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“Instead of setting up some nationalized health care system, suggest that any state, city or county can organize their own free health care system and see how it goes.”

FoxNews also has a 5 part special on the presidency and television. which has been quite good so far—it plays Saturday nights. Last Sunday was Clinton and Bush; this Sunday, it was all about Kennedy and Nixon.

I think that I have stepped into a parallel universe; this is a Democratic Congressman who makes perfect sense:

I do not recall who I heard this from, but an economics expert (probably talking to Neil Cavuto?) explained how the economic indicators for economic improvement are evident now. I forget which ones he mentioned, but it was an increase in purchase of certain types of raw materials and good by factories and businesses, which usually signals an economic upturn. He suggested an upturn by February. It seemed reasonable, and I am sorry I don’t have the economic indicators at my fingertips. However, we have ot factor in Obama and his approach to the economy, which could keep us in an economic slump for several years.

If gas has not gone up by March or April, new federal gas taxes will be imposed by the Obama administration. This will take gas back up to about $3/gallon, meaning the potential upward swings could be over $5/gallon over the next few years. By the way, when was the last time that the government said, “You know, we are collecting far too much in federal taxes here; we’re going to back off a little.” Environmentalists and Obama (if we are to take him at his word) don’t like that we just keep pumping gas into our cars and driving all over the damn place. Especially if we drive SUV’s. We have to break our addiction to oil (not my opinion), and one approach is, make it cost prohibitive. Bear in mind, as all of this happens, we have the potential for putting the price of gas around $1.50–1.75/gallon by drilling and keeping the gas tax the same.

[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]

#1. Republicans, who took a thumping election day past, have begun to go into self-examination. Proponents of gay marriage, who took a thumping in California and elsewhere, have taken to the streets. It is not okay with them that the people have spoken.

#2. Generally speaking, the cabinet will line up behind their president and support him. This is why is would be difficult for a cabinet member to run for president (which Hillary wants to do in 2012). However, if you want to undermine a president or leak damaging information, what better place to do it from, but in the cabinet? [Rush observed this]. What can Obama do? About a year and a half before the 2012 election, publically fire Hillary for undermining him and the interests of the American people [my thought].

#3. Rush observed: Why did Catholics vote for Obama in large numbers? The press kept hidden Obama’s very pro-abortion stance (favoring partial birth abortions and favoring killing babies who are accidentally born alive when they should have been born dead). Had this been made clear throughout the media, Obama would have lost a lot of Catholic and Christian votes.

If you will recall, almost 100% of the Democratic primary debates covered popular issues like Iraq (get out now) and Health Care (we want it to be free). I do not recall a single debate which asked the Democrats to distinguish themselves from one another when it came to abortion.

Cyber attack on the Pentagon computers. Before any war, either directly against the US or one which would involve US interests, there will be a cyber attack on our defense system. This is how it is done. You may not know this, but there is a lot of animosity between mainland China and Taiwan. China is a totalitarian government and Taiwan—which China sees as theirs—is a free society. Although I have lost contact with one of my friends in Taiwan, there is no telling how Chinese-Taiwanese relations stand at this moment. To be fair, if there was really a serious cyber-attack on the Pentagon, I doubt that we would actually know about it. Furthermore, I understand that there are two levels of security in the Pentagon computer system, and the higher level has never been breached. However, that does not mean that the attempt to break into our system is false.

Are you counting up all of these potential threats? Every week, there are 2 or 3 new ones.

Aren’t we lucky to have Obama handling foreign affairs? This is why Obama will keep Robert Gates on as Secretary of Defense. There needs to be at least one adult in his cabinet who is not an ideologue.

So far the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports 63 record snowfalls in the United States, 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month.

It's clear now that the earth has been cooling for the past decade, to the sorrow of the special pleaders and despite everything Al can do about it. The solar cycle peaked, the sun is quieter, the sunspots have faded and everybody but Al is cooling off.

I know a lot of liberals who have completely bought into this global warming thing; I often wonder when will they let it go.

At the end of the previous year and at the beginning of this year, newspaper after newspaper ran stories about the dire shape of our economy, using the words depression and Great Depression excessively. This was done back in 1992 and it convinced enough people that we were in dire economic straits, even though, it turned out that, after Clinton had been elected, there had been a significant growth for that period of time.

Don’t get me wrong—I do not want to minimize the economic situation that we are in, but there are certain numbers that you need to keep an eye on every time you read your newspaper and they tell you that things are good or bad.

1. Unemployment: this is the most significant number of all for any nation. At one time, 2–3% indicated that we were in good shape; today, because of the many welfare and unemployment benefits which are available, 4–5% essentially indicates full employment. From talking to two Great Depression survivors, those who had jobs during the Great D did fine.

2. Buying power: this is much harder to measure, and someone needs to come up for a measure of national disposable income. As long as planes are flying, retail stores are selling, ebay and amazon are making money, restaurants have customers, and ball fields, movies and concerts have patrons, we are in good financial shape. This means that people have extra money to spend and they are spending it.

3. Home-loan Interest Rate: Historically, 3–7% is pretty good. Anything approaching (or exceeding) 10% is bad.

5. Business Growth: 0.5–4%/quarter economic growth is good. 2–6% annual growth is good. So far, in the Bush administration, there has been one quarter of negative growth. Graphs which are seasonally adjusted appear to be much more erratic than the unadjusted GDP (gross domestic product).

6. Stock Market: Although the various averages for the stock market are extremely important and affect the portfolios of those who invest in the stock market, what came before is more important.

When newspapers are interested in shaping your opinion, they will run many stories about these things:

200. Some economist says that we were expecting one set of figures, but we got a different set of figures. For instance, if an economist says, “We were expecting a 4.2% unemployment rate, but it is 4.5%. Holy crap!” The reverse is true as well. “Better than expected [whatever]” is equally meaningless.

201. A story about how Charley Brown is not doing too well; or about how Charley Brown has climbed out of a deep economic hole.

202. Any story like those above with the words depression or economic recovery prominently featured.

I mention these things because the mainstream media acts as if the Bush economy was the worst on record and they will, in the future, continually tout the improvements in the Obama economy (or, if it is obvious that no improvements are occurring, then they will blame Bush for the economic situation).

As Rush has so eloquently pointed out (along with others), is Obama could stop the bleeding tomorrow by declaring, “No new taxes and we will extend the Bush tax cuts for at least 4 more years.” He hasn’t and he won’t, for several reasons. First of all, no matter what a Democrat promises, he isn’t going to cut taxes. He might cut a check to people, but no cutting taxes. John Kennedy cut taxes; but that was a long time ago. Today, Kennedy would be a moderate Republican.

There are two views as to why Obama won’t do this. (1) He wants the economic chaos to be great when he comes into office, so people will be more desperate. I don’t think this. I think the problem is (2) Obama just does not understand the market system, the economy or running a business. You would not hand Obama a gun and tell him to go after terrorists (he’s probably never shot a gun before); you would not hand him the keys to the plane you’re being flown in (yes, I know there are no keys), because he does not know how to fly. But, we have given him great power and authority over the economy and he does not really understand it.

I believe that Obama is going to pull and FDR and experiment with a variety of government programs. Karl Rove said that, whenever Obama is off-script, he will often revert to “share the wealth” type statements. One of his big proposals is a myriad of government social welfare jobs. If memory serves, there were about a dozen categories. FDR did the same thing. People needed a job? He taxed more, and then made up a government job. However, unemployment was sky-high throughout FDR’s reign.

One of the most basic concepts of taxation is, you lower taxes for the rich, and they pay a higher percentage of the overall tax bill. Tax revenues increase. One interviewer asked Obama about this, and he was surprised to hear it, and then said he would still go through with his tax hikes because that is more fair.

The problem is, Obama believes a lot of the socialist stuff that he has been taught. He would have gotten this at Harvard. Wright’s church was about “economic justice,” one of the tenants of liberation theology (which Black liberation theology is an offshoot of), and that means “spread the wealth.” It means that those in society at the bottom have gotten a raw deal and the only way to make things right is to take money from someone who is rich and give it to them.

Having been a liberal, I believed that too, at one time (to a lesser degree). However, I have seen for myself, firsthand, again and again, how welfare and government handouts stifle individual initiative. I have seen how it becomes a lifelong crutch for many people.

In any case, it should be fascinating. Higher and higher taxes, more and more government intervention and bureaucracy, a worsening economic state, and a press which loves Obama, so they are going to always talk about the good economic numbers (like today, they would be praising Obama because the gas prices are so low).

Eric Holder is another Clinton retread, and, as I have pointed out before, I have no problem with the candidate of change simply bringing back Clinton people. Change was a meaningless slogan, so I hold nothing against Obama for simply going back to the future. That approach is far better than him putting Ayers in as, for instance, secretary of Defense.

The problem with Holder is, he was intimately involved in the pardoning of Marc Rich, who was a fugitive wanted for fraud, racketeering, and trading-with-the-enemy charges, but granted a pardon because of the intercession of his ex-wife, who was a generous donor to Clinton's library and legal-defense fund.

There were 16 FALN terrorists who, as far as I understand, never requested a pardon, but were pardoned anyway by Holder.

He also was involved in the pardoning of Susan Rosenberg and Linda Evans, Weather Underground terrorists.

Although Bill Clinton deserves the lion’s share of the bad rap for these 3 sets of pardons, a man with a clear moral compass would not have participated.

However, here is the kind of pap the mainstream news will serve up about Holder:

If you cannot explain an investment vehicle in less than a minute to someone with an IQ of 100 or so, then this is probably too complex for a market investment. It should be either be heavily regulated or outlawed.

If an investment vehicle does not result in a business or group of business being invested in, then that investment vehicle should be outlawed. For example, my understanding of credit default swaps, based upon a 60 Minutes show, appear to be little more than people betting on the market. Their money is not actually being invested in the companies which they are betting on. It seems like this kind of activity should be strongly regulated if not outlawed altogether.

California does not have all of the nutcase. County-level prosecutor Texan Juan Angel Guerra, love child of Keith Richard and Michael Richards, has indicted Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales for their culpability in the alleged abuse of prisoners at club Gitmo.

(I was kidding about the love child part; if you watch either video, you will see what I am talking about).

Here is one of the many ways that you distinguish between a conservative and a liberal. There are about 50,000 different meeting/dating/mating sites on the internet (I have no idea how many there are) and millions of various organizations which hook you up with a variety of clientele (specifically for Democrats, Republicans, Asians, gays, etc.).

EHarmony was started by a Christian, I believe, and their claim to fame is that you fill out a lengthy questionnaire and are matched with people based upon areas of compatibility beyond the usual, “Wow, you’re really hot.”

Here is how a conservative would react if they noticed that eHarmony was not serving gays: (1) they would go to another web site that did or (2) they would recognize a gap in the market and set up their own site, gayHarmony.com.

Here is how a liberal reacts: sue them. Class-action suit. That’s justice! It does not matter that there are websites devoted strictly to gays hooking up with gays; they sued.

EHarmony settled, and eHarmony is apparently setting up a separate site for gays.

To me, one of the most corrupt functions in Washington is for some company or organization to get money from taxpayers and then to turn around and use some of that money to support candidates which will help them get more money. FNMA and FHLMC are examples of this.

Chris Dodd has had his own fingers in the mortgage pie, so Tom Scott, was set to interview Dodd. First, his producer did not tell him the proper time for the interview and he almost missed the interview time for this reason (he showed up early, and the interview apparently had already begun). The producer shut down the interview part way through, and Scott was fired.

Tom Scott went for Chris Dodd’s throat (politely). “Prove me wrong, Mr. Dodd, release the information.”

The interview was done 3 weeks ago, but Clear Channel did not release it, since it was not newsworthy. However, the interview was circulated by the internet, so Clear Channel finally aired the interview.

Tucker, on one of the political Sunday shows, explained that, if people being unable to pay their mortgages is the problem, then government ought to just give them the money to pay the mortgages (or work out the terms, etc.).

This woman reveals not only a complete misunderstanding of economics, but the typical liberal approach to economics: reward bad behavior (taking on a mortgage you cannot afford) by taking money from those who exhibited good behavior (taxpayers who pay their mortgages). For anyone reading this who has had a mortgage, you know that there were some months that you struggled to pay that mortgage. I recall with the second house that I bought, eating a lot of beans and rice as well as carrying my lunch to school in order to save 50¢ a day.

Somehow, Tucker thinks that, if irresponsible individual homeowners are bailed out, that will fix the economy.

The conservative viewpoint: reward good behavior (or, at least, leave them alone) and tax bad behavior. One of the best approaches to people who walked on their mortgages was for Uncle Sam to tax them on the amount that the mortgage company lost (considering that as income for the former homeowner). Believe it or not, some people reconsidered letting their houses go back when they found out that it could cost them money to do so (and Uncle Sam always gets his money).

This is a fantastic article which I just read, written by George Will earlier this year, speaking of an economics professor who explains free markets and pricing, using a pencil.

The student's economics professor, Ruth, rather than attempted to lead her class to an understanding of prices, markets and the marvel of social cooperation, held up a Dixon Ticonderoga No. 2 pencil and said: "No one can make a pencil."

Nonsense, her students think—someone made that one. Not really, explained Ruth. Loggers felled the cedar trees, truckers hauled them, manufacturers built the machines that cut the wood into five-sided portions to hold graphite mined in Sri Lanka, Mexico, China and Brazil. Miners and smelters produced the aluminum that holds the rubber eraser, produced far away, as were the machines that stamp TICONDEROGA in green paint, made somewhere else, on the finished pencil.

Producing this simple, mundane device is, Ruth says, "an achievement on the order of a jazz quartet improvising a tune when the band members are in separate cities." An unimpressed student says, "So a lot of people work on a pencil. What's the big deal?" Ruth responds: Who commands the millions of people involved in making a pencil? Who is in charge? Where is the pencil czar?

Her point is that markets allow order to emerge without anyone imposing it. The "poetry of the possible" is that things are organized without an organizer. "The graphite miner in Sri Lanka doesn't realize he's cooperating with the cedar farmer in California to serve the pencil customer in Maine." The boss of the pencil factory does not boss very much: He does not decide the prices of the elements of his product—or of his product. No one decides. Everyone buying and selling things does so as prices steer resources hither and yon, harmonizing supplies and demands.

2 issues ago, I commented on McCain’s campaign mistakes; Kathy took a slightly different viewpoint:

I was talking about this with my hubby last night, he heard someone on the boob toob say McCain ran a bad campaign & started down that road but I stopped him because I disagree, here is my take on it: John McCain didn't lose because he ran a bad campaign, he lost because the majority of voters in this election made the wrong decision.

I'm not even going into all of the reasons why the decision was wrong because we understand here why it was wrong (we have already counted the hundreds of ways!). But I hold each & every person who voted for him accountable because it was apparent through the whole race who was better suited to lead this country- and if anything it should have been even MORE obvious by the end. No excuses! Biased press coverage? Bull. How come we and the other 57+ million voters were able to see through the crap & find the real story on this guy?

The fact is that the Obama voters were blind, ignorant, stupid, gullible, flaming liberals, racist, lazy, bitter or any combination of the above. That video of Jeremiah Wright ALONE should have ended his campaign, any white person who belonged to such a hateful organization of any kind would have been tossed out in disgrace right then & there and we all know it. I could go on & on but my point is it was obvious from very early on- if you only took the time to look up their backgrounds & went by that ALONE you should have been able to figure it out.

So I'm not buying that line no matter who says it, this was not McCain's fault- he did a great job in the debates & through the whole campaign, he had very few missteps. His pick of Palin was pure genius. If you are putting anything in writing that assigns blame in this, that is where I strongly suggest you put it- my opinion only! As someone mentioned here already, you can't fix stupid. And there is obviously a lot of it in our country today because the population is going negative to truth in massive numbers. You don't have truth of God & you buy the lies of the world, pure & simple. Election 2008- great visual aid!

I stumbled across this your tube video (below) just now. I investigated and learned that a large unit of US military, reporting back after combat in Iraq, has been assigned to Northern Command, an arm of the Homeland Security office. This is the first time in recent times that the US Army has been deployed on American soil. In almost every case; the presence of the military signifies the possibility of martial law. Usually the National Guard is called out to enforce martial law, and a highly trained and combat seasoned force is overkill in the extreme.

I personally am not reading much into this, but some of the videos about this are really out there in the twilight zone, even inciting revolution. I sorted through some of them, and had a couple laughs, but let me tell you...these people are extremely glib and persuasive. Their videos have been viewed thousands of times, and a portion of those viewers, the brain dead, went their way with some very wierd ideas in their heads. I'm a doctrinal believer, and some of it really got my attention!

Until some crisis evolves, and those men are sent in to police American civilians, I will assume that they exist because of an elevated terror status, possibly for the election, yada, yada....

What troubles me is that these measures were taken in the near proximity, time line, to coincide with the bailout. The fact that a respected representative like Brad Sherman says these things to a convened Congress is very ominous, indeed. He is not known as a fringe alarmist. If it is true that he was warned that martial law would be declared if the bailout was not signed, there is a distinct likelihood that those military assets were deployed, and ready, to deal with a participated uprising by outraged citizens who opposed that bill....85% of us.

I fervently hope that this is all folly, overactive imaginations, but it won't hurt to watch carefully. With things as turbulent as they are, one spark could ignite a massive chain reaction.

Christians, who take the scriptures seriously, are about as happy about an Obama presidency as a pig is a bacon sandwich. Stoked we ain't. And it isn't because Barack is black. Personally, I think it is great that our nation has a black president, and I say this officially ends all the "oppressive white devil" blather. Yep, no mas "blanco el Diablo," por favor. We have now "evolved."

This means Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton can formally zip it. I think that's why Jackson was crying last Tuesday night ... he done. A black man is now the most important person on the planet, and it's not Jesse! Plus, Jackson's on tape saying he wanted to cut Obama's balls off, and now Barack's going to spread Jesse's wealth. That'll make a grown man cry. So close, Jackson, yet so far away.

Back to the church. What concerns Christians who are governed by the scriptures, and not Oprah, are Obama's liberal-to-the-core stances on abortion, marriage, socialism, freedom of speech, big government, taxes, guns and his associations with Marxist radicals. That's what freaks believers who actually believe, and not, I say, not the levels of melanin in Obama's epidermis.

As a believer, here's how I'm trying to deal with this: If God is omniscient then ... uh ... he knew this was coming; if he is omnipotent then ... hello ... he allowed this to happen; and if he's still omnipresent (and I'm pretty sure he still is) then he is still with us.

So, essentially, providentially, we got what God wanted us to have. Time will tell whether or not He's propping us up for a major national butt whuppin' or our tricky God is going to bring a back door unexpected blessing from someone most Christians assume God would never use.

Now, if we truly follow "Hey-soos," then we're commanded, not suggested, to respect and pray for those who have authority over us. We cannot pick and choose which texts we're going to obey and disobey when it comes to Christian conduct. I wish we could, because I'd like to slap the snot out of my neighbor who blares techno music from his balcony at 4:00 a.m., but alas, I can't.

"Honor," biblically speaking, in Greek, according to Yahweh, means not to be a braying d-bag like Al Franken, and "pray" for our leaders denotes all kinds of prayers, not just the "now I lay me down to sleep" stuff. Matter of fact, for a type of prayer that gets all the attention of Michael Moore's personal Gutbuster DVD, check out James Adams' book War Psalms of the Prince of Peace. This is an interesting book on a certain kind of biblical entreaty commonly utilized by Jesus and the saints in the Old and New Testament. I guarantee you have never heard these prayers prayed, preached or sang lately in your churches. Google it, get two copies (one for you and one for your pastor) and get back with me on how they have spiced up your prayer time. Our nation could depend on it.

Now back to the issue of honor. Christian, you don't want to mimic the unhinged loons on the left who sport Bush Derangement Syndrome with an equally obnoxious Barack Derangement Syndrome, do you? Also, just so you do not misinterpret what I mean when I say "honor," I'm not talking about wearing buttsmacker lip balm. True honor means we show respect and ... I said AND ... oppose, reprove or rebuke Obama when we think he's wrong. The Christian is commanded to do this if he or she truly loves someone. We just gotta make sure we do it with dignity and don't sound like the nasally, nerve-gratingly nasty demon toad lady named Janeane Garofalo.

Christian, are we really surprised McCain got McDusted? What did we think was going to happen in this election? Did we really believe McCain was going to become president in this TV-addicted, American Idol-addled culture? Huh? We can't run a guy who ticks off his base and looks like Uncle Fester - hero or not - against an electric Tiger Woods who has a billion bucks and a huge cult following. Haven't we learned anything from Dancing with the Stars? Leachman was destined to lose to Lucci.

Speaking of Palin: To Fox News' Carl Cameron and the McCain campaign punks who are dissing Palin, you dingleberries are truly pathetic.

What's next? Are you going to spray-paint old people at the mall? Drown some kittens? Pull the legs off spiders? All of you are a disgrace and are not worthy enough to unlatch Palin's pumps.

Finally, my Christian hope is this: Hopefully now the church will officially get off its backside and go look for its dust-covered bible it uses to read and believe. After we find our forsaken sacred text and once again peruse its pages, I hope there is widespread and heartfelt repentance for whizzing on its precepts. In addition, I hope that conservatives, after having had our butts handed to us, will turn our attention to a search and rescue mission for the baton that was lost when Reagan left office, and then attempt to hand it to someone on the right who has more unction than that of a hinge.

Trust me on this; it is not political, but this is the coolest link (it is a live webcam and 20,000-50,000 people are watching this right now; if all you see are photos, try it again in 20 minutes):

12 fairly vocal Obama supporters had a test of their knowledge of what they had just voted on. The video is quite enjoyable. Just about all of them knew about Palin’s pregnant daughter and the $150,000 worth of clothes. So, they did have some knowledge, and the media was certain to get that out there. Most of them knew that Palin could see Russia from her front porch (she didn’t say that, but Tina Fey did). On the other hand, few of them knew who Barney Franks was or even Harry Reid. One or two knew who Pelosi was. Most did not know which party controlled Congress.

Zogby was hired to do a poll, and they polled 512 Obama supporters on these and other questions. The percentages are also found on that page.

The point is, these people are not necessarily stupid. They knew some things which the press put out there again and again and again. They knew negative (but unimportant) stuff about Palin. However, stuff that might have been seen as negative about Obama or Biden; or even who controlled Congress, the media sort of kept that under wraps.

The person who instigated this is John Ziegler and he has gotten a lot of anger heaped on him for this video. Here he lists some of those who have attacked them, their columns and his answers:

This next one, I am having a tough time believing; Obama has chosen for his counsel Gregory Craig.

• Elian Gonzalez's father - Craig represented the father who demanded the return of his son after his estranged wife died trying to take Elian to freedom. Most people saw this as a thinly-veiled publicity stunt from Fidel Castro, attempting to embarrass the US. The dispute got resolved when Janet Reno ordered an armed assault on the house where Elian's family in the US provided him a home.

• John Hinckley, Jr - Craig presented and won the insanity defense that allows Ronald Reagan's would-be assassin to spend weekends with his family now.

• Kofi Annan - The former Secretary-General of the UN hired Craig to defend his interests in the Volcker Commission probe of the Oil-for-Food scandal, which put billions of dollars into Saddam Hussein's pockets while providing cash for Annan's son, his deputies, and some allege Annan himself.

• Pedro Gonzalez Pinzon - A Panamanian legislator wanted for murdering an American soldier in 1992. The Dallas Morning News demanded that Obama force Craig to drop the case during the campaign, but no report of whether he did is easily available.

This was a fantastic week for Rush. Some of the best shows that I have heard him do.

Ladies and gentlemen, you should know that all of a sudden now the Barack Obama transition team is trying to lower everybody's expectations. David Axelrod (who ran the campaign) and Robert B. Reich are out there saying, "Look, we're encountering problems worse than perhaps at any time in American history since FDR." My reaction is, "Well, you're telling us he is FDR! You're telling us he's Lincoln. You're telling us he's JFK. You're telling us it's Camelot. So what the hell is this lowering expectations crap? You can't do that. You got elected on lowering the sea level and making everybody love us and unifying everybody." Lowering expectations? Reich said it could be three years, by the way. Three years up to five. It's not worse than what Reagan inherited, folks. I don't care what anybody says, it's not worse than what Reagan inherited. Reagan didn't go out there lowering expectations. Barack Obama said he could unify the world! It's not time to lower expectations now that he's won. He should start doing what he said he could do: unifying. He should start explaining the reality of the situation in the auto industry: their employees, their retirees, their suppliers.

By the way, how many of you people are in favor of bailing out hedge funds? A hedge fund bought Chrysler! Chrysler is privately owned. Do you know who runs that hedge fund? John Snow, the former Treasury secretary (or at least he was in charge of it). Cerberus. Now, the CEO, Bob Nardelli, this is a soldier and a warrior. They tried to destroy this guy's life over the course of his career in the auto business and other places. They're trying as hard as they can here, but where's Obama? He had the fixes for all this stuff. He can send signals. Reagan sent signals during his transition period to the Iranians: "Don't mess with our hostages. Don't you dare mess with our hostages." Where's Obama? He needs to fill the void here. People are waiting on him. They're not waiting on Bush, and they sure as hell aren't waiting on Pelosi and Reid. He went around the world! He went around Europe and the Middle East while campaigning, having private meetings, saying anything he wanted. He was trying to arrange troop withdrawal deals when he was in Iraq.

If this guy is a true leader, where is he? He can at least project his image, his vision. Who would object if he did? Nobody would object. Obama is voting "present" right now. Barack Obama is voting "present." This is his track record: Avoid the tough things as long as you can; vote "present." This is a time to do something. Look what Pelosi did to the market yesterday. It was up 200 points, then they went on television with Reid and the rest of the gang. They announced the auto deal fell apart, bammo! They started issuing orders and instructions to the auto companies, and, bam! We end up down 400 yesterday.

I'll tell you what. He's backing out so that none of this touches him. That is the plan. It's time for Obama to step into the conversation. He's sitting on the sidelines out there and he's making himself out to be phony. Everybody voted for change, unity. How long will it take them to become disappointed? Well, this is going to be the scenario, I fear, for the four years. They're going to enact the agenda they want on their timetable, independent and without concern for what is happening elsewhere in the country. For example, there's no way -- there's no logical reason to even talk about raising taxes right now. He wants to do it. There's no reason to talk about nationalizing health care. He wants to.

RUSH: They know they must manage and lower those expectations, CBS 2 Political Editor Mike Flannery reports. A top economic advisor to Obama had a glum warning for the rest of us Thursday morning: Neither the job market nor the stock market will be turning around any time soon." Here is David Axelrod, the campaign director for Barack Obama, last night in Chicago on CBS 2 Eyeball News.

AXELROD: We are inheriting a, um, array of problems unlike any that any president has faced, maybe since Franklin Roosevelt --

AXELROD: -- in 1932. It's not going to be easy, and it's not going to be quick. One of his great strengths is he's never too high, he's never too low, he's very focused.

RUSH: Ronald Reagan inherited problems in 1980 that were far worse than the problems we have today, not that these won't replicate the problems of Jimmy Carter, but until we get to interest rates at 14%, unemployment at 23% or whatever it was, and everybody being told to wear sweaters, I can't see -- I mean, to compare themselves to FDR. And they knew what was coming, they lifted everybody's expectations on purpose. They played The Messiah game. Here is former Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h, also yesterday in Chicago on the incoming Obama administration.

REICH: This may be a long haul. 2009 is going to be a very, very hard year. Some economists are saying we're not going to get out of this for two years. Others are saying it's going to be three or four, maybe five years. We all have to be very careful about the expectations that we are putting on this man, our president-elect. If we all assume that it's going to be the first hundred days, we're going to be disappointed.

RUSH: What the hell is this? I'm serious about this, I'm not trying to tweak you Obama voters, but I know that you're out there. By the way, you Obama voters may not know, Robert B. Reich served in the Clinton administration and David Axelrod ran Obama's campaign. I mention it because exit polls of Obama voters show that they know diddly-squat about anything. Obama voters are the new Rio Linda. Rio Lindans have IQs three times as high as Obama voters. We know this. Exit poll data, not mine. Now, we are not going to let these people get away with lowering expectations like this. We have to lower our expectations? Promises were made, Obama. What was this mindless chant at that creepy acceptance speech? "Yes, we can, yes, we can, yes, we can," and now all of a sudden it's become "no, we won't, no, we won't, no, we can't." Expectations were set, Senator Obama, promises were made. And, by the way, your buddies are still making promises. You're Lincoln, you're FDR, you're Martin Luther King all rolled into one. You're the reason the world loves America again and you haven't even assumed office.

Obama said that he was the one we were waiting for, that he was going to lower the seas, fix the earth's weather. He was going to transform America. He could have stopped the dramatic erosion of the stock market a week ago, if he wanted to. All he would have to do is say that he's going to suspend his tax increases, just give some indication that there is going to be stability in government when he takes over, and you can watch this bottom out and start to rebound, but he's not going to do that because he is going to raise taxes, he is taking advantage of this crisis. Everybody got upset with me when I was telling them that he wants this crisis, that he's thriving on this crisis. Let me just play for you Rahm Emanuel again Tuesday night in Washington, DC, at the Wall Street Journal's CEO council. Here is Rahm Emanuel basically saying this crisis is made to order for the Obama campaign to advance their agenda.

MANUEL: You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that, it's an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before. This is an opportunity, what used to be long-term problems, be in the health care area, energy area, education area, fiscal area, tax area, regulatory reform area, things that we had postponed for too long that were long-term are now immediate and must be dealt with. And this crisis provides the opportunity for us, as I would say, the opportunity to do things that you could not do before.

RUSH: So Tuesday night you got Rahm Emanuel in Washington going, yeah, yeah, baby give us this crisis. A crisis is a terrible thing to waste. So whereas we couldn't get national health care because it was too big a step, now it's going to be easy 'cause people are panicked and they want solutions right now, and we want to raise taxes, and we want to regulate even more, we want to control education even more, and this crisis is going to give us the opportunity to do so and that's why Obama is not going to come out and offer any words of encouragement to the stock market or the economy in general by offering a promise of stability when he takes office. This volatility is going to continue because nobody knows what's going to happen, and there are great fears. The stock market, the greatest historical plunge, the largest historical plunge in the stock market postelection has now occurred after the election of Barack Obama, it is down 20%, and that doesn't count how much it was down prior to that, anticipating Obama's election.

So now we've had all these expectations. He was going to lower the seas; he was going to fix the weather; he was going to transform America; he was going to unify everybody. And now they're saying, forget that, forget that, you heard Reich. It could be two to four years of this misery. They have no answer. So now that Obama, for the first time -- this is important -- for the first time in his life, is responsible for something. He's the one lowering expectations. He was a community agitator. Now he's a financial market agitator. Our expectations for this country and our economy -- you know, I never have been able to understand why it is that the left wants to continue to trample on this whole notion of American exceptionalism. They don't believe it. And they got elected on that basis. Maybe because we didn't have a candidate who believed in it, either, or wasn't able to talk about it that well, but here these guys are actually telling the American people that voted for them, hey, hey, hey, drop all these messiah expectations you had. We're not going to get this fixed. We're in for the long haul. This is going to be really, really, really bad.

And it need not be that way at all. This is the United States of America. If you just get Barney Frank and Chris Dodd and Harry Reid and Pelosi, get them out of the way, cut some taxes or at least say that the tax rates that we have now are going to be maintained, the Bush tax cuts are not going to be tampered with, give some stability and let the people who make this country work begin this economic rebound.

RUSH: Oh, great. Okay. Well, it's great to have you on Open Line Friday. You're up first, and you know what that means.

CALLER: Oh, I know Rush, I'm going to say something that's probably not so respectful, but I don't know why you got your shorts in a knot over this Obama and backtracking and Robert Reich. It doesn't matter what he does. He's going to be the best president we've ever had, barring none because there are too many people who have too much riding on this. He's the first black president. They will not let him fail.

RUSH: I didn't think so. But I must tell you, Mr. Snerdley thought that you were.

RUSH: Well, you're right. I had a famous journalist who was writing a book send me a couple questions yesterday afternoon asking my thoughts on a couple things. He gave me a couple questions, he said, "How long is it going to be before the Drive-By Media turns on Obama?" I said they never will. They've got too much invested. He is too big to fail. They have made too much about this, he's The Messiah. They got him elected, they think, this is historical, first black president and so forth. They've got four years to blame Bush for everything that goes wrong during the Obama four years. So, yeah, I know what you mean.

CALLER: And, you know, I'm Italian, I'm a hundred percent Italian, and in the summertime my skin get very dark. So, you know, I may not be black enough to attack Obama, but in the summertime I'll call back and say this again and make it really work.

CALLER: But, you know, he's black. That's the end of it. It's like anything else, when you have people who are in a job, who cannot perform the job, but they are of color, they get preferential treatment.

RUSH: No, no, in this case it's not. It's far more than that with Obama. Sure, the fact that he's the first African-American president is major factor, and that's what, as far as the media is concerned, makes his candidacy historic. That's why it didn't matter who he is, what he is, what he's accomplished, which is nothing, it didn't matter what his experience is, which is dubious, because here was an opportunity for an historical achievement. What you have to remember is that most of the Drive-Bys that have big influence grew up in the sixties and they were informed and influenced by the civil rights battles back then and they have trained the younger Drive-Bys. This election was about a lot of something else, too. The Drive-By Media lost their monopoly in 1988. This was a chance for them to prove that they could still move public opinion and make a candidate of their choice win. Now, how did they do it? They did it by hiding every bit of information about Obama that was damaging.

The same people that were all bent out of shape about spying on terrorists are the some people that encouraged government officials in Ohio to investigate a private citizen who couldn't do anything to anybody, Joe the Plumber. Government computers were used to investigate this guy, and all he did was ask a question, and the Drive-By Media joined in trying to destroy Joe the Plumber because he represented a threat, since Obama had made a gaffe and admitted to everybody what his ideology is: spread the wealth. Call it what you want. Socialism, collectivism or what have you, they had to protect him. And so you're right, it goes much more than just the skin color. What it also has to do with is full-fledged, undiluted, raw liberalism. These people have been thwarted ever since Ronald Reagan. They have been dying to amass power in the White House and Congress that they will have for years, like FDR did, so that they can implement a pure leftist agenda, and Obama is the vehicle for that. And as such, he's too big to fail. The Drive-By Media will not abandon him. They will coach him, but they will not abandon him. They are starting to get concerned, however.

From the Chicago Tribune blog -- thanks, by the way, Mary Ellen, for the phone call -- from the Chicago Tribune blog, it's called The Swamp, William Neikirk, "Obama Should be in White House Sooner." I cannot tell you how amazed at myself even I sometimes am, being on the cutting edge of societal evolution. Yesterday I began the chant, "Where's Obama?" And so today in the Swamp at the Chicago Tribune, "'Obama Should be in White House Sooner' -- President-elect Barack Obama is having to wait more than two months before taking charge as the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression rages. He has said little while a lame-duck president and divided Congress try to cope." You go to the end of the story, it says, "It seems strange to have Obama sitting there in Chicago for so long with so much going on. It leaves the lame-duck government in place entirely too long. Dec. 1 might be a much better inauguration date in times like this."

Not all times, just in times like these when we have Obama in waiting, and then the New York Times today: "Looking to Washington Amid Turmoil, So Far in Vain." Obama, in resigning from the Senate before the latest session, has missed an opportunity to exert leadership. They, too, are asking, "Where is Obama?" The Drive-Bys want him there. And then let's go, ladies and gentlemen, to the audio sound bites. The Drive-Bys, as I said, they're starting to get a little nervous about where's all the change because all they're seeing is Clinton people being appointed to the cabinet. Here is the Today Show today, a montage of David Gregory's report about the Obama transition.

GREGORY: Well, you remember the campaign slogan for President-Elect Obama that he was going to turn the page in Washington. Well, critics and allies alike are looking at his appointment so far and complaining that he seems to be stuck on the same old chapter. A lot of his most stalwart supporters, a lot of liberals in the party beginning to wonder whether this is what they signed up for, whether they're getting enough change as he promised.

RUSH: Well, he's not even there yet and he's lowering expectations. He sent Axelrod and Reich-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h out to lower expectations, saying it's going to be a big problem, two or three more years at least, we're in deep doo-doo here. And now they're worried about the change. But they're going to find ways to cover for this because he's too big to fail. Another one. This was on MSNBC's 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. David Gregory the host speaking with Michelle Bernard of the Independent Women's Forum. The question, "Now, this is a line they've been threading all week and last week, too, is they've named these Clinton veterans to positions of prominence, and of course if Hillary becomes Secretary of State, doesn't get any more prominent than that, the Clinton era is back."

BERNARD: Absolutely. This is, I believe, could be a socially very significant problem for the brand-new Obama administration. I mean, think about it, we just had the election on November 4th. Most of us are talking not so much about the president-elect but about former President Bill Clinton and about Hillary Clinton. The same thing happened after Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination. All of the media was talking about Hillary Clinton. You know, there is so much drama surrounding the possibility of Hillary Clinton becoming the next Secretary of State that for anyone who ever suffered Clinton fatigue, they now have it in a very major way.

RUSH: And then this morning on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, the guest is Michael Isikoff of Newsweek. An unidentified caller from Georgia says, "I understand that the various arguments made for needing people with prior experience. Even so, I was hoping we would see new and fresh faces with The Messiah. And I'm starting to fear that we won't get the change that we were hoping for." Now, this is an Obama voter. And here's Isikoff's reply.

ISIKOFF: Look, I think that is a very legitimate point that, uh, you're gonna hear, uh, more and more. Um, uh, Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State; Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff; Eric Holder as Attorney General. These are all people right out of -- Jim Steinberg, who is being talked about as national security advisor, although that hasn't been confirmed yet. But these are all people right out of the Clinton administration, the second Clinton term in particular, and, you know, when Obama campaigned as an agent of change. Uh, uh, so I think if you see a cabinet and White House staff overstocked with -- you know, with Clinton retreads, um, you're gonna hear criticism about where's the fresh thinking, where are the fresh faces that we had hoped for when we elected Barack Obama?

RUSH: Well, here you have it. So there's some rumblings here of disquiet over The Messiah not fulfilling this promise for change. But they will end up covering for him 'cause he's too big to fail. But here we go. I know it's very unseemly and it's really sometimes not very classy to remind people I told you so. I told you, there's no change. He's a hack liberal Democrat. Barack Obama has less experience than any other Democrat that's ever been nominated, if you look at who his friends are, who his alliances are, the things he's written about and says he wants to do, he's a hack leftist, almost radical. Why anybody is surprised -- there's no change. Liberalism isn't change. We've had liberalism since FDR. We've had collectivism since FDR. We're just going to get more of it. That's going to be the change. And we're going to have ostensibly a president who can speak and people are going to be comforted by the fact that he doesn't sound like an idiot, even though they're going to ignore what he says.

RUSH: I want to go back to this Rahm Emanuel bit because another thought hit me last night about this. This is Tuesday night in Washington at the Wall Street Journal's CEO council, Rahm Emanuel, the new Chief of Staff for Barack Obama.

EMANUEL: You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before. This is an opportunity. What used to be long-term problems -- be they in the health care area, energy area, education area, fiscal area, tax area, regulatory reform area -- things that we had postponed for too long that were long-term are now immediate and must be dealt with. And this crisis provides the opportunity for us, as I would say, the opportunity to do things that you could not do before.

RUSH: Now, basically again what Emanuel is saying here that this economic crisis is the best thing that could ever happen to us because no crisis should ever go to the waste. You never want a serious crisis to go to waste, so we're not going to let this go to waste. We're going to let this get as bad as it can get and that will give us an opportunity to fix everything. If these guys ever do get national health care done, folks, do you realize if they get national health care done, the prospect of rolling that back, i.e., conservatism, that is going to be a major challenge. This is going to have to be stopped. National health care is going to have to be stopped. If it happens, that's going to be a long time rolling that back, even amongst all the failures that will result from it and all the harm. I know we haven't rolled back Social Security, that's the big one. If they get that done, we are in heap, heap big trouble. Here's what Emanuel is saying. This crisis, this economic crisis, your suffering, your anxiety, that's going to help us get our agenda forward.

Now, can you imagine the reaction if John Boehner in the House had said that a recession would help Republicans in 2010? Can you imagine if any Republican came out, imagine if Sarah Palin said, "We've gotta take advantage of this crisis. You can't let a serious crisis go to waste. This crisis is an excellent opportunity for us to have it demonstrated just how rotten the Democrats are." Can you imagine what the media would be doing to any Republican who was applauding, eagerly anticipating economic tumult and chaos? And it's not the first time. I remember back in 2002, Dick Gephardt in the House of Representatives, every time the stock market fell during the dot-com bubble 100 points, he'd clap and say, "Oh, boy, that's another seat in the House of Representatives for us."

RUSH: The Reverend Sharpton, ladies and gentlemen, was on the O'Reilly Factor last night; and the Reverend Sharpton was asked about the latest Al-Qaeda video referring to Barack Obama as a "house negro," and they asked the Reverend Sharpton what he thought about this.

SHARPTON: To now come at this point and try and define, that they are going to be the decider of who are the heroic blacks and to use such a derogatory, racist term against the president; I think it is an insult and something that is absolutely denigrating and racist, and I don't care who says otherwise. I would take that position.

RUSH: Now, folks, is it me? Am I so out of touch here that this sounds absurd? Who are we talking about here? Al-Qaeda has murdered 3,000 Americans inside of 45 minutes to an hour-and-a-half; they have beheaded American journalists; they have committed all kinds of atrocities all over the world. And now the American left is finally upset at Al-Qaeda (and Al Sharpton particularly) 'cause how dare they say something racist! They can kill whoever they want, whenever they want, and we'll do our best to understand it. But when they start using racist language, why, that's the last straw! This reminds me of another story, this guy that -- I hate to bring up bad memories, but -- Polly Klaas in California, the little girl who was kidnapped and raped and murdered. They found the guy that did it, and they brought him to trial, and they found him guilty; and at the sentencing he turned around and flipped off the journalists. He flipped 'em the bird, and that's when they started hating him: only when he flipped him off. They were sympathetic to the guy. This is the same thing. But let's go back, February 13th, 2007, Tennessee State University Nashville, Reverend Sharpton during a Q&A. An audience member says, "Do you believe that political leaders like Rice and Powell are viewed as 'house negroes' by other African-Americans?"

SHARPTON: I don't know that they're viewed as "house negroes" in the term. I believe that they are in the house and rest of us are in the field. (laughter) So it would not be an inaccurate description.

RUSH: There's the Reverend Sharpton describing Rice and Powell basically as "house negroes," but when Al-Qaeda calls Obama that: Why, this is intolerable! We can't put up with it!

RUSH: All right, audio sound bite, let's see, five and six. The Drive-Bys are finally offended by Al-Qaeda. We have a montage of various Drive-Bys talking about Ayman al-Zawahiri's latest tape.

COOPER: President-elect Obama gets a message from Al-Qaeda, the language offensive.

STARR: Some of the words in this audio message extremely offensive to the President-elect.

RUSH: This is the "House Negro" line that Ayman al-Zawahiri used. Drive-Bys finally offended. Now, this next one, this is fascinating. This is great. The Drive-Bys on MSNBC have a terrorism expert, and the terrorism experts have totally changed their tune on Al-Qaeda. Now all of a sudden Al-Qaeda is a bunch of backwards Neanderthals in caves, and they have racist hiring policies. The question was asked by Alison Stewart, she spoke with Evan Kohlmann about the Al-Qaeda message, "House Negro," from Ayman al-Zawahiri. And she asked the terrorism expert, "Why is Al-Qaeda putting this tape and message out? It's out now. Why are they doing it now?"

KOHLMANN: Al-Qaeda is trying to counter this wave of Obamania. They are attacking Obama as a symbol of change in America. I think a better question is is that, is Zawahiri here taking a very dangerous step? Because, you know, Al-Qaeda itself has had problems with racism and bigotry within the ranks, and it was only about a decade and a half ago that Al-Qaeda was paying different salaries to its Arab members and its black African members. And the person administering that financial scheme, that payment scheme, is now the number three in charge of Al-Qaeda. He wasn't demoted, he wasn't punished for this, he was promoted. So I think the question is, is Al-Qaeda really in a position to be, you know, spouting off about the evils of racism when clearly they have as much problem with it as anybody else.

RUSH: This is incredible! Do you realize what this dingleberry just said? Think about what Al-Qaeda is. They are a mass murdering terrorist group. Zawahiri comes out with a tape calling Obama the "House Negro." The terrorism expert says, wait a minute, you guys have lost your moral authority to talk about him as a "House Negro" because you don't pay your own negroes what you pay your own Arabs. (laughing)

RUSH: You gotta hear this sound bite again. This is the Drive-Bys all upset about Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri calling Obama a "House Negro" in the latest Al-Qaeda tape. Now, we've got this clown. His name is Kohlmann, Evan Kohlmann, and he supposedly is a "terrorism expert." I don't think he actually knows anything about terrorism. He's just one of these people that grovels to be on television shows and TV shows put him on there, and as a result, he is conferred expert status. I think he is probably a blithering idiot, as you will soon hear. This was from MSNBC last night, DNCTV, and the info babe's question was, "Why is Al-Qaeda putting out this tape and this horrible message about Obama" and the "House Negro"?

Now, as you listen to this guy's answer, I want you to remember who Al-Qaeda is. They murdered 3,000 Americans in one day. They have designs and aspirations to do that over and over again. They have beheaded journalists like Daniel Pearl on camera. They have maimed, tortured. They are a full-fledged, hundred percent terrorist group. So this so-called terrorist expert, Evan Kohlmann, said, "Why would they send out...? The Drive-Bys just offended by this. They're not offended by all this stuff, the terror activity Al-Qaeda does, but they just can't believe that Zawahiri would call him a "House Negro." So have a terrorism expert explain this. And this just convinces me even more I'm living today in the theater of the absurd.

KOHLMANN: Al-Qaeda is trying to counter this wave of Obamania. This is attacking Obama as a symbol of change in America. I think a better question is is that, i-i-i-is Zawahiri here taking a very dangerous step? Because, you know, Al-Qaeda itself has had problems with racism and bigotry within the ranks, and it was only about a decade and a half ago --

KOHLMANN: -- that Al-Qaeda was paying different salaries to its Arab members and its black African members.

KOHLMANN: And the person administering that financial scheme, that payment scheme, is now the number three in charge of Al-Qaeda. He wasn't demoted, he wasn't punished for this; he was promoted. So I -- I -- I -- I think the question is, is Al-Qaeda really in a position to be, you know, spouting off about the evils of racism when clearly they have as much problem with it as anybody else.

RUSH: Folks, who knew any of this? Who knew that Al-Qaeda was paying its black terrorists less than it was paying its Arab terrorists? Who knew this? Who cares? Who would even...? What difference does this make in assessing Al-Qaeda? We are now Americanizing Al-Qaeda. This guy says, "They've got no moral authority to call him a 'House Negro.' Why, he's essentially saying that they need their own affirmative action program before they can tell us or comment on us." (laughing) We've just conferred they're equal with us. We put Al-Qaeda up here on our level. You don't have to worry about their terrorism, but we can ignore them because they are racist, too. These are simply unreal. They've lost their moral authority, this guy says. They lost their moral authority to criticize. This reminded me of what happened during the Israeli-Lebanon war, you know, the border war there back in 2006. Anderson Cooper in northern Israel along the Israeli-Lebanon border. He interviewed the New Yorker magazine's Jeffrey Goldberg, as we go back in time to the archives.

COOPER: I think what's been lost in a lot of this coverage is just how anti-Semitic Hezbollah is in the rhetoric.

RUSH: Stop the tape here a minute. I want... Recue this, now. Hezbollah is part of the cabal that has sworn the extermination of Jews. Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestinians, all these people have sworn they're not going to stop until the Jews of Israel are marched into the sea. So here we have a couple of brainiacs on CNN stunned and shocked at the "anti-Semitic...rhetoric." The words of Hezbollah as they're launching rockets into Israel and killing Israelis, these guys are stunned at the words! They can't believe it, from a PR sense, of course.

COOPER: I think what's been lost in a lot of this coverage is just how anti-Semitic Hezbollah is in the rhetoric."

GOLDBERG: It's absolutely fascinating, Anderson, the anti-Semitism. Uhhh, there's two things that are fascinating about it. One is how embedded in the core of Hezbollah ideology anti-Semitism is. And I don't mean anti-Israel thinking or anti-Zionism. I mean frank, anti-Semitism. The other thing that's so interesting about it is how blunt they are and how frank they are about, uh, their anti-Semitism. They don't hide it. They don't try to mask it in any way. They state very openly to you when you ask, uh, their exact feelings about Jews, which are quite extreme.

RUSH: And these are experts! (laughing) CNN promotes Anderson Cooper as a world-famous worldwide qualified anchor and this guy from the New Yorker is an expert, and they are stunned and fascinated that a group that's openly sworn with their words to wipe out every Jew in the Middle East they can find, they are stunned at how anti-Semitic they are. They are stunned at how they don't hide or even try to mask their anti-Semitism. While they're firing rockets into Israel. This is what passes for the Drive-Bys. Al-Qaeda, by the way, they've blown it now. With this, you know, calling Obama the "House Negro," whatever chance Al-Qaeda had for a bailout, they have just blown it. They were on the road to having some sympathy here, but they've blown it. Now, one more time, MSNBC, the anchor David Shuster (this is late yesterday) was talking to "terrorism expert" Roger Cressey about the Obama "House Negro" message from Al-Qaeda. This is one of Clinton's terrorism guys. This Roger Cressey guy is one of Clinton's terrorism guys, and he was asked the significance of the "House Negro" message on this take.

CRESSEY: It's interesting, David. Al-Qaeda has a big problem on their hands. The United States has just elected a president whose middle name is "Hussein," Barack Hussein Obama. Think how that runs counter to every theme in, uh, Al-Qaeda's diatribes over the past seven years. So what they're trying to do is reestablish the high ground rhetorically, uh, through a series of statements, and this is the first of it. What they're saying, of course, is that Obama's more of the same. They're saying that defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan as Al-Qaeda has characterized them, the reason why Obama was elected. But really, David, uh, the Al-Qaeda machine, the media machine has really made a major misstep here; and I think a vast majority of the Islamic world that has celebrated the president-elect's election is going to look at this message and saying (sic), "What are they talking about?"

RUSH: What are we to conclude from this? I, as a highly trained talk specialist, somebody that can read the stitches on a fastball as well as read between the lines, I think what I'm hearing this terrorism expert say is that our president-elect's middle name has defeated Al-Qaeda. Yet we couldn't use this middle name during the campaign without being called racist, sexist, bigots, homophobes, and what have you. But now, these guys use his name all over the place to show, "Without even assuming office, without even ordering troops to the battlefield, his middle name has defeated Al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda has realized their PR blunder here because so much of the Arab world is so excited to have somebody as president whose name is Hussein, and now they come out in Al-Qaeda, call him a 'House Negro,' that means that Al-Qaeda's lost its standing." I guess Al-Qaeda just has to quit now. They just have to disband. It's over. They have to wave the white flag and surrender, according to this Clinton terrorism expert, 'cause it's over now. Obama has defeated them just with his middle name.

RUSH: "Unemployment..." This is a Goldman Sachs projection. "Unemployment will reach 9%,," it's currently six-and-a-half, "by the end of next year. The economy will shrink in each quarter until mid-2009," said the wizards of smart at Goldman Sachs today. "Their forecasts are lower than previous predictions due to continuing signs of falling domestic and foreign demand, labor market deterioration, renewed tightening in financial conditions and an apparent impasse in fiscal policy pending the transfer of power to the Obama administration in late January." Now, at what point does Washington wake up? I'm being facetious here. It's a rhetorical question. I'm asking it to make a point. At what point does Washington wake up and stop taxing everybody to the hilt? Leave the private sector alone. Leave the American people alone. The people who make this country work can rebuild this economy. In fact, they know it, by the way, because all these promises of further stimulus packages, what are those? The purpose of those stimulus packages is put money in everybody's pocket so they can start spending it. Consumer-led recovery.

Okay, fine and dandy. Get out of the way and let consumers and let the private sector and let the people who make this country work start the recovery process. All this central planning will guarantee that we'll be pursuing misery instead of happiness. There is not a single answer to job creation. There are millions of answers. Jobs come from millions of businesses and individuals risking their money (if they have any) on business ideas that they have confidence in. They've got confidence because they know that what they can do, given their unique talents and situations will work if the environment's right for it. They just need to keep more of their money and have fewer government restrictions. What Washington has to do is get rid of job-killing regulations and reduce taxes so Americans can solve this. The American people can and will solve this if given the opportunity to. It isn't going to be bureaucrats and politicians in Washington. Obama's not going to solve anything. No one person can. Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd. They are killing the US economy bailing this out, bailing that out; government owning a part of this business, a part of that sector.

If millions of Americans are set free after all of this, then millions of Americans will create jobs through innovation, risk taking, and just the natural order of things. It might not be a new way forward, but we should remember one of Reagan's timeless truths: Government's not the solution, government is the problem [an old Reagan quote]. See, this economic crisis was not caused by you or me or anybody else in the private sector. We're sitting here minding our own business, and these people throughout the bureaucracy -- Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the pressure brought to bear on banks and lending institutions on Wall Street and so forth -- the public sector created this problem and it's so damn frustrating to have people think that the very people created the problem are the only ones that can "solve" it. This problem can only be solved by people in the private sector. That's known as the market. The problem we face is that the people that cause the problem don't want to get out of the way. It's the source of their power. They, as Rahm Emanuel said... Grab sound bite number five. We can't play this enough. This crisis is just too great to go to "waste."

EMANUEL: You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that, it's an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.

RUSH: Stop. "[A]n opportunity to do things that you think you could not do..." He's not talking about you. This crisis doesn't afford you any opportunity. He's talking about agenda items of the Democrat Party. This crisis gives the Democrat Party an opportunity to do things they've always wanted to do but haven't been able to do because it was too big a leap. But now with the crisis it's easier to get health care nationalized; it's easier to raise taxes on whoever they want to raise taxes on; it's easier to get all these regulations. He's talking about himself, his party, the Democrat Party and their agenda. He's not talking about you.

RUSH: People have been, as always, patiently waiting. Here is Carol in Parma, Ohio. Nice to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: And I think you're wonderful. I have a question on the bailout yesterday. I wondered what you thought. Do you think it's going to affect retirees' benefits, pensions, you know, insurance and anything?

RUSH: You mean the auto business, the autoworkers? Well, even if -- in whatever plan that comes down the pike, even if, from your standpoint, the worst-case scenario as I understand it, if -- the auto companies are able to off-load some of the pensions, the federal government has an agency that buys them, up to a maximum of $50,000 a year. Now, I don't know what your husband or your pension pays you, but if it's more than $50,000 a year and if you happen to lose it, the government will buy it (the government fixes everything, don't you see?) and then they'll make it good up to a $50,000-a-year payoff. I think that's fairly close to being accurate. So I don't have any idea what's going to happen. Well, I do. I do. I know that there's going to be a bailout of some kind. It will happen after Obama is inaugurated. The Obama transition team has actually come up with this prepackaged bankruptcy plan that the government would fund to spare them going through all the hassles of courts and so forth.

One way or the other, the auto companies are going to get a bailout of some kind. They're going to get restrictions of how they must operate, because too many people think the way they're operating now is going to result in their death. So in order for them to get the money -- which they're gonna get because the Democrats want the unions to not suffer. They want the unions to get the bailout, Jennifer Granholm and the state of Michigan. It will be called an automaker bailout, but it's actually being done for other purposes. I think the pensions are going to end up being protected in this circumstance. I mean, that will be the whole point of the Democrat bailout. Speaking of all this, though, there's an interesting story. You may have heard this already, that Wal-Mart is showing profit. Wal-Mart's anticipating a huge holiday season, where very few other retailers are. I just saw on cable news. I saw another story: "Christmas shoppers will delay even further this year waiting for deals and bargains on holiday gifts," and so forth. Really? That's news? They do it every year! Everybody's looking for the best deal they can.

What is this? Every year some turkey's being mistreated somewhere, you know, the week before Thanksgiving. McDonald's profits are up. "Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, unexpectedly announced today that its chief executive will retire in February and be replaced by the head of its international division. The Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer said Mike Duke, 58, vice chairman of its international division, will take the reins from Lee Scott, 59, effective Feb. 1. Duke also becomes a member of the board of directors immediately. The international business is the company's fastest growing division. Profit rose 11% during this quarter while US profit rose 7%." Wal-Mart international profit up 11%, domestic 7%. You know, you read this story, and it makes you think. We're being told the economy is diving, it's in a spiral, the Democrats are morticians. Wal-Mart is soaring. Now, how can this be? What do you think? By the way, Wal-Mart is on the big enemies list of the Democrat Party.

Now, why do you think it might be that Wal-Mart is showing -- and this is retail, folks. Some of it is food and necessity, but a lot of it's retail. How in the world is Wal-Mart doing this amidst all this horrible, horrible economic news? Why do they remain at the top of the Democrat Party enemies list? Why do they gotta get Wal-Mart? Why do they not like Wal-Mart even thought Wal-Mart is showing the way to prosperity? Well, the questions kind of answer themselves. If you got a private sector firm that can profit while everything the government touches is going to hell in a handbasket even though we have a shortage of handbaskets, you can understand why government would resent them. But I think one of the biggest reasons for this is that they have driven back all attempts to unionize. So this Christmas when you have less money, disposable money -- gas is half of what it was five months ago -- Wal-Mart's offering good deals, and they're showing a profit offering you discount prices. How can this be?

RUSH: Obama has time to send a signal to the military and gays. He didn't have time to deal with the economy. He's got little time to help with the automakers and their bankruptcy, and I guess this is more important than sending a signal to Wall Street. "Obama to Delay Repeal of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.'" This will not sit well in certain sectors of our society. Remember, he was going to get rid of this lickety-split. This had to go! "Don't ask, don't tell" in the military, had to go. Nah, he's going to have to delay that. So he can send a signal to the homosexual crowd. He can send a signal to the military. But for some reason he just will not send a signal to Wall Street about what his plans are. He doesn't want the stability.

RUSH: Now, I was under the impression, because I listened to Senator Obama during the campaign, that he's only going to raise taxes on the rich, 'cause they've got it. They don't need it. They have more than they need. They can afford it. So he needs to raise taxes on the rich and cut taxes on the, quote, unquote, "middle class." So he wants economic recovery to bubble up from the bottom or whatever, which is very tough to do when you're at the bottom and you're broke. I don't know how you bubble anything up when you're broke, but that's not the point. I have a story here from AP-Obama, and it's about three Colorado ski resorts being "forced" to lay off workers. (gasping) It's from the Durango Herald. We read the Durango Herald every day here. It's part of our show prep rotation. (laughing) It might embarrass them so much they go out of business.

"This ski season is shaping up to be the worst in years, said a Canadian ski-resort company that has announced it has laid off workers across a dozen resorts, including three in Colorado. Vancouver-based Intrawest Corp. hasn't said exactly how many workers it let go, but company officials say the weak economy is squeezing the ski business." Now, who is it that goes out to Colorado and skis? No, it's not the poor. The poor are working in the hotels. The poor are working in the restaurants, the, quote, unquote, poor. The poor are working at the ski resorts where the rich are not going because the economy is cutting into their disposable income and they think that they've got tax increases coming.

"Colorado's Steamboat Ski & Resort, for example, is more than three hours by car from Denver. Because of that, most visitors fly in and stay several days, while smaller resorts closer to big cities have an easier time surviving a poor economy. 'They're not as dependent on out-of- state and international visitors,' Dave Belin, director at Boulder-based research firm RRC Associates, told the Rocky Mountain News. In a survey of skiers conducted online last month, RRC found that most skiers planned to ski as often as last year. But they planned to cut back in other ways -- on lodging, lessons and other extras such as traveling a long way to get to a ski mountain." See, I thought tax increases and other trivial income killers amounted to chump change to wealthy Americans. But this is what I told you, and this is the main reason I said we gotta support Senator McCain, in fact, because of his tax policy was right.

Every time you hear Obama or some Democrat talking about raising taxes on the rich to help the little guy, it's the little guy that gets shafted, and this ski resort story is a classic example. So we have to take the wealthy down a notch or two. How could that hurt anybody? Why, that couldn't hurt anybody! We gotta take the wealthy down a notch or two. They give up a little chump change, Obama can spend it on welfare checks for those who don't pay income taxes, and life is good for everybody! Except raising taxes is not chump change to rich people. That was just Obama shooting his mouth off. It turns out when the wealthy are pummeled by bad economic news of any kind they pull back, too. Nothing is chump change, and so now they're going to visit ski resorts less. And when they, the people that pay the freight by going skiing go less or don't stay overnight in hotels and so forth the ski resorts, three of them owned by a Canadian firm, are laying off the little guy, the guy who's supposed to benefit from tax increases on the rich.

You remember after the Exxon Valdez ran aground at Prince William Sound in Alaska? That big Alaskan oil spill up there? It was just tragic. At the same time it was comical to look at people with bottles of Dawn dishwashing detergent and paper towels trying to wipe the oil off the rocks. But they were good people, and they were stewards of the earth, and they really thought they were helping.

Of course there were a couple otters. They caught a couple otters swimming around in all that oil and they were waving their little paws at people: "Oh, it's so cute!" So they salvaged a couple otters and they took 'em on shore, 75 grand or something to clean up two of them, $150,000 or some such thing to clean up two otters. The day came when they were going to reintroduce them to the Prince William Sound environment after it had been cleaned up, mostly by Mother Nature, and they let the kids out of school and they had bands down there and they wheeled these otters down in cages on wagons; and they had this big ceremony applauding themselves for the great work they had done in saving the otters and their shoreline; and they let the otters loose; and the kids are cheering. "Yay, yay, yay, yay!" The otters are swimming out and doing what they do.

You know, people think that they're waving at them as they're on their backs, their little paws up there -- and out of nowhere came an Orca and just swallowed them both, in one bite! The Orca just outta nowhere: bam! A killer whale, and the band stopped playing, and the kids, "What happened, Mommy? Mommy, what happened? What happened?" People were covering their eyes, couldn't bare to see this. A hundred and fifty grand down the drain, and the source for the story was the insurance company that paid for the clean up of the otters.

RUSH: All this talk about Obama's cabinet, Eric Holder as Attorney General, Penny Pritzker at commerce. When you read a news account of the things Penny Pritzker's been involved in with her bank, this woman belongs more in jail than she does -- (interruption) well, 'cause she's hip deep in this subprime mortgage business with a bank that she controlled in Chicago. I'm stuck here, I'm kind of torn because, well, this is what happens when you lose elections. When you lose elections the opponents get the name of the people they want to be in key positions. We can sit here and bellyache about it all day long, it isn't going to change anything. We can maybe cause the Obama team to rethink some of these nominations, but even so -- (interruption) yeah, Eric Holder, he had a very detailed involvement in the Marc Rich pardon. Who's surprised? Who in the world is surprised that leftist radicals would nominate people like this to the cabinet? It's sort of flapping your gums over spilt milk. What do we expect? In fact, the only thing about this that's a surprise, quote, unquote, is the fact that the cabinet appointees in this whole administration is set up to be the Clinton administration third term with Obama running it.

It's a bit of a challenge for me to get all fired up about Penny Pritzker and Eric Holder and some of these other people. What are we supposed to do about it? I just don't want to sit here and bitch. I just don't want to sit here and whine and moan. That's not going to change anything. It's not going to have one effect on who he nominates. It's not going to have one impact. "Okay, but, Rush, you have a duty to inform." All right, I'm going to tell you. I can tell you everything you want to know about these nominees. I can tell you it's going to be bad, and then what do you do? March on Washington? Ask Obama to govern as a conservative? What are we going to do? I'll go through it all, but I gotta tell you that it's a little childish to sit here and whine and moan about the kind of people that the most leftist, radical, inexperienced Democrat ever elected to the presidency is going to appoint. This is what happens when they win and we lose. But to me the more important question here is, "Where is Obama?" He's naming his cabinet, but he's hanging back. Where is he? The auto chiefs, they're sent out of town without getting their bailout. I told you yesterday they weren't going to get it.

The Democrats don't want to be on the fence. They are hoping to slough this off to Bush, lame duck Bush. They know people are not in favor of this bailout. They don't want their fingerprints on it, Democrats in Congress. They're either going to wait for Obama to have his fingerprints on it, or they're going to try to get Bush to do something, because we're in such a state of emergency. Now, Mitt Romney had a New York Times op-ed, and basically he says, "Let 'em go under, let 'em do Chapter 11 and let 'em reorganize and all this. This is the only way this is going to get fixed." And that's the argument, do you bail 'em out and let 'em continue to go and so forth. And, really, ladies and gentlemen, the stock market's plunging. Barack Obama could solve a lot of this with one tiny little paragraph. He could fix a lot of this just by saying that he is going to postpone any tax increase whatsoever. If Obama wanted to stop this right now, he could. He could say this: "Given current economic conditions, my administration will not seek nor will I sign legislation that raises taxes for the foreseeable future. Further, I will ask Congress to cut corporate and capital gains taxes in the first 30 days of my taking office." Markets would soar, the recovery would begin, and hell might freeze over. That's how unlikely it is to happen. If he would do something like that, but why doesn't he do it?

The question then becomes, why is Obama absent here? Well, you might be saying, "Rush, he's not president yet." Don't give me that. He's the president-elect. Bush is the definition of a lame duck. Obama is the guy everybody's looking to. He had the campaign that was based on unity. He had the campaign that was based on preventing all this stuff, or looked at another way he had the campaign that promised to fix all this, to make sure there would not be suffering, to make sure there would not be any misery. He was going to run a campaign and an administration that was going to see to it that everybody felt love for everybody else, that there wasn't going to be any animosity, there wasn't going to be any anxiety. We were going to have a genuine utopia out there. You know me, I'm a free market kind of guy, and I want the market to work. But the fact is, Barack Obama won, and he is my president. He's your president, too. He campaigned on change and saying he could unify people. He said he even could unify the world. He said he would sit down with Iran with no preconditions.

By the way, the news today is that they finally now have enough ammo for one nuclear bomb. One nuclear bomb is all it takes going off somewhere. Now, the Israelis have an important decision to make here. If the Israelis wait until Obama is inaugurated to do something about the Iranian nuclear program, they know that they're not going to have any support from the United States of America in the form of the Obama administration. If they take action now against the Iranian nuclear sites, they have a much better chance of being supported by the current administration in the action that they take. This is serious stuff and we have known this kind of thing was coming. The Iranians have made no bones about where they're headed with this. They basically told the world where to get off, and the world didn't do anything about it. The world didn't have the guts to do anything about it, including us. So, here we are. He said he's going to sit down with Iran, no preconditions.

Why doesn't he sit down with the auto companies? Why doesn't he sit down with their executives, the unions, the workers, the retirees, all the suppliers? Why doesn't he sit down, why doesn't he have a meeting right now? He's Barack Obama. He's the president-elect. He's The Messiah. He's the guy that's going to fix everything. Why doesn't he have a big showboat meeting right now, bring these people together and unify them and tell them how it's going to be when he takes office, tell them what his plan is at least, tell us what his plan is? All this stuff is frittering away right before our eyes, oil price below 50 for a time today. In a way, this is of course good for people and their gasoline prices and so forth. I even heard today some wizard of smart in economics, say, "This could actually help the Christmas season." We just had, what, a record number of jobless figures today, 516 or whatever it was, to have some wizard of smart saying, "Well, yeah, the gas price, that could lead to people having more disposable income and maybe going out and buying more presents, going to more movies." This is where we're at. They're hoping here that because the gasoline prices plummet, that people will have a little bit more impetus to go spend money.

I don't think so. I think they're going to be very guarded with this because they know the price can jack right back up at a moment's notice just like it did first time around. There's so much instability, nobody knows what's happening next. There's so much volatility nobody can make any plans, including consumers. The markets can't make any plans; the banks can't make any plans because nobody knows what the policy is going to be. Where's Obama? This auto bailout business, we're being told it's devastating, going to have ripple effect throughout the US economy and where's Obama? Bring 'em all in, sit 'em down, make 'em understand, tell 'em how it's going to be, offer the fix. He said he was for change. This would be a great example of change, of how government's going to work under him. He could do it in another stadium. He could do a major town hall, some sort of gathering like that. He said that he and his followers agree he's got all the answers.

The people that voted for Obama, I guarantee you, think he's got all the answers, and I guarantee you this, they're puzzled as to why he hasn't done anything. Where is Obama? I mean, he could have a big meeting like the pope does. He could do anything here to show off the same personality and charisma that he exhibited during the campaign. Well, let me answer all this after the break. Of course, I ask these questions rhetorically because Obama is going to remain out of sight on all of this stuff and not have it his problem until it's his problem. In the meantime there's a part of me that thinks the worse it gets, the greater opportunity he will have to enact the kind of agenda he actually wants to enact.

RUSH: Okay, so where is Obama? He's not acting like Abraham Lincoln, that's for damn sure. He's acting like James Buchanan who was slurking away somewhere. Nobody knows where he is because he has no idea what to do. But he does have a plan; and it was articulated Tuesday night in Washington, DC, at the Wall Street Journal's CEO council. The chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, spoke, and here is a portion of Emanuel's remarks.

RUSH: Do you need me to translate this for you, folks, or is this clear enough? We love this crisis! This crisis finally is going to give us a chance to socialize as much of this economy as we can! The effort to get health care nationalized and all these other things that he mentioned were just too long term, too many obstacles in the way. But now this crisis, with people demanding fixes to everything; why, this is going to make it easy for us to radicalize the US economy and the United States government. "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." (laughing) What an opportunity! The crisis is an opportunity, is what he's saying. We have got the Obama team telling you that this crisis is an opportunity -- for them. It is an opportunity for them. So they think your panic and your crisis mentality will make you stand aside while they radicalize, nationalize as much of the economy as they possibly can.

So that's where Obama is. This is the answer to the question. Obama is standing on the sideline, and he and Rahm Emanuel are smiling as things get worse each and every day because in their line of thinking, it enables them to radicalize and move their agenda easier and easier with each passing day. The more of this stuff that gets fixed and dealt with then, by Rahm Emanuel's own words, the opportunity lessens, and we've got more long-term problems to overcome. What is happening here, ladies and gentlemen, is the complete abandonment of capitalism. What you see and hear out of congressional Democrats is a complete abandonment of capitalism. Obama will say and do no differently when he is inaugurated. There will be a frenzy of bureaucratic creations. This first hundred days of his is going to be a doozy. I'm warning you now: You haven't seen anything like this.

And Rahm Emanuel, veritably promises it in his comment Tuesday night in Washington, DC. Obama is gonna name "czars" to head this effort or that effort, legislation passed further regulating the economy, more propaganda about how terrible the free market is, more attacks on corporate executives wrapped in class warfare. FDR did this and Obama's out there saying he wants to experiment with things just like FDR did. He wants to go out there and say, "Well, we gonna experiment, see if this works, if that doesn't work. We just want to experiment." That's what FDR did. But FDR did it the same way Obama is planning to do it. He did it with an air of confidence; he did it with an air of all-knowing confidence which meant everybody went along with it because it sounded like Obama knew what he was talking about, when he has no clue.

By his own admission, he's gonna "experiment." By experiment, let me define experiment. Radicalize as much of this country as he can. You can see it all coming now. All of this is going to be blamed on Bush. All of this is going to be blamed on capitalism, on free markets. They'll call it lack of regulation. They'll call it lack of oversight of all these rich people. "The rich people -- CEOs, Wall Street people, all these people -- they were allowed to run around and screw it up and make the country their piggy bank. Well, those times have changed," Obama is going to say, and the people will stand up and cheer. You have to understand, you have to remember here that Obama's context for analyzing all social and economic matters is socialist. Not once has there been a suggestion about cutting taxes or keep the Bush tax cuts, even. This would do more to spur the stock market and consumer buying than anything anybody could do, and he will not do it for that reason.

[Rush got a phone call from a woman who slipped the real Thanksgiving story into the LA Times (kid’s section)]

RUSH: Here's the basic true story of Thanksgiving. First, here's what we're all taught. We're all taught that the hapless Pilgrims arrived here quite by accident and by luck. They landed at Plymouth Rock and they found this barren place, and they had no clue how to feed themselves. They had no clue how to survive. Basically the first white settlers, they brought with them syphilis and gonorrhea and environmental destruction, racism, sexism, all that. They had such trouble that the wonderful Native Americans -- the Indians, who (unbeknownst to them) were about to be conquered and put into revelations and made into alcoholics by the Pilgrims -- were so overcome with compassion and love for the arrival of these new, weird-looking people that they showed them how to grow food and corn and maize and even told them how to do popcorn. They told them how to slaughter turkeys long before Sarah Palin learned how to do it, and fixed this big feast to share the bounty of the Indians with these stragglers who had shown up and not known where they were -- and that's the "true" story of Thanksgiving as taught in schools. It's not at all what happened.

The Pilgrims arrived, and it was barren, and it was challenging, and there was disease -- pestilence -- as you can imagine. This is hundreds of years ago. William Bradford writes about this. He was the original governor of the colony. They decided to set up a system whereby everybody would be given a plot of land, and then whatever they produced would go into a common store. It was one of the first known experiments with socialism and it was based in all the great compassion and fairness that you would think. "Put in what you do and take out only what you need," and the whole point was that this common store is going to have the fruits of everybody's labor. Everybody is going to go in there and take out only what they need. Well, the problem was human nature reared its head, and a bunch of slackers amongst the Pilgrims realized they didn't have to do anything in order to go get what they wanted from the common store, because other people were carrying the weight, pulling the wagon.

Bradford realized after awhile this did not work. Resentment was cropping up amongst the producers for the non-producers. The non-producers were taking everything more than they needed. They just took what they wanted. They said, "Well, we're entitled to it! I mean, these are the rules."

"Well, nothing says I have to. It just says that whatever is produced is going to go to the common store."

Some of them weren't good at farming. They weren't allowed to specialize. They were just given a plot of land and told, "Here, do what you want."

Some, all they could do is clean up the manure and others were able to turn the manure into fertilized land and grow things. So Bradford finally figured out this wasn't going to work and they reassigned everybody a plot of land and then they said, "Whatever you do with this, you keep. It is yours. And if there's a surplus, you can sell it." That's what ultimately happened, and that's when the Pilgrims began to prosper, and it was at that point that they shared their bounty with the Indians. It was sort of a joint sharing of things. The Indians already knew about popcorn and that stuff, but they shared it. The true story of Thanksgiving, as Bradford writes it, is thanks to God. It was thanks to God for helping them learn the way to survive and prosper when they arrived in this new barren, forsaken, unknown place. Remember, now, this is Massachusetts in the wintertime. There was no Mass Turnpike, and there weren't any department stores and food stores. We can't relate to it. We cannot understand it. So the first experiment in capitalism in the new world, bammo! It went like gangbusters, and that's what Jennifer writes about -- Jennifer James is her name, writes about -- in the Los Angeles Times in the kids' section this weekend.

RUSH: Oh, there's Dingy Harry. Let's just listen to a little bit. You got Schumer up there and Dick Durbin.

REID: -- an agreement, but it's their agreement. Unfortunately, the sad reality is that no one has come up with a plan that can pass the House and Senate and get signed by President Bush, no matter how hard Senator Levin and the others have worked, and they've worked very, very hard.

REID: -- we've all witnessed in congressional hearings this week. The executives of the auto companies --

RUSH: These people have the longest faces, you ought to see, none of them are smiling up there.

REID: -- or the American people that this government bailout will be its last. In light of the importance of this issue to all of us --

REID: -- we have decided that the best way to proceed is to give the auto companies another opportunity to make their case, make their case to Congress and to the American people.

REID: We're requesting that they submit a plan to Congress through Chairman Frank and Chairman Dodd no later than December 2nd.

REID: These two very able men will review the plan and if necessary hold hearings during the week of December 2nd to fully vet the auto industry's proposal. We're prepared to come back into session the week of December 8th to help the auto industry, but only if they present a viable plan that gives us, the Congress, the confidence that taxpayers, the autoworkers, will be well served. In the meantime, it's important we remind everyone.

RUSH: There you have it. That's Dingy Harry laying down the law, the autoworkers didn't do a good enough job persuading them, so they've been given 'til December 2nd to come up with a new plan to submit to Chairman Frank and Chairman Dodd, the architects of the Fannie Mae failure and debacle and the global economic crisis brought on by the subprime mortgage -- oh, Nancy Pelosi. Let's JIP Pelosi and see what she's saying.

PELOSI: -- to this auto industry and to Congress as we go forth. It is all about accountability.

PELOSI: Until we can see a plan where the auto industry is held accountable and a plan for viability on how --

RUSH: That's all I need to hear. Let me translate this for you. The Big Three auto guys come up there and make their case for a bailout. These clowns in the House and the Senate could not come up with a way to get it done to where both sides of Congress would agree with it. So they have now decided to blame the auto execs for not begging enough, so the auto execs have now got until December 2nd to formulate a new plan and to present it in writing to Chairman Frank and Chairman Dodd. That new plan has to contain accountability. Basically what this plan that they've gotta submit has to contain is how they're basically going to turn over the operation of the auto companies to Chairman Frank and Chairman Dodd, to the Congress. You are witnessing right here, it took less than 90 seconds of JIP, 90 seconds of joining in progress, to see the authoritative, authoritarian nature of what the Obama government is going to be.

These guys come up there hat in hand asking for bailout money. I'm sure they bared their souls up there, but it wasn't enough for these people. They gotta come back, they gotta work harder, they gotta beg more, and they've gotta build in accountability, they gotta build in how they're gonna be hurt, how they're gonna be punished. I'm glad we did this. I'm glad we JIP'd it.

RUSH: Folks, this is too good what's going on here. Here's Barney Frank now talking about the auto bailout. Press conference.

FRANK: We put through a bill committing $700 billion of taxpayers' money at risk, although we hope to recover it.

FRANK: The context is this. There is wide-spread didisfac -- dissatisfaction. Not just in the Congress, but in the country --

FRANK: -- with what is perceived to be a failure of the recipients of those funds to carry out the intent that the Congress had. There is a sense that we did not do a good enough job of safeguarding the use of these funds --

RUSH: Come on, Barney! You gave the Treasury secretary sole authority to do with it what he wanted to do. It's too late to start complaining.

FRANK: -- either house of Congress today, which some people might think was a repeat. That's why we need to take time because you already have (slurping) a great deal of skepticism on the part of the public, on the part of the Congress, and in much of the media.

RUSH: All right. And I realize you Obama voters don't know who Barney Frank is, and I realize you Obama voters don't know who Harry Reid is, and I realize you Obama voters don't know who Nancy Pelosi is. (laughing) But these are the people running Congress. During the break, folks, it was fabulous. Harry Reid got up there and he started taking questions. I didn't hear the question, but whatever it was irritated the hell out of him, 'cause he said, "Look, these guys, they flew in here in their corporate jets, and that doesn't send the right signal. It doesn't send the right message. I can tell you this. The people in Searchlight, Nevada, and Las Vegas and Reno, they don't like seeing these CEOs of the Big Three coming in their corporate jets, and none of the rest of the people in the country do, either. Now, they've got to get their act together, and they've got to get a plan, and they've got to get a plan to us. We do not have the votes for the plan that they put forth, and we're not going to make ourselves look bad. The Congress looked bad this week. We don't have the votes. The auto companies looked bad this week.

"They've got 'til December 2nd to put together a plan." You know what this is all about? The reason they are so miffed is that their big constituents, the union thugs (the leaders, not the rank-and-file) they're the ones that want this bailout. This is a bailout as far as the Democrats are concerned to the United Auto Workers and the related jobs that deal with the auto industry, and it didn't happen. So here's Harry Reid running around; he's blaming the auto executive for the failure to come up with a piece of legislation that they could all agree on and pass that would send $25 billion to the auto companies. Now, here's... I'm just dreaming. That's all we can do now folks for the next four years. I'm just dreaming. The only honorable thing that the auto execs can do to save capitalism is to say to Barney Frank and Chairman Dodd and the rest of these people, "Screw you! We're not going to come, bend over backwards for you guys to make you look good and go ahead," and declare bankruptcy. Because anybody who thinks that Chris Dodd and Barney Frank know the first thing about the auto industry, deserves what they get.

RUSH: Here is Dingy Harry. This is the actual sound bite that I heard during a commercial break, and I was describing to you. This is Dingy Harry to the Big Three -- and I know you Obama voters don't know who he is. He's the Senate Majority Leader, and he was giving out orders to the Big Three automakers.

REID: What kind of a message do we send to the American people by having a bunch of failed votes here? We do not have the votes. What happened here in Washington this week has not been good for the auto industry. I know it wasn't planned, but these guys flying in their big corporate jets doesn't send a good message to people in Searchlight, Nevada, or Las Vegas or Reno, or anyplace in this country. We want them to get their act together.

RUSH: Pass the buck. Pass the buck, Harry. It's their fault. It's the auto executives' fault that the Congress could not come up with a plan to bail 'em out. Now, they have to come up with a plan to be bailed out.

[Here’s the problem—union voters make up a big Democratic constituency. I know one union voter who voted for Bush last time and voted for Obama this time because their union was so insistent that Obama was the man to vote for. You break up the unions and you break up this almost monolithic vote].

RUSH: It is sad and funny at the same time. It was predictable, a lot of people did predict it. They were right. What is going on on Capitol Hill today is a testament to the cluelessness of the people in charge of supposedly saving this economy. It is absolutely absurd to watch all this go down. Barney Frank is mad that the money is not being spent to buy out mortgages. He's mad that the money is not being lent by the banks. He's mad that the money is not being used as it should be used. The one thing about this is the central planner that they hired on this -- the central planner, Hank Paulson -- he's just doing what he was empowered to do.

He's in charge. He is a dictator when it comes to this bailout money. They gave him the power. I don't even know why they have the right to call him up there and have him explain what he's doing. How many times have I read to you the preamble, sections 1 and 2, the purpose of the bailout legislation? I don't know how many people have not noticed this, but the Secretary of the Treasury was given 100% power. Isn't it amazing again that these guys in Congress -- the House of Representatives and the Senate who passed this bill, wrote it and set it up -- are now acting outraged that there hasn't been any oversight. They're the ones that are supposed to have been doing the oversight.

So just like Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath, just like any other calamity when a bridge collapses or anything else, the people in charge of it get to set themselves up as spectators; surprised and shocked that this is happening and how come nobody told 'em? -- and they get away with it. The architects of this disaster are now questioning the man they gave total power to run this whole show, as though he's screwing up. They didn't want the hot potato. They wanted to get the credit for signing up and getting the $700 bill out there, but they threw it off on Paulson, and what Paulson basically did is go, "Whew! Now some of my close friends are not going to have sell their houses in the Hamptons and won't have to move to Yonkers."

Basically, what you have here is Wall Street has taken over Washington. Paulson knows it. Everybody else knows it. And these guys are now questioning Paulson as to what he's going to do and he's going up there and taking the heat, but he knows in his back pocket he's got the legislation that granted him total power to do whatever he wanted. Congress is just... I mean, I've never seen such an exercise in self-loathing. It's hard to watch -- and I have been watching it because, my friends, it is my job. I've been watching it. They spent... Have you heard the latest policy from Obamaism? (interruption) Well, there's a whole bunch of them, Mr. Snerdley. But Obama wants -- He talked about this with McCain in the meeting yesterday, "ending corporate welfare" as they sit there and debate whether or not to send $25 or $50 billion to the auto industry.

But yet they're going to "end corporate welfare." We're not ending corporate anything! We're in the business of nationalizing as much of these business as possible. Congress spent the last six years doing what? Blasting the 2002 resolution of force agreement against Iraq that they authored; and if you remember, they demanded a second vote on this. The Democrats were reading the tea leaves going into the midterm elections in November in 2002. The Democrats said, "You know, we're not on the right side of this Iraq thing. The American people are all fired up and want to go in there." So they demanded -- even after they had granted the president authority to use force at the time of his choosing, they demanded -- a second vote.

Tom Daschle and Kerry did, so that they could get on record, be on record to have everybody in the country know they supported this. Yet for the last six years, they've been acting like they had nothing to do with it, like Bush lied to them, like this is a total Bush operation. They wrote this $700 billion bailout bill. Most of them passed it, signed it, voted for it without having read the whole thing. Now they tell us that they are stunned that there hasn't been any oversight? I don't know where the oversight is when you grant the Treasury secretary full power to do with this 700 billion whatever he wants to do with it, because he is empowered here to "ensure the economic security of the American people."

They have expressed extreme disappointment that they passed the Bush tax cuts. They're lashing out at the central planner they created and empowered. Public approval ratings of Congress are at practically an all-time low. And even Congress doesn't seem happy with the decisions that they have been making. This is just a joke to watch them. We've got some audio sound bites coming up, but it is literally a joke. And I tell you, folks, in all candor we could sit here and we could do Will Rogers and we could make fun of them (and we do), but this is quite a teachable moment. Because there's so many people in this country, so many voters, so many average citizens think government is the solution to their personal problems, local problems, state problems, federal problems.

The government can handle it. The government should do something. Every time the government's empowered to take care of a crisis, they make it worse! It doesn't get solved, and yet people continue to somehow buy into the notion that government is the solution to these problems. It's not. The individual entrepreneurs are -- and poor old Mark Cuban, he had it dead on right yesterday at that post at the Huffington Post and he's all upset because not one member of Obama's economic team is an entrepreneur, and he said entrepreneurs are the guys that are going to be the key to the economic recovery. I said, "Mark, entrepreneurs are the targets of Barack Obama." They're the ones that are going to be paying all these new tax increases. They're the ones Obama does...

He wants to limit their ability to "access the American dream," quote, unquote. Of course there are not any entrepreneurs around Obama. He believes that government, central planning is the focus. So many people put their blind faith in the government to take care of things, eliminate problems, and now this is a joke, what is happening with all of these supposed bailouts, what's happening in the states. The city of New York, the mayor there wants people to limit the amount of salt that they use? This is just getting beyond the point of absurdity. It really is. At some point, you sit here and you desperately hope that enough people will realize that when the government says they've got the answers, they don't.

But I've been thinking this for 20 years, and we've had spurts where people have realized it. We always seem to go back to the default position that government can handle it. This is a collection of fools. This is a collection of zombies.

RUSH: These are uncertain times. These are times of great concern. When you don't have any stability out there, when you've got volatility, I don't care how much money people have, there are any number of ways you can lose it. If you're in the muni bond market, what if the issuers of the bond say sorry they're no longer AAA, what did they get rated down to AA or single-A, I mean they can do anything. Look at all the investments that people had in stock and look at the price of the stock, it fell. These kinds of things can happen. The AAA muni bond market is still pretty strong and still pretty solid, but when you have this kind of instability, when you have this kind of incompetence masquerading as a physician fixing what's wrong with you up on Capitol Hill, nobody's confident what's going on here.

This Treasury secretary hasn't the slightest clue what he's doing. Bernanke doesn't know what he's doing. We gave him $700 billion, half of it's been used. Everything we were told was not true about it. We were told we couldn't wait. We were that this bailout had to happen or it was over now and we're hearing the same thing about the auto industry: If we don't get this, it's over. All this crisis stuff. I was thinking the other day, I was watching -- I'm going to name names -- but I was watching a bunch of different business channels out there during the original debate over the $700 billion. I can remember some of these info babes and anchors going on and on and on, sounding just like they owned the companies on Wall Street and owned banks. "We've got to do this. We've just got to do this. I'm talking to X, and I've talked to this person, I've talked to them, we can't wait." These are journalists on business channels. "We can't wait. This must be done. The effects if we don't do this, we don't even want to think about." And so the first vote failed, it took a week or so to get the next vote, everything was chunking along just fine, country didn't go down the tubes, people didn't get laid off, institutions didn't crumble, people weren't jumping out of banks.

By the way, there are some protesters outside Wall Street today, little cardboard signs that say, "Jump, you SOBs." Some people want 'em to start jumping out of the windows on Wall Street. But, look. So we got the $700 billion. It cost $850 billion to get the 700 because they had to give some of these guys in Congress sops, as in pork, to get them to authorize it. So the Treasury secretary single-handedly empowered to use the money, he has given out 200 to 300 billion of it. There has been no noticeable change in the circumstances that warranted the bailout, and in fact, ladies and gentlemen, the original purpose of the bailout, which, among other things, was to buy up these toxic assets, i.e., worthless paper, it was last week that Hank Paulson, the Treasury secretary, the central planner, the single most powerful man in America by virtue of the bailout legislation, went out and had a press conference, "By the way, we're not going to buy up the toxic assets. We need this to bailout the credit card companies," the same day that American Express asked for a bailout for their credit card default and then other companies are getting in line.

So the original purpose -- remember, now, if we didn't do this, it was over. If we didn't do this, the United States of America was finished as we know it. We had all these information people on television, "We've got to do this," when the first vote was taken, the Republicans were not getting on board, these info babes and anchors on some of these business channels were excoriating these Republicans. Remember this? Okay, so the original purpose, buying up toxic assets and freeing up banks and lending institutions to lend, it hasn't happened. We're not going to buy the toxic assets, and they're not lending any money. Instead, we're now bailing out states, credit card companies, maybe auto companies. And the guys who wrote the legislation are having investigative hearings today to find out what the hell went wrong. How are we still a nation? I want to know how we are still functioning, based on what they told us.

So, damn right, Snerdley, there's a whole lot of people, maybe want hands-on suffering, but you don't have to suffer in an exact sense in order to be disquieted about this or a little bit concerned. Because with this kind of incompetence and this

kind of instability, this kind of volatility, you got an incoming administration, and nobody knows yet just how soon further crippling policies will be enacted, such as tax increases, raises in the capital gains rate, nobody who runs a business, large or small, can plan out cost of labor or any other fixed costs for the future because they have no idea what these clowns in Washington are going to do. When we have the private sector of this country having to wait day by day to find out what these muddle heads are going to do with the nation's economy, tell you that there's a lot of instability out there and a lot of people are concerned, and a lot of people are worried about losing what they've got. When you hear the state of New York saying -- I mean, what's happening in that state, what's happening in that city, the ideas they're coming up with to raise money, there are people saying, "Well, what if they just decide to say they're going to take half of everybody's assets, they're just going to take half of everybody's net worth," what's to stop 'em? What's to stop 'em? You can shake your heads and say that's outrageous. Do you know how bad this credit thing is?

These guys have been living on borrowed money and borrowed time for all of these years, personal, business, government. The dirty little secret here, we don't have nearly the capital to underwrite all the debt that has been taken on by people in this country from individuals to businesses to banks, to corporations, to states, to what have you. When we hear that the Federal Reserve loaned somebody $2 trillion two weeks before the $700 billion bailout, they loaned two trillion, we don't know to who, we don't know to how many, we don't know why, and we don't know what the repayment circumstances are, and they won't tell us. Two trillion. The annual federal budget is three trillion. The Fed just loaned -- where did they get it? Cash reserves? It's either going to have an inflationary effect or deflationary, and neither circumstance is good. And now we have all these businesses telling us they're going to collapse if they don't get bailed out. I don't blame anybody for having concerns here over the lack of stability, and when you see what these guys in Washington are doing, and when you take a look at what the mayor of New York and the governor of New York, what their ideas are to raise money, and this idiot, Schwarzenegger, what his ideas are to raise money out in California, while at this time, all these people are still planning on moving ahead with the global warming agenda, which is going to cost people even more freedom and liberty and taxes.

This, to me, looks like the governments, many of them, state, and, of course, the federal government, just trying to take over as much -- we say freedom and liberty; I think they're trying to get their hands on as much money as they can. Remember, their attitude is that all money in this country is theirs. I told you last week, they look at the whole federal budget and they look at what programs cost them. What does it cost them to allow us to have an IRA? What does it cost them to have us not be taxed as income, our health benefits, paid for by employers, what does that cost them? Why do you think they're messing around with 401(k) revisions? They're looking at what all of these tax breaks, incentives, what have you, all of their policies, all their programs, what does it cost them? They're up there plotting ways to get their hands on as much money as they can. And so no matter how much or how little you have, when you know this, you sit in trepidation every day and say, "What are they going to come up with next to take what I've got?" Because one thing we know about every damn one of these people up there, they've got what it takes to take what we've got.

RUSH: I just checked the e-mail: "Rush, Rush, Rush, it sounds like you think the bailout isn't gonna work." It's not. I'm sorry for being so unclear about this. It's not that I don't think it's gonna work, it's that I know it's not gonna work, and the reason it's not gonna work is because Bernanke and Paulson are fighting the market, and the market will always win. The market is the market, and it will always win, and they can't manipulate it. Folks, if anybody had figured out a way to manipulate the market, do you realize there would never be anything other than 100% growth and prosperity for one and all, at all times. If anybody were able to manipulate the market to make that happen, he would be president for life, and then they would clone him, and his cloned offspring would be presidents for life. No government has ever been able to guarantee prosperity. No government has ever been able to fix the market.

The market takes care of itself. And until all of this pressure, all of this desire to manipulate -- and there's more going on here. This is not just altruistic. This is not these congressional leaders and financial leaders trying to save the country. This is a bunch of people trying to use the government's pile of money to save their own bacon. It's no more complicated than that. But when they do that, when they use other people's money to shore up their own businesses, then you see what falls out of that: utter, total chaos. There is no guarantee that any entity, be it a human being, a small business, a large business, or an animal, there is no guarantee that that entity always enjoys prosperity, never encounters problems, and doesn't fail, and never gets fired, or never goes broke. Those things don't exist because every entity sees itself having all kinds of problems, challenges to overcome, some of them are worse than others, some fail, some get killed, some die off, what have you.

This effort to manipulate all this is just gonna make it worse and the people doing the manipulating know it's going to make it worse but to them there's something more important in the short run and that's saving themselves. Members of Congress do it every day to save themselves from decisions they've made. Greatest example is this. Most recent great example is this. They write a piece of legislation, $700 billion to save America's economy, they put one again in charge of it, the Treasury secretary, they give him dictatorial control, total authority no oversight, and today they're doing hearings wondering where the oversight is and why this guy is doing what he's doing and he doesn't even owe them an answer, in truth. He was given total authority to do what he wants.

[To be fair to Rush, before the bailout plan was passed, he pointed out time and time again, dictatorial powers were being given to Paulson; if I understood this, how is it that legislators did not?].

RUSH: I’ve been examining how we dealt with Obama during the campaign and how we dealt with Clinton during the campaign in 1992, and both methods of dealing with both candidates didn't work. Direct criticism of Bill Clinton did not work; Bill Clinton got elected. Direct criticism of Barack Obama did not work; he got elected. For whatever reasons, direct criticism did not work. The question is, we've gotta find a way to be effective here in being critical of some of these dramatic changes that we know Obama wants to bring about.

Now, let me give you a brief overview of some of my ruminations here prior to giving you the, I think, what the effective way to do this would be. As with Clinton, attacks on Obama didn't work. I don't care what -- and by "attacks," I don't mean anything vicious or mean, just attacking Obama personally. "This guy is going to do this; this guy is going to do this. His friends are these. What he said in San Francisco with the bitter clingers. The coal industry, he's going to bankrupt it." It didn't work. I remember in a debate, Obama's reaction when Hillary went after him for his relationship with Louis Farrakhan. He didn't really distance himself from Calypso Louie.

He did, but he didn't. But he did not "renounce" Calypso Louie. Hillary, in the debate, who was doing anything she could here to save her campaign and her candidacy, started savaging Obama's previous statements -- and what did he do? He just sort of laughed. He just shrugged and made her attack look like it was infantile, like she was just some screeching woman just attacking him. He just smiled and he just shrugged, and he said to Tim Russert, "You know, I have to say, I don't see a difference between 'denouncing' and 'rejecting.' There's no formal offer of help for Minister Farrakhan that would involve me rejecting it, but if the word 'reject' Senator Clinton feels is stronger than the word 'denounced,' I'm happy to concede the point. I'll reject and denounce."

He smiled and said, "Okay, look I've said X but if you want me to say Y, I'll say Y; and if you want me to say Z, I'll say Z, too." You know, she was boring in. She was accusing him of this and that and he just kind of smiled and laughed and said, "Okay, whatever you want me to say, I'll say." Every broadside that was directed at Obama was pretty much dealt with by him in that way, because they were broadsides. What you had here with Hillary and Obama you had two Alinskyites going at each other and Hillary proved to be the lesser of the two able Alinskyites. Also, have you noticed that the late-night comedians are saying that they are just having a tough time making fun of the guy -- and it's not just because of race.

You know, we found ways to parody the guy here. We can laugh at him and make fun of him here, but a lot of people don't think that he's funny. Other than his ears, what is there to caricature about the guy? You can caricature the way he... You know, even the stuff with The Messiah didn't work, even when he's out there acting like The Messiah. My point is that none of this stuff worked. We have to be honest. None of it worked, even when we attached to it specific details of Obama's plans and his proposals. It just didn't work. These comedians are finding it difficult to make fun of the guy, not just because of racial reasons.

Look at Ted Kennedy. He's easy to make fun of and laugh at. Bill Clinton was easy to laugh at and make fun of, because both of them live their lives to great excess in many funny ways. Obama seems not just Mr. Cool, he's Mr. Cold. He's just Mr. Cold. There just isn't a whole lot there to make fun of. Nothing about Obama inspires laughter. Bill Clinton inspired it left and right. Ted Kennedy inspired laughter, left and right. When you're Ted Kennedy, you name your dog Splash. Obama promised the dog, but they're going to have to wait on the dog. But how do you make fun of that because he still promised to get the dog? Also, because of how cold Obama is, passionate criticism of him really doesn't work because when you have the passion as the critic and he's Mr. Cold and just never loses his cool and so forth, it makes the passionate critic look like a zombie.

It makes the passionate critic look like an out-of-control, deranged, unhinged individual. So that doesn't work. So what does work? Just, my best thinking about this, to this point, and I don't know if it's going to bear out, even, but the only times that Obama was really in trouble in the campaign was when he did it to himself: the bitter clinger comment in San Francisco, the Joe the Plumber stuff. But even that didn't end up hurting him. But those were the two instances that the Obama campaign got in gear to try to limit the effectiveness of what he had done to himself: spread the wealth around, the bitter clinger comment coming out of San Francisco.

These self-inflicted wounds are about the only opportunities that you have. We don't want to sit around and wait for those because we don't know how often he's going to say things. Another one was when he said that abortion, you know, determining when a human being gets rights, at what point does life begin, when he said this to Rick Warren out at the Saddleback Church. That was a big problem. That was a big self-inflicted wound. Remember how among everybody who saw the debate at the Saddleback Church, it was clear that McCain had smoked Obama. Everybody knew it. So what are we left with to do, then? "Well, okay, Rush, you haven't talked about Bill Ayers being on Good Morning America Friday."

I know. On purpose. Others are going to talk about Bill Ayers. The election's over. You can do it from a See, I Told You So kind of point of view, if you want. What I think is going to be the most effective way to criticize Obama is to criticize his ideas without criticizing him. To criticize collectivism, to criticize giant growth of government. Call it Obamaism or whatever, but the way to go about this, I think, is, if you don't want to wait for these self-inflicted wounds, is to ignore Obama the man. When you ignore Obama the man, we do not run the risk of inflicting our own self-inflicted wounds that would create sympathy for the guy, 'cause right now he's a beloved figure with four million people headed to Washington at the inauguration, they say.

He's got everybody in the country enough behind him for all of the mythological reasons, for all of the public image reasons, the historical reasons and right now people don't want to hear anything bad about Barack Obama. They just don't want to hear it and if they do they're not going to believe it and they're going to resent anybody who runs around talking about Obama. He's going to have to do something first that illustrates that the criticism that we have mounted up 'til now is accurate. You know, we talk about Reagan-ism. We talk about social-ism, collective-ism, commun-ism. Obama-ism is the way to go after this.

Obama equals collectivism, and when you stop to think about this, this is really the opportunity of many of our lifetimes, because we haven't really dealt with full-bore collectivism as an ideology identified with a political party up 'til now. Yeah, we've had liberalism, but while we've had liberalism, we've always had some Democrats that were not totally on board that, and certainly we've never had such a radical collectivist as a president-elect or even a nominee of a particular party. So who are we? Well, we're the capitalists. Once he gets into office, and once he starts doing things, we're going to have a chance then to define Obamaism without mentioning him per se.

I think for however long is necessary 'til the bloom goes off the Obama rose -- 'cause it at some point is going to and this whole image thing will give way at some point to political reality, and until that happens -- personal criticism, or not even personal, but attacking Obama's ideas by attacking him is not going to fly. It's not going to stick. It is not going to persuade anybody. So we just have to bide our time here but attack what he stands for, attack what his belief system is, and name it. Obamaism. Collectivism. It was epitomized by what he told Joe the Plumber. You know, we all know who he is, and we all know what he wants to do, and we all know that he wants to do as much of it as possible as quickly as possible.

We don't know what constraints he's going to find once he actually takes office, what with the economic circumstance and situation. We can all guess, we can all speculate that maybe he won't care. The worse the economy is, the more power he will seek to take as quickly as he can. I'm still working my way through this, but all I know is that attacking Obama and attacking Bill Clinton did not work, even though every bit of the criticism was true, even though everything said about them was true. It didn't work. Why it didn't work, I can explain that when I have more time to do it, but it has to do with the cult of personality and it has to do with a whole bunch of factors; the Drive-By Media and the collective education of the American people, the voting population here.

There's a whole bunch of factors about why it didn't work, the psychological reasons, too, such as white guilt. The Drive-By Media covering up anything that was deleterious or harmful to Obama -- and especially, see, in that circumstance, where the Drive-Bys are covering everything up and pretending that there's nothing but angelic messiahnism about this guy; then you have the loyal opposition coming out with all these critiques --- his associates, his alliances, his socialism, what have you -- it just doesn't fly. Because the Obama people are able to segregate the critics and categorize us as, "Ah, just a bunch of the vast and the Republican hatemongers," or what have you. Their job is to discredit conservatism criticism and so the less criticism of him personally instead what he's doing and what he's going to do and what he believes, then I think the more powerfully effective the criticism will be.

RUSH: Paul in Pittsburgh. Hello, sir. Nice to have you on the Rush Limbaugh program.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. I just wanted to comment on the fact -- on the comment you made regarding bashing Obama and Clinton, how it didn't work. You know, I just feel that the average American, they just didn't know enough about what McCain would do. Even with all the bashing of Obama, that was just getting his policies out there and hearing about what his plans were -- and even if you're going to bash him, that just isn't enough of a rebuttal. I think the American people, you know, they got a good feel for the personality of both candidates, but they just didn't hear enough about McCain and what was he going to do. What was he going to do with taxes, you know, and different policies.

RUSH: Well... (sigh) I don't think it would have helped. McCain wasn't able to tell anybody what he was going to do, McCain wasn't running on a set of ideas. McCain was running on a resume, McCain was running on heroic life stories. Love of country, honor, this sort of thing. There was no identifiable set of core beliefs that you could peg on Senator McCain. But as to the notion that the criticism of Obama didn't work, there are a couple elements here that I didn't mention, and it didn't work... By the way, Clinton didn't really start getting into trouble until a couple days after he was inaugurated when he announced "Don't ask, don't tell." That was in 1993, and then when the, "I worked harder than I've ever worked in my life, but I can't find a way to come up with the middle-class tax cut. You're going to have to trust me on this."

That's when it started falling apart for him and that's when the media started getting doubts and started treating him in a different way. We're just going to have to wait for the same kind of thing to happen with Obama. Self-inflicted wounds are it. You add to it McCain was not willing to criticize Obama. McCain was not willing to criticize the things about Obama that make Obama dangerous, or at least make him risky. McCain wasn't willing to go there for a host of reasons. It doesn't matter now. All I'm telling you is that those who did engage in it, it didn't work. And it didn't work beating Clinton, and it didn't work for beating Bill Clinton in 1996, either, for a host of reasons. I'm not bashing the critics, and I'm not saying don't be critical.

I'm just saying going after Obama the way we went after Clinton didn't work. The evidence is clear, it didn't. There needs to be an alternative approach, because, whether it worked or not in the campaign, we're still going to have to do everything we can to stop this onslaught of collectivism, and it's going to be serious. I mean, this is a guy who wants to define the American dream as over, and I don't know what the figure is today. It's anywhere from $120,000 a year to $150,000 a year to $250,000 a year. At that point, the American dream is over, because your tax rates are going to go up so high that your ability to amass serious wealth beyond that is going to be difficult.

And if they do mess around with this 401(k) stuff and they take away the tax deductibility of your annual contribution, which they're thinking about doing in the Congress, there's any number of flash points coming up that give the opportunity to point out, "Okay, this is collectivism. This is Obamaism." Look at Mark Cuban. I go back to this. We had it yesterday. Mark Cuban is just... I mean, you couldn't find a more rabid Obama supporter. And I'm convinced that he has no idea who Obama is, and if he ever heard anybody criticizing Obama he would tune it out. He didn't want to hear it. For some reason, he assumed Obama was just like him. He's an entrepreneur. He made six billion or so (I think that's the number) selling an Internet company called Broadcast.com.

I think he was one of the first guys that streamed video and audio on the Internet, and sold it. Now he owns the Dallas Mavericks, and he thinks of himself as the epitome of an entrepreneur. So he sees Obama's economic team at last Thursday's or Tuesday's big deal in Chicago, where Obama announced what he's going to do to fix the economy (hardy-har-har) and he wrote a piece at the Huffington Post, Cuban did, about how troubled he was he didn't see any entrepreneurs. He said, "Obama's gotta know that the fix to this economy is going to bubble up from these entrepreneurs taking risks," and I'm reading this and I'm incredulous.

Those are his enemies, Mark! These entrepreneurs, the risk takers, those are the people Obama wants to punish 'cause they've done too well. When he talks about, "The economy's gotta get fixed from the bottom up," he's talking about wealth transfers. He's talking about "spreading the wealth around." He's not talking about inspiring entrepreneurial activity. Obama, in his big acceptance speech in Grant Park after he had kicked Michelle and the girls backstage, he said, "We are not a nation of individuals. We're not a collection of individuals." Well, yes, we are. The individual and his freedom and liberty is precisely what gives this nation an identity unlike any other.

Obama wants to come along and he openly says, "We're not a nation of individuals. We've gotta come together and work for the common good." Collectivism! But until he starts doing it, all the criticism in the world isn't going to have much effect, and why would it? He's not doing any of it yet. But the time will draw near. And I just think there are going to be a lot of people like Mark Cuban who have seen it earlier than most, that are going to be genuinely shocked that this guy is not who they thought he was. Because remember, all of his supporters were able to make of him whatever they wanted him to be. He was a blank slate; he even said so. It was "creepy." It was creepy to watch this. It was creepy to go out and talk to Obama supporters and find out how little they actually knew, but how much they thought they knew. It was creepy!

RUSH: This is Barbara in Starkville, Mississippi. Nice to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hello. Good to talk with you finally. I have a question. You mentioned before that the criticism didn't work against Obama, and hearing Bush talk this past week at the UN, he mentioned that his faith and prayer had helped him in getting through his presidency, which I'm sure meant his criticism and everything. And I wondered; it brings two questions to mind. Why did the criticism against Bush work so well and what will happen to Obama when the criticism finally comes because I don't see him as being rooted in faith and prayer.

RUSH: Now, this is an interesting question. Let's take the second one first, because basically you're saying how come the criticism of Clinton, criticism of Obama didn't work, but how come criticism of all Republicans does work?

RUSH: Well, in the first place it doesn't always work. We just think it does. They tarred and feathered Ronald Reagan, but it didn't work, two landslides. And again, how did Reagan deal with it? He just laughed at it. He did not have an alternative media. He didn't have anybody defending him every day. All he had was the power to connect with people to go over the heads of the media and make them look like idiots.

RUSH: We haven't had our own version of a charismatic leader in electoral politics in a long time. But beyond that, you're right to ask. Bush didn't defend himself, and Karl Rove has said recently that they learned a lesson. They were trying to be presidential, just be above it, to protect the vitality and the legacy, the image of the office, not politicize it so much, but they now realize they should have been more forceful in defending the outright lies and distortions that were told about Bush personally and politically.

RUSH: Yeah, why did it work on Palin? Why did the criticism work on Palin? Well, did it? See, we just assume because McCain lost the election that the criticism of Palin worked. However, I saw nothing but teeming crowds. I saw nothing but love and support, ambition, all kinds of passion for Sarah Palin. I saw election poll results talk about that Republicans loved her. Had they tried to make it out that she was a drag on the ticket. Now, it's no news that the left and Democrats are gonna hate any effective conservative Republican. You can't take the Drive-By Media factor out of this. The Drive-By Media loves to show what they think is the hypocrisy of Republicans. For example, let's take John Edwards, the Breck Girl. When they heard that he was having an affair, they ignored it. They did everything they could to sweep it under the rug because oh, they had so much hope in Edwards, wonderful family, he was going to someday have this brilliant national political career. They just couldn't bring themselves to be critical.

But let a Republican, a family values Republican, a conservative, social conservative Republican encounter some sort of moral failure and bammo it is like a hurricane descending on that person and it's seek and destroy because of hypocrisy and so forth. The reason for this is the left knows they cannot defeat our ideas. They have to destroy as many of our leaders as possible professionally, personally, and their credibility. They didn't just say no to Robert Bork; they tried to destroy him, they tried to ruin his life. Same thing with Clarence Thomas. You see, we don't do this. Our criticism of Obama was not aimed at destroying him. It was trying to alert people to his ideas. But when we're the lone voices and the Drive-Bys are not joining in that chorus, if you will, and if Obama is thus able to ignore the criticism and not respond to it, then you've got the old question, well, if a tree falls in the forest and nobody's there, does it make a sound? You know, if Obama's running around saying all kinds of weird, strange things and nobody is criticizing him for it, did he say the strange things?

RUSH: Look, it's an unlevel playing field. You know, we can sit here and bemoan the fact that Sarah Palin was mistreated, and we can bemoan the fact that McCain might have been mistreated, and all kinds on our side get mistreated. It's the way it is. I'll bet you that if Sarah Palin were left alone, and I'll bet you if she were not coached and if she were not constrained by the McCain campaign, I'll bet she could have dealt with it on her own inside of a week and deflected it and gotten rid of it and made her critics look to be total buffoons. But instead, you know, she's second on the ticket, so they sent her out there to do things that were supportive of McCain. I cringed every time I heard her call him a maverick. I wanted to shout, "This isn't going to get him a single vote. The maverick days are over. Nobody cares about him being a maverick." But, you know, they were stuck in a time warp. Newt Gingrich didn't respond to the criticism much 'cause some people just think that it's not going to affect 'em, or you try to befriend the media in the first place to try to deflect it. That doesn't work, either. It's a great question, Barbara. I'm glad you called.

RUSH: Mr. Snerdley (who is not the boss today, by the way) told me in no uncertain terms that he thinks I've overstepped here in saying that criticism of Obama, as the criticism of Clinton, didn't work. I simply mean by that that both guys won despite (sighs) voluminous information that should have disqualified both of them from ever being president. The criticism didn't work in defeating them.

Now, that is not to say it didn't work. After all, how many people voted for McCrazy, 58? Uh, McCain. Fifty, 58 million people? It was a seven million-point win. The point is, a lot of people voted for McCain, a lot of people voted against Obama. Obviously the criticism worked for some; and look, I'm not a dunce here, folks. I know it really boils down to this: Our standard-bearer not only did not have any charisma; our standard-bearer didn't have a campaign, did not have a core theme, did not have a core set of principles and beliefs that he was articulating. He's running as a war hero with a heroic story, and it didn't work.

Look at all the war heroes that can't win elections anymore. We have George Bush 41. I'm going to go through this list here. Bush 41, was great war hero, 1942, '44, whatever, World War II. He was shot down over the Pacific. He got back on the aircraft carrier. He lost to a draft dodger! He lost to a guy who wrote in his past, he "loathed the military." Now, the draft dodger only had 43% 'cause Ross Perot was in there. Ross Perot himself in his own way is a military hero, given his support. So maybe if Perot's not there and George Bush 41 gets those votes, but some polling data indicated he wouldn't, that Clinton would have still won even were Perot not there. We go forward to '96. Another war hero, Bob Dole. Skunk city!

We get to 2000, and we don't really have a war hero. They tried to make Gore a war hero by saying he was a journalist in Vietnam. In 2004: another Vietnam era war hero, the haughty John Kerry, versus a guy that the Democrats tried to claim lied about going to National Guard duty and serving. Yeah, McGovern. McGovern's a war hero. He got blown out in 1972. He was a war hero. He was a pilot in World War II. Now, we come forward to 2008 and another war hero. (snort) We had a war hero lose to the most unknown, the most inexperienced, the most unqualified and perhaps the most opposed-to-America-as-it-was-founded Democrat candidate ever. So the war heroes, it's not... God love 'em, God bless 'em, but they're not the ticket to victory anymore. Now, why is that? Very simple.

I warned you people of this not long after I began to serve this nation from behind the Golden EIB Microphone. Vietnam ends when, '72, '75. It's 30 years ago. That's a generation. In 30 years we've had a whole generation born that has no direct experience or knowledge with an America victorious in war other than the four-day Gulf War, and that was over so fast it looked like a video game to a lot of people. So we have a lot of people who have no knowledge of an America victorious at war. In fact, our war heroes in 2004 and 2008 came out of the most hated war in our adult lives. That's Vietnam. War hero from Vietnam? Yip yip. Whoop whoop. We had a war hero run in 2008 from the most hated war in American history, after six years of the American people being told how lousy and rotten the US military is -- unfairly.

Of course it was unseemly what was done, but we had the Democrat Party, the Drive-By Media praying for defeat. The military is immoral; the military is unjust. So we ran a war hero against all of that, but it was not the war hero stuff that doomed McCain. It was that, "What's he going to do? What's he stand for? Earmarks and he's a maverick. Okay, next." Certainly he had no charisma. But also, about this criticism business, McCain wouldn't criticize Obama. So we being really don't know if criticism would have worked. Now, Dole did try to criticize Clinton in 1996. He said, where's the outrage over all this? Where is the outrage over the way this country is being run and who this guy is? He's a moral reprobate. "Where's the outrage?" And of course Clinton's answer was, with a smile on his face, "Ha-ha-ha-ha! No attack ever fed a hungry child," and people just marveled.

Well, Dole said he wanted to take us back to yesterday. Some Americans do want to go back! (laughing) I guaran-damn-tee you, they'd love to go back to August. (laughing) Some Americans, yesterday would be just fine to a lot of Americans, Mr. Snerdley. Last month would be fine; two months ago would be fine. (laughing) Can we do this over? But regardless, I'm not saying that criticism should be taken off the table, I'm saying it should be redirected, especially now. It's a waste of time to criticize Obama now. He hasn't done anything. Wait 'til he does something. He stands for something. It's going to be very easy to explain it once he starts doing it, and therein lies the opportunity. I know full well that because McCain was not criticizing Obama because most voters in the country were chomping at the bit for somebody to get the truth out there because the media wasn't. So it would not be totally accurate to say it didn't work.

It did generate a significant number of votes for Yosemite Sam, but since he wasn't joining in it, Yosemite Sam couldn't get the dynamite to go off. You know, you remember what Yosemite Sam looked like when the dynamite failed to go off. He was prancing around there not having a clue what happened there. I don't care if he was trying to kill the Road Runner, if he was trying to kill Wile E. Coyote, whoever, Elmer Fudd. The dynamite never went off for old Yosemite Sam. It was the same thing in this campaign. I'll give you another example. The economic crisis, the bailout. Oh, they were worried. "This is horrible! We're not going to be a country in two days if we don't do something about it." McCain says (impression), "I am suspending my campaign, and I going to go to Washington to deal with," and Obama said, "I can multitask. If they need me, I'm here on the phone."

We laughed at it at the time, but it turned out that Mr. Cool -- Mr. Cold, actually, but there's Mr. Cool versus, you know, Mr. Grandstander. "I'm going to go back and I'm going to fix this," and then the meeting happened, and the cabinet room informant at the White House, we heard that McCain didn't say diddly-squat 'til the end of it, and the word came out of there was that Obama ran the meeting. (laughs) It also came out that the meeting fell apart with Obama running it, but we didn't hear about that enough. We just heard that Obama ran the meeting. Everybody can look at these things in hindsight and find out what you did wrong and what you'd like to do over again. I'm just telling you, I think going after all this personal stuff, personally criticizing Obama -- even if it's policy oriented -- isn't the way.

Just wait for his inauguration for something to actually happen and the way to go about it then will be to go after Obamaism, collectivism. Don't go after him personally, even. He's going to have a honeymoon with his supporters. He's going to have a while. You're not going to persuade anybody that's for the guy to change their mind right off the bat. It just isn't to happen. But you can frighten them about what he's going to do. You can frighten them about what's going to happen because he's president or because the Democrats are running the show or what have you. It just seems to me to be a better bet.

Anyway, "What if some detainees are acquitted or cannot be prosecuted at all? That concern is at the center of a debate among national security, human rights and legal experts that has intensified since the election." Isn't it amazing, Club Gitmo was a symbol of the worst of America, but now that these guys are going to be in charge of it, we have to change the way it's looked at and we've got serious considerations here, if we shut this down. Now, here is civil liberties lawyer David Cole, Georgetown law professor and a critic of the Bush administration on this, in the New York Times Sunday story said, "You can't be a purist and say there's never any circumstance in which a democratic society can preventively detain someone." Really? You can't be a purest and say that there's never a circumstance in which a country like ours can preventively detainee somebody? We've been hearing for the last five years that there's no circumstance in which we could do this legally. Now all of a sudden, Obama's people, "Oh, what's going on down there is fine. We may have to keep it open because we don't really think it would be safe to bring these people into the country, and we don't know what would happen if they got acquitted."

They would all be acquitted because in a US courtroom with rules of evidence and so forth, I can guarantee you that not one of these guys was read his rights by a US soldier, for one thing, and I bet they didn't collect a whole lot of evidence that a courtroom requires when they're out on the battlefield when they captured these guys. So Barry may flip-flop on Gitmo. So Vince Flynn turned out -- we don't know yet, but Vince, "I don't believe they're going to shut it down, they can't Rush, these are serious guys down there, the war on terror is a serious thing," and I did remember predicting that once these guys got into power, they're not going to lose this war, they're not going to have the war on terror lost when they're in the White House, and they're not going to have us lose in Iraq when they're in the White House, they're not going to saddle themselves with defeat, and closing Gitmo would lead to that. "Human rights groups have been mounting arguments to counter pressure that they say is building on Mr. Obama to show toughness, perhaps by echoing the Bush administration's insistence that some detainees may need to be held indefinitely." The Obama camp is pointing that out to its supporters now, and these human rights groups are trying to pressure Obama supporters and administration people, "Be tough, be tough and follow through on your promise here, close the place down."

"I'm afraid of people getting released in the name of human rights and doing terrible things," would not be wise for the Obama administration, said Benjamin Wittes, a fellow at the Brookings Institution. "He said debates over Guantanamo had created a mythology that American law permitted detention only upon conviction of a crime. Locking up mentally ill people who are deemed dangerous, he noted, is an accepted American legal practice." All of a sudden everything George W. Bush did in fighting the war on terror is something Obama now thinks he may have to continue. And his supporters, the same people who sliced and diced George W. Bush as somebody who ripped the Constitution to shreds, who spied on people, who trampled on constitutional rights and privacy rights, are now suggesting Obama may have to rethink this and do the same thing. Now, the New York Times may not be happy about this because the last paragraph you could interpret perhaps as a warning to the vice president select.

"In the end, the Obama administration may conclude that it is simply not feasible to seek a new preventive detention measure. Doing so could portray the new administration as following in the footsteps of President Bush, surely an unlikely goal as Mr. Obama sorts through his options." So they go through this whole story promoting his advisor saying, (paraphrasing) "Hey, what you need to do is keep the place open but write a new detention law that gives you the authority, coming under your imprimatur so that it doesn't have ties to Bush," but the effect of the new law would be the same as current law. The New York Times dutifully reports that but then they warn him in the end. "You better not do this. If you do this you're going to come off as no different than George W. Bush." But just keep in mind, folks, as I said last week Obama is too big to fail. The Drive-By Media has too much invested in him, he is too big to fail, they will continue to prop him up. So I have to publicly apologize, and I showed the story to Vince on Sunday morning. I said, "Vince, you may be right," and he smiled. He was very gracious about it and so forth. But it was a great weekend.

This is just a sample of what's coming, folks. Everything that you have heard that made this country the most hated in the world is probably going to be continued, the area of foreign policy and defense in some fashion, because President-Select Obama will need the flexibility to protect the country and yada yada yada.

RUSH: Also, in this New York Times piece "Post-Guantanamo -- A New Detention Law?" in which it is suggested here that obviously there's pressure being brought to bear on Obama to shut this place down, there's also pressure being brought to bear on him to keep it open with a new law that would be his signature law that he could then say, "Well, I fixed Gitmo. It's not the way it was under George W. Bush, but unfortunately we need to keep it open," and so forth and so on. They're even quote in this story from my old buddy Andrew McCarthy, who is part of the editorial board at National Review Online. He's a former federal terrorism prosecutor. He put the blind sheik, Omar Abdel Rahman behind bars. He's now director for the Center for Law and Counterterrorism, and they quote Andy in the New York Times piece yesterday.

"Yeah, we have lots of information that's reliable that tells us someone's a threat and that cannot be proved in court," blah, blah, blah. Now, three weeks ago, if Andy McCarthy had been quoted in the New York Times, it would have been as a rabid Neanderthal conservative insane lunatic, an Obama hater and so forth. But now he's got the respectability of a noted think tankist and intellectual in the New York Times. This kind of reminds me of the Judicial Watch bunch that hounded Clinton all through the nineties. And they turned around and they did something that Peter Jennings approved of, and the ABC World News Tonight treated the Judicial Watch that they despised all during the nineties with newfound respect. However, there's a contradiction here. The New York Times story runs yesterday. Last night on 60 Minutes -- and we didn't watch this. It was our last night, all of us together, so we were reveling, watching football and some "24." Steve Kroft said to Obama, "A number of different things you could do early. One of them is shut down [Club Gitmo]. You gonna take any action on those things?"

OBAMA: Yes. Uh... Eh, uh, er, I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantanamo, and I will follow through on that. Uh, I've said repeatedly that America doesn't torture, and I'm going to make sure that we don't torture. Uh, those are -- uhh those are part and parcel of an -- an effort to regain, uh, America's moral stature in the world.

RUSH: Oh, Lordy, what are we to do now? Obama very plainly said, "Yes, I'm going to shut it down. It's nothing more than a torture place." The New York Times has his staff and advisors looking for ways to keep it open.

RUSH: So, Vince? Vince Flynn is driving down to Ft. Lauderdale to catch his flight back to Minneapolis. Vince, I may yet be right about this. Who do we rely on in this dispute? Obama says he's gonna shut it down; there's going to be no torture. The New York Times says his advisors are looking at ways of keeping it open. We'll see. Obama is going to be able to get away with anything if next year he decides -- and this is always going to be the out -- blame Bush. Just blame Bush. He'll get in there and say, "You know what? I found things about Gitmo that Bush didn't tell us. There are things I was shocked to learn about the war on terror. We may not be able to get out of Iraq as soon as I had hoped. We may not be able to mount a surge in Afghanistan as soon as I had hoped. We may not be able to close Guantanamo as soon as I would have hoped because Bush didn't tell us everything that was going on." It's always going to be an out. It will work because the press will always support Obama in having to overcome the mess left to him by George W. Bush.

RUSH: Let me just close the loop on something in the first hour. I am predicting Obama will close Guantanamo Bay. I'm going to go with what Obama said last night on 60 Minutes and what he said throughout his campaign. I am going to eschew the New York Times story from yesterday which claims that his advisories are coming back with ways that, under his imprimatur, that the world would love us, that he could keep it open. He's gotta close it for the sake of his presidency. If he doesn't close it then he's going to give people like me a chance to define his presidency for him. By the way, grab sound bite two. I want to replay this with a little bit more time to analyze. We'll get to that in a second.

Now, I want to talk about how smart Obama is. I told you the appointment of Rahm Emanuel as the chief of staff is a very smart move politically because exactly as I thought it would it got a bunch of Arab criticism. This sort of diffuses the fear that a lot of people had that Obama's tight with Islamists because of the Hamas connection, the endorsement and so forth, and just for PR purpose. The Obama campaign's an image, his presidency will be an image. It is symbolism over substance. There's going to be some pretty bad substance to it.

RUSH: We are going to start in Bridgewater, Virginia. Hi, Danny. Thank you for calling, and welcome to the EIB Network.

CALLER: I just want to make a quick comment. I'm just kind of curious about what Obam-er is going to do with the Gitmo detainees. I guess he's going to feather them out through the United States penal system which is already overcrowded, and I don't know, maybe they can get together and figure out some (unintelligible).

RUSH: No, no. See, that's the point here. There are 250 reprobates down there. Forget what you've heard about Gitmo and the media. The media has led people to believe that these people are basically innocent, that they just look differently than we do, and they speak differently, and that they might wear turbans, and they might, you know, pray to Mecca and read the Koran, but these are just people. And we've been paranoid and imperialism, we snatched them away from their families and their homes. These people are human debris. They are dangerous. They are murderers. We have released people from Gitmo and recaptured them after they have committed battlefield crimes again; they have rejoined the war on terror.

This is the reason. So during the campaign and even leading up to the campaign -- I guess it would include the campaign because it went on for two years, but the left with this country along with Obama (and this is Clinton, too) were saying that the people down there, we need to close this place because it's destroying our image in the world, that nothing goes on except torture down there. They didn't mention the fact that all... You know what waterboarding is? Waterboarding is tricking people into thinking they're going to drown. They don't drown. But you trick people into thinking they're going to drown. You feel like it, and the mastermind of 9/11 vomited everything. He told us the truth about how it all happened; and two or three of his colleagues also were convicted.

But this was portrayed as torture. This was, "The United States is evil!" This was destroying our image in the world, along with Abu Ghraib and the hazing, fraternity hazing photos over there. So the left, just attacking George Bush for anything, said, "We gotta close it down! We gotta close it down," and furthermore, then the American left's trial bar got in action here, lawyers, they said, "You know, these people deserve constitutional rights. We have held them illegally. We've held them without charging them. We have put them in squalid conditions." We got all the stories about flushing the Koran down the toilet, all that BS, and that was from some guy at Newsweek. His name escapes me now. Yeah, Isikoff, the Lewinsky guy. He spiked a story and Drudge got it and the rest is history.

So the American people don't like their country being hated. They think that they don't like it and we need to repair our image. We have a national psychosis problem and that is that way too many people give a damn what people think of us. They give a damn what people think of them individually, and I'm telling you, that's death. That's destructive. It just stunts your growth. When you start giving a rat's rear end what people think of you, and live your life that way individually it's bad enough, but when the people in the country, when a majority of Americans start worrying what they think about us in these various hellholes that harbor people who want to kill us, then we're in trouble.

The Bush administration did not adequately defend itself, as they now admit, against these charges, and so the clarion call began. "We've gotta close Gitmo, and because we've mistreated these poor people that we're holding down there, we need to give them trials. Not military tribunals, but trials. We need to introduce them to the US court system in the United States, and give them fair trials. The world will respect us again because we are a beacon for that kind of thing." Okay. So we've got 250 of the dregs of society. Now, you bring 'em up here and you put 'em in the American judicial system -- these are prisoners of war -- you can examine every aspect of their capture. "Were you read your rights?" Can you imagine bringing the CIA in?

The CIA is not going to go for this. Can you imagine bringing the CIA in to testify as to how this prisoner happened to be captured? "Did you violate the privacy rights of the prisoners? Did you violate any other human rights of the prisoner? Have you mistreated the prisoner?" So the question of acquittals? I mean, you got an Oprahized bunch people as a jury (who already think the American system here is guilty for what they've done to these people), and I guarantee you, you're looking at acquittals. So you acquit these people, and then what do you do with them? The places they're from don't want them back. No other country wants them. You just turn 'em loose? Let's say you bring one to Kansas City for trial or St. Louis. You release 'em there after they're acquitted?

They're not guilty. What do you do with them? I mean, after they've been acquitted, folks, you can't say, "Well, ship 'em out of the country," 'cause they don't have papers. Well, about 12 million others don't, either. And we're not shipping them out of the country, at least in great numbers. So what do you do? So you're going to have these people running around? So this is a serious component of closing down Gitmo. What do you do with the people there? And I'm telling you that there are a lot of leftists in this country who do not like this country who want those people in this country for trials. They want show trials. They want the United States being found guilty of charges them illegally, capturing them illegally, torturing them. There are a bunch of leftist radical lawyers in this country that come from the same school Obama did that would love for that to be the result, because they know that they're a bunch of weepy-eyed journalists and mainstream media people who would then carry the water even further with documentaries.

"How did this happen to our country? Here is Ali Akbar Samazu Sahib Skyhook," and we'll get documentaries on his poor family. "He came from disadvantaged circumstances. He was caught up in a case of mistaken identity. He professed his innocence through thought of many months of his illegal incarceration at the hands of George Bush and Rumsfeld and Cheney," and the nation will be made to feel sorry for this guy and other compatriots. "While Rush Limbaugh profited from this with his Club Gitmo licensed merchandise," and they'll show pictures of our T-shirts and caps and all the things that are in the EIB Store for Club Gitmo. (Still a thriving business, I might add.) This will all happen, and the American people should feel good about their country again. "Why, here's old Sahib Skyhook finally released after months of torture and illegal imprisonment," and we'll be loved again.

We will love the fact that people love us! In the meantime, 250 people who have sworn an allegiance to kill as many Americans as possible will be out walking the streets; and then Skyhook, after all this... Remember, now, he's been acquitted in a US court with constitutional rights. What happens in that case? Good old Sahib Skyhook sues! He sues for damages. (laughs) Lost wages, whatever economic duress and stress, loss of conjugal relations with his wives, all this stuff. And of course our Oprahized jury will be so damn weepy and sorry that they'll give this guy the moon because the government will be paying and the government has an endless supply of money, "Why, look, we're bailing this guy out, this person out and that business out. It's only fair, it's only right that we treat these people properly."

So the very people that want to create more 9/11s are going to be paid to do it by us. We could call this... In fact, I'll tell you, if this happens, if Obama shuts down Club Gitmo, I'm going to give it a name. We're going to call it The Terrorist Bailout Plan. We're essentially going to bail these people out. In fact, we'll probably make a settlement with them before any lawsuit. We'll just say, "Here's a lump sum." We'll call Osama bin Laden and say, "Will this handle it?" Or if he's dead (which I happen to believe; I still don't think Osama's been alive all these years, but regardless) give it to Ayman al-Zawahiri. Or, better yet, call up Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and see if he'll take the money and have his nuclear program go away or whatever.

But, look, we're exaggerating in some ways here, but this is what's going to happen. If they bring 'em here for trial, I don't know how you find 'em guilty. Because the left is going to give them the best defense lawyers they can find, and lawyers will take the case. These are not going to be pro bono cases. The government will pay legal expenses because of the guilt George Bush made us all feel and so forth. So it is a crucial thing. You might ask, "Rush, why bring 'em here for trial? Why not just close it and ship 'em...? Nobody wants them! You can't just send these guys off to a country that doesn't want 'em. "Well, how come they're where we don't want them?" Because we have the responsibility of the world, as the superpower, on our shoulders to lead in this regard.

These people, they don't just kill Americans. They've killed, maimed tons of people, lots of people. So we can't just release 'em. But, more than that (and don't doubt me) as extreme and odd as this sounds, I guarantee you there are people like Bill Ayers and Reverend Wright, Tom Hayden, these guys from the sixties who would love for these guys to be brought to trial and win and have the US shamed and have to pay off. Obama is out there guaranteeing to close the place down, and if he can't just send 'em on a boat someplace, you have to bring 'em here for trial, if you close it down. Because, see, the basis for closing it down is that these people are being held without charges. But they're not US constitutional rights-possessing citizens. But we want to transfer those rights to them for the purposes of this trial.

RUSH: Even though I was not here Thursday or Friday, I was the subject of discussion for much of the cable news programs Thursday night, Friday night, and into Sunday. This is Sunday's Chris Matthews Show on NBC. Matthews and Michael Duffy have this exchange about moi.

MATTHEWS: People like Rush Limbaugh are already out there blaming this recession on Obama. He's calling it "the Obama recession" on the argument that the market has anticipated higher taxes and bad policy. That's why it's crashing.

DUFFY: That's how some people in the Republican Party are trying to resurrect the Republican Party. They've actually kind of handed the -- thrown the keys at the Obama team.

RUSH: Uhhh, well, he really doesn't understand the theory behind what I'm saying here, does he? Matthews is beside himself that I've labeled this the Obama recession. He understands the theory behind it, which is true. And that is, the market. What is the market? The market's down again today. At least it was the last time I looked. The Pittsburgh Steelers. I read a story yesterday in the Pittsburgh papers; it looks like Dan Rooney and his son Art the Second have finally found a way to put together some financing to buy out percentages of his four brothers that would give Dan Rooney the majority ownership. The NFL requires that the primary owner be 30% and each of the Rooney people has 16. There are five of them, and then there's a family that was friend of the founders. They got 20%.

Dan Rooney needs to get a 14 more percentage and he's been trying to buy it and they've had troubles and troubles, and Dan Rooney was a big Obama supporter. But he's the buyer, so capital gains doesn't affect him. The four brothers want to get this done before the end of the year to avoid Obama capital gains taxes. Now, if people like the Rooneys (and there are a lot of other people doing this) want to take as much cash in calendar year 2008 as they can, if they want to close transactions in calendar year 2008 for the express purpose of beating brand-new capital gains taxes, and now I'm hearing not 20% but 25% -- we're currently at 15. So if you go from 15 to 25%, you know damn well people in the market are thinking this way.

So how can you not attribute the market plunge, the market fall to him? In fact, even the 4,000-point plunge, the markets work six to nine months ahead. Believe me, I know these people on Wall Street that run these firms. They're a bunch of lib Democrats. No question about that. We've figured this out. The average investor and these people to whom the money really counts are trying to get as much thrown into this calendar year as possible. People are selling off, taking their gains, which is what led to the plunge. There's no question it's the Obama recession. There's no question. We didn't have any of this going on during the heart of Bush economic times.

And isn't it interesting that China is now... We've got a story from China today about their demand. The Chinese nation's demand for oil has plummeted; their demand for gasoline has plummeted. Why? Because the situation in the US economy has led to a slowdown all over the world. Can you believe..? You want to talk about us being a superpower no longer? You want to talk about people who think we need to be cut down to size? Can you believe that the United States subprime mortgage debacle has led to this global mess? So it's not only correct to say that this is the Obama recession. It'd be even more accurate to say that the worldwide recession has been brought on by the Democrat Party in the United States of America.

RUSH: Here is the Chris Matthews Show again on Sunday, National Public Radio liberal Michele Norris, listen to this.

NORRIS: The first 60 days of a presidency are so important, and that's why you hear Rush Limbaugh saying these things on the radio. It's why they're passing a baton to him hoping that it's so heavy, that he's got so much on his plate in that starting gate that he can't help but stumble and they know that that sets the tone for the rest of the administration.

RUSH: That's why Rush Limbaugh is saying these things on the radio, that's why they're passing the baton to him, hoping it's so heavy, he's got so much on his plate, the starting gate, he can't help but stumble? Folks, it is our job to define Obama as who he is, because the Drive-Bys have not done so. So once again, I guess they say the leadership role in this is coming down to me.

RUSH: Back to audio sound bite number two. Michele Norris, National Public Radio on the Chris Matthews Show on Sunday.

NORRIS: The first 60 days of a presidency are so important, and that's why you hear Rush Limbaugh saying these things on the radio. It's why they're passing a baton to him, hoping that it's so heavy, that he's got so much on his plate in that starting gate that he can't help but stumble, and they know that that sets the tone for the rest of the administration.

RUSH: Now, what she's saying... She's not talking about them passing the baton to me. She means to Obama. "That's why they're passing a baton to him hoping that it's so heavy, that he's got so much on his plate in that starting gate that he can't help but stumble." Now, this Michele Norris is an NPR liberal, and she thinks that if I -- the titular head of the opposition -- successfully label Obama a failure, then he might be in trouble. This is part of politics. You do try to define your opponent, campaign or otherwise, before he defines himself. And Obama really hadn't defined himself because he's image. Obama is symbolism. He hasn't really done anything yet but his presence has led to fear in the economic markets. This is undeniable. The prospect of his election also led to fear and resulted in market sell-offs. There are whole bunch of factors, but he certainly is one, and he remains one if people want to take whatever gains they have out of the market before this guy starts raising taxes on people. I don't look at this as "defining" Obama so much as telling the truth about him. You know, we're into information, entertainment, and education here; and since the Drive-Bys refused -- remember Tom Brokaw and Charlie Rose? "We really don't know much about him, Charlie. He's written a couple books, read a couple speeches." Yeah, you could have dispatched a reporter to find out. You didn't want to find out about him. But we do. We have. So we're doing the job you used to do.

RUSH: Chris Matthews Show on Sunday talking with Howard Fineman of Newsweek, Erin Burnett, CNBC. Matthews says, "Who's going to be the voice of the opposition the next couple of months? Is it going to be Pawlenty? Is it going to be Palin? Is it going to be McCain? Is it going to be Jindal?"

FINEMAN: It's going to be Rush Limbaugh and what's left of the conservative commentariate.

RUSH: The Drive-Bys are convinced that -- well, Dawn, you're smiling for the first time today. Maybe Snerdley's everybody's boss today. Have you been too bossy with her? (laughing) Bob Shrum last Monday, New York City, Harold Evans moderated a discussion of the role of the media in the 2008 campaign. One of the panelists was Democrat strategist Bob Shrum and Harry Evans says, "Was Senator McCain smart or not going to Sarah Palin to appeal to the base?"

SHRUM: It was a disaster and one of his biggest mistakes. I do not think this was a year when there was going to be a base election. I think if you had a base strategy you were doomed. He should have, if he couldn't pick Lieberman, he should have picked Tom Ridge. Pennsylvania would have been in play. He would have been criticized by Rush Limbaugh. There would have been a revolt on the floor of the Republican convention. Assuming he could have overcome it, he would have become a genuine independent maverick.

RUSH: I just love these Democrat telling us what we have to do to win. And, Shrum, you basically told McCain what he ended up doing. He may not have picked Lieberman and had a floor fight at the convention, but he didn't govern and campaign as a conservative, and I'll tell you, these people, they are lying through their teeth knowingly about Sarah Palin being a drag. Not only exit polls and polls taken since the election prove this, she was down in Miami late last week for the Republican Governors Association, she owned it. She owned it. I am wont to mention any names, but she so owned it that others in attendance cut short her press conference. I'm telling you, folks, Sarah Palin is the most popular Republican governor among the American people, among voters and so forth, and there's some stuffed shirts, blue-blood country club types in the Republican Party that do not like it at all. And they're trying to destroy her right now. You know, it's just like this babe at NPR saying, "Yeah, Limbaugh, if he can define Obama here in the first 60 days, he can hurt him."

In my case, I'm not lying about Obama. I'm just telling you who he is and sharing with you some of my expectations of what he's going to do based on what I know about him and his past and who has influenced him and so forth because the media is not doing it. But in Sarah Palin's case, it's not just Shrum and the Democrats. There are a lot of Republicans that are trying to destroy her, all these leaks about the clothes and that stuff, full-fledged lies, and we know it's lies and we know that Carl Cameron sopped it up and spit it out eagerly. There are a lot of people threatened by her because she is effective. She connects with people, and the Democrats don't want to deal with her. I guarantee you the Obama campaign was more worried about her than they were McCain. They could see those rallies. They could see the excitement. This battle is not over between the Rockefellers, even though they took us down to this giant defeat, they still think that they have the prescription for victory even though they've shown their prescription loses.

RUSH: Mike in Atlanta, you're next on the EIB Network. Hello, sir. Nice to have you with us.

CALLER: Now, listen. I'm a General Motors retiree, union worker, and first of all let me say that I don't agree with UAW's politics. I've voted Republican ever since Reagan, so I don't agree with their politics, but I am a UAW retiree. So I'd like to give you just a little bit a perspective of this, what's called, I guess, the union bailout.

RUSH: Can I...? Let me ask you a couple questions. How old are you now, if you don't mind my asking? You don't have to answer if you don't want to.

RUSH: You're going to be 57 your next birthday, and how long have you been retired?

RUSH: All right, so 55. You basically retired two years ago and go ahead now. Enlighten us with your perspective.

CALLER: Okay. (laughs) In 2006 the union took a lot of concessions, I don't know if people are aware of them. I never hear anybody talking about it. As of 2006, General Motors stopped the pension plan. So anybody coming in after 2006 won't get a pension. They severely cut the starting pay I think down to about $15 an hour, something like that. So when you hire in with General Motors you don't hire in at this big salary that everybody seems to think that you do. I've heard people talk about it. "You make 40 bucks an hour for turning a wrench on assembly line and stuff like that," but that's just not the case. That's just not the way it is. When I retired back in 2005, I think it was about $25 an hour I retired at. So, you know, right now I hear them talking about cutting the pensions.

RUSH: Okay, I've gotta take a break here. Mike, I'm glad that you're offering this perspective. I want to ask you -- I'll give you some time to think about it here during the break -- why do you think that is? Why do you think that starting out now pays much less than it used to with General Motors?

RUSH: We go back to Mike in Atlanta, retired United Auto Workers member. He's been retired for two years. He's 57. You just said that... By the way, a little disclosure. As you know General Motors is a sponsor of the EIB Network. We drive a number of their vehicles around, and we happen to think they're pretty cool. We happen to like 'em.

CALLER: Well, I'm glad to hear that. I wish more Americans still felt that way. (chuckles)

RUSH: Well, I think they're good. When we started, by the way, I was surprised. I was among the group of people that thought they'd been passed by in style and design and so forth. These cars that we get, some of them have features in them that are useful, things that are genuinely helpful features that cars that cost twice as much do not have.

CALLER: I've been General Motor man before I went to work for them. I've always bought General Motors products. Every car I've ever bought...

CALLER: (laughs) Yeah, I did. It's not that much, though. But every General Motors car I've ever bought I got at least 200,000 miles out of it.

RUSH: No question. We're going to be discussing General Motors and you're going to be critical of them, and I just wanted people to know, remind them out of the full disclosure that they are a sponsor here.

RUSH: But I want you to tell me why you think entry hourly wages are much less than they used to be today at General Motors, after all these union contracts. How the hell did this happen?

CALLER: Well, the reason they're not paying as much is because they're not making the money like I said. People have just for some reason stopped, lost confidence in General Motors for some reason and just stopped buying our cars. But if they're not making the money they just can't pay the wage. That's just the way I see that, so...

RUSH: Well, now, wait. Maybe I misunderstand, but I thought you were being critical when you made the statement that General Motors no longer pays what it did, but you're saying they can't pay the wage for whatever reason?

CALLER: Well, I'm saying in 2006, because things were getting tough when the UAW and General Motors negotiated the contract, UAW agreed to take concessions. One of the things they agreed to do was hire people in at a lot less. There are no more pensions. If you come to General Motors after 2006, you don't get a pension. They've totally done away with.

RUSH: Let me tell you something, though, about that. I've never had a job where I had a pension.

RUSH: I've never had a job with one. Now, I'm a member of AFTRA, but I don't even use the health care that comes along with it. I don't want to mess with it. I'm sure there's some sort of a pension there, but other than a union job, I've never had a job where somebody promised me a pension. Like I worked for the Kansas City Royals for five years --

RUSH: -- and the most I made was $17,000 a year I didn't get a pension. There was no talk of pension. That was all strange to me.

CALLER: General Motors, that is part of the contract they agreed to 30 years ago when I went to work for General Motors and they had like 50% of the job market and all things were going along real fine that was one of the things that you really counted on. When you worked for a company, you put 30 years in with them they guaranteed you a pension. But let me tell you, you know, the pensions aren't that much. People seem to think... If you think that we're making these huge pensions, it's not.

RUSH: No, they're not, but Social Security is not that much on a monthly basis per individual, but by the time you add up how much each individual gets times the tens of millions that are receiving Social Security, it costs a lot of people a lot of money to pay it. And it's the same thing with any entity as large as General Motors that has that many people. Let me ask you this before we go. I'm going to put you in management now. You're no longer on the line. You're in management, and you're making General Motors cars, and one of the business realities that you face is that you have to add in $2,600 per car on average that you make to the sale price to cover the pensions and the health care and the sick days and the holiday pay and the line relief and all that. And your competitor, Toyota, or anybody else only has to pay $200 per car for health care. What would you do?

CALLER: I understand what you're trying to say. I understand that point but, you know, General Motors --

RUSH: No, no, no, no. I'm not trying to say anything. I'm genuinely asking you. I'm putting there if you can do it, if you can put your management cap on. I'm not asking you to be sympathetic. I'm not asking you to be sympathetic with them. I'm not doing anything. I really want to know what you would do, and it may not be fair. I don't know how much management experience that you have, and I don't know what your overall impression of management in any business is. I know that most employees suspect management of not being honest and forthcoming about costs and this sort of thing. So I don't know what biases you have, but if you can do it, if you were running... Let's take out the car business, and let's say you're in the pizza business, and your pizzas cost, let's say, $7 more than the guy down the street from you because your pizza has to cover his pension, welfare, all these things, and the competitors' doesn't. What would you do?

CALLER: You know, I really can't say what I'd do there. All I know is like I'm trying to say, just trying to get a perspective from a person that basically lives on a pension now. I did have to go back to work, had to supplement my pension because it's not that much, and, you know, when I hear things like, "Well, it's just cut out General Motors pension and stuff like that." There's a lot of people like myself probably now that are hearing this are saying, "Yeah, what am I supposed to do if they just cut out my pension? You know, I worked for General Motors for 30 years and all of a sudden they're going to just do away with my pension. What am I supposed to do, go back to work when I'm 60, 70 years old?" So it just really puts us in a bad spot.

RUSH: No. No. But since you asked... I don't... You're a nice guy, and I'm sure you're a salt-of-the-earth guy, but since you asked, "What am I supposed to do, go back to work at 67?" No. You're not supposed to retire when you're 55. You sound to me like you are totally capable of still working. Unless you work for a place that forces you out, and says, "At 55 you can no longer do the job," you've got no business retiring at 55, if you can't afford to retire... (interruption) What's wrong, Snerdley? My boss is having a conniption in there. What's wrong? What, is that an impolitic thing to say? I have not...! (interruption) The American...? I have not redefined the American dream. The American dream is to retire at 65. People are retiring now at 50 and 55 and so forth when they're still capable of working. Okay, so you retire at 50 or 55 and you've got, according to the tables, at 55 you've got 22 years left. Now, who's gonna...?

There is a thing called the cost of living, and if your pension does not pay you what you're going to need to live in the style in which you become accustomed for 27 more years or 22 more years, then you're going to have to supplement it somehow. I have not redefined the American dream. I have not redefined it. Well, does anybody...? I don't even want to go there. Social Security is what it is. It's what it's not and it's more not than it is. But most people cannot live with nothing else, other than Social Security in the style in which they were accustomed when they retire. Now, I look and there are caveats here, of course you might work in a job where the boss forces you out at 55. They made Cronkite retired at 65, and he theoretically could have anchored that for 20 more years, and we would have been spared Dan Rather. The only reason Rather got the gig was CBS had this antiquated retirement age policy of 65. They don't have anymore because Rather is in his seventies now and they did away with it. But the answer is: keep working. You know, there's no crime in that, especially if you need the money. If you need the money, you keep working. If you need a job, don't quit. I don't understand what I said that's wrong.

Waxman is the new the chairman on the Committee on Energy and Commerce. What does this mean to you?

Remember the years of media flak President George W. Bush received for his alleged use for political gain of first the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and then the related Afghanistan and Iraq Wars?

Will the press be as vociferous now? Incoming Obama Administration Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, speaking on Wednesday on and to the Wall Street Journal Digital Network, stated outright his desire to make political hay with the ongoing travails of the U.S. and global economy:

"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."

Wonder why President-elect Obama resigned from the Senate so early (while Vice President-elect Joe Biden remains an active member) and is hanging back, not wading into the debate over bailouts etc.

[Bear in mind that Obama’s home state, Hawaii, just dropped their own socialized medicine venture because it was too costly; however, this is what the federal government ought to do: allow any state, country or city to provide socialized medicine, if that is their predilection].

Obama is not picking new and innovative candidates; he is going for Clinton Administration, Part II (which, in my opinion, is sensible):

Do you recall that one court wants the term illegal alien not to be used? Putin will not allow his press to use the word crisis:

Obama has two models which he can follow: the Reagan model or the FDR model. Both of them inherited tough times and both of them dealt with these difficult economic times in opposite ways. FDR was for more government and higher taxes; Reagan was for lower taxes and less government. Which will be Obama’s model?

It is estimated that FDR extended the Great Depression by about 7 additional years.

Two magazines compare Obama to Lincoln and to FDR on their covers. Obama is reported to be reading Team of Rivals (about the Lincoln cabinet). Now, do you recall even one story about Bush and the books he was reading? He is one of the most well-read of all the presidents, despite his reputation. I recall one story where he mentions and author he is reading, and

another story where Karl Rove mentions their competition when it came to reading books. I wonder if either quote made it into the mainstream media?

Very perceptive take on Obama and economics (on Obama’s short list for treasury secretaries, none of them are entrepreneurs; for those of us who believe in free enterprise, that should send a chill up your spine):

Conservative Review
Issue #50	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	November 23, 2008