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1) “We are a country founded on sacrifice. Our parents and grandparents and great grandparents worked hard and did without and died on battlefields all over the world, in order for us to have freedom and prosperity. This generation is made up of people who are not only reaping the benefits of all that personal sacrifice, but are more than willing to indent their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren—to sacrifice their economic future—so that we do not endure any personal financial hardships.” —paraphrased from a caller to the Bill Bennet radio program.

2)This is an old quote, and I am not sure who first said it, but it is application to the Israeli-Hamas conflict. “Violent Arabs will stop as soon as they love their own children more than they hate Israel.” Quite obviously, as long as Arabs bring up their children from the earliest age to kill Jews and to be suicide bombers, there will be violence in the Middle East.

3) Newt Gingrich on Hamas: “We [Americans] have gone through 40 years of self-delusion; Hamas has a clear position—destroy Israel. One Iranian leader has called for [at least] the symbolic killing of...the leaders of Egypt and Jordan. The Iranians are quite sincere in what they say. The Iranians are quite clear since 1979 in what they want: destroy Israel, drive the United States out of the Middle East and then create a Shia dominated system with Iran at it center. Hamas has a simpler objective: eliminate Israel; they don’t care much about the other things. And so, you say, “Terrific, let’s have a conversation” and they say, “Let’s eliminate Israel.” And you say, “Let’s show each other respect” and they say, “Terrific, we want the elimination of Israel.”

There is a civil war occurring in Mexico right now where more people are dying in this war than in Iraq. We finance this war by buying their drugs.

You have to choose Pinheads and Patriots and then choose Mallard Fillmore; the pinhead portion cracked me up. Excellent talking points for that same day; if you leave it cued up, then the talking points for the next day will pop up after the next commercial, and it is quite good (it is about violence in Oakland).

1) There have been so many instances where Hamas has placed women on the roofs of buildings where they are hiding, that Israel has actually taken to dropping fake bombs. The bomb comes down, the women scatter, and then Israel bombs the building for real.

2) On 9/12/01, no one but no one would have expected that to be the end of the radical Muslim attacks on our home soil. We all knew that they could and would strike us again. No one expected any man—much less Bush—to keep us safe. Do you recall how the Academy Awards almost did not take place after that, because they truly believed that they would be hit by a radical Muslim attack? Now, 7 years later, we take our safety for granted, and half of the country will not even acknowledge how that happened.

3) Although there is some increase in bank activity (mortgage refinancing is a very active concern nowadays), remember, why would a bank want to lend out a lot of money today at 5–8% when the writing on the wall is, a year or two from now, they will be getting 9–16%.

4) Is there anyone not on the side of Jack Bower during this season of 24? Yet, there are still people throwing a fit over our enhanced interrogation techniques at Gitmo. What we have done has been limited, produced no lasting effects (apart from shame and embarrassment), and is generally not as severe as some frat hazing has been in the past. Furthermore, and most importantly, everyone involved has said, enhanced interrogation has produced results. The fratboy stuff which went on (like putting underwear on the heads of prisoners) was lame, and those who did these things ought to face a mild discipline. Tough interrogation is to produce results, not to necessarily humiliate (unless, of course, humiliation works).

5) There is no Geneva convention with respect to terrorists. They do not wear uniforms, they do not represent a particular country which is a party to the Geneva convention, and they are far more likely to kill civilians than anyone else.

6) The army field manual is designed to keep grunts from getting in trouble. It is not the end-all and be-all of prisoner treatment.

7) I have not had a chance to research this, but there is a measure of how much banks lend to other banks (which indicates that they expect to get paid back) called the TED Spread. According to the little I have read and heard, right now, the TED Spread is low, and that is a very good thing. It may indicate that the worst is over with regards to the credit market, upon which our economy now functions.

1% of the Obama bailout package is dedicated to green jobs. The lion’s share of this bill is pork; lots and lots of pork. More change we can believe in.

Of those people given a second chance on their mortgage, 58% of them have since defaulted.

The Nixon and Clinton cabinets were perhaps the most corrupt of US history. Look for the Obama cabinet to rival them.

The Obama inauguration: He is going to talk about green jobs and an economy for the 21^st century. He will mention global warming. He will speak in generalities about hope, change and shared sacrifice. He may reprise his line about we are all Americans and not a collection red states and blue states. There might be a story about someone who made it, despite all of the odds against him (probably, tihs will be about Obama). Definitely some mention of both Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. There will be an implication that there is a straight line going from Lincoln through the MLK dream to Obama himself. “Martin Luther King said, ‘I have a dream.’ Tonight, you are all witnesses to that dream.” He will warn us about the dire economic situation that we are in, and that he is dealing with this as has not been done before. He will fail to talk about how 90% of more of the stimulus package is just old Democratic spend, spend, spend projects which have been laying around. He won’t tell you that much of this package boils down to political favors repaid. He may say, “Trust me, my fellow Americans, you and I will get through this.” I don’t know quite yet how Obama is going to address us, the rabble, those who need his help to make it through the tough times. I give it a 30–45 minute time limit. I don’t think that he will stretch it out as much as Clinton has done in the past (for his state of the union addresses).

Many newscasters will be knocked out by this speech. “I have seen 11 or 12 inaugural addresses in my lifetime, and this was the most dramatic [inspirational, whatever] address that I have ever seen.” “I will remember this event for the rest of my life.” “I realize that I am supposed to just be an impassioned observer of the news, but I have never experienced anything like this before.” Some may go so far as to suggest that this be a speech the our school children should learn. Maybe some will speak emotionally, and say, “If your children are there with you, this is a teachable moment [choke].” [I am not saying they will choke a child but that they will choke up with emotion].

Karl Rove predicts Obama will govern just like Bush when it comes to national security, regardless of what he says. So far, the primary news sources never call Obama on saying one thing but doing another.

Greenies are fighting the laying of power lines from wind farms in California to those who need the power.

Burris is confirmed. Was there any question? By now, everyone knows that Harry’s Reid’s bluster is meaningless.

We all know about the New York plane bound for North Carolina which set down in the Hudson River. No one died, and there were many convergent factors in something which could have been an incredible disaster.

The pilot was well-trained in gliding as well as having decades in as a pilot. With two engines out, this hero managed to glide this plane to the only possibly place where he would not kill everyone on board. Nowhere else would do.

The water was unusually placid that day; normally, there are higher and more violent waves.

The passengers did not panic. The flight crew did not panic. The flight crew helped to keep everyone calm and the people on board stayed calm and did what they were supposed to do.

Rescue crews who were nearby had trained as a result of 9/11 and they were trained to deal with all kinds of disasters.

Here is the parallel: we have a man traveling the country telling us that the sky is falling and he is the only one who can save us. We have to trust him, we have to believe in him, and we have to act quickly, without questioning him. The president-elect, unlike this pilot, has absolutely no training in the field of economics. He is doing everything he can to panic the American public. What does he offer the American people? The largest spending bill in the history of the world; larger, not only in amount but as a percentage of GNP. Does he know this will work? He has no clue. This is not Obama’s area of expertise.

There is no substitute for a man who has years and years of training in his field. There is no substitute for calm and clear direction.

It is hard to say when Bush will be given his due. I am listening to public radio in the background and they are getting in their last kicks against Bush, a few days before he leave office. Our history is written, for the most part, by liberals who flat-out lie as to what has occurred. What school child does not come away thinking that FDR saved the economy of the United States, when just the opposite was true? I am not an FDR-hater; I just simply recognize that there were areas where he did a lousy job (the economy) and areas where he shined (most of World War II and his fireside chats). So, it is hard to figure out when Bush will be looked at honestly and fairly. However, I write this with the foolish hope that, at some point, there will be some objective history recorded.

The War on Terror: Bush’s approach to terrorists was a brand new approach, not done anywhere else in the world until shortly after 9/11. Clinton treated terror attacks as a police problem. After the attack, send in the police and prosecute the offenders. This approach rarely stops terrorism; it simply attempts to deal with it after the fact. Bush went on the offensive. He took the fight to the terrorists. He did everything possible to get the terrorists before they struck, which was brand new. The radical left has hated him for this (and for everything else), but Bush prosecuted the War on Terror in a brand new way which was effective.

The Bush Approach to Terror at Home: Homeland security, FISA, going after the terrorists’ money and Club Gitmo. If any of these things are eliminated or compromised, we will look back and recognize what good ideas they are.

Take the War to the Terrorists: Although this was not altogether new, Bush approached this with greater fervor than any previous president. Sometimes, when we got attacked, previous presidents would send our armed forced into the Middle East, bomb and aspirin factory here or there, and leave. Our wars were like tv shows; quick, decisive, and men were back home before we could think about what had been done.

Bush took the war to the Middle East and he vowed to stay until he neutralized hostile forces. Bush did this, even when all opinion was against him. He took two countries, which were unstable and breeding grounds for terrorists (Saddam paid money to the family of terrorists). Bush has turned these into functioning democracies.

Bush’s Impact on Iraq and Afghanistan: When Carter had left office, he essentially destabilized 3 or 4 pro-American governments and changed them for decades into anti-American governments by doing that which was popular. Iran, South Africa and Rhodesian and the people of those countries will be affected for many generations because of political correctness. Bush took Iraq, ruled by a vicious dictator, and Afghanistan, ruled by the Taliban, and has turned them into free Democracies. 65% of the Iraq citizens voted—far more than vote in our elections here in the US—and they risked their lives in order to vote. Many Americans don’t bother if it is raining or if they are tired from a long day’s work. What happens in these countries will depend a great deal upon Obama. If he precipitously pulls out of Iraq (I don’t think he will), then Iraq could fail, and people could blame Bush for many decades to come of trying to do something which was impossible.

The Terror Vacuum: This was brilliant, and most Americans do not know that it even happened. By going into Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush created a vacuum for terrorists. Here was the United States, right close by, and these terrorists could go in and fight the Great Satan, and so they did. Iraq and Afghanistan functioned as vacuums for terrorists, sucking them in from all over. They came to these countries, and our military would kill them. Every time our military killed one terrorist, that was one less terrorist whose dream to come to America and kill Americans was destroyed.

The Decimation of Al-Qaeda and the Minimization of Osama bin Laden: I don’t care what you have heard in the news—our military has been killing thousands of Al-Qaeda and our country has foiled their plots and cut off their money. They have been routed again and again by the Bush administration. Osama bin Laden, once a great threat to the United States (he had been for a decade), is now reduced to hiding in caves and sending out meaningless diatribes. Bush has reduced this man to being irrelevant. Better to kill him or better to let him rot in jail forever; but, in the alternative, we have one of the richest men in the world now reduced to living in caves and unable to buy the stuff we can pick up over at BestBuy to make a decent recording or his latest series of threats. Remember Saddam being pulled out of that hole in the dirt? That is Osama, day and night; probably on the run much of the time.

The Freeing of Millions of Muslim Women: If feminist groups were not so filled with hatred for Bush, they would recognize that he has done more for women than any other man in history. Feminists have secured American women the right to kill their own babies; Bush secured freedom for millions of Iraqi and Afghani people. They will become doctors and lawyers and teachers all because of Bush. Some of them will put off their burkas and walk in the sunlight as women who are truly free.

The Reorganizing of our Covert Agencies: The biggest problem prior to 9/11 was that the CIA would not talk to the FBI who would not talk to the NSA. Information about terror threats needs to be shared.

Making Americans Aware of Terror: Several terrorist plots have been foiled by everyday Americans. We have been made aware of the problem, and there are men and women, no different than you or I, who recognized a problem and did something about it.

Supreme Court Appointments: The idea of our court system is to apply the laws which are on the books already. They are not supposed to make law; they are to adhere to the constitution. Now and again, the judiciary system might invalidate a law which clearly violates, say, the Bill of Rights. It is not right that 4 or 5 justices can take the constitution, somehow derive a privacy clause where no such clause exists, and then further, from that, derive a person’s right to terminate the life of their child—that is wrong. For a court to redefine the institution of marriage or for a court to go against the will of the people and invent a right which has never existed is wrong. The Bush court nominees are not activists; they are scholars in the field of law, and they believe in adhering to the constitution. I don’t care which side a judge is on; I just do not want 3 or 4 or 5 judges deciding what the law is for me.

The Economy: I have read and heard about dozens of lists about what Bush did right and what he did wrong, and these people always list Bush’s economy on the crap list. They are wrong. You look at employment, interest rate and inflation; and secondarily at the stock market and other factors. For most of Bush’s presidency, all of these numbers were good. An honest person cannot extol the Clinton economy and then deride the Bush economy. Both economies were actually quite similar in the numbers which are most important. What happened at the very end to the Bush economy was a result of the two behemoths, FNMA and FHLMC, being used for purely political purposes, and becoming ticking time bombs which went off at the end of the Bush administration. That the Bush economy did not tank back in 2006 or 2007 is much because of Bush’s simple economic approach: lower taxes, low interest and private enterprise growth.

The Bush Cabinet: The Clinton cabinet was filled with scandal; already, the Obama cabinet appears to be challenged as well when it comes to personal integrity. Bush’s cabinet, despite all of the phoney allegations, has acted honorably and in the interest of this country. If the worst that happened in 8 years is a perjury charge, that will make the Bush cabinet about the most honest presidential cabinet on record.

The Bush cabinet was also the most diverse cabinet in American history, with regards to race and gender. Obama’s may be more so; we’ll see.

The stuff I left out (I got tired of writing or someone else expressed it better): Libya was turned from a rogue nation, and enemy of the west, to a cooperative foreign power. Kaddafi’s WMD program is behind glass in a Tennessee museum.

Greater Freedom in Iraq and Afghanistan: At one time, we had the power to require the beginning governments to have a Bill of Rights, which would have included the freedom of religion. Hand-in-hand with this, missionaries from all over the world could have come to these countries and evangelized these people. True religious freedom would result in these governments being stronger and lasting longer. Bush should have known the history behind the transformation of nations (he does read a lot) and he should have applied what has worked in the past.

Going on the Offense to Sell his Policies: Dana Perino and Tony Snow helped Bush somewhat near the end, but what Bush needed to do was reach the people of the United States and talk to us. Since he has been on this end of my era tour, Bush’ approval rating has skyrocket from 22% to 34% in just a few weeks. I know many committed leftists that Bush could come to their houses and talk to them one-on-one, and they would be unmoved. However, there are a lot of people, had they heard from their president, they would have listened and considered what he had to say.

Bush gave a radio address every week. I never heard it and could never find it. He needed to find a way to speak directly to the American people, en masse, ala Obama and FDR. It does not matter that he was just a fair-to-middling speaker. He needed to explain himself to the public, rather than let his policies and ideas speak for themselves.

The Bush Budgets: We had 9/11, 2 wars and Katrina, Rita and Ike. However, Bush still spent too much money. It was not as bad as people make it out to be. When looked at the Bush deficits as a percentage of GNP, we were fine. His overall average throughout his terms in office was not much different from Clinton’s or any other previous president. However, Republicans ought to be fiscal conservatives, and if Clinton could balance the budget for 4 years (with a Republican Congress), Bush should have been able to match that, as well as pay down some of our debt. Fiscal conservatism is, and ought to be, one of the legs of the Republican party. When Clinton looks more fiscally conservative than Bush, that opened things up to the greatest spending president of all time, Barrack Obama, who will make FDR look like a piker.

Social Security: This was a great failure, and I was very sorry to see Bush fail here. Right now, social security is a mess. I will never see the money I paid into social security. There are people a few decades younger than me who may never see the money they paid into social security. This is a great Ponzi scheme which screws the American public. Whose money is it? It is not ours, it is the government’s, and they will dole it out as they see fit. If they want to bribe a voting block, they will give social security money to that voting block. Bush suggested that a portion of this money be made ours, that we could invest, that we were guaranteed.

I know a lot of liberals, and there is one thing that they do not understand: economic freedom is freedom. The more we are allowed to retain of our own money and the more we are allowed to control our own money, the more free we are. When government takes our money and gives it to someone else, or when government gives money to us for no reason, then we are made slaves to the government.

The Auto Bailout: When a business is too big to fail, it is too big. When a business comes to the federal government with their hand out, they should be broken down into component parts, and these pieces ought to try to make it on their own. The government should have invalidated

the retirement and the labor contracts. If the union said, no, then the auto industry should have been allowed to fail. It is all a matter of who blinks first. Reagan told the Air Traffic Controllers, “Get back to work, or you are fired.” Bush should have told the unions, “You either go along with this, or the government is not going to do a damn thing.” And then stare them down, face to face without blinking.

Teddy Roosevelt was a trust buster, and, I will admit, as a free market capitalist, I questioned this over the years. However, in retrospect, if a business is too big to fail, then it needs to be whittled down to individual parts not too big to fail. Then, any government propping up should be related to bankruptcy or pre-bankruptcy proceedings. We have laws and procedures in place already to deal with things like this. They ought to be used.

Welfare Reform: Welfare has ruined Americans and destroyed the Black family. At one time, there was no difference between the typical Black and the White family. Before the Great Depression, there was lower unemployment of Blacks than of whites. Government has managed to get so involved with Blacks that most of their children are now raised in single parent homes and most of their babies are killed by an abortionist. Government programs and welfare have done this. As Ann Coulter has pointed out, if you remove single mothers from the family equation, there is no difference between Black and white families in America. The single mother is the greatest predictor of every evil our society faces—crime, drug addiction, prostitution, runaways, low education, and teen pregnancies. Our government rewards Black single mothers for being Black single mothers, which perpetuates all of these societal problems. Bush should have done something.

Covert Operations: We need more operators who speak Arabic and are in the field. We need more agents out in the field. Now, the news media is telling us that there are not enough. If that is true, then there ought to be more. However, for all we know, maybe this is false, but disinformation which we want our enemies to have. If that is the case, then this belongs on the other list.

The Paulson Bailout: Politically, I was very opposed to the Paulson bailout. No man should have been given that much power to act that quickly with so much of our money. Given that, our financial markets seem to be stabilizing (there are some very important numbers, ignored by the press, which indicate that our banking industry is coming back). Furthermore, our stock market appears to have hit bottom (it is bouncing now), and our housing prices still have a ways to fall. It appears to me that the first $350 billion did the trick. Could this have been done with less money? Probably. Should Bush have talked to more experts? Definitely. However, Bush did what he did. If it worked, the Paulson bailout was probably a good thing. If it did not, it wasn’t. It is just to early to call.

Iraq and Afghanistan: One of the points made by a liberal to me concerning our involvement in the Middle East is, maybe they are unable to have a democracy there. I agree. This is a reasonable point. I do not know the answer. Will Iraq and Afghanistan be free nations 10 or 20 years from now? Will radical Muslims destroy the process and take over? Will these countries become Lebanon or Palestine? It is a tough call, and will impact Bush’s legacy.

The US Border: You are probably not aware of this, but there has been progress made with regards to illegal aliens in our country. Our newspapers will not print any good news related to George Bush. The number of those who are trying to get into the US is decreasing; more illegal aliens are self-deporting; and the border patrol is catching more and more.

Bush should have focused first on enforcement, and then on dealing with those who are left in our country. That appears to be his approach since comprehensive legislation was voted down. We will see how it all comes out. Early figures are encouraging.

On the other hand, Bush should have gone after illegal alien criminals and sanctuary cities with a vengeance.

Hurricane Katrina: There was absolutely no cooperation between federal, state and local governmental figures. The local government did not do much to evacuate their own people; nor did they do anything to provide some sort of protection for those who gathered at the New Orleans Superdome. The mayor sent his police force packing. I am hoping that Blanco (the governor) and Nagin (the mayor) simply screwed up. I pray that they did not do this in order to make the federal government look bad. Their finger pointing and politicization of this disaster within 24 hours of this disaster was a local and national disgrace.

I’ve seen local and national governments work well together with my own eyes—dealing with the Katrina refugees, and then dealing with Hurricane Rita followed by Hurricane Ike. I think that Houston’s mayor is a Democrat and our governor has an R next to his name (he’s not very conservative). However, during those 3 situations, at no time was politics an issue. No one pointed fingers; nobody complained. The damage we endured is easily equivalent to Katrina (try broken glass piled 5 foot high throughout the downtown area; try entire neighborhoods completely flattened).

What needs to be done is local; federal government is just too bulky and too far removed. The news services successfully managed to take a total local failure and hang it around Bush’s neck.

There were eventually, 51,000 federal boots on the ground (military and national guard). 100,000 people decided to stay in the city during the storm (some had no way of being evacuated), with 20,000 of them going to the Superdome.

After 8 years of no drama and no corruption within the presidential cabinet, Obama, the candidate of change, is going to change things.

Timothy Geithner (Treasury Secretary): Geithner did not pay 4 years of FICA taxes, which President-elect Obama tells us is a common mistake. I will never see any of my social security investment, yet I pay it, year after year after year.

The International Monetary Fund, the company which Geithner worked for, had him sign statements on which informed him that he needed to pay these taxes. The IRS caught up with Geithner and told him that he owed taxes for 2 of these years. He paid those taxes after being informed by the IRS that he needed to pay them. Did this make him think that he ought to pay for those other 2 years? Nope. When nominated as the Treasury Secretary, the man in charge of collecting our taxes, then he paid these other taxes. I sympathize with him when it comes to paying taxes; I think it is a sham. However, I do pay my taxes. I have filed late before but I have never paid late. How exactly is this man qualified to oversee our taxes, if he does not know when he is supposed to pay? Or, in the alternative, if he was hoping to cheat the IRS, how can I trust him? By the way, any IRS officer who did what Geithner did would be fired. Presumably, in a few months, fired by his boss Geithner.

In the year 2007, how many people working for IMF made the same mistake that Geithner did—that common mistake?

Hillary Clinton (Secretary of State): We have hot spots all over the world, especially in the Middle East, and the Clinton coffers are being lined, in the past and in the future, with money from the Middle East. I am not buying into Hillary has too much character to be compromised. I remember White Water and the “Bimbo Eruptions.” Hillary Clinton herself went out to personally destroy some of these women. When talking about Hillary and Bill, truth and integrity are not the first words which come to mind.

Eric Holder (Attorney General): The best that you can say about Holder is, he will do whatever he is told to do. Pardon mark Rich, who just happens to give Bill Clinton a buttload of money; set free a dozen terrorists to gain votes for Hillary? No problem. What Holder represents is a complete break from George Bush who successfully dealt with terrorist by going on the offensive. The other approach ended up with us being attacked on our own soil. I will admit; this is change. Ideally speaking, I would prefer an attorney general who is not a yes-man (especially with this cabinet) and who is going to be vigorous in his prosecution of terrorists and criminals.

Janet Napolitano (to head Homeland Security): She opposed the fence. Her main qualification to head homeland security? She is a governor on a border state who opposes building a fence to keep illegal aliens out.

Carol M. Browner (Climate Change Czar): She is a socialist, which is more than a coincidence, because the control which socialism puts over liberty is very similar to the control which climate change fanatics want to exert. Convince people that changing their light bulbs will save the planet and I suppose you can convince them to do anything.

And then there was El Diablo, Bill Richardson, who withdrew from cabinet, as it turns out, he might be dirty as well.

Remember, all of these choices reflect Obama’s judgment. If this is the best that Obama can come up with, then we are in sad shape indeed. If these reflect Obama’s first choices, just how bad will his alternative choices be?

No Republican would ever be able to confirm a cabinet like this (which is a good thing).

Last week, I off-handedly mentioned some factors in today’s economy, and I think that it is important to point these out, since I have never seen any newspaper or web article point these things out.

For a very long time, we had a very stable housing market throughout the United States. However, what seemed to happen for almost no reason at all is, the properties of some cities in New York, Florida and much of California began to suddenly skyrocket. I remember talking to my mother about one house, and then, a couple years later, that house had almost doubled in value. How did this happen?

Government decided that not enough minorities were homeowners, so government needed to fix this. Some races could walk into a Mortgage center and get a mortgage and others apparently could not. Various groups (like ACORN) decided that this was institutional racism; some politicians (Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, for instance) decided that this was unfair, so credit restrictions for the purchase of a house were reduced dramatically. This is government regulation; and these regulations were applied to FNMA and FHLMC, the largest financial institutions in the United States. In the past, they could only buy mortgages which conformed to certain standards, and suddenly these standards were lowered.

Elsewhere, banks and mortgage companies were faced with some very activist organizations which began to demand that they start giving loans out to minorities, regardless of their backgrounds. The community organizers actually went to the homes of bank executives to harass them.

So, over a period of about 5 years, it became clear that the government was going to buy loans which had little to recommend them.

Most of you reading this remember getting your first mortgage loan. It was not unlike being subjected to extensive dental work. The mortgage company wanted to know everything about your life; you could not have any late payments in your credit history (over the past 2 years) and you needed to provide a good explanation for those late payments prior to this. You needed to prove your income, you need to prove that the funds which you would use to buy the house were not borrowed, you needed to prove that you had some money in the bank or in liquid funds to back you up in case you got into trouble.

Then, there were specific ratios to which you needed to conform. Your monthly payment for your house could not be more than 28% of your monthly income; and all of your combined monthly debt (including the new house payment) needed to be around 33% of your monthly income. You had to be in the same field of work for 2 years. Etc. Etc. In other words, it was not easy to get a loan. With closing costs, prepaid and a down payment, it would cost you $4000–$15,000 to buy a $100,000 house.

All of this got thrown out the window. The Community Reinvestment Act, originally passed by Carter and then updated in the Clinton administration, changed these requirements. All of a sudden, millions of people who could not have bought a house before could now buy a house. They did not need good credit, they did not have to prove their income, and they often did not need money. So millions of new buyers got introduced into the market. What happened? Housing prices started moving upward, and quickly. Demand increased, supply did not change, so prices went up. Builders began building like crazy.

This affected me personally. I had 3 long-term tenants who moved out of my houses; none of whom really had the credit to buy a house; and none of whom had saved any money to buy a house. However, they all bought houses. What did our government do? It gave them the money to buy the house, it ignored their background and credit records, and then promised to buy these loans from the banks which originated them.

I want you to think about the kinds of people our government guaranteed loans for: people on welfare, people on section 8 housing, people who do not typically pay their bills, people who do not make much money. Now, it costs me an arm and a leg to buy my houses; it cost most of these people nothing. They figured out that, if they let the house go back to the mortgage company, then they could live there for 4–5 months for free. What logically do you think such a person is going to do? They began to walk away from these houses in droves. They did not have the money in the first place to make the payment; they did not have any personal savings sunk into their own house; and they could live for free if they stopped making payments.

My property taxes, over this period of time, skyrocketed. It costs money to give away stuff for free. I had one wonderful house which sat vacant for nearly 12 months because there were not tenants to be found. They were all buying houses. The only available tenants had credit records which would have shocked their mothers.

When the prices of houses go up due to a sudden demand, they will, at some point, come down. All of the building which took place in order to build these houses for all of these new buyers would suddenly come to a halt because, these buyers began to stop making payments.

All of this was caused by our government. The housing boom and balloon, all caused by our federal government. The eventual crash of the market—not a very difficult thing to foresee—caused by the government. However, when something like this is done, all of it happens a few years down the road. This was like a time bomb, set to go off several years in the future. The fingerprints are still there; we know who did this; however, it is not easy to wrap all of this into a slogan. It is hard to make this into a 12 second soundbite. So, what is the result? Bad economy blame Bush. Ignore the fact that on many occasions, Bush attempted to reform FNMA and FHLMC and that Democrats stood in his way. In this age of YouTube, you can watch Chris Dodd and Barney Frank assure Bush and the American public that there is nothing whatsoever wrong with FNMA and FHLMC, so there is no need to go in and fix them.

Always remember, government is a very big player in our economy. Most of the things which government does is for a short-term fix or something which sounds good (every American should own their own house) or which pleases a particular interest group, but which festers and causes great harm to our economy in the long run.

This week several key appointees to President-elect Barack Obama's cabinet will come before the Senate for their confirmation hearings. Obama's nominees represent his vision of the "change we need." Judging by the policies these nominees have supported in the past, it seems that the change our country will get is big-government policies that limit Americans' freedom and stunt economic growth. The Heritage Foundation has outlined important questions and topics that Senators should address during these hearings.

Eric Holder, Nominee for Attorney General. As head of the Department of Justice, the Attorney General is the head interpreter and enforcer of laws. It is critical that he treat the law as written, and not apply his own political views. Accordingly, Senators should ask why he signed a brief denying that individuals have the right to own guns, why he recommended that fugitive financier Mark Rich be pardoned, and why he didn't think that the Justice Department needed a court order before storming the home of Elian Gonzalez.

Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State Nominee. The Secretary of State is looked to on all matters of diplomacy, and this role will be key as we continue fighting the War on Terror. The conflict in Gaza and problems with Iran and Pakistan must be handled in a way that promotes American security. Additionally, challenges to U.S. sovereignty posed by multilateral treaties and international organizations, and important issues like NATO expansion and missile defense have to be addressed. Senator Clinton should be asked about all of the key national security issues.

Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy Nominee. Affordable and reliable energy supplies for the American people should be at the forefront of the Secretary of Energy's mission. Chu has in the past said that Americans have to "figure how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels of Europe," so he should be asked about this policy and how it would affect American consumers. The Secretary of Energy should also look to expand the supply of cheap electricity by turning to technologies like nuclear power. Because he has publicly expressed doubt regarding the handling of nuclear waste and proliferation issues, Senators should also ask him to clarify his position on the storage of nuclear waste.

Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education Nominee. Education policy is best left at the local level, so conservatives should be heartened that Duncan has in the past recognized the need for local leadership and supported allowing states greater flexibility and autonomy to fix their education problems. Yet because he supports sharp federal spending increases, which could lead to more Washington bureaucrats micromanaging our schools, it is unclear how he will apply these common-sense ideas. Senators should ask him about this issue, and also about his plans for No Child Left Behind and how he will address waste and inefficiency at the Department of Education.

1. When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.

2. The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.

3. It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.

4. I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

5. My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government. Thomas

7. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

8. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

9. To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.

In light of the present financial crisis, it's interesting to read what Thomas Jefferson said in 1802:

'I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.

Two things will keep you from being reelected: a bad economy which continues for the next 2+ years--especially if you try to fix it and do not; or any serious breach in national security.

With regards to the economy: you are getting an economy which is a lot like the one which Reagan inherited (he had a much tougher economy to deal with). Tax cuts for the rich and a good attitude toward private business, including tax breaks for corporations, businesses, and capital gains all worked (they need to be permanent to get confidence back in business and the market). What Reagan did worked. What FDR did--which is what you appear to want to do--did not work...an honest appraisal of history reveals this. The difference between you and FDR? In his day, he could get away with trying programs that did not work. With today's alternate media and the internet, if you do what FDR did, this public will vote you out of office, starting 2 years from now.

With respect to national security: what Bush has done worked. Now, you may want to give in to your personal leanings or your promises, but always remember, what Bush did, worked. If you try something that does not work, you will be voted out of office.

Even though I am a conservative and voted against you, I would rather see you succeed than fail. Do what worked; don't try stuff that does not work.

The average household would take 57,598 years to produce as much CO₂ as Obama's inauguration.

4 years ago, there were all kinds of stories in the media about the cost of the Bush inauguration. The Obama inauguration will cost about 3x as much. Where is the outcry during this time of economic crisis? Where is the outcry from the greenies?

Do not take this link lightly; this is the National Counterterrorism Center’s 2009 online Counterterrorism Calendar:

The only negative is, every single day could be marked with several incidents in Islamic terrorism history (see, www.thereligionofpeace.com for confirmation of this). Here is the mother-site:

Susan Crawford, convening authority of the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, has decided that the combination of things which we did to a prisoner constitutes torture. This is one of the reasons why, historically, women have been kept out of and away from the military.

Again, this is why much of the military function was kept from wives, mothers and sisters—war is an ugly thing, and it is hard for many women to wrap their minds around it.

CALLER: Happy New Year and all that. But, Rush, let me tell you something, as a black man, I feel we've been bamboozled by the media and by Obama. There's no way in the world -- black folks are never going to wake up and smell the coffee. Come on. You don't know nothing about the man. I did polls of my own and asked black folk, "What do you know about this man?"

CALLER: It's really too late, but the bamboozle part comes in now. He changed all the promises pretty much what he told and said he gonna do. I wanna know, what are you going to do now that you should have been doing in the first place?

CALLER: This is my problem, Rush. Why is it such that you gonna change now what you should have been doing already to get yourself outta there. And, Rush, infrastructure. I thought infrastructure is like the raggly houses in the black neighborhoods, build some stores in the raggly neighborhood, get them raggly burnt out -- in Detroit it's ridiculous. It's unimaginable. Rush, I thought economics 101 was your state and your mayor take care of your city and they are the keepers of each city and state. Federal government comes in last! You don't even need the federal government! Why do we have a governor and a mayor if you can't bring business into your city to make jobs for your people? Come on, Rush, it's economics 101. When is the black vote going to wake up and smell the coffee? You in poverty! Look at your neighborhood! Come on, people, get the jobs back in there. If Obama can do that, he will make me proud. Until somebody get in the black neighborhood and get these burned out houses fixed up, get these kids to lifting their pants off their butts and -- I'm so sick of it, Rush, and how can another group of people come in our country and get better and do better than what you should have been doing? I don't get it!

We've been here 500 years, and the Mexicans and the Chinas and the Arabs and the Indians can come over here and their kids do better than ours. Something is wrong with this picture. Black folk better wake up and they better look at the words this man is talking 'cause, Rush, I'm going to tell you something, we not in no depression. The media, all of them are pieces of crap. And, Rush, I'm telling you if America don't wake up the sovereignty our country is gone. I'm sorry, black, white, green or red, we not going to have a country, man. I'm sorry to ramble, Rush, on your birthday. I'm so sorry, sir. But somebody gotta wake the black people up! The preachers not doing it; the churches are getting empty; the kids are running wild, and everybody is scared to put the pressure on the blacks. I'm sick of the way we raise them. You go to jail if you hit 'em. Rush, what are you going to do when they kill somebody and they in jail? Well, I shoulda did this. Rush, I'm tired of American sovereignty being gone. We got to get back to raising these kids the right way, put some on that butt, stop sitting them in the corner, stop being soft. I'm sick of it. Where is America? What is wrong with us? We are turning into one of these socialized countries. We got to stop it, Rush. And we need you all help, man. This is unbelievable. I'm so sorry, sir. I'm sorry.

CALLER: I'm sorry. Yes, sir, I just wish our media would stop being on the enemy's side.

RUSH: A.J., do you realize, you're asking corrupt people to all of a sudden turn around and be honest. You're asking black people here to wake up and then realize what's happening, they don't care. It's not just black people, the people that voted for Obama, they don't care about anything yet except that he's there and he's going to be inaugurated. It's historic; it's symbolic; it doesn't mean anything.

CALLER: But, Rush, I feel so bad, it should be, but you know why I feel bad, because it should be a good occasion. This man got so much trash coming up behind him, I'm so sorry, I might be the only black person who--

RUSH: What do you mean by that? A.J., hang on here now. What do you mean Obama's got so much trash coming up behind him?

CALLER: Rush, I'm so sorry. I may not be the smartest guy in the world, but I know when things are tainted, and I'm so sorry, Rush, if everybody, when you get mad and talk about this man, come on. This is the first president ever -- and we know corruption is in the White House. We been knowing that. But when you blatantly do it in front of our eyes the way these Democrats are doing right now, and the Republicans are going along with it and letting 'em do it, McCain sold us out. He sold Sarah out. He stuck a dagger in her. Sarah had that party going, man, and McCain missed the boat of chopping the dagger in these people, the Democrats, and McCain sold her out. Sarah was a good person. The media ain't doing Kennedy like that, and I'm sick of these people and I'm sick of the media. I don't even watch TV no more. I'm so sick of these so-called fine dressing, the media looking like women, I'm sick of 'em, it makes me sick. They're sellin' out our country --

RUSH: Well said, A.J. There are a lot of people out there standing up, cheering you. That's A.J. from Houston, the substitute Official Obama Criticizer.

[Rush may be the first interviewer to bypass Coulter’s tone and concentrate more on the content of her book]

RUSH: As you know ladies and gentlemen we very infrequently have guests here. We do make occasions now and then. Today is one of those occasions. Ann Coulter is here, and for those of you watching on the Dittocam, we've got a new camera placement so that you see Ann and a view of me that seldom is ever seen, my rear. (laughing) But Ann Coulter's new book -- and I'm sure a number of you have seen her pilloried and abused on cable television for the past week. I noted, Ann, that the initial appearances, the Matt Lauers and the others basically attacking your right to breathe. "Who the hell are you?" And then whenever they deigned to get into the substance of your book, you wipe 'em up, and so they forget that and then start attacking your tone, which is where we are. I've had time to read portions of the book, and as is always the case with Ann Coulter books, there is serious, unique substance in these books, mixed in with the irreverent humor, which is what the critics harp on and overlook on purpose, some of the substance. I want to talk to you about some of the substance in the book, and if you feel like being funny --

RUSH: It's a thrill to have you here. The title of the book is Guilty: Liberal "Victims" and Their Assault on America. Now you're a prolific writer. You come out with a book every 18 months. Is that about right?

RUSH: Okay. So where did the idea for this book -- what did it start out to be? Do you do an outline? Do your books end up as you envision them when you start them?

COULTER: Not at all. I do all my own research, and suddenly, you know, you'll find interesting things where you weren't expecting to and you won't find interesting things where you thought you were going to. This was going to be more on specific victims. I mean it started with authentic victims in America, the blacks. There really was slavery, there really was Jim Crow, but then you have all these pseudo-victims, fake victims glomming onto the black story, illegal immigrants, the Muslims, the gays, my favorite victim group, wealthy white women living in Scarsdale who were bored being housewives -- that's Betty Friedan victim -- but then as I was writing, it was during the 2008 campaign, and of course the biggest victimizers of all are the media. They are the only attack machine, and yet they create villains, they tell these morality tales and there's always a villain and a victim. By the way, you are a big villain in these morality tales, but of course what they're trying to do is create an atmosphere of contempt, what they're doing to me now, but at least I can then come on the Rush Limbaugh Show. I can't believe you did this without a Rush Limbaugh Show for you to go on.

RUSH: (laughing) So what you mean here when you say that the victims are really the victimizers --

RUSH: -- victims are portrayed as helpless, sorrowful, sad-sack minorities. What you're saying is they're really power groups?

COULTER: Yes. I mean look at the Duke lacrosse players. They were supposed to be the victimizers of this poor, single mother, of course, black woman --

COULTER: Yes. And who was being victimized in that story? And, by the way, as I described in this book, the New York Times was holding on to the bitter end telling the stripper side of the story, which was untrue, and lying about it, but thanks to the Internet, the New York Times Pulitzer Prize biased story on the Duke lacrosse players was torn apart within hours of it being posted online. And you had one of my favorite ones, which I describe in the story, 95% world domination is not enough, it's about how the media, the mainstream media is always claiming to be a victim of themselves, of the media, the media isn't covering this, the media isn't covering that, and I loved this, when the New York Times exposed the Swift program -- remember, that was the government following the terrorist financing -- which coincidentally, by the way, which everyone has forgotten, the New York Times wrote an editorial two weeks after the 9/11 attack basically demanding that the Bush administration start tracking terrorist financing.

COULTER: So the government does it, they invite the media in to be open, tell the media what's going on, a consortium of various international financial institutions are tracking terrorist financing, but they ask various outlets of the media, do not expose this, and, of course, the New York Times puts it on the front page.

COULTER: Making the easiest job in the world, head of counterterrorism, Al-Qaeda, you just have to read the New York Times every morning over your coffee and you're done. And first the New York Times defended itself, was indignant that of course Americans were hopping mad and wanted to boil the New York Times editors and reporters in oil. First the New York Times denied that it had done anything unusual, because it was also on the cover of the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. Well, you know, the Wall Street Journal didn't appreciate being treated as the New York Times wing man and came out and said, yeah, we knew, but we weren't gonna print it, and then once you told Treasury that you were gonna print it, Treasury asked us to print our own version of it so that at least the facts would be right, but the greatest thing was, Frank Rich wrote two columns in a row talking about how the New York Times, the poor little New York Times was being bullied by patriotic Americans, enraged that they were revealing secret terrorist programs and actually raised the issue of anti-Semitism. He quoted favorably Chris Matthews on Hardball saying, "Oh, it's the old story, go after big ethnic New York."

RUSH: I think we need a new name for cable news, the Sanitarium. Where are the insane people in this society? They're working in cable news for the most part. Interesting about the warrantless wiretap situation, it's another thing Obama is going to hold onto. In fact, the New York Times had a story yesterday reporting that some intelligence court is going to come out and say it's entirely legal --

RUSH: -- after four years of trying to destroy Bush and any Republican, now it's entirely legal just in time for The Messiah to have access.

RUSH: If there's anybody who might spy on Americans using this, it would be this incoming administration.

COULTER: Right. Right. And I agree with you on Gitmo. I've noticed that the mainstream media has suddenly started running articles in Newsweek, LA Times, not yet the New York Times, that are suddenly describing how dangerous the detainees are at Guantanamo.

RUSH: And then it will manifest itself after The One accepts the oath of office on Tuesday, and a few short days afterwards we'll start hearing members of the administration say, "We didn't know how bad it really was."

RUSH: "The Bush administration held out on us. It's worse than we knew at Guantanamo. It's worse than we knew in the economy."

RUSH: They'll do what they can to continue to dump on Bush. I could see how you're looking out over our culture and you see these groups of cultural victims who have become as minorities, majorities through intimidation --

RUSH: And the more you look into it once again you end up with a book, not largely, but significantly about the media.

COULTER: A lot of it, yes, because they are the biggest victimizers. I mean they talk about the Republican attack machine. I have a whole chapter on the Republican attack machine, because it's one of the many imaginary phenomenon that terrifies liberals, along with global warming. The conservative media and the Republican National Committee guy I guess has them seized with terror. And I kept hearing, every time I wasn't even trying to pay attention to what was on TV, I kept hearing, "What are the Republicans going to do and the Republican attack machine," so I looked up on Nexis how often "Republican attack machine," the phrase, has been used. More than 700 times in a one-year period.

COULTER: Well, yes, that's the point of the chapter. But, meanwhile, "Democrat attack machine" has been used about seven times and there isn't even really a Democrat attack machine. There is one attack machine, it is the media, and, for example, the Democratic National Committee coming up with the fake National Guard documents -- that was CBS News -- and then calling it into the Kerry campaign. It wasn't the Obama campaign inventing the story at Sarah Palin rallies when she mentions Obama that members of the crowd were yelling, "Kill him." No, that was a member of the media. And the most striking proof of the media being the most powerful attack machine is once they jumped ship from the old golden boy Bill Clinton and the new golden boy, B. Hussein Obama came around, you see who wins.

RUSH: All right, now, I want to give you a chance, because you say "B. Hussein Obama" to your average cable news host, and they freak. Now, I happen, as a highly trained broadcast specialist, I understand why you do it, but I want to hear your reason. You tell 'em why you're doing it.

COULTER: Well, it is kind of funny that we just had this huge war against an enemy named Hussein, and the Democrats are running a candidate whose middle name is Hussein. And, by the way, when we ran J. Danforth Quayle, Calvin Trillin wrote an article, I think it was in the New York Times, I'm not sure, some mainstream media, sneering at the Republicans for being so stupid to run someone with a name like that and he sounds like a banker and it fits right into the image of Republicans as the party of the rich. Well, Democrats are kind of soft on terrorism and now they're running a candidate, well, he's about to assume the office of the presidency, with a middle name Hussein, I might have dropped it except every time I said it, liberals would go crazy, but as I've said before, it would be like Republicans running in 1948 a candidate named Thomas Hitler Dewey. I think people would notice that.

RUSH: There was a couple, by the way, a couple in New Jersey I think that actually had a kid and they gave him the middle name Hitler. I just saw this yesterday.

RUSH: I'll tell you, we are going to broadcast B. Hussein Obama's immaculate inaugural address on Tuesday, and I have instructed the broadcast engineer during the oath, both when it is given and he recites it, to bleep when he uses the name Hussein. Remember, John McCain jumped all over people in his campaign --

RUSH: -- to avoid any controversy whatsoever, we will bleep when he uses his own middle name. We're talking with Ann Coulter about her new book, Guilty.

RUSH: Welcome back. Rush Limbaugh, Open Line Friday, with Ann Coulter and her new book, Guilty: Liberal "Victims" and Their Assault on America. I tell you, for me this is an especially timely topic because I first became aware of this in the early nineties -- well, late eighties -- when I started this show. I'm in the process of attracting affiliates and so forth, and this is in the middle of the AIDS issue, the politicization of that disease --

RUSH: -- and so forth, and I, you know, would offer my opinion about it. And here came a distinct minority that was just doing everything they could to intimidate radio stations and even me from not saying what I wanted, and I ran into some news reporters about this. They said, "Well, we must give them voice. They are a minority and they are just trying to attain the same rights everybody else has and so forth," and I heard the Democrats talking about the "tyranny of the minority" when the Republicans were in the majority --

RUSH: -- and now that they're in the majority, they don't care about the minority, but it's amazed me how the majority has just caved.

RUSH: I don't care what group of victims you're talking about, it seems the vast majority --

RUSH: Take this out of the realm of the media because your examples there are great, but it's amazing how many cultural --

RUSH: -- conservatives who we would define that descend from the true virtue of the founding of this country, are caving --

COULTER: Well, that's part of the reason for this book, and I describe why I think how that works in this country. It actually is sort of a nice thing about America. Americans are incredibly charitable and kindhearted people, and so when they see some liberal claiming to having mortally offended, their natural instinct is to rush in and, you know, aid the afflicted. Well, I'm trying with this book to say, "These are crocodile tears. Stop falling for it. I know you're lovely, charitable people." Americans do look...

RUSH: Where is it in the Constitution where you have the right not to be offended?

COULTER: Well, to point it out. Once people start recognizing it and chuckling at it instead of opening their wallets and their hearts -- and, as I describe, Americans are the most charitable people in the universe, so I understand why it works. They love a disaster, whether it's a tsunami -- I shouldn't say "love," but they are almost greedy to help people who are hurting from a terrorist attack, to a tsunami, to a little girl down a pipe in Texas. Americans are making sandwiches, raising money, and donating blood; and the whole country will fixate on the little girl in the pipe. So Americans are sitting ducks for the crocodile tears of the liberals.

RUSH: All right, now, does this relate in any way...? We go back to the 2006 elections. I think one of the reasons we have a McCain in 2008 is because we lost George Allen in 2006 --

RUSH: -- over a word, and I think we lost the House of Representatives because of Mark Foley. It was nothing the Democrats did. The word was Macaca.

RUSH: What's the truth behind this -- and what did George Allen do that was wrong, in the aftermath, if anything?

COULTER: I describe this. First of all, George Allen was down in a not very wealthy area of Virginia, a rural part of town. The richest person, the most privileged person in the audience was this kid who was called Macaca. So in the audience, the most privileged individual --

COULTER: -- research, he's as I call them the Nazi block watchers. They show up at the opponent's campaign with their little cameras, and I think what Allen was doing was alerting these Americans in the audience, these lovely poor -- not poor, but not wealthy -- people that if they ask a stupid question, they were about to become YouTube celebrities. So he interrupts himself, and it's actually a cheerful, nice thing -- and also, you know, there's this one glum kid standing in the middle frowning and filming everyone. So he introduces the kid and says, you know, in a cheerful way... Oh, and at the same time Jim Webb, George Allen's opponent was out meeting with some Hollywood celebrities to raise money. So Allen makes a joke about that and says, "I want to introduce, I don't know what your name is, Macaca. You're here from my opponent's campaign. Tell him what real America is like. He's out meeting with Hollywood celebrities."

The Washington Post ran hundreds of articles on this. I don't know how Indian-American... Oh, the Macaca was a kid from a privileged family. He went to good schools in the wealthy suburb of Washington and Virginia. He was going to the University of Virginia. How does he become the victim in this story? He's trying to make fun of normal Americans showing up at a campaign rally. Okay, meanwhile, flash to Allen's opponent, Jim Webb, and you will search high and low to find any stories on this -- what I think are pretty clearly viciously anti-Semitic fliers against his primary opponent, who was Jewish. I describe them in the book. It shows his opponent in caricature like something out of Al Jazeera with a big hook nose and money coming out of his pocket. He calls him "jobs killer" and "the anti-Christ of outsourcing"? And in each picture there's framed pictures of a dollar sign. That raises absolutely no attention.

RUSH: Right. We all know why, and that's because the Democrats are incapable of such things and so they're protected.

RUSH: Well, no. They don't pretend to have any standards, so they can't violate them. They're protected. It's just like Geithner can get away with not paying his taxes, but you and I can't.

RUSH: Two sets of rules, liberals and everybody else. But I never heard of the word Macaca, and I was stunned to see weeks and weeks --

RUSH: -- of exploration, in-depth investigative reporting on just what the hell a Macaca was. And I still don't know! What is a Macaca?

COULTER: Well, they dig up some foreign language in which it means monkey, but, A, no one in the audience would have known that even if George Allen did because his mother had once lived in this country, was from some African country. Even if he knew what it meant, no one in the audience knew so it wasn't a way of getting people to laugh and ridicule this kid. But moreover, when did Indian-Americans become of certified victim category? What did we ever do to the Indians?

COULTER: No, the other Indians I know what we did to -- and that was the Democrats, once again, Andrew Jackson. (laughing)

RUSH: Precisely. She knows her history, folks. (laughing) Now, that's exactly right. Now, we've got one minute. Where did Allen go wrong in your opinion? If you had been running his show, where did he go wrong once the onslaught began?

COULTER: Not only he, but the Republicans around him. He apologized. He should never, ever have apologized.

RUSH: "We're not racist. We're not any of these things you say, and I'm sure I offended you."

RUSH: And of course the people on the side of the attack, "We welcome you over."

COULTER: Right. The moment you apologize, you have admitted that what they were attacking you for had some merit. Well, it didn't have merit. If you ever do something wrong, fine. I'm not against apologizing. But these are always synthetic scandals; there's always a completely phony victim. Like I say, the wealthiest person in the audience was the victim in this story.

RUSH: Exactly right. Well, I agree with you. I don't apologize ever. It helps that I'm never wrong. It's hard, but, I --

RUSH: Well, no. In a political thing, an apology is a tantamount admission to the charge they're demanding you apologize for and that's where Allen went wrong. Brief time-out. You got a couple more minutes here?

RUSH: It's Open Line Friday, El Rushbo -- the all-knowing, all-caring, all-sensing, all-feeling Maha Rushie -- with Ann Coulter and her new book, which I'm kind of honored we're actually discussing what's in the book for the first time in her week-long series of interviews rather than her tone.

RUSH: The title of the book is Guilty: Liberal "Victims" and Their Assault on America. It's fascinating. Folks, it is a fascinating premise. This whole business of how these poor, oppressed victimized little groups are running this country, with the aid of their willing accomplices in the Drive-By Media. Now, George Soros. There are two more people I want to ask you about here. George Soros, and as you say, "B. Hussein Obama."

RUSH: Everybody thinks -- well, not everybody. A lot of people think that we know George Soros, that he funds a bunch of 527s for Democrats and that he would spare no expense to get Hillary elected, then B. Hussein Obama or whatever, but you have a little bit more information about Soros in your book than a lot of people know and how he does what he does.

COULTER: Right. Well, first of all he does own the Democratic Party, thanks to campaign finance reform. Thank you, John McCain. Now individuals have less power. Plutocrats, like George Soros, have more power. And one of his minions said, "We bought it, we own it, it's ours." When he switched from the Clintons to Obama, like the media, you see who wins. What I think is interesting about Soros; and Markos, whatever his name is, of Daily Kos; and Arianna Huffington are, you know, basically the three unofficial spokesmen of the Democratic Party and they all speak in foreign accents of their foreign upbringings. Can't you wait a few generations? Let your grandkids do the America bashing, you know, not right away. You can barely understand them.

COULTER: Yeah, he was brought up in someplace in Latin America. You can't understand them. They speak in foreign accents. They represent the Democratic Party. George Soros, to show his great patriotism on 9/11 -- this is all you need to know about George Soros. After the 9/11 attack, there was a big move on Wall Street to buy American because there was a fear that when the market opened the following Monday, there would be a huge stock market crash. And short sellers who bet that American stocks would go down -- if there are a lot of short sellers, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because everybody is trying to not lose money by not short selling. So there was a big campaign by bond managers sending out letters to all of their investors saying, "There's nothing that I think would upset a lot of terrible people more than a big stock market rally on Monday." Out across America, you had little old ladies and farmers and bankers and waitresses calling their banks -- they'd never bought a stock before -- finding out how to buy $50 worth of stock. And on Monday the stock market opens, they sing God bless America, ring the bell, and George Soros said, "Sell! Sell! Sell!"

COULTER: When asked about it by Steve Kroft, he said, for one thing, he finally... Well, it's very clear. We quote it in my book. He admitted to collaborating with the Nazis as a teenager and he said the same thing about selling America short as collaborating with the Nazis. "Well, if I hadn't done it, someone else would have." That's the man who runs the Democratic Party.

RUSH: "B. Hussein Obama," again, as you refer to him, everybody knows that... Well, again, I think anyone listening to this program knows that in his race for the US Senate in 2004. It was '04, right?

RUSH: Yeah, that's right, because Roland Burris -- moving on up -- will only have two years in the Senate. Right.

RUSH: So the media helped Obama get private divorce files of one opponent, but there were two --

COULTER: I mean, this is the power of the media and why they are running the Democrats rather than the Democrats running the media. Obama and other liberal Democrats can always stand up and give magnanimous speeches about how, "I would never go after my opponent's family." Well, of course! You don't have to. You've got the media doing it for you, and so both times, first with Obama's primary opponent -- who was way ahead in the polls, he was very wealthy, he was going to win the primary, and so the media go in and get his sealed divorce records unsealed. And, by the way, speaking as a lawyer, I don't understand the point of sealing records if all that has to happen is for the media to say, "We think they'd be interesting. Can you get them unsealed them for us?" and get them unsealed.

COULTER: Well, then California, the case of Jack Ryan, a stunning Republican candidate, and this is another example of why you and I may be the last Republicans in name only because the actual Republican Party completely dumped a magnificent candidate, Jack Ryan, once again, luckily for Obama, his opponent was divorced. And so the media fly out to California, they get his divorce records, actually the custody records in this case unsealed. There is a highly implausible claim in the divorce records from his ex-wife, a member of Star Trek Voyager. He accused her of having an affair and she responded, "The only reason I had an affair was because he took me to sex clubs in New York, Paris, and I think New Orleans." So once again we have a Republican sex scandal that doesn't involve anyone having sex!

COULTER: He was accused of propositioning his own wife -- and, by the way, then when Obama's running against Sarah Palin I noticed once again Obama has a tough, formidable opponent (which John McCain was not) so someone's divorce records would have to be unsealed. Of course, Sarah Palin wasn't divorced so it wasn't her divorce records, reporters fly into Alaska. They unseal the divorce records of Todd Palin's business partner, with whom Sarah Palin was accused of having an affair. Alas, she was not.

RUSH: This traces back to Chicago and Illinois politics. What's the media...? Local and national, what's their really attraction to Obama? Is it race?

COULTER: Part of it, definitely is. For one thing, the media is more left wing than probably the average of the Democratic Party, even elected officials.

COULTER: Well, and certainly people who call themselves Democrat. The media is very, very left wing. You have with Obama, the most left-wing president we've ever had. So they liked that he's -- at least what he said he's going to do, but we hope that he has been lying to Daily Kos. And also there is the fact that he's black. Because as I point out, when it mattered -- during slavery, during the civil rights battles -- the Democratic Party was on the wrong side. So, you know, 40 years later they want a do-over which is why they're constantly creating fake racial hoaxes in this country so now they can finally come out and take a stand against racism, at the precise moment when no one is defending racism. So thanks, Democrats.

RUSH: The Republican Party to a person is out saying, "We hope had he succeeds. We want the new, young president to succeed." What do you think's going to happen? Let's go current events here. I know you didn't touch this in the book, but what do you think is going to happen in the Obama administration?

COULTER: I think you are right, from what you were saying in the first part of your program, and I hope he succeeds in the sense that, if he succeeds, that means he was totally lying to the New York Times and, you know, Code Pink. That means he was lying to them, and he will have to govern like a conservative. I suspect he may be doing what you were talking about in your program. Backing down from closing Gitmo, which is, you know, renamed Obamaville, backing down from pulling out of Iraq, not raising taxes on, quote, the rich, i.e., people who work for a living. Because if he doesn't he's going to be another Jimmy Carter and it's going to be a four-year term, so he gets elected as you say, as the cult figure. They're all getting on the comment. But then for him to succeed I mean in his heart he's a liberal so I don't know where the liberalism is going to come out. Maybe it will be things like abortion and gay marriage --

RUSH: Well, and there's a third element to this, and I'm having a mental block, but there are three pillars to the cultural overhaul that they want to engage in. Look, the guy is a full-fledged leftist.

RUSH: He's just a full-fledged leftist, but he won't be able to get away with getting what he wants if he talks that way. That's why these cabinet members are moderate figureheads. We all know that Bill Ayers will provide primary advice on education. They could never put him in the cabinet.

COULTER: (laughing) Right. And that does show the victory, by the way -- (snorts) I mean I'd like more of a substantive victory, but the victory -- of conservative ideas in America. Even Obama runs on tax cuts. I mean, he says he's going to give tax cuts to everyone, including people who don't pay taxes, which was a little suspicious to some of us. I think that's called welfare. But he doesn't run saying, "I'm going to raise taxes and raise welfare benefits." He says, "I'm cutting taxes."

RUSH: Well, he's still saying some dangerous things, though. Government is the only element that can fix the economy --

RUSH: -- and all these sorts of things, so it's going to be interesting to see. He's going to have no opposition.

RUSH: Republicans are bending over forwards. They're bending over backwards and grabbing the ankles.

COULTER: And blaming you. I knew it was your fault that John McCain lost. (laughing)

RUSH: Well, Colin Powell blamed me. He said the Republicans need to stop listening to me, which they did a long time ago. Who was it? It was Chris Matthews on Hardball last night who said -- or, no, it was Steve McMahon, you know, one of these Ken doll --

RUSH: -- inside-the-Beltway Democrat strategerists. And he said, "The problem with the Republican Party is that Rush Limbaugh is dragging them to the right."

RUSH: Number one on Book Scan. Well, after this we'll take care of those number twos and number threes and all that.

RUSH: I wish you the best. You are a prolific writer, and you have a lot of admirers out there because you don't take the guff, and you do not allow yourself to be manipulated or intimidated by these people, and you say to some of these people who interview you what a lot of Republican conservative voters wish their elected officials would say. Plus you make people laugh, and there's nothing wrong with that, especially now.

RUSH: Great that you came by. Good luck with the book. Do you have an idea for your next one? Do you work that far in advance?

COULTER: Not exactly. A few ideas. I have to say when I was writing this I kept thinking, "This could be the encyclopedia Britannica. I can't put it all in." But I think George Will told me, Shelley said, the poet, "A poem is never finished. It's abandoned," and that's what I always end up doing with the books because I can think of 17 more chapters in this book.

RUSH: Dan in Temecula, California, great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.

CALLER: It's a great honor to speak to you, Rush. I want to get right to the point. Don't want to waste time because I know you're a busy man. I want to talk about this shortfall that we supposedly have in California, $42 billion. Rush, I've lived here since 1961. I've watched in the last ten years the state government has doubled here in California. In the last five years, the general fund spending has gone up 30%. I have to pay... They have run the business and middle class out of California. We watched a net loss of population every single year. We have the highest gas tax in the country, the highest business tax, the highest sales tax. We are spending right now, Rush, $15 billion a year in Medicaid; seven billion a year in public assistance; $11 billion a year for illegal immigration in California. We're spending $600 million a year to keep illegals in our prisons. As I said, we right now, Rush, Schwarzenegger had a $9 billion surplus in the year 2006. He and these morons up in Sacramento spent every dime of it." They have increased our budget in this state every single year. I want to show you how ludicrous this is, Rush. They're talking about a $42 billion deficit. These morons have set a budget for $111 billion for the year 2010 which is $8 billion more than what they spent this year. What...? Look, Rush, I'm not the smartest guy and I'm not the sharpest pencil and I'm not the brightest Crayola in the box. I'm an average guy, but I've had it, and I'm sick and tired of it. And I'll tell you, the only reason I don't leave this state like all the other people who pay taxes -- meaning the middle class and business -- is I'm stuck here for reasons I can't control, but I could tell you this: As soon as I get the chance, I'm outta here, and if I sound mad, I am.

RUSH: Whine, whine, whine, whine, whine. That's all people are doing these days is whining and whining and moaning, and I'm getting tired of it. (pause) No, I'm just teasing out there. I thought of that response halfway through your call, and I was dying to use it. Look, I have total understanding for your situation out there. Frankly, I used to live in California for three and a half years and I loved it, and I love visiting. It's one of these places I love. I would love to live there, but I'm not going to give away what I've earned down a drain, you know? It's just a bottomless, endless pit. You know, you're propping up all kinds of noncitizens. I saw something the other day which will illustrate, Dan, your point. I have it in the Stack. I just haven't had a chance to get to it, so I'm going to recite this from memory, but the ballot initiative process is alive and well in California. It was a ballot initiate -- you might remember the name of it, but I don't, or the number of it. I don't remember, but basically the animal rights people out there spread the news that chickens and turkeys -- well, primarily chickens -- were being mistreated in the process of... The egg farmers were mistreating them by putting them in cages where they couldn't spread their wings.

RUSH: And the people of California, after being inundated with stories for years about how mean we were being to the, whose objective -- the only reason the chickens are alive is to lay eggs so that human beings can live, and that's what's insulting of these people! So they mandated brand-new cages that the egg farmers are going to have to invest in and buy at their own expense, which is going to add in total cost. The egg business in California, like any other business out there, is huge. The number of eggs that the California egg industry produces and ships is just incalculably large. So it's going to cost hundreds of billions to these egg farmers, chicken farmers and egg farmers, to retool. The story was -- it might have been in the Wall Street Journal -- that a number of them are going to say to heck with it like you and they're just going to leave, and they'll go to cheaper states to do business, because their business is laying eggs. These chickens are not pets.

CALLER: Rush, why is it that these people who want to do this, they always claim the high moral ground like we're the uncaring, insensitive people. Let me ask you then: Who do you think is going to pay for those eggs? The poor people that they say they represent. That's who's going to pay the price. Schwarzenegger wanted to put a 9.9¢ tax on every barrel of oil that came out of California.

RUSH: And they want restrictions on automobiles made to be driven in California, to raise the cost of those.

CALLER: At the same time, the state legislature wanted to raise the price of gas, the same people that cry the high moral ground, 21¢ a gallon. So the poor are going to pay for the gas, the poor are going to pay for the eggs, and they think they're doing them a service? When we've got billions of gallons off the coast of this country? It's estimated a hundred billion dollars worth of oil.

RUSH: I don't want to oversimplify this, but in the case of the animal rights nutcases who succeeded with that ballot initiative by tugging at the heartstrings of people who like animals, we all like animals. If you're a movie star, they always say the last thing you want to do is be in a movie with an animal because the animal will upstage you every time. Everybody just loves them, and we try to humanize every animal. Be it a tiger, be it a jaguar, we try to humanize them. Jack, I remember as a kid watching the road runner and coyote cartoons, Wile E. Coyote, and we humanized the coyote. And so we end up loving all these things, and the chicken, too. It doesn't matter what the animal is. So what happens is I firmly believe, Dan, that in large measure what's happening is leftist activists are seeking the destruction of capitalism. I think that's what the militant environmental movement is all about.

I think that's what the militant cultural rot movement is all about. I think it's all aimed at destroying individual liberty. I think it's all aimed at destroying what they think is the evil of capitalism, and that's the inequitable distribution of resources. And I think it's been a long, slow, stealthy procedure and strategy that they've employed. If all this had happened in one big gulp or in one week or one month or even a couple years in California, you wouldn't put up with it but since it's been happening incrementally, it's gotten to the breaking point now, but it may be too late to stop. You ask how in the world can they have such an out-of-control budget deficit and still increase spending by $8 billion next year? Very simple, it's called baseline budgeting. Very simple. There isn't a government in the world that will do with less next year than it had this year. It doesn't exist.

RUSH: And, look at how they're scaring you in California. "Well, we have to increase the budget. If we have to cut the budget, what's the first to go? Police! What's the next to go? Firemen! What's the next to go? Trash pickup! What's the next?" They're all the things that you interact with every day. They'll never tell you they're going to get rid of Mortimer Snerd and his merry band of bureaucrats who doesn't do diddly-squat all day long.

CALLER: One more thing and then I'm going to shut up, Rush. I want to thank Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama -- and you folks down there in Florida, the east side -- for your 10,000 oil rigs, while California has 23. But we don't want to mess up our pristine coast. And I want to thank the other states that provide our electricity with their coal burning plants in Nevada and Utah and all out in there, because California, see, doesn't want nuclear power. We want you to dirty your state so we'll buy your power.

RUSH: I'll tell you what, we're going to be running out of oil and coal pretty soon because Obama is going to re-implement the ban on offshore drilling that was raised during the campaign that was lifted, and if he does his cap-and-trade program, that's the end of the coal business. If he actually does the cap-and-trade program, if he gets it going, gets it up and running, then that's the end of the coal business. So we'll be looking enviously at you with all your windmills.

The California budget problem—it is much worse than you could ever dream (I will admit that I was shocked reading this):

RUSH: Now, get this. This is another AP story: "Prospects for health reform drop significantly when Americans hear potential financial trade-offs associated with expanding health insurance coverage, a poll indicates." This poll is by the Harvard School of Public Health. "Nearly seven in 10 people say they favor the concept of requiring employers to provide their workers with health insurance or contribute into a fund that pays to cover the uninsured." In other words, not quite single payer but mandated national health care, 70% support this. "President-elect Barack Obama has called for such an employer mandate for medium and large businesses. But what if they heard the mandate would cause some employers to lay off workers? Support falls dramatically," to about 30%. So 70% say, "Yeah, my boss ought to provide my health care, every aspect of it that I want." "Okay, but your boss is going to have to fire some people." "Oh, no, no, no," 30% say they only go for it that way. That's according to the survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, the Harvard School of public health. "Similarly, about two out of three people favor requiring all Americans to have health insurance."

Now, what a question. You know, frankly, folks, I don't care if you have health insurance. I don't give a damn whether you have health insurance. I certainly am not going to participate in a survey that says I think you ought to have it. It's none of my damn business what you have or don't have, especially if you're gonna take it from me. I don't care whether you have health insurance. See, this is another example. Now, my own staff says, "You don't care about the kids?" Would you remember the premise of the question? Two out of three people favor requiring all Americans to have health insurance. What if the poll is, two-thirds of Americans require favoring you to have a hybrid? None of my damn business what you drive. I don't care. I care the motivation, I don't want you to get hoodwinked into thinking you're saving the planet, but you want to drive some puddle jumper, go ahead, it's your life. But I don't have any right to tell somebody they have to have health care.

I don't have the right to tell my boss he must provide it. I don't have a boss, I'm the boss. I provided it at my own option to myself, when I go to the hospital, when I go to the doctor. But I don't care. But two-thirds of the American people think everybody ought to be required to have health insurance. What does it matter? But when this two-thirds, 67%, who favor people required to have health insurance, when told that some people may be required to buy insurance that's too expensive or that it's something they don't want, support falls to 19%. It should never get to two-thirds in the first place because people ought to be smart enough in this country to realize that if you force people to buy health insurance, some people aren't going to want it. Why do they have to have that asked to them in a question to realize it? Still, it's a huge drop. Sixty-seven percent think everybody ought to have it, until they're asked, well, what if it costs too much or they don't want it? Well, then only 19% support it. "About 47% were willing to pay higher insurance premiums or taxes. Forty-nine percent were not."

And the headline of the story is actually accurate: "Public Wary of Health Reform Tradeoffs." I'm surprised the AP, I don't know how long they're going to survive here. I know they didn't say Obama's health plan, but still, to run this story, this is giving away the game. Tradeoffs? There aren't any tradeoffs. Nobody's talked about tradeoffs 'til now. Everybody's going to have health insurance, we got utopia, and everybody is happy at the end of the day. Oh, no, tradeoffs? You mean some people are going to have to give up something? Some people might lose their jobs? But again, what really depresses me is that people ought to be able to figure that out on their own, but I guess it's too much to expect.

CALLER: Good morning. I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Brittany. I am the third oldest of ten children, and first generation daughter, born here in America from two parents who emigrated here from Iraq. I have two military brother veterans, one on the way to the Marine Corps, and I would like to speak to you today about Gitmo. And I would like to say, "Today I heard on the news that Barack Obama planned either in the first day or the first week of his term in office, close Gitmo and move them either to Pendleton or somewhere in Kansas."

CALLER: Well, even if it did happen, I'm just trying to say here that from my perspective of being someone who has relatives in the Middle East and being an American full heartedly --

RUSH: Don't deal in things that aren't real. Don't get yourself worked up about something that isn't going to happen. We got real things to get worked up about here. But closing Gitmo isn't going to happen. It's not going to happen. It is not going to happen. He's not going to close Gitmo. They're not going to pull out of Iraq until they can secure a 100% victory. They're not going to pull out of there with the possibility that the place falls apart. It ain't going to happen. They're going to increase troop levels in -- well, Bush has increased them; they're going to take credit for that. They're gonna go kick butt in Afghanistan. But about Club Gitmo... Oh, along the same lines, do you remember, Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle about a year ago (and we played the audio of this) that his cap-and-trade program would put the coal business out of business?

It would be silly for anybody to open a new coal plant. He was going to close them down. It turns out that's not going to happen, either. Ed Morrissey of HotAir.com points out that Obama's statements require an expiration date. Let me illustrate this for you -- first, Brittany, so you can relax and the rest of you, on Club Gitmo. Today's lead story in the Washington Post reports that President-select Obama, quote: "Will consider it a failure if he has not closed the military prison at Guantanamo Bay by the end of his first term in office." Now, that, for those of you who voted for Obama, is four years, not life. Four years. Now, they will issue the executive order on Monday or Tuesday afternoon. I'll betcha that executive order hits the news while the parade's going on. "Close Gitmo," because Obama knows that his Looney Tune fringe kooks in the asylums known as the left-wing blogosphere will be totally placated by Obama.

"We're closing it. I issued the executive order to close it," but it isn't going to happen for four years. So this is how he does it. He does two things at once, both sides of the issue, and gets credit for both, does not end up being criticized. Now, when it comes to coal, "A year ago, Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle this: 'So, if somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can -- it's just that it will bankrupt them, because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted,'" and he effectively said we're going to put the coal business out of business. "On Wednesday, Mr. Obama's choice to lead the US Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson, described coal to a Senate panel as 'a vital resource' for the country. A day earlier, Mr. Obama's nominee to run the Energy Department, physicist Steven Chu, referred to coal as a 'great natural resource.'

"Two years ago, he called the expansion of coal-fired power plants his 'worst nightmare.'" Is it a flip-flop? Ed Morrissey asks. No. It's just that his statements have an "expiration date," and when it expires, it's time for a new statement. So he's not going to put the coal industry out of business. He's saying a bunch of stuff. Well, no, we can't say he's not going to put the coal industry out of business because these claims by his people also have an expiration date. We just don't know what it is. We don't know how long these statements are operative. But there was never any intention to close Gitmo. Never. As Obama has said, he has learned some of these people down there are really dangerous -- and some of the evidence, though tainted, is true. (interruption) Yes. Liberals will stand for it. He's too big to fail. Listen, this is a cult, man. This is a cult! This is a guy who could get people to go to the Hale-Bopp Comet with him Tuesday afternoon if he said that's where he's headed.

RUSH: I constantly suggest to people that they not doubt me. Don't doubt me. I checked the e-mail during the time-out. People think that the left in this country is going to be outraged when they find out that Obama won't close Guantanamo Bay for four years. They won't hear that! It's in the Washington Post today but that's where it will die. What they're going to hear is an executive order announced to close it. They're gonna hear that on Tuesday afternoon and it's a done deal, okay, move on to the next thing. We will remind them of but they don't want to hear what we say or what we think about it even if we're quoting their messiah. But remember, the Bush administration shredding the Constitution, suspending habeas corpus in that place called Club Gitmo, where innocents were being held unfairly without trial, without being told what they're being charged with, without being told when they'll be released. The Obama administration now hopes -- and they, by the way, the Obama administration, campaign, he himself is saying all these things, too -- hopes to be able to shut the place down by the end of his first term.

RUSH: I want to give you some headlines I just saw on Drudge Report. "Unplugged, Circuit City to Liquidate Remaining Stores." They tried to sell their stores, they couldn't find a buyer, so they're going to liquidate their inventory. Pfizer cutting up to 2400 sales jobs. Hertz sheds more than 4,000 jobs. GE Capital, up to 11,000 jobs gone. And now it's no longer Bank of America, it's bank owned by America. The US government's the largest shareholder in Bank of America now, so it's United States Bank of America. Now, this stimulus package that is in the wings -- and it's going to happen, I mean everybody at Circuit City, at Pfizer, at Hertz, at GE Capital, they know it's coming, they know the bailout package is coming. Everybody knows that there's going to be an $850 billion to $1 trillion stimulus. They already know that there has already been a $750 billion or $850 billion stimulus back last fall, and they are telling us that these stimuli are nothing, they are firing people, they're closing stores. It's not working, folks.

CALLER: Geithner is obviously a fiscal crook. He has no fiduciary example that anybody should want to be following. He obviously did this on purpose with his taxes. I know, because my daughter is a student, and my husband trades on her account, and because one piece of paper wasn't sent in she got a bill for $140,000 from the tax man. You know, a student doesn't earn that kind of money! (laughing) I wanted to know what it was. So, you know, we had to do the paperwork, and then of course she didn't owe the money. But he should have been getting things from the IRS immediately. I mean, 2001 and 2002 should have already been in the mail two or three years ago. So he's just a crook. I mean, it's obvious, and all the things that he claimed... I didn't even know some of the things until you told me, when I heard it, you know, this morning, the extra things that I didn't read about in the media.

RUSH: Yeah, like claiming his kid's stay at a sleep-away camp as a tax deduction. But all of the tax payment information, forms, blah, blah, even payments that he was being given by the IMF and he didn't make them; I know, it's very difficult to believe that this is the case. It's a "mistake." But, look, they're circling the wagons around this, "It's an innocent mistake. A lot of people make these mistakes."

CALLER: I don't think so. Not when you're in business for yourself. But then there's the question of Holder. I mean, this man is obviously -- I don't care if he learned his lesson. Other people would go to jail if they did things like that. They would lose their jobs if they did things like that. I mean these -- you know, his whole cabinet is dirty, the whole cabinet is dirty. And he's having --

RUSH: Well, now, that may... I can't name every cabinet member off the top of my head right now. It's a little bit of a stretch here to say that they're "all" dirty.

CALLER: Humph. They all came from the Clinton cabinet, most of them, and I didn't like the way the Clintons ran the country.

RUSH: Yeah, but Carol Browner? I don't think Carol Browner is dirty. She's just a socialist. You know, and it turns out Richardson may be dirty. He may have a problem. He had to quit. But notice they threw him under the bus, but they're going out of their way to keep Holder, out of their way to keep Geithner, and I love the way they're doing it. Obama is "investigating" and "clearing" these people.

RUSH: The IRS audits you and you say, "All right. I'll check my files and get back to you," and then you tell the IRS, "Hey! You're wrong. I didn't do anything," and they say, "Okay, cool," and drive off.

CALLER: Oh, my goodness. You're like a stand-up comedian. You're just so brilliant.

CALLER: I love you very much. Listen, I want to go back to you guys over there because I want to just have them take my phone number, okay, and I'll talk to one of your people back there.

CALLER: Okay? I want to send you something but I know I can't talk about it on the air.

RUSH: Thank you. Love you, too. I appreciate it. I'm glad that you're out there.

RUSH: Timothy Geithner, he is just called a crook on this program. We gotta give him some slack. We gotta cut him some slack. At least he didn't try to deduct his old underwear that he gave to the -- what is it, the Salvation Army? Remember the Clintons did that? The Clintons took a tax deduction for their old clothes and underwear! They gave away old underwear to the Salvation Army! No! It was Goodwill. They gave it to Goodwill. You know, they dropped them in those bins out there. At least we haven't heard of Geithner trying to take a tax deduction on his old underwear.

RUSH: I want to do a little side-by-side comparison here of Obama and Steve Jobs -- he's in the news recently with his health problems -- and what the news of the health problems he's encountering is causing to happen to the stock of his company, Apple, Incorporated. Now, the reason for this is the fear that we all have that the country is slowly becoming a majority slacker country, people who think that they are entitled to things because they're Americans, that America owes them something or that the American government owes them a life of no suffering, a life of no sacrifice, a life of ease, so to speak. That's their birthright and in large part, in some cases, you can't blame 'em because there's been an entire political party apparatus that's been convincing them of this, that life is unfair because of Republicans and conservatives who steal all the money and there's none left for the little people, and the little people's money is in effect being stolen so they end up angry all the time and whenever the rich are soaked or harmed -- the clients of Bernie Madoff that got wiped out, I guarantee you, a significant number of Americans are happy about it because the rich finally find out what it's like, they'll be one of us, blah, blah, blah. So this mentality is pervasive.

Before we get into the side-by-side, a couple of interesting things in terms of polling data. Two polls out yesterday that say Americans want tax cuts in the stimulus plan and that they don't trust the federal government. There's also a poll out that says just the opposite. One is a Rasmussen poll. The other is the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. Now, the Rasmussen poll would indicate that Reaganism is not dead: tax cuts and a clear realization by Americans that government's the problem, not the solution. But is anybody in the Republican Party listening? Anybody that attended the fantastic Obama dinner on Tuesday night, any of them listening? To me, it's another fantastic wake-up call for Republicans, but they are so obsessed with not being seen as critical, that they're passing up what I think is a golden opportunity. For crying out loud, here you have the New Deal 2, call it what you want, collectivism, socialism, massive government, call it what you want. There is an opportunity for stark contrast here that is passing us by, at least at the elected level. It's not passing us by.

Let's see what's been handed for the Republicans on a silver platter in the recent past. The first bailouts, Americans by a large margin didn't think that bailout was the right thing to do, and we bailed out those banks, right, and we even had specific bailouts for some banks and the market's down today big time, and the bank stocks are one of the problems. We're back to where we were in October, when the banks were in big -- we're back there. We're in Groundhog Day! At least that movie ended. We're still in it! If you didn't know any better, this is the middle of October and the election's yet to happen. The bailout of the car companies, Americans didn't want that. They have rejected a current FDR spending spree proposal without tax cuts, according to polling data.

But then you go to the MSNBC poll, the MSNBC Wall Street Journal poll, "'Solid Support for Obama's Economic Plan.' -- A solid plurality of the American public supports the economic stimulus plan that President-elect Barack Obama has proposed, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. But the public also is concerned that the stimulus' price tag might be too expensive and would increase the U.S. deficit." Now, this makes my stomach turn. What are we to believe here? Two polls that say entirely different -- well, they're not all that different in the sense that the public is wary here, but at the same time in one poll they love Obama, they love the stimulus plan, but they're concerned it might be too expensive.

Democrat pollster Peter Hart said, "[American's] want to do something and want to see it done. But what they're warning [Obama] collectively is -- be careful." Now, according to the poll, 43% believe a stimulus is a good idea, compared to 27% who think it's a bad idea, and 24% who don't have an opinion. So let's add the 24 to 27, the people that don't like it and the people that have no opinion. That to me is 41% who do not solidly support the plan, and yet, the headline of this story: "Solid Support for Obama's Economic Plan." Popular details in the stimulus are more popular than the whole program. Individual parts of the stimulus are much more popular than the whole concept. Well, of course that makes sense because you divvy up where the stimulus is going to go, and the people in those groups are going to say, "Hell, yes, show me the money."

I want to take you back to CBS Market Snapshot, November 21st, 2008: "'Stocks Surge on Geithner Pick.' -- Indexes erased Thursday's steep declines after Obama's choice for the crucial job of Treasury Secretary was revealed. U.S. stocks surged Friday after word leaked that President-elect Barack Obama plans to nominate New York Federal Reserve President Timothy J. Geithner as his nominee for U.S. Treasury Secretary." That's November 21st, 2008. Let us now go to Wednesday, January 14th: "Stocks Plunge on Banks, Retail Sales." It's FoxBusiness.com, the article below is a summary of a report card. I mean, this is how I would look at it, a report card of the market's performance for yesterday and the past few months. I would call this the Obama stock market. If the stocks are going to surge in November in the Drive-By Media because of Timothy Geithner being chosen, then by God the stocks plummeting for whatever reason after that is also due to Obama. The Drive-Bys cannot have it both ways. So, to me, this is the Obama report card. It's entirely fair to call this Obama's stock market because it's reacting to what Obama's plans are for the economy. It's not reacting to Bush. Bush isn't on anybody's mind here.

Financial markets are a rough predictor of future economic performance, and based upon what the markets know of Obama's plans, it's giving him a failing grade. I'm not being political. The markets deal in bottom lines. It takes the pulse of millions of investors, both in this country and abroad, to report the results, unfiltered. Keynesians can spin this all day long, but the people with skin in the game aren't buying, they're selling. They don't like massive budget deficits; they don't like the omission of tax rate cuts from Obama's plan. Slashing government spending and tax rates would provide a jolt. Like I said yesterday, he could rip the markets up 500 points tomorrow without doing a thing, just say he's considering massive tax cuts. Just considering it. And you watch the difference. That's precisely why he won't do it. So markets are selling off. It's Obama's stock market. His decisions are not inspiring the country's economic activists. They have chosen to sit on the sidelines until they feel it's safe to invest again.

How many people do you know that are going into cash? How many people do you know that are going into gold? How many people do you know buying krugerrands, and they actually want it delivered, they don't want it kept in some vault someplace, they want it in their possession? And then how many people do you know who have cash at certain banks who are worried about whether or not the bank is going to be there? So the market, back in November, interpreted Obama's future plans as a way out, a quick fix, a man wearing a white hat had arrived, stocks soared. That was Geithner. As of that moment it became Obama's stock market. It's still Obama's stock market, and it isn't inspired. Now, let's build on the claim that news or appointments can and do influence markets, and let's look at the impact Steve Jobs has had over the years on his company, Apple, Incorporated. We're talking about a single individual. But unlike Barack Obama, or Timothy Geithner, Steve Jobs has been an individual who actually created things, invented new technology that millions of people wanted. He has been a producer. He's been an economic activist. He's been an original thinker. He has built wealth. He has helped improve people's lives around the world.

I know he's a big lib, but forget that for a second. The market has reacted negatively to Steve Jobs' health issues, because this has been a man who can actually influence the future performance of his company. His presence alone reported as healthy is all the market needs to hear to have Apple Computer continue to rise. His presence with questionable health gives the market pause. His departure from the company, five-month leave of absence, with uncertain health aspects in the future, is causing real problems. Steve Jobs is rightly perceived as the key man driving the Apple bus. Wall Street has rightfully looked Jobs and the performance of his company for reasons to invest. And that's how it ought to be, folks. Wall Street should look at individual companies as opposed to a few bureaucrats in Washington to determine how and when they should invest. The private sector should not be dependent on the public sector for their future well-being.

It makes perfect sense for the market to look at Apple, based on Steve Jobs' health, his presence, and so forth. But I'm telling you, it is a crying shame when the simple naming of a Treasury secretary can cause an upward spike in the market. The government ought not have this much influence on what people in the private sector do, but unfortunately, government's so big that it does, and that's why this is Obama's market, and this market's plunging. Because the people, the entrepreneurs, the people in the market who create, produce things, they're worried about the climate that they're about to step into. They're selling. They're not investing. Go look at the Dow Jones Industrial Average if you don't believe me. Take a look what's happening at Citibank. They got a bailout and look at what's happening to them. Barack Obama, Timothy Geithner, unfortunately, are looked to for future performance of the American economy the way Steve Jobs appropriately has been looked to for the future performance of Apple, Incorporated. I think there's an important lesson in looking at the impact of Obama and Geithner as leaders of the public sector and Steve Jobs on his private sector company.

See, what we need in the United States economy is more Steve Jobs. We don't need more Barack Obamas. And we don't need more Timothy Geithners; we don't need more Eric Holders; we don't need more Hillary Clintons; we don't need more Bill Clintons; we don't need more Bill Richardsons; we don't need more John Kerrys; we don't need more Rahm Emanuels. We need more Steve Jobs. The Obama administration is trying to act like a CEO for every American company. They are absorbing industry after industry. Instead, what the government ought to be doing is making life easier for Steve Jobs and future Steve Jobses. This is what Reagan understood. He understood that government needs to go get out of the way. Do you know why Reagan was optimistic? I mean Reagan inherited a malaise, an economic malaise from Jimmy Carter that was far worse even than we're going through now. Double-digit unemployment, double-digit interest rates. Do you know the difference between Reagan and Obama? Obama is about to assume office on a mantle of pessimism. It's bad and it's going to get worse. Did Reagan ever do that?

Reagan was this epitome of optimism, can-do, he believed in the goodness of the American people. You know why Reagan was optimistic? 'Cause he knew David Packard of Hewlett Packard; he knew that there were people like Steve Jobs out there. He knew that Steven Bechtel was out there at Bechtel, Incorporated. He knew the Halliburton people were out there. He knew of the greatness of the people in the private sector, who, if turned loose and unshackled, would bring us out of the malaise of Jimmy Carter. He had confidence; he had optimism in America and in the American people. This current bunch that's going to be inaugurated immaculately on Tuesday doesn't. They're pessimists. It's gonna get worse. We are all going to have to sacrifice. There's not one word from the Obama camp about how we are going to prosper. We are going to sacrifice, we are going to suffer, and we're going to suffer equally. We're all going to have skin in the game. You wonder why Reagan won 49 states twice? You wonder why he was so beloved, he was of good cheer, he was happy, he was enjoying life? It took two years for Reagan's plans to kick in. They tried to destroy him after his tax cuts were enacted, 'cause it wasn't immediate. It's a giant economy. You can't fix it with bailouts, but the trillion dollars, $750 billion, you can't do it.

They tried to destroy Reagan's recovery even before it began. Today they still rewrite the history of the success of the Reagan years because contrasting conservatives and liberals is as easy as contrasting a smile with a frown. Optimism, pessimism. I don't understand why the American people are so eager to embrace misery. Well, I guess I do. We learned it. If they think everybody else is miserable, they're happy. Remember that story? People would rather earn $50,000 than $100,000 if everybody was earning 50, remember that? Something's happened, but people seem to be enmeshed in the misery. They seem to me willing to invest in this messianic figure of hope, change, survival, salvation, what have you. Reagan knew all that came from individuals with freedom, being entrepreneurial with as few shackles around their ankles as possible. The stock market's been in a downward spiral ever since it figured out that bailouts, TARP, and FDR inspired deficit spending were to be the primary fixes for the economic turn down. Obama has owned these financial markets for several months now, and it's time he turned them loose, gave them back to the American people and people like Steve Jobs.

RUSH: All right, I really blew out the programming format in that last segment. We've got one minute 'til the next break, and I'm going to use it here. Why do you think the bailouts, the 350, the 700, why is it not working? 'Cause there's no plan with it, folks, they're just throwing money up against the wall, and they're hoping some of it sticks. They're hoping that it works. Interestingly, Michael Kranish in the Boston Globe today: "Amid Echoes of FDR, Debate Rekindles Over New Deal." And he quotes Jonathan Alter, who wrote The Defining Moment, a book on Roosevelt's first 100 days in office. Listen to this. "Roosevelt 'threw a lot of things against the wall to see what stuck. Many of them not only stuck, but remain mainstays of American life, such as Social Security and public aid to poor families.'" So we're doing FDR all over. There is no plan, just throw it up against the wall, all this bailout money, and see if it sticks. And in the meantime, we're amassing trillion-dollar deficits amidst pessimism.

RUSH: Here's Danielle in Chelsea, Michigan. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Well, hello. Mega global cooling... No! I'm sorry. Global warming dittos from the great state of Michigan.

CALLER: As I get older, I'm in my thirties, and I see the hypocrisy, the double standards of our government, particularly the Democrats, and it's frustrating. I do it right. You know, my husband has a good job. We didn't borrow too much money and we put 20% down on our house and now I'm told I have to sacrifice; I have to give. Well, wait a minute. My husband works hard. I work hard. We raise our family. We take care of our family. I just want the government to leave me alone. Let me raise my family. Let me keep more of my money, and I don't need 'em.

RUSH: I agree a hundred percent, but unfortunately the American people elected somebody that doesn't want to leave you alone.

CALLER: Well, and I'll tell you the blame. I have spoken with liberals. I have five children. You can imagine, as a conservative --

CALLER: -- not quite my late thirties, and, yes, five children that my husband and I could afford, we could raise. We can love. We can take care of. But to liberals, I am a terrible person.

CALLER: You know, the world's overpopulated, I'm contributing to global warming, and --

RUSH: It is not overpopulated, and there is no global warming. You're going to go frustrated dealing with them intellectually.

RUSH: I know. It's easy to. That's why they'll start attacking you personally. They'll start attacking the people you believe in. I mean, it's fun to do if you can keep your sanity about it, but, look, the hypocrisy... See, I'm glad you're spotting it at your relative young age. You're seeing all these double standards. You're seeing all the hypocrisy. There's a different set of rules for Democrats and Republicans. I'm going to tell you why that is, Danielle. The reason why Republicans are held to higher standards is twofold, two reasons. One, they actively suggest that they have higher standards that they seek to reach and attain. At the same time, they are despised (this is the second reason) by liberals and the media precisely because they attempt to maintain standards. Not everybody can.

We're all human. We're all going to stumble and fail. And when we stumble and fail, why, we become hypocrites. We become the biggest hypocrites, and they try to strip us of any credibility. The left, on the other hand, they don't talk about maintaining any standards -- behavioral, personal, or otherwise. There aren't any. Liberalism, in fact, is not based on standards. So they really can't commit ethics violations, unless they happen to be Blagojevich, and then, of course, they're going to nail him because he's embarrassing The Messiah. But Blagojevich wouldn't even be in trouble if he hadn't gotten caught and he was stupid enough to put on tape what he was trying to do: sell the Senate seat. Don't think that's the first time that's ever happened in Chicago or anywhere else.

But a party that maintains it has no standards -- in fact, standards are judgmental, standards are discriminatory, standards are unfair. So, you can have a guy like Sandy Burglar steals documents from the National Archives who's loved and adored. You have this guy, Holder, who had pardoned terrorists, pardoned Marc Rich; he's allowed to say he's going to be better next time. He learned from it. Then you have Palin who they'd rather put on a cross. You have Joe the Plumber, who they tried to destroy. So that's always going to be the case. There are two sets of rules. Nothing's fair, and the so-called arbiter of the rules have chosen up sides, the media, and they've thrown in entirely with the Democrats.

RUSH: Timothy Geithner. I can't let this go. He's the Treasury secretary nominee, and he didn't pay taxes. It is said that Timothy Geithner... By the way, Obama... Oh, I should tell you, Obama has "cleared" Geithner, just like Obama "cleared" himself. You know this? Obama has cleared Geithner, just like Obama cleared himself and his staff in the pay-for-play talks with Blagojevich. (laughing) By the way, Blagojevich today is swearing in the newly elected Illinois Senate, which will vote to impeach him. (laughing) It is said that Timothy Geithner employed a housekeeper whose immigration papers expired while she was working for him. In addition, he allegedly failed to pay Social Security and self-employment taxes when he worked for the International Monetary Fund.

Now, just like when Rahm Emanuel's dealings with Blagojevich, Obama has thoroughly reviewed Treasury secretary select's Timothy Geithner's situation and given it his blessing. Everything's okay! Obama has cleared his nominee again, so I'm glad that's over. Having a guy in charge of the IRS with multiple tax issues might have sullied the Immaculate Inauguration, but now that Barack Obama has determined it won't be a problem, it won't be a problem. But it was close. It was a close one. Here's my question. If Hillary Clinton's massive conflicts and political payoffs don't bother Obama or his fellow Washingtonians, why should Timothy Geithner's failure to pay taxes bother anybody? Rahm Emanuel's frequent contacts with governor cesspool, they didn't bother Obama.

I still can't figure out why they've dumped Richardson. They threw him under the bus for far less than what's gone on here. Obama has given his blessing to bailouts, he has given his blessing to Burris, he has given his blessing to Rahm Emanuel's swim in the Illinois cesspool, he has given his blessing to the Clinton conflict extravaganza, and he's given his blessing to his tax-challenged Treasury secretary. This is really a smooth transition here, has it not been, as we lead into the Immaculate Inauguration? This, ladies and gentlemen, is change we can believe in. Now, you maybe asking, "Why are the American people not up in arms about this?"

Very simple. It doesn't matter when Democrats do this! Democrats can get away with no ethics because they never stand for standards. They never proclaim to have them. Well, that's not really true. Nancy Pelosi said they're going to stick to the highest ethical standards. Obama has said he would; Clinton said he would. It's just rhetoric. It's just campaign rhetoric. We know they don't really mean it. Just like don't really mean much of what they say during the campaign. It's just breathtaking to watch this. Let us listen to audio sound bites here. Go to audio sound bites. Let's start with number three. We have a montage here from a senator, Senator John Kerry, and a bunch of Drive-Bys on Timothy Geithner.

KERRY: It is possible to make an innocent mistake. I think this is an honest mistake.

CROWLEY: The transition team put out a lengthy list of reasons why this was just an honest mistake.

STEPHANOPOULOS: This was an honest mistake, fairly common. Geithner himself is embarrassed by this and he's sorry.

RUSH: Well, what about Kimba Wood? I'm sure she was embarrassed and sorry. What about Zoe Baird? They were made to walk the plank. It's just so funny. Ha! I know it's outrageous and it's maddening and here are the Drive-Bys lining up, but you shouldn't be surprised by this because I have predicted this. The Drive-Bys are going to line up and protect all of these people except Richardson -- and if the Republicans had any gonads they would be asking if there's racism attached to Richardson being thrown under the bus because he's Hispanic. That's another thing. If it is such a "common mistake," why is there a law against it? But this common mistake business, folks, I'm not buying this. "It's a common mistake, frequently made mistake. He's very sorry for it."

Look, the nanny thing, that's probably a common mistake -- and not knowing whether or not your employee is legal or not, that's probably somewhat common. I'd also say it's pretty common, you know your employee is not legal, but "What the hell?" But this IMF thing, this is different. When you work at the IMF, they withhold no taxes. You're self-employed, essentially, which requires you to file quarterly estimates on your income, and he didn't do it for a number of years. And I think even after he was notified in an audit that he had slipped up here, he continued to commit the "mistake." Now, this is a guy that's going to be in charge of the IRS. This is a guy who's going to be in charge of the Treasury department. Some of this is just... They're asking us to believe a little too much, that he didn't know this? Didn't know he was being paid the gross?

The terms of employment are laid out... Do you know what you have to do in order to be paid the gross? Do you know the hoops you have to jump through to avoid having taxes withheld? It's just not something you can do. Folks, try this. Go in today or tomorrow and tell your boss you want to be paid the gross. You don't want any deductions. You'll handle it yourself. Your boss will tell you, "Sorry, it is impossible. The federal government makes me do this. You can't be paid the gross. We pay money to you and we have to have all of these deductions. We have to report it, you know, quarterly, weekly, whatever it is to the IRS and various other state authorities and so on. No, I can't do it." Then look in to see what you would have to, what kind of job you would have to do to be qualified or categorized as self-employed or an independent contractor, in which you pay the gross.

You know, I get audited by New York City and New York State every year since I moved to Florida; and their assumption is I'm lying to them about where I live, and they make mistakes every audit. In every audit they make mistakes based on faulty assumptions. That's just a common mistake. Imagine if it were reversed and I was the one making the mistake. I mean, there would be penalties. Whew! I shudder to think. There would be hearings. Wesley Snipes and I would be blood brothers, exactly right. So there's something about this, and I heard some Democrats say, "Well, you know, he's too important. This is just chump change. He's just too important." So change we can believe in -- Yes, we can! -- and hope! Timothy Geithner. Here, Jonathan Alter makes that very point last night on MSNBC. Question: "Is this another Zoe Baird situation where somebody is just going to go out the window, or do they seem to have been honest mistakes? Maybe, more importantly, is there sort of a bipartisan feeling this guy is just too valuable to even let ordinary rules apply to him?"

ALTER: It does seem to be an honest mistake. It would really be a shame if something like this sunk the nomination. We are in very serious times! They're quite different than 1993 when Zoe Baird's nomination was sunk for attorney general over this kind of nanny problem. Geithner is, by all accounts, the only person in Washington who fully understands TARP! (snorts) You know, $700 billion. We cannot afford at this point, unless there's gross malfeasance, to take him out of the picture.

RUSH: This is the Drive-By sentiment summed up by Jonathan Alter. Geithner is a genius; he's gonna save the economy of the entire world. So what if he doesn't pay his taxes? These are serious times. We need the man! He is the only guy who understands TARP! So, Snerdley, and the rest of you, do not doubt me ever again when I tell you the degree to which the Drive-Bys are going to be in the tank for Obama.

RUSH: Here's Andrea Mitchell with Mika Brzezinski today on Scarborough's show on MSNBC. Mika Brzezinski says, "Tim Geithner, is this a big problem, some tax issue for the guy?"

MTICHELL: He is hugely smart, they need him right away on the job, I think both senators in the -- Democrats and Republicans from the finance committee say that they need him right away to get confirmed. He did his own taxes, by the way, which is -- and then he got an accountant who didn't tell him all the back taxes that he needed to pay.

RUSH: Now, wait a minute, wait a minute, I don't want you people to misunderstand what we're doing here. This is an exercise. This really isn't about Geithner. We're not talking about Geithner here. We're talking about the media, the way the Drive-Bys are covering this. Smartest guy, the only one who understands TARP. So smart he does his own taxes. If he's so smart doing his own taxes, how does he miss the back taxes and the taxes that he owes and the taxes that he's not paying? And how does an accountant catch it, if he's the smartest guy that we've got out there? Shouldn't the accounting guy be running TARP? Have you people heard about how expensive Obama's inauguration is going to be? Bush has essentially had to declare a state of emergency to get the funding to pay for this. It's over a hundred million dollars. Bush's was $40 million or so. The Drive-Bys, the AP back in 2004, ran story after story about how outrageously wasteful, unnecessary, and expensive the Bush inauguration was. Today there are stories on how magnificent the Obama inauguration will be and how the cost is irrelevant, due to the historical nature and the good vibes that will be extending to the country. I've got both excerpts. I will share them with you after the next break. Dingy Harry, by the way, held a press conference. Are you worried about this Geithner pick now, in light of the back taxes documentation?

REID: Timothy Geithner is a person that is extremely well-qualified to be one of the finest secretaries of Treasury this country's ever had. And there is a few little hiccups, but that's basically what they are. I am not concerned at all.

RUSH: Okay, now, if I were Geithner, I would be a little worried about this. Dingy Harry's track record on getting people through the process is not all that good. Dingy Harry stood in the way of Roland Burris. Dingy Harry said Roland Burris doesn't have a prayer of getting in here; he can't satisfy our rules; we're not going to accept anybody appointed by Blagojevich. This week, Burris will be seated. Dingy Harry says no problem, little hiccup, Geithner will be in here. Now, if Dingy Harry's track record holds true, ladies and gentlemen, Timothy Geithner could be in trouble.

RUSH: The New York Times is reporting that Timothy Geithner's confirmation hearing, the new Treasury secretary, has been delayed until January 21st now, after the Republicans objected to holding his confirmation hearing on Friday. January 21st is the day after The Messiah is sworn in. Now, ladies and gentlemen, generally when Democrats run into ethics problems of any kind, the mantra then becomes it's time for reform. Sort of like campaign finance reform was reform for all the corruption that was involving lobbyists and money and politicians. Of course campaign finance reform was designed to get the money out of politics to protect these innocent little birds that are elected, when in fact they're the ones that are corrupt and are corrupting the system, it's not the system corrupting them. So when somebody important to the Democrats gets tripped up legally, it usually spurs a call for reform. Look at Clinton getting funded by the ChiComs. The Clinton administration, "We need to reform this," because you pass the buck to the system for getting you in trouble, not you, and so the call went out, "We need campaign finance reform."

So if the complexity of tax law tripped up the only guy who understands TARP, Timothy Geithner, isn't tax reform called for? I mean it's so common, it ensnares so many worthwhile public servants, it's a mistake everybody makes, it's such a common mistake. Isn't it time to get rid of the mistake, which is the law, not the people? Don't ask Charlie Rangel about this. This is one reform that is not going to happen, but normally that's how the Democrats play the game.

RUSH: UK Daily Mail online: "Bush Declares a 'State of Emergency' in Washington as Cost of Obama's Swearing-in Ceremony Soars to £110m." This is over $150 million. Now, I was a little early when I was on the way to the White House yesterday, so I had the driver take me by the Capitol, the side that's set up for the inauguration. I have never seen in my life so many Port-A-Potties all over everywhere. They're surrounding the Washington Monument; they're all the way down The Mall; they are on the grounds of Capitol Hill; the seats where the two-hundred and some odd thousand who are given official tickets will sit to witness the swearing-in ceremony. It's just massive. It is just huge, and I'm thinking all the stories we've had downplaying expectations of the number of people showing up.

Here is the story from the UK Daily Mail: "Barack Obama's inauguration is set to cost more than £100m making it the most expensive swearing-in ceremony in US history. The President-elect will take less than a minute to recite the oath of office in front of an estimated two million people--" oh, it's down to two million now "-- in the US capital next week. But by the time the final dance has been held at one of the many inaugural balls the costs for the day will be a staggering £110m," or over $150 million. Do you know where this number was revealed? It was revealed yesterday as Obama scrambled to answer questions about the nomination of Timothy Geithner. "Obama's White House spokesman, Robert Gibbs, said in a statement that Geithner had committed honest mistakes that he quickly addressed upon learning," and then they went on to discuss this. Okay, so, $150 million, Obama inauguration. Got that?

Let's go back to the Associated Press in 2005, the reporter Will Lester. This is a January 13th AP dispatch: "President Bush's second inauguration will cost tens of millions of dollars -- $40 million alone in private donations for the balls, parade and other invitation-only parties. With that kind of money, what could you buy? Two hundred armored Humvees with the best armor for troops in Iraq; vaccinations and preventive health care for 22 million children in regions devastated by the tsunami; a down payment on the nation's deficit, which hit a record-breaking $412 billion last year." Speaking of that, without the stimulus, we got the first three months of the 2009 fiscal year budget. We're on track to a $1.2 trillion deficit, and here in 2005, we're spending way too much money on Bush's inauguration, why, we could make a down payment on the nation's deficit.

And finally, "All these questions, what could we better spend the Bush inauguration money on, have come from Bush supporters and opponents. Do we need to spend this money on what seems so extravagant?" That was the lead, Will Lester, AP, January 13th. Yesterday, January 13th, 2009, Laurie Kellman: "So you're attending an inaugural ball saluting the historic election of Barack Obama in the worst economic climate in three generations. Can you get away with glitzing it up and still be appropriate, not to mention comfortable and financially viable? To quote the man of the hour: Yes, you can. Veteran ballgoers say you should. And fashionistas insist that you must. 'This is a time to celebrate. This is a great moment. Do not dress down. Do not wear the Washington uniform,' said Tim Gunn, a native Washingtonian and Chief Creative Officer at Liz Claiborne, Inc. 'Just because the economy is in a downturn, it doesn't mean that style is going to be in a downturn,' agreed Ken Downing, fashion director for Neiman Marcus."

Not one story so far about how many people in Darfur could we feed with this $150 million? How many Africans could be vaccinated against AIDS for some of this $150 million? What size home could you buy the brother George Obama, still living in the hut with just a meager portion of this $150 million? Aunt Zeituni might even be able to buy her a green card with a portion of the $150 million. What about all the children without health care? What about all of the middle-class people without jobs? How many people could be aided with a portion of Obama's inauguration budget? Bush, it was $40 million and they were asking how it could be better spent, that it's unnecessary. We weren't in a recession either, by the way, we weren't in an economic downturn. Now in the midst of an economic downturn, oh, yeah, go out there and gussie it up all you can, dress it up, spend it up, bad economic times, this is when we need to indulge ourselves more. Change we can believe in. And here now is Bill in Tampa. Bill, great to have you here. Thanks for waiting as we head back to the phones on the EIB Network, sir. Hello.

CALLER: I'm an automotive wholesale parts distributor from Tampa to Orlando daily, and a major soft drink manufacturer, Pepsi-Cola, has changed their logo where it looks eerily similar to Barack Obama's. They even have slogans like, "Are you ready to change the world?" on these billboards and signage. It just amazes me how they're backing this just like the media has since his 2004 speech.

RUSH: This is business. With business, don't make the mistake assuming this is ideological. It's not always. Sometimes it is. But in this case, this is just about selling Pepsi, and his logo was already close enough to theirs, they coulda sued him for copyright infringement. Instead, they're getting on board. Pepsi's always had a marketing challenge. How do we go against Coca-Cola? Their most famous campaign was, "The drink of a new generation." Well, they're back to it. They're just basically recycling it here. Somebody sent me an e-mail Sunkist is running ads that make it look like Obama and his family are endorsing the product.

RUSH: I saw a story yesterday -- even while flying to Washington, I was doing show prep -- and there was a story on all kinds of businesses who are trying to get themselves on television, somehow, during the inauguration because the people, the ratings, might rival the Super Bowl, and yet it won't cost anything if they can find a way to finagle themselves in the TV coverage somehow.

CALLER: Well, they may be successful, but I doubt it 'cause I've drank my last Pepsi-Cola, that's for sure.

First, we say article after article after article telling us just how bad our economy was, beginning in early 2008. Now, slowly but surely, there will be many articles about how the economy is getting better, and they will cite anything which looks good.

What Obama says and what he does can be quite different; here is Obama on coal (before and after the election):

Conservative Review
Issue #58	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	January 18, 2009