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

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

The House of Representatives passes a $800+ billion [so-called] stimulus bill. No Republican votes for it and a smattering of Democrats (some of those up for reelection in 2 years) voted against it. Obama had lobbied hard for this bill and for bipartisan support. Very little news coverage is given to the actual contents of the bill, except for talk radio, FoxNews and the Wall Street Journal.

The news media emphasized the million dollar office improvement of some executive and was concerned over Wall Street Bonuses (both of which have little or no effect upon us); but paid very little attention to the contents of the gargantuan [so-called] stimulus bill.

Obama attacks Rush Limbaugh directly, saying that Republicans cannot get things done if they keep listening to Rush. This is backed up by a fairly sizable ad campaign directed against Rush. Has any political party attacked a private citizen before like this?

Obama signs an executive order which allows each state (if I understand this correctly) to make their own emission standards for cars. Since Detroit cannot make cars for each state, the state which has the toughest standards will set policy, which will be whichever state has the toughest environmental lobby.

Blagojevich does a media tour, even going on FoxNews and The View, while he is impeached at home as governor of Illinois.

War and chaos continues to rage on our southern border, and newspapers and television here do not report on it. This potentially could become a greater crisis than Islamic terrorism.

Jimmy Carter: “Hamas has been firing rockets in order to call world attention to the hunger problem in the Palestinian region.” (not an exact quote, but the gist is right).

Sean Hannity, “Obama’s uses tougher language against Rush Limbaugh than he does against Hamas.”

Larry Summers, “We cannot afford the Bush tax cuts” while touting the largest so-called stimulus bill in the history of mankind. This bill is mostly pork, political paybacks and tax rebates for those who did not pay taxes in the first place. He added, “The priority is to get credit flowing again” whereas, the bill in question does not deal at all with this concern.

Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House: “We reached out to Republicans all along the way, they know it. They just didn’t have any ideas.”

President Obama, “Now is not the time for... [big business] to make a profit.”

There are riots in Bulgaria, Latvia, Greece and Iceland over high taxes and high unemployment. I guarantee you, if Obama screws up as badly as I think he will, this will occur here as well.

The PETA banned commercial for the Super Bowl (actually, this one was not banned, but they were told to tone it down and it would be okay to run):

On the other hand, this commercial was banned completely from the Super Bowl. It was far too political, and thus, somehow violates the standards of the Super Bowl:

1) Obama does not need Republican support for his stimulus bill. However, he knows that it will not stimulate the economy. If Republicans stand up against it as a whole, then they might take over the Senate and the House in 2010. He needs to be able to blame Democrats and Republicans when this bill does not stimulate the economy.

2) The mainstream news spent more time on a million dollar office remodel than it did on what is in this nearly $1 trillion so-called stimulus bill (which really is a Democratic payback and stay in office bill). The first has little or no impact on anyone’s life; the latter will have a dramatic effect on us, our children and upon their children.

3) More money will be spent in this emergency stimulus bill in 2011 or 2012 than in 2009. Since this is an emergency, why not cut out all of the spending to take place after 2009? (From the Huckabee show).

4) Obama and Congress are setting standards for Detroit automakers to make it even more difficult for them to sell cars. If consumers wanted the cars Congress wants us to buy, then Detroit would already be making them.

5) Most of the passengers of those 900+ private jets which landed in and near Washington D.C. in order to see the inauguration will soon be lecturing us on how we need to walk instead of drive or use public transportation, so that we can reduce our carbon footprints. The psychology here is, we are seen as the great unwashed. They are the privileged. There are rules for them and there are rules for us. People with power, wealth and/or fame often view us in that way.

6) For those of you who still fear global warming, it snowed in Dubai. The brilliant meteorologist, Rachel Maddow says that this is another proof of global warming.

7) Susan E. Rice, Obama’s Ambassador to the United Nations and spokeswoman for the Obama foreign policy, has explained that Obama will meet with Iran if they suspend their nuclear program. This is called a pre-condition. Obama clearly stated that he would speak to Iran and other enemies of the United States without pre-conditions. Susan Rice, on one of the Sunday talk shows, explained that this was a fulfillment of Obama’s promise to America to speak to Iran without pre-conditions.

8) Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, completely unfazed by what would seem like a contradiction to a normal person, has now set pre-conditions for the United States. The U.S. must (1) formally apologize to Iran; (2) the U.S. must withdraw all troops from around the world; and (3) he added, “You must stop your support for those ruthless, uncivilized, illegal, fake, murdering, child-killing Zionists.” If Short Takes #7 and 8 were not real people saying real things, one would think this is the script for a poorly written world sitcom.

9) On 60 Minutes, this past Sunday, one of the reasons given for the difficulty of a 2 state solution in Israel is all of the persky settlers who are trying to settle on the West Bank. I do not recall 60 Minutes making mention that Hamas has been sending thousands of rockets into Israel and that, geographically-speaking, a two-state solution would encourage more of this. The rockets apparently are not as big of an issue to 60 Minutes as one would suppose.

10) Saturday Night Live made fun of the Republican’s choice of Michael Steele as the new RNC chairman, saying, “You know, it can’t just be any black guy.” The implication is, that Michael Steele is just some random Black guy who happened to be a Republican.

11) US Representative John Conyers who wants to prosecute Bush, Rove and Cheney for war crimes (although there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever), is married to Monica Conyers, who is facing bribery charges. She’s caught on wire taking a bribe.

12) Business expert Clair McCaskill wants executive salaries frozen at $400,000 (they should not make more than our president). Geithner, to his credit, suggests that any bonuses paid to executives must be paid in stock which cannot be redeemed until the bailed out business pays the government back; otherwise, the stock received is worthless.

13) During a particularly cold day this past week, Obama was seen in the White House without a suit jacket. When his press secretary was asked about it, he reminded everyone that Obama is from Hawaii and he likes it warm. Will Obama tell us to turn our thermostats down when it is cold?

14) One of the big differences between conservatives and liberals can be see in Iraq versus Gitmo: conservatives want to liberate the people in Iraq from an evil dictator (liberals were more than willing to leave before stability could be established); liberals are more concerned with liberating and giving US citizen rights to Gitmo detainees.

21% of the kindergartners in Detroit will graduate high school. 51% literacy rate among Detroit adults. What political party has been in charge of Detroit over the past several decades?

The proposed stimulus bill is well over $800 billion and, with interest, will be about $1.2 trillion. Mike Huckabee points out, so that you can get an idea as to the size of this bill, that with $1 trillion, you could buy Coke, Pepsi Cola, Wal-Mart, Apple Computers, Google and Microsoft, and still have $20 billion left over. Let me repeat, you could buy all of those companies for what Obama and our Democratically controlled Congress wants to spend. Or, you could, instead, buy 1000 boxes of girl scout cookies for every man, woman and child in the United States.

Less than 1/3^rd of the emergency stimulus bill actually goes out the door this year.

According to John Boehner, 75% of the upper income earners are actually small businesses. I do not know if this is true or not.

14,000 candidates in Iraq are vying for 444 seats. Of the police and security forces, who were allowed to vote early (they will be providing security for the elections), there was a 90% turnout for early voting. Maybe a Democracy can work in Iraq?

Wall Street Executive bonuses in 2008 overall are down 40%. Because of this reduction in executive bonuses, New York City will face about a $1 billion dollar revenue reduction, because those executives pay a lot of taxes. So, who will make this up? Just google Governor Patterson’s tax and fee hikes.

Obama green proposals to the auto industry could add an additional $2000–7000 to the price tag of each car. That will certainly help out Detroit.

In about 10 years, because we will face some unusually cold weather, so the climate change folks will begin to blame weather-related calamities on climate change and on carbon in the atmosphere. The exact same things which are promoted today as solutions for global warming will be offered up as solutions for climate change. People will buy into this, but I don’t think it will quite be like the global warming hysteria of the years 2000–2006. In case you were unaware, the number of those who view global warming as a serious problem has decreased dramatically over the past few years.

No matter what Obama does, unless it is really drastic, the stock market is near the bottom (if not there already) so it will go up. Because there is so much inventory out there and so few qualified buyers, the housing market will take 1–3 years to reach some reasonable point of stability, where houses are being built again. They will not be built as quickly as the previous 10 years because that was an artificially created demand (the lowering of credit requirements by the government). So, we will see some sort of reasonable recovery begin in the next 1–3 years. People will be slow to go back to the market, and companies will be slow to hire, essentially because they do not know what Obama will do next.

George Friedman was on the Michael Medved show earlier this week, and he has a book out called The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21^st Century. In his interview with Michael, he claimed that the U.S. will get in a shooting war with Mexico, and reminded us that the 13^th largest economy in the world is Mexico’s. He also said that Turkey would be the next great foreign economy. I believe that the next great economy will be Iraq.

I would have never guessed that Obama would moved as quickly as he has with such a far-left agenda. The signs were there (all of his far-left pre-office associates), even though his rhetoric sounds moderate and pragmatic.

One approach, and I have no problem with this one, is for government to do nothing whatsoever about the economy. We are probably at the bottom of the stock market and the housing inventory is going to take a couple years to match supply and demand, no matter what government does. If business knows that Obama will do nothing by way of tinkering, we would move back to recovery within 2–3 years (remember, the key indicators are unemployment, inflation, interest rates, and growth).

Let’s say we want to fix it more quickly. As Rush has pointed out, all Obama has to do is say, “I am considering [a pro-business, conservative solution]” and the market would start going back up and businesses would stop laying people off. That is, just words from Obama could turn this around in one day.

Everyone pays taxes, from the least to the greatest, and there will be a multiple to fix the lowest and highest rates. Those at the top can pay no more than 3x (or 4x) what those at the bottom pay. 5% tax for everyone. At $100,000, this increases to 10% (exactly double of previous bracket) and at $1,000,000/year income, a 15 or 20% tax (3x or 4x the bottom tax rate).

Short term capital gains to be taxed at the tax rate of the individual. Long-term capital gains to be taxed at 10%. This encourages long-term investment. Corporate taxes to be reduced to 10–15%. The fair tax (a consumption tax) would be preferable to this.

Everyone pays FICA and everyone can have the option of controlling at least 50% of their FICA money (the government can restrict the investment vehicles used). That 50% is completely controlled and owned by the person who paid into FICA, and government cannot touch this amount, leverage it, or give it to someone else. Additional retirements may not take social security into consideration. Other retirement vehicles must stand on their own.

All investment vehicles must be understandable to someone with an IQ of 100 and can be explained in no more than 4 sentences. All investment vehicles somehow pump money into this or that public business (or into bonds). The idea of essentially betting on sectors or companies will be classified as gambling and outlawed.

FNMA and FHLMC need to be broken up and sold to private investors and investment companies. The government needs to completely get out of the secondary mortgage market. These companies can set their own standards when it comes to holding established mortgages.

Mortgage and bank leverage needs to be adjusted so that there is more money on hand in these institutions.

There must be a freeze on government spending, with a mandatory reduction of federal government spending by 5% per year.

These suggestions need to be implemented slowly (over several years), because if they are all put into effect all at once, the stock market would over react and double or triple in the first year.

A 2% annual reduction in congressional pay and benefits for every year the budget is not balanced.

Institute the Fair Tax (which is a consumption tax). Here, our taxes are not hidden. We know exactly what they are. The fair tax applies only at the consumer level.

Chris Matthews to Keither Olbermann while covering the primaries of Maryland and Virginia: "I have to tell you, you know, it's part of reporting this case, this election, the feeling most people get when they hear Barack Obama's speech. My - I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often.” For which we are all thankful.

David Gergen, when writing about Obama’s inaugural speech, called it less of a speech and more a symphony.

"When NBC News first assigned me to the Barack Obama campaign, I must confess my knees quaked a bit....I wondered if I was up to the job. I wondered if I could do the campaign justice." wrote NBC reporter Lee Cowan in an article for "The Peacock," an NBC advertising supplement.

Lee Cowan also said, “Even in the conversations we have as colleagues, there is a sense of trying especially hard not to drink the Kool-Aid. It's so rapturous, everything around him [Barack Obama]. All these huge rallies.” as quoted by New York Times reporter Jacques Steinberg in a March 1 story.

Reporter Eli Zaslow, described Obama’s workout sessions: "The sun glinted off chiseled pectorals sculpted during four weightlifting sessions each week, and a body toned by regular treadmill runs and basketball games." As Bernie Goldberg has pointed out, this is not news, nor is this even political analysis; this is a man-crush. Recall that the media said that Bush’s exercise regimen borders on the creepy.

On ABC’s Good Morning, America, Co-host Robin Roberts gushed: "Some would say it's a team of rivals, a la President Lincoln, or is a better comparison a team of geniuses as FDR did?" George Stephanopoulos responded with: "We have not seen this kind of combination of star power and brain power and political muscle this early in a cabinet in our lifetimes."

Keith Olbermann, when covering Obama’s Democratic convention speech live: "For 42 minutes, not a sour note and spellbinding throughout in a way usually reserved for the creations of fiction. An extraordinary political statement. Almost a fully realized, tough, crisp, insistent speech in tone and in the sense of cutting through the clutter....I'd love to find something to criticize about it. You got anything?"

Chris Matthews adds: "No. You know, I've been criticized for saying he inspires me, and to hell with my critics!...You know, in the Bible they talk about Jesus serving the good wine last, I think the Democrats did the same."

"He's come from a white family and a black family, and he's married to a black woman, and they're cool people. They are really cool. They are Jack and Jackie Kennedy when you see them together. They are cool. And they're great-looking, and they're cool and they're young, and they're - everything seems to be great....He may not win this thing because everybody in America is not going to be in a room with him somewhere....[But] if you're in [a room] with Obama, you feel the spirit. Moving." Chris Matthews talking on NBC's Tonight Show.

"Today, the audacity of hope had its rendezvous with destiny. No mere endorsement this, more like a political anointment from the Kennedys, merging ideals from two different eras....Obama is now an adopted son of Camelot. His candidacy blessed not just by the Lion of the Senate, patriarch of the clan, but by JFK's daughter." ABC's David Wright on Nightline

"What of the attacks has busted through to you? What makes you angriest at John McCain, the Republicans? What's being said about your husband that you want to shout from the mountain tops is not true?" NBC's Brian Williams asks Michelle Obama.

Obama is grilled with love by Brian Williams, “When an American politician comes to Berlin, we've had some iconic utterances in the past. We've had `Ich bin ein.' We've had, `Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall'....Is the phraseology that you would like remembered: `People of Berlin, people of the world, this is our moment, this is our time'?” Brian Williams interviewing Obama in Berlin

Another tough question from the press: "People have called you `The Savior,' `The Messiah,' `The Messenger of Change.' The expectations have been raised to such a level....If you are, as you just say, lucky enough to be elected the next president, are you going to have to consciously manage expectations during the first several months of your administration?" NBC's Matt Lauer to Barack Obama on Today. Today, we know that the answer to this question is yes.

Actor/comedian Richard Belzer (admittedly , not a journalist, but with a man crush too big to ingore): "We've been redefined for seven years now as a war-mongering, far-right, intolerant nation who's raping our own atmosphere and demonizing the poor and letting the banks rob us blind. I think if - any incremental move away from that would be a godsend. And I think Obama will, at the very least, put the brakes on this madness and in some ways heal it....I think the rest of the world, if they see that America elects a man of color, I think they'll breathe a big sigh of relief and not think that we're this war-mongering, rich white guy country." On FNC's Geraldo At Large

Chris Matthews discussing Obama’s speech on race on Hardball: "A speech worthy of Abraham Lincoln....What I personally view as the best speech ever given on race in this country....I think this is the kind of speech I think first graders should see, people in the last year of college should see before they go out in the world. This should be, to me, an American tract. Something that you just check in with, now and then, like reading Great Gatsby and Huckleberry Finn....One of the great speeches in American history."

To make certain that Obama knew up-front that no difficult questions would be asked, Co-host John Roberts first said: "I want to just stipulate at the beginning of this interview, we are declaring a Reverend Wright-free zone today. So, no questions about Reverend Wright. Our viewers want us to move on, so this morning we're going to move on. Is that okay with you?"

Reporter Jeff Glor: "In addition to enjoying basketball and cycling during down time, Obama loves to play Scrabble....Obama's job as a teenager was at a Baskin-Robbins, and to this day he does not like ice cream...."

Glor: "I mean, I think this is a man who plays to win. No matter what it is, whether it's the woman he wants to date or elected office or board games, there is an ambition there. There is a determination."

Chen: "Sounds like presidential qualities." From "The Five Things You Should Know" about Barack Obama on CBS's The Early Show.

Let’s talk true patriotism: "It's early April, which means these are the few days of the year when Americans of almost every political stripe unite in a perennial ritual: complaining about taxes. Count me out. I'm happy to pay my fair share to the government. It's part of my patriotic duty - and it's a heckuva bargain.... There seems to be an inconsistency about people who insist on wearing flag pins in their lapels, but who grumble about paying taxes....Genuine patriots don't complain about their patriotic obligations....Pay up and be grateful!" Former ABC and CNN reporter Walter Rodgers writing in the Christian Science Monitor.

I am sure that many more examples can be found in Bernie Goldberg’s A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (And Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media

First of all, in case you did not realize this, there will be no peace in the Middle East with the Jews there. They occupy a postage stamp of a country (0.2% of the Middle East), without any oil, but there is a level of hatred from some large groups of Arabs there which will make peace impossible. I don’t care who tries to mediate some kind of peace, whether it is Carter, Bush ‘41 or ‘43, Clinton or Obama, no one is going to be able to go in there and achieve any sort of long-lasting peace. The only time that there has been any long-lasting peace is when Israel launches a full-on attack against her enemies, and is allowed to kill so many Arabs that they finally give up. That usually gains the Jews about a decade of relative peace.

Obama seems to believe that he can bring peace to the Middle East by taking a balanced approach, because he was a student at a Muslim school in Indonesia and because his middle name is Hussain. The best Obama can hope for is a temporary ceasefire, which will put off the inevitable.

Obama’s first television interview after his swearing in was with Al-Arabiya TV Network. One of the things which Obama said was “My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy. We sometimes make mistakes. We have not been perfect. But if you look at the track record, as you say, America was not born as a colonial power, and that the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago, there's no reason why we can't restore that.”

1988 Pan Am Flight 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland. At the time, it was the worst act of terrorism perpetrated against the United States, and involved the greatest number of peacetime fatalities (270) in the United Kingdom. Just over 12 years after the event, at the conclusion of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial, a Libyan agent, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, was convicted on 270 counts of murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Libya subsequently agreed to pay relatives of the Lockerbie bombing victims $2.7 billion ($10 million each) in compensation. 169 American passengers--including 41 American students--and 11 American crew members perished in the attack.

1986A Berlin discotheque frequented by US servicemen was bombed. Libya held responsible.

1981Anwar Sadat, Egyptian leader who established peace with Israel, is killed by Islamic Jihad.

Personally, I don’t think the Obama is intentionally lying here. Obama knows very little about history, the military or economics. His ideology causes him to make false statements in order to back up what he believes in. He does not know what happened 20 or 30 years ago and he probably thinks that we are equally ignorant. Furthermore, he knows that no newspaper is going to fact-check him and point out every lie that he tells.

Obama went on to say: “I think that what you'll see [those in the Arab world] is somebody who is listening, who is respectful, and who is trying to promote the interests not just of the United States, but also ordinary people who right now are suffering from poverty and a lack of opportunity.” This is the lie that poverty and hardship are the root causes of terrorism. An angry religion, festering hatred and being brought up to believe in these things are the root causes of terror. Most Middle Eastern nations are awash in money because of oil.

Obama goes on to say, “The language we use matters [Obama is objecting to the phrase war on terror, a phrase his people will not use]. And what we need to understand is, is that there are extremist organizations -- whether Muslim or any other faith in the past -- that will use faith as a justification for violence. We cannot paint with a broad brush a faith as a consequence of the violence that is done in that faith's name.”

No one has ever claimed that all Muslims are radical, nor that all Muslims need to be persecuted. However, whenever an act of terror is committed, 99% of the time, it is by a radical Muslim.

It is also worth pointing out, we do not see large groups of Muslims out in the streets protesting innocent deaths caused by Islamic terrorists; however, if some prints a goofy cartoon in some obscure Danish newspaper, then they are out in the streets rioting.

In continuing his distinguishing himself from Bush, Obama adds, “But to the broader Muslim world what we are going to be offering is a hand of friendship.” There have been close ties between Arabs and Bush (and Clinton, for that matter) throughout the Bush administration. Bush called a meeting a couple months ago of Arab leaders, and they flew to Washington to meet him. Bush has helped to free millions of

people in Iraq and has a similar process is occurring in Afghanistan. This might reasonably be called a hand of friendship.

"Republicans spending $42 million on inauguration while troops die in unarmored Humvees."

"Fat cats get their $42 million inauguration party, ordinary Americans get the shaft"

This is why the Wall Street Journal continues to grow when almost all other newspapers are losing readers—the stimulus package is examined for what is actually in it:

And have you seen this analysis anywhere else? Which states get what (this is designed for a computer; it is part of Wall Street Journal’s online coverage):

Obama warns Republicans that they need to stop listening to Rush if they want to get things done:

I don’t think that I included this in last week’s issue; the Obama inaugural address:

RUSH: I have a serious proposal to make: the Obama-Limbaugh Stimulus Plan 2009. There is a serious debate in this country as to how best to end the recession. Recessions will end on their own if they're left alone. The average recession will last five months to 11 months. The average recovery from each recession will last six years. What can make the recession worse is the wrong kind of government intervention. The wrong kind of government intervention is precisely what President Obama has proposed. I don't believe that his stimulus plan is a stimulus plan at all. I don't think it's designed to stimulate anything but the Democrat Party. It's designed to repair the power losses from the nineties forward of the Democrat Party and to entrench this party for, quote, unquote, eternal power like Franklin Delano Roosevelt did with his New Deal.

Now, we have Keynesian economists who believe government spending on shovel-ready projects of all kinds, "infrastructure" -- schools, roads, bridges -- that's the best way, they think, to stimulate our staggering economy. There are just as many supply-side economists who make an equally persuasive case that tax cuts are the surest and quickest way to create permanent jobs and cause an economy to rebound and recover. The Heritage Foundation can provide those figures from the administrations of JFK, who cut taxes; from Ronald Reagan who cut taxes; and George Bush 43, who also cut taxes. The blueprint is there. We can consult it. We know what happens when tax rates are cut in a recession. We know that it brings an economy back. There is recent polling that proves the American people are in favor of both of these approaches.

Keynesian, stimulus spending by the government on infrastructure, roads and bridges and the like; and supply-side proposals -- and it's important to remember this, because it is the people's money in either case that's going to be spent here. It's our money. It is not Washington's. Now, the Rasmussen people have a new poll out, and notwithstanding the media blitz in support of the Obama stimulus plan, most Americans, Rasmussen finds, are skeptical. Rasmussen finds that 59% fear that Congress and the president will increase government spending too much in the next year or two. Only 17% worry that they will cut taxes too much. The American people, in polling, are not certain that the Obama stimulus plan is the way to go, despite what you're hearing from the Drive-By Media.

So it seems to me that there may be an opportunity here and now for genuine compromise and to establish at the same time as this genuine compromise, evidence for how to deal with future recession so that this no longer becomes a matter of partisan debate each time it happens, because recessions are going to happen. My proposal is designed to illustrate once and for all how to deal with them. Congress is currently haggling over how to spend $1 trillion, $1 trillion generated by American taxpayers in the private sector. Congress wants to spend -- think of this now -- $1 trillion that they don't have until you and I go to work and pay taxes. They want to spend this on a stimulus plan. They want to take it out of our pockets and redistribute this money in their way to their constituents and to their make-work projects like schools, roads, bridges, blah, blah, blah.

This does not have to be a divisive issue. It does not have to be in any way, shape, manner, or form a divisive issue. So I have a proposal. As has been noted, elections have consequences. President Obama in the meeting on Friday with House and Senate Republican leaders, Eric Cantor from Virginia in the House proposed a moderate tax cut plan. Obama said, Well, you know, "I won." I'm going to trump you on that. We're not going to do that. Well, where's the bipartisanship, President Obama? There is no bipartisanship in President Obama's plan. President Obama's definition of bipartisanship is when Republicans cave and agree with his plan so he can then claim it's bipartisan. But he's not compromising on anything here.

Mine is a genuine compromise. So let's look at how the vote came out, shall we? Fifty-three percent of voters in this country -- we'll say, for the sake of this proposal, 53% of Americans -- voted for Obama. Forty-six percent voted for Senator McCain, and 1% voted for wackos. Let's give the remaining 1% to President Obama, so let's say that 54% voted for President Obama and 46% voted for Senator McCain. As a way to bring the country together and at the same time determine the most effective way to deal with recessions, under the Obama-Limbaugh Stimulus Plan of 2009, $540 billion of the one trillion will be spent on infrastructure as defined by President Obama and the Democrats. The remaining $460 billion, or 46% that voted for Senator McCain, will be directed towards tax cuts, as determined by me.

These tax cuts will consist primarily of capital gains tax cuts and corporate tax rate cuts. So Obama gets $540 billion to spend his way. The other people of this country who did not vote for his way get $460 billion spent the way they would like it spent. This is bipartisanship! This is how bipartisanship really works. Okay, Obama wins by a 54-46 majority, so he gets 54% of the trillion bucks. Spend it his way. We get 46% of the trillion bucks to spend our way, and then we compare. Then we see which stimulus actually works and works the fastest, and I will guarantee you that if this plan is adopted, just the announcement that $460 billion will go toward paying for tax cuts, capital gains, and corporate tax rates -- we could throw in some personal income tax rate reduction in order to make sure that the voters don't think it's all about helping the big guys. But we need jobs, do we not?

Who hires people? Businesses! Businesses need tax cuts. The US corporate tax rate is obscene. It is the highest of all industrialized nations. It's 35%. Cut it. Cut it in half. Make the capital gains rate go away for three months, and then get out of the way to see what happens on Wall Street. And once Wall Street starts ticking up 500 points a day, you watch what happens to the rest of the private sector. It will follow right along. This would ensure a bipartisan compromise bill, as Democrats have said that they're always about. It would satisfy the American people's wishes, as polls currently note; and it would also serve as a test, going forward, as to which approach best stimulates the growth of jobs -- and it can be measured side by side. It could be determined where the new jobs are coming from.

And if President Obama would merely say -- if he would merely say -- that he will take this proposal under serious consideration, we would then see the reaction from the financial markets, which tend to be a barometer of the economy going forward. That is, if President Obama said that he thought this compromise proposal was worth his time to look at, the markets could react to that, just the way they did when President Clinton announced that he had reached agreement in principle with Republicans to balance the budget in the nineties. The market reacted positively to that news. Not to a formal bill signing, but to the news. If we have learned anything in recent months, the financial markets more than ever look to Washington for direction.

That's bad. The markets should be looking at the market. But they're not. The markets are looking to Washington. That's where we are. That's what "is" is. So let's float a trial balloon on this compromise. This satisfies every claim and demand of bipartisanship. This satisfies the people who lost the election. Those people are also people for which the president is the president. He's not just the president of the people who elected him. His job, he says, is to get the economy going. This would do it. This would not disenfranchise the people who did not vote for him. And as I say, not only would it work but it would provide a side-by-side test where we could see which part of this stimulus plan does better, so that the next recession we will know what to do.

The problems Americans face are great, but they are not insurmountable. They never have been insurmountable. There is no reason to get up every day and tell the American people that their future is bleak. There is no reason, as the administration is doing, to depress their hopes. There is no reason to suppress the notion that recovery can happen quickly, because it can, if we work together. In this new era of responsibility, let's use elements of both the Keynesians and the supply-siders to responsibly determine which theory best stimulates our economy -- and if elements of both work, so much the better. We will know. The economy doesn't have to be liberal versus conservative, or Democrat versus Republican.

And it certainly shouldn't be focused on whether or not one party gets reelected. The reason it has is because there is such a division in how the economy is viewed by the two parties. I got a question from a friend just a moment ago when I was talking about the Obamas redecorating the White House, using the same decorator that redecorated the executive suite at Merrill Lynch. Question: "How come taxpayers get so mad at businesses who misspend their money but can't make that connection when Congress misspends their money?" It's a great question. How is it that people that misspend a trillion dollars -- who know how to waste money and lose money faster than anybody -- are thought of as saviors; whereas the people in the private sector, whose job is to generate income for people, are so despised?

And here's the answer. The people, unfortunately in this country today, see themselves benefiting when government overspends. They see the rich getting richer when private sector executives overspend. So the Democrats have foisted, successfully, class envy. The economy need not be right versus left, Republican versus Democrat, but it is because one group wants the economy to be hands off -- government hands off, let the people who make this economy work, let it work. The other belief is that that leads too much inequity, unfairness. Government must choose winners and losers so that nobody's feelings are hurt blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, that's old hat.

The American people are made up of Republicans, Democrats, independents, moderates, whatever they want to call themselves, but our economy doesn't know the difference. Our economy should not be focused on whether or not one party gets reelected. This is about jobs now. It's about families. It's about solving a real and significant problem. So let us come together as one. The economic crisis is an opportunity to unify all of the people in this country if we just set aside the politics. The leader of the Democrats and the leader of the Republicans (me, according to Obama) can get this done. This will have the overwhelming support of the American people, because it will bring both sides together. The Obama-Limbaugh... Let him call it his. The Obama Stimulus Plan of 2009. Let's stop the acrimony. Let's start solving our problems, together. Why wait one more day?

RUSH: In the New York Post... Now, keep in mind that the attorney general there, Andrew Cuomo, is conducting an investigation into bonuses paid to executives during the bailout here on Wall Street. By the way, when you're losing gazillions of bucks and you pass out $4 billion worth of bonuses, it's a problem.

Why pay people who are failing? But regardless, they're investigating all of these high salaries. They're investigating these jets. They're investigating these refurbished executive suites. The New York attorney general is gonna bring these executives to their knees! And then this story pops up in the New York Post: "New York state will lose a whopping $1 billion in tax revenues this year because cash bonuses to Wall Street employees plummeted 44 percent in 2008, according to a bombshell new report." So we've already got a budget mess in New York state. Income taxes and others are going up, but the bonuses paid to Wall Street executives are going to cause a "bombshell" reduction of $1 billion to the New York state Treasury. "In an analysis released this morning by State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, he estimates that the securities industry paid its New York City employees $18.4 billion in bonuses last year compared to $33 billion in 2007 -- a drop in bonuses that will also cost the city $275 million," as well as the state one billion.

"'The securities industry has already lost tens of thousands of jobs and the industry is still continuing to write off toxic assets," said DiNapoli." Oh, woe is us! So what do we have? Two stories here that the rich -- and this is the second or third time we've seen this. The rich are cutting back. The rich are not spending -- and when the rich don't spend, it trickles down everywhere. I guess that means when the rich do spend it also trickles down. Now the rich are not even getting paid in New York, and it's going to result in a $1 billion loss -- and yet government is the only entity that can fix our problems? Now, I want to go back to this story from the AP, "The Wealthy Turn Stealthy as Economy Weakens." It's "luxury shame, or stealth wealth."

The objective here is to... There's a quote in here from a guy, a wealthy guy and his wife, shoppers: "A lot of us are downsizing not only because we have to, but because we think it is the right thing to do." May I take that comment as a teachable moment? Why? What makes downsizing the right thing to do? He makes it sound here like there's some sort of morality play going on in downsizing, like getting rid of the Mercedes and going out and buying a hybrid, or maybe getting rid of the lightbulbs that work and going out and getting these stupid curlicue cheese puff-like bulbs. If it's the right thing to do now, why wasn't it the right thing to do one, three, seven, whatever, years ago? If cutting back, if downsizing is the right thing to do now, why isn't it always the right thing to do?

Is it because unemployment is seven or eight percent instead of three or four percent? Is this guy afraid of hurting the feelings of out-of-work Americans, of causing resentment of his wealthy? There's always somebody unemployed, and there's always somebody who's got less than you do. There's always somebody who has more. The real emotion that's working here is fear. People like this rich guy quoted here think, if they flaunt it, they're afraid people like Obama and the government are going to come take it. So they want to portray themselves as not rich so they won't be a target. They don't want anybody criticizing them -- and in the process, they too are participating in slowing down the economy.

RUSH: The Heritage Foundation has a piece today by Brian Riedl: "Why Government Spending Does Not Stimulate Economic Growth," and it begins this way: "In a throwback to the 1930s and 1970s, Democratic lawmakers are betting that America's economic ills can be cured by an extraordinary expansion of government. This tired approach has already failed repeatedly in the past year, in which Congress and the President" did four things. "1. Increased total federal spending by 11 percent to nearly $3 trillion," and we have to point this out.

The Heritage guy here is exactly right. The Bush administration spent crazily, too. The Bush administration created a new entitlement. The Bush administration did all that, and it didn't prevent a recession, did it? All of that spending, and it didn't lead to any kind of a permanent economic recovery or an end to business cycles at all. The Congress and the president "Enacted $333 billion in 'emergency' spending." They "Enacted $105 billion in tax rebates, the stimulus package back in the first part of the year, and they "Pushed the budget deficit to 455 billion in the name of 'stimulus.'

"Every one of these policies failed to increase economic growth. Now, in addition to passing a $700 billion financial sector rescue package," the TARP bill, "lawmakers have decided to double down on these failed spending pol-icies by proposing a $300 billion economic stimulus bill. Even though the last $455 billion in Keynesian deficit spending failed to help the economy, lawmakers seem to have convinced themselves that the next $300 billion," or $350 billion or whatever it is "will succeed. This is not the first time government expansions have failed to produce economic growth. Massive spending hikes in the 1930s, 1960s, and 1970s all failed to increase economic growth rates."

See, this is the frustrating thing. There's a track record of total failure for the Obama-Democrat Party way, and he knows it! He knows it. He's an educated man. He's a smart man. He knows it. See, this is the frustrating thing. Obama knows this doesn't work. The Democrats know it doesn't work in the terms they're discussing, yet they want to do it. Why do they want to do it? Well, it must work somehow. It must accomplish something. It does, folks. It buys votes! It secures what they consider eternal power for the Democrat Party. But it doesn't revive the economy. It buys votes by doing just the opposite.

It creates more poverty. It creates more dependence. That's the objective. This is hideous, and the president goes on television this morning from the White House and totally misleads the people of this country by telling them his bill will put the responsibility on them, that it's up to them and only them, as it always has been, to make this economy sing? This is outrageous. He knows it; the media know it. Everybody pushing this knows that they are pushing a fallacy. I'm being kind. Everybody involved with pushing this knows that they are being fallacious, that they are prevaricating. This is why they are all saying, "It's gonna get worse before it gets better, even with the stimulus program," because they know this is gonna make it worse.

They hope that the economy will eventually rebound on its own to help them out. They know it's gonna get worse, which is why they're saying so. The Obama administration is depressing hope. The Obama administration is suppressing hope and change and all these things. The Obama administration is trying to depress you. This Heritage article, like government spending doesn't stimulate economic growth, I found it! I found it on their website: AskHeritage.org. They are producing new information and analysis on these spending bills daily. For example, if an $800 billion stimulus plan is approved, and 3.7 million jobs are really created, that's about $217,000 per job.

Now, I know that everybody gets a new job under this plan is not going to get paid $217,000, so where the hell is the rest of it going? The S-CHIP program, the State Children's Health Program, if that's approved, that effectively puts more kids in America on government health insurance than in private insurance. And it, by the way, classifies "kids" as up to 30 years of age. Now, these are facts. I found them at AskHeritage.org. Scholars are constantly researching. You can find it at AskHeritage.org as well, this and much more. It's an amazing resource. It takes 25 bucks to join up, and you can submit a question at AskHeritage.org. You have access to a database of scholarly, conservative data that will blow your mind.

RUSH: To the phones! We start in Pittsburgh. This is Shelly, and it's great to have you with us. Hi.

CALLER: I just wanted to call and make sure that you got my e-mail via the Democrat committee website where they encouraged us all to write our comments about your comments, you know, about hoping Obama fails.

RUSH: I think the well-wishers using the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee website, people sending me good wishes far outnumber the malcontents that the DCCC hopes sign their petition.

RUSH: If I'm doing such great damage to the Republican Party, why petition against me? If I'm doing all this damage...? This is another thing just hilarious.

CALLER: I think you're right. I was on there, and I e-mailed you, and I read a few comments, and, of course, there's the sheep who don't bother to research any of what you really said and that are --

RUSH: They took it totally out of context. They got a little clip, a 19 second clip of me --

RUSH: -- at the end of a long monologue explaining why I hope he fails. They're just using that. It is the Michael J. Fox thing all over again.

CALLER: Right. And I just wanted you to know that I e-mailed them also, and I told them that if they wanted to confront you and win, they should learn a lesson from their debacle with Harry Reid and they should do it honestly because what Harry Reid did, twisting your words around and that just blew up in his face. He didn't even have the good sense or class to admit that he did that after you raised all that money for charity. He tried to horn in on that and take responsibility for it, and it just made him look like an absolute ass. So I suggested to them that if they were going to try and take you on, the best thing they could do would be to do it honestly.

RUSH: Wait, wait just a second. See, it might have made him look like an ass, but where is he today? He's the majority leader of the US Senate. Was he harmed by that at all? I bet to this day he doesn't think he is or was. We won't know 'til he begins his own reelection effort in Nevada in 2010. Folks, you gotta understand what this is about if you want to take this stuff seriously. To me, this is old hat. This is just the latest stunt that they've tried for a number of years, but let me tell you. Let me offer you a contrast. It wasn't very long ago, was it, that the Democrat Party spent entire weeks praying, hoping, demanding defeat in Iraq. They spent years saying they hope President Bush failed. In fact, Google. Back in the old Google search days, if you searched, you'd find it.

They had to pull this down eventually, but I've got the screen shots. If you put in the words "George W. Bush" in the search field at Google, the second or third entry was "miserable failure." Dick Gephardt called George W. Bush a "miserable failure" way back in 2002. Now, the idea that the Democrats have behaved like angels the last six years and all of a sudden it's mean old Rush now saying rotten things about Obama, and they have to take me out of context again to do it. Now, it's troubling to some people. It's interesting nevertheless. We had brave men and women in the US military losing their lives, getting wounded. We had the members of the US military who were following orders and succeeding, succeeding in taming the Wild West known as Iraq.

And all during that time Harry Reid and others are hoping that they lose. They are calling the commander a liar to his face, General Petraeus when he's brought up to testify. Every Democrat from Waxman to Hillary Clinton to Harry Reid. They were waving the white flag of surrender before the surge even began. "This war is lost," Reid said. Jack Murtha was accusing them of being murderers and rapists. They said some of the most outrageously wrong, lying, personally destructive things about George W. Bush. So it rings a little hollow to me for the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee to now -- and, by the way, this is an association of elected Democrats. This, once again...

The similarity to Harry Reid is this. You have elected Democrats using the power of their office to attempt to stifle the speech of a private citizen who is in the media, and the First Amendment's free speech clause was expressly -- not expressly, but it was focused primarily on political speech, which is what we do here. So the Democrats get this free ride. Nobody was upset. I don't remember too many people in our party doing what the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee is doing today. I don't remember people petitioning the Democrats to shut up, stop aiding and abetting the enemy, stop saying we can't win. Remember we would do side by side audio sound bites of how talking points from Harry Reid or Chuck Schumer sounded just like they came from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or when a tape came from Ayman al-Zawahiri, how similar Zawahiri or Ahmadinejad's views on America were from what Democrat leaders were saying.

The idea that they have been angels behaving clean and pure as the wind-driven snow, and all of a sudden I come along and they have to manufacture a lie or an out-of-context statement in order to get the rabble-rousers? This is an attempt to stifle dissent. Remember what Hillary said about dissent. Dissent is the new patriotism! Well, not anymore. The new patriotism is paying higher taxes, according to Joe Biden. So we're in a serious battle here. These people play for keeps. The Obama philosophy is to clear the playing field, not level it. Just get rid of anybody on it who could stand in your way and that's what the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee is doing, and they're doing it dishonestly. So, you know, I appreciate everybody responding to it and sending them a message.

But what we're going to do -- I'm going to predict this to you. It won't be long, today or tomorrow they're going to say they exceeded their goals in signatures. They're going to say, "We got more signatures to tell Rush to shut up than we ever dreamed of getting." That's the next step of this. That's the next stage. "We got more response! The American people," they will say, "are fed up with Rush Limbaugh," and they may release the numbers, who knows. How are we going to prove it? They don't have a counter on their website. So this is just more of the same Stalinist-type, under the cover, under the guise of doing good and protecting the new president that everybody loves, and making sure he's not criticized. When the fact is, my friends, I, El Rushbo (and I say this happily) have hijacked Obama's honeymoon.

RUSH: Now, as for this -- I want to see one more thing about this Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee petition, this online petition. I'll tell you what they're going to do. Maybe they'll announce the numbers. When this is all over, when they decide to pull the plug on this, they're going to say something very simple, that there is a consensus to silence Rush Limbaugh. Our petition drive was far bigger than we ever thought it was going to be, and there is a consensus to shut up Rush Limbaugh.

Now, this whole thing was put in play with Obama mentioning me last Friday at the congressional leaders' meeting he had at the White House. You know, marginalize me (and by virtue of that, all of you) as the fringe kooks out here and co-opt the Republicans into, you know, being moderate, maybe even liberal a little bit and going along with the historic nature of the first black president. For that reason alone, he can't be denied. It's His plan. It's Change! Only His plan can get it done. It relies quite a lot on the ignorance of average Americans. It relies on the ignorance -- and I'm not saying stupidity, the ignorance -- of average Americans who do not understand what's in the plan. Even when you tell 'em, I think a lot of people are focusing on the individual items. Well, 650 bucks for coupons to convert your analog TV to digital, $21 million to re-sod the Mall, $4.19 billion for ACORN, for "neighborhood stabilization efforts."

See, the objective here, is people want to pick out these individual things and say, "Look at this! How does this create jobs? That's not stimulus." I think, you know, narrow-casting this or looking at it in niche ways is interesting, it might be persuasive to some, but truly says what this is really all about. What this is really all about is simply advancing an agenda of enlarging government and entrenching the Democrat Party in power, in perpetuity. That's all this is, and the individual ingredients are the mechanism that they accomplish this. Now, Snerdley has just sent me a note: "Everybody doesn't know the details of what the petition is and who the DCCC is." Okay, fair point. The Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee. Republicans have one, too, and they are organizations in the Senate.

For example, Chuck Schumer ran the Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee, and when he was running it was when they uncovered the private credit data of Michael Steele and went public with it. Tony Coelho used to run it in the House way back when. Chris Van Hollen runs it now for the Democrats. The purpose of the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee and the same thing with the Republican version, is to find candidates in off years and get them to run for open seats, and then to get your sitting members reelected, your incumbents reelected. It's all about reelecting Democrats. And the Republicans have one, too. I don't know who's running the RCCC right now, but the Democrats are doing it. So they put up a petition.

This is right out of the Rahm Emanuel playbook. This is right out of -- and, by the way, do you know that Rahm has a conference call every morning? Now, he's the chief of staff to Obama. You know who's on the conference call? James Carville, works at CNN; The Forehead, Paul Begala, works at CNN; and George Stephanopoulos, who has his own show at ABC. It's absolutely true. There is a conference call every morning between Rahm Emanuel and these three guys who worked together in the Clinton days. They're all former Clintonites from the Clinton war room. This is a conference call that takes place every morning, and sometimes multiple times during the day. I kid you not. Now, they have an online petition at the DCCC website that has a 19-second clip of me saying I hope Obama fails.

It's taken totally out of context and it's presented as, "Tell Rush Limbaugh what you think! Here's a message and hit the submit button, and we will send it to Rush." So it's a flood-my-inbox kind of campaign, and on my website last night, we linked to their home page where you can send the DCCC a message yourself. So we did a reverse petition last night at RushLimbaugh.com. It's still up there. So you go to RushLimbaugh.com, the reverse petition sends them a message from you, and it's been going gangbusters all night. So we've just been having fun with it. My spam filter has taken care of all their e-mails to me. I haven't seen one of them, and so... (laughing) It's funny, but at the same time, folks, this is an organization that serves to advance elected Democrats again targeting the free speech and lying about the free speech of a private individual citizen.

Which of course I am, even though I have hijacked the Obama honeymoon and they're not happy about it. So what they're going to do at the end of whatever their plan is, however long it takes, is they're going to say the response to their petition was overwhelming. More people think I should be shut up than they could possibly have imagined. There is a consensus of opinion now that they've collected that I need to be silenced. It's exactly what they're going to do, and there's no counter on their website so you don't really know how many it is. We'll just have to trust -- at least there wasn't one last night. We're just going to have to trust what they say.

You can tell DCCC what you think...but, remember, they are in power, and they will go after private citizens:

And just in case you think it is a good idea to speak out against this administration, check the following:

RUSH: We'd now like to provide a little safe haven for Eric Cantor, congressman from Virginia, who just finished 20 or so minutes with Andrea Mitchell at MSNBC. Congressman, it's great to have you here on the EIB Network for the first time.

RUSH: I was able to read some of the closed-captioning, Congressman, when you were on with Andrea Mitchell, and it's gotta be a little frustrating, but you know, you guys are doing great. You're hanging really, really tight and tough up there against this because it's a pork bill that Obama said would not be a pork bill. He promised that there would be no pork in this. We're going to do new ways, and here -- it could be Andrea Mitchell; it could be anybody in the Drive-By Media -- just basically treating you as a suspect, accusing you of opposing this marvelous, miraculous package, just because it's His. I don't think she has the slightest idea what's in it, after you told her.

CANTOR: Well, and that's the frustrating part, Rush, but we're not giving up, and thank goodness you're there to try and help get the message out about what this bill is and isn't. This is a spending bill. This is not a stimulus bill. And, you know, the message to the president that I delivered on several occasions, has been this: "You were elected by the people of this country because they had hope that you would actually change the way that our federal government works so that it could start working for the people again, and the first order of business should be to cut the waste and pork barrel spending in Washington." This bill is so chock-full of government expansion, it's hard to even find the stimulus programs in here. Even the Congressional Budget Office, controlled by the Democrats now, says it is not a stimulative bill. Twelve cents out of every dollar could be maybe argued that it is worth some stimulative effect. That is a far cry from doing things the right way and delivering results.

RUSH: Congressman, did you happen to have a chance this morning to hear President Obama's remarks in the White House after the two CEOs from IBM and Honeywell spoke?

RUSH: I'd like for you to hear what he said. I want to play you two sound bites because I know you've been swamped today. I want you to hear President Obama from January 8th. He was at George Mason University. This was the occasion where he said, only government can get this economy moving. Only government can provide the short-term boost. The second sound bite -- and these are short; they're 28 and 38 seconds each. In the second sound bite from today, he sounds positively Reaganesque. Here is Obama. It's cut 19, Mike. This is from January 8th of this year.

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

OBAMA JANUARY 8: Only government can provide the short-term boost necessary to lift us from a recession this deep and severe. Only government can break the cycle that are (sic -- is) crippling our economy. That's why we need to act boldly and act now...

RUSH: Okay, stop the tape. Now, let's move on. This was this morning. Congressman, this is 180-degrees different.

OBAMA JANUARY 28: In the end, the answer to our economic troubles rests less in my hands or in the hands of our legislators than it does with America's workers and the businesses that employ them. They are the ones whose efforts and ideas will determine our economic destiny just as they always have, for in the end it's businesses -- large and small -- that generate the jobs, provide the salaries, and serve as the foundation on which the American people's lives and dreams depend. All we can do, those of us here in Washington, is to help create a favorable climate in which workers can prosper, businesses can thrive, and our economy can grow.

RUSH: Okay, two totally contrasting views. When you go up to the White House and talk to him, which president...? I know it's tough. You guys, your strategy here is to blame the House bill on Pelosi and so forth, which is great, but how do you know which president you're dealing with?

CANTOR: (laughing) This is a good question, Rush, and to tell you the truth, you know, he came out to Capitol Hill yesterday and spoke to House Republicans, and he said he has no pride of authorship in this bill and he wants to continue to work with us. In fact, three weeks ago, before he was even sworn into office, he reached out and says, "Bring me your ideas." Well, last Friday, when we went to the White House, it was the bipartisan, bicameral leadership. So it was Pelosi, it was Hoyer, it was Boehner and I; Reid and McConnell and others; and we presented to the president our House Republican plan; and that plan is focused very much on the premise that he was trying to relate in the latest clip, that it really is the men and women in small business of this country that provide the jobs and the salaries, and all we can do here in Washington is to create an environment where you provide economic incentives for people to put their money to risk and create jobs. I couldn't have said it better. The problem is when we got into the discussion of the kind of tax relief that really will produce that kind of stimulus and incentive, he says we have a philosophical difference. His opinion is that we ought to go the route of his make-work-pay program. Well, you know what his make-work-pay program is. It is to provide refunds to people who don't even pay income taxes.

CANTOR: Now, the American people know that is unfair, and it doesn't do anything to provide incentives for people to get back to work and create jobs.

RUSH: It was actually reported that in that meeting he said to you -- and you were the one who specifically presented the tax cut proposals and then he smiled and said -- "Well, I'm going to trump you on that. I won, and we're not going to do that." How did that make you feel? You go up there under the auspices that he's willing to listen to your ideas, which I guess he did, he followed through.

CANTOR: Well, you know, Rush, he is the president, so, you know, he can say that, but all I countered with and said, "Look, you know, again, you set the standard. You're the one that said you want this to be a real stimulus bill. Let's get down to business. Let's throw out all the pork barrel stuff and really make this work." So he came back up to the Hill after we were at the White House and again was here yesterday. I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful, at some point, Rush, that we can get there. Again, Speaker Pelosi has really not embraced what it is that we are for. She claims she has. You know, she talks about the sacrifices that her caucus has made to include the net operating loss provisions, and you know what that is. Those are the ability for businesses to take advantage of the losses they have now and apply them against the gains and the income taxes they paid before.

RUSH: Which she has incurred, by the way, with her investment in T. Boone Pickens' natural gas plan.

CANTOR: Right. Well, she claims that was a very heavy lift and that the Democrats don't like that, and that perhaps we should be satisfied with that. My contention back, you know, to any of that kind of discussion is, "Look, we shouldn't just be satisfied with a partial attempt to sustain jobs. We ought to be doing everything we can, focused like a laser in on preserving the jobs that are out there and providing an environment to create new jobs."

RUSH: We're speaking with Congressman Eric Cantor from Virginia. Two more things before we let you go. You mentioned pork. I want to play you another President Obama sound bite. He's president-elect at this time. This is December 7th. He was on Meet the Depressed with Tom Brokaw, and he was being asked about the stimulus package, and he wanted to know how -- Brokaw wanted to know how -- much was gonna cost and who was going to pay for it.

OBAMA: When I met with the governors! All of them have projects that are shovel-ready. Now we're going to have to prioritize it and do it, uh, not in the old traditional, uh, politics-first-way. W-w-what we need to do is, uh, examine what are the projects where we're going to get the most bang for the buck. How are we going to make sure taxpayers are protected. Uh, you know, uh, the days of just pork coming out of Congress as a strategy, uh, those days are over.

CANTOR: Right. (laughing) Let me tell you something. It is porkulus. That's a great description. But let's call it how it is. Even the Congressional Budget Office says less than a quarter of the money that they've allocated towards these types of projects even gets out the door prior to the beginning of 2011. You know, and let's also look at sort of what they're talking about giving states money. Listen, we need to impose reform all over the place, at all levels of government. If you just sit here and have the federal taxpayers, again, borrow the money -- $2,700 for every man, woman, and child -- to then go and give to the states, and there's no reform there, how do we end up growing GDP? How do we end up getting jobs?

RUSH: We don't. See, that's the whole point. You know, it's great news, it is fascinating to learn all of these pork projects that are in this bill, and only 12%, if that, actually goes to stimulus. But that masks what this really is. This is a bill to grow government. This is a bill to grow the power of the Democrat Party. This is the New Deal 2. This is designed to create another 50 years of Democrat rule in perpetuity. This is not going to grow the economy. This isn't going to create any jobs. Congressman, he doesn't need any House Republicans. Correct me if I'm wrong. Every Republican could oppose this and it would still pass, correct?

RUSH: All right. So here's my question, final question. If this bill is so magical, if this bill is going to accomplish everything in terms of stimulus and bring back prosperity and full employment, why doesn't he want it to be only a Democrat vote? He could ruin the Republican Party forever! If this bill actually works as he says and none of you vote for it, he can come back when it's in full-fledged success mode and say, "These guys opposed it. They didn't want this." They could destroy you guys, but yet he wants your cover on this.

CANTOR: Absolutely. And, you know, it's the same as went on in prior bills when Speaker Pelosi wanted us to take responsibility along with them -- and, you know what? House Republicans are not going to do that, given the nature of this bill. That's our message to the president as well. If you want us to shoulder the burden of the product that comes out of Congress, it ought to be the right product. It ought to be a stimulative bill. It ought to create incentives for investment. It ought not be just more borrow and spending on the part of the government.

RUSH: Congressman Cantor, thank you very much. I've enjoyed talking to you. And, you know, keep fighting these people in the media. They are every bit as much your enemy as Pelosi is.

CANTOR: Well, listen, Rush, we've got so much work to be done. I thank you very much for what you're doing. We've got a tremendous amount of pork lift that we can back up this description of "porkulus" that I think your listeners would really like to read. So if they want to go on the Web, they can find it. It is astounding.

RUSH: Folks, look at things. Try to look at it this way, if you will. The Citibank corporate jet and the Merrill Lynch bathroom refurbishment means nothing to us. It means not one substantive thing to you whether they have a jet or not at Starbucks, Merrill Lynch, it matters nothing, it won't make one bit of difference in your life. Same thing if some of these guys want to remodel their offices for $1.2 million. But the loss of trillions in the stock market, your plummeting 401(k)s, your savings account, your pension plans, the loss of value in the housing market, this is what you ought to be angry about, this affects you big time. This affects you in matters of great substance. This is your savings. This is your life's work. This is, for some of you, your job. What ought to concern you is not the jets and not the bathrooms. What ought to concern you is the hack politicians telling you and everyone else that they are better equipped to run this economy than the people who have been.

This is a diabolical intricately woven web of deceit that is being executed and woven here, and you have been sucked right into it. If you're falling prey to all this class envy stuff, it's no different than when you think the rich ought to have their taxes raised, doesn't matter a hill of beans to you. In fact, it can mean something bad for you because then they are prone to hire fewer people and to pay fewer wages and smaller raises. After debacle after debacle after debacle, the question still arises, "How can people have such faith in government to fix things?" And the answer, frustratingly is, there are just too many people now to whom big government means big benefits, means big results, means the government cares. It's a sad place we've gotten to, and this bunch, Obama is moving faster than I ever thought, lickety-split. This guy, we haven't talked about it yet, but his speech, he ripped America again in his TV interview with al-Arabiya. His first formal interview as president is with al-Arabiya last night. He says, (paraphrasing) "Too often the United States has dictated, I'm sending George Mitchell, my envoy over to listen to you." He said, "The problem in Israel is that the Israelis have occupied too many PLO settlements." That's not the problem. That hasn't happened in years! The problem is the Palestinian and the Hamas, the gazooka rockets being launched into Israel.

"We are not your enemy," he says. Would he make that speech to me? Would Obama make a speech on, say, a conservative network and say, "I am not your enemy?" Or would he say, "You are my enemy"? Let's talk about casualties for just a second. Casualties are mounting. This matters. This isn't a jet. This isn't a redecorated bathroom. Casualties are mounting across the United States. Home Depot announced that they are killing off 7,000. Sprint killing off 8,000. Pfizer killing off 8,000 more. Other companies, including Caterpillar, brought the total to 40,000 jobs killed in just one day. Now, sadly, the number of casualties is expected to rise with no end in sight. The communists are warning that we're just witnessing the tip of the iceberg here. By the end of this year, 10% of America's workforce could be unemployed. But that doesn't matter, does it, because we're not going to let Citi have their jet and we're going to make sure we get the money back for the redecorated bathroom, right?

Ten percent of America's workforce could be unemployed even if President Obama's trillion dollar spending program is enacted. We are told there will be a net loss of at least two million jobs more by the end of the year. Even if, folks, he gets all of his trillion dollars, even with this dire forecast. A rapidly deteriorating labor market, our new president and his Democrat Congress are planning to kill even more jobs by demanding that automakers build green cars that nobody wants, by adopting Draconian fuel standards to appease radical environmentalists. At the local level, liberal state governments from California to New York to New Jersey are introducing new taxes as they refuse to rein in their budgets. I wonder if the Drive-By Media will keep a running monthly tally of the Obama casualties in the same manner they did war casualties under George W. Bush, or if protesters will plant crosses on mock graves for every job killed under the Obama administration. Will we have people protesting the loss of American treasure, the loss of American jobs? Will we have people camping out across the street from Obama's house in Chicago as they camped across the street from Bush's place in Crawford?

Forty thousand jobs killed in one day, the Obama administration tells us we're going to lose two million more this year even if he gets what he wants. Now, for those of you who think this is an unfair question, perhaps an unfair analogy, let me remind you, we are talking about lives here. We are not talking about jets. We are not talking about bathroom refurbishing. We were talking about what was once entrepreneurial freedom that's being usurped. We're trying to take these incidents as teachable moments to illustrate that what's happening here is nothing more than a giant usurpation of trillions of dollars of private sector wealth, transferred to the government, and then parceled out by that government on the basis of who they think ought to have it. They will pick winners and losers. We're talking about 40,000 people's lives, in one day. Their identities, their dreams, their hopes, and their jobs, casualties. There is a war going on. These are casualties in war, and I'm going to tell you what the war is. This is the Obama war on prosperity. Forty thousand jobs dead in one day.

RUSH: Larry in Kansas City, Kansas, as we go back to the phones. Glad you waited, sir. Welcome to the EIB Network.

CALLER: Well, Rush, I just want to say that I'm definitely a part of your 1% club. Article 1, Section 8 in the Ninth and Tenth Amendment basically say in plain terms Congress keep your hands off the private sector and the free market. There's nowhere in the Constitution where it says that they have the right for bailouts, to take control of the private sector. I applaud what you're doing, and count me in that 1%. If people want to buy a jet, let 'em buy a jet.

RUSH: Well, you know, there have been people raise questions about the constitutionality of the bailouts on the basis that you've mentioned, but somebody's gotta bring the case. Somebody's gotta bring it up. Nobody's going to bring the case that it's unconstitutional, on whatever grounds that you decide. Therefore, we're back to where we always are: the constant informing and educating of the American people. And, by the way, we're talking about hope and change? I'm reeeally looking for some hope and change. And one of my big hopes is that at some point enough Americans finally wake up and say, "Wait a minute! We're fed up with the way you people are spending money here." We can hope. We just had a campaign on it. And I'm hoping, and I'm hoping for immediate change, and I'll tell you this: The president of the United States hopes I fail. Try that.

Back in the early seventies, when Richard Nixon was president, he had a list of names on a piece of paper. They were members of the media, in large part, and he called this list of names his "enemies list." That list of names was part of the documentation that the House was preparing to use to impeach Richard Nixon. He had a list of media people he said were his enemies.

We have now gotten to 2009 where the president of the United States, Barack Obama -- in a meeting with Republican and Democrat leaders in the House of Representatives, in a meeting over his stimulus package -- can say to the Republicans, "Stop listening to Rush Limbaugh. Don't listen to him. That's not how things get done in this town," and there's no outrage that a private citizen has been singled out by the president of the United States.

RUSH: A new radio ad by Americans United for Change. The ads are currently running in Cleveland, Las Vegas, Reno, and Philadelphia.

FEMALE NARRATOR: (dramatic music) Listen to what Rush Limbaugh said about President Obama's agenda and his jobs package.

FEMALE NARRATOR: (dramatic music) The Obama jobs bill overwhelmingly passed the House... But not one Republican voted yes. Every Republican member of the House chose to take Rush Limbaugh's advice. Every Republican voted with Limbaugh and against creating 4 million new American jobs. We can understand why an extreme partisan like Rush Limbaugh wants President Obama's jobs program to fail, but the members of Congress elected to represent the citizens in their districts? That's another matter. Now the Obama plan goes to the Senate, and the question is: Will our senator, John Ensign, side with Rush Limbaugh too?

FEMALE NARRATOR: Or will he reject the partisanship and failed economic policies of the past, and stand up for the people of Nevada Call Senator Ensign now at (202) 224-3121 and tell him he represents you...not Rush Limbaugh.

RUSH: We left the number in so that you can -- as you did with the DCCC site -- if you want, call Ensign's office and say, "That-a-boy, babe! We're behind you, pal! We know and love Rush. Rush loves you." Ensign is one of the freshman class members of 1994, which I was made an honorary member of the House of Representatives. So here again you've got... This is MoveOn.org and a bunch of labor groups. This is George Soros, lying about your host, lying about America's Anchorman. The thing is everybody now knows what I have said. There has been so much attention focused on this. I mean, some of the wacko left that just reside in their own little cocoon world in the Internet may not know. This can backfire on these people.

It's a mistake to pit me against the president, because I don't buckle. I don't buckle. Look, the president is having a Super Bowl party at the White House. He's calling it a "Bipartisan Super Bowl Party." He's having leaders, bipartisan leaders come to the Super Bowl party. Am I invited? (laughs) Hell's bells, no! Why am I not invited? 'Cause he knows I'm not going to change my mind about anything! He also knows I've got a better theater with a better TV than he's got in the White House. I'm going to be watching at home. But this ad is the aimed at these senators. It's about getting them to buckle -- and here again in this ad, all of this concern for the Republicans, all this concern to save the Republicans.

Why does MoveOn.org and why do the unions want to save Republicans? Why do they want the Republicans to do the "right thing"? Don't they want the Republicans to fail. Why not wipe 'em out? If this plan's going to be so great, do it alone, get all the credit for it, and freeze the Republicans out. They want the Republicans in it 'cause it's bad; it isn't gonna work. There are no four million jobs being created in this bill. This ad is a full-fledged lie. We put together a quick little response to this, just for the fun of it.

ANNOUNCER: Listen to what Rush Limbaugh said about President Obama's agenda and his jobs package.

RUSH ARCHIVE: I know what his politics are. I know what his plans are, as he has stated them. I don't want them to succeed.

RUSH ARCHIVE: [W]hat is unfair about my saying I hope liberalism fails? Liberalism is our problem. ... Somebody's gotta say it.

That's my ad, and my ad is running on 600 stations in 50 states, reaching 22 million people. Obama's little ad -- and, by the way, this is not a MoveOn.org and a unions ad. This is a Barack Obama ad. This is Obama talking to Rahm Emanuel saying, "Okay, get one of these things going." I'm the new George W. Bush. I've taken his place, right out of the White House. They're running it in three states, two years before an election. I'm running my ad. In fact, grab that ad again. I'm running my ad nationwide free of charge -- it's not costing me or my affiliates anything -- and 22 million people are hearing it as often as I want to air it.

ANNOUNCER: Listen to what Rush Limbaugh said about President Obama's agenda and his jobs package.

RUSH ARCHIVE: I know what his politics are. I know what his plans are, as he has stated them. I don't want them to succeed.

RUSH ARCHIVE: [W]hat is unfair about my saying I hope liberalism fails? Liberalism is our problem. ... Somebody's gotta say it.

RUSH: I want to take you back, just to show you, ladies and gentlemen, that you should not doubt me. Remember during the Republican primaries, the heated battles between Mitt Romney and John McCain and Huckabee. I was -- we all were back then -- really conflicted. This was not going to be pretty, and I remember telling you several times that if McCain or Governor Huckabee were nominated and they got elected, it was going to destroy the Republican Party. Do you remember me saying so? What do you think this week has all been about?

This week has been about destroying the Republican Party. The moderate, get-along, reach-across-the-aisle, be-above-partisanship garbage put 'em to sleep. Obama sized it up and calculated he could grab a trillion dollars with that approach. His nice-guy attitude that ignored the desires of the base of the Republican Party almost brought the party to the brink -- and that's why all of these ads, why all these Democrats are begging Republicans to be moderate, join Democrats; 'cause they know that the Republican Party trying to do Democrat Lite is how the party will destroy itself, and that is exactly their objective.

http://davidlimbaugh.com/ (the featured column is the Alinsky-type attack on Rush; it may change throughout the week)

Another reason to read the Wall Street Journal; it exposes the pork package which is called a stimulus bill (it is a 40 year, Democratic wish list):

Even though this Obama stimulus plan is unprecedented in size, they are still lowering expectations concerning its efficacy:

This is fascinating; Google has changes its algorithms so that, when Obama is googled, there will not be the negative sites which would be pulled up when Bush was googled:

One of the ridiculous rumors in the past was to the White House sent talking points to O’Reilly or to Rush. However, this may not be as ridiculous anymore:

Rush’s stimulus plan in the Wall Street Journal; do you think any journalist will question Obama about this?

Conservative Review
Issue #60	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	February 1, 2009