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.

Congress passes a spending bill containing 8500 to 9000 earmarks (40% of which are Republican earmarks). I don’t believe that anyone from the Obama camp has expressed any problem with this.

President Obama gives an address to Congress. Governor Bobby Jindahl gives the Republican response.

Obama announces plans to remove some troops from Iraq over a 19 month period of time, leaving 50,000 troops behind (about a third of the forces which are there).

Tea party protests, tax protests and protests against the massive spending of Congress are occurring all over the United States. Most news outlets are ignoring these demonstrations.

Obama has proposed decreasing the tax write-off for charitable organizations and the home mortgage interest write off for those making $250,000/year.

President Obama, when announcing his budget: "I work for the American people, and I'm determined to bring the change that the people voted for last November.And that means cutting what we don't need to pay for what we do."

Larry Kudlow points out: “Study after study over the past several decades has shown how countries that spend more produce less, while nations that tax less produce more. Obama is doing it wrong on both counts.”

“We cannot tax and borrow out way out of this [economic crisis].” Bobby Jindal.

Vice President Joe Biden responded to Bobby Jindal and pointed out that Jindal has nothing to offer us, as “...Louisiana is losing 430 jobs per day.” However, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Louisiana was the only state to add jobs in November 2008 (you have to really dig through their site to find this statistic). Since Hurricane Ike, unemployment has slightly decreased overall in Louisiana (it was 5.5% in Dec. 2008, and there are no figures yet posted for Jan. 2009).

In 1933, Roosevelt became President and appointed Morgenthau governor of the Federal Farm Board. In 1934, when William H. Woodin resigned because of ill-health, Roosevelt appointed Morgenthau Secretary of the Treasury (an act that enraged conservatives). Morgenthau was an orthodox economist who opposed Keynesian economics and disapproved of some elements of Roosevelt's New Deal. Although he was a Roosevelt loyalist and retained his office until 1945, in "New Deal or Raw Deal?" Burton Folsom quotes Morgenthau, testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee in May of 1939, the FDR ally did not sugarcoat it: "We are spending more money than we have ever spent before and it does not work. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. We have never made good on our promises. I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started and an enormous debt to boot." (taken from a comment on Rush’s speech).

When discussing the promised tax cuts that Obama says he will be able to make to the federal budget, Charles Krauthammer said, “On the agricultural cuts, he [Obama] announced...proudly [that] it is $20 million, which means that if you have a thousand of those,...it would be 1/10 of one percent of $2 trillion in cuts he has promised.”

Rush Limbaugh, “President Obama, your policies are not new, they are not change and they are not hope. A president is given temporary stewardship over this great country...it is not their task to remake this nation in accordance with their own psychological makeup.”

The CBS Early Show today, co-host Maggie Rodriguez interviewing Joe Biden, asked, "Mr. Vice President, we watched the speech last night with a cross section of Americans, and we asked them if they had any questions for you, and I'd like to share one of them with you from a viewer who had to lay off the most ever staff last year, Hendrickson is his name, and he says, 'What I'm looking for are real clear details about how the stimulus is really going to help small business.'"

BIDEN: I would recommend that woman call my office directly, and I will be able to guide her as to what pieces of this package would be directly helpful to her. For example, it may very well be that she's in a circumstance where she is not able, her customers aren't able to get to her, there's no transit capability, the bridge going across the creek to get to her business needs repair, may very well be that she's in a position where she is unable to access the -- her energy costs are so high by providing smart meters, by being able to bring down the cost of her workforce.

President Obama, “We have entered into a new era of responsibility.” This apparently does not include responsible budgets submitted by Congress and signed into law by the President.

For those who want a cheerful prediction of the near future, Christina Romer, of the Obama administration has said the following: “Let me start with total production. We're projecting year-over-year GDP growth of -1.2 percent in 2009. Like most other forecasters, we anticipate that real GDP will fall significantly in the first quarter of this year. We expect it to bottom out sometime around mid-year 2009, and begin growing again by the end of the year. We're forecasting real GDP growth of 3.2 percent for 2010 as a whole, and more robust growth in 2011, 2012 and 2013.

So our forecast reflects the reality that the economy has substantial downward momentum, but it also reflects the administration's assessment that the comprehensive recovery program outlined by the President on Tuesday night will be effective. As he so plainly said, we will recover.

Growth after 2013 is forecast to settle down to a long-run growth rate of about 2.6 percent, which is roughly the average of the past decade.

Now, even with the comprehensive recovery package, the unemployment rate is forecast to rise in the first half of 2009, just simply because output is continuing to fall. We anticipate that it will average just over 8 percent for 2009 as a whole. The unemployment rate will come down, unfortunately, only slightly in 2010, because growth is predicted to be only slightly above trend. However, it will fall much more rapidly in 2011 and 2012 as the economy grows more rapidly.

Unemployment is assumed to settle down to about 5 percent of the labor force in the longer run, which is, again, about the average for the last decade.” I could not find the video of her giving these numbers (I saw it on FoxNews), but she presents this rosy scenario with a great big smile and infectious enthusiasm.

The Conservative Political Action Conference just held their big 2009 meeting, and Rush Limbaugh was the featured speaker. He was supporsed to give a 20 minute speech, and it ran 1 hour 30 minutes. It was quite good. Each part was a bit under 10 minutes long. If all you know is, you don’t like Rush Limbaugh, then this is well worth seeing. He was at the top of his game, if not a bit on the rambling side.

Ron Paul and Ann Coulter both spoke and both can be found on YouTube, but Ann wasn’t as funny as she usually is; and Ron was good, but not great.

Obama sings “I’ll bring it [the stock market] down.” You’ll want to get up and dance.

Tea Parties (some of these are local protests and some are national protests; the videos are not generally impressive but it just tells you that this is going on, if your news is not covering it):

http://www.24thstate.com/ (two videos; the first is professional and the second is of the tea party that was held there).

These videos are being uploaded daily, many of these just hours ago. There was one here in Houston; and I have not heard one word about it, even though one of our local news stations was there.

(1) If Obama is successful in reducing giving in America, there will be far fewer organizations for the needy to turn to (except for, of course, the government).

(3) If you combine the $250,000/year income for a couple as rich with high inflation, it will only be a few years before this takes in those who are currently making $150–175,000/year. The only thing which will slow this is, many businesses will be unable to afford cost of living raises when inflation kicks in.

(4) Most of Obama’s speech could have been given by any Republican, telling us that we need to ignore what he says and deal with what he does.

(5) In the past couple weeks, I have seen Louisiana’s conservative Republican Governor Bobby Jindal speak twice—one on Meet the Press and then when he gave the Republican response to Obama’s address. Both times, there was a problem with the audio. On Meet the Press, his voice was out-of-synch with his mouth, so that he looked sort of spooky. In his response to the Obama speech, his voice dropped out well over two dozen times. In both cases, what he said was almost overshadowed by these audio problems.

(6) We have heard over and over and over again about the Obama middle-class tax cuts; this $13/week will pale in comparison to the increases that we will pay for utilities as a result of Obama’s cap and trade program.

(7) Most people have no concept of the difference between $1 billion, $100 billion or $1 trillion. So, what Obama and the Congress is doing right now is incomprehensible to the average American. They elected Obama on the vague promises of hope and change, and many of them are getting back to their own lives, having no idea what sort of change is actually taking place under Obama. Furthermore, I think the average voter believes that, Obama will tack on an extra 2–3% tax onto the top 2% and that is going to pay for everything. Again, most voters have no concept of the amount of money which Congress is voting on.

(8) Charlton Heston, when his name and pictures flashed across the Academy Award screen, as one of those who passed away this year, barely received smattering applause; several people I have never heard of before, who also passed this year, received more enthusiastic applause.

(8) Obama’s withdrawal plan for Iraq is not substantially different from Bush’s or McCain’s.

(9) Under Obama’s cap and trade plane, the federal government will collect huge fees from coal powered plants, which will, therefore, have to pass these costs onto those who depend upon them for electricity. The government will turn around and send some money to these people who sees their costs increase. What sense does this make?

(10) I do not have any specifics on this; I just recently heard that stimulus I somehow provides for increased early education. There was so much stuff in that bill...which no one read.

(11) In his message to Congress, Obama claimed there were no earmarks in Stimulus I and that there would be none in the next budget year. He did not mention the 9000 earmarks in the budget passed this past year.

(12) Rush Limbaugh’s name shows up several times in a gender-studies textbook.

(13) I heard twice this month talking heads relating the mortgage relief bill to those who have lost their jobs. The mortgage relief bill will not bail out anyone who has lost a job, for whatever reason. This bill is going to affect a mortgage by maybe $50–150/month, hardly enough to make up for a lost job.

(14) To be fair, it is unclear just exactly who is going to be bailed out by this mortgage bailout bill. Obama has made it clear that capitalists (investors) and bad people will not be bailed out by this bill. If someone who has not been financially responsible does not get a mortgage bailout, why could we not have a similar bill applied to Obama and the Congress?

(15) Obama gave a speech about Iraq and the troop drawdown, without once using the words victory, drawdown, Bush, or success.

(16) I was one of the millions of Republicans who opposed the Bush bank bailout bill however, he did recognize that the key to this financial problem is credit. He was also aware of the problems of FNMA and FHLMC, and tried to reform these organizations. President Obama and our Congress are presently throwing out as much money as they think they can get away with, and, so far, have not really targeted any particular branch of the economy (nor is this spending timely or temporary). Furthermore, the amount of money that Bush put out there ($350 billion) seems like chump change compared to what Obama has passed by way of federal spending in just 3 weeks.

(17) Because there are so many abortions in the United States, it is almost impossible to adopt; and clinics are paying thousands of dollars for eggs.

(18) Rush claims that Obama has no intention of paying for the programs he was put forth.

(19) Personally, I am so sick of listening to Obama talk about how he inherited this recession and this trillion dollar deficit. He was in the Senate, and at no time, did he ever stand up and oppose any spending bill; he agreed with them, and even signed on to TARP I. Had he voted down any of the budgets, or spoken out against them when he was not running for office, his continual harping about what he as inherited would have some moral basis.

(20) The stimulus bill has provisions which favor labor unions, so it may not be of much help to those who are unemployed and not a member of a union. Although I have heard an Obama spokesperson assure me that non-union labor will benefit, the provision is still there in the bill.

(21) Eric Holder, our Black Attorney General, who believes that Americans are fundamentally cowards and do not intermix on the weekends as they should, and are not willing to have a conversation about race, has been challenged to a debate by Newt Gingrich, who is more than willing to have a conversation, as it were.

(23) I watched O’Reilly and someone else express confusion as to the purpose of Diane Feinstein investigating the CIA, and just what she hopes to achieve by this. She hopes to move up the ladder to get Bush and Cheney.

(24) Finally, a media story on the drug wars of Mexico on, of all shows, The Wall Street Journal Report (on FoxNews).

The 2009 Obama budget creates an $1.8 trillion deficit for the 2009 fiscal year, which, of course, is the highest ever in dollar terms, and it amounts to a 12.3% share of the economy, which is the largest since 1945.

If the top 2% of the rich had their income taxed at 100%, it would not be enough to cover the Obama budget. The various taxes on the wealthy proposed by Obama will raise only an additional $635 billion over the next 10 years.

Under Obama, government spending will move from 21% to 28% of the total economy in one year.

The Obama administration predicts a 1.2% loss in the economy for 2009 and a 3.2% growth for 2010.

The average yearly Bush deficit was around $250 billion, about which Obama and many Democrats griped. Based upon some very optimistic growth numbers, the Obama administration will double Bush’s deficits in some years.

We have several things working at cross-purposes here—our economy would rebound, even if we did nothing. However, Obama is doing everything in his power to (1) curb economic growth, (2) to raise the deficit and the national debt to record levels; and (3) to insure high inflation. I believe that, unchecked, it is possible for Obama to be stronger than the economy and to keep economic growth low or in the negatives for the next 2 years (depending on how much he and Congress do). We already know what massive government spending and programs do when competing with private business—we had an 8-year Great Depression when FDR did this, with high unemployment. What Obama adds to the mix is high inflation.

The government is going to move into the lending business is a big way. Look for alternative energy companies to receive preferential treatment. Look for racial quotas.

Obama has proposed more spending in 6 weeks than all of the government spending which took place between the founding of our country right up to Obama’s inauguration.

Although Obama will do more economic damage to our country than even FDR did (and I am not an FDR-basher; there were reasons that he did what he did, apart from the Great Depression), he should be only a one-term president. He has already enacted policy which will help to insure Democrats in office for as long as the eye can see; but his economic effect on this country will be so deep as to cause him to lose the presidency, even though, there will remain a huge number of people who worship him.

That magic number, $250,000/year, could become quite significant if Obama has his way. I don’t think that he will, but all of the changes in the tax code will essentially raise the taxes of those making over $250,000/year to 60% (this is an approximation depending upon the size of their mortgage interest). What is going to happen—and, again, this is if Obama is successful—is that more and more businesses will begin to cap salaries around $125,000, because once a couple jumps into that magic bracket, their tax liability goes way, way up. Obama says that the tax increase will only be a few percent; however, all things considered, it will be about a 20% jump. With inflation, many people are going to be trapped with a clear salary ceiling overhead. And, it may sound like $125,000 or so is a pretty nice salary, but when inflation is figured in, within 10 years, that is going to be like $80,000 (or so). The end result will be, there will be the very rich, and there will be the middle class, which, ideally, will be everyone making very similar salaries, which is economic justice. Inflation pushes up the salaries of those at the bottom; and Draconian tax laws cap the salaries at the top. Therefore, you have more and more people making about the same amount of money, which, of course, is only fair.

In any case, the Senate and House of Representative majority are going to allow these people to do almost anything they want to do for the next 2 years. Expect liberal policy enactment, government spending, and dependence on government to increase tremendously. And look for them to legislate any possible electoral advantage. They only have two years to work, and what happens during these next two years will be jaw-dropping.

News organizations are ignoring tax protestors and any sort of examination of the Obama budget.

Obama is not just pulling all the troops out of Iraq as quickly as possible. And he is leaving 50,000 behind, because the Democrats do not want to be saddled with a defeat.

The first step in radio censorship has begun with the quietly passed Durbin amendment. The key is, will it make it past the Supreme Court?

Even now, I am still amazed as to just how radical Obama is. His associations suggested this, but I had no clue that he would do this much in such a short period of time.

[I sent the following email to Michael Steele (head of the GOP) and to Newt Gingrich]

The Republican party needs to reach out to the majority of Americans which agree with us, and there is a way to do this.

We need a series of ads, 20-60 second ads, where a person stands up there, tells a little bit about themselves, one issue which is important to them, and to conclude by saying, "I am conservative Republican." or, "And that's why I'm a Republican."

There should be 3 sets of people in these ads: (1) people who are known to us, like you and Jindal, Natalie Arceneaux (from the Civil Right here in Houston), Lores Rizkalla (she is a second generation Egyptian with a radio program here); (2) individuals (and NOT actors; they may want to begin by saying, "I'm Gary and I am not an actor, I am a regular person like you...."); and (3) historical figures (e.g., Martin Luther King and Lincoln); you would narrate these ads (or someone else would like Dennis Haysbert from "The Unit").

Each ad needs to be clear, concise, and touch on one important conservative issue. Obviously, it would not hurt to focus group these ads, and we should make them ubiquitous on the Internet. These ads need to target people we have lost, and air on Networks like BET, Telemundo, etc. Some of these ads can be in Spanish.

I hope that you, Michael, or someone out there is listening to this. We have to reach out beyond TalkRadio and FoxNews and we need to make our philosophy, our conservatism, and love of this country known, and this needs to be made known to groups who have our values, but often vote Democrat because they just do not know who we really are. We have been branded as rich, white Wall Street businessmen, and some people believe that stereotype. We have to tell people through this series of ads that we are a large tent with strong and clear views which most Americans believe in.

For a tag line, particularly for the regular people, let me suggest, "I'm the face of the Republican party." or "I'm the face of the new Republican party."

[Another reason why the Wall Street Journal is more relevant today than your newspaper or the network news]

In the closing weeks of last year's election campaign, we wrote that Democrats had in mind the most sweeping expansion of government in decades. Liberals clucked, but it turns out even we've been outbid. With yesterday's fiscal 2010 budget proposal, President Obama is attempting not merely to expand the role of the federal government but to put it in such a dominant position that its power can never be rolled back.

The first point to understand is the sheer magnitude of federal spending built into this proposal. As the nearby chart shows, federal outlays will soar in fiscal 2009 to $4 trillion, or 27.7% of GDP, from $3 trillion or 21% of GDP in 2008, and 20% in 2007. This is higher as a share of the economy than any year since 1945, when the country was still mobilized for World War II. It is more spending by far than during the Vietnam War, or during the recessions of 1974-75 or 1981-82.

But let's assume, for the sake of argument, that Mr. Obama is right that this spending is needed now to "jump-start" an economic recovery. Though the budget predicts that the economy will recover in 2010, spending will still be 24.1% of GDP that year, and the budget proposes that spending will remain higher than 22% for the entire next decade even as the defense budget steadily declines. All Presidential budgets predict spending will decline in the "out years," if only to give the illusion of spending restraint. Mr. Obama tries the same trick, but he is proposing so many new and expanded nondefense programs that his budgeteers can't get anywhere close even to Jimmy Carter spending levels.

These columns focus on spending, rather than deficits, because Milton Friedman taught us that spending represents the real future burden on taxpayers. Nonetheless, the 2009 budget deficit is estimated to be an eye-popping 12.7% of GDP, which once again dwarfs anything we've seen in the postwar era. The White House blueprint predicts that this will fall back down to 3.5% as soon as 2012, but this is based on assumptions about Washington that aren't going to happen.

For example, Mr. Obama's budget assumes that nearly all of the new stimulus spending will be temporary -- a fantasy. He also proposes to eliminate farm subsidies for those with annual sales of more than $500,000. This is a great idea, and long overdue. But has the President checked with Senators Kent Conrad (North Dakota) or Chuck Grassley (Iowa)? We hope we're wrong, but a White House that showed no interest in restraining Congress during the recent stimulus bacchanal isn't likely to stand athwart history to stop the agribusiness lobby.

The falling deficit also assumes the largest tax increase in U.S. history, starting in 2011 with the repeal of the Bush tax rates on incomes higher than $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for couples. The White House says this will yield upwards of $1 trillion, if you choose to believe that tax rates don't affect taxpayer behavior.

In the real world, two of every three tax filers who fall into this income category are small business owners or investors, who are certainly capable of finding ways to invest that allow them to declare less taxable income. The real impact of this looming tax increase will be to cast further uncertainty over economic decisions and either slow or postpone the recovery. Ditto for the estimated $646 billion from a new cap-and-trade tax, which no one wants to call a tax but would give the political class vast new leverage over the private economy. (See here.)

Then there is Mr. Obama's plan for national health care. The White House has put a $634 billion place holder in the budget to pay for covering tens of millions of uninsured Americans with government subsidized coverage. But even advocates of this government plan say the cost will be closer to $1 trillion over 10 years, and probably much more. Meanwhile, the President is promising to reform entitlements, but his budget proposes a net increase of about $1 trillion in Medicare, Medicaid and other entitlements.

The biggest illusion in this budget may be its optimistic economic forecast. The White House assumes that the economy will decline by only 1.2% this year, before growing by 3.2% next year. This assumes the recovery will begin later this year and gather steam quickly to return to normal levels of growth. By 2010 to 2013, the budget adds, the economy will be cooking by an average of 4% a year -- which is also how it conjures up magical deficit reduction.

This growth is a lovely thought, but how? The only impetus for growth in this budget comes from the government spending more money that it is taking out of the job-producing private economy. With $1 trillion of new entitlements, $1.4 trillion in new taxes, and $5 trillion in new debt, America's entrepreneurs aren't getting any help soon from Washington.

Democrats will want to rush all of this into law this year while Mr. Obama retains his honeymoon aura and they can blame the recession on George W. Bush. But Americans are only beginning to understand the magnitude of Mr. Obama's ambitions, and how much of their own income will be required to fulfill them. Republicans have an obligation to insist on a long and considerable debate on all of this, lest Americans discover in a year or two that they live in a very different country.

[quoting Obama] "The only way to fully restore America's economic strength is to make the long-term investments that will lead to new jobs, new industries, and a renewed ability to compete with the rest of the world." Translation: Big government. President Obama loves the word "invest." (He used a form of it 11 times in his congressional address on Tuesday.) It sounds so modern and free market, and, most important, not like what it really is -- "spending." The administration is aware that the deficit is now the story. Thus Mr. Obama's suggestion that blowing out hundreds of billions for health care, energy and education somehow isn't Washington as usual -- but will instead yield American riches down the road.

Of course, no country has ever made good on such a promise. Washington, D.C.'s return on investment for investing $14,000 a year per student is a 40% high-school dropout rate. Government can create industries, though only those, like corn ethanol, that can't cut it without perpetual government aid. We're still waiting for Medicare to turn a profit. Nevertheless, investment is a catchy term. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently described her giant $410 billion 2009 omnibus spending bill as a similar "investment." Never mind that it contains 8,500 earmarks and the largest increase in discretionary spending since Jimmy Carter.

[Video Clip] WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY ROBERT GIBBS: What this administration is working to do, per the executive order, is to come up with a plan that ensures our security and does so in a way that meets the test of our values and protecting the men and women that keep this country free and safe. I don't think you have to do all of that through a photo op.

BAIER: What's he talking about there? Attorney General Eric Holder visited the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay today, although we don't know exactly what happened on that trip, because no reporters were allowed to follow the attorney general. There we have no pictures or info about that trip.

It happens on the same day that the transfer of a former Guantanamo Bay detainee completed, now released in Britain, Binyam Mohamed. And, obviously, this is controversial for some military families who believe he should still be behind bars.

KRAUTHAMMER: This guy Binyam is a piece of work. He's a Somali. He grew up in Britain. He ends up captured in Afghanistan.

His story is that he became a drug addict in Britain, and went over to Afghanistan to get off the drugs. Now, as we say in medicine, this is a reportable case. He would be the only person on the planet who goes to the country that is the greatest producer of opium on the planet to get off drugs.

Then he says he trained in an Al Qaeda camps, but only to fight in Chechnya. Well, if he can produce a diploma from terror university with a masters in advanced terrorism that is stamped for use only in Russia, I might give him a pass. But I don't believe a word of it.

Look, he made his choice. He joined Al Qaeda, which in the '90s had declared war on the United States and on all Americans. He knew what he was doing.

In the past, when you captured enemy combatants, he stays in custody until the war is over. So people argue the war will never end. Well, whose fault is that? Al Qaeda can declare an end any day it wants. I wouldn't ask for a surrender on the Missouri. A statement on the Internet will do.

But we aren't the ones responsible for an endless war. He chose his side. He stays in detention as the prisoners, the Germans the Italians who were held in the U.S. many years in World War II.

The Government is my Shepherd, I need not work. It alloweth me to lie down on a good job; It leadeth me beside still factories; It destroyeth my initiative. It leadeth me in the path of a parasite for politics' sake;

Yea, though I walk through the valley of laziness and deficit-spending, I will fear no evil, for the government is with me. It prepareth an economic Utopia for me, by appropriating the earnings of my own grandchildren. It filleth my head with false security; My inefficiency runneth over. Surely the government should care for me all the days of my life, And I shall dwell in a fool's house forever.

Was George W. Bush really the worst president ever? Another one of the many reasons the Wall Street Journal is seeing an increase in readership:

If you want to see the numbers are laid out, read The 2% Illusion—Take everything they earn, and it still won't be enough. This shows you that if you tax everyone making $250,000 and above, all that they make, they will not be able to pay for Obama’s proposed spending. However, there is a solution: a 100% tax on everyone who makes more than $75,000/year.

The text to Bobby Jindal’s response speech, along with his appearance on the Today Show.

The tenderness of the delicate American buttock is causing more environmental devastation than the country's love of gas-guzzling cars, fast food or McMansions, according to green campaigners. At fault, they say, is the US public's insistence on extra-soft, quilted and multi-ply products when they use the bathroom.

"This is a product that we use for less than three seconds and the ecological consequences of manufacturing it from trees is enormous," said Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defence Council.

"Future generations are going to look at the way we make toilet paper as one of the greatest excesses of our age. Making toilet paper from virgin wood is a lot worse than driving Hummers in terms of global warming pollution." Making toilet paper has a significant impact because of chemicals used in pulp manufacture and cutting down forests.

I heard a commercial for this next organization on the way to church this morning—transforming convicted criminals into entrepreneurs. They say that criminals often have characteristics which parallel those of entrepreneurs: they understand profit and loss, they understand competition, they understanding building a business, they are often independent and think outside of the box. What the Prison Entrepreneurship Program (PEP) does is, take these characteristics and it redirects them toward lawful and productive business pursuits (which can often be as profitable as a criminal enterprise). It seems like an excellent plan which goes far beyond the normal societal re-entry routes open to former criminals.

RUSH: Vickie, Lake Charles, Louisiana, you're up first today. It's great to have you with us. Hi.

CALLER: Well, what I heard on my local station yesterday was there was a vote that passed before the Senate, I believe. I'm not for sure because I caught the very tail end of it but it said that the so-called Fairness Doctrine was voted on, and they're going to bring it up. You know, they're going to try to squelch you guys again, and it passed by a margin, by a vote of 80-something --

RUSH: There were two votes yesterday, two amendments, the Jim DeMint amendment is what you're talking about.

RUSH: And the Senate effectively told the FCC, you cannot re-implement the Fairness Doctrine. It's over.

RUSH: Fifty-seven or 58 to 41, and what it does authorize the FCC to expand the concept of minority ownership and local content rules -- the contrivances I wrote eloquently about the in the Wall Street Journal. So, no. The push to censor talk radio is very, very much alive. Now, it still has to be voted on in the House.

RUSH: In the House, by the way, they've got people that want the Fairness Doctrine. This is part of another bill that has nothing to do with either of these two amendments. But the bottom line is that your suspicions based on your instincts are accurate. It's not the "Fairness Doctrine." They're not going to call it that. They're just going to go through a back door or a couple of back doors to censor that which they cannot control, and that where they cannot succeed. Liberalism does not flourish in a free market. Think of it that way.

RUSH: Steven in Acme, Washington, it's nice to have you on the program, sir. Open Line Friday, hello.

CALLER: Hello, Rush. Thank you for taking my call. First thing. As a fifth generation veteran and two soldiers in the family presently, thank you very much for what you're doing for veterans.

CALLER: We appreciate it. God bless you, sir. Do you think Obama is making the decisions and the stuff that he is, because he's in over his head and doesn't know what he's doing, or is actually doing it on purpose to destroy our country?

RUSH: Well, I don't think he thinks he's destroying it, the country. I think he knows he's destroying a system that he thinks is unfair, unjust, and he doesn't like. He is destroying capitalism. That's his objective. He wants to destroy capitalism. He wants to establish a very powerful socialist government, authoritarian. He's intellectual. They want control. He wants control of the economy; he wants it for his party as well. They don't think they're destroying America. They think they are America! See, these people think their way is America. We're the ones un-American. We're the ones that stand for capitalism, which is unfairness. To them, capitalism is greed. It is selfishness. And they are the good people, and they love to think of themselves that way. In truth, what Obama's doing is cruel.

What the Democrat Party has done is cruel. I intend to detail this in my CPAC speech tomorrow. What they have done is cruel in the guise of compassion. It is... (interruption) What? What! (interruption) What are you chuckling about? What is it? (interruption) Yeah. (interruption) I'm starting to think of things. I never... (interruption) Somebody at Fox called me today said, "Can you give me an advance idea what you're going to say?" I said, "I don't know yet." I don't start thinking about this 'til the last minute, until every bit of news that's going to happen has happened before I go out there. I can't write a speech. I cannot sit down and write a speech. I lose half my vocabulary when I write a speech, because I get caught up in the keyboard, typos. My brain freezes. All my life, my best thinking has been done while I'm speaking, as is illustrated by 20 years behind the Golden EIB Microphone.

But, yeah, the speech is tomorrow. It's like 26 hours away. This is when the little gray cells start exploding in there. So, yeah, I'm starting to get an idea. But, anyway, what they have done is cruel, and they've done it for 50 years, and they get away with it because of their "good intentions." They only want to help. Somehow the unintended consequences end up really damaging millions of people and families. It's never reported that way because the assumption is they're full of compassion and love, and they're "just trying to help." So no, he's not trying to destroy America. He thinks he is America. He thinks he represents the America that's been getting the shaft for 200 years. He represents the America that's on the wrong side of every deal.

They get the raw deal, the rotten deal. They have been screwed. They have been shafted. They've been taken advantage of; they've been discriminated against. It's time to make it right! It's time to show these people that have been doing these evil things to people exactly how it feels. So you want to find out what it's like on welfare when you don't care people are on it? Here you go, here's your unemployment check. You want to find out what it feels like to be scared to death? Here you go. This is about revenge, a little vengeance. It is about theoretical capitalism that they despise 'cause they can't control it and again because they think it's unfair and unjust and unequal. No, no, no. They're not in their minds trying to destroy America. They're trying to rewrite it.

The only problem they've got is that liberalism doesn't flourish in the free market which is why Obama has to go out and sound like he's Ronald Reagan, promising socialism. He couldn't be getting away with this -- and this point, ladies and gentlemen, is crucial. He couldn't and wouldn't be getting away with this were it not for a totally compliant press. If it weren't for the Drive-Bys in effect being his PR agent each and every day, he would not be getting away with this. If there were a genuine vetting of Barack Obama during the campaign and prior to it -- if there were a genuine vetting of his administration, all these plans -- he wouldn't be getting away with any of this. But he has not been vetted and he has not been challenged. He has not been investigated. He has not been questioned. He's not been doubted for going on two years. Well, that's a lot of solid time to propagandize people. That's where we are.

RUSH: To Minneapolis. This is Kristin. It's great to have you on the program, Kristin. Hello.

CALLER: Good. I just wanted to share a little story with you. I'm one of those five million Americans who are unemployed, and yesterday I called the unemployment office to see what benefits I would get from the stimulus package; and, of course, being a government agency they didn't know that much. But they did tell me that I would get $25 extra in my paycheck weekly, my unemployment check. And I thought to myself, "You know, something is not right here." You know, if they're going to give -- what is it? -- $13 or $16 to working Americans, but unemployed Americans they're going to give $25 to? Something's not right here and people should be outraged at that.

RUSH: But it makes total sense. The unemployed are not being paid nearly as much as the employed. It's only fair the employed get a smaller increase than the unemployed, because their baseline is lower. What is your unemployment check? Do you get it every week, every month? How do they come?

CALLER: They offer you the option. You don't have to have to have taxes taken out, but I choose to.

RUSH: Because you have to pay taxes on your unemployment compensation, eventually.

CALLER: I don't know offhand. I don't get stubs or anything because I have it direct deposited, I don't look that up, but now I'm going to get an extra $25 now. I mean, I think that's a good amount of money.

RUSH: Look, I may have to revise my answer here is why I'm asking for these numbers.

CALLER: No, he isn't. He has his own business, and we have employees. He has employees that work for him.

CALLER: Well, as an American I just think it's not right that people that are working are getting short-changed.

RUSH: God bless you for calling. God bless God for seeing to it that you got through, because this is a perfect illustration of my theorem about what this is all about. The unemployed -- the people who are technically not working and not doing anything -- are being paid more by the government to stay in that circumstance than people who are working.

RUSH: People who are working and fit a certain profile get 13 bucks a week, which is -- what is it? -- $52 a month. Whatever. It's less than a thousand dollars a year.

RUSH: Plus they're going to have to pay taxes on it next year 'cause the rates haven't been changed. So the people working -- you're exactly right -- the people who are working, who are getting their fingernails dirty, the people who are going out there and hanging in there, despite the obstacles --

RUSH: -- get a measly 13 bucks and your increase in your unemployment check is $25. I'm telling you, that's purposeful. They want to make it more attractive to be on unemployment than it is to work. Mark my words.

RUSH: I want to go to the Early Show yesterday. Joe Biden and the co-host Maggie Rodriguez have this exchange.

RODRIGUEZ: The Republican Party came out with their own charismatic, young, dynamic, ethnic spokesperson after the speech and said, "We don't buy it. We're not on board." Are you taking any of their objections into account?

BIDEN: What I don't understand from Governor Jin-dell (sic) is, what would he do? I mean in -- in Louisiana, there's 400 people a day losing their jobs. (sic) What's he doing? What's the answer?

RUSH: Joe Biden is wrong. I don't know who's telling him this, but Louisiana has added jobs at a time everybody is losing them. Of course, Rodriguez has to describe Jindal as "ethnic." What's that have to do with anything?

"Giving the [R]epublican response to President Obama's speech Tuesday night, Governor Bobby Jindal pointed out fundamental differences in how [R]epublicans and [D]emocrats see the economy," and Joe Biden says, "'[I]n Louisiana there's 400 people a day losing their jobs, what's he doing?'... But that claim is wrong, if you look at the numbers from the Louisiana Workforce Commission. 'In December, Louisiana was the only state in the nation besides the District of Columbia, according to the national press release that added employment over the month,' says Patty Granier with the Louisiana Workforce Commission. According to her, not only is Louisiana not losing jobs. 'The state gained 3,700 jobs for the seasonally adjusted employment,' Granier said of the most recent figures." These are numbers you can check out yourself if you go to LAWorks.net, Louisiana Works-dot-net, and there you can find the latest unemployment stats, "statistics that appear to directly contradict what Biden said." Louisiana is adding jobs; they're not losing jobs. Four hundred jobs lost a day is an out-and-out lie, similar to much of the irresponsible rhetoric coming from the entire Obama administration.

RUSH: Now cap and trade. Obama is going to use cap and trade to redistribute wealth to poor people. A lot of people don't know what cap and trade is. I have 'splained it on this program on a couple of occasions, but basically here's how it's gonna work. Any company that spews carbon emissions in the process of doing what they do will be assigned an allowable level of emissions, and if they exceed it, they will have to pay for it. They might be able to trade with a company that is underusing what it's allowed, but the objective here is the carbon tax. Just look at it as a carbon tax. They call it cap and trade because what they're trying to make you think is we're saving the environment. They're just going to put ridiculously low emission level standards on every business so that everybody exceeds them, and they're going to tax them, the business is going to have pay. Now, as you know, the way business operates they pass along the costs of doing business as much as possible to the end-user which is the retail customer. So prices are going to go up. Cost of doing business is going to go up.

Here's how it's described as MSNBC.com: "The federal government will soon begin tapping into a huge new source of revenue by requiring

companies to pay for the permission to emit so-called greenhouse gasses linked to global warming." While many details of the program remain unclear, the government's going to begin issuing permits by 2012. The basic outline is that "large sources of greenhouse gasses, such as electric utilities to purchase permits from the government for the gasses they emit, including carbon dioxide," which we exhale. We exhale it. It is part of us staying alive. It is going to be become a tax when it comes out of a smokestack. "A 'cap-and-trade system' would be created, under which the government would place a cap, or limit, on the total amount of greenhouse gasses that can be emitted. Companies that need to exceed their allotted level must buy offsetting permits from those that emit less." It's not a new idea. Trading pollution credits has been around for a while. This, however, is massive and has an ulterior motive.

Peter Orszag, the Congressional Budget Office director, now the head of Office and Management and Budget under Obama, told the House Ways and Means committee in September that such a system would create a new commodity, the right to emit carbon dioxide. A new commodity government could tax, they charge you for, you exhale it. For those of you who voted for Obama, I mean you breathe it out. You inhale, you exhale, carbon dioxide all over my microphone here, I've just polluted. The day might come where I get taxed on the average amount of exhales over the course of a week, particularly if I do it in the presence of other human beings who could thus be poisoned, they will say. The CBO estimated that by 2020 the value of these allowances could total between 50 and $300 billion annually, an enormous revenue stream that at the high end would be equal in size to roughly half the benefits paid out in Social Security last year. All this is is a money grab disguised as helping the environment. How much money can they steal this way when businesses are out of business, though? How much can they tax people when they're not working? If they limit salaries like they're talking about on Wall Street to $500,000, how is New York City going to survive? Doesn't matter. These are not concerns. He doesn't care about paying for any of this. This is about control.

It's like I told you yesterday, in 1975, the great economist, Dr. Friedrich Von Hayek was interviewed by George Will. Dr. Von Hayek, a brilliant free market economist, was asked, "Dr. Von Hayek, why is it that so many intellectuals and particularly economists look at capitalism, they won't see the overwhelming prosperity and success that it has generated." He said he troubled over this for a long time trying to understand it, and the best that he could come up with was that, to intellectuals, it's all about control. The fun is controlling things. That's what we're dealing with here, an administration, an individual, President Obama, who wants to control as much as they can. This is not about paying for things; it's not even really about raising revenue. What it's about is removing revenue. It's about limiting the amount of money that people have access to. That's a great attack on individual liberty and freedom. Bye-bye American dream. That's what all this is about. To get caught up in policy debates and agendas that are set by Democrats is to miss what this is about. This requires a philosophical opposition and a detailed explanation to the American people about what they face. Because Obama is promising all this stuff within the realm of reviving an economy, saving people's lives, making them more prosperous just like he's against earmarks while there are 9,000 in his budget, or in an omnibus spending bill that he's going to sign.

RUSH: Do you know what a cramdown is? Do you know what a cramdown is, Brian? No, it's not studying for anything. We're talking home mortgages. AskHeritage.org, you can find out what a cramdown is if you don't know. I happen to have a story from the Heritage Foundation about what a cramdown is. "The Helping Families Save Their Homes Act (H.R. 1106) would allow bankruptcy judges to reduce the principal owed on a mortgage, a practice often referred to as a 'cramdown.'" A federal judge would be empowered to basically break a contract. What is the principal of your mortgage? The principal is the value of your house minus whatever down payment that you've put down. Let's say you've got a $150,000 house, you put $20,000 down on it, so you're borrowing $130. That's your principal, the interest and taxes, insurance above that. A judge can come along and say, "I'm going to cram that down. I'm going to make that a hundred thousand. I'm going to reduce the principal by $30,000 so that the homeowner, the home occupier, the house occupier, can have a cheaper payment." Not reduce the interest, the principal. So a federal judge will be empowered in federal legislation Obama will sign, to basically say the contract that you have on your house is worthless.

Now, the federal judge will not be able to raise your principal. He will only be able to lower it and everybody is going to go along with this because this socks it to the banks, it socks it to the lenders. So what is the point of a contract? What is the point of a contract? AskHeritage.org can answer these questions and any others that you have, in addition to the regular posts they have from their brilliant scholars on the issues of the day. Membership is 25 bucks at the cheapest, and it goes up from there. It's a brilliant website to have, it's scholars, conservative scholars that sit around and think and write, and it's a great asset for those of you who are looking to find places that will confirm your conservative instincts. A cramdown, we gonna expand it. Cramdown is essentially the entire Obama agenda. They're cramming it down our throats. Why would a lending institution make a deal like this? The judge can render the contract meaningless.

A judge can go in and reduce the price of your house. Reduce the principal. You think this is about fiscal responsibility, all this stuff that Obama is doing? Shocking stuff here. The kind of stuff your parents told you nobody would ever do for you. You take out a loan, you're responsible for it. Nobody's going to ever come along, until Obama. It's finally happened. My parents are wrong about everything they told me. Everything they told me, they're wrong about, ever since we elected Obama. There's a free lunch. Evil rich are going to end up paying for everybody else. You don't even have to have a job to feel good about yourself. Be unemployed and have your horizons expand, according to the Boston Globe.

RUSH: Now, a couple words here about Bobby Jindal. There's a great disconnect, ladies and gentlemen, between the Beltway pundits in the Drive-By Media -- and I, sadly, have to include the Fox News All Stars in this. We live in a world obviously where style counts for more than anything else, and that's not good. Obama's a great stylist, a great orator, who gave great speech last night. But if you listen to it, it was meaningless. It had all kinds of lies.

Those of us who studied Obama know exactly what he's going to do. He's going to grow the government as big as he can. He's going to expand the government sector. He's going to do it at the expense of the high end of the private sector. He's going to do this. He's got the votes, by the way. If his speech created a bump in his approval numbers, he's got the votes to do anything he wants. He can do cap-and-trade, and he can do health care reform in 30 days. He can do socialized medicine. He can do whatever he wants as soon as he wants depending on the bump and the bounce he gets out of this speech, and I fully expect that the Drive-Bys will run polls showing that his approval numbers are way, way up. But the market is way, way down.

Again, the people with skin in the game heard the speech last night, and they don't like it. The market is down. It's vacillating around 150, minus 150 today. It's been around 180 or 122. It started out at minus 14. Now it's at minus 151. So the people with skin in the game, the people who invest their money to try to grow the economy are not digging what they heard last night. That continues to be the case with real people who make the country work. So we have a great stylist, a great orator who makes a great symbolic speech, wows everybody with his style. Everybody is falling all over themselves last night to praise Barack Obama in new ways that they think he hasn't been praised. "Elegant," he was... I forget some of the things. But I'm sure you were frustrated listening to it. Then Bobby Jindal came on, and everybody trashed Bobby Jindal. "That was the worst response I've ever seen. Why, that was horrible! Well, this is embarrassing. Why, get him off! This is rotten. He blew his chance," and so forth. It's very mistaken to have that impression of Bobby Jindal.

RUSH: Let me just say it right out. I love Bobby Jindal and that did not change after last night. I respect Bobby Jindal; I have great enthusiasm for Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, and nothing that happened last night changed my mind. Now, these answers to State of the Union speeches have been silly since I first became aware of them after Nixon was giving speeches in the early seventies and the Democrats had to come out. I almost got fired from a music station. I was doing a morning show in Pittsburgh, and maybe it had happened before this, but it had to be 1972, and I'm watching a response to a Nixon speech, and I'm on the air the next day, "What the hell was that? It's not in the Constitution, where is this response stuff?" And it's always been silly. I remember Jim Wright, Fort Worthless Jim, the speaker of the House from Houston, or somewhere in Texas, responding to Reagan. "We only want to help the president. We only want to work with the president." You shifty-eyed, lying, you never intended -- all you wanted to do was destroy. But I never heard the Drive-By Media talk about what a rotten, horrible, stupid speaker Jim Wright was. In fact, they built him up.

And then I remember Rosty Rostenkowski, he answered a presidential speech at one time, and John McLaughlin of the McLaughlin Group went nuts, "Do we have a new Democrat spokesman, Rosty!" So the Democrats go out there and give their responses, be it to Bush 41 or 43, and nobody dumped on them because they understand it's a lose-lose. Here you've got the big pomp and ceremony with live feedback, stand up, standing ovation, applause after applause after applause in the House chamber, and then you get some dinky little anteroom or even a governor's mansion in front of a staircase where there's no laugh track, there's no applause track, there's none of this. But I never heard, I have never heard the media, both sides, conservative, liberal media, dump on a responder in all my life until last night. They dumped on Jindal in ways that are damaging and make no sense. I hear from all of you in e-mail or on phone calls, you're sick of style, you're stick of phony baloney, plastic banana, good-time rock 'n' rollers who lie through their teeth and tell people whatever they want to hear, but they do it so well. You're sick of it because it's destroying the country. Well, we got that big time last night.

We got lie after lie after lie spoken as well as it's ever been said. We had nothing said last night, unless you knew who this guy is, and are willing to admit it, then you could walk out of that room last night scared to death for your country. But if you don't know who the guy is, you walk out of there feeling great because, man, he sounds smart, and it looked good, and, wow, everybody loved him, and, oh, it's sort of like the faith people have in God. You can't prove it, but you know it. You can't tell anybody why, but you know it. Same thing here. People who don't believe in God believe in Obama. Agnostics, atheists, because believe me, a planeload of atheists on a jet on the way to Hawaii and three of the four engines go out, the atheists start praying to who? God. Not the ocean, to save 'em. Everybody believes in God at some point, but not until they face their mortality. Everybody does. They have some God. Very few people think they're it. Obama is one. I think when Obama prays, it's to himself. Those of us who know him know this. Those of us who don't care about that, who just want symbolism, feel so good.

So, where are we? We as conservatives are in the wilderness, and many of you are hopeless. So we have a guy, Bobby Jindal, 37 years old, first time on the national stage, shows up last night to make a response to The Messiah. All he did was articulate what we believe. All he did was articulate opposition to what Obama is doing, with the obligatory when he's right, we'll work with him, just like we worked with Clinton on NAFTA, just like we worked with Clinton on welfare reform after we brought him in. These things happen. It doesn't mean that we lose our distrust. All Bobby Jindal did was tell us what conservatism is; he used his own life story to do it; he talked about the American people making the country work. He had it all. Now, he may not have done it in the same stylistic way as Obama. I can understand the Democrats trashing the man, just as they trashed Sarah Palin. They are mean-spirited, heartless, horrible winners. But the people on our side are really making a mistake if they go after Bobby Jindal on the basis of style.

Because if you think people on our side, I'm talking to you, those of you who think Jindal was horrible, in fact, I don't want to hear from you ever again if you think that what Bobby Jindal said was bad or what he said was wrong or not said well, because, folks, style is not going to take our country back. Solid conservatism articulated in a way that's inspiring and understanding is what's going to take the country back. Bobby Jindal's 37 years old. I've spoken to him numerous times. He's brilliant. He's the real deal. I'm not coming here to defend him, he doesn't need that. We're going to have to figure out what we want. Do we want to have somebody in our party who can sound as smart as Obama regardless what he says and convince people to vote for us, or do we believe in a set of principles that defined this country's founding and will return it to greatness again? And if we do, we cannot shun politicians who share those beliefs simply 'cause we don't like the way they say it.

RUSH: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. One more thing about Bobby Jindal here. Two years ago, if you had taken a poll among people who know Bernie Madoff, he would have had a 99% approval rating, and the guy who had blown the whistle on him would have had a 1% approval rating. Today, Bernie Madoff has a 0% approval rating and the guys who blew the whistle on him are now being asked, "Why didn't you speak up louder?" Barack Obama has whatever his approval rating is. Somebody told Bobby Jindal to act like he was talking to first graders last night. I don't know who advised him to do it. That can get fixed. But don't throw this guy overboard, and our side is doing this, and it is a huge mistake. If we're going to start throwing genuine conservatives overboard for some of these specious reasons, we deserve to get our butts beat every election.

Bobby Jindal and this whole business here of his speech and how it was not delivered in such a great, stylish way. How about the story he told? During Katrina, people on their rooftops, line after line after line after line of rescue boats, federal bureaucrats would not let 'em leave without proof of insurance. A local sheriff told a bureaucrat, "Sue me. Arrest me. I'm going to rescue people." Jindal heard him, said "What are you talking about, sheriff?" The sheriff told the story. Jindal gets on the phone to the bureaucrat and says, "I'm Bobby Jindal, congressman, Louisiana. You can arrest me, too," and they set out on the boats and they said to hell with FEMA, and they went and got the job done.

They didn't wait around for the bureaucracy. That story is the antithesis of where America is today, and it's the kind of story that America needs to hear and understand that made the country great.

RUSH: Here's Bobby Jindal on the Today show this morning. Meredith Vieira says, "You just heard the vice president take you to task for some of the words that you brought up last night. He said, basically, he's heard about all the criticism, but you never say what you're going to do."

JINDAL: The Republicans have laid out a plan, for example, rather than spending a billion dollars on the Census, $300 million to buy federal government cars, instead of all the wasteful spending in the stimulus, why not do what they first said they were going to do: let's do targeted infrastructure investments, let's do tax breaks, let's lower permanently the tax, lower tax breaks on the lower tax brackets in the income tax, let's cut taxes on capital gains, let's give a more aggressive net carry forward of losses for small businesses. Here's the fundamental disagreement. We think we do need to work to get the economy moving. We think it's more important to get the private sector moving rather than just spending government money. We need to focus on getting our businesses to hire people to create jobs. That will help to address the challenges that our country is facing.

RUSH: And that's Bobby Jindal expressing conservatism in a clear and articulate way, direct contrast to that coming out of the mouth of Obama. So the guy is good, folks. Don't throw him overboard. By the way, speaking of Bobby Jindal, as you know, he said he doesn't want to take some of the stimulus money because it will wreck the law and the budget on unemployment compensation benefits in Louisiana. Guess who's joining him? The Democrat governor of Tennessee says he might reject a portion of his stimulus out of concerns it would force the state to raise taxes on business in the future, exactly what Jindal said. This caused Chuck-U Schumer to come on and say, you can't just take a la carte here, you gotta take it all or take nothing. But a Democrat governor now parroting Bobby Jindal.

Dennis Miller explained Chris Matthews’ remark, by suggesting the Matthews was just finishing up after watching the Obama speech (recall that Chris Matthews revealed that a thrill ran up his leg when listening to Obama).

Here’s a few stats, which clearly point out, it is not your money anymore; it belongs to Obama and he knows how to spend it responsibly:

I find this to be fascinating; quite obviously, Obama does not write his own speeches; but it is amazing how filled they are with inaccuracies:

As to the AP article itself, the good news is that AP pair indeed spent over 1,200 words ripping into no fewer than eight assertions Obama made during his speech They related to housing aid, who invented the automobile, oil imports, the credibility of government cost savings claims, how supposedly "gutting" regulations led to current economic mess, how his ideas are only proposals (not dictates, as they would appear to be from the tone of his speech, the nation's ability to double its production of "renewable" energy, and the claim (criticized in the past by yours truly at NewsBusters and at BizzyBlog) that his programs will "save or create 3.5 million jobs."

Chinese flying to the US to buy our foreclosures (recall that I told you that property purchases right now are the smartest investments that you can make):

Conservative Review
Issue #64	Kukis Digests and Opines on this Week’s News and Views	March 1, 2009