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

I do not accept any advertising nor do I charge for this publication. I write this principally to blow off steam in a nation where its people seemed have collectively lost their minds.

“Desperate consumerism could only happen in a wealthy economy.” Margaret Hoover on FoxNews, commenting on the man trampled to death in Wal-Mart.

“Another shocking bit of news, ladies and gentlemen. This is from the business section of

the UK Times Online: "Sales of electric cars have fallen by more than half this year, according to figures released two days after the Government's climate change advisory body predicted a huge increase." Now, get this. "Only 156 electric cars were sold from January to October, compared with 374 for the same period last year." Now, why is this? Electric cars, that's what these jerks out in Silicon Valley are talking about, that's what they want the money from Detroit for. They want to come up with this new electric transportation system out there for the Silicon Valley. I can't imagine buying a car with a limited range to travel. It seems semi-dangerous to me. If I play in the NFL, I want to go to a nightclub on a Friday night with a loaded gun, I need to have a car that's going to get me there and get me outta there to the hospital when the gun goes off supposedly accidentally while I'm reaching for a drink. If I'm an NFL player going to a nightclub I sure as hell don't want to be in some little electric putt-putt that isn't going to get me to outrun the cops as I'm on the way to some super-secret location in a hospital. “ Rush Limbaugh 12/4/08

1) Barney Frank recently made fun of Bush, indicating that we had less than one president at this time. Barney Frank: Here's the problem. Secretary of the Treasury is waiting to hear from the Obama people, and the Obama people are waiting, and again, I'm a great fan of the president-elect but I think it's probably a case that he's going to have to be more assertive than he's been. And I know what he says is, "Well, we only have one president at a time." My problem is, at a time of great crisis, with mortgage foreclosures and autos, he says we only have one president at a time. I am afraid that overstates the number of presidents we have (laughter) at the present time.

Charles Krauthammer observed that George Bush has been quite the interventionist as of late, almost socializing our financial institutions (not something which he necessarily approved of). Quite obviously, he is anything but a lame duck president.

The interaction between Bush and Congress over the auto industry bailout has been remarkable, and, so far, under-reported (of course).

2) Bill O’Reilly, speaking about the atheist sign in the Washington State capitol, observed that these atheists will not insist on putting up their signs on Martin Luther King’s birthday in order to give their viewpoint in contrast to his (as King was a minister and very religious). Furthermore, no state official would allow any such display during King’s birthday either.

3) One of the myths of the past election is how bad American is viewed overseas. Bill Bennet suggests, before making such an incorrect statement, to use the gates test. If you raised the gates of a country, would more people try to get in than get out? Quite obviously, the US would be flooded with people looking for a better life. People would be leaving Communist and socialistic countries and Middle Eastern Countries by the boatload.

4) As you know, a Wal-mart employee was trampled to death by a crowd of excited Wal-mart shoppers. Bernie Goldberg observed that it is not our society and it is not Wal-mart who killed this man; the people who actually stepped on him in order to get to the plasma screen tv’s first are the ones who killed him.

94% of Americans with a mortgage are paying that mortgage on time. This is even after Congress required FNMA and FHLMC to take on homeowner debt from those who should never have been given a loan in the first place.

94% of all Americans who want a job are working. Not the best statistic, but overall, since the introduction of unemployment benefits, a good stat.

I still don’t think the Obama will shut down Gitmo. He may start to deal with some of the people there individually, and make it look like he is dealing with the whole Club Gitmo problem, but there are no other reasonable alternatives once Gitmo is shut down.

Obama is not going to pull out all of our troops from Iraq. He will pull out some soldiers, and many of them will be redeployed to Afghanistan. However, if things go sour in Iraq, Obama is not just going to throw his hands up in the air and bring everyone home. Politically, this would be the stupidest move any president could make—to take a good situation in Iraq and make it crappy by fulfilling some campaign promise to the far left.

Obama may set up some low level meetings with some of the goofy dictators in the world during his first year as president, but he is going to find that his life is going to be quite full and running off to talk to Chavez is not going to be on his to-do list. He may go to Iran or meet Ahmedinejad somewhere, within the first year, but he is going to find that it makes more sense to lean on our allies to lean on whack-job than it will be to meet with whack-job in person.

India is going to closely interface with George Bush or Condi Rice in order to set up something similar to the Patriot Act there. What Bush did here may become a model throughout the world, as terrorism increases.

I don’t care how many people are against bailing out the auto industry, there will be the first bailout by George Bush, taking the money which was originally going to be given to the auto companies to go more green which will now be given to just tide them over, with fewer strings. Then there will be the Obama bailout, no later than February, and there will be a myriad of strings attached.

I said that Bush would not be a lame duck president. He has been probably the most interventionist president in history in the past few months, with this bailout thing (unfortunately, in my opinion). He was the go-to guy when it came to reaching some kind of an auto bailout settlement.

I told you the bottom of the market would be reached around November. I still stand by that. When we got the half-million new unemployed number, the stock market actually went up. It seems to be bouncing off the 8000 bottom. Obviously, Obama could do some stupid stuff to change this.

About a month ago, I suggested that Obama will, in some way, pay back the newspaper business for helping get him elected. Suddenly, this does not seem so far-fetched:

Wal-Mart Shoppers Kill Wal-Mart Employee in order to buy Big-Screen TV’s (Wal-Mart has been blamed, society as a whole—you and I—have been blamed, but very few stories put the blame where it belongs)

In the previous few issues, I have printed at the end of each issue what (mostly) liberals think Obama is going to do when he gets into office. The fact is, we do not really know.

On the far left, the pink people are rather unhappy with Obama’s international security choices. They are not much different than Bush would have done in a third term (remember all of the accusations that McCain will just be George Bush’s 3^rd term?). However, even though these appointments may represent Obama’s cabinet of rivals (from the Lincoln biography), we really do not know what Obama will do. Under predictions, I have listed a set of foreign policy decisions which I believe Obama will follow.

My biggest concern is Obama’s economic policy. Roosevelt took the Great Depression and made it much worse with government tinkering (Hoover was no better). Obama does not see it that way, and Obama has absolutely no concept of free enterprise out in the real world (much like George McGovern, who recognized later in life how much government screwed up the private economy when he tried to run his own business up in the northeast).

So far, Obama is still talking about massive government jobs to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure (it is not crumbling; it was built quite well to begin with). When it comes to green jobs, Obama has used that term maybe 100 times, but has not gone into much more detail. It sounds great to the environmentalists, however, because they love Mother Earth, and don’t feel that government shows enough love to Mother Earth. In any case, bear in mind, every government job is going to cost about 4x what the private sector would charge to do the same thing. Furthermore, the numbers which Obama (or any politician) puts to a government program mean absolutely nothing. They are numbers pulled out of a hat. Whenever you hear a number, triple it, and that will be approximately the amount it will cost (if they are careful). If they are less careful, the actual cost will end up being about 9x more than the first figures given (like the new visitors section to the capital, so that Harry Reid doesn’t have to smell them as they come right in off the street).

My biggest concern, and no idea if Obama is going to do this or not, is universal health care. At this point in time, the government is being bankrupted by Medicare and Medicaid. We cannot afford this; so how will the government afford any sort of a universal health care system? Once health care is free, who knows just how many people will begin going to the doctor regularly, who were not before; or who were taking otc meds in the past? And if it is government-run, just how efficient do you think it is going to be?

Furthermore, US medical research will be stifled. Part of the reason so many medical breakthroughs originate in the United States is free enterprise.

First of all, let me explain what Bush is doing: he views the financial markets (particularly credit sources) as utilities. So, his approach to our economic problems is to free up credit, which is a necessary part of business. I am not justifying the approach that he has taken, or the amount of money the government has poured into banks, but giving you his viewpoint on the matter.

When it comes to the auto industry, this is a whole new thing to Bush—this means, the government will be put in charge or deciding which business will fail and which will succeed, rather than letting the free market do this. Obviously, only poorly-run businesses will require governmental assistance, so the government will be in charge of deciding which poorly-run companies should be allowed to continue.

Now, insofar as the Congressional Democrats are concerned, the union owns them. The union gives them money and votes. You wipe out the UAW, and that could move Michigan from blue to red. So, the Democrats cannot allow the auto industry to fail. However, bailing out the failing auto industry while there are clearly successful auto industries throughout the south, is quite unpopular (except in Michigan, of course).

Here is the politics behind it all. Hang this around Bush’s neck. Obama does not want to come into power and sign the auto bailout package on his first day. That could be political suicide for him and for Congressional Democrats (as the population of the US is slowly beginning to find out that the Democrats have been in charge of Congress for the past 2 years). Bush is not going to sign any such thing. However, Congress has already appropriated money to give to the automakers, but with strings (build more eco-cars). The compromise is, this money will be sent to the automakers, but without all of the strings attached from Congress (which is, in part, the reason the auto industry is in trouble to begin with).

Here is one of the places where we do not get the straight dope: what newspaper is doing an in-depth analysis of the auto industry? What television special is examining the union contracts, the retirement benefits of union workers, the actual demand the public has for this or that kind of car? Will 60 Minutes compare Michigan to Kentucky? Why is one model working and the other model not?

Here is what I do know: the cost to build a car at GM is about $2000 more than the cost to build a similar car at the Toyota plant in Kentucky. I know that the union workers not only have extremely high wages, but that their retirement packages are quite incredible as well.

Here is what I don’t know: I have heard over and over again of the concessions which the UAW has made in order to save the 3 US automakers. I have no clue as to what these concessions are.

The second thing I don’t know is, what is the US demand when it comes to specific vehicles. To listen to Rush, every family wants an SUV; to listen to Bill O’Reilly, the US automakers are not building enough fuel efficient cars. The automakers are not stupid; they know what the public wants. Why don’t I know? Why has the news left out these salient facts in their reporting?

Here is what I suspect: if America was clamoring for tiny, fuel efficient transportation vehicles, then the government would not have to mandate to the US automakers CAFÉ standards. The auto companies would build and sell those cars on their own. I suspect that the problem is, GM, Chrysler and Ford have to build too many cars which people do not want, in order to satisfy the standards set by Congress, and that is part of the US auto dilemma. I come to this conclusion via logic, and not via facts and figures.

Last week, there was all the hub-bub about Obama voters and their lack of political knowledge. Here is the Hannity and Combs interview with the guy who originated this survey:

Here is the questionnaire (done over the phone), along with the raw data (which voters believed or knew which facts).

Bear in mind, the idea was not to disparage Obama voters, but to show how much of an effect the media had on this election (I admit, I would have had to guess on question #8).

82.6% could NOT correctly say that Barack Obama won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot (25% chance by guessing)

88.4% could NOT correctly say that Obama said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket (25% chance by guessing)

56.1% could NOT correctly say Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground (25% chance by guessing).

Only 13.7% failed to identify Sarah Palin as the person on which their party spent $150,000 in clothes

And 86.9 % thought that Palin said that she could see Russia from her "house," even though that was Tina Fey who said that!!

Tension is rising between India and Pakistan because it looks like the killers who attacked Mumbai were based inside Pakistani territory. If shooting breaks out between these two countries, the world will have yet another crisis created by Muslim terrorists.

It is obvious to sane people that the American intelligence agencies must continue to stay ahead of the terror-killers and disrupt plots like Mumbai should they be directed here. To do that, information from captured terror suspects becomes vital.

But President-elect Obama has committed himself to an undefined no torture policy and is also having some difficulty finding someone to head up the CIA. Former CIA Chief of Staff John Brennan has taken himself out of the running because some far-left loons criticized him for taking an aggressive anti-terror stance after 9/11.

This is very disturbing. The far-left wants the CIA to go by the Army Field Manual when interrogating suspects. If that happens, all of us will be in danger.

Why? Well, here's what the manual says: "Prisoners of war who refuse to answer (questions) may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind."

Now - and this is important - that is fine for the military. It is not their job to break down terror suspects. It's their job to kill or capture them on the battlefield. The CIA should interrogate high-value targets.

But if Obama orders the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies not to employ any tough interrogation methods, trust me, many people will die. The terrorists are not going to stop, and only very aggressive action against them has kept us safe since 9/11.

But these far-left loons, these despicable people who blame America for worldwide terrorism, now have far more power in this country than they did just one month ago.

I believe Barack Obama understands the danger the Muslim terrorists pose to the world. I believe Mr. Obama will not destroy the CIA's ability to break down terror suspects. He has to know that hardcore terrorists are not going to give up information easily.

But still some people don't get it, and these people are foolish and dangerous, so crazed by their far-left ideology they'd allow innocent people to die for it.

The USA should never torture, but coerced interrogation at the direction of the president is vital when lives are on the line. Of course, the loons will never acknowledge that. They don't want to do anything "unpleasant" to terror suspects.

RUSH: The president came out today and said we're going to extend unemployment benefits. He officially used the "recession" word, big job losses, unexpected. Why are these unexpected? Obama told us. Obama told us not long ago we're going to lose millions of jobs, before we create millions more, or save millions more, what have you. Anyway, I understand the need for this unemployment compensation extension, I do. But, folks, a little tough love here. It is this kind of thing that is, over time, going to destroy a lot of people's initiative. It's a delicate balance here, but a lot of times in dire circumstances people get creative and get ambitious because of need. I keep hearing people say, "Well, the Great Depression, it can't happen again. I mean we've got the safeguards built in there, it can't happen again." It got me thinking, well, why did the Great Depression happen? If we can prevent a Great Depression by simply expanding unemployment benefits and bailing out banks and printing money, why didn't we do that in the Great Depression? Why didn't FDR just do that? Why did we go through all those years of pain and 25% unemployment, why did we do that? The safeguards are obviously very easy. So we're not going to have another Great Depression, eh? The more people that lose jobs that we continue to pay the fewer people I guarantee you down the road are going to be inspired to want to go back to work, and that's the downside of all this, and that, sadly, ladies and gentlemen, is one of the hoped-for results by many liberal Democrats in Washington today.

Right now, these Big Three automakers, the CEOs are up there, and they're begging for this bailout money, and the one thing that nobody is asking is, "What got 'em here in the first place, and what about this bailout is gonna fix what got 'em here in the first place?" What strikes me, ladies and gentlemen, is that just as we've had in previous occasions, what we have here are these three automobile executives up begging the very people responsible in large measure for the problems they have, for the solution. There's not one person that's listening to these auto executives today in the House of Representatives or the Senate that has the slightest business sense or any idea how to run a business and yet that's what they've been doing.

They have been directing the automobile companies how to build cars in this country. We're looking at cowardice. You know, just like the big oil companies finally said, "You guys, you're the ones that are causing us to have all these problems. You won't let us drill where there's oil." For the longest time, all these big, tough business CEOs have gone up to Congress and they've bent over and grabbed the ankles and they do it because they're scared because of all the power government has and we already know that liberal Democrats have made big business and their CEOs their number one enemies. They're on the target list. But it's about time some of these guys went up there and said, "If you guys would get out of our world, if you would get out of our business and let us run the business as we know how to do it, we won't be up here begging you for money." Don't you find it interesting that every business in the country and every state in the country is begging for money from the US government? Isn't it interesting? Why is this? Why is all of this happening? Is everybody in the private sector this stupid? Are all of these people that dumb that they do not know how to run a business?

I ran across something fascinating. It's Automotive News, and it's dated November 25th. It's by a guy named Peter Brown, who is the editorial director, and the title of the piece is: "In Defense (kind of) of Detroit." Before I read this, let me give you the reality here, though, folks. Happy as I am to be back here with you behind the Golden EIB Microphone, I still look at this as a sad day. Today the leaders, the titular leaders of General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler show up now hat in hand before a gaggle of politicians who are posing as business leaders. We have the 105-year-old Ford Motor Company. We have the 100-year-old General Motors company, and we have the 83-year-old Chrysler corporation. They appear before TV cameras and Congress. They dance when Congress says dance. They listen attentively when politicians upchuck their wisdom. They nod positively when the focus group lines dribble out.

It would take, ladies and gentlemen, more than one monologue, more than one program, more than one week to explain how they got here. But the point today is that they are here. They have come back after their homework assignment over the Thanksgiving holiday and come up with a plan that the Congress can vote for because most of the people in this country are opposed to this bailout. Here is what today and tomorrow is all about. Now, I don't know this for a fact. These are just my assumptions, intelligence guided by experience. Congress knows that they are going to bail out these companies. They know that 61, 63% of the public is against bailing out the companies. The automobile executives also know that Congress is going to bail them out, despite the fact that 61, 63% of the public is against it. The automobile unions, the United Auto Workers, they know that Congress is going to bail them out, the union voters. So they have to fake these tough decisions to help out, they have to fake these concessions that they are going to make. It's like Jim Wright, the former speaker of the House in Texas. (doing impression) "We only want to help you. We only want to help the president."

The car companies will give their pounds of flesh, and what's going to happen, new mandates, new standards, new regulations, the greening of the automobile industry, the unions, after the car companies give their pounds of flesh, the unions will give their ounces of flesh with the illusions of lower labor costs. But the net-net is the US Congress will give up nothing in terms of freeing up rules and regulations, standards and restrictions, all of that. As a matter of fact, rather than give up anything, Congress will gain more control over the US auto industry, and along with Congress gaining control of the US auto industry, so does Barack Obama. I'm happy to be back, but I'm sad to report this reality. We all know this is what's going to happen. And there's some talk, "By the way, we might go along with bankruptcy if it's prearranged and if there's no liquidation and so forth. And we need $2 billion to survive the next two weeks and so forth." Now, back here to Peter Brown, Automotive News, "In Defense of Detroit."

"Whose fault is this? Imagine that your home market is a large country whose energy policy can be summed up in two words: 'cheap gasoline.' Would your vehicles reflect that? Then suppose that your government tried to regulate fuel economy amid this sea of cheap gasoline, and the regulations established a high fuel economy standard for one type of vehicle (say 'cars'), and a very low standard for another (for example, 'trucks'). Would your fleet reflect that? Then imagine that your foreign competitors received huge subsidies to build greenfield plants in America to augment their imports to the United States. They have no retirees to take care of, and you have millions in the only major country where employers have to provide health care benefits. Then imagine that your home country's financial system collapsed under essentially a huge pyramid scheme by banks and investors, drying up credit and sending the nation into a deep recession." And if I might add, imagine during all this the price of gasoline doubled to four bucks in a relatively short period of time, and that caused pure havoc in your business.

"Can we acknowledge that many of the problems of the Detroit 3 were not entirely their fault? Let's look at one main criticism: Detroit stupidly became reliant on gas-guzzling SUVs and pickup trucks. Well, that's true. But the Detroit 3 didn't lead us to SUVs." See, this is what everybody misunderstands about how markets work. The consumer is driven by cheap gasoline. We all know Americans want big cars. The love affair with big cars, because of big families and safety, is pure Americana. And with cheap gasoline, the consumer bought the products the car companies made. The consumer led us to the SUV, not the evil car companies.

"The consumer, driven by cheap fuel and corporate average fuel economy regulations, pulled them there. In the early 1990s, after a huge investment in mid-sized cars, General Motors scrambled to convert car plants to truck plants to catch up to the American consumer. In those days, Toyota, Nissan, Honda and other competitors found themselves with inferior or no SUVs. But they did just fine in America with cars that worked for them elsewhere around the world. Meanwhile, they developed lots of trucks themselves. Alas, Toyota and Nissan developed huge pickup trucks and SUVs just at the end of the truck party and built huge Southern plants to make lots of them. Even Japanese automakers can make mistakes. But it's a rounding error for Toyota, not core as it was for the North American automakers. Certainly, Detroit should not have battled increases in fuel economy regulation. And GM's creation of the Hummer brand was almost criminal in its shortsightedness.

"So Sen. Shelby says these knuckleheads should die, die, die. Detroit's failed companies don't deserve any help. Remember, he's from Alabama, a manufacturing backwater until Daimler-Benz opened a Mercedes plant there in 1997." Again, I'm reading here from a piece in Automotive News by Peter Brown called, "In Defense (kind of) of Detroit." There's more to this that gets into hard economic numbers, too, and how these states profit by subsidizing the creation of jobs at these plants to make cars in places like Alabama and so forth. But the bottom line here is that General Motors and Chrysler and Ford have been told how to make cars, been told what the fuel standards ought to be, all the different types of gasoline that have to be formulated here, engines made to run those formulations of gas, all for the purposes here of environmental protection, global warming, or what have you. And some people say the government ought to bail 'em out because the government's the one partly responsible for putting them in this position. I just think it's getting to the point here where we're bailing out everybody and everybody wants to be bailed out, and a lot of these entities that need to be bailed out are people that are overly regulated by a bunch of goofballs that haven't the slightest idea how to run these businesses they're regulating in the first place.

RUSH: I'll give you some interesting numbers here about the auto industry in Alabama. I'm not jumping on Senator Shelby here. I mean, naturally Senator Shelby thinks these guys are running rotten businesses and they ought to go down the tubes. They may deserve to go down the tubes, but it's for being cowards and not standing up to government and telling them to go to hell when they're doing things to ruin the business. Like the Big Oil guys finally stood up and told these guys in Congress, "Let us drill." At any rate, Senator Shelby is from Alabama, and a bunch of foreign automakers went into Alabama. Why?

"Why did the auto industry go to Alabama? Alabama recognized that a local auto industry was a huge generator of jobs, taxes and prosperity. So the state gave Daimler $253 million in incentives to build a Mercedes-Benz plant. Daimler invested $300 million and created 2,000 direct jobs. The state's cost per automaker job: $126,500. The investment was so successful that Sen. Shelby's Alabama has since given more than $400 million to Honda and Hyundai. Now Congress is being asked to lend $25 billion to keep the Detroit 3 and their 260,000 U.S. employees, plus their suppliers and dealers, alive. 'It's a road to nowhere, and it's a big burden on the American taxpayer,' Shelby said. Even if, after a couple of years, the companies default, the investment would be less than $100,000 per Detroit 3 employee in the United States, and much less if you amortize it over the millions of people who depend on the Detroit and would have remained employed and insured.

"Is Shelby right that the Detroit 3 business model can't work? Chrysler was the world's most profitable mass-market automaker in the 1990s

-- until Daimler bought it and ran it into the ground. Let's acknowledge that there are reasons that each of the Detroit 3 faces the same catastrophe. What are the odds that every Detroit 3 exec of last 35 years has been an idiot? You don't have to forgive them all their errors to say that our government's policies have helped lead them to where we are, and that millions of Americans workers deserve a chance. Anyway, compared to subsidies from Alabama, Tennessee and other states, the proposed bailout is a heck of a bargain. If we didn't have a domestic industry, we'd say, gee, for $25 billion, we can earn more than that in taxes in the first year, even if they don't live forever. It's a pretty good deal in a pretty bad situation."

RUSH: We'll start in Brooklyn. This is Ann. Ann, great to have you here and thank you very much for waiting.

CALLER: Listen, I just had a heartbreaking situation. I went to Florida to buy my kids a new big car, and I ended up buying a Honda because I didn't know if GM and Ford were still going to be around. I'm driving an 11-year-old Ford myself because I believe in buying American.

CALLER: But you're a hundred percent right. All we need to do to save the car companies is to tell the government to get the hell away from taxes and regulations and leave 'em alone and they'll build a car people want to buy.

RUSH: Well, it's a little bit more complicated than that, but we've lost this. I'm watching these guys testifying, and I'm reading some of the closed-captioning going by and they're all promising to go green. Look, these guys have no recourse now. They are beggars, they are beggars, and eventually there are two words that are going to get this done. As I told you in the first hour, the bailout is going to happen, because, remember, as far as Pelosi and the Democrats are concerned, we're bailing out the unions.

I saw a YouTube today of a Ford plant in I think Brazil where they make a car, can't make the car here because of our own regulations, environmental regulations. They have a whole brand-new way of making the car. They have their own port down there. It's just fascinating video.

You can go to Europe and one of the most popular American-made cars is a car made by Ford that's not allowed to be sold here because of environmental regulations. This is a bailout of the unions. It's just that simple. These three guys, as long as they say, "I'm sorry," because when they say I'm sorry, they'll take the blame all on themselves, they will effectively ensure Congress from any blame. If they just say, "We're sorry," they're going to get bailed out, folks, and they're going to get saddled with new regulations to build all these little putt-putts that if people wanted, they'd be buying in droves 'cause they're out there to be bought already. It's a sad day. This stuff will get rolled back, eventually. It's going to be made right eventually because it's going to be devastating down the road for the next couple years or more.

By the way, you should be aware that there are some people who have an idea -- I think Charles Krauthammer originally floated this idea, I think it was originally his. See what you think of this. As a means of getting rid of all of the cafe regulations, the fuel mileage standards, make sure via taxes that the price of gasoline is always four bucks. Because we learned that the tipping point where people's behavior will be affected by the price of gas is four dollars. So right now, let's say that the national average of gasoline is two bucks, then the tax will be two bucks. If the price of gas goes to a buck 50, then the tax will go to two fifty so that the price of a gallon of gas always remains four dollars. The theory is that at that point you could remove the fuel standard requirements from manufacturing and let the Big Three make whatever cars they want to make, based on what people will buy at four dollars a gallon for gasoline. If the price of gasoline goes up to three bucks, then the tax ostensibly would go to one buck. But we know that wouldn't happen, would it?

I don't know of a tax that goes down and we're talking the federal tax here. State tax would be calculated here another way. So let's say that after a couple years the gasoline price national average, two dollars now, let's say it does go to three-fifty. Okay, so the law in effect says the tax will be 50 cents because we want to keep the price at four bucks. What will have to happen, they'll have to scale in a growth of that four dollars, after five years, four fifty, and then five dollars and so forth. And one of the theories behind this is that it locks in, forever, expensive gasoline, locks it in, and that way you could take all the regulations out of Detroit and all the manufacturing and the cars they will make will be reflected by the cost of gasoline.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. This is the happiest day of my life. My Christmas dreams have come true.

CALLER: Anyway, all I called to say is they forced us into these big cars back in the eighties with the child safety seats. They eliminated the station wagon, and you cannot put three baby seats in a Honda or in a tiny car.

RUSH: They didn't force you into anything. Who forced you? Are you saying by the requirement that you had to put your little crumb cruncher in a baby seat?

CALLER: I think that goes state to state, but the state of Ohio, right now I think our law is --

RUSH: Okay, I thought you were blaming the automakers at first, so I misunderstand.

RUSH: Okay, so the government requires all these things which required you to get a bigger car based on the size of your family?

CALLER: Yes, and if you've got your, you know, standard, 1.8 children then you can fit in a tiny car, but if you have three children, there's no way.

RUSH: I can relate to this. Last Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, I had 28 people arrive, and not all of them could stay at my house, some are going to The Breakers. So I gathered every SUV that I had --

RUSH: And because one of the guests is an infant that required an infant seat, it screwed up everything and I had to go out and get another SUV because I couldn't fit as many people in the SUV with the infant seat.

RUSH: I have a great story that just cleared the printer: "America's 'Other' Auto Industry." It's a story from the Christian Science Monitor.

"The US auto industry is throwing bolts, but here in Georgia's Chattahoochee Valley a South Korean car company is building a massive new manufacturing plant along the new Kia Parkway, replacing abandoned textile mills. The recently opened Korean BBQ House now vies for customers with Roger's Pit-Cooked Bar-B-Que. And in an indication of just how welcome Kia's nonunion jobs are, some 43,000 people applied for 2,600 positions -- with starting wages of $17 an hour -- as the plant gears up to turn out its first model next November. The expansion of this 'other' auto industry -- one that's foreign-owned, nonunion, and based largely in the South -- stands in stark contrast to this week's dire reports from America's own Big Three, whose CEOs laid out plans for a dramatic downsizing before traveling to Washington to plead for $34 billion... Two-thirds of 'foreign imports' are, in fact, built in the United States in nonunion shops, where it costs at least $2,000 less in labor to build each vehicle."

The point of the story is there is a thriving automobile industry in this country right now, and it's taking place in the South. It's happening in Georgia, it's happening in Alabama, Mississippi, and all of these companies are owned by foreigners, but they employ Americans. I mean two-thirds of the foreign imports are built in the United States, and one of the big secrets is right out in the open, and the Drive-Bys are now writing about it: unions! Here's the deal. Seventeen dollars an hour is what these people are going to work for at the Kia factory here in Chattahoochee Valley, and $28 bucks is what your average UAW worker makes. You get $28 bucks-an-hour for the average UAW worker for the Big Three or the big two-and-a-half, and 17 to 18 bucks-an-hour for the non-union people.

Now, as Charles Krauthammer pointed out yesterday, what's happening here, because I don't care what you've heard from what's this guy's name, Wettelfinger, Gettelfinger, the UAW guy, he's up there with the Big Three. Whatever you've heard about concessions, there aren't any. Oh, and the big question was asked this morning by some lib, a member of Congress, she asked the Big Three, "Hey, wouldn't it really help you all if the government took over your legacy health care costs?" Okay, there it is, folks. Finally it was right out in the open out there where we all know this is headed anyway. Krauthammer pointed out, look, the people in this country who are making 17, 18 bucks an hour, on average, are being asked to bail out the people making $28 bucks an hour, the union people that work for the United Auto Workers. It's all about being able to competitively stay in the business, and Chris Dodd, I mean, you have to give him credit, give credit where credit is due, he asked a smart question yesterday. He said, "Regardless what we do here, everything hinges on getting people into dealerships and buying your product, right?" It does. No matter what these clowns do up there.

CALLER: Absolutely. Hey, I've got a question for you, something I wanted to run by you. So in each of these bailouts, you know, everyone is getting bailed out, I've seen a couple AP reports, and they don't talk about the bailout but I kind of linked them together and I wanted to see what you thought about it. One of them was about university endowments being crippled 'cause they're all vested in the stock market and they're all down 40, 50%, and then tuition hikes, and people not being able to afford it with the economy going down. I wanted to see what you thought about the back door of socialism coming through here through universal education. They're going to say they're too big to fail and they're going to need a bailout.

RUSH: Well, now, it's interesting the way you put it, because the first reaction that I would have is that there is a symbiotic and business relationship between the left elected politicians and institutions of higher learning. They're all liberals, and have you ever wondered why, for example, even in the good times, like the Harvard endowment is down, they're guessing, eight billion. They had an endowment of over $50 billion or some such thing, and they never cut tuition.

RUSH: They never cut tuition, and yet the Congress, which is always aiming at Big Oil and always aiming at Big Retail and always aiming at Big Auto, and always aiming at Big Pharmaceutical, never aims at Big Education, and Big Education costs people an arm and a leg to put a kid through education and housing and all this for just four years of undergraduate.

RUSH: So we do student loans, we don't do anything, we don't target Big Education, we don't run 'em down, we don't force 'em for lower prices, we don't get on them for being out of touch for not understanding things people go through. It's a symbiotic relationship because they know that these schools are churning out little liberals.

CALLER: There was a report that said they could pay for all the tuition for all the undergraduates and all the graduates, and they would still have like 90% of their endowment intact --

RUSH: Exactly right. And these endowments are just donations from alumni and other things, like if your last name is Gook, and you want the medical building named after you, it would be Edward B. Gook Medical Building, give the endowment some money.

CALLER: What do you think about an education bailout? They are too big to fail, there are too many jobs, and then they'll say our kids won't get an education and won't be able to compete in the global warming, and I think it's coming, it's going to be like high school, high school, free high school, free college now.

RUSH: Yeah. Well, here's what I really think is going on here. On one hand, you have to laugh at it. On the other hand, you can drive yourself crazy getting angry about it. But what we really have is the government growing exponentially in geometric progressions just in time for the most avowed, extreme leftist president we've ever had to be inaugurated, to have total control over it. This is all being done under the guise of saving this industry, saving that industry, but all it's doing is advancing, as you say, a socialist agenda with hardly any opposition to it whatsoever.

Kukis: College is a business. Even though Congress will bail them out and make more money available to students, if they chose not to (highly unlikely), then colleges simply would lower their tuition rates. If a college does not have an education which students can afford, that college will go out of business. I don’t care what you hear, colleges and public schools have a lot of money right now.

RUSH: Now, I saw today on the Bloomberg News wire that the secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, has decided that he needs to do something now about home prices. He needs to do something about getting people into houses. You know, Phil Gramm said something back during the campaign. Of course, McCain zapped him for it. He said we're a nation of whiners. I never thought that this would happen. I thought that there was an innate toughness and an understanding of history by people in our country. We're not a nation of whiners, but man, there are enough people in this country who are, and we have leaders who are willing to pander to them. I guess the idea of America now, it's not just that you don't suffer pain, you don't suffer any discomfort. If there is any discomfort, why, the government has to come in and fix it, the government has to come in and alleviate your suffering and pain. We have too many politicians of both parties who are willing and able to run in there as fast as they can to try to take credit for doing that. It is shocking, and yet, while all this so-called pain and suffering is going on and we keep hearing people say Great Depression II, we don't have anybody alive in this country who understands what the Great Depression really was. And this is nothing like it.

This is fat city compared to the Great Depression. And yet, okay, so the housing market's in a slump and this market's in a slump, and we gotta bail 'em out, we can't have any pain, we can't have any suffering. I guess the days of tough love are gone. Thank you, Baby Boomers. So the Treasury secretary says, "Well, I tell you what we're going to do. We're going to make sure that home mortgage interest rates are four-and-a-half percent." Did you see that? Okay. So what we have now is price fixing in the mortgage industry. They've already bollixed this once or twice with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Are we going to learn from it? No! We're going to have the Treasury czar fix prices now. Central Planning, that's what I'm going to start calling the federal government because that's what's happening here, my good friends. Central Planning says that four-and-a-half percent mortgage rates are good for America.

Now, if Central Planning says that four-and-a-half percent mortgage rates are good for America and they're probably either today or tomorrow going to say that $25 billion is a good bailout number for the Big Three automakers, where is Central Planning going to stop? Central Planning is gonna require Americans to submit term papers saying how they will save money and that our next car will get 30 miles per gallon and will be made by UAW workers if they get the four-and-a-half percent mortgage? Is Central Planning going to say, okay, you want a four-and-a-half percent mortgage, you must sign an agreement that manmade global warming is killing us and that a tax on carbon will save the planet and that you will eagerly pay it in exchange for your four-and-a-half percent mortgage? Is Central Planning going to say you must sign an agreement on tax increases who makes anything any more than you do? Is Central Planning going to say, you must sign an agreement that you will vote for and support socialized medicine in exchange for your four-and-a-half percent mortgage? And, by the way, if you have a private jet, you will not qualify for a four-and-a-half percent mortgage. (laughing) Well, if Central Planning starts saying you don't need this and you don't need that, then we're screwed. Central Planning means federal government. You don't need a tax cut right now. You don't need that third car. You don't need it. All this is going to be done for our benefit. Don't misunderstand.

It's interesting to me to ask, "Why are we here? How did this happen?" And we're running the risk here, actually, we may have passed the point of no return on this. Everybody thinks the private sector doesn't work; everybody thinks free markets don't work. Ignorance is the number one most expensive commodity in this country. Did you see the Saxby Chambliss runoff results? It wasn't even close. It wasn't even close and the Democrat down in Georgia ran on Obama's change and hope and all that rotgut, all that platitudinous nothing. They had all the rappers out there. They had all the right people saying the right things, and guess what? Sarah Palin rolls in there and just swamps the Obama candidate. Obama, he didn't have time to go down there, no, no, he's too busy. I'm watching Obama and I'm beginning to wonder, "Does this guy want to be president, or does he want to do president?" What I mean by that is I think he's gonna sit up there and look at himself in a mirror every day and say, "Man, I got elected while all these Clinton people are out there running the Clinton third term."

I think he's excited about being president. I think he really believes this notion that American kids are going to feel happier about themselves and the world's going to love us even more -- except, of course, in India -- after his election. I'm going back and forth. I haven't figured it out yet. I haven't come to a conclusion here yet on what I actually think about this.

RUSH: "New Jobless Claims." This is the AP. Every month when they report the numbers: "'New Jobless Claims Drop Unexpectedly' -- New claims for jobless benefits fell unexpectedly last week but the number of people continuing to receive government aid reached a 26-year high and large companies announced more job cuts Thursday." Unexpectedly. Why is economic news "unexpected"? It doesn't matter what the economic news is. It's always "unexpected"!

CALLER: Yeah. My question, really, and if anybody would know it, probably you, why haven't any of these people in Congress been asked to recuse themselves from voting on giving away our money to the very same companies and corporations and individuals -- UAW, Freddie and Fannie, preferential loans to Dodd -- you know, it looks to me like bribery. And what's to prevent these guys from taking the money Congress gives them, our money, and shoving it back to the Congress people for another bailout down the road? This is insane. It's gotta stop.

RUSH: I'm telling you, you have hit the bull's-eye here on something that is I think very, very important in our country right now.

RUSH: What you are basically talking about is where the hell has ethics gone? That's what you're asking.

RUSH: And, you know, ethics in Washington is like everything else, it's a partisan two-way street. The Democrats really are not subject to any ethics. Victor Davis Hanson has a three-pager today at National Review Online about this very interesting conundrum that exists there, and I'll just give you one example off the top. Here you have Barney Frank and Chris Dodd. Let's just take Chris Dodd. Chris Dodd actually accepted money from Countrywide, the big mortgage broker and bank. He got a preferred mortgage interest rate. He was in the VIP program, that was the purpose of it. He oversaw legislation as the chairman of the banking committee that governed the mortgage industry, including his good buddy Angelo over at Countrywide. Not only is Chris Dodd not shamed, not only did he not resign, not only did he not get embarrassed, he's now in charge of rewriting the rules again for the mortgage industry.

RUSH: In the meantime, Trent Lott happened to make a joke about how much better America would be if Strom Thurmond had become governor somewhere, and he's forced out of the Senate for some words he told at a birthday party for an old man who couldn't even hear him anymore. So Republicans fall on the sword all the time, and then the Republicans demand that their own guys fall on the sword. The Republicans were the ones that forced Trent Lott out. I mean the Democrats are right in there demanding it, but the White House said, yep, I think you ought to go, you're embarrassing us. Ted Stevens, Ted, get the hell out of there, just won reelection but you're an unethical guy, get out. Democrats never fall on the sword, nobody ever demands they fall on the sword, so the answer to your question is, at our juncture in history now, Democrats are not capable, it's not possible by virtue of the definition of the word for them to be unethical. So there's no need for them to recuse themselves.

CALLER: Is there any possible way to put a provision in any of these things to keep this money from being shoveled back to the same criminals that are taking our money now?

RUSH: Well, the people that would have to write the provision are the people you're referring to here as the criminals, and I doubt they're going to ace themselves out of this.

RUSH: I mean, I'll tell you, I was talking about this on the radio yesterday, and I mentioned it a little bit in the speech last night in Washington. It's mind-boggling to watch this. It defies all common sense. All people can do is sit around and laugh. We're all Will Rogers now. You know, we're all Will Rogers making jokes about Congress. It's gotten to the point now that it is just absurd! It's gone beyond obscene. Nobody takes these people seriously. The American people are fit to be tied over it but have no power to do anything about it. What can the American people do, they just elected these people to run the show. At the same time, they're fit to be tied over it. I don't care, there does not seem to be any possible way a Democrat can ever violate ethics. They just simply don't apply.

Here is Mike in Greenville, North Carolina. You're on Open Line Friday. Hello, sir.

CALLER: Hey, I just wanted to point out that all we have to do is look back to 2002 with the US steel industry --

CALLER: -- for exactly how this should play out. Back in '02, the steel industry was at an all-time low. We're making steel for under manufacturing cost, and in that year, Bethlehem Steel, Ltd, all, you know, went into Chapter 7, the government let them because there was an overcapacity, and Nucor, which is a mini-mill, took over, US steel is still running strong, and right now, you know, six years later, the US steel market is phenomenal. The industry is balanced, as far as capacity-wise, and they're making a lot of money. So we just have to look six years in the past to know exactly what we need to do.

RUSH: It's a great example, and of course the Steelers, the football team of US steel, they've never gone into recession, they're still kicking butt out there.

RUSH: But you don't have to go to the past in order to find evidence of how to do something. Look to the present. All you have to do, you go to Alabama and Mississippi and Georgia and maybe Virginia, I'm not sure, one of the two Carolinas, you're going to find a thriving automobile industry in those states, and while they are foreign, quote, unquote, cars, they're made in America, and they cost basically $2,000 a car less than cars made in Michigan because these thriving automobile companies in the South are not unionized.

RUSH: Here's Scott in Spanish Fork, Utah. Great to have you on Open Line Friday. Hi.

CALLER: Thanks, Rush. Hey, could you please explain cap-and-trade in layman's terms?

RUSH: It's all you need to know. Theoretically, here's how it works. You have two evil, polluting businesses. One of them is an automobile plant, and the other one is an oil refinery. Two of the most hated industries of the Drive-Bys and the liberals. The government will then arbitrarily, according to some science that they will assign somebody to figure out, they will allow a certain amount of pollution from each factory. Then, if one of the factories produces more than it is allowed, the over-polluting factory will be able to buy credits from another factory not polluting its share so that it will be allowed to over-pollute as long as somebody down the road is under-polluting.

RUSH: And so the cap-and-trade basically is just a work -- the system's already in place called pollution credits, is what it used to be called. Now they're calling it cap-and-trade, and it also involves, if you over-pollute, go plant some trees, stupid things like this. It is in place in Europe. It is a scam. It is not working. It's not producing any money except for the people who came up with the idea, the Algores of the world. It will mean absolutely nothing, but it will destroy the coal industry, and Obama has promised it.

Even some on the left are banding together to show what a fraud cap and trade is:

RUSH: Folks, do you remember back in the mid-nineties we had a newspaper story from the Associated Press which said that lying was actually quite healthy for us? Lying spared people's feelings being hurt; lying kept our social fabric intact because telling the truth too often to too many people would just cause civil unrest, and we couldn't have that in the midst of perhaps the most dishonest president we've ever had, Bill Clinton. Well, Live Science: "Our research suggests that people may not need to worry too much about power corrupting Obama. His newfound power might enable the change he desires rather than that power changing him instead." So in 1995, lying was healthy. In 2008, all of a sudden, power does not corrupt.

RUSH: A press release from UCLA: "'UCLA Expert Blames American Values for Health Care Crisis' -- To heal our ailing health care system, we need to stop thinking like Americans. That's the message of two articles by UCLA's Dr. Marc Nuwer, a leading expert on national health care reform, published this week in Neurology, the journal of the American Academy of Neurology. 'Americans prize individual choice and resist limiting care,' says Nuwer, a professor of clinical neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. 'We believe that if doctors can treat very ill patients aggressively and keep every moment of people in the last stages of life under medical care, then they should. We choose to hold these values. Consequently, we choose to have a more expensive system than Europe or Canada.'

"Consider these statistics. The United States boasts the world's most expensive health care system, yet one-sixth of Americans are uninsured. Medical expenditures exceed $2 trillion annually, making health care the economy's largest sector, four times bigger than national defense." Let's look at why this is. We might find that part of the reason is the government meddling in this business. We might also find the introduction of trial lawyers into this business might be contributing to all of this money being spent. Another statistic. "By 2015, the US government is projected to spend $4 trillion on health care, or 20 percent of the nation's gross domestic product. An aging population will boost spending. Half of Medicare costs support very sick people in their last stages of life, and experts estimate that Medicare funds will be exhausted by 2018. Thirty-one percent of US health care funds go toward administration. 'We push a lot of paper,' Nuwer says. 'We spend twice as much as Canada, which has a more streamlined health care system that demands doctors complete less paperwork.'"

Yeah, more people die up there. More people leave their system to come down here. Anyway, "10 percent of US expenses are spent on 'defensive medicine' -- pricey tests ordered by doctors afraid of missing anything, however unlikely. 'Doctors don't want to be accused in court of a delayed diagnosis, so they bend over backwards to find something -- even if it's a rare possibility -- in order to cover themselves,' Nuwer says. Reforming the US health care system with the goal of providing universal, affordable, high-quality care will require rethinking our overall values and paying greater attention to care-related expenditures, according to Nuwer."

Snerdley, why are you so shocked? Why? No, this guy is doing us a favor! This guy is more right than he knows. In order to get national health care, we do have to stop thinking like Americans. Real Americans wouldn't put up with it. We need to start thinking like socialists, that's the only way it's going to happen. This guy, I know it offends you, because he's advocating it. He's advocating that we change the way our values are structured so as to get national health care. This is exactly what people need to be told. This is un-American to do it the way it's being proposed -- universal national health care.

Should the auto bailout money go to encourage Detroit to build more cars that America does not want?

Top climate change scientist is distressed because we are not spending enough money on global warming:

Conservative Review
Issue #52	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	December 7, 2008