $75,000 are up to 15 percent from 9 percent. Put another way, more than 40 percent of those voting earned over $75,000, making this the highest-income electorate in history."

Now, speaking for myself, this is fabulous. I love hearing this. This is great news, and I'm not surprised. The Bush economy, like the Reagan economy: lowering people's taxes was superb for people, and the economy was roaring for this to be the case. We kept hearing about the failed Bush policies of the last eight years and how we gotta go in there and change all of this, "And by God, we're going to change it and these numbers of people growing their income..." It ain't going to happen. Those people now are going to face Obama's new tax increases, folks. This is going to be choked off; this is going to be shut down. "The poorest segment of the electorate, those making under $15,000, has shrunk from 11 percent to 6 percent over the past dozen years. And those making $15,000 to $30,000 annually -- the working poor -- also shrunk from 23 percent to 12 percent of the electorate." Do you realize the magnitude of these numbers? The poor got richer, everybody got richer, but they were "the failed policies of the last eight years." The failed policies of the last eight years, and the media jumping right along, trying to convince you while you were doing great -- while you were doing well, while you were upwardly mobile -- that somehow it wasn't real. It wasn't happening because not everybody was and you had to be feeling guilty about it.

Journalistic malpractice mouthing the talking points of the Democrat Party, smearing the president, smearing the economy, smearing the military, smearing the United States of America for six years. But I have one more observation about this, and then we'll take a break and get to your phone calls. This group, the rise of the new elite class of voters, all these people now making more than 75, all these people now making more than a hundred, this would seem, ladies and gentlemen -- I say this happily so -- to undermine the pseudo-intellectual conservatives on our side who are arguing that all conservative appeals must be to the middle class. Rebuilding the conservative movement, the Republican Party is going to be a challenge. It's going to be an epic battle and we've got people on our side who think we have missed the boat because we're not targeting Hispanics; we're not targeting Wal-Mart voters. We're not targeting the middle class, and we're not targeting them the right way. We actually have people calling themselves conservatives who say what we need to do is just be like Democrats but not as bad. We need to go to these voters and tell them what we, running government, are going to do for them, middle class voters -- Wal-Mart voters, whatever the categorizations these intellectuals on our side are talking about. When in fact, everybody is more upwardly mobile than anybody knew!

This whole business of class politics, it gets confusing. You know, it makes me want to just abandon all this class politics. I hate identity politics and I hate class politics, because we are all Americans. I don't like, "We gotta go out and get the Hispanics, though, Rush." There's a way to get Hispanics. We can get African-Americans. We can get women. We can get everybody with a set of core principles that we do not abandon that benefit everybody regardless the damned color of their skin or their gender! We're all Americans, for crying out loud. And now we got people on our side who want to get into class politics and identity politics and come up with a portion of our agenda that targets this group (say it's Hispanics) or this group (say it's the working poor) or gotta go get this group: one-armed amputees on West 14th Street in The Village. I mean, however they want to get this down pat, we gotta go do it. Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Broad principles that apply across the board: conservatism, liberty, capitalism, free markets, property rights, national security.

It's not tough. But I'll tell you, until a leader emerges in the arena of electoral politics, we're going to have all these pseudo-intellectuals on our side wandering all over the countryside telling us they've got the brilliant answer to what went wrong -- and let me tell you something. Their candidate is who lost! Their ideas, these pseudo-intellectuals on our side. McCain made every move possible for Hispanics, right? Did he get them? He did not. They don't even have the guts -- these people on our side, do not even have the guts -- to stand up and say, "Okay, my candidate didn't work and my ideas didn't work." Because these pseudo-intellectuals who want to get into class politics and look at Americans like liberals do and see a group there and a group there and a group there; and come up with a government plan for that group, a government plan for that group.

They got that campaign, and we saw what happened to it -- and the tragic thing is we could have beaten Obama. Obama could have been beat. You look at the percentage of Republicans who stayed home. Have you seen that in the exit polls? There's so much to mine from these exit polls. Twenty percent of conservatives voted Obama. The same percentage of Republicans, but a lot of Republicans just stayed home. This was not a record-turnout election. We had people calling here throughout the campaign, "I don't care what you say, Rush, I'm staying home. I'm so mad; I'm not voting for any of them. I can't vote for Obama. I'm not voting for the Republicans," and they stayed home. Which is tragic. Obama could have been beaten. None of this need have happened.

RUSH: You know, we need to look at Oklahoma. Did you see the election returns out of Oklahoma? "McCain got 65.6 percent of the vote in Oklahoma, the highest state percentage for him in the country, even though Democrats hold an edge in voter registration by about 300,000 votes. The GOP candidate swept all 77 counties, repeating George Bush's feat four years ago against John Kerry. No Democrat has won a presidential race here since Lyndon Johnson's landslide in 1964." When I saw this, I said, "Now, what's different about Oklahoma other than the people that live there, what's different?" I asked myself today, "Do they have early voting? Do they allow registration and voting on the same day? Do you need an ID?" And isn't it interesting, the GOP for the most part -- they have a Democrat governor, David Boren -- the GOP for the most part runs the state, and this story says the Oklahoma state economy is in good shape, Oklahoma is not in trouble at all, 65-and-a-half percent voted Republican.

So I looked it up, folks, and here is what I found out. You could not register and vote on the same day in Oklahoma. Voter registration ends 25 days before Election Day. You can visit your county election board or mail in the form. Deadline is Friday, October 10th to mail in your vote. An ID was required to vote. When you register to vote in Oklahoma, you'll receive a voter ID card from the election official. You need to bring that card with you, your voter ID card when you go to vote. If you lose or misplace your ID card you get a new one by contacting the county elections official. Cards are not issued during the 24 days before the election. They did have early voting in Oklahoma on the Friday before the election; not 30 days before; not 25 days before. They had early voting on the Friday before, Friday, Saturday, and Monday early voting from eight a.m. to six p.m. Now, it sounds like Oklahoma has elections the way the whole country used to have elections. No early voting, you had to have an ID, no registering and voting on the same day.

This map show the countries which went for Obama (blue) and counties that went for McCain (red).

In the past, we have had a handful of holidays to honor a few individuals after time had passed and time had evaluated their place in US history. Not so with Obama; people want to honor him right now, even though he has done absolutely nothing but get elected.

A week or so ago, I said that Obama owes the media big time, and we might see some subsidizing of the media. This was Rush’s comment a few days ago:

RUSH: So now credit card companies want their share of the bailout pie, and Big Auto wants its share. It isn't going to be long before Big Media asks for a bailout. In fact, TIME Magazine today is asking for volunteers for buyouts. I kid you not. Isn't that just fabulous? And what happens if nobody volunteers? Which liberal journalist will be first? I thought they were into sacrifice -- they've been wanting us to sacrifice for the longest time. But anyway, TIME, Inc.'s biggest magazine has put out the call for at least 83 volunteers to quit, to take buyouts, according to memos and staffers at the company. I think TIME should just apply for -- hell, the whole newspaper industry should just call Paulson and say, "We want some of the bailout money." That will really tick me off! It's bad enough that I'm paying my credit card bills and some people aren't, and we're going to bail them out. If they start bailing out the Drive-By Media... That won't go down.

The media is still schilling for Obama. Recent poll, “Are you willing to wait for awhile for your big tax break from Obama?”

I think that this lack of a tax break is going to be open-ended, extending throughout Obama’s reign.

It is shocking that this story was not to be found anywhere in the media before Obama was elected.

As you are probably aware, there is more pollution in China than anywhere else in the world (perhaps the universe?). However, global warming and rising oceans to be blamed upon rich people in rich industrialized nations. How long before this becomes the opinion of the left as well? I’d say, about 3 years ago.

I have had a number of people on welfare and section 8 housing move into houses which I worked for decades to be able to afford. In the UK, Welfare mom moved into £1 million house.

Conservative Review
Issue #49	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	November 16, 2008