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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.

"A favorite pastime of tort lawyers is locating deep pockets, extracting money from them and, occasionally, trickling a small amount to some injured party. Is it any surprise that most legislators are lawyers?" - Mike McCarthy (making a comment at www.wsj.com)

“Obama’s choice of Leon Penetta [as CIA chief] was purely political; there will be purging and punishment.” Charles Krauthammer.

Actually, right now, Obama could not ask for anything better than the recent Israeli offense on Hamas. The more than Israel beats them down, the longer there will be peace in Israel.

O’Reilly’s talking points about the shooting in Oakland were excellent. They are best seen with the accompanying video.

Unfortunately, the O’Reilly/Jerry Brown interview which followed has not yet been posted. It was a good interview and Jerry sounded pretty sensible, while trying to explain the thinking of the rioters.

Ann Coulter on Hannity and Colmes, when it appeared as if she would not be on the Today Show:

Ann Coulter on the Early Show. Listen to how condescending the host is (I wonder how many other authors Harry Smith has called goofy).

1) Israel seems to be one of the few nations on this earth which has some clue as to how to deal with Arab terrorists.

2) It is easy to see why Blagojevich got elected. Despite everything I know about him, he still comes across as charming and erudite. In the midst of being impeached, Blago looks cheerful and quotes Tennyson, without notes or a prompter.

3) The only time in history that the Palestinians were given their own land to govern is by Israel. They receive billions of dollars in aide from around the world. So they use this money to continually attack Israel rather than to build up their own country.

4) We all recall the demonstrations and riots of Muslims over a few silly cartoons printed in some obscure Denmark publication. Do you recall the moderate Muslims demonstrating against radical Muslims who attacked and killed people in Mumbai? Neither do I. Now American Muslims are joining in. In Florida, because of the Israeli-Palestine conflict, some have cried out, “Back to the ovens.” If you need a good example of hate speech, this is it.

5) Penetta gutted the CIA budget under Clinton. What do you think he is going to do now?

If you remove illegitimate children from consideration, there is no statistical difference between white and black criminals. The percentages are about the same. It is the single-parent home which contributes far more criminals to society than any other segment of our population.

70% of the prison population are children of unwed mothers. 60–70% of runaways, teenage pregnancies, teenage rapists, teenage murderers are children of unwed mothers.

In the Minnesota recount, 25 precincts have more ballots than registered voters.

77% of Americans believe that the media is making the economy worse with its over-reporting of our economic realities.

1) Newspapers and magazines will continue to blame Bush for our economic woes part way into Obama’s administration. Any good news at all is going to be attributed to the new face in Washington; any bad news will be portrayed as a holdover from the Bush administration.

2) Obama is going to be called a pragmatist and a realist in our media. Expect to see those words or similar words a lot. He’s not going to be called a liberal or a progressive and his economic policies will not be called liberal or progressive.

3) I think the Obama is going to screw up when it comes to the protection of the American people. Those on the left have pushed back on every single measure that Bush has taken (and has kept us safe). Obama’s continued rhetoric about Club Gitmo and his appointment of Leon Penetta as the CIA head seem to indicate that to me. I think this will lose Obama the election. Dick Morris has a different opinion, and it is based upon personal experience. Morris says, you just go on TV, look sad and sincere, you bite your lower lip, you promise that you are going to get those guys, and then bomb a few aspirin factories.

4) You have heard that Obama has promised to meet with all kinds of deplorable world leaders without preconditions. He has recently spoken about talking to Hamas. I assume without preconditions. However, now Hamas is laying out preconditions for Obama to meet.

I thought this week, I’d be able to report that Burris was seated and that Kennedy will replace Hillary, but those are still up in the air.

Awhile ago (in October?) I said that November (2008) would be the stock market bottom. 8000 seems to be that bottom. The stock market is just going up and down at this point, simply because no one knows what Obama is going to do or what direction or economy is going.

Awhile ago, I said that our federal government would be bailing out newspapers or bailing out AP or Reuters news services. Although we do not have a federal bailout, at least one city is having its two newspapers bailed out by local government. This is the worst mistake we could ever make is to put government in bed with the news. Our news is slanted enough as it is.

We start 2009 in the midst of a crisis unlike any we have seen in our lifetime - a crisis that has only deepened over the last few weeks. Nearly two million jobs have now been lost, and on Friday we are likely to learn that we lost more jobs last year than at any time since World War II. Just in the past year, another 2.8 million Americans who want and need full-time work have had to settle for part-time jobs. Manufacturing has hit a twenty-eight year low. Many businesses cannot borrow or make payroll. Many families cannot pay their bills or their mortgage. Many workers are watching their life savings disappear. And many, many Americans are both anxious and uncertain of what the future will hold.

I don't believe it's too late to change course, but it will be if we don't take dramatic action as soon as possible. If nothing is done, this recession could linger for years. The unemployment rate could reach double digits. Our economy could fall $1 trillion short of its full capacity, which translates into more than $12,000 in lost income for a family of four. We could lose a generation of potential and promise, as more young Americans are forced to forgo dreams of college or the chance to train for the jobs of the future. And our nation could lose the competitive edge that has served as a foundation for our strength and standing in the world.

These are scare tactics made by someone who knows absolutely nothing about the free economy. There is no reason why his predictions are accurate.

Percentage-wise, what Obama faces in the economy is far less dire than that which Reagan inherited from Carter. What he is facing is somewhere more daunting than what Bush faced and somewhat less daunting than what Reagan faced.

Obama can choose the free enterprise approach of Ronald Reagan (which would guarantee that he is reelected); or he can choose to try to solve our economy the FDR way (which, no matter what you read in your lying history books, did not work!). It appears as though Obama will choose the latter method. At this point, I would predict that this approach will cause any viable Republican opponent to be elected 4 years hence.

This crisis did not happen solely by some accident of history or normal turn of the business cycle, and we won't get out of it by simply waiting for a better day to come, or relying on the worn-out dogmas of the past. We arrived at this point due to an era of profound irresponsibility that stretched from corporate boardrooms to the halls of power in Washington, DC. For years, too many Wall Street executives made imprudent and dangerous decisions, seeking profits with too little regard for risk, too little regulatory scrutiny, and too little accountability. Banks made loans without concern for whether borrowers could repay them, and some borrowers took advantage of cheap credit to take on debt they couldn't afford. Politicians spent taxpayer money without wisdom or discipline, and too often focused on scoring political points instead of the problems they were sent here to solve. The result has been a devastating loss of trust and confidence in our economy, our financial markets, and our government.

Note that Obama says almost nothing about the changed standards in FNMA and FHLMC. Does he realize that these are the largest financial institutions in the world? Does he realize that there was more investment in these two institutions than in any other financial institution in human history? Does he know that the changed standards have brought on the crisis that we are in? They caused the housing bubble (since people who normally would not be buying houses were thrust into the housing market) as well as the burst of the housing bubble (when these same people could or would not pay their mortgages). Obama has been closely associated with community organizations who essentially blackmailed banks into making these risky loans. You can search YouTube and find a number of Democrats telling everyone that FNMA and FHLMC were fine and that Bush should not mess with them or put on more regulations.

That is why I have moved quickly to work with my economic team and leaders of both parties on an American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan that will immediately jumpstart job creation and long-term growth.

It's a plan that represents not just new policy, but a whole new approach to meeting our most urgent challenges. For if we hope to end this crisis, we must end the culture of anything goes that helped create it - and this change must begin in Washington. It is time to trade old habits for a new spirit of responsibility. It is time to finally change the ways of Washington so that we can set a new and better course for America.

This is not some great, brand-new plan, like we have never seen before. It is typical, let’s take a lot of tax dollars and cut them loose over America. This is the liberal solution to everything; spend taxpayer money.

Reagan inherited a horrendous economy—arguably one which could have spiraled into a depression. Tax cuts and a free enterprise approach brought us out of it.

We do not need a brand-new, never-been-tried before approach (which brand-new approach is really not). We already know what works. Let’s do that instead.

There is no doubt that the cost of this plan will be considerable. It will certainly add to the budget deficit in the short-term. But equally certain are the consequences of doing too little or nothing at all, for that will lead to an even greater deficit of jobs, incomes, and confidence in our economy. It is true that we cannot depend on government alone to create jobs or long-term growth, but at this particular moment, only government can provide the short-term boost necessary to lift us from a recession this deep and severe. Only government can break the vicious cycles that are crippling our economy - where a lack of spending leads to lost jobs which leads to even less spending; where an inability to lend and borrow stops growth and leads to even less credit.

More government is what got us here in the first place. Why should I believe that even more government is going to fix it?

That is why we need to act boldly and act now to reverse these cycles. That's why we need to put money in the pockets of the American people, create new jobs, and invest in our future. That's why we need to re-start the flow of credit and restore the rules of the road that will ensure a crisis like this never happens again.

A free market always will have ups and downs in every single sector of the economy. That is a part of life. Government cannot insure that a crisis will never occur again. However, government did put us into the crisis that we are now in.

Available credit is a good thing. Making credit available to everyone, no matter what their background, is a bad idea, and is what got us here in the first place (there were other factors, but that is far and away the biggest cause of our present-day economic crisis).

That work begins with this plan - a plan I am confident will save or create at least three million jobs over the next few years. It is not just another public works program.

Oh, Mr. Obama, that is all this is, is another public works program. When government creates a job, they often pay 4x as much for that job as the free economy would (if memory serves, don’t welfare recipients get 17¢ out of every welfare dollar?), and the job continues, even when the work is completed. The worst approach in the world is federal jobs programs. FDR did it and there was no appreciable change in unemployment until World War II.

To finally spark the creation of a clean energy economy, we will double the production of alternative energy in the next three years. We will modernize more than 75% of federal buildings and improve the energy efficiency of two million American homes, saving consumers and taxpayers billions on our energy bills. In the process, we will put Americans to work in new jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced - jobs building solar panels and wind turbines; constructing fuel-efficient cars and buildings; and developing the new energy technologies that will lead to even more jobs, more savings, and a cleaner, safer planet in the bargain.

Free enterprise can do all of this. Just imagine how much would get done if government gave the go-ahead for 30–100 nuclear plants. That would deal with the phoney-greenhouse gas problem, with the lack of jobs, and with our over-dependence on foreign oil. This is a much smarter approach than changing out the light bulbs in federal buildings.

What Obama proposes sounds very good and green; just like bio-fuels did a few years ago.

To improve the quality of our health care while lowering its cost, we will make the immediate investments necessary to ensure that within five years, all of America's medical records are computerized. This will cut waste, eliminate red tape, and reduce the need to repeat expensive medical tests. But it just won't save billions of dollars and thousands of jobs - it will save lives by reducing the deadly but preventable medical errors that pervade our health care system.

I would love to hear about a single government program which cut costs. Every government program I am aware of costs 4–10x more than we are told to begin with, and is rife with corruption.

To give our children the chance to live out their dreams in a world that's never been more competitive, we will equip tens of thousands of schools, community colleges, and public universities with 21st century classrooms, labs, and libraries. We'll provide new computers, new technology, and new training for teachers so that students in Chicago and Boston can compete with kids in Beijing for the high-tech, high-wage jobs of the future.

And this will come at what cost? How many trillions of dollars are you willing to spend? Who is going to pay that money back? Will this debt fall upon our children and their children and their children after that?

To build an economy that can lead this future, we will begin to rebuild America. Yes, we'll put people to work repairing crumbling roads, bridges, and schools by eliminating the backlog of well-planned, worthy and needed infrastructure projects. But we'll also do more to retrofit America for a global economy. That means updating the way we get our electricity by starting to build a new smart grid that will save us money, protect our power sources from blackout or attack, and deliver clean, alternative forms of energy to every corner of our nation. It means expanding broadband lines across America, so that a small business in a rural town can connect and compete with their counterparts anywhere in the world. And it means investing in the science, research, and technology that will lead to new medical breakthroughs, new discoveries, and entire new industries.

In case you did not know, most of the road money is spent on other things. We do not have a crumbling infrastructure. Almost every American can name on the fingers of one or two hands all of the infrastructure problems over the past 10 years because hey get a lot of press.

We do not need government provided broadband. Most people have it, and those who don’t can get it at their libraries, Starbuck’s and many other places. A far greater percentage of kids at age 18 have a computer and a car than had a car at my age. I think our technology is progressing fine without government help.

We are the greatest country in the world when it comes to medical and technological discoveries. No other nation comes even close. I am not sure that more government is going to improve that.

Finally, this recovery and reinvestment plan will provide immediate relief to states, workers, and families who are bearing the brunt of this recession. To get people spending again, 95% of working families will receive a $1,000 tax cut - the first stage of a middle-class tax cut that I promised during the campaign and will include in our next budget. To help Americans who have lost their jobs and can't find new ones, we'll continue the bipartisan extensions of unemployment insurance and health care coverage to help them through this crisis. Government at every level will have to tighten its belt, but we'll help struggling states avoid harmful budget cuts, as long as they take responsibility and use the money to maintain essential services like police, fire, education, and health care.

40% of Americans do not pay federal income taxes, so how can 95% of Americans get a tax cut? This is a government check, paid for by someone else, which is going to be given as a promised bribe by Obama.

Our government has already spent a good deal of money, but we haven't yet seen that translate into more jobs or higher incomes or renewed confidence in our economy. That's why the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan won't just throw money at our problems - we'll invest in what works. The true test of the policies we'll pursue won't be whether they're Democratic or Republican ideas, but whether they create jobs, grow our economy, and put the American Dream within reach of the American people.

So, I guess I just look stupid? You tell me government is going to only invest in what works. You tell me you are not just throwing money at problems. As the stupidest man who ever lived once said, “I believe you, President-Elect Obama.”

We have to make tough choices and smart investments today so that as the economy recovers, the deficit starts to come down. We cannot have a solid recovery if our people and our businesses don't have confidence that we're getting our fiscal house in order. That's why our goal is not to create a slew of new government programs, but a foundation for long-term economic growth.

So, because you tell me you are making smart investments, I am supposed to believe that? So far, all I see in what you have told us about this plan is a slew of new government programs, which is what you have promised from the beginning on your website; as well as paying back the people who voted for you.

That also means an economic recovery plan that is free from earmarks and pet projects. I understand that every member of Congress has ideas on how to spend money. Many of these projects are worthy, and benefit local communities. But this emergency legislation must not be the vehicle for those aspirations. This must be a time when leaders in both parties put the urgent needs of our nation above our own narrow interests.

All of these public works projects are exactly that. Just because they are not added in the way earmarks are added in, does not make them any less a waste of money.

Now, this recovery plan alone will not solve all the problems that led us into this crisis

It is time to set a new course for this economy, and that change must begin now. We should have an open and honest discussion about this recovery plan in the days ahead, but I urge Congress to move as quickly as possible on behalf of the American people. For every day we wait or point fingers or drag our feet, more Americans will lose their jobs. More families will lose their savings. More dreams will be deferred and denied. And our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse.

Do not think about it; just act; right now; immediately. There is no time to waste. Do not drag your feet. The sky is falling and everyone’s house is on fire.

It will not come easy or happen overnight, and it is altogether likely that things may get worse before they get better.

But that is all the more reason for Congress to act without delay. I know the scale of this plan is unprecedented, but so is the severity of our situation. We have already tried the wait-and-see approach to our problems, and it is the same approach that helped lead us to this day of reckoning.

That is why the time has come to build a 21st century economy in which hard work and responsibility are once again rewarded.

How hard is this to understand? You take away government, and you stop over-taxing those who build our economy, and hard work and responsibility is rewarded. When a person who works 60 hours a week is not expected to subsidize the person who works 20 hours a week, then we are rewarding hard work and responsibility. Taxing the wealthy and bailing out companies which have engaged in bad business practices, does just the opposite of what you say you want to do.

That's why I'm asking Congress to work with me and my team day and night, on weekends if necessary, to get the plan passed in the next few weeks.

My recommendation; why don’t you and Congress take the first 6 months off? Pass a permanent tax bill which reduces the top rate to 25%, and reduces capital gains tax to 10%, and then go home and spend some time with your families. The economy will recover. If you get bored, figure out how to trim 20% of the federal budget.

You have to remember, Obama has never run a business of his own, he has never had to make payroll. He may not have even taken an economics course in college or high school (and, if he did, it would be at a liberal college). When you listen to him give speeches on the economy, bear all of this in mind. He is a blind man in a new house. He does not know where anything is or how it works.

Do you remember when he was finally asked a real question in one of the later debates? “In the past, lowering taxes and the capital gains rate results in more money flowing to the government; so why do you want to raise some taxes and the capital gains tax?” Obama was at first stumped. He did not say, “Heck, I didn’t know that;” but it was obvious that he didn’t. He finally settled on, “These additional taxes will make things more fair.” [These are not exact quotes]. Obama doesn’t know this. He’s a democrat and he’s an ideologue; they attempt to even out incomes by redistributing wealth, and, in the process, buy up more votes. In terms of what actually works for a free economy, Obama hasn’t a clue.

George McGovern, a liberal democrat who previously ran for president, eventually tried making his own business work, and he admitted, when he found out how much government interference there was standing between him and making money on this enterprise, he was shocked. He said had he known this, he would have voted a lot differently in his political past.

Obama has gotten a lot of money from the government that he and Ayers got to spent, but Obama really has no economic experience. To him, government is a place where they have a big bucket of money, and you just go there and get it and give it to the people who need it.

This understanding explains Obama’s clearly stated policies of a federally run health program (which would eventually supercede private health programs) and his 10 or 12 armies of federal employees that he wants to hire.

You may point out, but Obama has hired all of these veteran economy geeks. Obama is the decider; when it comes to implementing policy, he is the one who makes the final choice.

Right now, Obama is warning us that this is the greatest economic disaster in our lifetimes, that we must act quickly and that whatever we do, it must be big, big, big, and done quickly.

When Bush made the same claims a few months ago, I did not believe him. Now that Obama is saying the same thing, after there are no clear positive economic results from the Bush bailout, I do not see Obama, who knows even less than Bush does, fixing our economy with a big, bold bill.

If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, you pray. And whether you are or aren’t, let you Senators and Congressman know that you will not vote for them if they vote for another bailout bill.

Stand by your words. Now, maybe you cannot stand to vote for the opposite party in the next election, then vote for a third party.

There are Democrats and Republicans who do not want a huge bailout bill. Some of their constituents are telling them, “Do something, do anything!”

Obama has $350 billion to spend from the TARP money. This is where he needs to start; not with another huge government spending projects bill which will economically affect us for the next 20–50 years.

Obama tax cuts? Aiming to foster bipartisan support for his record-setting economic stimulus, President-elect Obama plans to propose huge tax cuts for businesses and middle-class workers that will total about 40 percent of the package, or up to $310 billion, congressional officials said.

Heck, that’s change I can believe in. I will admit, I never expected Obama to carry through with his lower taxes pledge. From this article, it appears as if he is trying to straddle the fence between free enterprise and making the government a lot larger.

However, the problem is, most of those tax cuts are going to people who may or may not pay taxes. Even though some Democrats have said, “Well, they pay state taxes and property taxes and sales taxes,” Obama is essentially taking money from people who earned it and putting it into the pockets of people who did not. The bottom 40% of Americans do not pay federal income tax (and, therefore, they do not pay state taxes either); so this check from Obama is simply a check from the government to buy their votes next time around.

Bush and Paulson have pumped about $350 billion into the financial markets. Why are we not seeing a change?

First of all, there is some change. Some financial institutions are lending money and others are not. We are entering into a new administration where, what will happen with the economy is anyone’s guess. Therefore, many investors are moving away from stocks and bonds (as we do not know the viability of many cities, schools and utilities at this time) and going into money market accounts and even into gold.

The biggest problem is the unknown. We do not know for certain what Obama will do. If he manages to pass another huge bailout bill, then we will see great inflation, which involves one set of economic strategies. If we see Congress actually pull back here (I doubt that), there will be another set of investment strategies. Will Obama go through and tax the higher tax brackets more? 5 who pay Will he let the Bush tax cuts expire? All of that is closely related to business, as these are the people who make business work.

If Obama could state some clear economic objectives and clear plans besides, “Our economy is the worst ever, ever; and I need to spend lots of tax dollars the second I get into office.”

Specific and well-laid out pro-business policies would do a lot to turn our economy around. Lower taxes for the 60% who pay taxes would turn the economy around.

Businesses and investors like a clear, pro-profit, pro-business economy which is steady and predictable. When the president-elect tells them the sky is falling, they are going to naturally pull back.

One of the headlines in several newspapers and reports has been, something along the lines of, Virginity Pledges Don't Stop Teen Sex (an actual CBS headline). The general idea is for you to either skim the article, read the headline, and come back with the idea that, teens are going to be sexually promiscuous, whether they are religious or not, and there is nothing you can do about it, parents.

What is the truth and what is false? A study looked at a subset of teens, some of whom took an abstinence pledge and some of whom did not, and found that there was no difference. Now, doesn’t that comport well with the self righteous people who looked down their nose at Sarah Palin’s family and huffed, “That is what happens when you teach just say no to your kids.”

Our takeaway from this is, teens are teens, they are going to have sex no matter what we do, so what we need to do is give them condoms and education and abortions on demand. Despite this being the liberal position, I can guarantee you that Obama is not going to give his daughters a how-to lesson and then hand them condoms for their first (or third) date. But the press tries to make us feel as if we are rubes (like the Palin family) if we think differently.

Here is what these lurid news reports have ignored: Janet Elise Rosenbaum of Johns Hopkins University, conducted this study, but made these comparisons within a specific subset of teens: those who are just as religious and conservative as the pledge-takers. So, she does not compare those who take such a pledge with teens in general; she confines this comparison to teens who have been brought up with religious and/or conservative values. Within this subset of teens, whether the kid takes a pledge or not is irrelevant.

The study is called "Patient Teenagers? A Comparison of the Sexual Behavior of Virginity Pledgers and Matched Nonpledgers," and it was published in the Jan. 1 edition of Pediatrics.

If you are to compare this particular subset of teens—those brought up by religious and/or conservative parents—here is how they compare to teens in general:

- These teens are less likely to have a teenage pregnancy, or to have friends who use drugs.

- When these teens lose their virginity they tend to do so at age 21 -- compared to 17 for the typical American teen.

Are you beginning to see why almost all newspapers in the United States are losing money while the Wall Street Journal continues to grow each year? Some people are getting tired of their newspapers pre-thinking their news for them, and making sure that it all comes out conforming to their point of view.

When I read about things like this, where studies and newspaper reports are done in such a way as to distort the truth, it, quite frankly, angers me. If this report turned out to prove that church going teens were the worst teens of all, that is fine with me, as long as it is an honest study. I do not mind hearing the truth. What bothers me is when I read pap designed to make me think a certain way.

I have a lot of liberal friends, and quite frankly, even those who believe that the news is slanted someone, do not really recognize just how slanted it all is. I mean, if you hear the same chorus sung in your newspaper, on tv, and in the magazines that you read, then you tend to believe that what is being said is true.

I wrote a column many months ago called Lies that Liberals Believe; and I listed approximately a full page of things which liberals believe to be the truth, things which are, statistically untrue. One example of this is, those who enter the military are disadvantaged and/or inferior to the average 18–20 year old kid, and that when they come out of the military—particularly if they come out of serving in a war—that they are scarred for life, and lead lives inferior to those who never went into the military in the first place. Liberals believe stuff like this, because they see it every time this subject is talked about on tv, whether it is a prominent article in the newspaper, or a special report on 60 Minutes. I could quickly list 10 relatives or friends who believe this kind of tripe, and it is because the media is designed not to tell you the truth, but to get you to think a certain way.

We saw it in this past election. Sarah Palin stumbles in an interview (she clearly did), and it is all over the news. Even things which were not true about her—that her child was not really her child or that she banned books from the library or that she said, “I can see Russia from my house”—found their way into the news. However, no one examined Obama near as carefully. No veritable army of news reporters descended upon Chicago as they did upon Juno, to find anything about Palin which might seem untoward.

I am all for an uncovering of the truth; I firmly believe that the press ought to examine a politician as carefully as possible, so that we know everything that we can about that person. But it irks me to see the press openly rooting for a candidate, and then gearing most of their articles to put that candidate in a favorable light. I am against the press disseminating myths either based on studies specifically designed to give us false information or myths based upon a study which the press intentionally distorts.

I would love to take comfort in the fact that most newspapers are driving their stock into the ground with their incredibly biased reporting. Unfortunately, in our bailout mentality, I fear our government will begin to bail out poorly run newspapers too.

The Blagojevich thing is a mess, and every day that he is in the news, more and more people are seeing just how corrupt Chicago and Illinois politics is. So, all Reid had to do was to tell the Blagojevich appointee, Rolland Burris, “Come on in, join our exclusive club” and the Blago news would soon disappear.

Here is what’s going on. Beside being an idiot, which explains some of what Harry Reid does, he also spoke to Blagojevich about who he should and who he should not appoint. Reid told Blago to appoint Veterans Affairs chief Tammy Duckworth or Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan (aka Demi Moore), whom are both white women. He told Blago not to appoint Jesse Jackson Jr., Danny Davis or Emil Jones, all of whom are Black. Quite obviously, Reid is not quite ready to seat Burris, who really needs to get himself a plaque proclaiming himself to be “Senate-Appointee Rolland Burris.”

What Harry Reid is after is someone he is sure will be elected in two years. He wants a Democrat because, historically speaking, most presidents lose seats in Congress two years into their administration (Bush being the exception to the rule).

Here’s what I read: Burris has given more than $20,000 to Blagojevich's campaign fund on his own and through his consulting and law firms, state campaign finance records show. Burris' consulting company received about $290,000 in state contracts with the Illinois Department of Transportation a few years ago, according to state comptroller records. Some of the clients Burris' firm lobbied for also got state business.

It’s Chicago, and Burris has been in the political scene for a long time, so don’t be shocked. Maybe Harry is actually concerned that this may become common knowledge to in the near future.

Britt Hume retired from FoxNews Special Report. I am sorry to see him go. He was an interesting, no-nonsense news anchor. His replacement is a nice enough guy (Bret Baier), but he is no Britt Hume. I was hoping that Chris Wallace might step in as Hume’s replacement, but no such luck.

Also, Hannity and Colmes is becoming just Hannity, which a grave error. I may agree with most of what Hannity stands for, but I liked the balance which Colmes brought. I don’t know that I can take a whole show of just Hannity. I was rooting for Hannity and Powers (Kirsten Powers) or, in the alternative, Hannity and Beckel (Bob Beckel).

Unbeknownst to me, there has been a poll on the internet, which I just learned of (the poll is closed). It turns out that Powers was 1^st choice (28%) and Beckel was 2^nd (13%).

HotAir pundit Allahpundit, suggests Hannity and Carville, which I think would be an incredible match up. Www.HotAir.com is a mostly conservative website, and the opinions there seemed to be mostly in favor of Hannity teaming up with someone else.

Someone else suggested Flavia Colgan, who is way hot, if nothing else. I don’t know her.

If nothing else, I hope that Hannity’s solo ratings tank, so that we get someone else to counterbalance him. I registered my opinion with FoxNews at 1-888-369-4762.

Throughout America's history, there have been some years that simply rolled into the next without much notice or fanfare. Then there are the years that come along once in a generation - the kind that mark a clean break from a troubled past, and set a new course for our nation.

Now, the very fact that this crisis is largely of our own making means that it is not beyond our ability to solve. Our problems are rooted in past mistakes, not our capacity for future greatness. It will take time, perhaps many years, but we can rebuild that lost trust and confidence. We can restore opportunity and prosperity. We should never forget that our workers are still more productive than any on Earth. Our universities are still the envy of the world. We are still home to the most brilliant minds, the most creative entrepreneurs, and the most advanced technology and innovation that history has ever known. And we are still the nation that has overcome great fears and improbable odds. If we act with the urgency and seriousness that this moment requires, I know that we can do it again.

That work begins with this plan - a plan I am confident will save or create at least three million jobs over the next few years. It is not just another public works program. It's a plan that recognizes both the paradox and the promise of this moment - the fact that there are millions of Americans trying to find work, even as, all around the country, there is so much work to be done. That's why we'll invest in priorities like energy and education; health care and a new infrastructure that are necessary to keep us strong and competitive in the 21st century. That's why the overwhelming majority of the jobs created will be in the private sector, while our plan will save the public sector jobs of teachers, cops, firefighters and others who provide vital services.

I understand that some might be skeptical of this plan. Our government has already spent a good deal of money, but we haven't yet seen that translate into more jobs or higher incomes or renewed confidence in our economy. That's why the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan won't just throw money at our problems - we'll invest in what works. The true test of the policies we'll pursue won't be whether they're Democratic or Republican ideas, but whether they create jobs, grow our economy, and put the American Dream within reach of the American people.

Instead of politicians doling out money behind a veil of secrecy, decisions about where we invest will be made transparently, and informed by independent experts wherever possible. Every American will be able to hold Washington accountable for these decisions by going online to see how and where their tax dollars are being spent. And as I announced yesterday, we will launch an unprecedented effort to eliminate unwise and unnecessary spending that has never been more unaffordable for our nation and our children's future than it is right now.

Now, this recovery plan alone will not solve all the problems that led us into this crisis. We must also work with the same sense of urgency to stabilize and repair the financial system we all depend on. That means using our full arsenal of tools to get credit flowing again to families and business, while restoring confidence in our markets. It means launching a sweeping effort to address the foreclosure crisis so that we can keep responsible families in their homes. It means preventing the catastrophic failure of financial institutions whose collapse could endanger the entire economy, but only with maximum protections for taxpayers and a clear understanding that government support for any company is an extraordinary action that must come with significant restrictions on the firms that receive support. And it means reforming a weak and outdated regulatory system so that we can better withstand financial shocks and better protect consumers, investors, and businesses from the reckless greed and risk-taking that must never endanger our prosperity again.

No longer can we allow Wall Street wrongdoers to slip through regulatory cracks. No longer can we allow special interests to put their thumbs on the economic scales. No longer can we allow the unscrupulous lending and borrowing that leads only to destructive cycles of bubble and bust.

That is not the country I know, and it is not a future I will accept as President of the United States. A world that depends on the strength of our economy is now watching and waiting for America to lead once more. And that is what we will do.

It will not come easy or happen overnight, and it is altogether likely that things may get worse before they get better. But that is all the more reason for Congress to act without delay. I know the scale of this plan is unprecedented, but so is the severity of our situation. We have already tried the wait-and-see approach to our problems, and it is the same approach that helped lead us to this day of reckoning.

That is why the time has come to build a 21st century economy in which hard work and responsibility are once again rewarded. That's why I'm asking Congress to work with me and my team day and night, on weekends if necessary, to get the plan passed in the next few weeks. That's why I'm calling on all Americans - Democrats and Republicans - to put good ideas ahead of the old ideological battles; a sense of common purpose above the same narrow partisanship; and insist that the first question each of us asks isn't "What's good for me?" but "What's good for the country my children will inherit?"

More than any program or policy, it is this spirit that will enable us to confront this challenge with the same spirit that has led previous generations to face down war, depression, and fear itself. And if we do - if we are able to summon that spirit again; if are able to look out for one another, and listen to one another, and do our part for our nation and for posterity, then I have no doubt that years from now, we will look back on 2009 as one of those years that marked another new and hopeful beginning for the United States of America. Thank you, God Bless You, and may God Bless America.

The postmortems on the presidency of George W. Bush are all wrong. The liberal line is that Bush dangerously weakened America's position in the world and rushed to the aid of the rich and powerful as income inequality worsened. That is twaddle. Conservatives--okay, not all of them--have only been a little bit kinder. They give Bush credit for the surge that saved Iraq, but not for much else.

He deserves better. His presidency was far more successful than not. And there's an aspect of his decision-making that merits special recognition: his courage. Time and time again, Bush did what other presidents, even Ronald Reagan, would not have done and for which he was vilified and abused. That--defiantly doing the right thing--is what distinguished his presidency.

Bush had ten great achievements (and maybe more) in his eight years in the White House, starting with his decision in 2001 to jettison the Kyoto global warming treaty so loved by Al Gore, the environmental lobby, elite opinion, and Europeans. The treaty was a disaster, with India and China exempted and economic decline the certain result. Everyone knew it. But only Bush said so and acted accordingly.

He stood athwart mounting global warming hysteria and yelled, "Stop!" He slowed the movement toward a policy blunder of worldwide impact, providing time for facts to catch up with the dubious claims of alarmists. Thanks in part to Bush, the supposed consensus of scientists on global warming has now collapsed. The skeptics, who point to global cooling over the

past decade, are now heard loud and clear. And a rational approach to the theory of manmade global warming is possible.

Second, enhanced interrogation of terrorists. Along with use of secret prisons and wireless eavesdropping, this saved American lives. How many thousands of lives? We'll never know. But, as Charles Krauthammer said recently, "Those are precisely the elements which kept us safe and which have prevented a second attack."

Crucial intelligence was obtained from captured al Qaeda leaders, including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, with the help of waterboarding. Whether this tactic--it creates a drowning sensation--is torture is a matter of debate. John McCain and many Democrats say it is. Bush and Vice President Cheney insist it isn't. In any case, it was necessary. Lincoln once made a similar point in defending his suspension of habeas corpus in direct defiance of Chief Justice Roger Taney. "Are all the laws but one to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated?" Lincoln asked. Bush understood the answer in wartime had to be no.

Bush's third achievement was the rebuilding of presidential authority, badly degraded in the era of Vietnam, Watergate, and Bill Clinton. He didn't hesitate to conduct wireless surveillance of terrorists without getting a federal judge's okay. He decided on his own how to treat terrorists and where they should be imprisoned. Those were legitimate decisions for which the president, as commander in chief, should feel no need to apologize.

Defending, all the way to the Supreme Court, Cheney's refusal to disclose to Congress the names of people he'd consulted on energy policy was also enormously important. Democratic congressman Henry Waxman demanded the names, but the Court upheld Cheney, 7-2. Last week, Cheney defended his refusal, waspishly noting that Waxman "doesn't call me up and tell me who he's meeting with."

Achievement number four was Bush's unswerving support for Israel. Reagan was once deemed Israel's best friend in the White House. Now Bush can claim the title. He ostracized Yasser Arafat as an impediment to peace in the Middle East. This infuriated the anti-Israel forces in Europe, the Third World, and the United Nations, and was criticized by champions of the "peace process" here at home. Bush was right.

He was clever in his support. Bush announced that Ariel Sharon should withdraw the tanks he'd sent into the West Bank in 2002, then exerted zero pressure on Sharon to do so. And he backed the wall along Israel's eastern border without endorsing it as an official boundary, while knowing full well that it might eventually become exactly that. He was a loyal friend.

His fifth success was No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the education reform bill cosponsored by America's most prominent liberal Democratic senator Edward Kennedy. The teachers' unions, school boards, the education establishment, conservatives adamant about local control of schools--they all loathed the measure and still do. It requires two things they ardently oppose, mandatory testing and accountability.

Kennedy later turned against NCLB, saying Bush is shortchanging the program. In truth, federal education spending is at record levels. Another complaint is that it forces teachers to "teach to the test." The tests are on math and reading. They are tests worth teaching to.

Sixth, Bush declared in his second inaugural address in 2005 that American foreign policy (at least his) would henceforth focus on promoting democracy

around the world. This put him squarely in the Reagan camp, but he was lambasted as unrealistic, impractical, and a tool of wily neoconservatives. The new policy gave Bush credibility in pressing for democracy in the former Soviet republics and Middle East and in zinging various dictators and kleptocrats. It will do the same for President Obama, if he's wise enough to hang onto it.

The seventh achievement is the Medicare prescription drug benefit, enacted in 2003. It's not only wildly popular; it has cost less than expected by triggering competition among drug companies. Conservatives have deep reservations about the program. But they shouldn't have been surprised. Bush advocated the drug benefit in the 2000 campaign. And if he hadn't acted, Democrats would have, with a much less attractive result.

Then there were John Roberts and Sam Alito. In putting them on the Supreme Court and naming Roberts chief justice, Bush achieved what had eluded Richard Nixon, Reagan, and his own father. Roberts and Alito made the Court indisputably more conservative. And the good news is Roberts, 53, and Alito, 58, should be justices for decades to come.

Bush's ninth achievement has been widely ignored. He strengthened relations with east Asian democracies (Japan, South Korea, Australia) without causing a rift with China. On top of that, he forged strong ties with India. An important factor was their common enemy, Islamic jihadists. After 9/11, Bush made the most of this, and Indian leaders were receptive. His state dinner for Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh in 2006 was a lovefest.

Finally, a no-brainer: the surge. Bush prompted nearly unanimous disapproval in January 2007 when he announced he was sending more troops to Iraq and adopting a new counterinsurgency strategy. His opponents initially included the State Department, the Pentagon, most of Congress, the media, the foreign policy establishment, indeed the whole world. This makes his decision a profile in courage. Best of all, the surge worked. Iraq is now a fragile but functioning democracy.

How does Bush rank as a president? We won't know until he's judged from the perspective of two or three decades. Hindsight forced a sharp upgrading of the presidencies of Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower. Given his achievements, it may have the same effect for Bush.

Lying with statistics (comparing our current economic crisis to the Great Depression, according to this article, is not too far-fetched.

(What they ignore is, most families during this time had one breadwinner, and when he or she was out of work, times were very tough; today, unemployment figures generally include mom or dad, if one of them is employed). Two more things that this article (or any other for that matter) does not tell you: (1) before the depression, unemployment was around 3% (since government introduced unemployment benefits and welfare, more people now do not have to work); and (2) Blacks had a lower unemployment rate than whites before the depression.

Cold weather continues to ravage the northern states (where the population, for the most part, believe in global warming):

There is good news out there. Five Somali pirates drown as they squabble over their $3million ransom:

Here is a shocker—Obama admits to Stephanopoulos that maybe he won’t be able to deliver on all of his campaign promises:

I have not seen the interview yet, but I wonder if Obama will suggest this is Bush’s fault?

Another example of hatred on the left. On an official Obama website (www.USAService.org) a restaurant will host an event where angry lefties can throw their shoes at a poster of Bush. Although this link has been removed, here is the page as it once looked:

RUSH: Folks, I am conflicted. I'm not often conflicted. I am conflicted about Obama. He had another press conference today to announce -- (interruption) no, I'm being serious, I'm being serious. I'm conflicted here. Let me see if I can express this in the way I intend to. I want to say it the way I'm thinking it. He had another press conference today to announce Leon Panetta -- we need the James Bond theme for that, (doing Bond impression) "Panetta, Leon Panetta, Bond, James Bond" -- as the CIA chief. Panetta is up there saying he will tell everything to Congress. He won't keep any secrets. That's not good in a spook. (laughing) Anyway, after all that, the press didn't care about Panetta, they started peppering The Messiah with economic questions. Here's my conflict. His economic speech yesterday literally spooked me, and it spooked me because -- and this is the conflict -- on one hand, I think that he is literally clueless and has no idea what he has put himself into here. I'm reminded of the big election movie starring Robert Redford called The Candidate. After they won, Redford said, "Okay, now what do we do?"

The other side of the conflict is I am convinced that Obama is a radical, extreme leftist who, like all radicals, is like a flower child. He has all these dreams, all of these visions of a utopia. And, of course, it's not possible. So the conflict is, does he not really know what he's doing, or does he know what he's doing? 'Cause that speech he gave yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, it spooked everybody. It spooked the Democrats on Capitol Hill, it spooked the markets. It's like I said yesterday, inside of two months we've gone from a nation of people that believe we have to have some discipline in the size of our government and our spending, and now the mainstream thought is government spending as fast as we can and only government can solve the problem. None of that is true. The success of this depends on how fast we spend money, and then he had this little press conference today where he's answering questions. I listened to this, and I don't know if I'm sure that he knows what he's doing. Even if he's a committed leftist, does he know what he's doing, does he know what he's gotten himself into? His whole campaign was platitudes. He's still speaking in platitudes, as though his very presence will make magic happen.

He says he's gonna meet with Iran, even though they're a big threat. He's going to have clandestine meetings with Hamas. He's gonna do all of these things that he was chided for during the campaign, for being ignorant or naive. And so is he naive, or is he devious? Is he naive or is he a wolf in sheep's clothing? The source of the conflict is that I know liberals, I know extreme leftists, and I know that a lot of them are not grounded in reality, they are grounded in emotion and visions and dreams of utopia, and, you know, doctors, nurses, clean water, birds and the bees flying all around, sun shining every day, birds chirping. I guess it really doesn't matter, because it does seem that he's going to take us as far left as he can while appearing moderate. He has a new term for liberal, by the way: "pragmatic conservative." That's how he describes himself now as a "pragmatic conservative," which will appeal to people like David Brooks at the New York Times and several of our squishy so-called conservatives in our media.

By the way, an alternative headline for this unemployment number. If the media doesn't want to say Obama saves 93% of the jobs, they could at least do a headline that says Obama's plans distracted by 7.2% unemployment. 7.2% unemployment, it's an unfortunate distraction. Let's go to some of the audio sound bites from today to try to illustrate this. This morning, from his transition headquarters, here is a portion of his opening remarks.

OBAMA: The unemployment rate is now well over 7%. In addition, we have 3.4 million people who want full time work, but are only able to get part time work. Clearly, the situation is dire. It is deteriorating, and it demands urgent and immediate action.

RUSH: We have been taking urgent and immediate action since October, the same kind of action that he is advocating now. And since we started taking this action look at what has happened, it has gotten dire. The very prescription he is offering is leading to these dire circumstances. The economy is stimulated by average Americans going about their business. The economy is grown by people engaging in commerce, working. It is not grown by what we are doing with stimuli and bailouts, as we have demonstrated over the past three months. If, ladies and gentlemen, bailouts and stimulus were the only way, as he said yesterday, government's the only entity that can stop this and fix this, we should already be on the road to being fixed because government has done everything it can. Going to spend another trillion, fine, spend another trillion. At some point it becomes meaningless. It's meaningless now, in terms of recovery. Its real meaning is the destructive nature of what we are doing and what he plans, and that's what's spooking me. What he's going to do is literally destructive, and I don't know that he knows it.

On the other hand, I know he's a committed, extreme leftist, and I think maybe he does know it, and that's the game. But I have a tough time believing that somebody would actually knowingly take such destructive steps as president of the United States. And then I look to history, and it's been done before, by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who happens to be a role model for this bunch, including Obama. So I'm conflicted here. But regardless, it doesn't matter. Whether he knows what he's doing or not, it ain't good what he's going to do, and that's the bottom line. Compounding the problem -- (interruption) Well, well, I'm getting to that in just a second. Compounding this problem, folks, I'm going to depress you. I don't want to do this. The Senate Republicans just completed a retreat. I had a spy at the retreat. Here is what my spy sent me last night. "Frustrated Senate staffers say that the Senate Republican retreat that just finished was demoralizing for the best of the Republican Senators. Republican Senators were told to moderate, to not be too extreme, to not be critical of the new administration, to remember the need for Northeastern Republican survival." The Republican Senators were told don't be too controversial, don't be extreme, moderate, and remember the need for the survival of Northeastern Republicans.

There is no leadership there. Everybody's cowed, everybody's cowering in corners, everybody is afraid. I'm talking about, when I say everybody, elected officials on our side at the retreat. Now, we compound that with the notion that it appears the mantra from our side is we want him to succeed. No, ladies and gentlemen, this can't succeed, is the problem. His plan cannot succeed in the objective that's being advanced, that's fixing the economy, getting us out of recession, preventing depression, getting people back to work, it can't do that. It's never been done. If it works this time it will be the first time in human history. We don't want this to succeed, because succeed means failure, success means failure. If this works, the only way it can work is to cause more damage. And to sit around while there is a golden political opportunity here to reestablish the identity and the differences of the Republican Party to this crowd that's now running the show in Washington, they got nothing to lose, they can't stop anything anyway, so why be afraid to criticize it? So fear has taken over our side.

Now, back to the Obama press conference today. CBS TV reporter Chip Reid says, "President-elect Obama, your staff has talked about a high end of about $800 billion, something like that. They say if that's true, and if 40% of it's tax cuts that don't have the bang for the buck that spending has, it's not big enough. Paul Krugman today said that it falls far short of what they're going to need to put America back to work. How do you respond to those points?"

OBAMA: Well, look, there are some people who, uh, have said that it's not big enough; there are others who say it's too big. Well, the, uh, as I said before, Democrats or Republicans, we welcome good ideas. This is not an intellectual exercise, and there's no pride of authorship.

RUSH: Stop the tape. This is exactly what it is. It's an intellectual exercise. It's a presentation at law school, it is a presentation of the Harvard Business School. It's designed to show how smart the guy is. It's designed to show how well spoken, how open-minded. "Well, we could do this or we could do that, a lot of people have good ideas, we don't care who gets the credit." None of this is true. He doesn't care who gets the credit? Ha-ha-ha. That is big-time BS in a brown paper bag. Forget the "B". Big time "S" in a brown paper bag. He doesn't care who gets the credit? Here, we'll listen to it in toto now.

OBAMA: If Paul Krugman has a good idea in terms of how to spend money efficiently and effectively to jump-start the economy, then we're going to do it. If somebody has an idea at that tax cut that is better than a tax cut we've proposed, we will embrace it. If you can show me that something's gonna work, I will welcome it. If it works better than something I've proposed, I'll welcome it.

RUSH: Look, trying to be respectful here. I don't believe a word of it. I don't believe a word of it. In the first place, there is no one who has an idea that will work that equals targeted spending of money to grow the federal economy. The US government is not the United States economy. They are trying to turn it into that, but it isn't that and it will not work. Paul Krugman, I don't care who -- there is nobody that has any idea -- if this were the way, the Soviet Union would have beat us in the Cold War. If this were the way, Cuba could wipe us out tomorrow. If this were the way, Mexico would not need to send half its population here. If this were the way, Kim Jong Il would be running the United Nations. If this were the way, the ChiComs wouldn't care what's going on in Tibet. There is a tax cut recipe that works. There are two of them. One's the Bush tax cuts. The other is the Reagan tax cuts. And do you think either has a hell of a chance of being part of his ultimate plan of action?

Pelosi and Barney Frank are already demanding that he repeal the Bush tax cuts now, not wait 'til 2010 when they expire. Now, he's just made himself sound here like he doesn't know what he's doing. (Obama impression) "Well, if somebody's got a better idea than I've got, we'll listen to it. If somebody's got a better idea we'll listen to it. We don't care about pride of ownership or authorship." This is spooky. This is the voice of total inexperience. This is the voice of somebody who is genuinely clueless who yet is a committed leftist. His inconsistency, his lack of specifics, his flowery lingo that says nothing, I'm telling you, folks, it's dangerous.

RUSH: We have where you remember sound bite from President-select Obama's press conference this morning. Chip Reid of CBS News and the president-select had this little exchange.

REID: Are you open to substantially increasing the size of it as it's been described, the spending portion on Capitol Hill?

OBAMA: The -- eh -- eh -- eh, uh, you know, I think that there are going to be a lot of different opinions out there. We're going to take all of them in, and, uh, at the end of the day we're going to have a package that Congress passes and I sign.

RUSH: All right, he continues to offer literally no specifics. Now, folks, I think I have a guess. I have a guess. I have a surmise at what's really going on here. He hasn't announced any specifics. Yesterday the Drive-By Media put out a long story, AP. They didn't question it. They just pointed out, for all the stuff he's saying about his stimulus plan, there are no specifics. There are no details. In this press conference today, it was more flowery, platitudinous, flower child sort of lingo, and this question and answer here with Chip Reid, "Well, are you gonna spend more?" Well, we're gonna talk to people, blah, blah, blah. What I think... This is just a wild guess. What I think is that Obama wants to move this country as far left as he can, as fast as he can. But he, while doing it, wants to be perceived as a centrist.

He's going to let the people who write the legislation take the hit for this. He's going to let Democrats in the House and the Senate be tagged with the "socialist" label or the "extremist" label or the "transfer of wealth" label. He's gonna sign it. There has to be a reason why he's not being specific here. All during the campaign, he said he had a plan, to get us out of this. And he's been talking about his plan, but he will not tell us what the plan is, other than: We gotta do it now, and it's gotta be big. Well, yeah, he's thrown some things in about infrastructure and all of that, but still, ladies and gentlemen, this is not cool, and this is also not cool. CNN -- to the extent that we can believe this because CNN is running phony, doctored pictures from Hamas on its website.

By the way, they were called on that by the blog Little Green Footballs, so they pulled the phony video that Hamas staged for them off the story, but the text of the story remains the same! So we can't trust CNN. However, they have a poll out that says 56% of the American people are for the stimulus, which tells me nothing because I don't think the 56% have the slightest clue what it is. John Zogby has a poll out that says the majority of Americans want "somebody to do something." That's not a good sign. In the old days of America, if you needed something done you did it yourself. I've even said this, and I've gotten a lot of e-mail from people. Frankly, it's been quite stressing. "Rush, easy for you to say, 'Go out and help yourself.' Easy for you to say, but it's bad out here! What are we going to do?" I understand it's bad. I understand unemployment numbers. I understand we're at 7.2%.

As a man of action, I just don't understand sitting around waiting for somebody. My whole life when I have waited for somebody else to do something, I've waited and I've waited, and even when a person I was waiting on to do something did it, it wasn't satisfactory. I learned over the course of my life... You know, the old adage, "You want it done right, do it yourself," there's truth in that, but it's not just if you want it done right you do it yourself; if you want it done, you do it yourself. This notion of sitting around waiting for somebody to do something is what got us into this circumstance now. After all these years of class envy and the Democrats growing government and putting more and more people on the federal dole one way or the other, more and more people are sitting around waiting for something, in a country that was not built by people waiting on anything. By the way, the layoff numbers? Do you know how many of the 500,000 or so are media? Let's see. It's 28,083, and about 22,000 of them have been hired by the government so far.

RUSH: Clandestine meetings with Hamas. The Obama administration is letting it out that that might happen. There are also reports today that Obama, even though he said Iran poses a great threat to the United States, that he might meet with them. Now, remember during the campaign, Obama... Look, folks, here's the way to answer this, or the way to look at it. I think he is in so over his head that it scares me. I don't think he has the slightest clue. I do believe he is possessed with an enormous ego and arrogance that is conflicting with his awareness that he doesn't have the slightest clue. That's why he's all over the board, from day to day, answering the same questions. He doesn't have the answers to the questions yet (certainly not so that they are programmed in his memory, that he can call them up by default) and it's scary. Here. They're letting it out that they're going to talk to Iran even after he said that Iran is the greatest threat to the United States.

Remember during the campaign, he said, "Yeah, we'll talk to them without preconditions. What's wrong with talking to them?" Well, guess what? The mullahs heard about this, and they have established preconditions before they'll talk to Obama! "Iran's Vice President Sets Two Preconditions for Talks with" Obama. Those preconditions are: "[A]s long as US forces have not left the Middle East region [i.e., Iraq] and continues its support for the [Israel], talks between Iran and US is off the agenda." Now, that's what the Iranians are doing. They're putting preconditions on talks! After The Messiah goes out there in the campaign, "Sure, I'd talk to them. No preconditions." Now they're the ones putting preconditions on the United States! (crumbles up article) This is just rank amateurism.

RUSH: Mike, as we go to the phones in Fort Wayne, Indiana, you're first today on Open Line Friday. Great to have you here, sir.

CALLER: The pressure is on. First call of the day. Hey, I just wanted to comment on Obama trillion-dollar stimulus package and it kind of baffles me why it's called a "stimulus" package. It's a huge spending program, but yet you asked why people support it. Well, they're thinking of their $600 stimulus checks that people got or their $1,200 checks, and I think that's why people will support it, because it sounds like, you know, "The check's in the mail."

RUSH: That may be an element of it, I'll grant you that. But there's a far larger, more dangerous, depressing reason, and that is that there are people out there who just want somebody to do "something," and they really believe that spending this kind of money will bring back the economy, will take the stock market back to 13 to 15,000, will get their jobs back. Imagine where we would be with all this if the price of gasoline were still $4 a gallon. You throw that into this mix. Well, folks, the price of gas may not get up to $4 a gallon, but a whole lot of other things are going to get up there as a result of this. You talk about inflationary -- or deflationary, whichever one happens here, but this happens to be inflationary when you start printing money like this. No, the sad thing is that too many people just want "something" done, and they do believe there's magic waiting to happen!

Like I've been saying all week, you know, the way to win elections is not to win arguments, sadly to say. If winning arguments won elections, I would be president for the past 20 years. Giving the people what they want, finding a way to say -- and this is where the education of the American people is crucial. This is where getting hold of the pop culture and getting rid of the stranglehold the left has on it is important. What people think matters, and when they want something and you have the best way of telling them you're gonna give it to them, they'll vote for you. At least the majority will. Not every American, but a majority will. We've just seen it happen. We see it now in these polls. I mean, the dirty little secret here is that the people who make this country work...

Let me try this a different way. I don't care whether it's AIG. I don't care whether it's Lehman Brothers. I don't care who it is. I don't care if it's the Mom and Pop Widget Company on Main Street in Oshkosh. If they're bankrupt and losing money, that's bad business, and they should fail. You don't bail out failed enterprises, and you certainly don't do it by taking money from the people who are succeeding, and that's exactly what we are doing. We're going to bail out failed small businesses, large businesses, failed banks, and we're going to do it in part by taking money from people who are successful. If anybody needs to be stimulated during a recession, it is the people who are succeeding so that they can succeed more! We're doing the exact opposite. We are rewarding bad decisions. We are rewarding failure. We're propping up losers. It will not work.

RUSH: In Temple, Georgia. Great to have you here on the EIB Network, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Look, you said you were conflicted about Obama. My wife and I have had a running debate about Obama. We're conflicted about one thing. We agree that he is a turtle on a fence post, that he was put there by handlers, but my wife thinks that sooner or later he's going to revolt against his handlers. I'm not so sure because I think he never expected to win the nomination, he never expected to beat Hillary in the first place. I genuinely don't think he knows what he's going to do. I think that's why he's been behaving the way he is. You're not hearing anything coherent; you're still not hearing any details simply because he never expected to be here in the first place.

RUSH: I have spoken to some who share your point of view on this and of course I've spoken to others who tried to persuade me of the turtle on a fence post analogy to this, because obviously if you see a turtle on a fence post, how the hell did it get there?

RUSH: Somebody had to put it there, and people are asking, "How did Obama get there? Somebody put him there." I've speculated on that myself. I think it's possible that early on he didn't expect to win this year.

RUSH: I thought he bought -- like everybody else bought into the notion -- that this was Hillary's coronation. But I think as time wore on, I think he wanted it so bad he could taste it. I think he had every expectation of winning this thing, and then when the Ohio and Texas primaries were over and he had to go down to the wire, don't kid yourself, he fully wanted and fully expected to win this thing after Iowa, if not before. See, but the conflict for me is, is he really in over his head, or is all of this right now just a show to try to avoid being pegged as anything, 'cause Obama has been a show throughout the campaign. His election is a triumph of symbolism over substance. It's not what he said, it's how he said it. Regardless, this country's going left faster than you've ever seen it go, whether he knows what he's doing or not. There are enough people in power in enough places to take it there, and he may well be the conductor on the train. So get ready, in any event.

RUSH: Now, Snerdley has asked a good question. Rare, but good question. When it doesn't work, aren't the American people going to blame the guy in charge? Well, who's that going to be? Obama? I am surprised at this question. I'm surprised that you would ask this question. Do you think the American people are going to blame Obama?

Let me tell you what's going to happen. Mark this date down, January 9th, 2009. Within a week -- 'cause it's already actually started -- within a week of the Immaculate Inauguration, we're going to start seeing stories that will feature those man-on-the-street interviews with people whose lives are starting to get a little bit better and they see the light at the end of the tunnel now. They go on more job interviews and they are doing a little bit better. The Drive-Bys will start setting the stage to create the impression in the minds of people that we're coming back, when we're not. Just as they try to set up this mood that we're going to hell in a handbasket when we're not, notice how that works. That convinces people, the old sawbuck, "Well, I'm doing fine, but I'm hearing on the news my neighbor is about to lose his job, we're in trouble here." So how does it play when you're outta work, but you hear that other people are getting jobs? If you are an Obama voter, you think your time is just around the corner, you gotta be patient because he's already working, his plan is already working.

Snerdley, why would people who voted for Obama on the basis of vibes, good feelings, and all this meaninglessness, all of a sudden turn substantive? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. They're not going to lose their homes. There was a piece of legislation being debated now to keep 'em in there. They're not going to lose their homes. The only people that are going to lose their homes are people that can afford to pay for it, but for some reason don't. There will be people out of work, but there will be hope, because there's change. And this attitude of hope will sustain people through the bad times 'cause Obama is there. You've gotta understand how the media is going to portray this, and then to the extent that that doesn't work on everybody, there's always, "It was much worse than we knew because of Bush." Remember, Bush is going to be a whipping boy. I would love to say that you're right, that the American people, not going to take 'em too long to figure out that this is bogus, this guy sold them a bill of goods, that their economic situation is in the toilet, somebody's about to hit the flusher, and they're gonna want change and so forth again, but it took four years for that to materialize with Jimmy Carter, and Jimmy Carter ain't no Barack Obama in terms of being able to hypnotize people while he speaks.

RUSH: Perhaps if there are people in the audience... Those of you out there who happen to agree with Snerdley and disagree with me, who believe that the American people will not put up with economic failure for very long and will get mad at Obama, may I remind you of the reputation Franklin Delano Roosevelt has to this day among people who voted for him? Franklin Delano Roosevelt did an Obama and prolonged the Great Depression by seven years. He won two terms and nearly got away with packing the Supreme Court. The war came along, but there were seven years, there were seven years of abject misery before the war came along during the Great Depression, when the New Deal was put into place. As my buddy Steve Gilbert reminds me, people were singing songs of joy back then. "We're in the money now. We're in the money now," and unemployment was at 25%.

It was much higher than what we have today. And if you think, if you think a demagogic, flowery-spoken candidate or president with an accomplice media can't convince people things are great when they're bad, you've got another think coming. If they can convince 'em things are horrible when they're good, the opposite's also possible. To this day people who were alive and voted for Roosevelt think he's the greatest president we ever had, and not because of World War II. It's because of Social Security, because of Medicaid, because of the New Deal. So don't doubt me. Don't think the American people that voted for this guy are going to turn on him in two years. I'm sorry to be depressing, but it's realistic. It gives you an idea. There's good in everything that happens. This is a profound opportunity we have here. It will all unfold as we lead our way back to prominence here.

RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, this next story indicates... It's bad news to me. I'm serious. It's surrender. You know me. I am one of the biggest fans of Big Oil. I admire what they do. I resent that they are a target to the American left. I resent that they are accused falsely of price fixing, gouging, and all of these things. It infuriates me. I've noticed the price of oil has come down, and so has the price of gasoline, and so therefore there's no talk about any conspiracy now, is there? And we don't hear the people who are being hurt by falling prices whining and moaning, do we? We only hear the whining and moaning when the price of oil and gasoline goes up, but the price of gasoline was at four bucks. It's now a buck and a half, depending on where you live, or $1.60. And nobody's complaining. There are people who are suffering because of this, like Hugo Chavez.

Oh, by the way, Hugo Chavez, somebody must have talked to him, because he's reinitiated the free home heating oil plan for Joe Kennedy in Massachusetts. They pulled it outta there, and we sorta had some fun with this because I mean, how bad is it -- how bad must your charity be -- when Hugo Chavez pulls away supply, your charity is out of business? When a South American dictator pulls his oil outta your program, your charity goes to bed? Anyway, he's reinitiated it. So I have a great appreciation for people in Big Oil. But now the chief executive of ExxonMobil, a man by the name of Rex Tillerson, "has called on Congress to enact a tax on carbon emissions, greenhouse gas emissions to fight global warming. In a speech in a speed from Washington, Rex Tillerson..."

And another reason I love these Big Oil CEOs is they have perfect names for Big Oil CEOs: REX Tillerson. It is a great name. I loved his predecessor. He was a big guy, jowly guy. I wish I could remember his name. This is the guy that got the $489 million golden parachute that everybody hated, but Drudge had a picture of this guy laughing over that headline about his $489 million parachute -- while the price of gasoline was rising, by the way. It just infuriated everybody. I can't remember the guy's name, but he had a great CEO name, too, for Big Oil. So Rex Tillerson said that a carbon tax, a greenhouse gas emissions tax, was a, quote, "more direct, more transparent, more effective approach to curtailing greenhouse gases than other plans popular in Congress and with the incoming Obama administration."

Now, I know what's going on here, but this still represents surrender. With Rex Tillerson, the Exxon CEO, endorsing a carbon tax, the bus that I spoke about yesterday that is going to go over the cliff and I don't want to be on? The bus may have already gone over the cliff, because this capitulation by Rex Tillerson, the CEO of ExxonMobil, would indicate -- does indicate -- to me that our public servants have the keys to the house and that we are living in the servants' quarters. This should be interpreted by shareholders and Exxon's board of directors as a resignation letter. Here's why there are problems with Rex Tillerson's endorsement of a carbon tax: manmade global warming is a hoax.

I got a note today from our official climatologist, Dr. Roy Spencer. He sent me something from his blog. The place in Siberia where it always gets coldest, has hit minus 76 degrees Fahrenheit twice last month. It had only done that one time in the last 25 years. Arctic sea ice, same amount, same thickness as in 1979. Snow in Chicago again. There is an Arctic air mass that caused temperatures of minus-50 in Alaska, that is going to descend over the Midwest and the East next week that will make the high temperature in New York perhaps minus five, and we are in the midst of global warming? Oh, oh, and there's another thing. I forgot to mention this. How many of you saw the movie, the global warming movie The Day After Tomorrow. The Day After Tomorrow had, all of a sudden and out of the blue, temperatures went from 75 degrees to minus 150 degrees (snaps fingers) in an instant.

Everything was just killed in an instant. The theory behind that happening was that scientists have told us that the conveyor belt of the Gulf Stream had ceased. Now, what it is, is in Europe, London, England, their temperatures year round are pretty moderate because there is a conveyor belt of ocean current from the Gulf Stream down here in south Florida that goes all the way across the Atlantic in a southwest-to-northeast track, and what it does is, it causes very cold water to sink and be replaced with warm water from the Gulf Stream. This warm water creates certain atmospheric conditions with winds and so forth that keep Europe, Western Europe, Europe, England pretty moderate in temperature. Now, scientists had told us the conveyor belt stopped about two years ago, or maybe even longer, and that premise (that conveyor belt, if you will) is how you envision the flow, the circulation of water.

The currents, as a conveyor belt from south Florida all and even further than that, all the way up to England, had stopped, and that's what caused this massive overnight sudden freeze. Well, guess what? Scientists have discovered that last month the conveyor belt started up. Now they're thinking they have to reexamine 25 years of models and science, because the conveyor belt has started again, and the reason they're surprised by this is because London has had unseasonalably cold weather because the conveyor belt had stopped but now it's kicked up again, and nobody did anything to jump start it. So now think, "Well, maybe this conveyor belt is cyclical." Like every other scientist in this field of global warming (it's a hoax!) they study it within the confines of their own lifetimes, and they try to draw, from the beginning of time, historical data within the context of an average human life, which is impossible.

But they have a political agenda behind global warming, and it is: more government, more spending, less freedom, higher taxes, so forth and so on. So global warming is a hoax, yet here comes Rex Tillerson endorsing a carbon tax. The earth, as I have just explained, is cooling. It has been cooling since 1997. It has not warmed. Carbon taxes will further drive the economy into the abyss, because where do you think they'll put the carbon tax first? On gasoline! Remember, Obama was not unhappy with a four-dollar-a-gallon price; he was just unhappy with how quickly it got there. Imagine four dollars a gallon in this economy, on top of everything else, with a carbon tax. Now, here's why. Rex Tillerson, I think, is throwing in the towel because he's looking around the world and he sees that leftists have taken over institutions.

What he sees is that a carbon tax on you, is far less damaging to him than a cap-and-trade program (that Obama wants) is on him. A cap-and-trade program on businesses, meaning emissions will be governed and arbitrarily set by government, and if you exceed those emissions, you have to pay a fine or you have to trade with a company that's not getting close to what it's allowed to emit and so forth. All of this under the false premise of reducing emissions that cause manmade global warming, which is a hoax! Cap-and-trade programs are miserable failures wherever they have been tried. They are hoaxes that benefit the likes of the designers, Algore and others. So Rex Tillerson, as a CEO, is doing due diligence here, and for his shareholders is making the right call.

He has concluded that governments around the world are going to raise taxes on somebody, on something having to do with energy, and he's absolutely right. And he says that the lesser of two evils is a carbon tax on carbon dioxide emissions rather than cap-and-trade. But it still, to me, represents a surrender. Why won't somebody stand up -- especially now, with abundant evidence -- and point fingers at all these people and say, "You're lying to us! It is a pure agenda-oriented hoax. We're not going for it. We're not going to raise taxes. We're not going to participate!" Well, Obama and Harry Reid this week both have said global warming is real and we must do something about it, and they couldn't care less whether it's real or not. All they care about is the opportunity it presents to raise taxes. (sigh) So, it's a surrender out there, ladies and gentlemen. However, I want you to know that here at the EIB Network, there is and will not ever be surrender.

RUSH: Oh, yeah, that previous Exxon CEO that I love is Lee Raymond. Drudge had the best picture of this guy. I think he was on Capitol Hill just laughing big time and his mouth was wide open, very jowly guy, the jowls over the knot in his tie, his big, long, narrow face, a huge guy, laughing over the headline of his $489 million golden parachute while the price of gas is going up. I just thought it was great.

RUSH: I just love this. Headline in the Washington Post today: "'Inaugural Rentals Begging for Takers.' -- Across the Washington region, homeowners' dreams of a quick and easy payday are evaporating as the days tick down to President-elect Barack Obama's swearing-in ceremony Jan. 20: The inaugural housing market has gone bust in record time. Those who listed their properties within a week or two of Obama's Nov. 4 election victory were able to score deals, but those who jumped on the bandwagon after that have largely been left without offers." Then they give us the usual journalistic template of a sob story involving a poor guy named Tim Tate who heard that a neighbor had rented out his condo in downtown Washington for $3,000 for the week. "He and his friends hatched a plan to rent out their own units and use the profits for a week-long jaunt to Morocco. But nearly two months after listing his condo on an inaugural housing Web site (one bedroom, one bath, $2,000 for the week), Tate has gotten nary a nibble. Neither have his friends. He dropped the price twice. The only inquiry came from European parents who wanted to rent it for their daughter's semester in the District," and had nothing to do with seeing Obama.

The template: Okay, bad news, bad news, find somebody suffering. What is the upshot? The upshot of this is, as usual, all of these earlier reports of unparalleled popular support, unparalleled popular devotion, four million people want to see Obama inaugurated, it was a lie from the get-go. And what Tim Tate should have told this reporter from the Washington Post named David Nakamura, "Get outta here, you're the one who created the circumstance that made me think I could rent out my little shack here for a thousand bucks and go to Morocco." Remember all those stories, four million people, we're not going to have enough Port-A-Potties, where are we going to put all the people? Oprah couldn't find a place, oh, no, Obama couldn't find a place because mean Bush wouldn't kick anybody out of Blair House, oh, no. There's room all over the place. Why, Obama was able to get a hotel that should have been sold out back in November. I want to know who got kicked out of the suite Obama was in at the Hay-Adams.

This is what I mean, folks, get ready because when the guy takes office, it will be slow in coming, but there's going to be news reports it's getting better out there, we talk to man on the street, we went back and talked to Tim Tate, and even though he didn't collect his grand for the week to go to Morocco he feels better now, it worked out even better 'cause he got to go see Obama get sworn in, whereas he wouldn't have. It worked out so well, he's feeling so happy. It's going to be story after story after like that, how people's moods have improved dramatically.

RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, as I survey the landscape out there during this period of utter economic despair, the midst of a recession that President-select Obama promises will get even worse...unless. There's something suspiciously absent from the rhetoric of Democrats that is usually at the top of the list during bad economic times. Correct me if I'm wrong, ladies and gentlemen, but I do not recall hearing in the past two months one word about increasing the minimum wage. If we're in really bad economic times, wouldn't they be calling for raising the minimum wage? Another thing I've not heard in all of these unemployment figures with all these newly unemployed people, how much of that (and I know some of it is due to that) is the increase in the minimum wage? How many people have been laid off because we did increase the minimum wage?

RUSH: Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Jeff, welcome to the EIB Network, sir. Hello.

CALLER: I have a prediction. Lookie here. When we start this bailout thing, I believe it's going to end when we have to start bailing out the states. Down here in the South we're tired of bailing out Detroit and all these liberal Dems are driving the states right into the ground. I just don't think we're going to have -- There's nothing in it for us to bail out any state.

RUSH: Well, yeah, I will believe this when I see it. I know that there are a lot of... Don't misunderstand. I know there are a lot of Americans just livid about what's going on, but I'm not so sure they're the majority right now. If we're to conduct a genuine, scientific, full-fledged national poll, I'm a little bit alarmed what the results would be. Because we are in a recession and people tend to get very personal in recessions. It's all about them, and when you've lost your job, what else should it be about? If somebody's coming along is a pied piper and has this flowery tongue lingo who's gonna make it better... See, the thing about Obama is he's actually telling people how bad it is and how much worse it's gonna get -- and that's also scary. Presidents inspire. "But, Rush, he's gotta be honest." Yeah, you can be honest, but you can inspire people because it isn't Obama, and it's not "Bawny Fwenk," and it's none of the other people that they've named that are going to bring us out of this recession.

It's going to be us, and people are not self-starters. People have to be motivated. People have to be inspired. If you can inspire 'em, they'll do it. You tell people they're capable of more than they think they can do, and they'll go about trying to prove it. High expectations is a great motivational tactic. He's doing the exact opposite. He's making sure people sit around and do nothing but wait. He's making it sound hopeless. "If we don't do this instantly, or soon..." We've heard this for the past three months with every damn one of these bailouts. "We've got to do it now. It's a crisis! We can't wait." So, we'll see. Snerdley is in your camp. He thinks that after a while, enough people are going to be affected by this, that they're gonna turn on Obama and the Democrats. I think that's going to happen, too, at some point, but, believe me, the media is going to be working against that proposition. They're going to be trying to convince as many people as possible things are getting better, even if only marginally, while they're not.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. You know, your show focuses so heavily on the blunders and hypocrisies of the liberals, and that's very entertaining. But you know the things that are right with the conservative movement, the rising stars -- I grant you there's not a lot of material there, but -- it is still such fear and instills so much rage in the liberals that I would love to see more from that angle. Because, one, I think you can make it terribly entertaining; and two, I can't believe that everyone with a conservative philosophy in government is just going to sit back and watch all this.

RUSH: Okay, so what is the...? As Larry King would say (angrily), "What's the question?"

CALLER: The question is, I would like to see on your show more about what is right with the conservative movement, as opposed to just what's wrong with the liberals. Because I can actually, being a longtime listener, I can talk more about what's wrong with the liberals than talk about what the conservatives are doing right today.

RUSH: Okay. Uh, name me a conservative you think is doing something right, in elective office or in the media.

RUSH: Jeb Bush just took himself out of the running for the Senate seat in Florida, Mel Martinez, that opens up in 2010.

CALLER: He's got the philosophy. He's got the name. It's just a matter of timing.

RUSH: This program is an outpost. My newsletter and website are go-to places for the exposure, the explanation, the selling, the love of conservatism. That's what this program is all about. By criticizing liberalism, by explaining it, I at the same time present the alternative. Right before I took your call, I gave a great illustration of what a conservative mind-set is all about. It's about inspiring people, motivating them. It's not about depressing them. It's not about having them sit on their rear ends.

RUSH: This program's a one-stop shop. It does all that you would want it to do. This program's suggestion, my suggestion of Bobby Jindal --

RUSH: -- is one of the reasons why he was being touted as a possible VP for McCain back then and why he's now on the short list for the Republican presidential nomination. So I am somewhat at a loss here.

CALLER: (giggles) But day after day we don't hear Bobby Jindal's name. We hear the angle of what's wrong with them as opposed to what's right with us --

CALLER: (interrupting) -- and you speak in concepts, but you only talk about the people! I mean, and I rely on your show for education at that, you know, at that level.

RUSH: Then I don't understand your complaint. This program is better for your education than any college class --

RUSH: It just so happens here, it just so happens that our friends, the liberals, happen to be in power. They're the ones that are the architects of the next two years, or perhaps even more, of the country's future.

CALLER: Yeah, but you gotta plant the seeds now, and if you plant the seeds by keeping the liberals off balance, by keeping in their face what we're doing right, and being confident and proud one half we're doing right... I mean, I'm so -- I'm so proud of my --

RUSH: Let me... You know, I'm sorry here, Amanda, but there is a time to be polite and there's a time to be assertive, and I want to be assertive. I always talk about what's right about conservatism. I always talk about the conservative principles that are out there. That's not the same as talking up the GOP, which is still led by moderates and appeasers, and I'm not going to talk up the GOP when it's not led by conservatives! It's the party that has to change, Amanda, not me. It's the party that has to change, not the voters. If they want to win elections, conservatives have to get hold of that party.

RUSH: Sonja Lyubomirsky. Let me see if it tells us who she is. Yeah, she's a professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside, is the author of The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want, Sonja Lyubomirsky. I hope I'm doing her name justice. "Why We're Still Happy," is the title of the piece. Why we are still happy. This is a fascinating column, by the way. While we're still happy in the midst of a depression, or recession, with no future other than Obama and hope? Why are we still happy? We should all be miserable, we're losing our 401(k)s, we're losing our jobs. We have -- Oh, train of thought here, having trouble reining it in. I predicted to you there would be bailout proposals for Bernie Madoff's ripped off people. The New York Times, somebody, has a story on all the great liberal Democrat charities who have gone bankrupt now because they -- I tell you, before this is all said and done, we will find the money to bail out some of these institutions that got shafted in the Madoff Ponzi scheme.

At any rate, Sonja Lyubomirsky. "These days, bad news about the economy is everywhere.

So why aren't we panicking? Why aren't we spending our days dejected about the markets? How is it that we manage to remain mostly preoccupied with the quotidian tasks and concerns of life? Traffic, dinner, homework, deadlines, sharp words, flirtatious glances." Those are tasks and concerns, flirtatious glances? I know a lot of people who would love to have one now and then. "Because the news these days affects everyone," that's why we're still happy. Do you realize the import of this? This woman is a professor of psychology. We're all happy because the bad news affects everybody.

"Research in psychology and economics suggests that when only your salary is cut, or when only you make a foolish investment, or when only you lose your job, you become considerably less satisfied with your life. But when everyone from autoworkers to Wall Street financiers becomes worse off, your life satisfaction remains pretty much the same. Indeed, humans are remarkably attuned to relative position and status. As the economists David Hemenway and Sara Solnick demonstrated in a study at Harvard, many people would prefer to receive --" now get this, "--an annual salary of $50,000 when others are making $25,000 than to earn $100,000 a year when others are making $200,000. Similarly, Daniel Zizzo and Andrew Oswald, economists in Britain, conducted a study that showed that people would give up money if doing so would cause someone else to give up a slightly larger sum. That is, we will make ourselves poorer in order to make someone else poorer, too."

Now, the piece goes on. The reason I wanted to grab this out of the Stack today was the statement I was making all day long, that I finally conclude, the "Barack the 'Magic Negro'" controversy last week brought it home for me. Winning elections, right now, is not about winning the argument. Winning elections right now is not persuading people about anything. Winning elections is not about being right. Winning elections is giving people what they want right now. Now, this is going to change at some point, because things in our culture and country are cyclical, but right now winning elections is about giving people what they want. And when you read -- if we can believe the data here -- that people would love to make $50,000 if more people made $25, than would like to make $100 if more people made $200, that people are made happy if others lose more than they do, how does this relate to Democrat Party politics, liberal politics? Taxes, for one illustration. You tell the middle class or whoever that the rich are going to get soaked, and they're happy, whether they get a tax cut or not. Whether they end up with more money in their back pockets or not, they're happy.

This column's premise, people are happy in America today, middle class, because the rich are having it handed to them, the rich are getting screwed, the rich are going bankrupt, the rich are this, and this is making people happy. This happens to be one of the fundamental premises of liberalism and Democrat Party politics, is creating this mind-set. And you would have to suggest that they've succeeded if this column is true, if the data here are correct. People want misery spread equally, which is what liberalism is. Equality is misery spread equally. People do not want somebody who makes $200 grand, if they make $100, they're unhappy, rather than happy at the opportunity to also make $200 grand. It's all about get even with them; it's all about punish those who have more. I've heard for the last ten years that class envy politics doesn't work, that it ran its course. But obviously things are cyclical and it's back. Now, when you face data like this and circumstances like this, the lesson, the point that I'm making here is, we can be right on everything, as conservatives, but right now won't matter.

If being right is heard by people as denying them what they want, such as health care, universal health care, or whatever, you know, home mortgages that they don't have to pay for, when you say no, no, that's not right, people have to be able to pay what they have borrowed. If one person comes along, no, no, no, affordable housing, we think you should stay in your house. No, it's not right, you shouldn't, this is not -- we can't function as a country this way, you will lose in America today, because people want certain things the Democrats and liberals are offering, whatever it is, and guess who's getting on board, guess who tried their own version of it? John McCain and the Republicans. They just weren't as authentic, 'cause I mean when you're copycatting the masters and the experts, people will intrinsically, instinctively go with the experts on this. So this requires new stratagems for reaching people, straighten around the country and get it back on track because that won't happen until people want that to happen. They think the country has been on the wrong track for all these many years, and it's just now getting on the right side.

RUSH: I just heard something that, frankly, surprises me. I was watching a little post-speech commentary from our friends in the Drive-Bys, and Nina Easton, who is a Fox News contributor and analyst. She writes for Fortune magazine, so she writes for a business audience. She used to be the Washington bureau chief for the Boston Globe. She got out of there in the nick of time before the New York Times company had to declare bankruptcy. They own the Boston Globe. At any rate, she said that the business community has signed onto this. The business community is all for the Obama economic plan, because of the tax cuts that are in, for business, in the Obama economic plan. Now, when the speech began, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 50. As we speak now, ladies and gentlemen, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down about 95. So it has fallen 45 points, yet the business community is behind the speech, behind the plan from the get-go.

There were no specifics announced today. And, by the way, the Drive-Bys -- I have a very, very detailed story here. The Drive-Bys are not concerned yet, but they're starting to note that there haven't been any specifics in any of Obama's economic plans, and today's speech (we have sound bites of it coming up) was just another series of airy platitudes rehashed from the campaign, but essentially what we're going to do here and what's happening is we are being led by somebody who knows nothing about economics, and his speech today was tantamount admission of that. We're told, though, since he doesn't know anything, that his economic team is superb, his economic team is made up of, you know, a bunch of Big Government types. We are told that the economy is so bad that only government can get us out of this, only the government can get us out of this, ladies and gentlemen. Then he said later on in the speech that we are going to have to get back to a new economy for the twenty-first century where hard work is once again rewarded. Now, I about choked, ladies and gentlemen, because that's the exact opposite of what his plan is. His plan taxes the hardworking, his plan taxes achievers. That's where he's gonna get some of the money that he's gonna give away to people who aren't working and to unsuccessful businesses.

This Nina Easton comment, that business is on board here, well, I looked at some of the plan. They did get somewhat specific in the $340 billion tax cut plan. There aren't any tax cuts in there. There are welfare payments for unemployed people, people who don't pay taxes at all, income taxes, and there are business write-offs for businesses that lose money. But there's no tax cuts for people who are stimulating the economy. Who stimulates the economy, by the way? How many deficits have we been running as a nation, budget deficits, annual, for how many years now? And yet this recession still happened. We've already tried this. It was just two months ago that we tried this very circumstance. We have been stimulating the economy in a robust way, according to the way the left defines it, and still The One tells us it's getting worse, and just like they sold the first $700 billion, "We gotta do it now, we can't wait, it's a crisis, we cannot wait any longer, our country can't afford to wait," and we are being micromanaged and hurried into a blunder of historic proportions.

This plan, if it happens, has been designed by Obama, is Jimmy Carter times a trillion. This is basically printing as much money as humanly possible. Because, folks, we don't have the value to back up the money that we are spending, we're not borrowing as much as we're going to spend. The ChiComs have sent out little warning notices saying, "Hey, you know, we may not continue to purchase your debt anymore," and it's a bunch of foreign nations that have been purchasing our debt, T-bills and all that. We're having to print this money, and we are unloading it. We're going to unload this printed money on favored industries and unions and populations to promote left-wing policies and entities, such as the green movement, Democrat mayors. We're going to hand out massive welfare payments to nontaxpayers, and we're going to call it a middle-class tax cut. Jimmy Carter times a trillion. If this happens, as envisioned by Obama, this is gonna go down as the biggest economic blunder in American history.

RUSH: It was only two days ago, ladies and gentlemen, that we heard these words from the President-select, Barack Obama, explaining why he has refused comment on the war between the Gazookas in Gaza and the Israelis.

OBAMA: I think the need to adhere to one president at a time is particularly important.

RUSH: "The need to adhere to one president at a time is particularly important." By the way, rockets were fired at Israel today from Lebanon. When rockets are fired from Lebanon, it's the Hezbos. So the Hezbos and the Gazookas are now teaming up against the Israelis. Hezbollah. Hezbollah has announced that they are "investigating," this is an O.J. Simpson line. Hezbollah is "investigating" who fired the rockets. The Drive-By Media lapping up, saying, "We'll help try to find out who fired the rockets from Hezbo locations in Lebanon." Now, let's hear 9-A again. This is Barack Obama two days ago.

OBAMA: I think the need to adhere to one president at a time is particularly important.

RUSH: This morning at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, Barack Obama, the president-select, gave a major economic address.

OBAMA: Only government can provide the short-term boost necessary to lift us from a recession this deep and severe. Only government can break the cycle that are (sic--is) crippling our economy. That's why we need to act boldly and act now --

OBAMA: That's why we need to restart the flow of credit and ensure the rules of the road that will ensure --

RUSH: But it will happen again because recessions are cyclical. So here he is, basically, with a lie. This is a lie. It's not just wrong. Folks, this is not something that's just wrong. This is not a disagreement among people. This is proven fact. Governments do not "break" economic cycles. They cannot. If government could do that, there would never be a recession! There would never be depressions. It would be smooth sailing 24/7 if government had this kind of power, but it doesn't. Well, it has the power to interfere, but it is not the means of "stimulating the economy." Who stimulates the economy? Who stimulates it? What will be the definition of economic recovery, the real definition of economic recovery? Will we say after Obama's first... Well, forget Obama for a second. Let's go back to the first $700 billion last October. We had to have that done, too.

It was a crisis! It was an emergency! Only government could do it. We had to do it then. We had to get credit flowing. We had to do all those things. We were told that that was the solution. That's just a couple short months ago, and here we are back and now we're going to do it again only this time over a trillion dollars. How come the economy is not fixed? No, no, I'm not trying to be facetious. I'm asking this as a serious question: Why isn't the economy fixed? If government doing this... Now, follow me. I know I'm too logical here, and I know, ladies and gentlemen, that being right does not win elections. But that's not what this program is about. This program is about informative, accurate, truthful education, and a good time had by all at the same time. So I'm not advising anybody on anything. We need to be as well informed as possible, and taking what Obama just said here, "Only government can do this."

Well, we've done how many bailouts, now? We've 700 billion here, 350 there. We've had a stimulus package or two since last spring. If government is the only entity that can break the cycle, why is the cycle not broken? And why are the markets not reacting as though the cycle has been broken? If government, if what Obama just said here -- and believe me, he doesn't know what he's talking about. That's what I'm trying to illustrate here. He literally does not know what he's talking about. He does not understand economics. He understands the empowerment of government. He understands the growth of government. He understands the strengthening and the enrichment of the Democrat Party for 50 years. That's what he understands. He does not understand the economy.

If all of this government spending, all of this printing of money, all of this borrowing of money, all of this recycling with bailouts here and bailouts there, why aren't the markets going, "Yeah! Okay!" Why isn't the recession over, if only government can do this? Well, the reason the recession isn't over is because government doesn't fix recessions. Who stimulates the economy? What are we hoping happens here? Who are the people that make the country work? That's the better question. Who are the people that make the country work? It's all of you. It's all of us, gainfully employed; seeking to improve our lives; creating new jobs, ideas, inventions, services. Economic growth is more people earning, earning higher wages and paying higher taxes in the form of lower rates, you know, more tax revenue. Who stimulates the economy? Is it the person who hires people? Is it the person who gives them raises? It's the person or the organization that creates ideas and products that people want to buy.

Those are the people who stimulate the economy and what's happening to them in Obama's plan? No tax cut for them. Obama, by the way, in his speech today said everything's on the table. No, it's not because he didn't mention tax cuts. The tax cuts he has mentioned prior to today are just Joe the Plumber wealth transfers, to people who are not working, or who have lost money in business -- and the people paying for it are those who have persevered, worked hard, continue to employ people, and are showing a profit. Those are the people who stimulate the economy and those are the people who are gonna get punished. Liberal Democrats believe in the downtrodden. They believe everybody's a victim. They want as many victims as possible. That's what Obama's speech was about today, was making as many of you think you're a victim of whatever, capitalism, and only your benevolent government can fix this. "We need to restart the flow of credit, restore the rules of the road." Um, the government that destroyed the housing market -- the government that had a large role in destroying the domestic auto industry -- is now saying only they can fix things. Here is yet another Obama excerpt.

OBAMA: We have already tried the wait-and-see approach to our problems, and it is the same approach that helped lead us to this day of reckoning, and that is why the time has come to build a Twenty-First Century economy in which hard work and responsibility are once again rewarded.

RUSH: How is hard work...? (laughing) I just had to laugh. "Time to build a Twenty-First Century economy in which hard work and responsibility are once again rewarded"? That's only one way to do that, and he's not doing it, and that's cut their taxes! The people he's talking about are paying 50% of their income in taxes. Let me ask you a question. Those of you who are employees, let's say that your boss pays you a certain amount of money and government tax law requires that of what you make, over 50% of it will be deducted from your paycheck in addition to the taxes you pay that you don't see. Like at the gasoline pump, at the grocery store, wherever you pay sales tax. The people that own and operate businesses face those tax rates of over 50%: state, federal, cost of doing business tax, whatever the taxes are.

What if you, as an employee, had to pay 50% of what your boss pays you in taxes? What would you do? Would it be profitable for you to continue to work, or would you be livid? The people that are going to be paying, in part, for this brilliant, compassionate stimulus; are those who are already doing the hard work and are not being rewarded for it. They're being punished! It is the slackers. It is the people who have not run businesses that are earning money that are going to be bailed out. It's the people who have not played by his precious rules that are going to be bailed out by the people who are obeying the rules and who are paying the freight.

He's right to say we need to get back to the day where hard work and responsibility were rewarded. Unfortunately, he lives in a political party that does not believe in that philosophy at all, otherwise he would be talking about cutting taxes. He would understand where the real stimulus occurs in an economy and where this comeback will occur, because it always does. Do you know what the average lifespan of a recession is over the course of United States history? Twelve to 24 months. And then, magically, we start to come out of it, without government being involved. This is going to delay that. This is going to prolong and sustain this recession. And Obama is out there telling everybody it's going to be a long time and it's going to get worse before it gets better.

RUSH: Barack Obama said in his speech this morning that we've already tried the wait-and-see approach to our problems, and it's the same approach that helped lead us to this day of reckoning. You know, we're trying to be respectful of The Messiah and the new president-elect and so forth, but frankly that's balderdash. We have not tried waiting and seeing. We have been in crisis mode for six years. For six years our friends in the Drive-By Media have been trying to convince you that we are in a recession. For six years they've been trying to do that, all for the express purpose of getting rid of Bush and Republicans and electing Democrats. Finally, a recession happened. We have been in crisis mode since last summer. We've been in crisis mode perhaps even longer than that with the presidential campaign. But certainly we have been in crisis mode since October. We have not been in a wait-and-see attitude. We have not been in a laissez-faire attitude whatsoever.

We have been hands-on to the point that government has never been this hands-on. We're getting close to already outspending what FDR did in the New Deal. Obama calls it wait-and-see. The same approach helped lead us to this day of reckoning? No. The approach that led us to this day of reckoning is the approach defined by Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, by Barney Frank of Massachusetts, by Franklin Raines and Jim Johnson at Fannie Mae, by Angelo Mozilla at Countrywide, by ACORN, the community organization group that pressured banks all over the country to make loans to people who couldn't afford them, and that whole game plan was set in motion by none other than Jimmy Carter. It was ignored for a while, then picked up by Bill Clinton and intensified in the late nineties. We are where we are precisely because of meddling liberal Democrat members of government and, sadly, a lot of Republicans in the last three to four years -- they have to be included in this as well -- for this irresponsible spending that has been taking place. And once the government spends it, the private sector doesn't have it.

The private sector is where stimulus takes place. The private sector, the average American, that's who makes the country work. If the government and its actions guaranteed economic prosperity, Wall Street should be throwing parties, because we have spent already close to a trillion dollars in stimulus, and isn't it amazing how no impact. In fact, it's gotten worse, they all admit that it's gotten worse, which means that we need to spend another trillion and we need to overspend by a trillion dollars a year perhaps the next three to four, while at the same time they tell us this is the recipe for prosperity. This is a disaster. This outdoes anything Bernie Madoff ever even conceived of doing. And like Bernie Madoff, the future victims of this are so excited their tongues are practically on the floor as they suck up all the excitement out there. (panting) They pant away. They can't believe their good fortune in having America loved once again, somebody who can speak, somebody who will not embarrass the United States. May destroy it, but, he will not embarrass us. Here's more. This is Obama, the president-select, ramping up the crisis mentality.

RUSH: Stop the tape a minute. Recessions come out of their cycles in 24-month periods if you just leave them alone. Wait and see is what works. It's the average length of time for a recession in America. Depression is a different thing. What now, Snerdley, what's the problem? Hm-hm. I'm not suggesting benign neglect. I am suggesting that we have the undertaker in charge of the body before it's dead. Think of Washington as a giant funeral home, and we are the living, and the undertakers are not changing their jobs. Their jobs are to prepare bodies for burial. We are on the conveyor belt heading into the funeral home. Most of us are smiling like stupid idiots at the prospects for our future much all because some guy who can put ten words together, which say nothing, makes them feel good. All right, here's the rest of this bite.

OBAMA: -- reach double digits. Our economy could fall $1 trillion short of its full capacity, which --

RUSH: It already has. You know, I could stop this after every word and analyze it, but I'm not going to do that because I don't want to appear hypercritical of the new president because, quote, we all want him to succeed. Take me off the bus, folks. I don't want to be on the bus to success if this is how it's defined. Why should we want somebody to succeed who doesn't have the slightest clue what he's doing and doesn't understand economics, why should we want him to succeed? I'll tell you why our guys are saying that because they are a bunch of pantywaist cowards who are afraid to stand up for their own principles because they're afraid if they do so, they'll be called racists or roadblocks or gridlockers, even though they don't have the ability to stop anything.

OBAMA: -- place into more than $12,000 in lost income for a family of four. We could lose a generation of potential and promise --

OBAMA: -- as more young Americans are forced to forgo dreams of college or the chance to train for the jobs of the future. In short, a bad situation could become dramatically worse.

RUSH: See? Ramp up the crisis, your kid can't go to college, wink-wink, that might be the best thing for your kid, by the way, is to find some other way to get educated rather than by a bunch of liberals. And of course you won't get job training, nope, it's going to get bad out there. And then Obama -- see if this doesn't sound like to you he's admitting that the plan won't even work.

OBAMA: This recovery plan alone will not solve all the problems that led us into this crisis.

OBAMA: No longer can we allow Wall Street wrongdoers to slip through regulatory cracks.

OBAMA: No longer can we allow special interests to put their thumbs on the economic scales.

RUSH: This economic recovery alone will not solve all of the problems that led us into this approximate crisis. It won't? Ha. The Messiah is confirming what I have said in my analysis, it isn't gonna work. But here's the reason it isn't gonna work. We must also work with the same sense of urgency to stabilize and repair the financial system. Folks, we did that, it's called TARP. We did that. We have stabilized the financial system, don't you know? Pay no attention to the stock market, pay no attention to office rentals being down, pay no attention to the reality, we fixed it. That's what the $700 billion bailout of the financial -- we bailed out a bunch of banks, we made 'em whole, we bailed out AIG, bailed out a bunch of people. And banks, of course, did exactly what I thought they would do, they didn't lend the money. (laughing) They saved it. Sarbanes-Oxley was supposed to fix all the ethical stuff, the Enron stuff, yeah. Well, it didn't work because people took their companies private to avoid Sarbanes-Oxley. Some of them did. Those that didn't take their companies did hurt. Folks, we have bailed out the financial system. This is what I'm trying to say. If government action fixed this, we should all be throwing parties because we should be confident that if 700,000 people lose their jobs next month, it doesn't matter 'cause the government has acted and that's the fix.

The Wall Street Journal has a column today. Just this paragraph. He wants to talk about the Wall Street wrongdoers and so forth? "The Congressional Budget Office reports that some $240 billion of the new spending," bailout money, "is for the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Congress will also want to keep in business Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as part of its nationalization of the mortgage market. So that $240 billion to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may never be repaid, although only last year our Solons and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson were ensuring us that Fannie and Freddie were no threat to taxpayers." Fannie and Freddie were no threat to taxpayers, they're fine. Well, we just bailed them out $240 billion and they're not going to have to pay it back. Think of it in Madoff terms. Think of it as Congress having stolen from the taxpayers, as a result of its Fannie Mae scam, nearly five times what Bernie Madoff made, have stolen from his clients. And yet the very people that led to the problem, now fixed it by -- a scam five times the size of Bernie Madoff's, and Obama today says, "No longer can we allow Wall Street wrongdoers to slip through the regulatory cracks." We put all this to song, ladies and gentlemen, to illustrate exactly, ladies and gentlemen, just what the gambit here is. They love the crisis; they want the crisis to continue. They're going to continue to stoke it, as Barack Obama sings in the song Recession.

Did you notice that we have heard almost nothing about the Richardson scandal; was Penetta selected, in part, to draw attention from Richardson?

Conservative Review
Issue #57	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	January 11, 2009